Nature and Art, Oetob.r 1, 1866.] 
ART IN THE FOREST. 
153 
ART IN THE FOREST. 
By G. W. Yapp. 
I T is said of French artists, that they study human 
nature at the cafe and the theatre, look at the 
world from the window of a fifth or sixth floor, go 
to the Jardin des Plantes for their lions and tigers, 
and draw their landscapes from the depths of their 
own imaginations. It is true that many of those 
in Paris indulge in too much chamber practice and 
take nature far too readily at second hand, but 
there are many exceptions. All French artists 
are not Parisians : there are hundreds of modest 
studios on the banks of the Loire, the Gironde, and 
the Rhone, where works are produced every year 
for the metropolitan exhibition ; and, amongst 
Parisians, Horace Yernet and many others have 
wisely set up their easels at Versailles and other 
charming localities. Troyon lived and died at 
Sevres, and Hamon paints poetry while looking- 
on the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Artist 
village life, in fact, has of late years become common 
in France. There is a colony at Ecouen, about a 
dozen miles from Paris, and the Forest of Saint 
Germain and other picturesque spots are dotted 
with artists, who find fresh air does not disagree 
with them, or injure their art. But Fontainebleau 
has for a long time been one of the most favoured 
haunts of the painter. It cannot be said that there 
is a Fontainebleau school like that founded, or 
rather commenced — for the continuity was soon 
solved — by Primaticcio, whose few unspoilt works 
are still the glory of the old chateau there; but there 
is a crowd of artists in the famous old forest in the 
summer season, and others, who reside continually in 
or near the town, have their ateliers, in fine weather, 
beneath clumps of noble trees, amidst the warm, 
grey sandstone nestling in moss, fern, and heather, 
and glowing with richly-tinted lichens of a hundred 
kinds. At Barbizon, a village in the outskirts of 
the forest on the Paris side, there is a complete 
artistic colony, and so many of the brethren visit 
the place during the summer, that the walls of the 
Maison Jaune, the only inn in the place, are 
covered everywhere with sketches, some of which 
are works of merit. Rosa Bonheur lives at 
Thomery, a village at the other extremity of the 
forest, famous for its dessert grapes, the renowned 
Chasselas cle Fontainebleau , and there tends with 
sisterly care the cattle which she immortalizes. 
But perhaps the most complete specimen of artist 
village life is to be found at Marlotte, a little place 
which has come into repute within a few years. 
Marlotte is situated at the very edge of the forest, 
and is distant about two miles from the Montigny 
station of the Bourbonnais branch of the Lyons 
railway. It is a clean, stony little place, contain- 
ing about two hundred houses, and five or six 
hundred inhabitants, and the first things likely to 
strike an observant visitor is the abundance of 
grape-vines and the paucity of windows ; in fact, 
the latter seem all to have been turned into the 
courts and gardens, in order to make room for King- 
Vine, who basks in the sun, morning, noon, and 
night, on the front of nearly every house in Mar- 
lotte. The stems of the vines are generally six or 
more feet in height, in order, perhaps, not to lead 
little people into temptation ; and being of all sizes, 
ragged and twisted, present a strange appearance. 
Sometimes they grow within a garden, where their 
roots may be more comfortably accommodated than 
beneath the grey sandstone. But however they 
may be arranged, almost every house, wall, and 
gate, looking- south, east, or west, bears its Baccha- 
nalian banner, and the huge branches of fruit 
generally hang in thick, luxuriant clusters. Such 
was and is still the case this year ; but alas ! — to use 
a venerable figure of speech — such a cold, wet 
August was never known in Marlotte, no ! “not 
in the memory of the oldest inhabitant ! ” In 
many places the berries are shrivelled and dropping 
olf, while in some cases the leaves too have fallen 
and left but a stick behind, and even where the 
damage is least, the grapes, though of good size, will 
be poor and watery. It is always said, in the wine 
districts, that three good vintages never yet came 
in succession, and, according to all appearance, that 
of 1866 will prove a sad contrast to those of the 
two past years, when the vines were loaded with 
luscious fruit, and the difficulty was not to get 
wine, but casks to hold it. 
You may walk through Marlotte from end to 
end in about ten minutes, you may notice a timber- 
yard and a blacksmith’s shop, but for a butcher’s 
or a baker’s, a grocer’s or a linendraper’s, a chemist’s 
or an undertaker’s, you may look from early dawn 
to dewy eve, and find never a one. Still, there is 
no reason for being starved in Marlotte. Milk and 
eggs are abundant ; several dames make a pound 
or so of butter more than they want for their own 
consumption weekly, and you are perfectly welcome 
to it, provided no one else has bespoken it ; fruit 
and vegetables are most plentiful, only they are 
all taken to Fontainebleau, or elsewhere, in the 
middle of the night, which the jolly paysanncs call 
the first thing in the morning ; the bakeress will 
bring your bread from the next village between 
breakfast and dinner-time, unless anything should 
interfere to prevent her ; and you may generally 
get whatever meat you require at the same place, if 
you order it on a certain day, and will walk a mile 
or so across the fields to Bourron to fetch it, unless, 
indeed, you commission the obliging postmaster- 
and-man, as we did, to bring it for you in the basket 
with your letters. To make up for deficiencies in 
one direction, there is a perfect plethora in another : 
if Marlotte is without bread, she has plenty of 
water ; there is a great stone-coverecl well in every 
corner, for everybody’s nse, only in many cases yoir 
