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What with these kingly travellers and such modern uncrowned kings as Puvis de Chavannes, Dumas, George Sand, Daubigny, and Troyon, together with a goodly number of lesser great ones, the famous little inn has had no reason to feel itself slighted by the great of any century. Of all this motley company of notabilities there were two whose visits seemed to have been indefinitely prolonged.
The works of Dubray, Triquetti, Yvon, Giraud, Gerome, Dubufe, Toulmouche, Courbet, Troyon, Rosa Bonheur and others exhibited the route toward the naturalistic taken by her modern school, so different from that pursued by the Pre-Raphaelites in England.
The second great group of painters who had studios in the forest and beside the stream were Rousseau, Dupre, Diaz, and Daubigny; Troyon, Van Marcke, Jacque; then Millet, the painter of peasants. Corot was born in Paris and received what education the ordinary school at Rouen could give him.
Haig's First Corps was more successful farther east; Vendresse and Troyon were captured and the Chemin des Dames was almost reached. But D'Esperey's 5th French army could make little impression on the Craonne plateau; Foch's 9th was unable to force the Suippe to the east of Reims, and Langle's 4th, while it occupied Souain, was similarly held up in Champagne.
Troyon told me that for the first ten years of his career he had never sold a picture, but lived by painting for Sèvres; the prosperity of Millet came from the patronage of American collectors, led by the appreciation of a Bostonian painter, William Hunt, and I well remember his famous "Sowers" on the highest line in the Salon, so completely skied that only one who looked for a Millet was likely to see it; while Rousseau, at the time I speak of, was glad to accept the smallest commission, and sold mostly to American collectors.
Meantime, the crown prince's army had been steadily victorious. The weak French army under General Sarrail had been pushed back, yielding only foot by foot, back, back, along the rugged hill country of the Meuse. A determined stand was made to protect the little fort of Troyon, ten miles south of Verdun, for had the Germans succeeded in taking this, Verdun would have been surrounded.
The Museum of the Luxembourg containing several pictures by modern artists, whose merits he recognized, was frequently visited by us and he admired heartily among others, Rosa Bonheur, Daubigny, Charles Jacque, and especially Troyon, whose works went far to shake his faith in topographic painting, and sowed the first seeds of the French school's influence on his mind.
Marcel looked pained and pointed out that such a course on the part of Bourke would be obviously unfair; the only real difference between them, he explained, was that where he filched a louis Bourke filched thousands; and if Bourke insisted on turning him over to the mercy of Madame and Papa Troyon, who would certainly summon a sergent de ville, he, Marcel, would be quite justified in retaliating by telling the Prefecture de Police all he knew about Bourke.
But though Troyon and Courbet were greater artists than Morland, Morland whispers something that is beyond art, beyond even our present life; as a shell with the sound of the sea, these canvases are murmurous with the under life. That young lady so charmingly dressed in white, she who holds a rose in her hand, is Miss Kitty Calcraft, by Romney. Do we not seem to know her?
The general prices were not higher than the Johnston prices, but Ary Scheffer's Marguerites brought 40,000 and 35,000 francs; a Troyon, 63,000; and Leopold Robert's admirable "Fishers of the Adriatic," 83,000 francs. The gallery of the Pereires brought 1,785,586 francs, which was rather higher than the Johnston total, but I believe there were more masterpieces.
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