Line and Form (1900) Part 15

To begin with the negatives--white and black--white may be creamy or silvery; black may be of a greenish or a bluish or brownish tone; then the primaries--red, blue, yellow, or red, green, violet--red may range from crimson to orange and russet; yellow may approach green or gold; green may be first cousin to blue; blue may be turquoise on the one hand, and touch purple upon the other; and so on through infinite variations of half tints and tones.

No doubt it is an easier matter to harmonize half tints than full bright colours, which may account for the prevalence of the former in decorative work. Nature's pattern-book, too, is full of half tones and mixed tints.

[The Colour Sense]

We may not all see colour precisely in the same way, and the same colour may appear to be of a different tint to different eyes; and it seems certain that climate and surroundings affect the colour sense: light and colour will stimulate the delight in colour; while, where grayness and dullness characterize the surroundings of life, the colour sense will grow weak, or, if it is manifested at all, it will show a tendency to grayness and heaviness of tint.

The art of the different peoples of the world ill.u.s.trates this, and, as we may see by turning from east to west, or from north to south, or even from winter to summer, in the main the love of colour follows the sun, like the rainbow.

We can all do something to cultivate our sense of colour, however, and there is no better way than studying the harmonies and varieties of nature. Even the town-dweller is not altogether deprived of the sight of the sky, which constantly unfolds the most beautiful compositions both of form and colour.

As to the choice of colours in decorative design, so far as that is not narrowed by the particular conditions of the work, we must be guided by much the same considerations as would serve us in designing generally, and must, of course, think of appropriateness to position and purpose.

Much depends, too, upon proportions of colour, and a beautiful and harmonious effect may be produced in a room by keeping the colour in a particular key, or even delicately varying the designs and tints of one or two colours. The same might be said in arranging a scheme of colouring for any particular piece of design--say, a painted panel or a textile pattern; although such things must ultimately be governed by their relation to other parts in any general scheme--circ.u.mstances necessitate their being often designed apart. Still, if the colour of a pattern has been carefully thought out, or rather harmoniously felt, as a real organic thing, it is sure to fit into its place when its time comes.

In arranging our design of colour we can have no better guide, as to proportions and quality, than nature, and should do well, as a matter of practice, to take a flower, or the plumage of a bird, or the colours of a landscape, and adapt them to some particular pattern or scheme of decoration, following the relative degrees of tint and their quant.i.ties as nearly as possible. To do this successfully requires some invention and taste; but successful, or unsuccessful, one could hardly fail to learn something positive and valuable about colour, if the attempt was conscientiously made; and fresher motives and sweeter colour would be more likely to result from such study.

[Importance of Pure Tints]

I think it is a very important thing in all decorative work to keep one's colours pure in quality, and to avoid muddy or heavy tints. Brown is an especially difficult colour to use, because of its generally heavy effect as a pigment, and the difficulty of harmonizing it with other colours except as an outline; and even here it makes all the difference whether it is a cool or a hot shade. A hot brown is most destructive of harmony in colours. It is safe, as a rule, to make it lean to green, or bronze, or gold.

As a general rule it is well to work either in a range of cool tints--a cool key of colour, or the reverse--a warm and rich one. Few cool harmonies can be better than ultramarine and turquoise on greenish white, of which the Persians and Indians are so fond in tile-work. They are delightful to the eye, while peculiarly adapted to the work, owing their quality to the oxide of copper, which the firing brings out so well.

Blues and greens and grays, relieved with white and yellow and orange: or, reds and yellows, relieved with white and opposed by blacks, generally answer: or a range of reds together, or range of blues, or of yellows, with black and white for contrast and accent. Blue and white, too, can be modified in quality; black may be greenish in tone, or brownish, bluish, or purplish according to the harmony aimed at. White may be pure or ivory-toned, cream-coloured or influenced by other colours, and should vary in degree according to the strength of the harmony. This brings us to the question of tone.

[Tones and Planes]

Now the ornamentist, the designer of patterns, relies for his effect upon the use of certain planes and oppositions of tints to relieve and express his design, to emphasize its main motive, to bring out or to subdue its lines and forms. He knows that cool flat tints--blues, greens, grays--will make forms and surfaces retire, and he makes use of them for flat and reposeful effects, such as wall and ceiling surfaces, adopting the natural principle of colour in landscape and sky.

