Page:Four and Twenty Minds.djvu/201

Rh an Anglada. He has never tried the wild excitement of research, but he has never sunk to the elegant banditry of those who paint with an eye to the winning of medals and high prices. He has traveled his own road, conscious of the tremendous difficulty of fixing in color a single fleeting moment of truth; he has felt that the daily endeavor to do this, the daily struggle to achieve the impossible, is enough to bear witness to his courage. He is by no means content with the whole of his own work, and if he were content, his very contentment would mark an end and a condemnation. But if in spite of loneliness, of poverty, and of envy his furious efforts and his loving insistence have enabled him now and then to fix, with the certainty of light and the evidence of color, some incidents and some aspects of living reality, then he has done his duty as a true and honest painter, and we as artists and as Italians owe him gratitude.