SUBJECT, MOTIVE, AND POINT OF VIEW
At the beginning of our talks, you may remember, 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 picture, 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 beautiful 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
Japanese 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 picture, you 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 according to their subject.
There are religious pictures; pictures of myths and legends or imaginary
subjects; portraits; landscapes; historical pictures, like _Washington
crossing the Delaware_; genre pictures or scenes of every day life;
still-life subjects, representing 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 subjects 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 subject 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 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 Europe and at
home. You will be apt to see everything 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 motive and point of view of
each artist. For he cannot help betraying them in his pictures, any more
than you can help betraying yours, if, being a partisan of Yale, you are
watching a football game between Yale and Harvard. Just as your behavior
will betray your feelings, so is a picture the expression of an artist’s
personal likes and dislikes. 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 impossible to enter into the merits of an
_idealistic_ picture, if you insist on approaching the study of it from
the _naturalistic_ point of view. And vice versa. The only way to
appreciate a picture is to approach 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 picture. 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
artists 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 figures, made the objects look more real, and suggested
the depth and distance of their surroundings. Next of Masaccio, who gave
his figures still more resemblance to life, and filled in their
surroundings with a suggestion of atmosphere. Then I told you of
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 concerned, their figures were absolutely natural. But,
as yet, the _naturalistic_ motive and point of view had not included the
seeing and rendering of nature’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 supplemented by the study of scholars,
who were translating and explaining the newly discovered writings of the
Greeks and Romans. Plato was the special favorite, 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 conception of what justice is in itself and of the
qualities of Prudence, Firmness, and Temperance that it involves, apart
from the machinery for making and administering the law. Men make laws,
and 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 teaching
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 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 pictures 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 pictures 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. Sometimes, for example, the
Virgin is seated on a throne, surrounded by angels and apostles, saints
and bishops; or at other times, Christ and his apostles are represented
in some scene from the New Testament story. The first presents an
entirely imaginary arrangement of the figures; the second makes no
pretence to representing the scene as it may have actually 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 arrangement 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. Not so wide a one as the religious 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 themselves, at length lost their liberty and their
pride in themselves. Other nations surpassed them in learning and
culture; and even Religion lost its intense hold on the public mind.
With the loss of high ideals the glory of _idealistic_ painting in Italy
waned 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 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 Médicis, 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 miserable.
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 languish. 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 Napoleon made himself Emperor David passed into his service,
and the high motive for his _idealistic_ pictures ceased.
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
interested in realities. Second, that those compositions were based on
the beauty of form of the human figure; the artists made their forms as
perfect as possible and placed them in an artificial arrangement that
would produce a pattern or composition of beauty and dignity. But modern
art is more concerned 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 atmosphere.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, that Seventeenth Century, in which Italian _idealistic_
painting dwindled, saw a new outburst 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 _realists_ or _naturalists_. Holland
had cut herself off from Flanders and the splendid vice-regal Court of
Brussels, and her own noblemen were busy fighting for their country’s
freedom. So there was no demand for her artists to paint handsome
decorations. She had also cut herself 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.
Not 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 eyes were opened and they knew him. It
is this moment that Rembrandt represented.
When you see this picture you will find no grandeur 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 Amsterdam. There is nothing of
imposing dignity even in the Saviour’s form and face. Whatever may be
the idealism in the picture, it does not depend on form. Its motive is
different from that of the Italians. 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 companions 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 conception 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 proceeded to
idealise the scene according to his own conception 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 have traced life back to the smallest conceivable beginning, they
are as far off from knowing what started that smallest beginning into
life. But because 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 movement 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, 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 mystery 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 mystery. 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, because 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 naturalism 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 English landscape painter,
Constable, was followed by the French landscapists of the
Barbizon-Fontainebleau 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
subject invented by the imagination. As the artist had never seen these
things, he had no business, 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, Édouard Manet.
He had become a student of the works of Velasquez, from whom he had
learnt: firstly, a new way of viewing his subject; 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; but I think you are
prepared for it, since impressionism 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 arriving 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 general
impression.
If you look out of window into a street, you may see a number of figures
on the sidewalks. You receive a general impression of figures, moving or
standing still; some men, some women, representing various spots of one
color. Now a _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
[Illustration: Evening. _Anton Mauve._]
this way, if you look at them on the street. The greater part of the
details would be lost in the general 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 _impressionist_ 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, before it changes to something else. You
know what I mean from your own experience. A certain expression 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 subject 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 _rendering_ 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, 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 different 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 pictures, has
recorded with extraordinary subtlety the impression presented to his
eye. For Monet’s _impressionism_ 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 whatever the objects may be. He wished us to be conscious
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 picture, _Bognor-Nocturne_, appeal to us like Rembrandt’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 greater or less degree all artists, whether _naturalists_ or
_idealists_, who are painting in the modern spirit have been influenced
by Monet and Whistler. 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 independent 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 _impression_ 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 American and French
Revolutions, there has been a gradually increasing interest in what we
call individuality. 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
possibilities. 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 individuality. For a long time this has been the principle of
education and government. The result is that there has been a universal
increase in individuality, 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 Roman
School; or we speak of the Flemish School, and Dutch Schools and so on.
In each case the artists, living in a certain 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 sees our modern
pictures, will not speak of Schools. He may see at once that the picture
is by an American, 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 country. 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 impersonal, 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
impresses 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 sentiment 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 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 concerned with
form, they came to be concerned particularly with light.
Therefore, when you look at a picture, ask yourself: 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 appearance,
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 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 explore the vast country
of motive and point of view.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Pronounced dees-poo-táh, with the accent on the last syllable. See
page 13.
[2] The body between the neck and the commencement of the legs.
[3] Mural--(Latin _murus_, a wall), having to do with a wall; in this
case a decoration on a wall.
[4] 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.
[5] Pronounced Yo-hann-es Fair-mair.
[6] We shall find it was discovered also by the Spanish artist,
Velasquez, in the same century.
[7] Pronounced pa-ee-sahje an-teem.
[8] 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.
[9] Showing a mastery over others.
[10] Turn back to his picture and see how all this that we are now
discussing is there illustrated.
[11] See page 88.
[12] 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.”
End of Project Gutenberg's A Child's Guide to Pictures, by Charles H. Caffin