Chapter VII: Part 7

You now take either burnt sienna pure, or burnt sienna and umber, and with a fine sable give strength and precision to the darkest parts, such as the nostrils, the division of the lips, the inside of the ears, etc. If a little black is necessary for the eyebrow or eyelashes, you now give these little finishing touches, and your head is complete.

You have not used one grain of lime or of any solid color; the wall is stained rather than painted, and you have none of those strange and capricious changes of color to fear which are so constantly occurring in the solid method, where lime is used freely as a pigment.

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I have now gone through the whole process of fresco-painting as far as I know it. I shall conclude with a few general observations.

The fresco-painter ought to be of a nature capable of continued exertion. Whatever the work is, whether head, torso, or drapery, it must be finished in a day. He must not, on the plea of headache or seediness, give himself a half-holiday. He may of course abstain from work for a whole day, or for a week if he likes, but those little snatches of rest, involving a game at lawn-tennis, a good lunch, or a look at the papers, to which many artists are rather partial, are denied him.

He is always working against time, and although this is trying at first, he soon gets accustomed to it.

Secondly, he must be a man of fixed purpose. He has got his cartoon and his colored-sketch, and he must turn a deaf ear to all suggestions of alterations when once these preliminaries are settled.

An alteration in the turn or size of a head, or a change in the action of a figure, are very easily carried out in an oil picture, but in a fresco it is a very serious matter to begin alterations.

Thirdly, he must not mind a bit what the workmen and people about the building think of him. I believe that the upper ten thousand (at least the æsthetically inclined amongst them) do not hold mural decoration in contempt, but the working class invariably take the fresco-painter in his blouse and on his scaffold to be one of their own fraternity.

If they were to see the same artist in a handsome studio painting somebody’s portrait in a gilt frame, they would at once suppose he was a gentleman, but coloring a wall is a very ungentlemanly occupation.

When I was painting a large monochrome work at University Hall, there were some plumbers and glaziers employed in repairing gas-pipes and mending windows. One of them came down into the hall where I was at work, and began to look about for something amongst the pots and colors on my table. Apparently he did not find what he wanted, so he turned round and called to me, “I say, governor, you don’t happen to have a bit of putty in your pocket?”

Fourthly and finally, the mural painter ought to be satisfied with moderate pay.

At the Tercentenary Rubens Festival celebrated at Antwerp, last year, an Art Congress was held, at which I assisted.

The principal question proposed for discussion was an eminently practical one. It was; “How can monumental and decorative painting be best encouraged and revived at the present time?”

In answer to this practical question I gave what I thought a practical answer. After passing in review various difficulties with which modern artists had to contend, I summed up by saying that the real impediment to the development of mural painting was its enormous cost, and I pointed out that it was only by the artist accepting very moderate pay, and having at his command a staff of efficient pupils who would be willing to work under him for little or no remuneration, that such works as were executed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries could again become common. I said a good deal respecting the costliness of large mural paintings done by modern artists of any repute, and on the other hand gave examples of modern work, which, with the help of efficient assistants, had been done not only well but at a moderate cost.

At the conclusion of my paper, up jumped a gifted orator, who knew no more about painting than a cobbler, and in a torrent of eloquence swept away the few grains of common-sense I had ventured to import into the congress.

It was a sacrilege (according to him) to profane the temple of high art with a dirty question of pounds, shillings, and pence.

Art was a subtle essence, a delicate perfume. Art was a religion. Art appealed to all our higher sympathies, and it was only by educating people up to a kind of art-millennium pitch that we could hope to see our public buildings decorated with historical paintings. He sat down and mopped himself amidst loud applause, and I felt considerably humiliated. We had a great deal more of this sort of thing at the congress. The few artists who were present sat dumb, and the high æsthetic gentlemen had it all their own way, so that the congress, which might have served some practical end, finished in vapor and smoke.

In spite, however, of this termination of the discussion, I am still convinced that until mural painters have sufficient love for their art to accept a small remuneration, decorative work of a high class will languish.

For the mural painter’s work, Manchester millionnaires do not vie with each other. No spirited and enterprising dealers beset his studio, eager to secure whatever he has on the easel. All of what Dr. Johnson called the “Potentiality of becoming rich beyond the dreams of avarice” is denied him. Pay of course he must have, but his patrons are generally committees or corporate bodies of some kind, who seldom give fancy prices.

Let him therefore console himself with the thought that his is the highest and noblest branch of the profession, and that whilst high-priced easel pictures are relegated to private galleries and dining-rooms, only to reappear at intervals at Christie’s salerooms, _his_ work is a fixture, and can always be seen by the public.

With the hope that it may be admired as well as seen I shall conclude my lecture.

LECTURE IX.

ON FINISH.

It has always been a disputed point, both amongst artists and writers on art, how near an approach to absolute truth is desirable in painting; some insisting on photographic accuracy, whilst others go to the opposite extreme, and consider mere suggestiveness to be the great desideratum in painting.

