of objects against a flat background, but rather an enchanted
mirror of the world, in which might be reflected space beyond
space in infinite recession. With this transformation of the
picture there was connected a complete change in the relation
of the artist to nature. Throughout all the earlier epochs of
the art that painter had concerned himself not with nature as
a whole, but with certain selected aspects of nature that furnished
him with his recognized subjects. These subjects were selected
on account of their intrinsic beauty or importance, and as
representing intrinsic worth they claimed to be delineated
in the clearest and most substantial fashion. In the 17th
century, not only was the world as a whole brought within
the artist’s view, but it presented itself as worthy in every
part of his most reverent attention. In other words the art
of the 17th century, and of the modern epoch in general, is
democratic, and refuses to acknowledge that difference in artistic
value among the aspects of nature which was at the basis of the
essentially aristocratic art of the Greeks and Italians. It does
not follow that selection is of any less importance in modern
painting than it was of old; the change is that the basis of selection
is not now a fixed intrinsic gradation amongst objects, but
rather a variable difference dependent not on the object itself
but on certain accidents of its position and lighting. The
artist still demands that nature shall inspire him with her
beauty, but he has learned that this beauty is so widely diffused
that he may find it anywhere. It was a profound saying of
John Constable that there is nothing ugly in nature, for, as he
explained it, let the actual form and character of an object be
what it would, the angle at which it might be viewed, and the
effect upon it of light and colour, could always make it beautiful.
It is when objects and groups of objects have taken on themselves
this pictorial beauty, which only the artistically trained eye
can discern, that the modern painter finds himself in the presence
of his “subject,” and he knows that this magical play of beauty
may appear in the most casual and unlikely places, in mean
and squalid corners, and upon the most ordinary objects of
daily life. Sometimes it will be a heap of litter, sometimes a
maiden’s face, that will be touched with this pictorial charm.
Things to the common eye most beautiful may be barren of it,
while it may touch and glorify a clod.
The artist who was the first to demonstrate convincingly this principle of modern painting was Rembrandt. With Rembrandt the actual intrinsic character of the object before him was of small concern. Beauty was with him a matter of surface effect that depended on the combined influence of the actual local colour and superficial modelling of objects, with the passing condition of their lighting, and the greater or less clearness of the air through which they were seen. Behind the effect produced in this fortuitous fashion the object in itself vanished, so to say, from view. It was appearance that was important, not reality. Rembrandt’s art was related essentially not to things as they were but as they seemed. The artists of the 15th century, whose careful delineation of objects gives them the title of the earliest realists, portrayed these objects in precise analytical fashion each for itself. More advanced painters regarded them not only in themselves but in their artistic relations as combining beauties of form and colour that together made up a pictorial effect. Rembrandt in his later work attended to the pictorial effect alone and practically annulled the objects, by reducing them to pure tone and colour. Things are not there at all, but only the semblance or effect or “impression” of things. Breadth is in this way combined with the most delicate variety, and a new form of painting, now called “impressionism,” has come into being.
To give back nature just as she is seen, in a purely pictorial aspect, is the final achievement of the painter’s craft, but as the differences of tone and colour on which pictorial beauty depends are extremely subtle, so it is only by a skill of touch that seems like the most accomplished sleight of hand that the required illusion can be produced, and in this way the actual handling of the brush assumes in modern painting an importance which in the old days it never possessed. The effect is produced not by definite statements of form and colour, but by what Sir Charles Eastlake termed “the judicious unfinish of a consummate workman,” through which “the flat surface is transformed into space.” Frans Hals of Haarlem, who was born in 1580, was perhaps the first to reveal the artistic possibilities of a free suggestive handling in oil paint, and Van Dyck is said to have marvelled how Hals was able to sketch in a portrait “with single strokes of the brush, each in the right place, without altering them and without fusing them together.” In the wonderful late Velazquez at Vienna, the portrait of the Infant Philipp Prosper as a child of two years old, the white drapery, the minute fingers, the delicate baby face from which look out great eyes of darkest blue, are all indicated with touches so loosely thrown upon the canvas that seen near by they are all confusion—yet the life and truth are in them, and at the proper focal distance nature herself is before us. The touches combine to give the forms, the local colours, the depth, the solidity of nature, while at the same time the chief impression they convey is that of the opalescent play of changing tones and hues which, eluding the limitations of definite contours, make up to the painter’s eye the chief beauty of the external world. Moreover it will be understood that this realization of the truth of space, which is the distinguishing quality of modern painting, does not mean that the artist is always to be rendering large views of sky and plain. The gift of setting objects in space, so that the atmosphere plays about them, and their relations of tone to their surroundings are absolutely correct and convincing, is shown just as well in a group of things close at hand as in a wide landscape. The backgrounds in the pictures by Velazquez of “The Surrender of Breda” and “Don Balthazar Carlos” at Madrid are magnificent in their limitless suggestion of the free spaces of earth and sky, but the artist’s power in this respect is just as effectively shown in the creation of space in the interiors of “The Maids of Honour” and the “Spinners,” and the skill with which he brings away the hand of the sitter from his white robe, in the “Innocent X.” of the Doria Palace at Rome. The fact is that the scale on which the modern painter works, and the nature of his subjects, make no difference in the essential character of the result. A very few square feet of canvas were sufficient for Ruysdael to convey in his “Haarlem from the Dunes” the most sublime impression of infinity; and a Dutch interior by De Hooch gives us just as much feeling of air and distance as one of the vast panoramic landscapes of De Koningk or Rubens.
§ 20. Impressionism.—The term “impressionism,” much heard in artistic discussions of to-day, is said to date from a certain exhibition in Paris in 1871, in the catalogue of which the word was often used; a picture being called Impression de mon pot-à-feu, or Impression d’un chat qui se promène, &c. An influential critic summed up these impressions, and dubbed the exhibition “Salon des Impressionistes” (Muther, Modern Painting, 1896, ii. 718). It is a mistake however to suppose that the style of painting denoted by this term is an invention of the day, for, in so far as it is practised seriously and with adequate artistic powers, it is essentially the same style as that of some of the greatest 17th-century masters, such as Rembrandt and Velazquez. Modern investigation into the reasons of things has provided the system with a scientific basis and justification, and we can see that it really corresponds with the experimentally determined facts of human vision. The act of “seeing” may mean one or two different things. We may (1) allow our glance to travel leisurely over the field of vision, viewing the objects one by one, and forming a clear picture to ourselves of each in turn; or (2) we may try to take in the whole field of vision at a glance, ignoring the special objects and trying to frame before ourselves a sort of summary representation of the whole; or again, (3) we may choose a single point in the field of vision, and focus on that our attention, allowing the surrounding objects to group themselves in an indistinct general mass. We can look at nature in any one of these three ways; each is as legitimate as the others; but since in most ordinary cases we look at things in order to gain information about them, our vision is usually of the first or
