But, as we know, it is never the purpose of art merely to stir feeling;
its purpose is to objectify feeling; if the art be painting, to put
feeling into color and line, and only when feeling is experienced as
_there_ is it aesthetic feeling at all. And what shall we think
of a picture like the "Doctor" of Luke Fildes', which is so pathetic
that one cannot bear to look at it? Surely a picture should make one
want to see it! Of course I do not mean that an artist cannot paint
pathetic and sentimental subjects. The great painters of the Passion
would disprove that with reference to the former and Watteau with
reference to the latter. But a power to achieve beauty of color and
line and to objectify pathos and sentiment through them was possessed
by these painters to a degree to which few others have attained. For
moralistic painting, however, there can be no excuse. You can paint
visible things and as much of the soul as can appear through them; you
cannot paint abstract ethical maxims. Of course a painter may intend
his picture to be an illustration of some moral maxim, or may even,
as Hogarth did, paint it to expose the sins of his age and create a
beautiful work notwithstanding; but only if, in the result, this purpose
is irrelevant and the concrete delineation everything.
CHAPTER XII
SCULPTURE
The sculptor has this advantage over all other artists, that his chief
subject is the most beautiful thing in the world--the human body. In
two ways the body is supremely beautiful: as an expression of mind and
as an embodiment of sensuous charm.
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