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''THE ART SPIRIT
'' 
''‘THE ART SPIRIT:

BY
ROBERT HENRI ~

NOTES, ARTICLES, FRAGMENTS OF LETTERS
AND TALKS TO STUDENTS, BEARING ON THE CON-
CEPT AND TECHNIQUE OF PICTURE MAKING, THE
STUDY OF ART GENERALLY, AND ON APPRECIATION

COMPILED BY
MARGERY RYERSON

 

PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1923
''COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

 

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PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA, Us S. Ae
''FOREWORD

Many students have asked for this book, and that is
the reason the fragments which are its composition have
been brought together. No effort has been made toward
the form of a regular book. In fact the opinions are
presented more as paintings are hung on the wall, to be
looked at at will and taken as rough sketches for what
they are worth. If they have a suggestive value and
stimulate to independent thought they will attain the
object of their presentation. There are many repeats
throughout the work, many times the same subject is taken
up and viewed from a different angle or seen in relation to
other matters. At the end there is a complete index which
will make up for the absence of chapters and sections and
the general scarcity of headings. There is no idea that
anyone should agree with any of the comments or that
anyone should follow the advice given. If they irritate to
activity in a quite different direction it will be just as
well. The subject is beauty—or happiness, and man’s
approach to it is various.

KR.
June, 1923
'' 
''THE ART SPIRIT

Art when really understood is the province of every
human being.

It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well.
It is not an outside, extra thing.

When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind
of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring,
self-expressing creature. He becomes interesting to other
people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and he opens
ways for a better understanding. Where those who are
not artists are trying to close the book, he opens.it, shows
there are still more pages possible.

The world would stagnate without him, and the world
would be beautiful with him; for he is interesting to him-
self and he is interesting to others. He does not have to
be a painter or sculptor to be an artist. He can work in
any medium. He simply has to find the gain in the work
itself, not outside it.

Museums of art will not make a country an art coun-
try. But where there is the art spirit there will be precious
works to fill museums. Better still, there will be the hap-
piness that is in the making. Art-tends towards balagice,
order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, the
economy of living—very good things for anyone to be
interested in.

The work of the art student is no light matter. Few
have the courage and stamina to see it through. You
5
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have to make up your mind to be alone in many ways. We
like sympathy and we like to be in company. It is easier
than going it alone. But alone one gets acquainted with
himself, grows up and on, not stopping with the crowd. It
costs to do this. If you succeed somewhat you may have
to pay for it as well as enjoy it all your life.

Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.
We are not here to do what has already been done.

I have little interest in teaching you what I know. I
wish to stimulate you to tell me what you know. In my
office toward you I am simply trying to improve my own
environment.

Know what the old masters did. Know how they com-
posed their pictures, but do not fall into the conventions
they established. These conventions were right for them,
and they are wonderful. They made their language. You
make yours. They can help you. All the past can help you.

An art student must be a master from the beginning;
that is, he must be master of such as he has. By being now
master of such as he has there is promise that he will be
master in the future.

A work of art which inspires us comes from no quib-
bling or uncertain man. It is the manifest of a very posi-
tive nature in great enjoyment, and at the very moment
the work was done.
''THE ART SPIRIT 7

It is not enough to have thought great things before
doing the work. The brush stroke at the moment of con- | 7
tact carries inevitably the exact state of being of the
artist at that exact moment into the work, and there it is, v
to be seen and read by those who can read such signs, and
to be read later by the artist himself, with perhaps some
surprise, as a revelation of himself.

For an artist to be interesting to us he must have been
interesting to himself. He must have been capable of
intense feeling, and capable of profound contemplation.

He who has contemplated has met with himself, is in a
state to see into the realities beyond the surfaces of his
subject. Nature reveals to him, and, seeing and feeling
intensely, he paints, and whether he wills it or not each
brush stroke is an exact record of such as he was at the
exact moment the stroke was made.

The sketch hunter has delightful days of drifting
about among people, in and out of the city, going any-
where, everywhere, stopping as long as he likes—no need
to reach any point, moving in any direction following the
call of interests. He moves through life as he finds it, not
passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to
know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his
sketch-book, a box of oils with a few small panels, the fit of
his pocket, or on his drawing pad. Like any hunter he hits
or misses. He is looking for what he loves, he tries to cap-
ture it. It’s found anywhere, everywhere. Those who are
''8 THE ART SPIRIT

not hunters do not see these things. The hunter is learn-
ing to see and to understand—to enjoy.

There are memories of days of this sort, of wonderful
driftings in and out of the crowd, of seeing and thinking.
Where are the sketches that were made? Some of them are
in dusty piles, some turned out to be so good they got
frames, some became motives for big pictures, which were
either better or worse than the sketches, but they, or rather
the states of being and understandings we had at the time
of doing them all, are sifting through and leaving their
impress on our whole work and life.

a" worry about the rejections. Everybody that’s
good has gone through it. Don’t let it matter if your

works are not “ accepted” at once. The better or more
personal you are the less likely they are of acceptance.
Just remember that the object of painting pictures is not
simply to get them in exhibitions. It is all very fine to.have —
your pictures hung, but you are painting for yourself, not
for the jury. I had many years of rejections.

a Do some great work, Son! Don’t try to paint good

- landscapes. Try to paint canvases that will show how

~ interesting landscape looks to you—your pleasure in the
thing. Wit.

There are lots of people who can make sweet colors,
nice tones, nice shapes of landscape, all done in nice broad
and intelligent-looking brushwork.

Courbet showed in every work what a man he was, what

a head and heart he had.
''THE ART SPIRIT 9

Every student should put down in some form or other
his findings. All any man can hope to do is to add his
fragment to the whole. No man can be final, but he can
record his progress, and whatever he records is so much
done in the thrashing out of the whole thing. What he
leaves is so much for others to use as stones to step on or
stones to avoid.

The student is not an isolated force. He belongs to a
great brotherhood, bears great kinship to his kind. He
takes and he gives. He benefits by taking and he benefits

by giving.

Through Art mysterious bonds of understandin
of knowledge are established among men. They are the
bonds of a great Brotherhood. Those who are of the
Brotherhood know each other, and time and space cannot
separate them.

The Brotherhood is powerful. It has many members.
They are of all places and of all times. The members do
not die. One is member to the degree that he can be mem-
ber, no more, no less. And that part of him that is of the
Brotherhood does not die.

The work of the Brotherhood doés not deal with sur-
face events. Institutions on the world surface can rise
and become powerful and they can destroy each other.
Statesmen can put patch upon patch to make things con-
tinue to stand still. No matter what may happen on the
surface the Brotherhood goes steadily on. It is the evolu-

tn
''10 THE ART SPIRIT

tion of man. Let the surface destroy itself, the Brother-
hood will start it again. For in all cases, no matter how
strong the surface institutions become, no matter what
laws may be laid down, what patches may be made, all
change that is real is due to the Brotherhood.

If the artist is alive in you, you may meet Greco nearer
than many people, also Plato, Shakespeare, the Greeks.

In certain books—some way in the first few paragraphs

you know that you have met a brother.

You pass people on the street, some are for you, some

are not.

Here is a sketch by Leonardo da Vinci. I enter this
sketch and I see him at work and in trouble and I meet
him there.

Letter to the Class, Art Students League, 1915

Aw interest in the subject; something you want
to say definitely about the subject; this is the first
condition of a portrait. The processes of painting
spring from this interest, this definite thing to be
said. Completion does not depend on material represen-
tation. The work is done when that special thing has
been said. The artist starts with an opinion, he organizes
the materials, from which and with which he draws, to the

ee
''THE ART SPIRIT 11

expression of that opinion. Every material he employs has
become significant of his emotion. The things have no
longer their dead meaning but have become living parts of
a codrdination. A prejudice has existed for the things
useful for the expression of this special idea, only things
essential to this idea have been used. Nature is there
before you. A particular line has been taken through
nature. <A special and particular vision is making itself
clear. The lace on the lady’s sleeve is no longer lace, it is
part of her, and in the picture stands as a symbol of her
refinement and her delicacy. The color in her cheek is no
longer a spot of red, but is the culminating note of an
order which runs through every part of the canvas sig-
nifying her sensitiveness and her health.

To start with a deep impression, the best, the most

interesting, the deepest you can have of the model; to pre-
serve this vision throughout the work; to see nothing else;
to admit of no digression from it; choosing only from the
“model the signs of it; will lead to an organic work. Every
element in the picture will be constructive, constructive of
an idea, expressive of an emotion. Every factor in the
painting will have beauty because in its place in the organ-
ization it is doing its living part. It will be living line,
living form, living color. Because of its adjustment, it is
given its greatest power of expansion. It is only through
a sense of the right relation of things that freedom can
be obtained.

As different as ideas and emotions are, there can be no
set rule laid down for the making of pictures, but for
students found working in a certain line suggestions may
be made. There is a certain common sense in procedure
''12 THE ART SPIRIT

which may be basic for all, and there are processes safe to
suggest, if only to be used as points of departure, to
those who have not already developed a satisfying use of
their materials.

It is on this ground that I offer you the following:
With your model posing as he does in the same position
every day of a week you have choice of differing modes of
study, and it is up to you to decide well which will be the
most profitable, which will carry you further. Some will
work the entire week on the same canvas and others will find
it an advantage to make an entirely new start every day,
preserving as far as possible the canvases of the early days
to compare with the work in hand, and making these com-
parisons, sitting in judgment on them and coming to
decision as to what to do next. Some will find it advisable
to start a canvas number one on the first day, and a canvas
number two on the second, and alternating these two can-
vases for the rest of the week, they will in a sort of duel
teach each other much. I myself have found it useful to
work on two canvases, alternating them with every rest of
the model. One does not sleep in this kind of work, there
is an excitement in it that can improve the sometimes dying
energies in a class room in the later days of the week.
Every mode has its virtues and its vices, but the student
who is a student and attending to his own case will in the
mode just described crowd into a week a lot of experience
in commencing a work, and he will come to a very great
knowledge of his understanding and his possible visions of
the subject. The value of repeated studies of beginnings
of a painting cannot be over-estimated. ‘Those who cannot
begin do not finish.
''THE ART SPIRIT 13

And for all who continue to work on the same canvas
let me suggest that your struggle throughout the week
should be to perfect the beginning of your painting. If
you are thinking and seeing your own work and the work
about you, you must observe how general is the failure in
_the progress of works. The fact is, finish cannot be sepa-
rated from a perfect commencement.

Insist then, on the beauty of form and color to be
obtained from the composition of the largest masses, the
four or five large masses which cover your canvas. Let
these above all things have fine shapes, have fine colors. Let
them be as meaningful of your subject as they possibly can
be. It is wonderful how much real finish can be obtained
through them, how much of gesture and modeling can be
obtained through their contours, what satisfactions can be
obtained from their fine measures in area, color and value.
Most students and most painters in fact rush over this;
they are in a hurry to get on to other matters,
minor matters.

In dealing with these four or five masses in portraiture,
the mass of the face is the most important and should be
considered as principal to the other masses, even though
_ the other masses be more brilliant or striking in themselves.
Also the mass of the head should be considered as principal
to any feature of the head. The beauty of the larger mass
is primary to and is essential to the lesser mass.

Paint over and over, scrape and re-commence in your
effort to find out and establish the beauty of color and
design possible in the larger masses. When you scrape, do
it like a good mechanic. Paint thin over proper light sur-
faces, but paint either thin or thick to get your desired
''14 THE ART SPIRIT

effect. Permit no hurrying on to the lesser masses before
all has been done that is possible with the larger masses.

Determine to get in these larger masses all that is pos-
sible of completion, all the drawing, color, design, charac-
ter, construction, effect. Remember that the greatest
beauty can be expressed through these masses, that the _
distinction of the whole canvas depends on them.

When later you come to the painting of the features of
the face, consider well the feature’s part in relation to the
idea you have to express. It will not be so much a question
of painting that nose as it will be painting the expression
of that nose. All the features are concerned in one expres-
sion which manifests the state of mind or the condition of
the sitter.

No feature should be started until you have fully com-
prehended its character and have established in your mind
the manner of its full accomplishment. To stop in the
process of drawing the lines of a feature to inquire “ what
next ” is surely to leave a record of disconnection.

No feature should be drawn except in its relation to the
others. There is a dominating movement through all the
features. There is sequence in their relationship. There
is sequence in the leading lines of the features with the
movements of the body. This spirit of related movement
is very important in the drawing or painting of hair. Hair
is beautiful in itself, this should not be forgotten, but it is
the last position of importance it takes in the make-up of
a portrait. The hair must draw the grace and dignity—
perhaps the brains—of the head. The lights on the hair
must be used to stress the construction, to vitalize,
accentuate and continue movement. The outline of the
''THE ART SPIRIT 15

hair over the face must be used as a principal agent for the
drawing of the forms of the forehead and temples, and
must at the same time partake of the general movement
of the shoulders and of the whole body. The hair is to be
used as a great drawing medium. It is to be rendered
according to its nature, but it is not to be copied. Think
well on this; it is very important.

“The eyebrows are hair in the last instance. To a good
draughtsman they are primarily powerful evidences of the
muscular actions of the forehead, which muscular actions
are manifestations of the sitter’s state of being. The
muscles respond instantly to such obvious sensations as
surprise, horror, pain, mirth, inquiry, etc., and the actions
of the muscles are most defined in their effect on that
strongly marked line of hair, the eyebrow. However
subtle the emotion, the eyebrow by its definiteness marks
the response in the muscular movement.

In certain heads, the eyebrow, while normal, still holds
a very positive gesture. There are those, therefore, who
carry in repose an expression of sadness, boredom, sur-
prise, dignity, and some accentuate the force or direction
in the action of looking. To a good draughtsman the eye-
brow is a living thing. It develops a habit which it
expresses in repose and it flashes intelligence of every
changing emotion. It draws the shape of the lower fore-
head and temples—the squareness, curve and bulk. After
all that, it is a series of small hairs growing out of
the skin. ;

The eyebrow must not be drawn hesitatingly. It must
be conceived as a whole; your conception, your brush, the
''16 THE ART SPIRIT

~ quantity of paint in right fluidity must be all ready before
~ you touch the canvas.

By the spring in the drawing of the eyelash the quick
action of the eye may be suggested. The upper eyelid and
lash generally cast a shadow scarcely observed yet very
effective on the eyeball. The white of the eye is more often
the same color as the flesh about it than the average
painter is likely to think it to be. The pupil is larger in
quiet light, becoming very small by contraction when look-
ing into brilliant light. The highlight in the pupil is a
matter of drawing although best done with one quick
touch. Its direction, shape, edges, and its contrast in
color and value to the pupil give shape, curve, brilliancy
or mark the contrary. The right brush, the right paint,
a perfect control of the hand are necessary for this. For
some, a maul stick to steady is of great value here. (‘There
is a time and place for all things, the difficulty is to use
them only in their proper time and places. )

The highlight on the end of the nose is likewise a mat-
ter of important drawing, although generally executed in
a simple quick touch. By its shape it defines the three

“angles of the end of the nose.

The lines and forms in the clothes should be used to
draw the body in its sensitive relationship with the head.
The wrinkles and forms of the clothes are building material
not for tailoring in your hands but for established basic
lines rising to the head. There is an orchestration through-
out the whole canvas. Nothing is for itself, but each thing
partaking of the other is living its greatest possibility, is
surpassing itself with vitality and meaning and is part of
''THE ART SPIRIT 17

the making of a great unity. So with the works of the
great masters.

Do not tell me that you as students will first learn how
to draw and then afterwards attend to all this.

It is only through such motives that you can learn to
draw. This kind of thought is drawing, the hand must obey ~
the spirit. With motive you will become clairvoyant of
means, will seize and command them. Without motive you
will wabble about.

Realize that your sitter has a state of being, that this
state of being manifests itself to you through form, color
and gesture, that your appreciation of him has depended
on your perception of these things in their significance,
that they are there of your selection (others will see dif-
ferently), that your work will be the statement of what
have been your emotions, and you will use these specialized
forms, colors and gestures to make your statement.
Plainly you are to develop as a seer, as an appreciator
as well as a craftsman. You are to give the craftsman in
you a motive, else he cannot develop.

All that I have said argues the predominant value of
gesture. Gesture expresses through form and color the ox
states of life. _

Work with great speed. Have your energies alert, up
and active. Finish as quickly as you can. There is no
virtue in delaying. Get the greatest possibility of expres-
sion in the larger masses first. Then the features in their
greatest simplicity in concordance with and dependent
on the mass. Do it all in one sitting if you can. In one
minute if you can. There is no virtue in delaying. But do
not pass from the work on mass to features until all that
2
''18 THE ART SPIRIT

can be said with the larger forms has been said—no matter
how long it may take, no matter if accomplishment of the
picture may be delayed from one to many days. Hold to
this principle that the greatest drawing, the greatest
expression, the greatest completion, the sense of all con-
tained, lies in what can be done through the larger masses
and the larger gestures.

When we know the relative value of things we can do
anything with them. We can build with them without
destroying them. Under such conditions they are enhanced
by coming into contact with each other.

The study of art is the study of the relative value of
things. The factors of a work of art cannot be used con-
structively until their relative values are known. Unstable
governments, like unstable works of art, are such as they
are because values have not been appreciated.

The most vital things in the look of a face or of a land-
scape endure only for a moment. Work should be done
from memory. The memory is of that vital moment.
During that moment there is a correlation of the factors
of that look. This correlation does not continue. New
arrangements, greater or less, replace them as mood
changes. The special order has to be retained in memory
——that special look, and that order which was its expres-
sion. Memory must hold it. All work done from the subject
thereafter must be no more than data-gathering. The sub-
ject is now in another mood. A new series of relations has
been established. These may confound. The memory of
''THE ART SPIRIT 19

that special look must be held, and the “ subject ” can now
only serve as an indifferent manikin of its former self. The
picture must not become a patchwork of parts of various
moods. The original mood must be held to.

The artist sees only that in the model which may help
him to build up the look he would record. His work is now
very difficult. With the model before him he works from
memory. He refers to the model, but he does not follow
the new relations which differing moods establish. He
chooses only from the appearance before him that which
relates to his true subject—the look which first inspired
him to work. That look has past and it may not return.
He is very fortunate if he can evoke again that look in
the subject.

It is very difficult to go away from a subject after
having received an impression and set that impression down
from memory. It is yet more difficult to work from mem-
ory with the “ subject ” in its changing moods still before
you. All good work is done from memory whether the
model is still present or not. With the model present there
is coupled with the distracting changes in its organization
which must not be followed, the advantage of seeing, never-
theless, the material—the raw material one might say—of
which the look was made.

Were the student constantly in the habit of memory-
practice there is little doubt but that he would dispense
with the presence of the model at the time of the actual
accomplishment of his work. But this would mean a form
of study which has not yet come in vogue. There is no
form of study more fascinating than this—that is, after
the first disheartening steps are taken. The first steps are
''20 THE ART SPIRIT

disheartening because while we may have learned copying
right well the effort to put down what we actually know—
that is, what we can carry away with us—is often a revela-
tion of the very little understanding we had in the presence
of the model.

I think it is safe to say that the kind of seeing and the
kind of thinking done by one who works with the model
always before him is entirely different from the kind of
seeing and thinking done by one who is about to lose the
presence of the model and will have to continue his work
from the knowledge he gained in the intimate presence.

The latter type of worker generally manifests a mental
activity of much higher order than his apparently safe and
secure confrére. He must know and he must know that he
knows before the model is snatched away from him. He
studies for information.

A good painting is a remarkable feat of organization.
Every part of it is wonderful in itself because it seems so
alive in its share in the making of the unity of the whole,
and the whole is so definitely one thing.

You can look at a good painting in but one way. That
is, the way it is made. Whether you will or not you must
follow its sequences.

There are some paintings, very remarkable for the skill
they display, which are, however, a mere welding together
of factors which belong to many different expressions of
nature. Many a school drawing of this character have I
seen held up as an example, given a prize, and yet being
but a mere patching together of many concepts—unrelated
factors nevertheless cunningly interwoven—there is not in
''THE ART SPIRIT 21

them that surge of life, that unity which is the mark of
true organization.

If you wish your work to have organization your con-
cept of the motive which is the incentive to your flight must
be as certain and you must hold as well to it as you would
have your organization certain and true to itself in all
of its parts.

No vacillating or uncertain interest can produce a
unity.

I have often thought of an art school where the model
might hold the pose in one room and the work might be
done in another. The pupils would have their places in both
rooms, one for observation and the other for work. The
pupil could return to the model room for information. In
getting the information he could view the model from his
place or could walk about and get an all-around concept ;
he could also make any sketches he might desire to make—
for information—but these drawings are not to be carried
into the work room. Into this room he only carries what
he knows.

It would be a wonderful school and the pupils in it
would not only enjoy their work and profit more but they
would be a much better class of students. For this class of
work would demand such activity of mind and such energy
that the practitioners of idle industry that now occupy so
many places in school studios would eliminate themselves.

One might ask why this plan is not tried. The reason
is the usual sad one. Good art schools are generally self-
supporting. They barely pay their expenses. Innovations
are financial risks. Besides, in this case the students have
''22 THE ART SPIRIT

to be convinced, and, as I have said before, the initial steps
in this kind of study are very discouraging.

Some tentative efforts have been made in memory
study but perhaps the nearest we have come to it in any
effective way has been through the introduction of the five,
ten, or thirty minute poses. In these, mental activity,
alertness, the quick seizing of essentials have been stimu-
lated. We have proved that thirty minutes of high-pitch
mentality and spirit is worth more than a whole week
below par. And in such rapid work where seeing and doing
is accomplished in five, ten, or thirty minutes the seeing
must be certain, selective, and the memory must be good.
This system of quick action has been of service.

In the old days, when a drawing was begun on Monday
and finished on Saturday, the student who did not know
how to begin a drawing “ began” one a week and spent a
week finishing the thing he had not known how to begin. A
thing that has not been begun cannot be finished.

But it took a terrible battle to introduce the Quick
Sketch. It will not be easy to introduce this Concept-and-
Carry method of study. A few individuals throughout the
history of art have adopted this method in spite of the
school conventions and these individuals are known to us
through their works.

It should be noted that in this memory form of study
it is not proposed that the model should be used less. It is
proposed that the model should be used more. This is a
thing that it would be well to understand. In fact, in
observing the work of many students or artists where the
model is before them for every stroke we may be impressed
with the idea that it is the model who is using the artist
''THE ART SPIRIT 23

instead of the artist using the model. This is certainly
the case where the artist is following the moods of the
model. Sometimes we see that the artist is not a willing
slave, however, for we hear him complaining that “ the
model has moved,” showing that somewhere in his mys-
terious consciousness there is a desire to do that thing
which he started out to do.

The development of an ability to work from memory,
to select factors, to take things of certain constructive
values and build with them a special thing, your unique
vision of nature, the thing you caught in an instant look
of a face or the formations of a moment in the sky, will
make it possible to state not only that face, that land-
scape, but make your statement of them as they were when
they were most beautiful to you.

By this I mean that you will make an organization in
paint on canvas; not a reproduction, but an organization,
subject to the natural laws of paint and canvas, which will
have an order in it kin to that order which has so im-
pressed you in nature—in the look of a face, in the look of
a landscape.

Faces are not permanently beautiful to us, nor are
landscapes. There seem to be moments of revelation,
moments when we see in the transition of one part to
another the unification of the whole. There is a sense of
comprehension and of great happiness. We have entered
into a great order and have been carried into greater
knowledge by it. This sometimes in a passing face, a
landscape, a growing thing. We may call it a passage
into another dimension than our ordinary. If one could
but record the vision of these moments by some sort of
''24 THE ART SPIRIT

sign! It was in this hope that the arts were invented.
Signposts on the way to what may be. Signposts towards
greater knowledge.

There are those who have found the sign and through
their works we can to some degree follow, as we do at
times when hearing music or in association with the works
of the masters of other arts.

Everyone in some measure has these moments of clearer
understanding, and it is equally important for all to hold
and fix them.

It is really not important whether one’s vision is as
great as that of another. It is a personal question as to
whether one shall live in and deal with his greatest moments
of happiness.

The development of the power of seeing and the power
to retain in the memory that which is essential and to make
record and thus test out how true the seeing and the ©
memory have been is the way to happiness.

What were the signs in that landscape, in the air, in
the motion, in our companionship, that so excited our
imagination and made us so happy?

If we only knew what were those signs we could paint
that country, could paint what it was to us.

What delight we have had in the memory of it! What is
that memory?

‘We do not remember it, nor did we see it as any single
thing, place or time.

Somehow times, places, things overlapped. Memories
carried into each other.
''THE ART SPIRIT 25

That time we sat in the evening silence in the face of
the mesa and heard the sudden howl of a pack of coyotes,
and had a thrill and a dread which was not fear of the
pack, for we knew they were harmless. Just what was
that dread—what did it relate to? Something ’way back
in the race perhaps? We have strange ways of secing. If
we only knew—then we could tell. If we knew what we saw,

we could paint it.

Letter to the Class, Art Students League, 1916

I orrer you this process of making a study. It is a
process I might or might not use myself. It is one way
of doing the work, but there are many ways. This is only
one of them. And it may prove a good experiment to you.
One advantage the process has is that it is economical as
to paint, and another advantage rests in the fact that you
may accomplish drawing and design first, and later develop
the color to its completion, thus separating two difficulties.

You start by making a very simple drawing on your
canvas, paying particular attention to the exact location,
size and shape of all the larger masses: the face, its light
and shade masses, the hair, collar and shirt, the tie, his
coat and the background. In this I have named seven
areas, and together they cover the total area of the canvas. ~
You do not go into details, but you devote yourself to
making the finest design you can possibly make with the
seven named shapes.

Your palette is clean. You now estimate the value and
color of each of these seven areas, and you mix a tone for
each of them, allowing for each a quantity of pigment a
''26 THE ART SPIRIT

little in excess of your estimate of the quantity necessary
to cover generously the area in question.

You work at these seven tones on your palette until
you are quite sure you have made mixtures that closely
approximate in color and value the (1) light of the face,
(2) shade of the face, (3) hair, (4) collar and shirt,
(5) tie, (6) coat, (7) background. Of course each of
these areas, or parts of the picture, have variations of
light and shade, and of color, but at this stage of your
work you disregard them. Your palette presents but
seven notes, each to represent flatly its corresponding area.

In making these notes you will find advantage in try-
ing them out by assembling them, maybe several times, in
a miniature picture on the palette, until you are sure you
have made the most distinguished assemblage possible in
this way. Seven notes which are effective and beautiful
in their relation to each other and which, assembled, will
give the clarity of the flesh and the collar and shirt, and
the richness and contrasting power of the darker notes, the
hair, tie, coat, background.

Let us assume that the model is a man of good healthy
complexion, black hair, a soft shirt and collar nearly white
but of a blue-green tint. A rich purple tie rather deep in
tone, a gray coat, and the background a rug designed in
dull red, dull yellow and green-blue low in tone and unified
by obscurity.

Now, all of the areas of the subject having their cor-
respondents in color, value and quantity on the palette;
and no other pigments allowed to remain, the palette pre-
sents in a general way precisely the notes that are to be
employed in the picture.
''THE ART SPIRIT Q7

The palette itself already looks like the subject, and
the student who having drawn, leaving only essential
lines, the placement, proportions and essential movement of
the subject, will be able to proceed to lay these colors on
the areas for which they are intended with a greater atten-
tion to their shapes, their drawing power, their fullness
and purity as pigments, than would be possible were they
mixed in the usual way.

My suggestion that you might use such a mode of set
palette is addressed to you after seeing you at your work,
gathering somewhat your aims, and observing your need
of a more simple process in the doing of what you are try-
ing to do.

This process is only one out of hundreds of processes.
There are many ways of painting pictures, and there are
many kinds of pictures, each claiming special procedure.

I offer this one process, without prejudice, because I
think that it will fit the ends I see you working for. You
will find that by its use you will be able to acclaim the
notes which give life to your subject ; to make your canvas
more rich and full, with harmony and contrast of color. It
will help you in the simple and net statements of value
whether they be values of color or values of black
and white.

I think you will see that by this detached painting of
the picture on the palette in terms of color and of value,
freed from the struggle with drawing, you will be able to
weigh the powers of the colors and values; to establish the
harmonies and contrasts; to become simpler; clearer;
more positive in your transitions and to have, when the
''28. THE ART SPIRIT

palette is thus set, a free mind to deal with the designs of
forms, drawing and the characterization.

There will be less confusion, less likelihood of falling
into exasperated and partial efforts to cover areas with
insufficient quantities of paint,and these quantities of paint
will have been better considered as to their general color
and value in relation to the other colors and other values.

I do not say that with the few flat tones I have indi-
cated for this portrait, a Monet-like impressionistic
picture may be painted, but I do say that anyone of you
who might desire to paint such a picture, or one with a full
iridescence of color, would do well first to acquire the
ability and habit of registering on your canvas, in any way
you can, an impression in large of the general shapes which
go to make up the character of the subject.

On the other hand, I am ready to say that with the
palette carefully built on this principle, the foundation of
a picture that is to be a brilliant and forceful statement in
color, color-vibration, mass, mass organization, in charac-
ter, character-signification, may be laid, and after the first
lay-in with this palette the palette may be augmented
and arranged in the same way as before with additional
divisions of color and value, to vitalize and complete the
work already established in its broader planes.

For the present, however, you as students should devote
yourselves to the power of simple expressions, to do all that
- can be done and learn how much can be said with the
simpler and more fundamental terms.

It should be well understood that the principle of this
form of set-palette is that a totally new palette is organ-
ized and set for each subject. It is possible to set a
''THE ART SPIRIT 29

palette, very scientifically arranged, that will be service-
able for many subjects, but in presenting this I have
looked to economy of paint and to the powers of concen-
tration on a certain scheme.

Note also that after the palette is arranged you have in
reserve your full set of colors, in their tubes, so that if in
practice a note you have made should prove false, you can
mix a new one to replace it, removing of course the false
note from the palette. It is at all times important to
remove any colors or mixtures that have no place in
the scheme.

Your regular stock of colors should be as nearly as
possible a well-balanced

Red Red-orange Orange Orange-yellow Yellow Yellow-Green

R RO O OY x YG

Green  Green-blue Blue Blue-Purple Purple Purple-Red
G GB B BP P PR

in correspondence with the spectrum band, and with these
you may have pigments that will serve as neutrals.

You will find at first that the study of your color scheme
and the setting of your palette will take considerable time.
With experience this time will be lessened. But in any
case do not think you are wasting time because you are
not fussing paint on your canvas. What you are doing
has to be done anyway, and it will take its time whether
you do it in the beginning or through the work. I am safe
in saying it will take less time and be better done if done
at first.

Before closing this letter I want to state again that
this form of set palette I have proposed is only one of many
forms. I do not want to limit you to it, I offer it rather
''30 THE ART SPIRIT

as a starting point for those of you who wish to use it as
such. Nor do I want to disturb those who are satisfied
with their present mode. I want you to act on your
own judgment.

Backgrounds

With the model before it, the background is
transformed.

Before the model takes his place, the wall is an identity
in itself and is forward.

When the model takes his place, the background
recedes and exists only as a complement to the figure.

Do not look at the background to know its colors or its
shapes. Look at the model. What you will see of the
background while looking at the model will be the back-
ground of that model.

All the beauty that can exist in the background rests
in its relation to the figure. It is by looking at the figure
that you can see this relation.

With your eyes well on the model, the values, tones,
shapes which you apprehend in the background are those
only which are complementary to the figure.

The shapes, tones and values you will apprehend in
the same background will differ with each new subject you
place before it,
''THE ART SPIRIT 31

The characters of each new subject before the back-
ground will claim of it their complements.

We are instinctively blind to what is not relative. We
are not cameras. We select. We do this always when we
are not painting. When you are sitting in conversation
with a young girl and are thinking the while how beauti-
ful she is, suddenly stop and ask yourself what has been
her background. Surely it was not all those incongruous
things that are now leaping into your consciousness from
behind her. And surely, too, while you were sitting there
and thinking her so beautiful you had created (uncon-
sciously) out of chaos a wonderfully fitting setting which
was back of her and around her and fully sufficient to her.

In ordinary life we see backgrounds right—in fact, as
they are. When we start painting we are apt to destroy
the background by looking at the multitude of things
behind the model.

Behind the model there are a multitude of things sub-
ject to all sorts of change according to our interest in
them. They are the raw material of a background. The
background is a creation in our consciousness.

Another way of saying it is to say that the head in
space creates its own background. That the background
becomes an extension of thé head; and that it is all the
canvas that is the head—not just that part the material
head occupies.
''32 THE ART SPIRIT

The background of our beautiful girl is a continuation
of her. If her beauty is one of great dignity the forms of
our background will be in harmony with or will be gracious
complements to this dignity seen in her face.

If she is merely chic, we will find in the background the
echoes and the complements of chic.

This will happen even though the material background
is precisely the same in each case.

All things change according to the state we are in.
Nothing is fixed. I lived once in the top of a house, in a
little room, in Paris. I was a student. My place was a
romance. It was a mansard room and it had a small
square window that looked out over housetops, pink chim-
ney pots. I could see |’Institut, the Pantheon and the
Tour Saint Jacques. The tiles of the floor were red and
some of them were broken and got out of place. There
was a little stove, a wash basin, a pitcher, piles of my
studies. Some hung on the wall, others accumulated dust
on their backs. My bed was a cot. It was a wonderful
place. I cooked two meals and ate dinner outside. I used
to keep the camembert out of the window on the man-
sard roof between meals, and I made fine coffee, and made
much of eggs and macaroni. I studied and thought, made
compositions, wrote letters home full of hope of some day
being an artist.

It was wonderful. But days came when hopes looked
black and my art student’s paradise was turned into a
* dirty little room with broken tiles, ashes fell from the
stove, it was all hopelessly poor, I was tired of camembert
and eggs and macaroni, and there wasn’t a shade of sig-

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 33

nificance in those delicate little chimney pots, or the Pan-
theon, the Institut, or even the Tour St. Jacques.

The material thing is the least part of a background or
an environment. And it should be noted, too, that a back-
ground is also an environment, for when you paint a back-
ground you are painting all that volume of space which
is the setting of your subject. And this fact should never
be lost sight of.

The background is more air than it is anything else.
It is the place in which the model moves. It is the air
he breathes.

The dimensions of a background are of very great
importance. The spaces on either side of the head and
above the head can do so many things good and bad to the
head and the figure that it is remarkable how little atten-
tion is generally paid to them. A figure can be dwarfed by
its placement, and if there is no sense of distance back of it
and on this side of it it will most surely be flattened.

From my point of view the simpler a background is the
better the figure in front of it will be, and also I will add,
the better the figure is the less the observer will need enter-
tainment in the background.

I am quite sure many a gold chair has been hauled in
because the artist has failed to get distinction and richness
in the mien of the sitter, and he counts on the chair to sup-
ply the deficiency. But a cocked hat won’t make a general.

3
''84 , THE ART SPIRIT

There are backgrounds so well made that you have no
consciousness of them.

‘The simpler a background is the more mastery there
must be in it: A full and satisfying result must be accom-
plished with extremely limited means.

At times secreted in the appearance of a simple tone
there is a gamut of color, a shifting across the spectrum
which keeps the thing alive, illusive, and creates the
mystery of depth.

On the other hand, one tone with the very slightest
change will do the thing. In this case the tone is in the
finest choice of relation to the dominant color of the figure.

A background is not to be neglected. It is a structu-
ral factor. It is as important to the head before it as
the pier is important to the bridge it carries. The back-
- ground is a support of the head.

Many an artist has fussed all day with a face, chang--
ing and changing and never getting it right because the
fault should have been found in the background which he
has neglected.

The background must travel along and keep pace with
every advance of the picture. A right eye travels all over
the canvas, for it is an organization of the whole that
makes any part. .

There are echoes everywhere of the feature you are
making. A touch on the face may be the causation of a
''THE ART SPIRIT 35

touch on the foot or, on the contrary, may demand

its removal.

The eye must be alert; must see the influence of one
thing on another and bring all things into relation.

The background as put in in the beginning may have
been excellent, but the work that has gone on before it
may demand its total reconstruction. Nothing is right
until all is done and a total unity has been accomplished.

It is important to stress attention to the background,
for it is a most common habit to neglect it.

If there are objects in the background they must not
be painted because they are interesting in themselves.
Their only right of existence is as complementary or
harmonic benefits to the head or the figure. In other
words: when you are painting the background or the things
in it you are still painting the head. Your eye is still on
the head, you see these things of the background in a

relative way only.

To paint otherwise is to digress and shift from one
subject to another, to paint many pictures in one.

When we delight in a thing in nature all our account-
ing of its environment is selective.

Seeing beauty in nature is a compositional act. Two
people may declare to each other the wonder of a sunset
''36 THE ART SPIRIT

or the loveliness of a woman, but, although they agree, each
has made his own selection.

Two painters before a sunset or a woman put down on
canvas the order of their seeing, and thus they communi-
cate to each other their separate ways.

In drawing, Rembrandt with a cast shadow or just a
line or two realized for us the most complete sense of space,
that is, background, environment. He could do this
because he saw and he had the genius of selection. Look
at his simplest drawings and you will see that he was a
supreme master in this.

A weak background is a deadly thing.
Every head claims its own kind of background.

There are backgrounds that should seem only to be air.
It takes some consideration, not only of color and value,
but as well of the way the paint is applied, and the thick-
ness or thinness of it, to make such a background.

Many a background has been spoiled simply because
the artist has tried to cover it with an insufficient amount
of paint; because it was a trouble to paint it all over, be-
cause his brush strokes were too much in evidence, because
he thought too little of it and did not realize the function
it had to perform.

The commonest fault is that he determines its color,
its value, and its content by looking at it and does not
''THE ART SPIRIT 37

realize its marvelous power of change, and that it is wholly
a matter of relation.

Mary Rogers’ approach to nature was purely a
spiritual one. Her technique in every instance was evoked
by the spirit of the things that she wished to express.

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a
day, when we seem to see beyond the usual—become clair-
voyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments
of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our
greatest wisdom.

It is in the nature of all people to have these experi-
ences; but in our time and under the conditions of our
lives, it is only a rare few who are able to continue in the
experience and find expression for it.

At such times there is a song going on within us, a song
to which we listen. It fills us with surprise. We marvel at
it. We would continue to hear it. But few are capable
of holding themselves in the state of listening to their own
song. Intellectuality steps in and as the song within us is
of the utmost sensitiveness, it retires in the presence of the
cold, material intellect. It is aristocratic and will not
associate itself with the commonplace—and we fall back
and become our ordinary selves. Yet we live in the memory
of these songs which in moments of intellectual inadvert-
ence have been possible to us. They are the pinnacles of
our experience and it is the desire to express these intimate
sensations, this song from within, which motivates the
masters of all art.
''38 THE ART SPIRIT

Mary Rogers was one of those who had the simple
power to listen to the song and to create under the spell of
it. She knew the value of revelation and her spirit had
that control over mentality which was the secret of her
gift for employing at all times in her work that specific
technique evoked by the song. She was master. Her work
is a record of her life’s great moments.

Her statement is joyous and clear.*

I want to see these houses solid, I want them to feel like
houses. I don’t care about your drawing and your values
—they are your affair. They will be good if you make me
sense the houses and they will be bad, however “ good ”
they are, if you do not make those houses live.

I want more than the outline of houses and I want more
than the frames of windows. It is impossible for me to see
only what the eye takes in, for these surfaces are only
symbols. The. look of a wall or a window is a look into
time and space. The wall carries its history, what we see
is not of the moment alone.

Windows are symbols. They are openings in. To
draw a house is not to see and copy its lines and values, but
to use them.

At noonday the landscape is just as fine, just as mys-
terious and just as significant as it is at twilight.

 

*International Studio, May, 1921.
''THE ART SPIRIT 39

By one with perception to grasp it there is as little seen
of the unessential at noon as the obscurity of — can
blot out from the casual observer.

It is true that obscurity may assist selection, may at
times force it.

Perhaps we delight in evening because we have had
the day.

It is seldom that the appearance of night can be
produced by a very black drawing. The beauty of night is
not so much in what you cannot see as in what you can see.
It is a fine thing, after the brilliant reds and blues and
yellows of daylight, to see the close harmony of evening
and night. Night can be painted so that it will be beauti-
ful and true with a palette that does not drop into black
but has instead a surprising richness of tone.

There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or sig-
nificant of the laws of the universe than the nude human
body. In fact it is not only among the artists but among
all people that a greater appreciation and respect for the

human body should develop. When we resj yect the nude we

 

will no longer have any shame about it.

The painting of hair. By the hair I mean the head or
that part of the head which is under the hair—for in art
hair is only important as hair after it has performed
another very expressive function. The hair is used to give

 

 
''ae ae

40 THE ART SPIRIT

shape to the head. <A beautifully shaped head with poor
hair is more important to us than a poorly shaped head and
beautiffil hair. The hair is used todrawthe head. Therefore
the terms of hair should be very simple as befits the dignity
of a well-shaped head. Hair also is a wonderful means of
vitalization. That is, by a wise use of hair the spirit of a
facial expression, or a whole body expression, may be
greatly enhanced. ‘The features of the face have an
anatomical responsibility, they must be in their places ; hair
has a certain irresponsibility. It may of itself do many
things. You can make a constructive use of it. It is a
great instrument in the hands of a wise draftsman or a
wise colorist. Perhaps you recall George Moore’s story
how an Irish editor, Gill, whose beard was trimmed through
the whim of a French barber to the style of Henry IV,
developed a latent character along the line which his new
appearance suggested.

Sometimes, is it not better to make a form turn by
changing the color value rather than by changing the
black and white value? I am _ not,» however, one
of those who totally repudiate black and white value in
favor of color value. All the means that are possible are
ours to use. - Under some circumstances a change in black
and white value produces the sense of a change in color.
The constant hatching of new colors is the procedure of
one who has become academic, who has a receipt. There
are times to hold a note and there are times to change it.
Some painters, addicted to the habit, change their notes
with the ticking of the clock. It is all a matter of measures

of silence, measures of noise, measures of color; some
© ee :
''THE ART SPIRIT 41

broad, expansive, and others quick and short, lines which
move swiftly, fluently, softly, scratch, halt, jump—all
kinds of lines for all kinds of purposes. The thing you
have in hand is a construction. The means are used in the
measures the subject demands. The value of a picture
rests in its constructive beauty. Its story, the fact that
it is about a man, a boy, a landscape, an event which
transpires, is merely incidental to its creation. The real
motive, the real thing attained is the revelation of what

you can perceive beyond the fact.

