Modern Painters Volume IV Part 13

You cannot. Of all the various impossibilities which torment and humiliate the painter, none are more vexatious than that of drawing a mountain form. It is indeed impossible enough to draw, by resolute care, the foam on a wave, or the outline of the foliage of a large tree; but in these cases, when care is at fault, carelessness will help, and the dash of the brush will in some measure give wildness to the churning of the foam, and infinitude to the shaking of the leaves. But chance will not help us with the mountain. Its fine and faintly organized edge seems to be definitely traced against the sky; yet let us set ourselves honestly to follow it, and we find, on the instant, it has disappeared: and that for two reasons. The first, that if the mountain be lofty, and in light, it is so faint in color that the eye literally cannot trace its separation from the hues next to it. The other day I wanted the contour of a limestone mountain in the Valais, distant about seven miles, and as many thousand feet above me; it was barren limestone; the morning sun fell upon it, so as to make it almost vermilion color, and the sky behind it a bluish green. Two tints could hardly have been more opposed, but both were so subtle, that I found it impossible to see accurately the line that separated the vermilion from the green. The second, that if the contour be observed from a nearer point, or looked at when it is dark against the sky, it will be found composed of millions of minor angles, crags, points, and fissures, which no human sight or hand can draw finely enough, and yet all of which have effect upon the mind.

-- 20. The outline shown as dark against the sky in Plate +29+, Fig. 2 is about a hundred, or a hundred and twenty, yards of the top of the ridge of Charmoz, running from the base of the aiguille down to the Montanvert, and seen from the moraine of the Charmoz glacier, a quarter of a mile distant to the south-west.[64] It is formed of decomposing granite, thrown down in blocks entirely detached, but wedged together, so as to stand continually in these seemingly perilous contours (being a portion of such a base of aiguille as that in _b_, Fig. 36, p. 185).[65]

The block forming the summit on the left is fifteen or eighteen feet long; and the upper edge of it, which is the dominant point of the Charmoz ridge, is the best spot in the Chamouni district for giving a thorough command of the relations of the aiguilles on each side of the Mer de Glace. Now put the book, with that page open, upright, at three yards distance from you, and try to draw this contour, which I have made as dark and distinct as it ever could be in reality, and you will immediately understand why it is impossible to draw mountain outlines rightly.

-- 21. And if not outlines, _a fortiori_ not details of ma.s.s, which have all the complexity of the outline multiplied a thousand fold, and drawn in fainter colors. Nothing is more curious than the state of embarra.s.sment into which the unfortunate artist must soon be cast when he endeavors honestly to draw the face of the simplest mountain cliff--say a thousand feet high, and two or three miles distant. It is full of exquisite details, all seemingly decisive and clear; but when he tries to arrest one of them, he cannot see it,--cannot find where it begins or ends,--and presently it runs into another; and then he tries to draw that, but that will not be drawn, neither, until it has conducted him to a third, which, somehow or another, made part of the first; presently he finds that, instead of three, there are in reality four, and then he loses his place altogether. He tries to draw clear lines, to make his work look craggy, but finds that then it is too hard; he tries to draw soft lines, and it is immediately too soft; he draws a curved line, and instantly sees it should have been straight; a straight one, and finds when he looks up again, that it has got curved while he was drawing it. There is nothing for him but despair, or some sort of abstraction and shorthand for cliff. Then the only question is, what is the wisest abstraction; and out of the mult.i.tude of lines that cannot altogether be interpreted, which are the really dominant ones; so that if we cannot give the whole, we may at least give what will convey the most important facts about the cliff.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 32. Aiguille Drawing.

1. Old Ideal. 2. Turnerian.]

-- 22. Recurring then to our "public opinion" of the Aiguille Charmoz, we find the greatest exaggeration of, and therefore I suppose the greatest interest in, the narrow and spiry point on its left side. That is in reality a point at all but a hatchet edge; a flake of rock, which is enabled to maintain itself in this sharp-edged state by its writhing folds of sinewy granite. Its structure, on a larger scale, and seen "edge on," is shown in Fig. 41. The whole aiguille is composed of a series of such flakes, liable, indeed, to all kinds of fissure in other directions, but holding, by their modes of vertical a.s.sociation, the strongest authority over the form of the whole mountain. It is not in all lights that they are seen plainly: for instance, in the morning effect in Plate +30+ they are hardly traceable: but the longer we watch, the more they are perceived; and their power of sustaining themselves vertically is so great, that at the foot of the aiguille on the right a few of them form a detached ma.s.s, known as the _Pet.i.t_ Charmoz, between E and _c_ in Fig. 60, p. 210, of which the height of the uttermost flake, between _c_ and _d_, is about five hundred feet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 41.]

