STAMINA IN PAINTING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 September 1939, Page 2

STAMINA IN PAINTING

IMPORTANCE OF FIRST IMPRESSION. Dalacroix once profoundly remarked that the difficulty in painting is not to lose the first impression. It is a difficulty that every painter knows, remarks Mr Eric Newton, the art critic. The power to strike while the mind's iron is hot is by no means uncommon. But how many painters, having estab- ■ lished their first broad masses with a few nervous lines that ..seem to retain the very twitch of the hand that holds the brush, and a few rapid indications of colour that still vibrate with the excitement of conception, have not paused and addressed themselves somewhat as follows: “If I add a single stroke to this, something of the careless rapture of what I have done will have vanished; some spark that I have kindled will have been dimmed. Yet what can I do? This is a mere skeleton. How shall I clothe it and yet not destroy it? And if I do continue what I have begun, at what stage dare I decide that it is ‘finished’ —fit to emerge as the final embodiment of my thought?” And, as always, the answer is to be found in the compromise that is so much more hazardous than facile extremism. The true test of an artist’s power is surely that he should have sufficient stamina to enable his first frenzy to survive the • process of “finishing.” The difference between the “finish” of a Holbein and the spontaneity of a Dufy is largely one of stamina —of having a reserve of power that is not) exhausted by the first sprint. What Holbein added to his first sketch was a further sublety, a deeper realisation of his original visual impulse. That is where he differs from a Meissonier, to whom “finish” merely meant added neatness or added detail, not added meaning.