CHABAUD The Laborer ] Impressionist but not quite. One feels the _poetic_, the _imaginative_--that is, the _studio_ quality in his work. He sought nature but not in the spirit displayed by the Impressionists. * * * * * The reaction began with Courbet and was given a powerful impetus by Manet who painted things not as he _imagined_ them but as he _saw_ them, and he did not try to see interesting people and things, he did not look for the _picturesque_ but he painted anything he happened to see upon the theory that the value of a work of art depends not upon its subject but upon its technic; that the worth of a painting is to be found in the painting and not in the object that happens to be painted. * * * * * Manet painted very few pictures outdoors. In the literal sense he did not belong to the _plein air_ school. Almost all his work was done indoors. But it was in no sense studio-art as we have used the term. He painted in his studio as directly as Monet painted outdoors. He painted a sitter with the same realism that Monet painted a haystack; and if he painted a bull fight from memory or from a sketch, he did it with the _intention_ to reproduce the scene literally. Whistler had his literal moods, so to speak; his moments when with clear eye and vision unaffected by any conscious play of the imagination he would make marvellously faithful transcripts from life and nature, transcripts so faithful that Monet’s at their best pale in comparison. I recall three exquisite marines which were painted in a boat, the canvases propped against a seat. But for the most part he painted indoors and with the one end in view--the composition of line and color harmonies more beautiful than anything found in nature, just as the musician seeks to compose harmonies more beautiful than any sounds found in nature. In the clearness of his vision and the faithfulness with which he painted the things and people with which he came in contact Whistler was an Impressionist--an Impressionist long before Monet, but in his search after color and line music, in his attempts to do things beyond and above nature, he was a _Post_-Impressionist. * * * * * From a psychological point of view it is not difficult to see how these movements come about. Given exhibitions year after year filled with paintings of the imagination, with idealized peasants such as Millet’s, and idealized landscapes such as Rousseau’s, it is morally certain the younger painters will feel a restless longing to return to the realities of life, just as the reading or theater going public after being fed too long on fairy-tales and romances demand more realistic representations of life. Every man who reads much has his fairy-tale period and his romantic period followed by a strong taste for realism, which in turn is followed by a new and finer appreciation of purely imaginative literature.