The meaning of pictures

We could easily settle, ex cathedra, this matter of art if our views were the only ones to be considered; but, unfortunately, intelligent people differ with us, and the painter himself is often our most determined antagonist. The painter, in fact, has opinions of his own about his pictures and he sometimes asserts them with no uncertain voice. His most persistent assertion is that the picture should be something decorative in form or color—be something beautiful to look at—rather than something moral, intellectual, or narrative. But the public, being differently minded, keeps insisting that the picture should be something in subject or have some literary meaning; and, consequently, it often misses the decorative altogether. So it is that there is plenty of material for disagreement. The painter and his public seem ever at swords’ points. Let us to-day review the case for the plaintiff and to-morrow perhaps we can sum up for the defendant public.

It is true, to begin with, that the average person who takes an interest in painting and attends gallery exhibitions often shoots wide of the mark in his appreciations. He starts wrong by devoting too much attention to pictures that have pretty faces and tell pretty stories. He is over-fond of heroes and heroines, plots and tales, dramatic scenes from history, or familiar characters in fiction. The ideal, whether in figure, face or landscape, pleases him; and he does not object to a laugh over the comic or the ludicrous. But he cannot abide coarse peasants or fishermen in art; Dutch pictures with their tavern brawls are not to his taste; and he persists in misunderstanding Italian people dressed in modern garb and representing sacred characters. Anachronisms of type, furniture, architecture, bother him beyond measure. The Madonna and the Apostles were Jews and lived in Judea, and he wishes an archæological report of the race, country, climate and soil. Of course, he does not care for portraits by Velasquez with their outlandish dresses, or large Flemish women by Rubens, or the “splashy” painting of Dutch burghers by Frans Hals. In short the average person is devoted to the pleasant subject in art and is continually asking of the picture: What does it mean?

The view of the painter is very different from all this. He is not interested in the pretty face. The Madonnas and Saints whether Dutch, French, German, or Italian, do not interest him as Madonnas and Saints. A figure, whether sacred or profane, is to him only a figure. As for the pretty story, the ideal, the correct costume, he usually turns up his nose at them. He is not always interested in what a picture means. Too often perhaps he cares not a rap whether it means anything or not. His question is first of all: What does it look? He wishes to know whether that figure is well drawn, rightly placed, beautiful as form solely and simply. Costume, whether right or wrong, is no great matter; but does that Madonna’s robe make for graceful line, or play well as a spot of color? The interior of a room has no significance architecturally. It may be false to history; but does it make a good setting for the figures, does it lend readily to light-and-shade, has it atmosphere (Plate 27)? Finally, what is the result of the workmanship as a whole? Has the painter handled his materials artistically, has he drawn his figures effectively, has he arranged them compactly, has he brought his lights-and-shades together truthfully, and has he fused his color-masses harmoniously? If so he has produced a work of art, whether its subject means much or means little.

The distinction which I would make is the old one between art as representation and art as decoration. The Arabic numeral 8, for example, conveys an abstract idea to the mind; but if you draw a series of linked 8’s thus: 888888888888888888 you will have something that conveys no idea and yet looks to the eye very like a graceful pattern for an architectural frieze. The art which the “average person” seeks in a picture-gallery represents an idea and has an expressive meaning, the art which the painter seeks in a gallery looks something and has a decorative meaning. It need not be inferred that the two kinds of art are incompatible with each other. On the contrary, they are closely united, for great art is both expressive and decorative, and all art is more or less decorative even when not expressive. Nor is it necessary to say that one is better than the other. Perhaps it is the thing said rather than the manner of saying that counts most with us; but what I wish to insist upon just here is that the painter is first of all devoted to the manner of saying, he is devoted to the decorative. We look at his pictures and think how long he toiled over that conception, how he walked the town, like Raphael, searching for that pretty face, how he must have studied to verify all his archæological facts. But, no. His greatest effort has perhaps gone out in the endeavor to make his tones harmonize, to get his drawing right, to hold his picture together in its planes, and make it one united impression of beautiful form and color.

