interiors of his Gothic cathedrals on broad canvases of insignificant height, which causes the pointed arches and vaulted structures of the foreground to be cut off at the top.  In spite of the mathematically correct drawing the general plan of the picture therefore reveals that the age of Peter Neefs no longer had a correct eye for the principle, for the spirit, of the Gothic, otherwise the master would not have cut off precisely the characteristic terminations of the columns and vaultings by the arbitrary horizontal line of the frame.  Thus, in very truth, Neefs paints rigid Gothic, but in his pictures we can recognize the seventeenth century which, at the most, could see the medieval forms correctly with the outer but not with the inner eye.

All the outlines of the ancient statues swell up under the pencil of the draughtsman of that day, every muscle becomes coarser, fuller, more fleshy, although the draughtsman undoubtedly believed he had reproduced it with mathematical exactitude.  The Grecian goddess no longer looks so demure.  She has grown to be a coquette; the Virgin has become a wife, because the age lacked the virgin eye, because Rubens’ full-bosomed women’s figures and Buonarotti’s swelling play of the muscles obtruded themselves everywhere, not only before the creative vision but also before the inner receptive vision.  Mignon, at that time, painted flowers preferably in the stage of their most fully developed splendor, and fruits succulently ripe to bursting; he despised closed buds.  This is something more than a mere fancy of this particular master; it is a token of the eye of the whole generation, which was dull as regards the beauty of buds, not only in the flower-piece but in all subjects of the plastic arts.

This changing play of “vision” takes place everywhere that beauty meets the gaze, but principally in the case of the beautiful in nature, because this, as such, must first be conceived by the vision.  The eye for the beautiful in art remains more constant in comparison.

In youth one has a totally different eye for natural scenery than in old age.  This is the reason why we often feel greatly disappointed when we behold a familiar region after a long time.  There is no more thankless task than to try to convince another of the beauty of natural scenery.

One tries, as it were, to implant in him one’s own eye—­an effort which rarely succeeds.  So it is, furthermore, the business of the landscape painter to implant his own eye for natural scenery in every one who looks upon his pictures, in such a manner that the latter shall get out of the landscape the same beauties which the eye of the artist put into it.  If he succeeds in this, one must at least concede that he has worked clearly, logically, and conscious of his effects.