Part 10

An Academy figure should be drawn on the same principle that a ship is built. If you visit a ship-builder’s yard you will see vessels in all stages of progress, but the future character and destination of each are discernible almost from the first laying down of the keel. You can tell at a glance whether the future vessel is to be a clipper yacht, a collier brig, or a barge. If you revisit the yard a month or two afterward, you will find great progress. The builder has got the planking on, but the vessels have retained their original form. In another month, perhaps, they will be found decked, caulked, coppered, and ready for launching; but they have never lost the original lines given them.

So it should be with your Academy figures. They will, of course, be less complete on the third and fourth days than on the ninth or tenth; but in no stage of their progress should they present the formless, hopeless appearance they too often do.

Let me hasten to add that this inartistic way of drawing (though too common here) is not universal, and that those who have chosen the better path will find the benefit of it hereafter.

I will now proceed to give you a few words of advice about figure-drawing after you have left the schools and are painting pictures of your own.

It will seldom happen that when you have to introduce a nude or semi-nude figure into your picture, you can copy the model exactly as you would in the Academy schools. _There_ all you have to do is to copy what you see, but if you have to represent a Moses, a Prometheus, or an Andromeda, and your model has short legs and deformed feet, it will not do to be too literal in your copy of him.

Artists often say on these occasions that the model puts them out, and that they can get on better without nature. Of course, if they copy all the defects of their model they may, to a certain extent, be right in saying that they do better without nature; but even in this case I doubt it. Nature, though cramped and vulgarized, is better than feeble reminiscences of Michael Angelo or Carracci. An accomplished draughtsman will constantly refer to nature without servilely copying her. It is not possible that the great sculptors of antiquity found (even in Greece) such matchless specimens of humanity as the Theseus, the fighting gladiator, or the Milo Venus. It is still more incredible that they evolved these perfect forms out of their inner consciousness. No; they idealized and improved what they found, not so much by taking the head of one model and putting it on the shoulders of another, adding the arms of a third, as by the much more subtle process of keen and artistic observation of various types of beauty.

To descend from the time of Phidias to our own days, you must (if you wish to excel) pursue the same method. Do not copy all the defects of your model, but, on the other hand, do not fancy you can draw without a constant reference to nature. It is far from my intention to deprecate the study of anatomy, and particularly that kind of artistic anatomy which our Professor so ably teaches, but I am sure he would agree with me in saying that anatomy _alone_ would only enable you to build up a coldly correct form of the human figure without either beauty or individuality.

Anatomy, and, I may add, academic studies generally, must be looked upon as the grammar of figure-painting, and we all know that however necessary it may be for a writer to be grammatical, grammar alone will not give him an elegant or even a clear style.

So it is in drawing and painting. The knowledge of anatomy and drawing which you acquire here is not the end of art, but only the beginning.

It would be out of place in this lecture to give you rules of proportion for the human figure. These rules you can learn (if you care about learning them) elsewhere, but it may be well for me to give you a few hints as to when and where it is right to depart from them. First, as to the size of the head. You probably all know that the head measures from one seventh to one eighth of the height of the figure. Seven and a half heads to the figure is a good average proportion. If, however, you have to draw figures of heroic size, you will have to make the head barely one eighth, and the larger the size of your figures the smaller ought to be the relative size of the head. Michael Angelo exceeded even these limits, and some of his imitators, who have always copied his defects rather than his good qualities, have caricatured him by giving their figures a height of ten or eleven heads. There is a point beyond which the sublime becomes the ridiculous.

Whilst on this subject, I would observe that these proportions can only be depended on when the head is neither inclined up nor down. An upturned head measured from the chin to the top of the head is always much shorter than one whose facial angle is vertical, and a head inclined downward and measured in the same way is considerably longer.

In colossal figures, the hands and feet should be in proportion to the head, and therefore rather small for the body and limbs.

It is generally advisable to make the leg, from the patella downward, somewhat longer than it is in nature. Length of leg gives style and elegance to a figure.

In many of the antique statues (the Apollo and the Venus de Medici, for instance) this method of improving nature seems carried to excess, and I should recommend a middle path between the extreme length of the antique tibiæ and the short Dachshund-like legs of our models.

