Boom! The sun sinks out of sight, and leaves behind a tinge of
purple, of modest gray touched with topaz--ah! that is better. I
paint and I paint and I paint.
Oh, Good Lord, how beautiful it is--how beautiful! The sun has
disappeared and left behind a soft, luminous, gauzy tint of lemon--
lemons half-ripe. The light melts and blends into the blue of the
night.
How beautiful! I must catch that--even now it fades--but I have it:
tones of deepening green, pallid turquoise, infinitely fine,
delicate, fluid and ethereal.
Night draws on. The dark waters reflect the mysteries of the sky--
the landscape fades, vanishes, disappears--we can not see it now, we
only feel it is there.
But that is enough for one day--Nature is going to sleep, and so
will we, soon. Let us just sit silent a space and enjoy the
stillness.
The rising breezes are sighing through the foliage, and the birds,
choristers of the flowers, are singing their vesper-songs--calling,
some of them, plaintively for their lost mates.
Bing! A star pricks its portrait in the pond.
All around now is darkness and gloom--the crickets have taken up the
song where the birds left off.
The little lake is sparkling, a regular ant-heap of twinkling stars.
Reflected things are best--the waters are only to reflect the sky--
Nature's looking-glass.
The sun has gone to rest; the day is done. But the Sun of Art has
arisen, and my picture is complete.
Let us go home.
The Barbizon School--which, by the way, was never a school, and if
it exists now is not at Barbizon--was made up of five men: Corot,
Millet, Rousseau, Diaz and Daubigny.
Corot saw it first--this straggling little village of Barbizon,
nestling there at the foot of the Forest of Fontainebleau, thirty-
five miles southeast of Paris. This was about the year Eighteen
Hundred Thirty. There was no market then for Corot's wares, and the
artist would have doubted the sanity of any one who might have
wanted to buy. His income was one dollar a day--and this was enough.
If he wanted to go anywhere, he walked; and so he walked into
Barbizon one day, his pack on his back, and found there a little
inn, so quaint and simple that he stayed two days.
The landlord quite liked the big, jolly stranger. Hanging upon his
painting outfit was a mandolin, a harmonica, a guitar and two or
three other small musical instruments of nondescript pedigree. The
painter made music for the village, and on invitation painted a
sketch on the tavern-wall to pay for his board. And this sketch is
there even to this day, and is as plain to be seen as the splash of
ink on the wall at Eisenach where Martin Luther threw the ink-bottle
at the devil.
When Corot went back to Paris he showed sketches of Barbizon and
told of the little snuggery, where life was so simple and cheap.
Soon Rousseau and Diaz went down to Barbizon for a week's stay--
later came Daubigny.
In the course of a few years Barbizon grew to be a kind of excursion
point for artistic and ragged Bohemians, most of whom have done
their work, and their little life is now rounded with a sleep.
Rousseau, Diaz and Daubigny, all younger men than Corot, made
comfortable fortunes long before Corot got the speaker's eye; and
when at last recognition came to him, not the least of their claim
to greatness was that they had worked with him.
It was not until Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine that Jean Francois
Millet with his goodly brood was let down from the stage at
Barbizon, to work there for twenty-six years, and give himself and
the place immortality. For when we talk of the Barbizon School, we
have the low tones of "The Fagot-Gatherer" in mind--the browns, the
russets and the deep, dark yellows fading off into the gloom of
dying day.
And only a few miles away, clinging to the hillside, is By, where
lived Rosa Bonheur--too busy to care for Barbizon, or if she thought
of the "Barbizon School" it was with a fine contempt, which the
"School" returned with usurious interest.
At the Barbizon Inn the Bohemians used to sing songs about the
Bonheur breeches, and "the Lady who keeps a Zoo." The offense of
Rosa Bonheur was that she minded her own business, and sold the
"Horse Fair" for more money than the entire Barbizon School had ever
earned in its lifetime.
Only two names loom large out of Barbizon. Daubigny, Diaz and
Rousseau are great painters, and they each have disciples and
imitators who paint as well as they; but Corot and Millet stand out
separate and alone, incomprehensible and unrivaled.
