By Naturalism it will be seen that we mean a very different thing from Realism. The realist makes no analysis, he is satisfied with the motes and leaves out the sunbeam. He will, in so far as he is able, paint all the veins of the leaves as they really are, and not as they look as a whole. For example, the realist, if painting a tree a hundred yards off, would not strive to render the tree as it appears to him from where he is sitting, but he would probably gather leaves of the tree and place them before him, and paint them as they looked within twelve inches of his eyes, and as the modern Pre-Raphaelites did, he might even imitate the local colour of things themselves. Whereas the naturalistic painter would care for none of these things, he would endeavour to render the impression of the tree as it appeared to him when standing a hundred yards off, the tree taken as a whole, and as it looked, modified as it would be by various phenomena and accidental circumstances. The naturalist's work we should call true to nature. The realist's false to nature. The work of the realist would do well for a botany but not for a picture, there is no scope for fine art in realism, realism belongs to the province of science. This we shall still further illustrate in the following pages.

Pre-Raphaelites.

Relative Tone And Value

Relative tone or value is the difference in the amount of light received on the different planes of objects when compared with one another.

Sentiment

Artists speak of the "sentiment of nature as a highly desirable quality in a picture. This means that naturalism should have been the leading idea which has governed the general conception and execution of the work. Thus the sentiment of nature is a healthful and highly desirable quality in a picture. Thus "true in sentiment" is a term of high praise. "Sentiment" is really normal sympathetic "feeling."

Sentimentality

As opposed to sentiment, is a highly undesirable quality, and a quality to be seen in all bad work. It is an affectation of sentiment, and relies by artificiality and mawkishness upon appealing to the morbid and uncultured. It is the bane of English art. The one is normal, the other morbid.

Soul

Soul = Vis medicatrix = Plastic force = Vital force = Vital principle = O. The word is, however, used by some of the most advanced thinkers in art, and when asked to explain it they say they mean by it "the funda-mental." From what we can gather, the word "soul" is the formula by which they express the sum total of qualities which make up the life of the individual. Thus a man when he has got the "soul" into a statue, has not only rendered the organic structure of the model, but also all the model's subtleties of harmony, of movement and expression, and thought, which are due to the physical fact of his being a living organism. This "life" is of course the fundamental thing, and first thing to obtain in any work of art. In this way, then, we can understand the use of the word "soul" as synonymous with the "life" of the model. The "soul" or life is always found in nature, in the model, and the artist seizes upon it first, and subdues all things to it. "Soul," then, to us is a term for the expression of the epitome of the characteristics of a living thing. The Egyptians expressed the "soul" or life of a lion, Landseer did not.

Tech-Nique

By technique is meant, in photography, a knowledge of optics and chemistry, and of the preparation and employment of the photographic materials by the means of which pictures are secured. It does in no way refer to the manner of using these materials, that is the "practice."

Tone

To begin with, as this book is for photographers, we must tell them they invariably use the word tone in a wrong sense. What photographers call "tone" should properly be colour or tint, thus: a brown tint, a purple tint, or colour.

The correct meaning of tone is the amount of light received upon the different planes of an object.