Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/419

Rh sympathies through the acquisition of a new point of contact with our fellows.

Almost all pictures tell a story. Those which seem not to do so at first sight are usually found to be full of meaning on second look; and a very large proportion of all the pictures most commonly seen, those m the illustrated journals, are intended almost solely as aids to narration. Stories are dear to us all. We are eager to hear them, to read them, and especially to see them. One that is told by a picture, and so is flashed upon the mind in a glance of the eye, adds to other possible excellencies those of brevity and surprise. In a picture we look usually first for what it tells—that it gives us, in a flash, a bit of life from a new point of view, seen in a different light, touched with humor, pathos or other sentiment—this is commendation enough. A portrait is to most a story picture. It tells more about the person portrayed than many pages of biography, and interests chiefly by what it tells.

It is usual to decry this story-telling element in pictures. Mr. John C. Van Dyke, for example, in his book on 'Art for Art's sake' speaks of 'The Angelus' as having a 'literary interest crowded into it to the detriment of pictorial effect.' We can not see in the picture, he says, 'the sound of the bells of the Angelus coming on the evening air, from the distant church-spire.' 'We must go to the catalogue to find the meaning of those two peasants standing with bowed heads in a potato field.' And he says, that, 'two thousand years hence, with the ringing of church-bells abandoned and forgotten fifteen hundred years before, we would not comprehend and appreciate the picture as we now do a Parthenon marble.' Mr. Van Dyke forgets that the Parthenon marble itself also tells a story; and that it is because we know the story well, because Greece and its religion, its social life and its art are familiar that we comprehend and appreciate at once even a fragment of that country's creations. The fragment arouses our recognition -pleasure, and most strongly. It appeals to us also by what it tells of the past; it tells it easily because we are full of a knowledge which makes us fit to receive it. Suppose Greece and her temples forgotten, a Parthenon marble would be beautiful still, probably, but it would be no more easily comprehended and appreciated than would 'the Angelus' if church-bells had passed out of human memory. All pictures are illustrative; all are story-telling in a measure. It is inevitable that they should be so. They can not, as Mr. Van Dyke seems to wish to have them do, 'show deep love of nature per se, independent of human association.' The question of illustrative intent is entirely one of degree. Nor is there any rule whereby one can say how much of this element a picture should contain. There it is; there it must be. It is good, and we may rejoice that it adds its force to that of the other factors in the delights of picture-gazing.