band of naked boys and girls over the golden summer sands in a sort of
ecstatic symphony of pantheism.

How does he secure such intensity of pitch in his painting of
atmosphere, of sunshine? By a convention, just as the falsification of
shadows by rendering them darker than nature made the necessary
contrasts in the old formula. Brightness in clear-coloured shadows is
the key-note of impressionistic open-air effects. W.C.
Brownell--French Art--puts it in this way: "Take a landscape with a
cloudy sky, which means diffused light in the old sense of the term,
and observe the effect upon it of a sudden burst of sunlight. What is
the effect where considerable portions of the scene are suddenly
thrown into marked shadow, as well as others illuminated with intense
light? Is the absolute value of the parts in shadow lowered or raised?
Raised, of course, by reflected light. Formerly, to get the contrast
between sunlight and shadow in proper scale the painter would have
painted the shadows darker than they were before the sun appeared.
Relatively they are darker, since their value, though heightened, is
raised infinitely less than the parts in sunlight. Absolutely, their
value is raised considerably. If, therefore, they are painted lighter
than they were before the sun appeared they in themselves seem truer.
The part of Monet's pictures that is in shadow is measurably true, far
truer than it would have been if painted under the old theory of
correspondence, and had been unnaturally darkened to express the
relation of contrast between shadow and sunlight."

Like Turner, Monet forced the colour of his shadows, as MacColl points
out, and like Monet, Sorolla forces the colour of his shadows--but
what a compeller of beautiful shadows--forces the key to the very
verge of the luminous abyss. Señor Beruete, the Velasquez expert,