the public, and that it was the duty of the State to receive impartially
the work of all the art movements; the public would know how to judge
and choose; the Government's duty was not to influence them by showing
them only one style of painting, but to remain in historic neutrality.
Thanks to this clever reply, the Academicians, among whom M. Gérôme was
the most rabid, resigned themselves to keeping their posts. A similar
incident, less publicly violent, but equally strange, occurred on the
occasion of the admission to the Luxembourg Gallery of the portrait of
M. Whistler's mother, a masterpiece of which the gallery is proud
to-day, and for which a group of writers and art lovers had succeeded in
opening the way. It is difficult to imagine the degree of irritation and
obstruction of the official painters against all the ideas of the new
painting, and if it had only depended upon them, there can be no doubt
that Manet and his friends would have died in total obscurity, not only
banished from the Salons and museums, but also treated as madmen and
robbed of the possibility of living by their work.

The Caillebotte collection was installed under conditions which the
ill-will of the administrators made at least as deplorable as possible.
The works were crowded into a small, badly lighted room, where it is
absolutely impossible to see them from the distance required by the
method of the division of tones, and the meanness of the opposition was
such that, the pictures having been bequeathed without frames, the
keeper was obliged to have recourse to the reserves of the Louvre,
because he was refused the necessary credit for purchasing them. The
collection is however beautiful and interesting. It does not represent
Impressionism in all its brilliancy, since the works by which it is
composed had been bought by Caillebotte at a time, when his friends were
still far from having arrived at the full blossoming of their qualities.
But some very fine things can at least be found there. Renoir is