The City of Domes [44]
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. He is shooting, and he's going to get what he is after."
Before each of the four pairs of murals, the painter indicated to us the happy way in which, by the deft use of the coloring, each blended into the other, and she called my attention to the clearness of the symbolism. So often, she remarked, the mural decorators used compositions that seemed like efforts to hide secrets, a childish way of working, sure to defeat itself. Brangwyn had no secrets. He was sincere and direct. He was happy over this work. He said that he had enjoyed doing it more than anything else he had ever done before. If these canvases had been found in the heart of Africa they would have been identified as coming from Brangwyn. No one else used color just as he did, with his kind of courage. His colors were arbitrary, too. He didn't follow nature and yet he always conveyed the spirit of natural things. Throughout his work he showed that he was a close and subtle observer. The sweep of rain through the air, the movement of figures and of draperies in the wind, the expression of human effort, how wonderfully he managed to suggest them all and to make them pictorial. But he wasn't interested in merely an activity. He loved repose. In nearly all of these eight canvases, so brimming with life, there were figures looking on serenely, calmly, conveying the impression of being absolutely at rest.
In every particular, according to the searching observer, Brangwyn was successful, with the exception of one, his treatment of birds. He evidently didn't know birds. If he had known them he would have loved them, and if he had loved them he would have entered into their spirit and he would have flown with them and he would have made them fly in his painting. Now they merely flopped. They were just about as much alive as the clay figures used in a shooting match. Even his highly decorative flamingoes weren't right. They did not stand firmly on the ground. They weren't alive. And the necks of the two flamingoes never could have met in the curves that Brangwyn gave them. This very failure, amusing as it was and hardly detracting from the effect of his work as a whole, was another proof that he was an instinctive painter, who relied for his guidance on feeling. But it was plain enough that he had chosen those flamingoes for their color, and a right choice it was.
We could not decide which of the eight murals we liked best. Perhaps, after all, they could not be considered apart. Though each was in itself a unity, the eight completely expressed
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. He is shooting, and he's going to get what he is after."
Before each of the four pairs of murals, the painter indicated to us the happy way in which, by the deft use of the coloring, each blended into the other, and she called my attention to the clearness of the symbolism. So often, she remarked, the mural decorators used compositions that seemed like efforts to hide secrets, a childish way of working, sure to defeat itself. Brangwyn had no secrets. He was sincere and direct. He was happy over this work. He said that he had enjoyed doing it more than anything else he had ever done before. If these canvases had been found in the heart of Africa they would have been identified as coming from Brangwyn. No one else used color just as he did, with his kind of courage. His colors were arbitrary, too. He didn't follow nature and yet he always conveyed the spirit of natural things. Throughout his work he showed that he was a close and subtle observer. The sweep of rain through the air, the movement of figures and of draperies in the wind, the expression of human effort, how wonderfully he managed to suggest them all and to make them pictorial. But he wasn't interested in merely an activity. He loved repose. In nearly all of these eight canvases, so brimming with life, there were figures looking on serenely, calmly, conveying the impression of being absolutely at rest.
In every particular, according to the searching observer, Brangwyn was successful, with the exception of one, his treatment of birds. He evidently didn't know birds. If he had known them he would have loved them, and if he had loved them he would have entered into their spirit and he would have flown with them and he would have made them fly in his painting. Now they merely flopped. They were just about as much alive as the clay figures used in a shooting match. Even his highly decorative flamingoes weren't right. They did not stand firmly on the ground. They weren't alive. And the necks of the two flamingoes never could have met in the curves that Brangwyn gave them. This very failure, amusing as it was and hardly detracting from the effect of his work as a whole, was another proof that he was an instinctive painter, who relied for his guidance on feeling. But it was plain enough that he had chosen those flamingoes for their color, and a right choice it was.
We could not decide which of the eight murals we liked best. Perhaps, after all, they could not be considered apart. Though each was in itself a unity, the eight completely expressed