DOI Heft:
No. 248 (November 1913)
DOI Artikel:Wood, T. Martin: Modern flower-painting
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21208#0111
Modern Flower-Painting
Modern flower-painting.
BY T. MARTIN WOOD.
The great period of the flower-piece in
art was, of course, the seventeenth century. It
was the Dutch, with their enthusiasm for gardening,
who brought the flower-piece into vogue. They
thought that no travail of composition was in vain
that enabled them to express their sense of the en-
chantment of flowers. In our own time, side by side
with the revival of gardening, the flower-piece has
again come into favour. There is no exhibition of
importance in these days in which several specimens
are not to be found. But how varied in character
these are. We are tempted to ask : Is there all this
variety in men’s visions ? Is there such an immense
difference between the impression which so simple
a thing as a bunch of flowers makes on one man
and another ? Or, in a modern exhibition, are we
merely confronted with a variety of those efforts to
be original in which we may always safely conclude
originality will not be found ? Effort may do a lot
for us in this world, but we cannot make ourselves
original by effort. We are original, not because we
leave the beaten track, but because we are that
particular kind of person who cannot find it. Some
people consider that originality is the most charming
thing in art. It is difficult to overrate it, but it is not
the only thing, and it is the illusion that it is that
has destroyed tradition, thus providing us with the
spectacle, in many branches of the arts, of a tree
that strives to bourgeon on a shrivelling trunk.
It is almost possible to educate every one to see
in the same way. Hence the horror which some
people have of a school of art. The differences
which puzzle us in the interpretations of simple
themes by the various artists in an exhibition are
not so much differences of vision as of feeling.
Flowers may look the same to different people, but
they do not mean the same. And all the differences
in the arts, in the last analysis, are differences of
feeling—in degree and in kind. There are some
people in whom a vague outline induces a sensation
of real distress; there are others who suffer from
“the satsuma bowl”
FROM A WATER-COLOUR BY KATHARINE CAMERON. R.S.W.
(In the possession of A. T. Miller, Esq.)
LX. No. 248.—November 1913
Modern flower-painting.
BY T. MARTIN WOOD.
The great period of the flower-piece in
art was, of course, the seventeenth century. It
was the Dutch, with their enthusiasm for gardening,
who brought the flower-piece into vogue. They
thought that no travail of composition was in vain
that enabled them to express their sense of the en-
chantment of flowers. In our own time, side by side
with the revival of gardening, the flower-piece has
again come into favour. There is no exhibition of
importance in these days in which several specimens
are not to be found. But how varied in character
these are. We are tempted to ask : Is there all this
variety in men’s visions ? Is there such an immense
difference between the impression which so simple
a thing as a bunch of flowers makes on one man
and another ? Or, in a modern exhibition, are we
merely confronted with a variety of those efforts to
be original in which we may always safely conclude
originality will not be found ? Effort may do a lot
for us in this world, but we cannot make ourselves
original by effort. We are original, not because we
leave the beaten track, but because we are that
particular kind of person who cannot find it. Some
people consider that originality is the most charming
thing in art. It is difficult to overrate it, but it is not
the only thing, and it is the illusion that it is that
has destroyed tradition, thus providing us with the
spectacle, in many branches of the arts, of a tree
that strives to bourgeon on a shrivelling trunk.
It is almost possible to educate every one to see
in the same way. Hence the horror which some
people have of a school of art. The differences
which puzzle us in the interpretations of simple
themes by the various artists in an exhibition are
not so much differences of vision as of feeling.
Flowers may look the same to different people, but
they do not mean the same. And all the differences
in the arts, in the last analysis, are differences of
feeling—in degree and in kind. There are some
people in whom a vague outline induces a sensation
of real distress; there are others who suffer from
“the satsuma bowl”
FROM A WATER-COLOUR BY KATHARINE CAMERON. R.S.W.
(In the possession of A. T. Miller, Esq.)
LX. No. 248.—November 1913