THE PRACTICE AND SCIENCE OF DRAWING
I
INTRODUCTION
The best things in an artist's work are so much a matter of
intuition, that there is much to be said for the point of view that
would altogether discourage intellectual inquiry into artistic
phenomena on the part of the artist. Intuitions are shy things and
apt to disappear if looked into too closely. And there is
undoubtedly a danger that too much knowledge and training may
supplant the natural intuitive feeling of a student, leaving only a
cold knowledge of the means of expression in its place. For the
artist, if he has the right stuff in him, has a consciousness, in
doing his best work, of something, as Ruskin has said, "not in him
but through him." He has been, as it were, but the agent through
which it has found expression.
Talent can be described as "that which we have," and Genius as
"that which has us." Now, although we may have little control over
this power that "has us," and although it may be as well to abandon
oneself unreservedly to its influence, there can be little doubt as
to its being the business of the artist to see to it that his
talent be so developed, that he 18may prove a fit
instrument for the expression of whatever it may be given him to
express; while it must be left to his individual temperament to
decide how far it is advisable to pursue any intellectual analysis
of the elusive things that are the true matter of art.
Provided the student realises this, and that art training can
only deal with the perfecting of a means of expression and that the
real matter of art lies above this and is beyond the scope of
teaching, he cannot have too much of it. For although he must ever
be a child before the influence that moves him, if it is not with
the knowledge of the grown man that he takes off his coat and
approaches the craft of painting or drawing, he will be poorly
equipped to make them a means of conveying to others in adequate
form the things he may wish to express. Great things are only done
in art when the creative instinct of the artist has a
well-organised executive faculty at its disposal.
Of the two divisions into which the technical study of painting
can be divided, namely Form and Colour, we are concerned in this
book with Form alone. But before proceeding to our immediate
subject something should be said as to the nature of art generally,
not with the ambition of arriving at any final result in a short
chapter, but merely in order to give an idea of the point of view
from which the following pages are written, so that
misunderstandings may be avoided.
The variety of definitions that exist justifies some inquiry.
The following are a few that come to mind:
"Art is nature expressed through a
personality."
19But what of architecture? Or music? Then there
is Morris's
"Art is the expression of pleasure in work."
But this does not apply to music and poetry. Andrew Lang's
"Everything which we distinguish from nature"
seems too broad to catch hold of, while Tolstoy's
"An action by means of which one man, having experienced a
feeling, intentionally transmits it to others"
is nearer the truth, and covers all the arts, but seems, from
its omitting any mention of rhythm, very inadequate.
Now the facts of life are conveyed by our senses to the
consciousness within us, and stimulate the world of thought and
feeling that constitutes our real life. Thought and feeling are
very intimately connected, few of our mental perceptions,
particularly when they first dawn upon us, being unaccompanied by
some feeling. But there is this general division to be made, on one
extreme of which is what we call pure intellect, and on the other
pure feeling or emotion. The arts, I take it, are a means of giving
expression to the emotional side of this mental activity,
intimately related as it often is to the more purely intellectual
side. The more sensual side of this feeling is perhaps its lowest,
while the feelings associated with the intelligence, the little
sensitivenesses of perception that escape pure intellect, are
possibly its noblest experiences.
Pure intellect seeks to construct from the facts brought to our
consciousness by the senses, an accurately 20measured world of
phenomena, uncoloured by the human equation in each of us. It seeks
to create a point of view outside the human standpoint, one more
stable and accurate, unaffected by the ever-changing current of
human life. It therefore invents mechanical instruments to do the
measuring of our sense perceptions, as their records are more
accurate than human observation unaided.
But while in science observation is made much more effective by
the use of mechanical instruments in registering facts, the facts
with which art deals, being those of feeling, can only be recorded
by the feeling instrument—man, and are entirely missed by any
mechanically devised substitutes.
The artistic intelligence is not interested in things from this
standpoint of mechanical accuracy, but in the effect of observation
on the living consciousness—the sentient individual in each
of us. The same fact accurately portrayed by a number of artistic
intelligences should be different in each case, whereas the same
fact accurately expressed by a number of scientific intelligences
should be the same.
But besides the feelings connected with a wide range of
experience, each art has certain emotions belonging to the
particular sense perceptions connected with it. That is to say,
there are some that only music can convey: those connected with
sound; others that only painting, sculpture, or architecture can
convey: those connected with the form and colour that they
severally deal with.
In abstract form and colour—that is, form and colour
unconnected with natural appearances—there is an emotional
power, such as there is in music, the sounds of which have no
direct connection with 21anything in nature,
but only with that mysterious sense we have, the sense of Harmony,
Beauty, or Rhythm (all three but different aspects of the same
thing).
This inner sense is a very remarkable fact, and will be found to
some extent in all, certainly all civilised, races. And when the
art of a remote people like the Chinese and Japanese is understood,
our senses of harmony are found to be wonderfully in agreement.
Despite the fact that their art has developed on lines widely
different from our own, none the less, when the surprise at its
newness has worn off and we begin to understand it, we find it
conforms to very much the same sense of harmony.
But apart from the feelings connected directly with the means of
expression, there appears to be much in common between all the arts
in their most profound expression; there seems to be a common
centre in our inner life that they all appeal to. Possibly at this
centre are the great primitive emotions common to all men. The
religious group, the deep awe and reverence men feel when
contemplating the great mystery of the Universe and their own
littleness in the face of its vastness—the desire to
correspond and develop relationship with the something outside
themselves that is felt to be behind and through all things. Then
there are those connected with the joy of life, the throbbing of
the great life spirit, the gladness of being, the desire of the
sexes; and also those connected with the sadness and mystery of
death and decay, &c.
The technical side of an art is, however, not concerned with
these deeper motives but with the 22things of sense
through which they find expression; in the case of painting, the
visible universe.
The artist is capable of being stimulated to artistic expression
by all things seen, no matter what; to him nothing comes amiss.
Great pictures have been made of beautiful people in beautiful
clothes and of squalid people in ugly clothes, of beautiful
architectural buildings and the ugly hovels of the poor. And the
same painter who painted the Alps painted the Great Western
Railway.
The visible world is to the artist, as it were, a wonderful
garment, at times revealing to him the Beyond, the Inner Truth
there is in all things. He has a consciousness of some
correspondence with something the other side of visible things and
dimly felt through them, a "still, small voice" which he is
impelled to interpret to man. It is the expression of this
all-pervading inner significance that I think we recognise as
beauty, and that prompted Keats to say:
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty."
And hence it is that the love of truth and the love of beauty
can exist together in the work of the artist. The search for this
inner truth is the search for beauty. People whose vision does not
penetrate beyond the narrow limits of the commonplace, and to whom
a cabbage is but a vulgar vegetable, are surprised if they see a
beautiful picture painted of one, and say that the artist has
idealised it, meaning that he has consciously altered its
appearance on some idealistic formula; whereas he has probably only
honestly given expression to a truer, deeper vision than they had
been aware of. The commonplace is not the true, but only the
shallow, view of things.
