nature is made to surprise those who judge Impressionism with
preconceived ideas. It is none the less true that, if a series of
Degas's first portraits were collected, the comparison would force
itself upon one's mind irrefutably. In face of the idealist painting of
Romanticism, Ingres represented quite clearly the cult of painting for
its own sake. His ideas were mediocre, and went scarcely beyond the
poor, conventional ideal of the Academy; but his genius was so great,
that it made him paint, together with his tedious allegories, some
incomparable portraits and nudes. He thought he was serving official
Classicism, which still boasts of his name, but in reality he dominated
it; and, whilst he was an imitator of Raphael, he was a powerful
Realist. The Impressionists admire him as such, and agree with him in
banishing from the art of painting all literary imagination, whether it
be the tedious mythology of the School, or the historical anecdote of
the Romanticists. Degas and Besnard admire Ingres as colossal
draughtsman, and, beyond all, as man who, in spite of the limitations of
his mind, preserved the clear vision of the mission of his art at a time
when art was used for the expression of literary conceptions. Who would
have believed it? Yet it is true, and Manet, too, held the same view of
Ingres, little as our present academicians may think it! It happens that
to-day Impressionism is more akin to Ingres than to Delacroix, just as
the young poets are more akin to Racine than to Hugo. They reject the
foreign elements, and search, before anything else, for the strict
national tradition. Degas follows Ingres and resembles him. He is also
reminiscent of the Primitives and of Holbein. There is, in his first
period, the somewhat dry and geometrical perfection, the somewhat heavy
colour which only serves to strengthen the correctness of the planes. At
the Exposition of 1900, there was a Degas which surprised everybody. It
was an _Interior of a cotton factory_ in an American town. This small
picture was curiously clear: it would be impossible to paint better and