Since the time that photography laid its claim to be reckoned among the
fine arts the attention of artists has been attracted first by the _claim_
and thereafter, with acknowledgments, to the _performance._
The art cry of the newly baptized had the vehement ring of faith and
determination. Like the prophecy of the embryo premier it sounded: “My
lords, you will hear me yet.”
The sustained interest of the “Photographic Salon” and the utterance of
its exhibitors in the language of art, has long since obtained concession
to the claim for _associate membership._ To make this relationship
complete became the effort of many writers of the photographic circle.
“The whole point then,” writes Prof. P. H. Emerson, B. A., M. D., of
England, “is that what the painter strives to do is to render, by any
means in his power, as true an impression of any picture which he wishes
to express as possible. A photographic artist strives for the same end
and in two points only does he fall short of the painter—in color and in
the ability to render so accurately the relative values, although this is
to a great extent compensated by the tone of the picture. How then is
photography superior to etching, wood-cutting, charcoal drawing? The
drawing of the lens is not to be equalled by any man. There is ample room
for selection, judgment and posing, and, in a word, in capable hands a
finished photograph is a work of art. Thus we see that the art has at
last found a scientific basis and can be rationally discussed, and I think
I am right in saying that I was the first to base the claims of
photography as a fine art on these grounds and I venture to predict that
the day will come when photographs will be admitted to hang on the walls
of the Royal Academy.”
Since the appearance of the above which comes as close to the real reason
in question as its logic might intimate, but which is worth quoting from
the prophecy which it contained, there have been many expressions of
opinions by photographers. None, however, are more to the point than the
following from the pen of Mr. F. H. Wilson: “When, fifty years ago, the
new baby, photography, was born, Science and Art stood together over her
cradle questioning what they might expect of her, wondering what place she
would take among their other children. Science soon found that she had
come with her hands full of gifts and her bounty to astronomy, microscopy
and chemistry made her name blessed among these, her elder sisters. Art,
always more conservative, hung back. But slowly jealous Art who first
frowned and called the rest of her brood around her, away from the
parvenue, has let her come near, has taken her hand, and is looking her
over with questioning eyes. Soon, without doubt, she will have her on her
lap with the rest.”
“Why has she been kept out so long? Almost from the beginning she claimed
a place in the house beautiful of art. In spite of rebuffs she knocked at
its doors, though the portrait painter and the critic flung stones at her
from the house-top, and the law itself stood at the threshold denying her
entrance. Those early efforts were not untinctured with a fear that if
she should get in she would run the establishment, but the law long since
owned her right, and instead of the crashing boulders of artistic dislike
and critical indignation the volleys they drop at her feet now are mere
mossy pebbles flung by similarly mossy critics or artist-bigots. Still,
the world at large hears them rattle and does not give her the place and
estimation she has won.”
“Art began with the first touch of man to shape things toward his ideal,
be that ideal an agreeable composition, or the loftiest conception of
genius. The higher it is the more it is art. Art is head-and-hand work
and a creation deserves the name of art according to the quality and
quantity of this expended on it. Simply sit down squarely before a thing
and imitate it as an ox would if an ox could draw, with no thought or
intention save imitation and the result will cry from every line, ‘I am
not art but machine work,’ though its technique be perfection. Toil over
arrangement and meditate over view-point and light, and though the result
be the rudest, it will bear the impress of thought and of art. I tell you
art begins when man with thought, forming a standard of beauty, commences
to shape the raw material toward it. In pure landscape, where
modification is limited, it begins when the artist takes one standpoint in
preference to another. In figure composition, where modification is
infinite, it begins with the first touch to bring the model into pose.
When he bends a twig or turns a fold of drapery the spirit of art has come
and is stirring within him. What matters the process! Surely it is time
that this artistic bigotry was ended.”
The kernel lies in the sentence “when he bends a twig,” etc., “the spirit
of art has come.” In other words when he exhibits choice and preference,
when, in short, he _composes._
Recognizing that composition was the only portal through which the new
candidate for art recognition could gain an entrance into the circle of
Art, the single effort of the past photographer, viz.; the striving for
detail and sharpness of line, has been relegated to its reasonable place.
A comprehension of composition was found to demand the knowledge of a
score of things which then by necessity were rapidly discovered, applied
and installed. Composition means sacrifice, gradation, concentration,
accent, obliteration, replacement, construction of things the plate does
not have, destruction of what it should not have.
Supplied with such a magician’s wand no effect was denied: all things
seemed possible.
Gratified by recognition in a new realm the new associations should be
strengthened. Whereas photography had been spanned by the simple compass
of Mr. and Mrs. A. and their daughter, in figures; or topographical
accuracies in landscape, revellers in the new art talked of Rembrandt and
Titian, Corot and Diaz. To do something which should put their art in
touch with these, their new-found brethren, was the thing! A noble
ambition, but only a mistaking of the effect for the cause. These men
_composed._ The blurred outline, the vacant shadow, the suppressed
corners, the clipped edges. This all means composition in the subduing of
insistent outline, in the exchange of breadth for detail, in the
centralization of light, in the suppression of the unnecessary.
But no, the employment of these devices of the painter from the
photographer’s point of view of composition is not sufficient.
Photography is now busy complimenting every school of painting under the
sun. Yesterday it was Rembrandt’s school. Now that is passed, and
Carrière is better and to-morrow, perchance, it will be Raphael or
Whistler or some Japanese, why not?
The one and only good sign which marks imitation is that it shows
appreciation, and this of the standards is a good thing. Let each have
its turn. Their synthesis may be _you._
But to a man of the professions or business whose time for study in these
vast fields of the classics is so disproportionate to their extent and
who, though supplied with search warrants and summons, still fails to make
a capture, how ineffectual and wearying this chase after
ideals—subjective. Why not shorten your course? Why not produce
Rembrandts and Corots because you apprehend the principles on which _they_
work and anticipate a surprise in discovering, as by chance, that you have
produced something which _recalls them._ In this way and by these means
there will be meaning in your claim of brotherhood.
One may scarcely call an estimate in art matters complete without an
opinion from Mr. Ruskin. “In art we look for a record of man’s thought
and power, but photography gives that only in quite a secondary degree.
Every touch of a great painting is instinct with feeling, but howsoever
carefully the objects of a picture be chosen and grouped by the
photographer, there his interference ends. It is not a mere matter of
color or no color, but of Invention and Design, of Feeling and
Imagination. Photography is a matter of ingenuity: Art of genius.”
On these lines however the philosopher of Coniston hardly proves his case.
Invention and design, feeling and imagination, are all a part of the
photographer’s suite. He employs them all. And these too are qualities
the most artistic. Technique, which is manual and not spiritual, is the
one point at which art and photography cannot coalesce. To Art’s sentient
finger-tips, Photography holds up only steel, wood and glass. Art
therefore holds the winning cards.
