Paul seemed interested, also somewhat amused. “Fresh air certainly does surround everything, and no doubt there is a universal-plan in nature; but why mix up art, fresh air and the universal-plan in that way?” Paul wondered how a fellow who could paint such practical pictures, so true to life, should talk so vaguely. “He’s a high-flyer. I like his fresh air and his pictures better than his queer sentiments.”
Now, what Doctor Wise especially desired to learn was, not what other people thought of Mr. Le Roy, but how he himself satisfied his own keen, analytical sense. How Le Roy worked, not in mere allegorical figure, but, going directly to nature, discovered and conveyed something worth portraying. For it was well known in art circles that Le Roy had slowly gathered together his own theories as to nature and what nature could give him, and of the Immortality of Art. The conversation, therefore, took that turn.
“Every artist,” said Le Roy, “has his own feeling, and if he develops it, may be a great artist in his way; yet, the other schools, the men with other methods and ideas, may not recognize the merit in his work.”
“Can this matter of feeling be explained in words?” asked Adele.
“I think so, having made a thorough and complete theory of it. I am now seventy years of age, and the whole study of my life has been to find out what it is that is in myself—what is this thing we call Life—and how does it operate. The idea has become clearer and clearer; and as we see that the Creator never makes any two things alike, nor any two men alike, therefore every man has a different impression of what he sees, and that impression constitutes feeling, so every man has a different feeling.”
The Doctor’s face lighted up as he eagerly drank in these words. Here was the “unlimited,” the very thing he had heard so much about—the unlimited with a vengeance. He knew that varied mentality and temperament among musicians who were artists often produced discord, but here was a successful artist of ripest maturity who insisted that no two artists were ever alike—all received different impressions, all had different feelings. Evidently everything or anything might be expected from an artist. “Hurrah for the typical artistic capacity and temperament; feelings of endless variety and scope, hence unlimited.” Such was the Doctor’s interpretation—the way it impressed him.
Le Roy continued:
“As to sitting at the feet of nature for inspiration, that came to my mind in the beginning of my career. I went instinctively to her, and drawn by a sympathetic feeling, I put something on canvas. It was not always a correct portrayal of the scene, but only something more or less like what I had in mind. Other artists and certain Philistines would see it and exclaim, “Yes! there is a certain charm about it. Did you paint it outside?—because if you did, you could not have seen this, that and the other.”
“Of course I could not deny it, and thought I ought to improve my method. Being young, I then took it for granted that we saw physically, and with the physical eye only. What I had to learn was that a true artist has two sets of eyes: the one physical, the other spiritual.”
Adele began to be uneasy lest the Doctor should at once claim three pairs of eyes, physical, mental, and spiritual, one of his own theories about such things, so she appealed to the artist as quickly as possible.