4922 THE MONTHLY PACKET OF EVENING READINGS For Members of the English Church. JANUARY, 1881. THE ARGUMENT FROM NATURAL BEAUTY. ANY student of art who has reached a fair standard of execution, and is able to express himself, so to speak, grammatically by his art, may now and then be inclined to look back on the way he has passed, and consider why and how he entered upon it. We will suppose that he was right in so doing; that he possesses observation and the graphic instinct, that he has a share of imagination, of sympathy, and understanding; that he has all or nearly all the intellectual qualifications he ought to have; and that he has been well trained in technique, and is educated in the workman's honour of always doing his best. This applies as well to women as to men; and a person of this kind, at the happy beginning of what may be a happy life, may ask himself, What made me take to art? And if he can really understand the tastes and motives which inclined him to choose any definite line of subject, he has already made a considerable step in the direction of success; for he may calculate on a proportion of the public's feeling much as he does, and appreciating his work. I mean that there is a better part of the buying public, who, having money and wishing to encourage art, or to understand it, or to possess pictorial records of things beloved or enjoyed, buy pictures because they like them; and that pictures ably painted for love of their subject will attract such persons. Postulating genuine love of the thing, more of it, perhaps, in the artist, but a fair share of it in the public-let us ask both, What made them care for art, and how did they enter on the quest of beauty? A large number, at all events of the sort of persons we have described, would be led to tell us that they began with liking pictures, or things which were picturesque. At all events, that word would be sure to turn up, and it would lead very well into our subject, for VOL. 31. PART 181. 1 |