that an injustice is done to it by reproducing it only by half-tone
process. The interest of this portrait is in the psychological grasp of
character it seems to show. The painter was in the habit of contributing
interior _genre_ scenes in water-colour to the Old Water-colour Society,
of which he was made an Associate in 1881. That may be said against his
painting, which may be said against the painting of so many eminent
black-and-white men who have changed to the art of painting too late in
the day. It shows failure to think in paint. An artist is only a great
"black-and-white" artist because he thinks in that medium. Possibly, if
there were no such thing as a "black-and-white" art, as we have it in
journalism to-day, some of the greatest men in it would instead have
been great painters. But successful transference to the one art after
unusual mastery has been acquired in the other is rarely witnessed. To
think in line, to see the world as resolving itself into the play of
alternating lines, so to habituate thought and vision to that one
aspect of everything is not the best preparation in the world for seeing
it over again in another art where the element of line is not the chief
incident of the impression to be created. Failure in the one art does
not mean failure as an artist. Those artists who have worked in a
variety of mediums with apparently equal success in each have always
attained the ability to make each medium in turn express the same
personal feeling. But nearly always there is in such cases that
sacrifice of the inherent qualities of one or other of the mediums
employed which a great virtuoso never makes.

Black-and-white men put themselves into an attitude of receptivity
towards that aspect of things which suggests representation in line.
Their acquired sensitiveness in this respect is expressed in the learned
character of their touch in drawing. Painters cultivate a similarly
receptive attitude towards nature, but lay themselves open to receive a