must be admitted that it was no small task, in the face of many very
unusual adverse circumstances, to bring together here the art of the
world. Mr. John E. D. Trask deserves unstinted praise for the
perseverance with which, under most trying circumstances, unusual enough
to defeat almost any collective undertaking, he brought together this
highly creditable collection of art. Wartime conditions abroad and the
great distance to the Pacific Coast, not to speak of difficulties of
physical transportation, called for a singularly capable executive, such
as John E. D. Trask has proved himself to be, and the world should
gratefully acknowledge a big piece of work well done. I do not believe
the art exhibition needs any apologies. Its general character is such as
fully to satisfy the standards of former international expositions.

It seems only rational that, with the notorious absence of any important
permanent exhibition of works of art on the Pacific Coast, an effort
should have been made to present within the exhibit the development of
the art of easel painting since its inception, because it seems
impossible to do justice to any phase of art without an opportunity of
comparison, such as the exposition affords. The retrospective aspects of
the exhibition are absorbingly interesting, not so much for the
presentation of any eminently great works of art as for the splendid
chance for first-hand comparison of different periods. Painting is
relatively so new an art that the earliest paintings we know of do not
differ materially in a technical sense from our present-day work.
Archaeology has disinterred various badly preserved and unpresentable
relics of old arts such as sculpture and architecture. It is little so
with pictures. Painting is really the most recent of all the fine arts.
It must seem almost unbelievable that the greatest periods of
architecture and sculpture had become classic when painting made its
début as an independent art. It is true enough that the Assyrians and