In considering the plastic arts in relation to subject, the large question of their function as illustration comes into view. An immense range of art, from that which deals with religion and history down to the drawings in our comic journals, evidently presupposes in the spectator’s mind a background of information with which the work of art itself does not and cannot furnish him. A work of this kind must certainly be said to rely for part of its interest upon something which is not in the picture. It is therefore not a pure art product; it is a complex of artistic with historical or religious or critical interest; but so long as we do not confuse the different elements it would be absurd to say that they may not be legitimately united. Still, the subject of a picture, as a picture, remains always something which is in the picture. It would therefore be a contradiction in terms to speak of a poor picture on a great subject. If the painting be poor, the subject is poor—the painter’s intention may have been great, but he has not expressed it. A reference to portraiture may help to make the matter clear. An indifferent portrait of a person held in special love or veneration by me would, if it were not so bad as to belie him, have an interest and value for me which it would entirely lack in the case of one who knew or cared nothing for the person represented. This superadded interest, the interest which travels through the painting to some concrete person or thing behind it, must be thought away before a work of art can be judged as a work of art. The application to religious or historical art is obvious. Here is a painting in which an uninformed observer sees a woman and an angel. What is he to make of it? The painter is evidently representing a moment of great exaltation and significance. The woman is receiving a message; and the painter can tell us, within the limits of his art, not what the message is, but of what kind it is—sad, or solemn, or joyful, or tragic. He can make all the accessories of the theme, the lighting, colour, etc., reinforce his conception, and the observer can discern, if he has intelligence in such things, that the painter is putting before us his conception of the way in which a soul conceives a mighty destiny. _That is the subject_; the universal idea, although the label on the frame be ‘The Annunciation.’ I hope it will not be thought that I am in any degree seeking to disparage the beautiful art of the Impressionists in maintaining that the highest art is that in which there is most of life. Life is so abundant and rich that one can find it almost anywhere in sufficient measure to delight and to enchant. Moreover, the great laws by which life acts and endures, the laws of rhythm, contrast, harmony, can be amply suggested in the plastic arts even when dealing with the most familiar things of earth, and these exalt and glorify any theme.