Eggs.Eggs. White against White.
Objects Visible by Light and Shadow.—If you will put a white egg on a piece of white paper, with another white paper back of it, you will see that it is only because the egg obstructs the light, the side of it towards the light preventing the light rays from touching the other side, and so casting a shadow on itself and on the paper, that the egg is visible. You will also see, if you manipulate theegg, that according as the light is concentrated or diffused, or according to the sharpness of the shadow and light, is the egg more or less distinct.
Contrast.—Apply these facts to other objects, and you will see how important the principle of contrast is to the representation of nature. Not only contrast of light and shade, but contrast of color. And you should make a study, both by setting up groups of objects in different lights, and by studying effects of lights wherever you are, of the possibilities and combinations of light and shadow.
Constant Observation.—The painter is constantly studying with his eyes. It is not necessary always to have the brush in your hand in order to be always studying. Keep your brain active in making observations and considering the relations in nature around you. The amount of material you can store up in this way is immense, to say nothing of the training it gives you in the use of your eyes, and in the practice of selection of motives for work. Schemes of color or composition are not usually deliberately invented within the painter's brain. They are in most cases the result of some suggestion from a chance effect noticed and remembered or jotted down, and afterwards worked out. Nature is the great suggester. It is the artist's business to catch the suggestion and make it his own. For nature seldom works outher own suggestions. The effect as nature gives it is either not complete, or is so evanescent as to be uncopyable. But the habit of constant receptivity on the part of the artist makes nature an infinite mine of possibilities to him.
The Canal.The Canal.Burleigh Parkhurst.Effect of diffused out-door light to be compared with effect of studio light in "Bohemian Woman," and artificial light in "Woman Sewing by Lamplight."
Perception.—Only by continually observing and judging of contrasts and relations can the eye be trained to perceive subtle distinctions; yet it must be so trained, for all good work is dependent on these distinctions.
Effects of Light.—It is important to study the different qualities of light. Take, for instance, the difference of character on a sunny day and on a gray day. On the former, fine distinctions of color are less pronounced; they are lost in the contrasts of sunlight and shadow. On a gray day the light is diffused; contrast is less, but the finer distinctions are more marked. For the study of the subtleties of color choose a gray day.
So, too, is the difference marked between the general light of out-doors and the more concentrated light of the house. The pitch is different. Outside, even in a dark day, the general character of light is clearer, more full, than in-doors.
There is nothing possible under the open sky like the strong contrasts you get from a single window in an otherwise unlighted room.
Compare, for instance, the character of the light and shade as shown in the illustrations on pages156and159. The one is the diffused, out-of-door light, the other that from a studio window. The character of the subject has nothing to do with this quality. The head would have less of sharpness and contrast in the open air, and more reflected light.
Other differences to be studied as to quality of the light in the manner of its contrast, and also for its color quality, are to be seen in moonlight or nightlight as compared with daylight. Artificiallight, such as lamp- and candle-light, gives marked effects also, which may be compared with daylight both as it is out-of-doors and in its more concentrated effects in the studio. Compare the picture of the "Woman Sewing by Lamplight," by Millet, with the "Canal" and the "Bohemian Woman" given above. The effects of gas and electric light also should be studied. Their characteristics both of contrast and, particularly, of color are worth your attention as a student, inasmuch as the essence of some pictures lies in these qualities.
Another matter of great importance to the student, and one which the same three illustrations just referred to may serve to show, is the effect on objects of the position of the point of entrance of the light with reference to them and to the observer. The simplest light is the side-light from a single window. This gives broad, sharp masses of light and shade, and makes the study of drawing and painting more simple. With the observer in the same relative position to the subject, as the light swings round towards a point back of him the contrasts become less, the relations more subtle and difficult of recognition, and naturally the study of them more difficult. In this position of light the values become "close." To make the object seen at all, it is necessary that the finest distinctions shall be observed.
Bohemian Woman.Bohemian Woman.Frans Hals.Effect of contrast of light and shade in studio to be compared with diffused light of open air in the "Canal," and artificial light in "Woman Sewing by Lamplight."
Sewing by Lamplight.Sewing by Lamplight.Millet.Effect of artificial light contrast to be compared with natural light in illustrations of "Canal" and "Bohemian Woman."
Descent from the Cross.Descent from the Cross.
Portrait painters have always been fond of a top light, which gives a direct concentrated light descending on the sitter, very similar in character to the side-light, but more favorable to the expression and drawing of the face.
Cross Lights.—The most confusing and difficult of study and representation are the "cross lights." If there are several windows or other points for the admission of light, and the sitter or object painted is between them, the light comes from all sides, so that the rays cross each other and there is no single scheme of light and shade. The rays from one side modify the shadows cast from the other side, and a perplexing and involved arrangement of values is the result. This is a favorite technical problem with painters, and its solution is splendid training; but the student who can successfully solve it is not far from the end of his "student days."
Importance.—Composition is of the utmost importance. It is impossible that a picture should be good without it. You may define it as that study by means of which the balance of the picture comes about. But you must understand the word balance in its broadest sense. There is nothing in the planning of the picture which has not to be considered in making the picture balance.
