proved sufficient to express the utmost range of colour or light
in nature, from the sun itself in the sky to the deepest gloom. Yet
our range of pigments is nothing like as wide as the range in nature
from light to shadow. It is wide enough to enable us to paint, to
the point of absolute illusion, an object receiving light in a room;
but not with actual light added. For example, one might paint the
portrait of a man, with a white shirtfront in full light, which would
be white, or nearly so. But if he wore a diamond stud, the light
from this--a reflection of the sky--would be much too bright for
our colours. In such a case it would become necessary to sacrifice
the stud, or to paint the man and the shirt down to it. It would
become a question for the painter which thing he considered the
most important, and in this way either a light or a dark version of
the man might be true, and both might be equally beautiful, but on
different grounds. One may imagine this difference of point of view
between Millais and Whistler in their portraits. The same kind of
question arises if we paint a landscape--whether to sacrifice the
ground for the sky, or the sky for the ground, or both for figures,
if we introduce them; and the solution is the same--that the colour
of the particular part one wishes to be the principal must determine
the colour of the secondary things.
We can consider the tints of our palette to be like the notes on a
keyboard, and, in looking at nature, try and resolve its appearances
into a series of tints in some correspondence with what we know from
experience our colours will produce. Thus, in looking at a scene,
one would say: “The general tone of the whole is so-and-so--warm,
or cold, or whatever it may be; the highest light is so-and-so, and
the darkest dark is so-and-so,” and having made up our mind on the
general aspect and limits of our problem, get to work on it in detail.
This is the ordinary way one would begin in studying from nature in
colour. Now we go on. The scale of colour may be divided into warm
and cold colours, and all colours we see in nature incline either to
warm or cold--I am presuming we are making a study from nature--not
only in themselves, but according to the degree in which they
are influenced by light. We shall, I think, never find light and
shadow on an object equally warm or equally cool. This would be a
monochrome, like an etching or an engraving, which suggests colour,
but does not give it; and those engravings best suggest colour which
are printed in black or neutral tints, and not in a positive colour,
for our imagination supplies the colour if the gradations are right.
But in ordinary daylight in a room the lights are cool, and the
shadows are warm in colour. So, out of doors in warm sunshine, we get
the lights warm and the shadows cool, even to the point of absolute
blue or violet. This brings me to one of the difficulties of outdoor
painting--the tendency, especially if sunlight be attempted, to paint
in too cold a key, so that a study which, at the time we were engaged
on it seemed absolutely true, should afterwards, when brought into
the even light of a room, fail to give the impression of warmth that
the original scene gave. We often see pictures of sunshine painted
which give us no impression whatever of warmth.
I think the reason of this is that we do not realise how warm the
colour of the light is, being enveloped in it, perhaps even having
it on our work--at anyrate, having our eyes filled with it. We are
struck by the sharp contrast of the cool shadow, and paint that, it
being obviously cool. But if we concede that the light is warm, we
can get the opposition of the cool shadow, and get it to look blue,
or almost so, even though as pigment it may be umber and white, or
grey. A difficulty of the same kind is felt with regard to the blue
of the sky, which, under some effects, appears as blue as one can
possibly make it--bluer, even--and at the same time warm. We may
pile on our brightest blue as much as we like, we cannot get it blue
enough, and we cannot at the same time get it warm. Now, we know that
the bright blues of our palette, when we look at them in a room, are
bright enough to give the sense of any conceivable blue; so we may
conclude that the fault does not lie in our paints, but in ourselves,
as not knowing how to manage them, and that we must try and make
the blue look more blue by accenting the complementary colours and
painting the ground and surroundings warmer--_i.e._ by painting the
whole picture in a warmer key.
There is the danger, of course, of going over to the other extreme,
but of the two it is better to err on the side of warmth than of
coldness; and I think that probably one reason of the fineness of
colour of the Venetians is that they had the possible blue of the
sky in their minds, if not in their pictures, as a key and point of
contrast with their other colours. But doubtless the main reason was
the situation and importance of Venice, and its relations with the
East; which gave its artists the finest possible opportunities of
studying colour. People of all races were there, dressed in fine and
varied colours, and moving among beautiful buildings, with the sea
and sky for background; and the Venetian artists had this fine show
daily before their eyes, under all conditions of lighting. All the
possibilities of colour would become familiar to them, and we can
understand how the influence of their surroundings led them to their
great results.
