The Influence of the Impressionists on Climate

Where, if not from the Impressionists, do we get those wonderful brown / fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas-lamps and / changing the houses into monstrous shadows? To whom, if not to them and / their master, do we owe the lovely silver mists that brood over our / river, and turn to faint forms of fading grace curved bridge and swaying / barge? The extraordinary change that has taken place in the climate of / London during the last ten years is entirely due to a particular school / of Art. You smile. Consider the matter from a scientific or a / metaphysical point of view, and you will find that I am right. For what / is Nature? Nature is no great mother who has borne us. She is our / creation. It is in our brain that she quickens to life. Things are / because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the / Arts that have influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from / seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. / Then, and then only, does it come into existence. At present, people see / fogs, not because there are fogs, but because poets and painters have / taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects. There may have / been fogs for centuries in London. I dare say there were. But no one / saw them, and so we do not know anything about them. They did not exist / till Art had invented them. Now, it must be admitted, fogs are carried / to excess.

They have become the mere mannerism of a clique, and the / exaggerated realism of their method gives dull people bronchitis. Where / the cultured catch an effect, the uncultured catch cold. And so, let us / be humane, and invite Art to turn her wonderful eyes elsewhere. She has / done so already, indeed. That white quivering sunlight that one sees now / in France, with its strange blotches of mauve, and its restless violet / shadows, is her latest fancy, and, on the whole, Nature reproduces it / quite admirably. Where she used to give us Corots and Daubignys, she / gives us now exquisite Monets and entrancing Pissaros. Indeed there are / moments, rare, it is true, but still to be observed from time to time, / when Nature becomes absolutely modern. Of course she is not always to be / relied upon. The fact is that she is in this unfortunate position. Art / creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on / to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that imitation / can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect / until we all become absolutely wearied of it. Nobody of any real / culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of a sunset. / Sunsets are quite old-fashioned. They belong to the time when Turner was / the last note in art. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism / of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on. -- _The Decay of Lying_.