EFFECTS OF FAULTY VISION IN PAINTING. 181 



and so mixed together that through them the color and transparency of 

 the water were most exquisitely rendered. 



Upon the portrait-painter astigmatism had a very different influ- 

 ence. He was held in high esteem in Paris, on account of his excel- 

 lent grasp of character and intellectual individuality. His admirers 

 considered even the material resemblance of his portraits as perfect ; 

 most people, however, thought he had intentionally neglected the 

 material likeness by rendering in an indistinct and vague manner the 

 details of the features and the forms. A careful analysis of the picture 

 shows that this indistinctness was not at all intentional, but simply the 

 consequence of astigmatism. Within the last few years, the portraits 

 of this painter have become considerably worse, because the former in- 

 distinctness has grown into positively false proportions. The neck 

 and oval of the face appear in all his portraits considerably elongated, 

 and all details are in the same manner distorted. What is the cause 



Fig. 4. 



Tig 



of this ? Has the degree of his astigmatism increased ? No ; this 

 does not often happen : but the effect of astigmatism has doubled, and 

 this has happened in the following manner : An eye which is normal 

 as regards the vision of vertical lines, but short-sighted for horizontal 

 lines, sees the objects elongated in a vertical direction. When the 

 time of life arrives that the normal eye becomes far-sighted, but not 

 yet the short-sighted eye, this astigmatic eye will at short distance see 

 the vertical lines indistinctly, but horizontal lines still distinctly ; and, 

 therefore, near objects will be elongated in an horizontal direction. 

 The portrait-painter, in whom a slight degree of astigmatism manifested 

 itself at first only by the indistinctness of the horizontal lines, has now 

 become far-sighted for vertical lines, and therefore sees a distant 

 person elongated in a vertical direction ; his picture, on the contrary, 

 being at a short distance, is seen by him enlai-ged in an horizontal 

 direction, and is thus painted still more elongated than the subject is 



