Painting and the personal equation, by Charles Hubert Woodbury

Painting and the personal equation
by Charles Hubert Woodbury
1919

PREFACE

THE chapters which are addressed to the Student are the substance of six lectures given at Ogunquit, Maine, in connection with a course of instruction in out-of-door painting. They were accompanied by a criticism of the several hundred sketches made by the class each week.

The purpose was to direct the mind along orderly and constructive lines, and to furnish a basis for individual expression.

Although the immediate object was to instruct in painting, it is apparent that consideration of the psychological factor must be of the same importance in public appreciation as in technical performance. For this reason the recognition of these organic principles opens the new era in which they will be of equal value to the general public as to the Painter himself. There are as many realities as there are men.

CONTENTS

PART I. THE PAINTER i

PART II. THE STUDENT 17

PART III. THE PUBLIC 179

PAINTING AND THE PERSONAL EQUATION

PART I

THE PAINTER

PAINTING AND THE PERSONAL EQUATION

PART I THE PAINTER

THE dealer and the painter were sitting hand in hand; a compromising situation, one might say, but not unprecedented, for we have the parallel of the lion and the lamb, as well as that of the walrus and his fellow philosopher.

The dealer, in his simple, artless way, was demonstrating that the value of a picture lay in rarity, fashion, and subject. He was willing to admit that there might be an artistic value also, but that had nothing to do with practical considerations and was not to be taken into account. Of the three important elements there seemed to the painter to be but one that he could control, that of subject; to be really rare, he would have to be dead, and to be the fashion depended a good deal on other people. Even

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in the subject he found difficulties, for that negligible artistic value seemed to influence his choice and carry him to places where practical people were few.

" Human interest/' said the dealer, " fundamental human interest."

" Why, yes," said the painter; "but, even there, one finds difficulties. I saw a portrait of a five-dollar bill once that landed the artist in jail, a criminal likeness, as some portraits of people. But of course it is scarcely a fair example, for art is not imitation, and if the artist had tried to express his sensation on seeing a five-dollar bill, or how it looked in relation to its surroundings, he might have been a blameless and successful man."

" I mean human interest," said the dealer coldly, "such as the modern Dutch school represents. We have sold a great many of such pictures lately."

" I know one of the best of the Dutchmen," said the painter, "a very good man, too. He, told me, however, that he could never sell one of his pictures without a cradle in it. It is not every one who could put in a cradle, and not have it interfere with other things; and then it is not always appropriate, is it?"

THE PAINTER

"This is a serious discussion," said the dealer.

"Of course/' said the painter, "universal, from the cradle to the grave. I know a man who painted deathbeds, pathos, you know the first one was so successful that the public would take nothing else wanted something characteristic, they said and he had to go on."

"We always try to keep ahead of the public taste and direct it somewhat," said the dealer. "Now, one of our well-known firms bought for a very moderate price, a large number of pictures by a man you painters considered one of your greatest, long before he was generally known or appreciated. They were put out, a few at a time, and the critics simply laughed at them, but they were wrong and since then they always take a much broader point of view and do not commit themselves until they can be reasonably sure of what is going to be right. It was a very good lesson for them. Of course the firm made a great deal of money; the Barbizon pictures gave out and the more genuine ones began to bring such large prices that it was necessary to have something distinctly different to offer to the buyers in

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the way of a masterpiece, and yet so moderate in price as to be a good investment. The people who bought these things in the beginning not only made money, but they gained a reputation for 'artistic judgment at the same time/'

"Why, yes," said the painter, "I knew one of those art lovers in Omaha, but he acted on his own judgment entirely and not on the advice of the dealers whom he suspected of being personally interested. He told me he offered twenty-five per cent of the catalogue price for twenty pictures in one of the large exhibitions and got eighteen of them. Two of the men were not hard up. He lectures on art now and has written a number of books about it.

"Let us see where we are," continued the painter thoughtfully, as he squeezed the dealer 's hand. "We paint the pictures and hope to sell them, for we have to be supplied with money as well as the rest of the world, but we do them primarily because we want to put into visible form some thought or feeling we have in the presence of our subject. As a commercial proposition we are wrong from the start, for you cannot place a money value on a sensation. Who

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can say that the emotion this beautiful cloud causes is worth fifty dollars or any other definite sum? One might as well try to express one's family affection in dollars and cents, which is certainly impossible unless in the case of failure when it comes to divorce or breach of promise. Then the situation is commercialized; we balance disappointment with dollars, mental suffering with a check, and perhaps try again. A picture is for the one who can understand it. Failing to find him, it passes to the dealer who makes it a commodity. I do not say that he is a parasite or a ghoul, but he will tell you that he is not in business for his health, and that his natural kindly impulse is to please rather than to educate. So his concern is of necessity to suit the public, forgetting that there is anything else involved. The painter who takes this point of view becomes a manufacturer like any other maker of commodities. He is no longer an artist, because he has given up personal expression, and is willing to oblige, as the dealer is, for business reasons. Back of him, however, stands the work of better men than he, who have made pictures so important a way of expressing thought,

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that no person of real refinement or newly acquired wealth could afford to be without them."

" How do you sell your pictures?" said the dealer. "My customers won't have them at any price."

"I do not know," the painter answered. "It seems like chance, but I have often thought that any line of action steadily held, even though it is not of the first importance, will force recognition in the end. We are individualists to a limited extent, but we represent a universal human impulse. We owe allegiance to it, and our support comes from it.

"Probably the cave man who drew a picture on a bone of his favorite mastodon found at first that his friends considered the time wasted which might have been better employed in clubbing his neighbors. He was unpractical, and idealistic, but in the end their own interest in the graphic arts was awakened, and they helped him out with his chores that he might have more time to devote to his art and make their cave the home beautiful.

"I would consider the profession to include not only those who do the work, but those who understand it as well. It is a society of common interests

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and seems to be large enough to support its active members, even without the help of the dealers/'

" But don't you think " said the dealer.

"I doubt it," said the painter, and shed a bitter tear.

The position the painter holds in the community is an equivocal one. His usefulness is not apparent to most people and there is no common need of him as there is for other professional men. The thing he produces seems to be a luxury which any one may be without, and his real importance is so general, so much a matter of periods rather than of daily living, that it is not strange that the public should be unaware of his value.

The ordinary standards of success do not apply. A masterpiece might well pass unnoticed and have little or no money value. On the other side, no amount of misspent money can create a great work, and our general way of measuring is entirely useless. This leads the painter to feel that he is misunderstood, and unappreciated, which is quite the case. Nor can it be very different in a world

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where the direct needs of the day are many and pressing.

If a painter could live on paint alone, his problem would be simple, but a sketch well made, or a day 's work well done, though it may be mentally stimulating, has little of nourishing value unless it is reducible to the common standard of exchange. To the prosperous business man he is a trifler, an egotist, unpractical, unbusinesslike, not exactly a lady, and certainly not a gentleman, an able-bodied person who should be doing something useful, unless by chance he should be possessed of money. He is not a confidence man, for some pictures are valuable, but they are more likely to be by the dead than by the living, and the presumption is against the man of to-day. This does not apply to the portrait, which has a different use, enabling one to do something personal for one's descendants. But in the end time judges, for the portrait of the king of finance becomes an example of the painter's work, and the king is not mentioned.

To the majority of people a picture is an imitation of Nature, and they anticipate gloomy times

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for the painter when photography or other mechanical processes shall be so perfected as to reproduce things "just as they are." For "just as they are, " let us substitute "just as they seem," and the whole misunderstanding is swept away. We do not all react in the same way under the same conditions and a picture is a description of a personal reaction. If it were possible to reproduce by mechanical process the action of light on matter, we should have the material from which to draw conclusions. But when a human hand takes part the conclusion is drawn, not by reason of the imitative power of the instrument, but because of the selective quality of the mind. That is to say, we see according as we are, and our facts vary with our perceptions.

One can sympathize with the old lady who said of a lively sketch, "I have lived in this place for thirty years, but I have n't seen no blood-red rocks here." She took it as criticism of her eyesight, since it purported to be a sketch of things as they were. Even the painters themselves have not always been clear on this point. We have had realism based on making things like, though the term itself was

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originally intended to distinguish a more direct form of work from the classic and romantic of other days.

Generally, to see what is in front of one is supposed to indicate no more than an ordinary degree of intelligence, and when a picture which by misconception is supposed to be a copy of Nature diverges so far from the accepted fact, it is not hard to realize why it is taken as a covert criticism or a meaningless vagary.

"He scootched up on the beach," said an old Maine native, "and drafted something in with a smut coal, painted it all red, blue, and yellow, and called that a picture." "I don't know," said another, "how he could have got one hundred and fifty dollars for a picture of my cow. I did n't give but thirty-five for her in the first place, and it don't look like her anyway." -i

Such people look at the surface of the canvas, seeing each spot as a detached and positive thing and naturally find it meaningless. Stern reality, too, has the first appeal, and it is hard for the farmer to conceive that representation could have

THE PAINTER

any value commensurate with the fact. He might well like to see two cows grow where one grew before, but one cow and a picture the aesthetic side is not convincing. He feels vaguely wronged, for his standards have been attacked in a way that carries conviction.

What the painter is to himself, his fellow painters, and his work, is a hard matter to define. He is not in any way the creature of Bohemia that one finds from time to time in novels of the day, that unappreciated genius with long hair, floating tie, and queer habits. He may not even be a genius, or very different from other people in his general needs or ways of thought. He deals with sensation, and for that reason the personal equation has greater influence in his life and work than it could have if he were following more specific things. This perhaps makes him an egoist and imposes the corresponding limitations. To counterbalance it, however, he has the ordinary man side, which, in proportion to its quality and wisdom, keeps the painter in check, judging and weighing the more isolated person.

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Painters disagree on every point connected with their profession, and are more than gently insistent in their expression of it. They meet, however, in the common belief that though they may differ among themselves they hold the truth between them, and it is impossible for the public to understand. Now and then comes a glimmer of hope of the dawn of intelligence and a public awakening, but it is generally connected with the sale of a picture and has personal rather than general significance.

The painter is very fond of paint, quite as the good carpenter is of planing a smooth, square edge, or as any other man likes deft work which he does with his hands. In fact, probably the majority of painters think only of the technical side of their work as they do it, carrying the thought of the subject subconsciously even to the point sometimes of denying its existence, as with those who claim to paint only literally what they see. Therefore, a painter's criticism of another's work, as well as his pleasure in it, is likely to be a technical one, and overbalanced on that side. In this is found his grievance with the critic, who directs, praises, or

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condemns that which he at best but slightly understands and could in no case do himself.

