The Mind of the Artist Part 4

Art happens--no hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend on it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about, and puny efforts to make it universal end in quaint comedy and coa.r.s.e farce.

This is as it should be; and all attempts to make it otherwise are due to the eloquence of the ignorant, the zeal of the conceited.

_Whistler._

XLIII

Art will not grow and flourish, nay it will not long exist, unless it be shared by all people; and for my part I don't wish that it should.

_William Morris._

XLIV

No, art is not an element of corruption. The man who drinks from a wooden bowl is nearer to the brute that drinks from a stone trough than he who quenches his thirst from a crystal cup; and the artist who gave the gla.s.s its shape, impressed as in a mould of bronze by the simple means of a second's breath and yet more cheaply than the fas.h.i.+oning of the wooden bowl, has done more to enn.o.ble and improve his neighbour than any inventor of a system: in his work he gives him the use and the enjoyment of things for which orators can only create a craving.

_Jules Klagmann._

XLV

The improviser never makes fine poetry.

_t.i.tian._

XLVI

Agatharcus said to Zeuxis--For my part I soon despatch my Pictures. You are a happy Man, replies Zeuxis; I do mine with Time and application, because I would have them good, and I am satisfyed, that what is soon done, will soon be forgotten.

XLVII

Art is not a pleasure trip. It is a battle, a mill that grinds.

_Millet._

STUDY AND TRAINING

XLVIII

Raphael and Michael Angelo owe that immortal fame of theirs, which has gone out into the ends of the earth, to the pa.s.sion of curiosity and delight with which this n.o.ble subject inspired them.

No man who has not studied the sciences can make a work that shall bring him great praise, save from ignorant and easily satisfied persons.

_Jean Goujon._

XLIX

He that would be a painter must have a natural turn thereto.

Love and delight therein are better teachers of the Art of Painting than compulsion is.

If a man is to become a really good painter he must be educated thereto from his very earliest years. He must copy much of the work of good artists until he attain a free hand.

To paint is to be able to portray upon a flat surface any visible thing whatsoever that may be chosen.

It is well for any one first to learn how to divide and reduce to measure the human figure, before learning anything else.

_Durer._

L

The painter requires such knowledge of mathematics as belongs to painting, and severance from companions who are not in sympathy with his studies, and his brain should have the power of adapting itself to the tenor of the objects which present themselves before it, and he should be freed from all other cares. And if, while considering and examining one subject, a second should intervene, as happens when an object occupies the mind, he ought to decide which of these subjects presents greater difficulties in investigation, and follow that until it becomes entirely clear, and afterwards pursue the investigation of the other. And above all he should keep his mind as clear as the surface of a mirror, which becomes changed to as many different colours as are those of the objects within it, and his companions should resemble him in a taste for these studies; and if he fail to find any such, he should accustom himself to be alone in his investigations, for in the end he will find no more profitable companions.h.i.+p.

_Leonardo._

LI

If you are fond of copying other Men's Work, as being Originals more constant to be seen and imitated than any living Object, I should rather advise to copy anything moderately carved than excellently painted: For by imitating a Picture, we only habituate our Hand to take a mere Resemblance; whereas by drawing from a carved Original, we learn not only to take this Resemblance, but also the true Lights.

_Leon Battista Alberti._

LII

There are a thousand proofs that the old masters and all good painters from Raphael onwards executed their frescoes from cartoons and their little easel pictures from more or less finished drawings.... Your model gives you exactly what you want to paint neither in character of drawing nor in colour, but at the same time you cannot do without him.

To paint Achilles the most goodly of men, though you had for your model the most abject you must depend on him, and can depend on him for the structure of the human body, for its movement and poise. The proof of this is that Raphael used his pupils in his studies for the movements of the figures in his divine pictures.

Whatever your talents may be, if you paint not from your studies after nature, but directly from the model, you will always be a slave and your pictures will show it. Raphael, on the contrary, had so completely mastered nature and had his mind so full of her, that instead of being ruled by her, one might say that she obeyed him and came at his command to place herself in his pictures.

_Ingres._

LIII

No one can ever design till he has learned the language of Art by making many finished copies both of Nature, Art, and of whatever comes in his way, from earliest childhood. The difference between a bad artist and a good is, that the bad artist _seems_ to copy a great deal, the good one _does_ copy a great deal.

_Blake._