Brooklyn Museum Quarterly . the spirit thatwas once the ethical basis of the genius of all the INIediter-ranean races, before Socratism and Judaism had come tocontaminate and weaken it. Following in the footsteps ofour great thinkers and men of learning—who are more in-terested in general principles, perhaps, than in their practi-cal application—our artists have consecrated themselves tothis same apostleship of the abstract; a path that leadsstraight to the Ideal, to first causes, and which seems torange them with the prophets and scribes of human devel-opment. French artists have always displ
Brooklyn Museum Quarterly . the spirit thatwas once the ethical basis of the genius of all the INIediter-ranean races, before Socratism and Judaism had come tocontaminate and weaken it. Following in the footsteps ofour great thinkers and men of learning—who are more in-terested in general principles, perhaps, than in their practi-cal application—our artists have consecrated themselves tothis same apostleship of the abstract; a path that leadsstraight to the Ideal, to first causes, and which seems torange them with the prophets and scribes of human devel-opment. French artists have always displayed and still displaythis essentially arehiteetomc spirit, which places us Frenchquite outside the contemporary movement, oscillating as itdoes all the way from a cooked-up dogmatism to a literarysentimentalism, from the Germany of Lessing to the Eng-land of Ruskin. Such artists were in former days Poussin,David, and Ingres; later came Chasseriau and Puvis deChavannes; at present there is a whole generation, forming 81. ROSES the most vital group among modern painters and of whomI shall speak presently. But, to return to mural painting. It nmst combinethe far-flung passion of the poets imagination with the ex-actitude and order of the scientist. As a matter of fact,even among our most fiery romanticists the free outpour-ings of the soul, the ^delires sacresf were always temperedby a cool power of reason which never quite it is that has given rise, through a misuse of terms, tothe saying that the French lack imagination. Xow muralpainting demands, on the contrary, a constant exercise ofinventive power; or, rather, it is invention, controlled ])y thenatural and organic laws derived from experience. Tlie 82
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