DAGNAN-BOUVERET. BRETONNES AU PARDON. (_By permission of the Artist._)] When these "spotted" pictures hang in a room where they are fewer in number than ordinary paintings they are difficult to understand. Only the disadvantages of such a method of painting are noticed; the disagreeable spottiness of the little points of colour ranged unpleasantly side by side, and putting one in mind of a piece of embroidery work, does not exactly appeal to the artist who looks for beautiful lines and _belle pâte_ in a picture. Nevertheless, the method would scarcely have found so many exponents did it not afford an opportunity to get certain effects which are scarcely obtainable in any other way. As a matter of fact, one finds in these pictures a sense of life, such shimmering, glimmering effects, such tremulous, vibrating light, as could not be arrived at without this disintegration of colour into separate points. Moreover, they have at a distance a decorative effect that leaves other pictures far behind. [Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._ DAGNAN-BOUVERET. THE NUPTIAL BENEDICTION. (_By permission of Messrs. Boussod, Valadon & Co., the owners of the copyright._)] The importance of Neo-Impressionism, therefore, depends on two particulars. First, in the analysis of light it has carried the principles of Impressionism to their furthest limit; secondly, in the matter of decorative effect it has laid aside one great fault of Impressionism, and has given us pictures which, seen from a distance, take on a definite form instead of a blur of indistinct tones. Amongst the younger painters exhibiting in the Salon, _Pointelin_--without any trace of imitation--perhaps comes nearest to the tender poetry of Corot, and has with most subtlety interpreted the delicate charm of cold moods of morning, the deep feeling of still solitude in a wide expanse. _Jan Monchablon_ views the meadow and the grass, the blades and variegated flowers of the field, with the eyes of a primitive artist. Wide stretches of rolling ground upon radiant spring days are usually to be seen in his pictures. The sun shines, the grass sparkles, and the horizon spreads boundless around. In the background cows are grazing, or there move small figures bathed in air, whilst a dreamy rivulet murmurs in the foreground. The bright, soft light of Provence is the delight of _Montenard_, and he depicts with delicacy this landscape with its bright, rosy hills, its azure sky, and its pale underwood. Light, as he sees it, has neither motes nor shadows; its vibration is so intense and fine that it fills the air with liquid gold, and absorbs the tints of objects, wrapping them in a soft and mystic golden veil.