Arrangement of Ordinary Windows.—For a good working light you should have only one window in your room; for the light coming in from two openings will make a crossing of rays which will not only interfere with the simplicity of the effect of light and shade on your model, but will make a glare on your canvas. You can either close the light out of the right-hand window, or, better, arrange a curtain so the light from one window will not fall on the same place as that from the other.

When you are working from still life or from a model this is often an advantage, for you can have a strong side-light on the model, and a second light on the canvas. To arrange this, have a sort of crane made of iron, shaped like a carpenter's square, which will swing at right angles with the wall, the arm reaching, say, six feet into the room. Swing this by means of staples well up to the ceiling, so that the light cannot get over it, and near to the right-hand window. From this arm you can hang a thick, dark curtain, which will cover and shut out the light from the right-hand window when swung back over it. If you want to pose your model in the light of that window, while you paint in that of the other, swing the curtain out into the room at right angles to the wall, and it will prevent a cross light from the two windows; so that when the model is posed back of the curtain the light from that window will not fall on the canvas, nor the light from the other fall on the model.

The light will be best on your picture coming from well above you as you work. There will then be no reflections on the paint. You may find it necessary to cover entirely the lower half of the window which gives your painting-light. You will find it useful to have a shade of good solid holland, arranged with the roller at the bottom, and a string running up through a pulley at the top; so that you may pull the shade up from the bottom instead of down from the top, and so cut off as much of the lower part of the window as is necessary.

If you need the light from the lower part of the window, you may make a thin curtain of muslin to cover the lower sash, which will let the light through, but diffuse the rays and prevent reflection.

The Size of the Studio.—Of course a large studio is a good thing, but it is not always at one's command. But you should try to have the room large enough to let you work freely, and have distance enough from the model. The size that I have mentioned, twelve feet by sixteen, is as small as one should have, and one that you can almost always get. If the room is smaller than that, you cannot do much in it, and fifteen by twenty will give ample space.



PART II

GENERAL PRINCIPLES



CHAPTER X

MENTAL ATTITUDE

There is a theoretical and a practical side to art. The business of the student is with the practical. Theories are not a part of his work. Before any theoretical work is done there is the bald work of learning to see facts justly, in their proper degree of relative importance; and how to convey these facts visibly, so that they shall be recognizable to another person.

The ideals of art are for the artist; not for the student. The student's ideal should be only to see quickly and justly, and to render directly and frankly.

Technique is a word which includes all the material and educational resources of representation. The beginner need bother himself little with what is good and what is bad technique. Let him study facts and their representation only. Choice of means and materials implies a knowledge by which he can choose. The beginner can have no such knowledge. Choice, then, is not for him; but to work quite simply with whatever comes to hand, intent only on training the eye to see, the brain to judge, and the hand to execute. Later, with the gaining of experience and of knowledge, for both will surely come, the determination of what is best suited for the individual temperament or purpose will work itself out naturally.

The student should not allow the theoretical basis of art to interfere with the directness of his study of the material and the actual. Nevertheless, he should know the fact that there is something back of the material and the actual, as well as in a general way what that something is.

Because the student's business is with the practical is no reason why he should remain ignorant of everything else. It is important that he should think as a painter as well as work as a painter. If he has no thought of what all this practical is for, he will get a false idea of his craft. He will see, and think of, and believe in, nothing but the craftsmanship: that which every good workman respects as good and necessary, but which the wise workman knows is but the perfect means for the expression of thought.

Some consideration, then, of the theoretical side of art is necessary in a book of this kind. A number of considerations arise at the outset, about which you must make up your mind:—

Is judgment of a picture based on individual liking?

Can you hope to paint well by following your own liking only?

Is it worth your while to try to do good work?

Can you hope to do good work at all?

You must decide these questions for yourself, but you must remember that it depends upon how you decide them whether your work will be good or bad.

To take the last consideration first, you may be sure that it is worth while to try to do good work, and mainly because you may hope to do as good work as you want to do. That is, precisely as good work as you are willing to take the trouble to learn to do. Talent is only another name for love of a thing. If you love a thing enough to try to find out what is good, to train your judgment; and to train your abilities up to what that judgment tells you is good, the good work is only a matter of time.

You will notice that you must train your judgment as well as your ability; not all at once, of course. But how can you hope to do good work if you do not know what good work is when you see it? If you have no point of view, how can you tell what you are working for, what you are aiming at? And if you do not know what you are aiming at, are you likely to hit anything?

Train Your Judgment.—Let us say, then, that you must train your critical judgment. How are you to set about it?

In the first place, don't set up your own liking as a criterion. Make up your mind that when it comes to a choice between your personal taste and that of some one who may be supposed to know, between what you think and what has been consented to by all the men who have ever had an opinion worthy of respect, you may rest assured that you are wrong. And when you have made up your mind to that, when you have reached that mental attitude, you have taken a long step towards training your judgment; for you have admitted a standard outside of mere opinion.

Another attitude that you should place your mind in is one of catholicity—one of openness to the possibility of there being many ways of being right. Don't allow yourself to take it for granted that any one school or way of painting or looking at things is the only right one, and that all the other ways are wrong. That point of view may do for a man who has studied and thought, and finally arrived at that conclusion which suits his mind and his nature,—but it will not do for a student. Such an attitude is a sure bar to progress. It results in narrowness of idea, narrowness of perception, and narrowness of appreciation. You should try all things, and hold fast to that which is good. And having found what is good, and even while holding fast to it, you should remember that what is good and true for you is not necessarily the only good and true for some one else. You must not only hold to your own liberty of choice, but recognize the same right for others. If this is not recognized, what room has originality to work in?

The range of subject, of style, and of technical methods among acknowledged masters, should alone be proof of the fact that there is no one way which is the only good way; and if you would know how to judge and like a good picture, the study of really great pictures, without regard to school, is the way to learn.

How to Look at Pictures.—The study of pictures means something more than merely looking at them and counting the figures in them. It implies the study of the treatment of the subject in every way. The management of light and shade; the color; the composition and drawing; and finally those technical processes of brush-work by means of which the canvas gets covered, and the idea of the artist becomes visible. All these things are important in some degree; they all go to the making of the complete work of art: and you do not understand the picture, you do not really and fully judge it, unless you know how to appreciate the bearing on the result, of all the means which were used to bring it about. All this adds to your own technical knowledge as well as to your critical judgment, both of which ends are important to your becoming a good painter.

Why Paint Well.—You see I am assuming that you wish to be a good painter. There is no reason why you should be a bad painter because you are not a professional one. The better you paint the better your appreciation will be of all good work, the keener your appreciation of what is beautiful in nature, and the greater your satisfaction and pleasure in your own work. There are better reasons for painting than the desire to "make a picture." Painting implies making a picture, it is true; but it means also seeing and representing charming things, and working out problems of beauty in the expression of color and form: and this is something more than what is commonly meant by a picture. The picture comes, and is the result; but the making of it carries with it a pleasure and joy which are in exact proportion to the power of appreciation, perception, and expression of the painter. This is the real reason for painting, and it makes the desire and the attempt to paint well a matter of course.

Craftsmanship.—The mechanical side of painting naturally is an important part of your problem. You cannot be too catholic in your opinion with regard to it. It is vital that you be not narrowed by any prejudices as to the surface effect of paint. Whether the canvas be smooth or rough, the paint thick or thin, the details few or many,—the goodness or badness of the picture does not depend on any of these. They are or should be the result, the natural outcome because the natural means of expression, of the manner in which the picture is conceived. One picture may demand one way of painting and another demand a quite different way; and each way be the best possible for the thing expressed. It all depends on the man; the make-up of his mind; the way he sees things; the results he aims to attain,—all of them controlled more or less by temperament and idiosyncrasy. What would produce a perfect work for one man would not do at all for another. The works of the great masters offer the most marked contrasts of ideal and of treatment, and painters have varied greatly in their manner of some painting at different periods of their lives. Rembrandt, for instance, painted very thinly in his early years, with transparent shadows and carefully modelled, solidly loaded lights. Later in life he painted most roughly; and "The Syndics" was so heavily and roughly loaded that even now, after two hundred years, the paint stands out in lumps—and this is one of his masterpieces. So again, if you will compare the manipulation in the work of Raphael with that of Tintoretto, that of Rubens with that of Velasquez, or most markedly, the work of Frans Hals with that of Gerard Dou, you will see that the greatest extremes of handling are consistent with equal greatness of result.

