Perforce
he loses scale, and therefore artistic completeness, but he secures an
incomparably vivid effect of reality, of nature--and of nature in her
gayest, most inspiring manifestation, illuminated directly and
indirectly, and everywhere vibrant and palpitating with the light of all
our physical seeing.
Monet is so subtle in his own way, so superbly successful within his own
limits, that it is time wasted to quarrel with the convention-steeped
philistine who refuses to comprehend even his point of view, who judges
the pictures he sees by the pictures he has seen. He has not only
discovered a new way of looking at nature, but he has justified it in a
thousand particulars. Concentrated as his attention has been upon the
effects of light and atmosphere, he has reproduced an infinity of
nature's moods that are charming in proportion to their transitoriness,
and whose fleeting beauties he has caught and permanently fixed.
Rousseau made the most careful studies, and then combined them in his
studio. Courbet made his sketch, more or less perfect, face to face with
his subject, and elaborated it afterward away from it.
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