MODERN PROBLEMS IN PAINTING 667 



A painting is the whole man, with his infinite susceptibilities to the 

 thoughts of other men and nature around him. It is his essay on the 

 world, whether it be a protest or an acquiescence. Delacroix has been 

 considered the acme of modern romanticism. But do we not see in 

 him the all-roundness of a great artistic mind? He is an artist. 

 He is a Delacroix. 



Again, people are wont to claim that realism is the insignia of 

 modern painting. There is no realism in art in the strict sense of the 

 word, for art is a suggestion through nature, not a presentation of 

 nature itself. We may notice that a vast amount of conventionality 

 exists even in the French impressionists, who are said to have given 

 the last word of realism. Their best productions command respect, 

 not on account of their power of painting sunlight, but in the value 

 of the new poetry they are enabled to express through their out- 

 door technique. The idea of division of color was extant long before 

 the modern impressionism am I correctly informed? already 

 found in Titian. 



Realism could not be the special characteristic of modern painting. 

 What painting of all times and all nations has not evinced the 

 desire for being true to nature? The relation of the artist to nature 

 has been defined ever since art was born. The climate of the land 

 in which he worked, the amount of light, the landscape, the occupa- 

 tions of men, his hereditary memories, the moral and the scientific 

 ideas of the age, which were intended to give him confidence in the 

 universe, have determined the character of his representation. His 

 instinct was always to record what he saw or imagined that he saw 

 around him. We must remember that what appears symbolic to 

 us in the archaic forms of painting was considered highly represent- 

 ative in their own age. The earliest annals of painting both in the 

 East and the West reflect the admiration for realism. We have 

 stories which I think you also have of the wondrous depiction of 

 fruits which the birds came to peck, of horses so true to life that 

 they neighed at night and often ran away from the walls. 



Although the development of painting in different countries 

 has created different methods of approaching nature, the original 

 relation to it has never been broken. For nature is a part of art as 

 the body is a part of the soul. A Sung writer has called attention 

 to the interrelation when he remarked that one admires a landscape 

 for being like a picture and a picture because it is like a real land- 

 scape. Art is no less an interpretation of nature than nature is a 

 commentary on art. The types of physical beauty in man or woman 

 which have been the source of inspiration to great masters are in 

 their turn determined by the ideal which they set for the succeeding 

 generations. The waves have become Korin to us as .shadows have 

 grown to be Rembrandt to vou. 



