At the Ecole des Beaux Arts the subject given last year to the students for their diploma pictures was “Augustus Causes the Tomb of Alexander the Great to be Opened, and Places a Crown of Gold on the Head of the Corpse.â€
When we reflect that Alexander had been dead some three hundred years, it will easily be understood that his body was in that half-putrid, half-mummified condition which is apparently so attractive to the artistic world in France.
Another marked characteristic of a French exhibition is the number of nude female figures. This is notoriously very objectionable to many English visitors, but for my part I would rather see a dozen nude nymphs than a decapitated figure or a putrid corpse. Many of these figures are done by young painters as a kind of supplement to their art education; and instead of being offended at their frequency, I am always glad to see so much laudable ambition. I only wish we had a few more similar efforts in our English exhibitions. The Hanging Committee would, of course, eliminate those which were objectionable either from want of technical skill or from any other cause, and the remainder might be allowed to hang on our walls and irritate Mrs. Grundy.
A third characteristic of a French exhibition is thegeneral excellence of what are called rustic pictures. The peasants are real peasants, and not models dressed up as such.
There is almost always in this class of subjects an honest attempt to give a truthful version of nature. There is a completeness about them that is very charming.
The pictures of flowers, fruit, fish, and every thing coming under the head ofnature morte, seem to me equally good. In fact, one hardly ever sees a bad still-life picture in a French exhibition. I suppose the jury is more strict about fruit, oysters, and copper kettles than about humanity, and particularly female humanity.
Pictures of animal life are, I think, less common than in English exhibitions. Dogs especially are seldom painted. This may be partly owing to the currish aspect of French dogs. Our bloodhounds, mastiffs, newfoundlands, deerhounds, and all the aristocracy of the canine race, are hardly ever seen in France; and it must be confessed that a stumpy-tailed mongrel or a clipped poodle is not a very tempting model. The French are not a doggy nation. A well-off Parisian will often keep a couple of ugly pointers, but it is always understood that “Stop†and “Komeer†are indispensable “pour la chasse,†and not to be regarded as pets or companions.
Finally, in every modern French exhibition theinfluence of Fortuny is very perceptible; I believe, however, that almost all the disciples of this school are Spaniards or Italians residing in Paris, and that the French artists who devote themselves to microscopic painting have the good taste to follow the lines of Meissonier rather than those of Fortuny.
We will now examine the Belgian pictures.
Belgian art is derived entirely from France. At the International Exhibition one passed from the French to the Belgian galleries without being aware of the change of nationality. I think, however, that the branch is at present in a healthier state than the parent stem. When I compare the recent mural paintings which have been executed in Belgium with similar work done in Paris, I am struck with the vast superiority of the Belgian. Again, in landscape the Belgians are far in advance of their neighbors. Comparisons are proverbially odious, so I will not incur odium by comparing English landscape with Belgian, but I should recommend those who think that we specially excel in this branch of the art to go and look at what the Belgians are doing. The great men of the Belgian school—the men whose names are familiar to every artistic circle in Europe—are declining in power even more rapidly than their colleagues in France, but there seems to me to be more hope about the younger men. The Belgian portrait-painters are, I think, inferior to the French as a rule, but there were one or two portraitsin the Belgian galleries which attracted a great deal of attention from their unaffected simplicity, and in this respect contrasted very favorably with some more showy French work. The history pictures, again, were more careful and better drawn than analogous French work. There was less striving after effect and singularity, and much better composition. They reminded me more of what French painting used to be before the school became afflicted with what may be called “sentimental radicalism†in art.
I was glad to notice that Baron Leys, the painter of the strange mediæval pictures of the Antwerp town-hall, has not left a school of mediævalists behind him. The quaint ugliness of an old Flemish picture is interesting because it is real, but in these modern works the uncouth drawing and constrained stiff attitudes of the early Flemings are assumed, and therefore offensive. No doubt there are several excellent artists living who have studied under Leys, but they have all of them abandoned the affectation of their master.
The influence of Rubens and his school is not perceptible in modern Belgian work. This is rather curious when we consider the immense amount of Rubens-worship which is perpetually going on at Antwerp. Rembrandt, Franz Hals, and Vanderhelst have had much more influence on the Belgian school than Rubens, but the modern artists of Brussels arenot a race of copyists. They evidently study nature a good deal, and this, it appears to me, is the secret of their strength. On the whole I have formed a very favorable opinion of the Belgian school, and when I recall to mind the excellent mural paintings at Ypres and Courtray, I must say that the old Parisian sneer about the “contrefaçon Belge†is quite inapplicable at the present day.
It is manifestly unfair to compare the German gallery of the Great Exhibition with the French, English, or Belgian section. The pictures sent by Germany were hastily got together at the eleventh hour, and were notoriously inadequate specimens of German art. Still they were interesting, as showing the tendency of the school.
