第38章

The painter at once supported the opinion."In these colonnades Guerin has done some of his finest coloring.The blue and the red are in absolute harmony with Brangwyn's rich tones.They must have been applied to fit the canvases.But the marvel is that the murals should show up so magnificently.Brangwyn painted them in London and he must have had second sight to divine just the right scheme.Do you realize," she went on enthusiastically, fairly losing herself in her enjoyment, "the immense difficulties he had to contend with? In the first place, see how huge those canvases are.Their size created all kinds of problems.To view them right, to get a line on the detail, so to speak, would have meant, for the average painter, walking long distances.But, in his studio, Brangwyn could not have taken anything like accurate measurements.""Perhaps he painted them out of doors," the architect suggested.

"I believe the explanation is that he thought them all out and he saw them in their places.From Mr.Mullgardt he had probably received a complete account, with drawings, of just what the court was going to be like.Then it lived before him and he made the murals live.His work shows that he begins in the right place, unlike so many people who paint from outside.He feels the qualities of the people he is going to paint.

He really loves them.He loves their surroundings.He must be very elemental in his nature.They say he is a great, uncouth sort of a fellow.When he first went to London he was very contemptuous of the work done by the academicians.It must have seemed to him, a good deal of it, effeminate and trifling.Can't you see how those murals show that he is a man clear through? They are masculine in every detail.""And yet they have a good deal of delicacy, too, haven't they?" said the architect."See how atmospheric those backgrounds are.They actually suggest nature.""Because they are unconventional and because they are true.And yet they are purely decorative.You wouldn't like to think of them as standing apart in a great frame.When you go close you will see that the colors are laid on flat.And they don't shine.For this reason they have great carrying power.Observe The Bowmen down there in the distance.Even from this remote end of the court it expresses itself as lovely in color and composition.Let us walk down and see how it grows on us as we approach."Slowly we moved along the colonnade, the figures seeming to grow more and more lifelike as the painter indicated their technical merits."They are of the earth, those men, aren't they? They are the antithesis of the highly civilized types used by so many of the painters today.They suggest red blood and strength of limb and joy in the natural things of life, eating, drinking, the open air, and simple comradeship.They make us see the wonder of outdoor living, the kind of living that most of us have missed.What a pleasure it is to find a worker in any kind of work trying to do a thing and actually doing it and doing it with splendid abandon.Now if Brangwyn hadn't entered into the feelings of those bowmen in the foreground, he couldn't have made the figure alive.And the life, remember, isn't merely brought out by the happy use of the flesh tints or by the play of the muscles.It's in the animating spirit.

As Brangwyn painted those fellows, he felt like a bowman.So he succeeded in putting into his canvas the strength that each bowman put into his bow.He isn't pretending to shoot, that sturdy fellow in front.