CHAPTER XXXV

SPAIN

Just as France to-day shows such a wealth of talent, Spain, correspondingly, can scarcely be said to come into the question of modern endeavour in art; in fact, it is quite impossible to treat of a history of Spanish art, one can only consider individual artists, for they each go their own way, working in different directions and without any concerted plan.

It was in the spring of 1870 that a little picture called "La Vicaria" was exhibited in Paris at the dealer Goupil's. A marriage is taking place in the sacristy of a _rococo_ church in Madrid. The walls are covered with faded Cordova leather hangings figured in gold and dull colours, and a magnificent _rococo_ screen separates the sacristy from the middle aisle. Venetian lustres are suspended from the ceiling; pictures of martyrs, Venetian glasses in carved oval frames hang on the wall, richly ornamented wooden benches, and a library of missals and gospels in sparkling silver clasps, and shining marble tables and glistening braziers form part of the scene in which the marriage contract is being signed. The costumes are those of the time of Goya. As a matter of fact, an old beau is marrying a young and beautiful girl. With affected grace and a skipping minuet step, holding a modish three-cornered hat under his arm, he approaches the table to put his signature in the place which the _escribano_ points out with an obsequious bow. He is arrayed in delicate lilac, while the bride is wearing a white silk dress trimmed with flowered lace, and has a wreath of orange blossoms in her luxuriant black hair. As a girl-friend is talking to her she examines with abstracted attention the pretty little pictures upon her fan, the finest she has ever possessed. A very piquant little head she has, with her long lashes and her black eyes. Then, in the background, follow the witnesses, and first of all a young lady in a swelling silk dress of the brightest rose-colour. Beside her is one of the bridegroom's friends in a cabbage-green coat with long flaps, and a shining belt from which a gleaming sabre hangs. The whole picture is a marvellous assemblage of colours, in which tones of Venetian glow and strength, the tender pearly grey beloved of the Japanese, and a melting neutral brown, each sets off the other and give a shimmering effect to the whole.

The painter, who was barely thirty, bore the name of _Mariano Fortuny_, and was born in Reus, a little town in the province of Tarragona, on 11th June 1838. Five years after he had completed this work he died, at the age of thirty-six, on 21st November 1874. Short as his career was, it was, nevertheless, so brilliant, his success so immense, his influence so great, that his place in the history of modern painting remains assured to him.

Like French art, Spanish art, after Goya's death, had borne the yoke of Classicism, Romanticism, and academical influence by turns. In the grave of Goya there was buried for ever, as it seemed, the world of torreros, majas, manolas, monks, smugglers, knaves, and witches, and all the local colour of the Spanish Peninsula. As late as the Paris World Exhibition of 1867, Spain was merely represented by a few carefully composed, and just as carefully painted, but tame and tedious, historical pictures of the David or the Delaroche stamp--works such as had been painted for whole decades by José Madrazo, J. Ribera y Fernandez, Federigo Madrazo, Carlo Luis Ribera, Eduardo Rosales, and many others whose names there is no reason for rescuing from oblivion. They laboured, meditating an art which was not their own, and could not waken any echo in themselves. Their painting was body without soul, empty histrionic skill. As complete darkness had rested for a century over Spanish art, from the death of Claudio Coellos in 1693 to the appearance of Goya, rising like a meteor, so the first half of the nineteenth century produced no single original artist until Fortuny came forward in the sixties.

