
* A Project Gutenberg Canada Ebook *

This ebook is made available at no cost and with very few
restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make
a change in the ebook (other than alteration for different
display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of
the ebook. If either of these conditions applies, please
check gutenberg.ca/links/licence.html before proceeding.

This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be
under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada,
check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER
COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD
OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE.

Title: Painting as a Pastime
Author: Churchill, Winston S. [Spencer] (1874-1965)
Date of first publication: 1948
Date of first publication (essay, no illustrations): 1932
   [Amid These Storms (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons)] 
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Cornerstone Library, 1965
   [reprint of 1950 McGraw-Hill edition]
Date first posted: 8 November 2016
Date last updated: 8 November 2016
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1373

This ebook was produced by Al Haines


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






[Illustration: Cover art]




[Frontispiece: Winston S. Churchill]




  The Right Honourable

  SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

  K.G., O.M., C.H., M.P.


  PAINTING
  AS A
  PASTIME


  CORNERSTONE LIBRARY
  NEW YORK




_The hardcover edition of this book was published in the United States
in 1950 by The McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.  This new Cornerstone
Library edition is a complete and unabridged reprint of that original
hardcover publication, and is published by arrangement with Odhams
Press Ltd., of London, England._


Reprinted 1965


_The essay "Painting as a Pastime" is reprinted from Sir Winston
Churchill's book_ Amid These Storms _(copyright, 1932) by permission of
the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons, N. Y._



  CORNERSTONE LIBRARY PUBLICATIONS
  Are Distributed By
  Affiliated Publishers
  A Division of Pocket Books, Inc.
  Rockefeller Center
  630 Fifth Avenue, New York 20, N.Y.

  Manufactured in the United States of America
  under the supervision of
  Rolls Offset Printing Co., Inc., N.Y.




Contents

The Author at his Easel . . . _Frontispiece_

PAINTING AS A PASTIME

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. A Vase of Flowers

2. The Loup River, Quebec

3. Lakeside Scene, Lake Como

4. The Tapestries at Blenheim Palace

5. The Blue Room, Trent Park

6. Village near Lugano

7. Olive Grove near Monte Carlo

8. Church by Lake Como

9. The Goldfish Pool at Chartwell

10. The Weald of Kent under Snow

11. Orchids

12. The Mill, Saint-Georges-Motel

13. Near Antibes

14. The Mediterranean near Genoa

15. St. Jean, Cap Ferrat

16. Flowers

17. By Lake Lugano

18. Chartwell under Snow




Painting as a Pastime

Many remedies are suggested for the avoidance of worry and mental
overstrain by persons who, over prolonged periods, have to bear
exceptional responsibilities and discharge duties upon a very large
scale.  Some advise exercise, and others, repose.  Some counsel travel,
and others, retreat.  Some praise solitude, and others, gaiety.  No
doubt all these may play their part according to the individual
temperament.  But the element which is constant and common in all of
them is Change.

Change is the master key.  A man can wear out a particular part of his
mind by continually using it and tiring it, just in the same way as he
can wear out the elbows of his coat.  There is, however, this
difference between the living cells of the brain and inanimate
articles: one cannot mend the frayed elbows of a coat by rubbing the
sleeves or shoulders; but the tired parts of the mind can be rested and
strengthened, not merely by rest, but by using other parts.  It is not
enough merely to switch off the lights which play upon the main and
ordinary field of interest; a new field of interest must be
illuminated.  It is no use saying to the tired 'mental muscles'--if one
may coin such an expression--I will give you a good rest,' 'I will go
for a long walk,' or 'I will lie down and think of nothing.'  The mind
keeps busy just the same.  If it has been weighing and measuring, it
goes on weighing and measuring.  If it has been worrying, it goes on
worrying.  It is only when new cells are called into activity, when new
stars become the lords of the ascendant, that relief, repose,
refreshment are afforded.

A gifted American psychologist has said, 'Worry is a spasm of the
emotion; the mind catches hold of something and will not let it go.'
It is useless to argue with the mind in this condition.  The stronger
the will, the more futile the task.  One can only gently insinuate
something else into its convulsive grasp.  And if this something else
is rightly chosen, if it is really attended by the illumination of
another field of interest, gradually, and often quite swiftly, the old
undue grip relaxes and the process of recuperation and repair begins.

The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is therefore a
policy of first importance to a public man.  But this is not a business
that can be undertaken in a day or swiftly improvised by a mere command
of the will.  The growth of alternative mental interests is a long
process.  The seeds must be carefully chosen; they must fall on good
ground; they must be sedulously tended, if the vivifying fruits are to
be at hand when needed.

