GLORY does not dispense her favours to the deserving with an equal bounty. Painters as well as authors often suffer from the caprices of the inconstant goddess. While there are some who, guided by her benevolent hand, attain the pinnacle of fortune at the first attempt and almost without effort, other artists with a genius akin to that of Millet live in a state bordering upon penury and die in destitution. Renown seeks them out later, much too late, and tardy laurels flower only upon their tomb.
Puvis de Chavannes for a long time fared scarcely better than these illustrious mendicants of art. He experienced the bitter pangs of injustice, the hostility of ignorance, the discouragement of finding himself misunderstood. If he was spared the extreme distress of Millet, it was solely because he was the more fortunate of the two in possessing a small private income. But nothing can crush the spirit of the born artist; neither contempt nor ridicule can hold him back. Puvis de Chavannes was endowed with a valiant and a tenacious spirit. Entrenched within the loftiness of his artistic ideal, as within a tower of bronze, he was steadfastly scornful of critics, affecting not to hear them; and never would he consent to disarm them by concessions that in his eyes would have seemed dishonourable. Yet this rare probity brought its own reward. The great painter attained the joy of seeing himself at last understood, and not only understood but admired during his life-time. He must even have derived an ironic satisfaction from counting among his warmest adherents certain ones who had formerly been conspicuous as his most violent detractors.
PLATE II.—THE PIETY OF SAINT GENEVIEVE
(In the PanthÉon, Paris)
In this composition, exceptionally fine in feeling, Puvis de Chavannes shows how much importance he attached to landscape, which was the natural setting of his paintings, and which he treated with as much care as his personages themselves.
Today the glory of Puvis de Chavannes shines forth in uncontested splendour. No one dreams of comparing him with any of his contemporaries, because his art reveals no kinship with that of any one of them. He is recognized as the successor and the equal of the great fresco painters of the Italian Renaissance. Even to these he owes nothing, having borrowed nothing from them. But he shares with them his passionate love of truth, his nobility of inspiration and sincerity of execution. There are no longer insinuating and derisory shakings of the head in the presence of his works. One must be devoid of soul in order not to sense their beauty. Even the ignorant, in the presence of this form of art which they do not understand, gaze upon it with respectful wonder, as upon something very great, the content of which they fail to make out, although they realize its power from the inner emotion they experience.
"My dear boy," wrote Puvis de Chavannes to one of his pupils, "direct your soul compass-like, towards some work of beauty; that is the way to achieve it in its entirety."
It is because he directed his own soul, compass-like, only towards works of a noble and pure beauty, surrendering himself with all the ardour of his impetuous and vibrant nature, that Puvis de Chavannes has taken his place as one of the noblest figures, not only in contemporary painting, but also in the painting of all times.
