Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/257

WHAT IS A GOOD PICTURE? no special appeal, would not, for that only reason, deny it a place upon the bill of fare, so no sensible painter would deny the artistic value of a Japanese print or a Persian rug simply because he does not happen to make that brand of art. Indeed, if there is any one rule for the judgment of works of art whose application is universal, it is that which demands of a picture, a print or a keramic that it shall differ from all other work in the same line, that it shall bear the impress not only of race but of individual personality within the racial limits. For it is the personality which makes the art. Nature, however beautiful, is not art. Art is natural beauty interpreted through human temperament. Here, then, we have at least one infallible test, which can be applied to any work under discussion—that it [201]