To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or
three hobbies, and they must all be real.  It is no use starting late
in life to say: 'I will take an interest in this or that.'  Such an
attempt only aggravates the strain of mental effort.  A man may acquire
great knowledge of topics unconnected with his daily work, and yet
hardly get any benefit or relief.  It is no use doing what you like;
you have got to like what you do.  Broadly speaking, human beings may
be divided into three classes: those who are toiled to death, those who
are worried to death, and those who are bored to death.  It is no use
offering the manual labourer, tired out with a hard week's sweat and
effort, the chance of playing a game of football or baseball on
Saturday afternoon.  It is no use inviting the politician or the
professional or business man, who has been working or worrying about
serious things for six days, to work or worry about trifling things at
the week-end.

As for the unfortunate people who can command everything they want, who
can gratify every caprice and lay their hands on almost every object of
desire--for them a new pleasure, a new excitement is only an additional
satiation.  In vain they rush frantically round from place to place,
trying to escape from avenging boredom by mere clatter and motion.  For
them discipline in one form or another is the most hopeful path.

It may also be said that rational, industrious, useful human beings are
divided into two classes: first, those whose work is work and whose
pleasure is pleasure; and secondly, those whose work and pleasure are
one.  Of these the former are the majority.  They have their
compensations.  The long hours in the office or the factory bring with
them, as their reward, not only the means of sustenance, but a keen
appetite for pleasure even in its simplest and most modest forms.  But
Fortune's favoured children belong to the second class.  Their life is
a natural harmony.  For them the working hours are never long enough.
Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays when they come are grudged
as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vocation.  Yet to both
classes the need of an alternative outlook, of a change of atmosphere,
of a diversion of effort, is essential.  Indeed, it may well be that
those whose work is their pleasure are those who most need the means of
banishing it at intervals from their minds.

The most common form of diversion is reading.  In that vast and varied
field millions find their mental comfort.  Nothing makes a man more
reverent than a library.  'A few books,' which was Lord Morley's
definition of anything under five thousand, may give a sense of comfort
and even of complacency.  But a day in a library, even of modest
dimensions, quickly dispels these illusory sensations.  As you browse
about, taking down book after book from the shelves and contemplating
the vast, infinitely varied store of knowledge and wisdom which the
human race has accumulated and preserved, pride, even in its most
innocent forms, is chased from the heart by feelings of awe not
untinged with sadness.  As one surveys the mighty array of sages,
saints, historians, scientists, poets and philosophers whose treasures
one will never be able to admire--still less enjoy--the brief tenure of
our existence here dominates mind and spirit.

Think of all the wonderful tales that have been told, and well told,
which you will never know.  Think of all the searching inquiries into
matters of great consequence which you will never pursue.  Think of all
the delighting or disturbing ideas that you will never share.  Think of
the mighty labours which have been accomplished for your service, but
of which you will never reap the harvest.  But from this melancholy
there also comes a calm.  The bitter sweets of a pious despair melt
into an agreeable sense of compulsory resignation from which we turn
with renewed zest to the lighter vanities of life.

'What shall I do with all my books?' was the question; and the answer,
'Read them,' sobered the questioner.  But if you cannot read them, at
any rate handle them and, as it were, fondle them.  Peer into them.
Let them fall open where they will.  Read on from the first sentence
that arrests the eye.  Then turn to another.  Make a voyage of
discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas.  Set them back on their
shelves with your own hands.  Arrange them on your own plan, so that if
you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are.  If
they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your
acquaintances.  If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not
deny them at least a nod of recognition.

It is a mistake to read too many good books when quite young.  A man
once told me that he had read all the books that mattered.
Cross-questioned, he appeared to have read a great many, but they
seemed to have made only a slight impression.  How many had he
understood?  How many had entered into his mental composition?  How
many had been hammered on the anvils of his mind, and afterwards ranged
in an armoury of bright weapons ready to hand?

It is a great pity to read a book too soon in life.  The first
impression is the one that counts; and if it is a slight one, it may be
all that can be hoped for.  A later and second perusal may recoil from
a surface already hardened by premature contact.  Young people should
be careful in their reading, as old people in eating their food.  They
should not eat too much.  They should chew it well.

Since change is an essential element in diversion of all kinds, it is
naturally more restful and refreshing to read in a different language
from that in which one's ordinary daily work is done.  To have a second
language at your disposal, even if you only know it enough to read it
with pleasure, is a sensible advantage.  Our educationists are too
often anxious to teach children so many different languages that they
never get far enough in any one to derive any use or enjoyment from
their study.  The boy learns enough Latin to detest it; enough Greek to
pass an examination; enough French to get from Calais to Paris; enough
German to exhibit a diploma; enough Spanish or Italian to tell which is
which; but not enough of any to secure the enormous boon of access to a
second literature.  Choose well, choose wisely, and choose one.
Concentrate upon that one.  Do not be content until you find yourself
reading in it with real enjoyment.  The process of reading for pleasure
in another language rests the mental muscles; it enlivens the mind by a
different sequence and emphasis of ideas.  The mere form of speech
excites the activity of separate brain-cells, relieving in the most
effective manner the fatigue of those in hackneyed use.  One may
imagine that a man who blew the trumpet for his living would be glad to
play the violin for his amusement.  So it is with reading in another
language than your own.

