The artist gets his picture from two sources. He either goes forth and
finds it, or creates it. If he creates it the work is deliberate, and the
artist assumes responsibility. If he goes to nature, he and nature form a
partnership, she supplying the material and he the experience. In editing
the material thus supplied, the artist discovers how great is the
disparity between art and nature, and what a disproof nature herself is to
the common notion that art is mirrored nature, and that any part of her
drawn or painted will make a picture.
The first stage of the art collector is that in which his admiration
dwells on imitation such as the still-life painter gives him, but soon his
art sense craves an expression with thought in it, the imitation,
brow-beaten into its proper place and the creative instinct of the artist
visible. In other words, he seeks the constructive sense of the man who
paints the picture. “The work of art is an appeal to another mind, and it
cannot draw out more than that mind contains. But to enjoy is, as it
were, to create; to understand is a form of equality.”(8) With the horse
before the cart and the artist holding the reins, he gets a fresh start,
and is in a fair way to comprehend Richard Wagner’s assertion that you
cannot have art without the man. In the same manner does the student
usually develop. With the book of nature before him he is eager to sit
down anywhere and read, attracted by each separate item of the vast
pattern, but he finds he has opened nature’s dictionary and that to make
poetry or even good prose he must put the separate words and phrases
together.
After the first roll of films has been printed and brooded over, the kodac
person is apt to ask in a tone of injured and deceived innocence, “_Well,
what does make_ a picture?”
He with others has supposed it possible to go to nature and, taking
nothing with him, bring something back. Though one does not set out with
the rules of composition, he must at least present himself before nature
with fixed notions of the few requirements which all pictures demand.
Having looked at a counterfeit of her within four sides of a frame and
learned to know why a limited section of her satisfied him by its
completeness he approaches her out of doors with greater prospects of
success than though he had not settled this point. Good art, of the
gallery, is the best guide to a trip afield. Having seen what elements
and what arrangements have proved available in the hands of other men, the
student will not go astray if he seek like forms in nature. Armed with
defininite convictions he will see, through her bewildering meshes the
faithful lines he needs. The star gazer with a quest for the
constellations of the Pleiades or the Great Bear, must close his eyes to
many irrelevant stars which do not fit the figure. Originality does not
require the avoidance of principles used by others. Pictorial forms are
world’s property. Originality only demands “the causing to pass into our
own work a _personal_ view of the world and of life.”(9) Personality in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred is a graft. The forms of artistic
expression have been preempted long ago. The men who had the first
chances secured the truest forms of it and in a running glance through a
miscellaneous collection of prints one’s attention is invariably arrested
by the force of the pictures by the older masters; so dominating is the
first impression that we concede the case upon the basis of effect before
discovering the many obstacles and omissions counting against their
greater efficiency. But the essence is of the living sort. With this
conceded and the fact that nature’s appeal is always strongest when made
through association with man it is for us to cultivate these associations.
“Study nature attentively,” says Reynolds, “but always with the masters in
your company; consider them as models which you are to imitate, and at the
same time as rivals, with whom you are to contend.”
A wise teacher has said the quickest road to originality is through the
absorption of other men’s ideas.
Before going forth therefore with a canvas or plate holder, it behooves us
first to know what art is. Certainly the most logical step from the study
of constructive form is through the practical technique of work which we
would emulate. To copy interpretations of outdoor nature by others is
commendable either at the experimental period, when looking for a
technique, or as an appreciation.
Besides this mental preparation, the next best equipment for finding
pictures is a Claude Lorraine glass, because, being a convex mirror, it
shows a reduced image of nature _in a frame._ The frame is important not
only because it designates the limitations of a picture, but because it
cuts it free from the abstracting details which surround it. If one has
not such a glass, a series of small pasteboard frames will answer. The
margin should be wide enough to allow the eye to rest without disturbance
upon the open space. Two rectangular pieces that may be pushed together
from top or side is probably the most complete device. The proportion of
the frame is therefore adaptable to the subject and the picture may be cut
off top, bottom or sides as, demanded.
[The View-Metre]
[Three Pictures Found with the View-Metre]
Many artists reduce all subjects to two or three sizes, which they
habitually paint. The view-meter may in such cases be further simplified
by using a stiff cardboard with such proportions cut out. By having them
all on a single board a subject may be more rapidly tested than by the
device of the collapsible sides. A light board, the thickness of a
cigar-box cover, 4×5 inches, and easily carried in the pocket, will enable
one to land his subject in his canvas exactly as he wants it, and avoid
the grievance of reconstruction later. By leaving a broad margin about
the openings, one obtains the impression of a picture in its mat or frame,
and may judge of it in nature as he will after regard it when completed
and on exhibition.
