Earlier examples of this are to be found in the great collections of Barbizon and Impressionist pictures here. A thing that should weigh against many a discouraging feature of our art-conditions is the fact that an American museum was the first in the world, and the only one during the lifetime of Manet, to hang works by that master. Returning now to our own painting, one man in this country resisted with complete success the test of an exhibition with the greatest of recent painters from abroad. It was Mr. Maurice B. Prendergast, who for thirty years had been joyously labouring at an art which showed its derivation from the best French painting of his day, its admirable acceptances of the teaching of Cézanne (scarcely a name even in Europe when Mr. Prendergast first studied him), and its humorous and affectionate appreciation of the American scenes that the artist had known from his youth. In original and logical design, in brilliant colour that yet had the mellowness of a splendid wine, he expresses the modern faith in the world we see and makes it lovable. At last we welcome an art in accord with the finest of the ancient-modern tradition, as European critics have since declared; yet it remains American in provenance and in the air of unconscious honesty that has always been a characteristic of the good work of this country. The latest wave of influence to come over American art has almost been the most far-reaching and invigorating. To go further than this assertion, at least in the matter of individuals, would be to forego the support of too large a part of that body of opinion that I know to be behind my statements throughout this essay. Art-matters must, in the final analysis, be stated dogmatically, but I am unwilling to speak of the schools now developing save in a general way, especially as the most interesting men in them have still to reach a definitive point in their evolution. They are abreast or nearly abreast of the ideas of Europe, and there is an admirable vigour in the work that some individuals are producing with those ideas. But the changes brought about by the International are still too recent for us to expect the most important results from them for a number of years. The general condition here has probably never been as good before. I have, till now, spoken only of the more traditional aspects of art--the kind one finds in museums--and that last word calls for at least a mention of the great wealth of art-objects that are heaping up in our public collections, and in the private galleries which so often come to the aid of the museums.