He grew up amid poor surroundings, and when he was twelve years of age he lost his father and mother. His grandfather, an enterprising and adventurous joiner, had made for himself a cabinet of wax figures, which he exhibited from town to town in the province of Tarragona. With his grandson he went on foot through all the towns of Catalonia, the old man showing the wax figures which the boy had painted. Whenever he had a moment free the latter was drawing, carving in wood, or modelling in wax. It chanced, however, that a sculptor saw his attempts, spoke of them in Fortuny's birthplace, and succeeded in inducing the town to make an allowance of forty-two francs a month to a lad whose talent had so much promise. By these means Fortuny was enabled to attend the Academy of Barcelona for four years. In 1857, when he was nineteen years of age, he received the _Prix de Rome_, and set out for Rome itself in the same year. But whilst he was copying the pictures of the old masters there a circumstance occurred which set him upon another course. The war between Spain and the Emperor of Morocco determined his future career. Fortuny was then a young man of three-and-twenty, very strong, rather thick-set, quick to resent an injury, taciturn, resolute, and accustomed to hard work. His residence in the East, which lasted from five to six months, was a discovery for him--a feast of delight. He found the opportunity of studying in the immediate neighbourhood a people whose life was opulent in colour and wild in movement; and he beheld with wonder the gleaming pictorial episodes so variously enacted before him, and the rich costumes upon which the radiance of the South glanced in a hundred reflections. And, in particular, when the Emperor of Morocco came with his brilliant suite to sign the treaty of peace, Fortuny developed a feverish activity. The great battle-piece which he should have executed on the commission of the Academy of Barcelona remained unfinished. On the other hand, he painted a series of Oriental pictures, in which his astonishing dexterity and his marvellously sensitive eye were already to be clearly discerned: the stalls of Moorish carpet-sellers, with little figures swarming about them, and the rich display of woven stuffs of the East; the weary attitude of old Arabs sitting in the sun; the sombre, brooding faces of strange snake-charmers and magicians. This is no Parisian East, like Fromentin's; every one here speaks Arabic. Guillaumet alone, who afterwards interpreted the fakir world of the East, dreamy and contemplative in the sunshine, has been equally convincing.

Yet Fortuny first discovered his peculiar province when he began, after his return, to paint those brilliant kaleidoscopic _rococo_ pictures with their charming play of colour, the pictures which founded his reputation in Paris. Even in the earliest, representing gentlemen of the _rococo_ period examining engravings in a richly appointed interior, the Japanese weapons, Renaissance chests, gilded frames of carved wood, and all the delightful _petit-riens_ from the treasury of the past which he had heaped together in it, were so wonderfully painted that Goupil began a connection with him and ordered further works. This commission occasioned his journey, in the autumn of 1866, to Paris, where he entered into Meissonier's circle, and worked sometimes at Gérôme's. Yet neither of them exerted any influence upon him at all worth mentioning. The French painter in miniature is probably the father of the department of art to which Fortuny belongs; but the latter united to the delicate execution of the Frenchman the flashing, gleaming spirit of the Latin races of the South. He is a Meissonier with _esprit_ recalling Goya. In his picture "The Spanish Marriage" (La Vicaria) all the vivid, throbbing, _rococo_ world, buried with Goya, revived once more. While in his Oriental pieces--"The Praying Arab," "The Arabian Fantasia," and "The Snake Charmers"--he still aimed at concentration and unity of effect, this picture had something gleaming, iridescent and pearly, which soon became the delight of all collectors. Fortuny's successes, his celebrity, and his fortune dated from that time. His fame flashed forth like a meteor. After fighting long years in vain, not for recognition, but for his very bread, he suddenly became the most honored painter of the day, and began to exert upon a whole generation of young artists that powerful influence which survives even at this very day.

The studio which he built for himself after his marriage with the daughter of Federigo Madrazo in Rome was a little museum of the most exquisite products of the artistic crafts of the West and the East: the walls were decorated with brilliant oriental stuffs, and great glass cabinets with Moorish and Arabian weapons, and old tankards and glasses from Murano stood around. He sought and collected everything that shines and gleams in varying colour. That was his world, and the basis of his art.

