Studio: international art (3.1894)

The Poetic in Paint

common object of any shore, and is never likely
to be. The economic law of supply and demand
does not apply, and Nature's bounty, in the matter
of these precious oddities and individualities, is
only too likely, as the century rolls on, to become
still more capricious and uncertain. Their en-
trances and exits are still, as heretofore, governed
apparently by pure devilment; and rarest and
most elusive of them all, most obscure and difficult
of analysis, is to my thinking the poet whose senti-
ment is conveyed to us in his paint. It may
nevertheless be worth our while to try and single
him out, and, from among a good deal of confusion
of opinion, to get at (if we can) some of the points
in his work which distinguish him from his fellows ;
for, odd as it may seem, neither among artists nor
laymen does there so far appear to have been settled
any lines of definition within which to place him.
It is doubtful even whether it has been fully recog-
nised that the poet-painter, when we do find him,
is such not because of, but in spite of, his subject.
Yet it should not be difficult to arrive at this much,
and be fairly sure about it. It is a test we apply to
a writer as a matter of course. He plays upon an
instrument that all the world is constantly using,
and the qualities and methods of his performance
are at once understood by the many. We dub
him poet and not prose-writer because of the
luminous cloud in which he wraps his subject, the
subtle aptness, delicacy, or music of his word ex-
pression ; above all, for the allusive play of fancy
involved in his use of his words, infinite in its
suggestion and appeal to the emotions or imagina-
tions of his readers. In a word, we are judging
and classifying him by, in its widest sense, his
technique. Let us then apply this same test (and
why should we not ?) to the painter. One result,
without doubt, immediately becomes evident.
Looking at any rate to the painting art of to-day,
it thins out the ranks of those who might claim to
be poets of paint in truly terrible fashion. We
may count them on the fingers—I had almost said
—of one hand.

To come closer to our point, let us suppose
ourselves standing in front of a picture intended
to realise pictorially, say, some pastoral lines of
Keats. What is it we at once feel to be want-
ing ? The story is clear enough, too clear in
many cases ; every fact is given us with elaborate
care ; nay more, it may even be that as an expres-
sion of these facts it is painted with a most sympa-
thetic technique, though this is by no means so
common. Yet it is not a poem in any sense as
are the original verses. There is nothing, and at
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first sight it might seem it is not possible there can
be anything, to supply the place of the words'
emotional suggestiveness, that peculiar allusive
quality in which their poetic character resides.
The picture is a translation only, and fails for the
reasons that militate against all translations. But
is this want an inherent incapability of the painter's
means of expression ? Is it impossible for an
original poetic sentiment coming at first hand to
find vent and impress itself clearly upon the
spectator through the media only of colour, line,
tone, or even touch ? A painter here and there has
proved the contrary in most powerful and vivid
fashion; and it is to this rare and in some ways
little understood band of artists that I would point
as the true poet-painters. Happily there is no
doubt about the power of their appeal on the mind
of the public. The recognition comes so soon as
the strangeness of their individuality has worn off;
though in the case of a shortlived artist this has
too often only been when he himself has been be-
neath the turf a comfortable ten or fifteen years.
What is not understood, and it may be admitted
is very hard of understanding, is the how and
why of their influence upon us. To put it generally,
it would in every case seem to be something in the
technique over and beyond what is necessary for
the adequate expression of the artist's subject.
Like the enhancing, yet in itself perfectly distinct,
appeal of music when coupled with fine words, the
handling, the play of the colour, the vitality of line,
any or all of the painter's instruments of expression,
become overcharged and electric as it were with
the dominant sentiment of his mind, affecting us
more or less powerfully by themselves and over-
riding the possible attractions of his subject. And
this tendency of the artist is constant. It is a
necessity with him appearing in all he touches—
the part of his work which is the real expression,
in its various forms, of himself.

But, as I have said, clearly as we recog-
nise and feel the existence of these qualities in
certain painters' work, it is no easy matter to
diagnose their nature. In common with all ques-
tions of feeling, they evade most effectually any
attempts at definite analysis. To take, however,
two of the simplest and most obvious instances, we
have not much difficulty in seeing that the
emotional sentiment, which affects us in a Botti-
celli, lies in the extraordinary living grace of his
outline; or that in a Mason his secret consists in
the exaggerated (in the best sense) sympathy
between his minor forms, or even the play of his
touch, and the main lines of his composition, until