No good painting was ever made without preliminary studies. When you are to make a picture, therefore, take plenty of time to prepare yourself with all the material in the form of facts that you may require. Don't trust to building up a picture from a sketch or two and your "general knowledge." That sort of thing is something which a painter of experience may do after storing his mind for years with all sorts of knowledge; but it will not do for most people—least of all for a student. And it is a dangerous way for any one to work. Even the experienced painter is apt to do the worse work for it, and if he does so constantly, his reputation may suffer for it. Take time to be right.



Don't be afraid of taking measurements. Every one who did anything worth looking at took measurements. Leonardo laid down a complete system of proportions. You can't get your proportions right without measurements, and if your proportions are not right, nothing will be right. Use a plumb-line: use it frequently, and measure horizontals and verticals. If you are in doubt about anything, stop a minute and measure. It takes less time than correcting.

Whatever you do, get the character first, then the details. Character is not a conglomeration of details. The detail is the incident of character. See what the vital things are first, then search farther.

Use your intelligence as well as your eye and hand. Think as you work. Don't for a moment let your hand get ahead of your brain. Don't work absent-mindedly, nor without purpose. If your mind is tired, if your eye won't see, stop and rest a while. Tired work runs your picture down hill.



CHAPTER XXVIII

STILL LIFE

The name of still life is used in English for all sorts of pictures which represent groupings of inanimate objects except flowers. The French word for it is better than ours. They call it "nature morte" or dead nature.

There is no kind of painting which is more universally useful—to the student as well as to the painter. It furnishes the means for constant, regular, and convenient study and practice. You need never lack for something interesting to paint, nor for a model who will sit quietly and steadily without pay, if you have some pieces of drapery, and a few articles, of whatever shape or form, which you can group in a convenient light.

You can make the group as simple or as difficult as you wish, and make it include any phase of study. The advantage of its possible variety, scope, and particularly, its convenience and cheapness and manageableness, make it the fundamental work for the beginner.

Materials.—Practically anything and everything is available for still life. You should be constantly on the lookout for interesting objects of all kinds. Try to get a collection which has as much variety in form, size, and surface as you can. Old things are generally good, but it is a mistake to suppose old and broken things the best. An object is not intrinsically better because of its being more or less damaged, although it sometimes has interesting qualities, as of color or history, because of its age.

What you should avoid is bad proportion, line, and color in the things you get. The cost is not of any importance at all. You can pick up things for a few cents which will be most useful. Have all sorts of things, tall slim vases, and short fat jugs. Have metals and glass, and books and plaques. They all come in, and they add to the variety and interest of your compositions.

Draperies.—The study of drapery particularly is facilitated by still-life study. You can arrange your draperies so that they are an essential part of your study, and will stay as long as you care to paint from them, and need not be moved at all. This fact of "staying power" in still life is one of importance in its use, as it reduces to the minimum the movement and change which add to the difficulties in any other kinds of work. The value of the antique in drawing lies in its unvarying sameness of qualities from day to day. In still life you have the same, with color added. You can give all your attention and time unhurriedly, with the assurance that you can work day after day if you want to, and find it just the same to-morrow morning as you left it to-day. This as it applies to drapery is only the more useful. You can hardly have a lay figure of full size, because of its cost. To study drapery on a model carefully and long, is out of the question, because it is disarranged every time the model moves, and cannot be gotten into exactly the same lines again.

Still life steps in and gives you the power to make the drapery into any form of study, and to have it by itself or as a part of a picture.

In draperies you should try to have a considerable variety just as you have of the more massive objects,—variety of surface, of color, and of texture. Do not have all velvet and silk. These are very useful and beautiful, but you will not always paint a model in velvet and silk. Satins and laces are also worn by women, and cloth of all kinds by men, and so you should study them. Sometimes you want the drapery as a background, to give color or line; and yet to have also marked surface qualities (texture), would take from the effect of those qualities in the other objects of the group.

As to color, in the same way you should have all sorts of colors; but see to it that the colors are good,—in themselves "good color," not harsh nor crude. It does you no good as a student to learn how to express bad color. Neither is it good training for you, in studying how to represent what you see, to have to change bad color in your group into good color in your picture.

Good useful drapery does not mean either large pieces, or pieces with much variety of color in one piece; on the contrary, you should avoid spotty or prominent design in it. Still, the more kinds you have, the more you can vary your work.

If your drapery is a little strong in color, you can always make it more quiet by washing or fading it to any extent. There is very little material which is absolutely fast color. But when it is so, and the color is too strong, don't use it.

Don't scorn old and faded cloth, especially silk and velvet, or plush. The fact that it would look out of place on furniture or as a dress does not imply that it may not be beautiful as a background or as a foreground color. These old and faded materials furnish some of the most useful things you can have; a fact the reverse of what is true in general of other still-life things.

The Use of Still Life.—There is no way in which you can better study the principles of composition than by the use of still life. The fact that you can bring together a large number of objects of any color and form, and can arrange and rearrange them, study the effect and result before painting, and be working with actual objects and not by merely drawing them, gives a positiveness and actuality to composition that is of the greatest service to you. You can use (and should at times) the whole side or corner of a room, and so practise composition on the large scale, or you can make a small group on a table. That you are using furniture and drapery or vases, flowers, and books, instead of men and women, does not affect the seriousness and usefulness of the problem; for the principles of composition and color do not have to do with the materials which you use to bring about the effect, but the effect itself.

It is practically impossible for the student and the amateur to make very advanced study of composition in line and mass with more than one or two living models; but with still life he may and should get all the practical knowledge possible.

Practical Composition.—Suppose you were going to work with still life, how would you begin? In the first place, get a good composition. Never work from a bad one. You must learn composition some time, so you might as well study it every time you have occasion to start a still-life study. Take any number of things and put them on a table, get a simple background to group them against. Consider your things, and eliminate those which are not necessary, or will not tell in the composition. It is a law that whatever does not help your picture (or composition) tells against it; so get rid of anything which will not help the composition.



For instance, here are a lot of things indiscriminately grouped on a table. You might paint them, but they are not arranged. There is no composition. They would lack one commanding characteristic of a good picture if you were to paint them so. What do they lack as they are? They have no logical connection with each other, either in arrangement or in the placing, to begin with. They do not help each other either in line or mass. They are crowded, huddled together. You could do with less of them; or, if you want them all, you can place them better. But suppose we take some of them away for simplicity, and rearrange the rest.



Here are some of the things, with others taken away. The combination is simpler, but still it is not satisfactory. There is some logical connection among the objects, but none in the grouping. They are still huddled; there is no line; it is too square; no attempt at balance; they are simply things. If you change them about a little, having regard to size, proportion, balance, and line, you can get something better out of these same objects.



Here the coffee-pot is moved toward the centre, to give height and mass, and to break up the round of the plaque; the handle turned around to give more looseness and freedom; the pitcher is placed where it will break the line of the plaque, yet not too obviously or awkwardly; the handle is placed at a good angle with that of the coffee-pot, and the relation of distance with the coffee-pot in balancing the whole is considered. The drapery is spread out so as to have some probability. It does not help much in line, but it does in mass and in color (in the original). It could be bettered, but it will do for the present. The cup also has a reasonable position, and helps to balance and to give weight to the main mass, which is the coffee-pot. There is not much light and shade in this composition, nor much distinction. But it does balance, and would make a good study, and is a very respectable piece of composition,—simple, modest, and dignified.

Now if you wanted to add some of those things which were eliminated, and make a more complicated composition, you would look for the same things in it when completed. We have simply the same group, with the bottle and glass added. The stout jug in the first group is left out because it is not needed, and it will not mass with the rest easily. The tall glass vase is left out because it is too transparent to count either as line, mass, or color, and does not in any way help, and therefore counts against, because it does not count for, our composition. The things we have here are enough, but they are not right as they are now. They injure rather than help the last arrangement. The bottle and glass are in the composition, but not of it; a composition must be one thing, no matter how many objects go to the making of it. This is two things. Draw a line down between the bottle and glass and the other things, and you get two compositions, both good, instead of one, which we must have for good arrangement.



