HE scheme of an exhibition of French primitives was first mooted immediately after the exhibition at Bruges in 1902. M. Henri Bouchot, who was the first to suggest the idea, devoted all his learning and his prodigious activity towards its realization; formed around himself a group consisting of all the scholars who, by their study of French mediaeval art, and especially of the history of French miniature-painting, seemed to him to be marked out as his essential fellow-workers: Messrs. Léopold Delisle, Robert de Lasteyrie, Georges Lafenestre, J. J. Guiffrey, Paul Durrieu, Camille Benoît, Henri Martin, and others; secured the most gratifying patronage; and, lastly, obtained from the Central Union of Decorative Art the promise of its splendid hospitality in the available portion of its future museum, in the palace of the Louvre itself. The Minister for Public Instruction and Fine Arts accepted the honorary presidency, and M. Édouard Aynard, deputy for Lyons, the working chairmanship. The exhibition will be opened on Easter Thursday, and will remain open until the end of July.

Notwithstanding this name of 'primitives,' which current usage has, so to speak, imposed upon the organizers of the exhibition, no attempt will, in fact, be made to go back to the first origins of French art. It is in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that we must look for the real primitives; but the promoters have voluntarily confined themselves to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in their search for the origins of modern art, for the beginnings not of an art that is being formed, but of an art that is being transformed by drawing closer and closer to nature and life. Nevertheless it is 1 Translated by A. Teixeira de Mattos.

important, if we would realize the value of the French art of the fourteenth century, and notably the strength of Paris as an artcentre, that we should remember that accumulation of earlier works of the first order, that mass of iconographic and plastic traditions, on which the artists of the Valois court continued to live, while transforming them and imbuing them with a new spirit. A few pieces of sculpture, of goldsmith's work and of ivory will be all that the forthcoming exhibition will contain to remind us of that glorious past and of that perfection achieved by our artists and artizans of the age of St. Louis, for in

stance.

ence.

The object of the exhibition will be to give a sort of general picture of the artistic activity of the Valois, from Philip VI to Henry III, from 1328 to 1589, at least in so far as concerns the art of painting on a flat surface and the arts based upon drawing; for the modelling arts will figure in this collection only for purposes of referA small number of sculptures, as characteristic types as possible, selected from among those which could be moved (that is to say especially from among those belonging to art-lovers in Paris), will mark the development of our art of statuary, the importance of which, for that matter, no longer remains to be proved now that we have museums of casts, like that of the Trocadéro, which enable us to grasp it as a whole and through its essential monuments.

The industrial arts, which were also so brilliant during that period, have necessarily had to be left on one side. There was no purpose in repeating the splendid demonstration provided by the retrospective exhibition of 1900. A few specimens will represent those only, such as the art of painting on enamel or of tapestry, which spring directly from the art of drawing or

colour.

One would have liked, especially, to illustrate fully the development of tapestry, which, under the conditions of our northern climate, is the real equivalent of the great decorative art of fresco-painting. Workshops of tapestry-weavers were set up in Paris as early as the end of the thirteenth century. They were prospering there in the fourteenth century even before the establishment of the celebrated workshops of Flanders. They called upon the most renowned painters for a supply of cartoons which took their motives from the most varied themes: religious subjects, romantic history, battle-scenes, and the rest. In their products we generally find a freedom of manner, a power of freshness, and, above all, a greatness of decorative effect which we should often seek in vain in paintings on panels or altar-screens, and which rival the qualities even of Italian fresco-painting.

The interest of art-lovers, aroused in our day and attracted more and more towards those admirable gothic tapestries, has brought to light a great number of pieces which it would have been quite easy to collect. Our churches and our municipal establishments have also preserved many series which could have been largely drawn upon. Unfortunately, space has, to a certain extent, been lacking, and the promoters have been obliged to content themselves with a few very important specimens, which will complete our information about the works of painting and will lend to some of the lobbies and lounges of the exhibition the wealth of their decorative effect, pending the organization of a special exhibition of this marvellous art, which requires so much room for its adequate display.

In the same way the attempt to bring together any series of glass windows has been almost completely abandoned, although the art of painting on glass was one of the first importance in our country. We shall have to judge the work of our painters decorative style, great on stained-glass, their

their love of realism in portraiture, from good photographs in detail; but to appraise the beauty of their workmanship and the glowing warmth of their colouring we must view their productions on the spot, in our churches and cathedrals.

