festival, was devoted to work which gave employment to a legion of decorative painters and sculptors.  After the Salon of 1848, as the government coffers were depleted, he obtained 80,000 francs’ worth of Sevres porcelain from the Minister of Commerce, to give as prizes.  He combated a proposition made by the Committee on Finance to suppress the Louvre studios of molding; he opposed the motion to reduce the corps of professors at the School of Fine Arts, and defended the School of Rome, threatened with suppression.

While Director of Fine Arts, Blanc fought his first and only duel, in defence of his brother, although he had never fired a pistol in his life.  During the political agitation of 1848, Louis was condemned by the National Assembly, and fled to London.  After his departure, he was abused in very insulting language by one Lacombe, and Charles called the latter to account.  In the duel which followed, Lacombe was hit, but the ball struck his pocket-book and glanced off, when Mery, one of the seconds, exclaimed, “That was money well invested!” and there the matter ended.

Another event, which occurred several years previous, has a certain psychological significance.  One evening Charles Blanc was visiting a friend who resided a distance of one hundred and fifty miles from Paris.  In the midst of conversation, he suddenly grew pale and exclaimed that he had received a shock, adding that something must have happened to Louis.  The next day his fears were confirmed by the receipt of a letter, telling him that the latter had been knocked down in the streets of Paris by a blow across the forehead.  When Dumas pere heard of this coincidence, he utilized it in his ‘Corsican Brothers.’

Notwithstanding his fine record as an administrator and his encouragement of talent, Blanc was sacrificed to the spirit of reaction which set in about 1850.  His removal displeased the entire art world, so highly was he esteemed for his integrity, his progressive ideas, and his unerring taste.  On his return to private life he resumed his ‘History of the Painters.’  ‘L’Oeuvres de Rembrandt’ (1853 to 1863), containing also a life of the artist, was illustrated by the first photographic plates which ever appeared in a book.

The name ‘Peintres des Fetes Galantes’ was derived by Blanc from the title conferred on Watteau by the French Academy.  Of the artists therein mentioned, Watteau occupied the realm of poetry; Lancret that of the conventional, the fashionable; Pater that of vulgar, jovial reality; Boucher, the most distinctively French of artists, that of brilliancy, dash, and vivacity.  These painters are a curious study for the historian interested in the external forms of things.