V.

It is only the denizens of southern countries who appreciate that repose during the heat of the day to which the Spaniards have given the title of the siesta. In the brisk and invigorated atmosphere of the North, where the enervating power of the sun is reduced to a minimum, people are at their busiest at the hours when in more tropical latitudes they surrender themselves to lassitude and indolent ease. It is one of the brunette beauties of the far south of France, drowsing, half asleep and half awake, through the midsummer mid-day, that Marcel-Paul Meys presents in "A Summer Siesta." The painter, who is of Parisian birth, is a pupil of Delaunay and of Puvis de Chavannes, to the influence of which masters one may probably ascribe his superb command of form and solid handling of his subjects.

One of the strongest and most individual of modern French painters, a man replete with originality and firey spirit, is Aime Nicholas Morot. Morot was born at Nancy in 1850, and studied art under Cabanel. He won the Prix de Rome in 1873, and his first picture exhibitat the Salon, in 1876, obtained him his first

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Chapter 6 Text

Marcel Paul Meys