This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project
to make the world's books discoverable online.
It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject
to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books
are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.
Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the
publisher to a library and finally to you.
Usage guidelines
Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing tliis resource, we liave taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. We also ask that you:
+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes.
+ Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
+ Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for in forming people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.
+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe.
About Google Book Search
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web
at|http: //books .google .com/I
iiiiiBili
I
W2,\
THE GRAPHIC ARTS
A TREATISE ON THE VARIETIES OF DRAWING,
PAINTING, AND ENGRAVING.
' There is a great advantage in thorough technical training which must not be overlooked. When a man learns anything thoroughly it inches him to respect what he learns. It teaches him to delight in his task for its own sake, and not for the sake of pay or reward. The happiness of our lives depends less on the actual value of the work which we do than on the spirit in which we do it If a man tries to do the simplest and humblest work as well as he possibly can, he will be interested in it ; he will be proud of it. But if, on the other hand, he only thinks of what he can get by his work, then the highest work will soon become wearisome.'
Prince Leopold's Speech at Nottingham^ June 30///, 1881.
THE GRAPHIC ARTS
9 Creati£!e
ON THE
VARIETIES OF DRAWING, PAINTING, AND ENGRAVING
IN COMPARISON WITH EACH OTHER
AND WITH NATURE
BY
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
AUTHOR OF 'etching AND BTCHBRS/ 'a PAINTBR's CAMP,' 'THOUGHTS ABOUT
ART,* 'UFB OF J. M. W. TURNER,' *THB INTBLLBCTUAL LIFB,* 'CHAPTERS
ON ANIMALS,' 'ROUND MY HOUSB,' ' THE SYLVAN YEAR,'
'the UNKNOWN RIVER,' 'MODERN FRBNCHMBN,' BTC
BOSTON ROBERTS BROTHERS
189 1
LIBRARY ^
OF THE
LaAND STANFORD JUNIOR
UNIVERSITY.
y
/I .i /*6
Univbrsity Prbss: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.
\0''^
TO
ROBERT BROWNING.
/ wish to dedicate this book to you as the representative of a class that ought to be more numerous — the class of large-minded persons who can take a lively interest in arts which are not specially their own. No one who had not carefully observed the narrowing of men^s minds by specialities could believe to what a degree it goes. Instead of being open^ as yours hcts always been, to the influences of literature^ in the largest sense^ as well as to the influences of the graphic arts and music^ the specialised mind shuts itself up in its own pursuit so exclusively that it does not even know what is nearest to its own closed doors. We meet with scholars who take no more account of the graphic arts than if they did not exist, and with painters who never read; but, what is still more surprising; is the complete indifference with which an art can be regarded by men who know and practise another not widely removed from it. One may be a painter, and yet know nothing whatever about any kind of engraving; one may be a skilled engraver, and yet work in life-long misunderstanding of the rapid arts. If the specialists who devote themselves to a single study had more of your interest in the work of others, they might find, as you have done, that the quality which may be called open-minded- ness is far from being an impediment to success, even in the highest and most arduous of artistic and intellectual pursuits ,
PREFACE
TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.
ON sending the sheets of this work to America, for an edition to be published at a moderate price and without illustra- tions, a question had to be considered which was not quite so simple as, at first sight, it appeared. There were a great many references to illustrations published in the first expensive English edition, and it seemed, of course, to the author, as it would to anybody else, that these references ought to be expunged when the engravings or reproductions no longer accompanied them. On further consideration, however, there appeared to be strong reasons against this course. The book contains very numerous references to works of art which cannot possibly be presented in its pages, to such things as mural paintings and other works in fiill colour which cannot be properly reproduced ; and as the reader will not be able in every case to go at once to the per- formances themselves, as he will be obliged by distance to take a good deal on trust at all events, and to accept the author's conclusions at least provisionally, there seems to be no reason why the illustrations to the edition de luxe should not be referred to in the cheaper editions just as freely as any other absent works of art. It being decided, then, that the references should be maintained, the only remaining doubt concerned the form of
viii Preface to the American Edition.
them. The strictly accurate and correct way would have been to say each time, '' the reader may see an example of this in an illustration by such an artist engraved or reproduced by such another artist and published in the columbier octavo edition of this work," but the most inexperienced of writers would feel the awkwardness of sajdng that a hundred times over. The conclu- sion was to keep all allusions to illustrations precisely as they stood in the first edition. The reader may find this a conven- ience if he has access to an illustrated copy.
The book is dedicated to a poet instead of being dedicated to a painter or other workman in the graphic arts, but there is an especial fitness in the dedication. I mean it as an expression of a desire that the graphic arts should be better understood by men of high literary culture than they have generally been hitherto, and also that those concerned in them should look to literature with more sympathy and imderstanding. It would not have occurred to me to dedicate this book to Scott, Words- worth, or Byron, if I had written in their day, because they lived outside of the Graphic Arts just as an illiterate artist may live outside of literature ; but Browning is not an outsider, and it is pleasant to think of a man who by s)rmpathy and knowledge is one of ourselves, one of the artistic firatemity, as it were, and yet at the same time a poet of great power and a thinker whose influence is steadily increasing. There is nothing to be more lamented than the isolation of one form of culture fi*om another, when it implies a real privation of light, and it was a character- istic of the age that immediately preceded ours to isolate men in separate cells of knowledge, each of which had its own little window looking out upon the world in its own special direction. It was not so in the great age of the Renaissance, and it is much less so at the present date (1882) than it was thirty years ago ; but we remember the time in England when artists were gener-
Preface to the American Edition. ix
ally illiterate and scholars equally ignorant of the fine arts and the natural sciences. At the present day one of the best linguists in our country is President of the Royal Academy, one of the most imaginative poets is a famous painter, and some of our* most eminent men of science are men of great literary power, with a wide knowledge of books and a lively interest in art. I do not dispute the economical doctrine that division of labour is good for mechanical production, but I feel perfectly certain that the concentration of all the faculties upon one art prevents the mind from seeing the arts in their true relations to .each other. Suppose the case of a painter, hard at work every day at his own specialty in painting, I should say that unless he takes care to keep his mind open by looking at the other varie- ties of art and taking an interest in them, he is very much exposed to the danger of narrowing his mind to the range of qualities visible on his own canvases. He may judge of other graphic arts unfairly, as a Spanish peasant goes to his own church, and believes that Protestants are not Christians.
The object of the present volume is to show as truly as possible the different kinds of usefulness which belong to the different graphic arts, without unduly extolling or depreciating any of them. For my part, I love them all, and each of them has in my eyes its own dignity, derived from associatioh with the labours of great men. The more we know of what they have done in these arts, the more the arts themselves become honour- able in our estimation. It will be found, too, that they throw light upon each other, and that there are many close analogies, not suspected at first, between processes apparently very differ- ent. The truth is that the variety of processes is not so great as it appears. Although the range of the graphic arts is extensive in their dealings with nature, their technical range is limited. All painting whatever is founded upon one of the two opposite
X Preface to the American Edition,
principles of transparence or opacity ; all engraving whatever is founded upon line or mass. All the graphic arts together are founded either upon naturalism or some kind of conventionalism, and by the time we have studied them enough to recognise old friends with new faces we are constandy meeting with principles long ago familiar.
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON. January, 1883.
PREFACE
TO THE ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
THE lesson brought home to me by the studies which have led to the production of this volume, is, that we ought not to despise any form of art which has been practised by great men. If it was good enough for them, it is probably good enough for us. Able artists have often accepted quite contentedly what may be truly called limited means of expression, but they have never tolerated a bad art.
This reasonable degree of trust in the practical sense of great artists has not always been general. A well-known instance of the contrary is familiar to us in the history of etching. For a long time before the modem revival of that art it was treated with a degree of contempt which is hardly imaginable now. People could not be induced to look at etchings, no publisher would invest in them, no periodical would insert them, and the general belief of the time was that Rembrandt had practised an art which, at the best, was only a defective substitute for en- graving. Surely a little reflection might have dissipated such a prejudice as that ! Rembrandt was an illustrious painter, a painter not only of great mental capacity, but of consummate technical skill, which he exhibited in remailcable variety. Besides this, he left behind him a great number of admirable drawings vtv
xii Preface to the English Illustrated Edition,
ink, in bistre, and other materials, quite sufficient to prove, if he had never produced such a thing as a picture at all, that he was a draughtsman of extraordinary powers, both mental and man- ual. Now, pray consider the extreme inherent improbability that such an artist as Rembrandt by these means had proved himself to be would have spent nearly half his time on a bad art ! He must have known, at least as well as we do, what are the qualities and powers which make an art available as a means of expression for such a genius as his, and, having made the necessary practical experiments, he must have come to the con- clusion that etching possessed them.
If we, in the present day, are liable to any wrong judgments about other arts, like that of our immediate predecessors about etching, we have a ready means of correcting them. We have simply to inquire — the inquiry need not be long or difficult — if the art that we feel inclined to despise has been practised by great artists. If it has been practised by them, not as a mere experiment, but as a pursuit, our contempt for it is either with- out grounds or on wrong grounds, we are probably blaming it for the absence of some quality which is not necessary to the expression of artistic ideas. Let us take as an example the simple and primitive-looking art of drawing with common pen and ink upon common white paper. Most people do not think much of such an art, for the materials are very cheap and to be met with everywhere, and the work does not flatter the eye when it is done. Still, it may deserve attention and consideration, for it was practised by many of the greatest artists who ever lived, amongst whom may be specially mentioned these three — Ra- phael, Titian, Michael Angelo. When we come to look into the matter, we find that the pen, though it does not offer any soft ^»ixury to the sense of. sight, is one of the best instruments for the expression of firm, decided, substantial knowledge, and that
Preface to the English Illustrated Edition* xiii
IS why those great men used it The lead-pencil is sometimes despised because it is given to beginners, yet it was employed habitually by Turner in the full maturity of his talent ; and its predecessor, the silver-point, was constantly in the hands of the old masters.
Some of us remember the time when water-colour was so de- spised in France that no critic would take it into consideration as a serious art. It was connected, in the popular conception, with the attempts of school-girls, and by an association of ideas in accordance with common mental habits, it was assumed that an art practised by young ladies could not possibly express the ideas oC thoughtful and educated men. It would have been equally reasonable to infer that because young ladies used pens and paper for their school themes an experienced author could not employ them for his manuscripts ; but reason is powerless against the prejudices of association. The most practical argu- ment in favour of water-colour is, that it actually has been em- ployed by men of great learning (in artistic matters) and great genius. If it had been a feeble art, such men as MUller and Cox would not have resorted to it
Lithography is slightly esteemed because it has been vulgar- ised by feeble work, or by work that is manually skilful, but des- titute of mental originality. It is also very unfortunate in being frequently represented by impressions from worn stones. It has become a business, and a business not always conducted with a due regard even to a commercial reputation. But surely this unlucky turn in the application of the art has nothing to do with its higher capabilities? It was heartily appreciated by great men in the last generation. If such men as Decamps, Gericault, and Delacroix, practised it or approved of it, we may be quite sure that it is an artist's process, whether it may happen to be fashion- able in the present day, or applied to unfashionable uses.
XIV Preface to the English Illustrated Edition.
I am told now that woodcut, though popular enough in a practical way as an adjunct to journalism, and a handmaid of scientific literature, is despised by the aesthetic taste of the day. Like lithography, it has become a trade ; careful drawings ai^ often cut to pieces by apprentices, and badly printed afterwards. We may deplore these errors. It is always sad to see good ma- terials turned to unworthy uses, but these misappUcations ought not to make us unjust to the art which is pursued unworthily-. Is literature always followed with a due sense of its noblest re- sponsibilities and powers ? Woodcut can be printed cheaply, so that it is used and abused in commerce, yet it has fine artistic capabilities. It is not a painter's process, because it is too laborious for an occupied painter to undertake it ; but it is a thoroughly sound process, capable of the most various effects ; and it has been encouraged by great artists, especially by Hol- bein, too delicate a draughtsman to patronise a rude and imper- fect art.
The fundamental error in estimating the Graphic Arts is to rank them by comparison with the ineffable completeness of nature. They may be compared with nature ; they shall be so compared in this volume, but only as a matter of scientific curiosity, not at all for the purpose of condemning some arts and exalting others. We who are constantly accustomed to the language — or rather, in the plural, the very different languages — of the graphic arts, lose by familiarity with their meaning the sense of their real remoteness from nature. We forget — we become incapable of properly understanding — what a distance there is between the natural object and the artistic representa- tion. For example, it was the custom of the old masters in many of their drawings to shade in strong, open, diagonal lines. There is nothing in nature like that. It is simply a conventional language intended to convey the notion of shade without imita-
Preface to the English Illustrated Edition. xv
tioiiy without even the beginning of an imitation, of its qualities. This is a single instance, but I could fill a hundred pages with such instances. If imitative truth were the test of excellence in the fine arts, the greater part of the drawings, etchings, and engravings in our museums, and many of the pictures in our gal- leries, would have to be condemned without remission. The real test of excellence in a process is this. Will it conveniendy — that is, without too much troublesome technical embarrassment — express human knowledge and human feeling? Will it record in an intelligible manner the results of human observation? If it will do this for man, with reference to some limited department of nature only, such as form, or light and dark, or colour .with- out full natural light, then it is a good art, however far it may fall short of nature in a vain struggle for complete imitation. This is the reason why we valfe so many drawings by great artists in which they voluntarily bridled the imitative instinct. They restrained that instinct ; they pulled it up at some point fixed in each case by some special artistic purpose and by the nature of the materials that they employed. They did not share the scorn for limited means of expression, which is one of the signs of imperfect culture, but they looked upon each tool as a special instniment and employed it in accordance with its proper uses, content if it expressed their thought, often not less content if the thought were conveyed by a hint or a suggestion to intel- ligences not very far inferior to their own.
In our own time an entirely new set of processes have rendered service by reproducing drawings and engravings of various kinds, often with a remarkable degree of fidelity. Some of ^ese pro- cesses have been employed in the illustration of the present volume, and great care has been taken, by the rejection of fail- ures, to have the best results which the present condition of photographic engraving could afford. The reader may be glad
xvi Preface to. the English Illustrated Edition.
to know how these reproductions have been made. Without entering into details which would require many pages for their explanation, I may say that the processes used for this volume are of very different natures. That employed by Messi:s. Goupil, called photogravure^ is a secret, and all I know about it is that the marvellously intelligent inventor discovered some means of making a photograph in which all the darks stood in proportion- ate relief, and from which a cast in electrotype could be taken which would afterwards serve as a plate to print from. All the Goupil photogravures in this volume are so produced, and very wonderful things they are, especially the Mercuij, which is the most difficult feat of reproduction I have hitherto seen attempted, on account of the extreme delicacy of many lines and the sharp- ness of others. We also give plates printed in two or more colours. They are printed in tach case from one copper and with one turn of the press ; how, we are unable to explain, but though the making of these illustrations is mysterious, the quality of them will be admitted by everyone who knows the originals in the Louvre. M. Dujardin's process of heliogravure is entirely different. He covers a plate made of a peculiar kind of bronze with a sensitive ground, and after photographing the subject on that simply etches it and has it retouched with the burin if re- quired.* M. Amand Durand employs ordinary copper plates, and uses bichromatised gelatine as an etching ground, which acquires various degrees of insolubility by exposure to light. He bites his plates like ordinary etchings ; and when they are in- tended to represent etchings he rebites them in the usual way and works upon them with dry point, &c., just as an etcher does, but when they represent engravings he finishes them with the
♦ He does not draw it, the drawing is done by photography ; he bites it in the lines cleared by the chemical process. M. Dujardin is not an artist like Amand Durand, but he is a remarkably skilful scientific operator.
Preface to the English Illustrated Edition, xvii
burin. In the reproductions from Mr. Poynter*s drawings, in this volume, the dark lines are done by photographic etching, and the uniform ground, which imitates Mr. Poynter*s paper, is in ordinary aquatint. The reader now perceives the essential difference between the Goupil process, in which there is no etching, and the processes employed by the heliograveurSy which are entirely founded upon etching.
The mechanical autotype process is founded upon the absorp- tion of moisture by partially soluble gelatine, and its rejection by bichromatised gelatine rendered insoluble by exposure to light. The printing is done in oil ink, which is rejected by the moist gelatine and caught by the insoluble. In the reproduc- tion of a pen drawing the ink Unes are printed from portions of gelatine which have been rendered insoluble by the action of light, and the blank spaces between the Unes represent the moistened gelatine. This is an excellent process for many purposes, certainly the best of all for the imitation of pen drawings.
The most defective of all photographic processes are gen- erally those intended to print like woodcuts in the text. Such reproductions often abound in thickened or in broken Knes, or in lines run together, and when this is the case they are worse than worthless from a critical point of view. The few repro- ductions printed with the text in the present volume have been very carefully executed by Messrs. A. and W. Dawson, and are as nearly as possible free from these defects. The process includes both photography and electrotype, but I am not able to give the reader very precise information as to the means by which the hollows are produced. The line, of course, is in relief, and always very nearly at the same level, as in woodcut.*
♦ Apropos of woodcut, I have just detected an erratum in the foot- note to page 75. Writing from memory, I had the impression that the
b
xviii Preface to the English Illustrated Edition.
The processes of photographic engraving have rendered very great services, especially to students of moderate means who live at a distance from great national collections, but the right use of reproductions must always be accompanied by a certain reserve. You can never trust them absolutely, for you can never be certain that a publisher will be a sufficiendy severe critic to reject everything that is less than the best. They are most precious as memoranda of works that we have seen and known, and then the only limit to their usefulness is the danger that the reproduction which we possess may gradually take the place in our minds once occupied by the original which is absent
sitter for the first sketch mentioned there was a valet, on account of his costume, but he was really a gentleman who had put on an old-fashioned dress. The reader will find him at page 52a
CONTENTS.
PAGB
I. Importance of Material Conditions in the
Graphic Arts i
II. The Distinction between Useful and Aes- thetic Drawing 8
III. Drawing for Aesthetic Pleasure 23
IV. Educational Influences of the' Graphic
Arts 34
V. Right and Wrong in Drawing 49
VI. Of Outline 62
VII. Of the Classic and the Picturesque Lines . 69
VIII. Of Drawing by Areas 74
IX. Of Drawing by Spots 78
X. Pen and Ink 82
XI. Auxiliary Washes iii
XII. The Silver-Point 124
XIII. The Lead-Pencil 132
XIV. Sanguine, Chalk, and Black Stone .... 144 XV. Charcoal 157
XVI. Water Monochrome 177
XVII. Oil Monochrome . . . • \^\
XX The Graphic Arts.
PACK
XVIII. Pastel 200
XIX. Tempera 209
XX. Fresco and its Substitutes 217
XXI. Painting in Oil and Varnish 249
XXII. Painting in Water-Colours \ 339
XXIII. Painting on Tapestry 388
XXIV. Wood-Engraving 398
XXV. Etching and Dry Point 430
XXVI. Line-engraving 449
XXVII. Aquatint and Mezzotint 480
XXVIII. Lithography 489
THE GRAPHIC ARTS.
CHAPTER I.
IMPORTANCE OF MATERIAL CONDITIONS IN THE GRAPHIC
ARTS.
TECHNICAL studies have been so generally undervalued that the purpose of a book like this may be readily mis- understood or misrepresented. It may be supposed to deal with matter only, and to neglect the mental element in art, be- , cause it is not disdainful of material things. This would be a wrong estimate of its purposes.
In the Graphic Arts you cannot get rid of matter. Every drawing is in a substance and on a substance. Every substance used in drawing has its own special and peculiar relations both to nature and to the human mind.
