especially Degas, have created in this respect a new style from which
the whole art of realistic contemporary illustration is derived. This
style had been hitherto totally ignored, or the artists had shrunk from
applying it. It is a style which is founded upon the small painters of
the eighteenth century, upon Saint-Aubin, Debucourt, Moreau, and,
further back, upon Pater and the Dutchmen. But this time, instead of
confining this style to vignettes and very small dimensions, the
Impressionists have boldly given it the dimensions and importance of big
canvases. They have no longer based the laws of composition, and
consequently of style, upon the ideas relative to the subjects, but upon
values and harmonies. To take a summary example: if the School composed
a picture representing the death of Agamemnon, it did not fail to
subordinate the whole composition to Agamemnon, then to Clytemnestra,
then to the witnesses of the murder, graduating the moral and literary
interest according to the different persons, and sacrificing to this
interest the colouring and the realistic qualities of the scene. The
Realists composed by picking out first the strongest "value" of the
picture, say a red dress, and then distributing the other values
according to a harmonious progression of their tonalities. "The
principal person in a picture," said Manet, "is the light." With Manet
and his friends we find, then, that the concern for expression and for
the sentiments evoked by the subject, was always subordinated to a
purely pictorial and decorative preoccupation. This has frequently led
the Impressionists to grave errors, which they have, however, generally
avoided by confining themselves to very simple subjects, for which the
daily life supplied the grouping.

[Illustration: RENOIR

PORTRAIT OF MADAME MAITRE]

One of the reforms due to their conception has been the suppression of
the professional model, and the substitution for it of the natural
model, seen in the exercise of his occupation. This is one of the most
useful conquests for the benefit of modern painting. It marks a just
return to nature and simplicity. Nearly all their figures are real
portraits; and in everything that concerns the labourer and the
peasant, they have found the proper style and character, because they
have observed these beings in the true medium of their occupations,
instead of forcing them into a sham pose and painting them in disguise.
The basis of all their