Greece during the Golden Age, color was enjoyed for the sake of color,
regardless of the dictates of nature. If an Italian felt like making a
background of blue or gold, he did so; if a Greek felt like painting and
gilding his sculpture, he did so, until the Parthenon and its contents
must have been gorgeous with color, laid on, not after the precepts of
nature, but for the most part arbitrarily, to please the eye.
All decoration begins with nature and ends in convention.
In this progress from birth in the imitation of natural forms and colors
to death in the rigidity of a hard and lifeless convention there is a
maturity wherein lines and contours and colors play with perfect
freedom, original forms and models being absorbed in the finer creations
of the imagination.
* * * * *
Ruskin habitually confused the use of _color_ with the painting of
_light_; while in truth there is no necessary connection at all between
colorists and _lightists_,--to coin a word that will very legitimately
mark a distinction.
The painting of light is the distinguishing feature of
nineteenth-century art, and Turner was the apostle crying in the
wilderness of darkness; he was the first to successfully attempt the
realization of sunlight. He keyed his palette up with the sun as the
objective point, while the Italians who had influenced him had keyed
theirs up simply to produce color-effects. They decorated walls and
altars and painted pictures--as a potter decorates his earthen bowl--to
please the eye.
Although Ruskin habitually speaks of Turner as a colorist, and
undoubtedly says a great many fine things concerning color, he did not
care at all for color apart from the delineation of form. To him color
was useful only as a mode of drawing; in itself it was as nothing at
all.
Speaking of his so-called “truths” of color, he says:
“All truths of color sink at once into the second rank. He,
therefore, who has neglected a truth of form for a truth of color
has neglected a great truth for a less one.
“That color is indeed a most unimportant characteristic of objects
will be farther evident on the slightest consideration. The color
of plants is constantly changing with the season, and of everything
with the quality of light falling on it; but the nature and essence
of the thing are independent of these changes. An oak is an oak,
whether green with spring or red with winter; a dahlia is a dahlia,
whether it be yellow or crimson; and if some monster-hunting
botanist should ever frighten the flower blue, still it will be a
dahlia; but let one curve of the petals, one groove of the stamens,
be wanting, and the flower ceases to be the same.”[38]
“The most convincing proof of the unimportance of color lies in the
accurate observation of the way in which any material object
impresses itself on the mind. If we look at nature carefully we
shall find that her colors are in a state of perpetual confusion
and indistinctness, while her forms, as told by light and shade,
are invariably clear, distinct, and speaking. The stones and gravel
of the bank catch green reflections from the boughs above; the
bushes receive grays and yellows from the ground; every hairbreadth
of polished surface gives a little bit of the blue sky or the gold
of the sun, like a star upon the local color; this local color,
changeful and uncertain in itself, is again disguised and modified
by the hue of the light or quenched in the gray of the shadow; and
the confusion and blending of tint is altogether so great that
were we left to find out what objects were by their colors only, we
would scarcely in places distinguish the boughs of a tree from the
air beyond them or the ground beneath them.”
“We shall see hereafter, in considering ideas of beauty, that
color, even as a source of pleasure, is feeble compared to form.
But this we cannot insist upon at present,--we have only to do with
simple truth; and the observations we have made are sufficient to
prove that the artist who sacrifices or forgets a truth of form in
the pursuit of a truth of color sacrifices what is definite to what
is uncertain and what is essential to what is accidental.”[39]
“It is, indeed, by this that the works of Turner are peculiarly
distinguished from those of all other colorists,--by the dazzling
intensity, namely, of the light which he sheds through every hue,
and which, far more than their brilliant color, is the real source
of their overpowering effect upon the eye, an effect so
_reasonably_ made the subject of perpetual animadversion, as if the
sun which they represent were a quiet, and subdued, and gentle, and
manageable luminary, and never dazzled anybody, under any
circumstances whatsoever. I am fond of standing by a bright Turner
in the Academy, to listen to the unintentional compliments of the
crowd,--‘What a glaring thing!’ ‘I declare I can’t look at it!’
