Frenchmen. He is of the movement.
Superficially his work may look exotic and odd. Odd it will certainly
look to people unfamiliar with painting. But anyone who has studied
and understood the Italians will see at a glance that Duncan Grant is
thoroughly in the great tradition; while he who also knows the work of
Wilson, Gainsborough, Crome, Cotman, Constable, and Turner will either
deny that there is such a thing as an English tradition or admit that
Duncan Grant is in it. For my part, I am inclined to believe that an
English pictorial tradition exists, though assuredly it is a tiny and
almost imperceptible rill, to be traced as often, perhaps, through
English poetry as through English painting. At all events, there are
national characteristics; and these you will find asserting themselves
for good or ill in the work of our better painters.

Duncan Grant's ancestors are Piero della Francesca, Gainsborough, and
the Elizabethan poets. There is something Greek about him, too; not the
archaeological Greek of Germany, nor yet the Graeco-Roman academicism of
France, but rather that romantic, sensuous Hellenism of the English
literary tradition. It is, perhaps, most obvious in his early work,
where, indeed, all the influences I have named can easily be found.
Then, at the right moment, he plunged headlong into the movement, became
the student of Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, though not, curiously enough,
of Bonnard, the modern artist with whose work his own has the closest
affinity, and, for a year or two, suffered his personality to disappear
almost beneath the heavy, fertilizing spate. He painted French
exercises. He was learning. He has learnt. He can now express, not
someone else's ideas, but himself, completely and with delicious ease,
in the language of his age. He is a finished and highly personal modern
artist.

I dare say Duncan Grant's most national characteristic is the ease with
which he achieves beauty. To paint beautifully comes as naturally to him
as to speak English does to me. Almost all English artists of any merit
have had this gift, and most of them have turned it to sorry account. It
was so pleasant to please that they tried to do nothing else, so easy to
do it that they scampered and gambolled down the hill that ends in mere
prettiness. From this catastrophe Duncan Grant has been saved by a gift
which, amongst British painters, is far from common. He is extremely
intelligent. His intellect is strong enough t