American artists. The question at issue is whether our new
men have anything to say, and do they say it in a personal manner. I
think the answer is a decided affirmative. We can't compete with the
great names in art, but in the contemporary swim we fairly hold our
own.

Consider our recent Academy exhibitions--and I prefer to take this
stronghold of antiquated art and prejudices as a starting-point
rather than the work of the out-and-out insurgents--consider, I
repeat, the Academy, and then try to recall, say, ten years ago and
the pictures that then hung on the line. Decidedly, as Zola would say,
there has been a cleaning up of dirty old palettes, an inrush of fresh
air and sunshine. In landscape we excel, easily leading the English
painters. Of Germany I do not care to speak here: the sea of mud that
passes for colour, the clumsiness of handling, and the general heavy
self-satisfaction discourage the most ardent champion of the Teutonic
art. In England, Burlington House still sets the fashion. At one Royal
Academy I attended I found throngs before a melodramatic anecdote by
John Collier, entitled The Fallen Ideal. It had the rigidity of a
tinted photograph. But it hit the "gallery," which dearly loves a
story in paint. The two Sargent landscapes did not attract, yet they
killed every picture within optical range. Nor was Collier's the worst
offence in an enormous gathering of mediocre canvases. One must go,
nowadays, to the New English Art Club to see the fine flower of new
English art. There Augustus John reigns, but he is not to be confined
in parochial limits; he is a "European event," not merely Welsh. He
dominates the club as he dominates English art. What's one man's paint
may be another's poison. I never saw so many examples of his except in
Mr. John Quinn's collection--who has the largest gathering in America
of the work of this virile painter and draughtsman. His cartoon--The
Flute of Pan (the property of Mr. Quinn)--hanging in the winter show
of the English Art Club, reveals the artist's impulse toward large
decorative schemes. At first the composition seems huddled, but the
cross-rhythms and avoidance of facile pose are the reason for this
impression. The work is magisterial. It grows upon one, though it is
doubtful whether it will ever make the appeal popular. John's colour
spots are seductive. He usually takes a single model and plays with
the motive as varyingly as did Brahms in his variations on a them