ant position in the French School. He is the
most original painter of the second half of the nineteenth century, the
one who has really created a great movement. His work, the fecundity of
which is astonishing, is unequal. One has to remember that, besides the
incessant strife which he kept up--a strife which would have killed many
artists--he had to find strength for two grave crises in himself. He
joined one movement, then freed himself of it, then invented another and
recommenced to learn painting at a point where anybody else would have
continued in his previous manner. "Each time I paint," he said to
Mallarme, "I throw myself into the water to learn swimming." It is not
surprising that such a man should have been unequal, and that one can
distinguish in his work between experiments, exaggerations due to
research, and efforts made to reject the prejudices of which we feel the
weight no longer. But it would be unjust to say that Manet has only had
the merit of opening up new roads; that has been said to belittle him,
after it had first been said that these roads led into absurdity. Works
like the _Toreador_, _Rouviere_, _Mme. Manet_, the _Dejeuner_, the
_Musique aux Tuileries_, the _Bon Bock_, _Argenteuil_, _Le Linge_, _En
Bateau_ and the _Bar_, will always remain admirable masterpieces which
will do credit to French painting, of which the spontaneous, living,
clear and bold art of Manet is a direct and very representative product.

There remains, then, a great personality who knew how to dominate the
rather coarse conceptions of Realism, who influenced by his modernity
all contemporary illustration, who re-established a sound and strong
tradition in the face of the Academy, and who not only created a new
transition, but marked his place on the new road which he had opened. To
him Impressionism owes its existence; his tenacity enabled it to take
root and to vanquish the opposition of the School; his work has enriched
the world by some beautiful examples which demonstrate the union of the
two principles of Realism and of that technical Impressionism which was
to supply Manet, Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley with an object for their
efforts. For the sum total of all that is evoked by his name, Edouard
Manet certainly deserves the name of a man of genius--an incomplete
genius, though, since the thought with him was not on the level of his
technique, since he could never affect the emotions like a Leonardo or a
Rembrandt, but