sented by Louis XVIII to the Duke of Wellington. It was in 1785 that Houdon started with Franklin for the United States, in order to study and model the head of Washington for the statue commissioned by the State of Virginia. Franklin and Jefferson, who had been entrusted with the choice of a sculptor, had very naturally decided in favor of their friend, who had already produced two busts of La Fayette-one for Richmond, Virginia, the other for the Municipality of Paris - and had attained signal success with his wonderful bust of Franklin, one example of which is now in the Louvre. Our master, in this unlike very many painters and sculptors of to-day, objected to working from portraits, though he had before him notable examples of this questionable mode of procedure: for instance, that of Bernini consenting to execute the bust of Charles I from the triple portrait by Van Dyck. Titian, too, worked out his famous portrait of François I, in the Louvre, without consulting the living model. He who was so familiar with Charles V, and made him the subject of so many masterpieces, was never in personal contact with François I. Nor, indeed, had he even seen Isabella of Portugal (the deceased consort of Charles V) of whom he painted a decorative, but empty, portrait d'apparat, now in the Prado Gallery of Madrid. But we are straying too far from Houdon, the greatest portrait-sculptor of the eighteenth century—perhaps the greatest portrait-sculptor of all time. His voyage, commencing at Havre on July 22, 1785, terminated at Philadela not very prophia on September 14 tracted adventure, considering the dangers and delays of sea journeys in those days. He made his way with all speed to Washington's country seat, Mount Vernon, where he worked hard for a fortnight, making a life-mask of the noble if rather stiff features, taking full notes, and then setting out at once on his return journey to France. It was evidently all work and no play for poor Houdon, who valiantly made his way to the United States for the one thing, and, that accomplished, hastened back to his studio and his numerous commissions. Though his artistic reputation already stood high at the time of his flying visit to America, it does not appear that he was welcomed with any particular warmth, or that he received from his somewhat austere host any exceptional hospitality. A letter of Jefferson's of January 4, 1786, shows Houdon already back in Paris and at work on his statue. The terms accorded to him were sufficiently liberal. The expenses of the American journey, including those of two assistants, were defrayed by the States, and for the statue itself a sum of 25,000 francs was paid. This liberality reminds us of that of the great Empress Catherine who, much about the same time paid to Sir Joshua Reynolds 1000 guineas for his sham-heroic Infant Hercules strangling the Serpents, and at the same time presented to him a diamond snuff-box. We hear of Houdon showing the bust (not the full-length) to amateurs on December 16, 1786. In the Salon of 1787 the bust was exhibited, with the description 'Le Général Washington, fait par l'auteur dans la terre de ce Général en Virginie.' In the Salon of 1793 there was shown a 'Statue esquisse en plâtre, d'environ un pied.' The statue itself, after having been exhibited in the artist's studio in 1792, was sent to America to be erected in the Capitol at Richmond. We have seen that the work, though as regards the head a masterpiece unsurpassable for nobility and refinement, is not as a whole to be counted among Houdon's most remarkable achievements. None the less was it desirable to accord full rights to the repetition expressly prepared for London, and to choose for it a place where, standing in solitude, a little away from the hum of the great city, it might be contemplated at the leisure of the onlooker. We would have selected for it some central space in the garden of the Victoria Embankment, beneath a light cupola or dome, that should, so far as possible, have given the same scheme of light and shade as that afforded in the Richmond Capitol to the original. It cannot too often be repeated that the greatness of the French master is not to be estimated by the few works from his hand which have found their way to England. Throughout his long life (1741-1828), which embraced the Monarchy, the Republic, the Empire, and the Restoration, he poured forth masterpieces; including in his œuvre almost all the illustrious men and many of the illustrious women of his time. Not only the body, but the soul, of those whose personality he summed up, was revealed by the great master. No other artist, ancient or modern, has with such technical mastery or such deep human sympathy realized all that was greatest, all that was most vivacious and charming, all that was most tender and subtle in the human beings whom he undertook to present to the world. No portraitist among either sculptors or painters has so brought to the surface the