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 AET FOR ART'S SAKE 
 
 SEVEN UNIVERSITY LECTURES ON THE 
 TECHNIGAL BEAUTIES OF PAINTING 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN 0. VAN DYKE 
 
 AUTHOR OP " NATURE FOB ITS OWN SAKE" 
 
 FOURTEENTH EDITION 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1907
 
 Copyright, 1833, by 
 C?HARLES SCRIBNEB'S riONS
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 
 TO MY PUIEND 
 W MURENCE HUTTOW 
 
 ?
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 The following lectures were delivered before the 
 students of Princeton College, Columbia College, 
 and Rutgers College. Their reception as lectures 
 has led to their publication in book form. The 
 subject with which they deal is one well calculated 
 to arouse diflferences of opinion. Modern painting 
 is so largely a matter of taste that no one, not even 
 an artist, is allowed to dogmatize about it, or lay 
 down arbitrary rules for its production. Sometimes 
 a candid statement of one's view or preference helps 
 others to a better understanding or a keener enjoy- 
 ment, and if these lectures prove serviceable in that 
 respect their object will have been fulfilled. 
 
 New Brunswick, N. J., 
 February, 1893.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Introduction 1 
 
 Lecture I. AH for ArVs Sake. — As to the subject of pictures — 
 The misunderstanding between the artist and his public — The 
 literary idea vx. the pictorial idea — What is meant by an idea in 
 art— The artist's mental equipment — An observer rather than a 
 philosopher or a story-teller — His keenness of vision in seeing 
 beauties in nature — The artist's material equipment — The lim- 
 its of painting — Only one sense (that of sight), to which a paint- 
 ing may appeal — Confusion of the arts — Their proper division 
 — Confusion of literary and pictorial motive illustrated — Cab- 
 anel's Tamar — Painting cannot recognize time-movement — Ex- 
 amples from the old masters — Examples from the moderns, 
 Millet, Poussin et «^.— The painter's idea, to be comprehended by 
 the unaided eye and his langupge that of form, light, air, color — 
 Necessity of a pictorial idea being a beautiful idea — Broad mean- 
 ing of the word " beauty "—Includes the forceful, the true, the 
 characteristic, but not the repulsive or the disgusting — Pure j)ic- 
 torial art vs. anecdotal art — Illustrative art — The aim of art in 
 ancient Greece and Italy not the aim of art in modern Prance and 
 America — The ideal vk. the individual — The change of motive il- 
 lustrated in landscajJC — Modern landscape and its search for the 
 truths and meanings of nature — But painting not confined to nat- 
 ural beauties— Pligher art in "the union of that which is nature 
 with that which is exclusively human " — Poetic or sympathetic 
 art illustrated in Corot, Daubigny et al. — Sublime art — Its ele- 
 ments — The predominance of thf human clement over the nature 
 element — Its rarity -Classification of art ideas under three heads, 
 viz., (1) beauties of nature, (2) beauties of nature combined with 
 the human element, (:5) sublime art or the human element pre- 
 dominant 5
 
 VI CONTENTS 
 
 Lecture II. Cotor.— Academic teaching regarding color — Line 
 vs. color — Importance of both — Color esteemed by painters the 
 highest quality of painting — The great colorists — Color theories of 
 science — Nature of light and color, how conveyed to us — Travel- 
 ling povsrer of color — Complementary and contrasted colors — 
 Chevreul's theory — Scientific laws to be deduced therefrom — Its 
 insufficiency in accounting for color-harmony — Other scientific 
 theories — The theories of the studio — Warm tones and cool tones, 
 and their relief one by the other, not necessarily productive of 
 harmony — Use of primary and complementary colors, again not 
 sufficient to account for harmony — The accord of similar or closely- 
 related colors, attended by better results — The rhythmic flow of 
 color in nature — Color by " values " — FromentLa and Stevens 
 quoted — Conclusion : Harmony is a pictorial poetry, the product 
 of a special faculty or feeling, and not reducible to law — How it 
 affects our senses — Taste and its kinds — Charm of colors low in 
 tone — Low-keyed pictures likely to be better than those in high 
 keys, and why — Practice of the painters — Deep- toned colors and 
 their use in pictures — The sentiment of deep colors objective — The 
 sentiment of deep colors subjective — Illustrations from painters — 
 Bright color and its use — The superlative qualitj' in painting — The 
 appeal of color to the eye rather than the roind Good color and 
 its tawdry imitation — Short history of color as shown in painting 
 ^Color in the ancient world — in Italy, Germany, England, France, 
 Spain, America 39 
 
 Lecture III. Tone and Liglit -and -Shade. — The word tone, its 
 meaning confused, as shown in single notes, in a whole picture — 
 (1) an American meaning of tone as uniformity of tint, i.e., 
 color-tone — Illustrations — Confusion of cause and effect the reason 
 of difference between American and English views of tone — (3) 
 English meaning of tone the proper distribution of light, i.e., 
 light-tone — .Mr. Ruskin's definitions — The American and English 
 meanings of tone closely related — Tone as related to color — Diffi- 
 culties of the problem — Examples of the violation of tone by 
 Rembrandt aiid the Italians — (3) The French view of tone or the 
 enveloppe, i.e., envelojjpe-toue. This is close of kin to aerial per- 
 spective and values — Color-tone as a picture motive — Its qualities. 
 
 Light-and-IShade. — Nature of light and of shadow — Opposing
 
 CONTENTS Vll 
 
 forces— Light-and-shade or chiaroscuro in painting— Its appear- 
 ance in nature— Its necessity in art— The proper balance of light 
 by shade— The transition from light to dark— Violent transi- 
 tions—The pitch of light— Proportion and gradation— Light- 
 and-shade in composition — Surplus light and surplus dark— 
 " Blackness " in pictures— Concentration of light upon a fixed 
 spot— One light— Double and triple lights— Centring of light 
 for strength in nature and in art— Extreme illustrations given 
 —Ancient method of wedging light to a centre— No such violent 
 practice to-day, but principle generally adhered to— Argument for 
 it— The modern spirit against it— The impressionist view of light- 
 and-shade— Their technical discoveries and the value of them to 
 art— The change of pitch in light— Influence of light on perspec- 
 tive planes— Color, line, etc.— Scientific use of colored shadows- 
 Results thus far of Impressionism— A serious movement and en- 
 titled to respectful consideration TG 
 
 Lecture IV. Linear and Aerial Perspective.— GeometricaX 
 perspective not considered — Linear perspective defined — Its effect 
 in nature illustrated— The point of sight— Horizon line— Point of 
 view — Perspective merely an appearance and not a real state of 
 nature— The abOity of the eye to see things as a unit by perspec- 
 tive, unity in a picture one aim of perspective effects — Variations 
 in nature — Variations in painting — Position of the point of sight 
 — Two points of sight confusing — Effect of linear perspective on 
 objects — The diminution of form — Perspective, how obtained by 
 painters — Use of linear perspective as picture motive not so fre- 
 quent as in days of Claude and Poussin — Modern abandonment of 
 great distances and mountain landscapes — Reason why — Subjects 
 chosen by modern landscapists. 
 
 Aerial Perspective. — The effect of atmosphere on lines, lights, 
 and colors— Nature of air— Our slight perception of it — Mental v.f. 
 visual knowledge — Effects of atmosphere upon forms in nature il- 
 lustrated — The blur of lines and oV)literation of features — Effect 
 of atmosphere on colors — Distance colors — Hues and their carry- 
 ing power — Their hold by contrast with the background — The 
 light hues generally hold stronger than the dark ones — The change 
 in hues as an effect of air — Liglit colors grow warmer, dark ones 
 lifhter and sometimes cooler — Painters work independent of rules
 
 Vlll CONTENTS 
 
 of changing color — Atmospheric effect upon lights and shadows 
 largely a matter of contrast with the background — Shadows darker 
 than objects casting them — The order of their disappearance in 
 the distance— Atmospheric effects upon color as shown in rows of 
 trees, etc. — Atmosphere as a picture motive — Shows the moods 
 of nature or the moods of man — How used by modern painters 
 —Local color emphasized — History of its use in art in Italy, in 
 Holland and Flanders, in France, America, etc. — Its extravagant 
 use — The scumble 112 
 
 Lecture V. Vahies. — Confused meaning of the word " value " 
 — The broad meaning — Value not positive, but comparative — 
 Deals with the quantity of light or dark in a tone or shade inde- 
 pendent of color — Illustrated in black and white work, with 
 black as the unit of value — The caiise of variation in light pitch 
 of various tones or shades immaterial — Value as caused by at- 
 mosphere — As caused by light distribution — Value when color 
 is used — Values of the different colors — Scientific percentages of 
 light or dark in hues — Value, how ascertained by the painter — 
 The Coutiu'e-Fromentin-Blanc use of the word as applied to the 
 light or dark of colors — Modern variation in the usage, applied 
 largely to slight difference in pitch of light or dark in similar or 
 closely related hues — Illustrations of this — The result of delicate 
 values on color rhythm — Cause of different values may be different 
 positions, different light, different textures — Illustrations — Atmos- 
 phere as productive of values — Examples of their absence in work 
 by Verestchagin — Present in Lerolle and Whistler's work — Deli- 
 cacy and subtility in Whistler's values — Light-and-shade or chiar- 
 oscuro a fourth cause of value — Objections to light-tone, aerial per- 
 spective, and chiaroscuro being confused with value — Necessary to 
 include them as a cause, of value merely — So considered and spoken 
 of by painters like Carolus-Duran, Hunt, and others — The mean- 
 ing illustrated — Line of distinction where value leaves off and 
 chiaroscuro is alone regarded — Broad use of values as applied to 
 the different intensities of picture planes — What the maintenance 
 of values accomplishes — Unity by atmosphere — Proper relations — 
 False values illustrated — Value as productive of color harmony — 
 Fromentin quoted — Nature and her relations of colors — Use of 
 values by schools of the past — In Italy, Holland, Spain, France, etc. 
 —Its prominence as an art-means to-day 143
 
 CONTENTS IX 
 
 Lecture VI. Drmving and Composition. — The dispute of line 
 vs. color— Both necessary means in art — Drawing defined. — Its 
 comprehensive scope — Difficulty of its accomplishment — Drawing 
 herein does not include methods or mediums of work — Two kinds 
 of drawing, (1) classic, and (2) naturalistic — Classic drawing and 
 what it accomplishes — Not realistic in modem sense — More crea- 
 tive and eclectic than real or natural — Its beauty — Its presence in 
 naturalistic surroundings produces discord — Real appearance of 
 line — Naturalistic drawing — The blur and distortion of line — The 
 appearance of life — The character of objects how given by draw- 
 ing — Elasticity of line in nature and art — Motion — The human eye 
 and the instantaneous camera — Immovable vs. changeable nature — 
 Kinds of line — Dictated by nature of object drawn and nature of 
 artist who draws — Individual treatment — Style and its absence — 
 History of drawing. 
 
 Composition. — Definition — Kinds of composition — Line compo- 
 sition alone treated herein — First essential, unity of all objects in 
 one scene — Isolated figures in compositions — Simplicity an aid to 
 composition — Concentration of attention on leading object or ob- 
 jects — Illustrations of lack of concentration — Double pictures of 
 Raphael, Veronese, and the Bolognese — Forms of line, the perpen- 
 dicular, the horizontal, the flowing or "line of beauty " so-called, 
 the broken or abrupt, the diagonal — Line in composition, repeti- 
 tion, continuity, curvature, interchange, radiation, etc. — Laws of 
 composition — Prominence, elevation, etc. — Styles of Composition, 
 the pyramidal, the symmetrical, the balanced, the oval, the dia- 
 mond, the circular, the concave, the convex, the diagonal, the V, 
 etc. — Modern composition 177 
 
 Lecture VII. Textures, Surfaces, and Brush-work. — The feat- 
 ures of objects whereby we distinguish them, form, color, and sur- 
 face, or texture — Our perception of these features — Characteristic 
 surfaces — Sir Joshua Reynolds on vivid expression — Textures in 
 nature — Mr. Raskin's classification of te.xtures — General impres- 
 sions and salient features, how received by us — How recorded in 
 painting — How textures are rendered by painters — Poor work 
 done by the English and German schools — Hard dry work by 
 other painters — Textiures in landscape — The test of good texture 
 painting — Warning against requiring textures in every picture--
 
 X CONTENTS 
 
 Well suited to small easel pictures like the genre paintings of the 
 Dutch and French ; but out of place in the large canvas and the 
 wall fresco — The latter holds by the larger elements of its con- 
 struction, bright surfaces are shunned — Practice of the Italians 
 and French classicists — Modern work in texture painting and its 
 rank. 
 
 JJrush-ivork. — The value of skilled work — The pleasure we de- 
 rive from understanding it — Brush-work the painter's style — Its 
 personal quality — Smooth vs. rough brush-work — Smooth surfaces 
 of the Florentines, who were not painters but draughtsmen — Leo- 
 nardo, Raphael, and others — The Venetians the painters — Titian 
 the first great master of the brush — His method of painting — 
 Giorgione, Palma, Paolo Veronese, and others — Flemish painting 
 with Rubens — His style and great facility of hand — Rembrandt 
 and his work — Velasquez, his method— The little Dutchmen, Hals, 
 Brouwer, Steen — The style of Steen's brush-work vs. that of 
 Raphael — French painters, Watteau, Boucher, Chardin — The 
 moderns, Vollon, Courbet, Fortuny — Painting in landscape of the 
 Fontainebleau-Barbizon men, Corot. Rousseau, Daubigny — Living 
 brush-men in Spain, Germany, France — Brush-men here in Amer- 
 ica, Chase, Sargent, Blum, and others — The maturity of painting — 
 Its " over-ripeness " — Extravagance in handling at present aay — 
 Painting with an object in view — Conclusion 214
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 I. Millet, The Gleaners, 8 
 
 n. CoROT, Landscape, 20 
 
 III. Plvis de Chavannes, The Bathers, 30 
 
 IV. Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 42 
 
 V. Rembrandt, Landscape, 50 
 
 VI. Correggio, La Notte, fi4 
 
 VII. Diaz, Edge of the Forest, T2 
 
 VIII. Raffaelli, On the Seine, 80 
 
 IX. Raphael, Transfiguration, 06 
 
 X. Fromentin, Horses at Watering Place, . . .114 
 
 XI. Vase and Flowers, Photograph of Color Val- 
 ues, 128 
 
 XII. DUEZ, PORTK.VIT IN RED, 136 
 
 XIII. Eaton, Reflection, 144 
 
 Xrv. David, The Sabines, 160 
 
 XV. PiNTURRicciiio, Portrait of a Boy 168 
 
 XVI. Benozzo Gozzoli, Adoration of Kings (Detail). 176 
 
 XVII. Detaille, The Dream, 184
 
 Xil LIST OP^ ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAOE 
 
 XVIIL Tintoretto, Makbia&e OF Ariadne AND Bacchus. 193 
 
 XIX. SiGNORELLi, The Curse (Detail), 200 
 
 XX. HoBBEMA, The Water Wheel, 208 
 
 XXI. Botticelli, Madonna and Angels, 216 
 
 XXII. Correggio, Madonna of St. Francis, .... 224 
 
 XXin. Botticelli, Calumny, 232 
 
 XJflV. Francia, Pieta, 84C
 
 ART FOR ART'S SAKE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Gentlemen : In beginning this course of lectures 
 on art, I must ask that you assist me in two ways. 
 First, by giving me your attention. In a course of 
 seven lectures it will be quite impossible to cover in 
 detail the ground I have mapped out, and much 
 must consequently be passed by with a mere sug- 
 gestion. It will require your attention not so much 
 to grasp what I may say, as to grasp what may be 
 hinted at or left to your inference. 
 
 Secondly, though it is not considered good form 
 to apologize beforehand, I must, nevertheless, ask 
 your indulgence for mistakes that I may make. My 
 subject is comparatively new. As Lord Bacon has 
 expressed it, I am to attempt to speak of those things 
 " whereof a man shall find much in experience, but 
 little in books." Some of my theme would require 
 half a lifetime to work out ; some of it I am not 
 able to work out ; and some of it, again, from its 
 purely speculative nature, never will be positively
 
 2 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 worked out. The most of what has been written 
 about the technic of painting is record of personal 
 preference or the upholding of certain schools or 
 metliods ; little has been said about it outside of the 
 studios, and that little is often at variance with the 
 practice of the painters. Naturally enough, a ground 
 hedged about by contradictory opinions, varying ex- 
 periences, and an occasional metaphysical pitfall is 
 not one that a person would choose for easy travel- 
 ling. While, therefore, you may profit by my mis- 
 steps, I beg that you will grant me your indulgence 
 for them. 
 
 I am not to speak to you of the history of art, nor 
 of its theory, nor its philosophy, except incidentally. 
 The rise of the schools of painting, the biographies 
 of the great painters, the nature of the ideal, the 
 real, and the beautiful, you will find in books. My 
 subject is, in one sense, of a humbler nature. It 
 is more material, more technical, and, if you choose, 
 more practical. I shall speak of painting as prac- 
 tised by the painters of to-day and yesterday ; and, 
 as nearly as possible, I shall attempt to treat the 
 subject from the point of view of the artist, not that 
 of the metaphysician nor that of the public. It 
 shall be my endeavor to get at the aim of the 
 painter, and to examine art-products in the light of 
 the producer's intention. In doing this the drift of 
 these lectures should be, not toward teaching one
 
 INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 how to paint a picture, but rather toward giving one 
 some idea of how to appreciate a picture after it has 
 been painted. Such, at least, is their object, and 
 with this object in view, I shall endeavor to explain 
 and illustrate such pictorial motives as color, tone, 
 atmosphere, values, perspective. I shall call your 
 attention, so far as practicable, to certain well-known 
 pictures, pointing out their good and bad qualities, 
 and making my remarks apply as much as possible 
 to modern art, of which we have, perhaps, too poor 
 an opinion. 
 
 As inti'oductory to this course, my first lecture 
 will treat somewhat of the very different views of 
 art held, respectively, by the artist and the public ; 
 and for our practical estimate of painting, the neces- 
 sity of dropping aesthetic theories and school-tradi- 
 tions, and taking a lesson from the painter. What 
 the painter's view is, may be apparent to us if we 
 strive to understand one of the meanings of thai 
 phrase in the art vocabulary, " Art for Art's Sake."
 
 5: 
 
 LECTUKE I 
 
 ART FOR ART'S SAKE 
 
 You are perhaps aware of the fact that there is a 
 misunderstanding, it might almost be called a quar- 
 rel, existing between the painter and his public. 
 The cause of it is an extremeness of view on the 
 one side, and a misapprehension of purpose on the 
 other side, with not a little intolerance on both 
 sides. It is through such causes that quarrels 
 usually arise. 
 
 The difference would seem to be largely about the 
 subjects of pictures and the ideas which should be 
 embodied in them. It appears that the painter 
 wants to paint one thing, and the " average per- 
 son," who may personify the public, wants him to 
 paint another thing. The former, knowing the 
 limits of his art, usually chooses to picture beauties 
 of color, form, tone, atmosphere, light ; the latter, 
 knowing not too much about what painting can or 
 cannot adequately do, desires that he portray the 
 heroic of history as seen in the Gracclii or the 
 Horatii, the romantic of to - day as it appears in
 
 6 AET FOR AET's SAKE 
 
 some touching love drama, or perhaps the comic of 
 the hour as exemphfied in the funny story. In his 
 desire to possess an epitomized novel in paint, 
 which may save the trouble of reading a three- 
 hundred page book, the " average person " fails to 
 appreciate that inherent pictorial beauty which of 
 itself is the primary aim of all painting. The pe- 
 culiar sensuous charms of color, the novelties of 
 natural beauty, the feeling of the artist as shown in 
 light and form and air are overlooked, and a picture 
 is judged largely by the degree of skill with which 
 it reveals a literary climax. 
 
 This popular conception of art degrades it by 
 supposing it a means of illustrating literature ; 
 while the artist's conception, extreme perhaps be- 
 cause of opposition, oftentimes underestimates the 
 value of ideas by giving undue importance to tech- 
 nical skill. As a natural result of such radical dif- 
 ference of belief there is an antagonism between the 
 differing believers. The public sneers at the painter 
 for his lack of ideas, and the incensed painter, in 
 trying to say that art should exist for its own sake, 
 its own ideas, and be judged by its own standards 
 of criticism, often lays himself open to ridicule by 
 extravagantly saying with a quoted companion in 
 a recent number of the Atlantic Monthly : "An artist 
 has no business to think at all." 
 
 All this reminds us of something we hav» known
 
 ART FOR art's SAKE 7 
 
 before. It is the old spectacle of the controver- 
 sial tourney - court with Quixotic riders dashing 
 about and trying to spit each other on lances, not 
 because of any deep wrong or grievance on either 
 side, but because of a misunderstanding. Kichard 
 of Musgrave stands forth declaring that art should 
 furnish us with literary ideas and stories ; and Will- 
 iam of Deloraine, in trying to say that it should not 
 treat of literary matters, asserts that it has nothing 
 to do with ideas of any kind. It must be evident 
 that one of them is in the wrong, and, from past 
 experiences with disputants, it is safe to assume 
 that both of them are so. Perhaps this may be de- 
 monstrated by examining the question, " What is 
 meant by an idea in ai-t ? " If terms were defined 
 and positions understood at the start there would 
 be little room for controversy. 
 
 In the order of inquiry it would be well to con- 
 sider, first, the artist's mental equipment. For we 
 wish to find out what knowledge is of the most value 
 to him, and hence, the kind of ideas with which he 
 is most familiar. Generally speaking his education 
 has not made L'm a statistician of phenomena and 
 actualities or he would be a scientist ; his reason- 
 ing powers have not been especially developed or he 
 would be a philosopher ; he is not deeply versed in 
 the moral or s]iiiitual affairs of the world or he 
 might be a teacher or a preacher ; he has no great
 
 8 • ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 fancy for telling stories or writing love episodes or 
 he might be a novelist or a maker of ballads. As a 
 painter he has one sense and one faculty, both of 
 which, by the necessities of his calling, are perhaps 
 abnormally developed. The sense is that of sight, 
 and the training of it has enabled him to see more 
 beauties and deeper meanings in nature than the 
 great majority of mankind. The faculty lies in his 
 ability to make known, to reveal to mankind, these 
 discovered beauties and imports of nature by the 
 means of form, color, and their modifications. The 
 American Indian may have as nebulous ideas of 
 Dumas's plots and counterplots as of Edwards' Free- 
 dom of the Will, or Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 
 because these enter not into the needs of his life ; but 
 he has the keenest of eyes for the sheen on a deer's 
 coat, the flutter of a leaf, the bend of the grass, the 
 overcast gray of the sky, because these do enter 
 into the needs of his life. So the artist, though he 
 may not fancy the comparison, is no great thinker 
 on abstract themes of human destiny, nor exponent^ 
 .of_saving truths of life, except incide ntally, fo r as an 
 artist he has little use for such speculations. But he 
 has a sense for beauty in form and color, and a mind 
 susceptible of receiving and revealing the most deli- 
 cate and poetic impressions of that beauty. He is 
 /^ not a reasonei*, but an observer ; not a narrator of 
 what he abstractly tbiuks, but a presenter of what
 
 (3 
 
 i 111
 
 ART FOR art's SAKE 9 
 
 he concretely sees. His is an eye that notes a pe- 
 culiar beauty in the gray mist of some lowland 
 meadow, in the deep wine-red of oak leaves in No- 
 vember, in the white hot sunlight beating into an 
 oriental court, in the light and shade on a nude 
 shoulder or a gossamer silk, in the muscular 
 strength of a torso, or in the manly dignity of a 
 human face. " Thou will delight in drawing the 
 vertebrae for they are magnificent," says Cellini, 
 and his fellow-artists heartily agree with him. The 
 whole world is but a unity of magnificent vertebrae, 
 modelled with exquisite skill, garmented in a robe 
 of many colors, of which the amethyst of the hills, 
 the emerald of the forests, the sapphire of the 
 oceans are but the leading hues, and canopied with 
 a firmament of azure embroidered with the m3'riad 
 broken splendors of the sun itself. Beauty is about 
 us on all sides ; not more in nature's mantle of joy- 
 ous color than in her gray garment of sorrow, not 
 more in sunlight than in shadow, not more in the 
 majestic harmony of sea or mountain than in the 
 warm monotone of low-lying sand-dunes, or the sad 
 humility of outstretched marshes. But alas ! for 
 our untrained eyes and minds we do not perceive 
 this beauty, we do not foel it, we do not know it. 
 And tlie very fact that we are incapable of seeing it 
 gives one very good reason for the artist's existence. 
 He is the man whose education and natural bent of
 
 10 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 mind have made him a seer, and, if he have any 
 pai't to play in the human comedy, it is primarily 
 that of a discoverer and revealer of these hidden 
 beauties of nature and Hfe. Therein Hes his pecu- 
 Har mental equipment, and, because he is best qual- 
 ified to reveal such beauties as these, is good argu- 
 ment why his art should be largely confined to ideas 
 concerning them. Why the artist is so limited, why 
 he is little more than an observer, or at the best a 
 thinker about what he sees, may be further discov- 
 ered if we examine his material equipment, or the 
 means wherewith he may make manifest his impres- 
 sions or thoughts about nature. And this brings us 
 to the consideration of the limits of painting. 
 
 You know that all ideas of whatever nature are 
 brought to us through the means of the five senses. 
 Three of these senses — those of smell, taste, and 
 touch — it will be readily comprehended have noth- 
 ing whatever to do with our appreciation of paint- 
 ing, and may therefore be put aside at once. The 
 senses of hearing and of sight remain. That por- 
 tion of the public which calls for literary ideas in art 
 somehow imagines it can hear a picture — or at the 
 least hear what some of the characters in it are say- 
 ing — and it is through this very confusion of what 
 should be told to tlie ear and what should be told 
 to the eye that the misunderstanding between the 
 artist and his public has arisen.
 
 ART FOR art's SAKE 11 
 
 There is but one sense to which a painting may 
 appeal, namely, the sense of sight. The broad 
 division of the arts made by Lessing in his Lao- 
 coon is quite correct. Those ideas which primar- 
 ily need form and color to describe them should 
 be shown in architecture, sculpture, or painting ; 
 and those which need sound or time -movement 
 should be shown in poetry, oratory, or music. It 
 may be well to emphasize the statement that sculpt- 
 ure and painting not only depend upon form or 
 color, but that, iuferentially, they can give no idea 
 of time. By this is meant that these arts must 
 seize upon the present moment and cannot ade- 
 quately show anything that has to do with succes- 
 sion of events or duration. The past and the future 
 are as blank to them as the unknown or the unseen. 
 This may be jjractically illustrated from a picture 
 by Cabanel in the Luxembourg called "Tamar." 
 It represents a beautiful girl lying in a faint across 
 the lap of an indignant-looking, dark-skinned chief, 
 who is shaking a clenched hand at an imaginary 
 person outside of the picture-frame. From the can- 
 vas alone one could make nothing of the story which 
 the painter thought to tell, for the reason that the 
 story requires duration and changes of scene which 
 the picture is unable to make. Told in literature it 
 seems tbat this girl, Taraar, has been badly treated 
 by Amnon. that slie goes to her brother Absalom for
 
 12 AET FOR art's SAKE 
 
 redress, and that he swears vengeance. Here are 
 three distinct scenes or acts. The poem or the 
 novel can tell them all, one after another, but the 
 painting can portray only one of, them, leaving the 
 other two to be supplied by the spectator's imagina- 
 tion — a quite impossible performance. Words may 
 move in time and produce successive pictures to the 
 mind until the whole tale is brought home to us ; 
 but a form drawn with the pencil cannot shift, a 
 color put on with the brush cannot change. The 
 picture presents us with only one idea. We know 
 the girl is in anguish of mind from her position and 
 pallor, we know the chief is angry from his scowling 
 front and flashing eye ; but who they are, and what 
 the cause of these attitudes and gestures, we are at 
 loss to conjecture. Left entirely to our imagination 
 we might think it was an Othello and Desdemona, 
 an Antony and Cleopatra, or almost any other pair 
 of ill-fated lovers. 
 
 Suppose, again, a painter should choose to paint 
 the scene from Robert Elsmere where Robert an- 
 nounces to his wife his determination to abandon 
 his parish living, to give up his church. He might 
 portray Catherine with a blanched face, and Robert 
 with an agonized brow, but he could not tell us the 
 preceding months of struggle and anguish which 
 would be necessary to explain the scene. Time 
 again is an element here, and successive changes —
 
 ART FOR art's SAKE 13 
 
 movement — are required. The one scene alone 
 without a title would represent Caudle and his wife 
 during a curtain lecture quite as truly as Elsmere 
 and his wife suddenly wrenched apart by a differ- 
 ence in religious belief. It will readily be compre- 
 hended, then, that in telling a story the painting is 
 not always a success because it cannot express time. 
 It must picture the present moment, and, moreover, 
 it should picture that which can be understood by 
 the unaided eye. 
 
 The sad jumbling of figment and pigment, the 
 telling to the eye with a paint-brush of half a story, 
 and to the ear in the title or catalogue of the other 
 half, is quite unnecessary. There is something rad- 
 ically wrong with those pictures, other than histori- 
 cal works, which require a titular explanation. For 
 if they be pictorial, in the full sense of the word, 
 they will reveal themselves without comment or 
 suggestion. The " Tapestry Weavers " of Velasquez, 
 the "Sleeping Venus" of Giorgione, the cavaliers 
 of Terburg, the interiors of Pieter de Hooghe and 
 Jan van der Meer of Delft, what need have they for 
 title or catalogue explanation ? No more than the 
 so-called " Venus of Melos," which is perhaps not 
 a Venus ; no more than a Watteau fete scene which 
 may tell any story or no story ; no more than Mo- 
 roni's "Tailor," of whicli liistoi-y gives us neither 
 explanation nor conjecture. These works explain
 
 14 ART FOR ART'S SAKE 
 
 themselves in line and color ; the eye comprehends 
 their entire meaning by one name as readily as by 
 another. They have nothing to say to our ear, need- 
 ing neither preface nor apology. This is equally 
 true of Millet's fine picture of " The Gleaners " (Fig. 
 1). Some women bending and gathering stray 
 grain-stalks, a sense of motion and life about them, 
 a coloring, a light, and an air suitable to a warm af- 
 ternoon in the fields, a sentiment suggestive of the 
 elemental, the toiling nature of the peasant life, and 
 that is all. But on the contrary, if we examine an- 
 other celebrated picture by the same artist, perhaps 
 the best known of all his works, "The Angelus," 
 we shall find a literary interest crowded into the 
 canvas to the detriment certainly of pictorial efiect. 
 The sound of the bells of the Angelus coming on 
 the evening air from the distant church-spire may 
 be heard in literature, but it cannot be seen in a 
 picture. We must go to the catalogue to find the 
 meaning of those two peasants standing with bowed 
 heads in a potato-field. Suppose "The Angelus" 
 without a title two thousand years hence, with the 
 ringing of church-bells abandoned and forgotten 
 fifteen hundred years before, would people compre- 
 hend or appreciate the picture as we now do a Par- 
 thenon marble ? I think not ; for it does not wholly 
 rely for interest upon pictorial qualities, but leans 
 very heavily on our exterior knowledge of bell-ring-
 
 AET FOR art's SAKE 15 
 
 ing at sunset in France. The sentiment of the picture 
 is charming, pathetic, beautiful ; but it should have 
 been written in poetry, not painted on canvas. For 
 the eye sees color, light, air, perspective, and knows 
 a pleasurable sensation in them, but it fails to grasp 
 sound. 
 
 The same objection may be made to a picture by 
 Poussin that M. Charles Blanc has spoken of as a 
 masterpiece of sublimity. In the central foreground 
 of a fine classic landscape is a group of sad-faced 
 shepherds moralizing over a square tomb of marble. 
 One of the shepherds kneels and traces with his fin- 
 ger the lettering on the stone ; " Et in Arcadia Ego." 
 If one happens to be a Latin scholar it is not diffi- 
 cult to discover why the shepherds are sad. The 
 voice from the tomb speaks : " I too lived in Arcadia, 
 I lived and loved and was happy as you are now, 
 but alas ! death came and my dust rests here." The 
 sentiuient is quite fine. So fine that it is to be re- 
 gretted the pleasure of understanding it is confined 
 to those who know enough Latin to read the inscrip- 
 tion. Had the writing been true to history and Ar- 
 cadia it would have been in Greek instead of in Latin, 
 and then the group of admirers would have been 
 still more limited. It may be well questioned if the 
 sentiment of a painting should hang upon a written 
 inscription and be for classic scholars to the exclu- 
 sion of others ; and it may be further questioned,
 
 16 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 Was it worth while for Poussin to sacrifice the effect 
 of his landscape composition, his painting of foliage, 
 sky, air, his drawing and modelling of form, to so 
 literatesque an incident as a voice from the tomb ? 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds has said, with his usual cau- 
 tion : " I fear we have very scanty means of exciting 
 those powers over the imagination which make so 
 very considerable and refined a part of poetry. It 
 is a doubt with me whether we should even make 
 the attempt." He might have added that the 
 attempt to excite the powers of the literary imagi- 
 nation is not only a failure because of the inadequate 
 capabilities of painting, but that it makes all pic- 
 torial qualities in the picture a partial failure also 
 because of their subordination to the literary idea. 
 If an artist wish us to hear, let him use poetry, 
 oratory, or music ; if he wish us to see, let him em- 
 ploy painting, sculpture, or architecture. The two 
 cannot serve double purposes with any degree of 
 satisfaction except perhaps in the case of historical 
 pictures, which are designedly more illustrative than 
 creative. 
 
 It seems then that the painter's ideas are lim- 
 ited to such subjects as may be comprehended 
 by the unaided eye independent of time -move- 
 ment, and that his language is limited to such sym- 
 bols of ideas as form, color, light, shade, air, and 
 their kind. When, therefore, people call for ideas
 
 ART FOR art's SAKE 17 
 
 in painting — meaning thereby literary, anecdotal, 
 moral, or religious ideas — and overlook with scorn 
 the pictorial motives of the artists, they are simply 
 asking that painting shall abandon its now proper 
 purpose. On the other hand, those persons who 
 maintain that " An artist has no business to think 
 at all," or that painting should be devoid of ideas, 
 are equally in error on the other side. The con- 
 servative answer to the question, "What is meant 
 by an idea in art ? " is, first, a pictorial idea — an idea 
 conforming to the limits of painting. Whether an 
 idea is pictorial or not may be tested in the first 
 place by questioning if it will exist of itself and 
 without a title. If we apply this test to the great 
 pictures of the Florentines and the Venetians, they 
 will bear it without flinching. Does it affect the 
 beauty of their pictures if their women be called by 
 the name of Madonna, Venus, Mona Lisa, or Forna- 
 rina ? Does it spoil the story, or play sad havoc 
 with the plot, if their men be known as Apollo, 
 St. George, the Man with the Glove, or Jacopo the 
 Gondolier ? Not a bit of it. The pictures live to- 
 day not by virtue of name or story, but by virtue 
 of their modelling, coloring, light, character, force, 
 power — all of them pictorial motives. Titian's so- 
 called "Sacred and Profane Love" has been well 
 instanced as an example of art existing for its own 
 sake. No one knows what the picture should be
 
 18 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 called, or why the two figures, one on either side 
 of the marble fountain, have such different expres- 
 sions ; no one needs to know in order to enjoy the 
 picture's beauty ; no one cares to know, except per- 
 haps the historian of art, seeking facts instead of 
 aesthetic pleasure. This is equally true of the 
 Dutchmen. Brouwer's topers, Hals's smiling mu- 
 sicians, Steen's fete scenes, Wynant's landscapes by 
 any other name, or no name, would be quite as 
 beautiful. Here in America is Rembrandt's picture 
 called, for purposes of identification, "The Gilder;" 
 does it affect our enjoyment of it that we do not 
 know who was the sitter? Who ever thought of 
 asking what a Tiepolo group is doing, or whether 
 Fortuny's " Serpent Charmer " influenced the snake 
 with his stick or with his voice? The canvases are 
 pieces of color, light, air, painted brilliantly, sym- 
 pathetically, artistically, and that is all there is to 
 them. Their painters never intended them to be 
 anything else. 
 
 A painter's idea, then, should be pictorial, but 
 there is still a further condition imposed upon it. 
 A mathematical problem on the black-board may in 
 one sense be pictorial ; that is, it may be compre- 
 hended by the unaided eye, but it would hardly do 
 to put on canvas as a picture. Why ? Because it 
 appeals to the intelligence only, it does not in any 
 way stimulate the emotions. In other words, it is
 
 ART FOR art's SAKE 19 
 
 not of the realm of beauty. A pictorial idea should 
 be a beautiful idea, but you must not misunder- 
 stand my use of the word "beauty." I do not mean 
 merely the straight nose, the rounded arm, the per- 
 fect proportion which Winckelmaun thought to be 
 at once the body and the spirit of Greek art. Nor 
 do I mean that quality plumed with iridescent wings 
 or circumscribed by various definitions which we 
 find in treatises on testhetics. As usually defined 
 by metaphysicians, "beauty" is not sufificient to 
 account for the pleasure we feel in the presence of 
 fine art. The word is capable of a broader meaning. 
 For beauty may be in all things, in the mind that 
 thinks, in the hand that paints, in the nature that is 
 painted. It is as much in the personality of the 
 painter as in the universality of the outer world. It 
 does not lie in the refined alone, but in the true, the 
 characteristic, the forceful — yes, even in the singular, 
 the abnormal, and the ugly, provided they are not 
 repulsive or disgusting. Something there must be, 
 either in the work or the worker, that strikes home 
 to our emotional and sympathetic nature, else there 
 is no true art. 
 
