Alfred Roll is one of the most amiable figures in the art world of to-day. No one has such feeling as he for the exquisitely delicate silvery vapour of a May morning atmosphere, quivering with sunlight and saturated with dew. No one knows how to model out with such creative genius as he a human body from the daylight that flows around it in gushing torrents. In his free-light painting one breathes free from all oppression. Besides qualities which, in all ages, make a great artist, he has the little trace of corruption which makes him a legitimate son of our age. One of his masterpieces—the naked young woman who clings caressingly to the bull—awakes Pasiphaistic ideas of old classic aberration. To procure pardon for this picture, he had to do no less than paint the splendidly healthy peasant girl with the brimming milk-pail and the cow—certainly a worthy penance. Roll is, to be sure, not always the charming, luminous painter of the milk-maid and the girl with the bull. He very often strikes other notes. Thus, for instance, in his picture inspired by socialism, which he calls “The Martyr’s Road,” he shows an old tramp who, with his back leaning against a tree, has collapsed by the wayside, has let his wallet fall beside him, and appears to be about to give up the ghost. The misery of his worn countenance already overshadowed by death, of his emaciated figure and tattered clothes are convincing. On the other hand, it is open to question whether it was good taste to paint the dying man in front view, with bold foreshortening of the outstretched legs, and with boot-soles of a terrific size, that rear up before us, in the extreme foreground, like two præ-historic _menhirs_. Roll intended to pay his homage to Maxim Gorki also. Was it from sincere feeling, or to show that he is _dans le mouvement_, and is keeping step with the most advanced of his time?