In making studies, however pure and simple, the object of which is to discover facts and to learn mastery of form, our aim should be to get as much truth as we can, truth of structure as well as of aspect. But these (as far as we can make them) exhaustive studies should be accompanied or followed by analytical studies made from different points of view and for different purposes.
Studies, for instance, made with a view to arrangements of line only—to get the characteristic and beautiful lines of a figure, a momentary attitude, the lines of a flower, or a landscape: studies with a view, solely, to the understanding of structure and form, or again, with the object of seizing the broad relations of light and shade, or tone and colour—all are necessary to a complete artistic education of the eye.
Accidents and Essentials
If we are drawn as students rather towards the picturesque and graphic side of art, we shall probably look for accidents of line and form more than what I should call the essentials, or typical line and form, which are the most valuable to the decorative designer.
In both directions some compact or compromise with nature is necessary in any really artistic re-presentation.
The painter and the sculptor often seek as complete representation as possible, and what may be called complete representation is within the range of their resources. Yet unless some individual choice or feeling impresses the work of either kind it is not a re-presentation, but becomes an imitation, and therefore inartistic.
The decorative designer and ornamentist seek to suggest rather than to re-present, though the decorator's suggestion of natural form, taking only enough to suit or express the particular ornamental purpose, must be considered also as a re-presentation. How much, or how little, he will take of actual nature must depend largely upon his resources, his object, and the limitations of his material—the conditions of his work in short; but his range may be as wide as from the flat silhouetted forms of stencils or simple inlays to the highly-wrought mural painting.
Design motive, individual conception and sentiment, apart from material, must, of course, always affect the question of the choice and degree of representation of nature. The painter will sometimes feel that he only wants to suggest forms, such as figures or buildings, half veiled in light and atmosphere, colours and forms in twilight, or half lost in luminous depths of shadow.