of grumbling at their tools on the part of these workmen in general?

Now, let us consider what is meant by the term 'Mere imitation of Nature.' The term is mostly used disparagingly, and with considerable accent on the 'mere.' To hear the word pronounced with the finest of scorn, get them pronounced by some new Symbolist if possible.

We will inquire into the great unsoundness of this phrase as commonly used.

Let us take a scene of which the artist is to give us a mere imitation. The time is, say, 11 o'clock on a summer morning. The subject is one of a brightly lit sky, but full of cloud forms and chances for design. The distance is some interesting and well-shaped hills-then sea, and nearer, seashore-the foreground consists of sand, and closer up rough stone and grass, finishing with well-shaped trees to the left in outdoor shadow. If the artist is a skilled one, and has fine. sensibility, he will give nice colour in the sky, full of gradations, but bright and luminous. The hills he will also make full of gradations and good in colour and nicely related to the sky he has painted. The sea will have sparkle, and have various strata of beautiful blues, greens, violet, and silver. The sand will be warm fluctuations of pinkish yellow with filmy surfaces of grey from light of the sky. The foreground will be dark green with passages here and there of deep violet, making a fine foil for the sunny distance, etc. All these things will be there, and the picture will be pleasing and perhaps saleable. But it will not have Nature's colour, or Nature's gradations, or Nature's absolute relations, or subtle adjustments. The analysis, if any, will be uncertain, fumbling, and wrong. The execution will be quite beside the mark, for it will not contain an adequate statement of the elements that go to build up the illusion of Nature herself. This will all be proved by one infallible test, viz. the lack of absolute illusion, or, in other words, mere imitation.' Imitation of Nature's positive and immediate relations alone can give back the wonder and beauty of the scene itself. Any departure from Nature's standards may safely be put down to mere inability to deal with them, and the necessity to be content in consequence with the introduction of pictorial standards. It would be right for some objector-in-chief to come in here with a remark about seeing Nature with two eyes, etc. And the answer is-' Well, paint Nature as full and round and true as when seen with one eye, and that will do.'

'A mere imitation' of the subtleties of colours in relation to each other, of the marvellous gradations inside of those, of the perfect adjustment and ordered harmony within the delicate yet

strong accents that express forms has never yet been given. They have not yet properly been attempted. So the phrase 'Mere imitation' has no meaning. Now, here comes in the question of Nature painting and personality. How far should a painter go in the rendering of natural appearances? Supposing he had the power accurately to analyse his visual impressions, and the organising brain of a Napoleon, and a technique of the very highest order, so that he could realise the subtleties and beauties of Nature, and so command the 'look' of Naturehow far should he actually go in this rendering of natural appearances? Is there any point where he should stop, and if so, where, and why?

These questions are suggested by the reading of many books on Art, and hearing the discussions of many artists, and also by the advent of the Post-Impressionists, etc. It is always assumed, firstly, that Nature is such a very vague and uncertain factor, and is seen so very differently by us all, that it doesn't matter how we render her, so long as it results in Art. And, secondly, that the personality of the artist is the main thing to be expressed; that is, though we must respect Nature in all other ways, in this connexion at least we need not treat her very seriously.

These two assumptions probably account for the extraordinary divergencies in the rendering of the same subject by the various artists, divergencies that go far beyond all possible differences in the sight of the individual artists. That the sight is good, and the use of it quite sound, can mostly be proved by the fact that the picture they will paint (with Nature before them) will remind one of some other artist's work which they have seen-and seen with very great accuracy.

So it comes to this, an artist can effectively echo another man's art, but so far cannot analyse and reproduce with vividness and truth the 'look' of living reality.

To the above statement as to the failure of artists to render the actual appearance of life, one ought in fairness to acknowledge a notable exception in the case of a well-known artist. If an average Sargent portrait were placed among a group of portraits by other great men, no doubt all sorts of merits would justly be attributed to the others; but the Sargent would stand out and separate itself in quite an extraordinary way. His portrait would be found by this test to possess a great and startling look of life. So much so that it might have the effect of turning the others into mere ghosts or shadows of people. This fact about Sargent has been felt for a long time, but its cause or its extent has not been fully defined. To great accomplishment in the whole art of painting as such he has added something else. Through a peculiar faculty of his own he has been able to educate himself very

largely in the 'science of appearances,' as Herbert Spencer calls it, and added this to the necessary accomplishments of a great painter. It is a thing thrown in, something over and above, and it separates him widely from virtually all other painters. The element of life in Art is not wanted by painters. Heavens ! What a good thing for them that it is not demanded! They say in effect We don't want life; what we want is style, quality of paint, beauty of drawing, fine design, etc.' It is a strange contradiction to strive to give the counterfeit presentment of living beings, and leave out the characteristic thing about them-i.e. the intense sensation of life. In saying they do not want people to look like Nature to this extent, they always imply that they could make them do so if they wanted to, and no doubt they honestly think it is so. This is mere self-delusion, and argues a misunderstanding of the difficulty (almost amounting to impossibility) of attaining such a thing.

