The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-11-12

better TO compare him than TO the decoration
Of one of those cathedrals which he has } mar
vellouBly described. There is an unspeakabie
mixture of solemn ecstasies and caustic severi.
ties, of exact observations and OF extravagant
bursts of sentiment, OF cool judgments and OF
Involuntary eruptions of imagination; there Is
copious vegetation of thought, reason often
incontine MT always active and strong, with In.
expresstble convulsionsof fear and OF rapture,
with surging visions, with an interior chaos
of dtsorganized vitalities and OF lndomltaole
unreason."
"Rival Nations in Art" is clearly volume
written in the interests of the French school.
We are quietly told that the last Great Exhi-
bition in Paris did but proclaim once more the
supremacy of French painters. Yet M. Ches-
neau, who five years ago extolled the chief
leaders of French painting in the nineteenth
century, cannot but now deplore the irrepara-
BILE losses his country has sustained. In the
death Of Ingres, Delacroix, AIRY Scheffer, Ver-
net, Decamps, Delaroohe, and Hppolyte
Flaudrin, the national art is discrowned of its
glories. Religious painting is all but annihi-
lated, classic styles are at discount, historic
art has sunk to the level of genre. Yet French
critics are naturally 10th to admit that what
Paris for the instant applauds can be anything
short OF perfection. Still they do permit them
selves to mourn over the past, though they
have scarcely the heart to deplore the present.
For better or for worse, naturalism is now
in every capital of Europe the order of the
day; and Paris, as usual among "rival nations
ever, she mitgates by warm flush of
romance--"romantic naturalism," perhaps,
may best express the present aspect of the
French school. In sentiment it is avowedly
false, in morality dubious; but even its
enemies must concede that for brilliance, dex-
terity, and technical skill, the school, even as
now shern Of its splendor, has never been
surpassed. But Paris is accustomed to assert
more than her due; she may be France but
fortunately, as yet, she is not the world and
for long time still to come there is likely
to subsist at all events among "rival nations
in the art' Of landscape implacable jealousies.
That Theodore Rousseau, when in competi-
tion with the landscape painters of Germany,
Scandinavia, England, and America, should
have carried off the grand prize, is a misdeed
never to be forgotten or forgiven. Still, we
readily admit that the students of nature In
all countries have much to learn from the
French. Our peighbors are remarkably true
in relations and tones; if their colors are
in scale restricted, they are balanced in con-
cord; greys and green's especially are mingled
with just gradation; the relation between
shade and half-shade, between sunshine and
half-sunlight, is as absolutely true as the
chords of an instrument in perfect tune. Yet,
strange to say, the French by some unac-
countable perversity, will persist in pitching
their colors in dirty dismal key, as If our
foggy English climate were their beau ideal.
M. Chesneau's conclusions as to "the in
fluence of International Exhibitions, ;" and his
opinions son the future of art, are ofweight.
Il is evident to all that these congresses of
civilization tend to concentration and csntrali-
zation-that the isolation, if not the inde-
pepdence, of the individual becomes merged
in the collective mass, Il Is further clear that
the publicity gained secures to the many the
knowledge and power which formerly were
xal, ,,nsxr of H. s.
over, record being taken of progress made, the
civilized world, it is supposed, can be no
longer subject to the periodic revul-
sions and retrogressions of past times;
knowledge will not again fall under
the eclipse of dark ages, nor will
science revert to pre-scientfc empiricism.
But though all this may be readily granted,
the question remains, whether art, as art, is
likely to be the gamer We are glad to OBJ
serve that NJ Chesneau has the boldness to
declare that one effect of monster exhibitions
is "vulgarization." There can be little doubt
that the tendency of crowded international
concourses is democratic; a vast gallery made
large enough to hold mob will be more con-
genial to the illiterate multitude than to an
audience select and few. Standards are thus
almost inevitably brought down to broad
averages; genius, if there be any, becomes sub
ject to the tyranny of majorities; whatever in
art asserts itself loudest is surest of honor and
reward. General uproar deatens the artist to
the voice of truth and beauty, which speaks
timorously in the quiet chambers of the miud.
Hence, by innate repugnance, not few
painters in our own times have eschewed ex-
hibitions wholly, and it weuld certainly be
hard to conceive of Fra Angelica in the crowded
Gallery of the Champ de Mars. These fierce
arenas of competition and strife exert upon
collective schools, as upon individual artists,
an influence not to be mistaken; distinctive
characteristics are destroyed; salient pictorial
styles, like protruding angles in stream, are
by persistent abrasion worn away. Hence
national schools lose their nationality, till at
length some have feared that the entire art
world might be left without latitude or longi-
tude, diversity of climate, or distinction of
race. Thus, what is personal in genius, or
individual in nationality, may in the end
become conglomorated into mass, called by
way of commendation Cosmopolitan" The
writer of the work before us, at all events,
seems to think that in International Exhibi-
tions originality is out of place, that
creation is an anachronism, that property
in ideas there can be Zone under prevailing
and free-and-easy plagiarism. Every new
| idea which can be turned to profit is plum
dered harpies lie in wait; aud steam-worked
machines are ready to multiply each thought
into thousand replicas. Every year, writes
NJ Chesneau, one sees, as a new plague ol
Egypt clouds of fashionable grasshoppers; one
sees them-these searchers without ideas,
these plagiarists of the thoughts of others
speeding to every quarter where has been any
signal success, dividing, crumbling, corrupt
ing the thought, burrowipg into il and devour.
ing it like mites; such is the plebeian process
through which the arts are propagated and vul
garised. Yet would we suggest that compensa
tion must come somewhere. There may possibly
be reason to hope that the arts in becoming