_A STUDY IN LIGHT AND SHADOW_
[Illustration: M]Y subject--the Union of Painting and Photography--is
not so short as you or I might wish it to be, yet I have tried to make
it as terse as a subject so crammed with incident, and so exhaustless in
matter, could be made. If you will try to endure it to the end, I trust
you may not be disappointed.
Photographers, as far as I have seen them, are a jealous-minded race.
They don't think enough of their art, or of themselves. They are too apt
to think that painters despise them, while in reality the painters of
to-day hang on to them as a drunken husband is apt to hang on to his
good-templar wife during the festive New Year season, or, to be more
poetic in simile, as a half-drowned sailor will clutch on, teeth and
nails, to the hard rock, which may have broken up his rotten old boat,
but now keeps him alive in the midst of the surf.
The painters of to-day have become realists, and photography is realism,
or nothing.
A photographer, to be able to produce a good picture, must be a true
painter in the highest sense of the word; therefore, a painter ought to
know the right qualities about a good photograph, whether he knows the
mixing of the chemicals, or length of exposure, or process of focussing,
&c., or not; although, to be able to compete, the tricks of the trade
have to be learned. Witness Sarony, Mora, and such men, with their fancy
dodges and splendid effects, and Seavey with his unapproachable
backgrounds.
Thus my title is almost superfluous, for painting and photography,
requiring the same direction of talent, are already united; only it may
be of a little service to hear a painter publicly avow the marriage
which is so constantly being consummated on the quiet.
It is in your work, as in ours, the doom to be often annoyed with
talented triflers who dip a finger into all the sciences, and are for
ever ready to dispute the point with the originators--buyers of brains,
who imagine that their cash gives them full liberty to find all sorts of
faults, or suggest improvements upon the worker's designs; who will not
buy unless their idiotic improvements are executed to the last letter,
and who afterwards lay the whole blame of the spoiling of the pie upon
the baker, when the guests condemn.
Having a direct object in view, I need not trouble you about chemicals
or lenses, aurora lights, or secrets that you all now know much better
than I could for years unborn, but come direct to what is of vital
interest to us both in our wedded state-viz. the seeking how we may put
as much as possible of the soul of nature, with her innate force of
feeling and motion, into our pictures; the men, modern and ancient, who
may best aid us by the examples and teachings they have left as a legacy
to us; a quiet consideration of what they really have done for us; a
right straight look at the men themselves, unbiassed by veneration or
prejudice, with a consideration as to how much we have taken advantage
of the legacies left to us.
The first aim of our investigation is therefore The Exact Imitation of
Nature--_i.e._ the outward form and appearances of nature, the body, in
fact, of that mystic Deity whom all men worship, no matter what is their
dogma, whether they have a creed or whether they be creedless.
Secondly, The Feeling, Sentiment, or Sensations of Nature--how her
appearance touches us, as we look upon her in the wealth and loveliness
of her colouring; also how we may keep that sentiment alive in our light
and shade.
Here the painter, with his colours, gets a better hand and a long start
ahead of the photographer, engraver, and etcher; and it is here that, if
those workers in light and shade can keep the sentiment as well as the
painter in colours, they gain a double and richer triumph--the triumph
of a racer who has been heavily and unfairly handicapped at the
beginning of the race.
Thirdly, The Motions, Actions, Passages, Expressions, and Impressions of
Nature. There both in photographer and painter the man himself is
brought out, whether he is a trained mechanic or a born genius.
Lastly, The Perfect Image, the whole innate force, which is the spirit
and soul of that matchless creation toward which we must all constantly
turn (as the sun-flower turns or the daisy opens to the glance of day)
for the life and light of our artistic beings.
Let us drop the weak word artist out of our consideration altogether.
Personally I abhor it, as denoting nigger minstrel, sword-swallower, or
that undefinable member of society who plays with foils and sable hairs
inside a studio enriched with Turkey ruggery, old armour, and marble
busts. Let us, who are workers, be plain painters and photographers,
never heeding the comforts of our surroundings, having only to do with
objects as accessories to our work, thinking only upon the _utility_ of
every nick-nack we may have, aiming only at the result without
considering the trouble or the inconvenience to the animal who is
bringing it all about; every conception or experiment being an
undiscovered country which we mean to find out and make our
own--Stanleys or Thompsons with our Africas; Pizzaros conquering and
annexing our Mexicos; plain, hardworking, earnest painters and
photographers; brothers in one grand service--Art.
I think, at the present day, painters recognise this fraternal stand
even more than photographers give them credit for doing; they know how
much they are indebted to the camera for making matters lucid which were
before obscure. Witness the galloping horses done by instantaneous
process, the shape of waves in full action, the rushing of waterfalls,
and the contortions of muscles in moments of great excitement. How many
of the old masters knew what a horse at full speed was like! and what
eye-openers to battle painters those photographs have been! None of the
sea painters were able to draw a wave in all its subtleties and froth
accessories as painters nowadays may do if they study the imprint of a
flying second; we may also have clouds in their strata, as they actually
are, with shadows perfect, in those artistic studies which, like the
institution of Christmas cards, are coming more and more into vogue
every year that we live.