Let's change them again. This is worse, if anything. We have now got two groups and a thing. The coffee-pot and cup and saucer alone, the bottle and glass alone, and the pitcher; the drapery tries to pull them together, but can't. The plaque has no connection with anything. They are all pulled apart. In the last group at least there was some chief mass, the first complete composition. Now every one is for himself; three up and down lines and a circle—that's about what it amounts to.



Let's group them,—push them together. Place the bottle near the coffee-pot. Because they are about the same height, one cannot dominate the other in height; then make them pull together as a mass.



Place the cup about as before, and the mass pretty well towards the centre of the plaque. Put the pitcher where it will balance, and the glass where it will count unobtrusively, and help break the line of the bottoms of the objects. The drapery now helps in line also, and gives more unity, as well as mass and weight and color, to the whole. This group is about as well placed as these objects will come. There is balance, mass, proportion, dignity, unity.

Of course you may make a paintable and interesting composition with only two things. But you must give them some relation both as to fact and as to position. The same elements of unity and balance and line come in, no matter how many or how few are the objects which enter as elements in your group.

In this way study composition with still life. Move things about and see how they look; use your eye and judgment. Get to see things together, and apply the principles spoken of in the chapter on "Composition" to all sorts of things in nature.

Scope of Study.—Drawing is always drawing, whatever the objects to which it is applied, and you can study all the problems of drawing and values with still life. The drawing is not so severe as that of the antique, nor so difficult as study from the life, but you can learn to draw and then apply it to other things, and advance as far as you please; and as I said at first, you need never lack an amiable model.

All sorts of effects of lighting you can study easily with still life; and of color and texture also. The study of surface and texture is most important to you. If you were to undertake to paint a sheep or a cow the first time; if you were to paint without previous experience a background which contained metal and glass, or a model with a velvet or satin dress, you would not succeed. These all involve problems of skill and facility of representation. When you paint a portrait or figure picture, or a landscape with animals, you should not have to deal with, as new, problems of this sort. You should have arrived at some understanding of this sort of thing in studies which are not complicated by other problems of greater difficulty. This is where still life comes in again to make the study of painting easier.

Interest.—But the use of this sort of painting is not only its practical use. You need not feel that it is all drudgery—which is something that most students do not love! You may make pictures with a much clearer conscience along this line; for the better the picture, and the more interesting and charming it is, the more successful is your work as study. You can be as interested in the beauty and the picture of it as you please, and it will only make you work the better. To see the picture in a group of bottles and books is to be the more able to see the picture in a tree and sky. An artist's eye is sensitive to beauty of color and line and form wherever he sees it. The student's should be also. No artist but has found delight in painting still life. No student should think it beneath his serious study.

Procedure.—Study painting first in still-life compositions. When you set up your canvas first, and set your palette, let it be in front of a few simple objects grouped interestingly; or, better, set up a single jar or a book, with a simply arranged background for color contrast. All the problems of manipulation are there for you to study. No processes of handling, no manner of color effect, which you cannot use in this study.

Learn here what you will need in other lines of work.

Beginning.—The best way to make a study from still life is to begin with a careful charcoal drawing on the canvas. You may shade it more or less as you please, but be most careful about proportions and forms. The shading means the modelling and the values in black and white; and you can do this either in charcoal as you draw, or it can be put in with monochrome when you begin with paint. But you must have the drawing sure and true first; for drawing is position, locality. You must know where a value is to go before you can justly place it. The value is the how much. You must have the where before the how much can mean anything in drawing. It would be well to lay in some of the planes of light and shade, because you feel proportion more naturally and truly so than with mere outline. The outline encloses the form, but with nothing but outline you are less apt to feel the reality of the form. The planes of values fill in the outline and give substance to it. They map it out so that it takes thickness and proportion; it is more real. And any fault of outline is more quickly seen, because you cannot get your masses of shade of the right form and proportion if the outline enclosing them is not right.

The Frottee.—Make, then, a careful light-and-shade drawing with charcoal directly on the canvas, working in the background where it tells against the group, but without carrying it out to the edges of the canvas.

Be accurate with your modelling and values, and keep the planes simple and well defined. Draw all characteristic details, but only the most important, nearly as if it were not to be painted, but were to remain a drawing.

Fix this drawing with fixative and an atomizer.

In beginning with paint go over the drawing with a thin frottee which shall re-enforce the drawing with color. You may do this with one color, making a monochrome painting very thin, leaving the canvas bare for the lights. Many of the best painters lay in all pictures this way. What color is to be used is a matter for consideration. It should be one so sympathetic to the coloring of the whole picture that if it is left without any other paint over it in places it will still look all right. Raw umber is a good color, or raw umber modified with burnt sienna and black. You can make a mixture that seems right. This establishes your larger values, and gives you something better than a bare canvas, and something with which you can have a more just idea of the effect of each touch of color you put on.

If there is much variety of color in the various objects of your composition, it is better to make your frottee suggest the different colors. Instead of making a monochrome frottee, rub in each object with a thin mixture, approximating the color and value, but not solid, nor as strong as it will become when painted, of course. Nevertheless, you can get in this first rubbing in, a strong effect, which at a distance has a very solid look, though the relations are not so carefully studied. When you come to put on solid color with this sort of an under-painting, it is easy to judge pretty closely of color as well as light-and-shade relations, and you can work more frankly into it.

Into this painting, when it is dry, you may begin to paint with body color, beginning with the true color and value of the lights, and working down through the half darks into the darks. Paint the background pretty carefully as to color and value, but loosely as to handling. Paint slowly, deliberately, and thoughtfully. There is no need to pile up masses of wrong color. You should try to be sure of the color before you lay it on. Study the color in the group, mix on the palette, and compare them. Think at least two minutes for every one minute of actually laying on paint. You save time in the end by being deliberate and by working thoughtfully. Put on color firmly and with a full brush, but there is no need to load color for the sake of the body of it.

Loaded Lights.—It was a principle with the older painters to paint the shadows thinly and with transparent color, and to load the lights. It gave a richness to the shadows and a solidity to the lights which was much valued. But don't think about this; don't let it influence the frankness of your painting. The theory is in itself largely obsolete now, and in fact has been disregarded by almost every able painter who ever lived, in practice, no matter what he said about it. I only speak of it because almost all books on painting have laid it down as a rule, and you had better know its true relation to painting. Like all other traditional methods of painting it has been used by the greatest of painters, and has also been disregarded by the greatest of painters; and as far as you are concerned, you may use it or not as suits your purpose. The main thing is to get the right color and value in the right place, in the most direct and natural, in the least affected, manner possible.

You may work into your frottee, then, more or less solidly as you feel will give you the best representation of the color you see.

Solid Painting.—Don't paint always in the same way. It is a mistake to get too accustomed to one manner of procedure. Different things require different handling. Let the thing suggest how you shall paint it. If you want to paint directly, paint solidly from first to last instead of rubbing in thinly first. But always have an accurate drawing underneath.

In working solidly without previous laying in, begin where each brush-stroke will have the greatest effect toward establishing the appearance of reality. If the canvas is light, begin by putting in the main darks, and if the canvas is dark, do the reverse. You get the most immediate effect of reality by the relief; the relief you get most directly by putting in first those values which contrast with what is already there. Establish your most telling values first, then work from them towards less immediately effective things.

Color and Values.—Study the color at the same time you do the value. Put on no touch of paint as a value or a color alone. If you do, you will have to paint that spot twice,—once for the value, and again for the color. You might as well paint for the two qualities in one stroke. It takes more thought, but it gives you more command of your work. It doesn't load your canvas with useless paint, and it saves time in the long run.

Relations and Directness.—Study to give the true relations of things. Try to get the just color quality. Give it at once. Don't get it half way and trust to luck and a subsequent painting to correct it. You will never learn to paint that way. Paint intensely while you paint. Use all the energy you have. Paint with your whole strength for a half or a whole hour, and then rest. You will accomplish more so than by painting all day in a languid, half-hearted way.

