Drawings in Pen & Pencil from Dürer's Days to Ours, with Notes and Appreciations

Excerpt: 'A drawing is a thing to be looked at and not written about. Pages and pages written about it will not make a good drawing bad nor a bad drawing good; nor will they, unfortunately, really equip and instruct anyone to know the one from the other—should he happen to lack that subtle sense whereby such things are known; for the reason why one drawing is justly ranked as a masterpiece while another is thrown away lies hidden on the plane of our more transcendental perceptions—such, for example, as the sense whereby we know whether a note is in tune or out of tune; and further: whether a musical composition is base in its gesture or great. At present the majority of people lack these senses but, due to a guiding justice, this fact rarely if ever prevents the artist who has achieved something great from receiving, though it may have been long retarded, his full meed of praise eventually. That the praise is so often belated and the appreciation of an artist retarded until, for him, it has lost its savour is due to many causes: so long as the competitive and childish habit persists—of awarding the palm of greatness to one man’s work by the simple expedient of simultaneously condemning someone else’s—narrowness and prejudice will continue to trouble the artist. It should surely not be difficult to realize that the world of art—like the Kingdom of Heaven—has many mansions, and that, though both have their “housing problems,” still—in both there is room for many.'