nstitutes the secret of all beautiful works. It has
taken up again a tradition and added to it a contemporary page. It will
have to be thanked for an important series of observations as regards
the analysis of light, and for an absolutely original conception of
drawing. Some years have been wasted by painters of little worth in
imitating it, and the Salons, formerly encumbered with academic
_pastiches_, have been encumbered with Impressionist _pastiches_. It
would be unfair to blame the Impressionists for it. They have shown by
their very career that they hated teaching and would never pretend to
teach. Impressionism is based upon irrefutable optic laws, but it is
neither a style, nor a method, likely ever to become a formula in its
turn. One may call upon this art for examples, but not for receipts. On
the contrary, its best teaching has been to encourage artists to become
absolutely independent and to search ardently for their own
individuality. It marks the decline of the School, and will not create a
new one which would soon become as fastidious as the other. It will only
appear, to those who will thoroughly understand it, as a precious
repertory of notes, and the young generation honours it intelligently by
not imitating it with servility.

Not that it is without its faults! It has been said, to belittle it,
that it only had the value of an interesting attempt, having only been
able to indicate some excellent intentions, without creating anything
perfect. This is inexact. It is absolutely evident, that Manet, Monet,
Renoir and Degas have signed some masterpieces which did not lose by
comparison with those in the Louvre, and the same might even be said of
their less illustrious friends. But it is also evident that the time
spent on research as well as on agitation and enervating controversies
pursued during twenty-five years, has been taken from men who could
otherwise have done better still. There has been a disparity between
Realism and the technique of Impressionism. Its realistic origin has
sometimes made it vulgar. It has often treated indifferent subjects in a
grand style, and it has too easily beheld life from the anecdotal side.
It has lacked psychologic synthesis (if we except Degas). It has too
willingly denied all that exists hidden under the apparent reality of
the universe and has affected to separate painting from the ideologic
faculties which rule over all art. Hatred of academic allegory,
defiance of