Among the other bigger pictures in this small gallery, a very poetic
Cazin, "The Repentance of Simon Peter," commands attention by a certain
outdoor quality which faintly suggests the Barbizon school. One does not
know what to admire most in this fine canvas. As a figural picture it is
intensely beautiful, and merely as a landscape it is of convincing
charm. It is to my mind one of the finest paintings in the exhibition,
and a constant source of great pleasure.

The big Tissot offers few excuses for having been painted at all. It is
nothing but a big illustration - all it tells could have been said on a
very small canvas. There is no real painting in it, nor composition -
nothing else, for that matter. The two Monticellis on the same wall make
up for the Tissot. Rich in colour and design, the one to the left is
particularly fine. The Van Marcke on the same wall is typical of this
painter's methods, but does not disclose his talent for very interesting
pictorial compositions, for which he was known.

On the opposite wall an older Israels gives lone a good idea of the
earlier period of this great Dutch painter, justly counted as one of the
great figures of the second half of the last century. While of recent
date, his art belongs to the older school - without attaching any odium
to that classification. The Barbizon school, the most important of the
last century, is very fitly represented by two charming and most
delicate Corots on either side of the Israels. The one to the right is
particularly tender and poetic. While by no means an attempt at a
naturalistic impressionistic interpretation of nature, like a modern
Metcalf, for instance, their suggestive power is so great as to overcome
a certain lack of colour by the convincingness of the mood represented.
Daubigny and Rousseau, of that great company of the school of 1825, are