A Lay Critic

At the loan show of the Contemporary Art Society in Colnaghi's, Bond St., London, the Prime Minister of England opened an exhibition of modernist French painting. Represented were Braque, Perain, Dufresne, Dufy, Flandrin, Friez, Marchand, Matisse, Picasso, Segonzac, Utrillo, Bonnard. The Prime Minister seemed quite familiar with such names and quite at home in the midst of Contemporary Art. "He proceeded to state, without false gusto, a few simple truths about Art, pointing out that Art, like Nature, never dies, that the old masters of today were once contemporaries, a fact too frequently forgotten by their exclusive worshippers, that the contemporaries of today will be the old masters of tomorrow, and that the function of the enlightened is to select them. He dwelt with considerable warmth on the part which Art and its appreciation plays in overcoming national prejudices, and securing international concord, concluding with a tribute to French genius."