one way in which they can make steady progress, for true art is always
and will be always one. Whatever changes may be made in the customs of
society, whatever new machines we may invent, whatever new manufactures
we may supply, Fine Art must remain what it was two thousand years ago,
in the days of Phidias; two thousand years hence, it will be, in all
its principles, and in all its great effects upon the mind of man, just
the same. Observe this that I say, please, carefully, for I mean it to
the very utmost. _There is but one right way of doing any given thing
required of an artist_; there may be a hundred wrong, deficient, or
mannered ways, but there is only one complete and right way. Whenever
two artists are trying to do the same thing with the same materials,
and do it in different ways, one of them is wrong; he may be charmingly
wrong, or impressively wrong--various circumstances in his temper may
make his wrong pleasanter than any person's right; it may for him,
under his given limitations of knowledge or temper, be better perhaps
that he should err in his own way than try for anybody else's--but for
all that his way is wrong, and it is essential for all masters of
schools to know what the right way is, and what right art is, and to
see how simple and how single all right art has been, since the
beginning of it.
But farther, not only is there but one way of _doing_ things
rightly, but there is only one way of _seeing_ them, and that is,
seeing the whole of them, without any choice, or more intense
perception of one point than another, owing to our special
idiosyncrasies. Thus, when Titian or Tintoret look at a human being,
they see at a glance the whole of its nature, outside and in; all that
it has of form, of colour, of passion, or of thought; saintliness, and
loveliness; fleshly body, and spiritual power; grace, or strength, or
softness, or whatsoever other quality, those men will see to the full,
and so paint, that, when narrower people come to look at what they have
done, every one may, if he chooses, find his own special pleasure in
the work. The sensualist will find sensuality in Titian; the thinker
will find thought; the saint, sanctity; the colourist, colour; the
anatomist, form; and yet the picture will never be a popular one in the
full sense, for none of these narrower people will find their special
taste so alone consulted, as that the qualities which would ensure
their gratification shall be sifted or separated from others; they are
checked by the presence of the other qualities which ensure the
gratification of other men. Thus, Titian is not soft enough for the
sensualist, Correggio suits him better; Titian is not defined enough
for the formalist,--Leonardo suits him better; Titian is not pure
enough for the religionist,--Raphael suits him better; Titian is not
polite enough for the man of the world,--Vandyke suits him better;
Titian is not forcible enough for the lovers of the picturesque,--
Rembrandt suits him better.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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