A man of profound culture and rare critical acumen, Eugène Fromentin (1820-1876) was perhaps greater as a critic than as a painter. He, too, travelled repeatedly in Algeria and Egypt, where he found abundant material both for his brush and pen. He did not look upon the East with the curiosity of the traveller, nor did he let the strange land work upon his romantic imagination. His pictures, somewhat timid in technique but marked by great refinement, reveal, on the other hand, a thorough understanding of the sad monotony of the sun-parched desert, and the chivalrous, noble bearing of its Arab inhabitants. His refined talent shows to best advantage in _Hawking in Algeria_ (No. 305). REGNAULT The Orient was by no means the uncontested field of the Romanticists. But the followers of the official school who devoted themselves to the depicting of Eastern life and scenery, approached these subjects in the same spirit of _parti pris_ which robs all their work of real significance—unless, like Henri Regnault (1843-1871) in his famous and often reproduced _Moorish Execution_ (No. 771), they treated them as rank melodrama. Regnault is, however, not to be judged by this overrated piece of sensationalism. Killed in the Franco-German War in 1871 at the early age of twenty-eight, this young painter gave rare promise of brilliant achievement in an altogether unacademic direction in his superb equestrian portrait of _General Prim_ (No. 770). There is something truly heroic in the way the Spanish general sits his horse, arresting its forward movement with a sudden jerk at the reins; but the ruggedness and unkempt appearance of the rider displeased General Prim to such an extent that Regnault, who would not alter the picture, preferred to keep it on his hands. ACADEMIC PAINTERS