IX--A PAINTER'S VIEWS ON PAINTING
The Old Masters and Their Pupils
The old masters taught, not because they liked teaching, nor yet from
any idea of serving the cause of art, nor yet because they were paid
to teach by the parents of their pupils. The parents probably paid
no money at first. The masters took pupils and taught them because
they had more work to do than they could get through and wanted some
one to help them. They sold the pupil's work as their own, just as
people do now who take apprentices. When people can sell a pupil's
work, they will teach the pupil all they know and will see he learns
it. This is the secret of the whole matter.
The modern schoolmaster does not aim at learning from his pupils, he
hardly can, but the old masters did. See how Giovanni Bellini
learned from Titian and Giorgione who both came to him in the same
year, as boys, when Bellini was 63 years old. What a day for
painting was that! All Bellini's best work was done thenceforward.
I know nothing in the history of art so touching as this. [1883.]
P.S. I have changed my mind about Titian. I don't like him.
[1897.]
The Academic System and Repentance
The academic system goes almost on the principle of offering places
for repentance, and letting people fall soft, by assuming that they
should be taught how to do things before they do them, and not by the
doing of them.
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