rs these strokes as smooth as marble, the
shadows have disappeared. The material brought together renders the tone
more beautiful. Marble has never an ugly tone."

"One may use impasto, but not everywhere. Your brush should be handled
with reference to the character of what you are copying ... do not
forget that an apple is smooth. I should like to see you model a
billiard ball. Train yourself to have a true eye."

These are precepts that might be given by any good painter, but few of
the moderns could more justly claim to have practiced all that they
preached.

As a creative artist Stevens had his limitations. His lineal
arrangements are seldom entirely fortunate and his compositions, despite
the skill with which the given space is filled, lack except in rare
instances the serenity of less crowded canvasses. He invariably strove
to gain atmosphere by his choice and treatment of accessories but he
rarely used the delicate device of elimination. Nevertheless he was a
great painter and a great Belgian, untrammeled by foreign influences. He
not only drank from his own glass but he drank from it the rich old
wines of his native country.

A SKETCH IN OUTLINE OF JACQUES CALLOT

V

A SKETCH IN OUTLINE OF JACQUES CALLOT

In the Print Room of the New York Public Library are a large number of
etchings by Jacques Callot, which are a mine of wealth to the
painter-etcher of to-day, curious of the methods of his predecessors.
Looking at the portrait of Callot in which he appears at the height of
his brief career with well formed, gracious features, ardent eyes, a
bearing marked by serenity and distinction, an expression both grave and
genial, the observer inevitably must ask: "Is this the creator of that
grotesque manner of drawing which for nearly three centuries has borne
his name, the artist of the _Balli_, the _Gobbi_, the _Beggars_?" In
this dignified, imaginative countenance we have no hint of Callot's
tremendous curiosity regarding the most fantastic side of the fantastic
times in which he lived. We see him in the role least emphasized by his
admirers, although that to which the greater number of his working years
were dedicated: the role, that is, of moralist, philosopher and
historian, one deeply impressed by the sufferings and cruelties of which
he became a sorrowful critic.

There surely never was an artist whose life and environment were more
faithfully illustrated by his art. To know one is to kno