You perhaps fancy that this contention for the decorative on the part of the painter is some fad of modernity. If you have that idea pray dismiss it, for it has no basis in fact. The decorative sense goes back to the dawn of history. It was the very first sign of the art instinct in Primitive Man. Just how it originally came to the surface would be difficult to determine. Years ago Schiller put forth a theory which has been accepted by Mr. Herbert Spencer and others to the effect that it arose through the play-impulse; and that art in its early significance was merely the result of man’s superfluous energy—something done for pleasure in an idle hour. That is to say, the Stone Age man ornamented his weapons of the chase and his domestic utensils with color and line because he had too great a supply of animal spirits. And the safety valve where his spirits blew off was art! We are to infer then that the decorative came into existence through man’s delight in form and color and because he had nothing better to do. The theory is ingenious but not wholly convincing. It is quite as reasonable to argue with Mr. Whistler that when the so-called Primitive Man set out for the chase in the morning there was some weak or crippled brother of the tribe who had not enough animal spirits to join the band, and was left behind with the women to do camp work. He could not draw bow or fight and so it is possible that he was put to work at making weapons, carving implements, moulding, decorating, and baking pottery. He was at first no doubt an awkward workman; but as his hands became more deft and his senses more acute he rounded shapes and forms with growing grace, and put patterns upon bowls and knife-handles with more justness of balance and appropriateness of design.

It is interesting to observe that almost at the start this primitive artist recognized the problem of adapting design and color to a given space—a problem that is to-day continually up for solution in every studio in the country. He recognized that the body of an ordinary vase, for instance, was capable of receiving one sort of a design—an open, free pattern perhaps,—the neck of it required something like a narrow-band pattern, the top or cover required a circular pattern. It was not long before our primitive artist found that the secret of good decoration lay in filling given spaces symmetrically; and that the sense of order, harmony, and proportion were necessities of his craft. He found the same problem staring him in the face when he left his pottery and its geometrical designs and began scratching the outlines of animals and men upon weapons or flat surfaces of stone. He had to adapt his figures to his space—adapt them rhythmically, decoratively. If the space happened to be a dagger-handle then the figures were necessarily of diminutive size or represented in horizontal attitudes; if the space were a shield then the figures had to carry the action around the centre in rows perhaps; if it were an upright panel of clay or stone then the figures were required to stand at full length and fill the space from bottom to top. The adaptation of design and color to prescribed space was (and is) the primary requisite of good decoration; and the early artist was accounted a success or a failure just in proportion as he accepted or rejected this requisite.

Centuries after the period of Primitive Man—no one knows how many centuries—when civilization had become established on the banks of the Nile, we find pottery, household utensils, weapons of warfare, furniture, embroideries, walls of temples and walls of tombs, all covered with patterns, figures, and colors. The carvings and paintings are better in execution, but not unlike those of more barbaric times. And the artist here in Egypt, like his predecessor in the Stone Age, is concerned with filling spaces decoratively. To be sure the king in his chariot surrounded by his bowmen, the flying enemy, the files of prisoners bearing tribute, the convocation of the gods, the scenes from royal and humble life, are all records of history, religion, or custom. The painter is saying something, illustrating something, with his figures and groups and colors; but how careful he is that he shall say it gracefully, pleasing the eye as well as the mind. The composition usually runs in long tiers or bands and the spaces are filled with standing or moving figures. The open spots about the figures are dotted with accessory objects, such as palms, fruits, implements, cartouches—all decorative in form or color. Everywhere in the Egyptian temple the hieroglyphs appeared in bands and rows—a text explanatory of the subject, but introduced in such a manner that no space in the picture should look empty or wanting in balance.

Assyrian art tells us the same tale. The alabaster slabs that lined the palace walls of Nineveh were all cut of one size, and the colored bas-reliefs upon them picturing warriors, chariots, horses, dogs, hunting scenes, battle scenes, and sacred scenes conformed to that size. Trees and city ramparts and rivers were used as accessory objects, and often the cuneiform inscriptions ran across them and held them together like a veil of atmosphere. With Greek art this decorative filling-of-space reached its highest point in the ancient world. You cannot to-day take up a red-figured vase, a silver coin, or an engraved gem without being conscious that the artist’s first thought was how to fill the given space effectively. There is little attempt at fitting a round stone into a square hole. The whole surface of the vase, the coin, or the gem is covered with a regard for the general form of the space decorated. A Greek coin almost always shows good decorative effect, because the disk is completely filled with a round profile; an American coin usually shows poor decorative effect because the space is not filled with one large object, but is huddled full of small dates, figures, stars, liberty-caps, and shields. The Greek die-sinker is influenced solely by decorative appearance, whereas the American die-sinker or his employer wants to tell you on a ten-cent piece all about the constitution, the flag, and the magnificent freedom and general excellence of the greatest republic on earth.

