Illusions. It represents a poet seated on the bank of a river, with drooping head and wearied frame, letting his lyre slip from a careless hand, and gazing sadly at a bright company of maidens whose song is slowly dying from his ear as their boat is borne slowly from his sight. In spite of the success which attended these first ventures, Gleyre retired from public competition, and spent the rest of his life in quiet devotion to his own artistic ideals, neither seeking the easy applause of the crowd, nor turning his art into a means of aggrandizement and wealth. After 1815, when he exhib- ited the Separation of the Apostles, he contributed nothing to the Salon except the Danse of the Bacchantes in 1849. And yet helaboured steadily and was abundantly productive. He had an “infinite capacity of taking pains,” and when asked by what method he attained to such marvellous per- fection of workmanship, he would reply, “En y pensant toujours.” A long series of years often intervened between the first conception of a piece and its embodiment, and years not unfrequently between the first and the final stage of the emboliment itself. A landscape was apparently finished; even his fellow artists would consider it done; Gleyre alone was conscious that he had not “found his sky.” 11 rppily for French art this high-toned laboriousness became influential on a large number of Gleyre’s younger contemporaries ; for when Delaroche gave up his studio of instruction he recommended his pupils to apply to Gleyre, who at once agreed to give them lessons twice a week, and cluracteristically refused to take any fee or reward. By instinct and principle he was a confirmed celibate: “ F or- tune, talent, health,-—hc had everything ; but he was mirried,” was his lamentation over a friend. Though he lived in almost complete retirement from public life, he took a keen interest in politics, and was a voracious reader of political journals. For a time, indeed, under Louis Philippe, his studio had been the rendezvous of a sort of liberal club. To the last—amid all the disasters that befell his country—«he was hopeful of the future, “ 1a raison finira bien par avoir raison." It was while on a visit to the Retrospective Exhibition, opened on behalf of the exiles t'rotn Alsace and Lorraine, that he suddenly dropped down and expired May 5, 1871. He left unfinished the Earthly Paralise, a noble picture, which Taine has described as “ a dream of innocence, of happiness, and of beauty—Adam and Eve standing in the sublime and joyous landscape of a paradise enclosed in mountains,” a worthy counterpart to the Evening. Among the other productions of his genius are the Deluge, which represents two angels speeding above the desolate earth, from which the destroying waters have just begun to retire, leaving visible behind them the ruin they have wrought; the Battle of the Lemanus, a piece of elaborate design, crowded but not cumbered with figures, and giving fine expression to the movements of the various bands of combatants and fugitives; the Prodigal Son, in which the artist has ventured to add to the parable the new element of mother’s love, greeting the repentant youth with a welcome that shows that the mother’s heart thinks less of the re )cntance than of the return; Ruth and Boaz ; Ulysses and Nausicaa ; Hercules at the feet of Omphale ; the Young Athenian, or, as it is popularly called, Sappho ; Minerva and the Nymphs; Venus Tl'dVBflllLOS; Daphnis and Chloe; and Love and the Parcae. Nor must it be omitted that he left a considerable number of drawings and water-colours, and that we are indebted to him for a number of portraits, among which is the sad face of Heine, engraved in the Revue (les Deux .llomlcs for April 185'2. In Clément’s catalogue of his works there are 683 entries, including sketches and studies. Gleyre is in great favour in Switzerland ; and a special exhibition of his works was held at Lausanne in the Arland Museum,
August and September 1874.
Sec Fritz Berthoud in Bibliot/u‘quc Uuivcrsclla dc Geneva, 1874 ; Albert dc Montct, Diet. Biographiqzw dcs Gcncvoz's ct drs Vaudois, 1877; and Vic dc Charles Glcyrc, 1877, written by his friend, Charles Clement, and illustrated by 30 plates from his works.
GLINKA, Fedor Nikolaevich (1788–1849), a Russian poet and author, was born at Smolensk in 1788, and was specially educated for the army. In 1803 he obtained a commission as an officer, aml two years later took part in the Austrian campaign. His tastes for literary pursuits, however, soon induced him to leave the service, whereupon he withdrew to his estates in the government of Smolensk, aml subsequently devoted most of his time to study or travelling about Russia. Upon the invasion of the French in 1812, he re-entcrcd the Russian army, and remained in active service until the end of the campaign in 1814. Upon the elevation of Count Milarodovich to the military governorship of St Petersburg, Glinka was appointed colonel under his command. On account of his suspected revolutionary tendencies he was, in 1826, banished to Pctrozavodsk, but he nevertheless retained his honorary post of president of the Society of the Friends of Russian Literature, and was after a time allowed to return to St Petersburg. Soon afterwards he retired completely from public life, and died on his estates in 1849.
Glinka's martial songs have special reference to the Russian military campaigns of his time. He is known also as the author of the descriptive poem Ii'arcliya, 8:0. (Cm'clia, or the Captivity of film-the Jmnwrua), 1830, aml of a metrical paraphrase of the book of Job. Ilis fame as a military author is chiefly due to his Pisma. Russia/go 0.17123: ra (Lrttrrs of a Russian Ofliccr), 8 vols, 181546.
brated Russian composer, was born at Novospassky, a village in the Smolensk government, in 1804, and not, as stated generally in the dictionaries, in 1803. His early life he spent at home, but at the age of thirteen we find him at the Blagorodrey Pension, St Petersburg, where he studied music under Carl Meier and John Field, the celebrated Irish composer and pianist, settled in Russia. “’e are told that in his seventeenth year he had already begun to compose romances and other minor vocal pieces; but of these n0- thing now is known. His thorm gh musical training (lid not begin till the year 1830, when he went abroad and stayed for three years in Italy, to study the works of old and modern Italian masters. His thorough knowledge of the requirements of the voice may be connected with this course of study. His training as a composer was finished under Dehn, the celebrated contrapuntist, with whom Glinka stayed for several months at Berlin. In 1833 he returned to Russia, and devoted himself to operatic composition. On November 27, 1836, took place the first representation of his Lifefor the Czar. This was the turning point in Glinka’s life,—for the work was not only a great success, but in a manner became the origin and basis of a Russian school of national music. Subject and music combined to bring about this issue. The story is taken from the invasion of Russia by the Poles early in the 17th century, and the hero is a peasant who sacrifices his life for the czar. Glinka has wedded this patriotic theme to inspiring and in some places admirable music. His melodies, moreover, show distinct affinity to the popular songs of the Russians, and for that reason the term “national” maybe justly applied to them. His appointment as imperial chapel—master and conductor of the opera of St Petersburg was the just reward of his dram- atic successes. His second opera, Ifusslun and Lymlmila, founded on Poushkin’s poem, did not appear till 1842; but in the meantime he wrote an overture and four entre-actes to Kukolnik’s drama Prince A'lzolmsl‘y. In 1844 he went abroad for a second time, and lived chiefly in Paris and Spain. On his return to St Petersburg he wrote and arranged several pieces for the orchestra, amongst which the
so-called Kamarz'ns/rag/a has achieved pepularity beyond the