And this holds good not only in dealing
with the great elementary forces--storms, thunder, lightning,
etc.--but with flowers, streams, the glow of sunlight. Always and
everywhere the grasp of Nature was intenser, more individual, and
subjective, than any we have met hitherto.
Idyllic feeling for Nature became sympathetic in his hands.
CHAPTER VII
THE DISCOVERY OF THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE
IN PAINTING
The indispensable condition of landscape-painting--painting, that is,
which raises the representation of Nature to the level of its main
subject and paints her entirely for her own sake--is the power to
compose separate studies into a whole and imbue that with an artistic
idea. It was therefore impossible among people like the Hebrews,[1]
whose eyes were always fixed on distance and only noted what lay
between in a cursory way, and among those who considered detail
without relation to a whole, as we have seen in mediaeval poetry until
the Renaissance. But just as study of the laws of aerial and linear
perspective demands a trained and keen eye, and therefore implies
interest in Nature, so the artistic idea, the soul of the picture,
depends directly upon the degree of the artist's feeling for her
Literature and painting are equal witnesses to the feeling for
Nature, and so long as scenery was only background in poetry, it had
no greater importance in painting.
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