Studio: international art (65.1915)

The Paris Salon of Fifty Years Ago

“ CACHE-CACHE

After the Moonlight had been at the Salon,
Daubigny, on the suggestion of several English
admirers (Leighton, the future P.R.A., amongst
them) sent the canvas to the Royal Academy,
which in 1866 was held in the building now occu-
pied by the National Gallery. But if Daubigny was
known and admired by the then younger men, he
was unknown and disliked by the older set whose
strength was not yet broken. So the picture, al-
though not actually rejected, was hung with the
least possible honour, over a doorway, and almost
invisible notwithstanding its six feet in length.
Daubigny’s friends were furious, but they were
young, and therefore almost powerless. They
could not prevent the deliberate affront to a
foreigner about whom, the older men thought, too
much fuss was being made.

Mr. H. T. Wells, a figure painter hardly remem-
bered now, but just then elected an Associate, and
a man of some wealth, bought the picture, and this
fact tempered the extreme chagrin the artist ex-
perienced when he and his son Karl, of whose
work we also give a reproduction, came later in
the year to London to see how his masterpiece
looked. Mr. Wells sold the picture about twenty-
five years afterwards to a Cornish collector, and as he
obtained several thousand pounds for it, the pluck
of making a purchase, purely from sympathy as it
was, turned out a fairly profitable arrangement.

We have already mentioned that Corot (1796-
1875), then approaching his seventieth year, sent
*54

to the 1864 Salon his ever-
beautiful Souvenir de Morte-
fontaine. In the Catalogue
of the Salon the title carried
an asterisk, which showed
that when it was sent in,
the painting was still in the
possession of the painter
The picture, now in the
Louvre, was for many years
the only satisfactory work
by Corot which was acces-
sible to the public. This
difficulty in seeing the
master’s pictures was respon-
sible for the fact that it was
not until over a dozen years
after the artist’s death that
his reputation began to be
built up outside: but in
purely artistic circles, of
course, the fame of Corot was
already well established.

The sketch of Honfleur by J. B. Jongkind (1819-
1891) is only a kind of memorandum of the com-
position of a picture which is certainly interesting.
Jongkind was a Dutch painter who spent most of
his time in Baris, but loved to go to the sea-coasts
of Normandy and Picardy. He was an etcher and
a water-colourist of fine quality, a pupil of Isabey.

Karl Daubigny (1846-1886) painted in direct
continuation of his father’s subjects. He never
was taken seriously, as his pictures were too fre-
quently weak reflections of the older painter. At
the same time he had a strong artistic sense, which
enabled him to produce a number of excellent
landscapes, of which the Automne, represented by
the sketch reproduced on page 153, is one.

In Edouard Frere (1819-1886) we have a French
artist of a different character, one whose figure-
pictures have enjoyed, and still continue to enjoy,
a place of distinction amongst collectors. Hide
and Seek is a typical example of his work, and his
greatest pleasure was to introduce happy or indus-
trious children into his pictures. Mr. Ruskin once
said that Frere’s colour could be compared with
Rembrandt’s, and, further, that “ he painted with
his soul, combining the depth of Wordsworth, the
grace of Reynolds, with the holiness of Fra
Angelico.” Another critic spoke of his children as
being always fascinating because of their uncon-
sciousness.

The art of Jules Breton (1827-1906) during his
lifetime was very warmly appreciated, and his