The distinction in the importance of material things between the Graphic Arts and literature deserves consideration because our literary habits of thought lead us wrong so easily when we apply them to the arts of design. All of us who are supposed to be educated people have been trained in the mental habits which are derived from the study of books, and these habits, as all artists and men of science are well aware, lead students to value words and ideas more than things, and produce in their minds a sort of contempt for matter, or at least for the knowl- edge of matter, which indisposes them for material studies of all kinds, and often makes them blind to the close connexion which exists between matter and the artistic expression of thought.
2 The Graphic Arts.
In literature, such a connexion can scarcely be said to exist. A writer of books may use pen or pencil, and whatever quality of paper he chooses. There is even no advantage in reading the original manuscript, for the mechanical work of the printer adds clearness to the text without injuring the most delicate shades of literary expression. The quality of paper used by Sir Walter Scott did not affect one of his sentences ; the quality of the different papers which were carefully selected by Turner, for studies of different classes, determined the kind of work he did upon them. Ink and pencil in the hands of a writer express exactly the same ideas ; in the hands of a draughtsman they express different ideas or different mental conditions. A draughtsman does not interpret the light and shade of Nature in the same manner with different instruments. He has to throw himself into a temper which may be in harmony with the instrument he uses, to be blind for the time to the qualities it cannot render, to be sensitive to those which it interprets readily. Even the roughness or smoothness of the substance he is work- ing upon determines many a mental choice.
Of these things a literary education gives us no perception. It even misleads our judgment by inducing us to suppose that substances are beneath the consideration of an artist, as they are outside the preoccupations of an author. Or it may felsify our opinions in another and more plausible way. It may, and it often does, induce people to think that technical matters may concern artists and still be below the region of the higher criti- cism which should interest itself in the things of the mind, and not bestow attention upon the products of the laboratory, or the processes of the painting-room. As a result of this way of thinking we sometimes hear critics praised for not being techni- cal, and blunders in technical matters, which surprise those "who understand the subject, do not appear to diminish the popularity of writers upon art, if only their style be elegant and their de- scriptions lively and amusing. Technical ignorance appears even to be an advantage to a critic, as it preserves him from
Material Conditions, 3
one of the forms of tiresomeness, and leaves him to speak of sentiments which all can enter into rather than of substances which only workmen and students ever touch, and of processes which only the initiated can follow.
It will be my purpose in the present volume to show how mental expression is affected by material conditions in the graphic arts. I shall point out, not in vague generalities, but in accurate detail, the temptations offered by each substance used and each process employed. I shall make it clear in what manner, and to what degree, the artist has to conform himself to material conditions in order that he may best express the thoughts and sentiments which are in him, and, above all, I shall make it my business to show how the choice amongst those thoughts and sentiments themselves, how the expression of some and the suppression of others, may in very many instances be accounted for by the nature of the materials employed. It is only by a thorough understanding of these conditions of things that criticism can lay its foundations in^ truth and justice. You may write brilliantly about an artist without knowing anything of the inexorable material conditions under which his daily labour has to be done ; you may capti- vate readers as disdainful of those conditions as yourself by the cleverness with which you can substitute rhetoric for informa- tion ; but if you have any real desire to understand the fine arts as they are — if you have any keen intellectual curiosity about them, if you wish to speak with fairness of those who have worked in them — you will be brought to the study of matter as well as to the comparison of ideals. The criticism which pro- fesses indifference to technical knowledge is a criticism without foundations, however prettily it may be expressed. It is to the true criticism what a cloud is to a mountain — the one a change- ful vapour sometimes gorgeous with transient colour and bearing a deceptive appearance of permanent form, the other massive and enduring, with a firm front to every wind and a base of granite deep-rooted in the very substance of the world.
•#
4 The Graphic Arts,
There is a prevalent idea that the study of material conditions is uninteresting — a dull study, not fit to occupy the attention of highly cultivated persons. This idea comes from our curiously unsubstantial education. The training of a gentleman has been so lAuch confined to words and mathematical abstractions that he has seldom learned to know the intimate charm which dwells in substances perfectly adapted to human purposes. There is a charm in things, in the mere varieties of matter, which affects our feelings with an exquisite sense of pleasurable satisfaction when we thoroughly understand the relation of these substances to the conceptions and creations of the mind. This charm is entirely independent of their costliness, and one of the best results of knowledge is that it makes us appreciate things for themselves as no one can who is unfamiliar with their noblest uses. A painter takes some cheap earth which he finds in Italy, such as the ferruginous earth of Sienna ; and it is better than gold to him, for it will enter into a hundred lovely combinations where gold would be of no use. Art does not reject what is costly, yet seeks nothing for its costliness. It accepts the blue of the lapis lazuli, and the colouring matter of the emerald,* but it also keenly appreciates a stick of well-burnt charcoal or a bit of common chalk. Many of the most delicate designs left to us by the old masters were done with the .silver-point, one of the simplest instruments and one of the cheapest, as it did not wear perceptibly with use. Here we find artists taking advantage of that blackening of silver by the very tarhish which gives so much labour to servants. The diamond point is used by engravers on metal, who appreciate its marvellous hardness. Ivory is used by miniature-painters on account of its exquisite surface. So ^influential are substances upon the fine arts that the modem development of wood-engraving has been dependent upon the use of a particular kind of wood, and even on a peculiar way of
* In ultramarine and the emerald oxides of chromium, the first is lapis lazuli in powder, and the second contains the colouring matter of the emerald.
Material Conditions, 5
sawing it across the grain, whilst the existence of lithography is dependent upon the supply of a peculiar kind of stone. The metals used in engraving directly affect the style of the engrav- ing itself. The existence of such a metal as copper has had a direct influence upon art, for if there had been none of it in the world a great deal of the best work in etching and engraving would never have been executed. If an artist who had etched on copper took to etching on zinc, the change of metals would produce, after a few experiments, a marked alteration in his manner. Even the degree of fineness or coarseness, in paper or canvas, affects the style of an artist. No one paints in the same way on coarse cloth and smooth panel ; no one draws in the same way on rough paper and Bristol board.
The materials employed affect not only the expression of the artist's thought and sentiment, but also the interpretation of nature. Every material used in the fine arts has its own subde and profound affinities with certain orders of natural truth, and its own want of adaptability to others. One might think that the materials were sentient and alive, that they had tastes and passions, that they loved some things in nature as the horse loves a grassy plain, and hated others as a landlubber hates the sea. It will be a part of my business in this volume to show liow these affinities and repugnances operate, and how they iffect the interpretation of nature in art, by impelling artists to a selection of natural truth in accordance with their dictates.
After this explanation of my project, I trust that its intel- lectual purposes are clear. The book will deal with matter, but with matter as an instrument of mind ; it will deal with the materials used by artists, but with reference to their various adaptabilities to the interpretation of nature. Seen with this double reference to human thought and nature, the substances we shall have to examine have a far higher significance than they could ever possess by themselves. What, by itself, is an inch of strong silver wire ? What is it but six-pennyworth of silver? Set it in a holder, let Raphael take it up atvd dt^cw ^'^
6 ' The Graphic Arts.
it — draw the Virgin modest and feir, the Child gleeful and strong — let Raphael trace the ideal forms in the dark grey silver lines, and then how noble the metal on the paper becomes !
People reverence carbon in the form of the diamond because it is prodigiously expensive, and they despise it in the form ot charcoal because it is so cheap that it can be used for fuel ; but a piece of charcoal and a diamond point are both equally noble in the eyes of an artist, for with the first he can draw very deli- cate shades, with the second the finest of lines. Even the hair of the camel, the sable, and the badger, may become ennobled in the hands of painters as a goosequill is when a poet uses it, and that unclean animal the hog renders unceasing service to the fine arts by supplying the kind of brush which has done more than anything to encourage a manly style in oil. The importance of instruments in the interpretation of nature and the expression of mind may be realised by simply imagining what oil-painting would have been if the hog-tool, which gives mastery over thick pigments, had been replaced by the camel- hair pencil, which can only be used with thin ones. It may seem, to the ultra-refined, a degradation to great art to owe any- thing to pigs* bristles, but all debts ought to be acknowledged. The history of art can never be truly or completely written until the influences of such things (apparently humble, yet in reality most important) is fully recognised. The use of this or that kind of hair in brushes has more to do with executive style in art than the most ingenious reasonings about the beautiful.
It may be thought that, as technical matters are very gener- ally known, there is little need for a new book about them ; but to this it may be answered that' the existing knowledge is scat- tered and fragmentary, so that the mere bringing of it together may be a service not without utility. Besides, there is a mor- phology of processes which has never been traced, and which I desire to trace. I wish to show the close connexion which exists, in principle, between processes so different in apparent results that they are not called by the same names. It may be
Material Conditions. 7
an advantage, again, to judge different methods fairly on their merits without reference to changeful tastes and fashions. There is an absolute value in each of the graphic arts quite indepen- dent of its relative value with regard to the temporary state of public opinion. The two questions about each of these arts are,
* Can it interpret nature ? ' and, * Can it express human thought and emotion ? * The answer to these questions in every case is,
* Yes ; within certain limits fixed by the nature of the material and the process.' And then comes the farther question, * What are those limits ? ' to which this volume shall be as complete an answer as I can make it.
8 The Graphic Arts.
CHAPTER II.
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN USEFUL AND AESTHETIC
DRAWING.
THE Graphic Arts are equally capable of expressing two opposite states of the human mind — the positive and the artistic.
Work done in the positive state of mind has for its single purpose the recording of fact and truth. Work done in the artistic temper may record a great deal of truth incidentally, but that is not its main purpose. The real aim of all artistic drawing is to convey a peculiar kind of pleasure, which we call aesthetic pleasure.
What this aesthetic pleasure is, and how it is excited, I shall have to explain later. For the present it is enough to note the separableness of it from simple truth, and the broad division of all work done in drawing into two great categories.
These categories might be called the positive and the poetic ; but the word 'poetic,* from its habitual association with the highest kind of imaginative creation, is too exalted for our pres- ent need. There is a great deal of clever, and by no means despicable artist-craft, which does not in the least deserve the name of poetry, and yet which is at the same time clearly not the outcome of the positive spirit. I therefore prefer the word * artistic,' which will readily be understood to mean a kind of mental activity which plans and schemes for aesthetic pleasure.
It is most important that the distinction between these two motives of draughtsmen, truth and delight, should be constantly
' fmnemhen
Useful and Aestketic Drawing.
iwnembered as a distmction which always exists ; but if we desire to think justly (which is the one purpose of all critical study and reflection) we must keep the distinction in our minds without hostiUty to either kind of drawing. Both are worth pur- suing ; both have rendered welcome service to the world ; and it is only a proof of narrowness to think contemptuously of either. Unfortunately it often happens, since narrowness is the commonest of all the failings of men, that those who are strongly imbued with the love for measurable and ascertainable fact have a contempt for the purveyors of aesthetic pleasure ; whilst, on the Other hand, those who are gifted with the genuine artistic temperament, — the temperament which flies to aesthetic pleas- ure as a bee to a bank of flowers, despise the slaves of truth for their deadness to exquisite sensations.
Of the two kinds of drawing, that of fact and truth has hitherto been the less appreciated. So keen is the general enjoyment of imaginative or fanciful art that the simple truth seems spiritless and unintelligent En comparison. It is only since the great scientific development of the present century that severe, emotionless drawing has been produced in a regular and reliable manner by any class of draughtsmen. Even now, with the instructive examples of pliotography so readily accessi'- blc, the feelings and emotions of men are so strongly acted upon by imaginative drawing that it seems to them truer than truth itself; and they are not only incapable of detecting its want of veracity, but they claim for it, in their enthusiasm, virtues pre- cisely the opposite of those which it really possesses. The misfortune of this is that truthful work, the simple transcript of the facts of nature, does not receive the moderate degree of credit which it deserves. Being without charm it is also without friends. It warms no man's heart ; it awakens no man's enthusiasm; and whereas the clever artist, who knows how to play upon our feelings by the well-known devices which appeal to the aesthetic sensibilities, gets credit for being truth- ful, which he is not, as well as accomplished, which W « ■, ^!tvt
lO The Graphic Arts.
simple draughtsman^ who draws what is before him, does not always win the trust which is due to his one virtue — veracity. This has been rather painfully impressed upon people who take an interest in these things by the failure of topographic landscape. In the decade between 1850 and i860 a distinct attempt was made, as an experiment, to draw the forms of landscape as they really are, and to colour them for truth rather than for beauty and charm. No intelligent artist or critic ever desired that the simple transcript of nature produced in this manner should supersede the cunningly arranged landscape which gave aesthetic pleasure; but it was thought that plain truth might find utterance in painting as it did in literature. It turned out, however, that the most serious and conscientious attempts in this direction were commonly misunderstood. The painters who set themselves to copy nature accurately were supposed to be ignorant of art. The absence of common arti- fices of arrangement made these men liable to the sort of criticism which blames one thing for not having the qualities of another, as if it were possible to reconcile composition with the truthful delineation of places.
If topographic landscape-painting had little chance in Eng- land it had none whatever on the Continent The one example of it in our National Gallery, Seddon's * Jerusalem,' would not be tolerated in a Continental collection, it being always under- stood that the purpose of a picture is not to tell the truth but to gratify the aesthetic desires. The too clear atmosphere, the importunate quantity of equally visible details, and the hopeless ugliness of very much of the material, are so strongly against that picture from the artistic point of view that its proper place is not amongst works of aesthetic art, where it shows to too great disadvantage ; yet paintings of that character, representing scenes of interest with the most strict veracity, would be valuable in their own humble way as illustrations of remote realities. That such art should be denied the right of existence because it is not aesthetic is as unreasonable as it would be to refuse
II paper aait
Useful and Aesthetic Drawing.
paper and print to plain narratives of travel because they are not novels and poems. It is well to appreciate the aesthetic qualities of Graphic Art when they are present ; but, when they are not present, it is very desirable that we should be just to the humble merits which often take their place. Accuracy in mat- ters of fact b one of those humble merits, and a very useful quality it is in all Graphic Art which illustrates either contem- porary events, or past history, or places which have an interest of their own. The woodcuts in our illustrated newspapers are often feirly accurate, but not always. When they are so the quality is far more valuable relatively to the special duty and function of such newspapers than any degree of cleverness in composition. For example, the Cape mail steamer, the Ameri- can, foundered in mid-ocean in April 1880, from the rupture of the screw-shaft. The weather was calm ; and the interesting point of the whole story is that the captain and other people were as calm as the weather, and that there was no confusion in their proceedings. They first breakfasted quietly and then quitted the ship in the boats, which started in good order with a sufficient sailing breeze and all sails set. These interesting facts were illustrated in the Graphic, in plain, truthful woodcuts from sketches by the chief officer of the vessel. A French illustrated newspaper treated the wreck in the grand, imagina- tive style. In the French artist's vigorous sketch the American was tossed in such a terrific sea as only occurs in the most furious Atlantic gales. She was dismasted, and in such a con- dition of wild and hopeless disorder that it would have been impossible to launch even a life-boat. The artist had appealed powerfully to the feelings, and his sketch proved very con- siderable rough ability in its way ; but observe how, by missing the facts of the real incident, he at the same time missed its peculiar and exceptional interest, and confounded a remarkable and unique occurrence with the crowd of ordinary shipwrecks ttisg from mere bad weather. The example is a striking nit it is not solitary. The clever artist, who is a very
i.
12 The Graphic Arts.
dangerous person indeed when a record of fact is wanted, comes with his love of effect and composition and is careless about truth of incident and form ; yet in all illustration what ' we need is a trustworthy record. When the Tay Bridge broke down we wanted to know how it had been constructed, and we did not care in the least what the skilful draughtsman on wood chose to imagine concerning the clouds about the moon^ So in books of travel, the real interest of illustration lies in the faithful drawing of things that we should not clearly understand from a verbal description, and this can be given without any aesthetic artifice or charm. Drawing of that kind, though with- out pretension, is as valuable as any honest account of inter- esting facts in writing, and deserves the acknowledgment which is due to all works of simple utility.
The plain drawing of facts has been undervalued not only in comparison with artistic design, but also, in a different way, by comparison with photography. It is supposed by many that since photography gives very minute detail, and is, in some sort, the fixed reflexion of nature in a mirror, anyone who desires a true record can get it much better by making use of a photographic apparatus than by the most careful study with a pencil. This is one of those cases in which a really well-founded opinion cannot possibly be a simple opinion, easily transmitted to those who have not studied the subject. Photography does, in some respects, give more delicate truth than any draughtsman can, but fix)m its incapacity for selection there are many truths which it cannot state so clearly as they can be stated in drawing, and it often happens that even if the photograph could give them separately, it cannot give them together. Again, not- withstanding all the really wonderful ingenuity which has been employed in making the photographic apparatus portable and convenient, it is still far from being so ready and handy as a pocket-book. But there is one fatal objection to photography in comparison with drawing, an objection which far outweighs all the others, and that is, the necessity for an actually existing
Useful and Aesthetic Drawing. 13
modeL You cannot photograph an intention, whilst you can draw an intention, even in the minutest detail, as we constantly see by the drawings made by architects of buildings not yet in existence. This setties the question in favour of drawing, be- cause all constructors require to be able to represent ideas and conceptions which have not yet become realities. Even in the representation of realities, photography is less explicit than a good drawing by a person who thoroughly understands what he has to represent. I may mention, as a remarkably good ex- ample of explanatory clearness in drawing, the famous French architect Viollet-le-Duc. The purpose of his immense labours as a draughtsman was not to render the aspects of nature, but to give the clearest possible explanation of substance and structure. His work is, therefore, not to be compared with the work of painters, in which there is generally an attempt to render something of the mystery and effect of nature, and yet, although he did not attempt this, he employed an intelligence of extraordinary acuteness in drawings which every cultivated critic admires for the special merits which they possess. For people whose pursuits are not those of a painter, Viollet-le-Duc (though his work is * hard as nails,' from the pictorial point of view) would be a much better model than Delacroix.
It is much to be regretted that plain explanatory drawing should not be more generally practised and understood. I remember being told by a French artist, who lived in a pro- vincial town of moderate importance, that there was not a single workman then living in the town who could understand a design in perspective. Mechanical drawings of plans, sections, and elevations, are, perhaps, more clearly understood by workmen in the common trades ; but with reference to these I may ex- press another regret, which is, that they are not better under- stood in the higher classes of society. It is so easy to explain structure by these three devices, and they place within our reach such admirably exact means of information with regard to very much human work, from tiie construction of a calVvtdi^X, ot ^sv
14 The Graphic Arts.
armoured battle-ship, to that of a tdephoney or a watch, that every educated person ought to be able to understand them without difficulty; and yet at present you find ladies and gentlemen who can make something out of an elevation, but are puzzled by a plan, and almost irritated by the apparent insufficiency of a section.
It is not intended to devote space to mechanical drawing in the present work, because the writer has not the special knowl- edge which would be required for any adequate treatment of the subject, and also because, since the purposes of mechanical and artistic drawing are so widely different, their presence in the same volume might appear incongruous. One remark may, however, be made on the subject in passing. Enthusiastic vmters upon the fine arts have sometimes brought themselves to believe, in the strength of their admiration for great artists, that their draughtsmanship was scientifically accurate, and could be compared with the perfection of the best mechanical work. This is one of the common errors which enthusiasts are so ready to commit Perfect accuracy is never to be expected fit>m any artist, though the degrees of deviation fix)m it are infinite ; and we speak of ' accurate drawing ' as I have spoken of it in this very chapter, always with the well-understood reser- vation that the accuracy is relative and not absolute. Mechani- cal drawing, with rule and compass, is man's confession of the inaccuracy of his own faculties. If we could draw exactly, what should hinder us from making elevations of steam-engines with a fi-ee hand, unembarrassed by these tiresome instruments ?