Pillars of marble and porphyry, groups of ivory and bronze, lustres of Venetian glass, gilded consoles with small busts, great tables supported by gilded satyrs and inlaid with variegated mosaics, form the surroundings of that astonishing work "The Trial of the Model." Upon a marble table a young girl is standing naked, posing before a row of academicians in the costume of the Louis XV period, while each one of them gives his judgment by a movement or an expression of the face. One of them has approached quite close, and is examining the little woman through his lorgnette. All the costumes gleam in a thousand hues, which the marble reflects. By his picture "The Poet" or "The Rehearsal" he reached his highest point in the capricious analysis of light. In an old _rococo_ garden, with the brilliant façade of the Alhambra as its background, there is a gathering of gentlemen assembled to witness the rehearsal of a tragedy. The heroine, a tall, charming, luxuriant beauty, has just fallen into a faint. On the other hand, the hero, holding the lady on his right arm, is reading the verses of his part from a large manuscript. The gentlemen are listening, and exchanging remarks with the air of connoisseurs; one of them closes his eyes to listen with thorough attention. Here the entire painting flashes like a rocket, and is as iridescent and brilliant as a peacock's tail. Fortuny splits the rays of the sun into endless _nuances_ which are scarcely perceptible to the eye, and gives expression to their flashing glitter with astonishing delicacy. Henri Regnault, who visited him at that time in Rome, wrote to a Parisian friend: "The time I spent with Fortuny yesterday is haunting me still. What a magnificent fellow he is! He paints the most marvellous things, and is the master of us all. I wish I could show you the two or three pictures that he has in hand, or his etchings and water-colours. They inspired me with a real disgust of my own. Ah! Fortuny, you spoil my sleep."

Even as an etcher he caught all the technical finesses and appetising piquancies of his great forerunner Goya. It is only with very light and spirited strokes that the outlines of his figures are drawn; then, as in Goya, comes the aquatint, the colour which covers the background and gives locality, depth, and light. A few scratches with a needle, a black spot, a light made by a judiciously inserted patch of white, and he gives his figures life and character, causing them to emerge from the black depth of the background like mysterious visions. "The Dead Arab," covered with his black cloak, and lying on the ground with his musket on his arm, "The Shepherd" on the stump of a pillar, "The Serenade," "The Reader," "The Tambourine Player," "The Pensioner," the picture of the gentleman with a pig-tail bending over his flowers, "The Anchorite," and "The Arab mourning over the Body of his Friend," are the most important of his plates, which are sometimes pungent and spirited, and sometimes sombre and fantastic.

In the picture "The Strand of Portici" he attempted to strike out a new path. He was tired of the gay rags of the eighteenth century, as he said himself, and meant to paint for the future only subjects from surrounding life in an entirely modern manner like that of Manet. But he was not destined to carry out this change any further. He passed away in Rome on 21st November 1874. When the unsold works which he left were put up to auction the smallest sketches fetched high figures, and even his etchings were bought at marvellous prices.

In these days the enthusiasm for Fortuny is no longer so glowing. The capacity to paint became so ordinary in the course of years that it was presupposed as a matter of course; it was a necessary acquirement for an artist to have before approaching his pictures in a psychological fashion. And in this later respect there is a deficiency in Fortuny. He is a _charmeur_ who dazzles the eyes, but rather creates a sense of astonishment than holds the spectator in his grip. Beneath his hands painting has become a matter of pure virtuosity, a marvellous, flaring firework that amazes and--leaves us cold after all. With enchanting delicacy he runs through the brilliant gamut of radiant colours upon the small keyboard of his little pictures painted with a pocket-lens, and everything glitters golden, like the dress of a fairy. He united to the patience of Meissonier a delicacy of colour, a wealth of pictorial point, and a crowd of delightful trifles, which combine to make him a most exquisite and fascinating juggler of the palette--an amazing colourist, a wonderful clown, an original and subtle painter with vibrating nerves, but not a truly great and moving artist. His pictures are dainties in gold frames, jewels delicately set, astonishing efforts of patience lit up by a flashing, rocket-like _esprit_; but beneath the glittering surface one is conscious of there being neither heart nor soul. His art might have been French or Italian, just as appropriately as Spanish. It is the art of virtuosi of the brush, and Fortuny himself is the initiator of a religion which found its enthusiastic followers, not in Madrid alone, but in Naples, Paris, and Rome.

