Henri Martin has always aimed at lofty ends, but the paths he has followed to gain them were crooked and wrong. He was, when he began, and still is, in moments of relapse, a dabbing stumper, _i.e._, he laid on a thick dab of colour the size of a hazel-nut and extended it somewhat. With this method, his famous “Vibrations” was, indeed, successful, especially at a certain distance; but he broke up all form, and this allowed him to draw quite superficially. If any one reproached him with not rendering a single outline with exactness and certainty, he could use the excuse: “One cannot at the same time flood a picture with flickering light and model precisely.” Stumping was with Martin as with his imitators the cloak to cover up artistically dishonest forms. His idealism—the main feature in his physiognomy as an artist—was revealed, in his first period chiefly, by his feeble figures being dressed in the garb peculiar to no time or country, the garb in which the Primitives were wont to make their angels appear, and by their moving in an artificial stage, which one can call neither earth, nor air, nor heaven; for, as a rule, it was painted a single iridescent, mixed colour, mostly a sort of pale lilac, into which some darker, smooth tree trunks, placed regularly like a lattice, were introduced. Typical of his first period are his symbolical pictures “Towards the Abyss,” and “Every One has his own Chimæra.” We are almost ashamed to linger over describing this confused rubbish. “Towards the Abyss.”—A hussy unclad after the fashion in vogue at a Paris artists’ pot-house—her cunning nudity is emphasised by ball-shoes, long black gloves, and by a black veil, thrown back at the right place, but transparent throughout—is hurrying down the gentle slope of a hill. Bats’ wings wide outspread sprout from her shoulders. A crowd of people, in which men and women of all ages and ranks are mixed up, rush after her with the attitudes and gestures of epidemic madness. Some run, others drag themselves along on their knees, others, again, on all fours, after her, and scuffle for flowers which she strews in her wake. Every meaning can be imported into this picture, but nothing can be gleaned from it, or, at most, that the frenzied attitudes of the slaves and victims of this creature, wallowing in the dust, kissing and licking the hussy’s footsteps, betray an unconscious masochistic trait in Henri Martin’s soul.