r's genius, despite its diabolic
cleverness. (It reveals a profound study of Titian, Cranach, and
Goya.) But his vision was in reality synthetic, not analytic; he was a
primitive; he belongs to the family of Velasquez, Ribera, Goya. He
studied Hals--and with what glorious results in Le Bon Bock! He
manipulated paint like an "old master" and did astounding things with
the higher tones of the colour scale. He was not an impressionist
until he met Monet. Then in audacity he outstripped his associates.
Discouraged by critical attacks, his courage had been revived by
Charles Baudelaire, who fought for Richard Wagner as well as for Poe
and Manet. To the painter the poet scornfully wrote: "You complain
about attacks? But are you the first to endure them? Have you more
genius than Chateaubriand and Wagner? They were not killed by
derision. And in order not to make you too proud, I must tell you that
they are models, each in his own way, and in a very rich world, while
you are only the first in the decrepitude of your art." Sinister and
disquieting that last phrase, and for those who see in impressionism
the decadence of painting (because of the predominance given to the
parts over the whole) it is a phrase prophetic.

Manet is a classic. His genuine power--technically speaking--lies in
the broad, sabre-like strokes of his brush and not in the niggling
_taches_ of the impressionists--of which the _reuctio ad absurdum_ is
pointillisme. He lays on his pigments in sweeping slashes and his
divisions are large. His significance for us does not alone reside in
his consummate mastery of form and colour, but in his forthright
expression of the life that hummed about him. He is as actual as Hals.
Study that Boy With the Sword at the Metropolitan Museum--is there
anything superficial about it? It is Spanish, the Spain of Velasquez,
in its beautiful thin, clear, flat painting, its sober handling of
values. The truth is that Manet dearly loved a fight, and being _chef
d'ecole_, he naturally drifted to the impressionists' camp. And it is
significant that Duret did not give this virile spirit a place in his
new volume, confining the estimate of his genius to the preface.
Mauclair, on the contrary, includes Manet's name in his more
comprehensive and more scientific study, as he also includes the name
of Edgar Degas--Degas, who is a latter-day Ingres, plus colour and a
new psychology.

The title of impressionism has been a misleading one. If