CLXXXVII

Landscape is a big thing, and should be viewed from a distance in order to grasp the scheme of hill and stream. The figures of men and women are small matters, and may be spread out on the hand or on a table for examination, when they will be taken in at a glance. Those who study flower-painting take a single stalk and put it into a deep hole, and then examine it from above, thus seeing it from all points of view. Those who study bamboo-painting take a stalk of bamboo, and on a moonlight night project its shadow on to a piece of white silk on a wall; the true form of the bamboo is thus brought out. It is the same with landscape painting. The artist must place himself in communion with his hills and streams, and the secret of the scenery will be solved.... Hills without clouds look bare; without water they are wanting in fascination; without paths they are wanting in life; without trees they are dead; without depth-distance they are shallow; without level-distance they are near; and without height-distance they are low.

Kuo Hsi (Chinese, eleventh century A.D.).

CLXXXVIII

I have brushed up my "Cottage" into a pretty look, and my "Heath" is almost safe, but I must stand or fall by my "House." I had on Friday a long visit from M—— alone; but my pictures do not come into his rules or whims of the art, and he said I had "lost my way." I told him that I had "perhaps other notions of art than picture admirers have in general. I looked on pictures as things to be avoided, connoisseurs looked on them as things to be imitated; and that, too, with such a deference and humbleness of submission, amounting to a total prostration of mind and original feeling; as must serve only to fill the world with abortions." But he was very agreeable, and I endured the visit, I trust, without the usual courtesies of life being violated.

What a sad thing it is that this lovely art is so wrested to its own destruction! Used only to blind our eyes, and to prevent us from seeing the sun shine, the fields bloom, the trees blossom, and from hearing the foliage rustle; while old—black—rubbed out and dirty canvases take the place of God's own works. I long to see you. I love to cope with you, like Jaques, in my "sullen moods," for I am not fit for the present world of art.... Lady Morley was here yesterday. On seeing the "House," she exclaimed, "How fresh, how dewy, how exhilarating!" I told her half of this, if I could think I deserved it, was worth all the talk and cant about pictures in the world.

Constable.

CLXXXIX

A wood all powdered with sunshine, all the tones of the trees illuminated and delicate, the whole in a mist of sun, and high lights only on the stems; a delicious, new, and rich effect.

ChassÉriau.

CXC

The forests and their trees give superb strong tones in which violet predominates—above all, in the shadows—and give value to the green tones of the grass. The upright stems show bare with colours as of stones and of rocks—grey, tawny, flushed, always very luminous (like an agate) in the reflections: the whole takes a sombre colour which vies in vigour with the foreground.

A magnificent spectacle is that of mountains covered with ice and snow, towards evening, when the clouds roll up and hide their base. The summits may stand out in places against the sky. The blue background at such a time emphasises the warm gold colour of the shadows, and the lower parts are lost in a deep and sinister grey. We have seen this effect at Kandersteg.

Dutilleux.

CXCI

In your letter you wish me to give you my opinion of your picture. I should have liked it better if you had made it more of a whole—that is, the trees stronger, the sky running from them in shadow up to the opposite corner; that might have produced what, I think, it wanted, and have made it much less a two-picture effect.... I cannot let your sky go off without some observation. I think the character of your clouds too affected, that is, too much of some of our modern painters, who mistake some of our great masters; because they sometimes put in some of those round characters of clouds, they must do the same; but if you look at any of their skies, they either assist in the composition or make some figure in the picture—nay, sometimes play the first fiddle....

Breadth must be attended to if you paint; but a muscle, give it breadth. Your doing the same by the sky, making parts broad and of a good shape, that they may come in with your composition, forming one grand plan of light and shade—this must always please a good eye and keep the attention of the spectator, and give delight to every one.

Trifles in nature must be overlooked that we may have our feelings raised by seeing the whole picture at a glance, not knowing how or why we are so charmed. I have written you a long rigmarole story about giving dignity to whatever you paint—I fear so long that I should be scarcely able to understand what I mean myself. You will, I hope, take the will for the deed.

Old Crome.

