academical formulas, too haughty, and partly, in their narrowness of
imagination, too weak, to learn much from the schools of colour; and
pass into a state of decadence, consisting partly in proud endeavours to
give painting the qualities of sculpture, and partly in the pursuit of
effects of light and shade, carried at last to extreme sensational
subtlety by the Dutch school. In their fall, they drag the schools of
colour down with them; and the recent history of art is one of confused
effort to find lost roads, and resume allegiance to violated principles.
139. That, briefly, is the map of the great schools, easily remembered
in this hexagonal form:--
1.
LINE
Early schools.
2. 3.
LINE AND LIGHT. LINE AND COLOUR.
Greek clay. Gothic glass.
4. 5.
MASS AND LIGHT. MASS AND COLOUR.
(Represented by Lionardo, (Represented by Giorgione,
and his schools.) and his schools.)
6.
MASS, LIGHT, AND COLOUR.
(Represented by Titian,
and his schools.)
And I wish you with your own eyes and fingers to trace, and in your own
progress follow, the method of advance exemplified by these great
schools. I wish you to begin by getting command of line, that is to say,
by learning to draw a steady line, limiting with absolute correctness
the form or space you intend it to limit; to proceed by getting command
over flat tints, so that you may be able to fill the spaces you have
enclosed, evenly, either with shade or colour according to the school
you adopt; and finally to obtain the power of adding such fineness of
gradation within the masses, as shall express their roundings, and their
characters of texture.
140. Those who are familiar with the methods of existing schools must be
aware that I thus nearly invert their practice of teaching. Students at
present learn to draw details first, and to colour and mass them
afterwards. I shall endeavour to teach you to arrange broad masses and
colours first; and you shall put the details into them afterwards. I
have several reasons for this audacity, of which you may justly require
me to state the principal ones. The first is that, as I have shown you,
this method I wish you to follow, is the natural one. All great artist
nations _have_ actually learned to work in this way, and I believe it
therefore the right, as the hitherto successful one. Secondly, you will
find it less irksome than the reverse method, and more definite. When a
beginner is set at once to draw details, and make finished studies in
light and shade, no master can correct his innumerable errors, or rescue
him out of his endless difficulties. But in the natural method, he can
correct, if he will, his own errors. You will have positive lines to
draw, presenting no more difficulty, except in requiring greater
steadiness of hand, than the outlines of a map. They will be generally
sweeping and simple, instead of being jagged into promontories and bays;
but assuredly, they may be drawn rightly (with patience), and their
rightness tested with mathematical accuracy. You have only to follow
your own line with tracing paper, and apply it to your own copy. If they
do not correspond, you are wrong, and you need no master to show you
where. Again; in washing in a flat tone of colour or shade, you can
always see yourself if it is flat, and kept well within the edges; and
you can set a piece of your colour side by side with that of the copy;
if it does not match, you are wrong; and, again, you need no one to tell
you so, if your eye for colour is true. It happens, indeed, more
frequently than would be supposed, that there is real want of power in
the eye to distinguish colours; and this I even suspect to be a
condition which has been sometimes attendant on high degrees of cerebral
sensitiveness in other directions; but such want of faculty would be
detected in your first two or three exercises by this simple method,
while, otherwise, you might go on for years endeavouring to colour from
nature in vain. Lastly, and this is a very weighty collateral reason,
such a method enables me to show you many things, besides the art of
drawing. Every exercise that I prepare for you will be either a portion
of some important example of ancient art, or of some natural object.
However rudely or unsuccessfully you may draw it, (though I anticipate
from you neither want of care nor success,) you will nevertheless have
learned what no words could have so forcibly or completely taught you,
either respecting early art or organic structure; and I am thus certain
that not a moment you spend attentively will be altogether wasted, and
that, generally, you will be twice gainers by every effort.
141. There is, however, yet another point in which I think a change of
existing methods will be advisable. You have here in Oxford one of the
finest collections in Europe of drawings in pen, and chalk, by Michael
Angelo and Raphael. Of the whole number, you cannot but have noticed
that not one is weak or student-like--all are evidently master's work.
You may look the galleries of Europe through, and so far as I know, or
as it is possible to make with safety any so wide generalization, you
will not find in them a childish or feeble drawing, by these, or by any
other great master.
And farther:--by the greatest men--by Titian, Velasquez, or
Veronese--you will hardly find an authentic drawing, at all. For the
fact is, that while we moderns have always learned, or tried to learn,
to paint by drawing, the ancients learned to draw by painting--or by
engraving, more difficult still. The brush was put into their hands when
they were children, and they were forced to draw with that, until, if
they used the pen or crayon, they used it either with the lightness of a
brush or the decision of a graver. Michael Angelo uses his pen like a
chisel; but all of them seem to use it only when they are in the height
of their power, and then for rapid notation of thought or for study of
models; but never as a practice helping them to paint. Probably
exercises of the severest kind were gone through in minute drawing by
the apprentices of the goldsmiths, of which we hear and know little, and
which were entirely matters of course. To these, and to the
exquisiteness of care and touch developed in working precious metals,
may probably be attributed the final triumph of Italian sculpture.
