Courbet was, as
a painter, a powerful individuality; of more force, however, as a
painter of the superficial envelope than of the deeper qualities which
nature makes pictorial at the bidding of one of finer fibre. His claim
to be considered modern can be contested, inasmuch as it was only in
subject that his work was novel. In manner of painting he was of a
time long past, of a school of greater masters than he showed himself
to be. With this reserve, however, as a vigorous painter, both of the
figure and landscape, he is interesting; and as one of the first to
look about him and find his subjects in our daily life, his work will
live.
Curiously enough, the revival of the art of another epoch in the case
of Saint Bonvin remained absolutely modern. By nature or by choice
this painter (born at Vaugirard, near Paris, in 1817, and dying at
St. Germain-en-Laye in 1887) is a modern Pieter de Hooghe; and as
the Dutch masters addressed themselves to a painstaking and sincere
representation of the life about them, in like manner Bonvin, bringing
to his work much the same qualities, choosing as his subjects quiet
interiors, with the life of the family pursuing its even tenor (or the
still more placid progress of conventual life, like the "Ave Maria
in the Convent of Aramont," in the Luxembourg), remains himself while
resembling his prototypes.
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