23
Fromentin's
"Art is the expression of the invisible by means of the
visible"
expresses the same idea, and it is this that gives to art its
high place among the works of man.
Beautiful things seem to put us in correspondence with a world
the harmonies of which are more perfect, and bring a deeper peace
than this imperfect life seems capable of yielding of itself. Our
moments of peace are, I think, always associated with some form of
beauty, of this spark of harmony within corresponding with some
infinite source without. Like a mariner's compass, we are restless
until we find repose in this one direction. In moments of beauty
(for beauty is, strictly speaking, a state of mind rather than an
attribute of certain objects, although certain things have the
power of inducing it more than others) we seem to get a glimpse of
this deeper truth behind the things of sense. And who can say but
that this sense, dull enough in most of us, is not an echo of a
greater harmony existing somewhere the other side of things, that
we dimly feel through them, evasive though it is.
But we must tread lightly in these rarefied regions and get on
to more practical concerns. By finding and emphasising in his work
those elements in visual appearances that express these profounder
things, the painter is enabled to stimulate the perception of them
in others.
In the representation of a fine mountain, for instance, there
are, besides all its rhythmic beauty of form and colour,
associations touching deeper chords in our
natures—associations connected with its size, age, and
permanence, &c.; at any rate we have more feelings than form
and colour of themselves 24are capable of
arousing. And these things must be felt by the painter, and his
picture painted under the influence of these feelings, if he is
instinctively to select those elements of form and colour that
convey them. Such deeper feelings are far too intimately associated
even with the finer beauties of mere form and colour for the
painter to be able to neglect them; no amount of technical
knowledge will take the place of feeling, or direct the painter so
surely in his selection of what is fine.
There are those who would say, "This is all very well, but the
painter's concern is with form and colour and paint, and nothing
else. If he paints the mountain faithfully from that point of view,
it will suggest all these other associations to those who want
them." And others who would say that the form and colour of
appearances are only to be used as a language to give expression to
the feelings common to all men. "Art for art's sake" and "Art for
subject's sake." There are these two extreme positions to consider,
and it will depend on the individual on which side his work lies.
His interest will be more on the aesthetic side, in the feelings
directly concerned with form and colour; or on the side of the
mental associations connected with appearances, according to his
temperament. But neither position can neglect the other without
fatal loss. The picture of form and colour will never be able to
escape the associations connected with visual things, neither will
the picture all for subject be able to get away from its form and
colour. And it is wrong to say "If he paints the mountain
faithfully from the form and colour point of view it will suggest
all those other associations to those who want them," unless, as is
possible with a simple-minded painter, he 25be unconsciously moved
by deeper feelings, and impelled to select the significant things
while only conscious of his paint. But the chances are that his
picture will convey the things he was thinking about, and, in
consequence, instead of impressing us with the grandeur of the
mountain, will say something very like "See what a clever painter I
am!" Unless the artist has painted his picture under the influence
of the deeper feelings the scene was capable of producing, it is
not likely anybody will be so impressed when they look at his
work.
And the painter deeply moved with high ideals as to subject
matter, who neglects the form and colour through which he is
expressing them, will find that his work has failed to be
convincing. The immaterial can only be expressed through the
material in art, and the painted symbols of the picture must be
very perfect if subtle and elusive meanings are to be conveyed. If
he cannot paint the commonplace aspect of our mountain, how can he
expect to paint any expression of the deeper things in it? The fact
is, both positions are incomplete. In all good art the matter
expressed and the manner of its expression are so intimate as to
have become one. The deeper associations connected with the
mountain are only matters for art in so far as they affect its
appearance and take shape as form and colour in the mind of the
artist, informing the whole process of the painting, even to the
brush strokes. As in a good poem, it is impossible to consider the
poetic idea apart from the words that express it: they are fired
together at its creation.
Now an expression by means of one of our different sense
perceptions does not constitute art, or 26the boy shouting at
the top of his voice, giving expression to his delight in life but
making a horrible noise, would be an artist. If his expression is
to be adequate to convey his feeling to others, there must be some
arrangement. The expression must be ordered, rhythmic, or whatever
word most fitly conveys the idea of those powers, conscious or
unconscious, that select and arrange the sensuous material of art,
so as to make the most telling impression, by bringing it into
relation with our innate sense of harmony. If we can find a rough
definition that will include all the arts, it will help us to see
in what direction lie those things in painting that make it an art.
The not uncommon idea, that painting is "the production by means of
colours of more or less perfect representations of natural objects"
will not do. And it is devoutly to be hoped that science will
perfect a method of colour photography finally to dispel this
illusion.
What, then, will serve as a working definition? There must be
something about feeling, the expression of that individuality the
secret of which everyone carries in himself; the expression of that
ego that perceives and is moved by the phenomena of life around us.
And, on the other hand, something about the ordering of its
expression.
But who knows of words that can convey a just idea of such
subtle matter? If one says "Art is the rhythmic expression of Life,
or emotional consciousness, or feeling," all are inadequate.
Perhaps the "rhythmic expression of life" would be the more perfect
definition. But the word "life" is so much more associated with
eating and drinking in the popular mind, than with the spirit or
force or whatever you care to call it, that exists behind
consciousness 27 and is the animating factor of our whole being,
that it will hardly serve a useful purpose. So that, perhaps, for a
rough, practical definition that will at least point away from the
mechanical performances that so often pass for art, "the
Rhythmic expression of Feeling" will do: for by Rhythm is meant
that ordering of the materials of art (form and colour, in the case
of painting) so as to bring them into relationship with our innate
sense of harmony which gives them their expressive power. Without
this relationship we have no direct means of making the sensuous
material of art awaken an answering echo in others. The boy
shouting at the top of his voice, making a horrible noise, was not
an artist because his expression was inadequate—was not
related to the underlying sense of harmony that would have given it
expressive power.
Let us test this definition with some simple cases. Here is a
savage, shouting and flinging his arms and legs about in wild
delight; he is not an artist, although he may be moved by life and
feeling. But let this shouting be done on some ordered plan, to a
rhythm expressive of joy and delight, and his leg and arm movements
governed by it also, and he has become an artist, and singing and
dancing (possibly the oldest of the arts) will result.
Or take the case of one who has been deeply moved by something
he has seen, say a man killed by a wild beast, which he wishes to
tell his friends. If he just explains the facts as he saw them,
making no effort to order his words so as to make the most telling
impression upon his hearers and convey to them something of the
feelings that are stirring in him, if he merely does this, he is
not an artist, although the recital of such a terrible incident may
be 28moving. But the moment he arranges his words so
as to convey in a telling manner not only the plain facts, but the
horrible feelings he experienced at the sight, he has become an
artist. And if he further orders his words to a rhythmic beat, a
beat in sympathy with his subject, he has become still more
artistic, and a primitive form of poetry will result.
