y people
have a false eye or an indolent eye; they can see objects literally, but
the exquisite is beyond them.

_Delacroix._

XVII

I would like my work to appeal to the eye and mind as music appeals to
the ear and heart. I have something that I want to say which may be
useful to and touch mankind, and to say it as well as I can in form and
colour is my endeavour; more than that I cannot do.

_Watts._

XVIII

Give me leave to say, that to paint a very beautiful Woman, I ought to
have before me those that are the most so; with this Condition, that
your Lordship might assist me in choosing out the greatest Beauty. But
as I am under a double Want, both of good Judgment and fine Women, I am
forced to go by a certain Idea which I form in my own Mind. Whether this
hath any Excellence of Art in it, I cannot determine; but 'tis what I
labour at.

_Raphael._

XIX

I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dream of something that never
was, never will be--in a light better than any light that ever shone--in
a land no one can define or remember, only desire--and the forms
divinely beautiful--and then I wake up with the waking of Brynhild.

_Burne-Jones._

XX

I love everything for what it is.

_Courbet._

XXI

I look for my tones; it is quite simple.

_Courbet._

XXII

Many people imagine that art is capable of an indefinite progress toward
perfection. This is a mistake. There is a limit where it must stop. And
for this reason: the conditions which govern the imitation of nature are
fixed. The object is to produce a picture, that is to say, a plane
surface either with or without a border, and on this surface the
representation of something produced by the sole means of different
colouring substances. Since it is obliged to remain thus circumscribed,
it is easy to foresee the limit of perfectibility. When the picture has
succeeded in satisfying our minds in all the conditions imposed on its
production, it will cease to interest. Such is the fate of everything
which has attained its end: we grow indifferent and abandon it.

In the conditions governing the production of the picture, every means
has been explored. The most difficult problem was that of complete
relief, depth of perspective carried to the point of perfect illusion.
The stereoscope has solved the problem. It only remains now to combine
this perfection with the other kinds of perfection already found. Let no
man imagine that art,