These are the points in which Japanese art has had a revolutionary effect upon the development of European. Each one of those who at that time belonged to the Society of the Jinglar has had more or less experience of its influence. Alfred Stevens owes to it certain delicacies of colouring; Whistler, his exquisite refinement of tone and his capriciously artistic method in the treatment of landscape; Degas, his fantastic and free grouping, his unrivalled audacities of composition. Manet especially became now the artist to whom history does honour, and Louis Gonse tells a story with a very characteristic touch of the first exhibition of the _Maîtres impressionistes_. He went there, coming from the official Salon in the company of a Japanese, and, while the French public declared the fresh brightness of the pictures to be untrue and barbaric, the son of sacred Nippon, accustomed from youth to see nature in light, airy tones without a yellow coating of varnish, said: "Over there I was in an exhibition of oil-pictures, here I feel as if I were entering a flowery garden. What strikes me is the animation of these figures, and the feeling is one I have never had elsewhere in your picture exhibitions." CHAPTER XXXI THE IMPRESSIONISTS The name Impressionists dates from an exhibition in Paris which was got up at Nadar's in 1871. The catalogue contained a great deal about impressions--for instance, "_Impression de mon pot au feu_," "_Impression d'un chat qui se promène_." In his criticism Claretie summed up the impressions and spoke of the _Salon des Impressionistes_.