Much may be argued in favor of both sides of the question, but a medium course is certainly the best.

Imitation of nature is no doubt the foundation-stone of all sound painting, and the natural inference would be, that the closer the imitation the better the picture. But, on the other hand, a picture which is not an exact counterpart of the object portrayed, but leaves something to be imagined, is generally more interesting than a more perfect copy would be.

This fact is particularly noticeable in pictures of flowers, fruit, and still life generally.

A picture which at a little distance gives thoroughly the character of the fish, game, or flowers it is intended to represent, will be much more masterly and artistic if the scales of the fish, the feathers of the birds, and the petals of the flowers are not individually studied with microscopic care, but treated in a broad, suggestive manner.

In a painting so handled the loss of a few minute details is more than compensated by greater freshness of color, and the charm inseparable from a rapid and dexterous execution.

If it were possible to combine the two qualities, if we could get breadth and brilliancy united with minute finish, it would even then be doubtful whether the picture would be any the better for the additional pains bestowed upon it.

In looking at pictures, we require to be deceived only up to a certain point, and the whole question depends on where to fix that point. In to-night’s lecture I intend to investigate this subject, and to extend my remarks to other kindred questions connected with the finish of a work of art.

All writers and lecturers on art are pretty well agreed that excessive finish is undesirable. I mean such finish as one sees in Bellini’s portrait of the Doge, where each individual hair is painted, and where every wrinkle or pimple is studied as though it were of the utmost importance.

There is, however, a kind of finish of an infinitely more objectionable kind than Bellini’s.

If Bellini elaborated small details to an extensive extent, they were at any rate thoroughly and honestly studied. His minute, delicate work always had a laudable object, whether it were the exact rendering of a stray hair or the microscopic modelling of the wrinkles about the eyes. But the finisher of whom I am now speaking has no object, beyond smoothness.

Bad proportions and gross errors in drawing are nothing to him provided he gets a smooth, uniform surface. Like the old-fashioned provincial drawing-master, who taught oils, water-colors, and Poonah painting, smoothness and finish are with him synonymous terms.

Probably most of you are happily ignorant of the lost art of Poonah painting and drawing, and I certainly do not mean to waste our time in describing it. It will be sufficient to say that the process was almost entirely mechanical, and that the results exhibited the maximum of smoothness combined with the minimum of art.

It used often to be taught in young ladies’ schools. It would be both invidious and unjust to compare the work of any Academy student with these inane productions, but I wish to warn you, as I have often warned you before, against confounding “finishing” with mere polishing.

Intelligent finishing consists in correcting small faults of detail, in revising the relative values of the shades and half-tones, in giving definite form to the fingers and toes, or any portion of the figure which may have been neglected. Unintelligent finishing, or what I call polishing, consists in getting a nice even grain for all the modelling of the figure. This polishing process may not in itself be objectionable, but it becomes objectionable when it interferes (as it too often does) with necessary alterations and modifications.

You probably all know that I am no advocate of _sketching_ in the schools. However much I may admire the nude studies of the great masters, I do not wish to see the same kind of work attempted by the students. I am decidedly for “finish,” “_high finish_” even, but by the term _I_ mean accuracy of drawing and modelling, and not neatness or evenness of execution.

To return to the Doge’s portrait, which I have taken as a thoroughly good specimen of minute finishing.

It is perfectly true that if you go close up to it and examine it with a lens, you will find it much more like nature than would be a head by Titian or Rembrandt if subjected to the same microscopic investigation; but pictures are not meant to be microscopic objects any more than human beings.

If in some foreign town I meet unexpectedly my old friend Smith, I should probably recognize him some fifty yards off. I should say: “That must be Smith, it is so like his figure and general appearance.” As I approach him I begin to distinguish his features, and I become more and more certain, until finally I grasp his hand and all doubt as to his identity vanishes. It is Smith all over, and, as I remark, not a bit changed since I last saw him.

I do not pull out a pocket lens and count the number of gray hairs in his whiskers, or the small warts about his eyes.

It appears to me that a life-size portrait should be treated in the same way. Viewed from the end of the gallery, it should resemble the person it represents, and the likeness should become more and more striking the nearer we approach, until we get within a very short distance.

If we approach still nearer, the brush-work of the artist begins to appear, and finally, if we examine the features with a lens, we can discover but very little left of the resemblance which was so striking at a reasonable distance.

The whole question is, What _is_ a reasonable distance? In portraits by the minute finishers, the point at which the work looks its best is evidently too near, and I think that in a good deal of modern painting it is too far off.

A life-size head should look its best at from about six to ten feet distance. Nearer than six feet the impasto and brush touches of the painter would be too apparent, and beyond ten feet the delicate modelling of details would begin to be lost.

Artists and the art-loving portion of the public delight no doubt in going close up to a fine Titian, Rembrandt, or Vandyck, but this is to see how the marvellously life-like effect has been produced (to learn a lesson in short), but not to view the work from the most favorable standpoint. I think it will be found that, generally speaking, the old masterpieces of portraiture are best seen within the distances I have mentioned.

