Talks about Art - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 edition. Excerpt: ...week, one day? But I wouldn't have said that when I Was fifteen. I should have felt as you do. But suppose that I had been wise enough, had kept my will for progress, not for carrying out my own views; and could have been with Velasquez at sixteen years of ago I I should have known how to paint. He could have told me in one week what he was ten years in learning. But every human being isn't so willing. I have never found anybody, Even Millet, whom I knew well, would only talk with me. He wouldn't show me two things. I've been painting thirty years. Under instruction, I could, in ten years, have learned all that I have learned--no, not all! but I could have followed any one in whom I had confidence. I went abroad to follow what I thought was the true method of painting; but I've told you more this winter, yes, sometimes more in one week, than I was ever told in my whole life! Not one person in five thousand can find out anything for himself. I've seen boys come out of Couture's atelier, and go farther in three months than others would in three years. They took the method at which he had arrivedI And mind that abroad they don't tell youI They neither show you nor tell you. Couture would say, "That's horrid! If you can't do better than that you'd better stop!" But it's always different with a man. He has to be in earnest I Ho has his living to get. If they'd shown mo in Harvard College how to do mathematics, I should have been a mathematician. But I'm glad now that they didn't You can't get too much showing. As soon as you leave your class nobody is going to be interested to show you how to do anything. Your friends will criticise and turn up their noses, but they won't show you. And while I say this, let me add it's disagreeable...