But reading and book-love in all their forms suffer from one serious
defect: they are too nearly akin to the ordinary daily round of the
brain-worker to give that element of change and contrast essential to
real relief.  To restore psychic equilibrium we should call into use
those parts of the mind which direct both eye and hand.  Many men have
found great advantage in practising a handicraft for pleasure.
Joinery, chemistry, book-binding, even brick-laying--if one were
interested in them and skilful at them--would give a real relief to the
over-tired brain.  But, best of all and easiest to procure are
sketching and painting in all their forms.  I consider myself very
lucky that late in life I have been able to develop this new taste and
pastime.  Painting came to my rescue in a most trying time, and I shall
venture in the pages that follow to express the gratitude I feel.

Painting is a companion with whom one may hope to walk a great part of
life's journey,

  '_Age cannot wither her nor custom stale
  Her infinite variety._'

One by one the more vigorous sports and exacting games fall away.
Exceptional exertions are purchased only by a more pronounced and more
prolonged fatigue.  Muscles may relax, and feet and hands slow down;
the nerve of youth and manhood may become less trusty.  But painting is
a friend who makes no undue demands, excites to no exhausting pursuits,
keeps faithful pace even with feeble steps, and holds her canvas as a
screen between us and the envious eyes of Time or the surly advance of
Decrepitude.

Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely.  Light and
colour, peace and hope, will keep them company to the end, or almost to
the end, of the day.

To have reached the age of forty without ever handling a brush or
fiddling with a pencil, to have regarded with mature eye the painting
of pictures of any kind as a mystery, to have stood agape before the
chalk of the pavement artist, and then suddenly to find oneself plunged
in the middle of a new and intense form of interest and action with
paints and palettes and canvases, and not to be discouraged by results,
is an astonishing and enriching experience.  I hope it may be shared by
others.  I should be glad if these lines induced others to try the
experiment which I have tried, and if some at least were to find
themselves dowered with an absorbing new amusement delightful to
themselves, and at any rate not violently harmful to man or beast.

I hope this is modest enough: because there is no subject on which I
feel more humble or yet at the same time more natural.  I do not
presume to explain how to paint, but only how to get enjoyment.  Do not
turn the superior eye of critical passivity upon these efforts.  Buy a
paint-box and have a try.  If you need something to occupy your
leisure, to divert your mind from the daily round, to illuminate your
holidays, do not be too ready to believe that you cannot find what you
want here.  Even at the advanced age of forty!  It would be a sad pity
to shuffle or scramble along through one's playtime with golf and
bridge, pottering, loitering, shifting from one heel to the other,
wondering what on earth to do--as perhaps is the fate of some unhappy
beings--when all the while, if you only knew, there is close at hand a
wonderful new world of thought and craft, a sunlit garden gleaming with
light and colour of which you have the key in your waistcoat-pocket.
Inexpensive independence, a mobile and perennial pleasure apparatus,
new mental food and exercise, the old harmonies and symmetries in an
entirely different language, an added interest to every common scene,
an occupation for every idle hour, an unceasing voyage of entrancing
discovery--these are high prizes.  Make quite sure they are not yours.
After all, if you try, and fail, there is not much harm done.  The
nursery will grab what the studio has rejected.  And then you can
always go out and kill some animal, humiliate some rival on the links,
or despoil some friend across the green table.  You will not be worse
off in any way.  In fact you will be better off.  You will know 'beyond
a peradventure,' to quote a phrase disagreeably reminiscent, that that
is really what you were meant to do in your hours of relaxation.

But if, on the contrary, you are inclined--late in life though it
be--to reconnoitre a foreign sphere of limitless extent, then be
persuaded that the first quality that is needed is Audacity.  There
really is no time for the deliberate approach.  Two years of
drawing-lessons, three years of copying woodcuts, five years of plaster
casts--these are for the young.  They have enough to bear.  And this
thorough grounding is for those who, hearing the call in the morning of
their days, are able to make painting their paramount lifelong
vocation.  The truth and beauty of line and form which by the slightest
touch or twist of the brush a real artist imparts to every feature of
his design must be founded on long, hard, persevering apprenticeship
and a practice so habitual that it has become instinctive.  We must not
be too ambitious.  We cannot aspire to masterpieces.  We may content
ourselves with a joy ride in a paint-box.  And for this Audacity is the
only ticket.