The truth of the matter is, that the universal picture combines in itself the abstract beauties of form and color, originating sensation, the thought, which, though on a special theme, may be so complete as to suggest parallels of a general nature, and the technique, which is the graceful and skillful means of adequate expression. That few pictures can answer all of these requirements goes without saying. Fortunately greatness may be found within its own limits, and it would be a misfortune to undervalue a real attainment in one direction even if it made no attempt to answer the whole problem.

x The painters who deal in light and color alone, sacrifice the beauties of line and composition for their sake. In making this choice they necessarily limit the range of their work to a side of art that is more easily understood by the painter than the public at large. There is in it the lure of sensation and a technical problem as well, both beyond the province of the untrained. Professional arrogance has little justification when one considers the sub-

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ject as a whole, for the appreciation of beauty is not rare or confined to people of talent and training. No specialist can claim it as his exclusive field, for it is interwoven with the entire mental life of civilization.

PART II

THE STUDENT

PART II THE STUDENT

A PICTURE is not simply a matter of putting on paint, for painting is only the final process, even though it is skillfully and effectively done. The picture is the visible expression of our personal artistic impulse. It is a result, and if not in every case exactly the one we hope for, we are here to look for the cause.

No one can deny that the means of expression are important, but they are of little use after all if we do not know what we are trying to say, or why we are trying to say it. Much of the class work will be directed to these points, and it is quite possible, as we go on, that you will find that technical difficulties which have troubled you before will disappear in the clearer understanding of your own motives and reactions. My belief has always been that knowledge or skill is much more -easily acquired if one has a definite use for it. For this reason, you will

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find that the hard work that you must necessarily do in the Art School may be somewhat lightened. Drawing will be no longer an abstraction, but rather the means to a definite end.

From the start, then, we will divide our troubles into those that are due to our own natures, and to others that belong to the natural depravity of paint. The first need immediate attention, for, after all, we are the motive power and the paint does more or less what it is told. The root of the painter is in the man, and the plant only can grow as it has soil to feed it. Let us understand ourselves first; we are well worth it.

Accurate sight, choice, and clear expression are the elements that make good painting.

The terms are easy to state, but you will find them far-reaching. Sight, which seems such a simple and direct thing, is by no means positive, for there is many a habit between the eye and the brain, ready to distort the message. Choice carries us deep into our own natures, and we must not only know ourselves, but measure without a fixed standard. It is only when we come to expression that we can take

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comfort, for there it is but a matter of hard work and common intelligence.

Any competent person can do good work if he knows what good work is. It is in the standard that the difficulty lies.

We are at present in a transition state, and there seems to be no generally accepted standard of Art. In fact the divergence of opinion is so great as to make it possible for a picture to be regarded by one as a masterpiece, and by another as an unforgivable insult. But we are going to work it out and see if there is any real clue to the situation.

A picture is a thought or a feeling expressed in terms of Nature. Your thoughts and feelings are your own, and their general value depends on many things, but expression is much less complex, and its definite part is to be understandable. If we chose to express, for ourselves alone, we could do it in any kind of arbitrary way which seemed suitable and convenient.

But most of us wish to say something to somebody else, we are willing to be understood, and that limits us to a generally accepted form. A word is

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arbitrary anyway, and becomes significant only by use, as was discovered, some years ago, by a set of young literary men in Holland. They found no words in the Dutch language to do full justice to their emotions, .and so manufactured new ones for that purpose. It was not a great success, for the new words were unintelligible to any outside of the cult, and the thought was lost to the world.

To say something to some one else, do not use your own arbitrary symbols. The language of the world is sufficiently complete to express the finest thought you may have. The bigger conditions are imposed on you. Beyond that it is your story. You can tell each day a new one, and it will be true.

Expression in pictures has a definite foundation, for the visible world is practically the same to us all, and the painter uses what amounts to a universal language.

This might seem to be leaving out of account the men who call themselves Symbolists, Cubists, Futurists, and even Modernists, but I am sure that they would join us in wishing it so. It is worth while,

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however, to consider them, for they may be valuable to us in ways of which they are unconscious.

Superficially these speculators misrepresent Nature, but claim that they do it by intention, and better to express their sensations. Of course there is some disadvantage in misrepresentation; it is so easily confounded with ignorance; but we are all likely to suffer injustice even though we may be academic and conventional. The trouble is with the common understanding r for those poor ladies of bones and irregularly distributed features are more likely to suggest to us malnutrition than highly abstract thought. Mutilation and distortion are too personal. I might have been that subject myself. And the case is not much better if the painter assures us that the portrait is not supposed to be a likeness of his sitter, but of the way she makes him feel.

Is it wonderful that the public is puzzled, and utterly -at a loss to know what it all means? Much of it is obvious charlatanism, some of it is honest incompetence, part of it is simple degeneracy, and the rest is valuable intention.

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Do not take it as 'a school, 'or even as a style of painting, but rather as a symptom of the times.

We have come to the point where many an old tradition is worn out. Many conventions have become lifeless, although based, in the beginning, on something definite and real, and it is high time to break them. But there is very little use in breaking, unless something is supplied. I cannot feel that there has been any constructive purpose shown by these special men. They are doing a service in shaking up dry bones, and it is good for bones to rattle; but it amounts to nothing but persecution if the matter stops there.

It is true enough we were a little drowsy and the day's work had only begun. We had carried one period to its logical conclusion, and were contenting ourselves with restating the result.

We look back to the time of the Barbizon School, and wonder at its dull conventions. The color looks arbitrary, and even the skillful form seems dictated by rule and custom. But the men of 1840 were discovering Nature, and painted her much as they saw her.

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Then came Manet, Monet, and the Impressionists, whose idea was to interpret rather than to represent. This was a wild innovation, and the critics were hysterical, promising to put a quick end to such absolute madness. We all know how far this was done. The Impressionists brought their contribution and it has been absorbed and incorporated into the general standards of the day. They are now conventional, and it is hard to see how they ever could have looked radical and iconoclastic.

At the present time we are entering another period. The purpose has passed from representation through interpretation to suggestion. The root of the modern movement is suggestion, the use of facts to induce a train of thought, and this opens up a wide field.

Not that a new thing has been discovered, but that we have recognized the nature of a force which has been hitherto instinctive. Properly used suggestion will include everything that has gone before. It draws on the past for its value and associates memory with the present. The wanton mutilation of Nature does not seem to have much to do with

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the case. A fact is deliberately used, not for itself, but to create a sensation, and to awaken the corresponding memories and ideas.

This does not seem a drastic innovation even to a gentle and retiring nature, but it is a very definite force, capable of misuse in the hands of irresponsible people. If one is so made as to take pleasure in shocking the righteous, disgusting or annoying, he has the means at his disposal. Such sport, however, we generally leave to the bad small boy, who goes as far as he may, still avoiding the stern hand of Justice. We are blurred by our terms. We are youthful, but we are not troubled with youngness. We of to-day, are the Futurists of yesterday, unless we disown our parents.

Certainly we are grateful to these men, for they have brought us something of real value, even though it is wrapped in worthless material. And for them, it is possible that there is a fatted calf waiting and that even their husks are doing good service who can say? It is difficult to judge men of the future, especially if they have no past.

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A word about the Primitives, and then we shall be ready for the present.

The original Primitive does not need to be explained. He used the means he had to express the thought of his day. He did not even realize that he was a Primitive. His mind turned to the future, but his methods were a subordinate consideration. He did as well as he could. The past would have carried him back to the cave man, who was in his turn the Primitive and had neither thought nor method to give his successor. Nevertheless, that same cave man was the original artist, the first to establish a value that was not strictly utilitarian. He lived in a practical age; his friends undoubtedly called him an altruist, which means that he did not live exclusively in the passing incident. He and his fellows have something for us that was not in the cut of their clothes. We inherit the men that they were.

From the first picture to the one that has just been painted, the sequence of thought and intention is unbroken. The method is a matter of the moment. It might well be that an old method could

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clothe new thought, unless, indeed, the garment were outgrown.

Take nothing old or new for its surface value, even a balloon depends on its gas. Paint as a Primitive if you like, but revert or else you are hollow.

As we rummage among our conventions and habits, we think with a sigh of when we were little children, and were not bothered by so much knowledge. There was no hesitation about painting our trees green because we knew that trees were green. Facts were in large and definite pieces and there were not so many of them after all. Our men needed eyes, nose, mouth, but so long as they got the regular supply they were all that people should be. The engines had plenty of smoke, and horses had enough legs to stand on. In fact we went in for essentials. As we proceeded, however, experience gripped us; we could not put down all we knew, there was not room enough, and the eyes got too big for the head, since they had to have lashes. We lost our man in his features. We forgot the tree in making the leaves. A career began to seem doubtful.

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We hear much of the direct vision of childhood, and it is certainly something to be considered.The child sees in generalities through lack of intimate knowledge. Having the knowledge we must sum up carefully and come to general conclusions. It is the simplicity of ignorance compared to the simplicity of knowledge. There might sometimes be resemblance in the outer form, but never in the essence. Those who are seeking to repeat the childish pictures in the name of naive simplicity, forget that they are not only unable to put themselves back to the mentality of six, but that six itself cannot record its vision accurately.

As an illustration of clear childish sight I remember one late afternoon, as I was driving with a small boy of five, there was an old white horse in the near field which was in shadow, and beyond, a hill in the orange light. The boy said, "Look at that blue horse." It was a fact to the child, a relation to the painter, but to the majority of people it simply would not have been so. Experience teaches us that horses are not blue, and our eyes are likely to tell us only what we know.

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Do not confuse habit with personality. Perhaps, after all, you were not made that way and you still can do something about it. It is natural to have secret pride in our inhibitions, for we realize that we are not like other people, but it is not always the mark of genius or even of virtue.

Clear sight, clear thought, and clear expression; the thought should depend on the sight, and the expression on the thought. They are all bound together in the final result, but we will have to take them up separately as we study.

Our impression of Nature is a very simple one. If we were to look at a certain landscape it might be sea, sky, trees, rocks and if you were asked what you saw, you would probably not tell the truth. You would name all of these things and the;n proceed to describe them, but your description would be from your previous experience. You see less than you think. You specialize from your knowledge. You see in general tones until you allow your attention to rest on some definite spot. It is important that you should understand this point clearly, for it will dispose of all of your preconceived ideas.

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You will have need enough of your knowledge later, however great it may be.

I want to separate your look from your thought, for in your look you are receiving without criticism, or question, or comment. It is pure color sensation, the present of the day. Not a thing that you have ever seen before or will ever see again, for the varying conditions do not repeat themselves. Your mind has nothing to do with it, except to receive the direct message from your eyes.

