Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/177

ON SCHOOLS eye, they learned their craft much as a tailor's apprentice learns his trade. When they were not grinding colors or stretching canvas, or sweeping out the studio, they were allowed to copy the master's work or possibly to fill in backgrounds for him, and they received his instruction in return for their labors. We do not hear of anything resembling the modern art school until the time of the brothers Carraci; and it thus happens that the graduates of the first genuine school of art were the painters of the Italian Decadence. There would seem to be a sinister significance in this coincidence a significance which has been a facile argument in the hands of those who hold that schools of art exert a pernicious influence upon the student, destroying his individuality and his personal outlook. They forget that the effect of the school atmosphere is a [133]