curves, light and dark, warm and cold colour oppose each other. Were the
balance between them perfect, the result would be dull and dead. But if
the balance is very much out, the eye is disturbed and the effect too
disquieting. It will naturally be in pictures that aim at repose that
this balance will be most perfect. In more exciting subjects less will
be necessary, but some amount should exist in every picture, no matter
how turbulent its motive; as in good tragedy the horror of the situation
is never allowed to overbalance the beauty of the treatment.
[Sidenote: Between Straight Lines and Curves]
Let us consider in the first place the balance between straight lines
and curves. The richer and fuller the curves, the more severe should be
the straight lines that balance them, if perfect repose is desired. But
if the subject demands excess of movement and life, of course there will
be less necessity for the balancing influence of straight lines. And on
the other hand, if the subject demands an excess of repose and
contemplation, the bias will be on the side of straight lines. But a
picture composed entirely of rich, rolling curves is too disquieting a
thing to contemplate, and would become very irritating. Of the two
extremes, one composed entirely of straight lines would be preferable to
one with no squareness to relieve the richness of the curves. For
straight lines are significant of the deeper and more permanent things
of life, of the powers that govern and restrain, and of infinity; while
the rich curves (that is, curves the farthest removed from the straight
line) seem to be expressive of uncontrolled energy and the more
exuberant joys of life. Vice may be excess in any direction, but
asceticism has generally been accepted as a nobler vice than
voluptuousness. The rococo art of the eighteenth century is an instance
of the excessive use of curved forms, and, like all excesses in the joys
of life, it is vicious and is the favourite style of decoration in
vulgar places of entertainment. The excessive use of straight lines and
square forms may be seen in some ancient Egyptian architecture, but this
severity was originally, no doubt, softened by the use of colour, and in
any case it is nobler and finer than the vicious cleverness of rococo
art.
We have seen how the Greeks balanced the straight lines of their
architectural forms with the rich lines of the sculpture which they used
so lavishly on their temples. But the balance was always kept on the
side of the square forms and never on the side of undue roundness. And
it is on this side that the balance would seem to be in the finest art.
Even the finest curves are those that approach the straight line rather
than the circle, that err on the side of flatnesses rather than
roundnesses.
[Sidenote: Between Flat and Gradated Tones]
What has been said about the balance of straight lines and curves
applies equally well to tones, if for straight lines you substitute flat
tones, and for curved lines gradated tones. The deeper, more permanent
things find expression in the wider, flatter tones, while an excess of
gradations makes for prettiness, if not for the gross roundnesses of
vicious modelling.
Often when a picture is hopelessly out of gear and "mucked up," as they
say in the studio, it can be got on the right road again by reducing it
to a basis of flat tones, going over it and painting out the gradations,
getting it back to a simpler equation from which the right road to
completion can be more readily seen. Overmuch concern with the
gradations of the smaller modelling is a very common reason of pictures
and drawings getting out of gear. The less expenditure of tone values
you can express your modelling with, the better, as a general rule. The
balance in the finest work is usually on the side of flat tones rather
than on the side of gradated tones. Work that errs on the side of
gradations, like that of Greuze, however popular its appeal, is much
poorer stuff than work that errs on the side of flatness in tone, like
Giotto and the Italian primitives, or Puvis de Chavannes among the
moderns.
[Sidenote: Between Light and Dark Tones.]
There is a balance of tone set up also between light and dark, between
black and white in the scale of tone. Pictures that do not go far in the
direction of light, starting from a middle tone, should not go far in
the direction of dark either. In this respect note the pictures of
Whistler, a great master in matters of tone; his lights seldom approach
anywhere near white, and, on the other hand, his darks never approach
black in tone. When the highest lights are low in tone, the darkest
darks should be high in tone. Painters like Rembrandt, whose pictures
when fresh must have approached very near white in the high lights, also
approach black in the darks, and nearer our own time, Frank Holl forced
the whites of his pictures very high and correspondingly the darks were
very heavy. And when this balance is kept there is a rightness about it
that is instinctively felt. We do not mean that the #amount# of light
tones in a picture should be balanced by the #amount# of dark tones, but
that there should be some balance between the extremes of light and dark
used in the tone scheme of a picture. The old rule was, I believe, that
a picture should be two-thirds light and one-third dark. But I do not
think there is any rule to be observed here: there are too many
exceptions, and no mention is made of half tones.
Like all so-called laws in art, this rule is capable of many apparent
exceptions. There is the white picture in which all the tones are high.
But in some of the most successful of these you will generally find
spots of intensely dark pigment. Turner was fond of these light pictures
in his later manner, but he usually put in some dark spot, such as the
black gondolas in some of his Venetian pictures, that illustrate the law
of balance we are speaking of, and are usually put in excessively dark
in proportion as the rest of the picture is excessively light.
