can, by drawing that line in the same
part of the corresponding square on the canvas, repeat the line in the
same relation and with exactness, while still leaving the hand free to
modify it, or correct it.
In this way the simplest or the most complex, the largest or the
smallest study sketch or drawing may be accurately transferred to any
surface you please.
CHAPTER XXV
KINDS OF PAINTING
Why not recognize that conviction, intense personal attraction to a
certain sort of thing is the life of all art. How else can life get
into art than through the love of what you paint? A man may understand
what he does not love, but he will never infuse with life that which
he does not love. Understand it he should, if he would express it; but
love it he must, if he would have others love it.
You see it is not the thing, but the manner; not the fact, but what
you can find in it; not the object, but what you can express by it.
"_Un chef d'oeuvre vaut un chef d'oeuvre_" because perfect delight in
loveliness found in a small thing is as perfect as perfect delight in
loveliness found in a great thing. And still life uninteresting as a
fact, may be fascinating if "seen through the medium of a
temperament."
Don't let the idea get into your head that one thing is easier to do
than another thing. Perhaps it is, but it is a bad mental attitude to
think so. And even then, you may find that when you have worked out
all that its easiness shows you, some one with better knowledge or
insight may come along and point out undreamed-of beauties and
subtleties. And are they easy? To see and express the possibilities in
easy things is the hardest of all.
=Classification.=--Divide paintings into two classes,--those
representing objects seen out-of-doors, and those representing objects
in-doors. This is the most fundamental of all classifications, and it
is one which belongs practically to this century. Before this century
it was hardly thought of to distinguish out-door light from in-door
light.
Some of the Dutchmen did it. But it is only in this century that the
principle has made itself felt. It is this which makes the difference
of pitch or key so marked between the modern and the ancient pictures.
It has changed the whole color-scheme.
An out-door picture may be still painted in the studio, but it must be
painted from studies made out-doors. It is no longer possible
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