And painters do use them constantly, whether they admit the fact or,
induced by a false pride, pretend that they do not. I see in every
exhibition glaring evidences of hay carts and field horses, yachts and
ships of all degrees, blankly copied, with hardly any disguise, from the
photographic studies suspended in the shop windows: clear photographic
studies, faithfully drawn out, and in the painting knocked about a
little, sometimes not so true as the original to nature, blurred and
mystified into that obscurity which does for feeling with the crowd; the
most original bit of painting being the man's signature who sells it,
that being strictly his own, and not the copyright of either the
photographer or the horse.
And why not? Clouds will not wait on our pencils and palettes being set;
horses will not stand until we draw out a faithful enough study of their
forms, nor ships pause until we get in all the rigging. The winds are
against it, and the waves. The hours flying along and tearing down the
sun-shadows before we have fixed one line of them on our paper or canvas
join in the protest, jeering at our deliberation, and mocking us as
slow-coaches, in these steam-engine days, for trying to crawl on at six
miles an hour, and dreaming that we can enter into competition with the
mile-a-minute express.
The pride which keeps the artist silent, or makes him deny the charge of
photo-borrowing, is an utterly false pride, and the sooner it is knocked
out of sight the better for all parties. Why should we not correct our
sketches--done for the sake of the colour and feeling, and not for the
form--from faithful photographs? It does not hinder us from being
original in the after-treatment, although it may save us much time in
the elaboration of sketch-details. Why not save our precious time for
something so much more worthy of it--the picture?[1]
Hitherto I have wanted so much to be original that, from conscientious
scruples, I would not use the photographic studies which some of my
friends had sent me. I looked upon them longingly, and put them out of
sight reluctantly, and so went down to sea-boards and meadows, catching
rheumatics and toothache, and wasting hours upon hours, and many
valuable sheets of Whatman's hand-made paper, trying to draw out all the
riggings of ships, and the shapes of cows, losing the effect often in my
endeavours to get the manipulation, and in reality not getting a
hundredth part of what I might have got with half-an-hour's rapid
dashing on of colour effects and a moment's focussing.
At present I know just a little about the art of photography, but I
intend to make it my duty to learn a great deal more--enough to be able
to sight a picture correctly; take and develop a dry plate, and
afterwards fix a print; for I can perceive plainly that Time is coming
on with rapid strides to the point when, along with his present utensils
of colour-boxes and sketching block, the painter will require to carry
his camera and stand, box of dry plates, and head covering.
And how proper it is that it should be so, a little experience will
prove to every one. An old castle or abbey, or the view of a town, or
even the markings upon the trees, would take us days to outline--the
buildings of the town, the fret-work about the abbey and castle, or the
knots and gnarling of the woodland--and even then they would be
incomplete. To illustrate my meaning, look at even the most careful
outline pencil drawings of Turner, one of the most delicate of outline
draughtsmen _when he liked_, or the scrupulous and untiring delicacy of
his admirer, Professor John Ruskin, with his pencil, and compare those
efforts with the lines about even the most commonplace photograph of a
building or tree-trunk, and I need say no more on that point. The
painter has lost the half, and distorted the rest; and although the
drawing may appear more attractive at first sight, the photograph will
be the better, for it embodies the first grand principle of a painter's
training--faithful imitation of the object which he desires to
represent.
Photographers are apt to labour under the mistaken notion that we do not
recognise this plain fact of artistic necessity; but we do, and if we
have not the manliness to own it, that is our cowardice and not our
blindness.
Be content, therefore, when you go into exhibitions and see the misty
result of your photographic studies in the realism of to-day hanging
all round, that this is recognition enough of the obligations Palette
owes to Camera.
To consider the first of our united art aims--viz., '_The Exact
Imitation of Nature_,' as she appears to us and as she appears to
others.
The eye is the organ to which we all appeal, and I do not know a more
fickle umpire--except perhaps the ear.
Many people are colour-blind, yet not entirely so, and more is the pity,
but just on one point, _like the sun-stroke of Sir Roger Tichborne_; and
the worst is, they are not aware of the particular point, and feel quite
put out if it is explained to them. They will think the man a fool who
tries to prove them wrong, for if they are strong upon any point, it is
upon that particular point. I have proved it dozens of times in cases of
partial sun-stroke and colour-blindness. I mean, just a slight wipe-out
of the mental slate, a blurring, or, as it were, a Dutch effect, in the
case of sun-stroke; or a delicacy of perception a-wanting in the
colour-blindness, a gauze veil dropped over, not nearly so apparent as
the blue glasses, or the lack of distinction between red and green, for
Daltonism like this ought to be palpable both to the sufferer and his
suffering friends.
There is also a distortion of vision apart from nearness or longness of
sight, which is a very troublesome agent to fight against for the
producer of pictures: a little nerve gone aglee, through partial
paralysis or an accident before birth, and everything is different to
him from what it is to anyone else; or it may be that it is spasmodic
and occasional in its effects, and then woe to the picture that comes
under his lash (if a critic) at the moment when the twisted fit is on
him.
Ten artists sit down to one landscape and make ten different pictures,
and the camera drops in and makes the eleventh, like none of the ten,
but wonderfully like the original, as those ten different pairs of eyes
must testify, in spite of their varied distortions.
Ten different critics look at a picture and find out different faults,
each praising as virtues the faults of the nine others.
