Art Principles Part 11

[d] Cupid and Death.

[e] Revenge.

How simply one may avoid the introduction of a skeleton in a design concerned with death, is shown by an example where three artists deal with the same motive--Death, the Friend. The first composition shows an old man sitting dead in a chair while a skeleton costumed as a monk, tolls a bell[a]: in the second there is also an old man in a chair, but an Angel with a scythe is subst.i.tuted for the skeleton[b]: in the third an Angel with huge folded wings forming an oval framework for her figure, leans over the body of a child which has its face hidden.[c] The second design is a vast improvement over the first, but the third is incomparably the best of the three. It may be remarked that a scythe is too trivial an emblem for the Angel of Death, for whom indeed an emblem of any kind is only admissible when Death is represented as the result of eternal justice, in which case a flaming sword is appropriate.

[a] Woodcut by A. Rethel.

[b] Lithograph by O. Redon.

[c] Painting by G. F. Watts.

Very rarely indeed can a good picture be made out of a funeral scene.

Such a scene attending the death of a great man may be fitly produced, so long as the imagination can be used in the composition; that is to say, if there are few or no records of the actual funeral[a]; but paintings relating to the modern burial of unnamed persons are of little value as works of art, for the imagination of the artist cannot extend beyond unpleasant prosaic incidents of common acquaintance. The purpose of the funeral scenes of Courbet[b] and Anne Ancher[c] has never been explained; and the various interiors, each with a coffin and distracted relatives of the dead, by Wiertz,[d] Dalsgaard,[e] and other modern artists, are capable of bringing only misery instead of pleasure to the observer.

[a] As in Rubens's Funeral of Decius, Vienna.

[b] The Burial at Ornans.

[c] The Funeral.

[d] The Orphans.

[e] The Child's Coffin.

But while funerals are unsuitable for the painter, interior scenes where death has occurred and friends are watching the body, offer special inducements to artists, because the perfect stillness of the living persons represented may be properly a.s.sumed, and so the illusion of life is little likely to be disturbed through the non-completion of an indicated action. On this account these works appear very impressive when well executed, and they may take high rank even when the artist is limited in his scope by the conditions of an actual scene. Very little is required however to destroy the illusion of continuity. In Kampf's picture of the lying-in-state of William I.,[a] where many watchers are shown who are presumed to be motionless, a boy in the middle distance in the act of walking, is a most disturbing element. An example where an illusion of continuity is perfectly maintained is Orchardson's Borgia, where Caesar Borgia stands in contemplation over the body of his poisoned victim. The silence indicated appears practically as permanent as the painted design, for any reasonable time spent by the observer in examining the picture, is not likely to be longer than that during which Caesar may be presumed to have remained still at the actual occurrence.

Scenes of approaching death may be arranged to produce a similar illusion, as for instance where those present are praying, or a single figure is waiting for the life to pa.s.s from the sick person.

[a] The Night of March 31, 1888, at Berlin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 16 (See page 190) Hercules Contemplating Death, in Bronze, by Pollaiuolo (_Frick Collection_)]

Little attention has been paid in art to the expression of dying persons. There are many pictures representing celebrated men and women in their dying moments, but very few of them exhibit an expression of n.o.ble resignation and fearlessness, qualities which are naturally a.s.sociated with a great man as his end draws near. No doubt the artist is often limited in his invention by the actual circ.u.mstances of the death scene, as in Copley's Death of Chatham,[a] for the statesman was unconscious at the moment of representation. Other than this the best known works of the kind relate to the death of Seneca,[b] Queen Elizabeth,[c] and General Wolfe.[d] In the last instance only is there a fine expression. How it was that Rubens missed his opportunity with Seneca is hard to understand. The presence of a clerk taking down the utterances of a philosopher as he bleeds to death, gives the design a theatrical appearance, and removes any suggestion of unconcerned resignation which might have arisen. One of the most powerful designs in existence relating to approaching death, is a sculptured figure in bronze of Hercules contemplating death.[e] The demi-G.o.d is represented standing on an altar. His left foot is raised upon the skull of an ox; his head is slightly bent, and the whole att.i.tude suggests a few moments of rest while he contemplates his coming fate. The conception is as fine as the subject is rare.

