International studio (25.1905)

This new direction in art came from tire longing
on the part of its founder for for a
cioser study of nature and her ways, and a desire
to render the simple appearances of nature by a
strong massing of colour and form without any
over-attention to the less important details. Dill's
work was simply a plea for the pure style of simple
contrasts of nature represented on canvas to pro-
duce quiet effects—a plea for the beauty which
lies in the elimination of all unimportant things.
Schiller has said that the great style lies in
throwing away the accidental, and in the pure
expression of the necessary; and consciously or
unconsciously, Dill has taken this precept to heart,
and has founded his work upon it.
One does not easily find in nature the full and
complete beauty seen in his pictures—one has to
search for it, and then you find it in the intimate
colouring and wonderful formation of objects
hidden in the soft and dreamy air. The artist
seeks to find the least striking things in nature

for his full harmonies of painting, as it is only the
unharmonic that is striking. One must study his
pictures individually to find their real and most
fascinating beauties. His capacity for combining
the beauties of nature with an architectural
whole, and his very personal understanding of
the beautiful render his talent at once masterful
and ideal. Zola expressed his conception of
a master painting as "nature through a tem-
perament." Professor Dill's pictures are always
the highest expressions of a pronounced individu-
ality, heightened by a knowledge of the laws of art
and the means of best representing nature.
Professor Dill is a wonderfully productive
worker and a master at the same time. His pic-
tures are full of the music of form and colour, with
their strong contrasts of light and shadow con-
centrating the innumerable details of nature to
great masses, and developing the question of
taste left us by tradition. Every picture expresses
the true feeling of nature and colour, and shows


CHARCOAL SKETCH

BY PROFESSOR LUDWtG DH.L