An Angler at Large/Chapter 6
It is now a little less than a year since I followed the making of a water-colour sketch from its first rough pencil lines to its signature. The young man who made it, my friendship for whom, up to that moment, had never been clouded by any reverence whatever, assumed wholly new proportions in my sight. The air with which he produced his materials, his Whatman board, his brushes, his water-pot, his sponge and his worn palette, glorified by the deposits from masterly mixtures, his confidence as he began taking measurements of the Ocean (by which we sat) along his marvellously sharpened pencil, the ease with which he roughed in his outlines, the vigour of his attack upon the sky, his deft handling of rocks and breakers, these things gave me food for thought, "Is it, then," I reflected, "that this adolescent has been enjoying up to now a consideration at my hands totally inadequate to his real parts? Is it possible that one whom I have known from the cradle should be master of such mysteries?" And lo! he had ended, and the vasty deep was mine to hang in the drawing-room. I was compelled to own that the impossible had happened. The boy had painted a picture, a picture, by Neptune! which breathed salt air like an onshore gale.
After my first stunned feeling had passed away, other reflections came to me. "Since," I thought, "a friend of mine can learn in his spare time to produce results so remarkable, it is clear that the trick is easier of acquirement than I supposed. After all, many young girls with no more brains than their sisters do produce most tolerable sketches, and it is not to be supposed that they devote more than a small proportion of their leisure to gaining their facility. Golf and lawn tennis, croquet and district visiting, these and other amusements claim them visibly for many of their waking hours, yet they produce pictures of which no one can mistake the meaning. Here, one shall say with certainty, is the representation of a lake with undoubted swans; this can only figure a distant mountain, and if these streaks and gloom be not like a sunset behind a churchyard, they are like nothing. Go to!" I said. "Let us emulate these damsels."
I conceived a contempt for water-colour sketching. I thought that I, even I, might be capable of it.
A year has passed, or almost a year. At length I find myself where perfect isolation may be secured for several hours at a time. This is a condition precedent to my assault upon the realm of pictorial art, for an observer of my deeds would utterly blight my endeavours. I must take my first steps quite alone.
A man—one of the few disagreeable men I know—once told me that when he sees anyone painting in the open air his genius prompts him to go behind the artist, regard the picture for a while, and then, with a heavy sigh, turn away. Suppose someone should come and do this behind me.
I must find a very secret spot.
The river will furnish me with what I want.
Disguised as an angler, rod in hand, creel on hip, waders well displayed, I will walk boldly into the meadows. No one hereabouts will give me a second thought. But if they should know what my creel contains, I feel that they would come trooping to gape and snigger at my back.
Until I can manage my materials (purchased by stealth last week—I too have my Whatman board, my brushes, my paint-box, my sponge, my palette) I will paint nothing but willows and rushes and water and the reflections in water, and the gleams of weed beneath it. A certain dexterity having been acquired among these simple subjects, I will with less trepidation attempt to limn the thatch and brick of the populous village.
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I have now sketched in water-colours.
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I have been looking through the catalogue of artists' materials, very generously included free of charge with my recent purchases, and particularly at the list of colours. My unsuccess is now explained. The tubes that have been sold to me are dull, commonplace things. Cobalt Blue, Yellow Ochre, Vandyke Brown, Dragon's Blood, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna. These names carry me back nearly half a century to the nursery where, with a shilling box of paints, I tinted the designs of the then fashionable Kate Greenaway. How should I have rendered sedgy banks and feathery willows and elusive tremulous reflections with such trite matter? What I need is a supply of Oxide of Chromium and Italian Pink, Mars Yellow and Scarlet Madder Alizarin, Hooker's Green No. 2, and Purple Lake and Primrose Aureolin. The very names are an inspiration. What effects I might achieve with these! How truly I could paint with Constant White! How imperishably with Permanent Mauve! How strenuously with Intense Blue! My sketch gives me no pleasure when I regard it. Let me rather gloat in anticipation over these marvels of the colourman. Let me fill up order forms.