‘Manet and the Post-Impressionists’ tore off the blinkers with a violence even those who were favourably disposed found quite bewildering. Hitherto, ‘modern’ pictures had been displayed piecemeal, or else had been glimpsed as inadequate reproductions in the pages of books with limited circulations. Now, on the walls of a prestigious gallery in the most fashionable part of the capital, hung a galaxy of works by artists whose names and techniques had, until then, been known to only the cosmopolitan few. London reeled.
