Their admiration of Turner and Constable was a repetition of the experiences of another great Frenchman nearly fifty years earlier. In his published journal, Delacroix has written: “Constable and Turner are true reformers.” At the Salon of 1824 the pictures of Constable so profoundly impressed him that he completely repainted his large canvas, the _Massacre of Scio_, then hanging in the same exhibition. The next year he visited London in order that he might more closely study Constable’s work. He returned to Paris marvelling at the hitherto unsuspected splendour of Turner, Wilkie, Lawrence, and Constable. Immediately he began to profit by their examples. Delacroix chronicles that he noticed that Constable, instead of painting in the usual flat tones, composed his picture of innumerable touches of different colours juxtaposed, and, at a certain distance, recomposing in a more powerful and more atmospheric natural effect. He adds that he considers this new method far superior to the old-fashioned one. The group of 1870 made this discovery afresh. It is pleasant to imagine that these artistic explorations somewhat dulled the misery of their exile. They worked and copied in the public and private galleries, they painted by the riverside, and in the streets and parks. With enthusiasm they absorbed the technique of Turner and Constable, perhaps of Watts, and the result is to be seen in Claude Monet’s _Haystacks_, in Pissarro’s street scenes, in Sisley’s landscapes, in the luminous work of Guillaumin and d’Espagnat, in the canvases of Vuillard, Maufra, and many followers. Their style was revolutionised, their ideals changed. The dull greys and the russet browns which reigned supreme before 1870 were banished for ever. [Illustration: THE WHITE RABBITS · GEORGES D’ESPAGNAT ] They returned to France the preachers of a new crusade. The “Café de la Nouvelle Athénée” became the centre of the group. Reunited under Manet, whose style commenced to show signs of much influence from Claude Monet, the reformers gathered many recruits, and gained more enemies. They were not without friends on the press: Emile Zola, who had written so eloquently in “Mes Haines,” Théodore Duret, friend and literary executor of Manet, Gustave Geffroy of “La Vie Artistique,” in Monet’s opinion the most slashing of the lot, Arsène Alexandre of “Le Figaro,” Gustave Cahen, Roger Marx, and many others. [Illustration: A SUMMER AFTERNOON · GEORGES D’ESPAGNAT ]