Limelight

“ Don't forget the mountains. The soft, steady, north light on your canvas, and a message from the mountains to your soul, through the same window, should make it a good place to work, Mr. Painter-man. I suppose over here"--he moved away from the window, and spoke in his mocking way--"over here, you will have a tea-table for the ladies of the circle elect--who will come to, 'oh', and, 'ah', their admiration of the newly discovered genius, and to chatter their misunderstandings of his art. ”

“ When a panorama is to pass before an audience, the artist darkens the room in which they sit, so that the picture may be more fully seen. So God sometimes darkens our place on earth, puts out this light and that, and then before our souls He makes to pass the splendors and glories of the better land. ”

“ Arched galleries and passages through the hills and mountains, partly perforated by the sea or electric fire, and enlarged by the industry of man, have a subdued light and make an impression of another kind, the red light in these perforated roads answering to the red shade of the outer world. ”

“ He who would judge adequately of a landscape must regard it not only with the painter’s eye, but with the poet’s. The feelings which the sight of any scene in Nature conveys to the mind—more especially of any scene on which history or fiction has left its trace—must depend upon our sympathy with those associations which make up what may be called the spiritual character of the spot. ”

“ In all of them landscape bears an important part, and in some the background has become the picture and completely subordinated the figures. In this little 'Golden Age' the landscape is quiet in tone, tinged with melancholy, romantic, to suit the mood of the figures. ”

“ Imprisoned in a flattened universe bounded by the screen of the spectacle that has enthralled him, the spectator knows no one but the fictitious speakers who subject him to a one-way monologue about their commodities and the politics of their commodities. The spectacle as a whole serves as his looking glass. ”

“ The work of all court and portrait painters is but the recording, that is, the illustration, of human vanity; and the work of all subject painters is but the recording, that is, the illustration, of great and important events; while landscape painting, a modern invention, is only more or less glorified topography. ”

“ He seems to have realized that a picture laid in a mystic locale, a locale strange to nearly everyone who frequents picture theatres, a locale enriched in poetry, fiction and song, as a land of uncanny magic, that such a picture demanded a slow, steady tempo. ”

“ Such a blotted paper held at a distance from the eye would strike the spectator as something excellent for the disposition of the light and shadow though he does not distinguish whether it is history, a portrait, a landscape, dead game, or anything else; for the same principles extend to every branch of art. ”

“ The artist in form and color bathes his landscape in 'the light that never was, on sea or land,' or, if not that, in some light or other, some 'tender light which heaven to gaudy day denies,' and which serves to reveal the feeling which he aimed to express through the landscape. ”

“ One has but to open the door to any forces of exhibition at all worthy of the name in order to see the imaging and qualifying agency called at once into play and put on its mettle. We may traverse acres of pretended exhibitory prose from which the touch that directly evokes and finely presents, the touch that operates for closeness and for charm, for conviction and illusion, for communication, in a word, is unsurpassably absent. ”

“ There below them is not only the field for industry and enterprise, but a panorama of natural charms destined to inspire poets, to glow on the canvas of painters, and to take on the magic of human association and tradition. ”

“ From any chance, outward or inward, observation—the fragment of a dream, an encounter on the street, the sight of a tower dating from the Middle Ages, in some ancient city, in the glow of the setting sun—there springs up for him, through the most rapid association of ideas, a history, a chain of events; and as he is by nature an artist, this series of events ever assumes a rhythmic form. ”

“ A man—I put it to you—has got to hustle after culture in these days and take it, so to speak, in tabloids. Now this morning, before you came along, I'd struck a magnificent notion. As I dare say you've been told, the way to get at the essence of a landscape is to half-close your eyes—you get the dominant notes that way, and shed the details. ”

“ Resting on the sound foundations of classics grew up an edifice of knowledge, whose every stage seemed in its rapid progress to annihilate the artistic beauty of the former, and whose culminating copingstone did copious grace to a homogeneous whole. ”

“ It is a focus of warmth and light in the vast smoky cavern; it gives the idea that literature is a thing of splendour, of a dazzling essence, of infinite gas-lit red and gold. A glamour hangs over the glittering booth, and a tantalising 39 air of clever new things. How brilliant must the books all be, how veracious and courteous the fresh, pure journals! Of a Saturday afternoon, as you wait in your corner of the compartment for the starting of the train, the window makes a frame for the glowing picture. ”

“ Every kind of scene and figure suggests a good composition to me—a market, the arrival of a boat, a group of men outside a soup-kitchen, the crowds wandering and gossiping in the streets—on the same principle as a flock of sheep—and it is all a matter of light and shade and perspective. ”

“ Take an author at his writing, a painter at his canvas, a composer listening to the melodies that dawn upon his glad imagination; let any one of these workers pass his daily hours by a wide window looking on a busy street. The power of the animating life blinds sight and hearing alike, and the great traffic of the city goes by like nothing but a passing pageant. ”

“ We command a view of the long line of art unfolding as a river flows, in winding course from meagre sources, and through untoward obstructions into a natural bed which awaits it, now deep and swollen, now slender, now graceful, now turbid, here breaking into smaller threads stretching into opposed directions, here again uniting and deepening, and we mark in all of its variety of course and depth, the narrow line of the channel. ”

“ But when we turn from the unsightly telegraph to the graceful structure at whose portal we stand, and when we contrast the airy outline of its curves of beauty, pendent between massive towers suggestive of art alone, with the overreaching vault of heaven above and the ever-moving flood of waters beneath, the work of Omnipotent Power, we are irresistibly moved to exclaim, "What hath man wrought!" ”

“ It is a noble landscape, where every feature is bold, and throughout which light and shade alternate in broad, effective masses, showing that you are gazing on a scene of great extent, and taking in miles of country with your eye. ”

