DRAWINGS IN PEN & PENCIL
FROM DÜRER’S DAY TO OURS
WITH NOTES AND APPRECIATIONS
BY GEORGE SHERINGHAM
EDITED BY GEOFFREY HOLME
LONDON: THE STUDIO, Lᵀᴰ 44 LEICESTER SQUARE, W.C.2
MCMXXII
PREFATORY NOTE
In the original circular relating to this volume it was announced that
Mr. Malcolm C. Salaman would contribute the letterpress. The Editor
desires to express his sincere regret that, owing to serious
indisposition, Mr. Salaman has been unable to fulfil this intention.
The Editor wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to the following
owners who have kindly lent drawings for reproduction in this volume:
Messrs. Ernest Brown and Phillips (The Leicester Galleries), Mr. William
Burrell, Lt.-Col. Pepys Cockerell, Mr. Campbell Dodgson, C.B.E., Mr.
Charles Emanuel, Mr. William Foster, Mrs. G. R. Halkett, Mr. Harold
Hartley, Mr. Francis Harvey, Mr. C. C. Hoyer-Millar, Mr. J. B. Manson,
Mr. A. P. Oppé, Monsieur Ed. Sagot, Mr. Edward J. Shaw, J.P., Monsieur
Simonson, Mr. G. Bellingham Smith, Mr. Roland P. Stone, Mr. D. Croal
Thomson, Mr. Charles Mallord Turner and Sir Robert Woods, M.P. Also to
Messrs. William Marchant & Co. (The Goupil Gallery), Mr. T. Corsan
Morton, Mr. E. A. Taylor and Mr. Lockett H. Thomson for the valuable
assistance they have rendered in various ways; and to Messrs. G. Bell &
Sons, Messrs. Chapman & Hall, Messrs. Charles Chenil & Co., Messrs. J.
M. Dent & Sons, Mr. William Heinemann, and the Proprietors of _La
Gazette du Bon Ton_, _Punch_ and _The Sketch_ for permission to
reproduce drawings of which they possess the copyrights.
CONTENTS
“Notes and Appreciations.” By George Sheringham 1
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Albano, Francesco. Pen Drawing. Photo, Anderson 58
Artist Unknown. Drawing in Pencil and Chalks. Photo, Giraudon 72
Barbieri, Giovanni Francesco. (See Guercino)
Bateman, H. M. _An Open Space_ (pen) 140
Beardsley, Aubrey. _John Bull_ (pen) 120
“ “ Pen Drawing 121
Béjot, Eugène. _Le Quai de Paris à Rouen_ 178
Belcher, George. Drawing in pencil and wash 141
Bell, R. Anning, R.A., R.W.S. Pen Drawing 164
Bellini, Gentile. _The Turk_ (pen). Photo, Anderson 40
“ “ _The Turkish Lady_ (pen). Photo, Anderson 41
Blake, William. _The Soul hovering over the Body_ (pen and wash) 119
Blampied, E., R.E. _The Sick Mother_ (pen) 147
Bone, Muirhead. _Front of the Quirinal Palace, Rome_ (pencil) 160
“ “ _Quai du Canal, Marseilles_ (pencil) 161
Botticelli, Sandro. _Abundance_ (pen & pencil) 47
Boutet de Monvel, Bernard. _Venus et l’Amour_ (pen) 182
“ “ “ “ Pen Drawing 183
Brangwyn, Frank, R.A. _The Steam Hammer_ (pen and chalk) 139
Burne-Jones, Bart., Sir Edward. _Seven Works of Mercy_ (pencil) 126
Callow, William, R.W.S. _The Rialto, Venice_ (pencil) 132
Canaletto. Pen Drawing. Photo, Mansell 76
Carlègle, E. Pen Drawing 184
Clarke, Harry. Pen Drawing 151
Claude Lorrain. Pen Drawing 71
Constable, John, R.A. _Salisbury_ (pencil) 85
Correggio. _The dead Christ carried off by Angels_ (pen). Photo,
Brogi 31
Cosway, Richard, R.A. _Henry_ (pencil and chalk) 83
Cotman, John Sell. _On the Yare_ (pencil) 86
Crawhall, Joseph. Pen Drawings 166
Dance, George, R.A. _Parke, Musician_ (pencil) 87
Daumier, Honoré. _En Troisième_ (pen and wash) 98
“ “ _Les Trois Connaisseurs_ (pen and wash) 99
Dulac, Edmund. Pencil Study 170
Du Maurier, George. Pen Drawing 113
Dürer, Albrecht. _A Courier_ (pen). Photo, Anderson 25
“ “ _The Rhinoceros_ (pen). Photo, Anderson 26
“ “ _The Procession to Calvary_ (pen). Photo, Brogi 27
“ “ _Praying Hands_ (pen). Photo, Mansell 28
Emanuel, Frank L. Pencil Drawing 138
Fisher, A. Hugh, A.R.E. Pencil Drawing 143
Flint, W. Russell, R.W.S. _Women quarrelling_ (pencil) 134
Forain, J. L. Pen Drawing 174
Foster, Birket, R.W.S. Pen Drawing 92
Fragonard, J. H. _Cupids playing around a fallen Hermes_ (pen) 79
Gainsborough, Thomas, R.A. _The Harvest Wagon_ (pen).