There are, no doubt, exceptions. Thus the portraits of Holbein gain by being studied closely, and those of Velasquez are best appreciated at a considerable distance, whilst the figures of Van der Helst are so admirably painted that they will bear a very close scrutiny as well as a distant view.

If an artist has the precision of a Holbein or the consummate execution of a Van der Helst, there is no harm in his following finish in portraiture almost to its extreme limit; but if not, he had better rest and be satisfied with less literal work.

In spite of a few honorable exceptions, the tendency of modern artists is, however, not toward the finish of Holbein, but rather in the opposite direction.

No one can walk through a Paris exhibition without being struck by the enormous amount of sketchy, imperfect work; the best specimens of which have, at a great distance, a look, a reminiscence of nature, but when viewed nearer, resolve themselves into smears of paint, generally plastered on with the knife.

Now it is this kind of work which is so attractive to the modern connoisseur. The peasant, the workman, the soldier pass it by with a laugh, or sometimes with an expression of bewilderment. The cultured artist shrugs his shoulders, but tries to view it leniently, as he would the work of a savage; but the _dilettanti_ and those who have a smattering of art-knowledge delight in it. It flatters their vanity to supplement out of their inner consciousness the artist’s short-comings.

These pictures get talked about in the salons and praised in the newspapers, whilst good, honest, sober work is comparatively ignored. Public taste having thus declared itself, it is not surprising that an ever-increasing crop of these young “impressionists” should be forthcoming to minister unto it.

There is another kind of departure from truth in connection with finish, which is, I think, almost as much to be deprecated. I mean where the heads are painted in a different style to the rest of the picture.

If we go back to the old masters, we shall never find this fault. Examine any of their works. Recall to mind the Raffaelles, the Titians, the Correggios, or the Poussins of the National Gallery, and observe that the draperies, accessories, and backgrounds are all in keeping with the heads. If, as in Perugino’s and Raffaelle’s early works, the painting of the flesh is delicate and smooth, though dry and hard, you will find the same qualities and defects in the whole picture.

If, on the other hand, as in Titian and Paul Veronese, the flesh-painting is rich and free, the draperies will be equally so. Take Rubens, again; how homogeneous is _his_ work! Let us suppose that a picture by this master were unexpectedly discovered, and that by some accident all the flesh-painting in it had been destroyed, would any one hesitate, on inspection of what remained, in attributing it to Rubens? Would not the good and bad qualities of the master be apparent in every part?

As the opposite extreme to the slapdash Rubens, take the careful Gerard Dow, and observe how the delicate and minute finish of the heads is carried out into every detail of his pictures. If we examine any genuine work of Rembrandt or of David Teniers, we shall always find the same homogeneous qualities. The heads may (as is often the case in Rembrandt) be more carefully painted than the unimportant parts of the picture; or contrariwise, as in David Teniers, we may sometimes find a stoneware flagon more elaborated than the hand of the boor who is holding it, but we recognize everywhere the touch of the master.

I know of no example amongst the old masters where the kind of disparity in style which I am deprecating is observable.

In certain modern pictures, however, this homogeneous quality in painting is sadly wanting. In the so-called Spanish school (by which I mean the school of Fortuny), the background, draperies, and accessories are painted with a crisp dexterity which is quite marvellous, whilst the heads are labored like colored photographs.

The contrast is sometimes so great that it is difficult to believe that the picture is not the work of two artists. This fault has become apparent in certain pictures of the Austrian school; but the contagion does not appear to have extended to us, at least not to our oil-painters.

I have, however, noticed a tendency amongst a few of our water-color figure-painters toward this singular modern peculiarity.

The difficulties of giving color, form, and expression to a head, and at the same time preserving a free style of painting, are no doubt much greater in water-color than in oil, but I think it so desirable that a work should be homogeneous that I would sacrifice a good deal in the way of finish and even of expression in the faces, to obtain that quality.

If a man has great versatility with his brush and wishes to display it, let him paint one picture in the style of Holbein or Memling, and another in the style of Velasquez, but he should not in the same picture (and _à fortiori_ in the same figure) attempt to unite two dissimilar styles of painting.

One of the principal difficulties young artists have to encounter in finishing a figure-picture is the management of their drapery.

If they are painstaking and make an intelligent use of their models they will succeed with their heads, hands, and all their flesh-painting; or if they do not succeed, the way to success is so obvious that I need say but little about it.

I assume that our young artist has gone through a course of study, and is able to paint a nude figure or a head from nature tolerably correctly. His difficulty will be, not in copying his models, but in making use of them without copying them.

He should form an ideal in his mind of the personage he means to represent, and take care to select either from professional models or from his friends those who approach nearest to this ideal. He will probably have to make use of casts. The small heads of the warriors on the Trajan Column are admirable in character and very suggestive. Casts from the mediæval heads of Pisano, Donatello, and Luca della Robbia are also very useful.

All these and other means toward his end will suggest themselves to him, but his course is not so clear when he comes to tackle his draperies.

