he painter to express any.
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. It is his
whole point of view. His Africa is that of the critic, the
_litterateur_, the _raffine_. Guillaumet's is Africa itself. You feel
before Guillaumet's Luxembourg canvases, as in looking over the
slightest of his vivid memoranda, that you are getting in an acute and
concentrated form the sensations which the actual scenes and types
rendered by the painter would stimulate in you, supposing, of course,
that you were sufficiently sensitive. Fromentin, in comparison, is
occupied in picture-making--giving you a beautifully colored and highly
intelligent pictorial report as against Guillaumet's actual
reproduction. There is no question as to which of the two painters has
the greater personal interest; but it is just as certain that for
abiding value and enduring charm personal interest must either be
extremely great or else yield to the interest inherent in the material
dealt with, an interest that Guillaumet brings out with a felicity and a
puissance that are wholly extraordinary, and that nowadays meet with a
readier and more sympathetic recognition that even such delicate
personal charm as that of Fromentin.

IV

So thoroughly has the spirit of realism fastened upon the artistic
effort of the present that temperament