the masses or tones (for the terms are often used interchangeably) that
go to the making of a visual impression can be considered in relation to
an imagined scale from white, to represent the lightest, to black, to
represent the darkest tones. This scale of values does not refer to
light and shade only, but light and shade, colour, and the whole visual
impression are considered as one mosaic of masses of different degrees
of darkness or lightness. A dark object in strong light may be lighter
than a white object in shadow, or the reverse: it will depend on the
amount of reflected light. Colour only matters in so far as it affects
the position of the mass in this imagined scale of black and white. The
correct observation of these tone values is a most important matter, and
one of no little difficulty.
The word tone is used in two senses, in the first place when referring
to the individual masses as to their relations in the scale of "tone
values"; and secondly when referring to the musical relationship of
these values to a oneness of tone idea governing the whole impression.
In very much the same way you might refer to a single note in music as a
tone, and also to the tone of the whole orchestra. The word values
always refers to the relationship of the individual masses or tones in
our imagined scale from black to white. We say a picture is out of value
or out of tone when some of the values are darker or lighter than our
sense of harmony feels they should be, in the same way as we should say
an instrument in an orchestra was out of tone or tune when it was higher
or lower than our sense of harmony allowed. Tone is so intimately
associated with the colour of a picture that it is a little difficult to
treat of it apart, and it is often used in a sense to include colour in
speaking of the general tone. We say it has a warm tone or a cold tone.
There is a particular rhythmic beauty about a well-ordered arrangement
of tone values that is a very important part of pictorial design. This
music of tone has been present in art in a rudimentary way since the
earliest time, but has recently received a much greater amount of
attention, and much new light on the subject has been given by the
impressionist movement and the study of the art of China and Japan,
which is nearly always very beautiful in this respect.
#This quality of tone music is most dominant when the masses are large
and simple#, when the contemplation of them is not disturbed by much
variety, and they have little variation of texture and gradation. A
slight mist will often improve the tone of a landscape for this reason.
It simplifies the tones, masses them together, obliterating many smaller
varieties. I have even heard of the tone of a picture being improved
by such a mist scrambled or glazed over it.
[Illustration: Plate XLIII.
MONTE SOLARO CAPRI
Study on brown paper in charcoal and white chalk.]
The powder on a lady's face, when not over-done, is an improvement for
the same reason. It simplifies the tones by destroying the distressing
shining lights that were cutting up the masses; and it also destroys a
large amount of half tone, broadening the lights almost up to the
commencement of the shadows.
#Tone relationships are most sympathetic when the middle values of your
scale only are used, that is to say, when the lights are low in tone and
the darks high.#
#They are most dramatic and intense when the contrasts are great and the
jumps from dark to light sudden.#
The sympathetic charm of half-light effects is due largely to the tones
being of this middle range only; whereas the striking dramatic effect of
a storm clearing, in which you may get a landscape brilliantly lit by
the sudden appearance of the sun, seen against the dark clouds of the
retreating storm, owes much of its dramatic quality to contrast. The
strong contrasts of tone values coupled with the strong colour contrast
between the warm sunlit land and the cold angry blue of the storm, gives
such a scene much dramatic effect and power.
The subject of values will be further treated in dealing with unity of
tone.
[Sidenote: Variety in Quality and Texture]
Variety in quality and nature is almost too subtle to write about with
any prospect of being understood. The play of different qualities and
textures in the masses that go to form a picture must be appreciated at
first hand, and little can be written about it. Oil paint is capable of
almost unlimited variety in this way. But it is better to leave the
study of such qualities until you have mastered the medium in its more
simple aspects.
The particular tone music of which we were speaking is not helped by any
great use of this variety. A oneness of quality throughout the work is
best suited to exhibit it. Masters of tone, like Whistler, preserve this
oneness of quality very carefully in their work, relying chiefly on the
grain of a rough canvas to give the necessary variety and prevent a
deadness in the quality of the tones.
