It is always interesting and profitable to get the views of workmen on
their work, and on the principles which guide them in it; and in
bringing together these sayings of artists Mrs. Binyon has done a very
useful thing. A great number of opinions are presented, which, in their
points of agreement and disagreement, bring before us in the most
charming way the wide range of the artist's thought, and enable us to
realise that the work of the great ones is not founded on vague caprice
or so-called inspiration, but on sure intuitions which lead to definite
knowledge; not merely the necessary knowledge of the craftsman, which
many have possessed whose work has failed to hold the attention of the
world, but also a knowledge of nature's laws.
"The Mind of the Artist" speaks for itself, and really requires no word
of introduction. These opinions as a whole, seem to me to have a harmony
and consistency, and to announce clearly that the directing impulse must
be a desire for expression, that art is a language, and that the thing
to be said is of more importance than the manner of saying it. This
desire for expression is the driving-force of the artist; it informs,
controls, and animates his method of working; it governs the hand and
eye. That figures should give the impression of life and spontaneity,
that the sun should shine, trees move in the wind, and nature be felt
and represented as a living thing--this is the firm ground in art; and
in those who have this feeling every effort will, consciously or
unconsciously, lead towards its realisation. It should be the
starting-point of the student. It does not absolve him from the need of
taking the utmost pains, from making the most searching study of his
model; rather it impels him, in the examination of whatever he feels
called on to represent, to look for the vital and necessary things: and
the artist will carry his work to the utmost degree of completion
possible to him, in the desire to get at the heart of his theme.
"Truth to nature," like a wide mantle, shelters us all, and covers not
only the outward aspect of things, but their inner meanings and the
emotions felt through them, differently by each individual. And the
inevitable differences of point of view, which one encounters in this
book, are but small matters compared with the agreement one finds on
essential things; I may instance particularly the stress laid on the
observation of nature. Whether the artist chooses to depict the present,
the past, or to express an abstract ideal, he must, if his work is to
live, found it on his own experience of nature. But he must at every
step also refer to the past. He must find the road that the great ones
have made, remembering that the problems they solved were the same that
he has before him, and that now, no less than in Dürer's time, "art is
hidden in nature: it is for the artist to drag her forth."