Chapter 6
Forget not therefore that the principal part of Painting or Drawing after the life consisteth in the truth of the line, as one sayeth in a place that he hath seen the picture of her Majesty in four lines very like, meaning by four lines but the plain lines, as he might as well have said in one line, but best in plain lines without shadowing; for the line without shadow showeth all to a good Judgement, but the shadow without line showeth nothing, as, for example, though the shadow of a man against a white wall sheweth like a man, yet it is not the shadow but the line of the shadow, which is so true that it resembleth excellently well, as drawn by that line about the shadow with a coal, and when the shadow is gone it will resemble better than before, and may, if it be a fair face, have sweet countenance even in the line; for the line only giveth the countenance, but both line and colour giveth the lively likeness, and shadows shew the roundness and the effect or Defect of the light wherein the picture was drawn. This makes me to remember the words also and reasoning of her Majesty when first I came in her highness' presence to draw, who after shewing me how she noted great difference of shadowing in the works and Diversity of Drawers of sundry nations, and that the Italians who had the name to be cunningest and to Draw best, shadowed not. Requiring of me the reason of it, seeing that best to shew oneself needeth no shadow of place but rather the open light, to which I granted, affirmed that shadows in pictures were indeed caused by the shadow of the place or coming in of the light at only one way into the place at some small or high window, which many workmen covet to work in for ease to their sight, and to give unto them a grosser line and a more apparent line to be deserved, and maketh the work imborse well and show very well afar off, which to Limning work needeth not, because it is to be viewed of necessity in hand near unto the Eye. Here her Majesty conceived the reason, and therefore chose her place to sit in for that purpose in the open alley of a goodly garden, where no tree was near nor any shadow at all, save that as the Heaven is lighter than the earth, so must that little shadow that was from the earth; this her Majesty's curious Demand hath greatly bettered my Judgement, besides divers other like questions in Art by her most excellent Majesty, which to speak or write of were fitter for some better clerk. This matter only of the light let me perfect that no wise man longer remain in Error of praising much shadows in pictures which are to be viewed in hand; great pictures high or far off Require hard shadows to become the better then nearer in story work better than pictures of the life; for beauty and good favour is like clear truth, which is not shadowed with the light nor made to be obscured, as a picture a little shadowed may be borne withal for the rounding of it, but so greatly smutted or Darkened as some use Disgrace it, and in like truth ill told, if a very well favoured woman show in a place where is great shadow, yet showeth she lovely not because of the shadow but because of her sweet favour consisting in the line or proportion, even that little which the light scarcely showeth greatly pleaseth, proving the Desire to see more.
_Nicholas Hilliard._
CLX
The lights cast from small windows also present a strong contrast of light and shadow, more especially if the chamber lit by them is large; and this is not good to use in painting.
_Leonardo._
CLXI
When you are drawing from nature the light should be from the north, so that it may not vary; and if it is from the south keep the window covered with a curtain so that though the sun shine upon it all day long the light will undergo no change. The elevation of the light should be such that each body casts a shadow on the ground which is of the same length as its height.
_Leonardo._
CLXII
Above all let the figures that you paint have sufficient light and from above, that is, all living persons whom you paint, for the people whom you see in the streets are all lighted from above; and I would have you know that you have no acquaintance so intimate but that if the light fell on him from below you would find it difficult to recognise him.
_Leonardo._
CLXIII
If by accident it should happen, that when drawing or copying in chapels, or colouring in other unfavourable places, you cannot have the light on your left hand, or in your usual manner, be sure to give relief to your figures or design according to the arrangement of the windows which you find in these places, which have to give you light, and thus accommodating yourself to the light on which side soever it may be, give the proper lights and shadows. Or if it were to happen that the light should enter or shine right opposite or full in your face, make your lights and shades accordingly; or if the light should be favourable at a window larger than the others in the above-mentioned places, adopt always the best light, and try to understand and follow it carefully, because, wanting this, your work would be without relief, a foolish thing without mastery.
_Cennino Cennini._
CLXIV
You have heard about Merlin's magic art; here in Venice you may _see_ that of Titian, Giorgione, and all the others. In the Palazzo Barbarigo we went to the room which is said to have been Titian's studio for some time. The window faces the south, and the sun is shining on the floor by two o'clock. This made us think, whether you should not, after all, let the sun be there while you are painting. A temperate sunlight in the room makes the lights golden, and through the many, crossing, warm reflections the shadows get clearer and more transparent. But the difficulty is to know how to deal with such a shimmer; it is easier to paint with the light coming from the north. On the other hand, you see that the Venetians never tried to render in painting the impression of real, open sunlight. Their delicate sense of colour found a greater delight in looking at the fine fused tones and shades which are seen when the sunlight is only reflected under the clear blue sky and between the high palaces. Therefore, you often think that you see, for instance, groups of gondoliers on the Piazzetta in gay silvery notes, as in any painting by Paolo Veronese; and in the warm daylight in the great, gorgeous halls of the Palazzo Ducale there are still figures walking about in a colour as golden and fresh as if they were paintings by Titian.
