In general, and when they are in most
completely characteristic mood, it is not the sentiment of nature that
one gets from the work of either painter. It is not even _their_
sentiment of nature--the emotion aroused in their susceptibilities by
natural phenomena. What one gets is their personal feeling for color and
design--their decorative quality, in a word.
The decorative painter is he to whom what is called "subject," even in
its least restricted sense and with its least substantial suggestions,
is comparatively indifferent. Nature supplies him with objects; she is
not in any intimate degree his subject. She is the medium through which,
rather than the material of which, he creates his effects. It is her
potentialities of color and design that he seeks, or at any rate, of all
her infinitely numerous traits, it is her hues and arabesques that
strike him most forcibly. He is incurious as to her secrets and calls
upon her aid to interpret his own, but he is so independent of her, if
he be a decorative painter of the first rank--a Diaz or a Dupre--that
his rendering of her, his picture, would have an agreeable effect, owing
to its design or color or both, if it were turned upside down.
Pages:
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89