ou say 'How interesting!' all pictures that do not immediately
give you such artistic joy as to make you say 'How beautiful!' are bad
pictures.

* * * * *

We never know what an artist is going to do. Of course not. The artist
is not a specialist. All such divisions as animal painters, landscape
painters, painters of Scotch cattle in an English mist, painters of
English cattle in a Scotch mist, racehorse painters, bull-terrier
painters, all are shallow. If a man is an artist he can paint
everything.

The object of art is to stir the most divine and remote of the chords
which make music in our soul; and colour is, indeed, of itself a mystical
presence on things, and tone a kind of sentinel.

Am I pleading, then, for mere technique? No. As long as there are any
signs of technique at all, the picture is unfinished. What is finish? A
picture is finished when all traces of work, and of the means employed to
bring about the result, have disappeared.

In the case of handicraftsmen--the weaver, the potter, the smith--on
their work are the traces of their hand. But it is not so with the
painter; it is not so with the artist.

Art should have no sentiment about it but its beauty, no technique except
what you cannot observe. One should be able to say of a picture not that
it is 'well painted,' but that it is 'not painted.'

What is the difference between absolutely decorative art and a painting?
Decorative art emphasises its material: imaginative art annihilates it.
Tapestry shows its threads as part of its beauty: a picture annihilates
its canvas; it shows nothing of it. Porcelain emphasises its glaze:
water-colours reject the paper.

A picture has no meaning but its beauty, no message but its joy. That is
the first truth about art that you must never lose sight of. A picture
is a purely decorative thing.

BIBLIOGRAPHY BY STUART MASON

NOTE

Part I. includes all the authorised editions published in England, and
the two French editions of Salome published in Paris. Authorised
editions of some of the works were issued in the United States of America
simultaneously with the English publication.

Part II. contains the only two 'Privately Printed' editions which are
authorised.

Part III. is a chronological list of all contributions (so far as at
present known) to magazines, periodicals, etc., the date given being that
of the first publication only. Those marked with an asterisk (*) were
publ