PROBLEMS OF STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING 659 



were only candles and oil lamps; to-day we have gas and electricity. 

 It is magical to see the gas-lamps throwing their flickering rays 

 through bluish twilight; to observe the light of electricity flood a 

 salon and mingle with the soft rays of a lamp. From all these wonders 

 of light of the new age, painters had heretofore kept fearfully at a 

 distance. They labored in the regular transom light of their studios, 

 and even softened this by means of curtains and draperies, in order 

 that it might most nearly approach the conditions known to the old 

 masters. 



The succeeding generation of painting, therefore, saw itself con- 

 fronted by three great problems. Whereas formerly modern men 

 had received a pose studied from old painters and ancient statues, 

 the problem now was to seize upon the movements of actual life. 

 Whereas formerly the works had been composed in accordance with 

 a rigid scheme, it was now proposed to present real life in a picture, 

 without doing violence to it or forcing it into the narrow prison of 

 traditional rules. Where formerly the dark color-schemes of the old 

 masters had been projected upon subjects of modern life, it was now 

 proposed to substitute for this "brown sauce" the fresh brightness 

 of nature, and to record all the wonders of artificial light which the 

 age of electricity and gas had produced. 



From two sides the painters were strengthened in this tendency. 

 In the first place, an event of great consequence occurred in the 

 discovery of Velasquez, on the occasion of an exhibition of his work 

 in private possession held at Paris in honor of the two hundredth 

 anniversary of his death. While artists had until now been only 

 familiar with the dark masters, they here made the acquaintance 

 of a light one. For the tone of his pictures is not a brown, but a cool 

 pearl gray. An old master, therefore, had already painted nature as 

 they wore now beginning to see her, and it is always important for 

 new truths to find classical verification. Of no less importance was 

 the influence of the art of Japan upon the course of the development 

 of European painting. At the beginning of the sixties there had 

 been a heavy importation into Europe of colored prints, the study of 

 which acted like a revelation. Here, too, everything that painters 

 sought was expressed in classical perfection. They marveled at the 

 spirited and lively arrangement of leaves, in which all architectonic 

 balance was lacking, but which, just because of this asymmetry, had 

 an effect as realistic as if nature itself had improvised them. They 

 were impressed by the surety with which the Japanese seized upon 

 the most rapid motion; things which the European had learned to see 

 only by means of instantaneous photographs were here presented 

 with boldest directness. Finally, they marveled at the color-effects. 

 What fresh brightness, and at the same time what beauty of tone. 

 was possessed by these magical prints; red and green trees, glowing 