CXCII

I am most anxious to get into my London painting-room, for I do not consider myself at work unless I am before a six-foot canvas. I have done a good deal of skying, for I am determined to conquer all difficulties, and that among the rest. And now, talking of skies, it is amusing to us to see how admirably you fight my battles; you certainly take the best possible ground for getting your friend out of a scrape (the example of the Old Masters). That landscape painter who does not make his skies a very material part of his composition neglects to avail himself of one of his greatest aids. Sir Joshua Reynolds, speaking of the landscapes of Titian, of Salvator, and of Claude, says: "Even their skies seem to sympathise with their subjects." I have often been advised to consider my sky as "a white sheet thrown behind the objects." Certainly, if the sky is obtrusive, as mine are, it is bad; but if it is evaded, as mine are not, it is worse; it must and always shall with me make an effectual part of the composition. It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the keynote, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment. You may conceive, then, what a "white sheet" would do for me, impressed as I am with these notions, and they cannot be erroneous. The sky is the source of light in nature, and governs everything; even our common observations on the weather of every day are altogether suggested by it. The difficulty of skies in painting is very great, both as to composition and execution; because, with all their brilliancy, they ought not to come forward, or, indeed, be hardly thought of any more than extreme distances are; but this does not apply to phenomena or accidental effects of sky, because they always attract particularly. I may say all this to you, though you do not want to be told that I know very well what I am about, and that my skies have not been neglected, though they have often failed in execution, no doubt, from an over-anxiety about them which will alone destroy that easy appearance which nature always has in all her movements.

Constable.

CXCIII

He was looking at a seventy-four gun ship, which lay in the shadow under Saltash. The ship seemed one dark mass.

"I told you that would be the effect," said Turner, referring to some previous conversation. "Now, as you perceive, it is all shade!"

"Yes, I perceive it; and yet the ports are there."

"We can only take what is visible—no matter what may be there. There are people in the ship; we don't see them through the planks."

Turner.

CXCIV

Looked out for landscapes this evening; but although all around one is lovely, how little of it will work up into a picture! that is, without great additions and alterations, which is a work of too much time to suit my purpose just now. I want little subjects that will paint off at once. How despairing it is to view the loveliness of nature towards sunset, and know the impossibility of imitating it!—at least in a satisfactory manner, as one could do, would it only remain so long enough. Then one feels the want of a life's study, such as Turner devoted to landscape; and even then what a botch is any attempt to render it! What wonderful effects I have seen this evening in the hay-fields! The warmth of the uncut grass, the greeny greyness of the unmade hay in furrows or tufts with lovely violet shadows, and long shades of the trees thrown athwart all, and melting away one tint into another imperceptibly; and one moment more a cloud passes and all the magic is gone. Begin to-morrow morning, all is changed: the hay and the reapers are gone most likely; the sun too, or if not, it is in quite the opposite quarter, and all that was loveliest is all that is tamest now, alas! It is better to be a poet; still better a mere lover of Nature; one who never dreams of possession....

Ford Madox Brown.

CXCV

You should choose an old tumbledown wall and throw over it a piece of white silk. Then morning and evening you should gaze at it, until at length you can see the ruin through the silk—its prominences, its levels, its zigzags, and its cleavages, storing them up in the mind and fixing them in the eye. Make the prominences your mountains, the lower parts your water, the hollows your ravines, the cracks your streams, the lighter parts your nearer points, the darker parts your more distant points. Get all these thoroughly into you, and soon you will see men, birds, plants, and trees, flying and moving among them. You may then ply your brush according to your fancy, and the result will be of heaven, not of men.

Sung Ti (Chinese, eleventh century).

CXCVI

By looking attentively at old and smeared walls, or stones and veined marble of various colours, you may fancy that you see in them several compositions—landscapes, battles, figures in quick motion, strange countenances, and dresses, with an infinity of other objects. By these confused lines the inventive genius is excited to new exertions.

Leonardo.

