IN art, the periphery informs the centre. Apparently 'mar- ginal' phenomena - such as varnish or frames - can be extremely important, both aesthetically, and in terms of a picture's meaning. Most avant-garde paintings from the 1870s to the 1900s are now far removed visually from the effects originally sought by the artists: varnish is one of the main culprits. This article looks at the issue of varnish on modern paintings from the impressionist period to that of the Fauves. It argues that, as far as artists themselves were concerned, varnish was not a finish to be applied automati- cally or arbitrarily to paintings. In addition to altering markedly the appearance of the object, varnish - or the lack of it - carried an ideological message: the decision not to varnish signalled the modernity not only of the work but also of the artist. A history of the debates concerning pic- ture varnishing forms the context in which a more detailed analysis of impressionist and Fauve paintings can be loc- ated. When contemporary art criticism, treatises on tech- nique, the opinions of dealers and artists, and the actual paintings themselves are examined, a pattern of views emerges which gives new significance to the problem of varnish.

and Michael Fried have seen Manet's uses of past images as exposing the significant place of EDOUARD MANET's painting presents a complex and con- troversial case of the modern artist's relation to preceding tradition. Scholars from Germain Bazin to Michel Foucaultthe museum in nineteenth- century experience. For Bazin, Manet's engagement with the art of distant masters exemplified the museum's rise as a site of artistic instruction. The variety of the museum collec- tion, he argued, promoted stylistic freedom, substituting choice for the tradition of apprenticeship to a single master. Later, Foucault associated Manet's archival enthusiasm with the museum's function as a new imaginative space of the nineteenth century. Its collected paintings, he affirmed, gen- erated further paintings out of themselves, new images implied by the relation of past works to each other, and to the modern viewer. More recently, Michael Fried, drawing in part on the theory of Harold Bloom, has regarded Manet as challenging the influence of museum painting, distorting the normal practice of selective imitation in an ambitious summarisation of earlier schools and styles.

TO the 'Index of previous Owners' in the third volume of John Ingamells's Wallace Collection Catalogue of Pictures should be added the name ofJeanne Becu, Comtesse Du Barry, in whose collection Greuze's Boy with a dog (Fig.27) can be documented between 1774 and 1777.1 It is unclear when or how Du Barry acquired this painting: contrary to what has been written, it did not come from the collection of her arch-enemy the duc de Choiseul.2 The paint- ing is first recorded in an inventory of her effects drawn up between 13th May and 23rd June 1774, after her exile from Versailles to the abbey of Pont-aux-Dames, where it is described as 'un petit garfon habillN tenant aussi un chien'.3 Included the following year among the assets that might be liquidated to pay her debts, Greuze's Boy with a dog was among the modern paintings offered for sale on 22nd December 1775 at the salle des Péres Augustins du grand couvent.

WHEN Gustave Caillebotte painted Le Pont de l'Europe in 1876, he depicted a scene that would have been instantly recognisable to Parisians of the day (Fig.29). This complex, striking image is dom- inated by the aggressive structure of the bridge along which stroll afldneur- his facial features said to be those of Caillebotte himself - and a female companion.' The powerful presence of the bridge in Caillebotte's composition is emblematic of the nature and force of the transformation and modernisation of Paris. The painting is audaciously contemporary in appearance, a representation of the modern Paris of Haussmann and Napoleon III. Yet its composi- tion may have its origin in an unexpected source: Cotton-goods Lane, Odenma-cho, a  colour woodcut of 1858 by Hiroshige from his series One hundred famous views of Edo (Fig.30). The hitherto unnoticed sim- ilarity between Le Pont de l'Europe and Cotton-goods Lane challenges previous assumptions about Caillebotte's painting, and at the same time offers some explanations for its unusual appearance. In addi- tion to the Japanese woodcut, a photograph of Caillebotte and his dog in the courtyard of the Louvre (Fig.34), taken around 1876 by his brother Martial (an amateur photographer), and recently redis- covered, appears to have been employed, with a few changes, in the painting.

challenges previous assumptions about Caillebotte's painting, and at the same time offers some explanations for its unusual appearance. In addi- tion to the Japanese woodcut, a photograph of Caillebotte and his dog in the courtyard of the Louvre (Fig.34), taken around 1876 by his brother Martial (an amateur photographer), and recently redis- covered, appears to have been employed, with a few changes, in the painting.

THE variable quality of much of the later work of Alfred Sisley and the relative paucity of personal documentation, particularly for the 1880s, had prevented until recently any thorough investigation of his motifs and stylistic development. But the sizeable group of let- ters from the 1890s written by Sisley to his friend the critic and col- lector Adolphe Tavernier, acquired in 1973 by the Fondation Custodia in Paris, has revealed a good deal about the painter's last visit to England and Wales in 1897, as well as some surprising details of his personal history.