Finish.—From this you may conclude that what is generally understood by the word "finish" is not necessarily a thing to be sought for. The tendency of great painters is rather away from excessive smoothness and detail than towards it. While a picture may be a good one and be very minute and smooth, it by no means follows that a picture is bad because it is rough. The truth is that the test of a picture does not lie in the character of the pigment surface in itself at all, nor in whether it be full of detail or the reverse, but in the conception and in the harmonious relation of the technique to the manner in which the whole is conceived. The true "finish" is whatever surface the picture happens to have when the idea which is the purpose of the picture is fully expressed, with nothing lacking to make that expression more complete, nor with anything present which is not needed to that completeness. This too is the truth about "breadth," that much misunderstood word. Breadth is not merely breadth of brush stroke. It is breadth of idea, breadth of perception; the power of conceiving the picture as a whole, and the power of not putting in any details which will interfere with the unity of effect.

Intent.—In this connection it would be well to bear in mind the purpose of the work on which the painter may be engaged. A man would, and should, work very differently on canvases intended for a study, a sketch, and a picture. The study would contain many things which the other two would not need. It is the work in which and by which the painter informs himself. It is his way of acquiring facts, or of assuring himself of what he wants and how he wants it. And he may put into it all sorts of things for their value as facts which he may never care to use, but which he wishes to have at command in case he should want them.

The sketch, on the other hand, is a note of an effect merely, or of a general idea, and calls for only those qualities which most successfully show the central idea, which might sometime become a picture, or which suggests a scheme. A carefully worked-up sketch is a contradiction in terms, just as a careless study would be.

A picture might have more or less of the character of either of these two types, and yet belong to neither. It might have the sketch as its motive, and would use as much or as little of the material of the study as should be needed to make the result express exactly the idea the painter wished to impart, and no more and no less.

All these things should be borne in mind, as you study the characteristics of paintings to learn what they can mean to you beyond the surface which is obvious to any one; or as you work on your own canvas to attain such power or proficiency, such cleverness or facility, as you may conclude it is worth your while to try for.



CHAPTER XI

TRADITION AND INDIVIDUALITY

A picture is made up of many elements. Certain of them are essentially abstract. They must be thought out by a sort of mental vision without words. This is the most subtle and intimate part of the picture. These are the means by which the ideal is brought into the picture.

Line, Mass, and Color.—Such are the qualities of line, dissociated from representation; of mass, not as representing external forms; and color, considered as a quality, not as yet expressed visibly in pigment, nor representing the color of any thing. When these elements are combined they may make up such conceptions as proportion, rhythm, repetition, and balance, with all the modifications that may come from still further combination.

It is because these elements are qualities in themselves beautiful that actual objects not beautiful may be made so in a painting, by being treated as color or line or mass, and so given place on the canvas, rather than as being of themselves interesting. A face, for instance, may be ugly as a face, yet be beautiful as color or light and shade in the picture. These qualities, I say, do not represent—they do not necessarily even exist, except in the mind to which they are the terms of its thought. Nevertheless, they are the soul of the picture. For whatever the subject, or the objects chosen for representation, it is by working out combinations of these elements, through and by means of those objects, that the picture really is made.

The picture, as a work of art, is not the representation of objects making up a subject, but a fabric woven of color, line, and mass; of form, proportion, balance, rhythm, and movement, expressed through those actual objects in the picture which give it visible form.

I do not purpose to go deeply into these matters here. Elsewhere, as they bear practically on the subject in hand, as in the chapters on "Composition" and on "Color," I shall speak of them more fully. But I wish here to call attention to this abstract side of painting in order to show the relation between the two classes of things, the one abstract and the other concrete, which together are needed to make up a picture.

The concrete, or material, part of a picture includes all those things which you can look at or feel on the canvas; and by seeing which you can also see the abstract qualities, which do not visibly exist until made visible through the disposition of these tangible things, on the canvas.

Beyond this is included all the technical qualities of expression; form, as drawing; all representations of objects; the pigment by means of which color is seen; and all those technical processes which produce the various kinds of surface in the putting on of paint, and bring about the different effects of light and shade and color, form or accent.

In learning to paint, it is with these concrete things that you should concern yourself mainly. The science of painting consists in the knowledge of how to be the master of all the practical means of the craft. For it is with these that you must work, with these you must express yourself. These are the tools of your trade. They are the words of your art language—the language itself being the abstract elements—and the thoughts, the combinations which you may conceive in your brain by means of these abstract elements.

You must have absolute command of these materials of painting. No matter how ideal your thought may be, no matter how fine your feeling for line and color and composition, if you do not know how to handle the gross material which is the only medium by which this can all be made visible and recognizable to another person, you will fail of either expressing yourself, or of representing anything else.

Now you will see what I have been driving at all this time; why I have been talking in terms which may well be called not practical. I want to fix your attention on the fact that there are two qualities in a picture: that one will be always within you, mainly, and will control the character of your picture, because it will be the expression of your mental self; and the other the practical part, which any one may, and all painters must learn, because it is the only means of getting the first into existence.

The one, the abstract part, no one can tell you how to cultivate nor how to use. If I tried to do so, it would be my idea and not yours which would result. I can only tell you that it is the thought of art, and you must think your own thoughts.

But the other, the material, the concrete, the practical, it is the purpose of this whole book to help you to understand and to acquire the mastery of, so far as may be done by words.

Teaching by words is difficult, and never completely satisfactory. But much may be done. If you will use your own brains, so that what does not seem clear at first may come to have a meaning because of your thinking about it, we may accomplish a great deal. I cannot make you paint. I cannot make you understand. I can give you the principles, but you must apply them and think them out.

Everything I say must be in a measure general; for the needs of every one are individual, and the requirement of each technical problem is individual. I must speak for all, and not to any one. Yet I shall state principles which can always be made to apply to each single need, and I will try to show how the application may be made.

Technique.—The science of painting consists of a variety of processes by means of which a canvas is covered with pigment, and various objects are represented thereon. The whole body of method and means is called technique; the several parts of technique are called by names of their own. That part which applies to the putting on of the paint may be generally called handling, although the word painting is sometimes restricted to this sense, and brush-work is often used for the same thing. The other technical means will be spoken of in their proper place. Let me say now a few words as to handling in general.

Where did all this technique come from?

From experiment.

Ever since art began, men have been searching for means of fixing ideas upon surfaces. But it is only within the last four hundred years that the processes of oil painting have been in existence—simply because they are peculiar to the use of pigments ground in oil as a vehicle, and the oil medium was not invented until the middle of the fifteenth century.

With the invention of this medium new possibilities came into the world, and a continual succession of painters have been inventing ways of putting on paint, the result being the stock of methods and processes of handling which are the groundwork of the art of painting to-day.

From time to time there have been groups of artists who have used common methods, and who have developed expression through those methods which became characteristic of their epoch; and because the resulting pictures were of a high degree of perfection, their methods of handling acquired an authority which had a very determining effect on different periods of painting.

In this way have come those ideas as to what kind of painting or what ways of putting paint on canvas should be accepted as "legitimate." And the methods accepted as legitimate or condemned as illegitimate have been varied from time to time—those condemned by one period being advocated by another; and the processes themselves have been almost as varied as the periods or groups of men using them.

In the long run, methods and processes have received such authoritative sanction from having been each and all used by undoubted masters, that they have become the traditional property of all art, which any one is free to use as he finds need of them. They have become the stock in trade of the craft.

The artist may use them as he will, provided only he will take the trouble to understand them. He must understand them, because the manipulations which make up these different processes accomplish different effects and different qualities; and as the painter aims at results, if he does not understand the result of a process when he uses it, he will get a different one from that which he intended.

The painter should not be hampered by process; he should not be controlled in the expression of himself by tradition. He should feel free to use any or all means to bring about the result he aims at, and he should allow no tradition or point of view to prevent him from selecting whichever means will most surely or satisfactorily bring about his true purpose.

Of course there are many ways of using paint which are unsafe. Some pigments are unsafe to use because they either do not hold their own color, or tend to destroy the color of others. You should always bear this in mind; and if you care for the permanence of your work, you should not use such materials or such processes as work against it. But beyond this, the whole range of the experience and experiment of the workers who have gone before you are at your command, to help you to express yourself most perfectly or completely; to represent whatever of visible beauty you may conceive or perceive.

And this is the whole aim of the painter; to stand for this is the whole purpose of the picture.



CHAPTER XII

ORIGINALITY

Originality is not a thing to strive for. If it comes, it is not through striving. The search for originality seldom results in anything worth having. It is a quality inherent in the man; and the best way of being original in your work is to be natural. Perhaps the most useful advice which you could receive is that you be always natural. Never be artificial nor insincere; never copy another person's subject, manner, or method, with the intention of doing as he does. The most original things are often the most simple, because they have come naturally from a sincere desire to express what has been seen or felt, in the most direct way.

