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Gérome had no picture in the last Salon, nor had Beaumont, Perrault, Voillemot r A. Lefèvre, the painter of the "Daughter f Ocean", which, a few years ago, appeared like a new Galatea, inspiring many Pygmalions. But Jules Lefbvre, Henner, Gustave Moreau and others, were represented by delicate and lovely pictures. Humbert exhibited a "Salomé," Schwertzmeyer "le Gorion," Merle a "Hebe", but these pictures, though remarkable as studies, did not make up for the lack of imagination by any delicacy or any other exceptional trait. The model, that sunbeam of the studies, has this year been made the subject of several good pictures.
Edward Dantan has placed a pretty little woman, perfectly nude, in the corner of a studio, and two dainty pink shoes stand before her and two tiny glasses - empty, of course - on a smal table near. On the other side of the room the young sculptor is hard at work, to make up for the time lost over that last glass.
Mr. Barlett, an English painter, but partly Parisian - as who is not nowadays? - has chosen the "Repose" of a model" for his subject. There are, perhaps, too many figures on his canvas, but what life and gaiety is in their bustle. These students, intent upon their work, are not of the class who pay for pink shoes. One paints a background, another prepares his palette: they chat, strol about , light their pipes, even read the newspaper, while the poor naked model, alone and silent, warms herself at the stove - a thoroughly English touch.
Bompland, a good painter, takes it more seriously. He places a beautiful woman, carefully painted, softly colored, alone, grave and sad, in a quaint studio full of the charming trifles with which artists now crowd their rooms. This apartment is all modern, but there is a touch of the antique in this woman, taken from nature, like the women of Heilbuth the eccentric water-colorist.
As for the great pictures, the superb "Galatea" of Moreau, Jules Lefebvre's pure and dainty half-length, Henner's refined and graceful figure of a young girls lit up by the softest moonlight. It is the province of Henner to portary with reverent hand a nude or half nude woman. This woman is always the same, but she is none the less charming, returning year by year to embody some new idea. With Henner, woman's beauty is a scared ideal, which he does not tarnish by a breath of fleshly desire; he would not push his ideal towards the pleasnat precipice; he would save it-to copy. For this reason, in the future his women will have the charm of the reverential and believing painters of the Renaissance. One must believe in what one paints.
This year Henner's female figure personifies the Fountain. Learning over the spring, she sees her own white figute fading away. It is another version of Byblis, the myth which inspired the modest Suchetez, who received a medal for his statue. But Henneh had in the Salon a head which far surpassed his other picture-a sleeping girl, with moist skin and scarlet cheeks, so life-like that one could hardly help waking her.
The half-length of a woman is an exquisite example of J.Lefebvre. It is the swan-like creature he always paints, the most superb of which, by-the-by, "La Femme Couchée", belongs to Alexander Dumas - a creature fresh, spring-like, innocent, quivering at the first warm kiss of life. If she lies upon a lion's skin, fan in hand, her elbow on the beast's head, she is called "Fatima".
If wandering frightened in the woods she is "La Cigale", the least natural of his works. If standing, severe and pure, the stiffness of one side of the figure redeemed by the roundness, the exquisite art of the other-lighting the world with a torch, the cancas wit two superb Roman eyes of Lucretiua's type-this swan-woman is called "Truth." But in whatever shape she comes, there is always the same indefinable charm-the solid flesh and rosy skin of a girl of sixteen. Lefebvre's women seem always ready to take flight, like birds, into the sky, their true home.
The "Galatea" of Gustave Moreau, full of soul, in spite of the lovely body, is in quite another style. How is it possible to deny to this painter the dame so willingly accorded to the commonplace cateres to the paltry caprices of the moment? Eyes gifted with the marvellous power of seeing beauty cannot find the calm and immaculate loveliness they seek in trivial reproductions of varying and perishable types, which come and go like clouds. He ignores-in spite of the money to be gained thereby-the easy puerilities of art of to-day; he seeks, in the world of legend, heroes whose vulgarity is ridden by distance, or in boundless space, spirits without substance, eternal symbols, ideals and dreams of beauty. This disdain of the fashion of the day which characterizes the work of Gustave Moreau is a sign of artistic superiority. True genius always generalizes. Its sympathy yearns over those treasures of the soul which the world disregards, those eager virtues whose feverish unrest tortures and kills so many noble hearts-with no loving hand to cover the poor dead with flowers. Moreau paints, in his warm style, where excess of imagination never wrongs art, a young girl of Thrace finding the head and lyre of Orpheus, that great suffering soul. When his friend Chasseriau dies, in the height of youth and strength, he paints, in sombre lines, "Death and the Young Man." If the thirst for beauty parches his eager lips and the love of the ideal disturbs his dreams, he paints Galatea, a serene, coquettish, careless, glowing, girlish beauty. He gives way to the delicious pleasure of his creative imagination, he adorns the chosen mystery with multitudes of details, he surrounds it with bold and original adjuncts; but his imagiantion is restrained by his conscience, and in these rides on the back of Pegasus he never loses his stirrup, he never loses sight of the logic which should govern the most brilliant flights of fancy. Feeling that his genius would lead him where his unpractised hand could not yet follow, he hid himself among the shadows of the cemetary of Pisa, still full of those quaint figures of Giotto, with feet like old gnarled trees. He studied Garracci's impetuous lines lines; he learnt drawing by copying untiringly Da Vinci's severe and earnest work; he set forth a poet, to return a painter. His Galatea, while possessing the softest femininity of form, is not a woman. She stands surrounded by a capricious vegetation, which seems like the wanderings of a poetic fancy. Moreau is accused of being somewhat scenic in his backgournds.
True, he is fond of the brilliancy of a light all his own, clear and silvery, glittering on the jewels of Helen's girdle, on the white foam of his yeasty waves, on the red tips of his coral islands and nests of pearl shell. But he will ever be the faithful lover of Galatea, and live as long as Henner, Doré, Laurent or Fromentin.
The Hour, Nueva York, 31 de julio de 1880.
(¹) No ha sido posible obtener el primer párrafo de este trabajo, publicado en The Hour, Nueva York, el 31 de julio de 1880