Photo, Mansell 82
Girtin, Thomas. _Carnarvon Castle_ (pencil) 89
Greenaway, Kate. Pen Drawing 116
Griggs, F. L. Pen Drawing 165
Guardi, Francesco. _Venice_ (pen) 77
Guercino, Il. Pen Drawing. Photo, Anderson 57
Hill, Adrian. _Folkestone_ (pencil) 137
Hill, Vernon. _A Sleeper_ (pencil) 158
Holbein, Hans. _The Family of Sir Thomas More_ (pen) 29
Houghton, A. Boyd. Pen Drawing 111
Hubbard, E. Hesketh. _S. Anne’s Gate, Salisbury_ (pencil) 154
Hughes, Arthur. _Unseen_ (pen) 118
Ingres, J. A. D. _Madame Gatteaux_ (pencil). Photo, Mansell 95
“ “ _Paganini_ (pencil) 96
“ “ _C. R. Cockerell_ (pencil) 97
Jones, Sydney R. _Near Chesham, Bucks._ (pen) 157
Jouas, C. Drawing in pencil and coloured chalks 175
Keene, Charles. Pen Drawings 105 to 109
Lalanne, Maxime. _Delft_ (pen) 171
Laroon, Marcellus. _A Hunting Party_ (pen & pencil) 78
Lawrence, Sir Thomas, P.R.A. _Lady Mary Fitzgerald_ (pencil) 93
Leonardo da Vinci. Pen Studies. Photos, Anderson and Brogi 32
“ “ “ _Head of an Old Man_ (pencil) 33
“ “ “ _Madonna and Child_ (pen). Photo, Anderson 34
“ “ “ _Head of a Young Woman_ (pen). Photo,
Braun & Co. 35
Lepère, A. _Le Vieux Menton_ (pen) 176
“ “ _Crèvecœur_ (pen) 177
Lhermitte, L. Pen Drawing 146
Mahoney, James. Pen Drawing 110
May, Phil. _A Portrait of her Grandmother_ (pen) 122
“ “ Drawing in pencil and chalk 123
McBey, James. _The Stranded Barge_ (pen) 167
Meryon, Charles. Pencil Drawing 101
Michelangelo. Pen Drawings. Photo, Anderson 42, 43, 46
“ Pen Drawing 45
Morland, George. Pencil Drawing 86
New, Edmund H. _Grasmere Church_ (pencil) 152
North, J. W., R.A. _The Gamekeeper’s Cottage_ (pen) 117
Orpen, Sir William, R.A. _Mother and Child_ (pencil) 148
“ “ “ _After Bathing_ 149
Ospovat, Henry. “_Life might last! We can but try_” (pen) 163
Ostade, Adriaen van. _Tavern Scene_ (pen) 68
Parmigianino. Pen Drawing. Photo, Brogi 75
Partridge, Bernard. _Place du Pillori, Pont-Audemer_ (pen) 133
Pellegrini, Riccardo. _Palm Sunday in Italy_ (pen) 125
Peruzzi, Baldassare. Pen Drawing. Photo, Anderson 37
Philpot, Glyn W., A.R.A. Pencil Study 168
Pinturicchio, Bernardino. _Young Woman with Basket_ (pen)
Photo, Brogi 31
Pinwell, C. J. _The Old Couple and the Clock_ (pencil) 115
Poulbot, F. Pen Drawing 181
Poussin, Nicolas. Pen Drawing 70
Rackham, Arthur, R.W.S. Pen Drawing 150
Raphael. Pen Drawings. Photo, Anderson 49, 53
“ _La Vierge_ (pen). Photo, Mansell 50
“ Pen Study. Photo, Mansell 51
Raphael, School of. Pen Drawing. Photo, Anderson 54
Rembrandt. _Lot and his Family leaving Sodom_ (pen). Photo,
Anderson 61
Rembrandt. _Saskia_ (pen) 63
“ _Old Cottages_ (pen) 64
“ Pen Drawing 64
“ _Judas restoring the Price of his Betrayal_ (pen).
Photo, Braun & Co. 65
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Pencil Drawing 127
Roubille, A. Pen Drawing 179
Russell, Walter W., A.R.A. Pencil Study 159
Sambourne, Linley. _The Black-and-White Knight_ (pen) 131
Shepperson, Claude A., A.R.A., A.R.W.S. _The Child_ (pencil) 135
Sime, S. H. Pen Drawing 155
Spurrier, Steven. Pencil Study 144
Steinlen, T. A. _Les Bûcherons_ (pen) 172
“ “ _Laveuses_ 173
Stevens, Alfred. Pencil Study 102
Sullivan, Edmund J., A.R.W.S. _Robespierre’s List_ (pen) 145
Tenniel, Sir John. _“What’s this?” said the Lion_ (pencil) 128
“ “ _Three little Men_ (pencil) 128
Tiepolo, G. B. _Faun and Nymph_ (pen) 73
Tintoretto. Pen Drawing. Photo, Brogi 59
Titian. Pen Drawings 38, 39
Tonks, Henry. Pencil Study 169
Turner, J. M. W., R.A. _Carew Castle Mill_ (pencil) 90
“ “ “ _Monow Bridge, Monmouth_ (pencil) 91
Velasquez. _Philip IV_ (pen) 60
Velde, Adriaen van de. _Le Passage du Bac_ (pen). Photo, Mansell 69
Veronese, Paolo. Pen Studies 55
Verpilleux, E. Pencil Drawing 153
Vinci, Leonardo da. (See Leonardo).