 A painter may make a pictorial presentation of 
 a cartman beating his horse (such was the sub- 
 ject of a recent Salon picture), or a group of mon- 
 keys dressed in men's clothing holding a court of 
 divorce, and these themes may interest or amuse
 
 20 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 US temporarily, but they do not in any way rouse 
 our emotions with the feeling of beauty. Such pict- 
 ures may possess a beauty of color or form, and 
 they may live and be considered art for that reason, 
 but certainly not by virtue of the beauty in their 
 subjects. Oftentimes artistic execution, color, light, 
 air, save an otherwise commonplace or repulsive 
 theme ; but that is no argument for the repulsive 
 theme, often as painters seek to make it. It is color, 
 light, and masterly handling of the brush that re- 
 deem Regnault's "Execution without Judgment," 
 Fortuny's "Butcher," and Rembrandt's "Dressed 
 Beef." The subjects or the ideas they convey are 
 hardly beautiful in themselves, but are made so by 
 superior artistic treatment, just as many a weed loses 
 its natural bitterness under a salad dressing. Yet 
 people rather like the Regnault " Execution " scene, 
 not because of its color and handling, but because it 
 hints at a ghastly story, and they like the humanized 
 monkeys, not because of any pictorial quality, but 
 because they are funny. A jest is easily grasped, 
 but a new beauty, a sentiment, a state of feeling, is 
 rather staggering, especially if the subject be of a 
 humble or commonplace character. Should an artist 
 choose to paint a weather-stained barn with open 
 double doors and low-hanging eaves, he might show 
 a beauty of sunlight in contrast with the deep 
 warmth of the interior shadows ; he might show that
 
 I- 
 o 
 
 cc 
 O
 
 ART FOK ART'S SAKE 21 
 
 suuligbt changing an edging of straw into bright 
 gold, transforming a whitewashed beam into a cen- 
 tre of light, or turning a horse's coat into a mirror 
 of silken sheen ; he might flood the interior with 
 atmosphere and color it with luminous hues, pitch 
 it with truest values, tone it in perfect accord, but 
 it is not likely that the " average person " would see 
 these beauties. He is looking for something else. 
 He wishes an art of ideas, as though these revela- 
 tions of color, light, shade, air were not of tliem- 
 selves ideas worthy of his consideration. But he 
 wishes another kind of idea, and so, for the purpose 
 of again illustrating the anecdotal side of popular 
 art, let us put in the picture what is desired, and we 
 shall then have Mount's well-known picture called 
 "The Barn." 
 
 Suppose, then, that on the floor of the barn, near 
 the double doors, is seated a group of truant boys 
 playing the forbidden game of cards, and having the 
 bad boy's good time ; suppose that along the side 
 of the barn, unobserved by the boys, comes the 
 sturdy farmer, with indignation written upon his 
 face and a birch in his hand. Now we have a story 
 in it, and the " average person " is well pleased. 
 The idea is quite apparent. The boys are certainly 
 in for a flogging. But let us put the story part of 
 the picture upon the rack and test it by those re- 
 quisites of a painting which we have thus far ad-
 
 22 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 vanced. Is it pictorial ? Yes ; it may be said to fil\ 
 fairly well that first coudition because there is little 
 or no time-movement to the incident, though the 
 subject is hardly serious enough for painting, and 
 would be better shown by black and white illustra- 
 tion in some comic weekly. There is a place for art 
 of a literary nature, but it is not on canvas ; it is on 
 the pages of books and magazines. There it holds 
 proper position, not as purely pictorial creation, but 
 as illustration — sight help — to the running text. 
 No one would deny for a moment the rahon d'eti^e 
 or the usefulness of this form of art, but it should 
 not show itself in oils, any more than miniature 
 work should appear in ceiling fresco. But let us 
 return to the analysis of the barn picture and test 
 its story by the second condition of painting. Is 
 there anything beautiful in the prospect of boys get- 
 ting a flogging ? Does the story appeal in any way 
 to the emotions usually excited by the presence of 
 beauty ? Not at all ; it is an incident that stimu- 
 lates our momentary curiosity, like that of the cart- 
 man beating his horse, but we cannot say that we 
 ai-e benefited, charmed, or emotionally pleased by 
 the representation of either scene. The story in the 
 picture has no place there : first, because it is not 
 beautiful ; secondly, because it has a distracting in- 
 terest which draws our attention away from those 
 suggestive features of sunlight, shadow, color, and 
 
 r
 
 ART FOR art's SAKE 23 
 
 atmosphere which are beautiful and which should 
 attract the chief notice of the observer. 
 
 Just here I fancy you are beginning to wonder if 
 all art ideas are to be made up from bai'ns, hay- 
 stacks, horses coats, tones, colors, and values. No, 
 not all of them ; but why not some of them ? If 
 the painter sees new beauties in such objects — 
 beauties that we do not see — and can make them 
 apparent to us on canvas, why should he not do so ? 
 Why should we not regard his work in the hght of 
 its intention, crediting it with what success it may 
 possess ? Why should we cast it aside because it is 
 not an ideal Madonna, or a sublime piece of classi- 
 cal allegory ? W^e can take pleasure in a china plate 
 and never think of dashing it to the floor because it 
 is not a Sevres vase ; and we can enjoy lyric poetry 
 without lugging in a thought of the epic produc- 
 tions of Dante and Ariosto. Why should we not 
 enjoy the slighter quality of painting in the same 
 manner? 
 
 I am aware that all this sounds to you like mod- 
 ern heres}'. Perhaps it sounds so because through 
 the mother country, England, we have been educated 
 more in literature than in art, and because we con- 
 ceive ideas by words more than by pictorial forms. 
 Moreover, we have been taught by history and the- 
 ory that the aim of art is the grand ideal, that it has 
 to do with great moral truths, that it is a teacher of
 
 24 ART FOR ART^S SAKE 
 
 men, and should deal with lofty themes of human 
 interest. Such, indeed, was once the aim of art, 
 but I would have you discriminate between what 
 was and what is ; I would have you avoid the ap- 
 plication of old standards to new work. Nothing 
 enduringly lasts to us. Civilization moves on ; it 
 never turns back. History may multiply analogies ; it 
 does not repeat likenesses. Philosophies, laws, arts, 
 sciences, even religions change. Art, in Greece, in 
 perfect accord with the Greek civilization, aimed at 
 the ideal, and in that same age there was a religion 
 of the gods and the demi-gods, a morality which, to 
 say the least, our modern teachers of moral science 
 would not approve of, and a code of laws which, if 
 in force among us to-day, would cause a revolution 
 to-morrow. For our practical use their religion, 
 ethics, and laws have disappeared. We have substi- 
 tuted others more conformable to our needs. Why 
 should we so persistently cling to their obsolete and 
 (now) inappropriate art-ideal ? Greek life was ideal, 
 the absorption of the many into one, unity in art- 
 craft and state-craft ; modern life is individual, in- 
 dependent, self-reliant, self-assertive. Where the 
 Greek sculptor modelled the ideal, the contempo- 
 rary French sculptor models the individual. I do not 
 say which is the better or the nobler aim, nor what 
 should be our civilization and art ; I state simply 
 what exists. So again in painting, we should not
 
 ART FOR art's SAKE 25 
 
 judge modern art by that of the Early Renaissance 
 period for its aim is totally dififerent. Italian paint- 
 ing started as an engine of the Church and was a 
 means of illustrating and teaching the Bible to 
 those who could not read, and a decoration of 
 church walls and altars ; but are there any such 
 necessities to-day ? Is painting an engine of any 
 creed, sect, or moving power ? Is it a decorator of 
 churches ? Is it anything but a means of sympa- 
 thetic and emotional expression given to the indi- 
 vidual man ? 
 
 Perhaps this change in art-motive can be illus- 
 trated by taking, for example, that essentially mod- 
 ern product, 'the landscape. In its early days Claude 
 and Poussin regarded it as an Arcadian setting 
 within which could be placed Ionic and Corinthian 
 temples, Roman aqueducts, peopled harbors, legions 
 of soldiers, groups of nymphs, classic shepherds, 
 and mythological gods. The whole conception was 
 classic, eclectic, ideal ; grandeur of composition and 
 beauty of line were predominant, and tlje object of 
 it all was to show the ideal dwelling-place of the 
 gods — the new Garden of the Hesperides. With Ro- 
 manticism in the early part of this century the con- 
 ception changed, and landscape became beautiful by 
 reason of its association with mediaeval or modern 
 heroes and their deeds. The sea stretched out upon 
 canvas, not for its grandeur of powei", its wealth of
 
 26 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 shifting colors ; but as the element upon which, be- 
 tween wave and sky, tossed the raft of the Medusa, or 
 the boat containing Don Juan and his shipwrecked 
 companions drifted on its hopeless way. The forest 
 was not painted so much for its beautiful masses of 
 varying greens, reds, and yellows, shotteu with sun 
 and with shadow, as it was for the i-efuge of Attiia, 
 Robin Hood, and Carl von Moor. The rising knoll 
 of ground, with its sweeping lines of beauty, was 
 but the resting-place of the castle Avhere mediseval 
 knights revelled and drank deep, or Manfred lived 
 and died in solitary remorse. The desert existed 
 not so much for its white light, rising heat, and 
 waving atmosphere, as for the home of the roaming 
 lion, or the treacherous highway of the winding 
 Bedouin caravan. 
 
 In both the classic and the romantic landscape 
 the painter took his theme from the historian, the 
 poet, or the romancer ; but the modern landscap- 
 ist has forsaken both of these conceptions. He 
 has come to discard associations, and to point out 
 to us that there is a beauty in the forms and 
 colors and lights of nature aside from man or his 
 doings. The pale light that glows along the eastern 
 hills at daybreak ; the splendors of the sun as it 
 sinks in the west ; the trooping along the sky of 
 gray rain-clouds ; the masses of deep-colored foliage ; 
 the mists that float along the marshes ; the sheen
 
 ART FOR art's SAKE 27 
 
 on the surface of a woodland pool ; even the wliite 
 light on the bark of the birch, are all beauties to 
 him. The mighty stretch of land that Claude and 
 Poussin fancied, with its representation of lofty 
 mountains, beetling precipices, and far-away valleys 
 has been abandoned. In its place the modern land- 
 scape painter chooses some quiet country lane, a 
 marsh, a patch of some field, or a corner of some 
 garden. For the representation of nature upon 
 canvas is not to be judged by its extent but by 
 its essence. There is a delicate meaning in the 
 humblest things about us. The meanest flower that 
 blows may contain it. Bonvin saw it in the thistle 
 and the bramble ; the Japanese reveal it in the stalk 
 of a reed, or in the color of a bird's wing. And to 
 portray by means of emj^hasized form and color 
 this essence of nature, to discover and interpret to 
 us this delicate meaning, to make us see what the 
 artist sees, and feel what he feels — to do this is one 
 of the aims, perhaps the piincipal aim, of modern 
 landscape painting. 
 
 The painting of to-day, you will thus observe, like 
 the poetry, shows deep love for nature per se, inde- 
 pendent of human association ; and whatsoever sub- 
 ject the artist may choose, be it landscape, genre, 
 still-life, or figure-jjiece, if he be a true artist, he 
 will prove himself the one to whom nature reveals 
 her liner jjliases. For, as Mr. Whistler has said.
 
 28 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 "He is her son and ber master, her son in that he 
 loves her, her master in that he knows her." Her 
 lover ever, he sees beauty in her countless forms and 
 faces, in her myriad hues and colors, in her shifting 
 moods and aspects, in her fraction of a part, in her 
 unit of a whole. For him the heap of straw upon 
 the barn-floor turns to gold in the sunlight, the 
 china plate becomes luminous with light as the 
 white sun seen through a mist, the rose is a wonder- 
 harmony of the most delicately blended hues, the 
 Sevres vase is a round, opalescent mirror, receiving 
 and refracting a thousand tints and shades. For 
 him fruit and silks and skies glow with color ; morn- 
 ing, noon, and twilight produce different atmos- 
 pheres ; mountains, buildings, human beings, flow in 
 graceful lines ; the sunlight falls like Danae's golden 
 shower ; the moonlight sleeps in silver across the 
 land and sea. In nature — nature alone — he seeks 
 his inspiration, and in studying her many works he 
 discovers new and unknown features. Perhaps he 
 sees a beauty in the falling rain, travelling over hill 
 and valley ; in the wind, sweeping the foam on the 
 crest of a breaker ; in the grayish-white effect of the 
 dew on the grass in the early morning ; in the sud- 
 den rush of light up the heavens that comes with 
 the rising moon ; in the burst of a sun-shaft through 
 storm-clouds. If he does, why should he not paint 
 it? To be sure such subjects and such ideas are
 
 ART FOR art's SAKE 29 
 
 not the greatest imaginable, but when artistically 
 handled they should have more than a bric-a-brac 
 interest for us. To have known genius is no good 
 reason for despising simple talent ; nor is it worth 
 while to discard one art because we happen to have 
 been educated on another art. If we look at this 
 modern art from a modern point of view and place 
 ourselves en rapport with our time, we shall find it 
 worthy of consideration. And it has not yet been 
 concluded that these subjects form the outermost 
 rim of the painter's ideas. 
 
 The portrayal of such beauties of nature as may 
 be found in weather-stained barns, vases, china 
 plates, cloud-effects, and atmospheres make up one 
 kind of art — perhaps the art most frequently met 
 with — but it has not been said nor intimated that 
 there was no other kind. There is something more 
 than I have described, something more of idea, 
 but not of the kind for which the "average per- 
 son " sighs. The only limit thus far imposed upon 
 painting is that its conceptions shall be pictorial- 
 ly beautiful. Within that boundary the range is 
 wide enough for any genius, however great. The 
 artist may paint the sunlight on the floor in his 
 room, or the sun itself ; a pool in the street, or the 
 great ocean ; a water-lily as La Farge, or a forest as 
 Dupre ; the face of his wife as llembrandt and Ru- 
 bens, or the face of a madonna or a sibyl as Raph-
 
 30 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 ael and Michael Angelo. For ideas while being 
 pictorially beautiful may be small or great, weak 
 or powerful, commonplace or sublime. And this 
 brings me to the brief consideration of another ele- 
 ment of the modern picture. Heretofore we have 
 spoken of natural beauties discovered and revealed 
 to us by the artist through ideas of form and color, 
 or their modifications. But it is necessary to con- 
 sider the change which a scene in nature may un- 
 dergo in the course of its absorption and regenera- 
 tion in the artist's brain. It is necessary to con- 
 sider the more emphatic subjective element of the 
 artist in his art. 
 
 Coleridge has suggestively said that painting is 
 of " a middle quality between a thought and a 
 thing — the union of that which is nature with that 
 which is exclusively human." The definition is a 
 good one, for painting is of a dual nature. It is not 
 the literal scene from life that we care for, else 
 we might content ourselves with a photograph. It 
 is not the material facts of earth or sky or sea upon 
 canvas that afford us pleasure, else we might get 
 these perhaps by a glance out of the window and 
 so not need their imitation. What we seek for in 
 every great picture is nature combined with the 
 human element. The artist, his manner of seeing, 
 his manner of thinking, his manner of telling, be- 
 comes an important factor in the picture of which
 
 
 III — PUVIS UE CHAVANNES. Tne Bathers.
 
 ART FOR art's SAKE 31 
 
 we needs must take account. The facts of nature — 
 and when I use nature in this connection I do not 
 mean landscape alone, but all things, whether ani- 
 mate or inanimate — the facts of nature, to possess 
 a serious interest for us upon canvas, require to 
 be heated with poetic fire, transfused, and newly 
 wrought in the crucible of the painter's mind. 
 
 It is not worth while to say with Mr. Euskin that 
 the individuality of the artist should be utterly swept 
 out of the canvas in favor of the truths of nature 
 as they are ; nor is it necessary to intimate, as M. 
 Veron does, that these truths of nature are inferior 
 to the individuality of the artist. Both views are 
 rather extreme, though perhaps for the production 
 of great art Veron is nearer right than is Mr. Eus- 
 kin. We may take the mean course and say that 
 for a middle quality of art, which I shall attempt 
 to classify hereafter, the two should go together. 
 Nature, yes ; but natui-e tinctured by the peculiar 
 view, thought, or feeling of her intei'preter, or, as 
 Alfred Stevens the painter has put it, " Nature seen 
 through the prism of an emotion." Daubigny's 
 pictures of the Seine and the Marne have no great 
 hold upon us because of their sj^ecial truth to local- 
 ity, nor are they great works because of their gen- 
 eral fidelity to nature. They simply represent the 
 poetic ideas of Daubigny about such natural beau- 
 ties as river banks, silver skies, and evening atnjos-
 
 33 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 pheres. In other words, they are landscapes plus 
 Daubigny — " the union of that which is nature with 
 that which is exclusively human." This is true 
 again of most of the work of that now famous 
 French school of landscape painters known as 
 the " men of 1830," whom Daubigny succeeded. 
 Corot's landscapes (Fig. 2) contain as much of 
 Corot as of Ville d'Avray. They are merely ideas 
 of white light, misty air, breathing expanding tree? 
 as seen, felt, loved, and worshipped throughout a 
 long life by as sincere a lover as nature ever pos- 
 sessed. And it is because his landscapes are dis- 
 tinctly Corotesque landscapes that we like them. 
 The paintings of Decamps, Rousseau, Diaz, are all 
 precious to us for a like reason. Each artist has his 
 peculiar view ; each is a poet after his own kind, 
 telling truly and sincerely what he sees and thinks 
 to be beautiful in nature ; each is possessed of an 
 individuality that pervades his art and turns the 
 canvas, one into the bright light and life of the 
 Orient, one into the volume and mass of earth, air, 
 trees, and skies, and one into the depth of woodland 
 foliage lit up by broken lights and the reflecting 
 surfaces of woodland ponds. 
 
 The work of Millet so aptly illustrates this po- 
 etic art, this nature stamped by the impress of man, 
 that I must call your attention to his fine picture 
 of "The Sower." I have spoken of this picture be-
 
 ART FOR art's SAKE 33 
 
 fore, but, simply for the sake of variety, I will not 
 now discard it for a newer and poorer illustration. 
 The peasant of Millet, considered historically or eth- 
 nographically, is not essentially different from the 
 peasant of any one of Millet's hundred imitators ; 
 but after being brooded over and thought over in 
 the painter's mind, he became an entirely different 
 person. He became endowed with poetry and art, 
 because looked at from a poetic and artistic point of 
 view. The dusk of evening, with its warm shadows, 
 falls about the Sower ; the heavy air, which the 
 earth seems to exhale at sunset, enshrouds him ; 
 luminous color -qualities form his background; a 
 rhythm of line, a swinging motion give him strength 
 and vitality. It was thus the ajiisfic eye of Millet 
 saw him. In the twilight sky, in the deep-shadowed 
 foreground, we see that the Sower works late ; in 
 the sweat and dust upon his face and the hat 
 crowded over his brow we see that he is weary with 
 toil ; in the serious eyes looking out from their deep 
 sockets we see the severity of his fate ; yet the 
 strong foot does not flinch, the swinging arm does 
 not falter, the parched lips do not murmur. His 
 life is but a struggle for bare existence, a battling 
 against odds, but how noble the struggle ! how 
 strong the battle ! A type of thousands in the 
 humble walks of life bearing patiently the burdens 
 laid upon him, though the world has long neglected 
 8
 
 34 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 him, and fame has never honored him, yet he is no 
 less a man, a brave man, a hero. It was thus the 
 poetic mind of Millet conceived him. 
 
 Here in this picture of the Sower we have a good 
 instance of that something "between a thought and 
 a thing " which Coleridge took to be the aim of art. 
 Here we have the idea in art, but it will be observed 
 that it is quite different from the narrative ideas of 
 literature. It is not a statement of fact, but a sug- 
 gestive impression ; not a realization of absolute 
 nature, but a hint at those deep meanings which will 
 not bear realization — those meanings which a sensi- 
 tive soul may know and feel, and yet be able to ex- 
 press only in part. For the idea in art is at the best 
 not like a clear-cut intellectual thought, but rather 
 like a sympathetic sensation or an emotional feeling. 
 Yet call it what we choose — emotion, feeling, thought, 
 or idea — it is about the only mental conception that 
 painting is capable of conveying or revealing. With- 
 out it one may produce art admirable by virtue of 
 novelty, color, form, skill of hand — the verve of the 
 artist ; with it one may produce a higher art, speak 
 a nobler language, serve a loftier purpose. For 
 what one simply sees in nature and portrays as it is 
 seen may be good art, but what one thinks or feels 
 about what one sees produces much better art. 
 
 Yet there is still a third, a higher quality of paint- 
 ing. For poetic feeling is as wide as poetry itself.
 
 ART FOR art's SAKE 36 
 
 and may be lyrical, sentimental, epic, or sublime. 
 There are grades and degrees of poetic conceptions 
 rising from mediocrity to lofty heights, and as a 
 painter's observation is dull or keen, as his feeling is 
 indifferent or passionate, as his mental capacity and 
 imaginative power are weak or strong, so may his 
 art be of a commonplace nature, or of that kind 
 which breathes the mystery and awe of prophetic 
 things from the vault of the Sistine. 
 
 Sublime art is so rarely seen, though we often 
 hear the adjective applied indiscriminately to pict- 
 ures that have the flavor of age about them, that it 
 is scarcely worth while to more than mention it here, 
 especially as I do not treat of it hereafter. It is not 
 produced by equal parts of the subjective and the 
 objective elements, but rather by a predominance of 
 the subjective. To attain sublimity in painting, the 
 thought must be so all-absorbing that it overawes 
 form ; it must carry us away with its sudden revela- 
 tion of might ; it must present to us the individual 
 strength of its producer so vividly that in its con- 
 templation we forget the forms of the picture. A 
 good example of this in literature is the epitaph 
 written by Simonides for the monument above the 
 three hundred at Thermopyla) : " Thou who passeth 
 by say at Laceda^mon we lie here in obedience to 
 her laws." Here the form or language is very little, 
 but the idea of self-sacrificing heroism is very great.
 
 36 . ART FOR FOR'S SAKE 
 
 f 
 
 A parallel sublimity in painting has been rarely, if 
 ever, seen. The man who came the nearest to it was 
 Michael Angelo. The unfinished marble of "Day " in 
 the Medici Chapel is a climax of great art, and the 
 great mystery-haunted Prophets, Sibyls, and Genii 
 on the Sistine ceiling are its counterparts. Some 
 others, like Palma Vecchio, Titiau, Veronese, and 
 Rubens, have bordered upon sublimity, and a num- 
 ber of others, like Blake, Delacroix, and in America, 
 John La Farge, have barely fallen short of it. 
 
 It is scarcely to be regretted that sublimity is not 
 a moi'e frequent quality of art, for perhaps if it were 
 common it would cease to be sublime. Gold gath- 
 ers uuto itself value from its scarcity, as sublimity in 
 art from its rarity. Both are admirable things, bwt 
 the success of the sublimity-hunter and that of the 
 gold-seeker are not essentially different. Perhapsi, 
 then, we would better take warning and not try bo 
 test every picture for sublimity lest disappointment 
 stare us continually in the face. It were wiser for 
 us to learn the appreciation and enjoyment of com- 
 moner beauties," and if, in the course of our life- 
 time, we chance to meet with rare ones we may en- 
 joy them all the more from never having known 
 them before. 
 
 The attempt to classify different styles of paint- 
 ing under general heads is not usually attended bs
 
 ART FOR art's SAKE 37 
 
 happy results, but for the purpose of recapitulation 
 I shall try to place modern art and modern art ideas 
 under three heads : 
 
 First. The art which discovers and reveals to us 
 beauties of nature by artistic ideas of form, color, 
 light, shade, atmosphere, and their kind. 
 
 Secondly. The art which is a union of natural 
 beauties with the artistic and poetic ideas of the 
 artist. 
 
 Thirdly. Sublime art wherein the idea or individ- 
 uality of the artist is predominant over all forms. 
 
 The third class of art is, as I have intimated, rarely 
 seen. The second class is commoner than the third, 
 but by no means common. Its exponents are such 
 men as Delacx-oix, Corot, Millet, Troyou, who are 
 justly considered the great modern masters. Some- 
 thing will be said of these men and of their art, but 
 not a great deal concerning the poetic side of it, 
 for I shall speak more of the painter than the poet. 
 The first class contains the great bulk of work not 
 only in modern times but in all times. From it 
 painting rises to higher planes. It is the initial 
 class for all artists of whatever rank, and in one 
 sense they never get beyond it. The masterpieces 
 of the schools, whether ancient or modern, were con- 
 sidered by their producers, first, for their quality 
 of line, color, light, or shadow — in short, for their 
 purely sensuous painter's element — and, secondly.
 
 38 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 as vehicles for the conveyance of poetic, religious, or 
 other ideas. As I have attempted to show you, this 
 first kind of art is not the greatest imaginable, but 
 it is that which we shall see the most of, and should 
 perhaps know the most about. Its study would nat- 
 urally lead us to consider the artistic treatment of 
 natural beauties by means of color, tone, light, val- 
 ues, composition, drawing ; and perhaps we would 
 better begin our study by speaking of color and the 
 difierent methods of its use among modern paint- 
 ers.
 
 LECTURE n. 
 
 ' COLOR 
 
 It has been for many years the teaching of the 
 Classicists and the Academicians that the chief feat- 
 ures of a picture is its drawing ; that either the 
 winding line, or the straight line, or the broken 
 line, as the exigencies of the case require, is the one 
 and only thing of beauty ; and that other features 
 of painting, such as color, atmosphere, light, shadow, 
 are but after-considerations, mere decorative effects. 
 So deeply rooted in the ^ole des Beaux Arts in 
 Paris is this teaching that a saying of one of its 
 early defenders has passed into a proverb : " Line 
 is absolute ; color is relative." 
 
 As a matter of fact there is no such thing in nat- 
 ure as line. Objects may appear in strong relief 
 when seen against opposing backgrounds, or they 
 may be so blended as to be almost imperceptible ; 
 they may have a round edge, a square edge, or a 
 flat edge, but the supposed line is nothing more 
 than the distinction between different colors. A 
 human hand resting across the front of a black coat
 
 40 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 may appear to have its sharp outline, but this 
 is because of the contrast between the coloring of 
 the flesh and the coloring of the cloth. Still we 
 need not push that point too far. For in the art of 
 painting line may be said to have a real existence, 
 and its correct drawing is certainly of importance ; 
 but the statement that this is primary, and all other 
 features secondary or subordinate to it, is only one 
 of those extravagant assertions which occasionally 
 emanate from partisan lips. It could as well be 
 said that the human skeleton is absolute, and that 
 the flesh, muscles, and skin, the blood that brings 
 the glow into the cheek and the lustre into the eye 
 — in short, the very life itself — are merely orna- 
 mental nothings. Without color the whole universe 
 would appear but the dry bones of inorganic mat- 
 ter, like that dead satellite the moon whirled on- 
 ward in its passive way, airless, colorless, soundless, 
 lifeless. Color may, indeed, be considered the sym- 
 bol of life. For so associated is it in our minds 
 with animation, virility, growth, power, that its 
 absence means to us the presence of death. But 
 while color gives the show of life it is perhaps lit- 
 tle more absolute or independent than line itself. 
 True, form may exist in a way independent of color, 
 as in charcoal work, etching, and engraving ; and so 
 the blue of the sky, the gray of the atmosphere, the 
 drift of smoke and cloud, the greens of the ocean,
 
 COLOR 41 
 
 the sheen of a silk or a rug, may be expressed with 
 little or no line ; but in the main one is dependent 
 upon the other, and both are necessary features of 
 painting. 
 
 In the eyes of the painters, as distinguished from 
 the Academic draughtsmen, color is esteemed the 
 very highest quality a painting may possess. By it 
 one may suggest hnes, lights, shadows, perspective, 
 and in it one may show his individuality, his senti- 
 ment, his mood or passion, his painter's enthusiasm. 
 In music hai-mony is for the present at least the 
 final word. There is nothing beyond it. And so 
 color-harmony is now the loftiest pitch to which the 
 painter may attain, the consummation of his art. 
 Good drawing is not infrequently met with among 
 all schools, but how difficult of achievement is 
 color-harmony may be indicated by simply reciting 
 the names of the colorists during the last four or five 
 centuries. From the years one might think the 
 number would be large, but in reality among the 
 thousands oi painters who have lived and pro- 
 duced and died, we may count the great colorists 
 on our fingers. They are Titian, Giorgione, Tin- 
 toretto, Paolo Veronese, Rubens, Velasquez, Dela- 
 croix, and perhaps some few others who had the 
 color-sense — the inclination rather than the con- 
 summation — like Rembrandt and Chardin. Tlie 
 small number may be accounted for perhaps on
 
 42 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 the score that there is always a paucity of genius ; 
 but it may also argue another point, namely, that 
 color-harmony is not yet fundamentally compre- 
 hended, and hence is exceedingly difficult to pro- 
 duce even by men of genius. Claims have been put 
 forth at different times by different people who 
 have thought they possessed its basic secret, but 
 no one of them has yet given a satisfactory working 
 explanation of it. The French say that though the 
 laws of color should be studied, yet theories cannot 
 produce the colorist ; and the colorists have all 
 taken precious good care not to explain anything, 
 if indeed they themselves consciously understood 
 the working of their own faculties or instincts. 
 Nevertheless there is some truth in the theories, 
 and we would better glance at them a moment in 
 passing. 
 
 For some of these color-theories we are indebted 
 to science. It has done much toward establishing 
 certain ground principles. It has, for instance, de- 
 monstrated that color is made apparent to the eye 
 by waves of light in a manner analogous (in its 
 general result at least) to that of music brought to 
 the ear on waves of sound. The sound-waves set 
 vibrating the delicate fibres of the auditory nerve 
 and affect us pleasurably or otherwise as the fibres, 
 like harp - strings, are harmoniously touched or 
 swept by the rude hand of discord. The light-
 
 IV.— LEONARDO DA VINCI Mona Lisa (La Gioconda).
 
 COLOR 43 
 
 waves, as they are long or short, set vibrating the 
 no less delicate fibres of the optic nerve, or to 
 speak more accurately, the nervous substance of the 
 retina whereby we see color, and produce in us the 
 sensation of pleasure in a Uke manner. Whether it 
 be a luminous wave striking the eye, or a sonorous 
 wave striking the ear, the effect is similar though 
 the sensory organs be different, and though sound 
 and light themselves be different in construction. 
 
 The motive or travelling power of light is an in- 
 herent quality, and the component parts of light or 
 light-waves have certain proportionate velocities 
 which have been scientifically tabulated. Thus, 
 when the light-wave is -jgf ^y^ of an inch in length, 
 it produces red to the eye ; when jttott ^^ ^^^ i^^h 
 in length it produces orange, and as the waves de- 
 crease in force we see yellow, green, blue, and vio- 
 let on through the spectrum. It is these waves of 
 light varying in length that produce color for us, 
 and the different substances which we have come to 
 regard as colored possess no color in themselves, 
 but only the power of reflecting waves of light of 
 certain lengths. But though colors have no actual 
 existence outside of our eyes they practically may 
 be said to exist and to depend upon the reflecting 
 power of objects. When the ti-ee dies the green of 
 the leaf fades through loss of vitality, in the same 
 way that the sound of the harp-string is hushed
 
 44 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 when the propelHng force is removed ; or, to speak 
 scientifically again, the light-wave which produces 
 in us the sensation of green is destroyed by the 
 leaf losing its power of reflection. Dulness of color 
 is due to a loss of vitality either in the reflecting 
 substance or in the light- wave ; brightness of color 
 is due to a high vitality or a stimulated energy, as 
 we shall presently note when we come to speak of 
 complementary colors. 
 
 So far so good. This is a clever and doubtless a 
 true explanation of the manner in which our ner- 
 vous organization is effected and sensation produced ; 
 but we are still far removed from the cause of har- 
 mony. Science successfully analyzes light, motion, 
 and sensation ; but what notes, how many, in what 
 proportion shall they be struck to produce a phys- 
 ical sensation of pleasure ? We know Hamlet's 
 pipe is capable of discoursing most eloquent music, 
 and we may analyze the sound of it and our own 
 sensations of pleasure in it ; but the art of the 
 player baffles us again. The stopping of the frets 
 here, and the opening of them there, so that they 
 produce melody ; the putting of a color in this 
 place, and a color in that place, so that they pi'oduce 
 harmony, is this governed by an unalterable scien- 
 tific law, or is it simply a matter of individual feel- 
 ing in the artist? M. Charles Blanc, speaking for 
 the theory of Chevreul, says the former ; but though
 
 COLOR 45 
 
 the law of complemeutary and contrasted colors has 
 been known to artists since the days of Delacroix, 
 yet the race of that rare manner of man known as 
 ■' the colorist " is no more plentiful on the face of the 
 earth to-day than before the law's discovery. 
 
 The substance of Chevreul's theory as set forth 
 by Blanc is this. White light is the union of all 
 colors. Its decomposition or dispersion makes the 
 dififerent colors apparent as one or more of them are 
 separated from the whole and reflected. Thus the 
 rays of light falling through a glass prism are broken 
 into the colors of the spectrum ; falling upon a Jac- 
 queminot rose they pass into and are absorbed in 
 the rose itself with the exception of red, which is re- 
 jected and reflected ; falling upon grass they are 
 again all absorbed with the exception of green. A 
 piece of coal absorbs all color and remains black or 
 colorless ; a sheet of white paper rejects all color 
 and therefore remains simply white, or colorless 
 again. 
 
 There are, correctly speaking, six colors. Three of 
 them — red, yellow, and blue — are primary or simjile 
 colors ; and three of them — green, orange, and violet 
 — are binary or composite colors, because they can 
 be formed by mixings of the three primary colors. 
 Each color has what may be called its complemen- 
 tary opposite, or that color by union with which 
 white may be produced. Thus green and red are
 
 46 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 complementary and seek each other because each 
 contains the elements needed by the other to make 
 up white. Being complementary their identities 
 are destroyed by mixture — that is, by mixing they 
 become white ; but, on the contrary, if placed side by 
 side they heighten each other's brilliancy by reflec- 
 tion. This is for the reason that every color will 
 cast about it a halo or flush of its complementary 
 color. Thus red is always bordered by a faint 
 tinge of green, and green by a faint tinge of red. A 
 shaft of sunlight passing through a hole in a yellow 
 curtain will throw a light suffusion of indigo on a 
 sheet of white paper, indigo being the complemen- 
 tary color of yellow, or that color which yellow 
 needs to make up pure white. The scientific reason 
 for the appearance of these halos of complementary 
 color would require too much time to explain here, 
 and besides it is not very important to us ; but you 
 need not doubt the fact, for it has been fully demon- 
 strated. Again, it has been demonstrated that the 
 shadow of a color does not show the color itself but 
 a complementary color — a fact which has given some 
 show of scientific reason for the purple and violet 
 shadows of the Impressionists. It is also well known 
 that colors placed upon canvas appear to change 
 son^ewhat when contrasted with other colors, through 
 what is known as optical mixture. 
 
 Three conclusions may be drawn from this law of
 
 COLOR 47 
 
 color contrast. First. That brilliancy is obtaina- 
 ble by placing colors coruplementary to each other 
 side by side, because each lends to the other its 
 favorable halo of color and thus tends to increase 
 the brightness. 
 
 Secondly. That dulness of color is obtainable by 
 placing uncomplementary colors side by side, be- 
 cause each dulls the other by casting an unfavorable 
 halo of color. Thus yellow, if placed beside green, 
 would throw a slight, almost imperceptible, indigo 
 upon the green ; and the green in turn would throw 
 a suffusion of red upon the yellow. The result upon 
 both colors would be a loss to some extent of their 
 resonance, their brilliancy, and their transparency. 
 
 Thirdly. That an optical mixture may be obtained 
 by the employment of complementary colors. If 
 we look at a red spot for a few moments, and then 
 shift the sight to white paper we shall see a faint 
 green disk appear. Applying this fact to landscape 
 a painter wishing in a shadow a faint tinge of green 
 might, by the use of red in the object, create the 
 appearance of green in the shadow. 
 
 Here again we have a valuable scientific demon- 
 stration of the manner in which the brightness, the 
 dulness, the partial destruction, or the mixture of 
 colors is produced ; and yet we are not nearer to the 
 cause of harmony. Brightness is no nearer to it 
 than dulness, and both of them were known to the
 
 48 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 ancients centuries ago. Rubens revelled in pris« 
 matic brillianc}', but was he more of a colorist than 
 Velasquez with his broken reds and silver grays ? 
 Delacroix had a considerable knowledge of optical 
 mixture and made practical application of it, but as 
 a colorist he falls short of Paolo Veronese, who 
 probably knew nothing about it. Science would 
 seem to have beaten about the bush because lacking 
 in power to go directly into it. It tells us how we 
 are affected, how colors are mixed, augmented, or 
 dulled, how they live, die, and travel ; it has also 
 builded some theories founded upon the constants 
 of color, purity, luminosity, hue, and their uses ; but 
 it does not tell us precisely what is harmony, nor 
 analyze the motive of the colorist in his placing of 
 hues. Perhaps it is more the affair of art than of 
 science to tell us this, yet should the same question 
 be asked of the painters their answers would be 
 even more indefinite than those of the color-theo- 
 rists. For they, too, are in ignorance of any positive 
 law or formula for its production. They follow cer- 
 tain practices taught in the studios, but these may 
 or may not produce the desired results only as the 
 practiser has, or has not, the color-instinct. Much 
 depends upon the temperament of the artist — in 
 fact almost everything. The subjective element — 
 the genius of the individual, working unconsciovisly, 
 perhaps — must never be lost sight of for a moment.
 
 COLOR 49 
 
 It is a quality of art that makes a law unto itself. 
 Homer's poetry may form rules of Greek prosody ; 
 but all the Greek prosody iu the world would not 
 make Homeric poetry. The works of the great col- 
 orists furnish chromatic teaching for the guidance of 
 their imitators, but the observance of the teachings 
 does not make the imitators great, though it may 
 greatly improve their talents. 
 
