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CONTEMPORARY ART 221
tending ever to substitute literary for plastic
significance. Every critic is on the watch for
a literary symbol and the chance of an alle-
gorical interpretation, every cultivated amateur
is eager to spy out an adroitly placed anecdote
or shaft of pictorial satire ; only with great
pains is any one induced to regard a picture
as an independent creation of form. In so
literary a society it seems paradoxical almost
to believe in pure painting ; and, in despair,
we cry out that no country can be expected
to excel, at one time, in two arts. We forget
Athens and Tuscany we also ;
forget France.
For more than two hundred years France has
led the visual art of Europe ; and if English
painting were ever to become one-tenth part
as good as French literature I, for my part,
should be as pleased as surprised. Of music
I say nothing ; yet in that art too France
was beginning, just before the war, to challenge,
not very formidably perhaps, the pre-eminence
of Germany and to stand as the fair rival of
Russia.
What hampers English artists most is, unless
I mistake, the atmosphere in which they work.
In France in Germany too, they say there
is a fairly large, authoritative, and intensely
serious public composed of artists, critics, and
competent amateurs. This public knows so
well what it is about that no painter, be he