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Walter Sickert: A conversation
This carefully crafted ebook: "Walter Sickert: A Conversation" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Walter Sickert was a british painter, printmaker, teacher and writer of German birth. Sickert was one of the most influential British artists of this century. He is often called a painter's painter, appealing primarily to artists working in the figurative tradition; there are few British figurative painters of the 20th century whose development can be adequately discussed without reference to Sickert's subject-matter or innovative techniques. He had a direct influence on the Camden Town Group and the Euston Road School, while his effect on Frank Auerbach, Howard Hodgkin and Francis Bacon was less tangible. Sickert's active career as an artist lasted for nearly 60 years. His output was vast. He may be judged equally as the last of the Victorian painters and as a major precursor of significant international developments in later 20th-century art, especially in his photo-based paintings.
32 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1978
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About the author
Virginia Woolf
1,907 books29.1k followers(Adeline) Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 25, 2024
I’m not sure we all have those dinner parties where every guest around the table can toss in some apt remark about the painting style of Walter Sickert. But then I’d lay odds that Virginia Woolf wasn’t in the habit of inviting people who couldn’t. She was literary. Her friends were literary. Walter Sickert liked to think his paintings tended that way too.
And anyway this is an imaginary dinner party which means anything goes.
So the guests set to, make comparisons between the biographer or novelist’s use of color and light, movement and stillness, Sickert’s use of pencil and brush, the author’s pen and paper. A careful splash of pigment or a few well-considered words on a page. Where’s the difference?
Seven or eight people we’re told, with time on their hands, good food, good wine and good company. Do they ever reach a conclusion?
It’s a short read, you can find it on Project Gutenberg and it’s not only interesting, it’s first-class writing, and it's fun. Read it for yourself and see. https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks12/120...
And anyway this is an imaginary dinner party which means anything goes.
So the guests set to, make comparisons between the biographer or novelist’s use of color and light, movement and stillness, Sickert’s use of pencil and brush, the author’s pen and paper. A careful splash of pigment or a few well-considered words on a page. Where’s the difference?
Seven or eight people we’re told, with time on their hands, good food, good wine and good company. Do they ever reach a conclusion?
It’s a short read, you can find it on Project Gutenberg and it’s not only interesting, it’s first-class writing, and it's fun. Read it for yourself and see. https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks12/120...
December 4, 2016
This is a pamphlet/essay on the painter Walter Sickert. It is in the form of a dinner party conversation. It is a discussion about painting, about colour and about the links between painting and writing; most specifically about Sickert’s painting. The conversation implies that Sickert is a literary painter and the painting now in the Tate Gallery entitled Ennui is given as an example;
“You remember the picture of the old publican, with his glass on the table before him and a cigar gone cold at his lips, looking out of his shrewd little pig’s eyes at the intolerable wastes of desolation in front of him? A fat woman lounges, her arm on a cheap yellow chest of drawers, behind him. It is all over with them, one feels. The accumulated weariness of innumerable days has discharged its burden on them. They are buried under an avalanche of rubbish. In the street beneath, the trams are squeaking, children are shrieking. Even now somebody is tapping his glass impatiently on the bar counter. She will have to bestir herself; to pull her heavy indolent body together and go and serve him. The grimness of that situation lies in the fact that there is no crisis; dull minutes are mounting, old matches are accumulating and dirty glasses and dead cigars; still on they must go, up they must get.”
Painting as realist novel. Sickert described himself as a realist painter. Woolf draws some parallels between the two;
“Let us hold painting by the hand a moment longer, for though they must part in the end, painting and writing have much to tell each other; they have much in common.”
Woolf looks at the strengths of each medium. As Hermoine Lee points out;
“…there is a ‘silent land’ which painters go into where they are talking about blocks of colour and textures and shapes, where the writers can’t follow. She is wistful about that silent land. She’d quite like to go there, but she has to use words.”
Woolf goes on to argue that painting (colour) is more transient and primitive than writing (narrative).
It is an interesting essay and I assumed at first, an insubstantial one, but interestingly when Hermione Lee was asked by one interviewer to recommend five works by Woolf she picked this along with To The Lighthouse, The Years, On Being Ill and Selected Diaries.
