A Wanderer in Paris

The Louvre has all these (together with many drawings), but above all it has the Monna Lisa, of which what shall I say? I feel that I can say nothing. But here are two descriptions of the picture, or rather two descriptions of the emotions produced by the picture on two very different minds. These I may quote as expressing, between them, all. I will begin with that of Walter Pater: "As we have seen him using incidents of sacred story, not for their own sake, or as mere subjects for pictorial realisation, but as a cryptic language for fancies all his own, so now he found a vent for his thought in taking one of these languid women, and raising her, as Leda or Pomona, as Modesty or Vanity, to the seventh heaven of symbolical expression.

"La Gioconda is, in the truest sense, Leonardo's masterpiece, the revealing instance of his mode of thought and work. In suggestiveness, only the Melancholia of Dürer is comparable to it; and no crude symbolism disturbs the effect of its subdued and graceful mystery. We all know the face and hands of the figure, set in its marble chair, in that circle of fantastic rocks, as in some faint light under sea. Perhaps of all ancient pictures time has chilled it least.[1] As often happens with works in which invention seems to reach its limit, there is an element in it given to, not invented by, the master. In that inestimable folio of drawings, once in the possession of Vasari, were certain designs by Verrocchio, faces of such impressive beauty that Leonardo in his boyhood copied them many times. It is hard not to connect with these designs of the elder, by-past master, as with its germinal principle, the unfathomable smile, always with a touch of something sinister on it, which plays over all Leonardo's work. Besides, the picture is a portrait. From childhood we see this image defining itself on the fabric of his dreams; and but for express historical testimony, we might fancy that this was but his ideal lady, embodied and beheld at last. What was the relationship of a living Florentine to this creature of his thought? By what strange affinities had the dream and the person grown up thus apart, and yet so closely together? Present from the first incorporeally in Leonardo's brain, dimly traced in the designs of Verrocchio, she is found present at last in Il Giocondo's house. That there is much of mere portraiture in the picture is attested by the legend that by artificial means, the presence of mimes and flute-players, that subtle expression was protracted on the face. Again, was it in four years and by renewed labour never really completed, or in four months and as by stroke of magic, that the image was projected?

"The presence that rose thus so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all 'the ends of the world are come,' and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek Goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the mysticism of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern philosophy has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea."

This was what the picture meant for Pater; whether too much, is beside the mark. Pater thought it and Pater wrote it, and that is enough. To others, who are not as Pater, it says less, and possibly more. This, for example, is what "Monna Lisa" suggested to one of the most distinguished and civilised minds of our time—James Russell Lowell:—

Finally, since we cannot (I believe) spend too much time upon this picture, let me quote Vasari's account of it. "For Francesco del Giocondo, Leonardo undertook to paint the portrait of Monna Lisa, his wife, but, after loitering over it for four years, he finally left it unfinished. This work is now in the possession of the King Francis of France, and is at Fontainebleau. Whoever shall desire to see how far art can imitate nature may do so to perfection in this head, wherein every peculiarity that could be depicted by the utmost subtlety of the pencil has been faithfully reproduced. The eyes have the lustrous brightness and moisture which is seen in life, and around them are those pale, red, and slightly livid circles, also proper to nature, with the lashes, which can only be copied, as these are, with the greatest difficulty; the eyebrows also are represented with the closest exactitude, where fuller and where more thinly set, with the separate hairs delineated as they issue from the skin, every turn being followed, and all the pores exhibited in a manner that could not be more natural than it is: the nose, with its beautiful and delicately roseate nostrils, might be easily believed to be alive; the mouth, admirable in its outline, has the lips uniting the rose-tints of their colour with that of the face, in the utmost perfection, and the carnation of the cheek does not appear to be painted, but truly of flesh and blood; he who looks earnestly at the pit of the throat cannot but believe that he sees the beating of the pulses, and it may be truly said that this work is painted in a manner well calculated to make the boldest master tremble, and astonishes all who behold it, however well accustomed to the marvels of art.

"Monna Lisa was exceedingly beautiful, and while Leonardo was painting her portrait, he took the precaution of keeping some one constantly near her, to sing or play on instruments, or to jest and otherwise amuse her, to the end that she might continue cheerful, and so that her face might not exhibit the melancholy expression often imparted by painters to the likenesses they take. In this portrait of Leonardo's, on the contrary, there is so pleasing an expression, and a smile so sweet, that while looking at it one thinks it rather divine than human, and it has ever been esteemed a wonderful work, since life itself could exhibit no other appearance."

King Francis I. (who met our Henry VIII. on the Field of the Cloth of Gold) bought the picture of Monna Lisa from the artist for a sum of money equal now to £20,000. It was on a visit to Francis that Leonardo died. "Monna Lisa" was the most valuable picture in the cabinet of Francis I. and was first hung there in 1545. It is very interesting to think that this work, the peculiar glory of the Gallery, should also be its nucleus, so to speak. The Venus of Milo and the Winged Victory, which I have grouped with "Monna Lisa" as its chief treasures, were not added until the last century.