‘Don’t it hurt your eyes?’--expressed as if they were in the
constant habit of looking the sun full in the face with the most
perfect comfort and entire facility of vision. It is curious after
hearing people malign some of Turner’s noble passages of light to
pass to some really ungrammatical and false pictures of the old
masters in which we have color given _without_ light.”[40]
“What I am next about to say with respect to Turner’s color I
should wish to be received with caution, as it admits of dispute.
I think that the first approach to viciousness of color in any
master is commonly indicated chiefly by a prevalence of purple and
an absence of yellow. I think nature mixes yellow with almost every
one of her hues, never, or very rarely, using red without it, but
frequently using yellow with scarcely any red; and I believe it
will be in consequence found that her favorite opposition, that
which generally characterizes and gives tone to her color, is
yellow and black, passing, as it retires, into white and blue. It
is beyond dispute that the great fundamental opposition of Rubens
is yellow and black, and that on this, concentrated in one part of
the picture and modified in various grays throughout, chiefly
depend the tones of all his finest works. And in Titian, though
there is a far greater tendency to the purple than in Rubens, I
believe no red is ever mixed with the pure blue, or glazed over it,
which has not in it a modifying quantity of yellow. At all events,
I am nearly certain that whatever rich and pure purples are
introduced locally by the great colorists nothing is so destructive
of all fine color as the slightest tendency to purple in general
tone; and I am equally certain that Turner is distinguished from
all the vicious colorists of the present day by the foundation of
all his tones being black, yellow, and the intermediate grays,
while the tendency of our common glare-seekers is invariably to
pure, cold, impossible purples.”
“Powerful and captivating and faithful as his color is, it is the
least important of all his excellences, because it is the least
important feature of nature. He paints in color, but he thinks in
light and shade; and, were it necessary, rather than lose one line
of his forms or one ray of his sunshine, would, I apprehend, be
content to paint in black and white to the end of his life.”[41]
For practical purposes truths of form are more essential than ‘truths’
of color; to mistake the size, shape, solidity, and texture of anything
is far more disastrous than to mistake its color. The color-blind get on
very well in the world, often without knowing their defect; but a person
who was form-blind would not get on at all.
The correct appreciation of form is of such vital importance that two
senses are brought to bear,--the sense of touch--the parent sense--as
well as the sense of sight; and without the co-operation of the sense of
touch, sight would be comparatively helpless in recognizing solidity,
texture, contours, etc. In the appreciation of form touch gets on very
well without sight, while sight could not get on at all without touch;
but, happily, a sense so precious is never completely lost.
Ruskin constantly uses the phrases, “truths of form,” “truths of color,”
and it is apparent that by these phrases he really means fidelity to
natural effects. With him a drawing, be it of a stone, a leaf, a tree, a
mountain, is not _true_ unless it corresponds to the thing in nature;
nor is a light or a shadow or a color _true_ unless it corresponds to
the effect in nature.
Now, so far as art is concerned, those so-called “truths” are of the
least importance.
Suppose a musician were to talk of “truths of sound,” meaning thereby
the more or less faithful imitation of the songs of birds, the rippling
of waters, the roll of thunder. Every one would know that his art was
of the most primitive character.
“Truths of sound,” in the sense that Ruskin speaks of “truths of form”
and “truths of color,” are not tolerated in music. To attain certain
effects, dramatic in character, imitations of sounds in nature are
sometimes introduced, but sparingly, and unless with great skill the
effect is disagreeable to even the uneducated ear, and if pressed too
far it becomes grotesque.
One art is like unto another, and what are really “truths” in one are
“truths” in another. It is immaterial whether the sense of hearing,
sight, or touch is appealed to; it does not matter whether it is a
composition of sound, of color, of line, or of form that is under
consideration, the fundamental principles of the art are the same; and
one of the fundamental propositions is: imitation is fatal to pure art.
It is the business of art to improve on nature, to take the raw
materials nature furnishes--her forces, her forms, her lines, her
colors, her lights and shadows, her sounds, her odors, her flavors--and
produce from them harmonious and agreeable effects unknown to nature.
