Ingres hated academic conventionality; he mingled the Florentine and Greek schools; he sought the ideal not outside of reality but in its very essence, in the reconciliation of style with nature.  Color he considered of secondary importance; he not only subordinated it voluntarily to drawing, but he did not have a natural gift for it.  Ingres is the artist who has best expressed the voluptuousness not of flesh but of form; who has felt feminine beauty most profoundly and chastely.

CALAMATTA’S STUDIO

From ‘Contemporary Artists’

I can still see Lamennais, with his worn-out coat, his round back, his yellow, parchment-like face, his eyes sparkling beneath a forehead imprinted with genius, and resembling somewhat Hoffmann’s heroes.  George Sand sometimes visited us, and it seemed to me that her presence lighted up the whole studio.  She always spoke to me, for she knew that I was the brother of a distinguished writer, and when she looked over my plate I trembled like a leaf.

Thus our calm sedentary life was enlivened by an occasional sunbeam; and when I was hard at work with my graver, my mind was nourished by the minds of others.  Giannone, the poet, read his commentaries on Shakespeare to us, and Mercure always had a witty retort in that faulty French which is so amusing in an Italian mouth.  Calamatta would listen in silence, his eyes glued to his drawing of the ‘Joconde,’ at which he worked on his good days.

BLANC’S DEBUT AS ART CRITIC

From ‘Contemporary Artists’

In those days things happened just as they do now; the criticism is almost invariably the work of beginners.  A youth who has acquired a smattering of learning, who has caught up the slang of the studios, and pretends to have a system or to defend a paradox, is chosen to write an account of the Salon.  I was that youth, that novice.  And after all, how become a workman unless you work? how become expert if you do not study, recognize your mistakes and repair them?  Beneath our mistakes truth lies hidden.

So I arrived at Brussels to exercise the trade of critic, and found myself in the presence of two men who were then making a brilliant debut as painters:  De Keyser and Henri Leys.  I hope I shall be forgiven if I reproduce my criticism of the latter’s ’Massacre of the Magistrates of Louvain.’

“Imagine to yourself a small public square, such as might have existed in Louvain in the fourteenth century; this square filled with angry people demanding satisfaction for the death of their chief, Gautier de Lendes, assassinated by the nobles; the approach to the palace of justice crowded with men armed to the teeth; at the top of the stairs the city magistrates on their way to execution, some as calm as if about to administer justice, others bewailing that the people know not what they do; peasants awaiting