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--Mais oui, Josepha, c'est elle! et les voix s'?teignirent dans des embrassades.

--Comment, Altesses! par quel curieux hasard nous retrouvons-nous ? Chiasso?

Les princesses expliqu?rent leur voyage vers un oncle mourant. Elles parlaient d'Edouard, de Guillaume, d'Humbert et de Fran?ois-Joseph, tous t?tes couronn?es, comme Avertie e?t parl? de ses fr?res et cousins; c'?tait ?trange, cette familiarit? dynastique et pr?nominale sur le quai de Chiasso.

Jamais ces trois jeunes femmes ne s'?taient revues depuis le couvent, o? Avertie avait ?t? leur respectueuse et assez flatt?e petite amie.

Elle se rappelait les dimanches pass?s chez la Reine exil?e, ? Passy, o? les Princesses montraient avec orgueil, dans le pavillon isol? du roi leur p?re, les drapeaux nombreux jadis enlev?s aux r?giments de l'usurpateur, fan?s, salis, trou?s de balles, tach?s de sang, m?me. Avertie en avait la chair de poule tant elle se croyait dans le merveilleux ?pique. Puis c'?tait encore une suite de cadres o?, sous verre, s'alignaient des pi?ces de monnaies de toutes grandeurs et perc?es ?galement au milieu d'un coup de pistolet. Le Roi, tireur ?m?rite, avait collectionn? ces petites gloires ? c?t? des grandes. Son immense portrait, qui centrait la salle, le repr?sentait en uniforme de g?n?ral, don Juan bell?tre, et un peu ?pais. Avertie, enfant, l'e?t souhait? plus mince, plus th??tral encore, plus Prince de L?gende. Mais l'uniforme brillant, les troph?es ensanglant?s, les damas somptueux tendus aux murs en faisaient, pour son imagination de neuf ans, un h?ros tout de m?me assez fabuleux.

Dans ces temps-l?, les journ?es de cong?, pass?es ? Passy, commen?aient toujours par des parties de cache-cache. Puis on allait dans la chambre des Princesses, grande pi?ce blanche et nue, dont l'odeur acre et fade de renferm?, si particuli?re aux chambres d'enfants, soulevait parfois le coeur d'Avertie. Trois petits lits en fer, laqu?s blanc, s'alignaient le long du mur et une grosse couronne royale aux fleurs de lys d'or leur servait de baldaquin.

Rien qu'en regardant ses anciennes compagnes, tous ses souvenirs se pr?cis?rent nettement. Do?a Josepha, dans l'amabilit? du sourire, faisait rena?tre ses enfantines fossettes, tandis que Do?a Alicia s'int?ressait avec gr?ce ? la vie d'Avertie. Leurs d?licieuses mani?res ?taient comparables ? une oeuvre d'art; on y go?tait un plaisir de beaut? et d'harmonie. Ces infantes, pourtant, ?taient simples, gaies, un peu na?ves comme presque toutes les Princesses; et Avertie pensa ? ces beaux fruits qu'on emp?che de m?rir librement dans les serres, en de petits sacs ?troits et bien clos. C'est ainsi que l'?tiquette avait d? contraindre ces femmes.

Cependant l'homme des douanes, fonctionnaire assagi par le protocole, s'approcha avec d?f?rence du groupe princier, et, englobant Avertie dans la <>, prit le num?ro de ses bagages, de ceux de Floche et, apr?s avoir bais? les mains de tout le monde, annon?a qu'on n'ouvrirait point les colis.

Le temps pressait. Avertie s'inclina, respectueusement elle aussi, vers les mains supra-patriciennes couvertes de grosses pierres pr?cieuses et rentra dans son wagon.

Floche, qui, derri?re sa vitre, avait tout surveill?, ne revenait pas de cette aventure.

--Que vous avez de belles connaissances, ma ch?re! Moi qui les avais prises pour de bonnes Allemandes. Ah! on est honor?e de voyager avec vous! D'ailleurs, de ces trois femmes, c'est vous seule qui sembliez l'Altesse!

