Then a flag of truce will be held out to the recalcitrant artist who
cannot be prevented from painting beautiful pictures. "Come, let us be
friends; let's kiss and make it up; send a picture to the academy;
we'll hang it on the line, and make you an academician the first
vacancy that occurs." To-day the academy would like to get Mr.
Whistler, but Mr. Whistler replies to the academy as Degas replied to
the government official who wanted a picture for the Luxembourg. _Non,
je ne veux pas etre conduit au poste par les sargents de ville
d'aris_.

To understand Manet's genius, the nineteenth century would have
required ten years more than usual, for in Manet there is nothing but
good painting, and there is nothing that the nineteenth century
dislikes as much as good painting. In Whistler there is an exquisite
and inveigling sense of beauty; in Degas there is an extraordinary
acute criticism of life, and so the least brutal section of the public
ended by pardoning Whistler his brush-work, and Degas his beautiful
drawing. But in Manet there is nothing but good painting, and it is
therefore possible that he might have lived till he was eighty without
obtaining recognition. Death alone could accomplish the miracle of
opening the public's eyes to his merits. During his life the excuse
given for the constant persecution waged against him by the
"authorities" was his excessive originality. But this was mere
subterfuge; what was really hated-what made him so unpopular-was the
extraordinary beauty of his handling. Whatever he painted became
beautiful--his hand was dowered with the gift of quality, and there
his art began and ended. His painting of still life never has been
exceeded, and never will be. I remember a pear that used to hang in
his studio. Hals would have taken his hat off to it.