January 31, 1918 
LAND & WATER 
relationship to the soil. 
The difference in painting is all the more striking .f you 
compare modern landscapes with older ones, such as those of 
Claude and the Poussins, which like them make a special 
feature of design. In the older pictures the designs, though 
beautiful and coherent in themselves, are. often arbitrar • in' 
respec( of what we know or believe about natural law. Trees 
are put where they could not grow, rivers'run, if not uphill, at 
any rate, in defiance of probability, and the lines of the hills 
are inexplicable by any theory of gravitation. The modern 
landscape painter is not satisfied unless he gets these things 
right — however interested he may be in his design. Truth, 
in the visual sense, as it was understood by the Impressionists, 
is not quite what I 
mean ; for the modern 
landscape painter is often 
careless of truth to ap- 
pearances. Truth to prin- 
ciple is what he cares 
about. Again, in the 
older " classical " — and 
even in the more recen 
" decorative " — landscape 
the successive planes of 
country are often mere 
silhouettes, like the" pro- 
files " of stage s enery ; 
and this is true also of 
the beautiful landscapes 
of the Chinese. 
The modern landscape 
-painter is exacting — some- 
times tiresomcly exacting 
— about his ground plan. 
Not only must his profiles 
be set in true and rhyth- 
mical relationship, but 
the front to back con- 
nection between them 
must be securely estab- 
lished. It is not merely 
a matter of correct per- 
spective, for in his desire 
to give reality to the 
third dimension, the modern painter will often ignore or defy 
perspective. He wants to make you feel rather than see the 
weight and solidity of his earth. Finally, in the old er land- 
scapes the peasants are generally playing ; in the modern 
they are generally working. 
Granting this general character of modern landscape there 
is in it a wide range of opinion and treatment. Cezanne began 
by putting cmpiiasis upon the masses and volumes and forces 
of Nature ; and his more enthusiastic followers carried this 
rapidly to its mathematical conclusion. For a time it was 
the fashion to paint diagrams of structure and " g aphs " 
of energy, which needed for their interpretation a very strong 
pictorial imagination^ust as it needs^ strong musical imagina- 
tion to ititerpret at sight a figured bass. I remember seeing 
at the Dore Galleries some remarkably interesting studies of 
" dynamsim " and 
" velocity " and 
" plasticity " by 
RussoloandBalla, 
"the ItaHan Futur- 
ists, which were 
only not good pic- 
tures because art 
is not mathe- 
matics. Still, I 
suppose that any 
good piece of 
music is reducible 
to figured bass, 
and a good picture 
ought to be re- 
ducible to a dia- 
gram of structure 
and energy. Any- 
how, whether they 
incline to the 
mathematical or 
the fully pictorial 
way of stating re- 
ality modern land- 
icape painters 
seem to be agreed 
that the la e — o 
ba s — is ihe im- 
portant th ng; and 
if they tike any- 
B<j WiliMm Rolhiiihlr.u 
The Storm 
thing for granted it is that part of the subject which 
corresponds to the upper parts in music ; the atmospheric 
elements which were just what the Impressionists were most 
keen about. 
Analogies between one art and another are risky, but it 
always seems to ny that the music of such composers as 
Debussy is a rather belated correspondence to Impressionism 
in painting ; and I beUcve that the next move in music will 
be a return, with a difference, to something more solid and 
formal, in which the bass will again have the obvious 
importance that it has in the music of Bach and 
Handel. This is only speculation, but what is bejond 
speculation is that vvKcreas the philosophy, art and music 
of the recent past 
were most concerned with 
variety and irregularity — 
with superficial differ- 
ences and accidents — thty 
are now preoccupied with 
fundamental unity and 
order. In a word, the 
concern of the moment 
all round is with soli- 
darity. 
It is indeed remarkable 
to look round a modern 
exhibition, such as the 
present one of the New 
English Art Club, andste 
bow many of the land- 
scapes dispense even w th 
trees. Desire for breadth 
is not enough to account 
for the choice of moun- 
tains ; it is rather the 
desire for structure. " A 
Welsh Valley," by Mr. 
Adria^i P. Allinson, is 
t/pical. Apart from iti 
merits as a picture it is a • 
passionate exercise in 
physical geography. Not 
that modern landscape 
painters really neglect 
the atmosphere The difference is that they are more con- 
cerned with what may be called, its plastic and dynamic 
character and possibilities than with its effects of colour. 
This corresponds curiously with the new conception of the 
atihosphere that has been forced upon us by the new art 
of lying. Such terms as " air pockets." " banking, "and " side- 
shpping " have made the least reflective familiar with the 
idea of the atmosphere as a highly organised element with a 
. more or less definite structure and movement. The -tendency 
in painting is to make the structure and movement visible, 
not only as they are obvious in the architecture of clouds, 
but by arbitrary expedients ; so that, Hke pigs, we are made 
actually to '' see the wind." Apart from the gain in reality 
this expedient helps to bring home the conception of the 
universe as one great orgitnism ; of different densities, maybe, 
but closely articu- 
lated in form and 
enery ; an organ- 
ism in which, to 
quote Thompson : 
" .\11 things by im- 
mortal power, 
Neai or far, 
Hiddenly, 
To each other 
linked are, 
That thou cans't 
not stir a flower, 
Without troubling 
oi a star." 
The unconscious 
aim, in fact, of 
modern landscape 
painting seems to 
be to help our 
blindness by mak- 
ing evident the 
"urgent rest" with 
which the heaven 
" betrays the eyes 
that on it gaze " ; 
to explode the 
" still lie " with 
which the 
invests its ' 
particled 
„,, . . tion." 
Whernside 
llolnn-H 
stone 
inter- 
vibra- 