Directness.—Directness comes from making up your mind just what tint of color and value is needed, and just where it is to go, first, then putting it there with no coaxing. Get the right color on your brush and plenty of it; then put the brush deliberately and firmly down in the right place, and take it directly away, and look at the result without touching it again till you have made up your mind that it needs something else, and what it is that it needs. Then do that and stop.

Directness and justness of relation are the most important things in painting. They tell for most, result in most, both to the picture and to the student. Whatever you do, work for that. Try to have no vagueness in your mind as to what you will do or why you do it, and the effect of it will show on your canvas.



CHAPTER XXIX

FLOWERS

Flower painting is the refinement of still life. You have the same control of combination, but you have not the same control of time. Flowers will change, and change more rapidly than any other models you can have; and at the same time they are so subtle that the most exquisite truth and justness are necessary to paint them well.

People seem to think that any one can paint flowers. On the contrary, almost no one can paint them well. There are not a dozen painters in the world who can really paint flowers as they ought to be painted. Why? Because while they are so exquisite in drawing and color, and so infinitely delicate in value, they are also even more infinitely subtle in substance and sentiment.

When you have got the drawing and the color and the value, you have not got the quality.

What is the petal of a flower? It is not paper, and it is not wax, neither is it flesh and blood, of the most exquisite kind. All these are gross as substance compared to the tender firmness of the flower petal; and the whole bunch of flowers is made up of petals.

Yet you cannot paint the petals either, else you lose the flower. You must paint the quality of the petal, and the character of the flower.

All these things make the mere perception of facts most difficult, and it must be done with full knowledge that in an hour it will be something else, and you can never get it back to its original form again. Yet you cannot paint a bunch of flowers in an hour. What will you do?

Mass and Value.—There is something besides the flower and the petal; there is the mass. The mass is one thing, and it is surrounded with air, and air goes through the interstices of it. You must make this visible. The difference in value in flowers is something "infinitely little," as a great flower painter said to me once. Yet the difference is there. The bunch has its nearer and its farther sides, and the way the light falls on it is the most obvious expression of it.

When you begin a group of flowers, get the whole first. Make up your mind that you cannot complete your work from the flower you have in front of you, and that you must constantly change your models. Do not paint the little things, the personal things first then. Paint what is common to all the flowers in the group first. Paint the mass and the rotundity of it, and express most vaguely the forms of the accents, and of the darks which fall between the flowers, but get their values. For you will have to change these, and you should have nothing there which will influence you to shirk. In this way only can you get the larger things without hampering your future work by what may be wrong.



Get the large values, and as little as possible of the expression of the individual flowers; then as the flowers fade and change, substitute one or two fresh ones at a time, in this or that part of the partially wilted group, using the same kind of flower as that which was in that place before; then work more closely from these new flowers, letting the whole bunch preserve for you the mass and general relation. As you work, the bunch will be gradually changing and constantly renewed from part to part, and you can work slowly from general to particular. Finally, from new flowers, put in those more individual touches which give the personal flowers.

This is the only way you can work a long time, and it is not easy. But it should not discourage you. Nothing takes the place of the flower picture, and the only way to learn to paint flowers is to paint flowers.

General Principles Hold Always.—Still, the principles of all painting hold here as elsewhere, and what is said of painting in general will have its application to flowers.

Paint flowers because you love them; and if you love them, love them enough to study patiently to express the qualities most worth painting, even if there be difficulties.

Details Again.—Don't make too much of unimportant things. The whole is more than the part; the flower than the petal. Of course you can't paint a flower without painting the petals, but you need not paint the petals so that you can't see anything else. If the character of the flower as a whole is to be seen at a glance without the emphasis of any special petal, suggest the petals only. If the petal is important to the expression of character, then paint it; and if you do, paint it well. Use your judgment; make the less expressive of the greater, or do not paint it at all.

Colors.—Colors and tints in flowers are always more rather than less subtle than you think them. If you have a doubt, make it more delicate—give delicacy the benefit of the doubt. Still, flowers are never weak in color. Subtle as they are, it is the very subtlety of strength. Black will be the most useless color of your palette. Make your grays by mixing your richer colors. A gray in a flower is shadow on rich color, and it must not be painted by negation of color, but by refinement of color.

Sketches.—Make sketches of flowers constantly. Try to carry the painting of a single flower or of a group as far as you can in an hour. Practise getting as much of the effect of detail as possible with as little actual painting of it, and then apply this to your picture.

Get to know your work in studies and sketches, and you will work better in more difficult combinations.

When you have, as you generally will have, still-life accessories to your flowers, rub in quickly the color and values of the vase or what not first, but leave the painting of it till the flowers are done. It will be a more patient sitter than they.

Apply the ways of painting spoken of with reference to still life to the sketching of flowers. Either rub in quickly a frottee and then paint solidly into that, or work frankly and solidly but deliberately to render the characteristic qualities. When you sketch flowers don't take too many at a time; calculate to work not more than an hour and a half or two hours, and have no more flowers in your sketch than you can complete in that time.

When you sketch, quite as much as when you work at more ambitious canvases, get the mass first, especially if the group is large. Then put in the accents which do most to give the character or type of the flower. Make studies of single flowers and sketches of groups. In the study search detail and modelling; in the sketch search relations and relief, effect and large accent.



CHAPTER XXX

PORTRAITS

Don't look upon portraits as something any one can do. A portrait is more than a likeness, and the painting of it gives scope for all of the great qualities possible in art. Only a great painter can paint a great portrait. Some great painters rest their fame on work in this field, and others have added by this to the fame derived from other kinds of work.

You must not think it easy to paint a portrait, or rest satisfied with having got a likeness. Likeness is a very commonplace thing, which almost any one can get. If there were no other qualities to be tried for, it would hardly be worth while to paint a portrait. Back of the likeness, which a few superficial lines may give, is the character, which needs not only skill and power to express but great perception to see, and judgment to make use of to the best advantage.

Character.—The first requisite in a good portrait is character,—more than likeness, more than color or grace, before everything else, it needs this; nothing can take the place of it and make a portrait in any real sense of the word. Everything else may be added to this, and the picture be only so much the greater; but this is the fundamental beauty of the portrait. Some of the greatest painters made pictures which were very beautiful, yet the greatest beauty lay in the perception and expression of character. Holbein's wonderful work is the apotheosis of the direct, simple, sincere expression of character in the most frank and unaffected rectitude of drawing. There are masterpieces of Albrecht Duerer which rest on the same qualities, as you can see in the Portrait of Himself by Duerer. Likeness is incidental to character; get that, and the likeness will be there in spite of you.

Hubert Herkomer said once that he did not try for likeness; if only he got the right values in the right places, the likeness had to be there. The same can hardly be said of character, for this depends on the selection from the phases of expression which are constantly passing on the face, those which speak most of the personality of the man; and the emphasis of these to the sacrifice of others. The painting of character is interpretation of individuality through the painting of the features, and, like all interpretation, depends more on insight and selection than on representation. Try for this always. Search for it in the manner, in the pose and occupation, of your sitter. Get likeness if you will, of course; but remember that there is a petty likeness, which may be accident or not, which you can always get by a little care in drawing; and that there is a larger character which includes this, and does not depend on exaggeration of feature or emphasis of accidental lines, but on the large expressiveness of the individual. You may find it elsewhere than in the face. The character affects the whole movement of the man. The set of the head and the great lines of the face, the head and shoulders alone would give it to you even if the features were left out. Study to see this, and to express it first, and then put in as much detail as you see fit, only taking care never to lose the main thing in getting those details.

Qualities.—There are other great qualities also which you can get in a portrait. All the qualities of color and tone, of course. But the simplicity of a single figure does not preclude the qualities of line and mass. The great things to be done with composition may as well be done in portrait as elsewhere. If you would see what may be done with a single figure, study the Portrait of his Mother, by Whistler. You could not have a better example. It is one of the greatest portraits of the world. Notice the character which is shown in every line and plane in the figure. The very pose speaks of the individuality. Notice the grace and repose of line, and the relations of mass to mass and space—the proportion. See how quiet it is and simple, yet how just and true. Of the color you cannot judge in a black and white, but you can see the relations of tones, the values and the drawing. It is these things which make a picture; not only a portrait, but a great work of art as well.