 The most common of all the studio teachings is 
 based upon the division of the colors into warm 
 tones and cool tones; the warm ones being the 
 reds, oranges, and yellows ; the cool ones the blues, 
 greens, and violets. They are regarded as warm or 
 cool as they approach or depart from the color of 
 fire or sunlight, because of the sentiment or feel- 
 ing they convey, and because of the effect they pro- 
 duce upon us. Thus white clouds, purple or snow- 
 clad mountain peaks, and dark-green foliage give us 
 the feeling of a Scandinavian landscape because they 
 reflect the coloring of a cold clime. Yellow sands, 
 heated air, heavy shadows, and warm skies bring us 
 upon the desert, because they reflect the coloring of 
 Sahai'a. So again a summer sky affects us with a 
 sense of coolness or warmth as it is blue or flushed 
 with yellow ; and, in a similar manner, the blue- 
 greens of the ocean speak to us of cold and storm, 
 while the opalescent tints reflective of the sky, in- 
 timate warmth and calm. 
 4
 
 OO ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 In painting, the relief of warm colors by cool ones, 
 or vice versa, has been the practice more or less of all 
 the painters, and is to this day. Some artists, fol- 
 lowing Correggio, build a picture in circles, making 
 the centre warm and the surroundings cool ; while 
 others, following some of the Florentines, reverse 
 this plan of action by making the centre cool and 
 the surroundings warm. Some intermix warm and 
 cool tones in the body of the work, as did the Ve- 
 netians ; and some place them side by side, as did 
 Rubens. The manner is a matter of individual taste 
 and cannot be reduced to rule. The effect of this 
 intermixture, and contrast of warm and cool tones 
 can scarcely be called a color-harmony, but rather an 
 agreeable sensation arising from the moderation of 
 the temperature of the picture, so to speak. The 
 extremes are avoided, or rather they balance one 
 another, and we are neither chilled with cold nor 
 irritated with heat. This is, however, more of a 
 negative than a positive quality, and is not sufficient 
 of itself to account for harmony. 
 
 Next to the relief of warm colors by cool ones 
 comes the practice of contrast, or the placing of 
 primary or complementary colors by the side of 
 their opposites. The Italians, down to the time of 
 the great Venetians, used the opposition of primary 
 colors, such as red and blue, so continuously that 
 to-day a Renaissance picture with one saint wearing
 
 V 
 
 Q 
 
 u
 
 COLOR 51 
 
 a blue robe and another saint wearing a red robe 
 may be set down with considerable accuracy as of 
 Italian origin. The simplicity of this coloring, Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds maintains, comported well with 
 the biblical themes the ItaHans painted, because it 
 gave dignity and severity to the characters. The 
 contrast, though harsh, was exhilarating, stirring as 
 the blast of a trumpet, and appropriate to the sub- 
 jects depicted as are the quick sharp notes of mar- 
 tial music to the marching host. But there is some 
 doubt if they employed the primary colors with 
 that aim solely in view. Sir Joshua, like a Shake- 
 speare-Browning editor, credits his subject with a 
 full quota of ideas, and then puts his own ingenuity 
 into the bargain. It is quite as probable that the 
 Florentines knew no other color-method, for these 
 same primary tones appear in almost all of the early 
 Italian and Renaissance pictures without much re- 
 gard to the subjects chosen. In tlie attempt to 
 avoid monotony a contrast was produced little short 
 of a discord. To be sure the pictures do not appear 
 violent to-day, owing to the mellowing effect that 
 disintegrating time and many coats of varnish have 
 had upon them, yet they are not now remarkable 
 pieces of color-harmony, however excellent they may 
 be in line and composition. 
 
 The Bolognese painters — the Carracci, Guido, and 
 others — made the discord less apparent by some-
 
 52 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 times washing out the primary colors, or breaking 
 them into lower tints, the eflfect being that the jar 
 of sudden transition was partially removed but har- 
 mony not yet attained. In modern times the re- 
 vivers of Florentine methods, like Ingres and his 
 following in France, and the Pre-Raphaelites in 
 England, have only succeeded in reproducing, 
 phonograph-like, the same shrill tones. Harmony 
 by contrast of the primary colors, with some nota- 
 ble exceptions, cannot be accounted a success by 
 the experience of either the past or the present. 
 Such a color-scheme is too palpable, too crude, too 
 violent ; it lacks cunning in its design, depth in its 
 sentiment, refinement in its feeling. There is a cer- 
 tain rhythm or flow of color, as there is of line, 
 which the free use of primary colors abruptly 
 checks ; the eye feels the interruption and recoils 
 from it as from a sudden shock. 
 
 The contrast of comj^lementary colors in its use 
 has been attended with more pleasing results than 
 that of the primary colors. Orange placed beside 
 blue appears not out of place, nor red beside green. 
 They move together, each borrowing from the other 
 some of its light and beauty. Delacroix, well versed 
 in complementary colors and their play, used them 
 perhaps more effectively than any other painter of 
 his time ; and to-day the French and Spanish 
 painters are fond of them for the production of
 
 COLOR 53 
 
 brilliancy. All painters afi'ect them somewhat. 
 Even those who paint gray skies and early spring 
 landscapes will occasionally put a blue-frocked man 
 in a picture to tone down its greens, or a red- 
 shawled woman to brighten them. Where bright 
 hues are sought the contrasts are sometimes made 
 very strong. An Arab dancer, for instance, may be 
 robed in orange and blue, or a woman on a green 
 side-hill may be dressed in red, or have over her 
 head a scarlet parasol. The effect of vividness is 
 certainly obtained in this way, and there is un- 
 doubtedly some harmony about it arising from the 
 affinities of the opposed tones. 
 
 Generally speaking the contrast of the primary 
 colors is too violent ; that of complementary colors, 
 while equally vivid, is a closer approach to harmony 
 for the reason I have just given, but does not yet 
 fairly strike the mark. Now, if we do away with con- 
 trast altogether as the chief color-aim, and examine 
 the accord of similar or closely related colors, we 
 shall, I think, be nearer an understanding of har- 
 mony, though we shall not wholly account for it by 
 any process of reasoning or logical theory. Color 
 appears at the best advantage when treated in a 
 manner analogous to that in which liglit and sliade 
 are dealt with. A portrait wlii.'li shows the shadow 
 under the eyebrow dull black or brown, and the 
 light on the nose pure wliite, is "forced," and
 
 54 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 quite intolerable, except in the hands of a Rem- 
 brandt. The change should be gradual, and neither 
 dark nor light used in extreme measure. So the 
 transition from the pink of the clieek to the ivory- 
 yellow of the throat should be by stages of progres- 
 sion, not abruptly or violently. This gradation by 
 very delicate, at times imperceptible transitions, is 
 characteristic of all nature. There are few sharp 
 breaks or changes in landscape, but rather a grad- 
 ual mingling, a blending of all colors into one har- 
 monious tone. The green of a tree seen against a 
 blue sky appears to be a harsh contrast of opposed 
 colors ; but the light through the branches of the 
 tree changes the green to a shade of gray, the at- 
 mosphere helps the graying-down process, until, be- 
 tween the two, we have not a green but a greenish- 
 gray ; or, if there be sunlight, a greenish-yellow, 
 either of which colors makes an agreeable transition 
 to blue. And for a more delicate gradation of color 
 consider the petal of a rose with its imperceptible 
 blendings, or the flush of an evening sky leading up- 
 ward toward the zenith, or the eastern sky at sun- 
 set. This succession of tints following each other so 
 rhythmically is one of the most charming beauties 
 of nature, appearing not in the countless shades and 
 tones of landscape alone, but in all things of visible 
 life. Nothing is too small or too insignificant to 
 have its gradations and changes of colors, and the
 
 COLOE 55 
 
 more delicate they are the less likely we are to see 
 them. The opal in a ring kindles, flames, and color- 
 fuses as we turn it ; but the unnoticed pebble at our 
 foot, the scales of a fish, the coat of a tiger, or the 
 cheek of a child will change and shift, blend and in- 
 termingle in a no less wonderful and beautiful way. 
 In painting it is not at all necessary that the whole 
 register of color from red to violet should be trav- 
 elled through in the attempt to gain a harmonious 
 result. The accord of similar tints may be sufficient, 
 provided each tint holds its proper place in the 
 scale. By " proper place " is meant not the position 
 of colors as they stretch across or up and down 
 the canvas, but as they recede in the background. 
 This involves what is known in studio parlance as 
 "value," the meaning of which I shall endeavor to 
 explain more fully hereafter. It is sufficient for the 
 present to say that tlie faithful maintenance of values 
 requires that every shade or color in a picture shall 
 be placed as it would appear in nature, and shall 
 hold its proper relationship in the scale of light or 
 dark to other shades or colors. Fromentin, himself 
 a painter and a high authority, has said that "the 
 whole art of the colorist lies in this knowledge, and 
 in employing the exact relation of values in tones." 
 At the present time value to some painters has 
 come to mean, primarily, the slight difference in 
 light pitch between similar tints or tones, as, for
 
 C\> ART FOR ART'S SAKE 
 
 instance, the difference in whites between a white 
 handkerchief and the white snow upon which it may 
 be lying, between a gi'ay house and a gray sky, a 
 pink flower and a pink dress, a green tree and a 
 gi-een hill-side seen at slightly varying distances. 
 The bringing out of these delicate tones of color by 
 giving them their just value in light or dark is con- 
 sidered by the best modern artists to be the great 
 secret of color harmony. Alfred Stevens, who as 
 a painter has a refined color-sense, says : " The 
 painter who does not know how to ' detach ' a 
 lemon on a Japanese plate is not a delicate colorist." 
 Here we have the problem of values again — the giv- 
 ing of the relative importance to the coloring of 
 both the plate and the lemon which shall place them 
 in proper relationship — and here is the problem of 
 color-harmony by gradations of similar tones, the 
 solution of which Stevens seems to think the man- 
 ner in which delicate coloring is obtained. 
 
 We have now before us the princijDal methods of 
 handling color employed by the painters, the relief 
 of warm colors by cool, or vice versd, the contrasts 
 of primary and complementary colors, the blend- 
 ing of similar tones and colors by gradation and val- 
 ues ; yet we are still somewhat in the dark as to what 
 is harmony and how it is produced. Perhaps the 
 blending of colors by gradation and values, of which 
 I have just spoken, produces the nearest approach
 
 COLOR 57 
 
 to a sought-for effect which when seen we recognize 
 as harmony. At least we would better so consider 
 it. In the meantime, while we are unable to solve 
 the entire problem, we shall not go astray if we class 
 the colorist with the poet as a person born and not 
 made. And harmony we must regard as a pictorial 
 poetry, the product of a special faculty or individ- 
 ual feeling, a something which cannot be brought to 
 book nor ruled into method. For our practical use 
 in trying to judge of harmonious coloring in pict- 
 ures, perhaps we should pay less heed to theories 
 than to our senses and our taste. 
 
 Man has two kinds of taste, a natural taste and an 
 acquired taste. In a state of barbarism the natural 
 — the physical — man outbalances the mental, rejoic- 
 ing in the strong, the violent, the unrefined. He 
 knows neither delicacy nor grace, neither tenderness 
 nor sympathy. Animal force, limited skill, crude in- 
 stincts are his chief possessions. In the civilized 
 state all this is changed. The mental man out- 
 balances the physical, and educa^on eradicates the 
 natural taste in favor of an acquired one, which is 
 stronger and more suitable to cultivated life. The 
 mind under training becomes tempered like a Toledo 
 blade, it has fineness, keenness, subtlety ; the trained 
 taste is but a reflection of tlie mind and requires 
 skill as well as force, and depth as well as height. 
 Thus it is that in a niattcr of color our Western
 
 58 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 Indian rejoices in crude ochres, flaring reds, and 
 poisonous greens ; decorates his im23lements of the 
 chase, his moccasins, his leggings, his tent-skins with 
 these colors ; and when he goes on the war-path stim- 
 ulates his courage by applying to his person an extra 
 quantity of them. The old civilization of the Eastern 
 Indians shows quite the reverse of all this. With it 
 delicacy of shade and richness of hue predominate, 
 primitive colors are seldom used, and broken tones 
 are so placed that they do not jar, but blend like the 
 bleached foliage of late autumn or the delicate har- 
 monies of a summer sea. 
 
 We would do well to take a lesson from the Ori- 
 entals in this matter, for they teach us what is un- 
 doubtedly true, that there is a dilTerence between 
 color and colors, and that good color does not exist 
 in brightness, sharpness, and contrast alone, but ap- 
 pears more frequently in mellowness, richness, and 
 accordance. It is not the ui:)per treble that pleases 
 the cultivated taste so often as the lower notes. Yet 
 the startling beauty which bright color possesses 
 when well handled, as in some of Eubens's pictures, 
 is undoubtedly a very high type of art, and naturally 
 it is one much affected by 3'oung artists. The infer- 
 ence of many of them is, perhaps, somewhat like our 
 own, namely, that color means bright color, and the 
 brighter it is the nearer is the jiainter approached 
 to a colorist. As a result we find the modern art-
 
 COLOR 69 
 
 world abounding with canvases checked and counter- 
 checked by contrasts, and so discordant with flaring 
 hues as to give a well-trained eye a temporary attack 
 of ophthalmia or strabismus. Doubtless the pro- 
 ducers of these canvases try as best they know how 
 to follow the Fromeutin formula of choosing colors 
 beautiful in themselves and arranging them in ap- 
 propriate and beautiful combinations ; but, unfort- 
 unately, they do not know the beautiful in color, 
 and, judging from the manner in which their pict- 
 ures are admired, one might say that we know even 
 less about it than the artists. 
 
 Now when there is a very small percentage of the 
 world of painters made up of colorists in high keys, 
 perhaps the wisest thing we can do in looking at 
 pictures is not to spend our time in searching for ex- 
 amples of these exceptional men. Rather should we 
 try to get some enjoyment out of tliose pictures 
 which deal with a less florid and a less ambitious 
 color-gamut. We shall not make a mistake if, as 
 a general rule, we give our attention to low-toned 
 pictures, or even those that are almost monotone, to 
 the neglect of those which are vividly set forth. Our 
 gain will be in more ways tlian one. 
 
 First. The low-toned pictures with few colors 
 may be simpler and broader in color-composition, 
 and simplicity and breadtli serve a purpose in aid- 
 ing comprehension by directness.
 
 60 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 Secondly. Their color is never irritatingly con- 
 spicuous, nor are they solely dependent upon it for 
 success. 
 
 Thirdly. A certain percentage of very good 
 painters use only dull and faded hues for the very 
 reason that they are not conspicuous, and because 
 they lend to the portrayal of other beauties, such 
 as atmosphere, light, shadow, and their kind. 
 
 By choosing first low-keyed pictures and pictures 
 simple in color-composition, we shall not only rid 
 ourselves of a great many crazy- quilt affairs, but 
 among them we shall be more likely to find good 
 pieces of work than among those of brighter and 
 more variegated hues. To be sure, the successful 
 management of high diversified color evidences a 
 wider scope, a more masterful command, and hence 
 a more complete beauty than may perhaps be found 
 in the lower notes ; but we would be in error did 
 we infer that all beauty lies in the upper scales and 
 that the lower notes are simply negative. The red 
 rose may be thought the most perfect of flowers, but 
 is the pale violet less beautiful in consequence there- 
 of? The crimsons and golds of sunset flame and 
 glow with brilliant splendor, but turn about and see 
 if the pearly grays of the eastern sky have not their 
 color-charm as well. Among the Gobelins it is not 
 the brightly colored but the low-toned, pale-keyed 
 tapestries which are the most sought after, and there
 
 COLOR 61 
 
 is a method, not a fashion, in tTie preference. It is 
 the charm of accord — the unity of color — that pleases. 
 And so in the dull clouds hanging over the Jersey 
 marshes in November, in the volumes of silvery 
 smoke thrown up from factory chimne3'S and loco- 
 motives, in the reflected grays of the pools and the 
 creeks, the faded yellows and browns of the rush- 
 es, there is a wealth of color-beauty which only the 
 trained eye can appreciate. Such a scene may have 
 infinitely more refinement about it than the scar- 
 let foliage and blue sky of an October noon-day. 
 Sunlight colors, and it may also discolor by too 
 great an intensity. There is often more charm in 
 twilight than in sunlight, and more beauty in storms 
 than in fair skies. Witness the heavy lowering days 
 of spring that hang over the North Atlantic like 
 a veil, the trooping clouds, the swirling rains, the 
 whitened foam, the cobalt blues and emerald greens 
 of tlie waves. Such a scene does not perhaps ap- 
 peal to us so powerfully at first as that vivid sunset 
 on the rim of the iridescent plane of water, the sun 
 itself sinking into the depths like a great wheel of 
 fire ; but its very sombreness maj^ be its charm and 
 its sullen mood a note of power. 
 
 The chief reason, however, why we should firsl 
 look to low-keyed pictures is not that they are, by 
 themselves considered, better or worse than liigh 
 keyed pictures ; but that in proportion we are likely
 
 62 ART FOR ART'S SAKE 
 
 to find more good work among the former than 
 among the latter. It need hai-dly be said that every 
 picture painted in low colors is not, in consequence 
 thereof, a masterpiece of art. Worthless pictures may 
 be painted in grays as readily as in scarlets ; but, as 
 I have intimated, the low colors have an advantage 
 over the high ones in that they are not so preten- 
 tious, and therefore, not so flagrantly offensive in 
 failure. Bad grammar in a dialect may be irritating 
 enough, but bad grammar in a court language like 
 the French is quite unbearable. 
 
 Again, it is hardly necessary to infer that every 
 bright picture, is in consequence of its brightness, 
 a bad picture. On the contrary, the Venetians, not 
 to mention Kubens, were famous for their high keys. 
 But it will be readily understood, I fancy, that their 
 works belong among the exceptionally good, and we 
 are not now considering the few but the many. If 
 red and blue in their primary intensities are quar- 
 relling hues — and they do quarrel in many pictures 
 by the old masters — it is apparent that they will 
 be less antagonistic if their intensities be reduced. 
 Pale blues and reds placed side by side will not jar 
 so violently as bright tones of the same colors, and 
 dull tones like brown and gray will not jar at all. 
 
 Next to the low-toned pictures we would do well 
 to regard those of deep rich color, for they again 
 are oftener good than the bright ones, and for
 
 COLOR 63 
 
 the same reason. Depth of color, as distinguished 
 from shallowness and crudeness, may be easily de- 
 tected if we place upon the floor a well-worn Da- 
 ghestan rug and beside it a new American rug of 
 factory manufacture. The one will be seen to have 
 body, warmth, and richness to it ; while the other 
 will have a surface hue, as though the color were 
 only skin-deep and liable to wash off in the first 
 rain-storm. Of themselves there is nothing tawdry 
 or crude about Avoods of pine, maple, and cherry ; 
 but place them beside a piece of old mahogany 
 and they suffer by comparison. So again the old 
 Cordova leathers have a qudity, a richness about 
 them which is not apparent in the bright English 
 moroccos. As a matter of taste a deep color is al- 
 most always preferable to a primary intensity. We 
 do not hesitate to choose an Indian-red in prefer- 
 ence to a brick-red, a peacock-blue to a sky-blue, or 
 an olive-green to a grass-green. The lighter hues 
 strike us as too gay, too flippant, too flimsy ; while 
 the deeper tones comport better with dignity and 
 what we call " good style " or " keeping." It is, for 
 one reason, because depth of color has a quality of 
 beauty in itself that so many artists employ it in 
 their pictures. It was the strength and mellow- 
 ness of the notes that led Brouwer and Teniers and 
 Pieter de Hooghe to use deep golden browns in 
 their interior pictures ; it was the warmth and glow
 
 64 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 of garnet reds and Egyptian yellows that led De- 
 camps and Fromentin to use them in their Oriental 
 scenes ; and Diaz, Jacque, Dupre, all chose deep, 
 Ijroken tones of brown, green, and orange, not be- 
 cause they always saw them in nature, but because 
 they always felt that those colors possessed strong 
 character and pure beauty in themselves. 
 
 There is another reason why some painters have 
 preferred deep colors to light ones. A color of any 
 grade or degree is primarily used to subserve one of 
 two purposes. Either it represents beauty as color 
 in itself, or it stands as the representation of a cer- 
 tain sentiment or state of feeling. It has been said 
 that one can give a blind man an idea of the color 
 red by telling him that it resembles the blast of a 
 trumpet. In that sense all the colors of the spec- 
 trum may be regarded as symbols suited to express 
 different sentiments ; and the strength of a senti- 
 ment may be interpreted by the deepening or the 
 lightening of the hues. Thus, while a bright hue 
 may portray a shrill cry of anguish, as a singer 
 pitches a shriek in the upper scale, so a low tone 
 may disclose a dark despair, a crushing sorrow, such 
 as the singer interprets again in those mellow notes, 
 not loud but deep, which move us to tears of sym- 
 pathy. It is thus that Delacroix tells us the despair 
 of the lost in the deep blues of the " Shipwreck of 
 Don Juan," and in the " Dante and Virgil ; " it is
 
 VI.-CORREUGIO La Notte.
 
 COLOR 65 
 
 thus that Watteau gives us the light airy spirit of his 
 characters in the gay reds, yellows, and light-greens 
 of his fete scenes ; it is thus that Millet sjieaks the 
 hard uncompromising life of the peasant in the dull 
 browns, mournful grays, and sad yellows of " The 
 Woodcutter " and the " Spaders." Poet, musician, 
 painter, may all use like means to the attainment of 
 like ends. It is the skilled Timotheus of the lyre 
 whose smooth notes incline the king to love and 
 pleasure, whose sad notes subdue him with the 
 thought of Darius fallen from his high estate, whose 
 clanging notes rouse him like a rattling peal of 
 thunder, and lead him on to revenge and fury. If, 
 then, the poet and the musician strike the deep 
 notes oftenest, it is because they portray the deep- 
 est passions ; and if the painter mix warmth and 
 shadow depths with his hues it is often for a simi- 
 lar reason. 
 
 This sentiment seems to be an accompaniment to 
 the subject portrayed, and belongs to it by associa- 
 tion as much as a blue sky to a bright day. There 
 is, perhaps, a certain appropriateness in the use of 
 gay colors for a ball-room scene, and dull colors for 
 a funeral, bright colors for a comedy, and sombre 
 colors for a tragedy, and many artists have so used 
 them ; at times, indeed, to the distortion of nature 
 which really possesses no sentiment in itself. But 
 there are numbers of brilliant exceptions to any 
 5
 
 66 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 law that might be derived from such a practice. 
 Titian, Tintoretto, Rubens, and Goya offered an 
 atonement for the tragic scenes they portrayed in 
 the splendor of their coloring. With them sky, 
 earth, air, do not weep and grow sad in sympathy 
 with the suffering hero. Christ staggers beneath 
 the cross on the way to Calvary, surrounded by the 
 rich colors of a Csesar's triumph ; martyrdoms of 
 saints by fire and sword are luminous with light 
 and brilliantly keyed in reds and yellows ; and the 
 horrors of the Spanish Inquisition are pictured in 
 shrewd harmonies of blood and flame. 
 
 There is no association of color with the sentiment 
 of the subject in such instances ; but there is, how- 
 ever, a subjective emotion — a state of feeling in the 
 artist. The painter has a way of revealing himself 
 in color, and by color telling us what beauties of na- 
 ture he loves the best. Regnault, at one time in his 
 career, seemed to live for clear air and bright sun- 
 light. He had a passion for them which was all- 
 absorbing. They were the inclination of his taste, 
 the incarnation of his ideal of beauty. Naturally 
 those bright tones that revealed light and air the 
 best were the ones he oftenest chose to use. The 
 subject mattered little. If he used red it might 
 be in the form of a brick wall, a silk robe, or a 
 pool of blood. Any one of them served to express 
 his feeling for color. With Courbet it was quite
 
 COLOR 67 
 
 the reverse. His mood appeared almost always 
 sombre. Did he paint the ocean, it was not brill- 
 iant with blues and greens, but heavy with temj^est 
 and darkened with rolling clouds. Did he paint a 
 combat of deer in a summer woodland, it was with 
 deep browns and greens and heavy shadows, sun- 
 light and blue sky were banished, and light-colored 
 foliage was shunned. Did he paint a portrait, it was 
 again a scheme of solemn, deep tones, a head peer- 
 ing out of gloom, a hand coming out of darkness. 
 But this was the way Courbet felt. His color-notes 
 were the index of his artistic character. They re- 
 vealed the sentiment and the feeling of the man — 
 those two qualities which he sneered at all his life 
 and intimated had no place in art. 
 
 Different again from both Eegnault and Courbet 
 was Corot, who looked to the early light of morning 
 as the supreme beauty of the universe. The grays, 
 browns, and pale yellows of his landscapes are but 
 so many notes of a painted lyric — the song of a new 
 Orpheus to the coming dawn. Color and light were 
 never made more direct revealers of personal senti- 
 ment than with Corot. His color was not deep like 
 that of Dupre, nor varied like that of Rousseau. In 
 conceptions of beauty he was not so diversified as 
 they were, nor so turbulent in demonstration. His 
 was a clear, pure flame, burning on throughout a 
 long lifetime ; theirs was fitful, fliiring up at times
 
 68 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 with great splendor, and then again sinking down low 
 in the socket. It would not do to say that their sen- 
 timent was deeper than his because their color was so. 
 For here none of them attempts to associate color with 
 any extraneous sentiment about the landscape. In 
 each case the color used tells merely the personal sen- 
 timent or preference of the painter, and the sentiment 
 depends not upon the depth or height of hue so much 
 as upon the emotional depth or height of the man. 
 
 And lastly we come to high color, the harmony 
 of which is, perhaps, the most difficult problem and 
 the most admirable feature of the painter's art. The 
 very rarity of a high-keyed harmony, the genius re- 
 quired for its production, might be sufficient reason 
 for our admiring it ; but there are other good rea- 
 sons inherent in the colors themselves. Our at)- 
 plause for the high notes of vocal music is not all 
 given to the difficulty of the accomplishment. The 
 pure beauty of the notes themselves captivates us. 
 It is so with the high notes of color. When har- 
 moniously used they constitute not only climacteric 
 art, but beauty in the superlative degree. They 
 have sweep, resonance, penetration, strength of feel- 
 ing ; they have the capacity of revealing depth of 
 emotion ; they have the ability to raise us on the 
 wings of the subUme. Infinite in power as Shake- 
 speare's liquid words, they form the epic language 
 of the Shakespeares of the brush.
 
 COLOR 69 
 
 But just how one should distinguish the Shake- 
 speares of the brush from the Tuppers of the brush, 
 and just how one should discriminate between the 
 true language and its tawdry imitation would be dif- 
 ficult to tell in words. Every rule that could be 
 formulated would be subject to so many exceptions 
 as to render it quite worthless. We know and feel 
 the quality of good color in contradistinction to bad 
 color, but how we know it we are somewhat at a 
 loss to divine. Were color a reasonable thing it 
 might be subjected to law, but it is decidedly un- 
 reasonable, in fact it hardly appeals to reason at all, 
 but rather to a sense or instinct. We turn over 
 different patterns of silks or wall-papers, rejecting 
 dozens to pick out one that pleases us. The mind, 
 practically speaking, has nothing to do with the 
 choice. It is the eye that says instantly whether a 
 coloring is pleasing or not, as the waves of light 
 strike the sensitive nerves of the retina pleasurably 
 or otherwise. All the reason in the world could not 
 make us enjoy the sight of Indian war-paint, nor the 
 sound of grinding glass under foot. The nei-ves 
 rebel without questioning the faculties of reason, or 
 the theories of science. It is chiefly by the sensi- 
 tiveness of the eye that we are able to discriminate 
 between good color and bad color, between harmony 
 and discord ; and our classification of color into low 
 tones, deep tones, and high tones, is merely to point
 
 70 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 out the degrees of color, and to indicate in what 
 proportion their combinations upon canvas have 
 been found harmonious by people of taste. For 
 that purpose the classification may be of service in 
 enabling one to avoid much that is bad in color, and 
 in giving the proper direction in the education of 
 the sense of sight, but no more. Sensitiveness to 
 color is undoubtedly increased by experience, for 
 sight is susceptible of cultivation like any other 
 sense ; and the only way that people ever become 
 good judges of color-harmony is by continually see- 
 ing and studying it in the best models. We can 
 learn much by association, for the human being is, 
 after all, of the chameleon breed, assuming readily 
 the coloring of his surroundings. 
 
 Though it is impossible to give an adequate rule 
 that will enable one to appreciate readily a harmony 
 of high color, yet there is one point that may be 
 mentioned here, more by way of suggestion than 
 dictum. There is a difference in the qualities of 
 high colors arising from their mixing and their 
 handhng, and this difference is easily detected. In 
 the city of New York one may buy on the street 
 corner, for two or three dollars, frame included, what 
 is called a "genuine oil-painting," as indeed it is. 
 These pictures are usually painted in very florid 
 colors, but if you examine the colors closely you will 
 find them shallow, muddy from bad mixing, lacking
 
 COLOR 71 
 
 in transparency, and utterly devoid of feeling or 
 sentiment. They have on their faces the stamp of 
 crudity, such as we associate with the rampant lion 
 on the tavern sign. On the contrary, if we study 
 some of the pictures of Alfred Stevens, for instance, 
 we shall find the colors quite as high, but of a differ- 
 ent quality. His colors are possessed of richness, 
 body, strength. They look pure as jewel lights, or 
 ocean depths, and they seem to sound mellow as 
 cathedral bells. The difference between the two is 
 similar to that between the golden shields of Solo- 
 mon and the brazen shields of Rehoboam. We 
 should not be led astray by the brazen shields in art. 
 They are the imitations, the counterfeits that pass 
 current for value. Sound them to the eye as one 
 rings the coin to the ear, and their baseness is im- 
 mediately apparent. 
 
 I now wish, before closing with this subject, to 
 speak in brief of some of the chief colorists whose 
 works you may have seen, or may be fortunate 
 enough to see hereafter. Refined color — note the 
 word refined — is not found with any primitive age or 
 people. It seems to belong to the latest period of 
 enlightenment ; it is associated with wealth, luxury, 
 splendor ; and it is sometimes looked upon as the 
 forerunner of political and social decay. Egypt, 
 Assyria, Greece, and Rome, so far as we positively 
 know, did not possess it. The colors of the Egyp-
 
 72 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 tians and Assyrians were primitive and crude. Those 
 of Greece and Rome are supposed to have been very 
 fine on the hypothesis that painting was on a par 
 with sculpture and architecture ; but such fragments 
 as have been exhumed do not quite warrant this as- 
 sumption, the colors being decidedly harsh even after 
 centuries of toning down. The Renaissance even did 
 not produce refined color, except at Parma with Cor- 
 reggio and in its after-climax at Venice. The Flor- 
 entines, if we except a man here and there like An- 
 drea del Sarto, were more remarkable for line than 
 for color. The Venetians, wherever or however they 
 got their color-sense I cannot now stop to inquire, 
 were the first great harmonists, beginning with the 
 Bellini and the Vivarini, running on with Giorgione, 
 Titian, Tintoretto, Palma the elder, Bonifazio, Paolo 
 Veronese, and finally, in decay, closing with Tiepolo. 
 Though the Venetians handled color in many differ- 
 ent ways, yet the general color-characteristics of 
 the whole school are great warmth, brilliancy, rich- 
 ness, depth, and resonance. The earlier painters of 
 the school never showed the splendid qualities of 
 Titian and Paolo Veronese, and the last disciple, 
 Tiepolo, seemed to discard the deep notes of color 
 for light paJe hues. You will usually find Tiepolo 
 set down in art histoi-y and criticism as a superficial 
 imitator of Paolo Veronese, but a study of his work 
 will convince you that there has been a mistake
 
 COLOR 73 
 
 about him. His color is luminous, cloud-like, and 
 perhaps thin ; but it is harmonious, and, moreover, 
 strikingly appropriate to the ceiling frescos for 
 which he was famous. 
 
 German and Enghsh art cannot be said to have ever 
 had a great colorist at any time. Some of the early 
 Germans achieved something approximating color ; 
 and in England Mr. Ruskin has made great claims 
 for Turner, but they are hardly substantiated by the 
 works in oil and water-color of that artist in the 
 National Gallery at London. Holland and Belgium, 
 on the contrary, have produced many colorists of 
 varying degrees of excellence. Rembrandt, with his 
 deep ruby reds and garnets, his yellows, grays, and 
 browns, vigorously handled and splendid in their 
 warmth under shadow, was the great leader of the 
 Holland school ; while Rubens, painting in lighter 
 keys, and mingling cool, warm, contrasted, comple- 
 mentary, and accordant tones all together at times, 
 was the leader of the Flemish school. A number 
 of other painters of these schools should be men- 
 tioned as colorists in a limited sense, Jan van der 
 Meer of Delft, Jan Steen, Brouwer, Terburg, de 
 Hooghe. 
 
 The French painters have always dealt freely with 
 color, but thev never attained much success with it 
 until the time of Watteau, a light and graceful 
 painter, with not a little feeling for harmonious
 
 74 AET FOR ART'S SAKE 
 
 eifects. His contemporary, Lancret, and his pupil 
 Pater, followed his methods, and iu a somewhat sim- 
 ilar, though more conveutional vein were Boucher 
 and Fragonard. Chardin, one of the most charm- 
 ing colorists in French art, stands quite by himself. 
 Delacroix, the leader of the Romantic School which 
 began to rise about 1825, to make round numbers, 
 was perhaps the leading colorist in French art. 
 Contemporary with him and after him came a num- 
 ber of painters handling color effectively, like De- 
 camps and Fromentin, the Orientalists ; Rousseau, 
 Dupre, and Diaz, the landscape painters ; and Bau- 
 dry and Millet, the figure painters. 
 
 Spanish art has several notable colorists in its 
 history anterior to the present century, chief among 
 them being Velasquez. His work is usually remark- 
 able for pure color handled with great simplicity and 
 directness. Long after him, Goya, with some suc- 
 cess, followed his methods, and after Goya, in the 
 1860's, came Fortuny, a leader in the brilliant and 
 the dazzling, who possessed much facility and some 
 power, but unfortunately died young, leaving an 
 incompleted record. Fortuny's example has been 
 followed by the Spanish school of to-day, which 
 claims among its adherents many lovers of bright 
 color, like Madrazo, Villegas, and Rico. 
 
 Here in America we never had much art worth 
 considering until some dozen or more years ago ;
 
 COLOR 75 
 
 80 we have reason to be proud that we to-day 
 possess painters like La Farge, Sargent, Dewing, 
 who are not inferior iu their handling of color to 
 the moderns of Europe whom I have mentioned.
 
 LECTUEE IIL 
 
 TONE AND LIGHT-AND-SHADE 
 
 The subject of Tone follows naturally after that 
 of Color. For it is intimately connected with color 
 and, in a way, taken in the mass, it is color, or at 
 the least is so regarded by some of the American 
 painters. 
 
 The word is used very loosely in criticism and in 
 the studio, as art words generally are, and means 
 various things to various people. To begin with, in 
 a limited sense and as applied to single notes, it 
 may have a meaning independent of color, as we 
 say "a light tone" or "a dark tone," referring to 
 the quantity of light or dark contained in it regard- 
 less of tint or hue. In that sense we may speak of 
 the light or dark tones of a charcoal sketch or an 
 etching as readily as of the tones of a painting in 
 high color. Again, the word is often coupled with 
 adjectives that give it a positive meaning ; as, for in- 
 stance, we speak of a " cool " tone, a " warm " tone, 
 a "deep" tone, a "rich" tone, meaning thereby 
 certain qualities which colors may possess in or out
 
 TONE AND LIGHT-AND-SHADE 71 
 
 of a picture. These meanings of the word it will 
 not be necessary to speak of further because they 
 explain themselves. 
 
 But tone has a larger, and, unfortunately, a more 
 confused meaning in painting than mere color or 
 light qualities in single notes. The word is also 
 applied to a picture as a whole, and, so far as I can 
 make out, it is used in three diflferent senses in cer- 
 tainly three different countries, though I would not 
 be understood as saying that all the painters in any 
 one of the countries to be mentioned agree in one 
 understanding of tone. 
 
 1. It seems that here in the United States some 
 of the painters, especially the younger men, regard 
 tone as the prevailing color or intensity of a picture, 
 as we say the tone of a landscape is gray, that of an 
 interior piece is red, that of a still-life yellow. Not 
 that each note in these instances should of necessity 
 be gray, red, or yellow, but that the general color 
 scheme should be tinctured by on^ of these hues 
 sufficiently to reflect it throughout the whole piece. 
 "We may call this color-tone. 
 
 2. In England the older painters understand by 
 tone the proper diffusion of light as it affects the 
 intensities of the different objects in a picture ; and 
 the right relation of objects or colors in shadow to 
 the parts of them not in shadow and to the princi- 
 pal light. This to me is largely a matter of value
 
 78 ART FOR ART'S SAKE 
 
 (French, valeur, a word for which the English some- 
 times substitute "keeping"); but inasmuch as it 
 is useless to dispute about the terms that people 
 choose to use, we must accept that of the English 
 painters. Let us call this light-tone. 
 
 3. In France there is a third meaning given to 
 tone, and, of course, every young student at Julian's 
 or the Beaux Arts will assure you that it is the 
 right one and the only one. This French mean- 
 ing, which is not universally accepted even in Paris, 
 regards tone as the enveioppe — the whole setting 
 and atmospheric make-up of a picture, wherein, if 
 correctly rendered, all objects, lights, and colors take 
 their proper places. This I should say was a mixt- 
 ure of aerial perspective and value again. For of 
 late years that word " value " seems to be a studio 
 phrase for almost everything that has to do with 
 the relationships of air, light-and-shade, and color. 
 Nevertheless, let us refer to this as envelope-tone. 
 
