Studio: international art (65.1915)

The Paris Salon of Fifty Years Ago

THE PARIS SALON OF FIFTY
YEARS AGO. BY D. CROAL
THOMSON.

(First A rticle.)

The interest in French art, as in everything
connected with our nearest Ally, has been naturally
deepened by the events
of the war. Had the
usual Paris Salon been
held this year it would
have been one of great
importance as indicating
tendencies for the future.

But to open the Salon has
not been found possible,
not only because so many
artists are to be found in
the fighting line, but also
from the inevitable jolt
that such a war gives to
all artistic movement.

It is, of course, quite
certain that the ultimate
effect of the present up-
heaval will be beneficial
to the development of
new ideas, for the old
ways are being aban-
doned, and we can only
speculate as to what direc-
tion the new movement
will take.

From 1789 onwards,
and again in 1830, fresh
ground was broken by
both artists and writers,
and we may look forward
to the immediate future to
witness some equivalent
development of which,
however, as yet we have
no serious indication.

The changes which
occur in artistic move-
ments are not easily dis-
cernible at the immediate

turning-point, but the modifications in a period of
fifty years are very great. For this reason the study
of French art at the Salon of fifty years ago is
specially interesting, and when we can accompany
the consideration of the pictures at that time with
facsimiles of original drawings made by the artists
concerned for a publication called “ L’Autographe
au Salon,” this interest is
vastly increased.

In looking back over
all these years we possess
the obvious advantage of
being able to judge from
a truer perspective, which
enables us to estimate
each artist on the whole
of his life’s productions,
and not only from the
individual work of the
year when it was pro-
duced. It is also quite
certain that the critic,
and likewise the public,
of the Sixties, accepted
with favour many painters
of what in England we
call Victorian Art, and
of whom now we hold no
great account.

We shall follow the
sequence of our repro-
ductions and commence
with Puvis de Chavannes
(1824-1898), who in
1864 was only beginning
to be recognised. Three
years before he had
exhibited Peace and War,
which he had prepared
for the decoration of the
Amiens Museum, his first
great work. Some dozen
years later he designed the
great artistic triumph of his
life, and the best known,
the St. Genevieve panels
in the Pantheon at Paris.

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LXV. No. 268.—July 1915

77