Every student must be aware that draperies adjusted on the lay figure and carefully copied, have always an unnatural and trivial look about them. The form underneath, if expressed at all, is the form of the lay figure, and not that of nature. It will not do therefore in a picture to adjust the drapery on a lay figure and copy the result.

This _may_ be done with advantage for those folds which hang altogether independent of the figure, but for all those which are in the slightest degree connected with the form underneath, some other method must be adopted.

No doubt the best method of all (were it possible) would be to dress up the living model and paint direct on to the picture, but this is seldom practicable.

Long before the artist has had time to study the folds, the model moves, and all has to be done over again.

If an artist has great experience with drapery, and the attitude is a very easy one, he may make a charcoal study which will serve him for the picture without having subsequently to readjust his drapery on the lay figure, but no young hand would be able to do this in a satisfactory way. He must go more systematically to work. He must first get a characteristic study of the nude figure. I mean such a study as the old masters used to make, giving the exact attitude and the form of the salient parts. He must then make a replica in charcoal of this study and adjust the drapery on his living model. On this replica he will now, as far as he can, reproduce the arrangement of the folds he has before him. There are plenty of studies by Raffaelle and the old masters which explain better than words can, the process I am trying to describe.

He has now two working drawings to guide him, viz., his original nude study, and the study from the draped model. Having thus as it were laid his foundations, he may drape his lay figure and paint direct from it on to his picture, taking care (as he proceeds) to correct the form from his preliminary studies. He will thus be doing sound, honest work, and, even if dissatisfied with his finished drapery, he has always his studies to fall back upon.

Some artists, especially French and Italians, make a great use of photography, and, if kept within bounds, I see no objection whatever to the practice. It would hardly be legitimate art to dress up and pose a number of models and have them photographed with the intention of transferring the group to canvas, but it is perfectly allowable to call in the aid of photography for draperies or costumes, where, from the action of the figures, it would be impracticable to draw the folds from nature.

All portrait-painters know that it is not easy to get ladies and gentlemen to sit for their clothes, and it is far better to get help from a good photograph than from a model or a lay figure whom the clothes do not fit. I have no doubt that if photography had been known in the time of Raffaelle he would have largely availed himself of it. He often copied whole figures from his predecessors, and this is certainly more reprehensible.

I now approach the vexed question as to how far the draperies, background, and accessory parts of a picture should be finished without detracting from the heads.

Most of you will doubtless recollect the passage in Sir Joshua’s discourses where, speaking of drapery, he says: “It is the inferior style that marks the variety of stuffs. With the historical painter the clothing is neither woollen, nor linen, nor silk, nor satin nor velvet: it is drapery, nothing more.”

I would fain believe that Sir Joshua meant to say that it was beneath the dignity of high art to trouble itself with surface texture, in which case I should certainly agree with him; but I am afraid this is hardly what he _did_ mean. However that may be, it is certainly not the inferior style which by intelligent arrangement and careful study of the folds expresses the nature and quality of the various stuffs. How is it possible (using Sir Joshua’s own words) to “dispose the drapery with the nicest judgment, and to copy it carefully,” without clearly expressing the material out of which it is made?

Satin and velvet are very seldom wanted in pictures of subjects taken from the Bible, ancient history, or mythology. The figures should be clothed in woollen or linen stuffs, and without descending to minute imitation of texture, the nature of these garments should be clearly expressed.

If in Raffaelle’s frescoes, and in the works of the Roman school generally, we are in doubt as to whether the draperies are meant for wool, linen, or silk, it is because their folds were _not_ “studied with the greatest care,” and often _not_ “disposed with the nicest judgment.” In many of Raffaelle’s works, and particularly in those of Giulio Romano, we feel that the draperies are wholly imaginary, and hence the vague uncertainty as to the material.

This uncertainty, instead of being a quality to be imitated, appears to me as a blemish to be avoided.

In the highest style of landscape-painting, again, although it would doubtless be absurd for the artist to elaborate his foliage leaf by leaf, yet there would be nothing beneath the dignity of his art in faithfully giving the general characteristics of the oak, the beech, the ash, the bay, and the olive, so that each species should be distinctly recognized in the picture.

I am quite aware that in many classical landscapes by Poussin and the old masters, it is difficult to specify the kind of trees they contain, but the botanical uncertainty in which we are left, instead of enhancing the merit of the work, rather lessens it.

I remember going through an Italian gallery with a mixed company, and coming upon a magnificent Titianesque landscape.

This arrested the attention of all the party, and was greatly admired, until some botanical Philistine asked what kind of trees the artist had meant to represent. We none of us could tell; I thought they were evergreen oaks, another said they were elms, a third apple-trees, and so on; but we were all in doubt.

“Well,” says the questioner, “it cannot be much of a picture if the trees are done so badly that no one can tell what they are.”

Our Philistine was no doubt wrong, but, at the same time, the work would have been all the better, and would have lost none of its imposing grandeur if the specific characters of the trees had been given with greater care.