“You remember the picture of the old publican, with his glass on the table before him and a cigar gone cold at his lips, looking out of his shrewd little pig’s eyes at the intolerable wastes of desolation in front of him? A fat woman lounges, her arm on a cheap yellow chest of drawers, behind him. It is all over with them, one feels. The accumulated weariness of innumerable days has discharged its burden on them. They are buried under an avalanche of rubbish. In the street beneath, the trams are squeaking, children are shrieking. Even now somebody is tapping his glass impatiently on the bar counter. She will have to bestir herself; to pull her heavy indolent body together and go and serve him. The grimness of that situation lies in the fact that there is no crisis; dull minutes are mounting, old matches are accumulating and dirty glasses and dead cigars; still on they must go, up they must get.”
Painting as realist novel. Sickert described himself as a realist painter. Woolf draws some parallels between the two;
“Let us hold painting by the hand a moment longer, for though they must part in the end, painting and writing have much to tell each other; they have much in common.”
Woolf looks at the strengths of each medium. As Hermoine Lee points out;
“…there is a ‘silent land’ which painters go into where they are talking about blocks of colour and textures and shapes, where the writers can’t follow. She is wistful about that silent land. She’d quite like to go there, but she has to use words.”
Woolf goes on to argue that painting (colour) is more transient and primitive than writing (narrative).
It is an interesting essay and I assumed at first, an insubstantial one, but interestingly when Hermione Lee was asked by one interviewer to recommend five works by Woolf she picked this along with To The Lighthouse, The Years, On Being Ill and Selected Diaries.
November 16, 2018
Only 38 pages but an original and entertaining take in Sickert and art in general: art seen as literary works/narratives. Fave phrase: 'all our words will fold their wings and sit huddled like rooks on the tops of the trees in winter.'
January 8, 2020
An essay on art, in the form of dinner party conversation, using as its example Walter Sickert, a British painter who painted portraits of "real" people, that is to say, common folks as opposed to dignitaries or the famous.
October 29, 2022
"The novelist after all wants to make us see".
Immensa Virginia Woolf.
Immensa Virginia Woolf.
November 14, 2020
Riflettendo sull’affermazione di Mario Praz che: “la tecnica della Woolf potrebbe accostarsi a quella del pointillisme”, pensiamo che essa sia composta da “una pluralità di momenti isolati gli uni dagli altri, messi insieme a caso dall’immaginazione” (ancora Mario Praz) quindi proprio una sorta di puntinismo letterario, di impressionismo della scrittura.. Sickert si distaccò dalle origini whistleriane – e quindi preraffaellite – per accostarsi a Degas, che gli insegnò a non ritrarre solo dal vero, ma anche dipingere sulla scorta di ricordi, fotografie, disegni e lo introdusse alla scuola dell’impressionismo francese. Divenne poi il principale esponente del Camden Town Group, di matrice postimpressionista inglese.
La Woolf descrive un’immaginaria conversazione svoltasi in una sera di dicembre. Il testo si apre con un pezzo di bravura sul cromatismo, sugli insetti che sono tutt’occhi, anzi, tutt’uno, col colore che vedono, fino ad assorbirlo. Si nota subito quanto il linguaggio woolfiano attinga alla poesia, abbeverandosene e, pur mantenendo intatta la razionalità, trascolori in lirismo.
“When I first went into Sickert’s show, said one of the diners, I became completely and solely an insect – all eye. I flew from colour to colour, from red to blue, from yellow to green. Colors went spirally through my body lighting a flare as if a rocket fell through the night and lit up greens and browns, grass and trees, and there in the grass a white bird. (pag 59)
Sickert è un biografo, la Woolf riesce a estrapolare dai suoi ritratti intere vite, trame, narrazioni.
“Yes, Sickert is a great biographer, said one of them; when he paints a portrait I read a life.”[…] When he sits a man or woman down in front of him he sees the whole of the life that has been lived to make that face.” (pp. 60 e 62)
Se il romanziere ci fa vedere ciò che descrive, cioè, in un certo senso, dipinge e pennella, Sickert “scrive“ una storia. Abbiamo una sorta di chiasmo, d’incrocio fra le coppie Woolf – Sickert e scrittura – pittura.
Per la Woolf, più che ritrattista e biografo, Sickert è romanziere, alla stregua di Dickens o Balzac. I suoi personaggi attingono alla realtà, egli ama descrivere la classe media, i lavoratori nel loro squallore, nella loro sofferenza, nei volti plasmati dalla fatica e dalla disillusione, nelle vesti sformate dall’uso, nei mobili logorati e di basso prezzo. Sentiamo muoversi e parlare questi personaggi, costruiamo attorno a loro delle trame, ascoltiamo le conversazioni, i rumori che li circondano, che provengono dalla strada, dalle finestre aperte.
