Jean Baptiste Greuze (Grèrz), 1725-1805

REUZE was born near Macon in Burgundy, learned the rudiments of his art in Lyons, then came to Paris and later studied in Rome. In reality self-taught, he lived and worked apart from academic influences, a painter of the people.

His first picture, "Reading the Bible," showed his real calling as a painter of the life of the middle classes, in distinction from a Boucher or a Fragonard, who depicted the Arcadian revels or frivolities of a cultured yet decadent aristocracy.

To-day Greuze, again highly valued, is most prized for his lovely renderings of the simple and tender charm of young girls, in heads or single figures, in which the sometimes affected sentimentality of the age, of which Rousseau was the exponent, finds expression.

In the Louvre at Paris, among others, are "The Paternal Malediction," "The Betrothed Country Girl," and perhaps most charming and popular of all, our picture, "The Broken Jug."

As this picture well demonstrates, no painter has known better than Greuze how to catch and render the graceful and innocent beauty of young girls, dreaming, it may be, half unconsciously of love, on whose gentle and placid features, however, the storms and experiences of life have as yet left no impress.

A mere accessory, the broken water jug hanging on the arm of the maiden, has given its name to this picture, which clearly tells its own story of lovely maidenhood in this charming girl, no nymph or goddess but,

"A creature not too bright or good,

For human nature's daily food."

Joan of Arc Hearing the Voice

Jules Bastien-Lepage (Bäs' tyan le pázh'), 1848-1885

HEN in 1889 Mr. Erwin Davis gave to the Metropolitan
Muscum the "Joan of Arc," which in his sale of that year

had reached the price of $23,400, more than five times what
he had paid the artist for it, it was thought a noble gift in
period of noteworthy bequests.

The Museum had yet to loan it for six months to the French people, for the Paris Exposition of 1889, as a work of national importance.

Joan of Arc represents preeminently to the French, the embodiment of the idea of the patriotic and enthusiastic uprising of the people to achieve national independence, as realized in the expulsion from French soil, under the leadership of the Maid of Orleans, of the hated English domination.

The artist, with great power of expression, has shown us the very birth moment of this historic movement. Under the trees in her father's garden the maiden stands, and the voices and visions which reveal to her what she has to be and to do, even now fill her soul with the lofty purpose which irradiates her features.

It is in the sublime thought and resolve, the divine illumination in some grand soul, that all great things have their beginnings. The artist has told us much of this in the attitude and expression of this country girl of mighty destiny.

While the armored figure in the background tries to tell us of her vision we may better read it in her face.

Bastien-Lepage, who may be called an impressionistic naturalist, was the pupil, but not the follower, of Cabanel.

IN our picture is given a good idea of an important, though not especially famous, statue, in the Vatican Museum.

It is doubtless a Roman reproduction of a Greek original and gives us the traditional, and probably authentic, likeness of the greatest of the Greek orators.

The art, like the literature of Rome, was based upon that of the Greeks, of which it was in large measure only a copy or inferior adaptation.

However, we are indebted to these Roman versions, which, being numerous and widespread, had thus increased chances of surviving the storms of the centuries, for many monuments of Greek art and history which have come down to us.

How Demosthenes by incessant labor overcame his natural defects of speech, disciplined his mind, and perfected his style; how in masterly orations he fought for the declining liberties of Athens against Philip the Macedonian king, seeking to repress factions, and stay the fall of a republic hastening to decay; his successes and final failure and tragic death by his own hand; these things have been often related.

It has been the habit to call Demosthenes the world's greatest orator, and a great orator he surely was. Comparisons are difficult, even impossible.

Their manner of thought and perhaps professional pride has led generations of classical scholars to give unqualified preference to the languages and heroes of antiquity. Modern orators have dealt with greater themes, in more weighty issues, and with richer resources of knowledge and illustration. Who shall measure the relative powers of a Demosthenes, a Burke, or a Webster?