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[Illustration: Detail from "The Pursuit" of Fragonard.
(_Frick Collection_)]
ART PRINCIPLES
With Special Reference to Painting
Together with Notes on the
Illusions Produced by the Painter
by
ERNEST GOVETT
With Thirty-one Illustrations
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1919
Copyright, 1919
by
Ernest Govett
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
PREFACE
This book is put forward with much diffidence, for I am well aware of
its insufficiencies. My original idea was to produce a work covering all
the principles of painting, but after many years spent in considering
the various recorded theories relating to aesthetic problems, and in
gathering materials to indicate how the accepted principles have been
applied, I came to the conclusion that a single life is scarcely long
enough for the preparation of an exhaustive treatise on the subject.
Nevertheless, I planned a work of much wider scope than the one now
presented, but various circumstances, and principally the hindrance to
research caused by the war, impelled me to curtail my ambition. Time was
fading, and my purpose seemed to be growing very old. I felt that if one
has something to say, it is better to say it incompletely than to run
the risk of compulsory silence. The book will be found little more than
a skeleton, and some of its sections, notably those dealing with
illusions in the art, contain only a few suggestions and instances, but
perhaps enough is said to induce a measure of further inquiry into the
subject.
That part of the work dealing with the fine arts generally is the result
of long consideration of the apparent contradictions involved in the
numerous suggested standards of art. In a little book on _The Position
of Landscape in Art_ (published under a nom de plume a few years ago),
I threw out, as a _ballon d'essai_, an idea of the proposition now
elaborated as the Law of General Assent, and I have been encouraged to
affirm this proposition more strongly by the fact that its validity was
not questioned in any of the published criticism of the former work; nor
do I find reason to vary it after years of additional deliberation.
I have not before dealt with the other propositions now put forward.
The notes being voluminous I have relegated them to the end of the book,
leaving the feet of the text pages for references only.
Where foreign works quoted have been translated into English, the
English titles are recorded, and foreign quotations are given in
English, save in one or two minor instances where the sense could not
be precisely rendered in translation.
E. G.
NEW YORK, January, 1919.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
Definitions of "Art" and "Beauty"--Aesthetic systems--The
earliest Art--Art periods--The Grecian and Italian
developments--National and individual "Inspiration"--
Powers of imagination and execution--Nature of "Genius"--
The Impressionist Movement--Sprezzatura--The broad manner--
Position in art of Rembrandt and Velasquez--Position of
Landscape in art.
_BOOK I_
CHAPTER
I.--CLASSIFICATION OF THE FINE ARTS 52
The Arts imitative of Nature--Classified according to
the character of their signs--Relative value of form in
Poetry--Scope of the Arts in the production of beauty.
II.--LAW OF RECOGNITION IN THE ASSOCIATED ARTS 59
Explanation of the Law--Its application to Poetry--To
Sculpture--To Painting--To Fiction.
III.--LAW OF GENERAL ASSENT 72
General opinion the test of beauty in the Associated
Arts.
IV.--LIMITATIONS OF THE ASSOCIATED ARTS 78
Production of beauty in the respective Arts--Their
limitations.
V.--DEGREES OF BEAUTY IN THE PAINTER'S ART 83
VI.--EXPRESSION. PART 1.--THE IDEAL 86
VII.--EXPRESSION. PART 2.--CHRISTIAN IDEALS 91
The Deity--Christ--The Madonna--Madonna and Child.
VIII.--EXPRESSION. PART 3.--CLASSICAL IDEALS 106
Ideals of the Greeks--Use of the ancient divinities
by the Painter.
IX.--EXPRESSION. PART 4.--GENERAL IDEALS 135
X.--EXPRESSION. PART 5.--PORTRAITURE 141
Limitations of the Portrait Painter--Emphasis and
addition of qualities in portrait painting--Practice
of the ancient Greeks--Dignity--Importance of
Simplicity--Some of the great masters--Portraiture
of women--The English masters--The quality of
Grace--The necessity for Repose.
XI.--EXPRESSION. PART 6.--MISCELLANEOUS 167
Grief--The Smile--The Open Mouth--Contrasts--
Representation of Death.
XII.--LANDSCAPE 192
Limitations of the Landscape Painter--Illusion of
opening distance--Illusion of motion in Landscape--
Moonlight scenes--Transient conditions.
XIII.--STILL-LIFE 214
XIV.--SECONDARY ART 219
Paintings of record--Scenes from the Novel--From
the written drama--From the acted drama--Humorous
subjects--Allegorical paintings.
XV.--COLOUR 228
_BOOK II_
INTRODUCTORY.--ILLUSION IN THE PAINTER'S ART 236
CHAPTER
I.--ILLUSION OF RELIEF 239
II.--ILLUSION OF MOTION WITH MEN AND ANIMALS 249
III.--ILLUSION OF SUSPENSION AND MOTION IN THE AIR 259
NOTES 273
INDEX OF ARTISTS AND WORKS OF ART MENTIONED IN THIS BOOK 357
GENERAL INDEX 369
LIST OF PLATES
PAGE
FRONTISPIECE.--DETAIL FROM FRAGONARD'S THE PURSUIT (FRICK
COLLECTION, NEW YORK).
This work, which is one of the celebrated Grasse series of
panels, offers a very fine example of the use of an ideal head
in a romantic subject. (See Page 139.)
PLATE 1.--THE EARLIEST GREAT SCULPTURES 6
(a). Head from a statue of Chefren, a king of the 4th Egyptian
Dynasty, about 3000 B.C. (Cairo Museum.)
(b). Head from a fragmentary statuette of Babylonia, dating
about 2600 B.C. (Louvre: from Spearing's "Childhood of Art.")
The first head is generally regarded as the finest example of
Egyptian art extant, and certainly there was nothing executed
in Egypt to equal it during the thirty centuries following the
5th Dynasty. The Babylonian head is the best work of Chaldean
art known to us, though there are some fine fragments remaining
from the period of about a thousand years later. It will be
observed that the tendency of the art in both examples is
towards the aims achieved by the Greeks. (See Page 7.)
PLATE 2.--"LE BON DIEU D'AMIENS", IN THE NORTH PORCH, AMIENS
CATHEDRAL 18
This figure by a French sculptor of the thirteenth century,
was considered by Ruskin to be the finest ideal of Christ in
existence. It is another example of the universality of ideals,
for the head from the front view might well have been modelled
from a Grecian work of the late fourth or early third century
B.C. (See Page 319.)
PLATE 3.--AFTER AN ANCIENT COPY OF THE CNIDIAN VENUS OF PRAXITELES.
(VATICAN) 30
It is commonly agreed that this is the finest model in existence
after the great work of Praxiteles, which itself has long
disappeared. The figure as it now stands at the Vatican, has the
right arm restored, and the hand is made to hold up some metallic
drapery with which the legs are covered, the beauty of the form
being thus seriously weakened. (See Pages 111 _et seq._)
PLATE 4.--VENUS ANADYOMENE 42
(a). Ancient Greek sculpture from the design of Venus in the
celebrated picture of Apelles. (Formerly Chessa Collection, now in
New York.)
The immense superiority of the sculpture over the painting (Plate
5), from the point of view of pure art, is visible at a glance. It
is an indication of the far-reaching scope of the sculptor when
executing ideals. (See Page 113.)
PLATE 5.--VENUS ANADYOMENE, FROM THE PAINTING BY TITIAN.
(BRIDGEWATER COLLECTION.) Compare with the Sculpture on
Plate 4. (See Page 115) 42
PLATE 6.--VENUS REPOSING, BY GIORGIONE. (DRESDEN GALLERY) 54
This is the finest reposing Venus in existence in painting. It was
the model for the representation of the goddess in repose used by
Titian, and many other artists who came after him. (See Page 116.)
PLATE 7.--DEMETER 66
(a). Head from the Cnidos marble figure of the fourth century B.C.,
attributed to Scopas. (British Museum.)
(b). Small head in bronze of the third century B.C. (Private
Collection.)
In each of these heads the artist has been successful in maintaining
the ideal, while indicating a suggestion of the sorrowful
resignation with which Grecian legend has enveloped the mind picture
of Demeter. Nevertheless, even this slight departure from the
established rule tends to lessen the art, though in a very small
degree. (See Page 122.)
PLATE 8.--RAPHAEL'S SISTINE MADONNA (DRESDEN GALLERY), WITH THE FACE
OF THE CENTRAL FIGURE IN FRAGONARD'S THE PURSUIT SUBSTITUTED FOR
THAT OF THE VIRGIN 80
This and the two following plates show very clearly that in striving
for an ideal, artists must necessarily arrive at the same general
type. (See Pages 138 _et seq._)
PLATE 9.--RAPHAEL'S VIRGIN OF THE ROSE (MADRID), WITH THE FACE
OF THE FIGURE REPRESENTING PROFANE LOVE IN TITIAN'S PICTURE
SUBSTITUTED FOR THAT OF THE VIRGIN 92
PLATE 10.--RAPHAEL'S HOLY FAMILY (MADRID), WITH THE FACE OF LUINI'S
SALOME SUBSTITUTED FOR THAT OF THE VIRGIN 102
PLATE 11.--THE PURSUIT, BY FRAGONARD. (FRICK COLLECTION, N. Y.) 114
A detail from this picture forms the Frontispiece. It will be
observed that in the complete painting the central figure apparently
wears a startled expression, but that this is entirely due to the
surroundings and action, is shown by the substitution of the face of
the central figure for that of the Virgin in the Sistine Madonna,
Plate 8. (See Page 139.)
PLATE 12.--PORTRAIT HEADS OF THE GREEK TYPE, FOURTH CENTURY, B.C.
(See Page 145) 130
(a). Head of Plato. (Copenhagen Museum.) (b). Term of Euripides.
(Naples Museum.)
PLATE 13.--PORTRAIT HEADS OF THE TIME OF IMPERIAL ROME. (SEE PAGE
145) 146
(a). Vespasian. (Naples Museum.) (b). Hadrian. (Athens Museum.)
PLATE 14.--SACRIFICE OF IPHIGENIA, FROM A POMPEIAN FRESCO. (ROUX
AINE'S HERCULANUM ET POMPEI, VOL. III) 160
This work is presumed to be a copy of the celebrated picture of
Timanthes, in which the head of Agamemnon was hidden because the
artist could see no other way of expressing extreme grief without
distorting the features. (See Pages 168 and 339.)