Drawing.—Good work in portraiture depends on good drawing, just as other work does. Don't think that because it is only a head you can make it more easily than anything else. As in other kinds of work, the drawing you should try for is the drawing of the proportions and characteristic lines. Get the masses and the more important planes, and don't try for details. You can get these afterwards, or leave them out altogether, and they will not be missed if your work has been well done.

Don't undertake too much in your work. Make up your mind how much you can do well, and don't be too ambitious; the best painters who ever lived have been content to work on a head and shoulders, and have made masterpieces of such paintings. You may be content also. See how little Velasquez could make a picture of! and notice also the placing of the head, and the simplicity of mass, and of light and shade.

Painting.—Of course you can help your color with glazing and scumbling, but work for simplicity first. It is not necessary to use all sorts of processes; you can get fine results and admirable training from portrait studies, and the more directly you do it, the better the training will be.

Study the Portrait of Himself, by Albrecht Duerer. You will find no affectation here; the most simple and direct brush-work only. You will not be able to do this sort of thing, but that is no reason why you should not try for it. It will depend on the brush-stroke. It implies a precision of eye as well as of hand. It means drawing quite as much as painting,—drawing in the painting. You will not get this great precision; nevertheless, try for it, and get as near it as you can. Don't try for too much cleverness; be content with good sincere study, and the most direct expression of planes that you can give.



Let your brush follow lines of structure. Don't lay on paint across a cheek, for instance. Notice the direction of the muscle fibre. It is the line of contraction of the muscle which gives the anatomical structure to a face. If your brush follows those, you will find that it takes the most natural course of direction.

Do the same with the planes of the body and of the clothing. Note the lines of action, and the brush-stroke will naturally follow them.

See that the whole form, and particularly the head, "constructs." The head is round, more or less; it is not flat. The planes of it cross the plane of the canvas, recede from it, cross behind, and return. This in all directions. You must make your painting express this. It is not enough that there be features, the features must be part of a whole which is surrounded, behind as well as in front, by the atmosphere. The hair is not just hair, it is the outer covering of the skull, and of necessity follows the curves of the skull; and there is a back part to the skull which you cannot see, but which you can feel—can know the presence of, because of the way it is connected with the front part by the sides. All this you must make evident in your painting, as well as the facts which are on the side of the skull turned toward you. How make it evident? By values and directness of brush-stroke.

Background.—Never treat the background as something different from the head. The whole thing must go together. The slightest change in the background is equivalent to that much change of the head itself. For the change means necessarily a different contrast, either of color or light and shade, and it will have its effect on the color or relief of the head.

Paint the two together, then. Make the head and all that goes with it or around it as equally parts of the picture, which all tend to affect each other. Your background is not something which can be laid in after the head is finished. True you can paint the background immediately around the head first, and then, after painting the head, extend the background to the edge of the canvas; but the color, tone, and character of the background must be decided upon at the time the head is painted, and carried on in the same feeling.

It is never good work to paint the head and then paint a background behind it. Particularly is this true when there are windows or any objects whatever in the background. It is most important that the whole thing shall be seen in the same kind of light, and in the same relation of light. This is hardly to be done when the head is one painting and the background another.



This is not rigidly true, however, in cases when the whole thing is planned beforehand, and studies made for each part, as in elaborate portraits and compositions which include several figures or special surroundings. But the principle holds good here also. The relation must be kept of the head to the surroundings, and the effect of the one upon the other always kept in mind.

Complex Portraits.—It is often possible to pose your model so as to bring out some characteristic occupation. This is often done in portraits of distinguished men. Such a treatment gives opportunity for composition both of the figure and of the various objects which may make up the background.

In such pictures you should study arrangement of line and mass, to make the thing aesthetically interesting as well as interesting as a portrait. Composition in mass,—the consideration of the head and shoulders in relation to the space of the canvas,—is necessary in the simplest head; but as soon as the canvas takes in a representation of action on the part of the figure, line and movement must be considered, as was done so beautifully in Whistler's portrait. In this the study of composition is your problem. You may study it all the time and in every picture you do, but it should be worked out before you begin to paint.

Plan your canvas carefully always. Know just where everything is coming. When you leave things to chance, you are pretty sure to have trouble later.

Portraits Good Training.—I would not have you undertake to paint a portrait rashly. You should know what you are to expect. If you are not pretty sure of your drawing, and of the first principles of seeing color in nature, and of representing it on canvas, you are likely to get discouraged. Particularly if a friend poses for you, you may expect disappointment on both sides. Drawing a head from the life is a very different thing from drawing an inanimate object which will stay in one position as long as you can pay the rent. So in the painting of it, too, the color itself is alive. Flesh is something very elusive to see the color of. And when you find that just as you begin to get things well under way, or are in a particularly tight place, just at that moment your model must rest, you must stop while the position is changed and gotten back to again; then you will begin to realize that "la nature ne s'arrete pas."

I would have you know all this, I say, before you begin on your first portrait; but, nevertheless, if you can get a start at it you will find it extremely good practice. The very difficulties bring more definitely to you the real problems of painting. The fact that it is really the representation of something which has life has an interest quite of its own. The constant change of position on the part of the model will make you more observant, and less regardful of details; or if you do regard the details, and forget the other things, it will show you how inadequate those details are to real expression, unless there is something larger to place them on.

Don't undertake the painting of a head without considering well that you are likely to have trouble, and that the trouble you will have is most likely to be of a kind that you don't expect. But, having begun, keep your head and your grit, and do the best you can. Remember that you learn by mistakes, and failures are a part of every man's work, and of every painter's experience, and not only of your own.

You will save your self-esteem from considerable bruising if you make it a point never to let your sitter see your work till you are pretty well over the worst of it. The knowledge that it is to be seen will make you work less unconsciously, and you will find yourself trying for likeness, and all that sort of thing, when that is not what you should be thinking about; and if, after all, the thing is a failure, it is a great consolation to know that no one but yourself has seen it!

Beginning a Portrait.—The ways of beginning portraits are innumerable. There is no one right way. Some are right for one painter or subject, and some for others; but there are some methods which are more advisable for the beginner.

You can begin and carry through your painting entirely with body color, or you can begin it with frottees, and paint solidly into that. Take these two methods as types, and work in one or the other, according to what are the special qualities you want your work to have.

If you have never painted a head, and have some knowledge of the use of paint and of drawing, I would suggest that you make a few studies of the head and shoulders, life size, in solid color, and on a not too large canvas, say sixteen by twenty inches. This will leave you no extra space, and you can devote your whole attention to the study of the head, with only a few inches of background around it. You will probably make the head too large. A head looks larger than it really is, especially when you are putting it on canvas. If you measure them you will find that few heads will be longer than nine inches from the top of the hair to the bottom of the chin. Take this as the regular size in drawing it on your canvas, and make the other proportions according to that.

Make a drawing of the outlines in straight lines, which shall give only the main proportions of the head, neck, and shoulders. Within this, block out the features largely. Don't draw the eyes, but only the shape of the orbit; nor the nostril, but only the mass of light and shade of the nose.

Construction.—In these studies avoid trying to get anything more than what will be suggested by this simple drawing. Use body color. Don't think of anything but what you have to represent. Never mind how the paint goes on, nor what colors you use, except that it is right in value, and as near the color as you can get. Put it on with the full brush, and try to get first the large masses and planes. Get it light where it is light, and dark where it is dark, and have contrast enough to give some relief. Don't try for any problems. Set your model in a simple, strong light and go ahead.

No details, no eyes, only the great structural masses. Try to feel the skull under these planes of light and dark. Have the edges of them pronounced and firm.

Do a lot of these studies; learn structure first. You will never be able to put an eye in its place in the orbit till you can make the plane of dark which expresses the bony structure of the orbit. You will feel the edge of the brow, of the cheekbone, and where the light falls on the temple and on the side of the nose. Inside of this is the dark of the cavity, broken for your purpose only by the light on the upper lid. Lay these in. Do the same with the other planes, and put your brush down firmly where you want the color, with no consideration but the simplest and most direct expression of value and color.

