The naturalist aesthetic of Taine: Between positivism and idealism

Taine aspired to place his philosophical project in the synthesis of the tw o major theoretical tendencies of the nineteenth century: positivism, on th e one hand, giving preference to the English tradition, and German metaphys ics, mostly Hegelianism, on the other. What does this attempt mean in the f ield of aesthetics? Taine based his interpretation of the production of art on a series of objective laws, following the naturalist method, as he clea rly stated at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris where he taught for several years from January 1864.