Émile Friant painted portraits and scenes of the French countryside.  He
had, to me, a decidedly cinematic eye — his genre paintings are not
sentimentalized and they have a bold, dynamic quality based on spatial
compositions of great though subtle power.  They remind me of Bertolucci’s
images in 1900.

The painting above uses a technique Tissot was fond of — creating a
space in the foreground that instantly occupies one’s attention but
which also opens up into a deep space beyond.  Spaces opening up
into deeper spaces instantly summon up the idea of movement, of the
potential for movement — they almost produce a sensation of movement.  This
and their photorealistic quality are what to me give them a cinematic
quality.

Friant was a late Victorian — he lived until 1932, well into the era
of the Impressionist triumph.  Like John Singer Sargent he
borrowed a freer approach to brushwork from the Impressionists while
remaining true to the basic aesthetic ideals of the Victorian academy.