P. G. Hamerton, England’s safest and surest critic of art, writing a
generation ago on the “Relation between Photography and Painting,” says:
“But all good painting, however literal, however pre-Raphaelite or
topographic, is full of human feeling and emotion. If it has no other
feeling in it than love or admiration for the place depicted, that is much
already, quite enough to carry the picture out of the range of photography
into the regions of real art.”
“And this is the reason why good painting cannot be based on photography.
I find photographic data of less value than hasty sketches. The
photograph renders the form truly, no doubt, as far as it goes, but it by
no means renders feelings and is therefore of no practical use (save for
reference) to a painter who feels habitually and never works, without
emotion.”
It is very much to be questioned if Mr. Hamerton in the face of what has
since been done with the camera by men who _feel_ and are led by the
emotional in art, would claim a distinction to the painter and deny that
the photographic product was unaffected by the emotional temperament.
A friend shows us a group of his pets, either dogs, horses or children,
done by an “artist photographer.” We find it strongly composed, evincing
a clear knowledge of every point to be observed in extracting from the
subject all the picturesqueness there was in it. We notice a soft
painter-like touch, shadows not detailed—simply graded—aerial envelopment
everywhere suggested.
It would be pedantry for the painter to correct the expression of his
friend and suggest that the man who produced the picture was not an
artist. It is the product of a man who felt exactly as an artist would
have felt; an expression of views upon a subject entirely governed by the
principles of art, and the man who made it, by that sympathy which he
exhibits with those principles, is my brother in art to a greater degree
than the painter who, with youthful arrogance, throws these to the winds
“mistaking,” as has been cleverly said, “the will-o’-the-wisp of
eccentricity for the miracle working impulse of genius.” In whatsoever
degree more of the _man_ and less of the _mechanics_ appear, _in that
degree_ is the result a work of art.
The reliance of photography on composition has provoked an earnest search
for its principles. The photographer felt safe in going to the school of
painting for these principles and accepted without question the best book
written for painters, that by John Burnet, penned more than a century ago
at a time when the art of England was at a low imitative ebb, and unduly
influenced by imitation. This has been abundantly quoted by photographic
teachers and evidently accepted, with little challenge, as final.
The best things, discoverable to the writer, in the field of composition,
have been by the photographers themselves—the best things as well as the
most inane; but in the face of so many results that earnest workers with
the camera produce and continue to put forth, which cannot find a place in
the categories of Art, it would seem that these preachments have been
unheeded, or were not sufficiently clear to afford practical guidance for
whom they were intended. Mr. P. H. Robinson(14)declares most strenuously
for composition. “It is my contention,” he says, “that one of the first
things an artist should learn is the _construction_ of a picture.” On a
par with this is the opinion of Mr. Arthur Dow, the artist, who declares
that “art education _should begin_ at composition.”
It is for lack of this that the searcher for the picturesque so frequently
returns empty handed.
PART II - THE ÆSTHETICS OF COMPOSITION
CHAPTER XII - BREADTH VERSUS DETAIL
Subjectively the painter and the photographer stretch after the same goal.
Technically they approach it from opposite directions.
The painter starts with a bare surface and creates detail, the
photographer is supplied therewith.
Art lies somewhere between these starting points; for art is a reflection
of an idea and ideas may or may not have to do with detail.
According to the subject then is the matter of detail to serve us. In the
expression of character a certain amount of detail is indispensable; by
the painter to be produced, by the photographer saved. But detail is
often so beautiful in itself! and is not art a presentation of the
beautiful, pleads the photographer. And the reply in the Socratic method
is: “Look at the _whole_ subject: does the idea of it demand this detail?”
The untutored mind always sees detail. For this reason most education is
inductive, but though the process is inductive, the goal is the eternal
synthesis. It is the reporter who gathers the facts: the editor winnows
therefrom the moral.
The artist must—in time—get on top and take this survey. Looking at any
subject with eyes half closed enables him to see it without detail, and
later, with eyes slowly opening, admitting that much only which is
necessary to character.
The expression of character by masses of black and white proves this.
Bishop Potter is unmistakable, his features bounded by their shadows.
From such a start then it is a question of procedure cautiously to that
point where the greatest character lies, but beyond which point detail
becomes unnecessary to character.
[Bishop Potter]
The pen portrait of Thackeray by Robt. Blum is a careful delineation of
the characteristic head of the novelist set on shoulders
characteristically bent forward and the body characteristically tall.
What more can be told of Thackeray’s personality? Would the buttons and
the wrinkles of the clothing help matters! No, as facts they would not,
and when art has to do only with character, the simplest statement is the
most forcible.
Millet, at one time, was known as “the man who painted peasants without
wrinkles in their breeches.” Not because wrinkles were too much for him,
nor because they were not thought worth while, but because, in his effort
to prune his picture of the unessentials, the wrinkles were brushed aside.
When, however, art has to do with filling an entire space with something,
and the clothing occupies a considerable part of it, what shall be done?
This changes the details of the question. Yet all portraits that hit hard
in exhibitions are those conceived in simplicity, those in which the
personality is what stops and holds us.
There are certain large organic lines of drapery which the character
demands, but beyond this point opinion divides authoritatively from the
complete silence of obliteration to the tumultuous noisiness of “the whole
truth”
In the portraits by Carrière all detail is swept away, and the millinery
artists are shocked. Simplicity should never compromise texture and
quality. This side of the truth cannot prove objectionable.
“You have made my broadcloth look like two-fifty a yard and it really cost
four,” was a criticism offered by a young lady who posed in a riding
habit. Such practical criticism is frequently necessary to bring the
artist down from the top height observatory where he is absorbed with “the
big things.”
Breath does not signify neglect of detail or neglect of finish; it means
simplification where unity had been threatened. It is seeing the big side
of small things, if the small things cannot be ignored.
The lighting of a subject has much to do with its breadth. A light may be
selected that will chop such a well organized unit as the body into three
or four separate sections, or one that produces an _equal_ division of
light and shade—seldom good. Shadows are generally the hiding-places for
mystery; and mystery is ever charming. None better than Rembrandt knew
the value of those vague spaces of nothingness, in backgrounds, and in the
figure itself, a sudden pitch from light and positiveness into conjecture.
We hear in photography much of the “Rembrandt-esque effect,” which when
produced, proves to be just blackness. There can be no shadow without
light, and Rembrandt’s effort was to obtain this, rather than produce
darkness.
The feeling of light may also be broadly expressed by a direct
illumination. Here the shadow plays a very small part, and the subject is
presented in its outline. Under such an effect we lose variety but gain
simplicity. This brings us close to the region of two dimensions, the
realm of Japanese art and mural decoration. The portraits of Manet, the
decorations of Puvis de Chavannes, and the early Italians, display the
quality of breadth because of the simplicity of lighting which these
subjects received.
Breadth in the treatment of the figure may be obtained by _graded_ light.