Among other pictures in the Louvre which date from the inception of a royal collection in the brain of Francis I. are the "Virgin of the Rocks" by Leonardo, Raphael's "Sainte Famille" (No. 1498) and "Saint Michael," Andrea del Sarto's "Charité" and Piombo's "Visitation". Louis XIII. began his reign with about fifty pictures and increased them to two hundred, while under Louis XIV., the Louvre's most conspicuous friend, the royal collection grew from these two hundred to two thousand—assisted greatly by Colbert the financier, who bought for the Crown not only much of the collection of the banker Jabach of Cologne, the Pierpont Morgan of his day, who had acquired the art treasures of our own Charles I., but also the Mazarin bibelots. Under Louis XIV. and succeeding monarchs the pictures oscillated between the Louvre, the Luxembourg and Versailles. The Revolution centralised them in the Louvre, and on 8th November, 1793, the collection was made over to the public. During the first Republic one hundred thousand francs a year were set aside for the purchase of pictures.

But we are in the Salon Carré. Close beside "La Joconde" is that Raphael which gives me personally more pleasure than any of his pictures—the portrait, beautiful in greys and blacks, of Count Baldassare Castiglione, reproduced opposite page 52; here is a Correggio (No. 1117) bathed in a glory of light; here is a golden Giorgione; here is an allegory by Titian (No. 1589) not so miraculously coloured as the Correggio but wonderfully rich and beautiful; here is a little princess by Velasquez; and near it a haunting portrait of a young man (No. 1644) which has been attributed to many hands, but rests now as the work of Francia Bigio. I reproduce it opposite page 70. And that is but a fraction of the treasures of the Salon Carré. For there are other Titians, notably the portrait (No. 1592) of a young man with a glove (reproduced opposite page 64) marked by a beautiful gravity; other Raphaels, more characteristic, including "La Belle Jardinière" (No. 1496), filled with a rich deep calm; the sweetest Luini that I remember (No. 1354), and the immense "Marriage at Cana" by Paolo Veronese, which when I saw it recently was being laboriously engraved on copper by a gentleman in the middle of the room. It was odd to watch so careful a piece of translation in the actual making—to see Veronese's vast scene with its rich colouring and tremendous energy coming down into spider-like scratches on two square feet of hard metal. I did not know that such patience was any longer exercised. This picture, by the way, has a double interest—the general and the particular. As Whistler said of Switzerland, you may both admire the mountain and recognise the tourist on the top. It is full of portraits. The bride at the end of the table is Eleanor of Austria; at her side is Francis I. (who found his way into as many pictures as most men); next to him, in yellow, is Mary of England. The Sultan Suliman I. and the Emperor Charles V. are not absent. The musicians are the artist and his friends—Paul himself playing the 'cello, Tintoretto the piccolo, Titian the bass viol, and Bassano the flute. The lady with a toothpick is (alas!) Vittoria Colonna.

It is, by the way, always student-day at the Louvre—at least I never remember to have been there, except on Sundays, when copyists were not at work. Many of the copies are being made to order as altar pieces in new churches and for other definite purposes. Not all, however! A newspaper paragraph lying before me states that the authorities of the Louvre have five hundred unfinished copies on their hands, abandoned by their authors so thoroughly as never to be inquired for again. I am not surprised.

From the Salle Carré we enter the Grande Galerie, which begins with the Florentine School, and ends, a vast distance away, with Rembrandt. But first it is well to turn into the little Salle des Primitifs Italiens, a few steps on the right, for here are very rare and beautiful things: Botticelli's "Madonna with a child and John the Baptist" (No. 1296); Domenico Ghirlandaio's "Portrait of an old man and a boy" (No. 1322), which I reproduce opposite page 136, that triumph of early realism, and his "Visitation" (No. 1321), with its joyful colouring, culminating in a glorious orange gown; Benedetto Ghirlandaio's "Christ on the way to Golgotha" (No. 1323, on the opposite wall), a fine hard red picture; two little Piero di Cosimos (on each side of the door), very mellow and gay—representing scenes in the marriage of Thetis and Peleus; Fra Filippo Lippi's "Madonna and Child with two sainted abbots" (No. 1344), and the "Nativity" next it (No. 1343); a sweet and lovely "Virgin and Child" (No. 1345) of the Fra Filippo Lippi school; another, also very beautiful, by Mainardi (No. 1367); a canvas of portraits, including Giotto and the painter himself, by Paolo Uccello (No. 1272), the very picture described by Vasari in the Lives; and Giotto's scenes in the life of St. Francis, in the frame of which, as we shall see, I once, for historical comparison, slipped the photograph of M. Henri Pol, charmeur des oiseaux. These I name; but much remains that will appeal even more to others.

To walk along the Grande Galerie is practically to traverse the history of art: Italian, Spanish, British, German, Flemish and Dutch paintings all hang here. Nothing is missing but the French, which, however, are very near at hand. Some lines of Landor which always come to my mind in a picture gallery I may quote hereabouts with peculiar fitness, and also with a desire to transfer the haunting—a very good one even if one does not agree with the reference to Rembrandt, which I do not:—

First bring me Raphael, who alone hath seen
In all her purity Heaven's Virgin Queen,
Alone hath felt true beauty; bring me then
Titian, ennobler of the noblest men;
And next the sweet Correggio, nor chastise
His little Cupids for those wicked eyes.
I want not Rubens's pink puffy bloom,
Nor Rembrandt's glimmer in a dirty room
With these, nor Poussin's nymph-frequented woods
His templed heights and long-drawn solitudes.
I am content, yet fain would look abroad
On one warm sunset of Ausonian Claude.

