| (...) Under the pretext of placing the elders near their descendants, - for the fauves claimed the most august kinships, one brings together works of Ingres, Corot, Courbet, Monticelli, Berthe Morizot, who attracted, rightly, the public. In truth, these masters, being dead, could not protest against the abusive use of their work; for by a strange conception, the Salon presented itself as a restorative justice for all the iniquities of yore, and declared all the unknown artists to be its own. This pretension, made for the enthusiasm of the youth, failed to show how wise and scrupulous masters, formerly fought falsely, could have approved the works of Messrs Matisse, Kees van Dongen Friesz, de Vlaminck, Derain, Girieud, Puy, Manguin or Braque, to name but a few, senseless canvases, chaotic, puerile, as bad in their kind as the worst Bouguereau in his; (....) |