 Aside from these understandings of tone you will 
 find a beautiful haziness of thought and indefinite- 
 ness of meaning in the use of the word among all 
 classes and nationalities of painters. In fact, it is 
 a convenient term often lugged in by the ears to fill 
 up a mental vacuum or round a sentence, and, as a 
 result, there is a confusion which people sometimes 
 think to clear up by arbitrary insistence upon their 
 own understanding of the word. Let us try to avoi4
 
 TONE AND LIGHT-AND-SHADE 79 
 
 that at the least, though inconsistency be the re- 
 sult. 
 
 Regarded in the American sense for its color alone, 
 as we shall first regard it, tone argues to a certain 
 extent uniformity, and perhaps similarity. There 
 must be one well-defined hue of color so strong in 
 quantity as to preponderate over all the others and 
 give a distinct character to the whole. It is no mat- 
 ter if the color be high or low, provided it be domi- 
 nant ; but the parcelling out of a given space to 
 many hues will not answer. Hence the dress of our 
 childhood's friend, the harlequin, with its fantastic 
 and checkered colors can hardly be looked upon as 
 a revelation of color-tone ; while the dress of his 
 companion, the fairy, in its fluify confusion of pink 
 gauze, pink bows, pink stockings, pink slippers, is 
 quite the reverse. The gray day upon the Jersey 
 marshes, which was spoken of in my last lecture, 
 will illustrate simple color-tone even better than the 
 dress of the fairy. Smoke, sky, air, trees, water, 
 foreground, and distance appear tinged with one 
 hue as though the gray night-mists in departing had 
 left their coloring on the things they had touched. 
 The predominant note is apparent at once, and if 
 such a scene were painted upon canvas it would 
 properly be ranked as a gray-toned or a low-toned 
 picture. The critics, if they spoke of it at all, might 
 add that it was " good in tone," perhaps meaning
 
 80 ART FOR ART'S SAKE 
 
 thereby that the predominance of the one color waa 
 well maintained, and that each note of the color- 
 gamut was in the proper key. 
 
 The similarity of tone in color to tone in music 
 offers one way of illustrating a meaning rather diffi- 
 cult of explanation. Should you ask a young xlmer- 
 ican painter what he means by the word, he might 
 say to you that a true or a false tone in a painting is 
 the exact counterpart of a true or a false note in a 
 piece of music. The analogy certainly seems quite 
 perfect. The color scheme of a picture, to be in 
 tone, must be keyed to a certain pitch of color, and 
 all the notes must harmonize with that pitch. If in 
 a piece of music written in two sharps, notes be 
 accidentally introduced belonging to the key of four 
 flats, discord would be the immediate result. The 
 musical flow would be broken by the introduction 
 of alien sounds destructive to the melody. So if 
 one paint such an Oriental scene as a Rose Festival, 
 with the purpose of obtaining color-tonality, the 
 whole piece should be keyed to the color of rose. 
 The dresses of the women, the coloring of their hair 
 and cheeks, the roses, the wall-hangings, the lounges 
 and rugs must all be flushed with pink, so that if 
 the canvas were placed on a revolving pin and 
 whirled rapidly around, the coloring would blend 
 into a uniform rose tint. Break this tint by, say, 
 several large quantities of purple or blue, imme-
 
 K 
 
 o\ 
 
 >./ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 VIII.- RAFFAELLI On the Seine.
 
 TONE AND LIGHT-AND-SHADE 81 
 
 diately there is a clash, and color-tone exists no 
 more. 
 
 The one tint or hue must prevail, yet this does 
 not argue that all other hues are to be rigidly ex- 
 cluded. Flats are introduced into the musical key 
 of four sharps without an unpleasant sensation, but 
 they do not occur often, nor are they more than 
 half-notes when they do occur. So in the gray land- 
 scape it will not jar to have a red chimney on a 
 house, and a small patch of blue in the sky ; nor 
 will a tache of green or yellow mar the color-tonality 
 o'^" the Rose Festival, because such touches are but 
 partial notes. But give up half the picture to one 
 color, and half to another color, or even encroach 
 upon the predominant hue by so much as one-third 
 or one-fourth of another hue, and perfect color- 
 tonality is gone. 
 
 You may often see good instances of color-tone 
 among the woven fabrics and embroideries of the 
 East, which are bjing brought in abundance to our 
 country at the present time. The ground of these 
 stuffs is generally of one tint, and upon this ground 
 are often woven many other tints in various figures 
 and patterns. But it will be noticed that these fig- 
 ures and patterns are generally small and unpretend- 
 ing, and that their combined color-eflfect, whether 
 opposed or similar, does not equal one-fifth of the 
 dominating power of the ground upon which they 
 6
 
 82 AET FOR art's SAKE 
 
 are j)laced. If we stand back at so great a distance 
 that the patterns cannot be seen, the color-tone of 
 the ground will be still plainly visible, and the whole 
 will appear as one uniform coloring. This may be 
 seen again in the closely woven Daghestan rugs, in 
 the Spanish enamelled leathers, and in the finer 
 pieces of Japanese lacquer- work. The work may be 
 relieved or heightened by touches of sympathetic 
 or even contrasted color here and there, but the 
 general complexion of the whole should be jDro- 
 uounced and positive. 
 
 This phase of tone, regarding it for color only, 
 which I have been trying to illustrate — and it is very 
 hard work, I assure you, for the proper illustration 
 belongs to art, not to literature, and should be seen 
 by the eye, not told to the ear — this phase of tone 
 will be associated in your minds with one tone, 
 or decorative tone. But it is not quite monotone. 
 Neither the rug nor the embroidery is like a roll 
 of cartridge - paper or a peach - blow vase. The 
 monotony of the one tint in the ground is broken 
 by many other tints, which, though perhaps of the 
 same family, and in symi^athy with the chief tint, 
 are nevertheless somewhat different. This difference 
 is still more marked in color-tone pictures, where 
 very often there are no two colors of exactly the 
 same hue, not even in the ground of the picture ; 
 but all the tints will be found of the same com-
 
 TONE AND LIGHT- AND-SHADE 83 
 
 plexioD, and tending toward a common-coloi' goal. 
 However, it may be admitted that perfect color-tone 
 approximates monotone without entirely paralleling 
 it. To please by uniformity of coloring is certainly 
 its object. Perhaps the pictui-es of Puvis de Cha- 
 vannes (Fig. 3), Cazin, and others are as good illus- 
 trations of color-tone as may be offered. 
 
 Between the American and the English meaning 
 of tone there is some difference, though possibly it 
 is largely a difference in terms or a confusion of 
 cause and effect. Mr. Ruskin, in his Modern Paint- 
 ers, gives as his primary understanding of tone the 
 right relations of objects to each other as regards 
 their substance and shadow. This "right relation " 
 is largely brought about by the proper distribution 
 of light, or the giving (approximately) to each ob- 
 ject or color that quantity of light or dark which it 
 would receive in nature. In actual landscape this 
 distribution of light frequently produces a soften- 
 ing, a mellowing, or a " toning-down " effect, and 
 that effect, showing, as it often does, in a uniformity 
 of tint, is what the American painter calls tone ; but 
 Mr. Ruskin and the English painters give the name 
 to the cause instead of to the effect, and speak of 
 tone (in one sense at any rate) as the distribution of 
 light. A painter, for whose opinion I have the most 
 profound respect, once explained to me the effect of 
 tone, as he understood it, by saying that "it was
 
 84 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 like looking at objects through a great gauze veil — 
 the veil in nature being produced by sunlight dif- 
 fused through atmosphere which ' tones ' in a uni- 
 form light all the objects seen." The illustration 
 was not without its truth. We see the same ef- 
 fect actually rendered by artists in their so-called 
 " artists' tableaux," in which a picture by some fa- 
 mous master is reproduced by placing living models 
 in the setting of a large picture-frame over the front 
 of which a transparent gauze is stretched. The 
 gauze is placed there to give an effect of tone. Seen 
 through it the figures back of it appear tinged or 
 touched or modified by a hai'monizing element re- 
 sembling light and atmosphere. 
 
 We see this same transparent veiling in nature at 
 every turn. The Jersey-marsh scene shows it. The 
 landscape itself is rather sombre in coloring, but it 
 is largely the diffusion of broken light that pro- 
 duces the gray atmospheric effect of the whole. It 
 changes and subdues by its touch, and no matter 
 what local colors there may be in the trees, the 
 houses, or the grasses, the gray will tinge them all. 
 The light of early morning and twilight may like- 
 wise produce color-tone effects, the half-light sil- 
 vering everything until the whole scene presents a 
 uniformity of complexion such as we have often ob- 
 served in the landscapes of Corot and Daubigny. 
 Yellow sunlight again, if properly diffused so that
 
 TONE AND LIGHT-AND-SHADE 85 
 
 every color in the picture is touched and modified 
 by it, as we may see in Millet's "Gleaners" (Fig. 1), 
 and in some of the landscapes of Cuyp ; or even yel- 
 low lamplight as seen in the interiors of the Dutch 
 painters and some of the moderns like Besnard and 
 Kruyer, may either of them produce a color-tone 
 effect. Such lights as these furnish us with tone in 
 both ovu: own and the English sense ; but color- 
 tone (the American sense) in full clear sunlight is 
 hardly a possibility. Under the direct vajs of the 
 sun every color may jump to its highest pitch, and, 
 by comparison, every shadow may sink to its lowest 
 depth. There is contrast rather than uniformity, and 
 just here is the American point of departure from 
 the English meaning. For the proper diffusion of 
 sunlight, regardless of any uniformity of tint or hue, 
 and the maintenance of each shadow in proper re- 
 lation to the chief light make up one, perhaps the 
 principal, English meaning of tone — make up light- 
 tone. In a landscape, for instance, a white house, 
 one-half of which is in shadow and one-half in light, 
 must not only show in itself the properly related 
 tones or qualities of white under light and white 
 under shadow, but its light and its shadow must be 
 pitched in relationship to every other light and 
 shadow in the scene ; and all the lights and shad- 
 ows must pay a relative allegiance to the highest 
 light, whatever that may be sky, water, or snow-
 
 86 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 clad mountain - top. If this perfect relationship 
 were shown in every object and in every light and 
 shade throughout the whole scene the result would 
 be a sense or feeling that everything in view was 
 illu mined by one kind of light and in one atmos- 
 phere ; and that would be what an Englishman 
 might call " good tone " (light-tone), though it might 
 not reveal that uniformity of hue which an Ameri- 
 can might call "good tone " (color-tone). 
 
 There is another, or rather an accompanying mean- 
 ing of tone, from the English point of view, which 
 deals with color and which requires a moment's con- 
 sideration. This is the second feature of tone as laid 
 down by Mr. Euskin, and its successful treatment 
 requires the painting of a given color in different 
 intensities of light, showing the different intensities, 
 but still maintaining the original quality of the color. 
 It is not an easy thing for the painter to do. A red 
 cloth, one part of which is in sunlight and one part 
 in shadow, remains unchanged in its quality though 
 changed in its shades. We instinctively feel that it 
 is one and the same cloth under different intensities 
 of light. But to paint it that way, to give the inten- 
 sities yet preserve the quality, that is not easy of 
 accomplishment. It requires a well-trained eye to 
 see, in the first place, and a well-trained hand to re- 
 cord, in the second place. Trickery, chic, and stu- 
 dio receipts are of little avail. The artists have a
 
 TONE AND LIGHT-AND-SHADE 87 
 
 maxim, " Paint it as you see it," which is whole- 
 some advice indeed, but in this case rather difficult 
 to follow. Some try to evade this direct method by 
 scumblings or glazings, with the idea of putting in 
 the shadow over the original hue, but I believe the 
 success of this at the present time is often ques- 
 tioned. 
 
 Whatsoever the artist's method, or howsoever dif- 
 ficult the problem may be of accomplishment, there 
 can be no question about the necessity of a colored 
 object showing light-aud-shade the same as one de- 
 void of color, and that, too, without wrecking local 
 character or hue. To be sure there have been some 
 remarkable exceptions to such a rule. The paint- 
 er's law of preserving color-quality in light and in 
 shadow has been broken again and again by geniuses 
 who have made laws unto themselves, but in our 
 count we cannot reckon with such cases. Rem- 
 brandt is an excellent example of the law-breaker. 
 While painting perhaps the most penetrating lights 
 and the most luminous shadows ever placed upon 
 canvas, he nevertheless distorted them both for pur- 
 poses of efiect by sacrificing color in the most mer- 
 ciless manner. He did this continually, kneading 
 colors under shadow into grays and browns, and 
 under light i^itching them in abnormal!}' high keys. 
 The effect was powerful, if "forced," and, of course, 
 permissible in the hands of genius.
 
 88 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 The Florentines and the Romans worked in a 
 similar though less violent manner. Thus you will 
 fi-equently see in the pictures of Raphael, Giulio 
 Romano, and the Bolognese painters that a red or a 
 blue robe in full light, where stretched across the 
 arm or the leg, will be bleached or faded out nearly 
 to a white ; while in shadow, as where it falls in 
 folds, the same robe will be pitched down many 
 degrees until it is nearly black, and of an entirely 
 different quality. Whatever their object in doing 
 this (it was probably to gain relief) it did not pro- 
 ceed from ignorance, for they did not always do it. 
 Nevertheless it was a falsification of nature and de- 
 structive of luminosity in shadow, of quality, of local 
 color. The pictures of the Venetians, Titian and 
 Paolo Veronese, where not only the shadows are 
 warm and deep, but the colors under them are 
 given their proper qualities, show much truer and 
 better work. 
 
 This secondary meaning of light-tone will be un- 
 derstood better perhaps if we again call up to mind 
 the landscape with the white house, only changing 
 the color of the house from white to red. If it 
 be still half in shadow and half in light, it must 
 be apparent that there will be two very different 
 intensities of red, but only one quality of it. In 
 other words, it would be a peculiar kind of red, no 
 matter whether in shadow or out of it; and to paint
 
 TONE AND LIGHT-AND-SHADE 89 
 
 it with the two intensities and only one quality, 
 showing it a matter of varying illumination and not 
 difference in hue, would be realizing tone in this 
 last meaning of the word. Furthermore, for the 
 light-tone of the whole picture this shadowed red 
 should be exactly related to all the other shadow^ed 
 colors of the scene and to the highest color, pre- 
 cisely as the house when white was related in its 
 shade to all the other shades in the scene and to the 
 highest light. 
 
 Finally, then, and by way of recapitulation, the 
 English view of tone concerns itself, first, with the 
 effect of light on lights and darks and their relations, 
 and secondly, with the eftect of light on colors and 
 their relations. The American view concerns itself 
 with the prevailing quantity of hue or tint which 
 may, and often does, arise from effects of light-distri- 
 bution. For the French view, which considers tone 
 as the enveloppe, it is so close of kin to what I shall 
 speak of under aerial perspective and values, that 
 for the present it may be passed by.* 
 
 The ujaking of color-tone a picture motive is of 
 modern origin. For though some of the pictures of 
 
 * None of these meanings of tone is exclusively confined 
 to the country indicated. The assignment is perhaps gener- 
 ally true, but is serviceable only as emphasizing the differ- 
 ent meanings of tone. Many painters in America have the 
 French idea of tone, and some in France entertain the Eng- 
 lish idea, and some in England the French idea.
 
 90 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 the ancients are not without good light-tone effects, 
 yet that color-tone was especially sought for by 
 them, or that much importance was attached to it, 
 may well be doubted. Formerly the painter was 
 scheduled in his profession as either a draughtsman 
 or a colorist ; now he may be a texture-painter, a 
 chiaroscurist, a luminarist, a tonalist, or what he 
 pleases. For art like the other professions has, in 
 the present century, been split up into many sec- 
 tions, and the place of the painter strong in all de- 
 partments is being occupied by the specialist skil- 
 ful in one thing alone. There is no reason why 
 color-tone should not be chosen as a painter's mo- 
 tive, for it is a charming, if not a startling, qual- 
 ity of art. It pleases by a subdued, yet pervading 
 beauty, as does the blue of a clear sky, the sea-green 
 of the ocean, the sound of an iEolian harp, or the 
 stir of the night-winds through the trees. It nei- 
 ther violently vibrates nor wearies the nerves of the 
 eye, but is restful, good to live with, cheering at 
 times, and soothing always. Its accompanying feat- 
 ures in painting, such as atmosphere, soft broken 
 light, and values, are, moreover, unfailing excellences 
 of art, full of subtile problems of technic and deli- 
 cate gradations of color which continually unfold 
 new pleasures to us the more we study them. True 
 enough it is not fitted by its nature to present us 
 with those ideas of a literary or an historical kind
 
 TONE AND LIGHT-AND-SHADE 91 
 
 which some people seem to think the chief aim of art. 
 But then, perhaps, it would be as well for us if we 
 should know less about the triumphs of Scipio dead 
 and gone, and more about the triumphs of nature 
 as she passes before us day after daj', robed in such 
 garments as never monarch wore, and accompanied 
 by such a procession of changing beauties as never 
 conqueror knew. 
 
 Light-and-Shade. — Night and day, light and dark, 
 sun and shade are opposing forces. Antitheti- 
 cal, they counteract and restrain each other ; com- 
 plementary, they emphasize and relieve each other. 
 Each shade is a light to a darker shade ; each light 
 is a shade to a higher light. A gray is a light to a 
 brown ; an orange is a shadow to a yellow. Each 
 acts as a foil for the other, and by the continual 
 play of change and interchange are we enabled to 
 distinguish in space the things of the visible world 
 about us. Without shade all things would be flat 
 and formless ; a cock of hay would be no thicker 
 than a knife-blade, a forest would be merely a thin 
 silhouette against the sky. "Without light not only 
 the problem of painting, but the problem of life it- 
 self would be a great deal more perplexing than 
 we at present find it. 
 
 Light-and-shade, or, as it is sometimes called, 
 chiaroscuro, is in pninting a means whereby objects
 
 92 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 are cast in relief upon flat surface and made to as. 
 sume the appearance of reality. It is, of course, of 
 great importance, and one can hardly imagine how 
 painting could exist without it except as decoration, 
 or in those crude forms which mark the jaicture- 
 writings of the barbarous tribes and the early civili- 
 zations. The Egj'ptian and the Assyrian wall-paint- 
 ings, and many of the mediseval paintings of Italy 
 are quite devoid of it, and in them we recognize its 
 necessity by its absence. For though modern paint- 
 ing is not an imitation of nature, yet it is a repre- 
 sentation of it seen from an individual point of view ; 
 and no individual has ever been able to see nature 
 in any form except by the means of liglit-and-shade. 
 The smallest objects about us possess it, a grain of 
 sand as well as a mountain, a match or a pencil as 
 well as a forest of hemlocks. It needs no argument 
 to prove this. An object, no matter what, receiving 
 light upon one side of it rejects, absorbs, or ob- 
 structs the light, and thus produces shadow on its 
 opposite side. An eclipse of the sun, and the earth 
 in its changes from day to night are simply large 
 illustrations of the truth. 
 
 But while light-and-shade enters into the rela- 
 tions of everything in the visible world its presence 
 in small quantities is little noted by us, perhaps for 
 the very reason that it is so common. A tree is 
 simply green to us, and stands against its back-
 
 TONE AND LIGHT-AND-SHADE 93 
 
 ground somewhat like a palm-leaf fan against a 
 wall ; we do not always notice the yellow-greens, 
 the emerald-greens, and the dark-greens, scattered 
 through it, that give it diversity, depth, roundness, 
 volume. A human face is known to us by its feat- 
 ures or lines ; we seldom see its lights and shades 
 — the high lights on the nose, cheek, chin, and fore- 
 head ; the deep shadows under the nose, under the 
 chin, and around the sides of the throat. A water- 
 bottle never strikes us as being in anyway marked 
 by light-and-shade, yet there is always a line of 
 white light running up and down or across it, ac- 
 cording to the direction from which the light comes. 
 If this water-bottle were of iridescent glass we should 
 notice the line of light instantly because it would be 
 colored, just as we should notice the changing hues 
 of an opal upon our hand ; but these objects in real- 
 ity possess no more light-and shade than an ordi- 
 nary glass or an ivory button. The light is simply 
 more apparent because it is colored ; it is not more 
 real. 
 
 Every visible tangible thing has its relief by con- 
 trasts of light with shade, and if, as I have intimated, 
 we do not always see them, it is because we are not 
 shrewd observers of the phenomenon of light, com- 
 mon though it be. A few days ago I was trying to 
 point out to a school-boy the lights and shades on a 
 polished copper tankard which he was endeavoring
 
 94 AET FOR art's SAKE 
 
 to draw on a sheet of paper. He protested that he 
 could not see them. The prevailing copper color of 
 the tankard had blinded him to the shadow grada- 
 tions. We are all more or less like him in short- 
 sightedness. Our observation is not keen enough 
 to note the delicate transitions that nature makes. 
 And so we draw upon all the resources of the earth 
 to provide ourselves with great artificial eyes where- 
 with to see the light of some distant world, and yet 
 we cannot see the light on the j^etal of a buttercup 
 growing beneath our window. It is well that the 
 artist lives to point out to us these minor beauties 
 that exist in the world about us. 
 
 The necessities of good art require that every 
 object which is of sufficient importance to have light 
 must also be accounted of sufficient importance to 
 have its proper amount of shade. I say "proper 
 amount " because there is no rule elastic enough to 
 cover all objects in nature and state what that 
 amount should be. An apple needs more shade than 
 a book, a . book more than a flat sheet of paper, 
 and so on through a thousand variations in the rel- 
 ative quantities of light and of shade dependent 
 upon the objects reflecting them. The eye alone 
 can say what is an adequate or j)roper balance. 
 
 As for the transition from the highest light to the 
 deepest dark, it should usually be made by delicate 
 gradations. "As smoke loses itself in the air, so
 
 TONE AND LIGHT-AND-SIIADE 95 
 
 are your lights and shadows to pass from one to the 
 other without any apparent separation," says Leon- 
 ardo, and his " sfumato " is the pictorial illustration 
 of his teaching (Fig. 4). The violent change will 
 not do as a rule, for nature is not violent, excejDt oc- 
 casionally and in small masses at that. A rift of 
 sunlight sometimes falls through a chink of a wall 
 and makes a thread of silver in a dungeon's gloom, 
 and often the shadow of a hollow rock, the sunlight 
 on a window-pane, make sharp contrasts of light 
 with shade ; but the sharpness is specially not gen- 
 erally true of nature. To be sure the very subtile 
 transition which Leonardo recommends, occasionally 
 results in wooliness of textures ; bvxt, on the other 
 hand, the sharp contrast which some of the painters 
 use to-day more often results in hardness of line and 
 absence of atmosphere. There is a middle ground 
 upon which good art may stand, and if there be any 
 leaning to the one side or the other it should be in 
 favor of dehcate gi-adation. The violent may prove 
 strong in the hands of genius, but in the hands of 
 the ordinary painter it shows only a pretentious 
 •weakness. 
 
 The pitch of light may be regarded as not of vital 
 importance provided it be balanced with a propor- 
 tionate pitch of shadow. It is not nature's heights 
 or depths that the painter may reproduce, but only 
 her proportions. No pigment, liowevcr brilliant;
 
 96 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 could possibly reach +he brightness of sunlight, nor 
 was there ever a nighi scene painted that closely ap- 
 proached the depth of the night shadows ; but the 
 proportioning of the lights to the shadows will give 
 us the effect, if not the extent, of either scene. 
 When a singer cannot reach certain notes in the 
 musical scale he adjusts the difficulty by transpos- 
 ing the scale yet retaining the relationship. The 
 painter produces the effect of great bi'ightness or 
 darkness in a similar manner. 
 
 Proportion and gradation, then, form the great 
 law of light-and-shade to which a picture must pay 
 deference not only in its individual objects but as a 
 whole. For when light-and-shade is considered as 
 it affects the whole picture, it becomes not less like 
 chiaroscuro but more like composition. That is to 
 say, its arrangement rules the composition of the 
 picture to a certain extent. Thus in a landscape 
 the relief of each object by its light and its shade 
 may not be sufficient in itself to render the picture 
 attractive and pleasing, though it may be absolutely 
 true to nature and realistic enough for an exclama- 
 tion point. A stretch of desert in sunlight, with 
 never a tree nor mound nor building to cast a 
 shadow, may be nature itself ; but if we should look 
 upon either the original, or its counterfeit present- 
 ment on canvas, we should be dazzled, and perhaps 
 annoyed, by its garishness, its bewildering light, its
 
 IX— RAPHAEL, Transfiguration.
 
 TONE AND LIGHT-AND-SHADE 97 
 
 monotony. The eye could find no relief in such a 
 scene, and necessarily it would not be attractive. 
 So again, if a green landscape under sunlight con- 
 tained no large shadow-masses to balance the large 
 masses of light and give relief to the eye, we might 
 fiud the same objection. The shadows may be in- 
 termixed or in masses, as the painter wills, each ob- 
 ject may have its light and cast its shadow and thus 
 make up the proportions of light to dark, or great 
 belts of light and shade may be thrown along the 
 landscape by partly obscuring the sun with clouds ; 
 but however it is done it seems necessary to good 
 art that the aggregate of shade should be sufficient 
 to relieve the mass of lights and dispel garishness. 
 
 The exact proportion of the light to the dark is 
 something that no one can stereotype in rule. 
 Some artists talk of one-sixth deep shadow, two- 
 sixths light, and the balance a large middle tint, 
 or they may give formulas of a similar nature cor- 
 responding to their experience ; but we would bet- 
 ter not rely upon any say-so whatever, other than 
 what we can extract from the sensitiveness of the 
 eye. Dannat's fine picture in the Metropolitan 
 Museum in New York, of four people singing in a 
 Spanish cabaret, appears to be more than half made 
 up of shadow, but the shadows are rightly propor- 
 tioned to the lights, at least there is no feeling of 
 blackness about them. The light coming through
 
 98 AET FOE AET'S SAKE 
 
 a break in the lattice is not large in volume, but 
 it is sufficient, and as a whole the picture gives us 
 a sensation of pleasure. If, however, in the same 
 museum, we move along some steps until, on the 
 same wall, we come before Meissonier's celebrated 
 Napoleonic picture of "Friedland, 1807," we shall 
 experience a sudden and a disagreeable change. 
 The first picture is as restful and refreshing to the 
 eyes as a deep wood-interior in August ; the second 
 picture has a glare and a flare about it, a heated 
 blistering light that irritates like a southern sea at 
 noonday. Swords and helmets gleam ; uniforms, 
 men's faces, horses' coats, look white or brick red ; 
 the sky and distance are full of light ; but there is 
 not a tree nor shrub nor hill nor house to cast a 
 shadow in which the eye could find a momentary 
 relief from the glare. The shadows of individual ob- 
 jects are true enough ; the sword-blade, the check- 
 rein, the horse and rider throw their shadows, but 
 the aggregate of them all is not sufficient to bal- 
 ance the power of the lights. That which the pict- 
 ure needs is relieving masses of shadow, which the 
 eye now seeks for in vain. In its present state it 
 appears to have about ninety per cent, of light and 
 ten per cent, of shadow ; and, as a result, the spec- 
 tator feels the need of cobalt-blue glasses in look- 
 ing at it for any considerable length of time. 
 
 The reverse of surplus light is, of course, surplus
 
 TONE AND LIGHT-AND-SHADE 99 
 
 shadow. We often hear painters speak of pictures 
 as " too black," which may mean that the whole 
 pitch of light is too low, or that the shades alone 
 are too dark. The works of Jacopo Bassano of the 
 Venetian school, in their present condition, are good 
 instances of extreme shadow-depths ; though it is 
 right to say that they have partly become so by 
 time, and were not originally painted as they now 
 appear. Some of Munkacsy's pictures painted with 
 bitumen are open to the same criticism of blackness, 
 and Goya's works are not always free from it, how- 
 ever powerful they may be in other respects. Cour- 
 bet, too, has at times given exaggerated strength to 
 his shadows, and at other times he has pitched pict- 
 ures so low in key as to make one think that 
 when he painted them the sun had become black 
 as sackclotli of hair after the manner told in the 
 Apocalypse. To be sure this blackness is not char- 
 acteristic of all the works of either Goya or Cour- 
 bet, and I have only spoken of their exceptional 
 pictures in this respect. Pei-haps better instances 
 could be found in the works of painters like Cara- 
 vaggio, Ribera, and Ribot. My use of the words 
 "black" and "blackness," you will understand as 
 being comparative only. Black is not a shadow but 
 a total absence of hght. Shadows, in the majority 
 of pictures, are colors of some sort, having a certain 
 amount of warmth and luminosity to them. Black
 
 100 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 is opaque and cold, and if you care to see how 
 different it is from a shadow, examine the black 
 cloth or velvets painted by Velasquez or Goya, and 
 compare them with the shadows in the same pict- 
 ures. 
 
 Gradation of light or color from a fixed centre is 
 perhaps a matter of composition again, but it may 
 not inappropriately come in here, since the light- 
 and-shade problem, with which it deals, is now be- 
 fore us. In the first place, the light which illumines 
 any sort of a pictorial composition is usually brought 
 from one point of the heavens and made to prevail 
 fi'om that point throughout the entire piece. Lights 
 from different quarters are likely to be conflicting, 
 and oftentimes confusing, rendering a task already 
 hard enough to execute doubly difficult. But the 
 difficulty of technical problems is an attraction to 
 some artists, so that while the great number of pict- 
 ures of the past and of the present may be found to 
 have light from but one direction, you will find other 
 pictures where the lights are doubled and some- 
 times tripled. Thus you will see among landscapes 
 many early moonrise pictures in which the twilight 
 and the moonlight struggle for the mastery ; you 
 will see pictures of interiors in which the light 
 comes from opposing windows ; and you will some- 
 times see lamplight conflicting with daylight. These 
 pictures, while revealing cleverness in the handling
 
 TONE AND LIGHT-AND-SHADE 101 
 
 of the different illuminations, can liardly be set down 
 as any great improvement on the handling of one 
 light, which, as I have said, we shall find in the ma- 
 jorit}^ of paintings. 
 
 In the second place, the light falling from what- 
 ever point of the compass the painter chooses, is 
 usually concentrated upon some one object or space 
 in the picture, and forms a well-defined point of high 
 light or high color, which is in effect the same thing, 
 I do not mean that the Hght is necessarily central- 
 ized on the canvas. It may be placed high or low, 
 to the right or to the left, but wherever placed it 
 forms a luminous spot from which gi'adation to op- 
 posite points of shadow or deep color begins. This 
 centring of light seems at first like a studio trick, 
 but nature herself is guilty of it. We see it coiitinu- 
 ally in the world about us as we see it in the works 
 of those painters who have produced likenesses of 
 that world. Pieter de Hooghe's concentration of 
 light at the end of a Dutch passage-way, as in his 
 Louvre picture ; anyone of the young-womau-with-a- 
 candle pictures by the little Dutchmen, in which the 
 lights increase toward the candle, and the shadows 
 increase toward the extremities of the room ; almost 
 any of the Oriental court pictui-es by Decamps with 
 sunlight centred on a wall or door, are as illustrative 
 of nature as of the technical principle we are con- 
 sidering. " Forced " they may be in a way, and yet
 
 102 AET FOR art's SAKE 
 
 permissible, because focusing the eye on the most 
 important part of the picture. 
 
 When Rembrandt, the great master of light con- 
 centration, painted a portrait, the centre of light 
 was the nose, cheeks, and chin ; the forehead was a 
 trifle lower in tone, or deepened by the shadow of a 
 hat, as in the Marquand portrait, now in the Metro- 
 politan Museum ; the sides of the cheeks were cor- 
 resjDondingiy lowered ; the throat and neck were 
 very deep flesh notes; the dress was usually dark, 
 or, if in light color, it was so saturated at times with 
 shadow as to lose much of its coloring principle ; the 
 hands often came out in flesh notes under shadow ; 
 the linen, if in light, was almost pure white, if under 
 shadow subdued ; and the background was an inde- 
 finable depth of gray, green, or gold-brown. This 
 manner of treatment characterized all his work. In 
 the Louvre two small pictures by him of philoso- 
 phers or alchemists, or some such persons, sitting at 
 a window whence floods a yellow light through a 
 dingy room, are excellent examples of concentration, 
 and you may see other examples of the same thing 
 in his landscapes (Fig. 5). Correggio composed a 
 picture in circles with the light in the centre, as 
 Couture has well described in speaking of the " Anti- 
 ope" in the Louvre. The "Night," at Dresden (Fig. 
 6), and the " St. Jerome," at Parma, show the same 
 practice. The example of Correggio was extensively
 
 TONE AND L,IGHT-AND-SHADE 103 
 
 followed by bis successors, especially tbe Caracci, at 
 Bologna. Tbere is in tbe Sage Library, at New 
 Brunswick, a picture of " Tbe Trinity," by Annibale 
 Caracci, wbicb well exemplifies ligbt concentration. 
 Tbe Fatber is seated upon clouds, surrounded by 
 angels, bis bead radiant witb sbafts of Hgbt. Above 
 bim bovers tbe dove, tbe symbol of tbe Holy Gbost, 
 and kneeling before bim tbe Madonna offers tbe 
 Cbild in arms. Around all tbese brigbtly illumi- 
 nated figures, as a foil to tbe ligbt, are spread tbe 
 deep browns and greens of foliage. Tbe object of 
 tbe picture seems to bave been less tbe majestic 
 conception of tbe Trinity tban tbe tunnelling of 
 darkness and tbe wedging of ligbt toward a centre. 
 But sucb illustrations as tbese, you will under- 
 stand, point to tbe extreme use of tbe principle and 
 were cbosen because tbey would tbus better exem- 
 plify tbe meaning of ligbt concentration. In modern 
 pictures, or among tbe majority of pictures of any 
 age, you will not find tbe practice so positive or 
 so violent. Indeed in some pictures you may not 
 readily recognize a centre of ligbt at all, for to-day 
 diffused ligbt is as often used as direct Hgbt, and 
 wbere Claude and Turner put tbe setting sun across 
 tbe sea on tbe borizon, and made a patb of golden 
 sunligbt along tbe waves flanked by Corintbian pal- 
 aces to conduct us to it, there are dozens of other 
 painters, like Duubiguy and Cazin, who bang tbe
 
 104 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 heavens with an almost unbroken veil, along thfi 
 thin parts of which we may discern the struggling 
 of a light, seen as through a mist of early morning. 
 Still the general principle of light concentration is 
 correct enough, however the practice may vary, and 
 almost every artist, consciously or unconsciously, 
 regards it to some extent in his composition. None 
 of the best works of Corot, the first great luminarist 
 of modern times, is without it. The high light in 
 his sky was always painted in first, and from that he 
 graded down to the foreground shadows by the 
 most delicate and truthful transitions imaginable. 
 Millet has almost always followed the same pi'inciple, 
 though with not so much emphasis as Corot. The 
 "Sower," the "Angelus," or any one of his pictures 
 of workers in the fields at twilight, where the light 
 comes from the western horizon and falls away into 
 the darks of the middle distance and foreground, 
 will serve for example. The modern schools, of 
 which Millet is no less a type because conspicuous, 
 are filled with painters whose works exemplify 
 centred light. This is true not of landscapes alone, 
 but of figure compositions, marines, and genre paint- 
 ings. Examine a still life by Bonvin or Vollon ; a 
 group of figures by Israels, Menzel, or Bonnat ; an 
 interior by Sargent, or a portrait by Carolus Duran, 
 and anyone of them will point to the principle. 
 I know some of the young men rather sneer at
 
 TONE AND LIGHT-AND-SHADE 105 
 
 concentration as savoring of conventional pictui-e- 
 making, but the practice because it is old is not 
 therefore utterly false and worthless. There is an 
 iconoclastic spirit rampant to-day, which seeks to 
 destroy everything in method that is not distinctly 
 novel and therefore modern ; but painting, though 
 it be an art, and not a science, has, nevertheless, 
 some well founded principles that do not wholly 
 pass away with the incoming of each new school. 
 Gradation and concentration are among these prin- 
 ciples, and while young painters may talk largely of 
 taking " Nature as she is," they should not forget 
 that in doing so it is their duty to reproduce her 
 upon canvas as forcibly (approximately) as they 
 found her. Do this with nature's forces they can- 
 not, and therefore they must resort to the forces 
 of art which may best substitute those of nature. 
 These, as the examples of past art show us, in re- 
 gard to light-and shade, are concentration and gra- 
 dation. They are the best means known to art 
 whereby a strength of hght may be builded up and 
 sustained. Each light or dark supports a brother 
 of the series converging toward a centre, as the 
 blocks of stone sustaining the pyramid taper to an 
 apex of a single block. Light gathers power from 
 being upheld by increasing darks, just as the force 
 that lies in the thin end of the wedge comes from 
 the sustaining bulk behind it. In the construction
 
 106 AET FOR art's SAKE 
 
 of the drama this wedging process is well kuown 
 under the name of "dramatic force," and is put to 
 continuous use. The whole play is merely a series 
 of concentrations in what are called climaxes. The 
 interest deepens from scene to act ; each scene sup- 
 ports an act, each act its successor, until the grand 
 climax ends the piece. It is the pyramid over again, 
 the most powerful building principle in the whole 
 architecture of the arts. Light concentration in 
 pointing, equally with dramatic force in the drama, 
 requires the sacrifice of the accessories to the prin- 
 cipals, the exaltation of some by the humiliation of 
 others, the centring of power upon a given point of 
 light, supported on the sides by the reserves of 
 shadow. There are pictures, and good ones too, 
 where doubtless this principle was never thought 
 of ; but it is not extravagant to say that probably 
 two-thirds of all the pictures of modern times will 
 exemplify it in a more or less positive manner. 
 
