takes, and the leaf shapes may be considered almost as the reflection
of the form of the brush itself.
The modelling of the more raised smooth parts is produced by gradually
and lightly adding--superimposing while moist fresh gesso, on the
system of _pâte sur pâte_, which amalgamates with that underneath. The
artist, in modelling the limbs of figures, would emphasize the main
muscular masses, allowing for the natural tendency of the paste to
soften its own edges in running together: so that a limb would be built
up somewhat in the way indicated in the drawing by successive layers
of the material floated over each other while moist. Of course, the
success of the result depends upon not only the nicety of touch but
also on the proper consistency of the gesso, which, if mixed too thin,
would be likely to lose form and run out of bounds. Gesso, therefore,
for brush work should be mixed like the valetudinarian’s gruel in one
of Miss Austen’s novels--“Thin, but not _too_ thin.”
[Illustration: System of Modelling with the Brush in Gesso]
[Illustration: Gesso Decoration: the Dining-Room, 1a, Holland Park
Designed by Walter Crane. The Side-board Designed by Philip Webb. From
a Photograph by W. E. Gray]
It is of little use giving exact quantities, since satisfactory working
depends upon all sorts of variable conditions, almost in the nature
of accidents, such as temperature, quality of the materials, and
nature of tools, none of which behaves exactly in the same way on all
occasions, and this variability must necessarily lead to different
results in different hands.
[Illustration: Gesso Decoration: the Dining-Room, 1a, Holland Park
Frieze and Panel over Fireplace and subsidiary work on the Woodwork
of the Fireplace, Designed by Walter Crane. The Fireplace Designed by
Philip Webb From a Photograph by W. E. Gray]
[Illustration: Gesso Decoration: Detail of Coffered Ceiling, 1a,
Holland Park
Designed by Walter Crane. From a Photograph by W. E. Gray]
It is only personal experience of the subtle mechanical and material
conditions which are inseparable parts of the production of all work
of the nature of art, which can really determine their fitness to each
individual worker, who must sooner or later, if his work is alive, make
certain variations to suit his own particular idiosyncrasies.
[Illustration: Gesso Panel Silvered and Tinted with Coloured Lacquers
(part of Frieze in Dining-Room at 1a, Holland Park)
Designed by Walter Crane. From a Photograph by W. E. Gray]
[Illustration: Panel in Gesso, Tinted with Lacquers and Lustre Paint
Designed by Walter Crane]
It is perfectly hopeless to attempt to pursue any form of art on
purely mechanical precepts and principles. A few plain and practical
directions, as to a traveller seeking his road in an unknown land,
may be given, and the rest must be learnt step by step in experience,
and as much as can be gathered from opportunities of seeing the work
done by skilled hands, from which, indeed, everything learnable can be
learnt.
[Illustration: Panel in Gesso, Tinted with Lacquer
Designed by Walter Crane]
Even complete mastery over materials is, after all, not everything. In
fact, from the artistic (or inventive) point of view, work only begins
there, as expression comes after or with speech.
Design has much analogy to poetry. Unless the motive is real and
organic, unless the thought and form have something individual in them,
unless the feeling is true, it fails to interest us. Herein lies the
whole question of artistic production.
Yet is it worth while to learn what can be learnt about any form of
art, if only it enables one to realize its true nature and something
of the laws of its expression, which knowledge, at least, if it does
not confer creative power, greatly increases the intelligent pleasure
of its appreciation.
THE RELATION OF THE EASEL PICTURE TO DECORATIVE ART
Despite the invention of oil painting (which Cennino considered only
fit for lazy painters) and the fact that many easel pictures now
produced appear to have a very remote relation to decorative art as
generally understood, I am still of the opinion that the easel picture,
properly considered and placed in its right relationship to its
surroundings, by judicious treatment and hanging, and above all by a
certain mural feeling, may be _the acme of decoration_. Its relation to
a scheme of decoration may be like that of a jewel in a dress.
Of course, everything depends upon the point of view of the painter,
in the first place, and in the present age the easel picture has been
a favourite medium not only for the display, strange to say, of that
individualism and experimentalism which are supposed to be special
modern characteristics, but also for the merging of individuality
in schools, types, and modes of painting, or frank imitation of
fashionable masters.
