T>t3 UC-NRLF mtsm B 4 Sfi4 73D tfj S-1 Jg8iieli*illotitl|Iu, MURILLO j itOE ^jMrnnantumi^ um i< umiwtmm.^ ^maeuoKH- MASTERS IN AR ^nxil SPANISH SCHOO ■;:.. l-:?ir: 335692 MASTERS 11^^ AET. PLATE I. PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN, CLEMENT &. CIE. MUEILLO THE HOLX FAMILT LOUVEE, PAEIS MASTERS IJV" ART. PLATE II. PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN, CLEMENT 4 CIE. MURHiliO VIRGIN AND CHILD [dETAIl] PITTI PALACE, FLORENCE c/c "t,"^"',' '\ r r.,,'< ' ' - H 9* n w MASTEKS IN AET. PLATE IV. PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN, CLEMENT & CIE. MUKIIiliO THE DIVINE SHEPHEEU PRADO, MADHII) MASTEKS IX ABT. PIRATE VI. PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN, CLEMENT 4 CIE. MUKILLO ST. ELIZABETH OF HUXGAKT HEALING THE SICK HOTAL ACADEMT OF FINE AETS, MADKID MASTEHS IX AKT. PLATE VII. PHOTOGRAPH BY HANFSTAENGL MUEILLO THE MELOX-EATEKS MUJS'ICH GALLEET ►J &, MASTERS IN" AET. PIiATE IX. PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN, CLEMENT & CIE. MURILLO THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION' LOnVEE, PAEIS , f^ c "e*- c MASTEliS IN' ART. PLATE X. PHOTOGRAPH BY LAURENT MUHILIiO THE VISION" OF ST. ANTHONIT OF PADUA SEVILLE CATHEDILAL POETEAIT OF MUEILLO OWNED BY EAEL SPENCEE, ALTHOEP, ENG. This portrait, which shows Murillo at about the age of sixty, was painted by him at the request of his children, and is inscribed, " Bartus Murillo seipsum depingens pro filiorum votis acprecibus explendis." It is believed to be that portrait which his con- temporary Palomino speaks of as "wonderful," and is probably the painter's most authentic likeness. MASTERS IN ART ISartoIome ^stefiatt iWttrillo BORN 16 17: DIED 1682 SPANISH SCHOOL ELLEN E. MINOR "MURILLO" BARTOLOME ESTEBAN MURILLO [pronounced in Spanish Moo-reel'-yo, and in English, Mew-ril'-o] was born in Seville, probably on the last day of De- cember, 1617, and was baptized on the first day of January, 161 8. Very little is known of his early years. His parents died before he was eleven years old, leaving him to the guardianship of a surgeon of the name of Juan Agustin Lagares, who had married his aunt Dona Anna Murillo. The boy was probably soon afterwards apprenticed to Juan del Castillo, his uncle; a painter of ordinary ability, under whose guidance Murillo made his first steps in the career of an artist. His gentle nature and anxiety to learn soon made him a favorite with his master and fellow students. Castillo took especial pains with his instruction, but did not allow him to omit any of the tedious and unin- teresting details of grinding colors, preparing and cleaning brushes, and other ordinary work of an artist's pupil. Murillo availed himself of all means of improvement, and soon painted as well as his master. In 1640 Juan del Castillo went to reside in Cadiz, and Murillo was left without his firiend and adviser, and in needy circumstances. For two years he had a struggle for existence. sThere were so many artists at that time in Seville that only the works of the most celebrated could be sold at anything Hke a remunerative price. Murillo was then quite unknown to fame, of a shy, retiring disposition, without any influential patron to bring him into notice ; and his only resource was to paint rough, showy pictures for the Feria, a weekly market, held in front of the Church of All Saints, where he took his stand at the stalls of eatables and old clothes, among groups of gypsies and mule- teers. For a painting to be called ''una pintura da feria '^ was far fi"om complimen- tary, for the purchasers were of the lowest class, who delighted in bright colors, with- out a care for correctness of design. This necessity to work for so inferior a class of buyers was not the hard fate of Murillo alone, for many of the Sevillan painters of farhe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had begun their ardst life in the same lowly way. It was the custom to bring brushes and colors into the fair, and to paint or alter the subject of a picture according to order. Many of these rough works were purchased for the colonies. As he stood in the market-place waiting for customers, Murillo had every opportunity of studying the habits and characteristics of the little beggar boys who swarmed in the streets of Seville, and who appear so often and so true to life upon his canvas. Still he was destined for better things than this. Pedro de Mova, a fellow pupil of Murillo's in Castillo's school, having found the restraints of the workshop too irksome, joined the Spanish infantry, then camping in Flanders. His love of painting, however, was revived when he saw the works of the Flem- ish artists; he threw aside his arms and went to London to study under Van Dyck. Early in 22 Sr^a^terjBftn^rt 1642, after that master's death, Moya returned to Seville, vastly improved by his six months with the Fleming; he brought with him copies of several paintings by Van Dyck, and also of many works which he saw in the Netherlands. These, together with the accounts of all he had seen and his own rapid improvement in style, so fired the ambition of Murillo that he became discontented with his circumscribed position, and resolved if possible to visit Rome. In order to obtain money for the accomplish- ment of his