In the sale-rooms Jongkind’s water-colours and etchings are now reaching very high prices, although one cannot agree that they are his most remarkable creations. Works the artist was content to sell for £4 to £8 now change hands under the hammer at sums ranging from £160 to £800. The best canvases were painted towards the end of his life, especially those depicting the luminous atmosphere of the beautiful Dauphiné countryside. His large landscapes are extremely unequal, somewhat hard and dry in technique, and more or less stereotyped in the choice of subject. His pictures do not always convey the true feeling for atmospheric effect, and many are simply experiments which lack the great quality of charm. Without a doubt he possessed extraordinary ability, but he lacked the illuminating spark of genius. He pointed out a way he was not himself strong enough to follow. [Illustration: MOONRISE · J. B. JONGKIND ] Louis-Eugène Boudin, an old comrade and life-long friend of Jongkind, is the head of the group of “little masters” who reigned during the transitional period in French landscape art between 1830 and 1870. He was born in the Rue Bourdet, Honfleur, on July 12, 1824, and died within a few miles of his birthplace in 1898. He leaves a magnificent record of work accomplished, and the memory of a noble life devoted to a beautiful ideal. Pissarro, in a letter addressed to the writer, says that Boudin had much influence upon the advancement of the Impressionist idea, particularly through his studies direct from Nature. His father was a pilot on board the steamboat _François_ of Havre, a bluff and hearty sailor, typical of the coast nearly a century ago. A good specimen is to be found in the burly guardian of the Musée Normand at Honfleur, who, by a coincidence not altogether strange in this world of coincidences, travelled round the world with old Boudin, and knew intimately “le petit Eugène.” The boy’s mother was stewardess on board the boat her husband piloted, and the artist commenced life in the humble and not altogether enviable capacity of cabin-boy. In that position he remained until his fourteenth year, travelling from French and English ports as far as the Antilles. At that age an irresistible desire came over his soul. He wished to quit seafaring life and devote himself to the brush. He had already made many sketches in bitumen, some having attracted attention from passengers. Those which have been preserved display wonderful proficiency, considering the many difficulties the boy had to labour under. Chance helped the youth; for his father, tiring of his endless struggle with the elements, retired from his post and opened a little stationery shop on the Grand Quai at Havre. The cabin-boy became shop-boy.