rank of the painters of
our time. Jules Breton never gave us anything more pleasing, and never
anything stronger in drawing, more true to life, or more poetic in
conception and treatment. I mention Breton because, of the men on the
other side, he is the only one who affects, so to speak, a similar
line of subjects. Breton loves his peasants and paints them as if he
did. Homer loved his subjects entirely in the same spirit. How
unequally the two men have been rewarded you all know. An all-wise
American who some years ago offered $40,000 for a Breton at auction
could not at the time have been induced to give one-tenth of that
amount for a Homer; and yet, for vigor, truth, sentiment, and
technic--yes, technic, for this picture was superbly painted--"The
Cotton Pickers," in my judgment, will outlive the other if the time
should ever come when picture-buyers think for themselves.

The Englishman, on the other hand, is the hardest man to pull out of a
groove. What _has been_ is good enough for him, whether in
architecture, art, politics, or government. Any one who objects, or
seeks to improve or to point out a new and different way, is
"anathema." It is hardly more than twenty years ago that John Sargent,
whose works are often the strongest drawing card in the annual
exhibitions, was ignored by the jury of the Royal Academy.

"A slap-dash sort of a painter, my dear boy. Most dangerous to allow
his things to come in. No drawing, you know, no finish--altogether out
of the question." So spoke a Royal Academician when the question was
broached.

Whistler never found a vacant spot, no matter how high, where he could
hang even a 10 x 14.

"A mountebank in paint, my dear sir. Think of giving him a place
alongside of Sir Frederick Leighton! Impossible! Absolutely
impossible!" That the Luxembourg exhibited his portrait of his mother,
and that the art critics of Europe voted it "one of the greatest
portraits of modern times," made no difference. These Royal wiseacres
knew better. Some of them still think they know better, a fact easily
ascertained when you walk through the Exhibition, as I do every
summer, and have continued to do for the past thirty years.

And this adherence to tradition is not confined entirely to technic--I
refer now to many of the English painters of to-day--but appears in
their choice of subjects as well. It is the _subjects_ which have been
successful--that is, which have been _sold_--that must be painted