Didier-Pouget achieved his “Mention Honorable” in 1890, won the “Concours Troyon” the following year, and was awarded the gold medal at the Salon in 1896 upon the recommendation of Gérôme, hitherto a strong opponent to the new style. He is now a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, his medals, diplomas, and awards from foreign exhibitions and Governments being almost innumerable. Such a measure of success is rarely achieved nowadays by a man under forty in the arduous profession of art. The State and the municipality of Paris are amongst his most regular patrons. Besides the pictures reserved for Paris, he is represented in the museums of Lyons, Macon, Toulouse, Tunis, the Embassy at St. Petersburg, the galleries of Boston, U.S.A., and Leipsic, and the private collections of the Kings of Italy and Greece. [Illustration: A STUDY · ALBERT BESNARD ] [Illustration: THE DEATH-BED · ALBERT BESNARD ] Personally Didier-Pouget is more Spanish than French. Of medium height, tanned complexion, black hair, dark eyes which tell unmistakably of the artist, very reserved in manner, and modest to a degree—these are his characteristics. He leads a solitary life in the Boulevard de Clichy. In his large studio will probably be found the canvas he is working upon, about ten feet by six, his favourite size. Innumerable studies are scattered around, rapid sketches of form and colour, line-drawings, careful black-and-white work full of detail, in fact every trifle which will aid him in completing the whole. [Illustration: MORNING MISTS IN THE VALLEY OF THE CREUSE · DIDIER POUGET ] [Illustration: MORNING IN THE VALLEY OF THE CORRÈZE · DIDIER POUGET ] If the greatest art is to represent an impression of Nature at her best, then the work of Didier-Pouget is great. “It is truly worth while being a painter to have produced any one of these,” writes the critic of “Le Temps.” The artist loves best to represent Nature in her peaceful moods, and generally seeks the solitudes of the exquisite hills, valleys, and rivers of the Tarbes countryside, or the rich watershed of La Creuse. Here, in the fresh early-morn, charged with dew and mist, he finds his subjects, overlooking magnificent panoramas of river, hillsides covered with heather, across valleys and plains from which loom out sculpturesque masses of foliage, dark and strong against the blue mist and distant mountain ridge. The painter prefers Nature serene and undisturbed, and introduces but little incident.