design he bought a piece of linen, divided it into squares of different sizes, and painted upon them attractive saints, bright landscapes, groups of flowers, fruit, and other subjects which suited the taste of eager purchasers. Then, without a word about his intention, he went away over the Sierras on foot to Madrid, a long and tedious journey. Arriving there without money, without friends, without anything, in fact, but a stock of indomitable courage, he went first of all to Velasquez, his fellow towns- man, then court painter to Philip IV., to ask advice and obtain letters of introduction to artists in Rome. Velasquez, who was at the height of his power, received him kindly, questioned him about Seville, his master, and his intentions. He was so taken with Murillo's answers and pleased with his manners, that he offered him an asylum in his own house, an offer which was gratefully accepted. . . . During the summer of 1642 Velasquez was absent with the king in Aragon, and upon his return was much pleased with some copies which Murillo had made of paintings by Ribera, Van Dyck, and Velasquez himself. In 1643-44 Velasquez was again absent with the king, in the northern campaign, and during this time Murillo had been working with unflagging industry, in the closest study of the masterpieces in the royal galleries. Velasquez was astonished at the progress he had made in freedom of style and decision of coloring. He now advised him to go to Rome, offering to give him letters of introduction to the first masters in that city. But Murillo had no longer the inclination to leave his country, and he returned to Seville early in 1645, after an absence of three years. Soon after his return he commenced a series of pictures with life-size figures for the small Franciscan convent near the Casa del Ayuntamiento. A sum of money had been collected by a member of their mendicant brotherhood, and the friars determined to expend it upon eleven paintings for the small cloister. The amount was so insignifi- cant that none of the Sevillan masters had considered it worth their acceptance. This was just the opportunity for showing his skill for which Murillo was waiting. The Franciscans, however, hesitated to give the commission to an unknown artist, but at length consented, as no one of established fame offered to undertake the work. For the next three years he was employed upon the paintings, and when they were finished all mis- trust in the artist was changed to admiration and joy, for they were real triumphs. In all of them could be seen the influence of the three years' study of the works of Ribera, Van Dyck, and Velasquez. By the assimilation of the styles of all three he had grad- ually developed one peculiarly his own. While his contemporaries still kept to the tame, lifeless style as taught in the Seville schools, Murillo boldly struck out another path, with nature as his instructor; and his name soon eclipsed those of Pacheco, Herrera, Valdes- Leal, and Zurbaran, which until then had been the most honored in Seville. By these paintings the artist's reputation was made, and he was soon overwhelmed with orders from different quarters. Now began a new era in his life. He was fiilly occupied in decorating the churches of different religious communities, and with work for noble patrons; he was admitted into the highest circle of society, and was worshipped by the people. In 1648 his circum- stances had so far improved as to enable him to marry a wealthy and noble wife. Dona Beatriz de Cabrera y Sotomayer. Apparently the strict Catholic spirit which is £l^ur iU 23 so evident in his works also ruled in his home. His two sons became priests. The elder, Gabriel Esteban, went to America. The second, Caspar Esteban, who for a time devoted himself to art, imitating his father's style, became eventually a canon in Seville Cathedral. After his marriage, Murillo's house became the resort of the most distinguished peo- ple in Seville; and in 1654, when Pacheco's death occurred, he became the acknowl- edged head of the Sevillan school. His stvle continually improved, his figures became rounder, his outlines softer, the backgrounds more hazy, and his individuality more pronounced. |. The need of a public academy for painting had been much felt by Murillo in his early days, and he determined to supply it for the benefit of a younger generation. By patiently enduring the decided opposition of his rivals, Herrera the younger and Valdes- Leal, he at length won them over to join in the undertaking, and succeeded in opening an Academy, of which he and Herrera were chosen the first presidents, on the first of January, 1660. The expenses were to be divided among the members, the scholars to pay what they could afford. The Seville Academy cannot be said to have had any great influence on Spanish art, and never produced any first-rate artists, nor did it long sur- vive Murillo, — a man who had fewer followers after his death than rivals during his life, — and twenty years after his death it was closed for want both of masters and students. After retiring from the Academy, Murillo confined his instructions to those pupils who assembled in his own workshop. By gentle teaching he knew how to attach them to himself, and retained the warm friendship of many even to the end