passing through the atmosphere, undergo certain modifications. Should
the object be a red one, the yellow, green, and blue rays, all, in fact,
except the red rays, are absorbed by the object, while the red is
allowed to escape. These red rays striking the retina produce certain
effects which convey to our consciousness the sensation of red, and we
say "That is a red object." But there may be particles of moisture or
dust in the air that will modify the red rays so that by the time they
reach the eye they may be somewhat different. This modification is
naturally most effective when a large amount of atmosphere has to be
passed through, and in things very distant the colour of the natural
object is often entirely lost, to be replaced by atmospheric colours, as
we see in distant mountains when the air is not perfectly clear. But we
must not stray into the fascinating province of colour.
What chiefly concerns us here is the fact that the pictures on our
retinas are flat, of two dimensions, the same as the canvas on which we
paint. If you examine these visual pictures without any prejudice, as
one may with a camera obscura, you will see that they are composed of
masses of colour in infinite variety and complexity, of different shapes
and gradations, and with many varieties of edges; giving to the eye the
illusion of nature with actual depths and distances, although one knows
all the time that it is a flat table on which one is looking.
Seeing then that our eyes have only flat pictures containing
two-dimension information about the objective world, from whence is
this knowledge of distance and the solidity of things? How do we _see_
the third dimension, the depth and thickness, by means of flat pictures
of two dimensions?
The power to judge distance is due principally to our possessing two
eyes situated in slightly different positions, from which we get two
views of objects, and also to the power possessed by the eyes of
focussing at different distances, others being out of focus for the time
being. In a picture the eyes can only focus at one distance (the
distance the eye is from the plane of the picture when you are looking
at it), and this is one of the chief causes of the perennial difficulty
in painting backgrounds. In nature they are out of focus when one is
looking at an object, but in a painting the background is necessarily on
the same focal plane as the object. Numerous are the devices resorted to
by painters to overcome this difficulty, but they do not concern us
here.
The fact that we have two flat pictures on our two retinas to help us,
and that we can focus at different planes, would not suffice to account
for our knowledge of the solidity and shape of the objective world, were
these senses not associated with another sense all important in ideas of
form, #the sense of touch#.
This sense is very highly developed in us, and the earlier period of our
existence is largely given over to feeling for the objective world
outside ourselves. Who has not watched the little baby hands feeling for
everything within reach, and without its reach, for the matter of that;
for the infant has no knowledge yet of what is and what is not within
its reach. Who has not offered some bright object to a young child and
watched its clumsy attempts to feel for it, almost as clumsy at first as
if it were blind, as it has not yet learned to focus distances. And when
he has at last got hold of it, how eagerly he feels it all over, looking
intently at it all the time; thus learning early to associate the "feel
of an object" with its appearance. In this way by degrees he acquires
those ideas of roughness and smoothness, hardness and softness,
solidity, &c., which later on he will be able to distinguish by vision
alone, and without touching the object.
Our survival depends so much on this sense of touch, that it is of the
first importance to us. We must know whether the ground is hard enough
for us to walk on, or whether there is a hole in front of us; and masses
of colour rays striking the retina, which is what vision amounts to,
will not of themselves tell us. But associated with the knowledge
accumulated in our early years, by connecting touch with sight, we do
know when certain combinations of colour rays strike the eye that there
is a road for us to walk on, and that when certain other combinations
occur there is a hole in front of us, or the edge of a precipice.
And likewise with hardness and softness, the child who strikes his head
against the bed-post is forcibly reminded by nature that such things are
to be avoided, and feeling that it is hard and that hardness has a
certain look, it avoids that kind of thing in the future. And when it
strikes its head against the pillow, it learns the nature of softness,
and associating this sensation with the appearance of the pillow, knows
in future that when softness is observed it need not be avoided as
hardness must be.
Sight is therefore not a matter of the eye alone. A whole train of
associations connected with the objective world is set going in the mind
when rays of light strike the retina refracted from objects. And these
associations vary enormously in quantity and value with different
individuals; but the one we are here chiefly concerned with is this
universal one of touch. Everybody "sees" the shape of an object, and
"sees" whether it "looks" hard or soft, &c. Sees, in other words, the
"feel" of it.
If you are asked to think of an object, say a cone, it will not, I
think, be the visual aspect that will occur to most people. They will
think of a circular base from which a continuous side slopes up to a
point situated above its centre, as one would feel it. The fact that in
almost every visual aspect the base line is that of an ellipse, not a
circle, comes as a surprise to people unaccustomed to drawing.