But when more force and brilliancy are wanted, some use of your paint in
a crumbling, broken manner is necessary, as it catches more light, thus
increasing the force of the impression. Claude Monet and his followers
in their search for brilliancy used this quality throughout many of
their paintings, with new and striking results. But it is at the
sacrifice of many beautiful qualities of form, as this roughness of
surface does not lend itself readily to any finesse of modelling. In the
case of Claude Monet's work, however, this does not matter, as form with
all its subtleties is not a thing he made any attempt at exploiting.
Nature is sufficiently vast for beautiful work to be done in separate
departments of vision, although one cannot place such work on the same
plane with successful pictures of wider scope. And the particular visual
beauty of sparkling light and atmosphere, of which he was one of the
first to make a separate study, could hardly exist in a work that aimed
also at the significance of beautiful form, the appeal of form, as was
explained in an earlier chapter, not being entirely due to a visual but
to a mental perception, into which the sense of touch enters by
association. The scintillation and glitter of light destroys this touch
idea, which is better preserved in quieter lightings.
There is another point in connection with the use of thick paint, that I
don't think is sufficiently well known, and that is, its greater
readiness to be discoloured by the oil in its composition coming to the
surface. Fifteen years ago I did what it would be advisable for every
student to do as soon as possible, namely, make a chart of the colours
he is likely to use. Get a good white canvas, and set upon it in columns
the different colours, very much as you would do on your palette,
writing the names in ink beside them. Then take a palette-knife, an
ivory one by preference, and drag it from the individual masses of paint
so as to get a gradation of different thicknesses, from the thinnest
possible layer where your knife ends to the thick mass where it was
squeezed out of the tube. It is also advisable to have previously ruled
some pencil lines with a hard point down the canvas in such a manner
that the strips of paint will cross the lines. This chart will be of the
greatest value to you in noting the effect of time on paint. To make it
more complete, the colours of several makers should be put down, and at
any rate the whites of several different makes should be on it. As white
enters so largely into your painting it is highly necessary to use one
that does not change.
The two things that I have noticed are that the thin ends of the strips
of white have invariably kept whiter than the thick end, and that all
the paints have become a little more transparent with time. The pencil
lines here come in useful, as they can be seen through the thinner
portion, and show to what extent this transparency has occurred. But
the point I wish to emphasise is that at the thick end the larger body
of oil in the paint, which always comes to the surface as it dries, has
darkened and yellowed the surface greatly; while the small amount of oil
at the thin end has not darkened it to any extent.
Claude Monet evidently knew this, and got over the difficulty by
painting on an absorbent canvas, which sucks the surplus oil out from
below and thus prevents its coming to the surface and discolouring the
work in time. When this thick manner of painting is adopted, an
absorbent canvas should always be used. It also has the advantage of
giving a dull dry surface of more brilliancy than a shiny one.
Although not so much as with painting, varieties of texture enter into
drawings done with any of the mediums that lend themselves to mass
drawing; charcoal, conté crayon, lithographic chalk, and even red chalk
and lead pencil are capable of giving a variety of textures, governed
largely by the surface of the paper used. But this is more the province
of painting than of drawing proper, and charcoal, which is more painting
than drawing, is the only medium in which it can be used with much
effect.
[Sidenote: Variety of Edges.]
There is a very beautiful rhythmic quality in the play from softness to
sharpness on the edges of masses. A monotonous sharpness of edge is
hard, stern, and unsympathetic. This is a useful quality at times,
particularly in decorative work, where the more intimate sympathetic
qualities are not so much wanted, and where the harder forms go better
with the architectural surroundings of which your painted decoration
should form a part. On the other hand, a monotonous softness of edge is
very weak and feeble-looking, and too entirely lacking in power to be
desirable. If you find any successful work done with this quality of
edge unrelieved by any sharpnesses, it will depend on colour, and not
form, for any qualities it may possess.