I shall now relate my personal experience.  When I left the Admiralty
at the end of May, 1915, I still remained a member of the Cabinet and
of the War Council.  In this position I knew everything and could do
nothing.  The change from the intense executive activities of each
day's work at the Admiralty to the narrowly measured duties of a
counsellor left me gasping.  Like a sea-beast fished up from the
depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted, my veins threatened to burst
from the fall in pressure.  I had great anxiety and no means of
relieving it; I had vehement convictions and small power to give effect
to them.  I had to watch the unhappy casting-away of great
opportunities, and the feeble execution of plans which I had launched
and in which I heartily believed.  I had long hours of utterly unwonted
leisure in which to contemplate the frightful unfolding of the War.  At
a moment when every fibre of my being was inflamed to action, I was
forced to remain a spectator of the tragedy, placed cruelly in a front
seat.  And then it was that the Muse of Painting came to my rescue--out
of charity and out of chivalry, because after all she had nothing to do
with me--and said, 'Are these toys any good to you?  They amuse some
people.'

Some experiments one Sunday in the country with the children's
paint-box led me to procure the next morning a complete outfit for
painting in oils.

Having bought the colours, an easel, and a canvas, the next step was to
begin.  But what a step to take!  The palette gleamed with beads of
colour; fair and white rose the canvas; the empty brush hung poised,
heavy with destiny, irresolute in the air.  My hand seemed arrested by
a silent veto.  But after all the sky on this occasion was
unquestionably blue, and a pale blue at that.  There could be no doubt
that blue paint mixed with white should be put on the top part of the
canvas.  One really does not need to have had an artist's training to
see that.  It is a starting-point open to all.  So very gingerly I
mixed a little blue paint on the palette with a very small brush, and
then with infinite precaution made a mark about as big as a bean upon
the affronted snow-white shield.  It was a challenge, a deliberate
challenge; but so subdued, so halting, indeed so cataleptic, that it
deserved no response.  At that moment the loud approaching sound of a
motor-car was heard in the drive.  From this chariot there stepped
swiftly and lightly none other than the gifted wife of Sir John Lavery.
'Painting!  But what are you hesitating about?  Let me have a
brush--the big one.'  Splash into the turpentine, wallop into the blue
and the white, frantic flourish on the palette--clean no longer--and
then several large, fierce strokes and slashes of blue on the
absolutely cowering canvas.  Anyone could see that it could not hit
back.  No evil fate avenged the jaunty violence.  The canvas grinned in
helplessness before me.  The spell was broken.  The sickly inhibitions
rolled away.  I seized the largest brush and fell upon my victim with
Berserk fury.  I have never felt any awe of a canvas since.

Everyone knows the feelings with which one stands shivering on a
spring-board, the shock when a friendly foe steals up behind and hurls
you into the flood, and the ardent glow which thrills you as you emerge
breathless from the plunge.

This beginning with Audacity, or being thrown into the middle of it, is
already a very great part of the art of painting.  But there is more in
it than that.

  '_La peinture a l'huile
    Est bien difficile,
  Mais c'est beaucoup plus beau
    Que la peinture a l'eau._'

I write no word in disparagement of water-colours.  But there really is
nothing like oils.  You have a medium at your disposal which offers
real power, if you only can find out how to use it.  Moreover, it is
easier to get a certain distance along the road by its means than by
water-colour.  First of all, you can correct mistakes much more easily.
One sweep of the palette-knife 'lifts' the blood and tears of a morning
from the canvas and enables a fresh start to be made; indeed the canvas
is all the better for past impressions.  Secondly, you can approach
your problem from any direction.  You need not build downwards
awkwardly from white paper to your darkest dark.  You may strike where
you please, beginning if you will with a moderate central arrangement
of middle tones, and then hurling in the extremes when the
psychological moment comes.  Lastly, the pigment itself is such nice
stuff to handle (if it does not retaliate).  You can build it on layer
after layer if you like.  You can keep on experimenting.  You can
change your plan to meet the exigencies of time or weather.  And always
remember you can scrape it all away.

Just to paint is great fun.  The colours are lovely to look at and
delicious to squeeze out.  Matching them, however crudely, with what
you see is fascinating and absolutely absorbing.  Try it if you have
not done so--before you die.  As one slowly begins to escape from the
difficulties of choosing the right colours and laying them on in the
right places and in the right way, wider considerations come into view.
One begins to see, for instance, that painting a picture is like
fighting a battle; and trying to paint a picture is, I suppose, like
trying to fight a battle.  It is, if anything, more exciting than
fighting it successfully.  But the principle is the same.  It is the
same kind of problem as unfolding a long, sustained, interlocked
argument.  It is a proposition which, whether of few or numberless
parts, is commanded by a single unity of conception.  And we
think--though I cannot tell--that painting a great picture must require
an intellect on the grand scale.  There must be that all-embracing view
which presents the beginning and the end, the whole and each part, as
one instantaneous impression retentively and untiringly held in the
mind.  When we look at the larger Turners--canvases yards wide and
tall--and observe that they are all done in one piece and represent one
single second of time, and that every innumerable detail, however
small, however distant, however subordinate, is set forth naturally and
in its true proportion and relation, without effort, without failure,
we must feel in the presence of an intellectual manifestation the equal
in quality and intensity of the finest achievements of warlike action,
of forensic argument, or of scientific or philosophical adjudication.

