Study! You must ever be on the look-out for beauties, that is the necessary mental attitude, otherwise they will never be seen. You must look for a thing if you wish to find it, and it is only by showing us your finds that you will prove you have artistic insight, we shall not believe a word you say about art until we see it in your work. If you do not study, or if you are incapable, you will remain blind in spite of your looking, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you show to the world commonplaces which you think are gems, for the world will soon tell you they are commonplace. We once knew a person who was colour-blind, who resented the suggestion as a personal insult, until one evening her eyesight was tested, when her colour-blindness was proved.
Let the student then be assured that he is blind, he cannot see art and nature until he has studied them long and closely. He may be arrogant enough to think he knows all about her without study. If that is so, as he grows older let him refer back to his earlier works, and if he has progressed meanwhile, let him recall how perfect he thought those early works at the time he did them, and then let him lash himself for his folly. A really good work will always bear looking back at, and will hold its own however old the artist gets. |No royal road.| There is no royal road to this appreciation of the beauties of art and nature, none but incessant and loving study, and though the cockney, or sage of the university, who dwells in towns and learns his art and his nature in the National Gallery and British Museum, may lecture on nature and art, let the student avoid him and his example. Lectures on art at any time are but Dead Sea fruit.
The student then must educate his eyesight in order to see the beauties of nature and art, and to do this he must study hard, for the true artist wishes to see these beauties and to record them, that is all, nothing more. The seers who see deeply, they are the poets! In science the original discoverers are the seers, and since but few can aspire to become seers, nevertheless let the rest be content to go on studying, for all of us can see these things with an educated and intelligent eye, and seeing, understand, and that reward is worth the pains.
CHAPTER II.
COMPOSITION.
Composition.
No chapter of this book has given us so much thought as this chapter on composition.
Laws of composition.
We could easily, as most writers have done, have given a digest of Mr. Burnet’s laws of composition, but we have no faith in any “laws of composition.” A law, to be logical, must hold good in all cases; now the so-called “laws of composition,” are often broken deliberately by great artists, and yet the result is perfect. This is easily explained, for these so-called laws are mere arbitrary rules, deduced by one man from the works of many artists and writers; and they are no more laws in the true sense than are the laws of Phrenology or Astrology.
Our problem.
The great question then, which presented itself to us, was this: Will the study of these so-called rules do good or harm to the student? Will a knowledge of them lead him to the production of conventional work, or will it in any way help him in his future work? We had many earnest discussions on this point with artists, and they seemed equally uncertain in the matter, though one condemned all such laws as absurd and unnecessary. |“Treatise on Painting.”| We most certainly feel inclined to agree with that one dissentient, but in trying to place ourselves in the position of the photographic student, with absolutely no knowledge of art, we have come to the conclusion that, perhaps, the student had better study Mr. Burnet’s “Treatise on Painting.” A cheap edition of this book is published by Dr. E. Wilson, of 835, Broadway, New York, and every student should get a copy of it. It can be thoroughly mastered in a week or two, so that not much time will be lost. The numerous plates will at any rate be of some use to the student.