palpitating with the light of all
our physical seeing.

Monet is so subtle in his own way, so superbly successful within his own
limits, that it is time wasted to quarrel with the convention-steeped
philistine who refuses to comprehend even his point of view, who judges
the pictures he sees by the pictures he has seen. He has not only
discovered a new way of looking at nature, but he has justified it in a
thousand particulars. Concentrated as his attention has been upon the
effects of light and atmosphere, he has reproduced an infinity of
nature's moods that are charming in proportion to their transitoriness,
and whose fleeting beauties he has caught and permanently fixed.
Rousseau made the most careful studies, and then combined them in his
studio. Courbet made his sketch, more or less perfect, face to face with
his subject, and elaborated it afterward away from it. Corot painted his
picture from nature, but put the Corot into it in his studio. Monet's
practice is in comparison drastically thorough. After thirty minutes, he
says--why thirty instead of forty or twenty, I do not know; these
mysteries are Eleusinian to the mere amateur--the light changes; he
must stop and return the next day at the same hour. The result is
immensely real, and in Monet's hands immensely varied. One may say as
much, having regard to their differing degrees of success, of Pissaro,
who influenced him, and of Caillebotte, Renoir, Sisley, and the rest of
the impressionists who followed him.

He is himself the prominent representative of the school, however, and
the fact that one representative of it is enough to consider, is
eloquent of profound criticism of it. For decorative purposes a hole in
one's wall, an additional window through which one may only look
satisfactorily during a period of thirty minutes, has its drawbacks. A
walk in the country or in a city park is after all preferable to anyone
who can really appreciate a Monet--that is, anyone who can feel the
illusion of nature which it is his sole aim to produce. After all, what
one asks of art is something different from imitative illusion. Its
essence is illusion, I think, but illusion taken in a different sense
from optical illusion--_trompe-l'oeil_. Its function is to make dreams
seem real, not to recall reality. Monet is enduringly admirable mainly
to the painter who envies and endeavors to imitate his wonderful power
of technical expression--the thing that occupies most the consc