Not alone with small objects was the Greek a decorative workman. The wall-paintings, the sculpture, the architecture, all exemplified his skill in space-filling. It was no mere accident that the figures in the highest part of a Parthenon pediment were shown standing, and that they were seated or reclining in the lower angles. There was a pedimental form to fill with figures, and Pheidias would not have been Pheidias had he not placed the figures so that they would fill the space gracefully, easily, and with no loss of dignity in their attitudes. Just so with the Parthenon frieze of Athenian youths on horseback. How gracefully they ride! And how well adapted the moving train of horsemen to the long, lane-like frieze that conducts them around the temple. It is obvious enough that the sculptor had to consider the field upon which he worked, and he had to fill it so that it would first of all be beautiful to the eye.

The step from ancient to modern art is a long one, but the decorating motive did not die with the Greeks. The Gothic age had perhaps more need for it than the age of Pericles. When painting began to rise in Italy, the chief patron of it was the all-powerful Church. At that time artists were not artists, in name at least. They were mechanics, members of trades-unions called guilds, and were hired to do certain kinds of work like carpenters, masons, stone-cutters, and other mechanics. The painter at that time was often a layer of colors, a gilder of altar-pieces, a modeller in clay, a hewer of marble, a goldsmith, a frame-maker—all in one. When the church was built he was called in to decorate it—that is, to make it beautiful to look at, attractive in appearance. There were certain architectural spaces—ovals, triangles, squares, panels—certain recesses in the apse, the dome, the ceiling, that had to be filled with carvings, designs, pictures. He filled them, and he was praised or criticised as he filled those spaces decoratively or otherwise. He was a decorator pure and simple. Then came Giotto. The same kind of spaces needed filling, but Giotto filled them better than his predecessors. His decorative sense was larger, his taste in color more refined; and he could draw a figure nobler and with more flexibility as regards its muscular play and action. Painting advanced with a bound. It did not do so because of Giotto’s subjects, because he painted the traditional Church themes like those before him; but because Giotto was, for his time, a great craftsman.

A hundred or more years later came Masaccio. Art was once more pushed suddenly forward, for Masaccio rounded the archaic line, drew drapery with ease, fathomed the tones of colors, gave light-and-shade, perspective, values. Then another hundred years to Michael Angelo and Raphael. With these two last-named artists drawing reached a great height. It could not at that time be carried further, and no painters in Florence were so famed for drawing and composition as Michael Angelo and Raphael. They filled space quite perfectly with lines and forms. (Plates 21 and 28.)

Contemporary with Michael Angelo and Raphael lived Leonardo da Vinci. He was an excellent draughtsman but you do not often hear him spoken of as such. His fame rests largely upon his discovery and mastery of light-and-shade. Here was something new with which to fill space. It made no difference that at this time painting often came down from the apse and the ceiling and spread itself upon canvas and wooden panel to make what we to-day call the easel-picture. The decorative motive was not lost sight of for a moment. Leonardo was just as solicitous that the panel should be decoratively beautiful as the wall fresco, and he made it beautiful by his mystery of light-and-shade, by his figures and colors. He was for Florence the perfect craftsman, and many students followed his initiative. Then came Correggio at Parma (Plate 8) and Giorgione at Venice (Plate 24), varying the use of light-and-shade and making of it a magnificent background upon which to weave colors. These three men for Italy perfected and completed the decorative use of light-and-shade, and you will always hear them spoken of as the masters of chiaroscuro, the inventors of composition by masses of light and dark.

One moment more to the school of Venice! You will remember that from her infancy Venice was a trader with the East. She was the carrier by sea, the broker, between Europe and that realm of Mahomet lying back of Constantinople which has never known any other art than colored ornament. This Moslem empire and its color-glamour had its influence upon the Venetians through their ships and traders, and when the painters began the fabrication of altar-pieces and mosaics for the Venetian churches it was not line or form or light or shade that primarily interested them. It was color—the color of the old decadent Eastern world—to which they were devoted. The Bellinis began it, their pupils Giorgione and Titian made it glorious, Paolo Veronese gave it final brilliancy and splendor. (Plates 5 and 14.) Again the height was reached. Space-filling at Venice was done primarily by masses of color, and to-day you will always hear the Venetians spoken of as the great colorists in art.

Now have you noticed that I have given you, in this little outline of art-history, the names of the great masters in painting? Have you noticed that the rise of that greatest school of all, the Italian, can be adequately explained on purely decorative grounds? Art was great in Italy primarily because the Italians were great technicians, great decorators, great space-fillers. If you will turn back and read their lives, their adventures, and their quarrels among themselves you will discover that they were not wholly absorbed by the Madonnas and Holy Families and the religious sentiment of art. Many of them had piety and strong belief, and some of them had neither the one nor the other. The subjects were dealt out to all of them alike by the Church; but the manner in which they should be painted was something taught in the bottega of the master, something dictated in each case by the space (the wall or altar) which had to be decorated.