Michael Angelo, when a boy, is said to have copied engravings by
Schöngauer and others, with his pen, in facsimile so true that he could
pass his drawings as the originals. But I should only discourage you
from all farther attempts in art, if I asked you to imitate any of these
accomplished drawings of the gem-artificers. You have, fortunately, a
most interesting collection of them already in your galleries, and may
try your hands on them if you will. But I desire rather that you should
attempt nothing except what can by determination be absolutely
accomplished, and be known and felt by you to be accomplished when it is
so. Now, therefore, I am going at once to comply with that popular
instinct which, I hope, so far as you care for drawing at all, you are
still boys enough to feel, the desire to paint. Paint you shall; but
remember, I understand by painting what you will not find easy. Paint
you shall; but daub or blot you shall not: and there will be even more
care required, though care of a pleasanter kind, to follow the lines
traced for you with the point of the brush than if they had been drawn
with that of a crayon. But from the very beginning (though carrying on
at the same time an incidental practice with crayon and lead pencil),
you shall try to draw a line of absolute correctness with the point, not
of pen or crayon, but of the brush, as Apelles did, and as all coloured
lines are drawn on Greek vases. A line of absolute correctness, observe.
I do not care how slowly you do it, or with how many alterations,
junctions, or re-touchings; the one thing I ask of you is, that the line
shall be right, and right by measurement, to the same minuteness which
you would have to give in a Government chart to the map of a dangerous
shoal.
142. This question of measurement is, as you are probably aware, one
much vexed in art schools; but it is determined indisputably by the very
first words written by Lionardo: "Il giovane deve prima imparare
prospettiva, _per le misure d'ogni cosa_."
Without absolute precision of measurement, it is certainly impossible
for you to learn perspective rightly; and, as far as I can judge,
impossible to learn anything else rightly. And in my past experience of
teaching, I have found that such precision is of all things the most
difficult to enforce on the pupils. It is easy to persuade to diligence,
or provoke to enthusiasm; but I have found it hitherto impossible to
humiliate one clever student into perfect accuracy.
It is, therefore, necessary, in beginning a system of drawing for the
University, that no opening should be left for failure in this essential
matter. I hope you will trust the words of the most accomplished
draughtsman of Italy, and the painter of the great sacred picture which,
perhaps beyond all others, has influenced the mind of Europe, when he
tells you that your first duty is "to learn perspective by the
_measures_ of everything." For perspective, I will undertake that it
shall be made, practically, quite easy to you; if you care to master the
mathematics of it, they are carried as far as is necessary for you in my
treatise written in 1859, of which copies shall be placed at your
disposal in your working room. But the habit and dexterity of
_measurement_ you must acquire at once, and that with engineer's
accuracy. I hope that in our now gradually developing system of
education, elementary architectural or military drawing will be required
at all public schools; so that when youths come to the University, it
may be no more necessary for them to pass through the preliminary
exercises of perspective than of grammar: for the present, I will place
in your series examples simple and severe enough for all necessary
practice.
143. And while you are learning to measure, and to draw, and lay flat
tints, with the brush, you must also get easy command of the pen; for
that is not only the great instrument for the first sketching, but its
right use is the foundation of the art of illumination. In nothing is
fine art more directly founded on utility than in the close dependence
of decorative illumination on good writing. Perfect illumination is only
writing made lovely; the moment it passes into picture-making it has
lost its dignity and function. For pictures, small or great, if
beautiful, ought not to be painted on leaves of books, to be worn with
service; and pictures, small or great, not beautiful, should be painted
nowhere. But to make writing _itself_ beautiful,--to make the sweep of
the pen lovely,--is the true art of illumination; and I particularly
wish you to note this, because it happens continually that young girls
who are incapable of tracing a single curve with steadiness, much more
of delineating any ornamental or organic form with correctness, think
that work, which would be intolerable in ordinary drawing, becomes
tolerable when it is employed for the decoration of texts; and thus they
render all healthy progress impossible, by protecting themselves in
inefficiency under the shield of good motive. Whereas the right way of
setting to work is to make themselves first mistresses of the art of
writing beautifully; and then to apply that art in its proper degrees of
development to whatever they desire permanently to write. And it is
indeed a much more truly religious duty for girls to acquire a habit of
deliberate, legible, and lovely penmanship in their daily use of the
pen, than to illuminate any quantity of texts. Having done so, they may
next discipline their hands into the control of lines of any length,
and, finally, add the beauty of colour and form to the flowing of these
perfect lines. But it is only after years of practice that they will be
able to illuminate noble words rightly for the eyes, as it is only after
years of practice that they can make them melodious rightly, with the
voice.
