His range of subjects finds its limit in one point: he has the greatest contempt for banality, for the repetition of others and of himself. Every subject has to give opportunity for the introduction of special models, not hitherto employed, of pictorial experiments and novel problems of light. He made his starting-point, the grace and charming movements of women. Trim Parisian laundresses in their spotless aprons, little shop-girls in their _boutiques_, the spare grace of racehorses with their elastic jockeys, marvellous portraits, like that of Duranty, women getting out of the bath, the movements of the workwoman, and the toilette and _négligé_ of the woman of the world, boudoir scenes, scenes in court, and scenes in boxes at the theatre--he has painted them all. And with what truth and life! How admirably his figures stand! how completely they are what they give themselves out to be! The Circus and the Opera soon became his favourite field of study. In his ballet-girls he found fresher artistic material than in the goddesses and nymphs of the antique. At the same time the highest conceivable demands were here made on the capacities of the painter and the draughtsman, and on his powers of characterisation. Of all modern artists Degas is the man who creates the greatest illusion as an interpreter of artificial light, of the glare of the footlights before which these _décolleté_ singers move in their gauze skirts. And these dancers are real dancers, vivid every one of them, every one of them individual. The nervous force of the born ballerina is sharply differentiated from the apathy of the others who merely earn their bread by their legs. How fine are his novices with tired, faded, pretty faces, when they have to sweep a curtsey, and pose so awkwardly in their delightful shyness. How marvellously he has grasped the fleeting charm of this moment. With what spirited nonchalance he groups his girls enveloped in white muslin and coloured sashes. Like the Japanese, he claims the right of rendering only what interests him and appears to make a striking effect--"the vivid points," in Hokusai's phrase--and does not hold himself bound to add a lifeless piece of canvas for the sake of "rounded composition." In pictures, where it is his purpose to show the varied forms of the legs and feet of his dancers, he only paints the upper part of the orchestra and the lower part of the stage--that is to say, heads, hands, and instruments below, and dancing legs above. He is equally uncompromising in his street and racing scenes, so that often it is merely the hindquarters of the horses and the back of the jockey that are visible. His pictures, however, owe not a little of their life and piquancy to this brilliant method of cutting through the middle, and to these triumphant evasions of all the vulgar rules of composition. But, for the matter of that, surely Dürer knew what he was about when, in his pictures of apocalyptic