Even the pietists like Fra Angelico were not free of obligation to the decorative. Nor did a single one of them ever wish to be free. Whether they believed in religion or not, whether they had pietistic sentiment or not, they all believed in the beauty of good form and good color. If you will look again at Andrea del Sarto’s Holy Families you will see little holiness about them or in them. They are only Florentine people posed in traditional attitudes, with Andrea’s wife enacting the part of the Madonna. But they are not wanting in decorative charm. Andrea knew how to fill space if not how to paint soul, and it was because he did fill space beautifully in the convent of the Annunziata that his townspeople called him “the faultless painter.” No one ever referred to him as “the faultless thinker” or “the faultless sentimentalist” or “the pietistic painter.”

If you will look again at the pictures of Titian you will see only handsome, well-fed, richly robed Venetians. Their brows are not burdened with Christian ecstasy nor their faces furrowed with classic thought. There is little to them but fine form and fine color. And yet I venture to think that Titian, taking him for all in all, was the greatest painter known to history. It was by and with such men—men devoted to the material and technical side of their art—that Italian craftsmanship rose step by step through three hundred years of severe training until the Renaissance height was reached and great art was the result. The pictorial voice of Italy would never have been heard in this world had it not been for the decorative skill of the workman, the craftsman of the Renaissance, the man we to-day call a technician. And from beginning to end the first consideration of Italian art was not religion, nor nature, nor the ideal nor the classic, but rather the making of a beautiful decoration by the use of lines, lights, shadows, and colors.

I am aware that you regard all this as decidedly heterodox, and possibly you may think I am distorting the facts to make a point in argument. But no. I am stating the artist’s contention, giving his idea of the development of art—the view held by the ancients and still upheld to-day by the moderns. But let me ramble on a little further, and consider this matter negatively. You know that with Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Titian art in Italy reached its climax, and that after them came that deluge known to history as the Decadence. But why was there a decadence? What caused it? Nothing more nor less than that the followers of the great men came to regard craftsmanship as something of a trick to be readily picked up, and failed to study with the severity of the early men. They thought to be technicians without labor, to gain facility without skill, to produce great pictures without knowledge. Their predecessors had achieved technique, and the followers thought they had nothing to do but help themselves to the result without bothering about going to the fountain-head. So they tried to combine certain line-effects of Raphael with Titian’s color and Correggio’s light-and-shade. Of course this attempt at a unity of technical excellences was an absurdity. Then, too, they began to think that the sublime or sentimental subject was worth more than good workmanship, and that Michael Angelo’s greatness lay in his mystery-haunted figures, as Raphael’s in his round-faced Madonnas. So they began copying these features, too. And as a result there appeared the ponderous scowling Titans of Salviati and Vasari, the sugary, empty-headed Madonnas of Carlo Dolci and Sassoferrato. They could not draw or paint like the great masters, because their hands had not been thoroughly trained; they could not design decoratively, because their taste had become corrupted; they could not think effectively, because they were following other people’s ideas rather than their own. No wonder there was decadence. It would have been very strange had there been anything else.

Two hundred years of this meretricious art followed the downfall of the Renaissance. During those centuries painting in Europe lay barren, save in some exceptional spots. It flourished in Holland with Rembrandt; it flourished in Flanders with Rubens; it flourished in Spain with Velasquez. Why did it flourish? If I were searching the entire history of painting I could not name for you three greater technicians than Rembrandt, Rubens, and Velasquez. With Titian, they are the great masters of the craft. Art always flourishes in the hands of the skilled craftsman; it always languishes in the hands of the unskilled craftsman. And it is necessary to insist upon it again that all these men were workmen, working with the decorative sense uppermost. They were artists, too—artists who expressed great thoughts, sentiments, and emotions, particularly Rembrandt; but they never would have been artists, they never would have represented any fact or thought worth considering, had they not been, first of all, decorative workmen.

