And likewise the savage who, wishing to illustrate his description of a strange animal he has seen, takes a piece of burnt wood and draws on the wall his idea of what it looked like, a sort of catalogue of its appearance in its details, he is not necessarily an artist.  It is only when he draws under the influence of some feeling, of some pleasure he felt in the appearance of the animal, that he becomes an artist.

Of course in each case it is assumed that the men have the power to be moved by these things, and whether they are good or poor artists will depend on the quality of their feeling and the fitness of its expression.

[Illustration:  Plate IV.

Study on tissue-paper in red chalk for figure of Boreas]

The purest form of this “rhythmic expression of feeling” is music.  And as Walter Pater shows us in his essay on “The School of Giorgione,” “music is the type of art.”  The others are more artistic as they approach its conditions.  Poetry, the most musical form of literature, is its most artistic form.  And in the greatest pictures form, colour, and idea are united to thrill us with harmonies analogous to music.

The painter expresses his feelings through the representation of the visible world of Nature, and through the representation of those combinations of form and colour inspired in his imagination, that were all originally derived from visible nature.  If he fails from lack of skill to make his representation convincing to reasonable people, no matter how sublime has been his artistic intention, he will probably have landed in the ridiculous.  And yet, #so great is the power of direction exercised by the emotions on the artist that it is seldom his work fails to convey something, when genuine feeling has been the motive#.  On the other hand, the painter with no artistic impulse who makes a laboriously commonplace picture of some ordinary or pretentious subject, has equally failed as an artist, however much the skilfulness of his representations may gain him reputation with the unthinking.

The study, therefore, of the #representation of visible nature# and of #the powers of expression possessed by form and colour# is the object of the painter’s training.

And a command over this power of representation and expression is absolutely necessary if he is to be capable of doing anything worthy of his art.

This is all in art that one can attempt to teach.  The emotional side is beyond the scope of teaching.  You cannot teach people how to feel.  All you can do is to surround them with the conditions calculated to stimulate any natural feeling they may possess.  And this is done by familiarising students with the best works of art and nature.

* * * * *

It is surprising how few art students have any idea of what it is that constitutes art.  They are impelled, it is to be assumed, by a natural desire to express themselves by painting, and, if their intuitive ability is strong enough, it perhaps matters little whether they know or not.  But to the larger number who are not so violently impelled, it is highly essential that they have some better idea of art than that it consists in setting down your canvas before nature and copying it.