If every one were content to be himself, there would be no dearth of originality. No two people are alike, neither are any two painters alike; they could not be. They do not look alike, nor see alike, nor feel alike, nor think alike. How, then, should they paint alike? The attempt to do a thing because another has made a success of that sort of thing is the most fruitful source of the commonplace in painting.

Paint that which appeals to you most fully. Don't try to paint what appeals to some one else. If you like it, then do it; and do it in the most direct way you can find; only do it so as to fully and completely convey just what it is that you like, unaffected by anything else. And because you have seen or felt for yourself in your own way, and expressed that; and because you are not another, nor like any other that ever was, what you have done will not be like anything else that ever was—and that is originality.

But never imitate yourself, either. Be open. Be ready to receive impressions and emotions. And if you have done one thing well, accept that in itself as a reason for not doing it again. There are always plenty of things—ideas, impressions, conceptions, appreciations—waiting to be painted; and if you try to paint one twice, you fail once of freshness, and lose a chance of doing a new thing.

That is what a painter is for, not to cover a canvas with paint, hang it on a wall, and call it by a name. The painter is the eye of the people. He sees things which they have no time to look for, or looking, have not learned to see. The painter serves his purpose best when he recognizes the beautiful where it was not perceived before, and so sets it forth that it is recognized to be beautiful through his having seen it.

There is the difference between the artist and the photograph, which sees only facts as facts; which while often distorting them does so mindlessly, and at best, when accurate, gives the bad with the good in unconscious impartiality. But back of the painter's eye which sees and distinguishes is the painter's brain which selects and arranges, using facts as material for the expression of beauties more important than the facts.

But what is a picture? I have met some strange though positive notions as to what is and what is not a picture. Some persons think that a certain (or uncertain) proportion of definite forms and objects are necessary to make canvas a picture; that it must contain some definite and tangible facts of the more obvious kind. I remember one man who asserted that a canvas in an exhibition was not a picture, but only a sketch, because it had nothing in it but an expanse of sea and sky. To make a picture of it there was needed at least a moon, and some birds, or better, a ship and some reflections. All this sort of thing is idle. A picture is not a picture because it has more of this or less of that; it is a picture because it is complete in the expression of the idea which is the cause of its existence. And that idea may be tangible or not. It may include many details or none. It is an idea which is best or only expressed by being made visible, and which is worthy of being expressed because of its beauty; and when that idea is wholly and fully visible on canvas or other surface, that surface is a picture. What the contents of a picture shall be is a matter personal to the painter of it. The manner in which it is conceived and produced is determined by his temperament and idiosyncrasy.

A picture is a visible idea expressed in terms of color, form, and line. It is the product of perception plus feeling, plus intent, plus knowledge, plus temperament, plus pigment. And as all these are differently proportioned in all persons, it is only a matter of being natural on the part of the painter that his picture should be original.



CHAPTER XIII

THE ARTIST AND THE STUDENT

It is a mistake to make pictures too soon. The nearest a student is likely to get to a picture is a careful study, and he will be as successful with this, if he makes it for the study of it, as if he made it for the sake of making a picture—better probably. The making of a picture for the picture's sake is dangerous to the student. His is less likely to be sincere. He is apt to "idealize," to make up something according to some notion of how a picture should be, rather than from knowledge of how nature is. Real pictures grow from study of nature.

They are the outcome of maturity, not of the student stage. This implies something deeper than superficial facts, and a power of selection,—of choice and of purpose which must rest on a very broad and deep knowledge. The artist is always a student, of course; but he is not a student only. He is a student who knows what and why he wants to study; not one who is in process of finding out these things.

Aims.—It should be noted that the aim of the student and the aim of the artist are essentially different. The student's first aim is to learn to see and represent nature's facts; to distinguish justly between relations. It is the training of the eye and the judgment. Imitation is not the highest art; but the highest art requires the ability to imitate as a mere power of representation. The mind must not be hampered in its expression by lack of knowledge and control of materials, and the painter who is constantly occupied with the problems he should have worked out in his student days, is just so far from being a master. He must have all his means perfectly at his command before he can freely express himself.

The acquirement of this mastery of means is the student's business. Everything he does which aids him in this makes him so much nearer to being a painter. But he must remember that he is still a student, and as he hopes to be a painter, must have patience with himself; must not hurry himself, must work as a student for the ends of a student.

All the facts of nature art uses. But she uses them as she needs them, simplifying, emphasizing, suppressing, combining as will best meet the necessities of the case in hand. All this requires the utmost knowledge, for it must be done in accordance not only with laws of art, but with the laws of nature.

There are changes which can be made, and be right—made as nature might make them. Other changes which would be false to nature's ways, and so false to art also. For art works through nature always, and in accordance with her. This is the aim of the painter, to express ideas through nature, not to express notions about nature.

The facts of nature are the material of art; the words of the language in which the ideas of art are to be conveyed. But there are truths more important than these facts. The underlying sentiment of which they are the external manifestation, and which is the vivifying spirit of them. This is the true fact of the picture.

It is more important to give the sentiment of the thing than to give the fact of it; not merely because it is more truly represented so, but because the beauty is shown in showing the character. For the character of the fact is the beauty of the fact.

To bring out the beauty which may lie in the fact is the aim of the artist; to acquire the ability to do this is the aim of the student.



CHAPTER XIV

HOW TO STUDY

There is a right and a wrong way to study, and it all centres around the fact that what you aim to learn is perception and expression. What you are to express you do not learn; you grow to that. But you must learn how to use all possible means; all the facts of visible nature, and all the characteristics of pigments. All qualities, color and form and texture, are but the means of your expression, and you must know how they may be used. Your perception and appreciation must be trained, and your mind stored with facts and relativities. Then you are ready to recognize and to convey the true inwardness you find in conditions commonplace to others.

You are to see where others see not; for it is marvellous how little the average eye sees of the really interesting things, how little of the visual facts, and how rarely it sees the picture before it is painted. All is material to the painter. It is not that "everything that is, is beautiful," but that everything that is has qualities and possibilities of beauty; and these, when expressed, make the picture, in spite of the superficial or obvious ugliness. In one sense nothing is commonplace, for everything exists visibly by means of light and color, and light and color are of the fundamental beauties. So arrange or look upon the commonplace that light and color are the most obvious qualities, and the commonplace sinks into the background—is lost. There is nothing like painting to make life fascinating; for there is nothing which brings so many charming combinations into your perception, as the habit of looking to find the possibilities of beauty in everything that comes within your view.

You must form the habit of looking always from the painter's point of view. The painter deals primarily with pigment, and what can be represented with pigment; chiefly color and light in the broadest sense, including form and composition, as things which give bodily presence and action to the possibilities of pigment. Shade, or shadow, of course, is an actuality in painting, because it is the foil of light and color, and furnishes the element of relation.

Methods.—Two general methods are at the command of the student from the first,—to study at once from nature, or to copy. I think I may safely claim to speak for the great body of teachers who are also professional artists, in saying that copying is a means of study rather for the advanced student than for the beginner. You cannot begin too soon to study nature with your own eyes, and to accumulate your own facts and observations and deductions. The use of copying is not to find out how to paint, but to see how many ways there are of painting. The great end of all study in painting is to train the eyes to see relations, to see them in nature. It is not to see that there are relations, but to see where they are; to recognize and to measure and to judge them. Painting is the art of perception before everything, and when you copy you only see, accept, what some one else has already perceived. Copying does not help you to perceive, it can only help to show you how something can be expressed after it has been perceived, and that is not the vital thing in the study of painting. Handling, composition, management of color, technique of the brush generally, may be studied by copying. These only—and for these things it is useful and wise. But the beginner is not ready for these, for they are not the alphabet, but the grammar of painting.

Danger.—The danger of too early copying is that the student learns to set too much value on surface qualities rather than those to which the surface is merely incidental. With this is the danger (a serious one, and one hard to overcome the results of) that the student becomes clever as a producer of pictures before he has trained his power to see. He becomes a student of pictures rather than a student of nature, and when in doubt will go to art rather than to nature for help and suggestion. Could anything be more fatal? Consider the things that student will have to unlearn before he can think a picture in terms of nature—the only healthy, the only prolific way of thinking. He sees always through other people's eyes, and thinks with other people's brains, and feels other people's emotions; that is not creation; that is the attitude for the spectator, not for the painter.

These things are all useful and good, but not for the beginner. Later, when you have found out something for yourself, when you have ground of your own to stand on, then you may not only without danger, but with benefit, go to the work of other men to see the range of possible point of view and expression, to see the scope of technical material and individual adaptation; and so broaden your own mental view and sympathy, possibly reform or educate your taste, and perhaps get some hints which will help you in the solving of some future problem.

