In a similar manner we must bring our minds to bear upon the problem of the framed picture in connection with the decoration of a room. Our rooms are not only lighter but more spacious than the old-fashioned Dutch parlours, with their leaded panes; so it was merely a hereditary taint in our painters that made them cling so long to the ancestral style of painting, in spite of the altered conditions of the lighting and size of modern rooms. Impressionism did at any rate bring colour more into harmony with the improved lighting of our rooms; yet in every art the sins of the fathers are visited upon their children. The Impressionists discovered atmosphere, and so they denied the existence of lines, and the outlines vanished into thin air; they discovered light, and therefore they likewise denied the existence of colours. Then by means of light the colours were analysed, and patches of colour were decomposed into a heterogeneous conglomeration of luminous points. The Impressionists simply revelled in the most delicate nuances of vague tones of indefinite colour, and as they eliminated from their work all significant lines and all strong and frank colours, they spoilt to a great extent the decorative effect of their pictures when viewed at a distance: their paintings from that standpoint are often nothing more than a daub of violet and yellow, without form and void. [Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._ BOECKLIN. THE ISLE OF THE DEAD.] Thus towards the close of the nineteenth century there came under discussion a new problem again in the matter of picture painting. The question arose as to how decorative qualities might be arrived at in painting pure and simple. The way seems to be pointed out in the works of Moreau and Boecklin; the way in which they placed side by side beautiful strong colours in broad masses, and invariably so as to avoid all discord, and combined the most conflicting tones into a harmonious whole in a manner which words fail one to describe. It was delightful, after having looked so long at nothing but the subtle, delicate nuances of the Impressionists, to turn again to these full-toned colours ringing out their deep and mighty harmonies.