A volume might be written on this word, but it would be a volume of words with little meaning. As applied to art, the meaning of "ideal" has generally been that of something existing in fancy or in imagination, something visionary, an imaginary type of perfection. G. H. Lewes says, "Nothing exists but what is perceived;" we would say, nothing exists for us but what is perceived, and this we would make a first principle of all art. A work of pictorial art is no abstract thing, but a physical fact, and must be judged by physical laws. If a man draws a monster which does not exist, what is it? It is but a modified form of some existing thing or combination of things, and is after all not half so terrible as many realities. What is more terrible than some of the snakes than the octopus, than the green slimy crabs of our own waters? Certainly none of the dragons and monsters drawn from the imagination is half so horrible. Did the great Greek artist, AEschylus, describe a dragon as gnawing at the liver of Prometheus? No, he simply drew the picture of a vulture as being sufficiently emblematic.

But let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the dragon is more dreadful than any reality, even then the pictorial and glyptic artist cannot use it, for as he has no model to work from, the technique will necessarily be bad, there will be no subtleties of tone, of colour, of drawing, all which make nature so wonderful and beautiful. The dragon will be a pure caricature, that is all. Again, some people consider it wonderful that a painter takes a myth and renders it on canvas, and he is called "learned" and "scholarly" for this work. But what does he do? Let us say he wishes to paint the Judgment of Paris. He, if he is a good painter, will paint the background from physical matter, shaped as nearly like the Greek as possible, and he will paint the Paris and the ladies from living models. The work may be perfect technically, but where is the Greek part of it; what, then, does the painter rely upon? Why, the Greek story, for if not why does he not call it by a modern name? But no, he relies upon the well-known story - the Judgment of Paris - in fact he is taking the greater part of the merit that belongs to another man. The story of the Judgment of Paris is not his, yet it is that which draws the public; and these men are called original, and clever, and learned. Jean Francois Millet, in one of his scenes of Peasant Life, has more originality than all of these others put together. Many people, not conversant with the methods of art, think artists draw and paint and sculpt things "out of their heads." Well, some do, but no good artist ever did. We have in our possession a beautiful low relief in marble, done from a well-known Italian model in London. The work is as good as any work the Greeks did, the type is most admirable, and it was done by one of the sternest naturalistic sculptors of to-day.

A highly educated friend, an old Oxford man, called on us not long ago, and was greatly taken with the head; after looking at it a long while, he turned to us and said, "An ideal head, of course!" So it is the cant of "idealism" runs through the world. But we have heard some of the most original and naturalistic artists use the word "ideal," and on pressing them, they admitted it was misleading to others for them to use the word; but they meant by it simply intellectual, that is, the work of art had been done with intelligence and knowledge, but every suggestion had been taken from nature. The word ideal, to our mind, is so apt to mislead that we shall not use it.

Imaginative work. Impressionism.

Ideal work (q.v.).

To us Impressionism means the same thing as naturalism, but since the word allows so much latitude to the artist, even to the verging on absurdity, we prefer the term Naturalism, because in the latter the work can always be referred to a standard - Nature. Whereas if impressionism is used, the painter can always claim that he sees so much, and only so much, of Nature; and each individual painter thus becomes a standard for himself and others, and there is no natural standard for all. A genius like Manet tried to work out new ways of looking at nature, and that was legitimate, but when weak followers took up his "manner" and had not his genius, the result was eccentricity. For these reasons, therefore, we prefer and have used the term "naturalism" throughout this work. But, as we have said, we regard the terms "impressionism" and "naturalism" as fundamentally synonymous, although we think the work of many of the so-called modern "impressionists" but a passing craze.

Interpreting

The method of rendering a picture as it appears to the eye has been called interpreting nature. Perhaps interpreting is as good an expression as any, for the artist in his language (for art is only a language) interprets or explains his view of nature by his picture.

Local Colour

"The local or proper colour of an object (Korper-farbe) is that which it shows in common white light, while the illumination colour (Licht-farbe) is that which is produced by coloured light. Thus the red of some sandstone rocks, seen by common white light, is their proper local colour, that of a snow mountain in the rays of the setting sun is an illumination colour." - E. Atkinson, Ph.D., F.RS.