The first impression on entering the German gallery was a favorable one. It was like entering a gallery of old masters after a surfeit of garish, crude modern pictures. A closer examination led one, however, to form a less favorable opinion of the peculiarities of German art. The imitation of the old masters is, in my opinion, carried too far. Reminiscences of Holbein and Albert Durer crop up everywhere, and many pictures which are not directly imitative of the old masters have a brown old-varnished appearance. There may not have been any thing offensively bad or ludicrously absurd in the German gallery, but on the other hand, with a few exceptions, there appeared to me to be a sadwant of originality. These exceptional pictures were humble and unpretentious enough both in subject and dimensions, but full of truth and character.
The artist, Knaus, enjoys a great reputation both in Germany and Europe generally. His color, though true, is not very attractive. There is no great charm in his execution. The nature of his subjects precludes fine, classical drawing or noble composition. It may be asked, What, then, is his great merit? It is simply the intense realism of his figures. We always feel that we must have seen and known his peasants, his children, and his Jews. He has the same power of seizing types which John Leech so eminently possessed. Whether he quite deserves to be in the front rank of European painters is another question, but it is interesting to note the reputation such an artist has obtained in Germany, where art, though often learned, is seldom truthful or harmonious.
It has often been said that German art is never seen at its best in easel pictures, and that to express an opinion about it one ought to go to Germany, and study the mural paintings which abound there. It is more than twenty-five years since I visited either Munich or Berlin, and I am therefore not qualified to give an opinion about thepresentstate of art in Germany. I confess I was not favorably impressed with what Ithensaw; and have often in the course of these lectures found fault with Kaulbach and hisschool for neglecting Horace’s well-known precept, “Artis est celare artem.â€
The large mural works at Munich and Berlin used to be considered by Germans as the highest development of heroic painting. They asserted that their country was at the top of the ladder in high art, just as it undoubtedly was in music, and my criticisms on their great painters have always been provoked by this assertion. I have never stigmatized these decorative paintings as being absolutely bad or contemptible, but as being unworthy of the great esteem in which they were held.
I hear that at the present time other artists have in great measure superseded those of the school of Kaulbach, and that the highly artificial style of thirty years ago has been almost abandoned.
Scandinavian and Danish art are derived from Germany, as Belgian and Swiss are derived from France. In the case of Norway and Sweden, however, all the best artists emigrate to more southern regions; and small blame to them, for when daylight begins at ten and ends at two, there is not much time for painting pictures. These artists, who are mostly landscape-painters, return to their native countries in summer and make their sketches and studies; but the pictures themselves are painted either in Germany, Belgium, or France.
In Denmark the winter days are rather longer, and we find at Copenhagen a feeble attempt at anative school, bearing about the same relation to Dusseldorf or Berlin, that Birmingham or Liverpool would to London.
Leaving these humble followers of the German school, we will now enter the Austrian and Hungarian galleries.
Some French critic compared Austrian art to a noisy brass band, and the comparison is not inapt. No doubt the band is a very good one; the trumpets are loud, the trombones sonorous, and the big drum unexceptionable. Still it is not the kind of harmony which would please a musician. Austrian and Hungarian art, though apparently fascinating to the multitude, is too rich and cloying for a more fastidious taste. If you can fancy a mixture of plum-pudding and lobster-sauce, you will form a good idea of the most celebrated Austrian pictures. As the French school has a weakness for the horrible, and the English for the homely, so the Austrian delights in the showy. Pageants, royal receptions, and ceremonies of mediæval times are the subjects which the leading Austrian artists revel in; subjects in which there is not much story to tell, no human emotions to portray, nothing but silks, velvets, armor, and trappings to paint. All these accessories are marvellously well executed, a great deal too well indeed for the heads and the flesh; but it is this overpowering execution, united with a pseudo-Venetian coloring, which captivates the French bourgeois, just as it would captivate the London cockney.
I wish to observe that I am speaking of the large Austrian and Hungarian pictures which attracted so much attention at the Paris exhibition. Amongst the portraits and the smaller pictures there were some which would have done credit to any school. Vigorous in drawing and execution, full of character, and harmonious though rather dark in color, they appeared to me far superior to the kindred pictures from North Germany. I should have formed a very high estimate of the Austrian school if two or three of the principle pictures had been absent.
It may be asked why, if these large pictures were so offensively meretricious, the jury awarded them medals of honor?
I should be very sorry to have to defend all the decisions of the international jury, but in the present case I think I may say with truth that it was not admiration for this kind of art which dictated the award.
Before leaving the Austrian and Hungarian galleries, I would observe, that whatever may be thought of the pretentious richness of these large pictures, there exists at any rate an Austrian school, and that this school seems full of power and vitality. Austrians, do not, as a rule, paint their pictures in Paris or Rome. Others may, like myself, deplore the overpowering gorgeousness of a good deal of their work, but amongst the canvasses of more modest proportion there was abundant evidence of sound training and original invention.
Dutch art is very national; that is, the subjects are national. Muddy seas, flat meadows with groups of cattle, canal and street scenes—in short, the same kind of subjects which were formerly painted by Teniers, Vandevelde, De Hoogh, and Paul Potter, are still the favorites with the Dutch artists.