If we aim at getting the utmost fulness of colour in the lights,
as the Venetians did, the limited range of our colours makes this
impossible in the darks. It becomes necessary, then, to keep all
the darks together, treating them very broadly. You will find the
old painters were never afraid of strong darks or dark shadows. Sir
Joshua Reynolds advises that in a picture the shadows should be all
of one colour; or, at least, he says, they should _appear_ to be of
one colour, meaning that the eye should not rest on nor question
them. And though the old pictures impress one as being darker than
nature,--and so, in the sense of the general colour of nature,
untrue,--yet in themselves and within their conditions they give a
true impression of nature.
We have not the opportunity of studying fine colours that the old
painters had; our life goes on in more sombre dress. Still, there is
fine colour to be seen wherever the sun shines, here as elsewhere,
and of late years the search for the fulness of colour, with light,
has led artists to the furthest limits of the palette, and the most
violent means, in endeavouring to get the range and force of colour
in the shadows as well as in the lights, so that we find pictures
painted in spots of pure pigment placed side by side, the intention
being that they should fuse together in the eye of the spectator.
But the result is not successful; it is distressing to the eye,
and, I think, shows that something must be sacrificed at one end of
the scale or the other. And yet, if we paint in a very high key, in
simple tints, I question if we are not in some danger of starving our
colour for the sake of keeping our pictures light. White paint will
not of itself express light, but only by contrast with dark.
To get colour and light is the great thing. The difficulty is to get
them both. Turner, in his Italian landscapes, enhanced the colour
of his sky by a dark pine-tree in the foreground, sacrificing the
colour of the tree for the sake of accenting its value and warmth;
and the old landscape painter’s device of a brown tree is used for
the same end--to make the blue of the sky and distance more luminous
and beautiful. This is also the reason for the dark-brown foreground
usual in old landscapes; and our eye is not arrested by the tree or
the dark foreground, but goes past it to the point of the picture.
Rembrandt, in his colouring, seems to have avoided blue altogether,
gaining the sense of it by the opposition of golden-brown to grey.
The secret of his wonderful colour is difficult to read. A passing
impression of one of his pictures is of a work all in golden-brown,
with fine reds and strong blacks. But when one has looked long enough
at it to get into the picture, as it were, this sense of a particular
colour disappears, and we feel ourselves in presence of the actual
scene, with its air, colour, and light.
I do not think we should try and imitate the colour of the old
painters, though we can, by study, see in nature the indications
of, and perhaps the reasons for, their method of work. It would be
hopeless, for instance, for anyone to try and imitate Rembrandt’s
colouring; and probably Rembrandt himself would be unable to explain
his method, but would simply say, “I saw it so,” or “I wished to
express a particular sentiment.”
There is the question of quality of colour--another difficult thing
to define, though we recognise it readily. It does not seem to
depend on truth of relations, or even on truth of colour, for a
picture may be true in colour and yet the paint itself may be bad in
quality--opaque, heavy, or showing much labour. But there is fine
quality of colour in works differing as much from each other in
method as Rembrandt and the Primitives, as Raphael and Franz Hals, as
Velasquez and Titian. It means that the work impresses one as having
clearness, freshness, and that, in short, the impression is produced
of nature, and not of paint.
There are two methods of painting, and good quality of colour can
be achieved by either. One method is that of simple and direct
painting--that we put down the right colour at once with fresh,
untroubled paint, as in a sketch, and we know how often there is
greater charm in a sketch than in a finished work. This is the method
of Hals, of Velasquez, of Moroni, and of most moderns. The other
method is the elaborate one of preparing an underpainting, more or
less of the nature of monochrome, with reference only to the drawing
and massing of light and shade, and then painting by thin glazes,
or by working over thin glazes with the right colours, the under
colours showing through, and giving a richness and transparency. I
think we see this in the work of Rubens and of Titian, though, of
course, we nearly always see both direct and glazed colour in the
same work, as in that most marvellous head by Rembrandt, of himself
as an old man, in the National Gallery. The object of underpainting
and glazing is, of course, to retain the freshness which is so easily
lost in oil painting, if the same colour is painted over and over;
especially as when half-dry, or if much medium is used, it becomes
muddy: stiff colour stands fairly well.
Another object of underpainting is the determining of the design in
light and dark. All paint changes a little, lowers a little, with
time; and if a picture has no strong arrangement of light and dark,
but depends for its beauty on subtle delicacies and differences of
value, these are often lost in a few years through the flattening
down of the paint; while if there is a strong backbone, as it were,
of light and shade beneath the colour, the picture will always be
effective, and the main features remain, in spite of any little
changes.
The painter has to make the quality of his paint in oil-colour. If
you compare oil- with water-colour you will see what I mean; for if
you put a simple wash of colour on paper it is always beautiful,
because of its transparency, and it is difficult to lose this quality
in water-colour; but it is difficult to get it in oil, and still more
difficult to retain it throughout a work.