The easel picture differs from any conscious piece of decoration by
not being necessarily associated with, or consciously related to, any
other piece or scheme of design. Yet, practically, it _must_ be related
to something. It is related, in the first place, if a sincere work,
to something in the painter’s mind. Most painters are impressionable
and sensitive to the effect of their surroundings. It is a common
saying how much better a picture looks in the studio in the light in
which it was painted, but probably it is not only the lighting but
the surroundings also, and the picture has been perhaps unconsciously
painted in harmony with its surroundings, its colour scheme affected by
the colour of the studio walls, draperies, and furniture. Certain it is
that, as a rule, painters are known by a favourite scheme and key of
colour, quite apart from the fact that commercial considerations often
encourage them to repeat themselves.
The modern picture-exhibitions--I mean big shows like that of the Royal
Academy--have perhaps done more to destroy the decorative relationship
of the easel pictures than anything. An analogous effect is produced
on the mind by the sight of so many pictures of so many different
sorts, subjects, and scales, and treatments crowded together, to that
produced by a surfeit of ornament, and pattern on pattern, in internal
decoration. This seems to point to the fact that true decoration lies
rather in the sense of proportion and arrangement or distribution
than in the use of particular units of ornament, styles, colours, or
materials, and that one may destroy decorative effect by the very means
of decoration--but we have only to remember the meaning of the word.
I have spoken of _mural feeling_ in a picture being important to its
decorative quality or relationship, and it is the most obvious and
necessary relationship, since it establishes a relationship with the
destined place of the picture--_the wall_. Its frame, which separates
a picture from its surroundings, also helps to unite it again to its
original home, where it becomes a movable instead of a fixed panel
enclosed by a moulding. No word is perhaps oftener on the pen of the
prattler about pictures (or art critic) than the word “decorative,”
which seems very variously understood and applied to all sorts and
conditions of painting. What is really comprehended by the phrase is
appropriate treatment, or _mural feeling_. A satisfactory definition
of mural feeling would be difficult, since it is a quality composed
of many elements, but I think most artists know what they mean by it.
To my mind it includes a certain flatness of treatment with choice of
simple planes, and pure and low-toned colours, together with a certain
ornamental dignity or architectural feeling in the structure of forms
and lines of composition, and is generally antithetic to accidental or
superficial characteristics or what might be called landscape effects.
Does this then exclude landscapes from the decorative relation, it
might be asked?
Vast distances, large sky spaces, wind-tossed trees, turbulent seas
and flying shadows certainly do not tend to the repose of a wall--but
it is precisely to “give interest” (to people not interested in “mere
patterns”) that pictures are hung upon it, and to some tastes there
cannot be too much drama going on. Others would rather keep it bound up
in another form in their libraries and only let it loose occasionally.
But I am far from saying that even the sky-landscape has no decorative
place. But you must not mix it or have too much of it. A window may
be an important decorative element in the scheme of an interior, and
a landscape three parts sky may have something of the value of a
window in a room. But it might be possible to decorate with landscapes
alone, though one would prefer tapestry landscapes without sky, or
with very high horizons, at least for the lower walls; certainly there
never ought to be sky below the eye level on a wall. The Turner room
has a certain unity and splendour of its own, regarded simply from a
particular decorative point of view, and Turner would be pronounced
I suppose the least decorative in feeling of modern artists--rather
the epic poet in paint. Every age, too, has its own notions of
decoration--indeed one might say even every decade now, or even a less
period, we live so fast! No rules or canons of taste in art are of
universal application or acceptable to all periods. As decoration is
primarily fitness and harmony, with this central idea one may produce
decorative effects with very different materials, and we have only to
glance back to our historic periods to see how it was accomplished.
The standard of the Beautiful undoubtedly shifts, or perhaps changes
hands in the unceasing struggle to win it, and what is worshipped at
one epoch or in one century is cast out and trodden under foot in
the next. Perhaps we have (during the past century) gained a little
historic balance or toleration, and all of us are not prepared to make
a clean sweep of the work of the other centuries in favour of the
favoured one.
