In the eighteenth century, with its dearth of genius, we perceive more clearly that we are on the flats.  Chardin is the one great artist.  Painters are, for the most part, upholsterers to the nobility and gentry.  Some fashion handsome furniture for the dining-room, others elegant knick-knacks for the boudoir; many are kept constantly busy delineating for the respect of future generations his lordship, or her ladyship’s family.  The painting of the eighteenth century is brilliant illustration still touched with art.  For instance, in Watteau, Canaletto, Crome, Cotman, and Guardi there is some art, some brilliance, and a great deal of charming illustration.  In Tiepolo there is hardly anything but brilliance; only when one sees his work beside that of Mr. Sargent does one realise the presence of other qualities.  In Hogarth there is hardly anything but illustration; one realises the presence of other qualities only by remembering the work of the Hon. John Collier.  Beside the upholsterers who work for the aristocracy there is another class supported by the connoisseurs.  There are the conscientious bores, whose modest aim it is to paint and draw correctly in the manner of Raffael and Michelangelo.  Their first object is to stick to the rules, their second to show some cleverness in doing so.  One need not bother about them.

So the power of creating is almost lost, and limners must be content to copy pretty things.  The twin pillars of painting in the eighteenth century were what they called “Subject” and “Treatment.”  To paint a beautiful picture, a boudoir picture, take a pretty woman, note those things about her that a chaste and civil dinner-partner might note, and set them down in gay colours and masses of Chinese white:  you may do the same by her toilette battery, her fancy frocks, and picnic parties.  Imitate whatever is pretty and you are sure to make a pretty job of it.  To make a noble picture, a dining-room piece, you must take the same lady and invest her in a Doric chiton or diploida and himation; give her a pocillum, a censer, a sacrificial ram, and a distant view of Tivoli; round your modelling, and let your brush-strokes be long and slightly curved; affect sober and rather hot pigments; call the finished article “Dido pouring libations to the Goddess of Love.”  To paint an exhibition picture, the sort preferred by the more rigid cognoscenti, be sure to make no mark for which warrant cannot be found in Rubens, Sarto, Guido Reni, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Raffael, Michelangelo, or Trajan’s Column.  For further information consult “The Discourses” of Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A., whose recipes are made palatable by a quality infrequent in his dishes, luminosity.