Pur realista, Sickert non è pessimista. È come se nei suoi quadri si accennasse a una condizione parallela, di cui i personaggi sono parte inconsapevole, una realtà di maggiore gioia e pienezza di vita. Inoltre, seppur di umili origini, le sue figure non sono mai avvilite, degradate. Sono donne e uomini ben nutriti, che godono dei piaceri della vita, del possesso di semplici oggetti, del buon cibo. C’è sempre intimità fra i personaggi e le loro stanze, i loro interni. Ogni oggetto, un cassettone, un cappello, un bicchiere, un letto, è espressione del proprietario. La natura umana non è mai lontana dal dipingere di Sickert, sullo sfondo dei suoi quadri c’è sempre un essere umano, un venditore, una passante.
Sickert narra senza correre il rischio di cadere nel sentimentalismo, come accade ai romanzieri. Egli racconta con una pennellata di verde o di rosso, con un gesto della mano, secco e avvolto nel silenzio. E, tuttavia, è comunque un vero poeta, lo si vede soprattutto nei quadri che ritraggono Venezia, il circo, il music hall, i mercati. Di là dal soggetto concreto, carnoso, c’è sempre un cielo, una nuvola, una luce rosso oro che, addirittura, possiamo sentir “gocciolare” dal pennello nell’immagine. In questo modo egli ci rende consapevoli della bellezza, della poesia nascosta, anche se non è un visionario o un rapsodo, non è un Blake o uno Shelley. La sua pittura “is made not of air and star-dust but of oil and earth” (pag. 71)
Pittura e scrittura hanno molto in comune, la Woolf ci descrive il tormento del romanziere che cerca di farci “vedere” ciò che ha in mente. Il brano che segue può essere considerato un vero e proprio manifesto poetico.
“The novelist is always saying to himself how can I bring the sun on to my page? How can I show the sun and the moon rising? And he must often think that to describe a scene is the worst way to show it. It must be done with one word, or with one word in skilful contrast with another. […]They both speak at once, striking two notes to make one chord, stimulating the eye of the mind and of the body” (pag. 73)
Il saggio prosegue con una carrellata di grandi scrittori – da Pope, a Keats, a Tennyson – di cui la Woolf analizza le proprietà pittoriche ma anche musicali, la scelta lessicale inconscia che serve ad alimentare e nutrire l’occhio e l’orecchio del lettore. La Woolf ritiene che non esista scrittore suo contemporaneo capace di scrivere la vita così come Sickert sa dipingerla.
“Words are an impure medium; better far to have been borne into the silent Kingdom of paint” (pag 63)
Per tutto il saggio ella fa riferimento a quel confine oltre il quale c’è solo silenzio, c’è la disperazione dello scrittore incapace di esprimere ciò che vede, la musica nella sua testa, il quadro nella sua mente. È quella che Praz definisce “l’oppressione dell’enorme fardello dell’inespresso”.
“We try to describe it and we cannot; and then it vanishes, and having seen it and lost it, exhaustion and depression overcome us; we recognize the limitations which Nature has put upon us.” pag. 77)
Non manca, infine, nel saggio, una stoccata contro la critica, di cui la Woolf si sentiva vittima, come si evince anche dalla lettura del suo diario; la critica che, appunto, non è sempre capace di cogliere le sfumature pittoriche e musicali della scrittura, ma rimane relegata e limitata alla pagina stampata.
Meglio tacere, dice la Woolf, meglio inoltrarsi nella “silent land”, la terra silenziosa che sta al posto della - o forse oltre la - parola, dove tutta l’arte si combina, dove si fondono poesia, pittura e musica, dove le gocce di colore, le parole scritte e le melodie, diventano una cosa sola, dove il significato si dilegua e lascia il posto alla comprensione preconscia, alla pura emozione che appaga e gratifica.
La Woolf descrive un’immaginaria conversazione svoltasi in una sera di dicembre. Il testo si apre con un pezzo di bravura sul cromatismo, sugli insetti che sono tutt’occhi, anzi, tutt’uno, col colore che vedono, fino ad assorbirlo. Si nota subito quanto il linguaggio woolfiano attinga alla poesia, abbeverandosene e, pur mantenendo intatta la razionalità, trascolori in lirismo.
“When I first went into Sickert’s show, said one of the diners, I became completely and solely an insect – all eye. I flew from colour to colour, from red to blue, from yellow to green. Colors went spirally through my body lighting a flare as if a rocket fell through the night and lit up greens and browns, grass and trees, and there in the grass a white bird. (pag 59)
Sickert è un biografo, la Woolf riesce a estrapolare dai suoi ritratti intere vite, trame, narrazioni.