Ten women will look upon one man, and ten chances to one they will all
find different uglinesses about him, with the exception of the tenth,
_whom he may have chosen_, and yet they will all unite in agreeing that
she wasn't worthy of him; which clearly proves, I think, that this
form-distortion of vision is only partial.
Realism is the passion of the day, both in writers and painters; and
this passion photography is only too well qualified to gratify. To note
down a scene, or describe an emotion, by the aid of its most minute
outer symbolism, as faithfully and as free from complexity as possible,
seems to be the greatest virtue and highest aim of the modern school.
The names which I would select as samples of this style of work will be
those names which, by engravings and etchings, are best known to us, and
so likely to be of most use in our search after excellent examples.
Amongst the old masters I would quote Albert Dürer, for stern realism,
combining a symbolism and spirituality so refined that it is no wonder
his qualities have been so long unseen by critics such as Pilkington,
who says of him, 'He was a man of extreme ingenuity, without being a
genius--in composition copious without taste; anxiously precise in
parts, but unmindful of the whole, he has rather shown us what to avoid
than what to follow.'
Rembrandt I would take next, as we all know about him and his powers,
also because he seems to be the model chosen, but in few cases followed
out correctly, by photographers who desire to produce striking effects.
David Teniers I would point out next, as a type of naturalism without
much straining after force or effect, no elevating force or symbolic
influence.
I take these three great names as samples, because their manners are
distinctly separate, because their systems and tricks for reaching
effect are easily penetrated, and because, while I am describing
characteristic works by them, and explaining as well as I can how they
may be followed out with original force by photographers, you will be
able, I dare say, to recall some specimens of their brush-work, and so
follow me more easily.
All good original work is got from copying and following those who have
gone before. I could quote scores of painters since the days of Dürer,
Rembrandt, and Teniers, down to the present hour, who gain fame only
through being Dürerites, Rembrandtists, or Tenierians, with a little of
their own personalities thrown in, to make them masters. Dürer flung in
and mixed up a part of himself (which he could not keep out) along with
the training of Michael Wohlgemuth. Rembrandt hashed up Zwanenburg,
Lastman, Pinas, with a host of others, along with the son of his own
mother, to produce the mightiest giant of the art race, whom we all try
to copy whenever we want to feel free from the feeding-bottle.
It is the fate of all great men to copy. Blake says, 'The difference
between a bad artist and a good is that the bad artist _seems_ to copy a
great deal, and the good one _does_ copy a great deal.'
Spending lots of time drawing after the antique and winning gold medals
and certificates; fiddling over false niceties; trying _to finish_, when
there is no such thing as finish in creation, far less in art; being so
careful that they lose all freedom of action, freedom of thought, and
produce _nothing_;--that is the rubbish they are turning out of the
Government schools nowadays; students who labour five years at freehand
outline, ten years at antique casts, and niggle the rest of their useful
years amongst nude models in life schools, while the real active
copyists are vaulting over their silly heads, and digging out niches to
enshrine themselves in, down Time.
William Hunt, the Yankee, in his 'Talks about Art,' tells us about Dürer
and copying in his own terse way thus: 'Albert Dürer, with an outline,
knew how to make an outline look like a firm, full figure. He began with
firmness, and finished with delicacy.... But he didn't get it in a day.
Hercules may have strangled a serpent when he was a baby, but there was
a time when he couldn't. "Dürer worked in his own way!" No! nor did
anybody else at first. They all worked in the manner of someone else, in
the way they were shown: Raphael after Perugino, Vandyke after Rubens.
If Albert Dürer had lived in Venice he would have been a Venetian
painter. As it was, he worked as the old German artists had worked.'
'The Lord and his Lady,' 'Melancholy,' and 'The Virgin and Child' are
the engravings by Albert Dürer which represent his clear, concise style
as well as any others of his works for our present purpose.
In the first picture, 'The Lord and his Lady,' we have a simple
arrangement of straight perpendicular lines--the lady seen profile, with
sloping unbroken lines of drapery; the lord almost full-face, looking
upon her, a straight sword hung in front and slanting in unison with the
folds of the lady's drapery; a plant at right side with split top,
growing straight so far, yet inclining towards the direction of dress,
sword, and figures; a tree-trunk at left wing with gnarling, repeating
the folds of dress, with the figure of Death behind the tree holding up
his hour-glass:--they are passing from Death's corner, yet by the
hour-glass he knows that, as the shadows travel round, so surely will
they both return.
The light and shade are simple as the arrangement, directly falling from
above and to the left; the light divides the direct half of tree, dress,
clock, and flower, and the other half is in broad shadow, a light
foreground and light distance and a clear sky; all the shade relief
rests about the central objects of interest. As a sample of unaffected
masterly ease of management and restraint I do not know its equal; nor
have I yet seen a photograph treated (although it might easily be so) in
the same possessed way, except perhaps the first efforts of the amateur
before he had learned how to manage his lighting up. If experienced men
would only learn to come back to the effects of their days of ignorance,
bringing their gained knowledge to rectify the defects _outside_ the
accidental effects; if old painters would only take lessons from the
natural attempts of their little sons and daughters--how great we might
all become, and how original!
