Jean Raffaelli.—Like Henri Martin, Sisley, and the other stipplers who painted with little dots, Jean François Raffaelli at first painted with thin, slightly serpentine strokes. And we have had to get accustomed to this manner. Raffaelli has been able to succeed, because he long favoured subjects for which his ripple lines were the suitable style. He painted poor people in poor landscapes, emaciated bodies in slatternly clothes under trees as dry as brooms. Like a raindrop on a window-pane, and like a tear on a furrowed cheek, the slender traces of colour flowed down these pitiable figures, arousing twilight imaginations of weeping, plaintive trickling, and dissolving. Later on he caught cheerful, coloured views of Paris streets—The Invalides, Notre Dame, and the Place St Michel. In these his streaky way of painting was somewhat inadequate; but his amazing feeling for a crowd in the hurried, nervous movement which is peculiar to the Parisian lower orders, saved him. I know no painter who feels as Raffaelli the bustle of the world’s metropolis. I think that any one who suffers from dread of the market-place, must get a feeling of fear at seeing his pictures. In a third period of his production, Raffaelli gave a rare example of complete change in his maturity. He who had grown famous as a painter of the poor and miserable, of vices and sicknesses, turned, at the zenith of his success, from the aspects that he had hitherto cherished, and opened his heart to the joys of existence. In his mind a process occurred, such as the ninth symphony describes in eternal strains. In his despair a voice suddenly cries out: “Brothers, let us sing other strains,” and roars out exultingly: “Joy, fair brightness of the gods.” Formerly, he knew only abandoned tramps, tattered beggars and thieves, broken-down hospital brothers. His plant-world consisted of the leprous turf in front of the Paris forts, decayed flowers, the half-withered, suburban street trees, broomlike and leafless as in autumn. And he painted this misery in miserable colours and in his own peculiar, streaky manner, especially appropriate to the subject. Now he caresses with a broad, full brush bloomingly beautiful maidens in white raiment, sunny, ornamental gardens with rich _parterres_, fresh nosegays or living flowers. He has also changed his style with his subject. It is all renovated—palette, execution, and story. I have a feeling of a secret happiness having blossomed in this artist’s soul, and I rejoice in the cheerful unconcern with which, by his altered work, he makes all men privy to his _Vita Nuova_.