PLATE 15.--ALL'S WELL, BY WINSLOW HOMER. (BOSTON MUSEUM, U. S. A.) 176
An instance where the permanent beauty of a picture is killed by an
open mouth. After a few moments' inspection, it will be observed
that the mouth appears to be kept open by a wedge. (See Page 176.)
PLATE 16.--HERCULES CONTEMPLATING DEATH, BY A. POLLAIUOLO. (FRICK
COLLECTION, NEW YORK.) 190
The only known design of this nature which appears to exist in any
of the arts. (See Pages 190 and 343.)
PLATE 17.--ARCADIAN LANDSCAPE, BY CLAUDE LORRAINE. (NATIONAL
GALLERY, LONDON) 198
A fine illusion of opening distance created by the precise rendering
of the aerial perspective. The illusion is of course unobservable in
the reproduction owing to its small size and the want of colour.
(See Page 198).
PLATE 18.--LANDSCAPE, BY HOBBEMA. (MET. MUSEUM, NEW YORK) 210
A fine example of Hobbema's work. A strong light is thrown in from
the back to enable the artist to multiply his signs for the purpose
of deepening the apparent distance. (See Page 202.)
PLATE 19.--LANDSCAPE, BY JACOB RUYSDAEL, (NATIONAL GALLERY,
LONDON) 220
Example of an illusion of movement in flowing water. (See Page 204.)
PLATE 20.--THE STORM, BY JACOB RUYSDAEL. (BERLIN GALLERY) 232
Exhibiting an excellent illusion of motion, due to the faithful
representation of a series of consecutive movements of water as the
vessel passes through it. The illusion is practically lost in the
reproduction, but the details of design may be observed. (See Page
206.)
PLATE 21.--THE LITTA MADONNA, BY LIONARDO DA VINCI. (HERMITAGE) 240
This is perhaps the best example known of an illusion of relief
secured by shading alone. (See Page 240.)
PLATE 22.--CHRIST ON THE CROSS, BY VAN DYCK. (ANTWERP MUSEUM) 252
A superb example of relief obtained by the exclusion of accessories.
Van Dyck took the idea from Rubens, who borrowed it from Titian,
this artist improving on Antonella da Messina. The relief of course
is not well observed in the reproduction because of its miniature
form. The work is usually regarded as the finest of its kind in
existence. (See Page 244.)
PLATE 23.--PATRICIA, BY LYDIA EMMET. (PRIVATE POSSESSION, N. Y.) 264
A very excellent example of the plan of securing relief described
in Book II, Chap. I. Here also the relief is not observed in the
reproduction, but the original is of life size and provides an
illusion as nearly perfect as possible. (See Page 247.)
PLATE 24.--THE CREATION OF ADAM, BY MICHELANGELO. (VATICAN) 276
Instance of the use of an oval form of drapery to assist in
presenting an illusion of suspension in the air. (See Page 260.)
PLATE 25.--THE PLEIADS, BY M. SCHWIND. (DENNER COLLECTION.) 288
One of the finest examples of illusion of motion in the air.
(See Page 269.)
PLATE 26.--ST. MARGARET, BY RAPHAEL. (LOUVRE) 302
Perhaps the best example in existence of a painted human figure in
action. It will be seen that every part of the body and every fold
of the drapery are used to assist in the expression of movement.
(See Page 250.)
PLATE 27.--DIANA AND NYMPHS PURSUED BY SATYRS, BY RUBENS. (PRADO) 318
A good example of an illusion of motion created by showing a number
of persons in different stages of a series of consecutive actions.
(See Page 254.)
PLATE 28.--AUTOMEDON WITH THE HORSES OF ACHILLES, BY H. REGNAULT.
(BOSTON MUSEUM, U. S. A.) 334
The extraordinary spirit and action of these horses are above the
experience of life, but they do not appear to be beyond the bounds
of possibility. In any case the action is perfectly appropriate
here, as the animals are presumed to be immortal. (See Page 256.)
PLATE 29.--MARBLE FIGURE OF ARIADNE. (VATICAN) 348
This work, of the Hellenistic period, illustrates the possibility of
largely varying the regular proportions of the human figure without
injury to the art, by the skilful use of drapery. (See Page 329.)
Art Principles
INTRODUCTION
In view of the many varied definitions of "Art" which have been put
forward in recent times, and the equally diverse hypotheses advanced for
the solution of aesthetic problems relating to beauty, it is necessary
for one who discusses principles of art, to state what he understands by
the terms "Art" and "Beauty."
Though having a widely extended general meaning, the term "Art" in
common parlance applies to the fine arts only, but the term "Arts" has
reference as well to certain industries which have utility for their
primary object. This work considers only the fine arts, and when the
writer uses the term "Art" or "Arts" he refers to one or more of these
arts, unless a particular qualification is added. The definition of
"Art" as applied to the fine arts, upon which he relies, is "The
production of beauty for the purpose of giving pleasure," or as it is
more precisely put, "The beautiful representation of nature for the
purpose of giving disinterested pleasure." This is, broadly, the
definition generally accepted, and is certainly the understanding of
art which has guided the hands of all the creators of those great works
in the various arts before which men have bowed as triumphs of human
skill.
There has been no satisfactory definition of "Beauty," nor can the term
be shortly interpreted until there is a general agreement as to what it
covers. Much of the confusion arising from the contradictory theories of
aestheticists in respect of the perception of beauty is apparently due to
the want of separate consideration of emotional beauty and beauty of
mind, that is to say, the beauty of sensorial effects and beauty of
expression respectively.[1] There are kinds of sensorial beauty which
depend for their perception upon immediately preceding sensory
experience, or particular coexistent surroundings which are not
necessarily permanent, while in other cases a certain beauty may be
recognized and subsequently appear to vanish altogether. From this it is
obvious that any aesthetic system based upon the existence of an
objectivity of beauty must fall to the ground. On the other hand,
without an objectivity there can be no system, because in its absence a
line of reasoning explaining cause and effect in the perception of
beauty, which is open to demonstration, is naturally impossible. Nor may
we properly speak of a philosophy of art.[2] We may reasonably consider
aesthetics a branch of psychology, but the emotions arising from the
recognition of beauty vary only in degree and not in kind, whether the
beauty be seen in nature or art. Consequently there can be no separate
psychological enquiry into the perception of beauty created by art as
distinguished from that observable in nature.
It must be a natural attraction for the insoluble mysteries of life that
has induced so many philosophers during the last two centuries to put
forward aesthetic systems. That no two of these systems agree on
important points, and that each and every one has crumbled to dust from
a touch of the wand of experience administered by a hundred hands, are
well-known facts, yet still the systems continue to be calmly presented
as if they were valuable contributions to knowledge. Each new critic in
the domain of philosophy carefully and gravely sets them up, and then
carefully and gravely knocks them down.[3] An excuse for the systems has
been here and there offered, that the explanations thereof sometimes
include valuable philosophical comments or suggestions. This may be, but
students cannot reasonably be expected to sift out a few oats from a
bushel of husks, even if the supply be from the bin of a Hegel or a
Schopenhauer. Is it too much to suggest that these phantom systems be
finally consigned to the grave of oblivion which has yawned for them so
long and so conspicuously? Bubbles have certain measurements and may
brilliantly glow, but they are still bubbles. It is as impossible to
build up a system of philosophy upon the perception of beauty, which
depends entirely upon physical and physiological laws, as to erect a
system of ethics on the law of gravitation, for a feasible connection
between superstructure and foundation cannot be presented to the mind.
We may further note that a proper apprehension of standards of judgment
in art cannot be obtained unless the separate and relative aesthetic
values of the two forms of beauty are considered, because the beauty of
a work may appear greater at one time than at another, according as it
is more or less permanent or fleeting, that is to say, according as the
balance of the sensorial and intellectual elements therein is more or
less uneven; or if the beauty present be almost entirely emotional,
according as the observer may be affected by independent sensorial
conditions of time or place. Consequent upon these considerations, an
endeavour has been made in this work to distinguish between the two
forms of beauty in the various arts, and the separate grades thereof.
It will be noticed that the writer has adopted the somewhat unusual
course of including fiction among the fine arts. Why this practice is
not commonly followed is hard to determine, but no definition of a fine
art has been or can be given which does not cover fiction. In the
definition here accepted, the art is clearly included, for the primary
object of fiction is the beautiful representation of nature for the
purpose of giving disinterested pleasure.
* * * * *
Art is independent of conditions of peoples or countries. Its germ is
unconnected with civilization, politics, religion, laws, manners, or
morals. It may appear like a brilliant flower where the mind of man is
an intellectual desert, or refuse to bloom in the busiest hive of human
energy. Its mother is the imagination, and wherever this has room to
expand, there art will grow, though the ground may be nearly sterile,
and the bud wither away from want of nourishment. Every child is born a
potential artist, for he comes into the world with sensorial nerves, and
a brain which directs the imagination. The primitive peoples made
beautiful things long before they could read or write, and the
recognition of harmony of form appears to have been one of the first
understandings in life after the primal instincts of self-preservation
and the continuation of the species. Some of the sketches made by the
cave men of France are equal to anything of the kind produced in a
thousand years of certain ancient civilizations, commencing countless
centuries after the very existence of the cave men had been forgotten;
and even if executed now, would be recognized as indicating the
possession of considerable talent by the artists. The greatest poem ever
written was given birth in a country near which barbaric hordes had
recently devastated populous cities, and wrecked a national fabric with
which were interwoven centuries of art and culture. That the author of
this poem had seen great works of art is certain, or he could not have
conceived the shield of Achilles, but the laboured sculpture that had
fired his imagination, and the legends which had perhaps been the seed
of his masterpieces were doubtless buried with his own records beneath
the tramp of numberless mercenaries. Fortunately here and there the
human voice could draw from memory's store, and so the magic of Homer
was whispered by the dying to the living; but even his time and place
are now only vaguely known, and he remains like the waratah on the
bleached pasture of some desert fringe--a solitary blaze of scarlet
where all else is drear and desolate.
Strong is the root of art, though frail the flower. Stifled in sun-burnt
ground ere it can welcome the smile of light; fading with the first
blast of air upon its delicate shoots; shrivelling back to dust when the
buds are ready to break; or falling in the struggle to spread its
branches after its beautiful blossoms have scattered their fragrance
around: whatever condition has brought it low, it ever fights
again--ever seeks to assure mankind that while it may droop or
disappear, its seed, its heart, its life, are imperishable, and surely
it will bloom again in all its majesty. Sometimes with decades it has
run a fitful course; sometimes with centuries; sometimes with
millenniums. It has heralded every civilization, but its breath is
freedom, and it flourishes and sickens only with liberty. Trace its
course in the life of every nation, and the track will be found parallel
with the line of freedom of thought. A solitary plant may bloom
unimpeded far from tyranny's thrall, but the art and soul of a nation
live, and throb, and die, together.
