HO has not suffered under the tyranny of an insistent phrase from the street song of the moment? or from the reiteration of a foolish phrase? ‘The French Burne-Jones,’ for instance, is one that will intrude when Moreau is mentioned. Such an inept com- parison is degrading to both painters, and its ghost must be laid. To apply a geographical adjective to an artist is always a fatuous substitute for criticism. A Belgian Shakespeare or a French Burne- Jones—how pitifully meaningless each phrase is seen to be when you face it boldly. For the essence of Burne-Jones is that he is Northern, and of Moreau that he is Latin.

A Frenchman looks to the East through Rome; whether his gaze be fixed on theology or art, he sees it through the atmosphere of the eternal city. An Englishman regards Rome as an episode, and sometimes for- gets even whether Greece inspired the Latins, or vice versâ. For Rome to a Briton is not the outpost of his frontier whence he emerges in quest of the dim past; it is not the beginning of his to-day, but one of the twilights of dead yesterdays. He may travel to the Orient, whose frontier is Greece, by sea; or, through the haunted forests of Germany and down the Danube. His East is linked to him not by the Caesars, nor the Popes, but by the Crusaders. His myths of Hellas reach him more often by way of Chaucer or William Morris. That Venus should masquerade as Our Lady of Pain, clad in broideries of mediæval fashion, seems to him natural enough. Not so the Frenchman, who, Latin by race, is still Latin in heart, and regards far off Greece and more distant Egypt as the direct artistic progenitors of his forefathers the Romans, by whom he claims a clear pedigree through the masters of classic times, back to the East, the birthplace of knowledge.

Recognising this sharply defined distinction, you may trace the art of Burne-Jones and Moreau to the same fountain-head, and find in the brooding East the mother of all the mysteries each delights to re- edify; but the two streams only meet at the source. Over the waters of the one still hangs the heavy-scented incense cloud of the Middle Ages; the other flows azure and sparkling from springs fed by the dews from the mystic rose of Persia, from lotus-pools of Ind, and from Hellenic brooks wherein Narcissus gazed.

For Moreau is the classic ideal, which is scholarly simplicity; al- though 6 l'Ange, St. Etienne, un Calvaire, une Déposition de Croix, Ensevelissement du Christ, and the biblical pictures, Salomé, David, Bethsabée.

To these may be added the series of designs for the fables of La Fontaine which were admirably described in an illustrated paper in The Magazine of Art.1 Reproductions of these sixty-four water-colours nominally intended to illustrate La Fontaine are not yet accessible in volume form, but many single pictures have been admirably etched by Bracquemond. Mr. Claude Phillips sees in them a distinctly strong trace of Persian influence, which, unlike Japanese, does not concern itself with the purely exterior manifestation of humanity and the outer world, but is distinguished by supreme calm, devoid of violent action, assisted by a severe life and tempered passions. Possibly it would be still more accurate to call this influence Hindoo-Greek, for although both sprang, doubtless, from the same source, it is the latter develop- ment which Moreau feels. But in the exquisitely delicate tracery and jewelled embroideries, that preserve a certain reticence in their splen- dour, there is kinship to Persian fantasy. The text of La Fontaine, with its beasts masquerading as men, its prim moralities and fossil anec- dotes, fettered Moreau, who seems at times to have wearied of the effort.

The Head of Orpheus, which Ary Renan describes so charmingly, has found an English critic, whose impression is so vividly expressed that it were folly to try to put the idea in other words: ‘It is against skies flushed by an aftermath of sun that recall for their touches of orange and bands of brooding purple these words, Quelles violettes frondaisons vont descendre—words so expressive of that hush in nature become strange in expectation of some countersign pregnant for the future—it is against a sky like this,’ he says, ‘that an all-persuasive figure moves away; the head of Orpheus lies between her hands, and we scarcely know if her fastidious dress, decked with so many outlandish things, has been clasped to her waist and chaste throat in real innocence of the burden she holds so mystically; but this hint of sentiment is too slight, too fugitive, in the picture to become morbid.’ In The Birth of Venus, not included in M. Ary Renan’s list, we note a curious influence of Pompeii. The figure of Venus, in the foreground, floats in a shell, by way of boat, scarce conscious of the clamorous worshippers on the distant beach who would fain attract her gaze; through a cleft in the fantastic walls of rock that bound the coast you catch a glimpse of a lovely country.

