658 MODERN PAINTING 



phase of its development. Artists began now to examine, technically 

 and aesthetically, the works of classic painters, and sought to paint 

 pictures which, in technical excellence, should not be inferior to 

 theirs. This originated a systematic study of the colors used by the 

 old masters. 



These painters, also, may be classified in accordance with the 

 models they chose. There were some who preferred the rugged and 

 angular masters of the quattrocento; others who endeavored to 

 acquire the light and shade of the Venetians of the sixteenth century; 

 others, again, who became absorbed in the works of the little masters 

 of Holland during the seventeenth century; and, finally, others 

 who delighted in the bold brush-work and the dark tones of the 

 Neapolitans of the baroque period. The result of these studies was 

 an exceedingly important one. A whole generation of painters in all 

 countries of Europe had made it a lifework to discover the secret 

 of color possessed by the old masters; and they consequently com- 

 manded in virtuoso fashion all the technical means of the past. All 

 of their works are pleasing on account of their cultivated, distin- 

 guished beauty, reminding us of the old masters. 



But was the goal actually reached when the power was gained to 

 imitate the old masters to the extent of actual illusion? Had these old 

 masters themselves been in their turn imitators, or is not the wealth 

 of varied beauty created in former centuries to be explained rather 

 by the circumstance that every artist dared to trust his own eye and 

 his own feelings? This independence had not yet been attained by 

 the moderns. There existed a contradiction between the modern 

 subjects which they represented and the style of the old masters 

 in which they represented them. Examining their paintings, we may 

 well ask whether the movements of modern man are actually repre- 

 sented, or whether they are not a slavish repetition of the positions 

 and gestures which are found in the old masters. Does the arrange- 

 ment actually express the surging activity of modern life, or is not 

 everything forced into a scheme of composition prescribed long 

 ago? The color deserves a special attention. The old masters observed 

 carefully the conditions of lights under which they labored. They 

 painted their pictures in studios into which the light penetrated 

 through small bull's-eye panes, and their paintings were destined 

 panly for gloomy chapels in great churches, partly for narrow rooms 

 paneled in brown wood, into which the light of heaven fell softly 

 through stained glasses. 



In the nineteenth century life has become brighter. Through large 

 panes of glass the light streams full into our rooms. Furthermore, 

 the great physical achievements of the nineteenth century have 

 brought wonders of light before which an old master would have stood 

 speechless. When they, or even when our grandparents lived, there 



