obscure. This will be found due to the inadequacy of the ordinary encyclopedias of artist-biography. While these compilations are usually good as far as they go, they do not go far enough. They are not actually up to date in matters of information even when published, and in a year or two new men who achieve success who were unknown when the books were written. In "Modern Figure Painting," which brings facts down not only to the year but to the month of its issue, will, therefore, be found many items of great personal interest, which would be looked for in vain in any other publication. This information, laboriously assembled from a hundred different sources, is the latest which is procurable, and as correct as it has been possible to make it, so that, distinct from its pictorial value, "Modern Figure Painting" will possess that of a current record of the artistic progress of our own time.

Having, in a general way, outlined our purpose, and the methods applied to its accomplishment, let us direct our attention to the results.

The first subject chosen by us is a picture which attracted much attention at the Salon Exhibition in Paris in 1894: a young girl, on the morning after her first ball, lost in reverie over the wilted flowers which remain to her as faded trophies of the festival. The painter of "Fallen Rose-Leaves," F.M. Lard, is a Parisian, for some years a contributor to the Salon of works of a similar class of genre, and much charm of color and refinement of execution. More elaborate in composition and material is "Chilly," by Jules Scalbert: two modern wood-nymphs, one of whom already bathes in the pellucid waters of a sylvan stream, while her companion lingers on the bank, half timid and half shivering at the cold caress of the summer breeze. Scalbert, who has achieved an enviable reputation as a painter of these graceful idylls, was born at the old city of Douai, in the Department du Nord, and studied his art under Pils and Petit. He has been a regular exhibitor at the Salon for some fifteen years. "Chilly" is one of his latest works. The name of Carl Sohn, the younger, is well and favorably known at the German

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Chapter 1 Text

Albert Aublet