Part 12

In my opinion a colored sketch or water-color drawing gains brilliancy by being mounted on a white ground, whereas, according to theory, the dazzling whiteness of the mount ought to make the drawing look dingy.

In the same way, supposing you have painted a series of figures for the decoration of a pediment or frieze, and you find that your figures are dull and heavy in color, how are you to remedy this without repainting them? My answer would be, Give them a gold or light bright-colored background. It is not only that this bright background enlivens the whole work, but it has the effect of making each individual figure appear less dull in color.

Although experience has taught me that these apparently anomalous effects are produced with color, yet, of course, where black and white alone are concerned, the law of contrast follows its natural course; that is, if you want to give brilliancy to a white spot, surround it with black; and if you want to give darkness to a black spot, surround it with white.

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In a composition of several figures, it is almost always desirable to assist the effect by selecting white or light-colored draperies for the figures in the light, and dark colors for the figures in the shade.

This principle may, of course, be carried too far, but as a general rule it may be depended on.

A good deal has been said by Sir J. Reynolds and others in praise of a simple palette, and with much of this I cordially agree; still I think that in the ordinary practice of figure-painting nine or ten colors are indispensable.

If I give you my own palette, it is not that I wish to dictate to you what colors to employ, but simply as a foundation for the remarks I am going to make about the colors generally used. First, with regard to white.

White lead is the pigment all but universally used in oil-painting. Many years ago I tried zinc-white. It was strongly recommended, on the ground that it did not turn yellow or black with age like white lead. I believe it has this good quality, but it wants opacity and body; and although I think it might be used with great advantage in skies, or for scumbling, I don’t think it can ever replace white lead for flesh-painting.

We next come to Naples yellow. I am no chemist, and do not profess to tell you what Naples yellow is made of, any more than I could inform you of what London butter is made. There are a great many shades of this useful color, but I think that the pale greenish variety is the most serviceable. The French have _jaune de Naples ordinaire_, _jaune brilliant_, and three shades of _jaune Pinard_. Our colormen have pale and deep Naples yellow, of various shades, and lemon yellow besides. Of all these varieties, I prefer the light-colored _jaune Pinard_. In painting flesh it will be found useful, especially in the reflected light of the shadows, where white lead would probably create heaviness and opacity; but it is in light-colored draperies, in gold-embroidered brocades, and in glowing sunsets that Naples yellow of some kind becomes indispensable. Yellow ochre ought to be a simple earth, tinted yellow in nature’s laboratory; but, like the aforesaid Naples yellow, you cannot tell what the contents of the tube you purchase as yellow ochre really are.

The _terra chiara_, which, in Italian fresco, replaces our yellow ochre, is perfectly durable, but no yellow ochre that I ever bought in London would resist the action of the lime.

Hence I conclude that the yellow ochre of the trade is not a genuine earth. However that may be, it is quite indispensable on the palette, and in oil-paintings seems perfectly durable. Roman ochre, golden ochre, and other varieties are quite unnecessary if you have yellow ochre on your palette; but brown ochre is capital for one particular purpose, and for nothing else that I know of. The purpose of which I am speaking is for painting a dead white luminous bit of wall or pavement. If you mellow your white lead with a very little brown ochre, you will get a luminous compound which is neither yellow nor red, and is totally dissimilar to your flesh tint.

Of raw sienna I would speak with great respect, as it is perfectly durable in fresco-work, where yellow ochre drops off the wall and disintegrates every thing it is mixed with. Nevertheless, raw sienna wants body; when ground in oil, and except perhaps for landscape-painting, I hardly ever use it.

Before exhausting the yellows, I may mention that the only violent yellow you ought ever to admit on your palette is cadmium. Chromes of all kinds are rank poison, and cadmium, though quite safe, is a difficult color to manage with discretion.

Light red is burnt ochre, and is one of the most useful colors of the palette for painting flesh. Mixed with white and a very little yellow it is the foundation of all flesh-painting. The French light red, or “_brun rouge_,” as it is called, is much better than ours. It is a little more pink in color, and is generally pleasanter to work with.

We now come to vermilion. Of this color there are two kinds in common use, the Chinese and the so-called extract of vermilion. I should think it hardly necessary to have both kinds on the palette, but some artists, who are much better colorists than I can pretend to be, think otherwise; and although they omit altogether umbers and browns of all sorts, yet never lay their palette without both sorts of vermilion.

Burnt sienna is the next color on our palette, and is of universal use. It is the best color to use for giving warmth to shades, and for preparing draperies or stuffs which are ultimately to be blue or green. Of course, one may use it too much, but it never gives opacity and heaviness, which any other red would do if employed for a similar purpose.

