genius have the mission to show out of the riches of nature only that which they are permitted to take away, and to show it to those who would not otherwise have suspected its presence. They serve as translators and interpreters to those who cannot understand the language." A. P. Ryder, A. N. A., one of the most subjective painters among the artists of the United States, whose works have the power in them of starting the observer's thoughts and setting them wandering far away, says in his "Para"Broadway graphs from the Studio of a Recluse:" Magazine." "Nature is a teacher who never deceives. When I grew weary with the futile struggle to imitate the canvases of the past, I went out into the fields. In my desire to be accurate I became lost in a maze of detail. Try as I would my colours were not those of nature. My leaves were infinitely below the standard of a leaf, my finest strokes were coarse and crude. The old scene presented itself one day before my eyes framed in an opening between two trees. It stood out like a painted canvas - the deep blue of a midday sky — a solitary tree, brilliant with the green of summer, a foundation of brown earth and gnarled roots. There was no detail to vex the eye. Three solid masses of form and colour-sky, foliage, and earth the whole bathed in an atmosphere of golden luminosity. I threw my brushes aside; they were too small for the work in hand. I squeezed out big chunks of pure, moist colour, and taking my palette knife I laid on blue, green, white, and brown in great sweeping strokes. I saw nature springing into life upon my dead canvas. It was better than nature for it was vibrating with the thrill of a new creation." "The artist should fear to become the slave Broadway of detail. He should strive to express his Magazine.” surface of it. What thought and not the avails a storm cloud accurate in form and colour, if the storm is not therein ?" Sept., 1905. "Imitation is not inspiration, and inspira- Ibid. tion only can give birth to a work of art." "It is the first vision that counts. The Ibid. artist has only to remain true to his dream, and it will possess his work in such a manner that it will resemble the work of no other man - for no two visions are alike, and those who reach the heights have all toiled up the steep mountains by different routes." "The idea of what a work of art is," said W. Brymner, R. C. A., in an interesting lecture on painting, "is very vague in the minds of most people. I think the majority are satisfied it is the faithful copying of objects or individuals. From the earliest times we find writers on art extolling paintings, not because they said something, but because they were deceptively lifelike. Zeuxes painted grapes the birds pecked at. Vasari continually praises the deceptive painting, and Leonardo said that a painter's best master was the mirror. What is it, then, that elevates a painting from the mere representation of objects to the level of a work of art? Zola describes art as 'a corner of nature seen through a temperament.' That is, that an artist must, before he begins his picture, have experienced some emotion, some thought suggested by the view of nature before him. The artist conveys to us the feeling he has experienced by perhaps making everything very real to us and true, but all as |