第39章

He is shooting, and he's going to get what he is after."Before each of the four pairs of murals, the painter indicated to us the happy way in which, by the deft use of the coloring, each blended into the other, and she called my attention to the clearness of the symbolism.So often, she remarked, the mural decorators used compositions that seemed like efforts to hide secrets, a childish way of working, sure to defeat itself.Brangwyn had no secrets.He was sincere and direct.He was happy over this work.He said that he had enjoyed doing it more than anything else he had ever done before.If these canvases had been found in the heart of Africa they would have been identified as coming from Brangwyn.No one else used color just as he did, with his kind of courage.His colors were arbitrary, too.He didn't follow nature and yet he always conveyed the spirit of natural things.

Throughout his work he showed that he was a close and subtle observer.

The sweep of rain through the air, the movement of figures and of draperies in the wind, the expression of human effort, how wonderfully he managed to suggest them all and to make them pictorial.But he wasn't interested in merely an activity.He loved repose.In nearly all of these eight canvases, so brimming with life, there were figures looking on serenely, calmly, conveying the impression of being absolutely at rest.

In every particular, according to the searching observer, Brangwyn was successful, with the exception of one, his treatment of birds.He evidently didn't know birds.If he had known them he would have loved them, and if he had loved them he would have entered into their spirit and he would have flown with them and he would have made them fly in his painting.Now they merely flopped.They were just about as much alive as the clay figures used in a shooting match.Even his highly decorative flamingoes weren't right.They did not stand firmly on the ground.They weren't alive.And the necks of the two flamingoes never could have met in the curves that Brangwyn gave them.This very failure, amusing as it was and hardly detracting from the effect of his work as a whole, was another proof that he was an instinctive painter, who relied for his guidance on feeling.But it was plain enough that he had chosen those flamingoes for their color, and a right choice it was.

We could not decide which of the eight murals we liked best.Perhaps, after all, they could not be considered apart.Though each was in itself a unity, the eight completely expressed a big conception.And in detail each canvas was full of delightful bits.If you closed your hand and peered between your thumb and your fingers, you could see how beautifully the color had been applied and how, throughout the whole surface, the workmanship sustained itself.Never was there the sense of faltering or of petering out.And everywhere there were expressions of fine understanding and sympathy, in the study of a peasant mother holding her babe, nude boys flying kites, a happy face with the lips blowing a pipe, a muscular figure lifting a jar, all conveying abundant life and rich coloring.

The painter finally ran away from us, apologizing for her enthusiasm.

In discussing her opinions, the architect said: "Well, I don't altogether agree.But she may be right.She sees from the inside, which is very different from seeing from the outside.There is a great deal of artistic appreciation that can be felt only by the artist, by the fellow-craftsman.No wonder we go so far astray when we criticise aspects of art that we're only related to indirectly or not related at all."We walked to the Marina.From there we saw the sun, a great red ball, sinking behind the Golden Gate.