In nature it is the delicate yet strong turn of the whole
neck which occupies us. We merely sense the minor varia-
tions of form in the muscles and bones. Sometimes,
however, the sterno-clido becomes the dominant interest.
In a spirited movement of the head that muscle grips our
whole attention because it is a great sign of will in the ges-
ture. In such cases the rotundity of the neck—its sure
solidity—must exist, but as a secondary consideration.

The wise draftsman brings forward what he can use
most effectively to present his case. His case is his special
interest—his special vision. He does not repeat nature.

-
In the sleeve there is an arm, well shaped, shoulder-

joint, elbow, wrist-joints, a unified running movement
through all; a gesture in perfect harmony with the head.
The body is a solid. Like the arm but larger. Paint the
drapery to make one know the dignity and the beauty of
these shapes in their very largest sense. The collar must
go around the neck, must tell of its trip around the beauti-
ful form. The collar rests on the fullness of the shoulder
''i Sy ae

i

 

42 THE ART SPIRIT

and chest. Its function is to define the graciousness and
the strength of these. Later it can be a collar, have its
own incidental whims, but first of all it must accomplish
_ its greater function. It had better define the human form
even if it never gets to the point of being very much of a
collar. The arm, even if the drapery looks so, must never
become flat. The drapery must speak first of the shape,
direction and the beautiful volumes of the arm. Drapery,
like hair, is to be wsed—not copied; rhythms, echoes, con-
tinuations—not wrinkles for the sake of fact, but these
things selected and used for their constructive value only.
When a fine dancer appears before you in a very sig-
nificant gesture, you are caught only by the folds of her
drapery which respond to the great will in her movement.
She has established in you a trend of interest. What
enters your vision is only the sequences of this established
interest. When gamblers play in luck, when they continue
to win, seem to have a knowledge of how the card will turn,
they may be said to have fallen in with one of the courses
nature takes. They do not know it, but there are sequences
and sequences, untold numbers of them overlaying, inter-
mingling. Every movement in nature is orderly, one thing
the outcome of another, a matter of constructive, growing
force. We live our lives in tune with nature when we are
happy, and all our misery is the result of our effort to
dictate against nature. In moments of great happiness
we seem to be with the universe; when all is wrong we seem
to be alone, disjointed. Things are going on without us.
The effect of sensing the gesture of the master dancer,
hearing music, seeing the greater works of creative
masters, is extension.
''THE ART SPIRIT 43

The art student of these days is a pioneer. He lives ina
decidedly colorless, materialistic age. The human family
has not yet come out of the woods. We were more bar-
barian, we are still barbarians. Sometimes in the past we
shot ahead, in certain ways, ahead of where we are now.
We gave flashes of what is possible in man. We have yet
as a body to come up to the art of living. The art student
of today must pioneer beyond the mere matters of fact.

There is nothing in the juggler’s skill of copying
things. It is a question of seeing significances and appre-
hending the special forms and colors which will serve as
building materials. A good picture is a well-built struct-
ure. There is material in the model before you for all
kinds of structures. All these structures will be like the
model, but beyond likeness there will be a manifestation of
something more real, more related to all things, and more
unique in itself. Infinite simplicity. A direct purpose and
most exacting choice of the terms of expression. I believe
the great artists of the future will use fewer words, copy
fewer things, essays will be shorter in words and longer in
meaning. There will be a battle against obscurity. Effort
will be made to put everything plain, out in the open. By
this means we will enter into the real mystery. There will
be fewer things said and done, but each thing will be fuller
and will receive fuller consideration. Now we waste.
There is too much “ Art,” too much “ decoration,” too
many things are made, too many amusements wasted. Not
enough is fully considered.

We must paint only what is important to us, must not
respond to outside demands. They do not know what they
want, or what we have to give.

&
''44 THE ART SPIRIT

I think I have made it apparent that the model as he
stands before you, however still he may appear to be, is
not static.

During the time of posing he drifts through many
moods.

While his body occupies practically the same place
there is constant change. A flow runs through his body.
The forms reorganize, new dominances occur.

Every emotion has its expression throughout the body.
The door opens, some one comes into the room. The look
of the eye has its correspondence in every part of the body.
The model sinks into reverie, every gesture of the body,
externally and internally, records it.

I refer you again to Rembrandt’s drawings. In them
Rembrandt seems to have drawn states of being. He
expressed with the flow of movement through forms which
are in response to states of being. Hence the intimate life
of his work.

Solidity

Ir I hold any object up in front of you, you have a
very positive sense of its solidity. Your estimate of it as
a matter of bulk is, most likely, very exact. You have
also a very fair judgment of its weight. You know about
how far it is from your eyes and about how far it is from
the background, and from any other objects in its vicinity.

If the object happens to be a human head you are
highly sensitive to its progressions and regressions of form.
Knowing heads so familiarly, you immediately remark any
absences of the normal in its shape. If a head were only
''THE ART SPIRIT 45

half thick through you would know it and you would be
shocked by it. If it were flat it would horrify you. We
are very appreciative of the solid. Yet, most paintings
and most drawings produce the appearance of flatness.
Backgrounds often crowd forward and take their places
on the same plane with the head, and an ear will not stay
back on the side of the head, but contests with the nose
for first-plane prominence. Distances across the canvas
are generally very nearly correct, but distances in, follow-
ing the line of vision, hardly exist. It is a question to
solve. The old sentimental idea that an artist does not
use his brains prohibits an investigation, and as this old
sentimental idea still holds great sway there are as yet
only a comparative few who risk falling from the clouds
by setting to work that dangerous and earth- ere
machine, the brain.

I have heard it very often said that an artist does not
need intelligence, that his is the province of the soul. All
very lovely, but heads painted by such artists are generally
very flat and a great medium of expression is lost to them.
They recognize and make much of the measures across
their flat surfaces, but miss all the wonder of depth. If flat
across the canvas there are to be found beautiful compo-
sitional measures, then deep in there are other measures,
more mysterious and meaningful, and which complement
the flat measures and make even these more beautiful.

If a man has the soul of an artist he needs a mastery
of all the means of expression so that he may command
them, for with his soul in activity he has much to say. If
he refuses to use his brain to find the way to signify the
meaningful depth of nature on his flat canvas with his
''46 THE ART SPIRIT

colors, he should also refuse to use his hands and his
brushes and his colors, and the canvas itself. However,
all these, the canvas, paints, brushes, hands and brains
are but tools to be guided ‘by the soul of man. : The brain
can prove to be a wonderful tool, can be a willing slave, as
has been evidenced by some men, but of course it works
poorly when it has not the habit of usage. An automobile
can become a source of delight, but the first time you drive
you are as apt to go up a tree as to go up the road.

It seems absurd that one should argue the use of the
brain in art or anything else, but absurd as it seems, there
are yet excellent grounds for continuing the argument.
Every day I am meeting some one who regards the advent
of Jay Hambidge or Denman Ross, or Maratta or any
student of the laws of nature in construction, as dangerous
to our art. Indeed they are dangerous to art as it is
today, for what they propose is that there should also be
some common horse-sense along with a strengthening of
the soul, and this may result in a considerable change. The
whole fact is that art and science are so close akin that
they might very well be lumped together. They are cer-
tainly necessary to each other and the delights of either
pursuit should satisfy any man. I am naturally not
speaking of commercial science or commercial art in
saying this.

Well, suppose we use our brains. We see things solid.
Solidities are important to us in nature. In solidities there
are measures that greatly affect us. There are rhythms ©
in the ins and outs of form. Music, the freest and to many
the most impressive of arts deals in measures which seem
to go in every direction. They combine, they move
''THE ART SPIRIT 47

together, they deflect and they oppose. Music is a
structure of highly mathematical measures. According to
the selection and relative value of these measures the music
is great or small in its effect on us.

The mind is a tool, it is either clogged, bound, rusty,
or it is a clear way to and from the soul. An artist should
not be afraid of his tools. He should not be afraid
to know.

If the painting appears flat, if only the crosswise
measures are of value, if the measures in are non-expres-
sive, then it is time to investigate; to use the mind, to
experiment, to find a way, with flat paint on a flat canvas,
to use this third dimension so that the mysterious fourth
may be sighted.

I am certain that we do deal in an unconscious way with
‘another dimension than the well-known three. It does not
matter much to me now if it is the fourth dimension or
what its number is, but I know that deep in us there is
always a grasp of proportions which exist over and
through the obvious three, and it is by this power of super-
proportioning that we reach the inner meaning of things.

A piece of sculpture, a painting or the gesture of a
hand may have all the simple measurements, but the artist
may have so handled these as to make us apprehend quite
others. The Sphinx is a demonstration of this. The great
Greek and Chinese art and in fact art everywhere and at
all times has to greater or less degree demonstrated this.
Everywhere there are glimmers of it in all art, in all
expression. Isadora Duncan, who is perhaps one of the
greatest masters of gesture the world has ever seen, carries
us through a universe in a single movement of her body.
''48 THE ART SPIRIT

Her hand alone held aloft becomes a shape of infinite sig-
nificance. Yet her gesture in fact can only be the stretch
of arm or the stride of a normal human body.

What measures are apprehended in the glance of
an eye?

If then our pictures are flat and lacking in the
approach to significant dimensions, would it not be well to
investigate our means? First, there must be the will for
it. The absolute need for solidity must be felt before
solidity can be attained.

Painters, through thought and study and association
with their brothers, the scientists, have learned the power
of color values in form modeling, and they have added
this power to black and white values. If you look at a
Sung period drawing you will see that the Chinese master
has effected a tremendous solidity in the use of a line.

If you want to know how to do a thing you must first
have a complete desire to do that thing. Then go to
kindred spirits—others who have wanted to do that thing
—and study their ways and means, learn from their suc-
cesses and failures and add your quota. Thus you may
acquire from the experience of the race. And with this
technical knowledge you may go forward, expressing
through the play of forms the music that is in you and
which is very personal to you.

Receipts are for slaves.

I love the tools made for mechanics. I stop at the win-
dows of hardware stores. If I could only find an excuse to
''THE ART SPIRIT 49

buy many more of them than I have already bought on the
mere pretence that I might have use for them! They are
so beautiful, so simple and plain and straight to their
meaning. There is no “ Art” about them, they have not
been made beautiful, they are beautiful.

Some one has defined a work of art as a “ thing beauti-
fully done.” I like it better if we cut away the adverb
and preserve the word “ done,” and let it stand alone in
its fullest meaning. Things are not done beautifully. The
beauty is an integral part of their being done.

As busy as a real boy is busy, I do not know why he
is leaning over there, but I enjoy him and I understand
his eager interest in what he is doing.

A tree growing out of the ground is as wonderful
today as it ever was. It does not need to adopt new and
startling methods.

Color

Tue possibilities of color are wonderful. A study
entrancingly interesting and unlimited. It is a wise stu-
dent who has a perfectly clean, well-kept palette—glass
over a warm white paper on a good-sized table, always
clean—and uses such a palette to make continual essays
with color—thousands of little notes, color combinations,
juxtapositions of all the possible intensities of a well-

4
''N

50 THE ART SPIRIT

selected spectrum palette. Many artists just paint along,
repeat over and over again the same phrases, little know-
ing the resources of the materials before them, and in many
cases simply deadening their natural sense of color instead

of developing it.

The backgrounds that are dark are very difficult to
paint. That is, to make them seem like fine, breathable air.
Of course it is easy to get away with a dark background,
and it by its nature cannot be crude, but it can be heavy,

snuffy, black.

The effect of brilliancy is to be obtained principally
from the oppositions of cool colors with warm colors, and
the oppositions of grave colors with bright colors. If all
the colors are bright there is no brightness.

However much you may use “ broken color,” hold on
to the few simple larger masses of your composition, and
value as most important the beauty and design of these
larger masses, or forms, or movements. Do not let beauty
in the subdivisions destroy the beauty or the power of the
major divisions.

Whatever you feel or think, your exact state at the
exact moment of your brush touching the canvas is in
some way registered in that stroke. If there is interesting
or reasonable sequence in your thoughts and feelings, if
there is order in your progressive states of being as the
paint is applied, this will show, and nothing in the world

can help it from showing.
There is a super color which envelops all the colors.
''THE ART SPIRIT 51

It is this super color—this color of the whole, which is
most important.

Dirty brushes and a sloppy palette have dictated the
color-tone and key of many a painting. The painter
abdicates and the palette becomes master.

Employ such colors as produce immensity in a small
space. Do not be interested in light for light’s sake
or in color for color’s sake, but in each as a medium
of expression.

There is a color over all colors which unites them and
which is more important than the individual colors. At
sunset the sun glows. The color of the grasses, figures and
houses may be lighter or darker or different, but over each
there is the sunset glow.

A human body bathed in the color of the atmosphere
surrounding it, luminous and warm in its own color.

The color of a background is not as it is, but as it
appears when the artist is most deeply engaged with the
figure in front of it. It is not seen with a direct eye.

If you look past the model at the background it
responds to your appeal and comes forward. It is no
longer a background.

Get a right height of chair and sit at your painting
table. Take as true a Red, Yellow and Blue as you can
choose. Mix neighbor with neighbor until you have three
''52 THE ART SPIRIT

new notes, Orange, Green, Purple. Set all six in a line
and mix neighbor with neighbor until you have six more—
RO. OY. YG. GB. BP. PR. You have now before you a
homogeneous palette, analogous to the spectrum band.
They are PR. R. RO. O. OY. Y. YG. G. GB. B. BP. P.

This is a first step taken in the direction of an

acquaintance with the possibilities of pigment colors.

You can make hundreds of experiments on the glass of
your palette the memories of which will sink into you to
come into service in cases of actual need when at the work

of painting.

The studies H. G. Maratta has made in the formation
of palettes and generally in the science of color are of a
decided educational value. Many of us have benefited
greatly through his work. He told me many years ago that
his first intention was to write a book, but decided, upon
consideration, that a practical demonstration with colors
instead of the names of colors would be better. So he
made the colors and they were his book. Many artists
bought his colors and opened the box thinking the magic
of picture-painting would jump out. Others bought them
knowing that they would have to dig, and they dug. It
was mighty well worth while.

The works of such men are available to the student
and the wise student will be keen to know what is going on

in the world.
''THE ART SPIRIT . 53

Such works are really gifts, for the making of them
represents much study and is certainly not a commer-
cial proceeding.

If you have not read, and studied, for here again you
must dig, the works of Denman Ross, get them by all
means, for you must want to get the wisdom and the prac-

tical advice they contain, and what they suggest.

Understand that in no work will you find the final word,
nor will you find a receipt that will just fit you. The fun
of living is that we have to make ourselves, after all.

It is a splendid thing to live in the environment of great
students. To have them about you in person if you can.
If not in person, in their works. To live with them. Great
students agree and disagree. They stir the waters.

Many things that come into the world are not looked
into. The individual says “My crowd doesn’t run that
way.” I say, don’t run with crowds.

I suggest many other books. There are many theories
on color. Look them up. Get acquainted. There may be
something you want to know.

Personal experimentation is revealing, and, once you
get into it, immensely engaging.

Remember that pigment is one thing and light is
another. A palette is set in accord with the spectrum
''54 THE ART SPIRIT

band. But combinations of light and combinations of pig-
ments produce differing results.

Signac’s book ‘“ Néo-Impressionnisme ” is a book that
should interest any student. It is a pity it has not been
translated into English. But if you know French it will
be good to read. It is an argument in favor of the total
division of color in painting, but that does not matter. In
making his argument he tells in a simple way many
valuable things.

I think the true Yellow is rather more green than the
yellow generally accepted as “true.” I am speaking of
paint and I am thinking of the functioning power of
the pigment.

Black is always thought of as a neutralizer of color.
It should be better remembered that white is also a
neutralizer of color, except perhaps in its effect on a
very deep blue, blue purple, purple or purple red, so deep
that their color cannot be appreciated. In such cases the
neutralizing white has a reverse effect when only a slight
quantity is added. It serves to bring the color up out of
the depths. Except for this service white is a neutralizer.

In the painting of light, in modeling form, keep as
deep down in color as you can. It is color that makes the
sensation of light. Play from warm to cold, not from
white to black.

The tendency to put in more and more white is so usual
that it would be well to restrict the white. Keep it off the
''THE ART SPIRIT 55

palette. Allow only so much of it in the pigments which
must have it, and allow them much less than you think they
should have.

A set palette may look quite impossible for its want of
white in comparison with the subject before you. It cer-
tainly is, any paint is, if you expect to reproduce the thing
in nature. But your work is not, and cannot be, a repro-
duction. Nature has its laws. Your pigments and your |
flat canvas have other laws. You must work within the

laws of your material.

Your palette may look impossible but it may be that
by adding more white you will make it more impossible.
The pictures that produce the sensation of light and form
are really deep in color. Try something white against
them. The pictures which are overcharged with white
paint look whiter but they do not have the look of light.

Form can be modeled in black and white, but there are
infinitely greater possibilities in modeling through the
warmth and coolness of color.

There are three methods. The first is black and
white modeling. This was largely practiced by the old
masters who relieved themselves of a double difficulty by
building their pictures up in monochrome and _ later
applying glazes of transparent color. Form was almost
wholly dependent on the monochrome substructure.

The second method is color modeling to the exclusion
of black and white monochrome. Many have professed
this method, but few have practiced it.
''56 THE ART SPIRIT

The third method is the union of the first and second.
In this method there is a recognition of advantages to be
derived from both, requiring a wise proportioning and
selection in order that the two methods may amalgamate
in such way as to strengthen each.

For the motives of the old masters their choice of
technique was undoubtedly well made. Their works
evidence it.

For our time other choices may be necessary, for we
are different. We may be better or worse in being different,
but so we are, and our methods must be suited to our needs.

As an example let us take a hand. With a great old
master the hand becomes a symbol. He made the symbol
by making a hand magnificent, monumental, but of such a
material definiteness that it is photographically perfect.

The hand made by a true modern will not lend itself
so readily to the black and white reproduction. It is made
with different agents because it is conceived in a new way.

What the modern man finds of interest in life is not
precisely the same as of old, and he makes a new approach,
deals in another way because the symbol to be made is not
the same.

The old method, great as it was, required a mode of
procedure which I believe is rarely practical in these days.
It meant a building up in black and white, the design
finished in this medium. Then weeks of drying. Then a
return to the subject and the color applied. It was a cool
and calmly calculated procedure.

It seems to me that the present day man, with all his
reverence for the old master, is interested in seizing other
''‘

THE ART SPIRIT 57

qualities, far more fleeting. He must be cool and he must
calculate, but his work must be quick.

_ All his science and all his powers of invention must be
brought into practice to capture the vision of an_illusive
moment. It is as though he were in pursuit of something
more real which he knows but has not as yet fully realized,
which appears, permits a thrilling appreciation, and is
gone in the instant.

At any rate the best things in the best pictures of these
days are not seizable by the old methods, nor do they seem
to come through the agents that symbolize for the men of
the past.

In speaking this way I do not mean by my “ modern
man” anyone who is in or out of the “modernist school ”
or in or out of any school. I mean the modern man
whoever or wherever he may be. Nor am I speaking of
the generality of work as it appears in our exhibitions.
I am speaking of something of which we have a glimmer,
sometimes very faint, here and there.

For the same reason that I have indicated my prefer-
ence for the employment of both methods in the matter of
color values and black and white values, I prefer the use
of pure colors together with grave colors.

There are artists who declare with almost a religious
fervor that they only use “ pure colors.” But generally in
seeing their pictures I find that they have more or less
degraded these colors in practice.

I believe that great pictures can be painted with the
use of the most pure colors, and that these colors can be so

wcities einai fal i
''--

58 THE ART SPIRIT

transformed to our vision that they will seem to have
gradations which do not actually exist in them. This will
be brought about by a science of juxtaposition and an
employment of areas that will be extraordinary.

But even so, there is a power in the palette which is
composed of both pure and grave colors that makes it
wonderfully practical and which presents possibilities
unique to itself.

In paintings made with such a palette, if used with
great success, we find an astounding result. It is the grave
colors, which were so dull on the palette that become the
living colors in the picture. The brilliant colors are their
foil. The brilliant colors remain more in their actual
character of bright paint, are rather static, and it is the
grave colors, affected by juxtaposition, which undergo the
transformation that warrants my use of the word “living.”
They seem to move—rise and fall in their intensity, are in
perpetual motion—at least, so affect the eye. They
are not fixed. They are indefinable and mysterious.

In experimentation I have seen an arrangement of a
bright color and a very mud-like neutral pigment present
the phenomena of a transference of brilliancy—the neu-
tral presenting for a moment a sizzling complementary
brilliance far overpowering the “ pure color ” with which
it was associated.

On a picture, because there are many conflicting asso-
ciations, such an extreme occurrence could not be possible.
but the fact exists and the impression is made on our
keener consciousness.

\

a i m
''THE ART SPIRIT 59

If new colors were made far more brilliant than the
present “pure” colors; then the present colors would
fall into the rank of neutrals, and when juxtaposed with
their superiors, which would be more or less static, the same
change might be effected in them.

It would be their turn to make this thing happen in the
eye of the observer. For it is an effect on the sensitive eye
and a consequent stirring of the imagination which pro-
duces the illusion.

The fact is that a picture in any way, in color, form,
or in its whole ensemble but sends out agents that stimulate
a creation which takes place in the consciousness of
the observer.

That is the reason association with works of art
is enjoyable.

It is also the reason they tire some and irritate others.

Generally in pictures which give the illusion of fine
color and form we find one, less often two, areas made up
of pure color. This, or these notes are possibly the most
obvious and striking notes, but it may be found that how-
ever beautiful they are in themselves they are only foils to
the mysterious tones they serve to complement. It is these
ever-changing mysterious tones which keep up the interest
in the picture.

Have you not seen many pictures that bowled you over
at first sight, staggered you on the next, and did not stir
you thereafter?
'' 

J

60 : THE ART SPIRIT

Artists have been looking at Rembrandt’s drawings for
three hundred years. Thousands and thousands of
remarkable drawings have been made since, but we are not
yet done looking at Rembrandts. There is a life stirring
in them.

If it is possible that there are “ mysterious ” colors in

a picture it is also possible that there are “ mysterious ”

lines and forms.

The picture that bowls you over at first sight and the
next day loses even the power to attract your attention is
one that looks always the same. It has a moment of life
but dies immediately thereafter.

All manifestations of art are but landmarks in the
progress of the human spirit toward a thing but as yet
sensed and far from being possessed.

The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of

inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate —

good art. He needs no one to give him an art education;

he is already qualified. He needs but to see pictures with —
his active mind, look into them for the things that belong —

to him, and he will find soon enough in himself an art con-
noisseur and an art lover of the first order. |

Do not expect the pictures to say the expected ; some of :

’

the best will have surprises for you, which will, at first, 4

shock you. There are many surprises to come to the most
knowing, just as Wagner opened new roads in music and

d
’
’

  
''THE ART SPIRIT 61

disturbed to distraction those who believed no further roads
were possible.
There will be new ideas in painting and each new idea

will have a new technique. ,_

Art is the inevitable consequence of growth and is the
manifestation of the principles of its origin. The work of
art is a result; is the output of a progress in development
and stands as a record and marks the degree of develop-
ment. It is not an end in itself, but the work indicates the
course taken and the progress made. ‘The work is not a
finality. It promises more, and from it projection can be
made. It is the impress of those who live in full play of
their faculties. The individual passes, living his life,
and the things he touches receive his kind of impress, and
they afterwards bear the trace of his passing. They give
evidence of the quality of his growth. The impress is made
sometimes in material form, as in sculpture or painting,
and sometimes in ways more fluid, dispersed, but none the
less permanent and none the less revealing of the principles
of growth.

Art appears in many forms. To some degree every
human being is an artist, dependent on the quality of his\
growth. Art need not be intended. It comes inevitably as
the tree from the root, the branch from the trunk, the
blossom from the twig. None of these forget the present
in looking backward or forward. They are occupied
wholly with the fulfillment of their own existence. The

we
''OE POTEET aT LO, Oe I oe ee

62 THE ART SPIRIT

branch does not boast of the relation it bears to its great
ancestor the trunk, and does not claim attention to itself
for this honor, nor does it call your attention to the
magnificent red apple it is about to bear. Because it is
engaged in the full play of its own existence, because it is
full in its own growth, its fruit is inevitable.

The Brush Stroke

The mere matter of putting on paint.
The power of a brush stroke.

There is a certain kind of brush stroke that is both bold
and bad.

There are timid, halting brush strokes.

Strokes that started bravely but don’t know where to

go. Sometimes they bump into and spoil something else, —

or they may just wander about, or fade into doubtfulness.

There are strokes in the background which come up
against the head and turn to get out of the way.

Strokes which look like brush strokes and bring us
back to paint.

There are other strokes which inspire a sense of vigor, —
direction, speed, fullness and all the varying sensations an —

artist may wish to express.

 

a

a
|
4

gana Sarat aa ifs i aa

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 63

The mere brush stroke itself must speak. It counts _

whether you will or not. It is meaningful or it is empty.
It is on the canvas and it tells its tale. It is showy, shal-
low, mean, meagre, selfish, has the skimp of a miser; is
rich, full, generous, alive and knows what is going on.

When the brush stroke is visible on the canvas it has a
size, covers a certain area, has its own texture. Its tiny
but very expressive ridges catch light in their own way.
It has its speed and its direction. There is a lot it has of
itself, and the strokes tell their tale in harmony with or in
opposition to the motive of the picture.

On account of the shiny character of paint it is neces-
sary to adhere to a general movement in brush direction to
avoid a stroke which will shine even though the picture
hangs in its proper light.

_ It sometimes happens that drawing dictates a sweep
in a certain direction while to avoid the “shine” the
opposite direction must be taken. Here is where one’s
ingenuity and skill is brought into play. It is like walking
well walking backward. It’s a feat one has to accomplish.

We often hear, “ If somebody would only invent an oil
paint that would not shine!” Few want to give up oil
paint, but all have distressing moments over the technical
avoidances of a destroying shine.

- Sometimes the stroke may be made in the direction
drawing dictates, and the shine can be killed by a very
delicate and skilful blending stroke with a clean brush;
thus breaking down the light-catching ridges of the orig-
''64 THE ART SPIRIT

inal strokes. This is difficult to accomplish without a
resultant weakening or softening of the original stroke.

Sometimes this blending or flattening stroke can be
made at once. Other times better to do it later when the
paint is more set.

In this latter case where the shine is not removed at
once the artist will be bothered by the falseness of the note, —
due to the presence of the reflected light, and he will be
much troubled, for he must consider it as it is to appear
when flattened, not as it is with the shine on it, and he must
work accordingly.

There are few outsiders who have any dream of the
difficulties an artist has to meet in the mere putting on of
his paint.

There are strokes which depress whole canvases with
a down-grade movement and a down-grade feeling as
a result.

Some backgrounds which should give a rising sense seep
downward with thin paint and strokes which seem to

be weeping.
There are the attenuated strokes.

Strokes which seem to stretch the paint in an effort to
make it cover. :

Miserly strokes.

There are rich, fluent, abundant strokes.

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 65

Strokes that come from brushes which seem full
charged, as though they were filled to the hilt and had
plenty to give.

Strokes which mount, carry up, rise.

See Greco’s pictures.

Strokes which are placid.
An evening scene by Hiroshigi.
The horizontal.

The stroke of the eyebrow as it rises in surprise.

A stroke in the ear which connects with the activities of

the other features.

A stroke which gives the indolence, voluptuousness,
caress, fullness, illusiveness, vital energy, vigor, rest and
flow of hair.

Strokes which end too soon.

Dull strokes and confused strokes on youthful, —
spirited faces.

The stroke of highlight in the eye. Much meaning in
whether it is horizontal, pointing up, pointing down, or
high or low on the pupil.

Bad strokes which are bad because a brush or condition

of paint was chosen which could not render them.
5
''66 THE ART SPIRIT

For things which require a greater steadiness of hand
than you can command, use a maul stick.

Strokes carry a message whether you will it or not.
The stroke is just like the artist at the time he makes it.
All the certainties, all the uncertainties, all the bigness of
his spirit and all the littlenesses are in it.

Look at the stroke of a Chinese master. Sung period.
There are strokes which comprehend a shape.

There are strokes which are doubtful of shape.

 

The stroke which marks the path of a rocket into the —

sky may be only a few inches long, but the spirit of the
artist has traveled a thousand feet at the moment he made
that stroke.

There are whole canvases that are but a multitude of

parsimonious, mean little touches.

There are strokes which laugh, and there are strokes ©

which bind laughter, which freeze the face into a set

immovable grimace.

Strokes which carry the observer with exact degrees

of speed.
Strokes which increase their speed, or decrease it.

Strokes with one sharp defining edge carrying on its
other side its complement, soft, merging.

 

 

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 67

It is wonderful how much steadiness can be commanded
by will, by intense desire.

Use a maul stick—use anything when you have to.
Don’t use them except when you have to.

If possible, transmit through your free body and hand.

Whatever feeling, whatever state you have at the time
of the stroke will register in the stroke.

Many a canvas carries on its face the artist’s thought
of the cost of paint. And many a picture has fallen short
of its original intention by the obtrusion of this idea.

It is not necessarily the poor who think of the cost of
paint. Many an artist has starved his stomach and
remained a spendthrift in paint.

The reverse is also true.

Strokes with too much or too little medium.

The stroke in itself; in its own texture, that is, the
texture it has of itself apart from the texture it is intended
to reproduce, is a thing on the canvas, is an idea in itself,
and it must correlate with the ideas of the picture.

The stroke may make or it may destroy the integrity
of the forms.

There is a fine substance to flesh, “ Just any kind ” of
a stroke won’t render it,

 
''68 THE ART SPIRIT

A brush may be charged with more than one color and
the single stroke may render a complete form in very
wonderful variation and blend of color. Not easy by any

means and often abused.

There are good reasons for all the varying shapes,
sizes, lengths and general] details of brushes. Some artists
have special brushes made for special purposes and some-
times they modify brushes, and all who are wise take
wonderful care of their brushes.

Varnish will somewhat lessen the shine of brush marks,
becauses it fills the interstices and flattens the surface. But
varnish has its drawbacks, and just enough and no more
than enough to lock up the picture should be the limit of

its use.

a

Every student should acquaint himself with the —
qualities and uses of varnish by reading and comparing ©
the books which deal specifically with the chemistry |

of painting.

The sweep of a brush should be so skilled that it will
make the background behind a head seem to pass behind
the head—not up to it—and make one know that there is

atmosphere all around it.

The stroke that gives the spring of an eyelid or the
flare of a nostril is wonderful because of its simplicity and
certainty of intention.

j
:

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 69

There are brittle and scratchy strokes, lazy, maudlin,

fatly made and phlegmatic strokes.
One of the worst is the miserly stroke.
Get the full swing of your body into the stroke.

Painting should be done from the floor up, not from

the seat of a comfortable chair.

Have both hands free. One for the brush and the

other for reserve brushes and a rag.

Rag is just as essential as anything else. Choose it

well and have plenty of it in stock, cut to the right size.

In having the best use of your two hands the thumb
palette is eliminated. Have a table, glass top, white or
buff paper under the glass. Have a brush cleaner. Make
it yourself. The things sold in shops are toys.

Get the habit of cleaning your brush constantly as you
work. The rag to wipe it. Thus the brush can hold the
kind of paint you need for the stroke.

Great results are attained by the pressure, force or
delicacy with which the stroke is made.

The choice of brushes is a personal affair to be
determined by experience.
''70 THE ART SPIRIT

Too many brushes, or too many sorts of brushes cause
confusion. Have a broad stock, but don’t use them all
at once.

It is remarkable how many functions one brush can —

perform.
Use not too many, but use enough.

Some painters use their fingers. Look out for poison.
Some pigments are dangerous—any lead white, for
instance.

Silk runs, is fluent, has speed, almost screams at times.

Cloth is slower, thicker, the stroke is slower, heavier.

Velvet is rich, caressing, its depths are mysterious, —

obscure. The stroke looses itself, not a sign of it is
visible. So also the shadows in hair.

Strokes which move in unison, rhythms, continuities

throughout the work; that interplay, that slightly or fully

complement each other.
See pictures by Renoir.

Effects of perspective are made or defeated by sizes
of strokes, or by their tonalities.

There are brush handlings which declare more about

the painter than he declares about his subject. Such as —

say plainly: “ See what vigor I have. Bang!” “Am I .

  
''THE ART SPIRIT a1

not graceful?” “ See how painfully serious I am!” “ Pm
a devil of a dashing painter—watch this! ”

Velasquez and Franz Hals made a dozen strokes reveal
more than most other painters could accomplish in
a thousand.

Compare a painting by Ingres with one by Manet and
note the difference of stroke in these two very different men.
The stroke is like the man. I prefer Manet of the two.
But that is a personal matter. Both were very great
artists.

Compare the paintings if they are within your reach,
if not compare reproductions. Compare also Ingres’
drawings with those of Rembrandt.

Manet’s stroke was ample, full, and flowed with a
gracious continuity, was never flip or clever. His
* Olympia ” has a supreme elegance.

Icy, cold, hard, brittle, timid, fearsome, apologetic,
pale, negative, vulgar, lazy, common, puritanical, smart,
evasive, glib, to add to the list and repeat a few. Strokes
of the brush may be divided into many families with many
members in each family. A big field to draw from and an
abundant series of complements and harmonies among
them; to use as units in the stress and strain of picture
construction. Perhaps there is not a brush mark made
that would not be beautiful if in its proper place, and it is
the artist’s business to find the stroke that is needed in the

 

 
''72 THE ART SPIRIT

place. When it is in its proper place, even though it bore
one of the hateful names I have given some of them, it is
transformed, and it has become gracious or strong and
must be re-named.

The picture that looks as if it were done without an
effort may have been a perfect battlefield in its making.

A thing is beautiful when it is strong in its kind.

What beautiful designs a fruit vendor makes with his —
piles of oranges and apples. He takes much trouble and .
Tam sure has great pleasure in arranging them so that you —
can see them at their best. .

A millionaire will own wonderful pictures and hang —
them in a light where you can’t half see them. Some are
even proud of the report, “ Why, he has Corots in the
kitchen—Daubignys in the cellar! ”

If it is up to the artist to make the best pictures he can
possibly make, it is up to the owners to present them to the —
very best advantage.

The good things grow better. There is always a new —
surprise each time you see them.

The man who has something very definite to say and —
tries to force the medium to say it will learn how to draw. —

Originality: Don’t worry about your originality. You
could not get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick ©

 

 

 

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 73

to you and show you up for better or worse in spite of all
you or anyone else can do.

An address to the students of the School of Design for
Women, Philadelphia. Written in 1901

Tue real study of an art student is generally missed
in the pursuit of a copying technique.

I knew men who were students at the Academie Julian
in Paris, where I studied in 1888, thirteen years ago. I
visited the Academie this year (1901) and found some of
the same students still there, repeating the same exercises,
and doing work nearly as good as they did thirteen
years ago.

At almost any time in these thirteen years they have
had technical ability enough to produce masterpieces.
Many of them are more facile in their trade of copying the
model, and they make fewer mistakes and imperfections of
literal drawing and proportion than do some of the great-
est masters of art.

These students have become masters of the trade of
drawing, as some others have become masters of their
grammars. And like so many of the latter, brilliant jug-
glers of words, having nothing worth while to say, they
remain little else than clever jugglers of the brush.

The real study of an art student is more a develop-
ment of that sensitive nature and appreciative imagina-
tion with which he was so fully endowed when a child, and
which, unfortunately in almost all cases, the contact with

 
''74 THE ART SPIRIT

the grown-ups shames out of him before he has passed into
what is understood as real life.

Persons and things are whatever we imagine them to be.

We have little interest in the material person or the
material thing. All our valuation of them is based on the
sensations their presence and existence arouse in us.

And when we study the subject of our pleasure it is to
select and seize the salient characteristics which have been
the cause of our emotion.

Thus two individuals looking at the same objects may
both exclaim “ Beautiful !’—both be right, and yet each
have a different sensation—each seeing different charac-
teristics as the salient ones, according to the prejudice of
their sensations.

Beauty is no material thing.

Beauty cannot be copied.

Beauty is the sensation of pleasure on the mind of
the seer.

No thing is beautiful. But all things await the sensi-
tive and imaginative mind that may be aroused to pleas-
urable emotion at sight of them. This is beauty.

The art student that should be, and is so rare,is the one
whose life is spent in the love and the culture of his personal
sensations, the cherishing of his emotions, never under-
valuing them, the pleasure of exclaiming them to others,
and an eager search for their clearest expression. He never
studies drawing because it will come in useful later when
he is an artist. He has not time for that. He is an artist
in the beginning and is busy finding the lines and forms to
express the pleasures and emotions with which nature has

already charged him.
''THE ART SPIRIT 75

No knowledge is so easily found as when it is needed.

Teachers have too long stood in the way; have said:
“Go slowly—you want to be an artist before you’ve
learned to draw!”

Oh! those long and dreary years of learning to draw!
How can a student after the drudgery of it, look at a man
or an antique statue with any other emotion than a plum-
bob estimate of how many lengths of head he has.

One’s early fancy of man and things must not be for-
got. One’s appreciation of them is too much sullied by
coldly calculating and dissecting them. One’s fancy must
not be put aside, but the excitement and the development
of it must be continued through the work. From the
antique cast there should be no work done if it is not to
translate your impression of the beauty the sculptor has
expressed. To go before the cast or the living model with-
out having them suggest to you a theme, and to sit there and
draw without a theme for hours, is to begin the hardening

rot your sensibilities to them—the loss of your power to
take pleasure in them. What you must express in your
drawing is not “ what model you had,” but ‘ what were
your sensations,” and you select from what is visual of the
model the traits that best express you.

In drawing from the cast the work may be easier. The
cast always remains the same—the student has but to
guard against his own digressions. The living model is
never the same. He is only consistent to one mental state
during the moment of its duration. He is always changing.
The picture which takes hours—possibly months—must
not follow him. It must remain in the one chosen moment,
''76 THE ART SPIRIT

in the attitude which was the result of the sensation of that
moment. Most students wade through a week of chang-
ings both of the subject and their own views of it. The
real student has remained with the idea which was the com-
mencement. He has simply used the model as the indif-
ferent manikin of what the model was. Or, should he have
given up the first idea, it was then to take on another,
having destroyed the work which was the expression of
the former.

The habit of digression—lack of continued interest—
want of fixed purpose, is an almost general failing. It is
too easy to drift and the habit of letting oneself drift
begets drifting. The power of concentration is rare and
must be sought and cultivated, and prolonged work on one
subject must not be mistaken for concentration. Pro-
longed work on one subject may be simply prolonged
digression, which is a useless effort, as it is to no end.

Your model can be little more than an indifferent mani-
kin of herself. Her presence can but recall to you the self
she was when she so inspired you. She can but mislead if
you follow her. You need great time to paint your picture.
It took her a moment, a glance, a movement, to inspire it.
She may never be just as she was again. She changes
momentarily. As she poses she may be in the anguish of
fatigue. Who can stand all those hours, detained from their
natural pursuits without being bored? At least there is a
drifting of the mind, pleasant, gay, sad, trivial—and,
imperceptibly the forms and the attitude change to the
expression of the thought, and it gets into the brush of the
careless artist and it comes out in the paint.

 

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 07

Few paintings express one idea. They are generally
drifting composites wandering through the poses of many
frames of mind of the sitter, and the easy driftings of the
view of the artist. They present the subject, but the parts
are as seen under different emotions, and their only excuse
is that they are so wonderfully well done.

Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some
potent power to make us think things we like to think.

A “still life” in great art is a living thing. The
objects are painted for what they suggest, and their
presentation has no excuse if it is not to carry to the
mind of the observer the fancy they aroused in the artist.”
If they do not do this and are but simply wonderfully well
copied, then there is no communication between the artist
and the observer, and the latter gets no more than he would
if he were to see the same things in nature. Chardin was a
great painter of still life.

When a student comes before his model his first ques-
tion should be: ‘ What is my highest pleasure in this?”
and then, “ Why?” All the greatest masters have asked
these questions—not literally—not consciously, perhaps.
And with them this highest pleasure has grown until with
their great imaginations, they have come to something like
a just appreciation of the most important element of their
subject, having eliminated its lesser qualities. With
their prejudice for its greater meaning, their eyes take
note only of the lines and forms which seem to be the mani-
festation of that greater meaning.

This is selection. And the result is extract.
''78 \. THE ART SPIRIT

\

\

2%

The reat artist has not reproduced nature, but has
expressed by his extract the most choice sensation it has
produced upon him.

A teacher should be an encourager.

An artist must have imagination.

An artist who does not use his imagination is a
mechanic.

No material thing is beautiful.

All is as beautiful as we think it.

There is a saying that “ love is blind ”’—perhaps the
young man is the only one whoappreciates her.

There are many artists who cast upon the floor and
trample under foot their very best production simply
because it was done hurriedly under the inspiration of an
idea; the work has expressed the idea, but remains other-
wise incomplete, ‘ unfinished ” they say, and then they save
and frame and put under glass a work that is but a clever
composite of a series of incomplete ideas, seemingly
finished. The latter has taken time, work, study, looks
knowing, shows erudition. There has been no shirking. —
They call it serious—and serious it is.

The other is but a butterfly of the imagination. How-
ever, butterflies are beautiful.

Such a proposition as this should not send art students
off to the making of hasty dashes at ideas and end in reduc- —
ing art to a scribble or two, for there is a check to that in ©
the works of most of the masters. There are the old Dutch, |
whose butterflies lived through the most completed
development, as well as those of such as Whistler, which —
may have been done with the least amount of detail. All —
are complete. Each beautiful in its kind.

 

 

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 79

An art student should read, or talk a great deal with
those who have read. His conversations with his intimate
fellow-students should be more of his life and less of paint.

