REPORT OF MR. MILLETT.
169
is compnsed of rolling clouds of smoke, waving banners and enthusiastic soldiers, admirably relieving the figures of the horse and man, and eloquently significant of the General’s wild and stormy career. Regnault’s Execution in ci Moorish Palace, with the ghastly head and bleeding trunk, is too dramatic and tricky to be considered first-class art, but the figure of the stalwart executioner carelessly wiping the sword, is boldly posed and strongly drawn.
Of the superior excellence of French landscapes shown in the Exposition there can be little question, and they were varied enough in character to show the adaptability of the French artistic nature to this sort of work, with high attainments in every direction of procedure. From the broad and free treatment of Corot to the minutely finished and somewhat formal realism of Robinet, there was every grade and good specimens of each. A large number of admirable examples of Rousseau were exposed, all of them of a fruity juieeness of color and strong effect. Rousseau gives more than any other artist the exact meteorological conditions of the atmosphere and the associated effects in perspective, aerial and terrestrial. The many twinkling trees, with their opaque Masses of foliage, the deep rich shadows and the broad strong opposition with the sky, and above all, the mysterious, indefinable play of the sunlight, repeated and reflected everywhere;—all this is found to perfection in his works. Of a simple line of meadow, with a clump of trees against the sky, fie makes a picture full of interest, representing nature in her most delicate phases, impressing from richness and variety of color, grand oppositions and wonderful suggestions of nature as she is found. The most striking of the pictures showm was a motive on the border of the forest of Fontainbleau. Grand masses of trees on either side, marshy ground between, a Pfido beyond, the sky full of flaky clouds, and all bathed 111 strong sunlight which gilds, defines and mystifies in a thousand ways.
Corot, on the other hand, impresses from his depth of feel- ln g for the subtle charms of nature seen from a different point °f view. He suggests the grand features of the landscape, mfuses his picture with the one great solemn beauty of nature, an d leaves it to the imagination to supply what, in the enthu- 22