In the Dutch school, as seen at the Great Exhibition, there was a laudable absence of priggishness or sensationalism, but the pictures appeared to me to lack the neat precision of touch and the delicacy of color which distinguished the old Dutchmen.
Pathos will cover a multitude of sins, and in some of the best modern Dutch work this quality is not wanting; but in subjects which do not admit of pathos, such as the old familiar scenes of Teniers and Ostade, something more is wanted than indifferent execution and dull, inoffensive color. I am inclined to think that Dutch art was not only fairly, but even favorably represented at the Paris Exhibition, for in several recent visits to Holland I was always struck by the want of development of modern art. There are no great mural painters as in Belgium; the Church, being Protestant, does nothing for art. The rich Dutch citizens and merchants are equally unsympathetic; in short, there is no demand for a high class of art, so there is no supply.
I never heard of a Dutch collector who patronized modern painters. His rooms are always filled with Ostades, Wouvermans, Vanderveldes, etc., or morefrequently with wretched copies of these masters; but in these private collections, which are scattered all over Holland, one never meets with a good picture by a modern artist. Under these circumstances I think it very creditable to Dutch artists that painting should not have declined more than it has in Holland.
Swiss art can only be regarded as provincial French. It is, however (like the Dutch), very national in its subjects. Glaciers, snow mountains, pine forests, and châlets were the usual subjects in the Swiss section. Even the figure-subjects were redolent of Switzerland—peasants, guides, hunters, and tourists were the principaldramatis personæ. If a fault is to be found with these innocent works of art, it is that they look as if they were meant for the tourist or the Alpine Club market. A traveller who is detained by rain for a week at Interlacken would be just the man to purchase a good view of the Jungfrau, or perhaps he might be tempted by a group of Bernese Oberlanders at home. The native Swiss pictures are too much like their wood carvings, not works of good art but pleasant souvenirs.
We will now cross the Alps and say a few words about Italian art.
Italy was wretchedly represented at the Great Exhibition. None of her greatest artists had contributed. The best pictures were by two or three Parisian Italians, and the worst by men whose properabode ought to be Hanwell or Colney Hatch. It has often been remarked that modern Italians labor under the same disadvantage which afflicts a man who has had illustrious progenitors. He may not be a greater fool than other men, indeed he may be rather above the average, but he gets no credit for it. People are always contrasting him with his illustrious father or his glorious grandfather, and the poor fellow has hard work to get any justice done him. This may be true enough at Venice, Florence, or Rome, where thechefs-d’œuvreof the old masters are in very close proximity. I can well understand that a stranger who has been feasting his eyes all the morning on Titians and Paul Veroneses, should find the descent very precipitous to the level of a modern Italian studio; but in Paris there were no such formidable rivals to fear, and it is much to be regretted that Italy did not put forth her whole strength. I am inclined, however, to give another reason why modern Italian art has suffered from the proximity of so manychefs-d’œuvreby the old masters, and that is the temptation to become copyists. Wealthy Americans, if they cannot carry away the originals, will have copies, and the harvest to be derived from this source by a clever painter is so rich a one that he is often tempted to abandon the paths of originality and virtue, and become a copyist.
Of course the leading painters would not accept a commission for a copy of Beatrice Cenci, but therehave been (and doubtless are still) artists fitted for better things, whodoaccept these commissions and are glad of them. A friend of mine a good many years ago asked me to call and see a copy of this celebrated portrait which had just arrived from Italy. He had given the painter a commission for it two years before. I could not say much in praise of it. It was a fair average copy, but I could not help remarking that the artist had been a precious long time about it. “Oh,†says my friend, “mine was the seventh order for a Beatrice Cenci in his book, and he told me that nothing would induce him to paint more than four copies a year of this head. He had other work to attend to,†etc., etc. If a man once gets into the way of earning his living by copying, he will never get out of it (at least not in Italy).
Independently of downright copying there is the danger of imitating, and this is a danger to which Italian art has always been very much exposed. No good can ever come of imitating the old masters, but when the masters so imitated are men like Carlo Maratti or Luca Giordano, the downfall of the school is indeed precipitate.
Italian painters, like Italian sculptors are very skilful workmen, but they do not appear ever to get beyond a certain point of excellence.
The new school of Rome may be said to have been founded by Fortuny, and in this school executionis every thing. Doubtless this phase of Italian art is better than the dreary decadence of the first half of the century, but I cannot say I am a great admirer of the new style. I will speak of Fortuny and his followers presently, when I get to the Spanish school, but before leaving the Italian Court I may mention that there were some specimens of microscopic painting which were marvellous if they were really legitimate pictures and not painted photographs. Admitting, however, that they were genuine pictures, the very fact of their looking like colored photographs relegates them to an inferior style of art. They are curiosities, and not much more.
In justice to the Italian section I should mention that if the oil pictures were bad, the water-colors by Rota were excellent.
