the objects in sunlight, whose value habitually we do not note, be neglected or falsified.  Add to this source of illusion the success of Monet in giving a juster value to the sunlit half of his picture than had even been systematically attempted before his time, and his astonishing trompe-l’oeil is, I think, explained.  Each part is truer than ever before, and unless one have a specially developed sense of ensemble in this very special matter of values in and affected by sunlight, one gets from Monet an impression of actuality so much greater than he has ever got before, that he may be pardoned for feeling, and even for enthusiastically proclaiming, that in Monet realism finds its apogee.  To sum up:  The first realists painted relative values; Manet and his derivatives painted absolute values, but in a wisely limited gamut; Monet paints absolute values in a very wide range, plus sunlight, as nearly as he can get it—­as nearly as pigment can be got to represent it.  Perforce he loses scale, and therefore artistic completeness, but he secures an incomparably vivid effect of reality, of nature—­and of nature in her gayest, most inspiring manifestation, illuminated directly and indirectly, and everywhere vibrant and palpitating with the light of all our physical seeing.

Monet is so subtle in his own way, so superbly successful within his own limits, that it is time wasted to quarrel with the convention-steeped philistine who refuses to comprehend even his point of view, who judges the pictures he sees by the pictures he has seen.  He has not only discovered a new way of looking at nature, but he has justified it in a thousand particulars.  Concentrated as his attention has been upon the effects of light and atmosphere, he has reproduced an infinity of nature’s moods that are charming in proportion to their transitoriness, and whose fleeting beauties he has caught and permanently fixed.  Rousseau made the most careful studies, and then combined them in his studio.  Courbet made his sketch, more or less perfect, face to face with his subject, and elaborated it afterward away from it.  Corot painted his picture from nature, but put the Corot into it in his studio.  Monet’s practice is in comparison drastically thorough.  After thirty minutes, he says—­why thirty instead of forty or twenty, I do not know; these mysteries are Eleusinian to the mere amateur—­the light changes; he must stop and return the next day at the same hour.  The result is immensely real, and in Monet’s hands immensely varied.  One may say as much, having regard to their differing degrees of success, of Pissaro, who influenced him, and of Caillebotte, Renoir, Sisley, and the rest of the impressionists who followed him.