At this critical moment in the artistic development of England Mr. John Collier has come forward as the champion of common-sense in art.  It will be remembered that Mr. Quilter, in one of his most vivid and picturesque metaphors, compared Mr. Collier’s method as a painter to that of a shampooer in a Turkish bath. {119} As a writer Mr. Collier is no less interesting.  It is true that he is not eloquent, but then he censures with just severity ’the meaningless eloquence of the writers on aesthetics’; we admit that he is not subtle, but then he is careful to remind us that Leonardo da Vinci’s views on painting are nonsensical; his qualities are of a solid, indeed we may say of a stolid order; he is thoroughly honest, sturdy and downright, and he advises us, if we want to know anything about art, to study the works of ’Helmholtz, Stokes, or Tyndall,’ to which we hope we may be allowed to add Mr. Collier’s own Manual of Oil Painting.

For this art of painting is a very simple thing indeed, according to Mr. Collier.  It consists merely in the ’representation of natural objects by means of pigments on a flat surface.’  There is nothing, he tells us, ’so very mysterious’ in it after all.  ’Every natural object appears to us as a sort of pattern of different shades and colours,’ and ’the task of the artist is so to arrange his shades and colours on his canvas that a similar pattern is produced.’  This is obviously pure common-sense, and it is clear that art-definitions of this character can be comprehended by the very meanest capacity and, indeed, may be said to appeal to it.  For the perfect development, however, of this pattern-producing faculty a severe training is necessary.  The art student must begin by painting china, crockery, and ‘still life’ generally.  He should rule his straight lines and employ actual measurements wherever it is possible.  He will also find that a plumb-line comes in very useful.  Then he should proceed to Greek sculpture, for from pottery to Phidias is only one step.  Ultimately he will arrive at the living model, and as soon as he can ‘faithfully represent any object that he has before him’ he is a painter.  After this there is, of course, only one thing to be considered, the important question of subject.  Subjects, Mr. Collier tells us, are of two kinds, ancient and modern.  Modern subjects are more healthy than ancient subjects, but the real difficulty of modernity in art is that the artist passes his life with respectable people, and that respectable people are unpictorial.  ‘For picturesqueness,’ consequently, he should go to ‘the rural poor,’ and for pathos to the London slums.  Ancient subjects offer the artist a very much wider field.  If he is fond of ‘rich stuffs and costly accessories’ he should study the Middle Ages; if he wishes to paint beautiful people, ’untrammelled by any considerations of historical accuracy,’ he should turn to the Greek and Roman mythology; and if he is a ‘mediocre