Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/420

416 To the story element in pictures as a cause of our enjoyment of them we must add another element closely allied to it, that of history. The historical picture is always a story picture; but it usually tells to an observer more than a mere story. If we are ourselves already familiar with the incident depicted, we gain from looking at the picture the recognition-pleasure already noted. If we are not familiar with it we take pleasure in adding to our historical knowledge the particular incident set forth in the picture. That is, in looking at historical pictures we either pride ourselves on a recognition which assures us that we are so far well-informed, or we please ourselves by adding to the sum of our knowledge.

Knowledge of the life of an artist, of his peculiarities, of striking incidents in his career, of the country and the time in which he lived—this knowledge adds much to the pleasure gained from pictures. A glance at one, if it is recognized as by an artist of whom the observer already has some knowledge, gives first the pleasure of identification or naming—not different from that which one has who can name on sight a distant mountain peak—and next, through association the pleasure of recalling, even though vaguely, facts in the artist's life. Much of the pleasure won from pictures lies in this identification-emotion.

The pleasures thus far noted as derived from pictures are not derived from pictures only. We get the same enjoyment from looking at scenes upon the stage, at photographs of nature, at nature herself, at incidents in real life about us and from poetry, story and literature in general. This is equivalent to saying, and the saying is a true one, that most' of the enjoyment of pictures is due to effects not at all associated with or flowing from 'art' as that word is generally used by artists. The artist himself, however, is by no means free from the influence of the factors already enumerated. From time to time, in his development as an artist, he has undoubtedly tried to free himself from what seemed to him the embarrassing limitations of the habit, formed in youth, of getting from pictures pleasures born of fashion, curiosity, sympathy and story. He never succeeds in doing this. He sees all pictures as he does all art—as I have said in discussing the presence of the story element in all art—through the medium of his own past experiences and of his own character. He sees them first as an animal, as a social being, as a person fashioned by the age and country in which he lives. As an artist, however, as a person skilled in his calling, the things that usually most interest him are technique, design, color, light and shade, line, and manner of laying the paint on the canvas. It has probably always been the fashion for artists themselves to speak rather scornfully of the interests aroused by and the pleasure taken in pictures from the point of view of the story or of