There is the hat I have always known,
on the back of his head as I have always seen it, and the wooden
pipe is held tight in his teeth as I have always seen him hold it.
How large, how profound, how simple the drawing! How easily and
how naturally he lives in the pose, the body bent forward, the
elbows on the table! Fine as the Orchardson undoubtedly is, it seems
fatigued and explanatory by the side of this wonderful rendering of
life; thin and restless--like Dumas fils' dialogue when we compare
it with Ibsen's. The woman that sits beside the artist was at the
Elysee Montmartre until two in the morning, then she went to the
_ratmort_ and had a soupe _aux choux_; she lives in the
Rue Fontaine, or perhaps the Rue Breda; she did not get up till
half-past eleven; then she tied a few soiled petticoats round her,
slipped on that peignoir, thrust her feet into those loose morning
shoes, and came down to the cafe to have an absinthe before breakfast.
Heavens! what a slut! A life of idleness and low vice is upon her
face; we read there her whole life. _The tale is not a pleasant one,
but it is a lesson_. Hogarth's view was larger, wider, but not so
incisive, so deep, or so intense. Then how loose and general Hogarth's
composition would seem compared to this marvellous epitome, this
essence of things! That open space in front of the table, into which
the skirt and the lean legs of the man come so well--how well the
point of view was selected! The beautiful, dissonant rhythm of that
composition is like a page of Wagner--the figures crushed into the
right of the canvas, the left filled up with a fragment of marble
table running in sharp perspective into the foreground.
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