come.

The long-cloaked man with red whiskers impressed me as one with courage. Here was an apostle in Rome. One knew at a glance that this was what he felt himself to be. This man, whose gospel, presented by himself with forcible arguments and fanatical earnestness, helped along the little whirlwind now disturbing the world. of painting and sculpture, was the American apostle and "angel" of Post-Impressionism.

It is not expected that any reader will accept Post-Impressionism entirely through understanding how it arose. In any case the larger public will hardly be able immediately to understand and appreciate the good that is in it. The ability to ignore facts that are sacred to us or that have been hammered into us as fundamental requires time. Appreciation must grow naturally in the reader, as it did in me, and perhaps the story of my experience with this movement will help others who are just entering the street that seems so long.

Seven or eight years ago, as I was walking along a quiet street in the Latin Quarter of Paris, I observed an unusual figure of a man approaching. He wore a long, black cloak, was bareheaded, had a profusion of red whiskers, and wore sandals on his bare feet. His face was thoughtful, and so serious that it seemed lacking in humor; his stride and carriage indicated a vigorous, athletic body.

I did not smile, as many did, at the bare head and the sandaled bare feet in the city streets; rather, I was impressed with the strength and sincerity of this personality. One felt sure that this was no faker seeking notoriety by his appearance, but a man who had the courage to be himself. It is an easy matter to be frank when we are alone with ourselves, to disagree with established teaching; then get up, put on our conventional collar and hat, resume our conventional expressions, and carry on our conventional work. But it takes a tremendous amount of courage to be different from our fellow-sheep, and to be frank where it implies facing de

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In the course of a few days I was invited to his apartment, which rapidly was becoming a rendezvous for the restless in art. I have a distinct memory of my visit. The apartment was modest, being full with the dozen people who stood about the room, discussing the paintings and sculpture of Matisse, about twenty or more, which our host had bought. was my first sight of this new art, and as my mind was not thoroughly liberated from the prevailing idea of what constituted good pictures and bronzes, I was shocked, notwithstanding the serious arguing of the apostle, who was so earnest that his tense expression and dilating eyes gave me the feeling that he had an obsession. He talked much about the primitive, about the "personal emotion" one gets from nature, and about the "sensation"; but what he showed me seemed so ignoble in form and violent in color that, although willing to be broad in judgment, I could not but think this new thing freakish and disordered. The little class had converts, some of whom believed only in that part of the testament which related to painting, others, more thoroughly convinced, accepting all details even unto the red whiskers. Of course if a convert properly prepared by nature could fulfil all requirements, he no doubt felt that he should not restrain his whiskers, especially as they were in a sense more archaic than the smooth face of a conventional American. Archaic is one of the passwords. heard it often from the little group of sandaled anarchists, and realizing that it might have a real influence on art, even on my own art, I made use of my "Century Dictionary," and found that:

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The archaic, in art, not simply the quality of rudeness or of being primitive, but a

rudeness and imperfection implying the promise of future advance. Work that is merely barbarous is not properly archaic. The archaic style, in an art of sufficient force to have any development, succeeds the first rude attempts of a people to arrive at graphic representation, and exhibits a manifest sincerity and striving to attain truth, until finally the archaic quality disappears little by little as truth is reached in the great art-schools, such as those of Greece and of the Renaissance painters, or as art sinks into lifeless conventionalism before reaching truth, as in the sculpture of Egypt and Mesopotamia.

After some reflection, I came to the conclusion that these men were going far back in order to go ahead.

It was too far back for me, so the next day I got out a canvas that was under way, counted the fingers and toes on the principal figure, plumbed up his spinal column, made him seven and a half heads high, as per Academy Julian, put his weight on his feet and his feet on the ground, blew fixative on the drawing, and started in to paint along the lines that I hoped would lead me some day to the gates of Rembrandt-or thereabouts. But the scene and the conversation of the group I had met kept obtruding upon my thoughts to such an extent that I laid down my palette and went out for a walk in the quiet lanes of Montparnasse Cemetery. What had been said about "personal emotion" was in my mind. I had always vaguely felt the bit in my mouth, a bit with a strong check, a restraint when inspiration seemed closest. It even seemed at times as though the necessity of making my details thoroughly intelligible to the public often blocked my path when I was nearly at the goal. Full of enthusiasm and vigor, I would begin the day's work with such a desire to express something that had been in my thoughts for some time that I would be all eagerness to see it realized. Now, this thing that I wanted to express might have been something I had seen, or something that had developed from an idea I had kept in my memory, and was waiting only for an outward stimulus to push along.

