technique to the expression of grand allegories, rather in the manner of
Puvis de Chavannes. The effort at getting away from mere cleverness and
escaping a too exclusive preoccupation with technique, and at the same
time acquiring serious knowledge, betrays itself in the whole position
of the young French School; and this will furnish us with a perfectly
natural conclusion, of which the following are the principal points:--

What we shall have to thank Impressionism for, will be moral and
material advantages of considerable importance. Morally it has rendered
an immense service to all art, because it has boldly attacked routine
and proved by the whole of its work that a combination of independent
producers could renew the aesthetic code of a country, without owing
anything to official encouragement. It has succeeded where important but
isolated creators have succumbed, because it has had the good fortune of
uniting a group of gifted men, four of whom will count among the
greatest French artists since the origin of national art. It has had the
qualities which overcome the hardest resistance: fecundity, courage and
sure originality. It has known how to find its strength by referring to
the true traditions of the national genius, which have happily
enlightened it and saved it from fundamental errors. It has, last, but
not least, inflicted an irremediable blow on academic convention and has
wrested from it the prestige of teaching which ruled tyrannically for
centuries past over the young artists. It has laid a violent hand upon a
tenacious and dangerous prejudice, upon a series of conventional notions
which were transmitted without consideration for the evolution of modern
life and intelligence. It has dared freely to protest against a
degenerated ideal which vainly parodied the old masters, pretending to
honour them. It has removed from the artistic soul of France a whole
order of pseudo-classic elements which worked against its blossoming,
and the School will never recover from this bold contradiction which has