Cubists and Post-Impressionism

by Arthur Jerome Eddy

In painting my picture I did not paint from a fixed point and always from the same point, but I studied the cathedral and surroundings from all points of view and obtained a personal conception of it, which I reproduced on my canvas.

I only included the details which struck me most forcibly, and thought it necessary to break up the monotony of the roofs in the first plan by one of the most beautiful details of the cathedral—a statue of a saint, who is certainly not in his right place as far as the eye is concerned, but does really occupy the place which he occupies in my conception of what was before me.

That a painter should deliberately attempt to show on one canvas features of all sides of a building, strikes the layman—and many artists—as a “crazy” attempt to achieve the impossible; but it is not impossible, as a moment’s reflection shows.

It is, of course, easy to show all sides and all details of a building, interior and exterior, on one sheet or canvas, by drawing or painting, one after another, in panorama effect—that is done in every architect’s drawing-room.

It is also equally possible to superimpose these detached drawings one over the other and see or feel the outlines through. That is, the drawing or photograph of the exterior of a cathedral may be so made as to show in outline or shadowy substance the altar within.

Illustrations along these lines are common in fiction—ghostly, shadowy, mystical effects, effects secured only by treating stones and walls and human beings as semi-transparent.

In this way every feature of a cathedral that strikes the artist, whether on the outside or inside, whether a feature so permanent as a statue or so fleeting as a wedding ceremony, may be indicated in his picture. By suppressing every detail save the most striking, what purports to be the picture of a cathedral may appear to be fragments of spires, bronze doors, statues, altars, lights, processions, the brilliant color of a priest’s robe, the white note of a bridal veil.

Another man painting his impressions of the same subject might catch glimpses of entirely different features.

If we can in our mind’s eye see what is behind an object; if, for instance, we can picture to ourselves clearly the children playing in the yard back of a house, why may not the painter, if he chooses, suggest to us in his picture of the house the vital feature of the children in the rear?