more or less from the fatigue of his position in life. He bears the print of this weariness more or less
plainly. The first necessity for the portrait-painter
is to seize the trace of this fatigue. By so doing the
human being he represents will belong as much as
can be to the circumstances of his life ; he will
belong to them from the crown of his head to the
sole of his foot.' This mode of getting at the effect
of the thousand influences of life and thought upon
physical form seems to us more virile than the gos-
pel of sympathy somewhat excessively preached by
Professor Herkomer. Admirable as is the Slade
Professor's doctrine that a great breadth of sympa-
thetic nature is of the first necessity to a portrait-
painter, we think he lays too great stress upon
the bond between artist and model, in saying that
the artist ' has no business to paint a person he has
no sympathy with. He is not an honest painter if
lie does.' If, by sympathy. Professor Herkomer
means comprehension, the intellectual understand-
ing of another's mode of thought and feeling,
then we heartily agree with him. As the novelist
cannot depict tlie character he does not grasp, so
the portrait-painter must fail to render truly the
physiognomy upon which he cannot read the drama
of a soul. We have spoken of Jean Quentin Latour,
rightly called the ' magician ' by the great critic
Diderot, as the painter of physiognomy par excel-
lence. He, of all men, judging from the portraits
that have come do^vn to us from his fine and vigor-
ous pencil, and by the record of liis admirable say-
ings, would appear to have formed, beyond all others,
a philosophical conception of his art. At the
Louvre are fourteen splendid pastels by this master.
It is rather, however, in the Museum of St. Quentin,
where are preserved the works he left to his native
town, that we can judge of Latoui-'s genius. He
painted nothing but portraits ; he painted only in
the delicate medium brought once more into vogue
in England by the exhibition at the Grosvenor
Gallery. The eighty-seven pastel portraits or there-
abouts preserved in the gallery at Saint Quentin
form a monument preserving so long as it lasts, the
glory, the grace, the wit of the eighteenth century in
France. This marvellous representation of a whole
society in the portraits of its philosophers, its
clowns, its beautiful women and brave men possesses
a feature of almost startling interest to the painter
and writer. In a collection of preparatory sketches
made by Latour of his sitters, here we see, in a
number of heads, surrounded by mops of hair,
wildly indicated, the rapid sketch of the impression
made upon the artist by the men and women whose
idealised portraits hang on the walls of this and of
ther museums. The character, the temperament.
the health, the peculiar nature of all these human
beings are recorded with terrible crudity. The
sight affects us, as might the perusal of notes jotted
down by a confessor of souls or a physician of the
body. There may be seen the sketch of Madame de
Pompadour. The subtle, cold, and terrible face
stares down upon us with porcelain blue eyes, the
original of the wonderful portrait in the Louvre,
where the courtesan appears in the pomp of her
splendid attire, and of her luxurious surroundings.
The French scliool has always had a saving distrust of
^ le jolV A robust imitation of nature is still its
note. It acknowledges the inestimable truth that
there is an inner beauty in all characters sincerely
rendered ; and character rather than idealisation is
the aim of its portraiture.
Bastien Lepage invested ugliness with a rough sublimity: he was so cunning at recognising and renderino- the human and individual in the most uncouth specimens of the race, that he would have given the charm of human interest to a study of a journeyman printer in a suit of ready-made clothes. He has given in the portrait of his own peasant father an admirable example of realistic treatment, lifted into the highest domain of art by a clear per- ception of the spiritual force moulding form. It is impossible for those who have seen it to forget the representation of the honest-eyed old man, of rustic build, sitting with rough hands clasped, and his cotton handkerchief spread over his knees.
Mr. Furniss lashes that vanity of sitters which imposes upon painters the obligation of flattery. 'A portrait-painter, to be fashionable and prosperous, must, nine times out of ten, lay on the varnish of flattery with a full brush. Whether an artist plies a brush, a chisel, or a camera, he must flatter or fail.' The critic here touches a point on which it would be difficult to lay too much stress — the duty owed by the sitter to the painter. In the neglect of this duty lies the ground of the complaint that while there are admirable portraits of men, there are but few of women in our exhibitions to-day. It is the women's fault. The determination to look pretty coMe que coutc, to be painted in a favourite gown, to have all trace of the passage of years and their emotions omitted from their countenance, is the ruin of feminine portraiture.
French women treat artists with a more intelligent surrender of their personal vanity; they co-operate with the artist in subordinating their own idea of self to his conception of what constitutes their best self. The recognition that the artist's point of view is the all-important condition for the production of a work of art enables them to be acquiescent in the hands of the painter. We too
