M.
Benjamin-Constant's artificially conceived seraglio scenes are as
realistically rendered as is indicated by a recent caricature depicting
an astonished sneak-thief, foiled in an attempted rape of the jewels in
a sultana's diadem, painted with such deceptive illusoriness by M.
Benjamin-Constant's clever brush. The military painters, Detaille, De
Neuville, Berne-Bellecour, do not differ from Vernet more by painting
incidents instead of phases of warfare, by substituting the touch of
dramatic _genre_ for epic conceptions, than they do by the scrupulously
naturalistic rendering that in them supplants the old academic
symbolism. Their dragoons and _fantassins_ are not merely more real in
what they do, but in how they look. Vernet's look like tin soldiers by
comparison; certainly like soldiers _de convenance_. Aime Morot
evidently used instantaneous photography, and his magnificent cavalry
charges suggest not only carnage, but Muybridge as well.
The great portrait-painters of the day--Carolus-Duran, Bonnat,
Ribot--are realists to the core.
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