i6 
Land & Water July n, igi8 
Of Mountains: By Charles Marriott 
AFTER looking at the water-colours of the 
"Canadian Rockies," by Mr. Charles John 
Collings, at the Carroll Gallery, George Street, 
Hanover Square, I found myself wondering why 
the Overseas Dominions, or mountains anywhere, 
are seldom painted successfully. Since the suggested answers 
to both halves of the question are complimentary to Mr. 
Collings there can be no harm in considering them here. 
As to the iirst half of the question I believe that the reason 
is' that artists who paint in the Dominions generally try too 
liard. When a man paints landscape in England, or in any ' 
of the older countries, he is generally inspired by one of two 
motives : to paint landscape as landscape irrespective of 
locality or to paint a portrait of a particular place. The 
result may be, and often is, extremely characteristic of the 
country, but that is not the conscious and deliberate aim. 
It is one of the paradoxes of art — and of Hterature — that 
while few things are more charming than local colour when 
it happens incidentally, nothing is more tiresome when it 
is or seems to be a purpose of the work. To take a concrete 
instance, a man might paint Stoke Poges as a collection of 
houses or very precisely as Stoke Poges, and win our sym- 
pathy in either case ; but let him paint it as typical of Eng- 
land, which it undoubtedly is, and we turn away from him 
in boredom. Exactly the same is true, of course, of people. 
John Brown may be painted as j ust a man or as John Brown ; 
but he must not be painted as "an English gentleman" — 
though he may have every claim to the title. 
Artistic paradoxes are always worth examining for the 
sake of the human reasons behind them. I believe that the 
reason why conscious local colour or character alienates our 
sympathy is that it excludes. General and particular interest 
are both universal ; even the parish pump will appeal to the 
whole world so long as it is painted on its own merits ; but 
when the artist insists upon its Itcal character he introduces 
a parochial element. He becomes the showman instead of 
the interpreter. In passing, I may commend the, inquiry to 
politicians as helping to distinguish between true and false 
nationalism. 
Whether I am right or wrong in the reason, it cannot be 
-denied that when artists paint in Canada, Australia, or 
South Africa, they are apt to be impressed with the Canadian, 
Australian, or South African character of the scene at the 
expense of its general or particular interest ; and it is because 
the work of Mr. Collings is free from this parochialism that 
it is so sympathetic and, so far as an Englishman may judge, 
at the same time so characteristically Canadian. The 
Canadian character comes incidentally because Mr. Collings 
is absorbed in the subject without any desire to play the 
showman. 
The reason for his success with mountains goes deeper 
still ; to the very foundations of art, indeed. It will be 
allowed, I suppose, that on the whole the best artistic inter- 
pretation of mountains is to be found in music and lyric 
poetry ; and if you will consider them for a moment you will 
see that, of all forms of art, these are the least dependent 
on accurate description and the most exclusively concerned 
with suggestion. They deal not with mountains themselves, 
but with the feelings excited by mountains. Painting is not 
so pure, but it might with advantage be kept a great deal 
purer than it commonly is. There is no essential difference 
between mountains and any other facts of nature as material 
of painting, but their great scale makes them a sort of artistic 
booby-trap. A mere copy of the facts of a tree may contain 
a good deal of its character, but a mere copy of the facts of a 
mountain is nothing at all, owing to the necessary reduction 
in scale. Some painters try to get out of this by treating 
the facts rhetorically, and as a general rule it may be said that 
when a painting of a mountain is not trite it is vulgar. 
What it comes to is that mountains expose a difficulty 
that is reaSly present in all the facts of nature as material of 
painting. Before they can be painted they must be digested. 
But this is not an intellectual process, as I shall try to show. 
Sitting in the train one day, I watched the landscape, very 
bright and small, in the bowl of the lamp overhead. That 
was a long time ago, and though I have thought about it 
often since I have never yet been able to fmd words for the 
feeling it gave me. But, leaving out all purely optical 
differences, this is what it came to ; that whereas a reflection 
in a flat mirror is just that, and no more, a reflection in a 
convex mirror is magical. You feel that if you touched the 
former nothing would happen, but that if you touched the 
latter it might burn your fingers. No doubt you will say 
that the difference is optical ; that in the flat mirror the 
landscape is only reflected, while in the convex mirror it is 
reflected and concentrated. 
