File:Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch - A Bend of the Canal.jpg

Identifier: landscapefigurepai00sher (find matches)
Title: Landscape and figure painters of America
Year: 1917 (1910s)
Authors: Sherman, Frederic Fairchild, 1874-1940
Subjects: Landscape painting Figure painting
Publisher: New York : Privately printed
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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to the painter thatnature is to be taken as she is, is to say to theplayer that he may sit on the piano. Thatnature is always right is an assertion artisticallyas untrue as it is one whose truth is univer-sally taken for granted. It might almost besaid that nature is usually wrong, that is tosay, the condition of things that shall bringabout the perfection of harmony worthy apicture is rare, and not common at all. Anyone who had the pleasure of seeing theWhistler Exhibition in Boston, in 1904, musthave been struck with the very fine compositiondisplayed in his works. The greatest attentionis paid to this and to maintaining the interestof the observer, which is not allowed to zanderout of the canvas, but is held and attractedby the varied points of interest chosen and em-phasized by the artist. He knows that: uany-thing will not make a picture. Science mustbe there, but must not obtrude itself. Thepicture which looks most like nature to theuninitiated will probably show the most atten-
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J. H. WEISSENBRUCH 189 tion to the rules of the artist. Turner is h. r.reported to have said that nature gave him a?°n.a great deal of trouble in painting his pictures.It must of necessity be, says Sir JoshuaReynolds, that even works of genius, as theymust have their cause, must also have theirrules. Unsubstantial as these may seem, anddifficult as it may be to convey them in writing,they are still seen and felt in the mind of theartist, and he works from them with as muchcertainty as if they were embodied upon paper.The great artists in the past discovered oradopted instinctively, as the best for the com-position of their pictures, certain forms basedon the triangle, as an example in RaphaelsDresden Madonna, the circle, in Corots ibid.Ville dAvray, the cross, in Guido RenisCrucifixion, and the curved line, in RubenssDescent from the Cross. In looking overany collection of the great pictures of theworld, it is evident that these fundamentalforms, with variations, appealed to the arti

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