Now, when you can lay in a head in this way, so that you can express the likeness with nothing but these dozen or so of simple planes, you have got some idea of what are the main things which give character to a head. You will begin to understand how it should "construct." Into this you can put all the detail you want, and if the detail is in value with this beginning it will keep its proper relation to the whole.

Always when painting a head solidly, work this way. Get the action and character of the head as a whole. Block in the planes of the face and the features; and then go ahead to give the details which express the lesser characteristics. But always get the character, even the first look of resemblance, with this blocking in. Details and features will not give you the likeness, to say nothing of the character, if you have not gotten the character first by the representation of those proportions which mean the structure which underlies all the accidental positions of the detail of feature.

The Frottee.—If you want to be more exact with your drawing before you begin to paint, lay in your canvas with a light-and-shade drawing in charcoal. Then make a frottee in one color, and paint into and over that, as was described in the Chapter on "Still Life."

By careful and studious use of these two methods of work you can learn the main principles of painting portraits, and modify the handling as you have need; for all the various methods of manipulation are modifications of one or the other, or combinations of both of these fundamentally different ways of working.

If you paint more than one sitting, get as good a drawing as you can the first day. Put in your frottee the next, or make your blocking in; then after that do your painting into the frottee, or the working out of such details as you decide to put in.

Titian painted solidly, probably with no details; then worked these in and glazed, then touched rich colors into the glaze.

But you had better not bother with all these ways of painting. When you can work well in the simplest way, you will find yourself making all sorts of experiments without any suggestions from me. Work first for facts of utmost importance, and technical methods are not such facts. Perception and representation by any most convenient means are the first things to be thought of, and nothing else is of importance until a certain amount of advance is made along this line.

Learn to see and paint the wholeness of the thing at once, not the details, but the fact of it. Try to lay in things so that you have a solid ground to work onto and into later.

Look for the vital things. Don't try for "finish." Finish is not worked for nor painted into a picture; finish occurs when you have represented all you have to express. When you have got character and values and true representation of color, you will find that the "finish" is there without your having bothered about it.

The masses you are to look for and emphasize are the great spaces where the light strikes and the shadows fall. Close your eyes. The lines disappear. You only see large planes of values; express these at once and simply.

Don't be afraid of rudeness, either of handling or of color, at first. Don't try for finesse. All these delicacies will come later. But you must get the important things first. Learn to be strong first, or you never will be. Delicacy comes after strength, not before.

So, too, freedom comes after knowledge—is the result of knowledge. So paint to learn. If it is rigid at first and hard, never mind. Get the understanding and the representation as well as you can, and try for other things later.



CHAPTER XXXI

LANDSCAPE

From the usual rating of figures as the most important branch of painting, it would be natural to speak of that kind of work first. But work from the head must come before you attempt the figure, and there are a good many things that you can learn from landscape which will help you in figure-work. The manner of painting figures has been much modified, too, of late years, owing to certain qualities and points of view which are due to the study of landscape and the important position that it has come to occupy.

In the old days landscape was only a secondary thing, not only as a branch of art in itself, but particularly as it was used by figure painters. In this century it has so broadened in its scope that it is now recognized to be as important a field of work as any. But further than this, it has become the most influential study in the whole range of painting. From the development of the study of outdoor nature, and particularly outdoor light, it has come about that certain facts of nature have been recognized which were before neglected, ignored, or unsuspected, and these facts bear quite as much on the painting of the figure as on the painting of landscape. So that it is no more possible to paint the figure, in some respects, as it was painted as a matter of course a hundred years ago, while other ways of painting the figure, which were undreamed of at that time, are the matters of course now.

The whole problem of light has taken a new phase, and the treatment of color in that relation is modified in the painting of figures as well as in the other branches of work.

Pitch.—In no direction is this more marked than in the matter of pitch, or key. With the study of landscape, the range of gradation from light to dark has broadened. A picture may now be painted in a "high key;" the picture may be, from the highest to the lowest note in it, far lighter than would have been thought possible even thirty years ago.

This question of "bright pictures" is one which demands consideration. One has only to go into any exhibition of pictures to-day to be struck with the fact that the key of almost every picture in it, of whatever kind, has changed from what it would have been in the last generation. This is not merely the result of the spread of the "Impressionist" idea. That influence has only been strongly felt in this country within the last ten years. It is not that which I am speaking of now. I mean the fact that even the grayer pictures—those which do not in any ordinary sense of the word belong to Impressionist work—are light in color, where they would once have been dark, or at least darker. The impressionists have had a definite influence, it is true; but the work of the earlier "plein air" men—the men who posed their models out-of-doors as a matter of principle, who studied landscape out-of-doors—was the first and most powerful influence, and that of the impressionists, coming along after it, has simply emphasized and carried it farther.

Bright Pictures.—Whatever may be thought of the work of those painters who are called "impressionists," it must be recognized that they have taught us how some things may be possible. And the present quality of brightness will necessarily be to a certain extent a permanent one in art. For like it or not as we may, it is true—true to a certain great, fundamental characteristic of nature. For outdoor light is bright, even on a gray day. The luminosity of color is too great to be represented with dark paint or lifeless color. And once this fact is recognized, it is a fact which will inevitably influence all kinds of work. What is possible and right at a certain stage of knowledge or recognition may be impossible when other points of view have once been accepted. We see only what we look for, and we look for only what we expect to see or are interested to see. You cannot go out-of-doors now and paint as you would have painted a hundred years ago. Then you would have painted what you saw then; but you would not have seen nor looked for things which you cannot help seeing now. For our eyes have been opened to new qualities and new facts, and once the eyes have been opened to them they can never be closed to them again.

Average Observation.—I say we see only what we look for, what we expect to find; anything out of the ordinary is hard to believe at first. In looking at nature the average observer does not even see the obvious. Certain general facts he accepts in the general, but as a rule there is no real recognition of what is there; no perception of the relations of things; no analysis; no real seeing, only a conventional acceptance of a thing as a thing. Men look at nature with one idea, and at a picture of nature with an entirely different idea. Nature in the picture is to most people just what they have been accustomed to see in other pictures. They get their idea of how nature looks from those pictures, and if you show them a picture differently conceived they have difficulty in taking it in.

For this reason the "bright picture" does not "look right." I remember being asked by a man in a modern exhibition what I thought of "these bright pictures." When I asked which pictures he had reference to, I found that he meant the work of a man whose whole aim in painting landscape was, as he once said to me, to get "the just note" in color and value. One would think that the fact that the whole force of an extremely able and sincere mind was directed to that purpose, would produce a picture with at least truth of observation. Yet this was not what my passing acquaintance wanted to see. The picture he liked, which "had some nature in it," as he pointed out to me, was an extremely commonplace landscape with a black tree against a garish sky, reflected in a pool of water. The "bright picture" seemed to me exquisitely gray and quiet, though high in key, and the one with "nature in it," harsh and crude, but conventional; and that was just the point. The average observer wants to see, and does see, in nature what he is accustomed to accept in a picture as nature.

But a painter cannot go on such a basis. He may paint a dark picture, but he must find a subject which is dark to do so. He may not paint daylight with false pitch and false relations, and say he sees it so. With every liberty for personal seeing, there are still certain facts so established and obvious that personality must take them and deal with them, must use them and not ignore them, in its self-expression.



The pitch of daylight is one of these facts. Light and luminosity may not be qualities which appeal to your temperament. You may therefore not make them the main theme of your painting of landscape; but you cannot paint a daylight picture without in some way making it obvious that luminosity is a fundamental characteristic of day light. There is no other quality so universally present and pervasive. In sunlight it is the most vital quality. You might as well paint water without recognizing the fact that water is wet, as to paint daylight without recognizing the fact that diffused sunlight is brilliant.

A Help.—You will find it very useful as a help in seeing pitch as well as color to have a card with a square hole cut in it to look through at your landscape. Have one side covered with black velvet and the other left white. Compare darks with the black, and the lights with the white, and make the picture compose in the opening as in a frame.

