CHAPTER VISUBJECT IN PAINTING

Ithas been intimated, more than once in these lectures, that the artist, deep down in his heart, has no great respect for the public’s taste concerning works of art. He has always arrogated to himself and his fellows the exclusive right of saying what was and what was not art; and he would have us believe that after all art is made only for the appreciation of artists. Such a feeling is comforting and comfortable, no doubt. It possibly pervades branches of industry other than the arts. The shoemaker probably feels that he knows more about shoes than the people that wear them and the cook more about dinners than the people that eat them; but neither of them would contend that shoes were made only for shoemakers or dinners only for cooks. Nor can the contention of art exclusively for the artist be made good save in the extravagant atmosphere of the art-school. Unless the picture appeals to someone without the studio, unless it is accepted by someone in the outside world, its excuse for being would seem to be very slight. The work may please the worker and he may be as absorbed and happy in his occupation as a childmaking sand houses on the sea-shore; but in neither case is energy put to a profitable purpose. An author writes a book to be read by the public, and an orator speaks to be heard by the public; why should not a painter paint to be seen by the public?

XXVII.—TINTORETTO, Marriage in Cana, S. M. della Sa’ute, Venice.

And the audience that sees has something to say about what the painter shall paint. It creates in large measure the demand which the artist supplies. I am aware that oftentimes the contrary is maintained and it is asserted that the artist sets the pace and directs the public taste. Sometimes he does, but he is influenced more or less by his audience. The demand for work has always come from those who could pay for it, and the patron usually insists upon having his views incorporated in the work. The history of painter and patron in the past rather confirms this. No doubt Michael Angelo had some contempt for the art views of Julius II., but he painted the Sistine ceiling as the Pope requested. And probably Rubens thought his Jesuit patrons in Flanders an ignorant pack of priests, but he painted the themes and subjects they designated. The subject—aye—there’s the rub! For the public will have it and the painters will hate it—that is to say, some of the modern painters have come to hate it apparently for no other reason than that the public likes it. Of recent years there has arisen a cry of “art for art’s sake”—that is to say, art in the form, color, and workmanship, butnot in the thought or subject—and many artists have given their unqualified support to the dogma. In upholding the charm of the decorative they are prone to deny charm to anything and everything else. Form and color, they alone make a picture, and all else is philistine sentiment—the very leather and prunello of art.

It is not to be denied that this contention of the painter is right enough so far as it affirms the importance of the decorative. Form and color do make art, and that too with slight reference to subject-meaning; but we may question the assumption that there is no other form of art, and that the subject and what art may mean to us are matters of no importance. We have already considered the different kinds of painting that are produced by painters who think and paint in different ways. “Art is in the look,” says Whistler; “No, it is in the thought,” says Millet; Vibert in his pictures seems to believe it is the subject that counts; and if Meissonier were alive he would certainly insist upon it that art consists in realizing the model—in painting a boot you could pull off or a spur you could put on. But it must be apparent to you that each one of these men, while exploiting his own preference, is possibly exploiting his own limitation. No doubt each one of them believes there is nothing to be seen beyond where he has travelled.

But there is something too much of “my way is the only way” in these views of painting. Not perhaps too much for the men themselves, because a person usually succeeds better who believes implicitly in himself and is convinced by his own convictions; but too much perhaps for those who have nothing to do with production, who have to do only with the enjoyment of things produced. Individually we may be willing to admit that neither the subject nor the realistic portrayal of nature interests us so much as the look of a picture and what it may express in thought or sentiment; but it would be idle for us to ignore the fact that four-fifths of the people who are looking at pictures are interested only in subject and that perhaps two-thirds of the painters who are painting them are intent only upon doing something realistic. It is possible to influence and persuade these many dwellers in Philistia, if you choose so to regard them, but they cannot be pushed aside contemptuously.