Or in building a hut, so long as a man is interested solely in
the utilitarian side of the matter, as are so many builders to-day,
and just puts up walls as he needs protection from wild beasts, and
a roof to keep out the rain, he is not yet an artist. But the
moment he begins to consider his work with some feeling, and
arranges the relative sizes of his walls and roof so that they
answer to some sense he has for beautiful proportion, he has become
an artist, and his hut has some architectural pretensions. Now if
his hut is of wood, and he paints it to protect it from the
elements, nothing necessarily artistic has been done. But if he
selects colours that give him pleasure in their arrangement, and if
the forms his colour masses assume are designed with some personal
feeling, he has invented a primitive form of decoration.
And likewise the savage who, wishing to illustrate his
description of a strange animal he has seen, takes a piece of burnt
wood and draws on the wall his idea of what it looked like, a sort
of catalogue of its appearance in its details, he is not
necessarily an artist. It is only when he draws under the influence
of some feeling, of some pleasure he felt in the appearance of the
animal, that he becomes an artist.
Of course in each case it is assumed that the men have the power
to be moved by these things, and whether they are good or poor
artists will 29depend on the quality of their feeling and the
fitness of its expression.
 |
|
The purest form of this "rhythmic expression of feeling" is
music. And as Walter Pater shows us in his essay on "The School of
Giorgione," "music is the type of art." The others are more
artistic as they approach its conditions. Poetry, the most musical
form of literature, is its most artistic form. And in the greatest
pictures form, colour, and idea are united to thrill us with
harmonies analogous to music.
The painter expresses his feelings through the representation of
the visible world of Nature, and through the representation of
those combinations of form and colour inspired in his imagination,
that were all originally derived from visible nature. If he fails
from lack of skill to make his representation convincing to
reasonable people, no matter how sublime has been his artistic
intention, he will probably have landed in the ridiculous. And yet,
so great is the power of direction exercised by the emotions on
the artist that it is seldom his work fails to convey something,
when genuine feeling has been the motive. On the other hand,
the painter with no artistic impulse who makes a laboriously
commonplace picture of some ordinary or pretentious subject, has
equally failed as an artist, however much the skilfulness of his
representations may gain him reputation with the unthinking.
The study, therefore, of the representation of visible
nature and of the powers of expression possessed by form and
colour is the object of the painter's training.
And a command over this power of representation and expression
is absolutely necessary if he is to be capable of doing anything
worthy of his art.
30This is all in art that one can attempt to
teach. The emotional side is beyond the scope of teaching. You
cannot teach people how to feel. All you can do is to surround them
with the conditions calculated to stimulate any natural feeling
they may possess. And this is done by familiarising students with
the best works of art and nature.
It is surprising how few art students have any idea of what it
is that constitutes art. They are impelled, it is to be assumed, by
a natural desire to express themselves by painting, and, if their
intuitive ability is strong enough, it perhaps matters little
whether they know or not. But to the larger number who are not so
violently impelled, it is highly essential that they have some
better idea of art than that it consists in setting down your
canvas before nature and copying it.
Inadequate as this imperfect treatment of a profoundly
interesting subject is, it may serve to give some idea of the point
of view from which the following pages are written, and if it also
serves to disturb the "copying theory" in the minds of any students
and encourages them to make further inquiry, it will have served a
useful purpose.
31
II
DRAWING
By drawing is here meant the expression of form upon a plane
surface.
Art probably owes more to form for its range of expression than
to colour. Many of the noblest things it is capable of conveying
are expressed by form more directly than by anything else. And it
is interesting to notice how some of the world's greatest artists
have been very restricted in their use of colour, preferring to
depend on form for their chief appeal. It is reported that Apelles
only used three colours, black, red, and yellow, and Rembrandt used
little else. Drawing, although the first, is also the last, thing
the painter usually studies. There is more in it that can be taught
and that repays constant application and effort. Colour would seem
to depend much more on a natural sense and to be less amenable to
teaching. A well-trained eye for the appreciation of form is what
every student should set himself to acquire with all the might of
which he is capable.
It is not enough in artistic drawing to portray accurately and
in cold blood the appearance of objects. To express form one must
first be moved by it. There is in the appearance of all objects,
animate and inanimate, what has been called an emotional
significance, a hidden rhythm that is not 32caught by the
accurate, painstaking, but cold artist. The form significance of
which we speak is never found in a mechanical reproduction like a
photograph. You are never moved to say when looking at one, "What
fine form."
It is difficult to say in what this quality consists. The
emphasis and selection that is unconsciously given in a drawing
done directly under the guidance of strong feeling, are too subtle
to be tabulated; they escape analysis. But it is this selection of
the significant and suppression of the non-essential that often
gives to a few lines drawn quickly, and having a somewhat remote
relation to the complex appearance of the real object, more
vitality and truth than are to be found in a highly-wrought and
painstaking drawing, during the process of which the essential and
vital things have been lost sight of in the labour of the work; and
the non-essential, which is usually more obvious, is allowed to
creep in and obscure the original impression. Of course, had the
finished drawing been done with the mind centred upon the
particular form significance aimed at, and every touch and detail
added in tune to this idea, the comparison might have been
different. But it is rarely that good drawings are done this way.
Fine things seem only to be seen in flashes, and the nature that
can carry over the impression of one of these moments during the
labour of a highly-wrought drawing is very rare, and belongs to the
few great ones of the craft alone.
It is difficult to know why one should be moved by the
expression of form; but it appears to have some physical influence
over us. In looking at a fine drawing, say of a strong man, we seem
to identify ourselves with it and feel a thrill of its strength in
33our own bodies, prompting us to set our teeth,
stiffen our frame, and exclaim "That's fine." Or, when looking at
the drawing of a beautiful woman, we are softened by its charm and
feel in ourselves something of its sweetness as we exclaim, "How
beautiful." The measure of the feeling in either case will be the
extent to which the artist has identified himself with the subject
when making the drawing, and has been impelled to select the
expressive elements in the forms.
Art thus enables us to experience life at second hand. The small
man may enjoy somewhat of the wider experience of the bigger man,
and be educated to appreciate in time a wider experience for
himself. This is the true justification for public picture
galleries. Not so much for the moral influence they exert, of which
we have heard so much, but that people may be led through the
vision of the artist to enlarge their experience of life. This
enlarging of the experience is true education, and a very different
thing from the memorising of facts that so often passes as such. In
a way this may be said to be a moral influence, as a larger mind is
less likely to harbour small meannesses. But this is not the kind
of moral influence usually looked for by the many, who rather
demand a moral story told by the picture; a thing not always
suitable to artistic expression.
One is always profoundly impressed by the expression of a sense
of bulk, vastness, or mass in form. There is a feeling of being
lifted out of one's puny self to something bigger and more stable.