In all battles two things are usually required of the
Commander-in-Chief: to make a good plan for his army and, secondly, to
keep a strong reserve.  Both these are also obligatory upon the
painter.  To make a plan, thorough reconnaissance of the country where
the battle is to be fought is needed.  Its fields, its mountains, its
rivers, its bridges, its trees, its flowers, its atmosphere--all
require and repay attentive observation from a special point of view.
One is quite astonished to find how many things there are in the
landscape, and in every object in it, one never noticed before.  And,
this is a tremendous new pleasure and interest which invests every walk
or drive with an added object.  So many colours on the hillside, each
different in shadow and in sunlight; such brilliant reflections in the
pool, each a key lower than what they repeat; such lovely lights
gilding or silvering surface or outline, all tinted exquisitely with
pale colour, rose, orange, green or violet.  I found myself
instinctively as I walked noting the tint and character of a leaf, the
dreamy, purple shades of mountains, the exquisite lacery of winter
branches the dim, pale silhouettes of far horizons.  And I had lived
for over forty years without ever noticing any of them except in a
general way, as one might look at a crowd and say, 'What a lot of
people!'

I think this heightened sense of observation of Nature is one of the
chief delights that have come to me through trying to paint.  No doubt
many people who are lovers of art have acquired it in a high degree
without actually practising.  But I expect that nothing will make one
observe more quickly or more thoroughly than having to face the
difficulty of representing the thing observed.  And mind you, if you do
observe accurately and with refinement, and if you do record what you
have seen with tolerable correspondence, the result follows on the
canvas with startling obedience.  Even if only four or five main
features are seized and truly recorded, these by themselves will carry
a lot of ill-success or half-success.  Answer five big questions out of
all the hundreds in the examination paper correctly and well, and
though you may not win a prize, at any rate you will not be absolutely
ploughed.

But in order to make his plan, the General must not only reconnoitre
the battle-ground, he must also study the achievements of the great
Captains of the past.  He must bring the observations he has collected
in the field into comparison with the treatment of similar incidents by
famous chiefs.  Then the galleries of Europe take on a new--and to me
at least a severely practical--interest.  'This, then, is how ----
painted a cataract.  Exactly, and there is that same light I noticed
last week in the waterfall at ----.'  And so on.  You see the
difficulty that baffled you yesterday; and you see how easily it has
been overcome by a great or even by a skilful painter.  Not only is
your observation of Nature sensibly improved and developed, but you
look at the masterpieces of art with an analysing and a comprehending
eye.

The whole world is open with all its treasures.  The simplest objects
have their beauty.  Every garden presents innumerable fascinating
problems.  Every land, every parish, has its own tale to tell.  And
there are many lands differing from each other in countless ways, and
each presenting delicious variants of colour, light, form, and
definition.  Obviously, then, armed with a paint-box, one cannot be
bored, one cannot be left at a loose end, one cannot 'have several days
on one's hands.'  Good gracious! what there is to admire and how little
time there is to see it in!  For the first time one begins to envy
Methuselah.  No doubt he made a very indifferent use of his
opportunities.

But it is in the use and withholding of their reserves that the great
Commanders have generally excelled.  After all, when once the last
reserve has been thrown in, the Commander's part is played.  If that
does not win the battle, he has nothing else to give.  The event must
be left to luck and to the fighting troops.  But these last, in the
absence of high direction, are apt to get into sad confusion, all mixed
together in a nasty mess, without order or plan--and consequently
without effect.  Mere masses count no more.  The largest brush, the
brightest colours, cannot even make an impression.  The pictorial
battlefield becomes a sea of mud mercifully veiled by the fog of war.
It is evident there has been a serious defeat.  Even though the General
plunges in himself and emerges bespattered, as he sometimes does, he
will not retrieve the day.

In painting, the reserves consist in Proportion or Relation.  And it is
here that the art of the painter marches along the road which is
traversed by all the greatest harmonies in thought.  At one side of the
palette there is white, at the other black; and neither is ever used
'neat.'  Between these two rigid limits all the action must lie, all
the power required must be generated.  Black and white themselves,
placed in juxtaposition, make no great impression; and yet they are the
most that you can do in pure contrast.  It is wonderful--after one has
tried and failed often--to see how easily and surely the true artist is
able to produce every effect of light and shade, of sunshine and
shadow, of distance or nearness, simply by expressing justly the
relations between the different planes and surfaces with which he is
dealing.  We think that this is founded upon a sense of proportion,
trained no doubt by practice, but which in its essence is a frigid
manifestation of mental power and size.  We think that the same mind's
eye that can justly survey and appraise and prescribe beforehand the
values of a truly great picture in one all-embracing regard, in one
flash of simultaneous and homogeneous comprehension, would also with a
certain acquaintance with the special technique be able to pronounce
with sureness upon any other high activity of the human intellect.
This was certainly true of the great Italians.

