Paul Cezanne, unknown to the public, is appreciated by a small group of art lovers.  He is an artist who lives in Provence, away from the world; he is supposed to have served as model for the Impressionist painter Claude Lantier, described by Zola in his celebrated novel “L’Oeuvre.”  Cezanne has painted landscapes, rustic scenes and still-life pictures.  His figures are clumsy and brutal and inharmonious in colour, but his landscapes have the merit of a robust simplicity of vision.  These pictures are almost primitive, and they are loved by the young Impressionists because of their exclusion of all “cleverness.”  A charm of rude simplicity and sincerity can be found in these works in which Cezanne employs only just the means which are indispensable for his end.  His still-life pictures are particularly interesting owing to the spotless brilliancy of their colours, the straightforwardness of the tones, and the originality of certain shades analogous to those of old faience.  Cezanne is a conscientious painter without skill, intensely absorbed in rendering what he sees, and his strong and tenacious attention has sometimes succeeded in finding beauty.  He reminds more of an ancient Gothic craftsman, than of a modern artist, and he is full of repose as a contrast to the dazzling virtuosity of so many painters.

[Illustration:  CEZANNE

DESSERT]

Berthe Morisot will remain the most fascinating figure of Impressionism,—­the one who has stated most precisely the femineity of this luminous and iridescent art.  Having married Eugene Manet, the brother of the great painter, she exhibited at various private galleries, where the works of the first Impressionists were to be seen, and became as famous for her talent as for her beauty.  When Manet died, she took charge of his memory and of his work, and she helped with all her energetic intelligence to procure them their just and final estimation.  Mme. Eugene Manet has certainly been one of the most beautiful types of French women of the end of the nineteenth century.  When she died prematurely at the age of fifty (in 1895), she left a considerable amount of work:  gardens, young girls, water-colours of refined taste, of surprising energy, and of a colouring as distinguished, as it is unexpected.  As great grand-daughter of Fragonard, Berthe Morisot (since we ought to leave her the name with which her respect for Manet’s great name made her always sign her works) seemed to have inherited from her famous ancestor his French gracefulness, his spirited elegance, and all his other great qualities.  She has also felt the influence of Corot, of Manet and of Renoir.  All her work is bathed in brightness, in azure, in sunlight; it is a woman’s work, but it has a strength, a freedom of touch and an originality, which one would hardly have expected.  Her water-colours, particularly, belong to a superior art:  some notes of colour suffice to indicate sky, sea, or a forest background, and everything shows a sure and