symbolism, abstraction and romantic scenes, has led it to
refuse to occupy itself with a whole order of ideas, and it has had the
tendency of making the painter beyond all a workman. It was necessary at
the moment of its arrival, but it is no longer necessary now, and the
painters understand this themselves. Finally it has too often been
superficial even in obtaining effects; it has given way to the wish to
surprise the eyes, of playing with tones merely for love of cleverness.
It often causes one regret to see symphonies of magnificent colour
wasted here in pictures of boating men; and there, in pictures of cafe
corners; and we have arrived at a degree of complex intellectuality
which is no longer satisfied with these rudimentary themes. It has
indulged in useless exaggerations, faults of composition and of harmony,
and all this cannot be denied.

But it still remains fascinating and splendid for its gifts which will
always rouse enthusiasm: freedom, impetuousness, youth, brilliancy,
fervour, the joy of painting and the passion for beautiful light. It is,
on the whole, the greatest pictorial movement that France has beheld
since Delacroix, and it brings to a finish gloriously the nineteenth
century, inaugurating the present. It has accomplished the great deed of
having brought us again into the presence of our true national lineage,
far more so than Romanticism, which was mixed with foreign elements. We
have here painting of a kind which could only have been conceived in
France, and we have to go right back to Watteau in order to receive
again the same impression. Impressionism has brought us an almost
unhoped-for renaissance, and this constitutes its most undeniable claim
upon the gratitude of the race.

It has exercised a very appreciable influence upon foreign painting.
Among the principal painters attracted by its ideas and research, we
must mention, in Germany, Max Liebermann and Kuehl; in Norway, Thaulow;
in Denmark, Kroyer; in Belgium, Theo Van Rysselberghe, Emile Claus,
Verheyden, Heymans, Verstraete, and Baertson; in Italy, Boldini,
Segantini, and Michetti; in Spain, Zuloaga, Sorolla y Bastida, Dario de
Regoyos and Rusinol; in America, Alexander, Harrison, Sargent; and in
England, the painters of the Glasgow School, Lavery, Guthrie and the
late John Lewis Brown. All these men come within the active extension of
the French movement, and one may say that the honour of having first
recognised the truly national