But a harmonious effect is always more difficult with mixed materials
(which may account in some degree for the marked success of “the tulip
and the bird” in modern decorative patterns).
Certain material conditions, too, favour the growth of a higher type of
art at one period than another. We can never elude the economic basis
which necessarily affects our forms of art as of other things.
“Pictures, furniture, and effects” is the auctioneer’s favourite phrase
in describing the property of a gentleman. He might be describing
pictures alone. We have heard of “furniture pictures”--but remove the
reproach, is it not in the fitness of things that pictures should be
furniture, and their highest destiny to decorate a room?
But when pictures become counters in the game of speculation, your
decorative relations along with your social relations may take care of
themselves. They become, in fact, very _poor relations_.
The portability of the easel picture may have something to do with
its unrelatable character in some cases. Destined for nowhere in
particular as a rule, it goes on tour--a member of a performing and
often very diverse company, to all the provincial towns, and even on
the continent. Yet there were portable and even folding pictures in
classical and mediaeval times, and certainly there was no want of
decorative relationship in the latter period when, as we know, they
were often most beautiful pieces of furniture and wall decorations, as
well as pictures. Even the gold-framed oil picture was frankly treated
by the Venetians as a decoration--and a ceiling decoration--as witness
the Tintorettos in the Ducal palace.
It would not be difficult to select pictures from the National Gallery
from the Italian, Flemish, and even the Dutch and Spanish schools,
which would not only be admirable pieces of decoration but also furnish
the decorator with beautiful decorative schemes of colour.
An easel picture might be made the central point of its own scheme of
colour and tone, and led up to, as it were, by everything in the room.
There may be, as I have said already, room for the open sky in
decoration, too, if you “sky” it enough, or put it in a frieze, and
this touches a rather important point of decorative relationship, too
often ignored by the hanger of easel pictures, that is the placing of
the picture so that its horizon or vanishing point shall be on a level
with the eye of the spectator.
Checked by such considerations, and due selection of scale and tone in
placing pictures, I would not say that decorative effects are not
possible with the most easel of easel pictures--only you must add the
decorator to the painter to bring them off.
[Illustration: Pictorial Decoration, Ducal Palace, Venice
From a Photograph by Alinari]
Some facetious friends of William Morris once proposed to send him a
circular asking subscriptions to an association for the protection
of the poor easel-picture painter, since he was being frozen out by
designers of wall-papers and hangings of such mere ornamental interest
that people did not want anything else on their walls.
It was a joke, but there was meaning in it, and, thrown as we are on
the world-market, the floating of one man or one kind of art is too
often at the expense of the sinking of another. Pictures, like other
things, should, in an ideal state, be produced for use and pleasure
not for profit, and there would then be less doubt of their decorative
relationship; and, although, if this method were adopted generally, it
would greatly reduce the output, I cannot help feeling the Japanese
show a true instinct for the decorative relation of pictures when
they only show _one_ kakimono at a time; but, after, all that would
only mean that we could keep the rest of our collection--as so many
masterpieces have been kept--rolled up or with their faces to the wall.
A GREAT ARTIST IN A LITERARY SEARCHLIGHT[2]
Our late veteran idealist-sculptor-painter so often sat in the chair
of the literary operator, whether journalistic critic, interviewer,
or more serious biographical appraiser, that one imagines that in
his life-time he must long have ceased to wonder what manner of
man--or artist--he might be, and, like enough, vexed not himself when
vivisected to make a British holiday.
[2] “G. F. Watts,” by G. K. Chesterton. London, Duckworth and
Co.
The necessity for a more or less complete “sizing up” of a famous
artist, of classifying him and affixing a descriptive label, or brand,
seems to answer to some requirement of the age, despite the chance of
the label becoming out of date, owing, perchance, to the unexpected
versatility or longevity of the labelled.
It accords with the habits of a commercial people to have “all goods
marked in plain figures;” curiosity, too, must be satisfied, and art,
not always at once clearly speaking out for itself in the vernacular,
the literary interpreter and critical labeller find their opportunity.
