But, at the same time, his weakness lies in this very eminence. The man who had passed through the high-school of the old masters with the greatest success was entered as a student for life, and never took the professorial chair himself. Helferich has called him the impersonated spirit of the galleries, the spirit which is centuries old. This indicates the direction which must be taken by the further development of painting. A really new and independent art must finally emancipate itself from the Renaissance colouring, the tone of Church painting, and the _chiaroscuro_ of pictures painted behind the variegated panes of lattice-windows. It must be evident that the methods of the old Spanish and old Dutch schools, excellent in themselves, were fully in keeping with strange scenes of martyrdom or quiet interiors with peasants and fat matrons, but that they could not possibly be employed in pictures of artisans beneath the free sky, nor in those of elegant interiors of our own days, nor of pale and delicate _Parisiennes_ attired in silks, beings of a new epoch. A different period necessitates different methods. It is not merely that the subjects of art change, but the way in which they are handled must bear the marks of the period. Nature should no longer be studied through the prism of old pictures, and the phrase _beau par la vérité_ must be exalted to a principle applying to colour also. The pre-Raphaelites and Menzel were the first to become alive to the problem. They were never taken captive by the tones of the early masters, but placed themselves always in conscious opposition to the artists of older ages. The battle against "brown sauce" even formed an essential point in the programme of the Brotherhood. They protested against conventional colouring as violently as against the sweeping line taught by traditional rules of beauty. [Illustration: _Quantin, Paris._ HOKUSAI. FUSIYAMA SEEN THROUGH A SAIL.]