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A CHILD'S GUIDE TO
PICTURES
1
BY
CHARLES H. CAFFIN
AUTHOR OF "how TO STUDY PICTURES'
New York ^ .' '
THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY:
1908
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©ATION^^PYRIGHT, 1908, BY
R & TAYLOR COMPANY
Published, July, 1908
• • •
• . X^E 'iKOW PRESS, NEW YORK
C O N T E N T S
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Feeling for Beauty 11
11. Art and Her Twin Sister, Nature . . 21
III. Nature is Haphazard; Art is Arrangement . 30
IV. Contrast 40
V. Geometric Composition 55
VI. Geometric Composition {Continued) ... 63
VII . The Action, Movement, and Composition of
THE Figure 75
VIII. The Classic Landscape 83
IX. Naturalistic Composition 95
X. Naturalistic Composition {Continued) . . 106
XL The Naturalistic Landscape . . . .117
XII. Form and Color 129
XIII. Color 144
XIV. Color — Values — Subtlety 160
XV. Color — ^Texture, Atmosphere, Tone . . 180
XVI. Color— Tone 204
XVII. Brush-work and Drawing 219
XVIII. Subject, Motive, and Point of View . . 230
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PJlGS
View on the Seine . Homer D. Martin . Frontispiece
La Dispute, del Sacramento Raphael 56
Jurisprudence - . Raphael 66
The Manitou Lunette . . . . E. H. Blashfield 86
Dido Building Carthage . . . . J. M. W. Turner 92
The Sower J. F. Millet 100
Young Woman Opening a Window . . J. Vermeer 108
Crossing the Brook J.M.W. Turner 118
Paysage - J. B.C. Corot 128
Washington Crossing the Delaware . . E. Leutze 140
Prince Balthazar Carlos Velasquez 168
The Little White Girl . . . . J.M. Whisder 176
The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine . . Correggio 192
Light and Shade George Inness 202
Evening Anton Mauve 246
A CHILD'S GUIDE TO
PICTURES
A CHILD'S GUIDE
TO PICTURES
CHAPTEK I
THE FEELING FOR BEAUTY
SOME of you, I expect, collect photographs of
pictures in connection with your history studies.
These portraits of the principal characters and pic-
tures, illustrating great events, places, costumes, and
modes of living of the period, add greatly to the in-
terest of your reading. They hring the past time
vividly before your eyes.
But it is not this view of pictures that we are
going to talk about in the present book. I shall have
very little to say about the subjects of pictures —
partly because you can find out for yourselves what
subjects interest you; but mostly, because the sub-
ject of a picture has so very little to do with its
beauty as a work of art. For it is this view of a
picture, as being a work of art, that I shall try to
keep before you.
I remember seeing the photograph of a picture
hanging in a place of honor on the wall of a girFs
room ; and I asked her why she had chosen this par-
ticular one out of many that she had. You see that,
in order to help anyone, you have to try to get into
11
A Guide to Pictures
their minds, and find out how their minds are work-
ing ; and as much of my work is with girls and boys,
I try to get from them hints as to the best way of
helping them. Well, this girl, let me tell you, bub-
bled over with life and fun, swam like a fish and
climbed trees like a squirrel; but she had her
thoughtful moods, when, as often as not, she would
lay out her collection of photographs of pictures on
the floor, and not only look at them, but think about
them. And I have no doubt that she was in one of
those moods, when she chose out this particular
print and hung it on her wall, in order that she might
see it often.
So I asked her why she had chosen it, and she
said : " Because I liked it.'' I asked her why ?
" Oh, I don't know," she said. Now that is just the
sort of girl or boy for whom I am writing this book.
Not that I think that girl would have liked her pic-
ture any better for knowing why she liked it. Then,
" What is the good," you ask, " of writing a book
to help her to know ? " A very shrewd question and
quite to the point. Let me try to answer it.
When the girl said she did not know why she liked
the picture, I think she meant that she could not put
into words what she felt. It was the feeling with
which the picture filled her that made her like it. I
could understand what she meant, because I remem-
bered an experience of my own. The first time that
I saw Eaphael's Disputd^ which decorates a wall in
one of the rooms of the Vatican in Kome, I had set
out with my guidebook, intending to study all the
12
The Feeling for Beauty
paintings by Eaphael that decorate these rooms. I
entered the first room and, I suppose, looked round
the walls and saw three other paintings; but all I
recall during this visit was the Disputd. I sat down
before it and remained seated! I do not know how
long, but the morning slipped away. What I
thought about as I looked at the picture I cannot
tell you. My impression is that I did not think
at all; I only felt. My spirit w^as lifted up and
purified and strengthened with happiness. Return-
ing to my hotel, I read about the picture in the
guidebook. It appeared that one of the figures
represented Dante. I had not noticed it, and as I
read on I found out other things that I had missed ;
that, indeed, the whole subject, so far as it could
be put into words, had escaped me. I had no knowl-
edge of what the painting was about ; only I had felt
its beauty. ^
Since then I have studied the picture and discov-
ered some of the means that Raphael employed to
arouse this depth of feeling, and the knowledge has
helped me to find beauty in other things.
So, to go back to my girl friend, I would not dis-
turb the beauty of her feeling with teachy-teachy
talk, any more than I would talk while beautiful
music was being played. But, suppose in a simple
way I could make her understand that I, too, felt
the beauty of the picture; and, as I have learned
a little how to express feeling in words, should try
to tell her how I felt the beauty. Might it not add
to her pleasure, if she discovered that I was putting
13
A Guide to Pictures
into words some of the feeling that she herself had,
and perhaps suggesting other beauties that she had
not felt ?
Well, that is what I hope to do for you in this
book, to put some ideas into your head, that will
lead you to look for and find more and more beauty
in pictures and in nature and in life. Ideas, mark
you, not words. We shall have to use words, but
words are of no account, unless they make you feel
the idea contained in them.
I say feel; and you will notice I have used these
words, feel and feeling, several times already. I
have done so because I want to impress upon you
that the enjoyment of beauty, whether in pictures
or any other form, comes to us through feeling. It
may lead to thinking, and perhaps should, but it does
not begin with thinking or reasoning, as does, for ex-
ample, algebra or geometry. Nor can we, as we
say, " get it down fine," in the way we do with the
Latin declensions. When you have learned them
thoroughly, you know them once and for all, and
you know about them just what every other girl
and boy who has learned them knows. With feel-
ing it is otherwise. What you feel is different to
what 7 feel; we can never feel alike. No two peo-
ple can. So I am not going to tell you what you
ought to feel about pictures ; nor am I going to try
and persuade you to like one and not like another.
Therefore, this book would not be much help to you
in passing an examination about pictures, if any-
thing so foolish could be supposed. But I hope it
14
The Feeling for Beauty '
may start your imagination off in a great many
new directions, and help you to discover more and
more of beauty not only in pictures, but in life.
For we should study pictures not solely for their
own sake, but also as a means of making our lives
fuller and better. If you ask me what is the most
beautiful thing in the world, I shall not say art,
although I am writing about pictures — but life — its
fullness of possibility and abundance of oppor-
tunity. Especially young life ; the lives of you girls
and boys, who, as yet, have so few mistakes to regret,
so much to look forward to of promise and fulfill-
ment. What you will make of those lives of yours
may depend a little upon schools and teachers, pa-
rents and friends, money and health, and many other
things, but most of all upon your own wills. I won-
der if you have read the life of Eobert Louis Steven-
son?
He had only such education as many other boys
of his time had, little or no money, and very poor
health. But what a deal he made of his own life
and how he helped the lives of others ! What a
fellow he was for fun, and how he loved wisdom; a
great worker and a greatly conscientious one; not
satisfied unless his work was the very best that he
could make it. And the reason was that he loved
beauty as well as wisdom; and in his life and writ-
ings, because in his own inward thoughts wisdom
and beauty went hand in hand. I know of no better
example of the full life; of a life made the most
of, in the best and truest sense, with gladness and
15
A Guide to Pictures
strength for itself and for the lives of others. While
his body sleeps on an island mountain, overlooking
the vast beauty of sky and ocean, his spirit stays
with us.
The secret of the fullness of Stevenson's life was
that, so far as in him lay, he left no portion of the
garden of his life uncultivated. There were no waste
places, every part was fruitful. He did the best
that he could for his poor, weak body; kept his in-
tellect bright with learning, his fun alert with hope,
his friendships warm with sympathy; and kept his
life and work sweetened and purified and strength-
ened by the love of beauty. He was in a high sense
in love with life — his own life, the lives of others,
and life in art and nature, and the abundant harvest
of his garden is the love that countless men and
women and children bore him and still maintain.
Such fullness of life is rare. Boys and girls, and
for that matter men and women, cultivate some part
of themselves, and let the rest go to waste. And
the part which is most apt to be overlooked is the
sense of beauty. We train our bodies and our minds,
but neglect those -£.ve senses, which are just as much
a part of us. It is true that men train their senses
for the practical purposes of business: the watch-
maker, for instance, his delicacy of touch; the tea
producer, his senses of taste and smell ; the mariner,
his senses of sight and sound. But business, though
necessary, is not everything. We do not confine the
exercise of our bodies and minds to work and busi-
ness, but use them also for enjoyment, and train them
16
The reeling for Beauty
for this purpose. Do we not learn to swim, play
ball and tennis, and practice other bodily exercises
for the pure enjoyment of them ? Or in our leisure
moments busy our brains with study of bees, ma-
chinery, history, all kinds of difficult subjects not as
work, but as a relief from work ? We call them our
" hobbies," and indulge them for pleasure, and find
that the pleasure improves our health and spirits,
and in the end even makes us do our necessary work
better, and so find more pleasure in that also. For
it is in what we know best and can do best that we
really take most pleasure. And though life cannot
be all pleasure, yet pleasure, rightly understood,
should be one of the chief aims of life. And one
of the chief sources of pleasure is to be found in the
beauty that reaches our minds through the senses,
especially through the senses of sight and sound.
Let me illustrate in a simple way how one child
will gain pleasure from her senses while another
doesn't. Both have their five senses in working order
— smell, taste, touch, sight, and sound — and have
been in the woods gathering flowers. They reach
home. One throws her handful down on a sofa,
table, or chair, or the nearest bit of furniture, and
goes off to do something, or it may be nothing, leav-
ing the flowers to wither and become an untidiness.
What made her gather them ? Perhaps, because she
is full of health and had to run about and do some-
thing ; perhaps, because she has not quite gotten over
the fondness that most of us had, as babies, for
breaking and tearing things. It amused her to break
17
A Guide to Pictures
the big steins and tear off the vines or pull up the
little plants. Or possibly she was really attracted
by the beauty of the flowers, but soon tired of them,
and went off to other things.
Not so, however, with her companion. She
spreads a paper on the table, lays out her flowers,
brings one or two vases, and settles down to the
pleasure of arranging them. She picks up a flower,
and while she waits to decide in which vase it shall
be put, see how delicately she handles it! You can
tell in a moment she has a feeling of love and ten-
derness toward the flower. She puts it in a vase, and
then her eye travels over the other flowers to decide
which shall bear it company. What color, what form
of flower will match best the first one ? And while
she is making the choice almost unconsciously she
sniffs the fragrance of that spray of honeysuckle.
Well, she lingers so long over the pleasure of arrang-
ing her flowers that we have not time to stay and
w^atch the whole proceeding ; but presently, when we
come back, we find the vases filled and set about the
room where they will look their best ; this one in the
dark corner with the wall behind it; another on
the window sill, so that the light may shine through
the petals of the flowers. And we think to ourselves
what taste the girl has ! For (have you ever thought
of it?) we use the word taste, which originally de-
scribed only the sense of tasting things with the
tongue, in order to sum up a finer use of the senses
of sight and sound.
And this finer use of the senses, such as Steven-
18
The Feeling for Beauty
son cultivated, so that his life and works are beauti-
ful as well as wise and good, we too may cultivate,
and it is the object of this book to help us do it. I
call it a guide to pictures, but I want to make it
much more than that — a guide for the wonderful
organs, your senses, that they may grow more and
more to feel the beauty that is all about us in nature
and in life, as well as in pictures and other works
of art. So beauty is really our subject, beauty in
nature and in art. The two are separate, though
united as twin sisters.
As I write, many of you are enjoying your sum-
mer vacations, face to face with nature. The health
of the mountains or the sea is in your blood; your
bodies know the joy of active movement ; your minds
are filled with the interest of new scenes and adven-
tures, of sports and fun with friends. But every
once in a while I think it likely that your happiness
is increased by something beautiful you have seen
in nature. Perhaps even now, as you read these
words, there comes to you the memory of some sun-
set, or moonlight on the water, of early morning mist
creeping among the tree tops, or I know not what of
nature's beauty, suddenly revealed to you because you
were in the mood to receive it.
You were in the company of a friend, and you
drew your arm closer through his or hers, and both
were the happier for the beauty that was before you
and had entered into your hearts. Or perhaps you
were alone, and the eagerness came over you to make
some record of your joy — in a letter to a friend or
19
A Guide to Pictures
in some poem for no eyes but your own. You felt
the need to give utterance to your joy in nature's
beauty. You bad in you a little of the desire that
stirs the artist.
And this brings us to the other kind of beauty,
which is not of nature, though it is of nature's
prompting — the beauty created by the artist. We
are going to study the work of artists who create
beauty in pictures. But do not make the mistake
some people do, of thinking that it is only painters
who are artists. An artist is one who fits some
beautiful conception with some beautiful form of
expression. His form of expression, or as we say,
his art, may be sculpture, painting, or architecture;
or some handicraft, as of metal or porcelain or em-
broidery ; or it may be music, the composing of music
or the rendering of it by instrument or voice ; it may
be acting or some forms of dancing ; it may be poetry
or even prose. The artist, in a word, is one who not
only takes beauty into his o^vn soul, but has the gift
of art that enables him to communicate the beauty to
others by giving it a form or body. If he be a mu-
sician, he gives it a form of sound; if a painter, a
form visible to the eye. It is his power of creating
a form for the beauty which he feels that makes
him an artist. And in its various forms — poetry,
music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and the rest
— art is man's highest expression of his reverence for
and joy in beauty.
20
CHAPTEE II
ART AND HER TWIN SISTER, NATURE
A Work of Art is Distinguished hy Selection
IN the previous chapter we talked about beauty, and
noted that there were two kinds — beauty in na-
ture and beauty in art. Let us now look a little more
closely into this distinction, so that we may grasp
the idea of what a work of art is.
Since what the painter puts onto his canvas is visi-
ble to the eye, it will generally represent or suggest
some form in nature. So the painter is a student of
nature. But not in the same way as the botanist who
studies the forms of trees and plants which grow
above the ground, or the geologist who explores the
secrets of the earth below the ground. These we call
scientists or scientific students, because the object of
their study is exact knowledge of nature. They ad-
dress themselves directly to our intellects and teach
us to Jcnow the facts of nature accurately; but the
painter appeals first to our sense of sight and helps
us to feel more deeply the heauty of the visible world.
Unless we thoroughly grasp this difference we
shall never properly understand what painters try
to do, nor be able properly to enjoy their pictures.
21
A Guide to Pictures
So here, at the beginning of our talks together, let
us look into this difference.
We have said that the painter represents or sug-
gests some form in nature. Sometimes he represents
the actual appearance of nature, as when he paints
a portrait or a landscape. At other times he sug-
gests the possible appearance of things, which he has
never seen but only imagines, as the old Italian
painters did when they made pictures of St. George,
killing the dragon, or of Christ in the manger, with
a choir of angels hovering above. They had never
seen a dragon, but from their study of the lizard,
which in hot countries like Italy may constantly be
seen basking on the hot rocks or darting away at your
approach, they imagined a form and painted it so
that it suggests an actual creature. So, for their an-
gels, they studied the forms and movement of chil-
dren, as they ran and played, with hair and skirts
streaming in the wind ; also the wings and the flight
of birds, and the appearance of the sky. Nature
was, as it still remains, the artist's teacher. Just in
what way he learns of her and uses her lessons, I am
going to try and show you. But first let me remind
you that nature and art, though so close together that
I have called them twin sisters, are quite separate.
I do so because many people confuse them together.
Frequently you will hear a person say of some view
of nature that it is " beautiful as a picture." Well,
very likely it is, but as we shall see, not in the same
way. Or some one will exclaim, as he stands in
front of a picture, " It looks like nature." So it
22
Art and Her Twin Sister, IN'ature
does ; and yet it is not really like nature. Why both
these remarks are in a small way true, but in the big
sense not true, we shall discover, I hope, presently.
Meanwhile, suppose we lay the book aside and look
out of the window.
Are you living in the country or city? In either
case you are looking out at nature, as the painter
understands the word. For, while we who are not
painters, when we talk of nature, have in mind the
earth and sky and water, and the living things that
move therein, as beasts, birds, and fishes, and the
forms that live but do not move, trees and flowers
and seaweed, for example, and also the chief of liv-
ing and moving creatures — man; the painter uses
the word nature in a wider sense. With him it
means everything outside himself, so that it includes
things made by man: streets, buildings, chairs, and
tables — the thousand and one objects that man's
brain and handiwork have fashioned out of the ma-
terials of nature.
But you are waiting at the window, looking out,
perhaps, upon a street — a row of buildings, many
people on the sidewalks, carriages and carts, passing
before your eyes; or else into the garden of your
country home, with its trees and shrubs and flowers,
and possibly a view of fields and hills and woods. In
each case the woodwork of the window frames in the
view. Move slowly backward and you will notice that
the view grows smaller and smaller; advance again
and the view spreads out farther and farther ; step to
the left and some of the view on that side disappears,
23
A Guide to Pictures
but you will see more toward the other side. Im-
agine for a moment that the woodwork of the win-
dow is a picture frame and you are deciding how
much of the outside view you will include in the
picture. If you own a kodak and are in the habit of
taking pictures, you move the camera or your posi-
tion until the image in the " finder " seems to be
about what you wish to photograph. Whether you
thus use the " finder " or the window frame, you are
selecting a bit of nature for a picture.
This should make clear to you one of the differ-
ences between nature and art. ^Mature extends in
every direction all round the artist, an unending
panorama from which he selects some little portion
to form the subject of his work of art. But he car-
ries his selection still farther, for even in the part
of nature that he has selected there is so much more
than he could ever put into his picture. Take an-
other look out of the window. What a mass of de-
tails the whole presents ! And, if we fix our eye on
any one of its parts, it also is made up of a number
of details. It would be impossible for the artist to
paint them all. And so, also, if your view from the
window is a country scene and you look at one
object, that elm, for example. Do you think it would
be possible for an artist to paint all the scales of the
bark, all the spreading limbs, much less all the little
branches and twigs and the countless leaves ?
As the artist cannot possibly paint everything, he
must choose or select what he will leave out and what
he will put in. Once more, the characteristic of art
24
Art and Her Twin Sister, IN'ature
is selection J while that of nature is abundance. We
talk of nature's prodigality ; w^e say that she is prodi-
gal of her resources, flinging them around as a prodi-
gal or wasteful man flings around his money. You
know, for example, how the dandelion scatters its
seeds broadcast over the la^vn ; how the daisies spread
over the fields until the farmer calls them the
" white weed '' ; how the woods become choked with
undergrowth and the trees overhead crowd one an-
other with their tangle of branches. The lawns and
fields must be continually weeded ; the woods cleared
and thinned. Man, in fact, when he brings nature
under the work of his hand, is continually selecting
what he shall weed out and what he shall let remain.
And so the artist with the work of his hand — his
work of art.
Suppose we make believe that we are watching an
artist as he begins his work of selection. The one
over there, sitting under a big, white umbrella with
his easel in front of him, will serve our turn. If
he will let us look over his shoulder, we shall see
that with a few strokes of charcoal upon his canvas
he has already selected how much of the wide view
in front of him he will include in his picture. It
finishes, you see, on the right with a bit of that row
of trees that stand against the sky, and on the left
with that small bush, so that in between is a little
bit of the winding road, with a meadow beyond
dotted with cows. He has squeezed some of the
paint from the tubes on to his palette, and takes up
his brushes. ISTow watch him " lay in," as he would
25
A Guide to Pictures
say, " the local colors " ; that is to say, the general
color of each locality or part of the scene.
The general color of the sky is a faint blue; of
the trees on the right, a grayish gTeen; of the bush
on the left, a deeper green ; of the meadow, a yellow-
ish green, while that of the road is a pinkish brown,
for the soil of this part of the country, we will sup-
pose, is red clay. All these local colors he lays in,
covering each part with a flat layer of paint so that
his canvas now presents a pattern of colored spaces.
Yet already it begins to " look like something." We
can see, as it were, the ground plan, on which the
artist is going to build up his picture. But now he
must stop, for his paints are mixed with oils and
take some time to dry, and he cannot work over the
paint while it is sticky.
A few days later we pay him another visit. He
has been busy in our absence; the picture looks to
us to be finished, and we begin to compare it with
the natural scene in front of us. In nature those
trees on the right stand so sharply against the sky
that we can count their branches. Evidently the ar-
tist hasn't, for in his picture he has left out a great
many of them ; indeed, he has put in only a few of
the more prominent ones. See, too, how he has
painted the trees ; he hasn't put in a single leaf. In-
stead he has represented the foliage in masses, lighter
in some parts where the sun strikes, darker in the
shadows. When we compare his trees with the real
ones, they are not a bit the same, and yet the painted
ones look all right; we can see at once that they
26
Art and Her Twin Sister, Mature
are maples and in a general way very like the real
ones.
The artist hears lis talking, and he says : " My
business, you see, is not to make real trees ; that's na-
ture's business ; I'm a maker of pictures, and in them
I only suggest that the trees are real. I try to make
you feel that these are maple trees " — and he points
to that part of the picture with his brush — " and I
hope also to make you feel their beauty. I don't
give you an imitation of nature, but a suggestion
of nature's truth.
" Kow see," he says, " how I have painted those
cows : just a few dabs of brownish red and black and
white, showing against the green of the grass. Do
they suggest cows to you ? " " Yes," we say in
chorus.
" Well, I hope they do," he replies, ^^ and that you
don't say ^ yes ' merely to please me. But if you
had never seen a cow would you know from these
dabs what a cow is really like ?
" I am sure you wouldn't," he goes on without
waiting for an answer ; " and if the farmer gave me
a commission to paint his favorite prize cow, I am
sure he wouldn't be satisfied with these dabs. And
I should not blame him. !N^o, in that case I should
place the cow where I could study it closely: the
long, straight line of the back, the big angle of the
hips, the strong-ribbed carcass, and its covering of
glossy hair, the mild liquid eyes, and damp nose.
These and a great deal more I should paint, if I were
near the cow. But look at those cows over vonder.
27
A Guide to Pictures
Thej are a long way off, and consequently look very
small. I can't see in them the different points that
I know a cow has ; to my eyes from where I sit they
look as I have painted them. For an artist does not
paint what he knows to be there, but what he can see
from liere,
" Look," he continues, picking up a tiny pointed
brush. " See what happens, when I paint what I
know to be there ! '' And with quick, deft strokes
he proceeds to sharpen the lines of the back of one
of his cows in the picture, and give her four very
decided legs ; to hang a tail ; and give her horns ; and
titivate the head, put in an eye and make the tongue
curl round the muzzle.
" Why, it looks like a toy cow ! " we exclaim.
And so it does.
And now, instead of intruding any longer on our
artist friend's time, let us see where our visit to him
has brought us.
We have noted that one difference between nature
and art is, that nature is inexhaustible in her effects,
and that an artist selects from her only some little
part to make his work of art. Secondly, that he does
not paint the whole of what he has selected, but out
of it again selects certain parts ; sufficient not to imi-
tate the original, but to suggest its appearance.
Thirdly, that natural truth is not the same as artis-
tic truth; that while the scientific man studies one
thing at a time so that he may know what is there,
the artist tries to obtain an impression of the whole
scene, and paints each part of it, not as he knows
28
Art and Her Twin Sister, Nature
it to be, but as he can see it from his fixed
position.
By this time you can better understand that to say
of nature " It is as beautiful as a picture," is a loose
way of talking. ITature is beautiful in the endless
variety of its effects ; a picture, for the one or two ef-
fects, choicely selected by the artist. And to say of a
picture that it looks like nature is equally inaccurate,
for the artist does not imitate nature but suggests it,
which, as we have seen, is a very different thing.
However, I should tell you, that some painters do
imitate nature. I have seen a picture in which the
painter had represented a five-dollar bill, pinned on
a board, and so accurately had he imitated the bill
and the board that, until you were close to them and
passed your hand over the flat canvas, you would not
know it was a picture. And there is a story told of
a Greek painter, Zeuxis, that he once imitated a
bunch of grapes so exactly, that the birds flew down
and pecked at it.
But, although it is a fact that a great many people
think this exact imitation of nature a very fine thing,
they do so because they have not seen many pictures
or found out what a work of art really is. I am in-
clined to think that, by the time you have fiinished
this book, if not sooner, you will look upon such ex-
amples of skill and patience as labor in vain, so far
as art is concerned.
It is all very well for the conjurer to boast that
the quickness of his hand deceives your eye. But the
aim of the artist is not deception.
29
CHAPTER III
NATURE IS HAPHAZARD: ART IS ARRANGEMENT
WE have seen that the characteristic of nature is
abundance, while that of art is selection.
Now let us note another difference between the two
— ^nature is haphazard, art is arrangement.
I do not forget that nature works bj laws; that
the workings of nature are not accidental, but the
result of certain causes which produce certain ef-
fects; so that the operations of nature produce an
endless chain of cause and effect. Thus in the fall,
because the sap flows downward in the tree, the fiber
of the leaf's stalk is gradually weakened, until the
leaf by degrees loses its hold on the branch, and,
because everything obeys the law of gravitation, falls
to the ground. But where will it fall ? That may
depend upon the force and direction of the wind. It
may happen that the wind is from the north or from
the west; that its breath is soft, or that it blows a
gale. I say it " may happen" so or so ; for this is
our habit of speech. When we don't understand the
cause from which an effect springs, we use the word
" happen," as if the affair were an accident or
chance.
But a scientific man would say that such words
30
Mature is Haphazard: Art is Arrangement
as " accident '^ and ^^ chance " are inaccurate, and
would tell us why the wind was blowing from a cer-
tain direction at a certain moment, and tell us why
it was soft or fierce. And yet, why should the tiny
leaf have been ready to let go just at the moment
when the breeze came ? Upon what particular spot
will the dandelion seed, after floating far in the air,
alight? We may believe that the moment and the
place are controlled by one Great Mind to whom
everything is plain. But to our finite minds, whose
capacity to understand is limited, such things are not
plain. They seem to us like chance, and their results
appear to our eyes haphazard.
Compare, for example, the appearance of nature
with that of a well-kept garden. The latter has
straight paths, intersecting one another; trim bor-
ders with rows of lettuces and radishes ; separate
plots, reserved for peas, corn, spinach, potatoes, and
other crops. Even the straggling vines of the cucum-
bers are kept within certain bounds. Everywhere is
an appearance of order and arrangement, beside
which the tangle of growth in the woods, or even the
dotting of trees on the hillside, seems haphazard.
Or look out into the street, which, as you remember,
in the painter's sense of the word is a part of nature.
The city authorities have laid out the lines of the
street, but the buildings vary in size and style ; each
one according to what happened to be the need and
the taste of the man who built it. And the appear-
ance of the sidewalk and roadway will vary from day
to day and hour to hour, according to what may be
31
A Guide to Pictures
the number and the character of the people and of
the vehicles, as they happen to move or stand still.
Compared with that garden, the appearance of the
street is haphazard.
Compare two parlors. One is a medley of furni-
ture and bric-a-brac, of all sorts of sizes and shapes
and colors, picked up at auction sales, or in the
shops, each because it happened to be a bargain or
to strike a moment's whim, and then set in the parlor
where there happened to be room for it. The other
parlor, on the contrary, shows signs of order and ar-
rangement. There are fewer objects in it, and they
have been carefully chosen and arranged for the
double purpose of making the room comfortable and
agreeable to the eye. It is an illustration of good
taste in selection and arrangement.
The haphazard of nature we enjoy. But the con-
fusion of the parlor distresses us, if we have any
sense of selection and arrangement. This sense the
artist possesses in a marked degree, and on it he
bases the making of his picture.
We have already noticed how he selects, but may
have to mention it again in describing how he ar-
ranges, since the two acts are mixed up together, as
when you select some flowers and then arrange them
in a vase.
When we first made the acquaintance of the artist
in the previous chapter, he had already, you will re-
member, " roughed in " with his charcoal the objects
he was going to paint. We were so interested in
what he had selected, that we paid little attention to
32
Mature is Haphazard : Art is Arrangement
the arrangement of the objects. It is this that we
are now going to study.
His canvas is on the easel, its bare white surface
inclosed within the four sides. He is going to fill
this space, not only for the purpose of suggesting to
us the appearance of the scene he has selected, but
in such a way that the actual arrangement of the
objects — the pattern which they make upon the can-
vas — shall give us pleasure. This he calls his compo-
sition. The word, as you know, if you have studied
Latin, means simply " putting " or " placing to-
gether." But, as the artist uses it, it always means
that the placing together shall produce an effect that
is pleasing to the eye. It is only when it does, that
the result can properly be called a work of art. For
you will recall what we said in the first chapter, that
the artist is one who fits his conception with a beau-
tiful form. And this form is his composition.
ISTow, before we go any farther with the artist's
method of composition, let me invite you to do a little
composing on your own account. That wall in your
special room or den where you hang your favorite
photographs — how is it arranged? Are the photo-
graphs pinned up higgledy-piggledy, so as to crowd
as many as possible on the wall ? Is your only idea
just to hang them up where you can see them ? Or
have you placed them together in such a way that
their actual arrangement, as they spot the open space
of your wall, is agreeable to your eye? For, in a
'^^y? your wall, before you hung the photographs,
was like the bare canvas of the artist. The four
33
A Guide to Pictures
edges inclosed it; the space is yours to do with it
what you wish.
Suppose, now, that you are starting with the wall
bare. Your family has moved into a new house, or
the old one is being repaired. There is your plaster
wall, as w^hite as the artist's canvas. You are al-
lowed to decide what shall be done with it. What
will you do with it?
Oh ! you are going to choose a paper. Well, what
shall it be ? Yes, pretty, of course. But pretty by
itself, or when your pictures are hung ? For, if you
choose a paper with a large pattern of many bright
colors, it may interfere with the effect of the pic-
tures. You don't wish to do this ? Then it will be
well to choose a paper that is not too prominent ; one
that has a small pattern, or none at all, only a single
tint. Some people prefer a neutral tint ; one, that is
to say, which is neither one thing nor the other ; not
very green, or blue, or red, or yellow, but rather so;
some color that is difficult to define. For, because
this paper does not attract particular attention, it al-
lows the photographs, hung upon it, to show up more
prominently.
However, the papering is your affair, and you
have made your selection. At last the workmen,
their ladders, their paste pots, and shavings are
cleared out of the room and you can begin to arrange
it. You have placed the furniture where it best fits
in, looks best, and seems most comfortable, and now
you turn your attention to each of the four walls.
Once more, is the placing of the photographs to be
34
!N'ature is Haphazard: Art is Arrangement
higgledy-piggledy, " any-old-how," just to show
them, or are you going to arrange them carefully, so
as to make each wall a pleasing composition ?
We will suppose you decide upon the latter plan.
How will you proceed ? I can imagine you choosing
one of two ways.
Either you will select your biggest picture, or the
one you prize most, and place it in the middle of the
wall, and then place the others on each side of it, so
as to balance one another. Or, you will feel that
such an arrangement would be too stiff and formal,
too obviously balanced, and will sprinkle the pictures
over the wall space, so that their arrangement is ir-
regular and looks as if it were accidental, and yet
seems balanced. For, if you are trying to arrange
your pictures in the way in which they seem to you to
look best, consciously or unconsciously you are work-
ing to secure a balance.
Yes, one of the principles of artistic composition
is balance. Like all the principles, adapted by ar-
tists, it is founded on an instinct of human nature.
Have you ever noticed that when a man carries a
bucket of water, he holds the free arm away from his
body ? He does it by instinct, to offset the drag of
the bucket on his other arm and to balance his body.
Have you ever walked upon the steel rail of a rail-
road track ? Most of us have, I imagine. We tread
pretty firmly for a little while, and then we totter.
Out go our arms immediately to restore our balance.
We walk up and do\vn the deck of an ocean liner,
when the sea is rough, and slope our bodies to the
35
A Guide to Pictures
movement of the vessel. Why? To keep our bal-
ance. If we lose it we are hurled across the deck in
a very undignified fashion. On the contrary, what
a beautiful spectacle is presented when a good
skater balances backward and forward; perhaps an
even more beautiful one, when a good dancer who
feels the joy of movement sways to the rhythm of the
music.
So, to maintain a balance is an instinct of human
nature ; to lose it produces ugly results ; while beau-
tiful ones may be secured from it, especially if the
balance is rhythmic.
Another principle, then, of artistic composition is
rhythm, and this, too, is founded on an instinct of
human nature. Let us see what rhythm is. A small
boy has found an old pot, catches up a stick, and be-
gins to belabor the pot and make himself a nuisance.
By and by he gets tired of his own noise, imagines
his pot a drum, and hits it with rhythmic strokes,
one following the other in measured beats. Watch
how his legs begin to move to the time of the strokes,
and how the other youngsters fall in behind him.
Left, right, left, right, on they march ; their legs and
shoulders swinging to the rhythmic beat. I wonder
if they know they are following an instinct, pretty
nearly as old as humanity. Probably they don't,
and wouldn't care if they did. All they know is that
they are having a good time. That's just it! And
they are having the same sort of good time that the
primitive man gave his friends, when he first hit on
the idea of clapping his hands together in rhythm.
36
[N^ature is Haphazard: Art is Arrangement
Later on he found he could get more stirring effects
and save his hands by rhythmic hammering of one
piece of wood upon another. Then came along a
primitive Edison who perfected the principle and put
tom-toms on the market. And so, in time, music
came to be invented. For the basis of music and of
the pleasure that is received from it is its measured
beat or rhythm.
It is, however, not only from the actual measured
beat, appealing to our ear, that we gain pleasure, but
also from the suggestion of rhythm to our sense of
sight.
A man stone deaf can enjoy watching a dance.
He has never heard a sound in his life, but his sense
of sight is stirred to pleasure by the spectacle of
measured repetition of the movements. Similarly,
the measured repetitions of stationary objects gives
us pleasure, — the measured repetition, for example,
presented by the West Point cadets, as they suddenly
halt, either in close formation or in open ranks.
" How beautiful ! " we exclaim. And it is because
the Athenians realized the beauty of measured repe-
tition and the pleasure that it gives to the sense of
sight, that they surrounded their great temple, the
Parthenon, with ranks of columns, arranged at equal
distance from one another. For, though they may
have learned the beauty of repetition from studying
the tree stems in the woods, yet, when they built their
work of art, they avoided the haphazard of nature,
and introduced order and arrangement by making
the repetitions measured.
37
A Guide to Pictures
Behind the columns, however, high up on the out-
side of the temple wall they set a frieze or band of
figures. It extended clear around the temple, rep-
resenting a procession of people on their way to the
great festival of the goddess Athene. The remains
are now in the British Museum ; but, doubtless, you
have seen casts of portions of it, and will recall some
in which young men are riding, the head of each
horse overlapping the body of the one in front of it.
There is here no longer an actual measured repeti-
tion, as in the case of the columns. The bodies are
not separated by exact intervals, nor do they repeat
the same forms. The youths differ, so do the horses,
and the actions of the forms are dissimilar. And yet
the arching of the horses' necks, the prancing of the
forelegs, and the bodies of the youths swaying to the
movement of the horses are so arranged, that there
is no break or interruption or confusion, but the
whole seems to flow up and down regularly. There
are no actual, measured intei'vals or actual repeti-
tions, yet the feeling of both is suggested. The ar-
rangement of the forms is rhythmic, in that it sug-
gests rhythm. And the principle of this also the
Greeks found in nature, as you may, if you watch
the waves rolling shoreward.
But all this while the artist's canvas is standing
white and bare upon the easel, and must continue
to stand. For, when he gets to work, I want you, not
only to see what he does, but feel the meaning of his
intention. And we can best enter into another per-
son's feeling, if we have experienced something of his
38
^Nature is Haphazard: Art is Arrangement
feeling in ourselves. So, I have rummaged among
our own experiences, in order to make you feel how
much we have in common with the artist. He and
ourselves are creatures of like nature, with similar
senses, similar sources of pleasure and pain, and
similar instincts leading us to do and to like similar
things. Only the artist has keener senses, and has
cultivated his instincts and study of nature, and has
drawn from them certain practical hints to help him
create his work of art.