of his life. Palomino says that in 1670 a painting of the Conception by Murillo, wliich was exhibited at the feast of Corpus Christi in Madrid, attracted great notice, and that Charles II. expressed a desire that the artist should enter his service, and employed Murillo's friend Don Francisco Eminente to bring it about. But all his efforts were unavailing, for Murillo had seen nothing attractive in Velasquez's position at court, and preferred his own independent retirement in Seville. He was now at the zenith of his power. In 1671 he commenced a series of paintings for the hospital of the old estab- lished brotherhood of the Holy Charity in Seville, to which he had himself been allied as a lay brother since 1665. He was engaged to paint eleven pictures for it, which occupied him for about four years, and are some of his most celebrated works. From this time on he was constantly occupied in painting innumerable religious pictures for convents, monasteries, and churches. But it was not for convents and churches only that Murillo painted. Bermudez savs that there was scarcely a good house in Seville that did not possess some memento of his skill. Seville ever remained the theatre of Murillo's work; after his journey to Madrid in his younger days he only once left his native town. At the beginning of 1680 he went to Cadiz to paint one large and four small pictures, with which he had promised to fill the retablo of the high altar in the church of the Capuchin friars. The large one represented the "Marriage of St. Catherine," a large portion of which, namely the graceflal centre group of the Virgin and infant Saviour and the bride, was finished, when the artist had a dangerous fall from the scaffold which he was mounting to enable him to reach the upper part of the painting. Tradition savs that this accident occurred in the chapel at Cadiz, but whether there or in his own studio, it is certain that the end of his life was passed in Seville. Too weak any longer to be able to use his brush, he would spend hours in prayer in the parish church of Santa Cruz, close by which he lived. His favorite position was in front of Campana's celebrated painting of the "Descent from the Cross," executed a century before, and which Murillo greatly admired. 24 a^ai^tcr^xn^rt When Murillo felt that his end was approaching, he sent for a notary to make his will; but death came so quickly that he was unable to sign it. The notary appended the following statement to the document: "Towards five o'clock on the afternoon of the third of April, 1682, I was sent for to make the will of Bartolome Murillo, painter and burgher of this town of Seville; and when I had written down as far as the names of his heirs, and was inquiring the name of his son Don Caspar Esteban Murillo, and as he was in the act of saying his name and that of his elder son, I observed that he was dying; and when I asked him the formal question whether he had made any other will, he did not replv, and soon after died." His funeral was celebrated with great pomp, and he was laid to rest by his own de- sire in the church of Santa Cruz at the foot of his favorite picture. M. F. SWEETSER "MURILLO" THE free march of French armies throughout the Spanish peninsula in the days of the first Napoleon brought about an extension of the fame of Spanish art; for their retreating baggage-trains carried into Northern Europe hundreds of priceless paint- ings. Marshal Soult was especially energetic in plundering Southern Spain of its best pictures, from whose sale he derived great sums in after-years. Souk's robberies were skilfully planned and premeditated; and the cities in advance of his army were explored by spies, in the disguise of tourists, who were provided with Bermudez's '* Dictionary of Art in Spain," and marked out the richest treasures. The Marshal seized the objects of his covetousness, and carefully guarded the legality of their titles by forcing their owners to sign fictitious bills of sale. The trophies were trans- ferred to his house in Paris; and for many years afterwards the thrifty veteran derived a large income from selling them, one by one, to wealthy English nobles. Hundreds of other pictures were huddled into the Alcazar of Seville, awaiting transportation to France; but the sudden retreat of the French army compelled their abandonment. In 1852 what remained of Marshal Souk's collection was sold, and the fifteen Murillos which it contained brought ^232,649. %i)t art of iMurtllo CARL JUSTI INTRODUCTION TO BAEDEKEr's "SPAIN AND PORTUGAL" IT has lately become fashionable to depreciate Murillo in contrast with Velasquez, partly in reaction against his popularity with the layman, and partly on technical and artistic grounds. It appears to us that neither reason is justified. The two masters should not be compared, — the one holds the mirror to nature and his period, the other shows us what lies behind the brow. Murillo, who lived in a fanatically Roman Cath- olic provincial town, and painted for conventual churches, hospitals, and sacristies, had to represent, like the contemporary Italians, the subjects that pleased the devout of his day, such as the Immaculate Conception, the visions of the monk's cell, the mys- teries and ecstasies of asceticism. He could not devote his entire energy