But really he does neither; he deals with their subjects occasionally,
but always in a completely modern, as well as a thoroughly personal,
way. His color is as original as his general treatment and composition.
He had no schooling, in the Ecole des Beaux Arts sense. A brief period
in Henri Scheffer's studio, three months under Couture, after he had
begun life in an altogether different field of effort, yielded him all
the explicit instruction he ever had. His real study was done in Italy,
in the presence of the old masters of Florence. With this equipment he
revolutionized modern decoration, established, at any rate, a new
convention for it. His convention is a little definite, a little bald.
One may discuss it apart from his own handling of it, even. It is a
shade too express, too confident, too little careless both of tradition
and of the typical qualities that secure permanence. In other hands one
can easily imagine how insipid it might become. It has too little body,
its scheme is too timorous, too vaporous to be handled by another.
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