 It is useless to deny, however, that the violent 
 concentration of light, such as we see in Rembrandt 
 or Decamps, and even the moderate concentration 
 of a Millet or a Breton, is fast becoming a practice 
 of the past. It is fading away in favor of " Nature 
 as she is," with diffused light, high light, and very 
 luminous shadows. That movement in art which 
 passes under the misleading name of Impressionism 
 has established new views and new methods of
 
 TONE AND LIGHT- AND -SHADE 107 
 
 handling lights and shadows. True enough its ex- 
 ponents, men like Claude Monet and Renoir, are 
 just now painting snatches and sketches of nature 
 rather than pictures ; they are cutting off a piece of 
 what is before them rather than composing ; but 
 even so they have proved that a picture may exist 
 and be a picture without the wedging and centring 
 of light, and without the opposition of strong lights 
 to darks. In fact the impressionists, or, as the late 
 ones should be called, the luminarists, may be cred- 
 ited with a new and important technical discovery, 
 one that is destined in all probability to influence 
 the entire future of art. When painting came out 
 of the Middle Ages the technic of art had to be 
 learned over again. Attention was first directed to 
 form ; that mastered, hght-and-shade was developed ; 
 finally, at Venice, color. But the development of 
 light-and-shade under Leonardo, Correggio, Rem- 
 brandt, never was quite complete. It was true 
 enough in the relations perhaps, but too low in the 
 pitch. The luminarists have raised the pitch, but in 
 doing so they have sacrificed the relations somewhat. 
 That is to say, nature travels the whole scale, her 
 highest light going to 100, her deepest black to 
 zero. Art with its pigments cannot possibly regis- 
 ter over, say, 50 points. Nature's intensities either 
 in black or white can only be approximated, and the 
 painter usually represents them with, say, 30 points.
 
 108 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 If Rembrandt's scale ran from 20 to 50, Monet's 
 scale would run from about 40 to 60, the one repre- 
 senting the old-time studio light, the other repre- 
 senting open-air sunlight But Monet's gamut or 
 range is not so extensive as Rembrandt's. It is 
 more limited (by luminarist practice) in depth of 
 shadow, and not proportionably extended in height 
 of light. The absolute appearance of shadows has 
 been given by showing them as very luminous color- 
 masses ; but the absolute appearance of pure sun- 
 light has not been given (though often suggested) 
 because of the limits of pigment. As a result there 
 is a garishness in the pictures of the luminarists, 
 produced by the sacrifice of scale, by the sacrifice of 
 depth of register to height of register, by the loss 
 of the lower notes. 
 
 But it is not alone with the raising of the general 
 pitch of light that the luminarists must be credited. 
 Besides increasing the intensity of light to some ex- 
 tent they have sought out its proper diffusion, play, 
 and color-effect on objects. And this, too, not in 
 sunlight alone but in all sorts of light. Beraud 
 with his gaslight, Besnard with his starlight, Cazin 
 with his broken light, and Monet with his sunlight, 
 are all luminarists seeking by various methods to 
 reproduce light effects. Yet sunlight in open-air 
 painting is perhaps the chief feature of the mod- 
 ei'n movement. And here in this open-air study
 
 TONE AND LIGHT-AND-SHADE 109 
 
 some curious phenomena are disclosed to us. For 
 instance, the luminarists tell us that the effect of 
 sunlight upon objects and colors is to render them 
 transitory and uncertain. Under high light line is 
 dissipated, objects in the background appear to pro- 
 ject themselves into the foreground and disturb per- 
 spective, the surfaces of objects, instead of standing 
 out in modelled relief, are flattened into mere rela- 
 tive tones or patches of color, and color itself is 
 sometimes changed in local hue, is shattered or 
 bleached. 
 
 Besides this they have laid hold of some scien- 
 tific facts which they have utiUzed. For instance, 
 they know that a beam of pure white hght passing 
 through a prism decomposes into the colors of the 
 spectrum. Hence the conclusion that light is color 
 in a subtile translucent form. The air on a bright 
 day is consequently filled with it, and wherever light 
 is and air is there must color be also, tinging every- 
 thing it touches, making some objects blue, other ob- 
 jects violet, and others again purple or yellow. To 
 get light in the picture then, they use color freely 
 and in variety, putting it on sometimes in small 
 broken points that attempt the subtihty of nature 
 herself, and leaving to the eye at a certain distance 
 the task of reuniting these colors into what should 
 seem to us the original beam of pure white light. 
 Again, they tell us that instead of darkening with
 
 110 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 sunlight shadows really lighten, and this is true 
 enough, though the sharp contrast with the bright 
 light makes them appear darker at first ; that they 
 are not only a phase of light but a colored phase of 
 it. Hence the purples and violets of their reflections 
 and the absence of those dark notes which we have 
 always looked upon as shadows caused by the par- 
 tial destruction of light. 
 
 The influence of this movement has already gone 
 far, and will undoubtedly go farther, though its ex- 
 ponents have not yet produced many masterpieces. 
 The free use of high colors to obtain the desired 
 effect of light does not always please the color 
 sense, nor does it always give the appearance of 
 light. The absence of decisive quality and body in 
 the shadows gives an unreal, evanescent appearance 
 to objects at times ; the dissipation of line produces 
 flabbiness in the figure ; and the disturbance of the 
 perspective planes often confuses the whole picture. 
 There is an extravagance of statement just now even 
 with the leaders — that same extravagance which al- 
 ways attends every initial movement. In addition, 
 there are many individuals with neither clever heads 
 nor clever hands who are at present sailing under 
 the union-jack of Impressionism or Luminism and 
 bringing contempt upon their betters by their er- 
 ratic performances. But we should not forthwith 
 3ondemn the whole school on these accounts. Nor
 
 TONE AND LIGHT-AND-SHADE 111 
 
 should we now, nor at any time, condemn any school 
 or body of artists because they do not see as we see. 
 If all mankind saw alike what use would there be 
 for the painter ! It is just his business to see and 
 tell us what we do not see ; and if his vision is start- 
 ling to us at first, the cause of it may be our own 
 uneducated eyes and not the painter's falsity of 
 view. At any rate there is enough talent in the so- 
 called impressiouistic brotherhood, and enough nov- 
 elty in their view of nature, to entitle them to re- 
 spectful consideration, and if out of it does not arise 
 a new and strong school of landscape, then some 
 people must be credited with an error in judgment
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 LINEAR AND AERIAL PERSPECTIVE 
 
 The word perspective is familiar to us all. With 
 its meaning we have had more or less experience 
 which may, or may not, be cause for congratulation 
 upon our arrival at a subject concerning which we 
 have some knowledge. The subject is certainly not 
 new. Anaxagoras and Democritus wrote geometri- 
 cal treatises uj^on it centuries ago, and many not 
 unworthy successors have done so since their time. 
 But with the geometrical side of perspective I do 
 not purpose to deal, for the reason that in actual 
 painting it has not been usually considered by the 
 painters of the past, and among those of the pres- 
 ent it is not even generally understood. Those of 
 you who may care to follow up the study of this 
 geometrical side would better read Mr. Ruskin's 
 treatise on the subject. What I may have to say 
 about the subject to-day will be ahnost entirely from 
 the artist's point of view. 
 
 Perspective is, perhaps, not so much an end of 
 painting in itself as it is a means of obtaining cer-
 
 LINEAR AND AERIAL PERSPECTIVE 113 
 
 tain effects. As a means it is its object to show 
 upon flat surface the dimensions and intensities of 
 objects at varying distances by just gradations 
 of form, contour, color, and hght. There are two 
 kinds of perspective at least, and I am not sui-e but 
 that there should be three classes of it, described 
 respectively by the adjectives linear, aerial, and 
 chromatic. But for our purposes the second adjec- 
 tive is expansive enough to include the third and 
 render the latter unnecessary. 
 
 The proper use in painting of linear perspective 
 produces a lessening in the size of objects by reces- 
 sion, and an apparent convergence of lines toward a 
 given focus, called technically " the point of sight." 
 It gives us upon a small scale the representation of 
 an effect continually seen in nature. A glance down 
 a long street reveals this effect to us every day of 
 our lives. The rows of trees and the buildings, as 
 the eye follows the top line of tbem, appear to run 
 down from the upper sky to the rim of the horizon 
 or the point of sight. The bed of the street, the 
 curb-stones, the sidewalks appear to run up from 
 our feet to this same point of sight. Again, it will 
 be noticed that the walls of the buildings and the 
 sides of the trees appear not only to run down, but 
 to run in, until, if the street be very long, the rows 
 of buildings, trees, curb-stones, and sidewalks come 
 to meet in the distance — the lines of convergence 
 8
 
 114 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 appearing to run from every direction toward a 
 homon centre. Again, these lines of convergence 
 compress and contract all the objects as they recede 
 from us, and allow them to expand as they approach 
 us. We often see this illustrated at the railway sta- 
 tion when looking up or down the tracks for a be- 
 lated train. As the train approaches the station we 
 see the locomotive grow larger and larger ; as the 
 train moves away the rear car becomes smaller and 
 smaller. 
 
 The principle by following which this effect is 
 produced in art is not difficult of comprehension. 
 Imagine the sun upon the horizon line shooting out 
 shafts of light from it in all directions, the distance 
 between the shafts widening of course with the 
 radiation ; place a facsimile of this sun — the point 
 of sight — in the centre of a picture-frame so that 
 the top, bottom, and sides of the frame shall cut 
 off the ends of the flying shafts, and we shall then 
 have a skeleton of perspective. In the street scene, 
 of which I spoke a moment ago, if the sun were 
 placed at the end of the street the lines of the curb- 
 stones and sidewalks would follow certain of these 
 flying shafts of light directly toward the centre ; 
 the lines of the tops of the houses, the trees, and the 
 telegraph-poles would follow other shafts higher up, 
 and, were the picture specially composed as a per- 
 spective effect, the breaks in the clouds would be
 
 X. — f Ro'/t'.T iN. n.Ji-. J-. //i:c:.rg Piice.
 
 LINEAR AXD AERIAL PERSPECTIVE 115 
 
 arranged in their lines to conduct upon the upper 
 shafts of light directly to the centre again. Tpon 
 whatever line or shaft the eye might fall it would 
 inevitably be led to the point of sight, or, as we 
 have supposed, the sun itself. 
 
 To be sure such bits of nature as the railway and 
 the street scene do not arise continually as exem- 
 plars of nature's perspective principles, but there is, 
 nevertheless, a law of diminution and convergence 
 underlying every scene, whether it be a positive ex- 
 ample or not. We hardly need to be told that there 
 is no such thing in reality as two parallel lines i-un- 
 ning together, but to our eyes they appear to run 
 together. Perspective is in itself one proof in many 
 that painting represents not reality, as our " real- 
 ists" would have it, but only the appearance of re- 
 ality. It is merely a semblance of things resulting 
 from the eye's inability to grasp distant objects as 
 they actually exist. The compensation, however, for 
 the inability of the eye to see things in the distance 
 in their real relations is, that by seeing them in per- 
 spective we gain a breadth and depth of view not 
 otherwise obtainable. We are enabled to see not 
 one object alone but many objects, all held together 
 by a common bond of unity. This is true of the 
 perspective in a painting. For the eye could not 
 gi-asp, ill either depth or breadth, the whole of the 
 scene upon canvas were it not that by the Hnes or
 
 116 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 shafts of light, of which I have spoken, the vision is 
 conducted down a converging path toward the point 
 of sight, which is usually the point of interest as 
 well. One object of linear perspective in painting, 
 then, aside from its giving the appearance of dis- 
 tance, is to obtain unity — to enable us to grasp the 
 whole scene at a glance — and without it a pict- 
 ure would be disjointed, and comprehensible only 
 by examining one part of it at a time as we do the 
 passing scenes of a panorama. This unity by per- 
 spective may be seen well exemplified if standing 
 in a room we look out through a pane of glass, im- 
 agining the window-sash a picture-frame. Miles 
 in depth and miles in width appear within the 
 square of a few feet ; and if we imagine further 
 that the landscape is painted on the glass instead of 
 seen through it, we shall have the correct perspec- 
 tive of a picture. 
 
 This you will understand is the general principle 
 of perspective that I am trying to explain, and the 
 illustrations given show linear perspective in its sim- 
 plest form only (Fig, 7). It has its many complex- 
 ities, involving problems which are scarcely worth 
 our time puzzling over ; but I think it necessary to 
 say they exist, that you may not think every picture 
 which lacks a diamond-point composition, converg- 
 ing lines of trees, buildings, or telegraph-poles, and 
 a sun, or at least a tunnel of concentrated light pre-
 
 UNEAE AND AERIAL PERSPECTIVE 117 
 
 cisely in the middle of it, is therefore bad or lack- 
 ing in perspective. The point of sight, or the place 
 where the sight should be drawn, is a matter of 
 choice with the painter. It is generally near the 
 centre of the piece, as in Leonardo's "Last Supper," 
 for instance ; but there is no particular reason that it 
 should be so. The painter, like the photographer, 
 may focus his picture where he pleases ; but, also 
 like the photographer, whatever point he focuses 
 becomes a centre of interest from which the shafts 
 or lines radiate. Some of the Dutchmen, like Van 
 Goyen, Cuyp, and Van de Velde, were very fond of 
 placing the poiut of interest off at the extreme side, 
 and leading up to it by long rows of buildings, the 
 descending masts of ships, or the retiring ranks of 
 trees or hills. But the goal of interest in any one 
 of their pictures is generally well defined and easy 
 to discover, no mattter where placed, because of 
 the convergence of line and light toward that spot. 
 The fly's parlor of a spider's web is not always 
 placed in the centre of a given space, nor in the 
 centre of the web, but our eye naturally seeks 
 it because all the lines of the web upon which the 
 spider travels lead directly to it. 
 
 The point of sight may be shifted right or left 
 provided we shift our station point to correspond ; 
 and there is no reason why it should not be raised 
 up by a high horizon line, as the needs of the fore-
 
 118 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 ground and middle distance may require (Fig. 8), 
 or, on the other hand, placed low down, as the needs 
 of the upper sky may require, the visual ray which 
 comes to the eye being raised or lowered again to 
 correspond. There is nothing very arbitrary about 
 perspective except the point of sight, which should 
 be the loadstone of the picture to attract the eye of 
 the spectator. As I have observed, in speaking of 
 light-gradation, this point of sight will not always 
 be so apparent as in a Claude or Turner sunset, and 
 in many pictures you will have some difficulty in 
 finding it at all ; but if the perspective be good the 
 lines, whether apparent or not, will converge, and 
 the eye will be led to some one point in the picture 
 — the point of interest, the point of sight, and gen- 
 erally the point of light. Two notable instances of 
 the violation of this rule are Kaphael's " Transfigu- 
 ration " (Fig. 9), and the large " Marriage in Cana," 
 by Paolo Veronese, in each of which there are two 
 points of sight, two horizon lines, and two base 
 lines. But this, instead of being a virtue of the 
 pictures is perhaps a fault, because of the confusion 
 brought about by conflicting points of interest. In 
 the presence of such a dual composition the eye is 
 embarrassed by riches, and like the historic donkey 
 of Buridan, it starves between two measures of oats. 
 The effect of linear perspective upon objects is that 
 as they recede from us they appear to decrease in
 
 LINEAR AND AERIAL PERSPECTIVE 119 
 
 size in a geometrical ratio. To explain tliis, let us 
 change the flaming sun, which I have been using for 
 illustration, into so commonplace a thing as a bicy- 
 cle wheel, and we shall have quite as good a perspec- 
 tive skeleton upon which to construct a picture. Let 
 the hub be the point of sight ; let a line drawn di- 
 rectly across the middle, just below the hub, be the 
 horizon ; let the lower spokes be the middle dis- 
 tance and foreground ; the lower rim the bottom of 
 the frame or the station-point where the spectator 
 stands ; the upper spokes the sky ; the upper rim 
 the zenith, or the top of the frame ; and the side 
 spokes and rims the wings of the picture and the 
 sides of the frame. Now, if we suppose in the right- 
 hand corner foreground some palaces in a row, as 
 in Turner's Carthage pictures, or Claude's " Em- 
 barkation of the Queen of Sheba," the first one 
 of which just fits iu between two spokes of the 
 wheel at their widest end, and that the row recedes 
 in the distance, perfect linear perspective would re- 
 quire that the height of the palaces decrease iu pro- 
 portion to the narrowing of the converging lines or 
 spokes. On the canvas the buildings might appear 
 two feet in height iu the foreground, one foot in the 
 middle distance, and farther back only half a foot ; 
 for, as the lines or spokes narrow, the objects shrink 
 correspondingly, not only in height but in width, 
 until at last lost iu distance or centred in the hub.
 
 120 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 Of course the buildings would not be the only ob- 
 jects so affected. The clouds in the upper zenith 
 would also be caught, and compressed as it were, 
 between the spokes of the upper half, and receding 
 down toward the hub would decrease in all their 
 dimensions. The objects on the ground or on the 
 water, whether bushes, trees, men, animals, boats, 
 or ships, would undergo a similar process of size- 
 degradation. The natural result of such a propor- 
 tionate contraction of objects would be that only 
 the larger objects would hold out in the distance, 
 and that the smaller ones would be completely ab- 
 sorbed or blotted away. The grass, the small bushes, 
 the stones, the human beings would vanish long be- 
 fore the trees, the ships, and the palaces; and, as 
 Leonardo has wisely remarked, by the very abandon- 
 ment of the small things and the recognition of the 
 large bodies only, would the distance be increased 
 and the illusion of perspective made more complete. 
 It may be well to bear in mind, however, that in 
 practice few painters ever cover their canvases with 
 lines like the spokes of a bicycle wheel ; or, as I 
 have said, know, or care to know, anything about the 
 geometrical side of perspective. If the painter's 
 perspective be true, it may be planned and scaled 
 by lines, but he does not consider the geometrical 
 theory of form-shrinkage to gain the practical truth 
 of perspective. He simply draws nature as he sees
 
 LINEAE AND AERIAL PERSPECTIVE 121 
 
 it, trying as far as possible to get rid of tlie abstract 
 literal knowledge which he possesses about objects, 
 and striving to record only the impression received 
 by his eyes. This is not an easy thing to do, for 
 the memory of objects is continually influencing the 
 eye. A man a mile away from us has as many lines 
 and shades about him as at any other distance, but 
 we do not see them. He counts to our eyes as noth- 
 ing but a spot of color on the landscape, though we 
 may think he possesses more distinctness. When he 
 steps up into the middle distance he becomes more 
 like a man, though he is still only a horse-post-look- 
 ing affair with a hat at the top. When he comes 
 into the foreground, however, not only the lines of 
 the body but those of the face and its features, the 
 hands, the clothing, all come out distinctly. The 
 relative height or breadth of the man at the vary- 
 ing distances, instead of being geometrically ascer- 
 tained by a skeleton of converging lines, is caught 
 in a very primitive manner by holding out the han- 
 dle of a paint-brush at arm's-length, getting the 
 man in a line of sight, shutting one eye, and indi- 
 cating the height or breadth in inches by a thumb- 
 mark on the brush handle. And for practical pur- 
 poses, perhaps, this is as good a way as any. It is 
 not quite accurate, but accuracy is the bane of the 
 fine arts, for no other reason than because it is ac- 
 curacy. Preciseness and primness, exactness and
 
 122 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 conventionality are synonyms in the art vocabularVj 
 and any one of them is likely to make a painting 
 mechanical, impersonal, and unsympathetic. 
 
 At the present time, so far as my observation 
 goes, linear perspective on the grand scale is not so 
 much sought after as it was in the early part of this 
 century. That is to say, the Claude-Poussin-Turner 
 ten-mile stretches of landscape, with streams and 
 groves and background mountains have disappeared 
 in favor of the meadow strip, a marsh land in fog, 
 a side-hill, or a bit of wood interior. The mod- 
 ern painters who are, above all, the great landscap- 
 ists, seem to think that these long distances, with 
 mountain - peaks and rolling clouds, involve too 
 much form at the expense of the painter's feeling 
 and sentiment. I cannot give the exact why of this, 
 but I offer you as a suggestion that modern paint- 
 ing would appear to be nearer of kin to music than 
 to sculpture or architecture, and is continually 
 striving to blend form with sympathetic execution, 
 and thus make one harmonious whole which shall 
 emphasize neither nature nor man, yet embody 
 both. Where form is so predominant as in mountain 
 pieces, the state of feeling or emotion in the man 
 and the execution, are overbalanced and compara- 
 tively lost. This, I take it, may partly account for 
 the fact that no painting of the Alps, nor of the 
 Rocky Mountains, nor of deep valleys or gorges,
 
 LINEAR AND AERIAL PERSPECTIVE 123 
 
 has ever been considered satisfactory art. It may 
 also suggest the reason why the landscape painter 
 of modern times, as Corot, chooses the low-lying 
 scene with few trees or hills ; as Troyon or Dau- 
 bigny the marsh, the meadow, or the sedgy river; as 
 Diaz or Kousseau the quiet wood-interior ; leaving 
 the frowning precipice, the lurid sky, the blue val- 
 ley far beyond, to those who have neither power of 
 sentiment nor skill of execution, and must attract 
 by the proportions of their canvas or their subject. 
 The recent use to which atmosphere and its ef- 
 fects have been put has also been the cause to some 
 extent of the abandonment of great distances in 
 landscape, the air being used as a screen to shut 
 out the backgi'ound. Claude and Poussin did not 
 perhaps value aerial perspective highly enough. 
 They seemed to place their reliance more on the 
 shrinkage of line than the fading of color. The 
 moderns in some cases have gone a little to the 
 other extreme, suflfocatiug the landscape at times 
 with something intended for ail', but which looks 
 like smoke, or fog, or a scumble of gray paint. In 
 pictures other than landscapes or marines, the im- 
 portance of linear perspective has not perceptibly 
 diminished. It is quite as necessary to-day to give 
 correctly the dimensions of a room, the top of a 
 table, or the legs of a chair, as it used to be in clas- 
 sic times ; and while linear perspective is not so
 
 124 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 much relied upon for effect in certain pictures as it 
 once was, yet its value is not to be lightly consid- 
 ered nor its beauty overlooked in any picture, 
 
 • • • • 
 
 Aerial Perspective. — The second part of this sub- 
 ject deals with aerial perspective, which may be con- 
 sidered in effect as the atmospheric dissipation and 
 final obliteration of lines, colors, lights, and shades 
 as the objects which show them recede in the dis- 
 tance. Heretofore we have been speaking of the 
 diminution of form as the distance increases ; but we 
 have not taken into consideration the effect of the 
 intervening atmosphere upon the lines, lights, and 
 colors. If there were no air at all there might still 
 be linear perspective, as we all have noticed in those 
 huge airless landscapes which are sometimes hippo- 
 dromed around the world for the admiration of the 
 unthinking many ; but in thoroughly good paiuting 
 the air must be reckoned with, for it changes the 
 appearance of objects quite as much as simple form- 
 shrinkage. 
 
 Atmosphere must be looked upon as something 
 in the nature of a mist, a haze, or a light smoke. 
 The air about us is filled with countless particles of 
 matter, which reflect, break, and transmit waves of 
 light in such a way that when in quantity we see 
 them as a blue or a gray haze. Hence the azure 
 of the sky overhead and the blue-gray appearance
 
 LINEAR AND AERIAL PERSPECTIVE 125 
 
 that hangs about the mountains, or in the far-away 
 depths of their valleys. This haze, though too sub- 
 tile of itself to be seen at, say one hundred yards, 
 has a very decided eflfect upon objects at that dis- 
 tance wliich may be readily observed. This effect 
 is, first, that while the objects recede in size they 
 also begin to blur and waver in outline. An indis- 
 tinctness gathers about them, similar, though not so 
 strong, to the dimness which enshrouds objects at 
 evening when the light begins to fade. 
 
 We have not an active appreciation of this be- 
 cause we lack the keen eyes of painters, and for 
 the further reason that we have a mental knowl- 
 edge of almost all the objects of nature which con- 
 tinually contradicts our visual knowledge. Thus we 
 recognize at two hundred yards down the street a 
 friend coming toward us ; but how do we recognize 
 him ? Simply because he is a friend ; because we 
 mentally know, from having stood beside him many 
 times, just how he looks in face and feature. We 
 see him on the street ; something in circumstance, 
 dress, carriage, or height speaks who he is, and then 
 our accommodating mind, knowing his features, 
 tells our eyes just what those features are like, and 
 we immediately fancy we see liis brown eyes, his 
 Greek nose, and his clean-cut chin. The mind may 
 be right enough in its recollection, but the eyes 
 have been deceived ; for at that distance the human
 
 126 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 face, especially under the shadow of a hat-brim, is 
 little more than a blur of flesh color. The legs, 
 arms, body, head, are seen, but the features of 
 the face, sometimes the hands and feet are gone — 
 blurred out — not by reduction in the size of those 
 features, but by seeing them through a veil of at- 
 mosphere which dissipates and obscures their hnes. 
 The truth of this illustration I will ask you to test 
 by trying to make out the features of a person whom 
 you have never seen before, at the distance I have 
 supposed. Under gaslight you require a glass to 
 see features distinctly across an opera-house ; you 
 will need the same gla^ss under sunlight to see the 
 same features on the street at two hundred yards. 
 
 We may make a similar mistake in landscape. 
 We go out into the meadow, and before our feet it 
 is an easy matter to count the individual blades of 
 grass as they grow ; fifty yards away we know simi- 
 lar individual blades exist, and perhaps fancy we can 
 see them ; but do we? A hundred yards farther on 
 is a tree in foliage ; we know foliage is formed of sep- 
 arate leaves, and again we fancy we can see these 
 leaves ; but all that our eyes tell us is summed 
 up in a round mass of green, broken by lights and 
 shadows. Several hundred yards farther on are 
 some sheep browsing in the grass. Try to see their 
 ears ; try to make out their legs ; try to make out 
 if they have heads. You cannot. The animals are
 
 LINEAll AND AERIAL PERSPECTIVE 127 
 
 only oblong patches of dark or light color against the 
 green background. Suppose the distance increased 
 several hundred yards more till the sight strikes a 
 belt of timber. It is composed of individual trees 
 vFith broad trunks and many limbs ; can you dis- 
 tinguish any one of them? Is there anything to 
 the timber but a mass of green and purple foliage 
 impenetrable to the eye ? And so we may keep on 
 increasing the distance until we come to the moun- 
 tain, around the base of which, like a flat carpet, run 
 forests of timber scarcely recognizable except by 
 our mental knowledge that they are forests ; and 
 higher up come gray and bluish masses which we 
 know to be huge forms of granite standing aloft like 
 the castles of the Rhine ; and still higher up in the 
 slopes and gorges the blue air becomes so dense 
 that the timber, the rocks, sometimes parts of the 
 mountain itself, are lost to view. 
 
 Occasionally in looking at the mountain, when 
 the weather is clear, you may observe what may 
 seem at first blush a singular phenomenon. The 
 trees at the base of it are very dull in color and 
 vague in line, but at the top they appear to come 
 out more distinctly. The top appears nearer to you 
 than the bottom. This may be partly due to the 
 fact that the timber grows thinner toward the sum- 
 mit, and is thus more distinct ; but it is mainly due 
 to the very thing I am trying to illustrate, namely,
 
 128 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 the density of the air. The base of the mountain 
 is seen through that mass of the thick air which al- 
 ways lies close to the ground ; the top is partly seen 
 through a higher and thinner atmosphere. It is the 
 school teaching of to-day that the seeing on the 
 ocean of a vessel's masts and sails before seeing hei 
 hull is a proof of the roundness of the earth. The 
 teaching is true enough, but in actual demonstra- 
 tion it may be questioned if the interposition of the 
 dense atmosphere lying along the water has not 
 quite as much to do with losing the ship's hull as 
 the interposition of the earth's surface. The paint- 
 ing of distant ships in the marine pieces of Dupre, 
 Boulard, and others, argue that way at the least, 
 and in a matter of actual appearance a painter's eye 
 is quite as reliable as a mathematician's figures. 
 
 Form, then, not only shrinks in size in propor- 
 tion to the distance removed, but blurs and wavers 
 and loses its outline in proportion to the density of 
 the atmosphere through which it is seen. On a 
 clear day, or in high altitudes, lines are quite dis- 
 tinct as are the stars on a cold winter night ; in 
 the haze of October, the mist of spring, the heat of 
 summer, they dissipate more rapidly. In a fog, 
 such as we often know along the Atlantic seaboard, 
 a few yards are sometimes sufficient to lose the form 
 of objects altogether, as you may have noticed in the 
 case of coming and going ferryboats in New York
 
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 -^ (-1 
 
 
 
 o
 
 LINEAR AND AERIAL PERSPECTIVE 129 
 
 harbor during foggy weather. And, by the way, I 
 may call attention here to the fact that the tops of 
 these ferryboats are almost always seen before the 
 hulls or guards, a fact which may serve as further 
 argument in the ship-at-sea question. Fog is only 
 an extreme illustration of atmospheric density, the 
 air being filled with atoms of moisture instead of, 
 as upon a clear day, with atoms of dust. One is 
 denser and more perceptible than the other, and 
 has a more iDositive effect upon line ; but both of 
 them are modifying influences which the painter es- 
 timates in giving distance, and which we should be 
 careful to note for the reason that the tyro in paint- 
 ing often fails to note them. 
 
 Yet line is not the only thing that dissipates and 
 blurs in proportion to the density of the atmos- 
 phere through which it is seen. Color is an im- 
 portant part of objects, and this, too, is changed by 
 air in more ways than one, and often to the paint- 
 er's perplexity. First, let me say that, so far as I 
 have observed, I do not find that colors, as colors, 
 are capable of rendering distance by association or 
 otherwise. That is to say, blue, because it resem- 
 bles the sky or the ether around distant hills, is not 
 a distance color ; nor red, because of its warmth or 
 frequent use in household decoration, a near color. 
 All colors are affected by distance, but they do not 
 of themselves create it, as seems to be supposed in 
 9
 
 130 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 some quarters. In original hue one appears about 
 as near or as far as another. In the order of their 
 disappearance in the distance there may be a differ- 
 ence ; but, after asking many landscape painters 
 about this, and making not a few experiments and 
 observations myself, I am inclined to doubt if there 
 be any great or well-defined difference. There is an 
 apparent variance which may be due to causes other 
 than hue or atmospheric effect, the quantity of light 
 or dark contained in a color in connection with the 
 backgi'ound against which it is seen being the prin- 
 cipal one. Given similar intensities of green, yel- 
 low, and blue — that is, make them equal in the 
 quantity of light or dark they shall contain — place 
 them on an absolutely neutral background, and one 
 will appear about as strong as another. But if the 
 intensities of light or dark be unequal in the colors, 
 as, for instance, in a chrome-yellow, an emerald- 
 green, and a cobalt-blue, then that color will (prac- 
 tically) disappear first which shows the least con- 
 trast to the background. If the background in the 
 case of these supposed colors should be a green 
 meadow, then the emerald-green would go first, the 
 cobalt-blue second, and the chrome-yellow last, the 
 light of the yellow standing out in the strongest re- 
 lief against the dark of the gi-een ground. 
 
 rt seems to be the opinion of some writers, Leo- 
 nardo da Vinci among others, that the dark colors
 
 LINEAR AND AERIAL PERSPECTIVE 131 
 
 carry stronger than the light ones ; but, with great 
 respect for Leonardo, I think the working of the 
 rule is mainly dependent upon this same matter of 
 background again. A hght shows better on a 
 dark ground, and a dark better on a light ground. 
 A practical illustration of the first statement is the 
 white disk on the line-poles used in surveying, the 
 white showing stronger against green landscape 
 than black. An illustration of the second may be 
 seen by flying two kites, one a deep purple and the 
 other a pale yellow, against a Hght sky. The purple 
 kite will stand out the longer, and the stronger by 
 contrast. A double illustration may again be found 
 in the military system of signalling by flags. If 
 signalling from a hill-top five miles away, where the 
 light sky is the background, a black or red flag is 
 used ; if signalling in a valley where the dark earth 
 is a background, a white flag is used. 
 
 The landscape about us usually contains more of 
 dark than of light (that is, as compared with the sky 
 or its reflections from water, snow, or the like), 
 and the inference I would draw from this is, that 
 in ordinary landscape the lights hold stronger than 
 the darks, because of the generally dark background 
 against which they are shown. Reverse the ground, 
 and the inference must likewise be reversed. Upon 
 the mountain's side the trunk of the white birch 
 shows among the green pines like a strip of snow in
 
 132 AET FOR art's SAKE 
 
 an upper valley ; but place the birch and the pines 
 upon the mountain's ridge, where they are seen 
 against a light sky, and immediately the pines show 
 strongly and the birch is lost. Seen from the 
 mountain's top, looking down into the valley, a field 
 of ripened grain surrounded by timber makes a 
 light spot on the landscape ; but were the whole 
 valley a mass of yellow grain, and one patch of tim- 
 ber stood in the middle of it, we can easily imagine 
 the effect would be the direct opposite of what we 
 at first noted. 
 
 Aside from colors showing as patches of light or 
 dark on the landscape (Fig. 10), the intervening at- 
 mosphere produces some changes in their hues 
 which may be generally summarized by saying that 
 as they recede in the distance the light colors be- 
 come warmer and the dark colors lighter and some- 
 times colder. Thus at fifty yards a forest is filled 
 with great patches of green, red, and warm brown ; 
 but two miles away its foliage appears as a mass of 
 purples, cold blues, and grays. The weather-beaten 
 sail of a fishing-smack near at hand may be gray in 
 color but out half a mile at sea or farther, especially 
 at sunrise or sunset, it changes to a pale-orange 
 tone not easily detected except by the trained eye 
 of the painter. At two hundred yards* distance 
 purplish-red turns to orange-red, yellow becomes a 
 warmer yellow bordering upon orange, ultramarine
 
 LINEAE AND AERIAL PERSPECTIVE 133 
 
 first turns to a purple and then quickly dissipates, 
 and many of the lighter and more delicate hues are 
 simply grayed down by the atmosphere into neutral 
 tints. 
 
 I am not able to give you any scientific reason for 
 these changes, nor state any positive law that will 
 apply to all colors alike ; but the general rule of 
 light colors becoming warmer, and dark colors 
 lighter, and sometimes cooler, will answer our pur- 
 poses, especially as we shall find its recognition 
 among painters, so far as painters recognize any 
 rules whatever. As a matter of fact there are few of 
 them that know, or care to know, about theories of 
 changing colors. Some of them paint nature just as 
 they happen to see it, at times producing like the 
 impressionists, violet shadows and blue lights ; oth- 
 ers paint to make a picture, and if a certain color is 
 wanted in a certain part of a picture to make tone or 
 harmony, or for repetition's sake, they put it there 
 whether it is in nature or not. It is the prevailing 
 belief that the painter is ever and always the most 
 conscientious slave to the truths of nature, and so 
 in the abstract he is ; but when he wishes to paint 
 a picture he is first and last a slave to the truths of 
 art And rightly so. For it is not nature's imita- 
 tion we seek, but a painter's impression of nature 
 forcibly set forth ilivough the medium of art. 
 
 Atmospheric eflect upon lights and shadows is
 
 134 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 similar to that upon light or dark colors, a high 
 light holding stronger among dark surroundings 
 and a deep shadow holding stronger among light 
 surroundings. When the contrast is not marked 
 they both fade and finally disappear from view at 
 about the same distance, and moreover, when in 
 small quantities they generally disappear sooner 
 than the objects reflecting them or causing them. 
 In full sunlight a shadow is usually darker than the 
 object casting it unless this object be black. The 
 shadow of a tree, for instance, at noontime ap- 
 pears darker than the tree itself when close to view ; 
 but when at a distance I think the shadow lightens 
 and fades sooner than the dark of the tree, per- 
 haps because its flat position does not enable it to 
 be seen so well. When the shadows are in large 
 masses thei'e may be an exception to this, as there 
 may be in regard to the lights. The deep shade on 
 a mountain slope, or the sunlight on a white house, 
 a tin roof, or a distant lake may be seen for miles, 
 telling as distinct patches of dark or white on the 
 landscape ; but the light on the trunk of a maple- 
 tree will last little longer than the shadow back of 
 it, and the varied play of light and shade among the 
 leaves of that tree, easily seen near at hand, will be 
 blurred out by distance, the lights about as quickly 
 as the shades. After lines, colors, lights, and shades 
 have all disapppeared, so far as our identification of
 
 LINEAR AND AERIAL PERSPECTIVE 135 
 
 them is concerned, there will still be a checkered 
 or varied appearance about the objects possessing 
 them. A mass of castellated rock upon the distant 
 mountain's side, long after its line and color are lost 
 and the lights and shades of crevices and breaks 
 have disappeared, will still not appear as one uni- 
 form hue. The mingling of color and light-and- 
 shade will create variations in the tint which, 
 though indefinable in their vagueness, are never- 
 theless apparent. 
 
 The dissipating effect of atmosphere upon colors 
 and intensities may be comprehended better if in 
 our daily walks we take the opportunity of compar- 
 ing like with like at different distances. There is, 
 for instance, no commoner sight in cities than 
 policemen dressed in blue coats standing on the 
 street corners ; get two of them in a line of sight at 
 the distances from you of, say, ten and one hundred 
 yards, and you will immediately see the difference 
 in the intensities of the blue. If the painter should 
 not give this difference in pitch, but from mental 
 knowledge perhaps, should I'epresent the clothing 
 of both policemen of the same intensity, the effect of 
 distance and air would be destroyed, the two police- 
 men would be inextricably pasted together, the first 
 would not " detach " or stand apart from the second. 
 If the policemen are not to be found in your walks 
 of life, you may notice the effect of atmosphere on a
 
 136 AKT FOR ART^S SAKE 
 
 row of elm or maple trees quite as readily. Get the 
 trees in a line of sight, and notice first the differ- 
 ence in the tree-trunks. The one nearest you will 
 be the darkest, or if not the darkest then the strong- 
 est — the most intense in color whatever its hue — 
 and as the trees recede they become lighter and 
 weaker in a perfect ratio. The green of the trees 
 will be affected in a similar way, fading away into 
 gray-green and finally to gray-blue. The effect is 
 noticeable even at short range if we look carefully, 
 for though we cannot by taking thought or rubbing 
 our eyes see a dry atmosphere a block away from 
 us, yet we can very easily see its effect upon objects 
 at that distance. 
 
