Art in Nature

— Fortunately for our love of art, our love of nature is becoming more subject to artistic guidance. The latter sentiment is to a great degree inherent; right in impulse, but too often crude and inartistic in its manifestations ; leading, by false logic, to the conclusion that because a thing is “ natural ” it must therefore be beautiful. The results of good intentions misapplied are proverbially identical with the fruits of the intentionally bad. Fortunately, however, mistakes are the most potent of educators, and in view of the violence of some of the horticultural art that delights the multitude in and about many of our cities, although it may be to the artist like a needle-thrust in the eye, there is the consolation that finally it must become painful to the sight of all.

In a certain great city that rejoices in a reputation for cultivated taste, there is a favorite piece of public ground, which exhibits qualities of color and design so inharmonious as to make it comparable to a patchwork quilt. It is almost an article of faith with the larger number of the inhabitants that this piece of ground is a Garden of Eden in beauty. As the presence of the good is in time certain to awaken a consciousness of the bad, it is safe to predict that, in the city in question, the creation of extensive public grounds, designed by an artist who has made such work the study of a lifetime, will make even the great mass of the population aware of the room for improvement in their pet garden.

The classes known as cultivated need training in this respect almost as much as do the generally untutored. Indeed, the former too often have a certain selfsufficiency of taste which makes them more difficult to reach. Some of us, who can easily tell if a landscape-painting be good, cannot say if a landscape itself be bad, although the same principles hold in the latter as in the former. Few persons who know good paintings would care to venture to paint for themselves, but at times the amateur steps in where the artist fears to tread. There are too many, however, who consider their admiration for nature sufficient to warrant them in the attempt to create their own landscapes, when the pictures they would compose involve a dealing with elements so complex that, in comparison, the problem of the painter is simplicity itself.

The common error that because a thing grows out of the ground it is peculiarly “ a work of nature,” and therefore of necessity beautiful, is a most fruitful source of failure in gardening and landscape. In this light, it seems almost a heresy to state the fact that many of our garden flowers are as much the work of man as are aniline dyes, for instance, and that one may be as atrocious in color as the other. Akin to this error is the idea that things which may be excellent and beautiful in themselves must be correspondingly excellent and beautiful in conjunction. The women of a certain insular realm have a reputation, in other lands, for ill-taste in dress. The silks, velvets, laces, etc., of which their garments are made may be of admirable quality, and even beautiful in themselves ; but an array like a green velvet bonnet with a purple feather and scarlet ribbons, combined with pink waist and blue skirt, constitutes a spectacle which would probably have startled the eyes of one accustomed even to the sight of King Solomon robed in all his glory ! But, this combination is artistically no worse than that displayed in the garden heretofore alluded to, with lawns blotched and tattooed with unmeaning floral designs, shrubs and trees planted without reference to unity of composition or any effect of spaciousness, a small pond attempting to imitate the irregularity of a lake, but margined with stiff granite curbing and crossed by a ponderous bridge.

Another false tendency, born of good intent, is the sentimentality manifest in a sort of arboreal fetichism, regarding a tree in itself as something sacred, a sort of sentient being, invested with an inherent right to existence. This feeling often stands formidably in the way of the development of the artistic qualities of a landscape.

For the popularization of this, as of other arts, a familiarity with the works and the teachings of its best masters is essential. Our land has been lavishly endowed by nature, and for art to become something besides an exotic we need to appreciate that fact. A true art must be founded in nature, and not in the art of another people. The practical field for the exercise of the noble calling known as landscape-gardening, or landscape-architecture, is a large one in this country, and young men of artistic tastes, who seriously apply themselves to the study, need not fear to find its ranks overcrowded. The growth of taste will keep their services in demand, however their numbers may increase. A notable advance in the past few years is evident. Greater attention is paid to the artistic character of private grounds ; our cities are learning to regard public parks as necessities, and through them the best of missionary work is done in bringing the poorest classes out from their noisome surroundings, opening their eyes to the beauty of sunlight and the common things of nature ; a public sentiment has been developed which has secured the preservation of Niagara from the vandalism which for years has prostituted it; important steps have been taken for the protection of the Adirondacks ; and perhaps Congress may be persuaded to save our national forest domain before the trees have been entirely cut away, or licked up by the flames.