\l lie CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 189I BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library N 76.P79 1903 Pictorial composition and the critical j 3 1924 020 489 047 Date Due N QV2 i> m n HflAY 4 '^ mi PEC 4 ^OS'fi' APRS \iiUii MAY 2 ( tn^g =mQ- Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924020489047 PICTORIAL COMPOSITION Century Magazine Light and Shade — Geo. Inness Pictorial Composition And the Critical Judgment of Pictures A HANDBOOK FOR STUDENTS AND LOITERS OF ART H?^fPOORE, A.N.A. NEW YORK: THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO. 33-37 East Seventeenth St., Union Sa North T Copyright, 1903, By The Baker & Taylor Co. Published, March, igos It is with sincere pleasure that I dedicate this book to my first teacher, Peter Moran, as an acknowledgment to the interest he inspired in this important subject Preface This book has been prepared because, although the student has been abundantly supplied with aids to decorative art, there is little, within his reach, concerning pictorial composition. I have added thereto hints on the critical judg- ment of pictures with the hope of simplifying to the many the means of knowing pictures, prompted by the recollection of the topsyturvi- ness of this question as it confronted my own mind a score of years ago. I was then apt to strain at a Corot hoping to discover in the em- ployment of some unusual color or method the secret of its worth, and to think of the old mas- ters as a diiferent order of beings from the rest of mankind. Let me trust that, to a degree at least, these pages may prove iconoclastic, shattering the images created of superstitious reverence and al- lowing, in their stead, the artist to be substituted as something quite as worthy of this same homage. The author acknowledges the courtesies of the publishers of Soribners, The Century and Mvai- sey^s magazines, D. Appleton, Manzi, Joyant & Co., and of the artists giving consent to the use of PREFACE their pictures for this book. Acknowledgment is also made to F. A. Beardsley, H. K. Freeman and L. Lord, for sketches contributed thereto. Henbt Kankin Pooke, Orange, N. J., Feb. i, 1^03. Contents Part I PICTOEIAL COMPOSITION CHAFTER FAGS I. Inteoduotoey ....... 11 II. The Scientific Sense in Pictures . 14 III. Balance 25 Balance of the Steelyard ... 38 Postulates 39 Vertical and Horizontal Balance . 41 The Natural Axis 44 Apparent or Formal Balance . . 46 Balance by Opposition of Line . . 49 Balance by Opposition of Spots . . 53 Transition of Line 55 Balance by Gradation .... 58 Balance of Principality or Isolation . 61 Balance of Curvature . ... 62 IV. Evolving the Pictdee .... 63 V. Entrance and Exit 74 Getting into the Picture .... 74 Getting out of the Picture ... 80 CONTENTS OHAFTEB FAGB VI. The Ciecular Observation of Pict- ures 84 Circular Composition .... 94: Eeconstruction for Circular Obser- vation • W2 VII. Angular Composition, the Line of Beauty and the Keotangle . 107 The Vertical Line in Angular Com- position 11<^ Angular Composition Based on the Horizontal 116 The Line of Beauty .... 123 The Eectangle 139 VIII. Equivalents 131 The Composition of One, Two, Three, and More Units . . 132 The Figure in Landscape . . .136 IX. Groups 140 X. Light and Shade 151 Principality by Emphasis, Sacrifice, and Contrast 160 Gradation 168 XI. The Place of Photography in Fine Art 177 CONTENTS Paet II THE ESTHETICS OF COMPOSITION" CdAFTEB PAGE XII. Breadth versus Detail . . . 187 Suggestiveness 193 Mystery 197 Simplicity 200 Reserve 201 Eelief 206 Finish 307 Part III THE CEITICAL JUDGMENT OF PICTURES XIII. The Man is Art 211 XIV. Speoipio Qualities and Faults . 216 XV. The Picture Sense . . . .226 XVI. Color, Haemont, Tone . . . 233 Values 242 XVII. Envelopment and Color Perspec- tive 244 XVIII. The Bias of Judgment . . .250 Illustrations FAGB Light and Shade. — Inness . . Frontispiece Fundamental Forms of Construction ... 17 Lion in the Desert.' — Gerome . . . . 31 Salute to the Wounded. — Detaille ... 31 The Connoisseurs. — Fortuny 33 Pines in Winter 33 Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt. — Glarin . . 37 Lady with Muff 38 Indian and Horse 53 The Cabaret. — L'hermitte 53 Along the Shore. — 0. Bptler .... 54 Pathless. — A. E. Hinton 54 Her Last Moorings 69 On the Thames.— G. A. Piatt .... 59 Photography Wearing the Pictorial ... 60 View Taken with a Wide Angle Lens . . 69 Three Pictures Found with the View-Metre . 70 Don'ts 83 The Path of the Surf 85 The Shepherdess 85 Circular Observation — The Principle . . 86 The Slaying of the Unpropitious Messenger . 86 Huntsman and Hounds 91 Portrait of Van der Geest. — Ruhens ... 91 ILLUSTRATIONS FAGS Marriage of Ariadne and Bacchus. — Tintoretto 92 Endymion. — Watts 93 Fight Over the Body of VatTOclus.—Weirtz . 99 1807.— Meissonier 99 Ville d'Avary.— Coroi 99 The Hermit.— G^erard Dow 100 The Forge of Vulcan. — Boucher .... 100 The Herder.-W^acgwe 108 Alone. — J. Israels Ill The Dance. — Carpeaux Ill The Crucifixion. — Aime Morot .... 112 Lady Archibald Campbell. — Whistler . . . 112 Alice.— F. M. Chase 112 Out of the Book of Truth. — Claude Lorraine . 119 The Beautiful Gate. — Raphael .... 119 Sketches from Landscapes. — Henry Banger . 120 Hogarth's Line of Beauty 124 Mother and Child. — Orchardson . . . .127 Stream in Winter.— W. E. Schofield . . .127 Eepose of the Keapers. — L'hermitte . . .128 Departure for the Chase. — Guyp .... 128 The Lovers. — Gussow 147 The (Poulterers.— WaZZam(^er 147 The Mght Waiah.—Berribrandt .... 148 Eetum of the Eoyal Hunting Party. — Isabey . 148 The View-Metre 156 Note Book Sketches from Eubens, Velasquez, Claude Lorraine and Murillo. — F. A. Beards- ley 161 ILLUSTRATIONS A Keversible Effect of Light and Shade . PAGE 163 Fundamental Forms of Chiaroscuro . 169 Fundamental Forms of Chiaroscuro . 170 The Hillside 175 Eiver Fog 175 The Chant 175 Death of Caesar. — Gerome .... 176 The Travel of the Soul.— Howard Pyle . 176 The North Eiver. — Prendergast . 203 An Intrusion. — Bull 303 Landscape Arrangement. — Guerin 303 The Madonna of the Veil. — Raphael . 304 The Last Judgment. — Michael Angela 204 Birth of Virgin Mary. — Durer . . ' . 204 The Annunciation. — Botticelli . 304 In Central Park 204 The Inn. — Teniers 204 Pictorial Composition PART I " The painter is a compound of a poet and a man of science." -HamerUm. " It is working within limite that the artist reveals himself." -Goethe. CHAPTER I INTKODUOTOEY This volume is addressed to three types of art workers ; the student of painting, the amateur pho- tographer, and the professional artist. To the latter it speaks more in the temper of the studio discussion than in the spirit didactic. But, em- boldened by the friendliness the profession al- ways exhibits toward any serious word in art, the writer is moved to believe that the matters herein discussed may be found worthy of the artist's attention — perhaps of his question. For that reason the tone here and there is argumen- tative. The question of balance has never been reduced to a theory or stated as a set of principles which Qould be sustained by anything more than ex- ample, which, as a working basis must require reconstruction with every change of subject. Other forms of construction have been sifted PICTORIAL COMPOSITION down in a search for the governing principle, — a substitution for the " rule and example." To the student and the amateur, therefore, it must be said this is not a " how-to-do " book. The number of these is legion, especially in painting, known to all students, among which the catalogue of the yellow covered shilling lit- erature is conspicuous. Such volumes are pub- lished because of the great demand and are de- manded because the student, in his haste, will not stop for principles, and think it out. He will have a rule for each case ; and when his direct question has been answered with a principle, he still inquires, " "Well, what shall I do here ? " Why preach the golden rule of harmony as an abstraction, when inharmony is the concrete sin to be destroyed. "We reach the former by elimi- nation. "Whatever commandments this book con- tains, therefore, are the shalt npts. As the problems to the maker of pictures by photography are the same as those of the painter and the especial ambition of the former's art is to be painter-like, separations have been thought unnecessary in the address of the text. It is the best wish of the author that photography, fol- lowing painting in her essential principles as she does, may prove herself a well met companion along art's highway, — seekers together, at arm's length, and in defined limits, of the same goal. The mention of artists' names has been limited, and a liberal allusion to many works avoided because to multiply them is both confusing and unnecessary. [12] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION To the art lover this book may be found of interest as containing the reasons in picture com- position, and through them an aid to critical judgment. We adapt our education from quaint and curious sources. It is the apt correlation of the arts which accounts for the acknowledgment by an English story writer that she got her style from Euskins' " Principles of Drawing " ; and of a landscape painter that to sculpture he owed his discernment of the forest secrets, by daily observing the long lines of statues in the corridor of the Koyal Academy ; or by the composer of pictures to the composer of music ; or by the preacher that suggestions to discourse had come to him through the pictorial processes of the painter. [13 1 CHAPTEE II THE SCIENTIFIC SENSE IN PICTtTEES The poet-philosopher Emerson declared that he studied geology that he might better write poetry. For a moment the two elements of the propo- sition stand aghast and defiant ; but only for a moment. The poet, who from the top looks down upon the whole horizon of things can never use the tone of authority if his gaze be a surface one. He must know things in their depth in order that the glance may be suffi- cient. The poet leaves his geology and botany, his grammar and rhetoric on the shelf when he makes his word picture. After he has expressed his thought however he may have occasion to call on the books of science, the grammar and 'rhetoric and these may very serioush/ interfere with the spontcmeous product. So do the sen- tries posted on the boundary of the painter's art protect it from the liberties taken in the name of originality. " The progressive element in our art," says the author of " The Law of Progress in "Art," " is the scientific element. . . . Artists will not be any more famous for being scientific, but they are PICTORIAL COMPOSITION compelled to become scientific because they hare embraced a profession which includes science. What I desire to enforce is the great truth that within the art of painting there exists, flourishes and advances a noble and glorious science which is essential and progressive." " Any one who can learn to write can learn to draw ; " and every one who can learn to draw should learn to compose pictures. That they do not is in evidence in the work of the many ac- complished draughtsmen who have delineated their ideas on canvas and paper from the time of the earliest masters to the present day, wherein the ability to produce the details of form is manifest in all parts of the work, but in the com- bination of those parts the first intention of their presence has lost force. Composition is the science of combination, and the art of the world has progressed as do the processes of the kindergarten. Artists first re- ceived form ; then color ; the materials, then the synthesis of the two. l^otable examples of the world's great compositions may be pointed to in the work of the Eenaissance painters, and such examples will be cited ; but the major portion of the art by which these exceptions were sur- rounded offer the same proportion of good to bad as the inverse ratio would to-day. Without turning to serious argument at this point, a superficial one, which will appeal to most art tourists, whether professional or lay, is found in the relief experienced in passing from the galleries of the old to those of the new art [^5] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION in Europe, in that one finds repose and expe- riences a relief of mental tension, discovering with the latter the balance of line, of mass and of color, and that general simplicity so necessary to harmony, which suggests that the weakness of the older art lay in the last of the three essentials of painting; form, color and composition. The low-toned harmonies of time-mellowed color we would be loath to exchange for aught else, ex- cept for that element o# disturbance so vague and so difficult of definition, namely, lack of composi- tion. In the single case of portrait composition of two figures (more difficult than of one, three or more) it is worthy of note how far beyond the older are the later masters; or in the case of the grouping of landscape elements, or in the arrangement of figures or animals in landscape, how a finer sense in such arrangement has come to art. Masterful composition of many figures however has never been surpassed in certain ex- amples of Michael Angelo, Eubens, Corregio and the great Yenetians, yet while we laud the successes of these men wp should not forget their lapses nor the errors in composition of their con- temporaries. Those readers who have been brought up in the creed and catechism of the old masters, and swallowed them whole, with no questions, I beg will lay aside traditional prejudice, and regard- ing every work with reference to neither name nor date, challenge it only with the countersign "good composition." This will require an un- [i6] [i7] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION sentimental view, which need not and should not be an unsympathetic one, but which would bare the subject of that which overzealous devotion has bestowed upon it, a compound accumulation of centuries. The most serious work yet written on com- position, Burnet's " Light and Shade," was penned at a time when the influence of old masters held undisputed sway. The thought of that day in syllogism would run as follows : The work of the Old Masters in its composition is beyond re- proach. Botticelli, Eaphael, Paul Potter, "Wou- vermans, Cuyp, Domenichino, Durer, Teniers et al., are Old Masters. Therefore, we accept their works as models of good composition, to be fol- lowed for all ages. And under such a creed a work valuable from many points of view haa been crippled by its free use of models, which in some cases compromise the arguments of the author, and in others, if used by artists of the present day, would only serve to administer a re- buke to their simple trust, in that practical man- ner known to juries, hanging committees and publishers. The slight advance made in the field of paint- ing during the past three centuries has come through this channel, and strange would it seem if the striving of this long period should show no improvement in any direction. Composition is the mortar of the wall, as drawing and color are its rocks of defence. Without it the stones are of little value, and are but separate integrals having no unity. If the [18] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION reader agrees with this, then he agrees to throw out of the category of the piotv/re all pictorial representations which show no composition. This classification eliminates most of the illus- trations of scientific work ; such illustrations as aim only at facts of incident, space or topography, photographic reproductions of groups wherein each individual is shown to be quite as important as every other, and which, therefore, become a collection of separate pictures, and such illus- trations as are frequently met with in the daily papers, where opportunities for picture-making have been diverted to show where the victim fell, and where the murderer escaped, or where the man drowned — usually designated by a star. These are not pictures, but perspective maps to locate events. Besides these, in the field of painting, are to be found now and then products of an artist's skill which, though interesting in technique and color, give little pleasure to a well-balanced mind, destitute as they are of the simple principles which govern the uni- verse of matter. Take from nature the princi- ples of balance, and you deprive it of har- mony ; take from it harmony and you have chaos. A picture may have as its component parts a man, a horse, a tree, a fence, a road and a moun- tain ; but these thrown together upon canvas do not make a picture ; and not, indeed, until they have been arranged or composed. The argument, therefore, is that without com- position, there can be no picture ; that the com- [19] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION position of pictorial units into a whole is the picture. Simple as its principles are, it is amazing, one might almost say amusing, to note how easily they eluded many artists of the earlier periods, whose work technically is valuable, and how the new school of Impressionism or Naturalism has sought to snub or tried to snub them. That all Im- pressionists do not agree with the following is evi- denced by the good that comes to us with their mark, — " Opposed to the miserable law of compo- sition, symmetry, balance, arrangement of parts, filling of space, as though Nature herself does not do that ten thousand times better in her own pretty way." The assertion that composition is a part of Nature's law, that it is done by her and well done we are glad to hear in the same breath of invective that seeks to annihilate it. When, under this curse we take from our picture, one by one the elements on which it is builded, the result we would be able to present without offence to the author of " Naturalistic Painting," Mr. Francis Bate. " The artist," says Mr. Whistler, " is born to pick, and choose, and group with science these elements, that the result may be beautiful — a& the musician gathers his notes and forms his chords until he brings forth from chaos glorious harmony. To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano. That Nature is always right is an assertion artistically, as untrue as it is one whose truth is universally taken for [20] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION granted. Nature is very rarely right to such an extent, even, that it might almost be said that Nature is usually wrong ; that is to say, the con- dition of things that shall bring about the per- fection of harmony worthy a picture is rare, and not common at all." Between the life class, with its model standing in academic pose and the pictured scene in which the model becomes a factor in the expression of an idea, there is a great gulf fixed. The precept of the ateliers is paint the figure ; if you can do that, you can paint anything. Influenced by this half truth many a student, with years of patient life school training behind him, has sought to enter the picture-making stage with a single step. He then discovers that what he had learned to do cleverly by means of routine practice, was in reality the easiest thing to do in the manufacture of a picture, and that sterner diflBoulties awaited him in his settlement of the figure into its surroundings — background and foreground.*^ Many portrait painters assert that it is the set- ting of the subject which gives them the most trouble. The portraitist deals with but a single figure, yet this, in combination with its scanty support, provokes this well-known com- ment. The lay community cannot understand this. ' " I gave up art," said a student who had spent seven years in foreign ateliers, "not because I could not paint, but be- cause I was never taught the business. I could not make pictures." [21] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION It seems illogical. It can only be comprehended by him who paints. The figure is tangible and represents the known. The background is a space opened into the unknown, a place for the expressions of fancy. It is the tone quality accompanying the song, the subject's reliance for balance and con- trast. An inquiry into the statement that the accessories of the subject demand a higher degree of artistic skill than the painting of the subject itself, and that on these accessories depend the carrying power of the subject, leads directly to the principles of composition. "It must of necessity be," says Sir Joshua Eeynolds, " that even works of genius, like every other effect, as they must have their cause, must also have their rules ; it cannot be by chance that excellencies are produced with any con- stancy or any certainty, for this is not the nature of chance ; but the rules by which men of extra- ordinary parts, and such as are called men of genius, work, are either such as they discover by their own peculiar observations, or of such a nice texture as not easily to admit being expressed in words, especially as artists are not very fre- quently skillful in that mode of communicating ideas. Unsubstantial, however, as these rules may seem, and difficult as it may be to convey them in writing, they are still seen and felt in the mind of the artist ; and he works from them with as much certainty as if they were embodied upon paper. It is true these refined principles cannot always be made palpable, as the more [22] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION gross rules of art; yet it does not follow but that the mind may be put in such a train that it still perceives by a kind of scientific sense that propriety which words, particularly words of impractical writers, such as we are, can but very feebly suggest." Science has to do wholly with truth, Art with both truth and beauty ; but in arranging a pre- cedence she puts beauty first. Our regard for the science of composition is acknowledged when, after having enjoyed the painter's work from the art side alone, the science of its structure begins to appear. In- stead of the concealment of art by art it is the suppression of the science end of art that takes our cunning. " The picture which looks most like nature to the uninitiated," says a clever writer, "will probably show the most attention to the rules of the artist." Ten years ago the writer took part in an after- dinner discussion at the American Art Associa- tion of Paris over the expression " the rules of composition." A number of artists joined in the debate, all giving their opinion without premedi- tation. Some maintained that the principles of composition were nothing more than aesthetic taste and judgment, applied by a painter of ex- perience. Others, with less beggary of the question, afl&rmed that the principles were negative rather than positive. They warned the artist rather than instructed him ; and, if rules were to fol- [23] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION low principles, they were rules concerning what should not be done. The epitome of the debate was that composition was like salt, in the defini- tion of the small boy, who declared that salt is what makes things taste bad when you don't put any on. [24] CHAPTEE III BALANCE Ol" all pictorial principles none compares in importance with Unity or Balance. " Why all this int^se striving, this struggle to a finish," said George Inuess, as, at the end of a long day, he flung himself exhausted upon his lounge, " but an effort to obtain unity, unity," The observer of an artist at work will notice that he usually stands at his easel and views his picture at varied distances, that he looks at it over his shoulder, that he reverses it in a mirror, that he turns it upside down at times, that he develops it with dots or spots of color here and there, points of accent carefully placed and oft- times changed. "What is the meaning of this thoughtful weigh- ing of parts in the slowly-growing mosaic, but that he labors under the restraint of a law which he feels compelled to obey and the breaking of which would cause anguish to his aesthetic sense. The law under which his striving proceeds is the fundamental one of balance, and the critical artist obeys it whether he be the maker of vignettes for a newspaper, or the painter who declares for color only, or the man who tries hard to produce naivet6 by discarding composi- tion. The test to which the sensitive eye sub- [25] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION jects every picture from whatsoever creed or camp it comes is balance or equipoise, judgment being rendered without thought of the law. After the picture has been left as finished, why does an artist often feel impelled to create an accent on this side or weaken an obtrusive one on the other side of his canvas if not working under a law of balance ? Let any picture be taken which has lived long enough before the public to be considered good by every one ; or take a dozen or more such and add others by artists who declare against com- position and yet have produced good pictures; subject all these to the following simple test: Find the actual centre of the picture and pass a vertical and horizontal line through it. The ver- tical dmision is the more important, as the nat- ural balance is on the lateral aides of a central sv^- port. It will be found that the actual centre of the canvas is also the actual pivot or centre of the picture, and around such a point the various components group themselves, pulling and haul- ing and warring in their claim for attention, the satisfactory picture showing as much weight by attraction on one side of the centre as the other, and the picture ^ej^ec^ in balance displaying this equipoise above and below the horizontal line. Now, in order that what seems at first glance an extraordinary statement may be understood, the reader should realize that every item of a picture has a certain pulUng power, as though each object were a magnet of given potency. Each has attraction for the eye, therefore each, [26] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION while obtaining attention for itself, establishes proportional detraction for every other part. On the principle of the steely a/rd, the farther \ from the centre and more isolated an object is, the greater its weight or attraction. Therefore,^ in the balance of a picture it will be found that a very important object placed but a short distance from the centre