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Painting today is a terrible problem to an absolutely sincere, honest, and yet ambitious mind.

Fired to set forth something of his very own, to avoid plagiarism and give the world something it has never yet received, the artist, in whatever direction he advances, finds the horizon bounded by a great master whom he cannot hope to surpass. Well, indeed, may he ask what is the use of trying to do what Van Eyck, Botticelli, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Veronese, Michael Angelo, Velasquez—nay, even what Constable, Corot, Claude Monet, and Signac have done to perfection?

In despair at surpassing the limits set by the great masters of progress he harks back, as the pre-Raphaelites did, to the painters before Raphael. Alas, Fra Lippi and Taddeo Gaddi are soon found to be too sophisticated. He goes back farther, to Giotto, to Orcagna, even to the Egyptians, and with the same result. At last he takes his courage in his hands and, throwing overboard the whole cargo of art history, ancient and modern, he seeks to forget that picture was ever painted, and with eyes freed from traditional vision he seeks to recreate the barbaric art of infancy.