THE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN ART. 25

How strangely this art philosophy contrasts with that
•characteristic of the modern West, so clearly set forth in
Browning's poem:

" But why not do as well as say.........paint these

Just as they are, careless what cones of it ?

God's works—paint any one......

......Have you noticed, now,

Yon cullion's hanging face ? A bit of chalk,

And trust me but you should though! Bow much more

If I drew higher things with the same truth I

That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place,

Interpret God to all of you! "

For such realists, this last is not the function of art;
but to ITS it seems that the very essential function of art
is to * interpret God to all of you !'

Burne-Jones almost alone amongst artists of the
modern "West seems to have understood art as we in India
understand it. To a critic who named as a drawback in
the work of a certain artist, that his pictures looked as if
he had done them only out of his head, Burne-Jones
replied, " The place where I think pictures ought to come
irom."

Of impressionism as understood in the West, and the

• claim that breadth is gained by lack of finish, Burne- Jones
spoke as an Eastern artist might have clone. Breadth

• could be got " by beautiful finish and bright, clear colour well-
matched, rather than by muzzy. They (the Impressionists)
do make atmosphere, but they don't make anything else :
they don't make beauty, they clon't make design, they
don't make idea, they don't make anything but atmos-
phere—and I don't think that's enough—I don't think it's
very much," Of realism he spoke thus: " Realism ?
Direct transcript from Nature ? I suppose by the time the

• photographic artist' can give us all the colours as cor-
rectly as the shapes, people will begin to find out that the