“Yes, Sickert is a great biographer, said one of them; when he paints a portrait I read a life.”[…] When he sits a man or woman down in front of him he sees the whole of the life that has been lived to make that face.” (pp. 60 e 62)
Se il romanziere ci fa vedere ciò che descrive, cioè, in un certo senso, dipinge e pennella, Sickert “scrive“ una storia. Abbiamo una sorta di chiasmo, d’incrocio fra le coppie Woolf – Sickert e scrittura – pittura.
Per la Woolf, più che ritrattista e biografo, Sickert è romanziere, alla stregua di Dickens o Balzac. I suoi personaggi attingono alla realtà, egli ama descrivere la classe media, i lavoratori nel loro squallore, nella loro sofferenza, nei volti plasmati dalla fatica e dalla disillusione, nelle vesti sformate dall’uso, nei mobili logorati e di basso prezzo. Sentiamo muoversi e parlare questi personaggi, costruiamo attorno a loro delle trame, ascoltiamo le conversazioni, i rumori che li circondano, che provengono dalla strada, dalle finestre aperte.
Pur realista, Sickert non è pessimista. È come se nei suoi quadri si accennasse a una condizione parallela, di cui i personaggi sono parte inconsapevole, una realtà di maggiore gioia e pienezza di vita. Inoltre, seppur di umili origini, le sue figure non sono mai avvilite, degradate. Sono donne e uomini ben nutriti, che godono dei piaceri della vita, del possesso di semplici oggetti, del buon cibo. C’è sempre intimità fra i personaggi e le loro stanze, i loro interni. Ogni oggetto, un cassettone, un cappello, un bicchiere, un letto, è espressione del proprietario. La natura umana non è mai lontana dal dipingere di Sickert, sullo sfondo dei suoi quadri c’è sempre un essere umano, un venditore, una passante.
Sickert narra senza correre il rischio di cadere nel sentimentalismo, come accade ai romanzieri. Egli racconta con una pennellata di verde o di rosso, con un gesto della mano, secco e avvolto nel silenzio. E, tuttavia, è comunque un vero poeta, lo si vede soprattutto nei quadri che ritraggono Venezia, il circo, il music hall, i mercati. Di là dal soggetto concreto, carnoso, c’è sempre un cielo, una nuvola, una luce rosso oro che, addirittura, possiamo sentir “gocciolare” dal pennello nell’immagine. In questo modo egli ci rende consapevoli della bellezza, della poesia nascosta, anche se non è un visionario o un rapsodo, non è un Blake o uno Shelley. La sua pittura “is made not of air and star-dust but of oil and earth” (pag. 71)
Pittura e scrittura hanno molto in comune, la Woolf ci descrive il tormento del romanziere che cerca di farci “vedere” ciò che ha in mente. Il brano che segue può essere considerato un vero e proprio manifesto poetico.
“The novelist is always saying to himself how can I bring the sun on to my page? How can I show the sun and the moon rising? And he must often think that to describe a scene is the worst way to show it. It must be done with one word, or with one word in skilful contrast with another. […]They both speak at once, striking two notes to make one chord, stimulating the eye of the mind and of the body” (pag. 73)
Il saggio prosegue con una carrellata di grandi scrittori – da Pope, a Keats, a Tennyson – di cui la Woolf analizza le proprietà pittoriche ma anche musicali, la scelta lessicale inconscia che serve ad alimentare e nutrire l’occhio e l’orecchio del lettore. La Woolf ritiene che non esista scrittore suo contemporaneo capace di scrivere la vita così come Sickert sa dipingerla.
“Words are an impure medium; better far to have been borne into the silent Kingdom of paint” (pag 63)
Per tutto il saggio ella fa riferimento a quel confine oltre il quale c’è solo silenzio, c’è la disperazione dello scrittore incapace di esprimere ciò che vede, la musica nella sua testa, il quadro nella sua mente. È quella che Praz definisce “l’oppressione dell’enorme fardello dell’inespresso”.
“We try to describe it and we cannot; and then it vanishes, and having seen it and lost it, exhaustion and depression overcome us; we recognize the limitations which Nature has put upon us.” pag. 77)
Non manca, infine, nel saggio, una stoccata contro la critica, di cui la Woolf si sentiva vittima, come si evince anche dalla lettura del suo diario; la critica che, appunto, non è sempre capace di cogliere le sfumature pittoriche e musicali della scrittura, ma rimane relegata e limitata alla pagina stampata.