He should be careful of the influence of those with
whom he consorts, and he runs a great risk in becoming a
member of a large society, for large bodies tend toward the
leveling of individuality to a common consent, the forming
and the adherence to a creed. And a member must be ever
in unnecessary broil or pretend agreement which he can-
not permit himself to do, for it is his principle as an art
student to have and to defend his personal impressions.
Somebody, I think it was Corot, said that art is “ nature
as seen through a temperament.”

There are, however, societies of a very few—little
cliques which form by sympathy and which believe in and
sustain the independence of their members, and which live
by the variety of individualities expressed. Such was that
coterie of which Manet, Degas, Monet, Whistler and
others of special distinction were the outcome. Rossetti,
Burne-Jones, the pre-Raphaelites, formed another. Many
are the little congresses among the students in Paris made
up of men from all countries, who draw together through
similar sympathy.

The reproduction of things is but the idle industry of
one who does not value his sensations, and who was done
with his imaginings when he passed out of childhood and
consented that the prancing horse he had bestrode in those
happy days had only been a broken broomstick.

Old Walt Whitman, to his last days, was as a child in
the gentleness and the fullness of his fancy. A few flowers
''80 ; THE ART SPIRIT

on his window-sill were enough to arouse in him the pleas-
antest sensations and the most prophetic philosophy.

Walt Whitman was such as I have proposed the real art
student should be. His work is an autobiography—not of
haps and mishaps, but of his deepest thought, his
life indeed.

No greater treasure can be given us. Confessions like
those of Rousseau or those of Marie Baskirtseff are thin in
comparison with this life expressed by Whitman, which is
so beautiful, in the reading of which we find ourselves.

Whitman died a few years ago, but Whitman lives on
in his work, which is his life, and which will expand and be
greater the more it is known. Like Shakespeare, who met
so few in his fifty odd years, and knew us all so well down to
this day. Think of the brilliant writers whose touches on
the hearts of their publics have not lasted out even their
own lifetimes.

Permit me to quote these lines of Walt Whitman’s,
written-of his own work :—

“Leaves of Grass,’ indeed (I cannot too often reiter-
ate) has mainly been the outcropping of my own emotional
and other personal nature—an attempt from first to last,
to put a person, a human being (myself, in the latter half
of the nineteenth century, in America) freely, fully and
truly on record. I could not find any similar personal
record in current literature that satisfied me. But it is
not on ‘ Leaves of Grass ’ distinctively as literature, or a
specimen thereof, that I feel to dwell or advance claims.
No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them
as a literary performance, or attempt at such perform-
ance, or as aiming mainly towards art or xstheticism,”

 
''f

THE ART SPIRIT 81

and then close at hand he quotes from another. A picture of
unknown authorship is the subject. ‘ Rubens, asked by a
_ pupil to name the school to which the picture belongs, re-

plies, ‘I do not believe the artist, unknown and perhaps no

longer living who has given the world this legacy, ever
belonged to any school or ever painted anything but this
one picture, which is a personal affair—a piece out of a

man’s life.

can be regulated from without. It carries its own counter- |
poise and does not receive it from elsewhere—lives on its/

3:39

And he quotes from Taine :—
“ ‘All original art is self-regulated ; and no original art

~ own blood.’ ”

One of the great difficulties of an art student is to decide
between his own natural impressions and what he thinks

_ should be his impressions. When the majority of students
and the majority of so-called arrived artists go out into
landscape, saying they intend to look for a “ motive,” they
_ too often mean, unconsciously enough, that it is their inten-

a

 

tion to look until they have found an arrangement in the
landscape most like some one of the pictures they have seen

and liked in the galleries. A hundred times, perhaps, they

have walked by their own subject, felt it, enjoyed it, but

having no estimate of their own personal sensations, lack-
ing faith in themselves, pass on until they come to this

established taste of another. And here they would be
_ ashamed if they did not appreciate, for this is an approved
taste, and they try to adopt it because it is what they think

they should like whether they really do so or not.
Is it not fine to see the development of oneself? The

finding of one’s own tastes. The final selection of a most

6

x

Y
''82 THE ART SPIRIT

favorite theme; the concentration of all one’s forces on
that theme; its development ; the constant effort to find its
clearest expression in the chosen medium; an effort of
expression which commenced with the beginning of the idea,
and follows its progress step by step, becoming a technique
born of the theme itself and special to it. The continuation
through years, new elements entering as life goes on,
each step differing, yet all the same. A simple theme on_
which a life is strung.

The study of art should go broadcast.

Every individual should study his own individuality to
the end of knowing his tastes. Should cultivate the pleas-
ures so discovered and find the most direct means of
expressing those pleasures to others, thereby enjoying
them over again.

Art after all is but an extension of language to the
expression of sensations too subtle for words.

And we will acquire this greater power of reveal-
ing ourselves !

All the forms of art are to be a common language, and
the artist will no longer distinguish himself by his tricks
of painting, but must take rank only by the weight and the
beauty of what he expresses with the wise use of the
languages of art universally known.

Seeing

It is harder to see than it is to express.

The whole value of art rests in the artist’s ability to
see well into what is before him. This model is wonderful
in as many ways as there are pairs of eyes to see her. Each
''THE ART SPIRIT 83

view of her is an original view and there is a response in
her awaiting each view. If the eyes of a Rembrandt are
upon her she will rise in response and Rembrandt will draw
what he sees, and it will be beautiful. Rembrandt was a
man of great understanding. He had the rare power of
seeing deep into the significance of things.

The model will serve equally for a Rembrandt drawing
or for anybody’s magazine cover. A genius is one who
can see. The others can often “ draw”
Their kind of drawing, however, is not very difficult. They
can change about. They can make their sight fit the easiest
way for their drawing. As their seeing is not particular
it does not matter, With the seer it is different. Nothing
will do but the most precise statement. He must not only
bend technique to his will, but he must invent technique

remarkably well.

that will especially fit his need. He is not one who floats
affably in his culture. He is the blazer of the road for
what he has to bring. Those who get their technique first,
expecting sight to come to them later, get a technique
of a very ready-made order.

To study technique means to make it, to invent it. To
take the raw material each time anew and twist it into
shape. It must be made to serve a specific purpose. The
same technique must never be used again. Each time it
must be made new and fresh. A stock of set phrases won’t
do. The study is a development of wit.

An artist’s warehouse, full of experience, is not a store
of successful phrases ready for use, but is a store of raw
material. The successful phrases are there, but they have
been broken down to be made over into new form. Those
who have the will to create do not care to use old phrases.
''84 THE ART SPIRIT

There is a great pleasure in the effort to invent the exact
thing which is needed. Use it. Break it down. Begin
again. It is a great thing to be able to see. Seeing is

without limit. It is a great thing when one has a fair
measure of seeing. Then to invent the means of expressing —

it. To be a master of technique rather than to be the
owner of a lot of it. Those who simply collect technique

have at best only a second-hand lot. A great artist is one ©
who says as nearly what he means as his powers of ©
invention allow. An ordinary artist often uses eloquent ©

phrases, phrases of established authority, and if he is skil-

_ ful it is surprising to see how he can nearly make them fit

his ideas—or how he can make the ideas give way to the
phrase. But such an artist is not having a good time. A

snake without a skin might make a fair job of crawling into |
another snake’s shedding, but I guess no snake would be |

fool enough to bother with it.

I have been trying to make this matter clear—this
matter that the whole fun of the thing is in seeing and_
inventing, trying to refute a common idea that education
is a éase of collecting and storing, instead of making. It’s”
noteasy. But the matter is mighty well worth considering. ~

There are men who admire women’s dress. They do
not know what the material of the dress is. One may
admire a tree without knowing it is a chestnut tree. A boat }
may be appreciated, painted by an artist, yet the artist :
may not have a sailor’s interest in knowledge of sails. He
paints what and as he sees. He has found it beautiful and

i

 

tC

 

siesta
—

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 85

i it is beauty he has sought to render. The garments of a
woman may be fine—rare—expensive—a certain kind, but
to the artist the dress may be only part of the woman.

ol

If in your drawings you habitually disregard propor-
} tions you become accustomed to the sight of distortion and
lose critical ability. A person living in squalor eventually
gets used to it.

There are mighty few people who think what they
think they think.

There are pictures that manifest education and there
are pictures that manifest love.

The ignorant are to be found as much among the edu- -

 

SUPP DOME Te OTT.

cated as among the uneducated.

Education as we have it does as much to thwart the
recognition of individual experience as lack of education

CORES IS Pro Aree OE

limits it.

If you want to know about people watch their gestures.
_ The tongue is a greater liar than the body.

There are hand shakes of great variety. Some are
warm and mean that you are cared for.

Your enemy is not thinking of the skin on the back of
his neck. Watch it.

Artists deal with gestures. They get to know a great
deal about people.

 
''86 THE ART SPIRIT

A sitter may not say a word for an hour, but the body
has been speaking all the time.

A work of art in itself is a gesture and it may be warm
or cold, inviting or repellent.

To the Students of the Art Students’ League:

The exhibition of the works of Thomas Eakins at the
Metropolitan Museum should be viewed and studied by
every student and, in fact, every lover of the fine arts.

Thomas Eakins was a man of great character. He was
a man of iron will and his will was to paint and to carry
out his life as he thought it should go. This he did. It
cost him heavily, but in his works we have the precious
result of his independence, his generous heart and his
big mind.

Eakins was a deep student of life and with a great love
he studied humanity frankly. He was not afraid of what
this study revealed to him.

In the matter of ways and means of expression—the
science of technique—he studied most profoundly as only a
great master would have the will to study. His vision
was not touched by fashion. He cared nothing for pretti-
ness or cleverness in life or in art. He struggled to appre-
hend the constructive force in nature and to employ in his
works the principles found. His quality was honesty.
“ Integrity ” is the word which seems best to fit him.

Personally, I consider him the greatest portrait
painter America has produced. Being a great portrait
''THE ART SPIRIT 87

painter, he was, as usual, commissioned to paint only a very
few. But he had friends and he painted his friends. Look
at these portraits well. Forget for the moment your
school, forget the fashion. Do not look for the expected,
and the chances are you will find yourself, through the
works, in close contact with a man who was a man, strong,
profound, and honest, and, above all, one who had attained
the reality of beauty in nature as it is; who was in love
with the great mysterious nature as manifested in man and
things, who had no need to falsify to make romantic, or to
sentimentalize to make beautiful. Look, if you will, at the
great Gross clinic picture for the real stupendous romance
in real life, and at the portrait of Miller for a man’s
feeling for a man. This is what I calla beautiful portrait;
not a pretty or a swagger portrait, but an honest, respect-
ful, appreciative man-to-man portrait.

But I have no intention to specify. I simply ask you
to look. I expect the pictures to tell you, if you can but
see them from out of yourselves, and I expect them to fill
you with courage and hope.

Eakins many years ago taught in the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts, and in those days it was an
excitement to hear his pupils tell of him. They believed
in him as a great master, and there were stories of his
power, his will in the pursuit of study, his unswerving
adherence to his ideals, his great willingness to give, to
help, and the pleasure he had in seeing the original and
worthy crop out in a student’s work. And the students were
right, for all this character you will find manifest in his
work. Eakins’s pictures and his sculptures are the record-
''88 THE ART SPIRIT

ings of a man who lived and studied and loved with a

strong heart.
« 1917.

There are many craftsmen who paint pleasantly the ;

surface appearances and are very clever at it.

There are always a few who get at and feel the under- —
current, and these simply wse the surface appearances —
selecting them and using them as tools to express the —

undercurrent, the real life.

If I cannot feel an undercurrent then I see only a

series of things. They may be attractive and novel at

first but soon grow tiresome.

There is an undercurrent, the real life, beneath all

appearances everywhere. I do not say that any master

has fully comprehended it at any time, but the value of —
his work is in that he has sensed it and his work reports ~

the measure of his experience.

It is this sense of the persistent life force back of ,
things which makes the eye see and the hand move in ways —

that result in true masterpieces. Techniques are thus

created as a need.

It is necessary to work very continuously and valiently, ©
and never apologetically. In fact, to be ever on the job
so that we may find ourselves there, brush in hand, when

the great moment does arrive.

It is very possible that you know all these things and —
know them to be true. I simply recall them to you, to —

 

4

 

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 89

make them active again, just as I would like you to recall
them to me, for sometimes our possessions sleep.

All the past up to a moment ago is your legacy. You
have a right to it. The works of ancient masters, those of
the student next you, the remark let drop a moment ago;

all is experience, race experience.

Don’t belong to any school. Don’t tie up to any
technique.

All outward success, when it has value is but the
inevitable result of an inward success of full living, full
play and enjoyment of one’s faculties.

A man cannot be honest unless he is wise. To be honest
is to be just and to be just is to realize the relative value of
things. The faculties must play hard in order to seize the
relative values.

The very essential quality of all really great men is
their intense humanity, and they all have an unusual power
of thinking.

In these times there is a powerful demarcation between
the surface and the deep currents of human development.

Events and upheavals, which seem more profound than
they really are, are happening on the surface. 5

But there is another and deeper change in progress. It
''90 THE ART SPIRIT

is of long, steady, persistent growth, very little affected
and not at all disturbed by surface conditions.

The artist of today should be alive to this deeper evo-
lution on which all growth depends, has depended and
will depend.

On the surface there is the battle of institutions, the
illustration of events, the strife between peoples. On the
surface there is propaganda and there is the effort to
force opinions.

The deeper current carries no propaganda. The shock
of the surface upheaval does not deflect it from its course.

It is in search of fundamental principle; that basic
principle of all, which in degree as it is apprehended points
the way to beauty and order, and to the law of nature.

On the surface, disaster is battled with disaster. Things
change. But all improvement is due to what of funda-
mental law rises to the surface, through the search made
by those of the undercurrent.

The law of the surface is a failure for the same reason
that the Wright brothers could not have made their
machine fly on the laws of Blackstone, which were not
based on fundamental principle but rather on certain
rights of man, which rights are now questioned.

The artist of the surface does not see further than
material fact. He describes appearances and he illus-
trates events.

Some fractional part of him flows in the undercurrent.
It is the best part of him but he and his surface publit
underestimate it. He may be conscious of it. He may be
conscious of it and ashamed of it. Or, he may repress it
because it hurts his surface interests.
''THE ART SPIRIT 91

There are painters who paint pictures with spiritual
titles but whose motives are purely materialistic.

Goya painted events, some of his subjects were his-
torical, but I find his obvious subject a thin veil. Beyond
the veil we see his realities. They are immeasurable.

We have seen superficial painters rise, have a storm of
public approval, and then disappear from notice.

Even that other and very different popularity
recently given Renoir and Cezanne I question.

If they had not been idealized out of their true charac-
ters, they might never have had such vogue as they
have had. ;

Perhaps in order to make them as popular as they now
are, it has been necessary to deny them the very most
striking qualities; the very qualities which were necessary
to them in doing the fine work they have done.

They have been stripped of humanity. We are told
they had no interest in the personalities they painted, and
this and that has been taken from them until they are only
half themselves.

I have been told in face of one or other of their works
that these men had no character interest, that in
fact they loftily avoided seeing any such base element in
the ‘* motive.”

And yet, of course, on the canvas before us there was
a marvelous characterization, an employment of material,
the paints and the model, in such a rare way as to make us_
realize deep down into the life of the subject.

The great masters in all the arts have been whole men,
not half men. They have had marvelous fullness in all
''92 THE ART SPIRIT

human directions, have been intensely humane in them-
selves and in their interests. And if they seem to select,
it is because they have so much to select from.

It may be that what we take for absence of humanity
is the very presence of it, our understanding of the word,
or the emotion, being so different, so materialistic.

Renoir and Cezanne are quite unalike, yet an important
likeness does exist in that their search has been toward a
truer realization.

Renoir is rather Eastern in his sensibility, and Cezanne
possesses qualities both Eastern and Western, and is
of the future type. He had intense realization of what
is beyond material and intense powers to employ mate-
rials constructively.

People say “ it is only a sketch.” It takes the genius
of a real artist to make a good sketch—to express the most
important things in life—the fairness of a face—to repre-
sent air and light and to do it all with such simple short-
hand means. One must have wit to make a sketch. Pictures
that have had months of labor expended on them may be
more incomplete than a sketch.

Letter of Criticism

This to me is the most beautiful in color. It has a fine
quality of light and atmosphere. The sky is fine, and has
an area in good measure with the other forms. The
several echoes of this blue sky in the lower blues of

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 93

windows, umbrella and ground are effective—helping the
sky and being helped by it. The roof and the reds of the
foreground are excellent in effect on each other. This
naturally includes the effects that the colors have in con-
trast, and the play in this way of the three big color areas
of the picture, red, yellow-green and blue, is fine.

The sketch is an excellent impression in the key most
true to the gayety of the subject and its warm light.

It remains, however, a slight sketch, made slight more
because of lack of organization and concentration in the
forms than that the forms are not much finished. Con-
centration; the play of one form into another, the balance
of one form, or incident, or idea, or material, with the
others, and all leading to one central interest. This is what
the study lacks. All satisfying things are good organiza-
tions. The forms are related to each other, there is a
dominant movement among them to a supreme conclusion.

Study some good satisfying pictures or reproduction
of pictures that you very much admire and you will find
this to be one of their great secrets. Some pictures, as
portraits, are so organized that you are directed not only
by obscure but by very obvious influences to the head.

In a composition like yours, it is rather by subtle influ-
ences that the eye of the spectator and his interest is
guided, because in such a subject there are many rests for
interest al] over the canvas, but these are only rests. One
must, in the good composition, go on to the supreme
climax. It is in this way that a sense of fulfillment and
completion is accomplished. These are things you must
study. You can study them in all good and satisfying
''94 THE ART SPIRIT

works of art. No receipt about it. Just a principle. One
finds it in great music. It is a question of getting results
through balance, rhythm, cumulation, opposition, etc., and
this applies to all the agents you employ in your work. I
have remarked some good balances, but you have engaged
other agents—such as figures, figures doing things, win-
dows, etc., etc., and these, while serving well in certain
color-notes, say at the same time too much and too little
in themselves.

If you introduce an agent, that agent must enter into
the order of things, must attain in its character a right
amount of balance with the other things. If the agent is a
figure and there are other figures, it must take its
place in degree of prominence with the other figures as
well as its degree of prominence as a color, form or line-
note in the whole composition.

Your picture may express the idea of dazzle and con-
fusion, but the picture must not be confused. What I have
said is the most important criticism I have for you. It is
an understanding of this principle that will make you
progress not only in the way you have already attained,
but in all other ways.

You will see that it means drawing, not imitative draw-
ing but constructive drawing, and it means finish, but not
the finish that is the ideal of the ignorant.

This sketch of yours could, for instance, be a finished
work of art with no more detail, some less in parts, than
it has now.

Work for order and balance of the excellent factors
already on the canvas, the whole concerted, and every ac
tor playing its part up to the dominant, as though every

 
'' 

 

THE ART SPIRIT 95

part were willed to move towards the central idea. It could
be a complete work—complete as art and even appreciable
by the most ignorant art judge, who would like it deep down
in his consciousness even if in the top of his head he were
still begging for what he calls finish (more detail or more
smoothness). And this same sketch could be carried much
further as a statement of various interests, and if the
organization, the concerted movement, were kept, the
thing would still be large, full, a more complex subject, but
equally simple.

Now, after all this, your sketch is very handsome, fine
in color—showing your talent admirably. Why don’t you
take it as a subject to work out, to study, and to bring to
a full dompletion. Suppose you take a larger sized canvas
——say 26 by 32, or some such size, and go at this very
subject—not in a flighty, hurried way, but as a student—
like a builder—to make something that will be wholly
satisfying to you. Not a picture to be more “ finished ”
in the common sense, but one to be finished in this other
sense, which will please you. You have the data for it in
the sketch. If you can fight this thing out you will find
yourself much advanced at the end of the fight even if you
have failed in making a picture of it. But you won’t fail
if you keep your mind about you and work on the canvas
only to get what you like. To do this there must be no
flighty dashing at the thing. You must lay your plans
and know what you are doing. You must determine the
central motive to which all evidences converge (some con-
vergences will be literal, others will not), and you must
determine the lesser centres. You must make up your mind
what work in the whole each part is to play. You can
''<4
N

96 THE ART SPIRIT

always scrape, or let dry and work over. It can’t be done
in an afternoon. It may take some time and many inter-
vals for consideration. The time does not matter if by it
you get your whole idea of art moved forward.

On your big canvas you can decide to have practically
no more detail than you have on this panel. This will mean
that you must make the forms in their present state just as
significant as they possibly can be.

A fine drawing by Phil May has very little detail in it,
but what lines he did put down were so significant of his
quality of idea that no more lines, or no more details,
were necessary.

Of course, what I suggest will mean a battle for you—
not a test of your grit in a sprint, but it’s a good six-day
go. It will take courage and it will take common sense.
Don’t begin to paint before you have quite satisfied your-
self as to the placement of everything. You can make
numerous little drawings, or panel sketches of the various
parts. For instance, the people on the benches, no more
finished, but better concerted.

Make up your mind what you want to put down and
don’t let anything prevent you from putting down just
that. The big picture should be as charming and as free
as the little sketch—but more concerted.

You have a lot of talent, a real flair for color, and you
should be willing to work to a conclusion, to ae
things out.

Study reproductions and pictures you like in this mat-
ter - rhythm, organization, a

 

“Silteat + very great service to you.
''THE ART SPIRIT 97

These suggestions I have given you are easily written
and quickly read, but what they mean for you is a lot of
hard concentrated work, and if you do it you will pass on
from the tentative, the touch-and-get-away state. You
are not to give up the quick sketch. That work is to go on
always. Some things can only be seized in that way. This
other work is the rounding out, and completing, from
memory. When I say “ completing,” remember that I do
not mean conventional finish.

I admire this other sketch of yours very much. The
group of Indians has the burn of color. As a critic, I
might say I wish they would turn around more, or, as they
are doing something, there together, do it more to the
observer’s satisfaction.

As to the piano picture, there has been more thinking
about the style of art the picture is in than thought of
the subject. The subject has been bent to the manner
rather than that the manner has been the outcome of the
needs of the subject.

The red interior is vigorous, promising, but too much
a riot of color—is more riotous in the painting than sug-
gestive of the riot in nature.

I have seen many artists develop. I have seen many who
have failed to push on although possessed of this brilliant
talent for the noting of fresh and valuable sketches. There
are many who make near masterpieces, near complete state-
ments. That final bringing of things together, tying up,
accentuation of the necessary, and elimination of the

unnecessary, requires a force of concentration that few are
7
''98 THE ART SPIRIT

capable of attaining. It’s the last, final spurt of energy—
the climax of all that has gone before. The majority fail
at this point. Those who become masters do not. Finish
with many “ artists ” is to smooth over, close up—in fact
it is a negation of all that brilliant courage of the original
sketch. The finish I ask for is the fuller carrying out of
the spirit and the fulfillment of the organization that is
hinted at in the sketch.

The appreciation of art should not be considered as
merely a pleasurable pastime. To apprehend beauty is to
work for it. It is a mighty and an entrancing effort, and
the enjoyment of a picture is not only in the pleasure it
inspires, but in the comprehension of the new order of con-
struction used in its making.

Get up and walk back and judge your drawing. Put
the drawing over near the model, or on the wall, return to
your place and judge it. Take it out in the next room, or
put it alongside something you know is good. If it is a
painting put it in a frame on the wall. See how it looks.
Judge it. Keep doing these things and you will have as
you go along some idea of what you are doing.

I once met a man who told me that I always had an
exaggerated idea of things. He said, “ Look at me, I am
''THE ART SPIRIT 99

never excited.” I looked at him and he was not exciting.
For once I did not over-appreciate.

There are painters who paint their lives through with-
out ever having any great excitements. One man said to
me, “I lay it in in the morning, then I have luncheon and
I take a nap, after which I finish.” Certainly a well regu-
lated way for a quict gentleman and quite unlike the
procedure of an idea-mad enthusiast who works eighteen
hours at a stretch.

One of the reasons that exhibitions of pictures do not
attract a larger public is that so many pictures placidly
done, placidly conceived, do not excite to imagination.
The pictures which do not represent an intense interest
cannot expect to create an intense interest.

It is often said “ The public does not appreciate art!”
Perhaps the public is dull, but there is just a possibility
that we are also dull, and that if there were more motive,
wit, human philosophy, or other evidences of interesting
personality in our work the call might be stronger.

A public which likes to hear something worth while
when you talk would like to understand something worth
while when it sees pictures.

If they find little more than technical performances,
they wander out into the streets where there are faces and
gestures which bear evidence of the life we are living, where
the buildings are a sign of the effort and aspiration of
a people.

It may be that the enthusiast does not exaggerate and
that an excited state is only an evidence of the thrill one
has in really seeing.
''100 THE ART SPIRIT

When the motives of artists are profound, when they
are at their work as a result of deep consideration, when
they believe in the importance of what they are doing, their
work creates a stir in the world.

The stir may not be one of thanks or compliment to
the artist. It may be that it will rouse two kinds of men
to bitter antagonism, and the artist may be more showered
with abuse than praise, just as Darwin was in the start,
because he introduced a new idea into the world.

The complaint that “the public do not come to our
exhibitions—they are not interested in art! ” is heard with
a bias to the effect that it is all the public’s fault, and that
there could not possibly be anything the matter with art.
A thoughtful person may ponder the question and finally
ask if the fault is totally on the public’s side.

There are two classes of people in the world: students
and non-students. In each class there are elements of the
other class so that it is possible to develop or to degenerate
and thus effect a passage from one class to the other. +

The true character of the student is one of great
mental and spiritual activity. He arrives at conclusions
and he searches to express his findings. He goes to the
market place, to the exhibition place, wherever he can
reach the people, to lay before them his new angle on life.
He creates a disturbance, wins attention from those who
have in them his kind of blood—the student blood. These
are stirred into activity. Camps are established. Dis-
cussion runs high. There is life in the air.

The non-student element says it is heresy. Let us have
* peace! ” Put the disturber in jail.
''THE ART SPIRIT’? °°”? ** 101

In this, we have two ideas of life, motion and
non-motion.

If the art students who enter the schools today believe
in the greatness of their profession, if they believe in self
development and courage of vision and expression, and
conduct their study accordingly, they will not find the
audience wanting when they go to the market place with
expressions of their ideas.

They will find a crowd there ready to tear them to
pieces ; to praise them and to ridicule them.

Julian’s Academy, as I knew it, was a great cabaret
with singing and huge practical jokes, and as such, was a
wonder. It was a factory, too, where thousands of draw-
ings of human surfaces were turned out.

It is true, too, that among the great numbers of stu-
dents there were those who searched each other out and
formed little groups which met independently of the school,
and with art as the central interest talked, and developed
ideas about everything under the sun. But these small
groups of true students were exceptional.

An art schoo] should be a boiling, seething place. And
such it would be if the students had a fair idea of the
breadth of knowledge and the general personal develop-
ment necessary to the man who is to carry his news to the
market place.

When a thing is put down in such permanent mediums
as paint or stone it should be a thing well worthy of record.
It must be the work of one who has looked at all things, has
interested himself in all life.
''102° PEE ART SPIRIT

Art has relations to science, religions and philosophies.
The artist must be a student.

The value of a school should be in the meeting of
students. The art school should be the life-centre of a
city. Ideas should radiate from it.

I can see such a school as a vital power; stimulating
without and within. Everyone would know of its existence,
would feel its hand in all affairs.

I can hear the song, the humor, of such a school, put-
ting its vitality into play at moments of play, and having
its say in every serious matter of life.

Such a school can only develop through the will of the
students. Some such thing happened in Greece. It only
lasted for a short time, but long enough to stock the world
with beauty and knowledge which is fresh to this day.

Schools have transformed men and men have trans-
formed schools.

When Wagner came into the world it was very different
from when he left it, and he was one of the men who made
the changes.

Such people are very disturbing. They often create
trouble, we can’t sleep when they are around.

If the art galleries of the future are to be crowded
with spectators it will depend wholly on the students.

If there had been no such disturbers as Wagner, audi-
toriums would not now be filled with listeners.

When a drawing is tiresome it may be because the
motive is not worth the effort.
''THE ART SPIRIT 103

Be willing to paint a picture that does not look like
a picture.

The mere copying, without understanding, of external
appearances can hardly be called drawing. It is a per-
formance and difficult, but—

Every movement, every evidence of search is worthy
of the consideration of the student.

The student must look things squarely in the face, know
them for what they are worth to him.

Join no creed, but respect all for the truth that is
in them.

The battle of human evolution is going on.

There must be investigations in all directions.

Do not be afraid of new prophets or prophets that
may be false.

Go in and find out. The future is in your hands.

You can learn much by a cool study of the living eye.
Examine it closely and record in your mind just what and
where its parts are. In pictures eyes should fascinate,
arrest, haunt, question, be inscrutable, they should invite
into depths. They must be remarkable. You must have
your anatomical knowledge so that you can use it without
consciously thinking of it, and your technique must be
positive and swift. Eyes express human sensitiveness and
they must be wonderfully done.

ie olicinredn pte ai ate are

si at mil hl Naan ae
''104 THE ART SPIRIT

I am sure there are many people—and there are artists
—who have never seen a whole head. They look from
feature to feature. You can’t draw a head until you see
it whole. It’s not easy. Try it. When I first realized
this it seemed that I had to stretch my brain in order to get
it around a whole head. It seemed that I could go so far,
but it was a feat to comprehend the whole. No use trying
to draw a thing until you have got all around it. It is only
then that you comprehend a unity of which the parts can be
treated as parts.

The dominant eye. Note that there is a compositional
relation between the eyes—that is, one eye commands the
greater interest. If you paint them equal, no matter what
the position of the head, the observer will get no right con-
ception of them. In life one eye always dominates the
observer. In painting this domination must persist.

The average idea of portraiture needs reconstruction.

When Rodin made his Balzac he made a great portrait.
It is probably not so much what Balzac looked like to the
ordinary eye; but it is the man as Rodin understood him,
and I think Rodin had unusual understanding.

Keep your old work. You did it. There are virtues
and there are faults in it for you to study. You can learn
more from yourself than you can from anyone else.
''THE ART SPIRIT 105

After you have made a drawing from the model don’t
simply put itaway. You are not half through with it. It’s
a thing to study.

If you are working from day to day on a drawing, take
it home. Put it where you can see it well.

No one can get anywhere without contemplation. Busy
people who do not make contemplation part of their busi-
ness do not do much for all their effort.

Study the drawing out. When you take it back before
the model you will have a state of mind far in advance of
the state of the drawing.

If it is a drawing of a pose which is not to be continued,
just the same, make your study of it—and redraw it. Use
plenty of paper. Seriousness does not mean sticking to

one piece of paper or canvas.

He paints like a man going over the top of a hill,
singing.

Many artists learn to draw a leg or arm in a certain
state of action and use the same no matter how unfitting
it may be to the subject in hand.

We see in a picture or decoration labeled “Labor,” a
man with the muscles in his arms and legs bulging as
though he were accomplishing some mighty feat of strength,
although the use of all this terrific muscular action may be
no more than the carrying home of his dinner pail.
''106 THE ART SPIRIT

In drawing a man pulling on a rope, make your draw-
ing state fully what muscles are affected by this action.

Develop the power of seeing the points of action; your
keenness of sight of such muscular activities must be
greater than that of the ordinary observer.

In buying a horse, if you are not acquainted with
horses, you will fail to recognize the fine points. You will
refer to your friend who is a judge of horses and from his
expert knowledge, he will be able to tell at once the signs
of the horse’s power, fleetness or condition.

The art student must learn to read the state, tempera-
ment, action and condition of his subject through the out-
ward signs, and use the same as a means of expressing and
making special what is important to him in the subject.

In this pose our model is as much an artist as any of
you. He has a distinct idea of the action he wishes to
express, and he keeps well to the idea. It is a piece of good
acting. If you would but put as much mind, energy and
imagination in your drawing as he does in taking and
holding to the spirit of his pose, good work would result.

In drawing this outline you forget what the line signi-
fies because your interest is in drawing the line only as a
line. You must think more of what created the line in
nature; of the movement and the form that created it.
The line is nothing in itself.

Look at this drawing by Rembrandt. Your mind is at
once engaged by the life of the person represented. The
''THE ART SPIRIT 107

beauty of the lines of the drawing rest in the fact that you
do not realize them as lines, but are only conscious of what
they state of the living person.

Here are people represented in differing actions, and
each one sensed in his nature, you seem to know all about
them. It is the individual significance of the persons in the
action of the picture that seizes you. You have been let
into that life of long ago.

In this other Rembrandt drawing we see people in a
tavern. Among them is an imposing client. Note the way
the lines force our understanding of his pompous author-
ity. How different each one present carries himself. In
the whole composition there is a unity of line and there is a
unity of group, time and place, but each personage is an
identity in himself. Variety within unity.

We like to look at these drawings because they carry to
us just what was running through the mind of Rembrandt.
They express states of life as Rembrandt understood them.
They are real historical documents, not of governmental
climaxes, but of the real, intimate life of people while they
unconsciously live their lives.

Ordinary histories estrange us from the past. The
works of such as Rembrandt bring us near it.

The personages in the Rembrandt drawings are seen
as in the actions of their lives. Our model on the stand
before us is equally an individual, and is at this moment
doing one of the things which go to make up his or her life.
This studio is no less a place where life is going on in its
tragedy and comedy than any other.
''108 THE ART SPIRIT

The model on the stand is a piece of history, and if you
know this you will draw more interestingly, because you
will see more interestingly.

Life and art cannot be disassociated, nor can any
artist, however he may desire it, produce a line of “ sheer
beauty,” 7.e., a line disassociated from human feeling. We
are all wrapped up in life, in human feelings; we cannot,
and we should not, desire to get away from our feelings.

In fact lines are only beautiful to us when they bear a
kinship to us. Different men are moved or left cold by
lines according to the difference in their natures. What
moves you is beautiful to you. To all men in a general
way human lines have significance.

In all great paintings of still-life, flowers, fruit, land-
scape, you will find the appearance of interweaving human
forms, the forms we unconsciously look for. We do but.
humanize, see ourselves in all we look at.

Because we are saturated with life, because we are
human, our strongest motive is life, humanity; and the
stronger the motive back of a line the stronger, and there-
fore the more beautiful, the line will be.

In looking at certain drawings of landscape by
Cezanne, I found myself first filled with a delightful sense of
intimacy, of warmth and human feeling.

Presently I became conscious that I was looking at a
wonderful orchestration of human forms. In the trees,
the rocks, the grasses—everywhere, were variations on the
human form, fragmentary but interplaying and forming
a magnificent symphony.

Critics have written that Renoir was not interested in
the people he painted, was only interested in color and
''THE ART SPIRIT 109

form, that the who or what of the model was totally neg-
ligible to him. Yet one has only to look at those little
children he painted, the one bending over his writing, the
two girls at the piano, to cite instances; and it will be
apparent that Renoir had not only a great interest in
human character, in human feeling, but had also a great
love for the people he painted.

He needed new inventions in technique, in color and form
to express what he felt about life. His feeling was so great
that his search was directed, and the result is as we have
seen—great rhythms in form and color.

Because a line is beautiful in one picture is no argument
that it will be beautiful in another. It is all a matter
of relation.

The line in a great drawing is not a slave to anatomical]
arrests and beginnings. There is a line that runs right
through the pointing arm and off from the finger tip into
space. This is the principal line. This is the line which
the artist draws and makes you follow. "2

It is not necessarily a visible line to the photogray ic
eye. It is there nevertheless and is hidden in the science
of the draftsman. All else that is visible is there only to
make you sense this line, and it dominates.

Your eye does not follow the muscle and bone making
of the arm. It follows the spirit of life in the arm.

Such a line runs through the whole figure, rising from
point to point in measures which are not controlled by the
anatomical structure, except in the loosest way. These
measures define another dimension—that fascinating
fourth if you like—which has to do with your concept of
the significance of the whole—that ultra something which
''110 THE ART SPIRIT

has always engaged your interest more than mere facts
of the person standing before you.

If you ask me how you are to locate these points on
which your line is to rest in its progress, I can only tell you
that you most certainly see them and you know them well in
your deeper consciousness. It will take some deep sounding
to bring them into your intelligence, which is blocked too
much now with an eye-seeing vision of material things,
things which, however, really do not and never have
had much importance to you.

If in your composition of an arm, a figure, a whole
canvas, you do come to see these measures and can fix
them, you will find the minor forms, the little anatomies,
falling wonderfully into their places, easier to do and to
regulate as to their importance, than ever before.

The lines which are important in an “ outline ” draw-
ing are not necessarily those which edge against the back-
ground—often the great line moves inward from this and
travels across or down the forward body.

In considering lines as a means of drawing, it is well to
remember that the line practically does not exist in nature.
It is a convention we use.

I think I am safe in saying, until you became an art
student, you never saw an outline—you never took the out-
line into consideration. You saw forms and these forms
had character and motion.

If you use lines now as a means of drawing, try to
find the way to make them express what you see—forms of
definite character and movement. Don’t become a victim
of line.
''THE ART SPIRIT 111

There is a certain kind of penmanship made in schools
which seems to draw around the letters of a word like a
wire, and there is another penmanship, much more human,
that seems to be the word.

In drawing, there are lines which travel fast, which
carry the eye over space with a surprising rapidity and
land you at a nodal point, where you are forced to rest,
and then take new departure at the same or a quite dif-
ferent speed. There are lines that are heavy, dragging,
lines that have pain, and lines that laugh.

A canvas may be measured with inches, but the speed
with which you travel over it is regulated by the artist.

A line may plunge you into silences, into obscurity,
and may bring you out into noise and clarity.

The line around the edge of a figure on a white piece of
paper represents the figure’s mergence into the background
—its place in air—and represents depths and textures.
Some parts of the edge of a body are nearer you, some
parts are further away; the outline will show these dis-
tances. At places, the bone of the body is near the surface
and it is hard. At other places the body is soft. The out-
line defines these; hardness and softness.

I am glad to hear of your plans and I wish I could be a
helper, as you suggest. I understand from your letter
that you would like me to write an article.

This brings up, however, the matter that we have sev-
eral times discussed—whether the cobbler should stick to
his last—whether the artist should paint, and put all his

ig sean ata tite
''112 THE ART SPIRIT

energies, his whole heart and mind in what he is best at,
both from inclination and experience, instead of lecturing,
writing, going to meetings, or going into society. It was
only last night that, talking to an artist friend, I regretted
there was but one of me, for as I said, if there were two, I
could then paint both the people and the landscape. As it
is, there being but one of me, I spend six to eight hours a
day in actual painting and the rest of the time getting
ready for the work, or resting, and in my passage to and
from the studio where I paint people, I see most beautiful
landscape under rare effects slide by. And this is a true
loss to me for I have the feeling, and have had considerable
experience, in painting landscape.

I would like to be in many activities. I think that any-
one who has had the pleasures of study and work for years
may be full of regret because he cannot practice in all
the arts.

Painting is a great mystery. No one has ever learned
quite how to paint. No one has ever learned quite how
to see.

Sometimes we do grip the concert in a human head,
and so hold it that in a way we get a record of it into paint,
but the vision and expressing of one day will not do for
the next.

Today must not be a souvenir of yesterday, and so the
struggle is everlasting. Who am I today? What do I see
today? How shall I wse what I know, and how shall I
avoid being victim of what I know? Life is not repetition.

If painting were an accomplishment easy to repeat
after “ learning,” there would be time and energy for other
practices. But good painters (and I consider as good
''THE ART SPIRIT 113

painters all those who work from the will of self-expres- //
sion) have little time to go afield.

They are generally at work. And as far as sociability
is concerned, they are the most social people in the world,
at least so I have found them.

‘I have just laid down a book and the caress of my hand
was for the man who wrote it, for the great human sym-
pathy of the man and his revealing gift to me through the
book. I have never seen the man, do not know his outside,
but I am intimately acquainted with him. His warmth is
all about me. Insofar as I am capable I am his kin. I am
not anxious to see how well he dances, or how well he paints.
He has said what he wanted to say to me in the way he
wanted and thought best to say it.

I do not like the very modern fancy which makes an
actor of a man as soon as he has proven himself a pugilist.

It is true, no doubt, that if my writer is deflected from
writing to dancing or painting, somewhat of his genius will
appear in these arts. But why should he be deflected,
since it is the man’s self we want, and he has found and

developed his best way of giving it.

Painting is the expression of ideas in their permanent
form. It is the giving of evidence. It is the study of our
lives, our environment. The American who is useful as an
artist is one who studies his own life and records his
experiences ; in this way he gives evidence. If a man has
something to say he will find a way of saying it.

8
''114 THE ART SPIRIT

The undercurrent and motive of all art is an individual
man’s idea. From each we expect what he has to give. We
desire it. It is absolutely necessary for him to give it out.

What is the relation of the artist to the community?
What good does a man’s art do? There are those in the
community who regard the artist as amere entertainer come
with cap and bells to amuse and perform graces before a
paying public. The true artist regards his work as_a-means
of talking with men, of saying his say to himself and to
others. It is not a question of pay. It is not a ‘a question 7 oF
willing acceptance on the part of the public. If he is wel-
comed and paid it is very good, but whether or no he must
say his say. Whitman was not paid for his work either in
money or in appreciation at the time he did it. What we
have from him was a gift, at first—and for long after—
unwillingly received. So also with Ibsen. They made good
first. ‘They were ridiculed first. Stevenson, the inventor,
was laughed at. The Wright brothers were laughed at in
the beginning. Men have to give just as the bird has to
sing. The artist is teaching the world the idea of life. The
man who believes that money is the thing~ is ‘cheating
himself. The artist teaches that the object of a man’s life
should be to play as a little child plays. Only it is the play
of maturity—the play of one’s mental faculties. There-
fore, we have art and invention.

 

Art in the community has a subtle, unconscious, refin-
ing influence.

It is a curious fact that the delicate acoustic arrange-
ments of a music hall can be impaired by the music of
inefficient, discordant orchestras, and’ for this reason poor
musical performances have been forbidden in some places.
''THE ART SPIRIT 115

If a poor performance could affect. adversely the acoustics
of a hall, would not an able performance tend to im-
prove them?

It practically means that the presence of good art will
unconsciously refine a community and that poor art will
do it incalculable harm.

