figures as phantoms, the scenes as so much childishness; he will not have an inkling what these forms, remotely resembling human beings, are doing, or what they mean. For he is not acquainted with the Greek and Latin classics, and without this hypothesis the works of Puvis are dead symbols, incomprehensible to any one unprovided with the special key, and without the natural constraining power of plain human truth and beauty. The provoking over-estimation of his work by corybantic critics justified every severity against Puvis de Chavannes in his lifetime. Now his appreciation no longer requires polemical pricks, and we can say that his Géneviève cycle secures him a permanent place in the history of art; that his great allegorical frescoes are cold, dead, sprawling, pretentious subtleties; and that neither his drawing nor his colour sanctify him as a master and model. His importance consists in this, _i.e._, that in his time the longing for beauty took him as a cloak for a passionate confession. The Puvis cult was, in the main, a reaction against Realism. By the exaggeration with which he was honoured may be measured the greatness of the disgust which his contemporaries felt for naturalistic art. XI BRIGHT AND DARK PAINTING CHARLES COTTET A generation ago opposition arose against gloomy painting. Down with the twilight cellar painting! Down with the studio sauce! Hurrah for the open air! Long live free light! With this war-song a brave, hot-blooded band stormed art academies and studios of masters, and, shouting for joy, planted their silver and violet banner on the posts they had taken. For two whole decades the art exhibitions presented a cheerful, festive aspect. It was always Sunday. The glow of a southern noon rested over whole walls. From the hundreds and thousands of canvases, big and little, streamed the gleaming sunlight in its full glory. Men, beasts, things, landscapes—all swam in luminous splendour which, at most, patches of violet shadow subdued timidly. Nature seemed to know no other conditions of light than those of Capri in July. About the turn of the century this suddenly began to change. In some pictures the light went out. Certain painters again discovered the darkness of evening, of leaden-clouded winter’s day, of thickets, of rooms. On some palettes the eternal white and violet was replaced by the old brown, black, and olive-green of our fathers. The phenomenon became, year by year, more marked. To-day the change is accomplished. Free light is thrown away after the old moons. Painting has grown sick of noonday. There is an atmosphere of twilight in all the pictures. The young painters—the victors of the day—use as much asphalt, mummy, and umber, as did the old ones thirty years ago. Whole ranges of walls in the Paris _salons_ lie as in deep shadow, and we may go through several