subject_, although the title of each of their productions, if catalogued,
might conveniently be called "Orpheus and Eurydice." Each has had his own
conception of the theme, each his own professional technique in handling
his chosen medium, each his own habits of brain, each, in a word, has
found his own subject. "Are these children who are playing in the
sunlight," said Fromentin, "or is it a place in the sunlight in
which children are playing?" One is a "figure" subject, that is to say,
while the other is a landscape subject.

The whole topic of the "provinces" of the arts becomes hopelessly academic
and sterile if one fails to keep his eye upon the individual artist, whose
free choice of a subject is conditioned solely by his own artistic
interest in rendering such aspects of any theme as his own medium of
expression will allow him to represent. Take one of the most beautiful
objects in nature, a quiet sea. Is this a "painter-like" subject?
Assuredly, yet the etcher has often rendered the effect of a quiet sea in
terms of line, as a pastellist has rendered it in terms of color, and a
musician in terms of tone-feeling, and a poet in terms of tone-feeling
plus thought. Each one of them finds something for himself, selects
his own "subject," from the material presented by the quiet sea, and
whatever he may find belongs to him. We declaim against the confusion of
the genres, the attempt to render in the terms of one art what belongs, as
we had supposed, to another art, and we are often right in our protest.
Yet artists have always been jumping each other's claims, and the sole
test of the lawfulness of the procedure is the success of the result. If
the border-foray of the impressionist or imagist proves successful, well
and good, but a triumphant raid should not be mistaken for the steady
lines of the main campaign.