> Conceive your picture to be, in its beginning, only what is included in a single glance. That would be made up of large form and general color. If we find an interest later, these are its surroundings, the background of our thought. The color of Nature depends on the sky, as it is the source of light. Local color itself is a part of the sun's light, and in addition it is modified by the direct light reflected from the surface. So what we see is very intimately connected with the special day and time. As the direction and color of the light change, so all color changes. A red rock would be red as long as one could see it, but the kind of color would depend on

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what the sky happened to be at the moment, and also on the position of the sun. These conditions are established by a great many local things, humidity, temperature, and wind, all adding together to make the colored light of the moment.

You see well enough that consistency of color effect must be one of the first requirements of a good sketch, and Nature is likely to keep on changing while you wait.

Now, if you paint the sky properly, have a great deal of trouble with the water, and wind up in triumph with the rocks, you may have occupied an hour. The sky has changed in that time, however, and in our picture the rocks belong to half -past ten, while the sky is that of an hour earlier. There is a false relation. Your color scheme is worthless because it is not consistent. You have to make the sketch so simple in the first attempt, and so accurate in the adjustment of the larger color values, that you make it true to one set of conditions. I often find pupils who work patiently from nine till one, beginning with the sky and ending with the foreground, oblivious to the fact that they have

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recorded the changes of an entire forenoon. Consistency first.

We should say to ourselves, kindly but firmly, "This thing that I see gives me a definite impression which comes from the relation of a few large tones/ 1 Establish the sky in its general color and then the other important masses in their relation to it, and stop to check up the result before any great changes occur. This insures consistency, and any details that may be added later are kept within the limits of these original tones; the sketch will be a true record of some special time and condition. It is easy to make corrections in the beginning, as we have no details to hamper us and the spaces are flat and definite.

You begin with a very simple set of color values, and end with them, or nothing. You will come to think of them less and less as first steps, and finally you will consider them as almost the unattainable.

You do not have to repaint a tone that is slightly wrong, but add to it the element that is missing. Put on the color in any way you choose, but choose the quickest way always. Scrub it on as if you were

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painting a fence or washing a boy's face. It makes absolutely no difference about the surface, the color scheme is the thing you are after. If the general tone of your rocks is wrong, no amount of lovely rock drawing will make them good, and it will all be wasted time.

Be deliberate. Size up the whole day and conditions. There is always plenty of time for essentials, but the unimportant things are so many that it is impossible to do them all, and we are worked to death by the trifles. Then paint as though you had been sent for. You cannot afford to lose a second anywhere not a second. After the first five minutes you should feel a glow of satisfaction in the thought that whatever Nature might do in the way of changes, you have nailed that effect.

The sketch is not made up of a number of small and ill-adjusted things, but, like the world, is massed together in a big, consistent way, and afterwards may be modulated and formed. In the beginning and at the end you have these large considerations. They are the same in the beginning as in the end. It is only the addition of matters important to the

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whole that warrants the time and the work put on the picture subsequently.

So far, I have talked to you only of color impression, but naturally you cannot have color without form, and divisions without dividing lines. If we start with the simplest division we can possibly make, it would have to be earth and sky. Our picture would be then in two tones. To carry on, we could divide the earth into sea and land, and, further subdivide into land and trees, adding elements in their relative importance. If we are limiting ourselves, however, to our color sensation of a few basic values, we shall never be tempted to go far into specialized form, and the meaning of our forms will help the choice. It is a good check on your natural rapacity for minor things, and will often help you to discriminate. In starting this way we accomplish several important things in a very short time.

In the first place, we have a consistent effect, having insured ourselves against changes of light if we keep within our established limits. We have designed our canvas for better or for worse, by dividing the space into masses of color, and finally we

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have the general black-and-white values. These values we did not realize we were getting, for they are inherent in the color, and are the equivalents in neutral to which all color is reducible. If one is to compare, it must be done through a common term ; money, for example, or light, or good manners ; in this case it is light, which is a very respectable standard.

It may seem somewhat of a risk for me to tell you that first attempts can ever be considered of much importance. They are certainly not successes, and yet through them you are beginning to assert your superiority over external conditions. You are weighing, summing, deciding, establishing your right to a personal opinion; not the sort of things that incompetents do. The tangible results may be very few, but they are certainly better than cheap successes. I do not suppose that many of you are overflowing with self-confidence when you start your morning sketch. You have no reason to be so when you think of yesterday or the day before. But you need not go out beaten and humble if you know that you have the clue to one, at least, of Nature's

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secrets. Nothing is ever produced by a poor victim. You can be master of your intention.

It may be possible that you will think that I am telling you how to paint, and urging a method as a means of salvation. I have nothing of the sort for you. Rules often reverse and methods are adapted only to special cases. Principles alone remain steady. They will lead you in a general direction, but the ways are many of reaching a given point. There is no substitute for intelligence.

These instructions are intended to show you what important things you must consider in beginning your picture, rather than any special way of painting it. They are to help you to record what you actually see in one glance, not what you think about a particular spot, and they will furnish you with the setting of your thought.

For instance, you may be interested in a rock on the hillside, but the bigger fact, the hillside, must be right before the rock can have any place to stay. There is a beauty of great relations that lies behind the interest of any single fact, and unless you see it in that way, your pictures will be mere gossip,

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harmless, perhaps, but of purely personal importance. If you catch yourself considering a small bush and forgetting the great slope of the land, you may be sure that you are dealing with minor facts. You have to go back and create from the start.

To put this in another way, our pochade is like a picture seen from too great a distance. It is the summing-up of many details into a few large masses, a statement of conditions, a weather report, but nothing is said of what we think of the day.

You can readily see the importance of being able to form a very quick judgment, as to the balancing of these masses, and in the end it must become so instinctive that it is scarcely a question of thought at all. We deliberately acquire a habit and save our minds for the point of our story. ;

Habits have an evil name, but we live by them. Once they were conscious thought, then through repetition we forgot and they became a general attitude. It seems very clear that we should be particular about the seed and know exactly what we are planting.

Each experience is passed on, to the subconscious

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mind, there to be weighed and returned with others as instinctive judgment. Since we have control of at least part of the material that goes to that mind, we should assure ourselves as to its quality. There is not much to be hoped for from facts which are not so. But consider the happy day when you are right without thinking, when the sketch is good as a matter of course, and the hand does not need close watching. It is a pity to spoil this vision, but I have to tell you that a time will come when you will need all the minds you have, for as yet you are only recorders, and conclusions have not been drawn.

For the present let us think only of conditions. The attempt to see in a large way is the point. Your studies are not of much importance, but you cannot overvalue the mental effort.

Nature does a great many things that are beyond the limits of either your taste or invention. Sketching sounds like a light and pleasant amusement, and so it may well be if that is your caliber. They say that familiar knowledge breeds contempt, but I doubt if it is equally true of wisdom.

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We may know a great many things about trees, and rocks, and water, and sky; then the day changes the balance and we think of them all in a new way.

Detail you will learn; the right kind does not complicate but amplifies. Your individual good sense would enable you to make things harmonious, but Nature will do something that is perfectly unexpected and far beyond any one's invention. Always would I go to Nature for the big color relations. I should consider beyond that, that I might reasonably expect to supply from my experience the necessary details. I should always hope, however, to have a direct color sketch of four or five related tones as a basis for my picture, and never have such an appalling amount of knowledge as to find it unnecessary.

It is customary to have certain definite problems given out each week, to be done out of class. This week I am going to ask you to make nine sketches of one subject under varying conditions.

The sketches should look complete, but when you examine closely -you find they are done in

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three or four very simple, flat tones. You see the same tree painted at different times of the day, under various phases of light and sky. In each one the color depends on the sky, and there is consequently a definite difference in the greens. To carry the sketches on to completion would be a matter of a very short time, for though these few tones seem abstract to you, the modulation of the edges and the addition of a small amount of detail would immediately give them the look of reality. That is the problem for next week.

Select something that is capable of interesting variations, and go to it at different times on different days. Each sketch should not take more than half an hour, and when they are put side by side, they should show a definite variation, and at most only superficial repetition.

The changes of light bring different color divisions and you will have a new design each time. Nature does not vary in form, but what we see both of form and color depends on light. You will notice that what I am recommending you to do will resemble a poster, a Japanese print, or even

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a child's painting; but the difference lies in the fact that the few large tones are the deliberate summingup of Nature's details, and are related in accordance with the special conditions of light. '

A few words now about technique, so that there may be no misunderstanding as to its importance. It is a poor thing that cannot be abused, and I do not want you to be afraid of the word, or to surround it with mystery.

^ There is no mystery about it; neither is there right nor wrong, but there is good and bad.

Technique is clear expression of what you see or feel. A Raphael Madonna in the manner of Monet would be bad technique, for it would have more atmosphere than holiness. Or if you put your request for a ticket at the North Station in the form of a sonnet or short song, you would be blamed for it; but the form would not be really wrong, and under other circumstances might even bring you the cordial appreciation of a generous public. Fit your means to the end you have in view.

The basis of all painting is drawing, and drawing is a combination of mind and hand, and the root

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of all detail. It may take a few years at the Art School to train the hand, but the training of the mind has less definite limits and should go on for the rest of your natural life.

You do not start with a totally untrained hand, even though you may never have drawn, for it has been taught from childhood more or less to obey the will. There will be what amounts to a spontaneous technique, for the hand is always skillful enough to make some sort of response to a directing mind. The initial trouble is farther back than the hand, and higher up.

In the work we have to do in the class, I am not trying to save you from the drudgery of training that you must necessarily go through before you are able to express yourself accurately. It seems logical enough to begin with the study of ourselves and the effect of Nature on us, in order to get a clear idea as to what we are trying to do. We avail ourselves of whatever little skill we may possess, and for the time being it is enough, for it does not require a great deal, to render general forms. Later you will come to the point which

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you cannot pass without thorough technical knowledge.

At the end of the first week, I am fully conscious that already many a hope has been blighted and that we face an uncertain future. Rules seem to offer us no prospect of support, and we have not only to consider Nature in our attempt to represent her, but we have to take ourselves into account as well. It promises to be a complicated matter.

We are told that a picture is not merely an affair of putting on paint, our intentions have been questioned, the evidence of our eyes has been doubted, and even the orderly working of our minds seems to be under suspicion.

It is not easy to fix the mind on fundamental things, but you do not begin until you can do so, no matter how much work has gone before.

Why paint or talk to tell unimportant truths that any one can see, but would rather not be obliged to? Unless your contribution is something better than gossip, it is scarcely worth the trouble. Penetrate, but do not bore.

