clausen - aims and ideals in art

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Aims and Idealsin Art

G. Clausen


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AIMS AND IDEALS IN ART


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RaphaelPORTRAIT OF BALTHAZAR CASTIGLIONE


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AIMS AND IDEALSIN ART

EIGHT LECTURES DELIVEREDTO THE STUDENTS OFTHE ROYAL ACADEMY

GEORGE CLAUSENA.R.A., R.W.S.

raOFESSOR OF PAINTING IN THE ROYAL ACADBMT

WITH THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS

SECOND EDITION

METHUEN & CO.36 ESSEX STREET W.C.LONDON


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First Published . . October igo6Second Edition . . igotj


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NOTEThese Lectures were given in 1905 and1906 ; and, with the exception of a fewalterations in form made necessary bypubhcation, are pjinted as they weredelivered. I desire to express mythanks to the President and Council ofthe Royal Academy, to the authoritiesof the British Museum, to M. J. E.Buloz, and to the Vasari Society, forkindly permitting me to reproducedrawings ; and I wish to gratefullyacknowledge the assistance given meby Mr. Sidney Colvin, Mr. LaurenceBinyon, and Professor Rapson.

G. C.


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CONTENTS1905 I. On Truth to Nature ; and Style II. Imagination and the Ideal III. Invention .

IV. Taste ....1906 V. Drawing VI. Drawing VII. Quality in Colour VIII. The Relative Importance of Sub

jECT and Treatment .

PACKI

25S379107125139

165


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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONSPortrait of CastiglioneCoin of TerinaThrone of Venus (Right side)Throne of Venus (Left side) . Study of Bather (Drawing)The Mass of Bolsena (Right side)The Mass of Bolsena (Left side)Wall Painting from Pompei .Study for Composition (Drawing)Study for Composition Study for Composition Study for Composition Landscape Study . . The Miracle of the FishChrist's Charge to PeterStudy of Arms and Hands (Drawing)Study of Figure .Study of DraperyStudy of Figure .

FACING PAGERaphael Frontispiece

. 8

. 12

. 13Michelangelo 16

Raphael 34Raphael 38

. 48Tintoret 56Veronese 60Bassano 61Bloemart 64

. Rembrandt 65Masaccio 69Raphael 70

l) Diirer 109Raphael 114Ingres 115

Leighton 118


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X List of Illustrations

Study of Figure .Study of Figure .A Group of TreesAn Interior .Study of a Tree TrunkStudy of BoatsA River and TreesMother and ChildStudy of LandscapeStudy of LandscapeThe EngraverSeated FigureA Winter Landscape

FACING PAGE(Drawing) Watts 119

Millet 127Claude 1 30

Rembrandt 134Claude 141Claude 146Claude 152

Watteau 157Gainsborough 160

Titian i6iWatteau 167Watteau 176

Rembrandt 180


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ON TRUTH TO NATURE; AND STYLESIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, in his notes onDu Fresnoy's Art of Painting, very truly

says that The study of nature is thebeginning and the end of theory. It is innature only we can find that beauty which is thegreat object of our search : it can be found nowhereelse : we can no more form any idea of beautysuperior to nature than we can form an ideaof a sixth sense, or any other excellence out ofthe limits of the human mind. We are forcedto confine our conception even of heaven itselfand its inhabitants to what we see in this world.Nothing can be so unphilosophical as a sup-position that we can form any idea of beauty orexcellence out of or beyond nature, which isand must be the fountain-head from whence allour ideas must be derived.


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Lectures on PaintingThis being acknowledged, it must follow, of

course, that all the rules which this theory,or any other, teaches, can be no more thanteaching the art of seeing nature. The rules ofart are formed on the various works of thosewho have studied nature the most successfully :by this advantage, of observing the variousmanners in which various minds have con-templated her works, the artist enlarges his ownviews, and is taught to look for and see whatotherwise would have escaped his observation.

This really sums up the matter, and I can dono more than try, by touching on some pointsof detail, to help you to arrive at some sort ofstandard, some definite idea of what should bean artist's aim ; what idea of truth or whataspect of nature are best worth our trying toexpress : for every picture, even the worst,has some measure of truth to nature, otherwiseit would not be recognisable. We have to findfor ourselves some meaning for nature, somestandard of truth.The Greek artists, and in a lesser degree the

great Italians, expressed more perfectly than


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On Truth to Nature ; and Style 5others a type of form which we recognise asapproaching an ideal of perfection. These aretrue to the type rather than to the individual;while, on the other hand, an artist like Velasquezis truer than others in giving the natural appear-ance of the individual. The portraits of Raphael,of Velasquez, and of Rembrandt, are each trueto nature ; and it may help us, perhaps, to holdour way amidst contradictory or opposite ten-dencies in art, to remember that there is no onetruth to nature, for nature contains all truthsand includes all manifestations : and truthto nature is a loose and inexact phrase whichwe use to support our individual point of view.The finest works include more than one kind oftruth, and so are nearer to nature.A mean, poor view of nature may be chosen,

and may be painted truly ; that is to say, thepicture may correspond to the idea of its painterbut however great the painter's accomplish-ment, it wiU be a poor picture. It is, though,true, in a way, to say that it does not matter whatobject is painted, if it is painted well : for goodpainting justifies itself. The question is, what do


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Lectures on Paintingwe mean by good painting ? It may be onlysmart execution, or it may be, like the noblerealism of Watts, the expression of a fine under-standing of his subject. We come back to thenecessary thing : the art of seeing nature.Truth of resemblance does not cover the

whole ground of art ; much of the finest workappeals on other grounds ; through subject, orsentiment, and demands that the spectatorbe in sympathy and prepared to receive itsmessage. It is not the greatest works whichhave the largest number of admirers; these donot impress people at once, but are received withindifference, or even with a measure of hostility.You will remember that Reynolds, in speaking

of Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican, and hisinability to understand them at first, says thecustodian told him that many persons whocame expressly to see these works had passedthrough the rooms without noticing them, andat the end asked where they were ; and heconfesses to his own disappointment on firstseeing them. The impressions of nature in theminds of these people, and in his mind, had


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On Truth to Nature ; and Style 7practically no correspondence with the impres-sions of nature which were in the mind of Raphael.Yet, if Raphael had not been true to nature,if his works were not founded on a deep under-standing and great knowledge of nature, it isinconceivable that they should have gained,and should still retain, the admiration andesteem of the artistic world.

It is easier for us, perhaps, to recognise thefine qualities of Raphael's art in his portraitsthan in his large compositions, which are in asense too familiar to us, too much a part of ourinheritance, for us to think of them critically ;they have become commonplaces, and we cannotestimate the greatness of his achievement. Butin his portraits we come nearer to him, andsuch works as the portrait of Castiglione in theLouvre, or the portraits in the Uffizi, or thePope Julius in our National Gallery, are,I think, unsurpassable, in their truth to theessential things in nature, the structure andcharacter ; the modelling is firm and thorough,and close to the form. The Castiglione seemsto me to rank even with Velasquez's portrait


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8 Lectures on Paintingof Philip in the National Gallery, in the senseof atmosphere which it has, in addition to itsother fine qualities.These portraits of Raphael show what is

called a sense of style. Now, what is style ?The word is used in two senses ; as when wespeak of the style of Rubens, or of Rembrandt,we mean rather their manner : but when we speakof the style of the Parthenon Marbles, we meansomething beyond mannerism, something thatexpresses as closely and completely as possiblethe beauty and subtlety of nature. The highestpraise we can give to the finest work (such as,for instance, that splendid figure the Ilyssus,which is perhaps the most beautiful of all theParthenon Marbles), is only to say that it istrue to nature ; that it represents very trulya fine type of form. But then, it may be saidthat a photograph, or a cast from nature, arethe finest things attainable ; and if the aim ofart were only to present a close copy of a station-ary thing, I don't see how this can be gainsaid.However true these things may be, they seemto lack intention: and the fact of an artist


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British MuseumCOIN OF TERINA(enlarged)


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On Truth to Nature ; and Style 9making anything, whatever his material, pre-supposes some intention on his part. There issomething he wishes to say; some measure ofaction, some kind of expression ; and it is ingiving this, with the truest expression of formand colour, that the painter's work lies. Andalthough faces and figures vary infinitely, theyall refer in greater or less degree to the normaltype ; and though this is rather felt in the mindthan seen by the eye (though, of course, theimpression must come through the eye), itshould be expressed and conveyed to the mindof those who see the artist's work.

