The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1906-05-25

tional advantages Of the few who can
seek unusually picturesque localities.
Most city boys and girls spend the
summer at home, with only parks OF
the suburbs available for picturesque
material, or short run in the ad-
jacent country, and thus it is matter
of nice selection and appreciation
with which we are to deal. 1t may be
a consolation to them that it is pcs
sible to do more with a back yard
with much appreciation than with the
Rockies or grand canyons without it.
So the locality need not concern the
pupil so much as his artistic sensi-
bilities.
Variety of Treatment.
Wherever the motif is found, be it
in park, country or back yard, by
river or sea, let it stand as study
not to be exhausted by one presenta-
ton, but as source of inspiration
in the inexhaustibility OF artistic in
depreciation. The same clump of trees
in the yelled morning is not the same
under the deep shadows of noon, and
the quiet of evening is not the same
as the mysterious mass of shadow at
night. A gray day does not present
the same color masses as sunny
day, and so on through all the changes
that nature puts on to interest with
her untiring variety.
Not only is there variety in the
change of nature, but there is the
variety of the point of view from
which she is viewed. This is the
great scale of proportion that is to be
tried, and the drawing of the same
clump of trees and pond or river or
fence with the horizon high or low,
the picture upright, square or long
and narrow, with all the degrees be-
tween. The cutting off of the top
line that the foreground may be aug
mented, the experimenting with the
placement of the principal group to
this or that side, or the center, in fact,
every consideration of the chosen
motif should be tried, not only for
the variety, but as the best way to
study proportions, to exercise fer
tility of invention and to guard
against that tiresome fault-conven-
tionality.
Beauty in Haystacks.
One of the great landscape painters
of France painted two haystacks
under such different aspects. His ex-
hibition was of great interest from
the nature students point Of view and
from the artists. There was score
or more of canvases from January
to December, from dawn to night. The
haystacks were painted through mist
and rain, under frost and sun, some
an hour apart in the moment of their
presentation and others months. 1t
seemed as though the artist had never
wearied of showing how many phases
of beauty his subject could take on,
and his exhibition showed that he did
not weary the onlooker, for one went
over this calendar done in haystacks
with untiring delight in the changes
and variety.
If we present subject as every
one else has presented it there is lit
tie value in our presentation. The
story has been told before and we are
repeating it. But if we take, no mat
ter how commonplace the theme, a
subject that has been told again and
again, and give it in new light and
a new dress we at once claim the at
tention. This is the artists claim to
recognition, that he shows us our own
world through new eyes.
Treat Subject Thoroughly.
1t is meant that the student take
whatever material he may have and
pursue it to that end that he finds
interest in the study of proportion,
placement, balance and color, which
must come il that artistic tempera-
ment is eXistant.
Let the proportion of each mass of
trees, ground, pond or whatever else
composes the picture be weighed and