his vision is not purely pictorial; and because he feels the literary
significance of what he sees his conceptions are apt to be literary.
But he does not impose his conceptions on his pictures; he works his
pictures out of his conceptions. Anyone who will compare them with those
of Rossetti or Watts will see in a moment what I mean. In Duncan Grant
there is, I agree, something that reminds one unmistakably of the
Elizabethan poets, something fantastic and whimsical and at the same
time intensely lyrical. I should find it hard to make my meaning
clearer, yet I am conscious enough that my epithets applied to painting
are anything but precise. But though they may be lyrical or fantastic or
witty, these pictures never tell a story or point a moral.

My notion is that Duncan Grant often starts from some mixed motif which,
as he labours to reduce it to form and colour, he cuts, chips, and
knocks about till you would suppose that he must have quite whittled the
alloy away. But the fact is, the very material out of which he builds
is coloured in poetry. The thing he has to build is a monument of pure
visual art; that is what he plans, designs, elaborates, and finally
executes. Only, when he has achieved it we cannot help noticing the
colour of the bricks. All notice, and some enjoy, this adscititious
literary overtone. Make no mistake, however, the literary element in the
art of Duncan Grant is what has been left over, not what has been added.
A Blake or a Watts conceives a picture and makes of it a story; a
Giorgione or a Piero di Cosimo steals the germ of a poem and by curious
cultivation grows out of it a picture. In the former class you will
find men who may be great figures, but can never be more than mediocre
artists: Duncan Grant is of the latter. He is in the English tradition
without being in the English rut. He has sensibility of inspiration,
beauty of touch, and poetry; but, controlling these, he has intelligence
and artistic integrity. He is extremely English; but he is more of an