dy" and of the picture.

Herein lies the injustice of acquiring the posthumous effects of an artist
and exposing for sale every scrap to be found. The ravenous group of
dealers which made descent upon the Millet cottage at the death of that
artist effected as clean a sweep as an army of ants in an Indian bungalow.
In consequence we see in galleries throughout Europe and this country many
trifles in pastel which are not only incomplete but positively bad as
color. Millet used but a few hard crayons for trials in color suggestion,
to be translated in oil. Some were failures in composition and in most
the color is nothing more than any immature hand could produce with such
restricted means. To allow these to enter into any estimate of Millet or
to take them seriously as containing his own estimate of art, or as
intrinsically valuable, is folly.

The faults of selection may also be open to difference of opinion. "Who
would want to paint you when no one wants to look at you?" said an old
epigrammatist to a misshapen man. "Not so," says the artist; "I will
paint you though people may not like to look at you and they will look at
my portrait not for your sake but for my art, and find it interesting."

The cult that declares for anything as a subject, its value dependent upon
that which the artist adds, stands as a healthy balance to that band of
literary painters which affected English art a generation ago, the school
of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Maddox-Brown, who strove to present _ideas_
through art. With them the idea was paramount, and the technical in time
dwindled, the subject with its frequently ramified meaning, proving to be
beyond their art expression.

Again, the popular attempt to conceive in pictures that which the artist
never expected us to find is as reprehensible in graphic as in musical
art. There is often no literary meaning whatever in some of the best
examples of both. Harmony, tone, color and technique pure and simple are
the full compass of the intention. What this may suggest to the
individual he is welcome to, but the glib dictum of certain preachers on
art as to hidden intentions would indicate that they had effected an
agreement, with the full confidence of the silent partner to exploit him.
Beware of the gilt edged footnote, or the art that depends upon it. A
writer of ordinary imagination and fluent English can put an aureole about
any work of art he desires and much reputation is sec