Contemporary with the fighters in the great battle between the Romanticists and the Classicists were a group of able painters who were not connected with either of these main currents of artistic thought, but drew their inspiration from the Dutch genre painters. _The Arrival of a Diligence at the Messageries_ (No. 28), by Louis Leopold Boilly (1761-1845), and _The Interior of a Kitchen_ (No. 261), by Martin Drolling (1752-1817), may be quoted as characteristic instances of these “small masters” without possessing the luminosity of their Dutch exemplars. DECAMPS Something of the precious quality of pigment and of the luminosity of these Dutchmen is to be found in the genre pictures of Alexandre Gabriel Decamps (1803-1860), of which a large number form part of the Thomy Thiéry Bequest—notably _The Knife-Grinder_ (No. 2831) and _The Gipsy Encampment_ (No. 2833). Decamps owes his historical importance to his position as the head of the Orientalists. Unlike his contemporary explorer of the East for pictorial purposes, Delacroix, he found the facts of Eastern life, scenery, and customs sufficiently attractive to be satisfied with the realistic statement of his visual impressions, instead of making them the basis for the invention of romantic incidents. Yet the _Street in Smyrna_ (No. 2827) and similar works are by no means of merely topographic interest, for Decamps was a great painter to whom pigment yielded beauty independent of the subject represented. _The Rat retired from the World_ (No. 2834) vies in quality with the still-life pictures of Chardin. Decamps was also the greatest animal painter of his time, as may be gathered from his _Chevaux de halage_ (No. 204), _The Bull-Dog and Scotch Terrier_ (No. 206), and the precious little genre piece, _The Kennel-Boy_ (No. 2838). THE ORIENTALISTS Brought up in the tradition of the Classicist school, Prosper Marilhat (1811-1847) only “formed himself” when the world of colour was discovered to him under the glowing sky of the Holy Land and Egypt, where he painted _The Mosque of the Khalif Hakem, at Cairo_ (No. 615). Another Orientalist of great distinction, who, after being a favourite pupil of Ingres, became attracted by the fiery romanticism of Delacroix, was the Creole Théodore Chassériau (1819-1856). His works at the Louvre illustrate the earlier better than the later phase of his art. Chassériau was still entirely under the spell of Ingres when he painted, in 1844, the decoration of the Cour des Comptes, which building was destroyed under the Commune. _Peace_ (No. 121A) is a fragment of this important decorative work, which may be said to constitute a link between Ingres and Puvis de Chavannes. _The Chaste Susannah_ (No. 121) and the _Portrait of Father Lacordaire, Dominican Preacher_ (No. 121B), are again clear evidence of Ingres’s influence upon Chassériau at the beginning of his brief career.