The ArtistsCecilia Beaux
“Never was a word more abused than ‘Technique.’ To many ‘Technique’ means the purely mechanical, material side of a work, something generally found to be hard, shiny, even vulgar. Just now, to be clumsy is to be admired. Indeed bungling is much in fashion now, in painting. And if one does not bungle naturally, one may easily learn how to do it from the initiated. But the true definition of ‘Technique’ is very simple. A perfect technique in anything only means that there has been no break in continuity between conception, or thought, and the act of performance.
— Cecilia Beaux from “Address to the Contemporary Club of Philadelphia Shortly after Sargent’s Death,” 1926