It is, however, difficult enough to attempt to sum up the quality and
range of an artist in his lifetime, and in the short perspective of the
present assign to him his proper relative position for all time; but,
as it may be still more difficult after he has gone, there may be some
excuse for the attempt--which has at least the excitement of daring--to
make a true estimate of his powers and position while he yet liveth,
and while his works change their character under different impulses and
influences under our very eyes.
Not that such a brilliant and sympathetic little study as this by Mr.
Chesterton needs any excuse. He is always such good reading, and has
such a bright epigrammatic way of putting things, that even if he were
less penetrating he could not fail to be amusing and stimulating.
The rapid flash of his searchlight, as it were, touches so airily on
so many interesting objects in its sweep that, as one might say of a
painter, his background, with its wealth of subsidiary and illustrative
detail, is often more fascinating than the treatment of his main
subject or principal figure.
The book for one thing is remarkable for the attitude the author takes
up in regard to the nineteenth century--in endeavouring to account for
Mr. Watts--and, as it appears to be a not altogether uncommon view with
men of the present generation--although mostly born in that mythical
century--one may take his view as more or less typical. But, really,
from the way in which the century just closed is regarded one might
suppose it was as distant almost as the thirteenth.
[Illustration: “Love and Death”
By G. F. Watts, R.A.]
Have we then changed so much, or is it only the figure-heads or
brain-heads and their ideals which have changed? That “there is a tide
in the affairs of men” we all know--a flood and an ebb tide, indeed,
and it may be the tide of aspiration is now rather low, and some of us
may sigh as we look seaward at the stately departing ships with their
brave ensigns glowing in the fading light of sunset which has left the
foreshore, encumbered with the drift and wreckage of disappointed hopes
and disillusion.
We may have to wait some time for the flood and we know not what
argosies of new hopes and thoughts it will bring us. In the meantime we
must make shift with our _one_ hope, or our hope with _one_ string as
best we may.
But if our young men have ceased to dream dreams, our old men have not
ceased to see visions, and the great idealist-painter we have so lately
lost must be counted as the foremost of such.
It will always be to his honour that through good report and evil
report he steadfastly upheld the banner which proudly asserts the
intellectual character of painting, and claims its right and its power,
as a language of peculiar vividness, richness, and resource, to express
certain typical and profound thoughts and emotions, and to embody by
definite but delicate symbolism ideas and ideals not possible to be
conveyed so succinctly, so suggestively, and above all, so beautifully
by any other means.
Matter and manner cannot really be separated in any vital art. Form and
spirit become fused in all its highest, even in all its genuine shapes.
[Illustration: “Sir Galahad”
By G. F. Watts, R.A.]
Mr. Chesterton rather steps aside in one place to poke fun at Allegory
(as I note literary men are, curiously enough, prone to do), although
elsewhere he appears to admit that it has its due place and value in
art, and he grows enthusiastic over Mr. Watts’s use of it.
But that is just the crux. Everything is in the artist’s use and
treatment.
There is allegory and allegory. In its highest form it is a species
of poetry, in its lowest it becomes a catalogue. We may go to Cesare
Ripa and get a recipe for the correct make-up of any virtue we wish
to symbolize. Fedelta (Fidelity), for instance, is given, “Donna
vestita di bianco, colla destra mane tiene una chiave, ed ha alii
piedi un cane.” Well, there you are--but it all depends upon the
artist whether the emblem represents each item in the crudest form, or
becomes a really fine design, full of refinement and inner meaning.
To appreciate the allegory of a past age one must be able to read
oneself into its spirit. The Allegories of Botticelli seem to belong
to a different world from those of Rubens, and appeal to a different
mood and even order of mind. I quite agree with Mr. Chesterton that a
lady in classical drapery and a cornucopia, or caduceus, would quite
inadequately represent modern commerce. (A bull and a bear playing
see-saw across the globe would be nearer the mark, perhaps!) But the
lady might have a place in a decorative composition, symbolizing things
in the abstract, when beauty of treatment is again all-important. The
spirit of Spenser’s “Faerie Queene” is more painter-like in allegory
(which is always in Spenser perfectly definite) than that of any other
writer, and it is perfectly blended with poetic and imaginative
feeling, just as in a painted allegory the matter of it should be
inseparable from its form.