may be balanced by a very small object on the other side of the centre andj fv/rih&r removed from it. The whole of the pic- torial interest may be on one side of a picture and the other side be practically useless as far as picturesqueness or story-telling opportunity is concerned, but which finds its reason for existing in the lalance, and that alone. In the emptiness of the opposing half such a> picture, when completely in balance, will have some bit of detail or accent which the eye in its circular symmetrical inspection will catch, un- consciously, and weave into its calculation of balance ; or if not an object or accent or line of attraction, then some technical quality, or spirit- ual quality, such, for example, as a strong feeling of gloom, or depth for penetration, light or dark, a place in fact, for the eye to dwell upon as an important part in connection with the subject proper, and recognized as such. But, the querist demands, if all the subject is on one side of the centre and the other side de- pends for its existence on a balancing space or accent only, why not cut it off ? Do so. Then you will have the entire subject in one-half the space to be sure, but its harmony or balance will [27] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION depend on the equipoise when pivoted in the new centre. Balance of the Steelyard. Let the reader make the test upon the " Con- noisseurs " and cut away everything on the right beyond a line through the farther support of the mantel. This will place the statue in the exact centre. In this shape the picture composes well. In re-adding this space however the centre is shifted leaving the statae and two figures hang- ing to one side but close to the pivot and demand- ing more balance in this added side. Now the space alone, with very little in it, has weight enough, and just here the over-scientific enthusi- ast might err ; but the artist in this case from two other considerations has here placed a figure. It opposes its vertical to the horizontal of the table, and catches and turns the line of the shadow on the wall into the line of the rug. An extended search in pictorial art gives warrant for a rule, upon this principle, namely: where the subject is on one side of the centre it must exist close to the centre, or, in that degree in which it departs from the centre, show positive anchorage to the other side. It is not maintained that every good picture can show this complete balance ; but the claim is made that the striving on the part of its designer has been in the direction of this balance, and that, had it been secured, the picture would have been that much better. Let this simple test be applied by elimination of overweighted parts or [28] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION addition of items where needed, on this prmoi^le, and it will be found that the composition will always improve. As a necessary caution it should be observed that the small balancing weight of the steelyard should not become a point causing divided interest. It is easy to recognize a good composition ; to tell why it is good may be difficult ; to tell how it could be made better is what the art worker desires to know, and may be ofttimes thus re- vealed. Let the student when in doubt weigh out his picture in the balances and then verify it on the steelyard. Postulates. The necessary postulates are as follows : All pictures are a collection of units. Every unit has a given value. The value of a unit depends on its attraction ; of its character, of its size, of its placement. A unit near the edge has more attraction than at the centre. Every part of the picture space has some at- traction. Space having no detail may possess attraction by gradation and by suggestion. A unit of attraction in an otherwise empty space has more weight through isolation than the same when placed with other units. A black unit on white or a white on black has more attraction than the same on gray. The value of a black or white unit is pro- [29] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION portioned to the size of space contrasting with it. A unit in the foreground has less weight than one in the distance. Two or more associated units may be reckoned as one and their united centre is the point on which they balance with others. There is balance of Line, of Mass, of Light and Dark, of Measure, which is secured upon a scale of attraction which each possesses. The " Lion of the Desert," by Gerome shows three isolated spots and one line of attraction. The trend of vision on lea\ring the lion is to the extreme right and thence back along the pathway of dark, and then light into the picture to the group of trees. Across this is an oppositional balance from the bushes of the foreground to the mountains of the extreme distance. The only line in the composition, better seen in the paint- ing than in the reproduction, counts much in the balance over the centre. The placement of the 'important item or subject, has little to do with the balance scheme of a picture. This is the starting point, and hala/nce is a consideration te- yofid this. i In every composition the eye should cross the /central division at least once. This initiates i equipoise, for in the survey of a picture the eye naturally shifts from the centre of interest, which '^may be on one side, to the other side of the can- vas. If there be something there to receive it, the balance it seeks is gratified. If it finds noth- [30] Lion in the Desert — GirBme Balance of Isolated Measures Salute to the Wounded — Detaille Balance of Equal Measures i ^K^ ''at M^l HI ' ^SB| ppwi %:^u -'A.r^'^' ^'' Pines in Winter Unbalance The Connoisseurs — Fortuny Balance of the Steelyards PICTORIAL COMPOSITION ing, the artist must create something, with the conclusion that some element of the picture was lacking. In the snow-scene the eye is attracted from the pine-trees to the houses on the left and rests there, no attraction having been created to move it to the other half of the picture. "What is known as divided interest in a picture is nothing more than the doubt established by a false arrangement of balance, too great an at- traction being used where less weight was needed. The artist must be the judge of the degree of satisfaction he allows this feeling, but no one can ignore it and obtain unity. The question of degree must have a caution placed before it ; for in an attempt to create a balance on the opposite side of the vertical the tendency is to use too heavy a weight. The whole of the subject is sometimes made to take its place well on one side and another item would seem redundant. Two points will be noticed in all of such cases: that the opposing half may either be cut off without damage, or greatly elongated, and in both forms the picture seems to survive. The fact becomes an argument for the theory of balance across a medial upright line; in the first instance by shifting the line itself into the centre of the subject, and in the second by securing more weight of space with which to balance the subject. The portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, an excellent composition from many points of view, finds its most apparent balance on either side of the sinu- [33] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION ous line of light through, the centre exhibiting the aas^'a, which many .pictures show in varying de- grees. The opposing corners are well balanced, the palm over against the dog, with a trifle too much importance left to the dog. Place the finger in observation over the head and forelegs of the dog, taking this much off and the whole compo- sition gains, not bhly because the diagonal cor- ners then balance, but because the heads of both woman and dog are too important for the same sides of the picture. It would be perfectly possible in the more com- plete composition to have both heads as they are, but this would demand more weight on the other side ; or a shifting of the whole picture very slightly toward the palm side. In the painting this is not felt, as the head of the dog is so treated that it attracts but little, though the object be in the close foreground. This picture also balances on the horizontal and vertical lines. Here we have the dog and fan balancing the body and palm. The balance across the diagonal of the figure, by the opposition of the dog with the palm is very complete. Joined with the hanging lamp above this sinuous line effects a letter S or without the dog and palm Hogarth's line of bqauty. In the matter also of the destruction of the necessary foundation lines which support the figure (the sofa), and cut the picture in two, this curving figure, the pillow and the palm leaf do excellent service. [34] Portrait of Sara Bernhardt — Clairin Balance Across the Natural Axis Lady with Muff — Photo A. Hewitt Steelyard in Perspective PICTORIAL COMPOSITION When one fills a vase with flowers he aims at both unity and balance, and if, in either color combination, or in massing and accent, it lacks this, the result is disturbing. Let the vase be- come a bowl and let the bowl be placed on its edge and made to resemble a frame, entirely sur- rounding the bouquet; his effort remains the same. To be effective in a frame, balance and unity are just as necessary. The eye finds repose \ and delight in the perfect eqv/ipoise of elements, brought into combination and bound together by the girdle of the frame. A picture should be able to hang from its exact centre. Imperfect composition infiicts upon the beholder the duty of accommodating his head to the false angle of the picture. Pictures that stand the test of time do not demand astigmatic glasses. We view them balanced, and they re- peat the countersign — " balanced." After settling upon this as the great consider- ation in the subject of composition and reducing the principle to the above law, I confess I had not the full courage of my conviction for a six month, for now and then a picture would appear that at first glance seemed like an unruly colt, to refuse to be harnessed to the theory and was in danger of kicking it to pieces. After a number of such apparent exceptions and the ease with which they submitted to the test of absolute bal- ance from the centre, on the scheme of the steel- yards, I am now entirely convinced that what writers have termed the " very vague subject of composition," " the perplexing question of ar- [35 1 PICTORIAL COMPOSITION rangement of parts," etc., yields to this simplest law, and which, in its directness and clearness, affords the simplest of working rules. Those whose artistic freedom bids defiance to the slavery of rule, as applied to an artistic prod- uct, and who try to produce something that shaE break all rules, in the hope of being origi- nal, spend the greater part of the time in but covering the surface so that the principle may not he too easily seen, and the rest of the time m balancing the unbalanced. As the balance of the figure dominates aU other considerations in the statue or painting of the human form, so does the equipoise of the pic- ture, or its balance of parts, become the chief consideration in its composition. The figure bal- ances its weight over the point of support, as the flying Mercury on his toes, the picture upon a fulcrum on which large and small masses hang with the same delicate adjustment. In Fortuny's " Connoisseurs," the two men looking at a picture close to the left of the centre form the subject. The dark mass behind them stops off further penetration in this direction, but the eye is drawn away into the light on the right and seeks the man carrying a portfolio. At his distance, to- gether with the lighted objects he easily bal- ances the important group on the other side of the centre. Indeed, with the attractiveness of the clock, vase, plaque, mantel and chest, his face would have added a grain too much, and this the artist happily avoided by covering it with the portfolio. [36] Missing Page Missing Page PICTORIAL COMPOSITION In the portrait study of " Lady with MuflE," one first receives the impression that the figure has been carelessly placed and, indeed, it would go for a one-sided and thoughtless arrangement but for the little item, almost lost in shadow, on the left side. This bit of detail enables the eye to penetrate the heavy shadow, and is a good «xample of the value of the small weight on the long arm of the steelyard, which balances its opposing heavy weight. This picture is trimmed a little too much on the top to balance across the horizontal line, and, in- deed, this balance is the least important, and, in some cases, not desirable ; but the line of light fol- lowing down from the face and across the muff and into the lap not only assists this balance, but carries the eye into the left half, and for that reason is very valuable in the lateral balance, which is all^mvportant to the vpright subject. One other consideration regarding this picture, in the matter of balance, contains a principle : The line of the figure curves in toward the flower and pot which become the radius of the whole inner contour. This creates an elliptical line of observation, which being the arc on this radius receives a pull toward its centre. There is a modicum of balance in the mere weight of this empty space, but when given force by its isola- tion, plus the concession to its centripetal sig- nificance, the small item does great service in settling the equilibrium of the picture. The lines are precisely those of the Kubens recently Mded to the Metropolitan Museum, wherein the [39] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION figures of Mary, her mother, Christ and Johr form the arc and the bending form of the moni its oppositional balance. in proof of the fact that the half balance, oi that on either side of the vertical is sufficient ir many subjects, see such portraits in which the head alone is attractive, the rest being suppressed in detail and light, for the sake of this attraction It is rarely that figure art deals with balance over the horizontal central line in conjtmction with balance over the vertical. One may recall photographs of figures, in which the positions on the field of the plate are very much to one side of the centre, but which have the qualifying element in leading line oi balance by an isolated measure that brings them within the requirements of unity. The " Brother and Sister " * by Miss Kasebier — the boy in sailor cap crowding up to the face and form of his younger sister, — owes much to the long, strongly- relieved line of the boy's side and leg which draws the weight to the opposite side of the picture. In imagination we may see the leg below the knee and know how far on the opposite side of the cen- tral vertical his point of support really is. The movement in both figures originates from this side of the picture as the lines of the drapery show. Deprive such a composition of its balan- cing line and instead of a picture we would have but two figures on one side of a plate. ■See "The Pose in Portraiture," -well-known to photogra' phers and well worthy the attention of painters. Tennant & Ward, N. Y. [4ol PICTORIAL COMPOSITION Horizontal Balance. The significauce of the horizontal balance is best understood in landscape, with its extended perspective. Here the idea becomes reminiscent of our childhood's " teeter." Conceiving a long space from foreground to distance, occupied with varied degrees of interest, it is apparent how easily one end may become too heavy for the other. The tempering of such a chain of items until the equipoise is attained must be coordinate with the effort toward the lateral balance. Vertical and Horizontal Balance. In the " Salute to the Wounded," by Detaille, complete and formal balancie on both the vertical and horizontal line is shown. The chief of staff is on one side of centre, balanced by the officer on the other, and the remaining members of staff balance the German infantry. Although the heads of prisoners are all above the horizontal line, three-fourths of the body comes below — a just equivalent — and, in the case of the horse- men, the legs and bodies of the horses draw down the balance toward the bottom of the canvas, specially aided by the two cuirassiers in the left corner. In addition to this, note the value of the placement of the gray horse and rider at left, as a means of interrupting the necessary and ob- jectionable line of feet across the canvas and leading the eye into the picture and toward the focus, both by the curve to the left, including the black horse, and also by the direct jump across [41 ] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION the picture, through the white horse and toward the real subject — *. e., the prisoners. Much has been written by way of suggestion in composition dealing with this picture or that to illustrate a thought which might have been simplified over the single idea of balance which contains the whole secret and which if once understood in all of its phases of possible change will establish procedure with a surety indeed gratifying to him who halts questioning the next step, or not knowing positively that the one he has taken is correct. These criticisms vaguely named "confusion," " stiffness," " scattered quantity," etc., all lead in to the root, unbalance, and are to be corrected there. ^ Balance is of importance according to the 'number of units to be composed. Much greater license may be taken in settling a single figure into its picture-space than when the composition involves many. In fact the mind pays little heed to the consideration of balance until a com- plication of many units forces the necessity upon it. The painter who esteems lightly the subject of composition is usually found to be the painter of simple subjects — portraits and non-discursive themes, but though these may survive in antag- onism to such principles their authors are de- manding more from the technical quality of their work than is its mission to supply. The first two main lines, if they touch or cross, start a composition. After that it is neces- sary to work upon the picture as it hangs in the balances. [42] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION The inutility of considering composition in outline or in solid mass of tone as a safe first analysis of finished work is evident when we dis- cover that not until we have brought the picture to the last stage of detail finish do we fully en- compass balance. The conception which looks acceptable to one's general idea in outline may finish all askew; or the scheme of Light and ^ 4 Dark in one or two flat tones minus the halance of gradation will prove false as many times as faithful, as it draws toward completion. It is be- cause of this that artists when composing roughly in the presence of nature seldom if ever produce note-book sketches which lack the unity of grada- tion. It is the custom of some artists to paint im- portant pictures from such data which, put down hot when the impression is compulsory, contain [43] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION more of the essence of the subject than the fai f ul " study " done at leisure. The possibilities of balanced arrangement ing so extensive, susceptible in fact of the m eccentric and fantastic composition, it folio that its adaptability to all forms of presentat: disarms argument against it. In almost en case, when the work of an accomplished pain fails to convince, through that completen which of all qualities stands first, when, af the last word has been said by him, when i ture, in short, has been satisfied and the wc still continues in its feeble state of insurrecti( which many artists will confess it frequently quires years to quell, it is sure proof that w back in the early construction of such a picti some element of unbalance had been allowed. The Natural Axis. / In varying degrees pictures express what m be termed a natural axis, on which their co ponents arrange themselves in balanced com] sition. This axis is the visible or imaginary li which the eye accepts connecting tte twtTmc prominent measures or such a line which first i ^ests the attention. If there be but one figu: group or measure, and there be an opening point of attraction through the background j verting the vision from such to it, then this li of direction becomes the axis. The axis dc not merely connect two points within the p ture, but pierces it, and the near end of the shs has much to do with this balance. [44] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION Balance across the centre effects the unity of s the picture in its limitations with its frame. Balance on the axis expresses the natural balance of the subject as we feel it in nature when it touches us personally and would connect our spirit with its own. We discern the former more readily where the subject confronts us with little depth of back- ground. "We get into the movement of the latter when the reach is far in, and we feel the subject revolving on its pivot and stretching one arm toward us while the other penetrates the vis- ible or the unknown distance. Balance constructed over this line will bring the worker to as unified a result as the use of the steelyard on the central vertical line. In this method there is less restraint and when the axis is well marked it is best to take it. Not every subject develops it however. It is easily felt in Clairin's portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, the " Lady with Muff," " The Path of the Surf," and in the line of the horse, Indian, and sunset. "When the axis is found, its force should be modi- fied by opposed lines or measures, on oQe or both sides, ^n "these four examples good compo- sition has been effected in proportion as such balance is indicated ; in the first by dog and palm, in the second by flower-pot, in the third by the light on the stubble and cloud in left hand corner, and in the last by the rocks and open sea. A further search among the accompanying illustrations would reveal it in the sweeping line [45] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION of cuirassiers, balanced by the group about Napoleon, the line of the hulk and the light of the sky in "Her Last Moorings," the central curved line in "The body of Patroclus," the diagonal line through the arm of Ariadne into the forearm of Bacchus. Appakent ok Formal Balance. Eaphael is a covenient point at which to com- mence a study of composition. His style was influenced by three considerations : warning by the pitfalls of composition into which his pred- ecessors had fallen; confidence that the abso- lutely formal balance was safe ; and lack of ex- perience to know that anything else was as good. To these may be added the environment for which most of his works were produced. His was an architectural plan of arrangement, and this well suited both the dignity of his subject and the chaste conceptions of a well poised mind. Eaphael, therefore, stands as the chief expo- nent of \!asi formal composiUon. His plan was to place the figure of greatest importance in the centre. This should have its support in balan- cing figures on either side ; an attempt then, often observable was to weaken this set formality by other objects wherein, though measure responded to measure, there was a slight change in kind or degree, the whole arrangement resembling that of an army in battle array; with its centre, fianks and skirmishers. The balance of egual measures— seen in his " Sistine Madonna," is con- spicuous in most ecclesiastical pictures of 'that [46 J PICTORIAL COMPOSITION period, notably the " Last Supper of Leonardo " in which two groups of three persons each are posed on either side of the pivotal figure. This has become the standard arrangement for all classical balanced composition in pictorial decoration. The doubling of objects on either side of a central figure not only gives to it im- portance, but contributes to the composition that quietude, symmetry and solemnity so compatible with religious feeling or decorative requirements The objection to this plan of balance is that it divides the picture into equal parts, neither one having precedence, and the subdivisions may be continued indefinitely. For this reason jt^has no place in genre art. Its antiphonal responseslbe- long to tKerteffipTe. A more objectionable form of balance on the centre is that in which the centre is of small importance. This cuts the picture into halves without reason. The " Dutch Peasants on the Shore," by Artz, and "The Poulterers," and David's "Kape of the Sabine "Women," are axamples. In the group of peasants, the picture is en- tirely included by the outer circuit of the figures, the spaces beyond are excluded from the calculation and might be cut off or extended without claiming attention. Unaccounted-for space is bad economy. Every inch of surface should play its part. The circular group of Dagnan-Bouveret's "Pardon in Brittany," where the peasants are squatted on the left in the foreground is a daring bit of balance, finding its justification in the [47] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION movement of interest toward the right in background. In all forms, save the classic degprati( should be the artiste effort to conceal the bal over the centre!) In avoiding the equal divisions of the pi^ plane a practical plan of construction is \ upon the strong points as opposed to the ■ ones. It assumes that the weak point h centre, and that in all types of composition v formality is not desired the 'Centre is t avoided^. Any points equi-distant from any sides ai'e also weak points. The ineqnalit: distance should bear a mathematical ratio to other as one and two-thirds, two and three-f These points will be strongest and best adi for the placement of objects which are di from the boundary lines and the corners, i ffrees moat varied. [48] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION If we take a canvas of ordinary proportion, namely, one whose length is equal to the hy- pothenuse on the square of its breadth, as 28x36 or 18x24: and divide it into unequal divisions as three, five or seven, we will produce points on which good composition will result. The reason for this is that the remaining two- thirds becomes a unit as has the one-third. If the larger is given the precedence it carries the interest; if not it must be sacrificed to the smaller division. On