In his admirable book on Shakespeare, Victor Hugo has shown that there
is no progress in the arts. Nature, their model, is unchangeable; and
the arts cannot transcend her limits. They attain completeness of
expression in the work of a master, on whom other masters are formed.
Then comes development, and then a lapse, an interval. By-and-by, art is
born anew under the stimulus of a man who catches from Light a new
convention.
_Bracquemond._