Among the instincts that we share with him are,
as I have tried to show — first, an instinctive prefer-
ence for order and arrangement ; secondly, the need
of balance and the pleasure we receive from it;
thirdly, the increased pleasure we derive from bal-
ance, when it is accompanied with rhythmic repeti-
tions. These are the principles on which he relies
when he makes his composition. For let me repeat,
and not for the last time, that the purpose of his com-
position is not only to suggest some scene of nature,
but to make the composition itself a source of pleas-
ure to our sense of sight.
I
39
CHAPTER lY
CONTRAST
IN the previous chapter we discussed balance and
repetition as elements of composition. We have
now to study another element — that of contrast.
This also results from a natural love of change and
variety. How sick we should get of candy, if we had
nothing else to eat! how tired of sunshine, if there
were never a cold or wet day to make the sun seem
extra beautiful by contrast ! " Jack/' as we know,
" will become a dull boy," if his studies are not en-
livened by play; but how worse than dull — stupid
and ill-tempered — if his play were not relieved by
something serious. Yes, contrast is the salt of life,
without which living would be tasteless and insipid.
More than this, I can hardly believe that a boy or
girl can grow up to be brave and true, a really fine
specimen of manhood or womanhood, unless some
shadow of hardship and pain has passed over the
sunny period of youth. We have to learn to take the
bitter with the sweet, and it is through meeting each,
as it comes along, as a part of the day's work, that we
gradually build up character.
So contrast, it seems, serves two purposes in life
— it adds to the pleasure of life, and it gives force
40
Contrast
and worth to character. Its effects in art are very
similar. The artist employs it to give variety and at
the same time character and distinction to the pat-
tern of his compositions.
You can find out for yourselves how he does this,
if you take a piece of paper, a pencil, a pair of com-
passes, and a straight-edge. First draw a rectangle.
This is the space to he filled or developed into a com-
position. ]^ow draw a vertical line up the center of
it. You will admit that this is not interesting hy
itself; but cut it at right angles with a horizontal
line, and immediately the figure begins to have some
character. Immediately, also, if you have any eye
for balance — and almost everybody has — you will be-
gin to notice that it makes a great difference at just
what point the horizontal line cuts the vertical. In
the first place, whether the arms of the horizontal are
or are not the same length — then, at how high or how
low a point on the vertical line they branch out.
You can experiment with these two lines until the
cross seems to you to look its best.
You could not draw anything much simpler than
this figure; and yet it is sufficient to illustrate two
principles of contrast in composition — first, that the
contrast is interesting, and second, that it is made
more interesting, when the contrasted parts are care-
fully balanced. ISTow take the compasses and, cen-
tering on the point of intersection of the two lines,
describe a circle. The latter will introduce into the
figure a still further contrast between curved and
straight lines. And again your sense of balance will
41
f
A Guide to Pictures
be brought into play. How far will you make your
circle extend ? It is for you to say, because you are
trying to satisfy your own feeling for what will look
best. ]^ow, as a contrast to this circle, add four
smaller ones at the extremities of the cross. !N^ext,
from the center of the big circle draw radiating lines.
As a last touch of contrast, suppose you draw a seg-
ment of a circle in each of the four corners of the
rectangle.
By this time we have built up a composition, the
pattern of which consists of contrasts. But, as I
dare say you have noticed, it also consists of repeti-
tions. And once more I will remind you that both
the repetitions and the contrasts are balanced. Con-
trast, repetition, and balance — ^these are the simple
elements of composition.
Our pattern or composition is a very simple form
of geometric figure. If you feel disposed, you can
amuse yourself by devising other kinds of simple pat-
terns ; starting, for example, with a circle inside your
rectangular space ; or, selecting, to begin with, a cir-
cular frame and starting with a triangle or square
inside of it, and in either case continuing to build up
or embroider your design with additional features.
In this way by varying the shape of your original
frame and the character of the pattern that you put
in it, you can go on indefinitely inventing designs.
All these, I want you to observe, are geometric in
character. They are based upon the figures which
you find in geometry — the square, rectangle, tri-
angle, and circle.
42
Contrast
!N"ow just as the acorn may in time become the
great oak tree, so this simple basis of geometric de-
sign is at the root of the compositions of the great
Italian pictures and of thousands of other pictures,
even to our own day. Their compositions are based
upon a geometric plan. The only difference is that
your plan is clearly visible, while theirs is more or
less disguised. The reason is that they do not fill
their spaces, as you did, with simple lines, but with
forms — figures, columns, buildings, draperies, trees,
hills, and so on. Consequently, when we speak of
the " lines " of their compositions, we often mean
rather the direction which the figure, or the object
whatever it may be, takes. Thus, a standing figure
may take the place of your vertical line ; the slightly
undulating top of the hills behind it may correspond
to your horizontal line; a curving group of angels,
floating in the air, may suggest your circle; while
your diagonal line may be replaced in the picture by
the branches of a tree that spread in a diagonal di-
rection. In other words, what you have done (shall
I say?) stiffly with compasses and straight-edge, the
artists do freely and loosely. Yet, I repeat it, under-
neath this seeming freedom, if you search for it, you
will find the basis of a geometric design. This I
hope to show you in the following chapter. Mean-
while, there is another use for contrast that you
should know.
It is the contrast between the light and the dark
parts of a picture. It is employed, in the first place,
to make the objects in the picture look more real. If
43
A Guide to Pictures
you ^x your eyes on any object in the room or out
of doors, you will observe tbat some parts of it are
light and some dark, and that there are various de-
grees of lightness and darkness. It is the light on
an object that enables us to see it. If there were no
light on it — if it were in complete darkness, that is
to say — ^nothing would be visible. And, while it is
the light that enables us to see the object, it is the
degree of light on some parts of it and the various
degrees of darkness on others that enable us to real-
ize the shape of it. In other words, the contrast of
light and dark, received by the eyes, communicates to
our brain the sense of form and bulk.
That it should do so seems to be the gradual result
of a habit, unconsciously acquired. Those who study
such things tell us that we began to perceive things,
not through the sense of sight, but by the sense of
touch. The baby reaches out its little hand to feel
for the mother's breast; it burrows its way to her
warm body; is comforted by the feel of her arms
around it. When the child is older and you present
her with a doll, you may be disappointed that she does
not at once show pleasure. Instead of her face light-
ing up with joy, as you hoped it would, she stares at
the doll in rather a dull way. But presently she
stretches out her hands, and takes the doll into
them and begins to feel it all over, and at length
clasps it in her arms against her body. It is by the
sense of touch that she seems to have assured herself
that the doll is " real." When she is older, however,
if you offer her a new doll, immediately her face
44
Contrast
lightens with gladness of welcome. For, in the
meantime she has learned to know a doll by sight,
and now when she gets it into her hands she turns it
round and round that she may look at it, patting the
face, however, and the dress, and lifting up the lace
of the petticoats and handling the sash, because, al-
though she has grown to recognize things by her sense
of sight, she has not lost her delight in the sense of
touch. !N^or will she, I hope, as she grows older. In-
deed, artists, knowing how much pleasure people de-
rive from the feel of things, take great pains, as we
shall see in another chapter, to paint the surfaces,
or, as they suggest it, the texture of objects, in such a
way as to make us feel how pleasant it would be to
touch them. Besides, it makes the figure seem so
much more real, if they suggest to us that, if we
touched the face, it would feel like flesh; or, if we
could pass our hand over the dress, it would seem
soft and mossy like velvet, or smooth and polished
like satin.
But, to return to the contrast of light and dark.
Although it is by this contrast that we get an impres-
sion of the form or bulk of an object, most people
are not aware of the fact. They have grown up in
the habit of recognizing things by sight, without
being conscious of how they do so. They just see
things. Artists, however, have had to learn the rea-
son and how to apply it to painting.
• •••••
The history of modern painting extends back
about six hundred years. In the thirteenth century,
45
A Guide to Pictures
the paintings which decorated some of the churches
in Italy were painted in what is called a conventional
way. That is to say, a certain custom was followed
by all the painters. They represented the heads and
hands of their figures, but the bodies were covered
with draperies, under which there was little or no
suggestion of any form or bulk. For the whole
figure appeared flat. It was as if you should make
a little figure of clay or paste, and then pass a roller
over it, until its thickness is flattened down into noth-
ing but length and breadth. The figures, in fact,
gave no appearance of being real and lifelike because,
as artists would say, there was no drawing in them.
There was nothing to suggest that the figures had
real bodies.
By degrees, however, people grew tired of these
unlifelike figures, and a painter named Giotto
(1266 ?-1337) became the leader of a new motive
in painting. It was simply to try and make the fig-
ures look real and the scenes in which they appeared
seem natural. Instead of following a convention,
he used his eves and studied nature. He was no
longer satisfied to fill in the background of his pic-
ture with a flat gold tint as the conventional paint-
ers had done. He \vished to increase the reality of
his figures by representing them in real surround-
ings, sometimes in a room, sometimes out of doors.
Instead of being content to make his pictures flat,
representing only length and breadth, he set to work
to create the suggestion of the third dimension —
depth. He would try and make you feel that you
46
Contrast
could walk from the foreground of liis picture, step
by step, through to the background ; and that, as jou
reached each figure or object in the scene, you could
pass your hand round it and feel that it had real
bulk. I said '' step by step " and I lay stress on it.
For what Giotto tried to represent was not merely
some figures in front and then a big gap that you had
to jump over before you reached the background, but
what the artists call the " successive planes " of the
scene — the step-by-step appearance of the scene.
Perhaps you will grasp better what this means if,
when you next go to the theater, you carefully ob-
serve the scenery, representing some outdoor effect.
On each side of the stage, very likely representing
tree trunks, there is a series of " wings," one behind
another at a distance of say five feet, while across
the stage, hanging down from the " flies," is a series
of cut cloths, representing foliage, that correspond
with the wings and seem to be branches of the tree
trunks. Well, these cloths and their wings corre-
spond to the " successive planes " of a picture. They
lead gradually back and you can actually walk in
and out of them. But, when you reach the back
cloth, you are stopped, so far as your legs are con-
cerned. If you are sitting in the auditorium, how-
ever, your eye goes traveling on and on a long
distance, for the back cloth is itself a picture, in
which there is an illusion of successive planes.
The artist's word for representing the successive
planes is perspective. If you stand between the rails
of a trolley line or railroad and look along it, the
47
A Guide to Pictures
lines seem to draw together or converge. Yet in re-
ality you know that they are equidistant from each
other all the way along. But, since our power of see-
ing becomes less and less as objects are farther re-
moved from us, so to our diminishing sight the size
and distinctness of the space between the rails ap-
pears also to diminish. In the same way you will
observe that the width of the street seems to dimin-
ish, and the people and wagons appear smaller and
smaller, according as they are seen farther and far-
ther back in the successive planes. The houses, too
— ^you know that if you stood in front of any of the
houses, exactly facing it, the upright sides would
appear to be, as they are, of equal height, and that
the windows and cornice would appear in parallel
horizontal lines. Yet, as you stand in the street
and look along the houses on either side, they pre-
sent a different apppearance. In the case of each
house the upright side, nearer to you, seems higher
than the one farther off, and the rows of windows
and the line of the cornice appear to slope downward.
For the houses as they take their places in the reced-
ing or successive planes seem to diminish in size.
This, you see, is another example of what we have
already said, that the artist does not paint what he
knows to be facts, but the appearances, as he sees
them from the point where his eyes are — his " point
of sight." You remember how in an earlier chapter
that artist represented, or rather suggested the cows
in the distance by a few dabs. That was how he saw
them from his point of sight. I could not tell you
48
Contrast
then, but you will understand now, that he was obey-
ing the law of perspective, and was representing the
cows as they appeared in their own proper plane of
the scene. Do you remember that when he drew in
their horns and tails and other details, they looked
like toy cows ? We can now see why. They contra-
dicted their surroundings ; they no longer were at
home in their own plane ; their plane was a good way
off, but they were represented as if close to our eyes ;
and, as we saw how small they were, they seemed to
us like toy cows.
You see, it is entirely a matter of how things look
to the eyes. The painter, as I have said, does not
represent the facts as he knows them to be, but the
impressions which the facts make upon his eyesight;
and these impressions, by the way in which he ren-
ders them, he hands on to us. His picture is not
nature, but a suggestion or illusion of nature.
Now, although Giotto had dicovered that, to make
you feel that you could walk back through his pic-
tures, he must represent the successive planes, he
only partly found out how to do it. It was not until
nearly a hundred years later that a painter named
Masaccio learned how to fill the whole of his pic-
ture with a suggestion of atmosphere, so that the ob-
jects took their places properly in their proper
planes, and it was still later before artists thoroughly
worked out the methods of perspective.
The greatest difficulty that they had to surmount
was how to " foreshorten " their figures, or represent
them in " foreshortening." A simple way of under-
49
A Guide to Pictures
standing what this means is to stand in front of a
mirror and stretch out your arms to left and right,
like the arms of a cross. Each extends a long way.
But now bring them in front of you and stretch
them toward the mirror. At once they look shorter,
or at any rate you cannot see their length. They ap-
pear foreshortened. Or you may practice a still
more " violent " example of foreshortening, if you
are able to place the mirror where you can see your
body, when lying down with the feet toward it, for
now the whole length of the body appears foreshort-
ened in the mirror. The surface of the latter, you
observe, corresponds exactly with the surface of a
picture. It is a flat plane upon which is produced
the appearance of successive or receding planes, and
though you cannot see the length of your body be-
cause it is foreshortened, you are made to feel its
length.
It was a long time before artists overcame the dif-
ficulty of representing this effect; and the first
pictures in which it was accomplished were naturally
regarded as wonders. Since it is not the purpose of
this book to teach you to draw I will mention only
one of the principles involved. It is the one we have
already been discussing — the contrast of light and
dark, or, as it is called, " chiaroscuro." Artists soon
discovered that, if an object has bulk, that part of it
which is nearest to the light will reflect most light;
the parts less near, less light ; w^hile the parts that are
exposed to no light will appear dark. As this was
how the artists saw the objects, it was so they tried
50
Contrast
to represent them. They learned to " model '^ the
object, that is to say, to represent it as having bulk,
by reproducing in their pictures the contrasts of light
and dark. At first the contrasts were crude, chiefly
of the very light and very dark, but by degrees the
artists became more skillful and learned to represent
also all the varying gradations of less light and less
dark. By this time they were better able to sur-
mount the difficulty of foreshortening.
You will see how, if you will again stand in front
of the mirror and stretch out one arm toward it.
The simplest test is made, if you can arrange that
the light shall be directly at your back, for then it is
reflected by the mirror on to the front of you. In
this case you will notice that your outstretched hand
receives the most light, because it is nearest to the
light. If it were represented in this way in a pic-
ture, our habit of seeing the highest or brightest light
on the highest or most directly exposed surface of an
object would make us feel that the hand projected in
front of the body.
If, however, you stand before the mirror with light
falling upon you from one side, the picture in the
mirror will be quite different in appearance. The
light and shadow will be more broken up and diver-
sified. Some part of your hand, it may be simply
the edges of the fingers, will catch a high light, even
if it is not the highest ; and light probably will fall
on your forearm, between the wrist and elbow, and
again upon the upper part of the arm. Broadly
speaking, your arm presents three planes of form —
51
A Guide to Pictures
the hand, the forearm, and the upper arm. And,
though to your untrained eye the light on all of these
planes may seem the same, to an artist's eye it would
vary according to the angle at which the light hits
the plane, or, as the artist himself would say, accord-
ing to the angle of the plane. These angles vary all
over the figure, as you may be able to see if you ex-
amine your picture in the mirror. To mention a
few, in a general way, there are several angles
around each of the shoulders, about the breast, round
the neck, while the face, with its projecting nose, its
receding eye sockets, its rounded cheeks and so on,
presents a regular patchwork of angles of plane. Or
shall I say, the whole figure presents a whole multi-
tude of facets like a cut diamond ? Only, unlike the
diamond, its facets are uneven in size and irregular
in shape. And just as the light on the facets, here
very light and elsewhere not so light, informs us of
the shape of the diamond, so do these differently
lighted angles of plane, when presented in a picture,
give us the suggestion of the figure's shape.
And now study the shadows in your mirror pic-
ture. They result from the opposite of what we have
been talking about. In their case the angles of plane
are turned away from instead of toward the light,
and some parts, such as the hollows of the folds of
your dress or coat, seem to catch no light at all and
to be quite dark. I expect you find it much easier
to detect the various gradations of dark or shadows
than those of the light. And a great many artists, es-
pecially in olden times, seem to have seen the shadows
52
Contrast
more than the lights — for they represent the former
with more subtlety, that is to say, with a keener eye
for variations, than they do the latter. Indeed, the
subtle rendering of light is particularly an accom-
plishment of modern artists.
Well, if you have carefully studied your portrait
in the mirror, I think you must have discovered how
large a part the contrast of light and shadow plays
in the appearance of the figure, and therefore, what
an equally important part it plays in producing an
illusion of reality in the picture. I do not forget
that an artist by simply drawing an outline with a
pen or pencil can also suggest to us the appearance
of an object. But, if he does so, it is by the help of
ourselves, for he relies on our imagination to supply
what he has omitted.
Finally, before we leave the mirror portrait, I
should like to ask you in which of the following ways
you see it: Do you see it as a bold, simple compo-
sition of light and dark ? Or are you conscious of a
hundred and one little details about the clothes and
face and hair and so on ? The former is what artists
call the " broad " way of seeing nature. Many ar-
tists see nature in this way and represent in a bold,
free, broad manner simply the big general facts.
Others, on the other hand, as you may be, are con-
scious at once of the great variety of details of which
the whole is composed, and represent the subject in
a highly detailed manner. Neither is the right nor
the wrong way. Thousands of fine pictures have
been painted in both ways. On the other hand, if
53
A Guide to Pictures
you find you grow to like one way more than another,
it will be because you yourself, as well as the artist,
have the habit of receiving impressions in that way.
Do not on that account think other people wrong for
receiving impressions differently and therefore pre-
ferring the other sort of picture. We cannot help
having preferences, but they shouldn't prejudice us
against the preferences of others.
64
CHAPTER V
GEOMETRIC COMPOSITION
T^N" the previous chapters we talked about the ele-
•■' ments of composition. We found that the com-
position or arrangement of figures and objects in
the picture is designed bj artists for two purposes:
Firstly, to represent some subject; and, secondly, to
represent it in such a way that the arrangement itself
will be a source of pleasure. This second purpose is
what makes the picture a work of art. And we found
that the artist, in order to make his composition
give pleasure to our sense of sight, relies upon the
pleasure that we derive from repetition and contrast,
and upon the instinct that we all have for keeping
our balance. The elements of composition, in fact,
are repetition and contrast in a state of balance,
sometimes with the added charm of rhythm.. We
also found that one way in which artists contrive to
make this balance of repetition and contrast is by
playing, as we may say, upon the simple geometrical
patterns of the rectangle, triangle, and circle.
Now let us study an actual example, and for the
purpose I have chosen Raphael's Disputd.^ It is
' Pronounced dees-poo-tdh, with the accent on the last sylla-
ble. See page 13.
55
A Guide to Pictures
painted on a wall of one of the " Stanze " or suite
of rooms in the Vatican, the home of the Pope, in
Pome. Raphael painted many other decorations in
these rooms, but this was his first one, executed when
as a young man of twenty-five he had been sum-
moned from Florence to work for the powerful pope,
Julian 11. Raphael had been a pupil of Perugino,
and he took one of the geometrical designs that his
master had already used. The pupil, however, im-
proved upon it.
Observe, first, the shape of the space that Raphael
was called upon to decorate. It is kno^\Ti as a
lunette or moon-shape. Xow it was this space and
no other, that for the time being, he had to decorate.
What he put into it, must be suggested by, one may
almost say, must grow out of, the particular shape
of this space. In fact, the outside lines of the lu-
nette, and the lines inside, must together form the
pattern of the composition. ISTow observe how he did
it. Briefly, he put into it a number of curved lines,
that would repeat the curve of the outside, and some-
times also be in contrast to it. Likewise he intro-
duced horizontal lines, to repeat the bottom edge,
and vertical ones in contrast. Let us examine it
more closely.
Not quite in the center but nearly so, is a small
circle, on which appears a dove. This circle arrests
our eye, and its effect is to make us feel very cer-
tainly that part of the composition is above it and
part below. It is repeated above by a much larger
circle. This is not completed; for its regularity of
56
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Greometric Composition
shape is interrupted by the two figures, seated one
on each side. The circle seems to pass behind these
till it merges with the clouds below. Both the small
and the large circles repeat the outside curves of the
lunette. On the other hand the curve of the clouds,
and the figures seated upon them form a contrasting
curve, and there is another one higher up, formed
by the two groups of floating angels. In the center,
above the larger circle, is a figure with a nimbus
that points up, carrying our eye toward an imagi-
nary center, somewhere outside the picture, from
which start the radiating lines. So the impression
of that part of the picture that we have been exam-
ining is of uplift. By successive steps the eye and,
through it, the imagination, are invited to mount up.
And now for the part below the small circle, sepa-
rated from what is above by an open space of clear
blue sky. Do you notice that the band of figures
stretching across this part takes the form of a curve,
repeating the curves of the circles but contrasted
with the two important curves of cloud ? Its effect
is to prevent one's gaze from soaring altogether up-
ward. This downward curve, as it were, tethers
the composition to the ground firmly in the two cor-
ners. And now note that the central feature of this
lower part is the altar, an equilateral, in strongest
possible contrast to the curves and circles above it.
That it may have still stronger emphasis, observe
how its horizontal lines are repeated down to the
bottom of the picture by the steps, so that the eye,
as it were, mounts the steps to this central feature.
57
A Guide to Pictures
Further the equilateral is again enforced and also
balanced by the vertical and horizontal lines, form-
ing a suggestion of equilateral figaires in the corners.
The one on the right is actually a door^vay ; the black
part is the door. Some artists might have felt it was
a drawback to have a bit thus cut out of the picture.
'Not so Raphael. There, as elsewhere in these rooms,
he takes the doorway into his composition and makes
it serve a very useful purpose of emphasising the cor-
ner, and then invents another structure to strengthen
equally the corner opposite.
I^ow note the radiating lines of the pavement. In
a general way they repeat the radiation of the lines
at the top of the picture ; but they are farther apart
and bolder, as befits the bolder character of the lower
part. Have you discovered the point from which
these lines of the pavement radiate ? By using a
straight edge to each in turn, you will find that all
the lines, if continued would meet within the little
circle of ornament that stands upon the altar. To
this point also the gaze of many of the figures is
directed.
Some of the figures, however, are standing so that
though they gaze towards this center, the lines of
their bodies lead our gaze upward as well as towards
the center. Then again, beside the altar is a figure
with its arm pointing upward, so that our eye
and imagination are not permitted to stop at the
little circle. For Raphael had to bind the lower and
upper parts together and make one united composi-
tion. Very easily the stretch of the sky might have
58
Geometric Composition
divided the whole into two parts. Lest it should,
he has softened the contrast of the lower and upper
curves by introducing on the one side a building, on
the other a low hill with delicate trees springing up-
ward.
IN^ow let us pause for a moment, and observe the
general effect of the lines, which we can do by turn-
ing to the skeleton drawing on transparent paper.
It lays bare the plan of the composition, and we can
see that it is a geometric composition of repetition and
contrasts, of horizontal, vertical, diagonal and curved
lines, balanced so as to unite into one single impres-
sion. To myself the impression is of looking into
the interior of a circular building, with a vaulted
roof. I remember just such a building in Kome;
the Pantheon, built in honor of all the gods, but
now, as in RaphaeFs time, a temple of the Church.
As you enter it an altar faces you across the stretch
of pavement, and the lines of the architecture, as it
circles round you and above you, are very similar to
these lines, while overhead the ribs or radiating lines
of the vaulted ceiling suddenly stop, for there is a
circular opening at the top, through which you can
see the sky, and the light strikes down through it in
diagonal shafts of light.
I wonder if Raphael had the Pantheon in mind
when he composed this picture ? Very likely, for
he must have seen it; and he had a wonderful gift
for receiving impressions and making use of them.
And this building, both for its unusual shape and
particularly from that wonderful opening, carrying
59
A Guide to Pictures
one's imagination upward from finite space to the
infinite spaciousness of sky, is peculiarly impressive.
It fits in also with the conception that Raphael seems
to have formed of the subject which the picture
commemorates.
For the name of the picture is misleading. It does
not represent a dispute or argument, as the title
Disputd would suggest. The real subject is an al-
legory of the Holy Catholic Church — the Church
on Earth and the Church in Heaven, the Church
Militant and the Church Triumphant. And it is the
idea of the Church on Earth as held by the Roman
Catholic Church that is represented. You may not
be a Roman Catholic yourself, any more than I am,
but none the less let us try to enter reverently for a
few minutes into the conception of the picture, since
it will help us to see how wonderfully the composi-
tion grows out of the idea.
To the Roman Catholic the highest act of wor-
ship is the service of the Mass. Here, in conse-
quence, the altar at which it is celebrated is made the
most prominent feature of the lower part of the
picture. It forms, as it were, a keystone of the arch
of figures ; the bishops, doctors, and faithful of the
Church on Earth. Their worship is directed towards
the altar on which rests the receptacle in which the
Sacred Bread is reserved. On earth the Church
reveres the Bread as the Body of Christ; a symbol
of the Body of the risen Christ in Heaven. Above
the altar hovers a dove, sjTnbol of the Holy Spirit,
through whom the Words of Holy Scripture make
60
Geometric Composition
known the Glory of the Christ. The sacred books
are borne by baby forms, " for of such is the
Kingdom of Heaven." Above the symbol of the
Holy Spirit, sits enthroned the Christ, with hands
uplifted, showing the wounds that the nails made.
On one side sits the Virgin Mother, on the other,
John the Baptist, who prepared the way before Him ;
while to right and left is a row of Apostles, Saints,
and Martyrs. Above the circle of glory appears the
figure of God the Father, with hands upraised in
blessing. On either side of Him float angels and
the sky is thick with baby faces of Cherubs and
Seraphs, singing " Hosanna." Down through their
midst descend shafts of golden light from the far off
infinite Sun of Righteousness.
Whether or not Raphael had in mind the Pan-
theon, his rendering of the allegory far excels the
grandeur even of the beautiful temple. For his own
temple is composed of earth and sky. " The Earth
is His Tabernacle," and the ceiling thereof the vault
of the Heavens themselves. Suspended in it is the
vision of the Holy Trinity, and the throngs of the
heavenly hosts, whose praise and adoration are the
mighty echo of the prayers and praises down below
on earth.
Thus, you see, with what simple clearness Raphael
grasped the idea that Pope Julian II asked him to
commemorate. It is as logical as a proposition in
geometry, and on simple principles of geometric
design he built up the idea into a picture. How the
simplicity of the idea has been elaborated with a
61
A Guide to Pictures
variety of beautiful thoughts, and how the simplicity
of the design of the structure has been hung, as it
were, with rich embroideries of detail, I must leave
you to search out for yourselves. If you do, you
will find that each figure represents some example
of repetition or contrast, each a separate beauty and
meaning.
In conclusion I will ask you one question. Do you
perceive the rhythm that prevails in this balance of
repetition and contrast: how from the bottom of
the composition the successive waves of pattern flow
upward, as the thoughts of the Faithful mount in
successive waves of prayer and adoration?
62
CHAPTEE VI
GEOMETRIC COMPOSITION (Continued)
T TERE is another example of geometric composi-
-*- -^ tion. It is also by Eaphael and is painted
on one of the walls in the same room that the
Disputd decorates. But, while the latter's geometric
plan was very noticeable, this one is more disguised
and the whole design has a much greater appear-
ance of freedom. It is recognised by artists as
one of Raphael's most beautiful compositions, and
one of the finest examples of space decoration in ex-
istence.
But before we examine the plan on which the
decoration of this space has been built up, let us
study the subject. It is usually called Jurisprudence,
that is to say the principle of Law — both the making
and the administering of laws. In the Disputd
the subject, as you remember, was Religion) in two
of the other panels in this same room Raphael has
represented Philosophy and Poetry. Here he set
himself to represent the idea of Law. The idea, you
observe. In all these four panels, it is an idea, not
an event or incident, that is represented; but an
idea — something that has existence only in the mind.
For all the subjects represent abstract ideas; ideas,
63
A Guide to Pictures
that is to say, abstracted or removed from the ex-
perience of the senses. We cannot, for example, see
religion or Law; nor touch, taste, smell, nor hear
them. We can see the policeman on his beat, or the
judge in court, or the members of the legislature —
the men who, respectively, maintain, administer, and
make the laws ; and we can see the record of the laws
in books. But the idea or principle of Law which
has caused men to construct all this machinery for
the making and enforcing of the laws, exists only
in the mind.
Therefore, when Raphael was asked to paint the
subject of Jurisprudence or Law, something that no
one has ever seen or will see, what did he do ? He
asked himself the question: When people have a
respect for Law, how does it show itself in their
acts ? In the first place they are very careful in the
making of the laws; they found them upon the ex-
perience of the past and shape them to fit the needs
of the future ; they exhibit PRUDEI^CE. Secondly,
in the enforcing of the laws, they exhibit two quali-
ties: FIRMNESS and MODERATIOK Though
they firmly uphold the law, they remember that
" earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. "
Raphael, then, determined to represent the idea of
Law, by representing three of its qualities: Pru-
dence. Firmness and Moderation. These three again
are abstract ideas. Iso one has ever seen them or
will see them; we can only see the results of them,
64
Geometric Composition
the acts which they influence man to do. So if
Prudence, Firmness and Moderation have no visible
shape, how could he represent them to the eye ? He
probably took a hint from a form of a stage play
that was popular in his day. At any rate he did
what the authors of these ^^ Moralities " or " Alle-
gories " were in the habit of doing. For they in-
troduced as characters in their plays the Vices and
Virtues; making an actor, for example, personify
Gluttony or embody in his own person the idea of
Gluttony. Thus, a fat man would be chosen for the
part, and he would pad himself so as to look still
fatter; he would make his face shining and greasy,
and perhaps cover the front of his coat with grease,
to suggest what a greedy and dirty feeder he was.
He would come on the stage eating, and anything
he had to say or do would help the audience to
realise that the only thing he lived for was to stuff
himself with food. This was called an embodiment
or personification of Gluttony; for the idea of Glut-
tony was suggested in the person of the actor by the
peculiarities of his body and behaviour. While the
personifications of the Vices were for the most part
comic, those of the virtues were beautiful or heroic,
so that these Moralities or Allegories were as popular
with the crowd as with people of taste. Sometimes
the allegory was represented, not with figures moving
about the stage, speaking and acting, but as a sta-
tionary group, in which the figures were raised on
steps, so that a very imposing composition or tab-
leau was presented. And no doubt, when these were
65
A Guide to Pictures
given on a grand scale artists often arranged the
spectacle.
On the other hand, the artists were not slow
to adopt the same idea in their pictures. The
great altarpieces and large decorations, painted by
the Italian artists of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries are to all intents and purposes allegories.
Such certainly is this Jurisprudence of Raphael's.
He has personified the three virtues of Prudence,
Firmness and Moderation. To Prudence he has
given two faces. One is old, for it gazes back over
the long past; the other has the freshness of youth,
as it peers into the future. It is looking at itself
in a mirror. Why? For everything in these alle-
gories is intended to convey a meaning to the minds
of the spectators. Perhaps there are two reasons.
The face is gazing at the reflection of itself, as it
now is; for Prudence, besides taking note of the
past and looking toward the future, must know the
present. Again, since a mirror reflects what is in
front of it and shows us our face as others see it,
it was used by the artists as an emblem of Truth.
And to know the truth is wisdom, and to act accord-
ing to truth and wisdom is prudence. So, when you
see a figure holding the emblem of the mirror, you
may be sure the artist is personifying the idea of
Truth, or Wisdom, or Prudence, or all three com-
bined.
On the bosom of Prudence is a winged head ; per-
haps intended for the head of Medusa, which turned
to stone every one who looked at it. If so, it is an
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Geometric Composition
emblem here of the terribleness of Prudence, when
offended. She is gentle in herself, but a terror
to evil doers. At her side a baby form holds a
torch. This was used as the emblem of that which
enlightens the world — Learning; and suggests here
that Prudence is illuminated by learning, per-
haps also, that truth and wisdom and prudence are
themselves lights which lighten the darkness of the
world.
The figure to the right of the Torch;bearer offers
Prudence a bit and reins. It is with these that men
control horses; so they were adopted by painters as
an emblem of control ; and, knowing this, we recog-
nise that the woman who holds them is intended to
personify Moderation. Her whole bearing suggests
modesty, which is a form of moderation, for both
words imply that a person has the sense to know
how far it is right to go, and where it is fit to stop.
But note the figure of the woman on the right.
She is of powerful build, seated in a positive sort of
attitude that has nothing of the gentle retiring char-
acter of the other figures. She is a personification
of Firmness, armed for defense, with helmet, cuirass,
and greaves. But, though she carries no weapon of
offense, she holds in leash one of those pumas with
which the ancients used to hunt big game. She
will, if necessary, pursue and pull down the law's
transgressors. Meanwhile she bears an oak branch,
the emblem of strength and victory in civil life, as
opposed to the laurel of war, for her victories are
those of peace. The little Cupids, or Amorini, as
67
A Guide to Pictures
the Italians call them^ except the two who carry the
mirror and torch, are put in simply to increase the
beauty of the composition.
I have dwelt first upon the subject of this decora-
tion, because it is a key to so many of the old paint-
ings and to many modern ones as well. Their sub-
jects represent abstract ideas personified, embodied
in human form ; the particular idea being shown by
the emblems which accompany each figure. People
had come to recognise that such and such an em-
blem indicated such and such an idea, and, whenever
a painter wished to suggest that idea, he represented
a figure with the familiar emblem.
Xow, too, that we have grasped the meaning of
this allegory of Raphael's we can better enter into
his manner of representing it. Since the idea is an
abstract one^ he has expressed it in an abstract way.
That is to say, he has not attempted to represent real
life, or the figures as doing any real thing. It is
true they are life-like and their actions are quite
natural; but the positions in which they have been
placed were chosen in order that the arrangement
of their limbs and bodies might produce an effect of
beautiful rhythmic balance. Perhaps this was Ra-
phael's only thought, for he was above everything
an artist, whose work in life it is to create forms of
beauty. Yet he had a mind so ready to receive all
kinds of impressions that, living as he did in a very
lawless age, when men were guided more by self
than justice, he may have realised how beautiful
would be a reign of law and order.
68
Greometric Composition
Anyhow, this decoration in a wonderful way pos-
sesses just those characteristics that would belong to
a state of society in which justice or justness were the
natural habit and not merely a thing enforced by law.
How simple life would be if every man did to others
wdiat he would have them do to him, and instead of
rivalry and suspicion, what a harmony there would
be ! It is harmony and simplicity that are the chief
characteristics of this decoration.
The simplicity is very marked. There are three
principal figures. I believe, if there were nothing
else but these, the balance of the composition would
be complete, and certainly the allegory would be ex-
plained. But balance is not necessarily harmony.
In a school debate, for instance, ten of you on the
right of the room may say " aye," and ten on the
left may say " no," to a subject which is being dis-
cussed between you. There is a balance — ten on one
side, opposed to ten on the other.
But in this decoration there is harmony. You
have only to look at the picture to be sure of it.
You cannot detect any rivalry between the three
figures, although one of them is so much more mass-
ive than either of the other two. All of them seem
drawn together into one chord of feeling, the lead-
ing note of which is the head of Prudence, lifted
above the heads of her companions and seen alone
against the open space of the sky and in the place
of chief importance — the center of the arc of space.
Please remind me presently to say a word about the
placing of this head, for just now I do not wish to
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A Guide to Pictures
interrupt tlie subject that we are considering — tlie
harmony of the composition.
This is brought about particularly by the Amorini
that, as it were, bind the three figures into a garland
of festoons. iN'ote, first, the two which are on the
extreme right and left. The wing and arm of the
former and the inclination of the latter's whole body
suggest diagonal lines. These cut across the angles
of the space, or as they say in geometry, subtend the
angles ; tying their two arms together and also offer-
ing a strong contrast to their direction. The baby
figures also keep the composition from running away
to nothing at the corners, for they serve the pur-
pose of making the pattern curl up at each end. Or
suppose we think of the pattern of the composition,
as if it were partly made up of a wreath, such as
we use at Christmas time to festoon our houses.