144. I shall not attempt, in this lecture, to give you any account of
the use of the pen as a drawing instrument. That use is connected in
many ways with principles both of shading and of engraving, hereafter to
be examined at length. But I may generally state to you that its best
employment is in giving determination to the forms in drawings washed
with neutral tint; and that, in this use of it, Holbein is quite without
a rival. I have therefore placed many examples of his work among your
copies. It is employed for rapid study by Raphael and other masters of
delineation, who, in such cases, give with it also partial indications
of shadow; but it is not a proper instrument for shading, when drawings
are intended to be deliberate and complete, nor do the great masters so
employ it. Its virtue is the power of producing a perfectly delicate,
equal, and decisive line with great rapidity; and the temptation allied
with that virtue is the licentious haste, and chance-swept, instead of
strictly-commanded, curvature. In the hands of very great painters it
obtains, like the etching needle, qualities of exquisite charm in this
free use; but all attempts at imitation of these confused and suggestive
sketches must be absolutely denied to yourselves while students. You may
fancy you have produced something like them with little trouble; but, be
assured, it is in reality as unlike them as nonsense is unlike sense;
and that, if you persist in such work, you will not only prevent your
own executive progress, but you will never understand in all your lives
what good painting means. Whenever you take a pen in your hand, if you
cannot count every line you lay with it, and say why you make it so long
and no longer, and why you drew it in that direction and no other, your
work is bad. The only man who can put his pen to full speed, and yet
retain command over every separate line of it, is Dürer. He has done
this in the illustrations of a missal preserved at Munich, which have
been fairly facsimiled; and of these I have placed several in your
copying series, with some of Turner's landscape etchings, and other
examples of deliberate pen work, such as will advantage you in early
study. The proper use of them you will find explained in the catalogue.
145. And, now, but one word more to-day. Do not impute to me the
impertinence of setting before you what is new in this system of
practice as being certainly the best method. No English artists are yet
agreed entirely on early methods; and even Reynolds expresses with some
hesitation his conviction of the expediency of learning to draw with the
brush. But this method that I show you rests in all essential points on
his authority, on Lionardo's, or on the evident as well as recorded
practice of the most splendid Greek and Italian draughtsmen; and you may
be assured it will lead you, however slowly, to great and certain skill.
To what degree of skill, must depend greatly on yourselves; but I know
that in practice of this kind you cannot spend an hour without
definitely gaining, both in true knowledge of art, and in useful power
of hand; and for what may appear in it too difficult, I must shelter or
support myself, as in beginning, so in closing this first lecture on
practice, by the words of Reynolds: "The impetuosity of youth is
disgusted at the slow approaches of a regular siege, and desires, from
mere impatience of labour, to take the citadel by storm. They must
therefore be told again and again that labour is the only price of solid
fame; and that, whatever their force of genius may be, there is no easy
method of becoming a good painter."
LECTURE VI
LIGHT
146. The plan of the divisions of art-schools which I gave you in the
last lecture is of course only a first germ of classification, on which
we are to found farther and more defined statement; but for this very
reason it is necessary that every term of it should be very clear in
your minds.
And especially I must explain, and ask you to note the sense in which I
use the word "mass." Artists usually employ that word to express the
spaces of light and darkness, or of colour, into which a picture is
divided. But this habit of theirs arises partly from their always
speaking of pictures in which the lights represent solid form. If they
had instead been speaking of flat tints, as, for instance, of the gold
and blue in this missal page, they would not have called them "masses,"
but "spaces" of colour. Now both for accuracy and convenience' sake, you
will find it well to observe this distinction, and to call a simple flat
tint a space of colour; and only the representation of solid or
projecting form a mass.
I use, however, the word "line" rather than "space" in the second and
third heads of our general scheme, at p. 94, because you cannot limit a
flat tint but by a line, or the locus of a line: whereas a gradated
tint, expressive of mass, may be lost at its edges in another, without
any fixed limit; and practically is so, in the works of the greatest
masters.
147. You have thus, in your hexagonal scheme, the expression of the
universal manner of advance in painting: Line first; then line enclosing
flat spaces coloured or shaded; then the lines vanish, and the solid
forms are seen within the spaces. That is the universal law of
advance:--1, line; 2, flat space; 3, massed or solid space. But as you
see, this advance may be made, and has been made, by two different
roads; one advancing always through colour, the other through light and
shade. And these two roads are taken by two entirely different kinds of
men. The way by colour is taken by men of cheerful, natural, and
entirely sane disposition in body and mind, much resembling, even at its
strongest, the temper of well-brought-up children:--too happy to think
deeply, yet with powers of imagination by which they can live other
lives than their actual ones: make-believe lives, while yet they remain
conscious all the while that they _are_ making believe--therefore
entirely sane. They are also absolutely contented; they ask for no more
light than is immediately around them, and cannot see anything like
darkness, but only green and blue, in the earth and sea.