I am glad to note that almost all modern landscape-painters are fully alive to the fact that a tree is not merely a tree, but a particular species of tree, and that the species can be thoroughly indicated without in any way lessening the grand character of the work.

To return to draperies and costumes.

The artists of the Byzantine and Romanesque periods used to paint their heads of a conventional and very ugly type, without any attempt at individuality, and bestow all their care on the draperies, nimbi, and accessory parts, often enriching their work with real jewels.

This fashion, which was rampant in the Byzantine period, began to wane in the fourteenth century, but lingered on almost till Leonardo da Vinci’s time.

During what may be called the golden age of art (that is, from Leonardo’s time down to Poussin’s) the proper balance of finish between flesh and drapery seems to have been well observed, but in the last century (especially in this country) the artists of the time reversed the practice of the old Byzantine painters; that is, they painted the heads of the sitters as well as they could, and left the dress and accessories to be put in by their assistants.

Bad as the flesh-painting was, the treatment of the dress was still more slovenly and inartistic. The apologists for this style of work say that the head is everything in a portrait, and that no one cares about the dress and background, but this was certainly not the opinion of the old masters. To take a familiar example. Is not the head of Gavartius greatly improved by the exquisitely-painted frill which surrounds it? Or, again, is not the life-like flesh in Bordoni’s female portrait rendered still more life-like by the gorgeous color and masterly execution of the crimson dress?

Our National Gallery teems with examples of the same kind, where judicious finish of the accessory parts assists rather than mars the effect of the flesh-painting.

I do not wish to be understood as insisting that in all cases the dress and background should be as much finished as the heads, but there is a great difference between unfinished work and bad work, and it is this difference which the advocates for neglecting accessories seem unable to understand. I do not find fault with a certain charming unfinished portrait group by Rubens in the Louvre, because the accessory parts are merely indicated, but I _should_ find fault with it if they were clumsily and inartistically painted. The kind of work I am protesting against is that which is often noticeable in portraits of the Gainsborough and Lawrence schools, where the shoulders and hands are quite shapeless, and the folds of the dress utterly impossible.

It is very refreshing to me to emerge from a gallery containing pictures of this class, and to enter one devoted to pictures of the Dutch school. I feel as if I had reached _terra firma_ after floundering about in a quagmire. We never find a want of intelligent and careful drawing in the hands and dresses of portraits by Rembrandt, Van der Heist, Franz Hals, Terburg, and all the other masters of the school.

It may be objected that I am deprecating a fault which no longer exists, that my expressions of antipathy to a slovenly treatment of the accessory parts of a picture are out of date, and that the commonplace, simpering full-lengths of fifty years ago, with their impossible shoulders and badly-drawn hands, are no longer seen in an Academy exhibition. I am quite willing to grant this, but it does not follow that because this pseudo-Lawrence sort of work is no longer seen on the walls of the Academy, that therefore it is defunct.

There is a large and ever-increasing class of young artists who are treading in the footsteps of the old masters, who grudge no time and spare no pains in the study of their hands, costumes, and every thing which will give finish and completeness to their work; but, on the other hand, there are still many who, to save themselves trouble, and perhaps misled by the present extraordinary popularity of Gainsborough, are satisfied with the most careless and weak treatment of all accessories in their pictures.

That these pictures are not often seen on the Academy walls is due to the rejecting power of the Council, and not to the non-existence of their authors.

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Having thus, I trust, given you to understand that by the word “finish” I mean something quite different from mere smoothness or polish, I will now give you a few hints as to how the work of finishing a picture is to be accomplished.

It was the habit of Horace Vernet to make a very rough pen-and-ink sketch for his elaborate battle-pieces. He would then, without further preamble, have his models, and paint direct from them on to the blank canvas, finishing every thing as he went on.

When the whole canvas was covered, the picture was finished.

I remember, on one occasion, he painted a most gorgeous Arab saddle, holsters, stirrups, and all, and several weeks afterward painted the horse which bore it.

Cocked-hats, kepis, etc., he would knock off by the dozen, and then, when he could get his trooper models, he would paint the wearers. He was always, in the matter of finish, putting the cart before the horse. I don’t think that he did this intentionally, but he was of an impatient nature, and could not bear to sit idle, waiting for his sitters.

He was not a great colorist, like his contemporary Delacroix, nor a great draughtsman, like Flandrin, but his pictures have a manly, business-like look about them, and a homogeneous quality which is perfectly marvellous, considering the heterodox way in which they were put together.

No living artist, and probably none that ever lived, could have taken such liberties with his _modus operandi_ without the most disastrous results; and I feel sure that no one present here to-night would think of painting a figure-picture in this haphazard fashion.

Supposing the subject of the picture to be the time-honored one of “King John Signing Magna Charta.”

Instead of (like Vernet) beginning by painting a mediæval inkstand, and then perhaps doing a bit of tapestry background, proceeding onward toward the figures, the proper process would be to get the figures done first, and finish with the accessory parts.