Meglio tacere, dice la Woolf, meglio inoltrarsi nella “silent land”, la terra silenziosa che sta al posto della - o forse oltre la - parola, dove tutta l’arte si combina, dove si fondono poesia, pittura e musica, dove le gocce di colore, le parole scritte e le melodie, diventano una cosa sola, dove il significato si dilegua e lascia il posto alla comprensione preconscia, alla pura emozione che appaga e gratifica.
December 27, 2025
This short piece takes the form of (surprise, surprise) a conversation, ostensibly at a dinner party, about art in general and the paintings of one Walter Sickert in particular.
The conversation (rather disembodied, almost a monologue) swoops over a variety of topics, but mostly homes in on the idea that Sickert is a storyteller in paint. The conversationalist(s) discuss several of his paintings, describing them slightly if at all, while extracting a great deal of, if not actual story, at least character sketch and situation from them.
At the end, Woolf produces a letter from Sickert in which the painter states that he is "a literary painter ... like all the decent painters." This seems a bit pat, but does wind the discussion up neatly.
Very readable, if slight.
Six out of ten pigments.
The conversation (rather disembodied, almost a monologue) swoops over a variety of topics, but mostly homes in on the idea that Sickert is a storyteller in paint. The conversationalist(s) discuss several of his paintings, describing them slightly if at all, while extracting a great deal of, if not actual story, at least character sketch and situation from them.
At the end, Woolf produces a letter from Sickert in which the painter states that he is "a literary painter ... like all the decent painters." This seems a bit pat, but does wind the discussion up neatly.
Very readable, if slight.
Six out of ten pigments.
July 12, 2019
Re-read this lovely essay, making an analytical outline and trying to find all the criticism I could about it (which is not much aside from Diane Gillespie's helpful remarks in The Sister's Arts).
December 3, 2024
read for my contemporary art uni class !!!
May 24, 2025
I must not be British aristocracy, lol ! , I can’t get into art appreciation, by art meaning paintings on canvases.
In this short fiction cum piece of art criticism, ostensibly a group of people met for a dinner party, they sat around and chatted and gabbed and for a while the chatter settled on an exhibition of Walter Sickert’s paintings at an art gallery. Apparently his paintings gave off the whole-picture gestalts of novels, biographies, dramas and poems. Or the diners were able to read all that into half a dozen of Sickert’s paintings. They all felt deeply the connections between colours, brushstrokes and words.
VW at her Hogarth Press publishing company gave him good press allowing her fictional characters to agree that Walter Sickert was probably the best painter of their day in between-wars England.
There the diners sat, riven from the working classes by their own distinctions in birth, class, education, social standing and whatnot, doing their best to deal with the best painter’s diversity, his continental and German backgrounds. Jolly nice of them to go out of their way like that to counter the germanophobia of their times.
To my horror, nothing to do with VW’s crowd at all, Walter Sickert’s name was subsequently besmirched by the yellow press in making him a prime suspect for the gruesome 1888-1891 JTR slashings in London’s dockside. So what if it’s now reported that his name’s been cleared because he wasn’t even in England all that much. Still, his name now always comes up in that cold case file.
In this short fiction cum piece of art criticism, ostensibly a group of people met for a dinner party, they sat around and chatted and gabbed and for a while the chatter settled on an exhibition of Walter Sickert’s paintings at an art gallery. Apparently his paintings gave off the whole-picture gestalts of novels, biographies, dramas and poems. Or the diners were able to read all that into half a dozen of Sickert’s paintings. They all felt deeply the connections between colours, brushstrokes and words.
VW at her Hogarth Press publishing company gave him good press allowing her fictional characters to agree that Walter Sickert was probably the best painter of their day in between-wars England.
There the diners sat, riven from the working classes by their own distinctions in birth, class, education, social standing and whatnot, doing their best to deal with the best painter’s diversity, his continental and German backgrounds. Jolly nice of them to go out of their way like that to counter the germanophobia of their times.
To my horror, nothing to do with VW’s crowd at all, Walter Sickert’s name was subsequently besmirched by the yellow press in making him a prime suspect for the gruesome 1888-1891 JTR slashings in London’s dockside. So what if it’s now reported that his name’s been cleared because he wasn’t even in England all that much. Still, his name now always comes up in that cold case file.
November 19, 2012
Pretentious. But did make me want to go and look at Walter Sickert paintings, so not all bad.