to the repro- duction of the mere visual phenomenon. He had to depict what he had never seen; he had to wrestle for years with such a problem as how to paint successfully a human face set against a background of glowing hght. But his critics shut their eyes to his marvel- lous mastery of the illustrative apparatus, in which he vies with the Itahans of the aca- demic school. They assert that his effects are purely materialistic, though hundreds of sr^ur ilio 25 artists, already forgotten or quickly passing into oblivion, have produced precisely sim- ilar effects so far as the material outside is concerned. The fact that we speak of Murillo's "St. Anthony" and his "Immaculate Conception " as if he had created them is itself a proof that he does not owe everything to his material. It is more prob- able that the depreciation of Murillo has its real ground in the modern materialist's dis- like of the mystical subjects of the painter. He has represented things which the power of Velasquez refused to grapple with; but to give reahty to the never-seen is also legit- imate art. He depicts the miraculous in so naive and intimate a way that it loses its unnatural character; and his pictures are so simple and so truthfully felt that even the sceptic can appreciate their charm and read into them purely human ideas. Murillo was originally as essentially a realist as Zurbaran or Velasquez. When his task was merely to reproduce the actual, as in his famous groups of boys, and in the rendering of accessories, such as animals, ecclesiastical vessels, or the contents of a library, he has combined his characteristic broadness of touch with due attention to the accuracy, form, and pleasingness of the external appearance. His artistic greatness, the secret of his wonderful success, lies in the fact that he recognized the unique character and special charm of the human nature of Southern Spain, adapted it to the palette and the brush, and ventured to introduce it into paintings of religious subjects. This accounts for those elastic figures, the soft and supple forms of which lend themselves much more readily to painting than to sculpture; this is the source of the deep brown of the eyes and hair, set off by a warm flesh-tone reflecting the light. « To many this seems a thing of no great importance; but he was the first to discover it, and none of his imitators has reached his level. The Andalusian saints and Madon- nas seen elsewhere might just as well have been painted in Naples or in Holland. Like Rembrandt, he recognized with the insight of genius, that biblical history and the legends of the saints could be best narrated in the dialect of the people. . . . The pupil of a careless and incorrect academician like Juan de Castillo, Murillo would not have become what he was if he had not undergone the purging of both phrase and manner offered by the naturalism of the period. Many of his earlier paintings are cold and sombre in tone, sad in coloring, black in the shadows, jejune and trivial in charac- ter and expression. This eirly style is known as the estilo frio, or cold style, though such generalizations must not be applied in too sweeping a manner. His next phase, known as the warm style, estilo calido, is marked by deeper coloring and strong contrasts of light and shadow; but the light is actual light and the plastic forms are well defined. Murillo's last style, peculiar to himself, is known as el vaporoso, from a certain va- porous or misty effect that it produces. He here shows the unmistakable influence of Rubens, whom he had studied in engravings. The struggle of all great colorists to over- come the heaviness, opacity and hardness of matter led Murillo to his last system. Al- though still of solid impasto (hence the enduring quality of his painting), his brush- work is now loose and free; he produces his effect by a variety of tints melting into one another; he arranges the drapery now in sharp folds, now in flat. He models in the light without the aid of gray shadows; his palette is full of cheerfiil and warm colors; his figures are overflowing with life and sensibiHty; he has found the secret of so de- materializing them, partly through their gestures and partly through his handling of drapery, chiaroscuro, and accessories, that they seem to float in air; his visions are, as it were, woven of light and air. The description of Murillo as an improvisatore, who ** paints as the bird sings," is not very apposite. Few men have so well understood the art of pictorial composition or known so well how to charm the eye by gradations of light, skilful attitudes, and adroit foreshortenings; {^vi painters have calculated their effects more carefully. 