the highest to the lowest note in
it, far lighter than would have been thought possible even thirty
years ago.

This question of "bright pictures" is one which demands consideration.
One has only to go into any exhibition of pictures to-day to be struck
with the fact that the key of almost every picture in it, of whatever
kind, has changed from what it would have been in the last generation.
This is not merely the result of the spread of the "Impressionist"
idea. That influence has only been strongly felt in this country
within the last ten years. It is not that which I am speaking of now.
I mean the fact that even the grayer pictures--those which do not in
any ordinary sense of the word belong to Impressionist work--are light
in color, where they would once have been dark, or at least darker.
The impressionists have had a definite influence, it is true; but the
work of the earlier "_plein air_" men--the men who posed their models
out-of-doors as a matter of principle, who studied landscape
out-of-doors--was the first and most powerful influence, and that of
the impressionists, coming along after it, has simply emphasized and
carried it farther.

=Bright Pictures.=--Whatever may be thought of the work of those
painters who are called "impressionists," it must be recognized that
they have taught us how some things may be possible. And the present
quality of brightness will necessarily be to a certain extent a
permanent one in art. For like it or not as we may, it is true--true
to a certain great, fundamental characteristic of nature. For outdoor
light _is bright_, even on a gray day. The luminosity of color is too
great to be represented with dark paint or lifeless color. And once
this fact is recognized, it is a fact which will inevitably influence
all kinds of work. What is possible and right at a certain stage of
knowledge or recognition may be impossible when other points of view
have once been accepted. We see only what we look for, and we look
for only what we expect to see or are interested to see. You cannot go
out-of-doors now and paint as you would have painted a hundred years
ago. Then you would have painted what you saw then; but you would not
have seen nor looked for things which you cannot help seeing now. For
our eyes have been opened to new qualities and new facts, and once the
eyes have been opened to them they can never be closed to them again.

=Average Observation.=--I say we see only what we look