Que j’ai gardé la forme et l’essence divine
De mes amours décomposés![[3]]
The Man with the Hoe
By Millet
“It is the same when Shakespeare depicts Iago or Richard III., when Racine paints Nero and Narcissus; moral ugliness when interpreted by minds so clear and penetrating becomes a marvellous theme of beauty.
“In fact, in art, only that which has character is beautiful.
“Character is the essential truth of any natural object, whether ugly or beautiful; it is even what one might call a double truth, for it is the inner truth translated by the outer truth; it is the soul, the feelings, the ideas, expressed by the features of a face, by the gestures and actions of a human being, by the tones of a sky, by the lines of a horizon.
“Now, to the great artist, everything in nature has character; for the unswerving directness of his observation searches out the hidden meaning of all things. And that which is considered ugly in nature often presents more character than that which is termed beautiful, because in the contractions of a sickly countenance, in the lines of a vicious face, in all deformity, in all decay, the inner truth shines forth more clearly than in features that are regular and healthy.
“And as it is solely the power of character which makes for beauty in art, it often happens that the uglier a being is in nature, the more beautiful it becomes in art.