EFFECTS OF FAULTY VISION IN PAINTING. 185 



We are almost always conscious of indistinct vision, be it in con- 

 sequence of incorrect accommodation or insufficient power of sight, 

 especially if it is not congenital, but has gradually appeared. But it 

 is extremely difficult and in many cases impossible to convince those 

 of their defect who suffer from incorrect vision as to form and color. 

 They never become conscious of it themselves, even if it is not con- 

 genital, and the most enlightened and intelligent among them remain 

 incredulous, or become even angry and offended, when told of it. In- 

 correct perception of form may, however, easily be demonstrated. If 

 in consequence of astigmatism a square appears oblong to any one, 

 he can measure the sides with a compass ; or, what is more simple 

 still, he can turn it so that the horizontal lines are changed into 

 vertical ones, and vice versa, and his own sight will convince him 

 of his error. It is more difficult to demonstrate whether a per- 

 son sees colors correctly or not. Such glaring mistakes as those 

 produced by color-blindness can be easily recognized, but faults 

 produced by a diminished sensation of small differences in the shades 

 of color can only be recognized as such by the fact that the majority 

 of persons with normal vision declare them to be faults. Such, for 

 instance, are deviations produced by an incorrect perception of pig- 

 ments, which in painting makes itself felt by a constantly-recurring 

 plus or minus of a single color in the whole picture. It may also show 

 itself by small faults in the rendering of every color. In discussing 

 this subject with artists, they at once declare these anomalies to repre- 

 sent a school, a taste, a manner, which may be arbitrarily changed. 

 They most unwillingly concede that peculiarities of sight have any 

 thing to do with it. It seems to me sometimes as if they considered 

 it in a certain measure a degradation of their art that it should be 

 influenced by an organ of sense, and not depend entirely upon free 

 choice, intelligence, imagination, and talent. 



Thus, to return to the point from which we started : if a painter 

 whose lens becomes yellower begins to paint in a bluer tone, it is said 

 that he has changed his style. The painter himself vehemently pro- 

 tests against this opinion ; he thinks that he still paints in his old 

 style, and that he has only improved the tone of his color. His eai'lier 

 works appear to him too brown. To convince him of his error, it 

 would be necessary to remove his lens suddenly. Then every thing 

 would appear to him too blue, and his paintings far too blue. This is 

 no hypothesis, but a fact. Patients on whom I have operated for 

 cataract, very often spontaneously declared, immediately after the 

 operation, that they saw every thing blue ; in these cases I invariably 

 found their crystalline lens to be of an intense yellow color. In 

 pictures painted after the artists were considerably over sixty, the 

 effect of the yellow lens can often be studied. To me their pictures 

 have so characteristic a tone of color, tnat I could easily point them 

 out while passing through a picture-gallery. As a striking example, 