You are not the slaves of Nature, though you

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must be able to follow closely before you have the right to command. The modern tendency is to look for the unusual, probably because it gives a fresh sensation to a somewhat jaded taste. There is much good that may come out of it, but one has to pursue the search with a thoroughly open mind. Queerness alone is not genius, though genius may be equally incomprehensible to us of moderate intelligence.

We must know what there is to know, of Nature and of ourselves. Beyond that we are free and our place waits for us.

IN the tangle of Nature, unless we -have some definite guide, we are lost. The complications are endless; our sensation is induced by some of them, but not by all. We must have means of picking out those incidents that give us the mental impression.

The world in front of us has a thousand stories told on a single page. As we look our interest centers, and it is one story only that we read. The others exist as general conditions like the hum of the crowd behind the words we are hearing. If our attention wanders, and we mix the events of one story with those of another, we lose the thread of the narrative and nothing has happened. We say, "Why, yes, of course, but what of it?" There is neither wisdom nor interest in isolated words or facts. We do not go to the dictionary in time of trouble, though all of the words are there that would answer our questions.

Nine people out of ten assume that a picture is

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a direct imitation and that the painter has nothing to do but copy as best he can. This is fundamentally wrong, for if it were possible to reproduce Nature exactly, the result would be at best only a lifeless counterfeit. The movies are better, even though they lack color, for they move and in that are nearer to Nature than any picture could be. A picture is an entirely different matter. It is an individual interest in a given spot and may fail to have much general significance. This is neither for nor against it. It might well happen that one's personal interest is so special as to be shared by very few people indeed, and many a painter faces this situation. It is here that he must definitely decide what he wants most, for lack of appreciation is the price he pays for his own personal taste. It is better to be clear about this in the beginning, for if we long to be appreciated it is a job in itself and we should give our full mind to it. One of the mistakes a painter makes is the assumption that he is different from the rest of the world. He may like what others do not, but he is nevertheless human. He gets his sensations in exactly the same way as

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do other people. He is the same and more so. This is his only chance, for if his talent were a special sense there would be no one to understand it but himself.

Mankind sees, but sees badly thinks, and thinks loosely. Thinking and seeing are inseparable, for the eyes cannot focus on a spot without conscious thought. Try it. When we let our eyes and our attention rest on an object, we lose consciousness of the unrelated surroundings; it is an automatic selection by both eyes and brain. We choose what we see, whether we are painters or not. The world is objective to us only at the point where our eyes and mind touch it. There thought and sight combine. All else becomes general and subjective, to be rearranged, however, as soon as the eye passes to another object.

You may ask why a picture, complete in every detail, should not stand in the place of Nature and give us the same reaction. There are two reasons. One is that the picture is so small that the whole of it is practically in focus, though representing objects widely apart. And the other is, that the

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painter directs that you should look at what interests him.

This is a starting-point, and from now on we are much misunderstood people, for we are going to be blamed for failing in what we are not even trying to do. How often we hear it said of a picture, "Nature does not look like that"; and, "I never saw such colors anywhere." These persons are probably right, for the facts they gather are unrelated. They take a census of Nature, a catalogue of things, useful but not literary. Even the cook picks out the materials she wishes to use for her pudding, and their identity is lost in the final result. No one feels undue pride in the knowledge of the components of that pudding, not even the cook herself.

For some reason, it always seems insulting to doubt what any one sees. Probably it is because the truthfulness of the eye is taken for granted, and it is the owner's veracity that is in question. I hope as we go on, you will allow me to criticize your vision, from time to time, without implying that your honesty is involved. We shall begin in

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the spirit of the much surprised person, who, under pressure of a new idea, doubts his own eyes. We shall at least question ours and satisfy ourselves that we know what we see, rather than see what we know. It may be that we shall find that our eyes have been closed by our minds, for it is very easy for an established thought to disconnect our eyes and our minds altogether.

From childhood we are warned against things that are not so we may not even tell them, but now I warn you against the things that are so. You may be good without the warning, but you never can be great. Which simply means to say, you must always have an open mind, unclogged by prejudice or habit, and be ready to take each fresh impression and weigh it as though it had never happened before. You might find something new. Remember that the privilege of seeing a blue horse is lost by those who know that horses are not that color.

Now, having warned you that you must be very careful not to allow the mind to influence the sight, I have to tell you that there are many times when

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the eyes are entirely misleading without a previous knowledge of the facts. The baby reaches for the moon, for example; sometimes older people do also; but experience teaches us that the brightness is a long way off, and it generally looks so.

We judge distance because we know that form seems to diminish as it goes away from us, and we are doubtful whether our drawing looks like a bowl or a dome until we know which it is supposed to be. We see solid form by a series of characteristic facts that we know to mean mass, and so it goes on.

I should question both eyes and mind and use one to check the other. You cannot trust either of them.

I have indicated to you the structural form of your picture. It is a definite spot as a center of interest, a concrete shape associated with minor forms which serve to explain it. In addition are the general forms and color masses which represent the conditions of life and place.

You have to begin with generalities, and it is no misfortune. You are qualifying yourselves for the object of your choice. Later you have to weigh

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facts in order to determine their relative importance, keeping some and throwing away others, but at present I am making it easy for you by telling you to hold only to general considerations. You commonly know Nature by objects, about most of which you have formed some opinion. Deprived of these, you enter a new world altogether where you have no preconceived ideas and you make a fresh start. It is better than signing the pledge not to indulge in detail, especially as we may need to take a little of it later, for purely public reasons.

There is one more question to ask in regard to our eyes. What happens when we see color? It is nothing that we can put into words any further than to describe the conditions and say whether we like them or not. It does not in itself raise any train of thought except by suggestion, and is a pure sensation. The color that you put on to a picture is not an imitation, but the source itself of our sensation. Form is represented, but color is actual. We can thrill with the scientist when he tells us that color is a matter of wave lengths in a hypothetical medium, but he does not

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tell us why one wave length should be agreeable and another the reverse. There is nothing we can get from him. Who knows if we all have the same sensation? There is no way of proving it. The colorblind person loses a part of what the rest of us have, and even we may be insensitive to a greater or less degree. Some see warm with one eye and cold with the other, and it is said that tobacco will limit the vision for red. There is no such thing as uniformity in color sensation. Each person has his own, and even that is not constant, for it varies continually with the condition of nerves and physical state.

While all of this is true, it is a matter of very small importance to the painter, for he deals in the relations of color and never in one color by itself. He can use his warm eye or his cold eye and come to the same result with either, for the difference would be only one of tone.

If we stop to consider, there is very little in sight, or life, or doing, that can be isolated and retain its value. It is in the relations where the quality lies.

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So the word is to compare, whether it is form, or color, or thought. There is nothing that you can say about the literal that will be of the slightest importance. Unless you are very careful you will find yourself trying to imitate each color for itself, and you will not feel at all conspicuous through your success.

Remember that you are dealing with a sensation, and that you are feeling the relation and not the separate colors. It is a very easy matter to adjust one in reference to another, but almost impossible to be so exactly right as to paint them independently. If there is any easy way that is blameless, you had better take it.

The Dutch painters talk of "color in tone," and it means color implied; like painting a red-headed person, not with red paint, but with the balance of color so suggested that a very little warmth seems red. Imply your color rather than actually paint it, which does not mean that you must be dull or colorless. It is all a matter of relations.

You may grasp everything I say, but it will not become your thought until you have tested it.

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You will hold it in your mind and some day you will invent it for yourself, and then it will be yours. Do not accept things without trying them. Test everything I tell you, for some of it may not be true.

In a general way we have considered the mechanics of impression; it may seem elaborate and unnecessary, for in the end all you do is to go out and paint, unconscious of the complexities of thought and sight. At such a time you certainly cannot be bothered with self -ana lysis, principles, or even rules. The gun is loaded and you have to shoot. It is when you examine what you have hit that all of this knowledge is necessary. Or, if perhaps you did not hit anything, you can find out how to take a better aim in the future. All that is needed is to put down what you see. But you see as you are and not all that there is to be seen.

You will notice that our model picture is a single thought or interest with all else subordinate, and with irrelevant material entirely left out. This is not accepted by every painter, though I believe that the great pictures of the world answer these

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conditions. It is not in any way degree of finish, but rather of emphasis, that characterizes this conception of a picture. A fact of minor importance may be thoroughly elaborated so long as we never forget that it is minor. The minute it becomes obtrusive it loses its secondary place.

There is a certain order of picture that we all know, so intimately painted that there is nothing left unsaid. The execution is marvelous and we are filled with wonder that any man should be so skillful. True enough, we forget what it is all about in our joy in the verisimilitudes; but does it matter? A completely realized picture is canned emotion.

Don't tell all that you know; some of it might be impertinent; let the other fellow do a little guessing. What is too definitely limited is prevented from being bigger than its limits. Create an interest by painting toward a possibility; never take anything to the top-notch, because after that comes anticlimax; but promise something greater to happen next. Never touch your highest; show that you can go higher if you choose but don't choose!

When you know only a little you will want to

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tell it all, but later you will be content to use merely what is necessary for the immediate object. The constructive way is to have a knowledge of all things plus the knowledge of how few you need for expression. Know the conditions that make two thirds of your knowledge unnecessary. It takes far less to create an impression than one would naturally suppose, provided you use the suitable means. Eliminate, but do not mutilate. The latter is cruelty, or ignorance, or both. Ease implies hard work somewhere, for freedom comes only with intimate knowledge. Skill ought to make you more capable of conveying the sensation of the moment, and not result in mannerisms and types of days.

My general impression is that a painter should be a very intelligent person, for, in the summingup, we are bound to admit that we come in the end to individual opinion, a preference without the possibility of proof. We are not in any worse situation, however, than is the scientist with his molecule and his atom, which are useless to him without force, the unexplainable; or the biologist, whose unknown is life. We call ours the personal

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equation, and we are lucky to have it. We will label it talent, if you like, or genius, or temperament, or x, if you are mathematically minded, but whatever its name may be, it is the determining factor. It is a factor, however, and the rest of the equation is knowledge; general, special, useful, useless, any kind of knowledge, so long as you draw from it the sense of law and order in the universe. If I have to take a man's opinion, I choose my man. I would not place my trust in a tramp, though he were temperamental, or even in a distinguished specialist, but I would find one of generally sound judgment, whose knowledge of many things gives him the power of instinctive Tightness.

There are no rules for painting, and yet it is undeniable that some pictures are better than others. Some are interesting without being good, and some good, but with no interest, quite like the people who make them. A picture is so like its author, that one might in a general way reconstruct the person from it. If you make a definite record of the things that interest you as they pass,

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you show your choice and the sort of person you are. The subject-matter may be commonplace, the incidents trivial, and yet they may have a definite bearing on some large principle; in that you will find a standard. Art is choice.

