is like-minded with these older masters he will have to
express himself much in their manner. He will have to make, with his
eyes open, the sacrifices which they made, more or less unconsciously,
and to deny a whole range of truths with which his fellows are occupied
that he may express clearly and forcibly the few truths which he has
chosen.

All truths are good, and all ways of painting are legitimate that are
necessary to the expression of any truth. I am not here concerned to
show that one way is better than another or one set of truths more
important than another set of truths. For the present I am desirous only
of showing why there is more than one way--of explaining the necessity
of different methods for the expression of different individualities and
different ways of envisaging nature and art. But a little while ago it
was the modern or impressionistic manner that needed explanation. It
was new, it was revolutionary, and it was misunderstood and disliked. A
generation of critics has been busy in explaining it, a generation of
artists has been busy in practising it, and now the balance has turned
the other way. The pressure of conformity is upon the other side, and it
is the older methods that need justification and explanation. The
prejudices of the workers and the writers have gradually and naturally
become the prejudices of at least a part of the public, and it has
become necessary to show that the small minority of artists who still
follow the old roads do so not from ignorance or stupidity or a stolid
conservatism, still less from mere wilful caprice, but from necessity,
because those roads are the only ones that can lead them where they wish
to go. No more magnificent demonstration of the qualities possible to
the purely modern methods of painting has been made than this brilliant
little picture of Sargent's. All the more is it a demonstration of the
qualities impossible to these methods. If such qualities have any
permanent value and interest for the modern world it is a gain for art
that some painters should try to keep alive the methods that render
possible their attainment.

VI

THE AMERICAN SCHOOL

In the catalogues of our museums you may find entries like this: "John
Smith, American school; The Empty Jug" or what-not. In such entries
little more than a bare statement of nationality is intended. John Smith
is an American, by birth or adoption; that is all that the statement is
meant to