But rather than the undue sophistication which can result from unwise copying,—the over-knowledge of process and surface, and under-knowledge of nature,—is to be preferred a frank crudeness of work which is the result of an honest going to nature for study. You should not expect a perfect eye for color and form too soon. Better a healthily youthful crudity of perception based on nature, and standing for what you have yourself studied and worked out, which represents your own attainment, than a greater show of knowledge which is insincere and superficial because it represents a mere acceptance of the facts set down by others; and not only that, but even with it an acceptance also of the actual terms used by those others.

Often copying is the most convenient way in which you can get help. There is really much to be learned from it, and you can make a picture serve as a criticism on your own work. Particularly in the matter of color or tone, as something to recognize the achievement of for its own sake. If you can recognize good color as such, aside from what it represents, if you can appreciate tone in a picture which is the work of some one else, you are so much the more likely to notice the lack of those qualities in your own work. So, too, there are qualities of brush-work which are always good, and some which are always bad. You can study the former positively, and the latter negatively, in studying and copying other pictures.

I have mentioned the training of your critical judgment as a necessity in your education. You can do it slowly in learning to paint, but you can facilitate that training by copying and studying really good pictures, if you do it in the right way.

The Right Way.—So if you do copy, do it in the right way, so as to get all the real help out of it, and not so as to have to unlearn the greater part of it. Don't copy "to get a picture." Don't make a copy which at a distance has a resemblance to the original, but which on a more careful study shows none of the qualities which make the original what it is. Not only see to it that the same subtleties of perception and representation are preserved in your copy, but that they are attained in the same way. Use the same brush-work or other execution. Use the same pigments in the same places, with the same vehicles; study the original with your brain as well as with your eyes and hands; try to see not only how the painter did a certain thing but why. So that as you work, you follow him in the working out of his problem, and make it your problem also. In this way you will get some real good from his picture, and not a mere canvas which has been of no use to you, nor can be of any satisfaction to any one else who knows a good picture (copy or original) when he sees it.

Why Copy.—There are only two good reasons for making a copy,—to study the original as a problem, and to have something to serve as an example of the master on a work which you like. And in either case such a sincere manner of copying as I urge is the only possible way to get what you want. To "get a picture," regardless of whether it really does justice to the original, is the wrong way, and this leads always through bad copying to bad painting, and you are fortunate if you escape an entire perversion of your point of view.

You may be able to make some money now and again by doing this sort of thing, but you will never learn anything from it. On the contrary, it is the surest way you could find of closing your eyes to all that is worth seeing.

Get to Nature.—If you would really learn to paint, to see for yourself, to represent what you see in your own way, you cannot get to nature too soon. Don't bother about what the thing is, so long as it is nature herself. By nature I mean anything, absolutely anything which exists of itself, not painted. Whether it be the living figure, or a cast, or a bit of landscape, or a room interior—all things which actually exist must show themselves by the facts of light falling upon them: the relation of color, and the contrasts of light and dark. Whatever you see is useful to you in this way, for these bring about all the qualities and conditions which you most need to study. But models are not always at command, interiors do not easily stay a long time at your disposal, and bits of landscape which interest you are not always easy to get at; for a student is apt to be either far advanced or unusually ardent who will find interest in the first combination which falls under his eye. Therefore the most practically useful material for study, which is always "nature," is what we call "still life,"—"morte" nature, dead nature is the better or more descriptive name the French give to it. By this is meant any and all combinations of objects and backgrounds grouped arbitrarily for representation. Bottles and jugs and fruits, books and bric-a-brac; all sorts of things lend themselves readily and interestingly to this use.

The great value of still life for the student lies in the variety of combinations of color and form, of light and shade and texture, that he can always command. There is practically no problem possible to in-the-house light which may not be worked out by means of still life. The training in perception and representation, in composition and arrangement, and in technique, which it will give you is invaluable; and most important of all, while you can always make such arrangements as will interest you, because you need place only such things or colors as you like, you are really studying nature herself, you are looking at the things themselves, and the result you get is the product of your own eyes and brain. The problem is entirely your own, both in the stating and the solving, and what you learn is well learned, and represents a definite progress along the right line.

You have worked for the sake of the working, and there is nothing which you have got from it that may not be applicable to any future work you may do, that does not directly lead to the great object you have in view,—to learn how to paint well.

Be Sincere.—But, above all, be sincere with yourself; don't do anything to be clever, nor because it pleases some one else. Painting is difficult enough at best. You need all the interest and fascination that the most charming thing can have for you to help you to do it so that it is worth the trouble. Don't take away the whole life of it by insincerity. A very thoughtful painter said to me once that he believed that all really good pictures could be shown to be good by the sole criterion of conviction. Can you think of any painting being good without it? Can you think of any amount of cleverness and ability making a picture good without that. And it is quite as important in study as elsewhere. Never do anything except seriously; take yourself and your work seriously; only by serious work can serious results come.

Joy in Your Work.—Do it because you like to. But like good work and hate bad work; and, above all, hate half-way work. Understand yourself: what you want to do and why you want to do it, and then be honest enough with yourself to work till you have honestly done what you wanted to do, and as you wanted to do it.



PART III

TECHNICAL PRINCIPLES



CHAPTER XV

TECHNICAL PRELIMINARIES

Reasons.—Painting is something more than laying on paint. It implies a certain amount of knowledge of necessary preliminaries—technical matters which are not strictly painting, but without which good painting is impossible.

It is all well enough to put paint on canvas, but there must be a knowledge on which to base the where and the why of laying it on, as well as the knowledge of how to lay it on. If anything, the where and why are more important than the how. There are almost infinite methods and processes of getting the paint onto the surface. Every painter may select or invent his own way, and provided it accomplishes the main purpose—the bringing about of combinations of form, relative color and pitch, the expression of an idea—it is all right. But there are laws which govern the positions of the different spots of paint, and the reasons for placing them in certain relations. These laws are back of personal idiosyncrasy. They are a part of the laws which control all material things. The painter may no more go contrary to them in painting than he may go contrary to physical laws in any of the practical matters of life. If pigments are not used in accordance with the laws governing their chemical composition, they will not stand. If the laws of proportion are not observed in composition, the picture will not balance. The laws of color harmony are as mathematically fixed as the law of gravity. So, too, the relations of size, which give the impression of nearness or distance to objects, rest on the laws of optics. You have infinite scope for individual expression inside of those laws, but you cannot go outside of them.

Scientific Knowledge not Necessary.—It is not necessary that you should have any special knowledge of all these laws nor even of the application of them; but you must recognize their existence, and have some practical notions about them and their effect on your work.

You can of course carry the study as far as you are interested to go. The farther the better. The more you study them the more you will find them interesting, and the easier will it be for you to work freely within their limitations. But this is not the place for special study. There are books which treat particularly of these things, and you must go to them.

But a superficial consideration of these subjects cannot be left out of any book which would be really helpful to the student of painting. I can go into the theory of things only so far as to give you that amount of practical knowledge which is absolutely necessary to you as a painter. What I shall give is given only because it cannot be wisely left out, and the form of it as well as the substance and quantity are determined by the same reason.

As you hope to become a painter, then, do not neglect to study and think of this part of the book, not merely as a preliminary to the process of painting, but as containing matter which is continually essential to it—which is part and parcel of it.

Another reason for the careful reading of these chapters is that any discussion of the art of painting necessarily demands the use of words or phrases which must be understood. To speak of technical things presupposes the use of technical phrases, and without a knowledge of the words there can be no comprehension of the thought.



CHAPTER XVI

DRAWING

Drawing is basic to painting. Good painting cannot exist without it. I do not mean that there must be always the outline felt or seen, but that the understanding of relative position, size, and form must be felt; and that is drawing. Drawing is not merely form, but implies these other things, and painting is not legible without them. They go to the completeness of expression. Movement, and action, as well as composition and all that it implies or includes, depend upon drawing, and they are vital to a painting.

Importance of Drawing.—Much has been said and written of drawing as being the most important thing in a picture; so much so, as to excuse all sorts of shortcomings in other directions. This is a mistake. Drawing is essential because you cannot lay on color to express anything without the colors taking shape, and this is drawing. But still the color itself, and other characteristics which are not strictly a part of drawing, are quite as important to painting, simply because the thing without them could not be a painting at all: it would be a drawing.

