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Title: The Mind of the Artist
Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art
Author: Various
Commentator: George Clausen
Release Date: June 22, 2006 [EBook #18653]
Language: English
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THE MIND OF THE ARTIST
[Illustration: _Rembrandt_ THE POLISH RIDER _Berlin Photographic Co_]
THOUGHTS AND SAYINGS OF PAINTERS
AND SCULPTORS ON THEIR ART
COLLECTED & ARRANGED BY
MRS. LAURENCE BINYON
WITH A PREFACE BY GEORGE CLAUSEN, R.A.
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1909
_All rights reserved_
PREFACE
It is always interesting and profitable to get the views of workmen on
their work, and on the principles which guide them in it; and in
bringing together these sayings of artists Mrs. Binyon has done a very
useful thing. A great number of opinions are presented, which, in their
points of agreement and disagreement, bring before us in the most
charming way the wide range of the artist's thought, and enable us to
realise that the work of the great ones is not founded on vague caprice
or so-called inspiration, but on sure intuitions which lead to definite
knowledge; not merely the necessary knowledge of the craftsman, which
many have possessed whose work has failed to hold the attention of the
world, but also a knowledge of nature's laws.
"The Mind of the Artist" speaks for itself, and really requires no word
of introduction. These opinions as a whole, seem to me to have a harmony
and consistency, and to announce clearly that the directing impulse must
be a desire for expression, that art is a language, and that the thing
to be said is of more importance than the manner of saying it. This
desire for expression is the driving-force of the artist; it informs,
controls, and animates his method of working; it governs the hand and
eye. That figures should give the impression of life and spontaneity,
that the sun should shine, trees move in the wind, and nature be felt
and represented as a living thing--this is the firm ground in art; and
in those who have this feeling every effort will, consciously or
unconsciously, lead towards its realisation. It should be the
starting-point of the student. It does not absolve him from the need of
taking the utmost pains, from making the most searching study of his
model; rather it impels him, in the examination of whatever he feels
called on to represent, to look for the vital and necessary things: and
the artist will carry his work to the utmost degree of completion
possible to him, in the desire to get at the heart of his theme.
"Truth to nature," like a wide mantle, shelters us all, and covers not
only the outward aspect of things, but their inner meanings and the
emotions felt through them, differently by each individual. And the
inevitable differences of point of view, which one encounters in this
book, are but small matters compared with the agreement one finds on
essential things; I may instance particularly the stress laid on the
observation of nature. Whether the artist chooses to depict the present,
the past, or to express an abstract ideal, he must, if his work is to
live, found it on his own experience of nature. But he must at every
step also refer to the past. He must find the road that the great ones
have made, remembering that the problems they solved were the same that
he has before him, and that now, no less than in Dürer's time, "art is
hidden in nature: it is for the artist to drag her forth."
GEORGE CLAUSEN.
NOTE
This little volume, it need hardly be said, does not aim at being
complete, in the sense of representing all the artists who have written
on art. It is hoped, however, that the sayings chosen will be found
fairly representative of what painters and sculptors, typical of their
race and time, have said about the various aspects of their work. In
making the collection, I have had recourse less to famous comprehensive
treatises and expositions of theory like those of Leonardo and of
Reynolds, than to the more intimate avowals and working notes contained
in letters and diaries, or recorded in memoirs. The selection of these
has entailed considerable research; and in tracing what was often by no
means easy to find, I wish to acknowledge the kind assistance,
especially, of M. Raphael Petrucci, M. Louis Dimier, and Mr. Tancred
Borenius. I have also to thank Lady Burne-Jones, Miss Birnie Philip,
Mrs. Watts, Mrs. C. W. Furse, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, Mr. J. G. Millais, Mr.
Samuel Calvert, and Mr. Sydney Cockerell, for permission to make
quotations from Burne-Jones, Whistler, Watts, Furse, D. G. Rossetti,
Madox Brown, Millais, Edward Calvert, and William Morris; also Sir
Martin Conway, Sir Charles Holroyd, Mrs. Herringham, Mr. E. McCurdy,
and Mr. Everard Meynell, for allowing me to use their translations from
Dürer, Francisco d'Ollanda (conversations with Michael Angelo), Cennino
Cennini, Leonardo, and Corot, respectively.
Thankful acknowledgment is also made to the authors of any other
quotations whose names may inadvertently have been omitted.
Above all, I thank my husband for his advice and help.
C. M. B.
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE POLISH RIDER. Rembrandt _Frontispiece_
_Tarnowski Collection, Dzikow_
FACING PAGE
THE CASTLE IN THE PARK. Rubens. (_Detail_) 28
_Vienna_
LOVE. Millais 48
_The Victoria and Albert Museum_
THE MUSIC OF PAN. Signorelli 74
_Berlin_
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST'S WIFE. J. Van Eyck 96
_Bruges_
HOPE. Puvis de Chavannes 102
_By permission of Messrs. Durand-Revel_
THE MASS OF BOLSENA. Raphael. (_Detail_) 118
_The Vatican_
THE CHILDREN AND THE BUTTERFLY. Gainsborough 134
_National Gallery_
THE MIND OF THE ARTIST
I
An able painter by his power of penetration into the mysteries of his
art is usually an able critic.
_Alfred Stevens._[1]
[Footnote 1: The Belgian painter, not the English sculptor.]
II
Art, like love, excludes all competition, and absorbs the man.
_Fuseli._
III
A good painter has two chief objects to paint, namely, man, and the
intention of his soul. The first is easy, the second difficult, because
he has to represent it through the attitudes and movements of the limbs.
This should be learnt from the dumb, who do it better than any other
sort of person.
_Leonardo da Vinci._
IV
In my judgment that is the excellent and divine painting which is most
like and best imitates any work of immortal God, whether a human figure,
or a wild and strange animal, or a simple and easy fish, or a bird of
the air, or any other creature. And this neither with gold nor silver
nor with very fine tints, but drawn only with a pen or a pencil, or with
a brush in black and white. To imitate perfectly each of these things in
its species seems to me to be nothing else but to desire to imitate the
work of immortal God. And yet that thing will be the most noble and
perfect in the works of painting which in itself reproduced the thing
which is most noble and of the greatest delicacy and knowledge.
_Michael Angelo._
V
The art of painting is employed in the service of the Church, and by it
the sufferings of Christ and many other profitable examples are set
forth. It preserveth also the likeness of men after their death. By aid
of delineations the measurements of the earth, the waters, and the stars
are better to be understood; and many things likewise become known unto
men by them. The attainment of true, artistic, and lovely execution in
painting is hard to come unto; it needeth long time and a hand practised
to almost perfect freedom. Whosoever, therefore, falleth short of this
cannot attain a right understanding (in matters of painting) for it
cometh alone by inspiration from above. The art of painting cannot be
truly judged save by such as are themselves good painters; from others
verily is it hidden even as a strange tongue. It were a noble occupation
for ingenious youths without employment to exercise themselves in this
art.
_Dürer._
AIMS AND IDEALS
VI
Give thou to God no more than he asketh of thee; but to man also, that
which is man's. In all that thou doest, work from thine own heart,
simply; for his heart is as thine, when thine is wise and humble; and he
shall have understanding of thee. One drop of rain is as another, and
the sun's prism in all: and shalt not thou be as he, whose lives are the
breath of One? Only by making thyself his equal can he learn to hold
communion with thee, and at last own thee above him. Not till thou lean
over the water shalt thou see thine image therein: stand erect, and it
shall slope from thy feet and be lost. Know that there is but this means
whereby thou mayst serve God with man.... Set thine hand and thy soul to
serve man with God....
Chiaro, servant of God, take now thine Art unto thee, and paint me thus,
as I am, to know me; weak, as I am, and in the weeds of this time; only
with eyes which seek out labour, and with a faith, not learned, yet
jealous of prayer. Do this; so shall thy soul stand before thee always,
and perplex thee no more.
_Rossetti._
VII
I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see
everything I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To
the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the sun, and a
bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a
vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy, is
in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way.... To
the eye of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.
_Blake._
VIII
Painting is nothing but the art of expressing the invisible by the
visible.
_Fromentin._
IX
The picture I speak of is a small one, and represents merely the figure
of a woman, clad to the hands and feet with a green and grey raiment,
chaste and early in its fashion, but exceedingly simple.
She is standing: her hands are held together lightly, and her eyes set
earnestly open.
The face and hands in this picture, though wrought with great delicacy,
have the appearance of being painted at once, in a single sitting: the
drapery is unfinished. As soon as I saw the figure, it drew an awe upon
me, like water in shadow. I shall not attempt to describe it more than I
have already done, for the most absorbing wonder of it was its
literality. You knew that figure, when painted, had been seen; yet it
was not a thing to be seen of men.
_Rossetti._
X
A great work of high art is a noble theme treated in a noble manner,
awakening our best and most reverential feelings, touching our
generosity, our tenderness, or disposing us generally to seriousness--a
subject of human endurance, of human justice, of human aspiration and
hope, depicted worthily by the special means art has in her power to
use. In Michael Angelo and Raphael we have high art; in Titian we have
high art; in Turner we have high art. The first appeals to our highest
sensibilities by majesty of line, the second mainly by dignified
serenity, the third by splendour especially, the Englishman by a
combination of these qualities, but, lacking the directly human appeal
to human sympathies, his work must be put on a lower level.
_Watts._
XI
THE SIX CANONS OF ART
Rhythmic vitality, anatomical structure, conformity with nature,
suitability of colouring, artistic composition, and finish.
_Hsieh Ho_ (Chinese, sixth century A.D.).
XII
In painting, the most troublesome subject is man, then landscape, then
dogs and horses, then buildings, which being fixed objects are easy to
manage up to a certain point, but of which it is difficult to get
finished pictures.
_Ku K'ai-Chih_ (Chinese, fourth century A.D.).
XIII
First it is necessary to know what this sort of imitation is, and to
define it.
Definition:
It is an imitation made with lines and with colours on some plane
surface of everything that can be seen under the sun. Its object is to
give delight.
Principles which may be learnt by all men of reason:
No visible object can be presented without light.
No visible object can be presented without a transparent medium.
No visible object can be presented without a boundary.
No visible object can be presented without colour.
No visible object can be presented without distance.
No visible object can be presented without an instrument.
What follows cannot be learnt, it is born with the painter.
_Nicholas Poussin._
XIV
"In painting, and above all in portraiture," says Madame Cavé in her
charming essay, "it is soul which speaks to soul: and not knowledge
which speaks to knowledge."
This observation, more profound perhaps than she herself was aware, is
an arraignment of pedantry in execution. A hundred times I have said to
myself, "Painting, speaking materially, is nothing but a bridge between
the soul of the artist and that of the spectator."
_Delacroix._
XV
The art of painting is perhaps the most indiscreet of all the arts. It
is an unimpeachable witness to the moral state of the painter at the
moment when he held the brush. The thing he willed to do he did: that
which he only half-heartedly willed can be seen in his indecisions: that
which he did not will at all is not to be found in his work, whatever
he may say and whatever others may say. A distraction, a moment's
forgetfulness, a glow of warmer feeling, a diminution of insight,
relaxation of attention, a dulling of his love for what he is studying,
the tediousness of painting and the passion for painting, all the shades
of his nature, even to the lapses of his sensibility, all this is told
by the painter's work as clearly as if he were telling it in our ears.
_Fromentin._
XVI
The first merit of a picture is to feast the eyes. I don't mean that
the intellectual element is not also necessary; it is as with fine
poetry ... all the intellect in the world won't prevent it from being bad
if it grates harshly on the ear. We talk of having an ear; so it is not
every eye which is fitted to enjoy the subtleties of painting. Many people
have a false eye or an indolent eye; they can see objects literally, but
the exquisite is beyond them.
_Delacroix._
XVII
I would like my work to appeal to the eye and mind as music appeals to
the ear and heart. I have something that I want to say which may be
useful to and touch mankind, and to say it as well as I can in form and
colour is my endeavour; more than that I cannot do.
_Watts._
XVIII
Give me leave to say, that to paint a very beautiful Woman, I ought to
have before me those that are the most so; with this Condition, that
your Lordship might assist me in choosing out the greatest Beauty. But
as I am under a double Want, both of good Judgment and fine Women, I am
forced to go by a certain Idea which I form in my own Mind. Whether this
hath any Excellence of Art in it, I cannot determine; but 'tis what I
labour at.
_Raphael._
XIX
I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dream of something that never
was, never will be--in a light better than any light that ever shone--in
a land no one can define or remember, only desire--and the forms
divinely beautiful--and then I wake up with the waking of Brynhild.
_Burne-Jones._
XX
I love everything for what it is.
_Courbet._
XXI
I look for my tones; it is quite simple.
_Courbet._
XXII
Many people imagine that art is capable of an indefinite progress toward
perfection. This is a mistake. There is a limit where it must stop. And
for this reason: the conditions which govern the imitation of nature are
fixed. The object is to produce a picture, that is to say, a plane
surface either with or without a border, and on this surface the
representation of something produced by the sole means of different
colouring substances. Since it is obliged to remain thus circumscribed,
it is easy to foresee the limit of perfectibility. When the picture has
succeeded in satisfying our minds in all the conditions imposed on its
production, it will cease to interest. Such is the fate of everything
which has attained its end: we grow indifferent and abandon it.
In the conditions governing the production of the picture, every means
has been explored. The most difficult problem was that of complete
relief, depth of perspective carried to the point of perfect illusion.
The stereoscope has solved the problem. It only remains now to combine
this perfection with the other kinds of perfection already found. Let no
man imagine that art, bound by these conditions of the plane surface,
can ever free itself from the circle which limits it. It is easy to
foresee that its last word will soon have been said.
_Wiertz._
XXIII
In his admirable book on Shakespeare, Victor Hugo has shown that there
is no progress in the arts. Nature, their model, is unchangeable; and
the arts cannot transcend her limits. They attain completeness of
expression in the work of a master, on whom other masters are formed.
Then comes development, and then a lapse, an interval. By-and-by, art is
born anew under the stimulus of a man who catches from Light a new
convention.
_Bracquemond._
XXIV
The painter ... does not set his palette with the real hues of the
rainbow. When he pictures to us the character of a hero, or paints some
scene of nature, he does not present us with a living man in the
character of the hero (for this is the business of dramatic art); nor
does he make up his landscape of real rocks, or trees, or water, but
with fictitious resemblances of these. Yet in these figments he is as
truly bound by the laws of the appearance of those realities, of which
they are the copy (and very much to the same extent), as the musician is
by the natural laws and properties of sound.
In short, the whole object of physical science, or, in other words, the
whole of sensible nature, is included in the domain of imitative art,
either as the subjects, the objects, or the materials of imitation:
every fine art, therefore, has certain physical sciences collateral to
it, on the abstractions of which it builds, more or less, according to
its nature and purpose. But the drift of the art itself is something
totally distinct from that of the physical science to which it is
related; and it is not more absurd to say that physiology or anatomy
constitute the science of poetry or dramatic art than that acoustics and
harmonics are the science of music; optics, of painting; mechanics, or
other branches of physical science, that of architecture.
_Dyce._
XXV
After all I have seen of Art, with nothing am I more impressed than with
the necessity, in all great work, for suppressing the workman and all
the mean dexterity of practice. The result itself, in quiet dignity, is
the only worthy attainment. Wood-engraving, of all things most ready for
dexterity, reads us a good lesson.
_Edward Calvert._
XXVI
Shall Painting be confined to the sordid drudgery of facsimile
representations of merely mortal and perishing substances, and not be as
poetry and music are, elevated into its own proper sphere of invention
and visionary conception? No, it shall not be so! Painting, as well as
poetry and music, exists and exults in immortal thoughts.
_Blake._
XXVII
If any man has any poetry in him, he should paint, for it has all been
said and written, and they have scarcely begun to paint it.
_William Morris._
XXVIII
Long live conscience and simplicity! there lies the only way to the true
and the sublime.
_Corot._
XXIX
All the young men of this school of Ingres have something of the pedant
about them; they seem to think that merely to be enrolled among the
party of serious painters is a merit in itself. Serious painting is
their party cry. I told Demay that a crowd of people of talent had done
nothing worth speaking of because of all these factious dogmas that they
get enslaved to, or that the prejudice of the moment imposes on them.
So, for example, with this famous cry of _Beauty_, which is, according
to the world's opinion, the goal of the arts: if it is the one and only
goal, what becomes of men who, like Rubens, Rembrandt, and northern
natures in general, prefer other qualities? Demand of Puget purity,
beauty in fact, and it is good-bye to his verve. Speaking generally, men
of the North are less attracted to beauty; the Italian prefers
decoration; this applies to music too.
_Delacroix._
XXX
At the present time the task is easier. It is a question of allowing to
everything its own interest, of putting man back in his place, and, if
need be, of doing without him. The moment has come to think less, to aim
less high, to look more closely, to observe better, to paint as well but
differently. This is the painting of the crowd, of the townsman, the
workman, the parvenu, the man in the street; done wholly for him, done
from him. It is a question of becoming humble before humble things,
small before small things, subtle before subtle things; of gathering
them all together without omission and without disdain, of entering
familiarly into their intimacy, affectionately into their way of being;
it is a matter of sympathy, attentive curiosity, patience. Henceforth,
genius will consist in having no prejudice, in not being conscious of
one's knowledge, in allowing oneself to be taken by surprise by one's
model, in asking only from him how he shall be represented. As for
beautifying--never! ennobling--never! correcting--never! These are lies
and useless trouble. Is there not in every artist worthy of the name a
something which sees to this naturally and without effort?
_Fromentin._
XXXI
I send you also some etchings and a "Woman drinking Absinthe," drawn
this winter from life in Paris. It is a girl called Marie Joliet, who
used every evening to come drunk to the Bal Bullier, and who had a look
in her eyes of death galvanised into life. I made her sit to me and
tried to render what I saw. This is my principle in the task I have set
before me. I am determined to make no book-illustration but it shall be
a means of contributing towards an _effect of life_ and nothing more. A
patch of colour and it is sufficient; we must leave these childish
thoughts behind us. Life! we must try to render life, and it is hard
enough.
_Félicien Rops._
XXXII
So this damned Realism made an instinctive appeal to my painter's
vanity, and deriding all traditions, cried aloud with the confidence of
ignorance, "Back to Nature!" _Nature!_ ah, my friend, what mischief that
cry has done me. Where was there an apostle apter to receive this
doctrine, so convenient for me as it was--beautiful Nature, and all that
humbug? It is nothing but that. Well, the world was watching; and it saw
"The Piano," the "White Girl," the Thames subjects, the marines ...
canvases produced by a fellow who was puffed up with the conceit of
being able to prove to his comrades his magnificent gifts, qualities
which only needed a rigorous training to make their possessor to-day a
master, instead of a dissipated student. Ah, why was I not a pupil of
Ingres? I don't say that out of enthusiasm for his pictures; I have
only a moderate liking for them. Several of his canvases, which we have
looked at together, seem to me of a very questionable style, not at all
Greek, as people want to call it, but French, and viciously French. I
feel that we must go far beyond this, that there are far more beautiful
things to be done. Yet, I repeat, why was I not his pupil? What a master
he would have been for us! How salutary would have been his guidance!
_Whistler._
XXXIII
It has been said, "Who will deliver us from the Greeks and Romans?" Soon
we shall be saying, "Who will deliver us from realism?" Nothing is so
tiring as a constant close imitation of life. One comes back inevitably
to imaginative work. Homer's fictions will always be preferred to
historical truth, Rubens' fabulous magnificence to all the frippery
copied exactly from the lay figure.
The painter who is a machine will pass away, the painter who is a mind
will remain; the spirit for ever triumphs over matter.
