THE BAILLIE GALLERY AGAIN.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1518, 14 August 1912, Page 5

THE BAILLIE GALLERY AGAIN.

Sir,—Mr. Baillie's strictures addressed to professional critics must have been really meant for tho gratuitous critics, as ho cannot .honourably sustain a quarrel uifch' the former. Had it not been fs>r their generous offices he would ha\o sold very few pictures. Mr. Baillie must remember that his enterprise wis ii a maimer an attack on the public j-nr»c and woukl. be bound to be' looUod at askance by a section of the public at I may also bring under his notice a fact probably now lo him, viz., art is not intrinsically an end in itself, but a means to an end. This heresy will strike him as novel, but it accounts for some, at all events, of the adverse criticism evidently rankling in his memory. What time' liavo we for tho minutiae of differences hstween one man's performance with a-brush as apainst another's. No, you waste time oil, and want money for, *au effort.in' oils, what purpose has been served by, that waste of time? Of course there .is art and, art. Art that is art strikes 'homo and tho critic's art cannfat prevail against it. It is only art that is otherwise which depends upon forced flattery' to Ret through. When wo have an art gallery lot each picture not be'better, than that which' ome other artist drew,' biit portray some sentiment or ideal that preachcs improvement, in some form or other of the ideals of the human cosmos.. From* this noint of view my claim is that Mr. Baillie's •' gallery failed.—l am, ctc., v.:/; HENRY BODLEY.