Visscher, Cornelis. Portrait Study in pencil 67
Walker, Fred, A.R.A. _A Dark Deed_ (pencil) 112
Whistler, J. McNeill. _Girl with Parasol_ (pen) 129
Wilkie, Sir David, R.A. _The Mail Coach_ (pen) 103
Winterhalter, Franz Xaver. Portrait Studies in pencil 81
Printed by Herbert Relach, Ltd., 19-24, Floral Street, Covent Garden,
London, W.C.2.
NOTES AND APPRECIATIONS
A drawing is a thing to be looked at and not written about. Pages and
pages written about it will not make a good drawing bad nor a bad
drawing good; nor will they, unfortunately, really equip and instruct
anyone to know the one from the other--should he happen to lack that
subtle sense whereby such things are known; for the reason why one
drawing is justly ranked as a masterpiece while another is thrown away
lies hidden on the plane of our more transcendental perceptions--such,
for example, as the sense whereby we know whether a note is in tune or
out of tune; and further: whether a musical composition is base in its
gesture or great. At present the majority of people lack these senses
but, due to a guiding justice, this fact rarely if ever prevents the
artist who has achieved something great from receiving, though it may
have been long retarded, his full meed of praise eventually. That the
praise is so often belated and the appreciation of an artist retarded
until, for him, it has lost its savour is due to many causes: so long as
the competitive and childish habit persists--of awarding the palm of
greatness to one man’s work by the simple expedient of simultaneously
condemning someone else’s--narrowness and prejudice will continue to
trouble the artist. It should surely not be difficult to realize that
the world of art--like the Kingdom of Heaven--has many mansions, and
that, though both have their “housing problems,” still--in both there is
room for many.
In life the “housing problem” for the artists is acute and vexed--they
have to scramble for a place and, in the scramble, if some are unduly
praised far more are unduly blamed. Death seems to be the only arbiter
of justice for them. In the struggle for recognition none are more
unscrupulous and narrow than the artists themselves; with the instinct
of self-preservation strongly developed in them they, metaphorically,
deal what they hope will be death-blows at all who stand in their way.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for an
artist to be a just critic of his contemporaries. The truth of this
assertion is easily tested: ask an artist his opinion of a mixed dozen
of old masters--he will have words of praise for all of them and his
comparisons will be just and true. Then ask him his opinion of a dozen
of the leading artists of his own day--he will not have words of praise
for more than two; and if by chance he should still be a student in the
schools he will find himself only able to praise one of them; and the
remarks he will make about the others will be in questionable taste!
Even our most revered old masters gave way to this human weakness. For
instance, Michelangelo treated Leonardo as though he held him in
profound contempt; especially in a little matter connected with the
casting of a bronze. In fact--each paid the other the compliment of
jealousy.
The deplorable battle that had to be waged before Whistler’s genius
could be accepted is also a good example. In the very forefront of the
fight rode Whistler shamelessly wounding, for the sake of his own
aggrandizement, his opponents, who were really his brother artists.
Viewed at this distance of time it looks a dirty business, and several
good artists are only now healing of their wounds. He is forgiven of
course, firstly because he was a genius of a high order and secondly
because of his wit and the irresistible style with which he handled his
weapons; and thirdly because he was, of course, most venomously attacked
on all sides himself. It was the power of Whistler’s caustic wit that
caused the prestige of our leading art society to become so undermined
that, until quite recently, many of our greatest living artists could
not face the ignominy of exhibiting there; and to this day one still
meets with the bashful student who has to deny himself any visits to its
exhibitions!
* * * * *
Fenollosa says: “Art is the power of the imagination to transform
materials--to transfigure them--and _the history of Art should be the
history of this power_ rather than the history of the materials through
which it works.” In the limited size of this book neither the one nor
the other history is attempted of European pen & pencil art. Had
either been intended the English draughtsmen could not so preponderate
in it. That they do so is due to the fact that the book is intended
primarily for the English public, and is published in the hope that it
may help somewhat to stimulate its appreciation of what its own artists
have done and are doing, and what the great masters did in the past.
* * * * *
Drawings have this great advantage--that they convey their meaning
instantly. They tell their story more swiftly than a telegraph-form,
whereas ideas on a printed page have to be assimilated in the usual
processional order. So whoever looks through this collection of drawings
with intelligent interest must be rewarded with a share in the vision of
many great men on a great variety of subjects. And whether he is
conscious of the process or not he must retain some memory of each;
perhaps--with luck and other qualities--a very clear memory. For it is a
gain, a privilege and a delight to be able to assimilate in an instant
the fine idea of a great artist. Surely, too, it must give to the reader
a momentary feeling of freedom from the shackles of space and time. My
point is that it would take the briefest writer many pages to present to
the student of psychology the personality and character of, say, the
_Earl of Surrey_, as they are conveyed to him by Holbein’s drawing--in
one _coup d’œil_. And it would be indeed a long book that gave him as
adequate a presentment (as do these drawings) of a hundred different
persons, places and incidents by a hundred different writers. For in
this book are drawings that will teach him to see like gods, like
super-men, like birds, like swashbucklers, and even to see with the eyes
of little old ladies. And Michelangelo, in return for a glance, will
give him his great conception, and Mr. Bateman will crack ten jokes with
him in as many seconds.
