It is true that the influence of Goya has tended for some time toward solely temperamental and emotional expression. That was because the tendency of the age ran in this direction. To-day, however, it is pointed in a new direction, facing the actual realities of existence. Impressionism is melting away before a new dawn of Realism. Thinking people are beginning to re-establish themselves upon the facts of life; not the old conventions that passed as facts, but the facts, as they are presenting themselves to a newly awakened realisation of an encompassing environment of spiritual facts. They are Realists, who would study the facts of life in their spiritual relation to the universe. Behind this still uncertain momentum of modern thought art is groping. If one ventures to hazard a conjecture of the outcome, it may be that the painter will get back to a more disciplined and scientific use of form and color, using them organically, but not, however, to the sole or even the main end of representation. He will appeal as directly and exclusively as possible to man’s purely esthetic perceptions, and correlate these to his conception of universal beauty. Painting thus may become once more, but in a new religious sense, a spiritualized expression. Following this train of thought one comes upon a curious analogy between Goya and El Greco. It was no accident of changing whim that has made the progressive artist of to-day turn from Velasquez to Goya, and has drawn so many besides artists to admiration of El Greco. It is because both tender to the needs of to-day. Both are artists of expression. They share with Rembrandt the distinction of being the greatest artists of expression that any school can show. Though Goya’s genius is confined to a lower level of expression, it points in principle to the spiritual altitude of El Greco’s. Both are models of suggestion for the artist of to-day, if he is alive to the esthetic and spiritual needs of his age and is striving to express them. That, after its own period of greatness, it should be thus refertilizing modern art, is the proud distinction of the Spanish School. [Illustration: IN THE BALCONY GOYA COLLECTION OF THE DUKE OF MARCHENA, PARIS] A POSTSCRIPT Very suggestive of the force and persistence of the Spanish character is the fact that the only Spanish artists of recent years who have become notably distinguished are those who have remained true to the traditions of their School. Academic encouragement has been given to the production of historical pictures, which cover large quantities of canvas but excite little interest. On the other hand, those painters who have acquired a European and American reputation have all based their art on naturalism.