It must be remembered, that if you preserve the centre of the figure where it ought to be, you can only lengthen the tibia at the expense of the femur; and although a great length from the knee to the instep may be desirable, yet a very short thigh is certainly not an element of beauty. In short, and even in medium-sized models, the middle of the figure is generally too low, so that you may increase the length of the leg without at all diminishing the proportions of the thigh. It is a curious fact, that sitting and especially kneeling figures by the side of standing ones always appear small if represented of their exact relative size. I have always found this to be the case, and have invariably had to increase the dimensions of my kneeling figures, although by so doing I knew I was violating strict truth. As another instance of a case where a departure from perfect accuracy is necessary, I may mention the drawing of foreshortened arms and legs, particularly when they are only slightly foreshortened. Unless the outline and muscular development are kept rather fuller than it is in nature, the limbs will look withered and poor.

Style in drawing is not synonymous with correctness. There can be no true style without a certain amount of correctness, but, on the other hand, a drawing may be very correct and yet deficient in style. Photographs are a good illustration of the distinction.

No one will dispute the general accuracy of photography, and yet how few photographs possess the element of style!

A fine style of drawing may be defined as the delineation of beautiful forms in a masterly and simple manner. It must be founded on nature, but purified and refined by the continual study of the antique.

The execution should not be timid and labored, and on the other hand it should not obtrude itself by its dexterity. Michael Angelo and Raffaele are generally accepted as the great masters of style in drawing, and it is very noticeable how simple and unobtrusive their execution is.

Michael Angelo’s departure from natural proportions, and his often forced attitudes, give great offence to many modern artists, particularly to the mediævalists; and instead of recognizing in him (as Sir Joshua did) the great master (_par excellence_) of style in drawing, they strongly object to his peculiarities. For myself, I cannot say that I worship him to the extent that Sir Joshua did; but when I recollect the timid and meagre drawing of the Florentine and Umbrian schools of the period, and compare these poor forms with Michael Angelo’s “Creation of Adam and Eve” in the panels of the Sistine Chapel, I must acknowledge that his great reputation as a draughtsman and designer is fully deserved.

Sir J. Reynolds, in his discourses, with which most of you are familiar, has entered very fully into the question of style, or of what used in his day to be called the great style or the grand style.

I am not going to inflict on you many quotations from the celebrated discourses, but there is one sentence which I shall quote, as it will serve as a text on which to graft my own remarks on the subject of style. The passage is this:

“The whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists in being able to get above all singular forms, local customs, particularities, and details of every kind.”

It appears to me that Sir Joshua ought to have added at the end of his condemnation of “singular forms, particularities, and details of every kind,” the words, “when they are mean or trivial.” Forms may be full of character, and even beautiful, though singular. Many of the antique fawns’ heads, though singular enough, have the elements of style in them. Raffaelle’s cripple at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple is singular to the verge of grotesqueness, but he in no way detracts from the grand style of the cartoon. Many other examples of singular forms might be given from the works of acknowledged masters of style.

Then, again, if by “details” ugly details are meant, I quite agree with Sir Joshua in thinking them incompatible with a grand style, but it is detail which gives individuality to a figure; and in the fighting gladiator, the dancing fawn, and indeed in all the masterpieces of antiquity, the detail is most elaborate.

Neglect of detail is the besetting sin of those painters who aim at the grand style. They fail to see that the same process of selection may be applied to the detail, as well as to the general proportions of the figure.

In a portrait you must of course copy your sitter. You must take him as you do a wife, for better, for worse. He may have a cast in his eye or a conspicuous pimple on his nose, which, of course, as a faithful portraitist you are bound to reproduce. You are under no such obligation if you are painting an ideal head from the same individual. You may omit the pimple, and make him look straight. But your same sitter may have finely-formed furrows across his brow, or delicate expressive wrinkles extending from the corners of his eyes. Are you, in painting an ideal head, to neglect these landmarks of age and wisdom? I say, by no means, neither in painting nor sculpture.

The word “ideal,” from a misconception of its meaning, has come to be almost a term of reproach, and at a recent lecture at the Royal Institution some ridiculous parody of Canova was nick-named “Ideal,” and contrasted unfavorably with a masterly portrait bust by Donatello.

This is about as fair as if I, holding a brief on the other side, were to produce the Theseus as a specimen of the ideal, and Madame Tussaud’s effigy of the Claimant, of the realistic.

The “ideal,” or what Sir Joshua calls the grand style, means a generalization of beautiful forms, but it has nothing to do with neglect of detail, except when such detail is trivial, ugly, or superfluous.

It must also be remembered that detail does not mean furrows, wrinkles, and veins alone; it means also minute correctness in rendering of form.

The outward contour of any portion of the human form is never perfectly spherical, nor perfectly elliptic, nor perfectly straight, and it is the delicate perception and artistic execution of form which constitutes beauty.

