DAVID CROAL THOMSON
on to Carolus Duran, and he, not knowing how to weave them into his work, passed them to John Sargent, whose brilliant dexterity almost realized the traditions of 1600. If Sir John Millais had not joined the pre-Raphaelites, who knows what he might have accomplished in great painting? Whistler, Charles Furse, and Thomas Eakins, each in his own way, carried on the traditions for a few years; but there are already signs of another relapse that may prove fatal.
The inspiration of all really great Art, as Ruskin so wisely points out, is religion. Another three centuries may see the end of that—communism and religion cannot exist together. Art in some form, either great or small, lives as a tradition through all the ages, building, either well or ill, upon that which was already laid in varying strata, as civilization proceeded. It has never been spontaneous, and never can be. That this is so can be discovered from an examination of the illustrations of Matthew Mans' work in Croal Thomson's book, which plainly indicate that he blossomed from many grafts upon the same tree. In particular, Cottage Scene shows, if not the German ancestry of his family, the direct influence of German Art, of a period anterior to Menzel; at other times the blossom is the result of a graft from his brother James, and again from William. He is at his best when he is pursuing his own fantasies, his day-dreams of princes and princesses and castles in the air, pictorial expressions of that inner and spiritual life that was in such contrast to his real and bitter experience.
We often wonder if there is a mathematical law governing the phenomena of coincidences. They are so mysterious, and sometimes so startling, as to induce a belief in a direct
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