It is instructive to look at his "Servant
at the Fountain," reproduced here, compare it with many of the
pictures of familiar life like those of Wilkie, Webster, or Mulready,
published last month, and note the unconsciousness of the work before
us.
The work of a painter equally able, though suffering somewhat as
representing an art with which we moderns have little sympathy, falls
into comparison here, and undoubtedly loses by it. The unfortunate
painter, Octave Tassaert, who was born in Paris in 1800, and lived
there, undergoing constant privation, until he voluntarily ended his
life in 1874, possibly found consolation for his hard lot in depicting
scenes like that entitled "An Unhappy Family."
The lesson of the art of the men considered here is that of direct
inspiration of nature, of reliance on native qualities rather than
those acquired; and the impulse given by them has continued in force
until to day. We have before us, as a consequence, two strongly
defined tendencies which will control the future of painting. The
first and strongest, for the moment, is the impressionistic tendency,
with its negation of any pictorial qualities other than those based on
direct study from objects actually existing. This would, if carried
to a logical conclusion, eliminate the imaginative quality, and render
the painter a human photographic camera.
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