it to the National Gallery of Berlin makes me gnash my teeth. The
sight of so much misspent labour, of the acres of canvases deluged
with dirty, bad paint, raises my bile. We know that all things are
relative, and because Germany has produced few painters worthy of the
name that after all it doesn't much matter--there is Italy and Holland
to fall back on; not to mention the Spain of El Greco, Velasquez,
Goya, and the great Frenchmen. But there is something singularly
exasperating in German painting, whether old or new, that sets us to
wondering whether such museums as the National Gallery, Berlin; the
new Pinakothek, Munich, and other repositories of ugly colour and
absurd mythologies do not cause a deterioration in public taste. It is
almost pathetic to see not only the general visitor but also students
gazing admiringly at the monstrous art of Kaulbach, Schadow, Cornelius
(the Nazarene school), or at the puerilities of the Swiss, Arnold
Boecklin and his follower, Franz von Stuck, of Munich, who has simply
brutalised the eternal Boecklin themes. It is all very well to say
that these galleries, like the modern collection upstairs in the
Dresden gallery (with its wonderful Rembrandts and Vermeers
down-stairs) serve to preserve the historical art chain. But bad art
should have no significance, history or no history--let such history
appeal to the professors of aesthetics and other twaddlers.
Furthermore, the evil example of Boecklin and the rest, shows in
German contemporary painting. I don't mean the Cubists and other
freaks, but in current art, the art that sells, that receives
respectful critical treatment. We are continually forced to look at
the menagerie, mermaids, and frogs, and fauns, painted in imitation of
the hard, violent tones of Boecklin, himself a scene-painter, but not
a great painter.

The critics in Germany don't bother themselves over paint quality,
beautiful surfaces, or handling, but with books about the philosophy
of the painter, his "weltanschauung," his ethics; you all the while
wondering why he uses such muddy paints, why he is blind to the
loveliness of atmosphere, pure colours, and sheer pictorial quality.
Style and quality are, I believe, suspected in Germany as evidences of
superficiality, of a desire to add ornament where plain speech should
suffice. Like German prose and German singing--oh, how acrid is the
Teutonic tone-production, a lemon in the larynx!--German painting
limps heavily. Nie