Imagine a nail driven into the wall where the head
of the baby on the left hand is. Attach the wreath
to it. Now drive another nail into the puma's head
and between this one and the first nail, let a loop
of the wreath hang down so that it follows the di-
rection of the baby's body and a bit of the oak stem.
This direction, if you look at the picture, suggests
a festoon, l^ow continue to make festoons — first
along the arm of Firmness up to the hand of the
Cupid; now another from that point along the line
on the Cupid's wing and arm and up the arm of
the next little figure; another from the top of the
mirror, following the curve of the arm of Prudence
up to her head. So far, on the left side of the
70
Greometric Composition
painting we have four small festoons. But I wonder
if you can make out another one a long one, the
ends of which are fastened to the head of Prudence
and that of the baby in the left corner. It follows
the slope of the figure of Prudence until it reaches
her foot, the direction of which starts it across the
gap between her and Firmness, where the line re-
appears, following the folds of the latter's drapery,
at first along the floor and then above her greave
up to the baby's head.
And now for the right hand side of the painting.
In the first place there is a repetition of the long
festoon. This one is suspended from the head of
Prudence to the top of the wing of the Cupid in
the right hand corner. It dips down along the curve
of the torch, down through the folds of Moderation's
drapery to her feet and then rises up and passes
round the back of the child. But hanging above
this main festoon are two rows of smaller ones.
Firstly we find a very shallow festoon from the head
of Prudence to the hand which holds the bit; an-
other from this point to the top of the head of
Moderation. Below this, however, is again a festoon
from the bit, along the droop of the reins to the
hand which holds them, from which point there is
still another along the arm up to the head.
ISTow, I do not for a moment wish you to think
that Raphael chose points in his composition and
then arranged that the lines of the limbs and dra-
peries should form festoons between them. In ex-
amining his work, I am trying not to tell you how
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A Guide to Pictures
he did it, but to explain what has been done. And
here, clearly visible, are what I have called, festoons.
We might describe them by some other name — as
ripples of movement. For as the water in some shal-
low brook ripples over and between the stones dan-
cing in the sunshine, so these curves of movement,
now in light and now in shadow, flow between these
figures and flow over them, until the whole composi-
tion is a woven mass of rhythmic undulations.
Rhythmic ? Yes, it is just because these ripples or
festoons present such a beautiful example of rhythm,
that I have dwelt upon them. In fact it is the
rhythmic movement of the composition that gives to
this painting its greatest charm.
In the following chapter I shall have more to say
about the rhythmic movements of the figures. Let
us conclude this one with a few words about the
geometric plan on which the composition of the
" Jurisprudence " is based. As I have said, it is
not nearly so apparent as that of the Disputd. The
latter's plan looks as if it might have been laid out
with straight edge and compasses. It was, as I have
told you, adapted from a composition by Raphael's
master, Perugino, and he, very possibly, may have
adapted it from some one else's plan; for in those
days, artists did not see any harm in starting with
another man's design, and altering it a little, or
perhaps making it more elaborate to suit their o^vn
purpose for the moment. But in the short time that
elapsed between the painting of the Disputd and the
Jurisprudence the pupil had made great strides. He
72
Geometric Composition
had found his own strength and was working in the
glory of it. Therefore the Jurisprudence exhibits a
freedom of design, which so disguises the ground
plan, that it is difficult to be sure of what it is, al-
though one still feels that it is geometrical.
The first thing we note is that the artist has
strengthened the bottom line of the lunette by repe-
tition. He has carried a stone bench along the en-
tire width, which also serves as a seat for the fig-
ures. Do you see the advantage of making the
figures seated ? If Kaphael had represented them in
a standing position, he would have had to make them
smaller in order to get them entirely into the space ;
and this would have lessened the feeling of bigness
in the composition. So he invented a device by
which he could represent them seated. Further, he
has raised the bench in the center by the addition
of another step, so as to lift the composition nat-
urally in the part where the space to be decorated is
highest.
Thus from the corners, or angles of the lunette
there is on each side a gradual rise up to the head
of Prudence^ that suggests a pyramid or a triangle
within the curved space. The same triangular effect
is repeated in the pattern, made by the figures of
Prudence and the Cupid who holds the torch. The
curve of the torch is so arranged as to balance the
slope of the woman's legs. So the geometric plan
may be the repetition of a smaller, inside a larger
triangle, contrasted with the curve of the lunette.
On the other hand, if you look at the painting again,
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A Guide to Pictures
you notice that the Cupid with the torch is balanced
by the one who holds the mirror. Their bodies have
a vertical or upright direction, and then the tops of
the torch and the mirror supply points which the eye
seems to join by a horizontal line, so that a rectangle
occupies the center of the composition as it does in
the Disputd. This strong contrast of a rectangular
form to the curve of the lunette, and then again the
contrast of the diagonal lines, formed by the Cupids^
figures across the angles of the space, may be the
simple geometric elements out of which this composi-
tion grew.
74
CHAPTEK VII
THE ACTION, MOVEMENT AND COMPOSITION OF
THE FIGURE
WHE^ a few pages back I spoke of the move-
ment of the figures I was using the word
as artists understand it. They do not mean by it
that the figure is represented as moving its limbs or
body. Eor this they use the word " action.'' They
speak of the action of the figure. But when they
talk of " movement " they refer to the way in which
the action is expressed. They mean that one, con-
tinuous stream of energy winds in and out through
all the undulations of the action. Thus, in the fig-
ure of Moderation: the action consists in the fact
that she is seated^ with her legs extended to one side,
while her body turns in the opposite direction, and
while the hands are stretched out in the direction
that the body faces, the head is turned away. If
you compare the action of this figure with that of
either of the others, you will see how much more
complicated it is ; how many more windings it makes.
And an artist would say that this figure has a fine
movement, because through all the windings or un-
dulations of action one can feel a continuous stream
of energy; so that every part of the figure contrib-
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A Guide to Pictures
utes exactly its natural share to the action, and the
lines of the figure, from the toe to the hand that
holds the bit, flow continuously and harmoniously.
The only way in which you can see for yourself how
fine the movement is, is to study it very carefully,
and by degrees you will begin to discover how won-
derfully the flow of movement is expressed. It may
help you, if you put yourself into the same position,
that is to say, make your own body represent this
action. At first it may seem a little awkward, but
presently, as you adjust your body to the actions,
you will find that it seems easy and natural, for you
will have secured a perfect poise. And, after all,
it is the perfect poise in the action of this figure of
Moderation that helps to make the movements so fine.
Kow turn to the figure of Prudence, Here the
action is much simpler. The body faces in the same
direction that the legs extend. But it leans back a
little. If you try the action yourself, you will find
it difiicult, for the stretching out of the legs makes
you wish to bring your body forward, so as to make
the balance easy. But Raphael, knowing this, has
made Prudence prop up her body, as it were, by
leaning its weight on her left arm. Do you see how
this forces up her left shoulder ? The representation
of this and the drawing of the arm make us feel what
a pressure of weight downwards the hand has to
support. Artists, you will find, usually make some
one part of the figure carry the chief weight. Some-
times they may paint a standing figure in which
the weight passes straight down through the figure
76
Action and Composition of the Figure
and is supported evenly by the two feet, like a col-
umn bearing down on to its base. But, more often,
they make one leg carry the chief weight, or, as in
this figure, one arm. Then it becomes very interest-
ing ; first, to study the part of chief muscular strairiy
and secondly, to note how all the other parts of the
action harmonise with it. For example, in this fig-
ure of Prudence, although the arm sustains the chief
pressure, a considerable amount must bear down
through her trunk ^ on to the seat. But, if we com-
pare her trunk with that of Moderation, I think we
shall feel at once that the latter is supporting the
greater weight. In fact, the point of greatest mus-
cular action in the figure of Moderation is at the
base of the trunk.
But to return to Prudence, We have noted that
the left shoulder is raised higher than the right.
Now observe the inclination of the head as it leans
gently forward on the neck to gaze into the mirror
and the easy action of the arm that holds the light
mirror. Equally easy and without effort is the
action of the legs. In fact, except for the firm quiet
pressure on the arm, the whole figure suggests a gra-
cious repose. Not only is the expression of the face
sweetly meditative, but the same feeling, as the ar-
tists would say, of exquisite repose pervades the en-
tire figure. You should learn to look for this in
pictures. Do not be satisfied only with a beautiful
face; but expect to find the beauty and the same
• The body between the neck and the commencement of the
legs.
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A Guide to Pictures
kind of beauty expressed in the action and movement
of the figure. For it is in this expression of feeling
that an artist shows his skill.
Compare the feeling in the figure of Moderation.
It is no less marked, though the feeling expressed
is a different one. It is also quiet and gracious,
but it does not suggest repose. Corresponding with
the flexible, winding movement, the feeling is rather
one of reaching out, as if in pleading or tender invi-
tation. However, it is often very difficult to explain
in words just what the feeling of a figure expresses ;
and perhaps it is better not to try to do so. The
main thing for you is to get the habit of feeling the
feeling.
JSTow let us study the feeling of Firmness. Like
that of the central figure, it suggests repose; but a
repose not so much of gracious meditation, as of
strength and force. In a moment, if need be, this
figure would rise to its feet, thrill mth alertness and
put forth its strength. Meanwhile, as it sits, the
line of pressure is straight down through the cen-
ter of the trunk, and it is the lower muscles of the
back that are supporting the chief weight. One
shoulder is raised, not however, because it has to
bear any pressure as in the case of the central fig-
ure, but simply because the trunk inclines a little
toward the puma. Observe, though, that the head
is held erect over the central line of the figure. If
it were not, the feeling of firm strength in the figure
would be lessened. On the other hand the face is
turned to one side, in order that by its contrast of
78
Action and Composition of the Figure
direction the movement of the whole figure may be
more effective.
For, I wonder if you have noticed that the move-
ment in every case presents a chain of contrasts and
repetitions. Start, for example, with the left foot
of Firmness, and move your finger over the direc-
tion of the figure; first up the calf of the leg to the
knee; then off toward the right to the hip; then
leftward up the body, then again to the right at
the slope of the shoulders; then slightly to the left
up the neck, and lastly note the face turned to the
right. You will have found that your finger has
described a series of zig-zags. If you start with the
other foot, the figure will equally present a series
of zig-zags, though some differ from the former ones.
Similarly, if you begin with the foot of Prudence,
your eye travels up to the knee; then horizontally
toward the lap; next up the slight backward slope
of the body; then in the opposite direction, when
you reach the neck and head. The contrasts in the
figure of Moderation are so marked, that I am sure
you can make the zig-zag for yourself.
I have used the word zig-zag because I want you
to feel how marked the contrasts are, and to realise
that it is by means of these contrasts that an artist
composes his figures. The zig-zag, however, in the
actual figure has rounded angles ; it is indeed rather
a series of alternate curves to right and left, some-
what like the curves described by a skilful and grace-
ful skater, cutting figures on the ice. And it is this
series of curves that give the effect of rhythm as well
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A Guide to Pictures
as harmony to the figures in this picture. For, as
you may have seen for yourself, the principles on
which an artist composes a single figure are the
same as those he uses in the composition of several
figures into one picture. He relies upon repetitions
and contrasts to produce a balance, which because
of its rhythm of parts shall ensure a harmonious
whole.
The only difference in the case of the picture is
that the composition is made up, not only of figures,
but of the empty spaces of the background also. As
artists would say, the composition is an arrangement
of full and empty spaces; and its beauty depends
upon the harmony and balance between them. In
the Jurisprudence, for example, it is remarkable how
the space filled by the figure of Prudence, corre-
sponds in size and even in its wedge shape to the
empty space formed by the upper and lower step of
stonework. For the rest, the quantity of space oc-
cupied by the other two figures seems to be about
equal to the empty spaces around them, though the
latter, instead of being solid masses are broken up
and distributed. But you will notice, how large a
stretch of empty space is left at the top of the
lunette, so that the eye is drawn upward and the
dignity of the whole decoration thereby elevated,
^ote also, what a quiet impressive spot the head of
Prudence makes against the background of the sky.
There is, as it were, nothing to disturb its gracious
repose. This device of setting a figure against the
background of the sky, Raphael may have learned
80
Action and Composition of the Figure
from one of his masters^ Periigino. At any rate,
both employed it, with beautiful effect.
You may often see in nature the beauty of this
effect; when, for example, on the top of some rising
ground a tree, or a figure, or a church spire, stands
against the sky. If the object is motionless, it seems
to become more impressive because of the vastness of
the sky. Or, should the objects be children at play
(I can remember a picture of this), then their sport
seems to take on more joyousness, freedom, and
buoyancy, from the vastness of the sky.
And now, a short description of the way in which
this decoration was painted. It is what is called
" fresco,'' an Italian word that means " fresh."
The name is used because the painting is done while
the plaster of the wall is still fresh, that is to say,
not " set " or dry. The following is the process.
The wall was first covered, as in our houses to-day,
with a coat of rough-cast plaster, which was allowed
to dry thoroughly. In the meanwhile the artist had
prepared full-sized drawings of his figures. As soon
as he was ready, a thin coating of smooth-finish
plaster was spread over such portion of the lunette
as he could paint in a day. Upon this the drawing
was placed and an assistant would go over all the
lines with a blunt-pointed tool, pressing hard enough
on the paper to leave a mark in the plaster under-
neath. There, when the paper was removed, ap-
peared the figure, enclosed in grooved lines. Then
the artist set to work and laid in the color, using
paint that was mixed^ not with oil, but with water
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A Guide to Pictures
to which some gluey substance was added. The
plaster, you remember, was still damp, but since it
contained plenty of cement, dried or '^ set " quickly,
and as it dried, the paint dried with it, and became
a part of the plaster. When it was done, the artist,
if he wished, could add a few decisive strokes. The
following day another portion of the lunette would
be treated in the same manner and so on until the
whole was painted. It is a method, you see, that
left the artist no chance of fumbling over his work.
He had to make up his mind beforehand exactly
what he meant to do^ and to do it quickly. Hence,
with an artist so skilled as Raphael, the work has
the extra charm that belongs to what has been done
easily and fluently. You know how much pleasanter
it is to listen to an easy, fluent speaker than to one
who hesitates and corrects himself continually. So,
too, in a work of art, the feeling that it has grown
easily under the artist's hand adds to our enjoyment
of it. It seems to be a spontaneous expression of
himself.
82
CHAPTER VIII
THE CLASSIC LANDSCAPE
WE have seen in the previous chapters how
Raphael built up composition from a sim-
ple geometric plan, on the principles of repetition
and contrast, rhythmically balanced. Other Italian
artists worked upon the same lines, and with such
skill and grandeur of invention that the Italian
pictures, especially of the Sixteenth Century, are
still considered the finest examples of this sort of
composition. It is distinguished by being what we
may call " formal," or " conventional."
The figures are arranged, that is to say, not as
you would be likely to see them in actual life, but
according to a rule or formula or convention. The
idea has been not to represent a real scene, but to
display the figures and their surroundings in such
a way as to produce an effect of beauty ; sometimes
a simple one, more often one of great impressiveness
or magnificent splendor. The figures and other ob-
jects have been so arranged and so drawn as to fur-
nish an orderly pattern of beauty and dignity. The
subjects of the pictures might be taken from the
Bible story or from the legends of ancient Greece,
or be simply invented to set forth the pride that the
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A Guide to Pictures
people took in their cities — the pomp and glory of
Venice, for example. But, no matter what the sub-
ject might be, the aim of the artist was first and
foremost to paint a thing of beauty. And in this
search for beauty he soon discovered how much de-
pended upon the surroundings of his figures and the
objects that he introduced.
When he desired the simpler kind of beauty he
set his figures in lovely landscape scenery with hills
and trees and winding streams ; when he was bent on
grander effects, he added architectural settings. For
the architects of that day were erecting noble build-
ings with columns and arches, vaulted roofs and
domes ; partly in imitation of the remains of Roman
architecture, but also designed in a fresh spirit of
invention to fit the new purposes for which the
buildings were required. Thus arose that vast
temple of the Roman Church, St. Peter's. It is
what is called a classic building; because its style
is in many respects like that of the old classic Roman
temples, which in their turn had represented a new
use of the still older classic style of Greek archi-
tecture.
The painters, then, inspired by the work of the
architects, discovered how much dignity they could
give to their own compositions by introducing archi-
tectural features. Sometimes they would introduce
columns, or a flight of steps or a balustrade, some-
times a whole building; or represent the figures
grouped in a street or square, surrounded by build-
ings, or often inside a building, standing under a
84
The Classic Landscape
vaulted ceiling. These are only a few of the archi-
tectural features, so freely used by the Italian paint-
ers. Let us study their value to the composition.
Some people who live in country homes are fond
of flowers. They grow cluster-roses, honeysuckle,
wistaria and other long-armed climbing plants over
their verandahs. If they are fond of gardening and
not satisfied merely with a lawn and a few shrubs,
they will erect arclies and trellis-work on which
vines may cling and cluster. In the first place, they
know that these slender, straggling plants will thrive
better, if they have some support ; they will not be so
torn by the buffets of the wind, and their limbs and
leaves and flowers will get more sunshine. Secondly,
they will show to better advantage, because of the
contrast of their winding, wreathing forms and ir-
regular masses with the firm, strong, simple lines
of the verandah or trellis-work. United they form a
prettier composition, than would the vines and clus-
ter-roses, if huddling in an unsupported tangle.
The principle is the same in the composition of a
picture, where the vines are represented by the ac-
tion of the figures. To their irregular masses of
drapery and undulating lines of limbs the architec-
ture presents at once the contrast and support of de-
cided lines and clearly defined masses. And since
the classic style of architecture, which was used, is
so noble, it added nobility to the composition. Even
the penny photographs of the Italian pictures will
prove to you that this is so. Study them and find
this out for yourselves.
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A Guide to Pictures
" ^ow, the example of the Italians, in this respect,
was followed by other nations, especially the French.
The latter continue to this day the painting of beau-
tiful pictures in which the figures are combined with
landscape and architecture. And our own Amer-
ican artists are doing the same thing, as you can see
if you have a chance of visiting the Library of Con-
gress, at Washington, or any other of the public
buildings throughout this country, in which the walls
have been decorated with mural paintings.^
So far we have been speaking of the use of archi-
tecture to support the figures. In time, however,
artists found a new use for it. They employed it
to support the landscape; which brings us to a talk
about* what is called the " Classic Landscape."
Nowadays, when so many artists paint nothing
else but landscape pictures, it may seem strange that
the Italians of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Cen-
turies used landscape only as a support for the fig-
ures. It was not because they were blind to the beau-
tiful scenery of their own country, for, when they
did introduce it into their pictures, they represented
it in a very lovely way. But always as a back-
ground to the figures, which you are made to feel
are the principal features of the picture. The
reason is that the public for whom they painted de-
manded figure subjects. The Church required pic-
tures that would bring home to the hearts of the
people who could not read the beauty of the Bible
' Mural — (Latin murus, a wall), having to do with a wall; in
this case a decoration on a wall.
86
.-si
^
O
:^
■i'-'
The Classic Landscape
Story; rich men and women wished to decorate their
palaces with scenes from the old Greek legends;
while cities adorned their public buildings with
allegorical subjects in which the pride they took in
their own municipal life was set forth in figures,
personifying the character of its greatness. More-
over, those were stirring times in which the rivalry
between the cities and between the noble families led
to constant wars and plottings. Men, beginning as
nobodies, rose rapidly to power. I^ot, as they do
to-day in our country, by using their brains and
energy in the peaceful pursuits of industry and trade
and learning; but through brute force, guided by
brains that schemed to win by fraud and violence.
So it was man that, as we say, cut the chief figure
in these times; man's power and woman's beauty.
Mankind was so interested in itself that it spared
little thought for the beauty of nature. It is true
that architects built noble houses on sites command-
ing beautiful views and laid out the gardens with
fountains, trees and flowers. Even this however, was
for the glorification of some man or woman. But
the love of nature which leads artists to paint land-
scapes and the public to value such pictures is a dif-
ferent thing. In the love of nature man forgets
himself; he is absorbed in the beauty of the natural
world outside himself; he is fond of nature for its
own sake.
It was not until the Seventeenth Century that ar-
tists began to study and paint the landscape in this
spirit. When they did so, the landscape took the
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A Guide to Pictures
first place in their pictures, and tlie figures, if any
were introduced, became the unimportant features,
kept small and put in merely to enliven the scene.
By this time landscape painting, as a subject distinct
in itself, branched out into two directions — the
naturalistic and the formal. The naturalistic was
practised by the Dutch artists, who painted the out
of door life and appearance of Holland so truth-
fully, that to-day when we look at their pictures we
can see the meadows and streams, the mills and the
farms, exactly as they were three hundred years ago.
But the subject of natural landscape we will study
later on.
The other kind of landscape I have called formal
because, instead of being drawn directly from na-
ture, it was made up, like the Italian figure pictures,
according to a rule or formula or convention. Just
as in those pictures the figures were represented as
grander and more beautiful than people usually are
in real life, and were arranged for the purpose of
a handsome composition in attitudes that people do
not usually assume, so with the formal landscapes.
The artists tried to make them more grand and im-
posing than ordinary nature, and composed them ac-
cording to an artificial plan. They did not in their
picture represent any real scene in nature, but built
up a number of natural details into a composition,
constructed on a geometric plan. And especially
they introduced details of classic architecture; so
that these formal designs are often called classic
landscapes.
88
The Classic Landscape
If you turn to the illustration you will see at
once that the artist has not represented the natural
landscape. The very title, Dido Building Car-
thage, shows the classic influence. The subject is
taken from Virgil's ^Eneid, Book I, line 420.
Turner, the great English artist, who in 1815
painted this picture, had never seen Carthage; nor
had he ever seen any spot on earth like the one rep-
resented here. What he had seen was the work of
Claude Lorrain, a French artist of the Seventeenth
Century, who lived in Italy and invented this kind
of landscape. Turner himself preferred to paint the
natural landscape ; but, since the people of his own
day admired the classic landscape of Claude and his
followers, he wished to prove that he also could paint
like Claude, if he chose; and as well as the French
artist. Therefore, when he died, he left this picture
and another classic landscape. The Sun rising in
a Mist to the National Gallery, on condition that
they should be hung alongside of two by Claude Lor-
rain. So, while studying this picture we are really
studying the principles on which Claude built up the
classic landscape, and on which his followers worked
for nearly two hundred years, until the love of nature
won out and the naturalistic landscape took its place.
The geometric plan of this picture is very simple.
You can discover it by joining the upper and lower
opposite corners by two diagonal lines that cut each
other in the center. This produces four triangles;
of which the top is given to the sky, the bottom to
the water^ and the two sides to the land and build-
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A Guide to Pictures
ings and trees. Skj and water occupy more space
than the other two parts; but since the latter are
filled with details of bold design, they attract extra
attention, so that the balance between the full and
empty spaces is kept true.
The balance is a harmonious one. You will per-
haps realise better what this means if you think for
a moment of a balance that is not harmonious; for
instance of a pair of hanging scales, in one pan of
which there is a flat round one pound weight, exactly
balancing a pound of candy in the other pan. We
should not call this a harmonious balance. If we
examine why it is not, it will help us to understand
the meaning of harmony in composition. The reason
is that there is no relation between the box of candy
and the one pound weight, except that each weighs
the same. On the other hand, in the picture every
detail has some relation to the other details, and
all are related to the whole. The whole, in fact, is
a woven mass of contrasts and repetitions, in exact
relation; very much as a composition of music is
made up of exactly related contrasts and repetitions
of sound notes. Alter one of these and there will
be a discord, unless some other notes are altered to
restore the harmony. Similarly if the artist had al-
tered the shape of one of the details in his picture,
or its color^ or its lightness or darkness, there would
have been a discord in the effect of his picture ; it
would no longer present the appearance of perfect
oneness. He would have to alter some other parts
to restore the harmony.
90
The Classic Landscape
In studying the picture to try and discover how
the effect of harmony is produced we find ourselves
studying the contrasts and repetitions of which it is
composed. And, first the contrasts. One big one
is the contrast of the architecture with everything
else in the picture — the contrast of these quiet
stately masses, which seem so firm and strong, com-
pared with the shimmering surface of the water and
the tremulous mistiness of the sky ; the contrast also
of their decided lines with the irregular spotting of
the figures, and with the irregular masses of the
trees and foliage. The big tree, although it is mo-
tionless in the quiet air, seems as if a breeze would
stir it ; the water has ripples of motion ; some of the
figures appear to be moving, while others are only
still for the moment, and the sky — it is palpitating
with the actual stir of the atmosphere, as the upper
air gradually cools and draws up the warmer air
from below, and this warmer air cools into misti-
ness. But the buildings stand immovable and solid.
While all around them either moves or could move,
they seem to suggest the force and permanence of
what does not change. Or perhaps we may feel that
grand as the buildings are, stately and magnificent,
yet the sky is lovelier, for the buildings are limited
to their one size and shape, while the sky seems a
part of that which has no limits or boundaries. It
draws off our imagination into the mystery of dis-
tance and of the unknown. So the impressions which
the contrast of the architecture arouses are not only
such as the eye can see, but such also as the imagi-
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A Guide to Pictures
nation can feel. This, no doubt, is one of the secrets
of the pleasure which so many people have found
and still find in classic landscapes.
And now for another series of contrasts : those sup-
plied by the lights and darks. In the original pic-
ture these contrasts would depend partly on the color
of the various objects; but here, in the black and
white reproduction, we may think of the pattern
simply as one of very dark spots and very light ones,
threaded together by others of varying depths of
greyness. Again, what an important part the sky
plays ! It is a flood of light, against which every-
thing forms a silhouette,^ more or less dark, re-
lieved by spots and streaks of light. The water, but
for the pathway of reflection, is shrouded in shadow.
Shadow, too, is wrapping itself round the tall build-
ing on the left, and slumbers drowsily among the
trees on the opposite hill slopes. The artist, you
will notice, has varied the distribution of shadows.
On the left the gradation from very dark to very
light is continuous. It is as if the first building
struck a loud strong note, and the sound gradually
diminished toward the distance. On the right, how-
ever, the foreground is lighter, and the dark gradu-
ally increases, swelling up, as they say in music, in
a crescendo effect and then passing in a diminuendo
far off into the distance. In fact, on both sides of
• In 1759 a M. de Silhouette was minister of finance, and he
was so economical that the French used his name as a nickname
for cheap things, among others for the profile portraits cut out
of black paper, which were then popular. In time, the word
came to be used for any dark mass seen against a light one.
92
^
-2
The Classic Landscape
the picture the arrangement of dark and light is
rhythmical. I have only touched upon the broad
general plan of contrasted darks and lights, and
must leave you to study for yourselves the intricate
and subtle effects with which the picture abounds;
for example, the fine threads and little dots of light
and dark that form a tangle on the left bank; or,
on the right, the mass of leafage in half shadow
against which the trunk of the tree shows very dark.
You know the old proverb about leading a horse to
the water. I can draw your attention to these
things, but I can not make you feel their beauty.
I think, however, I can promise you, that, if you are
sufficiently interested in what we are talking about
to really study this picture, to explore carefully the
lighter parts and peer into the shadows to see what
lurks within them, its beauty will make itself known
to you.
As I myself am examining a black and white
reproduction of this picture, that lies before me
while I write these lines^ there is music coming from
the next room. It has stopped, and I wish it would
begin again; for music seems to fit in with the im-
pressions that this picture stirs in my imagination.
ISTor is this merely a fanciful idea. Music is one
art and painting is another. They are different, it
is true, but yet are sisters with much in com-
mon. And why not? For they come from the
same parents — the hand and the mind of man. And
through the harmony of the light and dark of which
this picture is composed there floats, it seems to me,
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A Guide to Pictures
the fancy of a melody. I think it comes from out
the endless distance of that sky ; gently floating tow-
ard us, and crooning over the objects in the fore-
ground, as a mother murmurs a lullaby over her
baby while it falls asleep. But it is not altogether
crooning, for see that tree's dark, round mass of
tone ! How it thumps itself into our notice, while
its force spreads up the hill, and then leaps across
the water, and stirs with a different kind of energy
in the dark building on the left. There is nothing
of the feebleness and the helplessness of a baby in
this picture. It suggests rather, big and mighty
effort, growing toward the time of rest. It is not
the music of a lullaby I seem to hear, but the even-
ing hymn of sturdy workers as they cease for a little
from their toil.
94
CHAPTEK IX
NATURALISTIC COMPOSITION
T'N the preceding chapters we have been studying
-'■ formal, or conventional, composition. We have
seen how the artists arrange their groups of figures
and the position and gestures of each figure accord-
ing to a rule or formula or convention, the basis of
which is a geometric plan, on which they build up
a balance of repetitions and contrasts. And we have
noted that these formal compositions are artificial
arrangements; that the figures are not grouped as
you might expect them to be in real life, nor in
positions that men and women usually assume. And
these formal compositions we have seen were also
called, classic; the last example being the classic
landscape in which nature has been made to look
more grand by the addition of features of classic
architecture.
We reach now another principle of composition.
It is the arrangement adopted by the artist, whose
motive is to make his picture represent nature nat-
urally; so I call it naturalistic composition. But,
as we have noted before, the artist is not satisfied
merely to represent nature; he wishes in the first
place to make his picture a thing of beauty. Nature
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A Guide to Pictures
is not always beautiful; so he selects from nature
and arranges his subject in such a way, that we shall
not only recognise how true the picture is to nature,
but feel also how beautiful it is as a work of art.
Its beauty, you see, is founded, not upon a formal
plan, but on its truth to nature.
Here for example, is The Sower by the French
artist, Jean Frangois Millet. If we have ever seen a
man scattering grain, we recognise at once the pic-
ture's truth to life. But Millet's intention was not
only to make us know what the man is doing, but
to create an impression on our minds that shall make
us feel a sense of beauty, through the way in which
the picture represents the incident. As a young
man, Millet had studied the examples of Greek and
Roman sculpture in the Museum of the Louvre in
Paris, and learnt through them the classic principles
of composition — the balance obtained by rhythmical
repetition and contrast. And these principles, as we
shall see presently, are applied to this figure of The
Sower, I hope to show you that this is the secret
of the picture's beauty. Although the action of the
figure inside the shabby clothes is quite natural, the
movement is rhythmical. In fact it represents a
mixture of the classical and the naturalistic motive.
Firstly, the naturalistic. We know at a glance
what the man is doing. The forms in the picture,
the colors, the light and shade, make an impression
on the eye which is immediately telegraphed to one
of the centers of the brain. The result is that we
know the picture represents a man in a field sowing
96
ItTaturalistic Composition
grain, while from the color and light in the sky, and
the shadows creeping over the field, we know that
it is twilight.
This direct thought stirs us to further thinking;
for we recall that laborers start for their work in
early morning, so this one has probably been toiling
all through the day. But we notice that his actions
are still vigorous, he should be tired, yet he is work-
ing as sturdily as at any time during the day; per-
haps with even more energy, in order that he may
finish sowing the field before the darkness comes.
In fact, the arrangement of forms, colors, and light
and shade has made a strong impression on the
thinking part of the brain, stirring us not only to
observe, but to draw conclusions. And this, of
course, is what Millet meant that it should do.
But this was not all that he intended. Most peo-
ple of his day must have thought it was; for nearly
all the critics, or persons who are supposed to be
able to judge of the value of a picture, and nearly
all the connoisseurs, who are supposed to be able to
appreciate its beauty, turned up their noses and
shrugged their shoulders. " This is horrible ! '' they
exclaimed. " A common laborer in his dirty clothes,
doing his miserable work. Ugh ! how vulgar ! This
is not art; for art should be concerned with beauty.
Why does not the fellow paint some beautiful girl
in beautiful draperies ? Phew ! Take the picture
away, it smells of the farm."
You see they confined their criticisms and appre-
ciation to what the picture was about — its subject;
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, A Guide to Pictures
and because ttey did not like the subject, they con-
demned the picture. They got no further than
hnoiuing and thinking, they did not permit them-
selves to feel. But it was on their feelings also that
Millet wished to make an impression. Through the
arrangement of line, form, color, and light and shade
he sought to stir that other part of the brain to
which messages are telegraphed by the senses, with
a result that we are made to feel. Let us analyse
the composition; and see how it illustrates the prin-
ciple that we have been discussing of balance, and
rhythmic repetition, and contrast.
We will begin with the latter. !N'ote, then, how
the sloping line of the field cuts across the picture.
This diagonal line is contrasted with the perpen-
dicular sides of the picture, and with the upright
direction of the figure of the man. It forms, how-
ever, another contrast; it divides the light from the
dark. The sun has gone down behind the slope; so
that, while the sky is still luminous with a lovely
glow, the ground is in shadow, dreary and heavy
looking. So, too, the figure of the man. The light
is at his back^ so that what we see of him is shrouded
in gloom. Against the gloom of the ground his fig-
ure shows comparatively indistinctly, but the upper
part stands very sharp against the light. There is
a strong contrast between its heaviness and gloom
and the lovely radiance of the waning light; while
down below the figure looms out of the gloom and
heaviness, as if it were a part of them that had
gathered into definite shape. Yes, though his head
98
ISTaturalistic Composition
may stand against the sky, the man is part of the
earth.
Eight away, is there nothing in this to make us
feel? Millet, at any rate, had often felt the poig-
nancy of contrast, in his own life and in the lives
of others. He had known what it was to see his
wife and children short of food, to have his own
stomach empty, while his mind was full of beautiful
ideas, and his cottage full of pictures, that some day
men would buy, but not yet. He had seen little
bright faced children standing at the open grave
of the father or the mother; the happy young bride
at the altar, and among the congregation the young
widow ; and evening after evening, as the darkness
fell, the lonely figures in the field, toiling out their
short lives, whilst behind them spread the everlasting
beauty of the sunset, and a few miles off in Paris,
where he came from, the lights were gleaming and
people were making ready for pleasure, though
there too, as he knew from his own experience, peo-
ple starved. Yes, it is through experience that we
learn to feel deeply, and it is to experience that the
contrast of this picture appeals.
When we recognise that by this contrast of light
and darkness, Millet sought to express the dreary
routine, day in day out, early and late, of the
peasant's lot in a world where nature is so beautiful,
and there can be so much beauty in life, we may
imagine to ourselves what would be the effect of
raising or lowering the diagonal line. To have given
more lighted space, would have made the figure stand
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A Guide to Pictures
out too prominently so that it would have dominated
the scene, and the scene itself would have seemed
too spacious. Velasquez, in his equestrian portraits,
kept the horizon line low, so that Philip IV, for ex-
ample, or his minister, Olivarez, is made to appear
a very important person in a very large world. But
Millet wished us to feel the lowliness of the peasant,
bound close to the earth in very narrow surround-
ings. Again, to have raised the horizon line, would
have destroyed the balance between light and dark-
ness, which now is absolutely true. This balance
suggests a feeling of repose ; shall I say of acquies-
cence in the necessity of the contrast ? For Millet
did not consider himself a reformer whose work is
to set things right and to do away with contrasts;
but an artist, w^iose aim was to harmonise the con-
trasts and to find some balance between the lights
and darks of life ; just as Stevenson out of his weak-
ness and strength made his life a beautiful one.
And now let us study the lines of the figure. In
the first place you wdll agree that they enclose a form
which is unmistakably that of a man sowing grain.
It was necessary for Millet to arrange the lines, in
some way that should convey this impression. But
there are many other ways in which they might have
been arranged, so as to obtain this result. For in
the act of sowing a man takes many positions and
any one of these would have done, if all the artist
had desired was to make us Jcnow that the man was
sowing. But Millet wished to do more.
As a boy he toiled in his father's fields, so he had
100
The Sower. J. F. Millet.
10-hs'
^Naturalistic Composition
a fellow-feeling for the peasants ; and as lie watched
them, day after day laboring so faithfully, he found
a big idea in their work. It was something like
this — work is necessary, and to do our own share of
it as well as we can is the big thing for each of us.
And the oldest work of all and the most necessary
is the growing of the wheat. To-day the seed is laid
in rows by machine-drills; but in Millet's time it
was scattered by hand, just as it had been since man
began to sow. This sower, then, that he watched
was a descendant of a long line of sowers, stretching
back to the beginning of civilisation ; and still in the
fields of Barbizon he was doing his humble share
of the world's necessary work. Millet felt the big-
ness of this idea; and in his imagination the man
was no longer Jacques or Jean — a sower ; he became
*' The Sower," a type — a big heroic type. Then, as
Millet felt him to be, so he set to work to paint him,
choosing such lines as would convey this big feeling
to us. Observe, first, the balance of the figure : how
the weight of the body is planted almost equally on
both feet. If you try to put yourself in the position,
you will find that you can raise neither foot with-
out moving the body. If you wish to raise the back
foot, you must move the body forward till the weight
is on the right foot ; or, if you would raise this latter,
you must move the body back till the weight is over
the left foot. The center of gravity or of mass runs
down through the body and between the legs. Now
sway your body backward and forward a few times,
and then bring forward the left leg in front of the
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A Guide to Pictures
right, so that the position of the feet is reversed.
