SOURCE: "Théophile Gautier, Colorist," in The Critic, New York, Vol. XLIII, No. 1, July, 1903, pp. 47-50.

In the following excerpt, Sumichrast underscores the importance of beauty in Gautier's short stories.

In the happy youth of Romanticism, Gautier, like many another enthusiast, madly worshipped those painters in whom the gift of color oft outweighed the sense of form. He was an adorer of the most glowing palettes, and the Venetians on the one hand and Rubens on the other won his constant praise. It so happened that the Museum of the Louvre was well provided with masterpieces of the one and the other school, and there it was that Gautier made his first acquaintance with the beauty and splendor of color that, it must be owned, was sadly lacking in the works of the school of David and his successors.

Then, though he was later on to become one...