And it has not, on
the other hand, the interest of reality--that faithful and enthusiastic
rendering of the external world which gives importance to and fixes the
character of the French painting of the present day.
Had Regnault lived, he would have more adequately--or should I say more
plausibly?--marked the transition from romanticism to realism.
Temperamentally he was clearly a thorough romanticist--far more so, for
instance, than his friend Fortuny, whose intellectual reserve is always
conspicuous. He essayed the most vehement kind of subjects, even in the
classical field, where he treated them with truly romantic truculence.
He was himself always, moreover, and ideally cared as little for nature
as a fairy-story teller. In this sense he was more romantic than the
romanticists. His "Automedon," his portrait of General Prim, even his
"Salome," are wilful in a degree that is either superb or superficial,
as one looks at them; but at any rate they are romantic _a outrance_. At
the same time it was unmistakably the aspect of things rather than their
significance, rather than his view of them, that appealed to him.
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