s concerned, to the values of every other object, and no
effort being made to get the precise value of the object as it would
appear under analogous circumstances in nature.

It may be replied, and I confess I think with excellent reason, that
Gerome's picture has no window in it, and therefore that to ask of him
to paint a picture as he would if he were painting a different picture,
is pedantry. The old masters are still admirable, though they only
observed a correspondence to the actual scale of natural values, and
were not concerned with imitation of it. But it is to be observed that,
successful as their practice is, it is successful in virtue of the
unconscious co-operation of the beholder's imagination. And nowadays not
only is the exercise of the imagination become for better or worse a
little old-fashioned, but the one thing that is insisted on as a
starting-point and basis, at the very least, is the sense of reality.
And it is impossible to exaggerate the way in which the sense of reality
has been intensified by Manet's insistence upon getting as near as
possible to the individual values of objects as they are seen in
nature--in spite of his abandonment of the practice of painting on a
parallel scale. Things now drop into their true place, look as they
really do, and count as they count in nature, because the painter is no
longer content with giving us change for nature, but tries his best to
give us nature itself. Perspective acquires its actual significance,
solids have substance and bulk as well as surfaces, distance is
perceived as it is in nature, by the actual interposition of atmosphere,
chiaro-oscuro is abolished--the ways in which reality is secured being
in fact legion the moment real instead of relative values are studied.
Something is lost, very likely--an artist cannot be so intensely
preoccupied with reality as, since Manet, it has been incumbent on
painters to be, without missing a whole range of qualities that are so
precious as rightly perhaps to be considered indispensable. Until
reality becomes in its turn an effect unconsciously attained, the
painter's imagination will be held more or less in abeyance. And perhaps
we are justified in thinking that nothing can quite atone for its
absence. Meantime, however, it must be acknowledged that Manet first
gave us this sense of reality in a measure comparable with that which
successively Balzac, Flaubert, Zola gave to the readers of their
books--a sens