The larger pictures were historical, classic, grand: but the smaller
pictures--the lively little bits of colour dotted in here and
there--were of that new school which Mr. Smithson affected. They were of
that school which is called Impressionist, in which ballet dancers and
jockeys, burlesque actresses, masked balls, and all the humours of the
side scenes are represented with the sublime audacity of an art which
disdains finish, and relies on _chic, fougue, chien, flou, v'lan_, the
inspiration of the moment. Lesbia blushed as she looked at the ballet
girls, the maskers in their scanty raiment, the _demi-mondaines_ lolling
out of their opera boxes, and half out of their gowns, with false smiles
and frizzled hair. And then there came the works of that other school
which lavishes the finish of a Meissonier on the most meretricious
compositions. A woman in a velvet gown warming her dainty little feet on
a gilded fender, in a boudoir all aglow with colour and lamplight; a
cavalier in satin raiment buckling his sword-belt before a Venetian
mirror; a pair of lovers kissing in a sunlit corridor; a girl in a
hansom cab; a milliner's shop; and so on, and so on.
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