an idyll of the thoughtless gayety of light-hearted life, heedless of anything beyond the day, and revelling in the full enjoyments of the present.

Jacques Clement Wagrez was born in Paris in 1850. His father was a painter of some ability and from him he received his first instruction. At different periods afterward he studied, at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, under Farochon, Lenepveu, Pils, and Henri Lehmann, the two latter of whom most influenced him. Appearing first at the Salon in 1876 with a portrait and mythological subject, "Eros," which created remark, and in 1878 his "Education of Achilles by the Centaur" won him a medal and was purchased by the Government for the Aurillac Museum. He early began to give much attention to painting for purposes of decoration, and produced many water-colors and designs for the illustration of costly artistic publications. His "Spring Fairy" is one of a series of panels intended for the decoration of a private mansion, and the idea is derived from an old French tale, of the descent from her home among the clouds of the deity who brings the warm mists, the sunlight, and the flowers of spring, to the earth. The nondescript beast which accompanies her seems to have been introduced by the artist in a purely whimsical and fantastic spirit, as it has no place in the legend upon which the picture is based.

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Chapter 8 Text

Charles Zacharie Landelle