The arrangement of the lines, of the forms, of the masses, and of the colors must all be right if the composition be right. Composition is the planning of the picture; and it is more or less complicated, more or less to be carefully studied beforehand in exact accordance with the simplicity or complication of the scheme of the picture. You may not need more than the consideration of a few main facts. It may almost be done by a few moments' deliberation in some simple studies or even pictures. But even then there is possible the most subtle discrimination of selection, and a perfect gem of composition may be found in thearrangement of a picture having the simplest and fewest elements. The more complicated the materials which are to be worked into a picture, the more careful must be the previous planning; but, for all that, the genius will find scope for his utmost powers in a simple figure, just because the fewer the means, the more each single thing can interfere with the balance of the whole, and the more a fine choice will tell.
The Æsthetic.—I have already mentioned briefly the æsthetic elements of a picture. I have called to your attention that back of the obvious facts of a subject and the objects in the picture, and the theme which the painter makes his picture represent; back of the technical processes and management of concrete material which make painting possible, is the æsthetic purpose of the work of art; without this it could not be a work of art at all: it would be merely a more or less exact representation of something, a mere prosaic description, the interest in which would lie wholly in thefact, and would perish whenever interest in the fact should cease. It is not thefact, nor even the able expression of the fact, which makes a work of art a thing of interest and delight centuries after the bearing of the fact has been forgotten. The perennial interest of a work of art lies in the way in which the artist has used his ostensible theme, and all the facts and objectsappertaining to it, as a part of the material with which he expresses those ideas which are purely æsthetic; which do not rest on material things. These have to do with material things only by rendering them beautiful, giving to them an interest which they themselves could not otherwise have.
Theory.—Does this sound unpractical? Well, it is unpractical. Does it seem mere theory? It is theory. I want to impress it on you that it is theory. For it is the theory which underlies art, and if you do not understand it, you only understand art from the outside. Consciously or unconsciously every artist works to express these purely æsthetic qualities, and to a greater or less extent he expresses himself through them.
Art for Art's Sake.—This is the real meaning of the much-debated phrase, "Art for art's sake." The mistake which leads to the misconception and most of the discussion about it, is in confounding "art for art's sake" with "technique for technique's sake," which is a very different thing. Certainly every painter will work to attain the most perfect technique he is capable of. But not for the sake of the technique, but for what it will do. The better the technique the better the control of all the means to expression. If you take technique to mean only the understanding and knowledge of all the manipulations of art, technique isonly a means, and it is so that I mean it to be understood here. If you broaden its meaning to include all thementalconceptions and means, that is another thing, and one likely to lead to confusion of idea. So I use the word technique in its strictest sense.
The Æsthetic Elements.—What, then, are these æsthetic qualities I have spoken of? Will you consider the quality of "line"? Notaline, but line as an element, excluding all the possible things which may be done with lines in different relations to themselves and to other elements. Now will you consider also the other elements, "mass" and "color"? Do you see that here are three terms which suggest possibilities of combination of infinite scope? and they are purely intellectual. What may be done with them may be done, primarily, without taking into consideration the representation of any material fact whatsoever. Take as the type, conventional ornament. You can make the most exquisite combinations, in which the only interest and charm lies in the fact of those combinations in line and mass and color.
Take architecture. Quite aside from the use of the building is the æsthetic resultant from combinations of line and mass and color.
And so in the picture the question ofart, the question of æsthetic entity, lies in the intellectual qualities of combinations of line and mass andcolor which permeate through and through the technical and material structure that you call the picture, and give it whatever universal and permanent value it has, and which make it immortal, if immortal it ever can be.
Composition.—The bearing of all this on composition should be obvious, for composition is the technique of combination. In the composition of a picture all the elements come into play. It is in composition that the management of the abstract results in the concrete.
Let us look at it from a more practical side. Frankly, there are qualities, which you always look for in a picture,—good drawing, of course, and good color. But there are such things as these: Harmony, Balance, Rhythm, Grace, Impressiveness, Force, Dignity. Where do they come from? Must not every good picture have them, or some of them, to some extent? How are you going to get them? If you have fifteen or twenty square feet or square yards of surface, you will not get them onto it by unaided inspiration. Inspiration is, like any other intellectual quality, quite logical, only it acts more quickly and takes longer steps between conclusions perhaps. You will get these qualities onto your canvas only by so arranging all the objects which make up the body of your picture that these qualities shall be the result. It is arrangement then.
Arrangement.—Butarrangementof what? how? The objects. But on some principle back of them. Consider another set of qualities: proportion, i.e., relative size; arrangement, relative position; contrast; accent,—these are what you manipulate your objects with, and your objects themselves are only line and mass and color in the concrete. Objects, figures, bric-a-brac, draperies, houses and trees, skies and mountains, and every and any other natural fact, you may consider as so many bits of form and color with which you may work out a scheme on canvas; and how you do it is to consider them as pawns in your game of æsthetics.
With these as materials, what you really do is to combine mass and line and color by means of proportion, arrangement, contrast, and accent, that a beautiful entity of harmony, balance, rhythm, grace, dignity, and force may result. And this is composition.
