If Marquet were as familiar with naked women as he is with the hats,
coats, and petticoats he sees from his window, doubtless by this time he
would have elaborated a set of symbols wherewith to record his sense of
them. Happily he is not: so, before the model, he finds himself obliged
to demand of the artist that is in him some plastic equivalent for his
intense and agitated vision. Thus goaded and disarmed he can produce
a masterpiece. And, therefore, were it for me to give advice, what
I should say to Marquet would be--throw away your sketch-book and
panel-box, and settle down in a studio, with a top light, a model or
two, and a six-foot canvas. Only, as this must be just what M. Lhote has
been telling him, naturally he would tell me to mind my own business.

His apologist, M. Besson, at any rate, has no patience with those who
would set artists in the way they should go. In this essay he gives them
a piece of his mind, and he does it so well and so gaily that it is a
pleasure to be scolded. First, he has a few words with "une dame,
que Gerome fit heritiere de ses uniformes et qui devint la muse d'un
geometre-arpenteur de certaine recente peinture." (Whom can he mean?)

Je connais l'atelier de Marquet, Madame, en marge de l'Atelier ou
l'on esthetise, ou l'on fabrique les manifestes et les novateurs de
genie. Marquet garde son role de peintre. Il n'est guere pour lui de
souci plus serieux que le souci de sa liberte. Il veut etre libre
pour peindre, libre meme pour oublier la peinture, libre encore,
libre davantage pour n'etre ni questionne ni consulte, pour ne
devenir ni un expert, ni un educateur de sots.

Et voila pourquoi, vous n'avez jamais fait de conference en son
atelier.

And again:

Pour n'avoir jamais asservi son art a la construction d'un systeme,
pour avoir senti la vanite des theories, pour n'avoir pas fait tout
les pelerinages d'ou l'on revient avec des regles, l'art d'Albert
Marquet donne une impression de peinture heureuse.

Of course M. Besson is right. Few in this world cut a more ludicrous
figure than art-masters; few things are more deplorable than propaganda.
Yet M. Besson should be careful: one thing there is more ridiculous
still, and that is counter-propaganda. Protestantism in art is
the devil; but the devil is not such a fool as to protest against
protestantism. He leaves that to the young bloods of the Rotonde and the
Cafe Royal. By al