[a] National Gallery, London.

[b] By Rubens, at Munich.

[c] By Delaroche, at the Louvre.

[d] By Benjamin West, Westminster Coll., London.

[e] By A. Pollaiuolo, Frick Coll., New York. See Plate 16[59].

The artist should glorify death if possible, but he can only do this when the subject has a general application. Many painters have introduced the Angel of Death into scenes where death has occurred, and have thus converted them into work of pathos and beauty. Notable examples of this are Watts's Death, the Friend, already referred to, and H. Levy's Young Girl and Death, where the Angel gently clasps the body of a girl whose face is hidden. One of the finest designs of the kind is Lard's Glory Forgets not Obscure Heroes. On a battlefield, where all else has gone, lies the body of a soldier over whom stoops a lovely winged figure who raises the head of the hero, and seems to throw a halo of glory over him.[a] In historical paintings the appearance of sleep is often given to a dead body, as in Cogniet's Tintoretto Painting his Dead Daughter, a pathetic picture, bringing to mind the story of Luca Signorelli painting his dead son.[b]

[a] The design for this picture was probably suggested by Longepied's fine sculptured group of Immortality at the Louvre, the idea of which was no doubt drawn from Canova's L'Amour et Psyche.

There are Tangara groups and fragments of larger works in existence showing that the Greeks executed many designs of a similar character.

[b] See also Girodet's Burial of Atala, and Le Brun's Death of Cato.

CHAPTER XII

LANDSCAPE

Limitations of the landscape painter--Illusion of opening distance--Illusion of motion in landscape--Moonlight scenes--Transient conditions.

Considered as a separate branch of the painter's art, landscape is on a comparatively low plane, because the princ.i.p.al signs with which it deals, and the arrangement of them to form a view, may be varied indefinitely without a sense of incongruity arising. Thus there can be no ideal in the art; that is to say, no ideal can be conceived which is general in its character. The artist can aspire to no definite goal: his imagination is limited to the arrangement of things which are inanimate and expressionless. He may produce sensorial, but not intellectual, beauty. The n.o.bler human attributes and pa.s.sions, as wisdom, courage, spiritual exaltation, patriotism, cannot be connected with landscape, and so it is unable to produce in the mind the elevation of thought and grandeur of sentiment which are the sweetest blossoms of the tree of art.[60]

Another drawback in landscape is the necessity for painting it on an extraordinarily reduced scale. Because of this the highest qualities of beauty in nature--grandeur and sublimity--can only with difficulty be suggested on canvas, for actual magnitude is requisite for the production of either of these qualities in any considerable degree. A volcano in eruption has no force at all in a painting, a result which is due, not so much to the inability of the painter to represent moving smoke and fire, as to the impossibility of depicting their enormous ma.s.ses. The disability of the painter in respect of the representation of magnitude is readily seen in the case of a cathedral interior. This may or may not have the quality of grandeur, but a picture cannot differentiate between one that has, and one that has not, because no feeling of grandeur can arise in looking at a painted interior, the element of actual s.p.a.ce being absent.

Seeing that an ideal in landscape is impossible, the landscape painter cannot improve upon nature. In the case of the human figure the painter may improve upon experience by collecting excellencies from different models and putting them into one form, thus creating what would be universally regarded as ideal physical beauty; and he may give to this form an expression of spiritual n.o.bility which is also beyond experience because it would imply the absence of inferior qualities inseparable from man in nature. Thus to the physical, he adds intellectual beauty.

Such a perfect form may be said to be an improvement upon nature, for it is not only beyond experience, but is nature purified. But the landscape painter cannot improve upon the signs which nature provides. He may vary the parts of a tree as he will, but it would never be recognized as beyond possible experience unless it were a monstrosity.[61] And even if he could improve upon experience with his signs, this would help him but little, for the beauty of a landscape depends upon the relation of the signs to each other, and not upon the beauty of the separate signs which vary in every work with the character of the design. In colour also the painter cannot apply to his landscape an appropriate harmony which the sun is incapable of giving. From all this it follows that the aesthetic value of a landscape depends entirely upon its correspondence with nature.

A good landscape must necessarily be invented, because it is impossible to reproduce the particular beauty of a natural scene.[62] This beauty is due to a relation of parts of the view, infinite in number, to each other, but what this relation is cannot be determined by the observer.