[Illustration: PLATE 1 (See page 7)
Head of Cephren, 4th Egyptian Dynasty (_Cairo Museum_)
Chaldean Head: About 2600 B.C. (_Louvre_)]
Egypt, Babylon, Crete, Greece, Rome, tell their stories through
deathless monuments, and all are alike in that they demonstrate the
dependence of art expansion upon freedom of action and opinion. An art
rises, develops another and another, and they proceed together on their
way. Sooner or later comes catastrophe in the shape of crushing
tyranny which curbs the mind with slavery, or steel-bound sacerdotal
rules which say to the artist "Thou shalt go no further," or
annihilation of nation and life. What imagination can picture the
expansion of art throughout the world had its flight been free since the
dawn of history? Greece reached the sublime because its mind was
unfettered, but twenty or thirty centuries before Phidias, Egyptian art
had arrived at a loftier plane than that on which the highest plastic
art of Greece was standing but a few decades before the Olympian Zeus
uplifted the souls of men, while whole civilizations with their arts had
lived and died, and were practically forgotten.
It is to be observed that while in its various isolated developments,
art has proceeded from the immature to the mature, there has been no
general evolution, as in natural life, but on the other hand there seems
to be a limit to its progress. So far as our imagination can divine, no
higher reaches in art are attainable than those already achieved. The
mind can conceive of nothing higher than the spiritual, and this cannot
be represented in art except by means of form; while within the range of
human intelligence, no suggestion of spiritual form can rise above the
ideals of Phidias. Of the purely human form, nothing greater than the
work of Praxiteles and Raphael can be pictured on our brains. There may
be poets who will rival Homer and Shakespeare, but it is exceedingly
doubtful. In any case we must discard the law of evolution as applicable
to the arts, with the one exception of music, which, on account of the
special functioning of its signs, must be put into a division by
itself.[a]
[a] See Chap. III.
But although there has been no general progression in art parallel with
the growth of the sciences and civilization, there have been, as already
indicated, many separate epochs of art cultivation in various countries,
sometimes accompanied by the production of immortal works, which epochs
in themselves seem to provide examples of restricted evolution.[4] It is
desirable to refer to these art periods, as they are commonly called,
for the purpose of removing, if possible, a not uncommon apprehension
that they are the result of special conditions operating an aesthetic
stimulus, and that similar or related conditions must be present in any
country if the flame of art there is to burn high and brightly.[5] The
well-defined periods vary largely both in character and duration, the
most important of them--the Grecian development and the Italian
Renaissance--covering two or three centuries each, and the others, as
the French thirteenth century sculpture expansion, the English literary
revival in the sixteenth century,[6] and the Dutch development in
painting in the seventeenth, lasting only a few decades. These latter
periods can be dispensed with at once because they were each concerned
with one art only, and therefore can scarcely have resulted from a
general aesthetic stimulus. But the Grecian and Italian movements applied
to all the arts. They represented natural developments from the crude to
the advanced, of which all nations produce examples, and were only
exceptional in that they reached higher levels in art than were attained
by other movements. But there is no evidence to show that they were
brought about by special circumstances outside of the arts themselves.
While there were national crises preceding the one development, there
was no trouble of consequence to herald the other, nor was there any
parallel between the conditions of the two peoples during the progress
of the movements. A short reference to each development will show that
its rise and decline were the outcome of simple matter-of-fact
conditions of a more or less accidental nature, uninfluenced by an
aesthetic impulse in the sense of inspiration.
The most common suggestion advanced to account for the rise in Grecian
art, is that it was due to the exaltation of the Greek mind through the
victories of Marathon, Plataea, and Salamis. That a people should be so
trampled upon as were the Greeks; that their cities should be razed,
their country desolated, and their commerce destroyed; that
notwithstanding all this they should refuse to give way before enemies
outnumbering them twenty, fifty, or even a hundred to one; and that
after all they should crush these enemies, was no doubt a great and
heroic triumph, likely to exalt the nation and feed the imagination of
the people for a long time to come; but that these victories were
responsible for the lofty eminence reached by the Greek artists, cannot
be maintained. From what we know of Calamis, Myron, and others, it is
clear that Grecian art was already on its way to the summit reached by
Phidias when Marathon and Salamis were fought, though the victories of
the Greek arms hastened the development for the plain reason that they
led to an increased demand for works of art. And the decline in Grecian
art resulted purely and simply from a lessened demand. Though this was
the reason for the general decay, there was a special cause for the
apparent weakening with the commencement of the fourth century B.C. In
the fifth century Phidias climbed as high in the accomplishment of
ideals as the imagination could soar. He reached the summit of human
endeavour. Necessarily then, unless another Phidias arose, whatever in
art came after him would appear to mark a decline. But it is scarcely
proper to put the case of Phidias forward for comparative purposes. He
carried the art of sculpture higher than it is possible for the painter
to ascend, and so we should rather use the giants of the fourth
century--Scopas, Praxiteles, Lysippus, Apelles--as the standards to be
compared with the foremost spirits of the Italian Renaissance--Raphael
and Michelangelo--for each of these groups achieved the human ideal,
though failing with the spiritual ideal established by Phidias.
It must be remembered that all good art means slow work--long thinking,
much experiment, tedious attention to detail in plan, and careful
execution. Meanwhile men have to live, even immortal artists, and rarely
indeed does one undertake a work of importance on his own account. It is
true that in the greater days of Greece the best artists were almost
entirely employed by a State, or at least to execute works for public
exhibition, and doubtless the payment they received was quite a
secondary matter with them, but nevertheless few could practise their
art without remuneration. During the fifth and fourth centuries great
events were constantly happening in Greece, and in consequence there
were numberless temples to build and adorn, groves to decorate, men to
honour, and monumental tombs to erect. Innumerable statues of gods and
goddesses were wanted, and we must not forget the wholesale destruction
of Athenian and other temples and sculptures during the Persian
invasion. In fact for a century and a half after Plataea, there was
practically an unlimited demand for works of art, and it was only when
the empire of Alexander began to crumble away that conditions changed.
While Greece was weakening Rome was growing and her lengthening shadows
were approaching the walls of Athens. Greece could build no more temples
when her people were becoming slaves of Rome; she could order no more
monuments when defeat was the certain end of struggle. And so the
decline was brought about, not by want of artists, but through the
dearth of orders and the consequent neglect of competition.
In the case of the Italian Renaissance the decadence was not due to the
same cause. The art of Greece declined gradually in respect of quantity
as well as quality, while in Italy after the decay in quality set in,
art was as nourishing as ever from the point of view of demand. The
change in the character of the art was due entirely to Raphael's
achievements. As with the early Greek, nearly the whole of the early
Italian art was concerned with religion, though in this case there were
very few ideals. The numerous ancient gods of Greece and Rome were long
gone, to become only classical heroes with the Italians, and their
places were taken by twenty or thirty personages from the New Testament.
Incidents from the Old Testament were sometimes painted, but nearly all
the greater work dealt with the life of Christ and the Saints. The
painters of the first century of the Renaissance distributed their
attention fairly equally among these personages, but as time went on and
the art became of a superior order, artists aimed at the highest
development of beauty that their imaginations could conceive, and hence
the severe beauty that might be shown in a picture of Christ or a
prominent Saint, had commonly to give way to a more earthly perfection
of feature and form, which, suggesting an ideal, could only be given to
the figure of the Virgin. And so the test of the power of an artist came
to be instinctively decided by his representation of the Madonna. No
doubt there were many persons living in the fifteenth century who
watched the gradually increasing beauty of the Madonna as depicted by
the succession of great painters then working, and wondered when and
where the summit would be reached--when an artist would appear beyond
whose work the imagination could not pass, for there is a limit to human
powers.
The genius arose in Raphael, and when he produced in the last ten or
twelve years of his life, Madonna after Madonna, so far in advance of
anything that had hitherto been done, so great in beauty as to leave his
fellow artists lost in wonder, so lofty in conception that the term
"divine" was applied to him in his lifetime, it was inevitable that a
decadence should set in, for so far as the intelligence could see,
whatever came after him must be inferior. He did not ascend to the
height of Phidias, for a pure ideal of spiritual form is beyond the
power of the painter,[b] but as with Praxiteles he reached a perfect
human ideal, and so gained the supreme pinnacle of his art. But while
there was an inevitable decadence after him, as after Praxiteles, it
was, as already indicated, only in the character of the art, for in
Italy artists generally were as busy for a hundred years after Raphael,
as during his time. Michelangelo, Titian, and the other giants who were
working when Raphael died, kept up the renown of the period for half a
century or so, but it seemed impossible for artists who came on the
scene after Raphael's death, to enter upon an entirely original course.
The whole of the new generation seemed to cling to the models put
forward by the great Urbino painter, save some of the Venetians who had
a model of their own in Titian.
[b] See Chap. IX.
Thus it is clear that the rise and decline of the Grecian and Italian
movements were due to well ascertained causes which had nothing to do
with a national aesthetic impulse; nor is there evidence of such an
impulse connected with other art developments.
The suggestion that a nation may be assisted in its art by emotional or
psychological influences arising from patriotic exaltation, is only an
extension of an opinion commonly held, that the individual artist is
subject to similar influences, though due to personal exaltation
connected with his art. It is as well to point out that there is only
one way to produce a work of art, and that is to combine the exercise of
the imagination with skill in execution. The artist conceives an idea
and puts it into form. He does nothing more. He can rely upon no
extraneous influence. It is suggested that to bring about a supreme
accomplishment in art, the imagination must be associated with something
outside of our power of control--some impulse which acts upon the brain
but is independent of it. This unmeasured force or lever is usually
known by the term "Inspiration." It is supposed that this force comes to
certain persons when they have particular moods upon them, and gives
them a great idea which they may use in a painting, a poem, or a musical
composition. The suggestion is attractive, but in the long range of
historical record there is no evidence that accident, in the shape of
inspiration or other psychological lever, has been responsible in the
slightest degree for the production of a work of art. The writer of a
sublime poem, or the painter of a perfect Madonna, uses the same kind of
mental and material labour as the man who chisels a lion's head on a
chair, or adds a filigree ornament to a bangle. The difference is one of
degree only. The poet or painter is gifted with a vivid imagination
which he has cultivated by study; and by diligence has acquired
superlative facility in execution, which he uses to the best advantage.