_E. Lundgren._
PORTRAITURE
CLXV
Painting the face of a pretty young girl is like carving a portrait in silver. There may be great elaboration, but no likeness will be forthcoming. It is better to put the elaboration into the young lady's clothes, and trust to a touch here and a stroke there to bring out her beauty as it really is.
_Ku K'ai-Chih_ (Chinese, fourth century).
CLXVI
Portraiture may be great art. There is a sense, indeed, in which it is perhaps the greatest art of any. And portraiture involves expression. Quite true, but expression of what? Of a passion, an emotion, a mood? Certainly not. Paint a man or a woman with the damned "pleasing expression," or even the "charmingly spontaneous" so dear to the "photographic artist," and you see at once that the thing is a mask, as silly as the old tragic and comic mask. The only expression allowable in great portraiture is the expression of character and moral quality, not of anything temporary, fleeting, and accidental. Apart from portraiture you don't want even so much, or very seldom: in fact, you only want types, symbols, suggestions. The moment you give what people call expression, you destroy the typical character of heads and degrade them into portraits which stand for nothing.
_Burne-Jones._
CLXVII
It produces a magnificent effect to place whole figures and groups, which are in shade, against a light field. The contrary, _i.e._ figures that are in light against a dark field, cannot be so perfectly expressed, because every illuminated figure, with or without a side light, will have some shade. The nearest approach to this is when the object so treated happen to be very fair, with other objects reflecting into their shades.
Shade against shade is indefinite. Light and shade against shade are mediate. Light against shade is perspicuous. Light and shade against light is mediate. Light against light is indefinite or indistinct.
_Edward Calvert._
CLXVIII
Most of the masters have had a way, slavishly imitated by their schools and following, of exaggerating the darkness of the backgrounds which they give their portraits. They thought in this way to make the heads more interesting, but this darkness of background, in conjunction with faces lighted as we see them in nature, deprives these portraits of that character of simplicity which should be dominant in them. This darkness places the objects intended to be thrown into relief in quite abnormal conditions. Is it natural that a face seen in light should stand out against a really dark background--that is to say, one which receives no light? Ought not the light which falls on the figure to fall also on the wall, or the tapestry against which the figure stands? Unless it should happen that the face stands out against drapery of an extremely dark tone--but this condition is very rare, or against the entrance of a cavern or cellar entirely deprived of daylight--a circumstance still rarer--the method cannot but appear factitious.
The chief charm in a portrait is simplicity. I do not count among true portraits those in which the aim has been to idealise the features of a famous man when the painter has to reconstruct the face from traditional likenesses; there, invention rightly plays a part. True portraits are those painted from contemporaries. We like to see them on the canvas as we meet them in daily life, even though they should be persons of eminence and fame.
_Delacroix._
CLXIX
Verestchagin says the old-fashioned way of setting a portrait-head against a dark ground is not only unnecessary, but being usually untrue when a person is seen by daylight, should be exploded as false and unreal. But it is certain a light garish background behind a painted head will not permit that head to have the importance it should have in reality, when the actual facts, solidity, movement, play of light and shadow, personal knowledge of the individual or his history, joined to the effects of different planes, distances, materials, &c., will combine to invest the reality with interests the most subtle and dexterous artistic contrivances cannot compete with, and which certainly the artist cannot with reason be asked to resign. A sense of the power of an autocrat, from whose lips one might be awaiting consignment to a dungeon or death, would be as much felt if he stood in front of the commonest wall-paper, in the commonest lodging-house, in the meanest watering-place, but no such impressions could be conveyed by the painter who depicted such surroundings. Lastly, I must strongly dissent from the opinion recently expressed by some, that seems to imply that a portrait-picture need have no interest excepting in the figure, and that the background had better be without any. This may be a good principle for producing an effect on the walls of an exhibition-room, where the surroundings are incongruous and inharmonious; an intellectual or beautiful face should be more interesting than any accessories the artist could put into the background. No amount of elaboration in the background could disturb the attention of any one looking at the portrait of Julius the Second by Raphael, also in the Tribune, which I cannot help thinking is _the_ finished portrait in the world. A portrait is _the most truly historical picture_, and this the most monumental and historical of portraits. The longer one looks at it the more it demands attention. A superficial picture is like a superficial character--it may do for an acquaintance, but not for a friend. One never gets to the end of things to interest and admire in many old portrait-pictures.