There are degrees of perfection even in this, the most rigidly exact of all the graphic arts — degrees of perfection that no one can properly appreciate who has not been trained at the mechanical draughtsman's desk. When the thickness of a hair- line on one side or other of the all but invisible point is enough to lead to inconvenient constructive error, it is intelligible that intense care should be required. Let us respect these exact and patient labours with the bow-pen, for without them our
Useful and Aesthetic Drawing. 1 5
noilem industrial activity would not be possible. A locomotive could not be made from sketches, nor even from careful draw- ings done by the eye and the hand.
A kind of drawing which completely realises the double sense of the Greek word ypa^iv is the designing of letters for type. The draughtsmen who invent or modify the forms of letters for new founts, display at the same lime die accuracy of mechani- cal draughtsmen, or what very nearly approaches it, and some- thing of the taste of artists. Without a very high degree of accuracy the type would be visibly wrong in its curves, whilst, if the designer had no taste, he would be unable to carry out a dominant principle through all the letters of the alphabet. The matter is more interesting from an artistic point of view than people generally imagine. They fancy that type is made some- how by machinery, and they little suspect by what art and judg- ment the letters were so cut that they might look well not only in isolation but together. Sometimes improvements, or changes, have gone in a wrong direction. For example, in the last cen- tury, and before it, nobody tried to make the letters occupy the same horizontal space, or anything Uke it ; but in the earlier half of our own centiuy type- designers thought the old type too irregular, and by extending the narrow letters laterally and narrowing the broad ones they obtained an appearance of more perfect mechanical regularity at the cost of variety. At the same time they became proud of their skill in cutting fine hair- strokes, and printers were proud of the clearness with which they coiUd print both very thin strokes and very thick ones ; hence a kind of type which reached its perfection in M. Plon's establishment at Paris, where the thick strokes were very broad •uid black and the thin ones as delicate as they could be, the japer used being as white and as smooth as possible to show ic clear cutting of the type to the best advantage. No doubt the effect of clearness was obtained, but the system had the A artistic defect that the diick strokes were importunate and ilive when the reader was near enough for the thin ones
^g^arti;
i6 The Graphic Arts.
to be visible. The type-designers of the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries avoided this error. In their designs one part of a letter was not made for one distance and another for an- other. They also avoided the modem vulgarism of cmvature without graceful modulation. The curves in the best old type are sometimes bold and sometimes restrained, just as the letters are sometimes broad and sometimes narrow. In modem vulgar type the curves are bold and mechanical everywhere alike, and the letters as nearly as possible of uniform dimensions. It need not surprise us, then, that in a time like the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century when, whatever may have been our errors, some of us do really seek after what is beautiful, and dp really try to improve our taste, there should have been a return to what is now called * old-faced type,' and a better appreciation of its forms.
The excellence of type-designing, which does not imitate an3rthing in nature, depends almost entirely upon the sense of harmony in the designer. He must feel by a happy instinct what sort of letter will go well with another, and when he de- cides to modify the shape of one he must feel what modification will be required in another to give the letters that indescribable family likeness which runs through every good alphabet. The curious in these matters will remember instances in which the designer's modifications have not been consistently carried out, and they will also remember other founts of type which appear to have reached an ideal perfection of harmony. The love of artistic consistency which exists even in ordinary human nature is clearly proved by the care with which type-designers and sign-painters always at least try to draw congruous alphabets. The absence of any model for letters in the natural world makes the effort the more remarkable as the designer has really nothing to go by but his own sense of what is fitting. Besides harmony, letters often exhibit marked artistic qualities of other kinds. Some are picturesque and others severe, some are deli- rcate and elegant> others sturdy and massive, qualities which are
Useful and Aesthetic Drawing, ly
an to be found in the highest kinds of painting, sculpture, and architecture, and which add immensely to the interest and variety of nature itself, both in animals and plants.
The alphabets used by different nations clearly reflect the general tendencies of their taste. It is not merely custom which makes us feel a sense of incongruity when we meet with Roman fetters on monuments erected in a Gothic building; there is a real incongruity between the forms of classic letters and the forms of Gothic architecture and decoration. Gothic letters are picturesque and ornamental, in the same taste as the contemporary architecture and furniture; Roman letters are simple and severe, like Roman architecture and dress. This is a subject which would bear following out if we had space for elaborate comparisons, but they would require illustrations. Every student of Greek, who has any sense of the charm there is in the mere shapes of letters, must have felt that a part of his pleasure in reading the language was due to the beauty of the Greek characters. When Greek is printed in modem Eng- lish type it loses half its charm, and this is not merely fanciful, it results from a real artistic difference.
Handwriting is to the drawing of type and the letters of in- scriptions what sketching from nature is to the slow and stu- dious drawing of natural forms. All writing, whether careful or careless, is drawing of some kind, though the forms drawn are not natural but conventional. Rapid handwriting is not merely like sketching, it is sketching. The same strong marks of idio- syncrasy which are to be found in the sketches of artists exist in handwriting, and there is the most various beauty in hand- writing, which is quite distinct from its legibility, just as the beauty of manual style in painting is a different quality from truth. It is curious, considering how few people give a thought to these matters, that each kind of handwriting, whether the letters are well formed or not, is generally not less consist- ent and congruous than the carefully studied alphabets of the type-de$igner9 and letter-engravers. People write legibly o\
f 8 The Graphic Arts.
illegibly, elegantly or inelegantly, but they seldom put ktteirs together which do not go well with each otiher. There are in- stances of incongruity, but they are rare. In general they arf prevented fix)m occurring by the unities of tastes and habit which form the identity of each of us, so that we acquire a personal style in penmanship as we do in the use of language. The writing-master, who disapproves of our personal st)des, and tries to impose upon us his own norma to correct our personal deviations from his ideal, does precisely what narrow criticism does in the fine arts when it tries to set up a fixed model of style.
Useful drawing of objects does not altogether ignore effects of light, but it uses sucii effects for its own purposes, taking more or less of them as they are required simply for explana- tion. The outline of an t%% is merely a flat oval, but if shade is used the full shape of the egg is explained. In mechanical drawing shade is very frequentiy needed for explanations of this kind, and it is used accordingly, in a formal manner, there being no necessity for giving it any artistic quality, or any delicate re- semblance to nature. Burnet, in his treatise on the Education of the Eye, showed conclusively how valuable the shadows cast by the sun may be for explaining the forms of objects which are only partially seen. He gave a figure which would only have represented a sudden rise in a road, had it not been for the cast shadow, which revealed the existence of the three arches of a bridge, the arches themselves being quite invisible to the spec- tator. Artists have often amused themselves and the public by making a cast shadow tell part of the story of a picture.
Local colour (the difference in degrees of dark between one hue and another) may often be explanatory in useful drawing, when the object is to exhibit the employment of different mate- rials in construction. For instance, if an architect were drawing a pavement composed of white, black, and red marble, he might give the two first with their own strong contrast, and represent the red by a grey shade of its own degree of depth. Colour is
If
I often
Useful and Aesthetic Drawing.
I men
ii
(rfteo eniplo)^d in nseful drawing simply for explanatory pur- poses. When this is done there is no pretension to imitate nat- ural colouring, still less to produce agreeable atrangemenis of hues. The colours used are only employed to make the nature of the materials more intelligible, as pale yellow may stand for deal, yellowish brown for oak, and Indian ink for iron. In the same way a certain conventional representation of texture is often admitted in useful drawing. Viollet-le-Duc was very fond of indicating the direction of the grain of wood, as Albert DQrer did when a piece of woodwork (which he understood as well as a joiner) occurred in one of his engravings.
Whatever is given in usefiil drawing it invariably omits one great quality of nature, and that is mystery. This is one of the noblest and best attainments of modem artistic drawing and painting, though it was quite unknown to the ancients, and has not been consciously aimed at by the modems until compara- tively recent times. It is a charming and poetical quality in advanced art, expressing man's sense of the infinity which lies everywhere around him ; but it is not of the slightest practical use, and so of course it is rigidly excluded from all drawing executed for purposes of utility, where it would be nothing but an inconvenience. For the same reason useful drawing dis- cards all effect which interferes with absolutely clear delineation ; though, as we have already seen, it accepts certain effects of simple light and shade, which help to make solidity and sub- stance more intelligible.
Drawing for purposes of simple utility might be practised far more generally if its real limits were properly understood. Ar- tistic drawing and painting are so attractive, so splendid, so predominant, that people almost invariably look upon useful drawing as an unsuccessful attempt to reach a kind of art which is at the same time more emotional and less exact. A topo- graphic draughtsman, instead of being estimated on his own merits as a truthful describer of places, is judged as if he were ~ artist who did not know how to arrange his materials. The
20 The Graphic Arts.
traveller who has learned to draw people and things with feir accuracy, but without attractive manual skill, thinks that it is necessary to hand his simple, truthful work to some clever draughtsman on wood to be made into brilliant sketches for publication. The illustrated newspapers waste money without end in putting shade on drawings which, do what they will with them, can never be really artistic,* when the shading, which is perfectly worthless from the aesthetic point of view, prevents anything like delicate truth of line. There are illustrated news- papers out of England which are entirely vulgarised by strained efforts to look artistic, whereas the accurate delineation of truth, without useless and false effect, could be got for less money, and would make the papers valuable as permanent records of contemporary history. Again, if the simple delineation of truth were appreciated at its real value, there is no reason in the world why any daily journal which is printed upon good paper should not insert illustrations of an explanatory kind whenever there was any need for them. Illustration might be ten times as much used as it is if the real purpose of it were steadily kept in view, and not confounded with the purposes of a higher kind of art.
There is another reason why it is desirable that useful drawing should be more valued than it is. At present there are hosts of practical amateurs in every civilised country who, for the most part, are wasting their time in fruitless attempts to imitate the manual cleverness of the popular artists in the exhibitions. There is plenty of useful work in drawing which such amateurs might easily learn to do, and to do in quite a satisfactory man-
* I do not mean that no drawings in such publications as the Graphic and the Illustrated London News can ever be really artistic, but that there are numbers of drawings necessarily issued in journals of that class which can never rise above simple utility. The fact is, that woodcuts in journals come under two categories, the useful and the artistic It is a waste of money to try to make the simply useful cuts look as if they were artistic
Useful and Aesthetic Drawing. 21
ner^. Archaeotogy, topography, and the natural sciences open boundless fields for useful or instructive illustration, whilst all the schools in the kingdom are ready to receive as gifts what- ever collections a careful and studious draughtsman might be pleased to form. The true cause of the discouragement of amateurs is not that they are earning no money, since money is not their object, but that they are producing thankless and pur- poseless work. Useful drawing ought not to be either thankless or purposeless. It is not founded on vanity or pleasure, but on truth. It is to the drawing of great artists what the plain narra- tive of an honest eye-witness is to the artful inventions of a novelist or a poet, inventions which are devised expressly to act upon the feelings, and in which all the resources of accom- plished skill in the use of language are employed to give glad- some or melancholy pleasure and to lull the power of criticism to sleep.
I have written strongly in favour of useful drawing because, itovci its inability to give aesthetic pleasure, it is always likely to be undervalued by cultivated people. I wish it to be appre- ciated for itself, for the honest service which it can render to many kinds of knowledge ; and 1 regret that it should ever be compared and confounded with artistic drawing, when each ought to stand firmly on its own basis. You do not expect a good newspaper reporter to have the charm of a literary artist, so why despise a plain truth-draughtsman because his work is without pictorial seductiveness?
The necessity for keeping the two kinds of drawing well sep- arated is felt quite as strongly on the artistic side as on the other. Many artists, especially German artists, have allowed useful drawing to get into pictures, and there it is out of place. Even in engravings such as those of Albert Diirer, it is not really an artistic advantage that the engraver should draw benches and tables with the care and attention of a well-educated joiner; Rembrandt's way of treating furniture is better in great art. The hard manner of Maclise, borrowed (perhaps unconsciously)
22 The Graphic Arts.
from German models, is also useful drawing out of {^ace ; the loose and apparently careless drawing of Josef Israels (espe- cially visiNe in his etchings) is far better suited to artistic ex- pression of a high order. If a general rule could be stated it might be something like this : The purpose of useful drawing is to explain the construction of an object, but the purpose of artistic drawing is to produce a visual effect to which full con- structive explanation may be an impediment The artist knows as much as the draughtsman, but he ought not to insist upon his knowledge. A poet may have studied geography, but he must not write like a geographer.
Drauiing for Aesthetic Pleasure.
CHAPTER III. DRAWING FOR AESTHETIC PLEASURE.
THE kind of drawing practised by artists of all kinds has for its chief pnqsose the production of aesthetic pleasure, — ^^^leasure in which there are the most various degrees of dignity and nobleness, a pleasure which may elevate and strengthen our nature, or corrupt it like a vicious indulgence.
The variety of the effects produced in us by the various kinds and degrees of aesthetic pleasure is enough to prevent any care- ful thinker from extolling or condemning it absoliiiely. We our- selves live in an age when a remarkable movement is taking place in the Anglo-Saxon peoples which looks like the awaken- ing of dormant aesthetic instincts. Those of us who have at- tained middle age were born in a time when beauty was not a subject of any interest to the mass of Englishmen and Ameri- cans, and we have witnessed a gradual change in the Anglo- Saxon spirit which is leading it not only towards beauty, but towards a new kind of reasoning about the fitness of things dic- tated by aesthetic considerations far more subtie and profound than the simple question as to whether an object is beautiful or ugly by itself. Our fathers, the Englishmen of the last genera- tion, knew as weil as we do that there are beautiful things in the world — they knew that the best Greek statues and the best Italian pictures were beautiful things which might reasonably be desired by rich men like the Duke of Devonshire, but they did attempt to bring the common things around them into har- y with aesthetic taw. In the present generation very many are really trying to do this, trying to arrange the external
24 The Graphic Arts,
and visible things of life in such a manner as not to violate the aesthetic sense of suitableness. Many things which our fathers did we feel to be wrong and out of place. For example, if a great opportunity, like the arrangement and decoration of Tra- falgar Square, were offered to us now, we should hesitate about putting the statue of Lord Nelson, like Simeon Stylites, on a column just behind that of Charles I. on a pedestal ; and we might, perhaps, be alive to the necessity for making the National Gallery important enough to hold its own against the buildings in its neighbourhood. It is true that we permit great incongru- ities, that we allow relative injury to be inflicted on public build- ings by huge erections near them, as Westminster Abbey is dwarfed by Queen Anne's Mansions ; but we are at least sensi- ble of the wrong : and in this we differ from our fathers, who did not know that a building could be at the same time injured and untouched. In a word, we are beginning to understand artistic relativity, to feel aesthetic pleasure when it is observed, and aesthetic suffering, or discontent, when it is violated; whereas the whole conception of artistic relativity, and of any pleasure or pain that might be connected with it, was foreign to our fathers' minds.
The idea of so ordering things that their mutual relations may be pleasing to the aesthetic sense is the foundation of culture in the fine arts. Truth, in these arts, is altogether subordinate. They do, no doubt, include and even require most extensive and subtle knowledge of natural truth, but it is only to avail themselves of it when it happens to be agreeable./ A highly cul- tivated artist knows twenty times as much about nature as the most accurate, matter-of-fact draughtsman, and yet the artist con- stantly sacrifices truth to composition. 1 He sacrifices it, also, to the idealisation of natural forms, to emphasis in lines, and to the concentration of natural light-and-shade and colour. All these are necessary to the artist, because without them he cannot give that aesthetic pleasure on which his fame and fortune entirely depend. These arrangements and idealisations are, iif fact> the
Drawing for Aesthetic Pleasure* 2$
artist's especial and peculiar work; it is these labours which distinguish him from the simple draughtsman.
Of all my doctrines about art, this doctrine concerning the sacrifice of truth appears to be the most hard to receive. From a sentiment which is respectable in itself, the sentiment of grati- tude to great artists for the pleasure which they have given and give still, though they lie in their dark graves, those who love their work can scarcely endure to hear it said that they had not absolute veracity. It is supposed that when a critic points out their deviations from truth he does so with the intention of blaming them, just as in the ordinary intercourse of life it would be an attack upon a man's character to say that his word was never to be depended upon. It is high time that this misun- derstanding should cease, and with a view to its cessation I will explain the matter in this place as clearly as I may be able.
The want of veracity in the ordinary intercourse of life is quite justly the subject of severe blame, not only because it is morally wrong, but because those societies where it is habitual are disintegrated by it ; for when no man can trust another it is impossible that the social machine should work harmoniously. Notwithstanding this, the license to say what is not true has always been accorded to poets, who are never blamed for avail- ing themselves of it to any extent whatever, provided only that their fictions be interesting or agreeable. They go far beyond the mere permission to invent fictitious narratives ; they affect, even when speaking in their own persons, and not through the mouths of their characters, all kinds of sentiments and beliefe which are not really their own, when the sentiments and beliefs seem poetical. A Protestant poet does not in the least hesitate about writing like a Roman Catholic if any doctrine of the Church of Rome happens for the time to suit the poetic effect. Sir Walter Scott, though himself an Edinburgh Presbyterian, could aflfect, for purposes of art, the most absolute belief in the reality of the Pope's spiritual powers, and their heavenly origin:
26 The Graphic Arts.
* The Pope lie was saying the high, high ooasSy All on Saint Peter's day, With the power to him given, by the saints in heaven^ To wash merCs sins away.
The Pope he was saying the blessed mass.
And the people kneeled around. And from each man^s soul his sins did pass
As he kissed the holy ground,*
In this case the reason for the assumed belief is obvious, but it is a purely artistic reason. The poet could not have got so fine an opening on any other terms. The slightest expression of doubt would have chilled all the lines that followed.
Every reader will remember the pretty pantheism which opens the fifth canto of the ' Lay i '
* Call it not vain : they do not err
Who say, that when the poet dies Mute Nature mourns her worshipper. And celebrates his obsequies.*
Here the poet, after fully indulging his fancy, knew that he was asking rather too much firom the reader's power of make- belief, and fell back on a more customary kind of superstition. * Not that,* he goes on to say, * inanimate things can mourn, but they are peopled with ghosts who really do mourn, with the ghosts of those whom the poet celebrated, and who are grieved at the loss of his sjmapathy and of the fame it brought them.*
Not only do poets often affect to be superstitious, they also affect ignorance when it seems more poetical than knowledge. Well-educated modem poets, acquainted with geography, affect antique ignorance of remote lands merely to give them the kind of glamour and mystery which accurate knowledge dispels. Every poet knows that precision of place and date spoils the enchanting effect of poetry ; that if places are mentioned at all they had best be those of which no mortal can exactly deter- mine the modem locality, such as the places of the Arthurian legend ; whilst the most glorious subjects for poetry in the
Drawing for Aesthetic Pleasure. 27
erents of the present day, such as the tragedy of Queretaro, and Garibaldi's invasion of Sicily, are spoiled for this generation by I the too truthful precision of the newspapers. See how gladly
^fc^jWilliam Morris avoids such precision when he begins a tale :
' /s a far country, that I cannot rtaiai, Aad oa aye.tr iong ages past away, A King [here dwell, in real, and ease, and fame. And richer than the Emperor is lo-day.'
^^^^^ ma
The poet pretends to be unscientific and not to know too much of history, which has come to him in vague yet powerful and affecting legend, which he is at liberty to mould afresh in the telling. It is a part of his art and craft to assume these affectations which nobody blames in him. To write scientifi- cally would be to abdicate his proper function.
