When the French Revolutionists undertook to reconstruct the calendar as they did everything else, they rearranged the months on the plan which they called the Republican year. In this new almanac, "Floreal," or the month of flowers, was the eighth in order of succession, and extended from April 20th to May 19th. This is the month which the painter typifies in his nymph basking in a woodland glade on a couch of turf and wild-flowers. Louis Joseph Raphael Collin was born in paris in 1850, and was educated for a profession at the Lyceum Saint Louis and the College of Verdun. Discarding the original purpose of his career, he, in 1869, entered the studio of Bouguereau as a pupil, after which he made a course of study under Cabanel. In 1873 he exhibited his first Salon picture, "Sleep," a magnificent nude which secured him a medal, and is now at the Museum of Rouen. In 1875 another picture of similar character was bought out of the Salon by the Government for the Arras Museum, and in 1877 his "Daphne and Chloe" was also purchased for the Museum of Alencon. He has been a member of the Legion of Honor since 1884. In the hands of Albert Aublet, "The New Moon" becomes a graceful female figure, which forms a crescent in a sky fleeced with clouds, that wreath in vapors above the pale peaks of the legendary Mountains of the Moon. "The Gypsy" of

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Chapter 8 Text

Louis Joseph Raphael Collin