No Rules.—Naturally in dealing with a thing like this, which is the very essence of art, rules are of very little use. Ability in composition may be acquired when it is not natural, but it calls for a continuous training of the sense of proportion and arrangement, just as the development of any other ability calls for training.
The best thing that you can do is to study good examples and try to appreciate, not only their beauty, but how and why they are beautiful. Cultivateyour taste in that direction; and with the taste to like good and dislike bad composition will come the feeling which tells you when it is good and when it is bad, and this feeling you can apply to your own work, and by experiment you will gain knowledge and skill.
Rules are not possible simply because they are limitations, and the true composer will always overstep a limitation of that kind, and with a successful result.
Principles of composition, too, must be variously adapted, according to the kind of picture you have in hand. The principles are the same, of course; but as the materials differ in a figure painting and a landscape, for instance, you must apply them to meet that difference.
Suggestions.—The first suggestion that might be made as a help to the study of composition is to consider your picture as a whole always. No matter how many figures, no matter how many groups, they must all be considered as parts of awhole, which must have no effect of being too much broken up.
If the figures are scattered, they must be scattered in such a way that they suggest a logical connection between them as individuals in each group, and groups in a whole. There should usually be a main mass, and the others subsidiary masses. There should be a centre of interest ofsome sort, whether it be a color, a mass, or a thing; and this centre should be the point to which all the other parts balance.
Simplicityis a good word to have in mind. However complicated the composition may seem superficially, you may treat it simply. You will control it by not considering any part as of any importance in itself, but only as it helps the whole; and you may strengthen or weaken that part as you need to. Don't cut the thing up too much. Let a half a dozen objects count as one in the whole. Mass things, simplify the masses, and make the elements of the masses hold as only parts of those masses.
Study placingof things in different sizes relative to the size of the canvas. Make sketches which take no note of anything but the largest masses or the most important lines, and change them about till they seem right; then break them up in the same way into their details. Apply thestepssuggested for drawing to the study of composition, searching for balance chiefly, or for some other quality which is proper to composition.
Line.—Each of the main elements of composition can be used as a problem of arrangement. You can studycompositionin line, in mass, or in color.
"The Golden Stairs," by Burne-Jones, is almost purely an arrangement inline, and beautifully illustratesthe use of this element as the main æsthetic motive in a picture.
The Golden Stairs.
Compare this composition in line with the "Descent from the Cross," in which thelineis equally marked, but more complicated, and used in connection withmassto a much greater extent, and involved with interrelations of chiaroscuro and color. Consider the effect which each picturederives as a whole from this management of these elements. The one emphasizing that of line, with the resultant of rhythm and grace; the other balancing the elements, and so gaining power and impressiveness.
The Sower.The Sower.Millet.To show arrangement in mass and line, in which the mass gives weight and dignity without weakening the emphasis of rhythm in the line.
Often the whole composition should be a balancing of the elements, as in this case. But the emphasizing of one element will always emphasize the characteristics to which those elements tend as the main characteristic of the picture.
Grace, rhythm, movement, come most naturally from arrangement chiefly inline. Ifmasscomes into the picture, the masses may be arranged to help theline, or to modify it. In "The Sower" the management of mass is such as to give great dignity, and almost solemnity, to the picture, yet not to take away from the rhythmic swing and action of the figure which comes from line, but even to emphasize it. Compare this in these respects with the lighter grace of "The Golden Stairs" and the less unified movement, but greater activity, of the "Descent from the Cross."
Of course masses will come into the picture; but either the masses themselves can be arranged into line, or there can be emphasis given to lines which break up or modify the masses, so that the character of the picture is governed by them.
Mass.—In the arrangement of mass, light and shade and color are effective. Smaller groups maybe made into a larger one, and individual objects also brought together, by grouping them in light or in shade, or by giving them a common color.
Return to the Farm.Return to the Farm.Millet.To show the effect of mass in giving qualities of "scale" and "the statuesque."
Weight, dignity, the statuesque, scale, are characteristics ofmass. Line in this connection only takes from the brusqueness that mass alone would have, or helps to break up any tendency to monotony. The "Return to the Farm," by Millet, shows this combination, the reverse of "TheSower." In this, thelineis used to enrich the repose and weight, the statuesque of themass. In the other, themassgives dignity and impressiveness to the grace and rhythm of theline.
The color scheme of course will have an equal effect in the emphasizing or modifying of the motive of line or mass. Color will not only have an effect on it, but must be in sympathy with it, or the balance will be lost.
Color.—This is mainly where composition in color will come in. Light and shade or chiaroscuro, as I explained in the last chapter, are necessarily intimately connected with composition here. And you never work in color or mass without working in light and shade also. Of color itself I shall speak in the next chapter. It is only necessary to point out the fact of connection here. Of course in painting, all the elements are most closely related. Although it is necessary to speak of them separately in the actual working out, you keep them all in mind together, and so make them continually help and modify each other.
A Principle.—There is a well-established principle in architecture, that you must never try to emphasize two proportions in one structure. A hall may be long and narrow, but not both long and wide; in which case the proportions would neutralize each other—you would have a simple square, characterless. You may emphasize heightor breadth—not both, or you get the same negative character.
