Its
standard is as high, its subjects are as inexhaustible, as ever. We hear
now and then of a decline in French art: the great artists who carried
it to the high-water mark of modern times have all, or nearly all,
passed away, but there is certainly no sign of a vacuum. The activity of
production is as great as ever, the interest in art as vital. _L'Art_
draws its material from past as well as present; the work of older
artists is kept alive in its pages by the most perfect reproductions;
and in its special department of black and white there is advancement
rather than decline. The importance of such a publication to the
interests of art throughout the world is incalculable. It absorbs the
best thought and production of the day. Its high standard and breadth of
scope render it impossible for any particular clique to predominate in
its pages, while its independent tone and encouragement of individual
talent make it a powerful counteracting influence to the conventionalism
which forms the chief danger to art in a country where technical rules
have become official laws. In fact, _L'Art_ has constituted itself a
government of the opposition. It has its Prix de Florence for the
education in Italy of promising young sculptors--its galleries in the
Avenue de l'Opera, which are used for the purpose of "independent"
exhibitions or for the display of work by one or another artist. It
examines and reports the progress of art all over the world, rousing the
latent Parisian curiosity as to the achievements of foreign artists,
and, what is of more importance (to us at least), it shows the world
what is being done and said and thought in the art-circles of Paris. The
perusal of its comprehensive index alone will give the reader a clear
outline of the state of art in Russia, Japan, Persia and Algeria, as
well as in the better-known countries. Such a work is not for the
delight of one people alone: it comes home to art-lovers everywhere.

The principal art-event of last spring was the Demidoff sale. About half
the etchings in the volume before us are reproductions of pictures in
that collection. M. Flameng has forgotten all the perplexities and
intricacies of the nineteenth century to render the placid graciousness
of a beauty whose portrait was painted in the eighteenth by Drouais. M.
Trimolet has etched in a Dutch manner a landscape of Hobbema in the
Louvre, but M. Gaucherel translates a Ruysdael from the Demidoff
collection into an