Tradition and Common Sense

PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER (circa 1530-1569)
(Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nezv York)
THE HARVESTERS
TRADITION in painting as usually understood means all the conventions, technical devices, and means of expres
sion handed on to the painter from the past. “Handed on” may be misleading, for it suggests the easy acceptance of a gift. “Tradition,” says Mr. T. S. Eliot (speaking of litera
ture), “cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour.” But on reflection it will be seen that tradition is not confined to technique. Technique cannot be separated from meaning, and, broadly speaking, tradition is the expression of a local attitude to life. If this local tradi
tion remains too confined in place, it is likely to suffer from provinciality. If it spreads too quickly, it becomes a dis
sipated fashion without roots or permanent growth and is provincial in time.
It may be true of literature to say that every writer and reader begins with a tradition, because we are on the whole
By R. W. ALSTON
a literate nation; but this is less true of painting. Yet in an old civilization one would hardly find many who were

visually illiterate, for we are bom into an environment of tradition.

This environment is not like a stream in which progress is inevitable. Belief in inevitable progress, still very preva
lent, is a pernicious idea, because it implies that no effort is necessary. After all, as a great statesman said, “delay is as necessary as progress.”

Mr. Eliot goes on to speak of the necessity for the historical sense, which involves “a perception not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence”. I think literary men have thought out these problems better than painters;

but now let us turn to a painter who does approach the problem, though not so directly.

Northcote was a pupil of Reynolds. He was once asked