Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/72

40 I believe that the artist's personality is formed and developed by the steady battle which he is forced to wage with other personalities. If this battle is fatal to the artist and his personality succumbs, that is nothing other than destiny."

Matisse's efforts were directed to the establishing of a rigid discipline in his studio. He proclaimed the value of caution, he led painters back to the solid foundation of study, to a long and patient observation. He was surrounded by workers, a group which was really trying to understand him. Such attitudes were all the more wholesome in that painting had already dwindled out somewhat into facile impressions and casual—although charming, perhaps—colour schemes. It might be said that although Matisse may have honestly submitted to discipline he knew nothing of tradition. But this objection seems almost an advantage to me; the cry for tradition is usually a mere subterfuge for mediocre artists whereby they can justify work which has no strength of its own. The true tradition is simply a frame constructed about the spiritual strivings and methods common to an epoch and a people. The masters of the nineteenth century, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, and Rodin, were also compelled to make their own tradition and mould it after their own requirements. I have often heard Matisse complain that every one must find an individual form for his own sensations. I and many another of his students praise Matisse because he has subjected us to a training, a critique of form, and the proper respect for colour, as well as teaching us how to judge and analyse our antecedents.