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Let premiums be ottered for the best portraits, — for the best scenes pho- 

 tographed from nature, and from the best specimens of colored photographs. 

 By this means, it appears to your committee, the cause of art would be 

 advanced, and the walls of the society's hall adorned at each exhibition. 



We deem the premiums now offered for work in wax, hair, feathers, 

 cones, and the like, generous and fully equal to any merit that the manu- 

 facture of such articles can possibly imply, Our reasons for these opinions 

 will appear below. 



In offering premiums for paintings and works of art, this society is doing 

 a good thing and advancing the great cause of the elevation of society, 

 and the education of public taste. These premiums must, however, be of- 

 fered and awarded with good judgment in order to accomplish the most in 

 this direction. 



Taste is that power of the mind by which we discern and judge of the 

 beautiful in nature and art. Its nature is two-fold, for, while it discrimi- 

 nates between beauty and deformity, it also is a source of pleasure and of 

 pain. It is the result both of natural sensibilities and of culture. While 

 it may be improved by culture, there is no arbitrary set of rules by which 

 it may be measured . In some degree it must always differ in different per- 

 sons, and yet there is a great variety of questions in aesthetics upon which 

 mankind generally are agreed, and from this variety certain general prin- 

 ciples may be deduced by which we may judge of our own decisions. That 

 this is so, we can see by the light of history. Thus, the Venus that the 

 Greek artist Praxitiles evoked from the marble five hundred years before 

 Christ was born, pleased the cultivated taste of the great Pericles no more 

 than it would to-day please the most critical taste of the nineteenth century. 

 The Venus of the Roman capitol has been a model for two thousand years, 

 and is no less a model now than it was when first the artist's skilled hand 

 made it the embodiment of the idea in his brain. The mosaic doves which 

 charmed the elder Pliny, nineteen centuries ago, are still the delight of 

 visitors to the Capitoline museum at Rome. 



In like manner the frescoes of Michael Angelo, and the paintings of 

 Raphael Sanzio agree with the taste of cultivated artists now, as well as 

 they did when they were fresh, four hundred years ago. 



The highest style of painting is found in the representation of the " hu- 

 man form divine," generally as the exponent of a great idea. Then follow 

 historical painting, landscape painting, portrait painting, and the painting 

 of animals. Last of all is genre painting, or the representation of familiar 

 scenes, interiors, etc., which affords little scope for either the imagination 

 or the inventive faculties. 



Paintings must exhibit shape, size, light and shadow, color and texture, 

 and are to be examined in all these respects. Shakespeare tells us that 

 " Truth needs no color, beauty no pencil," but if he had examined some 

 of the mountains your committee examined, he would confess himself mis- 

 taken. Those mountains needed a good deal more color to make them ex- 

 hibit a picture anything like truth. 



It will be acknowledged that the artist's labor demands faculties which 



