for, and to express, the true character of a being or of a site, seemed
to them more significant, more moving, than to search for an exclusive
beauty, based upon rules, and inspired by the Greco-Latin ideal. Like
the Flemings, the Germans, the Spaniards, and in opposition to the
Italians whose influence had conquered all the European academies, the
French Realist-Impressionists, relying upon the qualities of lightness,
sincerity and expressive clearness which are the real merits of their
race, detached themselves from the oppressive and narrow preoccupation
with the beautiful and with all the metaphysics and abstractions
following in its train.

[Illustration: CLAUDE MONET

CHURCH AT VERNON]

This fact of the substitution of _character_ for _beauty_ is the
essential feature of the movement. What is called Impressionism is--let
it not be forgotten--a technique which can be applied to any subject.
Whether the subject be a virgin, or a labourer, it can be painted with
divided tones, and certain living artists, like the symbolist Henri
Martin, who has almost the ideas of a Pre-Raphaelite, have proved it by
employing this technique for the rendering of religious or philosophic
subjects. But one can only understand the effort and the faults of the
painters grouped around Manet, by constantly recalling to one's mind
their predeliction for _character_. Before Manet a distinction was made
between _noble_ subjects, and others which were relegated to the domain
of _genre_ in which no great artist was admitted to exist by the School,
the familiarity of their subjects barring from them this rank. By the
suppression of the _nobleness_ inherent to the treated subject, the
painter's technical merit is one of the first things to be considered in