_ART IN ITS RELATIONSHIP TO EVERYDAY LIFE_
[Illustration: I] DO not suppose many, amongst even observant people
(unless they take the trouble to investigate the matter specially), can
realise what an important factor art has become to the most trivial
object of everyday life, or how impossible it is for us to do without
its aid at every turn.
By art I mean the embellishment or beautifying of articles of utility
or necessity, and the imitation of nature as far as it is possible for
us to copy or translate the beautiful and perfect so lavishly spread
about us, and bring it within the scope of our hourly necessities.
As an instinct, this craving after the beautiful is developed very early
in man and woman. The first instinct of the child, of course, is for
food, but the second will be for ornament; it cries for its mother's
milk first, and when satisfied with this craving, next becomes attracted
towards the fringes and buttons of its mother's dress, or the pendant
dangling from the end of its father's watch-chain.
To gratify this early taste, the baby becomes possessor of a gum-stick;
but I very much doubt if the baby has yet been born who would be
satisfied with a plain, unadorned bit of stiff indiarubber, if it can
have its choice between this and the attractive carved coral, with its
ornaments of glittering bells.
Amongst early nations--our own for instance, which I put upon the same
level as the aboriginals of Australia or the natives of New Guinea--we
find the same instinct for art and observation of nature: there is no
nation so low or primitive that it does not indulge in ornament.
It is also a curious point in natives, that, the more primitive they
are, the more refined they are in their taste, the nearer they are to
nature and each other; it is the half-civilised only who depart from the
imitation of what they see about them, and indulge in eccentricities and
extravagances.
This directness and simplicity stamp each effort of the child and the
savage when they attempt to express their ideas--ideas which are
prompted by what they see; and the same directness and simplicity are
the sign-marks on all the most perfect work of the finished artist,
whether he is the designer of pictures, churches, pleasure-grounds, or
the costumier who strives to cover the defects of his wealthy patron.
Talking about clothes and the near affinity between nature and art--even
in this minor department I remember once the great Parisian autocrat of
costumes, Mr. Worth, coming to Melrose especially to study the ruins of
that fine abbey to get ideas for future designs in ladies' dresses. His
system is to look at the woman who comes to him for advice in this
all-important matter, see how she walks backwards and forwards, studying
as she does so all her good points and defects; then, being a poet in
his own line, he imagines her as the ideal woman, and, without troubling
himself about her own tastes or inclinations, he creates a dress in
shape and colour which will make her as nearly approaching to his ideal
woman as she can be made. This is his great secret and the cause of his
success and popularity: he always strives to work up to his ideal of
beauty and the perfection of nature in the most direct and easiest way
possible.
As proof of this, a friend of mine once went to him to get a costume.
This lady could never get any dress to suit her; something was for ever
amiss with either the tone or shape. Nature had not been over kind to
her either in form or colour, and her dressmakers, as she did herself,
always attired her according to the fashion of the hour, which, of
course, not being originated for her specially, could not be expected to
suit her.
Worth was at last caught in a moment of leisure by this applicant, who
had lingered about the threshold of his palace of fashion for some weary
weeks before she could gain her point.
The great man looked her over critically, as one might examine a horse
for sale at a fair; then he made her walk before him twice, and, telling
her 'that would do,' consigned her to an assistant, who took her
measurements, her name and address, and gave her a receipt for her fee
of one hundred guineas.
A week or so passed, and then the dreamt-about costume came to hand. As
the lady remarked, 'It was the plainest and shabbiest-looking frock that
ever I saw, _but when I tried it on I looked better than ever I had done
in my life_.'
Worth's idea suited this lady because it was fashioned only for her, but
ten chances to one it would not have suited anyone else. Why?--because
there are no replicas in nature.
This is where a ruling fashion is so ridiculous; it may answer the one
who is important enough to bring it into vogue, but it cannot possibly,
for the reason I have stated, answer anyone else.
Look along the street at the faces and figures which are constantly
hurrying past, each one different in nose, eyes, mouth, expression, and
gait; it is wonderful how it can be, but so it is! Look at any park, you
cannot find two oak trees alike, nor even two blades of grass.
