is deeply imbued with thought and reason. Little windows
scrupulously spaced look out upon vistas where everything
is held in equilibrium, upon a miniature universe subjected
to an inner sense of symmetry. There is in Italian painting,
from the fresh-tinted frescoes of Giotto to the flowing har-
monies of Tiepolo, no marked departure from this essential
principle. And while color plays an important rôle in these
compositions, notably in the work of the Venetians, it
rarely attains ascendency over line and form.

That which, without risk of misapprehension, may be
termed the scholastic element in Italian art assumes, with
the work of the Frenchmen, a more scientific application.
The chief contribution made by latter-day France to the art
of painting has been the development of the theory and prac-
tice of what is known as impressionism. While there have
been reactions against impressionism, they have proved noth-
ing more than tributes to a method without which modern art
could scarcely have come into existence. The entire pan-
orama of contemporary landscape painting bases itself upon
impressionism. We no longer, as with the Italians, gaze
through narrow little panels upon a remote, ordered world.
We are at last out of doors flooded with sunshine. We were
brought there by means of the patient analysis of light and
the application of certain definite scientific principles to the
problem of atmospheric painting.

If the art of the Italians is philosophic, and that of the
Frenchmen, especially Manet, Monet, and their successors,
illumined by scientific clairvoyance, it is but reasonable to
infer that the work of the Scandinavians should betray
characteristics equally distinctive. The inhabitants of the
Northern peninsula, cut off from the main current of Con-
tinental cultural development, and living in close community
with nature, have evolved an aesthetic expression that may
be termed indigenous. In painting, sculpture, and archi-
tecture similar conditions have produced similar results.
While it is manifest that the art of Sweden, Denmark, and
Norway is by no means identical, it nevertheless shares cer-
tain specific affiliations. The differences are those of degree,

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