Avertie m?prisa un peu son amie pour cette flagornerie, mais... elle se regarda dans la glace.

Avertie fut heureuse de se savoir sympathique, mais surtout de rester si distante malgr? une telle intimit?!

Elles approchaient de Milan et leur impatience d'arriver rendait ces derni?res heures monotones et p?nibles. D'ailleurs, la Lombardie qu'elles traversaient, couverte de vignes uniform?ment vertes--et verts aussi les m?riers trapus--ajoutait au soporifisme. Pourtant l'enthousiasme classique de Floche for?a l'attention de son amie. Par complaisance, celle-ci regarda, se leva, se rassit, se releva pour regarder encore, tant de fois qu'elle en prit une mine fatigu?e.

--Vous ?tes malade, ch?re amie? Dieu! que je suis contente. Je vous aime tellement plus ? vous voir des d?faillances. <> m'avaient tant dit que vous seriez un turc, que vous me feriez trotter en cercle, que vous seriez de fer, inexorable d?s sept heures du matin! Et voil? que c'est moi le turc, moi la vaillante inexorable! Ah! vous m'?tes charmante et bien sympathique, d?cid?ment! Tenez, voici mon coussin, mon ch?le et mes sels de lavande...

Comme elles donnaient leurs tickets, elles aper?urent un costume beige, un chapeau <>, un nez pointu sous l'ombre de la visi?re.

--Le Peintre! le Peintre ? Milan, ma ch?rie, quelle joie!

Floche gloussait comme un naufrag? qui aper?oit une bou?e. C'?tait en effet le Peintre.

--Nous vous emmenons! lui dirent-elles... Mais quel hasard?...

--Je savais que vous partiez et je suis venu. Renvoyez-moi si vous n'avez pas de coeur.

D?s lors, elles aussi, voyag?rent les mains vides, en Altesses. Avertie trouva un repos d?licieux ? se sentir lib?r?e de tout souci mat?riel et ? se garder enti?re pour les joies qu'elle s'?tait promises. Le Peintre servirait de fourrier et de chasseur.

CHAPITRE IV

--Mesdames, un bel appartement, ? deux lits, 12 francs... nous n'avons que cela delibre... pas de <> pour Monsieur... et le g?rant indique le Peintre.

--M?ssieu? mais qu'est-ce qu'il peut bien nous faire! reprend Avertie, indign?e.

--Alors, montons, Mesdames.

--Jardin? Comment, gar?on, sont-ce les jardins de l'h?tel qui se trouvent l??

--Ah! parfaitement.

Et elle aima davantage l'Italie d'appeler les cabinets <>.

Arriv?es dans leur chambre, Floche jette p?le-m?le ses paquets, gants et chapeau sur les lits. Puis sans m?me regarder:

--?a! un bel appartement, pour 12 francs, avec vue sur les derri?res! ?tre venue de Paris ? Milan pour voir frire des soles dans la cour d'un h?tel.... J'en mourrai!

--Oh! Attendez quelques jours encore avant de vous d?truire, voulez-vous? Et choisissez vite votre lit! lui r?pond Avertie.

--Hum, dans une ?table pareille, que m'importe le choix d'une liti?re!

Et elle s'approprie le plus confortable.

Elles avaient d?j? commenc? ? ranger leurs menus objets, lorsque Avertie jeta un regard circulaireck white paint.

American Art

During the first half of the nineteenth century, many untrained artists, working in the cities but more often traveling about the countryside, provided na?ve or primitive pictures for the ever-increasing middle classes. Up to this time the artist had been mainly a portraitist; but with the invention of the camera in 1839 he had to shift his emphasis, and by mid-century America had a thriving school of landscape painters, whose works fed a national pride in the great wild terrain of the New World. After the Civil War, however, these landscapes also appealed to a populace seeking relief in the ideal world of a quiet countryside away from the humdrum of dirty cities that were springing up everywhere, the result of the Industrial Revolution.

Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer were the great turn-of-the-century artists. They portrayed American life and scenery with straightforward candor. Their example has been carried on by some modern American artists who, fascinated with the urban growth of the 1900s, have emphasized the vitality of city life. These include painters such as Henri, Bellows, and Sloan. More recently abstract art has been in the forefront of American painting.

Unusual in European art, the sense of immediacy in this rescue scene was an American innovation, and it assured Copley's reputation in Britain while furthering the importance of realism in narrative painting. The successful merchant and former English sailor Brook Watson commissioned the young American artist, who had settled in London, to depict an adventure that occurred in the sailor's youth. Watson had been attacked by a shark while swimming in Havana, Cuba, in 1749. Using a fresh approach, Copley recaptured the horror of that event by lending vivid emotions to the rescuers--cowardice, fear, compassion--and by catching the helpless fright of the boy.

Artist and subject, while breaking from the first posing session for this portrait, took to the fresh air and exercise of skating on the frozen Serpentine in London's Hyde Park. The sport gave Stuart a novel idea, which he translated with a free-spirited freshness and vigor. Commissioned by Mr. William Grant, this, Stuart's first full-length portrait, was a triumph at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1782. Unlike West, under whom he studied, and Copley, another American artist, Gilbert Stuart eventually returned to the United States, achieving further fame with his innumerable portraits of George Washington. Painted in 1795, the famous portrait in gallery 62 is believed to be his first life study of the president.

After an 1848 Pennsylvania agricultural fair, James Cornell commissioned this record of his prize-winning livestock and acreage. In addition to carefully detailing each cow, horse, pig, sheep, and building, the artist Edward Hicks has also emphasized the decorative patterning of the group. This so-called na?ve piece does not present a sophisticated rendering of anatomy or landscape, but it does present a study in contrast between the rhythmic row of animals and the geometric background. Lacking formal artistic schooling, Hicks was a sign and coach painter, who did pictures as a sideline or as favors for friends.

Painted in Paris, this canvas caused a scandal at an 1863 exhibition. The lack of personality in the face infuriated critics; they failed to realize that this was not intended as a portrait. Whistler, an American expatriate, was exercising his artistic theories by exploring a single tone--white. The starched cuffs, striped sleeves, cambric skirt, brocade curtain, and fur rug create a "Symphony in White," as Whistler once titled this work. The fullness of the girl's lips, the thick richness of her chestnut hair, and her wide blue eyes, however, mark a subtle but uneasy contrast to the purity of the white color. This tension is carried further by the presence of the bearskin and the garish flowers wilting on the floor, symbolic, perhaps, of a bestiality of nature and an innocence lost. To emphasize the color relationships around this woman, his mistress Joanna Hiffernan, Whistler flattened the space and avoided strong lights and shadows.

When public boxing was illegal in New York, fights were held in private clubs with fighters elected as members for only the night of the match. The black boxer may be Joe Gans, lightweight champion from 1901 to 1908; his opponent has not been identified. Once a professional athlete himself, George Bellows understood the violence of the sport. Brutality is conveyed by the angular lines of the fighters' bodies, the boldly slashing brushwork, and the lurid glare of spotlights within the gloomy arena.

French Art of the 19th Century

French art during the second half of the 1800s is noted for its innovation and its diversity. Yet, although the paintings produced during this period differ in their visual effects, the artists of these works were all largely concerned with the same problem: how to treat nature and how to define reality. Thus, in reaction to the neoclassicists, who stressed line and color, and the romantics, who favored lush hues, exotic or unusual subject matter, and emotionalism, the realists sought to paint only what was before them, free from embellishment. Other artists such as Monet and Renoir concentrated upon recording the fleeting and subtle color impressions created by changes in sunlight. Because their technique was rapid and sketchy, these latter artists gave less attention to studiously modeled form, and their paintings, although "realistic" in their rendition of light and space, do not have the solid, tangible qualities so evident in Academic painting. Still other artists rejected impressionism's concern with transitory moments in order to express either their intuitive reactions to the natural world or their personalized interpretation of the physical laws that order appearances. Reality was redefined by these artists, such as Gauguin, van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, and C?zanne, who were known as post-impressionists. It was their work which prepared the way for twentieth-century expressionism and abstraction.