_Wiertz._
XXXIV
A little book by the Russian soldier and artist Verestchagin is
interesting to the student. As a realist, he condemns all art founded on
the principles of picture-makers, and depends only on exact imitation,
and the conditions of accident. In our seeking after truth, and
endeavour never to be unreal or affected, it must not be forgotten that
this endeavour after truth is to be made with materials altogether
unreal and different from the object to be imitated. Nothing in a
picture is real; indeed, the painter's art is the most unreal thing in
the whole range of our efforts. Though art must be founded on nature,
art and nature are distinctly different things; in a certain class of
subjects probability may, indeed must, be violated, provided the
violation is not disagreeable.
Everything in a work of art must accord. Though gloom and desolation
would deepen the effects of a distressing incident in real life, such
accompaniments are not necessary to make us feel a thrill of horror or
awaken the keenest sympathy. The most awful circumstances may take place
under the purest sky, and amid the most lovely surroundings. The human
sensibilities will be too much affected by the human sympathies to heed
the external conditions; but to awaken in a picture similar impressions,
certain artificial aids must be used; the general aspect must be
troubled or sad.
_Watts._
XXXV
The remarks made on my "Man with the Hoe" seem always very strange to
me, and I am obliged to you for repeating them to me, for once more it
sets me marvelling at the ideas they impute to me. In what club have my
critics ever encountered me? A Socialist, they cry! Well, really, I
might answer the charge as the commissary from Auvergne did when he
wrote home: "They have been saying that I am a Saint-Simonian: it's not
true; I don't know what a Saint-Simonian is."
Can't they then simply admit such ideas as may occur to the mind in
looking at a man doomed to gain his living by the sweat of his brow?
There are some who tell me that I deny the charm of the country. I find
in the country much more than charm; I find infinite splendour; I look
on everything as they do on the little powers of which Christ said, "I
say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
these." I see and note the aureole on the dandelion, and the sun which,
far away, beyond the stretching country, spends his glory on the clouds.
I see just as much in the flat plain; in the horses steaming as they
toil; and then in a stony place I see a man quite exhausted, whose gasps
have been audible since morning, who tries to draw himself up for a
moment to take breath. The drama is surrounded by splendours. This is no
invention of mine; and it is long since that expression "the cry of the
earth" was discovered. My critics are men of learning and taste, I
imagine; but I cannot put myself into their skins, and since I have
never in my life seen anything but the fields, I try to tell, as best I
can, what I have seen and experienced as I worked.
_Millet._
XXXVI
One of the hardest things in the world is to determine how much realism
is allowable in any particular picture. It is of so many different kinds
too. For instance, I want a shield or a crown or a pair of wings or what
not, to look real. Well, I make what I want, or a model of it, and then
make studies from that. So that what eventually gets on to the canvas is
a reflection of a reflection of something purely imaginary. The three
Magi never had crowns like that, supposing them to have had crowns at
all, but the effect is realistic because the crown from which the
studies were made is real--and so on.
_Burne-Jones._
XXXVII
Do you understand now that all my intelligence rejects is in immediate
relation to all my heart aspires to, and that the spectacle of human
blunders and human vileness is an equally powerful motive for action in
the exercise of art with springs of tranquil contemplation that I have
felt within me since I was a child?
We have come far, I hope, from the shadowy foliage crowning the humble
roof of the primitive human dwelling, far from the warbling of the birds
that brood among the branches; far from all these tender things. We left
them, notwithstanding, the other day; and even if we had stayed, do you
think we should have continued to enjoy them?
Believe me, everything comes from the universal; we must embrace to give
life.
Whatever interest one may get from material offered by a period,
religion, manners, history, &c., in representing a particular type, it
will avail nothing without an understanding of the universal agency of
atmosphere, that modelling of infinity; it shall come to pass that a
stone fence, about which the air seems to move and breathe, shall be, in
a museum, a grander conception than any ambitious work which lacks this
universal element and expresses only something personal. All the
personal and particular majesty of a portrait of Louis XIV. by Lebrun or
by Rigaud shall be as nothing beside the simplicity of a tuft of grass
shining clear in a gleam of sunlight.
_Rousseau._
XXXVIII
Of all the things that is likely to give us back popular art in England,
the cleaning of England is the first and the most necessary. Those who
are to make beautiful things must live in a beautiful place.
_William Morris._
XXXIX
On the whole, one must suppose that beauty is a marketable quality, and
that the better the work is all round, both as a work of art and in its
technique, the more likely it is to find favour with the public.
_William Morris._
ART AND SOCIETY
XL
With the language of beauty in full resonance around him, art was not
difficult to the painter and sculptor of old as it is with us. No
anatomical study will do for the modern artist what habitual
acquaintance with the human form did for Pheidias. No Venetian painted a
horse with the truth and certainty of Horace Vernet, who knew the animal
by heart, rode him, groomed him, and had him constantly in his studio.
Every artist must paint what he sees, rather every artist must paint
what is around him, can produce no great work unless he impress the
character of his age upon his production, not necessarily taking his
subjects from it (better if he can), but taking the impress of its life.
The great art of Pheidias did not deal with the history of his time, but
compressed into its form the qualities of the most intellectual period
the world has seen; nor were any materials to be invented or borrowed,
he had them all at hand, expressing himself in a natural language
derived from familiarity with natural objects. Beauty is the language of
art, and with this at command thoughts as they arise take visible form
perhaps almost without effort, or (certain technical difficulties
overcome) with little more than is required in writing--this not
absolving the artist or the poet from earnest thought and severe study.
In many respects the present age is far more advanced than preceding
times, incomparably more full of knowledge; but the language of great
art is dead, for general, noble beauty, pervades life no more. The
artist is obliged to return to extinct forms of speech if he would speak
as the great ones have spoken. Nothing beautiful is seen around him,
excepting always sky and trees and sea; these, as he is mainly a dweller
in cities, he cannot live enough with. But it is, perhaps, in the real
estimation in which art is held that we shall find the reason for
failure. If the world cared for her language, art could not help
speaking, the utterance being, perhaps, simply beautiful. But even in
these days when we have ceased to prize this, if it were demanded that
art should take its place beside the great intellectual outflow of the
time, the response would hardly be doubtful.
_Watts._
XLI
You refer to the use and purpose of the liberal arts; not a city in
Europe, at present, is fulfilling them. And if any one in Melbourne were
now to produce, even on a small scale, a picture fulfilling the
conditions of liberal art, then Melbourne might take the lead of
civilised cities. But it is not the ambition of leading, nor the
restlessness of a competitive spirit that may accomplish this.
A good poem, whether painted or written, whether large or small, should
represent _beautiful life_. Are you able to name any one who has
conceived this beauty of the life of men? I will not complicate the
requirements of painted poesy by speaking of the music of colour with
which it should be clothed; black and white were enough. The very
attempt to express the confession of love were fulfilment sufficient.
_Edward Calvert._
XLII
So art has become foolishly confounded with education, that all should
be equally qualified. Whereas, while polish, refinement, culture, and
breeding are in no way arguments for artistic result, it is also no
reproach to the most finished scholar or greatest gentleman in the land
that he be absolutely without eye for painting or ear for music--that in
his heart he prefer the popular print to the scratch of Rembrandt's
needle, or the songs of the hall to Beethoven's "C Minor Symphony."
Let him have but the wit to say so, and not let him feel the admission a
proof of inferiority.
Art happens--no hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend on it, the
vastest intelligence cannot bring it about, and puny efforts to make it
universal end in quaint comedy and coarse farce.
This is as it should be; and all attempts to make it otherwise are due
to the eloquence of the ignorant, the zeal of the conceited.
_Whistler._
XLIII
Art will not grow and flourish, nay it will not long exist, unless it be
shared by all people; and for my part I don't wish that it should.
_William Morris._
XLIV
No, art is not an element of corruption. The man who drinks from a
wooden bowl is nearer to the brute that drinks from a stone trough than
he who quenches his thirst from a crystal cup; and the artist who gave
the glass its shape, impressed as in a mould of bronze by the simple
means of a second's breath and yet more cheaply than the fashioning of
the wooden bowl, has done more to ennoble and improve his neighbour than
any inventor of a system: in his work he gives him the use and the
enjoyment of things for which orators can only create a craving.
_Jules Klagmann._
XLV
The improviser never makes fine poetry.
_Titian._
XLVI
Agatharcus said to Zeuxis--For my part I soon despatch my Pictures. You
are a happy Man, replies Zeuxis; I do mine with Time and application,
because I would have them good, and I am satisfyed, that what is soon
done, will soon be forgotten.
XLVII
Art is not a pleasure trip. It is a battle, a mill that grinds.
_Millet._
STUDY AND TRAINING
XLVIII
Raphael and Michael Angelo owe that immortal fame of theirs, which has
gone out into the ends of the earth, to the passion of curiosity and
delight with which this noble subject inspired them.
No man who has not studied the sciences can make a work that shall bring
him great praise, save from ignorant and easily satisfied persons.
_Jean Goujon._
XLIX
He that would be a painter must have a natural turn thereto.
Love and delight therein are better teachers of the Art of Painting than
compulsion is.
If a man is to become a really good painter he must be educated thereto
from his very earliest years. He must copy much of the work of good
artists until he attain a free hand.
To paint is to be able to portray upon a flat surface any visible thing
whatsoever that may be chosen.
It is well for any one first to learn how to divide and reduce to
measure the human figure, before learning anything else.
_Dürer._
L
The painter requires such knowledge of mathematics as belongs to
painting, and severance from companions who are not in sympathy with
his studies, and his brain should have the power of adapting itself to
the tenor of the objects which present themselves before it, and he
should be freed from all other cares. And if, while considering and
examining one subject, a second should intervene, as happens when an
object occupies the mind, he ought to decide which of these subjects
presents greater difficulties in investigation, and follow that until it
becomes entirely clear, and afterwards pursue the investigation of the
other. And above all he should keep his mind as clear as the surface of
a mirror, which becomes changed to as many different colours as are
those of the objects within it, and his companions should resemble him
in a taste for these studies; and if he fail to find any such, he should
accustom himself to be alone in his investigations, for in the end he
will find no more profitable companionship.
_Leonardo._
LI
If you are fond of copying other Men's Work, as being Originals more
constant to be seen and imitated than any living Object, I should rather
advise to copy anything moderately carved than excellently painted: For
by imitating a Picture, we only habituate our Hand to take a mere
Resemblance; whereas by drawing from a carved Original, we learn not
only to take this Resemblance, but also the true Lights.
_Leon Battista Alberti._
LII
There are a thousand proofs that the old masters and all good painters
from Raphael onwards executed their frescoes from cartoons and their
little easel pictures from more or less finished drawings.... Your model
gives you exactly what you want to paint neither in character of drawing
nor in colour, but at the same time you cannot do without him.
To paint Achilles the most goodly of men, though you had for your model
the most abject you must depend on him, and can depend on him for the
structure of the human body, for its movement and poise. The proof of
this is that Raphael used his pupils in his studies for the movements of
the figures in his divine pictures.
Whatever your talents may be, if you paint not from your studies after
nature, but directly from the model, you will always be a slave and your
pictures will show it. Raphael, on the contrary, had so completely
mastered nature and had his mind so full of her, that instead of being
ruled by her, one might say that she obeyed him and came at his command
to place herself in his pictures.
_Ingres._
LIII
No one can ever design till he has learned the language of Art by making
many finished copies both of Nature, Art, and of whatever comes in his
way, from earliest childhood. The difference between a bad artist and a
good is, that the bad artist _seems_ to copy a great deal, the good one
_does_ copy a great deal.
_Blake._
LIV
If you deprive an artist of all he has borrowed from the experience of
others the originality left will be but a twentieth part of him.
Originality by itself cannot constitute a remarkable talent.
_Wiertz._
LV
I am convinced that to reach the highest degree of perfection as a
painter, it is necessary, not only to be acquainted with the ancient
statues, but we must be inwardly imbued with a thorough comprehension of
them.
_Rubens._
LVI
First of all copy drawings by a good master made by his art from nature
and not as exercises; then from a relief, keeping by you a drawing done
from the same relief; then from a good model, and of this you ought to
make a practice.
_Leonardo._
LVII
I wish to do something purely Greek; I feed my eyes on the antique
statues, I mean even to imitate some of them. The Greeks never
scrupled to reproduce a composition, a movement, a type already received
and used. They put all their care, all their art, into perfecting an
idea which had been used by others before them. They thought, and
thought rightly, that in the arts the manner of rendering and expressing
an idea matters more than the idea itself.
[Illustration: _Rubens_ THE CASTLE IN THE PARK _Hanfstaengl_]
To give a clothing, a perfect form to one's thought is to be an
artist ... it is the only way.
Well, I have done my best and I hope to attain my object.
_L. David._
LVIII
Who amongst us, if he were to attempt in reality to represent a
celebrated work of Apelles or Timanthus, such as Pliny describes them,
but would produce something absurd, or perfectly foreign to the
exalted greatness of the ancients? Each one, relying on his own powers,
would produce some wretched, crude, unfermented stuff, instead of an
exquisite old wine, uniting strength and mellowness, outraging those
great spirits whom I endeavour reverently to follow, satisfied, however,
to honour the marks of their footsteps, instead of supposing--I
acknowledge it candidly--that I can ever attain to their eminence even
in mere conception.
_Rubens._
LIX
[You have stated that you thought these Marbles had great truth and
imitation of nature; do you consider that that adds to their value?]
It considerably adds to it, because I consider them as united with grand
form. There is in them that variety that is produced in the human form,
by the alternate action and repose of the muscles, that strike one
particularly. I have myself a very good collection of the best casts
from the antique statues, and was struck with that difference in them,
in returning from the Elgin Marbles to my own house.
_Lawrence._
LX
It is absolutely necessary that at some moment or other in one's career
one should reach the point, not of despising all that is outside
oneself, but of abandoning for ever that almost blind fanaticism which
impels us all to imitate the great masters, and to swear only by their
works. It is necessary to say to oneself, That is good for Rubens, this
for Raphael, Titian, or Michael Angelo. What they have done is their own
business; I am not bound to this master or to that. It is necessary to
learn to make what one has found one's own: a pinch of personal
inspiration is worth everything else.
_Delacroix._
LXI
From Phidias to Clodion, from Correggio to Fragonard, from the greatest
to the least of those who have deserved the name of master, Art has been
pursuing the Chimæra, attempting to reconcile two opposites--the most
slavish fidelity to nature and the most absolute independence of her, an
independence so absolute that the work of art may claim to be a
creation. This is the persistent problem offered by the unstable
character of the point of view at which it is approached; the whole
mystery of art. The subject, as presented in nature, cannot keep the
place which art with its transforming instinct would assign it; and
therefore a single formula can never be adequate to the totality of
nature's manifestations; the draughtsman will talk of its form, a
colourist of its effect.
Considered in this light, nature is nothing more than one of the
instruments of the arts, in the same category with their principles,
elements, formulas, conventions, tools.
_Bracquemond._
LXII
One must copy nature always, and learn how to see her rightly. It is for
this that one should study the antique and the great masters, not in
order to imitate them, but, I repeat, to learn to see.
Do you think I send you to the Louvre to find there what people call
"le beau idéal," something which is outside nature?
It was stupidity like this which in bad periods led to the decadence of
art. I send you there to learn from the antique how to see nature,
because they themselves are nature: therefore one must live among them,
and absorb them.
It is the same in the painting of the great ages. Do you think, when I
tell you to copy, that I want to make copyists of you? No, I want you to
take the sap from the plant.
_Ingres._
LXIII
The strict copying of nature is not art; it is only a means to an end,
an element in the whole. Art, while presenting nature, must manifest
itself in its own essence. It is not a mirror, uncritically reflecting
every image; it is the artist who must mould the image to his will; else
his work is not performed.
_Bracquemond._
LXIV
Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as
the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artist is born to
pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the
result may be beautiful; as the musician gathers his notes, and forms
his chords, until he bring forth from chaos glorious harmony.
To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to
the player that he may sit on the piano.
_Whistler._
LXV
When you have thoroughly learnt perspective, and have fixed in your
memory all the various parts and forms of things, you should often amuse
yourself when you take a walk for recreation, in watching and taking
note of the attitudes and actions of men as they talk and dispute, or
laugh or come to blows one with another, both their actions and those of
the bystanders who either intervene or stand looking on at these things;
noting these down with rapid strokes in this way, in a little
pocket-book, which you ought always to carry with you. And let this be
of tinted paper, so that it may not be rubbed out; but you should change
the old for a new one, for these are not things to be rubbed out but
preserved with the utmost diligence; for there is such an infinite
number of forms and actions of things that the memory is incapable of
preserving them, and therefore you should keep those (sketches) as your
patterns and teachers.
_Leonardo._
LXVI
Two men stop to talk together: I pencil them in detail, beginning at the
head, for example; they separate and I have nothing but a fragment on my
paper. Some children are sitting on the steps of a church; I begin,
their mother calls them; my sketch-book becomes filled with tips of
noses and locks of hair. I make a resolution not to go home without a
whole figure, and I try for the first time to draw in mass, to draw
rapidly, which is the only possible way of drawing, and which is to-day
one of the chief faculties of our moderns. I put myself to draw in the
winking of an eye the first group that presents itself; if it moves on I
have at least put down the general character; if it stops, I can go on
to the details. I do many such exercises, and have even gone so far as
to cover the lining of my hat with lightning sketches of opera-ballets
and opera scenery.
_Corot._
LXVII
There is my model (the artist pointed to the crowd which thronged a
market-place); art lives by studying nature, not by imitating any
artist.
_Eupompus._
LXVIII
When you have clearly and distinctly learned in what good colouring
consists, you cannot do better than have recourse to nature herself, who
is always at hand, and in comparison of whose true splendour the best
coloured pictures are but faint and feeble.
However, as the practice of copying is not entirely to be excluded,
since the mechanical practice of painting is learned in some measure by
it, let those choice parts only be selected which have recommended the
work to notice. If its excellence consists in its general effect, it
would be proper to make slight sketches of the machinery and general
management of the picture. Those sketches should be kept always by you
for the regulation of your style. Instead of copying the touches of
those great masters, copy only their conceptions. Instead of treading in
their footsteps, endeavour only to keep the same road. Labour to invent
on their general principles and way of thinking. Possess yourself with
their spirit. Consider with yourself how a Michael Angelo or a Raffaelle
would have treated this subject; and work yourself into a belief that
your picture is to be seen and criticised by them when completed. Even
an attempt of this kind will rouse your powers.
_Reynolds._
LXIX
What do you mean--that you have been working, but without success? Do
you mean that you cannot get the price you ask? then sell it for less,
till, by practice, you shall improve, and command a better price. Or do
you only mean that you are not satisfied with your work? nobody ever was
that I know, except J---- W----. Peg away! While you're at work you must
be improving. Do something from Nature indoors when you cannot get out,
to keep your hand and eye in practice. Don't get into the way of working
too much at your drawings away from Nature.
_Charles Keene._
LXX
The purpose of art is no other than to delineate the form and express
the spirit of an object, animate or inanimate, as the case may be. The
use of art is to produce copies of things; and if an artist has a
thorough knowledge of the properties of the thing he paints he can
assuredly make a name. Just as a writer of profound erudition and good
memory has ever at his command an inexhaustible supply of words and
phrases which he freely makes use of in writing, so can a painter, who
has accumulated experience by drawing from nature, paint any object
without a conscious effort. The artist who confines himself to copying
from models painted by his master, fares no better than a literatus who
cannot rise above transcribing others' compositions. An ancient critic
says that writing ends in describing a thing or narrating an event, but
painting can represent the actual forms of things. Without the true
depiction of objects, there can be no pictorial art. Nobility of
sentiment and such-like only come after a successful delineation of the
external form of an object. The beginner in art should direct his
efforts more to the latter than to the former. He should learn to paint
according to his own ideas, not to slavishly copy the models of old
artists. Plagiarism is a crime to be avoided not only by men of letters
but also by painters.
_Okio_ (Japanese, eighteenth century).
