A passionate admirer of Watteau, he would seem to have locked himself up in a rather sterile devotion to the eighteenth century master.  One must suppose that there was something dead in his appreciation, something recognized but unfelt, and therefore not really understood.  This deadness came through into his work.  Lacking genuine inspiration, struggling in consequence to impart life by tricks and conventions, he occasionally allowed himself to tumble into downright vulgarity.  Suddenly, and without renouncing any ancient loyalty, he has come to life.  It is Watteau that inspires him still; but the essential Watteau—­Watteau the painter—­not that superficies which is more or less familiar to every hack, be he limner or penman, who dabbles in the eighteenth century.  How amusing to fancy that the just admiration now felt for the genius of Watteau by those descendants of Cezanne who formerly misesteemed it has somehow put Guerin himself in the way of becoming intimate with an art he had formerly worshipped at a distance!

Though the war did not kill or even cripple the movement, since the war there has been a change, or, at any rate, a change has become apparent.  To begin with, Picasso has, in a sense, retired from public life—­from the life of the cafes and studios I mean—­and in isolation works out those problems that are for ever presenting themselves to his restless brain.  The splendid fruit of his solitude we saw last summer chez Paul Rosenberg.  From time to time Picasso still paints a Cubist picture—­to keep his mind in—­but he is hardly to be reckoned a Cubist, and certainly not a pure one.  Of that school, which still flourishes (exhibiting at la Section d’Or or rue de la Baume the work of Braque, Gleizes, Leger, Metzinger, Gris, Laurens, Lipsitz, Marcoussis, Henry Hayden, and the brilliant Irene Lagut), Picasso is the inspiration, perhaps, but not the chief.  His influence in the western world and on foreign painters in Paris is as great as ever; but the French, slightly vexed, maybe, at having accepted so long the leadership of a Spaniard, show signs of turning back towards their national tradition.  So, though Picasso remains the animator of the doctrinaire school or schools, Lhote may become the master.  It is the fashion, I know, not to take his influence seriously.  No matter how clever a man he may be, Lhote—­they say—­is not a big enough painter to be a chief.  It may be so—­I suspect it is—­yet we should not forget that, besides being intelligent and capable of drawing more or less plausible inferences from premises of his own choosing, Lhote can point to a practice by no means despicable.  For the rest, he is the apostle of logic and discipline, and so finds plenty to approve in the Cubist doctrine and the French tradition from Poussin to David.  I do not know whether Bissiere is to be ranked amongst his disciples—­I should think not—­but Bissiere, a most attractive artist, is perhaps significant