So you may apply this principle more or less exactly to the composition of a picture. Don't try to express too many things in one picture, or if you do, let some one be the main thing, and all the rest be subordinate to it. There is perhaps no law more rigid than the one which denies success to any attempt to scatter force, effect, and purpose. One main idea in each picture, and everything subordinated to lend itself to the strengthening of that.
To a certain extent this will apply to line and mass, though not absolutely. As a rule, line or mass, one or the other, must be the main element.
Leverage.—I have often thought that much insight into the principles of balance of masses, and of mass and line, could be gained by thinking of it analogously to equilibrium in leverage. A small mass, or a simple line or accent, may be made to balance a very much greater mass. The greater part of a canvas may be one mass, and be balanced by quite a small spot. But leverage must come in to help. Somewhere in the picture will be the point of support, the fulcrum. And the large mass and the small one will have an obvious relation with reference to that point. Or the element of apparent density will come in. The large mass will be the least dense, the smallone the most dense, and the equilibrium is established. For composition is but the equilibrium of the picture, and equilibrium the picture must have.
There are many rules as to placing of mass and arrangement of line, but they are all more or less arbitrary and limiting in influence. Individuality must and will ignore such rules, just because composition deals chiefly with the abstract qualities rules will not help. A fine feeling or perception of what is right is the only law, and the trained eye is the only measure. As in values, so in composition you must study relations in nature, and results in the work of the masters, to train your eye to see; and you must sketch and block in all sorts of combinations with your own hand, to give you practical experience.
Scale.—One point of great importance should be noticed. That is the effect on the observer of the size of any main mass or object with reference to the size of the canvas. This is analogous to what is calledscalein architecture.
If the mass or object is justly proportioned to the whole surface of the canvas, and is treated in accordance with it, it will impose its own scale on all other objects. You can make a figure impress the observer as being life size, although it may really be only a few inches long. A house or castle coming into the picture may be made togive its scale to the surroundings, and make them seem small instead of itself seeming merely an object in a picture. This will be due to theplacingof it on the canvas, largely, and more in this than in anything else. The manner of painting will also lend importantly to it; for an object to appear big must not be drawn nor painted in a little manner.
The placing of objects of a known size near, to give scale, is a useless expedient in such a case. At times it may be successful, often of use; but if the scale of the main object is false, the other object of known size, instead of giving size to the main one, as it is intended to do, will be itself dwarfed by it.
Placing.—This matter of placing is one which you should constantly practise. Make it a regular study when you are sketching from nature. Try to concentrate in your sketches so as to help your study of composition. In making a sketch, look for one main effect, and often have that effect the importance of some object, studying to give itscaleby the placing and the treatment of it, and its relation to the things surrounding it in nature and on the canvas. In this way you will be studying composition in a most practical way.
Still Life.—For practical study of composition, the most useful materials you can have are to be found in still life. Nowhere can you have so greatfreedom of arrangement in the concrete. You can take as many actual objects as you please, and place them in all sorts of relations to each other, studying their effect as to grouping; and so study most tangibly the principles as well as the practice of bringing together line and mass and color as elements, through the means of actual objects. This you should constantly do, till composition is no more an abstract thing, but a practical study in which you may work out freely and visibly intellectual æsthetic ideas almost unconsciously, and train your eye to see instinctively the possibilities of all sorts of compositions, and to correct the falsities of accidental combinations.
Don't Attempt too much.—Don't be too ambitious. Begin with simple arrangements, and add to them, studying the structure of each new combination and grouping. When you are going to paint, remember that too much of an undertaking will not give you any more beauty in the picture, and may lead to discouragement.
In the Chapter on "Still Life" I will explain more practically the means you may take, and how you may take them, to the end of making composition a practical study to you.
The subject of color naturally divides, for the painter, into two branches,—color as aquality, and color asmaterial. Considered in the former class, it divides into an abstract a theoretical and a scientific subject; considered in the latter, it is a material and technical one. The material and technical side has been treated of in the Chapter on "Pigments." In this chapter we will have to do with color considered as an æsthetic element.
The Abstract.—The quality ofcoloris the third of the great elements or qualities, through the management of which the painter works æsthetically.
Just as he uses all the material elements of his picture as the means of making concrete and visible those combinations of line and mass which go to the making of the æsthetic structure, so he uses these in the expression of the ideal in combinations of color. In this relation nothing stands to him for what it is, but for what it may be made to do for the color-scheme of his picture. If he wants a certain red in a certain place, he wants it because it is red, and it makes little difference tohim,thinking in color, whether that red note is actually made by a file of red-coated soldiers, by a scarlet ribbon, or by a lobster. The scarlet spot is what he is thinking of, and what object most naturally and rightly gives it to him is a matter to be decided by the demands of the subject of the picture; and its fitness as to that is the only thing which has any influence beyond the main fact that red color is needed at that point. If he were a designer of conventional ornament, the color problem would be the same. At that point a spot of red would be needed, and a spot of paint would do it. The painter thinks in color the same way, but he expresses himself in different materials.