Yet Spanish painting, so far as it is individual, works even now upon the lines of Fortuny. After his death it divided into two streams. The official endeavour of the academies was to keep the grand historical painting in flower, in accord with the proud programme announced by Francisco Tubino in his brochure, _The Renaissance of Spanish Art_. "Our contemporary artists," he writes, "fill all civilised Europe with their fame, and are the object of admiration on the far side of the Atlantic. We have a peculiar school of our own with a hundred teachers, and it shuns comparison with no school in any other country. At home the Academy of the Fine Arts watches over the progress of painting; it has perfected the laws by which our Academy in Rome is guided, the Academy in the proud possession of Spain, and situated so splendidly upon the Janiculum. In Madrid there is a succession of biennial exhibitions, and there is no deficiency in prizes nor in purchases. Spanish painting does not merely adorn the citizen's house or the boudoir of the fair sex with easel-pieces; by its productions it recalls the great episodes of popular history, which are able to excite men to glorious deeds. Austere, like our national character, it forbids fine taste to descend to the painting of anything indecorous. Before everything we want grand paintings for our galleries; the commercial spirit is no master of ours. In such a way the glory of Zurburan, Murillo, and Velasquez lives once more in a new sense."

The results of such efforts were those historical pictures which at the Paris World Exhibition of 1878, the Munich International Exhibition of 1883, and at every large exhibition since have been so exceedingly refreshing to all admirers of the illustration of history upon ground that was genuinely Spanish. At the Paris World Exhibition of 1878 _Pradilla's_ "Joan the Mad" received the large gold medal, and was, indeed, a good picture in the manner of Laurens. Philip the Fair is dead. The funeral train, paying him the last honours, has come to a halt upon a high-road, and the unhappy princess rushes up with floating hair and staring eyes fixed upon the bier which hides the remains of her husband. The priests and women kneeling around regard the unfortunate mad woman with mournful pity. To the right the members of the Court are grouped near a little chapel where a priest is celebrating a mass for the dead; to the left the peasantry are crowding round to witness the ceremony. Great wax candles are burning, and the chapel is lit up with the sombre glow of torches. This was all exceedingly well painted, carefully balanced in composition, and graceful in drawing. At the Munich Exhibition of 1883 he received a gold medal for his "Surrender of Granada, 1492," a picture which made a great impression at the time upon the German historical painters, as Pradilla had made a transition from the brown bituminous painting of Laurens to a "modern" painting in grey, which did more justice to the illumination of objects beneath the open sky. In the same year _Casado's_ large painting, "The Bells of Huesca," with the ground streaming with blood, fifteen decapitated bodies, and as many bodiless heads, was a creation which was widely admired. _Vera_ had exhibited his picture, filled with wild fire and pathos, "The Defence of Numantia," and _Manuel Ramirez_ his "Execution of Don Alvaro de Luna," with the pallid head which has rolled from the steps and stares at the spectator in such a ghastly manner. In his "Conversion of the Duke of Gandia," _Moreno Carbonero_ displayed an open coffin _à la_ Laurens: as Grand Equerry to the Empress Isabella at the Court of Charles V, the Duke of Gandia, after the death of his mistress, has to superintend the burial of her corpse in the vault at Granada, and as the coffin is opened there, to confirm the identity of the person, the distorted features of the dead make such a powerful impression upon the careless noble that he takes a vow to devote himself to God. _Ricardo Villodas_ in his picture "Victoribus Gloria" represents the beginning of one of those sea-battles which Augustus made gladiators fight for the amusement of the Roman people. By _Antonio Casanova y Estorach_ there was a picture of King Ferdinand the Holy, who upon Maundy Thursday is washing the feet of eleven poor old men and giving them food. And a special sensation was made by the great ghost picture of _Benliure y Gil_, which he named "A Vision in the Colosseum." Saint Almaquio, who was slain, according to tradition, by gladiators in the Colosseum, is seen floating in the air, as he swings in fanatical ecstasy a crucifix from which light is streaming. Upon one side men who have borne witness to Christianity with their blood chant their hymns of praise; upon the other, troops of female martyrs clothed in white and holding tapers in their hands move by; but below, the earth has opened, and the dead rise for the celebration of this midnight service, praying from their graves, while the full moon shines through the apertures of the ruins and pours its pale light upon the phantom congregation. There was exhibited by _Checa_ "A Barbarian Onset," a Gallic horde of riders thundering past a Roman temple, from which the priestesses are flying in desperation. _Francisco Amerigo_ treated upon a huge canvas a scene from the sacking of Rome in 1527, when the despoiling troops of Charles V plundered the Eternal City. "Soldiers intoxicated with wine and lust, tricked out with bishops' mitres and wrapped in the robes of priests, are desecrating the temples of God. Nunneries are violated, and fathers kill their daughters to save them from shame." So ran the historical explanation set upon the broad gold frame.

