At the beginning of our talks, you may remember, I told you I should not have much to say about the subjects of pictures; For I wished at the start to make you realise, that what a picture is about is of much less importance than the way in which the subject is treated. A fine subject may be treated in such a way as to make a very bad picture, while a good picture may be composed of a subject in which one is not particularly interested. In fact, I wished to help you to look at a picture first and foremost as a work of art; a thing beautiful in itself because of its composition of form and color; beautiful in an abstract way, that is to say, apart from the ideas suggested by the subject. My aim has been to try to teach you to admire a picture in an abstract way, as you admire a Japanese or Chinese vase, simply and solely for its beauty of form and color.
This is not the usual way. Most people begin by taking interest in the subject of a picture, and very many never get any further in their appreciation. On the other hand I felt that, if I could once get you interested in the abstract qualities of a picture, you would be started right, and that your interest in the subject would be sure to follow after. So our talk about subject has been put off until now.
Pictures are sometimes sorted into groups according to their subject. There are religious pictures; pictures of myths and legends or imaginary subjects; portraits; landscapes; historical pictures, like Washington crossing the Delaware; genre pictures or scenes of every day life; still-life subjects, representing flowers and fruits, dead birds, beasts and fishes, and objects of man’s handiwork; decorative subjects and mural paintings. But this grouping does not settle the matter, since each of these subjects can be treated in more than one way. How it is treated depends upon the motive and point of view of the artist.
t So, the simplest way to grasp this matter of subject is first of all to find out what is meant by an artist’s motive and point of view. As usual, let us start with dictionary meanings of these words and then see their application to what we are discussing.
Motive, then, is that which causes a thing to move, which impels it. What is the motive power of that train? Is the power that moves it steam or electricity? What is the motive of any particular artist, the force which impels him to adopt a certain method or to work in a certain direction?
Point of view on the other hand, is the point at which a person stands to view something. You may watch a procession in the street from the point of view of a window. But the word is more often used, not of where your body stands, but of where your mind stands. According to our birth and bringing up ; that is to say, as the result of what we inherit from our forebears, and have acquired by education and experience, we each have our own point of view. For example, you will not hesitate to say that your point of view is American. You read about the Panama canal. You are not only interested, but proud, because Americans are digging it. If the French, who began it, were carrying on the work, your interest in it would be less and your pride nil. When you travel abroad, at any rate for the first time, you will not be able to help making critical comparisons between the way they do things in Europe and at home. You will be apt to see every-thing from the point of view of an American. Your point of view is the result of your being what you are. And it is the same with an artist. Being what he is, and what he cannot help being, he has his own particular personal point of view. Being what he is, he also has his own individual motive. Through the union of motive and point of view, he sees things in his own way and in his own way is impelled to represent them.
Since each artist is a person different to all other persons, the varieties of motive and point of view are infinite. There is no end to the variety ; and, as you grow older, and continue your study of pictures, you will find more and more interest in looking into and discovering just what is the particular motive and point of view of each artist. For he can-not help betraying them in his pictures, any more than you can help betraying yours, if, being a partisan of Yale, you are watching a football game between Yale and Harvard. Just as your behavior will betray your feelings, so is a picture the expression of an artist’s personal likes and dislikes. In studying pictures, therefore, you are also studying the personality of the men who painted them.
I wish you to feel that this sort of study has no limits. Its interest will last you, as long as you live. At the same time my aim is to help you to enter upon the study. And at the start everything should be made as simple as possible. So, although motives and points of view are infinite in variety, let us see if we cannot find some simple clue to the study of them. I think it may be found in dividing all artists into two big groups. On the one side, those who are inclined to represent the world as they see it to be ; on the other side, those who represent things according to their own ideas. It is the great division between the naturalistic or realistic and the idealistic motive and point of view. Some artists are naturalists, or realists; others are idealists; a great many are a mingling of the two.
This broad general distinction must be thoroughly understood. For you can see that it would be impossible to enter into the merits of an idealistic picture, if you insist on approaching the study of it from the naturalistic point of view. And vice versa.
The only way to appreciate a picture is to approach it from the point of view of the man who painted it. We must try to enter into his mind and find out his motive and see the subject as he saw it.
