“The discovery of these Impressionists consists in having thoroughly understood the fact that strong light discolours tones, and that sunlight reflected by the various objects in nature, tends from its very strength of light to bring them all up to one uniform degree of luminosity, which dissolves the seven prismatic rays in one single colourless lustre, which is the light.... Impressionism, in those works which represent it at its best, is a kind of painting which tends towards phenomenism, towards the visibility and the signification of things in space, and which wishes to grasp the synthesis of things as seen in a momentary glimpse.... One has now the right to say, without provoking an outcry, that it has been given to the people of the present time to witness a magnificent and phenomenal artistic evolution by this succession of canvases painted by Claude Monet during the past twenty years.” GEFFROY. “Two coloured surfaces in juxtaposition will exhibit the modification to the eye viewing them simultaneously, the one relative to the height of tone of their respective colours, the other relative to the physical composition of these same colours.... We must not overlook the fact, that whenever we mix pigments to represent primitive colours, we are not mixing the colours of the solar spectrum, but mixing substances which painters and dyers employ as Red, Yellow, and Blue colours.... All the primary colours gain in brilliancy and purity by the proximity of Grey.... Grey in association with sombre colours, such as Blue and Violet, and with broken tints of luminous colours, produces harmonies of analogy which have not the vigour of those with Black; if the colours do not combine well together, it has the advantage of separating them from each other.... Distant bodies are rendered sensible to the eye, only in proportion as they radiate, or reflect, or transmit the light which acts upon the retina.” CHEVREUL. “The object of landscape painting is the imitation of light in the regions of the air and on the surface of the earth and of water.... One must seek above all else in a picture for some manifestation of the artist’s spiritual state, for a portion of his reverie.... In the career of an artist, one must have conscience, self-confidence and perseverance. Thus armed the two things in my eyes of the first importance are the severe study of drawing and of values.”