LXXI
I remember Dürer the painter, who used to say that, as a young man, he
loved extraordinary and unusual designs in painting, but that in his old
age he took to examining Nature, and strove to imitate her as closely as
he possibly could; but he found by experience how hard it is not to
deviate from her.
_Dürer_ (quoted by Melancthon).
LXXII
I have heard painters acknowledge, though in that acknowledgment no
degradation of themselves was intended, that they could do better
without Nature than with her; or, as they expressed it themselves, _that
it only put them out_. A painter with such ideas and such habits, is
indeed in a most hopeless state. _The art of seeing Nature_, or, in
other words, the art of using models, is in reality the great object,
the point to which all our studies are directed. As for the power of
being able to do tolerably well, from practice alone, let it be valued
according to its worth. But I do not see in what manner it can be
sufficient for the production of correct, excellent, and finished
pictures. Works deserving this character never were produced, nor ever
will arise, from memory alone; and I will venture to say, that an artist
who brings to his work a mind tolerably furnished with the general
principles of art, and a taste formed upon the works of good artists,
in short, who knows in what excellence consists, will, with the
assistance of models, which we will likewise suppose he has learnt the
art of using, be an over-match for the greatest painter that ever lived
who should be debarred such advantages.
_Reynolds._
LXXIII
Do not imitate; do not follow others--you will always be behind them.
_Corot._
LXXIV
Never paint a subject unless it calls insistently and distinctly upon
your eye and heart.
_Corot._
LXXV
I should never paint anything that was not the result of an impression
received from the aspect of nature, whether in landscape or figures.
_Millet._
LXXVI
You must interpret nature with entire simplicity and according to your
personal sentiment, altogether detaching yourself from what you know of
the old masters or of contemporaries. Only in this way will you do work
of real feeling. I know gifted people who will not avail themselves of
their power. Such people seem to me like a billiard-player whose
adversary is constantly giving him good openings, but who makes no use
of them. I think that if I were playing with that man, I would say,
"Very well, then, I will give you no more." If I were to sit in
judgment, I would punish the miserable creatures who squander their
natural gifts, and I would turn their hearts to work.
_Corot._
LXXVII
Sensation is rude and false unless _informed_ by intellection; and,
however delicate be the touch in obedience to remote gradation, yet
knowledge of the genus necessarily invests the representation with
perspicuous and truthful relations that ignorance could not possibly
have observed. Hence--Paint what you see; but know what you see.
_Only paint what you love in what you see_, and discipline yourself to
separate this essence from its dumb accompaniments, so that the accents
fall upon the points of passion. Let that which must be expressed of the
rest be merged, syncopated in the largeness of the _modulation_.
Boldly dare to omit the impertinent or irrelevant, and let the features
of the passion be modulated in _fewness_.
Not a touch without its meaning or its significance throughout the
courses. There is no disgrace, but on the contrary, honour, be the
touches never so few, if studied. By determined refusal to touch
vaguely, and with persistence in the slowness of thoughtful work, a
noble style may be at length obtained: swift as sublime.
_Edward Calvert._
LXXVIII
I started on Monday, 25th August, for Honfleur, where I stayed till 5th
September in the most blessed condition of spirit.
There I worked with my head, with my eyes, harvesting effects in the
mind; then, going over everything again, I called up within myself the
figures desired for the completion of the composition. Once I had evoked
all this world from nothingness, and envisaged it, and had found where
each thing was to be, I had to return to Paris to ask for nature's
authorisation and make sure of my advance. Nature justified me, and, as
she is kind to those who approach her reverentially, gave me of her
grace without stint.
_Puvis de Chavannes._
LXXIX
I wish to tell you, Francisco d'Ollanda, of an exceedingly great beauty
in this science of ours, of which perhaps you are aware, and which, I
think, you consider the highest, namely, that what one has most to work
and struggle for in painting, is to do the work with a great amount of
labour and study in such a way that it may afterwards appear, however
much it was laboured, to have been done almost quickly and almost
without any labour, and very easily, although it was not. And this is a
very excellent beauty. At times some things are done with little work in
the way I have said, but very seldom; most are done by dint of hard work
and appear to have been done very quickly.
_Michael Angelo._
METHODS OF WORK
LXXX
Every successful work is rapidly performed; quickness is only execrable
when it is empty--small. No one condemns the swiftness of an eagle.
To him who knows not the burden of process--the attributes that are to
claim attention with every epocha of the performance--all attempt at
swiftness will be mere pretence.
_Edward Calvert._
LXXXI
I am planning a large picture, and I regard all you say, but I do not
enter into that notion of varying one's plans to keep the public in good
humour. Change of weather and effect will always afford variety. What if
Van der Velde had quitted his sea-pieces, or Ruysdael his waterfalls, or
Hobbema his native woods? The world would have lost so many features in
art. I know that you wish for no material alteration, but I have to
combat from high quarters--even from Lawrence--the plausible argument
that _subject_ makes the picture. Perhaps you think an evening effect
might do; perhaps it might start me some new admirers, but I should lose
many old ones. I imagine myself driving a nail; I have driven it some
way, and by persevering I may drive it home; by quitting it to attack
others, though I may amuse myself, I do not advance beyond the first,
while that particular nail stands still. No man who can do any one thing
well will be able to do any other different thing equally well; and this
is true of Shakespeare, the greatest master of variety.
_Constable._
LXXXII
To work on the _Ladye_. Found part of the drapery bad, rubbed it out,
heightened the seat she sits on, mended the heads again; did a great
deal, but not finished yet. Any one might be surprised to read how I
work whole days on an old drawing done many years since, and which I
have twice worked over since it was rejected from the Royal Academy in
'47, and now under promise of sale to White for £20. But I cannot help
it. When I see a work going out of my hands, it is but natural, if I see
some little defect, that I should try to mend it, and what follows is
out of my power to direct: if I give one touch to a head, I give myself
three days' work, and spoil it half-a-dozen times over.
_Ford Madox Brown._
LXXXIII
In literature as in art the rough sketches of the masters are made for
connoisseurs, not for the vulgar crowd.
_A. Préault._
LXXXIV
It is true sketches, or such drawings as painters generally make for
their works, give this pleasure of imagination to a high degree. From a
slight, undetermined drawing, where the ideas of the composition and
character are, as I may say, only just touched upon, the imagination
supplies more than the painter himself, probably, could produce; and we
accordingly often find that the finished work disappoints the
expectation that was raised from the sketch; and this power of the
imagination is one of the causes of the great pleasure we have in
viewing a collection of drawings by great painters.
_Reynolds._
LXXXV
I have just been examining all the sketches I have used in making this
work. How many there are which fully satisfied me at the beginning, and
which seem feeble, inadequate, or ill-composed, now that the paintings
are advanced. I cannot tell myself often enough that it means an immense
deal of labour to bring a work to the highest pitch of impressiveness
of which it is capable. The oftener I revise it, the more it will gain
in expressiveness.... Though the touch disappear, though the fire of
execution be no longer the chief merit of the painting, there is no
doubt about this; and again how often does it happen that after this
intense labour, which has turned one's thought back on itself in every
direction, the hand obeys more swiftly and surely in giving the desired
lightness to the last touches.
_Delacroix._
LXXXVI
Let us agree as to the meaning of the word "finished." What finishes a
picture is not the quantity of detail in it, but the rightness of the
general effect. A picture is not limited only by its frame. Whatever be
the subject, there must be a principal object on which your eyes rest
continually: the other objects are only the complement of this, they are
less interesting to you; and after that there is nothing more for your
eye.
There is the real limit of your picture. This principal object must seem
so to the spectator of your work. Therefore, one must always return to
this, and state its colour with more and more decision.
_Rousseau._
LXXXVII
ON PROTOGENES
He was a great Master, but he often spoil'd his Pieces by endeavouring
to make them Perfect; he did not know when he had done well; a Man may
do too much as well as too little; and he is truly skilful, who knew
what was sufficient.
_Apelles._
FINISH
LXXXVIII
A picture must always be a little spoilt in the finishing of it. The
last touches, which are intended to draw the picture together, take off
from its freshness. To appear before the public one must cut out all
those happy accidents which are the joy of the artist. I compare these
murderous retouchings to those banal flourishes with which all airs of
music end, and to those insignificant spaces which the musician is
forced to put between the interesting parts of his work in order to lead
on from one motive to another or to give them their proper value.
Re-touching, however, is not so fatal to a picture as one might think,
when the picture has been well thought out and worked at with deep
feeling. Time, in effacing the touches, old as well as new, gives back
to the work its complete effect.
_Delacroix._
LXXXIX
A picture, the effect of which is true, is finished.
_Goya._
XC
You please me much, by saying that no other fault is found in your
picture than the roughness of the surface; for that part being of use
in giving force to the effect at a proper distance, and what a judge of
painting knows an original from a copy by--in short, being the touch of
the pencil which is harder to preserve than smoothness, I am much better
pleased that they should spy out things of that kind, than to see an eye
half an inch out of its place, or a nose out of drawing when viewed at a
proper distance. I don't think it would be more ridiculous for a person
to put his nose close to the canvas and say the colours smelt offensive,
than to say how rough the paint lies; for one is just as material as the
other with regard to hurting the effect and drawing of a picture.
_Gainsborough._
XCI
The picture[2] will be seen to the greatest advantage if it is hung in a
strong light, and in such a manner that the spectator can stand at some
distance from it.
_Rembrandt._
[Footnote 2: Probably the "Blinding of Samson."]
XCII
Don't look at a picture close, it smells bad.
_Rembrandt._
XCIII
Try to be frank in drawing and in colour; give things their full relief;
make a painting which can be seen at a distance; this is indispensable.
_Chassériau._
XCIV
If I might point out to you another defect, very prevalent of late, in
our pictures, and one of the same contracted character with those you so
happily illustrate, it would be that of the _want of breadth_, and in
others a perpetual division and subdivision of parts, to give what their
perpetrators call space; add to this a constant disturbing and torturing
of everything whether in light or in shadow, by a niggling touch, to
produce fulness of subject. This is the very reverse of what we see in
Cuyp or Wilson, and even, with all his high finishing, in Claude. I have
been warning our friend Collins against this, and was also urging young
Landseer to beware of it; and in what I have been doing lately myself
have been studying much from Rembrandt and from Cuyp, so as to acquire
what the great masters succeeded so well in, namely, that power by which
the chief objects, and even the minute finishing of parts, tell over
everything that is meant to be subordinate in their pictures. Sir Joshua
had this remarkably, and could even make _the features of the face_ tell
over everything, however strongly painted. I find that repose and
breadth in the shadows and half-tints do a great deal towards it.
Zoffany's figures derive great consequence from this; and I find that
those who have studied light and shadow the most never appear to fail in
it.
_Wilkie._
XCV
The commonest error into which a critic can fall is the remark we so
often hear that such-and-such an artist's work is "careless," and "would
be better had more labour been spent upon it." As often as not this is
wholly untrue. As soon as the spectator can _see_ that "more labour has
been spent upon it," he may be sure that the picture is to that extent
incomplete and unfinished, while the look of freshness that is
inseparable from a really successful picture would of necessity be
absent. If the high finish of a picture is so apparent as immediately to
force itself upon the spectator, he may _know_ that it is not as it
should be; and from the moment that the artist feels his work is
becoming a labour, he may depend upon it it will be without freshness,
and to that extent without the merit of a true work of art. Work should
always look as though it had been done with ease, however elaborate;
what we see should appear to have been done without effort, whatever may
be the agonies beneath the surface. M. Meissonier surpasses all his
predecessors, as well as all his contemporaries, in the quality of high
finish, but what you see is evidently done easily and without labour. I
remember Thackeray saying to me, concerning a certain chapter in one of
his books that the critics agreed in accusing of carelessness;
"Careless? If I've written that chapter once I've written it a dozen
times--and each time worse than the last!" a proof that labour did not
assist in his case. When an artist fails it is not so much from
carelessness: to do his best is not only profitable to him, but a joy.
But it is not given to every man--not, indeed, to any--to succeed
whenever and however he tries. The best painter that ever lived never
entirely succeeded more than four or five times; that is to say, no
artist ever painted more than four or five _masterpieces_, however high
his general average may have been, for such success depends on the
coincidence, not only of genius and inspiration, but of health and mood
and a hundred other mysterious contingencies. For my own part, I have
often been laboured, but whatever I am I am never careless. I may
honestly say that I never consciously placed an idle touch upon canvas,
and that I have always been earnest and hard-working; yet the worst
pictures I ever painted in my life are those into which I threw most
trouble and labour, and I confess I should not grieve were half my works
to go to the bottom of the Atlantic--if I might choose the half to go.
Sometimes as I paint I may find my work becoming laborious; but as soon
as I detect any evidence of that labour I paint the whole thing out
without more ado.
_Millais._
[Illustration: _Millais_ LOVE _By permission of F. Warne & Co._]
XCVI
I think that a work of art should not only be careful and sincere, but
that the care and sincerity should also be evident. No ugly smears
should be allowed to do duty for the swiftness which comes from long
practice, or to find excuse in the necessity which the accomplished
artist feels to speak distinctly. That necessity must never receive
impulse from a desire to produce an effect on the walls of a gallery:
there is much danger of this working _un_consciously in the accomplished
artist, _consciously_ in the student.
_Watts._
XCVII
Real effect is making out the parts. Why are we to be told that masters,
who could think, had not the judgment to perform the inferior parts of
art? (as Reynolds artfully calls them); that we are to learn to _think_
from great masters, and to perform from underlings--to learn to design
from Raphael, and to execute from Rubens?
_Blake._
XCVIII
If I knew that my portrait was still at Antwerp, I would have it kept
back for the case to be opened, so that one could see that it had not
been hurt by so long a time spent in a case without being exposed to the
air, and that, as often happens to colours freshly put on, it has not
turned rather yellow, thereby losing all its first effect. The remedy,
if this has happened, is to expose it repeatedly to the sun, the rays of
which absorb the superfluity of oil which causes this change; and if at
any time it still turns brown, it must be exposed afresh to the sun.
Warmth is the only remedy for this serious mischief.
_Rubens._
EFFECTS OF TIME ON PAINTING
XCIX
The only way to judge of the treasures the Old Masters of whatever age
have left us--whether in architecture, sculpture, or painting--with any
hope of sound deduction, is to look at the work and ask oneself--"What
was that like when it was new?" The Elgin Marbles are allowed by common
consent to be the perfection of art. But how much of our feeling of
reverence is inspired by time? Imagine the Parthenon as it must have
looked with the frieze of the mighty Phidias fresh from the chisel.
Could one behold it in all its pristine beauty and splendour we should
see a white marble building, blinding in the dazzling brightness of a
southern sun, the figures of the exquisite frieze in all probability
painted--there is more than a suspicion of that--and the whole standing
out against the intense blue sky; and many of us, I venture to think,
would cry at once, "How excessively crude." No; Time and Varnish are two
of the greatest of Old Masters, and their merits and virtues are too
often attributed by critics--I do not of course allude to the
professional art-critics--to the painters of the pictures they have
toned and mellowed. The great artists all painted in _bright_ colours,
such as it is the fashion nowadays for men to decry as crude and vulgar,
never suspecting that what they applaud in those works is merely the
result of what they condemn in their contemporaries. Take a case in
point--the "Bacchus and Ariadne" in the National Gallery, with its
splendid red robe and its rich brown grass. You may rest assured that
the painter of that bright red robe never painted the grass brown. He
saw the colour as it was, and painted it as it was--distinctly green;
only it has faded with time to its present beautiful mellow colour. Yet
many men nowadays will not have a picture with green in it; there are
even buyers who, when giving a commission to an artist, will stipulate
that the canvas shall contain none of it. But God Almighty has given us
green, and you may depend upon it it's a fine colour.
_Millais._
C
I must further dissent from any opinion that beauty of surface and what
is technically called "quality" are mainly due to time. Sir John himself
has quoted the early pictures of Rembrandt as examples of hard and
careful painting, devoid of the charm and mystery so remarkable in his
later work. The early works of Velasquez are still more remarkable
instances, being, as they are, singularly tight and disagreeable--time
having done little or nothing towards making them more agreeable.
_Watts._
CI
I am painting for thirty years hence.
_Monticelli._
CII
Sir John Millais is certainly right in his estimate of strong and even
bright colour, but it seems to me that he is mistaken in believing that
the colour of the Venetians was ever crude, or that time will ever turn
white into colour. The colour of the best-preserved pictures by Titian
shows a marked distinction between light flesh tones and white drapery.
This is most distinctly seen in the small "Noli Me Tangere" in our
National Gallery, in the so-called "Venus" of the Tribune and in the
"Flora" of the Uffizi, both in Florence, and in Bronzino's "All is
Vanity," also in the National Gallery. In the last-named picture, for
example, the colour is as crude and the surface as bare of mystery as if
it had been painted yesterday. As a matter of fact, white unquestionably
tones down, but never becomes colour; indeed, under favourable
conditions, and having due regard to what is underneath, it changes very
little. In the "Noli Me Tangere" to which I have referred, the white
sleeve of the Magdalen is still a beautiful white, quite different from
the white of the fairest of Titian's flesh--proving that Titian never
painted his flesh white.
The so-called "Venus" in the Tribune at Florence is a more important
example still, as it is an elaborately painted picture owing nothing to
the brightness that slight painting often has and retains, the colours
being untormented by repeated re-touching. This picture is a proof that
when the method is good and the pigments pure, the colours change very
little. More than three hundred years have passed, and the white sheet
on which the figure lies is still, in effect, white against the flesh.
The flesh is most lovely in colour--neither violent by shadows or strong
colour--but beautiful flesh. It cannot be compared to ivory or snow, or
any other substance or material; it is simply beautiful lustre on the
surface with a circulation of blood underneath--an absolute triumph
never repeated except by Titian himself.
It is probable that the pictures by Reynolds are often lower in tone
than they were, but it is doubtful whether the Strawberry Hill portraits
are as much changed as may be supposed. Walpole, no doubt, called them
"white and pinky," but it must be remembered that, living before the
days of picture cleaning, he was accustomed to expect them to be brown
and dark, probably even to associate colour with dirt in the Old
Masters. The purer, clearer, and richer the colours are, the better a
picture will be; and I think this should be especially insisted upon,
since white is so effective in a modern exhibition that young artists
are naturally prompted to profit by the means cheaply afforded and
readily at hand.
I think it is probable that where Titian has used brown-green he
intended it, since in many of the Venetian pictures we find green
draperies of a beautiful colour. Sir John seems to infer that the
colours used in the decoration of the Parthenon (no doubt used) were
crude. The extraordinary refinements demonstrated in a lecture by Mr.
Penrose on the spot last year, at which I had the good fortune to be
present, forbid such a conclusion. A few graduated inches in the
circumference of the columns, and deflection from straight line in the
pediment and in the base-line, proved by measurement and examination to
be carefully intentional, will not permit us for a moment to believe
this could have been the case; so precise in line, rhythmical in
arrangement, lovely in detail, and harmonious in effect, it could never
have been crude in colour. No doubt the marble was white, but
illuminated by such a sun, and set against such a sky and distance, the
white, with its varieties of shadow, aided by the colours employed,
could have gleaned life and flame in its splendour. Colour was certainly
used, and the modern eye might at first have something to get over, but
there could have been nothing harsh and crude. The exquisite purity of
line and delicacy of edge could never have been matched with crudity or
anything like harshness of colour. To this day the brightest colours may
be seen on the columns at Luxor and Philae with beautiful effect.