CXCVII

Out by a quarter to eight to examine the river Brent at Hendon; a mere brooklet, running in most dainty sinuosity under overshadowing oaks and all manner of leafiness. Many beauties, and hard to choose amongst, for I had determined to make a little picture of it. However, Nature, that at first sight appears so lovely, is on consideration almost always incomplete; moreover, there is no painting intertangled foliage without losing half its beauties. If imitated exactly it can only be done as seen from one eye, and quite flat and confused therefore.

Ford Madox Brown.

CXCVIII

To gaze upon the clouds of autumn, a soaring exaltation in the soul; to feel the spring breeze stirring wild exultant thoughts;—what is there in the possession of gold and jewels to compare with delights like these? And then, to unroll the portfolio and spread the silk, and to transfer to it the glories of flood and fell, the green forest, the blowing winds, the white water of the rushing cascade, as with a turn of the hand a divine influence descends upon the scene. These are the joys of painting.

Wang Wei (Chinese, fifth century).

CXCIX

In the room where I am writing there are hanging up two beautiful small drawings by Cozens: one, a wood, close, and very solemn; the other, a view from Vesuvius looking over Portici—very lovely. I borrowed them from my neighbour, Mr. Woodburn. Cozens was all poetry, and your drawing is a lovely specimen.

Constable.

CXCIXa

Selection is the invention of the landscape painter.

Fuseli.

CC

Don't imagine that I do not like Corot's picture, La Prairie avec le fossÉ; on the contrary we thought, Rousseau and I, that it would be a pity to have one picture without the other, each makes so lively an impression of its own. You are perfectly right in liking the picture very much. What particularly struck us in the other one was that it has in an especial degree the look of being done by some one who knew nothing about painting but who had done his best, filled with a great longing to paint. In fact, a spontaneous discovery of the art! These are both very beautiful things. We will talk about them, for in writing one never gets to the end.

Millet.

CCI

TO ROUSSEAU

The day after I left you I went to see your exhibition.... To-day I assure you that in spite of knowing your studies of Auvergne and those earlier ones, I was struck once more in seeing them all together by the fact that a force is a force from its first beginnings.

With the very earliest you show a freshness of vision which leaves no doubt as to the pleasure you took in seeing nature, and one sees that she spoke directly to you, and that you saw her through your own eyes.

Your work is your own et non de l'aultruy, as Montaigne says. Don't think I mean to go through everything of yours bit by bit, down to the present moment. I only wish to mention the starting point, which is the important thing, because it shows that a man is born to his calling.

From the beginning you were the little oak which will grow into a big oak. There! I must tell you once more how much it moved me to see all this.

Millet.

CCII

I don't know if Corot is not greater than Delacroix. Corot is the father of modern landscape. There is no landscape painter of to-day who—knowingly or not—does not derive from him. I have never seen a picture of Corot's which was not beautiful, or a line which did not mean something.

Among modern painters it is Corot who as a colourist has most in common with Rembrandt. The colour scheme is golden with the one and grey with the other throughout the whole harmony of tones. In appearance their methods are the opposite of each other, but the desired result is the same. In a portrait by Rembrandt all details melt into shadow in order that the spectator's gaze may be concentrated on a single part, often the eyes, and this part is handled more caressingly than the rest.

Corot, on the other hand, sacrifices the details which are in the light—the extremities of trees, and so on—and brings us always to the spot which he has chosen for his main appeal to the spectator's eye.

Dutilleux.

CCIII

Landscape has taken refuge in the theatre; scene-painters alone understand its true character and can put it into practice with a happy result. But Corot?

Oh that man's soul rebounds like a steel spring; he is no mere landscape painter, but an artist—a real artist, and rare and exceptional genius.

Delacroix.

CCIV

TO VERWÉE

There is an International Exhibition at Petit's now, and I am showing some sea-pieces there with great success. The exhibition is made up, with one or two exceptions, of young men. They are very clever, but all alike; they follow a fashion—there is no more individuality. Everybody paints, everybody is clever.

We shall end by adoring J. DuprÉ. I don't always like him, but he has individuality.

Too many painters, my dear fellow, and too many exhibitions! But you see, at my age, I'm not afraid of showing my pictures among the young men's sometimes.

Yet I hate exhibitions; one can hardly ever judge of a picture there.

Alfred Stevens.