But it takes two to establish a work of art--the artist and the other
man; and even then the other man can only take from it what he can put
into it: Mr. Bateman’s jokes fall flat if the other man has no sense of
humour. Michelangelo has no message for the man entirely unfamiliar with
fine ideas. The artist can but launch his work of art on the world and
hope that the other man will recognize it.
Such diversity of presentment as the collection of drawings in this book
gives should do something to inculcate a more catholic appreciation of
art than one finds in that unpleasant being--“the average man.” It is
the critic’s business to educate the public to that catholicity of
appreciation, but unfortunately he may delight in doing the opposite:
too often Ruskin’s eloquent writings did but beautifully express his
bigoted prejudices. His eloquence succeeded in foisting upon the public
as masterpieces--meriting comparison with the works of Titian and
Tintoretto--certain banal, third-rate Victorian water-colours. And he is
committed to a description of Canaletto as a _base_ painter--because
Canaletto painted into a picture what Ruskin considered an unworthy
artifice. The critical faculty is to a considerable extent intuitive and
sub-conscious, and therefore to concentrate only along a special line of
thought is the worst possible training for a critic. However, the
English people, having ceased to rely so completely on John Ruskin to do
their thinking for them, and growing suspicious of the carping of that
most irascible critic have, among other things, discovered the splendid
sincerity of Canaletto for themselves. Let us hope that they had the
generosity, in embracing Canaletto, to do so without discarding someone
else of equal value; but, as a rule, immobile minds cannot take in a new
thought without first ejecting some other:--our grandfathers worshipped
at Raphael’s shrine; our fathers at Turner’s and we--losing interest in
both--have “discovered” Velasquez; the talk in the schools and coteries
is of Leonardo and Uccello while Rubens, too, is forgotten or
disapproved. Cannot Uccello be great without the depreciation of
Raphael! Or must partisan hero-worship be carried on about art in the
same spirit as the butcher-boys of rival firms wear light or dark blue
ribbons on one special day in the spring!
Surely the real value of art in this world lies in its diversity and
infinite variety. The artist’s principal function in the community is
that he teaches it to see. This is the great man’s final achievement. So
that men who come after him say: “Ah, it was Rembrandt who taught us how
glorious a thing is light”; “it was Whistler who showed us the mystery
of the evening and the beauty of the Thames”; “Turner who gave us
sunsets and Velasquez who taught us the marvel of our physical vision
and showed us the very air we breathe.” As each new artist reaches the
height of his art our horizon should grow wider and the vision of the
world more rich. The new generations are going to teach us the beauty of
our back streets and gasometers. Good luck to them, for when they have
done it our dullest walks will have a zest!
* * * * *
But Art cannot be of the most truly vital and evolutionary kind unless
it is born of national inspiration and has its roots in the social and
spiritual life of a people--growing in response to their conscious need
and desire for it. We adulate the great Italian artists instead of
paying our homage to the Italian people for producing them--as they
undoubtedly did, by desiring them; for art was not only a joy to their
kings and prelates but _a spiritual need to themselves_. In such an
atmosphere great men were bound to arise to give form to the ideals and
emotions of the nation. Other countries have in equal degree made this
demand at certain periods of their history; to mention the more
obvious--Egypt, Persia, Greece, China, France, Japan. And in
answer--great men have arisen to express what were really _national
ideals_ in concrete form. The demands of a king and his court may
produce a Velasquez; the desire of a city may produce a Watteau or a
Sargent; but only the desire of a nation can produce a great school in
art.
Religion once held the artist as her most valuable ally and was,
invariably, the source of his inspiration in all the greatest
masterpieces he gave the world in all branches: whether in architecture,
sculpture, painting, or in the lesser arts of carving, illuminating,
embroidery, jewellery. For art has ever reached its high-water mark in
the expression of religious ideals or in ministering to the needs of a
religious civilization: the temples of Egypt, Greece and Ancient India;
the paintings of the great schools of Italy, China, Flanders and Japan;
the sculptures of the Parthenon and the Renaissance; and even the ju-jus
of Africa and Australasia (about the virtues of which Chelsea mimics the
adulations of Paris) were one and all oblations to the gods. But
Religion in a frenzy of madness drove the artist from her sanctuaries
and has not yet admitted the disastrous results of her crime. And all
over the world--in the East as well as in the West--the artist has now
retaliated and has gone elsewhere for his inspiration (and,
incidentally, has turned, for the most part, for his appreciation to the
race who are still forbidden by the sacred tenets of their faith to make
to themselves “any graven image”). And art is now only the demand of the
few.
At this particular point in history--a fact that should give us to
think--the peoples of all the world are very far from clamouring to see
their ideals given form through art. That many of them have ideals and
can formulate their desires this generation has had ample proof; as for
instance it had of the English--in the war. But the English have given
innumerable proofs, too, that the desire of the mass of this people does
not tend towards the arts--for however many great painters the English
have produced the fact remains that our only national art--except
perhaps the school of Reynolds and a tradition of landscape
painting--is, still, _literature_; as it always has been. It is nothing
to us that a national memorial is not conceived on nearly such large or
costly lines as are our drapery stores. This causes us no concern
whatever; we get what we want--economy of public money; and what we
deserve--unworthy memorials. To the present-day public the function of
the artist is of small importance--his work is there to amuse us, to
flatter our vanity, to decorate our hideous houses (with which we are
well content) and, when he is dead, to afford us the mild excitement of
a little speculative buying. With such a point of view we can produce no
great school in art. Nothing can change us except we change ourselves.
