FORM AND COLOR
When we began to speak about composition we continually used the words
“line and form.” Gradually, 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 everything
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 features as strangely
different.
Yet, notwithstanding the identity of form and 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 interested in color. This is only another way of saying that the
varieties in nature are inexhaustible. Nevertheless, although no two elm
trees are exactly alike, all elm trees are sufficiently similar to be
recognised 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 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 surround it.
Now, this distinction, between the way in which the Florentines and the
Venetians saw and represented objects, still appears in modern art. In
fact, ever since the days of the great Italians there have been artists
who relied on drawing and artists who relied on color. For over a
hundred years the importance 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
classic 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 Ingres 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.
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 would be, if everything, for instance, were a uniform gray!
Quite true, and Ingres probably would have agreed. As a _man_, 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
important--he was not thinking of how things appear in the actual world,
but how they should be represented 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. It is by 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 disagree with them, their point of view and method are apt to be
called _Academic_.
The word ideal, used in this sense, has the meaning “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, “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 according to
his own idea of perfection. Now 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 enjoy 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. Because 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”[8]
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 Carlsen’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 Vollon 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 Washington 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 imagination as an artist is chiefly shown in the capacity
that his mind has for discovering unexpected beauties 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 differences of color, according to the
way the light falls on it, various delicate differences in the
roughness or smoothness of the rind; curiously beautiful accidents of
color, as it reflects the colors of other objects 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 record 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 understood 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 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 Fine 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 _Formula_. Previously it was the _Classic_ formula of which we
spoke. This, you remember was the rule or plan for building up a formal
composition, sometimes 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, Classic, or Idealistic. Sometimes, in fact,
the meaning 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 Düsseldorf, a city on the Rhine; at a
time when that school had abandoned Classical subjects for incidents
from history, or scenes from German legends, 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 reproduced the
actual habits and life of the times, whereas the Düsseldorf 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 compelled 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 early in the evening of
December 25, 1776, and lasted until four a.m. the following morning.
Does this picture represent the dimness of a winter twilight, 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 answer is
“no.” Leutze probably had no thought of representing this aspect of the
truth; the Düsseldorf 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
represent them in relation to one another, with varying degrees of
clearness and obscurity. A similar artificiality 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 neglected a number of important facts relating to
the hour of the occurrence and to the conditions of atmosphere and
light, as they must have affected the appearance of the scene. He was
simply not interested 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.
[Illustration: Washington Crossing the Delaware. _Emanuel Leutze._
(_Property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art._)]
Do you think that Washington and the flag-bearer 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 serious 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 indifference 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 applause, 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 grouping of
figures on the stage of a popular theater. It is theatrical. I do not
say dramatic, but theatrical, between which two ideas there is this
distinction. 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--that the characters behave as they might be expected
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 Academic manner they are not true to life, but
artificially concocted.
On the other hand, as I have said, many Academic pictures, choosing
classical or idealistic subjects, 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 natural beauty but for that of
the artist’s own invention.
So, to bring the subject to a finish, we must bear in mind that there
are two distinct ways of painting 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 interfere with our
judgment of the different merits of each. Until we recognise the “Great
Divide” between the Academic and the Naturalistic points of view, we
shall not get very far in our appreciation of pictures.