The work of the furniture carver or jeweller does not require such high
powers, and he climbs only a few steps of the ladder whose uppermost
rungs have been scaled by the greater artists.
If in the course of the five and twenty centuries during which works of
high art have been produced, some of them had been executed with the
assistance of a psychological impulse directed independently of the
will, there would certainly have been references to the phenomenon by
the artists concerned, or the very numerous art historians, but without
a known exception, all the great artists who have left any record of the
cause of their success, or whose views on the subject are to be gained
by indirect references, have attributed this success to hard study, or
manual industry, or both together. We know little of the opinion of the
ancient Greeks on the matter, but the few anecdotes we have, indicate
that their artists were very practical men indeed, and hardly likely to
expect mysterious psychological influences to help them in their work.
So with the Romans, and it is noticeable that the key to the production
of beauty in poetry, in the opinion of Virgil and Horace, is careful
preparation and unlimited revision. This appears to be the view of some
modern poets, and if Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton, had experienced
visionary inspiration, we should surely have heard of it. Fortunately
some of the most eminent painters of modern times have expressed
themselves definitely upon the point. Lionardo observed that the painter
arrives at perfection by manual operation; and Michelangelo asserted
that Raphael acquired his excellence by study and application. Rubens
praised his brushes, by which he meant his acquired facility, as the
instruments of his fortune; and Nicholas Poussin attributed his success
to the fact that he neglected nothing, referring of course to his
studies. According to his biographers, the triumphs of Claude were due
to his untiring industry, while Reynolds held that nothing is denied to
well directed labour. And so with many others down to Turner, whose
secret according to Ruskin, was sincerity and toil.
It would seem to be possible for an artist to work himself into a
condition of emotional excitement,[7] either involuntarily when a great
thought comes to him, or voluntarily when he seeks ideas wherewith to
execute a brilliant conception; and it is comprehensible that when in
this condition, which is practically an extreme concentration of his
mental energy upon the purpose in hand, images or other aesthetic
suggestions suitable for his work may present themselves to his mind.
These he might regard as the result of inspiration, but in reality they
would be the product of a trained imagination operating under
advantageous conditions.
Nor can any rule be laid down that the character or temperament of an
artist influences his work, for if instances can be given in support of
such an assertion, at least an equal number may be adduced which
directly oppose it. If we might approximately gauge the true characters
of Fra Angelico and Michelangelo from a study of their work, it is
certain that no imagination could conjure up the actual personalities of
Perugino and Cellini, from an examination of the paintings of the one
and the sculptures of the other. What can be said on the subject when
assassins of the nature of Corenzio and Caravaggio painted so many
beautiful things, and evil-minded men like Ribera and Battistello
adorned great churches with sacred compositions? If the work of Claude
appears to harmonize with his character, that of Turner does not.
"Friendless in youth: loveless in manhood; hopeless in death." Such was
Turner according to Ruskin, but is there any sign of this in his works?
Not a trace. If any conclusion as to his character and temperament can
be drawn from Turner's paintings, it is that he was a gay, light-hearted
thinker, with all the optimism and high spirits that come from a delight
in beautiful things. The element of mood is unquestionably of importance
in the work of an artist, but it is not uncommon to find the character
of his designs contrary to his mood. Poets, as in the case of Hood, or
painters as with Tassaert, may execute the most lively pieces while in
moods verging on despair. With some men adversity quickens the
imagination with fancies; with others it benumbs their faculties.
The tendency of popular criticism to search for psychological phenomena
in paintings, apparently arises largely from the difficulty in
comprehending how it is that certain artists of high repute vary their
styles of painting after many years of good work, and produce pictures
without the striking beauty characterizing their former efforts.
Sometimes when age is beginning to tell upon them, they broaden their
manner considerably, as with Rembrandt and others of the seventeenth
century, and many recent artists of lesser fame. The critic, very
naturally perhaps, is chary of condemning work from the hand of one who
has given evidence of consummate skill, and so seeks for hidden beauties
in lieu of those to which he has been accustomed. A simple enquiry into
the matter will show that the change of style in these cases has a
commonplace natural cause.
[Illustration: PLATE 2 (See page 319)
"Le Bon Dieu d'Amiens" (_Amiens Cathedral_)]
To be in the front rank an artist must have acquired a vast knowledge of
the technique of his art, and have a powerful imagination which has been
highly cultivated. But the qualifications must be balanced. Commonly
when this balance is not present the deficiency is in the imagination,
but there are instances where, though the power of execution is supreme,
the imagination has so far exceeded all bounds as to render this power
of comparatively small practical value. The most conspicuous example of
this want of balance is Lionardo, who accomplished little though he was
scarcely surpassed in execution by Raphael or Michelangelo. His
imagination invariably ran beyond his execution; his ideas were always
above the works he completed or partly finished: he saw in fact far
beyond anything he could accomplish, and so was never satisfied with the
result of his labour. At the same time he was filled with ideas in
the sciences, and investigated every branch of knowledge without
bringing his conclusions to fruition. During the latter part of his
life, Michelangelo showed a similar defect in a lesser degree, for his
unfinished works of the period exceed in number those he completed.
Naturally such intellectual giants, whose imaginations cannot be
levelled with the highest ability in execution, are few, but the lesser
luminaries who fail, or who constantly fail, in carrying out their
conceptions, are legion, though they may have absorbed the limit of
knowledge which they are capable of acquiring in respect of execution.
It is common for a painter to turn out a few masterpieces and nothing
else of permanent value. This was the case with numerous Italian artists
of the seventeenth century, and it is indeed a question whether there is
one of them, except perhaps Domenichino, whose works have not a
considerable range in aesthetic value.
There have been still more artists whose powers of execution were far
beyond the flights of their imaginations. They include the whole of the
seventeenth century Dutch school with Rembrandt at their head, and the
whole of the Spanish school of the same period, except El Greco,
Zurbaran, and Murillo. When an artist is in the first rank in respect of
execution, but is distinctly inferior in imaginative scope, his work in
all grades of his art, except the highest, where ideals are possible,
seems to have a greater value than it really possesses because we are
insensibly cognizant that the accomplishment rises above the idea upon
which it is founded. On the other hand his work in the highest plane
appears to possess a lower value, because we are surprised that ideals
have not been attempted, and that the types of the spiritual and
classical personages represented are of the same class of men and women
as those exhibited in works dealing with ordinary human occupations or
actions. This is why the sacred and classical pictures of Rembrandt,
Vermeer of Delft, and the other leading Dutch artists, appear to be
below their portrait and genre work in power.
The course of variation in the work of a great painter follows the
relative power of his imagination and his execution. Where there is a
fair balance between the two, the work of the artist increases in
aesthetic value with his age and experience; but when his facility in
execution rises above the force of his imagination, then his middle
period is invariably the best, his later work showing a gradual
depreciation in quality. The reason is obvious. The surety of the hand
and eye diminishes more rapidly than the power of the mind, which in
fact is commonly enhanced with experience till old age comes on. Great
artists who rely mostly upon their powers of execution, and exhibit
limited fertility in invention, such as Rembrandt, have often a manner
which is so interwoven with the effects they seek, that they are seldom
or never able to avail themselves of the assistance of others in the
lesser important parts of their work. A man with the fertile mind of a
Rubens may gather around him a troupe of artists nearly as good as
himself in execution, who will carry out his designs completely save
for certain details. Thus he is not occupied with laborious toil, and
the decreasing accuracy of his handiwork troubles him but little. On the
other hand a Rembrandt, whose merits lie chiefly in the delicate
manipulation of light effects and intricate shades in expression,
remains tied to his canvas. He feels intensely the decreasing facility
in the use of his brush which necessarily accompanies his advancing
years, and his only recourse from a stoppage of work is an alteration in
manner involving a reduction of labour and a lessened strain upon the
eyesight. With few exceptions the great masterpieces of Rembrandt were
produced in his middle period. During the last ten or fifteen years of
his life he gradually increased his breadth of manner. He was still
magnificent in general expression, but the intimate details which
produced such glorious effects in the great Amsterdam picture, and fifty
or more of his single portraits, could not be obtained with hog's
hair.[8]
Disconnecting then the work of the artist with inspiration or other
psychological force, we may now enquire what is mean by "Genius,"
"Natural gift," or other term used to explain the power of an artist to
produce a great work? It would appear that the answer is closely
concerned with the condition of the sensorial nerves at birth, and the
precocity or otherwise of the infantile imagination. From the fact that
we can cultivate the eye and ear so as to recognize forms of harmony
which we could not before perceive, and seeing that the effect of this
cultivation is permanent, it follows that exercise must bring about
direct changes in the nerves associated with these organs, attuning them
so to speak, and enabling them to respond to newer harmonies arising
from increased complexity of the signs used.[9] It is matter of common
knowledge that the structure of the sensorial nerves varies largely in
different persons at birth, and when a boy at a very early age shows
precocious ability in music or drawing, we may properly infer that the
condition of his optic or aural nerves is comparatively advanced, that
is to say, it is much less rudimentary than that of the average person
at the same age; in other words accident has given him a nerve
regularity which can only be gained by the average boy after long
exercise. The precocious youth has not a nerve structure superior in
kind, but it is abnormally developed, and so he is ahead of his
confreres in the matter of time, for under equal conditions of study he
is sooner able to arrive at a given degree of skill.
But early appreciation of complex harmony, and skill in execution, are
not enough to produce a great artist, for there must be associated with
these things a powerful imagination. While the particular nerves or
vessels of the brain with which the imagination is concerned have not
been identified, we know by analogy and experience that the exercise of
the imagination like that of any other function, is necessary for its
development, and according as we allow it to remain in abeyance so we
reduce its active value. Clearly also, the seat of the imagination at
birth is less rudimentary in some persons than in others. From these
facts it would appear that when both the sensory nerve structure and the
seat of the imagination are advanced at birth, then we have the basis
upon which the precocious genius is built up. With such conditions,
patient toil and deep study are alone necessary to produce a sublime
artist. Evidently it is extremely rare for the imagination and nerve
structure to be together so advanced naturally, but commonly one is more
than rudimentary, and the deficiency in the other is compensated for by
study.[10]
Of course these observations are general, for there arises the question,
to what extent can the senses and imagination be trained? We may well
conceive that there is a limit to the development of the sense organs.
