The painter of still-life has the choice of four kinds of imitation, namely, the representation of products of nature which are in themselves beautiful, as roses and fine plumaged birds; the imitation of products of human industry which are in themselves beautiful, as sculptured plate or fine porcelain; the representation of natural and manual products which in themselves are neither beautiful nor displeasing, but interest from association of ideas, as certain fruits, books, and musical instruments; and the imitation of things which in themselves are not pleasing to the sight, as dead game, kitchen utensils, and so on. Obviously the artist may assort any two or more of these varieties in the same picture. He may also associate them with life, but here he is met with a grave difficulty which goes to the very root of art. If two forms, not being merely accessories, are associated together in a design, the lower form must necessarily be subordinated, otherwise the mind of the observer will be disturbed by the apparent double objective. A live dog or other animal in a still-life composition will immediately attract the eye of the observer, drawing off his attention from the inanimate objects represented, which will consequently thereafter lose much of their interest. The presence of a man is still worse. Not only is it natural and inevitable that a human being should take precedence of whatever is inanimate in a work of art, but in the case of still-life, where he is painted of natural size, he must necessarily overshadow everything else in the picture. Further, his own representation is much injured because the surroundings exercise a disconcerting influence. Even with the human figures of such a work executed by a painter of the first rank, they are quite uninteresting.[a]
[a] See still-life pictures at the Hague and Vienna Museums by Van Dyck and Snyders.
Beautiful products of nature such as brilliant flowers and butterflies, cannot be imitated so well that the representations appear as beautiful as the things themselves, and so are unsuited as entire subjects for paintings, for we are usually well acquainted with these things, and consciously or unconsciously recognize the inferiority of the imitation. The greatest flower painters have therefore wisely refrained from introducing into their works more than a few fine roses or similar blooms. The presence of many less beautiful flowers in which the imitation is, or appears to be, more pleasing than the natural forms, neutralizes or overcomes the effect of the inferior imitation of the more beautiful. In fact the extent to which natural products which are necessarily more beautiful than the imitations, may be used in painting, except as incidentals, is very limited. They cannot appropriately be used at all on walls and curtains where they continually cross the vision, for they would there quickly tire owing to the involuntary dissatisfaction with the representation. The Japanese, whose whole art of painting was for centuries concentrated upon light internal decoration, rightly discard from this form of art all natural products which are necessarily superior to the imitations, and confine their attention to those signs which, while being actually more beautiful, when closely seen, than the imitations, do not appear to be so in nature where they are usually observed at some distance from the eye. Thus, waterfowl of various kinds, small birds of the hedges, storks, herons, branches of fruit blossoms, light trees and vegetation, are infinitely preferable to the more beautiful products for purely decorative purposes. A common pigeon with an added bright feather, is better on a wall or screen than the most brilliant pheasant, for in the one case the representation appears above ordinary experience, and in the other case, below it.