"I say that the ordinary man who comes before a painting, frankly and generously ready to yield himself up to the impression
that the artist has sought to arouse in his senses through his vision, will feel the significance of that art much more purely
and fully than the critic who has set up for himself an elaborate code of laws founded on the achievement of one or two great
masters, which the standard he applies to every work of art in a calculated and death-dealing manner which destroys his capacity
to receive its real significance.
In short, the expert, by book-learning and by science, may come to a wide knowledge of the history of a painting of it's
maker; but he has no gifts whereby he senses the real significance of that work of art a whit better than the ordinary man,
who often endowed with superb and exquisite perception of the music that is in colour and line and mass.
It is as fatuous to measure the art of a Boucher or Chardin by the art of a Michelangelo or a Rembrant, as it is to measure
that art of a Velazquez by the art of a Turner. The sole significance is as to whether an artist, by the wizardry of his
skill, has created the impression upon our senses that he desired to create. If he shall have done so, then for us who sense
it, he is a creator; if he shall have failed, then for us whom he fails to reach he does not exist as an artist." -
Haldane Macfall.
