The great masters who have directed brush and chisel in the performance of their work must have known what their purpose was; they certainly knew better than any one else, and they undoubtedly realized how far they had succeeded, or how far they had fallen short of securing the qualities which they had discovered and which they had undertaken to reveal. The evidence of these men is invaluable. Its importance bears an exact relation to their success in producing great and enduring works. This is true in every other field of human endeavor and it is equally true in the field of art. The opinion of the great astronomer with reference to astronomy is more valuable than that of the layman; the opinion of the great painter than that of the amateur. The man who knows any science so perfectly that he can practice it successfully, the artist who knows his art and nature so well that he can produce great works of art, these have earned the right to express their opinions. I think this must be accepted as a fundamental truth. It is therefore to the painter and sculptor that I turn for judgment. I have been aided in this inquiry by knowledge of the opinions of many of the able painters and sculptors of our own time. Intimate discussion has stimulated further inquiry, and a conviction which was originally based upon familiarity with the methods and purpose of the painter has been confirmed. _The Artist and His Purpose_ During all the great periods of art able men have striven earnestly to attain a knowledge of character and beauty and to achieve their truthful representation. Even when the purpose of the artist has been to express some specific idea or to record some incident or historical event, the work has lived, not because of the idea conveyed or the interest which attaches to the subject, but because it has portrayed character in a powerful manner, or because it has expressed the qualities of beauty which are inherent in nature. Upon these qualities, as they have been understood and translated by the artist, has depended the life of every great painting and work of sculpture. I believe this to be a fundamental and far reaching truth, accepted almost universally by painters and sculptors. This, I know, is equivalent to saying that the chief value of a work of art lies in its power to give aesthetic pleasure. These observations may suggest a question as to the relative importance of a work of art which tells a story or records historical events as compared with one which appeals solely to the aesthetic sense or the love of beauty. Human language, it would seem to me, is the logical method for conveying thought from one mind to another and offers direct, untrammelled mental contact without the intervention of form or design of any kind, while the representation of beauty for beauty’s sake alone is the more direct and effective way of creating and stimulating in the human heart a love of nature and art.