All the complex tendencies of an artist's mindare seen in what he does, so that it is not possibleto isolate, as it were, one quality from the others,and exactly define it ; but one may make arough attempt. And it seems to me that styledoes not depend on symmetry, nor on propor-tion ; for we find in examining such works as thelittle Greek statuettes, the so-called Tanagrafigures, that they are sometimes ill-proportioned,or even clumsy, yet that they have what is calledthe charm of style. I think that this quality


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lo Lectures on Paintingcalled style, rests, first, on expressive action,on structural rightness ; and when we see it atits finest, on this truth of action, expressedwith the closest approach to the finest type ofform. And I think, too, that underlying thisthere must be a creative impulse of the artistthat his aim is to express something, not merelyto copy.As the quality of style depends rather onform than on colour, we may perhaps refer toancient sculpture as showing this more clearly ;and especially, I think, it may be seen in thesmall figures and in the coins. An illustra-tion is given of a small coin of Terina in theBritish Museum, which is about half an inch indiameter ; no doubt the die was cut to thatsize, and not reduced from a large model, as isthe practice now. The enlarged illustrationshows clearly the things which were thoughtnecessary to express ; that is, the main formsand their direction ; everything else is ignored.The so-called Throne of Venus, a piece of

Greek work, in the National Museum at Rome,may be instanced as a fine example of style.


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On Truth to Nature ; and Style 1It is a marble seat carved on the back and sideswith figures in relief (those on the sides are givenas illustrations) which are remarkable for thebeautiful austerity of their drawing. Nothing isgiven that is not essential ; the modelling is asclose and true to natural form, and as subtleas > possible, although it has the appearance ofgreat simplicity. All the fine antique workshould be studied ; especially, I think, after someexperience in the life class, when we can see thereason of the ancients' generalisations. As itis, we go through the antique room and forgetit as soon as we can ; but it is well worth while toreturn to the best antique figures, not to copythem, but to study them, as Michelangelostudied the Belvidere torso, from which, hesaid, an artist could learn everything.

It should be remembered that the Italianartists had the advantage of reference to theancient works, and all the artists of the Re-naissance should be studied ; especially, I think,the early ones : Masaccio, Leonardo, Bellini,Pisanello, and Mantegna. Pisanello was one ofthe earliest and best ; he is particularly fine in


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12 Lectures on Paintinghis medals, which have the same firm, truedrawing, the same structural rightness and graspof essentials, that we find in the best Greekwork : and are perhaps the finest works in thatkind that have been produced.The greatest artists of the Renaissance,

Michelangelo and Raphael, should of course bestudied. If, for instance, it is possible toexamine one of Michelangelo's figures, as itwere, from the outside only, for what it showsus of his method, apart from the interest of itsintention ; it would seem that his aim is to givemovement, to express sentiment by movement.And though it may be said that he exaggeratesthe action and development of his figures, Ithink it would be truer to say that he does notgo beyond the point of necessary expression.

His work is conceived from within. The in-tention is that a figure shall express an emotionby its action. The action is imagined anddesigned, and then comes the close study ofhow this would be shown, which we can followto some extent from his existing studies ; anda good example is that of the Bather, a drawing


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Na tionaI Attiseuin , A'oieTHRONE OF VENUS (RIGHT SIDE)


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National Museum, RomeTHRONK OF VP:NUS (LEFT SIDE)


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14 Lectures on Paintingand the taste of the time, influence us in whatwe admire in art, and see or seek in nature

:

and we naturally base ourselves on the reigninginfluence of the moment, without assuring our-selves, by comparison with acknowledged stand-ards, whether we are on firm ground. It is right,of course, that an artist should be impression-able, that he should be fully appreciative of thegood work of his fellows, that he should begrateful to those of them who can help him ;but why stop there ? He should rememberthat the older artists who have attained masterycan help. One should not say, Oh, Titian isall very well, or Raphael is very great, ofcourse, but I'm not going in for that sort ofthing but rather one should say, What canthese men, too, teach me ? Even if a painteris, as we mostly are, concerned with the things ofthe day, he should remember that the old menhad to use that which was before their eyes;that the sun shone and made things beauti-ful, and that life went on then much as it doesnow : and whatever may be the direction of histalent, some one of the great artists is ready,


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On Truth to Nature ; and Style 1as it were, to take h m by the hand. But itwould, for instance, be a mistake for a manwith a taste for genre, or still life, to embarkon an imaginative subject, simply because herightly believed it to be the highest form of artmany a capable painter has been lost that way.And one should remember that great art can beshown in the commonest and simplest things ;as we may see in the work of Rembrandt, DeHooghe, Vermeer of Delft, and Jan Steen ; orof Chardin, who in that splendid still-life picturein the National Gallery gives us a loaf of bread,a bottle, glass and knife, so finely seen, or ratherthe beauty of their appearance as expressed bylight, is so finely shown, that the little pictureoutweighs many of far greater pretension.Our tendency, in the search for literal, or

imitative truth, is to concentrate attention onthe rendering of the surfaces, textures, andaccidental appearances ; ignoring or neglectingthe deeper truths, the underlying qualities ofstructure and movement : from which, in afigure, we infer the intention, or in a tree, thenature of its growth, and the influence it is


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1 Lectures on Paintingunder, and so on. These qualities I thinkgovern the other ones (or should). Of coursewe must begin by literal imitation ; we must beas exact in our studies as we can ; it is the onlyway to learn. But it is not possible to painta live man if we only paint his skin. In every-thing that moves, that has life of any sort, froma figure, to a flower unfolding, or a tree bendingin the wind, something is conveyed by that lifeand movement ; if we do not get this we fail

;

however beautifully we may finish up details,the work has not the spirit of life. What wefind in the greatest works, that which keepsthem still living to us, is the artist's perceptionof nature, expressed through his material. Andthe greatest men see farthest. In criticising asketch or painting, nothing is more commonthan to be met, on pointing out some obviousfault, with the answer Well, I did it fromnature ; or It was just like that in nature :and one can only sayor thinkIs that allyou see in nature ? When Reynolds, who had been trained under

Hudson to paint in a literal way, came to under-


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Michelangelo British MuseumPEN DRAWING: STUDY OK BATHER


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On Truth to Nature ; and Style 17stand the work of the great Italians, he felt, ashe said, that it was necessary for him to become asa little child again, and learn anew ; and he becamewhat, for want of a better name, I suppose wemay call a stylist. Now, what was the difference ?We all know Reynolds's mature work ; itsgreat charms are the ease of movement of hisfigures, and the effective management of thelighting. I do not know any of Reynolds'searliest work, and but little of Hudson's ; butwe can infer Reynolds's early work from aportrait of Newton by Hudson, in Trinity College,Cambridge. It is a full-length sitting figure, inthe dress of the time. The head is weU painted,in a literal and rather hard manner, resemblingthat of Hogarth, though not so good ; and it isnot related in lighting to the rest of the picture,which is kept very dark, and is conventionallypainted. The picture is neither frank realismnor fine convention. But we find that Re5molds,as we know him, studied the lighting of hispictures as one would compose a landscapeand he used the effects of light and shadow toexpress form, and to build up his picture, as


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1 Lectures on PaintingTitian did : and if there is a quality belongingto colour analogous to that of style in form,I think it should be sought in this direction.For if style, as expressed in form, depends onthe essential things, the close study of structureand movement, so in colour should it not alsodepend on its essential qualities ? Which arethe harmony and true relation of the parts,under the influence of light.The French painter Rousseau, in one of his

letters, says, Everything springs from theuniversal ; whatever interest one may take byreason of religion, of manners, history, etc.,in the representation of a subject, is of no valueexcept through the understanding of the universalagency of the airthis suggestion of the in-finite. Nothing can prevent a stone by theroadside, round which the air seems to play,from being a greater conception than someambitious work that is wanting in this spirit.All the formal majesty of a portrait of LouisXIV. by Lebrun or Rigaud, will be overthrownby a tuft of grass clearly lighted by the sun ;which is only to say, in a few words, that in