'Melancholy.' This is a more complex composition, an arrangement of
crowded shadow, worth studying for the effect of dying light, trailing
from the folds of a woman's skirt. It is too much filled with symbolic
objects to describe just now, and the great point of interest is the
glitter upon the folds, the broken lines which make up these folds, and
the universal gloom over the rest. It is not like the obscurity of
Rembrandt, for every object is distinctly manipulated, yet from it
Rembrandt may have got the first idea for the development of his style.
'The Virgin and the Child' I like for its extreme delicacy and
lightness, and also for the power of reflections which it contains. The
old house on the other side of the river is a useless disturbance, and
mainly useful in its historical architectural evidence, and also to
prove that even the most astute self-critic may make mistakes and just
work too much. How suggestive is that monkey at her side, chained
prisoner like the struggling dove in the grasp of the mischievous Baby
Christ--the dove, symbol of captured truth, and the infant with his
humanity only as yet made manifest! I wish we could have a photograph
with this subtlety of realism, this absence of shadow, this clear depth
of transparency. It seems to me as if photographers could do it if they
liked, and were not afraid of the public. That pale white subtlety,
stealing gently upon us, not much to look upon at first sight, almost a
blank, yet growing gaze by gaze, until we cannot let it out of our
thoughts, like a white rose against a whitewashed wall, with the green
leaves and the crimson stalk bleached vert-grey with the midday
sun-blaze, and the shadow under it of the softest of purple greys.
I would like to linger over Albert Dürer and his influence, not only on
art as regards painting, but on art as regards literature: Goethe
working up his Faust; tales of mediæval chivalry; of demons and spirits,
solemn, truth-loving souls beset by false decoys; knights sore tempted
and yielding just for a moment, to fill out long years of repentance;
honour ever rising up and choking love; love shadowed over by despair;
death ever present and ever sweet as the surcease from labour and years.
But it would tire you, for we have it going on still, only much of the
honour is forgotten and the tenderness of the love is brutalised; but we
have the work, and the want, and the woe unutterable, with us ever, and
for ever, and we who can will rush from it as the steam-engine rushes on
iron lines, drowning the sounds of the wailing behind us in our own loud
puffing, hiding the sight of the weeping behind us in the dense smoke of
our own importance.
I turn from Dürer to Rembrandt, as from a nature refined and gentle to a
nature rugged and strong, as from a woman to a man, whose firm hand I
like to grasp even better than the tender clasp of the other.
Rembrandt, the master of painting--even more than Rubens--of etching and
photography, who when better understood will benefit us all more than
any one of the others, with one exception, which I shall name presently.
'The Painter's Mother,' a head with white cap, ruffle, and black dress,
one of many which either he or his disciples painted often, strongly
marked, a study in the modelling of wrinkles and reflections.
'Interior, with Woman plucking a Fowl.' The figure sits fronting us with
face down-turned, a black cap casting deep shadows over the whole
features, with the exception of a half-light playing upon the under-side
of the cheek, and portion of the back of the neck seen from the white
ruffled collar, open at the neck. Satin-textured body, with dull red
sleeves, and amber lining on the upturned skirt; this is very dark green
or black. She holds the fowl with one hand, plucking with the other,
while between her feet rests the basket to catch the feathers. At the
left corner lies a bunch of carrots, breaking up the copper Dutch pan
behind; farther back is a basket supporting a board with flat fish upon
it. Still deeper in shadow is a large boiler with earthenware jars and a
chain hanging over; behind those again, a very dark background.
There is not much in this subject--a fowl half plucked and a
harsh-featured woman plucking; the most commonplace incident, without
moral, except the moral that life is very uncertain and mortality
sure--in a hen-coop particularly. Without any pathos, save the pathetic
tracing of those hard scorings of care on that matron's face; not much
to make sentiment out of in an ordinary hand; what we may see any hour
if we live where such acts are continued from day to day. Yet in the
hands which have made it what it is, what may we, the lookers-on, not
make out of it?
The secret of Rembrandt lies here exposed, if we can only read him
aright. It is not the mass of shadow and isolated light which stamp the
power and individuality of the man. These are only his tricks of trade,
repeated when he saw how well they took with the public. It is the
vigour and command of this master which strike us as we probe the
breadth and extreme simplicity of his accessories. He is content with a
bunch of carrots when they serve his purpose. The gigantic copper
stew-pan would have been enough if he could have hidden a part of the
exact circle; but he wanted the woman to stand out alone; the other
objects were put in to support a blankness, as a little by-play, an
incident by the way: the working woman is the aim of his setting up that
large canvas. He got it all in an afternoon, the time she was plucking
the fowl--that is, the master touches; the rest might be done by
anyone.
To imitate Rembrandt properly, get hold of the first East-end
basket-woman that you chance to meet--a herring or orange vendor will
do; take her as she sits, without arranging a single fold, adding to or
removing one iota about her; take her in the street or in the close, or
as she squats down inside the half-darkened doorway of her own little
shop. She can neither have too little nor too much about her if she
struck you distinctly while you passed as being picturesque. Never mind
the lighting, and don't think to be original; as she stands, or sits, or
squats, she is the woman for your camera; out with it, and secure her
before she can wink or know what you are up to, and you have caught the
whole secret of Rembrandt's power and realistic talent.
