And Mr. Steer's picture is merely an instance of a general tendency
which for the last twenty years has widened the gulf between modern
and ancient painting. It was Manet who first suggested _la peinture
claire_, and his suggestion has been developed by Roll, Monet, and
others, until oil-painting has become little more than a sheet of
white paper slightly tinted. Values have been diverted from their
original mission, which was to build up _une atmosphere de tableau_,
and now every value and colour finely observed seem to have for
mission the abolition of chiaroscuro. Without atmosphere painting
becomes a mosaic, and Mr. MacColl seems prepared to defend this return
to archaic formulas. This is what he says: "The sky of the sea-beach,
for example, if it be taken as representing form and texture, is
ridiculous; it is like something rough and chippy, and if the
suggestion gets too much in the way the method has overshot its mark.
Its mark is to express by a symbol the vivid life in the sky-colour,
the sea-colour, and the sand-colour, and it is doubtful if the
richness and subtlety of those colours can be conveyed in any other
way." Here I fail altogether to understand. If the sky's beauty can be
expressed by a symbol, why cannot the beauty of men and women be
expressed in the same way? How the infinities of aerial perspective
can be expressed by a symbol, I have no slightest notion; nor do I
think that Mr.
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