And now we return to the Champs-Elysées in order to look at some pictures and admire a beautiful bridge. For the Avenue Alexandre III., as for the Pont Alexandre III., Paris is indebted to the 1900 Exhibition. These are her permanent gains, and very valuable they are. Of the two white palaces on either side of this green and spacious Avenue, that on the right, as we face the golden dome of the Invalides, is the home of the Salon and of various exhibitions. I say Salon, but Paris now has many Salons, two of which, in more or less amicable rivalry, occupy this building at the same time. In one, the Salon proper, the Salon of the old guard, the Royal Academicians of France, there are miles of paint but few experiments; in the other, where the more independent spirits--the New Englishers, so to speak--hang their works in personal groups, there are fewer miles but more outrages. For outrages, however, pure and simple (or even impure and complex), I recommend the Salon that is now held in the early spring in some of the old Exhibition buildings on the banks of the river, close to the Pont d'Alexandre III. I have seen pictures there--nudities, in the manner of Aztec decorations, by the youngest French artists of the moment--which made one want to scream. It was said once that the French knew how to paint but not what to paint, and the English what to paint but not how to paint it. Since then there has been such a fusing of nationalities, such increased and humble appreciation on the part of the English painters of the best French methods, that one can no longer talk in that kind of cast-iron epigram; but it is impossible to see some of the crude innovating work now being done without the reflection that France is rapidly and successfully creating a school of artists who not only know not what to paint but how to paint too.
The Palais des Beaux-Arts, which was built for the collection of pictures at the Exhibition of 1900, is now a permanent gallery for the preservation of the various works of art acquired from time to time by the municipality of Paris, thus differing from the Luxembourg collections, which are national. The Palais has become a kind of brother of the Carnavalet, the one being the historical museum of Paris and the other--the Palais--the artistic museum of Paris. The Palais undoubtedly contains much that is not of the highest quality, but no one who is interested in modern French painting and drawing can afford to neglect it, while the recent acquisition of the Collection Dutuit, consisting chiefly of small but choice pictures of the Dutch masters, including a picture of Rembrandt with his dog, from his own hand, has added a rather necessary touch of antiquity.