He was
farther away from the classic inspiration than any other romanticist of
his fellows; and at the same time he cared for the external world more
on its own account and less for its suggestions, than any painter of
equal force before Courbet and Bastien-Lepage. The very fact that he was
not, intellectually speaking, wholly _dans son assiette_, as the French
say, shows that he was a genius of a transitional moment. One's final
thought of him is that he died young, and one thinks so not so much
because of the dramatic tragedy of his taking off by possibly the last
Prussian bullet fired in the war of 1870-71, as because of the
essentially experimental character of his painting. Undoubtedly he would
have done great things. And undoubtedly they would have been different
from those that he did; probably in the direction--already indicated in
his most dignified performance--of giving more consistency, more vivid
definiteness, more reality, even, to his already striking conceptions.
III
REALISTIC PAINTING
I
To an intelligence fully and acutely alive, its own time must, I think,
be more interesting than any other.
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