THE PROFANITY
OF PAINT

MY view-point is the painter’s, the poet’s; ah, I am a romanticist! But my book is true. The romanticist finds truth without seeking it; it is before him, around him, and he gathers it all with the joy of the child that plucks the flowers in the fields. Truth is not knowledge: it belongs to temperament; it is vision! The child and the romanticist love the beautiful, that is all: truth is there!

[12]

I   HAVE loved trees all my life; they were the friends of my baby years. Though the land of the trees seemed far away from the close-built houses, I wandered thither with great joy and never knew that my little feet were tired. The tall aspens were the most wonderful things in the world: they are still. I shed tears on being told that the Cross was made from one of them. I have wept since at the sight of their trembling leaves. They trembled for the tragedy of Golgotha. I[14] know they will tremble to the end of the world. Melancholy trees! O but they are beautiful—beautiful and gentle like a nun with a prayer quivering upon her lips, with her white fingers and her rosary sparkling from under her robe: and, lo, the aspens are all alike, as she and her holy sisters must needs be for the sake of their holiness.

Sensitive to all the changes of the sky, the aspen reflects wondrous colour; the leaves, like a million little mirrors, draw the blue and the purple from above and drink the orange from departing suns. And all the colour and the light blend in subtle harmonies like the precious pearls on the neck of a goddess. Ah! do they not pulsate[15] like the strings of beads on a maiden’s breast? The vision is fleeting as it is beautiful; the colour upon the leaves, like that in the dews around, is surely spiritual.

[16]

AS a painter, out-of-doors, the aspens are my despair, for they are surely beyond the limitations of paint. I once set my palette with bright colours with a grove of aspens in front of me: O, but when I looked up into all the mass of shimmering leaves, spread out like a garment inwoven with gems, flowing upon the breezes and toying with the rich dyes of heaven, I shut down my box, threw myself upon the grass and sat there in idle adoration, like a heathen before his[18] god. If all I beheld was meant for a revelation it was surely as beautiful as the burning bush. To Moses I am more than grateful: it is through him that God’s voice rings out against the bad artist: Thou shalt not make ... any likeness of any thing. When God said the same thing to the Chinese three thousand years ago they understood and have painted colour ever since. Why is the western world in the dark?

O let my eyes be baptized with the sun that I may behold colour like the heathen!

How long I stayed in the temple of the trees I do not know; time did not count because I was not at work: all was like a dream. If I had been a[19] Florentine of the olden days I would have seen here the robes of a saint, perhaps the shining garment of the Blessed Virgin.

I did well to close my box and keep my eyes unspoiled by the profanity of paint, leaving the pure impression to some happy occasion when the memory of it all will be sufficient for my picture.

[20]

THE trend of this book shows clearly that I am no realist. Although, in my solitude, years ago, I made many careful drawings of various things and gained some knowledge of their mechanism, my labours brought me no pleasure save the small satisfaction of having done a self-inflicted task after reading miserable books on art. In those days I pitied myself; but now I pity the miserable authors. The education of the painter is a mistake: educate the man! The painter will[22] find himself, sooner or later. If there is no painter in him his case is hopeless.

Art education, so called, which is the training of the eye and the hand, gives one a facility for recording facts: truth never. Truth is felt. To the painter, the poet, the romanticist facts are cold things belonging to the past—dead things that have nothing to do with intuition, vision, truth. He must dream new dreams, employ new methods, create new things! He is not a common creature and, therefore, should not be entrusted with any public responsibility: but God grant that in all the economic medley, called civilization, he may have the right to live.

ALTHOUGH I write just the things I feel, my book is an effort: but I am glad of this. That I have no liking for any literary task and hate all correspondence I regard as a gift. My mother has a rarer gift: she does not talk. She speaks when she has something to say and never utters empty words. O but she is eloquent! She clothes her thoughts with simple language and stops at the right moment; it is a well-timed pause in which her face counts. Her intermittent silence is a master stroke; it gives the same[24] sense of space that I would have in my picture. Perhaps it is beyond art, but it is all hers without an effort; arising out of her good soul it belongs to her nature.

I see her too little; her home is in a village on the coast and mine in an inland city. That I shall miss her one day is the miserable thought I cannot get rid of without seeing her. O but when I arrive my fears vanish in a moment, for she lives for me. She is dear to look upon: but when she looks at me my sense of spiritual security is greater than can ever be described. I feel the influence of her peace which brings mine back to me. Her eyes are aglow from silent thoughts of me, and[25] I stay with no other desire than to be with her and believe in immortality—believe all her belief!