this principle it may be seen that a figure could occupy a position in the centre which if it tied itself in ajpositi/oe "vray to that division which carried the remainder of the interest it would be unobjectionable as an element dividing the picture into equal parts. The formula is always productive of excellent results. This proportional division of the picture one may find in the best of Claude Lorraine's land- scapes, with him a favorite method of construc- tion. It suggests the pillars and span for a sus- pension trestle. When, as is invariably seen in Claude's works the nearest one is in shadow, the vision is projected from this through the space intervening to the distant and more attractive one. A feeling of great depth is inseparable from this arrangement. Balance by Opposition of Liite. A series of oppositional lines has more variety and is therefore more picturesque than the tan- gent its equivalent. The simplest definition of [49] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION picturesqueness is variety in unity. The lin the long road in perspective offer easy con for the eye, but it finds a greater interef threading its way over a track lost, then fc lost and found again. In time we as si arrive from a to a by one route as by the o but in one the journey has had the greate terest. Imagine a hillside and sky offered as a pic The hillside is without detail, the sky a b] The first item introduced attracts the eye, second and third are joined with the first they parallel the line of the hillside the] nothing toward the development of the pi< but rather harm by introducing an elemer monotony. If, however, they are so place to accomplish opposition and transition they to send the eye on its travels. No better example of this principle can be ( than Mr. Alfred Steiglitz's pictorial photog of two Dutch women on the shore. The of ropes through the foreground connect others in the middle distance leading tangent to the house beyond. To one who fences or has used the b sword a feeling for oppositional line should ( as second nature. A long sweeping stroke ] be parried or opposed frankly ; the reposte i also be parried. A bout is a picturesque coi sition of two men and two minds in which u of the whole and of the parts is preserved bj balance of opposed measures. The analog appropriate. The artist stands off brush in 1 [50] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION and fights Ms subject to a finish, the force of one stroke neutralizing and parrying another. This is as true of linear as color composition, where the scheme is one producing harmony by oppo- sition of colors. In the photograph of the Indian and horse we have a subject full of fine quality. (See page 63.) The demonstration occurs in the sky at just the right place to serve as a balance for the heavy measures of the foreground and the interest is drawn back into the picture and to the upper left hand corner by the two cloud forms, over which is sharply thrown a barricade of cloud which turns the vision back into the picture. The simplicity of the three broad tones is appropriate to the senti- ment of vastness which the picture contains. The figure seated in revery before this expanse supplies the mental element to the subject, the antithesis of which is the interest of the horse, earthward. Each one has his way, and in the choice by each is the definition of man and brute, a separation which the pose of each figure indi- cates through physical disunion. The space be- tween them widens upon the horizon line. To establish the necessary pictorial connection or at least a hint of it suggests three devices. A lariat in a curving line might be slightly indicated [SI] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION through the grass : the foreground might be so as to limit the range toward us ; or a bro! line may be constructed diagonally from horse's left foot by a few accents in the lighl the stubble. In the first, the union is eflfec by transition of line ; in the last by oppositioi the spot of the figure to the line of the hori shoulder and leg extended by a line through grass. Opposition is always stronger in proj tion as the spot opposes the centre of the li For that reason were the figure raised it wo have been better placed for such opposition well as effecting transition of line with the h^ zon with which it now effects the less pot quality of opposition. Balance bt Opposition of Spots. Spots or accents are in the majority of ca equivalent to a line. The eye follows the 1 more easily, but the spot is a potent force of traction and we take the artist's hint in his of it, often finding that its subtlety is wo more than the line's strength. In the case c simple hillside back-stopped by a dense mass trees, a flat and an upright plane are present but until the vision is carried into and beyt the line of juncture the opposition of mere pla accomplishes little, the only thing thus est lished being a strong effect of light and shi and not until the eye is coaxed into the sky that there be established a union between pathway or other object on the hill and distance, balance by transition will be effect [52] Western Y^ASTKS—Pkoio A. C. B.ode Opposition of Light and Dark Measures The Cabaret — L. L'hermitte Opposition Plus Transition Along the Shore — Photo by Geo, Butler Transitional Line Pathless— /'^^^(j by A, Horsley Hinton Transitional Line PICTORIAL COMPOSITION This is one of the subtlest and most necessary principles in landscape composition. The illus- tration herewith is of the simplest nature but the principle may be expanded indefinitely as it has to do both with lateral and perspective balance. In the " Death of Caesar," the perspective line of the statues and the opposite curve in the floor are continued through the opposing mass of col- umns and wall to the court beyond, a positive control of the distance by the foreground, being thus secured. Teansition op Line. More effective than opposition, as the cross bar is more effective for strength than the bar sup- ported on only one side, is Tram,8iti(m, or the same item ca/rried across, or deUmered to another item which shall cross a line or space. In the group of peasants in the Cabaret note the use of lines of opposition and transition, in both the single figures when taken in twos. The laborer (with shovel) in his upper and lower extremities exhibits a large cross which becomes larger when we add the table on which his ex- tended arm rests and the figure standing behind him. The ascent of this vertical is stopped by the line of the mantel and then continued by the plate and picture. So in minor parts of this group one may think out the rugged energy of its composition, nor anywhere discover a single curved or flowing line. !N"or does it require an experienced eye to note the pyramidal structure of the various parts. In the action of the heads [55 J PICTORIAL COMPOSITION and bodies of the two central figures is another strong example of oppositional arrangement. The heavily braced table is typical of the whole. In landscape the transitional line from land into sky is often impossible and objectionable. The sentiment of the subject may deny any at- tempt at this union. Here the principle only^ should be hinted at. In the case of a sunset sky where the clouds float as parallel bars above the horizon and thus show the character of a quiet and windless closing of day, a transitional line such as a tree, mast or spire may be unavailable. Oppositional spots or lines attracting the vision into the land and thus diverting it from the hor- izontals are the only recourse. In the shore view the sun's rays create a series of lines which admirably unite with the curve of the wagon tracks. The union of sky and land is thus af- fected and meanwhile the subject proper has its ruggedness associated with the graceful compass of these elements. In fact transitional line is so powerful that un- fless it contains a part of the subject it should seldom be used. In the "Annunciation" by Botticelli the in- troduction of a long perspective line beyond the figures, continuing the lines of the foreground, railroads the vision right through the subject, carrying it out of the picture. If the attention is pinned perforce on the subject, one feels the interruption and annoyance of this unnecessary landscape. The whole Italian school of \ the Eenaissance weakened the force of its portraits [S6] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION and figure pictures by these elaborate settings which they seemed helpless to govern. In Velasquez we frequently find the simplification of background which saves the entire interest for the subject ; but even he in his " Spinners " and to a lesser degree in some other compo- sitions, makes the same error. In the greatest of Eembrandt's portrait groups, " The Syndics," his problem involved the placement of six figures. Four are seated at the far side of a table looking toward us, the fifth, on the near side, rises and looks toward us. His head, higher than those of the row of four, breaks this line of formality ; but the depth and perspective of the picture is not secured until the figure standing in the background is added. This pro- duces from the foreground figure, through one of the seated figures, the transitional line which pulls the composition forward and backward and makes a circular composition of what was com- menced upon a line sweeping across the entire canvas. The hillside entitled "Pathless," by Horsley Hinton is a subject easily passed in nature as ordinary, which has been however unified and made available through the understanding of this principle. So much of an artist is its author that I can see him down on his knees cutting out the mass of blackberry stems so that the two or three required in t^e foreground should strike as lines across the demi-dark of the lower middle space. The line of the hill had cut this off from the foreground and these attractive lines are as [57] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION cords tying it on. From the light rock in the lower centre the eye zigzags up to the line of hillside, cutting the picture from one side to the other. Fortunately nature had supplied a remedy here in the trees which divert this line. But this is insisted on in the parallelism of the distant mountains. The artist, however, has the last word. He has created a powerful diversion in the sky, bringing down strong lines of light and a sense of illumination over the hill and into the foreground. The subject, unpromising in its original lines, has thus been redeemed. This sort of work is in E^dvanoe of the public, but should find its reward with the elect. Balance by Gradation. Gradation will be mentioned in another con- nection but as a force in balance it must be noticed here. It matters not whither the tone grades, from light to dark or the reverse, the eye will be drawn to it very powerfully because it suggests motion. Gradation is the perspective of shade ; and perspective we recognize as one of \the dynamic forces in art. When the vision is delivered over to a space which contains no detail and nought but gradation, the original im- pulse of the line is continued. Gradation, as an agent of light, exhibits its loveliest effect and becomes one of the most in- teresting and useful elements of picture construc- tion. As a force in balance it may frequently re- place detail when added items are unnecessary. [58] On the Thames — C. A. Piatt S^ Uki^-^., Her Last Moorings — From a Photograph Gradation vs. Detail , Photography Nearing the Pictorial PICTORIAL COMPOSITION In " Her Last Moorings " the heavy timbers, black and positive in the right foreground, clog the entrance and divide the interest. The di- version from the hulk to the sky is easy and direct and forms the natural axis. A substitu- tion for the foreground item is a simple grada- tion, balancing a like gradation in the sky. The measure of light and dark when mixed is tonically the same as the gray of the gradation — but its attraction is weakened. Balance of Principality ok Isolation. These qualities are not synonymous but so nearly so that they are mentioned together. In discussing the principle of the steelyard it was stated that a small item could balance a very large one whose position in point of balance was closer to the fulcrum, but to this point must be added the increase of weight and importance which isolation gives. These considerations need not be mystifying. In the charge to Peter, "Feed my sheep," Eaphael has produced something quite at va- riance with his ordinary plan of construction. Christ occupies one side of the canvas, the dis- ciples following along the foreplane toward him. Here is an isolated figure the equivalent of a group. The sleeping senator of Gerome's picture ef- fects a like purpose among the empty benches and pillars. The main group is placed near the centre, the small item at the extreme edge. Even Cassar in the foreground — covered by [61] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION drapery and in half shadow — is less potent as an item of balance, than this separate figure. Balance op Cxtevattjee. Hogarth writing in 1753, on the Analysis of Beauty produced a scale of curved lines and selected from the seven (No. 4) as containing the greatest beauty. Here then is a form that bal- ances itself on the centre and may be accepted as a good base line in either the vertical, hori- zontal or diagonal placement. Again, this balance is beautifully illustrated in the standing figure, the equipoise being main- tained by oppositional curves in the' upper and lower extremities. Applying this principle to a more composite design see the " Kepose of the Barley Keapers " (page 128), or the curve balanc- ing curve of the landscape herewith, not in its reflection but on either side of a line bisecting the horizontal, the point to be noted being the equal measure of rhythm on either side of the vertical. The value of this line will be more fully developed in connection with the fifth of the fundamental forms of construction, the letter S. [62] CHAPTEE IV EVOLVING THE PICTUBE The artist gets his picture from two sources. He either goes forth and finds it, or creates it. If he creates it the work is deliberate, and the artist assumes responsibility. If he goes to na- ture, he and nature form a partnership, she sup- plying the material and he the experience. In editing the material thus supplied, the artist dis- covers how great is the disparity between art and nature, and what a disproof nature herself is to the common notion that art is mirrored na- ture, and that any part of her drawn or painted will make a picture. The first stage of the art collector is that in which his admiration dwells on imitation such as the still-life painter gives him, but soon his art sense craves an expression with thought in it, the imitation, brow-beaten into its proper place and the creative instinct of the artist visible. In other words, he seeks the constructive sense of the man who paints the picture. " The work of art is an appeal to another mind, and it cannot draw out more than that mind contains. But to enjoy is, as it were, to create ; to understand is a form of equality." * With the horse before the cart and the artist holding the reins, he gets a • " Cionsiderations on Painting," John LaFarge. [63] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION fresh start, and is in a fair way to comprehend, Eichard "Wagner's assertion that you cannot have art without the man. In the same manner does the student usually develop. With the book of nature before him he is eager to sit down anywhere and read, attracted by each separate item of the vast pattern, but he finds he has opened nature's dictionary and that to make poetry or even good prose he must put the separate words and phrases together. After the first roll of films has been printed and brooded over, the kodac person is apt to ask in a tone of injured and deceived innocence, " Well, what does make a picture ? " He with others has supposed it possible to go to nature and, taking nothing with him, bring something back. Though one does not set out with the rules of composition, he must at least present himself before nature with fixed notions of the few requirements which all pictures de- mand. Having looked at a counterfeit of her within four sides of a frame and learned to know why a limited section of her satisfied him by its completeness he approaches her out of doors with greater prospects of success than though he had not settled this point. Good art, of the gallery, is the best guide to a trip afield. Having seen what elements and what arrangements have proved available in the hands of other men, the student will not go astray if he seek like forms in nature. Armed with deflninite convictions he will see, through her bewildering meshes the faithful lines he needs. The star gazer with a [64] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION quest for the constellations of the Pleiades or the Great Bear, must close his eyes to many irrelevant stars which do not fit the figure. Originality does not require the avoid- ance of principles used by others. Pictorial forms are world's property. Originality only demands "the causing to pass into our own work a personal view of the world and of life." Personality in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred is a graft. The forms of artistic expression have been preempted long ago. The men who had the first chances secured the truest forms of it and in a running glance through a miscellaneous collection of prints one's attention is invariably arrested by the force of the pictures by the older masters; so dominating is the first impression that we concede the case upon the basis of effect before discovering the many obstacles and omis- sions counting against their greater efficiency. But the essence is of the living sort. With this conceded and the fact that nature's appeal is always strongest when made through association with man it is for us to cultivate these associa- tions. "Study nature attentively," says Keynolds, " but always with the masters in your company ; consider them as models which you are to imi- tate, and at the same time as rivals, with whom you are to contend." A wise teacher has said the quickest road to "\ originality is through the absorption of other ) men's ideas. Before going forth therefore with a canvas or [65 J PICTORIAL COMPOSITION plate holder, it behooves us first to know what art is. Certainly the most logical step from the study of constructive form is through the prac- tical technique of work which we would emulate. To copy interpretations of outdoor nature by others is commendable either at the experimental period, when looking for a technique, or as an appreciation. Besides this mental preparation, the next best equipment for finding pictures is a Claude Lor- raine glass, because, being a convex mirror, it shows a reduced image of nature m a frrnne. The frame is important not only because it designates the limitations of a picture, but be- cause it cuts it free from the abstracting details which surround it. If one has not such a glass, a series of small pasteboard frames will answer. The margin should be wide enough to allow the eye to rest without disturbance upon the open space. Two rectangular pieces that may be pushed together from top or side is probably the most complete device. The proportion of the frame is therefore adaptable to the subject and the picture may be cut off top, bottom or sides as demanded. Many artists reduce all subjects to two or three sizes, which they habitually paint. The view- meter may in such cases be further simplified by using a stiff cardboard with such proportions cut out. By having them all on a single board a subject may be more rapidly tested than by the device of the collapsible sides. A light board, the thickness of a cigar-box cover, 4x5 inches, [66] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION and easily carried in the pocket, will enable one to land his subject in his canvas exactly as he wants it, and avoid the grievance of reconstruc- tion later. By leaving a broad margin about the openings, one obtains the impression of a picture in its mat or frame, and may judge of it in na- ture as he will after regard it when completed and on exhibition. The accompanying photograph was produced by a revolving camera encompassing an area of 120 degrees. As a composition it is not bad, but unfortunate here and there. It has a well-defined centre, and the^ two sides balance well, the left clogging the vision and thus giving way to the right, which allows the eye to pass out of the picture on this side beyond the fountain and across the stretch of sunlight. At a glance, however, one may see three complete pictures, and with the aid of the view-meter a number of other combinations may be developed. Its con- struction is that of Hobbema's "Alley near Middelharnes," in the National Gallery, London, of so pronounced formality that a number of such construction in a gallery, would prove monotonous. Beginiiing on the left, we may apply the view- meter first to exclude the unnecessary branch forms and sky space on the top ; second, to cut away the tree on the right, which, in that it par- allels the line of the margin, is objectionable, and is rendered unnecessary as a side for the picture by the two trees beyond in the middle plane; and, third, to limit the extent of the picture on [67 J PICTORIAL COMPOSITION the bottom, tending as it does to force the spec- tator back and away from the subject proper. The interest is divided between the white build- ing and rustic bridge and the pivot of this com- position adjusts itself in line with the centre tree. In the next picture the first tree on left of avenue is cut away for the same reason as in the previous arrangement, and although one of a line of trees in perspective, the trunk as an item is unserviceable, as its branches start above, the point where the top line occurs, and can there- fore render no assistance in destroying an abso- lute vertical as has been done in the left tree by the bifurcation, and the first on the right by the encroaching masses of leaves. The eye follows the receding lines of roadway beneath the can- opy and is led out of the picture by the light above the hill. The last arrangement is more formal than either of the others but gives us the good old form of composition frequently adopted by Turner, Eousseau, Dupr§, and others, namely of designing an encasement for the subject proper, through which to view it. For that reason after the arch overhead has been secured all else above is cut away as useless. The print has been cut a little on the right, as by this means the foreground tree is placed nearer that side and also because the extra space allowed too free an escapement of the eye through this portal, the natural focus of course being the fountain where the eye should rest at once. It has been cut on the bottom so as to exclude the line where the road and the grass meet — an es- [ 68 ] Three Pictures Found with the Vikw-Metre. {See Page 6g.) PICTORIAL COMPOSITION pecially bad line, paralleling the bottom, of the picture and line of shadow upon the grass. This shadow is valuable as completing the encase- ment of the subject on the bottom and in start- ing the eye well into the picture toward its subject. ^ Our natural vision always seeks the light. - Shadows are the carum cushions from which the sight recoils in its quest for this. Letting the eye into the picture over a foreground of sub- dued interest, or better still, of no interest is one of the most time-honored articles of the picture- maker's creed. If the reader will compare the first and last of these three compositions he will see how in this respect the first loses and the last gains. The element of the shaded foreground in the first was cut out in preserving a better place- ment for the subject. The photographer comes upon a group of cows. " Trees, cattle, light and shade — a picture surely ! " Fearful of disturbing the cows he ex- poses at a distance, then stalks them, trying again with a different point of sight and, having joined them and waited for their confidence, makes the third attempt. On developing, the first one reveals the string-like line of road cut- ting the picture from end to end, the cattle as isolated spots, the tree dividing the sky space into almost equal parts. In the second, the lower branch of tree blocks the sky and on the other side there is a natural window, opening an exit into the distance. This is desirable but unfortunately the bending roadway on the right [71] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION accomplishes the same purpose and so two exits are offered, always objectionable. With this out, the value of the rook and foreground cow is also better appreciated as leading spots taking us to the natural focus, the white cow lying close to the tree. The rock in left corner having no in- fluence in a leading line should be suppressed. The cattle now swing into the picture from both sides and one of them opposes the horizontal of her back to the vertical of the tree, thus easing the force of its descent. In the last there is much more concentration. The road does not parallel the bottom and though passing out of the picture the vision is brought back again along the distant line of trees. The objection to this arrangement lies in the equal division of the subject by the tree-trunk. The white cow focalizes the vision but the sky and the more graceful branches soon capture it. The cow in the right foreground is only valuable as an oppositional measure to the line of cows stretching across the picture which it helps to divert, otherwise she carries too much attraction to the side. The best arrangement for the subject would have been the tree one-third from the left side, the white cow touching its line, one or two of those lying on the ground working toward the fore- ground in a zigzag, little or no diversion from the distance on the left of tree. The swing of the picture would then have been from the foreground to the focus, the white cow and tree, therifce to the group under the tree and out [72] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION through the sky. This would have divided the pi(^ure-plane into thirds instead of halves, bring- ing