In hatching and touching your plate, which to me seems to represent the
second working, think upon all the dodges of the etchers, Haydon,
Hamerton, Herkomer, Whistler, &c. If you have a chemical to eat down
certain parts of it broadly, leaving the prominent parts (be sparing of
prominent parts) standing out dense, do not niggle with your
pencil-point over-much, except it is to blur out an accessory which may
be too distinct. I do not know much about printing photographs, yet I am
inclined to think that it is here where the genius of the photographer
may be brought out. If I were a photographer I'd never for a second
leave a plate while it was printing. I'd try all sorts of dodges upon
the sun with pieces of paper having little eccentric holes torn out
where I wanted an artificial shadow to fall across my plate, by exposing
the print altogether at times, so as to mellow any extreme lights,
painting touches of white on it to bar out the sun altogether where I
wanted a mysterious gleam, whether it was on my picture or not, and
never rest until I had made it my own. I may be wrong, of course, in
all this; but it is the idea which now strikes me; or all this may have
been done already, or considered _infra dig._ or illegitimate; yet here,
I think, as in the treating of a painted picture, the photographer can
liberate himself entirely from the trammels of custom, and never be at a
loss for fresh tracks.
In landscape photography I constantly observe good pictures rendered
imperfect through the fatal power of the camera, which must print every
object before it, and yet in the printing even more than in the sorting
of the plate I think much, if not all, of this might be obviated by a
careful study and following up of the tricks of Rembrandt; if it is the
foreground which is too plainly marked, why not take another foreground
plate, and, clearing off all not required, place it over the other
plate, and so let the sun strike through both and blurr that corner?[2]
or make a dark shower cloud as in the engraving 'The Three Trees,' by
covering boldly portions of the plate with paper and allow the rest to
print darker; or by adroit covering and exposing, simplify the whole
arrangement and create divisions where you want them; a ray of light, or
a part blackened, or any device that occurs to you, which is what we
call inspiration?
The magic of Rembrandt rests in this--that he seldom creates, _but he
takes advantage of circumstances and local incidents_ to intensify the
story he is telling you.
To illustrate my meaning by three short quotations from celebrated
authors, whose tragedies are intensified and minutely expressed by the
working up of the commonest accessories, as we see in every tragedy of
daily life--a clock striking at the tensioned second; or a mouse
peering out of its hole; or the crack of a distant whip; the rumbling of
a cart; a laugh or a careless oath heard outside; something unimportant
seen or heard that fixes it all into its compact run or place; the
sledge bells of Mathias in the Polish Jew; or the ragged stick of Eugène
Aram.
My intention in giving these quotations is to prove to you how writers
know the value of common objects, and how few of them are wanted for the
purpose, so that in choosing our accessories we may so choose that the
link is carried on, yet nothing uselessly put in to distract the
attention; the object being to draw the eyes and thoughts, _for a
moment_, from the main act, so that we may return again better prepared
for the tragedy.
Zola, that Rembrandt of modern French literature, in one of his novels,
'La Belle Lisa,' describes the return to Paris of an escaped political
martyr called Florent.
Florent, having passed through fearful sufferings, is picked up
exhausted by one of the Paris market women and taken to Paris in her
cart. He is in a starving condition, but, being proud, will not tell the
woman about his wants, and, leaving her, gets into company with a
hard-up artist called Claude, who, although also hungry and _sou_-less,
yet is carried away by the artistic glow of light and shade and wealth
of colour about a coffee and soup stall which they pause to admire.
'I tell you,' says Claude, 'a man should paint what he sees, and as he
sees it. Now, look there. Is this not a better picture than
their--consumptive saints?'
'Women were selling coffee and soup. A small crowd of customers had
gathered round a large kettle of cabbage soup which smoked on a tiny
brazier. The woman, armed with a long ladle, first put into a yellow
bowl thin slices of bread, which she took from a basket covered with a
napkin, and then filled up the bowl with soup. There were clean
market-gardeners in blouses; dirty porters with their shoulders soiled
by the burdens they had carried; poor devils in rags--in short, all
sorts of people--eating their breakfast, and scalding themselves with
the hot soup. The painter was delighted, and half shut his eyes to
compose his picture. But the smell of the cabbage soup was terribly
strong. Florent turned away his head--the sight made him dizzy.'
Here we have a Rembrandtesque study of hunger and endurance, with all
the accessories put into quiet order.
The second sketch which I take is from an essay by Walt Whitman on the
death of President Lincoln. We all know how he (Abraham Lincoln) was
shot in the theatre, and in those few jerky commonplace sentences Walt
Whitman, the American Michael Angelo of words, presents to us as grim
and gruesome a picture as I know anywhere. It has more of the loose but
massive work of our English realist, Millais, about it than the
compacter work of Rembrandt. It has a day-light or surrounding gas-light
effect about it also, and little shadow or mystery, but it is to me
blood-curdling in its startling distinctness.[3]
You have here a scene as filled out with detail in the light as Albert
Dürer's 'Melancholy' in the shadow. Walt Whitman has not omitted a
single object which impressed him at the time--in fact, he tells us the
whole dire tragedy by the aid of animate or inanimate objects not at all
connected, except by association, with the murder; and this I wish you
to remember strictly--how, by the placing and building up of objects,
chairs, tables, flags, as here, all leading out from the centre of
sight, which is the tale, you may suggest a deed without showing the
main actors of it at all. Witness here that the principal figure,
Abraham Lincoln, is never seen.
