, that this movement has
had the greatest influence on modern illustration, sometimes through its
colouring, sometimes simply through the great freedom of its ideas. Some
have found in it a direct lesson, others an example to be followed.
Some have met in it technical methods which pleased them, others have
only taken some suggestions from it. That is the case, for instance,
with Legrand, with Steinlen, and with Renouard; and it is also the case
with the lithographer Odilon Redon, who applies the values of Manet and,
in his strange pastels, the harmonies of Degas and Renoir, placing them
at the service of dreams and hallucinations and of a symbolism which is
absolutely removed from the realism of these painters. It is, finally,
the case with the water-colour painter Henri Riviere, who is misjudged
as to his merit, and who is one of the most perfect of those who have
applied Impressionist ideas to decorative engraving. He has realised
images in colours destined to decorate inexpensively the rooms of the
people and recalling the grand aspects of landscapes with a broad
simplification which is derived, curiously enough, from Puvis de
Chavannes's large decorative landscapes and from the small and precise
colour prints of Japan. Riviere, who is a skilful and personal poetic
landscapist, is not exactly an Impressionist, in so far as he does not
divide the tones, but rather blends them in subtle mixtures in the
manner of the Japanese. Yet, seeing his work, one cannot help thinking
of all the surprise and freedom introduced into modern art by
Impressionism.

Everybody, even the ignorant, can perceive, on looking through an
illustrated paper or a modern volume, that thirty years ago this manner
of placing the figures, of noting familiar gestures, and of seizing
fugitive life with spirit and clearness was unknown. This mass of
engravings and of sketches resembles in no way what had been seen
formerly. They no longer have the solemn air of classic composition, by
which the drawings had been affected. A current of bold spontaneity has
passed through here. In modern English illustration, it can be stated
indisputably that nothing would be such as it can now be seen, if
Morris, Rossetti and Crane had not imposed their vision, and yet many
talented Englishmen resemble these initiators only very remotely. It is
exactly in this sense that we shall have credited Impressionism with the
talents who have drawn their inspiration less from it