to most of what was seen near it, gained an exaggerated reputation.  The promise was indisputable; but, after seeing the Leicester Gallery exhibition, I came to the conclusion that there was not much else.  Indeed, his drawings often betrayed so superficial a facility, such a turn for calligraphic dexterities, that one began to wonder whether even in expecting much one had not been over sanguine.  The extravagant reputation enjoyed by Gaudier in this country will perhaps cross the mind of anyone who happens to read my essay on Wilcoxism:  native, or even resident, geese look uncommonly like swans on home waters:  to see them as they are you should see them abroad.

Bonnard and Vuillard, unlike Aristide Maillol, though being sensitive and intelligent artists who make the most of whatever serves their turn they have taken what they wanted from the atmosphere in which they work, are hardly to be counted of Cezanne’s descendants.  Rather are they children of the great impressionists who, unlike the majority of their surviving brothers and sisters, instead of swallowing the impressionist doctrine whole, just as official painters do the academic, have modified it charmingly to suit their peculiar temperaments.  Not having swallowed the poker, they have none of those stiff and static habits which characterize the later generations of their family.  They are free and various; and Bonnard is one of the greatest painters alive.  Mistakenly, he is supposed to have influenced Duncan Grant; but Duncan Grant, at the time when he was painting pictures which appear to have certain affinities with those of Bonnard, was wholly unacquainted with the work of that master.  On the other hand, it does seem possible that Vuillard has influenced another English painter, Miss Ethel Sands:  only, in making attributions of influence one cannot be too careful.  About direct affiliations especially, as this case shows, one should never be positive.  It is as probable that Miss Sands has been influenced by Sickert, who has much in common with Vuillard, as by Vuillard himself; and most probable of all, perhaps, that the three have inherited from a common ancestor something which each has developed and cultivated as seemed to him or her best. La recherche de la paternite was ever an exciting but hazardous pastime:  if Bonnard and Vuillard, in their turn, are claimed, as they sometimes are, for descendants of Renoir, with equal propriety Sickert may be claimed for Degas.  And it is worth noting, perhaps, as a curious fact, that in the matter of influence this is about as much as at the moment can be claimed for either of these masters.  Both Renoir and Degas lived well on into the period of which I am writing; but though both were admired, the former immensely, neither up to the present has had much direct influence on contemporary painting.