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On Truth to Nature ; and Style 19art it is better to be simple-minded thanclever.The art of Millet, one of the greatest of the

moderns, confirms this. His inspiration wasdrawn directly from the nature round abouthim, yet his design has the same simplicityand directness of appeal, the same quality ofstyle, as we find in Greek and other great art. One is never so Greek, said Millet, as inpainting naively one's own impressions, nomatter where they were received ; and in hisdrawings and paintings, with their true expres-sion of unconscious actions, we seem to getback to the simplicity of an older world. Someof his designs have the completeness, simplicity,and beauty of a Greek gem ; an artist mustbe moved himself if he is to move others, saidMillet. And that is the secret of it all, thatthe artist must be true to himself ; men aswidely apart as Blake and Franz Hals (to takeextreme instances) were alike in this. Thegreat school of Dutch painters were strong aslong as they, like the Italians, were true to theirnatural sources of inspiration ; but how lament-


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20 Lectures on Paintingable was the failure of those Dutch artists, whothought to improve their style by adoptingItalian mannerisms Types and customs vary,but the beauty of the air, of the sunlight, andthe shadow are, as Rousseau says, of theuniversal ; so that things mean and sordidin themselves, like the tavern scenes of JanSteen or Brouwer, may be so seen by the insightof the painter into great truths of nature, thatthey convey some vision of beauty.Some years ago, that great artist, whose long

life has just endedMr. Wattswas goodenough to give me some advice. I was speakingof the difficulty of doing something I was tryingto do, because I could not get a model to pose ;and I said, Of course one has to rely on memory.*' Yes, he said, memory is a good thing, butthere's a better. I asked him what that was. Knowledge, said he, and he took a piece ofchalk and made a drawing of the bones of theknee. There, he said, when you reallyknow the shape of these bones, it doesn'tmatter what position you draw the knee in,you'll understand it. It was a most valuable


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On Truth to Nature ; and Style 2lesson, and made things clearer to me, and Ithink it is worth recording ; for, as Reynoldssays, An artist ought to see clearly enoughto enable him to point out to others the prin-ciple on which he works. This gives point tothe great difference between knowledge andskill. What we acquire in the Ufe-class is mainlyskill. What we get by the wider study of nature,and of pictures as guides or warning-posts, isknowledge ; and, as we know, it is not alwaysthe most skilful student who develops into thegreatest artist. Knowledge of nature shouldcontrol and direct the skill ; for if a painter hasonly acquired imitative skill, the object of hispicture will naturally be to display it, and hismind is the servant of his hand ; but if he hassome knowledge of nature, he must feel that,however great his skill, it is as nothing comparedwith the beauty of nature which he wishes toexpress : his hand then becomes the servant ofhis mind.

Reynolds says that the service of nature,when properly understood, is perfect freedom.This we may see in all the greatest artists, and


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On Truth to Nature ; and Style 23artist of unknown date, though they mighthave been written yesterday. Some extractsmay be of interest :

Excellence does not consist in multiplicityof detail, nor in bare simplicity ; difficulty isnot art, nor is ease : non-accordance with rulesdoes not ensure an artistic style, and withovermuch method the result may be highlyinartistic. First give rigid attention to all rules,then follow your genius and break away fromthem. If you want to work without rules,first follow every rule : if to paint with ease,first take pains : if you would have a slightand simple style, first study all the multitudinousdetails.Another ancient artist says, When a picture

seems to be alive with motion and breath, asthough of heavenly creation, it may be calleda work of genius. When the touches are some-thing above the ordinary, and the washes arein accord with good taste, a fertility of motivecontrolling the whole, it may be called a workof excellence. When there is correctness ofform, and a general observance of rules, the


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24 Lectures on Paintingresult may be called a work of ability and hesums up as follows : With the breath of thefour seasons in one's breast, one will be able tocreate on paper. The five colours well appliedenlighten the world.


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IIIMAGINATION AND THE IDEAL

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II

IMAGINATION AND THE IDEALIMAGINATION is the driving force of the

artist, whether he paints the visible beautyof outward things, as did Velasquez, or

the fancies of the mind, as did Blake, a manat the opposite pole of thought and temperament,whose pictures have no conscious reference tovisual sensations. The painter's imaginationdirects whatever he does ; and although theword is commonly used in the restricted sensein which we apply it to Blake, it seems to methat for a good historical picture, or even fora good portrait, some imaginative power isrequired : some strong intuition, some dramaticinsight which dictates the point of view andcontrols the artist's work. It would even seemas if the possession of imagination alone, withthe very poorest technical equipment, makes the27


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28 Lectures on Paintingartist : not of course that it makes him a painter,but that if he has a definite thing to express hewill find, somehow, the means of doing so. Thework of Blake is an excellent instance of this,for in spite of his conventionalities, and from apainter's point of view, the feebleness andchildishness of his execution, he conveys hismeaning, and in such a way that there is evena charm in this weakness, telling of his strugglefor expression : as usually happens in an artist'swork, he tells more than he intends. Blake'ssublimity seems to me a little stagey ; his sim-plicity is his finest quality.Of course his style was formed largely on

that of Michelangelo, but his knowledge of themaster was derived from copies or prints, theonly material available, which exaggerated themuscular action. It was not until photographsof the Sistine frescoes were available for study,that we could see how fine Michelangelo reallywas ; how true in the delicacy as well as in theforce of his work.

Blake himself seems to have been quite uncon-scious of any technical weakness ; indeed, he


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Imagination and the Ideal 29thought himself better, as a painter, than hiscontemporaries. He says in his very character-istic way, referring to imagination : he whodoes not imagine in stronger and better linea-ments, and in stronger and better light, thanhis perishing mortal eye can see, does not imagineat all. The painter of this work asserts that allhis imaginations appear to him infinitely moreperfect, and more minutely organised, thananything seen by his mortal eye. How thiscontrasts with Reynolds's calm and reasonablestatement, We can no more form an idea ofbeauty superior to nature, than we can forman idea of a sixth sense, or any other excellenceout of the limits of the human mind. We areforced to confine our conceptions, even of heavenitself, and its inhabitants, to what we see in thisworld.

Still, Blake was able to express his ideas ; andhis pictures, because of this, touch us more thanany amount of capable and accomplished worksdealing with imaginative themes, but lackingimagination. Blake expresses himself ; his workleaves an impression on the mind, and this is


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30 Lectures on Paintingone test of vital work : for, after all, it is ex-pression which counts in art. One may recallthe well-known words of Blake, in speaking ofthe sunrise, What you will tell me that whenthe sun rises you see a little round golden spotlike a guineaI tell you I see all the hosts ofheaven, singing Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord GodAlmighty ; and probably if he painted a sunrise,he would feel it natural to symbolise it in thatway. But if we turn to the work of Turner, whowas a fine painter and a master of his materials,as well as a man of great imagination, we findthat he had the same great view of nature, asa living presence, although he did not personifyit as Blake did. For he was able to see and toseize the elements in nature which give thesuggestion of life, and by putting them beforeus, he arouses in us the same feelings as naturedoes. In the one case there was the imaginativeinsight only, the emotion received from nature,but in the other there was also the artist able toanalyse the grounds of this emotion, and, havinggreat power of drawing, and knowledge of gra-dation and colour at his command, to express it.