The Ideal.—This is the reason that a still-life painting is as interesting to a painter as a subject which to another finds its great interest in the telling of a story. To the painter the story, or the objects which tell it, are of minor importance. That the picture is beautiful in color is what moves him. As composition and color the thing is an admirable piece of æsthetic thinking and æsthetic expression, and so gives him a purely æsthetic delight; and the technical process is secondary with him, interesting only because he is a technician. The representation of the objects incidental to the subject is as incidental to his interest, as it is to the picture considered as an æsthetic thought.
This is what the layman finds it so impossible to take into his mental consciousness. And it is probable that many painters do not so distinguish their artistic point of view from their human point of view. But consciously or unconsciously the painter does think in these terms of color, line, and mass when he is working out his picture; and whether he admits it to himself or not, these characteristics are the great influencing facts in his judgment of pictures, as well as in the growth and permanency of his own fame. That is why a great popular reputation dies so rapidly in many instances. The æsthetic qualities of the man's work are the only ones which can insure a permanent reputation for that work; for the art of painting is fundamentally æsthetic, and nothing external to that can give it an artistic value. Without that its popularity and fame are only matters of accidental coincidence with popular taste.
If a painter is really great in the power of conception and of expression of any of the great æsthetic elements, his work will be permanently great. It will be acknowledged to be so by the consensus of the world's opinion in the long run; nothing else can make it so, and nothing but obliteration can prevent it.
I am explicit in stating these ideas, not because I expect that you will learn from this book to be a great master of the æsthetic, but because I amassured that you can never be a painter unless you understand a painter's true problems. You must be able to know a good picture in order to make a good picture, and however little you try for, your work will be the better for having a painter's way of looking at a painter's work. The technical problems are the control of the materials of expression. The painter must have that control. The student's business is to attain that control, and then he has the means to convey his ideas. But those ideas, if he be a true painter, are not ideas of history or of fiction, but ideas of line and mass and color, and of their combinations.
The Color Sense.—Therefore color is a thing to be striven for for its own sake. Good color is a value in itself. You may not have the genius to be a good colorist, but you need not be a bad one; for the color sense can be definitely acquired. I will not say that color initiative can always be acquired; but the power to perceive and to judge good color can be, and it will go far towards the making of a good painter, even of a great one.
I knew one painter who came near to greatness, and near to greatness as a colorist, who in twelve years trained his eye and feeling from a very inferior perception of color to the power which, as I say, came near to greatness. He was an able painter and a well-trained one before that; but in this direction he was deficient, and he deliberatelyset about it to educate that side of himself, with the result I have stated. How did he do it? Simply by recognizing where he needed training, and working constantly from nature to perceive fine distinctions of tone; and by careful and severe self-criticism. Summer after summer he went out-doors and worked with colors and canvas to study out certain problems. Every year he set himself mainly one problem to solve. This year it might be luminosity; next it might be the domination of a certain color; another year the just discrimination of tones—and he became a most exquisite colorist.
So, as I knew his work before and after this self-training, and as I know personally of the means he took to attain his purpose, I think I can speak positively of the fact that such development of the color sense is possible.
Taste.—It is well to remember that taste in color is not dependent on personal judgment alone; that what is good and what is bad in color does not rest on mere opinion. That a good colorist's idea of color does not agree with your own is not a matter of mere whim or liking, in which you have quite as good a right to your opinion as he has to his. The colorist, it is true, does not produce or judge of color by rule. He works from his feeling of what is right. But there is a law back of his taste and feeling. The laws of colorharmony are definite, and have been definitely studied and definitely calculated. Color depends for its existence on waves of vibration of rays of light, just as sound is dependent on sound waves.
Color Waves.—These waves of light give sensations of color which vary with the rapidity or length of the wave, and certain combinations of wave lengths will be harmonious (beautiful), and others will not be. This is a matter of scientific fact; it is not a notion. The mathematical relations of color waves have been calculated as accurately as the relations of sound waves have been. It is possible to make combinations of mathematical figures which shall represent a series of harmonious color waves. And it is possible to measure the waves radiated from a piece of bad coloring and prove them,mathematically, to be bad color.
It is a satisfaction to the artist to know that this is so; because although he will never compose color-schemes by the aid of mathematics, it gives him solid ground to stand on, and it diminishes the assurance of the man who claims the right to assert his opinion on color because "one man's taste is as good as another's." It is also encouraging to the student to know it, because he then knows that there is a definite knowledge, and not a personal idiosyncrasy, on which he can found his attempts to cultivate this side of his artistic life.
Color Composition.—The artist's problem in colorcomposition isanalogousto that of line and mass, but is of course governed by conditions peculiar to it. The qualities which derive from line and mass are emphasized or modified by the management of color in relation to them. The painter in this direction uses the three elements together. Contrast and accent are attributes of color. Dignity and weight, as well as certain emotional qualities, such as vivacity and sombreness, may give the key to the picture in accordance with the arrangement of its color-scheme.
The mass may be simplified and strengthened, or broken up and lightened, by the color of the forms in it. By massing groups of objects in the same color, or by introducing different colors in the different forms in the same group, the mass is emphasized or weakened. So in line, the same color in repetition will carry the line through a series of otherwise isolated forms, and effect the emphasis of line. Masses can be strung into line, like beads, on a thread of color. In the great compositions of the old Venetian painters this marshalling of color groups constituted a principal element. The decorative unity of these great canvases could have been possible in no other way.
