DOI Heft:
No. 215 (January 1915)
DOI Artikel:Reddie, Arthur: The landscapes of David Murray Smith, R.B.A.
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43457#0259
Dai'id Murray Smith, R.B.A.
The landscapes of david
MURRAY SMITH, R.B.A.
In “ The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”
there is a sentence which reads : “ The Imitator is
a poor kind of creature. If the man who paints
only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees
before him were an artist, the king of artists would
be the photographer. It is for the artist to do
something beyond this.” Whistler was not here,
of course, referring to the art of the landscape
painter especially, but his words, so true of all art,
will serve admirably as text for an article written in
appreciation of the works of a painter whose land-
scapes make their great appeal in just the achieve-
ment of that “ something beyond this ’’—beyond
mere imitation of Nature.
Nature is so rich, so generous, so almost profligate
in the beauties she offers so inexhaustibly that the
artist when face to face with some exquisite land-
scape or glorious view, may to some extent be com-
pared to the gourmet tempted to over-indulgence by
a luxurious profusion of rare plats; perchance he
succumbs and tastes them all—with indigestion as
consequence. With no desire to write flippantly,
one would venture to describe as artistic indigestion
that malady from which so frequently landscape
painters—particularly when they indulge in work
of a painstaking literalness—would appear to be
suffering. There are occasionally subjects ready
made in Nature for the painter; scenes which will
completely satisfy his aesthetic predilections, and in
which he may be able to preserve topographical
accuracy without there being entailed any sacrifice of
the composition which, as artist and individual, he
desires to create upon the canvas. This, however,
happens but rarely, and in general the painter finds
that his transcript of Nature must be a rearrange-
ment of material, a selection and a rejection, in order
to produce a work which shall be a beautiful ren-
dering, in terms of his art, of the various data Nature
affords him. The earnest student and lover of Nature
who, with paints and canvas, seeks to perpetuate and
to communicate something of the joy he feels in the
OIL PAINTING BY D. MURRAY SMITH, R.B.A.
“LANDSCAPE IN SOUTH WALES
The landscapes of david
MURRAY SMITH, R.B.A.
In “ The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”
there is a sentence which reads : “ The Imitator is
a poor kind of creature. If the man who paints
only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees
before him were an artist, the king of artists would
be the photographer. It is for the artist to do
something beyond this.” Whistler was not here,
of course, referring to the art of the landscape
painter especially, but his words, so true of all art,
will serve admirably as text for an article written in
appreciation of the works of a painter whose land-
scapes make their great appeal in just the achieve-
ment of that “ something beyond this ’’—beyond
mere imitation of Nature.
Nature is so rich, so generous, so almost profligate
in the beauties she offers so inexhaustibly that the
artist when face to face with some exquisite land-
scape or glorious view, may to some extent be com-
pared to the gourmet tempted to over-indulgence by
a luxurious profusion of rare plats; perchance he
succumbs and tastes them all—with indigestion as
consequence. With no desire to write flippantly,
one would venture to describe as artistic indigestion
that malady from which so frequently landscape
painters—particularly when they indulge in work
of a painstaking literalness—would appear to be
suffering. There are occasionally subjects ready
made in Nature for the painter; scenes which will
completely satisfy his aesthetic predilections, and in
which he may be able to preserve topographical
accuracy without there being entailed any sacrifice of
the composition which, as artist and individual, he
desires to create upon the canvas. This, however,
happens but rarely, and in general the painter finds
that his transcript of Nature must be a rearrange-
ment of material, a selection and a rejection, in order
to produce a work which shall be a beautiful ren-
dering, in terms of his art, of the various data Nature
affords him. The earnest student and lover of Nature
who, with paints and canvas, seeks to perpetuate and
to communicate something of the joy he feels in the
OIL PAINTING BY D. MURRAY SMITH, R.B.A.
“LANDSCAPE IN SOUTH WALES