It is no province of this book to take the place of a catalogue; but I must mention a few pictures. The left wall is throughout, I may say, except in the case of the British pictures, the better. Here, very early, is the lovely "Holy Family" of Andrea del Sarto (No. 1515); here hang the four Leonardos which I have mentioned and certain of his derivatives; a beautiful Andrea Solario (No. 1530); a Lotto, very modern in feeling (No. 1350); a very striking "Salome" by Luini (1355), and the same painter's "Holy Family" (No. 1353); Mantegna; a fine Palma; Bellini; Antonello da Messina; more Titians, including "The Madonna with the rabbit" (No. 1578) and "Jupiter and Antiope" (No. 1587); a new portrait of a man in armour by Tintoretto, lately lent to the Louvre, one of his gravest and greatest; and so on to the sweet Umbrians—to Perugino and to Raphael, among whose pictures are two or three examples of his gay romantic manner, the most pleasing of which (No. 1509), "Apollo and Marsyas," is only conjecturally attributed to him.

We pass then to Spain—to Murillo, who is represented here both in his rapturous saccharine and his realistic moods, "La Naissance de la Vierge" (No. 1710) and "Le Jeune Mendicant" (No. 1717); to Velasquez, who, however, is no longer credited with the lively sketch of Spanish gentlemen (No. 1734); and to Zurbaran, the strong and merciless.

The British pictures are few but choice, including a very fine Raeburn, and landscapes by Constable and Bonington, two painters whom the French elevated to the rank of master and influence while we were still debating their merits. Such a landscape as "Le Cottage" (No. 1806) by Constable, with its rich English simplicity, brings one up with a kind of start in the midst of so much grandiosity and pomp. It is out of place here, and yet one is very happy to see it. From Britain we pass to the Flemish and Germans—to perfect Holbeins, including an Erasmus and Dürer; to Rubens, who, however, comes later in his full force, and to the gross and juicy Jordaens.

Then sublimity again; for here is Rembrandt of the Rhine. After Leonardo, Rembrandt is to me the glory of the Louvre, and especially the glory of the Grande Galerie, the last section of which is now hung with twenty-two of his works. Not one of them is perhaps superlative Rembrandt: there is nothing quite so fine as the portrait of Elizabeth Bas at the Ryks, or the "School of Anatomy" at the Mauritshuis, or the "Unjust Steward" at Hertford House; but how wonderful they are! Look at the miracle of the flying angel in the picture of Tobias—how real it is and how light! Look closely at the two little pictures of the philosopher in meditation. I have chosen the beautiful "Venus et L'Amour" and the "Pèlerins d'Emmaus" for reproduction; but I might equally have taken others. They will be found opposite pages 146 and 154.

On the other wall are a few pictures by Rembrandt's pupils and colleagues, such as Ferdinand Bol and Govaert Flinck, who were always on the track of the master; and more particularly Gerard Dou: note the old woman in his "Lecture de la Bible," for it is Rembrandt's mother, and also look carefully at "La Femme Hydropique," one of his most miraculously finished works—a Rembrandt through the small end of a telescope.

From these we pass to the sumptuous Salle Van Dyck, which in its turn leads to the Salle Rubens, and one is again filled with wonder at the productivity of the twain—pupil and master. Did he never tire, this Peter Paul Rubens? Did a new canvas never deter or abash him? It seems not. No sooner was it set up in his studio than at it he must have gone like a charge of cavalry, magnificent in his courage, in his skill and in his brio. What a record! Has Rubens' square mileage ever been worked out, I wonder. He was very like a Frenchman: it is the vigour and spirit of Dumas at work with the brush. In the Louvre there are fifty-four attested works, besides many drawings; and it seems to me that I must have seen as many in Vienna, and as many in Dresden, and as many in Berlin, and as many in Antwerp, and as many in Brussels, to say nothing of the glorious landscape in Trafalgar Square. He is always overpowering; but for me the quieter, gentler brushes. None the less the portrait of Helène Fourment and their two children, in the Grande Galerie, although far from approaching that exquisite picture in the Liechtenstein Gallery in Vienna, when the boys were a little older, is a beautiful and living thing which one would not willingly miss.

Van Dyck was, of course, more austere, less boisterous and abundant, but his record is hardly less amazing, and he seems to have faced life-size equestrian groups, such as the Charles the First here, without a tremor. The Charles is superb in his distinction and disdain; but for me, however, Van Dyck is the painter of single portraits, of which, no matter where I go, none seems more noble and satisfying than our own Cornelius Van Voorst in Trafalgar Square. But the "Dame et sa Fille," which is reproduced on the opposite page, is very beautiful.

