Art: Paris in Boston

"Art in America is derivative because it is still too young." Thus spoke France's Raoul Dufy in Boston last week. "France," he added, "has lived a long time—eight or nine centuries—and yet art in France, too, was derivative up until the 19th Century . . . American art, like America, must wait and live a while longer."

Meanwhile it was nice having visitors. Dufy, 73, in the U.S. for treatment of his arthritis, had already regained a bit of the nimbleness his knobby hands were famed for, had set to work painting sprightly watercolors and oils of his new surroundings. Dufy's...