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MODERN FRENCH PICTURES IN

ENGLAND*

THE most conspicuous feature of the picture sales at Christie's during the last two or three seasons has been the sensational prices paid for works of the group of painters known as the Barbizon and modern Dutch schools. No wave of fashion in picture or bookcollecting is without its beginnings: these are often the cumulative growth of many years-starting no one knows where, and sustained by influences unseen by the public at large. And so it is not easy to get at the genesis of the present widespread favour of collectors for the Barbizon school, a school which may trace its origin to the exhibition of pictures by John Constable at the Louvre in 1824.† The story of the Barbizon school and its long fight for recognition has been so admirably told in my friend Mr. Croal Thomson's book on the subject, that it is not necessary to go over the ground again. But one entirely neglected feature of the story is that of what may be described as its invasion of this country. How and through whose enterprise were these pictures imported into England? Like most great movements, this one was of slow evolution.

Art has no politics, and yet it was owing to a political movement that the great traffic in modern French pictures in this

* The term "Modern French Pictures" has been deemed sufficiently elastic to admit here of the works of some of the more eminent members of the modern Dutch school, and of two or three artists who do not, properly speaking, rank in either classification.

+ "Les idées," wrote some fifty years since the eminent French critic, who signed himself W. Burger, "de Constable sur la nature, sur le paysage, sur le manière de l'interpréter, pourraient être signées par quelque paysagiste français de la moderne école. Il est vrai que Constable est incontestablement un des initiateurs de la pléiade qui a regénéré le paysage en France, il y a environ trente ans."

country came about. The establishment of the Second Empire, and the "cordial understanding" which led us into the Crimean War, had the unexpected effect of opening up, or of developing, a new market for French art. The official friendship of the two nations produced amenities in art matters, and the English collector became an important patron at exhibitions in Paris. The practice does not seem to have been reciprocated-fortunately perhaps for the reputation of English art-or, if English pictures were purchased in those days, they have long since disappeared from France. The French of fifty years ago scarcely admitted the existence of such a thing as English art, apart from Constable, and even "ce Romney" was "inconnu au continent."

The opportunities in France for the English visitor to purchase pictures were numerous enough; but there was a large and wealthy class of English collector who could not find time to visit Paris whilst the exhibitions were open; and it was due to the enterprise and business acumen of the late Mr. Gambart, a Belgian picture-dealer domiciled in England, that an annual exhibition of French pictures was started in London. Mr. Gambart built a fine gallery at 121 Pall Mall, and this continues to be known as the French Gallery, where the traditions of its founder are now continued by Messrs. Wallis. Gambart's "First Annual Exhibition of the French School of Fine Arts in London" was held in 1854, and the brief Preface to the catalogueis well worth quoting:

At a period when the two greatest Nations of the world are united with the most unbounded confidence in the interest of civilisation and social order, it belongs to the Fine Arts to extend, if possible, these feelings of mutual friendship. An Exhibition in London of the productions of the most popular Artists of France must greatly contribute to augment the esteem of the British public for the French school. Such an exhibition cannot fail to bring together the Artists of both countries, while a communion of ideas and examples, with a better appreciation of their respective merits, will materially assist to bind more closely the brotherhood of England and France, on which the future fate of the world depends.

This exhibition was almost exclusively composed of the works of "official" artists, of men who, in perhaps somewhat divergent ways, carried on the traditions of the "classicism" of David, Gros, Guerin, and other teachers of the more or less immediate

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past. We find here, for instance, pictures by Bellange, Delacroix, Le Poittevin, Robert Fleury, Ary Scheffer, and Horace Vernet. But the exhibition was somewhat leavened by works of the forerunners and early members of the school which has obtained so much favour with English collectors of recent years. Rosa Bonheur is here with three pictures, Diaz with two, Jules Dupré with the same number, and examples of Louis Français (Corot's early friend), Meissonier, and Th. Rousseau. We may, therefore, consider that this exhibition of 1854 was the earliest one in London to include important examples of modern French artists so much in evidence to-day in the English sale-room, in private collections, and in semi-public exhibitions. The experiment of Mr. Gambart was a financial success; and we learn from the Gentleman's Magazine of June of that year that the Earl of Ellesmere purchased Ary Scheffer's Francesca di Rimini at 1200 guineas, whilst the Duke of Argyll bought the same artist's Conversion of St. Augustine at 250 guineas, in spite of the fact-not mentioned in the catalogue-that these were not the originals, that of the former, at one time in the collection of the Duchesse d'Orleans, being in the Demidoff collection at Florence, whilst the original of the second was, in 1854, the property of the ex-Queen Amélié at Claremont.