When we have done so, we may not like his picture. That is another matter. Perhaps his motive and point of view, when we have discovered them, do not please us. Our own are so different, that he and we cannot really agree. Or possibly, while we agree with his motive and point of view, we do not feel that he has expressed them well. In either case, his picture is not for us. At least, not today; for, as we grow older, we shall find that our own motive and point of view are apt to change. We have studied more, and know more, and may find that pictures, we once did not care for, we now admire; and, on the other hand, that the pictures we once liked have ceased to please us.
Now for a talk about the difference between naturalistic or realistic and idealistic. When the art of painting began to revive in Italy at the end of the Thirteenth Century, the first aim of the artists was to make their pictures more really resemble life and nature. I have already told you of Giotto, who gave roundness and natural gestures to his figures, made the objects look more real, and suggested the depth and distance of their surroundings. Next of Masaccio, who gave his figures still more resemblance to life, and filled in their surroundings with a suggestion of atmosphere. Then I told you of Mantegna, who from the study of the remains of classic sculpture gave further naturalness of life and vigor to his figures; until, by degrees, from the observation of nature and the study of the classic sculpture, artists reached proficiency in the natural rendering of the figure. So far as form was concerned, their figures were absolutely natural. But, as yet, the naturalistic motive and point of view had not included the seeing and rendering of nature’s light. That was to come later.
On the other hand, the study of classic sculpture,. while helping the progress toward naturalism, had started some artists in the direction of a new motive and point of view. For now the appreciation of the antique sculpture became increased and supplemented by the study of scholars, who were translating and explaining the newly discovered writings of the Greeks and Romans. Plato was the special favorite, and the Italians of the end of the Fifteenth Century learned from him the motive of idealism and the idealistic point of view.
They learned from his writings to think not only of things, but of ideas. Even to consider ideas of more importance than things; especially the idea of beauty. You will remember that in speaking of Raphael’s Allegory of Jurisprudence, we said that Jurisprudence represented an abstract idea : the conception of what justice is in itself and of the qualities of Prudence, Firmness, and Temperance that it involves, apart from the machinery for making and administering the law. Men make laws, and some are good and some are bad. Even the good ones are not always perfectly administered. To-day, in America, our conception or idea of law is higher than our methods of putting it in practice. Everywhere, always, men’s ideals are higher than their conduct.
Ideals, then, which are the motives, resulting from ideas, represent the highest effort of man after what is best and most beautiful. Most beautiful because it is best and best because it is most beautiful.
Such was part of what artists learned from Plato. Do you see how they applied it to their art? To Leonardo da Vinci, one of the first Italian artists to become influenced by the classic spirit, the teaching appealed in some such way as the following: The idea of Beauty is separate from the things or objects in which it is manifested; just as we may have an idea of smell apart from any particular flower; or of love, apart from the object of our love. The highest ideal for an artist is to express in his pictures something of this abstract idea of beauty, to give to his figures beauty and grandeur of form and noble heads ; to put them in positions of grace and dignity. He will not paint human nature as he sees it to be, with all its imperfections, but will people his pictures with a race of men and women and children of ideal beauty.
This was the motive that inspired those noble Italian pictures of the Sixteenth Century. It was from the high standpoint of abstract beauty that the artists looked at their subject. Their point of view was idealistic. But this was not the only thing that made their pictures noble. The artists were inspired also by a great demand on the part of the , people of their day. Religion held a strong plate in the hearts of the people. They called for pictures to beautify the churches and, at the same time, to teach those that could not read the beauties of religion. To-day people have learned to read, and books to a large extent serve the purpose that pictures used to do. But in those days the people needed pictures; and it was this strong need, acting like rich soil to the beautiful plant of idealism, that helped to produce these wonderful pictures. They are the most wonderful that the modern world has ever seen, just because of this union of two most strong motivesthe religious need of the people and the exalted love of beauty of the artists.
But note the character of these pictures. Some-times, for example, the Virgin is seated on a throne, surrounded by angels and apostles, saints and bishops; or at other times., Christ and his apostles are represented in some scene from the New Testament story. The first presents an entirely imaginary arrangement of the figures; the second makes no pretence to representing the scene as it may have actually occurred. The apostles, many of whom were fishermen, have heads as noble as philosophers; robes arranged in beautiful folds of drapery, and conduct themselves with the grace and dignity of some fine classic statue. Every line, every arrangement of form and space, is designed to assist in building up a composition of ideal beauty.