But you may say we have changed all that. The painter in those days was only a court dependant—a varlet of the king—not different from cabinet-makers, stone-cutters, and other mechanics; but to-day he is an independent citizen, a creative genius, a teacher of mankind, an influencer and moulder of public opinion. Yes; but the picture is still the picture. And custom may change the painter’s skin, but not his nature. He is still a skilled workman at heart, or at least would be such. And his main aim is decorative craftsmanship. Modern painting gives it proof. It is said, and truly enough, that art has advanced in this century. Why has it advanced? Simply because it has taken hold of the old technical and decorative problems, and tried to better them. In France, Ingres was doing his best to draw like Raphael, when Delacroix came to the front with a new kind of drawing. Instead of line he substituted the patch of color, and made the outer rim elastic, movable, life-like. Corot, Rousseau, and the landscape painters; Courbet, Millet, and Manet, the genre painters, helped complete it. Art under them rose rapidly, and the truth of nature was more nearly approximated.

But the light was too dull, the shadows too black. A new man came to the front to revise and re-edit the light-and-shade of Leonardo, Correggio, and Rembrandt. That man was Monet, the so-called impressionist. He changed the whole pitch of light by transposing the scale, and giving both lights and darks a higher register. And has not the rich deep color of the old Venetians been revised too? Look about you at the high keys of color that greet you in every modern picture exhibition. Claude Monet, whom people smiled at a dozen years ago, but are now calling a genius, is responsible for this high scale of color and light. He has transformed the whole decorative aspect of landscape painting, by studying the intermixture and play of pigments. We are now seeing colors in art that approximate, at least, the colors of nature; and they are just as beautiful decoratively as the old ones, only we are not yet accustomed to them.

Painting advances, breaks out new sails, and enters upon new seas with such new knowledge of materials. And of course some of the energy put into the study is to enable the painters to show a truer life and nature than ever before; but we are not to forget that there is beauty also in the new pitch of light and color and that the painter is using them with a decorative purpose. Indeed it would be easy to demonstrate that no present-day painter begins upon an oval, a square, a triangle of wood or canvas, without first planning how to fill that space gracefully with forms, lights, and colors. These nineteenth-century painters have had few wall-spaces to fill, but it has already been suggested that the decorative tradition has descended to them, and that they are as considerate about filling a panel or canvas as ever the old men were considerate about filling an apse or spandrel.

But I fancy you are ready to stop me by protesting that these motives are too material, too mechanical. You will perhaps insist that true art is above all this petty planning, squaring, measuring, space-filling; that genius knows not method, and that the ideal out-soars the base materials that would hold it down to earth. There are those who believe that inspiration dictates with the voice of an angel and that the hand of the poet or painter but obeys the voice; there are those who believe there is no labor or plan or design or foundation in the work of art. And it is true that oftentimes painting and poetry appear so effortless that we think them spontaneous and unpremeditated. But those are always the works that have been slaved over the most. Every great work of art is based in technical knowledge and has the skilled workman back of it. And many are the poets born by nature, yet lacking the accomplishment of verse. Did you ever read a great piece of prose or poetry written by a man ignorant of grammar and the rhythmical construction of sentences? Did you ever hear of a good piece of architecture built by a man who knew not plans, scales, and proportions? Did you ever see a great picture painted by a man who could not draw decently or lay color harmoniously? We are quite right in admiring the feeling, the enthusiasm, yes, the inspiration, if you prefer that word, of some great violinist over his instrument; but we should not forget the training of the hand, the many years of dealing with the material that made enthusiasm and feeling possible. How much of them should we have heard had the hand remained untrained? Shelley’s poetic thoughts, yes, but Shelley’s sense of melody, his knowledge of rhythm, his general mastery of words and sentences, gave them meaning to the world. And so, too, while we admire Tintoretto’s fertility of resource and his bounding imagination we should not overlook the fact that it was his absolute skill of hand, his knowledge of line and light and color, that made an idyl of the “Ariadne and Bacchus” and an epic of that great maëlstrom composition the “Paradise.”

Materials, craftsmanship, the decorative sense which requires that a man’s work shall be interesting in itself, are the very bases of art; and we often go astray in our judgments by not considering them. We have with us to-day one of the best literary technicians of the nineteenth century—Mr. James the novelist. It can hardly be contended that he is a very popular novelist. We sometimes read outbreaks in newspaper or magazine columns to the effect that he is not much of a story-teller, has not much of a plot. That is the complaint of the average person in the picture-gallery when he stands face to face with a Whistler nocturne. He wants what the artist does not care to paint. Mr. Whistler and Mr. James are both very well acquainted with the pretty face and the romantic story, but they choose to ignore them. The average person may read a novel by Mr. James and keep asking: What does it mean? but if Mr. James were at his elbow and disposed to ask questions he would certainly inquire: How does it read?

