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Lionardos clear aim that art should present the most beautiful and powerful effect, is set aside. Yet he saw it in an artistic use of the real facts and of all the facts of nature. That combination of ability and realism was to him the idea of a picture. I see the Chinese old painting exhibit at Montross. Here poetry, idea pure and simple, not realism, is the aim of painting. It is painting too, no doubt, but the contrary to the Italian idea. It is approached by those present tendencies in Paris towards reduction and simplification of the natural facts and realistic procedure of the art. Manet commenced it. Monet carried the realistic principle to an extreme at expense of the pictorial. The pictorial is the cardinal of all painting, removed equally from realistic illustration (the fotografic) and from the mere calligraphic or symbolistic, and around its perfect realization all good painting must revolve, whatever the aim.--

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