Some amount of softness makes for charm, and is extremely popular: "#I
do# like that because it's so nice and soft" is a regular show-day
remark in the studio, and is always meant as a great compliment, but is
seldom taken as such by the suffering painter. But a balance of these
two qualities playing about your contours produces the most delightful
results, and the artist is always on the look out for such variations.
He seldom lets a sharpness of edge run far without losing it
occasionally. It may be necessary for the hang of the composition that
some leading edges should be much insisted on. But even here a
monotonous sharpness is too dead a thing, and although a firmness of run
will be allowed to be felt, subtle variations will be introduced to
prevent deadness. The Venetians from Giorgione's time were great masters
of this music of edges. The structure of lines surrounding the masses on
which their compositions are built were fused in the most mysterious and
delightful way. But although melting into the surrounding mass, they are
always firm and never soft and feeble. Study the edge in such a good
example of the Venetian manner as the "Bacchus and Ariadne" at the
National Gallery, and note where they are hard and where lost.
There is one rather remarkable fact to be observed in this picture and
many Venetian works, and this is that the #most accented edges are
reserved for unessential parts#, like the piece of white drapery on the
lower arm of the girl with the cymbals, and the little white flower on
the boy's head in front. The edges on the flesh are everywhere fused and
soft, the draperies being much sharper. You may notice the same thing in
many pictures of the later Venetian schools. The greatest accents on the
edges are rarely in the head, except it may be occasionally in the eyes.
But they love to get some strongly-accented feature, such as a
crisply-painted shirt coming against the soft modelling of the neck, to
balance the fused edges in the flesh. In the head of Philip IV in our
National Gallery the only place where Velázquez has allowed himself
anything like a sharp edge is in the high lights on the chain hanging
round the neck. The softer edges of the principal features in these
compositions lend a largeness and mystery to these parts, and to restore
the balance, sharpnesses are introduced in non-essential accessories.
In the figure with the white tunic from Velázquez's "Surrender of
Breda," here reproduced, note the wonderful variety on the edges of the
white masses of the coat and the horse's nose, and also that the
sharpest accents are reserved for such non-essentials as the bows on the
tunic and the loose hair on the horse's forehead. Velázquez's edges are
wonderful, and cannot be too carefully studied. He worked largely in
flat tones or planes; but this richness and variety of his edges keeps
his work from looking flat and dull, like that of some of his followers.
I am sorry to say this variety does not come out so well in the
reproduction on page 194 [Transcribers Note: Plate XLIV] as I could
have wished, the half-tone process having a tendency to sharpen edges
rather monotonously.
This quality is everywhere to be found in nature. If you regard any
scene pictorially, looking at it as a whole and not letting your eye
focus on individual objects wandering from one to another while being
but dimly conscious of the whole, but regarding it as a beautiful
ensemble; you will find that the boundaries of the masses are not hard
continuous edges but play continually along their course, here melting
imperceptibly into the surrounding mass, and there accentuated more
sharply. Even a long continuous line, like the horizon at sea, has some
amount of this play, which you should always be on the look out for. But
when the parts only of nature are regarded and each is separately
focussed, hard edges will be found to exist almost everywhere, unless
there is a positive mist enveloping the objects. And this is the usual
way of looking at things. But a picture that is a catalogue of many
little parts separately focussed will not hang together as one visual
impression.
[Illustration: Plate XLIV.
PART OF THE SURRENDER OF BREDA. BY VELÁZQUEZ
Note the varied quantity of the edge in white mass of tunic. (The
reproduction does not unfortunately show this as well as the original.)
_Photo Anderson_]
In naturalistic work the necessity for painting to one focal impression
is as great as the necessity of painting in true perspective. What
perspective has done for drawing, the impressionist system of painting
to one all-embracing focus has done for tone. Before perspective was
introduced, each individual object in a picture was drawn with a
separate centre of vision fixed on each object in turn. What perspective
did was to insist that all objects in a picture should be drawn in
relation to one fixed centre of vision. And whereas formerly each object
was painted to a hard focus, whether it was in the foreground or the
distance, impressionism teaches that you cannot have the focus in a
picture at the same time on the foreground and the distance.