The third illustration which I take is from that well-known poem by Bell
on Mary Queen of Scots. I choose the closing act, her execution, as it
embraces within the lines leading up to the climax the incidents of the
verses going before, and because it is here that you see distinctly
surrounding the principal character (our unfortunate Queen) trivial and
more important items, all leading up to the loneliness of the victim and
the fickleness of fortune.
In the centre of the hall is placed the block and the masked headsman,
axe in hand. The scene is decidedly Rembrandtesque in its light and
shade; to be treated as Rembrandt has treated his 'Descent from the
Cross.' A strong light falls upon block, axe, and headsman; the rest is
in shadow, the carved woodwork and tapestry hangings of the hall fading
off towards the distant door; as the royal victim and her dog near, she
comes from the shadow which covers her attendants and other witnesses
into the full glare which falls upon that empty foreground; and, as it
streams over her pale face and grey hair and becomes muffled in the
thick folds of her velvet dress, the picture is complete.[4]
The third picture of Rembrandt's is of little use to us, so it is
needless going into detail with it. It has been misnamed 'A Jewish
Bride,' as, from the general outline of the figure, loosely holding a
bunch of flowers in the left hand and the symbolic vine-twisted staff
in the right, we must conclude that the honeymoon has been for a
considerable time passed, and that another joy awaits the expectant
husband. It is a portrait of the painter's second wife, and a very
lovely second wife she must have been, with her soft fair tresses, rich
dark eyes, creamy complexion, and seductive chin--a much nicer Dutch
frau than a Jewish bride.
But before leaving this master I would like to call your attention
particularly to, and ask you to remember, 'An Old Woman.'
This is more in the distinct manner of Rembrandt than his 'Jewish
Bride,' who might have any other name attached to it as well as that of
Van Ryn.
Here the old tanned face is seen in profile; the square-cut nose and
harsh mouth, subdued by toil, sullenised by hardship, with early hours
when the frost-breath hardened that parchment skin: a pitiful face,
without one ennobling trace upon it.
Just such an air of patient suffering as we have seen of a winter
morning on the stooping, shawl-bound head of the aged hag raking amongst
the cinders and offal of the street. It is thankless toil which does
this sort of painting and carving--a spring-time of labour and lust, a
summer-time of labour and curses, an autumn-time of labour and
treachery, and a winter-time of labour, starvation, and neglect. Is it
not all equally pitiful in its progression as we watch the stages?
The girl with her load making merchandise of her love; the woman with
her load toiling on for the thankless male; the mother with her load
selfishly laying as much of it as she can upon the delicate shoulders of
her young offspring; and that toothless old hag stooping down amongst
the shadows, square, gaunt, hopeless, resting from her load alone in her
tenth hour, crouching amidst the shadows with the ashes of her wasted
past crowning that hoary, honourless, neglected age.
This is passing realism and getting into the sublime, and this is what
the gross, coarse, miserly old master has done, with his innate force
and living soul, while his strong, bold brush, with its low, sad tones,
has painted an obscure interior and an old woman sitting brooding in the
cold and dark, clad in a dirty white-grey cloak, with a dirty grey skirt
faded to grim black-grey with newer black, patched sleeves, a few jars
on a darkened shelf overhead, all dark and hopeless except where the one
ray starts out that gaunt profile and what is seen of the shrivelled
neck.
TENIERS.--I take David Teniers after Rembrandt as an instance and
example of successful and easy grouping; I take him as the type of a
school embracing a long list of painters ancient and modern--Wilkie,
Faed, Orchardson, Cameron, Pettie, &c. &c.; and why I prefer him to our
own Sir David Wilkie is not so much that Teniers was before Wilkie,
because Teniers was by no means the first in that line of business. If
you can recall the delicate and silvery half-tones and open composition
of 'La Tourneuse,' and compare this with the hot colouring, slushy
handling, and forced composition of 'The Penny Wedding' and 'Blind Man's
Buff,' we must agree that here Teniers has the best of it. Yet I would
by no means decry Sir David Wilkie, except where comparison is forced,
as in this case; for I consider Sir David Wilkie, Tom Faed, and
Orchardson to be the very best models a painter or a photographer can
have for the composition of groups.
I am not at all prejudiced in favour of old masters or of old things, or
big names, or advertised brains or dry bones; rather the reverse. I like
young flesh and fresh blood, quick-beating pulses, and impetuous
motions. I would rather have a living mistake than a dead perfection any
day; yet, when I see the old ones far ahead of the young ones, it is
both a duty and a joy to bend the knee and adore the vanished past.
Orchardson and Hugh Cameron have come up the truest to the silver and
opals of Teniers, and for chaste deliberation and simplicity I can
commend no one before Orchardson: he always stops painting just at the
point where people should stop eating and drinking--the point this side
of repletion. Study his best-known examples--Christopher Sly, from
'Taming of the Shrew,' some articles of clothing and a pair of shoes in
the left-hand corner, to continue the slanting line of feet of the
servants waiting on Christopher; a walking-stick lying in the same line
as the feet of the negro, and people behind the screen; a sheet of paper
on the floor farther in takes exactly the same line of direction, and
the eye is no more troubled with details; we can all laugh without let.