I will assume, therefore, that this has been done, that the composition of the groups has been thoroughly studied, that a colored sketch has been made, and that each individual figure has been carefully studied from nature. The picture, however, after all this work, would probably be far from finished.

The general effect would have to be revised; certain portions which had cost hours, and even days of labor, would have to be sacrificed; other important parts, such as heads and hands, to be altered. Finally, the general scheme of color, which was pleasing enough in the sketch, but had somehow deteriorated in the picture, would have to be attended to.

A conscientious artist has often great difficulty in knowing _when_ his picture may be called finished.

Some men will carry their striving after perfection too far, and waste their time over really trivial details, or, like Penelope, be always undoing their previous day’s work. This is, no doubt, better than being too easily satisfied, but these vacillating artists should recollect that alterations are not always improvements.

On the whole, I think it may be safely said, that when the artist has fully carried out on the larger scale the intentions of his sketch, his work may be said to be done.

By the word “fully” I mean that each figure should be executed in such a way as to give force and pathos to his version of the subject. In the designing of hands, for instance, there are fifty ways (to return to our King John) of holding a pen. He should not hold it as if he were writing “Yours truly”; he should betray unwillingness mixed with fear both in his face and his hands.

The burly barons, again, should not appear to be inviting their monarch to kindly sign his name. Their hands ought to express a resolve that he _should_ sign it, and in their muscular knotty fingers should be indicated a foreshadowing of the consequences if he refused.

Attention to all these points is what constitutes “finish” rather than the elaboration of detail.

My master, Paul Delaroche, was a great adept at this dramatic completeness; indeed, it was this quality alone which earned him his reputation. His drawing was sound and correct, but nothing more; his color was generally inky and cold, but the dramatic force and truthfulness of his figures were quite enough to insure him a very high place amongst the artists of the nineteenth century.

When he was painting his well-known “Napoleon after Waterloo,” he wanted a pair of muddy boots. Some artists would have thought the mud-splashes of no importance whatever, and would have daubed them in at random; others, more careful, would have made their model put the boots on, and sent him for a walk in the muddy streets; but Delaroche, reflecting that boots are differently splashed after riding to what they are after walking, hired a horse, and got one of his pupils to don the jackboots, and take a good gallop across the plain St. Denis. The boots were splashed to perfection, and it did not take the master long to do them full justice.

Intelligent brain-work is of a higher order of excellence, and contributes more largely toward the completion of a work of art than mere execution. I am far from underrating executive skill, but the term is rather an elastic one, and generally includes good drawing and good color as well. Taken in its restricted sense, as meaning merely brilliant manual dexterity, I hold it to be of but little value. Of course a certain amount of dexterity is necessary, otherwise a fine sense of form could not be adequately expressed. If Leonardo and Raffaelle had not possessed considerable manipulative skill, they could not have produced a “Last Supper” and a “Madonna de S. Sisto.” Where would Holbein have been if he had not had great precision of touch as well as the keenest perception of form? Every painter should have sufficient power in his hand to give expression to what he feels, but this is not the kind of manual dexterity to which I have said I attach little importance. I mean the showy, impudent kind of work of which there are always numerous examples in foreign exhibitions--the kind of work which is too common amongst modern Italian painters, and which seems to be rampant in the Austrian capital.

To return to my subject, namely, the finishing of a picture. I would advise all young artists to beware of making alterations either in the composition or in the scheme of color of their pictures, when they are in an advanced state. A very slight change often brings in its wake many others, and gets the whole work into a muddle. Observations about incorrect drawing or faulty proportions are always valuable, as these imperfections can be remedied without disturbing the rest of the picture, but beware of suggestions which may in any way affect the general scheme of coloring.

Thus, if it is suggested to you that a certain mass of white drapery would be better dark, and you happen to agree with the suggestion, do not be in a hurry to carry out the change. Try the effect with charcoal or water-color first, and if the result does not please you, no harm has been done. Even if it _does_ please you, you should make a large allowance for the charm of novelty. You have had your picture before your eyes for a long time, and the change may be agreeable to you at first sight; and yet, if you carry it out, you may repent. Of course, if you do not agree with the suggestion, dismiss it from your minds.

The man who listens to every piece of advice that is given him will never finish his work. You probably all know the story of the artist with many candid friends, who got so bewildered by their criticisms that he provided a large piece of chalk and requested each of them to mark the part he desired altered. By the end of the day the surface of the picture was like a section of a chalk-pit.

A long experience has taught me that nothing ought to be left undone in the hope of retouching the picture on the so-called varnishing days. Such anticipations are almost always illusory; and it does not matter whether you have one or three days for retouching.

It often happens that one would like to have the picture home again and repaint it, but the few changes one has time to make during the purgatorial varnishing time are so trifling, that, except to the artist himself, they do not affect the general appearance of the picture, and they often interfere considerably with the rubbing-in of medium or some temporary varnish, which is generally indispensable for the exhibition of pictures painted with the ordinary materials.