Now sway again forward and backward. I ask you
to do this that you may feel how freely the body
moves in this position. And I ask you to stride,
that you may feel that the position in the picture
is only a momentary one, leading on to a natural
advance. For this perfect poise of the body on the
feet is not a stationary one, that in time will seem
stiff, but part of a moving one, that has the freedom
and the naturalness of life. And the movement is
a swift one. We can feel it is so from the length of
the stride; for it is only when you are moving
quickly, that you can take long strides, and still pre-
serve the balanced, rhythmic swing of the body.
We have spoken of the poise of the body on the
legs; now let us note the action of the right arm.
The action, I need hardly say, begins with taking
a handful of grain from the bag; then the arm is
swung back to the right to its full extent, and then
again brought back to the bag. Between these two
points — that of the bag and that of the full extent —
the arm is poised in motion, just as the action of the
body was poised between the backward and forward
motion of the legs. We can feel that the arm is
moving, and, at this instant it is moving backward,
for our own experience when we walk and swing
our arms naturally is that each arm goes back as
the leg on that side goes forward. The man's arm
will reach its furthest point backward when he brings
his full weight on the right foot. In a word, the
poise of the arm and the poise of the leg correspond.
102
Naturalistic Composition
Thej present an example of repetition of balance.
It is enforced, you will observe, in the composition
by the arm being made parallel to the direction of
the backward leg. This is another instance of repe-
tition; and there are still others: the repetitions of
the waist line, the shoulders, and the hat brim; of
the bandage on the left leg, the line from the shoul-
der through the thigh, the apron, hanging over the
arm, and of the echo, as it were, of these, in the tail
of the distant ox and the arm of the driver. These
repetitions, and others that you may discover for
yourself, help to bind the composition together and
also to make it rhythmic.
And now for contrast, we have noted the big one
made by the diagonal line, dividing the composition
into light and dark. Let us note those appearing in
the figure. First there is the big contrast of the
figure's own diagonal line from the shoulders down
through the right leg. It is contrasted most forcibly
with the sides of the picture, the horizon line, and
the direction of the right arm and the left leg. The
latter are practically at right angles to the figure —
strongest of all contrasts of line. It is to all these
vigorous contrasts that the energy and assertion of
the figure are mainly due. But there are other con-
trasts in the figure. Do you notice that the swing
of the arm brings the trunk of the body, or the torso,
as it is called, along with it? Swing your own arm
and you will find your torso following its direction.
If the man's arm were to reach its full extension,
his left shoulder would appear and his torso would
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A Guide to Pictures
front us nearly full. If his hand should reach the
bag, the right shoulder would come forward until
the torso would be seen almost in profile. However,
neither of these extremes is presented. The swing
of the torso is poised between the two. But do you
observe that the swing of the torso and arms is
across the path of direction of the swing of the legs ?
While they swing forward and backward, the arms
and torso swing alternately from right to left and
left to right.
Imitate this action with your own body, step for-
ward briskly with a swinging stride and at the same
time swing your arms and torso. If you feel the
exhilaration of the action as I think you will, you
will realise that it is the wonderful way in which
Millet has suggested this contrast of the swing, that
makes the action of the figure so stirring. By the
contrast of its lines, it expresses energy; by the
contrast of swing, so free, so rhythmic, so vigorous,
it lifts us to enthusiasm.
But finally observe the position of the head and
the direction of its gaze. While below it the torso
and arms swing from side to side, the head is fixed,
leaning a little forward in the direction of the on-
ward movement, its eyes firmly set on what is ahead.
Within the head is the brain which directs all the
action of the figure. But the face is shadowed over,
and through the shadow the features appear coarse
and heavy. We feel that the brain, though prompt-
ing the man to do his work to the utmost, is after
all a dull brain, in pitiful contrast to the vigor of
104
Naturalistic Composition
the body. Heroic though the figure is in the gran-
deur of its free, swift movement, as grand, if you
will take my word for it, as a Greek statue, yet it
is but that of a humble peasant, unconscious that
he is doing aught but that which he has to do.
There you have the idea as it presented itself to
the imagination of Millet!
" The Sower " is a striking illustration of the
point wdth which I started this book ; that the beauty
of a picture does not depend upon the subject, but
upon the way it is represented.
105
CHAPTEE X
NATURALISTIC COMPOSITION (Continued)
J]^ The Sower, by Millet, we found that, though
•*■ the composition was naturalistic, it was based
upon the classic principle of rhythm of line. We
shall not discover this principle in the present pic-
ture of a Young Woman Opening a Window. The
arrangement of the figure and its surroundings is
simply natural.
The picture is by Johannes Vermeer ^ of Delft,
so called because this town in Holland was his birth-
place and the scene of his life's work. Bom in 1632,
he is one of those famous Dutch artists of the Seven-
teenth Century, of whom I have already spoken.
We were talking of landscape painting and men-
tioned that in this century the art branched out in
two directions. Landscape up to that time having
been used as a background for figures, became then
an independent art, cultivated for its own sake ; and
the artists treated it in two ways. On the one hand,
some applied the principles of geometric composition
to an artificial building up of bits of nature into
what is called the formal, or classic landscape ; while
other painters represented the natural landscape
» Pronounced Yo-hann-es Fair-mair.
106
!N'aturalistic Composition
naturally. These latter were the Dutchmen, who
treated figures also in the same realistic spirit. That
is to say, whether they painted portraits or figure
pictures or landscapes, their aim was to represent
the actual subject as they really saw it. They did
not substitute an artificial arrangement for the nat-
ural appearance of people and things; nor did they
try to obtain beauty by altering and improving upon
nature. Their motive or purpose was to render the
beauty that is actually in nature. So, for the most
part, they chose subjects of familiar every day life.
This picture, for example, represents simply a
glimpse of home life, of a Dutch girl in well-to-do
circumstances. Perhaps the artist intended to make
a portrait of her ; probably his intention was only to
paint a genre picture, that is to say, : an incident of
every day life.y !Not so much, however, for the sake
of representing the incident, as of making it con-
tribute to a subject of abstract beauty. How he has
done this I hope we shall see presently. Meanwhile,
I want you to grasp the distinction between simply
representing an incident, as you or I might have
seen it, if we had been present, and Vermeer's mo-
tive of using the incident as a peg on which to hang
some beauty of light and color and texture. I mean,
it was the beauty of light and color and texture that
made him pleased to paint this picture; and prob-
ably he would have been just as pleased if some
other girl had been standing there, or some other
objects had been spread upon the table.
Perhaps a familiar example will illustrate this
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A Guide to Pictures
distinction. Two people start off for an afternoon's
walk. One sets out because he wishes to call upon
a friend who lives on the other side of the wood.
To pay this call is the object of his walk; for the
friend is building a new house. As he walks along
he is busy wondering how far it is advanced,
whether the plasterers have finished their work ; and
as he returns home he is thinking about the house
he has seen and how he himself, when he builds a
house of his own, will plan it differently. In fact,
the incident of his friend's being engaged in build-
ing is what interests him, and has been throughout
the afternoon the motive of his walk. His compan-
ion, on the other hand, agrees to go along with him,
not so much because he is interested in the house,
although he is to some extent, but mostly because
he loves a walk. He enjoys the exhilaration of the
exercise ; he is fond of the wood through which they
have to pass. He will have a chance to hunt for
the first signs of spring — the early skunk-cabbage,
the shy peep of the violet through the dead leaves
underfoot, the rose blush of the maples overhead, the
piping and flicker of the first bird-arrivals and so
on. The real motive of his walk is the joy of ex-
ercise and of the beauties met with on the way.
Visiting the house was but an excuse.
There is the same distinction among painters. To
some the representation of the incident is the main
thing; to others, the rendering of the beauties which
it involves. Vermeer, like the other Dutch artists,
of the Seventeenth Century, belonged to the latter
108
Young Woman Opening a Window. Johannes Vermeer.
{Property of The 'STcirajmlitan Miiseinn of Art.)
^Naturalistic Composition
class. Since, however, his subject is the peg on
which he hangs his arrangement of light and color,
let us begin by examining it.
A young woman is standing between a table and
a window. With one hand she opens the casement
while the other grasps the handle of a brass pitcher
that stands in an ewer of the same material. Per-
haps she is going to water some flowers that are out-
side on the wdndow^ sill. Her costume consists of a
dark blue skirt, buff-colored bodice, and a broad
collar and hood-like cap of thin white linen. The
table is covered with an oriental cloth, on which
is a yellow jewel case, while over the blue chair lies
a cloak of lighter blue. On the gray wall hangs
a map. This and the table cloth may remind us,
that the Dutch of that period, although they were
fighting for their political liberty against Spain,
found means to build ships and carry on trade across
the sea with far distant countries. Possibly the girl
was the daughter of some sea-captain or prosperous
merchant.
Anyhow the picture, beside being a beautiful
painting, is very interesting to us to-day as an illus-
tration of the domestic life of a Dutch girl of some
two hundred and fifty years ago. And the same in-
terest belongs to all the old genre pictures. They
make the past still alive to our eyes; just as the
genre pictures painted to-day will show some future
generation how we lived. But this, I repeat, was
not Vermeer's first thought. On the other hand, I
do not wish you to think that he was not himself
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A Guide to Pictures
interested in the subject of his picture. He was, I
am sure; but in another way. He, no doubt, ar-
ranged the figure with great care and carefully se-
lected and grouped the surrounding objects. But,
in placing the girl, he did not try to get the grace-
ful lines that Raphael, for example, would have
imagined. Vermeer's desire was to keep the pose
and gesture natural. In this he was simply follow-
ing the general motive of the artists of his country
and of that time. But his oAvn particular motive in
representing the girl in the act of opening the win-
dow was that the clear outside light might stream
in at the back of her figure and blend with the dim-
mer light of the interior.
I said that we would study the kind of beauty
that this picture possesses; and it is to be found
in the rendering of the light. The Italians, busy
with their grand classic compositions, would not
have thought of this. Their motive was the beauty
of form, arrayed in beautiful draperies, and so ar-
ranged that the figures should produce beautiful
patterns of line and form. To make a motive of the
beauty of natural light was a discovery of the Dutch.
They were artists, you see, and therefore in love
with beauty. But they confined themselves, almost
entirely, to real subjects of every day life, and ac-
cordingly had to find out the beauty that may be in
these familiar things. And it was not long before
they learned how much the beauty of things depends
upon the light in which they are seen.
Before we go any further in our study of the
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Naturalistic Composition
picture, let us see if we cannot be sure of this from
our own experience. Whether you live in a city or
in the country, how differently you feel when you
start out in the morning, according as the day is
fine or not. Under a bright sky everything takes
on a cheerfulness that is communicated to our own
spirit. Let the sky become downcast and the appear-
ance of objects becomes dulled. Often too, some
familiar object that we have passed time and time
again without particular notice, suddenly attracts us.
How beautiful ! we exclaim. If we try to discover the
reason of the beauty, we shall find very likely, that
it is due to some effect of light. It need not be a
bright light, on the contrary, it may be a soft light,
such as wraps itself around objects like a gauzy
veil, when the sky is thick with vapor. Do you
remember that line of Tennyson's — " Waves of light
went over the wheat " ? He had been watching a field
of wheat, spread out smoothly like a pale golden
carpet in the yellow sunshine. Suddenly, a soft
breeze passes over it, and as the stems bend their
heavy heads of grain, and recover themselves, ripples
of light travel across the field. The poet notes it in
his memory, for a future poem. So, if we use our
eyes, we may note countless examples of the beauty
which is added to the simplest things by light. In
fact, the changing effect of light will correspond to
the changing expressions that pass over the human
face.
The Dutch artists, as soon as they became really
interested in the nature and life around them,
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A Guide to Pictures
quickly recognised this fact, and made it the chief
motive of their pictures. They were no longer satis-
fied with mere realism; that is to say, to make the
figure and the objects around it look as real in the
pictures as they did in actual reality. They sought
to render the expression of which these objects were
capable, under the influence of light. If you do not
understand this I think you will, if you place a
bunch of flowers in some dark corner of the room,
look at it a little while, and then move it to the
window. Now, as the light falls upon the flowers
and shines through the petals, the whole bunch is
transfigured. It has taken on a new appearance of
beauty. Like a face that has suddenly lighted up
with an expression of happiness, the flowers seem
alive with radiance. They too, have their expres-
sion and it will change with the changing of light.
For look at them again toward evening, when the
light is low, and their faces, not less beautiful, will
show a quite different expression.
'Now the light which streamed in at that window
in Delft, when Vermeer painted this picture, was
a very cool, pure light; one would say, from seeing
the original picture, a morning light in Spring, it
is so pure and fresh and fragrant. Yes, one can even
feel the fragrance of its freshness, so exquisitely has
the artist suggested to us the impression of the
lighted air that steals into the room, filling it with
purity. See, how it bathes the wall; even the bare
gray becomes radiant; how it gleams on the girl's
shoulder, and filters through her cap, making it in
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^N^aturalistic Composition
parts transparent, so that one sees the background
color through it. Note also, how it roams among the
objects in the room, caressing the under part of the
girl's right arm, bringing out the softness and plump-
ness of her left wrist ; splashing the ewer and touch-
ing the pitcher, the table cloth, and other details
with glints of sparkle, like notes of gladness in a
melody of tender freshness.
Even in the reproduction one can feel the fresh-
ness that pervades the room, and the delicate quality
of the lighted atmosphere that envelopes the figures
and fills every part of the scene. I mean, that not
only is this effect of light visible to our eyes, but it
also stirs in us a sentiment or feeling of gladness
and refreshment. Still more will the original, if you
have a chance of seeing it in the Metropolitan
Museum, 'New York, where, though a very small
picture, it is one of the gems of the collection. For
there you will feel also the effect of the color, yel-
low, gray, and various hues of blue. They are all
cool colors, the blues especially, and very pure in
hue, which increases the sensation of freshness.
A moment ago I spoke of the picture as being like
a melody. It will suggest to some imaginations the
blitheness of a spring-song. The fact that a painting
may sometimes seem to have the tunefulness or har-
mony of music I have already mentioned in a pre-
vious chapter. The reason is that painting and
music, although different arts, have certain elements
in common. Later on, when we shall speak of color,
I shall try to suggest to you the correspondence be-
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A Guide to Pictures
tween sound notes in music and color notes in paint-
ing. But for the present I will remind you of an ele-
ment, common to both arts, of which we have already
spoken — rhythm. In Raphael's Jurisprudence, I
pointed out to you the rhythm of movement in the
figures. It flows through the forms of the figures
in rippling, wave-like lines of direction. But noth-
ing of that sort is apparent in Vermeer's picture.
There are repetitions and contrasts in the arrange-
ment of the full and empty spaces ; but they rep-
resent rather a pattern of spots ; we are not conscious
of any rh}i;hm of line. Then, in what does the
rhythm consist?
If you think of that line of Tennyson's — " Waves
of light went over the wheat," you may perhaps dis-
cover for yourselves the kind of rhythm in this pic-
ture. To give you time to think it out, before I tell
you, let me ask you, if you have noticed that in a
flower-bed in the garden a number of blossoms of
different colors will " dwell together in unity," but
if you pick some of these and bring them indoors
and begin to arrange them in a vase, the colors will
seem to clash. That they do not appear to clash in
the flower bed is because the out-of-door light envel-
opes everything, soothes the violence of the colors
and brings them all into an appearance of harmony.
Similarly in this picture, the light streaming through
the window brings all the different spots of color
into a single harmony of effect. They are no longer
separate and independent, but drawn together and
united by the veil of lighted atmosphere. Of this
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^Naturalistic Composition
again, we will speak when we reach the subject of
color.
But the rhythm of this picture, in what does it
consist ? Yes, in the movement, not of form, but of
light. Uniting all the colors into a single harmony,
it flows in and out through the lighter and darker
parts of the composition; sometimes in a broad
sweeping flood, as on the wall; sometimes in little
pulses of movement, as it leaps from point to point ;
now losing itself in the hollow of a shadow, then
reappearing in the gleam of a fold ; all the while
streaming through the picture in a continuous ebb
and flow. In fact, as we study it, we gradually
find that the light does for the parts of this com-
position what the lines of direction did in Raphael's
— it unites them in a rhythmic movement.
Do not be disturbed, if at first reading these words
convey little meaning to you ; or if at first sight you do
not feel the rhythm of the composition. It is there,
however, and some day, if you are really going to be
a student of pictures, you will feel it yourself.
For the present, if you will accept my word for
it, I wish you to understand that this rhythmic ef-
fect of out-of-door light represented a new motive
in painting. The Italians of the great period did
not see it. It was the discovery of the Dutch
realists, those artists of Holland in the Seventeenth
Century, whose study was the real appearances of
nature and life.^ Their pictures were not as grand
' We shall find it was discovered also by the Spanish artist,
Velasquez, in the same century.
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A Guide to Pictures
as the Italians'; for they were small in size, and
were not built up on the magnificently formal plan
that gives such a dignity and distinction to the
Italian pictures. ^N'or are their subjects so heroic
and impressive. They represent only the facts of
every day life. Yet they have a great beauty of
their own, because they rely on the inexhaustible
beauty of light.
It is on this same beauty that after two hundred
years artists of our own day are relying. They
have gone back to the example of Vermeer and the
other Dutch artists, and are applying it to the study
of similar subjects. They are painting nature as it
shows itself to them in its envelope of lighted atmos-
phere.
116
CHAPTER XI
THE NATURALISTIC LANDSCAPE
WE come now to the other arm of the Y, about
which we spoke in a previous chapter. Land-
scape had been used as a background to the fig-
ures, until in the Seventeenth Century some artists
began to make it the chief subject of their pic-
tures. But no sooner was landscape painting prac-
tised as a separate art than it branched into two
directions. We followed one of these and saw how
Claude Lorrain invented the formal, or classic
landscape; taking bits of nature, some from one
place, some from another, and building them up into
an artificial composition, which he made more grand
by the addition of classic architecture. It was not
unlike the way in which a handsome house is built;
the materials, — stone, wood, marble, and so on —
are brought together from various places, hewed to
certain shapes designed by the architect, and then
put together according to the rule or formula of
building. The main difference is that, though the
classic landscape does not represent any actual spot
in nature, it still bears a resemblance to nature.
But it is nature worked over by the fancy of man,
and improved according to his own idea of what is
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A Guide to Pictures
beautiful. The artist did not paint nature because
he loved it as it is^ but because it furnished him
with material for making a handsome picture. And
this picture-making use of landscape continued to be
popular with artists and the public well on into the
[N^ineteenth Century.
Meanwhile the other branch of landscape painting
had been started in the Seventeenth Century by the
Dutchmen. They, as we have seen, were interested
above everything in themselves, their own lives and
surroundings. This was the state of mind of the
whole people, and the artists gave expression to it
in their pictures. They too, were picture-makers,
who by their skill of painting and their love of
beauty made their pictures beautiful works of art.
But the subjects that they represented were seldom
imaginary ones. They painted what they actually
saw; and with so much truth that their art has
been called an art of portraiture. They made por-
traits of people, portraits of the outdoor and in-
door life, and portraits of their towns and harbors,
and of the country that surrounded them. So, by
comparison with the formal or classic landscape, we
may call their landscapes naturalistic, for they rep-
resented nature as it actually appeared to their eyes.
But their art died with them. As soon as Holland
had secured her independence, her artists began to
travel to foreign countries, especially to Italy.
There they set themselves to imitate the great Ital-
ians, and so far as landscape was concerned, joined
in the popular taste for the classic kind. It was not
118
Crossing the Brook. ./. M. W. T
urner
■?*,*
mOX
The Naturalistic Landscape
until a hundred years later, namely at the end of
the Eighteenth Century, that an English artist, Con-
stable, revived the naturalistic style of landscape.
He was a miller's son, whose boyhood had been spent
amid the simple loveliness of nature. Later he went
to London and studied painting ; but while he worked
in the big city, his heart was in the country, and
he suddenly made up his mind to go back to the
old scenes, and paint what he knew and loved. He
had seen some of the landscapes of the old Dutch-
men, and resolved that he would do what they had
done. In his own words, he would be a " natural
painter."
It was not long before the example of Constable
led some of the younger Erench artists to study the
old Dutch pictures in the Louvre. They were dis-
satisfied with the methods of painting upheld by the
older artists. It seemed to them a waste of time to
set up a model in a studio, and then, instead of
drawing it as they saw it, to correct it according to
some standard of perfection. Nor did they find any
interest in putting a number of such figures into
artificial groups, in order to build up some grand
composition, supposed to represent some classical
subject or story of the old time. They were full of
interest in the life of their own time, which was the
period following the Revolution, when Erance felt
young again and vigorous, and the young artists
and poets and fiction-writers were eager to express
in their work their joy in the reality of life. When
life was so real and so full of promise, why should
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A Guide to Pictures
they look back to the times of the great Italians and
occupy themselves with the artificial and make-
believe ?
Among these younger men was one, Theodore
Rousseau. He was not only independent in char-
acter and determined to see things with his own
eyes and to represent them as he saw them and felt
them, but he had a great love of nature. This led
him away from the city into the country; where he
studied the skies and the trees, and all the objects
of the landscape with an ever increasing love and
knowledge, until he came to know nature, as few
have done, and to feel toward it, as a man feels to-
ward that which he loves best in all the world. His
favorite spot in nature was that which surrounds
the Palace of Fontainebleau, an ancient residence
some thirty miles from Paris, of the kings of
France. It is a rolling tract of ground, broken up
with rocky glens and thick with forest trees, espe-
cially the oak. On the outskirts of this enchanting
garden of wildness, in the little village of Barbizon,
Pousseau made his home, and around him gathered
other artists, fascinated by the beauty of nature.
Among them was the Jean Frangois Millet whose
picture, The Sower, we have already studied. He
for the most part painted the peasants, working in
the fields or tending their flocks; but the others,
among them Dupre, Corot, and Diaz, painted the
landscape, while Troyon introduced cows into his
pictures and Jacque, sheep. With all of them the
motive was to represent nature as they saw and felt
120
The Naturalistic Landscape
it. They are known as the Fontainebleau-Barbizon
group of artists, and their example has had very
great influence on modern art. I shall speak of it
presently ; meanwhile will continue the story of nat-
uralistic landscape.
It is a very interesting fact that while these
French artists were going straight to nature for their
subjects and inspiration, some American artists,
knowing nothing of the Frenchmen, were doing the
same thing. A similar love of nature and longing
to paint it as they saw and felt it drew them from
the city to the beautiful spots that border on the
Hudson River. Their leader was Thomas Cole, who
made his headquarters among the hills and valleys,
the waterfalls and luxuriant vegetation of the ro-
mantic Catskills. Other names are those of Thomas
Doughty, Asher B. Durand, John F. Kensett.
Sometimes they painted the grander aspects of the
scenery ; the broad Hudson sweeping past its head-
lands, or the lakes with their girdle of mountains;
but quite as often the simpler loveliness of smiling
meadows and cosy farms. But always with the sin-
cere wish to represent, as faithfully as they could,
the natural beauty that they loved.
Gradually, however, as the country expanded
Westward and the pioneer spirit of the nation was
aroused, American artists began to attempt bigger
subjects. Church, Bierstadt, and Thomas Moran
attacked the colossal wonders of the Yellowstone and
the Rockies. It was no longer the beauty of nature
that inspired them, so much as its marvelousness
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A Guide to Pictures
and immensity. As many people believe, they tried
to do something that is beyond the power of paint-
ing to express. For on the comparatively tiny space
of their canvasses they did succeed in expressing
some of the appearances of nature's grandeur, but
they hardly made you feel it. I believe myself it is
impossible that they should; for an artist can only
make you feel in his picture something of what he
himself has felt ; and he must have thoroughly mas-
tered his own feeling before he can express it. But
in the presence of the stupendous works of nature,
as far as my experience goes, the feeling masters
ourselves. Amid the vastness of the height and
depth and breadth and the grandeur and glory and
marvel of it all, our spirit is swept out of us. We
see the mighty volume of water coming over
l^iagara and hear the roar of its might; but not as
we gaze into the face of a friend and listen to the
voice that we have learned to know and love so well.
In the one case our feeling is all brought to a cen-
ter of attraction, in the other it is caught away and
carried beyond our comprehension. We can only
lose ourselves in wonder.
Well, artists discovered the truth of this. Con-
stable and Rousseau lead the way, and now it is the
usual habit of the landscape artists to study nature
as one studies the face and form, the expression
and action of a friend. One cannot know a
number of friends as intimately as one or two.
So they have confined their pictures to the few
and simple aspects of nature; one little fragment
122
The ISTaturalistic Landscape
at a time, studied with loving intimacy and rep-
resented with the faithfulness of sincere and thor-
ough knowledge. In doing so, they have learned
like Johannes Vermeer and other Dutch artists of
the Seventeenth Century, that much of the beauty
and almost all the expression on the face of nature
are due to the effects of natural light. Light has
become the special study of the modern painters of
the naturalistic landscape. And they have carried
it further than the other artists did. Helped by
the scientific men, who have examined into the color
of light, the modern artist has found out how to
represent a great variety of the effects of light:
cool or warm light, the light at a particular hour
of the day, at a particular season of the year, and
in a particular kind of weather. In fact, the light
that he represents in his pictures is a faithful ren-
dering of some one of the countless conditions of
natural light.
You remember how the light in Yermeer's pic-
ture drew all the parts of the composition into a
harmonious whole and gave it rhythm. So too, in
these modern naturalistic landscapes the artist has
ceased to depend upon line and form in making the
composition. The latter is now rather an arrange-
ment of masses of lighted color. We will talk more
about this when we come to color; for the present,
it is enough to remember that we must not expect
to find in modern naturalistic landscapes the same
handsome patterns of composition that we find in
the classical. The modern have less dignity, but
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A Guide to Pictures
a more intimate charm. We do not stand apart
from the scene and admire it; we rather enter in
to it and enjoy it. It is something with which we
are familiar in nature, but we are made to feel a
greater beauty in it through the personal feeling
that the artist has put into his work. The French
have a term for this kind of landscape, which well
expresses the artist's motive and the feelings which
his picture inspires in us. They call it the " 'pay-
sage intime.^^ ^ Literally translated this means " in-
timate landscape " ; but it may be rendered more
freely a landscape in which we recognise how in-
timately the artist has studied his subject.
• • • • • •
I have given you a sketch of the growth of nat-
uralistic landscape in the Seventeenth Century up
to our own day, when this branch of painting has
become fully as important as that of figure subjects.
Now let me briefly describe the change that has
taken place in the motive of the landscape painter.
The motive, or aim of the early Dutchmen was
to make their pictures resemble as much as possible
the actual landscape. They were, as I have said,
" portraits '' of the natural surroundings. In their
desire that the portraits should be lifelike these ar-
tists painted in as many of the details as they could.
Moreover their point of view was objective. By
'^ point of view " I mean the way in which they
looked at the landscape ; and I call it " objective,"
because they looked at it simply as an object in
> Pronounced pa-ee-sahje an-teem.
124
The Naturalistic Landscape
front of them to be painted as nearly as possible
lifelike. This is the usual point of view of the
modern photographer. You go to him to have your
portrait taken. He poses you as an object in front
of his camera. His aim is to make a portrait that
will be like you, and will also please you because it
is a good-looking picture. He will do the same for
the next person that comes to him, and for the
next, and so on. All of them are simply objects
to be photographed. He has no personal feeling
toward any of them; his point of view is objective.
But, suppose he makes a portrait of his own
child. He will wish it to be more than a likeness
that any one would recognise. He wants it to be
a reminder in after years, when she is grovsni up
and changed, of how she used to look as a little
one, in moments when to her mother and himself
she seemed more than ever a darling. To him, you
see, she is not merely an object to be photographed;
his point of view towards his own child is not ob-
jective; on the contrary it is influenced by his per-
sonal love for her; the picture is to be a likeness
plus something more — a reflection of his own feel-
ing. This personal kind of point of view is called
" subjective," the opposite to objective. Perhaps
you will understand the difference between the two
more clearly by the following sentence : " The pho-
tographer photographs Mrs. X." The photographer
is the subject of the verb, photographs, " Mrs. X."
is the object. In this case the object is of more
importance than the subject because it is Mrs. X.
125
A "tjruide to Pictures
"who pays the money and has to be considered. But
change the words in this way — ^' The father photo-
graphs his little one." l^ow, so far as the taking
of the photograph is concerned, the father is the
more important. He is the subject of the verb, the
one who is going to do something and do it his o^Ya
way, so as to represent something which he, the sub-
ject, has in his mind. His point of view is entirely
his own — the subjective. Observe how this will
affect the way in which he takes the photograph.
The little one has just come in, we will say, from
a romp in the meadow. Her hair is tumbled and
the light plays through the silky strands ; there is
a sparkle of sunshine in her eyes ; her lips are
parted in a sunny smile as she stretches out to her
father a podgy hand, tightly clasping a bunch of
daisies. ^^ Little love " he thinks to himself, " what
a picture ! " He seizes his camera, and tells her to
stand still a minute. What is it, do you think that
he is going to try and catch? I need hardly say it
is the radiance in her face. Perhaps her podgy
hand too; but first and chiefly that expression of
happiness and love; for it is an echo, as it were, of
the happiness and love that he feels in his own
heart toward her. If he succeed, the picture will
be as much an expression of his own subjective feel-
ing toward the child, as of the child herself.
If you see what I mean you can now begin to un-
derstand how Constable, and, even more, Rous-
seau and the other Fontainebleau-Barbizon artists
looked at nature, ^o longer an objective point of
126
The Naturalistic Landscape
view, like the old Dutchmen's, it was a subjective
one. To them nature was not merely an object of
which to make a portrait. It was something they
loved, and, because they loved it, they painted it,
and in such a way that their pictures embodied the
feeling which they had for nature. They are full
of the artist's personal feeling, or as it is sometimes
called, sentiment. A landscape of Rousseau's sets
our imagination working. It may represent an oak
tree and a rocky boulder, half hidden in ferns and
vines, some little spot in the forest of Fontainebleau.
As we look at it we become more and more con-
scious of the strength and vigor of the tree ; the
firmness of its huge trunk, the mighty muscles of its
brawny arms, the grip which it has upon the ground,
and our imagination may begin thinking of the
roots hidden, below the ground. While the branches
spread out to the sunshine and the air, the unseen
roots reach out and grip the soil and grapple with
the rocks, anchoring firmly the tree against the
storms of weather and time. And perhaps we begin
to feel, as Rousseau himself did, that the oak is a
symbol of the might of nature ; and how she silently
works on regardless of the changes that happen in
the lot of comparatively short-lived men. Or we
look at one of Corot's pictures of the twilight, in
which the trees seem to have sunk asleep in blurs
of shade against the pale, faint light that is fading
from the sky; and the hush and tenderness of the
daily miracle of nature's rest steals over our spirits.
It is as if we were listening to the pensive melody
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A Guide to Pictures
of some sweet lyrical poem, very gently and rever-
ently read; such a one, perhaps, as Longfellow's
" Hymn to the Night." On the other hand, to re-
ceive an impression like that of Rousseau's picture,
we must choose a poem that tells, not of rest, but of
the grandeur of human effort, and must read it in
a strong voice and confidently, as if we were sure
that to be strong and faithful to the end was a
grand thing.
Indeed, so many landscapes, not only by the
Fontainebleau-Barbizon artists, but also by modern
men who are following in their footsteps, are full
of the suggestion of poetry, and we speak of them
as poetic landscapes. This does not mean that they
illustrate any particular poem, but that they affect
one's imagination in somewhat the same way as
poetry does. The reason is that such artists have
the spirit of poets. For nature arouses in them
deep emotions, and their pictures, like the poet's
verses, not only describe the beauty of nature, but
express the sentiment, or feeling, of their own souls.
On the other hand^ you must not expect to find
this suggestion of poetry in all modern naturalistio
landscape. There are still artists whose point of
view, like that of the old Dutchmen, is objective.
They are content to paint the beauty of nature
simply as it shows itself to their eyes. [N'or need
we argue as to which is the better way, this, or the
subjective point of view. We may prefer the one or
the other ; though, perhaps, it is better for us to keep
our minds open to the beauties of both.
128
o
o
C5
\
-, -» 1-
CHAPTER XII
FORM AND COLOR
W HEIST we began to speak about composition
we continually used the words " line and
form." Gradual^, however, as we left the subject
of formal composition and talked of naturalistic
composition, we found ourselves substituting the
words " colored masses.''
It would seem then as if there were a distinction
between these two things ; that form was on one side
of the fence and color on the other. Yet that would
contradict our experience; for we know that every-
thing which has a form or shape, visible to the eye,
has also color that we can see. And most things
that have color are seen to have a shape or form.
Not all; for example, when the sky is a cloudless
blue, or when we gaze over a distant expanse of
sea. Still, as a general experience, color and form
are identical. The face of a friend — you recognise
it by its color as well as by the form of the features ;
and, should you have the sorrow of looking upon
that face when it is dead, the change in the color
would make you recognise the once familiar fea-
tures as strangely different.
Yet, notwithstanding the identity of form and
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A Guide to Pictures
color, we find a certain separation between the two,
when we come to study pictures. The reason is that
some artists are more sensitive to form, others to
color. As I have already said, an artist paints only
the particular impression of an object which his
eye receives. Every eye has its own particular way
of seeing. Even the eye, most sensitive to form,
will not see it as other eyes will; nor will any one
color seem the same to every eye that is chiefly in-
terested in color. This is only another way of say-
ing that the varieties in nature are inexhaustible.
Nevertheless, although no two elm trees are exactly
alike, all elm trees are sufficiently similar to be rec-
ognised at once as elm trees. So with artists, some
group themselves as painters of form; others, of
color. In the old Italian days this distinction
separated the artists of Florence from those of
Venice. The Florentines — Leonardo da Vinci,
Michelangelo, Raphael, among the greatest — were
masters of form; the Venetians, especially in the
persons of Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul
Veronese, were masters of color. The one group
saw especially the shapes of things, the other saw
the world as an arrangement of spots or masses of
color.
The Florentines, in consequence of their interest
in form, took great pains with the outlines of their
figures. The outlines were clearly defined; in the
mural paintings the figures were enclosed by an
actual line; and always the figure shows distinctly
against the background. For, having drawn the
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Form and Color
figure very carefully, the artist did not let the color,
that was afterwards laid on, lap over the line or
interfere with the subtle undulations of the outline.
They were in fact, a school of great draughtsmen,
who relied principally on the beauty and vigor of
the drawing. The Venetians, however, were great
colorists, relying on color; and may be spoken of
as painters rather than draughtsmen. Yet they too,
of course, were masters of drawing. They could
represent the action of the figure as well as the
Florentines, but unlike the latter, did not care for
the clear outline. On the contrary, they softened
or blurred the outline slightly, in closer imitation
of nature.
If, for example, you look carefully at a tree, you
will not find that its shape is enclosed by a hard
line. The light creeps round the edges of the trunk
and of the masses of foliage in such a way that the
outlines are softened or slightly blurred. It is the
same with a figure seated in a room; here and
there its edges may seem sharply cut out against
the background, but in other parts the edges will
seem to melt into the background. In other
words, as we look at the figure, what we are most
conscious of is not its outline, but its mass of color
in relation to the other masses of color that sur-
round it.
Now, this distinction, between the way in which
the Florentines and the Venetians saw and repre-
sented objects, still appears in modern art. In fact,
ever since the days of the great Italians there have
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been artists who relied on drawing and artists who
relied on color. For over a hundred years the im-
portance of drawing has been upheld by the great
school of art in Paris maintained by the French
government. One of its famous teachers, Ingres,
used to tell his pupils " form is everything, color
is nothing." Perhaps he only meant by this that,
as long as they were pupils, the only necessary thing
for them to think about and learn to represent was
form. Because to draw well is so important for
any artist, and it is a thing that can be thoroughly
taught and learned. The French school takes as
its standard of excellence the perfect forms of clas-
sic sculpture and the great works of the Florentine
artists. Although the student may be drawing
from a living model whose form is not perfect, he
is taught to correct the imperfections of this or that
part, in order that the figure, as it appears in his
drawing, may be as near as he can get it to classic
perfection. But color, as we shall see presently, is
so much a matter of each person's feeling, that it
is impossible to reduce the teaching of it to any
method or standard. So perhaps that is what In-
gres had in mind. He meant that, for the time
being, his students should consider form to be
everything, color nothing.