As I have said, the key of the color-scheme has a direct emotional effect, so adding to the power and dignity or the grace and lightsomeness of the composition. The analogy between color andimagination is marked. Certain temperaments instinctively express their ideals through color. To the painter color may be an all-influencing power; it is the glory of painting.
Drawing appeals to the intellect, but color speaks directly to the emotions, and conveys at a glance the idea which is re-enforced through the slower intellectual perception of the meaning of forms. In some unexplained way it expresses to the observer the temperamental mood; the joyousness, the severity or agitation which was the cause of its conception. In this strange but direct manner the color note aids the expression by line and mass of the æsthetic emotion which is the meaning of the painter's thought.
Key.—The key, then, is an important part of the picture. The very termswarmandcoldapplied to colors suggest what may be done by color arrangement. Thepitchof the picture places it, in the emotional scale.
Tone.—Tone is harmony; the perfect balance of color in all parts of the picture. Fine color always means the presence, in all the color of the picture, of all the three primaries in greater or less proportion. Leave one color out in some proportion, and you have just so much less of a balance. I do not mean that some touch may not be pure color. On the contrary, the whole picture may be built up of touches of pure color. But the balanceof color must be made then by touches of the different colors balancing each other, not only all over the picture, but in each part of it, to avoid crudity or over-proportion of any color. Generally the color scheme is dominated by some one color: which means that every touch of color on the canvas is modified to some extent by the presence of that color, keeping the whole in key. Each color retains its personal quality, but the quality of the dominant color is felt in it.
False Tone.—This is not to be attained by painting the picture regardless of color relations, and then glazing or scumbling some color all over the whole. This is the false tone of some of the older historical painters, particularly of the English school of the earlier part of this century. They "painted" the picture, and then just before exhibiting it "toned" it by glazing it all over with a large brush and some transparent pigment, generally bitumen. This did, in fact, bring the picture in tone after a fashion. But it is not a colorist's method. It is the rule of thumb method of a false technique and a vicious color sense. True tone is not something put onto the picture after it is painted. It is an inherent part of its color conception, and is worked into it while the picture is being painted, and grows to perfection with the growth of the picture. It is of the very essence of the picture. It is the dominant balance ofcolor qualities; the result of a perfect appreciation of the value of every color spot which goes to the expression of the artist's thought.
In one sense it is the same asatmospherein that the tonality of the picture is the atmosphere which pervades it. It may perhaps be best described by saying that it is that combination of color which gives to the picture the effect of every object and part in it having been seen under the same conditions of atmosphere; having been seen at the same time, with the same modification, and with the same degree and quality of light vibration. Tone iscolor valueas distinguished from value as degree of power as light and shade; and in this is the perfection of subtlety of color feeling.
Tone Painters and Colorists.—Some painters have been called "tone painters," while others have been called "colorists;" not that tone painters are not colorists, but that there is a difference. It is a difference of aim, a difference of desire. Those painters who are usually called colorists, like Titian and Rubens, are in love with the richness and power of the color gamut. They are full of the splendor of color. They paint in full key, however balanced the canvas. Each note of color tells for its full power. Their stop is the open diapason, and their harmony is the harmony of large intervals and full chords.
The tone painter deals with close intervals. He is in love with subtle harmonies. What he loves is the essence of the color quality, and not its splendor. With the closest range he can give all possible half-tones and shades and modulations of color, yet never exceed the gray note perhaps; never once go to the full extent of his palette-power.
The utmost delicacy of perception and feeling, and the most perfect command of materials and of values, are necessary to such a painter. Above all, is he the "painter's painter," for the infinite subtlety and the exquisiteness of power are his. And yet this is the thing least appreciated by the lay mind, the most difficult to encompass, and requiring the most knowledge to appreciate.
Scientific Color.—To the scientist color is simply the irritation of the nerves of the retina of the eye by the waves of light. Different wave lengths give different color sensations. It is the generally accepted theory now that there are three primary sensations; that is, that the eye is sensitive to three kinds of color, and that all other shades and varieties of color are the results of mingling or overlapping of the waves which produce those three colors, and irritating more or less the nerves sensitive to each color simultaneously. These three primary colors are now stated to be red, blue, andgreen. The older idea was that theywere red, blue, andyellow; and was based on experiments with pigments. Pigments do give these results; for a mixture of blue and yellowpigmentwill give green, and a mixture of red and greenpigmentwill not give yellow, while the reverse is the fact withlight.
White light is composed of all the colors. And the white light may be broken up (separated by refraction or the turning aside of light rays from their true course) into the colors of the rainbow, which is itself only this same decomposition of light by atmospheric refraction. Black is the absence of light, and consequently of color. This is not the case with pigment, for pure pigment has never been produced. The pigment simply reflects light rays which fall on it; that is, pigments have the power of absorbing, and so rendering invisible, certain of the rays which, combined, make up the white light which illumines them; and of transmitting others to the eye by reflection. We see, that is, our nerves of sight are irritated by, those rays which are not absorbed, but which are reflected.