Further, whatever be the relation, the continuous changing light and atmospheric effects bring about a constant variation in the character of the beauty. It is possible for an actual view to suggest to the artist a scheme for a beautiful landscape, but in this the precise relation of the parts would have to be invented by the painter and fixed by experiment. The princ.i.p.al features from a natural view may be taken out, but not those which together bring about the beauty. There is no great landscape in existence which was painted for the purpose of representing a particular view. There have of course been scenes painted to order, even by notable artists, but these only serve the purpose of record, or as mementoes. The great view of The Hague, painted by Van Goyen under instructions from the syndics of the town, is the feeblest of his works, and the many pictures of the kind executed by British and German artists of the eighteenth century have now only a topographical interest.

Constable painted numerous scenes to order, and there are something like forty views of Salisbury Cathedral attributed to him, but only those in which he could apply his own invention are of considerable aesthetic value. A good artist rarely introduces into a painting even a small sketch of a scene made from nature. t.i.tian is known to have drawn numerous sketches in particular localities, but not one has been identified in his pictures. In nearly every painting of Nicholas Poussin the Roman Campagna may be recognized, and here he must have made thousands of sketches during the forty years he spent in the district, yet the most patient examination has failed to identify a single spot in his many beautiful views. So with Gaspar Poussin, who, unlike his famous brother-in-law, occasionally set up his easel in the open air; and with Claude who never left off sketching in his long life. The greatest landscapes are those which are true to nature generally, but are untrue in respect of any particular natural scene.

Seeing that in landscape the production of sensorial beauty only is within the power of the painter, and that the beauty is enhanced as nature is the more closely imitated, it is obvious that for the work to have a permanent interest, the scene depicted and the incidents therein should be of common experience, otherwise the full recognition of the beauty is likely to be r.e.t.a.r.ded by the reasoning powers being involuntarily set to work in the consideration of the exceptional conditions. Naturally the term "common experience" has a varied application. What is of common experience in scenery among people in a temperate climate, is rare or unknown to those living under the burning sun of Africa. The artist is fully aware of this, and in designing his work he takes into account the experience of the people who are likely to see his paintings. A view of a scene in the East, say in Palestine or Siam, may be a beautiful work and be recognized as true because the conditions depicted are commonly known to exist; it would further have an informative value which would result in added pleasure; but among people habituated to a temperate climate it would tire more quickly than a scene of a kind to which they are daily accustomed. In the one case an effort, however slight, is required to accommodate the view to experience, and in the other the whole meaning of the scene is instantaneously identified with its beauty.

In nature there is always movement and sound. Even on those rare days when the wind has ceased and the air seems still and dead, there is motion with noise of some kind. A brook trickles by, insects buzz their zigzag way, and shadows vary as the sun mounts or descends. But most commonly there is a breeze to rustle the trees and shrubs, to ripple the surface of the water, and to throw over the scene evidence of life in its ever charming variety. The painter cannot reproduce these movements and sounds. All he represents is silent and still as if nature had suddenly suspended her work--stayed the tree as it bent to the breeze, stopped the bird in the act of flight, fixed the water, and fastened the shadows to the ground. What is there then to compensate the artist for this limitation? Why, surely he can represent nature as she is at a particular moment, over the hills and valleys, or across great plains, with sunlight and atmosphere to mark the breadth and distance and so produce an illusion of movement to delight the eyes of the observer with bewitching surprise. For the eye as it involuntarily travels from the foreground of the picture to the background, proceeds from sign to sign, each decreasing in definition in conformity with the changes in nature, till vague suggestions of form announce that far distance has been reached. The effect is precisely that of the cinematograph, except that the eye moves instead of the picture. The apparent movement corresponds closely with the opening of distance in nature when one proceeds in a fast moving vehicle along a road from which a considerable stretch of country may be observed. Very rarely is the illusion so marked that the apparent movement is identified to the senses. When it is so marked the distance seems to come forward, but is instantaneously stayed before consideration can be brought to bear upon it. Clearly if one specially seek the illusion, it becomes impossible because search implies reason and an examination slow out of all proportion with the rapidity of the sensorial effect. Accident alone will bring about the illusion, for it can only arise when the eye travels at a certain rate over the picture, the minimum of which rate is indeterminable.

