re genius is that it springs
directly from conception to expression without much thought as to the
means; a man who has used the same tools for a dozen years is not
likely to take his chisel by the wrong end, nor to hesitate in
choosing the right one for the stroke to be made, much less to 'take a
sledge-hammer to kill a fly,' as the saying is. His unquiet mind has
discovered some new and striking relation between the true and the
beautiful; the very next step is to express that relation in clay, or
in colour, or in words. While he is doing so he rarely stops to think,
or to criticise his own half-finished work; he is too sure of himself,
just then, to pause, and, above all, he is too happy, for all the real
happiness he finds in his art is there, between the painfully
disquieting ferment of the mental chaos that went before and the more
or less acute disappointment which is sure to come when the finished
work turns out to be less than perfect, like all things human. It is
in the race from one point to the other that he rejoices in his
strength, believes in his talent, and dreams of undying glory; it is
then that he feels himself a king of men and a prophet of mankind; but
it is when he is in this stage that he is called vain, arrogant, and
self-satisfied by those who do not understand the distress that has
gone before, nor the disillusionment which will follow soon enough,
when the hand is at rest and cool judgment marks the distance between
a perfect ideal and an attainable reality. Moreover, the less the lack
of perfection seems to others, the more formidable it generally looks
to the great artist himself.

It was often said of Durand that his portraits were prophetic; and
often again that his brushes were knives and scalpels that dissected
his sitters' characters upon the canvas like an anatomical
preparation.

'I cannot help it,' he always said. 'I paint what I see.'

It was not his fault if pretty Donna Angela Chiaromonte had thrown a
white veil over her dark hair, just to try the effect of it, the very
first time she had been brought to his studio, or that she had been
standing beside an early fifteenth century altar and altar-piece which
he had just bought and put up at one end of the great hall in which he
painted. He was not to blame if the veiling had fallen on each side of
her face, like a nun's head-dress, nor if her eyes had grown shadowy
at that moment by an accident of light or expression, nor yet if