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Page 16
"Let me explain further," he went on, even more earnestly. "Imagine that
we are looking at a picture, and we admire exceedingly the perfection of
drawing its author has displayed,--the wonderful breadth of
composition,--the harmony of color-masses. The moment is full of keen
enjoyment for us; but the vital thing, after all, is, what impression
shall we take away with us. Has the picture borne us any message? Has it
been either an interpretation or a revelation of something? Shall we
remember it?"
"But is not simple beauty sometimes a revelation, Mr. Sumner?" asked
Barbara,--"as in a landscape, or seascape, or the painting of a child's
face?"
"Certainly, if the artist has shown by his work that this beauty has
stirred depths of feeling in himself, and his effort has been to reveal
what he has felt to others. If you seek to find this in pictures you
will soon learn to distinguish between those (too many of which are
painted to-day) whose only excellence lies in trick of handling or
cunning disposition of color-masses,--because these things are all of
which the artist has thought,--and those that have grown out of the
highest art-desire, which is to bear some message of the restfulness,
the power, the beauty, or the innocence of nature to the hearts of other
men.
"And there is one thing more that we must not forget. There may be
pictures with bad _motifs_ as well as good ones--weak and simple ones,
as well as strong and holy ones--and yet they may be full of all
artistic qualities of representation. What is true with regard to
literature is true in respect to art. It is, after all, the _message_
that determines the degree of nobility.
"Art was given for that. God uses us to help each other so,
Lending our minds out.
wrote Mr. Browning, and we should always endeavor to find out whether
the artist has loaned his mind or merely his fingers and his knowledge
of the use of his materials. If we find thought in his picture, we
should then ask to what service he has put it.
"If a poem consist only of words and rhythms, how long do you think it
ought to live? And if a picture possess merely forms and colors, however
beautiful they may be, it deserves no more fame. And how much worse if
there be meaning, and it be base and unworthy!"
"Does he not put it well?" whispered Malcom to Bettina from his usual
seat between her and Margery. "I feel as if he were pouring new
thoughts into me."
"Now, the one thing I desire to impress upon you to-night," continued
Mr. Sumner, "is that these old masters of painting who lived in the
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries had messages to give
their fellow-men. Their great endeavor was to interpret God's word to
them,--you know that in those days and in this land there was no Bible
open to the common people,--and what we must chiefly look for in their
pictures is to see whether or not they told the message as well as the
limitation of their art-language permitted.
"At first, no laws of perspective were known. None knew how to draw
anything correctly. No color-harmonies had been thought of. These men
must needs stammer when they tried to express themselves; but as much
greater as thought is than the mere expression of it so much greater are
many of their works, in the true sense, than the mass of pictures that
make up our exhibitions of the present day.
"Then, also, it is a source of the deepest interest to one who loves
this art to watch its growth in means of expression--its steady
development--until, finally, we find the noblest thoughts expressed in
perfect forms and coloring. This we can do here in Florence as nowhere
else, for the Florentine school of painting was the first of importance
in Italy.
"So," he concluded, "do not look for beauty in these pictures which we
are first to study; instead of it, you will find much ugliness. But
strive to put yourselves into the place of the old artists, to feel as
they felt. See what impelled them to paint. Recognize the feebleness of
their means of expression. Watch for indications in history of the
effect of their pictures upon the people. Strive to find originality in
them, if it be there, for this quality gives a man's work a certain
positive greatness wherever we find it; and so learn to become worthy
judges of that which you study. Soon, like me, you will look with pity
on those who can see nothing worthy of a second glance in these
treasures of the past.
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