The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed

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Title: The Practice and Science Of Drawing

Author: Harold Speed

Release Date: December 6, 2004 [EBook #14264]

Language: English

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THE

PRACTICE & SCIENCE

OF

DRAWING

BY

HAROLD SPEED

Associé de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris; Member of the
Royal Society of Portrait Painters, &c.

* * * * *

With 93 Illustrations & Diagrams

* * * * *

LONDON SEELEY, SERVICE & CO. LIMITED 38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET 1913

* * * * *

[Illustration: Plate I.

FOUR PHOTOGRAPHS OF SAME MONOCHROME PAINTING IN DIFFERENT STAGES
ILLUSTRATING A METHOD OF STUDYING MASS DRAWING WITH THE BRUSH]

* * * * *




PREFACE


Permit me in the first place to anticipate the disappointment of any
student who opens this book with the idea of finding "wrinkles" on how
to draw faces, trees, clouds, or what not, short cuts to excellence in
drawing, or any of the tricks so popular with the drawing masters of our
grandmothers and still dearly loved by a large number of people. No good
can come of such methods, for there are no short cuts to excellence. But
help of a very practical kind it is the aim of the following pages to
give; although it may be necessary to make a greater call upon the
intelligence of the student than these Victorian methods attempted.

It was not until some time after having passed through the course of
training in two of our chief schools of art that the author got any idea
of what drawing really meant. What was taught was the faithful copying
of a series of objects, beginning with the simplest forms, such as
cubes, cones, cylinders, &c. (an excellent system to begin with at
present in danger of some neglect), after which more complicated objects
in plaster of Paris were attempted, and finally copies of the human head
and figure posed in suspended animation and supported by blocks, &c. In
so far as this was accurately done, all this mechanical training of eye
and hand was excellent; but it was not enough. And when with an eye
trained to the closest mechanical accuracy the author visited the
galleries of the Continent and studied the drawings of the old masters,
it soon became apparent that either his or their ideas of drawing were
all wrong. Very few drawings could be found sufficiently "like the
model" to obtain the prize at either of the great schools he had
attended. Luckily there was just enough modesty left for him to realise
that possibly they were in some mysterious way right and his own
training in some way lacking. And so he set to work to try and climb the
long uphill road that separates mechanically accurate drawing from
artistically accurate drawing.

Now this journey should have been commenced much earlier, and perhaps it
was due to his own stupidity that it was not; but it was with a vague
idea of saving some students from such wrong-headedness, and possibly
straightening out some of the path, that he accepted the invitation to
write this book.

In writing upon any matter of experience, such as art, the possibilities
of misunderstanding are enormous, and one shudders to think of the
things that may be put down to one's credit, owing to such
misunderstandings. It is like writing about the taste of sugar, you are
only likely to be understood by those who have already experienced the
flavour; by those who have not, the wildest interpretation will be put
upon your words. The written word is necessarily confined to the things
of the understanding because only the understanding has written
language; whereas art deals with ideas of a different mental texture,
which words can only vaguely suggest. However, there are a large number
of people who, although they cannot be said to have experienced in a
full sense any works of art, have undoubtedly the impelling desire which
a little direction may lead on to a fuller appreciation. And it is to
such that books on art are useful. So that although this book is
primarily addressed to working students, it is hoped that it may be of
interest to that increasing number of people who, tired with the rush
and struggle of modern existence, seek refreshment in artistic things.
To many such in this country modern art is still a closed book; its
point of view is so different from that of the art they have been
brought up with, that they refuse to have anything to do with it.
Whereas, if they only took the trouble to find out something of the
point of view of the modern artist, they would discover new beauties
they little suspected.

If anybody looks at a picture by Claude Monet from the point of view of
a Raphael, he will see nothing but a meaningless jargon of wild
paint-strokes. And if anybody looks at a Raphael from the point of view
of a Claude Monet, he will, no doubt, only see hard, tinny figures in a
setting devoid of any of the lovely atmosphere that always envelops form
seen in nature. So wide apart are some of the points of view in
painting. In the treatment of form these differences in point of view
make for enormous variety in the work. So that no apology need be made
for the large amount of space occupied in the following pages by what is
usually dismissed as mere theory; but what is in reality the first
essential of any good practice in drawing. To have a clear idea of what
it is you wish to do, is the first necessity of any successful
performance. But our exhibitions are full of works that show how seldom
this is the case in art. Works showing much ingenuity and ability, but
no artistic brains; pictures that are little more than school studies,
exercises in the representation of carefully or carelessly arranged
objects, but cold to any artistic intention.

At this time particularly some principles, and a clear intellectual
understanding of what it is you are trying to do, are needed. We have no
set traditions to guide us. The times when the student accepted the
style and traditions of his master and blindly followed them until he
found himself, are gone. Such conditions belonged to an age when
intercommunication was difficult, and when the artistic horizon was
restricted to a single town or province. Science has altered all that,
and we may regret the loss of local colour and singleness of aim this
growth of art in separate compartments produced; but it is unlikely that
such conditions will occur again. Quick means of transit and cheap
methods of reproduction have brought the art of the whole world to our
doors. Where formerly the artistic food at the disposal of the student
was restricted to the few pictures in his vicinity and some prints of
others, now there is scarcely a picture of note in the world that is not
known to the average student, either from personal inspection at our
museums and loan exhibitions, or from excellent photographic
reproductions. Not only European art, but the art of the East, China and
Japan, is part of the formative influence by which he is surrounded; not
to mention the modern science of light and colour that has had such an
influence on technique. It is no wonder that a period of artistic
indigestion is upon us. Hence the student has need of sound principles
and a clear understanding of the science of his art, if he would select
from this mass of material those things which answer to his own inner
need for artistic expression.

The position of art to-day is like that of a river where many
tributaries meeting at one point, suddenly turn the steady flow to
turbulence, the many streams jostling each other and the different
currents pulling hither and thither. After a time these newly-met forces
will adjust themselves to the altered condition, and a larger, finer
stream be the result. Something analogous to this would seem to be
happening in art at the present time, when all nations and all schools
are acting and reacting upon each other, and art is losing its national
characteristics. The hope of the future is that a larger and deeper art,
answering to the altered conditions of humanity, will result.

There are those who would leave this scene of struggling influences and
away up on some bare primitive mountain-top start a new stream, begin
all over again. But however necessary it may be to give the primitive
mountain waters that were the start of all the streams a more prominent
place in the new flow onwards, it is unlikely that much can come of any
attempt to leave the turbulent waters, go backwards, and start again;
they can only flow onwards. To speak more plainly, the complexity of
modern art influences may make it necessary to call attention to the
primitive principles of expression that should never be lost sight of in
any work, but hardly justifies the attitude of those anarchists in art
who would flout the heritage of culture we possess and attempt a new
start. Such attempts however when sincere are interesting and may be
productive of some new vitality, adding to the weight of the main
stream. But it must be along the main stream, along lines in harmony
with tradition that the chief advance must be looked for.

Although it has been felt necessary to devote much space to an attempt
to find principles that may be said to be at the basis of the art of all
nations, the executive side of the question has not been neglected. And
it is hoped that the logical method for the study of drawing from the
two opposite points of view of line and mass here advocated may be
useful, and help students to avoid some of the confusion that results
from attempting simultaneously the study of these different qualities of
form expression.

* * * * *




CONTENTS


I. INTRODUCTION
II. DRAWING
III. VISION
IV. LINE DRAWING
V. MASS DRAWING
VI. THE ACADEMIC AND CONVENTIONAL
VII. THE STUDY OF DRAWING
VIII. LINE DRAWING: PRACTICAL
IX. MASS DRAWING: PRACTICAL
X. RHYTHM
XI. RHYTHM: VARIETY OF LINE
XII. RHYTHM: UNITY OF LINE
XIII. RHYTHM: VARIETY OF MASS
XIV. RHYTHM: UNITY OF MASS
XV. RHYTHM: BALANCE
XVI. RHYTHM: PROPORTION
XVII. PORTRAIT DRAWING
XVIII. THE VISUAL MEMORY
XIX. PROCEDURE
XX. MATERIALS
XXI. CONCLUSION

APPENDIX

INDEX




LIST OF PLATES


I. SET OF FOUR PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE SAME STUDY FROM THE LIFE IN
DIFFERENT STAGES
II. DRAWING BY LEONARDO DA VINCI
III. STUDY FOR "APRIL"
IV. STUDY FOR THE FIGURE OF "BOREAS"
V. FROM A STUDY BY BOTTICELLI
VI. STUDY BY ALFRED STEPHENS
VII. STUDY FOR THE FIGURE OF APOLLO
VIII. STUDY FOR A PICTURE
IX. STUDY BY WATTEAU
X. EXAMPLE OF XVTH CENTURY CHINESE WORK
XI. LOS MENENAS. BY VELAZQUEZ
XII. STUDY ATTRIBUTED TO MICHAEL ANGELO
XIII. STUDY BY DEGAS
XIV. DRAWING BY ERNEST COLE
XV. FROM A PENCIL DRAWING BY INGRES
XVI. STUDY BY RUBENS
XVII. A DEMONSTRATION DRAWING AT THE GOLDSMITHS' COLLEGE
XVIII. STUDY ILLUSTRATING METHOD OF DRAWING
XIX. ILLUSTRATING CURVED LINES
XX. STUDY FOR THE FIGURE OF "Love"
XXI. STUDY ILLUSTRATING TREATMENT OF HAIR
XXII. STUDY FOR DECORATION AT AMIENS
XXIII. DIFFERENT STAGES OF THE PAINTING FROM A CAST (1)
XXIII. DIFFERENT STAGES OF THE PAINTING FROM A CAST (2)
XXIV. DIFFERENT STAGES OF THE PAINTING FROM A CAST (3)
XXIV. DIFFERENT STAGES OF THE PAINTING FROM A CAST (4)
XXV. ILLUSTRATING SOME TYPICAL BRUSH STROKES
XXVI. DIFFERENT STAGES OF THE SAME STUDY (1)
XXVII. DIFFERENT STAGES OF THE SAME STUDY (2)
XXVIII. DIFFERENT STAGES OF THE SAME STUDY (3)
XXIX. DIFFERENT STAGES OF THE SAME STUDY (4)
XXX. A STUDY FOR A PICTURE OF "ROSALIND AND ORLANDO"
XXXI. ILLUSTRATIONS FROM BLAKE'S "JOB" (PLATES I., V., X., XXI.)
XXXII. ILLUSTRATIONS FROM BLAKE'S "JOB" (PLATES II., XI., XVIII., XIV.)
XXXIII. FÊTE CHAMPÊTRE
XXXIV. BACCHUS AND ARIADNE
XXXV. LOVE AND DEATH
XXXVI. SURRENDER OF BREDA
XXXVII. THE BIRTH OF VENUS
XXXVIII. THE RAPE OF EUROPA
XXXIX. BATTLE OF S. EGIDIO
XL. THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST
XLI. THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST
XLII. PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST'S DAUGHTER
XLIII. MONTE SOLARO, CAPRI
XLIV. PART OF THE "SURRENDER OF BREDA"
XLV. VENUS, MERCURY, AND CUPID
XLVI. OLYMPIA
XLVII. L'EMBARQUEMENT POUR CYTHÈRE
XLVIII. THE ANSIDEI MADONNA
XLIX. FINDING OF THE BODY OF ST. MARK
L. FROM A DRAWING BY HOLBEIN
LI. SIR CHARLES DILKE
LII. JOHN REDMOND, M.P.
LIII. THE LADY AUDLEY
LIV. STUDY ON BROWN PAPER
LV. FROM A SILVER POINT DRAWING
LVI. STUDY FOR TREE IN "THE BOAR HUNT"