It is this splendid feeling of bigness in Michael Angelo's figures
that is so satisfying. One cannot come away from the contemplation
of that wonderful ceiling of 34his in the Vatican
without the sense of having experienced something of a larger life
than one had known before. Never has the dignity of man reached so
high an expression in paint, a height that has been the despair of
all who have since tried to follow that lonely master. In landscape
also this expression of largeness is fine: one likes to feel the
weight and mass of the ground, the vastness of the sky and sea, the
bulk of a mountain.
On the other hand one is charmed also by the expression of
lightness. This may be noted in much of the work of Botticelli and
the Italians of the fifteenth century. Botticelli's figures seldom
have any weight; they drift about as if walking on air, giving a
delightful feeling of otherworldliness. The hands of the Madonna
that hold the Child might be holding flowers for any sense of
support they express. It is, I think, on this sense of lightness
that a great deal of the exquisite charm of Botticelli's drawing
depends.
The feathery lightness of clouds and of draperies blown by the
wind is always pleasing, and Botticelli nearly always has a light
wind passing through his draperies to give them this sense.
As will be explained later, in connection with academic drawing,
it is eminently necessary for the student to train his eye
accurately to observe the forms of things by the most painstaking
of drawings. In these school studies feeling need not be
considered, but only a cold accuracy. In the same way a singer
trains himself to sing scales, giving every note exactly the same
weight and preserving a most mechanical time throughout, so that
every note of his voice may be accurately under his control and be
equal to the subtlest variations he may afterwards 35want to
infuse into it at the dictates of feeling. For how can the
draughtsman, who does not know how to draw accurately the cold,
commonplace view of an object, hope to give expression to the
subtle differences presented by the same thing seen under the
excitement of strong feeling?
These academic drawings, too, should be as highly finished as
hard application can make them, so that the habit of minute visual
expression may be acquired. It will be needed later, when drawing
of a finer kind is attempted, and when in the heat of an emotional
stimulus the artist has no time to consider the smaller subtleties
of drawing, which by then should have become almost instinctive
with him, leaving his mind free to dwell on the bigger
qualities.
Drawing, then, to be worthy of the name, must be more than what
is called accurate. It must present the form of things in a more
vivid manner than we ordinarily see them in nature. Every new
draughtsman in the history of art has discovered a new significance
in the form of common things, and given the world a new experience.
He has represented these qualities under the stimulus of the
feeling they inspired in him, hot and underlined, as it were,
adding to the great book of sight the world possesses in its art, a
book by no means completed yet.
So that to say of a drawing, as is so often said, that it is not
true because it does not present the commonplace appearance of an
object accurately, may be foolish. Its accuracy depends on the
completeness with which it conveys the particular emotional
significance that is the object of the drawing. What this
significance is will vary 36enormously with the
individual artist, but it is only by this standard that the
accuracy of the drawing can be judged.
It is this difference between scientific accuracy and artistic
accuracy that puzzles so many people. Science demands that
phenomena be observed with the unemotional accuracy of a weighing
machine, while artistic accuracy demands that things be observed by
a sentient individual recording the sensations produced in him by
the phenomena of life. And people with the scientific habit that is
now so common among us, seeing a picture or drawing in which what
are called facts have been expressed emotionally, are puzzled, if
they are modest, or laugh at what they consider a glaring mistake
in drawing if they are not, when all the time it may be their
mistaken point of view that is at fault.
But while there is no absolute artistic standard by which
accuracy of drawing can be judged, as such standard must
necessarily vary with the artistic intention of each individual
artist, this fact must not be taken as an excuse for any obviously
faulty drawing that incompetence may produce, as is often done by
students who when corrected say that they "saw it so." For there
undoubtedly exists a rough physical standard of rightness in
drawing, any violent deviations from which, even at the dictates of
emotional expression, is productive of the grotesque. This physical
standard of accuracy in his work it is the business of the student
to acquire in his academic training; and every aid that science can
give by such studies as Perspective, Anatomy, and, in the case of
Landscape, even Geology and Botany, should be used to increase the
accuracy of 37his representations. For the strength of appeal
in artistic work will depend much on the power the artist possesses
of expressing himself through representations that arrest everyone
by their truth and naturalness. And although, when truth and
naturalness exist without any artistic expression, the result is of
little account as art, on the other hand, when truly artistic
expression is clothed in representations that offend our ideas of
physical truth, it is only the few who can forgive the offence for
the sake of the genuine feeling they perceive behind it.
How far the necessities of expression may be allowed to override
the dictates of truth to physical structure in the appearance of
objects will always be a much debated point. In the best drawing
the departures from mechanical accuracy are so subtle that I have
no doubt many will deny the existence of such a thing altogether.
Good artists of strong natural inspiration and simple minds are
often quite unconscious of doing anything when painting, but are
all the same as mechanically accurate as possible.
Yet however much it may be advisable to let yourself go in
artistic work, during your academic training let your aim be a
searching accuracy.
38
III
VISION
It is necessary to say something about Vision in the first
place, if we are to have any grasp of the idea of form.
An act of vision is not so simple a matter as the student who
asked her master if she should "paint nature as she saw nature"
would seem to have thought. And his answer, "Yes, madam, provided
you don't see nature as you paint nature," expressed the first
difficulty the student of painting has to face: the difficulty of
learning to see.
Let us roughly examine what we know of vision. Science tells us
that all objects are made visible to us by means of light; and that
white light, by which we see things in what may be called their
normal aspect, is composed of all the colours of the solar
spectrum, as may be seen in a rainbow; a phenomenon caused, as
everybody knows, by the sun's rays being split up into their
component parts.
This light travels in straight lines and, striking objects
before us, is reflected in all directions. Some of these rays
passing through a point situated behind the lenses of the eye,
strike the retina. The multiplication of these rays on the retina
produces a picture of whatever is before the eye, such as can be
seen on the ground glass at the back of a 39photographer's camera,
or on the table of a camera obscura, both of which instruments are
constructed roughly on the same principle as the human eye.
These rays of light when reflected from an object, and again
when passing through the atmosphere, undergo certain modifications.
Should the object be a red one, the yellow, green, and blue rays,
all, in fact, except the red rays, are absorbed by the object,
while the red is allowed to escape. These red rays striking the
retina produce certain effects which convey to our consciousness
the sensation of red, and we say "That is a red object." But there
may be particles of moisture or dust in the air that will modify
the red rays so that by the time they reach the eye they may be
somewhat different. This modification is naturally most effective
when a large amount of atmosphere has to be passed through, and in
things very distant the colour of the natural object is often
entirely lost, to be replaced by atmospheric colours, as we see in
distant mountains when the air is not perfectly clear. But we must
not stray into the fascinating province of colour.
What chiefly concerns us here is the fact that the pictures on
our retinas are flat, of two dimensions, the same as the canvas on
which we paint. If you examine these visual pictures without any
prejudice, as one may with a camera obscura, you will see that they
are composed of masses of colour in infinite variety and
complexity, of different shapes and gradations, and with many
varieties of edges; giving to the eye the illusion of nature with
actual depths and distances, although one knows all the time that
it is a flat table on which one is looking.
