Photography : Its Possibilities in the Art-Field. 231 



great landscape painters, the founders of the French modern 

 school, lived in and about Paris, Barbezon, Fontainebleau, 

 Ville d' Avray. They all painted the same localities; they all 

 lived under the same influences ; they often met ; some were 

 intimate friends; yet their works in color, composition, treat- 

 ment, or subject, in no manner or form at all resemble each 

 other. Rousseau painted the intellectual. Daubigny loved 

 the simple, the river Seine and her charming banks. Diaz, 

 the forest. Corot, the poetic, the mysterious. Dupre, the 

 virility of sunlight in color and form. These men of genius 

 saw the same nature, but each selected for illustration from 

 her unlimited sources the subjects most congenial to his 

 mind, and gave them expression through the medium of his 

 temperament. " Painting," said Fromentin, " Is the art of 

 expressing the invisible through the visible." The full mean- 

 ing of this sentence will be made apparent to all, by calling 

 attention to a few well-known works. Let us look at Mun- 

 kacsy's "Christ Before Pilate." (The limited time will not 

 permit my taking up more than one figure out of this splendid 

 group.) I will select for my purpose, not the founder of our 

 Christian faith — that exquisite type of Hebrew mold — that 

 noble, intellectual face ; nor shall I choose the severe and 

 learned judge. These tell the " invisible " too plainly to claim 

 my attention. I will take the warrior — "The visible," a full- 

 length standing figure in the foreground. In his hand a 

 spear; his back to the beholder; his looks toward the 

 gathered crowd. He who reads the language of art sees in 

 that one soldier, one spear, order, law, authority, the military 

 power of Rome. As a second illustration, let us see what 

 Jean Francois Millet has so beautifully told in his "Angelus." 

 " The visible," a field of labor; in the foreground two peas- 

 ants, a few implements of toil ; in the distance a church spire ; 

 over all a glorious sky, in colors of idealistic beauty. "The 

 invisible," Faith, the Christian's religion, hope of a better life 

 to come, the reward for sufferings on earth, immortality. 

 This painting, which, at the Secretan sale in Paris, a few years 

 ago, brought over one hundred thousand dollars, the highest 

 price ever paid for a modern work of similar size, represents 

 a very marked period of evolution in art. This same subject, 

 from the early dawn of painting, has been treated too often 