It is evident that any landscape of fair size in which considerable depth is indicated must necessarily produce an illusion of opening distance if the varying signs are sufficiently numerous and properly painted in accordance with the aerial perspective; and this illusion is undoubtedly the key to the extraordinary beauty observed in the works of the great masters of landscape since Claude unveiled the secrets of distance painting. That the apparent movement is rarely actually defined is immaterial, for it must be there and must act upon the eye, producing an involuntary sensation which we interpret as pleasure arising from admiration of the skill of the artist in giving us so good a representation of distance in his imitation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 17 (See page xii) Arcadian Landscape, by Claude Lorraine (_National Gallery, London_)]

As will presently be seen there are other kinds of illusion of motion which may be produced in landscape, but this illusion of opening distance is the most important, and it should be produced wherever distance is represented. In nature the effect of the unfolding of distance is caused by a sequence of signs apparently diminishing in size and clearness as the eye travels back, and a sequence of this kind should be produced by the artist in his picture. It is not sufficient that patches of colour of the tone and shape of sections of vegetation, trees, varied soils, and so on, be given, for while these may indicate distance as any perspective must do, yet an illusion cannot be produced by such signs because they are not sufficiently numerous for the eye to experience a cinematographic effect when pa.s.sing over them.

It is not distance that gives the beauty, but an illusion of opening distance, without which, and presuming the absence of any other illusion, only simple harmonies of tone and inanimate forms are possible. Moreover the patches of colour do not properly represent nature either as she appears to the eye, or as she is understood from experience. If one were to take a momentary glance at a view specially to receive the general colour impression, he might conceivably retain on his mind a collection of colour ma.s.ses such as is often put forward as a landscape, but natural scenes are not observed in this way, and the artist has no right to imply that a view should be painted as it is observed at an instantaneous glance. One cannot be supposed to keep his eyes closed, except for a moment, when in front of nature, and he cannot be in front of nature for more than a moment without involuntarily recognizing thousands of signs. There must necessarily be a certain clearness of the atmosphere for distance to be represented, and in the minimum clearness, trees, bushes, rivulets, and buildings of every kind, are well defined at least to the middle distance. These can and should be painted, and there can be no object whatever in omitting them, except the ignominious end of saving trouble.

And it is necessary that the signs, whether shadow or substance, should be completely painted as they appear to the eye in nature when observed with average care by one inspecting a view for the purpose of drinking in all its beauties, for this is how a painted landscape is usually examined. There is no place in the painter's art for a suggestive sign in the sense that it may suggest a required complete sign. A sign must be painted as completely as possible in conformity with its appearance as seen from the presumed point from which the artist sketched his view, for the reason that its value as a sign depends upon the readiness with which it is understood.[63] This is incontrovertible, otherwise the art of painting would be an art of hieroglyphics. In poetry suggestion is of great importance, and it may be so glowing as to present to the imagination a higher form of beauty than can be painted; but the signs of the painter cannot suggest beauty in this way, because the exercise of the imagination in respect of them is limited by their form. A sign painted less distinctly than as it is seen in nature is obviously removed from its proper relative position, or else is untrue, and in either case it must have a weakening effect upon the picture.

The successful representation of aerial perspective depends upon the careful and close gradation of tones in conformity with the varying atmospheric density. This is difficult work because of the disabilities arising from the reduction of the scene into miniature form, which necessitates the omission of many tones and effects found in nature, just as a portrait in miniature involves the exclusion of various elements of expression in the human countenance. But fortunately in landscape the variableness of nature greatly a.s.sists the artist. Only rarely is the atmosphere of equal density over a considerable depth of ground, and this fact enables the painter to simplify his work in production of the illusion without appearing to depart from nature. Thus he may deepen or contract his foreground within wide limits. The changes in the appearance of the atmosphere in nature have to be greatly concentrated in a painting, and as this concentration becomes more difficult as distance is reached, it follows that the artist has a better chance of success by making the foreground of his picture begin some way in front of him, rather than near the spot where he is presumed to stand when he executes his work. He may of course maintain some very near ground while materially shortening his middle distance, but this method must obviously lower the beauty of the painting as a distance landscape, and make the execution vastly more difficult. Claude adopted this plan sometimes, but it is seen in very few of his important works.