Good quality is a measure of the painter’s perception. Two men will
paint a plain blue sky, using, perhaps, the same pigment. One man
will give you the actual sense of the sky and the air, and the other
nothing but blue paint. The difference between them is that one man
had perception of the quality of the sky, and the other had not. So,
when we see a good quality in paint, we know that it means not only
niceness of hand and perception, but great knowledge and judgment in
the artist. It all comes back to the same old story--that we must
work, and cultivate our perceptions.
I have spoken of the emotional power of colour--_i.e._ the power
which colours in themselves have in inducing a mood--as an important
element in painting. The sad, golden tone of Rembrandt seems to
strike the keynote of his sentiment, and to bring us into his frame
of mind before we realise his subject. In the same way, the rich reds
and warm colours of Titian, Rubens, and Reynolds produce in our minds
the sense of activity, richness, and splendour, quite irrespective of
the drawing or modelling of their figures, or their meaning.
If they had painted their figures as they would look in the cold
light of a studio, this effect would not have been produced.
The picture of Admiral Keppel by Reynolds, in the present Old Masters
Exhibition, is painted in a clear grey key of daylight--a realistic
effect, as anyone might see it; and one may infer from this that in
those instances where Reynolds darkened down his pictures with rich
warm glazes, it was done designedly, in order to produce an effect by
the means of colour.
I think, then, that we may conclude in these cases--I may mention
as an example an “Adoration of the Magi,” by Filippino Lippi, in
the National Gallery, where red and gold and other rich colours are
pushed to their extreme power--that painters deliberately employed
the emotional power of colour, _as colour_, quite apart from any
immediate resemblance to nature, in order to produce an effect on the
mood of the spectator. And it must be the most difficult thing of all
in painting, to do this so as to include general truth of resemblance.
But these paths are outside the track of most artists to-day. Our
efforts are not so much directed to imaginative subjects, as to
actualities, and our endeavour is to find and express the beauty
which exists among us. We are more literal, less imaginative; and
this enhancing of nature by the power of colour is beyond us. We feel
that it may be possible to paint with our first and main reference to
nature as we see it around us, and, while trying to understand what
has been done, to claim still that beauty of colour may be found also
in the plain aspect of visible things even to-day.
It is for this reason, I think, that the art of Velasquez specially
appeals to us. In it the ordinary aspects of nature are found to be
not inconsistent with the finest art. There is nothing conventional
in his colour. It is simply like that of nature, and I think that
none but artists, or those who have studied the appearance of nature,
can quite understand the intense admiration his work excites. It is
not, as in the case of Titian and the colourists, an emotion produced
by colour, as colour, taking us beyond our ordinary sensations; but
it gives us something of the pleasure of a surprise, in finding
and recognising that such beautiful modulations of colour are
apparent under ordinary conditions. Velasquez is sometimes, perhaps
rightly, called unemotional, because his colour is not prearranged
to influence us, but is, as it were, an impartial statement, as
contrasted with the work of those painters who pushed the emotional
power of colour to its extreme limit.
As I hope to consider the work of Velasquez later, I will not touch
further on it now, but may mention one or two men of kindred spirit.
Chardin, the French painter, gives us very beautiful colour in his
still-life paintings in the Louvre, and there is one in the National
Gallery. We are shown, not what beautiful things are painted, but how
beautiful they appear under the influence of light. The effect of
one colour on another, the harmony of the different tints produced by
light on a few simple things--these things may be seen in his work;
as also in the work of Edouard Manet, who had much the same feeling
as Velasquez for the beauty of colour in simple, cool lighting, and
expressed it with a directness of vision and execution (being able by
a true eye to strike the tint at once) that gives his colour a very
great charm.
The splendid work of Sir John Millais--the “North-West Passage”
and the “Yeomen of the Guard,” for example--appeal to us in the
same way, as fine painting and fine colour, apart from the interest
of the subject. And that great artist who died recently--Mr.
Whistler--has not only given us the example of a fine and simple
method in painting, but has shown us more fully than any other artist
the modulations of colour by light. In his portraits, with their
fine realisation of the effects of atmosphere on colour, and in his
pictures of twilight and of night, he has recorded effects which no
artist before him had attempted. We can all see these things now, and
how beautiful they are, but Mr. Whistler was the one who showed us.
He was, I think, the one artist since Turner who has extended the
range of the artist’s vision in the direction of revealing to us the
beauty of colour as it appears in nature.
