the boudoir; many are kept constantly busy
delineating for the respect of future generations his lordship, or her
ladyship's family. The painting of the eighteenth century is brilliant
illustration still touched with art. For instance, in Watteau,
Canaletto, Crome, Cotman, and Guardi there is some art, some brilliance,
and a great deal of charming illustration. In Tiepolo there is hardly
anything but brilliance; only when one sees his work beside that of Mr.
Sargent does one realise the presence of other qualities. In Hogarth
there is hardly anything but illustration; one realises the presence of
other qualities only by remembering the work of the Hon. John Collier.
Beside the upholsterers who work for the aristocracy there is another
class supported by the connoisseurs. There are the conscientious bores,
whose modest aim it is to paint and draw correctly in the manner of
Raffael and Michelangelo. Their first object is to stick to the rules,
their second to show some cleverness in doing so. One need not bother
about them.

So the power of creating is almost lost, and limners must be content to
copy pretty things. The twin pillars of painting in the eighteenth
century were what they called "Subject" and "Treatment." To paint a
beautiful picture, a boudoir picture, take a pretty woman, note those
things about her that a chaste and civil dinner-partner might note, and
set them down in gay colours and masses of Chinese white: you may do the
same by her toilette battery, her fancy frocks, and picnic parties.
Imitate whatever is pretty and you are sure to make a pretty job of it.
To make a noble picture, a dining-room piece, you must take the same
lady and invest her in a Doric chiton or diploida and himation; give her
a pocillum, a censer, a sacrificial ram, and a distant view of Tivoli;
round your modelling, and let your brush-strokes be long and slightly
curved; affect sober and rather hot pigments; call the finished article
"Dido pouring libations to the Goddess of Love." To paint an exhibition
picture, the sort preferred by the more rigid _cognoscenti_, be sure to
make no mark for which warrant cannot be found in Rubens, Sarto, Guido
Reni, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Raffael, Michelangelo, or Trajan's
Column. For further information consult "The Discourses" of Sir Joshua
Reynolds, P.R.A., whose recipes are made palatable by a quality
infrequent in his dishes, luminosity.

The intellectual reaction from Classical to Ro