It is this variety which makes the world so charming, and the world's
Maker so worthy of our profoundest adoration; it is all the perfection
of art and limitless design, before which we may abase ourselves with
proud humility as being a portion of this great originality, and try to
imitate some of it with confidence: for, depend upon it, this infinite
variety does not stop with outside objects, but is carried on within to
our minds, thoughts, and observations. As there are no two objects
alike, so no two onlookers can see the same object exactly in the same
way, or reflect exactly alike; therefore we must stand apart from all
others and be original, whether we wish to be or not.
This is the consolation which I would give to young artists who may
imagine, because they are born in the nineteenth century, that they are
born a few centuries too late to make their mark in the world. We are
never too late for anything unless we make ourselves too late through
sloth or timidity; as long as we work with an intention we must always
move on, as we were intended to move on. Remember this when your hearts
are inclined to grow weak, and you fancy that you are going along too
slowly.
King Solomon thought that he knew everything and had been born too late
when he wrote 'There is nothing new under the sun,' yet after Solomon
came many others who discovered fresh objects to admire--Shakespeare and
Milton, and after them Carlyle and Ruskin; and still the busy minds keep
turning up fresh and new, fitting exactly to the day which has been made
for them. In Solomon's day the countless daisies opened their petals to
greet the sunbeam and closed them again at nightfall, each daisy
different from all other daisies, while the sparrows hopped about in all
their subtle varieties, as the daisies and sparrows have continued to
come and go down the ages, and as they must continue while this
ever-renovating world lasts, as fresh, as perfect, and as startlingly
new as when man first opened his eyes and beheld that wonderful nature
of which he was part and portion.
I hold that we have all original ideas, as much as Solomon or
Shakespeare had, if we like to use our own minds and our own eyes as
they did. We have all our limit, as they had theirs, for Solomon proved
that he had reached his limit, else he would never have written that
sentence; he had seen all that he could comprehend, and so gave the rest
up as vanity and vexation of spirit.
Job saw more than Solomon, for sorrow had opened his eyes and expanded
his senses, drawing him into the heart of nature, therefore he became a
wiser and, at the end, a happier man, dying while still a student of the
wonders all around him; and this is the religion which we must all seek
to embrace if we would advance in wisdom. We must begin, continue, and
end as students, with our comprehensions growing as we grow older, never
resting in our work or investigations, ever trying to grasp the lessons
set before us, and to express as far as we are able what we have learnt.
These lessons in art are constantly about us in our everyday life. We
walk through the forest in summer time, under the canopy of green
arches, with the upstanding boughs of trees spreading away until they
become indistinct in the shadowy distance. What does this suggest, if
not the grand cathedrals with their pillars and arched domes? and this
is what the early Fathers saw and tried to reproduce in their churches
and abbeys. We look up and see the clouds floating above us, sometimes
with shapes like cherubs and angels, at other times like demons and evil
spirits: so the old painters and poets watched, and got their ideas of
heaven and hell.
It is now more than twenty years since I first went amongst those people
whom we call savages. I mixed amongst the tribes of Australia, the South
Sea Islanders, and the Maoris. I had no better reason for going at first
than a boy's wish to see the world, when I began my wanderings, but I
was not long before I got a definite purpose, which has moved me ever
since.
I had taken lessons in drawing and painting before I left home,
otherwise I do not think my travels would have been of much service to
me. I also had a habit of not only sketching what struck me as peculiar
or useful, but of writing down carefully the descriptions of what I saw
as I went along.
At first I wrote down the observations at random, such as, if I saw a
sunset I would write something like this: 'Sun half only seen, vermilion
growing to glaze of lake, lower half purple spreading out to dun, upper
space ochre to orange with lemon; light edges of clouds near the sun,
and shadow sides of warm purple grey; above, green back space growing to
pearly grey, with rays shooting up cream-tinted, and filmy feathery
clouds creamy and flesh-coloured.'
This for the colours; then I would describe the shapes of the
cloud-masses from their likeness to something else. Sometimes they would
look like trees; then I thought what kind of tree they resembled, or it
might be a flying figure, with a distorted hunchback rushing after it.
As I followed these fancies it was wonderful what a tragic story that
sunset sometimes told me before I was done with it.
