What a strange race of supermen might be evolved if science and art could combine to give birth to a progeny in which the essence of both were equally mingled. Once upon a time by some miracle of the Gods and Muses such essences were so mingled, and a son was brought to birth whose doings were an astonishment and delight to his contemporaries and whose work was a record and proof of the success of the experiment. But the experiment was not repeated, and one may hazard a guess which Muse it was said “A most successful and unexpected result; add the data to the sum of human knowledge and let us proceed to the next experiment on our schedule!”
And the most artistic of scholars and the most scholastic of artists remains a lonely figure, for whom we can find no comparison: a fascinating enigma for the race.
He not only astounded and delighted his contemporaries but each succeeding generation; nor have we yet measured the extent of the knowledge materialized in the work of Leonardo da Vinci.
The creative artist is not satisfied with an intellectual grasp of a truth, for his aim must always be to translate abstract ideas into form; to clothe his thought in a visible or aural body. To the mind of the scholar, though, he must appear a most practical, almost utilitarian being—one who does not regard the acquirement of knowledge as an end sufficient in itself! Leonardo da Vinci combined in his personality the genius of both types. His scientific drawings are full of the finest æsthetic feeling; his æsthetic drawings are a marvel to the scientist. He had a passionate love of research, and the fact that he left so few completed paintings must be attributed to his having devoted so much of his energy to research. He did, however, leave great numbers of drawings that, by common consent, are ranked among the greatest achievements in art. They are the unique records of one of the noblest minds the race has produced—that of a supreme master of creative art.
Daumier
I always think of Daumier as of a man going through the dark and crowded streets of a city holding a lighted lamp and thrusting it into dusty corners. And of him shaking with Gargantuan laughter—while he watches the antics of the strange people he discovers—and penetrating with a glance to the very depths of their pathetic and ridiculous souls. But while his pencil mocks them his great heart loves them!
I have heard it asserted that Daumier drew like a sculptor, but I think it would be nearer the truth to say that in his finest drawings he is concerned first and last and all the time with light. For him this was scarcely a limitation: the light rays are gathered by the point of his pencil and fixed—by some alchemic process of his will on the paper—to glow there for our satisfaction as long as his drawings endure. Whereas, in a sculptor’s drawings, light is but a means to an end (he would carve the paper if he could!) he throws lines like measuring cords round the form—each a statement of some measurement of contour—and having established in this way a mass, he is able to take from it the elevation of all subsidiary and related forms with, one might say, his mental calipers. A process of drawing widely different from that practised by Daumier.