Where Art Begins

R

two above mentioned, and, while holding my own opinions with respect,

as an artist to artists the ugliness of it: to the broad masse

brain-clogging effect of it: to the people, the expense and unmanliness of our customs. I would fain, w

directly to nature; look straight at her, each with the

, that we all agree, without exception, to love this life when we can have it tolerably free from pain,

on of the wind bothers us-in fact, there is a happy medium which we cannot strike; and yet, with all the shortcomings, I doubt if there is a single sane Christ

ns, who could take time to do their work properly, although I will confess to moments-neither few no

long would be perfection, if custom, and fashion, and general debility of will would onl

ustom teaches us to endure, with martyr persistence, habits that are

ers up part of it, until it is so sensitive that it cannot be exposed; and fashion bid

ridiculed, both lamenting; while Fashion and

ccording to a fashion-square, round, or pointed toes-never according to nature and the foot which we ought to imitate, therefore not at all according to true art, which must follow after nature, never after fashion, which must always be utterly false and ugly until it emanates directly from nature, and

olesomely, bathing them when they have become intolerable with the exhalations fro

ightness of the cramping, never revealing, till some one tramps upon them, the painful fact of bunions and corns, which, in silence

beauty is my aim, I will pass them over, content to regard the ugly ab

crinolines were in vogue, even men of taste were weak enough to admire the fearsome abomination

oetic over the chef-d'?uvre of a shoemaker; we sing to the boot, for of c

did not like to look in her face, but by degrees I grew to lose the first horror, and I dare say mig

aining was severe, and their eyes were accustomed to flowers. Luxury and sloth were crimes in Greece; in the high times of Greece, I mean, when simplic

, and doffs them again with the benediction?-useless to her amongst her native hills-an a

g, importations from tinsel Paris be called feet? Alas! they are all that the envied, favoured one has to represent what God Almighty was already pleased with. He gave her roundness, which she has flattened-fulness, which she has reduced-softness, which she has made hard; all that He did she has attempted to undo, until what she is dipping into the tepid and aromatic bath is neither useful for walking nor tempting to the eye. They are white enough-almos

et emergencies, round where they rise, flat where they press the earth; the soles hard, as they ought to be, to encounter the roughnesses, with an instep just big enough to skim the ground, not high enough to attract the eye-nature is far too subtle for that; flexible and free, the toes are

umption. Nature makes us all beautiful, or would do so if we gave her a fair chance; and we spend years in bringing nature down to a level not to be described in any sim

to the old Greeks. Taste admits art to be right, yet yields to fashion, while that graven calf stands with senseless hoof upon the roses and the lilies, calling itself the God of M

ss); the neck may have its chains, the ears, the arms, and ankles, even the nose, rings, according to the fancy of the wearer or the taste of the nation. I do not like rings, or anything that divides the lines

s, false pride, false modesty, shame bred from

the poetry of our natures will not permit us to accept of them. We like to see that young man fresh from the hands of his Creator, meeting his mate with her first blush of womanhood in those spring-tinted glades of Paradise; we like to think of the child-minds waking up, each drinking in the other'

orget-me-nots, into which her tender feet are sinking, pushing back with those shell-tipped, tapering fingers the wealth of golden tresses which roll from the a

ent her to the many eyes. Yet in our draping we would consult nature with grace, rather than fashion; cover our woman without losing her identity; imitate naught except her own lines, in

the periods and changes with the world, we m

yet, can we compare the intricate flounces of to-day with the grandeur and grace of those simple antique f

lassic plait and coil; in the one case measuring fo

aled sufficient for grace without offending modesty; the eas

o the first foot cramp. An old legend has it that when Adam was forced from Eden he bruised his f

t childhood; the touch generally suggests the necessity of cultivating the organ of caution. So with man, the ignorant;

ems, the poetry of the jeweller expended in chaste designs and ornate extravagances-straps that catch a thousand sun rays, and break them into prismatic splinters; gems that get loosened from their elaborate settings, and, rolling amongst the grey dust, attract the beggar's eye with their flashing, and fire the hearts of the finders'

towel as the welcome home! Think of it, on a summer march, with your feet sweltering and blistering inside cramping boots-the c

il or a handful of snow rubbed briskly over that organ? Which feels the cold most, the Highlander with his kilt and bare legs, or t

r old books, to rave of the quaintness of Queen Anne, the shepherdesses of Watteau, the flowered vests and cocked hats of the beaux, the patches and periwigs of the be-hooped and be-bustled belles, cracked plates with fragile morals, manners of the stage-all that the idiots who get up the forced ecstasies rave about; but the talk grows low-

hort for action, long for show. Woman must appear yet before us as she should do, supple and free. The world must yet wake up to the truth and purity of beauty, and to do so mu

the whiteness and softness gained, if it can be gained without loss of strength, by shading it from the sun, is a point gained; for it is lovely in its fragility-a l

without a touch of the multitude of colour charms. We can never return to the innocence of Eden until we fling off the clay portion of us,

eir minds. In the South Seas I have watched the sexes together plunge into the coral-washed waves, and discourse on passing events ashore, and

the hygiene of that form, and make your fashion subordinate to those laws. Perfect health and perfect grace go together. Consult the colour which nature has given to you, and place the colour of your costume in

have suited the particular woman who

escue. You have equal right, through the royalty of your perfect wom

d wears away your own hair, besides carrying dead

own heads. A light cover for the sun, if fierce

not only yourselves, but

e deforming your hips. Look to the waist an

ll kind, if you will. But as Jove fought for life, so must you. On the milk of goats he grew strong to defy Father Time, the devoure

