No object is so ugly that, under certain conditions of light and
shade, or proximity to other things, it will not look beautiful; no
object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not
look ugly. I believe that in every twenty-four hours what is
beautiful looks ugly, and what is ugly looks beautiful, once.
And, the commonplace character of so much of our English painting
seems to me due to the fact that so many of our young artists look
merely at what we may call 'ready-made beauty,' whereas you exist
as artists not to copy beauty but to create it in your art, to wait
and watch for it in nature.
What would you say of a dramatist who would take nobody but
virtuous people as characters in his play? Would you not say he
was missing half of life? Well, of the young artist who paints
nothing but beautiful things, I say he misses one half of the
world.
Do not wait for life to be picturesque, but try and see life under
picturesque conditions. These conditions you can create for
yourself in your studio, for they are merely conditions of light.
In nature, you must wait for them, watch for them, choose them;
and, if you wait and watch, come they will.
In Gower Street at night you may see a letter-box that is
picturesque: on the Thames Embankment you may see picturesque
policemen. Even Venice is not always beautiful, nor France.
To paint what you see is a good rule in art, but to see what is
worth painting is better. See life under pictorial conditions. It
is better to live in a city of changeable weather than in a city of
lovely surroundings.
Now, having seen what makes the artist, and what the artist makes,
who is the artist? There is a man living amongst us who unites in
himself all the qualities of the noblest art, whose work is a joy
for all time, who is, himself, a master of all time. That man is
Mr. Whistler.
* * * * * * * *
But, you will say, modern dress, that is bad. If you cannot paint
black cloth you could not have painted silken doublet. Ugly dress
is better for art - facts of vision, not of the object.
What is a picture? Primarily, a picture is a beautifully coloured
surface, merely, with no more spiritual message or meaning for you
than an exquisite fragment of Venetian glass or a blue tile from
the wall of Damascus. It is, primarily, a purely decorative thing,
a delight to look at.
All archaeological pictures that make you say 'How curious!' all
sentimental pictures that make you say, 'How sad!' all historical
pictures that make you say 'How interesting!' all pictures that do
not immediately give you such artistic joy as to make you say 'How
beautiful!' are bad pictures.
* * * * * * * *
We never know what an artist is going to do. Of course not. The
artist is not a specialist. All such divisions as animal painters,
landscape painters, painters of Scotch cattle in an English mist,
painters of English cattle in a Scotch mist, racehorse painters,
bull-terrier painters, all are shallow. If a man is an artist he
can paint everything.
The object of art is to stir the most divine and remote of the
chords which make music in our soul; and colour is indeed, of
itself a mystical presence on things, and tone a kind of sentinel.
Am I pleading, then, for mere technique? No. As long as there are
any signs of technique at all, the picture is unfinished.
