was inevitable that men should get intoxicated with the possibilities of wealth, and mistake the accumulation of it for life itself. It was inevitable, too, that great command over labour should be associated with great rewards, and noble work be done for noble salary. But in the evolution of the world there is no evil but brings a larger good. It is possible that this very disease of bad distribution may bring its own cure. Are there not signs that the younger men of the middle classes, brought up in luxury, are growing careless of that whose want they have never felt, and may soon seek nobler lives in organizing and regimenting men to work for themselves, not for their masters, and to find a life fit for human souls in their work, rather than after it? Or that we economists may, even in his lifetime, acknowledge our debt to the man we have so much derided, in accepting his words as the new gospel of industry?—

"The merchant's function is to provide for the nation. It is no more his function to get profit for himself out of that provision than it is a clergyman's function to get his stipend. The stipend is a due and necessary adjunct, but not the object of his life, if he be a true clergyman, any more than his fee (or honorarium) is the object of life to a true physician. Neither is his fee the object of life to a true merchant. All three, if true men, have a work to be done irrespective of fee-to be done even at any cost, or for quite the contrary of fee; the pastor's function being to teach, the physician's to heal, and the merchant's to provide. That is to say, he has to understand to their very root the qualities of the thing he deals in, and the means of obtaining and producing it; and he has to apply all his sagacity and energy to the producing and obtaining it in perfect state, and distributing it at the cheapest possible price where it is most needed.

"And because the production or obtaining of any commodity involves necessarily the agency of many lives and hands, the merchant becomes in the course of his business the master and governor of large masses of men in a more direct, though less confessed way, than a military officer or pastor; so that on him falls, in great part, the responsibility for the kind of life they lead; and it becomes his duty, not only to be always considering how to produce what he sells, in the purest and cheapest forms, but how to make the various employments involved in the production, or transference of it, most beneficial to the men employed."*

*"Unto This Last," p. 32.

WM. SMART.

IN THE STUDIO OF CAROLUS DURAN.

CAROLUS

AROLUS DURAN is known by name in England fairly well. A sprinkling of the young painters now working in London have been his pupils, and have diffused an acquaintance with him and his work. Journalism has cleverly sketched an aspect of the man for English readers, and some of his paintings have been exhibited in the Academy. But his pictures have not often obtained the places they merit in our exhibition, and journalism, in sketching him as a lion, has occupied itself rather with the roar and mane of the animal than with the deeper leonine qualities. His sincerity and extreme energy of interest in all that relates to his art have been inadequately recorded.

Genius manifests itself in art in many ways-principally, to speak roughly, in two. The one way is the way of the ideal, the decorative, the fanciful, the arabesque. It finds, hovering somewhere midway between its own soul and Nature, with her family of facts, the perfectly melodious pattern, the subtly designed group whose coruscations of detail and pauses of breadth linger in the memory, the Medusa face whose beauty haunts; it seizes on them and fixes them for the world. The other way is by so clear and lucid a vision of Nature, that to translate a chapter of her reverently into painting, without thought of the impiety of an added or subtracted jot or tittle, is enough, and more than enough, for the occupation of a full life.

Duran is a painter whose genius is of the latter stamp. His work in portraiture, when I saw it and compared it with the living originals, was a startling revelation to me of how like paint may become to flesh and blood, of what subtle distinctions there are between face and face in every several quality, capable of being discriminated by the clear-seeing eyes of genius and recorded by its flexible hand.

A man of such calibre, and having the position and social privileges of a portrait painter of the first rank, who has driven across Paris, criticized a studio-ful of pupils whom he teaches gratuitously, and arrived at his own atelier by nine o'clock in the morning, and who, with some exceptions, has done this twice a week during the greater part of the year and for fifteen years in succession, has some uncommon qualities besides his artistic power.

The system of art-teaching that is usual in Paris is so little known in England that it calls for a few words of description. The "Atelier des Elèves de M. Carolus Duran," for instance, is a community that exists for the purpose of receiving his instructions in painting. The pupils pay the rent of the studio, choose and pose the models, and manage all their own affairs; the patron having nothing to do with the financial side of the studio except that he has sometimes come generously to its rescue, and kept it afloat when in difficulties.

M. Duran gives the permission to each pupil to enter the atelier, all regulations concerning its working must be submitted to him, and he retains the right to forbid the studio to any pupil he ceases to approve of. Under such a system a studio develops a distinguishing characteristic personality. A pupil who pays for his master's instructions may reserve the right to qualify some of them for himself as he receives them; he may take the criticisms of a master whose principles he does not wholly accept. But the authority of the master who gives his time is despotic. If you do not work in the way he tells you, you are bidden, as by Erasmus' innkeeper, "Quære aliud hospitium." By the nature of things pupils educated in this way are likely to be more enthusiastic admirers of their master than those taught on another system.

