e that the stately reticence of a man like
Sisley is worth far more to us now, if only because we find in his
works as they hang one beside another in numbers, a soberer and more
cautious approach to the theme engrossing him and the other artists of
the movement of that time. In the pictures of Sisley there is the
charm of the fact for itself, the delight of the problem of placing
the object in relation to the luminous atmosphere which covers it.

Men like Pissarro and Sisley were not forgetting Courbet and his
admirable knowledge of reality. They were not concerned with the
spectacular aspect of the impressionistic principle, not nearly so
much as with the satisfying realization of the object under the
influence of the new scientific problem in esthetics with which they
were concerned. For myself I am out of touch with Monet as a creator
and I find myself extracting far more satisfaction and belief from
Pissarro and Sisley, who deal with the problem of nature plus idea,
with a much greater degree of let me even say sincerity, by reason of
one fact and perhaps the most important one: they were not dramatizing
the idea in hand. They were not creating a furor with pink and
lavender haystacks. They were satisfied that there was still something
to be found in the old arrangement of negative and positive tones as
they were understood before the application of the spectrum turned the
brains and sensibilities of men. In other words Courbet survived while
the Barbizonians perished. There was an undeniable realization of fact
still there, clamoring for consideration. There was the reality then
even as now, as always. With Pissarro and Sisley there appeared the
true separation of tone, making itself felt most intelligently in the
work of these men from whom the real separatists Seurat, Signac, and
Cross were to realize their principle of pointilism, of which
principle Seurat was to prove himself the most satisfactory creative
exponent.

The world of art lost a very great deal in the untimely death of
Seurat; he was a young man of great artistic and intellectual gifts.
There was an artist by the name of Vignon who came in for his share
during the impressionistic period, probably not with any more dramatic
glamour than he achieves now by his very simple and unpretentious
pictures. I am sorry for my own pleasure that I have not been able to
see more of this artist's pictures from whom I think our own Theodore
Robinson must have ga