They say of him that he was absolutely indifferent to public opinion; but once, indeed, criticism touched his spirit to bitterness. “When Hades wants to lay new paving-stones, it will not fail to consign the commission to Puvis de Chavannes, a man of good intentions and vast ideas who has promised for twenty years to give us a masterpiece. This he will never do, for he can neither draw nor paint.” This was from the pen of Edmond About, a professed admirer and friend of the painter. Of the defection Puvis never spoke without bitterness. Alexandre Dumas, too, shot his barbs. “Puvis knows so little of drawing that he should scarcely permit himself the luxury of not painting.” But Théophile Gautier and Théodore de Banville, the poet who wrote Gringoire, were amongst the few who appreciated Puvis de Chavannes. In the stupid blindness of the time it needed a poet’s eye to discern this peculiar ethereal form of beauty to which his own perceptions and productions were kin. Puvis de Chavannes was surrounded by an atmosphere of unbroken calm through which jarring contact with the world never penetrated to trouble the spirit. This separation enabled him to give from a height, from the impenetrable distance into which he withdrew, his ennobling inspiring creations. Hitherto, in mural decorations and in frescoes, landscape formed an inferior part; it was a subordinate background, complementary to the figures, unreal, exaggerated, brilliant, glaring. It remained for Puvis de Chavannes to introduce into his frescoes the country of France with its exquisite atmospheric effects; to make rivers, trees, fields, and woods dignified, expressive parts of his composition; as a landscape painter he occupies a place with Corot, Rousseau, Troyon. There could not be a greater distance between schools than that of this master and the men of his period. The loves of the shepherds, the follies of Olympus, Greek myths, with little logical bearing on place or object decorated, had been the subjects chosen for the walls and ceilings of public monuments and public buildings. From these uninspired conceptions to the creations of Puvis de Chavannes is a decided transition. His compositions, never fantastic or impossible, are the highest conceptions of the real, as well as visions of [Illustration: STE. GENEVIÈVE SERIES (Panthéon)] [Illustration: STE. GENEVIÈVE SERIES (Panthéon)] the most exalted flight of a beautiful imagination. He chose his subjects himself always, and never permitted a suggestion. Ceilings he did not like to decorate; it seemed to him an unnatural form. “I seek,” he said, “to open a window on to the real,” and it has been said that he opened one into the soul. In his work there is “a union of the mind of the antique and the spirit of Christian art.” He was a great believer, as one of his friends said--_un immense croyant_.