finest shades of thought and feeling. The world has never before or since seen in counterfeit presentment men so famous, for good or for evil, as those who sat to Houdon, and to his penetrating gaze yielded up the innermost secrets of their being. His fine phrase on the attributes of the sculptor's art has been often quoted: 'One of the finest attributes of the difficult art of the sculptor is to preserve forms with perfect truth, and to render almost imperishable the likenesses of men who have been at once the glory and the happiness of the state. This idea has been ever with me and has encouraged me in my long labors.' Though Houdon succeeded in every branch of the sculptor's art, it was precisely in the portrayal of those who had deserved well of their country that he reached his highest point. It was in the rendering of the men of letters, the men of science, the Encyclopædists, the politicians, that his greatest triumphs were achieved. To dwell with rapt attention upon the portraits of these men is to read in its most splendid passages the book of the world's culture. Take the famous Voltaire, of which one version is in the Foyer of the Comédie Française, and another in the Hermitage at Petrograd. Of this, in truth, nothing that is new remains to be said. See also the less sensational but even more subtle JeanJacques Rousseau, with that wonderful look of hesitation and distrust in his eyes! For this last, Houdon, hastening to the dwelling of the dead man, himself made a death-mask. Then we have subtlest of all among these many unravelings of human character character the bust of d'Alembert, leader of the Encyclopædists. He is here seen after the death of his adored mistress, Julie de Lespinasse — a philosopher no longer, but a brokenhearted man. Safe in the self-sacrificing love, the truth of d'Alembert, Mlle. de Lespinasse had given herself, in unrestrained passion, first to the Marquis de Mora, then, after his death, to M. de Guibert; in either case (and that was her well-deserved punishment) compelled to own to herself that she was more loving than loved. Dying, she, with a cruelty that seems incredible in one who had so many fine qualities, confided her love-correspondence to the hapless d'Alembert-thus requiting with a mortal thrust by a dead hand his unparalleled devotion. With no open exhibition of tragic despair, Houdon concentrates in this face, which strives to be impassive, a world of agony. Grim and terrible, a man of the fifteenth century rather than the eighteenth, appears the great naturalist Buffon, in a bust done expressly for Catherine, Empress of Russia, and known not only in the marble bust of the Hermitage, but in various repetitions in the Louvre and elsewhere. How sympathetic in comparison, how full of the nobler joy in life, appears Lavoisier, the famous chemist, in the terra-cotta bust of the Louvre, and the original plaster of the Schwerin Museum! In Louis David's beautiful group, Lavoisier and his wife (1787), he gives himself equally to science and to conjugal love; but in Houdon's bust it is the great goddess who alone inspires him. There is, perhaps, no such expression of high intelligence and exquisite distinction in the whole life-work of the master as we find in the Duc de Nivernais, the marble original of which has disappeared, and is represented now only by the original plaster version in the Schwerin Museum. Nowhere else, whether in sculpture or in painting, is the haute noblesse of France, in its last and best moments, so felicitously real ized. Then again, with the truest inspiration Houdon presents Glück at the moment when, trampling down opposition, he stands forth supreme at the Grand Opéra of Paris, and in musicdrama generally. The rough workingclothes, the homely, pock-marked features these things give but a higher intensity to the genius of the man who, at a time when everywhere was but exquisite frivolity, divined and expressed to the full the sublimity of the Greeks. Houdon, so far as it was possible to do so, kept clear of the Revolution and its protagonists. He has, however, left us more than one magnificent bust of Mirabeau, the most passionately eloquent orator of the Revolution in its beginnings. The beautiful bust of a supercilious young gentleman (formerly in the collection of the sculptor Chapu) was at one time accepted as that of Robespierre. It is now, however, well recognized that this is no portrait of the 'Sea-green Incorruptible,' nor of any personality as marked as his. Quite by itself is the Cagliostroan amazing rendering of what might have been held to be beyond representation in sculpture - the man, halfgenius, half-charlatan, and fully conscious of his strange dual personality. Of this Cagliostro one example is in the Museum of Aix-en-Provence, another is, or rather was, in the London residence of the late Sir John Murray Scott. A not unfruitful analysis of each particular bust of this great time might be made in the way here attempted. we