And sometimes the persuasion of the artist is in direct defiance of the rational. The “no-subject” cry of some present-day writers of fiction will perhaps illustrate this. What shall we say, for instance, to the extravagance of those who tell us that in writing nothing which teaches, argues, or expounds is “literature”; that “literature” consists in the writing of something clever about nothing, and that when the thing said becomes of importance the work ceases tobe literary. The inference is, of course, that history and essay step down and out in favor of poetry and fiction; that Richard Le Gallienne’s sensuous cadences and Henry Harland’s delightful ping-pong conversations are “literature”; but not Macaulay’s history and De Quincey’s essays. Are we to believe that there is no art in Bossuet’s oration over the great Condé because it preaches; no art in Taine’s philosophy because it teaches? It is true enough that there is art in the skilful use of the adjective, in the glow of words, and in the slip of sentences; but why is there not art also in the handling of an idea, in the development of a subject, in a point of view? Why is it necessary to let the sense out of everything before it becomes artistic? Practically it is not possible to separate the mental from the mechanical. The mind guides the hand, and both are but manifestations of an individuality. How shall you distinguish Shakespeare the thinker from Shakespeare the dramatic writer? How shall you separate emotional thinking from its sequence, enthusiastic craftsmanship? People are not convinced by the argument for art in the method but not in the mind or the material.

Mr. Whistler, speaking for painting, is scarcely less extravagant than the writers. “As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight, and the subject-matter has nothing to do with theharmony of sound or of color. Art should stand alone and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like.” Thus Mr. Whistler; and again there is a measure of pungent pertinence in the remark. Painting should appeal primarily to “the artistic sense of eye,” but not necessarily to that alone. There is no reason why it should not have a meaning and express a feeling or a sentiment about something besides form and color. Even music appeals to something more than the ear. It suggests a feeling, an association. If it be true that it has no idea or sentiment, why do we grow sad over Siegfried’s Death March, or elated over that last upward burst of song in the dungeon scene from “Faust”? Why do we become emotional or sentimental or romantic over a symphony by Beethoven? If we wish meaningless sound we must take the æolian harp or the hum of the wind through pine needles or the roar of the sea breaking on the beach; and perhaps each of these seems beautiful to us largely because it suggests something like a human moan or wail.

Just so there may be a suggestion or meaning behind the most decorative of pictures. Every picture, if it be coherent at all, illustrates, represents, or expresses some fact, thought, or feeling. However shadowy the trees of the no-subject artist, howevervague and ghost-like the figures of a symphonist in paint, we see and recognize the trees and the figures. The lines, lights, and colors are so placed that they illustrate subjects, namely, trees and figures; they convey to us a meaning, and if they are so indefinite that we cannot distinguish trees from figures, rocks from grass, or water from sky, then the picture is not a picture, but merely a dash of variegated colors. Two dead fish upon a plank and behind them an iron pot—the picture that Vollon has painted for us—has, as a picture, perhaps as little subject about it as the most confirmed modern could desire; yet it is no less a subject. We recognize the pot, the plank, the fish readily enough. Smear the canvas so that we have only streaks of gray and black, and the subject is gone and with it the picture. It is then only a medley of pigment which may be rather interesting as a color-spot, but is no more of a picture than so much color rubbed on the panel of a door.

Mr. Whistler may call one of his small canvases of the open sea a symphony in blue or gray or catalogue it by any other fantastic name he chooses; but the fact remains that his few touches of the brush give us not only the form and color of the sea, but suggest to us the great ocean tossing after storm—rolling moodily under gray skies. The painter intended that such a meaning should be suggested. If he had not defined his sea and sky so that we couldrecognize them his canvas might still be a pretty piece of blue and gray, and it might be a “symphony”; but it would not be a picture. It would not picture anything; it would be merely pigment again.

And even an art-for-art’s-sake devotee might wonder why Mr. Whistler should fight wind-mills about “devotion, pity, love and patriotism” in pictures. Are the altar-pieces of the early Italians the worse for being filled with what people choose to think true “devotion”? Would the pictures by Filippino or Botticelli be the better if the pietistic sentiment were eliminated and a smiling Froufrou took the place of the sad-faced Madonna? Consider for a moment that splendid family group kneeling in the altar-piece of the Pesaro family by Titian, and then ask yourself if the suggestion of devotion here is any more objectionable than the spirit of frivolity or gayety in a scene from the ballet by Degas. Some years ago there was a rather interesting picture by Dagnan-Bouveret in the Salon, called “The Conscripts”—a picture showing a squad of youths marching down the street to the sound of drum-beats, with the tricolor flying over their heads. The sentiment of it was undoubtedly patriotic, and crowds stood about it day by day as long as the exhibition remained open. Would Mr. Whistler condemn it for either its patriotism or its popularity? If so,why not the “Surrender at Breda” by Velasquez? That, too, smacks of military glory, and I doubt not had its crowds of Spaniards staring at it in the past as Dagnan-Bouveret’s picture in the present. And why not put Rembrandt’s “Night Watch,” and Frans Hals’s Shooting Companies at Haarlem in the same pillory? They are full of uniforms, flags, drums and guns, and they are stuffed with patriotism, civic pride and burgher conceit; but, oddly enough, we find no painter-writer abusing them on that account. Why? Because they are not lacking in decorative quality; they are superb as form and color.

