All these things are simple enough, yet nearly always forgotten.
Your school of design here will teach your girls and your boys,
your handicraftsmen of the future (for all your schools of art
should be local schools, the schools of particular cities). We
talk of the Italian school of painting, but there is no Italian
school; there were the schools of each city. Every town in Italy,
from Venice itself, queen of the sea, to the little hill fortress
of Perugia, each had its own school of art, each different and all
beautiful.

So do not mind what art Philadelphia or New York is having, but
make by the hands of your own citizens beautiful art for the joy of
your own citizens, for you have here the primary elements of a
great artistic movement.

For, believe me, the conditions of art are much simpler than people
imagine. For the noblest art one requires a clear healthy
atmosphere, not polluted as the air of our English cities is by the
smoke and grime and horridness which comes from open furnace and
from factory chimney. You must have strong, sane, healthy physique
among your men and women. Sickly or idle or melancholy people do
not do much in art. And lastly, you require a sense of
individualism about each man and woman, for this is the essence of
art - a desire on the part of man to express himself in the noblest
way possible. And this is the reason that the grandest art of the
world always came from a republic: Athens, Venice, and Florence -
there were no kings there and so their art was as noble and simple
as sincere. But if you want to know what kind of art the folly of
kings will impose on a country look at the decorative art of France