A PAINTING BY FRANCOIS
SAINT BONVIN.

From the Salon of 1863; now in the Luxembourg galleries. A quiet
scene, essentially French from the type of the woman to the "fountain"
of red copper so often seen in French kitchens, it recalls the work
of the old Holland masters, and proves that, in our day, and with
material near at hand, one can be thoroughly modern, and yet claim
kinship with the great painters of the past.]

It is to these latter that the future must look, and it can do so with
confidence. In all the license which runs ahead of progress there
is less danger than resides in stagnation. The men of 1830, who by
ungrateful youths are now derided, had their turn at derision, and
extravagances were committed in their name, according to the
beliefs of their time. They carried their work, however, to its full
completion, and it remains the greatest achievement of this century
in painting, the greatest in landscape art of all time. What the
next century may bring is undoubtedly foreshadowed in the work of
impressionistic tendency. It has the merit of being a new direction,
one as yet hardly opened before us, but more hopeful, despite certain
excesses, than it would be to see the men of our time settle down to
an imitation of the works, however great, of those men of 1830. The
immediate effect of their example was and can still be seen in the
works of men too numerous to be enregistered here.

[Illustration: AN UNHAPPY FAMILY. FROM A PAINTING BY NICOLAS FRANCOIS
OCTAVE TASSAERT.

In the Luxembourg catalogue, to which museum the picture came from
the Salon of 1850, is printed a long quotation from Lamennais's "Les
Paroles d'un Croyant" (The Words of a Believer), an emphatic work,
of great popularity about the time that the picture was painted. The
women represented, having fallen into poverty, are suffering from cold
and hunger, the obvious end of the tragedy being explained by these
words, "Shortly after there were seen two forms, luminous like souls,
which took their flight towards Heaven." The picture, like much of
Tassaert's work, affords an instance of misguided and morbid talent.]

In Henri Harpignies, a living painter, though now aged, the influence
is felt in the careful attention to form throughout the landscape.
The delicate branching of trees is depicted in his work with accuracy
tempered by a sense of the beauty of line, which prevents it from
becoming photographic. Leon Germain Pelouse, who was born a