Or with the same motive the artist would treat some subject of Greek mythology, such as the story of Psyche. This again was a response to a strong need of the public. Not so wide a one as the religious need, but still a strong one, for among the cultivated classes there was an intense interest in. the old classic myths.
Or from the same idealistic point of view the artist would decorate the walls of a City Hall. To this also he was impelled by a strong public need : the desire of the citizens to express their pride in themselves and their city by means of beauty. For by this time the Italians had learned to express all their highest ideals in forms of ideal beauty.
But a change came. The Italians, long a prey to foreign enemies and quarrelling among them-selves, at length lost their liberty and their pride in themselves. Other nations surpassed them in learning and culture ; and even Religion lost its in-tense hold on the public mind. With the loss of high ideals the glory of idealistic painting in Italy waned and disappeared.
But artists of other lands continued to regard the idealistic painting of the Italians as a model of what came to be called ” the Grand Style.” During the Seventeenth Century Spanish artists imitated it in their religious pictures. But elsewhere it was used chiefly for great works of decoration; as by Ruben in Flanders (Belgium) and Le Brun in France. The former, for example, built up a series of magnificent compositions in honor of Marie de Medicis, the wife of Henry IV of France. They are now in the Louvre in Paris. Le Brun’s vast paintings and tapestries, that decorate the palace of Versailles, were designed to extol the glory in war and peace of Louis XIV, who at the end of his long reign left his country poor and his subjects miserable.
In fact, idealistic painting that had once been great, because nourished by an intense religious motive or by the motive of civic pride, had sunk to being a means of flattering the vanity of monarchs or pandering to the luxury of the idle rich. So during the Eighteenth Century it continued to languish. The form alone remained, growing less and less beautiful; the old spirit of it was dead.
A new one, however, arose and had a brief spell of life, for it was based on the awakened desire of the French people for liberty. In the years before the Revolution David painted idealistic pictures. He chose his subjects from the history of the Roman Republic, in order that by the example of its patriotism he might stir his own countrymen to action. The models for his figures he took from old Roman sculpture. His pictures fitted the temper of the time and helped the cause of liberty ; but when Napoleon made himself Emperor David passed into his service, and the high motive for his idealistic pictures ceased.
Later painters have turned again to Italy, and by building up imposing arrangements of figures have tried to make the spirit of Italian idealism live again. They have not succeeded. Perhaps for two reasons. First, that the old Italian compositions are mostly of an allegorical character, and allegory does not interest the modern mind. We are interested in realities. Second, that those compositions were based on the beauty of form of the human figure; the artists made their forms as perfect as possible and placed them in an artificial arrangement that would produce a pattern or composition of beauty and dignity. But modern art is more concerned with rendering the natural appearances of the world; and, if it idealises them, does so, as we shall presently see, by means of light and atmosphere.
Meanwhile, that Seventeenth Century, in which Italian idealistic painting dwindled, saw a new outburst of the naturalistic or realistic motive in two parts of the world; simultaneously, in Spain and Holland.
I have already told you how Velasquez in Spain and the Dutch artists devoted themselves to the study of the persons and things actually present to their eyes. They were realists or naturalists. Holland had cut herself off from Flanders and the splendid vice-regal Court of Brussels, and her own noblemen were busy fighting for their country’s freedom. So there was no demand for her artists to paint handsome decorations. She had also cut herself off from the Roman Catholic religion; and in the churches of the Reformed Faith there was no demand for great religious pictures. These two motives were lacking; but she had another onea very strong onethe love of country and the pride of the people in themselves. It was strong enough to produce a great school of painters of little pictures, distinguished for their great truth to nature.
Among these Dutch artists, however, was at least one who was not only a realist but an idealist. This was Rembrandt. It is of his idealism that I will speak here; and, to illustrate it, will tell you of a small religious picture in the Louvre: The Visit to Emmaus. You remember that Christ in the evening of the day of his Resurrection came upon two of his disciples and joined them in their walk to the village of Emmaus. Not recognising him, they talked of what had happened. It was not until the little party had reached the inn, and the Saviour raised his hands in blessing the food, that their eyes were opened and. they knew him. It is this moment that Rembrandt represented.
