JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
as he showed Wheelwright, has a meaning. One must make oneself master of it. One must learn to see, that is to say, to draw[1]—to seize the "drawing of things," that is to say the vital and essential qualities of things. "The drawing of things," as Poussin says, "must be the exact expression of the ideas of things."
This point can only be reached if we are strongly moved by what we see. Impression forces expression. "I should like to do nothing which was not the result of an impression received from the appearance of nature, either in landscape or in figures.… Art began to weaken from the moment when people no longer rested directly and simply upon impressions coming from nature, and when executive cleverness at once came to take nature's place: then began the decadence."
The majority of critics make for themselves an abstract ideal of beauty, and judge all works according to this ideal, condemning them unless they find it observed and applied. Millet protests against these pedantic claims. In judging an artist one must inquire, not
- ↑ "To see is to draw," said Millet to Wheelwright.
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