Seeing then that our eyes have only flat pictures containing
two-dimension information about the 40objective world, from
whence is this knowledge of distance and the solidity of things?
How do we see the third dimension, the depth and thickness,
by means of flat pictures of two dimensions?
The power to judge distance is due principally to our possessing
two eyes situated in slightly different positions, from which we
get two views of objects, and also to the power possessed by the
eyes of focussing at different distances, others being out of focus
for the time being. In a picture the eyes can only focus at one
distance (the distance the eye is from the plane of the picture
when you are looking at it), and this is one of the chief causes of
the perennial difficulty in painting backgrounds. In nature they
are out of focus when one is looking at an object, but in a
painting the background is necessarily on the same focal plane as
the object. Numerous are the devices resorted to by painters to
overcome this difficulty, but they do not concern us here.
The fact that we have two flat pictures on our two retinas to
help us, and that we can focus at different planes, would not
suffice to account for our knowledge of the solidity and shape of
the objective world, were these senses not associated with another
sense all important in ideas of form, the sense of
touch.
This sense is very highly developed in us, and the earlier
period of our existence is largely given over to feeling for the
objective world outside ourselves. Who has not watched the little
baby hands feeling for everything within reach, and without its
reach, for the matter of that; for the infant has no knowledge yet
of what is and what is not within its reach. Who has not offered
some bright object to a 41young child and
watched its clumsy attempts to feel for it, almost as clumsy at
first as if it were blind, as it has not yet learned to focus
distances. And when he has at last got hold of it, how eagerly he
feels it all over, looking intently at it all the time; thus
learning early to associate the "feel of an object" with its
appearance. In this way by degrees he acquires those ideas of
roughness and smoothness, hardness and softness, solidity, &c.,
which later on he will be able to distinguish by vision alone, and
without touching the object.
Our survival depends so much on this sense of touch, that it is
of the first importance to us. We must know whether the ground is
hard enough for us to walk on, or whether there is a hole in front
of us; and masses of colour rays striking the retina, which is what
vision amounts to, will not of themselves tell us. But associated
with the knowledge accumulated in our early years, by connecting
touch with sight, we do know when certain combinations of colour
rays strike the eye that there is a road for us to walk on, and
that when certain other combinations occur there is a hole in front
of us, or the edge of a precipice.
And likewise with hardness and softness, the child who strikes
his head against the bed-post is forcibly reminded by nature that
such things are to be avoided, and feeling that it is hard and that
hardness has a certain look, it avoids that kind of thing in the
future. And when it strikes its head against the pillow, it learns
the nature of softness, and associating this sensation with the
appearance of the pillow, knows in future that when softness is
observed it need not be avoided as hardness must be.
42Sight is therefore not a matter of the eye
alone. A whole train of associations connected with the objective
world is set going in the mind when rays of light strike the retina
refracted from objects. And these associations vary enormously in
quantity and value with different individuals; but the one we are
here chiefly concerned with is this universal one of touch.
Everybody "sees" the shape of an object, and "sees" whether it
"looks" hard or soft, &c. Sees, in other words, the "feel" of
it.
If you are asked to think of an object, say a cone, it will not,
I think, be the visual aspect that will occur to most people. They
will think of a circular base from which a continuous side slopes
up to a point situated above its centre, as one would feel it. The
fact that in almost every visual aspect the base line is that of an
ellipse, not a circle, comes as a surprise to people unaccustomed
to drawing.
But above these cruder instances, what a wealth of associations
crowd in upon the mind, when a sight that moves one is observed.
Put two men before a scene, one an ordinary person and the other a
great poet, and ask them to describe what they see. Assuming them
both to be possessed of a reasonable power honestly to express
themselves, what a difference would there be in the value of their
descriptions. Or take two painters both equally gifted in the power
of expressing their visual perceptions, and put them before the
scene to paint it. And assuming one to be a commonplace man and the
other a great artist, what a difference will there be in their
work. The commonplace painter will paint a commonplace picture,
while the form and colour will be the means of stirring deep
associations 43and feelings in the mind of the other, and will
move him to paint the scene so that the same splendour of
associations may be conveyed to the beholder.
But to return to our infant mind. While the development of the
perception of things has been going on, the purely visual side of
the question, the observation of the picture on the retina for what
it is as form and colour, has been neglected—neglected to
such an extent that when the child comes to attempt drawing,
sight is not the sense he consults. The mental idea of the
objective world that has grown up in his mind is now associated
more directly with touch than with sight, with the felt shape
rather than the visual appearance. So that if he is asked to draw a
head, he thinks of it first as an object having a continuous
boundary in space. This his mind instinctively conceives as a line.
Then, hair he expresses by a row of little lines coming out from
the boundary, all round the top. He thinks of eyes as two points or
circles, or as points in circles, and the nose either as a triangle
or an L-shaped line. If you feel the nose you will see the reason
of this. Down the front you have the L line, and if you feel round
it you will find the two sides meeting at the top and a base
joining them, suggesting the triangle. The mouth similarly is an
opening with a row of teeth, which are generally shown although so
seldom seen, but always apparent if the mouth is felt (see diagram
A). This is, I think, a fair type of the first drawing the ordinary
child makes—and judging by some ancient scribbling of the
same order I remember noticing scratched on a wall at Pompeii, and
by savage drawing generally, it appears to be a fairly universal
44type. It is a very remarkable thing which, as
far as I know, has not yet been pointed out, that in these first
attempts at drawing the vision should not be consulted. A blind man
would not draw differently, could he but see to draw. Were vision
the first sense consulted, and were the simplest visual appearance
sought after, one might expect something like diagram B, the
shadows under eyes, nose, mouth, and chin, with the darker mass of
the hair being the simplest thing the visual appearance can be
reduced to. But despite this being quite as easy to do, it does not
appeal to the ordinary child as the other type does, because it
does not satisfy the 45sense of touch that
forms so large a part of the idea of an object in the mind. All
architectural elevations and geometrical projections generally
appeal to this mental idea of form. They consist of views of a
building or object that could never possibly be seen by anybody,
assuming as they do that the eye of the spectator is exactly in
front of every part of the building at the same time, a physical
impossibility. And yet so removed from the actual visual appearance
is our mental idea of objects that such drawings do convey a very
accurate idea of a building or object. And of course they have
great advantage as working drawings in that they can be scaled.
If so early the sense of vision is neglected and relegated to be
the handmaiden of other senses, it is no wonder that in the average
adult it is in such a shocking state of neglect. I feel convinced
that with the great majority of people vision is seldom if ever
consulted for itself, but only to minister to some other sense.