Key and Harmony.—But you should remember that the high key for out-of-door work does not mean crude nor unsympathetic color, neither does it mean that there is nothing but sunshine and shadow. Your picture may be as high as you please in pitch, and yet be harmonious and pleasing. I have seen impressionist pictures of most pronounced type hung in the same room with old pictures and in perfect harmony with them. It means that good color is always good color, and will always be harmonious with other good color, whatever the pitch of either. One picture is simply a different note from the other, that is all. The color in nature is not crude in not being dark. The relations of spots of color are just; you have only to be as just in observing them, and your picture will be harmonious.

Make your notes just all over your canvas. Have some of them just and the rest false, and of course it will be wrong. Or if you try to make crudity take the place of brilliancy, you will not get harmony. The harmony which comes from the presence in just relation of all the colors is none the less beautiful because more alive. You need not try for the most contrasting and most sparkling qualities of out-of-door color, but you should feel for the out-of-doorness of it.

The space, the breadth, lack of confines, the largeness and movement, vibration and life,—these are the things which the modern painter has discovered in landscape and has emphasized; and this is what has made modern landscape a vital force in modern art. Whatever you do or do not see, feel, and express in your painting, these you must see, feel, and express; for once these qualities are recognized and accepted they are as universal as the law of gravity, and can be as little ignored.

Landscape Drawing.—Landscape is more difficult to draw than is generally thought; not only is the character affected by the scale of the main masses, but there is great probability of overdrawing. The curves that mark the modelling of the ground are very difficult to give justly. The altitude and slope of mountains are almost invariably exaggerated. The twists and windings of roadways and fences are seldom carefully drawn; yet the most exquisite movement of line is to be gained by just representation of them. To give the character of a tree, too, without making out too much of the detail of it, needs more precise observation than it generally gets.



Get the character; get the sentiment of it. Search for the important things here first, and be more particular about the placing of each line than about the number of lines.

Don't draw too many lines in a landscape; don't draw too many objects. Carefully study the scene before you till you have decided what parts are most essential in giving the character that you want to express, and then draw most carefully those parts. See which are the most expressive lines in it. Get the swing and movement of those lines in the large; then study the more subtle movement of them. Get these things on the canvas first, and put everything else in as subsidiary to them. Have all this well placed before you begin to paint, and allow for little things being painted on to this.

Don't get too many things into one landscape. The spirit of the time and place is what will make the beauty of it, not the details nor the mere facts. This spirit you will find in a few things, not in many. Having found which lines and forms, which masses and relations of color and value, express this, the more carefully you avoid putting in other things the more entirely you emphasize the quality which is the real reason of existence of your picture.

In studying landscape, work for one thing at a time. What has been said of sketching and studies applies here. Landscape is the most bewildering of subjects in its multiplicity of facts and objects and colors and contrasts. If you cannot find a way to simplify it you will neither know where to begin nor where to leave off. I cannot tell you just what to do or not to do, because no two landscapes are alike. Recipes will do nothing in helping you to paint. But there is the general principle which you may follow, and I try to keep it before you even at the risk of over-repetition. In no kind of picture can you drag in unimportant things simply because they exist in nature. In landscape more than elsewhere, because you cannot arrange it, but must select in the actual presence of everything, you must learn to concentrate on the things which mean most, and to refuse to recognize those which will not lend themselves to the central idea.

Selection.—When you select your subject, or "motif," as the French call it, select it for something definite. There is always something which makes you think this particular view will make a good picture. State to yourself what it is that you see in it, not in detail, but in the general. Is it the general color effect of the whole, or a contrast? Is it a sense of largeness and space, or a beautiful combination of line in the track of a road, or row of trees, or a river? Perhaps it is the mass and majesty of a mountain or a group of trees. Something definite or definable catches you—else you had better not do it at all; and what that something is you must know quite precisely, or you will not have a well-understood picture.

When you have distinctly in your mind what you want to paint it for, then see that the composition is so placed on your canvas that that characteristic is the main thing in evidence. With this done it is a very easy thing to concentrate on that characteristic, and to leave out whatever tends to break it up or distract from it. This is the only way you can simplify your subject. First by a distinct conception of what you paint it for, then by so much analysis of the whole field of vision as will show you what does and what does not help in the expression of it.

Detail.—Much detail in landscape is never good painting. Whether big or little, your canvas must express something larger and more important than detail. Give detail when it is needed to express character or to avoid slovenliness. Give as much detail where the emphasis lies as will insure the completeness of representation—not a touch more.

Structure.—Have your foreground details well understood in drawing and value. This does not require the drawing of leaf and twig, but it does require structure. Everything requires structure. Structure is fundamental to character. If you will not take the trouble to study the character of any least thing you put in, don't put it in at all. Nothing is important enough to put in, if it is not important enough to have its character and its purpose in the picture understood.

I spoke of structure in speaking of the head. If I said nothing but "structure, structure, structure" to the end of the section, you would get the impression of what is the most important thing in drawing. If you will look for and find the line and proportion expressing the anatomy which makes the thing fulfil its particular function in the world, you will understand its character, and that is what is important, everywhere.

Work in Season.—Make your picture in the season which it represents. I don't say that a good summer picture may not be made in winter; but I do say that you are more likely to express the summer quality while the summer is around you. There is too much half painting of pictures, and then leaving them to be "finished up" afterwards.

Of course you can make all your studies and sketches, and then begin and finish the picture from them. If you are careful to have plenty of material, to accumulate all your facts with the intention of working from those facts, all right; but it would be better if you were to work your picture in the season of it, as long as you are a student at least. For until you have had a great deal of experience, you will find when you come to paint your picture that some very much needed material you have neglected to collect, and you cannot safely supply it from memory. If this occurs in the time of year represented in the picture, you can just go out and study it.

Out-of-door Landscapes.—The most important movement in modern art, the most important in its effects on all kinds of work, is what I have mentioned as the plein air movement. It was thought by some clear-headed men that the best way to paint an out-door picture was to take their canvases out-of-doors to paint it. Instead of working from a few color sketches and many pencil studies, they painted the whole picture from first to last in the open air. Working in this way, certain qualities got into the pictures unavoidably. Necessarily the color was fresher and truer. Necessarily there was more breadth and frankness, and less conventionality and mere picture-making. The spirit of the open got onto the canvas, and the whole type of picture was changed. For the first time out-of-door values were studied as things in themselves interesting and important. The result on landscape pictures was that pictures painted in the studio seemed unreal and insincere, and that men looked and studied less for the making of pictures, and more for what nature had to reveal.

It would be a good thing for you as a student if you would do as these men did whenever you want to do any work at landscape, whether for itself, or for background. If you wish to pose any kind of figure with landscape background, pose and paint your figure out-of-doors. Make sketches as much as you please, make studies as much as you please; but make them for the suggestions and knowledge they will give you, and not for material to be used in painting a picture at home. For your picture, start, and go on with, and finish it out-doors; you will get a feeling of freshness and truth in your work which you cannot get any other way. You will also acquire a power of concentration and of selection and rejection in the presence of nature which is of the utmost importance to you.

Impressionism.—It is not possible to speak of landscape and plein air without mention of the "Impressionists." You should understand what "impressionism" really is, and what it is not, and what the impressionist stands for. Whether we like it or not, this work is not to be ignored. It has tried for certain things, and has shown that they can be much more justly represented than had before been believed to be possible, and fad or no fad, that result stands.

In the first place, impressionism does not mean "purple and yellow." Any one who says "purple and yellow" and throws the whole thing aside, is a very superficial critic. The purple and yellow are incidental to the impressionist, not essential. It is only one of the ways of handling color by means of which it was found possible to express certain qualities of light.

Before everything else the real impressionist stands for the representation of the personal conception and method as against the traditional. He believes that if a man has anything of his own to say, he must say it in his own way; and that if he cannot find that nature has anything to say to him personally, if nature cannot give him a personal message, if he can only paint by giving another man's ideas and another man's method, then he had better not paint at all; so that whatever he may see to paint, and however he finds a way to express it, the value of it and the truth of it lie in the fact that it is his, his way of seeing, and his way of expressing,—that it is "personal."

