Excerpt from International StudioIn his spare time he devoted his energies to pure art, paying no heed to the transitory fashions of the hour, disdaining the aesthetic snobisme which has caused, and is causing, such ravages in art work generally. In his holiday times he would go far away, to Florence or to Venice or elsewhere on Italy's consecrated ground, where Beauty shines in its eternal glory. Hence spring the real sources of M. Levy-dhurmer's art, and I don't think any one will quarrel with him on this account. I' was in Italy he learnt that feeling of expression which is one of his predominating characteristics, and there 'twas also he acquired his love of the imaginative and the ideal. Moreover, his masters - the Masters of the fourteenth and fif teenth centuries, who in the plastic arts gave expression to all that is heroic and grand and beautiful in the heart of humanity - taught him the secret of impeccable shape, and taught him, too, a respect for nature and for life. To them he owes also that perfect precision which I so greatly admire in his work, that absolute certainty of touch which enables him to express just what he wishes, neither more nor less. In this Italian school, also, he became impressed with the great truth, that the artist must realise at every instant that he can afford to neglect nothing, that everything has a deep meaning, and that the artist's duty is to reveal this to us, according to his tem perament, in all sincerity and with all the force that is in him.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.