among his masterpieces; there is
in London at least one other work by Gris, and that, to my thinking, a
better; while the Derain is by no means worthy of that eminent artist.

I wish we could have been shown three or four capital works by Derain,
because there is no man in the modern movement more readily appreciated
by people who care for painting, but boggle at the unfamiliar. I
remember finding myself once in Kahnweiler's shop on the Boulevards with
an extremely intelligent official from South Kensington, and I remember
his admitting with excellent candour that, though the Picassos still
puzzled him, he was a thorough convert to Derain. Naturally: how should
a man of taste and erudition not appreciate the exquisite scholarship
of an artist who can use the masters of painting as a very fine man of
letters--Charles Lamb, for instance--uses the masters of literature? For
Derain is one who has gone to the root of the matter and can remind you
of the Siennese school or have a joke with Pinturicchio by a subtler
method than quotation. When such a one bases his art on Cezanne and the
_douanier_ Rousseau, treating them quite simply as masters, an
intelligent spectator is bound to unlock his most finished prejudices
and take another look at them.

Marchand and de Vlaminck dominate one end of the gallery. There are
three pictures by each, they are admirably hung, and the effect produced
by this pool of distinguished and beautifully ordered colour is
marvellous. One is brought to a stand by that indescribable sense that
has come to most of us on entering for the first time some well-arranged
room in an important continental gallery--a sense of being in the
presence of great art. Closer examination, without destroying the unity
of effect, proves these two men to be about as different as two very
good artists of the same school and country can be. On Marchand I said
my say two years ago when I wrote a preface for his show at Carfax: he
is pre-eminently solid and architectural, and obviously he is highly
sensitive--by which I mean that his reactions to what he sees are
intense and peculiar. But these reactions, one fancies, he likes to take
home, meditate, criticize, and reduce finally to a rigorously definite
conception. And this conception he has the power to translate into a
beautifully logical and harmonious form. Power he seems never to lack:
it would be almost impossible to paint better. I do not know which of
Marchand's th