entirely ignored by the older painters, whose principal concern was
style, and who reduced a landscape to three or four broad tones,
endeavouring only to explain the sentiment inspired by it.

And now I shall have to pass on to the Impressionists' ideas on the
style itself of painting, on Realism.

From the outset it must not be forgotten that Impressionism has been
propagated by men who had all been Realists; that means by a reactionary
movement against classic and romantic painting. This movement, of which
Courbet will always remain the most famous representative, has been
_anti-intellectual_. It has protested against every literary,
psychologic or symbolical element in painting. It has reacted at the
same time against the historical painting of Delaroche and the
mythological painting of the _Ecole de Rome_, with an extreme violence
which appears to us excessive now, but which found its explanation in
the intolerable tediousness or emphasis at which the official painters
had arrived. Courbet was a magnificent worker, with rudimentary ideas,
and he endeavoured to exclude even those which he possessed. This
exaggeration which diminishes our admiration for his work and prevents
us from finding in it any emotion but that which results from technical
mastery, was salutary for the development of the art of his successors.
It caused the young painters to turn resolutely towards the aspects of
contemporary life, and to draw style and emotion from their own epoch;
and this intention was right. An artistic tradition is not continued by
imitating the style of the past, but by extracting the immediate
impression of each epoch. That is what the really great masters have
done, and it is the succession of their sincere and profound
observations which constitutes the style of the races.