it cannot penetrate
directly, receive its gracious influence in this way and always under a
subtler law which governs its direct shining--by gradation.

Most good pictures are produced in the medium range and the ends of the
scale are reserved for incisive duty. A series of gradations in which the
grace and flow of line and tone are made to serve the forcible stroke
which we see, presents a combination of subtlety and strength. Again the
art of Inness affords illustration.

There are three forms of this _quality:_ that in which light shows a
gradual diminution of power, as seen upon a wall near a window, or in
white smoke issuing from a funnel; that in which the color or force of a
group of objects weaken as they recede, as may be observed in fog; and
that in which the arrangement secures, in disconnected objects a regular
succession of graded measures. In each case the pictorial value of this
element is apparent. The landscape painter may avail himself of it as the
figure painter does of his screen, counting on the cloud shadow to temper
and unite disjointed items of his picture. He makes use of it where
leading lines are wanting or are undesirable, or to give an additional
accent to light by such contrast or to introduce a note of dark by
suppressing the tone of an isolated object. Gradation is the sweetening
touch in art, ofttimes making unity of discordant and unartful elements.
The vision will pierce the shadow to find the light beyond. It will dwell
longest on the lightest point and believe this more brilliant than it is
if opposed by an accent of dark which is the lowest note in a dark
gradation.

Turner and Claude often brought the highest light and deepest dark
together in close opposition through a series of big gradations of
objects, the most light-giving device known in painting. The introduction
of a shadow through the foreground or middle distance, over which the
vision travels to the light beyond, always gives great depth; another of
the devices in landscape painting frequently met with in the work of
Claude, Ruysdael, Corot, Vandevelde, Cuyp, Inness, Wyant, Ranger, and all
painters of landscape who attain light by the use of a graded scale of
contrasts. A cumulative gradation which suddenly stops has the same force
in light and shade as a long line which suddenly changes into a short line
of opposed direction. They are both equivalent to a pause in music,
awakening an attention at such a poi