But, after all, these historical pictures, in spite of their great spaces of canvas, are of no consequence when one comes to characterise the efforts of modern art. Explanations could be given showing that in the land of bull-fights this painting of horrors maintained itself longer than elsewhere, but the hopes of those who prophesied from it a new golden period for historical painting were entirely disappointed. For Spanish art, as in earlier days for French art, the historical picture has merely the importance implied by the _Prix de Rome_. A method of colouring which is often dazzling in result, and a vigorous study of nature, preserved from the danger of "beautiful" tinting, make the Spanish works different from the older ones. Their very passion often has an effect which is genuine, brutal, and of telling power. In the best of these pictures one believes that a wild temperament really does burst into flame through the accepted convention that the painters have delight in the horrible, which the older French artists resorted to merely for the purpose of preparing veritable _tableaux_. But in the rank and file, in place of the Southern vividness of expression which has been sincerely felt, histrionic pose is the predominant element, the petty situation of the stage set upon a gigantic canvas, and in addition to this a straining after effect which grazes the boundary line where the horrible degenerates into the ridiculous. Through their extraordinary ability they all compel respect, but they have not enriched the treasury of modern emotion, nor have they transformed the older historical painting in the essence of its being. And the man who handles again and again motives derived from what happens to be the mode in colours renders no service to art. Delaroche is dead; but though he may be disinterred he cannot be brought to life, and the Spaniards merely dug out of the earth mummies in which the breath of life was wanting. Their works are not directing-posts to the future, but the last _revenants_ of that histrionic spirit which wandered like a ghost through the art of all nations. Even the composition, the shining colours, the settles and carpets picturesquely spread upon the ground, are the same as in Gallait. How often have these precious stage properties done duty in tragic funereal service since Delaroche's "Murder of the Duke of Guise" and Piloty's "Seni"!

And these conceptions, nourished upon historical painting, had an injurious influence upon the handling of the modern picture of the period. Even here there is an endeavour to make a compromise with the traditional historic picture, since artists painted scenes from modern popular life upon great spaces of canvas, transforming them into pageants or pictures of tragical ceremonies, and sought too much after subjects with which the splendid and motley colours of historical painting would accord. _Viniegra y Lasso_ and _Mas y Fondevilla_ execute great processions filing past, with bishops, monks, priests, and choristers. All the figures stand beaming in brightness against the sky, but the light glances from the oily mantles of the figures without real effect. _Alcazar Tejedor_ paints a young priest reading his "First Mass" in the presence of his parents, and merely renders a theatrical scene in modern costume, merely transfers to an event of the present that familiar "moment of highest excitement" so popular since the time of Delaroche. By his "Death of the Matador," and "The Christening," bought by Vanderbilt for a hundred and fifty thousand francs, _José Villegas_, in ability the most striking of them all, acquired a European name; whilst a hospital scene by _Luis Jimenez_ of Seville is the single picture in which something of the seriousness of French Naturalism is perceptible, but it is an isolated example from a province of interest which is otherwise not to be found in Spain.

Indeed, the Spaniards are by no means most attractive in gravely ceremonial and stiffly dignified pictures, but rather when they indulge in unpretentious "little painting" in the manner of Fortuny. Yet even these wayward "little painters," with their varied glancing colour, are not to be properly reckoned amongst the moderns. Their painting is an art dependent on deftness of hand, and knows no higher aim than to bring together in a picture as many brilliant things as possible, to make a charming bouquet with glistening effects of costume, and the play, the reflections, and the caprices of sunbeams. The earnest modern art which sprang from Manet and the Fontainebleau painters avoids this kaleidoscopic sport with varied spots of colour. All these little folds and mouldings, these prismatic arts of blending, and these curious reflections are what the moderns have no desire to see: they half close their eyes to gain a clearer conception of the chief values; they simplify; they refuse to be led from the main point by a thousand trifles. Their pictures are works of art, while those of the disciples of Fortuny are sleights of artifice. In all this _bric-à-brac_ art there is no question of any earnest analysis of light. The motley spots of colour yield, no doubt, a certain concord of their own; but there is a want of tone and air, a want of all finer sentiment: everything seems to have been dyed, instead of giving the effect of colour. Nevertheless those who were independent enough not to let themselves be entirely bewitched by the deceptive adroitness of a conjurer have painted little pictures of talent and refinement; taking Fortuny's _rococo_ works as their starting-point, they have represented the fashionable world and the highly coloured and warm-blooded life of the people of modern Spain with a bold and spirited facility. But they have not gone beyond the observation of the external sides of life. They can show guitarreros clattering with castanets and pandarets, majas dancing, and ribboned heroes conquering bulls instead of Jews and Moors. Yet their pictures are at any rate blithe, full of colour, flashing with sensuous brilliancy, and at times they are executed with stupendous skill.

