nting
external forms; and _color_, considered as a _quality_, not as yet
expressed visibly in pigment, nor representing the color of any
_thing_. When these elements are combined they may make up such
conceptions as proportion, rhythm, repetition, and balance, with all
the modifications that may come from still further combination.

It is because these elements are qualities in themselves beautiful
that actual objects not beautiful may be made so in a painting, by
being treated as _color_ or _line_ or _mass_, and so given place on
the canvas, rather than as being of themselves interesting. A face,
for instance, may be ugly as a _face_, yet be beautiful as color or
light and shade in the picture. These qualities, I say, do not
represent--they do not necessarily even exist, except in the mind to
which they are the terms of its thought. Nevertheless, they are the
soul of the picture. For whatever the subject, or the objects chosen
for representation, it is by working out combinations of these
elements, through and by means of those objects, that the picture
really is made.

The picture, _as a work of art_, is not the representation of objects
making up a subject, but a fabric woven of color, line, and mass; of
form, proportion, balance, rhythm, and movement, expressed through
those actual objects in the picture which give it visible form.

I do not purpose to go deeply into these matters here. Elsewhere, as
they bear practically on the subject in hand, as in the chapters on
"Composition" and on "Color," I shall speak of them more fully. But I
wish here to call attention to this abstract side of painting in order
to show the relation between the two classes of things, the one
abstract and the other concrete, which together are needed to make up
a picture.

The concrete, or material, part of a picture includes all those things
which you can look at or feel on the canvas; and by seeing which you
can also see the abstract qualities, which do not _visibly_ exist
until made visible through the disposition of these tangible things,
on the canvas.

Beyond this is included all the technical qualities of expression;
form, as _drawing_; all representations of objects; the pigment by
means of which color is seen; and all those technical processes which
produce the various kinds of surface in the putting on of paint, and
bring about the different effects of light and shade and color, form
or accent.

In learning to paint, it i