tent as the foregoing. The eye seesaws back and forth along the lines
of the hammock arrangement of light, and we are conscious of the extreme
balance and the careful parcelling out of the units of force.

With all its evident abandon the method is painfully present, as though
the artist, given so much Greek, was careful to add the same amount of
Trojan. The level and plummet setting of the group exactly within the
sides of the frame, with no suggestion of anything else existing in the
world, puts it into the class of formal decoration, with which old
masterdom abounds, and whence Wiertz received the inspiration for most of
his great compositions.

[The Fight Over the Body of Patroclus--Weirls; 1807--Meissonier; Ville
d'Avray--Corot; The Circle in Perspective]

More studiable is the vortex arrangement of the "1807," with its
magnificent sweep of cavalry, where the tumultuous energy of one part is
augmented by fine antithesis of repose in another. Meissonier's
composition was expanded after the first conception was nearly completed.
The visitor at the Metropolitan Museum may discover a horizontal line in
the sky and a vertical one through the right end. This slight ridge in
the canvas shows the dimensions of the original thought. The added space
gave larger opportunity for the maneuvres of the cuirassiers, and set
Napoleon to the left of the exact centre, where, by the importance of his
figure, he more justly serves as a balance for the heavier side of the
picture.

As in the Whistler portrait, the keystone was the picture on the wall, in
this composition the group of mounted guardsmen on the left gives a
circle's unity to it, helps to join the middle distance with the
foreground, becomes the third point in the triangle, which gives pyramidal
solidity to the composition and is altogether quite as important to the
picture as the right wing to an army.

Corot was wont to rely on Nature's gift as she bestowed it, merely
allowing his sensitive picture-sense to lead him where pictures were,
rather than upon any artful reconstruction of the facts of nature. His
"Little Music," as he called it, came for the most part ready-made for
him, and he simply caught it and wrote the score. His art is less
impressive for composite quality, than, for example, that of Mauve, who,
in the same simple range of subject, sought to produce a perfect
composition every time. In the "Lake at Ville d'Avray," we have one