On the other hand it is generally understood that
he meant much more than this, that he was telling
his pupils what he himself considered to be the
whole duty of an artist. Let us try and enter into
his point of view.
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Form and Color
I can imagine some of my readers saying that
the phrase, " form is everything ; color, nothing/'
is nonsense; because color plays so important a part
in our enjoyment of sight. Just think what a
dreary world it w^ould be, if everything, for in-
stance, were a uniform gray! Quite true, and In-
gres probably would have agreed. As a marij he no
doubt enjoyed the pleasures of color. But it was
as an artist that he was speaking. He was stating
what he believed to be the proper subject of his own
art.
In the first place he was evidently one of those
artists who see the shape rather than the color of
things; to whom form makes an irresistible appeal.
In the second place — and mark, for this is very im-
portant — he was not thinking of how things appear
in the actual world, but how they should be repre-
sented in art. He was one of those artists who are
not interested in naturalistic painting; who do not
profess to paint nature. On the contrary, like the
great Italians, he only borrowed from nature certain
materials in order to build them up into a formal
composition of his own creation. He would have
told you that he was not representing the works of
nature but creating for himself a totally different
thing — a work of art.
On the other hand, many artists will reply, that
the work of art need not be a totally different
thing. That they themselves, like the Dutch of the
Seventeenth Century and all the modern painters
of the naturalistic composition, combine the two.
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It is hj representing nature, that they create a work
of art.
Here, you see, is a sharp conflict of points of
view. One group of artists, loving nature, desires
to represent it; the other, perhaps not loving nature
less, certainly loves art more. This latter group,
therefore, tries to improve on nature, and to use it
only for the creation of something that it feels to
be different and superior to nature. While the one
set of men wed nature to art, the other divorce art
from nature. Between the two there is a Great
Divide, which no amount of talking can bridge over.
The only conclusion to be reached is that there is
right on both sides. For the one group, because of
the kind of men composing it, its own way is the
right way; and for the other, for the same reason,
its way. We, as lookers on at the dispute, will do
well to learn to see the beauty in both kinds of
picture.
You may as well know the names by which the
two points of view are known. With one, the
naturalistic, we have already become acquainted.
The other is called by the artists who practise it the
" idealistic.'' They will tell you that they paint
" ideal " subjects. By those, however, who dis-
agree with them, their point of view and method are
apt to be called Academic.
The word ideal, used in this sense, has the mean-
ing " more perfect than in real life." When a person
says: ^^ The ideal way to spend a summer holiday ''
— we know even before he utters the next words,
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Form and Color
" would be," that he is going to tell us something
that he does not expect to enjoy. It is how he
would have things, if he could arrange them ac-
cording to his own idea of perfection. Xow this
is what the artist means when he calls his picture
an ideal one.
Personally, I do not like this use of the word,
because it seems to imply that this kind of picture
is superior to the other. And the artists who paint
this kind of picture believe that it is; we, however,
who are simply students of pictures, longing to en-
joy the beauty of all kinds of motive and ways of
painting, will not admit this. We go back to the
fact with which I started this book: that the value
of a picture does not depend upon the subject but
the way in which the artist has rendered it. Be-
cause a man portrays some noble incident from
poetry or the Bible, or invents some scene out of
his brain, it does not follow that his picture will
represent a higher degree of beauty or a finer
imagination than one which only represents some
simple scene in nature. I will go further and say
that some of the pictures of " still life '' ^ by the
Frenchman, Antoine Vollon, or our own American
artist, Emil Carlsen, exhibit more beauty, yes, and
even more imagination than many ambitious figure
subjects. Why is this? How can a picture of a
pumpkin and vegetables by Vollon, or one of Carl-
' Still life, or as the French call it "dead nature" includes,
firstly, picked flowers, fruit and vegetables, and dead animals,
and secondly, vases, pots, and other objects of man's handicraft.
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sen's subjects, such as a creamy porcelain vase, and
a lemon, and one or two other delicately colored
objects on a white tablecloth, show more beauty and
imagination than, for instance, an imposing picture
like Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware ?
The answer is that Yollon and Carlsen exhibit
more feeling for beauty and more imagination in
matters that especially belong to painting, while
Leutze went outside of painting. Let me explain
myself. Leutze saw beauty in the heroism of Wash-
ington and his soldiers, fighting against tremendous
odds for a great cause in the terrible cold of winter.
His imagination was kindled by the importance of
the cause and the devotion of those who fought for
it. It was the facts, as they appealed to his mind,
and the ideas that his mind formed about them
which he tried to represent. But the special field
for the artist, as I have already said, is not covered
by his mind but by his eyes. It is with what he
can see that he should be first and chiefly concerned
— the beauty of the visible world. And his imagi-
nation as an artist is chiefly shown in the capacity
that his mind has for discovering unexpected beau-
ties and rendering them. Thus to ourselves, and
even to some artists, a pumpkin may seem but a
bright orange mass, with a rough or shiny rind as
the case may be; an attractive spot of color and
shape, a thing to be admired for a moment and
then forgotten. Another artist, on the contrary,
sees a great deal more in it. He sees subtle differ-
ences of color, according to the way the light falls
136
Porm and Color
on it^ various delicate differences in the roughness
or smoothness of the rind; curiously beautiful ac-
cidents of color, as it reflects the colors of other ob-
jects near it ; mysteries of shadow, some deep and
strong, others so faint that an ordinary eye might
not detect them. These and other qualities, that
his sensitive eyes perceive, create impressions in his
brain that fill his imagination with a sense of
beauty somewhat as music does. He cannot tell
you why he enjoys it so much, or explain in words
the effect it has on his imagination. The whole
impression is a vision of his imagination, excited
by the sense of sight, and this vision he sets to
work to interpret on his canvas, in order that it
may be communicated to our eyesight, and, in turn,
excite our imagination. We receive from form and
color feelings of pleasure that we cannot describe in
words but which are not less real on that account.
It is an abstract enjoyment, free from any distinct
connection with words or facts. On the other hand,
in Washington Crossing the Delaware it is the rec-
ord of facts, presented in the picture, that chiefly
interests us. Neither the forms nor the arrangement
of color have in themselves any separate abstract
quality of beauty.
So, it is not upon the beauty of the things seen
by the eyes, but upon the interest of things under-
stood by the mind that Leutze depended. He
really neglected his own proper field of painting,
for that of the writer or orator. Therefore, he put
himself at a disadvantage; for I think you will
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admit, that a good speaker or writer could describe
the incident in a much more thrilling way than the
picture does.
But we have strayed somewhat from our point.
We were speaking of idealistic pictures, and noted
that they are so called because the artist instead of
representing nature as it is, corrects it and improves
upon it in order to bring it up to what he considers
an " ideal " standard of perfection. I mentioned
that these pictures and the motive which prompts
them are also called " Academic."
The reason is that the school in Paris which
teaches these principles of painting is maintained by
the Academy of the Pine Arts ; and its example has
been followed by many other European Academies
of painting. So, when we speak of a picture being
Academic in character, we mean that its motive and
manner of painting follow the rules laid down by
the schools. To repeat a word we have frequently
used before, they are based on the Academic For^
mula. Previously it was the Classic formula of
which we spoke. This, you remember was the rule
or plan for building up a formal composition, some-
times strengthened by the introduction of classic
architecture and often representing some scene or
story of classic legend. And it is upon this classic
formula that the Academic practice is largely based.
So when a modern artist paints a picture after the
fashion of Raphael's Jurisprudence, we can speak
of its manner and motive as being Academic, Clas-
sic, or Idealistic. Sometimes, in fact, the meaning
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Form and Color
of these words is practically the same, but not
always.
For at times an Academic painter will choose an
everyday subject of ordinary life, yet his picture
will not be naturalistic. There are two ways in
which he may miss the truth of nature. Either he
will try to improve upon the actual facts, or he
will leave out the light and atmosphere in which the
objects appear in nature. We may find examples
of both these contradictions of the natural truth in
Leutze's picture. He was trained in the Academy of
Diisseldorf, a city on the Rhine; at a time when
that school had abandoned Classical subjects for in-
cidents from history, or scenes from German leg-
ends, or what it called genre-pictures of peasant
life. But these last were not genre in the sense that
the old Dutch pictures were. For the latter repro-
duced the actual habits and life of the times, where-
as the Diisseldorf artists presented fancy pictures
in which the peasants were grouped, as if they
were taking part in some scene in an opera or other
theatrical performance. This artificial treatment
appears in Washington Crossing the Delaware,
It is supposed to represent a historical incident.
Do you think it has the value of history; that the
incident really happened as it is here depicted?
The artist, of course, was not present; he was com-
pelled to shape the facts of the incident according
to what he had read about them, or, as I rather
suspect, according to what his fancy had pictured
them. History tells us that the crossing began
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A Guide to Pictures
early in the evening of December 25, 1Y76, and
lasted until four a.m. the following morning. Does
this picture represent the dimness of a winter twi-
light, much less the gloom of night? I might ask
the further question, is any kind of natural light
suggested in this picture? I feel confident the an-
swer is " no." Leutze probably had no thought
of representing this aspect of the truth; the Diissel-
dorf School paid no attention to the real appearances
of light ; or to the effect that light would have upon
the appearance of the figures. Their outlines are
sharply defined ; every figure is rendered with about
equal distinctness; no effort has been made to rep-
resent them in relation to one another, with varying
degrees of clearness and obscurity. A similar arti-
ficiality appears in the representation of the ice. It
is true the lights and shadows and gleam of the
surfaces of real ice have been studied; so that the
painting conveys the idea of ice; but this is a very
different thing from the painted blocks representing
the effects of real ice, as seen in real light.
So we find that Leutze, though wishing to give
us a vivid representation of the incident, has ne-
glected a number of important facts relating to the
hour of the occurrence and to the conditions of at-
mosphere and light, as they must have affected the
appearance of the scene. He was simply not inter-
ested in these matters. Then, what of the point on
which he evidently relied — the grouping of the
figures in the foreground? It is a ticklish job to
pull a boat through a mass of floating ice-cakes.
140
<4i
I ^
a t
b£
o
bJO
cc
03
• ^1
Form and Color
Do jou think that Washington and the flag-hearer
would have increased the difficulty and peril by
standing up? Don't you know that to stand up in
a boat even on smooth water is a foolhardy thing
to do? It is a frequent cause of accident and loss
of life in pleasure parties. On an occasion so seri-
ous as this would the leader have been guilty of
such folly ? Certainly not. Washington and every
man, not actually engaged in navigating the boat,
would have been sitting low down, so as to help
preserve the balance and offer as little resistance as
possible to the wind. Here, then, is another indif-
ference to facts in this so-called historic picture.
But Leutze did not care about facts. His motive
was to bring out the heroic character of the events.
So he made Washington strike a heroic attitude.
It is the way in which a popular actor takes the
center of the stage and strikes an attitude and waits
for the applause. Leutze wanted a central figure
around which to build up his composition and, in
order to support the central figure, reared another
behind it holding aloft the flag. Thus he wins ap-
plause, at once, for the star actor and the patriotic
sentiment of the scene. In fact his composition is
similar in intention and arrangement to the group-
ing of figures on the stage of a popular theater.
It is theatrical. I do not say dramatic, but theat-
rical, between which two ideas there is this distinc-
tion. When we speak of a scene being dramatic we
mean that the action of the plot has been vividly
expressed by means that create an illusion of truth
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A Guide to Pictures
— that the characters behave as they might be ex-
pected to do in real life under the circumstances.
By theatrical, on the other hand, we imply that the
behaviour of the actors, instead of ^' holding the
mirror up to nature,'' is regulated so as to produce
an artificial effectiveness. Such a scene we call
theatrical, or stagey. And the same words, in my
opinion, can be applied to this picture. For Leutze
failed to realise, not only that truth may be
stronger than fiction, but also that it may be more
impressive than artificial effectiveness. The true
word spoken in simple earnestness, the true act done
simply, often move men's imagination, where loud
rhetoric and ostentatious conduct leave it cold. So,
too, in a picture, a deeper sentiment may be aroused
by simple truth of representation, than by a display
of mock heroics.
In this picture, you will observe, we have been
discussing the Academic point of view applied to the
representation of an incident that really happened.
The painter undertook a real subject, but has not
rendered it as it would have really appeared to us,
had we been there to see the event. This is a charge
that can be brought against many so-called historical
pictures, and against those smaller ones, the genre
pictures, which are supposed to represent incidents
of actual everyday life. When painted in the Aca-
demic manner they are not true to life, but artifi-
cially concocted.
On the other hand, as I have said, many Aca-
demic pictures, choosing classical or idealistic sub-
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Form and Color
jects, make no pretence of representing life. They
try to improve on life by making their forms more
beautiful than they actually are in nature; and
build up compositions which must not be compared
with the way in which people group themselves in
real life. In such pictures we do not look for nat-
ural beauty but for that of the artist's own inven-
tion.
So, to bring the subject to a finish, we must bear
in mind that there are two distinct ways of paint-
ing a picture. If the artist has tried to represent
nature, we must learn to compare it with nature;
if on the contrary, he has tried to paint a subject
of ^' ideal perfection," we must not find fault with
its unnaturalness. We may prefer the one or the
other kind; but should not let our preference inter-
fere with our judgment of the different merits of
each. Until we recognise the ^"^ Great Divide" be-
tween the Academic and the l^aturalistic points of
view, we shall not get very far in our appreciation
of pictures.
143
CHAPTER XIII
COLOR
XT was mentioned in the previous chapter that
■*■ artists may be divided into two classes: those
who are particularly interested in the shape or
form of what they see, and those who see the world
as an arrangement of " colored masses." It is the
latter way of seeing things that we are now going
to consider.
We know that everything visible to the eye has
color. When we think of a garden lavni, an im-
pression of green comes into our mind. Green, an
artist would say, is the local color of the lawn — the
general hue which distinguishes it from the paths
and flower beds. There may be dandelions spotted
about the grass; indeed it is a lucky lawn that is
not overrun with them ; yet, notwithstanding the
yellow patches, the local color of the lawn is green.
And this is true^ although here and there the grass
may appear yellow in the warm sunshine, or,
where the shadows of the trees lie, may have a
bluish tinge; or again, in the distance may appear
to be almost gray. You see then, that when we
begin to talk about color, we do not think only of
the general hue or local color, but also of the
144
Color
changes which take place in its appearance, accord-
ing as it is subject to light and shadow or is seen
near or further off.
'Now let us take another case. A woman, we will
suppose, has a quantity of white cotton material
which she proposes to dye blue. She buys some
indigo, and puts it in a tub of water. Into this
dye-bath she plunges the cotton,, and then hangs it
on a line to dry. When she has taken it down and
ironed it, it presents a uniform hue of blue, its
local color. But what happens when she has made
it up into a dress? The local color remains the
same; but the appearance is no longer of a uniform
hue. In some parts the blue is paler or whiter than
the local color, in other parts darker; for now the
material is not spread out smoothly, the light no
longer falls upon every part of it in the same way.
The skirt, for example, hangs in folds; and the full
light strikes directly only on the raised edges of
the pleats. Into the hollow of the fold less light
penetrates, and at different angles.
Just what do we mean by angle of light? We
must remember that the rays of light coming from
the sun, radiate or travel outward in straight lines,
as the spokes of a wheel radiate from the hub; ex-
cept that the spokes of light are not confined to a
flat circle, but radiate in all directions from every
part of the sun's orb. But to return to the wheel.
Let us suppose that it is a buggy's wheel, and that
the buggy is jacked up, so that we can turn the
wheel easily. We will do so until one of the spokes
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A Guide to Pictures
is pointing straight down to the ground, and, to
make sure that it is exactly vertical, we will suspend
in front of it a string with a weight attached to its
lower end. If the spoke follows exactly the direc-
tion of this plumb line, then we know that it is
pointing do^vn directly to the surface of the ground.
We know, in fact^ that the direction of the spoke
is at right angles to the surface of the ground; or,
which amounts to the same thing, we may say that
the surface of the ground is at right angles to the
direction of the spoke.
But what about the direction of the other spokes
of the wheel? With them the plumb line will not
help us. We must get a straight stick, say the
handle of the stable broom. If we hold this along
the direction of either of the spokes, nearest to the
center one^ we shall find that when the handle
touches the ground, it will be at a point further off
from the hub, and not at a right angle to the
ground but at an acute angle. If we try the same
experiment with the next spoke, we may need a
longer stick, for the point where it reaches the
ground will be still further from the hub, and the
angle of direction will be still more acute. If we
follow on to the next spoke, we shall probably find
that its direction, when extended, does not reach the
ground. It points above it. Perhaps it hits the
barn wall ; and then again comes the question : does
it hit the wall at a right angle or at an acute angle ?
The answer to this, if you think a moment, will
depend upon the position, not only of the spoke,
146
Color
but also of the wall. For example, the spoke may
point directly at the wall, so that when you stand
at the corner of the barn and run your eye along
the wall, the spoke will make a right angle with the
wall's vertical direction. But the wall has another
direction — a horizontal one; and this may slope
away from the direction of the spoke, so that if you
stand in front of the wall, your stick makes with it
an acute angle. Evidently under some circumstances
a single direction may make with the surface of the
wall both an acute and a right angle.
By this time our experiment, which started out
so simply, has become perhaps a little puzzling to
follow. But I don't mind if it has; for I wish you
to realise that, although this matter of direction
and angles is simple in principle, it works out in
a very complicated way. The more we realise this,
the more we shall realise the wonderful effects of
light upon color. As a beginning, let us imagine
that the hub of the wheel is a center of heat, white-
hot, and that the spokes are rays of light, not sta-
tionary like the woodwork but travelling outward
at great speed. The shaft of light that runs straight
down and strike the ground at right angles to the
surface, would make the spot where it touches very
bright. The second shaft, however as it reaches
the ground further off from the hub will illumine
the spot with less light. Moreover, since it hits an
acute angle and is travelling fast, some of it will
glance off the spot. It will be reflected from the
surface back and forth, somewhat as a ball is tossed
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A Guide to Pictures
backwards and forwards from the hands of a group
of children.
This fact of reflection and the fact that the so-
called angle of reflection is the same as the angle
of incidence, or, in other words, the angle at which
the light falls upon the object, explains a familiar
sight. Have you never seen, late in the afternoon,
when the sun is above the horizon, a blaze upon
a hill side, so bright that your first thought is it
must be a house on fire ? You saw it suddenly ;
and, if you walk a few steps to the right or left, it
as suddenly disappears; to reappear, however, when
you resume your former position. By this time you
know it is not a fire, but the reflection of the sun
from some window or tin roof. The light, striking
down upon it, glances off, and, as you happen to
be in the line of its angle of reflection, strikes you
full in the eyes. But move your position, so as to
get out of the " line of fire," and the reflected ray
passes you by without attracting your notice.
Here is another example of reflected light, which
you yourself can control. Do you remember the
fairy Tinker Bell, in ^^ Peter Pan " ; how she ap-
peared as a patch of light, dancing over the walls?
Very likely when you returned from the theater
you made her appear on the walls of your home.
As you sat at the breakfast table you picked up a
tumbler of water, or a bright bladed knife, and
moved it about until it caught the light and tossed
it across the room on to the wall, where you could
make the fairy hover by gently shaking the glass
148
Color
or knife. On the other hand by changing the posi-
tion of the glass or knife you could cause her to
disappear; to reappear if you wished it, on another
part of the wall.
^Now after considering the difference between
direct and reflected light, let us go back to the blue
dress. We were saying, you will remember, that
the skirt no longer presented an appearance of uni-
form hue. For the local color of the material had
become affected by the way in which the light
reached the folds. On the raised edges the blue ap-
pears almost white; in the bottom of the hollows,
where no light penetrates, it appears to be almost
black. Meanwhile on the sloping edges of the
folds there are varying degrees of lighter or darker
blue, according as the material approaches nearer
to the light, or recedes further from it. In other
words, the light strikes the surfaces of the dress at
different angles; there are varieties of reflections,
and some parts of the skirt are almost entirely re-
moved from the action of the light.
But all this time we have been speaking of light,
and yet the subject of this chapter is color. Well,
the reason is, that color is light and light is color.
If w^e were shut up in a cellar from which all light
was excluded, we should see no color. Our eyes
would experience no sensations of sight whatever,
and, if we were left there a long time, our eyes, not
being used, would probably lose their sense of sight.
But, if after we had been in a cellar a little while
surrounded by '^ thick darkness " as the old Eng-
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A Guide to Pictures
lish expression is — meaning a darkness so opaque
that the eye cannot penetrate it — the window shut-
ter should be opened a trifle, then immediately our
eyes would experience a sensation of color. The
shaft of light, cutting across the darkness, would
look white ; but, if it hit upon a shelf of apples, our
eye would receive a sensation of green or red or
yellow. If light is color, why should it seem white
in one case and some other hue in another ? It is
because in the whiteness of light are contained all
the colors of which we are conscious. Very likely
you know the experiment by which the truth of this
is shown. Supposing you are still in the cellar and
place in the pathway of the shaft of light a prism —
that is to say, a bar of glass not round or square,
but triangular — what will happen? The glass be-
ing transparent, the light will pass through it. But
not in a straight line; for, as it hits one of the
sloping surfaces of the prism, it will be bent out of
its course ; and then^ as it reaches the opposite slop-
ing side, it will again be bent into another direc-
tion. So the light in its passage through the prism
will have been twice bent out of its original direc-
tion; and^ when it emerges, it will be no longer a
single shaft of white light, but will appear as a
broad band of many colored lights; red, orange,
yellow, green, blue, violet. We may call this succes-
sion, a scale of color lights. They correspond in
hue and order to the bands or scale of colored lights
in the rainbow, for the latter is the result of an
act of nature, which on a very large scale is like
150
Color
our experiment with the prism. Only nature's
prism is formed by a bar of rain on which strikes
a shaft of light through a slit in the thick upper
clouds.
With this scale of colored lights scientists have
made delicate experiments. They have analysed
the colors more exactly; discovering, that is to say,
the distinct degrees of color, for instance, between
the red and the orange, as the one passes into the
other ; and again between the orange and the yellow,
the yellow and the green, and so on. Then, after
discovering the succession of monochromatic tints,
as they call them, by optical instruments, they have
tested the power of the human eye to discriminate,
or detect the difference between these various tints.
^Notwithstanding that the difference between the
latter is so slight, they have found that the eye is
sensitive to something like two million monochro-
matic tints. I mention it not to trouble you with
figures but to stir your imagination; for such a fact
should fill us with admiration not only of the mar-
vellous qualities of light but also of the marvellous
capacity of the human eye. It helps us to begin to
realise the miracle of light and the immense field
of study that lies open to the artist who is a color-
ist, to whom, that is to say, it is the color of the
visible world that most appeals.
Light, then, contains within itself all colors.
When light falls upon an object, for example, a leaf,
the latter absorbs some of the colors of the light and
throws off others. The part thrown off in the case
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of the leaf is what we call its color: green, or it
may be greenish yellow, or a bluish green, or in
autumn, crimson. Every substance has this power
of absorbing some of the light and of throwing off
the rest; and it is the different chemical properties
of different substances that decide which of the
colors of light they will absorb and which they will
throw off; or, as we say, causes them to be a certain
color.
We have spoken of the human eye being sensitive
to an immense variety of colors. Let us consider the
meaning of sensitive. In the first place, the eye re-
ceives an impression that causes it to telegraph to
the brain a record of the hue; but it means more,
for the word sensitive implies a capacity to feel.
In some way or other the brain receives an impres-
sion of feeling. Just how it does, I understand, is
not kno^Ti; but scientists tell us that these impres-
sions of sight, while they are not quite similar to the
feelings aroused by sound, have something in com-
mon. Just as some sounds give pleasure while others
are disturbing, so with colors — we receive from them
sensations of pain or pleasure. According to the de-
gree of our sensitiveness to sound or color our feel-
ings are aroused. It may be only slightly, or it may
be more intensely. It is pleasant, for example, to
hear the sound of the robin's note, and, as we peep
out of our bedroom window to look at him, we may
catch sight of the yellow or red notes of color that
the tulips are beginning to make against the dark
earth. They too will give us pleasure. And in both
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Color
cases our pleasure may go no further than just a
little enjoyment of their note of color or sound. Or,
on the other hand, they may stir our imagination.
We recognise their notes as the first signs of spring.
Xature in her mysterious way has whispered alike
to the robin and the tulip that the rigor of winter
is over; that spring is come with its birth of new
life, bringing beauty and happiness in its train.
And in ourselves, as we recognise the notes of spring,
life leaps up with a new sense of the beauty and
happiness of living. Those notes, in fact, which be-
gan by giving only simple pleasure to our ear, have
stirred ideas in our minds; they have become asso-
ciated in our imagination with a fuller and higher
sense of life.
On the other hand, some notes of sound distress
us. The unexpected discharge of a gun may strike
us unpleasantly; the roar of the wind and the rain
against the window fill us with melancholy; the cry
of a creature in pain, even before w^e know whence
the cry comes or the reason of it, may cut us like
a knife. I mean, that sounds, quite apart from any
definite thoughts that we associate with them, may
hurt us. So may colors. I might illustrate this by
saying that sometimes when we enter a room the
color of the carpet, perhaps green with red roses as
big as cabbages, and the color of the furniture,
which may be of gold upholstered in blue, seem to
start up and hit us a bang in the eye. But perhaps
you like smart colors, so I will offer another ex-
ample. Shakespeare said —
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She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat, like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief.
Shakespeare's opportunity of seeing pictures had
been very limited. In fact, I am sure that he was
not thinking of pictures when he described melan-
choly as ^' green and yellow." Either he had an
instinctive dislike of this combination that probably
he could not have explained ; simply he felt it to be
disagreeable; or he may have associated it in his
imagination with something he had observed. Per-
haps for instance, since he speaks in the next line
of a '^ monument/' he may have been thinking of
the green and yellow stains on old tombstones, so
that " green and yellow " suggested to him the very
opposite of ^' damask cheek " with its rosiness of
healthy life ; in fact the signs of wasting and decay.
Anyhow, to Shakespeare's imagination these colors
represented something disagreeable. That is the
point. Colors, like sounds, may excite feelings of
distress or pleasure.
And, if single notes may give pleasure, how much
more a number of them. It is when a number of
them are combined into a composition that a har-
mony is produced. The musician creates a harmony
of sound, the painter a harmony of color. The se-
cret of a harmony is the relation, that the separate
notes of sound or color in it bear to one another.
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Color
If I try to explain this, it is not because I wish to
tell you how to make a color harmony, but because
I hope the explanation may help you to enjoy it.
Perhaps we may get an idea of what relation means
if we think of a football team. It consists of a num-
ber of individuals with separate duties. Some play
forward, others half-back, quarter-back, and so on.
When each member not only does his own work as
well as possible but plays well into the hands of the
other members, we speak of the excellence of the
team work. And in nine cases out of ten it is not
brilliant individual play, but fine all-round team-
work that wins the game. The different members
are so well related to one another, that the whole
team works harmoniously.
It is similar in a harmony of colors. Tor perhaps
you see that what I wish you to understand is not
that a few bright colors make a harmony, but that
it is the result of a combination. There must be
team-work among the colors. They count as in-
dividual spots of color, but still more in relation to
all the other colors. There may be one or more
crack players — I mean predominant ^ notes of color,
— but they will have colleagues or assistants — colors
of the same hue but differing in degree — which will
repeat or echo their effect^ with variations all over
the canvas. These subordinate colors and the crack
ones will play in and out, backing one another up,
and, as it were, passing the ball backward and for-
ward into one another's hands ; acting in such exact
» Showing a mastery over others.
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A Guide to Pictures
relation to one another, that their efforts result in
a perfect harmony of effect.
But so far we have been thinking only of one
team, working out its scheme of attack and defense
in practice play. There is a more complicated play,
namely, when the team is pitted against a rival
team. So in color. An artist will introduce rivalry,
or competition into his color scheme; namely, two
crack notes of color that, seen by themselves, would
produce a disagreeable sensation. Why does he do
so ? Because he knows the value of contrast and dis-
cord; just as you know it is more fun to watch a
game of football between two well-matched rival
teams than the merely practice play of one of them.
For now the artist is pitting one set of colors against
another set; the crack players on both sides and
their backers-up — the colors of different but closely
related hue ; and the game between them is fast and
furious — an interplay of likes and unlikes, of repe-
titions and of contrasts. The excitement of the
game results from the even balance of the two rival
sets of colors, swaying backward and forward over
the gridiron — I mean the canvas — massing here and
there, then scattering in a burst of animation — the
two teams so evenly matched that their rivalry only
makes the give and take of the game more brilliantly
harmonious.
Such, in a way, is the harmony of color, as it ap-
pears in the pictures of a true colorist. It has a
focal point of intensity where the effect is massed,
but all about it^ scattered over the canvas, is the in-
156
Color
terplay of related similarities and contrasts, all of
which combine into a harmonious whole.
It maj help jou, as it has helped me, to under-
stand the combination of these numberless repeti-
tions and contrasts of color, if I tell jou of an ex-
perience of sound that I remember. I was one of
a party walking in the Swiss mountains, and at a
turn in the path we came upon a man, sitting with
a gun across his knees. For a small amount this
mountaineer was prepared to let off his gun. We
paid, he fired. There was a sharp report — a focal
point of sound — then a neighboring mountain side
sent back an echo, which was caught by another that
sent it back, whence again it was re-echoed from
another mountain peak, and so on, back and forth,
until in a moment or two, the whole mountain
world resounded with a wondrous roar. From a
single note of sound, which made a very slight im-
pression had grown a multiplication of slightly dif-
fering sounds. For the first echo was slightly dif-
ferent to the original note, and then again the echo
of this echo differed slightly, so too the echo that
came next and the one that followed that, and so
on through a scale of slightly varying tones, that
finally merged into one huge swell of throbbing
sound, as of some mighty organ music — a harmony
of tumult. It was a wonderful sensation, and has
helped me to realise the wonder of color harmony.
For an artist generally founds his color scheme
upon one or two notes of color, and then by repre-
senting the echoes of these colors, as they are re-
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A Guide to Pictures
fleeted at different angles from the various planes
of surface, gradually elaborates or works out a maze
of related colors that merge into a harmony.
On the other hand it is not only by painting the
interplay of reflections that an artist produces a har-
mony of color. There is a less complicated way,
represented in Japanese prints and paintings, and in
the work done by some of our artists who have
adopted their method. In this case the color is flat ;
the objects, that is to say, are not modeled by lights
and darks. The form, instead of being actually
represented is only suggested. Consequently there
are no reflections and the colors are laid on flatly
and smoothly. But they are most carefully related
to one another; both in quantity and tint. The ar-
tist, for example, may use only rose and lavender and
black. But his sense of color is first shown in his
choice of the particular tints of rose and lavender and
black, and then secondly, in his distribution of these
on the white paper. Perhaps he determines to make
the black his crack player. But he wishes to produce
a balance of harmony of all his colors, so he carefully
considers how large a space the chief spot of black
shall occupy, and then what quantity of the remain-
ing spaces shall be occupied by the rose and lavender
and the white paper. Having thus worked out the
ground plan of the scheme, he may elaborate it by
repeating some of the black in other parts of the
picture, and by introducing echoes of the rose and
lavender in the large spot of black. The echoes, in
this case, you observe, are not reflections, they are
168
Color
simply repetitions in smaller quantities of the colors
of the main spots. His composition, in fact, is a
pattern of main spots, and their echoes; the whole
presenting a unity and harmony because the colors
are in exact relation.
And when this has been done either in a simple
harmony or a more elaborate one, with the true feel-
ing of a colorist^ no alteration can be made in any
part of the picture without producing a discord, de-
stroying, that is to say, the exquisite balance of the
whole. I mean, that if, for instance, you were to
cut off a part of the picture in order to make it fill
a frame, you would destroy the harmony of the
whole. For now the relation of the colors will have
been disturbed. There is no longer the same balance
in the quantity of each, nor do they occupy the same
related position in the composition.
In a word, as we said above, the secret of color
harmony is the relation of the separate colors to
one another and the whole.
159
CHAPTER XIV
COLOR (Confinwed)— VALUES— SUBTLETY
SO far in our talk on color we have laid stress on
three points: first, that color is light; sec-
ondly, that color is affected by light; thirdly, that
the painter who is a colorist arranges color in rela-
tion to other colors, so as to produce a harmony.
The reason was, that I wished yon not to think of
color as paint. Paints, or as artists call them, pig-
ments, are only the materials that man has invented
to imitate the real thing. The real thing is nature's
color. Pigments we will speak of later.
From early ages man has been attracted by na-
ture's colors and has tried to imitate them in order
to brighten up his own person and his surroundings.
He began by smearing his own body with some form
of dye or pigment, either to make himself more at-
tractive or to strike terror into his enemies. As he
became more civilised and learned to weave wool
and cotton and flax, he dyed his blankets and cloth-
ing, and added gay borders and patterns to the local
color. Growing more skilful in the fashioning of
clay pots, and bows and arrows, and other articles
of war and domestic use, he decorated them with col-
ored designs. Little by little he learned how to imi-
160
Color — Values — Subtlety
tate the beauty of nature's coloring. But, at first,
it seems to have been the brightness of color that
attracted him ; just as to-day, a great many children
and, for that matter, grown-ups as well, prefer gay
colors. Manufacturers and merchants know this.
Accordingly, to suit the taste of a great many cus-
tomers who still have the primitive child-man's love
of gay-colored things, they fill the markets with
gaudy-colored carpets and wall-papers, and gaudily
upholstered furniture, gaudy curtains, cushions and
so forth. And people buy them, so that thousands
of households are furnished in a way that to any
one who love's nature's coloring, seems horrible.
Yes, this is a strong word. But if you will believe
me, not too strong to express the feelings of distress
that such parlors excite in people whose taste is more
civilised. They are as much distressed, as if the
parlor were filled with roosters, parrots and mon-
keys, all crowing, and screeching and chattering to-
gether in a horrible discord of sound.
Perhaps you do not like my hinting that people
who prefer these noisy colors are not yet fully civil-
ised. You have been taught that we are living in
a very civilised age, with all sorts of modern im-
provements that the people of the past never thought
of, much less enjoyed. This of course is perfectly
true. Science and mechanical inventions have made
living easier; travel is cheaper, education has ad-
vanced, books are within the reach of everybody
and, best of all, we have more pity for the poor,
and the sick and the afilicted, and try to make their
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A Guide to Pictures
lot less terrible. Yes, and in thousands of other
ways we are more civilised. Yet, even so, we may
be far from enjoying all the opportunities of civili-
sation that this wonderful age offers.
How many girls and boys, I wonder, who have
enjoyed the benefits of a good education, when they
reach the age in which they can choose for them-
selves what they will read, select the best books ? I
mean by the best books, those that in history, poetry,
biography, travel, science, and fiction, really give
us the best kind of knowledge of men and life. Are
there not thousands of readers who are satisfied to
read nothing else but the latest novel, no matter how
trashy it may be ? Thousands, indeed, who are not
bettering their minds and lives, as really civilised
people should try to do; but allowing the garden
of their hearts and souls to become laid waste
and barren, just as your flower garden would
soon be, if you turned loose in it the poultry and
the pigs.
The truth with such readers is, that, though they
enjoy the blessings of civilisation, they have missed
one of civilisation's finest products. They have not
good taste, their taste is had. And bad taste is like
a poison. If it is allowed to remain in the system
it will in time affect the whole body. None of us
can make a habit of reading trash vdthout sooner
or later becoming trashy and cheap and common-
place in our thoughts, conversation, choice of friends
and conduct.
However, as you are reading this book, I hope it
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Color — Values — Subtlety
is a sign that you do not care for trashy reading.
So let us get back to the subject of taste in matters
of color. If one looks back over the past, there is
no doubt that as peoj^le became more civilised, one
of the ways in which they showed improvement was
in color taste. They gradually ceased to be attract-
ed only by the brightness of color; they began to
find beauty in the relation of one color to another ;
to try to produce a harmony of colors.
I wonder whether, as you have been reading, it has
occurred to you to think: Why does the author ob-
ject to bright colors ? He says we learn to love
color by studying nature's coloring. Are there not
bright colors in nature ? Is it wrong to like them ?
Certainly not; nor do I object to bright colors.
I am often delighted with them. But, in the first
place, bright colors do not look the same in nature
as they do in a parlor. Secondly, art, as we have
said before, is different to nature. The artist does
not imitate everything he sees in nature, but from
it selects this and that to make his work of art.