Whistler has said:
“The imitator is a poor kind of creature. If the man who paints
only the tree or flower or other surface he sees before him were an
artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for
the artist to do something beyond this: in portrait-painting to put
on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that
one day,--to paint the man, in short, as well as his features; in
arrangement of colors to treat a flower as his key, not as his
model.”[42]
Art begins with “truths,” in the Ruskin sense, and flowers in
“harmonies,” in the Whistler sense. It begins with the concrete, with
imitation, with fidelity to natural effects, and it develops by a
process of abstraction until it attains the chaste perfection of a Greek
temple or a Beethoven symphony.
Nature is never left entirely behind, and some arts are more dependent
upon her than others; but, generally speaking, the more abstract the art
the higher it is; the purer and freer it is from imitation or suggestion
of natural effects, the nobler its attainment. Because poetry and music
are almost entirely independent of nature and natural effects, do they
as arts, from one point of view, outrank sculpture and painting.
* * * * *
Ruskin, of course, was by no means blind to these considerations, and
when he talked of “truths of form” and “truths of color” he did not mean
literal imitation, but he did mean the fidelity of a draughtsman, of a
man whose eye and mind were on the thing or effect before him; and his
great work is one long attempt to show that Turner in his brilliant and
fanciful compositions was still clinging close to nature, that he
painted rocks and trees and clouds and sunlight as they really were, and
more beautifully than any man before or since.
All of which goes to show that Turner was not a colorist in the sense
Whistler was.
The one used color as a means, the other as an end. To the one color,
like line, or like black and white, was incidental to his
composition--the composition, the conception, the dream, the fancy,--in
short, the subject, being all important. To the other harmonies in color
was the end in view, almost to the exclusion in some of the nocturnes of
line and of form.
To Ruskin, even more than with Turner, color was simply a means to an
end,--the more perfect imitation of nature; hence his utter lack of
sympathy for Whistler’s work.
To pure color arrangements Ruskin was blind. He demanded a relation and
significance beyond the mere color harmony. Lines or waves of color
placed side by side arbitrarily, and with no more relation to nature
than so many notes of music, had no meaning for him, whereas for
Whistler they meant practically all there is to the science and art of
color.
To Ruskin the blue hair of a Greek statue would have seemed absurd and
childish; to the Greek it would have been simply a color-note in the
place where it was needed to perfect the color-scheme.
So utterly wanting is the sense of color-music in the modern world that
we like our sculpture in either ghastly marble, or, still more
perversely, with the yellow hues and dirt and dinginess wrought by time
and the elements, whereas those who created the greatest sculpture known
subdued all garish qualities by the use of gold and bronze and color,
not imitatively, but arbitrarily, to please a highly cultivated fancy.
* * * * *
From descriptions of Ruskin’s home, “Brantwood,” it is clear that he had
no craving for harmonious effects about him. Discords did not disturb
him; he could return with no sensations of discomfort from the keen
appreciation of natural beauties to rooms which would be intolerable to
any one like Whistler with an instinct for proportion and color.
The house had “a stucco classic portico in the corner, painted and
grained and heaped around with lucky horseshoes, highly black-leaded.”
The incongruity of the painting and graining--so contrary to all
Ruskin’s teachings--and black-leaded horseshoes surprised even his
friendly biographer.
His own room “he papered with naturalistic fancies to his own taste,”
and on the walls were “a Dürer engraving, some Prouts and Turners, a
couple of old Venetian heads, and Meissonier’s ‘Napoleon,’”--a typical
collector’s conglomeration.
The walls of the dining-room were painted “duck-egg,” whatever that
color may be, and covered with an even more heterogeneous collection of
pictures,--“the ‘Doge of Gritta,’ a bit saved from the great Titian
that was burnt in the fire at the Ducal Palace in 1574; a couple of
Tintorets; Turner and Reynolds, each painted by himself in youth;
Raphael, by a pupil, so it is said; portraits of old Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin
and little John and his ‘boo hills.’”