I have already spoken of the painter’s main difficulty--in
determining the proper relation of parts to the whole--in the matter
of lighting and arrangement of his picture. This is also the main
difficulty in colouring, and the only solution I can give you is
that you should, at least once, endeavour to have the scene you are
painting--if it is of such a nature that you can do this--actually
before you, and to consider it as a whole, taking in the whole scene
as comprehensively as possible; and so you can judge the effect of
one colour against another, and see which colour strikes you most
unmistakably, and so gives the keynote to the rest. We should study
in the same way anything we happen to see that strikes us as having
the material for a picture.
Truth or beauty of colour is the main thing in a picture. It is, in
fact, the only thing that gives a picture a high place among the
masterpieces. A picture that is well drawn and modelled only will
interest, but will be passed by in favour of colour. For colour
touches us more deeply; its sense is more instinctive. A child will
be excited by colours, but indifferent to form. We all, artists or
not, have some latent memory or mental image, which is called forth
in us when we look at a picture, and recognise, or fail to recognise,
nature in it; not, I think, so much by our memories of form, as by
our memories of the colour and general appearance of nature.
We can only see what we have learned to look for. An uneducated
person will consider a face in a picture beautiful if it has bright
eyes, pink cheeks, and red lips; or a landscape beautiful if it also
presents him with the obvious facts. It will be enough for him; it is
as much as he sees in nature. But Nature does not reveal her beauties
unsought, and the study of paintings by those who are not artists
is not only an education, but an added pleasure to their lives,
enlarging and directing their minds, so that they learn to detect and
appreciate beauties in nature to which they would otherwise have been
blind.
IV
TITIAN, VELASQUEZ, AND REMBRANDT
In speaking of these great artists, the greatest masters of
painting that the world has seen, I do not propose to do more than
make a rough comparison of their main qualities, with the idea of
indicating the points of agreement and of difference between them.
It seems almost an impertinence to speak at all of men who are
above discussion or praise, whose names alone suggest the finest
painting, and each of whom in his own way has reached the limits
of achievement. One might discuss all the problems of painting by
reference only to what each has done. I am not qualified to do this,
but can only give my own, perhaps superficial, impressions of their
work.
It seems to me that the differences which divide Italian painting
into schools are of much less account than are the great qualities
these schools had in common--a noble simplicity of form, broad
lighting, and rich, full colouring. Indeed, to my mind there are
only two schools of Italian painting--Michelangelo is the one, and
the rest of the Italian painters all come together in the other. The
great ceiling of the Sistine Chapel stands apart from, and beyond,
all other work; but of all the other Italians, Titian most fully
represents the finest painting. By his great genius he brought
together the theories of his predecessors, and carried on their
practice to a degree of completeness which cannot be surpassed.
Velasquez said, “It is Titian who bears the banner”; whether in
subject pictures or portraits, his work is perfect in all the
qualities of painting, and it may almost be said that he has done
with colour all that can be done.
He is the meeting-point of the old and the new. His work combines
minuteness and freedom. His early training must have given him the
power he possessed of treating detail with the most dainty fineness,
yet keeping it always in its place, never letting it appear laboured
or obtrusive. There is a “Madonna” of his in the Vienna Gallery--an
early work--that has the clearness and simplicity of the Primitives,
with a greater fulness. It is carried to the finest point of
realisation, with seemingly the greatest ease. It is one of the most
beautiful things in the Gallery.
Titian chose, as a rule, a simple mode of lighting--a warm daylight,
or evening light, upon his figures; not concentrating the interest
on one main point of his picture by suppression of minor things, but
controlling it from one end to the other, and including everything
in his attention. His effect was produced by devices of composition
which he invented, or developed, from his own observation of nature.
I have already indicated how, by relieving figures in light by
figures and objects in shade, or by uniting figures and groups
by shadows--on the ground, on or from trees and buildings--he
constructed his pictures, using these momentary effects of contrast
which we may notice for ourselves in nature. These devices, besides
enabling him to make his picture by placing his principal objects
in prominence, give us the sense of living and moving nature; of man
not merely posed against a background of landscape or building, but
in the scene, and part of its setting, so that one influence is felt
throughout. And in this use of landscape, as well as in his treatment
of landscape as a mood of nature, and not a transcript of nature,
Titian was the first and one of the greatest of landscape painters.
His method was usually to keep the principal parts of his picture
warm and light, and this warmth was enhanced by the blue of the
sky, which he frequently used in his background; and the colours of
his principal figures were made to tell out strongly, as well as
separated from the background, by masses or spaces of shadow in the
middle distance; as we see in the picture of the “Entombment” in the
Louvre. We may notice, too, in this picture how the central light is
packed round with various colours--rich reds and dark greens--in the
dresses of the supporting figures.
[Illustration:
_Titian_ _Louvre_
THE ENTOMBMENT]