here are no more shadows at
all, nothing that could serve to indicate the values and to create
contrasts of colours. Everything is light, and the painter seems easily
to overcome those terrible difficulties, lights upon lights, thanks to a
gift of marvellous subtlety of sight.

[Illustration: CLAUDE MONET

THE CHURCH AT VARENGEVILLE]

Generally he finds a very simple _motif_ sufficient; a hay-rick, some
slender trunks rising skywards, or a cluster of shrubs. But he also
proves himself as powerful draughtsman when he attacks themes of greater
complexity. Nobody knows as he does how to place a rock amidst
tumultuous waves, how to make one understand the enormous construction
of a cliff which fills the whole canvas, how to give the sensation of a
cluster of pines bent by the wind, how to throw a bridge across a river,
or how to express the massiveness of the soil under a summer sun. All
this is constructed with breadth, truth and force under the delicious or
fiery symphony of the luminous atoms. The most unexpected tones play in
the foliage. On close inspection we are astonished to find it striped
with orange, red, blue and yellow touches, but seen at a certain
distance the freshness of the green foliage appears to be represented
with infallible truth. The eye recomposes what the brush has
dissociated, and one finds oneself perplexed at all the science, all the
secret order which has presided over this accumulation of spots which
seem projected in a furious shower. It is a veritable orchestral piece,
where every colour is an instrument with a distinct part, and where the
hours with their different tints represent the successive themes. Monet
is the equal of the greatest landscape painters as regards the
comprehension of the true character of every soil he has studied, which
is the supreme quality of his art. Though absorbed beyond all by study
of the sunlight, he has thought it useless to go to Morocco or Algeria.
He has found Brittany, Holland, the _Ile de France_, the _Cote d'Azur_
and England sufficient sources of inspiration for his symphonies, which
cover from end to end the scale of perceptible colours. He has
expressed, for instance, the mild and vaporous softness of the
Mediterranean, the luxuriant vegetation of the gardens of Cannes and
Antibes, with a truthfulness and knowledge of the psychology of land and
water which can only be properly appreciated by those who live in this
enchanted region. This has not pr