His study was “papered with a pattern specially copied from Marco
Marziali’s ‘Circumcision’ in the National Gallery, and hung with
Turners.” There was a crimson arm-chair and a “polished-steel fender,
very unartistic,” his biographer remarks; “red mahogany furniture, with
startling shiny emerald leather chair-cushions; red carpet and green
curtains.” This is the sort of room wherein Ruskin worked and wrote. It
simply illustrates the truth that it is one thing to write and talk
about color and a far different thing to really _feel_ color.
* * * * *
It is the custom to call every man who paints in high key or uses
brilliant colors a colorist, as Ruskin called Turner and Rubens
colorists; but it is not the mere use of color that makes a man a
colorist, but the use he makes of it, the object he has in mind in using
it.
The mechanical draughtsman and the architect may use on their plans and
designs all the known colors, but no one would think of calling either a
colorist.
In painting still-life a man may exhaust the palette and yet be no
colorist. In painting portraits one man may require his sitters to dress
in bright colors, another in sober blacks, grays, or browns, with the
result that one set of portraits fairly dazzle the beholder, while the
other scarce attracts attention; and yet the former may not be the work
of a colorist while the latter may.
The determining factor is the attitude of the painter towards color. If
he uses color imitatively, or as incidental to drawing, or as a means to
some end other than the production of color harmonies, he is not a
colorist; but if his delight is in color, if he uses color for the sake
of color, for the sake of charming the eye, as the ear is charmed by
music, then he is a colorist.
No hard and fast line of demarcation can be drawn, since every painter
is something of a colorist; but between the two extremes of the painter
on one hand who uses color imitatively or as incidental to drawing and
the colorist who produces and delights in pure color schemes and
harmonies there is a wide interval.
Whistler, in his love of color, approached the latter extreme; but it
was only when he practised decoration that he could indulge his fancy
without limitations. When he brought the Leyland dining-room into
harmony with his “Princess of the Land of Porcelain” by the use of blue
and gold, line and form--though somewhat apparent--were virtually
negligible quantities; and when he arranged the reception-room of the
house in Rue du Bac, and his own studio, the only considerations were
the color-effects.
In his “White Girl” of 1863 Whistler began in a large way his symphonies
in color; and while in pictures like the “Thames in Ice,” “The Music
Room,” and “At the Piano” he painted along more conventional lines,
these departures were infrequent and in themselves exhibited his
predilection for color. It was simply impossible for him to paint any
picture without making the color harmony a prime object.
Not long after the “White Girl,” which was “Symphony in White, No. I.,”
followed the other experiments in white, known as Symphonies Nos. II.
and III.
Then came--the chronological order is not important--the Japanese group,
“The Princess of the Land of Porcelain,” “The Gold Screen,” “The
Balcony,” the “Lange Leizen,” and others, in which the figures and
accessories, though still prominent, were made subordinate to the
brilliant color schemes. The compositions were still obvious, but the
color incomparably more so.
Then the “Nocturnes,” in which detail and composition were refined away,
and little remained but color-effects so exquisite that they seemed, and
still seem, beyond the power of brush, and more like some thin glazes
and enamels than paintings on canvas.
As music in color the “Nocturnes” and certain of the “Harmonies” and
“Symphonies,” wherein detail is as nothing and the color everything, are
Whistler’s most exquisite--the word is used advisedly--achievements.
Others will equal his portraits before they equal his “Nocturnes.”
As a still further step towards pure color composition he had in mind
for years a series of pictures, pure creations of fancy, somewhat
suggestive of the Japanese group, but less realistic--just color-music.
Happily, the sketches are in existence, and afford some indication of
the color-dreams that floated through the great painter’s imagination.
They show how musical color is when freed from entangling associations
and used broadly and decoratively.
* * * * *
We have, then, the following phases, rather than “periods,” in his
mastery of color:
1. That wherein composition and detail predominate, though color is the
motive.
2. That wherein composition and detail are still conspicuous, but are
subordinate to the color scheme.
3. That wherein composition and detail are practically lost in the
effort to produce subtle color harmonies.
4. That wherein the sole object is color-music, quite regardless of
other considerations.