True art strikes deeper than the surface. There is that
which we call the subconscious. We do certain things and

 

are influenced by certain things without knowing why. We
hear a band play a military selection, and, though we may
not be at all martially inclined, we suddenly become con-
scious of the fact that we have walked in step to the
music. And so with a good picture. Unconsciously we
fall in with the rhythm of its music. The man looks at the
picture; he attaches little importance to it; but it doesn’t
have to hit a man on the head to make an impression. ‘The
influence is all the greater because the man doesn’t realize
that it’s there. Look at a Homer seascape. There is order
in it and grand formation. It produces on your mind the
whole vastness of the sea, a vastness as impressive and as
uncontrollable as the sea itself. You are made to feel the
force of the sea, the resistance of the rock; the whole thing
is an integrity of nature.

Landscape is a medium for ideas. We want men’s
thoughts. It’s the same in other things. It is said that
Wells had the right idea about writing history when he
wrote The Outline, for his object was not so much
to give us the dates of the various occurrences, as to
tell us of the conditions of humanity. And so the various
details in a landscape painting mean nothing to us if they
do not express some mood of nature as felt by the artist.
''116 THE ART SPIRIT

It isn’t sufficient that the spacing and arrangement of the
composition be correct in formula, The true artist, in
viewing the landscape, renders it upon his canvas as a living
thing. Perhaps he feels the wind blowing across landscape.
In this case he may wse the tree to express the splendid
power of the wind. It is a birch tree. It is a frail tree. It
bends before the wind. You see the wind’s effect in the
branches and the leaves. Everything about the tree indi-
cates the life and force of the wind. Thus the tree becomes
an eloquent symbol; it is the medium through which the
idea of the wind is expressed.

The next day the artist goes out again, his active mind
open to impressions, displaying interest in all directions.
Again the tree attracts his attention. This time it is the
tree growing; the tree resisting the wind; the tree with
its fecundity ; the tree rising and spreading from its roots ;
the tree undergoing its complete cycle of growth from the
roots, deriving its nutrition from the moisture in the
ground and the sap in the trunk; the tree with the twigs
and the leaves and the final flowering into blossoms ; and in
this tree the wind is blowing—the wind, which is to the tree
as a chasing is to the cup.

There is the heart and the mind, the Puritan idea is that
the mind must be master. I think the heart should be
master and the mind should be the tool and servant of the
heart. As it is, we give too much attention to laws and
not enough to principles. The man-who wants to produce
art must have the emotional side first, and this must be
reinforced by the practical.

The man who has great emotions might burst into
tears—but that is as far as he will get if he has no practi-
''THE ART SPIRIT 117

cal side. The artist must have the emotional side first, the
primal cause of his being an artist, but he must also have
an excellent mind, which he must command and use as a
tool for the expression of his emotions.

The idea, which is the primal thing for a picture, is all
in the air; the expression on canvas is a case of absolute
science as it deals with materials. A great artist is both a
great imaginer and a great employer of practical science.
First there must be the man, then the technique.

There are many ways of seeing things.

When you saw the thing and it looked beautiful to you,
you saw it beautifully. Paint it as it looked then.

Some students possess the school they work in. Others
are possessed by the school.

Let a student enter the school with this advice:

No matter how good the school is, his education is in
his own hands. All education must be self-education.

Let him realize the truth of this, and no schoo] will be
a danger to him. The school is a thing of the period. It
has the faults and the virtues of the period. It either uses
''118 THE ART SPIRIT

the student for its own success or the self-educating stu-
dent uses it for his success. This is generally true of all
schools and students of our time.

It is up to the student whether he becomes a school-
made man or whether he uses the school as a place of
experience where there are both good and bad advices,
where there are strengths and weaknesses, where there are
facilities, and much information to be had from the
instructors, and much to be gained by association with the
other students. He may learn equally from the strong and
the weak students. There are models to work from and a
place to work in.

The self-educator judges his own course, judges
advices, judges the evidences about him. He realizes that
he is no longer an infant. He is already a man: has his
own development in process.

No one can lead him. Many can give advices, but the
greatest artist in the world cannot point his course for he
is a new man. Just what he should know, just how he
should proceed can only be guessed at.

A school should be an offering of opportunity, not a
direction, and the student should know that the school will
be good for him only to the degree that he makes it good.
It is a field for activity where he will see much, hear much
and where he must be a judge, selecting for his special need,
and daily discovering his need.

When we have bred a line of self-educators there will
then be no fear of schools. Those who have done dis-
tinguished work in the past, who have opened new road-
ways of vision and invented techniques specific to such
visions have done it in spite of environment. They have
''THE ART SPIRIT 119

learned what the schools had to offer, how much, how little.
Strengths and weaknesses have alike been material to
their progress.

Different men must learn different things. Each man
must put himself as far as possible in the way of knowing
what is known and he must make his choices. Everything
back of him is his heritage to use or to leave. The school is
a place of strengths and weaknesses. There are things
insisted upon and there are things omitted. There are all
sorts of advices, good and bad, and there are advices that
will serve one and not another.

The man who goes into a school to educate himself and
not to be educated will get somewhere. He should start
out a master, master of such as he has, however little that
may be. By being master of such as he has in the beginning
it is likely he may later be master, after years of study,
of much.

He should not enter the school with any preconceived
idea of his destiny. In fact he should be open and free.
His aim should be to search deeply and work hard and let |
the outcome be what it may.

The best art the world has ever had is but the impress
left by men who have thought less of making great art
than of living full and completely with all their faculties
in the enjoyment of full play. From these the result
is inevitable.

The technique of a little individuality will be a little
technique, however scrupulously elaborated it may be.
However long studied it still will be a little technique; the
''120 THE ART SPIRIT

measure of the man. The greatness of art depends abso-
lutely on the greatness of the artist’s individuality and on
the same source depends the power to acquire a technique
sufficient for expression.

The man who is forever acquiring technique with the
idea that sometime he may have something to express, will
never have the technique of the thing he wishes to express.

Intellect should be used as a tool.

The technique learned without a purpose is a formula
which when used, knocks the life out of any ideas to which
it is applied.

The great artist has cast a glow of romance over the
café and Bohemia. It is not that he has spent much time
there. He was always too busy with his work for that. It
is because when he did go for relaxation he put his wit, his
humor, his vitality and all himself into it. He made things
hum, turned the sordid into romance, then disappeared
back to his work leaving a memory in Bohemia.

Age need not destroy beauty. There are people who
grow more beautiful as they grow older. If age means to
them an expansion and development of character this new
mental and spiritual state will have its effect on the physi-
cal. A face which in the early days was only pretty or
even dull, will be transformed. The eyes will attain mys-
''THE ART SPIRIT 121

terious depths, there will be a gesture in the whole face of
greater sensibility and all will appear coérdinate.

About the portrait Whistler painted of his mother I
have always had a great feeling of beauty. She is old.
But there is something in her face and gesture that tells
of the integrity of her life. There is nothing wabbly about
her face as there is in the faces of those whose integrity has
been uncertain. A wonderful record of woman’s beauty
would have been lost to the world if her son had seen fit to
look for any other beauty than that which was present.
There she sits, and in her poise one reads the history of a
splendid personality. She is at once so gentle, so
experienced, and so womanly strong.

She may have had other beauty in her youth, but it
could not have surpassed this, which charms and fills us
with reverence.

It is more the gesture of a feature than the feature
itself which interests and pleases us.

The feature is the outside, its gesture manifests the
inner life.

Beauty is an intangible thing; can not be fixed on the
surface, and the wear and tear of old age on the body can-
not defeat it.

Nor will a “ pretty ” face make it, for “ pretty ” faces
are often dull and empty, and beauty is never dull and it
fills all spaces.

The lace on a woman’s wrist is an entirely different
thing from lace in a shop. In the shop it is a piece of

 

 

‘
;
#
S
’
''122 THE ART SPIRIT

workmanship, on her hand it is the accentuation of her
gentleness of character and refinement.

Perhaps whatever there is in my work that may be
really interesting to others, and surely what is interesting
to me, is the result of a sometimes successful effort to free
myself from any idea that what I produce must be art or
must respond in any way to any standard.

It must be old fashioned, or new fashioned or no
fashion at all. It must be what it is and must have been
made because it was a great pleasure to make it.

Whatever is worth while I am sure must be made this
way, and the influences should be all the influences, little
and big, of a lifetime.

Develop your visual memory. Draw everything you
have drawn from the model from memory as well.

Realize that a drawing is not a copy. It is a construc-
tion in very different material.
A drawing is an invention.

The technique of painting is very difficult, very
interesting.

There is no end to the study of technique.

Yet more important than the lifelong study of tech-
nique is the lifelong self-education. |

In fact, technique can only be used properly by those
who have definite purpose in what they do, and it is only
''THE ART SPIRIT 123

they who invent technique. Otherwise it is the work °

of parrots.

You can do anything you want to do. What is rare is
this actual wanting to do a specific thing: wanting it so
much that you are practically blind to all other things,
that nothing else will satisfy you. When you, body and
soul, wish to make a certain expression and cannot be dis-
tracted from this one desire, then you will be able to make
a great use of whatever technical knowledge you have.
You will have clairvoyance, you will see the uses of the
technique you already have, and you will invent more.

I know I have said a lot when I say “ You can do any-

»* But I mean it. There is reason

thing you want to do.
for you to give this statement some of your best thought.
You may find that this is just what is the matter with most
of the people in the world; that few are really wanting
what they think they want, and that most people go
through their lives without ever doing one whole thing
they really want to do.

An artist has got to get acquainted with himself just as

much as he can. It is no-easy job, for it is not a present- .

day habit of humanity. This is what I call self-develop-
ment, self-education. No matter how fine a school you are
in, you have to educate yourself.

There is nothing more entertaining than to have a
frank talk with yourself. Few do it—frankly. Educating
yourself is getting acquainted with yourself.

Find out what you really like if you can. Find out
what is really important to you. Then sing your song.
You will have something to sing about and your whole
heart will be in the singing.
''124 THE ART SPIRIT

When a man is full up with what he is talking about he
handles such language as he has with a mastery unusual to
him, and it is at such times that he learns language.

Don’t follow the critics too much. Art appreciation,
like love, cannot be done by proxy: It is a very personal
affair and is necessary to each individual.

A Sketch

It is only some people sitting down out-of-doors. There
is the sensation of comfort under the trees, the baby car-
riage, the bloom of flowers, the women’s clothes, green
trees. The man has disposed his legs along the line of
greatest comfort. He won’t keep them long that way but
just for the moment he has the expansion of a dog in the
sunlight. It is all a matter of the sense of these things and
it is very beautiful. It is not the kind of art that is pain-
ful either in its conception or its doing. It seems to have
been born of wit, and good-humored love of people and
things—seems to have come forth spontaneously—a love
song. It seems so easy and it seems so glad to exist.

Beside it, the bitter duty thing, made of painful hard
labor, of grinding and irritating patience; the thing
great only because of the agony it took in its making, the
dully labored, witless thing, the thing without love,
the thing made not for itself but to win a prize, hangs ill
at ease.
''THE ART SPIRIT 125

I do not want to see how skilful you are—I am not
interested in your skill. What do you get out of nature?
Why do you paint this subject? What is life to you?
What reasons and what principles have you found? What
are your deductions? What projections have you made?
What excitement, what pleasure do you get out of it?
Your skill is the thing of least interest to me.

Don’t be a high-key or a low-key artist. Both keys
belong to you. Use the key that fits.

Form enveloping form. The over-modeling.

I can feel the sogginess of that man’s footsteps as he
comes along. He seems to be the spirit of dreary rain.

A sketch that is the life of the city and river.

So you are after the Japanese? Well, don’t be so
superficial about it. Get the principle of it, but not
the mannerism.

No one should be asked to write on any artist or art
movement unless he likes the work of the artist or the effects
of the movement very much, and has in his liking none of,
that propagandist spirit which boosts to the skies his idol
and lays everything else in the dust. We have had much of
this in recent times. Nor should the “ Honor List ” be
taken too seriously as an indication of worth.

I venture to say that Thomas Eakins will be spoken
of in times to come as one of the very great men in all
''he

126 THE ART SPIRIT

American art, but he died practically unknown and
received only an “ honor ” or two.

I wonder what part in an encyclopedia of American
art the truly decorative and significant work of the Indian
will play. It is interesting to find that there has been
going on for centuries, a very remarkable art expression
right here—pure art, not imitation, and related, somehow,
to the more ancient art that existed beyond the Pacific.

In a great many writings and in much conversation I
have noted a tendency to consider the paintings of a man
who has never been abroad more American than those of a
man who has been abroad. May as well say that Benjamin
Franklin left his American spirit in Philadelphia when he
went to Europe.

It is quite possible for a man to live all his life in Cali-
fornia and paint as a disciple of the Barbgzon school and
for another to spend most of his life in the forest of Fon-
tainbleau and show his California birth from beginning
to end.

After all the error rests in the mistaken idea that the
subject of a painting is the object painted.

Some men are so provincial that, put them where you
will, they will be and do according to their home kind.
Others will react to the outside world as the men of their
nation feel. But in the great ones, of which a nation may
be proud, the race speaks.

The greatest American, of whom the nation must be
proud, will not be a “ typical ” American at all, but will be
heir to the world instead of a part of it, and will go to
every place where he feels he may find something of the
''- THE ART SPIRIT 127

information he desires, whether it be in one province
or another.

It is easier, I think, to paint a good picture than it is to
paint a bad one. The difficulty is to have the will for it.
A good picture is a fruit of all your great living.

There are terrible pictures that have taken time and
pain to make, intricate and difficult, results of grinding
patience, research, great amalgamations of material.
They frighten the sensitive student for the message they

carry is of the pain and boredom of their making.

Don’t take me as an authority. I am simply expressing
a very personal point of view. Nothing final about it.
You have to settle all these matters for yourself.

Houses, housetops, like human beings have wonderful
character. The lives of housetops. The wear of the
seasons. The country is beautfiul, young, growing things.
The majesty of trees. The backs of tenement houses are
living documents.

Blunder ahead with your own personal view.

Make the man’s feet grip the ground.
''128 THE ART SPIRIT

In drawing a tree there is a dominant line of growth
throughout. Some times your tree must be so specialized
that an expert on trees would be fully satisfied. Other
times it does not matter if it is even surely a tree.

Your pictures seem to be made up of things seen in
nature plus a memory of pictures you have liked. ‘The
percentage of the latter is often too great.

Make the hill express its bulk as a hill.
Make the wagon express its carrying power.

I am not interested in color for color sake and light for
light sake. I am interested in them as means of expression.

The eye should not be led where there is nothing
to see.

A satisfactory painting of a head is almost the highest
piece of composition.

I regard the salons of Paris and the big annuals as in-
stitutions detrimental to art. Art should not be segregated
to a certain six weeks in the year. Art should be persist-
ent; exhibitions should be small. Every one enjoys Fifth
Avenue, because there a series of very small exhibitions
occur in the dealers’ galleries. We enjoy them all, for
they are not beyond our endurance and because they are
''THE ART SPIRIT 129

divided into groups, a group in each gallery; we are thus
enabled to see more and enjoy more than were they
smashed together in one great hodge-podge. And on Fifth
Avenue art is persistent; we can always find something
there in all seasons.

The Big Show should not be desired. All over the
world art has been made into a three-ringed circus with
salons. All who are familiar with modern art history ,

know the “salon pictures ’

as a special and very over-
grown and mongrel breed.

Letter, 1916

The question of development of the art spirit in all
walks of life interests me. I mean by this, the development
of individual judgment and. taste, the love of work for the
sake of doing things well, tendency toward simplicity and.
order. If anything can be done to bring the public to a
greater consciousness of the relation between art and life,
of the part each person plays by exercising and developing
his own personal taste and judgment and not depending. on
outside “ authority,” it would be well. Moreover, if the
buyers of pictures could be brought to believe that, what-
ever may be their interest in accredited old masters, they
have, equally with the artists, their part to play in the
development and the progress of art in our own time and
place—that they, too, should enter the struggle for today’s
expression, lending a full support by purchasing the works

of the strugglers and searchers of our day and risking
9
''130 THE ART SPIRIT

many mistakes in their purchases, just as the artists are
risking many mistakes in their efforts—it would be of
public benefit.

* To have art in America will not be to sit like a pack-
rat on a pile of collected art of the past. It will be rather
to build our own projection on the art of the past, wherever
it may be, and for this constructiveness, the artist, the
man of means and the man in the street should go hand in
hand. And to have art in America like this will mean a
greater living, a greater humanity, a finer sense of relation
through all things.

Few of our art critics are constructive. There is much
little quibbling. I should like to see every encouragement
for those who are fighting to open new ways, every living
worker helped to do what he believes in, the best he can.
The man of means should take his chance in the struggle,
making mistakes in judgment along with the rest of us—a
worker in the developments of his own time.

Out of it all, what is good will survive and will be known
later; what is bad or negligible will pass and we shall

have lived.

Go and see the picture. I know you will like it. Put
on a pair of false whiskers so you won’t be bothered. I am
thinking of a series of disguises for myself so that I can go
to picture galleries and look at the pictures, and think
about them.

There should be an art law prohibiting friends from

recognizing each other in art galleries. If space were not
''THE ART SPIRIT 131

so expensive I would suggest a “ social” room adjoining
each picture gallery where we could retire with friends, and
ask and answer, “ Where did you go this summer?”

Don’t make your picture like a picture, make it like
nature. The result will be a picture just the same, but it
will be a new picture.

Don’t let the painting of your background be the tech-
nique of seeping rain, nor that of tall grasses. Your
background is mainly air in which is enveloped the distant
curtain seen not with a direct eye. Your eyes are still
looking into those of the model.

Order is perceived by the man with a creative spirit.
It is achieved by the man who sincerely attempts to express
himself and thus naturally follows organic law.

I think that this search for order, which is the artist’s
work, produces orderliness not only in mind, but in body.
In my own experience I have sometimes felt all in, dis-
turbed, not fit, but have had to start painting because of
an appointment with a sitter. In an hour’s work I have
''132 THE ART SPIRIT

found myself O. K., fine, and at the end of the three
or four or five hours’ work have been tired, but altogether
in better shape than when I started.

I have had the same experience when I have had to talk
to a class of students. Often I start, very tired from other
work, or distracted by little annoyances, with nothing to
say and no invention in saying it, but am forced by the
engagement to go on. Presently, as I make the struggle
for orderly and relative ideas, the fatigue rolls away,
order begets order, and a healthy state of mind and body
exists. And again at the end I am tired, but in better con-
dition than when I started. There is more than one way to
rest and to recuperate, and it amuses me to say the para-
dox—that resting is often very fatiguing.

Of course, on the other hand, we find among artists and
art students many who, instead of thinking and searching
order, dash at their work in a wild splashing frenzy, with-
out reason, without an interest in finding the way, just
wanting the goal, screaming and stamping their feet to
get it—not interested in the process of getting it. Such as
these, practicing in disorder, wear themselves out, destroy.

To study art is to study order, relative values, to get
at fundamental constructive principles. It is the great
study of the inside, not the outside of nature. Such a

pursuit evokes justice, simplicity, and good health.

Berthe Morisot learned a great deal from Manet, but
she expressed her own, a woman’s, Vision.
''THE ART SPIRIT 133

Art is not in pictures alone. Its place is in every-
thing, as much in one thing as another. It is up to the
community as a whole, in conduct, business, government
and play.

We will never have an art America until this is under-
stood, and when this idea is really understood it will bring
us about as near the millennium as we can hope to get.

I believe very much in the importance of a thorough
study of the materials used. Their quality as to dura-
bility. An artist may not be a chemist but he can ascertain
much from the books written by authorities. Y

I believe in the study of technique. One should know as
far as possible all the possibilities of a medium.

I am not interested in technical stunts, in bravura. I
am interested in simple expression. Not interested in
painting the surface of things.

Paint must be so simply managed that it will carry
understanding past the material fact.

Painting should never look as if it were done with diffi-
culty, however difficult it may actually have been.

Motive demands specific technique.

Without motive, painting is only some sort of diffi-
cult jugglery.

The finer the motive, the more the artist sees signifi-
cance in what he looks at, the more he must be precise in
the choice of his terms.
''134 THE ART SPIRIT

Individuality and Freedom in Art *

RM Me te ae hae

It seems to me that before a man tries to express
anything to the world he must recognize in himself an
individual, a new one, very distinct from others. Walt
Whitman did this, and that is why I think his name so
often comes to me. The one great cry of Whitman was
for a man to find himself, to understand the fine thing he
really is if liberated. Most people, either by training or
inheritance , count themselves at the start as “ no good,”
or “second rate” or “ just like anyone else,” whereas in
everyone there is the great mystery; every single person
in the world has evidence to give of his own individuality,
providing he has acquired the full power to make clear
this evidence.

* * * # & #

Twachtman was one of the men in America who could
see the greatness of life about him. It chanced that he
lived much in Connecticut and saw it there, but he would
have found it in Spain or France or Russia, and had he
gone to paint in those countries his art would have still
been American. To me Twatchman is one of the giants in
America. He got at the essential beauty of his environ-
ment and developed for himself a matchless technique. It
is thus that art history must grow. There is no one
recipe for this making of American artists, beyond afford-
ing to the men who have the gift the opportunity for
supreme development and the right expression of it.

For instance, contrast the work of Twachtman and
Winslow Homer. The same scene presented by these two |

 

* From article in The Craftsman, 1909.
''THE ART SPIRIT 135

men would be not an identical geographical spot but an
absolutely different expression of personality. Twachtman
saw the seas bathed in mists, the rocks softened with vapor.
Winslow Homer looked straight through the vapor at the
hard rock; he found in the leaden heaviness a most tre-
mendously forceful idea. It was not the sea or the rock
to either of these men, but their own individual attitude
toward the beauty or the force of nature. Each man must
take the material that he finds at hand, see that in it there
are the big truths of life, the fundamentally big forces, and
then express in his art whatever is the cause of his pleas-
ure. It is not so much the actual place or the immediate
environment; it is personal greatness.and personal freedom
which demands a ns Hight art expression. A man must
be master of. himself and master of his word - to_achieve
the full realization of himself as an artist.

Bo a Pe ae

That necessity is the mother of invention is true in art
as in science.

*  & # # #

It is a question of saying the thing that a person has to
say. A man should not care whether the thing he wishes
to express is art or not, whether it is a picture or not, he
should only care that it is a statement of what is worthy
to put into permanent expression.

+“ * * % # mH

In my understanding of color, there is absolutely no
such thing as color for color’s sake. Colors are beautiful
when they are significant. Lines are beautiful when they are

significant. It is what they signify that is beautiful to
''136 THE ART SPIRIT

us, really. The color is the means of expression. The
reason that a certain color in life, like the red in a young
girl’s cheek, is beautiful, is that it manifests youth, health;
in another sense, that it manifests her sensibility.

MT Me MC RS

We want inventors all through life; the only people
that ever succeed in writing, painting, sculpture, manu-
facturing, in finance, are inventors.

Every stave in a picket fence should be drawn with wit,
the wit of one who sees each stave as new evidence about
the fence. The staves should not repeat each other. A
new fence is rather stiff, but it does not stand long before
there is a movement through it, which is the trace of its
life experience. The staves become notes, and as they differ
the wonder of a common picket fence is revealed.

Artists are sometimes asked, “ Why do you paint ugly
and not beautiful things?” The questioner rarely hesi-
tates in his judgment of what is beautiful and what is ugly.
This with him is a foregone conclusion. Beauty he thinks
is a settled fact. His conception also is that beauty rests
in the subject, not in the expression. He should, there-
fore pay high for Rembrandt’s portrait of a gentleman,
and turn with disgust from a beggar by Rembrandt.
Fortunately Rembrandt is old enough not to have this
happen, and the two, the gentleman and the beggar, flank
''THE ART SPIRIT 137

each other on the walls in fine places. But the lesson has
not been learned. The idea still remains, that beauty rests

in the subject.

The artist wants to paint the baby as he has seen it in
the naturalness of its usual clothes. The mother wants it
painted in its new dress and cap. There is nothing left of
the baby but a four-inch circle of a fractional face, all the

rest is new clothes.

Many things pass in the course of a day.

Idle philanthropy is a sort of disease.

It is all very well to form societies for the Encourage-
ment of Deserving Young Artists, and people go at these
things with a spirit of benevolence and a faith in their
infallibility that is appalling. They seem to think that
benevolence will do the whole thing, and do not realize that
what they have undertaken is as much a matter of mind
as it is of heart.

The plan is usually to pick out the deserving and pres-
ently to give prizes to the most deserving.

I ask, “ How are we old fellows to know when a young
fellow is deserving?” and the stare I get as an answer
means, “ Why, who should know if not we great old fel-
lows?” and they say, “We will have a committee, a jury! ”

Throughout the whole history of art, committees and
juries, whoever composed them have failed to pick winners.
Oh yes, there are a few instances, but they are so few that
they only serve as exceptions to prove the rule.
''138 THE ART SPIRIT

To cite one great instance. Take the history of art in
France. Practically every artist who today stands a glory
to French art was rejected and repudiated by the com-
mittees and juries.

So the young artists are to be noticed, and if they
are deserving, we, the old fellows, are to hand down by our
judgment encouraging awards to the little fledglings.

How does the young artist look at it?

If these young artists are really deserving it must be
because they have already ideas and opinions which belong
to them, and their generation. It is quite likely they don’t
want our judgment.

Are we not too anxious to have our fingers in their
pie as well as in our own?

Can’t we ever realize that it is not for the old to judge
the young—that it is the young who must judge the old?

To award prizes is to attempt to control the course of
another man’s work. It is a bid to have him do what you
will approve. It affects not only the one who wins the
award, but all those who in any measure strive for it. It
is an effort to stop evolution, to hold things back to the
plane of your judgment. It is a check on a great adven-
ture of human life. It is negative to the idea that youth
should go forward. It is for the coming generation to
judge you, not for you to judge it. So it must happen,
whether you will it or not.

If you want to be useful, if you want to be an
encouragement to the deserving young artist, don’t try to
pick him or judge him, but become interested in his
effort with keen willingness to accept the surprises of
its outcome.
''THE ART SPIRIT 139

To struggle for an open forum for exhibition without
the control of juries, and for greater opportunity to all
for self-education, means an exercise not only of benevo-
lence but of mind. To do this is not to be an old
fellow reposing in the past and interfering with the
future. It is part of the building of greater opportunity,
and whoever participates in it is still alive and young, and
will profit by it, for in the field he has helped to open there
will grow new and wonderful things, and among them he
may choose and judge in the way which is his right, that is,
for himself, not for others. He may award with his per-
sonal appreciation, or pass money by purchasing, but this
will be a personal affair.

I repeat, if our attempt to help young artists is to be
by giving them prizes which we award, we demand of them
that they please ws—whether they please themselves or
not. Let the work they do get its honor in being what it is.

Prizes generally go amiss. The award of prizes has the
effect of setting up a false discrimination.

We must realize that artists are not in competition
with each other.

Help the young artists—find for them means to make
their financial ways easier, that they may develop and
fruit their fullest—but let us not ask them to please us in
doing it.

If we find, individually, that any of their works please
us, let us buy as far as we can, and rouse others to buy
from them according to their personal choice. In doing
this there will be quite enough judgment exercised. In fact
if we become in this way participators in the new
adventures, it is likely that our powers of judgment will
''140 THE ART SPIRIT

broaden. I cannot conceive of myself as a buyer only of
old pictures—turning my back on the adventures of today.
Finally, I say—don’t force the prize game on the
“ deserving young artist ’—leave it for the old children of
our own generation to play with and let it die with them.

Appreciation of life is not easy. One says he must earn
a living—but why? Why live? It seems as though a great
many who do earn the living or have it given them do not
get much out of it. A sort of aimless racing up and down
in automobiles, an aimless satisfaction in amassing money,

> nothing personal, all

an aimless pursuit of “ pleasure,’
external. I have known people who have sat for years in
the cafés of Bohemia, who never once tasted of that spirit
which has made life in Bohemia a magnet. These people
were not in Bohemia—they were simply present. Really
bored to death although they did not know it, and’ poisoned
too by the food and drink—being inert they were open
prey to it. They and their kind, in the various ways, are
in hot pursuit of something they are not fitted to attain.
It takes wit, and interest and energy to be happy. The

 

“pursuit of happiness is a great activity. One must be open
and alive. It is the greatest feat man has to accomplish,
and spirits must flow. There must be courage. There are
no easy ruts to get into which lead to happiness. My \ man
must become interesting | to himself and must _become actu-
ally expressive before he can be happy. YT do not say that
these people are “devoid of the possibility of happiness,
but they have not been enough interested in their real
''THE ART SPIRIT 141

selves to have awareness of the road when they are on
it. They no doubt fall into moments of supreme pleasure,
which they enjoy, whether consciously or uncon-
sciously. It is these moments which I am sure prevent
them from suicide. There are, however, others who do
recognize their great moments, and who go after them with
all their strength.

Walt Whitman seems to have found great things in the
littlest things of life.

“It beats all the things that wealth can give and every-
thing else in the world to say the things one believes, to
put them into form, to pass them on to anyone who may
care to take them up. “

There is the hope of happiness—a hope of development,
that some day we may get away from these self-imposed
dogmas and establish something that will make music in
the world and make us natural.

//Of course, if a man were to plump suddenly into the
world with the gift of telling the actual truth and acting
rightly, he would not fit into our uncertain state, he
would certainly be very disturbing—and most probably we
would send him to jail. '

We haven’t arrived yet, and it is foolish to believe that
we have. The world is not done. Evolution is not complete.

iy People’ *

Tue people I like to paint are “ my people,” whoever
they may be, wherever they may exist, the people through
whom dignity of life is manifest, that is, who are in some

* Article in The Craftsman, 1915,

 
''142 THE ART SPIRIT

way expressing themselves naturally along the_ lines
nature intended for them. My people may be old or
“young, rich or poor, I may speak their language or I may
communicate with them only by gestures. But wherever I
find them, the Indian at work in the white man’s way, the
Spanish gypsy moving back to the freedom of the hills, the
little boy, quiet and reticent before the stranger, my
interest is awakened and my impulse immediately is to tell
about them through my own language—drawing and
painting in color.

I find as I go out, from one land to another seeking
. my people,” that I have none of that cruel, fearful pos-
session known as patriotism; no blind, intense devotion
for an institution that has stiffened in chains of its own
making. “My love of mankind is individual, not national,
and always I find the race expressed in the individual. And
so I am “ patriotic” only about what I admire, and my
devotion to humanity burns up as brightly for Europe as
for America; it flares up as swiftly for Mexico if I am
painting the peon there; it warms toward the bull-fighter
in Spain, if, in spite of its cruelty, there is that element in
his art which I find beautiful ; it intensifies before the Irish
peasant, whose love, poetry, simplicity and humor have
enriched my existence, just as completely as though each
of these people were of my own country and my own
hearthstone. Everywhere I see at times this beautiful
expression of the dignity of life, to which I respond with
a wish to preserve this beauty of humanity for my friends
to enjoy.

~ This thing that_I call dignity in a human being is
mertieely the result of an established order in the universe.”
''THE ART SPIRIT 143

Everything that is beautiful is orderly, and there can be no
order unless things are in their right relation to each
other. this right relation throughout the world beauty
is born. A musical scale, the sword motif for instance in
the Ring, is order in sound; sculpture as the Greeks saw
it, big, sure, infinite, is order in proportion; painting, in
which the artist has the wisdom that ordained the rainbow
is order in color; poetry,—Whitman, Ibsen, Shelley, each
is supreme order in verbal expression. It is not too much
to say that art is the noting of the existence of order
throughout the world, and so, order stirs imagination and
inspires one to reproduce this beautiful relationship exist-
ing in the universe, as best one can) Everywhere I find
that the moment order in nature is understood and freely
shown, the result is nobility }the Irish peasant has
nobility of language and facial expression; the North
American Indian has nobility of poise, of gesture; nearly
all children have nobility of impulse. This orderliness must
exist or the world could not hold together, and it is a vision
of orderliness that enables the artist along any line what-
soever to capture and present through his imagination
the wonder that stimulates life. |

It is disorder in the mind of man that produces chaos
of the kind that brings about such a war as we are today
overwhelmed with It is the failure to see the various phases
of life in their ultimate relation that brings about militar-
ism, slavery, the longing of one nation to conquer another,
the willingness to destroy for selfish unhuman purposes.
Any right understanding of the proper relation of man to
man and man to the universe would make war impossible.)

The revolutionary parties that break away from old
''144 THE ART SPIRIT

institutions, from dead organizations are always headed
by men with a vision of order, with men who realize that
there must be a balance in life, of so much of what is good
for each man, so much to test the sinews of his soul, so
much to stimulate his joy. But the war machine is invented
and run by the few for the few. There is no order in the
seclusion of the world’s good for the minority, and the
battle for this proves the complete disorganization of the
minds who institute it. War is impossible without institu-
tionalism, and institutionalism is the most destructive
agent to peace or beauty. ‘When the poet, the painter, the
scientist, the inventor, the laboring man, the philosopher,
see the need of working together for the welfare of the
race, a beautiful order will be the result and war will be as
impossible as peace is today.

Although all fundamental principles of nature are
orderly, humanity needs a fine, sure freedom to express
these principles. When they are expressed freely, we find
grace, wisdom, joy. We only ask for each person the
freedom which we accord to nature, when we attempt to
hold her within our grasp. If we are cultivating fruit in
an orchard, we wish that particular fruit to grow in its own
way; we give it the soil it needs, the amount of moisture,
the amount of care, but we do not treat the apple tree as
we would the pear tree or the peach tree as we would the
vineyard on the hillside. Each is allowed the freedom of
its own kind and the result is the perfection of growth
which can be accomplished in no other way. The time
must come when the same freedom is allowed the individual ;
each in his own way must develop according to nature’s
purpose, the body must be but the channel for the expres-
''THE ART SPIRIT 145

sion of purpose, interest, emotion, labor. Everywhere
freedom must be the sign of reason. }

We are living in a strange civilization. Our minds and
souls are so overlaid with fear, with artificiality, that often
we do not even recognize beauty. It is this fear, this lack
of direct vision of truth that brings about all the disaster
the world holds, and how little opportunity we give any
people for casting off fear, for living simply and naturally.
When they do, first of all we fear them, then we condemn
them. It is only if they are great enough to outlive our
condemnation that we accept them. i

Always we would try to tie down the great to our
little nationalism ; whereas every great artist is a man who
has freed himself from his family, his nation, his race.
Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to
true culture, has been a rebel, a “ universal” without
_ patriotism, without home, who has found his people every-
where, a man whom all the world recognizes, accepts,
whether he speaks through music, painting, words
or form.

Each genius differs only from the mass in that he has
found freedom for his greatness; the greatness is every-
where, in every man, in every child. What our civilization
is busy doing, mainly, is smothering greatness. It is a
strange anomaly ; we destroy what we love and we reverence
what we destroy. The genius who is great enough to cut
through our restraint wins our applause; yet if we have
our own way we restrain him. We build up the institution
on the cornerstone of genius and then we begin to establish
our rules and our laws, until we have made all expression
within the commonplace. We build up our religion upon

10
''146 THE ART SPIRIT

the life of the freest men that ever lived, the men who
refused all limitation, all boundaries, all race kinship, all
family ties; and then we circumscribe our religion until
the power that comes from the organization blinds and
binds its adherents. We would circumscribe our music,
we would limit the expression of our painter, we would curb
our sculpture, we would have a fixed form for our poet if
we could. Fortunately, however, the great, significant,
splendid impulse for beauty can force its way through every
boundary. Wagner can break through every musical limi-
tation ever established, Rodin can mold his own out-
line of the universe, Whitman can utter truths so burning
that the edge of the sonnet, roundelay, or epic is destroyed,
Millet meets his peasant in the field and the Academy for-
gets to order his method of telling the world of this imme-
morial encounter.

I am always sorry for the Puritan, for he guided his
life against desire and against nature. He found what
he thought was comfort, for he believed the spirit’s safety
was in negation, but he has never given the world one
minute’s joy or produced one symbol of the beautiful order
of nature. He sought peace in bondage and his spirit
became a prisoner.

Technique is to me merely a language, and as I see life
more and more clearly, growing older, I have but one
intention and that is to make my language as clear and
simple and sincere as is humanly possible. I believe one
should study ways and means all the while to express one’s
idea of life more clearly. The language of color must of
necessity vary. There are great things in the world to
paint, night, day, brilliant moments, sunrise, a people in
''THE ART SPIRIT 147

the joy of freedom; and there are sad times, half-tones in
the expression of humanity, so there must be an infinite
variety in one’s language. But language can be of no value

for its own sake, it is so only as it expresses the infinite “

moods and growth of humanity. An artist must first of all
respond to his subject, he must be filled with emotion
toward that subject and then he must make his technique
so sincere, so translucent that it may be forgotten, the
value of the subject shining through it. To my mind a
fanciful, eccentric technique only hides the matter to be
presented, and for that reason is not only out of place,
but dangerous, wrong.

All my life I have refused to be for or against parties,
for or against nations, for or against people. I never
seek novelty or the eccentric; I do not go from land to
land to contrast civilizations. I seek only, wherever I go,
for symbols of greatness, and as I have already said, they
may be found in the eyes of a child, in the movement of a
gladiator, in the heart of a gypsy, in twilight in Ireland
or in moonrise over the deserts. To hold the spirit of
greatness is in my mind what the world was created for.
The human body is beautiful as this spirit shines through,
and art is great as it translates and embodies this spirit.

Since my return from the Southwest, where I saw many
great things in a variety of human forms,—the little
Chinese-American girl, who has found coquetry in new
freedom; the peon, a symbol of a destroyed civilization in
Mexico, and the Indian who works as one in slavery and
dreams as a man in still places—I have been reproached
with not adding to my study of these people the back-
ground of their lives. This has astonished me because all
''148 THE ART SPIRIT

their lives are in their expressions, in their eyes, their
movements, or they are not worth translating into art. I
was not interested in these people to sentimentalize over
them, to mourn over the fact that we have destroyed the
Indian, that we are changing the shy Chinese. girl into a
soubrette, that our progress through Mexico leaves a
demoralized race like the peons. This is not what I am
on the outlook for. I am looking at each individual with
the eager hope of finding there something of the dignity of
life, the humor, the humanity, the kindness, something of
the order that will rescue the race and the nation. That
is what I have wanted to talk about and nothing else. The
landscape, the houses, the workshop of these people are
not necessary. I do not wish to explain these people, I do
not wish to preach through them, I only want to find what-
ever of the great spirit there is in the Southwest. If I can
hold it on my canvas I am satisfied, for after all, every
race, every individual in the race must develop as nature
intended or become extinct. These things belong to the
power of the ages. I am only seeking to capture what I
have discovered in a few of the people. Every nation in
the world in spite of itself, produces the occasional indi-
vidual that does express in some sense this beauty, with.
enough freedom for natural growth. It is this element in
people which is the essence of life, which springs out away
from the institution, which is the reformation upon which
the institution is founded, which laughs at all boundaries
and which in every generation is the beginning, the birth
of new greatness, which holds in solution all genius, all
true progress, all significant beauty.
''THE ART SPIRIT 149

It seems to me that this very truth accounts for the
death of religions. The institutionalized religion doubts
humanity, whereas truth itself rests upon faith in
humanity. The minute we shut people up we are proving
our distrust in them; if we believe in them we give them
freedom, and through freedom they accomplish, and
nothing else matters in the world. We harness up the
horse, we destroy his very race instincts, and when we
want a thrill for our souls we watch the flight of the eagle.
This has been true from the beginning of time. It is better

that every thought should be uttered freely, fearlessly, |

than that any great thought should be denied utterance
for fear of evil. It is only through complete independence
that all goodness can be spoken, that all purity can be
found. Even indecency is bred of restriction not of
freedom, for how can the spirit which controls the ethical
side of life be trusted except through the poise that is
gained by exercise? When we think honestly, we never
desire individuals bound hand and foot, and the ethical
side of man’s nature we cannot picture as overwhelmed
and smothered with regulations if we are to have a per-
manent human goodness; for restrictions hide vice, and
freedom alone bears morality.

I wonder when, as a nation, we shall ever learn the
difference between freedom and looseness, between restric-
tion and destruction,—so far we certainly have not.
When people have the courage to think honestly, they
will live honestly, and only through transparent honesty
of life will a new civilization be born. The people who
think and live sincerely will bear children who have a vision
of the truth, children living freely and beautifully. We

ack
''150 THE ART SPIRIT

must have health everywhere if we are to overcome such
civilizations as we see falling to pieces today, not only
health of body, but health of mind. Humanity today is
diseased, it is proving itself diseased in murder, fire,
hideous atrocity.

The more health we have in life the fewer laws we will
have, for health makes for happiness and laws for the
destruction of both. If as little children, we were enabled
to find life so simple, so transparent that all the beautiful
order of it were revealed to us, if we knew the rhythm of
Wagner, the outline of Pericles, if color were all about us
beautifully related, we should acquire this health and have
the vision to translate our lives into the most perfect art
of any age or generation.

I sometimes wonder what my own work would have
been if I could as a child have heard Wagner’s music,
played by great musicians. I am sure the rhythm of it
would have influenced my own work for all time. If in
addition to this great universal rhythm, I could have been
surrounded by such art as Michaelangelo’s frescoes in the
Sistine Chapel, where he paints neither religion nor pagan-
ism, but that third estate which Ibsen suggests “ is greater
than what we know ;” if these things had been my environ-
ment, I feel that a greater freedom of understanding and
sympathy would have come to me. Freedom is indeed the
great sign which should be written on the brow of
all childhood.

There are other things I should like to speak of which
have been important to me as a painter. In addition to a
sense of freedom, a sure belief that only the very essence
of the universe was worth capturing and holding, perhaps
''THE ART SPIRIT 151

one of the most valuable things for the painter to study is
economy, which is necessary in every phase of life, almost
the most valuable asset a man can possess. But in paint-

ing especially, a man should learn to select from all *

eaperience, not only from his own but from that of all ages,
essential beauty. He should learn through wisdom to
gather for his work only the vital and express that with
the keenest delight and emotion. The art that has lasted
through all ages has been culled in this way from often
what seemed meagre opportunity. Beethoven must have
captured his Ninth Symphony only through the surest
understanding of what was essential to hold and translate
to the world. He was not listening carelessly or recklessly
to the melody which is held on the edge of the infinite for
the man with spiritual ears; rather he was eager, intense,
sure, wise and economical as he gathered beauty and dis-
tilled it into that splendid harmony which must forever
hold the world captive. And so all great music, great
prose, everything beautiful must depend upon the sure,
free measure with which it is garnered and put into
language for the people, for each lovely thing has its
intrinsic value and belongs in its own position for the werld
to study, understand and thrive upon.