We have many circumstances to deal with. Some people are so appreciative as to like everything, but they run the serious danger of being promiscuous. The real painter is the one who chooses from the trivialities those which are significant. The external appearance of Nature is of slight importance in itself; it is also indeterminate. What we see depends on what we happen to be; not only on our permanent qualities, but on the passing ones as well. A bad dinner will not alter our view of the world, but it may bend it temporarily.

If I suggest to you a system, it is to provide that your thought may be orderly. We pass from the general to the special with a sure means of measurement for the minor things. Our large color planes may seem arbitrary, but they are the sums of many other smaller color patches, existing within their limits.

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The next step will be in the way of self-justification, for if we are so bold as to cut the world up into a few large pieces, the public has a right to know what we mean by it. We separate the trees from the sky by a general contour line, but that is good only so long as we consider simply color mass. If we think of them as trees, it will be necessary to modify our line to show how a tree meets a sky, and it will be in accordance with its personal character as well as its kind. I am not speaking of outline in the ordinary sense, but rather the alternation on the edge between the sharp and the vague which is caused by the play of light and the character of surface it falls on. We know things in Nature very largely by their edges, and if these are made characteristic we have gone a long step toward representation. Do not think that this is an easy matter, though it may be done by a touch here and there, a sharpening of one place and the blurring of another. The character of that tree is at your mercy. Who ever thinks of a ladylike pine, or expects to find softness about it? It may bend or break, but it will not soften. Yet the needles are

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soft enough, if you think only of them and forget the tree that carries them. When you can only say a little about a person, do not tell me the size of his collar. If you mention it, I might think it his chief claim to distinction or at least a determining factor. Give me his political opinions; I may want to know him. Remember the character of things you are dealing with, if it is only on the edge. Beyond the meeting-line we take very much for granted, whether it is with trees or people. Paint your mass flat; we will guess at the leaves if you show us that we ought to.

Do you realize what it means when the sky and the water meet in a line that makes half our horizon? A pond would not do that; it is possible only for the Great Lakes or the ocean. These divisions mean large things in their simplicity and are not arbitrary. Our personal choice comes, in the placing on the canvas, for there we can give the prominence of space to the mass in which we are interested. If our interest is sky, we would naturally give it more room than the water, putting the horizon low, and reverse the proportion if our

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picture were of a wave. The facts before us would be the same in either case.

There are no rules for placing except those of common sense. Make your point clearly. The faults in composition are only such matters as detract from the interest. One can imply much by the arrangement of the large masses. I remember wondering why a painted Dutch windmill never gave the impression of size until I found a picture in which the top of the mill was cut by the frame and the size was fully expressed. There was a drawing, too, of an elephant so crowded into the space as to give the feeling that there was not enough room for so large a creature.

These are matters of suggestion, and it is significant that they should come in now while our thought is yet so general. You will notice, however, that the suggestion is true to its order. We think of large divisions and feel size. If our minds were on one object, other objects would be implied. The lesson is, if you wish to be big you must be so from the start. Size belongs to essentials and cannot be added as an incident. You can be king

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of trifles later, and it is a distinguished situation so long as you measure with your own people, but if you stray into the world, you may have to wear just a hat and leave the crown behind you.

I wish to give you a sense of the dignity of great divisions as well as of their practical importance.

Having made our world of a few large pieces, we are fast coming to the time when we will take a personal interest in it. You will have to reconsider your masses then, for where your attention is fixed, there you will see more intimately. The tone that was flat will be made of a number of variations, all adding up to the original sum. So we always go back to the beginning.

You will find that .a flat tone often looks dull, lacking the life and intensity that you see in Nature. This is not necessarily because your color is wrong, but for a totally different reason. All life is change, and where there is no change, in the end, consciousness leaves. Press your finger on the table and you will soon forget where that finger is unless you press again. A tone made of broken color will keep your sensation moving from one

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spot to another, unconscious, perhaps, but active. A flat tone is static and dead. This might seem an argument for painting everything in spots, and so it would be if we had not that troublesome future interest of ours to consider. We are thankful to have Nature keep quiet while we look at that man on the beach; and in the painting we desire that our public should give undivided attention to the point of our story, and we refrain from being too interesting in matters of only general importance. If our picture depends on the play of light or motion or unstable and shifting conditions, then we should use every means to unsettle the attention. So do not be disturbed if you cannot paint the sea as blue as it looks, for it is not in reality one color. No blue could be as blue as that. It is blue, and brown, and green. The company it is in makes it so brilliant, and it might be quite dull somewhere else. Choose your company if you want to shine.

I do not wish to complicate matters for you unduly, but there are a few warnings that you may find of service. A sketch has a way of looking very respectable out of doors, but disappointing when

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it is brought home. This is because the light outside is intense, also oftentimes colored. If you paint with a colored light on your canvas, it misleads you as to what you are actually putting on, and you will find to your sorrow later that it is better not to shine by reflected light. A red rock behind you will give your color a charm that is not in the least apparent when the rock is no longer an influence. The sunshine on your canvas will lead you to think you have done it at last, but it is another gray day when it gets to the studio. Of course, in these cases you miss in tone rather than in relation of color or values, but that is enough to destroy the beauty, and sometimes even the meaning. Sunlight, for example, is so essentially yellow, that cold lights in a landscape will suggest anything but the sun as a source. This does not apply to painting within doors where the lights are cold and the shadows warm. We have another trouble in our blues, which rapidly decrease in intensity with failing light and distance. This would not be a matter of importance if all colors had the same rate of change, but you will find your blue dis-

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appearing long before the others are affected, and it will be necessary to overstate it to make it relatively true. You will find it a safe rule to paint all color brighter than you see it, as much is lost in the dim light of our houses. If this seems to you a falsification of facts that we have taken so much trouble to establish, let me remind you that our object is to re-create a sensation. Facts are but raw material. The world is our oyster, but it is better for the salt and tabasco.

Art is not based on the way things are, but upon things as you see and feel them. Realism is after all only what you think the thing may be.

To sum up, we begin with the largest aspects of Nature, sky and land. Then, dividing again, we have sky, water, land, and trees, such things as might be spelled with a capital. That is the reduction of Nature's forms to the fundamental elements. When we look at Nature we see it colored, and we get our first impression in that way. To start your picture you must begin with those color relations, the color value of the sky to the color value of the sea and land. Now these values are de-

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pendent on the sky, and as the sky changes so do all other things change in accord with it. In order to be consistent, we must directly establish the relations and stick to them. We must have a true beginning or we cannot have anything but empty endings. Your natural tendency will be to imitate, but I have cut that out altogether by telling you to paint an average which does not exist. It is much more difficult than it seems; easy to state, but far from easy to do. You have the problem of reducing a thousand small spots to one large tone and then comparing these tones until they are accurately adjusted. It brings it to a question of your own summing-up and your own opinion, for Nature offers you none of these things that you state as facts.

However much we may differ in personal taste or even in our judgment of current affairs, if we go back far enough we shall reach the point of common beliefs which we call general principles. These sketches occupy exactly that position, and should be substantially the same, whoever paints them. Later, as we bring our individual prefer-

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ences into play, they differentiate and no longer look like the work of one person. Originality does not mean that you are superior to law, but rather that you are keener than others to discriminate between law and custom. A picture must be based on the great considerations of color values; acquaint yourself with these, for they are the law, and beyond them all else is custom to be followed or broken as it seems to you best.

There are still a few words to say in the way of general advice. It is better to be definitely wrong than weak, and better to be downright bad than tentative. Be definite even in blunder; make your mistakes, make them as if you intended them, and they will get by sometimes. But if you are indefinite, no one will have the least confidence in your art.

Failure is not always disaster; fail if you have to and go on; a quitter always loses. Be more afraid of your successes, for you should be aiming at what you cannot possibly reach. I am not offering the standard of the perfectionist which is in reality the mock humility of the egotist; but rather a general

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direction with the better always a little beyond your reach. The point of discouragement is where you always do well, never better or worse; it takes the devil as a measure to make mediocrity even respectable. No extreme is good. Pick out the best of all and be forceful and delicate at the same time; have full color, but delicate color; always a certain reserve, but never a lack of vitality.

One of the characteristics of American landscape is that it has a virility that you do not find in Europe. The American people are full of life, and their natural expression is force. We are not slow in action and we are quick-minded. We go to extremes easily, but we are not soft, not dreamers only. The art that will come from America will be virile like our air, which has the clearness of crystal. It is not " atmosphere, " but a medium just the same. We do not see bare Nature, but Nature covered with a medium of beauty. The air in Europe is thicker, and gives beautiful color effects, but I believe it is foreign to our temperaments. Our land has a touch of savagery, and we are to make good on our own lines. When we are in England, we

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have a sense of long cultivation; that everything has been made artificial; that there is nothing firsthand. But we are a new people making a new country and a new art; we are also made by the country and dominated by it. Here everything is elemental; the hills have great lines, for they were scored and moulded by the glacier as it made its way to the sea. The ocean, too, placid enough at times, is boundless force quietly held in check. Everything about us suggests elemental force; and unless we can show it in some way, we are clearly outside our environment.

Force through delicacy and not through brutality, and the question is, How may we express it?

Ill

UP to this point we have considered Nature in a very general way. No one thing has been of special importance and we have thought only of the simple color pattern formed by the various large divisions of our subject.

But to live only in generalities is not after the fashion in which most of us are made. Who bothers very much about the climate so long as the weather suits him? Our thought is in the present and we know about things. The painter must express himself through objects and use the means by which they are ordinarily identified. I want to keep always before your mind the fact that we see but very little and take a great deal for granted. If in painting we supply that little, we reconstruct the mental image and express our fact.

We know by experience that we live in a world of solid form; but form looks solid to us by reason of the shadow it casts and the variation of light and dark which shows direction of surface. Think of

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the letters we have all seen made only of shadows, but with the rest of the form so implied as to seem completed.

A shadow is to most of us a dark spot, but so is a hole; and we know only by the general probabilities which it may be. There are other qualities to shadow as well as darkness, and it is likely that though we do not necessarily think of them, they are equally important in forming our impression.

If a shadow is darkness, or, better, lack of light, there must also be a lack of color and of detail as well, for color is light, and form is seen only when illuminated. Our shadow must be a balance of these three qualities to be accepted and classified without thought. Darkness alone is not enough. I am really making you a very handsome present by telling you what shadow is not, and we may even extract from it a comforting and sustaining rule.

