International studio (58.1916)

The Romance of a Painter s Mind

Always the technique of his pictures is perfectly
adapted to the subjects—whether it is the in-
terpretation of the mood of a beautiful woman, or
the suggestion of the faery spirit of white birch
tree in morning mist or the presentment of some
tremulous, luminous landscape of the mind.
Landscape of the mind—the phrase came to me,
I remember, the first day I ever saw the lyrical
paintings of Augustus Tack. There is an air
about them that stills the beholder with a sense
of the seriousness of joy. He wants to think, to
breathe inspiration, as he looks up to the moun-
tain tops where the splendour of the sunset lin-
gers along the cloud drift, and he wants to think
—to be alone with his soul, as he gazes into the
forest depths below where the shadows have
already conquered and where the mists are merg-
ing into night. And yet his thought is curiously
devoid of substance. Almost one would deny
that it is thought at all—almost one would call it
just intangible emotion—if it were not for the
definite direction, the mental mood. It is a
mood compounded of influences, of serenity and
strength, of refreshment and exhilaration. A far
view from a mountain height on a cool shadowy
morning will produce exactly these poised and
proud delights. And Tack is above all else the
painter of heights and distances, of faintly sub-
flushed summit silhouettes, of pearly cloudshine
and blue cloud shadows. Serenity and strength
are in his mountains and they are the attributes
of his own personality. Because his art and his
life are one he inevitably expresses his spirit
through whatever subjects he interprets.
I have called attention to the mental influence
of his art’s sensations. Tack’s truth is not the
truth of the realist. It recognizes that there is
nothing so true as illusion—the mind’s “dream
of a world.” But for this dreamer, dreams are
life-like. They may be fantastic and poetic, per-
haps, but with the fantasy and poetry of nature
rather than of books. In an excellent critique by
Royal Cortissoz on the work of Bryson Burroughs
this artist is included in what the critic
aptly calls “the wistful school of painters.”
They are the men for whom the poetry that the
eye can see is not enough; who will look from
magic casements to enjoy the light that never was,
to reverence again the gods of Greece and of the
Northland, to incarnate again the angels of Fra
Angelico and the strange mythical creatures of
Piero di Cosimo, to celebrate dead ladies of the

middle ages, to sing again of “old unhappy
far-off things and battles long ago.” Now paying
tribute to an ancient beauty in the coin of a
thoroughly modern art seems to me a very
delightful and a very commendable thing to do,
and personally I am glad and grateful for all the
mental background that furnishes the art of
such great masters as Puvis and Menard and our
own Davies. In the case, however, of the “wist-
ful school of painters,” we must acknowledge two
dangers. First, there is the danger—for those of
us who also love such themes—that the charms
of these far-sought subjects will tend to make
us all too tolerant, not only to the most mannered
attitudes, but also to the most commonplace
platitudes of style. In this age of image-break-
ing we are apt to forgive much to those who linger
reverently over lost illusions, before forsaken al-
tars. Secondly, there is the danger that exactly
because such “hoarding of old lore” is rare now-
adays exactly because people are crowding for-
ward so fast that there is neither time nor incli-
nation to look backward—such dreaming will
tend more and more to isolate the dreamers from
the spirit of their own times, from the insistent
urge and march of men and events. But this is
not true of the subjects selected by Tack. One
comes down from his high places refreshed and
exhilarated for the business of living, with the
serenity and strength of the unchanging moun-
tains in one’s heart. That is a romance that
never changes, and forever inspires.
Now Augustus Tack has a wide and profound
knowledge of tradition, is an ardent lover of old
romance and one of the most genuinely spiritual
men I have ever known. But his is pre-emi-
nently a youthful mind which responds quickly
to influences of time and place. On one day he will
be reverently studying the glamour of ancient
Chinese paintings and Gothic glass and the music
of Bach and Beethoven, on the next he will be
eagerly alive and attentive to the most startling
revolutionary disturbances in the realms of paint-
ing and music. Revelling, of course, in the magic
of Monticelli, he will be curiously serious also
over the sensational performances of Picasso.
Although he deplores the hypocrisy and the vul-
garity which pervade so much of the modern
movement, yet he sympathizes with the uncertain
groping in the dark of some of the desperate
pioneers who are so determined to escape from
the tyranny of the past. In his own brain he

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