LIST OF DIAGRAMS


I. TYPES OF FIRST DRAWINGS BY CHILDREN
II. SHOWING WHERE SQUARENESSES MAY BE LOOKED FOR
III. A DEVICE FOR ENABLING STUDENTS TO OBSERVE APPEARANCES AS A
FLAT SUBJECT
IV. SHOWING THREE PRINCIPLES OF CONSTRUCTION USED IN OBSERVING
MASSES, CURVES, AND POSITION OF POINTS
V. PLAN OF CONE ILLUSTRATING PRINCIPLES OF LIGHT AND SHADE
VI. ILLUSTRATING SOME POINTS CONNECTED WITH THE EYES
VII. EGG AND DART MOULDING
VIII. ILLUSTRATING VARIETY IN SYMMETRY
IX. ILLUSTRATING VARIETY IN SYMMETRY
X. ILLUSTRATING INFLUENCE OF HORIZONTAL LINES
XI. ILLUSTRATING INFLUENCE OF VERTICAL LINES
XII. ILLUSTRATING INFLUENCE OF THE RIGHT ANGLE
XIII. LOVE AND DEATH
XIV. ILLUSTRATING POWER OF CURVED LINES
XV. THE BIRTH OF VENUS
XVI. THE RAPE OF EUROPA
XVII. BATTLE OF S. EGIDIO
XVIII. SHOWING HOW LINES UNRELATED CAN BE BROUGHT INTO HARMONY
XIX. SHOWING HOW LINES UNRELATED CAN BE BROUGHT INTO HARMONY
XX. THE ARTIST'S DAUGHTER
XXI. THE INFLUENCE ON THE FACE OF DIFFERENT WAYS OF DOING THE HAIR
XXII. THE INFLUENCE ON THE FACE OF DIFFERENT WAYS OF DOING THE HAIR
XXIII. EXAMPLES OF EARLY ITALIAN TREATMENT OF TREES
XXIV. THE PRINCIPLE OF MASS OR TONE RHYTHM
XXV. MASS OR TONE RHYTHM IN "ULYSSES DERIDING POLYPHEMUS"
XXVI. EXAMPLE OF COROT'S SYSTEM OF MASS RHYTHM
XXVII. ILLUSTRATING HOW INTEREST MAY BALANCE MASS
XXVIII. PROPORTION

* * * * *




THE PRACTICE AND SCIENCE OF DRAWING




I

INTRODUCTION


The best things in an artist's work are so much a matter of intuition,
that there is much to be said for the point of view that would
altogether discourage intellectual inquiry into artistic phenomena on
the part of the artist. Intuitions are shy things and apt to disappear
if looked into too closely. And there is undoubtedly a danger that too
much knowledge and training may supplant the natural intuitive feeling
of a student, leaving only a cold knowledge of the means of expression
in its place. For the artist, if he has the right stuff in him, has a
consciousness, in doing his best work, of something, as Ruskin has said,
"not in him but through him." He has been, as it were, but the agent
through which it has found expression.

Talent can be described as "that which we have," and Genius as "that
which has us." Now, although we may have little control over this power
that "has us," and although it may be as well to abandon oneself
unreservedly to its influence, there can be little doubt as to its being
the business of the artist to see to it that his talent be so developed,
that he may prove a fit instrument for the expression of whatever it
may be given him to express; while it must be left to his individual
temperament to decide how far it is advisable to pursue any intellectual
analysis of the elusive things that are the true matter of art.

Provided the student realises this, and that art training can only deal
with the perfecting of a means of expression and that the real matter of
art lies above this and is beyond the scope of teaching, he cannot have
too much of it. For although he must ever be a child before the
influence that moves him, if it is not with the knowledge of the grown
man that he takes off his coat and approaches the craft of painting or
drawing, he will be poorly equipped to make them a means of conveying to
others in adequate form the things he may wish to express. Great things
are only done in art when the creative instinct of the artist has a
well-organised executive faculty at its disposal.

* * * * *

Of the two divisions into which the technical study of painting can be
divided, namely Form and Colour, we are concerned in this book with Form
alone. But before proceeding to our immediate subject something should
be said as to the nature of art generally, not with the ambition of
arriving at any final result in a short chapter, but merely in order to
give an idea of the point of view from which the following pages are
written, so that misunderstandings may be avoided.

The variety of definitions that exist justifies some inquiry. The
following are a few that come to mind:

"Art is nature expressed through a personality."

But what of architecture? Or music? Then there is Morris's

"Art is the expression of pleasure in work."

But this does not apply to music and poetry. Andrew Lang's

"Everything which we distinguish from nature"

seems too broad to catch hold of, while Tolstoy's

"An action by means of which one man, having experienced a feeling,
intentionally transmits it to others"

is nearer the truth, and covers all the arts, but seems, from its
omitting any mention of #rhythm#, very inadequate.

* * * * *

Now the facts of life are conveyed by our senses to the consciousness
within us, and stimulate the world of thought and feeling that
constitutes our real life. Thought and feeling are very intimately
connected, few of our mental perceptions, particularly when they first
dawn upon us, being unaccompanied by some feeling. But there is this
general division to be made, on one extreme of which is what we call
pure intellect, and on the other pure feeling or emotion. The arts, I
take it, are a means of giving expression to the emotional side of this
mental activity, intimately related as it often is to the more purely
intellectual side. The more sensual side of this feeling is perhaps its
lowest, while the feelings associated with the intelligence, the little
sensitivenesses of perception that escape pure intellect, are possibly
its noblest experiences.

Pure intellect seeks to construct from the facts brought to our
consciousness by the senses, an accurately measured world of phenomena,
uncoloured by the human equation in each of us. It seeks to create a
point of view outside the human standpoint, one more stable and
accurate, unaffected by the ever-changing current of human life. It
therefore invents mechanical instruments to do the measuring of our
sense perceptions, as their records are more accurate than human
observation unaided.

But while in science observation is made much more effective by the use
of mechanical instruments in registering facts, the facts with which art
deals, being those of feeling, can only be recorded by the feeling
instrument--man, and are entirely missed by any mechanically devised
substitutes.

The artistic intelligence is not interested in things from this
standpoint of mechanical accuracy, but in the effect of observation on
the living consciousness--the sentient individual in each of us. The
same fact accurately portrayed by a number of artistic intelligences
should be different in each case, whereas the same fact accurately
expressed by a number of scientific intelligences should be the same.

But besides the feelings connected with a wide range of experience, each
art has certain emotions belonging to the particular sense perceptions
connected with it. That is to say, there are some that only music can
convey: those connected with sound; others that only painting,
sculpture, or architecture can convey: those connected with the form and
colour that they severally deal with.

In abstract form and colour--that is, form and colour unconnected with
natural appearances--there is an emotional power, such as there is in
music, the sounds of which have no direct connection with anything in
nature, but only with that mysterious sense we have, the sense of
Harmony, Beauty, or Rhythm (all three but different aspects of the same
thing).

This inner sense is a very remarkable fact, and will be found to some
extent in all, certainly all civilised, races. And when the art of a
remote people like the Chinese and Japanese is understood, our senses of
harmony are found to be wonderfully in agreement. Despite the fact that
their art has developed on lines widely different from our own, none the
less, when the surprise at its newness has worn off and we begin to
understand it, we find it conforms to very much the same sense of
harmony.

But apart from the feelings connected directly with the means of
expression, there appears to be much in common between all the arts in
their most profound expression; there seems to be a common centre in our
inner life that they all appeal to. Possibly at this centre are the
great primitive emotions common to all men. The religious group, the
deep awe and reverence men feel when contemplating the great mystery of
the Universe and their own littleness in the face of its vastness--the
desire to correspond and develop relationship with the something outside
themselves that is felt to be behind and through all things. Then there
are those connected with the joy of life, the throbbing of the great
life spirit, the gladness of being, the desire of the sexes; and also
those connected with the sadness and mystery of death and decay, &c.

The technical side of an art is, however, not concerned with these
deeper motives but with the things of sense through which they find
expression; in the case of painting, the visible universe.

The artist is capable of being stimulated to artistic expression by all
things seen, no matter what; to him nothing comes amiss. Great pictures
have been made of beautiful people in beautiful clothes and of squalid
people in ugly clothes, of beautiful architectural buildings and the
ugly hovels of the poor. And the same painter who painted the Alps
painted the Great Western Railway.

The visible world is to the artist, as it were, a wonderful garment, at
times revealing to him the Beyond, the Inner Truth there is in all
things. He has a consciousness of some correspondence with something the
other side of visible things and dimly felt through them, a "still,
small voice" which he is impelled to interpret to man. It is the
expression of this all-pervading inner significance that I think we
recognise as beauty, and that prompted Keats to say:

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty."