Lack of color is neutrality, and a shadow will be found at such a place on the achromatic scale as its value may determine. It is modified, however, by local conditions and turns toward the color on which it rests. Neutrality in general implies lack

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of attention, objects we are not interested in. Even a tentative interest destroys the neutral, and in an affair of pigment, we find a color in place of a nonentity.

There is the neutral scale, to be sure, but it applies to its own condition of light, and varies in accordance with the way in which that light changes. This means only that all color is relative as we have remarked before. You cannot carry your neutral about with you in your pocket mixed in a tube and ready for use. It might be the nicest color you could find all day, and you must not be interested or even bored. Your question about a shadow answers itself; if it were any color at all, would n't you know it? For each set of conditions there will be the corresponding neutrals and they change with every canvas you paint.

Since we are to question especially what is accepted as common fact, let us doubt for a moment the darkness of shadow. At most it never could be black, for out of doors there is always between us and any object, a film of white light reflected directly from surfaces as well as from dust and

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moisture. Adding to this, eyes somewhat dazzled, and, more important than all, a mind full of the thought of light, we shall find no great degree of darkness possible within our range of vision. There are dark spots, however, though somehow they do not look like the holes that we find now and again in otherwise well-regulated canvases.

My question is, What do we see? Is it cause or effect, or perhaps both, and would one suggest the other? A neutral spot without detail, in surroundings of full color and form, shows that something has happened, and we are likely to think it may be shadow, since it is the inevitable result of that condition. This is of little importance unless the effect leads us to overestimate the cause, and I very much suspect that it does. We could test it by eliminating detail and color, and asking if such a spot would suggest darkness, though in reality as light as its neighbors. We will be more careful as we look at those dark spots. They are not as innocent as they seem. Or have we been taking too much for granted again, and trusting in obvious facts?

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We have gained something, however, that we can use very well later, in the hint that the effect Could increase or suggest the cause. When we finally allow ourselves to be as interesting as we really may be, we shall need all that we know of mental technique. Every one naturally resents the didactic, and if we can present our fact so that it may be drawn as an inference, we enlist the mind of our audience and avoid doing violence to its pride, especially in affairs of general knowledge, such as how Nature ought to look. Dangerous ground, but we must allow others to do a little thinking, though there is no reason why we should not direct that thought, and even anticipate the conclusion if we do not appear too prominently ourselves.

State a result and imply the cause for others to discover. It gives them much mental stimulation if sufficiently obvious. This is called imagination and is a credit to any one so long as it does not interfere with the practical. Be courteous in your painting. Suggest the thought so that the other believes it to be his own discovery. The old masters

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often did that, if we may judge by some of their admirers.

If we can imply shadow through terms of light, we have expressed the minor and the major in one word, and given each its due importance. Our first thought will be of dominating light, and then we shall notice the shadows. One other word about the neutral before we come to our rule. However much a thing of the moment the neutral may be, it is always colder than the sunlit colors.

Paint your shadows neutral and modify them with the local color on which they fall.

You might even get considerable credit that you do not deserve, by allowing your mind a complete rest and painting your lights warm and the shadows cold, for that is their permanent, unvarying, unalterable relation.

There is still a little help that we may draw from this rule before we proceed to doubt it. If in your pursuit of Beauty, you find in your picture some spot that does not seem to share the light of its surroundings, it may be too dark, but more likely is too cold and suggests to you gratuitous shadow.

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Beware of presents of that sort, even if you make them to yourself. It is not done by well-informed people.

We cannot have our rule and always keep it, too, and so we must start on the trail of the exceptions. Special conditions will modify the objective, and that is the class to which all rules belong. Principles belong to the subjective, and vary only with our imperfect understanding. A reflected light will so alter a harmless shadow as to render it noticeable instead of unobtrusive as it naturally should be. It is generally not the actual change, but its unexpectedness that attracts our attention, and the rule is not seriously broken, unless in our excitement we break it ourselves. There is a fatal attraction to the unusual, and the tendency is to magnify its importance. One is also inclined to be proud of the ability to see fine differences, and to forget to ask, sometimes, if they are worth seeing. There is a parallel to this in the imaginative person who finds faces in clouds, dogs' heads in rocks, and seems generally to be reminded of what the object is not. Personally I prefer the clouds and the rocks.

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You will see that my whole thought of shadow is that it serves to explain and suggest, but that we naturally look at the light. There are times when shadow is dominant, and then all of the conditions are altered and we work by other rules. Size of shadow makes a difference, then, and we note another exception. If you ask me how large a shadow may be before it gives up our rule, you will have to tell me of what you are thinking before I answer the question. You find what you are looking for and lose other things. If your taste is for light, you know of shadow, but are apt to forget it. You take it as a matter of course; needed, but of no personal interest. It would be certainly easier if we could give up all vagueness and state our measurements in inches; but sizes vary, and the best we can do is with mental proportions.

When we said last week that color is a sensation, we lifted a burden that science cannot carry. Not that we mind it, for that is what we are here for; but I see endless trouble ahead even in this small matter. We can be fairly definite about form, for we have two or three senses with which to

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check it. Without sight, touch, or smell, a chair would still be an obstruction, there would be no argument as to its presence; but sensation is our own, and there are only general ways of comparing yours and mine. What is a matter of small interest to you may be very important to me. When we speak of neutral color, we mean the zero of that feeling; neither possession nor loss, which are both sensation, but an emotional dead center. It must be more than a bore and less than an interest, the point of complete indifference. You can see that this brings us, in a practical way, to a neutral so common, so expected, that we neither know it is there nor feel that anything is missing. This is the basis of shadow and a test of the rule and its exceptions. It could even be the rule itself, if you choose to take it.

A final word and we will pass to color. Wherever blue is the basis of shadow, it must be intensified to keep pace with the other colors; wrong at the start but right at the finish. This supposes a normal distance from which a picture should be seen, and every painter instinctively adapts him-

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self to it, though it is a mystery to the public. As nearly every shadow is blue or purple in some degree, it follows that the actual pigment used is more colored than the facts seem to warrant. One wonders sometimes about rules and exceptions. Would it not be better to know all of the reasons and then forget them and paint?

Color is a perfectly harmless sensation. It leads to no evil whatever, and at the very worst can only be a nuisance. But it is interesting to think that just beyond our vision come the ultra-violet rays, which are the rays of chemical action, bring death to the lowest organisms, and have something to do with the life history of plants.

As far as the painter is concerned the scientific side of color is unimportant; for only the effect of it is what concerns him. He divides colors into two classes, the warm and the cold, with, of course, an indeterminate line between. As color recedes from us, it gradually loses its identity, and finally merges with the sky. In doing so it also grows cooler, so that we may broadly say the warm colors belong to the foreground and the cold to the distance. If

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you speak to me of a red and yellow sunset, I will tell you that it is not an exception, but a totally different case. The source of the light is colored, part of the spectrum is missing, and local color does what it can.

Think of a red object as one which absorbs all color but red, and shows us only what it has no taste for. Green will swallow the red, but if that is the source of light there is nothing left an4 our trees will be black. If you are looking for further complications, our eyes are so dazzled by the brilliant light that anything dark will take the complementary. Local color has very little chance, and is dominated by the greater sensation. Cover the sky and study the changes that come from colored light playing on the various surfaces. Then cover your ground and paint your sky, like an honest and responsible person. You have your sunset, but it is colored paint; for you have not shown what the dazzling light has done to you. People will look at it, and tell you of other sunsets you should have seen, so bright that no artist could paint them. You seem improbable, but you do not dazzle, and

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your search for facts has but placed you under suspicion. Color is a sensation. If I could make you think it was red by painting it green, I should certainly do so.

There is an afterglow that comes over these hills so elusive that paint seems never to touch it. It always looked red in the picture and always like paint, until once, when I made the shadows green, I found my color. It was a relation between red and green, and not a local color. There is a color of fact and a color between the facts; a single sensation made up of many, like a chord in music, possible to analyze, but to be felt as one.

It is one of our instinctive habits to measure distance by color variation as well as by diminishing form. The cooling of color as it recedes from us is so much a matter of perpetual experience that most people have never thought of it, and would tell you that it is unimportant if true. And yet we all know that a mountain is far away, because it seems blue, and a misty day in the city will make the buildings look very much higher. Here is your chance to express the third dimension, which is the

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measure of illusion. You have breadth and height, but you must imply depth, and it may be done by diminishing form and graying color. If you cover a space with alternate spots of warm and cool color of identical value, the warm will appear to be in front of the cool. Our surface vibrates; we have done, what, in the ordinary course of events, would mean separation or shadow. The Impressionists do this and find it an excellent means to an end.

As you sit down to consider on Saturday night all of the facts you have gained with the paint you have used, you will find nothing more far-reaching than this matter of the warm and the cold. It sounds too simple to be of much importance, but it means the relative place in the world of the object you are interested in. Also it means that other things should keep their place, too, which is quite important in a well-ordered canvas. This matter of place is like size, for it belongs to the beginning and cannot be postponed till the time comes to explain. No amount of argument will make a false color keep its proper distance, or even justify its pres-

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ence. If you divide your canvas into a few colors that are appropriate to their respective planes, you have expressed depth and followed a law of Nature.

This is a brief discussion of how we get our facts. Before long we shall want to use them, and we shall have other things to occupy our minds.

We find many confusing incidents in Nature that are difficult to see clearly, unless we refer to the cause. Facts cannot be changed, but the conclusions we draw from them must be, as we get a larger view. There are not so many kinds of visible facts when we stop to think of it, and we could easily make a short list that would include everything we know through the service of our eyes. The first is the solidity of form, and I have told you in a general way how we recognize the solid. Scientists say it is motion in mass, and the Greeks had their doubts when they said, "What is, is not." However it may seem to a scientist or philosopher, Christian or pagan, or neither, to the mere painter form is a solid fact, though even his object is illusion.

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Our next fact is extension, measurement, size, any term you choose to express the limiting and separation of objects. It is the equivalent of time, in the spacing of events. I have never heard it doubted that two bodies may not occupy the same place at the same time. When time disappears, all events become one and matter coincides. This is the infinite equation.

We have light with its components of color, a matter recognizable through but one of our senses. Finally there is motion, which is a state or condition. It may look like a dubious fact, since its essence is change, but if it is permanency that makes fact we shall soon be forced to doubt our own importance.

To sum up, we have mass, measurement, light, and motion, as definite elements with which to express our ideas. The discussion of motion we shall have to leave, to some extent, until later, for it involves suggestion and choice, but there is one aspect of it which belongs to our present subject. Our first thought of motion is of line or direction, the path of the passing object. The thing itself is

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more or less vague, and we shall consider that side of the matter when we become more intimate with objects. But if the line of passing separates planes, as it does in the case of sea and shore, or if it is continuous, like the trail of smoke across the sky, then we have a case of fundamental line, which is to be taken as a description of character.

