PAINTING AS A PASTIME
Sm,—The note of natural asperity which I detect in Mr. Alston's pertinent question warns me too late that it would have been safer to say " appear to have been painted on the spot," for certain it is that Constable's art bears a truly remarkable impressionistic likeness to nature on the move, hardly attainable if painted indoors. And it may be that we disagree over what constitutes a sketch ; so many of Constable's so-called " sketches " are to me fully fashioned pictures. With regard to the latter part of Mr. Alston's downright letter, I am content to leave the art critics to challenge his prophecy that they will be unable to distinguish between amateur and professional painting. As to the writer's dismal postulate that the general escape to painting will be " at the expense of
all quality in art," that again surely only becomes authoritative when it has been proved correct ? I for one am ready to risk it, for if, like Bonnard, " one repents having written succinct and lapidary phrases upon art," it is consoling to remember Turner's apposite aphorism that
" painting is a funny business."—Yours, &c., ADRIAN Hai. Old Laundry Cottage, Midhurst, Sussex.
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