But, you will say, modern dress, that is bad.  If you cannot paint black cloth you could not have painted silken doublet.  Ugly dress is better for art—­facts of vision, not of the object.

What is a picture?  Primarily, a picture is a beautifully coloured surface, merely, with no more spiritual message or meaning for you than an exquisite fragment of Venetian glass or a blue tile from the wall of Damascus.  It is, primarily, a purely decorative thing, a delight to look at.

All archaeological pictures that make you say ‘How curious!’ all sentimental pictures that make you say ‘How sad!’ all historical pictures that make you say ‘How interesting!’ all pictures that do not immediately give you such artistic joy as to make you say ‘How beautiful!’ are bad pictures.

* * * * *

We never know what an artist is going to do.  Of course not.  The artist is not a specialist.  All such divisions as animal painters, landscape painters, painters of Scotch cattle in an English mist, painters of English cattle in a Scotch mist, racehorse painters, bull-terrier painters, all are shallow.  If a man is an artist he can paint everything.

The object of art is to stir the most divine and remote of the chords which make music in our soul; and colour is, indeed, of itself a mystical presence on things, and tone a kind of sentinel.

Am I pleading, then, for mere technique?  No.  As long as there are any signs of technique at all, the picture is unfinished.  What is finish?  A picture is finished when all traces of work, and of the means employed to bring about the result, have disappeared.

In the case of handicraftsmen—­the weaver, the potter, the smith—­on their work are the traces of their hand.  But it is not so with the painter; it is not so with the artist.

Art should have no sentiment about it but its beauty, no technique except what you cannot observe.  One should be able to say of a picture not that it is ‘well painted,’ but that it is ‘not painted.’

What is the difference between absolutely decorative art and a painting?  Decorative art emphasises its material:  imaginative art annihilates it.  Tapestry shows its threads as part of its beauty:  a picture annihilates its canvas; it shows nothing of it.  Porcelain emphasises its glaze:  water-colours reject the paper.

A picture has no meaning but its beauty, no message but its joy.  That is the first truth about art that you must never lose sight of.  A picture is a purely decorative thing.

BIBLIOGRAPHY BY STUART MASON

NOTE

Part I. includes all the authorised editions published in England, and the two French editions of Salome published in Paris.  Authorised editions of some of the works were issued in the United States of America simultaneously with the English publication.

Part ii. contains the only two ‘Privately Printed’ editions which are authorised.