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Imagination and the Ideal 31The imagination of an artist is shown, I think,

rather in the treatment of his subject than inhis choice of the subject itself ; and one mayinstance this by a comparison of the work ofJan Steen or Metsu, with that of Mieris. Inthe work of Steen or Metsu, although the commonthings they painted are perfectly realised, onefeels that they are subordinated to the dramaticincident of their subjects (or that the dramaticincident is raised into prominence over them).Exactly how this is done it is difficult to say ;it is a question of the things the mind of theartist most dwelt on, which thereby are somehowbrought to our minds. In the case of Steen orMetsu it is the human interest, or the beautyof the thing as seen ; we are made to feel some-thing more than that so many items are com-prised in the picture. But in the case of Mieristhere is an utter lack of imagination. It is trueeverything is painted beautifully and minutely ;one could take a lens to examine it : but hepaints his hares and cabbages and carrots andthings, with the eye of a marketing housewifelooking for defects, and his people too, in the


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32 Lectures on Paintingsame spirit. So that his work, for all its skill,is poor. It tells us nothing.The perfect union of technical skill with

great imagination is found in Michelangelo,and only in him. His work attains perfectionin this balance of the finest qualities, for notonly are his figures true, in their expression,to nature, but his workmanship, in its masteryand skiU, is perfect ; his sculpture bears com-parison with that of the ancient artists. Suchwell-known figures as the David, the Slave,the Pieta in St. Peter's, and the beautiful bas-relief in the Diploma Gallery, are masterpiecestechnically, if it is possible to look at themapart from all thought of their meaning ; butthey were not finished so finely only to showhis knowledge of anatomy, or of form, but inorder to give the utmost truth of expression.His knowledge was gained that it might servehis imagination ; we see in his work expressiveaction carried to its extreme point, but notexaggerated : and although his figures are indi-vidualised, they include more than the individual,for by fixing a characteristic action, they become


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Imagination and the Ideal 33typical. His figures are not vague abstrac-tions, made to conform to a conventional heroicor ideal t5^e ; but they show differences ofbuild and of characterisation, as marked as wefind in life, so that in spite of their being re-moved from us by their grandeur, they arestill individual, and human in their variety.This may be seen in the frescoes in the SistineChapel, where the figures of the prophets andsibyls show a variety of types, as also do thefine supporting figures between them ; these areso individual that one can almost recognise thedifferent models used. It is rarely that he givesa figure at rest ; he fixes the action of a moment,the most telling expression of the thought.Can work such as this be done by rule ? One

can recognise the imagination of an artistwe feel Michelangelo's mind from looking athis works better than if he had written hisideas down ; and we see that certain elementsare used for expression. Yet his imitatorsseemed to think that by using these elements,beginning, as it were, at the other end, theywould produce imaginative work ; forgetting


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34 Lectures on Paintingthat, though they borrowed his properties, theycould not borrow his brains.The impulse in his work is from within ; the

imagination directs. As Re5niolds says, Thereare two modes of imitating nature, one of whichrefers to the mind for its truth, and the otherto the eye. The work of Michelangelo, andat a distance and derived from itthat of Blake,refers to the mind. They both give expressionto an imagined ideal. One cannot imaginethat Michelangelo would free himself from hisown strong bias, and become sufficiently detachedto face nature quite frankly, like a portraitpainter. His imagination governed his eyes,and he used his models only so far as they servedhis idea. This was not the case with Raphael,for although his work also refers to the mindfor its truth, it refers, I think, more to the eye.He was more in touch with the world, moreinterested in his fellows. His imagination didnot so much evolve things from within, as itassimilated and used things round about him.He had more observation than Michelangelo,or, it would be truer to say, a wider observation ;


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Imagination and the Ideal 35for no observation, no searching, could be closerand deeper than that of Michelangelo : but itwas, as it were, directed always to one figure,searching it to the uttermost. He did not, HkeRaphael, express the relations of figures toeach other in a group, or the different play ofone character with another, which is one ofRaphael's greater qualities ; the one in which,perhaps, he excels all other artists except Rem-brandt.

Raphael's figures come so naturally andbeautifully into their places, and one often thinksof their beautiful grouping ; while with Michel-angelo, one thinks always of one or anothersingle figure : he was a solitary man and adreamer, disliking even the presence of hisassistants. Raphael lived surrounded by hisfriends and pupils, he was interested in theworld ; and it seems to me that his painting isat its best when he painted individuals, andnot abstractions. Some of his finest work,that certainly which we are most able to appre-ciate, is in portraiture ; and if one may presumeto say so, there seems, in the Vatican frescoes,


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^6 Lectures on Paintingwhere his fine quaUties of construction, character-isation, and drawing are seen to perfection,to be more enjoyment in the work, when he ispainting actual people. The certain ideawhich, as he said, the painter must have in hismind, did not control him altogether, as it didMichelangelo ; and it is interesting to noticein some of the splendid frescoes in the Vatican,the difference between the beautifully drawnand firmly characterised figures on the one side,all evidently portraits, and the conventional Raphaelesque figures on the other. Thisis particularly noticeable in the Heliodorus,and in the Mass of Bolsena ; the side groups ofthe latter fresco show a marked difference incharacter ; one group we feel to be real and theother unreal, and the strength and variety ofthe realistic figures emphasises the samenessin the types of the ideal figures : a same-ness we do not find in Michelangelo. Withall their appropriateness of action, they do notgive us the same conviction as do the idealfigures of Michelangelo ; we even see in themthe germ of that insipidity which marked his


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Imagination and the Ideal 37followers and imitators. And it is perhaps therecollection of so much conventionality foundedon the external qualities of Raphael, that blindsus to the real greatness of his work. He hada wider range and a more sympathetic imagina-tion than any other artist ; he was able togather from everything he saw, its typicalcharacter ; so that, to every subject he painted,he gave its most characteristic expression, andfixed standards which still remain, for groupingand composition. The group of Hehodoruscould not be attempted again without referenceto Raphael, nor could a Madonna, or any subjectwhich he treated.The great genius that this shows has come

now to be taken for granted : it does not astonishus. His work seems to have come about soeasily, so naturally, and it has been so longwith us, that we take it as a matter of course,as we do the sky or the sunshine. It is notuntil we begin to think it aU out, that all thishad to be created ; not until we think of theartist facing the great blank walls do we realisehow stupendous was his work. And if we pass


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Imagination and the Ideal 39must have been dictated by the necessity offilUng large spaces ; for, as this requires a distantpoint of view to be taken, the picture has to beseen broadly ; but what is wonderful, especiallyin Raphael's work, is that with all this there isno sacrifice of necessary detail, and at closequarters one can see that the figures are minutelyfinished, and are hatched, like a drawing.

This form of art developed naturally in theItalian Renaissance ; it does not developnaturally with us. Our life is too complicated,and its conditions are opposed to it ; we cannotget the same opportunities for observation, anda painter who essays imaginative work in thismanner now has nothing to lead him up to ithe cannot refer to nature, with older work toguide him, but only, a long way back, to theolder work.

It is sometimes said, indeed, that there is noscope for imaginative art nowadays ; but thisis not so, for imagination does not depend onexternals. If it exists, it will express itself freelythrough the materials at hand ; and althoughthe art of the great Italians cannot be re-created,


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4 Lectures on Paintingimaginative art is still possible, though its direc-tion may be different. Rousseau, the Frenchlandscape painter, said, It is asked that artshould abandon retrospective history : that itshould confine itself to actuality and repudiatethe past. This is evidently a healthy andfruitful idea, but the artist is essentially sensitive,he is not master of his emotion, he paints bestthat which moves him most. Go and tellDelacroix to burn Shakespere, destroy Goethe,Dante, and all who have inspired him ; tellGrcricault to forget the Iliad, Proudhon to giveup Longus and the great figures of Greek anti-quity, Ingres to be false to Raphael. . . . Theartist has a right to his professional education ;we can teach him to see well, to construct well :but to feel, to be touched, is a matter whichconcerns him and his temperament alone. Hemust have the most perfect liberty of expressionand of development. This seems to me trueand wise. If we consider another great imagin-ative artist, Rembrandt, whose imagination, likethat of Raphael, was nourished by his surround-ings, we find that he, like Raphael, painted


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Imagination and the Ideal 41Scriptural subjects. Raphael used the hand-some types of his fine race for models, Rembrandtused very ordinary Dutchmen. Each had thepower of imagining and re-creating a scene,and it is curious to notice the difference in thenature of their appeal to us. Raphael's appealsby its beauty, its general appropriateness andTightness ; so that, apart from the charm of hisfigures, we feel that even if the events did nothappen as he has depicted them, they ought tohave happened so : we accept his version asworthy of its subject. But the first impressionof Rembrandt, with his ugly and very ordinarypersons, is that these events cannot possiblyhave happened in this way; we have an ideathat it was nobler, more dignified, and so on.But we find, when we get to know Rembrandt,that he brushes all these ideas of dignity aside,for it did not occur to him that the men andwomen of Scriptural times could be differentfrom those of his own : and his pictures convinceus because he goes straight to the heart of hissubjects, re-creating a scene with all its emotionand expression, and giving it a sense of reality


