Most artists, besides, do not take sufficient pains to reproduce the true light under which the events they treat have really taken place. Thus, such scenes as are taken up in the just-mentioned pictures—scenes of battles under the intolerably torrid sun of Africa, are being painted by the greyish light of European studios. Of course the sunlight, and the numerous peculiar effects dependent on it, cannot prove successful in such a case, and the effect is lost. Is that realism, then? Certainly not. * * * * * I go further, and assert that in cases where there exists but a bare representation of a fact or of an event without idea, without generalization, there can possibly be found some qualities of realistic execution, but of realism there would be none: of that intelligent realism, I mean, which is built on observation and on facts—in opposition to idealism, which is founded on impressions and affirmations, established _à priori_. Now, can any one bring the reproach against me that there is no idea, no generalization in my works? Hardly. Can any one say that I am careless about the types, about the costumes, about the landscape of the scenes represented by me? That I do not study out beforehand the personages, the surroundings figuring in my works? Hardly so. Can any one say that, with me, any scene, taking place in reality in the broad sunlight, has been painted by studio light—that a scene, taking place under the frosty skies of the North, is reproduced in the warm enclosure of four walls? Hardly so. Consequently, I can claim to be a representative of realism—such realism as requires the most severe manipulating of all the details of creation, and which not only does not exclude an idea, but implies it. That I am not alone in such an estimate of my work, is proved by the following lines, from a correspondent to an American paper,[2] sent from Paris at the time of the last exhibition of my paintings in that city— “The respect shown to certain pictured ideals—the ideals of a painter so foreign to Parisian conventions as Verestchagin—is noted as a pleasing indication of departure from the gross realism that was beginning to obtain in French art. Mr. Dargenty, of the _Courrier de l’Art_, does not consider Verestchagin as a ‘seducing’ painter, but concedes to him knowledge and talent, and declares that for his part he prefers the refinement of an idea to the ‘brutal expression of vulgar realism.’ He hopes for a reaction and believes that the crowd that ‘precipitated’ itself in the exposition of Mr. Verestchagin ‘heralded’ a running victory for the idea.” Still more notable was the judgment of the London _Christian_ of December 2, 1887—a view having all the more interest to me because of the special character of the paper that published it—