it into the form elsewhere recommended as being the arrangement of Claude's best pictures. [73] CHAPTEE y ENTRANCE AND EXIT Gettmg Into the Picture. In coming at a picture, the first question is, how to get into it. One reason why so many pictures are passed by in exhibitions is that the public lacks an invi- tation to enter, while others, by contrast, greet you a long way off. One feels obliged to stop and acknowledge their cordiality. Some admit - you to their confidence through the side door, and into others you have to climb over a barrier, or a lot of useless detail which, ofttimes conceals admirable quality. The open door is a surer invitation than the diffident latch-string. Mystery, subtlety and evasive charm are all in place in a work of art, but should not stand on the threshold. One spot or circumference there should be to- ward which, through the suppression of other parts, the eye is led at once. "When there, even though the vision has passed miles into the can- vas, one is at the starting-point only, from which to proceed in viewing the picture. Any element which proves too attractive along this avenue of entrance is confusing to the sight and weakening to the impression. [74] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION One item after another, in sequence, the visitor should then be led to, and, having made the circuit and paid his respects to the company in the order of importance with that special care which prevails at a Chinese court function, the visitor should be shown the exit. Getting out of a picture is almost as important as getting into it, but of this later. ' If the artist, in the composition of his picture, cannot so arrange a reception for his guests, he is not a successful host. This disposal of the subject matter into which jprincipaUty enters so acutely is more patent in the elaborate figure subject than in any other. With the distinction between an assemblage of, and a crowd of figures, made plain. The writer once called, in company with a friend of the painter, upon the late Edmond Yon, the French landscapist. "We found him in his atelier, and saw his completed picture, about to be sent to the Salon. He shortly took us into an adjacent room, where hung his studies, and thence through his house into the garden, showed us his view of the city, commented on the few fruit trees, the flowers, as we made the circuit of the little plot, and, at the porte, we found the servant with our hats. It was a perfectly logic- ally sequence. "We had come to the end; and how complete ! " He always does it so," said the friend. "We had seen the man, his picture, his studies, his house, caught the inspiration of his view, had made the circuit of the things which daily sur- [75] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION rounded him, and what more — nothing; except the hats. Bon jour ! The new picture, like any new acquaintance, we are tempted to sound at once, in a single glance, judging of the great and apparent planes of character, seeking the essential affinity. If we pass favorably, our enjoyment begins leisurely. The picture we are to live with must possess qualities that will bear close scrutiny, even to analysis. If we are won, there is a satisfaction in knowing why. It must be remembered that the actual picture space in nature is that of a funnel, its size varying according to the extent of distance represented. The angle of sixty degrees which the eye com- mands may widen into miles. The matter of equipoise or unity therefore applies to most ex- tended areas and no part of this extent may es- cape from the calculation. The objection of formal balance over the centre is that it produces a straddle, as, in hop- scotch one lands with both feet on either side of a dividing line. In all pictures of deep perspec- tive the best mode of entrance is to shate in, with a series of zigzags, made easy through the habit of the eye to follow Unes, especially long and receding ones. It is the long lines we seize upon in pinning the action of a figure, and the long lines which stretch toward us are those which help most to get us into a picture. The law here is that of perspective recession, and, it being the easiest of comprehension and the most effective in result, is used extensively [76] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION by the scene-painter for his drop-curtain and by the landscapist, whose subject proper lies often in the middle distance — toward which he would make the eye travel. "When the opportunity of line is wanting an arrangement of receding spots, or accents is an equivalent. The same applies, though in less apparent force, to the portrait foreground figure subject. "Where the subject lies directly in the fore- ground, the eye will find it at once, but the care of the artist should even then be exercised to avoid lines which, though they could not block, might at least irritate one's direct vision of the subject. Conceive if you can, for one could rarely find such an example in pictorial art, of the forespace corrugated with lines paralleling the bottom line of a frame. It would be as diflicult for a bicyclist to propel his machine across a plowed field as for one to drive his eye over a fore- ground thus filled with distracting lines when the goal lay far beyond. Mr. Schilling, in his well-known "Spring Ploughing," has treated this problem with great discernment. Instead of a multiplicity of lines crossing the foreplane, the barest suggestion suf- fices to designate plowed ground, the absence of detail aUowjng greater force to the distant groups. ji;- In the Marine subject, especially with the sea running toward us, long lines are created across the foreground, but with respect to these, as 177] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION may be noted in nature, there is a breaking and interlacing of lines in the wave form so that the succession of such accents may lead tangentially from the direction of the wave. A succession of horizontal lines is however the character of the marine subject. "When the eye is stopped by these it has found the subject. Only through the sky or by confronting these forms at an angle can the force of the horizontals be broken. Successful marines with the camera's lens pointed squarely at the sea have been produced, but the best of them make use of the modifying lines of the surf, or oppositional lines or grada- tions in the sky. In a large canvas by Alexander Harrison, its subject a group of bathers on the shore, one single line, the farthest reach of the sea, proves an artist's estimate of the leading line. On it the complete union of figures and ocean depended. Its presence there was simple nature, its strong enforcement the touch of art. The eye's willingness to follow long lines may however become dangerous in leading away from the subject and out of the picture. What student cannot show studies (done in his earliest period) of an interesting fence or stone wall, blocking up his foreground and leading the eye out of the picture ? It is possible to so cleverly treat a stone wall that it would serve us as an elevation from which to get a good jump into the picture. Here careful painting with the in- tent of putting the foreground out of focus, could perhaps land the eye well over the obstruc- [78] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION tion, and if so, our consideration of the picture begins beyond this point. If the observer could take such a barrier as easily as a cross country steeple-chaser his fences and stone walls, there would be no objection, but when the artist forces his guest to climb ! — he is unreasonable. For two years a prominent American landscape painter had constantly on his easel a very power- ful composition. The foreplane of trees, with branches which interlaced at the top, made, with the addition of a stone wall below, an encase- ment for the picture proper, which lay beyond. The lower line, *. e., the stone wall, was in constant process of change, obliterated by shadow or despoiled by natural dilapidation, sometimes vine-grown. In its several stages it showed always the most critical weighing of the part, and a consummate dodging of the diflBculties. When finally exhibited, however, the wall had given way to a simple shadow and a pool of water. The attempt to carry the eye over a cross-line in the foreground had been a long and conclusive one, and its final abandonment an ad- monition on this point. A barrier across the middle distance is almost as objectionable. In the subject of a river embankment the eye comes abruptly against its upper line, which is an accented one, and from this dives off into the fathomless space of the sky, no intermediate ob- ject giving a hint of anything existing between that and the horizon. In order to use such a subject it would be necessary to oppose the horizontal of the bank 179^ PICTORIAL COMPOSITION by an item that would overlap and extend above it, as a hay wagon with a figure on top of it or the sail of a boat, and if possible to continue this transitional feeling in the sky by such cloud forms as would carry the eye up. Attraction in the sky would create a depth for penetration which the embankment blocked. The " Path of the Surf " is a splendid leading line ending most beautifully in a curve. Many readers will recall the notable picture by Mr. Picknell, now deceased, of a white road in Picardie. Here all the lines converged at the horizon. The perspective was so true as to become fascinating, a problem of very ordinary deception. More subtle is Turner's "Approach to Venice," see Fundamental Forms, in which the lines are substituted by spots — the gondolas — which, in like manner, bear us to the subject. The graceful arch of the sky also presses us to- ward the subject. One may readily use the placement of the spots and substitute cattle instead of gondolas and woods for the spired city; or groups of figures, sheep, rocks, etc. The composition is fundamental, and will accommodate many sub- jects. Getting Out op the Picture. This is important because necessary. It is much better to pass out than to back out. Pic- tures show many awkward methods of exit. In some there are too many chances to leave ; in others there are none. Pictures in which there [80] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION is no opportunity for visual peripatetics require no such provision. In the portrait we confront a personality, and some painters plainly teU us by the blank space of the background that there shall be but one idea to the observer's mind. In this event he has but to bow and withdraw. But suppose the curtain of the background be drawn and a glimpse is disclosed of a landscape beyond. This bit of attraction leads us toward it. Instead therefore of breaking off from the subject we are led away from it. The associations with the subject are ofttimes interesting and appropriate and the great majority of portraits include them. As soon therefore as we begin on any detail in the background we connect the portrait with the pictorial and the sitter becomes one of a number of elements in the scheme, the fulcrum on which they balance. A patch of sky, besides creating an expansion in the diameter of the picture in- troduces color, often valuable, as noted later. But more than this, these sky spots in a dark background are air holes. They enable us to breathe in the picture, giving a decided sense of atmosphere. When well subordinated they offer no distraction to the subject, but give to the picture a depth. When no other object is \ introduced, a gradation is serviceable. Much ^ may be thus suggested and besides the depth and air properties thus introduced, such variety of surface excites visual motion. The eye always i follows the course of light from the shadow. The artist may make use of this fact in balancing the picture and of leading the eye out where he [81] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION will. As it is desirable to enter the picture in a series of curves or zigzags, in like manner it should be left, though the natural finish of such a series should connect easily with its start. The eye should never be permitted to leave the principal figure or object and go straight back and out through the centre. If this is allowed the width of the picture is slighted. Therefore if the attraction of the natural exit is greater than other objects they exist in vain. The exit should be so guarded that after the visitor has moved about and seen everything, he comes upon it naturally. For example conceive a subject — figures or cattle — with the principal object in the foreground. From this the other objects, all placed on the left side, move in a half circle back and into the picture, this cir- cuit naturally leading to an opening in the trees or to a point of attraction in the sky or to a glimpse of distance. If this be not of less interest than any object of the progression, the unity of the pic- ture disappears, for from the principal object in the foreground the vision goes direct to the distance. Providing two or more exits is a common error of bad composition. This is the main objection to the form of balance on the centre, which pro- duces two spaces of equal importance on either side. In the drawing of the " Shepherdess " by Millet, the attraction of two alleys which the eye might take is largely regulated by the subordination of one of. them by proportional size and a lowering of the tone of the sky. At best, however, it is a case of divided interest, though the deepest dark ' [82] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION against the highest light helps to control the sit- uation. If for the balance of the pines in the snow scene a small tree on the right were added, the objection would then be that from the central point of attraction, the pines, the vision would go in two directions, toward the houses and the tree. The visual lines connecting these two points would cross the first or principal object instead of leading from this to one and thence to the other as would not be the case if the added tree appeared in the extreme distance on the right. Under this arrangement there would be progres- sion into the picture. A still better arrangement would have been direct movement from the mass of trees to the houses placed on the right, with the space now occupied by them left vacant. 4 DON'TS. 1. Parallel lines without vertical opposition. 2. Entrance stopped by an opposing plane. 3. Perspective occnrring in a vertical. 4. Two masses of the same size in diSerent plane. [83 1 CHAPTEE YI THE CIECULAE OBSEKVATION OF PIOTFKES The entrance into a picture and obstacles thereto, as applied to landscape, has already been considered, from which it is evident that wisdom renders this as easy as possible for the vision, not only negatively, but through positive means as well. An obstruction through which penetration is impossible, clogging the picture in the fore- ground or middle distance when such an object is not the subject, or when the interest lies be- yond, produces a redundant composition. / When in nature we observe a scene that natur- ally fits a frame and we find ourselves gazing first at one object and then at another and re- . tv/rning agcdn to the jvrsty we may be sure it will make a picture. But when we are tempted to turn, in the in- spection of the whole horizon (though this be circular observation), it proves we have not found a picture. Our picture, on canvas, must fit an arc of sixty degrees. The other thing is a pano- rama. The principle is contained in the illustra- tion of the athletes. This picture has the fasci- nation of a continuous performance and so in degree should every picture have. In the foreground, or figure subject the same principles apply. The main point is to capture [84] The Path of the ^vsiV^^Pkoto. Triangles Occurring on the Leading Line ~ — ttt: — - -. :'.,; K-. MinM^ 'fWr^ ' -^WB mgU^^^ 1.^1 W'"" m. m ::\.TO HB- 11' ''1 m^im U^^Bbaaga Ali*Ji] Mjfe%:.;-:" 'r?^"f-'viS^' '.y : -■'-'■■- S-'-^y f¥§SS-fe-fe-: ,■ '-: - ■., The Shepherdess — Millet Composition Exhibiting a Double Exit ^ Slaying of the Unpropitious Messengers Triangular Composition — Circular Observation Circular Observation — The Principle PICTORIAL COMPOSITION the observer's interest with the theme, which to Ms mental processes shall unfold according to the artistes plan. "With twenty objects to present,: which one on the chessboard of your picture shall take precedence and which shall stand next in importance, and which shall have a limited in- fluence, and which, like the pawns, shall serve as little more than the added thoughts in the game?. In " The Slaying of the TJnpropitious Messen- gers," a picture of g^eafr power and truly sublime in the simplicity of its dramatic expression, the vision falls without hesitation on the figure of Pharaoh, easily passing over the three pros- trate forms in the immediate foreground. These might have diverted the attention and weakened the subject had not they been skillfully played for second place. Their backs have been turned, their faces covered, and, though three to one, the single figure reigns supreme. Note how they are made to guide the eye toward him and into the picture and discover in the other lines of the picture an intention toward the same end, the staircase, the river, the mountain, the angular contour of the portico behind tying with the nearer roof projection and making a broken stairway from- the left-hand upper corner. See, again, the lines of the canopy composing a special frame for the master figure. Suppose a reconstructidfei of this composition. Behold the slain messengers shaken into less re- cumbent and more tragic attitudes, ari?anged along the foreplane of the picture ; let all the [87] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION leading lines be reversed ; make them antagonis- tic to the principles upon which the picture was constructed. The subject indeed will have been preserved and the story illustrated, but the fol- lowing points will be lost and nothing gained : A central dominating point of interest ; the dis- parity between monarch and slave ; the senti- ment of repose and quietude suggested by a starlit night and the coordination of recumbent lines; the pathos of the lonely vigil, with the gaze of the single figure strained and fixed upon the distant horizon whence he may expect the remnants of his shattered army. The artist's first conception of this subject was doubtless that of a pyramid ; the head of Pha- raoh is the apex and the slaves the base and side lines. The other lines were arranged in part to n u U I a i-i < a o lA < >< a ■< ^•| < PICTORIAL COMPOSITION cylinder, but on a flat plane the principle is just as forcible, as will further be shown in the pic- ture by Israels. "The Crucifixion," by Morot, is more statu- esque than picturesque, and would gain in effect if seen unembarrassed by the limitations of a frame. Its strength in one situation is its weak- ness in another. The presence of the frame creates three spaces, one above the horizontal and one on either side of the vertical, and these are empty. Therefore, although the single thought of the dying Saviour is sufficiently great to bear — nay, even, perhaps, demand — isolation, it unites itself with nothing else within our com- pass of vision, and, therefore, cannot be said to compose with its frame. The reader is now in a position to appreciate the simple mechanics which underlie the composition by Israels. In " Alone " the artist starts with the figure of the man — ^a vertical. The next thought closely allied is the woman. The two complete a cross. From either end two more verticals are erected. On the left another horizontal joins the vertical in the top of the table and unites it with another vertical, the shutter, and so on to the edge of the picture. On the other side the basket top leads off from the vertical and thence down the side to the floor and to the edge of the picture by the lines of fagots. The circuit, which helps to keep the vision in the picture and serves to render more compact the subject proper, is developed by the shelf, weights of the clock, basket, cap, items upon table, shutter and bedpost. For ["3] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION proof that the horizontal lines in this compo- sition were all placed there for the relief of the verticals, with the first of which the picture starts,' let us remove the table, basket and bench and see how the arrangement becomes one of quadrangles, paralleling instead of uniting with the sides. In every case, in the accompanying illustrations, there has been an effort to reach out toward the sides and take hold there. Those that have established these points of contact most fully are the most stable and the most satisfying. In the composition of the " Beautiful Gate," by Baphael, the two pillars, in that they span the whole distance from bottom to top, destroy all chance for unity. Three pictures result instead of one — a triptych elaborately framed. Even with these verticals cutting the picture into sec- tions, had horizontals been introduced between them and in front, or even behind, some of the necessary unity of pictorial structure could have been secured. What connection exists between these several parts is all subjective, but not structural, the impulse to exhibit the wonderful columns in their remarkable perfection of detail being a temptation to which the picture was sacrificed. Such an exhibition of the uncontrolled vertical produces an effect on a par with a football car- ried straight across the field and placed on the goal line without opposition. All the strategy of the game is left out, and although the play produces the required effect in the score, a few ["4] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION repetitions of the procedure would soon clear the benches. The interest to the spectators and players alike enters in when the touch-down is accomplished after a series of zigzags toward the outer line, where force meeting force in a counter direction results in a tangent, when the goal is reached by the subtlety of a diagonal. A cushion carom is an artistic thing ; a set-up shot is the beginner's delight. In the " Allegory of Spring," by Botticelli, we have a sample of structure lack- ing both circular cohesion and the stability of the cross adhesion. Like separate figures and groups of a photographic collection, it might be extended indefinitely on either side or cut into four separate panels. The accessories of the fig- ures ofifer no help of union. Besides the lack of structural unity, no effort toward it appears in the conception of the subject. Each figure or group is sufficient unto itself, and the whole represents a group of separate ideas. This is not composition. But what of the single figure in standing por- traiture, when only the person is presented, and no thought desired but that of personality, when the outline stands relieved by spaces of nothing- ness? Though less apparent, the principle of union with the sides still abides. What is known as the lost and found outline is a recognition of this, an effort of the background to become homogeneous with the vertical mass, the line giving way that the surrounding tone may be let in. Such is the feeling with which many of the most subtle of "Whistler's full-lengths have been ["5] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION produced. The portraits of Carriere are still more striking examples of absolute dismissal of outline. In the well-known portrait of " Alice," by Mr. Chase, where the crisp edges of a white dress are relieved against a dark ground, such treatment is impossible. Here, however, the device of fly- ing ribbons is a most clever one, which, besides giving the effect of motion, causes an interrup- tion in these clean-out outlines, as also in the formal spaces on either side. The horizontal ac- cent of dark through the centre of the canvas, suggesting a grand piano in the dim recesses be- hind, fulfills a like obligation from the linear as well as tonal standpoint. Angular Composition Based on the Hori- zontal. As the vertical may be termed the figure painters' line so the horizontal becomes the line of the landscape painter. Given these as the necessary first things, the picture is made by building upon and around them. The devices which aid the figure painter in disposing of one or many verticals have been briefly viewed. A consideration of the horizontal will necessarily take us out of doors to earth and sky, where na- ture constructs on surfaces which follow the horizon. The problem in composition which each of these lines presents is the same and the principle governing the solution of each identical ; balance by equalization of forces. Owen a Ivtie which [ii6] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION coincides with hut one side of the picture it becomes necessary for the poise of the quadri- lateral to cross it with an opposing line. The rectangular cross, though more positive and effective, is no more potential in securing this unity than the crossing of lines at a long angle. A series of right angles will in time arrive at the same point as the tangent, but less quickly. Each angle in such an ascent produces the parity of both horizontal and vertical. The tangent ex- presses their synthesis. In Fortuny's " Connois- seurs," the right angle formed by the line of the mantel and the statue takes the eye to the same point as the tangent of the shadow. Again, the principle allows the modification of any arm of the cross, maintaining only the fact of the cross itself. When a line passes through the first or necessary line of construction it has, so to speak, incorporated itself as a part of the picture, and what it becomes thereafter is of no great importance. If the reader will make simple line diagrams of but a few pictures, this point will be made clear, and it will be found that such diagrams which represent either the actual lines of direction or lines of suggestion from point to point or mass to mass will com- fortably fill the quadrilateral of the frame as a linear design. In all analyses of pictures the student should select the first or most commanding and neces- sary line of the conception. Having found this thread the whole composition will unravel and l*W(|«» «rr '5^ 1:/ ' ^'. . " Every man i^aSz 'can paint