It is no doubt a gratification to the ambition of any man to find himself at the head of a band of aspiring youth to see written after the names of rising painters the inscription, usual in France, "Elève de M. So and So." In Paris, too, there exists another way in which the pupil may indirectly repay his master. The members of the selecting and hanging committee, or jury, for each year's Exhibition are chosen by the suffrages of the exhibitors in the Salon, and it is expected that a pupil should vote this honour for his master. Consequently the more pupils a man has had, the higher on the list his name is likely to be. But M. Duran does not lay himself out for this recompense; he freely admits foreigners to the benefits of his atelier, and it is often half full of Americans, English, and other aliens, while only Frenchmen have the right of voting for the jury. And he has expressed himself as equally pleased to teach few pupils as many, if they work hard and are in earnest.

A studio of students in Paris is a rather different thing from the corresponding institution in London. It begins work, for one thing,

at a much earlier hour: half-past seven or eight being usual instead of ten. Both the workers and the idlers seem to take themselves with less seriousness than on this side of the water. The French art student while he works will talk, sing, or whistle with dreadful frequency, whilst the American or Englishman beside him is generally silent, or only stops now and then and relaxes a set face whilst he makes a remark, and then goes on working.

The idle French student is simply the noisiest creature in creation, and when he is in a majority in a studio, the effect is beyond any comparison I can think of, except, perhaps, a voyage in one of those ships of King Hiram's that were freighted with apes and peacocks. I shall not easily forget the clamorous discussions in the Carolus Duran atelier during the week after the Salon opened. A very Babel of vociferous disputation possessed the place, and when there was an instant's lull, into it some one plunged with a yell of "Dites donc Cabanel!" (or any other artist), with a shrill accentuation of the name in the direction either of admiration or derision. And then Babel closed in again upon the laudation or abuse of that artist and his works. There was a Frenchman in the studio at that time who supported the unpopular thesis that Puvis de Chavannes could paint, and was always ready to be drawn into fierce argument on the point. He had a trumpet-like falsetto that could emerge even amid that Babel, and he had two stock observations with which he punctuated all disputations: "C'est épatant" or "C'est dégoutant." A picture by Puvisse (with the s multiplied by ten) was in his opinion épatant; most other works were in comparison dégoutants. I am inclined to envy that man the clear-cut simplicity of his artistic faith.

The Poles were an interesting feature in the studio as I knew it; in general intelligence and cosmopolitan knowledge they ranked high among their fellow-students. Most of them had a considerable facility of design that was greatly beyond their power of painting what was before them: a certain faculty of representing vigorously an elaborate battle scene by sunset, or the like, out of their heads. As an instance of their linguistic enterprise, I remember one of them telling me that his greatest literary admiration was for Lord Byron, and that, having read him translated into Polish, he learned English to be able to read him in the original. He said once, rather pathetically, that it was possible to speak English, and to speak it well too, and yet not so as an Englishman could understand it.

It may be worth while briefly to describe Carolus' own way of work, as I saw it one morning when he painted a head from the model in the atelier.

He drew it in on the cauvas in charcoal, and had it fixed before beginning to paint; and the drawing of it was as interesting as the

painting. Of all materials known to art, none enables skilful fingers to produce an effect more instantaneously than soft charcoal on s half-primed canvas. Darks of velvety depth may be obtained in the first moment, and modelled up with a finger-touch into the most delicate half-tones appreciable in the second. I confess that I, for one, expected to see a vivid presentment of the model leap into life on the canvas under-one may be permitted for once in a way to say the Promethean touch of the Master.

But no. As the drawing proceeded, and one began to grasp its meaning, it became obvious that he was reserving all effect for the painting, towards which this was the sternest preparation. With the care of a general, who surveys the ground on which he is about to hazard battle, did Carolus place his masses and lines: rubbing out occasionally, making alterations, and holding up the stick of charcoal between his eye and the model to take measurements, as humbly as any tyro setting out his first drawing from the antique. When done, the only remarkable thing about the drawing was its extraordinary precision: the lines were such as any one might trace had he the knack to persuade them to go exactly into their right places.

Haydon tells a story of a gentleman who came to see the Elgin Marbles when they were first exhibited, and, being rather astonished than delighted, asked the man who looked after them wherein their particular merit lay. The man replied, "Why, they are so like Nature, sir." "Pooh," said the gentleman, "there's nothing in that." "But," adds Haydon, "the man was right."

And so with this piece of workmanship of Duran's; all through drawing and painting there was no bravura, there were no tours-deforce; nothing was remarkable but its simple directness and its truth to Nature.

His palette held these colours :

White (blanc d'argent).

Yellow ochre. He strongly objects to the use of any other yellow in flesh painting, especially anything of the nature of chrome or cadmium. Raw sienna is looked upon as a useless colour in this atelier.

Laque Rose Dorée.

Laque Capucine.

Laque Garence Foncée. These colours correspond roughly to what we call crimson and madder lakes.

Burnt sienna,

Emerald green.

He had these on his palette, but to the best of

my recollection he did not use them.

Cobalt. Made much use of.

Mineral blue. A strong blue, not used in the painting of flesh.