ined a deal of strength for his own bridge
building between Bastien Le Page and the Monet "eccentricity," so to
call it.

There is always a reason for reticence, and it is usually apt to come
from thinking. Sisley and Pissarro, Vignon, Seurat, and Robinson were
thinking out a way to legitimize the new fantastic craze for prismatic
violence, and they found it in the direct consideration for the fact.
They knew that without objects light would have nowhere to fall, that
the earth confronted them with indispensable phenomena each one of
which had its reason for being. They were finding instead of losing
their heads, which is always a matter of praise. I could stay with
almost any Pissarro or Sisley I have ever seen, as I could always want
any Seurat near me, just as I could wish almost any Monet out of sight
because I find it submerged with emotional extravagance, too much
enthusiasm for his new pet idea.

Scientific appreciation had not come with scientific intentions. Like
most movements, it was left to other than the accredited innovators
for its completion and perfection. That is why we find Cezanne
working incessantly to create an art which would achieve a union of
impressionism and an art like the Louvre, as he is said to have
characterized it for himself. We know now how much Cezanne cared for
Chardin as well as for Courbet, and Greco. There is a reason why he
must have respected Pissarro, far more than he did at any time such
men as Gaugin, the "flea on his back" as he so vividly and perhaps
justly named him. There was far more hope for a possible great art to
come out of Van Gogh, who, in his brief seven years had experimented
with every aspect of impressionism that had then been divulged. He too
was in search of a passionate realization of the object. His method of
heavy stitching in bright hues was not a perfected style. It was an
extravagant hope toward a personal rhythm. He was an "upwardly"
aspiring artist by reason of his hyper-accentuated religious fervours.
All these extraneous and one might even say irrelevant attempts toward
speedy arrivism are set aside in the presence of the almost solemn
severity of minds like Pissarro and Sisley, and of Cezanne, who
extracted for himself all that was valuable in the passing idea of
impressionism. The picture which lasts is never the entirely
idiosyncratic one. It is that picture which strives toward realization
of ideas through a given principle with which it is in