Remote gtk3 app rendering issues

[Daniel Kasak <d j kasak dk gmail com>]

Greetings all. I have a bizarre issue that makes me wonder if I
understand how remote X applications work ...

I'm running Sabayon Linux on my dev laptop. My work has a bunch of
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS servers. When I ssh into a server and run a gtk3 app,
it renders widgets in a horrible 3.1 style, and many icons are
missing.

But if I tar up /usr/share/themes/Ambiance on the server, and dump it
into my ~/.themes on my laptop, the widgets render in the 'Ambiance'
theme - but *only* if I *also* tell my local window manager (
Enlightenment ) to use the Ambiance theme. I usually use the Adwaita
theme. I see that Ubuntu 14.04 LTS doesn't have the Adwaita theme -
maybe it's too old for this?

What's going on here? I thought the X client did all the rendering,
and pushed pixmaps to the ( in this case, remote ) X server. But
clearly resources on my laptop are being used here.

Perhaps I'm approaching things incorrectly? What's the "recommended"
way of running remote ( gtk3 in particular ) apps and having them
render nicely - ie as they would if I was actually on the server I'm
ssh'd in to?

Dan