Verestchagin says the old-fashioned way of setting a portrait-head
against a dark ground is not only unnecessary, but being usually untrue
when a person is seen by daylight, should be exploded as false and
unreal. But it is certain a light garish background behind a painted
head will not permit that head to have the importance it should have in
reality, when the actual facts, solidity, movement, play of light and
shadow, personal knowledge of the individual or his history, joined to
the effects of different planes, distances, materials, &c., will combine
to invest the reality with interests the most subtle and dexterous
artistic contrivances cannot compete with, and which certainly the
artist cannot with reason be asked to resign. A sense of the power of an
autocrat, from whose lips one might be awaiting consignment to a dungeon
or death, would be as much felt if he stood in front of the commonest
wall-paper, in the commonest lodging-house, in the meanest
watering-place, but no such impressions could be conveyed by the painter
who depicted such surroundings. Lastly, I must strongly dissent from the
opinion recently expressed by some, that seems to imply that a
portrait-picture need have no interest excepting in the figure, and that
the background had better be without any. This may be a good principle
for producing an effect on the walls of an exhibition-room, where the
surroundings are incongruous and inharmonious; an intellectual or
beautiful face should be more interesting than any accessories the
artist could put into the background. No amount of elaboration in the
background could disturb the attention of any one looking at the
portrait of Julius the Second by Raphael, also in the Tribune, which I
cannot help thinking is _the_ finished portrait in the world. A portrait
is _the most truly historical picture_, and this the most monumental and
historical of portraits. The longer one looks at it the more it demands
attention. A superficial picture is like a superficial character--it may
do for an acquaintance, but not for a friend. One never gets to the
end of things to interest and admire in many old portrait-pictures.
_Watts._
[Illustration: _J. Van Eyck_ PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST'S WIFE _Bruckmann_]