“I am sure you wouldn’t,” he goes on without waiting for an answer; “and if the farmer gave me a commission to paint his favorite prize cow, I am sure he wouldn’t be satisfied with these dabs. And I should not blame him. No, in that case I should place the cow where I could study it closely: the long, straight line of the back, the big angle of the hips, the strong-ribbed carcass, and its covering of glossy hair, the mild liquid eyes, and damp nose. These and a great deal more I should paint, if I were near the cow. But look at those cows over yonder. They are a long way off, and consequently look very small. I can’t see in them the different points that I know a cow has; to my eyes from where I sit they look as I have painted them. For an artist does not paint what he knows to be there, but what he can see from here.
“Look,” he continues, picking up a tiny pointed brush. “See what happens, when I paint what I know to be there!” And with quick, deft strokes he proceeds to sharpen the lines of the back of one of his cows in the picture, and give her four very decided legs; to hang a tail; and give her horns; and titivate the head, put in an eye and make the tongue curl round the muzzle.
“Why, it looks like a toy cow!” we exclaim. And so it does.
And now, instead of intruding any longer on our artist friend’s time, let us see where our visit to him has brought us.
We have noted that one difference between nature and art is, that nature is inexhaustible in her effects, and that an artist selects from her only some little part to make his work of art. Secondly, that he does not paint the whole of what he has selected, but out of it again selects certain parts; sufficient not to imitate the original, but to suggest its appearance. Thirdly, that natural truth is not the same as artistic truth; that while the scientific man studies one thing at a time so that he may know what is there, the artist tries to obtain an impression of the whole scene, and paints each part of it, not as he knows it to be, but as he can see it from his fixed position.
By this time you can better understand that to say of nature “It is as beautiful as a picture,” is a loose way of talking. Nature is beautiful in the endless variety of its effects; a picture, for the one or two effects, choicely selected by the artist. And to say of a picture that it looks like nature is equally inaccurate, for the artist does not imitate nature but suggests it, which, as we have seen, is a very different thing.
However, I should tell you, that some painters do imitate nature. I have seen a picture in which the painter had represented a five-dollar bill, pinned on a board, and so accurately had he imitated the bill and the board that, until you were close to them and passed your hand over the flat canvas, you would not know it was a picture. And there is a story told of a Greek painter, Zeuxis, that he once imitated a bunch of grapes so exactly, that the birds flew down and pecked at it.
But, although it is a fact that a great many people think this exact imitation of nature a very fine thing, they do so because they have not seen many pictures or found out what a work of art really is. I am inclined to think that, by the time you have finished this book, if not sooner, you will look upon such examples of skill and patience as labor in vain, so far as art is concerned.
It is all very well for the conjurer to boast that the quickness of his hand deceives your eye. But the aim of the artist is not deception.