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of ours, w ho sere and staged tos
LE PANTHEON
1 is good to have in one's home the portraits
of those who honoured their families. For
wd of young people, friends, relations
uch a t
g onthe war establish.
n our Countryland!
t
ing through the whole world, friendships increase
round her, suspicious: minds rely on her, and a dav
of new hopes may bé seen.
We owe those men, the Dead, the living, our
leaders ons soldiers, an eternal gratitude. fter
od, t are the saviours of our noble and useful
country, our example, our pride, those we should
r we have to cncturg
man life may avoid, neither
our hearths, nor in our larger family.
Their names will be collected, theiractions written
in the French history and home traditions h
children will speak of their father, of their grand-
father, among other soldiers of the Great War. It
lesson and the remembrance of their deeds more
urable.
It would be too late to atlempt this work of glo-
scsi alter the war. Documents may get lost
urely, the martial bearing of these men will
disappear “when peace sets in again r
they are nothing but soldiers. any other indus-
trial stamp has faded away owing t ar, to
their sacrifices, adv entures and honour, these strong-
handed modellers! They ir victo-
rious physiognomies, they have those of endurance
I{uman
deserving victory, ot will and secret hope:
faces never bore the mark of vice |
This is why, the French or the foreigners, our
Allies, all thee whe wadersiand this, will congra-
tulale a group of French artists : Pierre Carrier-
Relleuse, Auguste- Frangois Gorguet ed their help-
males, who, on the morrow of t ctory of the
Aarne, undertook a work of ilovification through
painting : The War Pantheon !
merable portenits many from life, other from
photographies and doc sis sent by the families,
may be seen on a canvas 360 feet long and 45 fe ‘eet
high. The w e 5,400 square fest and,
what surprise us, and may’ be looked upon as a
“prodigy, is its being well composed, well painted.
and a masterpiece worthy of being seen and of
last’ tin
On the steps of huge stairs, towered by the wing-
ed statue of Victory, stan’ re us, offered to our
looks, thousands of heroes, piicers of all ranks and
soldiers, footmen, gunners emen, sailors,
tors, all very like and chosen. among { those mention.
ed in dispatches and having the war cross.
DE LA GUERRE
Down, at the. foot of the white marble pedestal of
of
Nungesser, of Vedrines, moa Poice of vialiey of
Dor
rme, of Garros acc charming an
grave youth. Then the portraits of “abbé fnocques
abbe Andrieux, chaplains of the Fuser, ed
of the bishops of our invaded ri regions, remin
the devotedness and sacrifice of ‘so ma s
Among these soldiers. room was made too for some
women, who really took part in this war :
nurses, ‘posts -office clerks and others still, that life
had noiselessly prepared in well regulated fortune,
placed by the very events at the head
of the most important services of a town, proving.
capable of command ad charity as well.
Quite near the spectator, on the platform where
rise the first steps of the stairs, a numerous group
of official personalities form the train of the Presi-
bli
in this great review, up the-starry c ountry roads
and lames, and one may follow the marching regi-
ments. Aeroplanes fly hueviedly from this double
horizon, and, w rapping up t rhole seen, in higher
regions, towering the Gold wi ‘inged Victory, a rain-
bow tells every one a new dawn was given birth to.
The harmony of this huge composition could only
be achieved by real artists. ere is no vacant
place in this crowd and yet, there is air. The
colours, all so different and hardly’ blurred,. -melt i in
the “Tein and “The
Dead, know at what cost! .
Just in front, at the other extremity of the pano-
as
rama, another composition rises this one, rem
t
the ground “ to th he canvas. But,
different in tone and mesning | It is but purity oof
lines, solitude and meditatio one
Dead See the
perfect order of this architecture, these w
ing a half circle with a lane betvee:
at their summit with a light cross: this grove of
cypresses, the geometrical plan of which you guess,
yonder, with all the shades it brings, a ecorating
waite
LE PANTHEON
tableau of a moving grandeur, and which none but
a familiar Italian landscape painter might be able to
picture for us. See this quadrangulat’ pyram mid,
figures, six soldiers, carrying a
coffin at arm's length. Admire the beauty of these
stones, of the garlands of roses discreetly decking
the pilasters set from part to. par
white wall, on the right and on the left.
your eyes in the reflection of this fine and accurate
mauve hue, falling from the sky over the steps,
i he stones,
e
choose the morning light
for his work ; hepainted the richest time, the beginn-
w hen the disassembled colours
at’ the same tim away as
a caravan, Tingering here and there. for us to believe
that night is not yet victorious.
rom this monument to the Dead to the triumphal
stairs, the immense canvas linking both compositions
is divided into two unequal s
Down, along the right hhemic
left one, the Nations, allied t
represented, y
le then, along the
You see England and no doubt the Scotch and
een for gotten ~ with
wih her
a huge
Hindoo unifor; ave not
this little Mie, Cava alone luminous,
eyes lifted up above th
white marble pylon, showing that the masters who
ompos.
of colours; they too have been looking for something
above men!—, Belgiumwith theking, the queen, the
princes, Cardinal Mercier, the ministers who asso-
ciated their names to one of the noblest royal acts
in the history of the world;— Italy, Portugal,
China, South America, ihe United-States.— What
an exact comprehensio merica in the double
portrait of “President Ww. ‘Ison and of General Pershing
— Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, with her women
at arms mixed with t soldiers, —
an
Russia,’ Roumania, ending this filing of the nations .
. revolted | against the haughty and Pagan, o}
place, once more near the crouped
r o pass before our French
and Gorguet
anding at the corner of the
victorious regimen
know and hail the one who foresaw the war and
DE LA GUERRE
lifted up our hearts towards hope, having lived
in his mind’s eye the days we now through,
d who tried se hard to prepare us for ther
Paul Devore de
Abo e the two o hemic ycles, is the Trench country,
country invented or ied :.it is the
prodigeous battlefield tram Calais te Belfort.
When the visitor comes up the sloping grou
the war Pantheon, where we ‘sce this landscape,
He feels the wonder and emotion ofa traveller sett-
g his foot on the top of a mountain and discover-
ing. to infinity. the lowered relicf and the colour of
the earth. Allis wonderfully pictured : the fields,
the roads with their slopes and winding the rivers,
the hills or mountains, separating the waters, the
villages, set as they really are, on a
ow, Remarkable painters of the
» first rate documents and still
no other part of this work proved m more diet and
at fhe success of this attemptis a complete o
e sky above is equally fine, nat quite clear, but
dicta by long clouds whose s lustre and
gathering owing to the light and wind have been
finely observed.
eneral, who fought in all the regions of this
huge relief map, after gazing at the different sectors
which he knew so well said : it
And one of our great aviators,
landscape, judged the same and exclaimed
thought I was the only one, or nearly so, having
seen all these things!
No doubt, it is not si
is real, they fod it out in lke present or start it from
he vithout our onderstanding how. For,
they u ally are not lea and do not trouble
shape,
ers, musicians, ose masters
through Fairyland, received a marvellous gift: They
see and hear better the secret of this w: orld.
Those w have conceived the idea of the
Pantheon of the war, all those who have
accurate landscapes
of our earth and sky, shoul 1 be thanked for having -
so nobly used, for the service and glory of France,
their clear comprehension of things, their talent in
paintig them and so great a heart which gives them
anew
Rexé: BAZIN
de VAcademie Francaise.
True artists invent what
Tie
coer