enamoured of rustic life, he absorbed at an early stage, though
not without hesitation, the love of atmospheric effects characteristic
of Corot and of Manet. In his open-air heads and rural
scenes he is seen as a conscientious nature worshipper, accurate
and sincere, and, like Millet, imbued with a touch of mysticism
which becomes even more evident in his immediate pupils.
Round him there arose a little galaxy of painters, some more
faithful to tradition, some followers of the best innovators,
who firmly tread this path of light and modern life. These are
Butin, Duez and Renouf, Roll and Gervex, Dagnan-Bouveret,
Friant, Adolphe and Victor Binet and many more.
Immediately after the Exhibition of 1889 an event took place which was not without effect on the progress of French art. This was the schism in the Salon. The audacious work of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, which left anything that the Impressionists could do far behind, had accustomed the eyes of the public to the most daring attempts, while the numerous contributions of foreigners, especially from the north, where art aimed solely at a direct presentment of daily life, was a fresh encouragement to the study of modern conditions and of the lower classes. But, at the same time, the encroachment on space at the Exhibition (where no limit of number was imposed) by mere studies, hastened the reaction against the extravagances of the degenerate followers of Courbet, Manet and Bastien-Lepage. Remonstrances arose against their perverse and narrow-minded devotion to “truth,” or rather to minute exactitude, their pedantry and affectation of documentation; sometimes derived from some old colourists who had not renounced their former ideal, sometimes from younger men impelled unconsciously by literature, which had as usual preceded art in the revolt. The protest was seen, too, in a modified treatment of landscape, which took on the warmer colours of sunset, and in a choice of religious subjects, such as a pardon, or a funeral, or a ceremonial benediction, and generally of more human and more pathetic scenes.
Bastien-Lepage, like his great precursor Millet, bore within him the germs of a reaction against the movement he had helped to promote. Dagnan-Bouveret, who began by painting “Sitting for a Photograph” (now at Lyons) and “An Accident,” after painting “Le Pain bénit,” ended with “The Pilgrims to Emmaus” and “The Last Supper.” Friant, again, produced scenes of woe, “All Saints’ Day” and “Grief”; and their younger successors, Henri Royer, Adler, Duvent and others, who adhered to this tradition, accommodated it to a more modern ideal, with more vivid colouring and more dramatic composition.
Still, this normal development could have no perceptible effect in modifying the purpose of painting. More was needed. A strong craving for imaginative work was very generally felt, and was revealing itself not merely in France but in Belgium, Scotland, America and Germany. This tendency ere long resulted in groups forming round certain well-known figures. Thus a group of refined dreamers, of poetic dilettanti and harmonious colourists, assembled under the leading of Henri Martin (a strange but attractive visionary, a pupil of Jean Paul Laurens and direct heir to Puvis de Chavannes, from whom he had much sound teaching) and of Aman-Jean, who had appeared at the same time, starting, but with more reserve, in the same direction. Some of this younger group affected no specific aim; the others, the larger number, leant towards contemporary life, which they endeavoured to depict, especially its aspirations and—according to the modern expression now in France of common usage—its “state of soul” typified by melody of line and the eloquent language of harmonies. Among them should be named, as exhibitors in the salons and in the great Exhibition of 1900, Ernest Laurent, Ridel and Hippolyte Fournier, M. and Mme H. Duhem, Le Sidaner, Paul Steck, &c. On the other hand, a second group had formed of sturdy and fervent naturalistic painters, in some ways resembling the school of 1855 of which mention has been made; young and bold, sometimes over-bold, enthusiastic and emotional, and bent on giving expression to the life of their own day, especially among the people, not merely recording its exterior aspects but epitomizing its meaning by broad and strong synthetical compositions. At their head stood Cottet, who combined in himself the romantic fire and the feeling for orchestrated colour of Delacroix with the incisive realism and bold handling of Courbet; next, and very near to him, but more objective in his treatment, Lucien Simon, a manly painter and rich colourist. Both by preference painted heroic or pathetic scenes from the life of Breton mariners. After them came René Ménard, a more lyrical artist, whose classical themes and landscape carried us back to Poussin and Dauchez, Prinet, Wéry, &c.
Foreign influences had meanwhile proved stimulating to the new tendencies in art. Sympathy with the populace derived added impulse from the works of the Belgian painters Constantin Meunier, Léon Frédéric and Struys; a taste for strong and expressive colouring was diffused by certain American artists, pupils of Whistler, and yet more by a busy group of young Scotsmen favourably welcomed in Paris. But the most unforeseen result of this reactionary movement was a sudden reversion to tradition. The cry of the realists of every shade had been for “Nature!” The newcomers raised the opposition cry of The Old Masters! And in their name a protest was made against the narrowness of the documentary school of art, a demand for some loftier scheme of conventionality, and for a fuller expression of life, with its complex aspirations and visions. The spirit of English Pre-Raphaelitism made its way in France by the medium of translations from the English poets Shelley, Rossetti and Swinburne, and the work of their followers Stephane Mallarmé and Le Sãr Peladan; it gave rise to a little artificial impetus, which was furthered by the simultaneous but transient rage for the works of Burne-Jones, which were exhibited with his consent in some of the salons, and by the importation of William Morris’s principles of decoration. The outcome was a few small groups of symbolists, the most famous being that of the Rose ✠ Croix, organized by Le Sãr Peladan; then there was Henri Martin, and the little coterie of exhibitors attracted by a dealer, the late M. le Bare de Bouttiville, in which Cottet was for a short time entangled. But few interesting names are to be identified: Dulac (d. 1899), who became known chiefly for his mystical lithographs in colour; Maurice Denis and Bonnard, whose decorative compositions, with their refined and harmonious colouring, are not devoid of charm; Vuillard, &c. But it was in the school and studio of Gustave Moreau (1826–1898, q.v.) that the fire of idealism burned most hotly. This exceptional man and rare painter, locked up in his solitude, endeavoured, by a thorough and intelligent assimilation of all the traditions of the past, to find and create for himself a new tongue—rich, nervous, eloquent, strong and resplendent—in which to give utterance to the loftiest dreams that haunt the modern soul. He revived every old myth and rejuvenated every antique symbol, to represent in wonderful imagery all the serene magnificence and all the terrible struggles of the moral side of man, which he had explored to its lowest depths and most heroic heights in man and woman, in poetry and in death. Being appointed, towards the end of his life, to a professorship in the École des Beaux Arts, he regarded his duties as a real apostleship, and his teaching soon spread from his lecture-room and studio to those of the other masters. His own work, though hardly known to his pupils at the time, at first influenced their style; but, especially after his death, they were quickly disgusted with their own detestable imitation of subjects on which the master had set the stamp of his great individuality; they deserted the fabulous world of the Greek Olympus and the wonderful gardens of the Bible, to devote them to a passionate expression of modern life. Desvallières, indeed, remained conspicuous in his original manner; Sabatté, Maxence, Béronneau, Besson and many more happily worked out their way on other lines.
In trying to draw up the balance-sheet of French art at the beginning of the 20th century, it were vain to try to enter its work under the old-world headings of History, Genre, Portraits, Landscape. All the streams had burst their channels, all the currents mingled. Historical painting, reinstated for a
