Part 2 (1/2)

XIX

Ithat never was, never will be--in a light better than any light that ever shone--in a land no one can define or remember, only desire--and the for of Brynhild

_Burne-Jones_

XX

I love everything for what it is

_Courbet_

XXI

I look for my tones; it is quite siine that art is capable of an indefinite progress toward perfection This is a mistake There is a limit where it overn the imitation of nature are fixed The object is to produce a picture, that is to say, a plane surface either with or without a border, and on this surface the representation of so substances Since it is obliged to remain thus circumscribed, it is easy to foresee the limit of perfectibility When the picture has succeeded in satisfying our minds in all the conditions imposed on its production, it will cease to interest Such is the fate of everything which has attained its end: we grow indifferent and abandon it

In the conditions governing the production of the picture, every means has been explored The most difficult problem was that of complete relief, depth of perspective carried to the point of perfect illusion

The stereoscope has solved the problem It only remains now to combine this perfection with the other kinds of perfection already found Let no ine that art, bound by these conditions of the plane surface, can ever free itself from the circle which limits it It is easy to foresee that its last ill soon have been said

_Wiertz_

XXIII

In his ado has shown that there is no progress in the arts Nature, their eable; and the arts cannot transcend her limits They attain completeness of expression in the work of a master, on whom other masters are formed

Then comes development, and then a lapse, an interval By-and-by, art is born anew under the stiht a new convention

_Bracquemond_

XXIV

The painterdoes not set his palette with the real hues of the rainbow When he pictures to us the character of a hero, or paints so man in the character of the hero (for this is the business of dramatic art); nor does he make up his landscape of real rocks, or trees, or water, but with fictitious resements he is as truly bound by the laws of the appearance of those realities, of which they are the copy (and very much to the same extent), as the musician is by the natural laws and properties of sound

In short, the whole object of physical science, or, in other words, the whole of sensible nature, is included in the domain of imitative art, either as the subjects, the objects, or the materials of imitation: every fine art, therefore, has certain physical sciences collateral to it, on the abstractions of which it builds,to its nature and purpose But the drift of the art itself is so totally distinct from that of the physical science to which it is related; and it is not y or anatomy constitute the science of poetry or dramatic art than that acoustics and har; mechanics, or other branches of physical science, that of architecture