The separation of objects means the meeting of edges, where one thing stops and another begins, and the character of the object determines that line. In representation we reverse the order and suggest the character by the manner of meeting. You will notice that however literal we may be in intention, we are constantly forced back to suggestion. This is because neither the mind nor the eye can absolutely isolate a fact. We know nothing of one color alone. When we look at a pale blue, we unconsciously compare it with white, and so call it pale. We identify by association. No object ever completely fills our vision, either mental or physical. In thought we have the object with the conscious and subconscious associations, and the mind slips from one to the others. If we are straying now,

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we have only gone behind our subject, merely a temporary separation.

A rock on the hillside is bounded by a line that depends on its circumstances. Above in the air it is smooth and continuous, but where it meets the ground all depends on conditions. If we have sand the line is precise and broken only by shadow. If it is turf, the line is soft, or with bushes, we leave the ground and meet in the; air. Each object has its own personal ways. A tree comes from the ground; we may not always see it come, but we must make it possible for it to do so. There is unrest about a tree that carries its head in the air, with no visible means of support. We expect it of clouds, and do not like it if they adhere to the hillside. We very much prefer that Nature, at her age, should be strictly conventional.

There is an ever-recurring miracle that happens year by year, for which Nature is in no way responsible. Why do class rocks float? There is no discredit to the painter, for they seem to do it by their own volition. Do not forget that when a wave meets a rock it is more like a fight than a party.

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And even if there is no assault, we have a line traced by a horizontal moving liquid on a vertical solid. It is force meeting resistance.

When a wave breaks on a rock and there is a smother of foam, the eye finds it most difficult to follow the line. If you try to do so, you will assemble a number of facts that have happened at various times and together form a wave that is possible only in paint and quite beyond the range of the ocean. Stop to consider with what you are dealing; nothing is happening by chance. Every drop of that water is obedient to the force that compels it. What a travesty to make your wave burst into absorbent cotton!

A straight line in the joining of water and rock means the extreme of motion, or else absolute rest. The quality of the line will show which it may be. Swift motion has no time for trifles. There is a protest of white at a minor obstruction, but the line is continuous, and paralleled by others on the back of the rushing wave. It ignores the rock as much as it can. The quiet, straight line is the victim of form. It breaks at the shadows, is strong in the

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light, and may leave you in doubt altogether as to whether you are painting rock or sea. It does not need to be especially regarded; your second-hand forms are of more importance, for they show that you have at least a reflecting surface. A long, low curve means the swell of the tide, and so we can go on from line to line, each the direct answer to the conditions. What do you expect better than that? Your imitative forms have no family history and we are not at all sure of their relations.

We read through the individual the law of its kind, and a wave is a unit of the ocean. I do not wish in any way to underestimate the importance of an individual or of any single object that, we know all about. But the governing laws are superior to the unit, and belong to all humanity. The wave is a personal interest, but is modeled by force, which is universal. We should say of our picture, " The ocean acts in that manner." There is noob-. jection to its looking the part, too, but that should come in the way of an inevitable result. You must pass behind your subject to reach some common

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ground of experience or else it will have about the same general interest as your diary. We are glad that you were there when that wave broke; it must have been a very pleasant occasion; but we are interested in the power that could make such a thing happen. We may see something like it ourselves, some day, or even better. We have suggestion again; it seems always to lie in wait for us, no matter how simple and obvious we intend to be.

Why do you suppose our fishermen have a look in their eyes as though they were seeing beyond the horizon? They see the waves and the color, but they say, "I guess it's coming off to blow, and Mose had better get in before she strikes." They will risk their lives for you any day, but they will beat you at a bargain wherever they can. You would not do that, but would you go out as a matter of course to a boat in distress? True enough, it is not our profession, but it makes a painted wave look remarkably safe. I am asking you to respect what you are only representing.

The ocean is the simplest thing we know, and the most permanent. It looks exactly the same

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to-day as it did in the beginning and will be the same as long as the world lasts. We can study its surface through passing forms, such as mountains or dunes, which obey the same forces in changing material. We have gravity and the push of the wind as moulding agents in either case. I speak of the ocean now, not so much as a subject for painting, but rather to demonstrate to you the necessity of seeking causes in your attempt to see results. This may sound incompatible with the artistic temperament, and may be called scientific, which in this connection is supposed to be a term of reproach. Let us take what science we can; we shall need all of it, and more, when we come to add in our personal equation. Use your minds freely and without hesitation. If your knowledge is great enough, and your mind clear enough, your production will be so logical and spontaneous that no one will suspect that you have a mind at all. The simplicity of wisdom is never offensive and does not have to impress in order to convince. I am urging the value of knowledge and warning you against it. I have seen the face of a wave so beau-

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tifully painted that it must have taken days to draw all the detail, but one forgot that it was supposed to be moving. The anatomy of Nature is our professional concern, but that is a part of the diagnosis and does not appear as a separate item. We are glad the doctor knows, but we want to get busy and forget it.

Our problem next week will be the story of shadows and the careful consideration of our dividing lines. I think that we shall soon draw the conclusion that there is very little chance of an important finish if the start itself is bad. There is no use in beginning with chaos. That affair was settled a long time ago and we live in an ordered world. It is useless to try to be even the original, primordial particle, you are much too old for the part. Those simple old days have gone, and the most that you could do in that direction would be in the role of a civilized wreck. The sketch that you begin today has a long previous history in yourself. You do not start with the bare canvas; the picture is finished in you and to make it visible is the last step. It is not always a simple step to take and its

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evil name is technique. The easiest way is the academic, the manner of established respectability. Do not be afraid of it, for it is not necessarily reactionary. It means that best ways have been found to express a general line of thought. These ways may be adaptable enough to meet new conditions, but in any event the convention lies in the thought rather than in the technical method.

Any method is good that expresses the thought, and always will be. We find new ways as we go on, just as language coins new words when the mode of life changes. All methods are bound to become academic, provided they are backed by a thought of sufficient importance to last a considerable time. The technique of the moment may be perfectly adequate, and yet so limited to a cul-desac of thought as to have no ultimate value. Think of drawing, for example, which in the figure has been an affair of correct proportions, poise, and graceful line. If these elements are intentionally distorted, we have an expression of evil that would be hard to match by conventional methods. One could scarcely say that such things were not well

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drawn, for they thoroughly express the motive. But such a method is very like a kit of burglar's tools, nicely adapted to business, but of little general use unless, indeed, we join the criminal classes. Think of the academic as a link in the chain that connects us with the first artist. If we add enough to the present store of knowledge, we shall be academic to those who come after. My thought is that we grow from the past.

A thoroughly conventional training need hold only the man who was born to follow, and it gives the better man the right to diverge. I do not have much faith in the spontaneity of genius. A genius probably has the power of acquiring essentials in an extremely short time when it would take a century for another to do so. But the essentials are the same in either case. It does not appear likely that any one can omit thq training and start readymade, though at the present time that seems to be considered possible. As for radical changes and discoveries that would sweep away all that has gone before, they will come when man himself changes. If we suddenly were to acquire the habit

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of going on all fours, I should expect the artist's point of view to be altered accordingly. Art is exactly where man is and develops with him.

The actual manipulation of the brush is a skillful matter, and yet it requires more intelligence than manual dexterity. Art is psychology, not science, and there must ever be one unknown factor, the personal equation. You must know what you see, why you see, and what is worth seeing.

THERE is a certain abiding satisfaction in a glittering generality. It so eliminates the personal that one may never be at a loss to know what another should do, and it may even be of service to one's self at times when it sufficiently agrees with the facts. So far, we have succeeded in keeping personal interest very much in abeyance, or perhaps one might say, all of our potential interests have been pooled, and we have established a general average of sensations which will serve as a background for the special interest to come.

We have said very little so far about the actual ways of putting on the paint, and I have no doubt that you may feel your progress to be delayed by lack of technical knowledge. This may be true, to some extent, but I have a settled conviction that, at this point, the intention is far more important than the accomplishment. I do,not wish to belittle technique, but I have no abiding admiration for it when it serves as an excuse for an empty head.

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How many pictures do you pick out in a large exhibition to look at a second time? Presumably they are all good technically or they would not have passed the jury; though one wonders sometimes about that. In former times we were carefully instructed as to the proper sequence of cart and horse. I have no hesitation in saying that the advice is still good, though primitive in form. Do not be concerned about manual dexterity, for we are trying to open our eyes.

We are about to come to a turning-point in our career, which up to this time has been uneventful. We have looked in a general way, but have seen nothing, for our minds have not rested on any special point. I want to make a distinction between looking and seeing, for one is, at least in a measure, subconscious, while the other is definitely a matter of the conscious mind.

As we look out of the window, we see a man and a dog who become the subject of our active thought. Our eyes are focused on them, and the rest of the world takes a secondary place and modifies itself accordingly. Where your vision centers, there you

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see most clearly. This applies to color as well as to form, and though color and form may be stable in themselves, they vary with their place in relation to pur interest. Take a red spot, for example, and look at it directly. You see it, in its full intensity, and get the maximum of sensation it is able to give. If you move it to one side where it is but vaguely seen, there is less sensation from it, hence less intensity of red. As far as your thought is concerned it has changed, though in itself the color is the same as before.

We may as well acknowledge at once the instability of what we have been pleased to call fact. The man and the dog make over the world for us, but they quickly share the fate of other unimportant things if we prefer to look at a cloud. We no longer take them seriously.

Let us turn to a specific case, which will serve as the problem for the week. We have a landscape with a heavy cast shadow over the foreground, beyond, the lighted hills, and above, the sky. When our center of interest lies within the shadow, the color all about it gives us a definite sensation and

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is local since it is closely associated with the subject of our thought. Suppose we change our point of view to some object in the lighted distance. We are now looking over the shadow, and our active sensations would come from the new interest and its surroundings. Our shadow would not only be less definitely seen in detail, but its color would become more neutral. This is based on the fact that color is a sensation, and that indifference as a mental attitude has its visual equivalent in neutral. You can test this by keeping your eyes focused on the object of interest and asking yourself the actual tone of what you only half see. Change your objective to the other plane and ask the question again. You will find this a difficult thing to do, for it is natural to direct the look when you put the question. But the information you are after is not what the thing is, but what it has become through your indifference. We have but one clear and definite interest at a time, and all else is secondary to it.