148. The way by light and shade is, on the contrary, taken by men of the
highest powers of thought, and most earnest desire for truth; they long
for light, and for knowledge of all that light can show. But seeking for
light, they perceive also darkness; seeking for truth and substance,
they find vanity. They look for form in the earth,--for dawn in the sky;
and seeking these, they find formlessness in the earth, and night in the
sky.
Now remember, in these introductory lectures I am putting before you the
roots of things, which are strange, and dark, and often, it may seem,
unconnected with the branches. You may not at present think these
metaphysical statements necessary; but as you go on, you will find that
having hold of the clue to methods of work through their springs in
human character, you may perceive unerringly where they lead, and what
constitutes their wrongness and rightness; and when we have the main
principles laid down, all others will develop themselves in due
succession, and everything will become more clearly intelligible to you
in the end, for having been apparently vague in the beginning. You know
when one is laying the foundation of a house, it does not show directly
where the rooms are to be.
149. You have then these two great divisions of human mind: one, content
with the colours of things, whether they are dark or light; the other
seeking light pure, as such, and dreading darkness as such. One, also,
content with the coloured aspects and visionary shapes of things; the
other seeking their form and substance. And, as I said, the school of
knowledge, seeking light, perceives, and has to accept and deal with
obscurity: and seeking form, it has to accept and deal with
formlessness, or death.
Farther, the school of colour in Europe, using the word Gothic in its
broadest sense, is essentially Gothic _Christian_; and full of comfort
and peace. Again, the school of light is essentially Greek, and full of
sorrow. I cannot tell you which is right, or least wrong. I tell you
only what I know--this vital distinction between them: the Gothic or
colour school is always cheerful, the Greek always oppressed by the
shadow of death; and the stronger its masters are, the closer that body
of death grips them. The strongest whose work I can show you in recent
periods is Holbein; next to him is Lionardo; and then Dürer: but of the
three Holbein is the strongest, and with his help I will put the two
schools in their full character before you in a moment.
150. Here is, first, the photograph of an entirely characteristic piece
of the great colour school. It is by Cima of Conegliano, a mountaineer,
like Luini, born under the Alps of Friuli. His Christian name was John
Baptist: he is here painting his name-Saint; the whole picture full of
peace, and intense faith and hope, and deep joy in light of sky, and
fruit and flower and weed of earth. It was painted for the church of Our
Lady of the Garden at Venice, La Madonna dell' Orto (properly Madonna of
the _Kitchen_ Garden), and it is full of simple flowers, and has the
wild strawberry of Cima's native mountains gleaming through the grass.
Beside it I will put a piece of the strongest work of the school of
light and shade--strongest because Holbein was a colourist also; but he
belongs, nevertheless, essentially to the chiaroscuro school. You know
that his name is connected, in ideal work, chiefly with his "Dance of
Death." I will not show you any of the terror of that; only a photograph
of his well-known "Dead Christ." It will at once show you how completely
the Christian art of this school is oppressed by its veracity, and
forced to see what is fearful, even in what it most trusts.
You may think I am showing you contrasts merely to fit my theories. But
there is Dürer's "Knight and Death," his greatest plate; and if I had
Lionardo's "Medusa" here, which he painted when only a boy, you would
have seen how he was held by the same chain. And you cannot but wonder
why, this being the melancholy temper of the great Greek or naturalistic
school, I should have called it the school of light. I call it so
because it is through its intense love of light that the darkness
becomes apparent to it, and through its intense love of truth and form
that all mystery becomes attractive to it. And when, having learned
these things, it is joined to the school of colour, you have the
perfect, though always, as I will show you, pensive, art of Titian and
his followers.
151. But remember, its first development, and all its final power,
depend on Greek sorrow, and Greek religion.
The school of light is founded in the Doric worship of Apollo, and the
Ionic worship of Athena, as the spirits of life in the light, and of
life in the air, opposed each to their own contrary deity of
death--Apollo to the Python, Athena to the Gorgon--Apollo as life in
light, to the earth spirit of corruption in darkness;--Athena, as life
by motion, to the Gorgon spirit of death by pause, freezing or turning
to stone: both of the great divinities taking their glory from the evil
they have conquered; both of them, when angry, taking to men the form of
the evil which is their opposite--Apollo slaying by poisoned arrow, by
pestilence; Athena by cold, the black ægis on her breast.