"Journal de Eugène Delacroix." character of an object strikes him and the effect of this sensation is a strong peculiar impression. . . . Through this faculty he penetrates to the very heart of things, and seems to be more clear sighted than other men. . . . The end of a work of art is to manifest some essential or salient character, consequently some important idea, clearer and more completely than is attainable from real objects." Delacroix, the leader in the revolt against classicism in France, writes very strongly against realism: "Le réalisme devrait être défini l'antipode de l'art. car peut-on concevoir que l'esprit ne guide pas la main de l'artiste, et croira-t-on possible en même temps que, malgré toute son application à imiter, il ne tiendra pas ce singulier travail de la couleur de son esprit?" "Le but de l'artiste n'est pas de reproduire exactement les objets; c'est à l'esprit qu'il faut arriver." Although Whistler speaks as if what he calls. the painter quality were the only really great thing in art, it is evident to anyone who has seen those strangely personal nocturnes which O'Clock." Whistler. emanated from him how fully he expressed his inner feelings in his works. And scattered here and there among his writings, concealed under a covering of such brilliant and satirical wit as has seldom been seen, we find his true ideas about art. Talking of the critic-writer, who had no technical knowledge of painting, he says: "Meanwhile the painter's poetry is “Ten quite lost to him; the amazing invention that shall have put form and colour into such perfect harmony, that exquisiteness is the result, he is without understanding; the nobility of thought that shall have given the artist's dignity to the whole says to him absolutely nothing." In the celebrated lawsuit, Whistler v. Ruskin, he was asked, "Do you say that this is a correct representation of Battersea Bridge?" "I did not intend it," he answered, "The "to be a correct portrait of the bridge. As to Gentle Art what the picture represents, that depends upon Enemies." who looks at it. To some persons it may represent all that was intended; to others it may represent nothing." Again he writes: "The imitator is a poor kind of creature. If the man who paints only the tree or flower of Making Whistler. or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this: in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features." One of the finest appreciations of the Flemish and Dutch artists of the seventeenth century has been given by a modern French artist, 1820-1876. Eugène Fromentin, a painter of great technical skill, who shows himself also to be a very able critic and a very interesting and beautiful writer. He not only sees the exterior, but goes beneath to the painter's thought and ideas, and writing about Rubens, Rembrandt, and others, he allows us to see his own opinions about art. First see what he says about "the "The Old lost way" of modern painting: "All the fancies of the imagination, and what were called the mysteries of the palette, when mystery was one of the attractions of painting, Fromentin. give place to the love of the absolute, textual truth. Photographic studies as to the effects. of light have changed the greater proportion Masters of Belgium and Holland." Eugène |