_Watts._
CIII
I am getting on with my pictures, and have now got them all three into a
fairly forward state of _under_ painting; completion, however, will only
be reached in the course of next winter, for I intend to execute them
with minute care. I have simplified my method of painting, and forsworn
all _tricks_. I endeavour to advance from the beginning as much as
possible, and equally try to mix the right tint, and slowly and
carefully to put it on the right spot, and _always_ with the model
before me; what does not exactly suit has to be adapted; one can derive
benefit from every head. Schwind says that he cannot work from models,
they _worry_ him! A splendid teacher for his pupils! Nature worries
every one at first, but one must so discipline oneself that, instead of
checking and hindering, she shall illuminate and help, and solve all
doubts. Has Schwind, with his splendid and varied gifts, ever been able
to model a head with a brush? Those who place the brush behind the
pencil, under the pretence that _form_ is before all things, make a very
great mistake. Form _is certainly all-important_; one cannot study it
enough; _but_ the greater part of _form_ falls within the province of
the tabooed _brush_. The ever-lasting hobby of _contour_ which belongs
to the drawing material is first the _place_ where the _form_ comes in;
what, however, reveals true knowledge of form, is a powerful, organic,
refined finish of modelling, full of feeling and knowledge--and that is
the affair of the brush.
_Leighton._
MANNER
CIV
Manner is always seductive. It is more or less an imitation of what has
been done already, therefore always plausible. It promises the short
road, the near cut to present fame and emolument, by availing ourselves
of the labours of others. It leads to almost immediate reputation,
because it is the wonder of the ignorant world. It is always accompanied
by certain blandishments, showy and plausible, and which catch the eye.
As manner comes by degrees, and is fostered by success in the world,
flattery, &c., all painters who would be really great should be
perpetually on their guard against it. Nothing but a close and continual
observance of nature can protect them from the danger of becoming
mannerists.
_Constable._
CV
Have a holy horror of useless impasto, which gets sticky and dull, turns
blue and heavy. When you have painted a bit of which you are doubtful,
wait till the moment when it will be possible for you to take it out.
Judge it; and if it is condemned, remove it firmly with your
palette-knife, without rubbing by rags which spoil the limpidity of the
pigment. You will have left a delicate foundation, to which you can
return and finish with little labour, because your canvas will have
received a first coating. Loading and massing the pigment is an
abomination. In twenty-four hours gold turns to lead.
_Puvis de Chavannes._
CVI
From the age of six I began to draw, and for eighty-four years I have
worked independently of the schools, my thoughts all the time being
turned towards drawing.
It being impossible to express everything in so small a space, I wished
only to teach the difference between vermilion and crimson lake, between
indigo and green, and also in a general way to teach how to handle round
shapes and square, straight lines and curved; and if one day I make a
sequel to this volume, I shall show children how to render the violence
of ocean, the rush of rapids, the tranquillity of still pools, and among
the living beings of the earth, their state of weakness or strength.
There are in nature birds that do not fly high, flowering trees that
never fruit; all these conditions of the life we live among are worth
studying thoroughly; and if I ever succeed in convincing artists of
this, I shall have been the first to show the way.
_Hokusai._
CVII
Let every man who is here understand this well: design, which by another
name is called drawing, and consists of it, is the fount and body of
painting and sculpture and architecture and of every other kind of
painting, and the root of all sciences. Let whoever may have attained to
so much as to have the power of drawing know that he holds a great
treasure; he will be able to make figures higher than any tower, either
in colours or carved from the block, and he will not be able to find a
wall or enclosure which does not appear circumscribed and small to his
brave imagination. And he will be able to paint in fresco in the manner
of old Italy, with all the mixtures and varieties of colour usually
employed in it. He will be able to paint in oils very suavely with more
knowledge, daring, and patience than painters. And finally, on a small
piece of parchment he will be most perfect and great, as in all other
manners of painting. Because great, very great is the power of design
and drawing.
_Michael Angelo._
DRAWING AND DESIGN
CVIII
Pupils, I give you the whole art of sculpture when I tell you--_draw!_
_Donatello._
CIX
Drawing is the probity of art.
_Ingres._
CX
To draw does not mean only to reproduce an outline, drawing does not
consist only of line; drawing is more than this, it is expression, it is
the inner form, the structure, the modelling. After that what is left?
Drawing includes seven-eighths of what constitutes painting. If I had to
put a sign above my door I would write on it "School of Drawing," and I
am sure that I should turn out painters.
_Ingres._
CXI
Draw with a pure but ample line. Purity and breadth, that is the secret
of drawing, of art.
_Ingres._
CXII
Continue to draw for long before you think of painting. When one builds
on a solid foundation one can sleep at ease.
_Ingres._
CXIII
The great painters like Raphael and Michael Angelo insisted on the
outline when finishing their work. They went over it with a fine brush,
and thus gave new animation to the contours; they impressed on their
design force and fire.
_Ingres._
CXIV
The first thing to seize in an object, in order to draw it, is the
contrast of the principal lines. Before putting chalk to paper, get this
well into the mind. In Girodet's work, for example, one sometimes sees
this admirably shown, because through intense preoccupation with his
model he has caught, willy-nilly, something of its natural grace; but it
has been done as if by accident. He applied the principle without
recognising it as such. X---- seems to me the only man who has
understood it and carried it out. That is the whole secret of his
drawing. The most difficult thing is to apply it, like him, to the whole
body. Ingres has done it in details like hands, &c. Without mechanical
aids to help the eye, it would be impossible to arrive at the principle;
aids such as prolonging a line, &c., drawing often on a pane of glass.
All the other painters, not excepting Michael Angelo and Raphael, draw
by instinct, by inspiration, and found beauty by being struck with it in
nature; but they did not know X----'s secret, accuracy of eye. It is
not at the moment of carrying out a design that one ought to tie oneself
down to working with measuring-rules, perpendiculars, &c.; this accuracy
of eye must be an acquired habit, which in the presence of nature will
spontaneously assist the imperious need of rendering her aspect. Wilkie,
again, has the secret. In portraiture it is indispensable. When, for
example, one has made out the _ensemble_ of a design, and when one knows
the lines by heart, so to speak, one should be able to reproduce them
geometrically, in a fashion, on the picture. Above all with women's
portraits; the first thing to seize is to seize the grace of the
_ensemble_. If you begin with the details, you will be always heavy. For
instance: if you have to draw a thoroughbred horse, if you let yourself
go into details, your outline will never be salient enough.
_Delacroix._
CXV
Drawing is the means employed by art to set down and imitate the light
of nature. Everything in nature is manifested to us by means of light
and its complementaries, reflection and shadow. This it is which drawing
verifies. Drawing is the counterfeit light of art.
_Bracquemond._
CXVI
It won't do to begin painting heads or much detail in this picture till
it's all settled. I do so believe in getting in the bones of a picture
properly first, then putting on the flesh and afterwards the skin, and
then another skin; last of all combing its hair and sending it forth to
the world. If you begin with the flesh and the skin and trust to getting
the bones right afterwards, it's such a slippery process.
_Burne-Jones._
CXVII
The creative spirit in descending into a pictorial conception must take
upon itself organic structure. This great imaginative scheme forms the
bony system of the work; lines take the place of nerves and arteries,
and the whole is covered with the skin of colour.
_Hsieh Ho_ (Chinese, sixth century).
CXVIII
Simplicity in composition or distinctness of parts is ever to be
attended to, as it is one part of beauty, as has been already said: but
that what I mean by distinctness of parts in this place may be better
understood it will be proper to explain it by an example.
When you would compose an object of a great variety of parts, let
several of those parts be distinguished by themselves, by their
remarkable difference from the next adjoining, so as to make each of
them, as it were, one well-shaped quantity or part (these are like what
they call passages in music, and in writing paragraphs) by which means
not only the whole, but even every part, will be better understood by
the eye: for confusion will hereby be avoided when the object is seen
near, and the shapes will seem well varied, though fewer in number, at a
distance.
The parsley-leaf, in like manner, from whence a beautiful foliage in
ornament was originally taken, is divided into three distinct passages;
which are again divided into other odd numbers; and this method is
observed, for the generality, in the leaves of all plants and flowers,
the most simple of which are the trefoil and cinquefoil.
Observe the well-composed nosegay, how it loses all distinctness when it
dies; each leaf and flower then shrivels and loses its distinct shape,
and the firm colours fade into a kind of sameness; so that the whole
gradually becomes a confused heap.
If the general parts of objects are preserved large at first, they will
always admit of further enrichments of a small kind, but then they must
be so small as not to confound the general masses or quantities; thus,
you see, variety is a check upon itself when overdone, which of course
begets what is called a _petit taste_ and a confusion to the eye.
_Hogarth._
CXIX
Drawing includes everything except the tinting of the picture.
_Ingres._
CXX
One must always be drawing, drawing with the eye when one cannot draw
with the pencil. If observation does not keep step with practice you
will do nothing really good.
_Ingres._
CXXI
As a means of practising this perspective of the variation and loss or
diminution of the proper essence of colours, take at distances, a
hundred braccia apart, objects standing in the landscape, such as trees,
houses, men, and places, and in front of the first tree fix a piece of
glass so that it is quite steady, and then let your eye rest upon it and
trace out a tree upon the glass above the outline of the tree; and
afterwards remove the glass so far to one side that the actual tree
seems almost to touch the one that you have drawn. Then colour your
drawing in such a way that the two are alike in colour and form, and
that if you close one eye both seem painted on the glass and the same
distance away. Then proceed in the same way with a second and a third
tree, at distances of a hundred braccia from each other. And these will
always serve as your standards and teachers when you are at work on
pictures where they can be applied, and they will cause the work to be
successful in its distance. But I find it is a rule that the second is
reduced to four-fifths the size of the first when it is twenty braccia
distant from it.
_Leonardo._
CXXII
The great and golden rule of art, as well as of life, is this: That the
more distinct, sharp, and wiry the bounding line, the more perfect the
work of art.... Great inventors in all ages knew this: Protogenes and
Apelles knew each other by this line; Raphael and Michael Angelo, and
Albert Dürer, are known by this and this alone. The want of this
determinate and bounding form evidences the idea of want in the artist's
mind.
_Blake._
CXXIII
My opinion is that he who knows how to draw well and merely does a foot
or a hand or a neck, can paint everything created in the world; and yet
there are painters who paint everything there is in the world so
impatiently and so much without worth that it would be better not to do
it at all. One recognises the knowledge of a great man in the fear with
which he does a thing the more he understands it; and, on the contrary,
the ignorance of others in the foolhardy daring with which they fill
pictures with what they know nothing about. There may be an excellent
master who has never painted more than a single figure, and without
painting anything more deserves more renown and honour than those who
have painted a thousand pictures: he knows better how to do what he has
not done than the others know what they do.
_Michael Angelo._
CXXIV
It is known that bodies in motion always describe some line or other in
the air, as the whirling round of a firebrand apparently makes a circle,
the waterfall part of a curve, the arrow and bullet, by the swiftness of
their motions, nearly a straight line; waving lines are formed by the
pleasing movement of a ship on the waves. Now, in order to obtain a just
idea of action, at the same time to be judiciously satisfied of being in
the right in what we do, let us begin with imagining a line formed in
the air by any supposed point at the end of a limb or part that is
moved, or made by the whole part or limb, or by the whole body together.
And that thus much of movements may be conceived at once is evident, on
the least recollection; for whoever has seen a fine Arabian war-horse,
unbacked and at liberty, and in a wanton trot, cannot but remember what
a large waving line his rising, and at the same time pressing forward
cuts through the air, the equal continuation of which is varied by his
curveting from side to side; whilst his long mane and tail play about in
serpentine movements.
_Hogarth._
CXXV
Distinguish the various planes of a picture by circumscribing them each
in turn; class them in the order in which they present themselves to the
daylight; before beginning to paint, settle which have the same value.
Thus, for example, in a drawing on tinted paper make the parts that
glitter gleam out with your white, then the lights, rendered also with
white, but fainter; afterwards those of the half-tones that can be
managed by means of the paper, then a first half-tone with the chalk,
&c. When at the edge of a plane which you have accurately marked, you
have a little more light than at the centre of it, you give so much more
definition of its flatness or projection. This is the secret of
modelling. It will be of no use to add black; that will not give the
modelling. It follows that one can model with very slight materials.
_Delacroix._
CXXVI
Take a style of silver or brass, or anything else provided the point is
silver, sufficiently fine (sharp) and polished and good. Then to acquire
command of hand in using the style, begin to draw with it from a copy as
freely as you can, and so lightly that you can scarcely see what you
have begun to do, deepening your strokes little by little, and going
over them repeatedly to make the shadows. Where you would make it
darkest go over it many times; and, on the contrary, make but few
touches on the lights. And you must be guided by the light of the sun,
and the light of your eye, and your hand; and without these three things
you can do nothing properly. Contrive always when you draw that the
light is softened, and that the sun strikes on your left hand; and in
this manner you should begin to practise drawing only a short time every
day, that you may not become vexed or weary.
_Cennino Cennini._
CXXVII
_Charcoal._ You can't draw, you paint with it.
_Pencil._ It is always touch and go whether I can manage it even now.
Sometimes knots will come in it, and I never can get them out--I mean
little black specks. If I have once india-rubbered it, it doesn't make a
good drawing. I look on a perfectly successful drawing as one built
upon a groundwork of clear lines till it is finished. It's the same kind
of thing with red chalk--it mustn't be taken out: rubbing with the
finger is all right. In fact you don't succeed with any process until
you find out how you may knock it about and in what way you must be
careful. Slowly built-up texture in oil-painting gives you the best
chance of changing without damage when it is necessary.
_Burne-Jones._
CXXVIII
The simpler your lines and forms are the stronger and more beautiful
they will be. Whenever you break up forms you weaken them. It is as with
everything else that is split and divided.
_Ingres._
CXXIX
The draperies with which you dress figures ought to have their folds so
accommodated as to surround the parts they are intended to cover; that
in the mass of light there be not any dark fold, and in the mass of
shadows none receiving too great a light. They must go gently over,
describing the parts; but not with lines across, cutting the members
with hard notches, deeper than the part can possibly be; at the same
time, it must fit the body, and not appear like an empty bundle of
cloth; a fault of many painters, who, enamoured of the quantity and
variety of folds, have encumbered their figures, forgetting the
intention of clothes, which is to dress and surround the parts
gracefully wherever they touch; and not to be filled with wind, like
bladders puffed up where the parts project. I do not deny that we ought
not to neglect introducing some handsome folds among these draperies,
but it must be done with great judgment, and suited to the parts, where,
by the actions of the limbs and position of the whole body, they gather
together. Above all, be careful to vary the quality and quantity of your
folds in compositions of many figures; so that, if some have large
folds, produced by thick woollen cloth, others being dressed in thinner
stuff, may have them narrower; some sharp and straight, others soft and
undulating.
_Leonardo._
CXXX
Do not spare yourself in drawing from the living model, draped as well
as undraped; in fact, draw drapery continually, for remember that the
beauty of your design must largely depend on the design of the drapery.
What you should aim at is to get so familiar with all this that you can
at last make your design with ease and something like certainty, without
drawing from models in the first draught, though you should make studies
from nature afterwards.
_William Morris._
CXXXI
A woman's shape is best in repose, but the fine thing about a man is
that he is such a splendid machine, so you can put him in motion, and
make as many knobs and joints and muscles about him as you please.
_Burne-Jones._
CXXXII
I want to draw from the nude this summer as much as I possibly can; I am
sure that it is the only way to keep oneself up to the standard of
draughtsmanship that is so absolutely necessary to any one who wishes to
become a craftsman in preference to a glorified amateur.
_C. W. Furse._
CXXXIII
Always when you draw make up your mind definitely as to what are the
salient characteristics of the object, and express those as personally
as you can, not minding whether your view is or is not shared by your
relatives and friends. Now this is not _carte blanche_ to be capricious,
nor does it intend to make you seek for novelty; but if you are true to
your own vision, as heretofore you have been, you will always be
original and personal in your work. In stating your opinion on the
structural character of man, bird, or beast, always wilfully caricature;
it gives you something to prune, which is ever so much more
satisfactory than having constantly to fill gaps which an unincisive
vision has caused, and which will invariably make work dull and mediocre
and wooden.
_C. W. Furse._
CXXXIV
In Japanese painting form and colour are represented without any attempt
at relief, but in European methods relief and illusion are sought for.
_Hokusai._
CXXXV
It is indeed ridiculous that most of our people are disposed to regard
Western paintings as a kind of Uki-ye. As I have repeatedly remarked, a
painting which is not a faithful copy of nature has neither beauty nor
is worthy of the name. What I mean to say is this: be the subject what
it may, a landscape, a bird, a bullock, a tree, a stone, or an insect,
it should be treated in a way so lifelike that it is instinct with life
and motion. Now this is beyond the possibility of any other art save
that of the West. Judged from this point of view, Japanese and Chinese
paintings look very puerile, hardly deserving the name of art. Because
people have been accustomed to such daub-like productions, whenever they
see a master painting of the West, they merely pass it by as a mere
curiosity, or dub it a Uki-ye, a misconception which betrays sheer
ignorance.
_Shiba Kokan_ (Japanese, eighteenth century).
CXXXVI
These accents are to painting what melody is to the harmonic base, and
more than anything else they decide victory or defeat. A method is of
little account at those moments when the final effect is at hand; one
uses any means, even diabolical invocations, and when the need comes,
when I have exhausted the resources of pigment, I use a scraper,
pumice-stone, and if nothing else serves, the handle of my brush.
_Rousseau._
CXXXVII
The noblest relievo in painting is that which is resultant from the
treatment of the masses, not from the vulgar swelling and rounding of
the bodies; and the noble Venetian massing is excellent in this quality.
Those parts in which there is necessity for salient quality of relief
must be expressed with a certain quadrature, a certain varied grace of
accent like that which the bony ridge develops in beautiful wrists and
ankles, also in some of the tunic-folds that fall behind the arm of the
recumbent Fate over the middle of the figure of the Newlands Titian; and
again in some of the happiest passages in the graceful women of Lodovico
Caracci, and in their vesture folds, _e.g._ the bosom and waist of the
St. Catherine.
Doubtless there is a choice, or design were vain. There must be courage
to _reject_ no less than to _gather_. A man is at liberty to neglect
things that are repugnant to his disposition. He may, if he please, have
nothing to do with thistle or thorn, with bramble or brier....
Nevertheless sharp and severe things are yet dear to some souls. Nor
should I understand the taste that would reject the wildness of the
thorn and holly, or the child-loving labyrinths of the bramble, or
wholesome ranges of the downs and warrens fragrant with gorse.
No one requires of the painter that he even attempt to render the
multitude and infinitude of Nature; but that he _represent_ it through
the chastened elements of his proper instrument, with a performance
rendered distinctive and facile by study and genial impulse.
_Edward Calvert._
CXXXVIII
Modelling is parent of the art of chasing, as of the art of sculpturing.
Skilful as he was in these arts, he executed nothing which he had not
modelled.
_Pasiteles._
CXXXIX
Don't _invent_ arrangements, select them, leaving out what you consider
to be unimportant, and above all things don't be influenced in the
arrangements you select by any pictures you may see, except perhaps the
Japanese.
_C. W. Furse._
CXXXIXa
He alone can conceive and compose who sees the whole at once before him.
_Fuseli._
COLOUR
CXL
He who desires to be a painter must learn to rule the black, and red,
and white.
_Titian._
CXLI
There is the black which is old and the black which is fresh, lustrous
black and dull black, black in sunlight and black in shadow. For the old
black, one must use an admixture of red; for the fresh black, an
admixture of blue; for the dull black, an admixture of white; for
lustrous black, gum must be added; black in sunlight must have grey
reflections.
_Hokusai._
CXLII
When you are painting put a piece of black velvet between your eye and
nature; by this means you will easily convince yourself that in nature
everything is blond, even the dark trunks of trees relieved against the
sky. Black, when it is in shadow, is strong in tone, but ceases to be
black.
