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But it is not just right–the sun is setting in an explosion of yellow, of orange, of rouge-feu, of cherry, of purple.

Ah! it is pretentious, vulgar. Nature wants me to admire her–I will not. I’ll wait–the sylphs of the evening will soon come and sprinkle the thirsty flowers with their vapors of dew.

I like sylphs–I’ll wait.

Boom! The sun sinks out of sight, and leaves behind a tinge of purple, of modest gray touched with topaz–ah! that is better. I paint and I paint and I paint.

Oh, Good Lord, how beautiful it is–how beautiful! The sun has disappeared and left behind a soft, luminous, gauzy tint of lemon– lemons half-ripe. The light melts and blends into the blue of the night.

How beautiful! I must catch that–even now it fades–but I have it: tones of deepening green, pallid turquoise, infinitely fine, delicate, fluid and ethereal.

Night draws on. The dark waters reflect the mysteries of the sky– the landscape fades, vanishes, disappears–we can not see it now, we only feel it is there.

But that is enough for one day–Nature is going to sleep, and so will we, soon. Let us just sit silent a space and enjoy the stillness.

The rising breezes are sighing through the foliage, and the birds, choristers of the flowers, are singing their vesper-songs–calling, some of them, plaintively for their lost mates.

Bing! A star pricks its portrait in the pond.

All around now is darkness and gloom–the crickets have taken up the song where the birds left off.

The little lake is sparkling, a regular ant-heap of twinkling stars.

Reflected things are best–the waters are only to reflect the sky– Nature’s looking-glass.

The sun has gone to rest; the day is done. But the Sun of Art has arisen, and my picture is complete.

Let us go home.

The Barbizon School–which, by the way, was never a school, and if it exists now is not at Barbizon–was made up of five men: Corot, Millet, Rousseau, Diaz and Daubigny.

Corot saw it first–this straggling little village of Barbizon, nestling there at the foot of the Forest of Fontainebleau, thirty- five miles southeast of Paris. This was about the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty. There was no market then for Corot’s wares, and the artist would have doubted the sanity of any one who might have wanted to buy. His income was one dollar a day–and this was enough. If he wanted to go anywhere, he walked; and so he walked into Barbizon one day, his pack on his back, and found there a little inn, so quaint and simple that he stayed two days.

The landlord quite liked the big, jolly stranger. Hanging upon his painting outfit was a mandolin, a harmonica, a guitar and two or three other small musical instruments of nondescript pedigree. The painter made music for the village, and on invitation painted a sketch on the tavern-wall to pay for his board. And this sketch is there even to this day, and is as plain to be seen as the splash of ink on the wall at Eisenach where Martin Luther threw the ink-bottle at the devil.

When Corot went back to Paris he showed sketches of Barbizon and told of the little snuggery, where life was so simple and cheap.

Soon Rousseau and Diaz went down to Barbizon for a week’s stay– later came Daubigny.

In the course of a few years Barbizon grew to be a kind of excursion point for artistic and ragged Bohemians, most of whom have done their work, and their little life is now rounded with a sleep.

Rousseau, Diaz and Daubigny, all younger men than Corot, made comfortable fortunes long before Corot got the speaker’s eye; and when at last recognition came to him, not the least of their claim to greatness was that they had worked with him.

It was not until Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine that Jean Francois Millet with his goodly brood was let down from the stage at Barbizon, to work there for twenty-six years, and give himself and the place immortality. For when we talk of the Barbizon School, we have the low tones of “The Fagot-Gatherer” in mind–the browns, the russets and the deep, dark yellows fading off into the gloom of dying day.