Gallant attempts to change us have been made by individuals: Ruskin, in
proclaiming one of the world’s great painters, sought to instil some
fire of art into our flaccid hearts--and what happened? We pretended to
desire great things; we became sentimental about the “beauties of
nature” and our insincere desires produced a school of hucksters--who
profaned the work of their master and sullied the beauties of nature.
* * * * *
Where a country has no national art the message of its great men, when
they come, has to be completed just so far as they can take it in their
own lifetime; for it is carried no further by those who follow them;
whereas, when art is national, all its forms “interact. From the
building of a great temple to the outline of a bowl which the potter
turns upon his wheel, _all effort is transfused with a single style_,”
and the message of a great man may take centuries to achieve its
completion and fullness in a progressive unfoldment in evolution.
* * * * *
So many of the greatest drawings of the old masters were done in chalk
that it is sometimes difficult to find examples executed in pen or
pencil that will bring their work within the scope of this book; but in
the _Family of Thomas More_ we have an example of Holbein’s pen drawing
which could not be better for our purpose. It is obviously _the
carefully thought out design for a painting of considerable size_ and,
like all Holbein’s portraits, is a most intimate and searching study of
psychology. Composition drawings (and this one is a good example) are
among the most valuable to us of all works of art. Valuable because the
composition sketches of a great man are generally pure inspiration
throughout. In them he has worked too rapidly to be conscious of his
method--he has been as unconscious as a writer is of his hand-writing.
Napoleon said:
“Inspiration is the instantaneous solution of a long meditated
problem”; what more perfect description could one have of a
composition sketch, for the artist does, as a rule, meditate a
problem for a long time but the moment he finds the solution he
sets down his idea with the greatest zest seizing the first thing
to hand--generally a pen or a pencil. Moreover, in the first rapid
sketch that records his inspiration his mental vision is clear; the
interruptions--inevitable in the slow process of painting a
picture--having not yet occurred.
This book abounds with examples of sketches done in this way. They may
have been done thus, only as a means to an end, but that end is often
more nearly reached in the “instantaneous solution” than in the finished
picture that follows--though we may prize this for many other qualities.
[Sidenote: _Rembrandt_]
Rembrandt above all others delighted in setting down his ideas in this
way; and there are still in existence nearly nine hundred of these vital
drawings of his. I think I shall not be contradicted when I say that the
method by which these Rembrandt sketches were produced defies analysis:
they are not outline drawings, nor are they drawings of light (like
Daumier’s sketches), they are a kind of pictorial calligraphy--as Sir
Charles Holmes once pointed out--closely allied to the Japanese method
of brush drawing, though they are infinitely more varied and are not a
set of symbols constantly rearranged and adjusted for each new problem;
as is often the case in Japanese drawings; and also in the case of our
modern illustrators--who serve up again and again a few threadbare
receipts for hats, boots, facial expressions and so forth. With these
draughtsmen the line has all the hardness that one would expect from the
use of a metal point; the quill pen is incomparably a more sympathetic
instrument than the metal pen, and it is to be hoped that, as methods of
reproduction improve (and they are improving) draughtsmen will again
take to using the quill.
Rembrandt has shown us that the quill or reed pen can give a more
flexible line than any other instrument or medium (except perhaps a
brush) that the artist has at his disposal. Even chalk has not quite the
same possibilities in this particular respect, because the point is
continually crumbling as it is worn away, and the pencil--so suitable
for crisp or delicate work--cannot be used for emphatic statement
without the risk of happening upon that heavy quality that is so
unpleasant.
* * * * *
It is at about this stage that I feel some sort of an essay on drawings
and drawing in general is expected of me. However, as I do not expect it
of myself it is not likely to happen; and he who does must, I fear, be
disappointed. I hold the opinion, as I have already said, that a drawing
is a thing to be looked at and not written about and I therefore content
myself with the simple statement that _a drawing is a symbolic
arrangement of marks made by an intelligent person with a pointed
instrument on a more or less plain surface_. Now, though these three
essentials--the symbology, the arrangement and the intelligence of the
person--may all be excellent, the question of whether he may claim to be
really a draughtsman or why and when he may not be allowed any such
claim will ultimately always be decided by _the quality of the marks_;
in a drawing these are more usually curved lines; but to decide whether
they have the right quality or the wrong quality is a matter most
subtle, eclectic and erudite.
