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Venus in the Luxembourg hangs the well-known colossal figure of a beautiful nude woman with unnaturally over-developed thighs, which by the shining mirror in its uplifted right hand proclaims itself to be
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Truth. _Jules Lefébure_, the painter of this picture, is also completely a slave to tradition; he came from Cogniet's studio, and won the Prix de Rome in 1861. But he at least possesses more taste, elegance, and character; his painting of the nude is more distinguished, truer, and more powerful. He is in the broader sense of the word a worshipper of nature, and was so in his youth especially. His
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Sleeping Girl of 1865 and his
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Femme couchée of 1868 are smooth and honest studies from the nude, of delicate, sure draughtsmanship, and have therefore not become antiquated even to-day. Unfortunately he did not find this masculine accent again, when at a later time he grouped ideal figures together to make pictures of them. His
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Diana surprised of 1879 was a very clever composition of well-ordered lines, possessing even fine details, especially one or two charming heads, but as a whole it is lifeless and uninteresting. Like Bouguereau, he lacks power, and, notwithstanding his distinction and his capacity for arrangement, he is not painter enough to be truthfully entitled a
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Massacre a couple of excellent touches, but they are isolated phenomena in his work. After 1850 the approved system was to give nude female figures the appearance of being made of terra-cotta, biscuit, or ivory. The forgotten art of painting velvety, soft flesh, and of making it vibrate in light, had to be learned over again, and to this meritorious task _Henner_ devoted himself--the modern Correggio from Alsace, who stands to Cabanel in the same relation as Prudhon to David. Even Henner in his later days has become very much a mannerist, and has done some very bad work. To-day he prefers a heavy, pasty, buttery style of painting, with faces which look as if they had been pickled in oil, and have an unreal expression; his contrasts of light and shade, once so delicate, have become raw and forced. Yet beside Cabanel he still appears the true poet of female flesh-painting, the dreamy graceful depicter of refined sensuality. Prudhon's delicate ideal and his language of vibrating tenderness are revived in Henner. His
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Nymph resting in the Luxembourg has the same soft _morbidezza_, the same delightful mystery, in which Prudhon before him had enveloped the sweetness of smiling faces and the beauty of female forms. He too chose the Lombards as his guides. After winning the Prix de Rome in 1858, he sent to the Salon of 1865 a
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Susanna, which already shows his ability as a flesh-painter and his relationship to Correggio. And a Lombard he has remained all his life. One could with difficulty find a more delicate and smooth study of the nude than his
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Biblis