Always El Greco’s pictures leave an impression of their own upon the spectator; and this is the test of vital work. It is personality that counts in art. Whether he paints the visible truth of outward things, as in his portraits--that wonderful series in the Prado, for instance, in which he startles us with his revelation of his model--or pure fancies of the mind, as ‘The Vision of Philip II.,’ in the Escorial, a picture that would seem to have no conscious reference to things seen, one feels that he had something definite to express. And although his style at first may have been formed largely on that of the great Venetian painters, of Tintoretto especially--a “sort of shorthand of the Venetian,” Mr. Ricketts calls it--in all his pictures there is but one personality--that of himself. At the back of his art was a force of passionate character--unbalanced? Yes! capricious and arbitrary; a tyrannical need that compelled expression. But in spite of his singular conventions and, from a theorist’s point of view, the strangeness and exaggeration of his qualities, he does convey his meaning, splendidly effective, if not the best. And because of this intensity of vision we have those pictures of exaggerated statement that give credit to the fable of the painter’s madness, such as the ‘St. John the Baptist,’ in the Hospital San Juan Bautista, a picture which many have found ugly, while the few see in its new conception a striving for personal utterance, and find many things in its suggestion. El Greco stumbled in his methods maybe, never in his purpose, which was, it would seem to us, the significance of movement. All his strange skill, the power of his imagination, his new knowledge of colour and light, are used in this service, to bring home to us the vision of movement that everywhere he saw. Even in his portraits it is this that holds us. There is something more in them than the outward likeness; there is a power of reaching to and showing us the unquiet spirit within. He makes his portraits live and speak. This quality is present in all his work. Every picture is built up by its effect; and this effect is movement--life. By concentrating on a particular passage, by a contempt for detail and peddling accuracy, he directs our minds to this principal thing. His interest, as it were, compels ours; he realises his vision and makes us share in his imagination.