The trade in pictures with England received a great impetus in 1855, when the Great Exposition in Paris attracted large crowds. of English visitors to the French capital for the first time, and where, also for the first time, it was possible to study in one city the art of all countries. Théophile Gautier, in Les Beaux-Arts en Europe (two vols. 1855-6), has left us a valuable record of this great artistic gathering. By this time the work of Millet, Breton, Meissonier, Troyon, Corot, Rousseau and Daubigny had become familiar to the public, French and English, and probably the number of their works which, at the close of the exhibition, found their way to England was far greater than that of those of English artists which remained in Paris.

Undeterred by the counter-attractions of Paris, Mr. Gambart held his second exhibition in 1855, and his third in 1856. By this time he had formed his enterprise into one of a semi-official character. It was nominally under the direction of a committee, which consisted of Clarkson Stanfield, Daniel Maclise, F. Goodall,

George Godwin, the architect, J. W. Harding, Lewis Pocock, F.S.A., with Gambart as Director. Most of his exhibitors of 1856 had received medals or other recompenses at the Paris Exposition of the previous year, and so they appealed to the English buyer with the hall-mark of official recognition. The three BonheursRosa, Auguste, and Juliette-were represented, as were also Jules Breton (four works), Daubigny, Diaz, Harpignies, Meissonier, J. F. Millet, T. Rousseau, Troyon (five works), and Ziem (with three examples).

There were at least three exhibitions in 1857 at which the modern French school were represented. Gambart held his fourth series in this year, when the character of his exhibition was pretty much the same as it had been in 1856. The Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857 included a fair number of works of modern French artists, and the catalogue of that exhibition reveals the names of some of the earlier collectors. T. Creswick, R.A., was the owner of Landing Fish, by Troyon; M. Uzielli of a castle-piece by the same; Thomas Baring, The Studio, temp. Louis XIV. by Meissonier; James Fallowes owned one of Ziem's many Venice pictures, and Samuel Ashton had four by Ary Scheffer. But if illustrated contemporary accounts of the exhibition go for anything, the French pictures which attracted the chief attention were not the Troyons, the Meissoniers, and the Ziems, but those of such well-known artists as Scheffer, and the earlier men like Eustache Le Seur, Watteau and Greuze. There was a third exhibition of French pictures in England during this year, at the Crystal Palace, but of this I have not been fortunate enough to find a catalogue. Reference is however made to it for the very interesting reason that in a notice of it in the Revue des Beaux-Arts the writer states that "the English purchase more paintings in a year than all Europe in four years." The Revue blames French artists for putting a higher value on their works in England than they would do in France. Paintings for which they would take £40 in Paris are priced at £60 in England. The artists' excuse is given in these words: "It is only £20 more, and for an Englishman that is nothing."

At the International Exhibition held in London in 1862, the French artists occupied a gallery. The selection was confined to works painted by living artists since 1850, and those painted

since 1840 by deceased masters born after 1790. In effect, therefore, it was an exhibition of French art of the ten years previous to 1862, whilst, as a matter of fact, most of the pictures were from the Salons of 1860-1. Troyon, Corot, Rosa Bonheur, Ziem, Meissonier, Edouard Frère, and Jules Breton-who is described by Tom Taylor as "investing the humblest of conceivable subjects with a poetry which goes straight to the heart"—were among those whose pictures gave a further impetus to the English trade in French pictures. By 1870 the famous French Gallery in Pall Mall instituted by Gambart, had held its seventeenth annual exhibition; and it is curious to note that French artists no longer monopolised the walls of this gallery, for it included works by Alma Tadema, Artz, Bisschop, P. J. Clays, Josef Israels, Jacques and W. Maris, and Mauve.

We may turn aside for a moment from private and International exhibitions to those of the Royal Academy. The result does not suggest that the modern French and Dutch artists received much encouragement from this source. In 1868, however, a class of Honorary Foreign Associate was instituted, and six distinguished Frenchmen were elected—an architect, a sculptor, an engraver, and three painters, of whom Meissonier was one. In 1899 Jules Breton, who had never been hung at the Academy, was elected H.F.A. Of the fifteen or sixteen painters with whom we are now more particularly concerned, only eight ever exhibited at the Academy, as shown in the following table:

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A few of the other modern men appeared at the Grosvenor Gallery during the brief existence of that institution; but it is clear from the above figures that, with the single exception of

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