[Sidenote: _Hans Holbein the Younger_]
In Manchester, and the north of England generally, business men call an
artist’s personal style in drawing and design “his handwriting.” And
indeed the phrase has a nice aptness, for the quality of a man’s line in
pen or pencil work is as personal to himself and as unlike another’s as
is his calligraphy--and, like it, may charm or offend us. However--no
one ever has had any doubt about the charm and rightness of the quality
of Holbein’s lines.... “These are no imitations of classic suggestion
_but a new creation on parallel lines_ ... there are men who can create
with the same _naïveté_ and beauty as the Ionians. And let it be noted,
too, that these curves ... are the farthest removed in all art from the
insipidity of the Renaissance flourishes, which we sometimes teach as a
poisonous miasma in our art schools. These are curves of extreme
tension, as of substances pulled out lengthwise with force that has
found its utmost resistance, lines of strain, long _cool_ curves of
vital springing, that bear the strength of their intrinsic unity in
their rhythms.” So wrote Ernest Fenollosa--one of the few great writers
on art. He was not writing about Holbein, but how well he might have
been! What an admirable commentary it makes on the drawings of this
master draughtsman--“curves of extreme tension ... _cool_ curves of
vital springing.” ... Look at the drawings of the _Duchess of Suffolk_;
_Thomas Watt_; _Bishop Fisher_ or the _Family of Thomas More_
(reproduced here, p. 29) or any other portrait drawing by Holbein and I
think it cannot but be agreed that it is a perfect description of that
most difficult thing to describe--Holbein’s line. It must be admitted
that Holbein as a decorator seems to have been a different
being--“Renaissance flourishes” were then his stock in trade; they
sprout from every available excrescence. But most fortunately, in his
portraits, he had no use for the flourish; and here we are only
concerned with his portrait drawings.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _Michelangelo_]
One cannot study Michelangelo without realizing or at any rate
suspecting that _all presentment of psychology essentially depends upon
proportions, subtly observed_; and though one cannot expect a master in
an art school to allow his pupils to draw the model in inaccurate
proportions as a general rule he might, one thinks, occasionally with
advantage--say one day a week--order them to decide in their minds first
what type, psychologically, they most wish to suggest by the human
figure and to think out, then, _what proportions_ would best convey the
idea of it--deliberately falsifying, where necessary, the proportions of
the model to achieve their purpose. The proportions in a Michelangelo
drawing are _not_, accurately, those in a human figure. But, by a
general concensus of opinion, they are accepted as suggesting a
psychology more divine than human. This then must have been
Michelangelo’s intention. How did he do it. If we cannot learn the
secret by studying his drawings we have little else to help us except
the following cryptic receipt, that legend tells us came from him, and
which has still remained undeciphered--“a figure should be pyramidal,
serpentine, and _multiplied by one two and three_.” Is there any
connection between it and the occultists’ formula--“the one becomes two,
the two three, and the three seven,” and their axiom that “Seven is the
perfect Number”?
The principle of selecting deliberately where the proportions shall be
inaccurate to observed fact, for the purpose of suggesting a desired
type, is not unlike the principle that Rodin used to convey the idea of
action in a figure:--he taught that movement could best be suggested by
including in the pose at least two more or less instantaneous positions
or movements which _could_ not, accurately, occur _simultaneously_ in a
human figure.
That standard of excellence in art--that a picture or statue should “be
true to life”--has befogged too many of us. Art is in its essence and in
its finality--_artificial_. And proficiency is nothing if the obvious,
the non-essential and the trivial have been relied on to convey the
artist’s idea.
Reproductions of Michelangelo’s and Holbein’s finest drawings are
usually hung in most art schools--as examples of how to draw I suppose.
But, with curious inconsistency, the masters teach their students to do
it by a system of straight-line-scaffolding known as _blocking in_; a
method that has never been used by any of the greater draughtsmen, but
which was, I believe, imported from Paris in the ’seventies or
’eighties; as an antidote, no doubt, to the “poisonous miasma” that
Fenollosa condemns! However, competent draughtsmen are, of course,
produced by art schools here, as in other countries in considerable
numbers, but it is scarcely a debatable point that what modern art most
lacks is _tradition_. Present day conditions make the old system of
apprenticeship almost impossible--students are too numerous and the
artists too varied and contradictory in their opinions for any workable
system of apprenticeship to continue. The few attempts that are made in
this direction usually come to an unsatisfactory end. And so tradition
is dead or lost. The system as it was practised in the days of the
Renaissance--in conserving tradition--was of immense value to the
continuous progress of art; but in these days the student is thrust from
the art school into the world to make his way--as innocent of
traditions as a newly-hatched sparrow is of feathers. He is equipped
with the experience and opinions of his fellow students and the maxims
that are the stock in trade of the professional art-master; who--though
he is sometimes a real teacher and even an inspired and inspiring
teacher--is far more often merely an artist earning his living by
instructing his pupils in a system that he has himself evolved, and
which he is quite unable to demonstrate has ever been used by any great
draughtsman or painter.
To quote an example--no doubt an extreme case but a fairly typical
one--the student will be shown, as I have already said, a fine Holbein
drawing, and urged to emulate and study it with the closest attention;
but to do so he is given a blunt stick of charcoal and a piece of white
machine-made paper and initiated into a system of indicating
measurements and directions with heavy black lines. It is implied that
all the great masters began their careers by working in this way though,
for obvious reasons, no proof of this can ever be produced. It is
further implied that if he will apply himself to the art-master’s method
with real zeal he will in time be able to produce drawings like Holbein,
Ingres or Leonardo. If the student is a natural draughtsman he
invariably breaks away from the art school’s set of rules; and the
master generally has wit enough to let him go his own way. But the
others--well the others generally learn later in life with some
bitterness how they have been duped; unless they have had the good
fortune to be the pupils of Mr. Walter Sickert or Professor Tonks--who
both really have traditions from the old masters.
