words it is an entity and not a composition.

The process technically for the subduing of relief is flattening the
shadows, thus rendering the marked roundness of objects less pronounced.
The envelopment of air which all painting should express,--the detachment
of one object from another,--goes as far toward the production of relief as
is necessary.

FINISH.

But the enquiry is naturally made, "if deception is undesirable, should
the artist pause before he has brought his work to a complete finish?"
Finish is not dependent upon putting in everything which nature contains,
else would art not be a matter of selection. Finish, though interpreted
singularly by different artists as to degree, is universally understood to
mean the same thing. Finish is the expression of the true relations of
objects or of the parts of one object. When the true relations or
_values_ of shade and color are rendered the work is complete. That ends
it. The student for the first year or so imagines his salvation depends
on detail and prides himself on how much of it he can see. The instructor
insists on his looking at nature with his eyes half closed in the hope
that he will take the big end of things. There is war between them until
the student capitulates, after which the instructor tells him to go as he
pleases knowing with this lesson learned he will not go wrong.

As a comprehensive example of finish without detail, one may take the
works of Mauve which aim to represent nature as truly as possible in her
exact tints. No one can observe any picture ever painted by this master
and not be drawn down close to the ground that he may walk on it or
elevate his head into the air and breathe it or feel it possible to send a
stone sailing into its liquid depths; but finish! when we look for it
where or what is it? At the Stewart Gallery the attendant was accustomed
to offer the visitor a magnifying glass with which to examine the lustre
of a horse's eye or the buckles upon Napoleon's saddle, in the "Review of
Cuirassiers at the Battle of Friedland" by Meissonier. These items are
what interested the great detailist and they are perfect; but with all the
intense effort of six close years of labor the picture has less real
finish than any work ever signed by Mauve. The big thing in finish has
been missed and I doubt if any artist or connoisseur has ever come upon
this picture, now in the Metropolitan Museum, without a slight gasp at the