Important, however, as this curved cleavage is, it is so confused among others, that it has taken me, as I said, ten years of almost successive labor to develope, in any degree of completeness, its relations among the aiguilles of Chamouni; and even of professed geologists, the only person who has described it properly is De Saussure, whose _continual_ sojourn among the Alps enabled him justly to discern the constant from the inconstant phenomena. And yet, in his very first journey to Savoy, Turner saw it at a glance, and fastened on it as the main thing to be expressed in those mountains.

In the opposite Plate (+32+), the darkest division, on the right, is a tolerably accurate copy of Turner's rendering of the Aiguille Charmoz (etched and engraved by himself), in the plate called the "Mer de Glace," in the Liber Studiorum. Its outline is in local respects inaccurate enough, being modified by Turnerian topography; but the flaky character is so definite, that it looks as if it had been prepared for an ill.u.s.trative diagram of the points at present under discussion.

-- 23. And do not let it be supposed that this was by chance, or that the modes of mountain drawing at the period would in any wise have helped Turner to discover these lines. The aiguilles had been drawn before this time, and the figure on the left in Plate +32+ will show how. It is a facsimile of a piece of an engraving of the Mer de Glace, by Woollett, after William Pars, published in 1783, and founded on the general Wilsonian and Claudesque principles of landscape common at the time.

There are, in the rest of the plate, some good arrangements of shadow and true aerial perspective; and the piece I have copied, which is an attempt to represent the Aiguille Dru, opposite the Charmoz, will serve, not unfairly, to show how totally inadequate the draughtsmen of the time were to perceive the character of mountains, and, also, how unable the human mind is by itself to conceive anything like the variety of natural form. The workman had not looked at the thing,--trusted to his "Ideal,"

supposed that broken and rugged rocks might be shaped better out of his own head than by Nature's laws,--and we see what comes of it.

-- 24. And now, lastly, observe, in the laws by which this strange curvilinear structure is given to the aiguilles, how the provision for beauty of form is made in the first landscape materials we have to study. We have permitted ourselves, according to that unsystematic mode of proceeding pleaded for in the opening of our present task, to wander hither and thither as this or that question rose before us, and demanded, or tempted, our pursuit. But the reader must yet remember that our special business in this section of the work is the observance of the nature of _beauty_, and of the degrees in which the aspect of any object fulfils the laws of beauty stated in the second volume. Now in the fifteenth paragraph of the chapter on infinity, it was stated that curvature was essential to all beauty, and that what we should "need more especially to prove, was the constancy of curvature in all natural forms whatsoever." And these aiguilles, which are the first objects we have had definitely to consider, appeared as little likely to fulfil the condition as anything we could have come upon. I am well a.s.sured that the majority of spectators see no curves in them at all, but an intensely upright, stern, spiry ruggedness and angularity. And we might even beforehand have been led to expect, and to be contented in expecting, nothing else from them than this; for since, as we have said often, they are part of the earth's skeleton, being created to sustain and strengthen everything else, and yet differ from a skeleton in this, that the earth is not only supported by their strength, but fed by their ruin; so that they are first composed of the hardest and least tractable substance, and then exposed to such storm and violence as shall beat large parts of them to powder;--under these desperate conditions of being, I say, we might have antic.i.p.ated some correspondent ruggedness and terribleness of aspect, some such refusal to comply with ordinary laws of beauty, as we often see in other things and creatures put to hard work, and sustaining distress or violence.

-- 25. And truly, at first sight, there is such refusal in their look, and their shattered walls and crests seem to rise in a gloomy contrast with the soft waves of bank and wood beneath; nor do I mean to press the mere fact, that, as we look longer at them, other lines become perceptible, because it might be thought no proof of their beauty that they needed long attention in order to be discerned. But I think this much at least is deserving of our notice, as confirmatory of foregone conclusions, that the forms which in other things are produced by slow increase, or gradual abrasion of surface, _are here produced by rough fracture_, when rough fracture is to be the law of existence. A rose is rounded by its own soft ways of growth, a reed is bowed into tender curvature by the pressure of the breeze; but we could not, from these, have proved any resolved preference, by Nature, of curved lines to others, inasmuch as it might always have been answered that the curves were produced, not for beauty's sake, but infallibly, by the laws of vegetable existence; and, looking at broken flints or rugged banks afterwards, we might have thought that we only liked the curved lines because a.s.sociated with life and organism, and disliked the angular ones, because a.s.sociated with inaction and disorder. But Nature gives us in these mountains a more clear demonstration of her will. She is here driven to make fracture the law of being. She cannot tuft the rock-edges with moss, or round them by water, or hide them with leaves and roots.

