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LE POTAGER
SISLEY'S STRUGGLE FOR RECOGNITION
By Forbes Watson
A FAVORITE pastime of the critic of art is to trace in an artist's work the racial traits that give it its character. It is a pleasing diversion, leading the unwary into many pitfalls from which the attempt to extricate themselves, by throwing up a barrage of rhetoric, is not always successful. They should remember that the soul of Catholic Spain was expressed, not by a Spaniard, but by Theotocopuli the Greek. They might also be reminded by the pedigrees of more than one modern painter who is generally referred to as a French artist or an American artist, as the case may be, that this is a geographical rather than a racial description. He may be of German, Hebrew, Italian or Dutch parentage, and have none of the blood of the country to which his art is accredited.
The recent sale of Degas' works brought forth again the comment that he was the most peculiarly and intimately French artist of the nineteenth century. Degas was half Italian. The whole Impressionist school seems above all things essentially French; yet a thoroughly typical member of the group, whose work seems so French in its delicacy, French in its lightness of touch,