_Dutilleux._
CXLIII
The Variation of Colour in uneven Superficies, is what confounds an
unskilful Painter; but if he takes Care to mark the Outlines of his
Superficie, and the Seat of his Lights, he will find the true Colouring
no such difficult matter: For first he will alter the Superficies
properly as far as the Line of Separation, either with White or Black
sparingly as only with gentle Dew; then he will in the same Manner bedew
the other Side of the Line, if I may be allowed the expression, then
this again and so on by turns, till the light Side is brightened with
more transparent Colour, and the same Colour on the other Side dies away
like Smoak into an easy Shade. But you should always remember, that no
Superficie should ever be made so white that you cannot make it still
brighter: Even in Painting the whitest Cloaths you should abstain from
coming near the strongest of that Colour; because the Painter has
nothing but White wherewith to imitate the Polish of the most shining
Superficie whatsoever, as I know of none but Black with which he can
represent the utmost Shade and Obscurity of Night. For this Reason, when
he paints a white Habit, he should take one of the four Kinds of Colours
that are clear and open; and so again in painting any black Habit, let
him use another Extream, but not absolute Black, as for Instance, the
Colour of the Sea where it is very deep, which is extreamly dark. In a
Word, this Composition of Black and White has so much Power, that when
practised with Art and Method, it is capable of representing in Painting
the Superficie either of Gold or of Silver, and even of the clearest
Glass. Those Painters, therefore, are greatly to be condemned, who make
use of White immoderately and of Black without Judgment; for which
reason I could wish that the Painters were obliged to buy their White at
a greater Price than the most costly Gems, and that both White and
Black were to be made of those Pearls which Cleopatra dissolved in
Vinegar; that they might be more chary of it.
_Leon Battista Alberti._
[Illustration: _Signorelli_ THE MUSIC OF PAN _Hanfstaengl_]
CXLIV
A word as to colour. One can only give warnings against possible faults;
it is clearly impossible to teach colour by words, even ever so little
of it, though it can be taught in a workshop, at least partially. Well,
I should say, be rather restrained than over-luxurious in colour, or you
weary the eye. Do not attempt over-refinements in colour, but be frank
and simple. If you look at the pieces of colouring that most delight you
in ornamental work, as, _e.g._ a Persian carpet, or an illuminated book
of the Middle Ages, and analyse its elements, you will, if you are not
used to the work, be surprised at the simplicity of it, the few tints
used, the modesty of the tints, and therewithal the clearness and
precision of all boundary lines. In all fine flat colouring there are
regular systems of dividing colour from colour. Above all, don't attempt
iridescent blendings of colour, which look like decomposition. They are
about as much as possible the reverse of useful.
_William Morris._
CXLV
After seeing all the fine pictures in France, Italy, and Germany, one
must come to this conclusion--that _colour_, if not the first, is at
least an essential quality in painting. No master has as yet maintained
his ground beyond his own time without it. But in oil painting it is
richness and depth alone that can do justice to the material. Upon this
subject every prejudice with which I left home is, if anything, not only
confirmed but increased. What Sir Joshua wrote, and what our friend Sir
George so often supported, _was right_; and after seeing what I have
seen, I am not now to be _talked_ out of it.
With us, as you know, every young exhibitor with pink, white, and blue,
thinks himself a colourist like Titian; than whom perhaps no painter is
more misrepresented or misunderstood. I saw myself at Florence his
famous Venus upon an easel, with Kirkup and Wallis by me. This picture,
so often copied, and every copy a fresh mistake, is, what I expected it
to be, deep yet brilliant; indescribable in its hues, yet simple beyond
example in its execution and its colouring. Its flesh (O how our friends
at home would stare!) is a simple, sober, mixed-up tint, and apparently,
like your skies, completed while wet. No scratchings, no hatchings, no
scumbling nor multiplicity of repetitions--no ultramarine lakes nor
vermilions--not even a mark of the brush visible; all seemed melted in
the fat and glowing mass, solid yet transparent, giving the nearest
approach to life that the painter's art has ever yet reached.
_Wilkie._
CXLVI
In painting, get the main tones first. Do not forget that white by
itself should be used very sparingly; to make anything of a beautiful
colour, accentuate the tones clearly, lay them fresh and in facets; no
compromise with ambiguous and false tones; colour in nature is a mixture
of single tones adapted to one another.
_Chassériau._
CXLVII
A thing to remember always: avoid greenish tones.
_Chassériau._
CXLVIII
One is a colourist by values, by colour and light; there are colourists
who are luminarists as there are colourists pure and simple. Titian is a
colourist but not a luminarist, while Correggio is a colourist and a
luminarist.
The simple colourists are those who content themselves with representing
the tones in their value and colour without troubling about the magic of
light; they also give to tones all their intensity.
The luminarists, as the word indicates, make light the most important
thing. Three names will make you understand; Rembrandt, Correggio, and
Claude Lorraine.
Claude, taking the light of the sun for a starting-point, justifies his
method by nature: you know that he starts from a luminous point, and
that point is the sun. To make this brilliant you must make great
sacrifices, for you have no doubt remarked that we painters always begin
with a half-tint; as our paintings are not brightened by the light of
the sun, and start with a half-tint, it is necessary by the magic of
tones to make this half-tint shine like a luminous thing. You see that
it is a difficult problem to solve; how does Claude do it? He does not
copy the exact tones of nature, since beginning with a dull one, he is
obliged to make it luminous. He transposes as in music; he observes all
things constituting light, remarks that the rays prevent us from seizing
the outline of a bright object, that then the flame is enveloped by a
bright halo; then by a second one less vivid, and so on until the tones
become dull and sombre. In short, to make myself understood, his picture
seen from distance represents a flame.
Correggio also works in this way. Take for example his picture of
Antiope.
The woman, enveloped in a panther skin, is as bright as a flame. The
soft red tone forms the first halo, then the light blue draperies with a
slight greenish tint form the second halo. The Satyr has a value a few
degrees below that of the draperies, making it the third halo. When the
bouquet is thus formed, Correggio surrounds it with beautiful dark
leaves, shading towards the extremities of the canvas. These gradations
are so well observed, that if you put the picture at so great a distance
that you cannot see the figures, you will still have the representation
of light.
_Couture._
CXLIX
Painters who are not colourists make illuminations and not paintings.
Painting, properly speaking--unless one wants to produce a
monochrome--implies the idea of colour as one of its fundamental
elements, together with chiaroscuro, proportion, and perspective.
Proportion applies to sculpture as to painting. Perspective determines
the outline; chiaroscuro produces relief by the arrangement of shadow
and light in relation to the background; colour gives the appearance of
life, &c.
The sculptor does not begin his work with an outline; he builds up with
his material a likeness of the object which, rough at first, establishes
from the beginning the essential conditions of relief and solidity.
Colourists, being those who unite all the qualities of painting, must,
in a single process and at first setting to work, secure the conditions
peculiar and essential to their art.
They have to mass with colour, as the sculptor with clay, marble, or
stone; their sketch, like the sculptor's, must show proportion,
perspective, effect, and colour.
Outline is as ideal and conventional in painting as in sculpture; it
should result naturally from the good arrangement of the essential
parts. The combined preparation of effect which implies perspective and
colour will approach more or less the actual aspect of things, according
to the degree of the painter's skill; but this foundation will contain
potentially everything included in the final result.
_Delacroix._
CL
I believe colour to be a quite indispensable quality in the _highest_
art, and that no picture ever belonged to the highest order without it;
while many, by possessing it--as the works of Titian--are raised
certainly into the highest _class_, though not to the very highest grade
of that class, in spite of the limited degree of their other great
qualities. Perhaps the _only_ exception which I should be inclined to
admit exists in the works of Hogarth, to which I should never dare to
assign any but the very highest place, though their colour is certainly
not a prominent feature in them. I must add, however, that Hogarth's
colour is seldom other than pleasing to myself, and that for my own part
I should almost call him a colourist, though not aiming at colour. On
the other hand, there are men who, merely on account of bad colour,
prevent me from thoroughly enjoying their works, though full of other
qualities. For instance, Wilkie or Delaroche (in nearly all his works,
though the Hémicycle is fine in colour). From Wilkie I would at any time
prefer a thoroughly fine engraving--though of course he is in no respect
even within hail of Hogarth. Colour is the physiognomy of a picture;
and, like the shape of the human forehead, it cannot be perfectly
beautiful without proving goodness and greatness. Other qualities are in
its life exercised; but this is the body of its life, by which we know
and love it at first sight.
_Rossetti._
CLI
In regard to the different modes of painting the flesh, I belief it is
of little consequence which is pursued, if you only keep the colours
distinct; too much mixing makes them muddy and destroys their
brilliancy, you know. Sir Joshua was of opinion that the grey tints in
the flesh of Titian's pictures were obtained by scumbling cool tints
over warm ones; and others prefer commencing in a cool grey manner, and
leaving the greys for the middle tints, whilst they paint upon the
lights with warmer colours, also enriching the shadows with warmer and
deeper colours too. But for my own part, I have always thought it a good
way to consider the flesh as composed of different coloured network laid
over each other, as is really the case in nature, and may be seen by
those who will take the pains to look carefully into it.
_Northcote._
CLII
The utmost beauty of colouring depends on the great principle of varying
by all the means of varying, and on the proper and artful union of that
variety.
I am apt to believe that the not knowing nature's artful and intricate
method of uniting colours for the production of the variegated
composition, or prime tint of flesh, hath made colouring, in the art of
painting, a kind of mystery in all ages; insomuch, that it may fairly be
said, out of the many thousands who have labour'd to attain it, not
above ten or twelve painters have happily succeeded therein; Correggio
(who lived in a country village, and had nothing but the life to study
after) is said almost to have stood alone for this particular
excellence. Guido, who made beauty his chief aim, was always at a loss
about it. Poussin scarce ever obtained a glimpse of it, as is manifest
by his many different attempts: indeed France hath not produced one
remarkable good colourist.
Rubens boldly, and in a masterly manner, kept his bloom tints bright,
separate, and distinct, but sometimes too much so for easel or cabinet
pictures; however, his manner was admirably well calculated for great
works, to be seen at a considerable distance, such as his celebrated
ceiling at Whitehall Chapel: which upon a nearer view will illustrate
what I have advanc'd with regard to the separate brightness of the
tints; and shew, what indeed is known to every painter, that had the
colours there seen so bright and separate been all smooth'd and
absolutely blended together, they would have produced a dirty grey
instead of flesh-colour. The difficulty then lies in bringing _blue_,
the third original colour, into flesh, on account of the vast variety
introduced thereby; and this omitted, all the difficulty ceases; and a
common sign-painter that lays his colours smooth, instantly becomes, in
point of colouring, a Rubens, a Titian, or a Correggio.
_Hogarth._
CLIII
COPY ON CANVAS IN OIL OF THE DORIA CORREGGIO IN THE PALAZZO PASQUA
It seems painted in (their) juicy, fat colour, the parts completed one
after another upon the bare pannel, the same as frescoes upon the
flattened wall. Simplicity of tint and of colour prevails; no staining
or mottled varieties: the flesh, both in light and shadow, is produced
by one mixed up tint so melted that no mark of the brush is seen. There
is here no scratching or scumbling--no repetitions; all seems prepared
at once for the glaze, which, simple as the painting is, gives to it
with fearless hand the richness and glow of Correggio. All imitations of
this master are complicated compared to this, and how complicated and
abstruse does it make all attempts of the present day to give similar
effects in colouring! Here is one figure in outline upon the prepared
board, with even the finger-marks in colour of the painter himself. Here
is the preparation of the figures painted up at once, and, strange to
say, with solid and even sunny colours. Here are the heads of a woman
and of a naked child, completed with the full zest and tone of
Correggio, in texture fine, and in expression rich and luxurious, and as
fine an example of his powers as any part to be found in his most
celebrated work.
_Wilkie._
CLIV
In a modern exhibition pictures lose by tone at first glance, but in the
Louvre pictures gained, and Titian, Correggio, Rubens, Cuyp, and
Rembrandt combated everything by the depth of their tones; and one still
hopes that, when toning is successfully done, it will prevail.
You have now got your exhibition open in Edinburgh: do you find tone and
depth an advantage there or not? Painting bright and raw, if one can
find in his heart to lower and glaze it afterwards, is always
satisfactory; but unless strength can be combined with this, it will
never be the fashion in our days.
_Wilkie._
CLV
I went into the National Gallery and refreshed myself with a look at the
pictures. One impression I had was of how much more importance the tone
of them is than the actual tint of any part of them. I looked close into
the separate colours and they were all very lovely in their quality--but
the whole colour-effect of a picture then is not very great. It is the
entire result of the picture that is so wonderful. I peered into the
whites to see how they were made, and it is astonishing how little white
there would be in a white dress--none at all, in fact--and yet it looks
white. I went again and looked at the Van Eyck, and saw how clearly the
like of it is not to be done by me. But he had many advantages. For one
thing, he had all his objects in front of him to paint from. A nice,
clean, neat floor of fair boards well scoured, pretty little dogs and
everything. Nothing to bother about but making good portraits--dresses
and all else of exactly the right colour and shade of colour. But the
tone of it is simply marvellous, and the beautiful colour each little
object has, and the skill of it all. He permits himself extreme darkness
though. It's all very well to say it's a purple dress--very dark brown
is more the colour of it. And the black, no words can describe the
blackness of it. But the like of it is not for me to do--can't be--not
to be thought of.
As I walked about there I thought if I had my life all over again, what
would I best like to do in the way of making a new start once more; it
would be to try and paint more like the Italian painters. And that's
rather happy for a man to feel in his last days--to find that he is
still true to his first impulse, and doesn't think he has wasted his
life in wrong directions.
_Burne-Jones._
CLVI
All painting consists of sacrifices and _parti-pris_.
_Goya._
CLVII
In nature, colour exists no more than line,--there is only light and
shade. Give me a piece of charcoal, and I will paint your portrait for
you.
_Goya._
CLVIII
It requires much more observation and study to arrive at perfection in
the shadowing of a picture than in merely drawing the lines of it. The
proof of this is, that the lines may be traced upon a veil or a flat
glass placed between the eye and the object to be imitated. But that
cannot be of any use in shadowing, on account of the infinite gradation
of shades, and the blending of them which does not allow of any precise
termination; and most frequently they are confused, as will be
demonstrated in another place.
_Leonardo._
LIGHT AND SHADE
CLIX
Forget not therefore that the principal part of Painting or Drawing
after the life consisteth in the truth of the line, as one sayeth in a
place that he hath seen the picture of her Majesty in four lines very
like, meaning by four lines but the plain lines, as he might as well
have said in one line, but best in plain lines without shadowing; for
the line without shadow showeth all to a good Judgement, but the shadow
without line showeth nothing, as, for example, though the shadow of a
man against a white wall sheweth like a man, yet it is not the shadow
but the line of the shadow, which is so true that it resembleth
excellently well, as drawn by that line about the shadow with a coal,
and when the shadow is gone it will resemble better than before, and
may, if it be a fair face, have sweet countenance even in the line; for
the line only giveth the countenance, but both line and colour giveth
the lively likeness, and shadows shew the roundness and the effect or
Defect of the light wherein the picture was drawn. This makes me to
remember the words also and reasoning of her Majesty when first I came
in her highness' presence to draw, who after shewing me how she noted
great difference of shadowing in the works and Diversity of Drawers of
sundry nations, and that the Italians who had the name to be cunningest
and to Draw best, shadowed not. Requiring of me the reason of it, seeing
that best to shew oneself needeth no shadow of place but rather the open
light, to which I granted, affirmed that shadows in pictures were indeed
caused by the shadow of the place or coming in of the light at only one
way into the place at some small or high window, which many workmen
covet to work in for ease to their sight, and to give unto them a
grosser line and a more apparent line to be deserved, and maketh the
work imborse well and show very well afar off, which to Limning work
needeth not, because it is to be viewed of necessity in hand near unto
the Eye. Here her Majesty conceived the reason, and therefore chose her
place to sit in for that purpose in the open alley of a goodly garden,
where no tree was near nor any shadow at all, save that as the Heaven is
lighter than the earth, so must that little shadow that was from the
earth; this her Majesty's curious Demand hath greatly bettered my
Judgement, besides divers other like questions in Art by her most
excellent Majesty, which to speak or write of were fitter for some
better clerk. This matter only of the light let me perfect that no wise
man longer remain in Error of praising much shadows in pictures which
are to be viewed in hand; great pictures high or far off Require hard
shadows to become the better then nearer in story work better than
pictures of the life; for beauty and good favour is like clear truth,
which is not shadowed with the light nor made to be obscured, as a
picture a little shadowed may be borne withal for the rounding of it,
but so greatly smutted or Darkened as some use Disgrace it, and in like
truth ill told, if a very well favoured woman show in a place where is
great shadow, yet showeth she lovely not because of the shadow but
because of her sweet favour consisting in the line or proportion, even
that little which the light scarcely showeth greatly pleaseth, proving
the Desire to see more.
_Nicholas Hilliard._
CLX
The lights cast from small windows also present a strong contrast of
light and shadow, more especially if the chamber lit by them is large;
and this is not good to use in painting.
_Leonardo._
CLXI
When you are drawing from nature the light should be from the north, so
that it may not vary; and if it is from the south keep the window
covered with a curtain so that though the sun shine upon it all day long
the light will undergo no change. The elevation of the light should be
such that each body casts a shadow on the ground which is of the same
length as its height.
_Leonardo._
CLXII
Above all let the figures that you paint have sufficient light and from
above, that is, all living persons whom you paint, for the people whom
you see in the streets are all lighted from above; and I would have you
know that you have no acquaintance so intimate but that if the light
fell on him from below you would find it difficult to recognise him.
_Leonardo._
CLXIII
If by accident it should happen, that when drawing or copying in
chapels, or colouring in other unfavourable places, you cannot have the
light on your left hand, or in your usual manner, be sure to give relief
to your figures or design according to the arrangement of the windows
which you find in these places, which have to give you light, and thus
accommodating yourself to the light on which side soever it may be, give
the proper lights and shadows. Or if it were to happen that the light
should enter or shine right opposite or full in your face, make your
lights and shades accordingly; or if the light should be favourable at a
window larger than the others in the above-mentioned places, adopt
always the best light, and try to understand and follow it carefully,
because, wanting this, your work would be without relief, a foolish
thing without mastery.
_Cennino Cennini._
CLXIV
You have heard about Merlin's magic art; here in Venice you may _see_
that of Titian, Giorgione, and all the others. In the Palazzo Barbarigo
we went to the room which is said to have been Titian's studio for some
time. The window faces the south, and the sun is shining on the floor by
two o'clock. This made us think, whether you should not, after all, let
the sun be there while you are painting. A temperate sunlight in the
room makes the lights golden, and through the many, crossing, warm
reflections the shadows get clearer and more transparent. But the
difficulty is to know how to deal with such a shimmer; it is easier to
paint with the light coming from the north. On the other hand, you see
that the Venetians never tried to render in painting the impression of
real, open sunlight. Their delicate sense of colour found a greater
delight in looking at the fine fused tones and shades which are seen
when the sunlight is only reflected under the clear blue sky and between
the high palaces. Therefore, you often think that you see, for instance,
groups of gondoliers on the Piazzetta in gay silvery notes, as in any
painting by Paolo Veronese; and in the warm daylight in the great,
gorgeous halls of the Palazzo Ducale there are still figures walking
about in a colour as golden and fresh as if they were paintings by
Titian.
_E. Lundgren._
PORTRAITURE
CLXV
Painting the face of a pretty young girl is like carving a portrait in
silver. There may be great elaboration, but no likeness will be
forthcoming. It is better to put the elaboration into the young lady's
clothes, and trust to a touch here and a stroke there to bring out her
beauty as it really is.
_Ku K'ai-Chih_ (Chinese, fourth century).
CLXVI
Portraiture may be great art. There is a sense, indeed, in which it is
perhaps the greatest art of any. And portraiture involves expression.
Quite true, but expression of what? Of a passion, an emotion, a mood?
