The Studio march 15. 1910 [antikvár]

Albert Goodwin, R.W.S.The art of mr. albertgoodwin, r.w.s. by a. lys baldry.There are two large sections into which the great mass of landscape painters can be divided-the men who paint nature as she is, faithfully and in detail, and the men who use her suggestions as the foundation for pictorial abstractions, in which strict reality is subordinated to the expres-sion of a personal sentiment. The first type of artist is dependent for his success upon his selec-tive sense. If he has the power to recognise which of the subjects he sees is really paintable, and to choose out of the material presented to him just what is wanted to make an attractive picture, he will please his public and will produce work that is sufficiently convincing. If his taste, however, is imperfect and his vision is not under the control of his intelligence, if he is more ready to insist upon fidelity in the representation of factsany factsthan upon the accurate rendering of actu-alities which are assthetically interesting, his work will be neither pleasing nor convincing. It will,no doubt, have a marked degree of photographic truth, but, like much ill-considered photography, it will only pro ve how easy it is to waste labour on motives which are unworthy of glorification by means of art. He will fail first because he has chosen his subject unwisely, and secondly because he has been unable, through lack of imagination and in consequence of his habit of setting down uncompromisingly what is before him, to perceive what possibilities of artistic suggestion and adap-tation that subject may possess.The other type of artist uses his selective sense in a different way. He seeks not so much for the ready-made subject that he can reproduce bit by bit and detail by detail on his canvas as for one that sets him thinking, one that he can build upon and develop. Nature is to him the source of his inspiration, the exciting cause by which his imagination is stimulated into activity; and she rouses in him the desire to record the impression she has made upon him. He sees her not literally but through the médium of a creative temperament which is not content to take things merely as they are. This temperament influences him in his