[26]

THERE is something in the art of the master that I can never find a word for. I believe it is a sin to seek for one. Art in the finer sense is beyond the limitations of all words assigned by the philologists. The master is a magician, therefore it is only the poets that can speak with authority about his work: and it requires all the magic of poetry to deal with the creation of things. Words must be arranged so as to lose all their etymological stiffness before they can[28] ever express the things born of inspiration. Only inasmuch as the poet’s song transcends the meaning of his words does he approach the spiritual sense of art.

IN talking with brother painters I often find myself giving prominence to some particular word like rhythm, vibration, or colour: but I must always forget the root-meaning, or I would discard it at once. I must employ my adopted word in a new way. Its special meaning, though never explained, is communicated by repeating the word freely in various relations, pronouncing it with emphasis in an unexpected moment, or, again, pausing before its utterance so that the appreciative ear may anticipate it and catch the spiritual[30] sense intuitively and feel all I had attached to it from myself. It is nonsense to talk upon art without a personal note of this kind!

VERY few understand how much colour means to the colourist, or why, in the higher sense, like music it has no plural. Colours are the pigments, the materials: but colour is the soul of things!

I believe colour belongs to the fairies; it never comes quite within our grasp. It is borne upon the air, its chariot is the morning dews, and its paths the sunbeams. I have come to regard colour as a spiritual thing changing for ever, as all spiritual things do. Of a truth it is the beautiful emblem of[32] change. The idea of eternal change is fascinating beyond measure. God never created a fixture intentionally. We are immortal only inasmuch as we are eternally moving with the thought of God!

I   LOVE the word extravagance in its application to colour; for is not the sense of colour an innocent extravagance of the mind, which saves the possessor from discontent and death? I know I shall not die while colour floods in upon my eyes: it is the silent music of an eternal vision!

[34]

THE other day at coffee with a group of young painters I talked upon the importance of relation. I went so far as to say that no picture could have any sense of dignity without the quality I have named. Everything in the work should, in some special degree, contribute to the first idea. Nothing should be introduced for the sake of variety. No; it is better to let sameness be the principle.

I have seen sheep grazing in a meadow with all their heads turned[36] one way, all quietly pursuing the same course, as though led by a sympathetic spirit, and I have felt that the peace of all the pastures was undisturbed by their presence. I once saw a group of rustics with all their faces so nearly alike as to represent a distinct type; all bent upon the same work, pursuing the task with natural ease and unconscious order, and I felt the nobility of their occupation, the blessedness of labour. And when I have seen such people kneel before the crucifix with their heads bowed towards the east and have noted from behind the simplicity in their manners, the sameness in all their clothes, I have felt the fervour of their religion, the divinity[37] of poverty that makes them all unconsciously relative!

But if I want humour I get into a motor-bus and watch the mixed types, the short and the long, the fat and the thin, the hook nose and the snub; and I get it. But does not the motor-bus show the painter the confusion of ideas he must always avoid in his work?

I sometimes think there is humour in trees when cultivated by people who, from an insatiate love of variety, plant one of every kind around their lawns. No artist, unless he was mad, would record such a confusion of things as this.

Of a truth trees can only be painted by the sympathetic hand, one that can[38] make a simple group out of all around him, selecting only those that, by their forms, shall contribute to the artistic sense relation! In a word, the painter must never aim for likeness; the material sense should never be transferred to canvas: more than anything else trees have superb rhythmic tendencies: inspired by these, he should paint a rhythmic picture.

THE sky was impressive by its change from sunlight to sudden darkness; and the ethereal fabric hung like black velvet over all the woods. All the colour that a moment ago clothed the trees was gone in an instant, as a candle is blown out; and the world was without form.

I stood under a tree. The sense of my own presence was the only note of reality that disturbed the dream of pre-world void.

In a few minutes the heavens opened high above my head and a stream of[40] light slanted down upon an old oak. Perhaps it was the searchlight of a war god, for in a moment the oak was struck, and the earth shook as it fell. I was captivated as much by the greatness of the tree as by its fall; it was torn up with its roots with a mountain of clay in its grip. But more wondrous than all were the forewarned sheep that nestled under it to the last moment. Why did they all rise and leap forth into the open field? What made them flee before the blast?... There are sanctuaries which should never be unveiled: there are questions you should not attempt to answer—this is one.

THERE never was a colourist without a keen sense of humour and never without a generous soul. When I say humour I do not mean satire or anything that leaves a bitter taste. Satire is permissible with the community, but should never be directed against a person.

Humour must always be buoyant, pleasant in every way, and have no other meaning than that which makes the person who happens to be the sport of it laugh with the rest. The one so[42] honoured must, of course, be a genuine humorist, or he would be unworthy of special attention.

