Studio: international art (8.1896)

The Salon of the Champs-Ely sees

also be mentioned in order to bring out the con-
trast.

Among the historical works we may therefore
avoid the exhibits M. Gerome, member of the
Institute: La Veritk and Promenade de la Cour
dans les Jardins de Versailles, cold and hard pro-
ductions, clumsily treated, and quite remarkably
puerile in conception. And nothing better can
be said of the Irene and Les Otages, by M. Jean-
Paul Laurens, with his everlasting fondness for
bric-a-brac ; nor of M. Henri Pille's Quinze Mai
1588; nor of M. Andre Marchant's Eclaireurs
Franchetti a la Ferme de la Fouilleuse, and M.
Lionel Royer's Germanicus devant le desastre de
Varus. All these works are conceived in the
same empty, pompous style of theatrical and
would-be heroic sentimentality; but there is no
sign of any serious attempt to study the surround-
ings, or the personages themselves, or their facial
characteristics. There is intensity of inspiration
of a sort in M. Tattegrain's Bouches Inuiiles—a
scene full of horror, all too literally portrayed.
The sight of these famishing wretches, feeding on
the bodies of their fellows, recalls the disgusting
exhibitions of the wax-work museums. Two
canvases by M. Albrecht de Vriendt are con-
spicuous in this gallery—F Institution de POrdre
de la Toison dor, and Thierry cf Alsace, rapportant

a Bruges les reliques de Saint-Sang, painted for the
Hotel de Ville at Brussels. There is feeling and
knowledge in these pictures, without hardness,
despite a tendency to suggest the stained-glass
treatment. M. Georges Rochegrosse will, I
fancy, regret the false step he has taken this year in
his Angoisse Humaine: a pyramid of straining arms
and heads and bodies, with hands greedily out-
stretched towards the visions of Wealth and Fame
and Love (if Love it be ?) passing across the sky,
and leaving an alluring flood of light in their train.
The philosophic symbolism of M. Rochegrosse's
idea is apparent enough, but it seems to me to be but
inadequately realised, and to be devoid of clearness
and still more of simplicity. The same remark
applies to F Humanite, by M. Pelez. Despite
many excellent bits of detail, the general effect is
one of confusion and incoherence ; and the figure
of Christ upon the Cross seems to a great extent,
not to say entirely, out of place in this mob
thronging the square in which the scene is laid.
It is all very mannered and childish, for the simple
reason that the artist has attempted to show us
the materialisation of an Idea. I greatly prefer
M. Jean Veber's Fhomme aux poupees, with its
strange symbolism and its depth of feeling and
fancy. This little piece of nude is very true in
tone, and is the work of a painter with a future

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