Why not rest the fevered and wandering eye, rather
than make one more attempt to take it by force?

Let the reader supply another side of the argument by looking at the
illustrations in any history of painting. Let him select the pictures
that charm him most, and think of them enlarged and transferred bodily to
one corner of the room, as he has thought of the sculpture. Let them take
on motion without losing their charm of low relief, or their serene
composition within the four walls of the frame. As for the motion, let it
be a further extension of the drawing. Let every gesture be a bolder but
not less graceful brush-stroke.

The Metropolitan Museum has a Van Dyck that appeals equally to one's sense
of beauty and one's feeling for humor. It is a portrait of James Stuart,
Duke of Lennox, and I cannot see how the author-producer-photographer can
look upon it without having it set his imagination in a glow. Every small
town dancing set has a James like this. The man and the greyhound are the
same witless breed, the kind that achieve a result by their clean-limbed
elegance alone. Van Dyck has painted the two with what might be called a
greyhound brush-stroke, a style of handling that is nothing but courtly
convention and strut to the point of genius. He is as far from the
meditative spirituality of Rembrandt as could well be imagined.

Conjure up a scene in the hereditary hall after a hunt (or golf
tournament), in which a man like this Duke of Lennox has a noble parley
with his lady (or dancing partner), she being a sweet and stupid swan (or
a white rabbit) by the same sign that he is a noble and stupid greyhound.
Be it an ancient or modern episode, the story could be told in the tone
and with well-nigh the brushwork of Van Dyck.

Then there is a picture my teachers, Chase and Henri, were never weary of
praising, the Girl with the Parrot, by Manet. Here continence in nervous
force, expressed by low relief and restraint in tone, is carried to its
ultimate point. I should call this an imagist painting, made before there
were such people as imagist poets. It is a perpetual sermon to those that
would thresh around to no avail, be they orators, melodramatists, or
makers of photoplays with an alleged heart-interest.

Let us consider Gilbert Stuart's portrait of Washington. This painter's
notion of personal dignity has far more of the intellectual quality than
Van Dyck. He loves to give us stately, able, fairly conscientious g