By this term we mean the true and natural expression of an impression of nature by an art. Now it will immediately be said that all men see nature differently. Granted. Bat the artist sees deeper, penetrates more into the beauty and mystery of nature than the commonplace man. The beauty is there in nature. It has been thus from the beginning, so the artist's work is no idealizing of nature; but through quicker sympathies and training the good artist sees the deeper and more fundamental beauties, and he seizes upon them, "tears them out," as Durer says, and renders them on his canvas, or on his photographic plate, or on his written page. And therefore the work is the test of the man - for by the work we see whether the man's mind is commonplace or not. It is for this reason, therefore, that artists are the best judges of pictures, and even a trained second-rate painter will recognize a good picture far quicker than a layman, though he may not be able to produce such a one himself. Of course Naturalism premisses that all the suggestions for the work are taken from and studied from nature. The subject in nature must be the thing which strikes the man and moves him to render it, not the plate he has to fill. Directly he begins thinking how he can fill a certain canvas or plate, he is no longer naturalistic, he may even then show he is a good draughtsman or a good colourist, but he will not show that he is naturalistic. Naturalistic painters know well enough that very often painting in a tree or some other subject might improve the picture in the eyes of many, but they will not put it in because they have not the tree before them to study from. Again, it has been said that arranging a foreground and then painting it might improve the picture, but the naturalistic painter says no, by so doing "all the little subtleties are lost, which give quality to the picture!" Nature, is so full of surprises that, all things considered, she is best painted as she is. Aristotle of old called poetry "an imitative art," and we do not think any one has ever given a better definition of poetry, though the word "imitative" must not in our present state of knowledge be used rigidly. The poetry is all in nature, all pathos and tragedy is in nature, and only wants finding and tearing forth. But there's the rub, the best work looks so easy to do when it is done. Does not Burns' poem" To a mouse" look easy to write? This, then, is what we understand by naturalism, that all suggestions should come from nature, and all techniques should be employed to give as true an impression of nature as possible.

Original Work

This is a mightily misused word. Only those artists can be called original who have something new to say, no matter by what methods they say it. A photograph may be far more original than a painting.

Photographic

Some of the best writers and journalists of the day have adopted the use of the word "photographic," as applying to written descriptions of scenes which are absolutely correct in detail and bald fact, though they are lacking in sentiment and poetry. What a trap these writers have fallen into will be seen in this work, for what they think so true is often utterly false. And, on the other hand, photography is capable of producing pictures fall of sentiment and poetry. The word "photographic" should not be applied to anything except photography. No written descriptions can be "photographic." The use of the word, when applied to writing, leads to a confusion of different phenomena, and therefore to deceptive inferences. This cannot be too strongly insisted upon, as some cultured writers have been guilty of the wrong use of the word "photographic," and therefore of writing bad English.

Quality

Quality is used when speaking of a picture or work which has in it artistic properties of a special character, in a word, artistic properties which are distinctive and characteristic of the fineness and subtlety of nature.