The Meaning of Pictures by John C. Van Dyke

WE could easily settle, _ex cathedra_, this matter of art if our views were the only ones to be considered; but, unfortunately, intelligent people differ with us, and the painter himself is often our most determined antagonist. The painter, in fact, has opinions of his own about his pictures and he sometimes asserts them with no uncertain voice. His most persistent assertion is that the picture should be something decorative in form or color-be something beautiful to look at-rather than something moral, intellectual, or narrative. But the public, being differently minded, keeps insisting that the picture should be something in subject or have some literary meaning; and, consequently, it often misses the decorative altogether. So it is that there is plenty of material for disagreement. The painter and his public seem ever at swords' points. Let us to-day review the case for the plaintiff and to-morrow perhaps we can sum up for the defendant public.

It is true, to begin with, that the average person who takes an interest in painting and attends gallery exhibitions often shoots wide of the mark in his appreciations. He starts wrong by devoting too much attention to pictures that have pretty faces and tell pretty stories. He is over-fond of heroes and heroines, plots and tales, dramatic scenes from history, or familiar characters in fiction. The ideal, whether in figure, face or landscape, pleases him; and he does not object to a laugh over the comic or the ludicrous. But he cannot abide coarse peasants or fishermen in art; Dutch pictures with their tavern brawls are not to his taste; and he persists in misunderstanding Italian people dressed in modern garb and representing sacred characters. Anachronisms of type, furniture, architecture, bother him beyond measure. The Madonna and the Apostles were Jews and lived in Judea, and he wishes an archeological report of the race, country, climate and soil. Of course, he does not care for portraits by Velasquez with their outlandish dresses, or large Flemish women by Rubens, or the "splashy" painting of Dutch burghers by Frans Hals. In short the average person is devoted to the pleasant subject in art and is continually asking of the picture: What does it mean?