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42 Lectures on Paintingthat raises it far above the conventional viewimpressed on our minds by the familiar tradi-tional renderings. It is presented so truly thatit too becomes typical. All his amazing skill,his knowledge of light, expression, colour, andmovement, is used in the service of his imagina-tion, to bring the scene home to us. In such amasterpiece as the Hundred Guilder plate,how splendid is the grouping, and how fine thesentiment expressed through the arrangementof the light, with the line of sick people comingforward out of the shadow ; and all the expres-sions and incidents truly imagined, and somethingmore than that ; for he has expressed all thepossibilities of the scene so truly that his pictureis typical ; the subject has been done once forall. And we find this living force of his im-agination present throughout his work. Thereis something more in his portraits than the coldstare of the eye, there is the power of reachingto and showing us the person within ; he makeshis portraits speak to us. His imaginativepower, though perhaps not so wide in its rangeas Raphael's, is deeper; his work compels one's


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Imagination and the Ideal 43interest and sympathy, and leaves as profoundan impression on the mind as even that ofMichelangelo.Rembrandt may be said to have fixed the

type of Dutch art, as Raphael did of Italian :and his influence is still the guiding one in theliving Dutch school to-day : while in Italy, what-ever influence reigns now among its painters, it isnot that of Raphael, or their other great masters.Theirs is an art of the past. No one was greatenough to succeed the great Italians ; there wasnothing left but to follow at a distance ; andthese in turn had their followers, and the freshreference to nature dropped out of men's minds.It is a curious comparison, that of Raphaeldying at the height of his fame and the life ofhis school with him ; and Rembrandt dyingobscure and discredited, and his influence grow-ing greater with time, and inspiring a school.Both drew their inspiration from without ; oneaiming at an ideal perfection of form, the otherabsolutely blind to it, accepting and usingwhatever came to hand. One can hardly com-pare them, or say which was the higher aim or


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44 Lectures on Paintingthe greater achievement, but if we take a greatman's work as a legacy to his successors, itwould seem that Rembrandt's was the morefruitful ; and perhaps this is because the impulsetowards realising an abstract beauty is confinedto few, while the desire to express people andthings as they are will be felt by many ; andthat Rembrandt is still a living influence becausehe comes nearer to us, and is, as it were, every-body's friend, while men of kindred spirit withthe great souls of the past are rare, and theirroad is difficult to tread.

There can be no doubt that Mr. Watts wasone of these rare spirits. It is not my place tomake, nor am I capable of making, a just estimateof his great gifts, but I may touch on somepoints in his work, which is as remarkable forits great range as for its high aim. In thefirst place, we may see that he had a thoroughcommand of his means ; he was a bom painter,and had a natural gift of expression. His earlypictures show this ; such a work as the WoundedHeron is painted with an ease and accomplish-ment equal to that of the best Dutch still-life


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Imagination and the Ideal 45painters. Indeed, it reminds one in many waysof the early Velasquez in the National Gallery,though it is not quite so stern. In the presenceof Mr. Watts's early work we feel that he knewhis business, and that in whatever direction hisnature had led him, he would have shown himselfa master : we are (as Millet said of Rousseau) struck by the fact that a power is a powerfrom its very beginning. ... You were,'*Millet said to Rousseau, from the beginningthe little oak which was destined to becomethe great oak. We may see in Watts's earlywork hints of the influences of the time, ofLawrence, of Etty, and perhaps of Turner ; buthe soon finds himself, and in the splendid seriesof his portraits and pictures, but especially,it seems to me, in the portraits, we see howthorough was his knowledge of form, howtrue was his draughtsmanship, and how finehis colour-sense. His heads are finely constructedand modelled, and true in character ; nothingis slurred over, nothing essential is sacrificed.And they are remarkable among portraits inanother way : that everything is subordinated


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46 Lectures on Paintingto the expression of character, to the extenteven that his method of work varies accordingto the character of his sitter, so that there is akind of childhke, unconscious obedience of thehand to the mind. If we notice the differencein method between the portraits of Walter Craneand of Lord Roberts, and some of his ladies' orchildren's portraits, we see something of hisrange. His colour is fine and true, with no forcingfor effect ; the relation of flesh to linento thewhites, as well as to the darks of his pictureis so beautifully kept, that his colour seems tohave a wider range than that of the ordinary-palette. This is due to his fine sense of gradation,and also to his fine sense of quality of colourfor though, as we know, it is not possible to get agreater range than from white to black, yet agreater variety in this range is produced byvarying the kind of colour (that is to say, byusing in some places solid, in others transparentcolours) than is possible if all the tints are mixedand painted solidly. The transparent colour,although it may be taken down to the full strengthof a shadow, yet has a brilliancy from the lighter


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48 Lectures on Paintingand to show how thoroughly he entered intothe antique spirit.

Mr. Watts's third stage was the expression ofhis imagination ; of his own feehngs. He seemsto have felt that it was not enough to recordthings, that it was not enough to give aestheticpleasure, but that the object of his work shouldbe, in his own words, to suggest, in the languageof art, modern thought in things ethical andspiritual ; he was not content to embody oldmyths in fresh forms, but has given fresh formsto ideas and problems which touch us now.The question is often raised, whether in en-deavouring to give pictorial form to abstractideas, he was not giving up the finest qualitiesof the painter, such as we see in his portraitsand earlier works ; which come from his moreimmediate touch with life. It may be so. Formy own part, these works appeal to me more,but I do not propose to discuss it here ; and

I indeed I do not think it really worth discussing :we must take a man's life work as expressinghis nature and his convictions. This develop-ment came naturally to him, and whether by


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ULYSSES AND PENELOPE(wall-painting from POMPEII)

Museum, Pompeii


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Imagination and the Ideal 49reason of it our loss is greater than our gain,there can be no question of the nobihty of hisaim, nor of the greatness of his achievementfor such works as the Hope, Love andDeath, Opportunity, and many others whichwill occur to us, have, like great poems, passedinto our thought, and become part of ourinheritance,A criticism is sometimes made of Mr. Watts'swork, especially of his colour, that though it isno doubt very beautiful, and fine in effect, it isall borrowed from the Venetians, and that weshould not go back for our inspiration, butendeavour to create for ourselves as they did.How far is this true ? If the only merits ofMr. Watts's work were that it recalls the finequalities of the Venetians, and if his admirerswere content to copy these qualities from him,and so on, we can foresee that deteriorationwould result ; and there would be a reason toprotest, and to appeal for a fresh start. ButMr. Watts's fine qualities are his own ; his sym-pathy with the Venetians rests on his under-standing of their use of colour as well as form,

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50 Lectures on Paintingas a means of expression, and expression waswhat he sought. He learnt from the Venetiansthat colour speaks to us, that the mood of apicture depends on the tone of its colour. Forexample, a picture may be all painted in goldentones, and so far, we may say, be untrue to theactual look of things ; but within this goldenenvelope all the true relations of parts mayexist, the general colour giving the key or settingthe mood of the picture. This is what Rem-brandt did ; and I think we all, in our smallways, try to use colour in this way. But it isonly when a man knows all the possibilities ofcolour that he can do this weU, and that hebecomes, like Mr. Watts, a master, having thewhole scale at his command. I am convincedthat we cannot get this knowledge if we onlystudy in the cold north light of a studio, or evenif we supplement this by study of the masters ;but that we must go back to the old source, andstudy the whole wide range of light and colourin nature. Mr. Watts, like all great figurepainters, was also a landscape painter, and someof his landscapes, such as The dove that


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Imagination and the Ideal 51returned not, are as fine things as have beendone ; and it was, I feel sure, through the studyof landscape, not the study of Httle '* bits,but of the great controlling things, the sun andthe sky, in their relation to the earth and topeople, that he was able to find out the reasonsfor the fine colour of the Venetians, and howto use it for himself.

In looking at a picture, the mind refers tomore than is before the eye, to our consciousnessof things outside the picture. There may beno sky in the picture, but our recollection of thebalance between sky and earth wUl be felt byus ; and it seems to me in all Mr. Watts's pictures,whether it is actually expressed in the work ornot, that the blue of the sky is the determiningpoint of the scale, in his mind : so that there is,as it were, reflected back from his picturesit may be only in a vague suggestiona sense ofharmony with the great elementary things ofnature, by subtle indications of their corre-spondences with his figures. In some of hispictures, too, the alternations of light and shadowon the figures rouses the same feeling that we


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52 Lectures on Paintingget in nature in noticing the play of light andshadow over a wide country, and perhaps in-directly recalls it. I do not pretend to know,it is an obscure and difficult thing to trace ;but something of this is, I fancy, at the bottomof the sense of the life, and harmony with nature,that we feel before his finest work.Every development of his art seems to have

come naturally through his own mind, not, orhardly at all, from others' ideas ; for he keptapart from schools, and was throughout trueto himself and his ideals.


