REPORT OF MR. MILLETT.
161
we find the most brutal and disgusting vices go hand in hand with the highest efforts of civilization, so, joined with these superior powers and rare capabilities, we meet with the most ignoble creations and worthless trivialities, often in the garb of masterly execution,—an incongruity rarely found outside the ranks of the French artists.
Perhaps the most discouraging feature of their art is the persistent illustration, so generally indulged in, of woman, as she is understood in Paris. A French artist poses his mistress and paints her, and all the world recognizes her in the picture. There is no spark of sympathy for the beauty of line, the charm of texture, the invisible vesture of chastity. The nude is painted for the satisfaction it gives this false society of gazing upon it, and to supply the demand the artists paint it. In the French art department at Vienna, the walls glared at the visitor on all sides with nude forms, nearly all painted in a cold, impassive manner, or invested with the spirit of unblushing wantonness, worthy only to be turned face to the wall or to fill a corner in some maison dorée. Among all this abundance of nudity, scarcely a single figure could be pointed out that charmed with its color or texture, and but one or two attracted by a refined beauty of line oi' form. The highest effort of artistic execution is the representation of the texture and color of human flesh and file imitation of its forms. The French fail signally in the former, and are not irreproachable in the latter acquirement. Rubenÿ portrait of Helen Forman possesses these distinguished beauties of flesh painting, more than any other work that has come under my notice, and, while painted with a bewitching voluptuousness of color, and drawn with this master’s well known abandon , it is a marvel of chastity and delicacy. It is by comparing this picture with the tortured poses of the French nude figures, that we see in what counts the charm of the master’s work, and the weakness of the modern productions. Pubens was inspired by the tenderness °f his love, by his passionate admiration for the beauty of his young wife, and perfect faith in her purity, to immortalize k er iu all her chaste loveliness. Similar inspirations do not often possess the breast of the modern French artist; he either constructs some group of nude figures, in irreproach-