Humour is the tonic of genius. It is the healthy reaction of prolonged serious thought, the pleasant negative of stern reality, the divine intoxicant for the over-productive brain.

I have always felt that the past should be either forgotten or turned to humour. The only serious part of life is the present, but this should have its lighter side. When we have ceased to laugh we have done with all generous feeling, and, when this is dead, it is the end of all creative thought.

A BOOK is not worth its paper if it cannot suffer by the process of critical mutilation; writing, and also painting, must be viewed as a whole, but never pigment by pigment or line by line. Every paragraph read separately must call forth some opposite view or else the book is poor stuff. Every inch of the picture closely viewed by itself must bewilder the observer; otherwise, it is a weak, insipid, belaboured canvas, good for nothing. I tell you for your own sake: do not hold a microscope in front of genius!

[44]

IF I listened attentively to the things that others say my work would lose character. To pay attention to criticism is to pursue the process of laboured refinement which reduces all to the commonplace. Critics with much knowledge are people with retrospective minds; they cannot be of use to the born painter whose work is creative. Knowledge is related to things already accomplished; but the vast unexplored fields open to creative genius are beyond the range of all critical analysis. The painter, more[46] than any other, lives a life of spiritual change.

Look at the sky! The luminaries return, return, return! To the scientist they move with regularity and precision; but to the romanticist they shed new light every moment. The astronomer knows the facts: the poet feels the truth!

THERE is a certain something in a cigarette that gives character to the painter’s conversation. The cigarette itself plays an important part in timing the frequent pauses to suit the wit of genius. The curls of smoke punctuate a series of brilliant aphorisms which otherwise would be impossible. The painter has the gift of making parables. The fact is he talks from feeling rather than reason. He never makes a speech: he tells you something. But is he not charming withal?

[48]He has no self-restraint. The cold, placid surface, the cultivated evenness that is counted a valuable asset in the man of business, in the politician and the millionaire, is not his, thank God!

In his heart he is a child. He will talk about himself and his own work so frankly that you will always be interested if not wholly charmed. Unselfish in every vein, his grievance is never a personal one; it has no bearings save for his art. From this point the matter is soon beaten flat under his hammer of words. If he had not the courage to say all he felt he would be no painter! But do not be deceived: his fearless tongue has a fine counterpart deep in his heart. As a man in[49] the right capable of strong denunciation, he is the man you may safely approach and trust!

[50]

I   PREFER the café of the people, and never visit any that has an exclusive atmosphere unless I am obliged. I do not care to see many rich people at one time. It was ordained that the percentage of rich should always be small, therefore a crowd of them in one spot is bad form, often bad colour, and mostly confusion. A group of artisans never gives me any unpleasant thoughts: it is the natural order of things; the poor were regarded by Our Lord as the multitude.

[52]

THAT I belong to the middle-class is my chief misfortune; it is better to be born an aristocrat, but better still an artisan. To the middle-class belong all the money makers: builders of monopolies, political wire-pullers, and all that spells greed. These people buy everything and sell everybody. With them lying is an art, whereas for the poor it is only a pastime. The aristocrat—the product of luxury and idleness—is as much above any mean action as he is at loss in[54] managing his own affairs. He must employ agents: enter the middle-class! To them he entrusts all his worldly belongings, with an intuitive knowledge that he is robbed always and will be as long as he lives. He knows they pursue his money with all the zest that he pursues sport. But he always carries the same bright face, the same kind heart; and he would pay to the last penny. O but how strange, his agents save him from ruin! and the people on the land contribute more to the miserable business than is known to my lord, more than they themselves ever realise: and so the middle-class remains the back-bone of the Empire. But what does this mean? The truth is that[55] God made the lord and the labourer: the rest is mainly the work of the devil!

[56]

I   ONCE told a young artist to attempt no masterpiece. The thing cannot be done. The moment you think of doing a masterpiece you are befooled. Providence does not allow you to arrange anything of that kind. All you must do is paint with a generous heart—paint colour—and leave to the next generation the selection of your masterpiece. The painter, above all men, must be himself, without any regard for the world’s judgment. Do not be deceived: Time will decide the masterpiece—Time will destroy it!

[58]

[60]

WHAT is the painter’s mission? My dear sir, he has no mission. He may talk about anything and everything, but this is his pastime. His art should not be connected with any movement. Painting is a personal matter and, therefore, cannot be regulated by communities. When the painter talks he throws light upon himself, which is necessary sometimes; it may help others to understand him. The painter must be judged, in the end, from his own point of view: it is the only moral judgment for an honest man!