He was a
stout man, forty-five years old, with an expressive face and long grey
hair; recently he had become a member of the Institute and an officer
of the Legion of Honour. The grandson of a farmer in the Beauce country,
the son of a man risen to the middle classes, with peasant blood in his
veins, owing his culture to a mother of very artistic tastes, he was
rich, had no need to sell his pictures, and retained many tastes and
opinions of Bohemian life. His masterpiece, the _Village Wedding_, had
brought about a revolution in art only parallel with Courbet, and he
was acknowledged as Master by all the artists of the young school. The
picture remained, however, his greatest work, though he objected to have
it so designated, in the fear that it might be thought his powers were
failing. A later picture called the _Village Funeral_ was intended to
surpass it, but failed to arrest attention, and was indeed only an echo
of the earlier work. He was one of the few mourners at the funeral of
Claude Lantier. L'Oeuvre.
BONHOMME, the horse which for a quarter of a century had carried Doctor
Pascal on his visits to his patients.
Pages:
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124