painters accept Impressionism, they remain preoccupied with it, and even
those who love it not are forced to take it into account.

The Impressionist movement can therefore now be considered, apart from
all controversies, without vain attacks or exaggerated praise, as an
artistic manifestation which has entered the domain of history, and it
can be studied with the impartial application of the methods of
critical analysis which is usually employed in the study of the former
art movements. We shall not pretend to have given in these pages a
complete and faultless history; but we shall consider ourselves well
rewarded for this work, which is intended to reach the great public, if
we have roused their curiosity and sympathy with a group of artists whom
we consider admirable; and if we have rectified, in the eyes of the
readers of a foreign nation, the errors, the slanders, the undeserved
reproaches, with which Frenchmen have been pleased to overwhelm sincere
creators who thought with faith and love of the pure tradition of the
national genius, and who have for that reason been vilified as much as
if they had in an access of anarchical folly risen against the very
common sense, taste, reason and clearness, which will remain the eternal
merits of their soil. This small, imperfect volume will perhaps find its
best excuse in its intention of repairing an old injustice and of
affirming a useful and permanent truth: that of the authenticity of the
classicism of Impressionism, in the face of the false classicism of the
academic world which official honours have made the guardian of a French
heritage, whose soul it denied and whose spirit it deceived with its
narrow and cold formulas.