 Atmosphere may seem at first thought a slight 
 thing for the motive power of a picture because of 
 its intangibility, its delicacy, its apparent remote- 
 ness from human interest ; but as it expresses a 
 mood of nature, or a mood of the artist, I cannot 
 see but that it is a beauty which, in connection with 
 its usual attendants, tone and color, is pleasure- 
 giving and worthy of serious consideration. In the 
 early June mornings, when the light begins to flush 
 along the tops of the eastern hills, there is a charm, 
 a pleasure, a beauty in the feeling of cool air that 
 fills the upper valleys ; in the pale mists that float 
 along the hill-sides ; in the moist currents that move 
 above the lowland meadows, blurring with invisible
 
 M 
 UJ 
 
 Q 
 I
 
 LINEAR AND AERIAL PERSPECTIVE 137 
 
 fingers the tall reeds and bushes, silvering over the 
 foliage of the willows and poplars, and dripping 
 dew into the cups of a thousand flowers. It was 
 this early hour that Corot loved best — the hour 
 when he saw the beauty of the morning gleaming 
 through a silver veil, and caught upon canvas the 
 vision as it passed. At noon the mists and dews 
 have gone, the trees stand motionless in the hot sun, 
 casting heavy yet luminous shadows, butterflies of 
 many hues waver about the nodding grass, and bees 
 drone idly along from flower to flower. A warm 
 air appears to rise from the earth, gathering around 
 the maples on the walk, and occasionally lifting 
 with its faint breath a single leaf. It hangs above 
 the earth in waves of stillness like an enchanter's 
 spell, touching into immobility all warring elements 
 of nature, and hushing for a time the contentions 
 of men. This is the hour often chosen by those 
 painters of nature's brilliancy, Fortuny, De Nittis, 
 Rico, and William M. Chase. And then comes 
 twilight, when the trees stand up like silhouettes 
 against the yellow sky, and the shadows come creep- 
 ing down into the foreground. The pond is a mo- 
 tionless mirror of the sky ; the reeds and bushes 
 are dull spots of brown or green ; the air moves 
 hither and thither in faint gray waves pushing 
 about little patches of mist already risen, imbuing 
 all things with its spirit, and tinging all things with
 
 138 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 its hue. This was the hour of Daubigny — the houi 
 and the effect he so often depicted in his silver and 
 golden landscapes along the banks of the Seine and 
 the Marne. 
 
 Each clime has its peculiar atmosphere, the just 
 painting of which gives local coloring and identity. 
 At Scheveningen, looking up the beach to where the 
 sand-dunes bend around in a horseshoe, we may 
 see the heavy salt air of the sea wedged in the half- 
 circle, just as we have often seen its counterpart in 
 the pictures of the Dutch sea-painters. Off from 
 the coast, receding out to sea, the orange-bro\vn 
 sails of the fishing - smacks are blown full of the 
 same strong sea- wind ; the clouds go torn and fly- 
 ing across the upper sky, the waves come rolliug in 
 in great yellowish breakers that crash upon the 
 beach just as Mesdag and others have portrayed 
 them. Up over the protecting dykes the salt air 
 carries far inland ; the clouds drift over towns, 
 woods and meadows ; and the gray and damp of 
 the ocean, like human breath upon glass, change the 
 whole scene into a color-tone of pearly-gray such 
 as you may have noticed in the landscapes of Mauve 
 or Willem Maris. In Cairo, down the long narrow 
 street at noonday, the hot air looks half-blue, half- 
 red, as though the stones of the street were fur- 
 naces driving off iridescent heat which quavers 
 and I'ocks itself skyward. The roofs and the walla
 
 LINEAR AND AERIAL PERSPECTIVE 139 
 
 glare white in the sun. Dark flat shadows are 
 thrown across the street in which, crouched against 
 the buildings, sit white-hooded figures. A gayly- 
 trapped donkey staggers with his load. In the dis- 
 tance looms like a shaft of light the white minaret 
 of a mosque. Overhead is the deep -blue of the 
 Egyptian sky. It was thus that Decamps and Fro- 
 mentin saw and painted the beauty of the East. 
 Here, in New Jersey, there are days in June when 
 the air is thick with moisture ; dull leaden clouds 
 go slowly voyaging along the sky ; the heavy foli- 
 age is saturated with rain ; the meadows are half- 
 obscured in mist ; the hills are altogether lost. 
 Gray — gray atmosphere — creeps into every nook 
 and breathes its moist breath upon every object, 
 until the ruling spirit of the scene is saturation. It 
 is thus that Mr. Inness, our own landscape painter, 
 has portrayed it. 
 
 The history of aerial perspective, as practised 
 among the painters, may be briefly told. I cannot 
 say positively who began the use of it, for any artist 
 that I might name would be sure to have a forerun- 
 ner who practised it somewhat. I can only point to 
 a period when all the artists of a school began to in- 
 terest themselves in it. We have no reason to sup- 
 pose that any of the Pre-Renaissance artists knew 
 very much about it. The knowledge of it among 
 the Italians was extensive, as shown by the writings
 
 140 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 of Leonardo, but neither he nor his contemporaries 
 demonstrated it any too successfully in landscape 
 work. Their foregrounds were green or brown, 
 their backgrounds were blue, and little gradation 
 appeared between these two extremes. Their han- 
 dling of it in figure compositions was much better, 
 though by no means remarkable. Correggio and 
 the Venetians improved upon the Florentines in 
 aerial perspective, as they did in all things relating 
 to the techuic of painting except drawing and 
 composition ; but I do not know that any one of 
 them made atmosphere a picture motive. In Spain, 
 Velasquez was its master, and painted it with won- 
 derful effect, as the celebrated picture of the " Ta- 
 pestry Weavers " will show. But it was the Dutch 
 and Flemish schools that first put it forward as a 
 peculiar beauty of a picture, as may be seen in 
 those interiors of Pieter de Hooghe and Jan van 
 der Meer of Delft, of which I have spoken ; in the 
 architectural pieces of Van der Heyden, in the land- 
 scapes of Hobbema and Wynants, in the marines 
 of Van de Velde, and in the figure pieces of Rem- 
 brandt. 
 
 In France, during the first quarter of this cen. 
 tury, atmosphere and, in fact, all natural effects had 
 been largely abandoned for the beauty of the classic 
 and the academic ; but about the beginning of the 
 second quarter of the century it was again brought
 
 LINEAR AND AERIAL PERSPECTIVE 141 
 
 into notice by Constable and Bonington, and more 
 forcibly and poetically by Corot and the Oriental- 
 ists, Fromentin (Fig. 8) and Decamps. The Fon- 
 tainebleau-Barbizon school all understood it and 
 painted it with the most poetic results, especial 
 men like Troyon, Jacque, Rousseau, Daubigny and 
 Millet. Among the moderns there are so many 
 painters devoted to it that I can mention but a few 
 of them : LeroUe, Cazin, Besnard, Monet, in France ; 
 Weir, Twachtman, Tryon, Robinson, in America ; 
 and Israels, Mauve, Willem Maris, and others, in 
 Holland. 
 
 As I have intimated, some of the moderns go to 
 extremes in the portrayal of atmosphere, filling a 
 room with something that may be seen almost as 
 readily as smoke, blurring figures out of all recog- 
 nition at ten paces, because there happen to be 
 other figures at five paces, and stopping up the end 
 of a hundred-yard street with an impenetrable 
 scumble of gray paint in lieu of air. Such work 
 may be clever in its way as exemplifying values, 
 and artists may sometimes speak of such pictures as 
 " stunning things," but they " stun " more by their 
 falsity than their truth. The scumble is at the best 
 a questionable means of obtaining aerial effects at 
 short range ; for a dry atmosphere that can be seen 
 at a hundred yards is generally too apparent to be 
 true. We need not, however, find fault with the
 
 i42 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 painter's methods if they but render the right ef- 
 fects and when we consider with what slight tools 
 he produces these effects of nature — a brush, a few 
 colors, and a flat surface — perhaps we should noi 
 find fault with him at alL
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 VALUES 
 
 The word " Values " is one continually rolled 
 under the tongue by artists, art critics, amateurs, 
 and collectors ; but it is to be feared that, like Ben 
 Achmed's cheer, it means fish to one, flesh to an- 
 other, and fowl to a third. There is some confu- 
 sion of meaning about the term, which is attribu- 
 table to the fact that value may mean more than 
 one thing, or at the least is caused or produced by 
 more than one thing, as I shall endeavor to explain 
 to you. 
 
 The broad meaning of the word in painting is 
 not different from the meaning of the same word in 
 the business world. Personal and real properties 
 have a value, as judged by a standard of gold or 
 silver ; the tones and shades in a picture have a 
 value as judged by a standard of light or dark. 
 The hue, or coloring principle, may be said to have 
 nothing to do with the estimate of a tone's impor- 
 tance. Value does not reckon with colors as color, 
 but only with the quantities of light or dark they 
 may reflect. It is the intensity of a tone or shade
 
 144 AKT FOR art's SAKE 
 
 that counts, and not the hue of a red or the hue of 
 an ultramarine. Hence an etching, a pen-and-ink, 
 a sepia, or a charcoal drawing, may show values 
 quite as well as a painting in colors. 
 
 In black-and-white work the unit of value is usu- 
 ally black, and all the shades of white, gray, or 
 black have a relative worth or rank as they approach 
 the blackest dark in the drawing. There is no good 
 reason except custom, why, inversely, white should 
 not be used as a unit, and all the tones be given a 
 rank as they approach the purest white or the 
 ground of the paper. For, as already observed in 
 treating of light-and-shade, each shade is a light as 
 compared with a deeper shade, and each light is a 
 shade as compared with a higher light. However, 
 the usage of the artists is usually against the reck- 
 oning by whites ; and so in all pen, pencil, or etch- 
 ing-needle work, we would better look upon black 
 as the standard. 
 
 To illustrate this sliding scale of value in tone 
 let us, for example, consider an etching of a land- 
 scape. If the light come from the distant back- 
 ground, as we may suppose, the greatest, that is the 
 strongest values would be in the immediate fore- 
 ground. The grass, the bushes, the trees, would 
 be full in line and dark in tone, showing perhaps as 
 the most distinct lines (or blacks) upon the paper. 
 A.8 the landscape recedes the value of tree-trunks
 
 Ami — bA ; ON, Reflection
 
 VALUES 145 
 
 and their shadows begins to diminish. From a 
 sharp black they become a dull or broken black ; 
 and the lines show smaller, thinner, weaker. Far- 
 ther back in the distance the trees show still 
 fainter, and the foliage is made up by delicate 
 black lines, broken by light in such a manner that 
 it holds not as a mass of black but as a mass of 
 gray. If a white house were standing by a sheet 
 of water in the distance, its sides would almost 
 count as the white of the paper, that is they would 
 be lightly touched with gray ; the shadows of the 
 corners would be slightly indicated to preserve 
 identity of form ; and the sheet of water would 
 have merely some faint lines about it. Lowest in 
 value of all, that is reckoning from black as a unit, 
 would be the sunset sky (the highest light), repre- 
 sented by the white of the paper, perhaps cut here 
 and there by a scratchy line to indicate the form of 
 sun-shafts or clouds. If, in this supposed case of 
 gradation from foreground to background, any tone 
 should be given too dark or too light for its par- 
 ticular place or prominence, it would be false in 
 value and would give an untrue appearance to the 
 stching. The differences in the light or dark of 
 shades such as those we have supposed, you will 
 naturally conclude, are caused by aerial perspective, 
 the falling off in the intensity of objects as they 
 recede in the background ; but with the cause I am 
 10
 
 146 ART FOR AET'S SAKE 
 
 not now directly concerned. I wish merely to point 
 out to you that whatever may be the cause there is 
 a difference in the light-pitch of the various objects 
 or their shades running along the scale from black 
 to white ; and it is simj^ly this difference in pitch 
 that artists regard as a difference in value. 
 
 So much for the handling of values when the 
 darks are pronounced and the gradation toward 
 white is uniform. For the treatment of weaker 
 notes, and those which are merely shades of white, 
 the same landscape will furnish us an example inde- 
 pendent of recession or gradation by atmosphere 
 if we suppose in the immediate foreground a thick 
 clump of trees and under the shadow of the trees a 
 shepherdess dressed in white with a drove of sheep. 
 The girl's dress in reality may be pure white ; but 
 it is a white seen under shadow, and that is very dif- 
 ferent from a white seen under sunlight. The dress 
 will ai:)pear whiter than the gray sheep, but if the 
 etcher be so unfortunate as to make it a pure white 
 — that is, the white of the paper — he will find when 
 he comes to put in his light sky that he has left 
 himself no further resource, no higher step in the 
 whites to attain. He has played his highest card 
 too soon. The etching would be false in value, and 
 the etcher would be obliged to go back and lowei 
 the white of the girl's dress to a whitish-gray di& 
 tiuctly darker than the sky.
 
 VALUES 147 
 
 An illustration similar to this would be an etch- 
 ing of an interior where light is coming in at a win- 
 dow. On the wall perhaps hangs an engraving 
 with a white-jDaper edge to it ; around it is a white 
 mat ; and around the mat a white frame. Here 
 would be three whites, all, comparatively speak- 
 ing, under shadow ; but supposing them all of the 
 same material there would still be considerable 
 variation in their pitches, because the engraving 
 edge is more under shadow than the mat, the mat 
 more than the frame. As regards the darkness of 
 their whites, then, the engraving edge would come 
 first, the mat next, and the frame last ; while the 
 light coming in at the window would be whiter 
 than any one of them, or all of them put together. 
 In these last two illustrations you will note that the 
 variation in the whites is caused by the uneven 
 distribution of light. It is, in fact, nothing more 
 nor less than what the English painter would call 
 a matter of " tone ; " but, again, we need not con- 
 cern ourselves just now with the cause nor be con 
 fused by it. The effect is a difference in the pitch 
 of liglit or dark, and that is always, no matter what 
 the cause, a difference in value. 
 
 Wlifii color is used the unit of value instead of 
 being a dark is a light, and painters generally esti- 
 mate the importance of a tone or shade of color by 
 comparison with the highest light, or what is in ef-
 
 148 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 feet the same thing, the highest color. To avoid mis- 
 understanding it may be worth while to repeat that 
 this estimate is not made by taking into account 
 the hue or coloring principle of colors, but only the 
 tone or shade — the quantity of reflected light or 
 dark, Vermilion would have no more value than 
 ultramarine were it not that the vermilion reflects 
 twenty-five per cent, of light and the ultramarine 
 only seven per cent. Each color or broken tone of 
 color has a value proportionate to the quantity of 
 light it reflects (Fig. 11) ; and, scientifically, the 
 values of the six leading colors, if all subjected to 
 the same beam of sunlight, would rank, from high- 
 est to lowest, in the order of yellow, orange, green, 
 red, blue, violet. These values m a picture, you 
 will understand, are not positive, but always rela- 
 tive to other colors used. The positive percentages 
 of light in the leading colors have been computed 
 by scientists, yet the computations practically sei*ve 
 no purpose in art. For instance, chrome-yellow re- 
 flects about eighty per cent, of light, green about 
 forty per cent., and orange-red about sixty per cent. 
 With these known percentages one could, I im- 
 agine, scientifically construct the chief values of 
 a picture. Thus, let the chrome-yellow with its 
 eighty per cent, of light represent a sunset sky in 
 the background ; let the green with its forty per 
 cent, represent the grass in the immediate fore*
 
 VALUES 149 
 
 ground ; and let the orange-red with its sixty per 
 cent, represent the sail of a Venetian fishing-vessel 
 upon the water of the middle distance. Now we 
 have the three leading pitches of light in the three 
 planes of the picture, and all of them truthfully 
 maintained and in position. The green is to the 
 orange-red as the orange-red is to the chrome- 
 yellow ; or, expressed in figures as regards the val- 
 ues, 40 is to 60 as 60 to 80. 
 
 But art is far removed from science and mathe- 
 matics. The values of colors in a picture are not 
 computed by painters with scientific or positive 
 percentages of light, nor do they build pictures 
 in any such matter of figures as I have described. 
 The value of a tone is usually determined by its 
 relationship to other tones, and not by mathemat- 
 ical calculation but by the eye at a single glance. 
 To judge whether a note is relatively too high or 
 too low is a feat not difficult of accomplishment, 
 though to place the note quite right with a brush 
 may not be so easy. One look at a bouquet of flow- 
 ers made up of pink roses, yellow roses, and violets 
 will tell us that the yellow has more value than 
 the pink, and the pink more value than the violet 
 (Fig. 11) ; just as in the pictures of Sebastiano del 
 Piombo the orange - colored robes of his women 
 are seen to out-value the green and the red robes. 
 That color which appears t,o be the lightest, though
 
 i50 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 it may not be the strongest, is generally the one 
 that has the most value. When broken or mixed 
 tones are used the problem becomes a little more 
 intricate, but very little harder to solve by the spec- 
 tator. A brass kettle is not a pure yellow, but we 
 have no difficulty in determining its value as com- 
 pared with a copper kettle ; nor is the scarlet of a 
 maple-leaf a pure scarlet, yet its value is easily dis- 
 tinguished from the deep red of an oak-leaf. There 
 is, however, some difficulty in detecting the slight 
 inequalities in the tones of the same color when 
 seen at varying distances, of which I come to speak 
 immediately. 
 
 The meaning which recognizes value as the rela- 
 tive worth in point of light-pitch of the various colors 
 is the meaning of the term as understood and set 
 forth in print by Fromentin, Blanc, Couture, and 
 others, about twenty or thirty years ago, to speak 
 generally. But there has been a change in the ap- 
 plication of the word since then of which it is neces- 
 sary to take note. The advanced painter of to-day 
 does not always consider the difference between a 
 green and a blue, a red and a yellow, a violet and 
 an orange, as a matter of value, or, at the least, rare- 
 ly speaks of it as such. If he were questioned he 
 would doubtless call this a difference in colors — a 
 chromatic difference. Value in his vocabulary, per- 
 haps by a strained use of the word, has come to
 
 VALUES 151 
 
 mean the relative importance of colors similar in 
 hue and almost of the same intensity. 
 
 This slight difference in value was exemplified 
 some years ago by Fortuny in his picture of the 
 "Academicians of St, Luke Examiniug a Model," 
 in which the painter has posed a nude figure on 
 the top of a marble table, and thrown the pinkish- 
 yellow flesh of the figure against a delicate pink 
 wall as a background. When Gerome saw the pict- 
 ure he asked Fortuny why he had not placed the 
 figure against a dark ground for contrast, as he 
 (Gerome) would have placed it. Fortuny rather sar- 
 castically replied : "Because I am not the great artist 
 you are, sir." Which was the greater artist we need 
 not now stop to inquire, except to say that Fortuny 
 was certainly the greater as reg^ards the arrange- 
 ment of this picture. To relieve pinkish -yellow 
 against black would have been an easy enough 
 task ; but to relieve pinkish-yellow against pink 
 was the task of a skilled technician. Fortuny was 
 seeking a delicate color -scheme, and found it by 
 a truthful yet very slight discrinjination in his val- 
 ues. The detaching of the figure from the back- 
 ground created distance and air; the slight dift'er- 
 ence between the pinkish -yellow of tlie flesh and 
 the pink wall was sutlicient to do this ; and the 
 gain was that the pink of the wall, instead of break- 
 ing the flow of color, as black wouUl have done,
 
 152 AKT FOR art's SAKE 
 
 facilitated it, made it subtle, rendered it half-mys« 
 terious. 
 
 Fortuny's work shows not only a modern mean^ 
 ing of values, but is an illustration of the advance 
 in color-delicacy which has been made in recent 
 years. Working by the Gerome scheme of con- 
 trasts, a mediocre artist in painting the portrait of a 
 lady would perhaps paint her in a lilac dress with 
 blue ribbons, white linen, gold ornaments, and a 
 red background ; and the differences in pitch be- 
 tween these various colors would, under the Blanc- 
 Couture definition, be his differences in value. But 
 the more modern valuer, if I may be allowed that 
 word, would arrange matters otherwise. He would 
 paint her in black silk, trimmed perhaps with black 
 velvet, black lace, and jet beads, and he would 
 possibly place her against a black or dark-colored 
 ground. These various intensities of black relieved 
 and detached one from another would be a part 
 of his scheme of values. And for an illustration 
 of the effective way in which some of these blacks 
 have been handled I refer you to Fortuny again, the 
 "Portrait of a Spanish Lady," in the Metropolitan 
 Museum, New York. 
 
 At the Munich Exhibition in 1888, and also at the 
 Paris Exposition in 1889, there was a well-known 
 picture (Fig. 12) by Duez, the French painter, show- 
 ing a woman dressed in red, seated on a red lounge,
 
 VALUES 153 
 
 back of which was a red wall. There were no less 
 than eight or nine reds in the picture, and the paint- 
 er had set himself the task of painting a harmony of 
 them all. He did not wish to break in upon the 
 prevailing color with other colors, yet he wished the 
 objects to be in their proper positions and detached 
 one from another. He accomplished this not by 
 contrasts, but by the use of like hues. By slightly 
 varying the intensities of red, he detached his ob- 
 jects and yet maintained the color-flow. In the 
 same Munich Exhibition were some of the pictures 
 of Mr. Whistler, showing figures in gray relieved 
 against gray grounds, figures in brown relieved 
 against brown grounds, and figures in white re- 
 lieved against white grounds. The slight differ- 
 ences in the intensities, or light-reflecting qualities 
 of these grays, browns, or whites, reveal Mr. Whis- 
 tler's understanding of values. His practice does 
 not produce relief by contrast after the Gerome for- 
 mula, but a i-elief by accordance. Each tone is 
 guarded and preserved slightly but securely ; it is 
 not walled up and shut out by strongly contrasted 
 oppositions. The values are acutely perceived and 
 delicately recorded, the color-flow is not broken, 
 the relationship of the different tones is maintained, 
 every note is in its proper place. 
 
 Now here is apparently a second, and, I think, a 
 more commonly used meaning of the word value.
 
 154 AET FOR art's SAKE 
 
 In reality the meaning of the word has not changed, 
 but its application has. Value is still the relative 
 worth in light or dark of tones ; it is still con- 
 cerned with the light or dark of colors, but 
 more with similar and closely related than con- 
 trasted colors. The difference between a dull red 
 and a dark red is a refinement upon the differ- 
 ence between a red and a blue. The technical 
 difficulty of giving the necessary relief is greater, 
 and the delicacy of color is brought out with more 
 cunning. 
 
 As for the cause of the variation in the light or 
 dark of the similar colors in the latter instances 
 I have supposed, it is not, perhaps, so much at- 
 tributable to the intervening atmosphere as to the 
 colors being in slightly different positions, or re- 
 ceiving and reflecting different intensities of light. 
 If you break a spread of newly fallen snow, throw- 
 ing a patch of it ahead of you, you cannot fail to 
 see the patch distinctly relieved from the snow 
 beneath it. All the snow is, practically speaking, 
 of the one white ; but there is a difference in 
 value or intensity between the patch and the main 
 body of snow beneath it, else we should not be 
 able to distinguish the one from the other. The 
 patch receives varied intensities of light. Some 
 of it is illumined directly from the sky, the sides 
 of it receive reflected light, the underneath parts
 
 VALUES 155 
 
 of it have light thrown up from the snow be- 
 neath it. These trifling variations in the light-re- 
 flecting powers of the snow and its patch form a 
 problem in values the truthful solution of which 
 upon canvas could alone give us the appearance 
 of nature. A picture by Mr. Wyatt Eaton, called 
 "Keflection" (Fig. 13), in which a thoughtful- 
 looking girl is seated close to a mirror which re- 
 flects her side face, is a practical illustration of this 
 difference in value caused by difference in light. 
 The flesh-color of the face appears in both images, 
 but the intensity in the reflection is not so great 
 as in the original, for the reason that it does not 
 rsceive or reflect so direct a light as the original. 
 In the case of the black silk dress and its trim- 
 mings, of which I spoke a moment ago, the dif- 
 ference in the blacks might be due to the respective 
 reflecting powers of the various substances. The 
 velvet would be the darkest of all fz'om its lack of 
 even surface ; the lace would be next in order of 
 blackness ; the silk would be lighter because its 
 closely woven fibre makes a better reflector of 
 light ; and lightest of all the four blacks would 
 be the jet beads, which in their polished surfaces 
 would resemble tiny black mirrors reflecting the 
 light of surrounding objects. Some of the causes, 
 then, of the variation in pitch between objects of 
 the same or similar color may be set down to dif.
 
 156 ART FOR ART*S SAKE 
 
 ference in position, difference in light, and difference 
 in ligbt-reflectiug power or texture. 
 
 There are, however, several other causes for the 
 variations which must be enumerated ; but, again, 
 I must warn you against confusing cause with ef- 
 fect. We must keep our eye on the effect — the varia- 
 tion in the light-reflecting power of tones or shades. 
 For that must be reckoned with as value regard- 
 less of its cause. The next cause of value, then, 
 is atmosphere. Owing to the intervening air two 
 papers of the same color and in the same light, if 
 seen at different distances, will not appear of a like 
 intensity. As reserved in speaking of aerial per- 
 spective, a yellow at one hundred yards shifts into 
 a dull-orange, a blue into a dull-blue, a green puts 
 on a grayish-green hue ; not only the intensity 
 changes, but oftentimes the hue. As a result, where 
 there is comparison there is value. The difference 
 between similar colors at varying ranges brings 
 home to us the distinction in values caused by 
 atmosphere with some emphasis. The flesh-color 
 of a man's face, and the blue or black of his coat, 
 are noticeably stronger at ten paces than those of 
 another man in a line of sight a hundred paces 
 beyond him ; and the red of a brick house before 
 us is more intensely red than that of another brick 
 bouse half a mile away from us. If we imagined 
 a row of men, a hundred yards long, and a row of
 
 VALUES 167 
 
 brick houses half a mile long, the difference in 
 value wou]d not be less real, but it would be less ap- 
 parent through the delicacy of the gradation. And 
 in art it is by this delicacy of gradation, its ab- 
 sence or its presence, that we detect the unskilled 
 worker or the trained technician. 
 
 The disregard of atmospheric conditions, the lack 
 of color-gradation, the absence of true values, were 
 the chief technical shoi'tcomings of the Kussian 
 painter Verestchagin, whose large expanses of can- 
 vas were recently exhibited in New York. Among 
 these pictures was one representing General Skobe- 
 leff on horseback dashing along a line of soldiers 
 after some battle. It was a snow scene, but the 
 snow in the trenches of the immediate foreground 
 was little stronger in value than the snow in the 
 mountain valleys five miles beyond it. Near this 
 picture hung one of a camp hospital, with four or 
 five large tents receding diagonally, each beyond 
 the other, toward the background. The linear per- 
 spective was properly i-egarded, the tents shrank in 
 dimensions as they receded ; but the acirial persiDec- 
 tive was neglected, the tents did not fall off in in- 
 tensity of coloring. One of the best pictures in the 
 whole collection was a small painting of the "Jews 
 "Wailing Wall at Jerusalem ; " but it, too, was not 
 quite true in values. The wall was seen in perspec- 
 tive, receding into the background perliaps a hun-
 
 168 AET FOE AET'S SAKE 
 
 clred or more yards ; yet the last stone of it was 
 quite as strong in coloring as the first stone, the 
 last figure in white weeping before it was just as 
 brightly white as the first one on the line. The 
 linear perspective was right enough again, but the 
 effect of atmosphere, the true values of the different 
 hues and shades were lacking. The same painter's 
 picture called "Blowing from Guns," an incident in 
 the Sepoy War, showed that he was not without 
 knowledge of aerial perspective, for in it there was 
 a difference in pitch in the white garments of the 
 victims, and also in the white helmets of the Brit- 
 ish soldiers ; but this piece was an exception to the 
 disregard of delicate values marking the majority of 
 the pictures in the collection. 
 
 If we turn from Verestchagin's battle-pieces to 
 Lerolle's quiet church interior, called "The Organ 
 Rehearsal," now in the Metropolitan Museum, we 
 shall find that atmosphere has a very potent effect 
 in changing the values of tones and shades. The 
 scene is in the organ loft of a church, a girl is sing- 
 ing, and some people in groups are listening to 
 her. In front of her the choir -railing, seen in 
 perspective, runs across the church. Notice this 
 railing the next time you see the picture and 
 you will see a decided difference in the color- 
 pitch grading from foreground to background. The 
 foreground part is perceptibly stronger in value
 
 VALUES 159 
 
 than the background part, and the change in the 
 coloring of the railing from high to low can be 
 plainly traced with the eye. It is not obtrusively 
 prominent, and doubtless you would not notice it at 
 all unless your attention were called to it ; but it is 
 by just such gi-adatious as this throughout the pict- 
 ure that the sense and feeling of air, the proper re- 
 lations of the figures to their surroundings, the 
 expanse and extent of the church, are given. Mr. 
 Bridgman shows an effect similar to this in one of 
 his Algerian pictures called " On the Terrace." It 
 is a scene from the heights of the town, and in front 
 of the terrace is a white wall beginning at one corner 
 of the canvas and running diagonally into the back- 
 ground. In the original the wall is all of one pitch 
 of white, but in the picture the foreground-end of it 
 is a chalk white, and this white is graded through 
 various stages of depression until at the background- 
 end we see a gi-ayish-white. 
 
 And finally, as good illustrations of values arising 
 from atmospheric effect, I wish to call your atten- 
 tion once more to the pictures of Mr. Whistler. 
 The notes, nocturnes, symphonies, and harmonies 
 of color, by which names his pictures have come to 
 find lodgement in our minds, are the most delicate 
 and refined studies in values that you will see in 
 the whole range of modern art. His figure-pieces 
 are usually designed as studies in reds, browns.
 
 160 AKT FOR art's SAKE 
 
 grays, pinks, yellows, blacks, or whites ; but what, 
 ever colors he originally chooses are taken up, 
 repeated, and carried through the whole picture. 
 For instance, a lady dressed in pinkish -gray may 
 be standing on a walk in front of a house. The 
 walk will be gray, the house will be pinkish-gray, 
 the trees will be gray, the pink sky beyond it will 
 be tinged with gray. The picture will strike you 
 instantly as a note in pink and gray. And these 
 different pitches of the same or similar colors will 
 be so skilfully rendered, tbeir respective values will 
 be so well maintained that, though you can scarcely 
 detect the difference between them, they will never- 
 theless give you the sense of distance and the feel- 
 ing of air with irresistible force. 
 
 In his landscapes the gradations are even more 
 subtile, and the subtility of Mr. Whistler's values is 
 the greater from the extreme simplicity of his com- 
 positions. A little patch of canvas no larger than 
 your two hands will show, perhaps, one of his shore 
 scenes ; a strip of it gives us the gray of the sand 
 or the green of the grass ; a second strip gives us 
 the ocean ; a third strip gives us the sky, and that is 
 all there is to the composition of the picture. But 
 now, if you examine the green of that shore or 
 meadow as it runs back from the foreground per- 
 haps a quarter of a mile, you will find yourself won- 
 dering how the artist contrived to make it lie iiat
 
 c 
 
 r 
 
 9 
 
 > 
 < 
 
 I 
 >
 
 VALUES 161 
 
 and run back. There is apparently little chance for 
 linear perspective, for there are few lines except 
 those of the flat sod ; and there are no changes of 
 color, nor difference in value of one portion of the 
 green over another portion of it that you can dis- 
 tinguish with any degree of certainty. Yet the green 
 recedes, and it does so by almost imperceptible gra- 
 dations of color, by the most delicate handling of 
 values yet known in art — so delicate that they are 
 hardly seen, but rather felt to be there. And this 
 gradation runs from the foreground down to the 
 shore, and from the shore it begins again, on a 
 slightly different pitch, and runs across the sea to 
 the horizon, where it begins once more in the same 
 way and runs up the sky. The values of earth, sea, 
 and sky, as different masses in relation to each other, 
 are correctly maintained, and through each of the 
 three masses the values are carried again with a 
 greater refinement and a more cunning brush. Per- 
 haps this gradation by values is an illustration in 
 paint of what Mr. Whistler has said in words, that a 
 painting is finished when all the means of its pro- 
 duction have vanished from the canvas. Whatever 
 his theory of art, his practice certainly places before 
 us charming bits of nature, as beautiful in their 
 coloring as they are true in the relationship of their 
 parts. Above all, as a creator as well as a tech- 
 nician, he gives us more of the spirit of a scene than 
 11
 
 162 ART FOE AET'S SAKE 
 
 its dry facts and literal forms. He knows how to 
 grasp and emphasize striking features ; and he 
 knows how to leave to the imagination much that if 
 placed in the picture would simply drag it down. 
 
 I began this subject to-day by saying that "value 
 meant more than one thing, or at the least was caused 
 or produced by more than one thing." I must re- 
 peat that it reckons only with the quantity of light 
 or dark shown by a tone or shade ; but this quan- 
 tity of light or dark may be produced by several 
 different causes. We have examined some of these 
 causes ; first, the original difference in the light or 
 dark of colors ; secondly, the different light received 
 or reflected by similar colors placed in slightly vary- 
 ing positions ; and thirdly, the influence of atmos- 
 phere. Now, there is still a fourth cause productive 
 of a difference in the light or dark of tones which I 
 hesitate about referring to, because I may be thought 
 disposed to mix up terms and misname certain art- 
 means. This fourth cause is light-and-shade, or 
 chiaroscuro. 
 
 It may be objected to the atmospheric influence 
 that it is nothing but aerial perspective, that it 
 should be regarded as such, and not be confounded 
 with value. A similar objection may be made to 
 the introduction and compounding of chiaroscuro 
 with value. My answer is twofold. First, no mat- 
 ter what the cause, whether original difference in
 
 VALUES 163 
 
 color, aerial perspective, or simple light-and-sbade, 
 the effect is a variance in pitch which must be 
 recognized as value. In other words, a matter of 
 atmosphere or of chiaroscuro is also a matter of 
 value. Secondly, it is necessary to treat of these 
 art-means as productive of or influencing value, for 
 the reason that the modern painters so regard 
 them. Painters have certainly a right to give their 
 own meanings to their own products, or means of 
 production, however much it may displease diction- 
 ary makers and art critics. If they choose to re- 
 gard aerial perspective and chiaroscuro as value, 
 and they certainly do so regard them, then they 
 must be recognized as such by other people. The 
 term has undergone several changes in its usage 
 since Couture and Blanc defined it as the light or 
 dark of different colors and confined its application 
 to colors. You need not, then, be surprised to hear 
 so modern an artist as Carolus-Duran saying to a 
 pupil in his reported studio talks : " You have a 
 shadow there on the neck that looks like a stain, be- 
 cause it is not true in value."* Nor need you be 
 surprised to hear William M. Hunt, in his Talks on 
 Art, speaking about " Values — or masses of light 
 and shade ;" and another artist writing in the Art 
 Amateur : "These degrees of light and dark, whether 
 due to shade, to atmospheric effect, to lighting, or 
 * Contemporary Review, May, 1888.
 
 164 AET roK art's sake 
 
 to local color, are the values." For it is precisely 
 the " degrees of light and dark " that produce value, 
 and all causes of these deerrees must be taken into 
 consideration, among them chiaroscuro. 
 
 I have in mind a picture of Arab horsemen dash- 
 ing out from beneath a grove of trees. The first 
 horseman is iu the open light, the second still under 
 the shade of the trees ; both are on the same plane 
 and but a few feet ajiart. Let us suppose bo-th of 
 these horses are bay-horses. Though of precisely 
 the same coloring, would not the one iu the open 
 be of a higher value than the one under the wood? 
 Undoubtedly. And to what would this difference 
 be due? To atmosphere? No; they are on the 
 same plane, and we see them both through the same 
 density of air. To original difference of color ? No ; 
 we are supposing them both to be bay-horses or at 
 any rate of the same coloring. To what, then, is the 
 variation in appearance due unless it be to light-and- 
 shade ? It is simply the difference between a bay- 
 horse in full sunlight and a bay-horse in shadow, 
 and this is not only a matter of light-and-shade, but 
 a matter of value. 
 
 Take, again, a Cairo street in the late afternoon 
 when the shadows of the houses extend across the 
 street and fill it with shade. At one part of it there 
 is a missing house and a broad belt of sunlight pours 
 through the opening, turning whatever it touches
 
 VALUES 165 
 
 into white and gold. Instantly there is a difference 
 in value. The white walls in sunhght become the 
 highest white, to which all the other whites whether 
 under shadow or in half-tone pay allegiance. The 
 picture of the "Turkish School," by Decamps in 
 the Musee Fodor in Amsterdam is a good illustra- 
 tion of a similar effect. The school interior, its 
 gayly dressed occupants, and its gray-haired teacher 
 are all in shadow, except where, through a barred 
 window, the sunlight falls and strikes upon the 
 wall. And this spot of light is so vivid that people 
 oftentimes mistake it for reality and look about 
 the gallery to see from what window the light 
 comes. The relation of the light to the shadow is 
 certainly true enough to make the illusion momen- 
 tarily possible. Were the sunlight painted in a 
 lower key, or were the interior shadows painted 
 higher, we should feel the inconsistency at once. 
 The picture would not give the appearance of nat- 
 ure, and a painter would say of it that it was false 
 in value. 
 