He uses richer and more varied colour in textile hangings and carpets, furniture, and accessories--reds, yellows, greens, crimson, russets, orange, gold--which answer to the brighter flowers and parterres of our gardens, as things to be near the eye and touch, and to occur as lesser quant.i.ties in a scheme of interior colour design.

In the colour design of patterns, harmonious and rich effects can be produced by the use of pure colour alone, no doubt, if carefully proportioned, and separated by outline; though harmony is more difficult to attain in pure colours used in their full strength; and for their due effect, and to avoid harshness, such a treatment really requires out-door light or special conditions of lighting, or the strong light of eastern or southern countries, to soften the effect.

And since we have to adapt our designs to their probable surroundings, we usually consciously select certain tones or shades of a colour, rather than use it absolutely pure or in its full strength. The beautiful tone which time gives to all colour-work is difficult to rival, but no conscious imitation of it is tolerable.

But so long as our aim is strictly to make a colour scheme of any kind in relation to itself, or in harmony with its conditions, we are on a safe and sound path. It is this relativity which is the important thing in all decorative art, and which, more distinctly than any other quality, distinguishes it from pictorial art; although pictorial art is under the necessity of the same law in regard to itself; and in its highest forms, as in mural work, is certainly subject to relativity in its widest sense.

[Pattern and Picture]

At first sight it might appear as if there were an essential fundamental natural difference between a pattern and a picture, but when we come to consider it, it appears to be rather a distinction than a difference.

A pattern may be an arrangement of lines, forms, and a harmony of planes and tones of colour.

But these words would describe in general terms a picture also.

Certain recurrences of line and form; certain re-echoing notes of the same, or allied colour, are necessary to both pattern and picture. The abstract ingredients appear to be the same in both cases.

A picture indeed may be considered as a pattern of another sort, and the real difference is that whereas a pattern is not necessarily a picture, a picture is bound to be a pattern--a pattern having its quant.i.ties, its balance of ma.s.ses, its connecting lines, its various planes, its key of colour, its play of contrasts, its harmony of tones.

Technically, a picture may be considered as an _informal_ pattern, mainly of tone and values; while a pattern may be considered as a _formal_ pattern, mainly of planes of colour.

The ancient art of the East was all frankly pattern-work, whatever the subject pictured. Egyptian, Persian, Indian, Chinese, Moorish and Arabian art, in all their varieties, show the dominating sense of pattern, and the invention of the instinctive decorators in the use of colour.

The j.a.panese, also, are instinctive decorators, though in a less formal and more impressionistic way, and with much more naturalistic feeling.

Their pictures printed from colour blocks, as well as their "kakimonos,"

painted on silk, are frankly pattern-pictures, the pattern motive being quite as strong or stronger than the graphic or representative motive.

Mediaeval and early Renaissance painting in Europe was frankly more or less formal and of the nature of ornament, and even in its freest and fullest development, in the works of the great masters of the sixteenth century of Venice and Florence, a certain decorative or architectural feeling was never forgotten.

Painting was still in close a.s.sociation with architecture, and was the chief adornment of churches and palaces; thus it preserved a peculiar distinction and dignity of style. The Dutch school did more perhaps to break these old decorative and architectural traditions than any other, with their domestic and purely naturalistic motives, their pursuit of realism, atmospheric effect, and chiaroscuro--that fascinating goal of painting.

[Chiaroscuro]

Yet there were some of the seventeenth-century masters, and of the best, such as De Hooghe and Ver Meer of Delft, who showed themselves very much alive to decorative effect, which their power of chiaroscuro--the power of painting things in their proper atmosphere, as lost in transparent depths of shadow, or found in luminous mystery--only seemed to enhance.

As a wonderful instance of ornamental and dignified design carried into every detail with most careful draughtsmanship, and yet beautiful in chiaroscuro and grave colour, there is no finer example than J. Van Eyck's portrait-picture of "Jan Arnolfini and his Wife" in our National Gallery. Such pictures as these would tell as rich and precious gems upon the wall, and would form the centres to which the surrounding colour patterns and decoration would lead up, as in the picture the little mirror reflecting the figures shines upon the wall, a picture within a picture.