There seems to me no reason whatever why Italy, the land of art (par excellence), should lag behind in the international race. Italians are quick, intelligent, and imaginative. If they would steer a middle course between the tame imitations of the old masters and the sensational quackeries of contemporary art, I have no doubt they would take a high place in the European school.
The Spanish gallery was one of the most interesting in the whole exhibition. One or two of the large pictures showed great power and originality. I believe these pictures were painted by Spaniardsresiding in Rome. Indeed all the best Spanish pictures are painted either in Paris or Italy. There is no native school, as in the days of Velasquez and Murillo.
The most attractive wall in this gallery was that devoted to the works of Fortuny. Fortuny’s mode of painting, his delicate sense of color, and the novelty of his subjects, took the artistic world by storm some fifteen years ago. Since that time a host of imitators have arisen, mostly Spaniards or Italians, so that the modern Spanish school has come to be identified with his very peculiar kind of art.
I have no doubt that if one were to go to Spain and visit the studios of the resident artists, one would find very little of the Fortuny element. Probably the pictures would be more like Portuguese work, which of all European schools is the most backward. Setting aside, however, the question as to how far the Fortuny style can be called national, I will hazard a few remarks about its merits and faults.
In the first place, I think we ought to welcome any novelty in art, provided the novelty is not downright absurd, and a man who like Fortuny revolutionized modern art (at any rate in the south of Europe), certainly deserves consideration.
His pictures are characterized by a wonderful delicacy of execution and brilliancy of color. His drawing is firm and masterly. With all these goodqualities I cannot consider him to have been a great artist. In the first place, the subjects he affected were of the most frivolous and meretricious description. Secondly, the general effect in his pictures is not sufficiently attended to. I have heard them compared to those sheets one sometimes sees composed of a jumble of small photographs. Each individual figure or gaudy bit of stuff is perfect by itself, but the whole picture is deficient in effect.
Finally, the execution wants that breadth and manliness which are so conspicuous in the best works of Meissonier. Much as I admire any man of genius who departs from the beaten track and creates a style of his own, I cannot help thinking that Fortuny has been much over-rated.
Many of his followers’ works resemble the crude wall-papers and chintzes which used to be common before South Kensington was in existence.
Pinks, light blues, and coal-tar dyes of the most violent hues (colors which would drive our æsthetic amateurs mad) here run riot. The execution is always clever, but the offence against good taste in color is not to be got over. I do not recollect any landscape work in the Spanish gallery except as backgrounds to the figure pictures. If I were a Spanish artist I should leave the fripperies of the boudoir, and turn my attention to the grand forms of rock and forest which abound in the Asturias, or to the sierras of Andalusia, with their semitropical vegetation.
Of Russia and the United States as picture-producing countries but little can be said. There are a few Russians scattered over Germany, France, and Italy, who paint and exhibit pictures which pass muster more or less creditably.
Some give a Russian flavor to their work by painting Muscovite peasants, sledges, wolves and bears, but even these national pictures might have been done by French or German artists as far as the execution goes. The eye was not impressed in the Russian gallery, as it was in the English, Austrian, or Spanish departments, by some national peculiarity.
The large picture which obtained one of the medals of honor was painted in Rome. It represented one of the most barbarous episodes of Nero’s persecution of the Christians.
I thought it clever as a decorative work, but very weak in drawing.
There were in the Russian gallery some good heads very boldly and forcibly painted. Their authors, though their names ended in “sky,†“vich,†or “koff,†were pupils of the French or German schools, and therefore these works, though painted by Russians, can hardly be considered as characteristic of the school. The Byzantine element was not in the least traceable in the Russian galleries. Probably Byzantine pictures were excluded, as coming under the head of manufactures.
Greece exhibited a few pictures of modest proportions, and still more modest merit; but even this faint commendation cannot be accorded to Portugal, whose small contribution was ludicrous for its badness.
The art of the United States is even less national than the Russian. American artists seldom give us reminiscences of their country, and the American gallery was exactly like some of the rooms in the French Salon.
From their admiration of Parisian art it is probable that the American school of the future will, like the Belgian, be a branch of the French, unless indeed some American Fortuny should be raised in the States who would give an original impulse to Transatlantic art.
French critics were rather hard on the American figure-painters for choosing such subjects as the death of Cleopatra.
What in the world, they said, had Cleopatra and the Nile to do with America? About as much, I should say, as Nero and his atrocities had to do with France. According to these gentlemen, French artists may choose their subjects from any period and from any country; the same license may be allowed to Belgium, Germany, and possibly to England; but the American is to confine himself to the short and not very picturesque history of his own country.
This seems to me very unfair, but at the same time I should have liked to have seen amongst the landscapes something more national than views of Bougival or Fontainebleau.