If we do not blame poets for those deviations from veracity which belong to their craft, why should we blame, or be sup- posed to blame, painters for doing exactly the same thing? And why should painters themselves, and their admirers, be at such needless pains to prove that they are true still, after criti- cism has pointed to their deviations from nature simply to show w/iat art is, and not in any hostile spirit? There is nothing wrong in a painter's arbitrary treatment of his subject, but critics do wrong when they attribute to him a merit which he does not possess. The object of every painter who is really an artist is to awaken aesthetic emotions. If he does that, no matter at what cost of truth, his purpose is attained, and all that can be fairly said against him for not being truthful is, that when his deviations from the truth of nature are too glaring they attract our attention and prevent us from enjoying those aesthetic emo- tions which we desire. It follows from this that as the public which the painter addresses becomes itself more advanced in the knowledge of natural truth he must give as much more of it may be necessary to satisfy the spectator, but not in the least any moral obligation ; the real reason being that he has to
28 The Graphic Arts.
keep the purity of aesthetic emotion, which is of the most ex- treme delicacy and always liable to be disturbed by questions of a scientific character, foreign to its nature. For the same rea- son the wisest artists are carefiil to avoid, when they can do so, the painting of too much truth, because the public cannot un- derstand more than a limited quantity of it ; and the doubts and questions raised by excess of truth are just as injurious to emo- tional effect as those awakened by its deficiency. If this state- ment of the case is fair, as I believe it to be, the reader will now see clearly how little praise or blame can properly be attached to mere truth in the works of artists, except so far as it may reveal knowledge or ignorance. An artist is not bound to tell the truth with his pencil or brush, but he ought to know it, so as to have it ready on occasion. It seldom happens that a departure from truth is injurious to a drawing or a picture when it is the result of deliberate determination, but it may be fatal when the result of ignorance. In ordinary life deviations from truth are pardoned when the speaker knows no better, but se- verely blamed when he lies deliberately. The fine arts are sub- ject to another law : in them the wilful falsehood is usually the exercise of the artistic faculty and the involuntary misstatement an evidence of insufficient education.
It may seem that in thus combating the vain superstition about the truth of artists I take away one of the greatest sources of interest in the fine arts. There can, indeed, be no doubt that the best way to get a complete though half-illusory enjoy- ment out of the fine arts is to feel the emotions they excite, and to believe them to be truthful at the samejtime. I well remem- ber the delightful enthusiasm with which I fully believed, in youth, that the enchanting scenes of Turner, especially in his ' Rivers of France,* were faithful portraits of actual localities, — an enthusiasm much more complete and entire than my present admiration for the craft of the artist coupled with absolute un- belief in his topographic fidelity. Yet, on the other hand, if a more perfect knowledge of the devices of art brings us to a
Drawing for Aesthetic Pleasure. 29
condition of distrust as to its representation of facts, we come to possess a far keener and deeper appreciation of the artist's subtle wisdom and skill, and of th^ thoughtful labour bestowed on work for our enjoyment with so little ostentation that the most of it is concealed. Our admiration is transferred from one quality to another. We believed that artists were truthful, but after having discovered our mistake we find a compensation in a new pleasure, the aesthetic pleasure : the delight in beautiful or grand arrangements in art independently of any previous occurrence in natiure.
The doctrine that artistic painting is done for aesthetic pleas- ure, and not for truth, is met by artists themselves with various answers, of which I will select three, the strongest and best.
Some say, * We paint truth, but the ideal, and not the visible, truth.'
The reply to this is, that as all artists have different ideals, there is no such thing as any ascertainable unique ideal which can be properly caUed ideal truth ; whereas we have ascertain- able actual truth (not ideal) in the reality of the nature which surrounds us. Ideals are not one, but many and contradictory ; therefore only one of them, at the most, can be true. For example, if Turner's ideal is the true one, that of every other landscape-painter of any originality is false.
Again, some artists say, * We paint things, not as they are, but as they might be.'
The desire to paint nature as it might be is laudable, but no artist of any great composing power adheres to it in practice. The temptation to transgress the bounds of natiu*al law is con- stant. For example, we very frequently find two systems of lighting in the same picture, and the perspective, if carefully examined, will reveal the existence of two or more points of sight. One of the commonest licenses is to make rays of light, like the Irishman's gun, shoot round a comer, that a shade may not be too uniform. Colour and effect, in nature usually very much scattered, are purposely concentrated.
30 The Graphic Arts.
Lastly, some artists say, * We do not paint truth of fact, but truth of impression.'
If this rule were adhered to it would produce, though not lit- eral truth in pictures, yet still a certain mental truthfubess in artists themselves. The modem French sect of 'Impression- nistes ' have tried, in spite of ridicule, to carry the theory out in practice. It is practicable, but only in sketches, not in large and laboured pictures. If the reader (even supposing him to be highly cultivated) will honestly put it to himself what his im- pressions really are, he will find that they have all the character- istics of a sketch, that they may, perhaps, be clear and vivid in parts, but only at the cost of extreme vagueness aJud indecision elsewhere. If such impressions were accurately drawn, and not filled in firom other sources, they would never present the ap- pearance of finished pictures. What artists really do with their impressions is this. They often preserve an impression received fi:om nature as the nucleus round which the constructed picture is gathered ; but the details of the completed work were not in the original impression. All that can be said is that, when the added details are quite in harmony with the first thought, there is a certain fidelity to the original intention, but this general fidehty is not veracity.
Mr. Harding transferred the measure of truth from the artist ' to the spectator by his theory that the artist need only give so much truth as the spectator was likely to recognise. This is very much in accordance with my opinion, that the artist should just escape criticism on the score of truth in order to attain his real purpose, which is the production of aesthetic pleasure. I differ, however, from Mr. Harding in my belief that a class of draughtsmen (not artists in any high sense) might usefully em- ploy themselves in giving us accurate information about matters of fact far surpassing our own knowledge. The work of illus- tration, as I have shown in the last chapter, ought to be reliable in details of construction and other matters not already known to the spectator.
Drawing for Aesthetic Pleasure, 31
Before closing this chapter about drawing done for aesthetic pleasure, I may justly say that the amount of truth contained in such drawing — the general sum of truth — is often very great indeed, even when mingled with much fiction and involuntary error. Nothing is more wonderful than the inexhaustible depth of the knowledge possessed by great artists. The more we learn ourselves, the more we find that they knew long before us. The. greatest of them are so profound that in comparison with our own science they have almost the unfathomableness of na- ture. After twenty or thirty years of study we find that we '.lave not sounded them yet, that our lives are not long enough, diat most of the things we have acquired painfully were pos- sessed by them easily. An apparently careless hint will often reveal their perfect familiarity with some truth that the modem critic insists upon too strongly because he has rediscovered it and fancies that it is new. Great artists are full of knowledge, but they carry it lightly and are never pedantic. For knowledge, with them, is only a means, and not an end in itself — their end is aesthetic pleasure. To know the truth clearly, and yet to reveal only just so much of it as the occasion requires — to possess it for themselves, and yet never to give it to the world unmingled with fiction, unlimited by reticence — this is the characteristic of great artists.
We have still to consider, briefly, the effect of aesthetic pleas- ure upon the mind.
It is at the same time a culture and an indulgence. The most austere moralists set their faces against it as wholly evil. Others, less austere, admit it in great moderation as permissible, but no more. Another class of moralists has arisen of late years, and these advocate aesthetic pleasure as a substitute for lower indulgences. It is better, they say, to look at pictures than to get drunk in an ale-house. There still remains amongst men of business and scholars a certain dread and jealousy of aesthetic pleasure, as being likely to interfere with money-getting <Nr unattractive studies.
32 The Graphic Arts.
What may be fairly said in favour of aesthetic pleasure is that it gives our life a charm which is wanting to science and wealth so long as the aesthetic sentiment is absent. Imagine the case of a rich man, well provided with matter-of-fact information, yet whose life and mind are in all respects absolutely unadorned by art. Imagine him living in some hideous street, with hideous furniture around him. Let it be granted, if you will, that he is so dead to the beauty and charm of visible things as not to suffer from their absence — still, such a man's life would be imperfect and incomplete. He who knows the enduring charm of that visible beauty which is the outward sign and symbol of intellectual beauty, and which, in a world of illusions, is one of the firmest realities, would be content with an humbler fortune, and even with less extensive positive knowledge, if only his life might be passed amidst lovely natural scenery, in pure translucid air, with the sight of fair architecture and noble painting. Many have found in the unfailing quiet pleasure which these things afford, and in the elevation of mind which they favour, a con- solation and a compensation for the neglect and indifference of their contemporaries. Many an artist who has failed in the race for fame has found happiness in the glory of nature and in the masterpieces of those men of genius whom, if he could not rival, his studies had at least taught him to appreciate.
The only real danger in the love of aesthetic pleasure is that, by seductions the more tempting that they seem so innocent, it may diminish our combative power, make us less energetic in politics, commerce, and war, above all, less resolute morally, less disposed to put up with what is unpleasant when we ought to put up with it. For the fact remains that aesthetic pleasure is an indulgence which increases our sensitiveness to many dis- agreeable influences, and makes us try to avoid them, whereas it may often happen that our plain duty would take us into the very midst of them. The keen delight in lovely natural scenery is accompanied by a shrinking from ugly places, whieh dis- qualifies us for living in them even when we ought. The love of
Drawing for Aesthetic Pleasure. 33
art indisposes us for going far away from it, and yet most of the hard work in the world has to be done in places where there is neither architecture nor painting. This, and the loss of time in dreaming about beauty, are the principal dangers of aestheticism, but every pleasure in the world is evil in its excess or in its perversion. Surely we may grace our lives with the charm of art, and yet keep them dutiful and energetic.
Artists themselves incur far less risk of weakening the moral fibre by aesthetic indulgence than simple lovers of art, because nobody can become an artist without submitting to long toil and bearing up against hope deferred. The discipline of prac- tical art is quite as much moral as manual. Good work is not only the result of natural cleverness, but of a training in the virtues of industry, docility, and self-restraint To labour on till the hair is grey, often through decades of disappointment, to be always himibly trying to do better, to be still at school in the maturity of life and have your skill called in question and your knowledge denied by those who have not a twentieth part of either — these are conditions which require a degree of moral firmness all the greater that the artist gets no credit for it. No- body will believe that his work is work, yet, happily for himself, it is both labour and discipline. Pursued actively, the fine arts have little of the character of an indulgence ; it is the languid, passive enjoyment of them which may become harmful. The enervated connoisseur in T?ie Woman in White could not have borne the strain of a day's work, but he could sit in his easy chair and taste, in his feeble way, the wine that the much-toiling artists had grown for him in their vineyards.
34 The Graphic Arts.
CHAPTER IV.
EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES OF THE GRAPHIC ARTS.
WE have seen that drawing may be done either for truth or for aesthetic pleasure ; that illustrative drawing of aL kinds ought to be done for truth, and artistic drawing for pleas- ure, not so much the pleasure of the artist himself (for to him his production must always be a labour and a discipline) as the pleasure of the spectator. We have now to consider the con- nexion of these two very different kinds of drawing with educa- tion.
Useful, or illustrative dragJTigy is jr^vftlnaLhli^ as_.an assistance to literary or verbal explanation. By itself it is not of very great use. Imagine, for example, how limited would be the interest of an illustrated newspaper if only the cuts appeared, absolutely without words. We should not know, and if there had been no literary explanation of similar matters elsewhere, we should not be able even to guess, to what personages or incidents the woodcuts referred. A king or an emperor, unless he actually wore a crown upon his head, would be to us simply an officer in uniform, or a gentleman in civil dress. Men of the highest intellectual distinction, of the most splendid feme, would appear simply as human bodies with more or less intelligent faces, and more or less well-fitting clothes. Landscapes, in which remark- able events had just happened, and which owed all their interest to such events, would represent only so many acres or square miles of the earth's surface. Appearances very frequently de- pend for all their interest upon our knowledge of something which the appearance does not in the least convey, and conse-
Educational Influences, 35
quently which a graphic representation of the appearance .would equally fail to convey.
This truth was ' borne in upon ' me many years ago by a certain scene in the Highlands. Imagine a lovely afternoon in summer, a noble lake asleep in its basin, with only the slight silvery disturbance of faint local breezes, and on one side of this lake a fair bay, sheltered by a rocky promontory ; just one of those places which a poet or a painter would choose for delicious dreaming — a place where he might forget hfe's hard realities^ and live, for a golden hour, in harmony with the divine beauty of the world. I am not describing the place from imagination but from clear memory, and not from gwieral^ recollection only, but from its aspect on One particular dfay.*^! remember how painfril the smiling beauty of the water was to me that afternoon. Whyp^ful ? Because a young man, whose parents lived in a lowly, thatched cottage ^d by. had been swimming in that bay in the morning, and had been seized with cramp and drowned, and his body lay down in the deep water below that beautifril surface. The graphic arts could not tell you that. The most skilful painter could only give you the visible beauty, whilst missing the invisible tragedy, and so the whole painfulness of the scene would be lost to you. Perhaps the artist, if he desired to impress your mind with a vague sadness, might accomplish it by a picture of grey and melancholy weather, under a rainy sky, with ' wan water ' rippling against the cold, hard rocks ; but the more melancholy he rendered the appearance of the scene the Luther would he wander from its true significance. What affected me was the indifference of natiu*e to the* fate of man, it is that which touches us far more closely than any fictitious sympathy of sad-coloured cloud or sighing wind. The cottage looked peaceful in the pleasant sunshine, but the Hght knew nothing of the human sorrow there !
Again, in the description of character, graphic art fails for a similar reason. It can only describe what is visible, but the depths of character lie far below the surface. In all highly
36 The Graphic Arts.
civilised societies the deadliest hatreds are clothed with outward courtesy, and the most vicious natures appear decent and well conducted. The painter can, of course, make hatred and other bad passions visible, but in so doing he misses the main point, which is the deceptiveness of appearances, the quiet success of well-disciplined hypocrisy. And even when there is nothing that can be properly called hypocrisy, when we do no more than simply not expose our thoughts and feelings to the public gaze, when we innocentiy and honourably keep, as it were, the key of our own house, there are truths about our innermost feel- ings which literature, even the simplest prose, can teU easily and clearly, whilst they entirely escape the most subtle revelations of line and colour.
Another great defect of the graphic arts is, I will not say an absolute incapacity for narrative, but certainly an awkwardness and clumsiness which make these arts almost unable to tell any sequence of events without the help of verbal explanation. The best example of painted narrative which we possess is Hogarth's * Marriage k la Mode,* but without the elaborate titles of the different scenes we should not quite perfectly understand the story ; and even as it is, at the best, it is but a few pages torn here and there out of a novel. The largest historical picture is but a single page of history.
The effect of these deficiencies on the educational value of the graphic arts is very considerable, and I do not wish to un- derrate it. They amount to this, that when truths are contrary to appearances they cannot be represented, and that when the sequence of events is at all intricate or elaborate the graphic arts cannot, of themselves, explain it. These are most serious objections to anything which is proposed as an instrument of education.
Again, the graphic arts are often most inconveniently com- pelled to go beyond knowledge. I hold it to be one of the greatest conveniences of literature, as a means for imparting in- formation, that the writer is never really compelled to say more
Educational Injliiatces. 37
ttiern he knows. This is because literature has the resource of general expressions, and in the graphic arts there are no general expressions. If the reader will go back to some incident in his own recollection, separated from the present by some distance of lime, be will find that he can state it inily, but not draw it truly ; and that the truth of his verbal statement is due to that excellent quality of words by which they permit us to keep within our knowledge. Going back as far as I can in memory, I remember meeting a man on a road when 1 was a child, and the man stopped and spoke to me very kindly. I can go a little farther in precision, and say that the man was a gentleman ; farther still, and say that he was an ofhcer. This is all I know of him now, for the little incident occurred forty years since. Try as hard as I may, I cannot recall his face. I clearly re- member what he said to me, but that is not to our present purpose. Tliis is a true account, because I am allowed to use general terms ; but I could not draw tlie incident truly, because I should be forced to give the officer a (ace, yet have not the slightest recollection of his face.
Just in the same way the human race remembers things said to it, or done for it, long ago by superior persons, of whose visible features it has now lost all recollection. The historian can narrate these incidents truly, because he is never comjjelled to portray : the painter is under compulsion to give specific forms, and gives them wjien they cannot be true.
Even when the features of one or two persons principally con- cerned in an historical scene are known to us the subordinates are unknown. In the most interesting scenes of all, the prin- cipals themselves are unknown. The more seriously an artist attempts to paint the life of Christ the more painfully will he feel the necessity for painting another person who is only a model or an actor like the modem Christ at Ammeigau,
The graphic arts are very nearly useless for historical instruc- tion except when the artist had himself actually been an eye- of the scene represented, and even then he requires
l^^tion e*
38 The Graphic Arts.
great self-denial to teU plain truth, as the scene, however splen- did, is almost sure to be much less artistic than that which an artist's imagination would have invented. Mr. Prinsep's great picture of the * Proclamation of the Queen as Empress of India/ is a case in point The scene itself was gorgeous in the extreme, but Mr. Prinsep would have made a much more pic- torial work if he had been at liberty to use his imagination. With all its splendour, and notwithstanding the number of its figures, the picture is formal and meagre : faults that every able artist avoids when he has his own way.
The graphic arts may be of great use for archaeological illus- tration when there is no necessity for truth of incident or for the portraiture of persons. For example, an artist who combines archaeological knowledge with the needful technical skill, may show us how the Greeks or the Romans lived with a vividness iax surpassing our own imaided imagination. So much archae- ological knowledge is accessible now, after the laborious re- searches of specialists in every branch, that most of the details of costume and ways of living are ascertainable; and if the artist has imagination enough to clothe these dry bones with life, and throw himself heartily into the past, he may give oiu: sluggish minds an invaluable help and stimulus. Not only should such an artist be well acquainted with details of furni- ture and costume, but he should be able to feel and render the permanent natural characteristics of the countries where the ancients lived. The classical school of David, in France, failed in its attempt to revive the past of Greece and Rome through archaeological ignorance and blind indifference to atmosphere and landscape. In the works of Alma Tadema, the most care- ful study of antiquarian detail is united to an artist's vivid recol- lection of the colour and sunshine of the South ; so that his Romans are not only dressed in their own costumes and sur- rounded by their own things, but they live in Italian light and breathe Italian air.
The advance of general culture tends to put archaeological
Educational Influences. 39
painting in the place of historical incident-painting, and fron the educational point of view the change would be desirable Historical painting, as it was understood until very lately, is a most unsatisfactory art unless it is considered exclusively as picture-making. I mean that historical pictures might be well composed and richly coloured, but they gave wrong information. They might be hung in galleries as examples of clever painting, but it would have been worse tha^ useless to hang them in schools as a means of public instruction. Archaeological pic- tures, on the contrary, which aim simply at the most truthful possible revival of past aspects of human life, which show how a Roman lady went shopping, how Roman gentlemen reclined at meals, how their shady gardens and cool houses looked in a Roman summer, how the pitiless thousands gazed down into the arena whilst the gladiator lay bleeding on the sand, or the Chris- tian virgin stood pale as she awaited the spring of the panther ; pictures such as these are a powerful help to instruction. They supply exactly what our idle imaginations need. It is a heavy labour to reconstruct from verbal descriptions what the eye has never beheld. The painter undertakes this labour for us, and evokes visions of the past which if not always absolutely true are still a far closer approximation to the reality than anything we are able to imagine without his aid. Out of the dead and ticketed collections in museums, out of the dust of ruins, and from scattered passages in old books, he reconstructs, with the help of the light and life still to be seen on the earth, the life which is seen no longer.
