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These prove how extremely decorative and poetic Corot's designs appear on a large scale. The "Villa des Vallées," as it was named, is still preserved carefully by the widows of Daubigny and his son Karl,1 two most amiable ladies, and is a worthy monument to the spirit of the builder. Out in the garden, drawn up under the apple-trees, and overrun with grass and vines, rests the Botin, now serving as a sort of summer-house, and sadly recalling in its loneliness the departed masters. For several years the writer has lived near by, and one summer occupied the larger studio, thus becoming a more careful student of the genius of Daubigny. Many and famous were the guests of this hospitable house in the old days; Millet and Rousseau were among the number. One likes to think of these men, simple in habit, but great in thought and deed, meeting around a common board and discussing the burning questions of the art-world of their day.

Here, too, removed from the interruptions and feverish life of Paris, in the heart of a picturesque country to which he was bound by

door interpretation. "The Sheepfold" and the "Moonrise" of the Salon of 1861 were the first examples of this new departure, and although they possessed much poetic feeling, the public, who had been used to the more vigorous interpretations of his brush, could not recognize their old favorite in the more hesitating technic consequent on a change of style. He soon regained his place in their hearts, however, by such works as "The Morning" and "The Banks of the Oise at Auvers" in the Salon of 1863, "The Château and Park of St. Cloud" in 1865, "The Banks of the Oise, near Bonneville," of 1866, "The Meadows of the Graves at Villerville" in 1870, the pictures called "Moonrise" of 1865 and 1868, and "The Pond in the Morvan" of 1869. Several of these pictures were reëxhibited at the Universal Exposition of 1867, gaining their author another first-class medal. At the Universal Exposition of Vienna, in 1873, Daubigny did much to sustain the honor of French art by such works as the " Moonrise" from the Salon of 1868, and "The Beach of Villerville at Sunset,” in which

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associations reaching back to his infancy, Daubigny felt able to attempt the production of several works that he had for a long time meditated. Having succeeded in painting effects that would, as it were, wait to be painted, noting down living truths in the daylight and the fresh open air, he wished to record his impressions of those most beautiful but more delicate effects which last for so short a time that their realization must be the result of careful thought and patient creative labor, rather than of direct out

1 Charles-Pierre Daubigny, called Karl to distinguish him from his father, was born in 1846. Always at his father's side, he soon developed a taste for painting, which in the strong art-atmosphere in which he grew up was not long in becoming skill. To the Salon of 1863 he sent two landscapes done at Auvers. He was then only seventeen, but this precocious success did not prevent his continuing to study assiduously. Not wish ing to follow exactly in the same line with his father, he felt that it would be best to attempt subjects where figures would have the chief interest, and, always having possessed a taste for the sea, he spent several seasons along the Brittany and Normandy coasts. "The Winnowers of Kérity-Finistère" in the Salon of 1868 gained

both deep sentiment and great science unite. The first-named marks perhaps the highest point he ever reached in rendering the mysterious poetry of twilight, the hour when the moon takes the throne of the heavens, and tired man and beast go to their well-earned rest.

These works gained him a promotion to the grade of Officer of the Legion of Honor. Then came "The Fields in June," full of brilliant scarlet poppies, and "The House of Mère Bazot," his old nurse, in 1874.

him a medal. "The Plateau of Belle-Croix, Forest of Fontainebleau," gained him yet another, and is now owned by the museum of Bordeaux. He was then only twenty-two years old. He continued his work, constantly striving to improve, and every succeeding Salon found him in the line of progress. Fishing-life, and the rustic surroundings of Auvers, mostly occupied his brush, and he had attained an eminent position when a rapid consumption, the result of a boat accident, suddenly carried him off in 1886, at the age of forty. Sev eral of his works were bought by the Government, and were placed in the national museums. The future would in all probability have brought him still greater successes.

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It was at this time that the master's health began to fail. Exposure to all sorts of weather, absorbing the miasmatic vapors of morning and evening on the rivers, had no doubt told severely upon his sensitive and delicate temperament, and renewed attacks of asthmatic gout cut seriously into his painting time. He did not appear at the Salon of 1875; it was his first absence since 1848. In 1876, however, he sent "The Orchard," an immense canvas, some ten feet in length, depicting the time when apples are ripe, and are gathered under the changeful sky of breezy October. The whole effect was that of a "symphony in green," relieved here and there by the richly colored fruit, and touches of flowers among the grasses. The summer of 1876 was spent on the Normandy coast at Dieppe, and he there made a number of studies, among them a "View of Dieppe," which appeared in the Salon of 1877. With it he sent another "Moonrise," contrasting in its tender poetry with the vigor of the first-named picture, which he had completed in two sittings, one for the drawing and another for the painting. His malady gained fast upon him, however, and a hypertrophy of the heart suddenly carried him off on February 19, 1878, just as he had completed the sixty-first year of his age. We have not spoken of his etchings and illustrations. He was one of the revivers of the former art, and the many powerful plates that he left testify to his power with the needle, both as a means of expressing new ideas, or in re

producing his best work. Whether on copper or canvas, he always treated his subject in the same broad, masterly manner, keeping the means subservient to the end pursued, and no artist has left work showing wider range or versatility. His works record the beauty of his own country, for while he visited Italy in his youth, England in 1866 and 1870, Spain in company with Henri Regnault in 1868, and Holland, which he describes "as blond as the women of Rubens," in 1871, he does not seem to have found in these places the inspiration for his greatest pictures.

