There are many Virile-Impressionists in Europe, but they are so many individuals; here Virile-Impressionism is the result of racial, national, geographical conditions. It was inevitable that Impressionism in America should follow along virile and substantial lines rather than along nervous and superficial; it is the way the country is built. * * * * * Sargent is a Virile-Impressionist. He paints striking _likenesses_, but he also paints marvellous _characterizations_; that is, he gets beneath the skin of his sitters and paints them as they _are_, not as they seem. His sense of color is very deficient; many of his portraits from a decorative point of view are almost the reverse of pleasing; he had not the faintest appreciation of the subtle refinements of the things Whistler strove so long and earnestly to achieve; in his best things he is strong and direct to the point of brutality--all of which is characteristic of Virile-Impressionism, and exactly what one would expect from a vigorous, muscular, frank American. Though Sargent spends most of his time on the other side, he is no more English than French; his pictures fit into an American exhibition far more comfortably than into the Royal Academy or the old Salon. Robert Henri is another strong Virile-Impressionist. * * * * * The attitude of American painters toward the extreme modern developments is both curious and interesting. On the opening of the International Exhibition there was an outburst of violent indignation from the older men, ordinary speech failed to express their feelings, and they rushed into print with language as violent as the press would accept. All that made lively reading and lent zest to current literature. Six months later this feeling of angry opposition largely subsided. As an illustration, one of the bitterest of the Academicians accepted as a “good idea” the organization of an _independent_ exhibition, open to artists _without the intervention of a jury_, under the auspices of the National Academy, as soon as a building could be provided that would adequately house all exhibitions. Again, the very conservative authorities of a large art institute listened receptively to the suggestion that every art museum owed the public two things in the way of exhibitions: _First_, exhibitions selected by juries which would give the public the benefit of the best expert judgment available. _Second_, exhibitions wherein painters and sculptors barred by the juries would have opportunities to present their works _to the judgment of the public_. In short, suggestions that would not have been listened to before the International are now discussed as quite within the range of possibilities. There is no danger of these things coming to pass in the _immediate_ future; there is still too much latent opposition, but the virulent has measurably subsided. So much for the _older_ men.