them are not only
blameless but even lovable characters. Those sinister but flattering
insinuations and open charges of corruption fade woefully when one
considers how little the critic of contemporary art can hope to get for
"writing up" pictures that sell for twenty or thirty guineas apiece. The
expert, to be sure, is exposed to some temptation, since a few of his
words, judiciously placed, may promote a canvas from the twenty to the
twenty thousand mark; but, as everyone knows, the morality of the expert
is above suspicion. Useless as the occupation of the critic may be, it
is probably honest; and, after all, is it more useless than all other
occupations, save only those of creating art, producing food, drink, and
tobacco, and bearing beautiful children?

If the collector asks me, as a critic, for my opinion of the Velasquez
he is about to buy, I will tell him honestly what I think of it, as a
work of art. I will tell him whether it moves me much or little, and I
will try to point out those qualities and relations of line and colour
in which it seems to me to excel or fall short. I will try to account
for the degree of my aesthetic emotion. That, I conceive, is the
function of the critic. But all conjectures as to the authenticity of a
work based on its formal significance, or even on its technical
perfection, are extremely hazardous. It is always possible that someone
else was the master's match as artist and craftsman, and of that
someone's work there may be an overwhelming supply. The critic may sell
the collector a common pup instead of the one uncatalogued specimen of
Pseudo-kuniskos; and therefore the wary collector sends for someone who
can furnish him with the sort of evidence of the authenticity of his
picture that would satisfy a special juryman and confound a purchasing
dealer. At artistic evidence he laughs noisily in half-crown periodicals
and five-guinea tomes. Documentary evidence is what he prefers; but,
failing that, he will put up with a cunning concoction of dates and
watermarks, cabalistic signatures, craquelure, patina, chemical
properties of paint and medium, paper and canvas, all sorts of
collateral evidence, historical and biographical, and racy tricks of
brush or pen. It is to adduce and discuss this sort of evidence that the
Collector calls in the Expert.

Anyone whom chance or misfortune has led into the haunts of collectors
and experts will admit that I have not exaggerated the horror of