All round the Salle Rubens are arranged the little cabinets in which the small Dutch pictures hang—the Jan Steens and the Terburgs, the Hals' and the Metsus, the Ruisdaels and the Karel du Jardins, the Ostades and the golden Poelenburghs. Of these what can I say? There they are, in their hundreds, the least of them worth many minutes' scrutiny. But a few may be picked out: the Jan van Eyck (No. 1986) "La Vierge au Donateur," reproduced opposite page 166, in which the Chancellor Rollin reveres the Virgin on the roof of a tower, and small wild animals happily play around, and we see in the distance one of those little fairy cities so dear to the Flemish painter's imagination; David's "Noce de Cana"; Metsu's "Vierge et Enfant" the Memling and the Rogier van der Weyden, close by; Franz Hals' "Bohémienne," reproduced opposite page 186; Van der Heyden's lovely "Plaine de Haarlem" (No. 2382); Paul Potter's "Bois de La Haye" (No. 2529), almost like a Diaz, and his little masterpiece No. 2526; the Terburgs: the "Music Lesson" (No. 2588) and the charming "Reading Lesson" (No. 2591) with the little touzled fair-haired boy in it, reproduced opposite page 206; Ruisdael's "Paysage dit le Coup de Soleil" (No. 2560); Hobbema's "Moulin à eau" (No. 2404); and, to my eyes, almost first of all, Vermeer of Delft's "Lacemaker" (No. 2456), reproduced opposite page 216. These are all I name.

So much for the paintings by the masters of the world. The Louvre also has drawings from the same hands, which hang in their thousands in a series of rooms on the first floor, overlooking the Rue de Rivoli. Here, as I have said, are other Leonardos (look particularly at No. 389), and here, too, are drawings by Raphael and Rembrandt, Correggio and Rubens (a child's head in particular), Domenico Ghirlandaio and Chardin, Mantegna and Watteau, Dürer and Ingres. I reproduce only one, a study attributed to the school of Fabriano, opposite page 228. Here one may spend a month in daily visits and wish never to break the habit. We have in England hardly less valuable and interesting drawings, but they are not to be seen in this way. One must visit the Print Room of the British Museum and ask for them one by one in portfolios. The Louvre, I think, manages it better.

CHAPTER VII
THE LOUVRE: II. MODERN PICTURES

The Early French Painters—Richard Parkes Bonington—Chardin—Historical Paintings—Bonington again—The Moreau Collection—The Thomy-Thierret Collection—The Chauchard Collection.

French pictures early and late now await us. On our way down the Grande Galerie we passed on the right two entrances to other rooms. Taking that one which is nearer the British School, we find ourselves in Salle IX., leading to Salle X. and so on to Galerie XVI., which completes the series. In Salle X. the beginnings of French art may be studied, and in particular the curious Japanese effects of the Ecole d'Avignon. Here also is very interesting work by Le Maître de Moulins and a remarkable series of drawings in the case in the middle, representing the Siege of Troy. Salle XI. is notable for its portraits by Clouet and others; in Salle XII. we find Le Sueur, and in Salle XIII. the curious brothers Le Nain, of whom there are very interesting examples at the Ionides collection at South Kensington, but nothing better than the haymaking scene here, No. 542.

French painting of the seventeenth century bursts upon us in the great Salle XIV. or Galerie Mollien, of which Nicolas Poussin and Ausonian Claude are the giants, thus completing Landor's pleasant list with which we entered the Grande Galerie in the last chapter. There are wonderful things here, but so crowded are they that I always feel lost and confused. There is, however, compensation and relief, for the room also contains one minute masterpiece which perhaps not more than five out of every thousand visitors have seen, and yet which can be studied with perfect quietness and leisure. This is a tiny water-colour in the revolving screen in the middle. There is much delicate work in this screen, dainty aquatint effects by the Dutchmen Ostade and Van der Heyden, Weenix and Borssom, and so forth; but finest of all (as so often happens) is a little richly-coloured drawing of Nottingham by Bonington, who, as we shall see, has a way of cropping up unsuspectedly and graciously in this great collection—and very rightly, since he owed so much to that Gallery. He was one of the youngest students ever admitted, being allowed to copy there at the age of fifteen, while at the Beaux Arts. That was in the year after Waterloo. There may in the history of the Gallery have been copyists equally young, but there can never have been one more distinguished or who had deeper influence on French art. Paris not only made Bonington's career but ended it, for it was while sketching in its streets ten years or more later that he met with the sunstroke which brought about his death when he was only twenty-seven, and stilled the marvellous hand for ever.

Salle XV. is given up to portraits, among them—and shall I say chief of them, certainly chief of them in point of popularity—the adorable portrait of Madame Elizabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun and her daughter, painted by herself, which is perhaps the best-known French picture, and of which I give a reproduction opposite page 246. On a screen in this room are placed the latest acquisitions. When last I was there the more noticeable pictures were a portrait by Romney of himself, rich and melancholy, recalling to the mind Tennyson's monologue, and a sweet and ancient religieuse by Memling. There were also some Corot drawings, not perhaps so good as those in the Moreau collection, but very beautiful, and a charming old-world lady by Fragonard. These probably are by this time distributed over the galleries, and other new arrivals have taken their place. I hope so.

Galerie XVI., which leads out of the Salle des Portraits, brings us to French art of the eighteenth century—to Greuze and David, to Fragonard and Watteau, to Lancret and Boucher, and, to my mind, most charming, most pleasure-giving of all, to Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin, who is to be seen in perfection here and in the distant room which contains the Collection La Caze. It is probable that no painter ever had quite so much charm as this kindly Frenchman, whose loving task it was to sweeten and refine homely Dutch art. Chardin is the most winsome of all painters: his brush laid a bloom on domestic life. The Louvre has twenty-eight of his canvases, mostly still-life, distributed between the Salle La Caze and Salle No. XVI., where we now are. The most charming of all, which is to be seen in the Salle La Caze, is reproduced opposite page 234.

