1S90-91.] ART IN CANADA TO-DAY. 115 



second great need is for a museum equipped with well-chosen specimens 

 of the world's art. Our Government and citizens are establishing schools 

 of industrial and fine art, yet when we would point our pupils to examples 

 of pure art, lo ! there are none ; and when we would know what art has 

 been, in order to discover what art may be, we must go as exiles and pil- 

 grims to foreign cities, where there is no Canadian air to clear the 

 atmosphere of false traditions, or blow aside the prejudices of antique 

 philosophies : philosophies true enough in themselves, but not adapted 

 to the newer civilization of this continent. We want their history with 

 our hope, their experience with our ambitions ; and a museum that gives 

 the best of their art history and achievement will greatly strengthen our 

 hope and give rein to our ambition. 



A third need is for capable and generous criticism. There are many 

 men whose discernment and sympathies fit them eminently for the roll 

 of art critic ; but as yet journalism has not opened wide the door to 

 advancement in such a specialty. In the meantime, while we wait the 

 advent in Canada of an Albert Wolfe or Hammerton, we declare the 

 unprejudiced impression on the mind of the public to be the fairest test 

 of a picture's merit. No questioning will cast a reasonable doubt upon 

 the claim of an experienced purchaser to first place as connoisseur and 

 critic, freed as he is from the narrowing influences of specialities, which 

 impose limitations upon the judgment of the professional artist. But 

 this question we leave for fuller discussion in a later paper : suffice it 

 for us Canadians in our observation of the nature whose lavish won- 

 ders greet the eye everywhere, and of the representations of that nature 

 in pictorial art, we give our independent judgment the encouragement it 

 deserves. False taste will thereby be corrected, and art that is true art 

 greatly encouraged. 



