The Century.
MONET’S HOME AT GIVERNY.

MONET.MORNING ON THE SEINE.

MONET.   A WALK IN GREY WEATHER.
(By permission of M. Durand-Ruel, the owner of the copyright.)

So long as any advance beyond Rousseau and Corot seemed impossible, pictures of talent but only moderate importance had increased in number in the province of landscape. The landscape painters who immediately followed the great pioneers loved nature on account of her comparative coolness in summer; upon sites where the classic artists of Fontainebleau dreamed and painted they built comfortable villas and settled down with the sentiments of a householder. The country was parcelled out, and each one undertook his part, and painted it conscientiously without arousing any novel sensations. Impressionism gave landscape painting, which showed signs of being split into specialties, once more a firm basis, a charming field of study. To communicate impressions without any of the studio combinations, just as they strike us suddenly, to preserve the vividness and cogency of the first imprint of nature upon the mind, was the great problem which Impressionism placed before the landscape painters. The artists of Fontainebleau painted neither the rawness and rigidity of winter nor the sultry atmosphere and scorching heat of summer; they painted artistic and dignified and exquisite works. The Impressionists did not approach their themes as poets, but as naturalists. In their hands landscape, which in Corot, Millet, Diaz, Rousseau, Daubigny, and Jongkind is an occasional poem, becomes a likeness of a region under special influences of light. With more delicate nerves, and a sensibility almost greater, they allowed nature to work upon them, and perceived in the symphonies of every hour strains never heard before, transparent shadows, the vibration of atoms of light. decomposing the lines of contour, that tremor of the atmosphere which is the breath of landscape. Here also England was not without influence. As Corot and Rousseau received an impulse from Constable and Bonington in 1830, Monet and Sisley returned from London with their eyes dazzled by the light of the great Turner. Laid hold upon, like Turner, by the miracles of the universe, by the golden haze which trembles in a sunbeam, they succeeded in painting light in spite of the defectiveness of our chemical mediums.

MONET.THE CHURCH AT VARANGÉVILLE.
(By permission of M. Durand-Ruel, the owner of the copyright.)

Alfred Sisley might be compared with Daubigny. He settled in the neighbourhood of Moret, upon the banks of the Loing, and is the most soft and tender amongst the Impressionists. Like Daubigny, he loves the germinating energy, the blossoming, and the growth of young and luminous spring; the moist banks of quiet streamlets, budding beeches, and the rye-fields growing green, the variegated flowering of the meadows, clear skies, ladies walking in bright spring dresses, and the play of light upon the vernal foliage. He has painted tender mornings breathed upon with rosy bloom, reeds with a bluish gleam, and moist duck-weed, grey clouds mirrored in lonely pools, alleys of poplar, peasants’ houses, and hills and banks, melting softly in the warm atmosphere. His pictures, like those of the master of Oise, leave the impression of youth and freshness, of quiet happiness, or of smiling melancholy.