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226 CONTEMPORARY ART
Cezanne was a master. In London no one had
heard of them, so it was decided out of hand
that they were immoral aliens fit only to be
thrown on the nearest bonfire. C6zanne was
a butcher, Gauguin a farceur, Van Gogh a
lunatic : that is what
particularly disagreeable
the critics said, and the public said " Heehaw."
They reminded one of a pack of
Victorian curates to whom the theory of
natural selection had been too suddenly
broken. Two years later Roger Fry and I
collected and arranged at the Grafton Galleries
an exhibition of contemporary French art
Matisse, Picasso, Maillol, etc. Every one
abroad had recognized these men as interesting
artists of varying merit ; no one doubted
that the movement they represented was sig-
nificant and of promise. Only the English
critics had learnt nothing. They never do ;
they only teach. Here was something going
on under their noses that might well turn
out to be as important as the early fifteenth-
century movement in Tuscany, and they
went on directing the attention of their
pupils
to the work of Alfred Stevens. Here
was the art of the East of China, Persia,
and Turkestan being revealed to us by
European scholars, and they went on messing
about with English choir-stalls and sanctuary-
rings.