I have now taken you all round the picture galleries of the International Exhibition, and I may with truth say that we have no cause to be ashamed of the position we hold in the European art-world. The French were at home and able to exhibit nearly all their best works of the last ten years. We, from reasons that are very well known, were unable to do so, and yet we held a very respectable position. I am not John Bull enough to say, as some of my friends at the hotel did, that our school is the first in Europe. But what Idosay is that English art (speaking of course generally) is in a thoroughly healthy state; that English artists (also speaking generally) think more of their subjects and less of themselves than Frenchmen, Belgians, or Austrians do; that whilst some of the leading foreign schools are past the zenith of their power, we, on the contrary, seem to be improving steadily, and gradually getting rid of our faults. Some may be inclined to attribute this marked improvement to the extraordinary sums of money which have of late years been spent on art in this country, some to the existence amongst us of a school of high-art criticism, some to foreign influence. I attribute it to none of these causes, but solely to better training and a more scrupulous regard for nature.
It may be thought that in boasting about our better training I am blowing the academic trumpet pretty loudly, but I am not speaking so much of the training you get here and at other London art schools, as of the training which every young painter has to give himself after he has learned the A B C of his art. It is this training especially which is better than it used to be. The commonplace slap-dash way of going to work of former days is now the exception and not the rule with young painters.
One man may be careless or weak in his drawing, but he may have a keen sense for truthful atmospheric effect, and he labors away at his picture until he approximates to the out-of-door look of nature; another (a portrait-painter perhaps) wearies out his sitters in his endeavors to be truthful; a third will patiently brave the elements on a bare Scotch moor, humbly trying to imitate the fitful patches of sunshine and mist on the hillside before him.
All this is what I call good training. It is honest, conscientious work, and it is this which tells favorably on a school, rather than Manchester patronage or Oxford æsthetics.
I would observe, in conclusion, that in the appointment of our new President we have another cause for self-congratulation. It would be out of place here for me to dwell on all his qualifications for the important post he fills, but I should not like my first lecture under his presidency to pass withoutexpressing my thorough satisfaction with the choice we have made. To say more would probably be unpleasant to him, to have said less would have been unpleasant to me.
I may, however, point out that the progress of the English school of art does by no means rest with the President of the Royal Academy (however excellent he may be); it depends on the individual exertion of every member of the profession, from the President down to the probationer who seeks admission to the schools. Let us all do our best to produce careful, honest, and original work, and I have no doubt of the result.
Drawingis the backbone of all great work, and it is an art which, if neglected when you are young, does not appear ever to be acquired in after-life.
Most artists improve in color, and particularly in execution, as they get older, but in drawing they seldom acquire greater correctness. They acquire facility, but not accuracy. It is, therefore, of the highest importance that all students should carry out their studies in drawing as far as they possibly can whilst they are young. I am not speaking of their chalk studies alone, but also of their painted studies.
It often happens that as soon as a student gets a palette on his thumb, he considers himself completely emancipated from all the trammels of correct drawing, and after sketching his figure with a few hasty strokes of charcoal or red chalk, he smears on his color at once. I have known some who would not condescend to make any preliminary outline at all, but went in for drawing with the brush.
I can quite understand that when you first begin painting, the novelty of the material and the difficulties of color should prevent your drawing with thesame precision and firmness as you would with charcoal and chalk; but when these difficulties are overcome, you should endeavor to return to your former precision. It is very difficult, when once a slovenly habit of drawing has been contracted, to return to accuracy; but nevertheless it is possible.
The fact is, that an artist, to excel as a draughtsman, should consider himself a student all his life.
The school of painting ought to be the school of drawing in color, and no student ought to be allowed to color a badly drawn figure or head. This was always the rule, not only in Delaroche’s School, but in all theateliersof his contemporaries; and as more than half the present members of the Institute were students in these schools, the system cannot have been a bad one.
It may surprise some of you to hear the time that was spent in drawing the figure before beginning to paint.
The model used to sit for six consecutive days: from seven to twelve in summer, and from eight to one in winter, and an hour was allowed every day for intervals of rest.
During the whole first day’s sitting, nothing but drawing was done. Sometimes the shades of the figure were rubbed in with bitumen or some transparent brown, but no color was ever used. The master would come early on the Tuesday, and until he had passed, as it were, every student’s drawing,no one who studied seriously would think of laying on color. Six hours, therefore, out of the twenty-four were spent before the actual painting began; but, at any rate, good solid foundations had been laid: well-proportioned and carefully drawn figures were the rule and not the exception, and if the student had not time to finish his work by the end of the week, he would have at any rate a large portion of the figure carefully studied.
When a figure is well drawn, the master will take a pleasure in giving the student some hints about the color, and will perhaps take the palette himself; but to give instruction in color when there is no drawing, is like furnishing a house before the walls are built.
I have noticed that some of you in the life school attach too much importance to the mere outline, and neglect the structure and internal markings of your figures. Now the bones and principal markings of a figure are of infinitely more consequence than the outline; it istheywhich give the action and proportion, and in every stage of figure-drawing they should be accurately and clearly defined, to serve as landmarks from which the outline may be mapped out. If you were drawing a head, you would not trace a sharp outline of the hair, ears, and cheeks, without having first indicated the position of the eyes, nose, and mouth. Why then should you proceed on a different principle in drawing a figure?