When you see this picture you will find no grandeur in it such as the Italian pictures have. The figures are those of poor ordinary men. Rembrandt, being also a realist, drew them from the real types of poor Jews in the Ghetto, or Jew-quarter of Amsterdam. There is nothing of imposing dignity even in the Saviour’s form and face. Whatever may be the idealism in the picture, it does not, depend on form. Its motive is different from that of the Italians. Its motive is light. From Christ’s figure spreads a light. Is not one of his titlesThe Light of the World? And the light, flowing from this humble figure, illumines the faces of his humble companions and, passing up to the vaulted ceiling, sheds through the gloom a mystery of tremulous glow. The picture like the subject it celebrates, is a miraclea miracle of light.
Do you see how this was an expression of idealism ? Rembrandt in studying the world around him had discovered, like other artists of his time, the beauty of light. Light by degrees represented to him the highest element of beauty in the visible world. While the great Italians had found the ideal or highest conception. of abstract beauty in form, Rembrandt found it in light. Therefore, when he painted this picture and wished to show that these figures, though humble looking, were not ordinary men, and that the event was no ordinary meeting at a village inn, he proceeded to idealise the scene according to his own conception of ideal beauty. He introduced into it the beauty and mystery of light.
Please note that word mystery. A mystery is what passes beyond our knowledge and understanding, something that cannot be grasped by our mind and intelligence. Thus we speak of the mystery of life : scientists have discovered how the various forms of life have been developed on the earth, but the origin of life is still a mystery to them. Even when they have traced life back to the smallest conceivable be-ginning, they are as far off from knowing what started that smallest beginning into life. But because they do not know, do they say ” Oh, what we do not know is not worth the knowing ” ? No indeed ! they realise, that hidden in the mystery is a truth, even more wonderful than what they know.
Or again, some beautiful summer night by the sea-shore you are looking out over the water. The moon, is low and her rays make a pathway of light. You gaze along it and at first the waves are clearly visible, heaving in the light; further off, the movement of the waves disappears; only a luminous glow remains, growing fainter and fainter, till far away it melts into that thin line where sky and water meetthe horizon. Do you know that horizon really means boundary, the limit of our sight, the point beyond which our eye has no power to see? But is there nothing beyond ? If we took ship and sailed beyond that pathway of light, should we ever reach the horizon? We should only sail on to find the horizon continually beyond our reach.
Or we turn our gaze from the water to the sky. Above us, further than eye can travel, it extends. It is studded with innumerable stars. We may know the names of some of them, and have learned about their movements and their distance from the earth; but what do we know, what does any one, even the wisest and most learned, know of them, compared with our ignorance of them ? It will be well for us, as we gaze into the mystery of the heavens, to be thinking less of the little knowledge that we have than of the miracle, the wonder, of what transcends man’s understanding; of the vast, impenetrable mystery that surrounds our lives. To do so will fill us with, what we call, a spiritual joy; a joy, that is to say, which goes beyond knowledge, and affects that higher capacity of feeling that, not knowing what it is, we call spirit. This highest feeling, that we call spiritual, has always in it some element of mystery. The truth of this was curiously expressed by a little girl of my acquaintance, who was very fond of having her mother read poetry to her. I asked her if she understood a certain poem. ” Of course not,” was her quick reply, ” what fun would there be in poetry if you could understand it? ”
Well, I have spoken at length of Rembrandt, because his way of idealising a scene through the beauty and mystery of light, has become the way of modern artists. But it was not until nearly two hundred years after his death that the world came round to this way. In the mean time Rembrandt and the other Dutch painters of his Century, like Velasquez, had been forgotten. The painters were busy trying to keep alive the other notion of idealism, the Italian one, based on form. Indeed, it was not until naturalism again became popular, that idealism by means of light was renewed.
I have already told you of the revival of naturalism at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century; how the English landscape painter, Constable, was followed by the French landscapists of the Barbizon-Fontainebleau group. You remember that their point of view was nature as it is visible to the eye, but their motive was also to express the feelings of love with which it inspired themselves.
Then, about the middle of the Century appeared Gustave Courbet who loudly proclaimed himself a realist. He meant by this that he was not moved by sentiment, as the Barbizon naturalists were; that he believed that the only thing which concerned a painter was to paint what he could see, as it appeared to his eye alone. He wished to limit his art to what is visible to sight. So he thought it was foolish for an artist to attempt to represent a scene from the Bible or any historical subject or subject invented by the imagination. As the artist had never seen these things, he had no business, as a painter, to try and represent them. He was going outside his own art and meddling with some one else’s : the art of the writer or actor, for example.
