DOI Artikel:
Wood, T. Martin: The water colours of T. L. Shoosmith
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20710#0245
T. L. Shoosmith's IVater-colours
circuitous route, every one of them nervous and
none of them mechanical. On the other hand, as
with Mr. Shoosmith, the artist may arrive at his
result directly. Directness is not essential to
spontaneity or the reverse, and it is possible to
paint a thing directly without it having any spon-
taneity in it. The secret of attaining that quality
is the secret of the artist knowing exactly what he
wants to do, and he may not want to do a simple
thing, but something which is built up, one kind of
quality willingly lost to make a foundation for
another. No one shall say that any particular
method in water-colour painting is wrong. In some
ways it is the most fascinating of mediums ; it is less
dependent on any particular method than almost
any other medium, and having once learnt to control
the running water any painter may find in it qualities
for him alone. Style comes from the reconciliation
of the restless vision of the artist with its hard-and-
fast limitations ; its beauty lies in the evidence that
virtuosity has schooled it. To use water-colours
for a purpose purely of imitation, and not to wait
on its waywardness and' to avail himself of that way-
wardness for accidental effect, is for the artist to
prove himself holding a false ideal of its practice,
and to be dead to a beauty in it which will teach
him beauty, water and colour in themselves holding
such delicate secrets as in the art from Girtin to
Whistler have been the dream of its masters.
The essential qualities of water-colour painting
are perhaps even less understood by the lay mind
in art than the qualities of good oil painting; it
seems difficult for the layman in these matters to
appreciate and reconcile the variety of treatment
of which it is capable with his unsophisticated
vision of nature. Unable to disembarrass his
mind from an ideal of only imitative success,
there is often lost upon him all the accidental charm
which is its characteristic. Rightly understood, it
is less an imitative medium than any other, and
nowhere in art does mere imitation set the highest
standard. Its peculiar qualities render it par-
ticularly sensitive to individual treatment, so that
with one man it is a means towards realism,
with another an excuse for fantasy, and no medium
can become more personal to the artist or give
more intimate expression to his peculiar vision.
Upon whatever terms a painter stands with
nature, if he is fortunate enough in his art to
stand upon any at all with her and retain a
'the passenger's steps, treport "
228
from the water-colour by t. l. shoosmith
circuitous route, every one of them nervous and
none of them mechanical. On the other hand, as
with Mr. Shoosmith, the artist may arrive at his
result directly. Directness is not essential to
spontaneity or the reverse, and it is possible to
paint a thing directly without it having any spon-
taneity in it. The secret of attaining that quality
is the secret of the artist knowing exactly what he
wants to do, and he may not want to do a simple
thing, but something which is built up, one kind of
quality willingly lost to make a foundation for
another. No one shall say that any particular
method in water-colour painting is wrong. In some
ways it is the most fascinating of mediums ; it is less
dependent on any particular method than almost
any other medium, and having once learnt to control
the running water any painter may find in it qualities
for him alone. Style comes from the reconciliation
of the restless vision of the artist with its hard-and-
fast limitations ; its beauty lies in the evidence that
virtuosity has schooled it. To use water-colours
for a purpose purely of imitation, and not to wait
on its waywardness and' to avail himself of that way-
wardness for accidental effect, is for the artist to
prove himself holding a false ideal of its practice,
and to be dead to a beauty in it which will teach
him beauty, water and colour in themselves holding
such delicate secrets as in the art from Girtin to
Whistler have been the dream of its masters.
The essential qualities of water-colour painting
are perhaps even less understood by the lay mind
in art than the qualities of good oil painting; it
seems difficult for the layman in these matters to
appreciate and reconcile the variety of treatment
of which it is capable with his unsophisticated
vision of nature. Unable to disembarrass his
mind from an ideal of only imitative success,
there is often lost upon him all the accidental charm
which is its characteristic. Rightly understood, it
is less an imitative medium than any other, and
nowhere in art does mere imitation set the highest
standard. Its peculiar qualities render it par-
ticularly sensitive to individual treatment, so that
with one man it is a means towards realism,
with another an excuse for fantasy, and no medium
can become more personal to the artist or give
more intimate expression to his peculiar vision.
Upon whatever terms a painter stands with
nature, if he is fortunate enough in his art to
stand upon any at all with her and retain a
'the passenger's steps, treport "
228
from the water-colour by t. l. shoosmith