Having walked down the left wall of the Salle, it is well to slip out at the door at the end for a moment and refresh oneself with another view of Botticelli's fresco, which is just outside, before returning by the other wall, as we have to go back through the Salle des Portraits in order to examine Salle VIII., a vast room wholly filled with French paintings of the first half of the nineteenth century, bringing the nation's art to the period more or less at which the Luxembourg takes it up, though there is a certain amount of overlapping. No room in the Louvre so wants weeding and re-hanging as this, for it is a sad jumble. Search, however, for the magnificent examples by the great plein-airistes. They are lost in this wilderness; but there they are for those that seek—the two vast Troyons; Corot's magic "Souvenir de Castel-Gondolfon"; a great Daubigny, "Les Vendances de Bourgogne," very hard and fine, and the same gigantic painter's large and lovely harvest scene, "Le Moisson"; Rousseau's "Sortie de Forêt," not unlike the Rousseau in the Wallace Collection in London, with its natural archway of branches and rich tenderness of colour; the sublime "La Vague," by Courbet; lastly Millet's "Les Glaneuses," the three stooping women in the cornfield who come to the inward eye almost as readily as the figures in the "Angelus". The red, blue and yellow of their head-kerchiefs alone would make this picture worth a millionaire's ransom.

We leave the room by the door opposite that through which we came and find ourselves again in the Grande Galerie. The way now is to the left, through the Italian Schools, through the Salon Carré (why not stay there and let French art go hang?) through the Galerie d'Apollon (of which more anon), through the Rotunda and the Salle des Bijoux (whither we shall return), to another crowded late eighteenth and early nineteenth century French room chiefly notable for David's Madame Récamier on her joyless little sofa. (Why didn't we stay in the Salon Carré?) In this room also are two large Napoleonic pictures—one by Gros representing General Bonaparte visiting the plague victims at Jaffa in 1799; the other, by David, of the consecration service in Notre Dame, described in an earlier chapter. To see this kind of picture, at which the French have for many years been extremely apt, one must of course go to Versailles, where the history of France is spread lavishly over many square miles of canvas.

From this room—La Salle des Sept Cheminées—we pass through a little vestibule, with Courbet's great village funeral in it, to the very pleasant Salle La Caze, containing the greater part of the collection of the late Dr. La Caze, and notable chiefly for the Chardins of which I have already spoken, and also, by the further door, for a haunting "Buste de femme" attributed to the Milanese School. But there are other admirable pictures here, including a Velasquez, and it repays study.

Leaving by the further door and walking for some distance, we come to the His de la Salle collection of drawings, from which we gain the Collection Thiers, which should perhaps be referred to here, although there is not the slightest necessity to see it at all. The Thiers collection, which occupies two rooms, is remarkable chiefly for its water-colour copies of great paintings. The first President of the Republic employed patient artists to make copies suitable for hanging upon his walls of such inaccessible works as the "Last Judgment" of Michael Angelo and Raphael's Dresden Madonna. The results are certainly extraordinary, even if they are not precisely la guerre. The Arundel Society perhaps found its inspiration in this collection. Among the originals there is a fine Terburg.

On leaving the Thiers collection, one comes to a narrow passage with a little huddle of water-colours, very badly treated as to light and space, and well worth more consideration. These pictures should not be missed, for among them are two Boningtons, a windmill in a sombre landscape, which I reproduce opposite page 274, and next to it a masterly drawing of the statue of Bartolommé Colleoni at Venice, which Ruskin called the finest equestrian group in the world. Bonington, who had the special gift of painting great pictures in small compass (just as there are men who can use a whole wall to paint a little picture on), has made a drawing in which the original sculptor would have rejoiced. It would do the Louvre authorities good if these Boningtons, which they treat so carelessly, were stolen. Nothing could be easier; I worked out the felony as I stood there. All that one would need would be a few friends equally concerned to teach the Louvre a lesson, behind whose broad backs one could ply the diamond and the knife. Were I a company promoter this is how I should spend my leisure hours. Such theft is very nigh virtue.

Among other pictures in these bad little rooms—Nos. XVII. and XVIII.—are some Millets and Decamps.

Three more collections—and these really more interesting than anything we saw in Galeries XIV. or XVI., or the Salle des Sept Cheminées—await us; but two of them need considerable powers of perambulation. Chronology having got us under his thumb we must make the longer journey first—to the Collection Moreau. The Collection Moreau is to be found at the top of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the entrance to which is in the Rue de Rivoli. In the lower part of this building are held periodical exhibitions; but the upper parts are likely at any rate for a long time to remain unchanged, and here are wonderful collections of furniture, and here hang the few but select canvases brought together by Adolphe Moreau and his son, and presented to the nation by M. Etienne Moreau-Nelaton.

In the Thomy-Thierret collection in another top storey of the same inexhaustible palace (to which our fainting feet are bound) are Corots of the late period; M. Moreau bought the earlier. Here, among nearly forty others, you may see that portrait of Corot painted in 1825, just before he left for Rome, which his parents exacted from him in return for their consent to his new career and the abandonment of their rosy dreams of his success as a draper. Here you may see "Un Moine," one of the first pictures he was able to sell—for five hundred francs (twenty pounds). Here is the charming marine "La Rochelle" painted in 1851 and given by Corot to Desbarolles and by Desbarolles to the younger Dumas. Here is the very beautiful Pont de Mantes, reproduced opposite page 252, belonging to his later manner, and here also is an exceptionally merry little sketch, "Bateau de pêche à marée basse". I mention these only, since selection is necessary; but everything that Corot painted becomes in time satisfying to the student and indispensable to its owner. Among the pencil drawings we find this exquisite lover of nature once more, with fifteen studies of his Mistress.

