HALF-A-DOZEN PICTURES
'Some men when they grow rich, store pictures in a gallery,' Living,
their friends envy them, and after death the genuineness of the
collection is disputed under the dispersing hammer.
A better way is to spread your picture over all earth; visiting them as
Fate allows. Then none can steal or deface, nor any reverse of fortune
force a sale; sunshine and tempest warm and ventilate the gallery for
nothing, and - in spite of all that has been said of her
crudeness - Nature is not altogether a bad frame-maker. The knowledge
that you may never live to see an especial treasure twice teaches the
eyes to see quickly while the light lasts; and the possession of such a
gallery breeds a very fine contempt for painted shows and the smeary
things that are called pictures.
In the North Pacific, to the right hand as you go westward, hangs a
small study of no particular value as compared with some others. The
mist is down on an oily stretch of washed-out sea; through the mist the
bats-wings of a sealing schooner are just indicated. In the foreground,
all but leaping out of the frame, an open rowboat, painted the rawest
blue and white, rides up over the shoulder of a swell. A man in
blood-red jersey and long boots, all shining with moisture, stands at
the bows holding up the carcase of a silver-bellied sea-otter from whose
pelt the wet drips in moonstones. Now the artist who could paint the
silver wash of the mist, the wriggling treacly reflection of the boat,
and the raw red wrists of the man would be something of a workman.
But my gallery is in no danger of being copied at present. Three years
since, I met an artist in the stony bed of a brook, between a line of
300 graven, lichened godlings and a flaming bank of azaleas, swearing
horribly. He had been trying to paint one of my pictures - nothing more
than a big water-worn rock tufted with flowers and a snow-capped hill
for background. Most naturally he failed, because there happened to be
absolutely no perspective in the thing, and he was pulling the lines
about to make some for home consumption. No man can put the contents of
a gallon jar into a pint mug. The protests of all uncomfortably-crowded
mugs since the world began have settled that long ago, and have given us
the working theories, devised by imperfect instruments for imperfect
instruments, which are called Rules of Art.
Luckily, those who painted my gallery were born before man. Therefore,
my pictures, instead of being boxed up by lumbering bars of gold, are
disposed generously between latitudes, equinoxes, monsoons, and the
like, and, making all allowance for an owner's partiality, they are
really not so bad.
'Down in the South where the ships never go' - between the heel of New
Zealand and the South Pole, there is a sea-piece showing a steamer
trying to come round in the trough of a big beam sea.
