In a competition, Balzac's blasts of vanity
would beat the Archangel Michael's last trump for loudness.
Horace Vernet, he asserted, would never be a great painter. He was a
colourist; he knew how to design and compose, had technical skill,
and, now and again, found sentiment, but did not understand how to
combine these talents in his pictures. He was clever, but had no
genius. His _alter ego_ was Delaroche, to whom he gave his daughter in
marriage. Of the other painters, Boulanger, Delacroix, Ingres,
Decamps, Jules Dupre were his favourites--true artists, he deemed
them. At the _Salon_ he saw hardly anything to please him besides a
canvas by Meissonier and Cogniet's _Tintoretto painting his Dead
Daughter_. He would have liked to see Boulanger's _Death of
Messalina_, but the _Salon_ Committee had refused it.
In music his preferences were as eclectic as in pictures. Liszt, whom
he thought ridiculous as a man, he considered superb as a musician
--the Paganini of the piano, yet inferior to Chopin, since he had not
the genius of composition. And, in singing, Rubini was his idol
--Rubini who triumphed in the role of Othello, giving the suspicion
_air_ in a manner no one could equal.
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