and how often do I deviate from my theme and thus (instead of producing ‘clarity') cause confusion to become worse confounded!”
The result are paintings such as the four reproduced in color and half-tone.
The brilliant color combinations and harmonies of the originals are inadequately disclosed in the reproductions, the scale is too reduced. But the forms are well indicated, strange, curious forms, meaningless on first impression but insistent.
Most people are repelled at once by the landscapes because they seem so badly drawn a child could do better; but even as landscapes, as impressions of nature—or rather of something in nature—the pictures will not be denied.
If they were intended to be accurate representations of natural scenes, mountains, fields, trees, houses, they would be ridiculous indeed, but they are not so intended, therefore they should not be so judged.
In looking at these pictures—compositions, rather, it is but fair to look at them from the point of view of the painter, try to read them as he wrote them.
“Compositional” painting is no radical departure, no new discovery.