If a shadow be produced at the bottom of the picture sufficiently strong
to obliterate both the light and shade of detail, and thence be made to
weaken as it proceeds upward and finally give place to light, where light
is most needed, great simplicity as well as the element of variety will be
the result.
Thus, in the most effective treatment in mural decoration, one sees only
the grand forms, the movement, the intention, those things which most
befit the inner surface of the building being also those which bear the
greater importance. The fact is used as an argument for the assumption
that painting should, after all, be an art of two dimensions, length and
breadth, reserving thickness and its representation, for sculpture. This
robs painting of the quality of natural aspect, except under the single
effect of absolutely direct lighting and ignores its development beyond
the flatly colored representations of the ancient Egyptians, our American
Indians and the Japanese, a development inaugurated by the Greeks and
since adhered to by all occidental nations.
The student who goes to nature and sees mass only, discarding all detail,
will run the chance of being a colorist as well as a painter of breadth,
two of the most important qualifications; for if he refuses to be stopped
by detail his intelligence will crystallize upon that other thing which
attracts him. He will think the harder upon the simple relations of tones
and the exact color. Slowly dexterity will add a facility to his brush
and he will, while aiming at character, through breadth, unconsciously
introduce characteristic detail. This is the hope of the new method which
is now being introduced into the system of public school instruction.
The scheme as developed by Mr. Dow is decorative rather than naturalistic,
the aesthetic side with “Beauty,” as the watchword being in greatest
point. The filling of spaces in agreeable and harmonious arrangement does
not demand strict acknowledgment to natural aspect. Indeed this is denied
in most cases where the limitations of decoration are enjoined. With the
first principle, truth, upon which all education rests, as the basis of
such study, the nature part of this system will fall into its logical
channels. If nature’s largeness and simplicity contributes to its value,
then nature should be consulted when she is large and simple. Studies of
trees in gray silhouette, should be made at twilight, either of evening or
early morning, when the detail, which is useless to the decorative scheme,
is not seen. Under such conditions no slight or sacrifice is
necessitated. Nature then contributes her quantity directly and the
student has no warrant in assuming to change her. There are times also
when the face of nature is so varied that the most fantastic schemes of
_Notan_(15) are observed; a harbor filled with sails and sea-gulls, a
crowd of people speckling the shore, the houses of a village dotted over a
hillside. Under a direct light these become legitimate subjects offered by
nature herself to the scheme which, however, she only now and then honors.
The system therefore accompanies the student but part way and leaves him
still knocking at the door of the complete naturalistic presentation of
pictorial art, a development which stretches into limitless possibilities
by the use of the third dimension.
Work in two dimensions by reason of its greater simplicity should
naturally precede the complications involved in producing the completely
modelled forms of nature, and therein the argument for its use in the
early stages of the student’s development is a strong one.
SUGGESTIVENESS.
Breadth, so often accountable for mystery, leads to suggestiveness. It is
at this point that graphic art touches hands with the invisible,—where the
thing merges into the idea. Here we deliver over our little two by four
affair with its specifications all marked, into the keeping of larger
hands which expand its possibilities. If then Imagination carries us
beyond the limits of graphic art let us by all means employ it. Upon this
phase of art the realist can but look with folded arms. The dwellers in
the charmed world of Greek mythological fancy came on tiptoe to the
borders only of the daily life of that age.
The still-life painter has to do with fact, and for many other subjects
also the fact alone is sufficient. It is generally so in portraiture
where rendition of externals is attempted, but the portrait may suggest
revery and reflection, or, by _intimate accessory,_ provoke a discursive
movement in thought.
The realist is a man of drawing and how to do it, of paint and putting it
on, of textures and technique; he is a painter; and stops with that. But
the maker of pictures would step to another point of sight. He would so
aim as to shoot over the hilltop. He would hit something which he cannot
see.
Suggestion is both technical and subjective. There is suggestion of
detail, of act and of fact. In producing the effect, instead of the
detail, of a bunch of grass or a mass of drapery, we substitute suggestion
for literalism.
Fortuny, as a figure painter, was master of this art, his wonderful
arrangements of figures amongst drapery and in grasses bearing evidence.
Here, out of a fantastic crush of color, will be brought to view a
beautifully modelled hand and wrist which connect by the imagination only,
with the shoulder and body. These however, are ready to receive it and
like other parts of the picture are but points of fact to give
encouragement to the quest for the remainder. The hide and seek of the
subject, the “lost and found” in the line, the subsidizing of the
imagination for tribute, by his magic wand stroke were the artifices by
which Fortuny coquetted with nature and the public, fascinating the art
world of his day.
Fortuny, however, never took us beyond the bounds of his picture. It was
his doctrine that avoidance of detail was artful; that to carry the whole
burden when imagination could be tricked into shouldering some of it was
fool’s drudgery. Millet, who was his antipode as a clumsy handler of his
tools, declared himself fortunate in being able to suggest much more than
he could paint.
In one of the competitions at the Royal Academy in England, the prize was
awarded to that rendering of the expression of Grief which showed the face
entirely covered, the suggestion being declared stronger than the fact.
In the realm of suggestion however the landscape artist has much the wider
range. Who has not experienced the fascination of a hilltop? The hill
may be uninteresting—on your side,—but there is another. There is a path
winding over it, telling of the passing of few or many; your feet have
touched it and imagination has you in her train, and you follow eagerly to
the beck of her enchantment.
Suppose the scene at twilight on one of the great plains of northern
France where beets are the sole crop. A group of carts and oxen shut out
the background and no figures are seen. If however against the sky are
the silhouetted forms of two handfuls of beets, the sight of a figure or
even a part of him would seem unnecessary to a casual observer who wished
to know if there was any one about. These inanimate things moving through
the air mean life. The painter has created one figure and suggested the
likelihood of others by these few touches. Herein we have the suggestion
of a fact. The suggestion of an act, may further be developed by showing
the figure, having already finished with the handful, bending to pick up
others. Such a position would be an actual statement regarding the
present act but a suggested one concerning the former, the effect of which
is still seen. If then the figure were represented as performing
something in any moment of time farther removed from that governing the
position of the beets than natural action could control, he has forced
into his figure an accelerated action which ranges anywhere between the
startling, the amusing, and the impossible.
The power of implied force or action by suggestion is the basis of the
Greek sculptured art of the highest period. Much of the argument of
Lessing’s elaborate essay on the “Laocoon” is aimed at this point, which
is brought out in its completeness in his discussion of Timomachus’
treatment of the raving Ajax. “Ajax was not represented at the moment
when, raging among the herds he captures and slays goats and oxen,
mistaking them for men. The master showed him sitting weary after these
crazy deeds of heroism, and meditating self-destruction. That was really
the raving Ajax, not because he is raving at the moment, but because we
see he has been raving and with what violence his present reaction of
shame and despair vividly portrays. We see the force of the tempest in the
wrecks and the corpses with which it has strewn the beach.”