And hence it is that the love of truth and the love of beauty can exist
together in the work of the artist. The search for this inner truth is
the search for beauty. People whose vision does not penetrate beyond the
narrow limits of the commonplace, and to whom a cabbage is but a vulgar
vegetable, are surprised if they see a beautiful picture painted of one,
and say that the artist has idealised it, meaning that he has
consciously altered its appearance on some idealistic formula; whereas
he has probably only honestly given expression to a truer, deeper vision
than they had been aware of. The commonplace is not the true, but only
the shallow, view of things.

[Illustration: Plate II.

DRAWING BY LEONARDO DA VINCI FROM THE ROYAL COLLECTION AT WINDSOR

_Copyright photo, Braun & Co._]

Fromentin's

"Art is the expression of the invisible by means of the visible"

expresses the same idea, and it is this that gives to art its high place
among the works of man.

Beautiful things seem to put us in correspondence with a world the
harmonies of which are more perfect, and bring a deeper peace than this
imperfect life seems capable of yielding of itself. Our moments of peace
are, I think, always associated with some form of beauty, of this spark
of harmony within corresponding with some infinite source without. Like
a mariner's compass, we are restless until we find repose in this one
direction. In moments of beauty (for beauty is, strictly speaking, a
state of mind rather than an attribute of certain objects, although
certain things have the power of inducing it more than others) we seem
to get a glimpse of this deeper truth behind the things of sense. And
who can say but that this sense, dull enough in most of us, is not an
echo of a greater harmony existing somewhere the other side of things,
that we dimly feel through them, evasive though it is.

But we must tread lightly in these rarefied regions and get on to more
practical concerns. By finding and emphasising in his work those
elements in visual appearances that express these profounder things, the
painter is enabled to stimulate the perception of them in others.

In the representation of a fine mountain, for instance, there are,
besides all its rhythmic beauty of form and colour, associations
touching deeper chords in our natures--associations connected with its
size, age, and permanence, &c.; at any rate we have more feelings than
form and colour of themselves are capable of arousing. And these things
must be felt by the painter, and his picture painted under the influence
of these feelings, if he is instinctively to select those elements of
form and colour that convey them. Such deeper feelings are far too
intimately associated even with the finer beauties of mere form and
colour for the painter to be able to neglect them; no amount of
technical knowledge will take the place of feeling, or direct the
painter so surely in his selection of what is fine.

There are those who would say, "This is all very well, but the painter's
concern is with form and colour and paint, and nothing else. If he
paints the mountain faithfully from that point of view, it will suggest
all these other associations to those who want them." And others who
would say that the form and colour of appearances are only to be used as
a language to give expression to the feelings common to all men. "Art
for art's sake" and "Art for subject's sake." There are these two
extreme positions to consider, and it will depend on the individual on
which side his work lies. His interest will be more on the aesthetic
side, in the feelings directly concerned with form and colour; or on the
side of the mental associations connected with appearances, according to
his temperament. But neither position can neglect the other without
fatal loss. The picture of form and colour will never be able to escape
the associations connected with visual things, neither will the picture
all for subject be able to get away from its form and colour. And it is
wrong to say "If he paints the mountain faithfully from the form and
colour point of view it will suggest all those other associations to
those who want them," unless, as is possible with a simple-minded
painter, he be unconsciously moved by deeper feelings, and impelled to
select the significant things while only conscious of his paint. But the
chances are that his picture will convey the things he was thinking
about, and, in consequence, instead of impressing us with the grandeur
of the mountain, will say something very like "See what a clever painter
I am!" Unless the artist has painted his picture under the influence of
the deeper feelings the scene was capable of producing, it is not likely
anybody will be so impressed when they look at his work.

And the painter deeply moved with high ideals as to subject matter, who
neglects the form and colour through which he is expressing them, will
find that his work has failed to be convincing. The immaterial can only
be expressed through the material in art, and the painted symbols of the
picture must be very perfect if subtle and elusive meanings are to be
conveyed. If he cannot paint the commonplace aspect of our mountain, how
can he expect to paint any expression of the deeper things in it? The
fact is, both positions are incomplete. In all good art the matter
expressed and the manner of its expression are so intimate as to have
become one. The deeper associations connected with the mountain are only
matters for art in so far as they affect its appearance and take shape
as form and colour in the mind of the artist, informing the whole
process of the painting, even to the brush strokes. As in a good poem,
it is impossible to consider the poetic idea apart from the words that
express it: they are fired together at its creation.

Now an expression by means of one of our different sense perceptions
does not constitute art, or the boy shouting at the top of his voice,
giving expression to his delight in life but making a horrible noise,
would be an artist. If his expression is to be adequate to convey his
feeling to others, there must be some arrangement. The expression must
be ordered, rhythmic, or whatever word most fitly conveys the idea of
those powers, conscious or unconscious, that select and arrange the
sensuous material of art, so as to make the most telling impression, by
bringing it into relation with our innate sense of harmony. If we can
find a rough definition that will include all the arts, it will help us
to see in what direction lie those things in painting that make it an
art. The not uncommon idea, that painting is "the production by means of
colours of more or less perfect representations of natural objects" will
not do. And it is devoutly to be hoped that science will perfect a
method of colour photography finally to dispel this illusion.

What, then, will serve as a working definition? There must be something
about feeling, the expression of that individuality the secret of which
everyone carries in himself; the expression of that ego that perceives
and is moved by the phenomena of life around us. And, on the other hand,
something about the ordering of its expression.

But who knows of words that can convey a just idea of such subtle
matter? If one says "Art is the rhythmic expression of Life, or
emotional consciousness, or feeling," all are inadequate. Perhaps the
"rhythmic expression of life" would be the more perfect definition. But
the word "life" is so much more associated with eating and drinking in
the popular mind, than with the spirit or force or whatever you care to
call it, that exists behind consciousness and is the animating factor
of our whole being, that it will hardly serve a useful purpose. So that,
perhaps, for a rough, practical definition that will at least point away
from the mechanical performances that so often pass for art, "#the
Rhythmic expression of Feeling#" will do: for by Rhythm is meant that
ordering of the materials of art (form and colour, in the case of
painting) so as to bring them into relationship with our innate sense of
harmony which gives them their expressive power. Without this
relationship we have no direct means of making the sensuous material of
art awaken an answering echo in others. The boy shouting at the top of
his voice, making a horrible noise, was not an artist because his
expression was inadequate--was not related to the underlying sense of
harmony that would have given it expressive power.

[Illustration: Plate III.

STUDY FOR "APRIL"

In red chalk on toned paper.]

Let us test this definition with some simple cases. Here is a savage,
shouting and flinging his arms and legs about in wild delight; he is not
an artist, although he may be moved by life and feeling. But let this
shouting be done on some ordered plan, to a rhythm expressive of joy and
delight, and his leg and arm movements governed by it also, and he has
become an artist, and singing and dancing (possibly the oldest of the
arts) will result.

Or take the case of one who has been deeply moved by something he has
seen, say a man killed by a wild beast, which he wishes to tell his
friends. If he just explains the facts as he saw them, making no effort
to order his words so as to make the most telling impression upon his
hearers and convey to them something of the feelings that are stirring
in him, if he merely does this, he is not an artist, although the
recital of such a terrible incident may be moving. But the moment he
arranges his words so as to convey in a telling manner not only the
plain facts, but the horrible feelings he experienced at the sight, he
has become an artist. And if he further orders his words to a rhythmic
beat, a beat in sympathy with his subject, he has become still more
artistic, and a primitive form of poetry will result.

Or in building a hut, so long as a man is interested solely in the
utilitarian side of the matter, as are so many builders to-day, and just
puts up walls as he needs protection from wild beasts, and a roof to
keep out the rain, he is not yet an artist. But the moment he begins to
consider his work with some feeling, and arranges the relative sizes of
his walls and roof so that they answer to some sense he has for
beautiful proportion, he has become an artist, and his hut has some
architectural pretensions. Now if his hut is of wood, and he paints it
to protect it from the elements, nothing necessarily artistic has been
done. But if he selects colours that give him pleasure in their
arrangement, and if the forms his colour masses assume are designed with
some personal feeling, he has invented a primitive form of decoration.

And likewise the savage who, wishing to illustrate his description of a
strange animal he has seen, takes a piece of burnt wood and draws on the
wall his idea of what it looked like, a sort of catalogue of its
appearance in its details, he is not necessarily an artist. It is only
when he draws under the influence of some feeling, of some pleasure he
felt in the appearance of the animal, that he becomes an artist.

Of course in each case it is assumed that the men have the power to be
moved by these things, and whether they are good or poor artists will
depend on the quality of their feeling and the fitness of its
expression.

[Illustration: Plate IV.

STUDY ON TISSUE-PAPER IN RED CHALK FOR FIGURE OF BOREAS]


The purest form of this "rhythmic expression of feeling" is music. And
as Walter Pater shows us in his essay on "The School of Giorgione,"
"music is the type of art." The others are more artistic as they
approach its conditions. Poetry, the most musical form of literature, is
its most artistic form. And in the greatest pictures form, colour, and
idea are united to thrill us with harmonies analogous to music.

The painter expresses his feelings through the representation of the
visible world of Nature, and through the representation of those
combinations of form and colour inspired in his imagination, that were
all originally derived from visible nature. If he fails from lack of
skill to make his representation convincing to reasonable people, no
matter how sublime has been his artistic intention, he will probably
have landed in the ridiculous. And yet, #so great is the power of
direction exercised by the emotions on the artist that it is seldom his
work fails to convey something, when genuine feeling has been the
motive#. On the other hand, the painter with no artistic impulse who
makes a laboriously commonplace picture of some ordinary or pretentious
subject, has equally failed as an artist, however much the skilfulness
of his representations may gain him reputation with the unthinking.

The study, therefore, of the #representation of visible nature# and of
#the powers of expression possessed by form and colour# is the object of
the painter's training.

And a command over this power of representation and expression is
absolutely necessary if he is to be capable of doing anything worthy of
his art.

This is all in art that one can attempt to teach. The emotional side is
beyond the scope of teaching. You cannot teach people how to feel. All
you can do is to surround them with the conditions calculated to
stimulate any natural feeling they may possess. And this is done by
familiarising students with the best works of art and nature.

