KINDS OF PAINTING
Why not recognize that conviction, intense personal attraction to a
certain sort of thing is the life of all art. How else can life get
into art than through the love of what you paint? A man may understand
what he does not love, but he will never infuse with life that which
he does not love. Understand it he should, if he would express it; but
love it he must, if he would have others love it.
You see it is not the thing, but the manner; not the fact, but what
you can find in it; not the object, but what you can express by it.
"_Un chef d'oeuvre vaut un chef d'oeuvre_" because perfect delight in
loveliness found in a small thing is as perfect as perfect delight in
loveliness found in a great thing. And still life uninteresting as a
fact, may be fascinating if "seen through the medium of a
temperament."
Don't let the idea get into your head that one thing is easier to do
than another thing. Perhaps it is, but it is a bad mental attitude to
think so. And even then, you may find that when you have worked out
all that its easiness shows you, some one with better knowledge or
insight may come along and point out undreamed-of beauties and
subtleties. And are they easy? To see and express the possibilities in
easy things is the hardest of all.
=Classification.=--Divide paintings into two classes,--those
representing objects seen out-of-doors, and those representing objects
in-doors. This is the most fundamental of all classifications, and it
is one which belongs practically to this century. Before this century
it was hardly thought of to distinguish out-door light from in-door
light.
Some of the Dutchmen did it. But it is only in this century that the
principle has made itself felt. It is this which makes the difference
of pitch or key so marked between the modern and the ancient pictures.
It has changed the whole color-scheme.
An out-door picture may be still painted in the studio, but it must be
painted from studies made out-doors. It is no longer possible to pose
a model in a studio-light and paint her so into a landscape. It was
right to do it when it was done frankly, when the world had not waked
up to the fact that things look different in diffused and in
concentrated lights. It is not right now. You cannot go back of your
century. To be born too late is more fatal than to be born too soon.
Whatever kind of picture you take in hand, remember that what
distinguishes the treatment of it from that of other pictures depends
on the inherent character of it. That the difficulties as well as the
facilities in the working of it are due to the fact that it demands a
different application of the universal principles. Don't think that
landscape drawing is easier than that of the figure because smudges of
green and blue and brown can be accepted as a landscape, while a
smudge of pink will not do duty for the nude figure. It is only that
the drawing of the figure is more obvious, and variations from the
more obvious right are more easily seen.
You must study the necessities, the demands of treatment of the
different sorts of subjects--see what is peculiar to each, and what
common to all. You must find to what aesthetic qualities each most
readily lends itself, what are the subtleties to be sought for, and
what are the problems they offer.