This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 Excerpt: ...long sittings. He was painting at the same time as my portrait that of Lady Archibald Campbell. He put the two works abreast and I was able to observe the parallel stages through which he made them pass. One of his principal anxieties was to maintain the appearance of things produced without effort. Instead of adding ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 Excerpt: ...long sittings. He was painting at the same time as my portrait that of Lady Archibald Campbell. He put the two works abreast and I was able to observe the parallel stages through which he made them pass. One of his principal anxieties was to maintain the appearance of things produced without effort. Instead of adding details, he rather suppressed them, and guarded above everything from making them abundant. That his detractors could reproach him for painting pictures that were only sketches was possible not in consequence of any absence of effort on his part, but came from his own conception of what a work of art should be, and was the result, on the contrary, of persistent attention and added labour. We can understand why he should act so when we know the rules of aesthetics which he applied and formulated as a complement to the propositions he had already enunciated about etching. "PROPOSITIONS--No. 2 "A Picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared. 44 To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view. " Industry in Art is a necessity--not a virtue--and any evidence of the same, in the production, is a blemish, not a quality; a proof, not of achievement, but of absolutely insufficient work, for work alone will efface the footsteps of work. " The work of the master reeks not of the sweat of the brow--suggests no effort--and is finished from its beginning. 44 The completed task of perseverance otaly has never been begun, and will remain unfinished to eternity--a monument of good will and foolishness. " - There is one that laboureth, and taketh pains, and maketh haste and is so much the mor...
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