_Martin Rico_ was for the longest period in Italy with Fortuny, and his pictures also have the glitter of a casket of jewels, the pungency of sparkling champagne. Some of his sea-pieces in particular--for instance, those of the canal in Venice and the Bay of Fontarabia--might have been painted by Fortuny. In others he seems quieter and more harmonious than the latter. His execution is more powerful, less marked by spirited stippling, and his light gains in intensity and atmospheric refinement what it loses in mocking caprices, while his little figures have a more animated effect, notwithstanding the less piquant manner in which they are painted. Their outlines are scarcely perceptible, and yet they are seen walking, jostling, and pressing against each other; whereas those of Fortuny, precisely through the more subtle and microscopic method in which they have been executed, often seem as though they were benumbed in movement. Certain market scenes, with a dense crowd of buyers and sellers, are peculiarly spirited, rapid sketches, with a gleaming charm of colour.

_Zamacois_, _Casanova_, and _Raimundo de Madrazo_, Fortuny's brother-in-law, show no less virtuosity of the palette. Sea-pieces and little landscapes alternate with scenes from Spanish popular life, where they revel, like Fortuny, in a scintillating medley of colour. Later, in Paris, Madrazo was likewise much sought after as a painter of ladies' portraits, as he lavished on his pictures sometimes a fine _hautgoût_ of fragrant _rococo_ grace _a la_ Chaplin, and sometimes devoted himself with taste and deftness to symphonic _tours de force à la_ Carolus Duran. Particularly memorable is the portrait of a graceful young girl in red, exhibited in the Munich Exhibition of 1883. She is seated upon a sofa of crimson silk, and her feet rest upon a dark red carpet. Equally memorable in the Paris World Exhibition of 1889 was a pierrette, whose costume ran through the whole gamut from white to rose-colour. Her skirt was of a darker, her bodice of a brighter red, and a light rose-coloured stocking peeped from beneath a grey silk petticoat; over her shoulders lay a white swansdown cape, and white gloves and white silk shoes with rose-coloured bows completed her toilette. His greatest picture represented "The End of a Masked Ball." Before the Paris Opera cabs are waiting with coachmen sleeping or smoking, whilst a troop of pierrots and pierrettes, harlequins, Japanese girls, _rococo_ gentlemen, and Turkish women are streaming out, sparkling with the most glittering colours in the grey light of a winter morning, in which the gas lamps cast a warm yellow glimmer.

