ART AND ARTISTS. 797 



eye ; bat the public demands that, after painting the man 

 witli care and jirecision, the same care and precision shall be 

 lavished upon the pattern of the curtain and the accessories 

 of the escritoire. This is all very well in a photograph, but 

 herein lies the difference between photography and art. The 

 artist assimilates to himself that which suits his particular 

 temperament ; the rest is as if it did not exist. 



Two paintei's go for a stroll together ; the one sees beauty 

 in some subject or scene which sti'ikes no chord in the sensa- 

 tions of his comrade, who will go into ecstacy over a tone 

 of colour to which his brother artist is insensible. I have 

 driven miles with enthusiastic friends who promised to show 

 me the finest scenery in the colonies, and have felt that I must 

 fall a hundred per cent, in their estimation unless I went into 

 raptures over views which to me were positively ugly. When 

 will people begin to undei'stand that the artist can only do 

 well what he loves, and that what the pubHc loves is of no 

 consequence in the matter at all ? But the greatest disadvan- 

 tage under which we labour is the tendency of the general 

 pubhc to demand a subject as the motif of a picture. A 

 sentimental or romantic story will always more than counter- 

 balance weak or careless workmanship. The idea that a 

 picture must have some lesson or moral to impart, is, it is 

 true, slowly dying out, but it has still sufficient vitality to give 

 it a power which must not be overlooked or underrated. 

 Painting, like its sister art Music, should not depend at all upon 

 teaching definite lessons, but upon striking responsive chords 

 in the consciousness of the observer, producing thereby a thrill 

 of sympathy upon which a false tone of colour would jar as 

 keenly as a false note in one of Beethoven's sonatas. True, 

 painting has the advantage over music of being able to 

 reproduce definite scenes ; but in choosing his subject, the 

 artist who consciously works up a theme with the idea of 

 teaching a moral lesson, rather than from an innate love of 

 beauty for its own sake, will, I think, fail to produce a great 

 picture. Great pictures have only happened as the result of 

 the painter's natural love for his subject, assisted by the highest 

 technical skill in execution. The artist whose nature is most 

 touched by the beauty of flowers may do indifferently good 

 landscape or figure work ; but we may rest assured that if he 

 ever rises to greatness, it will be in some expression of his 

 natural love for flowers. The Frencli painter Millet, whose 

 deepest emotions were most stin-ed by study of the peasant 

 life of France, for many years frittered away his talent in 



