The Mind of the Artist Part 17

CXCIV

Looked out for landscapes this evening; but although all around one is lovely, how little of it will work up into a picture! that is, without great additions and alterations, which is a work of too much time to suit my purpose just now. I want little subjects that will paint off at once. How despairing it is to view the loveliness of nature towards sunset, and know the impossibility of imitating it!--at least in a satisfactory manner, as one could do, would it only remain so long enough. Then one feels the want of a life's study, such as Turner devoted to landscape; and even then what a botch is any attempt to render it! What wonderful effects I have seen this evening in the hay-fields! The warmth of the uncut gra.s.s, the greeny greyness of the unmade hay in furrows or tufts with lovely violet shadows, and long shades of the trees thrown athwart all, and melting away one tint into another imperceptibly; and one moment more a cloud pa.s.ses and all the magic is gone. Begin to-morrow morning, all is changed: the hay and the reapers are gone most likely; the sun too, or if not, it is in quite the opposite quarter, and all that _was_ loveliest is all that is tamest now, alas! It is better to be a poet; still better a mere lover of Nature; one who never dreams of possession....

_Ford Madox Brown._

CXCV

You should choose an old tumbledown wall and throw over it a piece of white silk. Then morning and evening you should gaze at it, until at length you can see the ruin through the silk--its prominences, its levels, its zigzags, and its cleavages, storing them up in the mind and fixing them in the eye. Make the prominences your mountains, the lower parts your water, the hollows your ravines, the cracks your streams, the lighter parts your nearer points, the darker parts your more distant points. Get all these thoroughly into you, and soon you will see men, birds, plants, and trees, flying and moving among them. You may then ply your brush according to your fancy, and the result will be of heaven, not of men.

_Sung Ti_ (Chinese, eleventh century).

CXCVI

By looking attentively at old and smeared walls, or stones and veined marble of various colours, you may fancy that you see in them several compositions--landscapes, battles, figures in quick motion, strange countenances, and dresses, with an infinity of other objects. By these confused lines the inventive genius is excited to new exertions.

_Leonardo._

CXCVII

Out by a quarter to eight to examine the river Brent at Hendon; a mere brooklet, running in most dainty sinuosity under overshadowing oaks and all manner of leafiness. Many beauties, and hard to choose amongst, for I had determined to make a little picture of it. However, Nature, that at first sight appears so lovely, is on consideration almost always incomplete; moreover, there is no painting intertangled foliage without losing half its beauties. If imitated exactly it can only be done as seen from one eye, and quite flat and confused therefore.

_Ford Madox Brown._

CXCVIII

To gaze upon the clouds of autumn, a soaring exaltation in the soul; to feel the spring breeze stirring wild exultant thoughts;--what is there in the possession of gold and jewels to compare with delights like these? And then, to unroll the portfolio and spread the silk, and to transfer to it the glories of flood and fell, the green forest, the blowing winds, the white water of the rus.h.i.+ng cascade, as with a turn of the hand a divine influence descends upon the scene. These are the joys of painting.

_w.a.n.g Wei_ (Chinese, fifth century).

CXCIX

In the room where I am writing there are hanging up two beautiful small drawings by Cozens: one, a wood, close, and very solemn; the other, a view from Vesuvius looking over Portici--very lovely. I borrowed them from my neighbour, Mr. Woodburn. Cozens was all poetry, and your drawing is a lovely specimen.

_Constable._

CXCIXa

Selection is the invention of the landscape painter.

_Fuseli._

CC

Don't imagine that I do not like Corot's picture, _La Prairie avec le fosse_; on the contrary we thought, Rousseau and I, that it would be a pity to have one picture without the other, each makes so lively an impression of its own. You are perfectly right in liking the picture very much. What particularly struck us in the other one was that it has in an especial degree the look of being done by some one who knew nothing about painting but who had done his best, filled with a great longing to paint. In fact, a spontaneous discovery of the art! These are both very beautiful things. We will talk about them, for in writing one never gets to the end.

_Millet._

CCI

TO ROUSSEAU

The day after I left you I went to see your exhibition.... To-day I a.s.sure you that in spite of knowing your studies of Auvergne and those earlier ones, I was struck once more in seeing them all together by the fact that a force is a force from its first beginnings.

With the very earliest you show a freshness of vision which leaves no doubt as to the pleasure you took in seeing nature, and one sees that she spoke directly to you, and that you saw her through your own eyes.

Your work is your own _et non de l'aultruy_, as Montaigne says. Don't think I mean to go through everything of yours bit by bit, down to the present moment. I only wish to mention the starting point, which is the important thing, because it shows that a man is born to his calling.

From the beginning you were the little oak which will grow into a big oak. There! I must tell you once more how much it moved me to see all this.

_Millet._

CCII

I don't know if Corot is not greater than Delacroix. Corot is the father of modern landscape. There is no landscape painter of to-day who--knowingly or not--does not derive from him. I have never seen a picture of Corot's which was not beautiful, or a line which did not mean something.

Among modern painters it is Corot who as a colourist has most in common with Rembrandt. The colour scheme is golden with the one and grey with the other throughout the whole harmony of tones. In appearance their methods are the opposite of each other, but the desired result is the same. In a portrait by Rembrandt all details melt into shadow in order that the spectator's gaze may be concentrated on a single part, often the eyes, and this part is handled more caressingly than the rest.

Corot, on the other hand, sacrifices the details which are in the light--the extremities of trees, and so on--and brings us always to the spot which he has chosen for his main appeal to the spectator's eye.

_Dutilleux._

CCIII

Landscape has taken refuge in the theatre; scene-painters alone understand its true character and can put it into practice with a happy result. But Corot?

Oh that man's soul rebounds like a steel spring; he is no mere landscape painter, but an artist--a real artist, and rare and exceptional genius.

_Delacroix._

CCIV

TO VERWeE

There is an International Exhibition at Pet.i.t's now, and I am showing some sea-pieces there with great success. The exhibition is made up, with one or two exceptions, of young men. They are very clever, but all alike; they follow a fas.h.i.+on--there is no more individuality.

Everybody paints, everybody is clever.