In the photographic realm of the nude, this quality is compulsory. We
don’t want to have offered us so intimate a likeness of a nude figure that
we ask, “Who is she, or he?” The general and not the particular suffices;
the type not the person. The painter’s art contains few stronger touches
through this means than the incident of the sleeping senator in Gérôme’s
_“__Death of Cæsar__”_.
In the suggestion of an idea, graphic and plastic art rise to the highest
levels of poetry. The picture or the poem then becomes the surface,
refracting the idea which stretches on into infinity.
The dying lion of Lucerne, mortally pierced by the shaft, the wounded lion
of Paris, striking under his forepaw the arrow meant for his destruction
are symbols memorializing the Swiss guard of Louis XVI, and the unequal
struggle of France against Germany in ’72.
At the death of Lorenzo the arts languished and Michel Angelo’s supine and
hanging figures in his tomb are there to indicate it.
MYSTERY.
Suggestion with its phantom guide-posts leads us through its varied mazes
to the dwelling-place of mystery. Here the artist will do well to tarry
and learn all the oracle may teach him.
The positive light of day passes to the twilight of the moon and stars.
What things may be seen and forms created out of the simple mystery of
twilight!
Its value by suggestion may be known technically to the artist, for
through the elimination of detail, the work is sifted to its essence and
we then see it in its bigness, if it has any, and if not we discover this
lack. When the studio light fails our best critic enters and discloses in
a few moments what we have been looking for all day long.
There should be in most pictures an opportunity of saying that which shall
be interpreted by each one according to his temperament, a little place
where each may delight in setting free his own imagination.
To account for the popularity of many pictures in both color and black and
white on any other ground than that of mystery seems ofttimes impossible.
The strong appeal made to all classes by subjects containing mysterious
suggestion is evidenced by the frequency of awards to such in photographic
and other competitions.
The student of photography asks if blurred edges, empty shadows and
vaporous detail mean quality. They certainly mean mystery, which when
applied to an appropriate subject signifies that the artist has joined his
art with the imagination of the beholder. He has therefore let it out at
large usury.
A cottage near a wood may be a very ordinary subject at three in the
afternoon, but at eight in the evening, seen in palpitating outline
against the forest blackness or the low toned sky, it becomes an element
in a scheme of far larger dimensions. The difference between the definite
and indefinite article, when coupled with that house, is the difference in
the quality of the art of which we speak.
Mystery by deception is a misguided use of an art quality.
In photography one man delights in the etching point and cannot stop until
he has made a net work all over his plate and led us to look at this
instead of his picture, which, if good, would have been let alone—a clever
device of throwing dust into our eyes. Another produces what appears to
be a pencil drawing, and a very good imitation some of them are, but at
best a deception. To make something look like something else is a
perversion of a brilliant discovery in photographic processes, which
offers the means for securing unity (and in this word lies every principle
of composition) by adding to or subtracting from the first product.
This may involve the destruction of two-thirds or three-fourths of the
plate or it may demand many an accent subtly supplied before unity is
satisfied, before the subject is stripped of its non-essentials or before
it may be regarded complete. Let such good work go on—and the other sort
too, if you will, the stunts, the summersaults and the hoop performances,
but in the dignity of photographic competitions give the deceptions, the
imitations of other things, no standing or quarter.
No one will deny the interest there is in a sensitive, flexible line and
in the rendition of mass by line. But photography is an art dealing with
finished surfaces of perfect modelling, and workers in this art should
preserve the “nature” of their subject. The man who feels line had better
etch or use a pencil.
SIMPLICITY.
Breadth while fostering suggestiveness gives birth to simplicity; a
subjective quality.
When applied to pictorial art, simplicity’s first appeal is a mental one.
We are attracted by neither technique nor color, nor things problematic to
the painter; but by _his_ mental attitude toward his subject. If we
determine that the result has come of elimination, that to produce it,
much has been thrown away and that the artist prefers what he has left at
a sacrifice, to what might have been, acknowledgment for this condensation
is coupled with respect. There is however a type of simplicity, the
Simple Simon sort, or an indisposition to undertake difficult things,
which leads to a selection of the easy subject in nature. Having found
some modest bit of charm, the Simple Simon turns and twists it to
attenuation, with the earnest declaration that there is no greater quality
than simplicity; but purposeful emptiness lifts its hands in vain for the
baptismal sanctification of the poetic spirit.
Where simplicity really serves the artist in his task is in those cases
demanding the unification of many elements.
In painting, Rubens and Turner thus wrought, bringing harmony from an
organ of three banks and a score of stops, setting themselves the task of
strong men.
Whatsoever subject be projected, the quality of principality takes
precedence over all others. This is the first step toward simplicity;
some one thought made chief; therefore some one object in the composition
of quantities and some one light in the scheme of chiaroscuro dominant.
With this determined, the problem which follows is, how shall principality
be maintained and to what degree of sacrifice must all other objects be
submitted. In the rapid examination of many works of art, those that
appeal strongest will be found to be those in which the elements are
simple, or, if complex, are governed by this quality through principality.
RESERVE.
Another bifurcation of simplicity is Reserve. In the simple statement of
the returning Roman general: “I came, I saw, I conquered,” all that the
senate desired to know was stated and it gained force by virtue of what
was left unsaid. Anything else might have gratified the curiosity of his
auditors, but the man, in holding this secret, made _himself_ an object of
interest. Rembrandt has told us that the legitimate gamut of expression
lies some distance between the deepest dark of our palette and its highest
light. Expression through limitations is dignified, a quality which the
strain to fill all limits sacrifices. It is the force quickly squandered
by the young actor, who “overacts,” disturbing the balance of forces in
the other parts.
Upon the pivot of Reserve the opposing creeds of the Impressionists and
Tonists bear with most contention. The former would lash their coursers
of Phoebus with unsparing hand from start to finish; the latter prefer the
“Waiting Race,” every atom of force governed and in control, held for the
opportunity, when increasing strength is necessary. It is the difference
between aiming at the bull’s-eye or the whole target.
The recent tendency of illustration to produce a result in three or four
flat tones is another voice proclaiming for reserve. The new movement in
decorative art may rightly claim this acknowledgment to it. In the work
of Jules Guérin it is interesting to note how the bit and bridle of these
two factors of breadth have been applied to every stroke, now and then
only, detail being allowed its say, and in but a still small voice.
With the large number of pictorial ideas now being recast in the
decorative formula it is necessary to have a clear notion of the purpose
and the limitations of decorative art, that this new art may not be
misunderstood nor confounded with the purely pictorial.