There must come a period when the optic or aural nerves can be attuned
no further; and is the limit equal in all persons? The probability is
that it is not. The physical character of the nerves almost certainly
varies in different persons, some being able to appreciate more complex
harmonies than others, granted the limit of development. This is a point
which has to be considered, particularly in the case of music wherein as
a rule, the higher the beauty the more complex the combinations of
signs. There is a parallel problem to solve in respect of the
imagination. We can well believe that there was something abnormal in
the imagination of Shakespeare, beyond the probability that in his case
the physiological system controlling the seat of the imagination was
unusually advanced at birth. It is quite certain that with such a man a
given training would result in a far greater advance in the functioning
capacity of the imagination, than in the vast majority of persons who
might commence the training on apparently equal terms; and he would be
able to go further--to surpass the point which might be the limit of
development with most persons.
These questions are of the highest importance, but they cannot be
determined. We are acquainted with certain facts relating to the general
development of the sense organs, and of the imagination; and in regard
to the former we know that there is a limit within comprehensible
bounds, but we see only very dimly anything finite in the scope of the
imagination. With what other term than "limitless" can we describe the
imagination of a Shakespeare? But in all cases, whatever the natural
conditions at birth, it is clear that hard work is the key to success in
art, and though some must work harder than others to arrive at an equal
result, it is satisfactory to know that generally Carlyle was right when
he described "genius" as the transcendent capacity for taking trouble,
and we are not surprised that Cicero should have come to the conclusion
that diligence is a virtue that seems to include all the others.
Seeing that the conclusions above defined (and some to be later drawn),
are not entirely in accord with a large part of modern criticism based
upon what are commonly described as new and improved forms of the
painter's art, it is necessary to refer to these forms, which are
generally comprehended under what is known as Impressionism.[c] Alas, to
the frailty of man must we ascribe the spread of this movement, which
has destroyed so many bright young intellects, and is at this moment
leading thousands of gentle spirits along the level path which ends in
despair. For the real road of art is steep, and difficult, and long.
Year upon year of patient thought, patient observation, and patient
toil, lie ahead of every man who covets a crown of success as a painter.
He must seek to accumulate vast stores of knowledge of the human form
and its anatomy, of nature in her prolific variety, of linear and aerial
perspective, of animals which move on land or through the air, of the
laws of colours and their combinations. He must sound the depths of
poetry, and sculpture, and architecture; absorb the cream of sacred and
profane history; and with all these things and many more, he must
saturate his mind with the practical details of his art. Every artist
whose work the world has learned to admire has done his best to gain
this knowledge, and certainly no great design was ever produced by one
whose youth and early manhood were not worn with ardent study. For
knowledge and experience are the only foundations upon which the
imagination can build. Every new conception is a rearrangement of known
signs, and the imagination is powerless to arrange them appropriately
without a thorough comprehension of their character and significance.
[c] The varied interpretations of Impressionism are referred to
elsewhere (see page ). When using the term in this book
without qualification, the writer means thereby the subordination
of design to colour, which definition covers all the forms of the
"new art" without going beyond any of them.
This then is the programme of work which must be adopted by any serious
aspirant to fame in the art of the painter, and it is perhaps not
surprising that the number of artists who survive the ordeal is strictly
limited. In any walk of life where years of struggle are necessary for
success, how small the proportion of men who persevere to the end; who
present a steel wall to misfortune and despair, and with an indomitable
will, overcome care, and worry, and fatigue, for year after year, till
at last the clouds disappear, and they are able to front the world with
an all-powerful shield of radiant knowledge! But unfortunately in the
painter's art it is difficult to convince students of the necessity for
long and hard study, because there is no definite standard for measuring
success or failure which they can grasp without long experience. In
industries where knowledge is applied to improvement in appliances, or
methods with definite ends, or to the realization of projects having a
fixed scope, failure is determined by material results measured commonly
by mathematical processes of one kind or another. A man produces a new
alloy which he claims will fulfil a certain purpose. It is tested by
recognized means: all concerned admit the validity of the test, and
there the matter ends. But in the arts, while the relative value of the
respective grades is equally capable of demonstration, the test is of a
different kind. Instead of weights and measures which every man can
apply, general experience must be brought in. The individual may be
right in his judgment, and commonly is, but he is unable to measure the
evidence of his senses by material demonstration, and as he has no means
of judging whether his senses are normal, except by comparison, he is
liable to doubt his own experience if it clash with that of others.
Thus, he may find but little beauty in a given picture, and then may
read or hear that the work has a high aesthetic value, and without
calling to mind the fact that no evidence in the matter is conclusive
unless it be based on general experience, he is liable to believe that
his own perception is in some way deficient.
Thus in the arts, and particularly in painting, there is ample scope for
the spread of false principles. Poetry has an advantage in that the
intellect must first be exercised before the simplest pictures are
thrown on the brain, so feeble or eccentric verse appeals to very few
persons, and seldom has a clientele, if one may use the word, outside of
small coteries of weak thinkers. It is difficult also in sculpture to
put forward poor works as of a high order, because this art deals almost
entirely with simple human and animal forms in respect of which the
knowledge is universal, and so as signs they cannot be varied except in
the production of what would be immediately recognized as monstrosities.
But in painting an immense variety in kind of beauty may be produced,
from a simple colour harmony to the representation of ideal forms
involving the highest sensorial and intellectual reaches, and there is
ample scope for the misrepresentation of aesthetic effects--for the
suggestion that a work yielding a momentary appeal to the senses is
superior to a high form of permanent beauty.
It is to the ease with which simple forms of ephemeral beauty may be
produced in painting that is due the large number of artists who should
never have entered upon the profession. Nearly every person of average
intelligence is capable with a few lessons of producing excellent
imitations of natural things in colour, as for instance, flowers, bits
of landscape, and so on, and great numbers of young men and women,
surprised at the facility with which this work can be done, erroneously
suppose that nature has endowed them with special gifts, and so take up
the art of painting as a career. Hence for every sculptor there are
twenty painters. Now these youthful aspirants usually start with
determination and hope, but although they know the value of studious
toil, they rarely comprehend that this toil, long continued, is the only
key to success. Most of them seem under the impression that inspiration
will come to their assistance, and that their genius will enable them to
dispense with much of the labour which others, less fortunate, must
undertake. They do not understand that all painters, even a Raphael,
must go through long years of hard application.
We need not be surprised that there should be occasional eruptions in
art circles tending to the exaltation of the immature at the expense of
the superior, or even the sublime, for we have always with us the
undiligent man of talent, and the "unrecognized genius." But hitherto,
movements of the kind have not been serious, for with one exception they
are lost in oblivion, and the exception is little more than a vague
memory. That the present movement should have lasted so long is not
difficult to understand when we remember the modern advantages for the
spread of new sensations--the exhibitions, the unlimited advertising
scope, and above all the new criticism, with its extended vocabulary,
its original philosophy, and its boundless discoveries as to the
psychological and musical qualities of paint. That history is silent as
to previous eruptions of the kind before the seventeenth century is a
matter of regret. It is unlikely that the greatest of all art epochs
experienced an impressionist fever, for one cannot imagine the spread of
spurious principles within measurable distance of a State (Thebes) which
went so far as to prohibit the representation of unbeautiful things. In
respect of poetry we know that the Greeks stood no nonsense, for did not
Zoilus suffer an ignominious death for venturing upon childish criticism
of Homer? In Rome eccentric painters certainly found some means to
thrive, for where "Bohemian" poets gathered, who neglected the barber
and the bath, and pretended an aesthetic exclusiveness, there surely
would painters of "isms" be found in variety. Naturally in the early
stages of the Renaissance, when patronage of the arts was almost
confined to the Church, and so went hand in hand with learning, inferior
art stood small chance of recognition; and a little later when Lorenzo
gathered around him the intellectual cream of Italy; when the pupils of
Donatello were spreading the light of his genius; when the patrician
beauties of Florence were posing for Ghirlandaio and his brilliant
confreres, and when the minds of Lionardo and Michelangelo were
blooming; who would have dared to talk of the psychological qualities of
paint, or suggest the composition of a fresco "symphony"?
[Illustration: PLATE 3 (See page 111)
Ancient Copy of the Cnidian Venus of Praxiteles (_Vatican_)]
But another century and more passed away. The blaze of the Renaissance
had gone down, but the embers were kept alive, for Italy still seemed to
vibrate with a desire to paint. Simultaneously in Flanders, in Holland,
in France, and in England, private citizens appeared to develop a sudden
demand for pictures, and quite naturally artists multiplied and fed the
flame. Outside of Italy the hustle and bustle in the art world were
novelties to the general public, though pleasant ones withal, and for
half a century or more they delighted in the majestic designs of Rubens
and Van Dyck, the intimate scenes of the Dutch artists, and the delicate
landscapes of Claude and Poussin and their followers, which were
continually finding their way from Rome. The simplicity of the people
protected the arts. They knew the hard labour involved in the production
of a picture; the worries, the struggles, the joys of the painters; and
daily saw beautiful imitations of every-day life in the shops and
markets. They must have been proud of them--insensibly proud of the
value of human endeavour. For them the sham and immature had no place:
there is not a single example of spurious art of the first three
quarters of the seventeenth century that has come down to us from
Holland or Flanders. But while the Dutch school was at the height of its
fame, a change was marking Italian art conditions. The half score of
academies scattered through the country were still in a state of
activity, carrying on, as far as they could, the traditions of the
Renaissance: from all parts of Europe students were still pouring in,
endeavouring to glean the secrets of the immortals; and there was no
apparent decrease in the demand for pictures from the religious
foundations and private buyers. But the character of the art produced
was rapidly declining: the writing on the wall was being done by the
hand that wielded the brush. As a necessary consequence the trader was
called in and art began to be commercialized. Worse still, fashions
appeared, guided by successive masters in the various centres, often
with an influence quite out of proportion with their merits.
By the middle of the century a general fall in activity and enthusiasm
was noticeable. The disciples of the Roman school, largely through the
pernicious influence of Bernini, had nearly forgotten the great lessons
taught by the followers of Raphael, and later by the three Carracci, and
were fast descending below mediocrity; the Florentine school included
half a dozen good painters, mostly students of Berritini: Venice was
falling into a stagnation in which she remained till the appearance of
Longhi and Tiepolo and their brethren; Bologna was living on the
reputation of the Carracci, and had yet to recover with the aid of
Cignani: Milan and Genoa as separate schools had practically faded away;
and the Neapolitan school was relying on Salvator Rosa, though Luca
Giordano was growing into an inexhaustible hive of invention. This was
the condition of Italian art, while political and other troubles were
further complicating the position of artists. For most of them the time
was gloomy and the future dark. A few turned to landscape; others
extended the practice of copying the early masters for the benefit of
foreign capitals, while some sought for novelty in still-life, or in the
then newly practised pastel work. But there was a considerable number
who would have none of these things; some of them with talent but
lacking industry, and others with industry but void of imagination. What
were these to do at a time when at the best the outlook was poor?