Courbet’s point of view of realism and his motive, to paint only what he could see, were carried further by another Frenchman, Edouard Manet. He had be-come a student of the works of Velasquez, from whom he had learnt : firstly, a new way of viewing his subject; secondly a new way of rendering what he saw. This new way of viewing the subject is what is now called ” impressionism.”
I am sorry to have to trouble you with a new word; but I think you are prepared for it, since impression-ism professes to be only a more natural and real way of seeing things. Of seeing things, that is the point. It does not take account of what things are, but of the impression they produce upon our mind, when they appear before our eyes. You are at work in school, and a stranger enters the class room. He converses for a few minutes with the teacher and then goes out. What sort of man was he ? If there are twenty children in the class, and each, on arriving home, relates the circumstance of the visit, there will probably be twenty different impressions of the visitor’s appearance. They will agree in some points and differ in others; yet each one of the impressions may be a true oneas far as it goes. How far it goes will depend on the quickness and thoroughness of your observation. But anyhow, it will not include a great number of details ; it will rather be a general impression.
If you look out of window into a street, you may see a number of figures on the sidewalks. You receive a general impression of figures, moving or standing still; some men, some women, representing various spots of one color. Now a realistic painter might say, ” Each one of those figures represents a real person; I will paint him as he really is; and, to do so, will ask him to stand still long enough for me to study him exactly in all his visible details.” ” And if you do,” retorts the impressionist painter, ” you will paint something so real, that it will be too real. For you never could see these people in this way, if you look at them on the street. The greater part of the details would be lost in the general impression.”
Well ! the more you think of it, the more right you see the impressionist isfrom his point of view. He says, if you. are going to be natural, be really natural; if you want to make your pictures look real, make them real in a natural way. If the only thing in art is to be as like nature as possible, and to represent things only as they would appear, if you suddenly looked at them, the impressionist is right And what makes this way of looking at things particularly interesting is the fact, that it is so often the momentary effect in nature that is most beautiful: the effect that lasts but a moment, that is fugitive or fleeting, caught in an instant, be-fore it changes to something else. You know what I mean from your own experience. A certain expression passes over your friend’s face. ” Oh! if I could only photograph her now,” you exclaim; but by the time you have arranged your camera, it is gone, and cannot be brought back to order. Well, it is just that fugitive, fleeting expression of a subject that the realist, who is an impressionist, tries to represent in his pictures.
So far I have tried to explain the impressionist’s point of view. Now let us consider his way of rendering what he sees. The whole secret of it is the part which light plays in the appearance of things. Manet and the other impressionists, among whom Claude Monet and Whistler are the most important, see every thing, as Vermeer did, enveloped in light. But they have gone further than he.
They have studied much more closely the ever varying qualities of light, as it differs according to place and season and even time of day. Monet has painted a series of pictures the subject of every one of which is the same haystack. At least that is how some people might describe them. But, if they enter into Monet’s point of view, they would say that the real subject is not the haystack but the effect of light upon its surface, and, as the effect of light is different in every case, none of the pictures are similar to one another. Each represents a separate fugitive expression of light. Monet, in them and other pictures, has recorded with extraordinary subtlety the impression presented to his eye. For Monet’s impressionism was also naturalistic.
Whistler, on the other hand, with no less subtlety, rendered also the impression that the things seen had made on his imagination. He was an idealistic impressionist. He painted, for example, a number of night-scenes, or ” nocturnes,” as he called them. The actual objects in them are of less importance than. Monet’s haystack, because in the dim light of twilight or night they are only faintly visible. Whistler did not wish us to be aware of the form of the bridge, or the boat, the sea and shore, or what-ever the objects may be. He wished us to be conscious of them only as Presences looming up like spirit-forms in the mystery of the uncertain light. Such nocturnes as Battersea Bridge and the sea-shore picture, Bognor-Nocturne, appeal to us like Rembrandt’s Visit to Emmaus. Just as the latter’s forms were humble, so the bridge itself is an ordinary sort of structure, and the sea-shore and the boats are without any unusual distinction. Yet in each case the scene has been idealised through the mystery of light, and appeals to our spiritual imagination. After two hundred years Rembrandt’s new principle of idealisation, founded upon the abstract beauty of light instead of on the abstract perfection of form, has been accepted by modern artists.
