THE PROFANITY OF PAINT

THE PROFANITY OF PAINT. BY WILLIAM KIDDIER

LONDON: A. C. FIFIELD, 13, CLIFFORD’S INN, E.C., 1916

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND

TO LOVERS OF COLOUR

1. My Book is True

MY view-point is the painter’s, the poet’s; ah, I am a romanticist! But my book is true. The romanticist finds truth without seeking it; it is before him, around him, and he gathers it all with the joy of the child that plucks the flowers in the fields. Truth is not knowledge: it belongs to temperament; it is vision! The child and the romanticist love the beautiful, that is all: truth is there!

[12]

2. My Friends the Trees

I HAVE loved trees all my life; they were the friends of my baby years. Though the land of the trees seemed far away from the close-built houses, I wandered thither with great joy and never knew that my little feet were tired. The tall aspens were the most wonderful things in the world: they are still. I shed tears on being told that the Cross was made from one of them. I have wept since at the sight of their trembling leaves. They trembled for the tragedy of Golgotha. I[14] know they will tremble to the end of the world. Melancholy trees! O but they are beautiful—beautiful and gentle like a nun with a prayer quivering upon her lips, with her white fingers and her rosary sparkling from under her robe: and, lo, the aspens are all alike, as she and her holy sisters must needs be for the sake of their holiness.

Sensitive to all the changes of the sky, the aspen reflects wondrous colour; the leaves, like a million little mirrors, draw the blue and the purple from above and drink the orange from departing suns. And all the colour and the light blend in subtle harmonies like the precious pearls on the neck of a goddess. Ah! do they not pulsate[15] like the strings of beads on a maiden’s breast? The vision is fleeting as it is beautiful; the colour upon the leaves, like that in the dews around, is surely spiritual.

[16]

3. The Profanity of Paint

AS a painter, out-of-doors, the aspens are my despair, for they are surely beyond the limitations of paint. I once set my palette with bright colours with a grove of aspens in front of me: O, but when I looked up into all the mass of shimmering leaves, spread out like a garment inwoven with gems, flowing upon the breezes and toying with the rich dyes of heaven, I shut down my box, threw myself upon the grass and sat there in idle adoration, like a heathen before his[18] god. If all I beheld was meant for a revelation it was surely as beautiful as the burning bush. To Moses I am more than grateful: it is through him that God’s voice rings out against the bad artist: Thou shalt not make ... any likeness of any thing. When God said the same thing to the Chinese three thousand years ago they understood and have painted colour ever since. Why is the western world in the dark?

O let my eyes be baptized with the sun that I may behold colour like the heathen!

How long I stayed in the temple of the trees I do not know; time did not count because I was not at work: all was like a dream. If I had been a[19] Florentine of the olden days I would have seen here the robes of a saint, perhaps the shining garment of the Blessed Virgin.

I did well to close my box and keep my eyes unspoiled by the profanity of paint, leaving the pure impression to some happy occasion when the memory of it all will be sufficient for my picture.

[20]

4. The Miserable Pursuit of Knowledge

THE trend of this book shows clearly that I am no realist. Although, in my solitude, years ago, I made many careful drawings of various things and gained some knowledge of their mechanism, my labours brought me no pleasure save the small satisfaction of having done a self-inflicted task after reading miserable books on art. In those days I pitied myself; but now I pity the miserable authors. The education of the painter is a mistake: educate the man! The painter will[22] find himself, sooner or later. If there is no painter in him his case is hopeless.

Art education, so called, which is the training of the eye and the hand, gives one a facility for recording facts: truth never. Truth is felt. To the painter, the poet, the romanticist facts are cold things belonging to the past—dead things that have nothing to do with intuition, vision, truth. He must dream new dreams, employ new methods, create new things! He is not a common creature and, therefore, should not be entrusted with any public responsibility: but God grant that in all the economic medley, called civilization, he may have the right to live.

5. The Gift of Silence

ALTHOUGH I write just the things I feel, my book is an effort: but I am glad of this. That I have no liking for any literary task and hate all correspondence I regard as a gift. My mother has a rarer gift: she does not talk. She speaks when she has something to say and never utters empty words. O but she is eloquent! She clothes her thoughts with simple language and stops at the right moment; it is a well-timed pause in which her face counts. Her intermittent silence is a master stroke; it gives the same[24] sense of space that I would have in my picture. Perhaps it is beyond art, but it is all hers without an effort; arising out of her good soul it belongs to her nature.

I see her too little; her home is in a village on the coast and mine in an inland city. That I shall miss her one day is the miserable thought I cannot get rid of without seeing her. O but when I arrive my fears vanish in a moment, for she lives for me. She is dear to look upon: but when she looks at me my sense of spiritual security is greater than can ever be described. I feel the influence of her peace which brings mine back to me. Her eyes are aglow from silent thoughts of me, and[25] I stay with no other desire than to be with her and believe in immortality—believe all her belief!

[26]

6. The Magic of Words

THERE is something in the art of the master that I can never find a word for. I believe it is a sin to seek for one. Art in the finer sense is beyond the limitations of all words assigned by the philologists. The master is a magician, therefore it is only the poets that can speak with authority about his work: and it requires all the magic of poetry to deal with the creation of things. Words must be arranged so as to lose all their etymological stiffness before they can[28] ever express the things born of inspiration. Only inasmuch as the poet’s song transcends the meaning of his words does he approach the spiritual sense of art.

7. The Personal Note

IN talking with brother painters I often find myself giving prominence to some particular word like rhythm, vibration, or colour: but I must always forget the root-meaning, or I would discard it at once. I must employ my adopted word in a new way. Its special meaning, though never explained, is communicated by repeating the word freely in various relations, pronouncing it with emphasis in an unexpected moment, or, again, pausing before its utterance so that the appreciative ear may anticipate it and catch the spiritual[30] sense intuitively and feel all I had attached to it from myself. It is nonsense to talk upon art without a personal note of this kind!

8. Colour

VERY few understand how much colour means to the colourist, or why, in the higher sense, like music it has no plural. Colours are the pigments, the materials: but colour is the soul of things!

I believe colour belongs to the fairies; it never comes quite within our grasp. It is borne upon the air, its chariot is the morning dews, and its paths the sunbeams. I have come to regard colour as a spiritual thing changing for ever, as all spiritual things do. Of a truth it is the beautiful emblem of[32] change. The idea of eternal change is fascinating beyond measure. God never created a fixture intentionally. We are immortal only inasmuch as we are eternally moving with the thought of God!

9. Extravagance

I LOVE the word extravagance in its application to colour; for is not the sense of colour an innocent extravagance of the mind, which saves the possessor from discontent and death? I know I shall not die while colour floods in upon my eyes: it is the silent music of an eternal vision!

[34]