Of course there are many manners of painting with more primitive
conventions in which the consideration of focus does not enter. But in
all painting that aims at reproducing the impressions directly produced
in us by natural appearances, this question of focus and its influence
on the quality of your edges is of great importance.
Something should be said about the serrated edges of masses, like those
of trees seen against the sky. These are very difficult to treat, and
almost every landscape painter has a different formula. The hard, fussy,
cut-out, photographic appearance of trees misses all their beauty and
sublimity.
There are three principal types of treatment that may serve as examples.
In the first place there are the trees of the early Italian painters,
three examples of which are illustrated on page 197 [Transcribers Note:
Diagram XXIII]. A thin tree is always selected, and a rhythmic pattern
of leaves against the sky painted. This treatment of a dark pattern on a
light ground is very useful as a contrast to the softer tones of flesh.
But the treatment is more often applied nowadays to a spray of foliage
in the foreground, the pattern of which gives a very rich effect. The
poplar trees in Millais' "Vale of Rest" are painted in much the same
manner as that employed by the Italians, and are exceptional among
modern tree paintings, the trees being treated as a pattern of leaves
against the sky. Millais has also got a raised quality of paint in his
darks very similar to that of Bellini and many early painters.
Giorgione added another tree to landscape art: the rich, full,
solidly-massed forms that occur in his "Concert Champêtre" of the
Louvre, reproduced on page 151 [Transcribers Note: Plate XXXIII]. In
this picture you may see both types of treatment. There are the
patterns of leaves variety on the left and the solidly-massed treatment
on the right.
[Illustration: Diagram XXIII.
EXAMPLES OF EARLY ITALIAN TREATMENT OF TREES
A. From pictures in Oratorio di S. Ansano. "Il trionfo dell' Amore,"
attributed to Botticelli.
B. From "L'Annunziazione," by Botticelli, Uffizi, Florence.
C. From "La Vergine," by Giovanni Bellini in the Accademia, Venice.]
Corot in his later work developed a treatment that has been largely
followed since. Looking at trees with a very wide focus, he ignored
individual leaves, and resolved them into masses of tone, here lost and
here found more sharply against the sky. The subordinate masses of
foliage within these main boundaries are treated in the same way,
resolved into masses of infinitely varying edges. This play, this
lost-and-foundness at his edges is one of the great distinguishing
charms of Corot's trees. When they have been painted from this mass
point of view, a suggestion of a few leaves here and a bough there may
be indicated, coming sharply against the sky, but you will find this
basis of tone music, this crescendo and diminuendo throughout all his
later work (see illustration, page 215 [Transcribers Note: Diagram
XXVI]).
These are three of the more extreme types of trees to be met with in
art, but the variations on these types are very numerous. Whatever
treatment you adopt, the tree must be considered as a whole, and some
rhythmic form related to this large impression selected. And this
applies to all forms with serrated edges: some large order must be found
to which the fussiness of the edges must conform.
The subject of edges generally is a very important one, and one much
more worried over by a master than by the average student. It is
interesting to note how all the great painters have begun with a hard
manner, with edges of little variety, from which they have gradually
developed a looser manner, learning to master the difficulties of design
that hard contours insist on your facing, and only when this is
thoroughly mastered letting themselves develop freely this play on the
edges, this looser handling.
For under the freest painting, if it be good, there will be found a
bed-rock structure of well-constructed masses and lines. They may never
be insisted on, but their steadying influence will always be felt. So
err in your student work on the side of hardness rather than looseness,
if you would discipline yourself to design your work well. Occasionally
only let yourself go at a looser handling.
[Sidenote: Variety of Gradiation.]
Variety of gradation will naturally be governed largely by the form and
light and shade of the objects in your composition. But while studying
the gradations of tone that express form and give the modelling, you
should never neglect to keep the mind fixed upon the relation the part
you are painting bears to the whole picture. And nothing should be done
that is out of harmony with this large conception. It is one of the most
difficult things to decide the amount of variety and emphasis allowable
for the smaller parts of a picture, so as to bring all in harmony with
that oneness of impression that should dominate the whole; how much of
your scale of values it is permissible to use for the modelling of each
individual part. In the best work the greatest economy is exercised in
this respect, so that as much power may be kept in reserve as possible.
