DOI Heft:
No. 137 (August, 1904)
DOI Artikel:Hind, Charles Lewis: Mr. Moffat P. Lindner's water-colours of Venice
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19882#0209
Moffat P. Lindner
MR. MOFFAT P. LINDNER'S
WATER-COLOURS OF
VENICE. BY C. LEWIS
HIND.
What art does for us, what it has done, what
it should do, are questions to which there can be
no final answer, for the solution of the problem
must always depend upon the personality of the
inquirer, and till the last man asks the last
question of the universe such questions will be
repeated. Nobody will deny that the power to
feel and to express beauty is one of the essentials
of the artist's equipment, although a vast number
of painters flaunt their want of this gift every year
at the Royal Academy, the New Gallery, the
Salons, and at Munich. But beauty of line,
of form, of quality, of tone, of colour, if it
be inherent in the artist, must be expressed
although he be skied, intermittently rejected, or
left altogether to his lonely dreams. Beauty
occurs anywhere, any time, and when it occurs joy
uprises and passes from the work to the observer.
If he feels it to be beauty, it is beauty. With
many artists this power of communicating beauty
would seem to be an occasional gift; they use
it unknowingly. Others turn naturally to the
expression of beauty as young birds to the air,
working slowly, selecting from nature, synthesising
their impressions, content to produce only from an
artistic impulse, disregardful of exhibitions with
their temptations to show something that will out-
scream the neighbouring canvases. In this cate-
gory of artists, who see nature across a tempera-
ment, in Zola's fine phrase, and who strive to
interpret the beauty of the world, I should place
Mr. Moffat P. Lindner. He has consistently
pursued an ideal of loveliness, not always, of
course, with uniform success ; but his pictures have
ever been inspired by an artistic, and never by a
literary, didactic, or commercial motive. It
matters nothing what they are called. They por-
tray effects, not facts — clouds, sunsets, billowy
sails, waves shimmering with the heat of the day,
mirroring the rays of the setting sun, reflections of
MR. MOFFAT P. LINDNER'S
WATER-COLOURS OF
VENICE. BY C. LEWIS
HIND.
What art does for us, what it has done, what
it should do, are questions to which there can be
no final answer, for the solution of the problem
must always depend upon the personality of the
inquirer, and till the last man asks the last
question of the universe such questions will be
repeated. Nobody will deny that the power to
feel and to express beauty is one of the essentials
of the artist's equipment, although a vast number
of painters flaunt their want of this gift every year
at the Royal Academy, the New Gallery, the
Salons, and at Munich. But beauty of line,
of form, of quality, of tone, of colour, if it
be inherent in the artist, must be expressed
although he be skied, intermittently rejected, or
left altogether to his lonely dreams. Beauty
occurs anywhere, any time, and when it occurs joy
uprises and passes from the work to the observer.
If he feels it to be beauty, it is beauty. With
many artists this power of communicating beauty
would seem to be an occasional gift; they use
it unknowingly. Others turn naturally to the
expression of beauty as young birds to the air,
working slowly, selecting from nature, synthesising
their impressions, content to produce only from an
artistic impulse, disregardful of exhibitions with
their temptations to show something that will out-
scream the neighbouring canvases. In this cate-
gory of artists, who see nature across a tempera-
ment, in Zola's fine phrase, and who strive to
interpret the beauty of the world, I should place
Mr. Moffat P. Lindner. He has consistently
pursued an ideal of loveliness, not always, of
course, with uniform success ; but his pictures have
ever been inspired by an artistic, and never by a
literary, didactic, or commercial motive. It
matters nothing what they are called. They por-
tray effects, not facts — clouds, sunsets, billowy
sails, waves shimmering with the heat of the day,
mirroring the rays of the setting sun, reflections of