All pigment is more or less absorbent of color rays, and more or less reflective of them; certain color rays being absorbed by a pigment, and certain other rays being reflected by it. The pigment is named according to those rays which it reflects. As a color-producing substance, then,the pigment is practically a mirror reflecting color rays. But a true mirror would reflect all rays unmodified. If we could paint with mirrors, each of which would reflect its own colorunsullied, we could do what the scientist does with light; but the painter deals with an imperfect mirror which gives no color rays back unsullied by rays of another class, and so our results cannot be the same as the scientist's. So that just in accordance with the degree of purity of transmitting power of a pigment will be the purity of the color which we get by its use. But absolute purity of pigment we cannot get, so we cannot deal with it as we do with light, and we deal with a practical fact rather than a scientific fact, as painters.
Primaries and Secondaries.—As all the other shades of color are produced by the combinations (over-lappings) of the waves or vibrations in the light rays from the primary colors, we have a series of colors called secondaries, because they are made up of the rays of any two of the three primaries: as purple, which is a combination of blue and red. When dealing withlightthe secondaries are: shades of violet and purple from red and blue; shades of orange red, orange, orange yellow, yellow, and yellowish green from red and green; and bluish green and greenish blue from blue and green—the character of the color being decided by the proportions of the primaries in the mixture.
These conclusions have been reached mainly through experiments in white light. The primaries so obtained do not hold good with pigment, as I have stated, but the principles do. It will avoid confusion if I speak hereafter of the combinations as they occur with pigment, it being borne in mind that it is a practical fact that we are dealing with rather than a scientific one.
In dealing withpigmentthe primaries are red, blue, andyellow, notgreen. Of course the secondaries are also changed; and we have purple and violet shades from red and blue, orange from red andyellow, and green from blue and yellow—all of which vary in shade with the proportion of the mixture of the primaries, as is the case with light.
Tertiaries.—Another class of shades or colors is calledtertiary, or third; for they are mixtures of all the three primaries, or of a primary with a secondary which does not result from mixture with that primary. Tertiaries are allgrays, and grays are practically always tertiaries. If you keep this in mind as a technical fact, it will help you in management of color. Grays are, to the painter, always combinations of color which include the three primaries. The usual idea is that gray is more or less of a negation of color. This is not so. Gray is the balancing of all color, so that any true harmony of color, however rich it may be, isalways quiet in effect as a whole; that is, grayish—good color is never garish. It is very important that the painter should understand this characteristic of color. You cannot be too familiar with the management of grays. If you try to make your grays with negative colors, you will not produce harmonious color, but negative color, and negative color is only a shirking of the true problem. Grays made of mixtures of pure colors, balancings of primaries and secondaries, that is, modifications of the tertiaries, are quite as quiet in effect and quite as beautiful as any, but they are also more luminous; they arelivecolor instead ofdeadcolor. Grays made by mixing black with everything are the reverse, and should not be used except when you use black as a color (which it is inpigment), giving a certain color quality to the gray that results from it.
Complementary Colors.—Two colors are said to be complementary to each other when they together contain the three primaries in equal strength. Green, for instance, is the complementary of red, for it contains yellow and blue; orange (yellow and red) is complementary to blue; and purple (red and blue) is complementary to yellow.
The knowledge of complements of colors is very important to the painter, for all the effects of color contrast and color harmony are due to this. Complementary colors, in mass, side by side, contrast.The greatest possible contrast is that of the complementaries.
Complementary colors mixed, or so placed that small portions of them are side by side, as in hatching or stippling, give the tertiaries or grays by the mixing of the rays.
The Law of Color Contrast.—"When two dissimilar colors are placed in contiguity, they are always modified in such a manner as to increase their dissimilarity."
Warm and Cold Colors.—Red and yellow are called warm colors, and blue is called a cold color. This is not that the color is really cold or warm, of course, but that they convey the impression of warmth and coldness. It is mainly due to association probably, for those things which are warm contain a large proportion of yellow or red, and those which are cold contain more blue. There is a predominance of cold color in winter and of the warm colors in summer.
From the primaries various degrees of warmth and coldness characterize the secondaries and tertiaries, as they contain more or less proportionately of the warm or cold primaries.
In contrasting colors these qualities have great effect.
Color Juxtaposition.—In studying the facts of color contrast and color juxtaposition you will find that two pigments, if mixed in the ordinary way,will have one effect; and the same pigments in the same proportions, mixed not by stirring them into one mass, but by laying separate spots or lines of the pigment side by side, produce quite another. The gain in brilliancy by the latter mode of mixing is great, because you have mixed thecolor rays, which are really light rays, instead of mixing thepigmentas in the usual way. You have really mixed the color by mixinglightas far as it is possible to do it with pigment. You have taken advantage of all the light reflecting power of the pigment on which the color effect depends. Each pigment, being nearly pure, reflects the rays of color peculiar to it, unaffected by the neutralizing effect of another color mixed with it; while the neutralizing power of the other color being side by side with it, the waves or vibrations of the color rays blend by overlapping as they come side by side to the eye; and so the color, made up of the two waves as they blend, is so much more vibrant and full of life.