I have written in this way to show how varied are the delights which
may be gained by those who enter hopefully and thoughtfully upon the
pathway of painting; how enriched they will be in their daily vision,
how fortified in their independence, how happy in their leisure.
Whether you feel that your soul is pleased by the conception or
contemplation of harmonies, or that your mind is stimulated by the
aspect of magnificent problems, or whether you are content to find fun
in trying to observe and depict the jolly things you see, the vistas of
possibility are limited only by the shortness of life.  Every day you
may make progress.  Every step may be fruitful.  Yet there will stretch
out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving
path.  You know you will never get to the end of the journey.  But
this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the
climb.

Try it, then, before it is too late and before you mock at me.  Try it
while there is time to overcome the preliminary difficulties.  Learn
enough of the language in your prime to open this new literature to
your age.  Plant a garden in which you can sit when digging days are
done.  It may be only a small garden, but you will see it grow.  Year
by year it will bloom and ripen.  Year by year it will be better
cultivated.  The weeds will be cast out.  The fruit-trees will be
pruned and trained.  The flowers will bloom in more beautiful
combinations.  There will be sunshine there even in the winter-time,
and cool shade, and the play of shadow on the pathway in the shining
days of June.

I must say I like bright colours.  I agree with Ruskin in his
denunciation of that school of painting who 'eat slate-pencil and
chalk, and assure everybody that they are nicer and purer than
strawberries and plums.'  I cannot pretend to feel impartial about the
colours.  I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for
the poor browns.  When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable
portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom
of the subject.  But then I shall require a still gayer palette than I
get here below.  I expect orange and vermilion will be the darkest,
dullest colours upon it, and beyond them there will be a whole range of
wonderful new colours which will delight the celestial eye.



Chance led me one autumn to a secluded nook on the Cte d'Azur, between
Marseilles and Toulon, and there I fell in with one or two painters who
revelled in the methods of the modern French school.  These were
disciples of Czanne.  They view Nature as a mass of shimmering light
in which forms and surfaces are comparatively unimportant, indeed
hardly visible, but which gleams and glows with beautiful harmonies and
contrasts of colour.  Certainly it was of great interest to me to come
suddenly in contact with this entirely different way of looking at
things.  I had hitherto painted the sea flat, with long, smooth strokes
of mixed pigment in which the tints varied only by gradations.  Now I
must try to represent it by innumerable small separate lozenge-shaped
points and patches of colour--often pure colour--so that it looked more
like a tessellated pavement than a marine picture.  It sounds curious.
All the same, do not be in a hurry to reject the method.  Go back a few
yards and survey the result.  Each of these little points of colour is
now playing his part in the general effect.  Individually invisible, he
sets up a strong radiation, of which the eye is conscious without
detecting the cause.  Look also at the blue of the Mediterranean.  How
can you depict and record it?  Certainly not by any single colour that
was ever manufactured.  The only way in which that luminous intensity
of blue can be simulated is by this multitude of tiny points of varied
colour all in true relation to the rest of the scheme.  Difficult?
Fascinating!

Nature presents itself to the eye through the agency of these
individual points of light, each of which sets up the vibrations
peculiar to its colour.  The brilliancy of a picture must therefore
depend partly upon the frequency with which these points are found on
any given area of the canvas, and partly on their just relation to one
another.  Ruskin says in his _Elements of Drawing_, from which I have
already quoted, 'You will not, in Turner's largest oil pictures,
perhaps six or seven feet long by four or five high, find one spot of
colour as large as a grain of wheat ungradated.'  But the gradations of
Turner differ from those of the modern French school by being gently
and almost imperceptibly evolved one from another instead of being
bodily and even roughly separated; and the brush of Turner followed the
form of the objects he depicted, while our French friends often seem to
take a pride in directly opposing it.  For instance, they would prefer
to paint a sea with up and down strokes rather than with horizontal; or
a tree-trunk from right to left rather than up and down.  This, I
expect, is due to falling in love with one's theories, and making
sacrifices of truth to them in order to demonstrate fidelity and
admiration.

But surely we owe a debt to those who have so wonderfully vivified,
brightened, and illuminated modern landscape painting.  Have not Manet
and Monet, Czanne and Matisse, rendered to painting something of the
same service which Keats and Shelley gave to poetry after the solemn
and ceremonious literary perfections of the eighteenth century?  They
have brought back to the pictorial art a new draught of _joie de
vivre_; and the beauty of their work is instinct with gaiety, and
floats in sparkling air.