[Decorative Evolving the Pictorial; The North River--Prendergast; An
Intrusion--Bull; Landscape Arrangement--Guerin]
Decoration is essentially flat. It represents length and breadth. It
applies primarily to the flat vertical plane. It deals with the symbols
of form, with fact by suggestion, with color in mass. It substitutes
light and dark for nature’s light and shade. Conceptions evolved upon the
flat vertical plane deal with pictorial data as material for heraldic
quartering, with natural fact as secondary to the happy adjustment of
spaces. Nature to the decorative mind presents a variegated pattern from
which to clip any shape which the color design demands.
The influence on pictorial art of the decorative tendency, has brought
much into the pictorial category which has never been classified.
The Rose Croix influence has witnessed its seed maturing into the _art
nouveau,_ and what was nurtured under the forcing glass of decoration has
suddenly been transplanted into the garden of pictorial art. In
consequence it would appear that the constitution of the latter required
amendments as being scarce broad enough to accommodate the newer thing.
It is difficult, for instance, to reconcile the crowded and spotted
surfaces in Mr. Maurice Prendergast’s pictures, to the requirements of the
balanced conception. It must be recognized however that their first claim
for attraction is their color which is usually a harmony in red, yellow
and blue, and when the crowds of people or buildings do not form balancing
combinations they oft-times so fill the canvas as to leave excellent
spaces, more commanding through their isolation than the groups choking
the limits of the canvas. More often however these crowds may be found to
hang most beautifully to a natural axis and to comply with all the
principles of pictorial structure.
In his park scene, showing several tiers of equestrians one above the
other, the chief charm is the idea of continuous movement which the scene
conveys. The detail, wisely omitted, if supplied would arrest the
attention and a challenge on this basis would follow. It would then be
found that what we accepted as an impression of natural aspect we would
demand more of as a finished picture. It is because it is more decorative
than pictorial and because its pictorial parts are rendered by suggestion,
that it makes so winning an appeal.
The quaint and fascinating concepts of Mr. Bull in the range of animal
delineation are all struck in the stamp of this newer mould, and the list
is a constantly increasing one of the illustrators whose work bears this
sign.
RELIEF.
The popular notion concerning pictures is that they should stand out; but
as has been aptly said, “they should stand in”; so stand as to keep their
places within the frame and to keep the component parts in control. A
single object straining itself into prominence through the great relief it
exhibits, is just as objectionable as the one voice in a chorus heard
above the rest.
It is a law of light that all objects of the same plane receive
identically the same illuminations. If then, one seems favored, it must
be by suppression of the rest. Now and then this is necessary, but that
it occurs by this means and not by unnatural forcing must be evident.
It is not necessary for the artist to lift his sitter off the canvas by a
forced light on the figure and an intense shadow separating him from the
wall behind.
Correggio knew so well to conserve breadth just here. Instead of this
cheap and easy relief, he almost invariably chose to offset the dark side
with a darker tone in the background, allowing the figure’s shadow to melt
inperceptibly into the back space. Breadth and softness was of course the
result.
Occasionally however a distinct attempt at relief may be witnessed in the
work of good painters. Some of Valesquez’ standing portraits are
expressive of the painter’s joy in making them “stand out.” In all these
pictures however there are no other objects, no items added to the
background from which the figure is separated. The subject simply stands
in air. In other words it is an entity and not a composition.
The process technically for the subduing of relief is flattening the
shadows, thus rendering the marked roundness of objects less pronounced.
The envelopment of air which all painting should express,—the detachment
of one object from another,—goes as far toward the production of relief as
is necessary.
FINISH.
But the enquiry is naturally made, “if deception is undesirable, should
the artist pause before he has brought his work to a complete finish?”
Finish is not dependent upon putting in everything which nature contains,
else would art not be a matter of selection. Finish, though interpreted
singularly by different artists as to degree, is universally understood to
mean the same thing. Finish is the expression of the true relations of
objects or of the parts of one object. When the true relations or
_values_ of shade and color are rendered the work is complete. That ends
it. The student for the first year or so imagines his salvation depends
on detail and prides himself on how much of it he can see. The instructor
insists on his looking at nature with his eyes half closed in the hope
that he will take the big end of things. There is war between them until
the student capitulates, after which the instructor tells him to go as he
pleases knowing with this lesson learned he will not go wrong.
As a comprehensive example of finish without detail, one may take the
works of Mauve which aim to represent nature as truly as possible in her
exact tints. No one can observe any picture ever painted by this master
and not be drawn down close to the ground that he may walk on it or
elevate his head into the air and breathe it or feel it possible to send a
stone sailing into its liquid depths; but finish! when we look for it
where or what is it? At the Stewart Gallery the attendant was accustomed
to offer the visitor a magnifying glass with which to examine the lustre
of a horse’s eye or the buckles upon Napoleon’s saddle, in the “Review of
Cuirassiers at the Battle of Friedland” by Meissonier. These items are
what interested the great detailist and they are perfect; but with all the
intense effort of six close years of labor the picture has less real
finish than any work ever signed by Mauve. The big thing in finish has
been missed and I doubt if any artist or connoisseur has ever come upon
this picture, now in the Metropolitan Museum, without a slight gasp at the
false relation of color existing between the green wheat, the horses
trampling through it and the sky above it. The unity of these elements
was the first step in finish and the artist with all his vast knowledge of
little things never knew it.
If then, perfect finish is a matter beyond detail, it follows it must be
looked for elsewhere than at this end of nature.
The average man soon takes the artist’s intention and accepts the work on
this basis, thinking not of finish nor of its lack, but of nature;
acknowledging through the suggestions of the picture that he has been
touched by her.
“During these moments,” says John La Farge in his “Considerations on
Painting,” “are not the spectators excusable who live for the moment a
serene existence, feeling as if they had made the work they admire?”
The argument then is that the master painter is one who selects the
subject, takes precious care that its foundation quantities and qualities
are furnished and then hands it over to any one _to finish._ That it
falls into sympathetic hands is his single solicitude.
“It requires two men to paint a picture,” says Mr. Hopkinson Smith, “one
to work the brush and the other to kill the artist when he has finished
his picture and doesn’t know it.”
PART III - THE CRITICAL JUDGEMENT OF PICTURES
“With the critic all depends on the right application of his
principles in particular cases. And since there are fifty
ingenuous critics to one of penetration, it would be a wonder if
the applications were in every case with the caution indispensable
to an exact adjustment of the scales of art.”—_Lessing’s Laocöon._
CHAPTER XIII - THE MAN IN ART
“Art is a middle quality between a thought and a thing—the union of that
which is nature with that which is exclusively human.”(16)
For the every-day critic much of the secret lies in the proposition art is
nature, with the man added; nature seen through a temperament. Nature is
apparent on the surface of pictures. We see this side at a glance. To
find the man in it requires deeper sight.
If a painter of portraits, has he painted the surface, or the character?
Has he gone halting after it, or has he nailed it: has he won with it
finally? Is he a man whose natural refinement proved a true mirror in
which his sitter was reflected or has the coarse and uneven grain of the
artist become manifest in the false planes of the character presentation?