Once I was staying with a gentleman who added phrenology to his other
accomplishments. He asked me if I never tried to write poetry, and I
said, 'I had not'; to which he replied, 'Then try it, for I think you
have the gift.'
I sat down that night and attempted to make rhyme, but as I did not know
much about the rules, and had no subject, I cudgelled my brains for
words and rhymes without considering what was my theme, and therefore I
failed because I had nothing definite to write about.
As far as I can now remember, I think that my first attempt was a
love-poem; but as I had never been in love, and had no woman to stand
before me as a model, and no experience to serve me for the emotional
part, it was all vague, and the result was exactly what might have been
expected--meaningless words.
Had I contented myself with writing about what I saw and knew, I might
have made something.
And this was what I learnt afterwards, after many failures: never to
take up my brush or pen unless I had something definite to do--that is,
never to depend altogether upon inspirations; have the object first
vividly before me, and then it is not difficult to describe it, so long
as one does not try to improve upon the model, or go out of the way to
write or paint too finely.
I discovered, after a great many failures, that nature cannot be
improved upon, or even approached very near, and that the utmost my
imagination could do was to put into recognisable, if faulty, shape
whatever stood before my eyes, or the feelings which I myself
experienced--in fact, I learnt that what we call imagination is not the
gift of creating things out of chaos, but rather the remembering of
emotions and scenes and real personages, and that the more vividly I
could remember, the better work I did.
Then I knew that Shakespeare's mighty genius lay in his vast powers of
observation and in his direct simplicity of expression, and that the
great charm of his characters lay in their reality, for they were people
whom he had met and studied.
But I did not learn this all at once, as I have said. I had to go
through the preliminary stages of vanity and vexation of spirit, stages
when I wallowed in paint and ink, fancying myself heaven-inspired, and
beyond the necessity of using my eyes if I desired to do anything fine.
It was all very well for sketches to look somewhat like nature and to be
particular with them, but for finished work much more than this must be
accomplished. So I struggled on spoiling canvases and good paper, before
the age of common sense arrived, and never valuing the best works of
all, which were my direct notes and sketches from nature.
It was the aboriginals of Australia who put me first upon the right
track; a miserable, low-caste race they appear to those who see them
hanging about the white settlements, clad in fantastic rags, the
cast-off garments of the white fellow, and taking, with the rags, all
the debasing vices of the conquerors, but a very different race when in
their native wilds, with their mystic institutions and hereditary laws.
We are so apt to despise these black fellows, and to classify them all
as savages and benighted heathens, particularly if we know nothing about
them--as we did with the Indians and Peruvians, Chinese and Japanese,
before our eyes became opened to their wonderful arts and ancient
mysteries, their sciences, philosophies, and spiritualisms. Nowadays,
like all people who take extreme views, we are rushing into the opposite
direction, and adopting, with blind credulity, all which we formerly as
blindly despised.
Our markets are crowded with Eastern and Japanese wares; our apartments
are becoming Oriental, and crammed with those artistic realisations of
nightmare monstrosities which the opium-smoking children of the sun
delight in. Fortunately, we can purchase specimens of these eccentric
artists cheaply, and, for the money, marvellously well done; yet,
graceful or quaint as these designs may be, to the art mind they are as
dangerous as the opium habit from which they are generated.
They are all morbid outcomes of an unwholesome and unnatural taste,
suggestive only of that refinement which is _blasé_ of tenderness,
humanity, or morality, and which is nearly past all excitements except
such as are monstrous and beastly, the demoralising refinement of decay.
Artistic?--yes; we must grant to them the praise of artistic execution;
but this is the whole length which we can go in the matter of praise,
and this is not enough for art to be of real utility to daily life and
its hourly obligations.
Oriental art is pitiless and cruel as a reasonless monster in the lesson
which it inculcates--cruel, fatalistic, and emotionless, therefore to us
Westerns enervating and demoralising. The real philosophers and
humanitarians of the East are contemplators of nature direct, and they
only represent the objects of their veneration by obscure symbols, never
by blasphemous caricatures; it is the unbelievers of the East and the
demon-worshippers who give us these nightmare creations, and who have
gone beyond the dreams of Paradise. No flower-land opens up to them in
their periods of opium-stupor; it is a land of gloomy shadows and dank,
dead leaves, through which crawl reptiles and noxious insects, or ghouls
loom up grotesque and horrible, and these weird remembrances they embody
in artistic shapes on bronzes, rare lacquer-work and tapestry, and send
out broadcast to demoralise the world of modern culture.
