221. Of course the character of everything is best manifested by
Contrast. Rest can only be enjoyed after labor; sound to be heard
clearly, must rise out of silence; light is exhibited by darkness,
darkness by light; and so on in all things. Now in art every color has
an opponent color, which, if brought near it, will relieve it more
completely than any other; so, also, every form and line may be made
more striking to the eye by an opponent form or line near them; a curved
line is set off by a straight one, a massy form by a slight one, and so
on; and in all good work nearly double the value, which any given color
or form would have uncombined, is given to each by contrast.[66]
In this case again, however, a too manifest use of the artifice
vulgarizes a picture. Great painters do not commonly, or very visibly,
admit violent contrast. They introduce it by stealth, and with
intermediate links of tender change; allowing, indeed, the opposition to
tell upon the mind as a surprise, but not as a shock.[67]
222. Thus in the rock of Ehrenbreitstein, Fig. 35, the main current of
the lines being downwards, in a convex swell, they are suddenly stopped
at the lowest tower by a counter series of beds, directed nearly
straight across them. This adverse force sets off and relieves the great
curvature, but it is reconciled to it by a series of radiating lines
below, which at first sympathize with the oblique bar, then gradually
get steeper, till they meet and join in the fall of the great curve. No
passage, however intentionally monotonous, is ever introduced by a good
artist without _some_ slight counter current of this kind; so much,
indeed, do the great composers feel the necessity of it, that they will
even do things purposely ill or unsatisfactorily, in order to give
greater value to their well-doing in other places. In a skillful poet's
versification the so-called bad or inferior lines are not inferior
because he could not do them better, but because he feels that if all
were equally weighty, there would be no real sense of weight anywhere;
if all were equally melodious, the melody itself would be fatiguing; and
he purposely introduces the laboring or discordant verse, that the full
ring may be felt in his main sentence, and the finished sweetness in his
chosen rhythm.[68] And continually in painting, inferior artists destroy
their work by giving too much of all that they think is good, while the
great painter gives just enough to be enjoyed, and passes to an opposite
kind of enjoyment, or to an inferior state of enjoyment: he gives a
passage of rich, involved, exquisitely wrought color, then passes away
into slight, and pale, and simple color; he paints for a minute or two
with intense decision, then suddenly becomes, as the spectator thinks,
slovenly; but he is not slovenly: you could not have _taken_ any more
decision from him just then; you have had as much as is good for you:
he paints over a great space of his picture forms of the most rounded
and melting tenderness, and suddenly, as you think by a freak, gives you
a bit as jagged and sharp as a leafless blackthorn. Perhaps the most
exquisite piece of subtle contrast in the world of painting is the arrow
point, laid sharp against the white side and among the flowing hair of
Correggio's Antiope. It is quite singular how very little contrast will
sometimes serve to make an entire group of forms interesting which would
otherwise have been valueless. There is a good deal of picturesque
material, for instance, in this top of an old tower, Fig. 48, tiles and
stones and sloping roof not disagreeably mingled; but all would have
been unsatisfactory if there had not happened to be that iron ring on
the inner wall, which by its vigorous black _circular_ line precisely
opposes all the square and angular characters of the battlements and
roof. Draw the tower without the ring, and see what a difference it will
make.
[Illustration: FIG. 48.]
223. One of the most important applications of the law of contrast is in
association with the law of continuity, causing an unexpected but gentle
break in a continuous series. This artifice is perpetual in music, and
perpetual also in good illumination; the way in which little surprises
of change are prepared in any current borders, or chains of ornamental
design, being one of the most subtle characteristics of the work of the
good periods. We take, for instance, a bar of ornament between two
written columns of an early fourteenth century MS., and at the first
glance we suppose it to be quite monotonous all the way up, composed of
a winding tendril, with alternately a blue leaf and a scarlet bud.
