s workmanship. Such works apart, his art has given us a message from
the purest source of poetry and painting, couched in a language which
is thoroughly of our time; and in this year, which is the centenary of
his birth, it can be said that no other painter of the century, save
the graver Millet, has held fast that which was good in the art of the
past, and so enriched it by added truth and beauty as Corot. It
was fitting that when he lay dying as cheerfully as he had lived,
contented that he had "had good parents and good friends," beautiful
landscapes flitted before his eyes, "more beautiful than painting."
On the morning of February 22, 1875, his servant urged him to eat
to sustain his strength; but he gently shook his head, saying: "Papa
Corot will breakfast in heaven to-day."

[Illustration: THE EDGE OF THE FOREST (FONTAINEBLEAU). FROM A PAINTING
BY THEODORE ROUSSEAU.]

Eighteen years before, on December 22, 1867, there had died at
Barbizon, Theodore Rousseau, who, born in Paris, July 15, 1812, had
been the leader of the revolution in landscape painting, in which we
to-day count Corot, Daubigny, Dupre, Troyon, Diaz, Jacque, and others
who, with our mania for classification, we call the "Barbizon school."
The fact that these men, more than any painters before their time,
had, by direct study from nature, developed strongly individual
characteristics, makes this title, localized as it is by the name of a
village with which a number of them had slight, if any, connection,
a misnomer. The French name for the group, "the men of 1830," is more
correct; for it was about that time that their influence in the Salon
began to be felt, as a result of the pictorial invasion of Constable.
Lacking the poetic feeling of Corot, and more realistic in his aims,
though not always in result, Rousseau met with instant success when
he exhibited for the first time at the Salon in 1834. His picture,
"Felled Trees, Forest of Compiegne," received a medal, and was
purchased by the Due d'Orleans. The following year the jury, presided
over by Watelet, a justly forgotten painter, refused Rousseau's
pictures, and from that time until 1849, when the overthrow of Louis
Philippe had opened the Salon doors to all comers, no picture by
Rousseau was exhibited at the Salon.

[Illustration: ON THE RIVER OISE. FROM A PAINTING BY CHARLES FRANCOIS
DAUBIGNY.

A typical French river, with the familiar figures of peasant women
washing linen in the stream.