And now let us consider the result of all this siren false art upon our
daily lives. Insensibly the deadly poison is imbibed in small doses,
until the strength and clearness of daylight look garish to us, the
direct colouring of nature appears too raw, and we can no longer inhale
a full breath of life as it is given to us, unfettered, into our
vitiated lungs.
The faith which was all-sufficient for our ancestors is discarded, not
for atheism, but for a mysticism infinitely more childish and
superstitious than the religion which we superciliously term
superstitious. Witness such pitiful exhibitions as those impostors,
so-called 'Aissouas,' who recently disgraced London with their
disgusting and fraudulent tricks--such-like flimsy performances as we
have been accustomed to see at penny shows at country fairs since our
boyhood, only in the case of these Eastern shams not half so cleverly
executed as the feats done by the ordinary country showman.
This is where art has such a resistless influence upon our daily lives,
and why we should be careful to discriminate between the true and the
false.
False art will make us cruel and remorseless--that is, the personating
and choosing of monstrosities; and the more artfully they are designed,
the more degraded and callous we must become, and the more deeply we
must sink in our moral perception of what is good and noble in humanity.
And while we sink step by step, the more morbidly vivisecting must we
become, and as we have grown accustomed to the study and contemplation
of distortion, the more distorted will be our views of everyday life:
humanity will represent only a field for the investigation of developed
or undeveloped vices and ignoble desires; there can be no possible room
for virtue or lofty aspirations in the life which we take up to
vivisect; in fact, before we have got half-way through with our
cold-blooded, one-sided investigation, it is no longer life which we are
cutting about, but a putrid corpse.
So much for those who are artistic or literary under these distorted
circumstances. The others, who are not so gifted in intellectual
qualities--but who have the same aspirations, and develop in action as
the others do in thought--become by unnatural progression such epicures
in horrors as the White-chapel monster whom we have come to know as
'Jack the Ripper.'
True or healthy art is content with the directness of the example which
nature sets before it, the result of which is faith in beauty, faith in
virtue, and a hopeful toleration of vice.
Vice to these students is no more the natural aspect of humanity than
blight is the natural state of the leaves upon the trees or flowers; it
is a diseased state, which must be endured, but may be eradicated. By
constantly watching the healthy life they come to comprehend the causes
for the unhealthy more quickly than do those who morbidly brood upon the
blighted portions only--i.e. their comprehensions become more vivid, and
their minds more robust, for our health depends entirely upon the food
we feed upon. People may accustom themselves to feed upon poisons, but
if they do, it is utterly impossible for them ever to live upon anything
else or to be able to exist without their daily dose.
To come back to my own experience in my search after nature. When mixing
among the natives of Australia I got the first revelation of what I
ought to do. I saw that they had many wise laws, blending with much that
was ugly, gross, and superstitious. Some of their rites appeared
contemptible, but even these rites perhaps appeared so owing to my own
imperfect knowledge of their origin and the secretiveness of the natives
themselves regarding them; yet some of their laws were clear enough and
good enough to be adopted by the most civilised races with advantage.
Their marriage laws and stern strictness regarding consanguinity stand,
with singular force of natural wisdom, out from a mass of apparently
reasonless rites and mysteries.
In their wild state the Australian tribes are a muscular and well-formed
race, considering the privations from want of food and water which they
have to undergo at times. This scarcity of food and long intervals
between rains have forced them to become nomadic in their habits, and
account naturally for the want of homes or villages and the rudeness of
their places of shelter. Where people are compelled to shift often, they
do not care to adorn their temporary homes--a few shards of gum-tree
bark are good enough to keep the dew from them at nights, and the
sun-rays are never too strong for them during the day. They are
accustomed to take long marches and endure hunger and thirst on the way,
so that they have no place for weakly members. If such are born, they
are promptly killed as soon as the fact is discovered. If they become
weakly afterwards, then such are doomed to a life of celibacy, so that
the tribe may not deteriorate.