So it seems then that Velasquez, Frans Hals, and Rembrandt shall go scot-free for perpetrating what is adjudged little short of a crime in Sir John Millais and George Boughton. Which is it, then, the presence of the devotional and the patriotic or the absence of the decorative that really excites the wrath of the Whistlerians? Possibly what their spokesmen meant to say was that in modern painting there is too much insistence upon the theme, the subject, the story told; that artistic qualities of form and color are ignored, pushed aside, overlooked in favor of the incident set forth; that painting is not a mere vehicle for illustrating poetry, fiction, religion, or history; that it has qualities peculiarly its own, which are entitled to quite asmuch consideration as the thought or theme which may be illustrated. And all of that would be true enough. The decorative phase of art is quite as important as the illustrative, but why are not both important? Why and how do they conflict with one another?

XXVIII.—RAPHAEL, Sistine Madonna. Dresden Gallery.

But, to return to our original contention, expressive painting cannot get on without a thought and a theme. It must represent or illustrate something. And if we should cast out all the pictures that have an expressive meaning we should do away with almost all the art of the past. Certainly all descriptive art would have to go. Historical canvases, we are told, are only “illustrative” anyway, and not art pure and simple. But just where shall the line be drawn between what is historical and what is not historical? A canvas of Napoleon retreating from Russia is illustrative—historical beyond doubt; but how does Meissonier’s portrait of Napoleon riding at the head of his bedraggled columns differ from Mr. Whistler’s picture of a blacksmith at his forge? One is the likeness of a famous general in time of war, the other is the likeness of a common blacksmith in time of peace; but both canvases are biographical, and therefore historical. A picture of the field of Gravelotte or the palace at Versailles might serve as an illustration of the political history of France; but a wheat stack and a row of poplars by Monet, awood-chopper or a gleaner by Millet, why do they not equally well illustrate the social and agricultural history of France? There is really no point where one can stop. Everything that can be recognized at all in a painting is more or less illustrative of history, fact or incident. And there is no reason why modernity should strain at an interesting subject because it happens to be political history, and swallow a stupid one because it happens to be social history. Titian, Rubens, and Velasquez did not do it. Each one of them painted the life and history of his time, not in portraiture alone, but in battle scene and court ceremony. And famous canvases they made of them, too. Can it be thought for a moment that the subjects were detrimental to the artists or their art? Evidently the painters themselves did not think so.

And is the church art of Italy to go, too, because it illustrates the biblical narratives? Without doubt it is the most complete expression of painting we have ever known, the most perfect in decorative charm, the most satisfactory in expressive meaning. What if it did teach the Bible to those who could not read! Did it not also adorn the interior of churches, and fulfil the modern requirements of painting by its beauty of form and color? And if it be true that art consists not in devotion or patriotism, but in drawing the nude figure, what differencedoes it make whether you draw that of Adam lying upon the edge of the world as Michael Angelo, or that of a dead unknown lying upon a hospital slab as Rembrandt? If the female figure be insisted upon as the acme of graceful line and delicate color, why cannot these be shown in a “Susanna at the Bath” as well as in a “Venus” or an “Olympe”? Some years ago Mr. Whistler painted the figure of a girl in white standing at full length upon a white bear-skin, and the result was called “The White Girl.” It is a study in whites, and his followers might count it a symphony in white without making much more of it than a clever exposition of painter’s values. In Venice, some centuries ago, Palma Vecchio painted the figure of a girl in rich browns standing at full length upon guns, and called the result “Santa Barbara.” (Frontispiece.) As a symphony, as a study in color-harmony, as a piece of drawing and painting, it is irreproachable. It is decoratively all that could be desired. Yes; and there is something more to it. The figure expresses superb dignity, nobility, and repose; it is the perfect type of woman; and in addition the picture has illustrated to the mob for many years the story of Santa Barbara the martyr. Both pictures are true enough art, delightful each in its way; but which is the more complete? And would you have the meaning knocked out of Palma’s picture, would you have itreduced to a mere symphony of brown and gold—something you might catalogue as “The Brown Girl”? Suppose, for argument’s sake, we admit that calling it Santa Barbara does not help it in any way; but does it injure it in any way? Certainly not.

