The Mind of the Artist Part 8

XC

You please me much, by saying that no other fault is found in your picture than the roughness of the surface; for that part being of use in giving force to the effect at a proper distance, and what a judge of painting knows an original from a copy by--in short, being the touch of the pencil which is harder to preserve than smoothness, I am much better pleased that they should spy out things of that kind, than to see an eye half an inch out of its place, or a nose out of drawing when viewed at a proper distance. I don't think it would be more ridiculous for a person to put his nose close to the canvas and say the colours smelt offensive, than to say how rough the paint lies; for one is just as material as the other with regard to hurting the effect and drawing of a picture.

_Gainsborough._

XCI

The picture[2] will be seen to the greatest advantage if it is hung in a strong light, and in such a manner that the spectator can stand at some distance from it.

_Rembrandt._

[Footnote 2: Probably the "Blinding of Samson."]

XCII

Don't look at a picture close, it smells bad.

_Rembrandt._

XCIII

Try to be frank in drawing and in colour; give things their full relief; make a painting which can be seen at a distance; this is indispensable.

_Cha.s.seriau._

XCIV

If I might point out to you another defect, very prevalent of late, in our pictures, and one of the same contracted character with those you so happily ill.u.s.trate, it would be that of the _want of breadth_, and in others a perpetual division and subdivision of parts, to give what their perpetrators call s.p.a.ce; add to this a constant disturbing and torturing of everything whether in light or in shadow, by a niggling touch, to produce fulness of subject. This is the very reverse of what we see in Cuyp or Wilson, and even, with all his high finishing, in Claude. I have been warning our friend Collins against this, and was also urging young Landseer to beware of it; and in what I have been doing lately myself have been studying much from Rembrandt and from Cuyp, so as to acquire what the great masters succeeded so well in, namely, that power by which the chief objects, and even the minute finishing of parts, tell over everything that is meant to be subordinate in their pictures. Sir Joshua had this remarkably, and could even make _the features of the face_ tell over everything, however strongly painted. I find that repose and breadth in the shadows and half-tints do a great deal towards it.

Zoffany's figures derive great consequence from this; and I find that those who have studied light and shadow the most never appear to fail in it.

_Wilkie._

XCV

The commonest error into which a critic can fall is the remark we so often hear that such-and-such an artist's work is "careless," and "would be better had more labour been spent upon it." As often as not this is wholly untrue. As soon as the spectator can _see_ that "more labour has been spent upon it," he may be sure that the picture is to that extent incomplete and unfinished, while the look of freshness that is inseparable from a really successful picture would of necessity be absent. If the high finish of a picture is so apparent as immediately to force itself upon the spectator, he may _know_ that it is not as it should be; and from the moment that the artist feels his work is becoming a labour, he may depend upon it it will be without freshness, and to that extent without the merit of a true work of art. Work should always look as though it had been done with ease, however elaborate; what we see should appear to have been done without effort, whatever may be the agonies beneath the surface. M. Meissonier surpa.s.ses all his predecessors, as well as all his contemporaries, in the quality of high finish, but what you see is evidently done easily and without labour. I remember Thackeray saying to me, concerning a certain chapter in one of his books that the critics agreed in accusing of carelessness; "Careless? If I've written that chapter once I've written it a dozen times--and each time worse than the last!" a proof that labour did not a.s.sist in his case. When an artist fails it is not so much from carelessness: to do his best is not only profitable to him, but a joy.

But it is not given to every man--not, indeed, to any--to succeed whenever and however he tries. The best painter that ever lived never entirely succeeded more than four or five times; that is to say, no artist ever painted more than four or five _masterpieces_, however high his general average may have been, for such success depends on the coincidence, not only of genius and inspiration, but of health and mood and a hundred other mysterious contingencies. For my own part, I have often been laboured, but whatever I am I am never careless. I may honestly say that I never consciously placed an idle touch upon canvas, and that I have always been earnest and hard-working; yet the worst pictures I ever painted in my life are those into which I threw most trouble and labour, and I confess I should not grieve were half my works to go to the bottom of the Atlantic--if I might choose the half to go.

Sometimes as I paint I may find my work becoming laborious; but as soon as I detect any evidence of that labour I paint the whole thing out without more ado.

_Millais._

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Millais_ LOVE _By permission of F. Warne & Co._]

XCVI

I think that a work of art should not only be careful and sincere, but that the care and sincerity should also be evident. No ugly smears should be allowed to do duty for the swiftness which comes from long practice, or to find excuse in the necessity which the accomplished artist feels to speak distinctly. That necessity must never receive impulse from a desire to produce an effect on the walls of a gallery: there is much danger of this working _un_consciously in the accomplished artist, _consciously_ in the student.

_Watts._

XCVII

Real effect is making out the parts. Why are we to be told that masters, who could think, had not the judgment to perform the inferior parts of art? (as Reynolds artfully calls them); that we are to learn to _think_ from great masters, and to perform from underlings--to learn to design from Raphael, and to execute from Rubens?

_Blake._

XCVIII

If I knew that my portrait was still at Antwerp, I would have it kept back for the case to be opened, so that one could see that it had not been hurt by so long a time spent in a case without being exposed to the air, and that, as often happens to colours freshly put on, it has not turned rather yellow, thereby losing all its first effect. The remedy, if this has happened, is to expose it repeatedly to the sun, the rays of which absorb the superfluity of oil which causes this change; and if at any time it still turns brown, it must be exposed afresh to the sun.

Warmth is the only remedy for this serious mischief.

_Rubens._

EFFECTS OF TIME ON PAINTING

XCIX

The only way to judge of the treasures the Old Masters of whatever age have left us--whether in architecture, sculpture, or painting--with any hope of sound deduction, is to look at the work and ask oneself--"What was that like when it was new?" The Elgin Marbles are allowed by common consent to be the perfection of art. But how much of our feeling of reverence is inspired by time? Imagine the Parthenon as it must have looked with the frieze of the mighty Phidias fresh from the chisel.

Could one behold it in all its pristine beauty and splendour we should see a white marble building, blinding in the dazzling brightness of a southern sun, the figures of the exquisite frieze in all probability painted--there is more than a suspicion of that--and the whole standing out against the intense blue sky; and many of us, I venture to think, would cry at once, "How excessively crude." No; Time and Varnish are two of the greatest of Old Masters, and their merits and virtues are too often attributed by critics--I do not of course allude to the professional art-critics--to the painters of the pictures they have toned and mellowed. The great artists all painted in _bright_ colours, such as it is the fashion nowadays for men to decry as crude and vulgar, never suspecting that what they applaud in those works is merely the result of what they condemn in their contemporaries. Take a case in point--the "Bacchus and Ariadne" in the National Gallery, with its splendid red robe and its rich brown gra.s.s. You may rest a.s.sured that the painter of that bright red robe never painted the gra.s.s brown. He saw the colour as it was, and painted it as it was--distinctly green; only it has faded with time to its present beautiful mellow colour. Yet many men nowadays will not have a picture with green in it; there are even buyers who, when giving a commission to an artist, will stipulate that the canvas shall contain none of it. But G.o.d Almighty has given us green, and you may depend upon it it's a fine colour.

_Millais._

C

I must further dissent from any opinion that beauty of surface and what is technically called "quality" are mainly due to time. Sir John himself has quoted the early pictures of Rembrandt as examples of hard and careful painting, devoid of the charm and mystery so remarkable in his later work. The early works of Velasquez are still more remarkable instances, being, as they are, singularly tight and disagreeable--time having done little or nothing towards making them more agreeable.

_Watts._

CI

I am painting for thirty years hence.

_Monticelli._

CII