at all can execute individual parts ; /Ijnt to keep these parts in due subordination as relative to a whole, requires a comprehensive view of art that m,ore strongly [163 J PICTORIAL COMPOSITION implies genius than perhaps any quality what- ever." No more forcible examples of this truth may be had than the art of Claude Lorraine. Claude whose nature painting Kuskin berates but whose composition is strong, had two distinct arrange- ments, both based on the principle of Principal- ity. In the first he created sides for the centre which were darkened so that the light of the centre might gain by contrast. It is the formal Kaphaelesque idea; the other and much better one shows a division of the picture into thirds. The first division is given to the largest mass but usually not the most important. This, if trees or a building, is shadow covered, reserving the more distant mass, which is the most attractive, to gain by the sacrifice of the foreground mass. The first of these forms was evidently most esteemed by Claude, for his greatest works are thus conceived : " Cleopatra Landing at Tarsus," " The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba," see page 161. " The Flight into Egypt," " St. Paul leaving Ostia," "The Seaport with the Large Tower " and others. In all of these the light proceeds toward us through an avenue which the sides create. Under this effect we receive the light as it comes to us. In the other form the vision is carried into the picture by a series of mass attractions the balance being less apparent. "The Landscape of the Dresden Gallery," "The Marriage of Isaac and Ee- becca," " The Finding of Moses," " Egeria and Her Nymphs," and "Driving Cattle to the [164] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION Meadows," together with many etchings, are based on the second form. In all these about one third of the picture is put into shadow, a great right angle being constructed of the ver- tical mass and the shadow which it casts, gener- ally across the entire foreground. In "The Travel of the Soul" by Howard Pyle, reproduced from the Centv/ry Magazine, is remarkably expressed the fullness of quality resulting from these few principles. The force of the light is increased first by juxtaposition with the deepest dark merging so gradually into the darkness behind as to become the end or culmination of the great gradation of the back- ground. As in many works by the older masters the source of light is conceived within the pic- ture, so by its issuance from the inward of the wing, the valuable principle of radiation has re- sulted, the light passing upward through the wan face behind to the crescent moon and below through the sleeve and long fold of the dress to the ground. On the side it follows the arm dis- appearing through the fingers into the shadow. Beyond this circuit lies the great encasement .of another gradation darkening toward the sides and corners. This has been interrupted by the tree masses and sky of the upper side, as the idea of radiation was changed on the left by the oppositional line of branch forms. In the other pictures of this remarkable series may be found three distinct type forms of composition. Together they set forth the structure of the circle or -ellipse, the letter S or line of beauty, [I6S] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION the triangle, and the cross. The one before us discloses a triangle or letter V, on which the figures compose, within a triangle formed of the rock fracture and path. It must be remembered that the eJSfort of the artist is to secure light in the degree which his subject demands. There are many degrees of light and they must not be confounded. The light of a lantern is not sufficient illumination for an effect under gas and a window on the north side won't do to call sunlight into a room upon a posed figure. The fault of many pictures is that the proprieties just here are violated. Some of the lowest toned interiors of Israels are satis- factory when judged from the standpoint of light, while out of door attempts in high key fail to suggest the fact of a sun in nature. The fault is that the exact degree of illumination which the subject demands is not present. There may be a greater feeling of light in a figure setting in the shadow than in the same figure next to a window. To the painter, light and air are but degrees of the same idea. If the figure seated in the shadow is well enveloped and relieved by the exact temper of reflected lights, it takes its place in his scheme of brilliant lighting as much as any other part. The purpose of shadow is first to produce light, second to secure concentration, third to dismiss space not required and incidentally to suggest air and relief by the gradation which every shadow must have. The idea of Notan, or the Light and Dark [166 J PICTORIAL COMPOSITION combination of Japanese art, differs from this in its intent, which is merely to set forth an agree- able interchange of light, dark and medium toned spaces. To the decorative intentions of the ori- ental artist natural fact is of small concern and the fact of shade produced by Light is dismissed as are many other notions which are non-conform- able to his purpose. The great value of this concept, however, should be recognized, and in formulating a scheme of light and shaide for any picture its light and dark masses may be so arranged as to suggest much of the beauty which its flat translation by Notan would yield. The practice of laying out the flat light and dark scheme of every picture which is to be finished in full relief is therefore most helpful, and directly in line with Sir Joshua's habit with the old masters. It is not suflS^cient that pictures have lights and darks. The balance here is quite as im- portant as line and measure. The proportion of -.liglit to dark depends on the importance required by certain parts of the picture. Ef- fectiveness is given to that end of the scale which is reserved vn small qucmtii/y. The white spot attracts in.the " DeM Warrior," the dark spot, in the " Lion of the Desert." A comparison of the "Night "Watch" and the "Landscape" by Inness will show that both are constructed on a medium tone on which strong relief is secured by contrasts of light and dark. Isolated spots occur through each contributing an energy opposed to the subtle gradations of the large spaces. The [167] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION rich depths of the background and the frequent opposition of shadow with light in the landscape are very typical of Inness' art and we know that the " Night "Watch " contains the best thought and richest conclusions of the greatest master of light and shade. The type forms in light and shade are less pro- nounced than those of linear construction, though through all compositions of effect, certain well defined schemes of chiaroscuro are traceable. As soon as any one is selected it rests with the artist to vary its conventional structure and make it original. Lack of a well-defined scheme of light and dark however, is ruinous to any pictorial or decorative undertaking. The accompanying wood interiors are intro- duced in proof that light and shade rather than form is the pictorial element of greatest value. In both pictures the principles of chiaros- curo are strongly expressed, and we look closely before discovering that the first one is the second placed on end. Analysis of pictures into light, dark, and half- tone develops the following forms. Geadation. Light being the happy and positive side of art presentation, any form or modification of it par- takes of its quality. The gradation bespeaks its tenderness, and, much as we may admire light's power, this, by its mere variety, is more attract- ive. [168 J r &L: fc*=:^.£r'-''— 1. Light and Dark 4- 2. Whistler's Portrait of 5. His Mother 6. S. Low Tide — C. A. Palmer Light with Dark Complement Moorland — E. Yon Charcoal Stutiy — Millet 7. Dark with Light Complement 8. Twjlight Study 9. The Arbor — Ferrier FUNDAMENTAL FORMS OF CHIAROSCURO 17 IB 10. Dark TO Light — Gradation 13. Grey with Black and White 11. Landscape — Geo. Inness Complement 12. The Kitchen — Whistler 14. St. Angela — Robt. Reid 15. An Annam Tiger — Surrand 16. Black and White with Grey Complement 17. The Shrine — Orchardson 18. Monastic Life — F. V. Du Mond FUNDAMENTAL FORMS OF CHIAROSCURO— Continued PICTORIAL COMPOSITION "We well endure the shadow if in it can be no- ticed a movement toward the light. Technically, an ungraded shadow means mud. One in which reflection plays a part speaks of the life of light and in it we feel that promise. We know it to be on its travels, glancing and refracting from every object which it touches. The shadows which it cannot penetrate directly, receive its gracious influence in this way and always under a subtler law which governs its direct shining — by gradation. Most good pictures are produced in the medium range and the ends of the scale are reserved for incisive duty. A series of gradations in which the grace and flow of line and tone are made to serve the forcible stroke which we see, presents a combination of subtlety and strength. Again the art of Inness affords illustration. There are three forms of this quality : that in which light shows a gradual diminution of power, as seen upon a wall near a window, or in white smoke issuing from a funnel ; that in which the color or force of a group of objects weaken as they recede, as may be observed in fog ; and that in which the arrangement secures, in disconnected objects a regular succession of graded measures. In each case the pictorial value of this element is apparent. The landscape painter may avail himself of it as the figure painter does of his screen, counting on the cloud shadow to temper and unite disjointed items of his picture. He makes use of it where leading lines are wanting or are undesirable, or to give PICTORIAL COMPOSITION an additional accent to light by such contrast or to introduce a note of dark by suppressing the tone of an isolated object. Gradation is the sweetening touch in art, ofttimes making unity of discordant and unartful elements. The vision ' wiU pierce the shadow to find the light beyond. It will dwell longest on the lightest point and believe this more brilliant than it is if opposed by an accent of dark which is the lowest note in a dark gradation. Turner and Claude often brought the highest light and deepest dark together in close oppo- sition through a series of big gradations of ob- jects, the most light giving device known in painting. The introduction of a shadow through the foreground or middle distance, over which the vision travels to the light beyond, always gives great depth; another of the devices in landscape painting frequently met with in the work of Claude, Kuysdael, Nolpe, Yandevelde, Cuyp, Inness, Wyant, Eanger, and all painters of landscape who attain light by the use of a graded scale of contrasts. A cumulative gradation which suddenly stops has the same force in light and shade as a long line which suddenly changes into a short line of opposed direction. They are both equivalent to a pause in music, awakening an attention at such a point, and only to be employed where there is some- thing important to follow. It is the experience of all picture makers that under the limitations which special subjects im- [ i;2 ] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION pose they are often obliged to search for an equivalent with which to comply with the re- quirements of composition. If, for instance, in the arrangement of a picture it is found necessary to move an object — a tree, figure or other item of importance, instead of ob- literation and repainting, the result is attained by creating an attraction on the opposite side from the direction it is to be moved. By so doing the range of the picture is in- creased and its space seems to take in more than its limits presupposed : If an isolated tree stand- ing against a mass of trees, by opening the sky through that mass or by creating attraction of color or form therein, the vision is led to the far side of the object to be moved, which is thereby crowded out of its position in the balancing scheme. An object upon a surface may frequently give place to a dark or light variation of the surface itself which becomes an equivalent of attrac- tion. Several objects may be made to balance with- out rearrangement though the marginal propor- tions of the picture are altered. The ship and moon compose as an upright, but not in long shape without either the following line which indicates the ship's course ; or an object of at- traction in the opposing half either in the dis- tance or foreground, much less being required in the latter than the former. The equivalent therefore of the leading line is the object on the farther shore. [ 173] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION The necessity of either the one or the other is more clearly shown when the line from the boat swings in the opposite direction. (See page 39.) The above are but samples of the countless substitutions enabling the artist to redeem faulty composition upon the sliding scale of attraction. [174] Hillside Graded Light Upon Surfaces. Clbud Shadows ^H '^^m H ■ mi s H-) J^.'- y^-^ '-'-'- -JI^HIlHBUHDSiiilk River Fog Light Graded by Atmospheric Density The Chant Gradation by Color Values of Separated Objects Death of Caesar — GerSme ^^ W^BHm." i H ^w-*"'- ~>„^^hIi!b^ ^^^^^K ^^^ S^^.^AjaRMRy P':^^^^^^^^^ sS^a^^^^^^ Century Magazine The Travel* of the Soul— ^/f^'?- Howard Pyle V \ CHAPTEE XI THE PLACE OP PHOTOGBAPHY IN PINE AET Since the time that photography laid its claim to be reckoned among the fine arts the attention of artists has been attracted first by the elaim and thereafter, with acknowledgments, to the performance. The art cry of the newly baptized had the vehement ring of faith and determination. Like the prophecy of the embryo premier it sounded : " My lords, you will hear me yet." The sustained interest of the " Photographic Salon " and the utterance of its exhibitors in the language of art, has long since obtained conces- sion to the claim for associate membership. To make this relationship complete became the effort of many writers of the photographic circle. " The whole point then," writes Prof. P. H. Emerson, B. A., M. D., of England, '? is that what the painter strives to do is to rendier, by any means in his power, as true an impression of any picture which he wishes to express as possible. A photographic artist strives for the same end and in two points only does he fall short of the painter — in color and in t!he ability to render so accurately the relative values, although this is to a great extent compensated by the tone of the picture. How then is photography superior to etching, wood-cutting, charcoal drawing? The [ m\ PICTORIAL COMPOSITION drawing of the lens is not to be equalled by any man. There is ample room for selection, judg- ment and posing, and, in a word, in capable hands a finished photograph is a work of art. Thus we see that the art has at last found a scien- tific basis and can be rationally discussed, and I think I am right in saying that I was the first to base the claims of photography as a fine art on these grounds and I venture to predict that the day will come when photographs will be ad- mitted to hang on the walls of the Koyal Academy." Since the appearance of the above which comes as close to the real reason in question as its logic might intimate, but which is worth quoting from the prophecy which it contained, there have been many expressions of opinions by photographers. None, however, are more to the point than the following from the pen of Mr. F. H. Wilson : " When, fifty years ago, the new baby, photography, was born, Science and Art stood together over her cradle questioning what they might expect of her, wondering what place she would take among their other children. Science soon found that she had come with her hands full of gifts and her bounty to astronomy, microscopy and chemistry made her name blessed among these, her elder sisters. Art, always more conservative, hung back. But slowly jealous Art who first frowned and called the rest of her brood around her, away from the parvenue, has let her come near, has taken her hand, and is looking her over with questioning eyes. Soon, [178] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION without doubt, she will have her on her lap with the rest. " Why has she been kept out so long ? Almost from the beginning she claimed a place in the house beautiful of art. In spite of rebuffs she knocked at its doors, though the portrait painter and the critic flung stones at her from the house-top, and the law itself stood at the threshold denying her entrance. Those early efforts were not untinctured with a fear that if she should get in she would run the establish- ment, but the law long since owned her right, and instead of the crashing boulders of artistic dislike and critical indignation the volleys they drop at her feet now are mere mossy pebbles flung by similarly mossy critics or artist-bigots. Still, the world at large hears them rattle and does not give her the place and estimation she has won. " Art began with the first touch of man to shape things toward his ideal, be that ideal an agreeable composition, or the loftiest conception of genius. The higher it is the more it is art. Art is head- and-hand work and a creation deserves the name of art according to the quality and quantity of this expended on it. Simply sit down squarely before a thing and imitate it as an ox would if an ox could draw, with no thought or intention save imitation and the result will cry from every line, ' I am not art but machine work,' though its technique be perfection. Toil over arrange- ment and meditate over view-point and light, and though the result be the rudest, it will bear PICTORIAL COMPOSITION the impress of thought and of art. I tell you art begins when man with thought, forming a stand- ard of beauty, commences to shape the raw material toward it. In pure landscape, where modification is limited, it begins when the artist takes one standpoint in preference to another. In figure composition, where modification is infinite, it begins with the first touch to bring the model into pose. "When he bends a twig or turns a fold of drapery the spirit of art has come and is stirring within him. What matters the process ! Surely it is time that this artistic bigotry was ended." The kernel lies in the sentence " when he bends a twig," etc., " the spirit of art has come." In other words when he exhibits choice and prefer- ence, when, in short, he composes. Eecognizing that composition was the only portal through which the new candidate for art recognition could gain an entrance into the circle of Art, the single effort of the past photog- rapher, viz. ; the striving for detail and sharpness of line, has been relegated to its reasonable place. A comprehension of composition was found to demand the knowledge of a score of things which then by necessity were rapidly discovered, applied and installed. Composition means sacri- fice, gradation, concentration, accent, oblitera- tion, replacement, construction of things the plate does not have, destruction of what it should not have. Supplied with such a magician's wand no effect was denied : all things seemed possible. [i8o] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION Gratified by recognition in a new realm the new associations should be strengthened. "Whereas photography had been spanned by the simple compass of Mr. and Mrs. A. and their daughter, in figures; or topographical accura- cies in landscape, revellers in the new art talked of Bembrandt and Titian, Corot and Diaz. To do something which should put their art in touch with these, their new-found brethren, was the thing ! A noble ambition, but only a mistaking of the effect for the cause. These men composed. The blurred outline, the vacant shadow, the sup- pressed corners, the clipped edges. This all means composition in the subduing of insistent outline, in the exchange of breadth for detail, in the centralization of light, in the suppression of the unnecessary. But no, the employment of these devices of the painter from the photographer's point of view of composition is not sufficient. Photog- raphy is now busy complimenting every school of painting under the sun. Yesterday it was Kembrandt's school. Now that is passed, and Carriere is better and to-morrow, perchance, it will be Eaphael or Whistler or some Japanese, why not ? The one and only good sign which marks imi- tation is that it shows appreciation, and this of the standards is a good thing. Let each have its turn. Their synthesis may be you. But to a man of the professions or business whose time for study in these vast fields of the classics is so disproportionate to their extent [i8i] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION and who, though supplied with search warrants and summons, still fails to make a capture, how ineffectual and wearying this chase after ideals — subjective. Why not shorten your course? Why not produce Eembrandts and Corots be- cause you apprehend the principles on which they work and anticipate a surprise in discover- ing, as by chance, that you have produced some- thing which recalls them. In this way and by these means there will be meaning in your claim of brotherhood. One may scarcely call an estimate in art mat- ters complete without an opinion from Mr. Eus- kin. "In art we look for a record of man's thought and power, but photography gives that only in quite a secondary degree. Every touch of a great painting is instinct with feel- ing, but howsoever carefully the objects of a picture be chosen and grouped by the photo- grapher, there his interference ends. It is not a mere matter of color or no color, but of Inven- tion and Design, of Feeling and Imagination. Photography is a matter of ingenuity : Art of genius." On these lines however the philosopher of Ooniston hardly proves his case. Invention and design, feeling and imagination are all a part of the photographer's suite. He employs them all. And these too are qualities the most artistic. Technique, which is manual and not spiritual, is the one point at which art and photography cannot coalesce. To Art's sen- tient finger-tips, Photography holds up only steel, C 182 ] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION wood and glass. Art therefore holds the win- ning cards. P. G. Hamerton, England's safest and surest critic of art, writing a generation ago on the " Eolation between Photography and Painting," says: "But all good painting, however literal, however pre-Eaphaelite or topographic, is full of human feeling and emotion. If it has no other feeling in it than love or admiration for the place depicted, that is much already, quite enough to carry the picture out of the range of photography into the regions of real art. And this is the reason why good painting can- not be based on photography. I find photo- graphic data of less value than hasty sketches. The photograph renders the form truly, no doubt, as far as it goes, but it by no means renders feelings and is therefore of no practical use (save for reference) to a painter who feels habitually and never works without emotion." It is very much to be questioned if Mr. Hamer- ton in the face of what has since been done with the camera by men who feel and are led by the emotional in art, would claim a distinction to the painter and deny that the photographic product, was unaffected by the emotional temperament. A friend shows us a group of his pets, either dogs, horses or children, done by an "artist photographer." We find it strongly composed, evincing a clear knowledge of every point to be observed in extracting from the subject all the picturesqueness there was in it. "We notice a soft painter-like touch, shadows not detailed — [183 J PICTORIAL COMPOSITION simply graded — aerial envelopment everywhere suggested. It would be pedantry for the painter to correct the expression of his friend and suggest that the man who produced the picture was not an artist. It is the product of a man who felt exactly as an artist would have felt; an expression of views upon a subject entirely governed by the principles of art, and the man who made it, by that sym- pathy which he exhibits with those principles, is my brother in art to a greater degree than the painter who, with youthful arrogance, throws these to the winds "mistaking," as has been cleverly said, " the will-o'-the-wisp of eccentricity for the miracle working impulse of genius." In whatsoever degree more of the man and less of the mechcmic appears, in that degree is the result a work of art. The reliance of photography on composition has provoked an earnest search for its principles. The photographer felt safe in going to the school of painting for these principles and accepted without question the best book written for paint- ers, that by John Burnet, penned more than a century ago at a time when the art of England was at a low imitative ebb, and unduly influenced by imitation. This has been abundantly quoted by photographic teachers and evidently accepted, with little challenge, as final. The best things, discoverable to the writer, in the field of composition, have been by the photog- raphers themselves — the best things as well as the most inane ; but in the face of so many re- [184 J PICTORIAL COMPOSITION suits that earnest workers with the camera pro- duce and continue to put forth, which cannot find a place in the categories of Art, it would seem that these preachments have been un- heeded, or were not sufficiently clear to afford practical guidance for whom they were intended. Mr. P. H. Bobinson declares most strenuously for composition. "It is my contention," he says, "that one of the first things an artist should learn is the construction of a picture." On a par with this is the opinion of Mr. Arthur Dow, the artist, who declares that " art education should begin at composition." It is for lack of this that the searcher for the picturesque so frequently returns empty handed. [i8S] The Esthetics of Composition PART II Breadth Versus Detail CHAPTEK XII Subjectively the painter and the photog- rapher stretch after the same goal. Technically they approach it from opposite di- rections. The painter