In his best time Turner was careful to set back his foreground, and to refrain from restricting his middle ground.

If a scene be taken from the middle distance only, as in many Barbizon works, the labour is much simplified because neither the close delineation of foliage, nor any considerable gradation of atmosphere is required, but then the beauty resulting from either of these two exercises is missing. It is equally impossible for such a scene to indicate growth and life, or the charm of a changing view. Some modern artists have a habit of blotting out the middle and far distance by the introduction of a thick atmosphere but this is an abuse of the art, because however true the aspect may be in the sense that a natural view is sometimes obscured by the atmosphere, the beauty of the scene as a whole is hidden, and the picture consists largely of an imitation of the mist, where an illusion of movement is impossible. The painter should imitate the more beautiful, and not the less beautiful aspects of nature. Jupiter has been sometimes painted as an incident in a picture, nearly wholly concealed by a cloud, but to exhibit a separate work of the G.o.d so concealed, would only be regarded as an excuse for avoiding exertion, however well the cloud may be painted; yet this would not be more reprehensible than to hide the greater part of a view by a dense atmosphere.

With a clear atmosphere an illusion of opening distance may be secured with the far distance and the greater part of the middle distance un.o.bservable, but in such a case a successful design is difficult to accomplish owing to the limited number of signs available. Many signs, as trees and houses, either darken or hide the view, while sunlight effects on un.o.bstructed ground, sufficiently definite to be used as signs, could not be very numerous without appearing abnormal. The only really first-cla.s.s method of producing a satisfactory near-ground illusion was invented by Hobbema in the later years of his life. This is to use skilfully placed trees and other signs through which paths wind, or appear to wind, and to throw in a strong sunlight from the back.[a]

The light enables far more signs to be used in depth than would otherwise be possible, and so the eye has a comparatively long track to follow. That the remarkable beauty of the pictures of Hobbema composed in this way is almost entirely due to the illusion thus created, is readily seen when they are compared with some of his other works, very similar in all respects except that the light is thrown in from the front or the side. Before placing his light at the back, the artist tried the side plan in many pictures, and while this was a decided improvement upon his earlier efforts to secure depth of near-ground signs, it was naturally inferior to the latest scheme. Jacob Ruysdael adopted the plan of Hobbema in two or three works with great effect.[b]

[a] See Plate 18.

[b] For example, The Marsh, Hermitage.

When the middle distance is hidden by a rising foreground, an illusion may be created by the far distance alone if this be of considerable depth. Since the fifteenth century it has been a frequent practice to conceal the middle distance, though mostly in pictures of figure subjects.[64] The Dutch artists of the seventeenth century who painted open-air scenes of human and animal life, as Paul Potter, Wouverman, and Albert Cuyp, avoided the middle distance whenever possible, but often managed to secure a fair illusion. In pure landscape the system is less often practised, and never by great artists.

The only means available to the painter of land views for creating an illusion of motion, apart from that of opening distance, is by the representation of flowing water so that a series of successive events in the flow, each connected with, but varying in character from, the preceding one, can be exhibited. Thus, a volume of water from a fall proceeds rapidly over a flat surface to a ledge, and thence perhaps to another ledge of a different depth, from which it pa.s.ses over or round irregular rocks and boulders, and thence over smaller stones or into a stream, creating in its pa.s.sage every kind of eddy and current.[a] Here is a series of progressive natural actions in which the progression is regular and continuous, while the separate actions cover such time and s.p.a.ce that they may be readily separated by the eye. If, therefore, the whole series be properly represented, an illusion of motion will result.[65] Obviously the canvas must be of considerable size, and the breaks in the flow of water as varied in character and as numerous as possible. Everdingen and Jacob Ruysdael seem to have been the first artists to recognize the significance of this progression, but Ruysdael far surpa.s.sed his master in the exhibition of it. He examined the problem in all its variations, solved it in a hundred ways, and at his death left little for succeeding painters to learn regarding it. Very rarely, one meets with a landscape where the double illusion of motion of water and opening distance is provided, and needless to say the effect is superb.[b]