ans Choosing a Model," which besides lacking the reserve force
of the former has its source in flippant imagination; and so may the many
other shifts of time and tide in the graphic arts be measured and
chronicled upon the basis of the emotions and the formative touch of the
poetic, upon the sequence of the artist's regard for the ideal and the
real, and the degree of his approach toward either. The concensus of the
ages regarding finish, dexterity, cleverness, and _chic_ is that in the
scale of art they weigh less than the simple breadth of effect which they
so frequently interrupt. The school of Teniers with all of its detail was
preservative of this.

It is on the question of detail and the careful anxiety concerning the
surface that the art instinct avoids science, refusing her microscope in
preference for the unaided impression of normal sight. The living art of
the ages is that in which the painter is seen to be greater than his
theme, in which we acknowledge the power first, and afterward the product.
It is the unfettered mode allowing the greatest individualism of
expression; it is, in short, the man end of it which lives, for his is the
immortal life.

APPENDIX

The argument of the book is here reduced to a working basis.

The Concept

The first point settled in the making of a picture after the subject has
germinated, is the shape into which the items of the concept are to be
edited; the second is the arrangement of those items within the proscribed
limits; the third is the defining of the dark and light masses. This
consideration forces the question whence the light, together with its
answer, hence the shadow.

The Procedure

The detail of the direction of light and the action of the shadows cuts
the pictorial intention clear of the decorative design. Design is a good
basis, its simplicity yielding favorably to the settlement of spaces and
the construction of lines, but its chief purpose ends when it has cleared
the field of little things and reduced the first conception, which usually
comes as a bundle of items, to a broad and dignified foundation into which
these little things are set.

Design

A severe, space-filling design in three tones or four will place the
student in a position of confidence to proceed with detail which, until
the design has settled well into