Chapter 3 - Page 2

chosen for him;
even in Fontainebleau he shrinks from what is sharply charactered.
But one thing, at least, is certain, whatever he may choose to
paint and in whatever manner, it is good for the artist to dwell
among graceful shapes. Fontainebleau, if it be but quiet scenery,
is classically graceful; and though the student may look for
different qualities, this quality, silently present, will educate
his hand and eye.

But, before all its other advantages - charm, loveliness, or
proximity to Paris - comes the great fact that it is already
colonised. The institution of a painters' colony is a work of time
and tact. The population must be conquered. The innkeeper has to
be taught, and he soon learns, the lesson of unlimited credit; he
must be taught to welcome as a favoured guest a young gentleman in
a very greasy coat, and with little baggage beyond a box of colours
and a canvas; and he must learn to preserve his faith in customers
who will eat heartily and drink of the best, borrow money to buy
tobacco, and perhaps not pay a stiver for a year. A colour
merchant has next to be attracted. A certain vogue must be given
to the place, lest the painter, most gregarious of animals, should
find himself alone. And no sooner are these first difficulties
overcome, than fresh perils spring up upon the other side; and the
bourgeois and the tourist are knocking at the gate. This is the
crucial moment for the colony. If these intruders gain a footing,
they not only banish freedom and amenity; pretty soon, by means of
their long purses, they will have undone the education of the
innkeeper; prices will rise and credit shorten; and the poor
painter must fare farther on and find another hamlet. "Not here, O
Apollo!" will become his song. Thus Trouville and, the other day,
St. Raphael were lost to the arts. Curious and not always edifying
are the shifts that the French student uses to defend his lair;
like the cuttlefish, he must sometimes blacken the waters of his
chosen pool; but at such a time and for so practical a purpose Mrs.
Grundy must allow him licence. Where his own purse and credit are
not threatened, he will do the honours of his village generously.
Any artist is made welcome, through whatever medium he may seek
expression; science is respected; even the idler, if he prove, as
he so rarely does, a gentleman, will soon begin to find himself at
home. And when that essentially modern creature, the English or
American girl-student, began to walk calmly into his favourite inns
as if into a drawing-room at home, the French painter owned himself
defenceless; he submitted or he fled. His French respectability,
quite as precise as ours, though covering different provinces of
life, recoiled aghast