In the 'Queen of Swords,' a more crowded composition, the ground lines
are the same, with the queen forming the point of the angle and a clear
foreground, with the exception of a fan that carries on the same lines.
In that scene from 'Henry IV.,' Part I., Prince Henry, Poins, and
Falstaff, we have one of the simplest, openest, and most refined
specimens of humorous composition on record. A straight, horizontal line
of tapestry, broken up at the exact limit by the burly hind-part view of
Sir John, the buffoonery expressed in that capacious broad waist-belt,
and the rounded folds of the doublet below it, is worthy of the mighty
creator of that inflated sponge, Falstaff. A table and chair behind it
keep the horizontal line, while relieving the emptiness of the floor
between Falstaff and his companions. The wall starts out towards us at
an angle, while, along with a chair, the Prince and Poins keep within
the vanishing lines from the point of sight, which is exactly in the
centre of the back view of Falstaff's waist, so that we must look
(whether we like or not) first and last at him, even although, with
Orchardson's usual love of refinement, he is modestly cast into
half-shadow.
They say Thackeray could draw a gentleman and Dickens could not. I deny
this sweeping assertion in the existence of Mr. Chester of 'Barnaby
Rudge'; but one thing I do think, which is, that Orchardson is the
painter who gives us the nearest approach to the easy insolence and
_bonhomie_ of a well-bred man of the world.
To return to Teniers (for a moment in passing), I cannot bring to mind
one of his pictures which I have seen that could in any way be improved
in the composition, added to, or taken from; every accessory tells its
own portion of the general story, and this I would once more point out
to the composer of a picture, along with a few simple laws which occur
to me as I write. The principal object is the first object which rises
up before the mind's eye, and fixes the composition when the story is
heard or read, therefore the main object to be considered and first set
up or drawn in--as the figure of the queen in Orchardson's 'Queen of
Swords'; the philosopher nearest us in 'Bacchanalian Philosophers,' by
Teniers; the two front figures in Rembrandt's 'Night Watch,' one dark,
one light, the dark one put in by Rembrandt first; and the child with
its cart even before the lighted-up woman and child who come before
'The Blind Fiddler,' by Wilkie. There is too much in this composition,
particularly that group of foreground objects, which bear such evident
traces of having been so carefully selected and placed in such a variety
of artificial carelessness--watering-pan, cabbage, box and utensils,
basin, stool, with little bat, and knife, placed so exactly as they
ought to be, like the hills of Borrowdale--all being, after
consideration, painty improvements, never dropped upon accidentally and
not at all required. You will find nothing of this sort in Rembrandt's
pictures, or in Rubens' (lavish though he is), or in Teniers', and
seldom in Pettie's or Orchardson's. In Vandyke's you may, or in
Wilkie's, because both Vandyke and Wilkie, being Court favourites,
permitted their own individuality and good taste to be oftener biassed
by the buzzing of the gartered insects about them; yielding to make this
or that improvement to suit a foolish patron, until their own gifts
became obscured, and their taste perverted to the level of a pair of
Court breeches. Rembrandt and Rubens were strong enough men always to
lead the fashion, and too strong ever to be led. But the times are
changed with us now, so that I do not think there is any danger of
Orchardson getting spoilt by good fortune; he is not in any way hurt by
it yet, at all events.
After we get the first object set up, the others all fall into place to
suit that central or main object, and this rule holds with the arranging
of light and shadow, as well as form--one minute centre of light round
which the half-lights range, and the deepest shadow where you can best
afford it. The central form, the central light, is of paramount
importance--all the rest are matters of convenience, chance, and
discretion.
Think less about what you may put in to help your picture than upon
what you may keep out, to give it importance and repose.
Every sitter has a fine point about him, or her: find it out--the best
side of the face, a nice arm, or good hand; they will reveal it to you
unconsciously before you have sighted them--and make that your first
object, and all the rest subordinate and to help that out.
Don't seize two points in one model; decide which is the most useful,
and take that; without regret, discarding all the others.
It may be that the only good bit is a hat, or a feather, or a pair of
gloves, or a brooch. The point that first attracts your eye pleasantly
is the point upon which to make your centre of vision, and around which
you will arrange the rest. If it is an article of dress, of jewellery,
then bring the light to bear upon it, and make all the rest in
half-shades.
Study nature for ever, if you would have any photographs you take
different from the last photograph. Never take a sitter at once; leave
them alone to knock about your studio while you pretend to be sorting
something else, but watch them unawares: you will see a natural touch
before long, a peculiar habit which they are not aware of, but by which
many of their friends know them. Fix on that as your character keynote,
and work up features, position, and accessories, so as not to lose sight
of this peculiarity; and with this borne always in mind and a good
knowledge of face and neck anatomy, without which I cannot see how
anyone can touch up a negative properly, I know of no reason wherefore a
photographer should not give us as complete a character study as any
painter, ancient or modern, from Millais back to Albert Dürer.
Yet before that state of perfection can be acquired, permit me, as one
of the public and also as a frequent sufferer, to enter my protest
against head-rests and long-sighting, to those who still practise these
abominations. No natural expression or easy posture can ever be gained
until instantaneous plates are used for everyone. Before they can well
settle in their self-chosen places and posture, have them down and risk
it--the chance of a spoilt picture is better than a conventional
position.
