428 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1951 



But at the midcentury the situation changed. The scientists came 

 out of the laboratory and took to their writing desks. The period 

 from 1850 to 1870 saw few new discoveries but witnessed the develop- 

 ment and clarification of general laws and principles drawn from the 

 data accumulated during the preceding 50 years. The principles of 

 the conservation of matter, the law of the dissipation of energy, Dal- 

 ton's atomic theory, the theory of evolution, all achieved acceptance 

 and popularization as scientific books poured from the presses. These 

 new and revolutionary concepts seized the imagination of the intel- 

 lectuals, and the new gospel of science spread thoughout Europe, 

 breaking down the old intellectual isolation of the nations. 



The new spirit manifested itself immediately in the form of "real- 

 ism." In literature, the scientific method of documentation and ac- 

 cumulation of evidence found its reflection in the works of Zola and 

 the Goncourts and in such books as Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" 

 (1856). Much the same dispassionate statement of contemporary 

 facts appears in the painting of Courbet, while the sociological inten- 

 tion of these writers is paralleled by the more dramatic works of 

 Daumier. But these artists demonstrate merely the turning point of 

 artistic expression. Their innovations were in subject matter rather 

 than in the structural elements of composition or the manner of laying 

 the paint on the canvas. The impact of scientific developments in 

 these respects first appears in the work of the impressionists. 



One of the main characteristics of impressionism is the laying on 

 of the paint in small, clearly visible blobs, dots, or curlicues through- 

 out the entire surface of the canvas. It is this continuous subdivision 

 of the canvas surface into innumerable tiny dots and particles of 

 paint, more than any other feature, that distinguishes impressionist 

 painting from previous styles and it is this characteristic which most 

 closely concerns us. 



One of the few novel scientific theories that had been voiced during 

 the first half of the nineteenth century was the theory that all forms 

 of matter — gaseous, liquid, or solid — are composed of innumerable 

 tiny particles of indestructible, solid, concrete matter. In gases, these 

 particles were conceived as loosely associated, much like a swarm of 

 bees, capable of independent movement, collision, and flight; in liquids 

 they were more closely united, acting much in the manner of grain 

 pouring down a chute ; in solids they were linked together in the man- 

 ner of a crowd of people holding hands, capable of jostling about to 

 some degree but incapable of seriously altering their relative positions. 

 Although numerous scientists of differing nationalities contributed 

 to this conception, the Englishman John Dalton is generally ac- 

 knowledged as the father of the theory. In his "New System of Chem- 

 ical Philosophy" (1808) Dalton first advanced his theory, saying: 