[Ill.u.s.tration (f134): J. van Eyck: "Portrait of Jan Arnolfini and His Wife." (National Gallery.)]

It is instructive from any point of view to study the quant.i.ties and relations of colour, and their tones and values, in such works.

[Ver Meer of Delft]

Take Ver Meer's "Lady at a Spinet" in our National Gallery.

[Ill.u.s.tration (f135): Ver Meer of Delft: "Lady at a Spinet." (National Gallery.)]

We have a plain white wall, exquisite in tone, upon which the crisp gold of the small picture inclosing a brownish landscape with a blue and white sky, and the broad black frame of the picture of Cupid tell strongly, yet fall into plane behind the figure in white satin--quite a different quality of white, and warmer and brighter than the wall. The bodice is a steely blue silk, which is repeated in the velvet seat of the chair; while the blue and white landscape upon the open lid of the spinet repeats the blue and white landscape on the wall, and the blue and white motive is subtly re-echoed in a subdued key in the little tiles lining the base of the wall. The floor is a chequer of black and white (mottled) marble, which gives a fine relief to the dress and repeats the emphatic black of the picture frame; the stand of the spinet is also black striated marble. Quiet daylight falls through the greenish white of the leaded panes. The pink-brown woodwork of the spinet and chair prevent the colour scheme from being cold. The flesh is very pale and ivory-like in tone, but the dress is enlivened by little crisp scarlet and gold touches in the narrow laces which tie the sleeves.

The little picture is a gem of painting and truth of tone, and at the same time might well suggest a charming scheme of colour to an ornamentist.

[Van Eyck]

Examine the Van Eyck in the same way, and we shall find a very rich but quiet scheme of colour in a lower key, highly decorative, yet presented with extraordinary realistic force, united with extreme refinement and exquisite chiaroscuro, and truth of tone and value, as a portrait-picture, and piece of interior lighting.

It is like taking an actual peep into the inner life of a Flemish burgher of the fifteenth century.

One seems to breathe the still air of the quiet room, the gray daylight falling through the leaded cas.e.m.e.nts, one of which stands open, and shows a narrow strip of luminous sky and suggestion of a garden with scarlet blossoms in green leaves.

The man is clad in a long mantle of claret-brown velvet edged with fur, over black tunic and hose. He wears a quaint black hat upon his head, which almost foreshadows the tall hat of the modern citizen. The pale strange face looks paler and stranger beneath it, but is in character with the long thin hands. The figure gives one the impression of legal precision and dryness, and a touch of clerical formality. The wife is of a buxom and characteristic Flemish type, in a gra.s.s-green robe edged with white fur, over peac.o.c.k blue; a crisp silvery white head-dress; a dark red leather belt with silver st.i.tching. Her figure is relieved upon the subdued red of the bed hangings, continued in the cover of the settle and the red clogs. The wall of the room, much lost in transparent shade, is of a greenish gray tone, and in the centre, between the figures, a circular convex mirror sparkles on the wall reflecting the backs of the figures. Thin lines delicately repeat the red in the mirror frame, which has a black and red inner moulding. A string of amber beads hangs on the wall, and repeats the shimmer of the bright bra.s.s candelabra which hangs aloft, and which is drawn carefully enough for a craftsman to reproduce.

[Pattern-Pictures]

Both designer and painter may find abundant suggestion in this picture, which, with Ver Meer's "Lady at the Spinet," I should describe as _pattern-pictures_--that is to say, while they are thoroughly painter's pictures, and give all the peculiar qualities of oil-painting in the rendering of tone and values, they yet show in their colour scheme the decorative quality, and might be translated into patterns of the same proportions and keys of colours.

As examples of what might be termed picture-patterns we might recur to the wall paintings, as I have said, of ancient Egypt and early art generally, for their simplest forms; but to take a much later instance, and from the art of Florence in the fifteenth century, look at Botticelli's charming little picture of "The Nativity," in the National Gallery. It has all the intentional, or perhaps instinctive, ornamental aim of Italian art, and its colour scheme shows a most dainty and delicate invention in the strictest relation to the subject and sentiment, and is arranged with the utmost subtlety and the nicest art.

[Botticelli]