severe and imposing editors.

Not quite at the start, naturally; and the first instalment of illustrations that he offered to a magazine then famous, the name of which is now forgotten—four little sepia drawings—was curtly rejected. But he refused to be discouraged, and not long afterwards deliberately made his way to the celebrated art-publisher, Curmer. This bold venture went badly at the start. The publisher, rendered distrustful by so youthful and importunate a face, assured the young man and the friend who had introduced him, that “for the time being he had nothing for him.”

But by a providential hazard, the short conversation which followed as a matter of civility before leave-taking touched upon the subject of life-masks. At that time life-masks happened to be quite the rage: people had their faces moulded in plaster just as nowadays they sit for a photograph; and young Meissonier related, not without vanity, that on the preceding Sunday he had taken the mask of the Johannot brothers, and he added that he knew those two princes of engraving quite intimately.

Famous acquaintances are always useful; the proof of this is that M. Curmer accepted an invitation to go the following Sunday to Meissonier’s studio, to sit for his life-mask,—and, once there, it was impossible for him not to order an aquarelle.

The door of this publishing house, however, was as yet only half-way open to the artist; for when his friend Marville, “an etcher in soft-ground, mediocre but prolific,” talked of having him collaborate on the Curmer edition of Paul and Virginia, the publisher, a prey once more to his original distrust, entrusted him to begin with,—with just one of the special illustrations,—to re-engrave!

Meissonier acquitted himself brilliantly of this half-task, with the result that he was entrusted with several other illustrations for the celebrated edition of Paul and Virginia, of which no bibliophile can ever speak without enthusiasm. But, on the other hand, he had an entire series to make for an edition, no less sumptuous, of The Indian Cabin, also a work of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.

FIRST SUCCESS

And then, in the words of one of his contemporaries: “The first rays of fame that caressed him streamed from those admirable and diminutive drawings for The Indian Cabin. He had done much sketching in the Jardin des Plantes, in the conservatories, where the flora of the tropics expanded opulently; also, before the windows of those shops of bric-a-brac, abounding in exotic objects, which in those bygone days stretched in a row facing the entrance to the Louvre, on the Place du Carrousel. All that he had to do was to rummage among those sketches in order to give his composition an inimitable stamp of truth, such as was seldom attempted by illustrators of his nation. It was a simple thing to convert into an ornamental letter a storm-broken lily, a group of Indian weapons, some Javanese musical instruments. If the text called for the ‘emblems of mental toil,’ the young artist heaped his table with volumes bound in parchment or full calf, acquired for a few sous from the stands along the quays, and he had only to copy, with all the naïveté of the Primitives, the gleam of the edges, the bands on the backs, the slips of paper alternating with the silken bookmarks.”

And the critic proceeds to cite an example of that “prodigious finish” which Théophile Gautier subsequently recognized as the most popular characteristic, so to speak, of his noble talent: “In two of these miniature vignettes, measuring less than four centimetres, two engravings can be made out, hanging upon a library wall; one of them interprets quite scrupulously The Pariah thinking of the English Doctor, and the other The English Doctor thinking of the Pariah. Between these engravings can be made out, hanging on a nail, and possessing all the characteristics described in the text, the pipe of English leather, the mouthpiece of which was of yellow amber, and that of the Pariah, the stem of which was of bamboo and the bowl of terra-cotta.”

The success of this de luxe edition was rapid and important. The first step along the path of glory was taken,—and on that path the first step costs more than anywhere else. Henceforth, no more need of soliciting work; far otherwise. The artist still continued to do illustrating. Mention must be made of the drawings that he did for Frenchmen Painted by Themselves, and later—here ends this chapter of his artistic career—the plates that served as illustrations for The Fallen Angel, by Lamartine (edition in two volumes, already unobtainable twenty years ago), and the Contes Rémois, by M. de Chevigné; this last series bears date 1858.

ETCHINGS

Let us add, for the sake of being complete, without wasting undue space upon side-issues, that Meissonier also experimented in etching. Authoritative critics assert that these attempts, in which the master modestly refused to see anything more than “essays,” will eventually become “the most precious treasures that bear his signature.”

PLATE IV.—1814
(Chauchard Bequest, Musée du Louvre)

This picture, so masterly and so dramatic in composition, is assuredly one of the most widely known in existence. The sombre visage of the Emperor, the severity of the landscape, the prevailing tone of sadness, admirably rendered, explain the wide favour enjoyed by this celebrated work, further popularized in engravings.

Besides, with one exception,—The Smoker, popularized by a large printing,—they are quite limited in number, and already eagerly sought after by collectors. And with all the more reason, because, at the fairly distant period of which we speak, the perfected processes for preserving the burined lines on the copper plate in all their original fineness and precision had not yet been invented; accordingly, the later proofs in his series of etchings betray a wearing of the copper which could not fail to lower their value. At the time of Meissonier’s death, a proof of The Preparations for the Duel, in which the signature was legible, “in the lower left corner,” brought upward of one thousand francs.

The most beautiful of all Meissonier’s etchings are, without question: The Violin, which he engraved with a burin at once powerful, delicate and, as some critics phrase it, “vibrant,” to adorn the visiting card of the celebrated lute player, Vuillaume; The Signor Annibale, representing, in braggadocio pose and costume, the celebrated actor, Régnier, of the Comédie-Française, in a rôle that is by no means the least celebrated in Augier’s Adventuress; and The Troopers, seven figures whose personalities stand out rather curiously and exhibit a picturesque diversity.

The Reporting Sergeant was a miniature sketch made, in order to try the ground, on the margin of the plate on which The Smoker was etched. It is a finished and charming little work, full of expression, of life and actuality, condensed into a microscopic square of paper.

But what of his paintings?