The busy man in 1999 took a soup-pill or a concentrated meat-pill for his noon day lunch. He dispatched these while working at his desk. His fair typewriter enjoyed her office lunch in the same manner. Ice-cream pills were very popular,—all flavors, also the fruit pellets. These the blonde and brunette typewriters of 1999 preferred to the bouillon or consommé pellets.
CHAPTER XXII.
The Fine Arts in 1999.
The art of Color-photography perfected in 1920. The world’s great artists witness the death-knell of art. The doom of cheap chromos. Nature paints her own matchless pictures. The sculptor’s art remains supreme in 1999. No machine can ever chisel a Venus de Milo. No substitute found for the human voice.
Painting, in 1999, had become a lost art, doomed, alas, never to revive. The glorious canvases of the old masters were still highly treasured. There still existed artists who threw their entire souls into beautiful paintings, superb creations of their artistic minds, true in every detail to nature. Although painting as a high art still existed in 1999, yet, as a profession and a means of obtaining a livelihood, it died very much after the manner of wood engraving, when the half tone process was perfected and had come into general use.
In the year 1912, after many struggles and disappointments, Prof. Deweyton, of the Montpelier, (Vt.) University, perfected the process of color-photography. This coveted secret, at last, had been wrested from nature. For centuries her beauties had been admired but never had she consented to transfer her own original colors on photographic plates and canvas.
When the art of color photography was perfected, the world then had little use for The Passing of the Artist. easels, palettes and painters. Nature became the Artist of the world and none dared to dispute her sway. At first it was with a feeling of sadness that the world parted with the art profession and its devotees, men and women who had imparted to canvas the world’s historic scenes, the portraits of the world’s great men, enchanting, noble women. The works of these great artists had delighted the children of men for many centuries. Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo, Correggio, Guido, and other famous artists, had bequeathed their glorious treasures of art to a grateful world, and even color photographic pictures done by nature’s own hand cannot rob these eminent artists of an iota of their fame. It was sad to think that after the discovery of color-photography great artists would lose their prestige, for none can rival nature in her own art.
This new process of Nature painting rendered to the world an invaluable service by The Chromo Affliction Subsides. driving out of the market a flood of cheap pictures and chromos of the most inferior class; pictures that had crept into many homes simply because they were cheap. These afflictions, too often paraded with flash moulding on the walls of our homes, were driven out by color-photography. In 1950 the old-style chromos were rare; they quickly disappeared from the habitations of men.
Through the specially constructed cameras of Prof. Deweyton, life size pictures Glorious Sunset Views. were secured, large landscape scenes, magnificent marine views, were reproduced with the exact colors of nature. Superb sunset views, in a matchless wealth of color, a revelry of gold and crimson, were transferred to canvas by natural process in 1920. This process became the great art triumph of the twentieth century. No human hand had ever attempted with any hope of success to reproduce on canvas the bewitching and mystic effects of the gloaming. Nature with her master hand, dared to reproduce, on canvas, this most difficult of all artistic studies. Michael Angelo, the supreme chief of all living or dead artists, never attempted to reproduce on canvas Vesuvius in active eruption. No human power could do the faintest justice to such a scene and no master of the art ever cared to risk his reputation in the attempt. But in color-photographs Nature reproduced the exact colors of the seething flames as they belched forth from the quivering crater. In 1930 a magnificent picture of Vesuvius, Ætna or Stramboli in active eruption could be purchased for the pitiable sum of $50. So perfectly natural were the volcanic flames that the effect was startling. The lava Could Almost Smell the Sulphur. running down the mountain side apparently threatened to set fire to the very walls of the room. A picture of this kind, a feeble representation painted by some eminent artist, would cost over $10,000.