But they have the _bel air_, and belong to the aristocracy
of the painting world. Diaz, especially, has almost invariably the
patrician touch. It lacks the exquisiteness of Monticelli's, in which
there is that curiously elevated detachment from the material and the
real that the Italians--and the Provencal painter's inspiration and
method, as well as his name and lineage, suggest an Italian rather than
a French association--exhibit far oftener than the French. But Diaz has
a larger sweep, a saner method. He is never eccentric, and he has a
dignity that is Iberian, though he is French rather than Spanish on his
aesthetic side, and at times is as conservative as Rousseau--without,
however, reaching Rousseau's lofty simplicity except in an occasional
happy stroke. Both he and Dupre are primarily colorists. Dupre sees
nature through a prism. Diaz's groups of dames and gallants have a
jewel-like aspect; they leave the same impression as a tangle of
ribbons, a bunch of exotic flowers, a heap of gems flung together with
the felicity of haphazard.
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