only because of his very thorough training in English art
ways, and because of his ability to select that type of picture which
would attract attention and bring credit and prosperity to the house
here and abroad; but also because of his ability to make friends among
the rich and powerful wherever he was, and to sell one type of important
picture after another--having some knack or magnetic capacity for
attracting to him those who cared for good art and were willing to pay
for it. His specialties, of course, were the canvases of the eminently
successful artists in various parts of the world--the living successful.
He knew by experience what sold--here, in France, in England, in
Germany. He was convinced that there was practically nothing of value in
American art as yet--certainly not from the commercial point of view,
and very little from the artistic. Beyond a few canvases by Inness,
Homer, Sargent, Abbey, Whistler, men who were more foreign, or rather
universal, than American in their attitude, he considered that the
American art spirit was as yet young and raw and crude. "They do not
seem to be grown up as yet over here," he said to his intimate friends.
"They paint little things in a forceful way, but they do not seem as yet
to see things as a whole. I miss that sense of the universe in miniature
which we find in the canvases of so many of the great Europeans. They
are better illustrators than artists over here--why I don't know."

M. Anatole Charles spoke English almost more than perfectly. He was an
example of your true man of the world--polished, dignified, immaculately
dressed, conservative in thought and of few words in expression. Critics
and art enthusiasts were constantly running to him with this and that
suggestion in regard to this and that artist, but he only lifted his
sophisticated eyebrows, curled his superior mustachios, pulled at his
highly artistic goatee, and exclaimed: "Ah!" or "So?" He asserted always
that he was most anxious to find talent--profitable talent--though on
occasion (and he would demonstrate that by an outward wave of his hands
and a shrug of his shoulders), the house of Kellner and Son was not
averse to doing what it could for art--and that for art's sake without
any thought of profit whatsoever. "Where are your artists?" he would
ask. "I look and look. Whistler, Abbey, Inness, Sargent--ah--they are
old, where are the new ones?"

"Well, this one"--the critic would probably persist.