International studio (51.1913/1914)

A Revival of Eighteenth-Century French Art


PANEL OVER THE KEYBOARD IN THE PIPE ORGAN IN W. M. SALISBURY’S HOUSE

BY EVERITT SHINN

4 REVIVAL OF EIGH-
/\ TEENTH-CENTURY
Z—X FRENCH ART
1 Y BY C. MATLACK
PRICE

It seems curious that an entire
school of painting should vanish
from the field of art—should be-
come utterly a thing of the past,
followed by no clique of painters.
Is it that our painters or our public
think differently than did the paint-
ers and the public of that highly
cultured, urbane and brilliant era
known as the eighteenth-century
French revival?
That the public as a whole has
suffered a change of ideals rather
than the painters as individuals is
manifested in more ways than one.
Where are the Solons, the wits, the
general brilliancy that characterized
that period? Its spirit of intense
vitality and effervescent frivolity
is of the past. There was no talk
then of “realism,” “materialism,”
or even of “impressionism” in art.
Men painted as they lived, in a per-
petual kaleidoscope of bat masque
and fete champetre, brilliant, gay,
galant, fantastic. That the transi-
ent and exotic spirit of the time


PANEL IN GREY, IO X 7 FT., IN THE WARREN M.
SALISBURY HOUSE AT PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS

BY EVERITT
SHINN

CLXVIII