Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/59

VIBRATION brought back studies wherein the pearly tones of out-of-door nature were for the first time accurately seen and noted.

A few of these pictures finding their way to France, were eagerly studied by a group of young Frenchmen, who, tired of the hide-bound conventions of David and Delaroche, were quick to recognize and absorb the new light. Armed with this fresh knowledge, these men in their turn went out into the fields, and looked and studied and painted; and thus grew up the great school of Barbizon.

A little later the artistic world was startled by the appearance of the French impressionists or luminarists. According to them, nature had spread her palette upon the heavens in the form of the rainbow, where all who looked might see and understand it. And everywhere and always, on hill [33]