Berkeley also wrote,
You would have us think, then, that light, shades, and colors, variously combined, answer to the several articulations of sound in language; and that, by means thereof, all sorts of objects are suggested by words or sounds through the ear: that is, neither from necessary deduction to the judgement, nor from similitude to the fancy, but purely and solely from experience, custom, and habit. (from Alciphron)For Berkeley, visual perception is a process of recognition of things previously experienced. La Farge reflected the same ideas in his lectures given at the Metropolitan Museum, published as Considerations on Painting, where he said,
If, therefore, we cannot separate ourselves from what we see; if our energies are necessary to help the artist to impress us; if what he appeals to us about is not an actual sight, but merely our sight of our memories in it, so that we could not put these things to a man born blind on his first recovery of sight, we know that it is because at least a great part of the influence exerted by the artist is the recall to our own experience of our own experience of our own memory.