Chapter IX

.

The sculptor and painter are at a disadvantage compared with the poet and novelist, for the limitation of their arts compels them to confine their imaginations to structural work. Each of the Associated Arts consists nominally of three parts: (_a_) the scheme, or idea, or fable; (_b_) the design or invention[32]; (_c_) the execution. In a representation of action, the painter or sculptor can only depict a

## particular moment of it, neither the beginning nor the end being

visible. He must therefore choose an action of which the beginning and end are known, for while either may be suggested in a simple design, both cannot be implied so that the whole story is obvious. He has consequently to take his moment of action from a fact or fable in one of the literary arts, or from actual life experience.[33] Where no

## particular action is indicated, as in many pastoral and interior scenes

in painting, or ornamental figures in sculpture, the conception and invention are one. Thus, the painter or sculptor is confined to only two parts of his art, the design and execution. While therefore the scope of the poet and novelist is as unlimited as the sea of human motives and passions, that of the painter and sculptor is held within strictly marked bounds.

All the Associated Arts are alike in that they cannot be specially used for moral or social purposes without suffering a marked deterioration. This is because of the limitations imposed upon the artist. His wings are clipped: his imagination is confined within a narrow groove: he is converted from a master to a slave. Hence no great work of one of these arts has been produced where the conception of the artist was bound by the necessity of pointing a moral, or of conforming to some idea of utility.[34]

##