f the next. For whereas the methods and
forms of one may admit of almost infinite development, the methods and
forms of another may admit of nothing but imitation. For instance, the
fifteenth century movement that began with Masaccio, Uccello, and
Castagno opened up a rich vein of rather inferior ore; whereas the
school of Raffael was a blind alley. Cezanne discovered methods and
forms which have revealed a vista of possibilities to the end of which
no man can see; on the instrument that he invented thousands of artists
yet unborn may play their own tunes.

What the future will owe to Cezanne we cannot guess: what contemporary
art owes to him it would be hard to compute. Without him the artists of
genius and talent who to-day delight us with the significance and
originality of their work might have remained port-bound for ever,
ill-discerning their objective, wanting chart, rudder, and compass.
Cezanne is the Christopher Columbus of a new continent of form. In 1839
he was born at Aix-en-Provence, and for forty years he painted patiently
in the manner of his master Pissarro. To the eyes of the world he
appeared, so far as he appeared at all, a respectable, minor
Impressionist, an admirer of Manet, a friend, if not a protege, of
Zola, a loyal, negligible disciple. He was on the right side, of
course--the Impressionist side, the side of the honest, disinterested
artists, against the academic, literary pests. He believed in painting.
He believed that it could be something better than an expensive
substitute for photography or an accompaniment to poor poetry. So in
1870 he was for science against sentimentality.

But science will neither make nor satisfy an artist: and perhaps Cezanne
saw what the great Impressionists could not see, that though they were
still painting exquisite pictures their theories had led art into a _cul
de sac_. So while he was working away in his corner of Provence, shut
off completely from the aestheticism of Paris, from Baudelairism and
Whistlerism, Cezanne was always looking for something to replace the bad
science of Claude Monet. And somewhere about 1880 he found it. At
Aix-en-Provence came to him a revelation that has set a gulf between the
nineteenth century and the twentieth: for, gazing at the familiar
landscape, Cezanne came to understand it, not as a mode of light, nor
yet as a player in the game of human life, but as an end in itself and
an object of intense emotion. Every great artist ha