venture. Matisse has gone to China, where
rhythm, not imitation, is the chiefest quality in art.

Such men as Matisse, Augustus John, and Arthur B. Davies excel as
draughtsmen. The sketches of the first-named are those of a sculptor,
almost instantaneous notations of attitudes and gestures. The
movement, not the mass, is the goal sought for by all of them. The
usual crowd of charlatans, camp-followers, hangers-on may be found
loudly praising their own wares in this Neo-Impressionist school--if
school it be--but it is only fair to judge the most serious and gifted
painters and sculptors of the day. Already there are signs that the
extremists, contortionists, hysterical humbugs, Zonists, Futurists,
and fakers generally are disappearing. What is good will abide, as is
the case with Impressionism; light and atmosphere are its lessons; the
later men have other ideals: form and rhythm, and a more spiritual
interpretation of "facts."

III

The Comparative Exhibition in New York over ten years ago proved that
it is dangerous to mix disparate schools and aims and personalities.
And while the undertaking was laudable, seeking as it did to dissipate
our artistic provinciality, it but emphasised it--proved beyond the
peradventure of a doubt American dependence on foreign art.
Technically, to-day, the majority of our best painters stem from
France, as formerly they imitated English models or studied at
Duesseldorf and Munich. When the Barbizon group made their influence
felt our landscapists immediately betrayed the impact of the new
vision, the new technique. Our younger men are just as progressive as
were their fathers and grandfathers. Every fresh generation uses as a
spring-board for its achievements the previous generation. They have a
lot to put on canvas, new sights that only America can show. What
matter the tools if they have, these young chaps, individuality? Must
they continue to peer through the studio spectacles of their
grandfathers? They make mistakes, as did their predecessors. They
experiment; art is not a fixed quantity, but a ceaseless
experimenting. They are often raw, crude, harsh; but they deal in
character and actuality. They paint their environment--the only true
historic method--and they do this with a modern technique. Manet,
Goya, Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Whistler, and
others may be noted in the technical schemes of nine out of ten
native-born