Presently, however, we see that, in order to observe the law of
principality, there is one large scarlet leaf instead of a bud, nearly
half-way up, which forms a center to the whole rod; and when we begin to
examine the order of the leaves, we find it varied carefully. Let A
stand for scarlet bud, _b_ for blue leaf, _c_ for two blue leaves on one
stalk, _s_ for a stalk without a leaf, and R, for the large red leaf.
Then, counting from the ground, the order begins as follows:
_b_, _b_, A; _b_, _s_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, A; and we think we
shall have two _b_'s and an A all the way, when suddenly it becomes _b_,
A; _b_, R; _b_, A; _b_, A; _b_, A; and we think we are going to have
_b_, A continued; but no: here it becomes _b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _b_, A;
_b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _c_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; and we think we are
surely going to have _b_, _s_ continued, but behold it runs away to the
end with a quick _b_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, _b_, _b_![69] Very often,
however, the designer is satisfied with _one_ surprise, but I never saw
a good illuminated border without one at least; and no series of any
kind was ever introduced by a great composer in a painting without a
snap somewhere. There is a pretty one in Turner's drawing of Rome with
the large balustrade for a foreground in the Hakewell's Italy series:
the single baluster struck out of the line, and showing the street below
through the gap, simply makes the whole composition right, when
otherwise it would have been stiff and absurd.
224. If you look back to Fig. 48 you will see, in the arrangement of the
battlements, a simple instance of the use of such variation. The whole
top of the tower, though actually three sides of a square, strikes the
eye as a continuous series of five masses. The first two, on the left,
somewhat square and blank, then the next two higher and richer, the
tiles being seen on their slopes. Both these groups being couples, there
is enough monotony in the series to make a change pleasant; and the last
battlement, therefore, is a little higher than the first two,--a little
lower than the second two,--and different in shape from either. Hide it
with your finger, and see how ugly and formal the other four battlements
look.
225. There are in this figure several other simple illustrations of the
laws we have been tracing. Thus the whole shape of the walls' mass being
square, it is well, still for the sake of contrast, to oppose it not
only by the element of curvature, in the ring, and lines of the roof
below, but by that of sharpness; hence the pleasure which the eye takes
in the projecting point of the roof. Also, because the walls are thick
and sturdy, it is well to contrast their strength with weakness;
therefore we enjoy the evident decrepitude of this roof as it sinks
between them. The whole mass being nearly white, we want a contrasting
shadow somewhere; and get it, under our piece of decrepitude. This
shade, with the tiles of the wall below, forms another pointed mass,
necessary to the first by the law of repetition. Hide this inferior
angle with your finger, and see how ugly the other looks. A sense of the
law of symmetry, though you might hardly suppose it, has some share in
the feeling with which you look at the battlements; there is a certain
pleasure in the opposed slopes of their top, on one side down to the
left, on the other to the right. Still less would you think the law of
radiation had anything to do with the matter: but if you take the
extreme point of the black shadow on the left for a center, and follow
first the low curve of the eaves of the wall, it will lead you, if you
continue it, to the point of the tower cornice; follow the second curve,
the top of the tiles of the wall, and it will strike the top of the
right-hand battlement; then draw a curve from the highest point of the
angled battlement on the left, through the points of the roof and its
dark echo; and you will see how the whole top of the tower radiates from
this lowest dark point. There are other curvatures crossing these main
ones, to keep them from being too conspicuous. Follow the curve of the
upper roof, it will take you to the top of the highest battlement; and
the stones indicated at the right-hand side of the tower are more
extended at the bottom, in order to get some less direct expression of
sympathy, such as irregular stones may be capable of, with the general
flow of the curves from left to right.
226. You may not readily believe, at first, that all these laws are
indeed involved in so trifling a piece of composition. But, as you study
longer, you will discover that these laws, and many more, are obeyed by
the powerful composers in every _touch_: that literally, there is never
a dash of their pencil which is not carrying out appointed purposes of
this kind in twenty various ways at once; and that there is as much
difference, in way of intention and authority, between one of the great
composers ruling his colors, and a common painter confused by them, as
there is between a general directing the march of an army, and an old
lady carried off her feet by a mob.