CHAPTER XIII: THE ARTIST AND THE STUDENT
It is a mistake to make pictures too soon. The nearest a student is likely
to get to a picture is a careful study, and he will be as successful with
this, if he makes it for the study of it, as if he made it for the sake of
making a picture-better probably. The making of a picture for the
picture’s sake is dangerous to the student. His is less likely to be sincere.
He is apt to “idealize,” to make up something according to some
knowledge of how nature is. Real pictures grow from study of nature.
They are the outcome of maturity, not of the student stage. This implies something
deeper than superficial facts, and a power of selection, — of choice and of purpose which
must rest on a very broad and deep knowledge. The artist is always a student, of course;
but he is not a student only. He is a student who knows what and why he wants to study;
not one who is in process of finding out these things.
Aims. - It should be noted that the aim of the student and the aim of the artist are
essentially different. The student’s first aim is to learn to see and to represent nature’s
facts; to distinguish justly between relations. It is the training of the eye and the
judgment. Imitation is the highest art; but the highest art requires the ability to imitate
as a mere power of representation. The mind must not be hampered in its expression by
lack of knowledge and control of materials, and the painter who is constantly occupied
with the problems he should have worked out in his student days, is just so far from
being a master. He must have all his means perfectly at his command before he can
freely express himself.
The acquirement of this mastery of means is the student’s business. Everything he
does which aids him in this makes him so much nearer to being a painter. But he must
remember that he is still a student, and as he hopes to be a painter, must have patience
with himself; must not hurry himself, must work as a student for the ends of a student.
All the facts of nature art uses. But she uses them as she needs them, simplifying,
emphasizing, suppressing, combining as will best meet the necessities of the case in
hand. All this requires the utmost knowledge, for it must be done in accordance not only
with laws of art, but with the laws of nature.
There are changes which can be made, and be right - made as nature might make
them. Other changes which would be false to nature’s ways, and false to art also. For art
works through nature always, and in accordance with her. This is the aim of the painter,
to express ideas though nature, not to express notions about nature.
The facts of nature are the material of art; the words of the language in which the ideas
of art are to be conveyed. But there are truths more important than these facts. The
underlying sentiment of which is the vivifying spirit of them. This is the true fact of the
picture.