Page:The Obligations of the Universities Towards Art.djvu/34

Rh eleven sequent titles of paintings of death scenes by different artists, principally by chevaliers, and he says they ought to be called chevaliers de la mort. The taste was not a transient one. No visitor to Paris can fail to see that blood is regarded as a standard enrichment of a painting. This is natural to a people who fight duels about trifles, and who treat war as though it were a virtue to find occasion for it; with such a passion it would be impossible that the Art should be of generally pure and ennobling character.

It would require a more extensive survey of the Art of our brilliant neighbours than the occasion allows, to determine its true character. I have not concealed my lack of enthusiasm for the tone of their artistic spirit, but I would not be understood as being blind to the value of their best work. If the accomplishment of paintings exciting great intellectual interest were all-sufficient, undoubtedly France would stand very high, if not pre-eminent, in its modern painters.

De la Roche, Gérome, and Meissonier have each executed works of extraordinary power in this direction; but, for the bountiful genius of Art, for the appeal to that side of our sensitiveness truly described by Browning in his lines—

they scorn to show a sign.

The Parisian artist does not cultivate that power