XXIAN ARTIST WITH DOUBLE VISION
THEY were again overlooking the Vesuvian Bay, Capri still in the distance, but more distinct, not unlike a phantom appearing and disappearing as the mist passed by. The intermediate space was much clearer, more light, better definition, as photographers say.
“Paul,” began the Doctor, “you remember George Le Roy, the artist we met at Tarpon Bayou, Florida? He is now at Capri.”
“Good!” exclaimed Paul. “A genius if ever there was one. He takes me a walk out into the country whenever I look at his pictures.”
“‘Art is his religion,’ so he says,” quoth the Doctor. “His palette and his Bible tell the same story, or something like that.”
“I can’t tell exactly why I like his pictures,” said Paul, “but I do.”
“His pictures speak,” said the Doctor; “they echo the Mind of Nature, the Voice, yet he never copies a tree or a cloud. You hear something said to you, yet not a word spoken. Now, Paul, that’s quite as high a flight for the artist as one is apt to find in figure painting.”
“Oh, I can’t agree with you there. The human form requires far greater ability to portray; one must depict action, and emotions, too—in fact, a better draughtsman is required.”
The Doctor took him up.
“No doubt greater accuracy in detail, correct eye for form, knowledge of anatomy to make the figure plastic, and intensefeeling to give power to convey to others the idea of emotions; but when it comes toexciting emotionsthe landscape artist has a field bountiful with opportunity for spiritual insight and significance—as a matter of fact, figures themselves need not be ignored, but made accessory.”
“The world and his wife don’t value landscapes as highly as you do,” remarked Paul, cogitating. “Who ever sees all that in a landscape?—why, the average man wouldn’t like it if he did see it.” This somewhat nettled the Doctor.
“The average man! that pretentious individual who always thinks of himself as Lord of Creation—let him keep on thinking of his physique and physical comforts. I enjoy good landscapes for the very reason that they lift one above all that; they respond to something better, and that settles it for me. I enjoy having inspiring landscapes always where I can see them; there are precious few faces of which I can say the same thing.” Then he added, as if mindful of one in particular: “Some faces never respond; I take to the woods to get rid of ’em, as I often leave a portrait for a landscape.”
The Doctor was getting roused. Paul detected it and concluded to laugh the matter off.
“Why not take your piano with you, Doctor—to the woods?”
“I would if I could. Gottschalk did; and others to-day, like him in that respect, do seek fresh thoughts and sounds direct from Nature. Saint-Saëns does; he told me so during some talks we had when out in far east Ceylon; and he is the most notable living expert in different forms of musical composition, ranging from complicated rhythmic conceits to serious harmonies well nigh sublime. As to Edvard Grieg, I caught him in the very act, entranced by Nature’s strange moods and melodies amid the waterfalls of his beloved Norway. And Beethoven! ah! there is the real test! Beethoven’s most profound utterances are but the unadulterated deep sounds and chords from Nature, both felt and heard when others thought him deaf. His experience was in the woods of Austria,and if we do not hear now, elsewhere, when he yet speaks, we do not really comprehend Beethoven, how he transmuted into another form that which exists in Nature. Blessed be his name! for he did it that we, too, might hear. And we call that Art.”
“Well, there’s one advantage about a piano in the woods,” teased Paul.
“What’s that?”
“You’ll be more comfortable, and possibly less moist than the other fellow.”
“What other fellow?”
“The one who sat on a wet cloud pecking at a harp—ask Widow Bedot.”
Evidently Paul was trying to escape a serious discussion. Fortunately for both, Adele came to the rescue. She perceived that men of such different temperaments could seldom see anything from the same point of view unless it was the result of a similar or simultaneous experience, and that with Paul the personality of the artist should go far to promote a thorough appreciation of his work.
“It strikes me,” said Adele, “neither of you knows all that may be said on that subject.”
“H’m!” ejaculated the Doctor, looking out of the corner of his eye.
“Or else you’re not thinking about the same thing.”
“Give it up,” laughed Paul. “I was with the Widow on that cloud.”
