This is what Gerome has done in the "Eminence Grise"--a
scene, it will be remembered, on a staircase in a palace interior. Manet
inquires what would happen to this house of cards shored up into
verisimilitude by mere _correspondence_, if Gerome had been asked to cut
a window in his staircase and admit the light of out-of-doors into his
correspondent but artificial scene. The whole thing would have to be
done over again. The scale of the picture running from the highest
palette white to the lowest palette dark, and yet the key of an actual
interior scene being much nearer middle-tint than the tint of an actual
out-of-doors scene, it would be impossible to paint with any
verisimilitude the illumination of a window from the outside, the
resources of the palette having already been exhausted, every object
having been given a local value solely with relation, so far as truth of
representation is concerned, to the values of every other object, and no
effort being made to get the precise value of the object as it would
appear under analogous circumstances in nature.
Pages:
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149