Luminosity.—The impressionist is imbued with the fact that all the light by means of which things are at all visible is luminous—that it vibrates. He does not think that living light can be represented by dead color. He strives to make his color live also. This is the secret of the purple and yellow. By the contrast of these two colors, by the combination and contrast and juxtaposition of the complementary colors and the use of pure pigments, he can make his colors more vibrant, and so give more of the pitch of real sunlight. He actually applies on his canvas the laws which are known to hold with light and color scientifically. He applies practically in his work those laws which the scientist furnishes him with theoretically. The result in some hands is garish, crude. But the best men have shown that it is possible to use the means so as make a subtle harmony and a luminous brilliancy that have never before been attained. The crudity is the result of the man, not of the method.

The Application.—The application of all this to your own work is that when you want pitch and sunlight you can get it through the observance of the laws of color contrast, and such a laying on of pigment as will bring this about. Try to study the actual contrasts of color, not as they seem, but as they are in nature. Study the facts which have been observed as to colors in their effects on each other, and then try to see these in nature and to paint the results.

The Luminists.—This is the principle of all "loose painting" carried out scientifically. It is the cause of the peculiar technique of those impressionists who paint in streaks and spots of pigment. The manner of putting on paint does interfere with the continuity of outline in the drawing necessarily, but there is a marked gain in the quality of light; and as these men are "luminists," and light is what they want primarily, the sacrifice is justifiable, or at any rate explicable.

Now if you understand the scientific principle, and the practical application and its result on canvas, you have in your hands one of the main instrumentalities in the rendering of one great quality of out-of-doors. How far you adopt it is a matter for you to decide for yourself. If the complete adoption of it implies too much of a sacrifice of other things of equal or greater value to you, then modify it, or take advantage of it as much as will give you the balance of qualities you most want. There is one way to get light and brilliancy and life into your color: adapt it to your purpose if you need it.

This is the application of color juxtaposition to mixing. The placing of complementaries so as to increase contrast is another way of adding to the brilliancy of light. You will find this most useful when you want to give the greatest possible emphasis to the effect of sunlight and shadow. If you keep your shadows cool, your lights will be the richer and more sparkling because of that contrast. If you want more strength in a note of color, get its complement as near it as you can. Look for their iridescence of edges of shadow, and of the contours of objects. You will get greater relief of light and shade by contrast of warm and cool than contrast of light and dark.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not advising you to be an impressionist. I wish only that you shall see what there is in this way of looking at nature and of representation of certain effects of nature, which will be of use to you in the painting of landscape. I would have you know what means are at your command, what is possible to accomplish in certain directions, and how it is possible to accomplish it; then I would have you make use of whatever will most directly and completely serve your purpose.

Do not use any color or colors, any method or point of view, because of any advocacy whatsoever. Know first what you want to paint and why. Let nature speak to you. Go out and look at landscape. Study and observe; see the effect which makes you want to paint it, and then use the means and method which seem most entirely adapted to it. Don't ask yourself, nor let any one else ask you, Is this So-and-So's method? or, Does this belong to this or that school? Don't bother about schools or methods at all. Look frankly to see, accept frankly, and then work to render and convey as frankly as you have seen. Be sincere—sincere with yourself and with your painting: then you will surely work at whatever you do from conviction, and not from fad; and whether it makes you paint as an impressionist or not is a very minor matter, because sincerity of purpose is the most important thing in painting, and method of representation one of the least.

Atmosphere.—A universal characteristic of nature will be a fundamental one in landscape. A landscape which you cannot breathe in is not a perfect one. We live and breathe in atmosphere, and the expression of atmosphere will go far to make your landscape true. But atmosphere is not haziness. Neither is it vagueness nor negativeness of color. Truth of color-quality, and justness of relation will do most in getting it. You had better not try for atmosphere as a thing, but as a result. Anything so universal and so indefinite can be expressed by no one thing. If you try to get it by any one means you will miss it. Study, then, the subtlety of color relation and justness of value. Try to be sensitive to the slightest variety of tone, and be satisfied with no least falsity of rendering, and you will find that your picture will not lack atmosphere.

Color of Contour.—An important thing for you to look for and to study is the color of contours. You will not find it easy; not easy even to know what it is that you are looking for. But consider it as a combination of contiguous values and color vibrations, and things will reveal themselves to you.

No form is composed of unvarying color. No combination of color surrounding it lacks variety. All along the edge of forms and objects, of whatever kind, the value and color relation constantly change. The outline is not constant. Here and there it becomes lost from identity of value and color with what surrounds it, and again defines itself. The edge is not sharp. The color rays vibrate across each other. The inevitable variety of tint and value, of definiteness and vagueness, gives a never-ending play of contrasts and blendings. These are qualities which go to the harmonizing of color, to the expression of light, and particularly to the feeling of atmosphere. This constant variety of contrasting edges is the constant movement and play of the visual rays, and the study of it gives life and vibration to the picture, and all the objects represented in it.

Outdoors, particularly when the play of diffused light and the movement of all the objects is continually felt, either through their own elasticity or because of the heat and light waves, this study is most necessary, if you would get the feeling of freedom, space, and air.

Skies.—In the painting of the sky there are several points to be kept in mind. The sky, even on the quietest day, is full of movement. Cloud masses change continually. If there are no clouds there is constant vibration in the blue; constant variety in the plane of color,—a throb of color sensation which is not to be expressed by a dead, flat tint.

Paint the sky loosely. Lay on the color as you will, with a broad, flat brush, or with a loose, smudgy handling; put it on with horizontal strokes, or with criss-cross touches, but never make it a lifeless tone. Have variety in it; keep a pulsation between the warm and cool color. You can work in the separate touches of half-mixed color, warm and cool, all through the sky, so that the whole tone will be flat and even, but not dense and dead. So far as the sky is concerned, the atmosphere is essential, and is to be represented not by dense color, but by free, loose, vibrating color.

Clouds.—If you have clouds to paint, do not draw them rigidly. Get the effect of the mass and movement, and the lightness of them. As they constantly change in form, any one form they may assume cannot be characteristic. The type form is what you must get, and the suggestion of the motion and lightness. You can suggest, too, the direction of the wind by the way they mass and sway and flow. The direction of the sun's rays, too, counts in the color of them. The outline of a cloud mass is never hard, never rigid. The pitch and luminosity and subtlety are what give you most of the effect of it.

Study the type of cloud, of course. It is a cumulus, cirrus, stratus, or what not. This character is important; but the character lies in the whole body of the cloud form, not in the accidental outlines or the special position of it for the moment.

Sky Composition.—The massing of cloud forms is a very useful factor in the composition of the landscape. The cloud bank or cloud line is capable of giving accent or balance to the picture. As it is not constant in position any more than in form, you can place it with truth to nature pretty nearly always where it will do the most good as an element in the composition. Make use of them, then, and study the forms and the possible phases of them so as to make the best use of them.

Diffused Light.—Much of the characteristic quality of out-door light is the result of the diffusion of light due to both the refraction and the reflection of the sky. The light which bathes the landscape comes in all directions from the sky. Necessarily, then, the sky will be in most cases far higher in value than anything under it. Even the blue of the sky, which looks darker than some bit of light in the landscape, you will find, if you can manage to get them to tell against each other, will be the more luminous of the two, and will look lighter. There are times when the sun glares on a white building or a piece of white sand, when the white tells light against the blue. But these are exceptions, and if we could get a blue paint which would give the intensity of color, and also the brilliancy of the light, even these cases would be most truly represented with the sky as the higher value. It is a case of whether to sacrifice value to color, or the reverse, as we cannot have both.

Sometimes, however, in a storm, the dense dark of the storm sky is really lower in value than some white object against it, especially if there be a bit of sun breaking through on it.

But in general, nevertheless, you should consider the sky as always lighter and more luminous than anything under it.

Three Planes.—It will help you in understanding the way the light falls on landscape to consider everything as in one of three planes, and these planes taking greater or less proportions of light according to the position of the sun with reference to them.

