ho otherwise might have become useful
citizens, shoemakers, tailors, policemen, or vice-presidents. For this
reason the phrase "academic" should be more elastic in its meanings.
There are academic painters influenced by Corot or Monticelli, as well
as by David, Gros, or Meissonier. The "academic" Rodin has appeared in
contemporary sculpture; the great Frenchman found for himself his
formula, and the lesser men have appropriated it to their own uses.
This is considered legitimate, though not a high order of art;
however, the second-rate rules in the market-place, let the genius
rage as he will. He must be tamed. He must be softened; his divine
fire shaded by the friendly screens of more prudent, more conventional
talent. Even among men of genius up on the heights it is the
personality of each that enters largely into the equation of their
work. No one can confuse Whistler the etcher with the etcher
Rembrandt; the profounder is the Dutchman. Yet what individuality
there is in the plates of the American! What personality! Now,
Felicien Rops, the Belgian etcher, lithographer, engraver, designer,
and painter, occupies about the same relative position to Honore
Daumier as Whistler does to Rembrandt. How seldom you hear of Rops.
Why? He was a man of genius, one of the greatest etchers and
lithographers of his century, an artist with an intense personal line,
a colossal workman and versatile inventor--why has he been passed over
and inferior men praised?

His pornographic plates cannot be the only reason, because his
representative work is free from licence or suggestion. Giulio
Romano's illustrations to Aretino's sonnets are not held up as the
representative art of this pupil of Raphael, nor are the vulgarities
of Rowlandson, Hogarth, George Morland set against their better
attempts. Collectors treasure the engravings of the eighteenth-century
_editions des fermiers-generaux_ for their capital workmanship, not
for their licentious themes. But Rops is always the Rops of the
Pornocrates! After discussing him with some amateurs you are forced to
realise that it is his plates in which he gives rein to an
unparalleled flow of animal spirits and _gauloiserie_ that are the
more esteemed. Rops the artist, with the big and subtle style, the
etcher of the Sataniques, of Le Pendu, of La Buveuse d'Absinthe and
half a hundred other masterpieces, is set aside for the witty
illustrator, with the humour of a Rabelais and the cynicism of
Cha