sees it in its highest form in musical interpretation, explaining the historical triumphs of great virtuosos.
Progressing from the stained drawing, watercolour gradually raised itself to be an art no longer existing upon a scaffolding of pencil work, but became a medium containing within its boundaries an open field for any experiment. In Melville’s hands it had the amenableness to alteration, to changed desire, which the sculptor finds in wax and clay, and the musician in his own art, the art in which is found the explanation and the key to the meaning of every other art, for within the range of musical notes there can be expressed alteration of feeling and every change of mood. Thought may be watched changing itself upon the surface of sound as the interchanging reflec
tions of waving trees and moving clouds in water. Such power Melville had in his art, which was always lyrical, musical, naturally praising the movement of life. Its delight was in sunshine ; the shadows are sorrowful that fall on the sunny walls, and they were painted wistfully, with a sense that they hid mysteries, and that in darkened doorways life steps aside for tragedy. He liked the clamour of the streets, the shouting at bull-fights ; and for
a mood of silence, the restful life of water flowing by a quiet quay.
Not a touch was added in Melville’s pictures that was not sensitively inspired, and his art not only captures changing colour, but, as in the picture The Cock Fight, seizes the gestures of the excited Arabs, the excitement of their strained and eager faces bending to watch the fight ; the whole scene is explained, though the birds are but scarcely suggested. Melville had the supreme painter’s gift of conveying not atmosphere only of air and sunlight, but also the psychic atmosphere, shall we say,
of a scene—its effect upon his own mind, the glamour, the romance, for instance, of the East as affecting a Western stranger. It is difficult to know how to explain in words this quality which is so integral a part of his art. Beyond his imita
tion of the scene, he succeeded in conveying a sense of its reality as happening. We hear the plaudits at the bull-fights, and in his Eastern scenes the sadness, the courage of the Arabs is as apparent as their picturesqueness. He went deeper with his art than those who say that painting praises only the appearance of things. His instincts made him aware that every phase in the appearance of things, every small change on the outward surface of life,
“ BEHIND THE SCENES AFTER A BULL-FIGHT ”
BY ARTHUR MELVILLE
Progressing from the stained drawing, watercolour gradually raised itself to be an art no longer existing upon a scaffolding of pencil work, but became a medium containing within its boundaries an open field for any experiment. In Melville’s hands it had the amenableness to alteration, to changed desire, which the sculptor finds in wax and clay, and the musician in his own art, the art in which is found the explanation and the key to the meaning of every other art, for within the range of musical notes there can be expressed alteration of feeling and every change of mood. Thought may be watched changing itself upon the surface of sound as the interchanging reflec
tions of waving trees and moving clouds in water. Such power Melville had in his art, which was always lyrical, musical, naturally praising the movement of life. Its delight was in sunshine ; the shadows are sorrowful that fall on the sunny walls, and they were painted wistfully, with a sense that they hid mysteries, and that in darkened doorways life steps aside for tragedy. He liked the clamour of the streets, the shouting at bull-fights ; and for
a mood of silence, the restful life of water flowing by a quiet quay.
Not a touch was added in Melville’s pictures that was not sensitively inspired, and his art not only captures changing colour, but, as in the picture The Cock Fight, seizes the gestures of the excited Arabs, the excitement of their strained and eager faces bending to watch the fight ; the whole scene is explained, though the birds are but scarcely suggested. Melville had the supreme painter’s gift of conveying not atmosphere only of air and sunlight, but also the psychic atmosphere, shall we say,
of a scene—its effect upon his own mind, the glamour, the romance, for instance, of the East as affecting a Western stranger. It is difficult to know how to explain in words this quality which is so integral a part of his art. Beyond his imita
tion of the scene, he succeeded in conveying a sense of its reality as happening. We hear the plaudits at the bull-fights, and in his Eastern scenes the sadness, the courage of the Arabs is as apparent as their picturesqueness. He went deeper with his art than those who say that painting praises only the appearance of things. His instincts made him aware that every phase in the appearance of things, every small change on the outward surface of life,
“ BEHIND THE SCENES AFTER A BULL-FIGHT ”
BY ARTHUR MELVILLE