It would be wiser and better that the proprietors and governors of most
of our art schools should say frankly--“we cannot teach drawing as the
great draughtsmen were taught, we teach a fairly serviceable method of
drawing which it must be clearly understood is intended to be painted
over.” However--their system of teaching drawing seems to be much
sounder than their system of teaching painting.
At this point I want to say too, that though the word “rhythm” is often
uttered in the schools very little that is useful or illuminating is
taught there about this most subtle and essential quality in art.
Essential in drawing, in line, in spacing, in chiaroscuro and in
composition. It is always present in the work of the greater masters.
Curiously enough, too, it is often the one quality that causes a lesser
man to hold rank among them. A drawing can hardly be stated by one line,
usually it needs many, and rhythm is the principle whereby the
draughtsman can make a number of complex statements in a drawing
synthetically an harmonious whole. It is by rhythm that every line is
related to every other line: they have the same relation to each other
on the paper as dancers have one to another in a ballet. When a
ballet--such as _The Humorous Ladies_--has been danced to its
conclusion, though there may have been many movements, each and all
were in sympathy with each other and with the main theme.
Rhythm is, I think, the secret of the charm or power in the work of
artists as widely different as M. Leon Bakst, Lovat Fraser and Claude
Shepperson.
The modern art school seems to be a sort of clearing house for the
elimination of the student who thinks the life of an artist more
attractive than--say--life in an office. This type predominates in
practically all art schools. He (or she) is intensely serious about
being an artist, but is not seriously interested in art. After a period
more or less prolonged, this kind of neophyte discovers that the work of
an artist is not materially assisted by sombrero hats, flowing ties,
bobbed hair, corduroy trousers, fancy-dress dances, views about free
love, all night discussions about ethics--and so on, one need not
continue the familiar list. Having, I say, discovered that the most
assiduous cultivation of these exciting manners and customs does not
constitute the life of an artist this neophyte drops out of the race, as
far as the art world is concerned, and disappears. Years of hard work
and perhaps actual privation were not in his contract with the Muse, at
least--he did not notice the clause! If that hard-work business was the
game then no candle was worth it! Is there any harm done. As far as the
unserious student is concerned, I suppose there may have been some good,
but his effect on the art school is wholly bad. It makes anything
approaching to the old system of apprenticeship impossible; and we have
any number of proofs that this old system was the right one.
* * * * *
Whether art is national or personal in its message there is no doubt
that its artists are a peculiar people; they consist of two kinds (but
many sects): one--the craftsman--has a mission to create exquisite
things and the other has a mission to see exquisitely and to teach
others to see exquisitely too. It is not possible to predict what new
thing the craftsman will next make beautiful or what new thing the
artist will next interpret as beautiful. They are inspired by a spirit
that bloweth where it listeth. How great the power of this spirit in us
still is is proved by the astonishing number of unlovely things that
have been lately revealed to the world as beautiful, through the
mysterious alchemic process of this spirit of vision working in the
artist. But the spirit of inspiration did not always work thus. Some
centuries ago--when we had not so long emerged from Greek thought and
the influence of Plato--the process was almost the reverse. It required
that the artist should first see beautifully on the plane of ideas some
mental conception and then give it birth in a material form. In those
days the æsthetic sense was the guiding intelligence that moulded man’s
civilization and environment. In other words art produced the
environment that produced the artist. Communing with the spirit, the
artist, looking inward and not out, sought his subject in his own mind
or soul; and only through his art did it become an objective reality for
others. But now, to-day, the æsthetic principle no longer moulds our
civilization; has but a negligible influence even on our thought and no
effect upon the practical affairs of life. We train our workers to live
and labour without a knowledge even that such principles exist or that
in past ages such ideas _controlled the growth of nations_.
That era is now closed, for “no phase or school of art in human society,
however beautiful, but contains within itself the germs of its own
destruction.” From the beauty of the past comes the grim battle-field of
to-day--where we wage our keen struggle for existence. Governments
cannot be taking architecture seriously when they are too out-at-elbows
to find housing accommodation for their populations--even in thea
meanest huts. And so it follows that their smaller buildings--such as
their post-offices, labour exchange bureaus, etcetera--are quite
unashamedly practical; in the most commonplace sense. Meanly designed
and economically executed to the lowest contractor’s tender, ignoring
even the simple, strong beauty that can be achieved merely by mechanical
efficiency (except recently in a few local housing schemes) they hedge
us about on all sides against the old æsthetic sense. Dimly we are aware
that we have lost that guiding intelligence--the spirit of art--that
lighted the path for our forefathers; and shamelessly we ignore all the
wealth of tradition we inherited from the preceding eras of their
greatness.
And the artist--has lost his inner vision. And in his place a new one
has been evolved; one who is equal to the task that we have set him: he
paints--not ideas but--life as he finds it; he paints experiences; he
records emotions; if he receives a visual shock--he cannot make enough
haste to do a picture recording it; for to him it is a psychological
experience and therefore supremely worth recording. We here set him
about with evils and surround him with the sordid and ostentatious; the
spirit working in him by a new alchemy has called evil good; what will
happen to the world if he should forget and call good evil! Let us hope
rather that the spirit of vision--guiding him now to look outward on the
visible world for his subject--will inspire him to penetrate the
darkness of the æsthetic desert we have set about him; and that--again
communing with the spirit--he will give us--not, as before, ideals from
his own mental psychology but--see for us and reveal to us finely the
mass-psychology of mankind. But it is not possible to prophesy what the
art of the future may be that mankind of the future will approve.
