Style is the invariable mark of any master; and for the student who does not aspire so high as to be numbered amongst giants, it is still the one quality in which he may improve himself at will. Passion, Wisdom, the creative force, the Power of Mystery or color are allotted in the hour of birth, and can be neither learned nor simulated. But the just and dexterous use of what qualities we have, the proportion of one part to another and to the whole, the elision of the useless, the accentuation of the important, and the preservation of a uniform character from end-to-end these which-taken together constitute technical perfection, are to some degree within the reach of industry and intellectual courage ,What to put in and what to leave out; Whether some particular facts be organically necessary or purely ornamental, whether if it be purely ornamental, it may not weaken or observe the general design ,and finally whether if we decide to use it, we should do so grossly and notably or in some conventional disguise are questions of plastic style continually re-arising .And the sphinx that patrols the highway of executive art has no more unanswerable riddle to propound.
We talk of bad and good whilst occasionally overlooking the ugly. Everything ,indeed ,is good which is conceived with honesty and executed with communicative ardor .but though on neither side is dogmatism fitting, and though in every case the artist must decide for himself, and decide afresh and yet afresh for each succeeding work and new creation, yet one thing may be generally said, that we are of the last quarter of the twenty first century, breathing as we do the intellectual atmosphere of outrage , are more apt to err upon the side of realism that to sin in quest of the ideal. Upon that theory it may be well to watch and correct our own decision, always holding back the hand from the least appearance of irrelevant dexterity and resolutely. Fixed to begin no work that is not philosophical, Passionate, Dignified, Happily mirthful or at the last and least, romantic in design.
So as to be continued…………