pictures of goats dissolving into pianists; of Liszt tearing passion and grand pianos into tatters.  He has contributed to the gaiety of nations with his celebrated design:  Ma fille!  Monsieur Cabanel, which shows a harpy-like mother presenting her nude daughter as a model for that painter.  The malicious ingenuity of Rops never failed him.  He produced for years numerous anecdotes in black and white.  The elasticity of his line, its variety and richness, the harmonies, elliptical and condensed, of his designs; the agile, fiery movement, his handling of his velvety blacks, his tonal gradations, his caressing touch by which the metal reproduced muscular crispations of his dry-point and the fat silhouettes of beautiful human forms, above all, his virile grasp which is revealed in his balanced ensembles—­these prove him to be one of the masters of modern etching.  And from his cynical yet truthful motto:  “J’appelle un chat un chat,” he never swerved.

A student and follower of Jean Francois Millet, several landscapes and pastorals of Rops recall the French painter’s style.  In his Belgian out-of-doors scenes and interiors the Belgian heredity of Rops projects itself unmistakably.  Such a picture as Scandal, for example, might have been signed by Israels.  Le Bout de Sillon is Millet, and beautifully drawn.  The scheme is trite.  Two peasants, a young woman and a young man holding a rope, exchange love vows.  It is very simple, very expressive.  His portraits of women, Walloons, and of Antwerp are solidly built, replete with character and quaint charm.  Charming, too, is the portrait of his great-aunt.  Scandal is an ambitious design.  A group of women strongly differentiated as to types and ages are enjoying over a table their tea and a choice morsel of scandal.  The situation is seized; it is a picture that appeals.  Ghastly is his portrait of a wretched young woman ravaged by absinthe.  Her lips are blistered by the wormwood, and in her fevered glance there is despair.  Another delineation of disease, a grinning, skull-like head with a scythe back of it, is a tribute to the artist’s power of rendering the repulsive.  His Messalina, Lassatta, La Femme au Cochon, and La Femme au Pantin should be studied.  He has painted scissors grinders, flower girls, “old guards,” incantations, fishing parties, the rabble in the streets, broom-riding witches, apes, ivory and peacocks, and a notable figure piece, An Interment in the Walloon Country, which would have pleased Courbet.

It is in his incarnations of Satan that Rops is unapproachable.  Satan Sowing the Tares of Evil is a sublime conception, truly Miltonic.  The bony-legged demon strides across Paris.  One foot is posed on Notre Dame.  He quite touches the sky.  Upon his head is a broad-brimmed peasant’s hat, Quaker in shape.  Hair streams over his skeleton shoulders.  His eyes are gleaming with infernal malice—­it is the most diabolic face ever drawn of his majesty; not even Franz Stuck’s