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They made it an international episode: less excuses have involved nations in war in days agone. But the enemies of Meissonier did not belong alone to America, although here every arm was braced and every tongue wagged to vindicate the cause of our countrywoman. In Paris the whole art world was divided into those who sided with Meissonier and those who were against him.
A few days after this Meissonier wrote these words in his journal: "It is the Twentieth of February the morning of my seventieth birthday. What a long time to look back upon! This morning, at the hour when my mother gave me birth, I wished my first thoughts to be of her. Dear Mother, how often have the tears risen to my eyes at the remembrance of you!
He never knew peace, and the rest for which he sighed slipped him at the very last. "I'm tired, so tired," he sighed again and again in those later years, when he had reached the highest pinnacle. And still he worked it was his only rest! Meissonier painted very few pictures of women, and in some miraculous way skipped that stage in esthetic evolution wherein most artists affect the nude.
Among the duties of my position was membership of the upper jury that which, in behalf of the French Republic, awarded the highest prizes. Each day, at about nine in the morning, we met, and a remarkable body it was. At my right sat Meissonier, then the most eminent of French painters, and beyond him Quintana, the Spanish poet. Of the former of these two I possess a curious memento.
Those cornflower-blue eyes, the turn of that creamy neck, her delicate curves she was a standing temptation to indiscretion! No! No! One must be sure of one's ground much surer! 'If I hold off, he thought, 'it will tantalise her. And he crossed over to Madame Lamotte, who was still in front of the Meissonier. "Yes, that's quite a good example of his later work.
It seemed easier to paint a Meissonier on the spot than to win ten thousand dollars on that mimic stock exchange. Nor could I help reflecting on the singularity of such a test for a man's capacity to be a painter. I ventured even to comment on this. He sighed deeply. "You forget, my dear," said he, "I am a judge of the one, and not of the other.
I'll introduce you to two celebrities. We will visit the homes of two artists." "But I have been ordered to go to the country!" "That's just where we'll go. On the way we'll call on Meissonier, at his place in Poissy; then we'll walk over to Medan, where Zola lives. I have been commissioned to obtain his next novel for our newspaper." Patissot, wild with joy, accepted the invitation.
But once let a creative artist lower his standard and give the world the mere product of his brain, with heart left out, that man will hate himself for a year and a day. He has sold his soul for a price: joy has flown, and bitterness is his portion. Meissonier never trifled with his compass. To the last he headed for the polestar.
This was very likely a vision of his own possible fate, for Meissonier must have been at that time a lonely and unhappy man. There are many stories of his first exhibited work, which Caffin declares was the "Visit to the Burgomaster," but Mrs. Bolton, who is almost always correct in her statements, tells us that it was called "The Visitor," and that it sold for twenty dollars.
On this basis the way seems opened to settle the changeful formulas of taste; why the rejection of what for the moment has held the pinnacle of popular favor; why, for instance, the waning of interest in the detailists of the brilliant French-Spanish School, the school of Fortuny, Madrazzo, Villegas, Rico, or of the work of Meissonier, who as a detailist eclipsed them all.
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