Meissonier, his life and his art . me roundly. I apologised humbly, saying, But my dear M. Pil-lardeau, among friends such a little attention is permissible ! But carefully as such documents may be collected, they can butiurnlsh the elements of life. It was in his studies that Meissoniercreated that life itself. He almost preferred these to his pictures, sopleasant were the memories of happy toil they evoked. They werehis flesh and blood. He often said that it would have been his idealto make nothing but sketches, to take notes here and there and dashthem upon canvas, as Pascal put down his ro
Meissonier, his life and his art . me roundly. I apologised humbly, saying, But my dear M. Pil-lardeau, among friends such a little attention is permissible ! But carefully as such documents may be collected, they can butiurnlsh the elements of life. It was in his studies that Meissoniercreated that life itself. He almost preferred these to his pictures, sopleasant were the memories of happy toil they evoked. They werehis flesh and blood. He often said that it would have been his idealto make nothing but sketches, to take notes here and there and dashthem upon canvas, as Pascal put down his roving thoughts on paper ;avoiding the long fatigue of building up a picture. After his death, a certain number of these studies were publishedin two volumes. They prove how ardently and how tenaciously he L 74 MEISSONIER worked out the subjects he wished to render. In some the samemotive is treated three or four times over: the difference hes in the sfreaterease of a gesture, the happier chrection of a ray of Hght, an expression, a. THE DOG MARCO. (Waier-colour drawing) look, a trifle too slight for definition. Some are finished carefully, othersare the roughest sketches, serving to seize an attitude, the movement ofa horses leg, the pose of a sleeping dog, the arrangement of a piece ofharness, the outline of a face, theshape of a helmet, the folds of a pairof doeskin breeches. His eye pene-trated, fixed, and comprehended allhe noted. Thiers talks of the light-ning of swords, I make j-ou see it! But, to make us see, what research,what conscientious and minute toilwere needed ! He would not trust to the recollections most clearly fixed in his brain by long he wanted to paint a corner of a ploughed field in iSoj,he went into the country to make sketches of clods. A current
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