As the professorship of sculpture is still vacant, I am not trespassing on any one’s ground if I say a word or two about finish in sculpture.

In this art, even more than in painting, excessive smoothness is too often mistaken for high finish.

The sculptors of the female figure especially, are too prone to efface (even in the clay) details which ought to be carefully preserved; and after the figure has been cast in plaster, the work of polishing goes on with file and sand-paper, until the few touches of nature which had been left are effaced.

The great mischief, however, is usually done when the plaster is copied into marble. The paid statuary who does this work strives to give still greater roundness to the already smooth and rounded limbs, and he generally succeeds too well. When the marble is ready for the finishing-touches of the sculptor, he sometimes endeavors to regain a little of the natural element, but generally he consoles himself with the reflection that high art is incompatible with detail, and so his Venus or nymph leaves his studio for the exhibition or the patron’s gallery, there to be admired as a model of beautiful carving and of exquisite taste; of the former, on account of its soft, boneless appearance; and of the latter, because, though a nude figure, there is no reminiscence of nature about it.

There is less of this kind of insipid sculpture now than formerly.

Terra cotta, which, as every one knows, is the direct impression of the artist’s modelling, has to a great extent supplanted marble, and the smooth pseudo-classical nymphs of forty years ago are rather out of favor.

French sculptors of the nude have, in their horror of smoothness, gone into the opposite extreme; and, thinking to give more realism to their work, have adopted a coarse granular style of modelling for their surface texture. I question, however, whether this new fashion at all meets the objection every artist must entertain toward the old style of work.

Even supposing we grant that, in nature, the skin is of a granular hummocky texture, such as we see in the plaster statues by Carpeaux and his school, I cannot allow that any thing is gained by this piece of realism.

Carpeaux himself was a man of genius, and in _his_ work, nature (though not of a very beautiful kind) is apparent everywhere; but his imitators, like most imitators, copy his eccentricities rather than his good qualities.

The real objection to the work of the Canova school of sculpture is not that the surface is unlike the human skin, but that unintelligent carving and excessive polishing tend to obliterate all character and individuality of form.

This objection can only be met by sculptors aiming at a more discriminating perception of form, as well as what (from want of a better word) I may call a more conservative style of execution.

The excellence of the masterpieces of antiquity does not lie either in their smoothness or in their surface texture, but in the beauty of their proportions, and in the thorough though never obtrusive knowledge of anatomy displayed in the modelling of every part.

These qualities, in sculpture as well as in drawing, are what constitute “finish,” and not mere surface polishing on the one hand, or on the other a coarse imitation of the cellular tissue of the skin.

LECTURE X.

ON THE CHOICE OF A SUBJECT.

Before beginning to treat of the composition of a picture, I should like to make some remarks on the choice of a subject. Of course, no rule can be laid down in this matter. What strikes one artist as being a very good subject will appear totally uninteresting to another. It is, perhaps, fortunate that this should be so. The taste of the general public is at least as varied as that of the profession, and thus every one can be suited. I remember an old gentleman who has now been dead many years, but who in his day was a great patron of artists, telling me that he preferred pictures with little or no subject in them. He liked what he called nice “satiny” bits of painting, and the less story there was in them to distract his attention from the “satiny” painting the better. I fancy that this want of appreciation of composition is more common than is generally supposed. For one person who notices the skill shown in the general arrangement of a picture, fifty will be found to admire its color and execution.

Now I do not wish in any way to depreciate the charm of harmonious color and brilliant execution. Of all qualities in painting they are, perhaps, the most captivating; but they are not the alpha and omega of art. I purpose, therefore, to devote several lectures to the study of composition, and acting in conformity with the precept about “first catching your hare before you proceed to cook it,” we will this evening review the various kinds of subjects generally chosen by artists.

In my lecture on the International Exhibition, I mentioned with disapproval a certain class of subjects much affected by the modern French school. The artists seem to have ransacked history for every incident that was most loathsome and horrible. I am not at all squeamish, and should not object to blood and torture occasionally, but it is the morbid treatment of these ghastly subjects and their frequency which are offensive.

Perhaps it is hardly necessary to caution English students against painting death and putrefaction. They generally have a laudable desire to sell their pictures, and this desire would naturally tend to keep their subjects sweet. Some letters on the dismal tendency of modern British art appeared in the _Times_ last autumn, and certainly I am not prepared to say that the writers were wholly in the wrong.

But if they had had an opportunity of comparing our school with the French, I think the letters would not have been written. Why, our deathbed scenes, funerals, etc., are positively cheerful, compared with the sensational pictures of a French exhibition. No; whatever the faults of English pictures may be, I don’t think the subjects can be called dismal.

On the contrary, I should say, speaking generally, that they are too frivolous. Pictures are continually being painted which have little or no subject. The costumes of the period are pretty, the mild incident depicted happened, or might have happened, and these are quite sufficient reasons to many young artists for painting the picture.

I am far from saying that such a picture must be a bad one. It may be, and often is, charming in color, arrangement, and execution.