 If these wide variations in pitch caused by light 
 or shade in mass can be regarded as value, then it 
 is difficult to understand why light or shade in 
 smaller quantities should not be considered in the 
 same way. The difference between the flesh-color 
 of the chin and tliat of the throat just beneath it 
 may be due to light-aud-shade, yet each tone must
 
 166 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 be reckoned with for its value, for if either be 
 placed too high or too low the portrait is rendered 
 untrue. It was doubtless the placing of too strong 
 a dark on the neck, judged by the light of the 
 cheek or the chin, that led Carolus-Duran to say 
 what he did to his pupil. It might be said that 
 the pupil simply made a slip in his light-aud-shade 
 by getting the shadow too dark ; and true enough 
 that was the only error. But the result of the error 
 was that the relation of the tones was falsified, and 
 that, I am insisting, was a falsification of value. A 
 group of young men dressed in white teunis-suits 
 standing under a tree, some of them in shadow and 
 some in suulight, is a matter of light-and-shade 
 again, and in England a matter of tone ; but the 
 comparison of the whites in sunlight with the 
 whites under shadow creates value. 
 
 Wherever there is an opportunity for the com- 
 parison of one tone or shade with another tone or 
 shade there value presents itself regardless of how 
 the tones or shades are produced. But it is always 
 necessary that there should be something with 
 which to compare. There must be a comparative 
 standard or unit by which an estimate of a tone 
 may be made. There could hardly be value to a 
 vase taken separately from other objects any more 
 than to a bag of gold on a desert island ; but great 
 distance or many objects are not necessary to the
 
 VALUES 167 
 
 comparison. The value of the vase could be esti- 
 mated by comparison with another vase, a piece of 
 marble, or a wall background ; and the fold of a 
 yellow dress may serve for comparison with a yellow 
 glove, or even with portions of the same dress seen 
 in a different light, or at a slight distance. There 
 is, however, a delicate line of distinction, rather 
 hard to determine, which marks the limit where 
 value leaves off and pure light-and-shade is alone 
 regarded. 
 
 A broad use of the word is sometimes, though 
 not often, applied to the intensities of the difl'erent 
 planes or sections of a picture as they are affected 
 by sunlight, shadow, or atmosphere. Thus a green 
 meadow-landscape may be shadowed in the fore- 
 ground, sunlit in the middle distance, half-lighted 
 in the background, and obscured in the sky, giving 
 four distinct pitches of color, each of them a mass 
 of diversified intensities in itself, and each holding 
 a relationship as a mass to the other masses. Or, 
 as in the landscapes of Mr. Whistler, there may be 
 a green foreground, a middle distance of beach and 
 sea, and a background of dark skj' each different in 
 pitch again. Or there may be three other pitches 
 of intensity, as shown in the people, the marbles, 
 and the buildings of Couture's "Romans of the De- 
 cadence." 
 
 It is neceasary in good art that the intensity of
 
 168 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 each plane be maintained within itself and be main- 
 tained in relationship to the other planes. The rea- 
 son of this rule of art we would instantly appreciate 
 could we see an example of the rule's violation. 
 One of Couture's Romans painted in strong colors, 
 and given a high value, if put into the background 
 of his picture would not stay there. The strong 
 coloring, the coloring of the first plane, would bring 
 the figure forward into that plane notwithstanding 
 it might be linearly represented as standing by a 
 distant column of the second plane. So in a land- 
 scape an intensity of the first plane if put in the 
 second plane would appear there as a spot, an ac- 
 cidental brush-stroke, which we should feel like 
 wiping out. In either case relationship would be 
 falsified and the picture would be " spotty " or dis- 
 jointed. 
 
 It may be carrying coals to Newcastle to explain 
 my explanation of values, but some may still feel 
 like asking : " What is the object of this regard for 
 pitch and intensity after all ? " and I feel that it is 
 perhaps necessary to say a few words more con- 
 cerning what value accomplishes, for it is certainly 
 one of the most important features of modern tech- 
 nic, and one upon which great stress is laid by the 
 painters. First, then, the proper maintenance of 
 values places objects, tones, and shades in a picture 
 in the precise relative position which they occupy
 
 XV_PiNTURRiCCHIO, Portrait of a Boy.
 
 VALUES 169 
 
 in the natural scene ; it unites all things by giving 
 the appearance of atmosphere, and blends the scene 
 into one consistent whole, such as we know nature 
 itself to be. Along the northern shore of the Medi- 
 terranean — one of the most beautiful shores on the 
 globe — an imaginative person may see through the 
 depths of the clear water what looks to be a mimic 
 world lying along the bottom of the sea. The rocks 
 appear to stand as mountains, the sands as valleys, 
 the sea-weeds as forests, the sea-shells as houses ; 
 light shines through it, shadow marks it, different 
 color-intensities appear everywhere, and over all is 
 the lapseless wave, the swaying current, that ce- 
 ments the whole into one — the oneness of the sea- 
 world. Our own world is much like it, so moulded, 
 so diversified, so shadowed, so lighted ; and over 
 it, cementing and holding it together by iiivisible 
 hands, is a similar lapseless wave, a swaying current, 
 not of water but of air. The transparent medium 
 through which in each case we are enabled to see, 
 helps to give proper place to objects, lights, and 
 colors, so that they have a worth according to their 
 position which we may estimate as value. Without 
 relative positions, without true values, the world of 
 sight in actual life would be but a jumble of con- 
 fused shades and tones ; objects and colors would 
 not recede ; order would give place to chaos. In 
 reaching out for a hand we might grasp a wrist ; in
 
 170 AET FOR art's SAKE 
 
 walking we should stumble, not seeing depressions 
 and elevations ; in throwing a stone we should not 
 know what force to give it, for distance would be 
 annihilated. 
 
 You may have seen somewhat of this unnatural 
 chaotic eifect in mediocre pictures where the differ- 
 ent objects fail to "detach;" a portrait head, for 
 instance, hopelessly fastened to its background, a 
 tree with its foliage glued fast to a white cloud, or 
 two sails of an oncoming ship which appear as 
 one. But a short time ago my attention was at- 
 tracted by this very lack of values in a pictui-e at 
 one of our spring exhibitions, showing a side view 
 of a yoke of oxen in the tall grass by the edge of a 
 pond. The body of the near ox completely hid 
 the body of the far one, but there were two heads 
 and two necks appearing in the picture, and one 
 ox had his head down drinking while the other 
 had his raised. The painter had not given the 
 true values to the different heads and necks. The 
 head of the far ox rose directly over the head 
 of the near one ; it apparently did not recede be- 
 yond the other a hair's breadth. The result was as 
 might be expected. The public was treated to the 
 museum curiosity of the double-headed ox repro- 
 duced in art. 
 
 You may often see similar examples of incom- 
 petency among artists of the English school, and
 
 VALUES 171 
 
 also at times among the impressionists. The lat- 
 ter have been from the begiuning strong advocates 
 of values, yet their practice has not always exem- 
 plified them happily. In some of the portraits by 
 Manet, the founder of the school and possibly its 
 strongest painter, the heads come forward from the 
 bodies and the necks recede, through the use of too 
 strong or too weak colorings ; the background in 
 Bastien-Lepage's "Joan of Arc " is confused for the 
 same reason ; and in Degas's work confusion is 
 sometimes worse than confounded by having the 
 pink dress and head of a ballet-girl in one plane of 
 the picture, and her feet in another plane. From 
 this it is not necessary for us to infer that Manet, 
 Bastien, Degas, Renoir, and others, are inferior 
 painters. On the contrary, we shall some day come 
 to forget their extreme point of view with their 
 technical experiments, and think of them as men 
 who advanced the serious study of art by the dis- 
 covery of new appearances in nature and new 
 methods of interpreting those appearances. 
 
 There is one more object of values concerning 
 which I made some mention in my second lecture 
 by quoting Fromentin iis saying that " the whole 
 art of the colori.st lies in his knowledge in employ- 
 ing the exact relations of values in tones." This 
 statement of Fromentin 's is perhaps a little broad 
 in its scope, but tliere is certainly good cause for
 
 172 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 thinking that color-harmony is largely governed by 
 relation. How or why it is so governed is not easy 
 of explanation, and I can only suggest to you what 
 I think to be the reason of it, namely, that the 
 maintenance of the proper relations and positions 
 of tones is in itself a cause of harmony independent 
 of the tones employed. Whether we like or dislike 
 certain conjunctions of color in a picture, we do not 
 feel any discord when the same colors are employed 
 by nature, except occasionally when the light is dis- 
 coloring or bleaching. Yellow, blue, and green may 
 jar in a picture of an autumn landscape, because in 
 it the relations of tones are only partly given or per- 
 haps not given at all. The green sward may be 
 shown but a few feet below the scarlet maple, and 
 the top of the scarlet maple may be the resting- 
 place for the bkie sky. But the autumn landscape 
 itself, when we look out upon it, seems not inhar- 
 monious. The green sward runs flat for miles, and 
 the blue sky, in its indefinable depth and flawless 
 transparency, is far above and far beyond the scar- 
 let maple. And as the relationships in nature or art 
 are coarse or refined, strongly marked as in full sun- 
 light, or subtilely blended as in twilight scenes, so 
 is our sense of harmony comparatively satisfied or 
 superlatively delighted. Three broad bands of red, 
 green, and blue placed side by side, though not dis- 
 agreeable, would hardly be called a rhythm of col-
 
 VALUES 173 
 
 or. The relationship between them is not delicate. 
 But take these colors and place them on the three 
 points of a triangle, one on each point, and then 
 blend in toward the centre of the triangle through 
 the intermediate notes until we are unable to say 
 where one color leaves off and another color begins, 
 and immediately we shall have a harmony. 
 
 It is this delicate blending — this subtile running 
 of one note into another, yet ever maintaining values 
 and relationships — that gives to Mr. Whistler's pict- 
 ui'es their beauty of color ; that lends the charm of 
 light and air to the landscapes of Corot ; that makes 
 Watteau's fete scenes a delight to the eye, and 
 helps place the pictures of the little Dutchman in 
 the first rank of art. I see, or at the least think I 
 see, this flow of tones true in value and accurate in 
 position in the masterpieces of Paolo Veronese, and 
 Tiepolo ; it seems to me apparent in the subtile reds 
 and yellows of Rubens ; in the browns and grays 
 of Pieter de Hooghe ; in the reds and golds of that 
 greatest painter of all, Velasquez. As far as I am 
 able to judge, therefoi*e, I may say that the mainte- 
 nance of values in closely related tones of color is a 
 leading principle of color-harmony. Tliis, suppos- 
 ing it to be the true hypothesis, may be entertained 
 without prejudice to the genius of the colorist ; for 
 though tlie principles of color were as well known 
 as those of poetry, yet the production of a harmony
 
 174 ART FOB, art's SAKE 
 
 or an epic would still require the services of those 
 exceptional men, the colorist and the poet. 
 
 From my speaking of Paolo Veronese and Tie- 
 polo in this connection you will doubtless infer, and 
 rightly enough, that the Venetians knew the mean- 
 ing and importance of values. They certainly knew 
 how to maintain the relationship of tones, but the 
 word value, coming from the French valeur, is of 
 modern coinage. All the Venetians, particularly 
 Carpaccio in landscape, show the happy handling of 
 values, and before them the Florentines developed 
 tone-relationship somewhat, notably Botticelli, but 
 not in an entirely satisfactory way. The fourteenth- 
 century painters, Giotto and his followers, were all 
 weak in this feature, painting being then in an im- 
 mature state as regards its technic, and value being 
 not the first, but one of the last technical problems 
 with which j^ainting was to deal. 
 
 Before the Italians, so far as we know, values 
 were little shown, though it is possible the Greeks 
 may have possessed a knowledge of them. Egyp- 
 tian painting, with its planeless, airless, shadowless 
 pictures, is an excellent example of where they are 
 entirely lacking. After the Italians the great mas- 
 ter of values was Velasquez. I do not think that 
 any painter, ancient or modem, ever surpassed him 
 in giving the proper position of tones and shades, 
 and in the placing of objects in atmosphere. The
 
 VALUES 176 
 
 Dutchmen tboroughly understood the importance 
 of relationship, and have been usually spoken of as 
 " strong " in values, especially Rembrandt, though it 
 may be well to note that Rembrandt's strength is 
 often forced and exaggerated strength. His adjust- 
 ment of lights to darks is perhaps true, in a way, 
 but the truth itself is so violent at times as to be 
 almost a falsehood. Franz Hals, Steen, or Brouwer, 
 seem to me more moderate exponents of the princi- 
 ple, though none of them possessed the great power 
 of Rembrandt. After the decline of the Dutch and 
 Flemish schools value as an art-means existed in a 
 feeble way only, until the moderns, notably Corot, 
 took up the subject anew, and Couture, Fromentin, 
 and others wrote upon it under the name of " va- 
 leur." All of the Fontainebleau-Barbizon school 
 comprehended its importance ; Bastien-Lepage was 
 a severe student of it ; and at the present time 
 there are many painters like Carolus-Duran, Bes- 
 nard, Raffaelli, Sargent, Chase, Weir, who employ it 
 in a masterful manner. 
 
 In common with other art-means, value has of 
 late been emphasized too much, perhaps, and given 
 undue prominence. Painting, like poetry, oscillates 
 between extremes. At one time it is color that 
 exercises the ingenuity of the schools, at another 
 time line, at another textures and brush-work, and 
 now it is value that sets the art world agog, and
 
 176 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 makes bad blood between the so-called naturalist 
 and the old-time conservative. The extremists at 
 present are some of the impressionists, who evident- 
 ly see nature as a series of patches pitched iu dif- 
 ferent keys, and maintain that the properly inten- 
 sified patch will represent the human figure, for 
 instance, quite as well as academic modelling and 
 drawing. This drawing by spots, areas, or patches 
 of color, has its advantages which we need not sneer 
 at, yet we may refrain from accepting it as the 
 whole truth to the demoralization of all older be- 
 liefs. The pendulum must vibrate several times 
 before it pauses on the mean line. A partial re- 
 action from the patch of the impressionist to the 
 firm drawing and modelling of the academician 
 will take place, and eventually we shall have a 
 compromise between the two which may produce 
 the art of the true naturalist — that man who, like 
 nature herself, is led into neither one extreme nor 
 the other, but gives to all things their pi-oper place, 
 and blends all things into unity and harmony with 
 that truth of design and nobility of execution which 
 humanly approximate the work of the Great De- 
 signer of AIL
 
 XVI— BENOZZO GOZZOLI, Adoration of Kings (deiail).
 
 LECTUEE VT. 
 
 I/RAWING AND COMPOSITION 
 
 The dispute as to whether liue is more important 
 than color or color than line, has about it the flavor 
 of age but little of the flavor of fair-mindedness. 
 There are stout advocates on either side, but why 
 there should be any question about supremacy 
 when both means are necessary to art, is one of 
 those interesting queries answerable only by con- 
 sidering the faculty for special pleading possessed 
 by the human intellect. 
 
 Color gives the glow and brilliancy of nature ; 
 line its grace and grandeur. Richness and trans- 
 parency, lustre and depth of hue, belong to paint- 
 ing ; but the placing of a muscle, the hollowing of 
 a depression, the rounding of a shoulder, the ex- 
 pression of a face, the movement of the body, these 
 belong to drawing. There is no reason why art- 
 means with such widely different aims should clash, 
 and of themselves they do not. The clash is be- 
 tween their partisan advocates. It is the academy- 
 trained classicist, skilled in drawing but unable to 
 12
 
 178 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 handle color, who occupies one extreme position and 
 maintains the superiority of line ; and to counter- 
 balance him we have on the other end of the see- 
 saw the interesting impressionist, who oftentimes 
 knows something of color but little of line, and who 
 maintains the beauty of the former and the useless- 
 ness of the latter. The impressionist places a patch 
 of color on the landscape and says to us that it is 
 by color we know a cow from a sheep. True, but 
 only a part of the truth. We know one from the 
 other quite as much by dimension. From the point 
 of our quick identification of objects in nature, the 
 impressionist with his color is no nearer perfection 
 than the classicist with his line — perhaps not so 
 near — and in the one discarding drawing, and in 
 the other slurring color, they both of them overlook 
 features which are necessary and beautiful in art — 
 doubly beautiful when brought together. In medio 
 tutissimus ibis. In disputed questions it is not a 
 bad plan to hold a middle course. Any one view 
 of art is, at the best, little more than a matter of 
 opinion ; and we who are interested in it as spec- 
 tators only, can ill afford to be purblind or half- 
 sighted in view. Perhaps then we would do well to 
 consider that color has its beauty, that line has its 
 beauty, and that there is no ground for comparison 
 between them as to which is the more beautiful. 
 Each has an individual beauty to be judged by its
 
 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 179 
 
 own merits, and both together make up a language 
 of art without which the highest thought or feeling 
 of the artist would remain unexpressed. 
 
 Drawing is the representation of lines, or their 
 modifications, upon flat surface in such a wa}' that 
 the curves, the depressions, the elevations, the 
 structures, in short the linear character of an object, 
 are shown to us. It includes in its scope perspec- 
 tive, light-and -shade, and values, as some of the aids 
 whereby it attains its end. For drawing in art does 
 not mean a flat silhouette thrown upon a canvas ; 
 nor does line mean the hard edging about an en- 
 closed space. The portions of an object, like the 
 limbs of a tree, that come forward or recede in the 
 background require perspective or foreshortening 
 for their rendering ; the relief of a muscle on the 
 arm, the depression in the hollow of the eye re- 
 quire light-and-shade ; and to give the thrust for- 
 ward of one leg and the push backward of another 
 leg requires a knowledge of values. Drawing, 
 then, should give us more than the contour of ob- 
 jects ; it should give us depth, bulk, weight, action, 
 life. It has been called the " grammar of art," but 
 it might more appropriately be named the litera- 
 ture of art, for its trutliful exposition is one of the 
 most difiicult things of accomplishment, next to har- 
 mony of color, in the whole field of painting. 
 
 VVhile I shall treat of that part of drawing which
 
 180 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 relates to line only, I do not purpose to speak of 
 the various rules of line laid down in text-books, for 
 that is quite foreign to the object of these lectures. 
 I assume that I am speaking to spectators, or at the 
 best amateurs of art, not artists nor art- students. 
 Again, I do not intend to detain you with accounts 
 which, if you received, you would probably forget, 
 of such technical methods as drawing with pen, 
 pencil, charcoal, or brush. Matters of that kind be- 
 long to the class-room or studio, where language 
 may be illustrated by casts, models, and drawings. 
 For ourselves, with little exact knowledge of forms, 
 which should make us cautious in criticism, and 
 with only a general impression of the objects 
 about us, we must find some simpler method of 
 testing the truth or falsity of drawing than the 
 academic model. 
 
 There are two general kinds of drawing, be- 
 tween which we need to discriminate at the start. 
 Mr. Hamerton has called them the Classic and the 
 Picturesque, though I should prefer the word 
 Naturalistic for the latter style, meaning by that 
 rather clumsy adjective the drawing which repre- 
 sents the natural appearance of objects. The Clas- 
 sic (1) deals with line for line's sake, and its ad- 
 vocates maintain that in its purity and simplicity, 
 in its delicacy and flow, in its unity with variety 
 and its variety without abruptness, lies the highest
 
 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 181 
 
 beauty of art. Its cliief subject is the buiuan fig- 
 ure, and in representing this figure it does not 
 preteud to absolute or special truth of natural 
 effect. On the contrary, it would seem to claim 
 that individual examples of nature are imperfect, 
 and that the acme of perfection is arrived at only 
 by uniting many individual perfections into one 
 perfect whole called (and miscalled) the ideal. In 
 no sense is it a deceptive imitation, nor, as I have 
 said, does it aim at even a striking representation 
 of nature. It does not reproduce a natural beauty ; 
 it creates a beauty of its own. All the clever brush 
 feats whereby textures and surfaces are given, sun- 
 light and shadow painted, and powerful relief or 
 depression shown, are foreign to its purpose. The 
 fio'ure is oftener flat than relieved, the outline is 
 too firm for nature, the flesh is not realistic flesh, 
 nor the hair realistic hair, and as for the clothing 
 it does not show the texture of cloth but is de- 
 signedly drapery — a something to repeat or con- 
 tinue the curves or falls of line. In fact, pure 
 classic drawing, as once practised by David (Fig. 
 14) and Ingres, and continued in a modified form 
 by present-day academicians, has very little exact 
 nature about it and a great ileal of carefully con- 
 sidered, powerfully directed, and skilfully executed 
 art. It is correctly associated in our minds with 
 Greek and Roman art, the remains of which some
 
 182 ART FOK AET's SAKE 
 
 of the Italian masters, and the draughtsmen of the 
 school of David, emulated and sought to reproduce. 
 It does not give us nature, but it certainly gives us 
 a dignified and graceful quality of art, noble in 
 theme and perhaps ideal in aspiration. It may be 
 lacking in contemporary human interest, in spon- 
 taneity, and in those personal qualities so much 
 sought for in art to-day ; yet for its lofty aim, its 
 purity, and the skill required in its execution, it 
 should be ranked as high art, and treated, even by 
 the realists, with consideration. 
 
 But We should beware of classic drawing out of 
 its proper sphere. It is abstract and creative, not 
 in any modern sense real or imitative. When, 
 therefore, the two kinds of drawing, classic and 
 naturalistic, meet on the same canvas, there is a 
 clash. The graceful classic figure with its accented 
 outlines introduced amid natural surroundings 
 creates discord at once. For nature does not show 
 those accented outlines. The objects in a room, 
 for instance, hold place by virtue of relation and 
 harmony. A nude human figure in that room be- 
 comes a part of the whole. Its outline fades into an 
 edge, faint and tremulous with light and air ; the 
 protrusions and recessions of the body show light- 
 and-shade ; the flesh becomes a well-marked text- 
 ure ; breath, palpitation, movement, life, are its 
 endowments. Treat this figure after the classic for-
 
 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 183 
 
 mula, and hardness, flatness, stiffness, death, is the 
 immediate result. Beauty of line counts for naught, 
 because out of place and inappropriate. This would 
 be equally true in the case of a landscape. In 
 nature all things have their relation one to an- 
 other. Objects are placed in air, not against it. 
 The hard outline and the flat silhouette do not 
 exist. The trunk of a tree is round, its apparent 
 edges are not its deepest color-notes, and moreover, 
 its surface is slightly wavered or blurred by atmos- 
 phere. A leaf of a tree is not the flat affair we 
 find pressed between the pages of the family Bible, 
 but is a waving, dancing spirit, receiving and re- 
 flecting light and shade, and is oftenest seen as 
 a blur or tacJie of green. A house has its lines 
 and edges, yet they are not straight nor strong, 
 but are affected by direct and reflected light, by 
 shadow, and by atmosphere again. 
 
 In Naturalistic drawing (2), then, as distinguished 
 from classic drawing, we would do well to beware 
 of, first, the academic, or the hard line ; and, 
 secondly, we would do well to consider the old 
 master's maxim that " the whole is more important 
 than the part." The small things must be dis- 
 regarded for the great truths. The most important 
 thing about a tree is its depth, volume, roundness, 
 mass, and to get tiiis impressive truth emphasis 
 of stem-drawing and leaf-drawing should not be
 
 184 ART FOR art's sake 
 
 given. A thousand stems and leaves do not make 
 a tree any more than a mass of words makes a 
 book. The life principle lies deeper, and the por- 
 trayal of this is certainly of more importance than 
 the emphasized drawing of the infinitesimal parts. 
 Objects should be conceived in their entirety, and 
 so drawn that there is a unity, a gathering of all 
 parts into one complete whole (Fig. 1). The 
 putting together of arms and legs, piece by piece, 
 as a child builds a block-house, will only result 
 in a manikin, even though it be done with the ac- 
 curacy of a David and the finish of a Denner. 
 The isolated details of form remain simply isolated 
 details. They may be classically beautiful, and yet 
 beautifully dead. 
 
 In representing nature, vitality counts for more 
 than accuracy. Delacroix was not a correct 
 draughtsman, from a classic point of view. He 
 sometimes twisted heads as no ordinary muscles 
 could twist them, he occasionally broke legs and 
 arms, and he painted abnormally large feet and 
 hands ; but he seldom failed to impress his be- 
 holders with the great truth and power of life. 
 Michael Angelo was another dislocator of joints on 
 occasion, and many an artist since his time has 
 slurred hands and feet to give the feeling of form, 
 the harmony of the whole. But in the case of 
 such men the slur is intentional. Truth of detail
 
 UJ 
 
 _l 
 
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 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 185 
 
 is purposely sacrificed to truth of mass. For where 
 line in classic di'awing is generally attained at the 
 expense of life, life in naturalistic drawing is often- 
 times attained at the expense of line. We should 
 bear in mind, then, that in classic drawing we are 
 to look for accurac}' of proportions and beauty of 
 line ; but in naturalistic drawing we are to look, 
 first, for the appearance of life. In pictures which 
 aim at natural effects, the first questions we should 
 ask ourselves are not, " Is that wrist-bone drawn 
 correctly ? " "Is that chimney on straight ? " but 
 rather, " Does that look like a human being ? " 
 " Does that look like a house ? " And this brings 
 me to another, and the most important, feature of 
 objects in nature as we see them and as they should 
 be portrayed upon canvas. 
 
 The chief purpose of naturalistic drawing is to 
 give the character of objects, and if we are strongly 
 impressed with that character at once, then the pur- 
 pose of the drawing has been accomplished whether 
 the lines be quite true or not. Troyon could not 
 draw a cow as correctly as Brascassat, but the dif- 
 ference between the two men is that Troyon really 
 shows us a cow and cow-nature, while Brascassat 
 gives us an exterior of a cow, or a cow-skin. It 
 would seem to be immaterial to us which one of the 
 artists places the muscles in the quarters the most 
 accurately, for the object of tlie drawing is not
 
 186 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 to show us cow-anatomy but cow-life. The esxily 
 nudes of Millet do not compare in accuracy and 
 delicacy of drawing with those of Bouguereau, but 
 again one gives us the vivid impression of human 
 nature, robust strength, and vigor of limb ; while 
 the other, faultily faultless, icily regular, accurate to 
 an exasperating degree, gives us but the epidermis 
 of humanity, a beautiful shell, a something pleasing 
 without but empty and lifeless within. Diderot 
 tells us of a young figure-painter who, before be- 
 ginning to draw, always knelt down and prayed to 
 be delivered from his model. It is not the literal 
 facts, the mere exterior appearance, but the charac- 
 teristic nature of an object that counts. In the 
 presence of a picture of quarried building stones 
 of what use to ask ourselves whether the seams and 
 veins and edges be drawn correctly ! The essence 
 of a rough granite block is its solid bulk and mass, 
 and we should ask ourselves: "How much does it 
 weigh ? " If we can feel that the stone has thick- 
 ness and weight to it, as for instance in Mr. Chase's 
 little picture of stone in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, 
 then its chief characteristic has been given and the 
 drawing is good. 
 
 In such cases accuracy is sacrificed to what may 
 be called the essence, the individuality of things. 
 There is in Venice a statue of General Coleoni on 
 horseback, which I venture to think one of the
 
 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 187 
 
 finest bronzes in Europe ; yet judged by absolute 
 truth of line both horse and man are extravagant 
 creations. No horse ever had such proportions, 
 no man quite such a figure ; but stand back and 
 look at the push and power, the defiant spirit, 
 the intense character of man and horse which are 
 given, and you will begin to think there was a 
 method in the distorted modelling of Verocchio. 
 So again when Delacroix and Barye draw the tiger 
 it is not anatomy, muscle, bone, and sinew that 
 they strive to show ; but the snarling, crouching, 
 treacherous mass of energy which makes up the 
 character of the tigei-. Were it a hyena they would 
 give it a sneaking apprehensive look, a bunched ap- 
 pearance in the fore-quarters, and a swinging shuf- 
 fling tread ; were it a deer the character would be 
 that of shyness with slimness of form and a springy 
 elastic step. The individuality of objects, if I may 
 so speak, is the fii'st thing that impresses us in 
 nature and it should be the first thing to attract 
 our attention in art. The drawing of an athlete, 
 who we feel sure is six feet high with a proportion- 
 ate breadth, and yet does not look to weigh more 
 than ten pounds ; the outlining of a stone building, 
 which we feel certain is not more than an inch 
 thick and is not of stone but of card-board covered 
 with muddy paint ; the delineation of a parrot on a 
 perch, which we know to be light and fluffy in
 
 188 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 plumage yet is painted to look like a piece of porce« 
 lain, all this may furnish us with graceful enough 
 line, but it does not give us the character of these 
 objects which, I have attempted to maintain, is the 
 aim of the naturalistic draughtsman. 
 
 It may possibly occur to some of you that instead 
 of setting forth such beauties as line may possess, I 
 am trying the best I know how to demonstrate that 
 art can get along without it. Such is certainly not 
 my intention. Instead of wishing to abolish line 
 I am simply striving to show that in nature it is 
 not rigid and immovable as we find it in classic 
 drawing, but elastic and changeable ; that it is not 
 a cold petrified fact, but a fleeting impression full of 
 life and movement, or at the least having the pas- 
 sive power of being moved. The granite block has 
 no active life, but its lines are being continually 
 changed by light and shade and air. The human 
 figure while being acted upon by like influences 
 has the power of action inherent in itself. The 
 swinging arm of the wood-choj^per does not pause 
 in air to let the artist draw it ; it moves on, and, as 
 Veron has well said, some of that movement which 
 has gone before and some of that which is to follow 
 should be given. There must be the suggestion of 
 motion by an elasticity of line else the man is dead, 
 frozen stiff with his axe upraised above his head. 
 Were the human eye like a photographic camera we
 
 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 189 
 
 might catch the momentary poise of the woodman's 
 axe and see it rigidly upheld ; but the best proof 
 that the human eye does not receive such quick im- 
 pressions is the recent and rather startling revela- 
 tion of the instantaneous camera concerning the 
 motions of the galloping horse. The camera tells 
 us of awkward steps, bunched positions and sprawl- 
 ing legs, but our eyes tell us of a graceful elon- 
 gated body, extending legs and neck, in short the 
 rush of a speeding, flying animal. And this is be- 
 cause the retina of the eye always retains, for a 
 short space of time, the image of the vanished ob- 
 ject. It is by the retained image that we see an ap- 
 parent ring of fire when one whirls a torch, with 
 one end of it in a glow of coals, rapidly around the 
 head ; and it is by the same momentary retention of 
 objects on the retina that the juggler astonishes us 
 with his sleight-of-hand, his hand travelling faster 
 than the sight of our eyes. Some years ago there 
 was shown in New York a picture by a well-known 
 painter representing a Western prairie-fire, with 
 several emigrant wagons fleeing before it. The 
 situation of the emigrants was perilous in the ex- 
 treme, for in addition to the fast-approaching flames 
 the wagon wheels appeared not to turn on their 
 axles. The painter had painted every spoke in the 
 wheels to be counted ! Tlic next time you see a 
 carriage on the street in rapid motion, notice how
 
 190 AET FOK art's SAKE 
 
 many of the spokes you can count, or even see eX' 
 cept as a whirl and a blur of confused light and 
 color. 
 
 Without considering the ap-parent truth of this 
 distorted lengthened blurred look of objects in 
 motion, without considering the difference between 
 things as they actually are and as they appear, peo- 
 ple have at times unjustly condemned pictures of 
 high merit. They have, for instance, found fault 
 with the flying figures of William Blake because the 
 legs and feet were too long, but they never found 
 fault with them because they did not fly. In the 
 same way they have criticised the drawings of Dela- 
 croix's tigers, Fromentin's horses, Michael Angelo's 
 figures, and Millet's peasants, but they have not 
 criticised the sense of motion, life, and power which 
 these men have given. It is just this sense and feel- 
 ing of life, this appearance of reality, that the mod- 
 ern draughtsman endeavors to portray ; and if he 
 give us the essence, the character of objects, we need 
 not cavil over his lines, be they apparently right or 
 academically wrong. 
 
 It is unnecessary that I should multiply illustra- 
 tion by following up this idea in landscapes, genre 
 paintings, and marines. Trees and flowers and 
 waves all have lines capable of being moved and 
 swayed ; and even the scarred and broken cliiFs and 
 the steadfast mountains may change with the pass-
 
 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 191 
 
 ing of a cloud over the face of the sun. Nature, in- 
 stead of being but one thing and having but one 
 form, has many shapes, many lights, many hues. 
 She shifts with each new breeze and changes with 
 each new sunbeam. The painter must catch the 
 passing look, and suit his hues to nature's momen- 
 tary mood. To portray landscape rigid and immov- 
 able is to portray, not the living, but the dead 
 world. 
 
 There are so many methods of drawing and 
 forms of line used in painting to-day that it would 
 be almost impossible for me to describe them, even 
 had I reason to believe that you would be interested 
 in hearing about them. Of the more common forms 
 of line and their uses, such as the straight line, the 
 curved line, the broken line, the angle line, I shall 
 have something to say in speaking of composition ; 
 but I may say here that no formula of drawing, 
 such as we often have laid down to us in ai't text- 
 books, can be accounted of much importance ex- 
 cept as productive of evil. Generally speaking, 
 rules in art are evils for no other reason than that 
 they are rules. They restrict the artist's powers, 
 they stifle spontaneity, they burden the spirit of 
 creation, which should be free of petty restraints. 
 To be bound by the traditions and received laws 
 of our forefathers fits us to do and be no better 
 than those who have gone before ; and it is the at-
 
 192 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 tempted enforcement of old laws upon new peo* 
 pies that continually breeds political, social, liter- 
 ary, and artistic revolutions. 
 
 It may be said, however, that in that modern art 
 which is not on its face eccentric or experimental, 
 the kind of line used is governed in a general way 
 by two considerations : First, by the nature of the 
 object drawn ; and secondly, by the nature of the 
 artist drawing. A crystal vase possessed of great 
 fineness of texture naturally requires fineness of 
 line ; whereas a coarse earthen jug requires a 
 rougher, broader treatment. The drawing of a 
 building is generally marked by firm lines, especial- 
 ly if seen close to view ; but the drawing of floating 
 clouds needs faint touches and sketchy lines of 
 great delicacy to give their fleecy nature. Again, 
 the drawing of a rough stone wall may need harsh 
 broken lines ; while the drawing of a mass of foliage 
 may call for blurred and indefinite lines. The lines 
 of a sea-wave should conform to its undulatory mo- 
 tion, those of a brazen shield to its light-reflecting 
 qualities, and those of a bear-skin rug to its hairy 
 texture. In a similar manner certain objects re- 
 quire upright lines, others flat or diagonal lines, and 
 others again need circular Avaving flowing lines, as 
 I shall attempt to show hereafter. 
 
 In working with a paint-brush the nature of the 
 object almost always dictates the manner of its
 
 UJ 
 
 O
 
 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 193 
 
 treatment. The human figure requii-es some recog- 
 nition of outline, and a working from the edge in 
 toward the centre, or vice vei^sa. In landscape line 
 work throughout is almost impossible, and the 
 modern painter draws largely by areas. A tree, for 
 instance, is not edged or outlined but brushed in 
 from the middle and worked outward until the pro- 
 portions of the area are attained. Again, there may 
 be a drawing by patches of light or dark, a glitter- 
 ing lake and a bright patch of sky holding certain 
 spaces of light in a landscape as distinguished from 
 a mass of rain-clouds and a belt of deep shadow 
 holding certain spaces of dark (Figs. 2 and 5). 
 And still again there may be a drawing by patches 
 of color, characteristic of the impressionists ; a 
 drawing by spots or isolated glitters of light, char- 
 acteristic of the modern Spaniards ; and a drawing 
 by patches of black, characteristic of Goya and his 
 followers. 
 
 But while the nature of an object has much to do 
 with the manner of line-treatment it receives, per- 
 haps a greater emphasis should be laid upon the 
 second consideration, that both the object and its 
 lines are greatly influenced by the nature — the 
 mental, emotional, and artistic make-up — of the ar- 
 tist. Individual treatment has become in these 
 modern times, more than ever before, the distin- 
 guishing mark of genius. Not that every original 
 13
 
 194 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 way is indicative of genius by any means, but rather 
 that every genius has an original method of setting 
 forth his view. This we may see in the great paint- 
 ers of all times by compai'ing their different treat- 
 ments of one given subject, the human form, for in- 
 stance. Michael Angelo handled it with swift vigor- 
 ous lines, giving muscular power, luxuriant strength, 
 the grace of grandeur ; Raphael handled it firmly, 
 yet delicately, imparting, especially to his women, a 
 charm of manner and a superb rhythm of move- 
 ment ; Correggio suffused the lines of his figures 
 with shadow-gradations and atmosphere, giving an 
 effect of warm physical life and puz-ely sensuous 
 beauty ; Titian made those lines bend with easy 
 strength and throb with living color. So again in 
 landscape Rousseau saw a tree as a solid bulk of 
 arms and foliage ; Daubigny saw it more delicately, 
 saw it in motion, light, airy, luminous ; Claude 
 Monet, the luminarist, sees it sometimes as a patch 
 of pale greenish-blue casting violet shadows. It is 
 thus that every painter, be he ancient or modern 
 master, has his peculiar way of seeing and working, 
 and as a result of his individuality we have what is 
 called his style. 
 