One of the most interesting of the Moreau pictures is Fantin-Latour's "Hommage à Delacroix," with its figures of certain of the great and more daring writers and painters of the day, 1864, the year after Delacroix's death. They are grouped about his framed portrait—Manet, red haired and red bearded, a little like Mr. Meredith in feature; Whistler, with his white feather black and vigorous, and his hand on the historical cane; Legros (the only member of the group who is still living, and long may he live!) and Baudelaire, for all the world like an innocent professor. Manet himself is represented here by his famous "Déjeuner sur l'herbe," which the scandalised Salon of 1863 refused to hang, and three smaller canvases. Among the remaining pictures which gave me most pleasure are Couture's portrait of Adolphe Moreau the younger; Daumier's "La République"; Carrière's "L'enfant à la soupière" (notice the white bowl); Decamps' "La Battue," curiously like a Koninck; and Troyon's "Le Passage du Gué," so rich and sweet.

From the Collection Moreau, with its early Barbizon pictures, one ought to pass to the Chauchard with its middle period, and then to the Collection Thomy-Thierret; but let us go to the Thomy-Thierret now. It needs courage and endurance, for the room which contains these exquisite pictures is only to be reached on foot after climbing many stairs and walking for what seem to be many miles among models of ships and other neglected curiosities on the Louvre's topmost floor. But once the room is reached one is perfectly happy, for every picture is a gem and there is no one there. M. Thomy-Thierret, who died quite recently, was a collector who liked pictures to be small, to be rich in colour, and to be painted by the Barbizon and Romantic Schools. Here you may see twelve Corots, all of a much later period than those bequeathed by M. Moreau, among them such masterpieces as "Le Vallon" (No. 2801), reproduced opposite the next page, "Le Chemin de Sèvres" (No. 2803), "Entrée de Village" (No. 2808), "Les Chaumières" (No. 2809), and "La Route d'Arras" (No. 2810). Here are thirteen Daubignys, including "Les Graves de Villerville" (No. 28,177), and one sombre and haunting English scene—"La Tamise à Erith" (No. 2821). Here are ten Diazes, most beautiful of which to my eyes is "L'Éplorée" (No. 2863). Here are ten Rousseaus, among them "Le Printemps" (No. 2903), with its rapturous freshness, which I reproduce opposite page 120, and "Les Chênes" (No. 2900), such a group of trees as Rousseau alone could paint. Here are six Millets, my favourite being the "Précaution Maternelle" (No. 2894), with its lovely blues, which again reappear in "Le Vanneur" (No. 2893). Here are eleven Troyons, of which "La Provende des poules" (No. 2907), with its bustle of turkeys and chickens around the gay peasant girl beneath a burning sky, reproduced opposite page 266, is one of the first pictures to which my feet carry me on my visits to Paris. Here are twelve Duprés, most memorable of which is "Les Landes" (No. 2871). And here also are Delacroix', Isabeys and Meissoniers.

The Chauchard pictures—140 in number—which are now hanging in five rooms leading from the Salle Rubens, were bequeathed to the nation by M. Alfred Chauchard, proprietor of the Magasins du Louvre (which some visitors to Paris have considered the only Louvre). Among the pictures are twenty-six by Corot, twenty-six by Meissonier, eight by Millet (including "L'Angelus") and eight by Daubigny.

I may say at once that the Chauchard Collection does not compare with the Thomy-Thierret in courage. M. Thomy-Thierret liked his pictures to be small and exquisite and happy. Within the limits imposed the Barbizon painters never did anything more delightful or indeed better. The whole collection—and it is beyond price—is homogeneous: it embodies the taste of one man. M. Moreau and his son had a robuster taste, a bolder eye. They wanted strength as well as sweetness, or strength alone. Their collection has not quite the homogeneity of the Thomy-Thierret, but one feels here also that personality has honestly been at work bringing together things of beauty and power that pleased it, and nothing else. But M. Chauchard....

It is perfectly evident in a moment that M. Chauchard had neither knowledge nor taste. He merely had acumen. At a certain moment in his successful life, one feels, M. Chauchard extended himself before the fire-place, stroked his spreading favoris (so like those of our own Whiteley), and announced "I must have some pictures". Other prosperous men saying the same thing have forthwith taken their courage in their hands and bought pictures; but M. Chauchard as I see him (both in his dazzling marble bust and in the portrait by Benjamin Constant), was not like that. "I must have some pictures," he announced, and then quickly reverted to type and cast about as to the best means of discovering whose pictures were most worth buying. That is how the Chauchard Collection came about, if I am not mistaken: it was the venture of an essentially commercial man—an investor-in-grain—who also desired a reputation of virtuosity but did not want to lose money over it.

As it happens M. Chauchard was well advised. But wonderful as they are, beautiful as they are, valuable as they are, there is not a picture here which suggests to the visitor that it ever brought a real gladness to the eyes of its owner in his own home.

