660 MODERN PAINTING 



lanterns, the yellow sickle of the moon, twinkling stars, every- 

 thing was represented, and nowhere a false note; everything held 

 together by that wonderful harmony which had formerly been 

 attempted by a false tuning to brown. Thus did Velasquez and the 

 Japanese contribute to the origin of modern impressionism. 



Freedom from the great dead have been thus won, an independent 

 representation of entirely new impressions became the aim of painters. 

 Especially did they try to solve all the problems of life which had 

 formerly been so timidly avoided. After they had been so long 

 painting in brown, they found the wonders of plein air so attractive 

 that for several years only scenes in the open air were painted. 

 Rays of sunlight which flutter blinkingly through the treetops, 

 great green meadows bathed in sunlight, the glimmer of glowing 

 air, the play of a spot of light on the water and on yellow sand - 

 such were the most popular subjects. After they had learned to 

 paint sunlight, other problems received their turn. They attempted 

 to depict the foggy freshness of morning and the sultry vapor of the 

 storm, the mysterious night scenes and gray twilight. Upon open 

 air pictures followed others representing the movements of light 

 indoors with a delicacy previously not thought of. Lastly came the 

 wonders of artificial light, those phenomena which the last quarter 

 of the nineteenth century, with its unheard-of improvements in the 

 entire lighting system, has brought about. It may, indeed, be said 

 that never before have light-effects of such subtilty been recorded 

 in pictures. 



And to-day? Well, every art suffers from the defects of its qualities. 

 The impressionists had discovered air: for it they neglected line, 

 since in atmosphere the outline disappears. They had discovered 

 light: for it they had, in a certain sense, neglected color, since color 

 is disintegrated by light, and the colored surface is dissolved into 

 a conglomeration of differently colored luminous points. The impres- 

 sionist delighted also in the most subtle nuances of tones dissolved in 

 light; but in eliminating from their works all pregnant lines and all 

 pronounced colors, they destroyed, in many respects, the decorative 

 effect of their pictures, which, from a distance, often had the effect 

 of indistinct violet and yellow chaos. And so towards the end of the 

 'entury, another new problem appeared, how to progress from the 

 purely artistic to the decorative. 



.Modern painting had concerned itself very little with this problem. 

 In reviewing the products of classical art. it will always be found 

 that the old masters carefully weighed the relations of the picture 

 to the space it was destined to occupy. The mosaics of Ravenna and 

 the frescoes of Giotto were intended to fill the whole church with 

 solemn harmonies and to be effective from every point of view, even 

 from the greatest distance. Therefore, purely decorative artists like 



