FROMENTIN AS A CRITIC
the trip to Belgium and Holland, not knowing whether a book would
come out of it, although urged to write by his friends who had en–
joyed the brilliance of his casual talk on the painters of the past and
knew
his
gifts as a writer. He was certain only that the journey would
not contribute to his
art,
for he felt rightly that his troubles as a
painter were lodged too deep within his personality to be resolved by
new inspirations from the past. But this concentrated, solitary ex–
perience in a foreign land was a powerful reawakening; it stirred
his energies as nothing had done before. The accumulated forces of
a lifetime were suddenly sparked, and in a few months, with an
incredible speed, he wrote out this book which represents his gifts
better than his paintings, refined as these may be.
It
reached a greater
public and provoked controversies that have not yet come to an end.
It won the admiration of Flaubert who saluted Fromentin as a
literary master. On the strength of the book, he posed his candidacy
for the French Academy as a man of letters; he was defeated by a
minor
art
critic who had the bad grace to attack his dead rival a
few months later. Fromentin's writings had brought him no prizes like
his pictures, but his name is more secure through his books.
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