In appearance he was of medium height, his complexion inclining toward olive, with dark hair and eyes, a strongly set head and forehead, well filled in its reflective and perceptive portions, and of an open, sympathetic expression, indicating much bonhomie, and at the same time great penetration and power to discriminate. In manner he was genial, modest, and entirely without assumption, giving his counsels more as a comrade than as a master; his advice having weight from its intrinsic worth, rather than from any manner of imparting it. His whole nature was childlike in its impulsive directness. He never kept systematic account of his works or progress: it was his to do the work; others might reckon up and classify. His methods were extremely simple. He usually prepared his own canvases, and continued this practice long after a world-wide reputation would make it appear

to be anything but an economical use of his time. He would begin a picture by sketching in a few broad traits with charcoal or brush, and then lay in his masses freely, keeping the colors from the start clear, rich, and pure. The palette-knife played an important part in covering large surfaces, which he afterward worked into form and detail with the brush. For smaller pictures and his river studies he preferred panels of oak and mahogany, first coated with a priming of neutral gray. He was one of the first painters to begin and complete large canvases out of doors. He would fasten them in place with stout stakes, working with fury when the effect was propitious, often leaving them in the open fields during the intervals to the mercy of wind, weather, cows, and small boys. The truths he sought were of far more vital importance than surface polish, and this direct outdoor work, guided by his artist's instinct, gave to his pictures great freshness of execution, as well as an added interest from the point of view of composition and sentiment. He painted as freely as a bird sings. His joyous, emotional temperament rarely looked at life and art with the deep melancholy view of Millet. Perhaps we find more of the joy of springtime in his earlier works, and later on come the "moonrises" and "twilights," when life's cares had awakened in his heart a deeper sympathy with the tender mysteries of eve and night. He never philosophized much about art or reduced his ideas to literary form. A lack of early education had left him ignorant of books in general, and his work gave him but little time to study them afterward, had he so desired. This, however, may have made him more purely a painter, thinking always in form and color, free from any foreign preoccupation whatever, content to express the joy he felt in nature just as he received it. "What does it matter?" he would say. "There are always people who are paid to know all one has need of, without counting the dictionaries." And so he did not stop painting to read. Particularly did he enjoy the society of his chosen comrades, and no social pleasure could compare with a quiet evening at home, or with friends, discussing art. He loved his house and home, and was his children's best playmate. Seldom was the table without guests, and here his kindly humor made every one feel happy. Whether at the Emperor's reception or in a laborer's cottage, a like politeness was extended to all, and the peasants of Auvers remember him with respect and affection. They might not fully have understood his pictures or their importance to the art-world, but they felt his fine personality and genuine interest in their life and work. When he was painting "The Island of the Valleys at Auvers," just after having con

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cluded the purchase of the property on which he built his studio, he amused himself by telling them, "This picture is to pay for my house,' and it was sold for thirty-five thousand francs. If a French peasant understands anything it is the value of a sou, and this immense amount to the rustic minds gave them forever afterward great respect for painters and painting.

"Ah," said to me Ferdinand Guilpin, his old gardener, "he was a good, kind man, M. Daubigny; the goodness of such people cannot be told. And M. Corot, too, he used to put on his blouse, light his pipe, and sit down to paint in the middle of the road like any workman. He had a merry word for all who passed, and was a rare good fellow. Those were the times when 'les vallées' were full of life. Monsieur Daubigny would go off on the plain in the early morning, work an hour or two, and then start for the river. Sometimes he would come to draw my donkey, or have some rabbits let loose in the kitchen here to sketch from. I always attended to his garden, in which he was very much interested, and it was a great loss to me when he died. Such times will never come again." Then Mère Sophie, his good wife, chimed in: "And don't I remember how we took the Prussians in here during the war to keep them from spoiling M. Daubigny's house. I had the keys, and knew he would not like the place being ransacked, so I stowed them all away here. It was only for a few days, but when monsieur came he made me a very handsome present; and M. Karl, poor child, who was in the National Guard during the siege of Paris, when at last he was dismissed from service, ran straight across the country here, in the night, without stopping. I was out in the yard in the early morning, and when he arrived he called out, Jardinière, jardinière, some milk, give me some milk!' He was terribly thin and worn, and I thought he would never stop drinking. Then he went into the house, threw himself on a bed just as he was, and slept for twenty-four hours."

And so the old folks, seated at each side of the big open fireplace on a Sunday afternoon, when Ferdinand has lighted his pipe after having shaved, will gossip on, lingering with regret over the eventful days of the past.

Daubigny never hesitated if his impulses carried him toward new experiments. He boldly undertook them, regardless of profit or loss. When death came it found him still occupied with new problems, and several large unfinished canvases make one regret that the master's hand should have been stayed so soon. But as he himself said, “One is never reasonable; like La Fontaine's wood-cutter, we never wish to be making the last fagot." In his frank, extemporaneous way of working he seemed to

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