ive intellectual scheme to trouble you, and no metaphysics of which
we have had quite enough in art. But if the simple and unaided colour
strike the right keynote, the whole conception is made clear. I regard
Mr. Whistler's famous Peacock Room as the finest thing in colour and art
decoration which the world has known since Correggio painted that
wonderful room in Italy where the little children are dancing on the
walls. Mr. Whistler finished another room just before I came away--a
breakfast room in blue and yellow. The ceiling was a light blue, the
cabinet-work and the furniture were of a yellow wood, the curtains at the
windows were white and worked in yellow, and when the table was set for
breakfast with dainty blue china nothing can be conceived at once so
simple and so joyous.

The fault which I have observed in most of your rooms is that there is
apparent no definite scheme of colour. Everything is not attuned to a
key-note as it should be. The apartments are crowded with pretty things
which have no relation to one another. Again, your artists must decorate
what is more simply useful. In your art schools I found no attempt to
decorate such things as the vessels for water. I know of nothing uglier
than the ordinary jug or pitcher. A museum could be filled with the
different kinds of water vessels which are used in hot countries. Yet we
continue to submit to the depressing jug with the handle all on one side.
I do not see the wisdom of decorating dinner-plates with sunsets and soup-
plates with moonlight scenes. I do not think it adds anything to the
pleasure of the canvas-back duck to take it out of such glories. Besides,
we do not want a soup-plate whose bottom seems to vanish in the distance.
One feels neither safe nor comfortable under such conditions. In fact, I
did not find in the art schools of the country that the difference was
explained between decorative and imaginative art.

The conditions of art should be simple. A great deal more depends upon
the heart than upon the head. Appreciation of art is not secured by any
elaborate scheme of learning. Art requires a good healthy atmosphere.
The motives for art are still around about us as they were round about
the ancients. And the subjects are also easily found by the earnest
sculptor and the painter. Nothing is more picturesque and graceful than
a man at work. The artist who goes to the children's playground, watches
them at their sport and