!N^othing in our garden makes a brighter spot
than the giant poppy. Its wide and flaring crimson
cup, stained with the purple of its stamens, burns
like a flame. I love the brave show poppies make,
ranged at intervals along the borders or massed in
a clump with a setting of greenery around them.
For, to prevent their brilliance overpowering the
garden, they need plenty of space and abundance of
contrasting colors. I cannot imagine anything more
noisy and gaudy than a little yard entirely filled
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A Guide to Pictures
with them. The reason they need space is that they
may be surrounded with plenty of atmosphere. It
is this which makes so great a difference between
effects of color out of doors and indoors. Out of
doors the atmosphere acts like a veil, softening the
sharpness of colors and forms and helping to draw
them together into a unity of effect. It is indeed,
more like a succession of veils, for between us and
nearby objects is a certain amount of atmosphere;
while objects further off, and still further off, and
further off still, are separated from us by con-
tinually increasing quantities of atmosphere. And
these planes of atmosphere, as we called them in
Chapter IV, act like veils of gauze through which
everything is seen. As I have said, they help to
subdue the colors and draw them into relation with
one another, and so suggest an effect of harmony.
In a room, however, especially a small one, we can-
not get far enough away from objects to permit
much atmosphere to come in between. There is not
so much distance to lend enchantment to the view.
Consequently, though we may enjoy the beauty of
a few of those poppies in a bowl on our table, we
should find a carpet or curtains or sofa of the same
color much too gaudy and overpowering. The ef-
fect would be much as if, while the piano was being
played, someone should blow loudly on a tin horn.
The noise would disturb the harmony of the music ;
we should shut our ears or turn the tin horn dis-
turber out of the room. So when we enter a gaudily
furnished room, we should like to shut our eyes to
164
Color — Values — Subtlety
the discord of color, and, if we had our way, would
banish the disturbing objects to the junk-shop.
But now for the second reason why some of na-
ture's colors, beautiful in themselves, may be less
so when introduced into a room or picture. For
the furnishing of a room, like the composing of a
picture, should, as far as possible, be a work of art,
and the artist, as you recollect, does not imitate na-
ture. He selects from nature. Out of her unlim-
ited storehouse of form and color he chooses for his
purpose some few effects at a time and combines
them in his work of art; guided in his choice and
arrangement by the principles of beauty he has dis-
covered in nature, particularly by the principle of
harmony. And in this respect he has an advantage
over nature. For the light and atmosphere cannot
choose the colors and objects which they help to
harmonise. Even after they have done their best,
there may be so many of those poppies that, while
their colors are subdued and brought into some re-
lation with the other colors^ the relationship is still
too distant — ^the difference between the two colors
too wide — to produce a perfect harmony. But the
artist, since he can pick and choose what he will
put into his picture, is able to avoid this difficulty;
just as a young couple when they start housekeep-
ing can generally avoid having things that will dis-
turb the harmonious arrangement of their parlor. I
say " generally," for sometimes, notwithstanding
their own taste, they receive from some kind but
tasteless friend, the present of a piece of furniture
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A Guide to Pictures
that plays the tin-horn to all their ideas of harmony.
This is a hard case. They do not wish to offend
Mrs. So-and-so or Aunt Jane, and yet they do not
like having to live with something offensive to their
own feelings !
We have said so much about the artist working
for a harmony of colors^ that I ought to warn you
that you will not see color harmonies in all pictures.
For a great many painters are not colorists. Bou-
guereau, for example^ was interested chiefly in form.
If he represented a young girl, drawing water from
a well, he painted her flesh pink; her dress, per-
haps, blue; the stone-work of the wall, gray; the
wood work of the bucket, brown ; and, if there was a
bush in the picture, of course, painted it green. His
only purpose in choosing this color or that color was
to represent the general appearances of the figure and
other objects. He only saw color, never felt it. He
never even saw it, as it really is ; or he would hardly
have painted all his girls and women the same kind
of pinky or creamy china-color. In fact, color to
him was quite unimportant. If he could draw the
girl beautifully he was satisfied. So it is beautiful
form we must look for in his pictures; the color
does not count.
Then there is another kind of painter ; Vibert, for
example, whose pictures were popular in this coun-
try. He liked to paint a cardinal in a scarlet cas-
sock, either in or out of doors. The scarlet makes
a big bright spot in the pictures. Vibert was evi-
dently fond of color; but in a very crude or unre-
166
Color — Values — Subtlety
fined sort of way. He had the primitive man's or
child's fondness for gay or brilliant hues ; and since
there are many people with the same child-like in-
stinct, he sold his pictures easily. He too, for the
most part only saw color. Or, if he felt it at all,
only in the very simple way of liking one color
better than another. Color never stirred in him deep
feelings. He never felt it as a musician feels sound.
He never wove the related colors into a harmony.
He was a gay painter, but not a colorist.
I wonder whether you are beginning to under-
stand the difference ? What I have said may help
to point the way to an understanding, but no amount
of reading can make you feel the beauty of color,
or enter into the feelings of an artist who is a color-
ist; and enjoy his work. This you can only do for
yourself by using your own eyes. Nor do I mean
by this that you should now and then look at a pic-
ture, or once in a while open your eyes to the beauty
of nature. What I suggest is that you should get
into the habit of keeping your eyes open to the
beauty of the world. If you do, you will have your
reward. And the more you watch out for beauty,
and so train your feeling and taste, the more you
will discover beauty in unexpected directions. Espe-
cially you will find that some of the most beautiful
color harmonies are made up of colors, that a little
while ago you would not have felt to be beautiful.
It is not difficult, for example, to enjoy the beauty
of nature's coloring when the sun is shining brightly.
But, because it is so easy, some painters who are
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A Guide to Pictures
colorists will not care to represent it in their pic-
tures. They will wait for what they call a gray
day — when the sun is hidden behind clouds of mist.
Or, like Corot^ they will prefer the early morning
or late evening, when the sky is very pale, and the
colors of nature are very subdued. Or, like Whis-
tler, who painted The White Girl, a girl in white,
standing on a white rug in front af a white wall,
they wdll choose some subject in which the differ-
ence between the colors is very slight. In a word
they are looking, not for splendid but for subtle
harmonies. Those grand Venetian colorists of the
Sixteenth Century, Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul
Veronese, and the great Flemish colorist of the
Seventeenth Century, Peter Paul Pubens, for - the
most part gloried in harmonies of splendour,
Velasquez, however, Pubens's contemporary, whose
life was spent in the service of Philip IV of Spain,
proved himself to be one of the world's greatest
colorists by the soberness and subtlety of his har-
monies. A large part of his work consisted in paint-
ing the portraits of the King, the Royal Family,
and the chief State officers. The taste of the Court
was opposed to bright colored costumes; indeed the
prevailing colors were black and gray, with occa-
sional touches of relief, such as blue or pale rose.
Yet out of these few colors he made wonderful har-
monies. To his sensitive eye a black cloak was not
a mass of thick darkness. As the light shone upon
the various surfaces at different angles, he discov-
ered all sorts of nuances, as the French say, or
168
Prince Balthazar Carlos. Velasquez.
• -p\ A ■* —
Color — Values — Subtlety
shades and degrees of lighter and darker black, in
fact, a scale of tints out of which he composed a
harmony. It was the same way with the grays and
drabs. We often call these neutral colors, by which
we mean that there is no particular color in them.
But Velasquez did not look at grays and drabs in
this way. Having to paint them he searched them
for possibilities of beauty, and found them in the
nuances, occasioned by the action of light. And out
of the scale of these nuances he composed harmonies.
To these nuances artists have given a name —
values. We know the ordinary use of the word. It
represents the relation of something to a certain
fixed standard. Thus, we take a dollar as a stand-
ard ; and say the value of this knife is fifty cents, or
of that two dollars. These knives differ in value ; or,
on the other hand, we may have two or more knives
that correspond in value. Or, again, if some of you
are arranging a picnic as a Dutch treat, one of the
party may undertake to bring ten cents' worth of
eggs, another ten cents' worth of crackers, and so
on. Though every one of twenty boys and girls
brings something different, the value of each contri-
bution is the same.
Now applying this to colors, you may see that
the point to which I am leading you is this. Just
as the knife varies in value from other knives, so
may one tint of black vary from another tint of
black ; one tint of red from another tint of red ; one
tint of yellow from another tint of yellow. Equally,
since a certain quantity of crackers may have the
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A Guide to Pictures
same value as a certain quantity of cheese, so may
a certain tint of red have the same value as a cer-
tain tint of yellow. But what is the standard by
which one kind of color can be compared with an-
other ?
The standard of value adopted by a painter, is
light. The value of any color depends upon the
amount of light reflected from it. Thus, if you look
at a man dressed in black, you will notice that the
black upon the shoulder, or the chest, or whatever
part receives the greatest quantity of light, will seem
less black than those parts which receive less light.
And it may be only in the hollows or shaded parts
that the black looks really black. Well, each one
of these separate degrees of black represents to the
painter a separate value of black.
Perhaps you will say — Why this is only a repe-
tition of what was said about the painting of reflec-
tions of light and the shadows on the blue skirt!
You are right. Then — why, you ask, this new term
— values? Well, it was when the modern man dis-
covered that the painting of these reflections and
shadows could be made a means of producing har-
monies of color; that, indeed, harmonies could be
produced out of the reflections alone, that they in-
vented this new name. They had discovered a new
principle of harmony, depending upon the varieties
of light on color, and they gave to these varieties
the new name of values. ISTot that the principle was
really a new one. It was an old one discovered by
Velasquez and at the same time by the Dutch — Ver-
170
Color — Values — Subtlety
meer among them.^ But about 1860 some modern
artists from studying the works of these men made
a new discovery of the principle.
Before discussing the importance of the rediscov-
ery, let us turn back to the other use of that word
values. If you remember^ the word is used not only
of the differences in degree in tint of some one
color; for example, the different values of black, of
green, of red and so on, but it is also used as a
standard to compare a color of one hue with a color
of another hue. Let me remind you of that Dutch
treat picnic to which everybody brought a contribu-
tion of equal value. I need not tell you that the ten
cents' worth of soda crackers will make a bigger
parcel than the ten cents' worth of cheese, while ten
cents' worth of 's " fine chocolate " would make
a very small parcel indeed. !N^ow, colors differ in
the same way. All colors throw off a certain quan-
tity of light, but the amount varies.
You remember, we said that the cause of color
was the fact, that light which is made up of all
colors penetrates every object in nature ; that each
object absorbs a certain quantity of the color and
throws off the remainder. And that this remainder
is what appears to our eyes as the color of the object.
But while we think of this remainder as color, do
not let us forget that it is light. And, recollecting
that color is light, we can understand that one color
has more or less light in it than another.
' Turn back to his picture and see how all this that we are
now discussing is there illustrated.
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A Guide to Pictures
I wish to make sure that jou do understand this,
so let us trj to illustrate it. We are in the habit of
estimating things by percentage. Suppose then that
we think of the light of the sun as representing one
hundred points. Scientists have discovered that ob-
jects which we call yellow absorb only some twenty
of these points; that, in fact, the quantity of light
thrown off by what we call yellow, or in other words
its value, is some eighty per cent. What we call
red, however, represents some sixty per cent, of
light; green, about forty per cent.
JSTow supposing an artist wishes to combine these
colors in a Dutch picnic; if he wishes, that is to
say, to combine these colors^ so that they will con-
tribute equally to the whole composition of color.
He will use a great deal less yellow than red, and
less of either of these colors than green. The packet
of green, like the crackers, will be bigger than the
cheese, or red; the yellow, or chocolate, smallest of
all.
Let us imagine a picture that will illustrate this.
But before we do so I must remind you that what
we are talking about is color harmonies, and par-
ticularly those harmonies of color in which the
modern artist delights. He learned them, as I have
said, from Velasquez, who was debarred from using
brilliant colors, he learned them also from the old
pictures of the Dutchmen, like Vermeer; lastly he
learned them from studying the pictures and prints
of the Japanese. The effect of all these examples
was to make him prefer subtlety to splendour.
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Color — Values — Subtlety
I have already explained the meaning of subtlety
and subtle. Both are derived from a Latin word
which means " finely woven " — fine spun threads of
silk or linen, woven closely together into a strong
but very delicate and thin fabric. So when we
speak of a subtle distinction we have in mind a dis-
tinction that is very slight; as between two tints of
yellow. To many eyes they will seem the same;
whereas an eye more subtly sensitive to degrees of
color can distinguish the difference. We may say
of such an eye, that it has a very delicate sense of
sight, or subtlety of vision. Subtlety implies deli-
cacy; and when we speak of the subtlety of an ar-
tist's color harmonies — how subtle they are — we
have in mind a delicate, exquisite, refined use of
color. He has not used many colors; nor obtained
his effects by force of strong contrasts. On the con-
trary, it is by subtle relation of a few colors, by
the subtle differences in their values that a har-
mony, distinguished by its exquisite delicacy, is pro-
duced.
Our own American artist, the late James MclSTeill
Whistler, was one of the first of the modern artists
to paint this sort of harmony. He painted four
pictures of a girl in a white dress, which he after-
wards entitled " Symphonies in White," numbering
them one, two, three, and four, just as a musician's
works are distinguished by a number. For Whistler
felt that there is some similarity between the har-
monies of color and those of sound notes, and tried
in his pictures to produce subtle effects as musicians
1Y8
A Guide to Pictures
do. In one of this series he represents the girl in
a white dress, standing on a white rug, before a
w^hite wall. The only variation from the white is
afforded by her dark hair and the flesh coloring of
her face and hands. These are what we may call
" accents " — notes of color that stand out with prom-
inence and decision. The rest is a symphony in
white.
He might have made his problem easier by throw-
ing a strong light upon the figure from one side.
This would have made some parts of the dress shine
out with the brightness of very high lights, and
would have caused the figure to cast a shadow on
the wall. This would have produced a harmony of
contrasts; a bold contrast of color values, easier to
paint. But Whistler was intent on something very
subtle — a harmony of similarities. So he placed the
figure in a dull light, that was evenly distributed
over the rug, the figure, and the wall, with the re-
sult that the distinctions between the color values
were very slight, very subtle. This means that it
was difficult to make the different masses of white
distinct from one another. The artist, you see, had
to make it appear that the girFs white figure was
nearer to us than the white wall; to make us feel
that, while the wall is flat, the figure has roundness
and bulk; and that, while the wall is an upright
surface, the rug represents a horizontal one. Yes it
was indeed a very difficult problem, because the only
possible way of solving it was to render the very
slight differences in the quantity of light, reflected
1Y4
Color — Values — Subtlety
from each and every part of the white surfaces, ac-
cording to the angle at which the light reached any
part, and the distance each part was from the eye
of the artist. And no doubt the keen mind of Whis-
tler was interested in the subtlety of the problem.
But this was not all. His feeling as an artist was
equally subtle. It delighted in the subtleties of
color values.
However, he also enjoyed effects of brighter color.
I have asked you to imagine this picture of Whis-
tler's because it illustrates the first meaning of
" values " — namely the different quantities of light
that may be contained in one and the same color.
I wish to illustrate now the other meaning of
" values " — which has to do with the quantity of
light contained in one color as compared with that
in another color; for example, with the percentage
of light contained in red as compared with that con-
tained in blue, or green, or white, or any other
color. For this purpose I have chosen the second in
Whistler's series of symphonies in white : The Little
White Girl. You can look at the reproduction and
see for yourself that part of the color scheme, or
color harmony, certainly the most important part,
consists of the figure of the girl in w^hite. You will
notice how it illustrates what we have been saying
about the other white girl. It is evenly lighted,
there are no contrasts of extreme light and dark ; the
dress is a woven tissue of subtly different values of
white. But in this case Whistler has treated the
white dress as the theme or chief motive, as a musi-
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A Guide to Pictures
cian would say, and has woven around it a composi-
tion of variations. It is the variations that I wish
you now particularly to notice. They may be put
under two heads. Eirst^ the reflection of the girl's
head in the mirror; second, the various spots of
color that surround her.
Suppose we begin with the latter. On the mantel-
shelf, close to the flesh-color of the girl's hand and
the white of her sleeve is a Japanese jar, decorated
in white and blue, and beside it a Japanese box
covered with that smooth shiny surface called lac-
quer, and of a scarlet color, like a geranium. Down
below appear the sprays of camelias with dark green
glossy leaves and white and rosy blossoms. The fan
repeats these colors^ but with a difference. There
is red in it, but of a different value to the red of
the box and flowers; blue, but of another value
than that on the vase; green, which differs in value
from the leaves. Secondly, in the mirror is a repe-
tition of the girl's head and of certain colors in the
room. But the reflected head, as you can see in the
reproduction, is in a lower key than the real one.
The colors are lower in value ; there is not so much
light in them; for the mirror has absorbed some of
it. You may test a mirror's appetite for light by
holding your handkerchief close to it. You will see
that the white of the reflection is much greyer than
the handkerchief, or according to the quality of the
glass, it may seem slightly blue. At any rate its
value will be lower than that of the handkerchief;
just as in this picture, the reflected colors of the
176
The Little White Girl. J. M. Whistler.
A-***
i
Color — Values — Subtlety
flesh and hair are lower in value than the actual
head.
I^ow, looking at the picture, we note that the fig-
ure occupies about one half of the composition. It
illustrates, as did The Sower^ the use of a main
diagonal line, though the feeling suggested by it is
different. In The Sower, you will remember, the
diagonal helped to give vigor and alertness to the
figure; while here, on the contrary, its suggestion
is one of very gracious quiet. For the slope of this
diagonal is not so steep as in the other picture ; nor
do the directions of the arms and head present such
abrupt contrasts. The left arm it is true, is nearly
at right angles — itself a strong contrast; but it is so
quietly laid along the mantel-shelf, which supports
its weight, that there is no suggestion of effort.
Meanwhile, the other arm, hanging so easily, is al-
most parallel to the main diagonal. The line also
of the neck gently carries on the lines of the shoul-
ders, and, as the head is slightly tilted back, its
downward pressure is supported by the shoulder that
rests on the shelf. The whole suggestion of the fig-
ure, in fact, is one of rest. There is no conscious
bodily effort to interfere with the reverie in which
the girl's mind is wrapt. She may be buried in her
thoughts or she may be absorbed in the beauty of
the box and vase, at which she seems to be looking.
" Seems,'' I say, for it is difficult to be sure that she
is conscious of them. Her gaze seems fixed to a far
vision, as if she had begim by looking at these ob-
jects, and then, as her thoughts passed beyond them,
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A Guide to Pictures
had let the gaze of her eyes follow. She seems
huried in some girlish reverie, wrapt " in maiden
meditation, fancy free." To me it is a very lovely
figure not because of the features of the face —
opinions may differ about the face being beautiful
in the ordinary sense of having beautiful features.
Its beauty to me lies in its expression; in its ex-
pression of some lovely mood of a girl's spirit. And
I find the figure beautiful, because all through it is
the movement of the same expression. This must
have been in Whistler's mind when he painted her.
But he was conscious, perhaps, of another side of
her nature; that she had moods of brightness as
well. At any rate he chose to contrast with the
pensive calm of the girl herself the bright animated
spots of color that surround her.
These spots of color, if you examine the picture
carefully, really play the part of the shadows in the
chiaroscuro of old pictures. Chiaroscuro, you re-
member, is the pattern of light and dark. Here the
red box and the blue of the vase and the green and
rose, of the camelias, yes, and even the face in the
mirror, the marble sheK and fireplace — all repre-
sent the dark spots. But not dark in the old way
of being shadows. They are dark as compared with
the white of the dress^ because their colors reflect
less light than the white; their values are lower.
Thus they serve the purposes of a dark contrast and
yet they themselves are very light. This, in a nut-
shell, is what the new study of values, that was
learnt from Velasquez and from Vermeer, and the
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Color — Values — Subtlety
other Dutchmen, really means. It has enabled the
artist to be even more true to life in the representa-
tion of objects, and at the same time to make his
color-harmonies purer, clearer and more transparent;
in one word, luminous; permeated, that is to say,
with a suggestion of light, that in nature permeates
the atmosphere and brings all objects into an ap-
pearance of harmonious unity.
How this particular picture is helped by a con-
trast, not of the old fashioned dark and light, as in
the Descent from the Cross but of values of color,
you can see for yourself, even from the reproduc-
tion. Still more would you realize it could you see
the freshness and purity and gladsomeness of the
original. Contrasts are needful in the composition
of a work of art — they are one of the sources of its
beauty. But imagine if you can, having shadows
and darkness brought into contrast with this white
robed figure ! How they would contradict the ex-
pression of its exquisite purity and loveliness! As
it is, the contrast of lower values does not in the
least jar upon the expression; on the contrary, it
gives it a greater meaning, since it suggests the at-
mosphere of happiness and brightness that has helped
to color the beauty of the girl's spirit.
179
CHAPTER XV
COLOR (CoM^intzed)— TEXTURE, ATMOSPHERE, TONE
I!N our previous talk about color we have laid
great stress on the relation of one color to an-
other. We have not thought of red, for example,
as beautiful by itself, but as one of a family of
colors, whose beauty consists in their relation to one
another. And this related beauty we have spoken
of as color harmony.
" Behold how good and joyful a thing it is,
brethren, to dwell together in unity.'' So said the
Psalmist, and his words might be applied to the
unity of colors. He did not mean that everybody
shall be of a like mind; there will always be differ-
ences of character among relations and the best of
friends ; but they will agree to differ ; and their very
differences make their unity or harmony the more
real and good. Such is the harmony among colors;
a union of differences or contrasts, as well as of
similarities; of variety of values of color related
into a harmonious unity.
On the other hand, though the beauty of colors is
chiefly to be found in their relations to one an-
other, there are separate possibilities of beauty to
each color. And if each displays its own share of
180
Color — Texture, Atmosphere, Tone
these the general beauty of the harmony will be in-
creased. Some of the possibilities are texture, qual-
ity, and tone.
Texture first. It is derived from the Latin word,
textum, — something woven. Texture, in its original
meaning, represents what has been produced by
weaving. A lady, when she is shopping, presses the
linen or silk, or cotton goods between her fingers in
order to judge of their texture ; whether it is closely
or loosely woven, whether it is hard or smooth to the
touch. Secondly, the word is used of a thing made
by any other means than weaving. We speak, for
example, of the texture of paper; and judge of its
texture by the feel of it. Thirdly, it has come
to be used of any material, whether made by
man or nature. Thus we say that oak has a very
close texture; glass is of firm but brittle texture;
butter is greasy in texture, and so on. Finally, the
word is used in a very general way to describe the
character of any substance, especially the kind of
surface that it has. So we say of the flesh of a
healthy baby, that its texture is firm and silky ; and
we speak of the glossy texture of a polished table ;
the dow^ny texture of a young chicken's breast, or
the velvety texture of a peach. In one word, texture
is the quality of a thing that we discover by touch-
ing it.
Texture appeals to our sense of touch. It ex-
cites in us a variety of feelings, pleasant or unpleas-
ant. I need not tell you how disagreeable the tex-
ture of sharp rocks may be to your bare feet, when
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A Guide to Pictures
you are bathing; what a relief it is to them to feel
the texture of sand. Some of you, I am sure, are
conscious of the pleasure you derive from handling
things. You have discovered for yourselves what
a lot of feeling you have in the tips of your fingers.
You would enjoy handling the red box in Whistler's
picture: and your touch would be very careful and
delicate. ]^ot alone because the box is valuable, but
because it is only with a delicate touch that you can
appreciate the exquisite smoothness of the lacquer.
The latter is a varnish composed of the gum of a
certain tree. The Japanese workman lays it over
the box very thinly, and, when it is thoroughly
dried, rubs the surface until it is perfectly smooth.
Then he applies another coating of lacquer and
again rubs, continuing the process several times,
until at last, the surface shows not a single flaw or
inequality, and is smooth and silky beyond the
/ description of any words. It is only by the look of
it, and still more, by the feel of it, that you can ap-
preciate the exquisite finish of the surface; and
your delight in it is mingled with almost a rever-
ence for the patience and love of the craftsman, who
could work so long and so faithfully to make this
little work of art perfect in its beauty and beautiful
in its perfection. Compared with this lacquer box,
the texture of an ordinary polished table or piano
seems coarse and commonplace.
I might go on to speak of the different kinds of
sensation that you would enjoy if you touched the
waxy petals of the camelia. But it is not necessary,
182
Color — Texture, Atmosphere, Tone
For if you have a joy in the sense of touch I need
not try to tell you about it. I will only ask you to
wait a few minutes, until we see how the enjoyment
derived from texture enters into the appreciation of
a picture.
Meanwhile, if any of you have not as yet been
conscious of getting this sort of pleasure through
your fingers, let me say that this does not prove
that you have no feeling for textures. I think that
you have had it unconsciously ; for I suspect that the
pleasure that you take in flowers is not only because
of their shape and color. As you have examined
the beauty of roses, the texture of their petals has
not escaped you. In one case, how silky ; in another,
how softly crumpled; in another, how delicately
waxen! You may never have put these ideas into
words, or even been conscious of them; but do you
not see, now I mention these textures, that they
have had a good deal to do with your pleasure in
the roses ? It may be, after all, the difference in
the texture that makes you prefer one rose to an-
other.
However, whether this be so or not, the fact re-
mains that a great number of people derive pleasure
from the textures of objects. So let us now see how
the artist, who, as I have said before, has instincts
and feelings like our own, takes advantage of this
feeling for texture to add to the beauty of his pic-
ture.
We shall often see a picture in which the textures
are not represented. Even modern pictures some-
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A Guide to Pictures
times fail in this respect; and it is a very common
fault with early American pictures, painted by ar-
tists who had not the advantage of training that the
modern student enjoys. I will quote the case of
John Singleton Copley, a very famous painter of the
Colonial Period, who lived in Boston and made
portraits of the well-to-do men and women of the
time, just preceding the Revolution. Before the
latter broke out, he went to England, where he spent
the rest of his life and was highly thought of. His
portraits are handsome as pictures for they repre-
sent men and women, mostly of elegant manners in
handsome clothes. They also give the impression of
being good likenesses. Yet his pictures lack anima-
tion. The figures and the costumes are stiff and
hard. This is partly due to there being no sugges-
tion of atmosphere surrounding them. The picture
is not filled with air and light, as we found Ver-
meer's was. But there is another reason. Copley
was unskilful in the presentation of textures.
The flesh and hair, the materials of the costumes,
the furniture and ornaments, present no differences
of texture. All seem to have a uniformly hard sur-
face, as if they were made of wood or tin. The re-
sult is that the whole picture seems hard and stiff —
lacking in animation. If you ask me why this lack
of animation is caused by the artist's neglect of
textures, I think the answer is that Copley has not
given to everything in his picture its own separate,
particular character. Por when you come to think
of it, — and the dictionary meaning of the word
184
Color — Texture, Atraosphere, Tone
textures, bears me out — the character of everything
depends so much upon its texture; whether it is
hard or soft, smooth or rough, glossy or dull, and
so on. Now, if there were a number of girls and
boys in the room, all sitting round with the same
dull expression on their faces, we should say that
the whole group lacked animation. What makes a
party animated and lively, is the fact that it is com-
posed of a number of persons, each having a sepa-
rate character to which he or she gives free play.
The more easily and naturally each exhibits his or
her character, the more animated and lively will be
the fun of the party.
Now, do you not see how this applies to a picture ?
The artist invites a number of different textures to
his party or composition. Surely the party will be
lacking in animation if he does not bring out the
special character of each. The lady's face and hands
will not contribute their full share to the animation
of the whole composition, unless the character of
their texture is expressed. It will not be enough to
represent only the coloring of the flesh, for its beauty
depends also upon its firmness and softness. Her
satin dress will lose half its charm, if we are only
made to see its shine and gloss. We know satin to
be also soft and thin, ready to arrange itself in all
sorts of delicate folds. This is a chief charm in the
character of satin; and if this particular satin does
not exhibit these qualities of texture, the dress will
not do its proper share in helping the animation of
the figure. Well ! if you agree with me about the
185
A Guide to Pictures
satin dress, I think that jou will see that the same
thing holds good of the table on which her arm is
resting, and the glass vase with carnations in it that
stands near her hand. Do you not think that the
character of the hand will be better expressed, if the
separate characters also of the polished wood, the
hard shiny cut glass, and the soft velvety flowers
are playing their part ? They may not be so impor-
tant as the woman and her dress, but in a composi-
tion as in a party, everybody must do their share,
if the affair is to be a complete success.
The first great masters in the rendering of tex-
tures were the old Flemish artists of the Fifteenth
Century — the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck,
for example, and Hans Memling. Their country, —
what we now call Belgium — had long been famous
for its textiles. Silks, linens, cloths and velvets —
its gold and silver and other metal work, its manu-
facture and decorating of glass. The Flemish were
a nation of craftsmen, skilled in the production of
the most beautiful articles of domestic use and
church worship. And this love for objects of beau-
tiful workmanship was shared by her painters. They
represented them in their pictures. They painted
not only the character of the men and women of
the time, but the character of the life in which they
lived, and did this by surrounding them with the
furniture and objects that gave distinction to their
lives. So the very rug on the floor, the glass in the
windows, the mirror on the wall in its highly
wrought frame, as well as the clothes worn by these
186
Color — Texture, Atmosphere, Tone
quiet, serious men and women, have a choiceness of
feeling. The room is not simply furnished, much
less is it cluttered up with all kinds of tasteless De-
partment Store '' objets d'art." Every thing in it
has its own distinction of beauty, suggesting the
taste and refinement of its owners^ and so by its
own character contributing to our appreciation of
the character of the men and women in the picture.
Another great master of texture was the German
artist of the Sixteenth Century, Hans Holbein the
younger. He too loved things of delicate and ex-
quisite craftsmanship and often made designs of
such things for the workmen of his native city,
Augsburg. So he was fond of introducing such ar-
ticles into his pictures. It was a joy to him to
paint them, each one with its own individual char-
acter of texture. Still, notwithstanding his love of
them, he only puts them into his pictures when their
character will help the character of his main sub-
ject. So, when he paints the portrait of a rich
merchant of taste, like Georg Gyze in his office, he
surrounds him with many objects related to his
work — inkpot, seal, scissors, ledger, and can for
holding string, letters, and a scale for weighing
money. There is a profusion of beautifully fash-
ioned objects, but they all by their separate char-
acters help us to understand more fully the character
of the merchant himself. On the other hand, since
characterization was Holbein's main purpose, he
treats the portrait of the great scholar Erasmus, dif-
ferently. Here he introduces only a small writing
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A Guide to Pictures
desk, a sheet of paper on it, and a pen in the
scholar's hand. These remind us that Erasmus was
a writer; while the handsome rings on his fingers
and a piece of finely woven material on the wall,
tell us of another side of his character — that heside
his love of learning, he had a taste for the beautiful
things of life.
Looking back then over what we have been say-
ing, we find that when the artist suggests to us the
different kinds of sensation we may receive from
touching things, he greatly increases the expressive-
ness of his pictures. By rendering or representing
the textures, as well as the form and color of objects,
he accomplishes at least four results. Firstly, he
makes the objects more life-like ; we feel as if we
might really handle them and receive the sensation
that such objects, if they were real, would give us.
Secondly, he gives us a more keen enjoyment of
their beauty; consciously or unconsciously we re-
ceive a sensation of the pleasure of handling them.
Thirdly, the increased life-likeness and beauty in-
creases the general animation of the whole picture.
Fourthly, this rendering of the separate character of
each object contributes to our understanding and
appreciation of the character of the whole subject.
To sum up, the rendering of textures suggests
reality, beauty, animation, and character.
w W "Vf vf TT TT
Atmosphere we have already alluded to in pre-
vious chapters. We saw how Vermeer filled the
scene of his picture with lighted air; and, in dis-
188
Color — Texture, Atmosphere, Tone
cussing color, we talked of it first as light, and then
went on to study how the light which is in the air
affects the light which is reflected from all objects
that are visible. We found that colors differ from
one another in the quantity of light they contain:
in what artists call their values; the value of red,
for example, being different from the value of blue
or green. Also we found that each single color may
have variations of value, according to the quantity
and direction of the light which falls upon it.
All this, you may say, has more to do with light
than atmosphere. But the two are really united.
What we call atmosphere, as you know, is the vol-
ume of gases which surrounds the earth. The par-
ticles from these gases are lit up by the light. We
cannot see the particles, only the reflections of light
thrown off by them. But though we cannot see the
particles themselves, they can interfere with our
seeing of other things. It is the layers or veils of
atmosphere that lie between us and a distant hill,
that prevent our seeing the bright green grass on
the latter and the dark green fir trees. Seen through
the atmosphere, the colors of the hill appear sub-
dued, the very form and bulk of the ground flat-
tened and, perhaps, indistinct.
This effect of atmosphere is one of the things that
we are now going to discuss. The other is that
atmosphere penetrates everywhere. Suppose we be-
gin Avith the second point. The atmosphere is in
one respect like water ; it is a fluid. It flows in and
out and around about and fills the whole space that
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A Guide to Pictures
is not occupied by some other body. But have you
thought what this means to an artist? Or at least
to some artists; for we said that Copley's pictures
contained little or no suggestion of atmosphere.
And the same may be said of a great many pictures
by modern artists. They represent the form and
color of things, but do not suggest that they are sur-
rounded, or, as is often said, enveloped in atmos-
phere.
Why is this ? Well ! in the first place, as you re-
member, there are many artists who do not profess
to represent nature. When they use nature as a
model, it is for the purpose only of getting the forms
of nature, and these they improve upon, as they
will tell you, so as to make the forms in their pic-
ture " ideally perfect." These " Academic " or
" classic " painters ^ as I have already said, think
of art as separate from nature. On the other hand,
even among those who think of art as a means of
interpreting nature, there are many artists who never
put atmosphere into their pictures. Or, if they do,
it is not nature's atmosphere.
Then what sort of atmosphere is it? I call it a
studio atmosphere, because it is manufactured in
the studio. The artist, feeling the need of softening
the hard outlines of his figures and of subduing any
harshness of color, spreads over the picture thin
layers of transparent, slightly colored varnish.
Through these glazes, as they are called, the forms
and colors are seen, somewhat as if you were look-
» See page 88.
190
Color — Texture, Atmosphere, Tone
ing at them through a piece of colored glass, and
the effect is to merge or bathe them in a glow of
atmosphere.
This was a usual practice with the great colorists
of the Italian Renaissance. Correggio's pictures, for
example, are prized for their golden glow. It is one
of the reasons of their beauty. But then, his idea
was not to interpret nature. His subjects were
drawn from the Bible, or the Christian religion, or
Greek Mythology, and he treated them as his imagi-
nation suggested. He saw them through the glow
of his own imagination, and surrounded them with
a glow that seems to place them far away from ac-
tual things in a beautiful world of their own. Sim-
ilarly, modern colorists, when they create pictures
out of their own imagination, will suffuse them with
an artificial atmosphere that helps to express the
spirit of the scene. In fact, these atmospheric ef-
fects, produced by glazing, are beautiful and proper
in their place. But their place is not in pictures
that profess to be studies of nature. In these it is
as wrong to suggest an unnatural atmosphere, as it
is to leave out all suggestion of atmosphere whatso-
ever, which is, perhaps, the more usual fault.
Since the true rendering of atmosphere is a part of
the true representation of light and color, you will not
be surprised to learn that it appeared in the pictures
of Velasquez and of the Dutchmen of the Seven-
teenth Century. We have already spoken of it in
the case of Vermeer. It was from these artists
that modern colorists, beginning about 1860, have
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learned to study the effects of atmosphere and light.
They have carried the study even further than the
older men. Indeed, the rendering of light and at-
mosphere has been the most distinct triumph of mod-
ern painting. There are two reasons for this.
One is, that with the advance of scientific studies
and mechanical inventions, people have become
more than ever interested in the every day facts of
life; and the writers, painters, and sculptors, fol-
lowing with the stream, have studied more and more
how to represent life and its surroundings, not as
we may dream they should be, but as they are
known to our actual experience. They have become
ardent '^ realists " or " naturalists." " Kealists,"
because they are occupied with what we are in the
habit of calling the realities of life.^ " ^Naturalists,"
because they love nature and try to represent her
actual appearances, as they are enveloped in and
affected by light and atmosphere.
The second cause of the modern advance in ren-
dering these qualities is again due to scientific dis-
coveries. Scientific men have made a close study of
light and color and the painters have profited by
the results. Painting, in a measure, has joined
hands with science.
However, now that we have seen why some artists
do not put atmosphere into their pictures, and
1 Later on I shall have something to say about these so called
realists. I shall say to them, as Hamlet said to Horatio, "There
are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our
philosophy."
192
The Mystic ^larriage of St. Catharine. Correggio.
