Part 3 (1/2)

So this damned Realism made an instinctive appeal toall traditions, cried aloud with the confidence of ignorance, ”Back to Nature!” _Nature!_ ah, my friend, what mischief that cry has done me Where was there an apostle apter to receive this doctrine, so convenient for ? It is nothing but that Well, the world atching; and it saw ”The Piano,” the ”White Girl,” the Thames subjects, the marines

canvases produced by a felloas puffed up with the conceit of being able to prove to his coifts, qualities which only needed a rigorous training to make their possessor to-day a master, instead of a dissipated student Ah, as I not a pupil of Ingres? I don't say that out of enthusias for theether, seem to me of a very questionable style, not at all Greek, as people want to call it, but French, and viciously French I feel that we o far beyond this, that there are far s to be done Yet, I repeat, as I not his pupil? What a master he would have been for us! How salutary would have been his guidance!

_Whistler_

xxxIII

It has been said, ”Who will deliver us fro, ”Who will deliver us fro as a constant close iinative work Homer's fictions will always be preferred to historical truth, Rubens' fabulous nificence to all the frippery copied exactly froure

The painter who is a machine will pass away, the painter who is a mind will remain; the spirit for ever triumphs over matter

_Wiertz_

xxxIV

A little book by the Russian soldier and artist Verestchagin is interesting to the student As a realist, he condemns all art founded on the principles of picture-makers, and depends only on exact i after truth, and endeavour never to be unreal or affected, it otten that this endeavour after truth is to be ether unreal and different fro in a picture is real; indeed, the painter's art is the h art must be founded on nature, art and nature are distinctly different things; in a certain class of subjects probability may, indeed reeable

Everything in a work of art loo incident in real life, such accompaniments are not necessary to make us feel a thrill of horror or awaken the keenest sympathy The most awful circumstances may take place under the purest sky, and as The human sensibilities will be too much affected by the human sympathies to heed the external conditions; but to awaken in a picture sieneral aspect must be troubled or sad

_Watts_

xxxV

The ree tothe at the ideas they impute to me In what club have my critics ever encountered ht answer the charge as the cone did when he wrote ho that I am a Saint-Simonian: it's not true; I don't knohat a Saint-Simonian is”

Can't they then si at aby the sweat of his brow?

There are some who tell me that I deny the charm of the country I find in the country much more than char as they do on the little powers of which Christ said, ”I say unto you, that Sololory was not arrayed like one of these” I see and note the aureole on the dandelion, and the sun which, far away, beyond the stretching country, spends his glory on the clouds

I see just asas they toil; and then in a stony place I see a asps have been audible since , who tries to draw himself up for a moment to take breath The drama is surrounded by splendours This is no invention ofsince that expression ”the cry of the earth” was discovered My critics are ine; but I cannot put myself into their skins, and since I have never inbut the fields, I try to tell, as best I can, what I have seen and experienced as I worked

_Millet_

xxxVI

One of the hardest things in the world is to determine how much realism is allowable in any particular picture It is of so many different kinds too For instance, I want a shi+eld or a crown or a pair of wings or what not, to look real Well, I make what I want, or a model of it, and then ets on to the canvas is a reflection of a reflection of soi never had crowns like that, supposing them to have had crowns at all, but the effect is realistic because the crown from which the studies were made is real--and so on

_Burne-Jones_

xxxVII

Do you understand now that all ence rejects is in immediate relation to all my heart aspires to, and that the spectacle of human blunders and human vileness is an equally powerful s of tranquil contemplation that I have felt within me since I was a child?