be plain with you, for
I like to be candid and outspoken, does not please me at all." This
purely temperamental judgment does not make of Velasquez either a good
or a bad critic. It is interesting as showing us that even a master
cannot always render justice to another. Difference engenders hatred,
as Stendhal would say.

Can the record of criticism made by plastic artists show a generous
Robert Schumann? Schumann discovered many composers from Chopin to
Brahms and made their fortunes by his enthusiastic writing about them.
In Wagner he met his Waterloo, but every critic has his limitations.
There is no Schumann, let the fact be emphasised, among the
painter-critics, though quite as much discrimination, ardour of
discovery, and acumen may be found among the writings of the men whose
names rank high in professional criticism. And this hedge, we humbly
submit, is a rather stiff one to vault for the adherents of criticism
written by artists only. Nevertheless, every day of his humble career
must the critic pen his _apologia pro vita sua_.

II - ART IN FICTION

Fiction about art and artists is rare--that is, good fiction, not the
stuff ground out daily by the publishing mills for the gallery-gods.
It is to France that we must look for the classic novel dealing with
painters and their painting, Manette Salomon, by Goncourt. Henry James
has written several delightful tales, such as The Liar, The Real
Thing, The Tragic Muse, in which artists appear. But it is the
particular psychological problem involved rather than theories of art
or personalities that steer Mr. James's cunning pen. We all remember
the woman who destroyed a portrait of her husband which seemed to
reveal his moral secret. John S. Sargeant has been credited with being
the psychologist of the brush in this story. There is a nice, fresh
young fellow in The Tragic Muse, who, weak-spined as he is, prefers at
the last his painting to Julia Dallow and a political career. In The
Real Thing we recognise one of those unerring strokes that prove James
to be the master psychologist among English writers. Any discerning
painter realises the value of a model who can take the pose that will
give him the pictorial idea, the suggestiveness of the pose, not an
attempt at crude naturalism. With this thesis the novelist has built
up an amusing, semi-pathetic, and striking fable.

There are painters scattered through English fiction--can we ever
forget Thackeray! O