The Art of Building a Home: A collection of lectures and illustrations

by Barry Parker; Sir Raymond Unwin

OUR EDUCATION IN ART.

My subject is “Our Education in Art,” & I approach it with a sense of trepidation, feeling that the task I have set myself is one of very great difficulty, and being, as I am, so fully alive to the tremendous issues involved in our holding right or wrong views upon art education.

The place in our lives which Art must fill is so exalted that it is with reverence I would consider the way in which we should teach or be taught to express ourselves in art, or learn to read the meaning of others expressed through that medium. Those who have come to realize that only by the employment of Art can the highest truths which we are capable of receiving be conveyed from one man to another, must feel that the method of preparing ourselves to wield so great a power, or render ourselves receptive of such an influence, should be most earnestly considered. I have taken “Our Education in Art” as my title, instead of “The Education of an Artist” or any other title which would have fixed more definitely the limitations within which I should confine myself, because I want what I am about to say to have a much wider application than it would if simply taken as addressed to those who propose to practise an art. For, to train all to an appreciation of what is good, true, and beautiful, in Art, is hardly less important than to train artists capable of expressing what is good, true, and beautiful.

All have not vouchsafed to them the power to express themselves in an art, but all are in some degree influenced by the artistic qualities of the things by which they are surrounded, and I wish to suggest a way of learning to appreciate what is good and true and beautiful in art, even more than a way of learning to create such art. That there shall be those who can appreciate good art is necessary to its life. That we should have those who can create it is not enough; this is the work of the few; the work of the many is to make an atmosphere in which it can live. I would impress as gravely as possible upon those who aspire to the practice of an art, not only the dignity belonging to what they would undertake, but the tremendous responsibility attaching to it.

The first thing that must go to the making of an artist is that he should have that within him which craves for expression, and which can only be expressed through the medium of an art. This first essential is given to many to whom the power to express it is not given, but without it the facility to express will be a power for harm not for good: it is the presence of great qualities, not the absence of bad, which makes a work of art.

The artist’s great responsibility lies in this: every time he creates anything capable of bearing the impress of the true art instinct, he brings into existence that which will have an influence upon all who see it, and will quicken or deaden in them this high instinct. The thought that, if he create not something better than would have been created by others, had he left it to them, he is doing harm in the world, not good, is one that should come home to him very solemnly. To the art worker belongs this privilege—that his art can be a great power for good; and this responsibility—that he must of necessity have done either harm or good by his work, and that unless he has done something which is beyond and above the conception of the general run (nay, of the great majority) of his fellow-creatures, something they feel to have a little more in it, and to be a little more than they can grasp, he is not merely harmless, he is a failure. For as in life generally, so in the artistic life, he who merely does what no one can attach blame to, and has not done better than others would have done in his stead, has lived to no purpose. Virtue is not a negative quality in art or in life; it does not consist in keeping the Ten Commandments. “All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?” This man 1900 years ago had grasped the truth of what I have said above better than most of us have to-day.

I will herein confine myself to speaking of those arts which depend upon our eyes for their means of appealing to us; and as I wish that these suggestions may be of real practical value, to all who desire to appreciate what is artistically good and true, I must leave out of our consideration, for the moment, all the greater qualities which belong to art; and confine myself to showing how we must first learn to see, and to what I may call the purely technical side of learning to see and represent. For simplicity I will take the art of portraying Nature, as seen in her landscapes, as my example of how to learn both to see and to draw; for the process is the same in either case.

Now when first one attempts to paint a landscape, one is over-whelmed by the tremendous number of different things one sees in it and has to take into consideration at the same time. There is the form and drawing, the light and shade, the atmosphere and its effect upon the local tints or real colours of each individual object in the landscape, the overpowering profusion of detail, the reflected lights and reflected colours, the relative value of objects, the texture, and character of surfaces, the composition, what we call the accidental effects; and last but not least, the teaching and meaning, the particular message Nature has to convey in the whole scene. And only by long and patient study of each of these separately, can we acquire the power to grasp them all together in the way which is necessary when painting.

Were I to teach, I should make my pupils go through a long and patient study of each of these separately, devoting much thought to each in turn, quite apart from the use of pencil or brush; for it is impossible to represent one without the others, but not impossible to study one without the others. And that we should be able to first dissociate one from another in our minds, and then see the influence of one upon another, is absolutely necessary to a true portraiture of Nature in landscape. I would then begin with the simplest of the things in my category, and impart to my pupils a knowledge of form (probably best done by some simple process of modelling), and I would go on to the drawing of form without reference to light and shade. Next I would teach them to see form in masses of light and shade only, leaving out of consideration at the first (as far as possible) the influence of reflected light, but eventually giving much time and thought to enabling them to see the reflected light truly, and to measure its gradations and degrees accurately. From this they should go on to represent textures and character of surfaces, and not until all this had been done would I bring in the use of colour. This should begin by the accurate matching of local tints, before the representation of the colour effects produced by atmosphere with its varying degrees of moisture, of density and transparency or opacity, its power of diffusing light, and its effect on distance, was attempted. Next I would allow sketching with reference to composition, grouping, and much study of the relative values of one object to another in the landscape, affected as it is by all the foregoing, and difficult of explanation as it always is, even in view of and with a perfect knowledge of all the foregoing. Finally, being first able to see and feel, then we would go on to try to catch & portray the moods and messages of Nature, and the poetry of the whole.