aving the money, and who have not a gleam of
understanding of the meaning of art. A woman who had ordered her
house to be furnished and decorated expensively, remarked
to a caller who commented on a water-color hanging in the
drawing-room: "Yes, I think it matches the wall-paper very nicely." When
such is the purpose of those who paint pictures and such is the
understanding of those who buy them, it is not surprising that not
every picture is inevitably a work of art.

But what is the poor seeker after art to do? The case is by no means
hopeless. In current exhibitions a few canvases strike a new note;
and by senses delicately attuned this note can be distinguished
within the jangle of far louder and popular tunes ground out, as it
were, by the street-piano. Seriously to study contemporary painting,
however, the logical opportunity is furnished by the exhibitions of
the works of single men or of small groups. As the reader who
wishes to understand an author or perhaps a school does not content
himself with random extracts, but instead isolates the man for the
moment and reads his work consecutively and one book in its
relation to his others; so the student of pictures can appreciate the
work and understand the significance of a given painter only as he
sees a number of his canvases together and in relation. So, he is able
to gather something of the man's total meaning.

Widely different from annual exhibitions, too, are galleries and
museums; for here the proportion of really good things is
immeasurably larger. In the study of masterpieces, it need hardly be
said, the amateur may exercise judgment and moderation. He should
not try to do too much at one time, for he can truly appreciate only
as he enters fully into the spirit of the work and allows it to possess
him. To achieve this sympathy and understanding within the same
hour for more than a very few great works is manifestly impossible.
Such appreciation involves fundamentally a quick sensitiveness to
the appeal and the variously expressive power of color and line and
form. To win from the picture its fullest meaning, the observer may
bring to bear some knowledge of the artist who produced it and of
the age and conditions in which he lived. But in the end he must
surrender himself to the work of art, bringing to it his intellectual
equipment, his store of sensuous and emotional experience, his
entire power of being moved.

For when all is said, there is no singl