Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/282

LANDSCAPE PAINTING carried, and we do not stop to consider the phraseology. But, as I have before intimated, each painter must look at all times out of his own eyes, and not through the eyes of his brother. In fact, in the modern scheme of things, the artist is the last rank individualist to survive. For him the merger and the combination spell ruin. Again we insist, and insist yet once again, that the very essence and marrow of art is personality. Any surrender of personality, therefore, can lead only to one goal—the abyss of artistic worthlessness.

Under these circumstances it becomes interesting to inquire just how much the young painter may accept with safety from his master; in what manner he may best acquire the thorough and intimate knowledge of technique which is so essential to his success, without [220]