His versatility amazes.  He did not always paint the same picture.  The Christ Between Two Thieves is academic, yet attracts because the expression of the converted thief is remarkable.  The Three Magi and Moses Within Sight of the Promised Land do not give one the fullest sense of satisfaction, as do The Daughters of Thespus or The Rape of Europa; yet they suggest what might be termed a tragic sort of decoration.  Moreau is a painter who could have illustrated Marlowe’s fatuous line, “Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia,” and superbly; or, “See where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament.”  He is an exotic blossom on the stem of French art.  He saw ivory, apes, and peacocks, purple, gold, and the heavens aflame with a mystic message.  He never translated that message, for his was an art of silence; but the painter of The Maiden with the Head of Orpheus, of Salome, of Jason and Medea, of Jupiter and Semele, will never fail to win the admiration and homage of those art lovers who yearn for dreams of vanished ages, who long to escape the commonplaces of the present.  Gustave Moreau will be their poet-painter by predilection.

Once in the streets of prosaic Paris he is as unreal as Rossetti or the Pre-Raphaelites (though their superior as one who could make palpable his visions).  In the Louvre—­where the Salon Carre is little changed—­Manet’s Olympe, with her every-day seductiveness, resolves the phantasies of Moreau into thin air.  Here is reality for you, familiar as it may be.  It is wonderful how long it took French critics to discover that Manet was un peintre de race.  He is very French in the French gallery where he now hangs.  He shows the lineage of David, one of whose declamatory portraits with beady eyes hangs near by.  He is simpler than David in his methods—­Mr. C.S.  Ricketts critically described David as possessing the mind of a policeman—­and as a painter more greatly endowed.  But Goya also peeps out from the Olympe.  After seeing the Maja desnuda at the Prado you realise that Manet’s trip to Madrid was not without important results.  Between the noble lady who was the Duchess of Alba and the ignoble girl called Olympe there is only the difference between the respective handlings of Goya and Manet.

PICTURES IN MADRID

I

The noblest castle in Spain is the museum on the Prado.  Now every great capital of Europe boasts its picture or sculpture gallery; no need to enumerate the treasures of art to be found in London, Paris, Vienna—­the latter too little known by the average globe-trotter—­Berlin, Dresden, Cassel, Frankfort, Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Florence, Rome, Naples, St. Petersburg, or Venice.  They all boast special excellences, but the Prado collection contains pictures by certain masters, Titian, Rubens, Correggio, and others, that cannot be seen elsewhere.  Setting aside Velasquez and the Spanish school, not in Venice, Florence, or London are there Titians of such quality and in such quantity as in Madrid.  And the Rubenses are of a peculiar lovely order, not to be found in Antwerp, Brussels or Paris.  Even without Velasquez the trying trip to the Spanish capital is a necessary and exciting experience for the painter and amateur of art.