She is bound to produce a form, admirable to human beings, by continual breaking away of substance. And behold--so soon as she is compelled to do this--she changes the law of fracture itself. "Growth," she seems to say, "is not essential to my work, nor concealment, nor softness; but curvature is: and if I must produce my forms by breaking them, the fracture itself shall be in curves. If, instead of dew and sunshine, the only instruments I am to use are the lightning and the frost, then their forked tongues and crystal wedges shall still work out my laws of tender line. Devastation instead of nurture may be the task of all my elements, and age after age may only prolong the unrenovated ruin; but the appointments of typical beauty which have been made over all creatures shall not therefore be abandoned; and the rocks shall be ruled, in their perpetual perishing, by the same ordinances that direct the bending of the reed and the blush of the rose."

FOOTNOTES

[57] See, for explanatory statements, Appendix 2.

[58] I have been able to examine these conditions with much care in the chain of Mont Blanc only, which I chose for the subject of investigation both as being the most interesting to the general traveller, and as being the only range of the central mountains which had been much painted by Turner. But I believe the singular arrangements of beds which take place in this chain have been found by the German geologists to prevail also in the highest peaks of the Western Alps; and there are a peculiar beauty and providence in them which induce me to expect that farther inquiries may justify our attributing them to some very extensive law of the earth's structure. See the notes from De Saussure in Appendix 2.

[59] That is to say, as it appears to me. There are some points of the following statements which are disputed among geologists; the reader will find them hereafter discussed at greater length.

[60] Running, at that point very nearly, N. E. and S. W., and dipping under the ice at an angle of about seventy degrees.

[61] It was often of great importance to me to ascertain these _apparent_ slopes with some degree of correctness. In order to do so without the trouble of carrying any instrument (except my compa.s.s and spirit-level), I had my Alpine pole made as even as a round rule for about a foot in the middle of its length. Taking the bearing of the mountain, placing the pole at right angles to the bearing, and adjusting it by the spirit-level, I brought the edge of a piece of finely cut pasteboard parallel, in a vertical plane (plumbed), with the apparent slope of the hillside. A pencil line drawn by the pole then gave me a horizon, with which the angle could be easily measured at home. The measurements thus obtained are given under the figures.

[62] That is to say, in a cliff intended to _owe its outline to dilapidation_. Where no dilapidation is to be permitted, the bedded structure, well knit, is always used. Of this we shall see various examples in the 16th chapter.

[63] Given already as an example of curvature in the Stones of Venice, vol. 1, plate 7.

[64] The top of the aiguille of the Little Charmoz bearing, from the point whence this sketch was made, about six degrees east of north.

[65] The _summits_ of the aiguilles are often more fantastically rent still. Fig. 39 is the profile of a portion of the upper edge of the Aiguille du Moine, seen from the crest of Charmoz; Fig. 40 shows the three lateral fragments, drawn to a larger scale. The height of each of the upright ma.s.ses must be from twenty to twenty-five feet.

I do not know if their rude resemblance to two figures, on opposite sides of a table or altar, has had anything to do with the name of the aiguille.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 39.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 40.]

CHAPTER XV.

RESULTING FORMS:--SECONDLY, CRESTS.

-- 1. Between the aiguilles, or other conditions of central peak, and the hills which are clearly formed, as explained in Chap. XII. -- 11, by the mere breaking of the edges of solid beds of coherent rock, there occurs almost always a condition of mountain summit, intermediate in aspect, as in position. The aiguille may generally be represented by the type _a_, Fig. 42; the solid and simple beds of rock by the type _c_. The condition _b_, clearly intermediate between the two, is, on the whole, the most graceful and perfect in which mountain ma.s.ses occur. It seems to have attracted more of the attention of the poets than either of the others; and the ordinary word, crest, which we carelessly use in speaking of mountain summits, as if it meant little more than "edge" or "ridge," has a peculiar force and propriety when applied to ranges of cliff whose contours correspond thus closely to the princ.i.p.al lines of the crest of a Greek helmet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 42.]

-- 2. There is another resemblance which they can hardly fail to suggest when at all irregular in form,--that of a wave about to break. Byron uses the image definitely of Soracte; and, in a less clear way, it seems to present itself occasionally to all minds, there being a general tendency to give or accept accounts of mountain form under the image of waves; and to speak of a hilly country, seen from above, as looking like a "sea of mountains."