ORA

to one another; therefore, our plans must come to naught. Madame Modjeska, one of the greatest of living actresses, is said to be able to do two things at once-to present to the public a face expressive of the most intense agony, shedding tears, and seemingly writing a letter which is breaking her heart, and actually making comic caricatures on the sheet of note-paper. Admiring this gifted woman as I do, this is a knowledge to

ome draped in the appearance of truth, which is beauty, but that only testifies to the rigid

the senses, it becomes the stern duty of artists to find out what she is before they attempt to r

nterpretation of that holy principle; Honour, Faith, Trust, Love which casteth out fear-all are outsp

ing repulsive, and a figure seemingly faultless devoid of grace, whilst the expression and the action transform the plain face and comm

dventures, frivolities, and vices of a fashionable upper ten thousand, nor the burlesque or comic opera, that turns to buffoonery all those sentiments which tend to melt or ennoble in the language and moral of the tragedy, from which they draw their ribald nonsense. Nor is it fulfilled in the poem that only deals in mystery and new-forged

s any other dexterity in craft, by rule. Neither is it fulfilled in the scant imitation of a bit of nature, although here more than in the meaningless blendings, because any old stump lying by the roadside, w

amples, in their habits and mode of living, that they were simple to severity. When I speak thus I except the debauched followers of Bacchus and Venus; for

hey gave us massive forms and gorgeous tints; the savage tribes fulfil their mission in their fantastic images of terror; the early painters fulfilled their mission, because they sought to r

hink of the price of his picture. Robert Burns had the true estimate of his poetry. We cannot judge a picture by its price. If it is a true effort, it is part of the painter's soul, which cannot be bought. Let him not say it is wo

tic attraction; to bring grace into our language, and actions, and morals; after we have administered to the sense of sight and smell, that we may always be lovers and ideals to our wives, banishing from us utterly all habits and liberties that tend to destroy the lovely

general blandness, which etiquette aims at, improving the high tone, which some aristocrats have, and some must pretend to learn, and which may be acquired by any one studying the first law of Christianity, which selfishness, and coarseness, and falseness cannot successfully imitate or keep up for long, no matter what title comes before or after their names, or the pedigree they may be able to tot up, or the appearance their tailor or dressmaker may give to them;-which only re

and instincts born in us, we all

bone and born with the breath. We have records when and how th

not, long before the serpent tempted her, knew of a method

centrated and bottled into the mind like a quintessence, over-proof, we have no time for wandering amongst words; with our girls, scientific and exact, Cupid must learn to be brief with what he has to tell

majestic designs are those freest from detail; the greatest charm about the disposal of drapery is in the fewest folds, big folds, falling straight; the best dressed men or women are those costumed the quietest. The sign of a lady and gentleman is simple, unaffected ease-an ease which embraces the

is very surface cramming of technical names and scientific phrases, without the more complete training of restraint or the polish of consideration-offensive by the ai

e before I had talked to them five minutes, to whom Euclid was a relaxation

our lives, not only in our houses, and dresses, and persons, and possessions, bu

te dignity, until the face and the body are covered with symmetrical designs, tell to the initiated a family history of sustained honours and glory; and this is the utility of the

e classic altars of gold which the Greeks and Romans set before the

coration, his woman, like himself, squatting in the sun, without any other intention than to eat, fight, and sleep. No race on earth has been so low, no time so

thought of flowers to adorn her braided locks. And the warrior plucked the tendril from the tree as he passed through the forest, and wound it round hi

beautiful about him. Fruit attracted him by its colouring, and bloom, and shape, when before he had only thought upon its taste; he fondled the dog which before he only noticed by his rigid discipline; and from the twisting of the real leaves and flowers round himself and his accoutrements, he grew to

ded, as David did the lion-boasting about it at camp-meetings, taking it as his ensign, with the motto, 'I did it all.' So every man became his

ide what he must have been proud to inherit. Hereward the Wake, in Charles Kingsley's romance, is a fresh boisterous character whom we must like better

doing something worthy of being read or listened to, or surely he would never have wasted his time over the elaboration of t

be seen, and can anyone admire the modesty

es all the ideas which he thinks are fine; the Swinburne who can see his own beauties and not be ashamed to point the

high-toned education and refinement to pretend to comprehend this categ

re strong passages in it, disconnected pieces that I look upon as a vocabulary, and use accordingly; but the author to me represents neither a seer, a prophet, nor a moral teacher, but only a used-up, tobacco-smoking, ill-natured old man, who ill-

ects and curves to inspire the foeman with horror; and in this we see the first departure from direct nature watc