There are many other reds. Venetian red is hardly to be distinguished from light red. Indian red is a deep laky red, and very opaque. I don’t think it is much used now, but formerly it was in great request for painting flesh. Etty was very fond of it.

The so-called Mars reds are perfectly durable, but all these colors are quite unnecessary.

Of the lakes the most useful for general purposes is madder lake. Some of them, such as yellow lake and scarlet lake, are very fugitive and not safe to use. Rose madder and purple madder are expensive, and, except for very rich stuffs, are seldom wanted. There are several varieties of brown and yellow madders, which may be used with advantage in landscape, but which are never really wanted for figure-painting.

Green is a color which is not absolutely necessary if you have blue on the palette, still it is sometimes very useful for the half tones. Oxide of chromium is the best of the decided greens, but I think that the French _vert de Cobalt_ is more generally useful. This is a bluish green, and a most excellent color for painting skies.

_Terra verte_ has no body in it, and I find it turns black very speedily. Malachite green is a sickly color that I cannot recommend; and what we used to call emerald green, but which the French call _vert veronese_, is rank poison on the palette.

Almost all the rich dark greens required for foliage and verdure in landscape-painting can be obtained by a judicious mixture of blues and yellows. French ultramarine, mixed with raw or burnt sienna, gives a strong dark green, which is not at all heavy, and every landscape-painter discovers new combinations of blues and blacks with yellows and reds, which enable him to give the infinite variety of nature.

As for blues, the only colors I can recommend are cobalt and French ultramarine. The colors known as ultramarine ash and mineral gray are sometimes useful, but they can very easily be imitated on the palette. I never use either Prussian, Antwerp, or any other cyaneous blue; and I think that, at any rate for figure-painting, they are unnecessary.

You will observe that I have not put any brown on the palette, not even umber.

I am quite aware that with many painters, especially English ones, raw umber is considered a _sine quâ non_, and I thought so myself a few years ago.

I took, however, a dislike to it from a conviction that it turned black, and I fancy that I have done better since I discarded it. It is very seldom seen on the palettes of foreign artists. Asphaltum and bitumen are very seductive colors, but, as every one knows, they have been the ruin of many excellent pictures, and it is well to steer clear of them. I think, however, that either color, when mixed with white lead, is tolerably safe, and nothing else that I know of gives so effectively and pleasantly the gray hair and fur of animals.

In blacks, you have ivory or blue black, both excellent colors, and there is also a charcoal black which is much more gray than either of the others, and has very little body. I think, when mixed with white, that it may be useful in painting clouds. It is generally gritty and badly ground, but for the purpose I mention, I don’t think this fault matters much.

Before taking leave of the palette, I may be expected to say something about brushes and mediums.

First, as to brushes:

As to the size of the brushes, this depends very much on the taste and habits of the artist.

I am fond of small ones myself, not necessarily sables, but small hog’s hair tools, and I should recommend them to beginners, who wish to express form as well as color in their work.

I never use flat brushes for painting flesh, and very seldom for any thing else, but this is merely an old habit.

Every one is perfectly right to use the tools which he finds the most convenient, only let them be good of their kind, and always kept in working order.

Now as to mediums:

This is a subject on which I speak with diffidence, as opinions vary greatly about these compounds. I think, however, that I may safely say that the less they are used by students the better. By mediums, I mean the various copal jellies which are sold in tubes, and placed on the palette like the colors.

I do not say that they are unsafe to use in moderation, but moderation is said by teetotalers to be a virtue more difficult to practise than total abstinence.

For a great many years I used them, and have only quite lately discarded them altogether in favor of clarified poppy oil. This oil is a very slow drier, and is, therefore, peculiarly suitable for Academy students’ work. It continually happens that a student prepares a larger portion of the figure than he can finish in one day. The next day it is too dry to continue the modelling, and yet not dry enough for glazing and repainting.

If he has painted it with poppy oil, he will find it in a very workable state for two or even three days.

Nothing can be safer, provided of course the picture is painted throughout with the same slow drier. The best and purest poppy oil is known by the name of _huile chromophile_. It has a strong smell of castor-oil, which to susceptible persons may be rather an objection.

I shall not attempt a criticism of the various oils and essences which are to be found at the color-man’s. What is one man’s meat is another man’s poison, and I even go farther and say, that the same man at one period of his career will swear by some compound which a few years afterward he will regard with special aversion. The only advice I give to young artists is to use the simplest materials they can, both for mediums and colors; and I may add, that the better the colorist, the simpler his palette generally is.

I have seen on some foreign artists’ palettes as many as six different kinds of lake, when one would have been quite sufficient, and I need hardly say that whatever other merit their pictures may have had, they were not distinguished for brilliant color.

After all, it is only natural that it should be so.

