Well, Titian was hugely/grotesquely successful in his day, and worked to a formula that appealed to his patrons. Of his time, and surpassing it - a bit like the Beatles, or the Dixie Chicks.
Anyway... this modern trio seems to be of their time and drowning in it (cesspool?).
So what aspects of their time don't they surpass? My guess would be along the lines of Walter Benjamin and Georgie Lukacs. Naturalistic "nostalgie de la boue" with no need for nostalgia - they're in it face down. Unlike Baudelaire, who "takes us to a realm beyond" the sludge. Or, in painting, the Finn Akseli Gallen-Kallela.
(http://www.groningermuseum.nl/uploads/Demasquee.jpg)
That's Sickert and Spencer.
Sargent is the same thing face up. Phosphorescing like the cadaver in Baudelaire's 'Une Charogne'. In Lukacs's take, the Salammbo to Madame Bovary.
All very dialectical - opposite poles trapped in the same magnet. One can't exist without the other. The "greats" make their own magnet, aren't just passive elements of a piece of Zeitgeist iron.
So Germaine's points are just that, and she manages to put em in English, too.
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