DOI Heft:
Nr. 204 (February, 1914)
DOI Artikel:Baldry, Alfred Lys: A romanticist painter: W. Russell Flint
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43454#0387
A Romanticist Painter: IF Rztssell Flint
A ROMANTICIST PAINTER : W.
RUSSELL FLINT.
Among the many faculties with which an
artist should be endowed few can be accounted as
of more importance than the power to invest his
work with a consistent and significant atmosphere.
This atmosphere should be the expression of his
own personal taste and conviction, of that selective
instinct which guides him in the choice and treat-
ment of his materia], and of that capacity for
realising his impressions which is necessary to
enable him to make intelligible to other people the
attitude which he adopts in the practice of his art.
If he cannot convey to others the sentiment by
which he is inspired, his production must always
remain unconvincing; it will be unpersuasive be-
cause it will not suggest that the artist himself has
arrived at any definite conclusion about the aim
and purpose of his effort.
There is, however, a very’real difference between
the creation of an atmosphere and the adoption of
a convention. The one is a reflection of the artist’s
strength, the other of his weakness, because the
atmosphere comes -from the domination of intel-
lectual and temperamental qualities, while the con-
vention is merely an evasion of thought and a
substitution of mechanical mannerisms for inde-
pendent and original activity. When the artist
lapses into a convention he has ceased to use his
intelligence, he has lost the faculty of observation,
he has become simply a machine which turns out a
sort of stock art pattern—a lifeless and soulless
piece of mechanism incapable of any variation of
movement and wanting in all power of adaptation.
But if in his practice he is influenced by his
temperament and if he uses his intelligence to dis-
cover what is the direction in which the best results
are possible to him, his work will never become
conventional, and yet it will bear indisputably the
stamp of his personality. The finer artist he is,
the more personal it will be, and the more definite
in its assertion of the impressions he has received
and of the conclusions at which he has arrived. It
is only the man of strong character and with the
clearest belief in himself who can surround the
whole of his production with the atmosphere of
himself, and can make it always consistently express
his intentions; it is only the artist with the firmest
convictions who can take up any type of material
and so shape and adapt it that, without any
perversion of natural realities, it will illustrate
“ CONVERSATION ”
LI. No. 204.—February 1914
WATER-COLOUR BY W. RUSSELL FLINT
253
A ROMANTICIST PAINTER : W.
RUSSELL FLINT.
Among the many faculties with which an
artist should be endowed few can be accounted as
of more importance than the power to invest his
work with a consistent and significant atmosphere.
This atmosphere should be the expression of his
own personal taste and conviction, of that selective
instinct which guides him in the choice and treat-
ment of his materia], and of that capacity for
realising his impressions which is necessary to
enable him to make intelligible to other people the
attitude which he adopts in the practice of his art.
If he cannot convey to others the sentiment by
which he is inspired, his production must always
remain unconvincing; it will be unpersuasive be-
cause it will not suggest that the artist himself has
arrived at any definite conclusion about the aim
and purpose of his effort.
There is, however, a very’real difference between
the creation of an atmosphere and the adoption of
a convention. The one is a reflection of the artist’s
strength, the other of his weakness, because the
atmosphere comes -from the domination of intel-
lectual and temperamental qualities, while the con-
vention is merely an evasion of thought and a
substitution of mechanical mannerisms for inde-
pendent and original activity. When the artist
lapses into a convention he has ceased to use his
intelligence, he has lost the faculty of observation,
he has become simply a machine which turns out a
sort of stock art pattern—a lifeless and soulless
piece of mechanism incapable of any variation of
movement and wanting in all power of adaptation.
But if in his practice he is influenced by his
temperament and if he uses his intelligence to dis-
cover what is the direction in which the best results
are possible to him, his work will never become
conventional, and yet it will bear indisputably the
stamp of his personality. The finer artist he is,
the more personal it will be, and the more definite
in its assertion of the impressions he has received
and of the conclusions at which he has arrived. It
is only the man of strong character and with the
clearest belief in himself who can surround the
whole of his production with the atmosphere of
himself, and can make it always consistently express
his intentions; it is only the artist with the firmest
convictions who can take up any type of material
and so shape and adapt it that, without any
perversion of natural realities, it will illustrate
“ CONVERSATION ”
LI. No. 204.—February 1914
WATER-COLOUR BY W. RUSSELL FLINT
253