“Then, isn’t it just possible, a wee bit possible, that a landscape artist himself, Mr. Le Roy, for instance, should know more about such things than either of us?”
“All right; we’ll visit him,” said the Doctor; “take a run over to Capri for the sake of our—artistic health.”
“You mean your credit as a critic,” thought Adele.
The venerable artist, nearly seventy years of age, gave thema cordial welcome, his sharp eyes sparkling behind his old-fashioned spectacles; a man of medium height, with evidently no thought to throw away on mere matter of dress. His light-colored soft hat covered a mass of touzled hair, with a few streaks of gray; his beard was sparse on the cheeks and luxuriant on the chin.
The Doctor looked with interest at his thin hands and his hectic cheeks; then noticed his forcible action as he walked and talked. Outward signs of a highly nervous, impulsive temperament were very pronounced.
“He looks more like an impractical, enthusiastic mystic than ever,” pondered the Doctor; “even more so than when I met him years ago—no doubt Italy suits him as he ages in spiritual discernment. He certainly can give very powerful impressions when he paints, and to all sorts and conditions of men; how remarkable, yet quite reasonable, that a man so frail as he should produce such effects of power. I suppose it is the intensity of his visions which makes him great. I wonder how Paul the practical will size him up?”
The artist was talking to Paul about fresh air and the delightful life at Capri.
“Then you paint in the open?” asked Paul.
“Well, yes, and no. Of course, one must go out, but not necessarily far—all is near at hand. Thepaysage intime, as it was called at Barbizon, is here, too, as we also found it in Florida. There’s a sort of unity in nature, and in it we live and move and have our being. It is a vast thing, that unity, but it is close to us also. The landscape picture may convey a comprehensive impression very large, out of proportion to its actual subject. Art, you know, is but part of the universal-plan, and like both science and religion, must drop into its appropriate place.”
Paul seemed interested, also somewhat amused. “Fresh air certainly does surround everything, and no doubt there is a universal-plan in nature; but why mix up art, fresh airand the universal-plan in that way?” Paul wondered how a fellow who could paint such practical pictures, so true to life, should talk so vaguely. “He’s a high-flyer. I like his fresh air and his pictures better than his queer sentiments.”
Now, what Doctor Wise especially desired to learn was, not what other people thought of Mr. Le Roy, but how he himself satisfied his own keen, analytical sense. How Le Roy worked, not in mere allegorical figure, but, going directly to nature, discovered and conveyed something worth portraying. For it was well known in art circles that Le Roy had slowly gathered together his own theories as to nature and what nature could give him, and of the Immortality of Art. The conversation, therefore, took that turn.
“Every artist,” said Le Roy, “has his own feeling, and if he develops it, may be a great artist in his way; yet, the other schools, the men with other methods and ideas, may not recognize the merit in his work.”
“Can this matter of feeling be explained in words?” asked Adele.
“I think so, having made a thorough and complete theory of it. I am now seventy years of age, and the whole study of my life has been to find out what it is that is in myself—what is this thing we call Life—and how does it operate. The idea has become clearer and clearer; and as we see that the Creator never makes any two things alike, nor any two men alike, therefore every man has a different impression of what he sees, and that impression constitutes feeling, so every man has a different feeling.”
The Doctor’s face lighted up as he eagerly drank in these words. Here was the “unlimited,” the very thing he had heard so much about—the unlimited with a vengeance. He knew that varied mentality and temperament among musicians who were artists often produced discord, but here was a successful artist of ripest maturity who insisted that no two artists were ever alike—all received different impressions, allhad different feelings. Evidently everything or anything might be expected from an artist. “Hurrah for the typical artistic capacity and temperament; feelings of endless variety and scope, hence unlimited.” Such was the Doctor’s interpretation—the way it impressed him.
Le Roy continued:
“As to sitting at the feet of nature for inspiration, that came to my mind in the beginning of my career. I went instinctively to her, and drawn by a sympathetic feeling, I put something on canvas. It was not always a correct portrayal of the scene, but only something more or less like what I had in mind. Other artists and certain Philistines would see it and exclaim, “Yes! there is a certain charm about it. Did you paint it outside?—because if you did, you could not have seen this, that and the other.”