In

1. Vol. x. 101.

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In the Hercules and Hydra, the central figure is, like that of the Venus, singularly removed from the gross physical type so dear to certain schools. It is a divine, not a fat Hercules; and the reality of the monster terrifies one. The colouring of the picture—dark green with blood-red in the sky and upon the ground—imparts a grim sense of awe. The third picture illustrated, the Apparition, is strangely like the Salome Dancing in its composition. In each the chief figure stands to the left of the spectator; in each a silent warrior with his mouth swathed in heavy drapery gazes mutely impassive; in each, huge arches rise profound and mysterious; but apart from mere similarity of composition the motif of either is utterly distinct. In the Apparition the figure of Herod is at the side scarce noticeable. The tragedy is but indirectly concerned with him; it is the instigator who is con- founded by the spectral and transfigured head that rivets the attention of one who sees the painting, no less than it appals the chief actor, who is alone moved by the portent. In the Salome Dancing, the white lily she holds as a sceptre seems to heighten the meaning of her sorcery. The hanging lamps and the cathedral-like aspect of the vast Asiatic interior, the brooding Herod who sits enthroned with grotesque monsters in a hellish trinity above him, all assist to make the scene suggest an impious travesty of the religion that was destined to enshrine the incident. So stern is the purpose that not at first do you realise the wealth of imagery which has been encrusted upon the idea, or rather the complexity of aspect which the idea itself has assumed in Moreau’s conception.

To describe in catalogue the works of Gustave Moreau already mentioned would serve no purpose. If any one interested in his paint- ing is unable to gain access to the pictures—and as they are mostly in private hands it is extremely difficult to do so—he will find in the various periodicals already mentioned descriptions of the most important. In A Rebours, Huysmans has spoken at some length of the Apparition, which was shown in England at the first Exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery. The story of Salomé has had a most lasting fascination for Moreau. A third picture—a wonderful water-colour, that so far appears to have escaped reproduction—which shows Salome returning with the head of John the Baptist on a charger, conveys the same poetic under- current we see in the Head of Orpheus. It is an echo of Heine’s terrible Salomein Alta Troll.

Of

1. A Rebours, pp. 74, 79

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Of the Young Man and Death, with its ascription to Chassériau, of the Plainte du Poète, reproductions are given in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, and elsewhere; but none of these do more than suggest and then only to those familiar with the originals—the scheme of colour which Moreau usually employs. His favourite harmony is in blues verging on peacock, merging into dark green, with rather hot browns and a liberal use of crimsons and old-gold colour. The flesh tones are inclined to be cadaverous; the draperies are often polychromatic, not ‘shot’ like those of Burne-Jones, but in layers of different hues. Bowers of clipped foliage, the lotus, the iris, and gum-cistus, lilies and roses, branches of coral and sea-plants, are frequent accessories. As Burne-Jones loves to depict metals, so Moreau delights in enamelled surfaces. To attempt to convey his manner in a sentence is not easy; perhaps to say that he is a cross between Mantegna and Delacroix might convey some idea of his colour, but his blues are quite unlike those of either master.

But this chance comparison with Burne-Jones is merely for explana- tory purposes. For to appreciate one painter by linking him with another—the eternal match-making of the elderly—is at once a failure and an unintentional insult. The one distinct patent of nobility for an artist is that he shall hide a superb pedigree by the still more noble title won by his own prowess. The more you study Moreau, the more you feel he owes his manner, his style, his entire art, to Moreau and Moreau only. In a distinctly limited manner he is not merely supreme, but an autocrat with no power behind the throne. The new personality of his invention is more and more apparent as you attempt to discover the real artist. Like all princes he may employ the universal language of courts, but he speaks as unreservedly as a democrat; he does not hunt like Flaubert for the exact adjective, nor weary himself by constant self-criticism. But the language he uses, whether polished by the master of the past or created for his own purpose, is strangely pregnant.G. W.