* * * * *

It is surprising how few art students have any idea of what it is that
constitutes art. They are impelled, it is to be assumed, by a natural
desire to express themselves by painting, and, if their intuitive
ability is strong enough, it perhaps matters little whether they know or
not. But to the larger number who are not so violently impelled, it is
highly essential that they have some better idea of art than that it
consists in setting down your canvas before nature and copying it.

Inadequate as this imperfect treatment of a profoundly interesting
subject is, it may serve to give some idea of the point of view from
which the following pages are written, and if it also serves to disturb
the "copying theory" in the minds of any students and encourages them to
make further inquiry, it will have served a useful purpose.




II

DRAWING


By drawing is here meant #the expression of form upon a plane surface#.

Art probably owes more to form for its range of expression than to
colour. Many of the noblest things it is capable of conveying are
expressed by form more directly than by anything else. And it is
interesting to notice how some of the world's greatest artists have been
very restricted in their use of colour, preferring to depend on form for
their chief appeal. It is reported that Apelles only used three colours,
black, red, and yellow, and Rembrandt used little else. Drawing,
although the first, is also the last, thing the painter usually studies.
There is more in it that can be taught and that repays constant
application and effort. Colour would seem to depend much more on a
natural sense and to be less amenable to teaching. A well-trained eye
for the appreciation of form is what every student should set himself to
acquire with all the might of which he is capable.

It is not enough in artistic drawing to portray accurately and in cold
blood the appearance of objects. To express form one must first be moved
by it. There is in the appearance of all objects, animate and inanimate,
what has been called an #emotional significance#, a hidden rhythm that
is not caught by the accurate, painstaking, but cold artist. The form
significance of which we speak is never found in a mechanical
reproduction like a photograph. You are never moved to say when looking
at one, "What fine form."

It is difficult to say in what this quality consists. The emphasis and
selection that is unconsciously given in a drawing done directly under
the guidance of strong feeling, are too subtle to be tabulated; they
escape analysis. But it is this selection of the significant and
suppression of the non-essential that often gives to a few lines drawn
quickly, and having a somewhat remote relation to the complex appearance
of the real object, more vitality and truth than are to be found in a
highly-wrought and painstaking drawing, during the process of which the
essential and vital things have been lost sight of in the labour of the
work; and the non-essential, which is usually more obvious, is allowed
to creep in and obscure the original impression. Of course, had the
finished drawing been done with the mind centred upon the particular
form significance aimed at, and every touch and detail added in tune to
this idea, the comparison might have been different. But it is rarely
that good drawings are done this way. Fine things seem only to be seen
in flashes, and the nature that can carry over the impression of one of
these moments during the labour of a highly-wrought drawing is very
rare, and belongs to the few great ones of the craft alone.

It is difficult to know why one should be moved by the expression of
form; but it appears to have some physical influence over us. In looking
at a fine drawing, say of a strong man, we seem to identify ourselves
with it and feel a thrill of its strength in our own bodies, prompting
us to set our teeth, stiffen our frame, and exclaim "That's fine." Or,
when looking at the drawing of a beautiful woman, we are softened by its
charm and feel in ourselves something of its sweetness as we exclaim,
"How beautiful." The measure of the feeling in either case will be the
extent to which the artist has identified himself with the subject when
making the drawing, and has been impelled to select the expressive
elements in the forms.

Art thus enables us to experience life at second hand. The small man may
enjoy somewhat of the wider experience of the bigger man, and be
educated to appreciate in time a wider experience for himself. This is
the true justification for public picture galleries. Not so much for the
moral influence they exert, of which we have heard so much, but that
people may be led through the vision of the artist to enlarge their
experience of life. This enlarging of the experience is true education,
and a very different thing from the memorising of facts that so often
passes as such. In a way this may be said to be a moral influence, as a
larger mind is less likely to harbour small meannesses. But this is not
the kind of moral influence usually looked for by the many, who rather
demand a moral story told by the picture; a thing not always suitable to
artistic expression.

One is always profoundly impressed by the expression of a sense of bulk,
vastness, or mass in form. There is a feeling of being lifted out of
one's puny self to something bigger and more stable. It is this splendid
feeling of bigness in Michael Angelo's figures that is so satisfying.
One cannot come away from the contemplation of that wonderful ceiling of
his in the Vatican without the sense of having experienced something of
a larger life than one had known before. Never has the dignity of man
reached so high an expression in paint, a height that has been the
despair of all who have since tried to follow that lonely master. In
landscape also this expression of largeness is fine: one likes to feel
the weight and mass of the ground, the vastness of the sky and sea, the
bulk of a mountain.

On the other hand one is charmed also by the expression of lightness.
This may be noted in much of the work of Botticelli and the Italians of
the fifteenth century. Botticelli's figures seldom have any weight; they
drift about as if walking on air, giving a delightful feeling of
otherworldliness. The hands of the Madonna that hold the Child might be
holding flowers for any sense of support they express. It is, I think,
on this sense of lightness that a great deal of the exquisite charm of
Botticelli's drawing depends.

The feathery lightness of clouds and of draperies blown by the wind is
always pleasing, and Botticelli nearly always has a light wind passing
through his draperies to give them this sense.

As will be explained later, in connection with academic drawing, it is
eminently necessary for the student to train his eye accurately to
observe the forms of things by the most painstaking of drawings. In
these school studies feeling need not be considered, but only a cold
accuracy. In the same way a singer trains himself to sing scales, giving
every note exactly the same weight and preserving a most mechanical time
throughout, so that every note of his voice may be accurately under his
control and be equal to the subtlest variations he may afterwards
want to infuse into it at the dictates of feeling. For how can the
draughtsman, who does not know how to draw accurately the cold,
commonplace view of an object, hope to give expression to the subtle
differences presented by the same thing seen under the excitement of
strong feeling?

[Illustration: Plate V.

FROM A STUDY BY BOTTICELLI

In the Print Room at the British Museum.]

These academic drawings, too, should be as highly finished as hard
application can make them, so that the habit of minute visual expression
may be acquired. It will be needed later, when drawing of a finer kind
is attempted, and when in the heat of an emotional stimulus the artist
has no time to consider the smaller subtleties of drawing, which by then
should have become almost instinctive with him, leaving his mind free to
dwell on the bigger qualities.

Drawing, then, to be worthy of the name, must be more than what is
called accurate. It must present the form of things in a more vivid
manner than we ordinarily see them in nature. Every new draughtsman in
the history of art has discovered a new significance in the form of
common things, and given the world a new experience. He has represented
these qualities under the stimulus of the feeling they inspired in him,
hot and underlined, as it were, adding to the great book of sight the
world possesses in its art, a book by no means completed yet.

So that to say of a drawing, as is so often said, that it is not true
because it does not present the commonplace appearance of an object
accurately, may be foolish. Its accuracy depends on the completeness
with which it conveys the particular emotional significance that is the
object of the drawing. What this significance is will vary enormously
with the individual artist, but it is only by this standard that the
accuracy of the drawing can be judged.

It is this difference between scientific accuracy and artistic accuracy
that puzzles so many people. Science demands that phenomena be observed
with the unemotional accuracy of a weighing machine, while artistic
accuracy demands that things be observed by a sentient individual
recording the sensations produced in him by the phenomena of life. And
people with the scientific habit that is now so common among us, seeing
a picture or drawing in which what are called facts have been expressed
emotionally, are puzzled, if they are modest, or laugh at what they
consider a glaring mistake in drawing if they are not, when all the time
it may be their mistaken point of view that is at fault.

But while there is no absolute artistic standard by which accuracy of
drawing can be judged, as such standard must necessarily vary with the
artistic intention of each individual artist, this fact must not be
taken as an excuse for any obviously faulty drawing that incompetence
may produce, as is often done by students who when corrected say that
they "saw it so." For there undoubtedly exists a rough physical standard
of rightness in drawing, any violent deviations from which, even at the
dictates of emotional expression, is productive of the grotesque. This
physical standard of accuracy in his work it is the business of the
student to acquire in his academic training; and every aid that science
can give by such studies as Perspective, Anatomy, and, in the case of
Landscape, even Geology and Botany, should be used to increase the
accuracy of his representations. For the strength of appeal in
artistic work will depend much on the power the artist possesses of
expressing himself through representations that arrest everyone by their
truth and naturalness. And although, when truth and naturalness exist
without any artistic expression, the result is of little account as art,
on the other hand, when truly artistic expression is clothed in
representations that offend our ideas of physical truth, it is only the
few who can forgive the offence for the sake of the genuine feeling they
perceive behind it.

[Illustration: Plate VI.

STUDY IN NATURAL RED CHALK BY ALFRED STEPHENS

From the collection of Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon]

How far the necessities of expression may be allowed to override the
dictates of truth to physical structure in the appearance of objects
will always be a much debated point. In the best drawing the departures
from mechanical accuracy are so subtle that I have no doubt many will
deny the existence of such a thing altogether. Good artists of strong
natural inspiration and simple minds are often quite unconscious of
doing anything when painting, but are all the same as mechanically
accurate as possible.

Yet however much it may be advisable to let yourself go in artistic
work, during your academic training let your aim be #a searching
accuracy#.




III

VISION


It is necessary to say something about Vision in the first place, if we
are to have any grasp of the idea of form.

An act of vision is not so simple a matter as the student who asked her
master if she should "paint nature as she saw nature" would seem to have
thought. And his answer, "Yes, madam, provided you don't see nature as
you paint nature," expressed the first difficulty the student of
painting has to face: the difficulty of learning to see.

Let us roughly examine what we know of vision. Science tells us that all
objects are made visible to us by means of light; and that white light,
by which we see things in what may be called their normal aspect, is
composed of all the colours of the solar spectrum, as may be seen in a
rainbow; a phenomenon caused, as everybody knows, by the sun's rays
being split up into their component parts.

This light travels in straight lines and, striking objects before us, is
reflected in all directions. Some of these rays passing through a point
situated behind the lenses of the eye, strike the retina. The
multiplication of these rays on the retina produces a picture of
whatever is before the eye, such as can be seen on the ground glass at
the back of a photographer's camera, or on the table of a camera
obscura, both of which instruments are constructed roughly on the same
principle as the human eye.