All painters fall into two classes,—those who are most sensitive to the refinements of form, and those most sensitive to refinements of color and tone. But the great colorists, the painters par excellence, the workers in pigment before everything else, those who find their sentiment mainly there, these are the men who have made painting what it is, and who have brought out its possibilities. And looking at painting from their point of view, drawing cannot be more important than other qualities.

Neglect of Drawing.—Great artists have sometimes not been perfect draughtsmen. They have been careless of exactness of form. But they have always been strong in the great essentials of drawing, and they have made up for such deficiencies as they showed, by their greatness in other directions. Delacroix, for instance, sometimes let his temperament run him into carelessness of form in his hurry to express his temperamental richness of color. These things are superficial to the greater ends he had in view, but we have to distinctly forgive it in accepting the picture. And a great colorist may be so forgiven; he makes up for his fault by other things. But there is no forgiveness for the student or the painter who is simply a poor draughtsman.

The effect of neglect of drawing is to make a weak picture. A painter, who was also an exceptionally fine draughtsman, once spoke of work weak in drawing as resembling "boned turkey." Lack of firmness, indecision, characterize the painter who cannot draw. Those firm, simple, but effective touches which are evident somewhere in the work of all good painters, are impossible without draughtsmanship. They mean precision. Precision means position. Position means drawing.

Proportions.—All good work is from the general to the particular, from the mass to the detail. Keep that in mind as a fundamental principle in good work, whatever the kind. You should never place a detail till you have placed your larger masses. The relative importance of things depends on the consideration of those most important first. Let this be your first rule in drawing.

Proportions next. Largest proportions, then exactness of relative proportions. Study first in masses. See nothing at first but the large planes. As Hunt said, "Hang the nose on to the head, not the head on to the nose." In getting proportions of the great masses, let no small variations of line or form break into your study of the whole. Therefore, see outlines first in straight lines and angles. If you cannot see them at first, study to find them; look at the long lines of movement; mass several curves into one line representing the general direction of them. Train yourself to look at things in this way. There is nothing which will not fall into position so. This will not be easy at first. The training of a quick perception of these things is a part of your training in drawing—the first essential. It is not that the straight lines are to be sought for themselves, but that they simplify the first breaking up of the whole into its parts, and so makes more easy the study of proportion. The accuracy of the general masses makes possible a greater accuracy of the lesser proportions which come within them.

You see form more truly also, when the perception of it is founded on a mass or a line indicating the larger character of it. It saves time for you, too. You do not have to rub out so much. The great lines and planes once established, everything else falls naturally into place. Spend much time over this part of a drawing. Cut the time you give to a drawing into parts, and let the part given to the laying in of larger proportions be from a third to a half of the whole time, and study and correct these until they are right.

Once these are right a very slight accent tells for twice what it would otherwise, and so you need much less detail to give the effect.

Modelling.—In the same way that you have laid out the proportions in mass, lay out your proportions of light and shade. Model your drawing by avoiding the small until the large variations of shade are in place. Avoid seeing curves in relief as you have avoided curves of outline. Try to analyze the modelling into flat planes, each one large enough to give a definite mass of relief. Don't be afraid of an edge in doing this. Let your flat tone come frankly up to the next tone and stop. This again is not for any effect in itself, but only for facility and exactness. Later you can loose it as much as you see fit in breaking up the drawing into the more delicate planes, and these again into the most subtle.

Study first the outline and then the planes. Constantly compare them as to relation; you will find it suggestive. Remember that your aim is to produce a whole, not a lot of parts, and although a whole includes the parts, the parts are incidental.

Measurements.—You will always have to use measurements for the sake of accuracy. Probably you will never be able to dispense with them. The best way would be to take them as a matter of course, and get so that you make them almost mechanically, without thinking of it. You will save yourself an immense deal of time and trouble by accepting this at once; for accuracy is impossible without measurements, and the habit of accuracy is the greatest time-saver.

Hold your charcoal in your hand freely, so that your thumb can slip along it and mark off parts of the object when you sight at them across the coal. Measure horizontal and vertical proportions into themselves and into each other. Height and breadth are checks to each other. If the height is a certain proportion of the breadth, then the smaller proportions of height must have equivalent proportions to each other as well as to breadth. Measure these and you are sure of being right.

Steps.—Divide your drawing into steps or stages of work. You will find it a helpful thing in studying. You will do it quite naturally later. Do it deliberately at first, as a matter of training.

First step.—Measure the extreme height and breadth of the whole group or object of your drawing, with accuracy, and mark each extreme.

Second step.—Outline the great mass of it with the simplest lines possible. Give the general shape of the whole. This blocks it in.

Third step.—Measure each of the objects in the group, or the parts most prominent, if it be a single object. Measure its height and breadth, both in its own proportion and in proportion to the dimensions of the other parts and of the whole. Enclose it in straight lines as you did with the whole mass.

Fourth step.—Find the more important of the lesser proportions in each object, and block them out also. This should map out your drawing exactly and with some completeness.

Fifth step.—Lay in simple flat tones to fill in these outlines, and keep the relations of light and dark very carefully as you do so.

Sixth step.—This should leave your paper with a few large masses of dark and light, which can now be cut into again with the next smaller masses, giving more refinement to the whole. This also should so break up the edges as to get rid of any feeling of squareness or edginess.

Seventh step.—Put in such accents of dark, or take out such of light, as will give necessary character and force to the drawing.

I do not say that this method produces the most finished drawing; but it is a most excellent way to study drawing, and, more or less modified, is practically the basis of all methods. In practised hands it allows of any amount of exactness or freedom of execution. I have seen most beautiful work done in this way.

Home Study.—It is not necessary to have a teacher in order to draw well; but it is necessary to find out what are the essentials of good drawing, and to work definitely and acquire them.

Good drawing is a combination of exactness and freedom; and the exactness must come first. The structure of the thing must be shown without unnecessary detail. You should always look at any really good drawing you can come at, and try to see what there may be in it of helpful suggestion to you.



Study the Masters.—Get photographs of drawings by the masters of drawing, and study them. See how they searched their model for form and character. Do not make so much of the actual stroke as the manner in which it is made to express and lend itself to the meaning.

In this drawing by Albrecht Duerer you have a splendid example of exactness and feeling for character. You could have no better type of what to look for and how to express it. Although it is not important that you should lay on the lines of shading just as this is done, it is important to notice how naturally they follow, and conform to, the character of the surface—which is one of the ways in which the point helps to search out the modelling.

This drawing is made with a black and a white chalk on a gray ground; a very good way to study.

A good hint is also offered in this drawing, of the modesty of the old masters, in subject. A hand or part of any object is enough to study from. There is no need to always demand a picture in everything you do.

Materials.—For all purposes which come in the range of the painter you should use charcoal. For purposes of study it is the most satisfactory of materials; it is sensitive, easily controlled, and easily corrected. For sketching or preliminary drawing on the canvas it is equally good.

You should have also a plumb-line with which to test vertical positions of parts in relation to each other, and this, with the pencil held horizontally for other relative positions, gives you all you need in that direction.

In drawing on the canvas it is not often necessary to do more than place the various objects and draw their outlines carefully and accurately. Sometimes, however, as in faces, or in pictures which include important figures, you will need a shaded drawing, and this can be done perfectly with charcoal, and fixed with fixative afterwards.

Imitation.—Perfect drawing, in the sense of exact drawing, is not the most important thing. A drawing may be exact, and yet not be the truer for it. It may be inexact, and yet be true to the greater character. So, too, the drawing may have to change an accidental fact which is not worth the trouble of expression or which will injure the whole. There is something more important than detail, and the essential characteristics can be expressed sometimes only by a drawing which is deliberately false in certain things in order to be the more true to the larger fact.

Then, too, there is an individuality which the artist has to express through his representation of the external; and he is justified in altering or slighting facts in order to bring about that more important self-expression. Of course the self must be worth expressing. There is no excuse for mere falsification nor for mere inability. But a good workman will not be guilty of that, and the complete picture in its unity will be his justification for whatever means he has taken.

Feeling.—Drawing must be a matter of feeling. A perception of essential truth of a thing, as much as of trained observation of the facts. The good draughtsman becomes so by training his observation of facts first, always searching for those most important, and emphasizing those; and with the power which will come in time to his eye and hand easily and quickly to grasp and express facts, will come also the power of mind to grasp the essential characteristics. And the trained hand and eye will permit the most perfect freedom of expression. This is the desideratum of the student; this is the end to be aimed at,—the perfect union of the trained eye and hand to see and do, and the trained mind to feel and select, and the freedom of expression which comes of that perfect union.



