BREADTH, in art, is a term which, though often used in a very indefinite manner, is not without a definite meaning. It signifies that peculiar disposal of the background of a picture which, without sacrificing or even concealing details, gives to the whole unity and harmony of effect. With the older landscape-painters, it was a common fault to produce the effect of distance either by a certain trick of light and shadow, or by one uniform hazy color in which the individual objects were entirely lost to view, and breadth became vacancy. In this respect, their pictures contrast unfavorably with those of such modern painters as Turner, of whom Mr. Ruskin has very truly said that "the conception of every individual inch of distance is absolutely clear and complete in the master's mind—a separate picture fully worked out: but yet, clearly and fully as the idea is formed, just so much of it is given, and no more, as nature would have allowed us to feel or see; just so much as would enable a spectator of experience and knowledge to understand almost every minute fragment of separate detail, but appears to the unpracticed and careless eye just what a distance of nature's own would appear—an unintelligible mass. Not one line out of the millions there is without meaning, yet there
is "not one which is not affected and disguised by the dazzle and indecision of distance. No form is made out, and yet no form is unknown." On the subject of breadth Mr. Ruskin has, moreover, the following very judicious remarks: "It were to be wished that our writers on art would not dwell so frequently on the necessity of breadth, without explaining what it means, and that we had more constant reference made to the princi ple, which I can only remember having seen once clearly explained and insisted on— that breadth is not vacancy. Generalization is unity, not destruction of parts; and com position is not annihilation, but arrangement of materials. The breadth which unites the.truths of nature with her harmonies is meritorious and beautiful, but the breadth which annihilates those truths by the million is not painting nature, but painting over her; and so the masses which result from right concords and relations of details are sublime and impressive, but the masses which result from the eclipse of details are con temptible and painful."