_Watts._
CLXX
There is one point that has always forced itself upon me strongly in comparing the portrait-painting qualities of Rembrandt and Velasquez. In Rembrandt I see a delightful human sympathy between himself and his sitters; he is always more interested in that part of them which conforms to some great central human type, and is comparatively uninterested in those little distinctions which delight the caricaturist and are the essence of that much applauded quality, "the catching of a likeness." I don't believe he was a very good catcher of likenesses, but I am sure his rendering was the biggest and fullest side of that man--there is always a fine ironical appreciation of character moulded by circumstance; whereas in Velasquez I find the other thing.
_C. W. Furse._
CLXXI
I have wished to oblige the beholder, on looking at the portrait, to think wholly of the face in front of him, and nothing of the man who painted it. And it is my opinion that the artist who paints portraits in this way need have no fear of the pitfall of _mannerism_ either in treatment or touch.
_Watts._
CLXXII
Let us ... examine modern portraits. I shut my eyes and think of those full lengths in the New Gallery and the Academy, which I have not seen this year, but whose every detail is familiar to me. You will find that a uniform light stretches from their chins to their toes; in all probability the background is a slab of grey into whose insensitive surface neither light nor air penetrates; or perhaps that most offensive portrait-painter's property, a sham room in which none of the furniture has been seen in its proper relation of light to the face, but has been muzzed in with slippery insincerity, and with an amiable hope that it may take its place behind the figure. The face, in all but one or two portraits, will lack definition of plane--will be flat and flabby. A white spot on the nose and high light on the forehead will serve for modelling; little or no attempt will have been made to get a light which will help the observer to concentrate on the head, or give the head its full measure of rotundity--your eyes will wander aimlessly from cheek to chiffon, from glinting satin to the pattern on the floor, forgetful of the purpose of the portrait, and only arrested by some dab of pink or mauve, which will remind you that the artist is developing a somewhat irrelevant colour scheme.
For solidity, for the realisation of the great constructive planes of things, for that element of sculpture which exists in all good painting, you will look in vain. I am sure that in an average Academy there are not three real attempts to get the values--that is, the inevitable relation of objects in light and shade that must exist under any circumstances--and not one attempt to contrive an artificial composition of light and shade which shall concentrate the attention of the spectator on the crucial point, and shall introduce these delightful effects of dark things against light and light against dark, which lend such richness and variety of tone and such vitality of construction to Titian, Rembrandt, and Reynolds. If we turn for a moment to the National Gallery and look at Gainsborough's "Baillie Family," or Reynolds' "Three Ladies decorating the Term of Hymen," we see at once the difference; in Gainsborough's case the group is in a mellow flood of light, there are no strong shadows on any of the faces, and none of the figures are used to cast shadows on other figures in the group; and yet as you look you see the whole light of the picture culminating in the central head of the mother, the sides and bottom of the picture fade off into artificial shadow, exquisitely used, without which that glorious light would have been dissipated over the picture, losing all its effectiveness and carrying power. See how finely he has understood the reticent tones of the man behind, and how admirably the loosely painted convention of landscape background is made to carry on the purely artificial arrangement of light and shade. In the Reynolds the shadowed figure on the left, and the shadows that flit across the skirts of the other two figures, and the fine relief of the dark trees, give a wonderful richness of design to a picture that is not in other respects of the highest interest.
_C. W. Furse._
CLXXIII
Why have I not before now finished the miniature I promised to Mrs. Butts? I answer I have not till now in any degree pleased myself, and now I must entreat you to excuse faults, for portrait painting is the direct contrary to designing and historical painting in every respect. If you have not nature before you for every touch, you cannot paint portrait; and if you have nature before you at all, you cannot paint history. It was Michael Angelo's opinion and is mine.
_Blake._
CLXXIV
I often find myself wondering why people are so frequently dissatisfied with their portraits, but I think I have discovered the principal reason--they are not pleased with themselves, and therefore cannot endure a faithful representation. I find it is the same with myself. I cannot bear any portraits of myself, except those of my own painting, where I have had the opportunity of coaxing them, so as to suit my own feelings.
_Northcote._
LIGHT AND SHADE
CLXXV
Don't be afraid of splendour of effect; nothing is more brilliant, nothing more radiant than nature. Painting tends to become confused and to lose its power to strike hard. Make things monumental and yet real; set down the lights and the shadows as in reality. Heads which are all in a half-tone flushed with colour from a strong sun; heads in the light, full of air and freshness; these should be a delight to paint.
