The BCC

Vikky Dougan

by Ralph Crane

Nora Akino

Painting of a Mouse, by Shibata Zeshin

The British Museum Images

2. Leaf from Album of Seasonal Themes: Crescent Moon, 1847.

Mucha

Eyvind Earle

A Swirl of Fog

1976

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“Being a painter, I will tell you just what I try to do when I paint. Beauty is the thing we are all searching for. As far as I know, truth is beauty, but often the truth is not beautiful. In nature when I look I see trees, some of them are such that they thrill me with their perfection and their sweeping lines and certain mood they seem to have. Windswept plains give me something that can’t be seen. In every tree I feel as though I could see the soul of that tree. It is alive. It is a person. And if beauty be related to the truth, harmony and balance must be there, and there must be movement because in nature all things move. And there are certain laws such as the law of duality. Everything has its opposite. Nothing is without its opposite. If I want a bright light in a painting, I must have a dark shadow. If I want a color to look very warm, I must have also a very cold color, and so on and on forever. But when I paint, I forget the things I know. I just sit there painting away, trying to get the feeling into my painting that I feel inside. Whatever beauty is, I feel it, and as long as I can I shall try to find more and more beauty, and to put it down so that others can see what I have seen.”