You have only the one scale from black to white to work with, only one
octave within the limits of which to compose your tone symphonies. There
are no higher and lower octaves as in music to extend your effect. So be
very sparing with your tone values when modelling the different parts.
XIV
UNITY OF MASS
What has been said about unity of line applies obviously to the outlines
bounding the masses, so that we need not say anything further on that
subject. The particular quality of which something should be said, is
the unity that is given to a picture by means of a well-arranged and
rhythmically considered scheme of tone values.
The modifications in the relative tone values of objects seen under
different aspects of light and atmosphere are infinite and ever varying;
and this is quite a special study in itself. Nature is the great teacher
here, her tone arrangements always possessing unity. How kind to the eye
is her attempt to cover the ugliness of our great towns in an envelope
of atmosphere, giving the most wonderful tone symphonies; thus using
man's desecration of her air by smoke to cover up his other desecration
of her country-side, a manufacturing town. This study of values is a
distinguishing feature of modern art.
But schemes taken from nature are not the only harmonious ones. The
older masters were content with one or two well-tried arrangements of
tone in their pictures, which were often not at all true to natural
appearances but nevertheless harmonious. The chief instance of this is
the low-toned sky. The painting of flesh higher in tone than the sky was
almost universal at many periods of art, and in portraits is still
often seen. Yet it is only in strong sunlight that this is ever so in
nature, as you can easily see by holding your hand up against a sky
background. The possible exception to this rule is a dark storm-cloud,
in which case your hand would have to be strongly lit by some bright
light in another part of the sky to appear light against it.
This high tone of the sky is a considerable difficulty when one wishes
the interest centred on the figures. The eye instinctively goes to the
light masses in a picture, and if these masses are sky, the figures lose
some importance. The fashion of lowering its tone has much to be said
for it on the score of the added interest it gives to the figures. But
it is apt to bring a heavy stuffy look into the atmosphere, and is only
really admissible in frankly conventional treatment, in which one has
not been led to expect implicit truth to natural effect. If truth to
natural appearances is carried far in the figures, the same truth will
be expected in the background; but if only certain truths are selected
in the figures, and the treatment does not approach the naturalistic,
much more liberty can be taken with the background without loss of
verisimilitude.
But there is a unity about nature's tone arrangements that it is very
difficult to improve upon; and it is usually advisable, if you can, to
base the scheme of tone in your picture on a good study of values from
nature.
Such effects as twilight, moonlight, or even sunlight were seldom
attempted by the older painters, at any rate in their figure subjects.
All the lovely tone arrangements that nature presents in these more
unusual aspects are a new study, and offer unlimited new material to
the artist. Many artists are content to use this simply for itself, the
beauty of a rare tone effect being sufficient with the simplest
accessories to make a picture. But in figure composition, what new and
wonderful things can be imagined in which some rare aspect of nature's
tone-music is combined with a fine figure design.
These values are not easily perceived with accuracy, although their
influence may be felt by many. A true eye for the accurate perception of
subtle tone arrangements is a thing you should study very diligently to
acquire. How then is this to be done? It is very difficult, if not
impossible, to teach anybody to see. Little more can be said than has
already been written about this subject in the chapter on variety in
mass. Every mass has to be considered in relation to an imagined tone
scale, taking black for your darkest and white for your highest light as
we have seen. A black glass, by reducing the light, enables you to
observe these relationships more accurately; the dazzling quality of
strong light making it difficult to judge them. But this should only be
used to correct one's eye, and the comparison should be made between
nature seen in the glass and your work seen also in the glass. To look
in a black glass and then compare what you saw with your work looked at
direct is not a fair comparison, and will result in low-toned work with
little brilliancy.