from painting them.

The mission of art is not truth, but beauty; and I know of no great
work--I will go even further, I know no even tolerable work--in
literature or in painting in which the element of beauty does not
inform the intention. Art is surely but a series of conventions which
enable us to express our special sense of beauty--for beauty is
everywhere, and abounds in subtle manifestations. Things ugly in
themselves become beautiful by association; or perhaps I should say
that they become picturesque. The slightest insistance in a line will
redeem and make artistically interesting the ugliest face. Look at
Degas' ballet-girls, and say if, artistically, they are not beautiful.
I defy you to say that they are mean. Again, an alteration in the
light and shade will create beautiful pictures among the meanest brick
buildings that ever were run up by the jerry-builder. See the violet
suburb stretching into the golden sunset. How exquisite it has become!
how full of suggestion and fairy tale! A picturesque shadow will
redeem the squalor of the meanest garret, and the subdued light of the
little kitchen where the red-petticoated housewife is sweeping must
contrast so delicately with the white glare of the brick yard where
the neighbour stands in parley, leaning against the doorpost, that the
humble life of the place is transformed and poetised. This was the ABC
of Dutch art; it was the Dutchmen who first found out that with the
poetising aid of light and shade the meanest and most commonplace
incidents of every-day life could be made the subjects of pictures.

There are no merits in painting except technical merits; and though my
criticism of Mr. Clausen's picture may at first sight seem to be a
literary criticism, it is in truth a strictly technical criticism. For
Mr. Clausen has neglected the admirable lessons which our Dutch