Will lighting ever become a fine art?  Will it ever be able alone to arouse emotional man as do the fine arts?  Are the powers of light sufficiently great to enthrall mankind without the aid of form, music, action, or spoken words?  It is safer to answer “yes” than “no” to these questions.  Painting has reached a high place as an art and this art is the expressiveness of secondary or reflected light reinforced by imitation forms, which by a combination of light and drawing comprise the “subjects.”  A painting is a momentary expression of light, a cross-section of something mobile, such as nature, thought, or action.  Light has the essential qualifications of painting with the advantages of a greater range of brightness, of greater purity of colors, and the great potentiality of mobility.  If lighting becomes a fine art it will doubtless be related to painting somewhat in the same manner that architecture is akin to sculpture.  With the introduction of mobility it will borrow something from the arts of succession and especially from music.

The art of lighting in its present infancy is leaning upon established arts, just as the infant learns to walk alone by first depending upon support.  The use of color in painting developed slowly, being supported for centuries by the strength of drawing or subject.  The landscapes of a century ago were dull, for color was employed hesitatingly and sparingly.  The colors in the portraits of the past merely represented the gorgeous dress of bygone days.  But the painter of the present shows that color is beginning to be used for itself and that the painter is no longer hesitant concerning its power to go hand in hand with drawing.  Drafting and coloring are now in partnership, the former having given up guardianship when the latter reached maturity.

Lighting is now an accompaniment of the drama, of the dance, of architecture, of decoration, and of music.  It has been a background or a part of the “atmosphere” excepting occasionally when some one with imagination and daring has given it the leading role.  Even in its infancy it has on occasions performed admirably almost without any aid.  The bursting rocket, the marvelous effects at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, and some of the exhibitions on the theatrical stage are glimpses of the potentiality of light.  To fall back upon the terminology of music, these may be glimmerings of light-symphonies.

Harmony is simultaneity and a painting in this respect is a chord—­a momentary expression fixed in material media.  A melody of light requires succession just as the melody in music.  The restless colors of the opal comprise a light melody like the songs of birds.  The gorgeous splendor of the sunset compares in magnitude and in its various moods with the symphony orchestra and its powers.  Throughout nature are to be found gentle chords, beautiful melodies and powerful symphonies of light and this music of light exhibits the complexity and structure analogous