But above these cruder instances, what a wealth of associations crowd in
upon the mind, when a sight that moves one is observed. Put two men
before a scene, one an ordinary person and the other a great poet, and
ask them to describe what they see. Assuming them both to be possessed
of a reasonable power honestly to express themselves, what a difference
would there be in the value of their descriptions. Or take two painters
both equally gifted in the power of expressing their visual perceptions,
and put them before the scene to paint it. And assuming one to be a
commonplace man and the other a great artist, what a difference will
there be in their work. The commonplace painter will paint a commonplace
picture, while the form and colour will be the means of stirring deep
associations and feelings in the mind of the other, and will move him
to paint the scene so that the same splendour of associations may be
conveyed to the beholder.
[Illustration: Plate VII.
STUDY FOR THE FIGURE OF APOLLO IN THE PICTURE "APOLLO AND DAPHNE"
In natural red chalk rubbed with finger; the high lights are picked out
with rubber.]
But to return to our infant mind. While the development of the
perception of things has been going on, the purely visual side of the
question, the observation of the picture on the retina for what it is as
form and colour, has been neglected--neglected to such an extent that
when the child comes to attempt drawing, #sight is not the sense he
consults#. The mental idea of the objective world that has grown up in
his mind is now associated more directly with touch than with sight,
with the felt shape rather than the visual appearance. So that if he is
asked to draw a head, he thinks of it first as an object having a
continuous boundary in space. This his mind instinctively conceives as a
line. Then, hair he expresses by a row of little lines coming out from
the boundary, all round the top. He thinks of eyes as two points or
circles, or as points in circles, and the nose either as a triangle or
an L-shaped line. If you feel the nose you will see the reason of this.
Down the front you have the L line, and if you feel round it you will
find the two sides meeting at the top and a base joining them,
suggesting the triangle. The mouth similarly is an opening with a row of
teeth, which are generally shown although so seldom seen, but always
apparent if the mouth is felt (see diagram A). This is, I think, a fair
type of the first drawing the ordinary child makes--and judging by some
ancient scribbling of the same order I remember noticing scratched on a
wall at Pompeii, and by savage drawing generally, it appears to be a
fairly universal type. It is a very remarkable thing which, as far as I
know, has not yet been pointed out, that in these first attempts at
drawing the vision should not be consulted. A blind man would not draw
differently, could he but see to draw. Were vision the first sense
consulted, and were the simplest visual appearance sought after, one
might expect something like diagram B, the shadows under eyes, nose,
mouth, and chin, with the darker mass of the hair being the simplest
thing the visual appearance can be reduced to. But despite this being
quite as easy to do, it does not appeal to the ordinary child as the
other type does, because it does not satisfy the sense of touch that
forms so large a part of the idea of an object in the mind. All
architectural elevations and geometrical projections generally appeal to
this mental idea of form. They consist of views of a building or object
that could never possibly be seen by anybody, assuming as they do that
the eye of the spectator is exactly in front of every part of the
building at the same time, a physical impossibility. And yet so removed
from the actual visual appearance is our mental idea of objects that
such drawings do convey a very accurate idea of a building or object.
And of course they have great advantage as working drawings in that they
can be scaled.
[Illustration: Diagram I.
A. TYPE OF FIRST DRAWING MADE BY CHILDREN, SHOWING HOW VISION HAS NOT
BEEN CONSULTED
B. TYPE OF WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPECTED IF CRUDEST EXPRESSION OF VISUAL
APPEARANCE HAD BEEN ATTEMPTED]
If so early the sense of vision is neglected and relegated to be the
handmaiden of other senses, it is no wonder that in the average adult it
is in such a shocking state of neglect. I feel convinced that with the
great majority of people vision is seldom if ever consulted for itself,
but only to minister to some other sense. They look at the sky to see if
it is going to be fine; at the fields to see if they are dry enough to
walk on, or whether there will be a good crop of hay; at the stream not
to observe the beauty of the reflections from the blue sky or green
fields dancing upon its surface or the rich colouring of its shadowed
depths, but to calculate how deep it is or how much power it would
supply to work a mill, how many fish it contains, or some other
association alien to its visual aspect. If one looks up at a fine mass
of cumulus clouds above a London street, the ordinary passer-by who
follows one's gaze expects to see a balloon or a flying-machine at
least, and when he sees it is only clouds he is apt to wonder what one
is gazing at. The beautiful form and colour of the cloud seem to be
unobserved. Clouds mean nothing to him but an accumulation of water dust
that may bring rain. This accounts in some way for the number of good
paintings that are incomprehensible to the majority of people. It is
only those pictures that pursue the visual aspect of objects to a
sufficient completion to contain the suggestion of these other
associations, that they understand at all. Other pictures, they say, are
not finished enough. And it is so seldom that a picture can have this
petty realisation and at the same time be an expression of those larger
emotional qualities that constitute good painting.
