I


CLASSIC PAINTING


I

More than that of any other modern people French art is a national
expression. It epitomizes very definitely the national æsthetic judgment
and feeling, and if its manifestations are even more varied than are
elsewhere to be met with, they share a certain character that is very
salient. Of almost any French picture or statue of any modern epoch
one's first thought is that it is French. The national quite overshadows
the personal quality. In the field of the fine arts, as in nearly every
other in which the French genius shows itself, the results are evident
of an intellectual co-operation which insures the development of a
common standard and tends to subordinate idiosyncrasy. The fine arts, as
well as every other department of mental activity, reveal the effect of
that social instinct which is so much more powerful in France than it is
anywhere else, or has ever been elsewhere, except possibly in the case
of the Athenian republic. Add to this influence that of the intellectual
as distinguished from the sensuous instinct, and one has, I think, the
key to this salient characteristic of French art which strikes one so
sharply and always as so plainly French. As one walks through the French
rooms at the Louvre, through the galleries of the Luxembourg, through
the unending rooms of the _Salon_ he is impressed by the splendid