We have observed that the graphic arts can only deal with the visible, and that when there is a contradiction between the appearance and the reality, when the invisible reality is of importance, the graphic arts fail from incapacity to explain it. We have also seen that they are often inconveniently compelled to go beyond accurate knowledge, and so become inaccurate, when what is really known is too general. There is nothing in graphic art corresponding to the word * animal * in language.
40 The Graphic Arts.
You cannot draw a creature which may be either a man, a porpoise, or a chameleon, nor a plant which may be either quercus robur or draba vema. We have seen that the want of general terms makes the graphic arts awkward and inconvenient to use for many didactic purposes. Their inefficiency in nar- rative has also been fully admitted. Their great use for archae- ological illustration has been acknowledged. We have not yet touched upon their greatest weakness as a means of instruction, which is, that they cannot reason.
I am far from sharing the Philistine belief that the training of an artist does not develop the reasoning power, for I am well aware that artists constantly exercise it with regard to their own work, and often with remarkable keenness and subtlety. At the same time it is impossible to shut one's eyes to the inca- pacity of graphic art for reasoning with the spectator ; and this, from the educational point of view, is a very serious incapacity indeed. Mathematical studies hold their place in education because they develop this special power of reason; but the reasoning process is always carried through in language, and the diagrams are only illustrations by which the process could not be followed without the help of words. It will be under- stood that with this incapacity for argument, painting is not, nor can it ever be, the chief educational power which must always be either speaking or writing. Even drawing done for educational purposes only, and not for pleasure, can never be anything more than an illustration of oral teaching, an assist- ance which every wise educator would gladly welcome, and which is far too much neglected ; but museums full of drawings could never teach our children if the voice of the master were silenced, and the printed page withheld from them.
The most earnest advocate of the graphic arts must be con- tents-then, to accept for them a secondary place in education, but a secondary place is very different from no place.
Our fathers simply excluded the graphic arts from the edu- cation of gentlemen. These arts were admitted in feminine
Educational Influences. 41
education, but with reference only to a mild kind of -aesthetic pleasure, not as an exact discipline. Were our fathers in the wrong?
They do not seem to have reasoned or thought about the matter. Classics and mathematics occupied their available time, and the desire for thoroughness in these was enough of itself to indispose them for an3rthing else. The idea of thoroughness alwa3rs makes men accept limits to their mental activity. We see this constantly in the professional spirit.
So far as we are able to understand the state of our fathers' minds with regard to the graphic arts, it appears to have been simply a state of preoccupation. They were preoccupied with other matters. It had been settled by the conventionalism of the time that drawing was not a necessity, but an ornament, or what was called an *• accomplishment,' and the most manly and substantial kind of education was thought to be better without ornaments and accomplishments. Cardinal Newman, in his book on University Education^ expressly cautions young men against the supposition that drawing can cultivate the mind. He begs them to remember the distinction between education and accomplishments, and tells them not to forget that drawing is only an accomplishment.
Of late years other influences have been at work, and it is believed by many that our forefathers made a mistaken estimate of drawing — that they undervalued its educational power. It is believed now, by an increasing number of able and influential persons, that the graphic arts are much more than accomplish- ments, that they are a discipline, and a discipline not only of the eye, but of the mind. I fully share this belief, and am pre- pared to give the reasons for it.
The graphic arts act upon the mind in two distinct ways, which answer to reading and writing in literature.
You may study work already done by others. This answers to reading. It requires the same attention as reading, and when the painter is imaginative, it requires, like the reading of poetry
42 The Graphic Arts.
an effort of imagination in the student. The educational effect of this kind of study is principally to make us more observant. We notice things in nature, as Browning tells us, when we have seen them painted, which without that aid we should never notice at all. But besides making us observant of what is within our reach, the graphic arts give us clearer conceptions of what lies beyond it. Past times and distant countries are, by their help, made, as it were, visible for us. Intricate details of construction, which could not be understood from verbal de- scriptions alone, are made perfectly intelligible by illustration. Literature itself has gained greatly in recent times by the study of drawing and painting. Some of the clearest modem writers — Thackeray, Th^ophile Gauthier, William Black, William Mor- ris— have acquired from the graphic arts some of the good qualities which make their writings what they are ; and many others, amongst whom Browning stands first, have shown so true an interest in these arts, that it may be presumed they have found mental nutriment in them and not amusement only. It is not possible to estimate the extent to which we, the people of the present day, are indebted to drawings and paintings done by others for the clearness of our ideas of things. Thanks to them, not a few of the great personages of history are, as it were, persoils whom we have really seen. Thanks to them, the life of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and Holland, has been recorded for us ever since the invention of oil-painting, not so fully nor (except in the case of Holland) so accurately as it might have been, but still with a clearness far surpassing the possibilities of our unaided imagination. Even the England of the eighteenth century lives for us still in the works of Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Hogarth. So keenly are all intelligent people now sensible of the capacity of graphic art for this especial service of giving clearness to our conceptions that the feeling of gratitude for what it has done is often lost in regret for what it has neglected, or was not in time to do. What would Christendom give for a set of authentic and faithful pictures of the life of Christ, not
Educational Influences. 43
graceful compositions like those of Raphael, nor ethnological and archaeological efforts like well-intended modem attempts to recover the irrecoverable truth, but real portraits of the Master and the disciples as they sat together or walked by the lake in Galilee ? The strength of the desire to have the past portrayed for us is proved by this, that rather than go without any illustra- tion of the narratives which most deeply interest them, people will pay for pictures constructed (as they are well aware) with- out any authentic documents. Even in the most truthful of these representations, aided by the exactness of modem research and the facilities of modem travel, the most important portions of the work, the faces of men whose portraits are unattainable, are as far from the tmth as ever.
Drawings and pictures not only help our culture by giving clearness to our ideas of visible things, they also help it by stimulating the imaginative faculty in us.
Imaginative activity in the student is necessary to successful study of all kinds. It is especially necessary in the study of literature, for without it the student only follows sequences of words and observes the application of grammatical mles. With it, he follows the thoughts and conceptions of his author. Unfortunately, however, the imagmation is often sluggish, and needs an external stimulus, which may be given in various ways. The most influential Churches employ the fine arts to stimulate the religious imagination, and enable the believer to get out of the vulgar surroundings of house and trade and rise to a higher region. The Church of England, for this purpose, employs music and architecture chiefly, but does not absolutely exclude painting. The Church of Rome and the Greek Church employ painting lavishly. All students of literature might have recourse to graphic art for the same reason. It gives wings to the mind. A picture seen in the heart of Manchester may carry us in an instant to the isles of Greece and the
' Laughing tides that lave - Those Edens of the Eastern wave.'
44 The Graphic Arts.
Only the imaginative mind, aided by the labours of painters, can ever quite fully emancipate itself from the tyranny of the present and the immediate — the ugly street, the dull atmos- phere, the busy crowd. Without such aid the world is only what we see from our own windows.
Besides carrying us instantaneously to the remote in time and space, the graphic arts, by their action upon the imagina- tion, have a constant tendency to increase the delicacy of oiu: perceptions. They produce an endless succession of verj various emotions, seldom strong enough to be actually painful yet often verging on pain ; seldom so pleasurable as to rival the joy and delight of our very happiest moments, yet reflecting and recalling them as planets reflect sunshine. These gentler fictitious emotions which the arts excite in us are an exercise for our feelings and prevent them from sinking into apathy. No one who enjoys and appreciates the graphic arts in any large and comprehensive sense can be dead or dull in feeling. His thoughts cannot be without tenderness or pathos ; he can- not close his mind against either the gladness or the sorrow of his fellow-men. It is not the splendour of painting, the rich colour and gorgeous accompaniment of gilded frame and palace wall, which make us proud of the influence of art, but the vast- ness of its sympathies with all humanity and with creatures inferior to humanity. Nothing is too humble for its loving observation, nothing too strong or terrible for its fearless scru- tiny. One great artist will paint a poor old woman, laden with sticks in winter, coming alone wearily through the wood, so that you want to be there and carry the burden for her ; another will paint Julius Csesar marching at the head of his legions ; and both Caesar and the old woman are quite equally within the all-embracing range of art. It has introduced peasants into drawing-rooms, and Dutch boors, with their humble pleas- ures of pipe and pot, into the most exclusive houses. If there were a personal, conscious Muse of Art, she would smile in quiet self-congratulation at these victories over human apathy
Educational Influences. 45
and pride. She would chuckle to think that Jean Francois Millet, of Barbizon, had made somebody pay six thousand guineas to see how two ignorant French peasants could say their evening prayer in a potato-field.
If the graphic arts, through the work of others, educate us in knowledge of things and in sympathy with mankind, they have another educating power when we actually practise them our- selves. This is clearly proved by the high degree of intelligence attained by many artists who have received little education out- side of their art itself, and who very seldom, and never for long together, place their minds within the educating influences of literature. Practical art has so strong a tendency to take pos- session of its man that it leaves, in many cases, hardly any possibilities of culture beyond its own limits. A few painters of exceptional gifts may, like Rubens and Leighton, distinguish themselves as linguists ; a few, like Cooke, may have a taste for science ; here and there a distinguished artist may have passed university examinations or written a successful book, but most artists confine their serious mental activity to the practice of their profession ; and it is a remarkable proof of the educating influence of art itself that these men, whose general education is so limited, should so often have the subtlety and delicacy of perception which belong to extensive culture. This, however, need not surprise us when we look deeper into the matter ; for the chief business of all culture is to enable us to distinguish difierences in spite of resemblances, and this every artist is constantly doing in his own work. Although he deals with appearances, he cannot represent even the appearances faith- fully without considering much that lies below the surface ; and as art is not by any means mere ocular imitation, but an intel- lectual analysis first, and a calculated synthesis, full of ingenious compromises, afterwards, it affords a most valuable training in the two great mental exercises of discrimination between things which exist already, and the invention of things which are to be brought into existence. This is enough to account for the
46 The Graphic Arts,
indubitable fact that artists have a degree of culture quite be- yond what might be expected from men whose minds are so little exercised in scholarship and science. But besides the constant training in analysis and synthesis, practical art teaches us to consider the effect of what we do upon the minds of others^ and so gives us the craft which enables men to deal successfully with human nature. This is a dangerous skill, — a skill, I mean, which may be dangerous to the possessor of it, for he may be tempted to exercise it unfairly ; but it is one of the results, and one of the most desired results, of culture. ' Les artistes^ said a distinguished Parisian critic to me, * sont les plus ruses des kommes* They are constantiy occupied in the art of winning men by a certain kind of persuasion, in which, although the voice is silent, there are many of the devices of oratory. The painter, like the orator, directs attention most strongly to that which will awaken interest or give pleasure ; he keeps in subordination the facts which do not serve his pur- pose, and carefully leads attention away from them j he does not state truths impartially, but selects and emphasizes them. Every painter who has studied the public taste has found out its vulnerable side, and has learned the craft which all must learn who have to influence mankind.
We said, in passing, that a few artists have shown an interest in science — meaning science outside of art ; but in treating of education by drawing we must not forget that the graphic arts include a natural science which has a fair claim to rank with the other natural sciences. If the graphic arts only placed us in communication with the minds of able men, they would still be interesting, like the study of musical compositions ; but they do much more than this, they bring us face to face with nature itself and with the mysterious, ever-present Power of which nature is the material expression. This is the reason why the graphic arts are a pursuit of inexhaustible interest. Every pursuit which includes the study of nature, be it even the smallest comer of nature, opens infinite horizons and gives
Educational Influences. 47
matter for observation without end. There is a satisfaction to the mind of man in finding itself in contact with natural law which sustains it in labour without any external reward. The mere privilege of studying Nature closely is in itself such a pleasurable form of education that no one would ever willingly leave her school who had once been so fortunate as to enter it. Her most eager and industrious schoolboys are grey-haired men ; her highest prize is not fame or wealth, but the happiness of the awakened inteUigence. This may account for the fact, that however modest may be the worldly success of artists and men of science they neva: seem to regret the time devoted to their studies. When they regret anything, it is generally the interference of intrusive necessities and obligations which have made them, at times, unwilling slaves to what the world con- siders more serious interests. Even the unsuccessful — those whom there are * none to praise ' and * very few to love ' — have found a solace and a consolation in the study of nature by which neglect and poverty have been borne more easily. The world may despise them, and critics condemn, but Nature, the infinitely patient teacher, is there still, repeating year after year the same lessons of unfailing interest and beauty.
Finally, practical art has one distinct advantage over all purely intellectual pursuits, which is, that it does not educate the mind only, but also the eye and the hand. I am well aware that a foolish prejudice, which if it is dying out is dying too slowly, considers this training of eye and hand a mark of degradation, because the skilful use of these physical organs assimilates the artist to the artisan. Some people — but not the wisest — are as proud of having idle and useless hands as Chinese ladies are of their useless feet. With these, all reasoning would be a waste' of time; but to others who have no such prejudice, I may offer a few remarks in favour of this ocular and manual education. Let it not be supposed that the education which we gain fix>m the graphic arts is by any means limited, in its effects, to the actual practice of those arts themselves. The eye which
48 The Gtaphic Arts.
is trained by drawing discerns form everywhere and in every* thing ; the hand wliich is skilled to use pencil or brush will be generally superior in delicacy and accuracy of touch to the hand which has never been taught The question, therefore, is not simply whether we care to be skilful in drawing, but whether we prefer a keen eye to a comparatively blind one, and a ready hand to a clumsy one. There are a thousand things to be done in ordinary life, as well as in different trades and profes- sions, in which accurate sight and sure touch are desirable. Surely a branch of education which gives these, not as substi- tutes for intellectual analysis and synthesis, but in addition tc them^ has so much the more in its favour.
a$ui Wrtmg. 49
CHAPTER V.
RIGHT AND WRONG IN DRAWING.
THERE are two leading schools in art criticism which ought to bear separate names, as they are quite distinct in their methods, and in their results. They have never been named yet, but they might be called the School of Censure and the School of Inquiry.
A critic who belongs to the School of Censure begins by as- suming a most exalted moral and intellectual position. How- ever young and ignorant he may be, he treats artists de haut en bos as prisoners at the bar, who are to receive acquittal or con- demnation from the judgment-seat. He has the clearest notions of right and wrong in art When a work has the luck to please him he pronounces it to be right, and when it goes beyond his little knowledge, or outside the narrow limits of his taste, he says that it is wrong. He does not condescend to explain the reason for these decisions. Irresponsible, accountable to no one, he sits supreme, like the Mahometan Allah, raising some to glory, and he cares not — casting others to perdition, and he cares not.
The School of Censure is founded simply upon personal taste. The best critics of that school are men who honestly and sincerely believe that they have a monopoly of right judg- ment in matters of art Sometimes they declare their opinions to be based on moral grounds, which it is wrong to question. He who ventures to think differently is a heretic, and incurs cen* sure not less severe than that visited upon the practical errors of
50 The Graphic Arts.-
the artist There are sins of opinion and sins of practice — that is to say, independence of thought and action.
The School of Censure is founded upon authority — upon the personal authority of the critic ; and authority of that kind, which has no consecration from a superior power, has to be supported by the strongest possible self-assertion. * I know the right and I know the wrong, this is right and that is wrong ; and if you ask for a reason it is because I say so, that is reason enough from me to you.'
The School of Inquiry follows another method. It repudi- ates the notion of authority; it is doubtful of individua] judgments, including that of the critic himself; it examines, compares, offers the results of its examination and compari- son, but always as results that may be considered subject to continual revision. In this school, the pride of the critic, his pre-eminence and success, are not to lead the fashion and in- fluence the market, but simply to throw a Httle mcMre li^t upon the true nature of the work that is done. It is my desire to be a faithful and dutiful servant and scholar in this school, and to work in strict obedience to its principles.
What, then, according to the principles that I profess, would be the distinction between right and wrong in art? Cleariy not my personal preferences, nor yours ; we may state them just for what they are worth, which is not very much, but we cannot set them up as an authoritative standard or * norm.' These being excluded, what remains to us?
In an earlier stage of criticism the ready answer would have been, * Truth to nature.' Unfortunately, in the present day, we know too much for such an answer to be acceptable. We know that great art is often untruthful, and yet we feel that it is great art still. We know that artists of eminence do not inter- pret nature in the same manner, that then: interpretations are not only partial and incomplete, but even contradictory ; and yet, in spite of these half-statements and counter-statements, we still acknowledge that the celebrity of these artists is deserved.
RigJit and Wrong. $i
and that they produced good art, though not a scientificalty accurate transcript of nature. We do not say that they were wrong, and we do not say that an accurate transcript would be artistically right
It has been proposed as a solution of the diiHculty that if an artist paints, not what is or has been, but what might be, he is right ; but that if he paints what could not possibly be in nature he is wrong.
This theory is captivating because it looks both liberal to- wards art and respectful towards nature. Unfortunately, it wiU not bear the only true test, which is, application to works of ac- knowledged excellence. Those works deviate from what might be, from the possible, almost as frequently as they deviate from what is, from the actual. To attribute tb them fidelity to the possible is simply an instance of a very common form of super- stition, which ascribes to some wonderful object virtues which it does not possess.
It has been said that right and wrong in art is simply the dis- tinction between the agreeable and the displeasing ; that if art gives pleasure it is right, but if it is disagreeable it is wrong.
At first sight this theory seems rather more promising than the other, because it recognises the importance of the pleasure- giving element in art ; but then comes the difficulty — to whom is the pleasure to be given ? To you ? To me ? To a French critic, or to a German? We shall probably receive the most different degrees of pleasure. Again, according to this theory, the same picture is wrong at one time and right at another, ac- cording to the changes of fashion, though its own qualities have not changed, unless by material deterioration, for the worse.
The truth is that there is no absolute rule of right and wrong in art, easily learned and easily applied. Right and wrong ex- ist in art, but they are always relative. We tolerate a thousand deviations from truth and say nothing about them ; then comes some one deviation that we do not feel disposed to tolerate, and we plainly express regret that the artist should have been
$2 The Graphic Arts.
guilty of it. Why this exception? The answer depends en- tirely upon the circumstances of the case, and I could only say why the exception is made with reference to some particu- lar work.
The nearest approach to a general law on this subject is the law of harmony. All good work is harmonious ; but, then, unluckily bad work may be harmonious also, in its badness. However, harmony is in itself a great virtue.
We say that a drawing is harmonious when all the parts of it are kept in perfect subordination to a predominant thought and are the issue of a single state of mind. We say that it is want- ing in harmony when the artist has not had sufficient control over himself to work as if he were in a single state of mind, but has foolishly or weakly allowed his various moods to spoil the unity of his work. This is the harmony of sentiment, but there is also the harmony of knowledge. If the knowledge exhibited by the draughtsman in one part of his work is manifesdy and in- consistently inferior to that exhibited in another, we feel that he ought either to have learned what he did not know, or else re- frained from insisting upon what he did know, so as to bring the exhibited knowledge into a state of at least apparent equality.
Again, there is a technical harmony in processes of which we shall have much to say, at different times, in the course of the present volume. Nature may be interpreted almost by any means if only the interpretation be consistent with itself, but any inconsistency, even though it be an addition of truth, is felt to be discordant and offends the artistic sense. A bit of real- istic painting, in the midst of a piece of decorative painting, would offend us, and yet the realistic bit would add a certain amount of veracity. On the same principle, the introduction of real things upon the stage is an artistic error, when the reality is surrounded by the fictions of stage scenery.
It follows from this that all the pure methods of drawing, such as silver-point, lead-pencil, pen, water-colour, &c., are compara- tively safe ; but that the mixed methods, such as silver-point
Right and Wrong. 53
and pen in combination, are dangerous. In painting, too, there is safety in all the restrictions and limits, and the more limited and restricted the technical method is the safer it is, because the less it is exposed to the danger of inconsistency. When oil-painting was applied to decorative purposes, like fresco, the most prudent artists wisely limited themselves to dead colour, and by this restriction assured to their work a degree of execu- tive harmony which might have been attained with very great difficulty if they had yielded to the seductions of transparent colour also.
