Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1906 (Heft 13))

portraits have opened up the way. Even though much that they have
worked for has been but superficially copied, and even though conventional
photography still has its many influential champions, there remains the fact
that they have brought about a revolution in the conception and photographic
expression of nature which raises high expectations for the future. Let us
hope that among the followers of these three masters there will be other
serious workers and new productive talents whom the discoveries of the
“Three” will lead to a still deeper artistic insight.
F. Matthies-Masuren.
(Translated from the German by George Herbert Engelhard.)

OF VERITIES AND ILLUSIONS.—PART II.

"

THEY are ill-drawn, poorly painted, and seem almost
childish in conception; yet one feels like getting down
on one’s knees before them." The speaker was one
of our younger painters, Paris-trained, with a keen
appreciation of technique and no little technical skill
to his own account, but a fellow also of mind and
imagination. His voice rang with serious earnestness,
and what he spoke of was the work of Cimabue and
Giotto.
He had made no new discovery—except for himself. He had realized
that, in the presence of an almost complete negation of what is considered
the ideal of painting to-day, he experienced such feelings as few modern
works could inspire. What is the secret of this influence upon him and
others? You may attribute it to the union of religion and art in those
early pictures; and yet, in the usual understanding of this union, be very
wide of the mark. For we have no proof that these men were religious
painters in the sense that, for example, Fra Angelico was; and, on the
contrary, much to suggest that the guiding motive of Giotto, at least, was a
very keen love and realization of the dignity and meaning of external
appearances. His point of view, in our modern speech, was that of a
naturalist. Nor is it probable that the religious motive, which at the
prompting of the Church these early pictures interpreted, would affect the
younger painter I have quoted; still less the story-telling faculty exhibited
by Giotto. We must seek, I think, another psychological explanation.
It is rather to be found in the very fact that these paintings are so
remote from modern experience and ideals that they can be viewed with
detachment from modern prejudices; they do not challenge the realities, as
we understand them; they make an abstract appeal. And the abstract
nature of their appeal is heightened by the further fact that the method of
their painting was based upon abstract principles. It represented a survival
of the Byzantine tradition, which had its origin in the influence of the
Oriental ideal upon what was left of the Greek.


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