starts with a bare surface and cre- ates detail, the photographer is supplied there- with. Art lies somewhere between these starting points ; for art is a reflection of an idea and ideas may or may not have to do with detail. According to the subject then is the matter of detail to serve us. In the expression of character a certain amount of detail is indispensable ; by the painter to be produced, by the photographer saved. But detail is often so beautiful in itself ! and is not art a presentation of the beautiful, pleads the photographer. And the reply in the Socratic method is: "Look at the whole sub-\ ject : does the idea of it demand this detail ? " ' The untutored mind always sees detail. For this reason most education is inductive, but [187] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION though the process is inductive, the goal is the eternal synthesis. It is the reporter who gathers the facts: the editor winnows therefrom the moral. The artist must — in time — get on top and take this survey. Looking at any subject with eyes half closed enables him to see it without detail, and later, with eyes slowly opening, admitting that much only which is necessary to character. The expression of character by masses of black and white proves this. Bishop Potter is unmis- takable, his features bounded by their shadows. From such a start then it is a question of pro- cedure cautiously to that point where the greatest character lies, but beyond which point detail be- comes unnecessary to character. The pen portrait of Thackeray by Eobt. Blum is a careful delineation of the characteristic head of the novelist set on shoulders characteristically bent forward and the body characteristically tall. What more can be told of Thackeray 's per- [ 188 ] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION sohality ? Would the buttons and the wrinkles of the clothing help matters ! No, as facts they would not, and when art has to do only with character, the simplest statement is the most forcible. ( Millet, at one time, was known as " the man who painted peasants without wrinkles in their breeches." Not because wrinkles were too hard for him, nor because they were not thought worth while, but because, in his effort to prune his picture of the unessentials, the wrinkles were brushed aside. When, however, art has to do with filling an entire space with something, and the clothing occupies a considerable part of it, what shall be done ? This changes the details of the question, yet of all portraits that hit hard in exhibitions are those conceived in simplicity, those in which the personality is what stops and holds us. There are certain large organic lines of drapery which the character demands, but beyond this point opinion divides authoritatively from the complete silence of obliteration to the tumultuous noisiness of " the whole truth." In the portraits by Carrfiire all detail is swept away, and the millinery artists are shocked. Simplicity should never compromise texture and quality. This side of the truth cannot prove objectionable. " You have made my broadcloth look like two-fifty a yard and it really cost four," was a criticism offered by a young lady who posed in a riding habit. Such practical criticism is fre- [189] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION quently necessary to bring the artist down from the top height observatory where he is absorbed with "the big things." Breath does not signify neglect of detail or neglect of finish ; it means simplification where unity had been threatened. It is seeing the big side of small things, if the small things cannot be ignored. The lighting of a subject has much to do with its breadth. A light may be selected that will chop such a well organized unit as the body into three or four separate sections, or one that pro- duces an equal division of light and shade — seldom good. Shadows are generally the hiding-places for mystery ; and mystery is ever charming. None better than Eembrandt knew the value of those vague spaces of nothingness, in back- grounds, and in the figure itself, a sudden pitch from light and positiveness into conjecture. We hear in photography much of the " Rembrandt- esque effect," which when produced, proves to be just blackness. There can be no shadow without light, and Eembrandt's effort was to obtain this, rather than produce darkness. The feeling of light may also be broadly ex- pressed by a direct illumination. Here the shadow plays a very small part, and the subject is presented in its outline. Under such an effect we lose variety but gain simplicity. This brings lis close to the region of two dimensions, the realm of Japanese art and mural decoration. The portraits of Manet, the decorations of Puvis de Chavannes, and the early Italians, display the [ 190] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION quality of breadth because of the simplicity of lighting which these subjects received. Breadth in the treatment of the figure may be obtained by graded light. If a shadow be pro- duced at the bottom of the picture suflBciently strong to obliterate both the light and shade of detail, and thence be made to weaken as it pro- ceeds upward and finally give place to light, where light is most needed, great simplicity as well as the element of variety will be the result. Thus, in the most effective treatment in mural decoration, one sees only the grand forms, the movement, the intention, those things which most befit the inner surface of the building being also those which bear the greater importance. The fact is used as an argument for the assumption that painting should, after all, be an art of two dimensions, length and breadth, reserving thick- ness and its representation, for sculpture. This robs painting of the quality of natural aspect, except under the single effect of absolutely direct lighting and ignores its development beyond the flatly colored representations of the ancient Egyptians, our American Indians and the Japa- nese, a development inaugurated by the Greeks and since adhered to by all occidental nations. The student who goes to nature and sees mass only, discarding all detail, will run the chance of being a colorist as well as a painter of breadth, two of the most important qualifications ; for if he refuses to be stopped by detail his intelligence will crystallize upon that other thing which at- tracts him. He will think the harder upon the [ 191 ] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION simple relations of tones and the exact color. Slowly dexterity will add a facility to his brush and he will, while aiming at character, through breadth, unconsciously introduce characteristic detail. This is the hope of the new method which is now being introduced into the system of public school instruction. The scheme as developed by Mr. Dow is deco- rative rather than naturalistic, the aesthetic side with "Beauty," as the watchword being in greatest point. The filling of spaces in agree- able and harmonious arrangement does not de- mand strict acknowledgment to natural aspect. Indeed this is denied in most cases where the limitations of decoration are enjoined. "With the first principle, truth, upon which all education rests, as the basis of such study, the nature part of this system will fall into its logical channels. If nature's largeness and simplicity contributes to its value, then nature should be consulted when she is large and simple. Studies of trees in gray silhouette, should be made at twilight, either of evening or early morning, when the de- tail, which is useless to the decorative scheme, is not seen. Under such conditions no slight or sacri- fice is necessitated. Nature then contributes her quantity directly and the student has no warrant in assuming to change her. There are times also when the face of nature is so varied that the most fantastic schemes of Notam, are observed ; a harbor filled with sails and sea-gulls, a crowd of people speckling the shore, the houses of a village dotted over a hillside. Under a direct [ 192] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION light these become legitimate subjects offered by nature herself to the scheme which, however, ahe only now and then honors. The system therefore accompanies the student but part way and leaves him still knocking at the door of the complete naturalistic presentation of pictorial art, a development which stretches into limitless possibilities by the use of the third dimension. "Work in two dimensions by reason of its greater simplicity should naturally precede the complications involved in producing the com- pletely modelled forms of nature, and therein the argument for its use in the early stages of the student's development is a strong one. SUGGESTIVENESS. Breadth, so often accountable for mystery, leads to suggestiveness. It is at this point that graphic art touches hands with the invisible, — where the thing merges into the idea. Here we deliver over our little two by four affair with its Bpecifications all marked, into the keeping of larger hands which expand its possibilities. If then Imagination carries us beyond the limits of graphic art let us by all means employ it. Upon this phase of art the realist can but look with folded arms. The dwellers in the charmed world of Greek mythological fancy came on tip- toe to the borders only of the daily life of that age. The still-life painter has to do with fact, and for many other subjects also the fact alone is [193] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION sufficient. It is generally so in portraiture where rendition of externals is attempted, but the por- trait may suggest revery and reflection, or, by intimate accessory, provoke a discursive move- ment in thought. The realist is a man of drawing and how to do it, of paint and putting it on, of textures and technique ; he is an artist ; and stops with that. But the maker of pictures would step to another point of sight. He would so aim as to shoot over the hilltop. He would hit something which he cannot see. Suggestion is both technical and subjective. There is suggestion of detail, of act and of fact. In producing the effect, instead of the detail, of a bunch of grass or a mass of drapery, we sub- stitute suggestion for literalism. Fortuny, as a figure painter, was master of this art, his wonderful arrangements of figures amongst drapery and in grasses bearing evidence. Here, out of a fantastic crush of color, will be brought to view a beautifully modelled hand and wrist which connect by the imagination only, with the shoulder and body. These however, are ready to receive it and like other parts of the picture are but points of fact to give encourage- ment to the quest for the remainder. The hide and seek of the subject, the " lost and found " in the line, the subsidizing of the imagination for tribute, by his magic wand stroke were the arti- fices by which Fortuny coquetted with nature and the public, fascinating the art world of his day. [ 194] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION Fortuny, however, never took us beyond the bounds of his picture. It was his doctrine that avoidance of detail was artful ; that to carry the whole burden when imagination could be tricked into shouldering some of it was fool's drudgery. Millet, who was his antipode as a clumsy handler of his tools, declared himself fortunate in be- ing able to suggest much more than he could paint. In one of the competitions at the Koyal Academy in England, the prize was awarded to that rendering of the expression of Grief which showed the face entirely covered, the suggestion being declared stronger than the fact. In the realm of suggestion however the land- scape artist has much the wider range. Who has not experienced the fascination of a hilltop ? The hill may be uninteresting — on your side, — but there is another. There is a path winding over it, telling of the passing of few or many ; your feet have touched it and imagination has you in her train, and you follow eagerly to the beck of her enchantment. Suppose the scene at twilight on one of the great plains of northern France where beets are the sole crop. A group of carts and oxen shut out the background and no figures are seen. If how- ever against the sky are the silhouetted forms of two handf uls of beets, the sight of a figure or even a part of him would seem unnecessary to a casual observer who wished to know if there was any one about. These inanimate things moving through the air mean life. The painter has cre- [195} PICTORIAL COMPOSITION ated one figure and suggested the likelihood of others by these few touches. Herein we have the suggestion of a fact. The suggestion of an act, may further be developed by showing the figure, having already finished with the handful, bending to {nek up others. Such a position would be an actual statement regarding the present act but a suggested one concerning the former, the effect of which is still seen. If then the figure were represented as performing something in any moment of time farther removed from that governing the position of the beets than nat- ural action could control, he has forced into his figure an accelerated action which ranges any- where between the startling, the amusing, and the impossible. The power of implied force or action by sug- gestion is the basis of the Greek sculptured art of the highest period. Much of the argument of Lessing's elaborate essay on the " Laocoon " is aimed at this point, which is brought out in its completeness in his discussion of Timomachus' treatment of the raving Ajax. " Ajax was not represented at the moment when, raging among the herds he captures and slays goats and oxen, mistaking them for men. The master showed him sitting weary after these crazy deeds of heroism, and meditating self-destruction. That was really the raving Ajax, not because he is raving at the moment, but because we see he has been raving and with what violence his present reaction of shame and despair vividly portrays. "We see the force of the tempest in the [196] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION wrecks and the corpses with which it has strewn the beach." In the photographic realm of the nude, this quality is compulsory. "We don't want to have offered us so intimate a likeness of a nude figure that we ask, " Who is she, or he ? " The general and not the particular suffices ; the type not the person. The painter's art contains few stronger touches through this means than the incident of the sleeping senator in GerSme's "Death of Caesar." In the suggestion of an idea, graphic and plastic art rise to the highest levels of poetry. The picture or the poem then becomes the sur- face, refracting the idea which stretches on into infinity. The dying lion of Lucerne, mortally pierced by the shaft, the wounded lion of Paris, striking under his forepaw the arrow meant for his de- struction are symbols memorializing the Swiss guard of Louis XVI, and the unequal struggle of France against Germany in '72. At the death of Lorenzo the arts languished and Michel Angelo's supine and hanging figures in his tomb are there to indicate it. Mystery. Suggestion with its phantom guide-posts leads us through its varied mazes to the dwelling-place of mystery. Here the artist will do well to tarry and learn all the oracle may teach him. The positive light of day passes to the twilight of the moon and stars. [197] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION What things may be seen and forms created out of the simple mystery of twilight ! Its value by suggestion may be known technic- ally to the artist, for through the elimination of detail, the work is sifted to its essence and we then see it in its bigness, if it has any, and if not we dis- cover this lack. When the studio light fails our best critic enters and discloses in a few moments what we have been looking for all day long. There should be in most pictures an opportunity of saying that which shall be interpreted by each one according to his temperament, a little place where each may delight in setting free his own imagination. To account for the popularity of many pictures in both color and black and white on any other ground than that of mystery seems ofttimes im- possible. The strong appeal made to all classes by subjects containing mysterious suggestion is evidenced by the frequency of awards to such in photographic and other competitions. The student of photography asks if blurred edges, empty shadows and vaporous detail mean quality. They certainly mean mystery, which when applied to an appropriate subject signifies that the artist has joined his art with the imagi- nation of the beholder. He has therefore let it out at large usury. A cottage near a wood may be a very ordinary subject at three in the afternoon, but at eight in the evening, seen in palpitating outline against the forest blackness or the low toned sky, it becomes an element in a scheme of far larger [198] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION dimensions. The difference between the definite and indefinite article, when coupled with that house, is the difference in the quality of the art of which we speak. Mystery by deception is a misguided use of an art quality. In photography one man delights in the etching point and cannot stop until he has made a net work all over his plate and led us to look at this instead of his picture, which, if good, would have been let alone — a clever device of throwing dust into our eyes. Another produces what ap- pears to be a pencil drawing, and a very good imitation some of them are, but at best a decep- tion. To make something look like something else is a perversion of a brilliant discovery in photographic processes, which offers the means for securing unity (and in this word lies every principle of composition) by adding to or sub- tracting from the first product. This may involve the destruction of two-thirds or three-fourths of the plate or it may demand many an accent subtly supplied before unity is satisfied, before the subject is stripped of its non- essentials or before it may be regarded complete. Let such good work go on — and the other sort too, if you will, the stunts, the summersaults and the hoop performances, but in the dignity of photographic competitions give the deceptions, the imitations of other things, no standing or quarter. No one will deny the interest there is in a sensitive, flexible line and in the rendition of [199] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION mass by line. But photography is an art deal- ing with finished surfaces of perfect modelling, and workers in this art should preserve the " nature " of their subject. The man who feels line had better etch or use a pencil. SiMPLICITT. Breadth while fostering suggestiveness gives birth to simplicity ; a subjective quality. "When applied to pictorial art, simplicity's first appeal is a mental one. We are attracted by neither technique nor color, nor things problem- atic to the painter ; but by his mental attitude toward his subject. If we determine that the result has come of elimination, that to produce it, much has been thrown away and that the artist prefers what he has left at a sacrifice, to what might have been, acknowledgment for this condensation is coupled with respect. There is however a type of simplicity, the Simple Simon sort, or an indisposition to undertake difficult things, which leads to a selection of the easy subject in nature. Having found some modest bit of charm, the Simple Simon turns and twists it to attenuation, with the earnest declaration that there is no greater quality than simplicity; but purposeful emptiness lifts its hands in vain for the baptismal sancti&cation of the poetic spirit. Where simplicity really serves the artist in his task is in those cases demanding the unification of many elements. In painting, Rubens and Turner thus wrought, [ 200 ] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION bringing harmony f rona an organ of three banks and a score of stops, setting themselves the task of strong men. Whatsoever subject be projected, the quality of principality takes precedence over all others. This is the first step toward simplicity ; some one thought made chief; therefore some one object in the composition of quantities and some one light in the scheme of chiaroscuro dominant. With this determined, the problem which follows is, how shall principality be maintained and to what degree of sacrifice must aU other objects be submitted. In the rapid examination of many works of art, those that appeal strongest will be found to be those in which the elements are simple, or, if complex, are governed by this quality through principality. Keseeve. Another bifurcation of simplicity is Keserve. In the simple statement of the returning Eoman general : " I came, I saw, I conquered," all that the senate desired to know was stated and it gained force by virtue of what was left unsaid. Anything else might have gratified the curiosity of his auditors, but the man, in holding this secret, made himself an object of interest. Rembrandt has told us that the legitimate gamut of expression lies some distance between the deepest dark of our palette and its highest light. Expression through limitations is digni- fied, a quality which the strain to fiU all limits sacrifices. It is the force quickly squandered by [ 201] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION the young actor, who " overacts," disturbing the balance of forces in the other parts. Upon the pivot of Keserve the opposing creeds of the Impressionists and Tohists bear with most contention. The former would lash their coursers of Phoebus with unsparing hand from start to finish ; the latter prefer the " Waiting" Eace," every atom of force governed and in control, held for the opportunity, when increas- ing strength is necessary. It is the difference between aiming at the bull's-eye or the whole target. The recent tendency of illustration to produce a result in three or four flat tones is another voice proclaiming for reserve. The new move- ment in decorative art may rightly claim this acknowledgment to it. In the work of Jules Guferin it is interesting to note how the bit and bridle of these two factors of breadth have been applied to every stroke, now and then only, de- tail being allowed its say, and in but a still small voice. With the large number of pictorial ideas now being recast in the decorative formula it is necessary to have a clear notion of the purpose and the limitations of decorative art, that this new art may not be misunderstood nor con- founded with the purely pictorial. Decoration is essentially flat. It represents length and breadth. It applies primarily to the flat vertical plane. It deals with the symbols of form, with fact by suggestion, with color in mass. It substitutes light and dark for nature's [ 202 ] The North River — Prendegast Or -*v ^«L P f ** ^^.