I noticed that their ideas never went beyond what they were accustomed
to see constantly about them; that the origin of their characteristic
weapon, the boomerang, was the eucalyptus leaf, that long leaf which
turns its thin edge to the light, and when it falls from the tree
circles in its descent as do those formidable implements of defence;
that in their songs and dances they told a tale of nature as they saw
it; and then I began to understand that where their strength lay I
might find mine also, and so I became a realist, and learnt never to
begin a sentence or paint a sketch unless I had a definite object, with
its shape, size, colouring, and character vividly before me.
Then I advanced another step in this primitive school of nature. I
learnt that these people never wasted words when they wished to express
themselves, and so I began to see how much stronger brevity is than
ornate and laboured phraseology, and how much finer an ornament is when
standing isolated and in no way disguised by superfluous flourishes; and
then I think my education was complete as far as the Australian
aboriginal could instruct me.
I very soon found plenty to do, and never afterwards wanted a subject. I
studied the gum-tree, with its perfect flower, where the male and female
are united from birth, and those medicinal leaves which look so sparse,
but are so closely put together, the density of which can only be seen
when the hurricane blows them about until they are like our willow-trees
at home. I watched the sturdy, twisted, gleaming branches, like great
white snakes, so different from any other branches of trees, until I
grew to love them.
(I remember how an all-wise art editor once objected to one of my
representations of a gum-tree because he said that the branches were so
_serpentine_, and therefore not like the trees which he had been
accustomed to see. I might have overlooked his ignorant remark, but I
found it difficult to forgive his sending my drawing to another artist,
who took the _serpentine_ appearance out of the branches, and so made
them appear like the trees to which he had been accustomed, before it
was allowed to be seen in print, and I have often wondered what the
people accustomed to real gum-trees have said about this
London-manufactured gum-tree.)
Those wonderful gum-trunks, with the bark hanging in long strips from
them like fluttering rags of brown sails! Mighty trees, some of them
rising four hundred feet into the blue-grey sky, and large enough in
girth to make good-sized houses, yet appearing beside their giant
brethren just like ordinary trees, until we began to measure their
circumference--size is so deceptive in this strange and vast sun-bathed
land, Australia.
What a deal I have written already about this one tree of Australia, in
all its many varieties, and yet I feel so much more than I can ever
express, either with brush or pen; it has grown so much a part of
myself.
What poetry may yet be written over its glory, as it has been felt and
written about the grand old oak of England! The gum-tree of Australia,
with its twisted limbs and tough heart, as broad-spreading as the
glorified tree of the Druids, as mighty as the gigantic pine of
California, with a character all its own and stamping it alone as a king
of trees; an iron monarch against which the axes of the woodmen break
their edges and turn aside; a beneficent ruler, for at its foot lie
wells of water to quench the thirsty, and in its leaves the most potent
medicine to cure disease.[11]
How I have studied it in the rosy dawn when the hidden sun changed the
upper branches to vermilion, and the crowds of paroquets and cockatoos
which it had sheltered all night woke up at the welcome sight of day;
how I have watched it in the sun-glare, with each outline sharply
defined, while the strong-beaked laughing jackass bent, over a bare,
snowy limb, and watched keenly amongst the underwood for its victim, the
venomous snake; and I have been often startled by the bird's uncanny
burst of mockery, when, after darting down and grabbing the snake, it
swiftly soared high in air, and from a great height dropped the
wriggling reptile: it was then the bird, misnamed a jackass, laughed
wildly as it watched the snake fall prone to earth and break its back.
I have seen it too in the afterglow, when the gaunt limbs became
salmon-tinted with a ghostly gleam over the forest, where deep shadows
were gathering fast; and in the dazzling moonlight, when they stood out
like great pillars, row upon row, mile after mile, as I rode along,
without seemingly a termination, some with the leaves drooping in black
masses, while in other parts great tracts of country were covered with
dead wood, where the forest fires had passed and shrivelled up their
lives, or the squatter had destroyed them for the sake of his herds; but
dead or alive, they stand year after year majestic and assertive of
their rank as lords, like solemn sentinels keeping guard over a silent
land.
What I mastered in Australia I carried with me to other lands, trying to
learn what the tattoo markings and tapu laws meant amongst the Maoris of
New Zealand, the punctilios and ceremonies of the South Sea Islanders,
and always getting my attention turned back to nature direct when I was
inclined to wander from this purpose or grow at all self-sufficient or
inclined to lean upon my own resources.
