felt on English art. More than any other man, Mr. Whistler has helped
to purge art of the vice of subject and belief that the mission of the
artist is to copy nature. Mr. Whistler's method is more learned, more
co-ordinate than that of any other painter of our time; all is
preconceived from the first touch to the last, nor has there ever been
much change in the method, the painting has grown looser, but the
method was always the same; to have seen him paint at once is to have
seen him paint at every moment of his life. Never did a man seem more
admirably destined to found a school which should worthily carry on
the tradition inherited from the old masters and represented only by
him. All the younger generation has accepted him as master, and that
my generation has not profited more than it has, leads me to think,
however elegant, refined, emotional, educated it may be, and anxious
to achieve, that it is lacking in creative force, that it is, in a
word, slightly too slight.




CHAVANNES, MILLET, AND MANET.


Of the great painters born before 1840 only two now are living, Puvis
de Chavannes and Degas. It is true to say of Chavannes that he is the
only man alive to whom a beautiful building might be given for
decoration without fear that its beauty would be disgraced. He is the
one man alive who can cover twenty feet of wall or vaulted roof with
decoration that will neither deform the grandeur nor jar the greyness
of the masonry. Mural decoration in his eyes is not merely a picture
let into a wall, nor is it necessarily mural decoration even if it be