Certainly not. Paint a man or a woman with the damned "pleasing
expression," or even the "charmingly spontaneous" so dear to the
"photographic artist," and you see at once that the thing is a mask, as
silly as the old tragic and comic mask. The only expression allowable in
great portraiture is the expression of character and moral quality, not
of anything temporary, fleeting, and accidental. Apart from portraiture
you don't want even so much, or very seldom: in fact, you only want
types, symbols, suggestions. The moment you give what people call
expression, you destroy the typical character of heads and degrade them
into portraits which stand for nothing.
_Burne-Jones._
CLXVII
It produces a magnificent effect to place whole figures and groups,
which are in shade, against a light field. The contrary, _i.e._ figures
that are in light against a dark field, cannot be so perfectly
expressed, because every illuminated figure, with or without a side
light, will have some shade. The nearest approach to this is when the
object so treated happen to be very fair, with other objects reflecting
into their shades.
Shade against shade is indefinite. Light and shade against shade
are mediate. Light against shade is perspicuous. Light and shade
against light is mediate. Light against light is indefinite or
indistinct.
_Edward Calvert._
CLXVIII
Most of the masters have had a way, slavishly imitated by their schools
and following, of exaggerating the darkness of the backgrounds which
they give their portraits. They thought in this way to make the heads
more interesting, but this darkness of background, in conjunction with
faces lighted as we see them in nature, deprives these portraits of that
character of simplicity which should be dominant in them. This darkness
places the objects intended to be thrown into relief in quite abnormal
conditions. Is it natural that a face seen in light should stand out
against a really dark background--that is to say, one which receives no
light? Ought not the light which falls on the figure to fall also on the
wall, or the tapestry against which the figure stands? Unless it should
happen that the face stands out against drapery of an extremely dark
tone--but this condition is very rare, or against the entrance of a
cavern or cellar entirely deprived of daylight--a circumstance still
rarer--the method cannot but appear factitious.
The chief charm in a portrait is simplicity. I do not count among true
portraits those in which the aim has been to idealise the features of a
famous man when the painter has to reconstruct the face from traditional
likenesses; there, invention rightly plays a part. True portraits are
those painted from contemporaries. We like to see them on the canvas as
we meet them in daily life, even though they should be persons of
eminence and fame.
_Delacroix._
CLXIX
Verestchagin says the old-fashioned way of setting a portrait-head
against a dark ground is not only unnecessary, but being usually untrue
when a person is seen by daylight, should be exploded as false and
unreal. But it is certain a light garish background behind a painted
head will not permit that head to have the importance it should have in
reality, when the actual facts, solidity, movement, play of light and
shadow, personal knowledge of the individual or his history, joined to
the effects of different planes, distances, materials, &c., will combine
to invest the reality with interests the most subtle and dexterous
artistic contrivances cannot compete with, and which certainly the
artist cannot with reason be asked to resign. A sense of the power of an
autocrat, from whose lips one might be awaiting consignment to a dungeon
or death, would be as much felt if he stood in front of the commonest
wall-paper, in the commonest lodging-house, in the meanest
watering-place, but no such impressions could be conveyed by the painter
who depicted such surroundings. Lastly, I must strongly dissent from the
opinion recently expressed by some, that seems to imply that a
portrait-picture need have no interest excepting in the figure, and that
the background had better be without any. This may be a good principle
for producing an effect on the walls of an exhibition-room, where the
surroundings are incongruous and inharmonious; an intellectual or
beautiful face should be more interesting than any accessories the
artist could put into the background. No amount of elaboration in the
background could disturb the attention of any one looking at the
portrait of Julius the Second by Raphael, also in the Tribune, which I
cannot help thinking is _the_ finished portrait in the world. A portrait
is _the most truly historical picture_, and this the most monumental and
historical of portraits. The longer one looks at it the more it demands
attention. A superficial picture is like a superficial character--it may
do for an acquaintance, but not for a friend. One never gets to the
end of things to interest and admire in many old portrait-pictures.
_Watts._
[Illustration: _J. Van Eyck_ PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST'S WIFE _Bruckmann_]
CLXX
There is one point that has always forced itself upon me strongly in
comparing the portrait-painting qualities of Rembrandt and Velasquez. In
Rembrandt I see a delightful human sympathy between himself and his
sitters; he is always more interested in that part of them which
conforms to some great central human type, and is comparatively
uninterested in those little distinctions which delight the caricaturist
and are the essence of that much applauded quality, "the catching of a
likeness." I don't believe he was a very good catcher of likenesses, but
I am sure his rendering was the biggest and fullest side of that
man--there is always a fine ironical appreciation of character moulded
by circumstance; whereas in Velasquez I find the other thing.
_C. W. Furse._
CLXXI
I have wished to oblige the beholder, on looking at the portrait, to
think wholly of the face in front of him, and nothing of the man who
painted it. And it is my opinion that the artist who paints portraits in
this way need have no fear of the pitfall of _mannerism_ either in
treatment or touch.
_Watts._
CLXXII
Let us ... examine modern portraits. I shut my eyes and think of those
full lengths in the New Gallery and the Academy, which I have not seen
this year, but whose every detail is familiar to me. You will find that
a uniform light stretches from their chins to their toes; in all
probability the background is a slab of grey into whose insensitive
surface neither light nor air penetrates; or perhaps that most offensive
portrait-painter's property, a sham room in which none of the furniture
has been seen in its proper relation of light to the face, but has been
muzzed in with slippery insincerity, and with an amiable hope that it
may take its place behind the figure. The face, in all but one or two
portraits, will lack definition of plane--will be flat and flabby. A
white spot on the nose and high light on the forehead will serve for
modelling; little or no attempt will have been made to get a light which
will help the observer to concentrate on the head, or give the head its
full measure of rotundity--your eyes will wander aimlessly from cheek to
chiffon, from glinting satin to the pattern on the floor, forgetful of
the purpose of the portrait, and only arrested by some dab of pink or
mauve, which will remind you that the artist is developing a somewhat
irrelevant colour scheme.
For solidity, for the realisation of the great constructive planes of
things, for that element of sculpture which exists in all good painting,
you will look in vain. I am sure that in an average Academy there are
not three real attempts to get the values--that is, the inevitable
relation of objects in light and shade that must exist under any
circumstances--and not one attempt to contrive an artificial composition
of light and shade which shall concentrate the attention of the
spectator on the crucial point, and shall introduce these delightful
effects of dark things against light and light against dark, which lend
such richness and variety of tone and such vitality of construction to
Titian, Rembrandt, and Reynolds. If we turn for a moment to the National
Gallery and look at Gainsborough's "Baillie Family," or Reynolds' "Three
Ladies decorating the Term of Hymen," we see at once the difference; in
Gainsborough's case the group is in a mellow flood of light, there are
no strong shadows on any of the faces, and none of the figures are used
to cast shadows on other figures in the group; and yet as you look you
see the whole light of the picture culminating in the central head of
the mother, the sides and bottom of the picture fade off into artificial
shadow, exquisitely used, without which that glorious light would have
been dissipated over the picture, losing all its effectiveness and
carrying power. See how finely he has understood the reticent tones of
the man behind, and how admirably the loosely painted convention of
landscape background is made to carry on the purely artificial
arrangement of light and shade. In the Reynolds the shadowed figure on
the left, and the shadows that flit across the skirts of the other two
figures, and the fine relief of the dark trees, give a wonderful
richness of design to a picture that is not in other respects of the
highest interest.
_C. W. Furse._
CLXXIII
Why have I not before now finished the miniature I promised to Mrs.
Butts? I answer I have not till now in any degree pleased myself, and
now I must entreat you to excuse faults, for portrait painting is the
direct contrary to designing and historical painting in every respect.
If you have not nature before you for every touch, you cannot paint
portrait; and if you have nature before you at all, you cannot paint
history. It was Michael Angelo's opinion and is mine.
_Blake._
CLXXIV
I often find myself wondering why people are so frequently dissatisfied
with their portraits, but I think I have discovered the principal
reason--they are not pleased with themselves, and therefore cannot
endure a faithful representation. I find it is the same with myself. I
cannot bear any portraits of myself, except those of my own painting,
where I have had the opportunity of coaxing them, so as to suit my own
feelings.
_Northcote._
LIGHT AND SHADE
CLXXV
Don't be afraid of splendour of effect; nothing is more brilliant,
nothing more radiant than nature. Painting tends to become confused and
to lose its power to strike hard. Make things monumental and yet real;
set down the lights and the shadows as in reality. Heads which are all
in a half-tone flushed with colour from a strong sun; heads in the
light, full of air and freshness; these should be a delight to paint.
_Chassériau._
CLXXVI
The first object of a painter is to make a simple flat surface appear
like a relievo, and some of its parts detached from the ground; he who
excels all others in that part of the art deserves the greatest praise.
This perfection of the art depends on the correct distribution of lights
and shades called _Chiaro-scuro_. If the painter, then, avoids shadows,
he may be said to avoid the glory of the art, and to render his work
despicable to real connoisseurs, for the sake of acquiring the esteem of
vulgar and ignorant admirers of fine colours, who never have any
knowledge of relievo.
_Leonardo._
CLXXVII
Chiaroscuro, to use untechnical language and to speak of it as it is
employed by all the schools, is the art of making atmosphere visible
and painting objects in an envelope of air. Its aim is to create all the
picturesque accidents of the shadows, of the half-tones and the light,
of relief and distance, and to give in consequence more variety, more
unity of effect, of caprice, and of relative truth, to forms as to
colours. The opposite conception is one more ingenuous and abstract, a
method by which one shows objects as they are, seen close, the
atmosphere being suppressed, and in consequence without any perspective
except the linear perspective, which results from the diminution in the
size of objects and their relation to the horizon. When we talk of
aeriel perspective we presuppose a certain amount of chiaroscuro.
_Fromentin._
CLXXVIII
A painter must study his picture in every degree of light; it is all
little enough. You know, I suppose, that this period of the day between
daylight and darkness is called "the painter's hour"? There is, however,
this inconvenience attending it, which allowance must be made for--the
reds look darker than by day, indeed almost black, and the light blues
turn white, or nearly so. This low, fading light also suggests many
useful hints as to arrangement, from the circumstance of the dashings of
the brush in a picture but newly commenced, suggesting forms that were
not originally intended, but which often prove much finer ones. Ah,
sometimes I see something very beautiful in these forms; but then I have
such coaxing to do to get it fixed!--for when I draw near the canvas
the vision is gone, and I have to go back and creep up to it again and
again, and, at last, to hold my brush at the utmost length of my arm
before I can fix it, so that I can avail myself of it the next day. The
way to paint a really fine picture is first to paint it in the mind, to
imagine it as strongly and distinctly as possible, and then to sketch it
while the impression is strong and vivid.
[Illustration: _Puvis de Chavannes_ HOPE]
I have frequently shut myself up in a dark room for hours, or even days,
when I have been endeavouring to imagine a scene I was about to paint,
and have never stirred till I had got it clear in my mind; then I have
sketched it as quickly as I could, before the impression has left me.
_Northcote._
DECORATIVE ART
CLXXIX
Decoration is the activity, the life of art, its justification, and its
social utility.
_Bracquemond._
CLXXX
The true function of painting is to animate wall-spaces. Apart from
this, pictures should never be larger than one's hand.
_Puvis de Chavannes._
CLXXXI
I want big things to do and vast spaces, and for common people to see
them and say Oh!--only Oh!
_Burne-Jones._
CLXXXII
I insist upon mural painting for three reasons--first, because it is an
exercise of art which demands the absolute knowledge only to be obtained
by honest study, the value of which no one can doubt, whatever branch of
art the student might choose to follow afterwards; secondly, because the
practice would bring out that gravity and nobility deficient in the
English school, but not in the English character, and which being latent
might therefore be brought out; and, thirdly, for the sake of action
upon the public mind. For public improvement it is necessary that works
of sterling but simple excellence should be scattered abroad as widely
as possible. At present the public never see anything beautiful
excepting in exhibition rooms, when the novelty of sight-seeing
naturally disturbs the intellectual perceptions. It is a melancholy fact
that scarcely a single object amongst those that surround us has any
pretension to real beauty, or could be put simply into a picture with
noble effect. And as I believe the love of beauty to be inherent in the
human mind, it follows that there must be some unfortunate influence at
work; to counteract this should be the object of a fine-art institution,
and I feel assured if really good things were scattered amongst the
people, it would not be long before satisfactory results exhibited
themselves.
_G. F. Watts._
CLXXXIII
I have ... gone for great masses of light and shade, relieved against
one another, the only bright local colour being the blue of the
workmens' coats and trousers. I have intentionally avoided the whole
business of "flat decoration" by "making the things part of the walls,"
as one is told is so important. On the contrary, I have treated them as
pictures and have tried to make holes in the wall--that is, as far as
relief of strong light and shade goes; in the figures I have struggled
to keep a certain quality of bas-relief--that is, I have avoided distant
groups--and have woven my compositions as tightly as I can in the very
foreground of the pictures, as without this I felt they would lose their
weight and dignity, which does seem to me the essential business in a
mural decoration, and which makes Puvis de Chavannes a great decorator
far more than his flat mimicry of fresco does.... Tintoretto, in S.
Rocco, is my idea of the big way to decorate a building; great clustered
groups sculptured in light and shade filling with amazing ingenuity of
design the architectural spaces at his disposal: a far richer and more
satisfying result to me than the flat and unprofitable stuff which of
late years has been called "decoration."...
Above all, I thoroughly disbelieve in the cant of mural decorations
preserving the flatness of a wall. I see no merit in it whatever. Let
them be massive as sculpture, but let every quality of value and colour
lend them depth and vitality, and I am sure the hall or room will be
richer and nobler as a result.
_C. W. Furse._
CLXXXIV
People usually declare that landscape is an easy matter. I think it a
very difficult one. For whenever you wish to produce a landscape, it is
necessary to carry about the details, and work them out in the mind for
some days before the brush may be applied. Just as in composition: there
is a period of bitter thought over the theme; and until this is
resolved, you are in the thrall of bonds and gyves. But when inspiration
comes, you break loose and are free.
_A Chinese Painter_ (about 1310 A.D.).
CLXXXV
One word: there are _tendencies_, and it is these which are meant by
_schools_. Landscape, above all, cannot be considered from the point of
view of a school. Of all artists the landscape painter is the one who is
in most direct communion with nature, with nature's very soul.
_Paul Huet._
CLXXXVI
From what motives springs the love of high-minded men for landscapes? In
his very nature man loves to be in a garden with hills and streams,
whose water makes cheerful music as it glides among the stones. What a
delight does one derive from such sights as that of a fisherman
engaging in his leisurely occupation in a sequestered nook, or of a
woodman felling a tree in a secluded spot, or of mountain scenery with
sporting monkeys and cranes!... Though impatient to enjoy a life amidst
the luxuries of nature, most people are debarred from indulging in such
pleasures. To meet this want artists have endeavoured to represent
landscapes so that people may be able to behold the grandeur of nature
without stepping out of their houses. In this light, painting affords
pleasures of a nobler sort by removing from one the impatient desire of
actually observing nature.
_Kuo Hsi_ (Chinese, eleventh century A.D.).
LANDSCAPE
CLXXXVII
Landscape is a big thing, and should be viewed from a distance in order
to grasp the scheme of hill and stream. The figures of men and women are
small matters, and may be spread out on the hand or on a table for
examination, when they will be taken in at a glance. Those who study
flower-painting take a single stalk and put it into a deep hole, and
then examine it from above, thus seeing it from all points of view.
Those who study bamboo-painting take a stalk of bamboo, and on a
moonlight night project its shadow on to a piece of white silk on a
wall; the true form of the bamboo is thus brought out. It is the same
with landscape painting. The artist must place himself in communion with
his hills and streams, and the secret of the scenery will be solved....
Hills without clouds look bare; without water they are wanting in
fascination; without paths they are wanting in life; without trees they
are dead; without depth-distance they are shallow; without
level-distance they are near; and without height-distance they are low.
_Kuo Hsi_ (Chinese, eleventh century A.D.).
CLXXXVIII
I have brushed up my "Cottage" into a pretty look, and my "Heath" is
almost safe, but I must stand or fall by my "House." I had on Friday a
long visit from M---- alone; but my pictures do not come into his rules
or whims of the art, and he said I had "lost my way." I told him that I
had "perhaps other notions of art than picture admirers have in general.
I looked on pictures as _things to be avoided_, connoisseurs looked on
them as things to be _imitated_; and that, too, with such a deference
and humbleness of submission, amounting to a total prostration of mind
and original feeling; as must serve only to fill the world with
abortions." But he was very agreeable, and I endured the visit, I trust,
without the usual courtesies of life being violated.
What a sad thing it is that this lovely art is so wrested to its own
destruction! Used only to blind our eyes, and to prevent us from seeing
the sun shine, the fields bloom, the trees blossom, and from hearing the
foliage rustle; while old--black--rubbed out and dirty canvases take the
place of God's own works. I long to see you. I love to cope with you,
like Jaques, in my "sullen moods," for I am not fit for the present
world of art.... Lady Morley was here yesterday. On seeing the "House,"
she exclaimed, "How fresh, how dewy, how exhilarating!" I told her half
of this, if I could think I deserved it, was worth all the talk and cant
about pictures in the world.
_Constable._
CLXXXIX
A wood all powdered with sunshine, all the tones of the trees
illuminated and delicate, the whole in a mist of sun, and high lights
only on the stems; a delicious, new, and rich effect.
_Chassériau._
CXC
The forests and their trees give superb strong tones in which violet
predominates--above all, in the shadows--and give value to the green
tones of the grass. The upright stems show bare with colours as of
stones and of rocks--grey, tawny, flushed, always very luminous (like an
agate) in the reflections: the whole takes a sombre colour which vies in
vigour with the foreground.
A magnificent spectacle is that of mountains covered with ice and snow,
towards evening, when the clouds roll up and hide their base. The
summits may stand out in places against the sky. The blue background at
such a time emphasises the warm gold colour of the shadows, and the
lower parts are lost in a deep and sinister grey. We have seen this
effect at Kandersteg.
_Dutilleux._
CXCI
In your letter you wish me to give you my opinion of your picture. I
should have liked it better if you had made it more of a whole--that is,
the trees stronger, the sky running from them in shadow up to the
opposite corner; that might have produced what, I think, it wanted, and
have made it much less a two-picture effect.... I cannot let your sky go
off without some observation. I think the character of your clouds too
affected, that is, too much of some of our modern painters, who mistake
some of our great masters; because they sometimes put in some of those
round characters of clouds, they must do the same; but if you look at
any of their skies, they either assist in the composition or make some
figure in the picture--nay, sometimes play the first fiddle....
Breadth must be attended to if you paint; but a muscle, give it breadth.
Your doing the same by the sky, making parts broad and of a good shape,
that they may come in with your composition, forming one grand plan of
light and shade--this must always please a good eye and keep the
attention of the spectator, and give delight to every one.
Trifles in nature must be overlooked that we may have our feelings
raised by seeing the whole picture at a glance, not knowing how or why
we are so charmed. I have written you a long rigmarole story about
giving dignity to whatever you paint--I fear so long that I should be
scarcely able to understand what I mean myself. You will, I hope, take
the will for the deed.
_Old Crome._
CXCII
I am most anxious to get into my London painting-room, for I do not
consider myself at work unless I am before a six-foot canvas. I have
done a good deal of skying, for I am determined to conquer all
difficulties, and that among the rest. And now, talking of skies, it is
amusing to us to see how admirably you fight my battles; you certainly
take the best possible ground for getting your friend out of a scrape
(the example of the Old Masters). That landscape painter who does not
make his skies a very material part of his composition neglects to avail
himself of one of his greatest aids. Sir Joshua Reynolds, speaking of
the landscapes of Titian, of Salvator, and of Claude, says: "Even their
_skies_ seem to sympathise with their subjects." I have often been
advised to consider my sky as "_a white sheet thrown behind the
objects_." Certainly, if the sky is obtrusive, as mine are, it is bad;
but if it is evaded, as mine are not, it is worse; it must and always
shall with me make an effectual part of the composition. It will be
difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the
keynote, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment. You
may conceive, then, what a "white sheet" would do for me, impressed as I
am with these notions, and they cannot be erroneous. The sky is the
source of light in nature, and governs everything; even our common
observations on the weather of every day are altogether suggested by it.