An answer came to this question. A new taste must be cultivated, and for
an art that required less study and trouble to produce than the sublime
forms with which the Renaissance culminated. So whispers went round that
Raphael was not really so great a master as was supposed, and that with
Michelangelo he was out of date and did not comprehend the real meaning
of art--very similar conclusions with which the modern impressionist
movement was heralded.[11] The discovery was made in Rome, but the news
expanded to Florence and Naples, and Venice, and behold the
result--Sprezzatura, or to use the modern word, Impressionism, that is
to say, the substitution of sketches for finished pictures, though this
is not the definition usually given to it. But fortunately for the art
of the time the innovation was chiefly confined to coteries. All that
could be said or done failed to convince the principal patrons of the
period that a half finished work is so beautiful as a completed one, and
so the novelties rarely found entrance into great collections, nor were
they used to adorn the interiors of public buildings. But a good many of
them were executed though they have long ceased to interest anybody. Now
and again one comes across an example in a sleepy Italian village, or in
the smaller shops of Rome or Florence, but it is quickly put aside as a
melancholy memento of a disordered period of art when talented painters
had to struggle for fame, and the untalented for bread.
The cult of Sprezzatura faded to a glimmer before the end of the
seventeenth century. Bernini was dead, and Carlo Maratta with a few
others led the way in re-establishing the health if not the brilliancy
and renown of Italian art. Nor did a recurrence of the movement occur in
the next century. During this period there was comparatively little call
for art in Italy, and at the end of it, when political disturbances made
havoc with academies and artists, the principal occupation of Italian
painters with talent was precisely that of their skilled brethren in
Holland and Flanders--the manufacture of "old" masterpieces. It was
reserved for the second half of the nineteenth century for Sprezzatura
to make its reappearance, and this time Italy followed the lead of
France.
There are many methods and mannerisms which go under the name of
Impressionism, but they are mostly suggestions in design or experiments
in tones which were formerly produced solely as studies to assist
artists in executing their complete works, or else eccentricities which
are obviously mere camouflage for lack of skill.[12] Sometimes the
sketches are slightly amplified with more or less finished signs, and
now and then novelties are present in the shape of startling colour
effects; but in all cases the impartial observer sees in the pictures
only sensorial beauty of a kind which is inevitably short lived, while
his understanding is oppressed with the thought, firstly that the
picture is probably the result of a want of diligence on the part of the
artist, and secondly that its exhibition as a serious work is somewhat
of a reflection upon the intelligence of the public.
Obviously the fundamental basis of Impressionism is weak and illogical,
for in our conception of nature it invites us to eliminate the
understanding. What the impressionist practically says is: "We do not
see solid form; we see only flat surface in which objects are
distinguished by colours. The artist should reproduce these colours
irrespective of the nature of the objects." But the objects are
distinguished by our knowledge and experience, and if we are to
eliminate these in one art, why not in another? Why trouble about
carving in the round when we only actually see in the human figure a
flat surface defined by colour? There is no scene in nature such as the
impressionist paints, nor can such a scene be thrown upon the mind of
the painter as a natural scene. Except in absolute deserts there are no
scenes without many signs which are clearly defined to the eye, and
which the artist can paint. He cannot of course produce all the signs in
a view, but he can indicate sufficient of them to make a beautiful
picture apart from the tones, and there can be no valid aesthetic reason
for substituting for these signs vague suggestions of colour infinitely
less definite than the signs as they appear in nature. Nor is there any
such atmosphere in nature as the impressionist usually paints. We do not
see blotched outlines of human figures, but the outlines in nature,
except at a considerable distance, appear to us clear and decisive
though delicately shaded, and not as seen through a veil of steam. Nor
has any valid reason been advanced for juxtaposing pure colours instead
of blending them before use.[13] Why should the eye have to seek a
particular distance from a painting in order that the colours might
naturally blend, when the artist can himself blend them and present a
harmony which is observable at any reasonable distance? We do not carve
a statue with blurred and broken edges, and then tell the observer that
the outlines will appear correct if he travel a certain distance away
before examining them.
In giving nearly his whole attention to colour the impressionist limits
his art to the feeblest form, and produces a quickly tiring, ephemeral
thing, as if unconscious of natural beauty. Sylvan glades and fairy
dales, where the brooks ripple pleasantly as they moisten the roots of
the violet, and gently lave the feet of the lark and the robin; where
shady trees bow welcome to the wanderer; where the grassy carpet is
sprinkled with flowers, and every bush can tell of lovers' sighs! Does
the impressionist see these things? Offer him the sweetest beauties of
nature, and he shows you in return a shake of a kaleidoscope. Mountain
peaks towering one above the other till their snowy crests sparkle the
azure sky; mighty rivers dividing the hills, crumbling the granite
cliffs, or thundering their course over impeding rocks; cascades of
flowing crystal falling into seething seas of foam and mist; the angry
ocean convulsively defying human power with its heaving walls and
fearsome caverns! Nature in her grandest form: sublime forces which
kindle the spirit of man: exhibit them to the impressionist, and he
presents to you a flat experiment in the juxtaposition of pure colours!
And the majesty of the human form, with its glorious attributes; the
noble woman and courageous man; incidents of self-sacrifice; the realms
of spiritual beauty, and the great ideals which expand the mind to the
bounds of space and lift the soul to Heaven! What of these? Ask the
impressionist, and he knows nothing of them. For his pencil they are but
relics of the past, like the bones of the men who immortalized them in
art.
This is perhaps an overstatement of impressionism as applied to the
works of a large number of artists, who although commonly sacrificing
form to colour, infuse more or less interest in the human poses and
actions which are nominally the subjects of their pictures. But one can
only deal generally with such a matter. The evil of Impressionism does
not lie in the presentation of colour harmonies as beautiful things, for
they are unquestionably pleasing, though the beauty is purely sensorial
and of an ephemeral character. The mischief arises from the declaration,
overt or implied, that these harmonies represent the higher reaches of
the painter's art, and that form or design therein is of secondary
importance. Let something false in thought or activity be propagated in
any domain where the trader can make use of it, then surely will the
evil grow, each new weed being more rank than its predecessor.
Impressionism is not a spurious form of art, but seeing that its
spurious claims were widely accepted, with substantial results, there
soon appeared innumerable other forms inferior to it. There is no
necessity to deal here with these forms, with the crude experiments of
Cezanne, the vagaries of Van Gogh,[14] the puerilities of Matisse, or
the awful sequence of "isms," commencing with "Post-Impressionism," and
ending in the lowest depths of art degradation; but it is proper to
point out that so long as Impressionism puts forward its extravagant
pretensions, these corrupt forms will continue to taint the realm of art
to the detriment of both artists and public.
The significance of Impressionism is alleged by its advocates to be of
such considerable import that in the public interest they should have
brought forward the most cogent arguments for its support. But we have
no such arguments, nor has any logical reason been advanced to offset
the obvious practical defects of the innovation, namely, that in the
general opinion the art is incomplete and decidedly inferior, and that
the leading critics of every country have ignored or directly condemned
it as an immature form of art. Nevertheless, although there has been no
determined attempt to upset the basis of art criticism as this basis has
been understood for more than twenty centuries; although the whole of
the arguments in support of the various forms of Impressionism have
failed to indicate any comprehensible basis at all, but have dealt
entirely with vague sensorial theories, and psychological suggestions
which have no general meaning; although it has never been remotely
advanced that the beauty produced by means of Impressionism is connected
with intellectual activity, as any high form of art must necessarily be:
notwithstanding all this, there has been gradually growing up in the
public mind, a vague and uncertain signification of the comparative
forms of art, which tends to the general confusion of thought amongst
the public, and a chaos of ideas in the minds of young artists.
The root of these spreading branches of mysticism is to be found in the
insistent affirmation that the broad manner of painting is necessary for
the production of great work, and that only those old masters who used
this manner are worthy of study. It is, as if the advocates of the new
departure declare, "If we cannot demonstrate the superiority of our
work, we can at least affirm that our methods are the best." Where a
small minority is persistent in advocating certain views, and the great
majority do not trouble about replying thereto, false principles are
likely to find considerable area for permeation among the rising
generation, who are easily impressed with the appearance of undisputed
authority. In the matter we are discussing, the limited authority is
particularly likely to be recognized by the inexperienced of those
mostly concerned, that is to say, young artists, because it sanctions a
method of work which reduces to a minimum the labour involved in
arriving at excellence by the regular channels.
Now the artist is at liberty to use any method of painting in producing
his picture providing he presents something beautiful. There is no
special virtue in a broad manner, a fine manner, or any other manner,
and the public, for whom the artist toils, is not concerned with the
point. It is as indifferent to the kind of brushwork used by the
painter, as to the variety of chisel handled by the sculptor. The
observer of the picture judges it for its beauty, and if it be well
painted, then the character of the brushwork is unconsidered. If,
however, the brushwork is so broad that the manner of painting protrudes
itself upon the observer at first sight, then the work cannot be of a
high class. All the paintings which we recognize as great works of art
are pictured upon the brain as complete things immediately they are
brought within the compass of the eye, and to this rule there is no
exception. If, when encompassed by the sight we find that a picture is
so broadly painted that we must move backwards to an unknown point
before the character of the work can be thoroughly comprehended as a
complete whole, then it is distinctly inferior as a work of art,
because, being incomprehensible on first inspection, it is necessarily
unbeautiful, and the act of converting it into a thing of beauty, by
means of a mechanical operation, complicates the picture on the brain
and so weakens its aesthetic value.[15] This is axiomatic. There are
proportions and propriety in all the arts, and the good artist is quite
aware of the lines to be drawn in respect of the manner he adopts. Jan
Van Eyck's picture of Arnolfini and his Wife, and Holbein's Ambassadors,
both painted in the fine manner, are equally great works of art with
Titian's portraits; and Raphael's portrait of Julius II. (the Pitti
Palace example),[16] which is in a manner midway between that of Holbein
and Titian, is superior to the work of all other portrait artists.
