In the consideration of the real factors in the impressionistic movement, we learn that it is not Monet and the younger crew such as Moret, Maufra, George d'Espagnat and Guillaumin who give us the real weight of this esthetic argument. We find Monet going in for hyper-sentimentalized iridiscences which culminate or seem to culminate in the "Lily" series until we are forced to say he has let us out, once and for all, as far as any further interest in the theory with which he was concerned. We are no longer held by these artificial and overstrained hues, and we find the younger followers offering little or nothing to us save an obvious integrity of purpose. These younger men had apparently miscomprehended idiosyncrasies for ideas and that, save for a certain cleanness of intention, they were offering scarcely anything of what is to be found by way of realization in the pictures of a really great colorist like Renoir.

The two artists who give the true thrill of this phase of the modern movement are without question Pissarro and Sisley. It is the belief of these two artists in the appearance of things for themselves, under the influence of the light problem, which gives them a strength not always visible at first by reason of a greater simplicity of effect which dominates all of their pictures. We see in both these men a real and impressive desire for a more exacting scientific relation as discovered by intellectual consideration, than is to be found in the emotional outcry predominating in most of the pictures of Monet. These do not hold for us in this day as solidly as they were expected to. There is a kind of superficiality and consequent dissatisfaction in the conspicuous aspiration toward the first flush, one may call it, of enthusiasm for impressionistic experience. There comes to one who is really concerned, the ever increasing desire to turn toward Pissarro and Sisley and to quietly dispense with many or most of Monet's pictures, not to speak of a legitimate haste to pass over the phlegmatic enthusiasms of the younger followers.

One feels that Pissarro must have been a great man among men not so great. One feels likewise that the stately reticence of a man like Sisley is worth far more to us now, if only because we find in his works as they hang one beside another in numbers, a soberer and more cautious approach to the theme engrossing him and the other artists of the movement of that time. In the pictures of Sisley there is the charm of the fact for itself, the delight of the problem of placing the object in relation to the luminous atmosphere which covers it.

Men like Pissarro and Sisley were not forgetting Courbet and his admirable knowledge of reality. They were not concerned with the spectacular aspect of the impressionistic principle, not nearly so much as with the satisfying realization of the object under the influence of the new scientific problem in esthetics with which they were concerned. For myself I am out of touch with Monet as a creator and I find myself extracting far more satisfaction and belief from Pissarro and Sisley, who deal with the problem of nature plus idea, with a much greater degree of let me even say sincerity, by reason of one fact and perhaps the most important one: they were not dramatizing the idea in hand. They were not creating a furor with pink and lavender haystacks. They were satisfied that there was still something to be found in the old arrangement of negative and positive tones as they were understood before the application of the spectrum turned the brains and sensibilities of men. In other words Courbet survived while the Barbizonians perished. There was an undeniable realization of fact still there, clamoring for consideration. There was the reality then even as now, as always. With Pissarro and Sisley there appeared the true separation of tone, making itself felt most intelligently in the work of these men from whom the real separatists Seurat, Signac, and Cross were to realize their principle of pointilism, of which principle Seurat was to prove himself the most satisfactory creative exponent.

The world of art lost a very great deal in the untimely death of Seurat; he was a young man of great artistic and intellectual gifts. There was an artist by the name of Vignon who came in for his share during the impressionistic period, probably not with any more dramatic glamour than he achieves now by his very simple and unpretentious pictures. I am sorry for my own pleasure that I have not been able to see more of this artist's pictures from whom I think our own Theodore Robinson must have gained a deal of strength for his own bridge building between Bastien Le Page and the Monet "eccentricity," so to call it.

There is always a reason for reticence, and it is usually apt to come from thinking. Sisley and Pissarro, Vignon, Seurat, and Robinson were thinking out a way to legitimize the new fantastic craze for prismatic violence, and they found it in the direct consideration for the fact. They knew that without objects light would have nowhere to fall, that the earth confronted them with indispensable phenomena each one of which had its reason for being. They were finding instead of losing their heads, which is always a matter of praise. I could stay with almost any Pissarro or Sisley I have ever seen, as I could always want any Seurat near me, just as I could wish almost any Monet out of sight because I find it submerged with emotional extravagance, too much enthusiasm for his new pet idea.

Scientific appreciation had not come with scientific intentions. Like most movements, it was left to other than the accredited innovators for its completion and perfection. That is why we find CÉzanne working incessantly to create an art which would achieve a union of impressionism and an art like the Louvre, as he is said to have characterized it for himself. We know now how much CÉzanne cared for Chardin as well as for Courbet, and Greco. There is a reason why he must have respected Pissarro, far more than he did at any time such men as Gaugin, the "flea on his back" as he so vividly and perhaps justly named him. There was far more hope for a possible great art to come out of Van Gogh, who, in his brief seven years had experimented with every aspect of impressionism that had then been divulged. He too was in search of a passionate realization of the object. His method of heavy stitching in bright hues was not a perfected style. It was an extravagant hope toward a personal rhythm. He was an "upwardly" aspiring artist by reason of his hyper-accentuated religious fervours. All these extraneous and one might even say irrelevant attempts toward speedy arrivism are set aside in the presence of the almost solemn severity of minds like Pissarro and Sisley, and of CÉzanne, who extracted for himself all that was valuable in the passing idea of impressionism. The picture which lasts is never the entirely idiosyncratic one. It is that picture which strives toward realization of ideas through a given principle with which it is involved.

So it seems then, that if Monet invented the principle of impressionism as applied to painting, Pissarro and Sisley assisted greatly in the creative idea for our lasting use and pleasure by the consideration of the intellect which they applied to it; just as Seurat has given us a far greater realization than either Signac or Cross have offered us in the principle of pointillism.

The "test of endurance" in the impressionistic movement is borne out; the strength of realization is to be found in Pissarro and Sisley and not in the vapid niceties of Monet, whose work became thinner and thinner by habitual repetitive painting, and by a possible false sense of security in his argument. Monet had become the habitual impressionist, and the habitual in art is its most conspicuous fatality. The art of Monet grew weaker throughout the various stages of Waterloo, Venice, Rouen, Giverney, and the Water Lilies which formed periods of expression, at least to the mind of the observer. Monet's production had become a kind of mercerized production, and a kind of spurious radiance invested them, in the end. It remained for Pissarro, Sisley, CÉzanne, and Seurat to stabilize the new discovery, and to give it the stamina it was meant to contain, as a scientific idea, scientifically applied.