And yet were ever two artists more unlike! Just compare "The Dancing
Sylphs" and "The Gleaners." The theme of all Millet's work is, "Man
goeth forth to his labors unto the evening." Toil, hardship, heroic
endurance, plodding monotony, burdens grievous to be borne--these
things cover the canvases of Millet. All of his deep sincerity, his
abiding melancholy, his rugged nobility are there; for every man who
works in freedom simply reproduces himself. That is what true work
is--self-expression, self-revelation. The style of Millet is so
strongly marked, so deeply etched, that no man dare imitate it. It
is covered by a perpetual copyright, signed and sealed with the
life's blood of the artist. Then comes Corot the joyous, Corot the
careless, Corot who had no troubles, no sorrows, no grievances, and
not an enemy that he recognized as such. He even loved Rosa Bonheur,
or would, he once said, "If she would only chain up her dog, and
wear woman's clothes!" Corot, singing at his work, unless he was
smoking, and if he was smoking, removing his pipe only to lift up
his voice in song: Corot, painting and singing--"Ah ha--tra la la.
Now I 'll paint a little boy--oho, oho, tra lala la loo--lal loo--
oho--what a nice little boy--and here comes a cow; hold that, bossy
--in you go for art's dear sake--tra la la la, la loo!"
Look at a Corot closely and listen, and you can always hear the echo
of the pipes o' Pan. Lovers sit on the grassy banks, children roll
among the leaves, sylphs dance in every open, and out from between
the branches lightly steps Orpheus, harp in hand, to greet the morn.
Never is there a shadow of care in a Corot--all is mellow with love,
ripe with the rich gift of life, full of prayer and praise just for
the rapture of drinking in the day--grateful for calm, sweet rest
and eventide.
Corot, eighteen years the senior of Millet, was the first to welcome
the whipped-out artist to Barbizon. With him Corot divided his
scanty store; he sang and played his guitar at the Millet
hearthstone when he had nothing but himself to give; and when, in
Eighteen Hundred Seventy-five, Millet felt the chill night of death
settling down upon him, and the fear that want would come to his
loved ones haunted his dreams, Corot assured him by settling upon
the family the sum of one thousand francs a year, until the youngest
child should become of age, and during Madame Millet's life.
So died Jean Francois Millet.
In Eighteen Hundred Eighty-nine "The Angelus" was bought by an
American Syndicate for five hundred eighty thousand francs. In
Eighteen Hundred Ninety it was bought back by agents of the French
Government for seven hundred fifty thousand francs, and now has
found a final resting-place in the Louvre.
Within a few months after the death of Millet, Corot, too, passed
away.
Corot is a remarkable example of a soul ripening slowly. His skill
was not at its highest until he was seventy-one years of age. He
then had eight years of life and work left, and he continued even to
the end. In his art there was no decline.
It can not be said that he received due recognition until he was
approaching his seventy-fifth year, for it was then, for the first
time, that the world of buyers besieged his door. The few who had
bought before were usually friends who had purchased with the
amiable idea of helping a worthy man.
During the last few years of Corot's life, his income was over fifty
thousand francs a year--"more than I received for pictures during my
whole career," he once said. And then he shed tears at parting with
the treasures that had been for so long his close companions.
"You see, I am a collector," he used to say, "but being poor, I have
to paint all my pictures myself--they are not for sale."
And probably he would have kept his collection unbroken were it not
that he wanted the money so much to give away.
Of the painters classed in the Barbizon School, it is probable that
Corot will live longest, and will continue to occupy the highest
position. His art is more individual than Rousseau's, more poetic
than that of Daubigny, and in every sense more beautiful than that
of Millet. When Camille Corot passed out, on the Twenty-second of
February, Eighteen Hundred Seventy-five, he was the best-loved man
in Paris. Five thousand art-students wore crape on their arms for a
year in memory of "Papa Corot," a man who did his work joyously,
lived long, and to the end carried in his heart the perfume of the
morning, and the beneficent beauty of the sunrise.