These rays of light when reflected from an object, and again when
passing through the atmosphere, undergo certain modifications. Should
the object be a red one, the yellow, green, and blue rays, all, in fact,
except the red rays, are absorbed by the object, while the red is
allowed to escape. These red rays striking the retina produce certain
effects which convey to our consciousness the sensation of red, and we
say "That is a red object." But there may be particles of moisture or
dust in the air that will modify the red rays so that by the time they
reach the eye they may be somewhat different. This modification is
naturally most effective when a large amount of atmosphere has to be
passed through, and in things very distant the colour of the natural
object is often entirely lost, to be replaced by atmospheric colours, as
we see in distant mountains when the air is not perfectly clear. But we
must not stray into the fascinating province of colour.

What chiefly concerns us here is the fact that the pictures on our
retinas are flat, of two dimensions, the same as the canvas on which we
paint. If you examine these visual pictures without any prejudice, as
one may with a camera obscura, you will see that they are composed of
masses of colour in infinite variety and complexity, of different shapes
and gradations, and with many varieties of edges; giving to the eye the
illusion of nature with actual depths and distances, although one knows
all the time that it is a flat table on which one is looking.

Seeing then that our eyes have only flat pictures containing
two-dimension information about the objective world, from whence is
this knowledge of distance and the solidity of things? How do we _see_
the third dimension, the depth and thickness, by means of flat pictures
of two dimensions?

The power to judge distance is due principally to our possessing two
eyes situated in slightly different positions, from which we get two
views of objects, and also to the power possessed by the eyes of
focussing at different distances, others being out of focus for the time
being. In a picture the eyes can only focus at one distance (the
distance the eye is from the plane of the picture when you are looking
at it), and this is one of the chief causes of the perennial difficulty
in painting backgrounds. In nature they are out of focus when one is
looking at an object, but in a painting the background is necessarily on
the same focal plane as the object. Numerous are the devices resorted to
by painters to overcome this difficulty, but they do not concern us
here.

The fact that we have two flat pictures on our two retinas to help us,
and that we can focus at different planes, would not suffice to account
for our knowledge of the solidity and shape of the objective world, were
these senses not associated with another sense all important in ideas of
form, #the sense of touch#.

This sense is very highly developed in us, and the earlier period of our
existence is largely given over to feeling for the objective world
outside ourselves. Who has not watched the little baby hands feeling for
everything within reach, and without its reach, for the matter of that;
for the infant has no knowledge yet of what is and what is not within
its reach. Who has not offered some bright object to a young child and
watched its clumsy attempts to feel for it, almost as clumsy at first as
if it were blind, as it has not yet learned to focus distances. And when
he has at last got hold of it, how eagerly he feels it all over, looking
intently at it all the time; thus learning early to associate the "feel
of an object" with its appearance. In this way by degrees he acquires
those ideas of roughness and smoothness, hardness and softness,
solidity, &c., which later on he will be able to distinguish by vision
alone, and without touching the object.

Our survival depends so much on this sense of touch, that it is of the
first importance to us. We must know whether the ground is hard enough
for us to walk on, or whether there is a hole in front of us; and masses
of colour rays striking the retina, which is what vision amounts to,
will not of themselves tell us. But associated with the knowledge
accumulated in our early years, by connecting touch with sight, we do
know when certain combinations of colour rays strike the eye that there
is a road for us to walk on, and that when certain other combinations
occur there is a hole in front of us, or the edge of a precipice.

And likewise with hardness and softness, the child who strikes his head
against the bed-post is forcibly reminded by nature that such things are
to be avoided, and feeling that it is hard and that hardness has a
certain look, it avoids that kind of thing in the future. And when it
strikes its head against the pillow, it learns the nature of softness,
and associating this sensation with the appearance of the pillow, knows
in future that when softness is observed it need not be avoided as
hardness must be.

Sight is therefore not a matter of the eye alone. A whole train of
associations connected with the objective world is set going in the mind
when rays of light strike the retina refracted from objects. And these
associations vary enormously in quantity and value with different
individuals; but the one we are here chiefly concerned with is this
universal one of touch. Everybody "sees" the shape of an object, and
"sees" whether it "looks" hard or soft, &c. Sees, in other words, the
"feel" of it.

If you are asked to think of an object, say a cone, it will not, I
think, be the visual aspect that will occur to most people. They will
think of a circular base from which a continuous side slopes up to a
point situated above its centre, as one would feel it. The fact that in
almost every visual aspect the base line is that of an ellipse, not a
circle, comes as a surprise to people unaccustomed to drawing.

But above these cruder instances, what a wealth of associations crowd in
upon the mind, when a sight that moves one is observed. Put two men
before a scene, one an ordinary person and the other a great poet, and
ask them to describe what they see. Assuming them both to be possessed
of a reasonable power honestly to express themselves, what a difference
would there be in the value of their descriptions. Or take two painters
both equally gifted in the power of expressing their visual perceptions,
and put them before the scene to paint it. And assuming one to be a
commonplace man and the other a great artist, what a difference will
there be in their work. The commonplace painter will paint a commonplace
picture, while the form and colour will be the means of stirring deep
associations and feelings in the mind of the other, and will move him
to paint the scene so that the same splendour of associations may be
conveyed to the beholder.

[Illustration: Plate VII.

STUDY FOR THE FIGURE OF APOLLO IN THE PICTURE "APOLLO AND DAPHNE"

In natural red chalk rubbed with finger; the high lights are picked out
with rubber.]

But to return to our infant mind. While the development of the
perception of things has been going on, the purely visual side of the
question, the observation of the picture on the retina for what it is as
form and colour, has been neglected--neglected to such an extent that
when the child comes to attempt drawing, #sight is not the sense he
consults#. The mental idea of the objective world that has grown up in
his mind is now associated more directly with touch than with sight,
with the felt shape rather than the visual appearance. So that if he is
asked to draw a head, he thinks of it first as an object having a
continuous boundary in space. This his mind instinctively conceives as a
line. Then, hair he expresses by a row of little lines coming out from
the boundary, all round the top. He thinks of eyes as two points or
circles, or as points in circles, and the nose either as a triangle or
an L-shaped line. If you feel the nose you will see the reason of this.
Down the front you have the L line, and if you feel round it you will
find the two sides meeting at the top and a base joining them,
suggesting the triangle. The mouth similarly is an opening with a row of
teeth, which are generally shown although so seldom seen, but always
apparent if the mouth is felt (see diagram A). This is, I think, a fair
type of the first drawing the ordinary child makes--and judging by some
ancient scribbling of the same order I remember noticing scratched on a
wall at Pompeii, and by savage drawing generally, it appears to be a
fairly universal type. It is a very remarkable thing which, as far as I
know, has not yet been pointed out, that in these first attempts at
drawing the vision should not be consulted. A blind man would not draw
differently, could he but see to draw. Were vision the first sense
consulted, and were the simplest visual appearance sought after, one
might expect something like diagram B, the shadows under eyes, nose,
mouth, and chin, with the darker mass of the hair being the simplest
thing the visual appearance can be reduced to. But despite this being
quite as easy to do, it does not appeal to the ordinary child as the
other type does, because it does not satisfy the sense of touch that
forms so large a part of the idea of an object in the mind. All
architectural elevations and geometrical projections generally appeal to
this mental idea of form. They consist of views of a building or object
that could never possibly be seen by anybody, assuming as they do that
the eye of the spectator is exactly in front of every part of the
building at the same time, a physical impossibility. And yet so removed
from the actual visual appearance is our mental idea of objects that
such drawings do convey a very accurate idea of a building or object.
And of course they have great advantage as working drawings in that they
can be scaled.

[Illustration: Diagram I.

A. TYPE OF FIRST DRAWING MADE BY CHILDREN, SHOWING HOW VISION HAS NOT
BEEN CONSULTED

B. TYPE OF WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPECTED IF CRUDEST EXPRESSION OF VISUAL
APPEARANCE HAD BEEN ATTEMPTED]

If so early the sense of vision is neglected and relegated to be the
handmaiden of other senses, it is no wonder that in the average adult it
is in such a shocking state of neglect. I feel convinced that with the
great majority of people vision is seldom if ever consulted for itself,
but only to minister to some other sense. They look at the sky to see if
it is going to be fine; at the fields to see if they are dry enough to
walk on, or whether there will be a good crop of hay; at the stream not
to observe the beauty of the reflections from the blue sky or green
fields dancing upon its surface or the rich colouring of its shadowed
depths, but to calculate how deep it is or how much power it would
supply to work a mill, how many fish it contains, or some other
association alien to its visual aspect. If one looks up at a fine mass
of cumulus clouds above a London street, the ordinary passer-by who
follows one's gaze expects to see a balloon or a flying-machine at
least, and when he sees it is only clouds he is apt to wonder what one
is gazing at. The beautiful form and colour of the cloud seem to be
unobserved. Clouds mean nothing to him but an accumulation of water dust
that may bring rain. This accounts in some way for the number of good
paintings that are incomprehensible to the majority of people. It is
only those pictures that pursue the visual aspect of objects to a
sufficient completion to contain the suggestion of these other
associations, that they understand at all. Other pictures, they say, are
not finished enough. And it is so seldom that a picture can have this
petty realisation and at the same time be an expression of those larger
emotional qualities that constitute good painting.

The early paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood appear to be a
striking exception to this. But in their work the excessive realisation
of all details was part of the expression and gave emphasis to the
poetic idea at the basis of their pictures, and was therefore part of
the artistic intention. In these paintings the fiery intensity with
which every little detail was painted made their picture a ready medium
for the expression of poetic thought, a sort of "painted poetry," every
detail being selected on account of some symbolic meaning it had,
bearing on the poetic idea that was the object of the picture.

But to those painters who do not attempt "painted poetry," but seek in
painting a poetry of its own, a visual poetry, this excessive finish (as
it is called) is irksome, as it mars the expression of those qualities
in vision they wish to express. Finish in art has no connection with the
amount of detail in a picture, but has reference only to the
completeness with which the emotional idea the painter set out to
express has been realised.

[Illustration: Plate VIII.

STUDY FOR A PICTURE

In red conté chalk and white pastel rubbed on toned paper.]