_Chassériau._
CLXXVI
The first object of a painter is to make a simple flat surface appear like a relievo, and some of its parts detached from the ground; he who excels all others in that part of the art deserves the greatest praise. This perfection of the art depends on the correct distribution of lights and shades called _Chiaro-scuro_. If the painter, then, avoids shadows, he may be said to avoid the glory of the art, and to render his work despicable to real connoisseurs, for the sake of acquiring the esteem of vulgar and ignorant admirers of fine colours, who never have any knowledge of relievo.
_Leonardo._
CLXXVII
Chiaroscuro, to use untechnical language and to speak of it as it is employed by all the schools, is the art of making atmosphere visible and painting objects in an envelope of air. Its aim is to create all the picturesque accidents of the shadows, of the half-tones and the light, of relief and distance, and to give in consequence more variety, more unity of effect, of caprice, and of relative truth, to forms as to colours. The opposite conception is one more ingenuous and abstract, a method by which one shows objects as they are, seen close, the atmosphere being suppressed, and in consequence without any perspective except the linear perspective, which results from the diminution in the size of objects and their relation to the horizon. When we talk of aeriel perspective we presuppose a certain amount of chiaroscuro.
_Fromentin._
CLXXVIII
A painter must study his picture in every degree of light; it is all little enough. You know, I suppose, that this period of the day between daylight and darkness is called "the painter's hour"? There is, however, this inconvenience attending it, which allowance must be made for--the reds look darker than by day, indeed almost black, and the light blues turn white, or nearly so. This low, fading light also suggests many useful hints as to arrangement, from the circumstance of the dashings of the brush in a picture but newly commenced, suggesting forms that were not originally intended, but which often prove much finer ones. Ah, sometimes I see something very beautiful in these forms; but then I have such coaxing to do to get it fixed!--for when I draw near the canvas the vision is gone, and I have to go back and creep up to it again and again, and, at last, to hold my brush at the utmost length of my arm before I can fix it, so that I can avail myself of it the next day. The way to paint a really fine picture is first to paint it in the mind, to imagine it as strongly and distinctly as possible, and then to sketch it while the impression is strong and vivid.
I have frequently shut myself up in a dark room for hours, or even days, when I have been endeavouring to imagine a scene I was about to paint, and have never stirred till I had got it clear in my mind; then I have sketched it as quickly as I could, before the impression has left me.
_Northcote._
DECORATIVE ART
CLXXIX
Decoration is the activity, the life of art, its justification, and its social utility.
_Bracquemond._
CLXXX
The true function of painting is to animate wall-spaces. Apart from this, pictures should never be larger than one's hand.
_Puvis de Chavannes._
CLXXXI
I want big things to do and vast spaces, and for common people to see them and say Oh!--only Oh!
_Burne-Jones._
CLXXXII
I insist upon mural painting for three reasons--first, because it is an exercise of art which demands the absolute knowledge only to be obtained by honest study, the value of which no one can doubt, whatever branch of art the student might choose to follow afterwards; secondly, because the practice would bring out that gravity and nobility deficient in the English school, but not in the English character, and which being latent might therefore be brought out; and, thirdly, for the sake of action upon the public mind. For public improvement it is necessary that works of sterling but simple excellence should be scattered abroad as widely as possible. At present the public never see anything beautiful excepting in exhibition rooms, when the novelty of sight-seeing naturally disturbs the intellectual perceptions. It is a melancholy fact that scarcely a single object amongst those that surround us has any pretension to real beauty, or could be put simply into a picture with noble effect. And as I believe the love of beauty to be inherent in the human mind, it follows that there must be some unfortunate influence at work; to counteract this should be the object of a fine-art institution, and I feel assured if really good things were scattered amongst the people, it would not be long before satisfactory results exhibited themselves.
_G. F. Watts._
CLXXXIII
I have ... gone for great masses of light and shade, relieved against one another, the only bright local colour being the blue of the workmens' coats and trousers. I have intentionally avoided the whole business of "flat decoration" by "making the things part of the walls," as one is told is so important. On the contrary, I have treated them as pictures and have tried to make holes in the wall--that is, as far as relief of strong light and shade goes; in the figures I have struggled to keep a certain quality of bas-relief--that is, I have avoided distant groups--and have woven my compositions as tightly as I can in the very foreground of the pictures, as without this I felt they would lose their weight and dignity, which does seem to me the essential business in a mural decoration, and which makes Puvis de Chavannes a great decorator far more than his flat mimicry of fresco does.... Tintoretto, in S. Rocco, is my idea of the big way to decorate a building; great clustered groups sculptured in light and shade filling with amazing ingenuity of design the architectural spaces at his disposal: a far richer and more satisfying result to me than the flat and unprofitable stuff which of late years has been called "decoration."...