With respect to portraits less than other subjects, can we expect to find
them reflections of the artist’s personality. But some of the ablest,
while interpreting another’s character, frequently add somewhere in it
their own. The old masters rarely signed, feeling that they wrote
themselves all through their works.
The sure thing regarding the great portraitist is that he is a man of
refinement. This all history shows.
Is our artist a genre painter: then does his mind see small things to
delight _in_ them, or to delight us—if this, he is our servitor or little
better,—does he go at the whole thing with the sincerity of an artistic
purpose and somewhere place a veritable touch of genius, or only represent
one item after another until the whole catalogue of items is complete,
careful that he leave behind no just cause for reproach? Has the man
dignified his subject and raised it to something above imitative art, or
does he clearly state in his treatment of it that imitation is the end of
art?
Is he a painter of historic incident; then does he convince you that his
data are accurate, or allow you to conjecture that his details are
makeshifts? Is the scene an inspiration or commonplace? Has he been able
to put you into the atmosphere of a bygone day, or do his figures look
like models in hired costume and quite ready to resume their own clothes
and modern life?
Is he a painter of flowers; then is he an _artist_ or a botanist? Is he a
marinist; then, as a landsman has he made you feel like one, or has he
painted for you water that can be walked on without faith? Has he shown
you the dignity, the vastness, the tone, and above all the movement of the
sea?
Is he a landscape painter? Then is he in a position to assert himself to
a greater degree than they all? The farther one may remove himself from
his theme, the less of its minutiae will he see. The process of
simplification is individual. What he takes from nature he puts back out
of himself. The landscape painter becomes an interpreter of moods, his
own as well as nature’s, and in his selection of these he reveals himself.
Does he show you the kingdoms of the world from some high mount, or make
you believe they may be found if you keep on moving through the air and
over the ground such as he creates? Does he make you listen with him to
the soft low music when nature is kindly and tender and lovable, or is his
stuff of that robust fibre which makes her companionable to him in her
ruggedness and strength?
As the hidden forces of nature control man yet bend to his
bidding—electricity, air, steam, etc.—so do the open and obvious ones
which the painter deals with. They dictate all the conditions and yet
somehow—he governs. The different ways in which he does this gives to art
its variety and enables us to form a scale of relative values.
The work of art which attracts us excites two emotions; pleasure in the
subject; admiration for the artist. Exhibitions of strength and skill
claim our interest not so much for the thing done, which often perishes
with the doing, as for the doer. The poet with a hidden longing to
express or a story to tell, who binds himself to the curious limitations
of the Italian sonnet, in giving evidence of his powers, excites greater
admiration than though he had not assumed such conditions.
It is the personal element which has established photography and given it
art character. Says J. C. Van Dyke, “a picture is but an autobiographical
statement; it is the man and not the facts that may awaken our admiration;
for, unless we feel his presence and know his genius the picture is
nothing but a collection of incidents. It is not the work but the worker,
not the mould but the moulder, not the paint but the painter.”
Witness it in the work of Michel Angelo, in both paint and marble. How we
feel _the man of it_ in Franz Hals, in Rembrandt, in Rubens, Van Dyck,
Valasquez, Ribera and Goya, in Watteau and Teniers, in Millet and Troyon,
in Rousseau and Rico, in Turner, Constable and Gainsborough, in Fildes and
Holl, in Whistler, in Monet, in Rodin and Barnard, in Inness, in Wyant and
Geo. Fuller.
Like religion, art is not a matter of surfaces.
Its essence is to be spiritually discerned. It is the spirit of the
artist you must seek;—find the man.
Back of the canvas that throbs, the painter is hinted and
hidden;
Into the statue that breathes the soul of the sculptor is
bidden;
Under the joy that is felt lie the infinite issue of feeling;
Crowning the glory revealed is the glory that crowns the
revealing.
Great are the symbols of being, but that which is symboled is
greater;
Vast the create and beheld, but vaster the inward creator;
Back of the sound broods the silence, back of the gift stands
the giving;
Back of the hand that receives thrill the sensitive nerves of
receiving.
CHAPTER XIV - SPECIFIC QUALITIES AND FAULTS
If we recognize the manly qualities in a picture, the work has at least a
favorable introduction. Farther than this point it may not please us, but
if not, it should remain a question of taste between the artist and
yourself; and, concerning taste there is no disputing. It is just at this
point that the superficial critic errs. Dislike for the subject, however
ably expressed, is never cause for condemnation. The fair question to ask
is, what was the artist’s intention? Its answer provokes your challenge;
“Is it worth the expression!” If conceded, the real judgment begins. Has
he done it; if not wholly—in what degree?
The question of degree will demand the patience of good judgment. There
may be much or little sanity in condemning a picture owing to a single
fault. It depends on the kind. There are errors of selection, of
presentation (technique) of natural fact, and of art principle. We can
excuse the first, condone the second, find small palliation for the third,
but he for whom art principles mean nothing, is an art anarchist.
Errors of selection are errors of judgment. A man may choose a subject
which is unprofitable and which refuses to yield fruit; and yet in his
effort at reediting its elements he may have shown great skill and
knowledge and may have expended upon it his rarest gifts—fine technique
and good color. The critic must read between the lines and blame the
judgment, not the art. Feeble selection and weak composition will be more
easily specified as faults than bad drawing and unworthy color.
To the profession, the epithet “commonplace” weighs heavily against a work
of art. Selection of what is fitting as an art subject means experience.
The “ungrateful” subject and bad composition are therefore likely to mark
the _nouveau_ in picture making—the student fresh from the atelier with
accurate drawing and true color and who may be full of promise, but who
has become tangled with what the French term the soujet ingrat. Every
artist has studies of this sort which contain sufficient truth to save
them from being painted over as canvas, and most painters know the place
for such—the storeroom. Exhibition of studies is interesting as
disclosing the means to an end, and the public should discern between the
intention of the “study” and of the picture.
Herein lies the injustice of acquiring the posthumous effects of an artist
and exposing for sale every scrap to be found. The ravenous group of
dealers which made descent upon the Millet cottage at the death of that
artist effected as clean a sweep as an army of ants in an Indian bungalow.
In consequence we see in galleries throughout Europe and this country many
trifles in pastel which are not only incomplete but positively bad as
color. Millet used but a few hard crayons for trials in color suggestion,
to be translated in oil. Some were failures in composition and in most
the color is nothing more than any immature hand could produce with such
restricted means. To allow these to enter into any estimate of Millet or
to take them seriously as containing his own estimate of art, or as
intrinsically valuable, is folly.
The faults of selection may also be open to difference of opinion. “Who
would want to paint you when no one wants to look at you?” said an old
epigrammatist to a misshapen man. “Not so,” says the artist; “I will
paint you though people may not like to look at you and they will look at
my portrait not for your sake but for my art, and find it interesting.”