Harmony, in the arts of design, is the achievement of a reso- lute wiU that goes directly to its purpose and does not allow itself to be tempted in one direction or the other. The great- est temptation of all is the complete truth of nature of which harmonious art only selects what it requires, deliberately sacri- ficing the rest
The collections of drawings by great masters prove clearly that so long as a drawing is harmonious it need not be carried fSar. Nothing is more generally to be remarked in the great men than the firmness with which they could stop short, at any given point, on the road towards natural truth. They could stop short in the simplified line, in the flat shade, in the sug- gested colour, but wherever they stopped their work held well together.
Besides harmony, a drawing ought to show knowledge ; but here we meet with one of those strong lines of separation which divide art from science. It would far exceed the duties of art- criticism to insist upon knowledge in a rigid and exacting manner. Many fine drawings by old masters give evidence of immature, imperfect knowledge, and yet, in spite of this scien- tific insufficiency, they are rightly valued as works of art. What criticism ought to do in such cases is to say fi'ankly how far the work falls short of complete science, for fear of giving counte- nance to the superstition that the great men of past times knew everything, but when the deficiency has been fairly stated there
54 The Graphic ArtSn
is no need to condemn the work on aocoont of it Art does not pretend to scientific perfection ; at the same time it is only fair to add that artists generally put ten times as much knowl- edge into their drawings as scientific men put into theirs, but then the artist will be vulneral^e on some positive, measurable matter. For example, if you set an artist to paint a starlit sky he will get certain truths of efiect, such as the gradation of the sky and its relation to the landsa4)e, but he will probably not dot the stars exactly in their right places, a feult very easily de- tected by an astronomer, who would certainly not commit it. The rule about knowledge appears to be that we may exact firom the artist a sufficient acquaintance with the knowledge generally possessed by the artists of his own day. On this principle a young painter who knew no more than Taddeo Gaddi, would certainly, and very properly, be excluded firom the Royal Academy Exhibition for not having made better use of his superior opportunities. In landscape, our modem paint- ers know more, and are expected to know more, than the best of the old masters, because the science of landscape has made immense progress since the close of the eighteenth century. Still, notwithstanding these exigencies, mere knowledge, though a virtue in the graphic arts, is not always an essential There is a great deal of knowledge in fine work, but there is also very firequently, mixed up with it, a great deal of honest, unpretend- ing, simple-minded ignorance.
The notion of right and wrong has been attached to what are called * industry ' and ' sloth ' in the fine arts. It has been as- sumed that laborious finish was industrious, and therefore right, whilst slightness was slothful, and consequendy wrong.
Like most theories about goodness and badness in art this doctrine seemed of very easy application, but there were two very weak points in it In the first place, an artist might be extremely industrious without bestowing any great amount of finish on particular works. A man who rough-hews blocks of marble may be not less industrious than a polisher. If I give
Right and Wrongs 55
a hundred hours to one drawing, or ten hours apiece to ten drawings, my industry is exacdy the same, whilst the intellectual energy and activity will probably be on the side of the ten, as they require ten different mental conceptions. But there is this further difficulty, that no critic can possibly tell with regard to apparefUly slight performances whether they have cost much labour or not Any tyro in criticism can see when there are a great many details, but the greatest labour of art is not in these — it is often in composition, in tone, colour, expression, and here whatever labour is unsuccessful is concealed by entire obliteration. When obliteration is not possible, as in drawing with pen and ink, the labour may have been bestowed upon previous trials, which the artist is careful not to show, as the labour of a poet is often thrown away (so far a^ any measurable result is concerned) on verses, stanzas, or even whole poems, which are never sent to the printer. My argument is, that no living himian being, except the workman himself, can tell what pieces of work have cost him great labour or little labour. Even finish itself is deceptive, and often seems to contain more down- right assiduous toil than was ever put into it ; but the greatest deception is on the other side, in the seemingly slight work which looks as if it had not cost an effort, and which incurs strong moral condemnation from critics who have so little understanding of art that they do not know how labour is applied in it
The virtues common to all drawings that we value are har- mony and a feir amount of knowledge, the knowledge required being only that of the time when the artist was alive. So with regard to artifices in the arrangement of materials, a well-informed critic would be dissatisfied with an artist who appeared to be unaware of the artifices known and practised in his own day. At the same time we admit into our collections many drawings by great masters of past times in which these artifices were not resorted to, and we value these drawings in spite of their com- parative simplicity and artlessness. "
56 The Graphic Arts.
In Mr. Harding's Principles and Practice of Art, he severely criticised several old masters for their ignorance of modem rules of arrangement, and reproduced several of their drawings in evidence. He quite succeeded in proving that they were not 'up to the dodges/ if I may borrow a colloquialism of the studios, but the reader wiU probably agree with me that we have quite enough of these in modem art. For my part, I know these artifices so well, so much too well, that I am sick of them, and get back to the simplicity of elder art with a delightful sense of refreshment. I know all the modem mles of compo- sition, which anybody with common abilities can master in a week, but they have never inspired me with any profound faith or abiding enthusiasm.* It is pleasant to think that so many old masters worked in happy ignorance of this critical legislation of the future, but a modem is expected to know about it, and it is not safe for him to be ignorant of it. The right way is to know the mles and pay them a sort of limited and independent atten- tion.
Mr. Harding does not seem to have reflected that in drawing old works over again on modem principles to show the supe- riority of these principles, he had taken away everything that
♦ One of these rules is, that every long line should be interrupted, but there are many cases in which obedience to this rule would enfeeble the expression of sentiment. For example, on the first page of the Biography of Paul Chalmers, R.S.A.y there is a drawing of * Montrose,' by Mr. George Reid, R.S.A. In this drawing the town is seen beyond the bay, and the water goes straight across the drawing without interruption. There is no foreground but some desolate land near the river, which flows towards the bay. Any ordinary artist, with a respect for established rules and little feeling, would have made the desolate foreground picturesque by put- ting something there — a cottage, or a cart, or some trees — to cut across the white line of water ; but Mr. Reld, who has the higher artistic sense, knew very well that the whole character of the scene would have been destroyed if he had done such a thing as that, and so he gave the dreary water without interruption, by which apparent absence of artifice he infinitely enhanced the interest of the distant town, a low line of build- ings with one dominant towen
Right and Wrong, 57
constituted the special interest of the old works, and reduced them all to the level of modem cleverness. In Plate XII. of the Principles and Practice of Art ^ he gave copies of two draw- ings in the British Museum done in pen and wash : one in the old Italian manner, by Bolognese ; the other in the old Dutch manner, by Rembrandt, and under these copies Mr. Harding gave the same subjects with his own treatment and improve- ments, thus affording us an excellent opportunity for comparing old and modem work. Mr. Harding's purpose was to show how hard the old drawings were, and how defective the old sys- tem (if it was a system) of arrangement ; at the same time he felt himself competent to demonstrate, by the work of his own hand, the superiority of modem craft. Certainly, if modem craft is superior, Mr. Harding was not guilty of any presumption in offering his own skill as an example of it, for he possessed it to perfection ; and I am not finding fault with him on that account All I desire to insist upon is, that if the old masters had followed modem mles we should have no old masters at all, as, in spite of dates, they would have been essentially modem.
The drawing of Bolognese represents a large fortified country- house, built on the level of a small round lake, and reflected in the water. A road goes half round the lake and makes a sudden turn in the foreground. Just at this tum stand two figures, immediately under the castle. Just behind the castle rises a conical hill with a small fortification on the top of it, and there is another conical hill, stiU higher, to the right, which has also a little fort upon its summit ; beyond these are distant hills, and to the left a glimpse of sea. The whole is in clear sunshine, probably that of some bright Italian aftemoon. The execution is of that simple kind which every student is familiar with in the drawings of the old masters : plain pen line, and a few fiat washes one upon another. It is not brilliant execution, and it does not pretend to be, but it quite conveys the impression of clear light and serene peace.
In Mr. Harding's improvement of the same subject everything
58 The Graphic Arts.
is altered to suit the picturesque taste which prevailed in Lon- don about the year 1845. '^^ Italian casde was felt to be too square and simple in its masses, and too low down to be efTective, so a tower was placed at each end, and an imposing structure, flanked by towers, was made to rise as a central mass behind the principal entrance, the whole building being set upon higher ground. The little fort on the smaller conical hill was developed into a grand feudal castie, the building on the second hill was removed, and the hill itself lowered and altered in shape, so as to make it duly subordinate to the central object. The sky, being too monotonous, was variegated with a fine effect of cloud. The circular lake was replaced by a sheet of water stretching across the picture, and communicating with the fore- ground by a stream. All lines were carefully interrupted by trees planted on purpose, and the treeless road by the margin of the lake was replaced by a bit of the regular modem sketch- er's rustic lane, with a cart on it and two figures, a dark one and a light one, for opposition. The space of distant sea was omitted because its flat line made a trian^e with the hills.
This is an account of the improvements in detail. The origi- nal drawing, in the modem artist's opinion, was wrong, and he was determined to set it right ; but please observe how com- pletely all these alterations have destroyed its character. The little circular lake, with the large formal casteDated mansion rising directly from its level, the two curious conical hills with the littie forts on their summits, the clear outlines of the distant mountains, and the expanse of level sea^ all these things gave to the Italian drawing a strong and peculiar character, which the improver dealt with quite mtWessly. Siihh improvements as these are effected at the cost of everything that gives any special interest to the older work. They are like those dreadful alterations by which old housej^and gardens are arranged to suit modem requirements ; alterations for which there is gen- erally not the slightest real necessity, and which are simply the laborious expression of a want of sympathy with the past.
Rigkt and Wrong. 59
With the two drawings before me I can only say that the old one has a local character of great originality and interest which quite disappears in the modem one ; and that the very ckar- ness and continuity of its lines are a part of that local character, and recall the bright southern atmosphere, which the modem improver seems to have exchanged for that of the Scotch high- lands. As to its defects in composition they are fully counter- balanced in the improvement by defects of an opposite nature. In the old drawing we see that the artist was simple-minded ; in the new one we meet at every step with obtrusive evidence of self-conscious intelligence.
The changes in the new version of the Rembrandt landscape are not so revolutionary, but they are slill a substitution of one character for another. In every group of trees, in every eleva- tion or depression of the ground, a modem grace and science are debberately substituted for the old-fashioned simplicity of the great master. On glancing from one to the other we perceive clearly enough that art had made much prc^ess in the direction of cleverness during the interval, but the progress is not all gain. The old workman did not, like the modem, seize upon every available opportunity for forcing nature into the most convenient shapes, and for getting the most effective contrasts, but there is a dignity in the older work which is better than the prettiness of the modem. We feel that Rem- brandt's landscape is serious, and that under certain effects it might be solemn, whilst Harding's is only brilliant.
I have often wished that it were permitted to modem artbts to work in the quiet temper of the old masters, I do not say that the old masters produced more learned work than some of the modems ; but there is clear evidence in their drawings that they were not constantly troubled by the anxiety to shine, or by the necessity to amuse. Some of the very best and greatest of them had in their drawings what we Englislimen value so much in manners — the straightforwardness which does lut effort, and makes no personal display. When I com-
6o The Graphic Arts.
pare modem art with modem literature I often see reason to regret that they should not be more upon an equaKty with reference to the requirement of clevemess. A man may write simply if he likes, and nobody finds fault with him ; but so soon as he draws or paints with the simpUcit)' of a serious old master he is scomfully told that he does not understand his business !
Here we are nearly at the end of the space allotted to our chapter, and we have not yet arrived at any very satisfactory definition of right and wrong in drawing. If there were no right and wrong that would be very sad and discouraging, would it not ? It would be a shock to our moral sense and a damper to our hopes of substantial and unquestionable excellence. Well, I have mentioned two virtues that may be considered certain, namely, harmony, and a certain amount of knowledge. Besides these there are many other virtues, but not one of them, that I can think of, is common to all good drawings whatever. I find after looking at great numbers of drawings that one will have conspicuously one virtue and another another : that one will be sincerely and humbly faithful, another boldly and grandly im- aginative ; that one will have exquisite lines and be as flat as a Dutch field, whilst another will have no lines to speak of but be powerfully modelled. I find that serene, sweet-tempered pa- tience constitutes the charm of one man's work, whilst the most fiery impatience arouses me, like the gallop of cavalry, in that of another. Learning commands my respect in some designs ; and then perhaps in the same museum, in the same room, on the same wall, I come upon some bit of loving work done with little science that wins and moves me more than all the leaming in the world. And the final conclusion to which all these works of art have driven me is, that they are just like so many living human beings who have seldom more than one or two strong and vigorous virtues to redeem their failings and their faults, and who are esteemed and respected even when they have these. And as the different professions aid the development
Right and Wrongs 6i
of certain special virtues, often at the expense of others : as the soldier strengthens courage within himself, and the physician mercy, and the priest chastity, and the lawyer sagacity, and the merchant prudence, so the different divisions of the graphic arts give separate encouragement to the different virtues of drawing. The burin and the silver-point encourage purity of line, charcoal teaches vigoiu: and truth of chiaroscuro, water- colour the refinements of delicate hues, and oil the force of strong ones ; but as for uniting all these virtues together in one work it ought never to be expected. It is enough for a work of art to have the quality of its own order.
62 The Graphic Arts.
CHAPTER VI.
OF OUTLINE.
THE earKest attempts in drawing were in outline, and out- line is used still for various purposes in artistic and sci- entific work.
Amongst artistic drawings those in complete outline are the simplest. Their two merits, not always compatible, are beauty and truth of line.
Truth of line implies not only truth of modulation but a due observation of the angles at which the lines run relatively to the horizon and also of their proportionate length. When angles, length, and modulation are faithfully observed, the lines are said to be true, although the use of them is in itself a conventionalism. If the lines are right in length and direction the spaces enclosed are sure to have the right shape, so that true line-drawing be- comes, by a consequence which need not be sought for con- sciously, true space-drawing at the same time.
The truth of linear drawing has nothing whatever to do with the thickness of the line, for an outline may be of any thickness provided only it be not variable. If it is variable in thickness then the eye is embarrassed in its choice of one side of the line or the other as the real contour. Again, the shaded side of an object cannot be properly represented by making the outline thicker on that side, though this has often been done, very irrationally. The unreasonableness of it is proved by the con- sideration that the thick black line comes generally where the shaded side is lightened by reflection. The darkest place on a sphere or cylinder is not at the contour but nearer to the middle.
Outline. 63
rawing should, therefore, take no account whatever of j light and sliade. Its fiinction is simply to detach spaces with- I out giving the dme and trouble necessary to fill theoi up. This 1 will be understood in a moment by a reference to geographical | work. A simple line is enough to detach land from sea and one state from another. Nothing m all the range of the grapliic arls does so much with so little labour as an outline. A line which any good draughtsman could put on paper in one minute will make the difference between nothing and a portrait in proiile.
The value of outline drawing has been very variously esti- mated by artists. It is not much cared for at the present day, for reasons which will be given shortly. Two or three traditional anecdotes which have come down to us from classic times, and which are too well known to need repetition here, seem to in- dicate that the ancient Greeks thought more of the simple Ime than we do, and cared more for the manual skill which could produce it to perfection. In our own time outline is chiefly used as a means of education in elementary drawing, and for architectural and ornamental purposes. Painters hardly ever use it in its purity : they may occasionally have recourse to it as a convenience, but they do not keep to it, in which they are guided by a sure instinct, for outline belongs to an essentially early stage of art, and is not compatible with those habits of sight and thought which are, or ought to be, the habits of painters in an age like ours, when their art is technically complete.
AU drawing began, in primitive times, with simple outline ; and the next stage was to fill up the spaces so mapped out with flat colour, but the ouUine was still preserved for a long time in all its hardness of definition. The first notion of draw- ing which occurs to man is to mark out the shapes of things in profile with a hard line. He seems to conceive of objects as if they were cut out of some flat material, and he thinks that when he has mapped out the contour he has done enough. The notion of modelling in drawing seems to have developed itself very gradually, and even in an age so advanced as our
64, The Graphic Arts.
own every ineKperienced student draws trees as if their branches went out to right and left, but never came to meet him. The first thing that strikes us in this choice of outline is, that the use of it involves a degree of definition far exceeding any- thing usually found in nature, and that it is only after some- what advanced study that we begin to perceive how rarely /natural objects are vigorously and completely detached from each other. The power of seeing things as they actually ap- pear to the eye, with all their confiision and mystery, all their intricacy, all their disguises of accidental light and shade, and colour, is a power which comes to us very late indeed, after a very slow and gradual education. All primitive drawing simpli- fies and detaches objects, and copies them in its own way, one by one, without any conception of their pictorial relations. So long as the mind of the draughtsman remains in this primitive condition outline is his natural expression ; but when he begins to see more of nature, when he begins to perceive the confu- sion, mystery, intricacy, which we have just been talking about, outline ceases to be enough for him. He begins to feel that it is true only in a very narrow and conventional sense ; that it is often inevitably false, if drawn at all ; and that even its best beauty, the line of beauty which the skilled Greek artists drew, is still, however gracefiil, however pure, only a very limited and special kind of beauty, in a world which offers much else for pur study and admiration.
â– ^ The practice of drawing in outline involves a special danger to the student, which ought not to be passed in silence. It concentrates his attention so much on the contours of things that he ceases to perceive what is within them, and then he be- comes the victim of a peculiar illusion. He fancies that because he knows the coast he knows the country. So much form can be explained by outUne that it gets credit for still more ; and the draughtsman is innocently persuaded that the fUlt white spaces which his lines enclose actually contain the modelling which he vaguely imagines for them. To ascertain how little an
Outline. 65
outiine really gives or encloses you have nothing to do but paint a picture from a severe outline drawing, you will then discover that the outline does little more than start you, and that the supplies of material for aU your subsequent labour have to be drawn from your own stores of knowledge, or from, the activity of your own imagination.
There may, of course, be outline within outline, just as in a map of England we may have the coast-line first, which is the contour, and then the divisions of counties. In the Ordnance map we have even the fields, still in outline, which answer to very minute details in artistic drawing. There is, therefore, such a thing as detailed outline drawing, which appears very full of matter at the cost of little labour, and it is quite true that such drawing convejrs more facts than can be conveyed by any other kind of design, with equal clearness, in the same space. It is the right kind of work for topographic purposes ; but although Albert Dtirer often made use of it for distant landscape it is dangerous in fine art, except for memoranda, and dangerous even for these also unless the artist follows at the same time some other form of study which presents things in their proper visual relations. The practice of Albert Dtirer ought not to mislead the modem student. He was a skilfiil draughtsman in his own way, but not a good example for us to imitate. It is said sometimes that he knew nothing of aerial perspective, but that is only one of his deficiencies, or rather, to speak more accurately, it is only a part of his one great deficiency. H^' never drew things in their mutual relations, as we see them when we see several things at once ; he drew first one thing as if it had been an isolated object, and then another thing, till his paper or plate was covered.
