sm. The critics
are merely expressing the trend of public opinion. It is not new to
our age. Diaz, so one story goes, once came stumping (he had lost one
leg) into Millet's cottage at Barbizon fresh from the Salon. Millet
had been painting nudes--the most exquisite bits of flesh-painting
seen for many a day, and as modest as Chabas "September Morn."

"What do they say of my things?" asked Millet.

"That you are still painting naked women," replied Diaz.

Millet was horrified.

"I paint naked women! I never painted one in my life."

Hence "The Angelus" and "The Sowers" and the other masterpieces of
clothed peasants.

In 1825 Constable writes in answer to a scurrilous attack made on his
so-called "puerile" efforts:

"Remember the great were not made for me, nor was I for the great. My
limited and abstractive art is to be found under every hedge and in
every lane, and therefore nobody thinks it worth while picking up. My
art flatters nobody by imitation: it courts nobody by smoothness: it
tickles nobody by politeness: it is without either fol-de-rol or
fiddle-de-dee. How can I hope to be popular?"

Ruskin's attack on Whistler is another case in point. A lawsuit
followed and Whistler recovered one farthing damages, and had the
effrontery to dangle it under the great critic's nose that same night
at a reception where they both met, followed by the remark:

"Beat you, old man."

Even Mr. Thackeray went out of his way in his "art notes" to belittle
and ridicule Sir Thomas Lawrence because he lacked what he called the
"virility of his progenitors and associates."

* * * * *

And now for my own system.

I use a heavy, gray charcoal paper, which is made by Dupre & Company,
No. 141 Faubourg St. Honore, Paris, and which costs about ten cents
per sheet, measuring about 40 x 30 inches each. This paper is evenly
ribbed but without the intermittent bands seen often in the lighter
charcoal paper, known as "Michelet," sold everywhere in our own art
stores. Dupre will send this paper to anybody who applies for it.

This paper I wet on _both_ sides and thumb-tack over an oil canvas the
size of the picture to be painted. It dries tight as a drum, and the
canvas backing protects it from puncture or other injury.

On this surface I make _a full and complete drawing in charcoal_ of
the subject before me, not in outline, but in strong darks, jet-black,
many of them--a finished drawing really, in