■>'i^ ^\^U /■ , • - — ' 1 ^. /' -J-: 1 f^ ■V -- ^. An Intrusion — Bull Scribner's Magazine Landscape Arrangement — Gudrin The Madonna of the Veil — Raphael Lines of background paralleling subject, im- pairing unity Birth of the Virgin Mary — Dilrer Subject relegated to background, picture divided through center photo. munsey's magazine In Central Park Figures supporting each other in vertical columns The Last Judgment — Michael Angelo Composition in three tiers and subdivided by two vertical lines lacking cohesion of parts The Annunciation — Botticelli Subject disturbed by lack of reserve in back- ground, the vision drawn across the fore- ground by continuing verticals The Inn— Teniers Two complete pictures on one canvas, no element of union Why Art without Composition is Crippled PICTORIAL COMPOSITION light and shade. Conceptions evolved upon the flat vertical plane deal with pictorial data as material for heraldic quartering, with natural fact as secondary to the happy adjustment of spaces. iN'ature to the decorative mind presents a variegated pattern from which to clip any shape which the color design demands. The influence on pictorial art of the decorative tendency, has brought much into the pictorial category which has never been classified. The Kose Croix influence has witnessed its seed maturing into the art nouveau, and what was nurtured under the forcing glass of decora- tion has suddenly been transplanted into the garden of pictorial art. In consequence it would appear that the constitution of the latter re- quired amendments as being scarce broad enough to accommodate the newer thing. It is difficult, for instance, to reconcile the crowded and spot- ted surfaces in Mr. Maurice Prendergast's pic- tures, to the requirements of the balanced con- ception. It must be recognized however that their first claim for attraction is their color which is usually a harmony in red, yellow and blue, and when the crowds of people or buildings do not form balancing combinations they oft- times so fill the canvas as to leave excellent spaces, more commanding through their isolation than the groups choking the limits of the canvas. More often however these crowds may be found to hang most beautifully to a natural axis and to comply with all the principles of pictorial struc- ture. [20S] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION In his park scene, showing several tiers of equestrians one above the other, the chief charm is the idea of continuous movement which the scene conveys. The detail, wisely omitted, if supplied would arrest the attention and a chal- lenge on this basis would follow. It would then be found that what we accepted as an impression of natural aspect we would demand more of as a finished picture. It is because it is more decora- tive than pictorial and because its pictorial parts are rendered by suggestion, that it makes so winning an appeal. The quaint and fascinating concepts of Mr. Bull in the range of animal delineation are all struck in the stamp of this newer mould, and the list is a constantly increasing one of the illustra- tors whose work bears this sign. Belief. The popular notion concerning pictures is that they should stand out; but as has been aptly said, " they should stand in " ; so stand as to keep their places within the frame and to keep the component parts in control. A single object straining itself into prominence through the great relief it exhibits, is just as objectionable as the one voice in a chorus heard above the rest. It is a law of light that all objects of the same plane receive identically the same illuminations. If then, one seems favored, it must be by suppres- sion of the rest. Now and then this is neces- sary, but that it occurs by this means and not by unnatural forcing must be evident. [206] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION It is not necessary for the artist to lift his sitter off the canvas by a forced light on the figure and an intense shadow separating him from the wall behind. Correggio knew so well to conserve breadth just here. Instead of this cheap and easy relief, he almost invariably chose to offset the dark side with a darker tone in the background, allowing the figure's shadow to melt inperceptibly into the back space. Breadth and softness was of course the result. Occasionally however a distinct attempt at relief may be witnessed in the work of good painters. Some of Valesquez' standing portraits are expressive of the painter's joy in making them " stand out." In all these pictures however there are no other objects, no items added to the background from which the figure is separated. The subject simply stands in air. In other words it is an entity and not a composition. The process technically for the subduing of re- lief is flattening the shadows, thus rendering the marked roundness of objects less pronounced. The envelopment of air which all painting should express, — the detachment of one object from an- other, — goes as far toward the production of relief as is necessary. Finish. But the enquiry is naturally made, " if decep- tion is undesirable, should the artist pause before he has brought his work to a complete finish ? " Finish is not dependent upon putting in every- [207] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION thing which nature contains, else would art not be a matter of selection. Finish, though in- terpreted singularly by different artists as to de- gree, is universally understood to mean the same thing. Finish is the expression of the true rela- tions of objects or of the parts of one object. When the true relations or values of shade and color are rendered the work is complete. That ends it. The student for the first year or so imagines his salvation depends on detail and prides himself on how much of it he can see. The instructor insists on his looking at nature with his eyes half closed in the hope that he will take the big end of things. There is war be- tween them until the student capitulates, after which the instructor tells him to go as he pleases knowing with this lesson learned he will not go wrong. As a comprehensive example of finish without detail, one may take the works of Mauve which aim to represent nature as truly as possible in her exact tints. Wo one can observe any picture ever painted by this master and not be drawn down close to the ground that he may walk on it or elevate his head into the air and breathe it or feel it possible to send a stone sailing into its liquid depths ; but finish ! when we look for it where or what is it ? At the Stewart Gallery the attendant was accustomed to oflPer the visitor a magnifying glass with which to examine the lustre of a horse's eye or the buckles upon Napoleon's saddle, in the " Eeview of Cuirassiers at the Battle of Friedland " by Meissonier. These [208] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION items are what interested the great detailist and they are perfect ; but with all the intense effort of six close years of labor the picture has less real finish than any work ever signed by Mauve. The big thing in finish has been missed and I doubt if any artist or connoisseur has ever come upon this picture, now in the Metropolitan Mu- seum, without a slight gasp at the false relation of color existing between the green wheat, the horses trampling through it and the sky above it. The unity of these elements was the first step in finish and the artist with all his vast knowledge of little things never knew it. If then, perfect finish is a matter beyond de- tail, it follows it must be looked for elsewhere at this end of nature. The average man soon takes the artist's inten- tion and accepts the work on this basis, think- ing not of finish nor of its lack, but of nature; acknowledging through the sugges- tions of the picture that he has been touched by her. " During these moments," says John La Farge in his " Considerations on Painting," "are not the spectators excusable who live for the moment a serene existence, feeling as if they had made the work they admire ? " The argument then is that the master painter is one who selects the subject, takes precious care that its foundation quantities and qualities are furnished and then hands it over to any one to Jkiish. That it falls into sympathetic hands is his single solicitude. [209 ] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION " It requires two men to paint a picture," says Mr. Hopkinson Smith, " one to work the brush and the other to kill the artist when he has fin- ished his picture and doesn't know it." [2IO] The Critical Judgment of Pictures PART III "With the critic all depends on the right application of his principles in particnlar cases. And since there are fifty ingenu- ons critics to one of penetration, it would be a wonder if the applications were in every caae with the caution indispensable to an exact adjustment of the scales of art." — Leeaing'a LaoeSon. CHAPTER XIII THE MAN IN ABT Aet is a middle quality between a thought and a thing — the union of that which is nature with that which is exclusively human." * For the every-day critic much of the secret lies in the proposition Art is Nature, with the man added ; nature seen through a temperament. Nature is apparent on the surface of pictures. We see this side at a glance. To find the man in it requires deeper sight. If a painter of portraits, has he painted the surface, or the character ? Has he gone halting after it, or has he nailed it : has he won with it finally ? Is he a man whose natural refinement ' Coleridge. [211] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION proved a true mirror in which his sitter was re- flected or has the coarse and uneven grain of the artist become manifest in the false planes of the character presentation ? With respect to por- traits less than other subjects, can we expect to find them reflections of the artist's personality. But some of the ablest, while interpreting an- other's character, frequently add somewhere in it their own. The old masters rarely signed, feel- ing that they wrote themselves all through their works. The sure thing regarding the great portraitist is that he is a man of refinement. This all his- tory shows. Is our artist a genre painter: then does his mind see small things to delight in them, or to delight us — if this, he is our servitor or little bet- ter, — does he go at the whole thing with the sin- cerity of an artistic purpose and somewhere place a veritable touch of genius, or only represent one item after another until the whole catalogue of items is complete, careful that he leave behind no just cause for reproach ? Has the man digni- fied his subject and raised it to something above imitative art, or does he clearly state in his treat- ment of it that imitation is the end of art ? Is he a painter of historic incident ; then does he convince you that his data is accurate, or allow you to conjecture that his details are make- shifts ? Is the scene an inspiration or common- place ? Has he been able to put you into the atmosphere of a bygone day, or do his figures look like models in hired costume and quite [212] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION ready to resume their own clothes and modern life? Is he a painter of flowers ; then is he an a/rtist or a botanist ? Is he a marinist ; then, as a landsman has he made you feel like one, or has he painted for you water that can be walked on without faith ? Has he shown you the dignity, the vastness, the tone, and above all the move- ment of the sea ? Is he a landscape painter ? Then is he in a position to assert himself to a greater degree than they all? The farther one may remove himself from his theme, the less of its minutiae will he see. The process of simplification is in- dividual. What he takes from nature he puts back out of himself. The landscape painter be- comes an interpreter of moods, his own as well as nature's, and in his selection of these he re- veals himself. Does he show you the kingdoms of the world from some high mount, or make you believe they may be found if you keep on mov- ing through the air and over the ground such as he creates ? Does he make you listen with him to the soft low music when nature is kindly and tender and lovable, or is his stuff of that robust fibre which makes her companionable to him in her ruggedness and strength ? As the hidden forces of nature control man yet bend to his bidding — electricity, air, steam, etc. — so do the open and obvious ones which the painter deals with. They dictate all the con- ditions and yet somehow — he governs. The dif- ferent ways in which he does this gives to art its [213] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION variety and enables us to form a scale of relative values. The work of art which attracts us excites two emotions; pleasure in the subject; admiration for the artist. Exhibitions of strength and skill claim our interest not so much for the thing done, which often perishes with the doing, as for the doer. The poet with a hidden longing to ex- press or a story to tell, who binds himself to the curious limitations of the Italian sonnet, in giv- ing evidence of his powers, excites greater ad- miration than though he had not assumed such^ conditions. It is the personal element which has estab- lished photography and given it art character. Says J. C. Yan Dyke, " a picture is but an auto- biographical statement; it is the man and not the facts that may awaken our admiration; for, unless we feel his presence and know his genius the picture is nothing but a (collection of in- cidents. It is not the work but the worker, not the mould but the moulder, not the paint but the painter." "Witness it in the work of Michel Angelo, in both paint and marble. How we feel the man of it in Franz Hals, in Eembrandt, in Eubens, Van Dyck, Valasquez, Eibera and Goya, in "Watteau and Teniers, in Millet and Troyon, in Kousseau and Kico, in Turner, Constable and Gainsborough, in Fildes and HoU, in "Whistler, in Monet, in Eodin and Barnard, in Inness, in "Wyant and Geo. Fuller. Like religion, art is not a matter of surfaces. [214] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION Its essence is to be spiritually discerned. It is the spirit of the artist you must seek ; — find the man. "Back of the canvas that throbs, the painter ia hinted and hidden; Into the statne that breathes the soul of the sculptor is bidden; Under the joy that is felt lie the infinite issue of feeling ; Crowning the glory revealed is the glory that crowns the re- vealing. Great are the symbols of being, but that which is symboled is greater; "Vast the create and beheld, but vaster the inward creator; Back of the sound broods the silence, back of the gift stands the giving; Back of the hand that receives thrill the sensitive nerves of re- ceiving." [215] OHAPTEE XIV SPECIFIC QUALITIES AND FAULTS If we recognize the manly qualities in a pic- ture, the work has at least a favorable introduc- tion. Farther than this point it may not please us, but if not, it should remain a question of taste between the artist and yourself ; and, concerning taste, there is no disputing. It is just at this point that the superficial critic errs. Dislike for the subject, however ably expressed, is never cause for condemnation. The fair question to ask is, what was the artist's intention ? Its an- swer provokes your challenge ; " Is it worth the expression!" If conceded, the real judgment begins. Has he done it ; if not wholly — ^in what degree ? The question of degree will demand the patience of good judgment. There may be much or little sanity in condemning a picture owing to a single fault. It depends on the kind. There are errors of selection, of presentation (technique) of natural fact, and of art principle. We can excuse the first, condone the second, find small palliation for the third, but he for whom art principles mean nothing, is an art anarchist. Errors of selection are errors of judgment. A man may choose a subject which is unprofitable and which refuses to yield fruit ; and yet in his [2X6] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION effort at reediting its elements he may have shown great skill and knowledge and may have expended upon it his rarest gifts — fine technique and good color. The critic must read between the lines and blame the judgment, not the art. Feeble selection and weak composition wiU be more easily specified as faults than bad drawing and unworthy color. To the profession, the epithet " commonplace " weighs heavily against a work of art. Selection of what is fitting as an art subject means ex- perience. The "ungrateful" subject and bad composition are therefore likely to mark the nouveau in picture making — the student fresh from the atelier with accurate drawing and true color and who may be full of promise, but who has become tangled with what the French term the sovjet iTigrat. Every artist has studies of this sort which contain sufficient truth to save them from being painted over as canvas, ajid most painters know the place for such — the store- room. Exhibition of studies is interesting as disclosing the means to an end, and the public should discern between the intention of the " study " and of the picture. Herein lies the injustice of acquiring the posthumous effects of an artist and exposing for sale every scrap to be found. The ravenous group of dealers which made descent upon the Millet cottage at the death of that artist effected as clean a sweep as an army of ants in an Indian bungalow. In consequence we see in galleries throughout Europe and this country many trifles [217] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION in pastel which are not only incomplete but positively bad as color. Millet used but a few hard crayons for trials in color suggestion, to be translated in oil. Some were failures in com- position and in most the color is nothing more than any immature hand could produce with such restricted means. To allow these to enter into any estimate of Millet or to take them seriously as containing his own estimate of art, or as in- trinsically valuable, is folly. The faults of selection may also be open to difference of opinion. "Who would want to paint you when no one wants to look at you ? " said an old epigrammatist to a misshapen man. "Not so," says the artist; "I will paint you though people may not like to look at you and they wiU look at my portrait not for your sake but for my art, and find it interesting." The cult that declares for anything as a subject, its value dependent upon thai which the artist adds, stands as a healthy balance to that band of literary painters which affected English art a generation ago, the school of Eosetti, Burne-Jones, and Maddox-Brown, who strove to present ideas through art. With them the idea was paramount, and the technical in time dwindled, the subject with its frequently ramified meaning, proving to be beyond their art expression. Again, the popular attempt to conceive in pictures that which the artist never expected us to find is as reprehensible in graphic as in musical art. There is often no literary mean- ing whatever in some of the best examples of [218] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION both. Harmony, tone, color and technique pure and simple are the full compass of the intention. What this may suggest to the individual he is welcome to, but the glib dictum of certain preachers on art as to hidden intentions would indicate that they had effected an agreement, with the full confidence of the silent partner to exploit him. Beware of the gilt edged footnote, or the art that depends upon it. A writer of ordinary imagination and fluent English can put an aureole about any work of art he desires and much reputation is secured on this wise. In the presentation of a subject through given pictorial elements, the critic will know whether the most has been made of the opportunity. If the composition prove satisfactory and the theme as presented still fails to move the critic, he must shift from the scientific analysis to those qualities governing the artist subjectively. He is lacking in "temperament," and without tem- perament who in art has a chance ? With years in the schools and a technique of mechanical perfection he lacks the divine fire and leaves us cold. It is for the critic to say this, and herein he becomes a teacher to public and artist. The patron who agreed that a picture under discussion had every quality which the salesman mentioned and patiently heard him through but quietly remarked, " It hasn't that," as he snapped his finger, is the sort of a critic who does not need to know the names of things in art. He felt a picture should have snap, and if it did not, it was lacking. [ 219 ] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION But beyond the presentation of a theme having in it the mark of genius, is that of workmanlike technique. The demand of the present age is for this. If a subject is not painted it will scarce hold as art. Ideas, composition, even color and harmony plead in vain ; the spirit of the times sits thus in judgment. The presentation also should be individual, the unmistakable sign of distinction. To be able to tell at a glance by this mark puts us on the foot- ing of intimate acquaintance. A difference ex- ists between this and the well-known mannerisms of individuals. The latter applies to special items in pictures, the former to the individual style of expression. An artist may have one way of seeing all trees, or the similarity of one picture with another may be because there is only one sort of tree that interests him, or one time of day when all trees attract his brush. In the first case he is a mannerist, in the other a worker in a chosen groove. It cannot be denied that many artists making a success in a limited range of subject consent to stop, and go no further, under pressure of dealers or the public. The demand for specialists has much more reason in science and mechanics than in art, which is or should be a result of impulse. Corot declared he preferred the low sweet music of early dawn and to him there was enough variety in it to keep him employed as long as he could paint ; but the thralldom of an artist who follows in the groove of a bygone suc- cess because if he steps out of it the dealer [ 220 ] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION frowns and will not handle his work, is pitiable, exposing to view year by year the remonitory canvas with such slight changes as newness de- mands. It would be a healthier sign in art if the press and public would applaud new ventures when it was clear that an artist, thereby, was seek- ing to do better things and perhaps find himself in a newer vein. But variety in art it is maia- tained need not come of variety in the individual but of a variety of individuals. So Van Marke must paint cows, and Jacque sheep and "Wouver- manns must be told by the iuevitable white horse, and have the mere mention of the artist's name mean the same sort of picture every time. This aids the simplification of a many-sided ques- tion. The public, as Mr. Hamerton declares, hates to burden itself with names; to which might be added that it also hates to diiferentiate with any single name. A good portraitist in England one year exhibited at the Koyal Acad- emy a wonderfully painted peacock. The people raved and thereafter he was allowed to paint nothing else. Occasionally it is shown that this discrimination is without reason, as many men rise above the restriction. The Gains- borough portrait and landscape are equally strong, the works of painters in marble, and sculptors who use color, have proved a surprise to the critics and an argument against the " specialty." There are two degrees in the subversion of the natural fact. If, for example, under the rule in physics, the [221 ] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION angle of incidence being equal to the angle of re- flection, it be found that a cloud in the sky will reflect into water too near the bottom of the picture, a painter's license may move it higher in its vertical line ; but if the same cloud is made to reflect at an angle several degrees to right or left, the artist breaks the simplest law of optics. The painter's art at best is one of deception. In the first case the lie was plausible. In the second case any schoolboy could have "told on " the artist. There are good painters who appear to know little and care less for physical fact. Their busi- ness is with the surface of the earth ; the whys and wherefores of the universe they ignore, com- placent in their ignorance until it leads them to place the evening star within the arc of the cres- cent moon, when they are annoyed to be told that the moon does not grow from this shape to the full orb once a month. But ofttimes, though the artist may not flout the universe, he shows his carelessness of natural fact and needs the snubbing. It is in this range that the little critic walks triumphantly posing as a shrewd and a discerning one. He holds up inconsistencies with his deft thumb and flnger and cries, "what a smart boy am I." And yet in spite of him Eubens, for the sake of a better line in the fore- ground of one of his greatest compositions dares to reconstruct a horse with his head issuing from his hind quarters, allowing the tail to serve as the mane, and Turner kept on drawing castles all wrong. [ 222 J PICTORIAL COMPOSITION But these critics have their place. Even Rus- kin accepted this as a part of his work. There are occasions, as every artist will admit, when the artless critic with his crude common- places is most welcome. As to the violator of art principles, his range in art must perforce be short, his reward a smile of pity, his finish suicide. Originality may find all the latitude it requires within the limits of Art Principles. Euskin in his principles of drawing enumerates these as "Principality, i. e., a chief object in a picture to which others point: Eepetition, the doubling of objects gives quietude : Symmetry de- velops solemnity, but in landscape it must be bal- anced, not formal. Continuity : as in a succession of pillars or promontories or clouds involving change and relief, or else it would be mere monotonous repetition. Curvature : all beautiful objects are bounded by infinite curves, that is to say, of infinitely changing direction, or else made up of an infinite number of subordinate curves. Badiation : illustrated in leaves and boughs and in the structure of organic bodies. Contrast : of shapes and substances and of general lines ; be- ing the complement of the law of continuity, contrast of light and shade not being enough. Interchange : as in heraldic quartering. Con- sistency : or breadth overriding petty contrast and giving the effect of aggregate color or form. Harmony : art is an abstract and must be har- moniously abstracted, keeping the relations of values." [ 223] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION With the above principles of composition Mr. Enskin aims to cover the field of architecture, sculpture and painting, and he declares there are doubtless others which he cannot define "and these the most important and connected with the deepest powers of art. The best part of every work of art is inexplicable. It is good because it is good." Mr. Hamerton enumerates the duties of the critic as follows ; " to utter unpopular truths ; to instruct the public in the theoretical knowledge of art ; to defend true living artists ^igainst the malice of the ignorant ; to prevent false living artists from acquiring an influence injurious to the general interests of art ; to exalt the fame of dead artists whose example may be beneficial ; to weaken the fame of dead artists whose names have an injurious degree of authority ; to speak always with absolute sincerity ; to give expression to vicissitudes of opinion, not fearing the imputa- tion of inconsistency ; to make himself as thoroughly informed as his time and opportuni- ties will allow, about everything concerning the Fine Arts, whether directly or indirectly ; to en- large his own powers of sympathy ; to resist the formation of prejudices." The above require- ments are well stated for critics who, by reason of the authority of their position as press writers, are teachers of art. As to the personnel and qualifications of this Faculty of Instruction, inves- tigation would prove embarrassing. The shal- lowness of the average review of current exhibi- tions is no more surprising, than that responsible [ 224] PICT.ORIAL COMPOSITION editors of newspapers place such consignments in the hands of the all-around-reporter, to whom a picture show is no more important than a fire or a function. Mr. Hamerton in his essay urges artists to write on art topics, as their opinions are expert testimony, a suggestion practically ap- plied by a small group of daily papers in America. [225] CHAPTEK XV THE PICTURE SENSE " Fortunate is he, who at an early age knows what art is." * Howsoever eloquent may be the artist in his work, it is convincing only in that degree to which his audience is prepared to understand his language and comprehend his subject. " The artist hangs his brains upon the wall," said the veteran salesman of the N^ational Acad- emy, and there they remain without explana- tion or defense. The crowd as it passes, enjoys or jeers, as the ideas of this mute language are com- prehended or confounded. Art requires no apol- ogy and asks none ; all she requests is that those who would aflfect her must know the principles upon which she works. An age of altruism should be able to insure to the artist sufficient culture in his audience so that his language be under- stood and that his speech be not reckoned as an uncertain sound. The public should form with him an industrial partnership, not in the limited sense