The successful one-tone pictures are generally painted in the middle
tones, and thus do not in any way contradict our principle of balance.
[Sidenote: Between Warm and Cold Colours.]
One is tempted at this point to wander a little into the province of
colour, where the principle of balance of which we are speaking is much
felt, the scale here being between warm and cold colours. If you divide
the solar spectrum roughly into half, you will have the reds, oranges,
and yellows on one side, and the purples, blues, and greens on the
other, the former being roughly the warm and the latter the cold
colours. The clever manipulation of the opposition between these warm
and cold colours is one of the chief means used in giving vitality to
colouring. But the point to notice here is that the further your
colouring goes in the direction of warmth, the further it will be
necessary to go in the opposite direction, to right the balance. That is
how it comes about that painters like Titian, who loved a warm, glowing,
golden colouring, so often had to put a mass of the coldest blue in
their pictures. Gainsborough's "Blue Boy," although done in defiance of
Reynolds' principle, is no contradiction of our rule, for although the
boy has a blue dress all the rest of the picture is warm brown and so
the balance is kept. It is the failure to observe this balance that
makes so many of the red-coated huntsmen and soldiers' portraits in our
exhibitions so objectionable. They are too often painted on a dark, hot,
burnt sienna and black background, with nothing but warm colours in the
flesh, &c., with the result that the screaming heat is intolerable. With
a hot mass of red like a huntsman's coat in your picture, the coolest
colour should be looked for everywhere else. Seen in a November
landscape, how well a huntsman's coat looks, but then, how cold and grey
is the colouring of the landscape. The right thing to do is to support
your red with as many cool and neutral tones as possible and avoid hot
shadows. With so strong a red, blue might be too much of a contrast,
unless your canvas was large enough to admit of its being introduced at
some distance from the red.
Most painters, of course, are content to keep to middle courses, never
going very far in the warm or cold directions. And, undoubtedly, much
more freedom of action is possible here, although the results may not be
so powerful. But when beauty and refinement of sentiment rather than
force are desired, the middle range of colouring (that is to say, all
colours partly neutralised by admixture with their opposites) is much
safer.
[Sidenote: Between Interest and Mass.]
There is another form of balance that must be although it is connected
more with the subject matter of art, as it concerns the mental
significance of objects rather than rhythmic qualities possessed by
lines and masses; I refer to the balance there is between interest and
mass. The all-absorbing interest of the human figure makes it often when
quite minute in scale balance the weight and interest of a great mass.
Diagram XXVII is a rough instance of what is meant. Without the little
figure the composition would be out of balance. But the weight of
interest centred upon that lonely little person is enough to right the
balance occasioned by the great mass of trees on the left. Figures are
largely used by landscape painters in this way, and are of great use in
restoring balance in a picture.
[Illustration: Diagram XXVII.
ILLUSTRATING HOW INTEREST MAY BALANCE MASS]
[Sidenote: Between Variety and Unity.]
And lastly, there must be a balance struck between variety and unity. A
great deal has already been said about this, and it will only be
necessary to recapitulate here that to variety is due all the expression
or the picturesque, of the joyous energy of life, and all that makes the
world such a delightful place, but that to unity belongs the relating of
this variety to the underlying bed-rock principles that support it in
nature and in all good art. It will depend on the nature of the artist
and on the nature of his theme how far this underlying unity will
dominate the expression in his work; and how far it will be overlaid and
hidden behind a rich garment of variety.
But both ideas must be considered in his work. If the unity of his
conception is allowed to exclude variety entirely, it will result in a
dead abstraction, and if the variety is to be allowed none of the
restraining influences of unity, it will develop into a riotous
extravagance.
XVI
RHYTHM: PROPORTION
Rules and canons of proportion designed to reduce to a mathematical
formula the things that move us in beautiful objects, have not been a
great success; the beautiful will always defy such clumsy analysis. But
however true it is that beauty of proportion must ever be the result of
the finer senses of the artist, it is possible that canons of
proportion, such as those of the human body, may be of service to the
artist by offering some standard from which he can depart at the
dictates of his artistic instinct. There appears to be no doubt that the
ancient sculptors used some such system. And many of the renaissance
painters were interested in the subject, Leonardo da Vinci having much
to say about it in his book.
Like all scientific knowledge in art, it fails to trap the elusive
something that is the vital essence of the whole matter, but such
scientific knowledge does help to bring one's work up to a high point of
mechanical perfection, from which one's artistic instinct can soar with
a better chance of success than if no scientific scaffolding had been
used in the initial building up. Yet, however perfect your system, don't
forget that the life, the "dither," will still have to be accounted for,
and no science will help you here.