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INVENTION ''

I^HE invention of a painter, says Rey-X nolds, consists not in inventing his

subject, but in a capacity of forming inhis imagination the subject, in a manner bestaccommodated to his Art. . . . It includes notonly the composition, or the putting the wholetogether, and the disposition of every individualpart, but likewise the management of the back-ground, the effect of hght and shadow, and theattitude of every figure or animal that is intro-duced or makes part of the work. And hegoes on to say that composition, which is theprincipal part of the invention of a painter, isby far the greatest difficulty he has to encounter.Every man that can paint at all can executeindividual parts ; but to keep these parts indue subordination as relative to a whole, re-

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56 Lectures on Paintingquires a comprehensive view of the art that morestrongly implies genius than perhaps any qualitywhatever. This is perfectly true, and mostadmirably expressed. We must all have hadsome such feeling, on looking at a fine picturewhich we know to be far beyond anything wecan do ourselves ; such as, for instance, Veronese's Vision of St. Helena, which is very simplein design. And if we examine each part, al-though we may feel ourselves capable of paintingany one detail as well as it is done in the original,we could no more paint the picture, that is,design it as an original work, than we could fly ;and we do not realise until, in spite of our skill,we have made numberless failures, that we haveneither seen nor understood the mechanism ofthe picture : the means by which its fine effectis produced. We can appreciate the action andintention of a picture, but so can the personwho is altogether ignorant of painting ; and wecan, in addition, appreciate the fine paintingof its parts : but we do not know enough tounderstand its invention, how its elements areput together so that it looks so well.


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TintorelSTUDY FOR COMPOSITION

(I'EN AND WASH DRAWING)In the author possession


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Invention 57The qualities in a picture which appeal to the

artist are not the same ones which appeal to thegeneral public. The man in the street canfeel the sentiment of Sebastian del Piombo's Raising of Lazarus, or Rubens's Descentfrom the Cross, or the truth of Velasquez'sportrait of Philip, or of the pictures of de Hooghehe can understand a story, but he cannot ap-preciate, and would probably be quite blind to,the qualities which make these works great. Abad copy, if the expression were preserved,would satisfy him ; he could appreciate, forinstance, the point of a drawing by* CharlesKeene or Phil May, but he would, I fancy, beequally pleased with a bad drawing, if it ex-pressed the intention.And as pictures are painted, not only for the

pleasure of the artist, but that they should befound worth looking at by all sorts of people, itwould seem that truth of action and expressionis the first quality to be sought in a picture.It must be so arranged that this is evident, forit is on this that the picture makes its appeal.Millet said, I wish first of all to make my


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58 Lectures on Paintingfigures express the actions they are engaged in :people and things should always be there withan object.Leonardo dwells on this very strongly, and is

never tired of urging the artist to observe. Hesays, When you are instructed in perspectiveand know how to draw the forms of bodies, itshould be your delight to observe and considerthe different actions of men, when they aretalking and quarrelling ; when they laugh andwhen they fight. Be quick in sketching thesewith slight strokes in your pocketbook, whichshould always be about you. When it is fulltake another, for these are not things to berubbed out, but kept with the greatest care ;because forms and motions of bodies are soinfinitely various, that the memory is not ableto retain them. Therefore preserve thesesketches as your assistants and masters. Hegoes on, The painter must observe on thespot, take sketches, and not wait till he wantssuch expression, and then have it counterfeitedfor him ; for instance, getting a model to weepwhen there is no cause : an expression without


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Invention 59a cause will be neither quick nor natural. Anda figure which does not express by its positionthe sentiments and passions by which we supposeit animated, will appear to indicate that itsmuscles are not obedient to its will, and thepainter very deficient in judgment. One morequotation, which is a kind of summing up : The painter ought always to form in his minda kind of system of reasoning, or discussionwithin himself, on any remarkable object beforehim. He should stop, take notes, and formsome rule upon it, considering the place, thecircumstances, the lights and shadows.

Well, this is all only excellent common sense.If a man sets out to paint a picture, he can'teven make a good commencement unless he hassome fund of collected observations to startfrom. We know that the great painters workedin this way, and it is well worth while for usto study their drawings and preparatory workwe can learn as much from them as from theirpictures, perhaps even more, because one cansee the steps that were taken. And in somecases, as in the studies of Raphael, one can see


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Invention '61

place which he had seen ; and one point of thedesign is that the greatest prominence is givento the figures of the shepherds.

In the sketch by Veronese there is an ingeniousarrangement of a flight of steps leading throughan archway. The group of the Holy Familyis posed on the steps, and so is raised up, but thefigure of Joseph, and an ox at the back, are inthe shadow of the arch, making a dark frameworkwhich allows the light to be focussed on theVirgin and Child. This effect of shadowfrom the arch is one which must have beenobserved in nature, and it is utilised very cleverly.It is evident, I think, that the need of filling anupright panel has determined the compositionin both these cases. In the design by Bassano,which is, I think, the finest expression of thesubject, it is interesting to note that the Childis made literally the centre of interest, by thefigures on either side bending towards Himthe lines of the stooping backs all form partsof circles, of which the Child is the centre : andwe may note that this design depends on lineand movement, rather than on lighting.


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Invention 63nature. In this there are no fine poses, but thesubject is felt ; an artist must be movedhimself, if he is to move others, as Millet said.When we are concerned with landscape, or

with figures associated with landscape, inventionis, I think, a much simpler affair than when oneis designing a subject, because one does as a rulesee one's subject first in nature ; the thing isbefore our eyes, and it is because we find aparticular effect beautiful that we want to paintit ; so that we have rather to select than toinvent. We must be quick to notice what it isthat impresses us ; what are the elements of thepicture : we must make up our minds aboutthe quantity and position of the lights and darks ;make a note of them, and, as far as possible,keep to it. Some of the finest drawings ofClaude and of Rembrandt show this simple andbeautiful noting of effect ; the drawing illus-trated is of a most commonplace scene, madebeautiful by the arrangement of the sunlightand shadow over it : by the placing of the lightsand darks.

It seems to methat the principal thing a


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64 Lectures on Paintingpicture depends on, for its general truth at anyrate, is knowledge of the effect of light and shade,in enhancing or modifying colour ; and I doubtif it is possible to get this except by studyingthe full range of light and colour, as we findit in outdoor nature : taking the landscapepainter's point of view, that light is the governingthing. In looking back to the early work, wesee that the possibility of rendering the beautyof natural effect was only recognised gradually,and that at first all figures had the same reliefand the same prominence ; then perspectivewas discovered, and little by little we can tracethe steps : Masaccio, Leonardo, Raphael, eachgaining something, until we come to the greatcentral figures, Titian, Rembrandt, and Velasquez,whose knowledge of light and colour sums up,it would seem, all that can be known. Thedevelopment of painting has been a gradualprogress towards the knowledge of light, andhow things are revealed by it ; and it is not toomuch to say that every great figure painter hasbeen a landscape painter also, or at any ratehas studied landscape. One may instance, since


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Invention 65the time of Titian and Giorgione, who were thefathers of landscape painting, Rubens, Velasquez,Rembrandt, Vermeer of Delft, Vandyke, Gains-borough, Reynolds, and in our own time SirJohn Millais, Whistler, and Watts.

This necessary knowledge of the effects oflight cannot be gained if we confine ourselves,in studying landscape, to the minute observa-tion we employ when painting things in detail,for we can't sit down to it ; we must culti-vate the habit of making quick comparisons,and of estimating the relative force with whichthings are presented to us ; looking at figuresand groups, sky, houses and trees all at once,and with a kind of governing observation overthe whole field of sight, noting and remarkinglight and shade, colour and gradation. Themethod may be as summary as we please, theroughest notes with the colours and gradationswritten down and numbered ; any method, sothat something remains in the mind. Then wecan begin to get our observations into some sortof system, and build up a little reserve of know-ledge, which we can confirm and estabhsh by

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66 Lectures on Paintingour study of pictures. It is only developinga faculty we already possess ; for, as you know,we can all criticise a painting to some extent,and pronounce on its degree of truth : throughthe recollections of nature which are latent inour minds, but are not cultivated sufficientlyto enable us consciously to use them for our-selves, constructively, as Turner and othergreat artists did.