The visual blindness of the majority of people is greatly to be
deplored, as nature is ever offering them on their retina, even in the
meanest slum, a music of colour and form that is a constant source of
pleasure to those who can see it. But so many are content to use this
wonderful faculty of vision for utilitarian purposes only. It is the
privilege of the artist to show how wonderful and beautiful is all this
music of colour and form, so that people, having been moved by it in his
work, may be encouraged to see the same beauty in the things around
them. This is the best argument in favour of making art a subject of
general education: that it should teach people to see. Everybody does
not need to draw and paint, but if everybody could get the faculty of
appreciating the form and colour on their retinas as form and colour,
what a wealth would always be at their disposal for enjoyment! The
Japanese habit of looking at a landscape upside down between their legs
is a way of seeing without the deadening influence of touch
associations. Thus looking, one is surprised into seeing for once the
colour and form of things with the association of touch for the moment
forgotten, and is puzzled at the beauty. The odd thing is that although
thus we see things upside down, the pictures on our retinas are for once
the right way up; for ordinarily the visual picture is inverted on the
retina, like that on the ground glass at the back of a photographic
camera.

To sum up this somewhat rambling chapter, I have endeavoured to show
that there are two aspects from which the objective world can be
apprehended. There is the purely mental perception founded chiefly on
knowledge derived from our sense of touch associated with vision, whose
primitive instinct is to put an outline round objects as representing
their boundaries in space. And secondly, there is the visual perception,
which is concerned with the visual aspects of objects as they appear on
the retina; an arrangement of colour shapes, a sort of mosaic of colour.
And these two aspects give us two different points of view from which
the representation of visible things can be approached.

When the representation from either point of view is carried far enough,
the result is very similar. Work built up on outline drawing to which
has been added light and shade, colour, aerial perspective, &c., may
eventually approximate to the perfect visual appearance. And inversely,
representations approached from the point of view of pure vision, the
mosaic of colour on the retina, if pushed far enough, may satisfy the
mental perception of form with its touch associations. And of course the
two points of view are intimately connected. You cannot put an accurate
outline round an object without observing the shape it occupies in the
field of vision. And it is difficult to consider the "mosaic of colour
forms" without being very conscious of the objective significance of the
colour masses portrayed. But they present two entirely different and
opposite points of view from which the representation of objects can be
approached. In considering the subject of drawing I think it necessary
to make this division of the subject, and both methods of form
expression should be studied by the student. Let us call the first
method Line Drawing and the second Mass Drawing. Most modern drawing is
a mixture of both these points of view, but they should be studied
separately if confusion is to be avoided. If the student neglects line
drawing, his work will lack the expressive significance of form that
only a feeling for lines seems to have the secret of conveying; while,
if he neglects mass drawing, he will be poorly equipped when he comes to
express form with a brush full of paint to work with.




IV

LINE DRAWING


Most of the earliest forms of drawing known to us in history, like those
of the child we were discussing in the last chapter, are largely in the
nature of outline drawings. This is a remarkable fact considering the
somewhat remote relation lines have to the complete phenomena of vision.
Outlines can only be said to exist in appearances as the boundaries of
masses. But even here a line seems a poor thing from the visual point of
view; as the boundaries are not always clearly defined, but are
continually merging into the surrounding mass and losing themselves to
be caught up again later on and defined once more. Its relationship with
visual appearances is not sufficient to justify the instinct for line
drawing. It comes, I think, as has already been said, from the sense of
touch. When an object is felt there is no merging in the surrounding
mass, but a firm definition of its boundary, which the mind
instinctively conceives as a line.

There is a more direct appeal to the imagination in line drawing than in
possibly anything else in pictorial art. The emotional stimulus given by
fine design is due largely to line work. The power a line possesses of
instinctively directing the eye along its course is of the utmost value
also, enabling the artist to concentrate the attention of the beholder
where he wishes. Then there is a harmonic sense in lines and their
relationships, a music of line that is found at the basis of all good
art. But this subject will be treated later on when talking of line
rhythm.

Most artists whose work makes a large appeal to the imagination are
strong on the value of line. Blake, whose visual knowledge was such a
negligible quantity, but whose mental perceptions were so magnificent,
was always insisting on its value. And his designs are splendid examples
of its powerful appeal to the imagination.

On this basis of line drawing the development of art proceeded. The
early Egyptian wall paintings were outlines tinted, and the earliest
wall sculpture was an incised outline. After these incised lines some
man of genius thought of cutting away the surface of the wall between
the outlines and modelling it in low relief. The appearance of this may
have suggested to the man painting his outline on the wall the idea of
shading between his outlines.

At any rate the next development was the introduction of a little
shading to relieve the flatness of the line-work and suggest modelling.
And this was as far as things had gone in the direction of the
representation of form, until well on in the Italian Renaissance.
Botticelli used nothing else than an outline lightly shaded to indicate
form. Light and shade were not seriously perceived until Leonardo da
Vinci. And a wonderful discovery it was thought to be, and was, indeed,
although it seems difficult to understand where men's eyes had been for
so long with the phenomena of light and shade before them all the time.
But this is only another proof of what cannot be too often insisted on,
namely that the eye only sees what it is on the look-out for, and it may
even be there are things just as wonderful yet to be discovered in
vision.

But it was still the touch association of an object that was the
dominant one; it was within the outline demanded by this sense that the
light and shade were to be introduced as something as it were put on the
object. It was the "solids in space" idea that art was still appealing
to.

"The first object of a painter is to make a simple flat surface appear
like a relievo, and some of its parts detached from the ground; he who
excels all others in that part of the art deserves the greatest
praise,"[1] wrote Leonardo da Vinci, and the insistence on this
"standing out" quality, with its appeal to the touch sense as something
great in art, sounds very strange in these days. But it must be
remembered that the means of creating this illusion were new to all and
greatly wondered at.

[Footnote 1: Leonardo da Vinci, _Treatise on Painting_, paragraph 178.]

And again, in paragraph 176 of his treatise, Leonardo writes: "The
knowledge of the outline is of most consequence, and yet may be acquired
to great certainty by dint of study; as the outlines of the human
figure, particularly those which do not bend, are invariably the same.
But the knowledge of the situation, quality and quantity of shadows,
being infinite, requires the most extensive study."

The outlines of the human figure are "invariably the same"? What does
this mean? From the visual point of view we know that the space occupied
by figures in the field of our vision is by no means "invariably the
same," but of great variety. So it cannot be the visual appearance he is
speaking about. It can only refer to the mental idea of the shape of
the members of the human figure. The remark "particularly those that do
not bend" shows this also, for when the body is bent up even the mental
idea of its form must be altered. There is no hint yet of vision being
exploited for itself, but only in so far as it yielded material to
stimulate this mental idea of the exterior world.

[Illustration: Plate IX.

STUDY BY WATTEAU

From an original drawing in the collection of Charles Ricketts and
Charles Shannon.]

All through the work of the men who used this light and shade (or
chiaroscuro, as it was called) the outline basis remained. Leonardo,
Raphael, Michael Angelo, Titian, and the Venetians were all faithful to
it as the means of holding their pictures together; although the
Venetians, by fusing the edges of their outline masses, got very near
the visual method to be introduced later by Velazquez.

In this way, little by little, starting from a basis of simple outline
forms, art grew up, each new detail of visual appearance discovered
adding, as it were, another instrument to the orchestra at the disposal
of the artist, enabling him to add to the somewhat crude directness and
simplicity of the early work the graces and refinements of the more
complex work, making the problem of composition more difficult but
increasing the range of its expression.

But these additions to the visual formula used by artists was not all
gain; the simplicity of the means at the disposal of a Botticelli gives
an innocence and imaginative appeal to his work that it is difficult to
think of preserving with the more complete visual realisation of later
schools. When the realisation of actual appearance is most complete, the
mind is liable to be led away by side issues connected with the things
represented, instead of seeing the emotional intentions of the artist
expressed through them. The mind is apt to leave the picture and
looking, as it were, not at it but through it, to pursue a train of
thought associated with the objects represented as real objects, but
alien to the artistic intention of the picture. There is nothing in
these early formulae to disturb the contemplation of the emotional
appeal of pure form and colour. To those who approach a picture with the
idea that the representation of nature, the "making it look like the
real thing," is the sole object of painting, how strange must be the
appearance of such pictures as Botticelli's.

The accumulation of the details of visual observation in art is liable
eventually to obscure the main idea and disturb the large sense of
design on which so much of the imaginative appeal of a work of art
depends. The large amount of new visual knowledge that the naturalistic
movements of the nineteenth century brought to light is particularly
liable at this time to obscure the simpler and more primitive qualities
on which all good art is built. At the height of that movement line
drawing went out of fashion, and charcoal, and an awful thing called a
stump, took the place of the point in the schools. Charcoal is a
beautiful medium in a dexterous hand, but is more adaptable to mass than
to line drawing. The less said about the stump the better, although I
believe it still lingers on in some schools.

Line drawing is happily reviving, and nothing is so calculated to put
new life and strength into the vagaries of naturalistic painting and get
back into art a fine sense of design.

This obscuring of the direct appeal of art by the accumulation of too
much naturalistic detail, and the loss of power it entails, is the cause
of artists having occasionally gone back to a more primitive
convention. There was the Archaistic movement in Greece, and men like
Rossetti and Burne-Jones found a better means of expressing the things
that moved them in the technique of the fourteenth century. And it was
no doubt a feeling of the weakening influence on art, as an expressive
force, of the elaborate realisations of the modern school, that prompted
Puvis de Chavannes to invent for himself his large primitive manner. It
will be noticed that in these instances it is chiefly the insistence
upon outline that distinguishes these artists from their contemporaries.

Art, like life, is apt to languish if it gets too far away from
primitive conditions. But, like life also, it is a poor thing and a very
uncouth affair if it has nothing but primitive conditions to recommend
it. Because there is a decadent art about, one need not make a hero of
the pavement artist. But without going to the extreme of flouting the
centuries of culture that art inherits, as it is now fashionable in many
places to do, students will do well to study at first the early rather
than the late work of the different schools, so as to get in touch with
the simple conditions of design on which good work is built. It is
easier to study these essential qualities when they are not overlaid by
so much knowledge of visual realisation. The skeleton of the picture is
more apparent in the earlier than the later work of any school.