At any rate, the conception was there, and it always took the form of a compo

sition. And the composition always took the shapes and lines that would represent the sentiment of my conception. That is to say, if a dramatic sentiment, the lines would be full of action and the masses pregnant with tragedy-long, violent lines in angles giving movement. If a poetic sentiment, the masses and lines would not disturb the eye with violent suggestion, but would be quiet and flowing. If a majestic sentiment, then the masses would be large, sculpturesque, and dignified. And in the conception, born at the same moment, and inseparable from the form, would be the color scheme.

This method of conceiving a picture is not that of every painter. I take simply the example I know most about. Nor is it at all clear in the mind before setting to work. But it is there, and with it the great desire to be realized. With this enthusiasm I would begin, and as my own experiences had taught me, I would make a composition sketch first. It would come in an hour or more, while the heat was great, and in the task the concentration of mind would be so intense and the play on the emotions so hard that the keenness of the imagination was soon dulled. But we will say that I expressed myself in a particular composition conceived in this way. What had I, then, that I should be so pleased? An arrangement of masses of color, of spots of color, of shapes of figures, of actions or movements of figures, a combination of all these, so that to an extent I visualized my conception, my fantasy, my caprice, my emotion, my dream, call it which you please.

No faces were in this sketch, no fingers on hands, in other words, no meaningless details, -and yet it gave me at a glance all that I meant to say. I expressed to myself at least my own emotion. '

Now, just here is where many of these ultra-moderns, Cubists, Futurists, Symbolists, etc., wish to stop. Perhaps their reason is that they have expressed their own feelings to themselves, and, that being the principal object of their work, think further development of a picture superfluous.

This little composition was alive to me, but not to others; for only the sensitive and imaginative artist could get my idea. So I must square it up, draw the figures, and paint in the faces; and the figures

must be well drawn, and the eyes must be in the right place, or I lose some of the dignity that I wish to convey. Now came my difficulty. The longer I worked on these details, and the more the picture developed in realism, so much in proportion did it lose that personal quality of enthusiasm and vigor and joy and spontaneity that was the soul of the sketch, and so much more did it become just a fairly well-built painting, a bit of craftsmanship full of flaws that were never in my conception, but which had become exceedingly important in my finished painting.

What was to be done? Was it right for one to compromise his strong feelings with labor that made them too well dressed and too polite and apologetic? Was the mere craftsmanship important enough to allow it to interfere with the free expression? Should one be more natural, expressing emotions of beauty, of happiness, of sympathy in some swift fashion that would have all the strength of one's feelings, yet be faulty in drawing, askew in form, and lack in quality of color? Or was it better to be conservative and restrained, as one had been taught, remembering that the Greeks and Titian and Velasquez set the standard we should climb for?

You see, I had been shoved into the new avenues without knowing it, and I was drifting along with a great quantity of cumulating ideas. I soon began vaguely to comprehend the reasons of these PostImpressionists, and said to myself, as many others have said, "There's a big truth in their point of view."

Along similar lines, but much more elaborated and complicated, much further in these new channels, argued those acquaintances in the Latin Quarter. Evidence of support to their new standard came from many avenues. Besnard, the leader of the "New Salon," was quoted as having an appreciation for Matisse; Claude Monet, then a vigorous worker at seventy, greatly admired the still life of Cézanne, and owned a number of examples; Rodin already had done his Balzac, which had been refused by the city of Paris, and was then exhibiting drawings in harmony with these Post-Impression thoughts; the germ had been carried to all the capitals of Europe, where those

tired of the old rules and conventions eagerly seized upon the new. Everywhere artists and art students who had what we call "revolutionary tendencies," who simply wanted to be different, saw a new hope come into their art lives.

At this upsetting moment of great excitement in the Latin Quarter I was obliged to return to my native land, and five years passed before I again saw examples of the ultra-modern in painting and sculpture.

With a mind in which five years of New York had made changes I went to the International Exhibition of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists held at the armory in 1913. This was the show, as all will remember, which created a vast amount of adverse comment and critical hilarity.

The first pictures one saw upon entering were the large decorative screens by Chanler, some of them beautiful in design and wonderful in execution. At the other end of the hall were the Cubists and that great drawing card, the "Nude Descending a Staircase." As I passed through the many rooms containing all varieties of Impressionism, I was surprised to find that I no longer doubted the new creeds. I seemed to understand what the artists wanted to say, and to be willing to forget some ugly defects that previously had disturbed me. Even some of the Cubist pictures, those enigmas that packed the armory with throngs of the curious, struck me as being very amusing and ingenious. fantasies of chunks of color.

