-air school of to-day. How long
this pendulum will continue to swing no one can tell. Both men are
great painters in the widest, deepest, and most pronounced sense; both
men have glorified, ennobled, and enriched their time; and both men
have reflected credit and honor upon their nation and their school.

Meissonier could not only draw the figure, give it life and action,
keep it harmonious in color, perfect in its gradations of black and
white, but he had that marvellous gift of color analysis which
reproduces for you in a picture the size of the top of a cigar-box
every tone in the local and reflected light to be found, say, in the
folds of a cavalier's cloak, the pleats no wider than the point of a
stub pen.

All this, of course, Sorolla ignores and, I am afraid, knowing the man
personally as I do, despises. What concerns the great Spaniard is the
whole composition alive in the blaze of the sunlight, the glare of the
hot sand and the shimmer of the blue, overarching sky, beating up and
down and over the figures, and all depicted with a slash of a brush
almost as wide as your hand. The first picture, the size of a
tobacco-box, you can hold between thumb and finger and enjoy, amazed
at the master's knowledge and skill. The other grips you from afar off
as you enter the gallery and stand startled and astounded before its
truth and dignity. In the first Meissonier tells you the whole story
to the very end. In the second Sorolla presents but a series of
shorthand notes which you yourself can fill in to suit your taste and
experience both of life and nature.

Whether you prefer one or the other, or neither, is a matter for you
to decide. You pay your money or you don't, and you can take your
choice. The future only can tell the story of the revolution of the
wheel. In the next decade a single Meissonier may be worth its weight
in sheet gold and layers of Sorollas may be stored in attics awaiting
some fortunate auction.

What will ensue, the art world over, before the wheel travels its full
periphery, no man knows. It will not be the hysteria of paint, I feel
assured, with its dabbers, spotters, and smearers; nor will it be the
litters of the cub-ists, that new breed of artistic pups, sponsors for
"The girl coming down-stairs," or "The stairs coming down the girl,"
or "The coming girl and the down-stairs," it makes no difference
which, all are equally incoherent and unintelligible; but it will be
something which, at le