The Mind of the Artist | Page 3

everything I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy, is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way.... To the eye of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.
Blake.
VIII
Painting is nothing but the art of expressing the invisible by the visible.
Fromentin.
IX
The picture I speak of is a small one, and represents merely the figure of a woman, clad to the hands and feet with a green and grey raiment, chaste and early in its fashion, but exceedingly simple.
She is standing: her hands are held together lightly, and her eyes set earnestly open.
The face and hands in this picture, though wrought with great delicacy, have the appearance of being painted at once, in a single sitting: the drapery is unfinished. As soon as I saw the figure, it drew an awe upon me, like water in shadow. I shall not attempt to describe it more than I have already done, for the most absorbing wonder of it was its literality. You knew that figure, when painted, had been seen; yet it was not a thing to be seen of men.
Rossetti.
X
A great work of high art is a noble theme treated in a noble manner, awakening our best and most reverential feelings, touching our generosity, our tenderness, or disposing us generally to seriousness--a subject of human endurance, of human justice, of human aspiration and hope, depicted worthily by the special means art has in her power to use. In Michael Angelo and Raphael we have high art; in Titian we have high art; in Turner we have high art. The first appeals to our highest sensibilities by majesty of line, the second mainly by dignified serenity, the third by splendour especially, the Englishman by a combination of these qualities, but, lacking the directly human appeal to human sympathies, his work must be put on a lower level.
Watts.
XI
THE SIX CANONS OF ART
Rhythmic vitality, anatomical structure, conformity with nature, suitability of colouring, artistic composition, and finish.
Hsieh Ho (Chinese, sixth century A.D.).
XII
In painting, the most troublesome subject is man, then landscape, then dogs and horses, then buildings, which being fixed objects are easy to manage up to a certain point, but of which it is difficult to get finished pictures.
Ku K'ai-Chih (Chinese, fourth century A.D.).
XIII
First it is necessary to know what this sort of imitation is, and to define it.
Definition:
It is an imitation made with lines and with colours on some plane surface of everything that can be seen under the sun. Its object is to give delight.
Principles which may be learnt by all men of reason:
No visible object can be presented without light.
No visible object can be presented without a transparent medium.
No visible object can be presented without a boundary.
No visible object can be presented without colour.
No visible object can be presented without distance.
No visible object can be presented without an instrument.
What follows cannot be learnt, it is born with the painter.
Nicholas Poussin.
XIV
"In painting, and above all in portraiture," says Madame Cave in her charming essay, "it is soul which speaks to soul: and not knowledge which speaks to knowledge."
This observation, more profound perhaps than she herself was aware, is an arraignment of pedantry in execution. A hundred times I have said to myself, "Painting, speaking materially, is nothing but a bridge between the soul of the artist and that of the spectator."
Delacroix.
XV
The art of painting is perhaps the most indiscreet of all the arts. It is an unimpeachable witness to the moral state of the painter at the moment when he held the brush. The thing he willed to do he did: that which he only half-heartedly willed can be seen in his indecisions: that which he did not will at all is not to be found in his work, whatever he may say and whatever others may say. A distraction, a moment's forgetfulness, a glow of warmer feeling, a diminution of insight, relaxation of attention, a dulling of his love for what he is studying, the tediousness of painting and the passion for painting, all the shades of his nature, even to the lapses of his sensibility, all this is told by the painter's work as clearly as if he were telling it in our ears.
Fromentin.
XVI
The first merit of a picture is to feast the eyes. I don't mean that the intellectual element is not also necessary; it is as with fine poetry ... all the intellect in the world won't prevent it from being bad if it grates harshly on the ear. We talk of having an ear;