The Mind of the Artist | Page 7

and since I have never
in my life seen anything but the fields, I try to tell, as best I can, what I
have seen and experienced as I worked.
Millet.
XXXVI
One of the hardest things in the world is to determine how much
realism is allowable in any particular picture. It is of so many different
kinds too. For instance, I want a shield or a crown or a pair of wings or
what not, to look real. Well, I make what I want, or a model of it, and
then make studies from that. So that what eventually gets on to the
canvas is a reflection of a reflection of something purely imaginary.
The three Magi never had crowns like that, supposing them to have had
crowns at all, but the effect is realistic because the crown from which
the studies were made is real--and so on.
Burne-Jones.
XXXVII
Do you understand now that all my intelligence rejects is in immediate
relation to all my heart aspires to, and that the spectacle of human
blunders and human vileness is an equally powerful motive for action
in the exercise of art with springs of tranquil contemplation that I have
felt within me since I was a child?

We have come far, I hope, from the shadowy foliage crowning the
humble roof of the primitive human dwelling, far from the warbling of
the birds that brood among the branches; far from all these tender
things. We left them, notwithstanding, the other day; and even if we
had stayed, do you think we should have continued to enjoy them?
Believe me, everything comes from the universal; we must embrace to
give life.
Whatever interest one may get from material offered by a period,
religion, manners, history, &c., in representing a particular type, it will
avail nothing without an understanding of the universal agency of
atmosphere, that modelling of infinity; it shall come to pass that a stone
fence, about which the air seems to move and breathe, shall be, in a
museum, a grander conception than any ambitious work which lacks
this universal element and expresses only something personal. All the
personal and particular majesty of a portrait of Louis XIV. by Lebrun
or by Rigaud shall be as nothing beside the simplicity of a tuft of grass
shining clear in a gleam of sunlight.
Rousseau.
XXXVIII
Of all the things that is likely to give us back popular art in England,
the cleaning of England is the first and the most necessary. Those who
are to make beautiful things must live in a beautiful place.
William Morris.
XXXIX
On the whole, one must suppose that beauty is a marketable quality,
and that the better the work is all round, both as a work of art and in its
technique, the more likely it is to find favour with the public.
William Morris.

ART AND SOCIETY
XL
With the language of beauty in full resonance around him, art was not
difficult to the painter and sculptor of old as it is with us. No
anatomical study will do for the modern artist what habitual
acquaintance with the human form did for Pheidias. No Venetian
painted a horse with the truth and certainty of Horace Vernet, who
knew the animal by heart, rode him, groomed him, and had him
constantly in his studio. Every artist must paint what he sees, rather
every artist must paint what is around him, can produce no great work
unless he impress the character of his age upon his production, not
necessarily taking his subjects from it (better if he can), but taking the
impress of its life. The great art of Pheidias did not deal with the
history of his time, but compressed into its form the qualities of the
most intellectual period the world has seen; nor were any materials to
be invented or borrowed, he had them all at hand, expressing himself in
a natural language derived from familiarity with natural objects. Beauty
is the language of art, and with this at command thoughts as they arise
take visible form perhaps almost without effort, or (certain technical
difficulties overcome) with little more than is required in writing--this
not absolving the artist or the poet from earnest thought and severe
study. In many respects the present age is far more advanced than
preceding times, incomparably more full of knowledge; but the
language of great art is dead, for general, noble beauty, pervades life no
more. The artist is obliged to return to extinct forms of speech if he
would speak as the great ones have spoken. Nothing beautiful is seen
around him, excepting always sky and trees and sea; these, as he is
mainly a dweller in cities, he cannot live enough with. But it is,