It is a mistake to make pictures too soon. The nearest a student is likely to get to a picture is a careful study, and he will be as successful with this, if he makes it for the study of it, as if he made it for the sake of making a picture—better probably. The making of a picture for the picture's sake is dangerous to the student. His is less likely to be sincere. He is apt to "idealize," to make up something according to some notion of how a picture should be, rather than from knowledge of how nature is. Real pictures grow from study of nature.

They are the outcome of maturity, not of the student stage. This implies something deeper than superficial facts, and a power of selection,—of choice and of purpose which must rest on a very broad and deep knowledge. The artist is always a student, of course; but he is not a student only. He is a student who knows what and why he wants to study; not one who is in process of finding out these things.

Aims.—It should be noted that the aim of the student and the aim of the artist are essentially different. The student's first aim is to learn to see and represent nature's facts; to distinguish justly between relations. It is the training of the eye and the judgment. Imitation is not the highest art; but the highest art requires the ability to imitate as a mere power of representation. The mind must not be hampered in its expression by lack of knowledge and control of materials, and the painter who is constantly occupied with the problems he should have worked out in his student days, is just so far from being a master. He must have all his means perfectly at his command before he can freely express himself.

The acquirement of this mastery of means is the student's business. Everything he does which aids him in this makes him so much nearer to being a painter. But he must remember that he is still a student, and as he hopes to be a painter, must have patience with himself; must not hurry himself, must work as a student for the ends of a student.

All the facts of nature art uses. But she uses them as she needs them, simplifying, emphasizing, suppressing, combining as will best meet the necessities of the case in hand. All this requires the utmost knowledge, for it must be done in accordance not only with laws of art, but with the laws of nature. There are changes which can be made, and be right—made as nature might make them. Other changes which would be false to nature's ways, and so false to art also. For art works through nature always, and in accordance with her. This is the aim of the painter, to express ideas through nature, not to express notions about nature.

The facts of nature are the material of art; the words of the language in which the ideas of art are to be conveyed. But there are truths more important than these facts. The underlying sentiment of which they are the external manifestation, and which is the vivifying spirit of them. This is the true fact of the picture.

It is more important to give the sentiment of the thing than to give the fact of it; not merely because it is more truly represented so, but because the beauty is shown in showing the character. For the character of the fact is the beauty of the fact.

To bring out the beauty which may lie in the fact is the aim of the artist; to acquire the ability to do this is the aim of the student.