[] Æneid V., where Juno sends Iris to the Trojan fleet.
[v] Thoma's Progress of the gods to Walhalla.
[w] See examples by La Touche, notably La Fête de Nuit, Salon, 1914.
CHAPTER XIII
STILL-LIFE
Its comparative difficulty—Its varieties—Its limitations.
Right through the degrees of the art of the painter till we reach still-life, the difficulty in producing the art is in proportion to the general beauty therein, but in the case of still-life the object is much less readily gained than in simple landscape which is on a higher level in painting. The causes of this apparent anomaly appear to be as follows:—Firstly in miniature painting one does not expect such close resemblance to nature as in still-life which usually represents things in their natural size: secondly, in still-life the relative position of the parts can never be such as to appear novel, whereas in landscape their position is always more or less unexpected: thirdly, in still-life the colours are practically fixed, for the painter cannot depart from the limited variety of tints commonly connected with the objects indicated, while in landscape the colouring may vary almost indefinitely from sun effects without appearing to depart from nature.
The beauty in still-life paintings may arise from several causes, namely, the pleasure experienced from the excellence of the imitation; the harmony of tones; the beauty of the things imitated; the association of ideas; and the pleasure derived from the acquisition of knowledge. Aristotle seemed to think this last one of the principal reasons for our appreciation of the painter's work, though he agreed that the better the imitation, the greater the pleasure to the observer. The argument appears to apply particularly to the lower forms of life because in nature they are not often closely examined. A cauliflower for instance may be seen a thousand times by one who would not carefully note its structure, but if he see an imitation of it painted by a good artist, his astonishment at the excellence of the imitation might cause him to observe the representation closely, and learn much about the vegetable which he did not know before. In this way the information gained would add to his pleasure.
As in landscape, from the absence of abstract qualities from the things represented, and since the position of the signs may be indefinitely varied without a sense of incongruity resulting, there can be no ideal in still-life, and so the painter cannot pass beyond experience without achieving the abnormal.