Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c12.104

c12.104

But his impressionism is not merely a blurred vision of natural appearances, as it often is in modern European art. To see with the mind, not merely with the eye; to bring out an essential quality, not the common appearance of things; to give the movement and character in a figure, not only the bone and muscle; to reveal some precious quality or effect in a landscape, not merely physiographical or botanical facts; and, above all, to identify himself with the inner consciousness of the Nature he portrays, and to make manifest the one harmonious law which governs Nature in all her moods,—these are the thoughts which he always keeps uppermost in his mind as soon as he knows how to use his tools with tolerable facility. It is considered of the most vital importance to train the faculty of mind-seeing from the earliest youth, when impressions are strong and vivid, instead of leaving this development to the end of the academic career, as we usually do in Europe. The oriental artist does not neglect detail—witness the wonderful studies of Japanese artists, and those by Indian artists given in Plates LXI., LXII. But the first principle of oriental art-practice is to develop a habit of concentrated thought at the same time as imitative skill is being acquired by practice. In modern European art academies, the creative power usually lies fallow in the most important years of a student’s mental development, while the imitative skill is being acquired by a dreary routine of more or less mechanical exercises. In this respect art-teaching only repeats the errors of what we mis-call “classical” education in public schools; but the habit thereby engendered of regarding art as a technical process, rather than a creative faculty, explains to a great extent the archæological critic’s standpoint in regard to Indian art.