Such expressions, vaguely used, do not, I think, generally imply much more than that the ground is waved or undulated into bold ma.s.ses. But if we give prolonged attention to the mountains of the group _b_ we shall gradually begin to feel that more profound truth is couched under this mode of speaking, and that there is indeed an appearance of action and united movement in these crested ma.s.ses, nearly resembling that of sea waves; that they seem not to be heaped up, but to leap or toss themselves up; and in doing so, to wreathe and twist their summits into the most fantastic, yet harmonious, curves, governed by some grand under-sweep like that of a tide, running through the whole body of the mountain chain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG 43.]

For instance, in Fig. 43, which gives, rudely, the leading lines of the junction of the "Aiguille pourri"[66] (Chamouni) with the Aiguilles Rouges, the reader cannot, I think, but feel that there is something which binds the mountains together--some common influence at their heart which they cannot resist: and that, however they may be broken or disordered, there is as true unity among them as in the sweep of a wild wave, governed, through all its foaming ridges, by constant laws of weight and motion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 44.]

-- 3. How far this apparent unity is the result of elevatory force _in_ mountain, and how far of the sculptural force of water _upon_ the mountain, is the question we have mainly to deal with in the present chapter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 45.]

But first look back to Fig. 7, of Plate +8+, Vol. III., there given as the typical representation of the ruling forces of growth in a leaf.

Take away the extreme portion of the curve on the left, and any segment of the leaf remaining, terminated by one of its ribs, as _a_ or _b_, Fig. 44, will be equally a typical contour of a common crested mountain.

If the reader will merely turn Plate +8+ so as to look at the figure upright, with its stalk downwards, he will see that it is also the base of the honeysuckle ornament of the Greeks. I may antic.i.p.ate what we shall have to note with respect to vegetation so far as to tell him that it is also the base of form in all timber trees.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 46.]

-- 4. There seems something, therefore, in this contour which makes its production one of the princ.i.p.al aims of Nature in all her compositions.

The cause of this appears to be, that as the cinqfoil is the simplest expression of proportion, this is the simplest expression of opposition, in unequal curved lines. If we take any lines, _a x_ and _e g_, Fig. 45, both of varied curvature (not segments of circles), and one shorter than the other, and join them together so as to form one line, as _b x_, _x g_, we shall have one of the common lines of beauty; if we join them at an angle, as _c x_, _x y_, we shall have the common crest, which is in fact merely a jointed line of beauty. If we join them as at _a_, Fig.

46, they form a line at once monotonous and cramped, and the jointed condition of this same line, _b_, is hardly less so. It is easily proved, therefore, that the junction of lines _c x_, _x y_, is the simplest and most graceful mode of opposition; and easily observed that in branches of trees, wings of birds, and other more or less regular organizations, such groups of line are continually made to govern the contours. But it is not so easily seen why or how this form should be impressed upon irregular heaps of mountain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 47.]

-- 5. If a bed of coherent rock be raised, in the manner described in Chap. XIII., so as to form a broken precipice with its edge, and a long slope with its surface, as at _a_, Fig. 47 (and in this way nearly all hills are raised), the top of the precipice has usually a tendency to crumble down, and, in process of time, to form a heap of advanced ruins at its foot. On the other side, the back or slope of the hill does not crumble down, but is gradually worn away by the streams; and as these are always more considerable, both in velocity and weight, at the bottom of the slope than the top, the ground is faster worn away at the bottom, and the straight slope is cut to a curve of continually increasing steepness. Fig. 47 _b_ represents the contour to which the hill _a_ would thus be brought in process of time; the dotted line indicating its original form. The result, it will be seen, is a crest.[67]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 48.]

-- 6. But crests of this uniform substance and continuous outline occur only among hills composed of the softest coherent rocks, and seldom attain any elevation such as to make them important or impressive. The notable crests are composed of the hard coherents or slaty crystallines, and then the contour of the crests depends mainly on the question whether in the original ma.s.s of it, the beds lie as at _a_ or as at _b_, Fig. 48. If they lie as at _a_, then the resultant crest will have the general appearance seen at _c_; the edges of the beds getting separated and serrated by the weather. If the beds lie as at _b_, the resultant crest will be of such a contour as that at _d_.

The crests of the contour _d_ are formed usually by the harder coherent rocks, and are notable chiefly for their bold precipices in front, and regular slopes, or sweeping curves, at the back. We shall examine them under the special head of _precipices_. But the crests of the form at c belong usually to the slaty crystallines, and are those properly called crests, their edges looking, especially when covered with pines, like separated plumes. These it is our chief business to examine in the present chapter.