The finest example of the union of the primitive with the most refined
and cultured art the world has ever seen is probably the Parthenon at
Athens, a building that has been the wonder of the artistic world for
over two thousand years. Not only are the fragments of its sculptures
in the British Museum amazing, but the beauty and proportions of its
architecture are of a refinement that is, I think, never even attempted
in these days. What architect now thinks of correcting the poorness of
hard, straight lines by very slightly curving them? Or of slightly
sloping inwards the columns of his facade to add to the strength of its
appearance? The amount of these variations is of the very slightest and
bears witness to the pitch of refinement attempted. And yet, with it
all, how simple! There is something of the primitive strength of
Stonehenge in that solemn row of columns rising firmly from the steps
#without any base#. With all its magnificence, it still retains the
simplicity of the hut from which it was evolved.

Something of the same combination of primitive grandeur and strength
with exquisite refinement of visualisation is seen in the art of Michael
Angelo. His followers adopted the big, muscular type of their master,
but lost the primitive strength he expressed; and when this primitive
force was lost sight of, what a decadence set in!

This is the point at which art reaches its highest mark: when to the
primitive strength and simplicity of early art are added the infinite
refinements and graces of culture without destroying or weakening the
sublimity of the expression.

In painting, the refinement and graces of culture take the form of an
increasing truth to natural appearances, added bit by bit to the
primitive baldness of early work; until the point is reached, as it was
in the nineteenth century, when apparently the whole facts of visual
nature are incorporated. From this wealth of visual material, to which
must be added the knowledge we now have of the arts of the East, of
China, Japan, and India, the modern artist has to select those things
that appeal to him; has to select those elements that answer to his
inmost need of expressing himself as an artist. No wonder a period of
artistic dyspepsia is upon us, no wonder our exhibitions, particularly
those on the Continent, are full of strange, weird things. The problem
before the artist was never so complex, but also never so interesting.
New forms, new combinations, new simplifications are to be found. But
the steadying influence and discipline of line work were never more
necessary to the student.

The primitive force we are in danger of losing depends much on line, and
no work that aims at a sublime impression can dispense with the basis of
a carefully wrought and simple line scheme.

The study, therefore, of pure line drawing is of great importance to the
painter, and the numerous drawings that exist by the great masters in
this method show how much they understood its value.

And the revival of line drawing, and the desire there is to find a
simpler convention founded on this basis, are among the most hopeful
signs in the art of the moment.




V

MASS DRAWING


In the preceding chapter it has, I hope, been shown that outline drawing
is an instinct with Western artists and has been so from the earliest
times; that this instinct is due to the fact that the first mental idea
of an object is the sense of its form as a felt thing, not a thing seen;
and that an outline drawing satisfies and appeals directly to this
mental idea of objects.

But there is another basis of expression directly related to visual
appearances that in the fulness of time was evolved, and has had a very
great influence on modern art. This form of drawing is based on the
consideration of the flat appearances on the retina, with the knowledge
of the felt shapes of objects for the time being forgotten. In
opposition to line drawing, we may call this Mass Drawing.

The scientific truth of this point of view is obvious. If only the
accurate copying of the appearances of nature were the sole object of
art (an idea to be met with among students) the problem of painting
would be simpler than it is, and would be likely ere long to be solved
by the photographic camera.

This form of drawing is the natural means of expression when a brush
full of paint is in your hands. The reducing of a complicated appearance
to a few simple masses is the first necessity of the painter. But
this will be fully explained in a later chapter treating more
practically of the practice of mass drawing.

[Illustration: Plate X.

EXAMPLE OF FIFTEENTH-CENTURY CHINESE WORK BY LUI LIANG (BRITISH MUSEUM)

Showing how early Chinese masters had developed the mass-drawing point
of view.]

The art of China and Japan appears to have been more [influenced by this
view of natural appearances than that of the West has been, until quite
lately. The Eastern mind does not seem to be so obsessed by the
objectivity of things as is the Western mind. With us the practical
sense of touch is all powerful. "I know that is so, because I felt it
with my hands" would be a characteristic expression with us. Whereas I
do not think it would be an expression the Eastern mind would use. With
them the spiritual essence of the thing seen appears to be the more
real, judging from their art. And who is to say they may not be right?
This is certainly the impression one gets from their beautiful painting,
with its lightness of texture and avoidance of solidity. It is founded
on nature regarded as a flat vision, instead of a collection of solids
in space. Their use of line is also much more restrained than with us,
and it is seldom used to accentuate the solidity of things, but chiefly
to support the boundaries of masses and suggest detail. Light and shade,
which suggest solidity, are never used, a wide light where there is no
shadow pervades everything, their drawing being done with the brush in
masses.

When, as in the time of Titian, the art of the West had discovered light
and shade, linear perspective, aerial perspective, &c., and had begun by
fusing the edges of the masses to suspect the necessity of painting to a
widely diffused focus, they had got very near considering appearances
as a visual whole. But it was not until Velazquez that a picture was
painted that was founded entirely on visual appearances, in which a
basis of objective outlines was discarded and replaced by a structure of
tone masses.

When he took his own painting room with the little Infanta and her maids
as a subject, Velazquez seems to have considered it entirely as one flat
visual impression. The focal attention is centred on the Infanta, with
the figures on either side more or less out of focus, those on the
extreme right being quite blurred. The reproduction here given
unfortunately does not show these subtleties, and flattens the general
appearance very much. The focus is nowhere sharp, as this would disturb
the contemplation of the large visual impression. And there, I think,
for the first time, the whole gamut of natural vision, tone, colour,
form, light and shade, atmosphere, focus, &c., considered as one
impression, were put on canvas.

All sense of design is lost. The picture has no surface; it is all
atmosphere between the four edges of the frame, and the objects are
within. Placed as it is in the Prado, with the light coming from the
right as in the picture, there is no break between the real people
before it and the figures within, except the slight yellow veil due to
age.

But wonderful as this picture is, as a "tour de force," like his Venus
of the same period in the National Gallery, it is a painter's picture,
and makes but a cold impression on those not interested in the technique
of painting. With the cutting away of the primitive support of fine
outline design and the absence of those accents conveying a fine form
stimulus to the mind, art has lost much of its emotional
significance.

[Illustration: Plate XI.

LOS MENENAS. BY VELAZQUEZ (PRADO)

Probably the first picture ever painted entirely from the visual or
impressionist standpoint.

_Photo Anderson_]

[Sidenote: The Impressionist Point of View.]

But art has gained a new point of view. With this subjective way of
considering appearances--this "impressionist vision," as it has been
called--many things that were too ugly, either from shape or
association, to yield material for the painter, were yet found, when
viewed as part of a scheme of colour sensations on the retina which the
artist considers emotionally and rhythmically, to lend themselves to new
and beautiful harmonies and "ensembles," undreamt of by the earlier
formulae. And further, many effects of light that were too hopelessly
complicated for painting, considered on the old light and shade
principles (for instance, sunlight through trees in a wood), were found
to be quite paintable, considered as an impression of various colour
masses. The early formula could never free itself from the object as a
solid thing, and had consequently to confine its attention to beautiful
ones. But from the new point of view, form consists of the shape and
qualities of masses of colour on the retina; and what objects happen to
be the outside cause of these shapes matters little to the
impressionist. Nothing is ugly when seen in a beautiful aspect of light,
and aspect is with them everything. This consideration of the visual
appearance in the first place necessitated an increased dependence on
the model. As he does not now draw from his mental perceptions the
artist has nothing to select the material of his picture from until it
has existed as a seen thing before him: until he has a visual impression
of it in his mind. With the older point of view (the representation by a
pictorial description, as it were, based on the mental idea of an
object), the model was not so necessary. In the case of the
Impressionist the mental perception is arrived at from the visual
impression, and in the older point of view the visual impression is the
result of the mental perception. Thus it happens that the Impressionist
movement has produced chiefly pictures inspired by the actual world of
visual phenomena around us, the older point of view producing most of
the pictures deriving their inspiration from the glories of the
imagination, the mental world in the mind of the artist. And although
interesting attempts are being made to produce imaginative works founded
on the impressionist point of view of light and air, the loss of
imaginative appeal consequent upon the destruction of contours by
scintillation, atmosphere, &c., and the loss of line rhythm it entails,
have so far prevented the production of any very satisfactory results.
But undoubtedly there is much new material brought to light by this
movement waiting to be used imaginatively; and it offers a new field for
the selection of expressive qualities.

This point of view, although continuing to some extent in the Spanish
school, did not come into general recognition until the last century in
France. The most extreme exponents of it are the body of artists who
grouped themselves round Claude Monet. This impressionist movement, as
the critics have labelled it, was the result of a fierce determination
to consider nature solely from the visual point of view, making no
concessions to any other associations connected with sight. The result
was an entirely new vision of nature, startling and repulsive to eyes
unaccustomed to observation from a purely visual point of view and used
only to seeing the "feel of things," as it were. The first results were
naturally rather crude. But a great amount of new visual facts were
brought to light, particularly those connected with the painting of
sunlight and half light effects. Indeed the whole painting of strong
light has been permanently affected by the work of this group of
painters. Emancipated from the objective world, they no longer dissected
the object to see what was inside it, but studied rather the anatomy of
the light refracted from it to their eyes. Finding this to be composed
of all the colours of the rainbow as seen in the solar spectrum, and
that all the effects nature produced are done with different proportions
of these colours, they took them, or the nearest pigments they could get
to them, for their palette, eliminating the earth colours and black. And
further, finding that nature's colours (the rays of coloured light) when
mixed produced different results than their corresponding pigments mixed
together, they determined to use their paints as pure as possible,
placing them one against the other to be mixed as they came to the eye,
the mixture being one of pure colour rays, not pigments, by this means.

But we are here only concerned with the movement as it affected form,
and must avoid the fascinating province of colour.

Those who had been brought up in the old school of outline form said
there was no drawing in these impressionist pictures, and from the point
of view of the mental idea of form discussed in the last chapter, there
was indeed little, although, had the impression been realised to a
sufficiently definite focus, the sense of touch and solidity would
probably have been satisfied. But the particular field of this new
point of view, the beauty of tone and colour relations considered as an
impression apart from objectivity, did not tempt them to carry their
work so far as this, or the insistence on these particular qualities
would have been lost.

But interesting and alluring as is the new world of visual music opened
up by this point of view, it is beginning to be realised that it has
failed somehow to satisfy. In the first place, the implied assumption
that one sees with the eye alone is wrong:

"In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it
what the eye brings means of seeing,"[2]

[Footnote 2: Goethe, quoted in Carlyle's _French Revolution_, chap. i.]

and it is the mind behind the eye that supplies this means of
perception: #one sees with the mind#. The ultimate effect of any
picture, be it impressionist, post, anti, or otherwise--is its power to
stimulate these mental perceptions within the mind.