I dare say that is right, but what I am concerned with is 
the difference in the feeling produced by the two reflections ; 
and though I have not been able to find words for it I can 
get near it by quoting other people. Blake said^ — the italics 
are his — "We are led to believe a lie when we see with not 
through the e3'e" ; Rodin said that the artist should paint 
with his eye "grafted on his heart," and a very wise man, 
whose name I forget, said: "Look into your heart and 
write." 
All these sayings, and a dozen more which might be quoted, 
mean ultimately the same thing : that the heart of man is a 
convex mirror in which the facts of nature are not only 
reflected, but concentrated, digested, and reduced to a 
condition in which — and in which only — they are available 
to art. Only in that condition are they "true," in the human 
sense of the word. In that condition the mountain, is as 
amenable to art as is the violet ; and the scale of the one 
and the fragrance of the other can both be adequately 
expressed. If you remember, Beethoven has got them both 
into five bars in "Adelaide," in an octave leap from the 
dominant and a quivering fall of semiquavers. That, and 
not fidelity to the facts, is the magic of art. Also, in that 
condition the facts of nature are as amenable to painting as 
to music or lyric poetry. The painter may for convenience 
make a more direct use of the facts than the musical com- 
poser or lyric poet, but if he is wise he will use them after 
reflection. 
It is because Mr. Collings has seen the Canadian Rockies 
through, and not merely with his eyes, has looked into his 
heart and painted, that he has been true to Canada and 
true to mountains. The rest is a matter of technical accom- 
plishment ; and here, with obvious and definite limitations, 
Mr. Collings can hold his own. He is a refined colourist, 
with a feeling for decoration and a keen sense of the more 
precious qualities of his medium. But, in view of the sub- 
ject, the great merit of his work is its freedom from parochial- 
ism. For, as will be seen, the answer to the two halves of 
the question that made me wonder is really one : the artist 
must sink his opinions in his feelings. Opinions divide, but 
feelings unite. If it is true that the artist must lose himself 
to find himself, it is equally true that he must forget the 
local bearings of his subject in order to find it — when it 
becomes both universally and particularly true. 
The problems of art are not to be settled in piecemeal 
fashion, nor is artistic truth a piecemeal truth. Both the 
problems and art itself depend upon certain broad principles 
common to human nature ; and at a time like the present 
it is well to remember them, particularly with regard to the 
dominions. As Lord Grey points out in his pamphlet on 
"The League of Nations," the world is not to be made right 
by piecemeal adjustments, but by the estabhshment of 
certain broad principles of right and justice. Nor does this 
mean the abolition of national or local character. On the 
contrary, in life as in art, it is only when things are put upon 
the basis of human nature that national and local character 
can be fulfilled. Get humanity right, and nationality will 
look after itself ; without the uneasy assertion that might 
very well be compared to the deliberate insistence on local 
colour or character in art. But for the consideration of these 
things it is well to follow the example of Mr. Collings and, 
if only in imagination, get up into the mountains. 
The name of A. J. Spencer as the author of a text-book 
is enough to ensure the usefulness and reliability of the 
work, and though in regard to the Corn Production Act 
of 1917, Mr. Spencer is breaking entirely new ground 
and has to deal with entirely new problems, his notes 
will be found of value. (Stevens & Co., 5s.) A protest 
may be made, however, against a reference on page 28 
to another text-book, for one would think that a book 
of 80 pages, for which five shillings is charged, should 
be complete in itself. .So much for the text, but with regard 
to the book as a volume, it may be observed that the deUcate 
white covers are more suitable for a boudoir-table than an 
office ; and why is the title not printed on the back ? Such 
a slim volume is lost in a library unless its name can be 
seen. Paper is now very costly, as we aU know, and a text- 
book of this kind, which will require to be rewritten when a 
little experience of the working of the Act has been gained, 
might have been printed upon a thinner and cheaper paper. 