Nor is it worth while to accept an allegorical figure by Fantin-Latour or a nursing mother by Degas and then quarrel with the meaning of a “Madonna” by Bellini (Plate7) or a “St. Catherine” by Sodoma. The use of the latter pictures by the Church to point a moral or adorn a tale does not invalidate their art, nor does the name attached to them blind anyone to their harmony of form, light, and color. We may be certain that those Renaissance men were just as much interested in the decorative side of their art as the moderns. They were expert technicians with a fine sense of line and color. Every feature of the Madonna’s face, form or costume, the fall of a robe, the sparkle of a gem, the play of light upon hair or nude shoulder, the depth and resonance of colors, were seized upon for decorative effect; but the emotions of “devotion, pity and the like,” which Mr. Whistler insists are quite foreign to art, did not disturb them in any way. They used them as they pleased and still made beautiful pictures.

Just so with the Dutchmen at the north. They painted portraits, interiors,fêtescenes, marines—all things that related to Holland—and they were veryintent upon giving the realistic appearance of everything so that anyone could divine the meaning; but they did not neglect the decorative nor quarrel about the subjects of their canvases. The fine conversation-pictures of Terburg or the interiors of Steen or the portraits of Hals (Plate22) need no apology for their purely artistic qualities. Every face or hand or figure, every scrap of light or color, has the most made of it. The painters wrung all the hues possible out of silks and satins, caught all the sparkle of glass, all the sheen of pots and dishes; but they did not think to win entirely by virtue of these qualities. They cared something for their subject and insisted upon its truth of representation and illustration, too.

XXIX.—BOTTICELLI, Allegory of Spring. Academy, Florence.

And what of the landscape? Are we to cast out the historical productions of Claude and Turner (Plates 11 and 26) because they are supposed to represent ancient Italy or classic Greece? What if Turner does paint a picture of Venice in which people may recognize some things Venetian, does that mar his painting of light, air, sky, and color, or dim the decorative splendor of the landscape in any way? Those splendid Venetian sunsets with scarlet clouds waving and flaming far up the zenith, their crimson reflection in the waters of the lagoons, the golden atmosphere that never painter yet painted, how are they harmed by the stray sunshafts that flush pink the familiar top of the San Marco campanile or gildinto recognition the great silver domes of the Salute? And if a modern paint a patch of mid-ocean without a name how much greater as art are his sea-waves than the waves of Claude shown in a seaport of France? What harm does the “seaport” and “France” do the picture? We have recently had some very beautiful studies of color, light, and air by Claude Monet which he has called “Rouen Cathedral” and “Westminster Bridge.” They are much vaguer in outline than Turner or Claude would have painted them; but they picture historical structures and might be called historical landscapes with as much reason as Turner’s “Bay of Baiæ” or Claude’s “Queen of Sheba.”

But the chief quarrel of the modern is with the story-telling subject—the sentimental or funny incident in paint—of which we see enough and to spare at every new exhibition. This too is historical art in a way. For thegenresubjects of the present time are history in the little—personal incidents usually, but nevertheless the history of the people. And yet it must be acknowledged that there is some reason for waging war against this kind of art as we find it to-day. Not that the story in itself is necessarily objectionable. If we are not interested in its incident perhaps we can enjoy its decorative qualities. The “Sacred and Profane Love” by Titian, which I have already mentioned, certainly had a literary meaningat one time, but to-day the allegory is lost to us and the picture lives by virtue of its fine form and color—the allegory in no way injuring its decorative qualities. Nor are the stories of Jan Steen or Van der Meer of Delft or Teniers objectionable in their pictures. You will hear no modern railing against them, for the very good reason that the pictures are excellent pieces of workmanship and exceptionally beautiful in surfaces, handling, color, light and atmosphere. But the present-day story-teller with a paint-brush is not so good a workman as the Dutchmen. He slurs the decorative and throws all the interest of his picture upon the incident portrayed, and lets form and color go lame, blind and halt if they choose. There is little to be said in praise of his work. The tawdry colors and the card-board figures with which his stories are told condemn them at the start. Yet the public, seeing not the cheapness of the method, applauds the incident portrayed and thus endorses a lame and halting art. It is this that stirs the wrath of the art-for-art’s-sake advocates and leads to their extravagance of statement.