Also this debasing system of smoothing away wrinkles, and blotches, and
character traces. I never can see a real harsh, wrinkled face nowadays,
except in some of the tintypes.
Of course I know the cry is raised that the public will have those wax
productions; but as one of the public I have not yet had my own likeness
taken quite right. For instance, in repose, I hang my head on one side,
and I have always been made to hold it straight up, like a soldier at
'attention.' Again, my nose is neither of a Greek nor Roman caste, and
yet I never do get that nose put in as I see it in a mirror, or as its
humpy shadow is cast upon the wall; or, as a gentleman once closed up a
wordy, if not very convincing number of reasons against my having the
qualities to make a poet, painter, or passable labourer, by exclaiming,
'Why, just look at your nose; did you ever know a clever man with a nose
like that?'
This photographed nose of mine has afforded me and others some
amusement; sometimes it has been so refined that I fell to reviling
nature for being so far inferior to the artist who finished it off so
well. Once it came home a splendid Roman, with the light upon it so
intensified by pencil-work that it stood out in bold enough relief to
have won a Waterloo, if big noses could have done that. I have one
portrait, which I am keeping to leave to posterity: it is so Byronic and
spiritual that future young ladies will no longer wonder why my wife
married me. This refined likeness and my love-songs together ought to do
the trick.
Yet I have some photographs very near perfection: one representing my
two little daughters, done by Tunny. Professor John Ruskin writes: 'The
face of the child on the spectator's right hand is the loveliest in
expression I ever saw in a photograph.' Also some by my friend Mr. John
Foster[5] of Coldstream cattle-pieces, and landscapes breathing of balmy
atmospheric effect. He gets up to work outside at three o'clock on
summer mornings, the hour when nature is like a blushing virgin, all
dewy loveliness and purity.
In France and England there is a school rising, who with the brush are
trying to compete with the camera--_the Impressionists_, who, along with
the camera, are yet fated to produce a great revolution in art. They aim
at giving the impression, effect, or sensation of an instantaneous
action or emotion or phase; not the phase exactly, but the swift
impression which it leaves upon the mind of the spectator, with form, as
it were--that is, with paints and brushes striving to embody the soul of
nature, and when the two are joined the result will be _perfection_.
To finish by bringing up the name which I have hitherto kept back, the
exception, about which some time ago I promised to tell you: the
sweetest, tenderest, mightiest art soul that ever was chained inside a
mortal body, and prompted the fingers to move as it wanted; the purest,
saddest mind that ever writhed neglected and found its reward so late,
the soul now free and stirring up a crowd with its pathetic activity, to
be like it pure and true--I mean _Jean-Francois Millet, the French
peasant painter_. Mr. Hunt says of him, 'For years Millet painted
beautiful things, and nobody looked at them. They fascinated me, and I
would go to Barbizon and spend all the money I could get in buying his
pictures. I brought them to Boston. _"What is that horrid thing?" "Oh,
its a sketch by a friend of mine!"_ Now he is the greatest painter in
Europe.'
That is a painter's verdict about a painter.
One of his pictures is vivid in my mind just now. There is a print of it
in that wonderful illustrated magazine, 'Scribner's Monthly,' where
engravings look like paintings or idealised photographs.
It is called 'The Sower,' the dim figure of a labourer scattering seed
over a ploughed field with one hand, and holding his apron filled with
embryo life in the other. In the distance, and lighted up by the sun, a
team of bullocks are dragging the plough, and a flight of birds over
beyond the seed. That is the whole composition put into bald words.
But as it has been rendered by this painter, it is an embodiment of all
which I have tried to explain, the spirit and body of living, working,
suffering nature.
What would I not give (if I had it) to see a photograph done like that!
and it can be done if you labour enough, know enough, and feel enough.
'The Sower!' As I look upon it I am drawn into it, mesmerised and
rendered clairvoyant. I am _en rapport_ with the freed spirit which has
left along with the delicate aroma of its departing wings a portion of
its own personality, its own immortality--vague and tender--greater than
Raphael, or Rembrandt, or Albert Dürer, for it has taken the deepest
root within humanity.
Tenderly I look upon it, not too boldly, for it seems vibrating with a
sensuous existence; it clutches at my heart--sinews as it reveals the
parables of Christ, accompanied by sobbing notes of melancholy
spirit-music; the far-off strikings of angel harp-strings, indefinite
but ravishing.
And the painter's body, that St. John face, with its misty development
of hair, lies under the earth. A maddened stag was driven by the hunters
and the hounds over the garden fence into the snow-covered garden on
that January morning of 1875[6], past the dying man's window, and
ruthlessly slaughtered under the eyes of the dying man--yielding up its
noble life for a bit of sport; the hot-red blood sinking through the
cold, white snow, and soaking into the covered hearts of the green
plants beneath. One up-turned glance of the glazing eyes met the
down-turned glance of the glazing eyes, and so, filled with despair and
pity, two souls--the soul of a stag and the soul of a painter--drifted
out into the morning light.
[Illustration: ANCIENT ASSYRIAN HALL: THE FEAST OF SARDANAPALUS
(_From a sepia sketch by the Author_)]