It was my failures which ever and again proved to me that I had no
resources of my own to fall back upon, and that I was only wasting my
talents when I tried to take my eyes from the face of nature; she had
proved herself all-sufficient for every imagination which I could ever
hope to conceive, no matter how long I lived, her school the best
college, and herself the only instructress which I needed at this
advanced stage.
It is a glorious experience this spread-out nature college, which I
recommend to everyone desirous of being regarded as original; an
ever-varied series of lessons, the chief charm of which is that each
student can only take away a little to call his own, leaving a full
treasury for whoever cares to come after him.
Copy great masters and read the best authorities; you will see what they
were able to take out of this treasury without diminishing its riches;
but do not borrow or try to wear their jewelry, for on you they will be
second-hand adornments; besides, to do so will be as foolish an act on
your part as if you were to put on a suit of clothes made for and worn
by someone else, instead of taking the clothes which have been measured
and made expressly for yourself.
Of course you must learn to understand how to choose what is best suited
for you, and for this purpose you must go into strict training, so as to
learn the laws and rules which these masters all had to learn first, and
improve upon as they progressed through the preliminary stages towards
that wider school in which no earthly master could guide them.
Like 'Johnny Ducks' in my story of 'Eight Bells,' I left home pretty
early to begin my wanderings, but before I left home I had gone through
a stiff training with different masters; in fact, I cannot remember the
time when I began to study drawing and painting, but it must have been
long before I began the alphabet, for I can recollect that event very
clearly, with a few of the ordinary incidents connected with it.
Both my parents were artistic and lovers of literature and art. The love
for books had been in both families for generations, as well as the
taste for travelling; many of my ancestors had been great travellers,
while not a few of them had paid the penalty of their lives for their
curiosity to see the world.
My father painted mostly in oil-colours, landscape and figure, and he
had gone through a very careful training under some of the best masters;
my mother painted in water-colours, and her _forte_ was flowers and
fruit; so that I had the benefit of watching them, and getting trained
almost insensibly to myself. I painted my first landscape in oils when I
was six years old, a copy of a picture lent to me by my first outside
master, before he sent his own to the exhibition, and which he allowed
me to sell afterwards for two guineas--to me at the time a very large
sum.
I can remember this picture most vividly, for the reason that I had to
do it twice over before my father was satisfied. The first canvas was so
badly done and enraged him so much that he broke it over my head as a
warning to me to be more careful; the second attempt must have been
better, for, although he did not praise it (he never praised anything I
did), yet he did not condemn it, while one day, as I was sitting under
the table unseen, he brought in a gentleman to look at it, who said 'it
was wonderful.'
My next master was a German designer from Munich, who taught me
ornamental drawing; he would not let me touch my paint-box at all while
he was present, but kept me strictly for over three years to charcoal,
pencil, and cartridge paper. At first it was straight and curved lines
only; next ornaments and friezes in relief; in my third year he allowed
me to draw leaves and blades of grass from nature also in the wintry
time the bare trees; finally, before he turned me off his hands he made
me arrange flowers and shrubs into groups, drawing them first exactly,
and next turning them into ornamental shapes and designs.
After him, I passed through the hands of a portrait-painter, drawing and
shading with charcoal only from the life. Then I painted the same in
monochrome in oils (I did not attempt water-colours, except to do
flowers in the wash style which my mother had painted for many years).
As a relaxation my father allowed me sometimes to paint pictures in oil
from nature. With some of my boy friends, I went out on Saturdays
sketching. We formed a club, and saved up our pocket-money to reward the
best painter, the umpire being the landscape-painter who had all along
been my friend and instructor in landscape-painting.
While thus trying to master in practice the A B C of art, through the
long winter nights, after I had learnt my school lessons for next day,
my father made me read all sorts of books on the theory of art in its
many branches. He used to mark off portions which he wished to impress
upon my memory and make me write them in my exercise-book. In this way I
copied off the greater part of M. Chevreul's 'Harmony and Contrast of
Colours,' a very long work indeed.
