Delacroix.
Corot.
Millet.
Daubigny.
Courbet.
Daumier.
Decamps.
Manet.
Degas.

Among these Turner stands out conspicuously from the rest, and he would
be included by anyone in a list of twenty, or perhaps a dozen, of the
greatest painters in the world. But oddly enough his influence on the
art in general has been comparatively small, if we are to judge by its
effects on other painters up to the present, while that of Constable has
been considerably greater. Manet, again, and Delacroix, have
accomplished far more for the history of painting than any other two in
our lists--and yet their names are scarcely known outside the circle of
those who know anything at all about painting.

For the English public at large an entirely different list would
probably prove the superiority of their own race to their complete
satisfaction--in spite of Meissonier, Dore, and Bouguereau on the other
side. But that is only because the British public, owing to the
monopoly

[Illustration: PLATE XLIV.--JACQUES LOUIS DAVID

PORTRAIT OF MME. RECAMIER

_Louvre, Paris_]

enjoyed by the Royal Academy, have never had a chance of judging for
themselves what they approve of and what they do not, and their taste
has been vitiated for generations by the exhibition of what this
self-constituted authority, no doubt unconsciously, conceives to be best
for them--and which, as might be expected, is usually found to coincide
pretty nearly with the sort of thing they are capable of producing
themselves. Hogarth's predictions at the time the Academy was instituted
have in a great measure come perfectly true, and the only benefit that
it has been to the English School of painting is that it has kept it
going. How far this may be called a benefit is at least arguable, but in
the main it is probable that if so many bad pictures had not been
painted, there would not have been so many good ones. On the other hand,
the removal of a man like Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema from his native
sphere of influence is quite enough to account for the unlooked-for
flowering of blossoms like the brothers Maris, Bosboom, Israels, and
Mauve in the Dutch garden, and if that is so, one need not grudge him
his interment amongst Nelson, Wellington, and other heroes of our own.

In a word, the history of painting in the nineteenth century is Revolt.
What it is going to be in the twentieth I am fortunately not called upon
to say; but if I may throw out an opinion based upon wh