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CONTEMPORARY ART 217
to visit the Luxembourg and inspect the
Caillebotte bequest. Imagine a continental
man of science who in 1880 had never taken
the trouble to read " The Origin of Species "
or investigate the theory of evolution !
The state of mind produced in most English
painters by this outlandish ignorance is calami-
tous. Unconscious of what is going on abroad,
dimly, at best, aware of what has been done
in the past, and lacking effective, well-informed
criticism from writers in the newspapers and
from their fellow-artists, they work without
standards, ideals or artistic seriousness, and
soon fall into that ghastly complacency in
which a man is content to satisfy the market
with endless repetition
of some popular success.
Modesty is a virtue hardly attainable by the
prize student from the Slade or the Academy
who is persuaded that in a few years he will
be the prize painter of the world, and is, in a
few years, by press and public duly confirmed
in his delusion. His first ambition will be to
get a picture accepted by the Royal Academy
or the New English Art Club, his next to
wheedle the quidnuncs
men into giving him a
i.e. the newspaper
place amongst the
local worthies, his last to discover a formula
that shall be the strong-box of his lucky hit.
This accomplished, commissions and paragraphs
begin to roll in with comfortable regu-