The position of the sun changes from a point immediately over, to a point practically at right angles to all objects in nature. Everything that can exist under the sun will come in one of these planes, and at some time in the day in each. The vertical, the horizontal, or some sort of an oblique between these two. If the sun is overhead exactly, the flat ground, the tops of trees and houses, will get the full amount of sunlight. The vertical planes, sides of houses, depths of foliage, etc., will get the least, some of them being lighted only by diffused and reflected light. The planes lying between these two extremes will get more or less, according as they are more or less at right angles to the direct rays of the sun. And as the sun declines from the zenith, the vertical planes get more and more and the horizontal planes less and less of the light, till in the late afternoon the banks of trees and sides of buildings and cloud-masses are gilded with light, and the broad horizontal plains of land and water are in shadow.

However obscured the sun may be, this principle holds more or less; and it makes clear and helps you to observe and notice many facts in landscape light and shade which it is necessary to know.

Millet said that all the beauty of color and value, and the whole art of painting, rested on the comprehension and observance of these facts.

He said that as the planes of any form turned towards or away from the light and so got more or less of it, and as one form stood more or less far back of another and the atmosphere came between, the color and value changed; and in the observance of this, and its representation as applied to any and every object or group of objects, lay the whole of painting. All the possible beauties of the art rested on it. He showed a painting of a single pear in which these things were most subtly observed, and said that that painting was as complete and perfect as any painting he could do simply because in the observance of these relations was implied the observance of everything which was vital to painting.

Short Sittings.—This characteristic, and the steady change of position of the sun and its effects on all the objects which are directly lighted by it, make it necessary, whenever you are painting from nature out-of-doors, that you should not paint at one thing very long at a time. The light changes pretty rapidly; at high noon it only takes a few moments to exactly reverse the light. It is seldom that you can do any just study for more than an hour or an hour and a half at a sitting. Some men do work two or three hours, but they are not studying justly all that time; for that which was light is dark three hours later, and any true study of value and color is impossible under these conditions. Of course on gray days this is less marked, but you must suit your sittings to the time and facts.

It would be better if you had more canvases, and worked a short time on each, and many days on all. You would have the truest work.

Monet works never more than a half-hour on one canvas; but when he starts out he takes a half-dozen or more different canvases, and paints on each till the light has changed. Theodore Robinson seldom worked more than three-quarters of an hour, or at most an hour, on one canvas; but, he worked for twenty or thirty days on each canvas, and sometimes had a single canvas under way for successive seasons.

Any man who would truly study for the just value and note of color must work more or less in this way when he works out-of-doors.



CHAPTER XXXII

MARINES

All that has been said on landscape painting applies to marines. You have the same open-air feeling and vibration of light and color. There is no need to say the same things over again. It is only necessary to take all these things for granted, and emphasize certain other things which are peculiar to the sea.

Sea and Sky.—To begin with, the relation of the sky to what is under it is markedly different in color from any other relations in painting. The sea is always more or less of a perfect reflecting surface, and always strongly influenced in color, value, and key by the reflections of the sky on its surface. The sky color is always modifying the water—when and how depends on the condition of the weather, and the degree of quiet or movement of the water. Sometimes the water is a perfect mirror; sometimes the mirror quality is almost lost, but the influence is there.

This relation is the most important thing, because the sea and the sky is always the main part of your picture; and no matter what else is there, or how well painted it may be, if these things are not recognized, if they are not justly observed, your picture is bad.

I cannot tell you all about these things. The variety of effects and relations is infinite. You must study them, paint them in the presence of nature, and use your eyes; only remember the general principles of air and atmosphere and light and color that I have spoken of elsewhere—all have most vital importance on marine painting. You must study these, and think of them, and in the presence of sea or sky observe their bearings, and apply them as well as you can.

Movement.—If "la nature ne s'arrete pas" ordinarily, the fact is even more marked in marines; for the water is the very type of ceaseless motion. Somehow, you must not only study in spite of the continual motion, but you must manage to make that motion itself felt. This you will find is in the larger modelling of the whole surface—the "heave" of it as distinguished from the waves themselves. The waves are a part of that motion of course; but give the wave-drawing only, without their relation to the great swing of the whole body of water, and you get rigidity rather than movement. The wave movement is in and because of this larger motion. See that first, and make it most evident, then let the waves themselves cut it up and help to express it.



Wave Drawing.—How shall you "draw" so changeable a thing as a wave? Every wave has a type of form, has a characteristic movement and shape; and as it changes it comes into a new position and shape in logical and practically identical sequence of movement. You can only study this by constant watching. You look at the wave, and then turn your eyes away to fix it on your canvas; as you look back, the wave is not there. Well, you can only not try to make a portrait of each wave; it isn't possible. Don't expect to. Study the movement and type forms; think of it; fix it in your mind; decide on the mass and suggestive relation of it to other masses, and put that down.

There is never a recurrence of the same thing either in exact form or color, but fix your eyes on one place, and over and over again you will see a succession of waves of similar kind. Or look at a wave and follow it as it drives on; changes come and go, but the wave form in the main keeps itself for some time.

Look over a large field of the water without too sharply focussing the eyes, you will see the great lines and planes of modelled surface over and over again taking the same or similar shapes, positions, and relations. And as you look your eye will follow the movement in spite of yourself. Your gaze will gradually come nearer and nearer; but meanwhile, in following the wave, it will have felt that the wave was the same in shape, but only varied in position.

In this way you will come to know the wave forms. Jot them down, either in color or with charcoal; but do not look for outline too much. Try to study the forms and relations, mainly by the broad touch, with a characteristic direction and movement. No amount of explanation will tell you anything. You must sit and look, think, analyze, and suggest, then generalize as well as you can.

Open Sea and Coast.—The open sea is all movement. Even a ship, the most rigid thing on it, moves with it. But you do not have to study these things from the standpoint of invariable movement. You can start from a stable base. Study coast things first. You have then the relation of the movement of the water to the rock or land, and you can simplify the thing somewhat. What has been said of motion holds good still; but you can get something definite in a rock mass, and study the changes near it, and then extend your study as you feel strong enough.

The study of coast scenery is quite as full of changing beauty as the open sea, and it has certain types that belong to it alone. Breakers and surf, and the contrast of land and sea colors and forms, give great variety of subject and problem. In the drawing of rocks the study of character is quite as important, but not so evasive, as the study of wave forms. You must try to give the feeling of weight to them. The mass and immovability add to the charm and character of the water about them.

Subject.—Don't undertake too much expanse on one canvas. Of course there are times when expanse is itself the main theme; but aside from that, too much expanse will make too little of other things which you should study. Whether your canvas be big or little, to get expanse everything in the way of detail and form must be relatively small, otherwise there is no room on the canvas for the expanse. So if you would paint some surf, or a rock and breakers, or a ship, place the main thing in proper proportion to the canvas, and let the expanse take care of itself, making the main thing large enough to study it adequately. If it is too small on the canvas, you cannot do this.

Ships.—The painting of the sea necessarily involves more or less the painting of vessels of different kinds. You may put the ship in so insignificant a relation to the picture that a very vague representation of it will do, but you must have a thorough knowledge of all the details of structure and type if you give any prominence to the ship in your picture.

Detail.—You do not need to put in every rope in a vessel. You do not need to follow out every line in the standing rigging even, in order to paint a ship properly. To do this would miss the spirit of it, and make the thing rigid and lifeless. But ignorance will not take the place of pedantry for all that. Every kind of vessel has its own peculiar structure, its own peculiar proportions, and its own peculiar arrangement of spar and rigging. Whether you are complete or not in the detailing of the masts and rigging, you must know and represent the true character of the craft you are painting. You must take the trouble to know how, why, and when sails are set, and what are the kinds, number, and proportion of them, and their arrangement on any kind of vessel or boat you may paint. There is again only one way to know this. If you are not especially a painter of marines, you may find that the study of some particular vessel in its present condition and relation to surrounding things will serve your turn; but if you go in for the painting of marine pictures generally, you can only get to know vessels by being on and about them at all seasons and places. Your regular marine painter fills dozens and hundreds of sketch-books with pencilled notes of details and positions and accidents and incidents of all sorts and conditions of ships. Ships under full sail and under reefed canvas; ships in a squall and ships in dead calm—he can never have too many of these facts to refer to.