It may be admitted, if you please, that the insistence upon the decorative use of language with Mr. James or with Mr. Swinburne is excessive. And so, too, the followers of Mr. Whistler, if not the leader himself, may be thought to refine color and mystify tone and shadow into a meaningless fog of pigments. Any principle, however good in itself, may be rendered ridiculous by extravagance in its application. But the followers of the decorative are not the only ones who go beyond the normal. Painters who are given to “ideas in art” oftentimes fly to the other extreme and neglect the decorative altogether. Mr. Holman Hunt, for example, will hardly be accused of not having enough ideas and meaning in his Palestine pictures, and just as certainly he will not be accused of pandering to the decorative. His drawing, coloring, painting, surfaces, are anything but pleasing. Nor does anyone doubt that Walt Whitman has put forth some poetic ideas as great as any in American literature, but the form in which he has sent them forth is far enough removed from the rhythmical. You read him and question perhaps whether he is a great poet or a solemn impostor just because he trusts his thoughts to bad drawing, crude coloring, and incoherent composition, just because he dispenses with the decorative.

Now you will please not understand me as saying that it makes no difference what you say if you but say it well, or that the setting is nobler or better than the gem itself. It is not necessary to rush to either extreme of statement. Some artists there be who make sweeping claims for the decorative, and so far as they themselves are concerned they are doubtless in the right. That is to say, form and color, in graceful combinations, make one kind of painting; but we need not straightway conclude that it is the only kind of painting. It has been suggested already that music and poetry may have something more to them than melodious sounds that fall sweetly on the ear; and that painting may have another mission than that of pleasing the eye with sensuous lines and colors. The ultimate end of painting is perhaps the expression of emotional feeling; and I am not now contending for superlative and final art in the Persian-rug picture made up of subtle lights and tones of colors. But it may be reasonably insisted that it is better for the picture—no matter what its ulterior meaning—that it should first of all be pleasing to the eye and decoratively attractive. Certainly that is the way all the great artists of the world have thought and wrought, from the man of the Stone Age who first decorated pottery to the American of to-day who is concerned with filling space upon panel or canvas.

And this decorative motive, which was the first consideration, remains to the last the most enduring feature of art. The history of a marble or a picture may be lost; its subject or theme may be forgotten; what it meant or signified to a past generation may be incomprehensible to a present generation; but what it looks is substantially the same for all times and all peoples. What, I wonder, makes the glory of the “Venus of Milo”—the fact that she is a Venus? It has been gravely questioned, is still questioned, just what character that figure is intended to personify; but it has never been doubted that it is a wonderful piece of line and form—something beautiful to look upon. What makes the glory of Titian’s “Sacred and Profane Love”? There is nothing either sacred or profane about it; the title is a misnomer—something attached to the picture long after the painter’s death—and no one knows what Titian intended to say in the picture. But is the picture less beautiful for that? It is a splendid panel of form and color; any name or no name could not render it less splendid. Its decorative quality is quite perfect. All those altar-pieces, frescoes, and mosaics in the Italian churches—how much meaning have they and their sacred subjects for the unbelieving art-lover of to-day! Very little indeed; but how beautiful they are to look upon just as pictures! (Plates 23 and 27). Who really cares to-day for the characters of Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth as compared with the deathless language of their decorative setting! Who does not care for Shakespeare’s jewelled sentences!

It is the common experience of art-lovers that the more they study pictures the more certainly do they lose interest in the theme or narrative illustrated. The historical or poetical incident portrayed fades into insignificance beside well-drawn forms and impressive schemes of color. No one who knows much about painting ever looks twice for the meaning of a Watteau or a Lancret group. The only meaning of it lies in its vivacity and gayety expressed in color and handling. Even where the meaning is important, as in Reynolds’s “Lady Cockburn and Family” (Plate 25) or Leighton’s “Summer Moon,” it is not possible to overlook or ignore the intertwining and blending of the group in both form and color, which makes it so attractive decoratively.

Such in brief is the artist’s view of art. It is firmly based upon the decorative, though all artists do not advocate it to the extinction of every other feature of the painting. On the contrary there are many who believe in sentiment, feeling, and emotional expression as the final aim. And some there are who stickle for the value of history, archæology, and story, as others for the value of the natural and the real. Indeed, there are several kinds of painting, representing several different points of view, and if we would cultivate catholicity of taste we should consider them all. There is a large body of intelligent people in this world who are even heretical enough to believe that art has some value as illustration; and since we have given the painter’s contention, perhaps it would be as well that we now state the case for the other side.