be sufficient to save from oblivion the man who has painted it. But the
study of light upon the figure has been the special preoccupation of
Manet, Renoir, and Pissarro, and, after the Impressionists, of the great
lyricist, Albert Besnard, who has concentrated the Impressionist
qualities by placing them at the service of a very personal conception
of symbolistic art. Monet commenced with trying to find his way by
painting figures, then landscapes and principally sea pictures and boats
in harbours, with a somewhat sombre robustness and very broad and solid
draughtsmanship. His first luminous studies date back to about 1885.
Obedient to the same ideas as Degas he had to avoid the Salons and only
show his pictures gradually in private galleries. For years he remained
unknown. It is only giving M. Durand-Ruel his due, to state that he was
one of the first to anticipate the Impressionist school and to buy the
first works of these painters, who were treated as madmen and
charlatans. He has become great with them, and has made his fortune and
theirs through having had confidence in them, and no fortune has been
better deserved. Thirty years ago nobody would have bought pictures by
Degas or Monet, which are sold to-day for a thousand pounds. This detail
is only mentioned to show the evolution of Impressionism as regards
public opinion.

[Illustration: CLAUDE MONET

THE HARBOUR, HONFLEUR]

So much has Monet been attracted by the analysis of the laws of light
that he has made light the real subject of all his pictures, and to show
clearly his intention he has treated one and the same site in a series
of pictures painted from nature at all hours of the day. This is the
principle whose results are the great divisions of his work which might