Theodore Winthrop

“ Rosy summer dwells fair and winning beyond our Northern wastes, where winter has been and will be, and we sigh for days of basking in perpetual sunshine. Warmth is the cheer, and sunshine the charm of Nature. Without warmth, we become Esquimaux nibbling at a tallow dip. Without sunshine, color fades away into Arctic pallors. All the blush and bloom and winy ripeness of earthly beauty are the gifts of sunshine. Upon the tropics those gifts are poured out most lavishly. ”

“ There the sun is master, and its atmosphere almost dazzles us away from simple study of the mountain forms. In “The Heart of the Andes” the great snow-peak is master, and its solemn, peaceful light the illuminator of the scene. Any land can see the sun occasionally, but any land cannot see dome mountains of snow. Therefore let the sun retire from this picture, and stand, as we do, spectator; and let us have that moment of day when light is strong and quiet, and shadows deep but not despotic. ”

“ We have a nearly clear field for Art, and no rubbish to be burned. Europe has been wretchedly impeded and futilized in Art by worshipping men rather than God, finite works rather than infinite Nature, and is now at pains to raze and reconstruct its theories. Our business is simpler, and this picture is a token of inevitable success, — a proof and a promise, a lesson and a standard. The American landscape-artist marches at Nature with immense civilization to back him. ”

“ We can see at once what the world is worth. What Nature has deemed man fit to receive, is here bestowed in one largess. All earth’s riches are compacted into one many-sided crystal.
In “The Heart of the Andes,” Mr. Church has condensed the condensation of Nature. It is not an actual scene, but the subtle essence of many scenes combined into a typical picture. A man of genius, painter, poet, organizer in any domain of thought, works with larger joy and impulse when he obeys his creative imagination. Life is too short for descriptive painting; we want dramatic painting. ”

“ We of the northern hemisphere have a geographical belief in the Andes as an unsteady family of mountains in South America, — a continent where earthquakes shake the peaks and revolutions the people, where giant condors soar and swoop, where volcanoes hurl up orbed masses of fiery smoke by day and flare luridly by night, where silver may hang in tubers at the roots of any bush, and where statesmen protocol, and soldiers keep up a runaway fight, for the honor and profit of administering guano. ”

“ Habits of mind are in every man’s power which will make him an infallible judge of artistic excellence at once. Does some one ask how to form those habits for comprehending landscape Art? If we are pure lovers of the world of God; if we have recognized the palpitating infinite of blue sky, and loved to name it Heaven; if we have been thrilled with the solemnity of violet dawn, and are rich with remembered pageantries of sunrise, and have known the calm and the promise of twilight glories over twilight glooms, and have chosen clouds to be the companions of our brightest earthly fancies ”

“ Dolts, fools, and triflers do not get much from Art, unless Art may perchance seize the moment to illuminate them through and through, and pierce their pachyderms with thrills of indignant self-contempt and awakening love. For divine Art has power to confound conceit into humility, and shame the unwashed into purifying their hearts. ”

“ Men of science have sighed over their bewilderment in tropic zones, where every novelty of vegetation is a phenomenon. Botanists sit there among the ruins of their burst herbariums, and bewail the lack of polysyllabic misnomers for beautiful strangers in the world of flowers. But Art should sing pæans, when it discovers the poetry of form and color entangled among those labyrinths, and hasten to be its interpreter to the world. ”

“ The inmost spirit of beauty is not to be discerned by dodging about and waiting until the doors of her enchanted castle shall stand ajar. The true knight must wind the horn of challenge, chop down the ogre, garrote the griffon, hoist the portcullis with a petard, and pierce to the shrine, deaf to the blandishments of the sirens. ”

“ Then we have no mundane errors to recant, and will not keep up a shabby scuffle with our convictions, and chuckle punily over some pinchbeck treasure-trove of our conceit, some minor fault in a noble work; but, finding that a bold lover has gone nearer to Nature than we, will choose him for our guide, and follow straight in his track to the penetralia of beauty.
There are two questions to be asked regarding “The Heart of the Andes.” 1. Is it a subject fit to be painted? 2. Is it well done? Genius should not choose for its theme, The Model Frog-Pond, and revel there in the clammy ooze. ”

“ Eternal snows climb out of eternal summer. The eye may catch a beam from the scarlet orchis, child of fiery climes, and glance before that rosy light is lost to the solemn white dome of Chimborazo. We can look at the North Pole through the crest of a palm, and cool the fire in our brain by the vision of a frostier than the “frosty Caucasus.” ”

“ According to some cosmical law, power worked most vigorously where beauty could afterward decorate most lovingly. Here narrow upright belts of climate are substituted for the breadths of zone after zone from torrid to frozen regions. All the garden wealth of the tropics, all the domestic charm of Northern plain and field and grove, dashed with a richer splendor than their own, are here combined and grouped at the base and along the flanks of bulky ranges topped with snow and fire. ”

“ If good and great, let it have the crown of unfading bays; but the world cannot toss its laurels lightly about to bristle on every ambitious pate. If we want noble pictures and progress to nobler, let us recognize them heartily when they come. ”

“ We may safely let ourselves grow, and never fear overgrowth. Why should not men become too large for “creeds outworn”!
“The Heart of the Andes” demands far more than a vague confidence that we can safely admire without committing ourselves. It is not enough to look awhile and like a little, and evade discrimination with easy commonplaces. Here is a strange picture evidently believing itself to be good ”

“ No lover of Art should be bullied out of his faith in his own instincts and independent culture by impertinencies about old masters and antique schools. Remember that Nature is the mistress of all masters, and founder of all schools. Nature makes Art possible straightway, everywhere, always. ”

“ Even if we have a neat love for the beautiful, and call ourselves by the pretty, modest title of amateurs, we have a large choice of degrees of benefit. We may see the first picture of our cycle, and receive a butterfly pleasure, a sniff of half-sensual emotion ”

“ We may have much to learn, but we have little to unlearn. Young artists, errant with Nature, are not caught and cuffed by the despotism of effete schools, nor sneered down into inanity by conservative dilettantism. ”

“ We can be vulgar admirers of novelty with no pains, or refined lovers of the beautiful with moderate pains. Let no one be diffident. Eyes are twice as numerous as men; and if we look we must see, unless we are timid and blink. ”

“ Before proceeding to the direct analysis, let us notice the strength of our position as American thinkers on Art. Generally with the boons of the past we have to accept the burdens of the past. But only a withered incubus, moribund with an atrophy, squats upon our healthy growth in Art. ”