^kakT
A«t
Color — Texture, Atmosphere, Tone
that among those who do some manufacture an at-
mosphere of their own, while others try to render
nature's atmosphere, let us study for ourselves the
effect of atmosphere in nature. It will help us, if I
begin by telling what we expect to find. First then,
that the outlines of objects are softened; secondly,
that the bulk of things seems flattened ; and thirdly,
that as objects recede or stand further off from our
eyes, their forms becomes more and more indistinct
and their colors change.
As to the first. Suppose you are standing on a
street or country road, and a wagon passes you.
While it is close in front of you, the body of the
wagon and the wheels and the man driving, all are
clearly outlined; you can distinguish distinctly the
parts of the wagon and the character of the man's
figure, whether it is fat or thin, strong or weak-
looking, and so on. But, as the wagon passes along
the road, its appearance changes. At first, it is the
smaller details that disappear; they have become
merged in the general mass ; then the outlines of this
mass grow less and less distinct; you could not be
sure now, unless you had seen the wagon close, ex-
actly what its build is; nor does one part seem
nearer to you than another, its bulk has become
flattened, and gradually the whole affair looks to be
only a patch of color against the color of the road.
Do you remember, it was as patches we saw the
cows which we met early in our talk? The reason
then given for their appearance was that our eyes
were not strong enough to distinguish their details
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A Guide to Pictures
at such a distance. And this reason also holds good
in the case of the wagon. But it is not only the dis-
tance that reduces our power of seeing, but also the
layers, or veils of atmosphere that hang between us
and the object. We are sure of this on a foggy day,
when the mist lies low over the country or city,
and trees and tall buildings loom up like blurs, and
everything beyond the distance of a few hundred
paces is blotted from sight. But the fog or mist
is only the atmosphere more moist than usual and
with its moisture condensed by cooling.
When you breathe on a mirror, the damp of your
breath is condensed by the coolness of the glass. A
film of mist forms over the mirror. Of an evening
you may see the mist lying over the river or mead-
ows; for the sun is gone down and the earth and
air are cooling. But the upper air cools more quick-
ly than the lower part, since the latter is still
warmed by the heat stored in the earth. So, as the
cooler air from above drops down, it acts like a
mirror to the breath of the earth or the air that
lies close over it ; and this air is condensed into mist.
All through the night both air and earth are cooling,
but the earth more slowly, so that there is still a
meeting of cooler and warmer air and consequent
condensations, and the mist is hovering over the
meadows when the next morning's sun rises. As
the sun mounts up, it begins to spread its warmth
and the upper air is the first to feel it. Growing
warm, it rises, drawing up after it the cooler air
below. And as the cooler air is sucked up, the
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Color — Texture, Atmosphere, Tone
warmer air closes in behind it; until, as this cir-
culation of cool and warm continues, the warmth
at last reaches down to the mists above the earth.
And then commences that beautiful sight that jou
may see on some summer mornings. The mists, that
a while ago lay like a blanket over the sleeping
earth, begin to stir, as if they themselves were
awakening from sleep. They tremble a little, then
slowly stretch themselves, and begin to rise to meet
the warmth of day. And as they rise, little wisps
of mist become detached from the main body and
float up and disappear, until gradually the whole
rising mass is rent asunder by the currents of warm
air into shreds and wreaths, which curl and float and
soar and at last lose themselves in the warmth that
now wraps the earth.
Later in the day, if the weather is very hot the
air, close above the ground, becomes so heated that
it rises very quickly, and we see a shimmer of light
upon its shifting patches. I mention this, because
I wish you to think of atmosphere, not only as veils
of gauze hung between us and objects we are look-
ing at, but also as a moving, palpitating, vibrating
fluid. We will talk a little more about this pres-
ently. Meanwhile, let us note some of the effects
of atmosphere upon form and color.
We have mentioned that it softens the outlines of
objects. This is only another way of saying that
the objects appear less distinct; that even a chim-
ney, though it cuts against the sky in strong con-
trast, has not really hard sharp outlines. At first
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A Guide to Pictures
sight you will think, perhaps, that it has; just as
the cornices of the roofs may seem to you to have
hard lines, and the windows and doorways to be
sharply outlined. But they do not appear so to an
artist's eye, and will not to yours in time, if you
are observant. Suppose an artist with pen and ink
should draw one of these houses, using a straight
edge to make the outline hard and sharp. This is
how an architect draws the design of a house, be-
cause his object is to make an exact drawing for
the builder to work by. But, if you have seen one
of these architectural drawings, you will recognise,
I think, that it does not look natural; that some-
how or other it is too precise and tight and hard to
suggest the appearance of an actual house. If this
were his object, the architect himself would draw the
house differently. He would make what is called a
free-hand drawing. He would no longer represent
the edges of cornices and chimneys and so on, with
continuous lines; he would "break them up"; lift-
ing his pen for a moment and leaving a tiny space
of white before he continues the line; making the
line thicker or thinner as he went along, and occa-
sionally pressing on his pen to produce a dot. In
these ways he will break up all the edges and out-
lines that they may not be too hard, but may have
the less distinct appearance that the lines of the ac-
tual house present to his eye. For the same reason
when he draws any bits of carving, such as the
capitals of the columns of the front door, he will
not represent every detail exactly, as if he were
196
Color — Texture, Atmosphere, Tone
making a working drawing for the carver. He will
leave out some and break up others, so that, although
he plainly indicates the style and character of the
ornament, it will not seem hard and sharp, but
softened, and a trifle indistinct, as the capital ap-
pears to his eye. He will, in fact, make allowances
for the softening effects of atmosphere.
Up to this point we have imagined the penman-
ship to be concerned only with the lines. 'Now let
us see how a great pen-artist, like Joseph Pennell, or
Edwin A. Abbey, would carry his drawing further.
He would see the house, not as a skeleton of lines,
but as a mass, part of which is silhouetted against
the sky, while the rest is seen in relation to the
other buildings or objects that stand near it. Each
according to his own individual technique, that is
to say, his own particular way of using the pen, will
make his building a mass distinct from the masses
of the other buildings, of the ground, and of the
sky. And on the masses of buildings he will make
the windows appear as they do in the actual build-
ing — namely, as patches, darker in color than the
walls. All this he will do, because to his eye the
different objects, under the influence of the atmos-
phere, appear as masses of various colors in rela-
tion to one another. More than this, when you have
grown to appreciate fully the work of Pennell and
Abbey, you will find that, though it is done in black
and white, it seems to suggest color.
Elsewhere I have spoken of the fact that many
artists, especially modern ones, see nature as an
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A Guide to Pictures
arrangement of colored spaces or masses in relation
to one another. This implies that they are very
little conscious of the edges or outlines of the
masses. If they think of them at all, it is to try and
prevent your noticing them in their pictures. They
paint, for example, the head, and shoulders, and
cheek of a man^ a bust portrait — ^with a dark back-
ground. If you examine the picture closely, you
will not find a sharp line, separating the head from
the background. In fact the color of the hair and
cheek seems to extend a little way into the dark of
the background. The artist has dragged his brush
round the head, so that it is impossible to say just
where the background begins. The reason for this
you understand, as soon as you step back and look
at the picture from a short distance off. The head
appears very solid; we can believe there is really a
hard skull beneath the full flesh of the cheeks and
the tight skin of the forehead. Yet the head does
not seem to be stuck against the background, like
a postage stamp on an envelope. Indeed, if the pic-
ture is well painted, the dark part is not really a
background. That is to say, it is not merely some-
thing behind the head; it seems to have depth and
to go back, but it also comes forward and surrounds
the head. The latter does not stick out of the pic-
ture, it keeps its place back within the frame, en-
veloped in atmosphere that, though it is very dark,
is penetrable. You feel, that is to say, that your
hand could be pushed through it without coming up
against some wall, as it were, that would stop it.
198
Color — Texture, Atmosphere, Tone
l^ow I particularly wished you to notice that the
head suggested to us that hardness of the skull and
the varying firmness and tightness of the flesh. For
it proves that the softening of the outline will not
interfere with the feeling of hardness and strength,
or firmness in the mass. The effect, indeed, is to
increase it, since out attention is concentrated on
the head and not distracted to the outline. On the
other hand, do not suppose that the softening of out-
lines is always intended to increase the suggestion
of solidity. It may be part of an entirely opposite
intention; namely, to lose sight of the idea of
solidity of mass. For example, the French land-
scape artist, Corot, often represented the masses of
the trees as soft, dark blurs against the soft light of
the sky. For he loved especially the early dawn and
late evening, when the light is very faint and in the
hush the trees loom up like quiet spirits. He
wished you to feel their presence, but not to be con-
scious of their solidity and bulk. He, you see, used
the softened outline for a different purpose; which
shows that in art, as in other matters, a single prin-
ciple may be applied variously in different cases.
These tree-presences of Corot are painted very
flatly. The roundness of their bulk disappears into
a flat mass. It was one of the ways in which he
avoided the suggestion of solidity. But here again
comes in the fact that a principle may have other
applications; for flatness does not necessarily make
the object appear unsubstantial. A house does not
look so, yet its front may be flat. And Corot, as
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A Guide to Pictures
other artists, and as you may, if you use your eyes,
had discovered that in the open air all objects ap-
pear flatter than they do indoors. The reason is that
in the case of a room lighted by windows, the light
is always stronger near the windows than it is in
parts of the room further removed. The light is
unequally distributed, so that there are more shad-
ows to throw up the bulk of objects. But out of doors
the light is more diffused; more equally distributed.
Moreover, we view things from a greater distance,
so that more atmosphere intervenes. The effect of
both these facts is to make the masses of objects
seem flatter. The lawn from a little distance may
look very smooth; but, when you walk over it, you
find the grass needs to be cut and the bumps to be
rolled before you can play croquet. That maple,
too, is a sturdy, solid fellow, but as you see Tts mass
of pale green against the darker mass of hemlock,
both seem flatter than they do when you are climb-
ing among their branches.
In speaking of the softening of outline and flat-
tening of bulk due to atmosphere we have frequently
alluded to the effect of distance on the appearance
of objects. The further off the latter are, the more
atmosphere will intervene, the less distinct will they
appear. In the case of distant hills, the ups and
downs of the ground, the bulk of the trees, even the
stability and massiveness of " the everlasting hills,''
may be softened and flattened into what seems to
be only a faint mass of color.
Perhaps we have walked over these hills and
200
Color — Texture, Atmosphere, Tone
know them to be carpeted with grass; the greens
also of the maples, oaks, cypress, each with its
separate hue, attracted our attention. But to-daj,
from a distance, all these greens are lost in a vapor-
ous hue of blue. It is this effect of atmosphere on
color that we will now talk about. It is easy to
notice in the case of the hills because of the great
quantity of atmosphere that intervenes between us
and them. But, if there were a row of maples ex-
tending from the hills to us, so placed that we could
look along their entire length, we should find the ap-
pearance of their color gradually changing, as they
recede from our eyes. In a word, to the sensitive
eye of the artist the colors of even nearby objects
are affected by atmosphere.
!N^ow, those hills appear to be blue; another day,
they will incline more to grey; yet another day to
violet or purple, or pinkish. In winter time,
around ISTew York, they would very likely take on
a dry, whitish color. In fact, the color will vary ac-
cording to the condition of the atmosphere and the
quality of the light; depending upon how moist or
dry, how warm or chill, the atmosphere may be, and
whether the light is yellow or golden, grey or white,
full or feeble, and so on. It is these constant varia-
tions of lighted atmosphere that give continually
fresh interest to the beauty of nature. Nature never
wearies us by being always the same. It is like a
human face, whose expression is continually chang-
ing.
Sometimes we see a beautiful human face, with
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A Guide to Pictures
almost perfect features. But behind that beautiful
mask may be a very dull, uninteresting mind. If
so, the expression of the face will be passive, the
opposite, that is to say, to active. It will not leap
from grave to gay; kindle, sparkle, grow tender, or
angry and joyful by turns. It will be — " faultily
faultless, icily regular, splendidly null '' — no expres-
sion. And we may even tire of its beauty; while
a face, less perfect in features, may win us more and
more and hold our interest by the charm of its con-
tinually varying expression. The more we think of
it, the more do we realise that beauty depends upon
expression. It is the same with nature as with the
human face. Its beauty is affected by expression
and this is produced by the varieties in the lighted
atmosphere.
A moment's thought will satisfy you of this. I^a-
ture's features vary with the seasons, but change
little from day to day. Every morning, during the
summer vacation, the same objects greet your eye,
but how differently you feel towards them, accord-
ing to what we call the weather, which after all is
the condition of the atmosphere. One day the fa-
miliar features of the landscape will take on an ex-
pression of gladness, some other day of dullness;
and the more we study the features, the more vari-
able will their expression appear from hour to hour,
day to day, and season to season.
I spoke just now of the movement of the atmos-
phere. It is a fluid, that one day may be as still
as a forest pool, another day may be stirred like the
202
Light and Shade. George Inness.
:;.i<T
NOX
Color — Texture, Atmosphere, Tone
ocean. We cannot see its particles, but we do see
the light reflected from them; and, I suppose, it is
the differences in the appearances of the lighted re-
flections that make us conscious of the stillness or
movement of the atmosphere on days when there is
no wind. We need not be very sensitive to nature
to notice these differences of the atmosphere at dif-
ferent seasons of the year; how, on certain winter
days, the air seems absolutely motionless; while on
other days it seems alert and sprightly; how in
early spring it seems astir with gentle life, while in
summer or autumn it mav be alive with animation
or heavy with drowsy languor.
The motionless air of winter has been rendered
with marvellous truth by John H. Twachtman; the
stir of spring by Dwight W. Tryon; the active air
of summer by Childe Hassam, and its languorous
drowsiness by George Inness. All these are Amer-
ican artists, whom I mention only as examples.
For much of the beauty of modern art, both Amer-
ican and foreign, is due to the sensitive rendering
of the variations in the atmosphere. For, the best
artists now-a-days are not satisfied to paint the
features of nature only ; they aim to depict the vary-
ing expressions on her face. And the chief cause,
as I have said, of these variations is the constant
change in the conditions of the lighted atmosphere.
203
CHAPTER XVI
COLOR {Continued)— TONE
WE shall frequently hear the words tone,
tonal, tonality, applied to pictures. Peo-
ple say, for example, this picture is rich in tone;
that has fine tonal qualities; another has a delicate
tonality. It is rather difficult to explain what
these words mean, for they do not seem to be
used in the same way by everybody. However, let
us try.
It is clearly a word derived from music, where
its meaning is more definite. We speak of a piano's
tone, by which we mean that, though it sounds the
same notes as another piano, the quality of the
sounds differs. We shall be using the word quality
often in the present chapter, so let us be sure we
understand its meaning. It is from the Latin word
qualis, which means of what kind. Of what kind
is this piece of dress goods ; what is its quality, com-
pared with another piece, at first sight similar? Is
it all wool, for example, while the other is cotton
mixture ? Is it softer, while the other is harder and
drier ? Will the one stand washing, while the other
will shrink? Similarly, when the same note is
struck on two pianos the tone of one may be rich,
204
Color — Tone
mellow, resonant, while that of the other is thin,
raw, and metallic.
Why is the tone superior ? You know, I suppose,
that when a piano string is struck it vibrates. That
is to say, it ceases to be a straight line, and becomes
agitated into a series of waves. In order to in-
crease the volume of the sound a thin layer of wood,
called the sound board, is placed beneath the strings.
As the string vibrates, this board vibrates in sym-
pathy, and so the volume of sound is increased and
enriched. Xow the least thing may disturb the per-
fection of this sympathetic vibration. Accordingly,
the superiority of the one piano is due to the fact
that all its parts are of finer make and material,
and are more perfectly adjusted to one another.
They are in so perfect a relation, that there is no
jar in any part, and thus the body of the instrument
is a united whole.
The tone of the piano, then, is due to the perfect
relation existing between the parts of the piano.
Applying this idea to a picture: it would seem that
tone is the result of all the colors being so perfectly
related to one another, that the vibration or rhythm
of the whole color-harmony is increased.
^ow this is certainly, in a general way, the mean-
ing of the word tone. So, although the word itself
is new to you, the idea contained in it is not. We
have talked a good deal about color-relations, rhythm,
and harmony. You remember our talk on Ver-
meer's picture. Well, his is a tonal picture, because
of the perfect relation of all the colors to one an-
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A Guide to Pictures
other. It is beautiful in tone; its tonality is ex-
quisite. And do you remember one particular fea-
ture of its exquisiteness ? I pointed out to you that
it is full of lighted atmosphere, and that the atmos-
phere seems to vibrate; that its rhythm passes
through and through the picture, uniting all the
masses of color into a harmonious whole. We noted
the difference between this kind of rhythm and that
in Raphael's Juris'prudence, where the rhythm is
the result of line. You could not describe that pic-
ture as tonal; for in it color plays a very unimpor-
tant part. Raphael was busied with the relations,
not of color, but of line.
I have reminded you of the rhythm of atmos-
phere in Vermeer's picture, because some people de-
scribe tone, as the result of fusing all the forms
and colors into a whole by enveloping them in at-
mosphere. But I think, if you have followed our
talks carefully, you will see that this use of the
word tone is pretty much the same as the one we
have arrived at. For you cannot see the effects of
atmosphere except in relation to the coloring of na-
ture. And I like our explanation better than this
one, because it is broader, and therefore includes
more. It includes, for example, all Japanese prints.
Many of them exhibit no suggestion of atmosphere;
yet they are always tonal in the sense that their
colors are in perfect relation.
E'ow, let me tell you of another definition of tone,
which again is included in our own. Some people
will tell you that a picture is tonal, because there is
206
Color — Tone
some one prevailing hue of color in it. Bj " prevail-
ing" we mean that some one color plays the most
important part. In Yermeer's picture, you may re-
member, it was blue. The girl's skirt made a strong
spot of blue. We are aware of other colors in the
picture, but they play subsidiary parts. What we
are most conscious of is a sense of blue throughout
the picture — a prevailing tone of blue. So in
Whistler's White Girl — Symphony in White, Numr
her One, there is a prevailing tone of white.
But this is only another way of saying that in
each picture the colors are in a perfect relation to
one another. Whether there are more or fewer
colors, and whether we receive an impression of many
colors or one in particular, does not really affect the
question. When all is said and done, tone is the
result of color relations, so arranged that they pro-
duce a rhythmic harmony.
* * * -jf- * *
An artist, when he paints a tonal picture, has in
mind the relative dark and light of colors, and their
relative coolness and warmth. Let me explain.
First the relative coolness or warmth of colors.
The artist regards blue as the coolest hue. As a
matter of fact violet reflects even less light than
blue; still, for his practical purposes, an artist says
that the cool hue is blue, and he associates with it
violet and green. On the other hand, yellow, he
treats as warm, and associates with it red and
orange.
And, if you consider for a moment, the distinc-
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A Guide to Pictures
tion of warm and cool hues, which is practised by
artists and founded on the nature of light, appeals
to our own experience. You will have no hesitation
in feeling that a bunch of violets, surrounded by
green leaves, gives you a feeling of coolness, as com-
pared with another bunch composed of red and yel-
low poppies.
Accordingly, if an artist has made up his mind
that his tonal harmony shall be a cool one, he either
composes it entirely of cool hues, or sees to it that
some one or all of them shall '^ prevail." The
warmer hues may be introduced for the sake of con-
trast, but very sparingly. And, of course, he will
reverse his use of the hues, if he wishes the tone to
be a warm one. This you could have guessed for
yourselves; but I point it out because most people,
I believe, prefer a warm picture. If it represents
the sun setting in a mass of crimson over which the
sky is orange, passing to yellow; and the effect of
this warm light is shown on the surrounding trees
and meadow, so that everything seems to be kindled
into a dreamy warmth, we easily find the picture
very beautiful. It is so attractive in its richness and
mellow warmth, that the quiet coolness of that pic-
ture opposite may seem tame by comparison, and we
pass it by. On the other hand, if, recognising the
difference of the intention, we study the latter pic-
ture carefully, we may very likely come to admire
it even more than the warmer one, by reason of the
very quietness of its appeal, or because of the purity
and freshness of feeling that probably pervade it.
208
Color — Tone
And now for the artist's other habit of consider-
ing the relative lightness and darkness of hues. It
comes into play, whether his tonal arrangement be a
cool one or a warm one. For by this means he in-
troduces contrasts of color; and as we have pointed
out, it is by contrasts as well as by similarities, that
a harmony is produced.
There are two ways of considering the difference
between light and dark. One is to treat it as an ar-
rangement of chiaroscuro^ the other as an arrange-
ment of values. This is a distinction that I have al-
ready explained ; but I will refresh your memory of
it, in its special application to tone.
Chiaroscuro, as you remember, means light and
dark. So it could be used of the light and dark of
values; but, as a matter of fact, it is applied to the
distribution of light and shadows, adopted by the ar-
tists of older times, and still used by many modern
ones. In applying it, they represented the light, as
coming from one direction, usually from behind
their backs; and as striking the objects and figures
in the picture at an angle, either on the right side
or on the left. They also took care that the light
should be concentrated or particularly bright at one
spot. On the contrary, the artist who considers the
light and dark of values, sees the light in the scene
he is painting, and observes that it pervades all parts
of it.
But, to return to the chiaroscuro; its effect is to
produce strong contrasts of light and shade: high
lights, nearly white in the parts most exposed to the
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A Guide to Pictures
light, and shadows almost black, in the parts most
removed. To offset these strong contrasts the artist
uses strong hues. The pure colors of red, yellow,
green, blue, may be used in large masses. The re-
sult is a tonal harmony of great richness, strik-
ing magnificence, or surprising impressiveness.
Of the last kind is Rubens' Descent from the
Cross. If you study a photograph of it, you will
see that the light does come from within the scene.
It flow^s from the Saviour's body ; and the light, as it
spreads, illumines certain parts of the surrounding
figures, especially the heads and hands ; just the parts
in fact, in which there is most expression of feeling.
The sacred Body has the pallor of death, it is almost
white, while black prevails elsewhere throughout the
picture, the only other colors being the flesh tints
of the faces and hands, and some dull green and
red. It is an admirable example of the strong con-
trast of black and white, and, let me add, of the
amazing effect that such contrast has on the imagi-
nation. For it is a picture that arouses one's emo-
tions of awe and pity and reverence to an extraor-
dinary degree; and the more you study it, the more
you will realise that the source of its appeal is the
chiaroscuro. The latter, though the light is within
the scene, is purely arbitrary. Rubens, that is to
say, did not try to imitate the effects of real light
and darkness; he chose to be the arbiter or judge
of how he would distribute them. And in the ar-
rangement he had three purposes. First, he wished
to secure the modeling of the figures ; note the mus-
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Color — Tone
cular force he has given to some of the men; the
pathetic droop of the Virgin's figure; and the piti-
able limpness of the Saviour's form. Secondly, he
was able to make this composition of contrasts one
of most impressive grandeur. Thirdly, as I have
already hinted in speaking of the figures of the
Saviour and the Virgin, he could by means of this
superb invention of light and darkness, fill us v^ith
profound emotion.
So much for the older method of considering the
relations between light and dark. The modern one,
depending on the light and dark of values, derived
from the example of Velasquez and of Vermeer and
other Dutchmen of the Seventeenth Century, I have
recently explained in connection with Whistler's
White Girly Symphony in White Number Two. So
I will only remind you that in this picture there is
practically no contrast of shadow. The whole scene
is bathed in a uniform light. But the contrast of
dark is obtained by putting in certain objects, the
red box, the blue vase, and so on, the values of
which are lower than that of the white dress. The
artist has thought of darkness, not as the result of
shadow, but of certain colors being darker in them-
selves, because they reflect less light than others. If
this is not quite clear to you, perhaps it will be, if
you refer to the chapter in which this picture is dis-
cussed.
On the other hand, the modern artist, even if he
works by values rather than by chiaroscuro, must
often wish to paint a scene that does involve shad-
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ows. We know that the scene may be filled with
light and yet there will be certain places where the
light is intercepted, so that shadows are formed.
Our lawn in summer is aglow with warm light, but
every tree and bush casts its shadow. Or the same
spot in winter is covered with snow and the air is
bright with cool light; yet here and there a trunk
of a tree spreads a thin layer of shadow.
But the difference is in the way the modern ar-
tist regards shadow. He has studied nature for the
purpose of representing the actual effects of nature;
and, in so doing, has discovered that the secret of
all effects is due to the action of light. So he has
learned to look at everything, shadows included, in
its relation to light. A shadow to him, then, is not
something different from light; it is a lessening of
the light. Some of the light has been intercepted
by the foliage of the tree, so that less light reaches
the ground. It may be that very little light filters
through the leaves. But, whether more or little, the
spot from which the light has been intercepted, still
contains some light. Even what we usually call the
shadows have light in them.
So, while chiaroscuro is a contrast of light and
dark, the contrast of values may better be described
as one of light and less light.
Observe how this works. Since the modern artist
sees light in shadows, he also sees color in them.
And their color varies according to the quality of the
light and according to the local color of the spot
affected. The local color of your lawn is green ; there-
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Color — Tone
fore, even under the trees, where little light reaches
the grass, the latter will still contain a greenish hue,
though the value of it will be much lower than that
of the sunlit lawn. On the other hand, the hue of
the shadow will also be affected by the quality of
the light, differing according as the light is dull or
brilliant, and as it inclines to white or yellow. This
is too intricate a subject to attempt to discuss here,
but I mention it in order that, if you are wide awake
and interested, you may amuse yourself by studying
these effects in your walks abroad.
A simple way of starting the subject is to study
the hue of the shadow cast by your hand on a sheet
of white paper. I am working by the light of a
\Yelsbach burner, and the shadow of my hand is a
pale reddish purple. The other day, on a bright
February morning, I laid my hand on a piece of
white paper and the shadow was bluish. In each
case, owing to the amount of light reflected from
the white paper, the shadow was very transparent,
and beautiful in its delicacy and softness.
Well, this little example illustrates what artists
have discovered about shadows lying on snow. They
are very transparent, very delicate, and tend toward
a hue of blue or plum color, according to the quan-
tity of light.
ITow to sum up our remarks on tone. When we
speak of a picture having tonal qualities, we meaA
that the artist has so combined the related darks
and lights and the related coolness and warmth of
his colors that he has produced a harmony, threaded
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A Guide to Pictures
through and through with a suggestion of rhythLi
or vibration. And the vibration will be most felt,
when the suggestion of atmosphere pervades the pic-
ture.
In the case of the Descent from the Cross we
have already hinted at the power of tone to arouse
emotion. I may add that tone always makes a
strong appeal to feeling — to abstract feeling. The
tonal harmony of an opal, whose pinks and greens
are suffused with creamy atmosphere, arouses in us
delight, quite apart from any suggestion to our
mind. The delight is one of pure feeling. Can you
not see that^ if an artist uses the tonal harmony of
the opal as a color scheme for a picture, the har-
mony would still delight us in an abstract way? It
would be interwoven now with the subject of his
picture, and we need not try, nor do we wish to
separate them. But the sentiment of the figure or
the scene will be all the more tender and lovely for
the harmony with which it is suffused.
I have in mind, for example, the pictures by the
American artist, Thomas W. Dewing. They show
you one or two women standing or sitting, appar-
ently lost in reverie, while placed beside them may be
a table and a vase and on the wall a mirror. If
you ask me what the picture is about, I will say:
Nothing. There is no subject to them in the sense
that you can describe: who the girl is, why she is
there, and what she is doing. So, instead of talking
to you about the figures, I should try to draw your
attention to the subtlety and beauty of the tonal har-
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Color — Tone
mony. I should recommend yon to look at it with
a mind as free from outside thoughts, as when you
were looking at the opal. Then by degrees, perhaps,
as the beauty of the tone winds itself about your
imagination, you will begin to find some sentiment
of beauty suggested by the girl herself.
What I wish you to understand is that an artist,
who has the gift of composing tonal harmonies, em-
ploys them to express the abstract feelings or emo-
tions that he has regarding his subject. A celebrated
example is Whistler's Portrait of the Artisfs Mother^
that now hangs in the Luxembourg Gallery, in
Paris. I expect you have seen photographs of it
and remember that it represents an oldish lady, in
a white lace cap and black gown, with her hands
folded over a handkerchief on her lap. We see her
figure seated in profile, in front of a grey wall. On
it are two little black-framed pictures, and on one side
hangs a dark green curtain.
When it was first exhibited the artist called it
" An Arrangement in Black and Grey." It may be
that he did not wish to drag his Mother into pub-
licity or make a parade of his feelings as a son.
But there w^as another reason, a much greater one.
The abstract feelings that he had for his Mother —
the love, reverence, and appreciation of her dignity
and tenderness — took color in his artist's mind in
an arrangement of black and grey. What a poet
might have put into the rhythm and harmony of his
verse, Whistler has expressed through the rhythm of
a tonal harmony of color.
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A Guide to Pictures
Another artist wlio was not a tonalist, might have
contrived to put into the face and hands and into
the lines of the figure as much dignity and gracious
tenderness. But his picture would not move us so
deeply as this one. For Whistler — how shall I de-
scribe it? — has woven the dignity and tenderness
into every part of the canvas. The mother sits alone
with her own thoughts, but all about her is the
music of color, choiring the love and reverence of
her son. !N'o wonder the picture takes its hold upon
us ; until we see in it not a mother, but the type of
what the conception of Mother means to us.
Its tonal harmony is one that is distinguished by
sobriety and reticence. It consists of quiet and sober
colors; it does not talk to our hearts in brilliant
glowing words. It moves us rather by its silence
and reserve, its reticence. I mention this because,
at first, perhaps, you will be more attracted by bril-
liant and glowing harmonies; and they are beauti-
ful too. They may fill us, as those of Rubens do,
with triumphant joy; or plunge us into poignant
emotion as do Rousseau's sunsets. But, just as our
capacity of feeling knows no limits, so there is
no limit to the variety of the tonal harmonies that
may stir it. And we shall grow to find some of the
most exalting and beautiful sensations in those har-
monies that are very quiet, subtle, and that speak to
our imagination in a ^^ still small voice."
As a farewell illustration, to sum up the meaning
of the quality and expression of tone, let me return
to sound tones. Have you ever thought of quality
216
Color — Tone
and expression in the case of your own voice ? I
do not mean the singing voice. Many of us do not
possess this kind of voice; but we all have a speak-
ing and reading voice. What are the quality and
expression of yours ? I am thinking now of the way
you use it; of the quality and expression of the
sounds you utter.
When you speak ; do you drawl " through your
nose " or chatter very quickly ? Are the sounds
shrill or harsh or monotonous ? Perhaps you have
never stopped to consider. It is astonishing how few
people do. Most people think of their voice only as
a contrivance for uttering words : they turn it on and
off like a faucet and let the words run. How fre-
quently one sees a pretty girl or woman, tastefully
dressed and of charming manners, who is altogether
pleasing as long as she keeps her mouth shut. But
the moment she opens it, half her charm vanishes.
There is no tone in her voice; no varieties of light
and shade in the pitch of the sounds, no varieties of
quietness or warmth in her speech; no rhythm of
effect. Even if it is not harsh, it is disagreeably
monotonous.
Or somebody else reads a passage from Shake-
speare, say The Balcony Scene in " Romeo and
Juliet.'' He is not as bad a reader as he might be;
for example, he does not stumble over the words or
jump over the punctuation. In fact, he reads intel-
ligently, with considerable attention to the meaning
of the speeches. And yet, after all, he reads very
badly, for his voice fails entirely to bring out the
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A Guide to Pictures
music of the verse. The scene is one of the loveliest
ever written, and it was written to be spoken aloud,
so that the loveliness of the thought might be con-
veyed in sounds of corresponding loveliness. But of
this our reader seems ignorant. He does not appear
to know that Shakespeare intended every vowel sound
to be uttered in such a way as to bring out the par-
ticular quality of its beauty; and arranged the se-
quence of the sounds, so that one should flow into
another in an exquisite rhythm of rising and falling
melody. This reader " murders " the beauty of the
scene, because there is no quality in the tone of his
voice and no tonal expression. Do you understand
what I mean?
If you have not thought of this before, I hope
you will give it some attention in future. For it
is in the power of everyone of us to improve the
quality and expression of our voices.
218
CHAPTER XVII
BRUSH-WORK AND DRAWING
"VTOW that we have come to an end of our talk
-^^ upon color, I must say a little about brush-
work. I hope to show you that a good painter may
use his brush in such a way that there is quality
and expression in the actual strokes.
I say a good " painter," because I am thinking
of that distinction I pointed out to you, between
artists who are really painters or colorists, and
those who are, more strictly speaking, draughtsmen.
The latter, you will remember, pay particular at-
tention to the lines of their figures, and then in
spreading the paint, are careful that it shall not in-
terfere with the outlines. On the other hand, the
man who is, strictly speaking, a painter, sees his fig-
ures as colored masses.
I tried to show you that each method is right
from its separate point of view. But at the time
we talked about this, we had not studied the mean-
ing of quality and expression. So I put off telling
you about the possibilities of quality and expression
in line. We will talk about it now, and then re-
turn to the brush work.
Remember, what we are to think of now is a
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A Guide to Pictures
drawing of a figure or object, represented simply in
outline, with no added strokes to suggest light and
shade. It may have been done with a pencil or
brush, or in one of many other ways; but it is only
outline. Now many people think the only purpose
of the outline is to enclose the figure, so that we
may see what the figure is. They may think the
figure is beautiful, because it represents something
of which they are fond ; the plump body of a baby,
for instance. But suppose the figure represents an
old worn-out beggar, with long scraggy arms and
bare, misshapen feet. Would they see any beauty
in it ? I expect not.
Yet, although there may be no beauty in the fig-
ure, there may be a great deal in the lines which
enclose it. If so, the beauty of line, of which we
are now talking, must be an abstract beauty ; due to
something in the line itself, independently of the
figure with which it is associated.
Suppose you draw a line on a piece of paper.
What is the result? The line has taken a certain
direction, and it is of a certain kind. It is
thick or thin, or it begins thin, grows thicker and
then diminishes in width, or vice versa. It may
be faint or distinct; firm or wavering, and so on.
Which ever kind it is it will be so, either because
you wished it to be of that kind, or because you
couldn't make it otherwise. In either case, it is you
that have made the line what it is. If you have
enough skill, you can make the line exactly what
you wish.
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Brush-work and Drawing
Again, the direction of the line is the result of
a movement of your hand and arm. Very likely
you moved uncertainly: you were not even sure in
what direction it was moving. But, if you were a
skilful and practised draughtsman, don't you sup-
pose you could so regulate the movement of your
hand and arm, that the line would take the exact
direction you desired ? Yes, you would have as
much control over the direction and character of the
line, as a musician has over the keys of a piano,
over which his hands move in various directions,
sounding the various notes.
But is the skill in doing this all that makes a
good musician ? You know that he must also play,
as we say, with feeling. This means, first, that he
must be able to feel the beauty of the music; sec-
ondly, that he knows how to move his arms and
touch the notes so as to draw forth from them just
the quality of sound that the feeling demands, and
to make the whole body of sounds render an expres-
sion of the feeling.
!N'ow, just as the feeling passes from the brain of
the musician into the tips of his fingers, so it does
with an artist. You will see him, as he tries to tell
you about the beauty of something, circling his hand
in the air, meanwhile curving his fingers and thumb,
as if he were trying to grasp the beauty. It is an
instinctive movement, due to his habit of expressing
his conception with his hand. A sculptor will do
much the same thing, only he is more apt to close
his fingers and express his meaning with his thumb
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A Guide to Pictures
— the part of his hand that he uses most in model-
ing.
One of the most beautiful examples of feeling in
the hand is illustrated in the modeling of a vase.
The potter stands before a " wheel," or table, the
top of which revolves. There is a spike in it that
holds in place the lump of clay. But while we
watch, it has ceased to be a lump. It has grown up
under the potter's hands and is a hollow vessel,
every moment changing its shape slightly, as with
his fingers or the palm of his hand he brings
it nearer and nearer to the design that is in his
brain. He stops for a moment, and we think that
he has finished. But, no, he is only criticising it.
It is not yet quite as he feels it should be; and
again the wheel revolves and the hand, — oh ! so
tenderly — coaxes the clay to receive exactly the line
of beauty that he feels.
And from the potter we may gain another insight
into the beautv of an artist's line. I said that the
clay grew up into the required form. And certainly
if you have seen the operation, you will say that
growth is just the word. ]^ow in the line of all
beautiful drawings there is the feeling of growth.
Xot in a metaphorical way, but most literally, the
line grows under the artist's hand, impelled by the
feeling in him that he is trying to express.
Let me tell you a little experience of my own.
