662 MODERN PAINTING 



chaser was not astonished when a picture, which he had admired at the 

 exhibition, looked like a hole in the wall or like a monotonous dirty 

 brown spot, when seen from a distance in a large room of his home. 

 The change for the better was first seen in the domain of mural 

 painting. Almost contemporaneously in all countries, tendencies 

 appeared, the object of which was, by means of the clear arrangement 

 of the complexes of color and line, to restore the mural picture to 

 its place as a decorative element. But the panel picture was also 

 reminded of its decorative purpose. Our rooms are not only brighter 

 but more spacious than were the small and dimly lighted Dutch 

 rooms; and it was only a sign of a lack of originality in modern 

 painters, notwithstanding the changed conditions of light and space, 

 to hold fast to the manner of the old masters. Impressionism first 

 brought the colors into harmony with the brighter light-effects of our 

 rooms, and neo-impressionism supplemented this by paying the 

 greatest possible attention to distant effects. It is, indeed, astonish- 

 ing how impressive these dotted paintings are. The little dots, at 

 close view a gaudy chaos, when seen from a distance shape them- 

 selves into such plastic forms, that neo-impressionistic paintings 

 overlook the widest rooms. Pointillism (in which the surface of the 

 picture is not smooth, but composed of little elevations and depres- 

 sions) contributes further to this effect; for, by reason of their 

 rough surface, the paintings, like the old mosaics, are effective from 

 every point of view. Numerous masters have sought to reach the 

 same goal of monumental decorative effect by other means, such as 

 the simplification of form by the effect of harmonious spots of color, 

 and by the subordination of color to decorative purposes. 



But it cannot be denied that this latest art, in so far as it is good, 

 still stands in intimate connection with impressionism. After im- 

 pressionism had taught painters how to catch the finest nuances of 

 motion and expression, an entirely new language of line was the 

 result of their reversion to the principle of style, and of the reduction 

 of the thousand details which they had learned to see anew to their 

 simple and significant original forms. In observing with scientific 

 accuracy the effect of light on color, impressionism also discovered a 

 wealth of new shades of color. We now distinguish a hundred values 

 where formerly we only saw one. Expressions like red, green, and 

 brown have become meaningless for the manifold infinitely differ- 

 entiated values of color. Consequently, when artists proceeded 

 from the realistic rendering of their impressions of nature to free 

 symphonic composition in the colors which impressionism had 

 discovered, there arose wealth, harmony, and softness of color, not 

 hitherto achieved. Such, in its principal stages, is the course which 

 painting has traversed from the beginning of the nineteenth to the 

 dawn of the twentieth centurv. 



