DOI issue:
Nr. 99 (May, 1905)
DOI article:Baldry, Alfred Lys: Arthur Rackham: a painter of fantasies
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26959#0256
AAytrAZrz/y/
elaborate argument about the importance of careful
preparation to the artist who wishes to devote him-
self to imaginative painting. The realist who is
satisfied to present things as they are, to "hold
the mirror up to nature "—a cant phrase which is
much misunderstood and often misapplied—does
not require anything like the same amount of pre-
liminary study, for he proposes to do nothing more
throughout his life than he has been accustomed
to do at school. He can always sit down before
his subject and reproduce it with all the exactness
of which he is capable, and with the strictest atten-
tion to its trivialities. There is no necessity for
him to think, no need even for him to stock his
memory with facts to draw upon in later years.
As soon as he has acquired the manual dexterity
which is expected of every passable student who
has gone through the ordinary art school course,
he can blossom out as a producing artist, and can
secure admission to the exhibitions for his records
of the things which are always about him.
All that such a man has to concern himself
with is the development of a capacity to see
microscopically. If he ever had any power of
viewing his material largely or of conceiving his
subject as a whole, he is certain to grow more
narrow in vision as he goes on. He loses his
larger perceptions and he gains in exchange a
faculty which is easier to exercise and less likely to
impose any strain upon what intellectual powers
he may chance to possess. His one and only
ambition is to produce works of art which will be
actual enough to be deceptive and which will
excite the gaping wonder of the uneducated by
their imitative exactness. When he has painted a
fly which some deluded observer tries to brush off
with a handkerchief, or represented a bunch of
grapes which is so like the real thing that it will
induce the street-arab to flatten his nose in admira-
tion against the shop-window in which the picture
is exhibited, he feels that he has not lived in vain.
His triumph seems to him to be assured, his
ambition to be completely satisfied.
The unfortunate thing, however, is that triumphs
of this sort can be secured so early in the career of
any artist who is blessed with sufficiently keen
sight. His development begins and ends with his
school training, and all he can acquire in later life
" LAKE SIDE : EVENING "
I$6
l-'ROM THE WATER-COI.OUR BY ARTHUR RACKHAM
f #/* A*.
elaborate argument about the importance of careful
preparation to the artist who wishes to devote him-
self to imaginative painting. The realist who is
satisfied to present things as they are, to "hold
the mirror up to nature "—a cant phrase which is
much misunderstood and often misapplied—does
not require anything like the same amount of pre-
liminary study, for he proposes to do nothing more
throughout his life than he has been accustomed
to do at school. He can always sit down before
his subject and reproduce it with all the exactness
of which he is capable, and with the strictest atten-
tion to its trivialities. There is no necessity for
him to think, no need even for him to stock his
memory with facts to draw upon in later years.
As soon as he has acquired the manual dexterity
which is expected of every passable student who
has gone through the ordinary art school course,
he can blossom out as a producing artist, and can
secure admission to the exhibitions for his records
of the things which are always about him.
All that such a man has to concern himself
with is the development of a capacity to see
microscopically. If he ever had any power of
viewing his material largely or of conceiving his
subject as a whole, he is certain to grow more
narrow in vision as he goes on. He loses his
larger perceptions and he gains in exchange a
faculty which is easier to exercise and less likely to
impose any strain upon what intellectual powers
he may chance to possess. His one and only
ambition is to produce works of art which will be
actual enough to be deceptive and which will
excite the gaping wonder of the uneducated by
their imitative exactness. When he has painted a
fly which some deluded observer tries to brush off
with a handkerchief, or represented a bunch of
grapes which is so like the real thing that it will
induce the street-arab to flatten his nose in admira-
tion against the shop-window in which the picture
is exhibited, he feels that he has not lived in vain.
His triumph seems to him to be assured, his
ambition to be completely satisfied.
The unfortunate thing, however, is that triumphs
of this sort can be secured so early in the career of
any artist who is blessed with sufficiently keen
sight. His development begins and ends with his
school training, and all he can acquire in later life
" LAKE SIDE : EVENING "
I$6
l-'ROM THE WATER-COI.OUR BY ARTHUR RACKHAM
f #/* A*.