Stained Glass Work Part 10

YOU MUST TEAR OFF THE SELVAGE EDGE OF YOUR TRACING CLOTH, otherwise the tracing cloth being all c.o.c.kled at the edge, which, however, is not very noticeable, will not lie flat, and you will be puzzled to know why it is that you cannot get your cut-line straight; tear off the edge, and it lies perfectly flat, without a wrinkle.

HOW TO DRY A BIG BRUSH OR BADGER AFTER IT IS WASHED.

I expect you'd try to dry it in front of the fire, and there'd be a pretty eight-shilling frizzle! But the way is this: First sweep the wet brush downwards with all your force, just as you shake the worst of the wet off a dripping umbrella, then take the handle of the brush _between the palms of your hands_, with the hair pointing downwards, and rub your hands smartly together, with the handle between them, just as an Italian waiter whisks up the chocolate. This sends the hair all out like a Catherine-wheel, and dries the brush with quite astonishing rapidity.

Come now! you'd never have thought of that?

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 70.]

And why have I reserved these hints till now? surely these are things of the work-bench, practical matters, and would have come more conveniently in their own place? Why have I--do you ask--after arousing your attention to the "great principles of art," gone back again all at once to these little matters?

Dear reader, I have done so deliberately to emphasise the _First_ of principles, that the right learning of any craft is the learning it under a master, and that all else is makeshift; to drive home the lesson insisted on in the former volumes of this series of handbooks, and gathered into the sentence quoted as a motto on the fly-leaf of one of them, that "An art can only be learned in the workshop of those who are winning their bread by it."

These little things we have just been speaking of occurred to me after the practical part was all written; and I determined, since it happened so, to put them by themselves, to point this very lesson. They are just typical instances of hundreds of little matters which belong to the bench and the workshop, and which cannot all be told in any book; and even if told can never be so fully grasped as they would be if shown by master to pupil. Years--centuries of practice have made them the commonplaces of the shops; things told in a word and learnt in an instant, yet which one might go on for a whole lifetime without thinking of, and for lack of which our lifetime's work would suffer.

Man's work upon earth is all like that. The things are there under his very nose, but he never discovers them till some accident shows them; how many centuries of sailing, think you, pa.s.sed by before men knew that the tides went with the moon?

Why then write a book at all, since it is not the best way?

Speaking for myself only, the reasons appear to be: First, because none of these crafts is at present taught in its fulness in any ordinary shop, and I would wish to give you at least a longing to learn yours in that fulness; and, second, because it seems also very advisable to interest the general reader in this question of the complete teaching of the crafts to apprentices. To insist on the value and necessity of the daily and hourly lessons that come from the constant presence, handling, and use of all the tools and materials, all the apparatus and all the conditions of the craft, and from the interchange of ideas amongst those who are working, side by side, making fresh discoveries day by day as to what materials will do under the changes that occur in conditions that are ever changing.

However, one must not linger further over these little matters, and it now becomes my task to return to the great leading principles and try to deal with them, and the first cardinal principle of stained-gla.s.s work surely is that of COLOUR.

CHAPTER XVI

OF COLOUR

But how hopeless to deal with it by way of words in a book where actual colour cannot be shown!

Nevertheless, let us try.

... One thinks of morning and evening; ... of clouds pa.s.sing over the sun; of the dappled glow and glitter, and of faint flushes cast from the windows on the cathedral pavement; of pearly white, like the lining of a sh.e.l.l; of purple bloom and azure haze, and gra.s.s-green and golden spots, like the budding of the spring; of all the gaiety, the sparkle, and the charm.

And then, as if the evening were drawing on, comes over the memory the picture of those graver harmonies, in the full glow of red and blue, which go with the deep notes of the great organ, playing requiem or evening hymn.

Of what use is it to speak of these things? The words fall upon the ear, but the eye is not filled.

All stained-gla.s.s gathers itself up into this one subject; the glory of the heavens is in it and the fulness of the earth, and we know that the showing forth of it cannot be in words.

Is it any use, for instance, to speak of these primroses along the railway bank, and those silver buds of the alder in the hollow of the copse?

One thinks of a hint here and a hint there; the very sentences come in fragments. Yet one thing we may say securely: that the practice of stained-gla.s.s is a very good way to _learn_ colour, or as much of it as can come by learning.

