The warning was wrongly timed. In 1897 it came too early, or too late. Too late, because Manet and Monet have apparently held their own against Gérôme and Gustave Moreau, and protests are futile against facts, or what are regarded as such at a given period. Too early, for people then still stood—and probably they stand now—at an insufficient distance from the movement now called impressionist to regard it from the perspective of history, and to assign it its proper place in the development of painting. That moment will come, most likely very soon. Then the protest of the Academicians will be superfluous, for even the æsthetic boors will repeat the verdict, then become a commonplace, that realism had its justification; that, besides transient harm, it was the author of permanent utility; and that, after a half-miraculous progress not uncommon in the history of art, the new men, who themselves could do little or nothing at all, taught more competent successors something precious. The Caillebotte room will help to bring about a correct estimate of the revolutionists of “the ’sixties.” Gérôme ought to have rejoiced at the opening of that room, for it really, for the first time, sets a legend in the light of history. For twenty years everybody has thought he had a right to chatter about realism, though few have really seen the documentary monuments of it, because up to now they were never conveniently accessible as a whole. The prototypical works of the Naturalist School were mostly shown cursorily in rare and little noticed exhibitions. Then they hung in their authors’ studios, or in some private collections. He who had not lived in Paris for thirty years, and observed with close attention all the details of the art movement, or did not undertake troublesome journeys of exploration and discovery, could speak of them only from untrustworthy imitations, or from absolutely worthless hearsay. Now, at last, the material can be seen by all. Whoever is capable of receiving his own impressions can procure them. Extravagant enthusiasm for the pioneers of the “Open Air” movement will now be quite as little excusable as its condemnation without mitigating circumstances. The former will, in face of the Caillebotte room, be recognised at the first glance as sheer weak-mindedness, the latter as lack of understanding. That is the great service of this room in the Museum: it adduces all that can be said on behalf of realism, and shows at the same time, inexorably, its limitations.