26 ^a^ttt^ in ^tt C. E. BEULE <'REVUE DES DEUX MONDES": 1861 MURILLO is a popular idol, not alone in his native country, but throughout Europe, where his pictures command prices equal to those of the greatest mas- ters, as the director of the Louvre can testify. On the other hand, artists seem to have but a mediocre opinion of him; for though they acknowledge his facihty and charm, they do not find in him that force which commands their attention, nor the technique nor those original qualities which make him worthy of their study. A wiser judgment lies, it seems to me, between the two; and for my part, while I delight in his happy gifts, I cannot shut my eyes to his defects; and though I study his work with lively pleasure, I cannot accord him that blind admiration which is the due only of the greatest masters. Therefore those critics whom Murillo inspires with so overwhelming an admiration must pardon me if I cannot follow them in imitating the solemn rites with which they ap- proach their idol. For example, — and perhaps to establish a likeness to Raphael, as if such changes in style were to be remarked only in the greatest artists! — they attrib- ute to Murillo three formal manners, and pointing from one example of his work to another say, " This picture is in his 'warm ' manner, this in his 'cold,' and this third in his 'misty' style." I have striven in vain to find the true basis for any such cut- and-dried divisions. The only divisions in his art which seem to me to hold, are those which mark his progress successively from a formative period, when to gain an imme- diate livelihood he was hastily daubing his bits of hnen at the fair; a second, when he was developing his style by a study of the masterpieces in Madrid; and a third, when he finally became master of his individual talent. It would be a more exact description to say, simply, that one picture is badly composed and crude in color and design, that another is, on the contrary, vigorously painted, and that a third is so rendered that the outlines seem half lost in clouds. Indeed, Murillo' s nature was, to my thinking, quite too simple to lend itself to such critical subtleties. A man of instinct rather than will, of sentiment rather than system, a painter by temperament, whose inspiration was facile, flowing, and unpremeditated, he painted as a bird sings, without effort and without definite intention. I believe he would have been highly perplexed if he had been asked to expound his ' ' theories of art. " The carelessness of brush, the promptitude of conception, the absence of conscious volition, — in a word, the happy freedom from bonds, is so evident in his works that it should disarm those critics who approach them to judge and measure by rule and formula. To my mind, both the weaknesses and the talents of Murillo are but clear expressions of the man's own nature and of the wider nature of the Andalusian race. Let us set his portrait before us; — not that which he painted for his sons, and which depicts him in mature age, a formed and accomplished artist, but that other likeness which Louis Philippe bought in Seville, and which shows him in the flush of youth, with all his pos- sibilities before him. We find him brilliant, ardent, fresh-colored, the warm blood flow- ing close under his skin; his eyes black, penetrating, full of fire and fliller still of passion; his forehead high, and modelled with those slight bosses which show a quick but rather feminine intelligence; the lower part of his face (as is frequently the case with his countrymen) less finely cut, and marred by a coarse mouth and the heavy outline of the chin. The total impression is that of a nature in which ardor serves instead of force, of facile but superficial rather than profound intelligence, and, as a prime trait, highly mundane and sensual. Are not these the very qualities we find written in his works.? Look at his Virgins, whose beauty is of so human a cast; his infant Christs, whose grace is so much more carnal than divine; his angels and cherubs, which might have been the despair of Boucher and his school; his saints and monks, who adore the Madonna or the Christ-child with such earthly passion. One of the most religious of painters in his subjects, Murillo was, it seems to me, one of the most pagan in his sen- sr^ur iUo 27 timents. With him the embodiment speaks more loudly than the idea, and the forms, borrowed from nature, have perhaps a beauty a thought too graceful, and a fleshliness a thought too near voluptuousness to accord w^ith the highest devotion. And yet, in saying this I have no wish to imply a doubt of Murillo's personal de- voutness or the sincerity of his intentions. The faith which his paintings express was the faith of his time and country. Before his day conflict with the Jews and Moors had excited religious passion in Andalusia to the highest pitch; — nowhere had the auto de fe caused greater bloodshed, or the tyranny of the Inquisition been more magnificently imperious. But in Murillo's time this severity had relaxed. A sentimental devotion had replaced fanaticism. The Jesuits, whose whole policy of adaptable principles, allowance of many pleasures, easy penances, sense-charming ceremonies, and adornment of the churches with hitherto unknown magnificence, was exactly adapted to the Andalusian character, were welcomed with special eagerness by the people of Seville. At the same time, the inflammable imaginations of the people were excited by the exploitation of new miracles, by the revival of old legends, by daily accounts of apparitions, visions, and ecstasies. It was no longer the robust faith of the Middle Ages nor the austerity of the cloisters, but an easier devotion and a more picturesque and emotional type of religion that Murillo's brush was called upon to serve. This is why he so frequently painted these ecstatic Assumptions and Conceptions; these monks