Page The First Years 18 The Arrival at Paris 29 The Years in Rome 37 The Works of Henner 44 The Portrait Painter 72 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Plate I. The Little Girl with the Blue Ribbon Frontispiece Petit Palais des Beaux-Arts II. The Reclining Nymph 14 Luxembourg Museum III. Portrait of Mlle. L 24 Luxembourg Museum IV. The Little Writer 34 Petit Palais des Beaux-Arts V. Bara 40 Petit Palais des Beaux-Arts VI. The Comtesse Diana 50 Luxembourg Museum VII. The Naiad 60 Luxembourg Museum VIII. The Magdalen with the Crucifix 70 Petit Palais des Beaux-Arts ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: Line drawing of Henner] There is no one who has not chanced, sooner or later, to pass the window of some picture dealer and find himself irresistibly attracted by a canvas forming a patch of fluid gold, a luminous vapour bathing the white body of a woman, white with that rich, warm whiteness that reveals, through the transparency of the skin, the inner flame, the bounding blood, the pulsing life. Such a picture was a Henner. And when you have come into contact, if only for once, with a work by this incomparable artist, the effect is lasting; you recognize any and all of his works at the first glance, just as you recognize a friend in the street, even before he is near enough for you to distinguish his features. So personal is Henner's manner, and so original his product, that it is impossible to confound him with any other painter, just as no other painter has ever been able or even attempted to imitate a type of which he alone possessed the magic secret. Although the tomb has barely closed above him, Henner has already entered upon his heritage of glory. Or should we not rather say that he had entered upon it during life, and that the unanimity of admiration which always followed him was in the nature of a definitive judgment, which posterity has nothing left to do but ratify? Among the most illustrious of our modern painters, Henner is the one who possesses to the highest degree the art of imprisoning light, of playing with it, of making it vibrate, of using it to illumine the most profound woodland shades, or to set it palpitating over feminine flesh. We must not seek within our own times