Amid the controversies of nineteenth-century French art criticism, Corot was a transitional figure. Popular with conservative patrons, he was also a champion of the younger, radical painters. This scene in a forest near Paris is composed of traditional elements: the overlapping planes of light and dark foliage and a deep perspective established by the path of light and space running through the painting's center. Corot's treatment of light, studied directly from nature, is quite modern, however, as he exactly captures the harsh glare and heavy shadow caused by strong sun.

Overlooking Paris' Saint-Lazare railroad yards, this sun-drenched scene is the first major picture Manet executed out-of-doors. Though influenced by his friends, the impressionists Monet and Renoir, Manet's disciplined temperament rejected impressionism's less structured effects. The rigid lines of the iron fence, for example, act as a foil for the figures' curves. The little girl, whose interest lies on the rail yards behind, forms a subtle tension with the woman who gazes out at the viewer. The color scheme, with its reversal of colors, serves both to unify the pattern and to underscore the separation of the two figures: the full womanly figure is dressed in blue accented with white, whereas the childish figure is in white accented with blue.

Wanting to capture the dazzling colors found in strong sunlight, the impressionist painter Renoir intensified the natural hues of reality to a greater vibrancy on canvas. The green of the grass depicted here is more intense in hue than that which one might expect to find in nature, and the gravel path sparkles like gems. In calculating the juxtaposition of color, the artist placed pale blue-green shadows on the child's face to heighten her rosy complexion. In addition, the blurred impressionist brushstrokes create the effect of shimmering sunlight dissolving form and detail. Once in response to criticism about his work, Renoir said, "There are enough things to bore us in life without our making more of them."

Monet, a founder of impressionism, became obsessed with the variations with natural light. From 1892 to 1895, he recorded in a series of paintings a medieval French cathedral as it appeared at different times of day or under different weather conditions. In over thirty canvases of Rouen Cathedral, Monet's analyses of light on the cathedral's surfaces resulted in iridescent colors and thick paint textures that are visually sensational yet highly naturalistic. Here, in early morning, the church shimmers lavender and violet, the stone of the upper portions glowing in the rich red-orange of the rising sun. Another from the Rouen series, showing the church in the yellow-white heat of the afternoon, is also in this room.

One of Degas' own favorite works, this, his last major oil painting, has a chalky texture reminiscent of the pastels he frequently used. Studying the strong patterns in Japanese prints as well as the snapshot effects of photography, this superb draftsman often designed his paintings with an angled point of view or created an off-center balance, cutting off figures by the frame edge. With the increasing abstraction of his late style, Degas here used a black outline which not only separates the gestures of the dancers but also accents their red apparel, intensifying the theatrical effect.

Most evident in this painting is the tension between what is, on the one hand, a rendition of nature and, on the other, C?zanne's deliberate organization of the shapes into a rhythm of forms. The swirls and eddies of the blue drapery are reflected in the curves of the apples, peppermint bottle, white linen, and carafe. At the same time, horizontal or vertical lines dominate along the edge of the table, the molding of the back wall, and the neck of the bottle, creating a linear grid that offsets and balances the curving lines. The blue-green tonality, in addition to the geometric patterning, further demonstrates the artist's intent to visually organize and unify. Indeed, for the sake of unity, C?zanne has even distorted the carafe by swelling it out on one side, pulling it deeper into the folds of the fabric.

Flattened shapes, strong outlines, unmodulated hues, and pronounced pigment textures have been among the central devices of many twentieth-century painters. Artists have often abandoned the direct imitation of reality, preferring instead to work through complex problems of pictorial design to express human feelings. A tremendous diversity of artistic styles has resulted, emerging in tempo with the rapid changes of modern society and technology. The National Gallery's present collection of modern art concentrates on the French school prior to World War I, the period when Paris was the cultural center of Europe.

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