work utterly lacking in the freshness and charm of true
inspiration. For however commonplace the subject seen by the artist in
one of his "flashes," it is clothed in a newness and surprise that charm
us, be it only an orange on a plate.

Now a picture is a thing of paint upon a flat surface, and a drawing is
a matter of certain marks upon a paper, and how to translate the
intricacies of a visual or imagined impression to the prosaic terms of
masses of coloured pigment or lines and tones is the business with which
our technique is concerned. The ease, therefore, with which a painter
will be able to remember an impression in a form from which he can work,
will depend upon his power to analyse vision in this technical sense.
The more one knows about what may be called the anatomy of
picture-making--how certain forms produce certain effects, certain
colours or arrangements other effects, &c.--the easier will it be for
him to carry away a visual memory of his subject that will stand by him
during the long hours of his labours at the picture. The more he knows
of the expressive powers of lines and tones, the more easily will he be
able to observe the vital things in nature that convey the impression he
wishes to memorise.

It is not enough to drink in and remember the emotional side of the
matter, although this must be done fully, but if a memory of the subject
is to be carried away that will be of service technically, the scene
must be committed to memory in terms of whatever medium you intend to
employ for reproducing it--in the case of a drawing, lines and tones.
And the impression will have to be analysed into these terms as if you
were actually drawing the scene on some imagined piece of paper in your
mind. The faculty of doing this is not to be acquired all at once, but
it is amazing of how much development it is capable. Just as the faculty
of committing to memory long poems or plays can be developed, so can the
faculty of remembering visual things. This subject has received little
attention in art schools until just recently. But it is not yet so
systematically done as it might be. Monsieur Lecoq de Boisbaudran in
France experimented with pupils in this memory training, beginning with
very simple things like the outline of a nose, and going on to more
complex subjects by easy stages, with the most surprising results. And
there is no doubt that a great deal more can and should be done in this
direction than is at pres