[View Taken with a Wide Angle Lens]
The accompanying _photograph_ was produced by a revolving camera
encompassing an area of 120 degrees. As a composition it is not bad, but
unfortunate here and there. It has a well-defined centre, and the two
sides balance well, the left clogging the vision and thus giving way to
the right, which allows the eye to pass out of the picture on this side
beyond the fountain and across the stretch of sunlight. At a glance,
however, one may see three complete pictures, and with the aid of the
view-meter a number of other combinations may be developed. Its
construction is that of Hobbema’s “Alley near Middelharnes,” in the
National Gallery, London, of so pronounced formality that a number of such
construction in a gallery, would prove monotonous.
Beginning on the left, we may apply the view-meter first to exclude the
unnecessary branch forms and sky space on the top; second, to cut away the
tree on the right, which, in that it parallels the line of the margin, is
objectionable, and is rendered unnecessary as a side for the picture by
the two trees beyond in the middle plane; and, third, to limit the extent
of the picture on the bottom, tending as it does to force the spectator
back and away from the subject proper. The interest is divided between
the white building and rustic bridge and the pivot of this composition
adjusts itself in line with the centre tree. In the next picture the
first tree on left of avenue is cut away for the same reason as in the
previous arrangement, and although one of a line of trees in perspective,
the trunk as an item is unserviceable, as its branches start above the
point where the top line occurs, and can therefore render no assistance in
destroying an absolute vertical as has been done in the left tree by the
bifurcation, and the first on the right by the encroaching masses of
leaves. The eye follows the receding lines of roadway beneath the canopy
and is led out of the picture by the light above the hill. The last
arrangement is more formal than either of the others but gives us the good
old form of composition frequently adopted by Turner, Rousseau, Dupré, and
others, namely of designing an encasement for the subject proper, through
which to view it. For that reason after the arch overhead has been
secured all else above is cut away as useless. The print has been cut a
little on the right, as by this means the foreground tree is placed nearer
that side and also because the extra space allowed too free an escapement
of the eye through this portal, the natural focus of course being the
fountain where the eye should rest at once. It has been cut on the bottom
so as to exclude the line where the road and the grass meet—an especially
bad line, paralleling the bottom of the picture and line of shadow upon
the grass. This shadow is valuable as completing the encasement of the
subject on the bottom and in starting the eye well into the picture toward
its subject.
Our natural vision always seeks the light. Shadows are the carum cushions
from which the sight recoils in its quest for this. Letting the eye into
the picture over a foreground of subdued interest, or better still, of no
interest is one of the most time-honored articles of the picture-maker’s
creed. If the reader will compare the first and last of these three
compositions he will see how in this respect the first loses and the last
gains. The element of the shaded foreground in the first was cut out in
preserving a better placement for the subject proper, which lay beyond.
[Photography Nearing the Pictorial]
The photographer comes upon a group of cows. “Trees, cattle, light and
shade—a picture surely!” Fearful of disturbing the cows he exposes at a
distance, then stalks them, trying again with a different point of sight
and, having joined them and waited for their confidence, makes the _third
attempt._ On developing, the first one reveals the string-like line of
road cutting the picture from end to end, the cattle as isolated spots,
the tree dividing the sky space into almost equal parts. In the second,
the lower branch of tree blocks the sky and on the other side there is a
natural window, opening an exit into the distance. This is desirable but
unfortunately the bending roadway on the right accomplishes the same
purpose and so two exits are offered, always objectionable. With this
out, the value of the rock and foreground cow is also better appreciated
as leading spots taking us to the natural focus, the white cow lying close
to the tree. The rock in left corner having no influence in a leading
line should be suppressed. The cattle now swing into the picture from
both sides and one of them opposes the horizontal of her back to the
vertical of the tree, thus easing the force of its descent.
In the last there is much more concentration. The road does not parallel
the bottom and though passing out of the picture the vision is brought
back again along the distant line of trees. The objection to this
arrangement lies in the equal division of the subject by the tree-trunk.
The white cow focalizes the vision but the sky and the more graceful
branches soon capture it. The cow in the right foreground is only
valuable as an oppositional measure to the _line_ of cows stretching
across the picture which it helps to divert, otherwise she carries too
much attraction to the side.
The best arrangement for the subject would have been the tree one-third
from the left side, the white cow touching its line, one or two of those
lying on the ground working toward the foreground in a zigzag, little or
no diversion from the distance on the left of tree. The swing of the
picture would then have been from the foreground to the focus, the white
cow and tree, thence to the group under the tree and out through the sky.
This would have divided the picture-plane into thirds instead of halves,
bringing it into the form elsewhere recommended as being the arrangement
of Claude’s best pictures.
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