feels, except by betraying a fondness for
violets and diffused light, and by exhibiting the temper of the radical
and the rioter. The order of a blithe, idyllic landscape by Corot, of
one of Delacroix's pieces of concentric coloration, of an example of
Ingres's purity of outline, shows not only temperament, but the position
of the painter in regard to the whole intellectual world so far as he
touches it at all. What does a canvas of Claude Monet show in this
respect? It is more truthful but not less impersonal than a photograph.

Degas is the only other painter usually classed with the
impressionists, of whom this may not be said. But Degas is hardly an
impressionist at all. He is one of the most personal painters, if not
the most personal painter, of the day. He is as original as Puvis de
Chavannes. What allies him with the impressionists is his fondness for
fleeting aspects, his caring for nothing beyond aspect--for the look of
things and their transitory look. He is an enthusiastic admirer of
Ingres--who, one would say, is the antithesis of impressionism. He never
paints from nature. His studies are made with the utmost care, but they
are arranged, composed, combined by his own sense of what is
pictorial--by, at any rate, his own idea of the effects he wishes to
create. He cares absolutely nothing for what ordinarily we understand by
the real, the actual, so far as its reality is concerned; he sees
nothing else, to be sure, and is probably very sceptical about anything
but colors and shapes and their decorative arrangement; but he sees what
he likes in reality and follows this out with an inerrancy so
scrupulous, and even affectionate, as to convey the idea that in his
result he himself counts for almost nothing. This at least may be said
of him, that he shows what, given genius, can be got out of the
impressionist method artistically and practically employed to the end of
illustrating a personal point of view. A mere amateur can hardly
distinguish between a Caillebotte and a Sisley, for example, but
everyone identifies a Degas as immediately and as certainly as he does a
Whistler. His work is perfectly sincere and admirably intelligent. It
has neither the pose nor the irresponsibility of the impressionists. His
artistic apotheosis of the ballet-girl is merely the result of his happy
discovery of something delightfully, and in a very true sense naturally,
decorative in material that is in the highest degree artificia