"The landscape [in the painting 'The Bathers', 1853, by Courbet is of an extraordinary vigor, but Courbet has done no more than enlarge a study exhibited there, near his large canvas; the conclusion is that the figures [the two bathers in the painting] were put in afterwards and without connection with their surroundings. This brings up the question of harmony between the accessories and the principal object, a thing lacking in the majority of great painters, [15 April 1853]"