To a greater or less degree all artists, whether naturalists or idealists, who are painting in the modern spirit have been influenced by Monet and Whistler. The example of these two has spread far and wide the study and rendering of light. But, while their followers agree in this motive, they are independent in their points of view. There are some whose point of view, like Monet’s, is objective. They are content to render the impression made upon their eyes. But, as their eyes see differently from Monet’s, their pictures are different from his. Each is the record of a separate personality. Equally, while others, like Whistler are subjective, recording the impression produced upon their minds, their pictures vary according to the character and quality of their separate minds. In fact, in later times, a notable feature of painting is its diversity of motives and points of view.
Let me try to explain this. Ever since the Ameri , can and French Revolutions, there has been a gradually increasing interest in what we call individuality. The main object of these revolutions was to establish the right of each and every individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the idea of government now is to give every individual the chance of making the most of his or her possibilities. Your teachers, for example, are not running their classes as machines; they are trying to make a personal study, so far as possible, of each one of you, in order to help you to develop your particular individuality. For a long time this has been the principle of education and government. The result is that there has been a universal increase in individuality, since numbers of people who had some special possibility have had a chance to develope it. To-day, in fact, there is probably nothing that counts more than individuality. This being so it is natural that we should look for it in art. And, if we do, we shall End it.
In former times there were ” schools of art.” In Italian art, we speak, for example, of the Florentine School, the Venetian School, the Roman School; or we speak of the Flemish School, and Dutch Schools and so on. In each case the artists, living in a certain city or country, had sufficient resemblance among themselves in their motives and methods of painting to produce a certain separate style. So, to-day, if an expert sees an old picture, he is able to say at once and, more often than not correctly, that it belongs to such and such a school.
But an expert of a hundred years hence, when he sees our modern pictures, will not speak of Schools. He may see at once that the picture is by an American, a German, or a French artist, for difference of race and habit of life and thought do still stamp in a general way the pictures of each separate country. But even within the limits of any one country there are as many varieties of motive and point of view as there are individuals.
So in modern times, more than ever before, there is an individual, personal note in pictures, just as there is in books. The artist makes the picture an expression of his own personal feelings. This is one reason why modern pictures are inferior to the old ones in grandeur and dignity. The older ones were not only larger in size, as a rule, but they were impersonal, like a fine building is. The architects who designed the Capitol at Washington put their own personal expression into it. But we do not feel it, as we look at their work. On the contrary, it is the impersonal, monumental dignity of the work that impresses us. But in most modern pictures, instead of what is impersonal, we receive a distinct impression of intimacy, of sharing the artist’s feeling. And it is the expression of this that we not only look for but enjoy discovering. We often speak of it as the sentiment of the picture.
This sentiment may be of all sorts and shades of feeling, ” from grave to gay, from lively to severe.” It may be romantic in spirit, appealing to us through the suggestion of what is weird and surprising; it may be full of the tenderness or of the trumpet call of poetry; it may invite us to gentle reverie, or stir in us a profound and poignant emotion. But I have said enough to point your way.
In conclusion let me sum up the contents of this long chapter. We have seen that there are two main streams of motive and point of view; the idealistic and the naturalistic. The former flows from the artist’s desire to represent his conception of ideal beauty, the latter from his love of nature. We have seen that they have alternately reached their highest flood, because the conditions of the times supplied a great public need to which each in turn responded. Lastly, we have seen that gradually both tendencies have undergone a change. Whereas, originally both the naturalistic and the idealistic motive were concerned with form, they came to be concerned particularly with light.
Therefore, when you look at a picture, ask your-self : Has the artist simply tried to render the visible appearance, or has he also tried to make the subject interpret some feeling of his own!?
If he is simply rendering the visible appearance: Has he been conscious only of form, or has he viewed the form in its envelope of lighted atmosphere ? Further, has he tried to represent the visible appearance, as we should find it to be, if we studied each and every part of it separately; or he has tried to give the impression of the entire scene, as it really reached his eyes ?
If he is interpreting through the subject his own feeling: What is the quality of the feeling? Does the picture simply express the artist’s consciousness of the grandeur or the loveliness of nature, or does it also interpret his feeling for the mystery of things not seen ?
Here are a few hints for you in setting out to explore the vast country of motive and point of view.