Thus, on the one side, it led directly to the analysis of atmospheric vibration, foreshadowed by Constable and Turner, but not by them elevated to the rank of a science; and on the other side, it led with equal inevitability to the total dependence of the painter upon Nature, and the consequent atrophy of his imagination. It was, as Manet said again, "Nature seen through a temperament." Against Impressionism, as against Romanticism, only one artist had dared to continue the tradition of classical, decorative painting descending from Giotto, through Raphael and Poussin, to Prud'hon and to Ingres. This was the Norman, Puvis de Chavannes. But Puvis, though nearly fifty, was still unknown, still dreaming of walls to conquer, still buried away from the eyes of the young men in the slumbrous depths of the official salons, while Impressionism was the _succès de scandale_ of the day. Gauguin heard of Impressionism and became a devout follower of its theories. He painted pictures in the manner of Camille Pissarro, who was a compatriot of Madame Gauguin, having been born in the Island of St. Thomas in the Antilles, then Danish territory. Gauguin took part in the exhibitions of the Impressionist group in 1880 and 1881. Huysmans, then as later the disciple of Naturalism pushed to its extreme limit, praised a nude of his because it was ugly. Gauguin began to be talked about, not only as a well-to-do amateur, but as a coming artist. But his work at the Bourse was exhausting his strength and his time. Although he had now a wife and five children dependent on him, Gauguin in January, 1883, took the rash step of quitting the financial world and devoting himself solely to art. This decision was, as Dr. Segalen says in his valuable Preface to the letters Gauguin wrote from Tahiti, the true turning-point in his career. When Paul Gauguin said to himself, "Henceforward I will paint every day," he was not only satisfying his vague and latest personal ambition and aptitude, he was setting himself to the fulfillment of a great impersonal duty: he was beginning to clear away the sophistications not only of his own nature but of modern art. IV It is important to note that Gauguin was thirty-five years of age when he came to this decision. This proves that the decision was no hasty one, of which he was liable to repent later. At such an age a man has arrived at his intellectual maturity; and, when this man is a Paul Gauguin, we may feel sure that he does not alter his whole manner of living from a mere desire for change. Gauguin had something to express and knew it. He had better work to do than dabbling in stocks and shares. And to this work he was determined to devote himself despite all opposition.