This building up of a picture by its effect is,as it were, the material part of the painter'sproblem, and the direction of study can beindicated ; but the governing design and actionmust first have been imagined, and for a pictureit must be imagined in light and shade. Fora design that is fine in line and arrangementonly, may be contradicted or neutralised by thearrangement of its colour ; or, on the other hand,a picture which is effective as a colour schememay be poor when reduced to its elements ofline. One cannot, I think, give any directionsfor design ; things may be pointed out, as thatabsolute symmetry or repetition in figures isnot pleasing (this is probably because the mind


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Invention 67recognises that no two people think or act alike),or that equal spaces are not pleasant to the eye,or that a principal object should not be exactlyin the centre, and so on : but one learns thesethings from the study of pictures. One method,for instance, of calling attention to the centralpoint of a picture, may be seen in the drawingof Bassano's, where lines, like parts of concentriccircles, surround the central point ; anothermethod is by lines converging to the centre ofinterest, as may be seen in the sketch by Tintoret,and in Mr. Watts's picture of Cain in theDiploma Gallery, where the arms of the angelsaU point down to the figure of Cain. And onemay frequently trace these two sets of linescombined, in a picture ; so that it isroughlyspeakingUke a spider's web, as in Claude'spicture of the embarkation of the Queen ofSheba. But these things are, it seems to me,done instinctively, rather than consciouslyand no rules can be given for designing figures,for the picture must arise in the artist's mind,and is dependent on his temperament, on whathas moved or interested him. We may point


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Invention 69that we should copy his gestures or groups,but we should study them. He had an un-equalled power of realising his subject in itsessentials, and expressing the action of eachindividual figure in it, in itself and in its relationto the other figures of his group. And hisaction is always natural, and, because natural,beautiful. It is difficult, out of the immensemass of his works, to choose any one, but one ofhis familiar works, the cartoon of Christ'sCharge to Peter, may serve for an example.The idea of his composition is probably derived,to some extent, from Masaccio's fresco of Christcommanding Peter to take the money from themouth of the fish. The proportion of thefigures to the background is the same, the headsare all on a level, and the feet at irregular levels,as the spectator would see them, standingand there is in each a landscape backgroundwith hills. The Apostles are grouped aroundthe figure of Christ, but the grouping in Masaccio'spicture is casual ; most of the figures seem thereby chance, and not to be related to the incident.The incident itself is not clearly told, nor are


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70 Lectures on Paintingthe principal figures given prominence : butthe drawing of the figures is fine.Now, if we turn to Raphael's work, we see the

great advance he made. The same natural andtrue point of view is taken, and there is thesame relation of figures to landscape ; but themain incident is given prominence by detachingthe two principal figures. Then the Apostles,instead of standing about vaguely, are shownto be interested in the incident ; there isvariety of expression and variety of gesturethroughout the group. This gesture is pro-gressive, and from the quiet figures at the end,is gradually intensified, until it reaches thecentral incident of the picture ; so that in thisgroup we have, first a little group, then figuresdetaching, and finally the figure of Peter : thefigure of Christ stands alone. Now all thisgives a fine effect, but why was it done ? It ishardly a sufficient answer to say that it comesbetter that way than in Masaccio's. Was itnot done because Raphael realised that thisvariety of action was true to human nature ?We all know that although a group of people do


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Invention 71keep together as a whole, the more active andthe more eager ones come away from the othersand so, not only has Raphael given to eachfigure his natural and appropriate gesture, buthe has given the group as a whole the behaviourof a group ; so that the group becomes t5^ical.A composition has been found which is naturaland inevitable ; it is done once for all, andcannot be done better.The truth sought in his inventions was, as in

his figures, a general truth ; to the type, ratherthan to the individual ; such a picture, forinstance, as that of Michael overthrowingSatan settles for ever the arrangement of thatsubject. It is told of the late M. Fantin, theFrench painter, that he was when a young mangoing through the Louvre with Millet, who drewhis attention to this picture ; but Fantin didnot like it, and gave his reasons. Yes, saidMillet, but look, what a terrible fall Andwhen we think of the great mass of his work,and that one man, in a short lifetime, advancedthe boundaries of his art in so many directions,to a point which has not been surpassed, we


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72 Lectures on Paintingcannot wonder at succeeding artists trying tofollow him ; and least of all at their failure :for how can one continue a perfection alreadyattained ?

It is worth while considering in this connec-tion, in the light of the more complete historicalknowledge of painting which we now possess,whether Reynolds's advice on generalisationhas proved to be altogether sound. He saystruly that the mind is distracted in a varietyof accidents, for so they ought to be Ccdled,rather than forms, and the disagreement of theseamong themselves will be a perpetual source ofconfusion and meanness until, by generalising hisideas, the painter has acquired the only truecriterion of judgment. This is quite true ; butthen he goes on to say, It is better that heshould come to diversify on particulars fromthe large and broad idea of things, than vainlyattempt to ascend from particulars to the greatgeneral idea : for to generalise from the endlessand vicious variety of actual forms is perhapsmore than any one mind can accomplish : butwhen the other and, I think, better course is


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Invention 73pursued, the artist may avail himself of theunited powers of his predecessors. He sets outwith an ample inheritance, and avails himselfof the selection of ages.

Well, we all do this in a sense, but I thinkhistory shows that those who set out in thatway, trying to avail themselves of the selectionof ages, have set out with a larger burden thanthey could carry. The scientific student can, Isuppose, and does, avail himself of the unitedpowers of his predecessors ; they are fully athis command : but every artist has to begin hisclimb at the bottom of the tree, and get up asfar as he can. The powers of his predecessorsare not at his command until he proves himselfequal with them. The history of art gives us adistinct warning in this respect, in the sterilitywhich has always attended the deliberate adop-tion of the grand, or any other style. What werightly learn from the masters is to do as theydid ; to study nature. In this spirit they canhelp us ; and I think we should try and allowourselves to be influenced by nature, somewhatin the spirit of Constable, who said, When I


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74 Lectures on Paintingam before nature, I try to forget that I haveever seen a picture. Of course we cannotforget the good things we have seen ; but whatis meant, I think, is that we should feel, whenbefore nature, that all pictures give but echoesof its power and beauty.The greatest service the old painters can do

is to steady our judgment ; for we are peculiarlyliable to be led away by following whateverfad happens to be in vogue at the moment.This may be a consequence of exhibitions,which lead men to emulation in those qualitiesmost appreciated by painters ; and so far as thisleads artists to make their work as perfect asthey can, it is commendable : but it leads alsoto the cultivation of virtuosity for its own sake,and as an end, which is surely a mistake. Forpainting is a means of expression, not in itselfan end. I know that the plea of '* art for art'ssake is made in justification, and that it istruly said that painting should not attempt toexpress things which can be better expressed inliterature ; but the object of a painter need notnecessarily be a story. The expression of


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Invention J^character, or the beauty and significance ofmovement, or the effects of light and atmo-sphere, and the emotions they raise ; any of theendless ways in which the beauty in naturemay be expressed may surely be taken as theartist's aim. If art for art's sake mean fortruth's sake, or for beauty's sake ; to expressnature as well, and with as good workmanshipas one can, one cannot have a better motto :but if it mean that the object of painting issimply to get, or display, fine technical qualities,then I think it is altogether the wrong wayabout, like putting the cart before the horse.Mr. Whistler did not paint his nocturnes for thesake of getting a beautiful quality of blue paint,but to express, as he once told me, the beautyand mystery of the night ; and all work thatlives does so because it interprets or revealssome beauty in nature. The French painterGerome once told a pupil that painting for thesake of painting was like speaking for the sakeof talking : to paint well, said he, one musthave something to say.The danger of virtuosity is its tendency to