There is another bad habit of drawing which has of late become too common in the schools, and which I, as visitor, have often protested against; and that is the practice of blackening the figure all over, with the intention of working out the details with breadcrumb or the eraser. It maybe that this is the most expeditious way of producing a smoothly-finished drawing, but I am sure it is not the most artistic way.
An Academy figure should be drawn on the same principle that a ship is built. If you visit a ship-builder’s yard you will see vessels in all stages of progress, but the future character and destination of each are discernible almost from the first laying down of the keel. You can tell at a glance whether the future vessel is to be a clipper yacht, a collier brig, or a barge. If you revisit the yard a month or two afterward, you will find great progress. The builder has got the planking on, but the vessels have retained their original form. In another month, perhaps, they will be found decked, caulked, coppered, and ready for launching; but they have never lost the original lines given them.
So it should be with your Academy figures. They will, of course, be less complete on the third and fourth days than on the ninth or tenth; but in no stage of their progress should they present the formless, hopeless appearance they too often do.
Let me hasten to add that this inartistic way ofdrawing (though too common here) is not universal, and that those who have chosen the better path will find the benefit of it hereafter.
I will now proceed to give you a few words of advice about figure-drawing after you have left the schools and are painting pictures of your own.
It will seldom happen that when you have to introduce a nude or semi-nude figure into your picture, you can copy the model exactly as you would in the Academy schools.Thereall you have to do is to copy what you see, but if you have to represent a Moses, a Prometheus, or an Andromeda, and your model has short legs and deformed feet, it will not do to be too literal in your copy of him.
Artists often say on these occasions that the model puts them out, and that they can get on better without nature. Of course, if they copy all the defects of their model they may, to a certain extent, be right in saying that they do better without nature; but even in this case I doubt it. Nature, though cramped and vulgarized, is better than feeble reminiscences of Michael Angelo or Carracci. An accomplished draughtsman will constantly refer to nature without servilely copying her. It is not possible that the great sculptors of antiquity found (even in Greece) such matchless specimens of humanity as the Theseus, the fighting gladiator, or the Milo Venus. It is still more incredible that they evolved these perfect forms out oftheir inner consciousness. No; they idealized and improved what they found, not so much by taking the head of one model and putting it on the shoulders of another, adding the arms of a third, as by the much more subtle process of keen and artistic observation of various types of beauty.
To descend from the time of Phidias to our own days, you must (if you wish to excel) pursue the same method. Do not copy all the defects of your model, but, on the other hand, do not fancy you can draw without a constant reference to nature. It is far from my intention to deprecate the study of anatomy, and particularly that kind of artistic anatomy which our Professor so ably teaches, but I am sure he would agree with me in saying that anatomyalonewould only enable you to build up a coldly correct form of the human figure without either beauty or individuality.
Anatomy, and, I may add, academic studies generally, must be looked upon as the grammar of figure-painting, and we all know that however necessary it may be for a writer to be grammatical, grammar alone will not give him an elegant or even a clear style.
So it is in drawing and painting. The knowledge of anatomy and drawing which you acquire here is not the end of art, but only the beginning.
It would be out of place in this lecture to give you rules of proportion for the human figure. Theserules you can learn (if you care about learning them) elsewhere, but it may be well for me to give you a few hints as to when and where it is right to depart from them. First, as to the size of the head. You probably all know that the head measures from one seventh to one eighth of the height of the figure. Seven and a half heads to the figure is a good average proportion. If, however, you have to draw figures of heroic size, you will have to make the head barely one eighth, and the larger the size of your figures the smaller ought to be the relative size of the head. Michael Angelo exceeded even these limits, and some of his imitators, who have always copied his defects rather than his good qualities, have caricatured him by giving their figures a height of ten or eleven heads. There is a point beyond which the sublime becomes the ridiculous.
Whilst on this subject, I would observe that these proportions can only be depended on when the head is neither inclined up nor down. An upturned head measured from the chin to the top of the head is always much shorter than one whose facial angle is vertical, and a head inclined downward and measured in the same way is considerably longer.
In colossal figures, the hands and feet should be in proportion to the head, and therefore rather small for the body and limbs.
It is generally advisable to make the leg, from the patella downward, somewhat longer than it is in nature. Length of leg gives style and elegance to a figure.
In many of the antique statues (the Apollo and the Venus de Medici, for instance) this method of improving nature seems carried to excess, and I should recommend a middle path between the extreme length of the antique tibiæ and the short Dachshund-like legs of our models.
It must be remembered, that if you preserve the centre of the figure where it ought to be, you can only lengthen the tibia at the expense of the femur; and although a great length from the knee to the instep may be desirable, yet a very short thigh is certainly not an element of beauty. In short, and even in medium-sized models, the middle of the figure is generally too low, so that you may increase the length of the leg without at all diminishing the proportions of the thigh. It is a curious fact, that sitting and especially kneeling figures by the side of standing ones always appear small if represented of their exact relative size. I have always found this to be the case, and have invariably had to increase the dimensions of my kneeling figures, although by so doing I knew I was violating strict truth. As another instance of a case where a departure from perfect accuracy is necessary, I may mention the drawing of foreshortened arms and legs, particularlywhen they are only slightly foreshortened. Unless the outline and muscular development are kept rather fuller than it is in nature, the limbs will look withered and poor.
