Consequently there are other artists who have more accurately rendered the colour of this African land: there are, for instance, Guillaumet and Regnault. With a somewhat austere, yet precise, touch, after the fashion of an extremely well-informed commentator rather than a deeply moved poet, Guillaumet shows us, in all their picturesque authenticity, the history and architecture of buildings ravaged by the sun, and outlined against them the stately silhouettes of Arabs to whom silence appears to be a sort of religious rite. Yet the sublime poetry of the desert has also touched his painter’s heart in _The Evening Meal_, now in the collection in the Luxembourg; the thin blue smoke, melting away into the calm atmosphere, is typical of the immobility of the Sahara, the sullen oppressiveness of daytime amid the sands. Henri Regnault, in works that are scarcely more than sketches and have never been exhibited, transcribed, with all the ardour of his age, during too brief a sojourn in Morocco, the symphony of divine colours which exhales from the soil of Africa and from its sky, that burns like living coals. Fromentin did not always dare to undertake to paint his own conceptions. His timidity is betrayed by the very modesty of his canvases, which scarcely exceed two yards. Nevertheless, the painter whom he loved the most was Rubens: Rubens, the prodigal dispenser of light, who poured his inexhaustible and gorgeous imaginings, like the waters of a mighty river, over canvases without number. Fromentin did not find it easy to give forth the treasures of his brain, excepting through the medium of writing. He delighted in sumptuousness, and he found it in Rubens, whom he eulogized, in his _Masters of Yesterday_, in a truly lyric strain. He did not understand Rembrandt and despaired of ever understanding him. He studied him constantly, with a sort of impatience, striving to glimpse, through his veils of half-shadows, the spirit of a genius who was too alien in nature, country, and race. [Illustration: PLATE VIII.--A HALT AT AN OASIS (Musée du Louvre) The weary caravan has halted, tempted by the verdure of the oasis. Faithful to his manner, Fromentin has taken advantage of this picturesque scene to throw a harmony of colour and light over the men and their surroundings. In all its simplicity, this picture is one of its author’s happiest efforts, because of the impression of life which emanates from this group, relatively so few in number.]