True as his sand-heap is, you feel somehow that there may be a
kitchen-garden or the entrance to a coal-mine on the other side of it,
or a little farther along. And the landscape of the "Judith," fine as
its sweep is, and admirable as are the cool tone and clear distance of
the picture, might really be that of the "south meadow" of some
particular "farm" or other.
The contrast which Guillaumet presents to Fromentin affords a very
striking illustration of the growth of the realistic spirit in recent
years. Fromentin is so admirable a painter that I can hardly fancy any
appreciative person wishing him different. His devoted admirer and
biographer, M. Louis Gonse, admits, and indeed expressly records,
Fromentin's own lament over the insufficiency of his studies. Fond as he
was of horses, for instance, he does not know them as a draughtsman with
the science of such a conventional painter in many other respects as
Schreyer. But it is not in the slightly amateurish nature of his
technical equipment--realized perfectly by himself, of course, as the
first critic of the technic of painting among all who have ventured upon
the subject--that his painting differs from Guillaumet's.
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