can be found a whole chain of truly national artists who have either
been misjudged, like Chardin, or considered as "small masters" and
excluded from the first rank for the benefit of the pompous Allegorists
descended from the Italian school.

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 Cythère_ 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