This progress from the, so to speak, tentative use of color in
connection with more or less conventional composition to the triumph of
color and suppression of composition is abundantly illustrated in his
works. It would not be difficult to arrange an exhibition of four groups
of about three canvases each, which would illustrate each phase. Such
an exhibition would do more to enlighten the public regarding his work
than any number of exhibitions of a large number of pictures gathered
and grouped in the usual way.
* * * * *
Regarding the use of flat tones he is reported to have once said:
“House-painters have the right idea about painting, God bless them.”
How far removed from Ruskin, who said:
“Hence, wherever in a painting we have unvaried color extended even over
a small space, there is falsehood. Nothing can be natural which is
monotonous; nothing true which only tells one story.”
To Ruskin nature was all in all; to Whistler color was of first
consideration. The one looked at color to find natural effects; the
other looked at nature to find color-effects.
Whistler chose intuitively those scenes and those hours of the day when
he would be least hampered by rigid requirements of line and form.
He frequently painted the sea under strong light; but under any light
water presents itself in broken lines and large masses.
He was a master of line in the high sense that with a few lines he could
render not only the character but the characteristics of whatever was
before him. He was a master of form,--even as Ruskin uses the
term,--since he could, when the conditions required it, express the most
subtle contours in terms of light and shade and color; but he cared
less for the bald realities of sunlight than for the shadows of dusk and
the mysteries of night.
He has himself said:
“The sun blares, the wind blows from the east, the sky is bereft of
cloud, and without all is of iron. The windows of the Crystal
Palace are seen from all points of London. The holiday-maker
rejoices in the glorious day, and the painter turns aside to shut
his eyes.
“How little this is understood, and how dutifully the casual in
nature is accepted as sublime, may be gathered from the unlimited
admiration daily produced by a very foolish sunset.
“The dignity of the snow-capped mountain is lost in distinctness,
but the joy of the tourist is to recognize the traveller on the
top. The desire to see for the sake of seeing is, with the mass,
alone the one to be gratified, hence the delight in detail.
“And when the evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as
with a veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky,
and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouses are
palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and
fairy-land is before us,--then the wayfarer hastens home; the
working-man and the cultured one, the wise man and the one of
pleasure cease to understand, as they have ceased to see; and
Nature, who, for once, has sung in tune, sings her exquisite song
to the artist alone, her son and her master,--her son in that he
loves her, her master in that he knows her.”[43]
And it was his habit to paint when the studio was filled with gloom and
lengthening shadows crept across the floor; when it was so dark the dull
eye of sitter or chance visitor could scarce distinguish the figure on
the canvas.
This “painting in the dark,” as some have called it, was a singular
trait. He would paint with increasing force and effect as the room
became darker and darker, until it seemed as if the falling of night was
an inspiration.
Once a sitter asked him how it was possible to paint when it was so
dark.
“As the light fades and the shadows deepen all petty and exacting
details vanish, everything trivial disappears, and I see things as they
are in great strong masses: the buttons are lost, but the garment
remains; the garment is lost, but the sitter remains; the sitter is
lost, but the shadow remains; the shadow is lost, but the picture
remains. And _that_ night cannot efface from the painter’s imagination.”
* * * * *
People never could understand his attitude towards nature. When he spoke
of the “unlimited admiration daily produced by a very foolish sunset,”
and how “the dignity of the snow-capped mountain is lost in
distinctness, but the joy of the tourist is to recognize the traveller
on the top,” he at once puzzled and irritated the lay mind, for is not
the sunset beautiful? and the traveller on the highest peak of greater
interest than the mountain?
When a lady one day rushed up to him and enthusiastically exclaimed:
“Oh, Mr. Whistler, I have just been up the river, and it reminded me so
much of your pictures.”
And he replied:
“Indeed! Then, Nature is looking up,”--people resented it as vanity.
But it was not vanity. It was simply his attitude towards nature and
art.
If some one had said to Mendelssohn, “I have just been in the woods and
heard sounds that were just like some of your “Songs without Words,”
Mendelssohn would have been surprised, and might well have replied,
“Then, the birds are doing better.”