The Silent Isle

Excerpt

There are two ways of recording and communicating to others an impression, say, of a building or a place. One way is to sit down at a definite point, and make an elaborate picture. It is thus perhaps that one grasps the artistic significance and unity of the object best; one sees it in a chosen light of noon or eve; one feels its dominant emotion, its harmony of proportion and outline. Or else one may wander about and take sketches of it from a dozen different points of view, record little delicacies of detail, tiny whims and irregularities; and thus one learns more of the variety and humours of the place, its gestures and irritabilities, its failures of purpose or design. The question is whether you like a thing idealised or realised. As to the different methods of interpretation, they can hardly be compared or subordinated. An artist does not choose his method, because his method is himself.