The Mind of the Artist Part 7

There I worked with my head, with my eyes, harvesting effects in the mind; then, going over everything again, I called up within myself the figures desired for the completion of the composition. Once I had evoked all this world from nothingness, and envisaged it, and had found where each thing was to be, I had to return to Paris to ask for nature's authorisation and make sure of my advance. Nature justified me, and, as she is kind to those who approach her reverentially, gave me of her grace without stint.

_Puvis de Chavannes._

LXXIX

I wish to tell you, Francisco d'Ollanda, of an exceedingly great beauty in this science of ours, of which perhaps you are aware, and which, I think, you consider the highest, namely, that what one has most to work and struggle for in painting, is to do the work with a great amount of labour and study in such a way that it may afterwards appear, however much it was laboured, to have been done almost quickly and almost without any labour, and very easily, although it was not. And this is a very excellent beauty. At times some things are done with little work in the way I have said, but very seldom; most are done by dint of hard work and appear to have been done very quickly.

_Michael Angelo._

METHODS OF WORK

Lx.x.x

Every successful work is rapidly performed; quickness is only execrable when it is empty--small. No one condemns the swiftness of an eagle.

To him who knows not the burden of process--the attributes that are to claim attention with every epocha of the performance--all attempt at swiftness will be mere pretence.

_Edward Calvert._

Lx.x.xI

I am planning a large picture, and I regard all you say, but I do not enter into that notion of varying one's plans to keep the public in good humour. Change of weather and effect will always afford variety. What if Van der Velde had quitted his sea-pieces, or Ruysdael his waterfalls, or Hobbema his native woods? The world would have lost so many features in art. I know that you wish for no material alteration, but I have to combat from high quarters--even from Lawrence--the plausible argument that _subject_ makes the picture. Perhaps you think an evening effect might do; perhaps it might start me some new admirers, but I should lose many old ones. I imagine myself driving a nail; I have driven it some way, and by persevering I may drive it home; by quitting it to attack others, though I may amuse myself, I do not advance beyond the first, while that particular nail stands still. No man who can do any one thing well will be able to do any other different thing equally well; and this is true of Shakespeare, the greatest master of variety.

_Constable._

Lx.x.xII

To work on the _Ladye_. Found part of the drapery bad, rubbed it out, heightened the seat she sits on, mended the heads again; did a great deal, but not finished yet. Any one might be surprised to read how I work whole days on an old drawing done many years since, and which I have twice worked over since it was rejected from the Royal Academy in '47, and now under promise of sale to White for 20. But I cannot help it. When I see a work going out of my hands, it is but natural, if I see some little defect, that I should try to mend it, and what follows is out of my power to direct: if I give one touch to a head, I give myself three days' work, and spoil it half-a-dozen times over.

_Ford Madox Brown._

Lx.x.xIII

In literature as in art the rough sketches of the masters are made for connoisseurs, not for the vulgar crowd.

_A. Preault._

Lx.x.xIV

It is true sketches, or such drawings as painters generally make for their works, give this pleasure of imagination to a high degree. From a slight, undetermined drawing, where the ideas of the composition and character are, as I may say, only just touched upon, the imagination supplies more than the painter himself, probably, could produce; and we accordingly often find that the finished work disappoints the expectation that was raised from the sketch; and this power of the imagination is one of the causes of the great pleasure we have in viewing a collection of drawings by great painters.

_Reynolds._

Lx.x.xV

I have just been examining all the sketches I have used in making this work. How many there are which fully satisfied me at the beginning, and which seem feeble, inadequate, or ill-composed, now that the paintings are advanced. I cannot tell myself often enough that it means an immense deal of labour to bring a work to the highest pitch of impressiveness of which it is capable. The oftener I revise it, the more it will gain in expressiveness.... Though the touch disappear, though the fire of execution be no longer the chief merit of the painting, there is no doubt about this; and again how often does it happen that after this intense labour, which has turned one's thought back on itself in every direction, the hand obeys more swiftly and surely in giving the desired lightness to the last touches.

_Delacroix._

Lx.x.xVI

Let us agree as to the meaning of the word "finished." What finishes a picture is not the quant.i.ty of detail in it, but the rightness of the general effect. A picture is not limited only by its frame. Whatever be the subject, there must be a princ.i.p.al object on which your eyes rest continually: the other objects are only the complement of this, they are less interesting to you; and after that there is nothing more for your eye.

There is the real limit of your picture. This princ.i.p.al object must seem so to the spectator of your work. Therefore, one must always return to this, and state its colour with more and more decision.

_Rousseau._

Lx.x.xVII

ON PROTOGENES

He was a great Master, but he often spoil'd his Pieces by endeavouring to make them Perfect; he did not know when he had done well; a Man may do too much as well as too little; and he is truly skilful, who knew what was sufficient.

_Apelles._

FINISH

Lx.x.xVIII

A picture must always be a little spoilt in the finishing of it. The last touches, which are intended to draw the picture together, take off from its freshness. To appear before the public one must cut out all those happy accidents which are the joy of the artist. I compare these murderous retouchings to those ba.n.a.l flourishes with which all airs of music end, and to those insignificant s.p.a.ces which the musician is forced to put between the interesting parts of his work in order to lead on from one motive to another or to give them their proper value.

Re-touching, however, is not so fatal to a picture as one might think, when the picture has been well thought out and worked at with deep feeling. Time, in effacing the touches, old as well as new, gives back to the work its complete effect.

_Delacroix._

Lx.x.xIX

A picture, the effect of which is true, is finished.

_Goya._