I liked his little landscapes better...simplified into nothing, into a
couple of primitive tints, wonderful clearness, light. But I doubt if he
will find a public to understand all that.

Democratic art! Art is the direct antithesis to democracy.... Athens! a
few thousand citizens who owned many thousand slaves, call that
democracy! No! what I am speaking of is modern democracy--the mass. The
mass can only appreciate simple and _naïve_ emotions, puerile
prettiness, above all conventionalities. See the Americans that come
over here; what do they admire? Is it Degas or Manet they admire? No,
Bouguereau and Lefebvre. What was most admired at the International
Exhibition?--The Dirty Boy. And if the medal of honour had been decided
by a _plébiscite_, the dirty boy would have had an overwhelming
majority. What is the literature of the people? The idiotic stories of
the _Petit Journal_. Don't talk of Shakespeare, Molière and the masters;
they are accepted on the authority of the centuries. If the people
could understand _Hamlet_, the people would not read the _Petit
Journal_; if the people could understand Michel Angelo, they would not
look at our Bouguereau or your Bouguereau, Sir F. Leighton. For the last
hundred years we have been going rapidly towards democracy, and what is
the result? The destruction of the handicrafts. That there are still
good pictures painted and good poems written proves nothing, there will
always be found men to sacrifice their lives for a picture or a poem.
But the decorative arts which are executed in collaboration, and depend
for support on the general taste of a large number, have ceased to
exist. Explain that if you can. I'll give you five thousand, ten
thousand francs to buy a beautiful clock that is not a copy and is not
ancient, and you can't do it. Such a thing does not exist. Look here, I
was going up the staircase of the Louvre the other day. They were
putting up a mosaic; it was horrible; every one knows it is horrible.