Take the original of “The Laocoon,” and a common fourth-rate garden cast of the statue which has stood half-a-dozen English winters, and has had the benefit of several good coats of paint. In this cast all the beautiful passages of the original have disappeared, and the neglecters of detail get what they think so desirable, namely, a general want of precision and individuality. Michael Angelo himself, who is Sir Joshua’s high-priest of the grand style, gives plenty of detail whenever his work is not meant to be seen at a distance. In his “Moses” and other statues even the veins are carefully studied.

It is the custom, in this as in most other academies, for the student to begin with the Antique, and finish with the Life. The object of this is of course to avoid multiplying difficulties at first, and to accustom him to draw from an inanimate object before he proceeds to copy one that is always more or less moving.

I should, however, very much wish that those who are ambitious of following the highest walk of art would supplement their life studies by a return to the antique.

They would then perceive beauties which they little dreamt of during their apprenticeship. They would acquire a fine taste for form, and would learn to generalize the knowledge they had acquired in the life schools.

I would make this class of students the highest in the Academy, so that no one should feel that by returning to the antique he was being subjected to degradation. In this last stage of the student’s education, artistic studies from the antique should be made, and not what are called finished drawings, such as are at present executed to compete for prizes. The character and beauty of the antique should be given rapidly, and by simple means.

Before proceeding to speak of the difficult problem of drawing objects in motion, I should wish to impress on your minds the importance of being able to draw tolerably from memory.

All drawing is, strictly speaking, an effort of memory. You cannot look at your model and trace lines on your paper at one and the same time; there must be an interval of a second or two, and all that you have to do to acquire facility in drawing from memory, is gradually to prolong this interval.

If you visit a large forge, you are sure to see men in violent action, either working the rolling-mill, or forging large masses of iron under the Nasmyth hammer. You may be certain that their action is perfectly natural, and that it is not only natural but most appropriate to the work they are about. Men who have been rolling boiler-plate for years are sure to set about their work in the most practical way. Sketching on these occasions is impossible, except, perhaps, to a newspaper correspondent, but there is nothing to prevent your watching the action of these men intently.

You will notice the various positions the body arms, and legs assume to accomplish various tasks; how each action is fitted to the work. You will endeavor to draw from memory what you have noticed. Your drawings will doubtless be very imperfect, but they will be infinitely better than what you could have produced before taking stock of what you saw at the forge.

In London you may not have opportunities of seeing much in the way of action that is worth drawing, but even in London people skate, play lawn tennis, and other games which give rise to action, and in the country there is always plenty to observe if you keep your weather eye open.

Every one cannot become a Horace Vernet, but I think that any fairly good draughtsman may, after examining an object carefully, learn to reproduce it two or three hours later when he reaches home; and this kind of power (though never cultivated in academic schools) is one which every young artist ought to endeavor to acquire. Very young children (unless they are asleep) cannot be studied in the deliberate manner in which a professional grown-up model is studied. Wild animals, again, are difficult things to draw, because they cannot be depended upon to retain the same position for any length of time.

It is in these cases that an artist who has exercised his memory has an enormous advantage over one who is merely a good academic draughtsman.

* * * * *

I will now turn to the question of how to represent objects which are meant to appear in motion, as a man walking, running, or striking, a horse galloping, etc. I do not intend to investigate the laws of motion, nor to point out the muscles which are brought into action by violent movement, but simply to analyze the appearance to our sense of vision of these various actions.

In drawing inanimate objects which are at rest, that which is apparent to the eye really exists, and therefore by drawing what you see, you will be mathematically correct; but even this apparent truism does not hold good in every case.

For example, take the usual pictorial method of representing a star, which, although astronomically incorrect, gives the impression a bright star produces on our organs of sight, and is therefore the proper method. Seen through a telescope the planets become round disks, and the brightest fixed stars mere points, and there can be no doubt of the non-existence of any radiation; and yet the _appearance_ of it is so constant that the terms “star-shaped,” “star-fish,” etc., are always used to designate objects of this form; and it is quite consistent with the soundest principles of art to represent what _appears_ to be, rather than what _is_.

When we come to consider moving objects, we find plenty of contradiction between what appears to be and what is. There are many moving objects which present no difficulty. Driving clouds or a ship in full sail are easily drawn, because, although moving rapidly through the air, their form varies very little as they proceed, and their apparent form is in no way different from their true form. Even the ever-heaving waves of the open sea, though by no means easy to draw correctly, offer no discrepancy between what you see and what _is_.