The idea that certain mathematical proportions or relationships
underlie the phenomena we call beauty is very ancient, and too abstruse
to trouble us here. But undoubtedly proportion, the quantitative
relation of the parts to each other and to the whole, forms a very
important part in the impression works of art and objects give us, and
should be a subject of the greatest consideration in planning your work.
The mathematical relationship of these quantities is a subject that has
always fascinated scholars, who have measured the antique statues
accurately and painstakingly to find the secret of their charm. Science,
by showing that different sounds and different colours are produced by
waves of different lengths, and that therefore different colours and
sounds can be expressed in terms of numbers, has certainly opened the
door to a new consideration of this subject of beauty in relation to
mathematics. And the result of such an inquiry, if it is being or has
been carried on, will be of much interest.
But there is something chilling to the artist in an array of dead
figures, for he has a consciousness that the life of the whole matter
will never be captured by such mechanical means.
The question we are interested to ask here is: are there particular
sentiments connected with the different relations of quantities, their
proportions, as we found there were in connection with different
arrangements of lines and masses? Have abstract proportions any
significance in art, as we found abstract line and mass arrangements
had? It is a difficult thing to be definite about, and I can only give
my own feeling on the matter; but I think in some degree they have.
Proportion can be considered from our two points of view of unity and
variety. In so far as the proportions of any picture or object resolve
themselves into a simple, easily grasped unity of relationship, a sense
of repose and sublimity is produced. In so far as the variety of
proportion in the different parts is assertive and prevents the eye
grasping the arrangement as a simple whole, a sense of the lively
restlessness of life and activity is produced. In other words, as we
found in line arrangements, unity makes for sublimity, while variety
makes for the expression of life. Of course the scale of the object will
have something to do with this. That is to say, the most sublimely
proportioned dog-kennel could never give us the impression of sublimity
produced by a great temple. In pictures the scale of the work is not of
so great importance, a painting or drawing having the power of giving
the impression of great size on a small scale.
The proportion that is most easily grasped is the half--two equal parts.
This is the most devoid of variety, and therefore of life, and is only
used when an effect of great repose and aloofness from life is wanted;
and even then, never without some variety in the minor parts to give
vitality. The third and the quarter, and in fact any equal proportions,
are others that are easily grasped and partake in a lesser degree of the
same qualities as the half. So that equality of proportion should be
avoided except on those rare occasions when effects remote from nature
and life are desired. Nature seems to abhor equalities, never making two
things alike or the same proportion if she can help it. All systems
founded on equalities, as are so many modern systems of social reform,
are man's work, the products of a machine-made age. For this is the
difference between nature and the machine: nature never produces two
things alike, the machine never produces two things different. Man could
solve the social problem to-morrow if you could produce him equal units.
But if all men were alike and equal, where would be the life and fun of
existence? it would depart with the variety. And in proportion, as in
life, variety is the secret of vitality, only to be suppressed where a
static effect is wanted. In architecture equality of proportion is more
often met with, as the static qualities of repose are of more importance
here than in painting. One meets it on all fine buildings in such things
as rows of columns and windows of equal size and distances apart, or the
continual repetition of the same forms in mouldings, &c. But even here,
in the best work, some variety is allowed to keep the effect from being
quite dead, the columns on the outside of a Greek pediment being nearer
together and leaning slightly inwards, and the repeated forms of
windows, columns, and mouldings being infinitely varied in themselves.
But although you often find repetitions of the same forms equidistant in
architecture, it is seldom that equality of proportion is observable in
the main distribution of the large masses.
Let us take our simple type of composition, and in Diagram XXVIII, A,
put the horizon across the centre and an upright post cutting it in the
middle of the picture. And let us introduce two spots that may indicate
the position of birds in the upper spaces on either side of this.
Here we have a maximum of equality and the deadest and most static of
results.
To see these diagrams properly it is necessary to cover over with some
pieces of notepaper all but the one being considered, as they affect
each other when seen together, and the quality of their proportion is
not so readily observed.
[Illustration: Plate XLVIII.
THE ANSIDEI MADONNA. BY RAPHAEL (NATIONAL GALLERY)
A typical example of static balance in composition.
_Photo Hanfstaengl_]
In many pictures of the Madonna, when a hush and reverence are desired
rather than exuberant life, the figure is put in the centre of the
canvas, equality of proportion existing between the spaces on either
side of her. But having got the repose this centralisation gives,
everything is done to conceal this equality, and variety in the contours
on either side, and in any figures there may be, is carefully sought.
Raphael's "Ansidei Madonna," in the National Gallery, is an instance of
this (p. 230). You have first the centralisation of the figure of the
Madonna with the throne on which she sits, exactly in the middle of the
picture. Not only is the throne in the centre of the picture, but its
width is exactly that of the spaces on either side of it, giving us
three equal proportions across the picture. Then you have the circular
lines of the arches behind, curves possessed of the least possible
amount of variety and therefore the calmest and most reposeful; while
the horizontal lines of the steps and the vertical lines of the throne
and architecture, and also the rows of hanging beads give further
emphasis to this infinity of calm. But when we come to the figures this
symmetry has been varied everywhere. All the heads swing towards the
right, while the lines of the draperies swing freely in many directions.