It is the Marcus Stones, the Viberts, and the Defreggers of painting who have brought the story into contempt and caused the opposition to it. That the “unco guid” Sunday-school incident or the horse-play of the grinning Tyrolean peasant, or the red-robed monk story should pass current as art while thepeasants of Millet, the landscapes of Corot, the marines of Whistler should be sneered at as impressionistic or “faddish,” was more than the artistic brotherhood could bear. It took up the cudgels for more art and less literature, and in knocking the silly incident in the head, it also tried to knock in the head every other incident in the art-world. This was perhaps an error. For the subject is not necessarily silly except in the hands of the whipper-snapper painter. There is nothing silly about the “Moses saved from the Nile” (Plate23) by Bonifazio, or the “Miracle of the Slave” (Plate15) by Tintoretto, or the “Good Samaritan” by Rembrandt, or the “Garden of Love” by Rubens, or the “Shepherds in Arcadia” (Plate30) by Poussin. Oh, yes; the old masters could paint stories when it pleased them to do so. They were religious and classic stories—themes hallowed by tradition—but not differing in other respects from the stories of to-day. They painted them well and with great decorative skill and therefore you never hear any painter decrying them; but, so far as their legitimacy or illegitimacy is concerned, they were not different from the “Love and Death” of Mr. Watts or the “Beguiling of Merlin” by Sir Edward Burne-Jones or the “Blind Fiddler” by Sir David Wilkie.

But we must not push our argument too hard, for we are not the special advocates of the story-picture.Nor should we, while stating the contention of the public for the subject-picture, be unjust to the contention of the painter for the decorative picture. It is true enough that the religious or classic theme of Renaissance art is not its most enduring quality with us to-day. The pictures live more by their excellences of form and color than by their subjects. Still the painters found no great hardship in having to paint designated themes. They worked easily under imposed conditions. When Mantegna was asked to paint a chapel in the Eremitani at Padua and the life of St. Christopher was given him as a subject he did not cry out against subjects in painting and talk about the absurdity of devotion and patriotism in art. He accepted the conditions and fulfilled them nobly. When Correggio was asked to paint an Assumption of the Madonna in the cupola of the Duomo at Parma he, too, accepted the conditions of subject and architectural surroundings and produced that wonderful circle of whirling angels which, seen from below, seems to rise higher and higher in the dome as though actually disappearing in the blue sky.

XXX.—POUSSIN, Shepherds in Arcadia. Louvre, Paris.

Hundreds of the Renaissance painters filled wall and altar spaces under similar limitations, producing Nativities, Flights into Egypt, Crucifixions, Resurrections, without ever a thought of quarrelling with their themes. They were hackneyed themes, too; but they knew that their success in the estimation oftheir fellow-craftsmen was largely dependent upon the degree of freshness and originality with which the subjects were treated. One of the astonishing things about Tintoretto at Venice is that, coming at the final day of the Renaissance, he should have handled the old time-worn and art-worn themes with such novelty and power. The Annunciation, the Nativity, the Flight, the Crucifixion in the Scuola San Rocco at Venice are marvellous pieces of originality and invention. Before Tintoretto’s time there were innumerable “Marriages in Cana” painted for the Church, but that wonderful picture in the Sacristy of the Salute at Venice goes beyond them all (Plate27). What was it to Titian or Moretto that the early men had painted the “Assumption of the Madonna”? They did it over again with greater originality and splendor.