Style in drawing is not synonymous with correctness. There can be no true style without a certain amount of correctness, but, on the other hand, a drawing may be very correct and yet deficient in style. Photographs are a good illustration of the distinction.
No one will dispute the general accuracy of photography, and yet how few photographs possess the element of style!
A fine style of drawing may be defined as the delineation of beautiful forms in a masterly and simple manner. It must be founded on nature, but purified and refined by the continual study of the antique.
The execution should not be timid and labored, and on the other hand it should not obtrude itself by its dexterity. Michael Angelo and Raffaele are generally accepted as the great masters of style in drawing, and it is very noticeable how simple and unobtrusive their execution is.
Michael Angelo’s departure from natural proportions, and his often forced attitudes, give great offence to many modern artists, particularly to the mediævalists; and instead of recognizing in him (as Sir Joshua did) the great master (par excellence) ofstyle in drawing, they strongly object to his peculiarities. For myself, I cannot say that I worship him to the extent that Sir Joshua did; but when I recollect the timid and meagre drawing of the Florentine and Umbrian schools of the period, and compare these poor forms with Michael Angelo’s “Creation of Adam and Eve†in the panels of the Sistine Chapel, I must acknowledge that his great reputation as a draughtsman and designer is fully deserved.
Sir J. Reynolds, in his discourses, with which most of you are familiar, has entered very fully into the question of style, or of what used in his day to be called the great style or the grand style.
I am not going to inflict on you many quotations from the celebrated discourses, but there is one sentence which I shall quote, as it will serve as a text on which to graft my own remarks on the subject of style. The passage is this:
“The whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists in being able to get above all singular forms, local customs, particularities, and details of every kind.â€
It appears to me that Sir Joshua ought to have added at the end of his condemnation of “singular forms, particularities, and details of every kind,†the words, “when they are mean or trivial.†Forms may be full of character, and even beautiful, though singular. Many of the antique fawns’ heads, though singular enough, have the elements of style in them.Raffaelle’s cripple at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple is singular to the verge of grotesqueness, but he in no way detracts from the grand style of the cartoon. Many other examples of singular forms might be given from the works of acknowledged masters of style.
Then, again, if by “details†ugly details are meant, I quite agree with Sir Joshua in thinking them incompatible with a grand style, but it is detail which gives individuality to a figure; and in the fighting gladiator, the dancing fawn, and indeed in all the masterpieces of antiquity, the detail is most elaborate.
Neglect of detail is the besetting sin of those painters who aim at the grand style. They fail to see that the same process of selection may be applied to the detail, as well as to the general proportions of the figure.
In a portrait you must of course copy your sitter. You must take him as you do a wife, for better, for worse. He may have a cast in his eye or a conspicuous pimple on his nose, which, of course, as a faithful portraitist you are bound to reproduce. You are under no such obligation if you are painting an ideal head from the same individual. You may omit the pimple, and make him look straight. But your same sitter may have finely-formed furrows across his brow, or delicate expressive wrinkles extending from the corners of his eyes. Are you, inpainting an ideal head, to neglect these landmarks of age and wisdom? I say, by no means, neither in painting nor sculpture.
The word “ideal,†from a misconception of its meaning, has come to be almost a term of reproach, and at a recent lecture at the Royal Institution some ridiculous parody of Canova was nick-named “Ideal,†and contrasted unfavorably with a masterly portrait bust by Donatello.
This is about as fair as if I, holding a brief on the other side, were to produce the Theseus as a specimen of the ideal, and Madame Tussaud’s effigy of the Claimant, of the realistic.
The “ideal,†or what Sir Joshua calls the grand style, means a generalization of beautiful forms, but it has nothing to do with neglect of detail, except when such detail is trivial, ugly, or superfluous.
It must also be remembered that detail does not mean furrows, wrinkles, and veins alone; it means also minute correctness in rendering of form.
The outward contour of any portion of the human form is never perfectly spherical, nor perfectly elliptic, nor perfectly straight, and it is the delicate perception and artistic execution of form which constitutes beauty.
Take the original of “The Laocoon,†and a common fourth-rate garden cast of the statue which has stood half-a-dozen English winters, and has had the benefit of several good coats of paint. In this castall the beautiful passages of the original have disappeared, and the neglecters of detail get what they think so desirable, namely, a general want of precision and individuality. Michael Angelo himself, who is Sir Joshua’s high-priest of the grand style, gives plenty of detail whenever his work is not meant to be seen at a distance. In his “Moses†and other statues even the veins are carefully studied.