Outline drawing may be practised with advantage as a part of an artist's education for two reasons. The first of these is that, unless we have drawn in outline we cannot know how many delicate beauties are hidden in the subtle varieties of line ; the next is because outline, though hardly ever used by artists
\
66 The Graphic Arts.
throughout an entire work, is often employed by them in por- tions of works where it is useful for some special reason. The principal convenience of it is that it will indicate the presence of objects, and give at least a good idea of their forms without involving the necessity for shading, a necessity from which, un- der certain circumstances, the artist may be glad to escape. Rembrandt set the example, in etching, of using outline in what may seem a partial and capricious manner. It was partial, cer- tainly, but not capricious, being dictated in every instance by the desire to avoid shading in some portion of the plate where shading would have produced some degree of dulness or heavi- ness. It was one of Rembrandt's artifices to keep large light spaces and large dark spaces in his plates, and it was a con- venience to him to put very little shading in the light spaces. This he managed, as in the ' Hundred Guilder ' print, the * Beg- gars at the Door of a House,' and other etchings, by using almost pure outline in the light parts, or outline in combination with a little shade, purposely kept much slighter and paler than in nature. If the reader examines the work of other original etchers he will find that they often have recourse to the same artifice. It is extremely convenient in etchings of landscape, because there is a great technical difficulty in observing accu- rately the distinctions between the palest tones m etching, and this is avoided by simply indicating certain objects in outline, a device which explains their presence, yet does not encumber the plate with too many lines.
Before leaving the subject of oudine we may take note of a curious fact about the use of the ruler. If you are drawing any- thing with a straight line in it, such as a new building, you will always find a ruled line quite inadmissible in every kind of pic- turesque design, though it is the basis of architectural drawing. You may make bulges in your line, or you may tremble and make ripples in it, or you may make it lean to one side or the other, and any of these faults shall be readily forgiven you, but if you are so ill-advised as to rule your line, there is an end to
Outline. 67
the charm of your performance. What is curious hi this is that the ruled Hne, in those cases where it is used at all, is generally much truer than anything which the unaided hand can draw. I remember talking about this subject to a French critic, who maintained that the reason why the ruled Hne was disagreeable was because it was untrue, yet surely in many things, such as the comer of a new house, a ship's mast, or a tightly stretched cord, the ruled line comes nearest to the truth. My conviction is that the question is not one of truth but of harmony. The ruled line is offensive in picturesque drawing because it is seen at a glance to be of a different origin from every other line about it, and so subordinate in fine art is truth itself to har- mony, that we all positively prefer visible error to a glaring technical discrepancy. This is the main reason, but there is another, which is, that of all lines those produced with a ruler are the least interesting. The pleasantest of all architectural drawings are the first rude sketches of imagined edifices, in which the lines are never straight.
I do not attach much importance to the often-repeated remark, that there are no lines in nature, by which it is intended to imply that linear art is of necessity inferior to that which is lineless. The rank of the fine arts is not determined so much by. their imitative resemblance to nature as by their power of aesthetic and intellectual expression. We know, of course, that lines are not really imitative, as lineless colour may be, but they are most valuable and convenient as a means for expressing human knowledge and feeling, and are not likely ever to be entirely abandoned so long as art shall be an expression of the human spirit.
Outline is used in the very earliest stage of an oil-picture for mapping out the first spaces of the dead colouring, but such outline is of a very rude and simple kind, I mean in modulation. In length and main direction it is carefully studied. All delicate modulations are given afterwards in the painting.
Hard and decided outlines, delicately modulated, are often
68 The Graphic Arts.
used as a basis for decorative painting, and left visible after- wards. They make the work much less costly in time, and as they are not disguised the conventionalism is readily admitted.
Thick black outlines are used to a great extent in large modem wood-engravings for the purpose of detaching figures. In these the outline is purposely overwhelmed by abundant shading, so that few people notice it, but it clears up the subject, of course at the cost of truth, as we shall see when we come to wood-engraving.
These thick outlines in wood-engraving answer to the lines which some modem painters leave visible in their least laborious works. Such lines are a conventionalism by means of which the painter can get through his work more rapidly. There would be no objection to them if they stood alone, because then their conventionalism would be unconcealed, and they might even be filled up with flat tints withoutxontradiction ; but when they are combined with any attempt at complete modelling there is an artistic incongruity, because if the modelling were really complete it ought to be able to detach objects without the help of lines. The truth is that when lines are used in oil- painting other than purely decorative, they are a cheap expe- dient by which the artist spares himself labour in tonic relations and in modelling. You may separate objects easily enough by an outline, but it requires careful labour to do as much by delicate light and shade.
The qualities of line divide the graphic arts into two great schools, the classical and the picturesque, but these are of so much importance that the linear differences on which they are founded will require a chapter to themselves.
Classic and Picturesque Lines. 69
CHAPTER VII.
OF THE CLASSIC AND PICTURESQUE LINES.
IT is the character of linear modulations which determines the difference between the classic and the picturesque line. All drawing comes under one of these two heads — it is either classic in style or picturesque, at least in its main principle, however remote its classicism may be from that of Phidias, or its picturesqueness from that of Rembrandt.
The difference between the classic and the picturesque modifications of line has its origin in two states of the human spirit, by which its sympathies and interests are directed to different objects or to different qualities of the same object.
The classic spirit is animated by the delight in organic perfection, the picturesque spirit by an interest in the pe- culiarities of character and in the effects of accident and time.
In the two kinds of drawing it may happen that the modu- lations are equally minute. The essential difference is not in more or less of minuteness, but in the relation to organic perfection. It does, however, happen, as a general rule, that the modulations of picturesque lines are more sudden and violent than those of classic design. They are at the same time more numerous and more distinctly countable. In pictu- resque design the changes of direction in line are often abrupt and unforeseen ; in classic design the changes of direction may be frequent, but they are seldom abrupt, and are so lit- tle unforeseen that our knowledge of structure always lead&
70 The Graphic Arts.
us to expect them, whilst much of the pleasure derived from that kind of drawing is in the sufficient, yet delicate, satisfac- tion of that expectation.
It is not desirable, in the interests of culture, that either the classic or the picturesque principle should become so dominant in the modem schools of art as to reign there un- opposed.
If the classic spirit reigned exclusively, nobody would draw anything that was not in perfect repair, and this would at once exclude from the materials of art all those things made by men of which the interest is chiefly romantic or pathetic. Besides this, the predominance of the classic spirit would extinguish our interest in humble and homely things. The classical draughtsman is not only indifferent to the world around him, but disposed to regard it with contempt The most picturesque cities in Europe and all that charming rustic material which occupies such artists as Millet and Fr^re, would not afford him as much aesthetic pleasure as a bit of antique earthenware, if only the lines of the pot were delicately modulated and pure.
If the picturesque spirit reigned exclusively, there would be an end to all severe study of beautiful form, as that would not be considered sufficiently lively and amusing. Sculpture would fall down to the level of those lifelike statuettes of the fishing population which are sold at Boulogne-sur-Mer, or of the Tam o'Shanter and Souter Johnnie at Alloway. Ar- chitecture would be planned and schemed for the artificial picturesque in which all sorts of arrangements are consid- ered permissible if they are quaint and unexpected, and in which artifice tries to gain the appearance of accident. Painting would flourish still, but would confine itself to such material as tumble-down buildings, rough soldiers and peasants, animals, and wild scenery. Nobody would paint the naked figure. Etching would flourish, on condition of avoiding what the painters avoided ; but line-engraving, al-
Classic and Picturestjue Lines. 71
ready pursued by few, would be absolutely and finally aban- doned.
The liberty of individual taste, which has resulted for us from the experiments of the past, has this good consequence, that both the classic and the picturesque principles of draw- ing are alive and active together. Each is appiieii according to the taste of the artist and the subjects which he prefers.
The love of ideal beauty and the desire for perfection lead us to the classic line; a healthy interest in common things leads us to the picturesque line.
Once adopted, each of the two principles gets possession of its man and pushes him forward in its own direction. The danger of studying line for its own beauty is that its ten- dency is against modelling and against effect. Pursued too ardently it leads back to flat Greek vase-painting, with its clear outlines and flat tints within them. I have even been told by a true believer that all art which goes beyond the firm line and fiat wash is debased and degraded art; that the firm line and fiat wash are the high-water mark of painting, and that evanescent lines and modelled surfaces are its ebb and deca- dence. It is certain that firmness of oudine and flatness of spaces are highly favourable to the severe study of linear beauty, whilst the study of surfaces is against it.
Severe students of the classic line have often been unfav- ourable to landscape, a disfavour which is perfectly natural, because, although beautiful lines are often to be met with in landscape, the interest of it is generally much more depen- dent upon light and shade, and especially upon colour, than on any degree of linear beauty. As, however, the linear beauty of natural landscape is generally undervalued, I may beg the reader to bear with a few words in its defence.
Linear beauty is found much more in some trees than others, and (as a general rule) more in leaves taken individually, or in small groups, than in masses of foliage. The trunks of some trees, such as the beech and the plane, are rich in linear
72 The Graphic Arts.
beauty ; whilst others, such as the oak, are more picturesque than beautiful. Noble mountain scenery, such as that of Switzerland and Savoy, abounds in lovely lines continually altered by perspective as we travel ; whilst minor hills, and amongst these some of the smallest and least imposing, like those in the south of England, are often exquisite in line. Some of the most beautiful lines ever to be seen in the earth- forms are found in the first gentle undulations between the broad continental plains and the great companies of moun- tains. Of all natural things, not organized, wind-sculptured snow is the most perfect in outline and in linear markings. It effaces the picturesque irregularities of the earth, and sub- stitutes for them a clean modelling like that of very deli- cately carved marble, which is sure to present refined out- lines everywhere. A great variety of beautiful lines may be found in agitated water, from the low smooth ground-swell, with its uninterrupted regularity of form, to the tossing and toppling breaker. After mentioning a few of those natural things, in which beautiful lines are commonly found, I may add that it is a mere superstition to suppose that Nature's drawing is always beautiful. It is sometimes ugly, and it happens more frequently still that natural lines seem as if some beautiful purpose had been intended and then very imperfectly carried out. It is probably this apparently im- perfect realisation of artistic intentions in landscape which makes classical figure-draughtsmen so indifferent to it, as the lines of the nude figure, which they are accustomed to study, more nearly fulfil the apparent intention.
When artists have a taste for linear perfection they do well to devote themselves to the figure, and avoid land- scape, not because they cannot find plenty of beautiful lines in landscape nature to please and occupy themselves, but because people are so little accustomed to look for beautiful line-drawing in landscape that when it is offered to them they do not perceive or value it. The popular qualities in
Classic and Picturesque Lines. 73
landscape are colour first, then texture, composition, and chiaroscuro.
The naked figure, or the figure simply draped, is the only subject in which classic line-drawing fully repays the student. Here the talent of a refined draughtsman is felt and ac- knowledged ; in the other forms of art it is generally thrown away.
74 The Graphic Arts.
CHAPTER VIII.
OF DRAWING BY AREAS.
THIS kind of drawing is largely practised by painters who study from nature with the brush. It differs widely from linear drawing both in principle and practice, and it both springs from and cultivates different habits of sight and thought
We have seen that if the linear draughtsman made his lines right in length and direction the areas enclosed by them must of necessity be the correct areas, although he may never have given them a thought. If a land-surveyor gets the walls and angles of an enclosure right upon his plan the area will be right also. This is the linear process, by which the area comes right indirectly.
It so happens that in oil-painting there is a great practical inconvenience in adhering faithfully to the linear process, for if the painter draws delicately modulated lines at the begin- ning of his task, he has to follow them out carefully in all subsequent colourings, which involves most tedious labour, and ties down the artist by so many petty manual restrictions that anything like energy of style becomes impossible for him.
I have had occasion, at the beginning of this work, to re- mark how closely mental and manual qualities are woven to- gether in the fine arts. Here is an excellent instance. Any high degree of mental energy in an oil-painter makes it unen- durable for him to follow refinements of line during all the
Drawing by Areas. 75
repaintings of his picture, so that if he has fire in his soul he will neglect the line during the earlier stages and reserve such attention as he may give to it for the finish. If, however, he neglects line he must still have something to go by, and he finds the necessary guidance in the proportions of areas.
People of limited experience, who have some knowledge of drawing by line but none of the other method, are often sur- prised when they see an accomplished landscape-painter at work from nature. Let us suppose that he has to paint a cot- tage with a thatched roof and a whitewashed wall ; he will probably put it in with an initiatory patch of something like straw-colour for the roof, laid on with a large brush, and a similar patch of white paint for the wall. The edges of both these patches will be left almost to chance, without any pre- tension whatever to linear drawing. In painting them the artist would not begin by the edges but by the middle, and when he had got them into the right state as a first painting, the probability is that any thoughtless person looking over his shoulder would not suppose that there was any drawing in them at all. There might, however, be good sound drawing of a certain kind, as the areas, though not enclosed by deli- cate lines, might be very nearly of the right proportion in the field of vision. On the other hand, a drawing of the same cottage in most delicate and observant line, might still be a bad drawing, if the artist's attention had been so much given to interesting details of line that he neglected their large pro- portions and so got his areas wrong. When drawing is deli- cate and bad at the same time, as it often is, the nature of the badness may be generally defined as a case of incorrectly pro- portioned areas.
We may lay it down then as a general rule that drawing by areas is essentially the drawing of painters, and especially of oil-painters.
It is still more necessary to a painter of landscape than to a figure-painter that he should be able to draw correctly by
76 The Graphic Arts.
areas, and to think in the language of areas rather than in the language of lines, because the intricacy and complexity of landscape subjects make it impossible to draw out all their parts delicately at first The figure-painter might keep to a delicate figure outline ; the landscape-painter could not follow minute outlines of foliage or herbage. In the instance just given of a thatched cottage, a perfectly accurate outline would be full of minute details of straw and moss (perhaps also of grass and flowers) which could not be followed from the beginning with the brush without destroying the relations of tone and colour.
As every kind of practice acts gradually upon the mind of the workman, and slowly but surely produces an effect upon his thoughts and opinions, it is always interesting to inquire what the effect is, and how the workman's ideas are modified by the particular thing which he does.
What is the effect of drawing by areas? Does it make painters indifferent to any of the beauties of nature ?
To know what the effect is we have only to refer to the school in which it is most practised — that of modem land- scape. The effect here is certainly to make artists indifferent to elaborate delicacy of line, and this is a distinct loss ; but it is not without compensation, as this very indifference to line leaves the mind more free to attend to tone and colour, which the landscape-painter finds to be more important. For him, therefore, in spite of a certain loss, drawing by areas is certainly the best method ; and if he can see all areas in their proper shapes and proportionate sizes, his eye is cultivated as it ought to be so far as drawing only is concerned.*
* One of the most unsuccessful landscape-painters, in the worldly sense, whom I ever knew, was greatly embarrassed to discover the rea- sons for his failure, as he rightly considered himself to possess at least as deep a knowledge of nature as his successful rivals. Notwithstanding this, his failure was easily accounted for. Instead of drawing by areas, and with the brush, he went by very delicate lines, into which he put an
Draiving by Areas. jy
amount of care and study for which nobody thanked him. He loved na- ture too much, so that it pained him to alter and compose ; and the con- sequence was that his works looked as if he were ignorant of composition. He knew too much of nature also, in a certain sense, which led him to paint rare effects which people could not understand; but of all his er- rors (errors, I mean, with reference to his worldly success) the greatest was drawing by line. There were beautiful lines in his pictures, but they gave them a look of hardness which made them less liked than far coarser and more ignorant work.
7& The Graphic Arts.
CHAPTER IX.
OF DRAWING BY SPOTS.
THE title of this chapter would have greatly astonished a critic of the last generation, when spottiness was consid- ered simply a vice in painting, and had not been developed into one of the forms of artistic expression.
Methods of execution are good or vicious, according to the degree of intelligence with which they are done. Even spots have been developed, by the skill of clever and observant men, into an artistic language, which has been found of great use for the expression of certain qualities in nature and a peculiar condition of the human mind.
We have just seen how painters may draw by areas. A spot is nothing but a small area distinguished from what surrounds it by some very visible difference of shade or colour. It may be of any shape, and need not be of one particular size, though when going beyond certain limited dimensions it be- comes what we should call a patch in oil-painting, or a blot in water-colour. What I mean by the word *spot' in this chapter is an area of an eighth of an inch in breadth, or less in small works, and four or five times as much in large ones.
It can be hardly necessary to observe that drawing by spots is directly opposed to that tranquillity which has generally been sought for by the greatest artists. Serene great art avoids them as much as it can, and always prefers broad spaces varied internally by well-studied modelling.
Nevertheless, drawing by spots is certainly authorised by Nature in many of her aspects, so that artists who adopt the
Drawing by Spots. 79
method may fairly appeal to her and say that they have au- thority for what they do. They are, indeed, quite indepen- dent of any necessity for self-justification, as their work, when good of its kind, has a striking resemblance to some appear- ances in nature.
Spots of the most various shapes and colours are produced in the natural world by different causes. They may be actual things, such as the pebbles by a brook, the daisies in a pas- ture, the stars in the sky. They may be small reflections of light on polished surfaces, such as the glitter on armour, or small spaces of darkness, such as the little hollows in rocks under sunshine. They may be mere changes of colour, like the spots on the hides of animals or the feathers of birds.
Spots of all kinds are much more numerous in full sunshine than in quiet light, and this is a reason why full sunshine was carefully avoided by great old artists, and why it is often sought by clever modern ones. In sunshine there are innu- merable small cast shadows, innumerable high lights. On dull days, or in twilight, all these disappear and give place to quiet breadth.
Artists who like spots are often exceedingly ingenious in the choice of subjects which admit that kind of interpretation. In figure-painting they avoid those broad and simple draperies which the classic artists preferred, and give their attention to eighteenth-century costumes, which are cut up into little de- tails by complex tailoring and embroidery. When they choose amongst the dresses of the present day it is always with the same purposes, and the still-life represented in their pictures is full of flicker and glitter. In landscape they like small- leaved trees with delicate stems and branches, and generally any small things that will catch the light and make spots and specks as little flowers do in a field.
Whilst thinking about the subject of this chapter I hap- pened to look out of a window which commands the edge of ^ wood* It was early in the morning, an April morning, and
8o The Graphic Arts.
the wood was already covered with small green leaves, princi- pally belonging to the birches. Bright early sunshine darted through everywhere, with level beams, and after getting through the entanglements of the trees, many of these beams hit some rising land opposite. The whole scene was nothing but specks and spots. All the leaves were dark or bright green spots, as they happened to be in shade or light The stems of the birches were revealed by silvery spots, and even the branches of other trees were traceable only by a confused glitter in cool or warm grey. The field itself was pied with buttercups and daisies, and where the soil was not covered with vegetation, the bare earth showed itself in spots, and so did the small stones. In this instance Nature seemed fully to authorise the spot system, except in her sky, which was one vast space of serene pale azure.
Some of the most important points in the human face, the pupils of the eyes, the orifices of the nostrils, and the comers of the mouth, may be represented by spots, and that so ef- fectively, that a few dots on paper convey a likeness, as we often see in the slight sketches of caricaturists.
The correct placing of spots requires a power of measure- ment by the eye, and consequently a power of drawing, not inferior to that required for accurate work in line. To draw a space of starlight sky with any near approximation to fidel- ity, by the eye only, would require the same powers, and the same training, as linear work, so far as simple accuracy is concerned.
The inferiority of the spot to the line is that it does not cultivate the sense of beauty to anything like the same de- gree, and consequently we find the spot resorted to rather by clever men than by great men. Skilful painters of costume and expression, including the whole school of Fortuny, use it extensively, but it is avoided by severe and serious students of form.
In landscape it has been sometimes used by great artists.
Drawing by Spots. 8 1
Many fine woodland pictures by the elder Linnell are founded more upon the spot than upon the line or the area. Con- stable's love of glitter on foliage led him to study the effect of spots more than it had ever been studied before his time, and the results he attained were nearer to those aspects of nature which he loved than more tranquil and sober painting ever could have been.