The cult that declares for anything as a subject, its value dependent upon
that which the artist adds, stands as a healthy balance to that band of
literary painters which affected English art a generation ago, the school
of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Maddox-Brown, who strove to present _ideas_
through art. With them the idea was paramount, and the technical in time
dwindled, the subject with its frequently ramified meaning, proving to be
beyond their art expression.
Again, the popular attempt to conceive in pictures that which the artist
never expected us to find is as reprehensible in graphic as in musical
art. There is often no literary meaning whatever in some of the best
examples of both. Harmony, tone, color and technique pure and simple are
the full compass of the intention. What this may suggest to the
individual he is welcome to, but the glib dictum of certain preachers on
art as to hidden intentions would indicate that they had effected an
agreement, with the full confidence of the silent partner to exploit him.
Beware of the gilt edged footnote, or the art that depends upon it. A
writer of ordinary imagination and fluent English can put an aureole about
any work of art he desires and much reputation is secured on this wise.
In the presentation of a subject through given pictorial elements, the
critic will know whether the most has been made of the opportunity. If
the composition prove satisfactory and the theme as presented still fails
to move the critic, he must shift from the scientific analysis to those
qualities governing the artist subjectively. He is lacking in
“temperament,” and without temperament who in art has a chance? With
years in the schools and a technique of mechanical perfection he lacks the
divine fire and leaves us cold. It is for the critic to say this, and
herein he becomes a teacher to public and artist.
The patron who agreed that a picture under discussion had every quality
which the salesman mentioned and patiently heard him through but quietly
remarked, “It hasn’t that,” as he snapped his finger, is the sort of a
critic who does not need to know the names of things in art. He felt a
picture should have snap, and if it did not, it was lacking.
But beyond the presentation of a theme having in it the mark of genius, is
that of workmanlike technique. The demand of the present age is for this.
If a subject is _not painted_ it will scarce hold as art. Ideas,
composition, even color and harmony plead in vain; the spirit of the times
sits thus in judgment.
The presentation also should be individual, the unmistakable sign of
distinction. To be able to tell at a glance by this mark puts us on the
footing of intimate acquaintance. A difference exists between this and
the well-known mannerisms of individuals. The latter applies to special
items in pictures, the former to the individual style of expression. An
artist may have one way of seeing all trees, or the similarity of one
picture with another may be because there is only one sort of tree that
interests him, or one time of day when all trees attract his brush. In
the first case he is a mannerist, in the other a worker in a chosen
groove. It cannot be denied that many artists making a success in a
limited range of subject consent to stop, and go no further, under
pressure of dealers or the public. The demand for specialists has much
more reason in science and mechanics than in art, which is or should be a
result of impulse.(17)
Corot declared he preferred the low sweet music of early dawn and to him
there was enough variety in it to keep him employed as long as he could
paint; but the thralldom of an artist who follows in the groove of a
bygone success because if he steps out of it the dealer frowns and will
not handle his work, is pitiable, exposing to view year by year the
remonitory canvas with such slight changes as newness demands. It would
be a healthier sign in art if the press and public would applaud new
ventures when it was clear that an artist, thereby, was seeking to do
better things and perhaps find himself in a newer vein. But variety in
art it is maintained need not come of variety in the individual but of a
variety of individuals. So Van Marke must paint cows, and Jacque sheep
and Wouvermanns must be told by the inevitable white horse, and have the
mere mention of the artist’s name mean the same sort of picture every
time. This aids the simplification of a many-sided question. The public,
as Mr. Hamerton declares, hates to burden itself with names; to which
might be added that it also hates to differentiate with any single name.
A good portraitist in England one year exhibited at the Royal Academy a
wonderfully painted peacock. The people raved and thereafter he was
allowed to paint nothing else. Occasionally it is shown that this
discrimination is without reason, as many men rise above the restriction.
The Gainsborough portrait and landscape are equally strong, the works of
painters in marble, and sculptors who use color, have proved a surprise to
the critics and an argument against the “specialty.”
There are two degrees in the subversion of the natural fact.
If, for example, under the rule in physics, the angle of incidence being
equal to the angle of reflection, it be found that a cloud in the sky will
reflect into water too near the bottom of the picture, a painter’s license
may move it higher _in its vertical line;_ but if the same cloud is made
to reflect at an angle several degrees to right or left, the artist breaks
the simplest law of optics. The painter’s art at best is one of
deception. In the first case the lie was plausible. In the second case
any schoolboy could have “told on” the artist.
There are good painters who appear to know little and care less for
physical fact. Their business is with the surface of the earth; the whys
and wherefores of the universe they ignore, complacent in their ignorance
until it leads them to place the evening star within the arc of the
crescent moon, when they are annoyed to be told that the moon does not
grow from this shape to the full orb once a month. But ofttimes, though
the artist may not flout the universe, he shows his carelessness of
natural fact and needs the snubbing. It is in this range that the little
critic walks triumphantly posing as a shrewd and a discerning one. He
holds up inconsistencies with his deft thumb and finger and cries, “what a
smart boy am I.” And yet in spite of him Rubens, for the sake of a better
line in the foreground of one of his greatest compositions dares to
reconstruct a horse with his head issuing from his hind quarters, allowing
the tail to serve as the mane, and Turner kept on drawing castles all
wrong.
But these critics have their place. Even Ruskin accepted this as a part of
his work.
There are occasions, as every artist will admit, when the artless critic
with his crude commonplaces is most welcome.
As to the violator of _art principles,_ his range in art must perforce be
short, his reward a smile of pity, his finish suicide. Originality may
find all the latitude it requires within the limits of Art Principles.
Ruskin in his principles of drawing enumerates these as “Principality,
i.e., a chief object in a picture to which others point: Repetition, the
doubling of objects gives quietude: Symmetry develops solemnity, but in
landscape it must be balanced, not formal. Continuity: as in a succession
of pillars or promontories or clouds involving change and relief, or else
it would be mere monotonous repetition. Curvature: all beautiful objects
are bounded by infinite curves, that is to say, of infinitely changing
direction, or else made up of an infinite number of subordinate curves.
Radiation: illustrated in leaves and boughs and in the structure of
organic bodies. Contrast: of shapes and substances and of general lines;
being the complement of the law of continuity, contrast of light and shade
not being enough. Interchange: as in heraldic quartering. Consistency: or
breadth overriding petty contrast and giving the effect of aggregate color
or form. Harmony: art is an abstract and must be harmoniously abstracted,
keeping the relations of values.”
With the above principles of composition Mr. Ruskin aims to cover the
field of architecture, sculpture and painting, and he declares there are
doubtless others which he cannot define “and these the most important and
connected with the deepest powers of art. The best part of every work of
art is inexplicable. It is good because it is good.”