But even from the point of view of the _true_ visual perception (if
there is such a thing) that modern art has heard so much talk of, the
copying of the retina picture is not so great a success. The impression
carried away from a scene that has moved us is not its complete visual
aspect. Only those things that are significant to the felt impression
have been retained by the mind; and if the picture is to be a true
representation of this, the significant facts must be sorted out from
the mass of irrelevant matter and presented in a lively manner. The
impressionist's habit of painting before nature entirely is not
calculated to do this. Going time after time to the same place, even if
similar weather conditions are waited for, although well enough for
studies, is against the production of a fine picture. Every time the
artist goes to the selected spot he receives a different impression, so
that he must either paint all over his picture each time, in which case
his work must be confined to a small scale and will be hurried in
execution, or he must paint a bit of today's impression alongside of
yesterday's, in which case his work will be dull and lacking in oneness
of conception.

And further, in decomposing the colour rays that come to the eye and
painting in pure colour, while great addition was made to the power of
expressing light, yet by destroying the definitions and enveloping
everything in a scintillating atmosphere, the power to design in a large
manner was lost with the wealth of significance that the music of line
can convey.

But impressionism has opened up a view from which much interesting
matter for art is to be gleaned. And everywhere painters are selecting
from this, and grafting it on to some of the more traditional schools of
design.

Our concern here is with the influence this point of view has had upon
draughtsmanship. The influence has been considerable, particularly with
those draughtsmen whose work deals with the rendering of modern life. It
consists in drawing from the observation of the silhouette occupied by
objects in the field of vision, observing the flat appearance of things
as they are on the retina. This is, of course, the only accurate way in
which to observe visual shapes. The difference between this and the
older point of view is its insistence on the observation of the flat
visual impression to the exclusion of the tactile or touch sense that by
the association of ideas we have come to expect in things seen. An
increased truth to the character of appearances has been the result,
with a corresponding loss of plastic form expression.

On pages 66 and 67 a reproduction of a drawing in the British Museum,
attributed to Michael Angelo, is contrasted with one in the Louvre by
Degas. The one is drawn from the line point of view and the other from
the mass. They both contain lines, but in the one case the lines are the
contours of felt forms and in the other the boundaries of visual masses.
In the Michael Angelo the silhouette is only the result of the
overlapping of rich forms considered in the round. Every muscle and bone
has been mentally realised as a concrete thing and the drawing made as
an expression of this idea. Note the line rhythm also; the sense of
energy and movement conveyed by the swinging curves; and compare with
what is said later (page 162 [Transcribers Note: Sidenote "Curved
Lines"]) about the rhythmic significance of swinging curves.

Then compare it with the Degas and observe the totally different
attitude of mind in which this drawing has been approached. Instead of
the outlines being the result of forms felt as concrete things, the
silhouette is everywhere considered first, the plastic sense (nowhere so
great as in the other) being arrived at from the accurate consideration
of the mass shapes.

Notice also the increased attention to individual character in the
Degas, observe the pathos of those underfed little arms, and the hand
holding the tired ankle--how individual it all is. What a different tale
this little figure tells from that given before the footlights! See with
what sympathy the contours have been searched for those accents
expressive of all this.

[Illustration: Plate XII.

STUDY ATTRIBUTED TO MICHAEL ANGELO (BRITISH MUSEUM)

Note the desire to express form as a felt solid thing, the contours
resulting from the overlapping forms. The visual appearance is arrived
at as a result of giving expression to the mental idea of a solid
object.]


[Illustration: Plate XIII.

STUDY BY DEGAS (LUXEMBOURG)

In contrast with Michael Angelo's drawing, note the preoccupation with
the silhouette the spaces occupied by the different masses in the field
of vision; how the appearance solid forms is the result of accurately
portraying this visual appearance.

_Photo Levi_]

How remote from individual character is the Michael Angelo in contrast
with this! Instead of an individual he gives us the expression of a
glowing mental conception of man as a type of physical strength and
power.

The rhythm is different also, in the one case being a line rhythm, and
in the other a consideration of the flat pattern of shapes or masses
with a play of lost-and-foundness on the edges (see later, pages 192
[Transcribers Note: Sidenote "Variety of Edges."] _et seq._, variety of
edges). It is this feeling for rhythm and the sympathetic searching for
and emphasis of those points expressive of character, that keep this
drawing from being the mechanical performance which so much concern with
scientific visual accuracy might well have made it, and which has made
mechanical many of the drawings of Degas's followers who unintelligently
copy his method.




VI

THE ACADEMIC AND CONVENTIONAL


The terms Academic and Conventional are much used in criticism and
greatly feared by the criticised, often without either party appearing
to have much idea of what is meant. New so-called schools of painting
seem to arrive annually with the spring fashions, and sooner or later
the one of last year gets called out of date, if not conventional and
academic. And as students, for fear of having their work called by one
or other of these dread terms, are inclined to rush into any new
extravagance that comes along, some inquiry as to their meaning will not
be out of place before we pass into the chapters dealing with academic
study.

It has been the cry for some time that Schools of Art turned out only
academic students. And one certainly associates a dead level of
respectable mediocrity with much school work. We can call to mind a lot
of dull, lifeless, highly-finished work, imperfectly perfect, that has
won the prize in many a school competition. Flaubert says "a form
deadens," and it does seem as if the necessary formality of a school
course had some deadening influence on students; and that there was some
important part of the artist's development which it has failed to
recognise and encourage.

The freer system of the French schools has been in many cases more
successful. But each school was presided over by an artist of
distinction, and this put the students in touch with real work and thus
introduced vitality. In England, until quite lately, artists were seldom
employed in teaching, which was left to men set aside for the purpose,
without any time to carry on original work of their own. The Royal
Academy Schools are an exception to this. There the students have the
advantage of teaching from some distinguished member or associate who
has charge of the upper school for a month at a time. But as the visitor
is constantly changed, the less experienced students are puzzled by the
different methods advocated, and flounder hopelessly for want of a
definite system to work on; although for a student already in possession
of a good grounding there is much to be said for the system, as contact
with the different masters widens their outlook.

But perhaps the chief mistake in Art Schools has been that they have too
largely confined themselves to training students mechanically to observe
and portray the thing set before them to copy, an antique figure, a
still-life group, a living model sitting as still and lifeless as he
can. Now this is all very well as far as it goes, but the real matter of
art is not necessarily in all this. And if the real matter of art is
neglected too long the student may find it difficult to get in touch
with it again.

These accurate, painstaking school studies are very necessary indeed as
a training for the eye in observing accurately, and the hand in
reproducing the appearances of things, because it is through the
reproduction of natural appearances and the knowledge of form and colour
derived from such study that the student will afterwards find the means
of giving expression to his feelings. But when valuable prizes and
scholarships are given for them, and _not_ for really artistic work,
they do tend to become the end instead of the means.

It is of course improbable that even school studies done with the sole
idea of accuracy by a young artist will in all cases be devoid of
artistic feeling; it will creep in, if he has the artistic instinct. But
it is not enough #encouraged#, and the prize is generally given to the
drawing that is most complete and like the model in a commonplace way.
If a student, moved by a strong feeling for form, lets himself go and
does a fine thing, probably only remotely like the model to the average
eye, the authorities are puzzled and don't usually know what to make of
it.

There are schools where the most artistic qualities are encouraged, but
they generally neglect the academic side; and the student leaves them
poorly equipped for fine work. Surely it would be possible to make a
distinction, giving prizes for academic drawings which should be as
thoroughly accurate in a mechanical way as industry and application can
make them, and also for artistic drawings, in which the student should
be encouraged to follow his bent, striving for the expression of any
qualities that delight him, and troubling less about mechanical
accuracy. The use of drawing as an expression of something felt is so
often left until after the school training is done that many students
fail to achieve it altogether. And rows of lifeless pictures, made up of
models copied in different attitudes, with studio properties around
them, are the result, and pass for art in many quarters. Such pictures
often display considerable ability, for as Burne-Jones says in one of
his letters, "It is very difficult to paint even a bad picture." But had
the ability been differently directed, the pictures might have been
good.

[Illustration: Plate XIV.

DRAWING IN RED CHALK BY ERNEST COLE

Example of unacademic drawing made in the author's class at the
Goldsmiths College School of Art.]

It is difficult to explain what is wrong with an academic drawing, and
what is the difference between it and fa fine drawing. But perhaps this
difference can be brought home a little more clearly if you will pardon
a rather fanciful simile. I am told that if you construct a perfectly
fitted engine--the piston fitting the cylinder with absolute accuracy
and the axles their sockets with no space between, &c.--it #will not
work#, but be a lifeless mass of iron. There must be enough play between
the vital parts to allow of some movement; "dither" is, I believe, the
Scotch word for it. The piston must be allowed some play in the opening
of the cylinder through which it passes, or it will not be able to move
and show any life. And the axles of the wheels in their sockets, and, in
fact, all parts of the machine where life and movement are to occur,
must have this play, this "dither." It has always seemed to me that the
accurately fitting engine was like a good academic drawing, in a way a
perfect piece of workmanship, but lifeless. Imperfectly perfect, because
there was no room left for the play of life. And to carry the simile
further, if you allow too great a play between the parts, so that they
fit one over the other too loosely, the engine will lose power and
become a poor rickety thing. There must be the smallest amount of play
that will allow of its working. And the more perfectly made the engine,
the less will the amount of this "dither" be.

The word "dither" will be a useful name to give that elusive quality,
that play on mechanical accuracy, existing in all vital art. #It is this
vital quality that has not yet received much attention in art training.#

It is here that the photograph fails, it can only at best give
mechanical accuracy, whereas art gives the impression of a live,
individual consciousness. Where the recording instrument is a live
individual, there is no mechanical standard of accuracy possible, as
every recording instrument is a different personality. And it is the
subtle differences in the individual renderings of nature that are the
life-blood of art. The photograph, on account of its being chained to
mechanical accuracy, has none of this play of life to give it charm. It
only approaches artistic conditions when it is blurred, vague, and
inde