It would be evidently unreasonable to attach to Impressionism all that is ante-academical, and between the two extremes there is room for a crowd of interesting artists.  We shall not succumb to the prejudice of the School by declaring, in our turn, that there is no salvation outside Impressionism, and we have been careful to state repeatedly that, if Impressionism has a certain number of principles as kernel, its applications and its influence have a radiation which it is difficult to limit.  What can be absolutely demonstrated is, that this movement has had the greatest influence on modern illustration, sometimes through its colouring, sometimes simply through the great freedom of its ideas.  Some have found in it a direct lesson, others an example to be followed.  Some have met in it technical methods which pleased them, others have only taken some suggestions from it.  That is the case, for instance, with Legrand, with Steinlen, and with Renouard; and it is also the case with the lithographer Odilon Redon, who applies the values of Manet and, in his strange pastels, the harmonies of Degas and Renoir, placing them at the service of dreams and hallucinations and of a symbolism which is absolutely removed from the realism of these painters.  It is, finally, the case with the water-colour painter Henri Riviere, who is misjudged as to his merit, and who is one of the most perfect of those who have applied Impressionist ideas to decorative engraving.  He has realised images in colours destined to decorate inexpensively the rooms of the people and recalling the grand aspects of landscapes with a broad simplification which is derived, curiously enough, from Puvis de Chavannes’s large decorative landscapes and from the small and precise colour prints of Japan.  Riviere, who is a skilful and personal poetic landscapist, is not exactly an Impressionist, in so far as he does not divide the tones, but rather blends them in subtle mixtures in the manner of the Japanese.  Yet, seeing his work, one cannot help thinking of all the surprise and freedom introduced into modern art by Impressionism.

Everybody, even the ignorant, can perceive, on looking through an illustrated paper or a modern volume, that thirty years ago this manner of placing the figures, of noting familiar gestures, and of seizing fugitive life with spirit and clearness was unknown.  This mass of engravings and of sketches resembles in no way what had been seen formerly.  They no longer have the solemn air of classic composition, by which the drawings had been affected.  A current of bold spontaneity has passed through here.  In modern English illustration, it can be stated indisputably that nothing would be such as it can now be seen, if Morris, Rossetti and Crane had not imposed their vision, and yet many talented Englishmen resemble these initiators only very remotely.  It is exactly in this sense that we shall have credited Impressionism with the talents who have drawn their inspiration less from