In various ways the free people of the world will find
and translate the beauty that exists for them; the musician
most often in the hidden space of the world, the sculptor
closer to nature, feeling her forms, needing her inspiration ;
the poet from the simple people in remote countries; the
painter it seems to me, mainly from all kinds and conditions
of people, from humanity in the making, in the living.
Each man must seek for himself the people who hold the

Ve
''152 THE ART SPIRIT

essential beauty, and each man must eventually say to
| himself as I do, “ these are my people and all that I have I
{owe to them.”

There is the new movement. There always has been

| the new movement and there always will be the new move-

ment. It is strange that a thing which comes as regularly
as clockwork should always be a surprise.

In new movements the pendulum takes a great swing,
charlatans crowd in, innocent apes follow, the masters
make their successes and they make their mistakes as all
pioneers must do. It is necessary to pierce to the core to
get at the value of a movement and not be confused by its
sensational exterior.

Here is the model with light on his face, a white collar,
a brown coat, black tie, black hair, gray background.

I have named enough things to make a great picture.

Get the most expressive design out of these, each one
treated as a simple mass.

See how much beauty in shape can be got out of the
association of these notes: flesh, collar, coat, tie,
hair, background.

They must all fit into the area of the canvas.

They must act and react on each other as the notes in
music act and react on each other.

These six notes may, through their contrasts of shape,
of color, of texture, produce powerful emotion. |

To work this way is to work as a designer.

All good drawing or painting is compositional.

Be
''Ms

THE ART SPIRIT 153

Better see what you can do on your canvas with these
simple notes and for the time being let all details go.

It is useless to keep on adding things to a canvas.

Some painters put thousands of big and little features
into a face, colors and more colors.

All day long they keep adding more and more.

They are like whales in a sea with their mouths wide
open swallowing everything that comes along.

Much can be done with little.

Many times in the work of the class I see things which
are equal to the greatest. Flashes of truth and a tech-
nique so simple and comprehensive that nothing could
be better.

Flashes come before a steady flame and flashes come
only to die out.

Your work is intensely interesting to me. I come
always to the class with expectancy.

If one could only know better when he has touched
near the truth.

We are troubled by having two selves, the inner and the
outer. The outer one is rather dull and lets great things

go by.

T'o a Teacher

If I were you I would prefer a short and courageous
career in art teaching to one that would be prolonged by
hedgings. What does it matter if by standing for the
''154 THE ART SPIRIT

thing you really believe in, fighting for it, giving to others
the reasons you have used in your own conviction, making
no weak concessions, you fail. Such failure is success.
You keep your likeness, anyhow. Besides, you can depend
on it, there are everywhere some people who will recognize
your wisdom, truth and courage, and you will be well
repaid by having won the appreciation of such people, even
if you come back, as a result, out of a job and strapped.
Many people would denounce what I have said as senti-
mental or even wild fanaticism. But don’t be fooled.
The diplomatic hedger is all about us. You and I have
seen many of them grow up and develop their game. Some
of them have bank accounts, and are very respectable and
safe citizens, but we are well aware of the price paid and
know it is far too dear. There are two classes of human
beings. One has ideas, which it believes in fully, perhaps,
but modifies to bring about “ success.” The other class
has ideas which it believes in and must carry out abso-
lutely ; success or no success. The first class has a tre-
mendous majority, and they are all slaves. The second
class are the only free people in the world. Some are kept
under the grind of poverty. Some are sent to jail, but they
are still the only free class. But the latter class does not
always get ground under the heel, nor sent to jail. People
are not always fools. There are those who only want “ to
be shown,” want to know, and there must be someone who
has the courage to show them. These are the words of the
old teacher before you again—get mad at me if you like—
but it’s the same as I used to say when I was teacher and
you were pupil, and it was such ideas, in which you then
saw truth and value, that made you come to hear me. And
''THE ART SPIRIT 155

it is because there are many people who are not fools and
only want “ to be shown,” that in spite of the conventions
of institutions, there has always been a place open for me,
although there has never been a time that failure has not
been predicted.

You go into a great cathedral and the impression may
be deep upon you. Must you define what you have felt? If
you can you are a poet—an artist. There are cathedrals
which have measures of great and many meanings.

The principles manifest in a Beethoven symphony are
those of orderly growth.

A government could be constructed on the principle
of a Beethoven symphony.

The principle of growth is important to your student
who wishes to prepare himself before entering the art
school. He should take such studies as lead to this
knowledge.

An unrestricted study of sociology should interest
him, for he must be intensely humane.

And in mathematics he should go just as far as he can,
for proportion is his means of expression.

Ability to copy lines, shapes, tones, amounts to little.

Ability to correlate lines, shapes, tones, is the rare and
necessary quality of the artist.

All good art is composition.

A portrait that is not a composition is not a portrait.
''156 THE ART SPIRIT

The painter deals with areas. He should know areas.

A line is not good because it is like a line.

A line is good because of its power related to other
lines, which are powers.

Every line, area, tone, value, texture, in fact every
effect produced in any way, including even the pressure of
the brush, should be considered as a compositional] or
constructive element.

The substructure must be understood.

Any deviation in “ finish ” from the principle of the
substructure is weakness and death to the thing as a work
of art.

It is clear tu see how a thorough knowledge of geome-
try would be valuable to the artist whose ideas are to be
expressed in apparently magical proportions.

It would ba well for the artist to get his training in
mathematics early so that his use of such knowledge will be
“instinctive ” later on. He should know while studying
mathematics the great value the study is to give in his
later work.

I am not proposing a “scientifically hampered” artist,
but one who is unhampered by ignorance, who understands
well the means he employs.

As to study for those in the industrial arts, I should
say that the same principles as above mentioned should
apply, for art is art, whether on a canvas, in stone, on a
book cover, an advertisement or a piece of furniture.

In the class-study the current methods of hand and eye
and very little head or heart procedure should be given up.
There are thousands of art students in every big city. Art
schools and art students. The schools have thousands, but
''THE ART SPIRIT 157

they turn out few artists, and most that do turn out well
are school renegades. The methods have not been the best.

Lines and forms should be regarded by the student
from the very beginning as compositional factors,
as measures.

The exterior of the model is not the model.

Any boy or girl sees more than the exterior. It is their
nature to do so.

The methods of the art school of today bring them back
to the surface so that they see the model in the terms of
the surface and not in the terms of reality, and so their
drawings and the art they produce may be but the neg-
ligible skill and trick, which have vogue for a while, and
then die.

Lines and forms are not fixed things. They compose
differently to different sensibilities, and to the same
observer they change their endings and_ beginnings
(although the model has not moved) because the individual
cannot see always the same. He is sometimes his greater,
sometimes his lesser self.

The student, from the beginning, should evoke his
greater self, realize that his work is a matter of construc-
tion (and a different construction from that generally
conceived in the art school).

The difference between light and artist’s pigments
should be studied. They should not be confounded.

He should note the similarities which exist in color
and music.

Intervals of color across the spectrum.

Intervals of color towards neutralization by mixing
of complements.

a ie is

i ia i
''158 THE ART SPIRIT

Intervals in the mixing of colors with white and the
constructive power which rests in the opposition of warm
colors to cold colors.

I am not interested in art as a means of making a
living, but I am interested in art as a means of living a life.
It is the most important of all studies, and all studies are
tributary to it.

I hope to see the heads of educational institutions give
up the idea that their art teaching should be such as will
prepare the student to earn the greatest amount of money. |
Art is certainly not a pursuit for anyone who wants to
make money. There are ever so many other better ways.

In the past every step of human progress has been
directed by art and science. These two are inseparable,
and cannot exist in their pure sense, the one without the
other. Theirs has been the effort to apprehend from
nature the principles by which we must live if we are to
extricate ourselves from the uncertainties and misunder-
standings in which we now find ourselves. .

It is for this reason that art study should not be
directed towards a commercial end. Educational] institu-
tions should assist the student and the public to a better
understanding of the meaning of the word “ art ” and the
need of study and individual development.

Letter of Criticism

Advice about your paintings is difficult. As I said to
you before, I cannot interest myself in whether they will
pass juries or not. More paintings have been spoiled
''THE ART SPIRIT 159

during the process of their making, through such consider-
ations, than the judgments of juries are worth.

The object of painting a picture is not to make a
picture—however unreasonable this may sound. The pic-
ture, if a picture results, is a by-product and may be
useful, valuable, interesting as a sign of what has past.
The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the >
attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning,
a more than ordinary moment of existence. In such
moments activity is inevitable, and whether this activity
is with brush, pen, chisel, or tongue, its result is but a by-
product of the state, a trace, the footprint of the state.

These results, however crude, become dear to the artist
who made them because they are records of states of being
which he has enjoyed and which he would regain. They
are likewise interesting to others because they are to
some extent readable and reveal the possibilities of
greater existence.

The picture is a by-product of such states as it is in the
nature of man to desire. The object therefore is the state.
We may even be negligible of the by-product, for it will be,
inevitably, the likeness of its origin, however crude.

It is for this reason that we find at times works by
children, or by savages, little acquainted with the possi-
bilities of the materials they have left their impress on,
and scant of tools to work with, filled with such qualities
as to cause us to hail them as great works of art.

The need of activity, or expression, which the state
evokes in most individuals is the cause of technical
research. We make our discoveries of technique while in the
''160 THE ART SPIRIT

state because then we are clear sighted. But at all times
we are engaged in research. Our object is to be ready.

If a certain kind of activity, such as painting, becomes
the habitual mode of expression it may follow that taking
up the painting materials and beginning work with them
will act suggestively and so presently evoke a flight into the
higher state.

There are artists who find themselves always at the
easel saying that they want to be there, tools in hand; in
the saddle urging on the great departure.

Contemplative appreciation of a trace; a picture,
hearing music, observing a graceful gesture, may cause
the spirit to flame up. We care for and treasure the
traces of states of greater living, fuller functioning, because
we want to live also, and they inspire to living. That is the
value of “ a work of art.” The traces are inevitable. The
living is the thing.

The reason so many artists have lived to great age and
have been so young at great age is that to such extent they
have lived living, whereas most people live dying.

The states of which I have spoken are healthy states,
they are natural—not supernatural. In them the mind
and body, all the man, is in a state of order, perfect
for functioning. Each time he attains the state he gains
not only the greater life of the moment but an effect on

. mind and body which is lasting.

I have spoken of activity being inevitable as a result of
such states, and the ancient Hindoo might be cited, sit-
ting in contemplative inactivity, as refutal of this, but it is
well to note that the only ground we have to believe in the
''THE ART SPIRIT 161

loftiness of his contemplation has been through his words
or his acts, however seldom these have taken place. The
activity need not be violent or continuous.

The Hindoo’s state of contemplation is many times
referred to as supreme or pure because of near total
negation of material interests. Wherever we have had
knowledge of the quality of his contemplation he has
touched material things. He has left the trace which we
may read. Purity is in the state, in being in the state,
because the state is true living. Things touched while in
this state are transformed into a likeness of the state. The
stone of the ancient Greeks was so transformed.

The Hindoo denied the world and died of this denial.
The Greek acknowledged the world and commanded it,
made stone and the many things of life subservient to his
state. The world won from him in the end, but his step
was a stage gained in man’s struggle to live in full function.
What we have that is great in old India is of those periods
where man was so well in the state that he had no fear of
material and made of it a vehicle of expression. His object
was not to make Art. His object was to live. He did not
fear what he touched as a ‘result of the activity created by
his state. In having his state and with free rein to the
activity engendered by it, the inevitable happened—the
by-product—art—the trace of his being.

In all times, as in our times, the domination of the
world has stood the enemy of the artist—the one who would
live. The demand to pass juries, to make the acceptable,
the salable, fighting of the wolf from the door, obtaining of
medals for the weight they have in waging the social war;

li
''162 THE ART SPIRIT

all these things, certain and terrible in their exactions,
have held the slave with his eye on the by-product, and
the by-product has suffered, for the by-product cannot
produce itself.

Things being as they are, the life of an artist is a battle
wherein great economy must be exercised. The kind of
economy which will result in moments of the purest freedom
in spite of the world’s exactions.

If one is a painter this purest freedom must exist at the
time of painting. This is as much as to say that a painter
may give up his hope of making his living as a painter but
must make it some other way. This is generally true,
although some do, by a freak of appreciation, make enough
while going their way to live sufficiently well. Perhaps this
happens, but I am not sure but that there is some cur-
tailing of the purity of the freedom.

I was once asked by a young artist whether he could
hope to make any money out of his work if he continued in
his particular style of painting. He happened to be a man
of considerable talent and had great enthusiasm in his
work. But I knew there was no public enthusiasm for such
work. I remembered he had told me that before he got
really into art he had made a living by designing labels for
cans, tomato cans and the like. I advised him to make
tomato-can labels and live well that he might be free to
paint as he liked. It happened also that eventually people
did buy his early pictures, although he was as far from
pleasing by what he was doing at this time as ever before.

eee
''THE ART SPIRIT 163

He now lived on the sale of his old pictures and was as
free to paint his new ones as he had been in the days of
tomato cans.

What is past in this letter is the most important part
of my advice to you in regard to your work. What fol-
lows probably will be more technical.

A fault I find is a lack of solidity. By solidity I mean
the employment of bulk as a factor of expression. Forms
interacting with forms. The weight and density of the
sea. The bulk and hard resistance of rock. The cavern
of the sky. A blouse with a body in it. A head with a
back to it. Bulk is only one of the factors of expression,
but it is a mighty force. Putting form against form, color
against color, line against line, movement against move-
ment, texture against texture and showing their inter-
action, showing through them the force which binds them,
is the way of good painting and drawing. It’s a question
of the life within.

How can solidity be obtained? What is the recipe?
It is a matter of conception. If in your state you have
the sense of it, in your work you will have the will for it.
Whoever cares most for the body which the blouse screens
from the eyes will paint the body in painting the blouse, for
in the state one sees through. In like fashion the wrinkles
and folds will become signs of movement, not only of a
blouse but of the life one senses in the individual.

Very technically speaking, thicker paint, a fearlessness
in painting over and not being afraid of spoiling in so
''164 THE ART SPIRIT

doing, may be conducive to a development of more solidity,
just as a larger brush will sometimes induce a broader
treatment. There is some consideration of the nature of the
materials you use in these statements, and there is the value
of suggestion in them. -But whatever dodge you try, what
you will succeed in suggesting is only what you have actu-
ally conceived.

Of the three beach pictures, I like most in them the
emotional quality. Like also the lilt of the gulls and the
rhythm of movement in the gulls collectively. Solidity as I
have described it would add much to the work. I may say
that the compositions are rather the expected. In this
regard I will refer to that rare quality of the unexpected in
Chinese paintings. Also will remark that solidity does not
require thickness of paint. A Chinese painting is almost
invariably solid. A Sung drawing, though it may be but
lines, very solid. The artist sensed form highly—got in
his lines what he sensed because nothing else would sat-
isfy him.

In the calm beach; red rock a good note, sea a bit
attenuated, horizon line monotonous, ordinary, not richly
expressive of what it means. This line is so important in
the composition that it must be strong in interest. There
must not be weakness of foreground. The eye is expected
to pass over it because it must feel to be there, solid, and
not attenuated.

Foregrounds being generally out of interest are hard
to do. But they must be sufficient. The small canvas—
feeling that it is wind-swept, good. But here meagre fore-
ground. Three textures—sky, sea, sand. We consider red,
yellow and blue-green a good chord in color if they are

Se
''THE ART SPIRIT 165

well differentiated. Sea, sky, sand are a good chord of
textures if well differentiated.

The head. A background is a certain color, but see a
head before it and the background color changes. A head
makes its own background. Movements in background
must grow out of head. We come to see only what relates.
In your backgrounds I see paint-brush strokes, not forms
related to head. Study massing of heads by masters.
Dignity of each mass in relation with others. Every shape
on a Velasquez head is a grand thing and every shape
pays a compliment to the other shapes, an organization
of great units. Note how few changes of direction in great
drawing. Economy. When change occurs, it counts.
Where is the dominant light? See how a master would
mass the hair. Note that your sterno-mastoid sags, has
not the grand gesture of youth and delicacy.

Notwithstanding all these criticisms you have heart for
the work. You love the things. You have a heart feeling
for the girl, and a respect. Forget about the exhibitions
and the juries. Think less of the success of the by-product
and you will have more success with it. Keep living. And

that means keep on painting.

It is not easy to know what you like.
Most people fool themselves their entire lives through
about this.

Self acquaintance is a rare condition.

FR ae eee Oe Ie
''166 THE ART SPIRIT

There are men who, at the bottom of the ladder battle ©
to rise ; they study, struggle, keep their wits alive and even- —
tually get up to a place where they are received as an equal —
among respectable intellectuals. Here they find warmth
and comfort for their pride, and here the struggle ends, ~
and a death of many years commences. They could have 3
gone on living.

Paint like a fiend when the idea possesses you.

The tramp sits on the edge of the curb. He is all ©
huddled up. His body is thick. His underlip hangs. His
eyes look fierce. I feel the coarseness of his clothes against |
his bare legs. He is not beautiful, but he could well be the |
motive for a great and beautiful work of art. The subject
can be as it may, beautiful or ugly. The beauty of a work
of art is in the work itself.

Use the ability you already have, and use it, and use it, —
and make it develop itself.

Don’t just pay your tuition and drift along with the —
current of the school. Don’t just fall in with the
procession.

Many receive a criticism and think it is fine ; think they
got their money’s worth; think well of the teacher for it,

 

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 167

and then go on with their work just the same as before.
That is the reason much of the wisdom of Plato is still

locked up in the pages of Plato.

Make compositions. Use the knowledge you acquire
in the life class at once.

Like to do your work as much as a dog likes to gnaw a
bone and go at it with equal interest and exclusion of
everything else.

It isn’t so much that you say the truth as that you say
an important truth.

Gesture and music are alike in that they have powers
of extension beyond known measurements.

In looking at a great piece of sculpture—the Sphinx,
we may be impressed by a sense of time. The sculptor
seems to have dealt in great measures, not the ordinary
ones. I believe that some such impression as this is received
by most of those who contemplate the Sphinx, that it
certainly does convey something outside its material self,
something in a very great measure. There is a peculiar
feeling of awe in its presence.

In viewing the Greek sculptures there is a similar sense.
The measures in the modeling are not casual external
measures, but seem to be such as to convey a sense of the
life within. External measures have been used therefore
by the artist in their analogous sense—not in their
material sense.
''168 THE ART SPIRIT

This may explain the great difference in impression we
receive from works of different periods in art history and
also the differences we feel in one artist’s work from
another in spite of the fact that they may be equals in
matters of skill.

In some works, marvelous though they may be, the
spirit of the observer seems to be caged within the measures
employed, and in other works, more marvelous, the
spirit seems to be liberated into a field of other and
greater measures.

In the first type of work we find ourselves caught and
held in fascinating intricacies. In the second we find cause
to take departure and enter into a condition of new and
yet very personal states of consciousness. One catches
us and shows us its marvels. The other is incentive to a
personal voyage of discovery. The first type can eventu-
ally be exhausted. The second can remain as a perpetual
incentive to new flights.

The men of action in the world have fixed their interests
in different ways at different times, and at the same times
men have taken different roads. The marvels of external
beauty for one and the marvels of the internal life for the
other, and in painting and sculpture the means of expres-
sion is in either case external appearances. But such
different uses must they make of external appearances!
It is a finding of signs.

We realize that there is no one way of seeing a thing
no matter how simple that thing may be. Its planes,
values, colors, all its characteristics are, as it were,
shuffled before each new-comer arrives, and it is up to him
to arrange them according to his understanding.

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 169

Once when I was a young student I heard another
student spoken of as “ one who saw color beautifully.” I
was very much impressed by this. So one has not only to
see color but he must see it beautifully, meaningly, con-
structively!—as a factor in the making of something, a
concept, something in his consciousness, something that is
not exactly that thing before him which the school has
said he should copy. This thing of seeing things. All kinds
of seeing. Dead seeing. Live seeing. Things that are
mere surfaces. Things that are filled with the wondrous.
Yes, color must be seen beautifully, that is, meaning-
fully, and used as a constructive agent, borrowed
from nature, not copied, and used to build, used only for
its building power, lest it will not be beautiful.

It is very hard to see this aspect, our aspect, of the
thing before us. It is very hard because it is the simplest
thing we do. If you could catch yourself while on some
ramble in the woods and know the source of your happi-
ness, and continuing the same kind of seeing, proceed to
paint, the work you would do would be eventually a reve-
lation to you. Eventually, I say, for at first it would
shock you, so different would it be from that convention
which has enslaved you. It would be your original out-
put. The easiest thing is the hardest. It is harder to be
simple than it is to be complex. Schools of new vision rise
and fall. The type of that man who said he couldn’t see
shadows purple but hoped soon to do so, is yet our
average type.

We are not yet developed to the plane where there are
many who would pit their own originality against the
fashion of the day.
''170 THE ART SPIRIT

It is, however, to the artist or to the scientist—there
are times when the distinction disappears—that we look
for that freedom which will return us to simple
understanding.

Our future freedom rests in the hands of those whose
likeness will be in their dissimilarity, and who will not be
ashamed of their own originality, whatever the fashion may

happen to be.

To answer, to the best of one’s ability, the questions
of a child is fine teaching. This is as beneficial to the
teacher as it is to the child. If the question finds the
teacher unprepared he is stimulated to research on the
point in question.

Many of these questions though apparently trivial are
fundamental, related to the beginning of a life. The
teacher participates in the study and becomes a student
along with the child.

We are all different; we are to do different things and
see different life. Education is a self-product, a matter of
asking questions and getting the best answers we can get.

We read a book, a novel, any book, we are interested in
it to the degree we find in it answers to our questions.

When the teacher is continually author both of the
question and its answer, it is not as likely the answer will
sink deep and get into service, as it will if the question is
asked by the child.

Both methods properly used have their value, but one
is much better than the other.
''THE ART SPIRIT 171

The special knowledge needed by one may not be much
needed by another.

I am particularly glad to hear that you have been
painting from memory. I am quite certain your best work
will come from dealing with the memories which have stuck
after what is unessential to you in experiences has dropped Y
away. Of course in many of your pictures, even painted
in the presence of the subject, this thing did happen.

I know one beautiful street scene you sent to the exhi-
bition that I have always felt was done in a trance of
memories undisturbed by the material presences (that is if
you did do it out of doors and with the street before you).

Especially in painting brilliant sunlight, working out-
doors is difficult, for it takes a long time to get eyes accus-
tomed to the difference between light and pigment so that
anything like a translation can be made.

In fact I think most pictures of the Southwest are to a
great extent false because the painters get blinded into
whiteness, make pale pictures where the real color of New
Mexico is deep and strong.

Anyhow, all work that is worth while has got to be
memory work.

Even with a model before you in the quiet light of a
studio there must come a time when you have what you
want to know from the model, when the model had better
be sitting behind you than before, and unless such a time
as this does come, it is not likely the work will get below
the surface.
''ee ee Te he i ye Og ne

172 THE ART SPIRIT

From a Letter

There is great beauty in your penmanship. The flow
of it. It is just such apparently unimportant tendencies
toward expression of something that runs deep in one,
which make drawing beautiful or otherwise.

It seems to have been Rembrandt’s very spirit which
pushed the inked stick around for him, while many another
appears to have been moved by intellect alone.

One of the attractions of Renoir is that at times his
paint seems to have a flow, one color into and through
another. One thinks of the elegance of mind that was back
of the line. We seem to know the very spirit of Giotto.
And the form of Manet! A beautiful dignity always
in Velasquez!

It would be easy to divide artists into two classes: those
who grow so much within themselves as to master technique
by the force of their need, and those who are mastered by
technique and become stylists.

I can think of no greater happiness than to be clear-
sighted and know the miracle when it happens. And I can
think of no more real life than the adventurous one of living
and liking and exclaiming the things of one’s own time.

Letter of Criticism

I see in the sketches a very personal outlook, an interest
in the beautiful design of nature, a decided sensitiveness to
''THE ART SPIRIT 173

the orchestration of color, good sense of form and the com-
positional possibilities of form.

All this I see so that the principal response I have to
make is “ go on.” Going on will mean a continual attack
with ever the will to get the fullest conclusion, to make
every work as complete as possible. By “ complete ” I do
not mean any conventional finish, but I do mean a complete
statement of just what you feel most important to say
about the subject.

A work of art is not a copy of things. It is inspired
by nature but must not be a copying of the surface. There-
fore what is commonly called “ finish’ may not be finish
at all.

You have to make your statement of what is essential
to you—an innate reality, not a surface reality. You
handle surface appearances as compositional factors to
express a reality that is beyond superficial appearances.
You choose things seen and use them to _ phrase
your statement.

When I opened the package and set out the five panels,
I had a decided satisfaction in them. The sense of beauty
was refreshing. No. 8 caught me first.

No. 4 seems not to have the fine areas, weights, meas-
ures, variety, balance of the one thing against another as
in No. 3, where the measures are excellent, giving those
qualities called distance and atmosphere.

I find the white house a bit big for the other forms of
the composition, big to be so empty. The incidents of
door, windows, fence, roof and chimney do not seem suffi-
cient to take away from the baldness of this large and
prominent area of the house.

~~
''174 THE ART SPIRIT

With an area so large and prominent, which attracts
so much, there should be more interest to warrant the
attraction. This interest might be produced in many ways.
Variation in color, in light and dark, etc. The green tree
to right is to me the finest incident in the composition.
This has life. One does not stop in seeing it. There is
an engaging variation. ‘

In sound there may be monotony—one note prolonged
to infinity.

There may be variety.

Variety may be a devilish jangle.

Variety may be such as to produce a popular air-

Variety may be such as Beethoven employed.

Good composition in painting is equally a fine employ-
ment of measures.

Compare your painting of the things of No. 4 with
those of No. 3.

Does not each thing look more precious in No. 3?
Compare white house with white house, window with win-
dow, incidental stave, stick or other interruption with each
other. You will find them all functioning, alive, interesting
in No. 8. It is only in that tree in No. 4 that one feels an
equal life. The why of this is that there is coérdination in
No. 8. The things are parts of a whole. Each thing
benefits the whole, its neighbor, all its neighbors, and is
receiving benefit from all of them. This is the principle of
, order. Each thing is more than itself alone.

In the great compositions of sound, the notes have a
power beyond what we might have hoped for them. They
enrich their surroundings and are enriched by their

rich surroundings.
''THE ART SPIRIT 175

In the efforts to accomplish composition there are
many rules and schemes established, some of them good and
some of them bad. But one thing I am certain of, and that
is that intense comprehension and intense desire to express
one whole thing is necessary. Without a positive purpose,
means effect only an exercise in means.

You can’t know too much about composition. That is;
the areas you have to fill, their possibilities, but you must,
above all, preserve your intense interest in life. You must
have the will to say a very definite thing. Then, the more
you know your means the better.

I put a different meaning to the words things and
forms.

I once had a pupil whom I considered an artist, and he
was an artist despite the fact that he never drew the model
in even reasonable anatomical proportion. This was too
bad, but the proportions of the forms in their areas on the

> made in his colors,

canvas, the proportions and “steps ’
values, lines, were beautiful. He was remarkable in ex-
_ pressing with what might be called form proportions, and
not at all good in expressing with thing proportions.

You have surely a sense of beauty and romance in
reality. You do not have to soften and sweeten nature to
make it beautiful. You are plainly not of the sort who
think a work of art or a thing beautiful must be a cheat.
You like nature, do not feel that you have to apologize for
it, and you believe in its integrity, you like integrity. You
think nature is all right, that there are endless, inex-
haustible pleasures, and revelation in it. You believe that
it is worth while getting frankly acquainted with, and that

ii avai abieacan shiek aioli al Deas

wi a al a aia la oo he
''176 THE ART SPIRIT

it is worth while trying to tell about the deepest intimacies
of this acquaintance, to tell in paint, or in any other way,
in fact. Your work tells me this much, because perhaps I
am looking for it, anxiously expecting and desiring it in all
work, and because I am used to pictures. That’s the reason
I say “ goon.” Ido not say “ go differently.” You have
to go on satisfying yourself more and more in order that
others less keen to see and less used to reading pictures
will get the song you sing. Your only hope of satisfying
others is in satisfying yourself. I speak of a great satis-
faction, not a commercial satisfaction.

There are people who buy pictures because they were
difficult to do, and are done. Such pictures are often only
a record of pain and dull perseverance. Great works of
art should look as though they were made in joy. Real
joy is a tremendous activity, dull drudgery is nothing to
it. The drudgery that kills is not half the work that joy
is. Your education must be self-education. Self-education
is an effort to free one’s course so that a full growth may be
attained. One need not be afraid of what this full growth
may become. Give your throat a chance to sing its song.
All the knowledge in the world to which you have access is
yours to use. Give yourself plenty of canvas room, plenty
of paint room. Don’t bother about your originality, set
yourself just as free as you can and your originality will
take care of you. It will be as much a surprise to you as
to anyone else. Originality cannot be preconceived, and
any effort to coddle it is to preconceive it, and thereby
destroy it. Learn all you can, get all the information that
is within your reach about the ways and means of paint.

The best advice I have ever given to students who have
''THE ART SPIRIT 177

studied under me has been just this: “ Educate yourself,
do not let me educate you—use me, do not be used by me.”

What I would say is that you should watch your work
mighty well and see that it is the voice that comes from
within you that speaks in your work—not an expected or
controlled voice, not an outside educated voice.

In the No. 2 there is beauty of open space, an expres-
sion in the temperature. There’s a good over-all state of
being in that landscape, and then that fence is beautiful in
its color, it progresses.

You need not know a thousand tricks performed by
others, you need not have a great stock of tricks of your
own making. With a great will to say a thing comes
clairvoyance. ‘The more positively you have the need of a
certain expression the more power you will have to select
out of chaos the term of that expression. Your sense of
color Iam sure of. I think you see color in beautiful order
in nature. You see color in construction. Some people
only see color and more color. The great thing is what
happens between colors. Some eyes see how lines go over
a shoulder and over a hip, can copy them and make an
indisputably honest statement of them; another eye may
see the relation between them, will recognize them as powers
in a great scheme.

I think you can have a wonderful time. It is really a
wonderful time I am wishing you. Art is, after all, only
a trace—like a footprint which shows that one has walked
bravely and in great happiness. Those who live in full
play of their faculties become master economists, they
understand the relative value of things. Freedom can only
be obtained through an understanding of basic order.

12
''178 THE ART SPIRIT

Basic order is underlying all life. It is not to be found in
the institutions men have made. Those who have lived and
grown at least to some degree in the spirit of freedom are
our creative artists. They have a wonderful time. They
keep the world going. They must leave their trace in some
way, paint, stone, machinery, whatever. The importance
of what they do is greater than anyone estimates at thé
time. In fact in a commercial world there are thousands
of lives wasted doing things not worth doing. Human
spirit is sacrificed. More and more things are produced
without a will in the creation, and are consumed or “ used ”
without a will in the consumption or the using. These
things are dead. They pass, masquerading as important
while they are before us, but they pass utterly. There is
nothing so important as art in the world, nothing so con-
structive, so life-sustaining. I would like you to go to
your work with a consciousness that it is more important
than any other thing you might do. It may have no great
commercial value, but it has an inestimable and lasting
life value. People are often so affected by outside opinion
that they go to their most important work half hearted or
half ashamed.

“ What’s the use of it if you are not making money
out of it?” is a too common question. To what distinction
an artist’s labors are raised the moment he does happen to
make money out of them! Very false values. I say this and
I know as well as any the difficulties of making sufficient
money and the necessity of making it in order to live and
go on.

Go to your work because it is the most important living
to you. Make great things—as great as you are. Work
''THE ART SPIRIT 179

always as if you were a master, expect from yourself
a masterpiece.

It’s a wrong idea that a master is a finished person.
Masters are very faulty, they haven’t learned everything
and they know it. Finished persons are very common—
people who are closed up, quite satisfied that there is little
or nothing more to learn. A small boy can be a master. I
have met masters now and again, some in studios, others
anywhere, working on a railroad, running a boat, playing
a game, selling things. Masters of such as they had. They
are wonderful people to meet. Have you never felt your-
self “in the presence” when with a carpenter or a
gardener? When they are the right kind they do not say
“J am only a carpenter or a gardener, therefore not much
can be expected from me.” They say or they seem to
say, “I am a Carpenter;” “I am a Gardener!” These
are masters, what more could anyone be!

I like your work and have only to ask you to go on
your own interesting way with all the courage you
can muster.

Keep as far as possible all your studies, all your fail-
ures, if somewhere in them appear any desirable qualities.

Such canvases are good for reference.

Later study of the work recalls the good of it.

Sometimes an old unfinished canvas will serve as a
recall from lesser and unimportant wanderings.

You can learn much from others but more from your-
self. In looking at an incomplete canvas some time after
its doing, the whole thing becomes clear, the tangle dis-
''180 THE ART SPIRIT

solves, and you see the way to complete it and how certain
faults may be avoided.

Don’t be ashamed to keep your bad stuff. After all
you did it. It is your history and worth studying.

Shame makes a small man give up a lot of time smear-
ing over and covering up his rough edges.

There is a wonderful work of art by Leonardo da Vinéi,
one of his most interesting. It is quite unfinished, yet per-
haps it is one of his most finished, gets us in deeper. No
work of art is really ever finished. They only stop at
good places.

Shame is one of the worst things that ever happened

to us.

There is weakness in pretending to know more than you
know or in stating less than you know.

Technique must be solid, positive, but elastic, must not
fall into formula, must adapt itself to the idea. And for
each new idea there must be new invention special to the
expression of that idea and no other. And the idea must
be valuable, worth the effort of expression, must come of
the artist’s understanding of life and be a thing he greatly
desires to say.

Artists must be men of wit, consciously or uncon-
sciously philosophers, read, study, think a great deal of
life, be filled with the desire to declare and specify their
particular and most personal interest in its manifestations,
and must invent.
''THE ART SPIRIT 181

Exhibitions will never attract crowds or create any
profound interest until there is in the works exposed evi-
dence of a greater interest in the life we live.

Letter of Criticism

The most important thing I can say to you is that
your work shows the artist temperament ; the tendency to
produce impressions of life, as you find it fascinating,
through the mediums of drawing and color.

All your things suggest action, or, better still, the state
of mind which is the cause of action.

You have the gift of color. Look at Japanese prints.
You will see in them these gifts developed to com-
pletion. The color is benefited by the form. The form
is benefited by the color. They balance. They seem
sufficient. There is no haste, yet they are as fast as one
could desire them to be.

They are impressions of nature, often similar to
yours. But they fill and satisfy. They have the sense of
full completion.

The Japanese artist had no hurry to get away from the
work lest it go wrong. He faced it out, and won out.

I would not have your drawings take on the conven-
tions, but I would have them acquire the solid integrity,
the certainty, of the Japanese prints.

Your Children with the Balloons (No. 1) is beautiful
in color, in child action. The balloons appear to have been
painted through the wondering eyes of the child. The
balloons are as admirable as the child saw them.
''182 THE ART SPIRIT

Should they have more completion? I believe that it is
not in the balloons themselves that further completion
should be sought, but it should be in establishing a finer
relation in all the parts of the composition to the space of
the whole.

Probably it would be good to say to you: Consider the
whole space of your canvas as the field of your expression.
A fine adjustment must be made within its limits. Your
ideas must not wander, anywhere, within the confines of the
canvas, but they must fill it completely.

A space may be left bare, but that bare space must
become meaningful. It is a part of the structure
nevertheless.

In the picture of the two women in the rain (No. 2)
there is the look and the feel of a shower pouring down
beautifully. The lines with which you have indicated the
rain appear to have an easy haphazard look. But they
cannot be haphazard for they have a fine rhythm and they
do make me follow you into the spirit of rain. They have
the science of design in them and the science is, as it should
be, beautifully covered.

The Portly Lady (No. 3) with the market basket has
the fascinations of Renoir color, and the humor of her
shows your kindly spirit. This may be said of practically
all your figures.

Courage to go on developing this ability to see in
nature the thing which charms you, and to express just
that as fully and completely as you can. Just that.
Nothing else. Not to do as any other artist does. Nor to
be afraid that you may do as any other artist does.
''THE ART SPIRIT 183

Do not require of your work the finish that anyone may
demand of you, but insist on the finish which you demand.

When the thing suits you it is right. Your greatest
masterpiece may be even more slight than any of these
things you have shown. Even more sketchy. But the
order in the slight material you will use will be so positive,
so certain and all comprehending that the fullest sense of
your idea will be conveyed and it will be complete.

The most beautiful art is the art which is freest from
the demands of convention, which has a law to itself, which
as technique is a creation of a special need.

The demand we so often hear for finish is not for finish, _
but is for the expected.

Judging a Manet from the point of view of Bouguereau
the Manet has not been finished. Judging a Bouguereau
from the point of view of Manet the Bouguereau has not
been begun.

I have just placed six more of your pictures before me.
One need not bother you talking of color. You need but
to command your medium and your sense and pleasure in
color will do the rest. With an actual command of the
medium, which you must work for, you will make beautiful
things. In No. 4 the white is exquisite. But the seated
figure is an ogre from lack of sustained intention.

No. 5. Beautiful in color and gesture and space rela-
tion of the figures.

No. 6. Again the beautiful relation of figures. They
are in charming sympathy with each other.

No. 7. Interesting for the strident action and color.

No. 8. An excellent thing. Except that the table rests
uneasily on its legs this canvas has the quality of relation-
''184 THE ART SPIRIT

ship within its confines that gives to the whole a real
integrity. Its spaces organize and one space illuminates
the other. It has that largeness which we admire in the
lithographs of Daumier.

No. 9. Altar boys. The allegro and the pomp. Such
an excellent boy to our side of the priest. What fine work
you can do in this vein when your grip is stronger, when
you can go the step of greater assurance. It will do well for
you to look at Daumier’s lithographs. His fancy is free.
His statement is assured.

In the color of your No. 10 one imagines the voices in
the air.

No. 11. A beautiful background.

No.12. Charming color. Had you more security in your
idea of the figures, which would have made you draw them
hardly different, yet with more positiveness, this would be
a splendid composition.

No. 13. Again the color, air, space, gesture of
woman’s head. Too bad she has such short fat legs; and
that the ground is not substantial. By substantial I do
not mean heavier, darker, nor this nor that, but simply
had you considered it more as ground on which a woman
walks, your feeling would have dictated the means of
its substantiality.

Your drawings also show the artist in you. You are
interested. You have art. What you say is as though it
came from you. It is a personal interest of your own and
it interests me.

You have a big line. It often gets cramped, but the big

line is there and it can grow.
'' 

THE ART SPIRIT 185

Daumier and the Japanese prints can be a good influ-
ence on you because you need not do like them.

I have just noticed the backs of two little girls walking
away. But there are so many I might notice. A woman
in red with another at her side. Little children walking
parade. Children at a door. Fat party in cab. Groups
of people. Foot bath. Sweepers. Fashions. People
drooping in the rain. Women and children. And so forth,
and so forth. All interesting matters of wit.

My best use to you is that I appreciate these things.
And my present appeal to you is to go on telling us what
you like, giving us your delight in it all. It is the way the
best artists have made themselves.

In going over these slight works of yours I have had a
great pleasure. They might have been much heavier with-
out having as much weight and I ee not have had any
pleasure at all.

Letter of Criticism

It is the conception which dictates the form and
the color.

The world and life are common, every day, and almost
empty to a great many people, but there are those who see
that the world and life are mysteriously wonderful.

There is a latent possibility of specific and penetrating
vision in each individual. The thing is to develop this pos-
sibility. The artists who count develop their vision, and
the results, since each one is different from the other, are
surprising and important.
''186 THE ART SPIRIT

I would call your attention to the reproductions of
those children’s heads done by Renoir. They are easily
obtainable and they are very beautiful, even without the
Renoir color. To have done such work Renoir must have
been charged with a high estimate and a great reverence
for the child, an unsentimental but a just appreciation of
the wonder before him; and he must have been so charged
at the very moment of the execution, for thus his hand
was guided to a magic that makes his interpretation
so wonderful.

In suggesting the works of masters, I do not mean that
pictures like their pictures should be made, or that motives
/ like their motives should be repeated. But I point rather

to the principles which underly their work. The principles
of developed judgment, power of essay, power of intense
feeling, intense respect.

Rembrandt’s beggars are wonders of life. He did not
pass them on to us saying simply, “ They are. vulgar

fellows.”

Besides this principle of motives, there is the principle
of construction. The construction with paint on flat can-
vas of colors and forms, for the expression of ideas. The
mastery of these mediums, understanding of limitations
and possibilities within the borders of the canvas, and with
the materials used.

And these two; the motive and the means must be so
brought together, so enacted at the same time, that their
action is as one.
''THE ART SPIRIT 187

It will not do to have your fine thought yesterday, and
paint your picture today.

I advise the study of the works of the masters. Titian
is a good one, for he understood organization, as his works
demonstrate, and he happens to be available in many repro-
ductions. Observe his compositions of figures and his
portraits of men and women. See how much use he makes
of balances and rhythms. Study these things well. Look
for the way the pictures are laced and bound together by
their lines, how they flow in currents which contro] your
sight and your interest. See the masses of light so held in
size in spite of detail, and the masses of dark, all of such
weights and such measures that there is fullness, sufficiency.

Good painting is a result of effort to obtain order, and
the order must go to all the sides of the canvas. Thus serene
dignity, static repose, vitality, action, variety, and the
various states of life can be suggested.

The exclusion of the trivial must be effected.

I am not considering so much either the merits or
demerits of your present work. I am trying to say things
that will be useful to you just as though I were saying
them to myself—for they would, and I hope will, be useful
to me.

In the faces painted by Greco we get something of
what was real—what happened in Greco. Novels are
sometimes more historical than histories.
''188 THE ART SPIRIT

We read books. They make us think. It matters very
little whether we agree with the books or not.