But I can convince you only too easily that M. Chauchard had no taste. Do you remember when driving out to Longchamp, through the Bois, either to the Races or to Suresnes, just after you pass the Cascade, you come on the left to a windmill overlooking the course, and on the right to a white villa, all alone and unreal? A club house, one naturally thinks it, for the French Jockey Club, or something of that kind. You may have forgotten the villa, but you will recall it when I say that on the very trim vivid lawn in front of it, scattered about, supposed to be counterfeiting life, are various animals in stone—a stag, a doe, some dogs, all white and motionless, in the best mortuary manner, and all, to you and me, outrageous. Well, that was one of M. Chauchard's homes. M. Chauchard was the owner of that lawn and its occupants. The man who looking out of his window could feast his eye on these triumphs of the monumental mason was the same man who bought for his walls sheep by Jacque and Millet, and cattle and dogs by Troyon....

No matter. M. Chauchard acquired pictures and left them to the French Nation, and they are now on view for ever (always excepting the fatal Continental Mondays) for all to rejoice in. The first really compellingly beautiful work as one enters—the first picture to touch the emotions—is Rousseau's "La Charrette". It was painted in 1862, five years before the painter's death, which left the villagers of Barbizon the richer by a studio-chapel. It is a mere trifle and it is as wonderful as a summer day: a forest glade, in the midst of which a tiny wagon and white horse with blue trappings are seen beneath a burning sky, such a picture as ought to have a wall if not a room to itself: such a picture as I should like to see placed above an altar. It is the same subject—a forest wagon—that provided what in some ways is the best or most attractive Corot here. His "La Charrette" is a large easy landscape lit by the gracious light of which he alone had the secret. In the foreground is a deep sandy road with the charrette labouring through it. But before we came to this we had stood before one of the finest of the seven Daubignys, "La Seine à Bezons," a river scene of almost terrible calm, with Mont Valerien in the distance and geese and boats on the near shore, and implicit in it the sincerity, strength and humility of this great man.

At the end of the room hang two large and busy Troyons, one on each side of M. Chauchard himself, the donor of the feast, whose bust in the whitest Carrara, with the whiskers in full fig and the croix de grand officier du Legion d'honneur meticulously carved upon it, stands here, as stipulated in the will. These two Troyons, of which there are eighteen in all, are I think the largest. One represents cows sauntering lazily down to drink; the other the return from the market of a mixed herd of cattle and sheep, with a donkey in panniers, being driven by a man on a white horse. As was his wont, Troyon chose a road on the edge of a cliff with a very green border of turf and an exquisite glimpse of sea to the left. None of the new Troyons perhaps is as fine as those in Salle VIII. of the Louvre proper, but this is a superb thing. The "Boeufs se rendant au labour" and the "Le Retour à la ferme" in Salle VIII. should be visited after the Chauchards.

And so we leave the first and largest room, in the midst of which are two cases of Barye's bronzes—lions and tigers, bears and deer, snakes and birds—and enter the first room on the left as we came in; and here we begin to see for the first time pictures with special knots of people before them. For the Meissoniers begin here. And of Meissonier what am I to say? For Meissonier leaves me cold. He is marvellous; but he leaves me cold. He painted with a fidelity and spirit that border on the magical; but those qualities that I want in a picture, those callings of deep to deep, one seeks in vain. Hence I say nothing of Meissonier, except that he was a master, that there are twenty-six of his masterpieces here, and that the crowd opposite his "1814" extends to the opposite side. How can one spend time over "Le cheval de l'ordonnance" and the "Petit Poste de Grand'-Garde" when Daubigny's "Les Laveuses (effet de soleil couchant)" hangs so near—this great placid green picture, so profoundly true as to be almost an act of God? Corot's "Etang de Ville d'Avray" is here too, liquid and tender.

The little room that leads out of this is usually almost unenterable by reason of the press before Meissonier's "1814". This undoubtedly is one of the little great pictures of the world, and I can understand the enthusiasm of the French sightseer, whose blood is still stirrable by the enduring personality of the saturnine man on the white horse. Neighbouring pictures are a rich cattle piece by Diaz, immediately over "1814"; Rousseau's "La Mare," which is not a little like the Koninck in the Ionides Collection at South Kensington, and the same painter's "La Mare au pied du coteau" with its lovely middle distance. Here too is one of Corot's many pêcheurs, who little knew as they fished on so quietly in the still gentle light that they were being rendered immortal by the quaint little bourgeois with the long pipe, sketching on the bank. One of the finest of the Duprés is also here—"La Vanne," a deep green scene of water.

In the last room we come at last to that painter whose work, next perhaps to Meissonier's, is the magnet which draws such a steady stream of worshippers to this new shrine of art—to Jean François Millet. M. Chauchard had eight Millets, including the "Angelus," but though it is the "Angelus" which is considered of many to be the very core of this collection, I find more pleasure in "La Bergère gardant ses moutons" (reproduced opposite page 308), which I would call, I think, the best picture of all. It has been remarked that no picture containing sheep can ever be a bad picture; but when Millet paints them, and when they are grazing beneath such a sky, and when one of those grave sweet peasant women—a monument of patient acceptance and the humility that comes from the soil—is their shepherdess, why then it is almost too much; and the brave ardent Jacque, whose "Moutons au Pâturage" hangs close by, is half suspected of theatricalism. Millet is so great, so full of large elemental simplicity and truth that one regrets that his eight pictures have not a room to themselves. That they should be elbowed by the neat dancing-master chefs d'œuvre of Meissonier is something of a catastrophe.