The difficulty of skies in painting is very great, both as to
composition and execution; because, with all their brilliancy, they
ought not to come forward, or, indeed, be hardly thought of any more
than extreme distances are; but this does not apply to phenomena or
accidental effects of sky, because they always attract particularly. I
may say all this to you, though _you_ do not want to be told that I know
very well what I am about, and that my skies have not been neglected,
though they have often failed in execution, no doubt, from an
over-anxiety about them which will alone destroy that easy appearance
which nature always has in all her movements.
_Constable._
CXCIII
He was looking at a seventy-four gun ship, which lay in the shadow under
Saltash. The ship seemed one dark mass.
"I told you that would be the effect," said Turner, referring to some
previous conversation. "Now, as you perceive, it is all shade!"
"Yes, I perceive it; and yet the ports are there."
"We can only take what is visible--no matter what may be there. There
are people in the ship; we don't see them through the planks."
_Turner._
CXCIV
Looked out for landscapes this evening; but although all around one is
lovely, how little of it will work up into a picture! that is, without
great additions and alterations, which is a work of too much time to
suit my purpose just now. I want little subjects that will paint off at
once. How despairing it is to view the loveliness of nature towards
sunset, and know the impossibility of imitating it!--at least in a
satisfactory manner, as one could do, would it only remain so long
enough. Then one feels the want of a life's study, such as Turner
devoted to landscape; and even then what a botch is any attempt to
render it! What wonderful effects I have seen this evening in the
hay-fields! The warmth of the uncut grass, the greeny greyness of the
unmade hay in furrows or tufts with lovely violet shadows, and long
shades of the trees thrown athwart all, and melting away one tint into
another imperceptibly; and one moment more a cloud passes and all the
magic is gone. Begin to-morrow morning, all is changed: the hay and the
reapers are gone most likely; the sun too, or if not, it is in quite the
opposite quarter, and all that _was_ loveliest is all that is tamest
now, alas! It is better to be a poet; still better a mere lover of
Nature; one who never dreams of possession....
_Ford Madox Brown._
CXCV
You should choose an old tumbledown wall and throw over it a piece of
white silk. Then morning and evening you should gaze at it, until at
length you can see the ruin through the silk--its prominences, its
levels, its zigzags, and its cleavages, storing them up in the mind and
fixing them in the eye. Make the prominences your mountains, the lower
parts your water, the hollows your ravines, the cracks your streams, the
lighter parts your nearer points, the darker parts your more distant
points. Get all these thoroughly into you, and soon you will see men,
birds, plants, and trees, flying and moving among them. You may then ply
your brush according to your fancy, and the result will be of heaven,
not of men.
_Sung Ti_ (Chinese, eleventh century).
CXCVI
By looking attentively at old and smeared walls, or stones and veined
marble of various colours, you may fancy that you see in them several
compositions--landscapes, battles, figures in quick motion, strange
countenances, and dresses, with an infinity of other objects. By these
confused lines the inventive genius is excited to new exertions.
_Leonardo._
CXCVII
Out by a quarter to eight to examine the river Brent at Hendon; a mere
brooklet, running in most dainty sinuosity under overshadowing oaks and
all manner of leafiness. Many beauties, and hard to choose amongst, for
I had determined to make a little picture of it. However, Nature, that
at first sight appears so lovely, is on consideration almost always
incomplete; moreover, there is no painting intertangled foliage without
losing half its beauties. If imitated exactly it can only be done as
seen from one eye, and quite flat and confused therefore.
_Ford Madox Brown._
CXCVIII
To gaze upon the clouds of autumn, a soaring exaltation in the soul; to
feel the spring breeze stirring wild exultant thoughts;--what is there
in the possession of gold and jewels to compare with delights like
these? And then, to unroll the portfolio and spread the silk, and to
transfer to it the glories of flood and fell, the green forest, the
blowing winds, the white water of the rushing cascade, as with a turn of
the hand a divine influence descends upon the scene. These are the joys
of painting.
_Wang Wei_ (Chinese, fifth century).
CXCIX
In the room where I am writing there are hanging up two beautiful small
drawings by Cozens: one, a wood, close, and very solemn; the other, a
view from Vesuvius looking over Portici--very lovely. I borrowed them
from my neighbour, Mr. Woodburn. Cozens was all poetry, and your drawing
is a lovely specimen.
_Constable._
CXCIXa
Selection is the invention of the landscape painter.
_Fuseli._
CC
Don't imagine that I do not like Corot's picture, _La Prairie avec le
fossé_; on the contrary we thought, Rousseau and I, that it would be a
pity to have one picture without the other, each makes so lively an
impression of its own. You are perfectly right in liking the picture
very much. What particularly struck us in the other one was that it has
in an especial degree the look of being done by some one who knew
nothing about painting but who had done his best, filled with a great
longing to paint. In fact, a spontaneous discovery of the art! These are
both very beautiful things. We will talk about them, for in writing one
never gets to the end.
_Millet._
CCI
TO ROUSSEAU
The day after I left you I went to see your exhibition.... To-day I
assure you that in spite of knowing your studies of Auvergne and those
earlier ones, I was struck once more in seeing them all together by the
fact that a force is a force from its first beginnings.
With the very earliest you show a freshness of vision which leaves no
doubt as to the pleasure you took in seeing nature, and one sees that
she spoke directly to you, and that you saw her through your own eyes.
Your work is your own _et non de l'aultruy_, as Montaigne says. Don't
think I mean to go through everything of yours bit by bit, down to the
present moment. I only wish to mention the starting point, which is the
important thing, because it shows that a man is born to his calling.
From the beginning you were the little oak which will grow into a big
oak. There! I must tell you once more how much it moved me to see all
this.
_Millet._
CCII
I don't know if Corot is not greater than Delacroix. Corot is the father
of modern landscape. There is no landscape painter of to-day
who--knowingly or not--does not derive from him. I have never seen a
picture of Corot's which was not beautiful, or a line which did not mean
something.
Among modern painters it is Corot who as a colourist has most in common
with Rembrandt. The colour scheme is golden with the one and grey with
the other throughout the whole harmony of tones. In appearance their
methods are the opposite of each other, but the desired result is the
same. In a portrait by Rembrandt all details melt into shadow in order
that the spectator's gaze may be concentrated on a single part, often
the eyes, and this part is handled more caressingly than the rest.
Corot, on the other hand, sacrifices the details which are in the
light--the extremities of trees, and so on--and brings us always to the
spot which he has chosen for his main appeal to the spectator's eye.
_Dutilleux._
CCIII
Landscape has taken refuge in the theatre; scene-painters alone
understand its true character and can put it into practice with a happy
result. But Corot?
Oh that man's soul rebounds like a steel spring; he is no mere landscape
painter, but an artist--a real artist, and rare and exceptional genius.
_Delacroix._
CCIV
TO VERWÉE
There is an International Exhibition at Petit's now, and I am showing
some sea-pieces there with great success. The exhibition is made up,
with one or two exceptions, of young men. They are very clever, but
all alike; they follow a fashion--there is no more individuality.
Everybody paints, everybody is clever.
[Illustration: _Raphael_ THE MASS OF BOLSENA (Detail) _Anderson_]
We shall end by adoring J. Dupré. I don't always like him, but he has
individuality.
Too many painters, my dear fellow, and too many exhibitions! But you
see, at my age, I'm not afraid of showing my pictures among the young
men's sometimes.
Yet I hate exhibitions; one can hardly ever judge of a picture there.
_Alfred Stevens._
ITALIAN MASTERS
CCV
There is something ... in those deities of intellect in the Sistine
Chapel that converts the noblest personages of Raphael's drama into the
audience of Michael Angelo, before whom you know that, equally with
yourself, they would stand silent and awe-struck.
_Lawrence._
CCVI
My only disagreement with you would be in the estimate of his
comparative excellence in sculpture and painting. He called himself
sculptor, but we seldom gauge rightly our own strength and weakness. The
paintings in the Sistine Chapel are to my mind entirely beyond criticism
or praise, not merely with reference to design and execution, but also
for colour, right noble and perfect in their place. I was never more
surprised than by this quality, to which I do not think justice has ever
been done; nothing in his sculpture comes near to the perfection of his
Adam or the majesty of the Dividing the Light from Darkness; his
sculpture lacks the serene strength that is found in the Adam and many
other figures in the great frescoes. Dominated by the fierce spirit of
Dante, he was less influenced by the grave dignity of the Greek
philosophy and art than might have been expected from the contemporary
and possible pupil of Poliziano. In my estimate of him as a Sculptor in
comparison with him as Painter, I am likely to be in a minority of one!
but _I_ think that when he is thought of as a painter his earlier
pictures are thought of, and these certainly are unworthy of him, but
the Prophets and Sibyls are the greatest things ever painted. As a rule
he certainly insists too much upon the anatomy; some one said admirably,
"Learn anatomy, and forget it"; Michael Angelo did the first and not the
second, and the fault of almost all his work is, that it is too much an
anatomical essay. The David is an example of this, besides being very
faulty in proportion, with hands and feet that are monstrous. It is, I
think, altogether bad. The hesitating pose is good, and goes with the
sullen expression of the face, but is not that of the ardent heroic boy!
This seems presumptuous criticism; and you might, considering my
aspirations and efforts, say to me: "Do better!" but I am not Michael
Angelo, but I am a pupil of the greatest sculptor of all, Pheidias (a
master the great Florentine knew nothing of), and, so far, feel a right
to set up judgment on the technique only.
_Watts._
CCVII
ITALIAN ART IN FLANDERS
As to Italian art, here at Brussels there is nothing but a reminiscence
of it. It is an art which has been falsified by those who have tried to
acclimatise it, and even the specimens of it which have passed into
Flanders lose by their new surroundings. When in a part of the gallery
which is least Flemish, one sees two portraits by Tintoret, not of the
first rank, sadly retouched, but typical--one finds it difficult to
understand them side by side with Memling, Martin de Vos, Van Orley,
Rubens, Van Dyck, and even Antonio More. It is the same with Veronese.
He is out of his element; his colour is lifeless, it smacks of the
tempera painter; his style seems frigid, his magnificence unspontaneous
and almost bombastic. Yet the picture is a superb piece, in his finest
manner; a fragment of an allegorical triumph taken from a ceiling in the
Ducal Palace, and one of his best; but Rubens is close by, and that is
enough to give the Rubens of Venice an accent which is not of this
country. Which of the two is right? And listening merely to the language
so admirably spoken by the two men, who shall decide between the correct
and learned rhetoric of Venetian speech, and the emphatic, warmly
coloured, grandiose incorrectness of the Antwerp idiom? At Venice one
leans to Veronese; in Flanders one has a better ear for Rubens.
Italian art has this in common with all powerful traditions, that it is
at the same time very cosmopolitan because it has penetrated everywhere,
and very lofty because it has been self-sufficient. It is at home, in
all Europe, except in two countries; Belgium, the genius of which it has
appreciably affected without ever dominating it; and Holland, which once
made a show of consulting it but which has ended by passing it by; so
that, while it is on neighbourly terms with Spain, while it is enthroned
in France, where, at least in historical painting, our best painters
have been Romans, it encounters in Flanders two or three men, great men
of a great race, sprung from the soil, who hold sway there and have no
mind to share their empire with any other.
_Fromentin._
CCVIII
I am never tired of looking at Titian's pictures; they possess such
extreme breadth, which to me is so delightful a quality. In my opinion
there never will, to the end of time, arise a portrait-painter superior
to Titian. Next to him in this kind of excellence is Raphael. There is
this difference between Raphael and Titian: Raphael, with all his
excellence, possessed the utmost gentleness; it was as if he had said,
"If another person can do better, _I_ have no objections." But Titian
was a man who would keep down every one else to the uttermost; he was
determined that the art should come in and go out with himself; the
expression in all the portraits of him told as much. When any
stupendous work of antiquity remains with us--say, a building or a
bridge--the common people cannot account for it, and they say it was
erected _by the devil_. Now I feel this same thing in regard to the
works of Titian;--they seem to me as if painted by a devil, or at any
rate from inspiration; I cannot account for them.
_Northcote._
NORTHERN MASTERS
CCIX
Raphael, to be plain with you--for I like to be candid and
outspoken--does not please me at all. In Venice are found the good and
the beautiful; to their brush I give the first place; it is Titian that
bears the banner.
_Velasquez._
CCX
Perhaps some day the world will discover that Rembrandt is a much
greater painter than Raphael. I write this blasphemy--one to make the
hair of the Classicists stand on end--without definitely taking a side;
only I seem to find as I grow older that the most beautiful and most
rare thing in the world is truth.
Let us say, if you will, that Rembrandt has not Raphael's nobility. Yet
perhaps this nobility which Raphael manifests in his line is shown by
Rembrandt in the mysterious conception of his subjects, in the profound
naïveté of his expressions and gestures. However much one may prefer the
majestic emphasis of Raphael, which answers perhaps to the grandeur
inherent in certain subjects, one might assert, without being stoned by
men of taste--I mean men whose taste is real and sincere--that the great
Dutchman was more a born painter than the studious pupil of Perugino.
_Delacroix._
CCXI
Rembrandt's principle was to extract from things one element among the
rest, or rather to abstract every element in order to concentrate on the
seizure of one only. Thus in all his works he has set himself to
analyse, to distil; or, in better phrase, has been metaphysician even
more than poet. Reality never appealed to him by its general effects.
One might doubt, from his way of treating human forms, whether their
"envelope" interested him. He loved women, and never saw them otherwise
than unshapely; he loved textures, and did not imitate them; but then,
if he ignored grace and beauty, purity of line and the delicacy of the
skin, he expressed the nude body by suggestions of suppleness,
roundness, elasticity, with a love of material substance, a sense of the
live being, which enchant the practical painter. He resolved everything
into its component parts, colour as well as light, so that, by
eliminating the complicated and condensing the scattered elements from a
given scene, he succeeded in drawing without outline, in painting a
portrait almost without strokes that show, in colouring without colour,
in concentrating the light of the solar system into a sunbeam. It would
be impossible in a plastic art to carry the curiosity for the essential
to an intenser pitch. For physical beauty he substitutes expression of
character; for the imitation of things, their almost complete
transformation; for studious scrutiny, the speculation of the
psychologist; for precise observation, whether trained or natural, the
visions of a seer and apparitions of such vividness that he himself is
deceived by them. By virtue of this faculty of second sight, of
intuitions like those of a somnambulist, he sees farther into the
supernatural world than any one else whatever. The life that he
perceives in dream has a certain accent of the other world, which makes
real life seem pale and almost cold. Look at his "Portrait of a Woman in
the Louvre," two paces from "Titian's Mistress." Compare the two women,
study closely the two pictures, and you will understand the difference
between the two brains. Rembrandt's ideal, sought as in a dream with
closed eyes, is Light: the nimbus around objects, the phosphorescence
that comes against a black background. It is something fugitive and
uncertain, formed of lineaments scarce perceptible, ready to disappear
before the eye has fixed them, ephemeral and dazzling. To arrest the
vision, to set it on the canvas, to give it its shape and moulding, to
preserve the fragility of its texture, to render its brilliance, and yet
achieve in the result a solid, masculine, substantial painting, real
beyond any other master's work, and able to hold its own with a Rubens,
a Titian, a Veronese, a Giorgione, a Van Dyck--this is Rembrandt's aim.
Has he succeeded? The testimony of the world answers for him.
_Fromentin._
CCXII
The painting of Flanders will generally satisfy any devout person more
than the painting of Italy, which will never cause him to shed many
tears; this is not owing to the vigour and goodness of that painting,
but to the goodness of such devout person; women will like it,
especially very old ones or very young ones. It will please likewise
friars and nuns, and also some noble persons who have no ear for true
harmony. They paint in Flanders, only to deceive the external eye,
things that gladden you and of which you cannot speak ill, and saints
and prophets. Their painting is of stuffs--bricks and mortar, the grass
of the fields, the shadows of trees, and bridges and rivers, which they
call landscapes, and little figures here and there; and all this,
although it may appear good to some eyes, is in truth done without
reasonableness or art, without symmetry or proportion, without care in
selecting or rejecting, and finally, without any substance or verve; and
in spite of all this, painting in some other parts is worse than it is
in Flanders. Neither do I speak so badly of Flemish painting because it
is all bad, but because it tries to do so many things at once (each of
which alone would suffice for a great work), so that it does not do
anything really well.
Only works which are done in Italy can be called true painting, and
therefore we call good painting Italian; for if it were done so well in
another country, we should give it the name of that country or
province. As for the good painting of this country, there is nothing
more noble or devout; for with wise persons nothing causes devotion to
be remembered, or to arise, more than the difficulty of the perfection
which unites itself with and joins God; because good painting is nothing
else but a copy of the perfections of God and a reminder of His
painting. Finally, good painting is a music and a melody which intellect
only can appreciate, and with great difficulty. This painting is so rare
that few are capable of doing or attaining to it.
_Michael Angelo._
CCXIII
All Dutch painting is concave: what I mean is that it is composed of
curves described about a point determined by the pictorial interest;
circular shadows round a dominant light. Design, colouring, and lighting
fall into a concave scheme, with a strongly defined base, a retreating
ceiling, and corners rounded and converging on the centre; whence it
follows that the painting is all depth, and that it is far from the eye
to the objects represented. No type of painting leads with more certain
directness from the foreground to the background, from the frame to the
horizon. One can live in it, walk in it, see to the uttermost ends of
it; one is tempted to raise one's head to measure the distance of the
sky. Everything conspires to this illusion: the exactness of the aerial
perspective, the perfect harmony of colour and tones with the plane on
which the object is placed. The rendering of the heights of space, of
the envelope of atmosphere, of the distant effect, which absorbs this
school makes the painting of all other schools seem flat, something laid
upon the surface of the canvas.
_Fromentin._
CCXIV
In Van Eyck there is more structure, more muscle, more blood in the
veins; hence the impressive virility of his faces and the strong style
of his pictures. Altogether he is a portrait-painter of Holbein's
kin--exact, shrewd, and with a gift of penetration that is almost cruel.
He sees things with more perfect rightness than Memling, and also in a
bigger and some summary way. The sensations which the aspect of things
evokes in him are more powerful; his feeling for their colour is more
intense; his palette has a fullness, a richness, a distinctness, which
Memling's has not. His colour schemes are of more even power, better
held together, composed of values more cunningly found. His whites are
fatter, his purple richer, and the indigo blue--that fine blue as of old
Japanese enamel, which is peculiar to him--has more depth of dye, more
solidity of texture. The splendour and the costliness of the precious
things, of which the superb fashions of his time were so lavish,
appealed to him more strongly.
_Fromentin._
CCXV
Van Eyck saw with his eyes, Memling begins to see with his soul. The one
had a good and a right vein of thought; the other does not seem to
think so much, but he has a heart which beats in a quite different way.
The one copied and imitated, the other copies too and imitates, but
transfigures. The former reproduced--without any preoccupation with the
ideal types of humanity--above all, the masculine types, which passed
before his eyes in every rank of the society of his time; the latter
contemplates nature in a reverie, translates her with imagination,
dwells upon everything which is most delicate and lovely in human forms,
and creates, above all, in his type of woman a being exquisite and
elect, unknown before and lost with him.
_Fromentin_
CCXVI
BRUGES, 1849
This is a most stunning place, immeasurably the best we have come to.
There is a quantity of first-rate architecture, and very little or no
Rubens.
But by far the best of all are the miraculous works of Memling and Van
Eyck. The former is here in a strength that quite stunned us--and
perhaps proves himself to have been a greater man even than the latter.