They look at the sky to see if it is going to be fine; at the
fields to see if they are dry enough to walk on, or whether there
will be a good crop of hay; at the stream not to observe the beauty
of the reflections from the blue sky or green fields dancing upon
its surface or the rich colouring of its shadowed depths, but to
calculate how deep it is or how much power it would supply to work
a mill, how many fish it contains, or some other association alien
to its visual aspect. If one looks up at a fine mass of cumulus
clouds above a London street, the ordinary passer-by who follows
one's gaze expects to see a balloon or a flying-machine at least,
and when he sees it is only clouds he is apt to wonder what one is
gazing at. The beautiful 46form and colour of the
cloud seem to be unobserved. Clouds mean nothing to him but an
accumulation of water dust that may bring rain. This accounts in
some way for the number of good paintings that are incomprehensible
to the majority of people. It is only those pictures that pursue
the visual aspect of objects to a sufficient completion to contain
the suggestion of these other associations, that they understand at
all. Other pictures, they say, are not finished enough. And it is
so seldom that a picture can have this petty realisation and at the
same time be an expression of those larger emotional qualities that
constitute good painting.
The early paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood appear to
be a striking exception to this. But in their work the excessive
realisation of all details was part of the expression and gave
emphasis to the poetic idea at the basis of their pictures, and was
therefore part of the artistic intention. In these paintings the
fiery intensity with which every little detail was painted made
their picture a ready medium for the expression of poetic thought,
a sort of "painted poetry," every detail being selected on account
of some symbolic meaning it had, bearing on the poetic idea that
was the object of the picture.
But to those painters who do not attempt "painted poetry," but
seek in painting a poetry of its own, a visual poetry, this
excessive finish (as it is called) is irksome, as it mars the
expression of those qualities in vision they wish to express.
Finish in art has no connection with the amount of detail in a
picture, but has reference only to the completeness with which the
emotional idea the painter set out to express has been
realised.
47 The visual blindness of the majority of people
is greatly to be deplored, as nature is ever offering them on their
retina, even in the meanest slum, a music of colour and form that
is a constant source of pleasure to those who can see it. But so
many are content to use this wonderful faculty of vision for
utilitarian purposes only. It is the privilege of the artist to
show how wonderful and beautiful is all this music of colour and
form, so that people, having been moved by it in his work, may be
encouraged to see the same beauty in the things around them. This
is the best argument in favour of making art a subject of general
education: that it should teach people to see. Everybody does not
need to draw and paint, but if everybody could get the faculty of
appreciating the form and colour on their retinas as form and
colour, what a wealth would always be at their disposal for
enjoyment! The Japanese habit of looking at a landscape upside down
between their legs is a way of seeing without the deadening
influence of touch associations. Thus looking, one is surprised
into seeing for once the colour and form of things with the
association of touch for the moment forgotten, and is puzzled at
the beauty. The odd thing is that although thus we see things
upside down, the pictures on our retinas are for once the right way
up; for ordinarily the visual picture is inverted on the retina,
like that on the ground glass at the back of a photographic
camera.
To sum up this somewhat rambling chapter, I have endeavoured to
show that there are two aspects from which the objective world can
be apprehended. There is the purely mental perception founded
chiefly on knowledge derived from our sense 48of touch associated
with vision, whose primitive instinct is to put an outline round
objects as representing their boundaries in space. And secondly,
there is the visual perception, which is concerned with the visual
aspects of objects as they appear on the retina; an arrangement of
colour shapes, a sort of mosaic of colour. And these two aspects
give us two different points of view from which the representation
of visible things can be approached.
When the representation from either point of view is carried far
enough, the result is very similar. Work built up on outline
drawing to which has been added light and shade, colour, aerial
perspective, &c., may eventually approximate to the perfect
visual appearance. And inversely, representations approached from
the point of view of pure vision, the mosaic of colour on the
retina, if pushed far enough, may satisfy the mental perception of
form with its touch associations. And of course the two points of
view are intimately connected. You cannot put an accurate outline
round an object without observing the shape it occupies in the
field of vision. And it is difficult to consider the "mosaic of
colour forms" without being very conscious of the objective
significance of the colour masses portrayed. But they present two
entirely different and opposite points of view from which the
representation of objects can be approached. In considering the
subject of drawing I think it necessary to make this division of
the subject, and both methods of form expression should be studied
by the student. Let us call the first method Line Drawing and the
second Mass Drawing. Most modern drawing is a mixture of both these
points of view, but they should be studied separately if confusion
is to be avoided. If 49the student neglects
line drawing, his work will lack the expressive significance of
form that only a feeling for lines seems to have the secret of
conveying; while, if he neglects mass drawing, he will be poorly
equipped when he comes to express form with a brush full of paint
to work with.
50
IV
LINE DRAWING
Most of the earliest forms of drawing known to us in history,
like those of the child we were discussing in the last chapter, are
largely in the nature of outline drawings. This is a remarkable
fact considering the somewhat remote relation lines have to the
complete phenomena of vision. Outlines can only be said to exist in
appearances as the boundaries of masses. But even here a line seems
a poor thing from the visual point of view; as the boundaries are
not always clearly defined, but are continually merging into the
surrounding mass and losing themselves to be caught up again later
on and defined once more. Its relationship with visual appearances
is not sufficient to justify the instinct for line drawing. It
comes, I think, as has already been said, from the sense of touch.
When an object is felt there is no merging in the surrounding mass,
but a firm definition of its boundary, which the mind instinctively
conceives as a line.
There is a more direct appeal to the imagination in line drawing
than in possibly anything else in pictorial art. The emotional
stimulus given by fine design is due largely to line work. The
power a line possesses of instinctively directing the eye along its
course is of the utmost value also, enabling the artist to
concentrate the attention of the beholder 51where he wishes. Then
there is a harmonic sense in lines and their relationships, a music
of line that is found at the basis of all good art. But this
subject will be treated later on when talking of line rhythm.
Most artists whose work makes a large appeal to the imagination
are strong on the value of line. Blake, whose visual knowledge was
such a negligible quantity, but whose mental perceptions were so
magnificent, was always insisting on its value. And his designs are
splendid examples of its powerful appeal to the imagination.
On this basis of line drawing the development of art proceeded.
The early Egyptian wall paintings were outlines tinted, and the
earliest wall sculpture was an incised outline. After these incised
lines some man of genius thought of cutting away the surface of the
wall between the outlines and modelling it in low relief. The
appearance of this may have suggested to the man painting his
outline on the wall the idea of shading between his outlines.
At any rate the next development was the introduction of a
little shading to relieve the flatness of the line-work and suggest
modelling. And this was as far as things had gone in the direction
of the representation of form, until well on in the Italian
Renaissance. Botticelli used nothing else than an outline lightly
shaded to indicate form. Light and shade were not seriously
perceived until Leonardo da Vinci. And a wonderful discovery it was
thought to be, and was, indeed, although it seems difficult to
understand where men's eyes had been for so long with the phenomena
of light and shade before them all the time. But this is only
another proof of 52what cannot be too often insisted on, namely
that the eye only sees what it is on the look-out for, and it may
even be there are things just as wonderful yet to be discovered in
vision.