Though I am not an artist, I have often made draw-
ings. One day I was enlarging a piece of ornament,
in which there were scrolls of acanthus leaves; big
222
Brush-work and Drawing
cabbagy sort of leaves, with a curving spine and
crinkly edges. The chief point was to get fine wind-
ing lines into the curves. For a long time I imi-
tated the copy as well as I could, when suddenly I
seemed to feel within me just how the curve should
go. It was not a matter of seeing the copy, but of
feeling the actual growth in my brain. And lo! a
miracle, for one moment my hand was able to do
what my brain prompted. That leaf actually grew
under my hand. I could feel it growing. And of
course that was the best bit of the whole drawing.
The rest was mechanical; this bit really lived.
Well, in my case that was a miracle and has never
been repeated. But in that moment I learned two
things — firstly, what must be the joy of an artist
in the act of creation; and, secondly, that an ar-
tist's line may be a living growth; and, in the case
of really fine draughtsmen, always is.
Since then I have watched the growth of trees
and plants, and discovered, as you may for your-
self, the separate beauty and character that belong
to the lines of growth of each separate plant and
tree. And, when you have done so, you will come
back to the study of line in drawing, convinced that
the beauty of line consists in its expression of life
and character. !N'ot only the life and character of
the object represented, but the life and character of
feeling in the artist.
]^ow perhaps you will realise how a drawing,
though it represents only an ugly old beggarman,
may be beautiful. Life, in all its forms is wonder-
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A Guide to Pictures
ful, even if sometimes horrible. And the expression
of it by a thing so slight as a line is beautiful, be-
cause we need not trouble about the object repre-
sented, but be satisfied to enjoy only the life and
character that the line expresses.
It will also help you to understand and appre-
ciate the abstract quality of line, if you study
Japanese drawings and prints. For their way of
representing figures and objects is not the same as
ours, nor do we always know what the subject of the
picture is about. Therefore we are better able to
enjoy the line in an abstract way, apart from all
consideration of the things that are represented.
******
After this little talk on line, we may now pass
to brushwork. It is no longer the thin edge that we
are to keep in mind, but the mass, great or small,
as the case may be; the mass of a gown, for ex-
ample, or the mass of one of its folds.
I need not tell you that an artist's hands may be
alive with feeling when he holds a brush, just as
when he has a pencil in them. In fact, what we
have said about feeling and expression in line may
be applied to brushwork. In the case of a man who
is not merely a filler in of spaces with paint, but
is by instinct a painter, the brushwork grows into
life beneath his hand. Sometimes he lays aside his
brush and takes a palette-knife, with which to
spread the paint on the surface or to scrape the part
already painted. Sometimes he uses no tool at all^
but kneads the paint with his thumb. Whether he
224
Brush-work and Drawing
employs these or other methods, is a matter of com-
parative unimportance. The main thing for us to
realise is that, whatever means he employs, it is be-
cause he is giving expression to some feeling in his
mind. There is a passage of feeling from his mind
through his arm to his hand, and thence to the
canvas.
The swifter the passage is, the more vitality, as
a rule, will there be in the brushwork. The reason
is, that in such a case the artist is sure of himself.
The feeling in his mind is so clearly comprehended ;
he so thoroughly feels what he wishes to express,
and is so sure of the way to render it, that there
is no hesitation or sign of fumbling in the result.
It has grown freely and naturally and the result
gives us that keen and direct pleasure that we de-
rive from what is brimful of life.
You know how stimulating it is to listen to a
speaker, whose words flow from his thoughts with-
out any humming and hawing; and whose words
naturally and exactly express the thought. In such
a man's talk there is a living growth of thought.
As you proceed in your study of painting you will
learn to feel in brushwork either the presence or
absence of such living growth.
You will find sometimes, however, that the brush-
work, which at first seems very much alive, is not
really a living growth. It is more like the clever
tricks that you perform with your bodies in a gym-
nasium. It is merely an exhibition of vigor. I
may liken this to the oratory of another sort of
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A Guide to Pictures
speaker, who has a great gift of the gab but very
few ideas. He pours out of his mouth a stream of
vigorous, showy, fine-sounding words ; and fascinates
you for a few minutes with the ^' exuberance of his
verbosity." But presently, when you come to think
it over, you discover how pretentious and slip-shod
the whole speech was. He was exhorting to patriot-
ism; but, where Lincoln would have left us with a
few choice thoughts, so perfectly expressed that they
will remain for ever in the memory, this man has
only bedecked his generalities with a confusion of
words. His speech is not golden, but cheap tinsel.
Well ! you will find that there are painters also,
so much in love with the exuberance of their own
cleverness, that they are satisfied to do nothing but
make a gymnastic display of it.
You will find too^ that there are others, to whom
the mere manual dexterity is so objectionable, that
they deliberately try to make you lose sight of any
brushwork in their pictures. Whistler was one of
these. He used to say that a picture is finished,
when the artist has completely disguised the means
by which it has been produced. He wished the ex-
pression of his feeling to reach our imagination
immediately and fully, without any other considera-
tion blocking the way or interfering with our ap-
preciation.
His method of painting was deliberate; a little
added to-day, something more another day; the
whole process extending, frequently, over several
years. For the feeling which he wished to express
226
Brush-work and Drawing
was a very subtle one, so the living growth of it, as
of many things in nature, was slow. On the other
hand, most of the great painters seem to have been
swift workers ; or at any rate their final result gives
one the impression of having been executed in the
vigor and glow of a swiftly working mind.
The best way to learn to appreciate brushwork is
to stand close to a picture, and observe the various
kinds of strokes and dabs and streaks. They seem
to have no meaning. But step back. Then all or
most of the separate brush marks will have disap-
peared. They are merged into one another and their
meaning becomes clear. Then, after having thor-
oughly studied the effect which the artist has pro-
duced, you may again step close up to the canvas
and examine the means by which he has attained it.
If it is a landscape you are studying, you will
find, possibly, that the sky, which from a distance
seems to be grey, is really composed of streaks of
blue and pink and grey. It is, in the first place,
by these streaks of the brush, and, secondly, by the
infusion of several colors, that the artist has suc-
ceeded in making his sky have the appearance of
atmosphere, extending far and far back. Then, if
you examine the trees, you may possibly find the
strokes short and stubby, so as to bring out the char-
acter of the foliage; while, what from a distance
gave the impression of being simply green, is also
found on closer inspection to contain many spots of
other colors. It is in this way that the action of
light upon the foliage has been suggested; so that
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A Guide to Pictures
the trees from a distance do not seem hard and
heavy but penetrated with light and atmosphere.
In this way, stepping nearer to and further from
the picture, and continually asking yourself: What
is the impression that the artist wished to convey
and why has he done so and so? you will soon find
that you are getting an insight into the quality and
expression of brushwork.
Now one word more. A little while ago I al-
luded to " finish." What is " finish '' ? Most peo-
ple think it means that every part of a picture
should be brought up to a uniform degree of polish
and precision. It should be sleek and shiny, like our
shoes, when the man has finished shining them.
Certainly you will see many pictures that seem
to justify this explanation. But as a rule they will
not be examples of good painting. You remember
our talk on texture. Well, only some textures are
sleek and shiny and polished. So, if this whole
picture is of that character, some of the textures
must have suffered. Then again, life is not uni-
form, it does not show itself in all people and things
in the same way. Therefore it is very likely that
the uniform polish and precision of this picture has
interfered with its expression of life. The whole
thing is mechanical rather than vital.
1^0, you must be prepared to find in well painted
pictures, all sorts of conditions of not seeming to
be finished ; all kinds of different styles, coarse, re-
fined, bold, dashing, reticent, and tender, brilliant,
and modest; almost as many different styles and
228
Brush-work and Drawing
conditions as there are painters. For a painter^s
use of the brush is an expression of his own in-
dividuality and life, as well as of the life and char-
acter of the subjects he represents.
I have already told you Whistler's definition of
" finished." It is perhaps too much a product of
his own personality to be of general service. One
more applicable to all kinds of painters and pictures
is the following. An artist has finished his picture,
when he has succeeded in making it express the
feeling that inspired it. This will include Whis-
tler's definition, and also the practice of a Titian,
a Rubens, or a Velasquez, whose brush strokes are
visible to this day, as witnesses of the living growth
of their conceptions.
Further it will include many pictures that to
your eyes seem unfinished. They look like sketches,
and, therefore, you think, cannot be considered as a
finished picture. But go slowly with a thought of
that sort. As you advance in appreciation you will
find that many a drawing of a few lines only, and
many a little picture, composed of a few touches of
color, have in them more of the living growth of
feeling, more of the charm of abstract beauty than
thousands of so-called finished pictures, in which
the original feeling, if there were any, has been sub-
merged in an ocean of trivialities.
229
CHAPTER XVIII
SUBJECT, MOTIVE, AND POINT OF VIEW
AT the beginning of our talks, you may remem-
ber, I told you I should not have much to
say about the subjects of pictures. For I wished at
the start to make you realise, that what a picture
is about is of much less importance than the way
in which the subject is treated. A fine subject may
be treated in such a way as to make a very bad pic-
ture, while a good picture may be composed of a
subject in which one is not particularly interested.
In fact, I wished to help you to look at a picture
first and foremost as a work of art; a thing beau-
tiful in itself because of its composition of form
and color; beautiful in an abstract way, that is to
say, apart from the ideas suggested by the subject.
My aim has been to try to teach you to admire a
picture in an abstract way, as you admire a Japan-
ese or Chinese vase, simply and solely for its beauty
of form and color.
This is not the usual way. Most people begin by
taking interest in the subject of a picture, and very
many never get any further in their appreciation.
On the other hand I felt that, if I could once get
you interested in the abstract qualities of a pic-
230
Subject, Motive, and Point of View
ture, yon would be started right, and that your
interest in the subject would be sure to follow after.
So our talk about subject has been put off until
now.
Pictures are sometimes sorted into groups accord-
ing to their subject. There are religious pictures;
pictures of myths and legends or imaginary sub-
jects; portraits; landscapes; historical pictures, like
Washington crossing the Delaware ; genre pictures
or scenes of every day life ; still-life subjects, repre-
senting flowers and fruits^ dead birds, beasts and
fishes, and objects of man's handiwork; decorative
subjects and mural paintings. But this grouping
does not settle the matter, since each of these sub-
jects can be treated in more than one way. How it
is treated depends upon the motive and point of view
of the artist.
So, the simplest way to grasp this matter of sub-
ject is first of all to find out what is meant by an
artist's motive and point of view. As usual, let us
start with dictionary meanings of these words and
then see their application to what we are discussing.
Motive, then, is that which causes a thing to
move, which impels it. What is the motive power
of that train ? Is the power that moves it steam or
electricity? What is the motive of any particular
artist, the force which impels him to adopt a certain
method or to work in a certain direction?
Point of view on the other hand, is the point at
which a person stands to view something. You may
watch a procession in the street from the point of
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A Guide to Pictures
view of a window. But the word is more often used,
not of where your body stands, but of where your
mind stands. According to our birth and bringing
up; that is to say, as the result of what we inherit
from our forebears, and have acquired by education
and experience, we each have our own point of view.
For example, you will not hesitate to say that your
point of view is American. You read about the
Panama canal. You are not only interested, but
proud, because Americans are digging it. If the
French, who began it, were carrying on the work,
your interest in it would be less and your pride nil.
When you travel abroad, at any rate for the first
time, you will not be able to help making critical
comparisons between the way they do things in Eu-
rope and at home. You will be apt to see every-
thing from the point of view of an American.
Your point of view is the result of your being what
you are. And it is the same with an artist. Being
what he is, and what he cannot help being, he has
his own particular personal point of view. Being
what he is, he also has his own individual motive.
Through the union of motive and point of view,
he sees things in his own way and in his own way is
impelled to represent them.
Since each artist is a person different to all other
persons, the varieties of motive and point of view are
infinite. There is no end to the variety; and, as
you grow older, and continue your study of pictures,
you will find more and more interest in looking
into and discovering just what is the particular mo-
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Subject, Motive, and Point of View
tive and point of view of each artist. For he can-
not help betraying them in his pictures, any more
than you can help betraying yours, if, being a par-
tisan of Yale, you are watching a football game
between Yale and Harvard. Just as your be-
havior will betray your feelings, so is a picture the
expression of an artist's personal likes and dis-
likes. In studying pictures, therefore, you are also
studying the personality of the men who painted
them.
I wish you to feel that this sort of study has no
limits. Its interest will last you, as long as you
live. At the same time my aim is to help you to
enter upon the study. And at the start everything
should be made as simple as possible. So, although
motives and points of view are infinite in variety,
let us see if we cannot find some simple clue to the
study of them. I think it may be found in dividing
all artists into two big groups. On the one side,
those who are inclined to represent the world as they
see it to be; on the other side, those who represent
things according to their own ideas. It is the great
division between the naturalistic or realistic and the
idealistic motive and point of view. Some artists
are naturalists, or realists; others are idealists; a
great many are a mingling of the two.
This broad general distinction must be thoroughly
understood. For you can see that it would be im-
possible to enter into the merits of an idealistic pic-
ture, if you insist on approaching the study of it
from the naturalistic point of view. And vice versa.
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The only way to appreciate a picture is to ap-
proach it from the point of view of the man who
painted it. We must try to enter into his mind
and find out his motive and see the subject as he
saw it.
When we have done so, we may not like his pic-
ture. That is another matter. Perhaps his motive
and point of view, when we have discovered them,
do not please us. Our own are so different, that he
and we cannot really agree. Or possibly, while we
agree with his motive and point of view, we do not
feel that he has expressed them well. In either
case, his picture is not for us. At least, not to-day ;
for, as we grow older, we shall find that our own
motive and point of view are apt to change. We
have studied more, and know more, and may find
that pictures, we once did not care for, we now
admire; and, on the other hand, that the pictures
we once liked have ceased to please us.
Now for a talk about the difference between
naturalistic or realistic and idealistic. When the
art of painting began to revive in Italy at the end
of the Thirteenth Century, the first aim of the ar-
tists was to make their pictures more really resemble
life and nature. I have already told you of Giotto,
who gave roundness and natural gestures to his fig-
ures, made the objects look more real, and suggested
the depth and distance of their surroundings. Next
of Masaccio, who gave his figures still more resem-
blance to life, and filled in their surroundings with
a suggestion of atmosphere. Then I told you of
234
Subject, Motive, and Point of View
Mantegna, who from the study of the remains of
classic sculpture gave further naturalness of life
and vigor to his figures; until, by degrees, from the
observation of nature and the study of the classic
sculpture, artists reached proficiency in the natural
rendering of the figure. So far as form was con-
cerned, their figures were absolutely natural. But,
as yet, the naturalistic motive and point of view
had not included the seeing and rendering of na-
ture's light. That was to come later.
On the other hand, the study of classic sculpture,
while helping the progress toward naturalism, had
started some artists in the direction of a new motive
and point of view. For now the appreciation of
the antique sculpture became increased and supple-
mented by the study of scholars, who were translat-
ing and explaining the newly discovered writings of
the Greeks and Romans. Plato was the special fa-
vorite, and the Italians of the end of the Fifteenth
Century learned from him the motive of idealism
and the idealistic point of view.
They learned from his writings to think not only
of things, but of ideas. Even to consider ideas of
more importance than things; especially the idea of
beauty. You will remember that in speaking of
Raphael's Allegory of Jurisprudence, we said that
Jurisprudence represented an abstract idea: the con-
ception of what justice is in itself and of the quali-
ties of Prudence, Firmness, and Temperance that
it involves, apart from the machinery for making
and administering the law. Men make laws, and
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A Guide to Pictures
some are good and some are bad. Even the good
ones are not always perfectly administered. To-
day, in America, our conception or idea of law is
higher than our methods of putting it in practice.
Everywhere, always, men's ideals are higher than
their conduct.
Ideals, then, which are the motives, resulting from
ideas, represent the highest effort of man after what
is best and most beautiful. Most beautiful because
it is best and best because it is most beautiful.
Such was part of what artists learned from Plato.
Do you see how they applied it to their art ? To
Leonardo da Vinci, one of the first Italian artists
to become influenced by the classic spirit, the teach-
ing appealed in some such way as the following:
The idea of Beauty is separate from the things or
objects in which it is manifested; just as we may
have an idea of smell apart from any particular
flower ; or of love, apart from the object of our love.
The highest ideal for an artist is to express in his
pictures something of this abstract idea of beauty,
to give to his figures beauty and grandeur of form
and noble heads; to put them in positions of grace
and dignity. He will not paint human nature as
he sees it to be^ with all its imperfections, but will
people his pictures with a race of men and women
and children of ideal beauty.
This was the motive that inspired those noble
Italian pictures of the Sixteenth Century. It was
from the high standpoint of abstract beauty that
the artists looked at their subject. Their point of
236
Subject, Motive, and Point of View
view was idealistic. But this was not the only thing
that made their pictures noble. The artists were
inspired also by a great demand on the part of the
people of their day. Religion held a strong place
in the hearts of the people. They called for pic-
tures to beautify the churches and, at the same time,
to teach those that could not read the beauties of
religion. To-day people have learned to read, and
books to a large extent serve the purpose that pic-
tures used to do. But in those days the people
needed pictures; and it was this strong need, acting
like rich soil to the beautiful plant of idealism,
that helped to produce these wonderful pictures.
They are the most wonderful that the modern
world has ever seen, just because of this union
of two most strong motives — the religious need of
the people - and the exalted love of beauty of the
artists.
But note the character of these pictures. Some-
times, for example, the Virgin is seated on a throne,
surrounded by angels and apostles, saints and bish-
ops; or at other times^ Christ and his apostles are
represented in some scene from the New Testament
story. The first presents an entirely imaginary ar-
rangement of the figures; the second makes no pre-
tence to representing the scene as it may have ac-
tually occurred. The apostles, many of whom were
fishermen, have heads as noble as philosophers;
robes arranged in beautiful folds of drapery, and
conduct themselves with the grace and dignity of
some fine classic statue. Every line, every arrange-
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A Guide to Pictures
ment of form and space, is designed to assist in
building up a composition of ideal beauty.
Or with the same motive the artist would treat
some subject of Greek mythology, such as the story
of Psyche. This again was a response to a strong
need of the public, ^ot so wide a one as the reli-
gious need, but still a strong one, for among the
cultivated classes there was an intense interest in the
old classic myths.
Or from the same idealistic point of view the
artist would decorate the walls of a City Hall. To
this also he was impelled by a strong public need:
the desire of the citizens to express their pride
in themselves and their city by means of beauty.
For by this time the Italians had learned to
express all their highest ideals in forms of ideal
beauty.
But a change came. The Italians, long a prey
to foreign enemies and quarrelling among them-
selves, at length lost their liberty and their pride
in themselves. Other nations surpassed them in
learning and culture; and even Religion lost its in-
tense hold on the public mind. With the loss of
high ideals the glory of idealistic painting in Italy
weaned and disappeared.
But artists of other lands continued to regard the
idealistic painting of the Italians as a model of
what came to be called " the Grand Style." During
the Seventeenth Century Spanish artists imitated
it in their religious pictures. But elsewhere it was
used chiefly for great works of decoration; as by
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Subject, Motive, and Point of View
Rubens in Flanders (Belgium) and Le Brun in
France. The former, for example, built up a series
of magnificent compositions in honor of Marie de
]\Iedicis, the wife of Henry IV of France. They
are now in the Louvre in Paris. Le Brun's vast
paintings and tapestries, that decorate the palace of
Versailles, were designed to extol the glory in war
and peace of Louis XIV, who at the end of his long
reign left his country poor and his subjects miser-
able.
In fact, idealistic painting that had once been
great, because nourished by an intense religious
motive or by the motive of civic pride, had sunk to
being a means of flattering the vanity of monarchs
or pandering to the luxury of the idle rich. So
during the Eighteenth Century it continued to lan-
guish. The form alone remained, growing less and
less beautiful; the old spirit of it was dead.
A new one, however^ arose and had a brief spell
of life, for it was based on the awakened desire of
the French people for liberty. In the years before
the Revolution David painted idealistic pictures.
He chose his subjects from the history of the
Roman Republic, in order that by the example of
its patriotism he might stir his own countrymen to
action. The models for his figures he took from old
Roman sculpture. His pictures fitted the temper
of the time and helped the cause of liberty; but
when Xapoleon made himself Emperor David
passed into his service, and the high motive for his
idealistic pictures ceased.
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A Guide to Pictures
Later painters have turned again to Italy, and by
building up imposing arrangements of figures have
tried to make the spirit of Italian idealism live
again. They have not succeeded. Perhaps for two
reasons. First, that the old Italian compositions
are mostly of an allegorical character, and allegory
does not interest the modern mind. We are inter-
ested in realities. Second^ that those compositions
v^ere based on the beauty of form of the human fig-
ure; the artists made their forms as perfect as pos-
sible and placed them in an artificial arrangement
that would produce a pattern or composition of
beauty and dignity. But modern art is more con-
cerned with rendering the natural appearances of
the world ; and, if it idealises them, does so, as we
shall presently see, by means of light and atmos-
phere.
******
Meanwhile, that Seventeenth Century, in which
Italian idealistic painting dwindled, saw a new out-
burst of the naturalistic or realistic motive in two
parts of the world; simultaneously, in Spain and
Holland.
I have already told you how Velasquez in Spain
and the Dutch artists devoted themselves to the
study of the persons and things actually present to
their eyes. They were idealists or naturalists. Hol-
land had cut herself off from Planders and the
splendid vice-regal Court of Brussels, and her own
noblemen were busy fighting for their country's free-
dom. So there was no demand for her artists to
240
Subject, Motive, and Point of View
paint handsome decorations. She had also cut her-
self off from the Roman Catholic religion; and in
the churches of the Reformed Faith there was no
demand for great religious pictures. These two
motives were lacking; but she had another one —
a very strong one — the love of country and the
pride of the people in themselves. It was strong
enough to produce a great school of painters of
little pictures, distinguished for their great truth
to nature.
Among these Dutch artists, however, was at least
one who was not only a realist but an idealist. This
was Rembrandt. It is of his idealism that I will
speak here; and, to illustrate it, will tell you of a
small religious picture in the Louvre: The Visit to
Emmaus. You remember that Christ in the evening
of the day of his Resurrection came upon two of his
disciples and joined them in their walk to the village
of Emmaus. ^ot recognising him, they talked of
what had happened. It was not until the little party
had reached the inn, and the Saviour raised his
hands in blessing the food, that their ej^ es were opened
and they knew him. It is this moment that Rem-
brandt represented.
When you see this picture you will find no gran-
deur in it such as the Italian pictures have. The
figures are those of poor ordinary men. Rembrandt,
being also a realist, drew them from the real types
of poor Jews in the Ghetto, or Jew-quarter of Am-
sterdam. There is nothing of imposing dignity even
in the Saviour's form and face. Whatever may be
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A Guide to Pictures
the idealism in the picture, it does not depend on
form. Its motive is different from that of the Ital-
ians. Its motive is light. From Christ^s figure
spreads a light. Is not one of his titles — The Light
of the World ? And the light, flowing from this
humble figure, illumines the faces of his humble com-
panions and, passing up to the vaulted ceiling, sheds
through the gloom a mystery of tremulous glow. The
picture like the subject it celebrates, is a miracle —
a miracle of light.
Do you see how this was an expression of idealism ?
Rembrandt in studying the world around him had
discovered, like other artists of his time, the beauty
of light. Light by degrees represented to him the
highest element of beauty in the visible world. While
the great Italians had found the ideal or highest con-
ception of abstract beauty in form, Rembrandt found
it in light. Therefore, when he painted this picture
and wished to show that these figures, though humble
looking, were not ordinary men, and that the event
was no ordinary meeting at a village inn, he pro-
ceeded to idealise the scene according to his own con-
ception of ideal beauty. He introduced into it the
beauty and mystery of light.
Please note that word mystery. A mystery is what
passes beyond our knowledge and understanding,
something that cannot be grasped by our mind and
intelligence. Thus we speak of the mystery of life :
scientists have discovered how the various forms of
life have been developed on the earth, but the origin
of life is still a mystery to them. Even when they
242
Subject, Motive, and Point of View
have traced life back to the smallest conceivable be-
ginning, they are as far off from knowing what
started that smallest beginning into life. But be-
cause they do not know, do they say ^' Oh, what
we do not know is not worth the knowing " ? No
indeed! they realise, that hidden in the mystery
is a truth, even more wonderful than what they
know.
Or again, some beautiful summer night by the
sea-shore you are looking out over the water. The
moon is low and her rays make a pathway of light.
You gaze along it and at first the waves are clearly
visible, heaving in the light; further off, the move-
ment of the waves disappears ; only a luminous glow
remains, growing fainter and fainter, till far away
it melts into that thin line where sky and water
meet — the horizon. Do you know that horizon
really means boundary, the limit of our sight, the
point beyond which our eye has no power to see?
But is there nothing beyond ? If we took ship and
sailed beyond that pathway of light, should we ever
reach the horizon? We should only sail on to find
the horizon continually beyond our reach.
Or we turn our gaze from the water to the sky.
Above us, further than eye can travel, it extends. It
is studded with innumerable stars. We may know
the names of some of them, and have learned about
their movements and their distance from the earth;
but what do we know, what does any one, even the
wisest and most learned, know of them, compared
with our ignorance of them ? It will be well for us,
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A Guide to Pictures
as we gaze into the mystery of the heavens, to be
thinking less of the little knowledge that we have
than of the miracle, the wonder, of what transcends
man's understanding ; of the vast, impenetrable mys-
tery that surrounds our lives. To do so will fill us
with, what we call, a spiritual joy ; a joy, that is to
say, which goes beyond knowledge, and affects that
higher capacity of feeling that, not knowing what
it is, we call spirit. This highest feeling, that we
call spiritual, has always in it some element of mys-
tery. The truth of this was curiously expressed by
a little girl of my acquaintance, who was very fond
of having her mother read poetry to her. I asked
her if she understood a certain poem. " Of course
not," was her quick reply, " what fun would there
be in poetry if you could understand it ? "
Well, I have spoken at length of Rembrandt, be-
cause his way of idealising a scene through the beauty
and mystery of light, has become the way of modern
artists. But it was not until nearly two hundred
years after his death that the world came round to
this way. In the mean time Rembrandt and the
other Dutch painters of his Century, like Velasquez,
had been forgotten. The painters were busy trying
to keep alive the other notion of idealism, the Italian
one, based on form. Indeed, it was not until nat-
uralism again became popular, that idealism by
means of light was renewed.
* * * * * *
I have already told you of the revival of naturalism
at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century ; how the
244
Subject, Motive, and Point of View
English landscape painter, Constable, was followed
by the French landscapists of the Barbizon-Fontaine-
bleau group. You remember that their point of view
was nature as it is visible to the eye, but their motive
was also to express the feelings of love with which
it inspired themselves.
Then, about the middle of the Century appeared
Gustave Courbet who loudly proclaimed himself a
realist. He meant by this that he was not moved
by sentiment, as the Barbizon naturalists were ; that
he believed that the only thing which concerned a
painter was to paint what he could see, as it
appeared to his eye alone. He wished to limit
his art to what is visible to sight. So he thought
it was foolish for an artist to attempt to represent
a scene from the Bible or any historical subject
or subjqct invented by the imagination. As the
artist had never seen these things, he had no busi-
ness, as a painter, to try and represent them. He
was going outside his own art and meddling with
some one else^s: the art of the writer or actor, for
example.
Courbet's point of view of realism and his motive,
to paint only what he could see, were carried further
by another Frenchman, Edouard Manet. He had be-
come a student of the works of Velasquez, from whom
he had learnt : firstly, a new way of viewing his sub-
ject ; secondly a new way of rendering what he saw.
This new way of viewing the subject is what is now
called " impressionism.'^^
I am sorry to have to trouble you with a new word ;
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A Guide to Pictures
but I think you are prepared for it, since impression-
ism professes to be only a more natural and real way
of seeing things. Of seeing things, that is the point.
It does not take account of what things are, but of
the impression they produce upon our mind, when
they appear before our eyes. You are at work in
school, and a stranger enters the class room. He
converses for a few minutes with the teacher and
then goes out. What sort of man was he ? If there
are twenty children in the class, and each, on arriv-
ing home, relates the circumstance of the visit, there
will probably be twenty different impressions of the
visitor's appearance. They will agree in some points
and differ in others ; yet each one of the impressions
may be a true one — as far as it goes. How far it
goes will depend on the quickness and thoroughness
of your observation. But anyhow, it will not include
a great number of details; it will rather be a gen-
eral impression.
If you look out of window into a street, you may
see a number of figures on the sidewalks. You re-
ceive a general impression of figures, moving or
standing still; some men, some women, representing
various spots of one color. "Now sl realistic painter
might say, " Each one of those figures represents a
real person ; I will paint him as he really is ; and, to
do so, will ask him to stand still long enough for me
to study him exactly in all his visible details."
" And if you do," retorts the impressionist painter,
" you will paint something so real, that it will be
too real. For you never could see these people in
246
^
>
Subject, Motive, and Point of View
this way, if you look at them on the street. The
greater part of the details would be lost in the gen-
eral impression/'
Well ! the more you think of it, the more right
you see the impressionist is — from his point of view.
He says, if you are going to be natural, be really
natural; if you want to make your pictures look
real, make them real in a natural way. If the
only thing in art is to be as like nature as
possible, and to represent things only as they would
appear, if you suddenly looked at them, the impres-
sionist is right. And what makes this way of looking
at things particularly interesting is the fact, that it
is so often the momentary effect in nature that is
most beautiful: the effect that lasts but a moment,
that is fugitive or fleeting, caught in an instant, be-
fore it changes to something else. You know what
I mean from your own experience. A certain ex-
pression passes over your friend's face. " Oh ! if
I could only photograph her now," you exclaim ; but
by the time you have arranged your camera, it is
gone, and cannot be brought back to order. Well,
it is just that fugitive, fleeting expression of a sub-
ject that the realist ^ who is an impressionist, tries to
represent in his pictures.
So far I have tried to explain the impressionist's
point of view. Now let us consider his way of ren-
dering what he sees. The whole secret of it is the
part which light plays in the appearance of things.
Manet and the other impressionists, among whom
Claude Monet and Whistler are the most important,
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A Guide to Pictures
see every thing, as Vermeer did, enveloped in light.
But they have gone further than he.
They have studied much more closely the ever
varying qualities of light, as it differs according to
place and season and even time of day. Monet has
painted a series of pictures the subject of every one
of which is the same haystack. At least that is how
some people might describe them. But, if they enter
into Monet's point of view, they would say that the
real subject is not the haystack but the effect of light
upon its surface, and, as the effect of light is differ-
ent in every case, none of the pictures are similar to
one another. Each represents a separate fugitive
expression of light. Monet, in them and other pic-
tures, has recorded with extraordinary subtlety the
impression presented to his eye. For Monet's im-
pressionism was also naturalistic.
Whistler, on the other hand, with no less subtlety,
rendered also the impression that the things seen
had made on his imagination. He was an idealistic
impressionist. He painted, for example, a number
of night-scenes, or " nocturnes," as he called them.
The actual objects in them are of less importance
than Monet's haystack, because in the dim light of
twilight or night they are only faintly visible.
Whistler did not wish us to be aware of the form
of the bridge, or the boat, the sea and shore, or what-
ever the objects may be. He wished us to be con-
scious of them only as Presences looming up like
spirit-forms in the mystery of the uncertain light.
Such nocturnes as Battersea Bridge and the sea-shore
248
Subject, Motive, and Point of View
picture, Bognor-N octurne , appeal to us like Rem-
brandt's Visit to Emmaus. Just as the latter's forms
were humble, so the bridge itself is an ordinary sort
of structure, and the sea-shore and the boats are
without any unusual distinction. Yet in each case
the scene has been idealised through the mystery of
light, and appeals to our spiritual imagination.
After two hundred years Rembrandt's new principle
of idealisation, founded upon the abstract beauty of
light instead of on the abstract perfection of form,
has been accepted by modern artists.
To a gTeater or less degree all artists, whether
naturalists or idealists, who are painting in the mod-
ern spirit have been influenced by Monet and Whist-
ler. The example of these two has spread far and
wide the study and rendering of light. But, while
their followers agree in this motive, they are inde-
pendent in their points of view. There are some
whose point of view, like Monet's, is objective. They
are content to render the impression made upon their
eyes. But, as their eyes see differently from Monet's,
their pictures are different from his. Each is the
record of a separate personality. Equally, while
others, like Whistler are subjective, recording the im-
pression produced upon their minds, their pictures
vary according to the character and quality of their
separate minds. In fact, in later times, a notable
feature of painting is its diversity of motives and
points of view.
Let me try to explain this. Ever since the Ameri-
can and French Revolutions, there has been a grad-
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A Guide to Pictures
uallj increasing interest in what we call individual-
ity. The main object of these revolutions was to
establish the right of each and every individual to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the
idea of government now is to give every individual
the chance of making the most of his or her possi-
bilities. Your teachers, for example, are not running
their classes as machines; they are trying to make a
personal study, so far as possible, of each one of you,
in order to help you to develop your particular in-
dividuality. For a long time this has been the prin-
ciple of education and government. The result is
that there has been a universal increase in individu-
ality, since numbers of people who had some special
possibility have had a chance to develope it. To-day,
in fact, there is probably nothing that counts more
than individuality. This being so it is natural that
we should look for it in art And, if we do, we shall
find it.
In former times there were " schools of art." In
Italian art, we speak, for example, of the Florentine
School, the Venetian School, the Koman School; or
we speak of the Flemish School, and Dutch Schools
and so on. In each case the artists, living in a cer-
tain city or country, had sufficient resemblance among
themselves in their motives and methods of painting
to produce a certain separate style. So, to-day, if an
expert sees an old picture, he is able to say at once
and, more often than not correctly, that it belongs
to such and such a school.
But an expert of a hundred years hence, when he
250
Subject, Motive, and Point of View
sees our modern pictures, will not speak of Schools.
He may see at once that the picture is by an Amer-
ican, a German, or a French artist, for difference
of race and habit of life and thought do still stamp
in a general way the pictures of each separate coun-
try. But even within the limits of any one country
there are as many varieties of motive and point of
view as there are individuals.
So in modern times, more than ever before, there
is an individual, personal note in pictures, just as
there is in books. The artist makes the picture an
expression of his own personal feelings. This is one
reason why modern pictures are inferior to the old
ones in grandeur and dignity. The older ones were
not only larger in size, as a rule, but they were im-
personal, like a fine building is. The architects who
designed the Capitol at Washington put their own
personal expression into it. But we do not feel it,
as we look at their work. On the contrary, it is the
impersonal, monumental dignity of the work that im-
presses us. But in most modern pictures, instead of
what is impersonal, we receive a distinct impression
of intimacy, of sharing the artist's feeling. And it
is the expression of this that we not only look for but
enjoy discovering. We often speak of it as the sen-
timent of the picture.
This sentiment may be of all sorts and shades of
feeling, " from grave to gay, from lively to severe."
It may be romantic in spirit, appealing to us through
the suggestion of what is weird and surprising; it
may be full of the tenderness or of the trumpet call
251
A Guide to Pictures
of poetry; it may invite us to gentle reverie, or stir
in us a profound and poignant emotion. But I have
said enough to point your way.
******
In conclusion let me sum up the contents of this
long chapter. We have seen that there are two main
streams of motive and point of view; the idealistic
and the naturalistic. The former flows from the
artist's desire to represent his conception of ideal
beauty, the latter from his love of nature. We have
seen that they have alternately reached their highest
flood, because the conditions of the times supplied a
great public need to which each in turn responded.
Lastly, we have seen that gradually both tendencies
have undergone a change. Whereas originally both
the naturalistic and the idealistic motive were con-
cerned with form, they came to be concerned par-
ticularly with light.
Therefore, when you look at a picture, ask your-
self : Has the artist simply tried to render the visible
appearance, or has he also tried to make the subject
interpret some feeling of his own ?
If he is simply rendering the visible appearance:
Has he been conscious only of form, or has he viewed
the form in its envelope of lighted atmosphere?
Further, has he tried to represent the visible appear-
ance, as we should find it to be, if we studied each
and every part of it separately; or he has tried to
give the impression of the entire scene, as it really
reached his eyes ?
If he is interpreting through the subject his own
252
Subject, Motive, and Point of View
feeling: What is the quality of the feeling? Does
the picture simply express the artist's consciousness
of the grandeur or the loveliness of nature, or does it
also interpret his feeling for the mystery of things
not seen ?
Here are a few hints for you in setting out to ex-
plore the vast country of motive and point of view.
THE END
253
THE NEW
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