Impressionism being beyond all a technical reaction, its predecessors should first be looked for from this material point of view.  Watteau is the most striking of all. L’Embarquement pour Cythere is, in its technique, an Impressionist canvas.  It embodies the most significant of all the principles exposed by Claude Monet:  the division of tones by juxtaposed touches of colour which, at a certain distance, produce upon the eye of the beholder the effect of the actual colouring of the things painted, with a variety, a freshness and a delicacy of analysis unobtainable by a single tone prepared and mixed upon the palette.

[Illustration:  MANET

YOUNG MAN IN COSTUME OF MAJO]

Claude Lorrain, and after him Carle Vernet, are claimed by the Impressionists as precursors from the point of view of decorative landscape arrangement, and particularly of the predominance of light in which all objects are bathed.  Ruysdael and Poussin are, in their eyes, for the same reasons precursors, especially Ruysdael, who observed so frankly the blue colouring of the horizon and the influence of blue upon the landscape.  It is known that Turner worshipped Claude for the very same reasons.  The Impressionists in their turn, consider Turner as one of their masters; they have the greatest admiration for this mighty genius, this sumptuous visionary.  They have it equally for Bonington, whose technique is inspired by the same observations as their own.  They find, finally, in Delacroix the frequent and very apparent application of their ideas.  Notably in the famous Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople, the fair woman kneeling in the foreground is painted in accordance with the principles of the division of tones:  the nude back is furrowed with blue, green and yellow touches, the juxtaposition of which produces, at a certain distance, an admirable flesh-tone.

And now I must speak at some length of a painter who, together with the luminous and sparkling landscapist Felix Ziem, was the most direct initiator of Impressionist technique.  Monticelli is one of those singular men of genius who are not connected with any school, and whose work is an inexhaustible source of applications.  He lived at Marseilles, where he was born, made a short appearance at the Salons, and then returned to his native town, where he died poor, ignored, paralysed and mad.  In order to live he sold his small pictures at the cafes, where they fetched ten or twenty francs at the most.  To-day they sell for considerable prices, although the government has not yet acquired any work by Monticelli for the public galleries.  The mysterious power alone of these paintings secures him a fame which is, alas! posthumous.  Many Monticellis have been sold by dealers as Diaz’s; now they are more eagerly looked for than Diaz, and collectors have made fortunes with these small canvases bought formerly, to use a colloquial expression which is here only too literally true, “for a piece of bread.”