Baschet.
DECAMPS.COMING OUT FROM A TURKISH SCHOOL.
(By permission of Mme. Moreau-Nélaton, the owner of the picture.)

Cassell & Co.
DECAMPS.THE WATERING PLACE.

Afterwards, when naturalism was at its zenith, Fromentin was much attacked for this wayward grace. He was accused of making a superficial appeal to the eye, and of offering everything except truth. And for its substantive fidelity Fromentin’s “East” cannot certainly be taken very seriously. He was a man of fine culture, and in his youth he had studied the old Dutch masters more than nature; he even saw the light of the East through the Dutch chiaroscuro. His pictures are subtle works of art, nervous in drawing and dazzling in brilliancy of construction, but they are washed in rather than painted, and stained rather than coloured. In his book he speaks himself of the cool, grey shadows of the East. But in his pictures they turn to a reddish hue or to brown. An effort after beauty of tone in many ways weakened his Arab scenes. He looked at the people of the East too much with the eyes of a Parisian. And the more his recollections faded, the more did he begin to create for himself an imaginary Africa. He painted grey skies simply because he was tired of blue; he tinted white horses with rosy reflections, chestnuts with lilac, and dappled-greys with violet. The grace of his works became more and more an affair of affectation, until at last, instead of being Oriental pictures, they became Parisian fancy goods, which merely recalled the fact that Algiers had become a French town.

MARILHAT.A HALT.

But after all what does it matter whether pictures of the East are true to nature or not? Other people whose names are not Fromentin can provide such documents. In his works Fromentin has expressed himself, and that is enough. Take up his first book, L’été dans la Sahara: by its grace of style it claims a place in French literature. Or read his classic masterpiece, Les maîtres d’autrefois, published in 1876 after a tour through Belgium and Holland: it will remain for ever one of the finest works ever written on art. A connoisseur of such refinement, a critic who gauged the artistic works of Belgium and Holland with such subtlety, necessarily became in his own painting an epicure of beautiful tones. This man, who never made an awkward movement nor uttered a brutal word, this sensitive, distinguished spirit could be no more than a subtle artist who had eyes for nothing but the aristocratic side of Eastern life. As a painter, however, he might wish to be true to nature; he could be no more than this. His art, compact of grace and distinction, was the outcome of his own nature. He is a descendant of those delicately feminine, seductively brilliant, facile and spontaneous, sparkling and charming painters who were known in the eighteenth century as peintres des fêtes galantes. He is the Watteau of the East, and in this capacity one of the most winning and captivating products of French art.

E. FROMENTIN.ARABIAN FALCONERS.

Finally, Guillaumet, the youngest and last of the group, found in the East peace: a scion of the Romanticists, there is none the less a whole world of difference between him and them. While the Romanticists, as sons of a flaccid, inactive period, lashed themselves into enthusiasm for the passion and wild life of the East, Guillaumet, the child of a hurried and neurotic epoch, sought here an opiate for his nerves. Where they saw contrasts he found harmony; and he did not find it, like Fromentin, in what is understood as chic. Manet’s conception of colour had taught him that nature is everywhere in accord and harmoniously delicate.

He writes: “Je commence à distinguer quelques formes: des silhouettes indécises bougent le long des murs enfumés sous des poutres luisantes de sui. Les détails sortent du demi-jour, s’animent graduellement avec la magie des Rembrandt. Même mystère des ombres, mêmes ors dans les reflets—c’est l’aube.... Des terrains poudreux inondés de soleil; un amoncellement de murailles grises sous un ciel sans nuage; une cité somnolente baignée d’une lumière égale, et dans le frémissement visible des atomes aériens quelques ombres venant ça et là détacher une forme, accuser un geste parmi les groupes en burnous qui se meuvent sur les places ... tel m’apparait le ksar, vers dix heures du matin....