But The Balance
On The Whole Would Be To The Good.
Professional men should be excluded, if for no other reason yet for
this, that they know too much for the beginner to be en rapport
with them.
It is the beginner who can help the beginner, as it is
the child who is the most instructive companion for another child.
The beginner can understand the beginner, but the cross between him
and the proficient performer is too wide for fertility. It savours
of impatience, and is in flat contradiction to the first principles
of biology. It does a beginner positive harm to look at the
masterpieces of the great executionists, such as Rembrandt or
Turner.
If one is climbing a very high mountain which will tax all one's
strength, nothing fatigues so much as casting upward glances to the
top, nothing encourages so much as casting downward glances. The
top seems never to draw nearer; the parts that we have passed
retreat rapidly. Let a water-colour student go and see the drawing
by Turner, in the basement of our National Gallery, dated 1787.
This is the sort of thing for him, not to copy, but to look at for
a minute or two now and again. It will show him nothing about
painting, but it may serve to teach him not to overtax his
strength, and will prove to him that the greatest masters in
painting, as in everything else, begin by doing work which is no
way superior to that of their neighbours. A collection of the
earliest known works of the greatest men would be much more useful
to the student than any number of their maturer works, for it would
show him that he need not worry himself because his work does not
look clever, or as silly people say, "show power."
The secrets of success are affection for the pursuit chosen, a flat
refusal to be hurried or to pass anything as understood which is
not understood, and an obstinacy of character which shall make the
student's friends find it less trouble to let him have his own way
than to bend him into theirs. Our schools and academies or
universities are covertly, but essentially, radical institutions
and abhorrent to the genius of Conservatism. Their sin is the true
radical sin of being in too great a hurry, and of believing in
short cuts too soon. But it must be remembered that this
proposition, like every other, wants tempering with a slight
infusion of its direct opposite.
I said in an early part of this book that the best test to know
whether or no one likes a picture is to ask one's self whether one
would like to look at it if one was quite sure one was alone. The
best test for a painter as to whether he likes painting his picture
is to ask himself whether he should like to paint it if he was
quite sure that no one except himself, and the few of whom he was
very fond, would ever see it. If he can answer this question in
the affirmative, he is all right; if he cannot, he is all wrong. I
will close these remarks with an illustration which will show how
nearly we can approach the early Florentines even now - when nobody
is looking at us. I do not know who Mr. Pollard is. I never heard
of him till I came across a cheap lithograph of his Funeral of Tom
Moody in the parlour of a village inn. I should not think he ever
was an R.A., but he has approached as nearly as the difference
between the geniuses of the two countries will allow, to the spirit
of the painters who painted in the Campo Santo at Pisa. Look,
again, at Garrard, at the close of the last century. We generally
succeed with sporting or quasi-sporting subjects, and our cheap
coloured coaching and hunting subjects are almost always good, and
often very good indeed. We like these things: therefore we
observe them; therefore we soon become able to express them.
Historical and costume pictures we have no genuine love for; we do
not, therefore, go beyond repeating commonplaces concerning them.
I must reserve other remarks upon this subject for another
occasion.
CHAPTER XIII - Viu, Fucine, and S. Ignazio
I must now return to my young friend at Groscavallo. I have
published his drawings without his permission, having unfortunately
lost his name and address, and being unable therefore to apply to
him. I hope that, should they ever meet his eye, he will accept
this apology and the assurance of my most profound consideration.
Delighted as I had been with his proposed illustrations, I thought
I had better hear some of the letterpress, so I begged him to read
me his MS. My time was short, and he began at once. The few
introductory pages were very nice, but there was nothing
particularly noticeable about them; when, however, he came to his
description of the place where we now were, he spoke of a beautiful
young lady as attracting his attention on the evening of his
arrival. It seemed that she was as much struck with him as he with
her, and I thought we were going to have a romance, when he
proceeded as follows: "We perceived that we were sympathetic, and
in less than a quarter of an hour had exchanged the most solemn
vows that we would never marry one another." "What?" said I,
hardly able to believe my ears, "will you kindly read those last
words over again?" He did so, slowly and distinctly; I caught them
beyond all power of mistake, and they were as I have given them
above:- "We perceived that we were sympathetic, and in less than a
quarter of an hour had exchanged the most solemn vows that we would
never marry one another." While I was rubbing my eyes and making
up my mind whether I had stumbled upon a great satirist or no, I
heard a voice from below - "Signor Butler, Signor Butler, la vettura
e pronta." I had therefore to leave my doubt unsolved, but all the
time as we drove down the valley I had the words above quoted
ringing in my head.
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