Of his faith or dogma his art, however, tells us nothing definite. The legends of saints are no less breathing evidences of a distinct _credo_, than the mythical figures in the Vision Antique and other works of the same character are expressions of harmony with the Greek pagan spirit. It is the expansive, all-embracing province of highest art the faith in, the love for Beauty which is the creed of Puvis de Chavannes; and it is the manner in which this inspired genius conceived and presented the forms of Beauty that separated him so vastly from his materialistic forerunners and contemporaries in France. Hitherto the human form had been presented, for the most part, for the delectation of the sense alone. Corporeal, physical beauty absorbed the painter, and awakened in return such admiration as this form of art expressed with greater or less refinement and power will always evoke. The artist, for the most part not believing in soul, scarcely suggested its existence. Not since the early Italians has any one painted as Puvis de Chavannes. Meditation, indifference to the world, absorption in his work, aided his development, “his genius unfolded in solitude.” The human form was to him the shadow, and the soul the reality; he made earthly beauty a veil for his idea of the eternal; form he subordinated to his thought. “I try,” he said, “through the shade to suggest the essence.” Nor let it be advanced that over his incapacity to draw Puvis de Chavannes threw concealing mistiness. His pastels, his drawings, the figures he has seen fit to leave nude, or semi-nude, disprove this. In 1872 he was made a member of the jury of the first Salon instituted by the State. A vivid remembrance of his own disappointment made him seek to introduce leniency into the judgments. He could not avail, and he resigned. On the next day, all his own canvases (which, no longer being a member of the jury, he had a right to exhibit) were refused. What the [Illustration: SORBONNE SERIES, No. 1] [Illustration: SORBONNE SERIES, No. 2] criterion of public taste in Art was at this time, certain pictures in the Luxembourg and the Louvre attest! The jurors and the judges are forgotten. Puvis de Chavannes, however, is remembered, with the distinguished company of the Refused--Courbet, Dupré, Baryé, Troyon, Rousseau, Diaz, Millet, Corot. It was not until he had produced a great number of his masterpieces that his success was determined--his genius recognised. He then ceased to be the individual, the sport of vulgar pen and brush, and became the symbol of his work as the flag is of patriotism. He became a gift, a force, a glory, which France before his death revered, and which she justly honours. He was made President of the Academy of Fine Arts at the new Salon, Champs de Mars, and wore the cross of the Legion of Honour.