The swing of the heads towards the right is balanced and the eye brought
back to equilibrium by the strongly-insisted-upon staff of St. Nicholas
on the right. The staff of St. John necessary to balance this line
somewhat, is very slightly insisted on, being represented transparent
as if made of glass, so as not to increase the swing to the right
occasioned by the heads. It is interesting to note the fruit introduced
at the last moment in the right-hand lower corner, dragged in, as it
were, to restore the balance occasioned by the figure of the Christ
being on the left. In the writer's humble opinion the extremely obvious
artifice with which the lines have been balanced, and the severity of
the convention of this composition generally, are out of harmony with
the amount of naturalistic detail and particularly of solidity allowed
in the treatment of the figures and accessories. The small amount of
truth to visual nature in the work of earlier men went better with the
formality of such compositions. With so little of the variety of life in
their treatment of natural appearances, one was not led to demand so
much of the variety of life in the arrangement. It is the simplicity and
remoteness from the full effect of natural appearances in the work of
the early Italian schools that made their painting such a ready medium
for the expression of religious subjects. This atmosphere of
other-worldliness where the music of line and colour was uninterrupted
by any aggressive look of real things is a better convention for the
expression of such ideas and emotions.
[Illustration: Diagram XXVIII(1).
A, D, G]
[Illustration: Diagram XXVIII(2).
B, E, H]
[Illustration: Diagram XXVIII(3).
C, F, I]
In B and C the proportions of the third and the quarter are shown,
producing the same static effect as the half, although not so
completely.
At D, E, F the same number of lines and spots as we have at A, B, C have
been used, but varied as to size and position, so that they have no
obvious mechanical relationship. The result is an expression of much
more life and character.
At G, H, I more lines and spots have been added. At G they are
equidistant and dead from lack of variety, while at H and I they are
varied to a degree that prevents the eye grasping any obvious
relationship between them. They have consequently a look of liveliness
and life very different from A, B, C, or G. It will be observed that as
the amount of variety increases so does the life and liveliness of the
impression.
In these diagrams a certain static effect is kept up throughout, on
account of our lines being vertical and horizontal only, which lines, as
we saw in an earlier chapter, are the calmest we have. But despite this,
I think the added life due to the variety in the proportions is
sufficiently apparent in the diagrams to prove the point we wish to
make.
As a contrast to the infinite calm of Raphael's "Madonna," we have
reproduced Tintoretto's "Finding of the Body of St. Mark," in the Brera
Gallery, Milan. Here all is life and movement. The proportions are
infinitely varied, nowhere does the eye grasp any obvious mathematical
relationship. We have the same semi-circular arches as in the Raphael,
but not symmetrically placed, and their lines everywhere varied, and
their calm effect destroyed by the flickering lights playing about them.
Note the great emphasis given to the outstretched hand of the powerful
figure of the Apostle on the left by the lines of the architecture and
the line of arm of the kneeling figure in the centre of the picture
converging on this hand and leading the eye immediately to it. There is
here no static symmetry, all is energy and force. Starting with this
arresting arm, the eye is led down the majestic figure of St. Mark, past
the recumbent figure, and across the picture by means of the band of
light on the ground, to the important group of frightened figures on
the right. And from them on to the figures engaged in lowering a corpse
from its tomb. Or, following the direction of the outstretched arm of
St. Mark, we are led by the lines of the architecture to this group
straight away, and back again by means of the group on the right and the
band of light on the ground. The quantities are not placed in reposeful
symmetry about the canvas, as was the case in the Raphael, but are
thrown off apparently haphazard from lines leading the eye round the
picture. Note also the dramatic intensity given by the strongly
contrasted light and shade, and how Tintoretto has enjoyed the weird
effect of the two figures looking into a tomb with a light, their
shadows being thrown on the lid they hold open, at the far end of the
room. This must have been an amazingly new piece of realism at the time,
and is wonderfully used, to give an eerie effect to the darkened end of
the room. With his boundless energy and full enjoyment of life,
Tintoretto's work naturally shows a strong leaning towards variety, and
his amazing compositions are a liberal education in the innumerable and
unexpected ways in which a panel can be filled, and should be carefully
studied by students.
[Illustration: Plate XLIX.
THE FINDING OF THE BODY OF ST. MARK TINTORETTO (BREDA, MILAN)
Compare with Raphael's Ansidei Madonna, and note how energy and movement
take the place of static calm in the balance of this composition.
_Photo Anderson_]