the artist's larger motive, whether religious sentiment, or a
love of sheer beauty of color and form, or insight into human
character, we are aided by a study of the history of technique to
determine how far the artist with the language at his command was
able to realize his intention.

But not only is art inspired and directed by the time-spirit of its age.
A single work is the expression for the artist who creates it of his
ideal. An artist's ideal, what he sets himself to accomplish, is the
projection of his personality, and that is determined by many
influences. He is first of all a child of his race and time; inheritance
and training shape him to these larger conditions. Then his ideal is
modified by his special individuality. A study of the artist's character
as revealed in his biography leads to a fuller understanding of the
intention and scope of his work. The events of his life become
significant as they are seen to be the causes or the results of his total
personality, that which he was in mind and temperament. What were
the circumstances that moulded his character and decided his course?
What events did he shape to his own purpose by the active force of
his genius? What was the special angle of vision from which he
looked upon the world? The answers to these questions are the clue
to the full drift of his work. As style is the expression of the man, so
conversely a knowledge of the man is an entrance into the wider and
subtler implications of his style. We explore the personality of the
man in order more amply to interpret his art, and we turn to his art
as the revelation of his personality. In studying an artist we must
look for his _tendency_ and seek the unifying principle which binds
his separate works into a whole. An artist has his successive periods
or "manners." There is the period of apprenticeship, when the young
man is influenced by his predecessors and his masters. Then he
comes into his own, and he registers nature and life as he sees it
freshly for himself. Finally, as he has mastered his art and won some
of the secrets of nature, and as his own character develops, he tends
more and more to impose his subjective vision upon the world, and
he subordinates nature to the expression of his distinctive
individuality. A single work, therefore, is to be considered in
relation to its place in the artist's development; it is but a part, and it
is to be interpreted by reference to the whole.

In the stu