It was delicious to breathe the balmy night air after the smoky, alcoholic atmosphere of the studio. Rocks walked a little way with Herbert and Matt under the silent stars before they came upon a hansom.
“I hope to be,” said Matt, gravely, “but it’s awfully confusing to know what’s right. They all talk so cleverly, and they all seem to be right.” He was still worried about formulæ, not having discovered that there are only men.
Rocks emitted a short laugh. “Don’t you bother your head with theories, my boy,” he said, laying his hand kindly on Matt’s shoulder. “You just paint. Every man does what he can, and runs down what he can’t. After all, Art is very old; there are no great sensational reforms left, like West’s discarding the toga for the clothes of the period. The _plein air_ school is this century’s contribution; after that there can only be permutations and combinations of the old. What is new in the Azure Art Gallery is not good, and what is good is not new.”
“_C’est fini!_” said Herbert. “That’s what people always say till genius comes along. My belief is, going by literature and music, that painting hasn’t said its last word.”
“It may come back to its first,” admitted Rocks, laughing. “Things go in cycles. At present the last word of Art is azure.”
“But there _are_ azure shadows?” said Matt.
“Yes; sunshine on a yellow sand gives a suspicion of blue and violet where the yellow light is cut off. But you exaggerate it and call that a revolution.”
“Yes, but this intensified violet, made on your canvas out of light pigments, does produce the illusion of sunlight,” argued Matt. “And, to my mind, it doesn’t falsify nature or values one bit, because in bright sunlight the eye really sees the dazzle, not the values.”
“Perhaps you young men see the new ultra-shades at the end of the spectrum,” said Rocks, a little annoyed to find Matt restive under his patronizing geniality. “Apelles had only four colors, but his reputation has survived. It is the craze for novelty that makes these fads catch on.”
“On the contrary,” retorted Matt, hotly, “people are so accustomed to the false they have no eyes for the true. It’s the old fable of the man with the pig under his cloak. I read somewhere that in Sir Joshua’s day it was the convention to paint portraits with hats under their arm, and that Sir Joshua, having to paint a man with his hat on, automatically put a second hat under his arm. If he hadn’t found it out, I don’t believe the public would have. And weren’t the 1830 men laughed at in France, though now they’re thrown in the teeth of the Impressionists? It’s always the same tale--the revolutionary is always wrong till he’s right. Treason never prospers. What’s the reason? When ’tis successful, ’tis no longer treason.’ Truth and light--that’s the right formula of landscape-painting.”