* * * * *
France has now no national art--save her sense of humour (and we all
know to what she turns infallibly for stimulation in that!) but she does
know a great man when she produces one; nor does she confound him with
a lesser artist, however much excitement she may indulge in in making a
passing fashion of the latter: her pride in Puvis de Chavannes does not
waver. She has recently had some men of genius, and they are typically
French, but can we accept them as having founded a national art in
France? No--for we experience the fact that the truths that Cézanne, Van
Gogh and Gauguin came to teach are no truer for restatement by their
disciples, nor have they been further illuminated for us by the endless
repetitions of their personal conventions. But the astonishing fact is
now being daily insisted upon by some among us that the art of these
Frenchmen _is_ national to England!
* * * * *
England once came near to having a national art--in the school of
Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney and Lawrence. At any rate their work,
reproduced in coloured-engravings by men almost their equal, did reach
the people in response to their demand for it and so became at least a
_national tradition_; brilliant but all short-lived.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _Joseph Crawhall_]
Ultimately it is the love of the people that alike crowns the king or
acclaims the artist, and until this happens no artist can be sure of a
prominent rank among the great; however much seeming popularity he may
enjoy in his lifetime. But there are reasons why an artist is sometimes
not given the rank he deserves until long after he should be--apart from
those supplied by the uncatholic point of view engendered in the people
by lack of education and the jealousy engendered in his contemporary
artists by their struggle for recognition. For instance--he may complete
very little work; or else his work may not be seen or known except to a
few private collectors and dealers, who are wisely but selfishly
exploiting it commercially; thus the recognition of his work by the
public may be retarded, for the simple fact that it does not know of its
existence: as in the case of Joseph Crawhall, who, when his work is
known, will undoubtedly be given the high rank he deserves and become as
famous to the public as he is now to the collector. I do not hesitate to
prophesy this in spite of the fact that I once heard one of our best
known critics state with considerable fervour that he wished Crawhall
had destroyed _all_ he had ever done instead of only what he did destroy
(probably nearly or quite half his work).
An artist as a rule lives by selling his work and though the fact that
works of art are articles of commerce may delay or accelerate the
verdict on him it will not ultimately affect it. These things are on the
knees of the gods; for though he, in his lifetime, may receive from
educated people a concensus of approval, posterity may yet reverse the
judgment. He may have been approved because his work was bought, and his
work may have been bought for much the same reason that some persons
back horses. In fact there is a certain resemblance between the two. In
the art world, as on the race-course, the favourites are obvious and
expensive; and, to continue the analogy, outsiders have a most
unexpected way of turning out to be winners. But here the analogy must
end--for a dead artist may be a little gold-mine whereas a dead
racehorse is merely cat’s-meat. Michelangelo is still a winner: it is
interesting to know that reproductions of his drawings are, to-day, sold
in far larger numbers than are the reproductions of any other man. To
the student of drawing he is still a god and, because of his superhuman
ability to draw, he lives in the student’s mind in a divine halo.
With regard to works of art considered as speculative investments I
offer the following advice: be sure you know a good drawing when you see
one, and buy a man’s drawings when he is young. To wait until he has
proved himself as a painter before accepting him as a draughtsman is,
economically, a bad principle. He--the now arrived painter--will
multiply the original price of his early drawings by twenty and pocket
his just but belated reward. Belated, because it would have been far
more valuable to him in the early days of his career to have sold the
same drawings for smaller sums when, probably, money was hard to come by
and may have meant much in the completion of his training. And the
drawings will probably be as good as any he will ever do; for, later in
life, when drawing is practised with a view to painting, the results are
generally more summary and, though frequently more masterly, they seldom
have quite the same sincerity as those done early in life, when--as a
rule forbidden by his teacher to paint--he will put into his drawings
the whole of his best endeavour and aim at creating a drawing that shall
be a complete work of art in itself; with the result that these early
productions are often “arrived” works of art, with a special beauty and
interest of their own, even before he has emerged from the student stage
himself.
[Sidenote: _Augustus John_]
There are many instances of this among the old and modern masters. Among
the latter there is Mr. Augustus John, who, while still at the Slade
School, produced drawings that proved him to be a great draughtsman; and
though his recent drawings may be the product of maturity--they may be
finger-posts, as it were, to new and original fields of art--they have
demonstrated the fact no more forcibly than did his early work.
* * * * *
Certain collectors, of course, have been fully alive to this point about
the work of young artists, and those who acquired some of the early
drawings of our greater men a few years ago must now be congratulating
themselves on their discernment; also on their astuteness--for they
probably acquired these masterpieces for absurdly small sums.
It is the public rather than the collector who has been slow to realize
the decorative value and charm of drawings. Is it confusing them with
the large, bloodless engravings of the Victorian dining-room? If so, it
is a pity; for drawings are a most fitting form of wall decoration for
small rooms: in their slight suggestion of subtle colour they harmonize
admirably with plain distemper walls--decorating without being
obtrusive--they take their place quietly in the scheme of the room.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _Dürer_]