are only done in art when the creative instinct of the artist has a
well-organised executive faculty at its disposal.

* * * * *

Of the two divisions into which the technical study of painting can be
divided, namely Form and Colour, we are concerned in this book with Form
alone. But before proceeding to our immediate subject something should
be said as to the nature of art generally, not with the ambition of
arriving at any final result in a short chapter, but merely in order to
give an idea of the point of view from which the following pages are
written, so that misunderstandings may be avoided.

The variety of definitions that exist justifies some inquiry. The
following are a few that come to mind:

"Art is nature expressed through a personality."

But what of architecture? Or music? Then there is Morris's

"Art is the expression of pleasure in work."

But this does not apply to music and poetry. Andrew Lang's

"Everything which we distinguish from nature"

seems too broad to catch hold of, while Tolstoy's

"An action by means of which one man, having experienced a feeling,
intentionally transmits it to others"