before whose faith the depths of a glad heaven open ; these Franciscans upon whom the infant Saviour bestows his childlike kiss; these Dominicans who embrace the crucifix with such passion that Christ leans from it to caress them; these winged seraphs who change the scourges of self- torturing saints to roses and lilies. In all such cases he found his plan ready-made and his procedure simple. He was not forced to constantly exert imaginative invention, — a tax which might have been beyond the limit of his powers. His historical pictures will serve as a still more satisfactory test by which to measure his talents and their limitations ; for it is in such subjects that the ability of the painter in composition, in style, and in dignity is most taxed, and in which the mediocre endow- ment soonest betrays itself. Let us take, for example, Murillo's large canvas of " Moses Striking the Rock" in the Hospital of La Caridad in Seville. Here the artist has given us a picture which is clear, interesting, and agreeable, but he has treated his subject without distinction, in- deed I might almost say without intelligence, for the true elements of its grandeur — the awfiilness of thirst, the passionate gratitude of the little band rescued from imminent death, the sublime inspiration of the prophet who, for the moment, wields the power of God — have entirely escaped him. Remove Moses and Aaron from the picture — and indeed their removal would be easy, for they are not integral parts of the composi- tion, and their expressions are, at best, uncertain — and there will remain merely a large genre-picture, which might appropriately be called "The Halt at the Foun- tain." It would be a very charming picture too, with its groups of women filling their jugs, the mothers caring for their little children, the dog drinking, all expressed in the gay flower-like tones which Murillo knew so well how to employ. It is evident that the deeper meaning of his subject did not preoccupy the artist for a moment, and that, in the delight of painting these bits of familiar life, the real every-day types which were to his taste and within the scope of his talents, he forgot its gravity. The same is true of his picture of "Christ Feeding the Multitude." Here neither Christ nor the apostles first attract our attention, but the waiting women seated in the foreground. We shall find the same merits and the same deficiencies in the ** St. Elizabeth of Hungary. " The saint has a cold, distracted air, and tends her patients as disinterestedly as if she had held such a clinic daily for twenty years. Of the spirit of tender charity which should have been the vital animation of the picture Murillo has given us nothing. He 28 lai^a^ter^in^rt was himself interested and he interests us in his painting of the patient who bends over the basin, the man in the foreground who unwinds the bandage from his leg, the cripple who is making-off behind, or the little ragamuffin who is scratching his head with such a monkey-like grimace. But if Murillo's talent was insufficient for large historical compositions, it was ample and delightful in those smaller canvases where the interest in individual figures, such as the isolated bits in his more ambitious pictures, serves in place of the grand style, and the general effect is intended rather to charm than to impress. On the one hand, then, to copy nature without reading into her, as the greatest artists have been able to do, a deeper meaning than lies upon the surface, and on the other to gracefully express the half pious, half emotional movements of the soul, — herein lies Murillo's role. He is by turns of the earth and of the sky; half a painter of the real, half a painter of pleasant and sensual dreams. In considering Murillo's work in its more technical qualities, I find that many of his most ardent admirers content themselves with extolling his coloring, and make no at- tempt to defend his drawing. In truth, considering that he was a painter so fond of copying nature, his drawing was mannered to a surprising degree; and, more than this, I must confess that I find in it something which I can no better express than to call it a taint of ** commonness " — a fault which seems to me far more regrettable than such blemishes as badly finished fingers, arms which lack anatomy, or heavy and impossible folds of drapery; for such blemishes do not, on the whole, deprive a design of charac- ter, while the sin of vulgarity is an all -pervading and deadly one. As for color, Murillo was endowed by nature with a gift for it; and like all those who are guided rather by instinct than by science, he sometimes failed sadly in his harmonies, and at other times was most exquisitely inspired. His coloring is ordinarily unctuous and consistent rather than vigorous, and is usually warm and charming; but here too I must qualify my praise and confess to finding in his use of color what I must again call the taint of vulgarity. Nothing is more fatal to a Murillo than the proximity of a painting by Velasquez, whose aristocratic brush, whose color, imposing by its force of truth, makes the coloring of the other seem almost "pretty " and chromo-like, and his light rather the light of the lamp than the white radiance of day. — abridged from the FRENCH. LUCIEN SOLVAY <