technician.  He then exhibited decorative pictures, pastels and drawings, which placed him in the first rank.  Cheret is universally known.  The type of the Parisian woman created by him, and the multi-coloured harmony of his works will not be forgotten.  His will be the honour of having invented the artistic poster, this feast for the eyes, this fascinating art of the street, which formerly languished in a tedious and dull display of commercial advertisements.  He has been the promoter of an immense movement; he has been imitated, copied, parodied, but he will always remain inimitable.  He has succeeded in realising on paper by means of lithography, the pastels and gouache drawings in which his admirable colourist’s fancy mixed the most difficult shades.  In Cheret can be found all the principles of Impressionism:  opposing lights, coloured shadows, complementary reflections, all employed with masterly sureness and delightful charm.  It is decorative Impressionism, conceived in a superior way; and this simple poster-man, despised by the painters, has proved himself equal to most.  He has transformed the street, in the open light, into a veritable Salon, where his works have become famous.  When this too modest artist decided to show his pictures and drawings, they were a revelation.  The most remarkable pastellists of the period were astonished and admired his skill, his profound knowledge of technique, his continual tours-de-force which he disguised under a shimmering gracefulness.  The State had the good sense to entrust him with some large mural decorations, in which he unfolded the scale of his sparkling colours, and affirmed his spirit, his fancy and his dreamy art.  Cheret’s harmonies remain secrets; he uses them for the representation of characters from the Italian comedy, thrown with fiendish verve upon a background of a sky, fiery with the Bengal lights of a fairy-like carnival, and he strangely intermingles the reality of the movements with the most arbitrary fancy.  Cheret has also succeeded in proving his artistic descent by a beautiful series of drawings in sanguine:  he descends from Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard; he is a Frenchman of pure blood; and when one has done admiring the grace and the happy animation of his imagination, one can only be surprised to see on what serious and sure a technique are based these decorations which appear improvised.  Cheret’s art is the smile of Impressionism and the best demonstration of the decorative logic of this art.

These are the four artists of great merit who have created the transition between Impressionist painting and illustration.  It would be fit to put aside Toulouse-Lautrec, who was much younger, but his work is too directly connected with that of Degas for one to take into account the difference of age.  He produced between 1887 and 1900 works which might well have been ante-dated by fifteen years.  We shall study in the next chapter his Neo-Impressionist comrades,