“I was for a year at the Art League, and two years in Paris. In Paris
we used to sit in rows at canvases, like this. We saw our teacher
for half an hour, twice a day. He would come and spend less than two
minutes beside the chair of each of us, and what would he do? Point out
a mistake, or a defect, or, rarely, an excellence, which, if we had any
talent at all, we could see perfectly well for ourselves. This last is
the important point.
“If you are a born illustrator, you will know your own mistakes better
than anyone can tell you about them. If you do not see your mistakes,
nobody can ever help you to be anything. All the teachers in all the
art schools cannot help you if you cannot see your mistakes. I said I
could help a pupil to know his own limitations. Well, that is the way.
If your own work looks quite finished and perfect to you, or if it
looks wrong but you cannot tell exactly what is the inaccuracy or lack,
you may depend upon it that you were not born to be an illustrator.
“That is true in anything. The writer, the sculptor and the musician
have to stand this test. What sort of musician would a man be who
could not detect a discord? You can see it easily enough with that
illustration. Well, your illustrator must see a bad bit of drawing, or
bad composition, just as quickly as a born piano player can tell if
he has played without expression. It is just as true in art as it is
in ordinary matters. The snow-shoveler must know when his sidewalk is
clean, the typewriter when the words are correctly spelled, the cook
when her pastry tastes right,—or they are all discharged forthwith.
Well, one expects no less of an illustrator than of a cook.”