After Heilbuth's death _Albert Aublet_, who in earlier days depicted sanguinary historical pieces, became the popular painter of girls, whose beauties are gracefully interpreted in his pictures. When he paints the composer Massenet, sitting at the piano surrounded by flowers and beautiful women,--when he represents the doings of the fashionable world on the shore at a popular watering-place, or young ladies plucking roses, or wandering meditatively in bright dresses amid green shrubs and yellow flowers, or going into the sea in white bathing-gowns, there may be nothing profound or particularly artistic in it all, but it is none the less charming, attractive, bright, joyous, and fresh. _Jean Béraud_, another interpreter of Parisian elegance, has found material for numerous pictures in the blaze of the theatres, the naked shoulders of ballet-girls, the dress-coats of old gentlemen, the evening humour of the boulevards, the mysteries of the Café Anglais, the bustle of Monte Carlo, and the footlights of the Café-Concert. But absolute painter he is not. One would prefer to have a less oily heaviness in his works, a bolder and freer execution more in keeping with the lightness of the subject, and for this one would willingly surrender the touches of _genre_ which Béraud cannot let alone even in these days. But his illustrations are exceedingly spirited. [Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._ DANTAN. A PLASTER CAST FROM NATURE.] It would be impossible to classify painters according to further specialties. In fact, it is as little possible to bring individuals into categories as it was at the time of the Renaissance, when the painter busied himself at the same time with sculpture, architecture, and the artistic crafts. Great artists do not wall themselves up in a narrow space to be studied. Liberated from the studio and restored to nature, they endeavour, as in the best periods of art, to encompass life as widely as possible. A mere enumeration, such as chance offers, and such as will preserve a sense for the individuality of every man's talent without attempting comparisons, seems therefore a better method to pursue than a systematic grouping which could only be attained artificially and by ambiguities. The late _Ulysse Butin_ settled down on the shore of the Channel and painted the life of the fishermen of Villerville, a little spot upon the coast near Honfleur. Sturdy, large-boned fellows drag their nets across the strand, carry heavy anchors ashore, or lie smoking upon the dunes. The rays of the evening sun play upon their clothes; the night falls, and a profound silence rests upon the landscape.