Nor did the Renaissance painters wholly ignore the audience for which their pictures were intended. When Raphael painted the “Sistine Madonna” (Plate 28), he was most careful about the composition of the group, about the drawing, the draperies, the light, the color, the action of the figures. He studied long and hard every decorative feature of the picture, that it might have grace of line and charm of hue. Yes; and he also studied long and hard the story it should tell to the congregation of the Black Friars’ Church at Piacenza, for whom the picturewas originally painted. It hung over the high altar of the church and was so conspicuously placed that the whole kneeling throng could see it. The curtains painted at the top of the picture are supposed to be the real altar-curtains, the ledge at the bottom where the cherubs rest is supposed to be the real altar-top. The angel-throng with the Madonna is coming down from heaven. She is walking on the clouds, coming forward to meet the kneeling worshippers and holding up to them the Child as the Hope of the World. Behind them is a great halo of light made up of angel-heads—the light of the Eternal Day. At the right St. Barbara kneeling turns away her face as though blinded by the radiance; at the left San Sisto the martyr looks up to the Madonna and with one deprecating hand upon his bosom points outward with the other to the congregation as though saying: “Not for me, but for these poor souls in my keeping.” It is impossible to ignore the story told in the picture; impossible to say that it is an intrusion or should have been left out. There is nothing very decorative about the large round eyes of the Mother and Child—they were taken almostverbatimfrom the old Byzantine mosaics—but again it is impossible not to recognize the look of wonder they express and the specific meaning they must have had for the audience.

All of which would seem to suggest once morethat the theme in painting is at least not a hindrance, not a something to be got rid of, but a condition to be dealt with and handled illustratively in the same way that a given space of wall, panel or canvas is a condition to be dealt with decoratively. To say that painting shall reveal only “the appearance of things” and that the significance of those things shall count for naught is one extreme; to say that objects shall depend solely upon their meaning and be regardless of decorative charm is the other extreme. Painters may choose either one or the other as becomes partisans (the great painters have always chosen both), but the spectator should cultivate a broader taste and exhibit a more discriminative mind. To Mr. Whistler, for instance, was given the sense of color, light, air, and the power to produce the glamour and the mystery of these in harmonies, symphonies, nocturnes—all of them decorative things lovely to look upon. Let us by all means admire them and love them; but we should not allow ourselves to think that this alone is art, and all the products of the other men but so much rags and scrap-iron. Mr. Watts has a differently endowed mind. He grasps elemental truths of life and presents them in allegorical forms that are beautiful to think about, and Mr. Whistler does not like that. But never mind; let us listen to Mr. Watts, too. He is a man of imagination, and whathe has to say is well worth listening to, though he has not Mr. Whistler’s point of view, and is somewhat lacking in the decorative quality.

Nor need we despise those painters whose equipment leads them to care as little for things decorative as for things symbolical. There are artistic minds that love to deal with facts as facts. Realism is healthful at least, and besides there may be much that is interesting in facts if we only study them long enough. Men like Courbet and Bonnat and Meissonier and Gérôme are not to be ignored. They are great students, great artists of their kind. Their minds move along scientific and archæological grooves, and in that respect they are quite different from the Whistlers, the Millets, and the Delacroixs; but I do not see why they are not entitled to admiration for what they do, especially when they do it so very well.

We should find something to admire in all of them, if we had more judgment and less prejudice. Unfortunately, we allow our likes to dictate to our taste. A certain form of art is agreeable to us, and therefore everything else is bad form and not art at all. Because one likes the Madonnas of Raphael is no reason for condemning the Madonnas of Holbein and Rubens. The landscape of Claude Lorraine is not incompatible with the landscape of Claude Monet. Both are good. But it is very difficultto make people see and believe that. Raising ourselves above prejudice is not easy of accomplishment. It is what is called, broadly, education—a difficult attainment to many, an absolute impossibility to some.

Indeed when we come to sum up these lectures we find their burden to be chiefly “Raising ourselves above prejudice.” The special pleas of painters, whether for realization or decoration or illustration, are, of course, to be heard and accepted in part; but we are not to believe in any one of them to the utter exclusion of the others. Each is excellent of its kind, so far as it goes; but in our final judgment of the work of art we may conclude that the sum of the whole is greater than any of its parts, and that truth to nature, individuality, imagination, pictorial poetry, decorative beauty, subject—all the elements—go to the making of what is called “great art.” Titian, Rubens, and Velasquez scorned none of these elements, advocated none of them exclusively; and you and I, who help make up the public, can perhaps do no better than base our principles of taste upon the works of those famed masters of the craft.

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“An admirable introduction to travel or study.”—The Congregationalist.

BY JOHN C. VAN DYKE

WHAT IS ART?Studies in the Technique and Criticism of Painting$1.00net. Postpaid $1.10

WHAT IS ART?