Lastly, everyone knows the place which miniature-painting also occupies in the history of the art of the middle ages and the large number of masterpieces that have been preserved, better sheltered in the manuscripts of our libraries than were the frescoes and pictures in our churches, exposed as the latter were to the vandalism of men and the ravages of time. But here, Admirable again, many difficulties arose. as the art of illuminators is, important as we to-day recognize it to be, it will always remain an inaccessible art. One cannot turn over the leaves of a precious manuscript as easily as one looks through a room in a museum or exhibition. And yet there would be very instructive comparisons to be drawn between the art of the painters and the art of the illuminators, arts which are complementary and throw light one upon the other. They are even said to proceed from each other, the limners reproducing discoveries in gesture, types and compositions of famous painters, and the latter in their turn applying themselves to this minute and patient art of the illuminator, and creating, as did Fouquet in the Book of Hours of Stephen Chevalier, masterpieces of composition which other decorators in their train translated by enlarging them into works of important dimensions, such as, for instance, the altar-screen at Loches.

To facilitate comparison, whenever the works in question have consisted of separate leaves, of isolated miniatures, it has been determined to exhibit them side by side with the paintings, in the same way as an endeavour has been made to bring together the rare drawings or sketches that have survived and the complete finished

paintings. So, notably in so far as the sixteenth century is concerned, the series of crayon-drawings of the school of Clouet has been placed beside that of the paintings often executed after those crayondrawings. But not all the manuscripts have had the good fortune (!) to fall to pieces in this way. The precious evidences of the passion for books shown by a Charles V or a Duke John of Berry, preserved in our public libraries; the manuscripts adorned with miniatures by Fouquet, Bourdichon, and many other artists of the fifteenth century, mostly anonymous; cannot be exhibited in the same rooms as the pictures. A parallel exhibition will be opened in the buildings of the National Library, in a room newly rebuilt, overlooking the Rue Vivienne and adorned with paintings from the former royal collection. Here the finest manuscripts of the National Library will be methodically exhibited, and to them will be added, forming a never to be forgotten whole, those of the Library of the Arsenal and the libraries of the different departments.

Painting proper will be represented, in the first place, by reproductions of frescoes. placed at the disposal of the exhibition by the Historical Monuments Board. These will show the continuation throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries of that manner of decoration which was so frequent during the Romanesque period, but which was partly abandoned by the succeeding period owing to the exigencies of gothic architecture and to the juster reason of our climatic conditions. It will be represented, above all, by a collection of works from very varied sources, representing the activity, not of a small, closed, limited and unideal school, but of a wide domain; in which schools were multiplied, often turning some to the north, others to the south; upon which influences of every sort were brought to bear; through which passed artists of very different origins,

who worked now in their own manner, now, and more often, in that of the country where they had met with fortune and success. But, whatever diversity, whatever complexity we may observe, whatever discussions may take place concerning some works of as yet uncertain origin and doubtful character, I am convinced that the experiment now attempted will be a conclusive one.

This

Chance discoveries have, so to speak, allowed certain works and certain names to be brought into juxtaposition. or that anonymous or disputed work has found a place in the inalienable inheritance of French art; this or that obscure name has been glorified by one or several masterpieces. Such is the case with Nicolas Froment and the Burning Bush at Aix; such is the case with Enguerrand Charonton and the Coronation of the Virgin at Villeneuve-les-Avignon. But how many other names remain missing! How many other names remain in the fields open to conjecture and to fantastic attributions, varying from van Eyck to Dürer, from an Italian to a Dutchman, according to the ignorance of the showmen or the imagination of the commentators, which are equalled only by the eagerness displayed in France to ascribe to a foreign name anything that seems likely to be accepted as a masterpiece.

Obviously it would be rash here and now to forejudge the result of these critical and comparative studies. Let me, however, outline the programme, as it were, of the coming discussions. It appears to me that, in the middle of the fourteenth century, in France, around the very sumptuous court of the Valois, there was formed, in Paris itself, an extremely brilliant and active art-centre, the glamour of which is due both to the wealth and liberality of the true Maecenases that were King John II and his sons, Charles V, the Duke of Berry, the Duke of Anjou, and the Duke of Burgundy, and