The big Atlantic rollers, and particularly the short, steep, irregular waves one sometimes meets with in the Channel, are awkward things to draw, especially to a sea-sick artist; but, at any rate, unless he is very far gone, he sees nothing which does not really exist, and no effect of wind on the waves is so rapid that he cannot see it.

The case, however, is widely different if you have to represent a rotating wheel. The spokes of the wheel are there, but it is impossible to see them. All you will be able to make out is a kind of flickering radiation, with perhaps some faint traces of concentric circles caused by mud spots or other marks on the spokes.

Even when the wheel turns very slowly the spokes become blurred and confused, and when it revolves briskly they are lost sight of altogether.

This is an extreme case, in which nothing in the way of spokes is distinguishable, and therefore nothing can be done; but when we see a man running or a horse galloping we _do_ distinguish the legs both of man and horse. We get a decided impression both of form and action, and it is our business as artists to convey that impression on paper or canvas. It is _not_ our business to draw man or horse in positions which may be true, but which are contrary to our own impressions. That there are plenty of such positions I hope to prove by means of these diagrams.

We have here two men walking, one of whom has his left leg forward and the other his right leg.

This diagram represents them going along fair heel-and-toe, perhaps not very elegantly, but at any rate it conveys the idea of walking.

Now it is self-evident that, in walking, the legs must pass each other at every step. Let us endeavor to draw our pedestrian at the moment when one leg is passing in front of the other, and we shall find it impossible to give the idea of fair heel-and-toe walking.

Now, why is this? The reason appears to me to be twofold; in the first place, at each step there is a momentary pause when both feet are on the ground; and the eye seizes on this pause, and naturally associates the position the legs are in with the action of walking. Secondly, it is only in this position that any idea can be given of the length of the step and the rate of the man’s progress. A photograph taken at the moment when one leg is passing the other, would not convey the impression of forward movement.

In nature it is the actual motion of the leg which causes the attitude to appear all right; but if we could arrest it instantaneously, the action would appear as cramped in nature as it does on paper.

During a thunder-storm at night, if you should ever happen to see a walking or a running man illumined by a flash of lightning, you will notice that he does not appear to be moving at all, unless the flash occurs just at the time when his legs are fully extended. I have myself seen the curious effect of a sudden flash of light on a moving carriage and horses. The horses, though trotting fully eight miles an hour, did not seem to be moving, and every spoke in the wheels was as plainly seen as if they had not been rotating.

What I have said about the action of walking applies equally to running. The attitude appears always more or less cramped unless the moment is seized when the runner’s legs are fully extended.

The illustration of running given in Flaxman’s lectures is wrong in more than one particular. In the first place, the heel ought not to touch the ground; it never does in running. Secondly, the figure appears poised on his right foot; indeed, he would fall rather backward than forward; and it is essentially necessary, in expressing the action of running, that the figure should appear to fall forward whenever one foot is on the ground.

In drawing the human figure either running or walking, this must always be attended to, otherwise the figure looks like an academy model, with his hind foot comfortably propped up on a box. It is possible that for a fractional part of a second, a running man’s leg might assume the vertical position given it by Flaxman; but this position, even if true, is one of those which ought never to be selected.

In the next fractional part of the second, the foot being arrested by the ground, and the body moving rapidly forward, the leg must assume a slanting position, and our man will be off his balance, and under the necessity of rapidly bringing to the front his other leg; and thus the idea of running is given, as in the preceding diagram.

Flaxman’s floating and aërial female figures are exquisitely graceful, and here he is seen at his best; but I think that the action of his male figures is rather academic; that is, they suggest too much the life-school, where the model is placed in a position which he can hold for a considerable length of time.

I am quite aware that in a severe bas-relief composition, or in a grave historical picture, a runner should not be represented as he might appear at Lilliebridge grounds, or racing after a cricket-ball at Lord’s. He should proceed more by comparatively slow bounds than by quick steps, but the sentiment of forward impetus should be just the same. There is a fine example of a running figure in one of Raffaelle’s _stanze_. I think it is in the “Heliodorus Expelled from the Temple.”

In the next diagram, the action approximates to Flaxman’s, but there is this important difference, that the left foot is in the air, and we feel that before it gets a good grip of the ground, the body will have moved on considerably, and the balance of the figure will have a strong forward tendency, as in the last illustration.

Any attempt to represent a man running whilst one leg is crossing the other, will be just as hopeless as to give the idea of walking under similar conditions.