In fact, he was certainly so intellectually, and quite equal in
mechanical power. His greatest production is a large triptych in the
Hospital of St. John, representing in its three compartments: firstly,
the "Decollation of St. John Baptist"; secondly, the "Mystic Marriage of
St. Catherine to the Infant Saviour"; and thirdly, the "Vision of St.
John Evangelist in Patmos." I shall not attempt any description; I
assure you that the perfection of character and even drawing, the
astounding finish, the glory of colour, and, above all, the pure
religious sentiment and ecstatic poetry of these works is not to be
conceived or described. Even in seeing them the mind is at first
bewildered by such godlike completeness; and only after some while has
elapsed can at all analyse the causes of its awe and admiration; and
then finds these feelings so much increased by analysis that the last
impression left is mainly one of utter shame at its own inferiority.
Van Eyck's picture at the Gallery may give you some idea of the style
adopted by Memling in these great pictures; but the effect of light and
colour is much less poetical in Van Eyck's; partly owing to _his_ being
a more sober subject and an interior, but partly also, I believe, to the
intrinsic superiority of Memling's intellect. In the background of the
first compartment there is a landscape more perfect in the abstract
lofty feeling of nature than anything I have ever seen. The visions of
the third compartment are wonderfully mystic and poetical.
_Rossetti._
CCXVII
VAN DYCK
Van Dyck completed Rubens by adding to his achievement portraits
absolutely worthy of his master's brush, better than Rubens' own. He
created in his own country an art which was original, and consequently
he has his share in the creation of a new art. Besides this he did yet
more: he begot a whole school in a foreign country, the English
school--Reynolds, Lawrence, Gainsborough, and I would add to them nearly
all the genre painters who are faithful to the English tradition, and
the most powerful landscape painters issue directly from Van Dyck, and
indirectly from Rubens through Van Dyck. These are high claims. And so
posterity, always just in its instincts, gives Van Dyck a place apart
between the men of the first and those of the second rank. The world has
never decided the exact precedence which ought to be his in the
procession of the masters, and since his death, as during his life, he
seems to have held the privilege of being placed near the throne and of
making a stately figure there.
_Fromentin._
SPANISH PAINTING
CCXVIII
VELASQUEZ
What we are all trying to do with great labour, he does at once.
_Reynolds._
CCXIX
Saw again to-day the Spanish school in the Museum,--Velasquez, a
surprising fellow! The "Hermits in a Rocky Desert" pleased me much; also
a "Dark Wood at Nightfall." He is Teniers on a large scale: his handling
is of the most sparkling kind, owing much of its dazzling effect to the
flatness of the ground it is placed upon.
The picture of "Children in Grotesque Dresses," in his painting-room, is
a surprising piece of handling. Still he would gain, and indeed does
gain, when he glazes his pictures. He makes no use of his ground; lights
and shadows are opaque. Chilliness and blackness are sometimes the
result; and often a cold blue or green prevails, requiring all his
brilliancy of touch and truth of effect to make tolerable. Velasquez,
however, may be said to be the origin of what is now doing in England.
His feeling they have caught almost without seeing his works; which
here seem to anticipate Reynolds, Romney, Raeburn, Jackson, and even Sir
Thomas Lawrence. Perhaps there is this difference: he does at once what
we do by repeated and repeated touches.
It may truly be said, that wheresoever Velasquez is admired, the
paintings of England must be acknowledged and admired with him.
_Wilkie._
CCXX
VELASQUEZ
Never did any one think less of a style or attain it more consummately.
He was far too much occupied with the divining of the qualities of light
and atmosphere that enveloped his subjects, and with stating those
truths in the most direct and poignant way to have time to spare on mere
adornments and artifices that amuse us in the work of lesser men. Every
stroke in Velasquez means something, records an observation. You never
see a splodge of light that entertains you for a moment and relapses
into _chic_ as you analyse it; even the most elusive bits of painting
like the sword-hilt in the "Admiral Pulido" are utterly just, and
observed as the light flickers and is lost over the steel shapes. No one
ever had the faculty of observing the true character of two diverse
forms at the same time as he did. If you look at any quilted sleeve you
will feel the whole texture of the material and recognise its own shape,
and yet under it and through it each nuance of muscle and arm-form
reveals itself. It is no light praise, mind you, when one says that
every touch is the record of a tireless observation--you have only to
look at a great Sir Joshua to see that quite half of every canvas is
merely a recipe, a painted yawn in fact, as the intensity of his vision
relaxed; but in a Velasquez your attention is riveted by the passionate
search of the master and his ceaseless absorption in the thing before
him--and this is all the more astounding because the work is hardly ever
conceived from a point of view of bravura; there is nothing
over-enthusiastic, insincerely impetuous, but a quiet suave dignity
informing the whole, and penetrating into the least detail of the
canvas.
There is one quality Velasquez never falters in; from earliest days he
is master of his medium; he understands its every limitation, realises
exactly how far his palette is capable of rendering nature; and so you
are never disturbed in your appreciation of his pictures by a sense that
he is battling against insuperable difficulties, severely handicapped by
an unsympathetic medium; but rather that here is the consummate workman
who, gladly recognising the measure of his freedom within the four walls
of his limitations, illustrates for you that fine old statement, "Whose
service is perfect freedom."
_C. W. Furse._
CCXXI
ON GAINSBOROUGH
We must not forget, whilst we are on this subject, to make some remarks
on his custom of painting by night, which confirms what I have already
mentioned,--his great affection to his art; since he could not amuse
himself in the evening by any other means so agreeable to himself. I am
indeed much inclined to believe that it is a practice very advantageous
and improving to an artist: for by this means he will acquire a new and
a higher perception of what is great and beautiful in nature. By
candlelight not only objects appear more beautiful, but from their being
in a greater breadth of light and shadow, as well as having a greater
breadth and uniformity of colour, nature appears in a higher style; and
even the flesh seems to take a higher and richer tone of colour.
Judgment is to direct us in the use to be made of this method of study;
but the method itself is, I am very sure, advantageous. I have often
imagined that the two great colourists, Titian and Correggio, though I
do not know that they painted by night, formed their high ideas of
colouring from the effects of objects by this artificial light.
_Reynolds._
[Illustration: _Gainsborough_ THE CHILDREN AND THE BUTTERFLY _Mansell_]
MODERN PAINTING
CCXXII
ON REYNOLDS
Damn him! how various he is!
_Gainsborough._
CCXXIII
I shall take advantage of Sir John's[3] mention of Reynolds and
Gainsborough to provoke some useful refutation, by stating that it seems
to me the latter is by no means the rival of the former; though in this
opinion I should expect to find myself in a minority of one. Reynolds
knew little about the human structure, Gainsborough nothing at all;
Reynolds was not remarkable for good drawing, Gainsborough was
remarkable for bad; nor did the latter ever approach Reynolds in
dignity, colour, or force of character, as in the portraits of John
Hunter and General Heathfield for example. It may be conceded that more
refinement, and perhaps more individuality, is to be found in
Gainsborough, but his manner (and both were mannerists) was scratchy and
thin, while that of Reynolds was manly and rich. Neither Reynolds nor
Gainsborough was capable of anything ideal; but the work of Reynolds
indicates thought and reading, and I do not know of anything by
Gainsborough conveying a like suggestion.
_Watts._
[Footnote 3: Sir John Millais.]
CCXXIV
I was thinking yesterday, as I got up, about the special charm of the
English school. The little I saw of it has left me memories. They have a
real sensitiveness which triumphs over all the studies in concoction
which appear here and there, as in our dismal school; with us that
sensitiveness is the rarest thing: everything has the look of being
painted with clumsy tools, and what is worse, by obtuse and vulgar
minds. Take away Meissonier, Decamps, one or two others, and some of the
youthful pictures of Ingres, and all is tame, nerveless, without
intention, without fire. One need only cast one's eye over that stupid,
commonplace paper _L'Illustration_, manufactured by pettifogging artists
over here, and compare it with the corresponding English publication to
realise how wretchedly flat, flabby, and insipid is the character of
most of our productions. This supposed home of drawing shows really no
trace of it, and our most pretentious pictures show as little as any. In
these little English designs nearly every object is treated with the
amount of interest it demands; landscapes, sea-pieces, costumes,
incidents of war, all these are delightful, done with just the right
touch, and, above all, well drawn.... I do not see among us any one to
be compared with Leslie, Grant, and all those who derive partly from
Wilkie and partly from Hogarth, with a little of the suppleness and ease
introduced by the school of forty years back, Lawrence and his comrades,
who shone by their elegance and lightness.
_Delacroix._
CCXXV
THE ENGLISH SCHOOL
I shall never care to see London again. I should not find there my old
memories, and, above all, I should not find the same men to enjoy with
me what there is to be seen now. Perhaps I might find myself obliged to
break a lance for Reynolds, or for that adorable Gainsborough, whom you
are indeed right to love. Not that I am the opponent of the present
movement in the painting of England. I am even struck by the prodigious
conscientiousness that these people can bring to bear even on work of
the imagination; it seems that in coming back to excessive detail they
are more in their own element than when they imitated the Italian
painters and the Flemish colourists. But what does the skin matter?
Under this seeming transformation they are always English. Thus instead
of making imitations pure and simple of the primitive Italians, as the
fashion has been among us, they mix with this imitation of the manner of
the old schools an infinitely personal sentiment; they put into it the
interest which is generally missing in our cold imitations of the
formulas and the style of schools which have had their day. I am writing
without pulling myself up, and saying everything that comes into my
head. Perhaps the impressions I received at that former time might be a
little modified to-day. Perhaps I should find in Lawrence an
exaggeration of methods and effects too closely reminiscent of the
school of Reynolds; but his amazing delicacy of drawing, and the air of
life he gives to his women, who seem almost to be talking with one, give
him, considered as a portrait-painter, a certain superiority over Van
Dyck, whose admirable figures are immobile in their pose. Lustrous eyes
and parted lips are admirably rendered by Lawrence. He welcomed me with
much kindness; he was a man of most charming manners, except when you
criticised his pictures.... Our school has need of a little new blood.
Our school is old, and the English school seems young. They seem to seek
after nature while we busy ourselves with imitating other pictures.
Don't get me stoned by mentioning abroad these opinions, which alas! are
mine.
_Delacroix._
CCXXVI
There are only two occasions, I conceive, on which a foreign artist
could with propriety be invited to execute a great national work in this
country, namely, in default of our having any artist at all competent to
such an undertaking, or for the purpose of introducing a superior style
of art, to correct a vicious taste prevalent in the nation. The
consideration of the first parts of this statement I leave to those who
have witnessed with what ability Mr. Flaxman, Mr. Westmacott, and the
other candidates have designed their models, and with respect to the
style and good taste of the English school. I dare, and am proud, to
assert its superiority over any that has appeared in Europe since the
age of the Caracci.
_Hoppner._
CCXXVII
(Watts is) the only man who understands great art.
_Alfred Stevens._
CCXXVIII
There is only Puvis de Chavannes who holds his place; as for all the
others, one must gild their monuments.
_Meissonier._
CCXXIX
PRUDHON
In short, he has his own manner; he is the Boucher, the Watteau of our
day. We must let him do as he will; it can do no harm at the present
time, and in the state the school is in. He deceives himself, but it is
not given to every one to deceive themselves like him; his talent has a
sure foundation. What I cannot forgive him is that he always draws the
same heads, the same arms, and the same hands. All his faces have the
same expression, and this expression is always the same grimace. It is
not thus we should envisage nature, we who are disciples and admirers of
the ancients.
_L. David._
CCXXX
ON DELACROIX
Delacroix (except in two pictures, which show a kind of savage genius)
is a perfect beast, though almost worshipped here.
_Rossetti (1849)._
CCXXXI
Delacroix is one of the mighty ones of the earth, and Ingres misses
being so creditably.
_Rossetti (1856)._
CCXXXII
ON DELACROIX
Must I say that I prefer Delacroix with his exaggerations, his mistakes,
his obvious falls, because he belongs to no one but himself, because he
represents the spirit, the time, and the idiom of his time? Sickly, too
highly strung, perhaps, since his art has the melodies of our
generation, since in the strained note of his lamentations as in his
resounding triumphs, there is always a gasp of the breath, a cry, a
fever that are alike our own and his.
We are no longer in the Olympian Age, like Raphael, Veronese, and
Rubens; and Delacroix's art is powerful, as a voice from Dante's
Inferno.
_Rousseau._
CCXXXIII
A DELACROIX EXHIBITION
Feminine painting is invading us; and if our time, of which Delacroix is
the true representative, _has not dared enough_, what will the enervated
art of the future be like?
Only paintings are exhibited just now. Two rooms scarcely hold his
riches; and when one thinks that there are here but the elements of
Delacroix's production, one is bewildered. What strikes one above all
in his sketches is the note of nervous, contained intensity, which
during all his full career he never lost; neither fashion nor the
influence of others affected it; never was there a more sincere note.
Plenty of incorrectness, I grant you, but with a great feeling for
drawing. Whatever one may say, if drawing is an instrument of
expression, Delacroix was a draughtsman. A great style, a marvellous
invention, passion expressed in form as well as in colour, Delacroix is
typically the artist, and not a professor of drawing who fills out
weakness and mediocrity by rhetoric.
_Paul Huet._
CCXXXIV
COROT'S METHOD OF WORK
Corot is a true artist. One must see a painter in his home to have an
idea of his merit. I saw again there, and with a quite new appreciation
of them, pictures which I had seen at the museum and only cared for
moderately. His great "Baptism of Christ" is full of naïve beauties; his
trees are superb. I asked him about the tree I have to do in the
"Orpheus." He told me to walk straight ahead, giving myself up to
whatever might come in my way; usually this is what he does. He does not
admit that taking infinite pains is lost labour. Titian, Raphael,
Rubens, &c., worked easily. They only attempted what they knew; only
their range was wider than that of the man who, for instance, only
paints landscapes or flowers. Notwithstanding this facility, labour too
is indispensable. Corot broods much over things. Ideas come to him, and
he adds as he works. It is the right way.
_Delacroix._
CCXXXV
From the age of six, I had the passion for drawing the forms of things.
By the age of fifty, I had published an infinity of designs; but all
that I produced before the age of seventy is of no account. Only when I
was seventy-three had I got some sort of insight into the real structure
of nature--animals, plants, trees, birds, fish, and insects.
Consequently, at the age of eighty I shall have advanced still further;
at ninety, I shall grasp the mystery of things; at a hundred, I shall be
a marvel, and at a hundred and ten every blot, every line from my brush
shall be alive!
_Hokusai._
CCXXXVI
It takes an artist fifty years to learn to do anything, and fifty years
to learn what not to do--and fifty years to sift and find what he simply
desires to do--and 300 years to do it, and when it is done neither
heaven nor earth much needs it nor heeds it. Well, I'll peg away; I can
do nothing else, and wouldn't if I could.
_Burne-Jones._
CCXXXVII
If the Lord lets me live two years longer, I think that I can paint
something beautiful.
_Corot at 77._
ARS LONGA
CCXXXVIII
If Heaven would give me ten years more ... if Heaven would give me only
five years more ... I might become a really great painter.
_Hokusai._
CCXXXIX
I will have my Bed to be a Bed of Honour, and cannot die in a better
Posture than with my Pencil in my Hand.
_Lucas of Leyden._
CCXL
Adieu! I go above to see if friend Corot has found me new landscapes to
paint.
_Daubigny_ (on his death-bed).
CCXLI
Leaving my brush in the city of the East, I go to gaze on the divine
landscapes of the Paradise of the West.
_Hiroshige_ (on his death-bed).
CCXLII
Much will hereafter be written about subjects and refinements of
painting. Sure am I that many notable men will arise, all of whom will
write both well and better about this art and will teach it better than
I. For I myself hold my art at a very mean value, for I know what my
faults are. Let every man therefore strive to better these my errors
according to his powers. Would to God it were possible for me to see
the work and art of the mighty masters to come, who are yet unborn, for
I know that I might be improved. Ah! how often in my sleep do I behold
great works of art and beautiful things, the like whereof never appear
to me awake, but so soon as I awake even the remembrance of them leaveth
me. Let none be ashamed to learn, for a good work requireth good
counsel. Nevertheless, whosoever taketh counsel in the arts let him take
it from one thoroughly versed in those matters, who can prove what he
saith with his hand. Howbeit any one _may_ give thee counsel; and when
thou hast done a work pleasing to thyself, it is good for thee to show
it to dull men of little judgment that they may give their opinion of
it. As a rule, they pick out the most faulty points, whilst they
entirely pass over the good. If thou findest something they say true,
thou mayest thus better thy work.
_Dürer._
CCXLIII
I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory
a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do
nothing for profit; I want nothing; I am quite happy.
_Blake._
INDEX OF ARTISTS
Agatharcus, 46
Alberti Leon Battista, 51, 143
Anon (Chinese), 184
Apelles, 87
Blake, 7, 26, 53, 97, 122, 173, 243
Bracquemond, 23, 61, 63, 115, 179
Brown, Ford Madox, 82, 194, 197
Burne-Jones, 19, 36, 116, 127, 131, 155, 166, 181, 236
Calvert, Edward, 25, 41, 77, 80, 137, 167
Cennini, Cennino, 126, 163
Chassériau, 93, 146, 147, 175, 189
Constable, 81, 104, 188, 192, 199
Corot, 28, 66, 73, 74, 76, 237
Crome, 191
Courbet, 20, 21
Couture, 148
Daubigny, 240
David, Louis, 57, 229
Delacroix, 14, 16, 29, 60, 85, 88, 114, 125, 149, 168, 203, 210,
224, 225, 234
Donatello, 108
Dürer, 5, 49, 71, 242
Dutilleux, 142, 190, 202
Dyce, 24
Eupompus, 67
Fromentin, 8, 15, 30, 177, 207, 211, 213, 214, 215, 217
Furse, 132, 133, 139, 170, 172, 183, 197, 220
Fuseli, 2, 139A, 199A
Gainsborough, 90, 222
Goujon, 48
Goya, 89, 156, 157
Hilliard, 159
Hiroshige, 241
Hogarth, 118, 124, 141, 152
Hokusai, 106, 134, 141, 235, 238
Hoppner, 226
Hsieh Ho, 11, 117
Huet, 185, 233
Ingres, 52, 62, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 119, 120, 128
Keene, 69
Klagmann, 44
Ku K'ai-Chih, 12, 165
Kuo Hsi, 186, 187
Lawrence, 59, 205
Leighton, 103
Leonardo, 3, 50, 56, 65, 121, 129, 158, 160, 161, 162, 176, 196
Lucas of Leyden, 239
Lundgren, E., 164
Meissonier, 228
Michael Angelo, 4, 79, 107, 123, 212
Millais, 95, 99
Millet, 35, 47, 75, 200, 201
Monticelli, 101
Morris, William, 27, 38, 39, 43, 130, 144
Northcote, 151, 174, 178, 208
Okio, 70
Pasiteles, 138
Poussin, N., 13
Préault, 83
Puvis de Chavannes, 78, 105, 180
Raphael, 18
Rembrandt, 91, 92
Reynolds, 68, 72, 84, 218, 221
Rops, 31
Rossetti, 6, 9, 150, 216, 230, 231
Rousseau, 37, 86, 136, 232
Rubens, 55, 58, 98
Shiba Kokan, 135
Stevens, A. (the Belgian painter), 1, 204
Stevens, A. (the English sculptor), 227
Sung Ti, 195
Titian, 45, 140
Turner, 193
Velasquez, 209
Wang Wei, 198
Watts, 10, 17, 34, 40, 96, 100, 102, 169, 171, 182, 206, 223
Whistler, 32, 42, 64
Wiertz, 22, 33, 54
Wilkie, 94, 145, 153, 154, 219
Zeuxis, 46
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
Edinburgh & London
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