The early paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood appear to be a
striking exception to this. But in their work the excessive realisation
of all details was part of the expression and gave emphasis to the
poetic idea at the basis of their pictures, and was therefore part of
the artistic intention. In these paintings the fiery intensity with
which every little detail was painted made their picture a ready medium
for the expression of poetic thought, a sort of "painted poetry," every
detail being selected on account of some symbolic meaning it had,
bearing on the poetic idea that was the object of the picture.
But to those painters who do not attempt "painted poetry," but seek in
painting a poetry of its own, a visual poetry, this excessive finish (as
it is called) is irksome, as it mars the expression of those qualities
in vision they wish to express. Finish in art has no connection with the
amount of detail in a picture, but has reference only to the
completeness with which the emotional idea the painter set out to
express has been realised.
[Illustration: Plate VIII.
STUDY FOR A PICTURE
In red conté chalk and white pastel rubbed on toned paper.]
The visual blindness of the majority of people is greatly to be
deplored, as nature is ever offering them on their retina, even in the
meanest slum, a music of colour and form that is a constant source of
pleasure to those who can see it. But so many are content to use this
wonderful faculty of vision for utilitarian purposes only. It is the
privilege of the artist to show how wonderful and beautiful is all this
music of colour and form, so that people, having been moved by it in his
work, may be encouraged to see the same beauty in the things around
them. This is the best argument in favour of making art a subject of
general education: that it should teach people to see. Everybody does
not need to draw and paint, but if everybody could get the faculty of
appreciating the form and colour on their retinas as form and colour,
what a wealth would always be at their disposal for enjoyment! The
Japanese habit of looking at a landscape upside down between their legs
is a way of seeing without the deadening influence of touch
associations. Thus looking, one is surprised into seeing for once the
colour and form of things with the association of touch for the moment
forgotten, and is puzzled at the beauty. The odd thing is that although
thus we see things upside down, the pictures on our retinas are for once
the right way up; for ordinarily the visual picture is inverted on the
retina, like that on the ground glass at the back of a photographic
camera.
To sum up this somewhat rambling chapter, I have endeavoured to show
that there are two aspects from which the objective world can be
apprehended. There is the purely mental perception founded chiefly on
knowledge derived from our sense of touch associated with vision, whose
primitive instinct is to put an outline round objects as representing
their boundaries in space. And secondly, there is the visual perception,
which is concerned with the visual aspects of objects as they appear on
the retina; an arrangement of colour shapes, a sort of mosaic of colour.
And these two aspects give us two different points of view from which
the representation of visible things can be approached.
When the representation from either point of view is carried far enough,
the result is very similar. Work built up on outline drawing to which
has been added light and shade, colour, aerial perspective, &c., may
eventually approximate to the perfect visual appearance. And inversely,
representations approached from the point of view of pure vision, the
mosaic of colour on the retina, if pushed far enough, may satisfy the
mental perception of form with its touch associations. And of course the
two points of view are intimately connected. You cannot put an accurate
outline round an object without observing the shape it occupies in the
field of vision. And it is difficult to consider the "mosaic of colour
forms" without being very conscious of the objective significance of the
colour masses portrayed. But they present two entirely different and
opposite points of view from which the representation of objects can be
approached. In considering the subject of drawing I think it necessary
to make this division of the subject, and both methods of form
expression should be studied by the student. Let us call the first
method Line Drawing and the second Mass Drawing. Most modern drawing is
a mixture of both these points of view, but they should be studied
separately if confusion is to be avoided. If the student neglects line
drawing, his work will lack the expressive significance of form that
only a feeling for lines seems to have the secret of conveying; while,
if he neglects mass drawing, he will be poorly equipped when he comes to
express form with a brush full of paint to work with.
IV
LINE DRAWING
Most of the earliest forms of drawing known to us in history, like those
of the child we were discussing in the last chapter, are largely in the
nature of outline drawings. This is a remarkable fact considering the
somewhat remote relation lines have to the complete phenomena of vision.
Outlines can only be said to exist in appearances as the boundaries of
masses. But even here a line seems a poor thing from the visual point of
view; as the boundaries are not always clearly defined, but are
continually merging into the surrounding mass and losing themselves to
be caught up again later on and defined once more. Its relationship with
visual appearances is not sufficient to justify the instinct for line
drawing. It comes, I think, as has already been said, from the sense of
touch. When an object is felt there is no merging in the surrounding
mass, but a firm definition of its boundary, which the mind
instinctively conceives as a line.
