The Impressionists, therefore, continued the methods of the English masters. But they added a strange and exotic ingredient. To the art of Corot and Constable they added the art of Japan, an art which had profoundly influenced French design one hundred years before. The opening of the Treaty ports flooded Europe with craft work from the islands. From Japanese colour-prints, and the gossamer sketches on silk and rice-paper, the Impressionists learnt the manner of painting scenes as observed from an altitude, with the curious perspective which results. They awoke to the multiplied gradation of values and to the use of pure colour in flat masses. This art was the source of the evolution to a system of simpler lines. In colour they ultimately departed from the practice of the English and Barbizon Schools. The Impressionists purified the palette, discarding blacks, browns, ochres, and muddy colours generally, together with all bitumens and siccatives. These they replaced by new and brilliant combinations, the result of modern chemical research. Cadmium Pale, Violet de Cobalt, Garance rose doré, enabled them to attain a higher degree of luminosity than was before possible. Special care was given to the study and rendering of colour, and also to the reflections to be found in shadows. So far as the term implies the position of teacher and pupils, the Impressionists did not form themselves into a school. On the contrary, they were independent co-workers, banded together by friendship, moved by the same sentiments, each one striving to solve the same æsthetic problem. At the same time it is possible to separate them into distinct personalities and groups. [Illustration: _Photo by W. A. Mansell & Co._ A COAST SCENE · R. P. BONINGTON ] [Illustration: _Photo by Fredk. Hollyer_ TIME, DEATH, AND JUDGMENT · G. F. WATTS ] Edouard Manet occupies a position alone. His work can be separated into two periods, divided by the year 1870. His earlier work deeply influenced Claude Monet, who was a prominent member of the group which gathered round Manet at the Café Guerbois. After 1870 the position was slightly changed, for, although he retained the nominal leadership of the group which was now known under the title of Impressionists, Manet was influenced by the technique of Claude Monet. The question has yet to be decided whether Manet or Monet was the founder of the new school. Monsieur Camille Mauclair declares for the latter, stating that Manet’s pre-eminence was due to the attention he attracted by his excessive realism, and that Claude Monet was the true initiator. It may be admitted that Impressionism, as the phrase is now understood, did not really gather force until 1867. Claude Monet was greatly attracted by Manet’s work as early as 1863, and upon these new methods he seems to have based his own, widened though after his visit to London with Pissarro in 1870.