But it was still the touch association of an object that was the
dominant one; it was within the outline demanded by this sense that
the light and shade were to be introduced as something as it were
put on the object. It was the "solids in space" idea that art was
still appealing to.
"The first object of a painter is to make a simple flat surface
appear like a relievo, and some of its parts detached from the
ground; he who excels all others in that part of the art deserves
the greatest praise,"[1] wrote
Leonardo da Vinci, and the insistence on this "standing out"
quality, with its appeal to the touch sense as something great in
art, sounds very strange in these days. But it must be remembered
that the means of creating this illusion were new to all and
greatly wondered at.
And again, in paragraph 176 of his treatise, Leonardo writes:
"The knowledge of the outline is of most consequence, and yet may
be acquired to great certainty by dint of study; as the outlines of
the human figure, particularly those which do not bend, are
invariably the same. But the knowledge of the situation, quality
and quantity of shadows, being infinite, requires the most
extensive study."
The outlines of the human figure are "invariably the same"? What
does this mean? From the visual point of view we know that the
space occupied by figures in the field of our vision is by no means
"invariably the same," but of great variety. So it cannot be the
visual appearance he is speaking about. 53It can only refer to
the mental idea of the shape of the members of the human figure.
The remark "particularly those that do not bend" shows this also,
for when the body is bent up even the mental idea of its form must
be altered. There is no hint yet of vision being exploited for
itself, but only in so far as it yielded material to stimulate this
mental idea of the exterior world.
All through the work of the men who used this light and shade
(or chiaroscuro, as it was called) the outline basis remained.
Leonardo, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, and the Venetians were
all faithful to it as the means of holding their pictures together;
although the Venetians, by fusing the edges of their outline
masses, got very near the visual method to be introduced later by
Velazquez.
In this way, little by little, starting from a basis of simple
outline forms, art grew up, each new detail of visual appearance
discovered adding, as it were, another instrument to the orchestra
at the disposal of the artist, enabling him to add to the somewhat
crude directness and simplicity of the early work the graces and
refinements of the more complex work, making the problem of
composition more difficult but increasing the range of its
expression.
But these additions to the visual formula used by artists was
not all gain; the simplicity of the means at the disposal of a
Botticelli gives an innocence and imaginative appeal to his work
that it is difficult to think of preserving with the more complete
visual realisation of later schools. When the realisation of actual
appearance is most complete, the mind is liable to be led away by
side issues connected with the things represented, instead of
seeing the emotional intentions of the artist expressed through
54them. The mind is apt to leave the picture and
looking, as it were, not at it but through it, to pursue a train of
thought associated with the objects represented as real objects,
but alien to the artistic intention of the picture. There is
nothing in these early formulae to disturb the contemplation of the
emotional appeal of pure form and colour. To those who approach a
picture with the idea that the representation of nature, the
"making it look like the real thing," is the sole object of
painting, how strange must be the appearance of such pictures as
Botticelli's.
The accumulation of the details of visual observation in art is
liable eventually to obscure the main idea and disturb the large
sense of design on which so much of the imaginative appeal of a
work of art depends. The large amount of new visual knowledge that
the naturalistic movements of the nineteenth century brought to
light is particularly liable at this time to obscure the simpler
and more primitive qualities on which all good art is built. At the
height of that movement line drawing went out of fashion, and
charcoal, and an awful thing called a stump, took the place of the
point in the schools. Charcoal is a beautiful medium in a dexterous
hand, but is more adaptable to mass than to line drawing. The less
said about the stump the better, although I believe it still
lingers on in some schools.
Line drawing is happily reviving, and nothing is so calculated
to put new life and strength into the vagaries of naturalistic
painting and get back into art a fine sense of design.
This obscuring of the direct appeal of art by the accumulation
of too much naturalistic detail, and the loss of power it entails,
is the cause of artists 55having occasionally
gone back to a more primitive convention. There was the Archaistic
movement in Greece, and men like Rossetti and Burne-Jones found a
better means of expressing the things that moved them in the
technique of the fourteenth century. And it was no doubt a feeling
of the weakening influence on art, as an expressive force, of the
elaborate realisations of the modern school, that prompted Puvis de
Chavannes to invent for himself his large primitive manner. It will
be noticed that in these instances it is chiefly the insistence
upon outline that distinguishes these artists from their
contemporaries.
Art, like life, is apt to languish if it gets too far away from
primitive conditions. But, like life also, it is a poor thing and a
very uncouth affair if it has nothing but primitive conditions to
recommend it. Because there is a decadent art about, one need not
make a hero of the pavement artist. But without going to the
extreme of flouting the centuries of culture that art inherits, as
it is now fashionable in many places to do, students will do well
to study at first the early rather than the late work of the
different schools, so as to get in touch with the simple conditions
of design on which good work is built. It is easier to study these
essential qualities when they are not overlaid by so much knowledge
of visual realisation. The skeleton of the picture is more apparent
in the earlier than the later work of any school.
The finest example of the union of the primitive with the most
refined and cultured art the world has ever seen is probably the
Parthenon at Athens, a building that has been the wonder of the
artistic world for over two thousand years. Not only are 56the
fragments of its sculptures in the British Museum amazing, but the
beauty and proportions of its architecture are of a refinement that
is, I think, never even attempted in these days. What architect now
thinks of correcting the poorness of hard, straight lines by very
slightly curving them? Or of slightly sloping inwards the columns
of his facade to add to the strength of its appearance? The amount
of these variations is of the very slightest and bears witness to
the pitch of refinement attempted. And yet, with it all, how
simple! There is something of the primitive strength of Stonehenge
in that solemn row of columns rising firmly from the steps
without any base. With all its magnificence, it still
retains the simplicity of the hut from which it was evolved.
Something of the same combination of primitive grandeur and
strength with exquisite refinement of visualisation is seen in the
art of Michael Angelo. His followers adopted the big, muscular type
of their master, but lost the primitive strength he expressed; and
when this primitive force was lost sight of, what a decadence set
in!
This is the point at which art reaches its highest mark: when to
the primitive strength and simplicity of early art are added the
infinite refinements and graces of culture without destroying or
weakening the sublimity of the expression.
In painting, the refinement and graces of culture take the form
of an increasing truth to natural appearances, added bit by bit to
the primitive baldness of early work; until the point is reached,
as it was in the nineteenth century, when apparently the whole
facts of visual nature are incorporated. From this wealth of visual
material, to which must 57be added the knowledge
we now have of the arts of the East, of China, Japan, and India,
the modern artist has to select those things that appeal to him;
has to select those elements that answer to his inmost need of
expressing himself as an artist. No wonder a period of artistic
dyspepsia is upon us, no wonder our exhibitions, particularly those
on the Continent, are full of strange, weird things. The problem
before the artist was never so complex, but also never so
interesting. New forms, new combinations, new simplifications are
to be found. But the steadying influence and discipline of line
work were never more necessary to the student.
