France Is The Only Nation In Which

The Beautiful Is In Nature, And It Is Encountered Under The Most Diverse Forms Of Reality. Once It Is Found It Belongs To Art, Or Rather To The Artist Who Discovers It.

Beauty Lies In Nature And Reveals, Once The Artist Has Perceived It, Its Own Expressive Power.

The Principle Of Realism Means Denial Of The Ideal.

Painting Is An Essentially Concrete Art And Can Only Consist Of The Representation Of Real And Existing Things.

On The Left Is The Realist Tradition Of The 19th Century, With Its Impulse To Social Description, Radical Criticism And Meditation On Things As They Are... Culminating In Courbet At His Mightiest (the Studio, The Funeral At Ornans And A Portrait Of A Trout That Has More Death In It Than Rubens Could Get In A Whole Crucifixion).