Benediction"; in 1883 by "The Vaccination"; in 1884 by "The Horse-pond" of the Musée Luxembourg; in 1885 by a "Blessed Virgin," a homely, thoughtful, and delicately coloured picture which gained him many admirers in Germany; and in 1886 by "The Consecrated Bread," in which he was one of the first to take up the study of light in interiors. In a Catholic church there are sitting devout women--most of them old, but also one who is young--and children, while an acolyte is handing them consecrated bread. This simple scene in the damp village church, filled with a tender gloom, is rendered with a winning homely plainness, and with that touch of compassionate sentimentality which is the peculiar note of Dagnan-Bouveret. The "Bretonnes au Pardon" of 1889 thoroughly displayed this definitive Dagnan: a soft, peaceful picture, full of simple and cordial poetry. In the grass behind the church, the plain spire of which rises at the end of a wall, women are sitting, both young and old, in black dresses and white caps. One of them is reading a prayer from a devotional book. The rest are listening. Two men stand at the side. Everything is at peace; the scheme of colour is soft and quiet, while in the execution there is something recalling Holbein, and the effect is idyllically moving like the chime of a village bell when the sun is going down. [Illustration: _L'Art._ DUEZ. ON THE CLIFF.] [Illustration: _L'Art_ DUEZ. THE END OF OCTOBER. (_By permission of the Artist._)] The zeal with which painters took up the study of contemporary life, so long neglected, did not, however, prevent the quality of French landscape painting from being exceedingly high. New parts of the world were no longer to be conquered. For fifteen years none of the nobler, nor of the less noble, landscapes of France had been neglected, nor any strip of field; there were no flowers that were not plucked, whether they were cultivated in forcing-houses or had sprung pallid in a dark garden of old Paris. It was only the joy in brightness and the newly discovered beauty of sunshine that brought with them any change of material. Following the Impressionists, the landscape painters deserted their forests. Those "woodland depths," such as Diaz and Rousseau painted, seldom appear in the works of the most modern artists. In the severest opposition to such once popular scenes there lies the plain, the wide expanse stretching forth like a carpet in bright, shining tones under the play of tremulous sunbeams, and scarcely do a few trees break the quiet line of the distant horizon. At first the poorest and most humble corners were preferred. The painting of the poor brought even the most forlorn regions into fashion. Later, in landscape also, a bent towards the most tender lyricism corresponded with that inclination to idyllic sentiment which was on the increase in figure painting. These painters have a peculiar joy in the fresh mood of morning, when a light