Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1905 (Heft 10))

embellishments as he deemed would better the goods; but always carefully
following and never forgetting any of those rules, the practice of which had
been accepted as being productive of beauty. So intense were these crafts-
men that many of the results of even the earliest period are to-day ranked
as works of art on a par with the paintings of Rembrandt and Velasquez.
When we think of the history of old art we pause and wonder when
and why the change in attitude of the public and artists toward originality
took place; and we can not but deplore this change, for in the present state
the demand upon an artist to be original is losing the world much of the
beauty-product. Titian could never have executed three thousand canvases
if he had had to do all the work; there would, if the present ethical con-
ditions had existed in the past, have been left us far fewer canvases by the
old masters. In their place would have been a quantity of mediocre work
from the hands of pupils who, through lack of sufficient talent, remained
pupils and assistants to the end of their days, but who, in a state of modern
ethical conditions, would have been forced to attempt to do work of their
own, and would naturally have produced indifferent results when separated
from the inspiring influence of the master. I think that the change of
attitude is due in part to the fact that the species “genius” has made his
appearance on earth — there were no “geniuses” in those days; the artists,
looking upon themselves as craftsmen, did not feel the necessity of being
original. Not until the day of Raphael did any painter take it upon himself
to assume “inspiration.” But Raphael seems to have suffered considerably
from a “swelled head”; he paraded the streets of Florence with a retinue of
admirers, and came to the conclusion that indeed he was not a craftsman, but
a gentleman, and that his work was all his own, whereas, in truth, he dis-
covered less than any of the other great Italians. The conception of genius,
however, matured in England, and I feel sorry to say that that most in-
telligent painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds, “blew no end of hot air about it.”
Reynolds’s mistake, and that of other English thinkers, arose largely from
the fact that they were not familiar with the evolution of Italian art, and
naturally could not but marvel at the final results which they concluded
could only have been made by “genius.”
A history of the evolution of the art-product of a modern man of talent
may not be amiss here, and will help to show how fallacious is the belief
that at least we in modern times do sometimes spontaneously originate. It
is the work of Claude Monet I am referring to, and it is he who, possibly
more than any other painter of to-day, enjoys the reputation of being
original. Never but in our age could such a fallacy have been promulgated.
The method of breaking color was not merely used by Sisley, who painted
before Monet, but some of Monet's work is easily confused with Sisley's, so
alike are they; also Turner, and others now long forgotten, employed the
“vibratory” principle of coloring; and strange is the fact that some of the
backgrounds of the frescoes and panels of Sodoma—he painted in Sienna in
the period of the Renaissance—are so suggestive of Monet that we almost
refuse to accept the work as that of an old master. But, most startling of

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