The Painter in oil

I have mentioned the training of your critical judgment as necessity in your education.
You can do it slowly in learning to paint, but you can facilitate that training by copying
and studying really good pictures, if you do it in the right way.
The Right Way. - So if you do copy, do it in the right way, so as to get all the real
help out of it, and not so as to have to unlearn the greater part of it. Don’t copy “to get a
picture.” Don’t make a copy which at a distance has resemblance to the original, but
which on a more careful study shows none of the qualities which makes the original
what it is. Not only see to it that the same subtleties of perception and representation are
preserved in your copy, but that they are attained in the same way. Use the same brush-
work or other execution. Use the same pigments in the same places, with the same
vehicles; study the original with your brain as well as with your eyes and hands; try to
see not only how the painter did a certain thing but why. So that as you work, you follow
him in the working out of his problem, and make it your problem also. In this way you
will get some real good from his picture, and not a mere canvas which has been of no use
to you, nor can be of any satisfaction to any one else who knows a good picture (copy or
original) when he sees it.
Why Copy. - There are only two good reasons for making a copy, — to study the
original as a problem, and to have something to serve as an example of the master on a
work which you like. An in either case such a sincere manner of copying as I urge is the
only possible way to get what you want. To “get a picture,” regardless of whether it really
does justice to the original, is the wrong way, and this leads through bad copying to bad
painting, and you fortunate if you escape an entire perversion of your point of view.
You may be able to make some money now and again by doing this sort of thing, but
you will never learn anything from it. On the contrary, it is the surest way you could find
of closing your eyes to all that is worth seeing.
Get to Nature. - If you would really learn to paint, to see for yourself, to represent
what you see in your own way, you cannot get to nature too soon. Don’t bother about
what the thing is, so long it is nature herself. By nature I mean anything, absolutely
anything which exists of itself, not painted. Whether it be the living figure, or a cast, or a
bit of landscape, or a room interior - all things which actually exist must show
themselves by the facts of light falling upon them: the relation of color, and the contrasts
of light and dark. Whatever you see is useful to you in this way, for these bring about all
the qualities and conditions which you most need to study. But models are not always at
command, interiors do not easily stay a long time at your disposal, and bits of landscape
which interest you are not always easy to get at; for a student is apt to be either far
advanced or unusually ardent who will find interest in the first combination which falls
under his eye. Therefore the most practically useful material for study, which is always
“nature,” is what we call “still life,” - “morte” nature, dead nature is the better or more
descriptive name the French give to it. By this is meant any and all combinations of
objects and backgrounds grouped arbitrarily for representation, Bottles and jugs and
fruits, books and bric-a-brac; all sorts of things lend themselves readily and interestingly
to this use.
The great value of still life for the student lies in the variety of combinations of color
and form, of light and shade and texture, that he can always command. There is