Ibsen clearly identifies his characters. These charac-
ters, however, are merely his materials. It is not Hedda
Gabler he introduces to us. It is a state of life and ques-
tions as to the future of the race.

‘Today we do not know howmuch we owe to Shakespeare.
His work is no longer confined in his writings. All litera-
ture has been influenced by him. Life is permeated with
the thoughts of Plato, with the thoughts of all great
artists who have lived. If you are to make great art it will
be because you have become a deep thinker.

Nature is sometimes seen through very obscure
evidences.

It is a big job to know oneself, no one can entirely
accomplish it yet—but, to try is to act in line of evolution.
Men will come to know more of themselves, and act more
like themselves, but this will be by dint of effort along the
line of humble self acknowledgment. ‘Today man stands in
his own way. He puts a criterion in the way of his own
revelation and development. He would be better than he is
and because man judges poorly he fails to become as good
as he might be. He should take his restraining hands off
himself, should defy fashion and let himself be. The only

men who are interesting to themselves and to others are
'' 

THE ART SPIRIT 189

those who have been willing to meet themselves squarely.
The works of the masters are what they are because they
are evidences from men who dared to be like themselves. It
cost most of them dearly, but it was worth while. They
were interesting to themselves, and now they are interesting
to us.

Letter from New Mexico

Here in the pueblos of New Mexico the Indians still
make beautiful pottery and rugs, works which are mys-
terious and at the same time revealing of some great life
principle which the old race had. Although some hands
lead, the whole pueblo seems responsible for the work and
stands for their communal greatness. It represents them,
reveals a certain spirituality we would like to comprehend,
explains to a degree that distinction which we recognize
in their bearing.

Materially they are a crushed out race, but even in the
remnant there is a bright spark of spiritual life which we
others with all our goods and material protections
can envy.

They have art as a part of each one’s life. The whole
pueblo manifests itself in a piece of pottery. With us, so
far, the artist works alone. Our neighbor who does not
paint does not feel himself an artist. We allot to some the
gift of genius; to all the rest, practical business.

Undoubtedly in the ancient Indian race, genius was the
possession of all; the reality of their lives. The superior

ones among them made the greater manifestations, but
_ each manifested, lived and expressed his life according to

>.
''190 THE ART SPIRIT

his strength; was a spiritual existence, a genius, an artist
to his fullest extent. Apart from that, they raised crops,
covered themselves, attended to the material according to
their understanding,.and wandered of course afar into
that dark life outside the artist life, into war and strife,
and all the fruits of material greed—like ourselves.

Behind them they have left some records of both exist-
ences, but we cherish most those which tell of a certain
spiritual well-being, the warm heart in love with life and
working with a love of work which is the song of their
well-being.

In America, or in any country, greatness in art will not
be attained by the possession of canvases in palatial
museums, by the purchase and bodily owning of art. The
greatness can only come by the art spirit entering into
the very life of the people, not as a thing apart, but as the
greatest essential of life to each one. It is to make every
life productive of light—a spiritual influence. It is to
enter government and the whole material existence as the
essential influence, and it alone will keep government
straight, end wars and strife; do away with material greed.

When America is an art country, there will not be three
or five or seven arts, but there will be the thousands of
arts—or the one art, the art of life manifesting itself in
every work of man, be it painting or whatever. We will
then have to give in kind for what we get. And every man
will be a true enrichment to the other.

Any step toward such an end is a step toward human
happiness, a sane and wholesome existence. Much will
come of the effort. There will be failures as well as suc-
''THE ART SPIRIT. 191

cesses, but if the strong desire exists both conditions will

serve as experience in progress.

Gesture, the most ancient form of expression—of com-

munication between living creatures.
A language we have almost lost.
Its infinite possibilities of expression.

To recapture gesture as a means of expression would
mean not only added powers of communication but would
mean also a greater health and strength.

In great cities public art galleries are generally put
in out-of-the-way places—remote from most of the people.
A visit requires an elaborate effort and more time in going
and coming than people can spare.

Having an idea of the educational influence of art, I
would like to see many small well-organized art galleries
scattered over a city, furnishing easy access to each com-
munity—whatever that community might happen to be,
rich, poor, business or residential.

In the same spirit I favor the Little Theatre movement,
and I would like to see places in every neighborhood for
good music by the best of musicians, so that their precious
influence might be spread over all the community. This of

course could not be done so long as the only will comes from
the box office.
''192 THE ART SPIRIT

As to the art galleries, what I am thinking of particu-
larly is rotary exhibitions of the best works owned by the
great central museum. In this way a series of very fine
collections would be kept in motion going to the people.

Anyone can see the pleasure and the benefit these exhi-
bitions would give, how they would be frequented in spare
hours by those who rarely have more than an hour’s
freedom at any one time.

The existence of these small neighborhood galleries
would in no way deflect from the importance or the useful-
ness of the big museum—in fact they would be a great help.

If you have the idea that an artist is not a decidedly
practical person, get over it.

Don’t think that Frans Hals was drunk when he
painted his vital pictures. Let the romancing historian
think so, but just look at one of his heads and realize what
cool generalship and positive, immediate decision were
necessary to place those solid forms in action and to render
so much completion with such simple strokes. Wonderful
judgment in the conception and execution of these works.
A great order in them. The whole thing an invention. No
copying. He must have had a fine working mind and he
must have used it as its master. I’ll bet his tools were the
best, and everything in the right condition, and the right
place, for immediate use.

One man, all distinguished bearing, another fat and
soft, with a ribald joke on his lip, one made of iron, and by

his side a dandy.
''THE ART SPIRIT 193

Frans Hals liked them all for what they were and he
gave his best to each one.

Every bit of Frans Hals’ painting is sheer invention.
Examine the structure in the strokes which make the heads.
They are parts of mighty buildings. Look at a mere tassel
on a boot or a sword hilt, you will find it a marvel-
ous composition.

Frans Hals was a man of wonderful judgment. He saw
life and people in his own peculiar way and he was a
supreme master of the tools in his hands.

I believe that keeping one’s faculties in full exercise is
the secret of good health and longevity. It made Titian a
young man at nearly a hundred.

Perhaps mental inactivity is the most fatiguing thing
in the world. It is a common thing for business men to
die soon after they retire. That is, if they do not take up
some new enterprise in life.

There are cases of actual rejuvenation as a result of
new enterprise more interesting than that which preceded.

Critical judgment of a picture is often given without a
moment’s hesitation. I have seen a whole gallery of pic-
tures condemned with a sweep of the eye. I remember
hearing a promient artist on entering a gallery declare
*“ My eight-year-old child could do better than this.” The
subject of the charge was a collection of modern pictures
with which the artist was not familiar. There were pic-

13
''194 THE ART SPIRIT

tures by Matisse, Cézanne and others. Works of highly
intelligent men; great students along a different line. The
works, whatever anyone might think of them, were the
results of years of study. The “ critical judgment ” of
them was accomplished in a sweep of the eye.

All kinds of critics, professional, artist, student and
lay-critics are prone to bring with them their precon-
ceived ideas. Many of them are outraged if they do not
find what they expect. Such people want peace—they
want no new sensations, and they want nothing that is
hard to get.

The critical spirit which is yet to develop will invite
difficulties, will wish to be disturbed into re-valuations.
New works will inspire to further energy. I have seen a
picture judged, acknowledged as good, and bought by
a man without turning a hair. He bought it really because
it did not give him a kick. It was a further proof that
what he already knew was sufficient. He bought it to dam
the stream of his own development.

There is an idea in America that people can be told
how to appreciate pictures. Whereas the appreciation
of art is a very personal and special response to creative
work. And it must be a part of the province of the artist
so to present his work as to help create this response.

The grip of a line.
Note how a line takes hold.
''THE ART SPIRIT 195

It hooks the vital parts together.

It binds the composition.

Look well at the model and look well at the drawings of
masters and you will see why I speak of the hook of a
line, which grips.

See the drawings of Rembrandt, the Chinese and the
Japanese masters.

There is a portrait in the Louvre which has a great
abrasion on the face, but somehow the abrasion does not
spoil the work. It is there but it does not count.

The picture is the work of Tintoretto—a great master.
His organization of forms is so powerful that it carries
through the obliterated place.

When you make figures in composition you may dis-
cover that you do not know the figure. Students work in
schools making life studies for years, win the prizes for life
studies and find in the end that they know practically
nothing of the human figure. They have acquired the
ability to copy. It is the common defect of modern art
study. Too many students do not know why they draw.

If you are studying art and not making compositions,
my advice is to begin immediately. You study from the
model] mainly to get experience. Your composition is the
expression of your interests and in making your compo-
sitions you apply what you learn when working from the
model. Your object in painting from the model is not to
''196 THE ART SPIRIT

become a painter of school studies, but to become a painter
of whatever you have to express with figures, portraits,
landscapes, street scenes, anything, in fact, that inter-
ests you.

Letter of Criticism

Drawing, disconcerted, going at random, now after
one idea, now after another. Good drawing comes of
a concerted movement, the selection of certain things, and
the specifying of them with an end in view. To the expres-
sion of this end all the parts of the canvas must work.
Features or parts of features, or accessories, all must be
treated as factors in a general movement. However inter-
esting they may be in themselves, in a painting they are
parts of a sequence more important than themselves.

Throughout the whole canvas you should think of the
effect of the big masses of color in their relation to each
other. In a good canvas these big masses work together,
have constructive effect on one another, just as in music.
In well composed music you can’t get away from
the motive.

A hundred artists might work with you from that same
subject, The Girl and the Goldfish, and assuming them all
to be good artists, each one of them because of his motive
would render the nose, the neck, the fish, all the parts, all
the colors and all the values in different ways, some elim-
inating where others accentuate, and all the pictures,
although different, would look like the model, all of them
beautiful because the factors of each picture are selected
and assembled with relation to their constructive value.
''THE ART SPIRIT 197

Now to deal with the work from another viewpoint and
give you further criticism I will say that my impression of
your two paintings made me feel that in doing them you
were trying to fit yourself into a kind of work, done to
your admiration by another artist, but quite outside your
power of concept. I think your only salvation is in find-
ing yourself, and you will never find yourself unless you
quit preconceiving what you will be when you have found
yourself, What, after all, are your greatest, deepest, and
all-possessing interests? Most people seem to think they
are great enough to know beforehand, and what generally
results is that they imprison themselves in some sort of
Girl and Goldfish subject, which, as I say, they may admire
from the hand of another but for which they have no per-
sonal vocation. Those who are so imprisoned work like
prisoners. You can see where the heart is out of it.
Pictures tell the story of actual impulse in the artist—
or the lack of it.

What you need is to free yourself from your own pre-
conceived ideas about yourself. It will take a revolution
to do it, and many times you will think yourself on the
road only to find that the old habit has possessed you
again with a new preconception. But if you can at least
to a degree free yourself, take your head off your heart and
give the latter a chance, something may come of it. The
results will not be what you expect, but they will be like
you and will be the best that can come from you. And
there will be a lot more pleasure in the doing.

Now these are only my opinions, I do not say they are
final, nor do I say they are right, but they are my opinions.
''198 THE ART SPIRIT

You have asked for them, and at any rate they are kinder
to you than they are harsh to the two pictures.

You are often told that your painting is “ very good—
as far as it goes—but you should carry it further.” You
proceed to “ carry it further,” and find yourself carrying
it backward. The trouble is most likely that you have
added things to it where what was needed was a ae
tion of what had already been set down.

Some people study hard for a time, then they “ gradu-
ate ” and sink back into the little they have learned.

There are many kinds of study. Those whose study is
of the real and rare kind get the habit. They can’t throw
it off. It’s too good. They go on studying all their lives,
and they have wonderful lives.

It is not desirable to devote all your time to an appre-
ciation of art. Art should drive you forth. It should be
an incentive to life. The greatest value of art to the
appreciator is in that it stimulates to personal activity.

When you have made a sketch, close your box—walk
away—then open your box. Maybe you will see that you
''THE ART SPIRIT 199

have deflected from your original idea. What you have
painted is not what seized you in the beginning—a vital
impulse has been lost—go back and go after that first
seizing idea—and refuse to be mastered by material things.

It is a mistake to think that spirituality is seen only
through a mist.

There are some painters who deal with the play of
light as the most graceful thing that exists.

What does a man see when he goes to the Indian
Dance? What are all these impressions? I have gone to
many, had a perfectly delightful time, and then later hear-
ing others talking of what they had seen, have found that
from their point of view I had missed everything of
importance. I have gone again and have struggled to see
the “ right ” things. In doing so I have felt quite educa-
tional, but I have not had any happiness. The effort has
prevented me from seeing what are my things in the dance.
But what does a man see when he sees his own things? A
few have found out—somewhat.

If a picture is not of these self-seen things, then it must
be a mighty interesting accounting of externals. It must
be strong in its kind. It would be a big job really to paint
the Snake Dance. I have never seen it, but of course with
''200 THE ART SPIRIT

my knowledge of other Indian dances, I have a ground to
base imagination on. I know that I would see a vast
country, an immense sky, great space. In this great space
there would be the mesa, the pueblo, the little crowd of
spectators, and then the dancers with rattlesnakes in their
mouths. Something happening way off there, a little speck
on the, face of the earth. But how would I see it? Would
it not be a reversal of all these proportions; the smallest
become the largest. I can believe that the tiny little snakes
would so enlarge upon me that I would be filled with an
overpowering sense of their writhing strength, their quick
and slow movements, strike and poison. They would
dominate the sky and the mountains, which would have to
take shapes according to them. It would be the Snake
Dance filling the universe.
Isadora Duncan dances and fills the universe. She
exceeds all ordinary measure.
The difficulty for us is to know what, or how we see
material things, when we are seeing beyond material things.
If we could only know what we see, and paint what we see!

I am glad to hear that you propose to take the bit in
your teeth and buck for freedom. There is little use in
painting—in living in fact—unless you let yourself grow
your natural course.

You will have a wonderful time. Others (those who
wish to dictate) will not be satisfied perhaps—but they are
never satisfied anyway—and you will give them better than
they know. At any rate what you will give will be news

ee
''THE ART SPIRIT 201

from your country. The big men have been rare simply
because most men heed dictators.

Nobody wanted Walt Whitman, but Walt Whitman
wanted himself, and it is well for us that he did.

Of course it is not easy to go one’s road. Because of
our education we continually get.off our track, but the
fight is a good one and there is joy in it if there is any
success at all. After all, the goal is not making art. It is
living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff
that is really art. Art is a result. It is the trace of those
who have led their lives. It is interesting to us because we
read the struggle and the degree of success the man made
in his struggle to live. The great question is: ‘* What is
worth while?” The majority of people have failed to ask
themselves seriously enough, and have failed to try
seriously enough to answer this question.

Life is being wasted. The human family is not having
half the fun that is its due, not making the beautiful things
it would make, and each one is not as good news to the
other as he might be, just because we are educated off our
natural track. We need another form of education.

The great revolution in the world which is to equalize
opportunity, bring peace and freedom, must be a spiritual
revolution. A new will must come. This will is a very per-
sonal thing in each one.

Our educatign has led away from the realization that
the mystery of nature is in each man. When we are wiser
we will not assume to mould ourselves, but will make our
ignorance stand aside—hands off—and we will watch our
own development. We will learn from ourselves. This
habit of conducting nature is a bad one.
''(ae THE ART SPIRIT

If those who work in both pastels and oils could get a
bit of the quality of the one into the other a good thing
would happen. For instance, here is a pastel all gay and
pale in its pastel lightness and there an oil deep in oily
sogginess. The pastel would benefit by a deeper note and
a textural unity of surface and the oil might come up out
of the gloom into which you have let it sink. It is not dark
because you willed it so. It is not lighter or more luminous
simply because you did not will strong enough to have it so.
In too many cases pastel stays pale because it wants to be
pale. Oil becomes dark and muddy because it is easy for
it to sink into depths, and the artist is victim, not master.

Letter of Criticism

General effect—Far the best works I have seen of
yours. Throughout there is a strong individual view of
things.. Individual enough to make them the unexpected,
and therefore not likely to meet the formulated expecta-

*‘ picture lovers.” The readers of the

tions of average
various books on “ How to Appreciate Pictures ” will not
have learned how to appreciate yours, therefore pioneer-
like you will have a rough road to travel with your public.
Where others are clever and precise you are not. Where
you are clever and precise, others are not. You have not
interested yourself in these subjects in the expected ways.
You have disregarded what you should have been
conventionally expected to regard; have neglected,

slighted, slurred, done poorly where you would be expected
''THE ART SPIRIT 208

to do your best, and have done well with insistence, with
interest, where others neglect.

For the critics of their times, Manet, Corot, Millet,
took interest in the wrong side of things. They did not
do the expected, but were pioneers—followed their very
individual whims, told their publics what they wanted their
publics to hear, not what their publics Ory knew and
wanted to be told over again.

In all your pictures the eyes are remarkable no matter
what may be my criticisms,—technical, anatomical or
otherwise. ‘They are remarkable expressions of human
sensitiveness. In the usual phraseology it might be said
“ They arrest,” “ They haunt.” They are inscrutable, and
yet they seem to invite one in. The six figures standing here
before me look with their serious questioning eyes. They
seem to ask me if there are not some deep sensations of life
forgotten in this hurly burly business of New York City.

You have study before you that will help you with this
feeling you have about the “look of people.” You will
gain by adding to your knowledge of the anatomy of an
eye. You can learn much from cool study of a living eye.
Examine it closely and record in your mind just what and
where are its parts.

You want to know an eye, nose, mouth, skull, the
muscles. The sources of information are many, first the
living feature itself, examined, studied. Then books on
anatomy, photographs from life, reproductions from the
works of great masters, then again the living feature itself.

The muscles are functioning always in life. They show
sometimes prominently—easy to see. An arm in its
strength is not difficult because there the actions of the
''204 THE ART SPIRIT

muscles are obvious. In other places it is hard to see the
muscles, hard to see the action. One who knows what is
under the skin will understand the slightest change onthe
surface. He is able to separate the important from the
unimportant in all these evidences. He knows the nature
of the thing. He sees the slightest sign that has meaning,
and is not deceived by accidents.

If you actually know the human body you can draw
most sensitive actions through clothes. You see the signs
of life in the body through the clothes, and the wrinkles
and folds of drapery become living things. You seize of
them what is essential and discard the rest. Without
knowledge and sense of the body, wrinkles and folds remain
wrinkles and folds.

There are thousands, however, who have drawn from
the nude model for years, and passed quite well according
to school standards, but who, nevertheless, do not know
the human body.

There are thousands who paint the features of the face
and yet could not pass a childish examination in facial
anatomy. This probably explains a good deal of the life-

lessness existing in portraiture.

The tendency of your color is straight, healthy, honest.
I know you have only to go on in order to develop a most
expressive color.

In your picture called Grain I admire very much the
rare independence in your vision of the sky.

The Brown-Eyed Girl with the Cat—Some frank notes
in the cat’s head and good closed-eye character. Hand-
some in blue ribbon and the girl’s pigtails. Not quite
''THE ART SPIRIT 205

enough “ whole note ” to the dress. There is a feeling for
and a cherishing of the dress, but the underlying or mass
color is not sufficient. You began painting variations
before you established the mass. Not so in the hair, excel-
lent; and the face excellent. I admire this. A fine piece
of painting, a frank rendering of character. I believe this
is a good likeness. It is certainly a distinct type.

When you are painting a background, don’t follow,
unless there is a good reason to do so, the common habit of
thinning the paint. Don’t try to spread too little paint
over too great a surface. Mix if anything more than is
needed. Put it on so that it will have the appearance of
sufficiency. Repaint a background as many times as each
new condition of the painting in the head or body calls for
a change in the background. The reason for many a feeble,
false or inefficient background is lack of energy to do the
labor of it. Paint the background in such a way as to
appear to pass back of the head, not simply up to it.

To return to the Little Girl and Cat, get a more beauti-
ful relation in the proportions of the body, arms, legs and
chair, more significantly appreciated. That leg is pain-
fully brittle and thin. Your brush stroke is too often the
same in figure, chair and background. In using everywhere
this same stroke it becomes meaningless and it robs each y
part of character, texture, perspective and distance.

The Man, austere, grave, wonderfully fine eyes, but
undoubtedly exaggerated in their forms. Look again. It
is excellent over-characterization, nevertheless. Arms
stiff and scrawny. Don’t believe they were so. Good chair.

It holds him.
''206 THE ART SPIRIT

You are not yet a master of the medium, not yet in
command, but fine of mind, serious, austere, showing that
you are made of good stuff, should work. You will never
become a popular painter. You are too much of an indi-
vidual for that. Yours is a harder task, and one that will
have fewer encouragers, but the popular painter is not in
for as good a time as you are.

Never change the course of a line until you have to.

Never change the plane of a form until you have to.

Never change the tone of a color or from one color to
another until you have to.

If you follow these injunctions intelligently you will
practice that great economy which is necessary to expres-
sion in your medium.

Every change must count, and count strong. There
must be no quibbling. You have the observer of your work
under control. Through the changes you lead him straight
or crooked into your meaning. If you have digressed into
triviality he must digress with you. Where you hesitate
or are uncertain, he hesitates and is uncertain. If you are
a quibbler and a flounderer, and not direct in your purpose,
he turns his back on your work unless he is, himself, like
you, happier in floundering.

Because the medium we use is very limited, we must
exercise a great economy in its use.

No line or form or color must change until you are
compelled by the necessity of the structure you are making
to change it.
''THE ART SPIRIT 207

The need for change must be great. You only make
the change because you must respond to an abso-
lute demand.

You have reserved your forces but now you must ex-
pend them positively and effectively. A new course, full of
meaning is to be taken, and by it the observer is to be
carried deeper into your meaning. You have taken a posi-
tive step to force his understanding of your motive.

Some painters flutter all about their subjects, others
are straight drivers to the essence of things.

A house has many windows, but a ray of light catches
on one. It becomes the window which declares all windows.
It is a builder and a vitalizer. It links with all the other
structures—is one of the big factors in making
the whole.

Your questions are, “ What is essential?” and “ How
shall the greatest economy be practiced?”

Water runs down hill concisely. There is no quibbling
about it. It does not have to run up hill in order to be
entertaining. Man has always followed its course with
fascination. ‘The soul of man may reveal its mysteries
through direct expression, simple speech, simple gesture,
simple painting, just as the soul of the brook is expressed
in full simplicity and economy.

One of the curses of art is “ Art.” This filling up of
things with “ decoration,” with by-play, to make them
** beautiful.”

When art has attained its place, surfaces will be
infinitely less broken. There will then be millions less of
things, less words, less gesture, less of everything. But
''208 THE ART SPIRIT

each word and each gesture and everything will count in a
fuller value.

When we have attained a sense of the relative value of
things, we will need fewer things. We will not change a line
or form or color until we have to—and when we do make a
change, a wealth of meaning will fill the world from this
new gesture.

The most furnished rooms may have very little in them.
The mere proportions of a room act on our sensibilities
much more than is declared by our present consciousness.
Man suffers, but it is in very little that he knows why he
suffers. He is happy and he is equally ignorant. As he
comes to know better the significance of change he
can be less hurt and he can move more swiftly to his
natural environment.

It is not the barrenness of an empty room, or an empty
life that we seek, we would get rid of clutter, and thus get
room for fulness.

On a face one accent rightly valued in all its powers is
worth a thousand little forms. The little forms subtract
more than they add. The right accent achieves.

Humanity may be divided into two distinct families.
They are as different as opposites in their course of life.
They do but confound each other in their effort to believe
themselves alike. One family may be called the digressors
—those who live with the billions of things, the billions of
ideas which clutter up the surface of life.

The members of the other group tend toward a sim-
plicity of sight, are conscious of a main current, are
related to the past, see into the future, are not of the time
present, but extend forward and back.
''THE ART SPIRIT 209

Be game—take a chance—don’t hide behind veils and
veils of discretion. The spirit of youth should be in the
young. Don’t try to be ponderous. Youth has clear eyes.
Let your colors be as seen with clear eyes. Go for-
ward with what you have to say, expressing things
as you see them. You are new evidence, fresh and young.
Your work, the spirit of youth, you are the progress of
human evolution. If age dulls you it will be time enough
then to be ponderous and heavy—or quit.

It takes a tremendous amount of courage to be young,
to continue growing—not to settle and accept.

The most beautiful life possible, wherein there is no
sordidness, is only attainable by effort. To be free, to be
happy and fruitful, can only be attained through sacrifice
of many common but overestimated things.

On the steps of the Prado I met a well-known French
painter who was there like myself studying the Spanish
masters. It was in 1900 and the great exhibition of Goya’s
work had just opened. He said “ Have you seen the
Goyas! A wonderful genius! What a pity he couldn’t

$99

draw!” Goya drew well enough to make this man think
he was a genius, anyhow.

Manet did not do the expected. He was a pioneer. He
followed his individual whim. Told the public what he
wanted it to know, not the time-worn things the public

14
''210 THE ART SPIRIT

already knew and thought it wanted to hear again. The
public was very much offended.

We have Great Periods. Periods when we freshen,
become disposed toward health and happiness, move for-
ward into hopeful philosophy. Then comes the stamp of
personal whim.

Technique becomes a tool, not an objective. We are
interested and we have expressions we must make. All
things are appreciated with an abundance of humor.
There is an association with nature. Something happens
between us and the flowers in a garden, a communication
' of gayety, a rhythm in the grass understood—something
charming in a day’s wash hung on the line—a song running
through it all. Associations with nature. It’s a state to
be in and a state to paint in.

a

There is a past, present and future in the fall of a
dress. Don’t arrange it.

In the old days of long skirts the models used to wonder
why I made them walk from the end of the room to the
place where I would have them pose. They were to con-
tinue walking until I spoke, and then they were to stop and
turn as though to hear what I had to say. It was not
always a success, but eventually it would happen right, and
the fall of the drapery would express the gesture of move-
ment, the arrest and the possible next gesture. There
''THE ART SPIRIT 211

would be a past, present and future, and there would be
unity and rhythm in the dress.

Continuity. You draw this leg as though it were near
the body—so near that separation is not visible, yet you
do not make me feel that the two are one. The leg must go
right into and all through the body.

You can learn to make a good map of the model, but it
will remain only a map unless you intend to make it more.

Map making is difficult, and in some cases useful, but
our business is more important, infinitely more difficult
and ever so much more interesting.

I do not say, however, but that a simply made map
might serve you as something to underlay a drawing. But
map making and drawing should not be confounded.

We have our choice of living in the past or the future
—the present being but for an instant—not that of course,
in fact. In the future there is the reality. The past is
the history of our failure in attaining it.

Superficially there is negligence, but deep down in
people there is love and craving for the beautiful. There
are many who go through their whole lives without ever
knowing when they have liked or what they have liked.

Keep up the work. Try to reduce everything you see
''212 THE ART SPIRIT

to the utmost simplicity. That is, let nothing but the
things which are of the utmost importance to you have ©

any place.

The more simply you see, the more simply you will

render. People see too much, scatteringly.
A landscape has got to mean a great deal to anyone
before it can be painted in any worthwhile way. It is

harder to see a landscape than to paint it. This is true ©
because there are lots of clever people who can paint any- —

thing, but, lacking the seeing power, paint nothing
worth while.

The technique used to express a dull idea is of the
nature of the idea, and however skilled it may be it is still
dull. The technique of a fine idea is likewise born of the

idea, and is like its parent. Seeing is not such an easy —

thing as it is supposed to be.

Letter to the Class *

It is important that you reach out for all information

regarding the materials you use. You must know your —

tools. You must have the best, and they must be in perfect

arrangement for service. Painting requires great judg- —

ment and skill. In the effort to capture and record in

paint one’s sensations, there must be no handicap with the —

materials. It is only now and again that the best masters
succeed, even though they have a highly developed
technique.

It is characteristic of the masters who have the ability

to now and again succeed, that they profoundly study the ©

 

*Art Students League, 1915

 

 

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 213

means and ways of their expression. They insist on good
tools, and they develop a remarkable order in their prepa-
ration for work, and this order continues throughout
their performance.

To be negligent, to be above such mean things as the
materials one handles, to be a sort of genius in a dream,

is a common misconception of an artist’s state. On the “

contrary his whole success in self expression depends on
order, or balance, which, in fact, is not only the means to
the end, but the work itself is great in measure as it stands
as a manifestation of order and balance. Such works give
us our vision of freedom. For freedom can only be
obtained through order—through a just sense of the
relative value of things.

The technique of painting begins with the simplest
mechanical issues and extends through to the heights
of science.

You should begin with the simplest issues. See that
your palette is a good tool, sizable for what you have to do.
See that it is well set with clean pigment, ordered to the
greatest convenience for your work. Be watchful of your
need and enjoy the steady development of your craftsman-
ship. See to the size, quality and condition of your brushes,
they are to be handled for a difficult operation. See to your
medium. Are the cups right in size for your brushes? Are
they securely attached in place most convenient for the
service? Have you the rag and have you the other
facilities for cleaning your brushes as you work? It is
surprising how these and many more equally simple
and equally important questions can seldom be answered
in a favorable way.
''214 THE ART SPIRIT

A barber has an apparatus that is surprising, and all
in such remarkable order. His intention is but to shave
and cut hair with the least amount of discomfort to the
sitter. An artist proposes to make a work of art, and
while his work requires infinite skill, he is generally far
behind the barber in the arrangement of the most ordinary
necessities. Why should this be so? Why should a studio
be a boudoir, a dream of oriental splendor to have tea in, a
junk shop, a dirty place, and rarely a good convenient
workshop for the kind of thought and the kind of work that
the making of a good picture demands?

Why should a palette be a crust of dirty, dust collect-
ing, dried up paint in which little inadequate squeezes of
fresh paint become confounded? Why shouldn’t the whole
thing be cleaned up every day, with ways devised for the
saving over night of the good paint that remains from the
day’s work? The reason for all these things is that one
does as one’s neighbor does, and as your neighbor is no
more of a pioneer or inventor than you are yourself, you do
not move out of your uncomfortable position until a new
neighbor comes along and shoves you out of it—if such is
possible, which it may not be, for many get ossified in mat-
ters of technique, and while they are not comfortable they
are still immovable. :

The thing to do is for each individual to wake up, to
discover himself as a human being, with needs of his own.
To look about, learn from all sources, look within, and find
if he can invent for himself a vehicle for his self-expression.
He has a world of precedents to begin on, some within his
sight, and more can be found. Let him move about a bit;
investigate the needs of his own case.
''THE ART SPIRIT 215

To have ideas one must have imagination.
To express ideas one must have science.

All this is to urge you to investigate, to read, to think.
You will understand what the word technique refers to.
You will wake up to the fact that the only education that
counts is self-education. There are the facilities of the
school, its advices, there are books, strengths and weak-
nesses of those about you. All these things are good
materials to the one who will use them constructively.

When I read about artists and their works I am not as
a rule interested in what is said about their works, but am
keen to know of the personalities of the artists themselves.
If I want to know about a picture I go to see it or I get a
reproduction. I find it is usually not at all like the writer’s
description. Pictures explain themselves. They are their
own describers.

Sometimes it does happen that the writer, in his effort
to describe a picture, reveals himself ; and if his philosophy
is interesting it is worth hearing him, even if he has insisted
on explaining a thing which is already self-explained.

When children are taken to a museum they are too
often talked out of their personal appreciations.

A friend of mine took his two boys to the circus. It was
their first circus. He was worried and discouraged because

his boys did not get the thing. He kept saying to them
''216 THE ARLE SPIRIT

* Look! Look!” but they were always looking the wrong
way. It was pretty tough to find that his boys were not
real boys. That night he left the table to read his paper.
The boys remained with their mother, and from the next
room he heard them tell what they had seen at the circus,
and their account settled the matter. His boys were real
boys! ‘They had seen all and several times more than

he had.

Letter of Criticism

As to your “ method ” of work try something different.
Take a change from your little fragmentary life-studies
on a 5-by-9 paper. Cast about a bit.

My advice to you is to venture, meet some other diffi-
culties, be a real student.

Real students go out of beaten paths, whether beaten
by themselves or by others, and have adventure with
the unknown.

There are few students in the schools. They are rare
anywhere. And yet it is only the student who dares to
take a chance, who has a real good time in life.

But remember that I say it is even possible for you to
follow your old method and have the adventures and come
out all right. It’s altogether what you are able to get out
of it.

Be sure that your decisions are really made by your-
self. Decisions made by yourself may be of a nature very
unexpected. In other words, very few people know what
they want, very few people know what they think. Many
''THE ART SPIRIT Q17

think and do not know it and many think they are thinking
and are not thinking.

Self education is no easy proposition.

Men either get to know what they want, and go after
it, or some other persons tell them what they want and
drive them after it.

I can’t tell you what you want to do, can’t lay any
plans for your doing it. You must surprise me. I am not
interested in your being the kind of regular fellow who tells
me what I know before. The case is in your own hands.
Get as much acquainted with yourself as you can. Question
yourself. After a while you may get some answers. They
will surprise and shock you, but they will interest you.
Maybe you will get so that you will begin to do things for
yourself. It will be very fine when you can begin to
serve yourself.

After all, your “ method” of work is nothing. Why
be tied to any method? You will say that when you step
out of your rut you don’t do as well. But what does that
matter? It may come better later. Anyway, don’t be a
slave to a “ method,” to a 5-by-9 piece of paper. Don’t let
anyone drive you away from your method and your 5-by-9
piece of paper. Don’t be a slave either way. Ask yourself.

There is no school that will exactly fit you. There is
no advice made just for your case. The air is full of
advice. Every school is waiting, whether it is willing or
not, for you to make it your school.

I do not know if this answer to your questions will be
satisfactory to you, but it’s the most useful I can give.

Do not let the fact that things are not made for you,
that conditions are not as they should be, stop you. Go
''218 THE ART SPIRIT

on anyway. Everything depends on those who go
on anyway.

Letter Concerning Prizes and Medals

The pernicious influence of prize and medal giving in
art is so great that it should be stopped.

You can give prizes justly for long-distance jumps,
because you can measure jumps with a foot-rule.

No way has been devised for measuring the value of a
work of art. History proves that juries in art have been
generally wrong. With few exceptions the greatest artists
have been repudiated by the art juries in all countries and
at all times. For a single example I will say that very
few if any prizes or medals were awarded to the artists who
are now in their old age, or after their death, the glory
of France.

In fact most of them did not get past the jury
of admission.

It’s not that the juries do not mean well, or at least
think they mean well, but it is simply that art cannot
be measured.

The reason for the survival of the award system
is purely commercial. ;

I suggest that you use the money to buy pictures ; that
you let this action carry with it the satisfaction which
your approval of the artist may mean; that you choose the
pictures you buy, yourselves, making your own mistakes,
learning the lessons which you will learn from your own
mistakes; and that you hang up the pictures you buy in
your permanent collection to represent your judgment.

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 219

Every community should have its own will, and have the
courage of it. Should develop its own power of judgment.
Mistakes must be risked.

There are collectors who do not do much or anything
for themselves in the field of art. They do not select their
own pictures, but they pay another man to make what
mistakes are to be made, and this man has a wonderful
and improving time doing it.

Perhaps you will see by what I say, that I am more
interested in the artistic development of a community than
I am in adding titles to artists’ names.

Nothing can help the artist more than such actual par-
ticipation as I suggest.

I should like every community to have a will of its own;
to be distinctly like itself; to make its own mistakes; to
make its own discoveries ; to choose its own pictures, hang
them up, and then take them down again when they no
longer like them, and replace them with such others as
they have come to like.

To visit such a community would be interesting, would
shock or please, would shake us up a bit, and cause
revaluation.

There would be some things in that place which one
could not find in any other place. We might like or we
might not like it, but the place would have its effect on us.
It would not be negative.

An artist must educate himself, he cannot be educated,
he must test things out as they apply to himself; his life is
one long investigation of things and his own reaction to
them. If he is to be interesting to us it is because he renders
a very personal account. If a community is to be inter-
''220 THE ART SPIRIT

esting to outsiders or have any sort of an existence, any
sort of a good time, it must do likewise.

When a community starts afresh in matters of art, it
takes on a big job. Not an outside job, but an inside job,
and one that can be most enjoyable and most profitable.

The greatest honor you can do an artist is to buy his
picture and hang it up in your gallery.

{

All art that is worth while is a record of intense life,
and each individual artist’s work is a record of his special
effort, search and findings, in language especially chosen
by himself and devised best to express him, and the signifi-
cance of his work can only be understood by careful study ;
no crack-judgment, looking for the expected, will do, nor
can we be informed by the best critics, for appreciation is
individual, differs with each individual and is an act of
creation based on the picture which is an organization,
not a mirror of the artist’s vision; but the essential
principle of it, and therefore of basic value to the creative
impulse in the spectator.

All interesting developments in art have at first puzzled
the public, and the best appreciators have had to
suspend judgment during the period necessary for full
consideration.

I value the effect of new notes on myself. I believe in
constant revaluation.

To appreciate and get a great deal from a work of art
does not mean to find the expected in it, nor does it mean,
necessarily to accept or follow it wholly, in part, or at all.

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 221

Every work is one man’s vision, an outside experience, use-
ful to us in our own constructions. The wisdom and the
mistakes of the past are ours to build on, and the picture
painted yesterday, now hanging on the wall, is already of
the past and is a part of our heritage.

I regard the battlers for ideas and the builders of new
roads with enthusiasm and reverence. Their works (the
record of their struggles and findings) are things to watch
and to cherish. This is the way I feel about the works of
serious men whether they be of the past or of today.

I am not interested in any one school or movement, nor

do I care for art as art. I am interested in life. The most
we can desire of men is that they be masters of such as
they have, and then we should be highly satisfied with them,
and regard them as neither less nor greater than any. Place
them as themselves.

I claim for each one free speech, free hearing. I am
interested in the open forum, open for every man to come
with his word and for every man to come to hear the evi-
dence, unticketed, unprejudiced by jury or critic.

If you want to be a historical painter, let your history
be of your own time, of what you can get to know person-
ally—of manners and customs within your own experience.

John Leech was a comic artist on Punch, and while
no one would care much to look over the Royal Academy
catalogues of his time, the pages in Punch by John
Leech hold our interest to this day. Leech is known as a
“comic ” artist, but his pictures went deep into life, and
the choice of his expression was noble. He is one of the
''222 THE ART SPIRIT

greatest artists England has had, and because he was so
interested in life as he found it his works have a great
historical value.

Rembrandt did not go out of his own sphere to make his
religious subjects—he applied the ideas to the materials
of his own life. That is one of the reasons his work is so
lasting in our interest.

If you must paint a “ Good Samaritan ” do not paint
the old story, in the old form, but let your subject be the
recurrence of the spirit of the good Samaritan as it pre-
sents itself to you in your own environment. These
great moments didn’t happen just once—they still con-
tinue to happen.

Perhaps some of you will recall seeing a picture painted
by John Sloan of the backs of the old Twenty-fourth Street
houses with the boys on the roof startling the pigeons into
flight. It is a human document of the lives of the people
living in those houses. You feel the incidents in the win-
dows, the incidents in the construction of the houses, the
incidents in the wear and tear on them; in fact, the life of
that neighborhood is all shown in the little line of houses,
yellow and red houses, warm in the sunlight. And the
quality of the sunlight is that of a caress; the houses, the
atmosphere are steeped in its warmth. That canvas will
carry into future time the feel and the way of life as it
happened and as it was seen and understood by the artist.

Sometimes in looking at the people of an old Chinese
painting I have felt how close in human kinship these
ancients were to me. In all other forms of record they
appear remote. The artist, who is not a materialist, sees

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 223

more than the incident. He puts in his work, whether
consciously or not, a record of sensibilities, and his work
bridges time and space, bringing us together.

There are the beautiful drawings William Glackens has
done of the children in Washington Square, and his streets
on the East Side with their surge of life. In being great
works of art they are none the less documents of life. Even
the prints of these, clipped from the magazine in which they
were published, are now treasured, mainly, of course, by
artists (for artists do know something about art) and are
shown to friends with a great pride in their possession.

Ever since the beginning there have been artists who
have found in the simple life about them the wonderful and
the beautiful, and through the fact of this inspiration
have sensed the way to make the combinations of form and
color we know as art.

Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists
in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth,
a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself.
The disposition to preconceive one’s degree of genius, or
the quality of it, is a mistake, for this preconception is
a limitation. :

The results of individual development cannot be fore-
seen, nor can these results be estimated by one in whom
such development has not as yet taken place.

It is useless to study technique in advance of having
a motive. Instead of establishing a vast stock of techni-
cal tricks, it would be far wiser to develop creative power
''224 THE ART SPIRIT

by constant search for means particular to a motive
already in mind, by studying and developing just that
technique which you feel the immediate need of, and which
alone will serve you for the idea or the emotion which has
moved you to expression. You will not only develop your
power to see the means, but you will acquire power to
organize the means to a purpose. In this form of study
there will be no less familiarization with what is generally
found in all technical study. You will acquire a habit and
ability to select and correlate. You will become a master
and organizer of means, and you will understand the value
of means as no mere collector of means ever can.

I have known many men who have read everything, have
what is called a perfect education, and who while knowing
everything know little of the essential qualities, or the pos-
sibilities, through organization, of anything. Such as
these while appearing learned through familiarity with
learning make no constructions of their own, for the genius
in them is still dormant.

To be an artist is to construct, and to whatever degree
one shows the genius for construction in work of any sort,
he is that much an artist.

The artist life is therefore the desirable life, and it is
possible to all.

Letter of Criticism

Both yours received and the last understood in all its
loneliness. You have a hard proposition, but I believe if
you fight it through it will be all the better.

 

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 225

Of course you can’t expect to go out and paint master-
pieces every day, and you can’t expect to equal steadily
what you have already done.

Since I returned to New York I have done a good deal
of work, but it has been discouraging because nothing yet
has happened to put me beyond my rank and file of work;
nothing that I will care to pick up and show and show
again, as I do some things. Like some of those I did
last summer.

But you have got to think there alone, and work to keep
yourself company, and thinking and working is what
counts. In the cities, in the studios, there is usually too
little time to think matters through. Most things are
skimmed, and people often believe they are doing quite a
good deal themselves when they are only being jostled
by others.

Up there, whatever will be interesting will be your
ideas, and whatever will be done will be your work. But a
man is human. Well, you are going to Boston to a genial
friend for a few days. Have a good time!

