something serious on
the carpet. It is valedictory, expressive of sorrow and contempt rather
than anger. All the other old favourites of vituperative must have
missed fire before this almost sacred, disqualifying Podsnappianism is
applied to the objectionable person, picture, book, behaviour, or
movement. And when the epithet is brought into action, in nine cases out
of ten it is aimed at some characteristic essentially, often blatantly,
Anglo-Saxon. Throughout the nineteenth century all exponents of art and
literature not conforming to Fleet Street ideals were voted un-English;
Byron, Shelley, Keats, Swinburne, the Pre-Raphaelites, and, in course of
good time, those artists who formed the New English Art Club. There was
some ground for suspicion of foreign intrigue. They regarded Mr.
Whistler, an American, who flirted with French impressionism, as a
pioneer. Some of their names suggest the magic Orient or the romantic
scenery of the Rhine. But it is not extravagant to assert that if Mr.
Rothenstein had chosen to be born in France or Germany, instead of in
Bradford, his art would have come to us in another form. In his strength
and his weakness he is more English than the English. Art may have
cosmopolitan relations (it is usually a hybrid), but it must take on the
features of the country and people where it grows; or it may change them,
or change the vision of the people of its adoption. Yet Ruth must not
look too foreign in the alien corn, or her values will get wrong. When
an English artist airs his foreign accent and his smattering of French
pigment his work has no permanent significance. Even Professor Legros
unconsciously assimilated British subjectivity: his Latin rein has been
slackened; his experiments are often literary.

It is an error however to regard the exhibitions of the New English Art
Club as a homogeneous movement, such as that of Barbizon and the
Pre-Raphaelite--inspired by a single idea or similar group of ideas. The
members have not even the cohesion of Glasgow or defunct Newlyn. The
only thing they have in common, in common originally with Glasgow, was a
distaste for the tenets and ideals of Burlington House. The serpent (or
was it the animated rod?) of the Academy soon swallowed the
sentimentalities of Newlyn, just as the International boa-constrictor
made short work of Glasgow. And the forbidden fruit of an official Eden
has tempted many members of the Club. Others have resigned