CHAPTER XVII

VALUES

The Term.—The word "values" is seldom understood by the average individual, yet it should not be difficult to take in. It means simply the relation between degrees of strength of light and dark, and of color considered as light and dark. Translate the word into "importance," and think what it means. The relative importance, strength, force, power, value, of a touch of color to make itself felt in the whole—that is its value. A weak value is a note which does not make itself felt; a strong value is one which does. A false value is a touch of color which has not its proper relation to the other spots or masses of color in the picture, considered as light and dark—not as color per se.

Importance.—As soon as you grasp this idea you see at once how important values must be to the whole picture. It is not possible to do any good work, either in black and white or color, without it. In one sense it is incidental to drawing. When you consider drawing as the expression of modelling, the relative roundness of parts, and of relief, as well as outline, values come into play to give the relations of planes of light and dark in black and white. In this it becomes part of drawing.

Values and Color.—As soon, however, as color becomes a part of the picture, values become the basis of modern painting as distinguished from the painting of previous centuries. Values, of course, always existed wherever good painting existed, because you cannot paint without recognizing the relations, the relative pitch and relative strength of tones. But the word is never heard in relation to old masters. It is apparently of quite modern coinage and use, and it probably was coined because of a new and greater importance of the fact which it represents.

The older painters in painting a picture kept parts of a whole object—a head or a figure, say—in relation to itself; and that was values—but restricted values. The whole picture was arranged on the basis of arbitrary lighting, which entered into the scheme of composition of that picture. This is not values, but what is generally understood by the older writers when they speak of "chiaroscuro." The modern painter deals little with chiaroscuro. It is almost obsolete as a technical word. Arbitrary arrangement of light and shade in a picture is not usual nowadays, and consequently the word which expressed it has dropped somewhat into disuse.

Basis of Modern Painting.—Instead of the old composition in arbitrary light and shade, the modern painter accepts the actual arrangement of light as the basis of his picture, and spreads the values over the whole canvas. In this way the quality of "value" becomes the very foundation of the modern picture. For you cannot accept the ordinary or actual condition of light, as governing the light and shade of your picture, without extending the same scheme of relations over the whole canvas. Every most insignificant spot of light and shade and color, as well as the most significant, must keep its place, must hold its true relation to every other spot and to all the rest. Each value must keep its place according to the laws of fact, or it is out of touch with the whole. The whole picture must be either on a scheme of general fact, or a scheme of general arbitrary arrangement. Any one piece of arbitrary arrangement in this connection must be backed up by other pieces of arbitrary arrangement, or else there must be no arbitrary arrangement at all. The modern painter accepts the former; and the importance of "values" is the result.

Absolute and Relative Values.—We may speak of values as absolute or relative. This relates to the key or pitch of a painting. It is the contribution to the art of painting which was made by the French painter, Manet. You may paint a picture in the same pitch as nature, or you may transpose it to a higher or a lower pitch.

The relations of the different values of the picture will hold the same relation to each other as the values of nature do to each other. But the actual pitch of each, the relation of each to an absolute light or an absolute dark, will be higher or lower than in nature. This would be relative values.

Or the pitch, relation to absolute light and dark, of each value may be the same, value for value, as in nature. This would be absolute values.

The attempt at absolute values was not made at all before Manet's time. A landscape was frankly painted down, or darker, from the pitch of nature, and an interior as frankly painted up, or lighter. In both cases the values had to be condensed,—telescoped, so to speak,—because pigment would not express the highest light nor the lowest dark in nature; and to have the same number of gradations between the highest and lowest notes in the picture, the amount of difference between each value had to be diminished—but relatively they were the same. The degree of variation from the actual was the same all through.

With absolute values the painter aims at giving the just note,—the exact equivalent in value that he finds in nature. He tries to paint up to out-door light or paint down to in-door light.

Close Values.—This naturally calls for a fine distinction of tones—the utmost subtlety of perception of values. To paint a picture in which the highest light may not be white nor the lowest dark black, and yet give a great range and variety to the values all through the picture, the values must be close; must be studied so closely as to take cognizance of the slightest possible distinction, and to justly express it. This sort of thing was not thought of by the older painters. It is the distinguishing characteristic of modern painting. It is a substitution of the study of relation for the study of contrast.

Study of Values.—You see at once how important, how vital, the study of values is to painting. Even if you paint with arbitrary lighting, as is still done by many painters, especially in portraits, you have to consider and study them as they apply to parts of your picture. You will find no good painter of old time who did not study relations. If you look at a Velasquez, you will find that he knew values, even though he did not use the word.

But if you are in touch with your century, if you would paint to express the suggestion you receive from the nature you study, or if you would convey the idea of truth to the world around you, as that world exists, frankly accepting the conditions of it, you will have to make the study of values fundamental to your work.

"The Fourth Dimension."—You study values with your eyes only, but you cannot measure values. Length, breadth, and thickness you can measure; but values constitute what might be called a "Fourth Dimension," and you must measure it by your eye, and without any mechanical aid. Your eye must be trained to distinguish and judge differences of value.

Helps.—There are, however, several things which you can use to help you in training your eye to distinguish values. When you look for values you do not wish to see details nor things, you wish to see only masses and relations. You must unfocus your eye. The focussed eye sees the fact, and not the relation. Anything which will help you to see outlines and details less distinctly will help you to see the values more distinctly.

Half-closed Eyes.—The most common way is to half close the eyes, which shuts out details, but permits you to see the values. Some painters think this falsifies pitch, and prefer to keep the eyes wide open, but to focus them on some point beyond the values they are studying. This is not so easy to do as to half close the eyes, but becomes less difficult with practice.

The Blur Glass.—An ordinary magnifying-glass of about 15-inch focus, which you can get at an optician's for fifteen or twenty cents, will blur the details, and help you to see the values, because it makes everything vague except the masses. You can frame it for use by putting it between two pieces of cardboard with a hole in them, or you can do the same with two pieces of leather sewed around the edge. Of course the glass itself is all you need, but it will be easily broken if unprotected.

Do not try to look through the glass at your subject, but at the glass and the image on it.

The Claude Loraine Mirror.—This is a curved mirror with a black reflecting surface. The object is reflected on it, reduced both in size and pitch. It concentrates the masses and the color, and so helps to distinguish the relative values.

You can make a mirror of this sort for yourself by painting the back of a piece of plate glass black. The real Claude Loraine mirror is expensive.

The Common Mirror is also very helpful in distinguishing values. It reduces the size of things, and reverses the drawing so that you see your subject under different conditions, and a fresh eye is the result. Place the group and your painting side by side, if you are painting still life, and look at both at the same time in the mirror. Do the same with a portrait and the sitter.

Diminishing Glass.—Much the same effect can be had by using a double concave lens. The picture is not reversed, but it is reduced, and the details eliminated.

In using any of these means you must remember that it is always the relations and not the things you are studying; and the most useful of these aids is the blur glass, because you cannot possibly see anything in it but the values and color masses, everything else being blurred.



CHAPTER XVIII

PERSPECTIVE

There are two kinds of perspective, linear and aerial. The former has to do with the manner in which horizontal lines appear to converge as they recede from the foreground, and so produce the effect of distance. The latter has to do with the effect of distance, which is due to the successive gradations of gray in color noticeable in objects farther and farther away from the observer.

Aerial Perspective.—To the student, aerial is color perspective, because of the modifications which colors undergo when removed to a distance. Modifications of tone are largely due to varying distance, and so aerial perspective is largely a matter of values. That they are due to the greater or less thickness of the atmosphere is only a matter of interest, not of importance, to the artist; the important thing to him is that the careful study of values is necessary to relief, perspective, and particularly, atmosphere and envelopment in a picture.

To the student, aerial perspective should be only a matter of observation and of the study of relations of color and value. There are no rules. The effect depends on greater or less density of atmosphere. Near objects are seen through a thin stratum of air, and farther objects through a thicker one. All you have to do to express it is to recognize the relative tones of color. Paint the colors as they are, as you see them in nature, and you need have no trouble with aerial perspective.

But though I say "this is all you have to do," don't imagine that I mean that it is always easy, or that it can be done without thought and study. You will have to use all your powers of perception if you wish to do good work in this direction. Especially on clear days, or in those climates where the air is so rare that objects at great distances seem near, you will find that atmospheric perspective is simply another name for close values. And close values, you remember, are the most subtle of relations of light and shade and color.

The only rule for aerial perspective is to use your eyes, and do nothing without a previous careful study of nature.

Linear Perspective.—For most kinds of painting, a technical knowledge of linear perspective is not necessary, although every painter should understand the general principles of it. In most cases all the exactness needed can be obtained by comparing all lines carefully with the pencil or brush handle held horizontally or vertically, and studying the angle any line makes with it. Apply to all objects in perspective the same observation that you do in any other kind of drawing, and you will have little trouble, as long as you are drawing from an object before you. But if you go into perspective at all, go into it thoroughly. A little perspective is a dangerous thing, and more likely to mix you up by suggesting all sorts of half-understood things than to be of any real help.