Coming down from the school with L the other
afternoon we got talking of how free we were to work and
think in dead old Haarlem; how it seems, eliminate and

 

shirk as you will, there is no time here to do one’s work.
Trouble, friends, business, distances to travel, a million
things great and small, no time to be long enough on any
one idea.

Last summer was a good one. Looking back on what
it forced on us; a dead place to work in, with that bunch
of children, and you, your landscape, occasional flights for
mild change to Amsterdam. And then after the long season

15
''226 THE ART SPIRIT

of dead Haarlem and work, the solid bunch of simple
amusement in Paris.

It looks to me as though you might break your long
quiets by letting loose occasionally. But you are up
against it and it is up to you.

You have gone there to find yourself. What you have
started, this thing of becoming an artist, a real one, almost
every man fails at. Few have the courage or stamina to
go through the parts one has to go through alone i in more
ways than one.

I don’t believe in being inhuman. I should feel sorry for
the man who would not cry for company and for sympathy.
The human creature must have these things, and when you
can’t stand it you will have to dig out and get your belly
full—and then go back.

If you go through this winter you will come out a
strong man and you will be well acquainted with yourself.

It’s hard. I shiver with the cold. It is easy maybe to
sit here and write this, seated by a steam radiator. But I
know what it is to be in the cold and alone in both ways. I
have lived, a little younger than you, where there was
equal cold and more exposure. I have known ever since
what it is to be in the cold and alone, and sometimes des-
perately so, because I have believed what I believe and have
stood by my believing.

You goon. The country is full of men ae are work-
ing in the cold, or worse—too much heat—just to get
enough to purchase a day’s miserable existence. You are
working for your character, and your pay is to last you
all your life.

I admire you for your start and I like to see men do

 
''.

‘THE ART SPIRIT 227

these things so much that I shall be shouting with joy when
I see you win out.

Of course I do not believe in the place you have chosen
more than another place. If you should think a warmer or
a more populated place would be better don’t consider
stubbornness a virtue.

To work, mind and body, and to be alone enough to
concentrate is the thing. I think you will like it there,
though mind you, you have only been there a short time.
You are not yet used to the weather. You can’t jump
from comfort into the conditions of such life. And then
the snow is to come. Get ready for the wonder of it, and
paint like a fiend while the ideas possess you.

I write so much because I admire you for the stand you
have taken and I want to shout with joy because a man has
taken the bit in his teeth.

As I said before, we can’t hope always to succeed. But
by fighting for it, out of the whole crop of a season’s work
there are surely some things that look like one’s simple
healthy view of life. If you paint two or three hundred
canvases this winter and a dozen of them are really good
and say your say of yourself, time and place, you can

be happy.

Purposes of an Art School

That of interest in the work. Development of a strong
personal art in America through stimulating in students a
more profound study of life, the purpose of. art, a real
understanding of Construction, Proportion, Drawing—
stimulating activity, mental and physical, moral courage,
''228 THE ART SPIRIT

invention in expression to fit the idea to be expressed; the
study, therefore, of specific technique, not stock technique.
Impressing the importance of the Idea, that it must have
weight, value, be well worth putting forth and in such
permanent medium. The development, therefore, of indi-
viduality, search for the just means of expressing same
simply and fully. The development, therefore, of artists
of mind, philosophy, sympathy, courage, invention.
Taking their work as a matter of vital importance to the
world, considering their technique as a medium of utter-
ance of their most personal philosophy of life, their
view of the subject—one that must be important and
worthy of their powers of seeing and understanding.
Drawing that is solid, constructive, fundamental, inven-
tive, specific, adapted to the special needs of the idea to be
expressed; such drawing as can come only from one who
has a decided and special purpose, profound understand-
ing, a realization of the importance of his word, and the
evidence he has to give.

A school where individuality of thought and individu-
ality of expression is encouraged. A school and instruc-
tion which offers itself to the student to be used by him in
the building of himself up into a force that will be of a
stimulating value to the world. That he may use the
school, its facilities, its instruction, that he may know that
the school and the instructors are back of him, interested,
watching, encouraging, as ready to learn from him as to
teach him, anxious for his evidence, recognizing in him a
man—another: or a new force, giving him the use of its
knowledge and experience, only demanding from him that
he work both mind and body to the limit of his endurance

 

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 229

to find in himself whatever there is of value, to find
his truest thoughts and find a means, the simplest,
straightest, the most fit means to make record of them. 'To
be the deepest thinker, the kindest appreciator, the clearest
and simplest, frankest creator he can be today, for by
so doing he is the master of such as he has today, and
that he is master today is the only dependable evidence
that he will be master tomorrow; that he has dignity,
worth, integrity, courage in his thought and action today
proves that he is today a student such as is worthy of the
name in its fullest meaning.

Letter *

I have no sympathy with the belief that art is the
restricted province of those who paint, sculpt, make music
and verse. I hope we will come to an understanding
that the material used is only incidental, that there is
artist in every man; and that to him the possibility
of development and of expression and the happiness of
creation is as much a right and as much a duty to himself,
as to any of those who work in the especially ticketed ways.

There is much talk of the “ growth of art ” in America,
but the proof offered deals too often with the increase in
purchases. I’m sure it often happens that the purchaser
believes he has done his art bit for himself and for the
public, when he has bought. Being a struggling artist
myself, far be it from me to say he should not buy! But
buying is not enough. We may build many imitation Greek
temples and we may buy them full of pictures, but there is
something more—in fact the one thing more which really

* Pleiades Club Yearbook, 1918.

 
''230 THE ART SPIRIT

counts before we can be an art nation—we must get rid
of this outside feeling of looking in on art. We must get
on the inside and press out.

Art is simply a result of expression during right feel-
ing. It’s a result of a grip on the fundamentals of nature,
the spirit of life, the constructive force, the secret of
growth, a real understanding of the relative importance of
things, order, balance. Any material will do. After all,
the object is not to make art, but to be in the wonderful
state which makes art inevitable.

In every human being there is the artist, and what-
ever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to
express the result of his growth and his contact with life.
I don’t believe any real artist cares whether what he does
is “ art? or not. Who, after all, knows what is art? Were
not our very intelligent fathers admirers of Bouguereau,
and was not Bouguereau covered with all the honors by
which we make our firsts, and were they not ready to com-
mit Cézanne to a madhouse? Now look at them!

I think the real artists are too busy with just being
and growing and acting (on canvas or however) like
themselves to worry about the end. The end will be what
it will be. The object is intense living, fulfillment; the
great happiness in creation. People sometimes phrase
about the joy of work. It is only in creative work that
joy may be found.

To create we must get down to bedrock. You cannot
construct unless you get at the principles of construction.
The principles of construction are applicable to any work.
If you get away from these principles, your structure will
fall down when it is put to the test. Governments have

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 231

fallen because their ideas of order were not based on
natural principles.

Sentiment, money, violence were not the agents in the
creation of that master work of art, the flying machine.
The Wright brothers had a wonderful will to comprehend
natural law. Billions of dollars could not buy, blind faith
could not persuade, violence could not compel the flying
machine. It came with the expenditure of comparatively
little money, no sentimentality, and came easily, because
they went to the right source.

We will be happy if we can get around to the idea that
art is not an outside and extra thing; that it is a natural
outcome of a state of being; that the state of being is the
important thing; that a man can be a carpenter and be a
great man. There is a book about a fisherman written by
Jeanette Lee, called “ Happy Island ”’—a very simple
little book, but it is worth reading apropos, for that fish-
erman was a great man and had in him the secret of a
great nation. I think a great nation must be a happy one.

I remember a great picture—it is no larger than my
two hands—it represents seven pears, and evokes every-
thing—cathedrals, beautiful ladies. Such was the spirit
of the artist that for me he projected universal essentials
of beauty. In his seven pears he evidently found a con-
structive principle and expressed it.

The great thing lies in the little things as well as in the
big. If I were to try to review the art of the past year
it would be to estimate how far we have gone in this idea.
But I will not try to review the art of the past year—it
can’t be done—it is too near to us. We have been terribly
busy with it, and it is not yet through with us. Our past
''232 THE ART SPIRIT

is our mystery. It is the tangle we have made of our hopes
when we have come up to them. The future alone is clear.

No nation as yet is the home of art. Art is an out-
sider, a gypsy over the face of the earth.

The only sensible way to regard the art life is that it is
a privilege you are willing to pay for.

Seldom has the great art or the great science of the
world been paid for at the time of creation. It has been
given, and in general has been cruelly received. You may
cite honors and attentions and even money paid, but I
would have you note that these were paid a long time after
the creator had gone through his struggles.

Breadth is useless unless it effects expression. Some-
times an almost imperceptible note plays a great part in
the making of a picture. It is not necessarily the obvious
thing which counts strongest. The great moments of a day
are sometimes such as hardly reach our consciousness, yet
such moments may have made all the beauty and the suc-
cess of the day. The almost imperceptible note may be
the most powerful constructive agent in a whole work.
''THE ART SPIRIT 233

A red flower placed in a window may expand its influ-
ence over all the area of your sight.

A man possessed of an idea, working like fury to hold
his grip on it and to fix it on canvas may not stop to see
just how he is doing the work; nor may he consider what
might be any outsider’s opinion of it. He must hold his
grip on the meaning he has caught from nature, and he
cannot grope for ways of expression. His need is immedi-
ate. The idea is fleeting. He must have technique—but
he can now use only what he actually knows. At other
times he has studied technique, tried this and that, experi-
mented, and hunted for the right phrase. But now he is
not in the hour of research. He is in the hour of expres-
sion. The only thing he has in mind is the idea. As to the
elegance of his expression, he cannot think of it. It is the
idea, and the idea alone which possesses him, and because
it must be expressed, because he has need to express it, he
makes a great draft on his memory, on all his store of
knowledge and past experience, and all these he regulates
into service.

If later we find that there was an elegance in his expres-
sion, that there was brilliant technique, still he was not
aware of it at the time of its accomplishment. It is only
the sign of the success of his effort to recapture all his
knowledge and make it work for him at a time of great
need. He was not conscious of his gracefulness, for it was
only a result of the high state of order to which he had
raised himself.
''234 THE ART SPIRIT

A young girl may come into a room and with her thor-
oughly unconscious gesture bring animation and a sense
of youth, health and good will. It is a fine technique which
she employs, for all in the room receive her message and
she imparts without loss somewhat of her youth and spirit
to each one present. Her technique is handled as only a
master could handle it ; that is, without thinking of it. In
the activities of play she has made her body supple and it
readily responds to her emotion. Through gesture she has
a language that is so much her own that it is spontaneous.
She is young, she is healthy, and she looks on the world
with a wonderful good will and there is a need within her
to transform all environment to her own likeness. Her
whole body, her look, her color, her voice, all about her is in
service and is unconsciously ordered to express and spread
the influence of the song that is in her.

If, on the other hand, she is one of those terrible
creatures who must walk and talk with the airs of their
betters, ‘who must in some way pretend to be that which
they are not, we may see a very skilled technique, one filled
with a thousand clever tricks, but it is a self-conscious tech-
nique—one which is an end in itself. We often meet men
who wear a mask of great profundity who would be bored
to death in being profound.

A scientist is not a scientist in order to be a scientist.
He is what he is because he wants to know about life. The
scientist wants to know life—therefore the marvels
of mathematics.

The young girl wants to live in the happiness of her
state—therefore her buoyant gesture.
''THE ART SPIRIT 235

The artist wishes to declare the significances he finds
in nature—therefore the painter’s technique.

There can be no delight in considering a technique that
is without motive.

The simplest form is perhaps that of the juggler.
Whether he catches the balls in his hands or not, the balls
go up into the air, perform perfectly natural curves and
fall according to the laws of nature. Whether he catches
them or not what the balls do is equally beautiful. But the
motive is to catch the balls, and the marvel is in the mani-
festation and the achievement of the motive.

A line, or a form, or a color, therefore cannot be mean-
ingful in itself. It must have motive, and to have motive
it must be related to other lines, forms and colors. It must
have sequence and an end must be attained. If the end
is a simple one the sequences will be equally simple.
If the end is the revelation of a profound mystery of nature
the sequences must be equal to it, for the revelation is
written in every part of the construction.

If the technique of a master is marvelous, if it appears
that he has turned paint into magic—rendered the life,
the look, and all about an eye in a stroke or two—it is not
that he has a bag of tricks. It is that with a mighty
power of seeing the particular eye and an absolute need to
express it, he uses judgment and he taps all his store of
experience: the eye is not made in a stroke or two because
he wants to make it in a stroke or two. He does not care
how many or how few strokes it takes. The eye is what
he wants.

Later he may himself marvel at the simplicity of its
rendering, and other days; in the days of research, he may
''236 THE ART SPIRIT

set himself the task of doing an eye in a stroke or two and
work hard at it. It is likely that in such conscious effort
he will not come anywhere near equaling the aforesaid eye,
but what he will do and what he will think in this experience
will sink into him and will become part of that store which
must open up when again he is in the state of great need.

I count on seeing your new work when you come to
town, and I count on finding in it the likeness of the man I
know. The techniques which are beautiful are the inven-
tions of those who have the will to make intimate
human records.

Be a warhorse for work, and enjoy even the struggle
against defeat. Keep painting, it’s the best thing in the
world to do. Learn that there are different views and that
it is up to you to make your own judgments. See the value
in compositional work and don’t be a life-class hack. Don’t
believe that sitting in an art school and patiently patting
paint on canvases will eventually make you an artist.
There is more than that. If a new movement in art comes
along be awake to it, study it, but don’t belong to it. Have
a personal humor about things. You will never know your
calibre until you have tried yourself. Avoid idle industry.
Always leave out the padding. Be venturesome. Try new
things that appeal to you. Examine others. Have a
pioneer spirit. Prevent your drawing from being common.
Put life into it. The way to do this is to see the model, see
''THE ART SPIRIT 237

that the model is great, wonderful—a human creature
there before you in the tragedy and comedy of life—then
draw. Avoid mannerisms, your own and other people’s.
Preserve your originality by painting what is before you
as you see it, for things have a special look to you. Make
your pictures of big pieces rather than small ones.
Through the big pieces the statement can be made frankly
and fully. Get the easy naturalness of nature. Nature
is full of surprises. They happen equally in great and
small events, and are inevitable results. They are parts of
a sequence. Make your picture as full of surprises and
as easy as nature. Don’t ever stock your head so full of
“Jearning ” that there will be no room left for personal
thinking. Develop your power of seeing through the effort
and pleasure of seeing. Develop the power to express
through the effort and pleasure of expression.

Ways of Study

The school is not a place where students are fitted into
the groove of rule and regulation, but where personality
and originality of vision, is encouraged, and inventive
genius in the search for specific expression is stimulated.

The rea] study of technique is not the acquirement of a
vast stock of pat phrases, but rather the avoidance of
such, and the creation of a phrase special to the idea. To
accomplish this, one must first have the idea and then active
inventive wit to make the specifying phrase. This places
the idea prior to the technique as a cause for the latter,
contrary to the academic idea, which is the reverse,
''238 THE ART SPIRIT

I am saying this with reference to the “ hard grind”
and “ grammar ” ideas. Hard grind! I was in art schools
for three years before I really began the struggle with
mind and body to do something with my faculties other
than the sheer mechanical process of eye and steady hand
assisted by several judgment-saving tools such as plumb-
line and a stick with notches in it.

I know the “ hard grind” and the “ grammar ” study
both here and in Paris, and while I was in it I was regarded
as typical, for I was anxious, and I worked all day and
all evening.

From my own experience I know that “ mindless
drudgery ” would be a better name than “hard grind,”
and that “ idle industry ” would be equally descriptive of
such work.

There are at present, all over the world, art students
sitting meekly at their work copying external appearances
in whatever is the fashion of the school in which they work,
copying lines and tints of models of which they have no
idea, no understanding, for which they have no respect, no
enthusiasm, putting off to some future day that sensitive
appreciation, that grasping of significance, that announc-
ing of a special evidence of their own about the matter,
simply “ hard grinding!” Maybe the name is not so bad.
Like a mill stone! Learning technique! Technique of
what? For the expression of what? Studying construc-
tion? Construction of what? What a deception!

Those meek students, plodding away, afraid to use their
intelligence lest they make mistakes, have a faith that
after so much virtuous humble tint and line copying, years
of it, the gift of imagination, the power to say things the

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 239

world is in need of hearing for profit or pleasure and the
special management of the medium, will be handed to them
as a diploma is handed to a graduate.

The man who becomes a master starts out by being
master of such as he has, and the man who is master at any
time of such as he has is at that time straining every
faculty. What he learns then from his experience is funda-
mental, constructive, to the point. His wits are being used
and are being formed into the habit of usage.

He is working on his direct road. His “ grind ” is hard.
His brain as well as his body is taxed to the limit, but his
“hard grind” is not a dull grind. For he is grinding
something. He is studying grammar because he needs it,
and needing it he studies with greater wit, and knows it
when he finds it.

This “ going slow,” this “ hard grind,” this study of
“ grammar ” as understood in Julian’s Academy and in the
academies that have sprung from Julian’s is too easy.
There is not in it the “ hard grind ” that makes a man find
himself and invent special language for his _per-
sonal expression.

I am for drawing and for construction, for continued
and complete study, acquirement of firm foundation. But
the drawing I am interested in is the drawing that draws
something, the construction which constructs. And the
idea to be expressed must be at least worthy of the means.

I find nature “ as is ” a very wonderful romance and no
man-made concoctions have ever beaten it either in romance
or sweetness.
''240 THE ART SPIRIT

Everything depends on the attitude of the artist
toward his subject. It is the one great essential.

It is on this attitude of the artist toward his subject
that the real quality of the picture, its significance, and
the nature and distinction of its technique depends.

If your attitude is negligent, if you are not awake
to the possibilities you will not see them. Nature does
not reveal herself to the negligent.

As a matter of fact the most ordinary model is in
reality a fascinating mysterious manifestation of life and
is worthy of the greatest gifts anyone may have of appre-
ciation and expression.

It was the attitude of Velasquez toward his model
that got for him the look which so distinguishes
his portraits.

The people he painted were conscious of the humanity
and the respect of the man before them. They knew that
he could pierce masks and that he could appreciate
realities with unbounded sympathy. They undoubtedly
enjoyed posing for him, and while he painted they looked
at him—responded to his look—were frank with him, and
revealed without pomp or negation their full dignity as
human beings.

So, his king becomes a man for whom you have sym-
pathy, pity and respect.

In that studio the king and Velasquez met and in the
portrait that was painted we see eyes and gesture which
tell of an unusual contact. To Velasquez he responded,
and he was safe to take his true position—that of a man,
not good, not bad, not great, but conscious of the
futility of pomp; touched with sadness, possessed of a

 

:
4
''THE ART SPIRIT 241

certain innate dignity, and craving above all things just
that kind of human sympathy and respect which
Velasquez, with love and without fear, was capable
of giving.

Philip IV sat for many portraits to Velasquez, and it |
was probable that he did so because the contact meant
for him his greatest moments.

There is something in environment which affects all
men, causes them to live for a time in a surprising full-
ness, or, on the other hand, causes them to close up.

By a compelling impulse a man goes for a day in the
woods. Just why the impulse came to break his usual
habit he does not know clearly, rather wonders at it, but
there is some vague thought of freedom. He plunges into
the rough parts of the wood, climbs under and over. He
runs wild. He tears his clothes—but it does not matter.
The business of his progress is met with enthusiastic
energy and time passes as in a dream. And concurrent
with his action there is thought of a surprising fluid char-
acter. His attitude toward the life he has just stepped
out of has wholly changed. Intricacies untangle. He
sees people in new values. Bitter feelings have disap-
peared. He is over and above all petty grudges, envies or
fears. Something has happened. The spirit of the wood
has possessed him. He has got into rhythm. Surely
he is no longer in his usual plane of life. It is a day of
clear seeing.

Later, days later, in his office he cannot recall just
what it was that passed—just what that ecstasy of the
wood really meant, but he has a memory that he had seen

16
''242 THE ART SPIRIT

into his life, and had seen it from a different angle and in a
way that simplified many matters.

When the dwarfs posed for Velasquez they were no
longer laughing stock for the court, and we see in their
portraits a look of wisdom, human pathos and a balanc-
ing courage. Velasquez knew them as fellowmen with
hearts and minds and strange experiences. He knew them
as capable of sensitive approach. Even in the madman
it is the glimmer of human sensibility, a groping of a
puzzled heart, that makes the great moving force of
the picture.

Where others saw a pompous king, a funny clown, a
“misshapen body to laugh at, Velasquez saw deep into life
and love, and there was response in kind for his look.

If you paint children you must have no patronizing
attitude toward them. Whoever approaches a child
without humility, without wonderment and_ without
infinite respect, misses in his judgment of what is before
him, and loses an opportunity for a marvelous response.
Children are greater than the grown man. All grown
men have more experience, but only a very few retain the
greatness that was theirs before the system of compro-
mises began in their lives. I have never respected any
man more than I have some children. In the faces of
children I have seen a look of wisdom and of kindness
expressed with such ease and such certainty that I knew
it was the expression of a whole race. Later, that child
would grow into being a man or woman and fall, as most
of us do, into the business of little detail with only now
and then a glimmering remembrance of a lost power. A
rare few remain simple and hold on through life to their

 
''THE ART SPIRIT 243

universal kinship, wade through all detail and can still
look out on the painter with the simplicity of a child and
the wisdom of the race plus an individual experience.
These, however, are rare, but the potentiality exists in
practically all children. We will not see much of any of
this unless the quality of our attitude is equal to it. The
sky will be a dull thing to the dull appreciator, it will be
marvelous to the eye of a Constable. Still-life will be
dead, inert, to the eye that does not start it in motion.
To a Cézanne all its parts will live, they will interact and
sense each other.

All nature has powers of response. We have always
been conscious of it. Our idea that things are dead or
inert is a convention.

I am not particular how you take this, scientifically
or otherwise; my simple motive is to make such sug-
gestions as will bring strongly to mind the thought that
the student in the school or the artist in the studio must
be in a highly sensitive and receptive mood, that negli-
gence is not a characteristic of the artist, that he must
not bind himself with preconceived ideas, must keep him-
self free in the attitude of attention, for he can never be
greater than the thing before him—which is nature,
whatever else it is, and nature contains all mysteries.
'' 
''- ROBERT HENRI'S CRITICISMS AND CLASS TALKS

 
'' 
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R.

Arr is the giving by each man of his evidence to_the

world. "Those who wish to give, love to give, discover the
pleasure of giving. Those who give are tremen-
dously strong. ae :
“Be always looking for the thing you like and not afraid
of overstating it. We want the simple vision of one who
sees and enjoys. Suppose all people try to declare the
things they like.

Terrible to have an artist put into his portrait what he
does not like in the sitter. If we could only learn to see
while we are painting as we see when we enjoy things.

It won’t do to blunt and dull your sensitiveness.

Study to appreciate.

What we need is more sense of the wonder of life and
less of this business of making a picture.

Your painting is the marking of your progression into
nature, a sensation of something you see way beyond the
two pretty colors over there. Don’t stop to paint the
material, but push on to give the spirit. We do not enjoy
or admire the material in life, for we hate a miser or a
merely business man. So why should we draw like a miser?
Rather, we should work like a person who sees beyond the
material. When we look at anything, we see beyond the
objects we draw. We should draw with this spiritual sight.
Thus the measure of a painting is the conception of the
artist. The value of a work of art depends on the flight
the observer takes from it.

A sign makes us see no end of things. Painting is to a
great extent a thing of signs. Of the many forms on the

247
''248 THE ART SPIRIT

model there are very few that the greatest artist
need employ.

The cause of revolutions in art is, that, at times, feel-
ing drops out of the work and it must fight to get back
in again.

Those who express even a little of themselves never
become old-fashioned.

The only true modern movement is a frank expression
of self.

The artist should have a powerful will. He should be
powerfully possessed by one idea. He should be intoxi-
cated with the idea of the thing he wants to express. If
his will is not strong he will see all kinds of unessential
things. A picture should be the expression of the will of
the painter.

We have very little idea and sight of big things, but a
splendid idea of little ones. This is the reason the war
could occur. Such evil growths as its cause would other-
wise have been foreseen. People have not looked largely
at life, mainly because our education drowns us in detail.
We don’t see the why of it all. Even the superficial thing
is important if you can see way beyond it. This is true of
painting. Much can be said with a few elements if you can
see each in its place.

There is a joy in the pursuit of anything.

Life is finding yourself. It is a spirit development.

Drawing

A drawing should be a verdict on the model. Don’t
confuse a drawing with a map.

 
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. 249

Lines are results, do not draw them for themselves.

Your drawing should be an expression of your
spiritual sight.

You should draw not a line, but an inspired line.

Yours should be the drawing of strong intentions.

Every line should be the universe to you.

Every line should carry a thousand pounds.

A line expresses your pride, fear and hope.

A line that has come from a line. Lines give birth
to lines.

Drawing is not following a line on the model, it is
drawing your sense of the thing.

Reality is obtained not by imitation, but by producing
the sense of nature.

Has your drawing the meaning you saw in the model
at first?

Make a drawing flow, stopping sometimes, and
going on.

Yours should be the drawing of the human spirit
through the human form.

You will never draw the sense of a thing unless you are
feeling it at the time you work.

Search for the simple constructive forces, like the lines
of a suspension bridge.

Get the few main lines and see what lines they call out.

Some lines are as though they would like to run off
the canvas.

Keep a bad drawing until by study you have found
out why it is bad.

Work for continuity of line. Strength is gained
through culmination.
''250 THE ART SPIRIT

Have a motive in breaking a plane. Have purpose in
the places where lines stop.

Keep thinking of rhythm of line and of forms. Colors
should have rhythmic effect.

Count on big line to express your ideas.

Find and lose.

Find the big shape of the head. All the small bumps
are but variations under control of the big shape. This

is constructive drawing.

The act of receiving is as difficult a feat and as cre-

ative as the act of giving. Therefore help the observer by
making your painting simple. Straight—lines.and_clear
angles have definiteness of character. If you use them,
the observer knows when he is being led in a new direction,
while a wabbly line confuses him. It is surprising how
much variety or how many changes exist within a line, that
is, without destroying it. Work for the holding of a line.
If all points are painted with the same valuation only
monotony will result. You should drive the observer on to
a conclusion.

There is always a commanding and simple line around
each head. Learn to have a love for the big simple note.

If painting is painting, it is drawing. You do not stop
drawing when you begin to paint, for painting is drawing.

A study from the nude should be a study to compre-
hend the human body. When away from model draw from
memory. Draw also opposite or very different views from
what you had in the class.
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. 251

If you think of a school drawing while you work, your
drawing will look like one.

Originality can be halted but not stamped out or
taken away.

Let yourself free to be what you will be.

Clerk mathematician. Creative mathematician.

If you do not act on a suggestion at first, you grow
dull to its message.

Be yourself today, don’t. wait till tomorrow. He who
is master_of what he has today, will be master of what
he has tomorrow. Many things we know are true that we
have never made a part of us. An artist is a master at
the start, if he is ever going to be one. Masters are
people who use what they have.

Don’t demonstrate measure but demonstrate the results
you may get from the employment of measure. There is
geometry in all good expression.

In a canvas there are two orders working together, the
dynamic and static.

Things are at interesting intervals away from you, as
well as across the canvas.

Look for echoes. Sometimes the same shape or direc-
tion will echo through the picture.

A curve does not exist in its full power until contrasted
with a straight line.

a
''252 THE ART SPIRIT

Good to oppose straight line to action side of figure.

In making the variations within a curve do not destroy
the main movement of the curve.

It is mathematics that gives the imposing archi-
tectural structure.

It is through change that we get the laws of nature.

In this group get the beautiful relationship which
exists between these two children, that is, the rhythm of
their life.

The model is not to be copied, but to be realized. The
painting is the result of the effect of the model on the
artist. It is not the model we need but the vision. Thus
when a great artist, as Isadora Duncan, affects us, that is
when we realize her, we are great as well as she. Thus the
observer can be great as he looks at a picture; that is, to
the extent to which he sees it as wonderful. The greatness
of the picture as it hangs on the wall is up to the observer.

In your model are the essential materials out of which
to make a good composition. Enough is there to make
a Manet, had he seen it; or a Whistler, had he seen
it; but the idiot if he saw it would make a copy. He would
put each line as he saw it, for he does not see correlation.
Those who interpret the model, do not use the measures of
photography or of sheer skill.

The Greeks did far less on a piece of work than
Bouguereau. Still we do not feel that there is anything
more to be done on a Greek statue. What is needed is a
wonderful judgment in the handling of your materia!s.
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. 253

There has never been a painting that was more beauti-
ful than nature. The model does not unfold herself to
you, you must rise to her. She should be the inspiration
for your painting. No man has ever over-appreciated a
human being.

Get the distinction of the model.

In painting some people we select mass rather than
action, they are more like a static pond than a run-
ning brook.

A good model is one whose lines have meaning.

Sometimes the sparkle on a button may be vital to the
whole composition.

Look for the spirit line that runs through everything.

Let your painting show the vibration of breathing.

Take the pose of the model, yourself, then you can feel
the pull of the muscles. Make the legs as though they ran
right through the body.

Defend your sight of the model.

Think, are the energies of the model in your painting?

Demand of the model all your greatest ideas. See the
dignity of the model, see the man in him.

What you see is not what is over there, but what you
are capable of seeing. It is a creation of your own mind,
not the model. The model is dependent on your ‘idea of
her. Your canvas should be a thing created under the
influence of her.

Draw constructively from the model. Art is a mani-
festation of the constructive power. Construction is the
bearing or relation of one note on another, each note in its
relation to each and every other note.
''254 THE ART SPIRIT

The model is one thing, like one gesture. Each part
does not exist until all parts are. Each part is a step ina
progression. There is a power that things have when
organized. Finish is only good when it plays a part in the
whole, but it is, too often, only an attempt to cover
up faults.

Energy, vitality and unity are the essential things
about man. The strength of a wild horse lies in its unity.

Think of a mother’s love for her child while you paint
that subject, that is, think of the idea you want to give
while you are painting.

I must win my way in with a child. He lives in a world
he has made, and in it there is no tying down to literal
facts. Paint with respect for him. You can’t buy him.
He is the great possibility, the independent individual.
The child lives in his world. It is nothing to you, but it is
just as big as yours.

To a child all the different colors are a romance, and
romance is all that is true.

The tremendous activity of a boy sitting still.

There have been periods when the world has thought
much of human beings, we knew more about them then than
we do now.

It is not the way you put paint on, but what you ask
of it that counts.

Your style is the way you talk in paint.

That little covering up is what is generally called finish.

The thing that makes the artist is a gigantic indi-
vidual development.
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. 255

Is your painting in accord with the big scheme in
nature? Anyone who desires to make a thing in large,
simple terms is in a healthy state.

Self-education, only, produces expression of self.

Don’t ask for a criticism until you are sure you can’t
give it yourself. Then you will be in a fine state to
receive it.

You cannot impose education on anyone.

Few people ever mention that they have studied under
themselves. Their attitude in school is, “Here I am, a
student, a ball of putty, roll me.” Nobody in the land is
free, for they are all asking, “ What do people expect
of me?”

If I could see and really understand the essence of the
life that is right around me I could with even such tech-
nique as I now command make masterpieces.

By my teaching I hope to inspire you to personal
activity and to present your vision.

I am interested in the size of your intention. It is
better to overstate the important than to understate it.

In your painting think of the neck, head and body as
having a liking for each other. There is a love of the hand
for the head. No cold lack of sympathy between the parts
of a human being, but a beautiful fellowship exists. The
parts are joyous in their play together, and an absolute
''256 THE ART SPIRIT

confidence exists between them. There should be the same
loving harmony between the face, the drapery, ornaments,
and in the very air which surrounds, for in your portrait
all these things have become part of the person.

The head.

Regard the head as a gesture.

Think,—how does the head come out of the body?

Some people’s features are strongly cut.

Look upon the head as a Greek bust. It may help you
to see the beauties of the head before you.

Sometimes the features shape the face, other times they
are contained within the face. The features of a Chinese
rarely destroy the dominance of the face.

If you wish, concentrate on a single feature (as, build
all toward one eye) make all lines lead toward that eye.

Interest generally begins with the eyes, with the mouth
or the gesture of the nose.

Often the rise of the forehead is as though it were a
surprise. A beautiful nobility of light up there.

Better have eyebrows too long and mouth too big than
the opposite.

Get a large and simple appreciation of the head.

Make the head a solid in a swim of atmosphere.

Keep your masses distinct, do not merge them
to softness. But note also that decided things are on the
verge of crudeness and may go over.

Never use a highlight unless you have to. Use it only
when it will be of great service. The same is true of
reflected lights, and even of half-tones.
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. Q57

In painting a flower aim for its strength. Strength
in delicacy.

Five minutes’ consideration of the model is more
important than hours of haphazard work.

If you get stuck with your painting, make a sketch of
the model in another medium. It will give you a fresh eye.

Hair and beard. The hair is wonderful in its gamut
from materialism to idealism, from detail to bigness.

It is so free and still so certain.

In hair there should be places of silence. These are of
great value.

You may use her hair, in contrast, to make the cool dis-
tinction of her face. The beauty of one is necessary to
the other. The hair helps to make the face, the face helps
to make the hair.

The line of the head between the hair and the face is
often a great opportunity for expression in a picture.

Ask yourself, what is your concept of the hair. How
get its activity?

Let the hair flow amply over the head. It goes back
into richness.

First see that it gives the shape of the head, then get
its own gesture.

Notice the way the hair dresses the head, how it reaches
out and possesses the background.

Black hair may be painted over a warm—sienna—

17
''258 THE ART SPIRIT

undertone, and at its edge against the flesh there is often a
stronger red. Paint this red to be felt—not seen.

There is very little white paint about white hair.

There is a wonderful fancifulness in the old man’s long
gray hair.

Look for the occurrence of beautiful measures in the
hair. Things are beautiful because they are related. The

_ beauty lies in relationships.

Have elasticity in the hair.

The skull should be firm under the hair.

Often the hair produces the idea of action, will.

A white beard is nearer the color of the face than one
would think. Sometimes it is but a few accents that make
the difference.

All faces have a direction of their own, some point in,
some point out. Concert the lines to express them.

A passage of gesture over the face.

Drive for the activity of mind through the features.

There may be many colors and shapes in a forehead,
but it should look like one thing, a forehead. This
is simplicity.

See the clock! Its great, big, blond, full face is not
spoiled by the hands, as the face of your painting is by the
features. Handle the majesty of the human face without
destroying it with the features.

An eye is an expression.

Think of the eyelid and the lip together. They
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. 259

are different features but they concert to express the
same emotion.

The eye of a young person is clear cut, of an old per-
son indefinite.

Generally there is a richer color around the eye.

Remember the shadow from the upper lid on the eyeball.

The light in the corner of the eye, near the nose, helps
to model the socket.

The white of an eye deceives almost everyone. It is
much less white than you think it, nor is it so cold. It is
nearer the color of the flesh. Often a slight variation
makes it.

The eyebrows are important. They have great mean-
ing. They are never without important action, and they
may have a multiplicity of gestures.

The eyebrows should be the master constructors of
the forehead.

Be certain of them, their place, direction, length,
beginning, variation and end. Then draw with this
understanding.

What use will you make of the eyebrow?

Remember the importance of the cheekbone.

Feel the sweep back under the eyebrow.

Feel sense of quick movement.

The direction of the nose may decide the way the hair
shall go.

The painting of a nose is the painting of an expression.

Think of the nose as dominating and giving direction,
It is like a chieftain advancing.
''260 THE ART SPIRIT

Work for the shape of the end of the nose. Do not
forget its whole shape in attention to the details of
the nostrils.

You need not elaborate both sides of the nose. In all
cases one side dominates the other. If the two sides are
made equally important the observer does not know which
to look at and jumps from one to the other satisfied
with neither.

Paint the nostrils as just going to expand.

Square the nose, angularize.

The end of the nose is not light, only the highlight on
it is bright.

The neck is often very expressive of the character of
the person.

Get the mellowness and glow of the neck. You must
sensitize paint and color.

Paint the neck, not only the shadow on the neck.

The neck rises from the action of the body.

There is imagination in the neck. The forms should
have life and action.

The body projects the neck and the neck projects the
head. The neck holds the head. Vital force articulates
the picture.

A pair of lips is not enough to make a mouth. The
chin must be active, not soft, mushy, or mixed up in shadow.

The lips are a culmination. It takes all the lower part
of the face to make a mouth.

A gesture that embraces space.
Every picture should have one big controlling ae
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. 261

Things should all be moving toward the expression of a
great idea.

Certain animals have developed into a grandeur of
gesture.

In painting a group of three women do not let interest
in the individuals spoil the dominant gesture of the
whole group.

Better to give the gesture than the outline of the arm.

Jump, and all becomes the spirit of that jump.

We watch dancing because there we can see the essen-
tial. We find in it the significant, wonderful line. It takes
a mighty little to do a lot.

The background has as much to do with the likeness
as anything else. It should be evoked by the figure. It is
the sensation of all space around the girl. The back-
ground should be sensitive to the head, and the chair seem
to strengthen itself to hold the body.

This drawing is good because the woman grips the
chair, she has weight. The legs of the chair support her,
they meet the floor. There is a sense of touch. The artist
should not copy the chair but be filled with the thought of
its function. If only a small part shows, never paint this
small part as a bit of a chair, but transform it, that is,
paint it in its relation to the head. There should be
something of the model all the way through. Paint her
fan in its relation to her head.

Paint even the rungs of the model’s chair so a poem
could be written about them.
''262 THE ART SPIRIT

Remember that your model is not against space but in
it. What is real to us and what we enjoy is the space, not
the walls of a room.

A background is that thing sensed around and back of
the model.

A background is good in color and form when it is so
certainly there that you do not think of it.

A poor background is sometimes thin, purely theatri-
cal, a mere drop curtain. It could be taken away.

The face should radiate its activity and color out into
the background.

* Don’t let the background smother the figure.

When you paint the background don’t look back of
the model to see it.

The space this woman occupies is very handsome.
Realize the dignity of space.

Some people need a big space back of them. Some heads
call for a big space, some others for a small one.

Be interested in the containing power of the wall.

Sometimes it is easier to draw the spaces left around
the model than actually to draw the model. Study the
Greek compositions done in relief on the Parthenon to get
the value of this.

Silk conducts the eye rapidly.

Some colors seem slow, others represent speed.

A purple thing may be painted without mixing the con-
stituents, red and blue, but these colors, red and blue, may
be so applied as to create a purple sensation in the eye and
at the same time give a richer modeling than possible with
the flat purple. The red forward and the blue receding.
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. 263

The importance of the garment as a garment is neg-
ligible in the presence of life.

Furniture and clothes are the escape of the bad artist.

Eradicate no end of lines and values, so that the clothes
become sensations of clothes with big gestures in them.

In life we eradicate much to see beauty.

Everything on the canvas, hair, coat, background and
chair should help express your idea of the man’s character.

Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model.
A student is one who struggles with himself, struggles
for order.

Make the forms of a garment so that a trip through
its hills and dales will be delightful.

When you start a painting, think: why is the model
interesting, why strong? How shall I use this necktie, his
hair, these things, to express him?

How does this tie make for energy, accent or
character?

Paint not the material but the spirit of the necktie, that
is, its relation to life, thought, breathing of the model.

Tie (here bright orange). Think of an engine coming
—cumulative effect.

A necktie is like a cork floating down a river, it is
itself last.

To make body exist under the dress, make the lines in
''264 THE ART SPIRIT

the man’s shirt continue those in the neck. Think of the
man while you draw his clothes.

The shoulder straps of that dress draw the shape of the
upper part of her body.

The beads of a chain had better not be counted. Think
of it as a series of influences. The chain around a woman’s
neck is a live thing.

In the line of the collar over the shoulders give the
graciousness of the young woman.

Paint the hat as a complement to the head.

Give her quality to the dress, as gentle as she is. The
way a bit of white looks on an old woman. It is different
from the way it looks on anybody else.

Give the cuffs and muff the energy of the hand.

Something of savagery and untamed life is indicated
by the jewel in the ear.

The flesh pulsates. In reality it is never very brilliant,
still it has the effect of being the most brilliant thing you
see. You can’t quite touch it as you can the earring.

A drag in a dress suggests a past action. Good with
long skirt to have model walk and thus trace the action.
All, instead of being limp, should be carrying out the
theme. Clothes should have not limpness but the beauty
of activity. Great things should be happening, currents
should be running through.

Think, what have you to say about that red dress and
white color?

Remember that the angle of light should catch down
the whole figure. It is deflected in its course by the acci-
dents of form, but it is continuous.

Avoid monotony among the lights.
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. 265

The white of a collar may be an excellent compositional
note in the color of a canvas, and it should be an aid
to solidity.

Think of the coat as a great opposition to the head.

Better paint the gesture of the hand than the hand.

The belt around the waist should be an expression of
the living, breathing body.

The wrinkles of a child’s dress are full of the history
of the day. The little child spoils the clean dress and
makes it. The clothes have become part of the child.

The necklaces on a papoose are the signs of the bounti-
ful in the savage.

Paint that over there as though the shawl itself were
alive. Put a certain expression in the shawl. Try to give
the sensation of the activity of her shoulders, the life of
her. The shawl should tell of its excursion around her
neck and over her shoulders.

Paint her clothes, laughing, brave.

Force a sense of life and sense of volume.

Don’t look the shadows out of the face. If you look at
any shadow long enough, it tends to grow light. There-
fore keep your eye focussed on the lights or on the expres-
sion, never on the shadows or background. Better have
shadows black and simple than weak.

Nothing should be negative or trying to get away,
brush strokes irresolute, words you did not mean.

Positiveness makes for good art. Don’t work flatly,
softly, roundly and negatively.

All concession is lying.
''266 THE ART SPIRIT

You will never get form till you want it. And wanting
to want it is not wanting it.

There are forms that can only be seen when you are
near a canvas, others only appear when you are far away.
To paint is to know how to put nothing on a canvas, and
have it look like something when you stand back.

Think of solidity as you work.

Think of values as giving form, not as spots of light
and dark.

Do not ask, “ Where is?” but “ Where do I need the
lights to make the beard, etc?”

