REALISM AND IDEALISM 113 



photographs, since in each case the result is a reproduction of 

 form under certain conditions of light and shade without 

 colour. Now, given the same advantage of illumination, 

 chemicals, exposure, and so forth, twenty photographic 

 cameras of equal dimensions and equal excellence will produce 

 almost identical representations of a single model. But set 

 twenty artists of equal skill in draughtsmanship to make 

 studies from one model, then, though the imitation may in 

 each case be equally faithful, there will be a different 

 intellectual quality, a different spiritual touch, a different 

 appeal to sympathy, a different order of suggestion in each of 

 the twenty drawings. In other words, each of the twenty 

 drawings represents the thing perceived and conceived 

 differently by each of the twenty draughtsmen. Some 

 specific ideality has formed an unavoidable feature of each 

 artist's work, while all have aimed, in like manner, at merely 

 reproducing the object before them. 



This is perhaps the simplest way of presenting the truth 

 that Realism and Idealism are as inseparable as body and 

 soul in every product of the figurative arts. In art it is not 

 a machine but a mind which imitates. Nay, even the hand 

 which draws is itself no mechanical instrument, but part of 

 a living organism, penetrated with intellectual vitality, instinct 

 with ideas. No draughtsman can rival the camera in bare 

 accuracy; but every draughtsman is bound to do what the 

 camera cannot do, by introducing a subjective quality into 

 the reproduction. 



It will be convenient to put this point in a slightly different 

 way. When we analyse what goes to the production of a 

 work of art, we find, upon the one hand, an act of mental 

 intuition into the object which has to be represented, whereby 

 the nature of that object is imaginatively grasped. Upon the 

 other hand, we find that certain materials and processes have 

 been employed with more or less technical dexterity, as 

 marble, clay, wood, metal, colour upon canvas, colour upon 

 lime-surface, copper-plate bitten by burin and acid, and the 

 like. These materials and processes, forming the technical 



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