mere technical ability, but something more inclusive, something relating
quite as much to attitude of mind as to dexterity of treatment. They
conceive as cleverly as they execute. There is a sense of confidence and
capability in the way they view, as well as in the way they handle,
their light material. They know it thoroughly, and are thoroughly at one
with it. And they exploit it with a serene air of satisfaction, as if
it were the only material in the world worth handling. Indeed, it is
exquisitely adapted to their talent. So little significance has it that
one may say it exists merely to be cleverly dealt with, to be
represented, distributed, compared, and generally utilized solely with
reference to the display of the artist's jaunty skill. It is, one may
say, merely the raw material for the production of an effect, and an
effect demanding only what we mean by cleverness; no knowledge and love
of nature, no prolonged study, no acquaintance with the antique, for
example, no philosophy whatever--unless poco-curantism be called a
philosophy, which eminently it is not. To be adequate to the
requirements--rarely very exacting in any case--made of one, never to
show stupidity, to have a great deal of taste and an instinctive feeling
for what is elegant and refined, to abhor pedantry and take gayety at
once lightly and seriously, and beyond this to take no thought, is to be
clever; and in this sense the Louis Quinze painters are the first, as
they certainly are the typical, clever artists.

In Louis Quinze art the subject is more than effaced to give free swing
to technical cleverness; it is itself contributory to such cleverness,
and really a part of it. The artists evidently look on life, as they
paint their pictures, as the web whereon to sketch exhibitions of skill
in the composition of sensation-provoking combinations--combinations,
thus, provoking sensations of the lightest and least substantial kind.
When you stand before one of Fragonard's bewitching models, modishly