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76 Lectures on Paintingdegenerate into cleverness and triviality, butnature does not impress us as being trivialand as the larger part of a student's trainingis necessarily imitative work, it is, I fear, toooften taken for granted that this, which is,after all, a kind of still-life painting, is thebeginning and end of the whole matter. Thisis apparent, it seems to me, in all exhibitions,and it is at the root of the great differencebetween modern work and the old ; whose aimwas rather to represent than to imitate nature.The best of modem work, it is true, joins onharmoniously with the best of the old ; thegreat French school of the middle of last centurytakes its place naturally with the great schoolsof the past, and the artists who made it wereoccupied with expression, with the spirit andnot the letter of their art ; with the simple anddirect appeal to the natural feeling and emotion,rather than with details which, however inter-esting they may be as matters of technique, areof less consequence. It seems to me that thispoint can be seen very clearly if we compareDenner with Rembrandt or Reynolds. Denner's


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Invention 77work is most wonderful as imitative workman-ship. Everything in it is painted as minutelyas possible, and at close quarters, but the effectof the picture as a whole is weak ; because itselements, instead of being adjusted to eachother, with each detail presented in its properdegree, as portions of a harmonious whole, aredisintegrated, so that, although we have everyitem, we have not the picture ; for our attentionis so compelled to every item, to every detail,as to give us almost a feeling of intrusion.There is certainly a triumph of imitation, butof how little account it all is, when comparedwith the easy and natural representation ofRembrandt or Reynolds, which we recognise atonce as true. One could not avoid a similarcomparison between the portraits of Sandysand of Watts in a recent exhibition. Watts'sportraits are composed, one element in itsrelation to another ; and this is the true view ofnature, which imitative painting, for all its skill,misses : for a general impression of truth is notproduced by adding together all the little truths,but by generalising.


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yS Lectures on PaintingThe artist must have an idea in his mind

which he wishes to convey ; he must depend onfacts, but he must control them according tohis intention. Rousseau has some remarks oncomposition which are of interest. He says, Iunderstand by composition that which is in us,entering as much as possible into the exteriorreality of things. If it were not so, the masonwith his rule could very quickly compose apicture representing the sea. It would beenough to draw a line at any height across hiscanvas. Now, what composes the sea, if it isnot the soul of the artist ? There is compositionwhen the objects represented are not there forthemselves, but for the sake of including undernatural appearances the echoes which they havein our souls.


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IVTASTE

TO


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IVTASTE

A PICTURE begins its life when it leavesthe painter's hand. He has made some-thing that, with reasonable care, will lastfor centuries ; in the hope that it will givepleasure, that someone will possess and cherishit, and will always like to look on it. He hasexpressed whatever insight into nature has beengiven him ; he has made his work conform tohis standard of taste. And it goes out into theworld to live or die, to have people continuallyfinding pleasure in it, recognising its beauty,and being led through it to a greater appreci-ation of nature's beauty ; or else tiring of it,like a child with a toy. Or it may come backto him, and he may turn it to the wall, and neverwish to look at it again. But we must rememberthat a picture cannot take its place definitely


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82 Lectures on Paintingin a few years ; if contemporary judgment isin the main right, there are, as we all know,many instances where it has been mistaken.The immediate success or failure of a workneed not count as an indication of its merit, forit is only when a picture has attained a respect-able agesay from ten to twenty yearsthatits place, whatever it may be, is assured.

So, to arrive at a standard of taste, we must goback to the older painters ; and as there aremany schools and many methods, there can beno one fixed standard for all, though all arealike, in that they must refer for their meritto the degree of truth with which they interpretsome aspect of nature in paint.But there are things which, however well and

truly painted, do not attract. A work may bevery well painted, but its subject may be re-pulsive, and this we agree to call bad taste ;or its subject may be unexceptionable, and yetit may be painted in a tasteless way : and soour taste is shown, not only in what we paint,but in the way we paint it.

It seems to me that taste in a picture is some-


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Taste 8^thing like natural good manners in man : notdepending on the elementsthe clothesof thepicture, but on the temperament it displays,and the measure of its harmony with our acknow-ledged standards ; for a man's picture revealshis outlook on the world, and is in that sensea part of him. If we choose a person for a friend,we like him, let us say, to be simple and natural,reliable and without swagger. Whether he isrich or poor, grave or gay, does not matter solong as we can depend on him. And it seemsto me that a picture, to be in good taste, musthave analogous qualitiesthat it should, likeour ideal friend, be in accord with the beststandards ; it should be in harmony with thebest we know.But we should not assume that the particular

direction in which we are led is the only direction,the one that everyone else should follow ; forthe differences of the various schools show usthat there is not one fixed, undeviating standard,though some standards are higher than others :but that each quality in a picture has its ownstandard, and that these are all equally founded


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84 Lectures on Paintingon some truth to, or agreement with, nature.And we recognise some works as the greatest,because in them we see that their qualities are,as it were, adjusted in the same proportionatebalance as in nature.By recognising that each response to nature

has its own standard, we may get to know ourown limitations, and so get on to a workingbasis ; each of us trying to make his work moreperfect in its own way. For it is absurd tosuppose that we should all try for the sameideals ; as much so as to expect conformityin opinion on other matters.The works of Phidias, of Michelangelo, of

Raphael and of Velasquez, of Titian and ofRembrandt, take by common agreement thehighest places ; they are our standards. Butthere is a harmony in all the best workanaccord with the possibilities of nature. Weagree that people in a picture should live, thattheir form should be well expressed, that theyshould be natural in their actions, and in theirproper environment ; that the influences ofthe light and air, and the colour in accordance


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Taste 85with this, should also be properly expressed.And on these simple and reasonable conditionsit seems to me that we may take Raphael,Velasquez, Titian and Rembrandt, Claude andConstable, each in a particular quality, as givinga standard. Both Phidias and Michelangeloare so great, so unapproachable, we cannotmeasure ourselves against them in any waythey are above comparison. But, leaving themaside, one cannot presume to make comparisonsbetween giants, each greatest in his own way.Raphael had, it seems to me, the greatest geniusas an inventor ; in this respect he had no limits.Consider the naturalness and variety of hisgroupings, and how his figures are all related toeach other. The things he wishes to bring intoprominence are there, just as they should be :his invention is so natural, that we recogniseit no more in his pictures than we do in a groupingof actual people. We take his observation asa matter of course ; but when we try, ourselves,to put even two or three figures together, wefind how difficult it is, and how poorly ourminds are furnished. And then what a mag-


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86 Lectures on Paintingnificent artist he was, how great the skill withwhich he carried through his long series ofworks ; it would seem that our difficulties ofdrawing, expression, and command of colourdid not exist for him : and since his time, nearlyfour hundred years ago, we cannot refer to anywork of the kind worthy to be named with his.But Raphael's work, though it is true to humannature, refers for the most part to conditions

that are past, as do the Greek statues ; like them,it is removed from us by racial and social con-ditions as well as by time. Yet, like the art ofthe Greeks, it is living, and should be studied inthe same spirit as we study the Greek work.We cannot revive a style which arose naturally

from conditions that are past : but Mr. Watts'scareer shows that the most modem mind, whenin sympathy with the finest work, can re-createits spirit, and he is an ideal example of the usewhich the old art can be to us, as a guidinginfluence.

If we take Raphael's work as a standard forcomposition and for ideal generalisation, wemust take that of Velasquez as the standard for


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Taste 87painting actual things. It does not seem possibleto surpass his work in its dispassionate andinclusive truth. In such a work as the laterportrait of Philip, everything is given as truly asin life, and the only reference seems to be directlyto nature, and not to other painters; and onemay imagine that Velasquez really did, whenbefore nature, forget that he had ever seen apicture ; as Constable says he tried to do.Is it altogether owing to the difference betweenthe Italian and Spanish temperamentor is itnot rather because of their finer and more subtleartthat the pictures of Velasquez are nearer tous? They are more modern than those ofRaphael (comparing the portraits of each),and while the resemblance to nature is so great,the art is so concealed, that it hardly occursto us there can be any art in it. What a finejudgment was that of Reynolds on Velasquez ; What we are all trying to do with great labour,he does at once.We do not feel like this before Titian, or before

Rembrandt: we feel the beauty of the picture,but the art is evident, and the point of view has


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88 Lectures on Paintingto be felt, and accepted. It is a parti-pris

clausen - aims and ideals in art

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