There are some kinds of subjects, however, which require a complete knowledge of all the rules and processes of perspective. Whenever you have to construct a picture from details stated but not seen; when you have a complicated architectural interior or exterior; when figures are to be placed at certain distances or in definite positions, and they are too numerous or the conditions are otherwise such that you cannot pose your models for this purpose; then you may have to make most elaborate perspective plans, and lay out your picture with great exactness, or the drawing which is fundamental to such a picture will not be true.

Such men as Gerome and Alma-Tadema plan their pictures most carefully, and so did Paul Veronese, and it requires a thorough and practical knowledge of perspective.

But this is not the place to teach you perspective. It is a subject which requires special study, and whole volumes are given to the elucidation of it. In a work of this kind anything more than a mention of the bearings of perspective on painting would be out of place. If you do not care to take up seriously the study of perspective, avoid attempting to paint any subjects which call for it; or, if you do care to study it, get a special work on that subject, give plenty of time to it, and study it thoroughly.

Foreshortening.—In this connection I may speak of something which is akin to perspective, yet the very reverse of it. As its name implies, foreshortening means the way in which anything seems shortened or in modified drawing as it projects towards you; while perspective is the manner in which lines appear as they recede from you. Like aerial perspective, the best way to study foreshortening is to study nature, not rules.

Perspective can be worked out by rule, foreshortening cannot. Pose your model, or if it be a branch of a tree, or anything of that sort, place yourself in the proper position with reference to it, and then study the drawing as it appears, thinking nothing of how it is; make your measurements, and place your lines as if there were no problem of foreshortening at all, but study the relations of lines, of size, and of values, and the foreshortening will take care of itself.

After all, foreshortening is only good drawing, and a good draughtsman will foreshorten well, while a bad draughtsman will not. Therefore, learn to draw, and don't worry about the foreshortening.



CHAPTER XIX

LIGHT AND SHADE

Chiaroscuro.—A few words about chiaroscuro will be useful. This is a term of great importance and frequent use with artists and writers up to within the last thirty or forty years. It has of late become almost unused. The reason for this was explained in the chapter on "Values." Nevertheless, it is well that the student should know what the word meant, and still means. Although he may hear and use it less frequently than if he had lived earlier in the century, the pictures, certain qualities of which no other word expresses, still exist, and are probably as immortal as anything in this world can be. He should know what those qualities are, and he should understand their relation to the work of to-day.

Chiaroscuro is described by an old writer as suggesting "a theme which is the most interesting, perhaps, in the whole range of the art of painting. Of vast importance, great extent, and extreme intricacy. Chiaroscuro is an Italian compound word whose two parts, chiar and oscuro, signify simply bright and obscure, or light and dark. Hence the art or branch of art that bears the name regards all the relations of light and shade, and this independently of coloring, notwithstanding that in painting, coloring and the clair-obscure are of their very nature inseparable. The art of clair-obscure, therefore, teaches the painter the disposition and arrangement in general of his lights and darks, with all their degrees, extreme and intermediate, of tint and shade, both in single objects, as the parts of a picture, and in combination as one whole, so as to produce the best representation possible in the best manner possible; that is, so as to produce the most desirable effect upon the senses and spirit of the observers. In a word, its end and aim are fidelity and beauty of imitation; its means, every effect of light; chromatic harmonies and contrasts; chromatic values, reflections; the degradations of atmospheric perspective, etc." The italics are mine.

You see at once that this covers a pretty wide field. But it is to be again noted that the use of chiaroscuro by the old painters meant not only the expression of the light and shade of nature, but the so arranging of the objects and the way that the light was permitted to fall on them, that certain parts of the picture became shadow, while the light was concentrated in some other part or parts. In this way the arrangement of the light and shade of a picture became a distinct element of composition, and a very important one. The quality of "light" was something to be emphasized by contrast. It is stated (whether truly or not) that the proportion of light to dark was according to a definite rule or principle with certain painters, some permitting more, and some less, space of canvas to be proportioned to light and to dark. The gradations of light and dark were studied of course; but the quantity of light spread over the canvas was calculated upon, so that the less space of light and the greater the space of dark, the more brilliant would be the main spot of light in the picture. They wrought with the quality of light and shade as an element, just as they would with the quality of line or of color, considered apart from objects or facts they might represent.

Arbitrary Lighting.—This is the arbitrary light and shade spoken of in the chapter on "Values"; and although the older painters included what we now call values in their word chiaroscuro, it is this fact of arbitrary lighting as opposed to accepting the light as it does fall, or selecting those places or times where it does naturally fall as we would like it to, that makes the difference between modern painting generally and the older method, and has made chiaroscuro as a word and as a quality of painting so much a thing of the past.

Light and Shade.—But we may use the old word with a more restricted meaning. If we use it to mean literally light and shade, the way light falls on objects and the relief due to the light side and the shadow side of them, we get a use which implies a very important and practical matter for present study.



Objects Visible by Light and Shadow.—If you will put a white egg on a piece of white paper, with another white paper back of it, you will see that it is only because the egg obstructs the light, the side of it towards the light preventing the light rays from touching the other side, and so casting a shadow on itself and on the paper, that the egg is visible. You will also see, if you manipulate the egg, that according as the light is concentrated or diffused, or according to the sharpness of the shadow and light, is the egg more or less distinct.

Contrast.—Apply these facts to other objects, and you will see how important the principle of contrast is to the representation of nature. Not only contrast of light and shade, but contrast of color. And you should make a study, both by setting up groups of objects in different lights, and by studying effects of lights wherever you are, of the possibilities and combinations of light and shadow.

Constant Observation.—The painter is constantly studying with his eyes. It is not necessary always to have the brush in your hand in order to be always studying. Keep your brain active in making observations and considering the relations in nature around you. The amount of material you can store up in this way is immense, to say nothing of the training it gives you in the use of your eyes, and in the practice of selection of motives for work. Schemes of color or composition are not usually deliberately invented within the painter's brain. They are in most cases the result of some suggestion from a chance effect noticed and remembered or jotted down, and afterwards worked out. Nature is the great suggester. It is the artist's business to catch the suggestion and make it his own. For nature seldom works out her own suggestions. The effect as nature gives it is either not complete, or is so evanescent as to be uncopyable. But the habit of constant receptivity on the part of the artist makes nature an infinite mine of possibilities to him.



Perception.—Only by continually observing and judging of contrasts and relations can the eye be trained to perceive subtle distinctions; yet it must be so trained, for all good work is dependent on these distinctions.

Effects of Light.—It is important to study the different qualities of light. Take, for instance, the difference of character on a sunny day and on a gray day. On the former, fine distinctions of color are less pronounced; they are lost in the contrasts of sunlight and shadow. On a gray day the light is diffused; contrast is less, but the finer distinctions are more marked. For the study of the subtleties of color choose a gray day.

So, too, is the difference marked between the general light of out-doors and the more concentrated light of the house. The pitch is different. Outside, even in a dark day, the general character of light is clearer, more full, than in-doors.

There is nothing possible under the open sky like the strong contrasts you get from a single window in an otherwise unlighted room.

Compare, for instance, the character of the light and shade as shown in the illustrations on pages 156 and 159. The one is the diffused, out-of-door light, the other that from a studio window. The character of the subject has nothing to do with this quality. The head would have less of sharpness and contrast in the open air, and more reflected light.

Other differences to be studied as to quality of the light in the manner of its contrast, and also for its color quality, are to be seen in moonlight or nightlight as compared with daylight. Artificial light, such as lamp- and candle-light, gives marked effects also, which may be compared with daylight both as it is out-of-doors and in its more concentrated effects in the studio. Compare the picture of the "Woman Sewing by Lamplight," by Millet, with the "Canal" and the "Bohemian Woman" given above. The effects of gas and electric light also should be studied. Their characteristics both of contrast and, particularly, of color are worth your attention as a student, inasmuch as the essence of some pictures lies in these qualities.

Another matter of great importance to the student, and one which the same three illustrations just referred to may serve to show, is the effect on objects of the position of the point of entrance of the light with reference to them and to the observer. The simplest light is the side-light from a single window. This gives broad, sharp masses of light and shade, and makes the study of drawing and painting more simple. With the observer in the same relative position to the subject, as the light swings round towards a point back of him the contrasts become less, the relations more subtle and difficult of recognition, and naturally the study of them more difficult. In this position of light the values become "close." To make the object seen at all, it is necessary that the finest distinctions shall be observed.



