Well, what Turner and other painters of his generation
did for landscape, had had to be done for men and women in earlier
days by earlier generations of artists. The Greeks were the first,
in their sculpture, to show the wonderful beauty of the human form;
till their day people had not recognised what to us now seems obvious.
No doubt they had thought one person pretty and another handsome, but
they had not known that the human figure was essentially a glorious
thing till the Greek sculptors showed them. Another thing painters
have taught the world is the beauty of atmosphere. Formerly no one
seems to have noticed how atmosphere affects every object that is seen
through it. The painters had to show us that it is so. After we had
seen the effect of atmosphere in pictures we began to be able to see
for ourselves in nature, and thus a whole group of new pleasures in
views of nature was opened up to us.
Away back in the Middle Ages, six hundred and more years ago, folks
had far less educated eyes than we possess to-day. They looked at nature
more simply than we do and saw less in it.
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