LXII

One must copy nature always, and learn how to see her rightly. It is for
this that one should study the antique and the great masters, not in
order to imitate them, but, I repeat, to learn to see.

Do you think I send you to the Louvre to find there what people call
"le beau idéal," something which is outside nature?

It was stupidity like this which in bad periods led to the decadence of
art. I send you there to learn from the antique how to see nature,
because they themselves are nature: therefore one must live among them,
and absorb them.

It is the same in the painting of the great ages. Do you think, when I
tell you to copy, that I want to make copyists of you? No, I want you to
take the sap from the plant.

_Ingres._


LXIII

The strict copying of nature is not art; it is only a means to an end,
an element in the whole. Art, while presenting nature, must manifest
itself in its own essence. It is not a mirror, uncritically reflecting
every image; it is the artist who must mould the image to his will; else
his work is not performed.