Art exists in the imagination--imagination
drew lines from star to star, and repeated its life on earth in the sky.
So it is true that the first picture--whether drawn by the imagination
alone in the constellations, on the walls of the cave with ochre and
similar materials, or engraved with keen splinters of flint on the
mammoth's tusk--the first picture was of the chase. Animals are earliest,
the human form next, flowers and designs and stories in drawings next,
and landscape last of all. Landscape is peculiarly the art of the
moderns--it is the art of _our_ civilisation; no other civilisation seems
to have cared for it. Towers and castles are indeed seen on the
bas-reliefs of Assyria, and waving lines indicate rivers, but these are
merely subsidiary, and to give place and locality to the victories the
king is achieving. The battle is the interest, the landscape merely the
stage. Till the latter days of European life the artist took no notice of
landscape.
The painting of hills and rocks and rivers, woods and fields, is of
recent date, and even in these scenes the artist finds it necessary to
place some animals or birds. Even now he cannot ignore the strong love of
human beings for these creatures; if they are omitted the picture loses
its interest to the majority of eyes. Every one knows how wonderfully
popular the works of Landseer have been, and he was an animal painter,
and his subjects chiefly suggested by sport. The same spirit that
inspired the Cave-dweller to engrave the mammoth on the slab of ivory
still lives in the hearts of men.
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