virtuous people as characters in his play? Would you not say he

was missing half of life? Well, of the young artist who paints
nothing but beautiful things, I say he misses one half of the

world.
Do not wait for life to be picturesque, but try and see life under

picturesque conditions. These conditions you can create for
yourself in your studio, for they are merely conditions of light.

In nature, you must wait for them, watch for them, choose them;
and, if you wait and watch, come they will.

In Gower Street at night you may see a letter-box that is
picturesque: on the Thames Embankment you may see picturesque

policemen. Even Venice is not always beautiful, nor France.
To paint what you see is a good rule in art, but to see what is

worth painting is better. See life under pictorial conditions. It
is better to live in a city of changeable weather than in a city of

lovely surroundings.
Now, having seen what makes the artist, and what the artist makes,

who is the artist? There is a man living amongst us who unites in
himself all the qualities of the noblest art, whose work is a joy

for all time, who is, himself, a master of all time. That man is
Mr. Whistler.

* * * * * * * *
But, you will say, modern dress, that is bad. If you cannot paint

black cloth you could not have painted silkendoublet. Ugly dress
is better for art - facts of vision, not of the object.

What is a picture? Primarily, a picture is a beautifully coloured
surface, merely, with no more spiritual message or meaning for you

than an exquisitefragment of Venetian glass or a blue tile from
the wall of Damascus. It is, primarily, a purelydecorative thing,

a delight to look at.
All archaeological pictures that make you say 'How curious!' all

sentimental pictures that make you say, 'How sad!' all historical
pictures that make you 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 absolutelydecorative 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 purelydecorative thing.
LONDON MODELS

PROFESSIONAL models are a purely modern invention. To the Greeks,
for instance, they were quite unknown. Mr. Mahaffy, it is true,

tells us that Pericles used to present peacocks to the great ladies
of Athenian society in order to induce them to sit to his friend

Phidias, and we know that Polygnotus introduced into his picture of
the Trojan women the face of Elpinice, the celebrated sister of the

great Conservative leader of the day, but these GRANDES DAMES
clearly do not come under our category. As for the old masters,

they undoubtedly made constant studies from their pupils and
apprentices, and even their religious pictures are full of the

portraits of their friends and relations, but they do not seem to
have had the inestimable advantage of the existence of a class of

people whose sole profession is to pose. In fact the model, in our
sense of the word, is the direct creation of Academic Schools.

Every country now has its own models, except America. In New York,
and even in Boston, a good model is so great a rarity that most of

the artists are reduced to painting Niagara and millionaires. In
Europe, however, it is different. Here we have plenty of models,

and of every nationality. The Italian models are the best. The
natural grace of their attitudes, as well as the wonderful

picturesqueness of their colouring, makes them facile - often too
facile - subjects for the painter's brush. The French models,

though not so beautiful as the Italian, possess a quickness of
intellectual sympathy, a capacity, in fact, of understanding the

artist, which is quite remarkable. They have also a great command
over the varieties of facial expression, are peculiarly dramatic,

and can chatter the ARGOT of the ATELIER as cleverly as the critic
of the GIL BLAS. The English models form a class entirely by

themselves. They are not so picturesque as the Italian, nor so
clever as the French, and they have absolutely no tradition, so to

speak, of their order. Now and then some old veteran knocks at the
studio door, and proposes to sit as Ajax defying the lightning, or

as King Lear upon the blasted heath. One of them some time ago
called on a popular painter who, happening at the moment to require

his services, engaged him, and told him to begin by kneeling down
in the attitude of prayer. 'Shall I be Biblical or Shakespearean,

sir?' asked the veteran. 'Well - Shakespearean,' answered the
artist, wondering by what subtle nuance of expression the model

would convey the difference. 'All right, sir,' said the professor
of posing, and he solemnly knelt down and began to wink with his

left eye! This class, however, is dying out. As a rule the model,
nowadays, is a pretty girl, from about twelve to twenty-five years

of age, who knows nothing about art, cares less, and is merely
anxious to earn seven or eight shillings a day without much

trouble. English models rarely look at a picture, and never
venture on any aesthetic theories. In fact, they realise very

completely Mr. Whistler's idea of the function of an art critic,
for they pass no criticisms at all. They accept all schools of art

with the grand catholicity of the auctioneer, and sit to a
fantastic young impressionist as readily as to a learned and

laborious academician. They are neither for the Whistlerites nor
against them; the quarrel between the school of facts and the

school of effects touches them not; idealistic and naturalistic are
words that convey no meaning to their ears; they merely desire that

the studio shall be warm, and the lunch hot, for all charming
artists give their models lunch.

As to what they are asked to do they are equallyindifferent. On
Monday they will don the rags of a beggar-girl for Mr. Pumper,

whose pathetic pictures of modern life draw such tears from the
public, and on Tuesday they will pose in a peplum for Mr. Phoebus,

who thinks that all really artistic subjects are necessarily B.C.
They career gaily through all centuries and through all costumes,

and, like actors, are interesting only when they are not
themselves. They are extremely" target="_blank" title="ad.极端地；非常地">extremelygood-natured, and very

accommodating. 'What do you sit for?' said a young artist to a
model who had sent him in her card (all models, by the way, have

cards and a small black bag). 'Oh, for anything you like, sir,'
said the girl, 'landscape if necessary!'

Intellectually, it must be acknowledged, they are Philistines, but
physically they are perfect - at least some are. Though none of

them can talk Greek, many can look Greek, which to a nineteenth-
century painter is naturally of great importance. If they are

allowed, they chatter a great deal, but they never say anything.
Their observations are the only BANALITES heard in Bohemia.