extreme right being quite blurred. The reproduction here given
unfortunately does not show these subtleties, and flattens the general
appearance very much. The focus is nowhere sharp, as this would disturb
the contemplation of the large visual impression. And there, I think,
for the first time, the whole gamut of natural vision, tone, colour,
form, light and shade, atmosphere, focus, &c., considered as one
impression, were put on canvas.

All sense of design is lost. The picture has no surface; it is all
atmosphere between the four edges of the frame, and the objects are
within. Placed as it is in the Prado, with the light coming from the
right as in the picture, there is no break between the real people
before it and the figures within, except the slight yellow veil due to
age.

But wonderful as this picture is, as a "tour de force," like his Venus
of the same period in the National Gallery, it is a painter's picture,
and makes but a cold impression on those not interested in the technique
of painting. With the cutting away of the primitive support of fine
outline design and the absence of those accents conveying a fine form
stimulus to the mind, art has lost much of its emotional
significance.

[Illustration: Plate XI.

LOS MENENAS. BY VELAZQUEZ (PRADO)

Probably the first picture ever painted entirely from the visual or
impressionist standpoint.

_Photo Anderson_]

[Sidenote: The Impressionist Point of View.]

But art has gained a new point of view. With this subjective way of
considering appearances--this "impressionist vision," as it has been
called--many things that were too ugly, either from shape or
association, to yield material for the painter, were yet found, when
viewed as part of a scheme of colour sensations on the retina which the
artist considers emotionally and rhythmically, to lend themselves to new
and beautiful harmonies and "ensembles," undreamt of by the earlier
formulae. And further, many effects of light that were too hopelessly
complicated for painting, considered on the old light and shade
principles (for instance, sunlight through trees in a wood), were found
to be quite paintable, considered as an impression of various colour
masses. The early formula could never free itself from the object as a
solid thing, and had consequently to confine its attention to beautiful
ones. But from the new point of view, form consists of the shape and
qualities of masses of colour on the retina; an