THE MODEL 131 



truth. If the aim of art be to render a literal image of the 

 object, then the art of the camera in this competition bears 

 away the palm. 



Nevertheless there is equally no doubt that Flandrin's 

 study is a painted poem, while the photograph of the nude 

 model is only what one may see any morning if one gets a 

 well-made youth to strip and pose. 



What then gives Flandrin's picture its value as an artistic 

 product, as a painted poem ? It tells no story, has no obvious 

 intention ; the painter clearly meant it to be as perfect a 

 transcript from the nude, as near to the vraie verite of nature, 

 as he could make it. The answer is that, although he may 

 not have sought to idealise, although he did not seek to 

 express a definite thought, his picture is penetrated with 

 spiritual quality. In passing through the artist's mind, this 

 form of a mere model has been transfigured. While it has 

 lost something of the vivacity and salient truth of nature, it 

 has acquired permanence, dignity, repose, elevation. It has 

 become 'a thing of beauty, a joy for ever,' in a sense in 

 which no living person, however far more attractive, more 

 interesting, more multiformly charming, can be described by 

 these terms. 



Ill 



Art will never match the infinite variety and subtlety 

 of nature ; no drawing or painting will equal the primary 

 beauties of the living model. We cannot paint a tree as 

 lovely as the tree upon the field in sunlight is. We cannot 

 carve a naked man as wonderful as the youth stripped there 

 upon the river's bank before his plunge into the water. 

 Therefore the thorough-going Realist ought frankly to 

 abandon figurative art, and to content his soul with the 

 exhibition and contemplation of actual nature. This, how- 

 ever, is not the conclusion to which our argument leads ; 

 for after we have admitted the relative inferiority of art to 

 nature, we know that art has qualities, all of them derived 

 from the intellectual, selective, imaginative faculties of man, 

 which more than justify its existence. 



K2 



