Blue Person is not an artist at all. He is a canvas-stretcher just as the Rain Man is a maker of cloud in bulk for the Cloud Artist's use. So when the master is not in the studio, and the Rain Man is playing hookey, the Blue Person has it all his own way. If the Cloud Artist has an inspiration, then the Blue Person steps aside and we have pictures. Or perhaps the Rain Man comes rushing in and throws great lumps of his manufactures all over the Blue Person's pretty canvas, and then we put on mackintoshes.
A hill-top is the best stance for looking at the Cloud Artist's work. It is impossible to see too large an area of it. No one can paint in small compass better than he, and I have often framed a marvellous little six-foot-by-five with my bedroom window. But to see him as he should be seen one wants the whole vault of heaven. Then the fellow's infinite variety becomes properly apparent. I never can decide in which vein I prefer him. When he is doing his big bold work with his great masses of cumulus, flinging them all day exuberantly across the blue, tearing continents of cloud to pieces and sending them swimming, he is at his liveliest and strongest. Then, too, he indulges his undoubted gift of humour. He becomes Rabelaisian, scolloping his edges into pompous, mile-long Bourbon faces, all chins, or
