He is more and more breaking himself of the habit of regarding living models, and allows himself to be hypnotised by the Præ-Raphaelite magic lantern. We might wish for an Orpheus to take this noble artist by the hand and lead him back to the light from the shades in which he has lost himself. Perhaps the adventure would be more successful than in the case of Eurydice. Albert Besnard.—Contemporary painting knows no more harsh contrasts than Puvis de Chavannes and Albert Besnard. The former saw nothing in the world except spectres; the latter sees only fireworks. Puvis’s eyes perceived no living colour; Besnard’s eye is in a state as if it had received a violent blow from a fist, in consequence of which it saw the proverbial ten thousand candles. There is nothing objectionable about his delight in colour; on the contrary, any one who is not suffering from Daltonism would be delighted to be invited to his debauch of colours. If only Besnard only satisfied his taste in a somewhat nobler way! It pleases him to introduce his dazzling rockets into women’s faces, and there no man of healthy taste will care to follow him. Besnard has marvellously beautiful yellow, orange, green, blue, and red on his palette. He can attune them, too, to a beautifully sounding harmony; but why must he put yellow on the cheeks, green on the hair, and blue and orange on the shoulders in his portraits? Why must he so portray his model as if it were streaked with luminous paint or bathed in a stream of light that has flowed through a coloured glass window? His mastery of drawing and modelling certainly makes his colouring-run-mad somewhat more endurable, but it does not justify his not searching for the tumult of colour which he loves in actual life (where, after all, he might with some effort find them), but chasing them into actual life without any regard or thought.