Art Principles with Special Reference to Painting: Together with Notes on the Illusions Produced by the PainterGovett, Ernest
Philosophy
Art Principles with Special Reference to Painting: Together with Notes on the Illusions Produced by the Painter
Govett, Ernest
Art; Painting
That landscape painting may be of considerable value in assisting
scientific exploration is instanced by an anecdote related to the writer
by a geological friend. Professor Jack, formerly Government Geologist of
Queensland, while travelling in that colony, having put up one night at
the house of a small squatter, noticed on the walls of the interior, a
number of colour drawings which had been painted by a son of the settler
from views in the neighbouring hills. One of these drawings showed a
reddish-brown tint running down the slope of a grey and nearly barren
hill. This caught the eye of the professor who asked the artist if the
colours roughly represented the natural conditions, and receiving an
affirmative reply, recommended the squatter to prospect the ground for
minerals. This was done with the result that profitable copper deposits
were found. It seems that in Australia many of the best mineral veins
are capped with iron, and run through schistose rocks traversed by
dioritic dykes. Professor Jack was well aware that the hills in the
district were formed of these rocks and dykes, and as the reddish-brown
streak indicated iron oxide, it occurred to him that the iron might be
the cap of a lode holding valuable minerals.[a]
[a] This note is from _The Position of Landscape in Art_, by the
present author.
NOTE 36. PAGE 87
Remarkable evidence of the universality of ideals, is afforded by the
galaxy of French sculptors who appeared in the thirteenth century. They
could have had no teachers beyond those responsible for the stiff and
formal works characterizing the merging of Norman with Gothic art; they
could have seen few of the fragments of ancient sculpture; and yet they
left behind them monuments which rival in noble beauty much of the work
produced in the greatest art period. How their art grew, and how it
withered; how such a brilliant bloom in the life of a nation should so
quickly fade, needs too detailed an argument to be ventured upon here,
if indeed a properly reasoned explanation can be given at all; but the
flower remains, as great a pride to mankind as it is a glory to France:
remains, though sadly drooping, for the petals of Rheims are gone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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