“ One of the finest examples is the plate of E. G. Asay, of Chicago. In this we find ourselves intruding upon the councils of the Muses; for we see Art seated upon a throne, with the palette and brushes idle in her lap, while about her, in graceful manner, recline History, Music, and Literature.{364} The lyre of Music is quiet, as, with her hand affectionately placed upon the shoulder of History, she listens to the reading of the just-inscribed record. Art likewise gives interested attention to the recital; and Literature, with her book closed, leans upon the convenient globe, and listens. ”

“ I'd say, 'The moving-picture field is the greatest gold-field in the world.' I'd tell him how many hundred thousand theaters there are in the world, all of them eager for your pictures and only needing to be told about them. ”

“ You see, therefore, that my delight and taste cannot well be riveted by a work of art, unless it imitates such objects of nature as are well known to me, so that I am able to test the imitation by my own experience of the originals. Landscape, with all that lives and moves therein—flowers and fruit-trees. ”

“ At the Globe, then, the types of scene presented are much the same as those with which we have become familiar in the sixteenth century; the old categories of open-country scenes, battle scenes, garden scenes, street scenes, threshold scenes, hall scenes, and chamber scenes will still serve. Their relative importance alters, no doubt, as the playwrights tend more and more to concern themselves with subjects of urban life. ”

“ The air has here, above all in the south, a transparency—oh, an infinite transparency! The despair of painters. Then this transparency gives greater purity to the outlines; nowhere do points stand out as they do here. ”

“ In great, glaring, garish and golden letters their poems will look down upon people from the rooftops, from the high walls of factories and barns, from fences and huge signs by all the roadsides, railroad sides, mountain sides, seasides, and all sides, and people will be compelled to look up to them, because there will be nowhere else to look. ”

“ We were now approaching a region where art and nature seemed to have united in one mighty and persistent effort to excel each other in the entrancing beauty and rugged grandeur that could be added to the picture. ”

“ At the sides are painted views of the country surrounding each scene of action; the neighbouring city, if there be one, is seen upon the left, and on the right are fields or open sea. And all this is executed with consummate skill, and knowledge of perspective, such as even modern scene-painters hardly, perhaps, surpass. ”

“ To read their productions is like looking on a piece of mediaeval art, a stained-glass window, where the figures are grotesque and the fable futile, but the richly blended colours bind us by their beauty. ”

“ I have a sort of organic protestation against certain things here, the toneless air in the streets, which feels like used-up indoor air, the "general debility" which pervades all ways and institutions, the worn-out faces, etc., etc. But the charming sunny manners, the old-world picturesqueness wherever you cast your eye, and above all, the magnificent remains of art, redeem it all, and insidiously spin a charm round one which might well end by turning one into one of these mere northern loungers here for the rest of one's days, recreant to all one's native instincts. ”

“ Many productions which appear at first sight dazzling phenomena in the province of the fine arts, and which as a whole have been honoured with the appellation of works of a golden age, resemble the mimic gardens of children: impatient to witness the work of their hands, they break off here and there branches and flowers, and plant them in the earth ”

“ If they paused too long in contemplation of a painting, newspapers might not be purchased! If they dawdled over the old-style newspaper, the digest magazines, the popular recordings, the minute movies, the spectator sports—the thousand and one forms of mass recreation offered the public—each in turn would suffer from unrestrained competition! ”

“ That is the perpetual interest of the place—that you live in a certain sort of knowledge as in a rosy cloud. You don’t go into the churches and galleries by way of a change from the streets; you go into them because they offer you an exquisite reproduction of the things that surround you. ”

“ See what a variety of rooms; what a variety of inventions in those rooms, which artificial and refined wants have called into existence. What books enrich the fair library; what glorious paintings grace its delicately-papered walls. Hark! music is issuing from instruments of novel and most ingenious construction. ”

“ What is it that makes the landscape artist? His power to portray depends upon his ability to discern and observe. The poet and orator do the same, but they make their pictures with words and phrases instead of pigments and canvas.
In seeing anything, get hold of every fact possible—size, position, color, relative importance, and, then, before you conclude your observations, close your eyes and reconstruct the scene mentally. ”

“ The grey light from the waves was reflected on the immaculate and shiny white paint, and shed a cold glare on the commonplace faces and on the plaid rugs, and on the vivid magazines which many of the people were reading, or pretending to read; for most persons only look at the pictures nowadays, and read the advertisements. ”

“ Here are museums and art galleries, and all things rare and valuable, the best of their kind. Here come great actors, and orators, and singers, from all over the world. Here, in short, is a centre of human life, in all its varied manifestations. ”

“ Landscapes artistically arranged formed backgrounds for the narratives, like the scenery of a theatre. You follow with your eyes a horseman galloping along the strand; you breathe amid the heather the freshness of the wind ”

“ A commonplace observer, had such been there to mark him, would have pronounced him one passionately devoted to scenery,—a man who loved to watch the passing cloud-shadows of a landscape, enjoying with all a painter's delight the varying tints, the graceful lines, the sharp-thrown shadows, and the brilliant lights of a woodland picture ”

“ Formerly landscapes had been used as backgrounds, oftentimes attractive and beautiful, while the real purpose of the pictures centred in the human figures. The distinctive feature of nineteenth-century landscape is the representation of Nature alone, and the variety of method used and the differing aims of the artists cover the entire gamut between absolute Realism and the most pronounced Impressionism. ”

“ Wherever it is spoken by the fireside, or sung by the roadside, or carved upon the lintel, appreciation of the arts that a single mind gives unity and design to, spreads quickly when its hour is come. ”