Some artists who have not covered their pictures with spots have,, nevertheless, made great use of them to give liveliness and sparkle to their work. The best known exam- ple of this is Landseer. He was excessively fond of sparkle, and loved above all things at the finish of a picture to put light dots on polished bits, stirrups, or armour, and especially on the bright eyes of his dogs and horses. An inferior draughtsman could not have put the dots as Landseer did, just in the right places for effect^ and with the most unhesi- tating decision of touch.
It should be observed, in conclusion, that drawing by spots has nothing to do with stipple, which is founded on principles of its own, to be explained later.
82 The Graphic Arts.
CHAPTER X.
PEN AND INK.
DRAWING in ink, either with the common pen that we write with, or with some other kind of pen used more particularly for artistic purposes, has sometimes been hastily classed amongst the * imperfect arts.'
What is meant by an * imperfect art ? ' The expression is used to designate an art which does not render with equal facility all the aspects of nature. It is an expression which I have always strongly disliked, both for its want of precision, as it does not state in what the imperfection lies, and for its implication that there exists some other art which may de- serve to be called * perfect.' The expression is objectionable, also, because it refers only to the imitation of nature, and takes no account of the human mind, which, nevertheless, is too important a factor in the fine arts to be entirely left out of consideration.
Every art described in this volume is perfect within its own limits. When this is not understood there must be a funda- mental misconception of the uses and possibilities of the fine arts. No one who understands them ever expects from them the complete representation of nature ; that is not their pur- pose, they are simply means of human expression — means by which men convey to others their delight in what they see, and in the exercise of their own inventive power. Consider, for a moment, how fundamentally imperfect, as imitations of nature, are the two arts which reign supreme in all the gal- leries of Europe, th^ arts of carving in marble and of paint-
Pen and Ink, 83
Ing in oil. Sculpture can only imitate massive form, painting can only imitate moderate light ; yet in spite of such imper- fections, and many others, these arts are precious to us for their clear expression of the human spirit. If, then, it is said of pen-drawing that it is * imperfect,' the answer is that pen- drawing is perfect within its own limits, and this is enough — enough for the long line of illustrious artists who have used the pen nobly, both in studies from nature and in sketching from imagination.
Every one of .the graphic arts has its limits in the imitation of nature. Those of pen-drawing lie chiefly in tone and gra- dation; but here it is necessary to establish a distinction between what is difficult and what is, in the absolute sense, impossible. The great artists who have drawn with the pen have always used it very much within its limits, they have not required from it as much tone and gradation as it can give ; and their reason for this reticence was because whenever tone and gradation happened to be their objects they had other and more rapid means at command. There is a wide distinction, in every art, between possibility and prudence. A delicate line-engraving may be so closely imitated with a fine pen that few people, at a little distance, would at the first glance detect the difference ; but no artist who knew the value of his time would waste it in such foolish toil. If he wanted delicate tones he would take sepia or bistre and a brush. Hence the pen-drawings of great artists, though . really full of refinement, have often what to the uneducated seems a coarse appearance. This apparent coarseness is always due to the omission of delicate tones ; yet the omission is wise and right, not because pen-drawing cannot render such tones, but be- cause it would be a misemployment of time and care to get them by its means. An author could, if he gave the neces- sary labour, learn to make his manuscript like print ; but no author who had anything to say would accept such a hin- drance to mental expression.
The Graphic Arts,
The (apparently) coarsest pen-drawings are usually the work of great artists ; the delicate and highly-finished pen- drawings are usually the work of amateurs, or else of work- men who are paid to imitate engravings for the purposes of photographic reproduction.
Our first lesson in the criticism of pen-drawing must be on the distinction between real and apparent coarseness. Real coarseness is deadness of perception, answering to vulgarity in manners ; but that which looks like coarseness to the un- educated is only directness and simplicity of expression, in which the artist purposely simplifies his statement of what he knows. Great artists, when they take up the pen, simplify by the omission of tones ; and the more they know of tone the more they simplify. Again, they very seldom appear to care about tenuity of line for its own sake ; a blunt pen which makes thick lines suits them, except in very small drawings, quite as well as a pen with a fine point. Neither do they care about making shade imitative of the delicate quality which it has in nature. In nature it is simply a degree of darkness without any texture whatever of its own, a veil be- neath which all the qualities of objects — their roughness or smoothness, their chromatic brightness or intensity — are sub- dued in proportion to its thickness ; in pen-drawing the pres- ence of shade is indicated by lines which, in the best work, have the least of its natural softness.
The best pen-drawing — that which has been practised by the greatest masters — is rightly, and wisely, and resolutely conventional. It is only a partial expression of natural truth ; and it willingly accepts the falsity of linear shading without attempting to dissimulate it by making the lines so delicate that they may be unobtrusive. It expresses form by a de- cided line and a certain limited amount of modelling. It loses all delicate light shades in white paper, and it often rep- resents all intense darks by black blots, without attempting minute distinctions between the degrees of their intensity.
Pen and Ink. 85
In many of the finest pen-drawings the extreme darks are omitted altogether, and the forms of nature are sufficiently suggested without them.
A good example of the sort of work which looks very coarse, but is not, is a drawing by Donatello in the collection of the Due d*Aumale, a pen-sketch for some project of an Entombment.'*'^ All the lines are so thick and rude that if a poster were drawn on such principles the lines in it would be strong enough, but what does this rudeness matter ? Dona- tello was not seeking for delicacy of shade ; he wanted to get the attitudes and expressions of three or four important fig- ures with the leading folds of their drapery, and here they are — one figure especially — clearly conceived and firmly set down whilst the idea was there in all its freshness. Modelling is rudely indicated with thick lines for shade and some cross- hatching running, in the darkest places, into black blots ; so that a Philistine, who knew nothing about summary expres- sion in the fine arts and nothing about Donatqllo, might con- clude that his notions of modelling were* very elementary. Such conclusions are perilous. Great artists do not always exhibit the whole of their knowledge ; they give what is suf- ficient for the occasion.
Michael Angelo was another illustrious artist who used the pen with a great deal of rough vigour, and in his case there was sometimes a peculiarity which it is not desirable that any- body should imitate. So long as he kept within the limits of real drawing his work was full of grandeur ; but he some- times, in the exuberance of an overheated imagination, passed beyond drawing altogether and exercised himself in the flour- ishes of calligraphy. A bold and rapid pen-sketch of his,t representing three reclining figures, is distinctly executed with the dashing curves and flourishes of the calligraphist. It looks as if it had been done by some clever writing-master,
• Reproduced in VArt^ vol. zviii. t VArt, vol. iii. p. 117.
86 The Graphic Arts.
as a flourishing translation of a study by a learned artist. Michael Angelo, in this design, appears to have been intoxi- cated with his own facility and to have lost the self-control without which there can be no truthful modulation of line. The lines here are not studied, any of them, but dashed in like the curves of capital letters. A much finer and better example of Michael Angelo's work with the pen is the pa^ of studies of hands, three of them, larger than life, with a man's back in the upper left-hand comer. The original is at Oxford ; but it has been autotyped by Braun, and is quite a first-rate example of bold but sober*work. The hands are modelled with great power, showing both the bony and mus- cular structure and the tension of skin between the fingers which are separated as they grasp some object, the wrist being high and bent. The well-known * Satyr's Head,' in profile, in the Louvre, which was drawn by Michael Angelo in ink, upon a drawing of a female head in sanguine, and which is supposed to have been done when Michael Angelo was a young man, is a strong and careful piece of modelling in hatched pen-work after the manner of some powerful piece of engraving, plainly showing that the artist could do sober work when in the humour, and that the calligraphic flourishes in some of his- rapid sketches were the result of a temporary excitement which carried him outside of, and beyond, the proper sphere of drawing. One of the finest of the very slight ink sketchesMs that of the recliniirg figure of Day, but it was done in such a hurry that the face is obliterated in scribble, and one foot is half as long again as the other.*
The pen-drawings of Raphael are delightful for their easy grace, and for the sure judgment with which the artist stopped short at those limits that a wise painter seldom transgresses when he draw^ with pen and ink. He left many drawings with the pen, chiefly sketches of projects and intentions, so that the subjects are often fully composed and we get those
• A reproduction appeared in VArt^ vol. iii. p. 83.
Pen and Ink- 87
improvements upon the natural lines which Raphael's exqui- site taste suggested. Other drawings are more matter-of-fact studies in which, of course, there is much less grace of line than there is in his ideas for pictures. To my taste, the best of Raphael's pen-drawings are the most entirely satisfactory expressions of his genius. I like them better than his paint- ings, for reasons which shall be given when we come to the greater art, and they have a charm of freshness, of genius ac- tually at work before us, thinking and realising its thoughts at the same time, which is not to be found in any of the elab- orate engravings from his finished designs. Popular admira- tion often confounds one quality with another, and so because Raphael had such a gift of graceful drawing as hjld never been seen before in Europe, he has been called the Prince of Painters ; which is a great mistake — as great a mistake as if you were to credit a man with eminent Greek scholarship on the strength of his elegant Latin.
Raphael, as a draughtsman with the pen, avoided (probably without ever thinking about it) the defects of Michael Angelo. There is great freedom in many of his designs, but you will never find in them a single instance of wild flourishes due to over-excitement Always master of himself, he lived with his own ideas of grace and beauty, which may often have pressed upon him somewhat urgently for at least a partial realisation, but which never made him forget that he was drawing. No man ever sketched more slightly when in a hurry, but th6 haste is indicated by extreme economy of labour, and not by lines run wild. There is the lovely sketch for the Virgin with the bullfinch, at Oxford,* so rapid that there is no outline for the forehead of the infant Jesus, and we see the Virgin's right arm through the other child's head, as if it were glass ; yet the lines of the two principal figures are drawn with moderation, and although the shading is very summary, consisting of strong
* Reproduced as an illustration in the Life of Raphael^ by Eugene Monti.
88 The Graphic Arts.
diagonal strokes with wide spaces between them, it is carefully placed, so as to give the infant Jesus the calculated degree of relief, and the effect of it, taken together, is moderate. This moderation in shading is characteristic of Raphael. In cer- tain places he would put a thick line, or a blot, to give strong accent or relief, but his shading is usually a middle-tint got with diagonal lines. All the elements of Raphael's pen-drawing will be found, on analysis, to reduce themselves to these four.
1. Pure line, indicating forms of persons, folds of drapery, &c. This line is not hard outline, but is often broken and picturesque, and deals with material within the outline; it is often multiple, so that the eye has three or four lines to choose from, in consequence of experiments and alterations. It is not generally thick, though it seems so when near lines run into each other.
2. Shading over the line, mostly diagonal, but not invariably. This shading is generally open, the lines being sometimes an eighth of an inch apart, but it is used only as a middle tint, all lighter tints being left white.
3. Cross-hatching, seldom resorted to, and used only acci- dentally, as it were, in parts, never laboriously, as if to imitate an engraving.
4. Thickened lines in places. The use of these is to give vigorous accents of relief. They have nothing to do with chia- roscuro, and are only used to detach features, members, or other objects. A nose, for instance, will sometimes be out- lined with a very thick line, to make it very clearly visible, in which case the thick line becomes a dark background on which the nose relieves itself as a white object. In a study for the * Entombment,' in M. Gay's collection, the shoulders of the kneeling female figure are outlined with strokes as thick as a large capital letter of this type. This has nothing to do with nature, it is simply a device for detaching objects without full light-and-shade. It is extensively resorted to at the present day in wood-engraving.
Pen and Ink, 89
The greatest of the Venetian pen-draughtsmen was Titian, whose remarkable power with this instrument will be better appreciated if the reader will take the trouble to look at earlier work of the same school, such as that of Gentile Bellini, of which there are some examples in the British Museum. The advance from G. Bellini to Titian is even greater than that from Mantegna to Raphael, for Mantegna had great breadth and decision in a simple style, though his work was primitive in comparison with the mature work of Raphael, whereas G. Bellini was delicate and even timid in manner, working out his drawing in minute pen-touches, and giving details with extreme care.* The advance from work of that class to the masculine line of Titian is like the progress from hesitating infancy to the most robust maturity.
The general characteristics of Titian's pen-drawing are these : — He seems to have considered the pen simply as an instrument for explaining the nature of tangible things, such as figures, trees, stones, ships, &c., and he did nqt use it even for the suggestion of colour, mystery, and effect. There is no local colour in his pen-drawings : an object dark in itself is of the same colour as a light object I need hardly observe that this is not due either to ignorance or forgetfulness ; certainly it cannot have been due to ignorance, for hundreds of pictures give their testimony that Titian was even more alive than most artists are to the value of local colour in the lights and darks of a picture. Other artists very frequently seek for variety of light and dark in sunshine and shadow, but Titian contented himself with diffuse light from the sky, and got the necessary variety in depth almost exclusively by means of the weights or values of local colour. As to possible forgetfulness this might have occurred in a single drawing, but the pen-drawings
♦ As, for example, in the drawing in the British Museum of a warrior in a high cap, seated, with a quiver on one side and a bow and sword on the other. Above him, in the same mount, is a study of a woman, exe* cuted on the same principles.
go The Graphic Arts,
of Titian are very numerous, and I believe they all ignore local colour equally, which proves a settled determination to avoid it in this kind of art. Again, his pen-drawings do not attempt to give either the mystery or the texture of natural things, nor do they represent the contrasts of light and shade which come from illumination, consequently they miss several very valu- able elements of what may be called the poetical impressions that we receive from the external world. What they really do give, and that with extraordinary force and clearness, is the artist's knowledge of things in themselves, and his sense of their mutual relations as elements in composition. They are not so elegant and charming as the pen-drawings of Raphael ; but taking the whole of the material that Titfan dealt with together, his drawings show by far the more comprehensive understanding of the visible world. Many readers will re- member the noble pen-drawing of Peter Martyr, which has been autotyped,* and in which we see, at its best, the painter's firm and simple treatment both of figures and trees, but the drawings in the Uffizj at Florence are less known, though some of them have been autotyped by Braun. Three land- scapes, with mountainous distances and fine trees in the fore- grounds, are especially grand examples of the bold and learned manner in which Titian dealt with natural material of a very high order. In one of these landscapes there is a crowded group of trees to the left on rocky ground, occupying half the picture, and the eye looks down from an eminence into a val- ley, out of which it ascends again over land diversified by minor hills and clumps of noble trees, until it comes to a dis- tance of lofty crests, peak behind peak, * far, far away.' This drawing is quite enough to prove that although Titian's system of pen-work did not admit delicate tones, which are very valu- able and useful in landscape, he could give a great deal of
• It is included in a volume of autotypes from drawings in the British Museum, published by Messrs. Chatto and Windus, with text by Mr. Comyns Carr.
Pen and Ink. 91
landscape character without them. Properly speaking, there is no chiaroscuro in this drawing. There is some shading, but it is simply explanatory of form, ot the roundness of tree- trunks, or the ruggedness of the mountain ground. Nothing can exceed the simplicity of the means used — a plain pen-line everywhere, never very delicate, even in the oudines of the distant mountains, and never thick or blotted as in Raphael and Michael Angelo, or in the modern work of which we shall have to speak presently. If you do not enjoy the drawing^ if you do not take delight in Titian's understanding of earth, and stones, and trees, the work will seem grey and dull to you, for it has no glamour of sparkle and gloom ; but it is the kind of work in which landscape-painting of the most brilliant descrip- tion may lay its firmest and most secure foundation. Here we have not the glory of landscape, not its splendours nor its mysteries, not its soft seductive beauty that fills the heart of man with a sweet sadness and inspires his imagination with dreams of a lost Paradise, but the positive tangible landscape of earth, and stone, and wood, drawn with the same grasp of matter that enables a figure-painter to deal with the bones and muscles of which our limbs are built. This realism, or, to use a still more accurate word, this materialism, of Titian's mind, made the pen an acceptable instrument for him. It is an excellent instrument for plain statements of material facts, the bard and clear ink line records them rigorously and pre- serves them permanently, but it is not the instrument where- with to express the tender reveries of a weary heart or the vague longings of a wandering imagination.
All hard and definite things, such as buildings and the trunks of trees, may be very well rendered with pen-lines. Titian often put buildings in the middle distances of his pen- drawings, and he had, notwithstanding the general largeness of his conceptions, rather a lively sense of the picturesque. His little mountain towns, with their variety of roofs and towers, and his villages with their homesteads, are delightful
92 The Graphic Arts,
for the loving care with which he attended to interesting details of construction, such as the placing of windows and arches, but, unluckily, in consequence of some obliquity of vision, he never could draw vertical lines, always malting them lean far to the right, sometimes even with a radiating sort of arrangement like the pieces on the right-hand side of a fan. In the Dresden Museum there is a noble drawing of a seaport on an island with rugged mountains beyond a strait, and a cliff crowned with a tower to the spectator's right, but, of course, all the walls are leaning in a way that threatens ruin. This drawing is specially interesting for its simple treatment of clouds and water, the movement of both being indicated with a few well-chosen lines, drawn just as firmly as those of the land or buildings. It not unfrequently happens that in the foregrounds of Titian's pen-drawings there is a good deal of what may be called unmeaning shading in long bold lines which efface the delicate beauty of natural vegetation, and are of use only as ver}' broad indications of the modelling of the earth-masses ; but whatever faults may be pointed out in these works they are always noble in style and most happily combine great breadth and energy of treatment with a vigilant attention to characteristic facts of form.*
Giorgione employed the pen in a manner which reminds us of Titian, but he used blacks more boldly, and he admitted a system of broken dotted lines as a suggestion of the texture of rocks which we do not find in Titian. His drawings of the figure are simple and lively, with light, easy shading, not too much insisted upon, and points of deep black which give accent and vivacity.
Claude left many pen-drawings, of which by far the greater number are more or less sustained by washes of bistre, or
* If the reader is seriously interested in studies of this kind he would do well to procure for himself Braun*s Autotypes from the Uffizj, marked 813, 814, 815, and 816, in Braun's general catalogue, and also the draw- ing from the Dresden Museum marked 63.
Pen and Ink. 93
some other water-colour monochrome. Some, however, are in pure pen-work, and these may be taken as the beginning of modern landscape sketching with the pen, which difiEers from the massive draughtsmanship of Titian in a greater lightness of style with less insistence upon facts of substance. Claude's drawing of material things was always comparatively slight, even when he was most energetic ; but this slightness was amply compensated for by a new and exquisite sense of land- scape effect and composition. We are not to look to his pure pen-drawings for effect, they are merely rough sketches of possible subjects, yet they show the landscape-painter in the choice and arrangement of material. Some of them are ap- parently coarse in manner to a degree which may at first sur- prise students who are familiar with Claude's delicate skies and distances in oil-painting, but it very frequently happens that the most refined painters used the pen with the least seeking after delicacy of line. I do not, however, think that Claude generally drew powerfully enough to make his pen- drawings very valuable in themselves ; they require to be sus- tained by. washes, when the chiaroscuro so added makes them more interesting.
The northern schools used the pen quite as vigorously as the Italian. Albert Diirer's wonderful manual skill with the burin, a much more difficult instrument than the pen, made him quite at ease in his drawings, and there is a sense of freedom in them showing itself in a facility of manner which, though not comparable to the light grace of Raphael, is still an evidence that the artist felt himself at play. Diirer's pen- drawings show the artist's mind in its hours, not of idleness, but of artistic relaxation, when he felt himself relieved for a while from the stress and strain of the mechanical perfection that engraving demanded, and could realise his ideas, to a certain extent at least, without any pain or effort. His sys- tem of shading was simple, and divided the subject into light and darker masses without reference to local colour, and with
94 The Graphic Arts,
no intentional display of craft in cross-hatching or in varied thickness of line.*
The pen is too valuable an instrument ever to have been completely abandoned by artists, but it has been employed by them more or less according to those delicate elective affinities which