I do not expect these masters would particularly appreciate my defence,
but I must avow an increasing attraction to their work.  Lucid and
exact expression is one of the characteristics of the French mind.  The
French language has been made the instrument of the admirable gift.
Frenchmen talk and write just as well about painting as they have done
about love, about war, about diplomacy, or cooking.  Their terminology
is precise and complete.  They are therefore admirably equipped to be
teachers in the theory of any of these arts.  Their critical faculty is
so powerfully developed that it is perhaps some restraint upon
achievement.  But it is a wonderful corrective to others as well as to
themselves.

My French friend, for instance, after looking at some of my daubs, took
me round the galleries of Paris, pausing here and there.  Wherever he
paused, I found myself before a picture which I particularly admired.
He then explained that it was quite easy to tell, from the kind of
things I had been trying to do, what were the doings I liked.  Never
having taken any interest in pictures till I tried to paint, I had no
preconceived opinions.  I just felt, for reasons I could not fathom,
that I liked some much more than others.  I was astonished that anyone
else should, on the most cursory observation of my work, be able so
surely to divine a taste which I had never consciously formed.  My
friend said that it is not a bad thing to know nothing at all about
pictures, but to have a matured mind trained in other things and a new
strong interest for painting.  The elements are there from which a true
taste in art can be formed with time and guidance, and there are no
obstacles or imperfect conceptions in the way.  I hope this is true.
Certainly the last part is true.

Once you begin to study it, all Nature is equally interesting and
equally charged with beauty.  I was shown a picture by Czanne of a
blank wall of a house, which he had made instinct with the most
delicate lights and colours.  Now I often amuse myself when I am
looking at a wall or a flat surface of any kind by trying to
distinguish all the different colours and tints which can be discerned
upon it, and considering whether these arise from reflections or from
natural hue.  You would be astonished the first time you tried this to
see how many and what beautiful colours there are even in the most
commonplace objects, and the more carefully and frequently you look the
more variations do you perceive.

But these are no reasons for limiting oneself to the plainest and most
ordinary objects and scenes.  Mere prettiness of scene, to be sure, is
not needed for a beautiful picture.  In fact, artificially-made pretty
places are very often a hindrance to a good picture.  Nature will
hardly stand a double process of beautification: one layer of idealism
on top of another is too much of a good thing.  But a vivid scene, a
brilliant atmosphere, novel and charming lights, impressive contrasts,
if they strike the eye all at once, arouse an interest and an ardour
which will certainly be reflected in the work which you try to do, and
will make it seem easier.

It would be interesting if some real authority investigated carefully
the part which memory plays in painting.  We look at the object with an
intent regard, then at the palette, and thirdly at the canvas.  The
canvas receives a message dispatched usually a few seconds before from
the natural object.  But it has come through a post-office _en route_.
It has been transmitted in code.  It has been turned from light into
paint.  It reaches the canvas a cryptogram.  Not until it has been
placed in its correct relation to everything else that is on the canvas
can it be deciphered, is its meaning apparent, is it translated once
again from mere pigment into light.  And the light this time is not of
Nature but of Art.  The whole of this considerable process is carried
through on the wings or the wheels of memory.  In most cases we think
it is the wings--airy and quick like a butterfly from flower to flower.
But all heavy traffic and all that has to go a long journey must travel
on wheels.

In painting in the open air the sequence of actions is so rapid that
the process of translation into and out of pigment may seem to be
unconscious.  But all the greatest landscapes have been painted
indoors, and often long after the first impressions were gathered.  In
a dim cellar the Dutch or Italian master recreated the gleaming ice of
a Netherlands carnival or the lustrous sunshine of Venice or the
Campagna.  Here, then, is required a formidable memory of the visual
kind.  Not only do we develop our powers of observation, but also those
of carrying the record--of carrying it through an extraneous medium and
of reproducing it, hours, days, or even months after the scene has
vanished or the sunlight died.

I was told by a friend that when Whistler guided a school in Paris he
made his pupils observe their model on the ground floor, and then run
upstairs and paint their picture piece by piece on the floor above.  As
they became more proficient, he put their easels up a storey higher,
till at last the elite were scampering with their decision up six
flights into the attic--praying it would not evaporate on the way.
This is, perhaps, only a tale.  But it shows effectively of what
enormous importance a trained, accurate, retentive memory must be to an
artist; and conversely what a useful exercise painting may be for the
development of an accurate and retentive memory.