see Woman plays in relation to man a subordinate rôle in the œuvre of Houdon; and yet some of his loveliest things are the portraits of women and children. Exquisitely feminine is the Sophie Arnould in the rôle of Iphigénie, which was at one time in the late Sir John Murray Scott's collection. Beneath the tearful heroine of Racine and of Glück or shall we say guess at? the femme charmante more celebrated for her bons mots than for the perfection of her art as vocalist and actress. The bust of Mme. de Sérilly at Hertford House we have already mentioned. A somewhat alarming amiability of aspect, combined with the suggestion of great intensity of will, characterizes the Empress Catherine of Russia, a work compelling in its force, though it was not done from life. For, hard as it may be to believe this, the French master never saw the august Empress, Ruler of All the Russias. No new description is required of the universally known Molière, of the Comédie Française, for which bust Houdon, accepting moderate eulogy, refused the title of Père de la Comédie, which enthusiasts more passionate than discriminating had sought to attach to it. Our master excelled greatly in the rendering of young girls and children -half-opened flowers, but brilliant already in freshness and beauty. Celebrated are the busts of the Brongniart family - especially that of the delicious Louise Brongniart. Less known but hardly less charming is the Madame Royale-Duchesse d'Angoulême (?), of which there is an original cast in the Schwerin Museum. Houdon was occasionally employed, but not greatly favored, by Napoleon I. A singularly beautiful terra-cotta bust of the Emperor by the great sculptor (1806) is in the Museum of Dijon. There are perhaps more forcible likenesses of the world-conqueror than this; there is none of a simpler and more classic perfection, or a truer sublimity. Not again was the master to rise to these heights. Houdon's homely appearance in old age is well shown in the elaborate portrait-piece, Houdon dans son Atelier, by Boilly. This is one of the treasures of the Musée Henry at Cherbourg. Excellent is the unflattered likeness of the master, who appears dressed in a kind of long white smock, or sculptor's coat, busily engaged in modeling a bust. The va-et-vient of the studio, filled with pupils and sightseers, in no way disturbs the veteran, who, 'venerable patriarch, guileless holds the tenor of his way.' No life of artist was ever more nobly filled than this of Houdon, one of France's greatest glories. BY HENRY VIDAL From Le Figaro, August 15 Ar dawn on August 15 our Nimrods have taken the field. Nimrods? In the Midi they never say hunters, but Nimrods. The papers announce: "This week Marius Escarteprune shot a dove near Cabasse. It is not the first achievement of our Nimrod; but we congratulate him again.' Indeed our Southerners are 'mighty hunters before the Lord,' in the words of the Scripture. To be sure, they are so only in the spirit. But that is not their fault. There never has been game in Provence. I made this statement in the service of truth, though I am quite sure that I shall be stigmatized as a 'liar,' a 'renegade,' and perhaps as an 'individual,’ which is the worst thing you can say of a man down here. The other day, none the less, I read of a congress of the hunters of Var, called to protest against an order forbidding shooting at sparrows. Now, if there were real game in Provence, they would leave sparrows in peace. But the Nimrods protested. Consider their case. They have carefully erected shelters in the top of some olive, almond, or cypress tree, and all that will be wasted. You know what I mean by shelters. You see them from the car-window when you speed southward, to our sunny Mediterranean coast- tiny hut lets masked with foliage. The Nimrods conceal themselves in these before sunrise, having first placed little cages of captured decoy birds in easy line of fire. At sunrise these imprisoned birds begin to sing, calling to their mates still at liberty to succor them. A bird perches on yonder cypress limb. There is a flash, a tremendous roar: the Nimrod has fired. A little bleeding, mangled body falls in front of the cages and their terrified occupants. In the evening they assemble, naturally at the Café de Chasseurs; and what exploits they recount! Madam Jeanne, the cashier, will testify to that. She knows their hunting stories by heart. 'It happened in 1908. M. Napoléon Banast, on the first day of the season, shot four starlings.' how "That's right,' shouts M. Banast. 'Wait a moment and I'll show I did it. Boy, bring me the gun.' you The proprietor has had a perfect copy of a fowling-piece made of wood, for the sole use of his patrons when they tell their hunting tales. 'Here you, boy!' M. Banast repeats impatiently. 'Give me the gun, so I can show them how I shot those starlings.' 'Just a moment, sir. M. Agueboulide has the gun at this moment, explaining how he shot two goldfinches.' |