Corot did not belong to the forestmen of Barbizon, but he was the founder of their religion of light. Th. Rousseau shares with him the silkiness, and approaches him in the down-like delicacy of his young foliage. Daubigny has more temperament; he is sturdier, more manly, perhaps I should say: more like a peasant. What raises him to the rank of master is the depth of his pictures, and his gift of working out his subjects in almost stereoscopic relief, in all planes—in the fore-, middle-, and background. His “Skiff” is, therefore, an excellent example. The mast of the vessel stands absolutely free. We see how air is encompassing it on all sides. Dupré shares in equal degree the praise of his two friends. That is not quite just, for he has by no means so much personality as they. He does not feel originally, but imitatively. Nature moves him first through the eyes of his companions in art. He imitates alternately the softness of Corot’s foliage and his silvery mistiness, Rousseau’s smoothness and insinuating harmony of colour, and Daubigny’s tree-poetry, but I look in vain for the feature that distinguishes him from the others. The delicate, and at the same time reverential love with which the Barbizon-men treat the individual tree, Troyon expends on domestic animals. As to the former the tree, so long as it does not melt in the haze of distance, is never merely part of the scheme, but a distinct, living being, possessing a physiognomy of its own, of which they render a strongly individualised likeness; so the latter regards animals with the understanding of a shepherd, who is known to recognise by their countenances all the sheep of a numerous flock. He will correctly depict the physiognomy of animals, without any propensity to giving them the look of human beings, through which animal painters only too easily become, without intending it, comic.