The Relation of Art to Nature

by John W. Beatty

That men are endowed by inheritance with varying degrees of mental power is a self-evident fact. No one will dispute this; it comes within our common experience. Providence has been lavish in the bestowal of extraordinary powers upon the few, but it remains everlastingly true that even with these success depends upon effort. Nothing is more fully established than this truism. The records of successful men in all periods and in every avenue of life bear testimony to this fact.

To the artist, seeing is the all important thing, and to him there is no mystery either in the development of this power or in the result obtained. To him it is simply a matter of logical evolution, the result of the day’s work well done. He begins his career as a student by laboriously copying nature. His first studies are, as a rule, hard and unsympathetic. I have not discovered an exception to this rule. In the beginning the art student does not even see colour in its fullness and beauty. Gradually he acquires greater power of perception. He discovers beautiful and harmonious colours in nature which were unseen at first. He realizes the exquisite grace of line to be found on every hand but unperceived before—the movement, charm, and beauty of natural forms. New beauties are revealed from day to day; new harmonies are seen and felt. Presently the inharmonious becomes distasteful; the ugly, intolerable; the offensive, a distress. He comes into the presence of nature with a new vision. Her beauties are revealed to him. He feels a thrill in the love he bears for the exceptional and profound beauty of an evening sky or a grey day. He never talks about inspiration or soul, although he has searched out the very soul of the landscape. He simply seeks with every power at his command, as Constable, borrowing the thought from Wordsworth, expressed it, “to give ‘to one brief moment caught from fleeting time’ a lasting and sober existence, and to render permanent many of those splendid but evanescent Exhibitions which are ever occurring in the endless varieties of Nature.”

The sculptor, I think, in some such manner lies in wait for the grace and charm of movement, the supreme expression of character and of harmony, as an animal lies in wait for its prey. When one or all of these qualities are seen he seizes his chisel and strives to fix what he has discovered in permanent form.

The artist, looking back over twenty or thirty years of continuous and earnest study, of repeated and laborious effort, and of failures and successes, realizes that the power of perception and selection which he now possesses is the result of these years of observation and labor. He also realizes that he has never quite attained to the full height of his ambition to represent truthfully the supreme qualities of beauty which he has learned to discover in nature.

In the selection of subjects for his works and in the production of arrangements or combinations representing either grace, beauty of colour and form, or essential character, the painter or sculptor is aided by two very powerful influences.

The first of these is his inherited or acquired taste. Step by step, precept upon precept, first as a student in the art school, then as an artist, this faculty known as taste is cultivated, increased, until with rare discrimination and judgment he selects, “picks and chooses,” as Whistler said, the things of beauty and harmony, being guided all the while by the unwritten law of harmony of which we are all conscious. To arrive at this consummation of the artist’s highest endeavors is not an easy task.

His course may be, and often is, a very delightful and agreeable one, but it is one of infinite effort and labor. Before the painter acquires this knowledge or power which enables him to discriminate with judgment and taste, selecting those forms and colours expressive of harmony, grace and beauty, he must have served an apprenticeship of many long years. The sculptor who would aspire to the exquisite and discriminating taste of a Rodin, who observes with patience and who seizes with marvellous skill upon the very essence of grace as it is expressed by the human figure, must travel the same tedious road. If the sculptor would read and know character as does a Saint-Gaudens, he must travel many a weary mile over the path which leads to perfection in art.

The second powerful influence helping the artist to acquire knowledge is, as Constable suggested, art itself. The student while pursuing the plodding course of training in the art school and later in a wider field as an artist, is not only searching out in nature the qualities of grace and harmony, but his eyes are constantly turned in the direction of the accumulated records of art. He studies with assiduous care and thought in the great works of all times, the qualities, the harmonies, the character wrested from nature by the able painters and sculptors of the past. Myriads have tried and failed to know and master nature during the past few hundred years, and only the few who have succeeded have left the record of their success. All the weak productions have gone into oblivion. To these really great works the painter and sculptor turn again and again, patiently, persistently, unfalteringly, sometimes through hours of silent study at other times by earnest effort to copy, but always with a single purpose in mind—to know and master the secrets of the masters. Little by little, always referring the master to nature for confirmation or proof, the artist struggles upward to a more consummate understanding of the works of nature, but he never forsakes or belittles this supreme source of all his power and knowledge.

Winslow Homer

I recall asking Winslow Homer if he did not think the beauty existing in nature must be discovered and reproduced by the painter. Quick as a flash he answered: “Yes, but the rare thing is to find a painter who knows a good thing when he sees it.”