For, consider:--

A painter has his colour-box and palette;

And if he has a good master he may learn by degrees how to mix his colour into harmonies;

Doing a little first, cautiously;

Trying the problem in one or two simple tints; learning the combinations of these in their various degrees of lighter or darker:

Exhausting, as much as he can, the possibilities of one or two pigments, and then adding another and another;

But always with a very limited number of actual separate ones to draw upon;

All the infinity of the whole world of colour being in his own hands, and the difficulty of dealing with it laid as a burden upon his own shoulders, as he combines, modifies, mixes, and dilutes them.

He perhaps has eight or ten spots of pure colour, ranged round his palette; and all the rest depends upon himself.

This gives him, indeed, one side of the practice of his art; and if he walks warily, yet daringly, step by step, learning day by day something more of the powers that lie in each single kind of paint, and as he learns it applying his knowledge, bravely and industriously, to add strength to strength, brightness to brightness, richness to richness, depth to depth, in ever clearer, fuller, and more gorgeous harmony, he may indeed become a great painter.

But a more timid or indolent man gets tired or afraid of putting the clear, sharp tints side by side to make new combinations of pure and vivid colour.

And even a man industrious, alert, and determined may lose his way and get confused amongst the infinity of choice, through being badly taught, and especially through being allowed at first too great a range, too wide a choice, too lavish riches.

A man so trained, so situated, so tempted, stands in danger of being contented to repeat old receipts and formulas over and over, as soon as he has acquired the knowledge of a few.

Or, bewildered with the lavishness of his means and confused in his choice, tends to fall into indecision, and to smear and dilute and weaken.

I cannot help thinking that it is to this want of a system of gradual teaching of the elementary stages of colour in painting that we owe, on the one side, the fashion of calling irresolute and undecided tints "art" colours; and, on the other hand, the garishness of our modern exhibitions compared with galleries of old paintings. For t.i.tian's burning scarlet and crimson and palpitating blue; and Veronese's gold and green and white and rose are certainly not "art colours"; and I think we must feel the justice and truth of Ruskin's words spoken regarding a picture of Linnell's:--

"And what a relief it is for any wholesome human sight, after sickening itself among the blank horror of dirt, ditchwater, and malaria, which the imitators of the French schools have begrimed our various Exhibition walls with, to find once more a bit of blue in the sky and a glow of brown in the coppice, and to see that Hoppers in Kent can enjoy their scarlet and purple--like Empresses and Emperors." (Ruskin, "Royal Academy Notes," 1875.)

From this irresolution and indecision and the dull-colour school begotten of it on the one hand, and from garishness on the other, stained-gla.s.s is a great means of salvation; for in practising this art the absolute judgment must, day by day, be exercised between this and that colour, there present before it; and the will is braced by the necessity of constant choice and decision. In short, by many of the modern, academical methods of teaching painting, and especially by the unfortunate arrangement, where it exists, of a pupil pa.s.sing under a succession of different masters, I fear the colour-sense is perplexed and blunted; while by stained-gla.s.s, taught, as all art should be, from master to apprentice, while both make their bread by it, the colour-sense would be gradually and steadily cultivated and would have time to grow.

This at least seems certain: that all painters who have also done stained-gla.s.s, or indeed any other decorative work in colour, get stronger and braver in painting from its practice. So worked t.i.tian, Giorgione, Veronese; and so in our days worked Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Madox-Brown, Morris; and if I were to advise and prate about what is, perhaps, not my proper business, I would say, even to the student of oil-painting, "Begin with burnt-umber, trying it in every degree with white; transparent over opaque and opaque over transparent; trying how near you can get to purple and orange by contrast (and you will get nearer than you think); then add sienna at one end and black at the other to enlarge the range;--and then get a set of gla.s.s samples."

I have said that stained-gla.s.s is "a great means of salvation," from irresolution and indecision on the one hand and from garishness on the other; but it is only a means--the fact of salvation lies always in one's own hands--for we must, I fear, admit that "garishness" and "irresolution" are not unknown in stained-gla.s.s itself, in spite of the resources and safeguardings we have attributed to the material.

Speaking, therefore, now to stained-gla.s.s painters themselves, we might say that these faults in their own art, as too often practised in our days, arise, strange as it may seem, from ignorance of their own material, that very material the _knowledge_ of which we have just been recommending as a safeguard against these very faults to the students of another art.

And this brings us back to our subject.

For the foregoing discussion of painters' methods has all been written to draw a comparison and emphasise a contrast.

A contrast from which you, student of stained-gla.s.s, I hope may learn much.

For as we have tried to describe the methods of the painter in oil or water colours, and so point out his advantages and disadvantages, so we would now draw a picture of the gla.s.s-painter at work; if he works as he should do.