PICTURES AT THE PARIS SALON.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 399, 22 September 1875, Page 3

PICTURES AT THE PARIS SALON.

[Abridged from the Athe)ucum,~] We have no flower-painters in England who faithfully cherish the fine traditions of the mascers of art who practised in the last century. M.'Jouder has sluuied the works of these masters with taste and good fortune. His " Fleurs des Champs" represents such blossoms with a charmingly free and light touch. The whole is, however, rather scattered in its effect and chiaroscuro. By to. Dargent we have " Sentier pres de Telgruc," a fine and effective piece. The fiat bottom of a valley presses close to a high bank of grey rock. The view is marked by sparse bushes and clumps of wintry fern which grow in crevices of the otherwise bald cliff ; beyond this is a glimpse of a rushy waste, seen darkly in evening light. A gleam of sunset falls on the cliff, Hooding it with rose color, and casting gigantic long shadows iuto the valley, thus producing a very weird effect. A white stallion has broken loose, and, taking fright at his own shadow, races on the sward, followed by another horse and the men in charge of both, —M. Couraut, in " Maree Montante "depicts a calm, almost waveless sea, gently falling on the shore in bars of opalescent and milkwhite colored water, under a grey and very delicately painted sky of great natural truth, and marked by extreme refinement of treatment. Dark green rocks are in the front; bars of pale orange light are on the horizon; craft occupy the mid-distance. This is an extremely beautiful picture, rendering with exquisite taste and feeling a lovely effect such as our sea-painters never encounter, or, at least, never attempt to paint. The English landscape-painter who desires to impart to his work sentiment of a truthful kind will do well to study M. Desbrosses' " Les Bords de la Semoie, Ardennes, le Soir." In fact, if our countrymen went into the Ardennes to paint, they would be able to learn a good deal that might serve their turn. This capital picture shows a river that is almost slate-black from rtllecting the gloom of the sky, and coal-black where it reproduces the still gloomier banks and foliage, elements that darken in the coming of a night storm. A gleam of silvery and brassy lustre is in the air. Beyond the water are many-tinted hills that shuts the valley. M. Daliphard's " Melancholic" is another highly pathetic, but perhaps less effective, landscape. In front stands a pool of still water, enclosed by banks of dull blue clay, and sordid verdure growing densely and close to the dull pool ; there is a belt of trees which autumn has thinned and made sere, moun-tain-like cumuli of deep grey, one fine line of greeuish light; a bar of sullen fire glows between the trunks of trees, close to the earth. It is evident that the British supremacy so often claimed in wood draughtsmanship is now, artistically speaking, a thing of the past. The French, bringing greater resources of art to bear upon it, have equalled if they have not beaten us. We doubt if a collection of examples so rich in the higher artistic qualities that belong to engraviug on wood, and illustrating the right application of this mode of art, could be got together in England which would surpass or even rival that in the Salon. We do not of course mean to assert that the French compete with us in the craft of making showy designs on wood, possessing none of the true qualities of wood draughtmauship, but quite different, and even opposite qualities. The sort of art called designing on wood, which has come into vogue for illustrated periodicals and books, is quite beside the question here. M. Gustave Dore is tremendously conspicuous with his vast expanse of paint upon canvas styled " Dante et Virgile visitent la Septieuie Euciente," a lurid work, soon, no doubt, to glare in London as another " grandest illustration of an ineffable tragedy," &c. As usual, it is a painful but by no means "ineffable" illustration of the downfall of a man of genius—one who has wasted his talents.

Among mauy military pictures is one which may be the cause of diplomatic reclamations. It is the work of M. Guignard, and styled " Bclaireurs eu Fuite," and for the first time in the Salons subsequent to the war it shows Prussians iu the act of flight. Two scouts gallop furiously along a snowy road, pursued by Frenchmen. One of the riders is trying to save his comrade, who has been badly wounded, and whose body has been slung on his horse's saddle, while the unhurt man, grasping that animal's bridle with one hand, urges his own horse with the other ; thus the pair tear over the ruts and stones of the rude snow-ladeu causeway : the wounded man's horse jibs and plunges backwards, tugging vainly in opposition to the strange hand on his bridle. The lances of the troopers swerve as they go, the black and white pennons describing great circles in the air. A capital piece of humor occurs in M. Loustaunau's "Le Naturaliste Amateur," the scene on a rocky path on the side of a hill, among trees and underwood, on a hot summer day, the subject a meeting of naturalists, with their trophies of skill and toil. He of the big sandwich box, loaded with beetles or herbs, has encountered a butterfly hunter in the shade. The former deliberately lights his pipe, the latter, seated panting on a stone, and just returned from the chase, has cast eff his coat, and fans himself with his hat; his swollen features, ruddy and wrinkled skin, his expression, so fit to the subject, are first-rate—so good, indeed, that it is impossible not to be charmed by the spirit of the picture, its humour, and its fidelity to nature.