it reaches the crest of a hill beneath the sky.
Just at this point the figures of two retreating horsemen
are seen. These are the men who have been trying
to kill St. Sebastian, and have left him, as they
thought, dead in the depth of the forest. In the
immediate foreground lies the figure of the half dead
saint, whose wounds are being dressed by two women.
Hovering immediately above this group, far up among
the tree branches, two lovely little angels are seen
holding the palm and crown of the martyr. All
the figures are better painted than is usual with
Corot, and the angels are very light and delicate,
both in color and form.” Mr. Earned quoted
from a celebrated French authority that this was “the
most sincerely religious picture of the nineteenth
century.” I leave it to the reader if Mr.
Larned’s description conveys any such impression.
To Field’s mind, it only suggested the grotesque,
and his reproduction was a
chef d’oeuvre,
as he was wont to say. He followed the general
outline of the scene as described above, but made
the landscape subordinate to the figures. The
retreating ruffians bore an unmistakable resemblance
to outlawed American cowboys. The saint showed
carmine ink traces of having been most shamefully
abused. But the chief interest in the picture
was divided between a lunch-basket in the foreground,
from which protruded a bottle of “St. Jacob’s”
oil, and a brace of vividly pink cupids hopping about
in the tree-tops, rejoicing over the magical effect
of the saintly patent medicine. His treatment
of this picture proved, if it proved anything, that
Corot had gone dangerously near the line where the
sublime suggests the ridiculous.
In Fortuny’s “Don Quixote” Field
found a subject that tickled his fancy and lent itself
to his untrammelled sense of the absurd. According
to Mr. Larned, Fortuny’s picture—a
water-color—in the Walters gallery was
one which represents the immortal knight in the somewhat
undignified occupation of searching for fleas in his
clothing. He has thrown off his doublet and his
under garment is rolled down to his waist, leaving
the upper portion of his body nude, excepting the
immense helmet which hides his bent-down head.
Both hands grasp the under garment, and the eyes are
evidently turned in eager expectancy upon the folds
which the hands are clasping, in the hope that the
roving tormentor has at last been captured. “What
an astonishing freak of genius!” exclaimed Mr.
Larned. “For genius it certainly is.
The color and the drawing of the figure are simply
masterly, and the entire tone of the picture is wonderfully
rich; indeed, for a water-color, it is quite marvellous.
This is one of Fortuny’s celebrated pictures,
but how the ‘Ecole des Beaux Arts’ would
in the old days have held up its hands and closed
its eyes in holy horror! Possibly an earnest disciple
of Lessing, even, might have a rather dubious feeling
about such a choice of subjects.”