An artist who is not a good colorist must (unless he is blinded by conceit) have some suspicion of his deficiency, and would naturally endeavor by a more elaborate palette to remedy his shortcomings, just as some of our bad cooks endeavor to improve their cuisine by a liberal use of made sauces. With artists as with cooks, the remedy is unsuccessful; in both cases it is taste that is wanted, and not a multiplicity of ingredients.

If a student has a germ of feeling for color, he may develop it into a plant of respectable growth. He will probably never become a great colorist, but he may at any rate learn to attain a certain degree of harmony and propriety, qualities which are not always found in the works of noted colorists.

I would strongly deprecate the habit of painting pictures up to exhibition pitch. Paint them up to the pitch you see in nature, and you will have quite enough to do. Exasperation is not force, and although a soberly-colored work may be eclipsed on the exhibition walls by a dazzling neighbor, yet it will more than hold its own when removed from the glare and glitter of its surroundings.

Color, as understood by many people, means violent contrasts of reds, blues, and yellows. Now, I am far from saying that strong contrasts and positive colors are always inharmonious. We have (even in our climate) plenty of wild flowers to prove the contrary. The scarlet poppy, the blue corn flower, the common yellow buttercup, are all as positive in color as red, blue, and yellow well can be, but the green stalk and leaves of each plant harmonize perfectly with the flower, and the contrast, though strong, is never offensive. The kind of contrasts I am deprecating are perhaps best known by the epithet “vulgar.” Look at the cheap colored glass windows which abound in our country churches, and which are generally much admired by the congregation. As a rule, the more crude the colors, the more grateful are the farmers and their wives to the donors of these windows for giving them something cheerful to look at during the service. We need not go into the country for specimens of vulgar taste in color. I never pass a London pillar letter-box without an uncomfortable feeling, particularly after it has been newly painted.

The post-office authorities are certainly not bound to educate the eye of the British public, and their object in painting these post-boxes vermilion was of course to make them more conspicuous, just as a red flag is used to indicate danger. But the daily press, and particularly that sheet which claims the largest circulation in the world, praised the authorities for “giving us a bit of color” to refresh the eye. Had these letter-boxes been painted of a laky Indian red, or of a bronze color, they would have been unobjectionable, but no one would have thought of commending them as “bits of color.”

Again, if we consider the scheme of clothing the volunteer regiments in scarlet, and try to account for the enthusiasm with which certain corps have hailed the innovation, we shall find that the “bit of color” is at the bottom of it. It can hardly be supposed that the gallant East-end volunteers wish to be mistaken for militiamen; it must be that the scarlet cloth is thought becoming, both by themselves and their female relatives. If I am not mistaken, the West-end corps, such as the Queen’s, the Inns of Court, and especially the artists, will be very loth to give up their gray uniforms and don the national red.

I am afraid that the average Englishman’s taste in color (though much improved of late years) is still but little more refined than the West African’s. If he no longer buys hideous wall-papers and vulgar carpets, it is not that he dislikes them, but that he does not know where to get them, so great has been the improvement in our manufactures. If we turn from the English Philistine to the English artist, we find ourselves at the opposite pole. He has often such a horror of loud, vulgar tints, that he is apt to fall into the affectation of painting on too subdued a scale, and I would caution you against this affectation. Truth is not necessarily dull, nor is simplicity monochromatic. There is no danger of the general public, which delights in the red coats of our soldiers, and thinks the crudest colored dyes the prettiest, encouraging you to paint sad olive pictures. The danger comes from the select few who are gifted with æsthetic tastes, and who, having recently awakened to the fact that crude contrasts do not constitute color, fall into the opposite extreme, and praise whatever is negative and colorless.

The dismal view of nature seems to me an unhealthy view; and although it may be commended as a reaction against vulgar, tawdry color, the art which it tends to foster is morbid and unsound.

Beauty of color is a much more subtle and indefinable quality than beauty of form. We are all pretty well agreed that the antique is the nearest approach to perfection of form which has ever been made, but we are by no means agreed about color. Some will think that Titian was the greatest colorist that ever lived, some Velasquez, some Paul Veronese, and some Rembrandt; and it is not only individual opinions that differ, but the collective opinion of the age. We all are familiar with instances of pictures which are now highly prized for their color, but which within the present century failed to gain admission to any exhibition.

Delacroix’s pictures used to be regularly rejected, or very badly hung, and these same pictures are now considered the gems of the gallery at Versailles. On our side of the Channel we used to turn out Muller’s, and, I believe, Constable’s pictures. These acts of what we should call injustice were not committed from any Academic spite or jealousy. They were simply the expression of the general public opinion at that time.