Even those who made their chief success as historical painters became new beings when they came forward with such piquant "little paintings." _Francisco Domingo_ in Valencia is the Spanish Meissonier, who has painted little horsemen before an inn, mercenary soldiers, newspaper readers, and philosophers of the time of Louis XV, with all the daintiness in colour associated with the French patriarch--although a huge canvas, "The Last Day of Sagunt," has the reputation of being his chief performance. In the year in which he exhibited his "Vision in the Colosseum," _Benliure y Gil_ made a success with two little pictures stippled in varied colours, the "Month of Mary" and the "Distribution of Prizes in Valencia," in which children, smartened and dressed in white frocks, are moving in the ante-chambers of a church, decorated for the occasion. _Casado_, painter of the sanguinary tragedy of Huesca, showed himself an admirable little master full of elegance and grace in "The Bull-Fighter's Reward," a small eighteenth-century picture. The master of the great hospital picture, _Jimenez_, took the world by surprise at the very same time by a "Capuchin Friar's Sermon before the Cathedral of Seville," which flashed with colour. _Emilio Sala y Francés_, whose historical masterpiece was the "Expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1493," delights elsewhere in spring, Southern gardens with luxuriant vegetation, and delicate _rococo_ ladies, holding up their skirts filled with blooming roses, or gathering wild flowers among the grass. _Antonio Fabrés_ was led to the East by the influence of Regnault, and excited attention by his aquarelles and studies in pen and ink, in which he represented Oriental and Roman street figures with astonishing adroitness. But the _ne plus ultra_ is attained by the bold and winning art of _Pradilla_, which is like a thing shot out of a pistol. He is the greatest product of contemporary Spain, a man with a talent for improvisation as ingenious as it was free, who treated with equal facility the most varied subjects. In the bold and spirited decorations with which he embellished Spanish palaces he sported with nymphs and Loves and floating genii _à la_ Tiepolo. All the grace of the _rococo_ period is cast over his works in the Palais Murga in Madrid. The figures join each other with ease--coquettish nymphs swaying upon boughs, and audacious "Putti" tumbling over backwards in quaint games. Nowhere is there academic sobriety, and everywhere life, pictorial inspiration, the intoxicating joyousness of a fancy creating without effort and revelling in the festal delight of the senses. In the accompanying wall pictures he revived the age of the troubadours, of languishing love-song and knightly romance free from the burden of thought, in tenderly graceful and fluent figures. And this same painter, who filled these huge spaces of wall, lightly dallying with subjects from the world of fable, seems another man when he grasps fragments from the life of our own age in pithy inspirations sure in achievement. His historical pictures are works which compel respect; but those paintings on the most diminutive scale, in which he represented scenes from the Roman carnival and the life in Spanish camps, the shore of the sea and the joy of a popular merry-making with countless figures of the most intense vividness, carried out with an unrivalled execution of detail which is yet free from anything laboured, and full of splendour and glowing colour,--these, indeed, are performances of painting beside which as a musical counterpart at best Paganini's variations on the G string are comparable--sleights of art of which only Pradilla was capable, and such as only Fortuny painted forty years ago.

Two masters who do not live at home, but in France, have followed still further the modern development of art with great power. The first is _Zuloaga_. The pictures of this artist have something truly Spanish, something that one as an admirer of Goya looks for eagerly in Spanish pictures. At the first glance the eye receives rather a shock. One seeks in vain for delicate painting of light in Zuloaga, or exquisite harmonies of colour. He places the crudest reds and yellows next to each other, strong, almost brutal, like a poster. With an uncompromising love of truth he paints the rouge-smeared cheeks and blackened eyebrows of his women-about-town, does not even try to make their movements graceful or give their costumes a touch of modish smartness. But what a breadth of conception! With what daring he sweeps his bold strokes over the picture! It is just because he avoids all flattery, because he brings nothing foreign, nothing cosmopolitan into his exclusive world, that the characteristics of Spanish life are mirrored with such truth in his works. Especially in his portrait of the popular poet, Don Miguel de Segovia, the whole picture is suffused with a rare Don Quixote feeling. Velasquez' Pablillas stands before you reincarnated. It is interesting, too, that Zuloaga, though in France, remains still a Spaniard. Even when he paints Parisiennes he translates toilette and gesture into grandiose Spanish style.

The influence of the French school is much more marked in the second of these Spanish masters, _Hermen Anglada_. He has come to the front in the exhibitions of the last few years. Besnard has given him much of his refined epicurism, and this French _hautgoût_ lends his pictures a charm which is altogether their own. If you are seeking for unusual and quaint effects you will find them in this Spaniard, who paints pale, colourless women in the most astonishing costumes, places them in the midst of sensuous, misty landscapes, and gives you a glistening potpourri of colours. But Anglada's work is in itself the best testimony to the fact that the Spain of to-day is getting worn-out and bloodless. There is something senile and sapless in this over-refined art that takes pleasure in nothing but the most extraordinary nuances, and that needs something very unusual to tickle its nerves.