The study of nature is of no significance, for painting is a conventional art, and it is infinitely more worthwhile to learn to draw after w:Holbein.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
A great many people have tunnel vision. Now tunnel vision is when you have a problem with the eyes so that you can only see a little spot ahead of you. You don’t have a broad range of vision. It is a very sad kind of eye defect. But Ford Schwartz was telling me a while back how some years ago when he spent a while in Mexico he stayed with some people in a village, the only non Mexican there. He found them to be very kindly and gracious people, but very limited, because all they could see was to do things exactly as every one else did so that their daily food was limited, day after day, to tortilla and beans, but they were living on the edge of the ocean. And he said day after day he caught fish in a matter of minutes, excellent eating, tasty varieties. But the Mexicans rarely ever touched the fish. They did things only as they had done them generation after generation. Now that is tunnel vision. That is a lack of any real vision. And that is exceedingly common. We can see it in the Mexicans, but we don’t see it in ourselves.
For when we are interested in the beauty of a thing, the oftener we can see it the better; but when we are interested only by the story of a thing, we get tired of hearing the same tale told over and over again, and stopping always at the same point — we want a new story presently, a newer and better one — and the picture of the day, and novel of the day, become as ephemeral as the coiffure or the bonnet of the day. Now this spirit is wholly adverse to the existence of any lovely art. If you mean to throw it aside to-morrow, you can never have it to-day.
The details and distractions are infinite. It is only natural, therefore, that we should never see the picture whole. But the universal goal — the attainment of harmony — is apparent.
In our thought of Empire to-day there is nothing in the nature of flag-wagging or boasting of painting the map red. No! Only a sense of pride in the race from which we spring—a pride which makes us humble in our own eyes, and resolute to make ourselves as worthy as we may of the heritage and responsibilities which are ours.
The underlying theme of Western poetry is mortality. The theme of carpe diem asks us to seize the day because we have only a limited number of them. To see life through the lens of death is to approach the condition of gratitude for the gift (or simply the fact) of our existence. And as Wallace Stevens said, Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.
I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet.
In this Summer time of ours with Scheveningen on the shore the bathing time and the hot weather I did very few things…. was only busy calculating my studies [for later paintings] and to see what I should do…. an interior with some figures an outside Schevening shore scene a scene with sentiment of feeling or a picture quite after nature so natural as if it was the old dutch school [17th century]…. I hope the next days will bring me a safe outcome from the turbulations in my head, all is so fine and beautiful to do..
Who knows if these very pictures, now painted for maharajas, will not find their way to the museums one day.