Impressionism has been wanting in intellectual depth and has left to its successors the care of realising works of great thought.  But it has brought us a sunny smile, a breath of pure air.  It is so fascinating, that one cannot but love its very mistakes which make it more human and more accessible.  Renoir is the most lyrical, the most musical, the most subtle of the masters of this art.  Some of his landscapes are as beautiful as those of Claude Monet.  His nudes are as masterly in painting as Manet’s, and more supple.  Not having attained the scientific drawing which one finds in Degas’s, they have a grace and a brilliancy which Degas’s nudes have never known.  If his rare portraits of men are inferior to those of his rivals, his women’s portraits have a frequently superior distinction.  His great modern compositions are equal to the most beautiful works by Manet and Degas.  His inequalities are also more striking than theirs.  Being a fantastic, nervous improvisator he is more exposed to radical mistakes.  But he is a profoundly sincere and conscientious artist.

[Illustration:  RENOIR

ON THE TERRACE]

The race speaks in him.  It is inexplicable that he should not have met with startling success, since he is voluptuous, bright, happy and learned without heaviness.  One has to attribute his relative isolation to the violence of the controversies, and particularly to the dignity of a poet gently disdainful of public opinion and paying attention solely to painting, his great and only love.  Manet has been a fighter whose works have created scandal.  Renoir has neither shown, nor hidden himself:  he has painted according to his dream, spreading his works, without mixing up his name or his personality with the tumult that raged around his friends.  And now, for that very reason, his work appears fresher and younger, more primitive and candid, more intoxicated with flowers, flesh and sunlight.

VII

THE SECONDARY PAINTERS OF IMPRESSIONISM—­CAMILLE PISSARRO, ALFRED SISLEY, PAUL CEZANNE, BERTHE MORISOT, MISS MARY CASSATT, EVA GONZALES, GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE, BAZILLE, ALBERT LEBOURG, EUGENE BOUDIN.

Manet, Degas, Monet and Renoir will present themselves as a glorious quartet of masters, in the history of painting.  We must now speak of some personalities who have grown up by their side and who, without being great, offer nevertheless a rich and beautiful series of works.

Of these personalities the most considerable is certainly that of M. Camille Pissarro.  He painted according to some wise and somewhat timid formulas, when Manet’s example won him over to Impressionism to which he has remained faithful.  M. Pissarro has been enormously productive.  His work is composed of landscapes, rustic scenes, and studies of streets and markets.  His first landscapes are in the manner of Corot, but bathed in blond colour:  vast cornfields, sunny