There is a more direct appeal to the imagination in line drawing than in
possibly anything else in pictorial art. The emotional stimulus given by
fine design is due largely to line work. The power a line possesses of
instinctively directing the eye along its course is of the utmost value
also, enabling the artist to concentrate the attention of the beholder
where he wishes. Then there is a harmonic sense in lines and their
relationships, a music of line that is found at the basis of all good
art. But this subject will be treated later on when talking of line
rhythm.
Most artists whose work makes a large appeal to the imagination are
strong on the value of line. Blake, whose visual knowledge was such a
negligible quantity, but whose mental perceptions were so magnificent,
was always insisting on its value. And his designs are splendid examples
of its powerful appeal to the imagination.
On this basis of line drawing the development of art proceeded. The
early Egyptian wall paintings were outlines tinted, and the earliest
wall sculpture was an incised outline. After these incised lines some
man of genius thought of cutting away the surface of the wall between
the outlines and modelling it in low relief. The appearance of this may
have suggested to the man painting his outline on the wall the idea of
shading between his outlines.
At any rate the next development was the introduction of a little
shading to relieve the flatness of the line-work and suggest modelling.
And this was as far as things had gone in the direction of the
representation of form, until well on in the Italian Renaissance.
Botticelli used nothing else than an outline lightly shaded to indicate
form. Light and shade were not seriously perceived until Leonardo da
Vinci. And a wonderful discovery it was thought to be, and was, indeed,
although it seems difficult to understand where men's eyes had been for
so long with the phenomena of light and shade before them all the time.
But this is only another proof of what cannot be too often insisted on,
namely that the eye only sees what it is on the look-out for, and it may
even be there are things just as wonderful yet to be discovered in
vision.
But it was still the touch association of an object that was the
dominant one; it was within the outline demanded by this sense that the
light and shade were to be introduced as something as it were put on the
object. It was the "solids in space" idea that art was still appealing
to.
"The first object of a painter is to make a simple flat surface appear
like a relievo, and some of its parts detached from the ground; he who
excels all others in that part of the art deserves the greatest
praise,"[1] wrote Leonardo da Vinci, and the insistence on this
"standing out" quality, with its appeal to the touch sense as something
great in art, sounds very strange in these days. But it must be
remembered that the means of creating this illusion were new to all and
greatly wondered at.
[Footnote 1: Leonardo da Vinci, _Treatise on Painting_, paragraph 178.]
And again, in paragraph 176 of his treatise, Leonardo writes: "The
knowledge of the outline is of most consequence, and yet may be acquired
to great certainty by dint of study; as the outlines of the human
figure, particularly those which do not bend, are invariably the same.
But the knowledge of the situation, quality and quantity of shadows,
being infinite, requires the most extensive study."
The outlines of the human figure are "invariably the same"? What does
this mean? From the visual point of view we know that the space occupied
by figures in the field of our vision is by no means "invariably the
same," but of great variety. So it cannot be the visual appearance he is
speaking about. It can only refer to the mental idea of the shape of
the members of the human figure. The remark "particularly those that do
not bend" shows this also, for when the body is bent up even the mental
idea of its form must be altered. There is no hint yet of vision being
exploited for itself, but only in so far as it yielded material to
stimulate this mental idea of the exterior world.
[Illustration: Plate IX.
STUDY BY WATTEAU
From an original drawing in the collection of Charles Ricketts and
Charles Shannon.]
All through the work of the men who used this light and shade (or
chiaroscuro, as it was called) the outline basis remained. Leonardo,
Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, and the Venetians were all faithful to
it as the means of holding their pictures together; although the
Venetians, by fusing the edges of their outline masses, got very near
the visual method to be introduced later by Velázquez.
In this way, little by little, starting from a basis of simple outline
forms, art grew up, each new detail of visual appearance discovered
adding, as it were, another instrument to the orchestra at the disposal
of the artist, enabling him to add to the somewhat crude directness and
simplicity of the early work the graces and refinements of the more
complex work, making the problem of composition more difficult but
increasing the range of its expression.
But these additions to the visual formula used by artists was not all
gain; the simplicity of the means at the disposal of a Botticelli gives
an innocence and imaginative appeal to his work that it is difficult to
think of preserving with the more complete visual realisation of later
schools. When the realisation of actual appearance is most complete, the
mind is liable to be led away by side issues connected with the things
represented, instead of seeing the emotional intentions of the artist
expressed through them. The mind is apt to leave the picture and
looking, as it were, not at it but through it, to pursue a train of
thought associated with the objects represented as real objects, but
alien to the artistic intention of the picture. There is nothing in
these early formulae to disturb the contemplation of the emotional
appeal of pure form and colour. To those who approach a picture with the
idea that the representation of nature, the "making it look like the
real thing," is the sole object of painting, how strange must be the
appearance of such pictures as Botticelli's.