Rome, that prodigious repository of art! with what reverential admiration the young artist approached her! What fascinated him from the start, offspring that he was of fair and undulating Alsace, was the Roman Campagna with its violent contrasts, its wide expanses ablaze with sunlight, cleft here and there with dense shadows, profound and nevertheless luminous. Here before his eyes, within reach of his palette, was not this the ideal landscape, such as his artistic instinct had taught him to prevision? Shadow and light clashing, interpenetrating, in order to form an imponderable and luminous dust, the light vivifying the shadow, the shadow sifting out the crudities of the light,--picture his joy at having foreseen all this instinctively, without having seen it, solely by his artistic intuition!

The five years which he passed in Rome were one perpetual enchantment. The proof of this is found in his correspondence with M. Goutzwiller, his first drawing-master, who remained his best friend. One receives the impression, in reading it, that he lived in a continuous ecstasy, in a world of fairyland.

This subject, consecrated to the glory of the young hero of the Revolution, had already been magnificently treated by David; none the less, Henner's Bara is not inferior to the other, and if perhaps it inspires a less degree of pity, there is something truly dramatic in the outstretched body, under the lowering sky.

And with what admiration and reverence he speaks of the great masters! How he loves them, and how well he understands the prodigious greatness of certain ones among them! The Venetians especially, those incomparable colourists, fired his ardour. He went to Venice, in order to worship them on the spot, in the presence of their works. But he was without prejudice; his taste was eclectic, like his own talent. His love for Titian and Giorgione did not prevent him from valuing Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. He loved them all, because he understood them all and because in each one of them he recognized the marvellous gift of genius. But none the less he had one preference, and he could avow it unashamed, for its object was one of the most extraordinary of all masters of design and colour: Correggio. Everything in the work of that admirable artist fascinated him; his dexterity, which verges upon the miraculous, his prodigious foreshortenings, the magic of his palette, and above all his mastery of chiaroscuro, which no other artist, not even Rembrandt, has surpassed. This time Henner had found his true master, the one with whom he was destined to impregnate himself permanently, as regards the harmonious distribution of lights and shades.

When he awoke from his contemplation of Correggio, it was in order to shut himself into his studio and feverishly endeavour to recapture with his own brush those exquisite colour tones that still dazzled his vision and possessed his spirit. What amazed him above all was the simplicity of means employed by the great masters to obtain all their effects, even those that seem the most complicated. "See," he said, "they have on their palettes only a few colours, and those the simplest: red, green, yellow, blue, black, and white! It is the modern painters who have invented the mixtures, that are so far removed from primitive simplicity!" Following the example of the earlier masters, Henner never employed any other colours than the simple ones. He always showed a marked aversion for mixed tints. His colours were always frank and sincere, even when toned down in order to avoid glaring and harsh effects. And it may justly be said of him that, "even on his palette his colours have already imprisoned light."

His studies in Rome did not make him forgetful of his obligations: he worked very seriously at his future exhibits. His five years' sojourn was distinguished by five masterpieces. He sent successively to the Beaux-Arts Christ in Prison and The Child with the Orange, pictures of rare perfection, each of which received the award of a medal, and both of which were purchased by the museum at Colmar, which wished to possess the first works of the young Alsatian artist. The following year, he sent in The Chaste Susannah, now one of the treasures of the Luxembourg Museum. The model who posed for Susannah was named Chiara. She was very handsome and well known in the artist world of Rome, and possessed an education much above her station. She exhibited much pride in having served as model for such a masterpiece.

The picture was exhibited at the Salon of 1865, and, curiously enough, it by no means met with the success that it deserved. The critics, accustomed to a very different type of painting, did not understand this new and unfamiliar method. ThÉophile Gautier was the only one who proclaimed its merit. It is only fair to add that his opinion was easily worth all the others. "It is not alone," he wrote, "the style and beauty of line that form the distinction of this beautiful Jewess, but also and more especially the fine instinct for colour. This is no statue that is bathing here, it is a very genuine woman."

At this same Salon, Henner exhibited two portraits of superior workmanship: that of Schnets, director of the École de Rome, and that of M. Joyau, architect of the same school.