The primitive force we are in danger of losing depends much on
line, and no work that aims at a sublime impression can dispense
with the basis of a carefully wrought and simple line scheme.
The study, therefore, of pure line drawing is of great
importance to the painter, and the numerous drawings that exist by
the great masters in this method show how much they understood its
value.
And the revival of line drawing, and the desire there is to find
a simpler convention founded on this basis, are among the most
hopeful signs in the art of the moment.
|
58
V
MASS DRAWING
In the preceding chapter it has, I hope, been shown that outline
drawing is an instinct with Western artists and has been so from
the earliest times; that this instinct is due to the fact that the
first mental idea of an object is the sense of its form as a felt
thing, not a thing seen; and that an outline drawing satisfies and
appeals directly to this mental idea of objects.
But there is another basis of expression directly related to
visual appearances that in the fulness of time was evolved, and has
had a very great influence on modern art. This form of drawing is
based on the consideration of the flat appearances on the retina,
with the knowledge of the felt shapes of objects for the time being
forgotten. In opposition to line drawing, we may call this Mass
Drawing.
The scientific truth of this point of view is obvious. If only
the accurate copying of the appearances of nature were the sole
object of art (an idea to be met with among students) the problem
of painting would be simpler than it is, and would be likely ere
long to be solved by the photographic camera.
This form of drawing is the natural means of expression when a
brush full of paint is in your hands. The reducing of a complicated
appearance 59to a few simple masses is the first necessity of
the painter. But this will be fully explained in a later chapter
treating more practically of the practice of mass drawing.
The art of China and Japan appears to have been more [influenced
by this view of natural appearances than that of the West has been,
until quite lately. The Eastern mind does not seem to be so
obsessed by the objectivity of things as is the Western mind. With
us the practical sense of touch is all powerful. "I know that is
so, because I felt it with my hands" would be a characteristic
expression with us. Whereas I do not think it would be an
expression the Eastern mind would use. With them the spiritual
essence of the thing seen appears to be the more real, judging from
their art. And who is to say they may not be right? This is
certainly the impression one gets from their beautiful painting,
with its lightness of texture and avoidance of solidity. It is
founded on nature regarded as a flat vision, instead of a
collection of solids in space. Their use of line is also much more
restrained than with us, and it is seldom used to accentuate the
solidity of things, but chiefly to support the boundaries of masses
and suggest detail. Light and shade, which suggest solidity, are
never used, a wide light where there is no shadow pervades
everything, their drawing being done with the brush in masses.
When, as in the time of Titian, the art of the West had
discovered light and shade, linear perspective, aerial perspective,
&c., and had begun by fusing the edges of the masses to suspect
the necessity of painting to a widely diffused focus, 60they had
got very near considering appearances as a visual whole. But it was
not until Velazquez that a picture was painted that was founded
entirely on visual appearances, in which a basis of objective
outlines was discarded and replaced by a structure of tone
masses.
When he took his own painting room with the little Infanta and
her maids as a subject, Velazquez seems to have considered it
entirely as one flat visual impression. The focal attention is
centred on the Infanta, with the figures on either side more or
less out of focus, those on the extreme right being quite blurred.
The reproduction here given unfortunately does not show these
subtleties, and flattens the general appearance very much. The
focus is nowhere sharp, as this would disturb the contemplation of
the large visual impression. And there, I think, for the first
time, the whole gamut of natural vision, tone, colour, form, light
and shade, atmosphere, focus, &c., considered as one
impression, were put on canvas.
All sense of design is lost. The picture has no surface; it is
all atmosphere between the four edges of the frame, and the objects
are within. Placed as it is in the Prado, with the light coming
from the right as in the picture, there is no break between the
real people before it and the figures within, except the slight
yellow veil due to age.
But wonderful as this picture is, as a "tour de force," like his
Venus of the same period in the National Gallery, it is a painter's
picture, and makes but a cold impression on those not interested in
the technique of painting. With the cutting away of the primitive
support of fine outline design and the absence of those accents
conveying a fine form 61stimulus to the mind,
art has lost much of its emotional significance.
But art has gained a new point of view. With this subjective way
of considering appearances—this "impressionist vision," as it
has been called—many things that were too ugly, either from
shape or association, to yield material for the painter, were yet
found, when viewed as part of a scheme of colour sensations on the
retina which the artist considers emotionally and rhythmically, to
lend themselves to new and beautiful harmonies and "ensembles,"
undreamt of by the earlier formulae. And further, many effects of
light that were too hopelessly complicated for painting, considered
on the old light and shade principles (for instance, sunlight
through trees in a wood), were found to be quite paintable,
considered as an impression of various colour masses. The early
formula could never free itself from the object as a solid thing,
and had consequently to confine its attention to beautiful ones.
But from the new point of view, form consists of the shape and
qualities of masses of colour on the retina; and what objects
happen to be the outside cause of these shapes matters little to
the impressionist. Nothing is ugly when seen in a beautiful aspect
of light, and aspect is with them everything. This consideration of
the visual appearance in the first place necessitated an increased
dependence on the model. As he does not now draw from his mental
perceptions the artist has nothing to select the material of his
picture from until it has existed as a seen thing before him: until
he has a visual impression of it in his mind. With the older point
of view (the representation by a pictorial description, as it were,
based 62on the mental idea of an object), the model was
not so necessary. In the case of the Impressionist the mental
perception is arrived at from the visual impression, and in the
older point of view the visual impression is the result of the
mental perception. Thus it happens that the Impressionist movement
has produced chiefly pictures inspired by the actual world of
visual phenomena around us, the older point of view producing most
of the pictures deriving their inspiration from the glories of the
imagination, the mental world in the mind of the artist. And
although interesting attempts are being made to produce imaginative
works founded on the impressionist point of view of light and air,
the loss of imaginative appeal consequent upon the destruction of
contours by scintillation, atmosphere, &c., and the loss of
line rhythm it entails, have so far prevented the production of any
very satisfactory results. But undoubtedly there is much new
material brought to light by this movement waiting to be used
imaginatively; and it offers a new field for the selection of
expressive qualities.
This point of view, although continuing to some extent in the
Spanish school, did not come into general recognition until the
last century in France. The most extreme exponents of it are the
body of artists who grouped themselves round Claude Monet. This
impressionist movement, as the critics have labelled it, was the
result of a fierce determination to consider nature solely from the
visual point of view, making no concessions to any other
associations connected with sight. The result was an entirely new
vision of nature, startling and repulsive to eyes unaccustomed to
observation from a purely visual point of view and used only to
seeing the " 63feel of things," as it were. The first results
were naturally rather crude. But a great amount of new visual facts
were brought to light, particularly those connected with the
painting of sunlight and half light effects. Indeed the whole
painting of strong light has been permanently affected by the work
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