It is the custom, in this as in most other academies, for the student to begin with the Antique, and finish with the Life. The object of this is of course to avoid multiplying difficulties at first, and to accustom him to draw from an inanimate object before he proceeds to copy one that is always more or less moving.
I should, however, very much wish that those who are ambitious of following the highest walk of art would supplement their life studies by a return to the antique.
They would then perceive beauties which they little dreamt of during their apprenticeship. They would acquire a fine taste for form, and would learn to generalize the knowledge they had acquired in the life schools.
I would make this class of students the highest in the Academy, so that no one should feel that by returning to the antique he was being subjected to degradation. In this last stage of the student’s education,artistic studies from the antique should be made, and not what are called finished drawings, such as are at present executed to compete for prizes. The character and beauty of the antique should be given rapidly, and by simple means.
Before proceeding to speak of the difficult problem of drawing objects in motion, I should wish to impress on your minds the importance of being able to draw tolerably from memory.
All drawing is, strictly speaking, an effort of memory. You cannot look at your model and trace lines on your paper at one and the same time; there must be an interval of a second or two, and all that you have to do to acquire facility in drawing from memory, is gradually to prolong this interval.
If you visit a large forge, you are sure to see men in violent action, either working the rolling-mill, or forging large masses of iron under the Nasmyth hammer. You may be certain that their action is perfectly natural, and that it is not only natural but most appropriate to the work they are about. Men who have been rolling boiler-plate for years are sure to set about their work in the most practical way. Sketching on these occasions is impossible, except, perhaps, to a newspaper correspondent, but there is nothing to prevent your watching the action of these men intently.
You will notice the various positions the body arms, and legs assume to accomplish various tasks;how each action is fitted to the work. You will endeavor to draw from memory what you have noticed. Your drawings will doubtless be very imperfect, but they will be infinitely better than what you could have produced before taking stock of what you saw at the forge.
In London you may not have opportunities of seeing much in the way of action that is worth drawing, but even in London people skate, play lawn tennis, and other games which give rise to action, and in the country there is always plenty to observe if you keep your weather eye open.
Every one cannot become a Horace Vernet, but I think that any fairly good draughtsman may, after examining an object carefully, learn to reproduce it two or three hours later when he reaches home; and this kind of power (though never cultivated in academic schools) is one which every young artist ought to endeavor to acquire. Very young children (unless they are asleep) cannot be studied in the deliberate manner in which a professional grown-up model is studied. Wild animals, again, are difficult things to draw, because they cannot be depended upon to retain the same position for any length of time.
It is in these cases that an artist who has exercised his memory has an enormous advantage over one who is merely a good academic draughtsman.
I will now turn to the question of how to representobjects which are meant to appear in motion, as a man walking, running, or striking, a horse galloping, etc. I do not intend to investigate the laws of motion, nor to point out the muscles which are brought into action by violent movement, but simply to analyze the appearance to our sense of vision of these various actions.
In drawing inanimate objects which are at rest, that which is apparent to the eye really exists, and therefore by drawing what you see, you will be mathematically correct; but even this apparent truism does not hold good in every case.
For example, take the usual pictorial method of representing a star, which, although astronomically incorrect, gives the impression a bright star produces on our organs of sight, and is therefore the proper method. Seen through a telescope the planets become round disks, and the brightest fixed stars mere points, and there can be no doubt of the non-existence of any radiation; and yet theappearanceof it is so constant that the terms “star-shaped,†“star-fish,†etc., are always used to designate objects of this form; and it is quite consistent with the soundest principles of art to represent whatappearsto be, rather than whatis.
When we come to consider moving objects, we find plenty of contradiction between what appears to be and what is. There are many moving objects which present no difficulty. Driving clouds or aship in full sail are easily drawn, because, although moving rapidly through the air, their form varies very little as they proceed, and their apparent form is in no way different from their true form. Even the ever-heaving waves of the open sea, though by no means easy to draw correctly, offer no discrepancy between what you see and whatis.
The big Atlantic rollers, and particularly the short, steep, irregular waves one sometimes meets with in the Channel, are awkward things to draw, especially to a sea-sick artist; but, at any rate, unless he is very far gone, he sees nothing which does not really exist, and no effect of wind on the waves is so rapid that he cannot see it.
The case, however, is widely different if you have to represent a rotating wheel. The spokes of the wheel are there, but it is impossible to see them. All you will be able to make out is a kind of flickering radiation, with perhaps some faint traces of concentric circles caused by mud spots or other marks on the spokes.
Even when the wheel turns very slowly the spokes become blurred and confused, and when it revolves briskly they are lost sight of altogether.
This is an extreme case, in which nothing in the way of spokes is distinguishable, and therefore nothing can be done; but when we see a man running or a horse galloping wedodistinguish the legs both of man and horse. We get a decided impressionboth of form and action, and it is our business as artists to convey that impression on paper or canvas. It isnotour business to draw man or horse in positions which may be true, but which are contrary to our own impressions. That there are plenty of such positions I hope to prove by means of these diagrams.
We have here two men walking, one of whom has his left leg forward and the other his right leg.