Copyright © 2020 by Wendy Waszut-Barrett
From 1882 to 1884, Henry C. Tryon (1847-1892) worked and wrote in the Salt Lake City area. As a scenic artist and author, Tryon’s name constantly appeared in the papers. In addition to painting new scenery during the Salt Lake Theatre stage renovation, Tryon also exhibited much of his easel art. He was in the perfect town to market himself. The “Salt Lake Daily Herald” published articles on a variety of artistic activities, including art exhibitions, theatrical productions and other creative ponderings in detail. In some ways this newspaper carried more information about theatrical productions and stage artists than many larger metropolitan publications across the country.
In 1883, an article on art exhibitions noted, “Henry C. Tryon stated when he came here, that he had never seen a range of mountains that afforded better opportunities” (9 Aug 1883, page 8). On May 18, 1883, “The Salt Lake Herald,” reported “Mr. Henry C. Tryon is at work on an oil painting which he has already presented to Mr. H. B. Clawson. It is a landscape in oil and is a gem much to be desired” (page 8). That spring, newspapers also reported, “Speaking of matters of art reminds us that Mr. Henry C. Tryon is still hard at work on scenery for the Salt Lake Theatre…There will not be a foot of old canvas in the building when Tryon leaves for pastures new…We congratulate Mr. Tryon, and are pleased to see the interest he takes in all that he does; and if the work referred to above is not art in its truest sense, then we would be happy to know just what art is” (Salt Lake Daily Herald, 22 April 883, page 12). Tryon was completely a large stock scenery collection, painting fine art pieces for local citizens and taking time to write on a variety of artistic subjects during the first half of 1883.
He submitted several articles to the “Salt Lake Daily Herald” throughout 1883. In his article, “Artistic Flashes,” he ended with the statement, “Don’t falsify nature by attempting, with your petty vanity, to improve upon her work. You will fail, because nature as an artist is pre-eminently superior to you” (9 Feb 1883, page 3).
On Sunday, August 12, 1883, he elaborated on this sentiment in Tryon’s “Art vs Skill.” Here is the article in its entirety:
ART vs. SKILL
By HENRY C. TRYON
There is a story familiar to most people of two rival artists, whose relative merits were disputed by their several admirers. To settle the dispute, they engaged in a friendly contest. On painted some fruit and put it in the window. It was so skillfully executed that the birds tried to get at this fruit. The other then had his picture ready and draped. His rival, attempting to raise the curtain that covered the supposed picture, learned that it was a clever deception being a skillfully painted representation of a cloth. The first artist exclaimed enthusiastically, “You are the greater artist: for, while I deceived only the birds, you have deceived an artist.”
This story, like most of those written about artists, is the verist nonsense. Two artists are not likely to enter into a “go-as-you-please” contest, nor to put on gloves to try which is the better man for a prize medal and the applause of the public. That always has been left to public performers and to mountebanks. By assuming the story to be true, it is no proof that either of them was an artist in a real sense. It proves nothing whatever. The popular idea of art is that skill, imitation, projection and perspective are the ends of all efforts in art; and that a work of art practically is to be judges by the skill shown in these directions, with a kind of vague idea that sentiment of color, tone, harmony, force, tenderness and feeling are but a means intended for the connoisseur to “ring them in,” – as one would pretty talk, which may be thrown in indiscriminately.
An artist, for instance, paints a street scene. It matters not how inartistic and mechanical the scene may be, nor how harsh and crude may be the color, if the perspective and light and shadow be correct, the average observer will look upon the scene as a marvelous work, for ‘It appears to reach back for a mile,’ and his surprise and wonder at this success overcomes any other feeling. This misunderstanding of the aim and object of true art prevents him from being even critical or even interested in anything beyond. Yet all this is a mechanical success, pure and simple. That linear perspective has no art quality of itself, and is not even difficult of attainment, all artists know who know anything about it. It is the same with projection. Draw an object and cast shadow from it, and it will apparently project from the paper. Anybody can do it. So, with imitation.
Every portrait painter knows the necessity of not painting laces or jewels or other flippant accessories with too much realism, else the general observer (who imagines imitation to be the greatest achievement) will never see the face at all. A certain eminent artist in painting a subject introduced in the picture a mat. After the attention of a few people had been fastened on that mat and they had analyzed its material, texture, and probably cost per yard, in disgust he painted it over, so that nobody afterward would think of it except that it was a mat, and pass on to the real picture – the material which made up the sentiment and the story he desired to express. Suppose a person in describing in writing the wonderful grandeur and beauty of the Wasatch range, should pause lovingly in the description of some pig pen, making this description so vivid and realistic that the total impression remained with the reader that it was a picture of a pig pen with an accessory of Wasatch mountains. What would the reader think? (assuming the purpose of this piece of literature was to convey a sentiment of the grandeur of the mountains) It is exactly so with art; mere imitation requires nothing but a little knowledge, more practice, and more or less patience; but these qualities alone do not make an artist; they simply enable an artist to express art feeling. The mere mechanical ability to touch the right keys on a piano in the translation of a musical composition, does not make a musician. It merely enables one to express musical thought and feeling, if he has it; and if he has it not, he is recognized by musicians as a musical artist, but is considered a musical mechanic. We all understand what is meant by “machine poetry.” The rhyme and the metre maybe faultless, but if it contains no grand beautiful or ennobling thought, it is recognized by all as mere verse; and there is all the difference in the world between verse and poetry. Literature and the arts are precisely similar in their objects. The poet paints with language, the musician with harmonies, the sculptor and draughtsman forms. The arts are so intimately blended that the mechanical phrases even are the same throughout. Who does not feel what is meant by color as applied to musical composition, and tenderness, strength, feeling and harmony as applied to painting? Follow the terms used in all the aria and they can be applied indiscriminately to each. Art is poetry, or it is nothing. If a picture, painted never so skillfully has nothing in it except the skill and knowledge of the artist, and does not contain poetic feeling, or is in any purpose or poetic cause why should it be painted, it ranks as a work of art, no higher than a piece of literature produced for the sole object of showing the author’s knowledge of words and of the grammatical arrangement of them.
A picture should be painted to express some of the sentiment (and assuming that that has been successfully accomplished) the nobility, purity and beauty of that sentiment will determine the position of the picture as a work of art. What is generally considered to be the end of art is properly the means to an end; the real end depends upon the genius of the artist. It is always conceded that an artist thoroughly understands the mechanical means to art (before mentioned), just as it is presupposed that an author understands grammatical rules and the skillful construction of sentences. When each is thus equipped, then he has within his grasp all that is required to give expression to high thoughts and sublime images; but unless the genius – the spirit of poetry – is inherent, he can only give to the world that which time, patience and perseverance will do for any intelligent person.”
To be continued…
