“I can’t tell exactly why I like his pictures,” said Paul, “but I do.”
“His pictures speak,” said the Doctor; “they echo the Mind of Nature, the Voice, yet he never copies a tree or a cloud. You hear something said to you, yet not a word spoken. Now, Paul, that’s quite as high a flight for the artist as one is apt to find in figure painting.”
“Oh, I can’t agree with you there. The human form requires far greater ability to portray; one must depict action, and emotions, too—in fact, a better draughtsman is required.”
The Doctor took him up.
“No doubt greater accuracy in detail, correct eye for form, knowledge of anatomy to make the figure plastic, and intense feeling to give power to convey to others the idea of emotions; but when it comes to exciting emotions the landscape artist has a field bountiful with opportunity for spiritual insight and significance—as a matter of fact, figures themselves need not be ignored, but made accessory.”
“The world and his wife don’t value landscapes as highly as you do,” remarked Paul, cogitating. “Who ever sees all that in a landscape?—why, the average man wouldn’t like it if he did see it.” This somewhat nettled the Doctor.
“The average man! that pretentious individual who always thinks of himself as Lord of Creation—let him keep on thinking of his physique and physical comforts. I enjoy good landscapes for the very reason that they lift one above all that; they respond to something better, and that settles it for me. I enjoy having inspiring landscapes always where I can see them; there are precious few faces of which I can say the same thing.” Then he added, as if mindful of one in particular: “Some faces never respond; I take to the woods to get rid of ’em, as I often leave a portrait for a landscape.”
The Doctor was getting roused. Paul detected it and concluded to laugh the matter off.
“Why not take your piano with you, Doctor—to the woods?”
“I would if I could. Gottschalk did; and others to-day, like him in that respect, do seek fresh thoughts and sounds direct from Nature. Saint-Saëns does; he told me so during some talks we had when out in far east Ceylon; and he is the most notable living expert in different forms of musical composition, ranging from complicated rhythmic conceits to serious harmonies well nigh sublime. As to Edvard Grieg, I caught him in the very act, entranced by Nature’s strange moods and melodies amid the waterfalls of his beloved Norway. And Beethoven! ah! there is the real test! Beethoven’s most profound utterances are but the unadulterated deep sounds and chords from Nature, both felt and heard when others thought him deaf. His experience was in the woods of Austria, and if we do not hear now, elsewhere, when he yet speaks, we do not really comprehend Beethoven, how he transmuted into another form that which exists in Nature. Blessed be his name! for he did it that we, too, might hear. And we call that Art.”