Berkeley, Reid, Helmholtz, Bain, and others who have given profound study to the sensation of sight, help us to the understanding of the difficulty of this particular problem. They show that from the long-standing ingrained habit of the race we treat the optical sensations we experience as of no importance to us as such. Their only use is in the deductions we make from them. Reid says The visible appearances of objects are intended by Nature only as signs or indications. The mind passes instantly to the things signified without making the least reflection upon the sign, or even perceiving that there is such a thing.' Helmholtz, backed by many experiments and proofs, states the matter thus: We only attend with any ease and exactness to our sensations in so far as they can be utilised for our knowledge of outward things; and we are accustomed to neglect all these portions of them which have no significance as regards the external world.' And again: It is a universal law of the perceptions obtained through the senses that we pay only so much attention to the sensations actually experienced as is sufficient for us to recognise external objects. In this respect we are one-sided and inconsiderate partisans of practical utility.' Max Nordau, the unloved of artists and other geniuses, makes some shrewd remarks on these facts of perception; for instance: All of us have this impulse to generalise the individual phenomena apprehended by us, to associate them with others to which they are not united. by any connexion that is perceptible to the senses, and to add on to them features which have no place in them. This habit of thought, a result of our organic imperfection, is the source of all our errors. If we allowed phenomena to produce their effects upon our senses without putting obstacles in their way in the nature of material images of the recollection of other

phenomena, that had previously occurred, and that had more or less superficial likeness to them, we might indeed be ignorant, but would not make mistakes; we might overlook facts or imperfectly perceive them, but would not interpret them untruly; we would have in our consciousness, it may be, a small number of conceptions, but none that were incorrect; for this mistake never arises from the perception, but from the interpretation, and the latter is not what lies in the phenomenon, but what we add to it from the means at our command, not what the senses communicate to the brain, but what the brain makes the senses believe. We stick, however, to our defective habit of thought, for it gives us an agreeable feeling of mental wealth, in that it fills our consciousness with a crowd of conceptions that do not allow it to be divided by any feature innate in them, whether they are correct or incorrect, schemes or realities.' In fact we only see what we have already seen, and expect to see; so to tell in paint the unbiassed truth about any phenomenon placed before an artist is not easy. He is too heavily handicapped. However, the science of perspective has been embodied in our Art practice-the science of anatomy and science of luminous colour has been added, and one hoped the science of appearances (the line on which Sargent has been going) would show signs of further development. In using the phrase 'science of appearances' some further explanation may be necessary—especially in this particular connexion. We have already ventured on the statement, No light, no Nature as far as the painter is concerned.' The thing to be examined, therefore, is the phenomenon of light. Now, to judge a phenomenon as it really is, and to be certain that we apprehend only what, as a matter of fact, is happening before our senses, we would have to face it with perfect impartiality and without acknowledging any previous experience of it. We would have to forget everything made familiar to us by previous phenomena, and keep from adding to it any features not actually comprised within it. In short, in direct vision we would have to suppress all previously acquired memories of sight. The character of our brain and thinking apparatus makes this nearly impossible. Still it is the only process by which we can attain truth to Nature's appearance ('mere imitation').

A spirited attack was made on the problem by both Manet and Monet, and the latter formulated a method of obtaining vivid luminous sensations, which has been adopted by many, and has degenerated into a mannerism. Monet's analysis nevertheless resulted in many beautiful and wonderfully true representations of the great luminous phenomenon we call the world. remained for Sargent, however, to bring the problem indoors.

It

and into portraiture, with the result that he has given, to a wonderful degree, the living look, which is the most striking characteristic of his sitters!

To like or dislike the achievement is beside the mark, and one is reminded of the nigger's song, 'There's ninety-nine verses to this song-you won't like them-but you've got to have 'em.' Many may not be able to follow this connexion between Monet and Sargent, the illumination is so vividly different in pitch, and Sargent's technique is quite on classic lines, while Monet's is the reverse. Still the problem of both is the same in each case. They have gone to the truth of the whole matter and tried to reach (through colour) the true illumination on which the illusion of Nature herself depends. We had thought that Art would show still further research into this mighty problem, but, alas! there are no followers of Sargent, and there cannot be as long as artists keep staring at his work with the conviction that they will find-as heretofore-some art trick, or 'stunt,' or 'fake' (or whatever the right word may be) to which they can. help themselves. The secret lies not in the work, but in the problem which has been his intense preoccupation.

But painting has gone off in a different direction-and in a considerable hurry too. The movement in general goes, in England, by the name of Post-Impressionism, and it is thriving greatly. Many fine things have been said—not unjustly-about some of those who practise it. But already there are far too many practising it in one form or another. They are now numbered by the thousands. The progress-in the way of numbers-is astonishing; and all within a year. And not less astonishing is the fact that artists, who a year ago were hopelessly commonplace and could achieve nothing, are now bright and shining lights. They were all great men in disguise, and we failed to recognise them. Of course that is, doubtless, the explanation.

As for the symbolism on which the whole movement is founded, it should not be forgotten that every object in Nature is a symbol, and no kind of parody of it can make it more of a symbol than it is, no matter how clever or funny the parody may be. On the other hand, the mysterious face of common things' still remains mysterious.' However closely we follow its outward appearance, it still continues to embody an immortal necessity. The world is a temple whose walls are covered with emblems, pictures, and commandments of the Deity.' But the PostImpressionist fears that we may tire of these emblems unless he touch them up a bit for us. He is doubtless of use-to the tired ones.

Since writing the last few lines the Futurists have arrivedso exit the Symbolists, Cubists, and Post-Impressionists in