October 20, 1893.] 



SCIENCE. 



213 



SCIENCE: 



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CAN WE SEE THE PICTUEE IN THE LANDSCAPE? 



BY WALDO DENNIS, CHICAGO, ILL. 



Often while enjoying a painting I have wondered 

 where lay the secret of transforming commonplace scenes 

 into interesting and beautiful pictures. I have been en- 

 tranced by paintings of which the scenes themselves, I 

 ' am sure, would not have stirred my feelings. Coloring 

 did not account for this magical change, thought I, for in 

 both scene and picture they are the same. To say it was 

 the artist's power to idealize, even if true, left the matter 

 no clearer. Because "idealize" stood not for something 

 known, but for something unknown, and thus, instead of 

 clearing up the mystery, it only appeared to. 



Lately while looking at a painting in the Art Building 

 at the World's Fair, some light came to me. The piaint- 

 ing was beautiful, and yet the scene was commonplace. 

 At once came the question, "Was that landscape really so 

 beautiful to the artist as he has made his picture ? Did 

 the artist really see, in the scene before him, the picture 

 he has painted ? In short, was the scene a picture to him 

 before he painted it ?" Thus meditating, I unconsciously 

 tried to see the landscape as he must have seen it, to look 

 at it through his eyes. 



Evident at once was the difference between looking at 

 a landscape and the picture of it. A landscape covers 

 several or many square miles. In looking at it, our eyes 

 wander over it, from place to place. To look to the left, 

 a direction to the right has to be turned away from. 

 While regarding the farmyards in the foreground, we see 

 less distinctly the wooded hill of the background. As one 

 part passes into view, another part passes out of it. In 

 fact, every portion of the scene before us must be seen in 

 its own particular direction, and with its own particular 

 focal adjustment. The conditions of distinct vision thus 

 imposed enable us to see one thing well at the cost of see- 

 ing all else faintly. 



How different is all this in looking at the picture. The 

 many square miles have been reduced to a square yard. 

 The multitude of objects, which to be seen well require 

 the eyes to wander about, and to constantly readjust 

 themselves, have all been brought to the same plane, and 

 can all be seen at one glance. Moreover, while looking 



at the square yard of picture your attention is not dis- 

 tracted, as in the scene, by a flock of blackbirds suddenly 

 flirting up from among the cattle in the pasture, circling 

 about in a whimsical way, and then as suddenly dropping 

 down again in the same place. The man at the plow does 

 not finally reach the end of his furrow, turn his horses 

 and come back; nor does the wagon on the road move 

 along as it seems to be doing, and compel your gaze to 

 follow it till it passes behind the hill out of sight. All 

 things are caught in an eternal pose, which offers no in- 

 terruption to your gaze. You see it all at a glance, and 

 you see it always the same, that is, without distracting 

 changes. 



In this transfer of a scene to canvas, plainly the beauty 

 of the landscape is concentrated. The variety of color 

 and form scattered through miles of extent is crowded 

 into a glittering square yard. It is like the enchantment 

 wrought for us as children by a fragment of looking 

 glass. The glass reduced the landscape before us to a 

 picture, and thus enabled us to comprehend it; beauty 

 flashed out upon us, where before we had not so much as 

 thought of there being any beauty, and I am persuaded 

 that, in general, only as we have power in some way to 

 picture the scene before us, do we gather its beauty. We 

 may be greatly attached to a familiar scene; this attach- 

 ment may help us to its beauty; but how much of this we 

 see, depends on our power to picture the scene. 



And here our question comes back to us: Did the 

 artist see his picture in the scene from which it was 

 taken before he p)ainted it ? But for an experience of my 

 boyhood I should conclude that to see a landscape as a 

 picture were out of the question. When a boy I was 

 somewhat addicted to dreaming with my eyes open. As 

 my reverie engaged consciousness, I was little aware of 

 the scene before me. But as the reverie concluded itself 

 the scene began to obtrude itself. In this condition of 

 waking from what was passing within to a consciousness 

 of what was present without, there was an interval, dur- 

 ing which I saw the scene before me as a whole, as a pic- 

 ture. Consciousness not yet distracted into making a 

 focal change was jiassively attentive to a larger and 

 larger field of the retina. The eyes, in their staring 

 fixedness, seemed literally optical instruments through 

 which an inner self was peeping, and stealthily peeping, 

 lest a disturbance should take away the opportunity by 

 destroying the conditions. This experience was like 

 waking from a delightful dream; it always left me feeling 

 like one having visited another world whose beauty was 

 unspeakable. Recalling this experience led me to con- 

 clude that the power to see natural scenes as pictures 

 may be acquired. Subsequent trial has proved it to be 

 true. 



Of course we cannot escape our visual limitations. As 

 the field of view becomes larger and larger, distinctness 

 of the whole of it suffers. But exjjerience shows this to 

 be no serious obstacle. Our general familiarity with 

 nature enables us to form a clear mental image from an 

 indistinct visual impression. The man we see at his 

 work or the cattle in the pasture need not be seen 

 very distinctly for us to know what they are and 

 what they are doing. In their contribution to the picture 

 this is sufficient. 



The enjoyment of standing at will in the midst of a 

 gallery of pictures in nature's own coloring can be un- 

 derstood only by one who can see them. 'UTaoever en- 

 joys nature enough to look for her pictures will find 

 them. And in them, once found, his eyes will be opened 

 to beauty that he knew not of before. Thus to see and 

 feel the unity in the scene before us, seems like seeing 

 with other eyes than the physical, like neglecting external 

 form and getting at the spii-it of beauty. 