But the most remarkable outcome of the spread of Impressionism is not
the extravagant use of the broad manner, for vagaries of this sort will
always find support among immature minds and undiligent hands, but the
establishment of a species of cult connected with certain old masters
who are not in the very first rank, and the attempted relegation to the
background of public opinion, of the few sublime painters whose colossal
genius and superiority are recognized by well balanced minds wherever
the breath of man can open the door of his soul. It is unnecessary to
enter upon a long enquiry as to the validity of these proceedings, but
the new position in which two great masters have been placed can
scarcely be ignored. These masters are Rembrandt and Velasquez, who
appear to have been set upon the loftiest of pedestals in order that
some of their glory may be shed upon the new varieties of Sprezzatura.
It has been frequently said that these masters were the first of
impressionists, but the connection between their work and Impressionism
is hard to find.[17] Not only is Rembrandt entirely distinct in his
manner from Velasquez; not only were they both portrait painters
primarily, while the great bulk of impressionist work is landscape; but
their aims, their ideas, and the whole of their works are as far removed
from the new school as the poles are asunder. The work of the two great
painters deals almost entirely with expression, that of the
impressionists with colour harmonies. In the one case intellectual
beauty is sought to accompany the sensorial, in the other the production
of beauty which is not purely or almost entirely sensorial, is not even
pretended. While these differences are obvious, and while no man of
ordinary intelligence is likely to be confused in his mind in respect of
them, the fact remains that the movement, which was born with
Impressionism some forty years ago, to raise Rembrandt and Velasquez to
an elevation in art to which they are not entitled, has met with much
success amongst that considerable section of the community which is
interested in art and appreciates its value, but suffers from the
delusion that special knowledge, which it has not acquired, is necessary
for the recognition of high aesthetic merit. No definite propositions
have been laid down in support of the movement: there has been no line
of reasoning for the critic to handle, nor have the old standards been
upset in the slightest degree: the position has been brought about
chiefly by a continuous reiteration of vague assertions and mystic
declarations, and by the glamour arising from the enormous prices paid
by collectors for the works of the masters named, consequent upon the
skilful commercial exploitation of this exaggerated approbation.
[Illustration: PLATE 4 (See Page 113)
Venus Anadyomene (_Sculpture after the painting of Apelles_)]
[Illustration: PLATE 5 (See page 115)
Venus Anadyomene (_The painting of Titian_)]
Portraiture is necessarily on a lower scale of art than historical
painting (using this term in its higher application), firstly because
ideals are not possible therein, and secondly in that the imagination of
the artist is very restricted. The greatest portrait ever painted is
immeasurably below a picture where a beautiful ideal form, with ideal
expression is depicted; as far below in fact as the best ancient
sculptured busts were inferior to the gods of Praxiteles. Neither
Rembrandt nor Velasquez was capable of idealization of form, and so
neither left behind him a single painted figure to take its place as a
type. Rembrandt was a master of human expression, and in the
representation of character he was perhaps unsurpassed by any painter,
but if we analyze the feeling that is at the bottom of the appreciation
of his portraits, we find that it largely consists of something apart
from admiration of them as things of beauty. There enters into
consideration recognition of the extraordinary genius of the artist in
presenting character in such a way that the want of corporeal beauty
seems to be unfelt. Instead of observing that the expression in a
countenance harmonizes with the features, we involuntarily notice
that the features harmonize perfectly with the expression, which seems
in itself to be the picture. Of course inasmuch as the expression
invariably appeals to the good side of our nature, it means intellectual
beauty, but as the depth of any impression of this kind of beauty
depends upon the development of the mind, the admiration must, except
where the artist presents corporeal beauty, be confined generally to the
cultivated section of the community. From the point of view of pure art,
his fame as a great painter can only rest upon those of his pictures
which are also appreciated for the corporeal beauty exhibited.
The extraordinary power of Velasquez lay in the sure freedom of his
execution, and in this he was equal to Titian. He was besides a master
of balance, and so every portrait he painted is one complete whole, and
has exactly the effect that a portrait should have--to direct the mind
of the observer to the subject, and away altogether from the painter.
But these high qualities as portrait painters do not place Rembrandt and
Velasquez on a level with Raphael, and Michelangelo, and Correggio.
Whatever the individual opinion, it is impossible to move aside from the
long path of experience and the laws dependent upon natural functions,
and so long as the world lasts, a work of ideal beauty, whether it be a
Madonna by Raphael, a Prophet by Michelangelo, or a symbolical figure by
Fragonard, will live in general estimation, which is the only test of
high beauty, far above portraits from life and scenes of every day
labour, however they may be painted. The beauty of the one is eternal
and exalting; and of the other, sympathetic and more or less passive.
The appreciation of Raphael and Michelangelo is universal, spontaneous,
emphatic; of Rembrandt and Velasquez, sometimes imperative, but usually
deliberative and cultivated. In fact it is only amongst a section of
cultivated people, that is to say, a small percentage of the community,
that Rembrandt and Velasquez are given a status which is not, and cannot
be, accorded them if we adhere to the natural and time-honoured
standards of judgment accepted by the first artists and philosophers
known to the world since art emerged from the prehistoric shade. To
place these artists above, or on a level with, the Italian artists
named, is to cast from their pedestals Homer, Phidias, Praxiteles,
Apelles, Shakespeare, Dante, and every other admittedly sublime genius
in art of whom we have record.
Another baneful result of Impressionism is the attempt to raise
landscape to a higher level in art than that to which it is properly
entitled. This is perhaps a natural consequence of the elevation of
colour at the expense of form, for the movement is based upon new
methods of colouring, and the significance of colour is vastly greater
in landscape than in any other branch of art. Elsewhere the disabilities
of the landscape painter are pointed out, and it will be seen that fixed
and unalterable restrictions compel an extreme limitation to his work.
It is because of these restrictions that the very greatest artists have
refrained from paying close attention to this branch of art as a
separate department.
From indirect records we may presume that landscape painting was well
understood in the days of ancient Greece, but there is no evidence that
it then formed a separate branch of art. In Roman times according to
Pliny, landscape was used for mural decoration. Of its character we can
only judge from the examples exposed during the excavations at Pompeii
and Herculaneum, which indicate that the pictures had but a
topographical interest, or formed settings for the representation of
industrial pursuits or classical adventures. Certainly there is no
instance in Greek or Roman art recorded or exhibited, of any landscape
as we understand it, that is, a work built up as a beautiful
representation of nature, to be instantly recognized by the observer as
a complete whole, as one sign in fact. The artists of the Italian
Renaissance did not paint landscapes as separate pictures unless by way
of study or experiment. They evidently considered landscape signs purely
as accessories, and composed their natural views with special reference
to figure designs. Some of them, particularly the leaders of the
Venetian School, occasionally painted pictures in which landscape
appears to play an important part, but in these cases the landscape is
really subsidiary, though essential to the design; and the works cannot
be compared in any way with those of Claude and others who often added
figures to their landscapes in order to comply with the wishes of their
patrons. The fifteenth century Flemish artists also dealt with landscape
purely as background, and so with Martin Schongauer, Duerer, and other
early German painters. But all the great painters down to the decline
of the Renaissance, closely studied landscape, as is evidenced by the
numerous sketches still existing, and the finished pictures remaining
clearly indicate that by the middle of the sixteenth century artists had
little or nothing to learn in landscape art, save the management of
complex aerial perspective.
Since landscape painting was introduced as a separate art towards the
end of the sixteenth century, it has only commanded general attention
when the higher art of the painter has appeared to decline. In Flanders
the spurt in landscape due to Paul Bril was terminated with the last of
the Breughels by the overpowering splendour of Rubens in historical
work, and the attempts of even Rubens himself to create a greater
interest in landscape signally failed. There were some good landscape
painters in Holland during the flourishing period of the Dutch school,
but it was only when Rembrandt, Dow, Terburg, and the rest of the bright
constellation of figure painters had passed their zenith, or were
resting in quiet graves, that landscape painting became in any way
general. Then it was that Hobbema, Jacob Ruysdael, and their numerous
followers, with coast painters like Van der Cappelle, and sea painters
as William van de Velde, turned out the many fine works which are now so
highly prized.
The Italians of the seventeenth century were too close to Raphael, and
Michelangelo, and Titian, to permit of a landscape being generally
received as a great work of art, but there appeared at this time in
Rome numerous foreigners from France, and Flanders, and Holland, who
were devoted to landscape, and amongst them the greatest genius known in
the art--Claude Lorraine. He was the first to put the sun in the sky on
canvas for the purpose of pure landscape; the first to master thoroughly
the intricate difficulties of aerial perspective; the first to adorn the
earth with fairy castles and dreamy visions of nature, such as we might
suppose to have been common in the days of the Golden Age, ere yet men
fought for power, or toiled from morn to eve for daily bread. With his
magic wand he skimmed the cream of natural beauty and spread it over the
Roman Campagna, transforming this historic ground into a region of
palaces, terraces, cascades, and glorious foliage. At the same time
Nicholas Poussin was also using the Campagna for the landscape settings
of his classical compositions--such perfect settings that it is
impossible to imagine the figures separated from their surroundings.
These two artists with their disciples, and many Flemish and Dutch
painters headed by Berghem and the two Boths, formed a landscape colony
of considerable importance, but no Italian landscape school was founded
from it. In the next century there was little pure landscape in Italy.
Some fine works of topographical, and a few of general interest were
produced by Canaletto and his followers, and a kind of landscape school
was maintained in Venice for half a century or more, but elsewhere in
Italy the cultivation of landscape was spasmodic and feeble.
In England and France, landscape as a separate art has only made
considerable headway quite recently, though there have been local
schools, as the Norwich and Barbizon, which followed particular methods
in design. Meanwhile England produced some isolated giants in landscape,
as Wilson, Gainsborough, Turner, and Constable, Turner standing out as
the greatest painter of strong sun effects on record. It will be seen
that until the last generation or so, in no country has landscape been
admitted to high rank as a separate art, universal opinion very properly
recognizing that the highest beauty in the handiwork of man is to be
found in the representation of the human figure. Profound efforts of the
imagination are not required in landscape, for it consists of a
particular arrangement of inanimate signs which have no direct influence
upon the mind, and cannot appeal to the higher faculties. There is no
scope therein for lofty conceptions, and consequently the sensorial
beauty exhibited must be very high to have more than a quickly passing
effect upon the observer. This high beauty is most difficult to obtain,
and can only be reached by those who have a supreme knowledge of the
technique of their art; who have made a long and close study of natural
signs and effects; and who are possessed of uncommon patience and
industry. We need not be surprised that scarcely one out of every
hundred landscape painters executes a work which lasts a generation, and
not one out of a thousand secures a permanent place on the roll of art.
