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ENGLISH POST-IMPRESSIONISTS 185
I can almost hear those queer people who
can appreciate what is vital in every age but
"
their own, squealing triumphantly We told
you so." Yes ; it is true. English Post-
Impressionism is becoming academic : but
Post-Impressionism is not ;
movement is as vital as ever.
in France the
Too many of the English Post-Impressionists
are coming to regard certain
simplifications,
schematizations, and tricks of drawing, not as
means of expression and creation, but as ends
in themselves, not as instruments, but as party
favours. The French masters are being treated
by their English disciples as Michael Angelo
and Titian were treated by the minor men of
the seventeenth century. Their mannerisms
are the revolutionary's stock-in-trade. One is
constantly confronted at the Dore Gallery by
a form or a colour that is doing no aesthetic
work at all ;
it is too busy making a profession
of faith ; it is shouting, " I am advanced
I am advanced." I have no quarrel with
advanced ideas or revolutionary propaganda ;
I like them very well in their place, which I
conceive to be a tub in the park. But no man
can be at once a protestant and an artist.
The is
painter's job to create significant form,
and not to bother about whether it will please
people or shock them. Ugliness is just as
irrelevant as
prettiness, and the
painter who