"They do not know that all is in all, and that the value of execution in a picture is in just proportion with its conception.
"With great artists, there is a certain choice, an impulse toward a particular beauty which captivates them; like real lovers, they sacrifice every thing to their passion; but, understand it well; sacrifice is not abandonment.
"With great masters, such as Raphael, Poussin, the absence of coloring is a voluntary surrender; besides, they have a coloring peculiar to themselves, and of a superior order. …
"Now, let us turn toward the colorists. Rubens presents himself as their king; but king though he be, he is not the equal of Raphael, who is a veritable angel."
In their compositions, Couture would have his disciples follow nature, and the instincts of their own hearts. He wages war against what he calls dead art, as seen in the works of certain French artists who tried to imitate the Greeks exclusively. As he strongly expresses it, they disinterred a dead body, and galvanized it to give it the appearance of life. He would have the pleasing scenes of common life represented and spiritualized; nature, in her dewy, morning aspect, studied and loved. He says to them: "Be French, be patriotic, be of your own times; create a strong, healthy, modern school; do not imitate the Greeks; become their equals." It must not be thought from this that the antique is not appreciated; on the contrary, the young artist is urged, after he has become comparatively skilled in drawing—not before—to study the antique very seriously, and to take it as the invariable basis of all his works. But what Couture urges principally is originality and truthfulness. While pressing the earnest study of nature, he says:
"Love, that is the great secret; love enlightens. We are often surprised at the tenderness of parents for their children, and at the qualities which they see in them. We think they are mistaken, whereas it is we who are mistaken. …
"Read a book with but little attention; look over the first few pages; skip twenty pages, then forty; hasten to the conclusion at once. What pleasure will you find in such reading? You would certainly not have the audacity to judge of that work; you would surely wait until you were more familiar with it. But now, when, with a good will, you read page by page, the work captivates you, and you leave it only when it is finished; then you say this work is admirable!
"It will be the same with nature, if you read it page by page.
"I do not think I am mistaken when I say that we are on the eve of seeing French high art spring into life. I see guarantees of it in the return of our young artists to nature; they are, if I may so express myself, at the first stage of that road which leads to the highest beauties."