_Bonnard_, _Vuillard_, _Valloton_ and _Roussel_ are others whose names have in the last few years become well known. Their art is built up on the foundation laid by the Impressionists only so far as they use the new colour-values discovered by the "bright painters," in a free, harmonious manner, and place them at the service of a new decorative purpose. In exhibitions one is often at a loss how to view these decorative paintings, such, for instance, as those of Bonnard and Vuillard; the eye is astounded for a moment when, after looking at the usual array of good pictures, it suddenly comes upon works that look more like pieces of Gobelin tapestry than paintings. Then one's mind reverts to rooms such as Olbrich, Van de Velde, or Josef Hoffmann designed with some particular purpose in view, and one understands the object of these pictures. "We can hang in our rooms any picture which is beautiful in itself and by itself." That is the old familiar story, but that feeling never enters our minds when we stand in a mediæval room in which there are no pictures that can be taken away from their surroundings. It is a difficult task to arrange things that are individually beautiful into a harmonious whole. The realisation of the old-time principle is for obvious reasons well-nigh impracticable--the modern man is a restless, fickle creature; he must always be at liberty to pitch his tent anywhere--but we can surely make some approach to it. One may imagine in every dwelling a room in which furniture and pictures are made to fit into some conception of harmony, and the works of Bonnard and Vuillard may be conceived as parts of such a scheme for the decoration of a room, and indeed--though we must not forget similar attempts which have been made in other directions--as parts of a scheme which, though thoroughly modern and by no means a mere external copy, reverts to the style of bygone centuries. From the historian's standpoint these young artists scarcely come into question; they are still too much in the embryonic stage for any conclusion to be arrived at with respect to either of them. But the art lover who looks to the future rather than the past feels bound to follow with care their creations, in which the wealth of beauty that is already indicated in their first prints, the certainty of purpose with which they direct their efforts towards the point at which Impressionism has left the widest gap, seems to give a guarantee that in the future France will maintain in the province of art the position she has held during the nineteenth century as the leading artistic nation. CHAPTER XXXV SPAIN Just as France to-day shows such a wealth of talent, Spain, correspondingly, can scarcely be said to come into the question of modern endeavour in art; in fact, it is quite impossible to treat of a history of Spanish art, one can only consider individual artists, for they each go their own way, working in different directions and without any concerted plan.