It may be noted that our predecessors in this country were by no means indifferent to color. On the contrary, they prided themselves on being the _crème de la crème_ of colorists, and any one who expressed admiration for the color of Gros and Géricault would be looked upon as a kind of traitor to the English school.

It was a generally accepted article of belief in England, that the French could draw, but knew nothing about color, and that for fine coloring you must look at home.

We have less national prejudice now, and I hope that we are in a better path toward forming a right judgment than our predecessors were. They almost always judged of the color of a picture by comparing it with similar works by the old masters, and if it reminded them of Titian, Correggio, Rubens, or some other acknowledged colorist, it was pronounced a fine thing. If it were unlike the work of any accepted master of color, it was thought nothing of, however true it might be to nature. Hence as Constable’s pictures resembled neither Claude, Cuyp, nor Ruysdael, they were disliked by the connoisseurs of the period, and were quite unsalable.

A remnant of this artificial way of judging pictures still lingers amongst us, but, speaking generally, the present generation has ceased to take this narrow view of color.

Mistakes in judgment are no doubt made, and posterity may pronounce a different verdict on some of our favorites; still the principle on which we decide whether a man is to be called a colorist or not, is sound.

The principle is briefly this:--That however unusual or novel the coloring of a picture may be, if it reminds one vividly of some harmony of nature, if there is space and air in it, and if the same atmosphere pervades the whole canvas, it is the work of a real colorist.

I have abstained in this lecture from giving you any of the old-fashioned recipes for coloring (such as keeping the shades warm and lights cool, and _vice versâ_), because I think that all such rules have a tendency to cramp and fetter the artist who follows them. Nothing can be more dissimilar than the works of the Florentine Ghirlandajo and the portraits of Rembrandt, and yet few will deny the right of both these painters to rank as colorists. I might bracket Titian with Rubens, or Correggio with Ostade, to show how broad is the path which leads to excellence in color.

An innate sense of the harmonious color in nature, and a steadfast determination, by hook or by crook, to reproduce an echo of this harmony on your canvas, must ultimately lead to a good result.

No original colorist could tell you by what process he arrives at the effects he obtains. His only secret (if secret it be) is that he observes more closely and intelligently than other men. It is not the colors he uses, nor the canvas, nor the medium, nor even the technical skill of his hand which cause his pictures to look like nature, whilst his neighbor’s look like paint. It is simply what phrenologists would call his bump of color, but what I (who do not believe in bumps) would term his keen appreciation of the harmony of nature, and his retentive memory which enables him to reproduce in his studio the fleeting effects he has seen.

I cannot promise you that by adopting the same method you will all become great colorists; but of this you may rest assured, that habits of observation and repeated attempts at rendering honestly and faithfully what you have seen, will tend to improve your color far more than all the rules that have ever been laid down, and all the lectures that have ever been delivered.

LECTURE VIII.

ON DECORATIVE PAINTING.

By decorative painting, I mean moral figure-painting. Ornamental designs are a very important factor in all decorative work, but as this branch of the art is out of my province, I shall say nothing about it.

The great mistake most artists make when they have a large wall-space to decorate with figures, is to proceed in the same way as they would for an easel picture. Elaborate finish, powerful light and shade, expression and individuality in the heads, are all excellent qualities in an easel picture, but they are by no means necessary in decorative work.

On the other hand, a well-balanced and harmonious composition, a pure and grand style of drawing, and great breadth and luminosity of coloring are absolutely essential for good decorative work.

These are all qualities which are never got by dexterity of hand, dodges about color, or chance, to which much of the fascination of oil-painting on canvas must be attributed. They are only attainable by patient and laborious work. I will endeavor to show you, step by step, what the nature of this work is.

It is always advisable for decorative work of any importance to make a cartoon of the size of the painting, and, if possible, after the completion of the cartoon, to have it put up _in situ_, so that the size of the figures, the arrangement of the groups, and the general effect may be judged of.

If the result is satisfactory, the work may be considered three parts done. Should there, however, be any alterations required, they should be carried out on the cartoon. Nothing which requires alteration should be left knowingly. There will always be plenty of unforeseen changes suggesting themselves during the progress of the painting, without complicating matters by having an imperfect cartoon.

For fresco-painting a cartoon is absolutely necessary.

In the course of this lecture I will describe the process of fresco-painting. Before, however, proceeding to speak of the different methods of painting, we will first consider the preliminary operations.

The first thing to be done, even before a stroke of charcoal sullies the spotless purity of our cartoon paper, is to get an idea of the kind of arrangement which it will be best to adopt. This pursuit of an idea for the general arrangement of our subject is of course entirely brain-work, but as soon as an idea is got, the hand comes into play; not, however, with charcoal on the big cartoon, but with pen and ink or pencil in the scrap-book.