“Of course I could not deny it, and thought I ought to improve my method. Being young, I then took it for granted that we saw physically, and with the physical eye only. What I had to learn was that a true artist has two sets of eyes: the one physical, the other spiritual.”
Adele began to be uneasy lest the Doctor should at once claim three pairs of eyes, physical, mental, and spiritual, one of his own theories about such things, so she appealed to the artist as quickly as possible.
“What did you do about it, Mr. Le Roy?”
“At first I tried to paint what I thought I saw, calling memory to supply the missing details.”
“And the result?”
“The picture had no charm whatever; there was nothing beautiful about it. I asked myself why it is that when I try to do my duty and paint faithfully I achieve so little, but when I care little for so-called faithful duty and accuracy I get something more or less admirable.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the Doctor, “I presume the first pair of eyes is always imitative, that is to say, photographic, andcopies; the second, artistic or spiritual—but how about the third pair, the intermediate?”
“Whose?” asked Le Roy.
“The highly intellectual critic’s, self-constituted.”
“Oh, the critic! He always sees more than I do,” laughed Le Roy. “Let him pass; what I wish to tell you is this:
“Little by little I began to find out that my feeling was governed by a principle, and I needed to find out the law under which it would act—the law of the unit, that is, of impression; although I did not then understand it as such.”
Paul thought this a rather big undertaking, to discover any law which would apply to all feelings, no two alike. Le Roy continued:
“Landscape is a constant repetition of the same thing under different forms and in a different feeling. When we go outdoors our minds are underloaded in some, overloaded in others—we don’t know where to go to work. We can only achieve something if we have an ambition so powerful as to forget ourselves and grasp whatever nature may give from any source; that is to say, one must be up in the science of his art. To be able to draw what you feel, you must first of all be able to draw what you see. There can be no true color without true form. In other words, to create an impression you must have both knowledge and technique to do so.”
This statement pleased the Doctor immensely, a clear recognition of the great philosophic truth that in the nature of things science and art are both essential under the law of impression in order to produce the best work. Now, what could the artist say about the higher spiritual element?
The reply came: “If a man could be as God when he is painting outside (perfection, thought the Doctor), then it would be easy enough; but, as he cannot, he must fall back on science. It is not possible for us to establish a measuring point in art—not in a broad, general sense. Even the early masters of the Renaissance were not always perfect in technique;they sought sympathy, not applause; and their results will always remain pre-eminent and authoritative in the domain of impression.” Le Roy seemed strong in his convictions about this, and followed up his thoughts with a still more comprehensive statement: “The worst of it is that all thinkers are apt to become dogmatic, and every dogma fails because it does not give us the other side.”
“Then it restricts the truth to one point of view?” inquired the Doctor.
“Yes—and the same applies to all things, to religion as well as to art. A man who thinks must find a third element besides the science of his art for his standpoint of reason. There is a Trinity operative in regard to this.”
All the party now strained every nerve to catch the words as they fell from the great artist’s lips.
“At one time I took up the science of geometry because I considered it the only abstract truth; the diversion of the arc of consciousness, and so on. No one can conceive the mental struggles and torments I endured before I could master the whole thing. I knew the principle was true, but in practice it seemed contradictory. I had constantly to violate my principles to get in my feeling.”
“Purely intellectual effort,” thought the Doctor, “must ever fail, in the very nature of things.” Le Roy continued:
“I used this mathematical mode of thought as my third, together with natural science and the art, to form the stable tripod-standpoint of reason. I found it enabled me to keep the understanding under perfect control, except——”
“Except when?” interrupted the Doctor, nervously. “Was not pure mathematics always invariably sufficient to attain stability and confidence?”
“Except when I overworked myself, then I was mentally tired,my spirit not satisfied—I got wobbly, like any one else.”
“Now what do you do?” asked Adele, in thorough sympathy,her lovely black eyes, full of intelligence, meeting those of the venerable philosopher in art.
“What do I do, my child? What do I do?”
“Therein lies the secret of my life.”