s the rest of us that T'ang art is well thought of, and that
without some important example of it no Oriental collection is deemed
complete. But T'ang art, as a rule, is neither literary nor pretty nor
at all the sort of thing the collecting class cares for. What this class
really likes is the art of the eighteenth century and the art of the
high Renaissance. Miraculously comes to light an important figure
labelled T'ang yet rich in the dear, familiar qualities of Renaissance
sculpture. As usual, the officials have got it both ways. Surely
Providence had a hand in this, unless it was the dealers.

IV

MARCHAND

[Sidenote: _Preface. Carfax Exhibition, June 1915_]

Of the younger French artists Marchand seems to me the most interesting.
By "the younger" I mean those who, though they descend from Cezanne,
have been influenced, directly or indirectly, by Matisse or Picasso or
both. These form a just distinguishable group sandwiched between the
quasi-impressionists--Bonnard, Manguin, Vuillard--and the Cubists. To be
precise, it is of a battered sandwich that they are the core; the jam
oozes through on either side. It always does. That is why scholars and
historians have a hard time of it.

I dare say Marchand would deny that he had been influenced by any one;
for some strange reason artists like to suppose that, unlike all other
living things, they are unaffected by their environment. The matter is
of no consequence, but with the best will in the world I should find it
hard to believe that the _Femme couchee devant un paysage_ (No. 5)
would have been just what it is if Gauguin had never existed, or that
the scheme of the beautiful _Portrait de femme_ (No. 4) owes nothing to
Picasso. And isn't it pretty clear that Marchand would have painted in
an altogether different style if Cezanne had never existed?

Believing, as I do, in the influence of one artist on another, I regard
this exhibition as a piece of rare good fortune for British art.
Marchand is eminent in just those qualities that we most lack. Above all
things he is a painter. I am curious to hear what Mr. Sickert has got to
say about his pictures; and I shall be disappointed if they do not wring
from him what used to be the highest encomium on the lips of his old
friend Degas--_C'est de la peinture!_

No living painter is more purely concerned with the creation of form,
with the emotional significance of shapes and colours, than Marchand. To
him, evide