"Yellow and Purple."—It is this principle which is the cause of the peculiarity in the technique of certain "Impressionist" painters. The "yellow lights and purple shadows" is only placing by the side of a color that color which will be most effective in forcing its note.
Brilliancy is what these men are after, and they get it by the study of the law of color contrastand color juxtaposition. The effect of complementaries in color contrast is what you must study for this, for the theory of it. For the practice of it, study carefully and faithfully the actual colors in nature, and try to see what are the real notes, what the really component colors, of any color contrast or light contrast which you see. Purple shadows and yellow light re-enforcing each other you will find to exist constantly in nature. Refine your color perception, and you will be able to get the result without the obviousness of the means which has brought down the condemnation on it. Closer study of the relations is the way to find the art of concealing art.
But yellow and purple are not the only complementaries. All through the range of color, the secondaries and tertiaries as well as the primaries, this principle of complement plays a part. There is no color effect you can use in painting which does not have to do, more or less, with the placing of the complementary color in mass, to emphasize; or mixed through to neutralize, the force of it. Train your eyes to see what the color is which makes the effect. Analyze it, see the parts in the thing, so that you may get the thing in the same way, if you would get it of the same force as in nature.
Practical Color.—All these theoretical ideas as to color have their relation to the actual handling ofpigment, which is the craft of the painter. The facts of contrasting and harmonizing color relation have a practical bearing on the painter's work, both in what he is to express and how he is to do it; as to his conception of a picture and his representation of facts. In his conception he must deal with the possibilities of effect of color on color. The power of one color to strengthen the personal hue of another, or its power to modify that hue, is a fact bearing on whether the color in the picture is the true image of the color he has seen in his mind. In the same degree must this possibility affect his representation of actual objects.
The greatest possibilities of luminosity in sunlight or atmospheric effects come from the power to produce vibration by cool contrasted with warm color. You will find that a red is not so rich in any position as when you place its complementary near it. At times you will find it impossible to get the snap and sparkle to a scarlet—cannot make it carry, cannot make it felt in your picture as you want it without placing a touch of purple, perhaps, just beside it; to place near by a darker note will not have the same effect. It is the contrast of color vibration, not the contrast of light and shade, which gives the life. And at the same time that you enhance the brilliancy of the several notes of color in the picture, you harmonize thewhole. For the mosaic of color spots all over the canvas brings about the balance of color in the composition, and harmony is the result.
Study Relations.—You must constantly study the actual relations of color in nature. You will find, if you look for it, that always, just where in art you would need a touch of the complementary for strength or for harmony, nature has put it there. She does it so subtly that only a close observer would suspect it. But the thing is there, and it is your business to be the close observer who sees it, both for your training as a colorist, and your use as an interpreter of nature's beauties. It is your business to see subtly, for nature uses colors subtly. The note sparkles in nature, but you do not notice the complementary color near it. Can you not also place the complementary color so that it is not seen, but its influence on the important color is felt? It is by searching out thesefinessesof nature that you train your eye. You must actually see these colors. At first you may only know that they must be there because the effect is there. But your eye is capable of actually recognizing them themselves, and you are no painter till it can. The theoretical knowledge is and should be a help to you, but the actual power of sight is most important. A painter may use theoretical knowledge to help his self-training, but power of eye he must have asthe result of that training. The instantaneous recognition of facts and relations, the immediate and perfect union of eye and thought, are what make that intuitive perception which is the true feeling of the artist.
Work this out with eye and palette. Study the color and its relation in nature, and study its analogy in the pigment touches on the canvas.
The Palette.—You try to attain nature's effects of light with pigment. Pigment is less pure than light. You cannot have the same scale, the same range, but you must do the best you can, and the arrangement of your palette will help you. As you have not a perfect blue, a perfect red, and a perfect yellow, you must have two colors for one. Your paints will always be more or less impurely primary. No one red will make a pure purple with blue, and an equally pure orange with yellow. Yet pure purple and pure orange you must be able to make. Have, then, both a yellowish or orange red and a bluish or purplish red on your palette. Do the same with blue and yellow. In this way you can not only get approximately pure secondaries when you need them, but the primaries themselves lean somewhat towards the secondaries, so that you can make very delicate combinations with pure colors. A bluish yellow and a yellowish blue, for instance, will make a rather positive green. By using a reddish yellow and a bluish orpurplish red, you practically bring in the red note, and make a grayer green while still using only two pigments.
So, too, you get similar control of effects by the use of opaque or transparent pigments, the transparent ones tending to richness, the opaque to dulness of color. Various processes in the manner of laying on paint bring about these different qualities, and will be spoken of in the chapter on "Processes."
Classify your pigments in your mind in accordance with these characteristics. Think of the ochres, for instance, as mainly opaque, and as yellows tending to the reddish. With any blue they make gray greens because of the latter quality, and they make gray oranges with red because of the dulness of their opacity and body. For richer greens think of the lighter chromes and cadmium yellows or citrons; and for the richer oranges, the deeper cadmiums and chromes. With reds, work the same way, scarlet or orange vermilions for one side of the scale, and the Chinese or bluish vermilion on the other side. The deeper and heavier reds fall in line the same way. Indian red is bluish, light red and Venetian red are yellowish.