Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/200

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

XIV

ON VISION

Vision! the key to the door of art; the power to see with the eyes of the soul! as necessary to the artist as faith to the true believer. We have been talking of color, vibration, refraction, drawing, and so on—all so much useless lumber if a painter have not the one divine gift. I once knew an artist who had all these technical things at his finger tips; he was an able draughtsman, a strong colorist, and the difficulties of refraction and vibration were to him a mere bagatelle. Yet one of his pictures was like a man without a soul a veritable Frankenstein Monster of art for he lacked the artist vision.

[154]