Read
May 1, 2017Edition: First Edition
June 16, 2018
This is really a conversation about art and it’s form in silence. Starts off with an attack of how few galleries exist and how much colour was there to think about…”the discussion about the value of coloured lights had led somebody to say that in the eyes of a motorist red is not a colour but simply a danger signal.” On another note… “First, on entering a picture gallery, the violent rapture of colour; then, when we have soused our eyes sufficiently in that, there is the complexity and intrigue of character.”
There was talk about colour and how people see color differently…”how painters are affected by their place of birth, whether in the blue South or the grey North; how colour blazes, unrelated to any object, in the eyes of children; how politicians and business men are blind, days spent in an office leading to atrophy of the eye; and so, by contrast, to those insects, said still to be found in the primeval forests of South America, in whom the eye is so developed that they are all eye, the body a tuft of feather, serving merely to connect the two great chambers of vision.”
When looking at art, it worthy to note the silence in the middle of every art “The artists themselves live in it. Coleridge could not explain Kubla Khan—that he left to the critics.”
Paint on canvas could be so many things, including a biography of someone. From a painting you can tell whether someone was living right….and the physical regime for that matter. Human nature has never exiled from the canvas.
When talking about colour and writing, it gets all sorts of interesting… “Each of Shakespeare’s plays has its dominant colour. And each writer differs of course as a colourist. Pope has no great range of colour; he is more draughtsman than colourist; clear washes of indigo, discreet blacks and violets best suit his exquisite sharp outlines save that in the Elegy to an Unfortunate Lady there is a mass of funeral black; and the great image of the Eastern King glows, fantastically, if you like, dark crimson. Keats uses colour lavishly, lusciously, like a Venetian. In the Eve of St. Agnes he paints for lines at a time, dipping his pen in mounds of pure reds and blues. Tennyson on the other hand is never luscious; he uses the hard brush and the pure bright tints of a miniature painter. The Princess is illuminated like a monk’s manuscript; there are whole landscapes in the curves of the capital letters. You almost need a magnifying glass to see the minuteness of the detail.”
You could also do literature with music and painting in mind….”The best critics, Dryden, Lamb, Hazlitt, were acutely aware of the mixture of elements, and wrote of literature with music and painting in their minds. Nowadays we are all so specialized that critics keep their brains fixed to the print, which accounts for the starved condition of criticism in our time, and the attenuated and partial manner in which it deals with its subject.”
I like that Virginia took time to appreciate Walter and his art.
There was talk about colour and how people see color differently…”how painters are affected by their place of birth, whether in the blue South or the grey North; how colour blazes, unrelated to any object, in the eyes of children; how politicians and business men are blind, days spent in an office leading to atrophy of the eye; and so, by contrast, to those insects, said still to be found in the primeval forests of South America, in whom the eye is so developed that they are all eye, the body a tuft of feather, serving merely to connect the two great chambers of vision.”
When looking at art, it worthy to note the silence in the middle of every art “The artists themselves live in it. Coleridge could not explain Kubla Khan—that he left to the critics.”
Paint on canvas could be so many things, including a biography of someone. From a painting you can tell whether someone was living right….and the physical regime for that matter. Human nature has never exiled from the canvas.
When talking about colour and writing, it gets all sorts of interesting… “Each of Shakespeare’s plays has its dominant colour. And each writer differs of course as a colourist. Pope has no great range of colour; he is more draughtsman than colourist; clear washes of indigo, discreet blacks and violets best suit his exquisite sharp outlines save that in the Elegy to an Unfortunate Lady there is a mass of funeral black; and the great image of the Eastern King glows, fantastically, if you like, dark crimson. Keats uses colour lavishly, lusciously, like a Venetian. In the Eve of St. Agnes he paints for lines at a time, dipping his pen in mounds of pure reds and blues. Tennyson on the other hand is never luscious; he uses the hard brush and the pure bright tints of a miniature painter. The Princess is illuminated like a monk’s manuscript; there are whole landscapes in the curves of the capital letters. You almost need a magnifying glass to see the minuteness of the detail.”
You could also do literature with music and painting in mind….”The best critics, Dryden, Lamb, Hazlitt, were acutely aware of the mixture of elements, and wrote of literature with music and painting in their minds. Nowadays we are all so specialized that critics keep their brains fixed to the print, which accounts for the starved condition of criticism in our time, and the attenuated and partial manner in which it deals with its subject.”
I like that Virginia took time to appreciate Walter and his art.
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