It is as easy to
account for their popularity as it is to perceive its transitory
quality. But not only is it a mark of limitation to refuse all interest
to such a work as, for example, M. Cabanel's "Birth of Venus," in the
painting of which a vast deal of technical expertness is enjoyably
evident, and which in every respect of motive and execution is far above
similar things done elsewhere than in France; it is a still greater
error to confound such painters as M. Cabanel and M. Bouguereau with
other painters whose classic temperament has been subjected to the
universal romantic influence equally with theirs, but whose production
is as different from theirs as is that of the thorough and pure
romanticists, the truly poetic painters.
The instinct of simplification is an intelligent and sound one. Its
satisfaction is a necessary preliminary to efficient action of any kind,
and indeed the basis of all fruitful philosophy. But in criticism this
instinct can only be satisfied intelligently and soundly by a
consideration of everything appealing to consideration, and not at all
by heated and wilful, or superior and supercilious, exclusions.
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