Dark and light to produce form not dark because there
is dark and light on the model.

Be sure not to model the knuckles and small incidents
so carefully that you forget the general big planes. This
fault causes lack of solidity.

Hardness and thinness of edge make for flatness.

Draw for solid as well as plane geometrical forms.

Be careful to go not nearly around, but rather, all the
way around the head.

Lack of solidity is sometimes due to little lights all over.

Angle of light, find and trace.

Nothing would be more horrible to you than the elim-
ination of form in real life.

Put parts nearer to you or further away, as you work.
Reach way back to the background and then forward
until it envelops the figure. Use forceful projection.
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. 267

When painting a laughing head the idea of continued
motion should be impressed on the observer. The picture
should only start the observer, should make him think he
sees more than is on the canvas. To do this, the painter
takes all the factors of the canvas and sets them in motion.
He must create a rhythm of movement through all.

A laughing head should be organic; that is, all related.
An organism has order.

Idea of face all bound together and tight as a clasped
hand, idea of pressure. A laughing mouth is stretched, the
chin projects, nose and upper lip shortened, the nostrils
spread, and eyes squeezed with ends lifted. The spirit of
laughter lights up a room. It spreads out over the whole
canvas. The body should be laughing as well as the face.
The laughter should pass from the beginning of the hair
to the ends of it. In the picture of a laughing boy, the
laughter should be continued in the hair, carrying out the
lines of the features, and a chatter should be in the back-
ground. The whole canvas should be like a laughing per-
son coming into a room.

After laughter one should feel full, not empty, as one
feels after fireworks.

A ripple runs around and picks up the chin. When he
laughs a whole new set of forms begin.

Learn giving and receiving in giving.

That which is worth while in a landscape is the expres-
sion of human emotion in it.
''268 THE ART SPIRIT

The sympathetic painting of a still-life has more
humanity in it than a head, unsympathetically painted.

I would rather see a wonderful little child than the
Grand Canyon.

Paint mountains as they are when they look wonderful
to you, when they seem to move and have a life of their own.
Try to discover what it is you see when they look so won-
derful. The thrilling glimpse from a train window may
dissolve into mere materialism when you go back and coldly
look at the subject. Mountains are great living things
under the sky. Sometimes a mountain lies there in the
atmosphere. The atmosphere comes down and envelops it.

Grasp the big things outdoors. The immense power of
the sea, the rock standing there. We do not think of rock,
but of resistance.

The romance of snow-filled atmosphere and the grim-
ness of a house.

Render the waterfall not merely as a waterfall, but use
the waterfall as an expression of life.

The old house sits down. At first a new house is an
interloper, after a while the landscape takes it in. The
houses become all of a family, related, and all the neigh-
borhood grows old together. People’s houses get to look
like them. There is more in a house than the materials it
is made of. Humanize the houses.

Get one form that looks like the tree rather than little
pickings at the branches. Give the tree its gesture. Some
trees are heavy, ample and full.

ee
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. 269

In a tree there is a spirit of life, a spirit of growth and
a spirit of holding its head up.

Get the music that exists in the play of light over the
houses in the landscape.

A mountain seen in the haze of distance must neverthe-
less look a solid heavy mountain.

Evening has a powerful light.

Be sensitive to just a common stick leaning against
the wall.

The very sense of love was in the approach of part
to part.

This is extremely beautiful, it is like a thought.

In his pictures there is the supreme line.

Everybody who has any respect for painting, feels
scared when he starts a new canvas.

A person who has never been afraid has no imagination.

There are ‘

‘colorist ” pictures which have color as
agents of construction, and there are others which riot like

a ribbon counter.

Brilliancy is going toward color, not toward white.

Cumulation is stronger than contrast. Cumula-
tive color.

Yellow makes things come forward, purple makes them
go back. Model with oppositions of cold and warm side
of palette.

Black is a very difficult color. Don’t get an over-
balance of it. : .

Black or gray, when opposed to warm colors tend
to look cool and opposite. That is, with purple they
''270 THE ART SPIRIT

tend to look yellow, but when with yellow the black or gray
seem purple.

Study the effect of juxtapositions of pure colors
with neutrals.

Vitalizing of color, by having it play within its note a
warm, a medium and a cool vibration, is very good and you
may develop it to advantage in all your color. This is easily
overdone, and sometimes becomes an obvious mannerism.

Work for simplicity of color.

Don’t see the colors too much by themselves.

There is a golden mean in color, a spectral relation.

People who have sense of color have sense of texture.
Color may be expressed through texture.

There are fashions of painting, such as painting dark,
painting light, and using a hundred colors to the
square inch.

At times you may produce the effect of a change of
color by only a change of texture.

A color mysteriously true.

Color is only beautiful when it means something. It is
never good of itself. It must be the expression of some
life value.

Color represents the deeper strain in human life.

There can be no fine color without good form.

Form should carry you along by its beautiful measures.
Think of form as an agent. Also there are measures of
color as they advance and as they recede.

There are: many colors and they are all moving,
moving.
Color should flow over the face,
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. Q71

Color and warmth are coming into our lives.

A big simple space is often a good complement

to activity.

A very dark picture is likely to look well in a white
frame. See the dark pictures in Petit Trianon, Versailles,
set into panels of white rooms. A very light picture may
look well in a black frame. Gold in good tone is generally
safe, but every picture has its best setting.

The frame should be an agreeable complement to the
picture. A picture made with dull colors should not be
in a dull frame; most certainly not if there is also a similar
tone in the frame to that of the picture. When a wall is
beautifully complementary to the picture in color and
texture only a very slight border is necessary as a frame to
stop the picture. The border and the wall combine to make
the setting.

‘ When we have acquired good taste most of the frames
now made will go to the furnace.

A picture has its definite areas, they should not wander
out into the frame. The frame should show that the pic-
ture has stopped at its edges.

Do whatever you do intensely.
The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes
pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.
''272 THE ART SPIRIT

The signature on a picture should be modest, should
be readable and simple and should enter into, not inter-
rupt, the composition.

The strong make-up of the human body is beauty and
refinement. ‘The human body is terrific. Beauty is a ter-
rific thing, as great as structure. Very few life-studies
are strong enough to live.

If you work from memory, you are most likely to put
in your real feeling.

The nude is exquisite, the most beautiful thing in all
the world.

Don’t let your figure look as though it had been ironed.

Feel the energy of the man. The shoulders have
thickness.

Description of a nude. See the welling of one color into
another, the mellowness and glow, the fire. She is gracious,
organic. There is a wonderful melting of red in the flesh
of her body.

A gleam of light plays over the body of the model. The
painting of the gleam depends more on change of color
than on white.

Paint the look of the body, the sensitiveness, the full,
tight leg. Her head is a delicate rose color seen in shade.

Purple over there is the sensation of purple rather than
the color purple. Don’t think of them as paints, but get
the quality of light.

Give the sensation of motion by distinctly showing in
your work which parts of the body are movable and
which not. Study to know which are which. Remember
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. 273

that the head of man is a solid structure. It refuses to
be twisted and cannot be bent up. The neck is a more
loosely jointed thing. Then come the fixed structural
bones of the chest. The waist again is movable and pliable,
but is followed by the structural and bony place at the
hips, then to the knee. The whole body consists of flexible
parts, inflexible parts. It is at the flexible places named
that the bend or twist actually occurs, but one is made to
feel the continuity of movement throughout.

Study muscles so that you know the nature of what you
use. Where each comes from, and goes to, and its part of
the action in hand.

Anatomy is a tool like good brushes.

Caught by facts, caught by facts of anatomy.

When in trouble drawing a nude, look for the straight
line. It may straighten you out.

A hand is more important as a hand than it is as a
series of fingers. You can’t see all the fingers of a hand
at once.

The overlay and interplay of muscles is like the run-
ning of a brook.

Feel the grip of the muscles on the heel.

Study that seeming magical effect of one line on
another.

A human body in a work of art may have normal color
and normal shape. The Greeks did it, they did not distort.

A great painter will know a great deal about how he
did it, but still he will say, “ How did I do it?”
The real artist’s work is a surprise to himself.
18
''274 THE ART SPIRIT

The big painter is one who has something to say. He
thus does not paint men, landscape or furniture, but
an idea,

There is a spirit of youth in the way these flowers are
painted. They are presented as youth sees growing things,
strong, courageous and sympathetic.

In looking at the work of another, try to enter into
his vision.

First look for the beauties in a painting. If I see any-
thing beautiful in my own work, that is what I am
interested in.

Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture.

A worker or painter should enjoy his work, else the
“*observer will not enjoy it. It is not good to wear lace
that was a drudgery to someone to make. The lace, as
well as the picture, should be made in joy.
His works are full of the beauty of his enthusiastic
interest in life.
All real works of art look as though they were done

in joy.

Low art is just telling things; as, there is the night.
High art gives the feel of the night. The latter is nearer
reality although the former is a copy. A painter should
be interested not in the incident but in the essence of
his subject.
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. Q75

Here is an emotional landscape. It is like something
thought, something remembered.

Reveal the spirit you have about the thing, not the
materials you are going to paint. Reality does not exist
in material things. Rather paint the flying spirit of the
bird than its feathers.

The coming into the presence of a piece of art you
truly love causes a tremendous revolution to occur in you.

Whistler. In this painting by Whistler we get the
sensation of the silence of velvet. From this there is a
change to its contrast—-harder and more visible materials.
We are held a moment and are deflected to areas where we
seem to pass through air. We come to the figure. Every
step we have taken in our approach is a preparation for
the ecstasy of human flesh.

The White Girl looks like the finest nature of Whistler.
It shows the heart and vision of Whistler. The hands are
not finished because he knew he could not do them in the
same spirit he had while painting the rest, and he could not
descend to common manufacture. The frailty and delicacy
of her dress are opposed to the solidity and strength of
her. It is a fantasy, it is a spiritual expression. We do
not have to stop and examine each part. Notice the sen-
sation of the melting of the arm into the dress.

Whistler’s sensitive nature influences every touch of

his brush,
''276 THE ART SPIRIT

Rembrandt. His drawing is made with the might of an
age of study.

His lines are filled with a great man’s sense of life.
Every touch on the canvas is laden with his interpretation
of life. His drawing gives the essence of his character. His
greatness lies in his intense feeling for his subjects.

Each line of his drawing was the inevitable thing.

The greatness lies in the way he managed the lines to
suit his state of mind.

Rembrandt was comfortably on earth.

Each line comes from within the model. It is as though
the brush stroke had come out of the life-blood of the
model. ‘The deeper you penetrate below the surface, the
better you will see the surface.

- The drawings of Rembrandt are full of color. In them
he tells us not only what he was able to do with paint, but
what he would like to have done.

El Greco. His work is an illustration of what a compo-
sition should be, that is, he puts together forces and makes
of these forces a great unit. Continuity is carried through
the canvas with a positive control, a codrdination. His
work overlays and interplays like a brook. The rising
movement in it is like a flame, and he makes much of the
movement of light.

Every touch you put down is part of a construction.
All that is not related to the basic idea is destructive to the
canvas. ‘The laws of composition should be those of
growth. The work should have the spirit of growth in it.
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. Q77

The artist must put in the force and power he sees in
nature. He must see such elements as will build. Begin
the flush on her face from the corner of the canvas. That
is composition. ‘Then a strength will go through the
canvas. A good composition is thus an expression of will.
Get the idea of progression. The artist uses the principle
of nature. Growth equals beauty. All structure is built
up by variety. That is, variety is one of the factors in
construction.

Take care that your compositions are an expression of
your individuality. See things not as they are, but as
you see them.

The lines of the model are factors of composition.
Lines change as you are your greater or smaller self. You
are using the line for a deeper impression. Try to see the
terms of the reality, and not the terms of the surface. A
child sees the reality beyond surface or fact, but later in
an art school he is taught to see the lines on the surface.
Get over this thing of copying the surface. You must not
see your subject, but through it.

We should not need to have a picture full of things.
The Japanese can appreciate a simple proportion, but we
are bred on excitement and thus do not appreciate a
Japanese house. Most of our life in New York is directly
opposed to their principle of simplicity.

Good composition is like a suspension bridge, each line
adds strength and takes none away. Thus a work of art is
finished from the beginning, as Whistler has said. If there
are only ten lines, then they are the ten lines which com-
prehend the most. Composition is the freedom of a thing
''278 THE ART SPIRIT

to be its greatest best by being in its right place in the
organization. It is a just sense of the relation of things.

Making lines run into each other is not composition.
There must be motive for the connection.

Get the art of controlling the observer, that is
composition.

Be sure you are composing to express yourself, not
composing to compose.

The observer should be carried through a canvas, each
part should be tied up with another part.

Do not let space in a canvas seem empty of purpose.

Decoration is not the flattening out of objects, it

is construction.

Cézanne. He had a great vision and it was beyond
him. In his effort to give his idea, he correlated things
never before correlated. Therefore he was a great artist.

His work shows part of a universal existence.

Some sculpture is warm, some forever cold.
All through the works of Goya there are Chinese
characteristics.

Archaic work. It is constructed mainly with over-
values. Reveals the inner life.
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. 279

Corot. The quality of mind that makes you paint as
you do is what counts. In this Corot was great. His
color and form identify the nobility of his nature.

Manet. Notice the meaning of every change.

Winslow Homer. Had such a sense of proportion that
his work would hold a business man straight.

He gives the integrity of the oncoming wave.

The big strong thing can only be the result of big
strong seeing.

Titian. What majesty ina Titian! He was one of the
greatest masters of composition. His work has large and
beautiful masses and lines which move in correlation.

Drawings. Study Daumier’s drawings.
Rodin gives us all the greatness he could find in
the model.

The Japanese weigh their proportions.

Hogarth. The head of fish girl. It is like the wind
that blows.
''280 THE ART SPIRIT

The old masters were not so nervous as we are, that
is why they could hold on better to the big masses.

The real people make the vision of youth come true.

Velasquez. Everybody he painted had dignity, from
a clown to a king. In the Infanta Margarita he united
the look of a child with that of a queen. He drew greatness
out of his models. Velasquez was a man in love with
humanity. He had the utmost respect for the king, the
beggar and the dwarf.

He must have felt and willed all that he did.

He did not have to deviate from nature for he could
see the beautiful in nature.

He painted with easy large movements, and his work
has great finish combined with great looseness. His forms
make beautiful rhythm.

A silver light runs through his work. There is a violet
note in the Spanish face.

His foreheads. Gave much human sensitiveness to
them. Put there a certain thickness and knotted force.
Built architecturally. An energy in the forehead. Did
not neglect the shape of the crown even if covered by hair.
He models the skull by the shape of the hair and eyebrows.

Certain of his pictures have climax in the eyes. He was
interested in the vital life of an eye. Made it simple.
Depth of eyes. Uplift of eyebrows. The cheek as though
described with fine phrases. A whole series of events that
''CLASS NOTES TAKEN BY M. R. 281

gives you the romance of the hair. Divides it at inter-
esting intervals.

He gives the great movements of form, and the move-
ments of color as they surge one against another.

Feel the dignity of a child. Do not feel superior to
him, for you are not.

A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle.

The paintings of such masters as Titian, Velasquez and
Whistler are like great documents hurled down. Each is
a great decision. ‘They are records of the thought and
struggle of the artist. The picture stands as a record of
how much and how little the artist knew, as rough as he
was and as capable as he was. The mistakes left in a
drawing are the record of the artist’s struggle.

In great art there is no beginning and end in point
of time. All time is comprehended.
'' 
'' 

INDEX

A

Academie Julian, 101, 239

Action, 105, 111

Address to students, School of
Design, Phila. (1901), 73

Age and beauty, 120

Age attained by artists, 160

Anatomy, 203, 204, 255, 273

Angle of light, 264, 266

Antique (casts), work from, 75

Appreciation, 60, 78, 95, 98, 115,

124, 185, 194, 198, 202, 220,
240, 274, 275

of the model, 240
differing appreciations, 202

Archaic works, 278

Arm, 203

Art a gypsy, 232

Art, the adventure of, 219

Art in America, 190

Art, attitude toward, 229

Art, the beautiful, 183

Art and brains, 45

Art, commercial, 158

Art and the Community,
129, 219

Art, the art country, 133

Art defined, 49, 61, a 230, 247,
281 re

Art, effect of, 42, "82, 115, 178, 198

Art of the future, 43, 82

Art and government, 190

Art in relation to happiness, 231

Art juries and judgments, 8, 230

Art a language, 82

Art life, the, 232

Art and life, 129, 201, 223

Art of living, 43

Art and making a living, 158, 178

Art and mathematics, 46

Art Museums, 5, 191, 192, 218,
220

Art, pay for, 232

Art, the principles of, 5

114,

Art, the province of everyone, 5,
129, 229

Art School, the
should have, 101

Art school, the life centre of a
city, 102

Art and science, 45, 158, 170

Art work and health, 131

Artist, his associations, 79, 101

Artist, attitude toward his sub-
ject, 240

Artist, character of, 5, 6, 10, 72,
78, 79, 80, 86, 88, 89, 97, 100,
101, 114, 116, 122, 123, 134, 135,
140, 145, 175, 180, 192, 213, 214,
215, 224, 254, 271, 274, 279, 281

Artist, development of, 97

Artist, his digressions, 112

Artist, the enthusiast, 99

Artist, the artist in everyone, 5

Artist, habits of, 214

Artist, his honors, 218

Artist, his humanity, 89, 91

Artist, his interest in human
forms, 108

Artist, knowing his best work, 78

Artist, the modern, 57

Artist, his state at the moment of
doing his work, 7

Artist, struggle of the, 161

Artist, character of his study, 100

Artist, the superficial type, 90

Artist, his work, 9, 112

Attitude of the artist toward his -
subject, 240

character it

B

Baby, painting of a, 137

Background, 30, 50, 131, 205, 261,
262

Backgrounds, dark, 50

Backgrounds, general discussion
of, 30

Ball of putty, a, 255

283
''284

Balzac, 104

Barber, the technical arrange-
ments of 214

Basic order, 178

Beauty, 136

Beauty defined, 72, 74

Beauty, love of, 211

Beauty, sheer, 108

Beethoven, 151, 155

Beginning a picture or study, 12,
22, 152, 269

Black and gray, 269

Black as a neutralizer of color,
54

Black and white modeling, 55

Black and white values, 40

Blackstone, 90

Boats, concept of, 84

Bohemia, 120, 140

Books, 10, 113, 188, 215

Bouguereau, 183, 230, 252

Boy, a, 49

Brains and art, 45

Bravura, 133

Breadth, 232

Brilliancy, 269

Brotherhood, 9, 113, 151

Brown eyed girl with cat, 204

Brush stroke, general discussion
of, 62

Brushes, 68, 69, 213

Burne-Jones, 79

By-product, art a, 159

C

Carpenter, the, 179

Cathedral, in a, 155

Cézanne, 91, 92, 108, 194, 230, 243,
278

Character, 91, 263

Chardin, 77

Chair, painting of a, 261

Change, the time for, 206

Child, 268
dress of, 265
dignity of, 281

Children, 147, 159, 170, 181, 186,
215, 242, 254, 265, 268, 281

Children, art by, 159

INDEX

Children with balloons, sketch of,
181

Children at circus, 215

Children painted by Renoir, 186

Children, teaching the, 170

Chinese American, 147

Chinese art, 222

Chinese art, Goya’s likeness to,
278

Chinese art, measures in, 47

Chinese art, Sung period, draw-
ing, 48, 66

Chinese, solidity in drawings, 164

Choice of the past or the future,
211

Chords of textures, 164

City life, painting of, 222

Civilization, our, 145

Class, the, 153

Clothes, 16, 41, 70, 84, 204, 263,
264, 265

Clothes, of a child, 265

Clothes, concept of, 84

Clothes and furniture in por-
traits, 263

Coat, 265

- Cobbler, stick to your last, 111

Collar, 41, 264, 265

Collector of pictures, 139

Collectors in relation to their
time, 129

Color, 29, 34, 40, 49, 50, 51, 52,
58, 54, 55, 57, 58, 92, 135, 169,
262, 269, 270

Color areas, 58

Color in background, 34

Color, books on, 58

Color, broken color, 50

Color, brushes and palette, 51

Color for color sake, 51, 135

Color, concept of, 50, 169

Color contrasts, 58

Color, general discussion of, 49

Color, effects of brilliancy, 50

Color, excessive hatching of, 40

Color experiments, 52, 58

Color and light, 51

Color masses, 50

Color modeling, 55

Colors of the palette, 29
''INDEX

Color, pigment and light, 53

Color, pure and grave, use of, 57-

Color, painting a purple drapery,
262

Color in sketches, 92

Color, sunlight, 51

Color, the super color, 50

Color values, 40

Color, variety in, 49-60

Color, a true yellow, 54

Commercial art, 158

Commercial world, the, 178

Community interest in art, 219

Composition, 10, 13, 20, 23, 93,
128, 155, 174, 182, 187, 195, 196,
271, 276, 277

Composition and life class, 195

Concentration, 76

Concept, 10, 17, 20, 23, 24, 32, 36,
37, 38, 41, 56, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77,
78, 82, 84, 88, 91, 104, 112, 115,
117, 124, 125, 127, 128, 131, 188,
135, 157, 167, 168, 169, 175, 177,
185, 186, 192, 196, 197, 199, 238,
240, 247, 248, 253, 275, 279

Concept, adherence to, 75, 76

Concept of color, 169

Concepts, differing, 32, 36, 56, 74,
167

Concept of houses, walls, win-
dows, 38

Concept of landscape, 115

Concept of life, 88

Concept of lines and forms, 157

Concept, marine, 279

Concept of the model, 157, 253

Concept, Mary Rogers, 37

Concept, spiritual vs. material,
275

Concept of still life, 77
Concept and technique, 233
Concept, Whistler’s, 275
Concept of the whole, 104
Concept of women’s dress, trees,
boats, 84
Constable, John, 243
Construction, 10, 43, 94, 156, 186,
224, 230, 239, 249, 276
Contemplation, 7, 105, 161, 225,
227, 257

285

Continuity, 211

/ Copying, 43, 79, 103, 252

Corot, 79, 208, 279

Courbet, 8

Coyotes, the how] of, 25

Critical ability, 85

Critical attitude
work, 98

Critical judgment, 193

Critical misrepresentation, 91

Criticise yourself, 255

Cuffs, 264

Cumulation, 250

Curve, 251

toward your

D

Dancer, drapery and gesture of,
42

Daumier, 184, 185, 279

Decoration, 278

Degas, 79

Deserving young artists, 137

Dimensions, other than the usual,
47, 109

Distortion, 85

Domination of the world, 161

Drapery, 41, 70, 204, 210

Drapery of a dancer, 41

Drapery, silk, cloth, velvet, 70

Drawing, 75, 83, 94, 105-111, 122,
156, 164, 195, 196, 209, 211, 239,
248, 249, 251, 253, 262, 272

Drawing from cast and living
model, 75

Drawing, constructive, 94

Drawing, Goya’s, 209

Drawing, map, 211

Drawing, motive in, 249

Drawing the nude, 272

Drawing, solidity in
drawings, 164

Dress of a child, 265

Dress, fall of a, 210

Dress, movement of, 264

Duncan, Isadora, 47, 200, 252

Chinese

E

, Eakins, Thomas, 86, 125
Echoes, 34

Economy, 151, 206
''286

Education, 85, 118, 123, 170, 188,
201, 215, 217, 248, 255

Education, self, 118, 123, 188, 215,
217, 255

Energy in painting, 205

Enthusiasm, 99

Environment, 32

Environment, effects of, 241

Evening, 269

Evolution, 90, 103

Exhibitions, 8, 99, 128, 181

Explanation of pictures, 215

Expression and gesture, 44

Expression, the hour of, 233

Eyes, 15, 16, 65 68, 103, 104, 203,
235, 258, 280

Eyebrows, 15, 259

F

Face, all life is in a, 148

Face, look of a, 18

Faces, character of, 14, 15, 18,
148, 258

Facial expression, 14, 15

Fan, 261

Features, painting of the, 14

Fifth Avenue, 128

Figure, knowing the, 195, 204

Figure and portrait painting
10-18, 25-30, 255

Finish, 10, 93, 97, 156, 173, 179,
180, 181, 183, 198, 254, 275

Flashes of genius, 153

Flatness in painting, 44

Flesh, 275

Flesh, brilliancy of, 264

Flower painting, 257

Flowers, 274

Flying machines, 231

Forehead, painting of, 258

Form modeling, 55

Forms, concept of, 157

Forum, open, 138, 221

Fourth dimension, 47

Frames, 271

Franklin, Ben., 126

Free people, the, 151

Freedom, 144, 149, 162, 177, 200

Freedom vs. looseness, 149

Freedom to work, 162

INDEX

Furnishing, 208

Furniture and clothes
traits, 263

Future and past, 211, 231

Future, the, 103, 170, 211, 231

G

Gardener, the, 179

Genius, 83, 145, 153, 189, 223

Genius, flashes of, 153

Geometry in art, 251

Gesture, 17, 42, 44, 47, 48, 85, 120,
167, 191, 200, 234, 260

Gesture of a dancer, 42, 47, 48

Gesture and music, 167

Gesture of a young girl, 234

Get up and walk back, 98

Giotto, 172

Gipsy, 232

Girl, gesture of a young girl, 234

Girl and gold fish, 196

Glackens, W. J., 223

Going it alone, 226

Good Samaritan, 222

Governments, 155, 230

Goya, 91, 209, 278

Goya, his likeness to the Chinese,
278

Gray and black, 269

Great Periods, 37, 210, 232

Greco, 65, 187, 276

Greco, the rising movement in,
276

Greek art, 47, 102, 161, 167, 252,
262, 273

Greek art, influence of, 102

Greek art, measures in, 47

Greek bas-reliefs, 262

Greek sculpture, 167

H

Hair, 14, 39, 70, 257, 258

Hair, concept and painting of,
257

Hair, the painting of, 39

Hair, white, 258

Hals, Franz, 71, 192

Hambidge, Jay, 46

Hand, the, 56, 265, 266, 273

Hanging pictures, 72

in por-

a
''INDEX

Happiness, 42, 140, 231

Happiness in relation to art, 231

Hard grind, the, 238

Hat, 264

Head, 10-18, 25-30, 39, 44, 104,
165, 203, 250, 256, 257, 266, 280

Head, drawing and painting of,
10-18, 25-30, 39, 104

Head and hair, 257

Head, its solidity, 44

Head as drawn by Velasquez,
165

Health and art work, 131, 149,
193

Heel, 273

Helping deserving young artists,
137

High key, and low, 125

Highlights, 256, 264, 266

Hindoo’s negation of the world,
160

Hiroshigi, 65

Historical painting, 107, 221

History, 107, 187

Hogarth, 279

Homer, Winslow, 115, 134, 179

Honesty, 89

Honor list, 218

Hour of expression, the 233

Hour of research, the, 233

Houses, concept of, 38, 127, 268

Human forms in all nature, 108

Humanity in art, 222

Humanity of artists, 89, 91, 108,
222

i

Ibsen, 114, 150, 188
Idle industry, 79
Idle philanthropy, 137

Indians, American, 126, 147, 189,.

199

Indian art, American, 126, 189

Indian dances, 199

Individuality and freedom in art,
134

Industrial art study, 156

Infanta Margarita, by Velesquez,
280

Ingres, 71

287

Inner life, the, 88
Institutionalism, 144, 148, 178
Intellect, 120

Inventors, 136

J

Japanese art, 125, 181, 185, 277,
279

Japanese art, simplicity in, 277

Japanese artist, 181 :

Japanese influence, 125

Jewels, 264

Jewels of a savage, 265

Judgments of art, 230

Juggler of balls, 235

Julian’s Academy, 101, 239

Juries, 8, 187, 158, 218

Jury, painting for, 158

K

Keep your old work, 104, 179
Knowing oneself, 188
Knowing the figure, 204

L

Lace, 121

Landscape, 8, 18, 23, 81, 108, 115,
127, 173, 212, 267, 268, 275

Landscape by Cézanne, 108

Landscape, concept of, 23

Landscape, painting of, 115

Landscape, search for motive in,
81

Laughing head, painting of, 267

Laws, 150

Laws of nature, 90

Lee, Jeanette, 231

Leech, John, 221

Leonardo da Vinci, 10, 180

Letter of criticism—sketches,
making a_ picture’ from
sketches, etc., 92

Letter of criticism—juries, ob-
ject of painting, state of the
artist, Hindoo, Greek, solidity,

158

Letter of criticism—sketches

finish, reality, variety, etc., 172
''288

Letter of criticism—criticism of
sketches, Japanese art, Dau-

mier, Manet, Bouguereau,
originality, finish, 181
Letter of  criticism—concept,

children painted by Renoir,
masters’ work as influences, 185

Letter of criticism—conception,
the girl with goldfish, origin-
ality, 196

Letter of criticism—appreciation
of art, originality, anatomy,
clothes, criticism of studies,
etc., 202.

Letter of criticism—victims of
method, originality, self-educa-
tion, 216

Letter of  criticism—student
who would find himself, con-
templation, painting landscape,
etc., 224

Letter to the class, 1915—por-
trait and figure painting,
working two canvasses, begin-
ning, composition, masses, fea-
tures, drapery, gesture, etc., 10

Letter to the class, 1916—a sug-
gested process for portrait and
figure painting, method of pro-
cedure, set palette, 25

Letter to the class—materials,
technique, palette, studio,
character of the student, etc.,
212

Letter to Art Students’ League
—Thomas Eakins, 86

Letter to a student—penman-
ship, the masters, stylists, 172

Letter to a teacher, 153

Letter from New Mexico—art
of Pueblo Indians, art and the
community, 189

Letter to Pleiades, 229

Letter—the pack rat, art and
the community, collectors of
art, 129

Life and art, 201

Life class and composition, 195

Light, painting of, 54

INDEX

Light and pigment, 53

Light, play of, 199

Line, 48, 105-111, 157, 184, 194,
249, 250, 273, 276, 277

Line, concept of, 157

Line, the dominant line, 109

Line, hook or grip of, 194

Line, measures, 109

Line, solidity in line drawing, 48

Line, victim of, 110

Lips, 260

Living in one’s own time, 172

Look of a face, 18

Look of people, the, 203

Luck of the gambler, 42

Lying, 265

M

Man in the woods, 241

Manet, 71, 79, 132, 172, 183, 203,
209, 252, 279

Mannerisms, 97

Manners in a picture gallery, 130

Map drawing, 211

Maratta, H. G., 46, 52

Marine, 115, 135, 165, 279

Masses, composition of, 13, 152

Master students, 6, 229

Masters, 6, 78, 172, 177, 179, 186,
189, 239, 251, 280

Masters, character of, 179, 189

Masters, the Dutch masters, 78

Masters, the old, 6, 78, 280

Masters’ work as influences, 186

Mastery over mediums, 202

Materialism, 91

Materials for painting, 69, 133,
212

Mathematics and art, 46, 155

Matisse, 194

Maul stick, 16, 66, 67

May, Phil, 96

Measures in art, 40, 46, 48, 109,
155, 167

Measures
line, 40

Measures in music, 46

Measures, significant, 109

Mechanics tools, 48

in color, form, and
''INDEX

Medals and prizes, 218

Meek art students, 238

Memory, visual, 122

Memory work, 18, 21, 28, 122,
171, 272

Memory work, advantages of, 23

Memory work, school for, 21

Mental inactivity, 193

Methods, slave to, 216

Methods of working, 216

~Michael Angelo, 150

Millet, 146, 203

Model, the, 22, 43, 44, 75, 76, 82,
85, 106, 107, 240, 248, 249, 252,
253, 257

Model, concept of, 157, 240, 249,
253

Model, drawing from, 75

Model, painting the, 248

Model, possibilities of, 43

Model, the state of, 44, 76

Model, use of, 22

Modeling in color, and black and
white, 55

Modern artist, 57

Monet, 79

Moore, George, 40

Morisot, Berthe, 132

Mother and child, 254

Motive, necessity of, 235

Mountains, 268, 269

Mouth, 260

Movement, 105-111, 272, 276

Movement, the rising movement
in Greco, 276

Muff, 264

Muscles, 203, 273

Museums, 5, 190, 192, 218, 229

Music, 46, 60, 102, 150, 155, 167,
174, 191

Music in the community, 191

Music and gesture, 167

Music, mathematical
in, 46

Music, painting compared with,
174

measures

My People, 141
Mysterious colors,
lines, 60

forms and

N

Nationality in art, 126
19

289

Nature as is, 239

Nature’s response, 243

Nature reveals, 240, 243, 253

Neck, the, 41, 260

Necklace, 264

Necktie, 263

Néo-Impressionnisme, 54

New Mexico, painting in, 171

New Mexico, pueblo art, 189

New movements, 61, 103, 152,
220, 248

Night, the colors of, 39

Noonday and night, 38

Nose, 14, 16, 68, 259

Notes taken by Margery Ryer-
son, 245

Nude, the, 39, 51, 195, 204, 272,
273

Nude, color of, 51, 272

Nude, drawing the, 272

Nude, knowing the, 195, 204

oO

Objective of painting, 159

Oil cups, 213

Oil and pastel painting, 202

Old age attained by artists, 160

Old masters, 6, 56, 280

Old master’s methods of form
modeling, 56

Old work, keep and study your,
104

Open forum, 138, 221

Order, 131, 142, 143, 178

Order, basic, 178

Originality, 72, 81, 102, 169, 176,
182, 197, 200, 202, 203, 216, 223,
236, 251, 255

Originality, effort to pre-con-
ceive, 197, 223

Outline, 105-111,

Pv

Painting, beginning a, 152
Painting, energy in, 205
Painting, good 187

Painter, popular, 206
Painting, for juries, 158
Painting in New Merico, 171
Painting, object of, 159
Painting in pastel and oil, 202
Painting a portrait, 277
''290

Painting, portrait by Whistler
275

Painting, superficial, 88
Painting ugly subjects, 136
Palette, 25-30, 29, 49, 51, 55, 58,
213, 214
Palette, colors of, 29, 51
Palette, set, 25-30, 55, 58
Paris, student’s room in, 32
Past and future, 211, 231
Pastel and oil painting, 202
Pay for art, 114, 232
Pears, picture of seven, 231
Penmanship, 172
People, My, 141
Philip IV, 241
Photography, 252
Picket fence, a, 136
Picture gallery manners, 130
Picture, object of painting a, 159
Picture of seven pears, 231
Picture made from a.sketch, 95
Pictures explained, 215
Pictures, proper hanging of, 72
Pictures which do not sustain
interest, 59
Pigment and light, 53
Plato, 167, 188
Pleasure in work, 176
Popular painter, 206
Portly lady, sketch, 182
Portrait, composition in, 155
Portrait and figure painting, 10-
18, 25-30, 33, 41, 147, 155, 227,
255, 277
Portrait and figure painting pro-
cesses, 10-11, 25-30
Portrait painter, Eakins, 86
Portrait painting, concepts, 17
Portrait painting, concept, com-
position, finish, construction,
10-18
Portrait _ painting,
clothes, 16, 41
Portrait painting, facial expres-
sion, 14
Portrait painting, the gold chair,
33
Portrait painting, importance of
the beginning, 18, 25
Portrait painting, speed, 17
Portrait, significance of, 147
Portraiture, ideas of, 104

drapery,

INDEX

Positiveness, 265

Pre-Raphaelites, 79

Prizes and medals, 187, 218

Proportions, 47, 85, 175

Proportions important in art, 175

Public art galleries, 5, 191, 192,
218, 220

Pueblo art, 189

Puritanism, 146

Q

Quick sketches, 22
Quitters, 166

R

Race experience, 89

Rag, 69, 213

Rain sketch, 182

Reality, 173

Recipe, painting by, 40, 48

Red flower, a, 233

Relative value of things, 18, 208

Rembrandt, 36, 44, 60, 71, 83, 106,
136, 172, 186, 222, 276

Rembrandt, his human feeling,
276

Rembrandt, expression of life, 44

Rembrandt, suggestion of place
in his drawings, 276

Renoir, 70, 91, 92, 108, 172, 182,
186

Renoir, children painted by, 186

Reproductions of the masters,
study of, 93, 96

Research, the hour of, 233

Rhythm, 42, 46, 187

Rodin, 104, 146, 279

Rogers, Mary, 37

Room, beauty of a, 208

Rossetti, 79

Ross, Denman, 46, 53

Rubens, 81

Ryerson, Margery, notes taken
by, 245

Ss

Salon pictures, 128

Savages, art by, 159

Science and art, 45, 158, 170

School, 21, 75, 89, 101, 102, 117,
156, 166, 215, 227, 228, 237

School, advice to a student enter-
ing, 117
''INDEX

School, character of, 101, 228

School as the life centre of a
city, 102

School drudgery, 75

School, the function of, 215

School for memory work, 21

School, methods of, 156

School, purpose of, 227, 237

Sculpture, 278

Sea, sky, and sand, 164

Seeing (concept), 82, 168, 212

Selection (see concept), 151

Self-acquaintance, 165

Self-criticism, 98

Self-education, 118, 123, 176, 188,
215, 217, 255

Sensational methods unnecessary,
49

Seriousness, 105

Set palette, 25-30, 55, 58

Shadows, 265

Shakespeare, 80, 188

Shame, 39, 180

Shawl, painting of a, 265

Sheer beauty, 108

Shine of paint, 63, 68

Signac’s, “Néo-Impressionnisme”,
54

Signing a picture, 272

Signposts, 24

Silk, 70, 262

Simplicity, 43, 96, 152, 206, 207,
211, 252, 266, 277

Simplicity in Japanese art, 277

Sketch, 7, 10, 22, 92, 97, 124, 125,
164, 172, 181, 182, 183, 185, 198,
205

Sketch of children with baloons,
181

Sketch, concept of a, 198

Sketch, the sketch hunter, 7

Sketch by Leonardo da Vinci, 10

Sketch, portly lady, 182

Sketch, the quick sketch, 22

Sketch, rain, 182

Sketches criticized, 92, 164, 172,
183, 205

Sloan, John, 222

Snake dence, 199

Snow, 268

Sociology, 155

Solidity, 44. 48, 104. 163. 164, 286

Solidity in Chinese drawings, 164

291

Solidity in line drawings, 48, 164

Speed in work, 17

Sphinx, 47, 167_...

Spirit of arty190 )

Spirit of greatness, 147

Spirit of youth, 209

Spirituality, 199

State of the artist at the moment
of his work, 7, 159

Stevenson, the inventor, 114

Still life, 77, 108, 268

Stroke, measure in a, 205

Student, character of, 5, 6, 10;
43, 72, 78, 79, 80, 86, 88, 89, 97,
100, 117, 123, 166, 175, 180, 198,
214, 216, 228, 239, 274

Student, the art student of to-
day, 42

Student, the attitude of, 101

Student, entering the school, 117

Student’s associations and study,
ae 10k:

Students, habits of, 214

Students, meek, 238

Student’s preparatory work, 155

Student’s relation to societies, 79

Students and non-students, 100

Students, the work of, 9

Students who will learn to draw,
72

Student who would find himself,
226

Studio, the artist’s, 214

Study, 10, 12, 17, 48, 79, 95, 98,
104, 122, 132, 166, 179, 180, 186,
198, 201, 216, 225, 235, 236, 237,
251, 257, 263

Study, the activities of, 236

Study, conduct of, 95

Study, disorderly habits, 182

Study, distractions, 225

Study, importance of the be-
ginning, 12, 17, 18, 22, 25

Study, working two canvasses, 12

Study, method of, 10

Study of the master’s works, 186

Study, necessity of motive, 17

Study, reading, 79

Study, technical, 235

Study your own old work, 104, 179

Study, ways of, 287

Style, 254

Stylists, 172
''292 INDEX

Success, 89, 154

Sunlight, 51, 171

Surface of life, 168

Surface painting, 88

Surface and undercurrent, 89

ay

eine, OL

Teacher, 6, 75, 78, 87

Teacher, attitude of, 6

Teacher, character of, 78

Teacher, Eakins as, 87

Teaching, 153, 170, 215, 228

Teaching, character of, 228

Teaching children, 170

Technical arrangements of a bar-
ber, 214

Technical economy, 206

Technical study, 235

Technique, 37, 73, 74, 78, 83, 84,
86, 88, 119, 122, 124, 133, 135,
146, 177, 180, 192, 206, 212, 214,
215, 224, 233, 235, 236, 237, 254

Technique, character of artist
shown by, 119

Technique and concept, 233

Technique of the coypist, 73

Technique of a master, 235

Technique, masters of, collectors
of, 83, 84

Technique without motive, 235

Technique, origins of, 88

Technique, study of, 74, 224

Texture, 270

chord of, 164

The Big Show, 129

The Man, 205

Theatre, little
ment, 191

Things, the multiplication of, 208

Things, relative value of, 18, 208

Thinking, 85

Tintoretto, 195

Titian, 187, 193, 279, 281

Tomato can labels, 162

Trace, 159

Tramp, a, 166

Trees, 49, 84, 128, 268

Twachtman, 134

theatre move-

U
Ugly subjects, 136, 166

Undercurrent, the, 88, 89, 168
Unity, 107, desire for, 175

Vv

Values, 266

Values, black and white, color, 40

Variety, 107, 174

Varnish, 68

Velasquez, 71, 165, 172, 240, 242,
280, 281

Velasquez, drawing of a head,
16

Velasquez, the dwarfs of, 242
Velvet, 70, 275

WwW

Wagner, 60, 102, 146, 150

Walls, concept of, 38

Wanting to do things, 123

War, 143, 248

Wasting, 178

Waterfall, 268

Water runs down hill, 207

Wells, H. G., 115

What is essential? 207

What is worth while? 201

When America becomes an art
country, 190

Whistler, 78, 79, 120, 252, 275,
277, 281

Whistler, portrait of his
mother, 120

Whistler, “ White Girl” by, 275

White, as a neutralizer, 54

Whitman, 79, 114, 134, 141, 146,
201

Why live? 140

Will, 248

Windows, concept of, 38, 207

Women’s dress, concept of, 84

Woods, man in the, 241

Work, keep and study old work,
179

Work, pleasure in, 230

World domination, 161

Wright brothers, 90, 114, 251

Writers on art, 125

Y

Yellow color, 54
Youth, spirit of, 209
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