Do not think for a minute that you can carry through a sketch with your eyes always fixed on

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one spot. Whatever you look at has its place in the scheme of the whole, and loses its personal characteristics in proportion to its diminishing importance. You must have the utmost regard for facts, but they are never to be allowed so to isolate themselves as to give a wrong impression. You often lose your subject in your concern for the truth. It cannot be denied that there are shingles on that building, houses on the point, and a beautiful hotel, rocks on the beach, a river, a bridge, a number of people and a few breaking waves. I know that they are all there, but somehow that man and a dog seem lost among so many realities.

Next time we will try the shadow problem. I will tell you for your comfort that it has wrecked every class for ten years. Once in a while there is an intelligent attempt at it, but very rarely. If the week should prove disastrous, I would recommend that the effort should be continued for a suitable time. It is a very excellent tonic.

If you are wise you will never allow your thought to drift from the center of interest. Your eyes may wander in search of the facts, but these are to be

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weighed by a discriminating mind before they can be properly used.

Perhaps you will find in this the reason why some of your canvases make you wonder that you did them anyway. They are made well enough, but nothing seems to happen. They have not even the interest of failure, which would enlist sympathy if not respect. You are hopelessly good and unimportant. All of your facts have an equal value; who would live in such a stupid world as that ! Your intention was good when you started, and your interest was warranted, but then it was fixed on one point. You have given us a catalogue and it is not exciting. We were looking for a story or at least a brilliant remark.

As soon as we turn to a center of interest, we are taking on our rights as individuals. The thing that attracts you is a matter of your personal taste. It is here that we too often mystify the public, for a painter's choice is frequently incomprehensible to the ordinary citizen. Part of this is due to the language we use, which is arbitrary to a larger degree than we realize. They say that a dog gets no idea

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whatever from a picture, for he sees the surface only. I have known human beings to look at them in much the same way. I suppose we are likely to see only what we are looking for.

There is no virtue in being obscure, and we should make our language as universal as possible, though never at the cost of principles. We should be understood, but say what we choose, nor fit that to any one's liking.

We find the humble and honest person who says, " I know nothing about Art, but I know what I like." It seems a desperate attempt at selfassertion, but if we do not own our personal taste, what is there to which we can lay claim? We share most things with others, even our own funerals, but taste belongs to us and we should be willing to fight for it.

Look receptive, but unconvinced when you are told what you should paint. The other man is telling you all about himself, though he does not know it. The real mistake is to force our choice on others even for the sake of doing good; it is an unwarrantable personal invasion, and when done in

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the name of truth there is nothing left to the victim but to run.

I once took a trip South with a shipload of tourists, three hundred and six of us in all. Three hundred and five knew what was true to Nature as well as what it was advisable to do about it, and I got a great deal of valuable information on points which seemed obscure before.

A Futurist will ask, "Why drag in the truth when it is a matter of taste?" Perhaps he is right; it is a subject for careful consideration. When any one claims to know the whole truth, one naturally asks if our informant is alive to all the possible contingencies. Minor truths are scarcely worth any one's trouble to claim, and major truth seems to be found more often in relations than in any positive fact.

I do not care so much what the thing is, as for what it is to me. We are looking for Nature's effect on us, and trying so to distribute paint on a canvas as to give the same sensation to others. Understand this, however; it is not a record of our sensation or what has happened to us, but of the

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causes so far as we can analyze them. The painting of the mental condition resulting from the cause has been gravely proposed by some of our prophets. It is a brilliant idea, and certainly can be carried out. But it assumes a public interest in one's private affairs that seems in no way warranted by experience.

It would be a gloomy future, indeed, for the deep-sea marine, if one may judge by appearances. We are glad to get that ocean inside a frame where we may give it our undivided attention. We are charmed that you like it, and it is a calamity if you do not. But give us the materials, for we prefer to draw our own conclusions, I am forced to admit that no matter how generous your intention may be in supplying these materials, there is disappointment in store for you. We see beauties that other people at best vaguely feel. Do not think that you have failed if your landscape is appreciated because it looks like a good place for a picnic. That is a subconscious recognition of its beauty, and we are not any too definite on that point ourselves.

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It is probable that every one has a subconscious knowledge of Nature, with the addition of enough of the conscious to meet the practical requirements of living. If we go far astray on the fundamental relations, we become unintelligible and flourish in a world known only to the painter.

I am not urging the claim of the public taste, but it is important that we should know as much as we can of our own mental reactions, as well as those of others. It may seem to you that we are taking unnecessary trouble and that all might be left to talent and an easily acquired technique. It would be simple, indeed, if talent could be trusted, but it has a way of leading one on to a definite spot, and beyond that the beast will not budge. It is somehow held by a balancing force, and you are fortunate if you do not find yourself drifting backward. This is not chance, but an inevitable result.

Talent does not wear out, but you may starve it. If we knew exactly what it is that makes the painter, we could establish a system of education that would be most unsatisfactory in its certainty, for we should each know our number in advance.

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We are specially made, and there are very few of us compared to the rest of the world. That might be because we are not much needed, but one has only to think of the number of pictures in existence and how they are kept from one generation to another, to answer that distressing suggestion. Not that we have the equivalent of an extra hand, especially made eyes, or a tract in our heads devoted to art, but more likely it is a matter of balance. We start with a mind sensitive to a class of emotions, vaguely called Beauty, but they are not abstractions and belong to the rest of existence as we do.

If we change our mental proportion, it may be for better, or it may be for worse; but this much is certain: when we develop one side at the expense of the other, there will come a time when we overbalance we are too rich a mixture. I believe this is what happens to a man who has gone stale; it is not more paint he wants, but more humanity. We are dealing with fundamental laws. Nature does not end where man begins, but they are woven together.

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My conclusion is that we are to accept our original proportions, and see that they are not very much altered in our subsequent development. The painter is a very intent person, and is likely enough to forget everything in the pursuit of his object. But who can say that matters of general importance are useless to him? He is not a superman very often.

We started with a center of interest, and perhaps we have wandered, though we have it still. So far we have spoken only of the vision casually centered on some object which for the moment attracts our attention. Around about it we see clearly, and the original color plane in which it lies would be divided by definite forms. As far as the color sum is concerned, however, there has been no change. It is like a dollar bill resolved into minor cash. It is still a dollar unless you lose something. We have the big color values. Then comes an interest which causes us to modify its surroundings and all of the other planes to a lesser degree. We have thrown a rock into the pool, created a disturbance, and nothing is the same as before,

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though from a sufficient distance the surface would still be flat and we have not appreciably raised the level. Nature attends to that by gravity and the tide, and with our rock or our thought we have only created an interest. If we are ambitious and anxious to raise the level, we will carefully choose our mark. Our rock might make more difference in a pail than in the ocean.

We pass from the general to the special, adding objects in the order of their relative importance. That is a rule for detail and leaves to you only the decision of what is important. You will find in it the utmost comfort.

There is one class of subjects that I must warn you. against, not because they are bad, but by reason of our own mixed feelings. Take moonlight, for example, which is popularly supposed to have an especial charm under some conditions, and to a poetic soul, suggests a picture. The sensation is not warranted by the visible evidence, but is made up of a variety of pleasant emotions. We have the memory of the hot day past, the smell of coolness in the air, the thought of better work to-morrow,

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and altogether we are susceptible to an extent not to be attributed to the facts. I am not maligning the moon, or underestimating anything that it does, but I am warning you that by daylight you may wonder how you lost the charm of that path of light on the water/

Then there is the pine wood which is in a measure beyond the range of paint, for there we have fragrance and sound as very real elements in our sensation. It is difficult to pass from one sense to the memory of another, from sight to the suggestion of sound or smell, though it may be done when personal association is very strong. But it is doubtful ground, and might easily lead to the confusion of the arts. I would leave the moon to literature. We might dispute about the wood, for that has color, and the best that words can do for color would be only to give it a name.

As a general thing, use your medium for what it can do best, and leave the other arts to their own province. I do not want you to think of a sonnet; I am giving you color and visual form, and it is a picture. The root of this trouble has been the fact

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that all of the arts have one common possession in suggestion and they even try to use it on each other. There should be a law against this or at least a gentleman's agreement. Our own share of suggestion is a definite matter, and we use it continually. If we, inadvertently, touch poetry or music, it is only that we have induced a mood similar to that which those arts produce. This does not seem sufficient basis for trouble between friends. We are all of us trying to create a sensation.

You may write about red, but that child belongs to me ; you may like his look, but you do not know all that he can do, and you could not put it as well as I can. Leave him to me; it is a better arrangement. As for the story, I can do something with it, but after all we should like to know what happens next, and you had better write about it. Or, perhaps, you should argue it with the movies; my sympathy is with you.

If you paint in a literal manner a headland, which is the end of a ridge stretching far back into the country, rising higher and higher, with the sea beyond in a long, straight line as it meets the sky,

THE STUDENT

and content yourself with what lies within your picture limits, you are giving us only a sample of Nature. If you suggest, however, by altering your line that the point continues to rise beyond the small portion you show, you give its true bearing in relation to other large affairs. It is not the whole of something small, but the edge of a continent.

Nature so changed as to fit our general impression will look more like the place than the spot does itself. Always keep that in your mind when arranging a picture, and imply the conditions that surround it. Tell more than you say.

As a matter of technique in this special case, the line of your headland should rise as it touches the frame. But even in that you must have a care, for if it rises too sharply, it will suggest .a small obstruction and not the great earth line.

If you should ask me of what suggestion in painting really consists, I should tell you that it is the facts that you state without mentioning them. They are inevitable inferences based on common experience. You will be in a way of constant surprise as you see how many they are.

PAINTING AND THE PERSONAL EQUATION

When we were considering general divisions and our sensation came from external conditions, we painted averages that did not exist, but were concrete and objective in their relation. Now, when we turn to a center of interest which we could reasonably expect to be objective, we find that we reverse the process and pass through facts to the implied.

Suggestion is the enrichment of any positive statement, and is like the overtones in music. That It is mental makes it a personal affair varying with the experience and quality of each individual. The facts live. This, as we said in the beginning, is where we take a new step in art, for our predecessors contented themselves with the facts, while we use them as a stimulant for thought. Jt is not the painful process that it sounds, and not necessarily educational. A person who is so constituted may still yearn and even yearn the more, since we deliberately clear the way. But such feelings are not for us; we supply the excitement.

Let us begin with common experience. Take a figure in motion ; for example, a bather we will say.

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Our thought is of movement and we see a red cap, an arm, and a flashing skirt. We may know very well all that is there, but to paint it would be to arrest the motion, for we should be giving the facts that belong to immobility. It is necessary that we should be in possession of all of the data so that what we use may be consistent, but our expression depends quite as much on what we leave out as on what we put in.

If we were to paint a speeding motor boat, a photograph would be of no use except as it would furnish informa

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Painting and the personal equation, by Charles Hubert Woodbury