Excerpt from Estimates in Art

Now, the dilemma of every artistic life is to strike the just balance between reflection and execution. Obviously, execution cannot safely be neglected. Even Claude attained a decent adequacy in this regard. And because be te fused to do more, his case is peculiarly instruc tive. It is as if he felt so keenly the impor tance of the original constructive vision that he declined to blunt or complicate it through exec utive processes too painful or too prolonged.

Ingres once said rather stupidly that to draw a picture was everything, and that the painting went of itself. Claude may be imagined as saying that to see pictures was everything to see them with utmost clarity and fervor and that the rest was largely a tedious super ¿uity. The doctrine is perilous, but, as a per sonal maxim at least, Claude's practice fully justifies it.

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