The man who does not give his life from his youth up, to his work,
concentrating his whole energy upon it, to the exclusion of everything
else, will paint only inferior landscapes. The four greatest landscape
painters known to us are Claude and Turner in distance work, and Hobbema
and Jacob Ruysdael in near-ground. Claude was labouring for twenty-five
years before he succeeded in accomplishing a single example of those
lovely fairy abodes so forcibly described by Goethe as "absolute truth
without a sign of reality." Turner took more than twenty years to master
the secrets of Claude; Jacob Ruysdael spent a quarter of a century in
working out to perfection the representation of flowing water, and
Hobbema passed through more than half of his long life before arriving
at his superlative scheme of increasing his available distance by
throwing in a powerful sunlight from the back of his trees. And a long
list of landscape painters of lesser lustre might be given, who went
through from fifteen to thirty years of painstaking labour before
executing a single first-class picture.
Great landscapes of the pure variety are of two kinds, and two kinds
only. The highest are those where an illusion of opening distance or
other movement is provided, and the second class are where natural
scenes of common experience, under common conditions of atmosphere, are
faithfully reproduced. The lighter landscapes representing phases, as
the sketches of the Barbizon school,[18] with the moonlight scenes, and
the thousand and one sentimental colour harmonies unconcerned with human
motives, which are turned out with such painful regularity every month,
serve their purpose as wall decorations of the moment, but then die and
fade from memory like so many of the unfortunate artists who drag their
weary way to the grave in the vain struggle for fame by means of them.
No landscape of the phase class can be anything more than a simple
harmony of tone and design, more ephemeral than the natural phase
itself. The quiet harmony is restful for the fatigued eye, and every eye
is fatigued every day; and because the eye feels relieved in glancing at
the picture, the conclusion arises to the unthinking that it must be a
great work of art. Glowing eulogies were pronounced upon Whistler's
Nocturne, in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, when it was first
placed there, but is there anything less like a work of beauty than the
dark meaningless patch as it is now seen? And the same thing has
happened with a thousand other landscapes of the kind--first presented
to the tired eyes of business and professional men, and then placed in
collections to be surrounded by permanently beautiful works. All these
phase pictures must quickly lose their beauty in accordance with natural
laws which cannot be varied. Let it not be supposed that the writer
means to suggest that these simple works should not be executed. They
are surely better than no decoration at all in the many homes for which
really fine pictures are unavailable, but it is entirely wrong to
endeavour to pervert the public judgment by putting them forward as
works of high art.
And what of the struggling artists? Look around in every city and see
the numbers of bright young men and women wearing away the bloom of
their youth in vain endeavours to climb the heights of art by the easy
track of glowing colours! It is the call of Fame they think, that leads
them along, for they know not the voice of the siren, and see not the
gaping precipice which is to shatter their dreams. There is but one sure
path to the top of the mountain, but it is drab-coloured, and many are
the slippery crags. Few of the strongest spirits can climb it, but all
may try, and at least they may direct their minds upwards, and keep ever
in front of them a vision of the great idealists wandering over the
summit through the eternal glow of the fires they lit ere death
consecrated their glory.
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
Classification of the fine arts
The arts imitative of nature--The arts classified according to the
character of their signs--Poetry not a compound art, primarily--The
extent to which the arts may improve upon nature.
Since art uses natural signs for the purpose of representing nature, it
is necessarily mimetic in character.[19]
Poetry represents all that the other arts imitate, and in addition,
presumed divine actions. Specially it imitates human and presumed
spiritual actions, with form and expression; expression directly, form
indirectly.
Sculpture imitates human and presumed spiritual form and expression;
form directly, expression indirectly. It also represents animal forms,
and modifications of natural forms in ornament.
Painting imitates natural forms and products, and specially human form
and expression; form directly, expression indirectly.
Fiction imitates human actions, and form and expression; expression
directly, form indirectly.
Music imitates natural sounds and combines them and specially represents
human emotional effects.
Architecture is the least imitative of the arts, its freedom in the
representation of nature being restricted by the necessity of serving
the end of utility. It combines geometrical forms, and in the positions
and proportions of these, is compelled to represent what we understand
from experience of nature as natural balance.
The poet may give to a character sublime attributes far above
experience, or expand form as Homer raises the stature of Strife to the
heavens, but he cannot provide attributes beyond experience in kind, or
any part of a form outside of nature. He may combine or rearrange, and
enlarge or diminish as he will, and so may the painter, the sculptor, or
musician, but he is powerless to create signs unknown to nature. It
follows then, that he who imitates nature in the most beautiful way,
that is to say, he who combines the signs of nature to form the most
beautiful whole, produces the greatest work of art.
It would appear that upon the character of their principal signs is
dependent the relative position of the arts in respect of the
recognition of beauty therein. Of the six fine arts, namely, Poetry,
Sculpture, Painting, Fiction, Music, and Architecture, the first four,
which hereafter in this work will be known as the Associated Arts, have
for their principal sign the human figure, to which everything else is
subordinate; while in music the signs consist of tones, and in
architecture, of lines.
All the other arts whose object is to give pleasure, as the drama,
dancing, etching, are either modifications of one of the fine arts, or
combinations of two or more of them. In recent times it has been held
that poetry is a combined art, owing to the almost invariable use of a
simple form of music in its construction, but it would appear that
primarily poetry is independent of metrical assistance. This was clearly
laid down by Aristotle, but modern definitions of the art have usually
included some reference to metre.[20] Now in our common experience two
things are observable in respect of poetry. The first is, that when by
way of admiration or criticism, we discuss the works of those poets whom
all the world recognizes as the greatest known to us, we deal only with
the substance of what is said, and the manner of saying it, without
reference to the metrical form. In the second place we observe that the
higher the poetry, the more simple is the metrical form with which it is
associated. The great epics, which necessarily take first rank in
poetry, have only metre, the higher musical measures in which lyrics are
set being avoided. But as we descend in the scale of the art, metrical
form becomes of more importance, and when simple subjects are dealt
with, and a grand style is inappropriate, the production would not be
called poetry unless in the form of verse.
[Illustration: PLATE 6 (See page 116)
The Reposing Venus of Giorgione (_Dresden Gallery_)]
In epic and dramatic poetry, we call one poet greater than another
because of his superior invention and beauty of expression, let the
measure be what it will. But the invention comes first, for only high
invention can be clothed with lofty expression. The actions of deathless
gods or god-like men; qualities of goodness, nobility, courage,
grandeur, so high as to be above human reach: only these can form the
subject of language and sentiment soaring into regions of the sublime,
and indifferent to metrical artifice. In the sacred books of all great
religions we may find the loftiest poetry without regular form, and any
prose translation of the Greek poets will provide many examples,[21]
though often there is a cadence--a rise and fall in the flow of words
which is more or less regular, and has the effect of emphasizing the
sentiment, and of throwing the images upon the mind with directness and
force. We must conclude then that in poetry, while metrical form is
generally essential, it is not vital to the highest flights of the poet,
and so strictly, poetry is primarily a pure and not a compound art.
Seeing that art uses the signs of nature of which man is at once a
product and a tool, it must in its progress follow the general course of
nature. In her development of life, nature is chiefly concerned in the
improvements of types for her own purposes, and only uses the individual
in so far as he can assist in this end, while the natural instinct of
the individual is to conserve and improve his type. The art which
represents life is compelled to deal chiefly with types, for it is only
by the use of a type that the artist can apply his imagination to the
production of high beauty, to whatever extent he may use the individual
to help him in this purpose, and it is instinctive in the human being to
maintain and improve the aesthetic attraction of the species. The highest
art, as the highest work of nature, consists of the presentation of a
perfected type. The artist therefore must consider the species before
the individual; the essential before the accidental; the general before
the particular.
The living signs of nature with which art deals are of two classes. In
the one sign the position of parts is the same throughout the species,
and is fixed and invariable, as in fully developed animals; in the other
the position is irregular, and variable within limits, as in plants. In
the latter case the position of parts may be commonly varied
indefinitely without a sense of incongruity arising, as in a tree, and
hence there can be no conceivable general form or type upon which art
may build up perfected parts and proportions. In respect of such a sign
therefore, art cannot improve, or appear to improve, upon nature, by
combining perfected parts into a more beautiful whole than nature
provides.
In the case of a fully developed animal, where the position of parts is
fixed, a type may be conceived which is superior in symmetry and harmony
to any individual of the species produced by nature, for the imagination
is restricted to an unchangeable form, and has but to put together
perfected parts and proportions. But this conception can only be applied
in art to human beings, because in respect of other animals, while no
two are alike, the members of each species, or each section of a
species, seem to be alike, or so closely alike in form and expression,
that no perfected type can be conceived which will appear to be superior
in general beauty to the normal individual of the species, or section
thereof, coming within actual experience. Thus, the most perfect
conceivable racehorse painted on canvas, might in reality be more
perfect in form than any actual racehorse, but to the observer of the
picture it would not appear to be of greater perfection or higher beauty
than racehorses that come, or may come, within experience. The poet may
describe the actions and appearance of a courser in such a way as to
suggest that the animal has qualities far above experience, but the form
of the animal when thrown on the mind of the reader, would still appear
to be within the bounds of experience.
With the human being, in addition to the general form there enters into
consideration the countenance, which is the all-important seat of
beauty, is the principal key to expression, and which, to the common
knowledge, differs in every person in character and proportions. Nature
never produces a perfect form with a perfect countenance, and she
actually refuses to provide a countenance which is free from elements
connected with purely human instincts and passions. But it is within the
power of art to correct the work of nature in these respects--to put
together perfect parts, and to provide a general expression approaching
our highest conceptions of human majesty. Homer, Phidias, and Raphael
have enabled us to throw upon our minds images far above any of actual
experience.
Apart from these ideal forms, nature cannot be surpassed by art in the
production of beauty, either in respect of animate or inanimate signs,
separately or collectively, the latter because within the limitations
of art, there is no grouping or arrangement of signs possible which
would not appear to correspond with what may be observed in nature,
unless something abnormal and less beautiful than any natural
combination be presented.
Poetry, painting, and sculpture may be concerned with ideals. In fiction
an ideal is impossible because the writer must treat of life as it is,
or as it appears to be, within the bounds of experience. In neither
music nor architecture is there a basic sign or combination of signs
upon which the imagination may build up an ideal.