Then came the rules of perspective and measurements, also artistic
anatomy. I worked first from Dr. Knox's book and that of Leonardo da
Vinci. Ships had always a great fascination for me, and I used to read
and copy from all sorts of books on this subject, principally
shipbuilders' manuals and seamen's navigation guides.
My father, besides his painting, had also studied many other
sciences--geology, mathematics, astronomy, and botany. I fancy his
favourite pastime was botany. He saved me twice from being poisoned,
through his knowledge of plants. He used to tell me about the stars and
their distances, and how, by the aid of mathematics, he was able to
measure space, and from that I began to have, what has been a passion
with me ever since, a desire to know all about the early nations and how
they grew, with their myths and religions.
So my daily life was impregnated with art and science--art chiefly, into
which all the others merge. I may say that I was twelve years grinding
at the preliminary portions of my art education. It took me nearly eight
years to write the twelve parts of my 'Life and Nature Studies,' after I
had gone over the world for the first time, and in this book I have
tried to write what I had learnt during my travels and before them--that
is, about twenty-six years of art study, and I do not think that I can
advise anyone to attempt to master the principles of art in a shorter
space of time.
I would divide the time thus: Five years to hard outline drawing (the
younger the student begins, the more facile his hand will grow), five
years to anatomy and the life, and the rest of the time to the countless
difficulties which he will constantly encounter, and which will give so
much pleasure in the conquering.
It must be admitted that, at the first, straight and curved lines are no
more interesting to the art student than are the pot-hooks in the
preliminary stages of calligraphy, but they are both equally necessary
for the making of a free and pure draughtsman and writer. By-and-by,
when persevered with, these lines become a positive pleasure to indulge
in; so much so, that the veteran artist when he is idling an hour away,
if he has a piece of paper before him, or with his walking cane, will
unconsciously revert to this early practice, and draw flowing parallel
lines upon the paper or on the sand. What was once a severe task has
thus become a relaxation.
I would not also insist upon only dry and hard grinding during these
preliminary years (some authorities do), any more than I could expect a
man wishing to exercise one muscle to leave all the rest of the body
inactive. I would rather advise students to exercise all their faculties
as well--colours, gradation, outside sketching from nature, copying in
galleries and from the life; only never let them forget that this is the
one muscle which they _must_ exercise regularly and without
intermission, for it is the all-important factor of their future lives.
Everything helps art, as art enters into everything: music, poetry,
science, history, romance; in every walk of life which we may enter
upon, it must be ennobled by art, while the draughtsman has a decided
advantage over the man who cannot draw.
Are you a gardener? To be a master of the craft you must learn the laws
of form, colours, arrangement, and symmetry. A tailor? If you can draw
well you will become a cutter-out. In fact, I do not know the profession
or trade where it does not enter into and advantage the man who has it
to command.
All this it does in its practical, money-making, worldly side, which is
to me the under-side of art; for, after all, money-making, although a
very useful accomplishment as far as the world goes, is not a very noble
or high gift, excepting for the power which it gives to the lucky
possessor to do good to his less fortunate fellow-creatures. Where art
comes in and fulfils its highest mission is the almost limitless range
which it imparts to the votary of intellectual pleasure and ethic
enjoyments. We are all born with eyes and senses of taste, smell, and
sight, &c., it is true--that is, all healthy beings are so blessed--but
it is art which takes the grosser films from these senses and renders
them acute, so that each pleasure may be multiplied a thousandfold.
The ears can distinguish sounds as they are given to us. Art makes them
appreciate music. The eyes can see hills and valleys. Art makes them
take exquisite pleasure in forms and colours, a keener appreciation in
all which comes within their range. It is the education and refinement
of all the five material senses.
But it also passes these outer gates, and impregnates the soul until the
imprisoned Psyche can burst from her fetters and spread out her gossamer
wings to the warmth and golden light of the Love-world. Whoever is once
really touched by the purifying kiss of art can no more go back to the
fog-land of debased desires or commonplace than can the butterfly return
to her caterpillar state of crawling. He must soar over the heads of the
grubs, joyous and free, basking all the days of his life in the sunlight
of sensitive impressions. Pity claims him as her favourite child, and
Charity, the divine, breathes upon him for ever with her fragrant,
life-giving breath.
[Illustration]