Thinking over the collection, I have very strongly the feeling already expressed that it was wrongly assembled. The investor rather than the enthusiast is too apparent. M. Chauchard, it is true, refrained from making money by his acquisitions, since he gave them to the nation, and this is eternally to his credit. None the less I find it difficult to esteem him as perhaps one should even in the light of a generous testator. One so wants pictures to be loved. And of all pictures that are lovable and that long to pass into their owner's being—to engentle his eyes and enrich his experience and deepen his nature—none equal those that were painted by the little group of friends who in the middle of the last century made the white-walled village of Barbizon their head-quarters and the Forest of Fontainebleau their happy hunting-ground and a Wordsworthian passion for nature their creed.

Such pictures deserve the most faithful owners and the most thoughtful hospitality....

But if we cannot get all as we wish it, at least we must be grateful for the next best thing, and to M. Chauchard and the Louvre authorities we must all be supremely grateful.

The Louvre is to-day the most wonderful museum in the world; but what would one not give to be able to visit it as it was in 1814, when it was in some respects more wonderful still. For then it was filled with the spoils of Napoleon's armies, who had instructions always to bring back from the conquered cities what they could see that was likely to beautify and enrich France. It is a reason for war in itself. I would support any war with Austria, for example, that would bring to London Count Czernin's Vermeer and the Parmigianino in the Vienna National Gallery; any war with Germany that would put the Berlin National Gallery at our disposal. Napoleon had other things to fight for, but that comprehensive brain forgot nothing, and as he deposed a king he remembered a blank space in the Louvre that lacked a Raphael, an empty niche waiting for its Phidias. The Revolution decreed the Museum, but it was Napoleon who made it priceless and glorious. After the fall of this man a trumpery era of restitution set in. Many of his noble patriotic thefts were cancelled out. The world readjusted itself and shrank into its old pettiness. Priceless pictures and statues were carried again to Italy and Austria, Napoleon to St. Helena.

CHAPTER VIII
THE TUILERIES

A Vanished Palace—The Most Magnificent Vista—Enter Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette—The Massacre of the Swiss Guards—The Blood of Paris—A Series of Disasters—The Growth of Paris—The Napoleonic Rebuilders—The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel—The Irony of History—A Frock Coat Rampant—The Statuary of Paris—The Gardens of the Tuileries—Monsieur Pol, Charmer of Birds—The Parisian Sparrow—Hyde Park—The Drum.

Had we turned our back only thirty-eight years ago on Frémiet's statue of Joan of Arc (which was not there then) in the Place de Rivoli, and walked down what is now the Rue de Tuileries towards the Seine, we should have had on our left hand a beautiful and imposing building—the Palace of the Tuileries, which united the two wings of the Louvre that now terminate in the Pavillon de Marsan just by the Place de Rivoli and the Pavillon de Flore on the Quai des Tuileries. The palace stretched right across this interval, thus interrupting the wonderful vista of to-day from the old Louvre right away to the Arc de Triomphe—probably the most extraordinary and beautiful civilised, or artificial, vista in the world. The palace had, however, a sufficiently fine if curtailed share of it from its own windows.

All Parisians upwards of forty-five must remember the Palace perfectly, for it was not destroyed until 1871, during the Commune, and it was some years after that incendiary period before all traces were removed and the gardens spread uninterruptedly from the Carrousel to the Concorde.

The Palace of the Tuileries (so called because it occupied a site previously covered by tile kilns) was begun in 1564 and had therefore lived for three centuries. Catherine de Médicis planned it, but, as we shall read later, she lost interest in it very quickly owing to one of those inconvenient prophecies which were wont in earlier times so to embarrass rulers, but which to-day in civilised countries have entirely gone out. The Tuileries was a happy enough palace, as palaces go, until the Revolution: it then became for a while the very centre of rebellion and carnage; for Louis XVI. and the Royal Family were conveyed thither after the fatal oath had been sworn in the Versailles tennis-court. Then came the critical 10th of August, when the King consented to attend the conference in the Manège (now no more, but a tablet opposite the Rue Castiglione marks the spot) and thus lost everything.

The massacre of the Swiss Guards followed: but here it is impossible, or at least absurd, not to hear Carlyle. Mandal, Commander of the National Guard, I would premise, has been assassinated by the crowd; the Constitutional Assembly sits in the Manège, and the King, a prisoner in the Tuileries, but still a hesitant and an optimist, is ordered to attend it. At last he consents. "King Louis sits, his hands leant on his knees, body bent forward; gazes for a space fixedly on Syndic Rœderer; then answers, looking over his shoulder to the Queen: Marchons! They march; King Louis, Queen, Sister Elizabeth, the two royal children and governess: these, with Syndic Rœderer, and Officials of the Department; amid a double rank of National Guards. The men with blunderbusses, the steady red Swiss gaze mournfully, reproachfully; but hear only these words from Syndic Rœderer: 'The King is going to the Assembly; make way'. It has struck eight, on all clocks, some minutes ago: the King has left the Tuileries—forever.