cher as to the initiative of Corot.
Whistler practically said: "Before Corot was, I am!" And he adduced
certain canvases painted with the misty-edged trees long before--but
why continue? Whistler didn't start Corot--apart from the
chronological difficulties in the way--any more than Courbet and Manet
started Whistler; yet both these painters played important roles in
the American master's art. So let us accept Mauclair's dictum as to
Claude Monet's priority in the field of impressionism. Certainly he
attained his marked style before he met Manet. Later he modified his
own paint to show his sympathy with the new school. Monet went to
Watteau, Constable, Monticelli for his ideas, and in London, about
1870, he studied Turner with an interest that finally bordered on
worship. And why not? In Turner, at the National Gallery, you may find
the principles of impressionism carried to extravagant lengths, and
years before Monet. Consider Rain, Steam and Speed--the Great Western
Railway, that vision of a locomotive dashing across a bridge in
chromatic chaos. Or the Sea Piece in the James Orrock collection--a
welter of crosshatchings in variegated hues wherein any school of
impressionism from Watteau's Embarkment to Monet's latest manner or
the _pointillisme_ of Signac and Seurat may be recognised. And there
is a water-colour of Turner's in the National Gallery called Honfleur,
which has anticipated many traits of Boudin and the Manet we know when
he had not forgotten Eugene Boudin's influence.

Let us enjoy our Monet without too many "mole runs." As De Kay pointed
out, it was not necessary for Monet to go to London to see Constables.
In the Louvre he could gaze upon them at leisure, also upon Bonington;
not to mention the Venetians and such a Dutchman as Vermeer. It is
therefore doubly interesting to study the Monets at Durand-Ruel's.
There are twenty-seven, and they range as far back as 1872, Promenade
a Trouville, and come down to the Charing Cross Bridge, 1904, and the
two Waterloo Bridge effects, 1903. It is a wide range in sentiment and
technique. The Mills in Holland of 1874 is as cool and composed as
Boudin. Sincerity and beauty are in the picture--for we do not agree
with those who see in Monet only an unemotional recorder of variations
in light and tone. He can compose a background as well as any of his
contemporaries, and an important fact is overlooked when Monet is
jumbled indiscriminately with a lot of inferior men. M