Art Principles Part 27

NOTE 65. PAGE 204

Lessing apparently overlooked the possibilities of landscape painting in his dictum as to progressive actions. He writes[a]:

If painting on account of the signs and means of imitation which it employs, and which can only be combined in s.p.a.ce, must entirely renounce time, then progressive actions cannot, in so far as they are progressive, be included in the number of its subjects, but it must content itself with coexistent actions, or with mere bodies, which on account of their position cause an action to be suspected.

It is true that a series of progressive human actions cannot be included in one painting, but progressive natural actions can be so included when the progression is regular and repeated and the actions are clearly separated to the eye. Although the painter can only depict a moment of time, he can show the whole progression, which is not the case in a series of human actions, as in the example quoted by Lessing, of Pandarus arranging his bow, opening his quiver, choosing an arrow, and so on.

Strange to say, De Quincey, in an explanatory note to Lessing's observations, also overlooks the movement of water broken by rocks, though he refers specially to landscape painting. He says[b]:

In the succession of parts which make up appearance in nature, either the parts simply repeat each other (as in the case of a man walking, a river flowing, etc.), or they unfold themselves through a cycle, in which each step effaces the preceding, as in the case of a gun exploding, where the flash is swallowed up by the smoke effaced by its own dispersion.

But for the purpose of the painter, the action of water breaking over ledges and boulders does not correspond with the case of a man walking or a river flowing, because the series of events forming the progression in the case of the water breaking, cover such time and s.p.a.ce that the events can be distinctly separated by the eye. Clearly also this action should not be included in De Quincey's second category, because the repet.i.tion is both regular and (to all intents and purposes) perpetual.

There should therefore be a third category to comprise those repeated progressive acts in which the events can be so separated by the eye as to be portrayed on canvas in the order of their progression, and in such a way that the whole progression, and the meaning of it, are at once apparent.

[a] _Laoc.o.o.n_, Phillimore translation.

[b] Essay on "Lessing."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 29 (See page 329) Greek Sculpture of Ariadne (_Vatican_)]

NOTE 66. PAGE 208

Professor Clausen relates that Whistler told him that his object in painting nocturnes was to try and exhibit the "mystery and beauty of the night." It is obvious that Whistler was here confusing psychological with visual impressions. The depth of gloom, the apparently limitless dark void which the eye cannot penetrate, mean mystery in a sense, because we can never accustom ourselves to the suggestion of infinity involved in something which is boundless to the senses. A sensation of the sublime may consequently arise, and this means beauty in a psychological sense. But we are considering art and not psychology.

Where nothing is distinguished, nothing can be painted, and if there be sufficient light for objects to be determined, there can be no mystery for the painter. If he be desirous of representing Night, he must follow the example of Michelangelo and symbolize it.

It is curious that since the death of Whistler, a picture ent.i.tled Mysteries of the Night has been painted by another American artist--J.

H. Johnston. A figure of a beautiful nude woman is standing on a rocky sh.o.r.e in a contemplative att.i.tude, with the moonlight thrown upon her.

The design is excellent, but the realistic modelling of the figure effectually kills any suggestion of mystery.

NOTE 67. PAGE 231

Vasari mentions that Michelangelo, though admiring the colour and manner of t.i.tian regretted that the Venetian painters did not pay more attention to drawing in their studies.[a] In quoting this, Reynolds observed[b]:

But if general censure was given to that school from the sight of a picture by t.i.tian, how much more heavily and more justly would the censure fall on Paolo Veronese, and more especially on Tintoretto.

Reynolds himself rightly excluded t.i.tian when he condemned the later Venetian painters of the Renaissance for their exaggeration of colour, and no doubt t.i.tian was also exempted by J. A. Symonds in his trenchant criticism of the work of this school. When dealing with the decline of Lesbian poetry after the brilliant period of Sappho, he wrote[c]:

In this the Lesbian poets were not unlike the Provencal troubadours, who made a literature of love, or the Venetian painters, who based their art on the beauty of colour, the voluptuous charms of the flesh. In each case the motive of enthusiastic pa.s.sion sufficed to produce a dazzling result. But as soon as its freshness was exhausted there was nothing left for art to live on, and mere decadence to sensuality ensued.

[a] _Life of t.i.tian_.

[b] Reynolds's Fourth Discourse.

[c] _Studies of the Greek Poets_, vol. i.

NOTE 68. PAGE 232

Sir George Beaumont relates of Reynolds[a]:

On his return from his second tour over Flanders and Holland, he observed to me that the pictures of Rubens appeared much less brilliant than they had done on his former inspection. He could not for some time account for this little circ.u.mstance; but when he recollected that when he first saw them he had his notebook in his hand for the purpose of writing down short remarks, he perceived what had occasioned their now making a less impression than they had done formerly. By the eye pa.s.sing immediately from the white paper to the picture, the colours derived uncommon richness and warmth; but for want of this foil they afterwards appeared comparatively cold.

[a] Cunningham's _Lives of the British Painters_.

NOTE 69. PAGE 249

Rodin[a] observes that in giving movement to his personages, the artist

represents the transition from one pose to another--he indicates how insensibly the first glides into the second. In his work we still see a part of what was, and we discover a part of what is to be.

Rodin points to Rude's fine statue of Marshal Ney, and practically says that here the illusion is created by a series of progressive actions indicated in the att.i.tude: the legs remaining as they were when the sword was about to be drawn, and the hand still holding the scabbard away from the body, while the chest is being thrown out and the sword held aloft. Thus the sculptor

compels, so to speak, the spectator to follow the development of an act in an individual. The eyes are forced to travel upwards from the lower limbs to the raised arm, and as in so doing they find the different parts of the figure represented at successive instants, they have the illusion of beholding the movement performed.

Rodin himself has followed a similar course with much success. The ancient Greek sculptors, when representing a figure in action, invariably chose a moment of rest between two progressive steps in the action. The Discobolus and Marsyas of Myron, and particularly the Atalanta in the Louvre, are fine examples.

[a] _Art, by Auguste Rodin_, compiled by Paul Gsell, 1916.

NOTE 70. PAGE 250

Mengs, in referring to the arrangement of the drapery in Raphael's figures, says[a]:

With him every fold has its proper cause; either in its own weight or in the motion of the limbs. Sometimes the folds enable us to tell what has preceded; herein too Raphael has endeavoured to find significance. It can be seen by the position of the folds, whether an arm or a leg has been moved forwards or backwards into the att.i.tude which it actually occupies; whether a limb has been, or is being, moved from a contracted position into a straightened one, or whether it was extended at first and is being contracted.

[a] _The Works of Anton Raphael Mengs_, vol. ii., D'Azara translation.

NOTE 71. PAGE 258

Besides a.s.sisting in providing an illusion, the t.i.tle of a picture may lend great additional interest to it. Thus in Millet's The Angelus the a.s.sociations called up by the t.i.tle act most powerfully on the mind, and one almost listens for the sound of the bell.[a] A work of a similar character is Bonvin's Ave Maria, where the nuns of a convent are answering the call[b]; and Horace Walker has a picture with the same t.i.tle, in which a boy who is driving cattle, stops in front of a Crucifix by the wayside[c]. An excellent example of this added interest is the t.i.tle of Turner's great picture of the _Temeraire_,[d] as to which R. Phillimore writes[e]:

It is not difficult to imagine the picture of an old man-of-war towed by a steam tug up a river. The execution of such a subject may deserve great praise and give great satisfaction to the beholder. But add to the representation the statement that it is "The fighting Temeraire towed to her last berth, " and a series of the most stirring events of our national history fills our imagination.

[a] The Louvre.

[b] The Luxembourg.