of giving and taking, but of something founded on comprehensibility. What proportion of the visitors to an annual exhibition can intelligently state the purpose of impressionism, or distinguish between this and ' Goethe • [226] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION tonal art ; what proportion think of art only as it exploits a " subject " or " tells a story " ; how many look at but one class of pictures and have no in- terest in the rest; how many go through the catalogue with a prayer-book fidelity, and know nothing of it all when they come out ! How many know enough to hang the pictures in their own houses so that each picture is helped and none damaged ? Could it be safely inferred that every collector of pictures knows and feels to the point of giving a reason for his choice of pictures, or even reason- able advice to a friend who would also own pictures ? Is not much of what is bought taken on the word of a reliable dealer and owned in the satisfaction of its being " all right," and per- haps " safe," as an investment ? Is it unreason- able to ask the many sharers in the passing picture pleasures of a great city to make themselves intelligent in some other and more practical way than by contact, gleaning only through a life- time what should have been theirs without delay as a fov/ndation ; and to exchange for the vague impression of pleasure, defended in the simple comfort of knowing what one likes, the enjoyment of sure authority and a reason for it. The best of all means for acquiring art sense is association ; first, with a personality ; second, with the product. The artist's safest method with the uninitiated is to use the speech which they understand. In conversation, artists, as a rule, talk freely, and one may get deeper into art from a fortnight's sojourn with a group [22; ] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION of artists than from all the treatises ever written on the philosophy of art. The most successful collectors of picturjes know &w. They study artists as Tv^ell as pictures. But on the other hand must it not also be conceded that acquaint- ance with fine examples of art is in a fair way of cultivating the keen and intelligent collector in the pictorial sense to a degree beyond that of those artists whose associations are altogether with their own works or with those who think with them, who must of necessity believe most sincerely in themselves and who are thus obliged to operate in a groove, and with consequent bias. For this reason association should be varied. No one has the whole truth. Music scores a point beyond painting, in neces- sitating a personality. We see the interpreter and this intimacy assists comprehension. But howsoever potent is association with art and artist, one may thus never get as closely in touch with art as by working with her. The best and safest critic is of course one who has performed. Experts are those persons who have passed through every branch and know the entire " busi- ness." The years of toil to students who eventually never arrive are incidentally spent in gaining the knowledge to thus hnow pictures, and though the success of accomplishment be denied, their com- pensation lies in the lengthened reach of a new horizon which meantime has been opened to them. "Whether the picture be found in nature [ 228 J PICTORIAL COMPOSITION and is to be rescued, as is the bas-Telief from its enveloping mould, cut out of its surroundings by the four sides of the canvas and brought indoors w^ith the same glow of triumph as the geologist feels in picking a turquoise out of a rock at which others had stared and found nothing; or whether it be found, as one of many in a collec- tion of prints or paintings ; or whether the recog- nition be personal and asks the acceptance of some- thing wrought by one's own hand — to know a picture when one sees it — this is art sense. Backed by a judgment presenting a defense to the protests of criticism, it becomes art knowl- edge. To find and preserve pictures out of the maze of nature is the labor of the artist : to recognize them when found, the privilege of the connois- seur. The guileless prostrations which the many affect regarding art judgments evoke the same degree of pity as the assertion of the beggar that he needs money for a night's lodging when you and he know that one is awaiting him for the ask- ing at the Bureau of Charities. The many de- clare they know nothing about art, the while having an all around culture in the humanities, in literature, poetry, prose composition, music, aesthetics, etc. The principles of all the arts be- ing identical, how simple would it be to apply those governing the arts which one knows to what is unknown. The musician and poet make use of contrast, light and shade, gradation, an- tithesis, balance, accent, force by opposition, iso- [ 229] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION lation and omission, rhythm, tone-color, climax, and above all unity and harmony. Let the musician and him who knows literature challenge the work of art for a violation of any of these and the judgment which results may be ac- cepted seriously ; and yet the essence lies beyond — with nature herself. It is just here that the stock writer of the daily paper misses it. He may have science enough, but lacks the love, the revelation through com/munion. But, with this omitted, critical judgment is safer in the hands of a person of broad culture, who knows nothing of the tools of painting and sculpture, than when wielded by a half-educated student of art with his development all on one side. Kuskin warns us of j'oung critics. As a short cut, the camera fills a place for the many who feel pictures and wish to create them, but at small cost of time and effort. A little art school for the public has the small black box be- come, into which persons have been looking searchingly and thoughtfully for the past dozen years. To those who have thus regarded it and exhibit work in competition, revelations have come. Non-composition ruins their chances. Good composition is nine-tenths of the plot. When this is conceded the whole significance of their art is deepened. Then and not until then does photography become allied with art, for this is the only point at which brains may he mixed with the photographic product. Any one who has experienced a lantern slide exhibition of art, where picture after picture fol- [ 230] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION lows rapidly and the crowd expresses judgment by applause, will not long be in doubt what pic- tures make the strongest appeal. The " crowd " applauds three types; something recognized as familiar, the " happy hit," especially of title, and, (not knowing why) all pictures, without regard to subject, which express unity. The first two classes are not a part of this argument, but of the last, the natural, spontaneous attraction of the healthy mind by what is complete through unity contains such reason as cannot be ignored. Subjects of equal or greater interest which an- tagonize unity fall flat before this jury. There is no opportunity more valuable to the amateur photographer than the lantern slide ex- hibition, and the fact that even now no more than ten or twelve per cent, of what is shown is pictorially good should provoke a search for the remedy. For the student, to fill the eye full of good compositions and to know why good, is of equal value with the study of faulty composition to discover why bad. The challenge of compositions neither good nor bad to discover wherein they could be improved is better practice than either. This is the constant exercise of every artist, the ejection of the sand grains from his easy run- ning machinery. Before photography became a fashion it was the writer's privilege to meet a country physician who had cultivated for himself a critical picture sense. The lines of his circuit lay among the [231 ] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION pleasantest of pastoral scenes. Stimulated by their beauty it became his habit, as he travelled, to mark off the pictures of his route, to note where two ran together, to decide what details were unnecessary, or where, by leaving the high- way and approaching or retiring he discovered new ones. After a time he bought a Claude Lorraine glass. It was shortly after this pur- chase that I met him. His enthusiasm was de- lightful. With this framing of his views his judgment grew sensitive and as he showed these mirrored pictures to friends who rode with him he was most particular at just what point he stopped his horse. The man for whom picture galleries were a rarity, talked as intelligently upon the fundamental structure of pictures as most artists. "I buy the pictures of Mauve," remarked a clergyman in Paris, " because he puts into them what I try to get into my sermons ; simplicity, suggestiveness and logical sequence." [232] CHAPTER XVI OOLOE, HARMONY, TONE In viewing a picture exhibition the average man, woman and child would be attracted by different aspects of it; the man by the tone of the pictures, the woman by their color, the child almost wholly by the form or subject. The distinction is of course epigrammatic, but there is a basis for it in the daily associations of each of the three, the man with the conventional appointments of his dress and his business equip- ment, the woman with her gowns, her house decorations and flowers, the child with the world of imagination and fancy in which he dwells. The distinction has much to do with the method and the degree of one's aesthetic devel- opment. That a picture must have a subject is the first pons asinorum to be crossed, the child usually preferring to remain on the farther side. The delight in color belongs to the lighter, freer or more barbaric part of the race. Tone best fits the sobriety of man. The distinction is the difference in preference for an oak leaf as it turns to bronze, and a maple as it exchanges its greens for yellow and scarlet. In the latter case two primaries are evolved from a secondary color and in the other a [233 ] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION tertiary from a secondary. In the case of the oak bronze there is more harmony, for the three primaries are present. In the case of the yellow and red, there is con- trast and effect, but less harmony, since but two primaries appear. As the walls are studied that sort of color art is found to be most conspicuously prominent which is in the minority and probably one's unsophisticated choice, from the point of view of color, would be that which has the distinction of rarity, as the red haired woman is at a premium in the South Sea isles. If, however, the tonal and the coloresque art were in even interchange, the former would have much of its strength robbed, to the degree of the excessive color of its neighbors. If, however, the pictures of tone and of color, instead of being hung together were placed apart, it would be found that the latter expressed the greater unity and presented a front of composure and dignity and that the varied coloi' combinations would as likely quar- rel among themselves as with their former neigh- bors. That a just distinction may be had between tonal and coloresque or impressionist art, the purpose of each must be stated. The " tonist " aims primarily at unified color, to secure which he elects a tone to be followed, which shall dominate and modify every color of his subject. This is accomplished by either painting into a thin glaze of color, administered to the whole canvas so that every brushf ul partakes of some [234] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION of it ; or by modifying the painting subsequently by transparent glaze of the same tone. The colorist and impressionist, on the con- trary, produce harmony by juxtapositions of pure color. Harmony results when the three primary colors are present either as red, yellow and blue or as a combination of a secondary and primary: green with red, orange with blue or purple with yellow. The impressionist goes farther, knowing that the complementary of a color will tend to neutralize it, supplying as it does the lacking element to unity, he creates a vivid scheme of color on this basis. In representing therefore a gray rock he knows that if red be introduced, a little blue and yellow will kill it, and the three colors together at a distance will produce gray. Instead, therefore, of mixing upon his palette three primaries to produce the tertiary gray, he so places them on the canvas that at the proper distance (though this consideration is of small concern to him) the spectator will Tnix them — which he often does. The advantage of this method of color presentation lies in the degree of purity which the pigment retains. Its disad- vantage appears in its frequent distortion of fact and aspect of nature, sacrificed to a scientific method of representation. An estimate of im- pressionism is wholly contained in the reply to the question, " Do you like impressions ? Yes, when they are good;" and in the right hands they are. They are good only when the real intention of [235 ] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION impressionism has been expressed, when the syn- thesis of color has actually produced light and air, and an impression of nature is quickened. But the voice from the canvas more frequently cries " nature be hanged — but this is impression- ism." The little people of impressionism finding it possible to represent more light than even nature shows in very many of her aspects, delight in exhibiting the disparity existing be- tween nature and, forsooth, impressionism. Thus we see attempts to "knock out" with these scientific brass knuckles all those who refuse to fight with them. The rumpus grows out of the different attitudes in which nature is approached. The one, drawn by her beauty, kneels to her, touching her resplendent garments; the other grasps her with the mailed hand, bedecking her with a mantle of his own. The knights wooing the same mistress are therefore sworn rivals. For effect, no one can deny that produced by the savage in war paint and feathers is more startling than the man wearing the conventional garb of civilization, or that the stars and stripes have greater attraction than the modified tones of a gobelin tapestry or a Persian rug. We put the flag outside the building but the daily course of our lives is more easily spent with the tapestry and rug. An " impression " ^ among tonal pictures ap- ^The term Impressionism applies entirely to a scheme of juxtaposed colors and not to the impression of a scene in place of its actnal rendition, as may be prodnced by tibe artist in mono- chrome. [236] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION pears as foolish, as a tonal picture among impres- sions and the sane conclusion is that the at- tempt to combine them should not be made. It was entirely under the influence of this fact that a picture by the late Theodore Eobinson was refused by the Metropolitan Museum, its alien and exotic color having no place in a gal- lery for which it was presented. The liberal policy of reserving it until a time when, with other impressions it could create its own environ- ment, was probably avoided through the honest opinion of the directors that such a time would never come. For charm in color no one will deny that in the works of old masters this is found in greater degree than in painting of more recent produc- tion, and the reason is, not because the pigments of the fourteenth century are better than ours, but it is to be found in the alterative and refin- ing influences of time and varnish, which have crowned them with the glorious aureole of the centuries. Guided by this fact the modern school of ton- ists seeks to shorten the period between the date of production and this final desirable quality,, by setting in motion these factors at once. They therefore paint with varnish as a medium, multi- plying the processes of glazing with pure color so that under a number of surfaces of varnish the same chemical action may be precipitated which in the earlier art came about with but few exceptions as a happening through the simple necessary acts of preservation. The consequence [237] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION of this adoption of kindred processes is that the tonal pictures and the old masters join hands naturally and can stand side by side in the gal- lery of the collector. This, though a wholly practical reason for the growing popularity of tonal art is one of the powerful considerations for the trend from that sort which is liable to create discord. The simplest illustration of harmony, and unity and tone may be had in nature herself, for though these qualities have their scientific exposition, the divisions of the color scale are not so easily comprehended by many people as the chart which may be conceived in extended landscape. The sky, inasmuch as it spreads itself over the earth and reflects its light upon it, dictates the tone of the scene. The surface of the lake re- veals this fact beyond dispute, for the water takes on any tone which the sky may have. The sky's power of reflection is no less potent in the landscape. Keflection is observable in that degree in which the surface, reflected upon, is rough or smooth. The absorbent surface allows the light to fall in and disappear and under this condition we see the true or local color. Note, for ex- ample, the effect of light on velvet or the hide of a cow in winter. When the hair points toward the light the mass is rich and dark, but when it turns away in any direction its polished surface reflects light, which like the lake becomes a mir- ror to it. Light falling upon a meadow will influence it [238] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION by its own color only in those places where the grass is turned at an angle from its rays. From these few observations it becomes obvi- ous that unity of tone is a simple matter when understood by the painter and that unity, being a most important part of his color scheme, may be increased by additions of objects bearing the desirable color which nature fails to supply in any particular subject. Thus if the day be one in which a warm mellow haze pervades the air, those tones of the sky repeated upon the backs of cattle, a roadway, clothing, or what not, may effect a more positive tonality than the lesser items would give which also reflect it. Herein then is the principle of Tonality : That all parts of the picture should be bound together by the j dominating color or colors of the picture. "With the indoor subject the consideration is equally strong. Let the scheme be one as color- esque as the Venetian school took delight in, vivid primaries in close juxtaposition (see small repro- duction in Fundamental forms — The Cross, page 170). The central figure, that of St. Peter is clothed in dark blue with a yellow mantle. The Virgin's dress is deep red, her mantle a blue, lighter than that of Peter's robe. Through the pillars is seen the blue sky of still lighter degree. Thus the sky enters the picture by graded approaches and focalizes upon the central figure. In like manner do the light yellow clouds repeat their color in the side of the building, in the yellow spot in the flag and the mantle of the central figure. The red of [ 239 ] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION the Virgin's robe and the yellow mantle to- gether form a combination of a yellow red in the flag, the blue and red of the central figures become purple and garnet in the surplices of the kneeling churchmen and doges. The rep- etition of a given color in different parts of the figure is pushed still further in the blue gray hair of the kneeling figures, the red brown tunics of the monks and the yellow bands upon the dra- peries. In the picture by Henry Kanger (page 120) (the crossing of horizontals effected without a line), a canvas in which the color is particularly reserved and gray, the tone is created by pre- cisely the same means. The cool gray and warm white clouds are reflected into the water and concentrated with greater force in the pool in the foreground, the greens and drabs of the bushes being strikingly modified by both of the tones noted in the sky. In landscape a cumula- tive force may be given the progress of the sky tones by the use of figures, the blue or gray of the sky being brought down in stronger degree upon the clothing of the peasant, his cart or farm utensils. Just here inharmony easily insinuates itself through the introduction of elements hav- ing no antiphonal connection. Fancy a single spot of red without its echo. Our sense of tonal harmony is unconsciously active when between two figures observed too far away for sight of their faces we quickly make our conclusions concerning their social station, if one be arrayed in a hat trimmed with purple [ 240] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION and green, a garnet waist and a buff skirt, while the other, though dressed in strong colors ex- presses the principles of coloration herewith de- fined. The purple and green hat may belong to her suit if their colors be repeated by modifica - ^tion, in it ; or the garnet and buflf become the foundation for unity if developed throughout the rest of the costume. The purchaser of a picture may be sure of the tone of his new acquisition if he will hang it for a day or two upside down. This is one of the simplest tests applied by artists, and many things are revealed thereby. Form is lost and the only other thing remains — color. Harmony being dependent only on the interre- lations of colors, their degree or intensity are im- material. On this basis it is a matter of choice whether our preference be for the coloresque or the more sober art. It must however be borne in mind that the danger lies in the direction of color. Inharmony is more frequently found here than in the picture of sober tone. Precisely the same palette is used to produce an autumnal scene on a blue day, when the colors are vivid and the outline on objects is hard and the form pronounced, as on an overcast day with leaden clouds and much of the life and color gone from the yellow and scarlet foliage. The reason why chances for harmony in the first are less than in the second is that the syn- thetic union of the colors is not as obvious or [241 ] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION as simple as in the latter, in which to produce the gray sky, red and yellow have been added to the blue, and the sky tones are more apparently added to the bright hues by being mixed into duU colors upon the palette. The circle of har- mony is therefore more easily apparent to our observation. It is for this reason that tonality is more easily understood when applied to the green and cop- per bronze of the oak tree against a cool gray sky than the red and yellow hillside and the blue sky. Values. Another important consideration in an estimate of a picture is its truth of values. The color may be correct and harmonious but the degree of its light and shade be faulty. This is a consider- ation more important to the student than the connoisseur as but few pictures see the light of an exhibition which carry this fault. It is the one most dwelt upon in the academies after the form in outline has been mastered. On it depends the correctness of surface presentation. If, for in- stance, the values of a face are false, the character will be disturbed. This point has been made evident to all in the retouching, which many photographs receive. Likeness is so dependent on those surfaces connecting the features or upon the light and shade of the features, that any tampering with them in a sensitive part is ruin- ous. Yalues represent the degree of light and shade [ 242] PICTORIAL COMPOSITION which the picture demands, the relations of one part to another on the scale assumed. Thus with the same light affecting various objects in a room, if one be represented as though illumined by a dif- ferent degree of light it is out of value ; or, in a landscape, if an object in the distance is too strong in either color or degree of light and shade for its particular place in perspective, it is out of value. There are therefore values of color and of chiar- oscuro, which may be illustrated in a piece of drapery. A light pink silk will be out of value in its shadow if these are too dark for the degree of light represented, and out of color value, if, in- stead of a salmon tone in the crease which a re- flection from the opposing surface of the fold creates, there be a purplish hue which properly belongs to the outer edge of the fold in shadow, where, from the sky or a cool reflecting surface near by, it obtains this change of color by reflec- tion. The most objectionable form of false values is the isolated sort, whereby the over accentuation of a part is made to impress itself unduly ; " to jump " in the technical phraseology of the school. The least objectionable and often permitted form is that where a large section is put out' of its value with the intent of accenting the light of a contiguous part. In landscape the whole foreground is fre- quently lowered in tone beyond the possibility of any cloud shadow, for the sake of the light beyond, which may be the color motif of the pic- ture and which thereby is glorified. [243] CHAPTER XVII ENVELOPMENT AND COLOR PEE8PECTIVB Allied to values is the idea of envelopment : of a kindred notion to this is aerial perspective. On these two depends the proper presentation of a figure m air. If at any place on the contour of a figure the background seems to stick, the detachment from its surroundings, which every figure should have, is wanting. The reason for it is to be found in a false value which has deprived it of rotundity of envelop- ment. The solid object which resists the attempt to put one's hand around it or to stretch beyond into the background, lacks this quality. A fine dis- tinction must be here drawn between simple en- velopment and relief, which is a more positive and less important quality. However fiatly and in mass figures may be conceived, the impression of aerial envelopment must be unmistakable. Here a nice adjustment of values or relative tones will accomplish it. Naturally, the greater space between the spec- j tator and an object, the more air will be present. ]