International studio (21.1903/1904(1904))

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intelligence and beauty of the present
day. Blanche was, as we have seen, fully
prepared for the accomplishment of this
noble task through his unceasing fre-
quentation of the rnost divers centres.
Frorn his early youth he went into society
in London as well as in Paris; he had
the opportunity of studying at his ease
the aristocracy and the fashionable
society of these great cities ; he was a
child of the house in the highest literary
salons, where types of a different kind
secured his attention; moreover, he did
not overlook the lowlier dass, as de-
monstrated by his illustrations for the
" Eddy and Paddy" of M. Abel Hermant.
He has thus steered clear of the shoal
on which are wrecked so many portrait-
painters who become the specialists of
the same centres, and whose work is
hence enveloped with a distressing mon-
otony. The one adopts as his own a
lucrative and inviting speciality, that of
painter of the aristocracy ; a second
affects to dwell in the salons of high
ßnance, or to be the conhdant of the

to put it briehy, to be the characteristics
of these later works, which compel us
to stand uncovered before the painter
who has attained the full maturity
of his talent. I speak of his pprtraits
of Charles Cottet, Claude Debussy,
Lucien Simon, Ignacio Zuloaga, George
Moore, Paul Adam, Maurice Barres,
Jules Cheret, Jose-Maria Sert, preceded
by thbse of the novelist Paul Hervieu,
of the historian Th. de Wyzewa, of the
musician Faure, and of the great poet
Leconte de Lisle.
If one examines these works, many of
which have been exhibited in the Salons,
one fully grasps the diversity and the sup-
pleness of his talent, and one likewise
understands—and this is an essential point
and one of the great merits of these fine
bits of painting—what an admirable
harvest of documents Blanche will leave
for coming generations to garner, by
having in his works permanently pre-
served the traits of some of the select
individuals, who, in entirely different
domains, constitute the aristocracy of roRTRAiT OF CHARLES coTTET BY j. E. BLANCHE
197