| The State always exerts its influence on Art; this influence is good or bad depending on whether the dispatchers of the works are more or less well aware of what decorative painting is, on the express condition that heaven has allowed original talents to appear on the world stage at the precise moment when a good judge in the matter exercises dictatorial power.
In recent years, the state has attempted successful innovations, encouraging artists whose talent has nothing academic in the pejorative sense of the word. We are too close to that moment to make a fair judgment on the results.
In order for the influence of the State on Art to be exercised in a beneficial way, it would be necessary, above all, to radically reform an education system which, dating back a hundred and fifty years, has given only too many evidence of his evil organization.
The Schools of Fine Arts should model their teaching on that which was given, formerly, in the workshops, confining themselves to teaching the pupils the technique of their art, the masters preaching by example and associating the young people with their work, instead to profess an artistic credo, varying every thirty years according to the fashion of the day before.
It would then be necessary to clearly separate the powers of the State from those of the "Institute". This could then appear as a Conservatory of "beautiful manners", no longer exerting its harmful influence on art by designating, each year, the Prix de Rome, not one of which became a great French painter, if we except Ingres, laureate in the first years of the Revolution.
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