Indeed, the better the painting, the more one regrets that so much good work should be spent on so trivial an incident.

Before proceeding to what I have to say about the choice of a subject, I would impress upon you that I only profess to give you my own opinions.

If any student or young artist has a great fancy for a certain subject, the probability is that he will treat it better than he would one less congenial to him, and I should be very sorry to dissuade him from it. Indeed, I should be much pleased to find that he had a subject at all. If there is a rock ahead for the English school, it is a tendency to shirk the difficulties of composition.

Pictures representing single figures (mere models dressed up as men-at-arms, milk-maids, or Highland lassies) are much commoner now than they used to be. Of course, in the minor exhibitions of London one expects to find plenty of work of this class, but the preponderance of these subjectless figure-pictures is becoming very marked even at the Academy; and as lecturer on painting, I should be neglecting my duty if I failed to notice it. It may be that these pictures pay, but art is not a trade; and even from a commercial point of view, I would suggest that there is such a thing as over-stocking the market.

The whole domain of history, both sacred and profane, is open to the artist, besides which there are innumerable subjects which are not strictly historical, but are suggested by history. Finally, to those who prefer illustrating the poets, there are Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and a whole host of more modern writers. Surely in such a vast quarry it cannot be difficult to dig out good subjects suitable to every mind. Many subjects are too hastily rejected because they have already been painted; when probably a new reading is very possible, or by slightly altering the moment chosen, the subject assumes another aspect.

In a former lecture I mentioned, as a familiar instance, the parable of the good Samaritan. Here is a trite and hackneyed subject enough. Every one has painted it, and yet it would be very possible, by altering the moment depicted, to give a new version of it.

Take the moment when the good Samaritan intrusts the wounded traveller to the care of the innkeeper, and leaves him money, adding that whatever more he may spend will be repaid him; and you have a capital subject, which has never, to my knowledge, been painted. Again, imagine the return of the Samaritan after a few days’ absence, and the gratitude of the injured man, now nearly restored to health, and you have another first-rate subject.

As an extreme example, take the “Holy Family.” How often has this subject been painted! Raffaelle alone painted it over thirty times, and I should think that there are at least a thousand original Holy Families in existence; and yet the subject seems to me as fresh as ever. The reason of this is, because it embodies the purest form of maternal love in the same way that the good Samaritan illustrates human kindness.

Maternal love and humanity are many-sided, and hence the subjects which illustrate them will be many-sided too.

Some artists shrink from taking known subjects from a laudable modesty. They could not think of entering into rivalry with Raffaelle or André del Sarto.

I deem this modesty unnecessary, provided they bestow on their work original thought and invention.

If they attempt to rival the _manner_ of the great masters, then they may be taxed with presumption, but no artist need be deterred from painting such subjects as the “Last Supper,” or the “Walk to Emmaus,” because many great masters have treated the same themes. I have probably said enough in defence of taking subjects which have already been painted, and will now attempt some classification of subjects suitable for the higher class of figure-pictures.

The term “Religious,” in connection with art, ought, I think, to be confined to those subjects in which Divine personages are introduced, or to those which embody some miracle. Thus “The Creation of Adam,” “The Holy Family,” “The Raising of Lazarus,” or “The Conversion of St. Paul,” would all come under the head of religious subjects; but I think the term misapplied when speaking of such subjects as “Hagar in the Desert,” “The Finding of Moses,” “Samson and Delilah,” etc., which have no religious element in them, although they are of course strictly Scriptural.

It is almost needless for me to remark that the Old and New Testament offer an inexhaustible field for pictorial illustration. The Bible is more read and better known than any other book in the world, and this alone would preëminently distinguish it as a source whence artists should derive subjects for their pictures; but besides this, the costumes from Noah down to St. Paul are simple and dignified, suggesting the highest style of art.

There are reasons which militate against young artists (or old ones either) attempting this highest class of religious subjects, the principal of which is the fear of failure; failure in this class being a much greater humiliation than in a lower walk of art. But there is also another good reason, and that is, the want of a market for their work.

Our churches do not, as a rule, purchase Biblical pictures, and our lay patrons of art naturally enough object to importing a “Crucifixion” or a “Noli me Tangere” into galleries and rooms full of mundane-subject pictures.

There seems, however, no reason why the second class of Scriptural subjects (those, I mean, which are simply historical or anecdotic) should not be more often painted than they are.

Of allegory and allegorical subjects I need hardly say any thing. For mere decorative purposes they may sometimes be eligible, but even then I think them quite out of date, and should be sorry to see a revival of the painted riddles which were so much the fashion in the time of Giotto and his followers.

Such semi-allegorical subjects as Reynolds’ “Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy” are permissible enough, because they are easily comprehended; but the allegories I object to are those which are totally incomprehensible without a page or two of letterpress to explain their meaning.

Mythology offers a much better field than allegory for decorative purposes. “Juno in her Peacock-drawn Car Ascending to Olympus,” “Orpheus and Eurydice,” “Prometheus Vinctus,” etc., etc., are all splendid subjects.