Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/298

 XXI THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN ART

hear with increasing frequency to-day the statement that art is universal and without a country; that, being the record of abstract beauty, it cannot be confined within stated geographical limits; that the terms "French art," "English art," etc., are therefore absurd. Art is art tout bonnement, and that is all there is to it.

According to these critics, the mere fact that a man with the temperamental sense of beauty chances to be born in France or in Holland does not necessarily make him a French or a Dutch painter. If the Frenchman were brought up in Holland, and the Hollander in [234]