“My best work is that which I enjoy when I am doing it; it is the work which brings me pleasure, the work that I do when I am cheerful, which is my best. This is, of course, according to temperament, but such is mine! I produce a great deal, I work very hard, of course I am ambitious, and at times know discouragement, when my conception is so far behind my power of expression. I take often two months to do a picture and work and correct my canvases enormously. There are days when the mystery that should surround an idea is absent. Those are the days that I say one sees too clearly, and at that time I do not paint. _Je ne pioche pas_, which means ‘I do not dig away at my work.’ I have produced enormously and I owe my success to myself and my work alone. I have never had patronage and have never been part of a coterie.” He has the gift of facile labour and his mental and temperamental characteristics are revealed in the free, breezy, healthful inspirations of his work. His is a happy, vigorous genius, sane and normal, utterly devoid of much of the weakness marking modern French art. * * * * * As soon as the painter of mural decorations leaves the domain of myth and contiguity to his subjects, he is on dangerous ground. Pure imagination is too personal, too largely of the painter’s own time--dying with his death and needing the very spirit of the age to interpret it, and when modern subjects become the choice for decorations, they should have for their principal scheme that which will appeal to the mass and be of general interest. The poorest man and woman, the youngest child may understand and enjoy the decorations in the School of Pharmacy. These are perhaps the most promising for the continuation of Besnard’s fame. They will live. The same may be said of the pictures in the Mairie of the Louvre; whereas, those in the School of Chemistry, delightful as they are, are so personal and subtle that they require printed cards to make them intelligible to the mass. The ceiling of the Hôtel de Ville represents the apotheosis of science. A female figure with the profusion of reddish hair Besnard is fond of painting, holds in her hands sheaves of light which she casts down into a darkened world.