Studies in the Technique and Criticism of Painting

$1.00net. Postpaid $1.10

Professor Van Dyke in this volume returns to the general subject of fine art, which he has already done so much to illustrate and illuminate in his various books. This book expounds the painter’s point of view as distinct from that of the connoisseur, the collector, or the museum director, which, he thinks, has for the past twenty years so monopolized discussion among us as to obscure the consideration of art as art, in considering it as a curiosity or commodity. To the preaching of this gospel, which is particularly timely in view of recent famous sales and expert controversies, are added chapters on the constitution, production, and appreciation of painting. The book is written in a particularly vivacious style, and its criticism of current materialism is crisp and even cutting. The author takes up such subjects as “The Use of the Model,” “Quality in Art,” “Art Criticism,” “Art History and Art Appreciation.”

BY PROFESSOR JOHN C. VAN DYKE

Nature for Its Own SakeFirst Studies in Natural Appearances 12mo, $1.50

Nature for Its Own Sake

First Studies in Natural Appearances 12mo, $1.50

“No one can read it without having his knowledge of nature enlarged, his curiosity quickened, and his sensitiveness to the beauty that is all about him in the world increased and stimulated.”—ChicagoTribune.

“He writes clearly and simply and indulges in little rhetoric or false sentiment. His ‘first studies,’ therefore, will probably reveal to many people many things of which they were unaware.”—The Nation.

“A series of interesting and distinctly original essays.”

—PhiladelphiaPublic Ledger.

“A book of uncommon merit, first, in its point of view, and, second, in the peculiar skill with which the subject of nature is handled.”—WashingtonPost.

“A book on nature widely different from anything yet written, and fresh, suggestive, and delightful.”

—New YorkTimes.

“A book for all nature lovers.... A most delightfulvade mecum.”—Bliss Carmanin New YorkCommercial Advertiser.

BY PROFESSOR JOHN C. VAN DYKE

The DesertFurther Studies in Natural AppearancesWith frontispiece. 12mo, $1.25net

The Desert

Further Studies in Natural Appearances

With frontispiece. 12mo, $1.25net

“The reader who once submits to its spell will hardly lay it aside until the last page is turned.”—The Spectator(London).

“This charming volume comes as strong wine indeed after the tepid rose-water of books dealing with snails and daffodils in suburban gardens. Mr. Van Dyke unquestionably knows his desert; he has the true wanderer’s eye for its essential fascination.”—The Athenæum(London).

“No virgin rush of young impressions, but an adult mingling of vision and criticism in a style that engages without startling the attention.”—LondonAcademy.

“Strange and curious reading, this book of the desert, and has all the fascination of things unaccustomed.”—New YorkTribune.

“The writer’s personality is carefully subordinated, but one cannot help feeling it strongly; that of a man more sensitive to color than to form, enthusiastic, but with a stern hand on his own pulse.”—Atlantic Monthly.

BY PROFESSOR JOHN C. VAN DYKE

The Opal SeaContinued Studies in Impressions and AppearancesWith Frontispiece. 12mo, $1.25net

The Opal Sea

Continued Studies in Impressions and Appearances

With Frontispiece. 12mo, $1.25net

“Prof. Van Dyke takes his reader’s imagination captive with prose in which we feel the sea’s own glamour of beauty and movement and mystery, its glory of color and power.”—New York Tribune.

“Pleasure awaits the reader of ‘The Opal Sea.’”—Boston Evening Transcript.

“The history, the poetry, the science, and the endless aspects of the sea are given in a style that will charm all lovers of the ocean.”—The Independent.

“Will be read for the pleasure which the work of a skillful observer wielding a practised pen is bound to give; and the pleasure will be great. Prof. Van Dyke is a master of the art of ‘seascape’ who need fear no comparison.”—The Spectator(London).

“No English writer, and no other writer except Michelet, has done as much as Mr. Van Dyke to arrange attractively what has been in the course of ages learned about the sea.”—The World(London).

“We strongly approve the combination of gifts which represent Prof. Van Dyke’s literary equipment and wish to commend his books most cordially to intelligent readers.”—The Standard(London).

“Lovers of the sea and lovers of nature generally will find much to interest them in this book, and here and there passages that may enthrall them.”—Literary World(London).

“Prof. Van Dyke’s being at heart a poet of the sea is proved in his fine raptures on well-nigh everything of the deep.”—Daily Chronicle(London).

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