There is no better exercise for the would-be artist than to study and
devour a picture, and then, without looking at it again, to attempt the
next day to reproduce it.  Nothing can more exactly measure the
progress both of observation and memory.  It is still harder to compose
out of many separate, well-retained impressions, aided though they be
by sketches and colour notes, a new, complete conception.  But this is
the only way in which great landscapes have been painted--or can be
painted.  The size of the canvas alone precludes its being handled out
of doors.  The fleeting light imposes a rigid time-limit.  The same
light never returns.  One cannot go back day after day without the
picture getting stale.  The painter must choose between a rapid
impression, fresh and warm and living, but probably deserving only of a
short life, and the cold, profound, intense effort of memory,
knowledge, and will-power, prolonged perhaps for weeks, from which a
masterpiece can alone result.  It is much better not to fret too much
about the latter.  Leave to the masters of art trained by a lifetime of
devotion the wonderful process of picture-building and
picture-creation.  Go out into the sunlight and be happy with what you
see.

Painting is complete as a distraction.  I know of nothing which,
without exhausting the body, more entirely absorbs the mind.  Whatever
the worries of the hour or the threats of the future, once the picture
has begun to flow along, there is no room for them in the mental
screen.  They pass out into shadow and darkness.  All one's mental
light, such as it is, becomes concentrated on the task.  Time stands
respectfully aside, and it is only after many hesitations that luncheon
knocks gruffly at the door.  When I have had to stand up on parade, or
even, I regret to say, in church, for half an hour at a time, I have
always felt that the erect position is not natural to man, has only
been painfully acquired, and is only with fatigue and difficulty
maintained.  But no one who is fond of painting finds the slightest
inconvenience, as long as the interest holds, in standing to paint for
three or four hours at a stretch.

Lastly, let me say a word on painting as a spur to travel.  There is
really nothing like it.  Every day and all day is provided with its
expedition and its occupation--cheap, attainable, innocent, absorbing,
recuperative.  The vain racket of the tourist gives place to the calm
enjoyment of the philosopher, intensified by an enthralling sense of
action and endeavour.  Every country where the sun shines and every
district in it, has a theme of its own.  The lights, the atmosphere,
the aspect, the spirit, are all different; but each has its native
charm.  Even if you are only a poor painter you can feel the influence
of the scene, guiding your brush, selecting the tubes you squeeze on to
the palette.  Even if you cannot portray it as you see it, you feel it,
you know it, and you admire it for ever.  When people rush about Europe
in the train from one glittering centre of work or pleasure to another,
passing--at enormous expense--through a series of mammoth hotels and
blatant carnivals, they little know what they are missing, and how
cheaply priceless things can be obtained.  The painter wanders and
loiters contentedly from place to place, always on the look out for
some brilliant butterfly of a picture which can be caught and set up
and carried safely home.

Now I am learning to like painting even on dull days.  But in my hot
youth I demanded sunshine.  Sir William Orpen advised me to visit
Avignon on account of its wonderful light, and certainly there is no
more delightful centre for a would-be painter's activities: then Egypt,
fierce and brilliant, presenting in infinite variety the single triplex
theme of the Nile, the desert, and the sun; or Palestine, a land of
rare beauty--the beauty of the turquoise and the opal--which well
deserves the attention of some real artist, and has never been
portrayed to the extent that is its due.  And what of India?  Who has
ever interpreted its lurid splendours?  But after all, if only the sun
will shine, one does not need to go beyond one's own country.  There is
nothing more intense than the burnished steel and gold of a Highland
stream; and at the beginning and close of almost every day the Thames
displays to the citizens of London glories and delights which one must
travel far to rival.




  SOME PAINTINGS
  BY
  The Right Honourable
  SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL
  K.G., O.M., C.H., M.P.



[Illustration: A Vase of Flowers]

1. A Vase of Flowers



[Illustration: The Loup River, Quebec]

2. The Loup River, Quebec



[Illustration: Lakeside Scene, Lake Como]

3. Lakeside Scene, Lake Como



[Illustration: The Tapestries at Blenheim Palace]

4. The Tapestries at Blenheim Palace



[Illustration: The Blue Room, Trent Park]

5. The Blue Room, Trent Park



[Illustration: Village near Lugano]

6. Village near Lugano



[Illustration: Olive Grove near Monte Carlo]

7. Olive Grove near Monte Carlo



[Illustration: Church by Lake Como]

8. Church by Lake Como



[Illustration: The Goldfish Pool at Chartwell]

9. The Goldfish Pool at Chartwell



[Illustration: The Weald of Kent under Snow]

10. The Weald of Kent under Snow



[Illustration: Orchids]

11. Orchids



[Illustration: The Mill, Saint-Georges-Motel]

12. The Mill, Saint-Georges-Motel



[Illustration: Near Antibes]

13. Near Antibes



[Illustration: The Mediterranean near Genoa]

14. The Mediterranean near Genoa



[Illustration: St. Jean, Cap Ferrat]

15. St. Jean, Cap Ferrat



[Illustration: Flowers]

16. Flowers



[Illustration: By Lake Lugano]

17. By Lake Lugano



[Illustration: Chartwell under Snow]

18. Chartwell under Snow






[End of Painting as a Pastime, by Winston S. Churchill]
