nderstanding of it is of value to the layman
in so far as the knowledge helps him to read the artist's language and
thus to receive his message. Both for artist and for layman technique
is only a means. Out of his own intelligent and patient experience
the layman can win his way to an understanding of methods; and his
standard of judgment, good enough for his own purposes, is the
degree of expressiveness which the work of art, by virtue of its
qualities of execution, is able to achieve. Skill may be enjoyed
intellectually for its own sake as skill; in itself it is not art.
Technique is most successful when it is least perceived. _Ars celare
artem:_ art reveals life and conceals technique. We must understand
something of technique and then forget it in appreciation. When we
thrill to the splendor and glory of a sunset we are not thinking of the
laws of refraction. Appreciation is not knowledge, but emotion.

IV

THE VALUE OF THE MEDIUM

AS I swing through the wide country in the freshness and fullness of
a blossoming, sun-steeped morning in May, breathing the breath of
the fields and the taller by inches for the sweep of the hills and the
reaches of sky above my head, every nerve in my body is alive with
sensation and delight. My joy is in the fragrance of earth, the
ingratiating warmth of the fresh morning, the spacious, inclosing air.
My pleasure in this direct contact with the landscape is a physical
reaction, to be enjoyed only by the actual experience of it; it cannot
be reproduced by any other means; it can be recalled by memory but
faintly and as the echo of sensation. There is, however, something
else in the landscape which can be reproduced; and this recall may
seem more glorious than the original in nature. There are elements
in the scene which a painter can render for me more intensely and
vividly than I perceived them for myself. These elements embody
the value that the landscape has for my emotions. The scene appeals
to something within me which lies beyond my actual physical
contact with it and the mere sense of touch. The harmony that the
eye perceives in these open fields, the gracious line of trees along
the stream's edge, the tossing hills beyond, and the arch of the blue
sky above impregnating the earth with light, is communicated to my
spirit, and I feel that this reach of radiant country is an extension of
my own personality. A painter, by the manipulation of his color and
line and mass, conc