Mr. Hamerton enumerates the duties of the critic as follows; “to utter
unpopular truths; to instruct the public in the theoretical knowledge of
art; to defend true living artists against the malice of the ignorant; to
prevent false living artists from acquiring an influence injurious to the
general interests of art; to exalt the fame of dead artists whose example
may be beneficial; to weaken the fame of dead artists whose names have an
injurious degree of authority; to speak always with absolute sincerity; to
give expression to vicissitudes of opinion, not fearing the imputation of
inconsistency; to make himself as thoroughly informed as his time and
opportunities will allow, about everything concerning the Fine Arts,
whether directly or indirectly; to enlarge his own powers of sympathy; to
resist the formation of prejudices.” The above requirements are well
stated for critics who, by reason of the authority of their position as
press writers, are teachers of art. As to the personnel and
qualifications of this Faculty of Instruction, investigation would prove
embarrassing. The shallowness of the average review of current
exhibitions is no more surprising, than that responsible editors of
newspapers place such consignments in the hands of the
all-around-reporter, to whom a picture show is no more important than a
fire or a function. Mr. Hamerton in his essay urges artists to write on
art topics, as their opinions are expert testimony, a suggestion
practically applied by a small group of daily papers in America. Says Mr.
Stillman, “No labor of any human worker is ever subjected to such
degradation as is art to-day under the criticism of the daily paper.”
Probably no influence is more responsible for the apathy and distrust of
the public regarding art than these reviews of exhibitions for the daily
press. The reader quotes as authoritative the dictum of a great journal,
seldom reflecting that this is the opinion of one man, who, with rarest
exception, is the least qualified of any writer on the staff to speak on
his theme. Such is the value which the average manager puts upon the
subject. To review the picked efforts of a year, of several hundred men, a
scant column is deemed sufficient. Howsoever honest may be the intention
toward these, the limitations render the task hopeless, for all efforts to
level the scales to a nicety may be foiled by the shears of the managing
editor if perchance another petit larceny should require any part of the
space.
So the critic gives it up, mounts a pedestal, waves whole walls, aye
galleries, to oblivion, and with the sumptuousness of a Nero, adopts the
magnificent background, in the light of which for a moment he shines
resplendent, as a gilded setting for his oracles.
CHAPTER XV - THE PICTURE SENSE
“Fortunate is he, who at an early age knows what art is.”(18)
Howsoever eloquent may be the artist in his work, it is convincing only in
that degree to which his audience is prepared to understand his language
and comprehend his subject.
“The artist hangs his brains upon the wall,” said the veteran salesman of
the National Academy, and there they remain without explanation or
defense. The crowd as it passes, enjoys or jeers, as the ideas of this
mute language are comprehended or confounded. Art requires no apology and
asks none; all she requests is that those who would affect her must know
the principles upon which she works. An age of altruism should be able to
insure to the artist sufficient culture in his audience so that his
language be understood and that his speech be not reckoned as an uncertain
sound. The public should form with him an industrial partnership, not in
the limited sense of giving and taking, but of something founded on
comprehensibility.
What proportion of the visitors to an annual exhibition can intelligently
state the purpose of impressionism, or distinguish between this and tonal
art; what proportion think of art only as it exploits a “subject” or
“tells a story”; how many look at but one class of pictures and have no
interest in the rest; how many go through the catalogue with a prayer-book
fidelity, and know nothing of it all when they come out! How many know
enough to hang the pictures in their own houses so that each picture is
helped and none damaged?
Could it be safely inferred that every collector of pictures knows and
feels to the point of _giving a reason_ for his choice of pictures, or
even _reasonable_ advice to a friend who would also own pictures? Is not
much of what is bought taken on the word of a reliable dealer and owned in
the satisfaction of its being “all right,” and perhaps “safe,” as an
investment? Is it unreasonable to ask the many sharers in the passing
picture pleasures of a great city to make themselves intelligent in some
other and more practical way than by _contact,_ gleaning only through a
lifetime what should have been theirs without delay _as a foundation_ and
to exchange for the vague impression of pleasure, defended in the simple
comfort of _knowing what one likes,_ the enjoyment of sure authority and a
reason for it.
The best of all means for acquiring _art sense_ is association; first,
with a personality; second, with the product. The artist’s safest method
with the uninitiated is to use the speech which they understand. In
conversation, artists, as a rule, talk freely, and one may get deeper into
art from a fortnight’s sojourn with a group of artists than from all the
treatises ever written on the philosophy of art. The most successful
collectors of pictures know this. They study artists as well as pictures.
But on the other hand must it not also be conceded that acquaintance with
fine examples of art is in a fair way of cultivating the keen and
intelligent collector in the pictorial sense to a degree beyond that of
those artists whose associations are altogether with their own works or
with those who think with them, who must of necessity believe most
sincerely in themselves and who are thus obliged to operate in a groove,
and with consequent bias. For this reason association should be varied.
No one has the whole truth.
Music scores a point beyond painting, in necessitating a personality. We
see the interpreter and this intimacy assists comprehension. But
howsoever potent is association with art and artist, one may thus never
get as closely in touch with art as by working with her. The best and
safest critic is of course one who has performed. Experts are those
persons who have passed through every branch and know the entire
“business.”
The years of toil to students who eventually never arrive are incidentally
spent in gaining the knowledge to thus know pictures, and though the
success of accomplishment be denied, their compensation lies in the
lengthened reach of a new horizon which meantime has been opened to them.
Whether the picture be found in nature and is to be rescued, as is the
bas-relief from its enveloping mould, cut out of its surroundings by the
four sides of the canvas and brought indoors with the same glow of triumph
as the geologist feels in picking a turquoise out of a rock at which
others had stared and found nothing; or whether it be found, as one of
many in a collection of prints or paintings; or whether the recognition be
personal and asks the acceptance of something wrought by one’s own hand—to
know a picture when one sees it—this is art _sense._ Backed by a judgment
presenting a defense to the protests of criticism, it becomes art
_knowledge._
To find and preserve pictures out of the maze of nature is the labor of
the artist: to recognize them when found, the privilege of the
connoisseur.
The guileless prostrations which the many affect regarding art judgments
evoke the same degree of pity as the assertion of the beggar that he needs
money for a night’s lodging when you and he know that one is awaiting him
for the asking at the Bureau of Charities. The many declare they know
nothing about art, the while having an all around culture in the
humanities, in literature, poetry, prose composition, music, æsthetics,
etc. The principles of all the arts being identical, how simple would it
be to apply those governing the arts which one knows to what is unknown.
The musician and poet make use of contrast, light and shade, gradation,
antithesis, balance, accent, force by opposition, isolation and omission,
rhythm, tone-color, climax, and above all unity and harmony.
Let the musician and him who knows literature challenge the work of art
for a violation of any of these and the judgment which results may be
accepted seriously; and yet the essence lies beyond—with nature herself.
It is just here that the stock writer of the daily paper misses it. He
may have science enough, but lacks the love, the revelation _through
communion._