"Realism" having led painting from the past to the present, and "Impressionism" having broken the jurisdiction of the galleries by establishing an independent conception of colour for a new class of subjects, the flood of modern life, which had been artificially dammed, began to pour into art in all its volume. A whole series of new problems emerged, and a vigorous band of modern spirits were ready to lay hold upon them and give them artistic shape, each according to his nature, his ability, and his individual knowledge and power. After nineteenth-century painting had found its proper field of activity they were no longer under the necessity of seeking remote subjects. The fresh conquest of a personal impression of nature took the place of that retrospective taste which employed the ready-made language of form and colour belonging to the old masters, as a vocabulary for the preparation of fresh works of art. Nature herself had become a gallery of splendid pictures. Artists were dazzled as if by a new light, overcome as though by a revelation of tones and strains from which the painter was to compose his symphonies. They learnt how to find what was pictorial and poetic in the narrowest family circle and amongst the beds of the simplest vegetable garden; and for the first time they felt more wonder in the presence of reality, the joy of gradual discovery and of a leisurely conquest of the world. Of course, _plein-air_ painting was at first the chief object of their endeavours. Having painted so long only in brown tones, the radiant magic world of free and flowing light was something so ravishingly novel that for several years all their efforts were exclusively directed to possessing themselves once more of the sun, and substituting the clear daylight for the clare-obscure which had reigned alone, void of atmosphere. In this sunny brightness, flooded with light and air, they found a crowd of problems, and turned to the perpetual discovery of new chords of colour. Sunbeams sparkling as they rippled through the leaves, and greyish-green meadows flecked with dust and basking under light, were the first and most simple themes.