It was the titles that disturbed the public. Titles are mental suggestions that often lead the mind away from the land of color and form and emotion into ethnology and mythology, literature, history, episodes of life, and many other regions. where the artist's ideas are completely lost in what might be called the literary ideas. of the onlooker. Whistler, one recalls, tried to remove that obstacle by calling his pictures symphonies. The Cubists might have called their works arrangements in cubes suggested by such or such a thing in nature; but in that case the crowd would not have hovered in that geometrical department of the exhibition.

Notwithstanding all the ferocious criticism, there was art in these pictures-art of the decorative and emotional sort. And

there was art in the violent colors of the other schools. We saw many lemons rolling down white-and-blue table-cloths, figures of beings that had lost all dignity of form, perspectives that were childish, draftsmanship that was ridiculous, paint put on the canvas in any way so that it did not suggest the suave technic of other days, a great absence of atmosphere, the thing that had been our religion a few years ago. Despite the lack of all these, which are a few of the many principles of our education, the principles of our great old masters, and a lack of the considerate politeness of our society and its garments of convention, there was life in Post-Impressionism. And if it had life, it had beauty; for they are inseparable.

I had come to appreciate. The obstacles in my vision had been pushed aside, and I saw clearly up the new avenues of thought.

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How can any one do this? How can one brush away his habits and be able to appreciate? He will be surprised how rapidly it will come to pass if he is interested in pictures and sculpture, interested enough to go often to see them. public will not have to overcome the technical education which blocked the artist's path, but will sooner get to the startingpoint on this new trail. But the public will always be divided into those who cannot forget, who reason as they were taught to reason, and into those whose minds respond more quickly to environment, to life, to discovery, and to new ideas.

are just as many intelligent people, but they see that a new truth has been added to our knowledge, and one which will be welded into all future art.

If one belongs to that part of the first half who do not know much about pictures, yet find they give pleasure and material for thought and increase one's observation of nature, the only possible way to understand the language of painting is to go frequently to exhibitions and museums. One should not be satisfied with magazine illustrations and newspaper pictures. They may be good as far as they go, but they do not help in color, and contribute little to the growth of taste. Taste is like everything else in our natures: it grows only through exercise. Taste does not mean elegance, refinement, Chippendale furniture, sweet colors, and jewels, although its education may lead through all these until one can see and choose with intelligence. You may even now be going through the sweet color and "ideal head" stage of growth. If that be the case, little wonder the new art shocked the refined senses of some.

No one artist can represent all the beauty of life. Consequently, we have many schools each accentuating its particular point of view. No man can honestly like them all. But because your taste leads you along certain lines, do not deny the virtues in any other healthy movement, provided, of course, you are convinced that it is healthy. Be careful that you do not become over-refined, too elegant, too used to the pretty, to respond to the elemental truths when honestly and crudely presented in art.

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VOICE the conviction of thousands of people when I say that the present era is one of the greatest artistic importance, and that it is made so by the noble line of painters that culminated in Cézanne, to go on to further realizations in the present and near future.

The word "moderns" is of course purely relative. Only a few years ago Professor Holmes wrote of Constable as the first of the moderns. Later André Suares spoke of Delacroix as the man from whom modern art is descended; perhaps Manet is the choice of the majority now, with a somewhat smaller, but increasing, number inclined to make the modern movement begin with Cézanne. The limits of the past and the accepted are constantly being set forward, and we see that the men who were thought to break most with tradition have only enriched it. The process keeps up to

day, and it is this that makes our time inspiring. We feel that we are alive and producing. We have learned the lessons of the past, including its greatest one, that we are worthy of our heritage and able to appreciate it only when we add to it. "Invent or perish," the great warning of Ruskin. It will be my privilege to speak here of the men

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who have preferred the former alternative.

They are men who justify their lives by their works, not by their artistic ancestry; nevertheless, as we are trying at present to understand these works better, it is worth while to glance backward and see how steadily the ideas of to-day have evolved from those of yesterday. With this in mind we shall be prepared to follow out in the Post-Impressionist and the Cubist pictures the continuing of the essential tradition of art, which is life, however they diverge from the unessential traditions of the manner of expressing it.

The history of the first three quarters of the nineteenth century is well known.

After the struggle between Classicism . and Romanticism came the Realists. The Impressionist school, with its scientific analysis of light, completed their work. It would of course be false to deny to men like Monet, Pissarro, and Renoir the possession of the classic qualities of form and color. In the perfect achievement of Renoir they are so splendid that he must be ranked not with the lesser, but with the greater, classics.

But with these men the obtaining of the esthetic qualities was mostly instinctive; with Cézanne we have the all-important