Portrait painters have always been fond of a top light, which gives a direct concentrated light descending on the sitter, very similar in character to the side-light, but more favorable to the expression and drawing of the face.

Cross Lights.—The most confusing and difficult of study and representation are the "cross lights." If there are several windows or other points for the admission of light, and the sitter or object painted is between them, the light comes from all sides, so that the rays cross each other and there is no single scheme of light and shade. The rays from one side modify the shadows cast from the other side, and a perplexing and involved arrangement of values is the result. This is a favorite technical problem with painters, and its solution is splendid training; but the student who can successfully solve it is not far from the end of his "student days."



CHAPTER XX

COMPOSITION

Importance.—Composition is of the utmost importance. It is impossible that a picture should be good without it. You may define it as that study by means of which the balance of the picture comes about. But you must understand the word balance in its broadest sense. There is nothing in the planning of the picture which has not to be considered in making the picture balance.

The arrangement of the lines, of the forms, of the masses, and of the colors must all be right if the composition be right. Composition is the planning of the picture; and it is more or less complicated, more or less to be carefully studied beforehand in exact accordance with the simplicity or complication of the scheme of the picture. You may not need more than the consideration of a few main facts. It may almost be done by a few moments' deliberation in some simple studies or even pictures. But even then there is possible the most subtle discrimination of selection, and a perfect gem of composition may be found in the arrangement of a picture having the simplest and fewest elements. The more complicated the materials which are to be worked into a picture, the more careful must be the previous planning; but, for all that, the genius will find scope for his utmost powers in a simple figure, just because the fewer the means, the more each single thing can interfere with the balance of the whole, and the more a fine choice will tell.

The AEsthetic.—I have already mentioned briefly the aesthetic elements of a picture. I have called to your attention that back of the obvious facts of a subject and the objects in the picture, and the theme which the painter makes his picture represent; back of the technical processes and management of concrete material which make painting possible, is the aesthetic purpose of the work of art; without this it could not be a work of art at all: it would be merely a more or less exact representation of something, a mere prosaic description, the interest in which would lie wholly in the fact, and would perish whenever interest in the fact should cease. It is not the fact, nor even the able expression of the fact, which makes a work of art a thing of interest and delight centuries after the bearing of the fact has been forgotten. The perennial interest of a work of art lies in the way in which the artist has used his ostensible theme, and all the facts and objects appertaining to it, as a part of the material with which he expresses those ideas which are purely aesthetic; which do not rest on material things. These have to do with material things only by rendering them beautiful, giving to them an interest which they themselves could not otherwise have.

Theory.—Does this sound unpractical? Well, it is unpractical. Does it seem mere theory? It is theory. I want to impress it on you that it is theory. For it is the theory which underlies art, and if you do not understand it, you only understand art from the outside. Consciously or unconsciously every artist works to express these purely aesthetic qualities, and to a greater or less extent he expresses himself through them.

Art for Art's Sake.—This is the real meaning of the much-debated phrase, "Art for art's sake." The mistake which leads to the misconception and most of the discussion about it, is in confounding "art for art's sake" with "technique for technique's sake," which is a very different thing. Certainly every painter will work to attain the most perfect technique he is capable of. But not for the sake of the technique, but for what it will do. The better the technique the better the control of all the means to expression. If you take technique to mean only the understanding and knowledge of all the manipulations of art, technique is only a means, and it is so that I mean it to be understood here. If you broaden its meaning to include all the mental conceptions and means, that is another thing, and one likely to lead to confusion of idea. So I use the word technique in its strictest sense.

The AEsthetic Elements.—What, then, are these aesthetic qualities I have spoken of? Will you consider the quality of "line"? Not a line, but line as an element, excluding all the possible things which may be done with lines in different relations to themselves and to other elements. Now will you consider also the other elements, "mass" and "color"? Do you see that here are three terms which suggest possibilities of combination of infinite scope? and they are purely intellectual. What may be done with them may be done, primarily, without taking into consideration the representation of any material fact whatsoever. Take as the type, conventional ornament. You can make the most exquisite combinations, in which the only interest and charm lies in the fact of those combinations in line and mass and color.

Take architecture. Quite aside from the use of the building is the aesthetic resultant from combinations of line and mass and color.

And so in the picture the question of art, the question of aesthetic entity, lies in the intellectual qualities of combinations of line and mass and color which permeate through and through the technical and material structure that you call the picture, and give it whatever universal and permanent value it has, and which make it immortal, if immortal it ever can be.

Composition.—The bearing of all this on composition should be obvious, for composition is the technique of combination. In the composition of a picture all the elements come into play. It is in composition that the management of the abstract results in the concrete.

Let us look at it from a more practical side. Frankly, there are qualities, which you always look for in a picture,—good drawing, of course, and good color. But there are such things as these: Harmony, Balance, Rhythm, Grace, Impressiveness, Force, Dignity. Where do they come from? Must not every good picture have them, or some of them, to some extent? How are you going to get them? If you have fifteen or twenty square feet or square yards of surface, you will not get them onto it by unaided inspiration. Inspiration is, like any other intellectual quality, quite logical, only it acts more quickly and takes longer steps between conclusions perhaps. You will get these qualities onto your canvas only by so arranging all the objects which make up the body of your picture that these qualities shall be the result. It is arrangement then.

Arrangement.—But arrangement of what? how? The objects. But on some principle back of them. Consider another set of qualities: proportion, i.e., relative size; arrangement, relative position; contrast; accent,—these are what you manipulate your objects with, and your objects themselves are only line and mass and color in the concrete. Objects, figures, bric-a-brac, draperies, houses and trees, skies and mountains, and every and any other natural fact, you may consider as so many bits of form and color with which you may work out a scheme on canvas; and how you do it is to consider them as pawns in your game of aesthetics.

With these as materials, what you really do is to combine mass and line and color by means of proportion, arrangement, contrast, and accent, that a beautiful entity of harmony, balance, rhythm, grace, dignity, and force may result. And this is composition.

No Rules.—Naturally in dealing with a thing like this, which is the very essence of art, rules are of very little use. Ability in composition may be acquired when it is not natural, but it calls for a continuous training of the sense of proportion and arrangement, just as the development of any other ability calls for training.

The best thing that you can do is to study good examples and try to appreciate, not only their beauty, but how and why they are beautiful. Cultivate your taste in that direction; and with the taste to like good and dislike bad composition will come the feeling which tells you when it is good and when it is bad, and this feeling you can apply to your own work, and by experiment you will gain knowledge and skill.

Rules are not possible simply because they are limitations, and the true composer will always overstep a limitation of that kind, and with a successful result.

Principles of composition, too, must be variously adapted, according to the kind of picture you have in hand. The principles are the same, of course; but as the materials differ in a figure painting and a landscape, for instance, you must apply them to meet that difference.

Suggestions.—The first suggestion that might be made as a help to the study of composition is to consider your picture as a whole always. No matter how many figures, no matter how many groups, they must all be considered as parts of a whole, which must have no effect of being too much broken up.

If the figures are scattered, they must be scattered in such a way that they suggest a logical connection between them as individuals in each group, and groups in a whole. There should usually be a main mass, and the others subsidiary masses. There should be a centre of interest of some sort, whether it be a color, a mass, or a thing; and this centre should be the point to which all the other parts balance.

Simplicity is a good word to have in mind. However complicated the composition may seem superficially, you may treat it simply. You will control it by not considering any part as of any importance in itself, but only as it helps the whole; and you may strengthen or weaken that part as you need to. Don't cut the thing up too much. Let a half a dozen objects count as one in the whole. Mass things, simplify the masses, and make the elements of the masses hold as only parts of those masses.

Study placing of things in different sizes relative to the size of the canvas. Make sketches which take no note of anything but the largest masses or the most important lines, and change them about till they seem right; then break them up in the same way into their details. Apply the steps suggested for drawing to the study of composition, searching for balance chiefly, or for some other quality which is proper to composition.

Line.—Each of the main elements of composition can be used as a problem of arrangement. You can study composition in line, in mass, or in color.

"The Golden Stairs," by Burne-Jones, is almost purely an arrangement in line, and beautifully illustrates the use of this element as the main aesthetic motive in a picture.



Compare this composition in line with the "Descent from the Cross," in which the line is equally marked, but more complicated, and used in connection with mass to a much greater extent, and involved with interrelations of chiaroscuro and color. Consider the effect which each picture derives as a whole from this management of these elements. The one emphasizing that of line, with the resultant of rhythm and grace; the other balancing the elements, and so gaining power and impressiveness.