he unseen. An error in the first instance, in the ornamental expression of her imagery, became a fixed law, as in Egypt and India, where century after centur

its, before the Olympian court was arranged into order or Homer had invented poetry. Hardy health was their aim and stalwart beauty their standard. The flowing grace of their own unfettered limbs taught them the purity of true art lines. V

formed by hammering the metals and beating them into plates and cords to lay upon or twist round blocks of wood and stone-a slow, hard, labo

inishing of detail, handing down from father to son their arts and sciences-everything hereditary, from the many grades of the priesthood to the low office of the acc

tuffs and embossed golden cups and clean-cut coins of Tyre, Sidon, an

d refined, and thus became daily a stricter necessity. Their own habits were simple, but their god

were a forgotten sin, Troy a fleck of white dust-all the heroes of that deathless romance only the vanished marshalling of an ant-hill; for what are we after our lives have gone unless the poet or the novelist creates us afresh and gives us actions that will not die? What is our pain or our pleasure to the partner of it all? We cannot feel theirs, they cannot

u the dead cerements, live as you lived, think again; and as yo

n stone and metal had a theory. Beauty was fixed by the Judgment of Paris, mythology became a living creed; while he, the blind father, spak

uch as the tenets of the next, about which we know nothing: so the novel. I have read all kinds of fiction: George Eliot, who tells us things as objectionable as the author of 'The Lady of the Camellias'; Dumas, who points out the virtue of fidelity even in a demi-monde, that false heroine; Zola, the needful man with the muck-rake. I have seen the novel-reader world-wise, and the philosophy-devourer a fool. Novels are the histories of humanity: they teach us a wisdom that years of sorrow only could reveal; through them we may look i

gaunt and square-without the undulating lines of forethought and forbearance, without the graceful folds of divine charity. I have seen m

hed at the perfection you see around you. Think but for a few moments upon the wisdom you hav

ter the room we have decorated and feel that there is nothing wanted, to look into the mirror and feel we are dressed,

ng ornament; how they modelled, punctured, painted, and fired their vases; how they preferred a cameo to a costly stone, a bit of mind to a rare flash; but what would th

ly. I want my friends to eat, drink, dress, and sleep as they ought to, as creatures who have inherited an immortality; who are all one (except by learning), patrician or plebeian, and who aim at refinement; not to be dazzled like weak moths by a glitter, but to

ight sky. The reflection of a religious or an atheistic colour may pass over them, as the sky colour is cast upon a fragment of jellyfish lying in a sea-side puddle, but they are no more than that shugging mass; the colour goes or the tide leaves them, and they are immediately rendered void. The Egyptian has a dog who sits waiting on souls of this description, who repeat other people's words, who borrow brains from book

sea-voyage. There is no place for grey here-it must be white, yellow, red, greens of the richest, russet of the most positive, purples that are not disguised: the fumes of the panting mid-day may be pallid, yet it is not the pallor of ashes, but the gas-haze which quivers above the white intensity of the bloom. Jungles, and closely-knitted bush-tracks, where the speckled adder swelters in the rayless fire; up, down,

raced by the north wind, and subdued by the gently wafted west-may well be refined. They are classic born, and to lo

r houses for the sake of the street, the street for the sake of the town, the town for the sake of the land in which it is cast. Assimilate your taste with the taste of other people

much furniture and accessories as you can; no more chairs than you want for visitors, no more tables than you strictly need; look round your walls and relieve the blank

short at a footstool or a tea-cup; but if you like to rest in your houses, and to be able to think while you rest, have all things plain a

Observe the flowers and fruits of a season when you plan out a scroll of flowers and fruits, and

to pieces as surely as a society-girl would collapse without her wh

about you, and raise the ideas of beauty, seek after health f

ions of it in their letters home; they ought to study painting, and know the reason for certain colours being mixed and put on, because taste, although a natural gift, is also an acquired ha

hotographed the picture, for it is instantaneous work with the brain; and the wondrous part of it all will be, that the picture I describe and the picture I draw will not be as you think it is going to be-at least, I cannot hope t

th a few dashes of my charred vine wand may transport you to the balmy South, where ice the thi

rlacing, broke the intensity of the mid-day glaring. I look down a clustering summit to a gleam of deep blue ocean and snow-white strand beyond. This is what the word vine has done to me, and something like this, or perhaps, if not so realisti

invention or a stop to its rapidity-each word becomes a fixed photograph, ins

vividly distinct; but while you are thinking where to begin to reduce it into form, it becomes a slender

king a mass of indistinct shadow under the tree roots-liquid shadow where the water laps the winds, velvet shadow where the grasses and plants are all mixed up; an ebony line of carving runs up the shafts of the feathery-crowned palm and the bulby banana tree; a broad black fan drops across the outer rim of that electric circle, as the banana leaf quits the shelter of the broken shade-work and asserts its independence; the tendrils are twisting about, but a pale sparkle alone revea

d teeth, sweet breath, and merry months. Love will come to you early and stay long beside you, for years are only grains of sand in the calculating glass of Cupi

ENUE-H