796 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION 1. 



juster understanding of form and colour, would a like effect 

 be produced ; and men in great numbers would admire the 

 work of painters, not, as is commonly the case now, because 

 the subject happens to please, but because of its artistic truth. 



Art in its highest form never will be popular, all attempts 

 to make it so notwithstanding. Art truly means the best 

 expression of some phase of many-sided truth. The per- 

 ception of this has generally been limited to a small minority, 

 for, by the time the majority has adopted a certain set of 

 views in art, as in everything else, its vitality has gone. 



The most common error with regard to painting is the 

 idea that it is possible to give valuable opinions about it with- 

 out study or experience. Men who would shrink from 

 sitting in judgment upon most questions with wliich they are 

 practically unacquainted, will, in front of pictures, pour forth 

 elaborate criticism and explanation which could astonish no 

 one more than the artists who painted them. There have 

 been pages upon pages of beautiful prose written by one of 

 our great English critics in explanation of Turner's method 

 "which, from a painter's point of view, are practically worthless. 

 No one can explain how a great man produces his picture. 

 There it is. We feel that it is true ; but the thing seems so 

 spontaneous, so frank, and happy, that all we can say is — 

 " How did the fellow think of that.'' why, it is perfect." As 

 to explaining his method, as well explain the method of a 

 skylark, who sings because he must. It is no use looking at 

 or criticising painting from a literary point of view : the 

 tendency is always to invest it with a literary aim. It is easy 

 to conceive that in literature subject may be nearly all im- 

 portant ; in painting it is nothing of the sort. This may be 

 easily proved by remembering that many of the works which 

 all painters agree in looking upon as masterpieces of art have 

 no subject at all. Take, for instance, Velasquez' portraits, 

 his infantas and courtiers. We are not at all interested in 

 the human beings themselves, many of whom are not known, 

 except through the fact that Velasquez painted them ; yet 

 to the painter they stand as unrivalled examples of his art. 

 The subject which is everything to the public, is nothing to 

 him ; or, to put it in another way, it is the expression of the 

 subject which is the important thing to the artist, while to the 

 average man it is the thing expressed. The Impressionist 

 (and all great painters have been Impressionists) asserts that 

 when you look at a man the curtain behind him and the 

 escritoire at his side are, though visible, not detailed to the 