[Illustration: “Hope”
By G. F. Watts, R.A.]
We feel this to be so in the finest works of Watts, such as the “Love
and Death.” It is strange, however, to find Mr. Chesterton writing of
allegorical pictures as if they were as plentiful as blackberries.
“Millions,” he mentions--I wonder how many he could count in any
Royal Academy exhibition? I had supposed that allegorical design was
almost a lost art, as well as a dead language, in the estimation of
our people--except perhaps the species which goes to the making of
political cartoons.
Mr. Chesterton’s discriminating appreciation of Mr. Watts’s portraits
is excellent, and his remarks upon the affinity between Watts and
Tennyson very true. In the comprehensiveness, but indefiniteness, of
their intellectual view they are akin; but vastness involves vagueness,
and vagueness is a characteristic in the painter’s work. In Mr. Watts’s
cosmic and elemental designs great half defined shapes loom up out
of vaporous space. His heroes belong to no definite historic time,
though in his wide catholicity and sympathy his work embraces all human
types. His eye is fastened on the type and slights the circumstance.
The accident, the realization of the moment is nothing to him; but one
never saw a drawing in pure outline by the artist, and the charm of
clear silhouette does not appear to appeal to him, neither is essential
to his art. And Mr. Watts himself cannot be outlined, and therefore it
seems curious to find him set down as a Puritan in one place, and a
democrat(!) in another. Although Mr. Chesterton speaks of clear outline
or “hard black line,” as a quality not Celtic, and bases his argument
that Mr. Watts is not Celtic upon the character of his line, his
phrase, “sculptor of draughtsmanship,” is incisive, as it is certainly
a grasp of _structure_ rather than outline which distinguishes Mr.
Watts’s work; and in this quality it may be said lies the true reason
of the difference between his portraits and much modern portraiture
which seeks rather the expression of the moment and the accidental
lighting, as in a landscape, rather than the type and the underlying
structure, the expression of which establishes a certain relation, and
that fundamental family likeness between very different individuals
which Mr. Chesterton has noted. For, indeed, men and women are moulded
in types far more than is commonly supposed.
After all, the great merit of Mr. Chesterton’s critical remarks
consists in their not quarrelling with an oak tree because it does not
happen to be a pine; and in that he does not think it necessary in
order that his subject may be properly appreciated to make a pavement
of all other reputations, or, like the irrelevant Walrus and Carpenter
on the sand--with much virtue in that “if”--“if this,”--certain
essential characteristics, say, of an artist’s style--“were only
cleared away it would be grand.”
For the rest, Mr. Chesterton’s sparkling style and wealth of whimsical
illustration make the book uncommonly readable, which cannot always be
said with regard to monographs on artists.
INDEX
Abydos, Temple of Seti, 89.
Academic method of art teaching, the, 58–65.
Action, representation of, 52, 54.
Advertisements, the curse of modern, 77, 78, 84.
Allegory in art, 278.
Anagni, chasuble from the Cathedral of, 206.
Animal forms in decoration, 203–224.
Architecture, importance of, in art training, 44, 50.
Art, influence of economic questions in, 23;
value of sound traditions in, 29;
social function of, 32;
the teaching of, 35–56;
sympathetic atmosphere a necessity for, 36–40;
connection between architecture and, 44;
essential unity of, 44, 48;
the imitative and imaginative sides of, 48;
advantage of architectural over pictorial training in, 50;
methods of art teaching, 58–68;
academic methods of teaching, 58–65;
dominated by the sculptor’s art and aims, 64;
modern possibilities of teaching, 66–68;
Tolstoi’s views on, 69–75;
the social and ethical bearings of, 88–101;
influence of, in the church, 93;
not the monopoly of the rich, 95–97;
refining influence of, 97, 98;
change in the conditions of the practice of, 99, 100.
“Art Nouveau, L’,” 128, 129.
Art Workers’ Guild, the, 18, 31;
device for, 251, 253.