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2io CONTEMPORARY ART
European art. On the other hand, the names
of Mr. Steer, Mr. John, Mr. Orpen and Mr.
McEvoy, here only less familiar than those of
Cabinet Ministers or County Cricketers, abroad
are as obscure. Mr. Steer, to be sure, has his
portrait in the Uffizi, but then, as likely as not,
the Poet Laureate has his birthday ode in the
Bibliothique
National?. If Mr. Steer and Sir
Edward Poynter are treated civilly abroad,
that may be because England is an important
country rather than because they are important
artists.
No wonder patriots are vexed to find English
art esteemed on the Continent and in America
below the art of Germany or Scandinavia,
seeing that English artists seem to possess
more native sensibility than either Germans or
Scandinavians and, perhaps, as much as
Russians. Yet it is a fact that their work,
by reason of its inveterate suburbanity, so
wholly lacks significance and seriousness that
an impartial historian, who could not neglect
the mediocre products of North and East
Europe, would probably dismiss English painting
in a couple of paragraphs. For it is not
only poor ; it is provincial : and provincial
art, as the historian well knows, never really
counts.
It would be pleasant to fancy that England
was working out, in isolation, an interesting