Nor will a single dab of Chinese white produce the effect of it, should it be the only dab of opaque white in the composition. The result in this case is still worse, for if transparent color has any value when uniformly distributed it is in the expression of air and perspective. The dab, then, is instantly out of plane, as it comes nearer to the eye than the transparent wash about it, and the illusion of distance is accordingly lost.
But another and quite a different thing occurs when the opaque color forms part of the whole, the two systems blending each with the other. To illustrate, my own experience has taught me that in nature whatever the sun shines upon is opaque. The façade of a cathedral, for instance, facing a sky where the rays of the sun strike it full is opaque, while the angles of the architecture, casting shadows large and small into which sink the blue reflections of the sky or the reflected lights from near-by objects, are invariably transparent.
And now for my own system and the reasons why I have abandoned all other systems. And in giving them to you I want to repeat what I said in the beginning of this course, that I do not ask you students to follow in my footsteps if your predilections, training, and innate consciences lead you to a different view of treatment. Many of you may not like my work at all, and you certainly have a large following, especially among the younger men and women who have advanced ideas. Many of you hold to the opinion that water-color men should stick to their trade and not encroach upon the oil painters in their technic. And many of you may at heart prefer, nay, even delight in, the broad, loose washes of the early English school.
There may be a few of you, however, who have open minds free from prejudice and free from the traditions of the past, and who are dissatisfied with the want of "virility," if I may so express it, shown in pictures painted on white paper, and with successive washings, and may accordingly see something in my own methods which may encourage you to follow in the path which I have cleared and which I humbly trust will lead to infinitely better results than I have so far achieved.
And in this you must have the courage of your opinions and be prepared for criticisms. Those who are against me are more numerous than those who are for me and my methods.
Only last month a distinguished New York daily paper, in reviewing a recent exhibition, said:
"There really is nothing left to say about Mr. Smith's water-colors. They appear with such unfailing regularity and are always so much the same. Nothing in the present collection will surprise those who know his work—and who does not? The artist's facility is undiminished, his industry untiring, but to look for any fresh inspiration in his work or a hint of anything but a conventional vision has long been a vain hope."
I should be discouraged if I thought that this was the last word on my work. I know better, because I am making a collection of such criticisms, showing the rating of our several painters. These summings up of mine will be extremely valuable as marking the changing taste of the public; for I have never supposed that either ill will or downright ignorance formed the basis of current criticism. The critics are merely expressing the trend of public opinion. It is not new to our age. Diaz, so one story goes, once came stumping (he had lost one leg) into Millet's cottage at Barbizon fresh from the Salon. Millet had been painting nudes—the most exquisite bits of flesh-painting seen for many a day, and as modest as Chabas "September Morn."
"What do they say of my things?" asked Millet.