 A draughtsman's style — we often hear of the style 
 of Leonardo, or Raphael, or Diirer, or some other 
 artist — is nothing more than his characteristic way 
 of setting forth his own view. It is the human,
 
 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 195 
 
 the subjective element, thrusting itself forward and 
 influencing the observation and the portrayal of 
 nature. It is impossible for any artist, howsoever 
 pronounced a realist he may be, to make a mechani- 
 cal machine of his eyes and fingers He cannot re- 
 ceive and record like a photographic camera, be- 
 cause he has not the dispassionate unreasoning 
 inorganic nature of the camera. He must see with 
 his eyes, think with his brain, and work with his 
 fingers ; strive as he may, he cannot escape the pe- 
 culiarities which nature has imparted to those indi- 
 vidual members. In their way every man's brain 
 and eye are biassed as compared with another man's 
 brain and eye ; and every man's hand moves differ- 
 ently from that of another. A dozen men of equal 
 talent, if set to draw one object before them, would 
 produce a dozen likenesses, no two of which would 
 be quite the same. It is this individuality of mind, 
 eye, and hand, all of which go to form a style, 
 that gives to Leonardo's work its grace and mystic 
 charm ; that gives to the work of Tintoretto its 
 fierceness, and fire ; that gives to Bellini and Car- 
 paccio earnestness and honesty, and to Velasquez 
 dignity and easy strength. On the contrary, it is 
 the very lack of individuality — the lack of original 
 view and treatment — that renders the work of Carlo 
 Dolci insipid, the Caracci exaggerated, Lebrun the- 
 atrical, and Bougucreau utterly empty.
 
 196 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 We may say, then, in so many words that style 
 is the man — the expression of the human element 
 in art — and while there are some painters who show 
 themselves in subject, and some in brush work, 
 there are others, like the Florentines of the Renais- 
 sance and the classicists of the French Empire, 
 whose individualities were none the less forcibly 
 revealed in flow of line and strength of modelling. 
 
 There is a myth going about the world to the 
 effect that drawing first became known by a Greek 
 girl seeing the shadow of her lover on the wall and 
 outlining it with charcoal. It is rather a pretty 
 conceit, but the cave-dweller of the Stone Age 
 knew drawing before walls were built or Greek 
 girls had lovers, as we may see by an examination 
 of prehistoric remains. All of the ancient nations 
 of the world practised it somewhat, but with no 
 great success. The Greeks were the first to be- 
 come accomplished draughtsmen, and the Romans 
 borrowed the most of what they knew of it from 
 them. The early Christians soon distorted and 
 then wrecked art by imposing ecclesiastical con- 
 ventionalities upon it ; and it was not until the 
 thirteenth century that drawing again began to 
 rise. In the fifteenth century Masaccio, Ghir- 
 landajo, Signorelli, Mantegna, in Italy, and in the 
 North, Van Eyck and Memling, gave it power, dig- 
 nity, and precision, but not the full complement of
 
 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 197 
 
 elegance or grace. The sixteenth century was re- 
 served as the great period of draughtsmen, reveal- 
 ing as it did Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Raphael, 
 Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolommeo, Correggio, Ti- 
 tian, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Diii-er, Holbein. 
 It combined power, grace, rhythm, motion, life, all 
 things, and is the one epoch of splendor in paint- 
 ing that has never been surpassed. 
 
 The Florentines and Romans were the greatest 
 in pure line, the Venetians being perhaps more re- 
 markable for painting than drawing, though not by 
 any means inferior draughtsmen. Painters more 
 than draughtsmen is the word that may be ap- 
 plied to Velasquez, Rubens, and Rembrandt, with- 
 out again undervaluing their knowledge of line. At 
 the beginning of this century the restored classic 
 held sway in France under David, and at the end of 
 the first quarter of the century Gericault and Dela- 
 croix began the movement against it and in favor 
 of naturalistic drawing which is known in art-his- 
 tory as Romanticism. At the present time some 
 few traces of the conflict remain, but generally 
 speaking, the modern painter amalgamates Classi- 
 cism and Romanticism, and produces wliat may be 
 called a Naturalism for lack of a better word. Some 
 of the draughtsmen who show early classic or aca- 
 demic training in their work are still alive, or have 
 but recently died, and their work is to-day unrivalled
 
 198 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 in its way. They are men like Paul Baudry, Caba- 
 nel, Lefebvre, Gerome, whose names have become 
 almost household words with us. 
 
 Composition. We may define composition as the 
 putting together of the elements of a picture. It 
 is not strictly a matter of arranging lines alone, 
 but includes in its scope perspective, color, values, 
 and light-and-shade ; for these form a part of that 
 perfect arrangement which a good picture requires. 
 Indeed, composition of a certain sort may be ef- 
 fected almost without line, by the massing of light 
 and shade as exemplified in some of the pictures of 
 Rembrandt (Fig. 5) and his school ; and also by the 
 massing of colors and lights as shown in the work 
 of Monticelli, Monet, Pissaro, and others. It is not 
 my intention, however, to speak of these forms of 
 composition just now. It is better perhaps, for sim- 
 plicity's sake, that we confine ourselves as closely as 
 possible to line composition. 
 
 To begin with, I wish to call attention at once to 
 the first and the most important requisite of compo- 
 sition, namely, unity. An object in a picture is very 
 much like a note in a bar of music ; its value does 
 not come fx*om its individual consideration, though it 
 may be perfect in itself, but rather from its relation
 
 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 199 
 
 to other objects. The wheel of a machine, the block 
 of a building, the petal of a flower are of little con- 
 sequence in themselves, but as factors in making up 
 a complete whole they have a certain relative value. 
 The figure in the room, of which I spoke some time 
 ago, is as much a part of the room as the chairs, 
 the rugs, and the wall-papers. Comparatively, the 
 same light strikes the one as the others, and the 
 same air surrounds them all. Give the figure an 
 undue amount of light or dark, and it becomes false 
 in value and out of place ; give it too high or too 
 low a coloring, and it is out of place ; give it too 
 much perspective or exaggerated strength of line, 
 and again it is out of place. That which gives all 
 the objects in the room their proper positions and 
 relations is the similarity of the conditions under 
 which they are seen ; and should an artist attempt 
 to paint the figure in the room without regarding 
 the surroundings, a false-valued, disconnected, and 
 (inferentially) badly-composed picture would be the 
 result. 
 
 Isolated objects cannot be huddled into a pic- 
 torial composition, as people are sometimes hurried 
 into matrimony, with the idea that, though they do 
 not care for each other at first, they will become 
 more congenial by association. Matrimonial com- 
 positions of this sort may possibly result in an af- 
 finity by mutual concessions ; but in pictorial com-
 
 200 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 positions the ill-matched figure concedes nothing. 
 He stands aloof and uncompromising. He is an 
 eagle in a crow's nest or a crow in an eagle's nest, 
 as the case may be, and is sadly out of place. Ob- 
 jects need not be of a kind, nor of a color ; but in 
 naturalistic painting, whatever their kind or color- 
 ing, if seen together it must be under like con- 
 ditions of light, and shade, and atmosphere. "A 
 work should be all of a piece, and people and things 
 should be there for an end," says Millet ; and in 
 oi'der that they be painted " all of a piece," they 
 should be so seen and conceived by the painter. 
 The scene must be first regarded from a compre- 
 hensive point of view and the question asked : 
 " What is the appearance of the whole ? " not 
 " What are the details of a part ? " Some of the 
 academicians, David, Ingres, Lethi^re, and even 
 Bouguereau, Cabanel, and Gerome, have seen fit in 
 certain of their pictures to exaggerate strength of 
 line, and thus give only separate figures where there 
 should be a uniform group ; but disregard of unity, 
 though it may be atoned for by a beauty of line, 
 can hardly be set down as a virtue even in academic 
 composition. 
 
 As an aid to unity in composition may be men- 
 tioned, first, simplicity. It undoubtedly displays a 
 great deal of skill to compose a many-figured, 
 many-lined picture like Raphael's School of Athens,
 
 XIX. — SiGNORELUi, Til- Curse ^detall from Last Juiigment).
 
 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 201 
 
 and the art of the artist should not be overlooked ; 
 but so complicated a composition is not readily un- 
 derstood by the mind, nor grasped as a unit by the 
 eye. As far as the meaning of a picture is con- 
 cerned, it should be intelligible almost at a glance 
 and as a whole. The unravelling of its meaning by 
 examining first one part, and then another part, and 
 finally drawing a conclusion from the sum of infor- 
 mation received, can hardly be called effective pic- 
 torial work. Moreover, there is, or should be, an 
 epigrammatic smack about all great truths. To tell 
 them simply is a mark of greatness in itself. None 
 knew this better than the old masters. The "Musi- 
 cians " by Giorgione, the " Frari Madonna " by Bel- 
 lini, some of the pictures by Piero della Francesca, 
 and aU of the pictures by Velasquez, are so many 
 cases in point. It requires the audacity of genius 
 to place people around a table and paint them 
 all bolt upright quietl}' looking out of the canvas, 
 yet this is what Rembrandt did in his "Syndics 
 of the Cloth Hall " at Amsterdam ; it requires 
 genius again to paint portraits with a few per- 
 pendicular lines, head erect and eye alert, yet this 
 is what ]\Iaiitegna and Antonello da Messina did. 
 Simple, imaffected, natural at times to stiffness, 
 the pictures of these men come to us to-day witli 
 a directness that argues greatness ; and for that 
 directness we are sometimes indebted to another
 
 202 ART FOR ART'S SAKE 
 
 aid to unity in composition, namely, eflfective con- 
 centration. 
 
 The statement was ventured, in speaking of liglit- 
 and-shade, that in almost every well-composed 
 picture there is a point of high light, or of high 
 color, from which there is a gradation to lesser 
 lights and colors. Now, there is also a chief object 
 or objects which bear relation to the infei-ior objects 
 in the same ratio as the lights to the shades. And 
 there is also one point of sight and one horizon 
 line toward which the lines which make up the 
 focus of the eye bear a relation or are meant to 
 converge. All of these art-means in composition 
 should work together for the purpose of bringing 
 before the eye, directly and simply, one view, one 
 idea, one picture. There cannot be (that is, argu- 
 ing from the master-pieces of past art), in an effec- 
 tively-composed picture, two views or two ideas, 
 any more than in the play or novel there can be 
 two heroes. Hamlet is pre-eminent and brooks no 
 rival. He is the apex of the pyramid, and all the 
 scenery, coloring, and people of the play are but 
 the bases upon which he stands. Painting is not 
 unlike the drama in this respect. The attention of 
 the eye is caught by the converging lines, lights, 
 and colors, and is directed toward one point of in- 
 terest. It could not very well be caught and di- 
 rected toward two points of interest. To be sure,
 
 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 203 
 
 Eapbael, in bis celebrated picture of tbe " Transfig- 
 uratioD," gives us an example of tbe violation of 
 tbis generally accepted law of composition. Tbe 
 group of people at tbe bottom is separately put 
 togetber and separately ligbted ; it bas one point of 
 sigbt and one leading object. Tbe group at tbe 
 top forms anotber picture, witb its own sigbt- 
 point and ligbt again (Fig. 9). But tbe result is 
 not a successful piece of composition, even tbougb 
 Kapbael bimself composed it. Tbe "Transfigura- 
 tion " is not one united picture, but two pictures 
 upon one canvas. Tbe "Marriage in Caua," by 
 Paolo Veronese, is anotber example of a double 
 picture ; and in not a few of tbe Bolognese pict- 
 ures, representing angels in tbe clouds and kneeling 
 saints upon tbe eartb below tbem, tbere is a like 
 disregard of tbe one point of sigbt and tbe united 
 group. But tbe consensus of art-opinion bas always 
 been against tbese pictures in tbeir composition, 
 bowever mucb it may bave conceded to tbem in 
 otber features. 
 
 In modern times, since tbe monumental canvas 
 and tbe bistorical fresco bave been largely aban- 
 doned in favor of small easel pictures, less atten- 
 tion is paid to concentration, especially by tbe 
 young men, tban perbaps tbere sbould be. Many 
 of tbe genre painters devote tbemselves to tbe re- 
 alization of tbe infinitely little in any and all parts
 
 204 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 of their pictures, anticipating, rightly enough, that 
 Fashion will visit the gallery, glass in hand, to ex- 
 amine shoe -buckles and point-lace, regardless of 
 points of sight, sky-lines, and picture planes. Nev- 
 ertheless, and in spite of the Meissonier imitators, 
 who do that really strong technician small honor, 
 there is a well-grounded reasonable requirement un- 
 derlying the making of pictures which calls for the 
 relation if not the concentration of lines, lights, and 
 colors ; and I repeat, the object of this is little more 
 than singleness of effect, oneness of appearance. 
 Unity, I take it, is an essential of composition, for 
 though there is a beauty in method, a something 
 to be admired about the flow or fall of lines, yet 
 this is secondary to the main purpose, which is to 
 convey the scene as a whole. If composition does 
 not somehow aid concejDtion by a forcible presen- 
 tation of certain objects, lights, and colors, then it 
 has failed in what is generally considered its chief 
 requirement. 
 
 The subject treated and the individuality of the 
 artist usually dictate the kind of arrangement to be 
 used, as we have noted was the case in drawing. 
 There is, of course, some conventionality about the 
 commoner and older forms of line, and some gener- 
 ally accepted truths which may be mentioned. The 
 perpendicular line is usually conceded to be one of 
 dignity, severity, or even majesty, and is often em-
 
 DKAWING AND COMPOSITION 205 
 
 ployed in portraits, groups of figures, interiors, and 
 architectural pieces. Some of the finest portraits 
 in the whole realm of art are those by the Italians 
 where the sitter is painted in an erect position, with 
 the lines of the clothing simple, severe, and even 
 hard (Fig. 15). The early Italian portraits in the 
 Ufiizzi aju Floi-ence, Palma's "St. Barbara "in Ven- 
 ice, Benozzo Gozzoli's "Journey of the Magi" (Fig. 
 16), and Regnault's "Execution" in the Louvre at 
 Paris, will serve as illustrations of this line in 
 painting ; and if you would see its efi'ect in sculpt- 
 ure, look sometime when you are in Florence, at 
 the fine marble of " St. George " by Donatello, or 
 the modern bronze of " Jeanne d'Arc " by Fremiet, 
 in Paris. 
 
 The horizontal line is one of repose, or perhaps 
 of solemnity. An outstretched landscape with its 
 horizon and low sky-line, the tops of rows of trees 
 and fences, the low marshes, the sea-shore, or the 
 distant lines of the sea itself, all show it. Aside 
 from the modem employment of it in landscape, 
 military scenes (Fig. 17), and marines, the old Vene- 
 tian masters used it for reclining figures ; it was 
 known to the Egyptians and Assyrians — in fact it 
 was about the only style of composition they did 
 know, as the processional scenes on the walls of the 
 tombs and temples show to tliis day ; it was also 
 used by the Greeks both in sculpture and in paint-
 
 206 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 ing ; and a rather unique use was recently made of 
 it in a long, slim picture now in the Amstei'dam 
 Museum, by Jan van Beers the Belgian, called the 
 "Burial of Charles the Good," in which there is a 
 marching funeral-train of monks and knights in 
 chain armor. 
 
 The flowing or waving line has usually been 
 known to us under the rather sweeping appella- 
 tion of the line of beauty, by which is doubtless 
 meant the line of grace. It is especially adapted 
 to the human figure (Fig. 18), though it may be- 
 long to animals and even to landscapes, where hill- 
 tops, sky-lines, and cloud effects are used. The 
 broken or abrupt line is generally supposed to be 
 one of action and power. Signorelli (Fig. 19) and 
 Michael Angelo used it with great results in giving 
 hurried movement to the human form ; many artists 
 have employed it in battle-pieces (Fig. 17, in the 
 sky) ; and some again, like Delacroix and Barye, 
 have used it in the drawing of animals in combat. 
 The diagonal line seems especially well fitted for 
 perspective effects, such as a roadway with trees and 
 a wall or fence running along one side of it (Fig. 
 7) ; it is used in sky-line drawings where the hills 
 or mountains or trees cut off part of the view (Fig. 
 20) ; and Rubens, Signorelli, and others have made 
 application of it in giving the rush or fall of figures 
 (Fig. 19). Thei-e are some other forms of line em*
 
 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 207 
 
 ployed for different purposes by different painters, 
 but as they are generally arbitrary with the indi" 
 vidual, it is perhaps unnecessary to speak of them. 
 
 There are a number of studio teachings and for- 
 mulas of line in composition which have a vogue 
 among artists, and doubtless have good reason for 
 existence, though to an amateur many of them seem 
 rather arbitrary. Thus there is a law of repetition 
 which calls for the paralleling of one line by an- 
 other, as for instance, the line of the figure being 
 repeated by the lines of the dress or the sofa upon 
 which the figure is lying ; or the lines of a ship's 
 mast being repeated in other distant ships' masts. 
 Oftentimes the repetition strengthens the main line 
 (Figs. 18 and 21), and that is of course the ostensi- 
 ble reason for its use. There is another law which 
 seems to require that no flowing line shall com- 
 plete its course without being broken by an angle — 
 for contrast, it is said, though why it is beautiful or 
 agreeable any more than the contrast of a snow- 
 storm in June is not told us. Then there is a law 
 of continuity which requires that the line of an ob- 
 ject, though broken, must be taken up and contin- 
 ued farther on by another object ; a law of curva- 
 ture which makes certain objects in a picture the 
 catch-points of curved lines (Fig. 21) ; and innu- 
 merable laws of interchange, radiation, and harmony 
 laid down by Mr. Ruskin and others, all of which
 
 208 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 have their uses, but none of which can be regarded 
 as the one and only way of composing a picture. 
 
 Perhaps the most reasonable of all the laws of 
 composition is the oldest of them, the law of spe- 
 cial prominence, which requires the predominance 
 of one or more leading objects at the expense of all 
 the other objects in the picture. As I have already 
 intimated, the superior importance of one object in 
 a group aids the eye in finding the centre of inter- 
 est. The principal object draws the sight through 
 the subordination of the other objects, just as some 
 bright star in the heavens attracts attention through 
 the dimness of its surrounding constellation. In 
 the old Egyptian paintings this law of special prom- 
 inence was enforced by giving exaggerated dimen- 
 sions to the chief figure, because the Egyptians did 
 not know the resources of high light and high 
 color. The battle-pieces upon the walls of the pal- 
 aces, where the king in his chariot is shown to be 
 several times the size of his enemies or his own sol- 
 diers, are examples of it. 
 
 This law was also enforced in the pedimental 
 sculptures of Greece, and in early Italian painting, 
 but in the latter it was not quite the Egyptian 
 method which was followed. The Italians did not 
 (except at the start) enlarge the principal figure, 
 but elevated it above the other figures, as instanced 
 in the countless pictures of the Madonna Enthroned.
 
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 O 
 
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 X 
 
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 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 209 
 
 The madonna was raised toward the apex of a 
 pyramid and surrounded with arabesques or archi- 
 tectural columns, and at the base of the pyramid 
 on either side were placed kneeling or standing 
 saints, one group balancing the other. This style 
 of composition, known as the symmetrical style, of 
 which almost all the early crucifixions are examples, 
 is well shown in the work of Cimabue and his fol- 
 lowers, and later in the paintings of Filippo Lippi, 
 Mantegna, Bellini, even Correggio (Fig. 22), and 
 others. It was well fitted to the religious nature 
 of their subjects, its lines being simple and digni- 
 fied, and perhaps it originated in a wish to picture 
 the Madonna or the Christ in an exalted position, 
 corresponding to Biblical description or tradition. 
 Art was not then at its highest pitch, but when the 
 Renaissance was fully inaugurated this symmetrical 
 style of composition changed somewhat, though the 
 law of prominence was not laid aside. Instead of 
 having two saints on one side of the picture to com- 
 plement two bishops on the other side, or some- 
 thing of that nature, the equilibrium was maintained 
 by irregular groups, as may be seen in Raphael's 
 " School of Athens," Andrea del Sarto's " Birth of 
 the Virgin," Botticelli's "Calumny" (Fig. 23), and 
 the large figure pieces of the Venetians. It was a 
 balance not by numbers but by masses or groups, 
 and as it allowed some latitude to the artist, it 
 14
 
 210 ART FOR ART'S SAKE 
 
 superseded to some extent without entirely doing 
 away with the previous style. 
 
 As the study of composition advanced the styles 
 of arrangement fitted to different subjects were 
 increased. Thus there was an oval composition 
 wherein the lines of the figures or the draperies 
 made the circle of the canvas, as shown in Eapha- 
 el's " Madonna della Sedia," Solario's " Madonna of 
 the Green Cushion," and Botticelli's " Madonna and 
 Angels" in the Uffizi (Fig. 21). There was also 
 an arch composition, as shown in Andrea del Sar- 
 to's " Madonna of the Sack," in Florence, in Cor- 
 reggio's "Coronation of the Virgin," at Parma, in 
 Francia's "Pieta," National Gallery, London (Fig. 
 24), and in Fra Bartolomraeo's " Descent from the 
 Cross," in the Pitti. In the " Sistine Madonna " 
 there appears to be a diamond-shaped composition, 
 the Madonna and Child forming the upper acute 
 angle of the diamond, Pope Sixtus and St. Barbara 
 the wide part, and the two cherubs below the lower 
 acute angle. Eubens, in one of his kermess pict- 
 ures, has a circular composition in the shape of a 
 band of peasants with hands clasped, forming a 
 large ring ; and Raphael's " Punishment of the 
 Sorcerer " has a similar arrangement. Some paint- 
 ers again employed a concave arrangement, where- 
 in the lines began with the figui-es at the side and 
 circled in toward the middle-distance ; other paiut-
 
 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 211 
 
 ers reversed this style and produced the convex, 
 wherein the figures began in the middle and bent 
 around and back toward the distant sides. 
 
 In landscape the composition-schemes have been 
 still more numerous, and the arrangements of sky- 
 lines, hill-lines, and tree-lines many. Some painters, 
 like Cuyp, Van Goyen, and Hobbema, have drawn a 
 diagonal line from one corner of the canvas to the 
 other, using one triangle for mountains, buildings, 
 trees, or something that would produce dark, and 
 the other triangle for sky or something that would 
 produce light (Fig. 20). Other painters, like Claude 
 and Turner, have used a sky-line resembling an 
 open letter V cut out of the toj) of the canvas, the 
 bottom of the letter corresponding to the point 
 of sight, and the diagonal sides the converging lines 
 of buildings, trees, or mountains (Fig. 7). Other 
 artists, like Rousseau, Daubigny, Cazin, have used 
 the undulatory and the straight line running across 
 the centre of the canvas, broken here and there by 
 trees, or buildings, or mountains again. 
 
 In modern composition the styles are so many and 
 so defiant of law or formula, that it would be quite 
 useless to attempt their description. Almost all of 
 them, however, are modifications of the earlier styles, 
 or in some way lean upon tlu^ old-established princi- 
 ples of prominence and concentration — the results 
 of modern Impressionism always excepted. The
 
 212 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 Egyptian with his enlarged figure, and the early 
 Italian with his elevated Madonna, find their paral- 
 lel in the modern painter with his highly-lighted 
 or highly-colored figure. "Diana Surprised," the 
 masterpiece of that academic draughtsman, Jules 
 Lefebvre, is a good example of the old pyramidal 
 style of composition with modern improvements. 
 Diana stands central in the picture, supported by 
 her nymphs on either side, whom she not only 
 towers above in height, but outshines in light and 
 color. 
 
 There is still an open field for originality in com- 
 position, and many seek it ; but unfortunately most 
 of the discoveries are only novelties of fashion, or 
 revolts against all method, possessed of few abiding 
 truths. Still even these are entitled to respectful 
 consideration, if not always acceptance. It would 
 be absurd to attempt the binding of art to certain 
 forms or styles of composition. As well try to limit 
 the expression of poetry to certain metres and 
 stanzas. The choice of arrangement is a part of 
 the individual genius of the artist, valuable for its 
 very individuality, and the attempt to confine it 
 within prescribed limits could only result in the de- 
 struction of the art-spirit by mechanical repetition. 
 It is with composition as with drawing ; any un- 
 yielding rule is a curse instead of a blessing. For 
 nature scorns all rules and genius binds itself only
 
 DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 213 
 
 by its own. There are certain large principles which 
 in a general way may be adhered to in composition, 
 such as unity, concentration and prominence, which 
 I have endeavored to emphasize ; but the application 
 of these principles is a part of art itself for which 
 we cannot make absolute rules and may judge only 
 by results.
 
 LECTUEE Vn. 
 
 TEXTURES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH WORK 
 
 I HAVE reserved for this last lecture some consid" 
 erations upon the skill of the artist as shown in the 
 handling of the brush ; and I wish to call your at- 
 tention, first, to the necessity for that skill in the 
 rendering of textures and surfaces. 
 
 It has already been stated that there were two 
 features of objects whereby we could determine 
 their physical nature, aside from their association 
 with other objects ; their form and their coloring. 
 There is still a third, their surface appearance or 
 texture. The first of these three features is gener- 
 ally the one that possesses the most meaning to our 
 American eyes. Possibly this is for a reason, already 
 noted, that the English-speaking nations have been 
 educated upon line more than upon color or light. 
 There is with them a severity at the expense of the 
 sensuous, which makes more of form than either or 
 any of the other features. While, therefore, our 
 training has in away made us quick enough to grasp 
 colored line-suggestions in art, it has likewise made
 
 TEXTURES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH WORK 215 
 
 US slow to grasp colored liglit-suggestions or text- 
 ares. An oblong square of mixed colors lying upon 
 the floor in front of a lounge assures us at once that 
 the painter of it meant to portray perhaps a Turkish 
 rug. It may be as hard as granite, as thin as sheet- 
 iron, and as smooth as glass, but somehow we do not 
 seem to mind that. The artist intended it for a rug, 
 and we, by laying hold of line and color only, easily 
 cajole our imagination into thinking that it is one. 
 But now, what is the strong feature of a rug ? Line? 
 No more than it is the strong feature of a heap of 
 leaves. Color ? Yes, somewhat, though a rug may 
 be colorless and still be a rug. What then is its 
 striking peculiarity, unless it be its surface appear- 
 ance? Tlie uneven distribution, absorption, or re- 
 flection of light is the chief cause of its textural 
 appearance, and by its texture we are able to dis- 
 tinguish it from a piece of matting, a piece of oil- 
 cloth, or a piece of tin. The fabric is loosely woven, 
 shaggy, heavy, has a moss-like softness about it, and 
 is, in fact, as far removed as possible from hardness, 
 thinness, or smootlniess ; yet our supposed painter, 
 while emphasizing its line and suggesting its color, 
 fails to render those qualities of its texture which 
 may be said to make its character. 
 
 " We ought to commend that strength of vivid 
 expression which is necessary to convey in its full 
 force the highest sense of the most complete efiect
 
 216 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 of art," says Sir Joshua. Surely the truthful ren« 
 dering of the surfaces of objects is as much a part 
 of " the complete effect of ax't " as their drawing or 
 their coloring. How can there be "a strength of 
 rivid expression " in a face that is not made up 
 of the flesh and blood of humanity, but is a pink 
 and white porcelain face like that of a French 
 doll ! How can there be any " vivid expression " 
 in a copper kettle that looks as soft as a pump- 
 kin, or in a sheep that looks as hard as a tomb- 
 stone, or in a table-cloth that looks as rigid as a 
 square of zinc ! A surface robbed of its character 
 is a vacancy ; and how many things in nature are 
 dependent almost entirely upon their surfaces for 
 identity, we may come to know by considering an 
 ordinary ball-room illustration. Suppose a woman 
 dressed in yellow tulle. The fabric is loosely woven, 
 reflects no light of importance, is semi-transparent, 
 gauzy, cloud-like. Suppose her wearing yellow rib- 
 bons — I do not know if that would be considered 
 " good style," but let us suppose the case. One side 
 of the ribbon shows a silk surface, closely woven, 
 but reflecting little light, and dull in coloring ; the 
 reverse side shows perhaps a satin surface, glossy, 
 bright in color, reflecting a great deal more light 
 than the silk side. Suppose her wearing some gold 
 ornaments ; the metal is hard, compact, metallic, 
 polished, shining with light. Suppose, lastly, the
 
 XXI.- BOTTICELLI, Madonna and Angels.
 
 TEXTURES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH WORK 217 
 
 woman has yellow hair ; it is not a woven nor a 
 metallic surface, but a mass of fine lines which, seen 
 as a mass, is dull in parts and has some sheen in 
 others, is light, wavy, fluffy, elastic. Here are five 
 diffei-ent materials not strongly distinguished by 
 their drawing, for they have few hard lines, not 
 strongly distinguished by their coloring, for they are 
 all yellow, and yet distinctly five different materials 
 by virtue of their light-reflecting surfaces. Should 
 we extend the illustration and consider the great 
 difference between the flesh of her arm and the 
 glove below it, between the ivory of her fan and 
 the roses at her waist, between the shining leather 
 of her slipper and the floor she stands upon, we 
 should have little difficulty in believing that a 
 strength in their vivid expression in painting would 
 be necessary to " the most complete effect of art." 
 Almost every object in the world about us has its 
 peculiar texture, and if we are to have an art that 
 truly represents nature the painter must render 
 these textui'es as they appear. Flat paint will not 
 at one and the same time convey the various im- 
 pressions of different objects, however true the 
 drawing and local coloring. 
 
 ^Ir. Ruskin has classified textures under three 
 heads : 
 
 " 1. Lustrous, as of water and glass. 
 
 " 2. Bloomy or velvety, as of a rose leaf or peach.
 
 218 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 " 3, Linear, produced by filaments or threads, 
 as in feathers, fur, hair, and woven or reticulated 
 tissues." 
 
 I repeat the classification for what it is worth, 
 which is something, though I would suggest that 
 you do not jump to the conclusion that among 
 all the things created there are but three kinds of 
 surfaces, and that three methods of painting will 
 render them all. The human race may be classified 
 under five or six heads, but from that it does not 
 follow that the make-up of an Italian is quite that of 
 an Englishman, thouj^rh both be of the Caucasian 
 branch. Each object in nature, though it may be- 
 long to a class, is peculiar in its surface construc- 
 tion, and its peculiarity in this respect may estab- 
 lish its pictorial character. The portrayal of this 
 pictorial character cannot be done by any one or any 
 three formulas for " doing " textures. The brush 
 must adapt itself to the material which it seeks to 
 reproduce, not necessarily by painting smoothly for 
 smooth textures and roughly for rough textures, 
 but by emphasizing the striking features. In every- 
 day life we have a way of looking at things in mass, 
 and receiving impressions of their salient features 
 at a glance. For instance, we rise up in the morn- 
 ing, look out of the window, and say to ourselves it 
 is clear, it is cloudy, or it rains ; we do not analyze, 
 reason over, and sum up the matter by counting
 
 TEXTURES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH WORK 219 
 
 sunbeams, dark clouds, or rain-drops. We receive 
 instantly a truthful impression gathered from one 
 or two strong appearances. So, again, we come into 
 a libraiy, cast a look about us, and gain an idea at 
 once of the whole interior. Under foot is a hard 
 shiny substance which we see is a waxed floor, upon 
 it lie some plush-like looking squares which we see 
 are rugs, before a lounge is a dark hairy mass that 
 we know is a bear-skin, the curtains hang in heavy 
 lustreless folds, the books in the cases have a leath- 
 ery look, the lamps a dull bronze look, the and- 
 irons a bright brass look. None of these objects 
 impresses us by its minute details, but by its 
 general appearance, its striking peculiarity. Soft 
 pearl-like lustre reveals the character of a porcelain 
 vase, transparency and reflection reveal that of a 
 crystal paper-weight, and flufly volume that of a 
 feather duster. The skilful painters of textures 
 seize and record these peculiarities ; some of them 
 by careful and detailed use of the point of the 
 brush, like Alma-Tadema ; others by broad sweeps 
 of the flat of the brush, like VoUon. 
 
 The manner of execution is a matter of individual 
 choice and temperament. There is no trick about 
 it, or it might be readily taught. The young wom- 
 an's belief that the artist who paints the copper 
 kettle so beautifully must mix copper with his pig- 
 ments has no foundation in fact. It is merely a
 
 220 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 part of the painter's teclmic corresponding to that 
 of the draughtsman or the engraver. This skill of 
 hand is sometimes astonishing in its production of 
 realistic effects. In the Meti-opolitan Museum is a 
 small picture by Bargue of a Bashi-Bazouk seated 
 on a stone, which will well repay a close study of its 
 painting. The work is smooth, detailed, and quite 
 perfect in its textures. Flesh, stone, copper, china, 
 silver, silk may be as readily identified as though 
 the model sat before us. This is a good instance of 
 minute texture-painting, but there are other paint- 
 ers, like our own Mr. Chase, who are equally deft 
 with their fingers in a broader way, and can, with a 
 few brush-strokes, paint you silk, satin, and plush 
 so that you would instantly know them apart. 
 
 Many painters, however, are so faulty in this re- 
 spect that some warning against their work is nec- 
 essary. Almost all of them can give us form and 
 color, in a recognizable way at least, but the artist 
 who can paint wood here, copper there, and silk 
 elsewhere, is not so very frequently met with. If 
 we examine the works of Mr. Watts, the English- 
 man, an artist of no mean ability but a poor painter, 
 we shall find that his flesh looks like his cloth, his 
 cloth like his marble, his marble like his Cupid- 
 wings, and his Cupid-wings like a mixture of pal- 
 ette scrapings. Everything is painted alike, with 
 the same brush-stroke and the same heavy, impene-
 
 TEXTURES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH "WORK 221 
 
 trable pigment. Inability to paint different sur- 
 faces with skill appears to be a failing of the Eng- 
 lish school, with some exceptions of course, and the 
 Germans are little cleverer of hand. The Dussel- 
 dorf school, fond of allegories and the dramatic 
 scenes from history, has taught its disciples to paint 
 a marble column that looks like putty, and to place 
 a splash of whitewash along the side of it for sun- 
 light ; to paint Greek costume as hard and rigid as 
 it is usually seen in sculpture ; to paint roads like 
 mortar-beds ; and stone buildings like whitewashed 
 wooden ones. The Munich school is much better, 
 but still persists in painting flesh that looks like 
 sooty dough, and sunlight on polished furniture 
 which looks like nothing so much as a copious 
 sprinkling of white powder. 
 
 In every school are painters with a popular and 
 an exaggerated reputation, who are notably faulty 
 in texture-painting. To be disagreeably partic- 
 ular, I may mention as examples Eichter, of the 
 German school, Holman Hunt and Burne-Jones, 
 of the English school, Bouguereau of the French 
 school, and a great many of the older painters of 
 the American school. In landscape painting the 
 sins of omission and commission are even more fre- 
 quent than in genre or figure painting. It seems to 
 be thought by some people that the accurate paint- 
 ing of surfaces is requisite in the case of bright
 
 222 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 things only ; that a copper basin, a wine-glass, an 
 apple, and a table-knife must show smooth textures 
 by patches of high light, but that the broken waving 
 lights and shades of forest foliage, the carpeted 
 green of a lawn, the lustreless brown of a freshly 
 ploughed field, may be painted in almost any way 
 provided one gets the local coloring right. This 
 would seem an error. The very beauty of a cloud 
 is its formless drifting nature, its floating lightness ; 
 paint it hard and motionless in the sky like an ice- 
 berg in a sea of blue glass, and all the charm of the 
 upper air is gone. The foliage is to our eyes foli- 
 age for the one reason that it is made up of many 
 leaves dancing, changing, intermingling with each 
 other in countless hues and shades ; paint each leaf 
 with shining edges of white so that it resembles 
 a piece of newly -clipped tin, and again the beauty 
 of the forest is destroyed. As well paint wooden 
 water or leathern roses as take from any substance 
 in nature that surface-appearance which goes to es- 
 tablish its identity. For a characterless object in a 
 picture can do no good, and it has the ability to do 
 much harm. 
 
 Probably the severest test of the good or bad 
 texture-painting of a picture is to examine objects 
 apart from their surroundings and ask yourself 
 what they are meant to represent, and whether they 
 represent it. Should you cut one of Kalfs or van
 
 TEXTURES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH WORK 223 
 
 Aelst's painted lemons into strips, you would still 
 have lemon strips ; isolated or together, Desgoffe's 
 jewelry is still jewelry ; and the silks, satins, and 
 marbles of Meissonier and Alma-Tadema, no matter 
 where, or how seen, retain their identity. 
 
 But here it is worth while issuing a warninsr 
 against applying this test indiscriminately to all 
 classes of pictures, and in no case is it to be made 
 a determining test as to whether a picture is good 
 or not. Many pictures, though poor in texture- 
 painting, excel by their other merits, those of Mr. 
 "Watts, for instance, excelling in imagination and 
 poetic conception ; and in judging pictures we must 
 consider what the painter succeeds in doing, and 
 not be forever critical over what he fails to do. 
 Again, though texture painting is not wholly con- 
 fined to small easel pictures, yet there is some 
 reason for thinking that it should be. It hardly 
 comports with the dignity of a very large picture 
 for it to have emphasized surfaces and glitters and 
 glares of light, notwithstanding the examples of 
 Titian, Paolo Veronese, and Rubens. A cottage 
 may have a profusion of scroll-work and ornament 
 as a little picture may be elaborate in its finish ; 
 but the castle and the wall painting require sim- 
 plicity, and devotion to the larger elements of their 
 construction. The large painting would seem to 
 stand or fall by its conj position or color ; textures
 
 224 AKT FOR art's SAKE 
 
 are not vitally important to its existence. Still' 
 life and genre pieces such as the Dutchmen, Steen 
 and Terburg painted, and Vollon and Mettling 
 paint to-day, are the proper kind of pictures in 
 which to display brilliant texture - painting ; but 
 this cleverness of hand in small things would 
 appear trivial in the pictures on the walls of the 
 Pantheon at Paris. Moreover, great pictorial ideas 
 or magnitude of subject, require more the artis- 
 tic than the natural way of presentation. A com- 
 edy on the stage may be given in the ordinary 
 speaking tones of the voice, but a tragedy requires 
 melodramatic elocution. The classicists David, 
 Ingres, and others, as I have intimated in a pre- 
 vious lecture, did not paint clothing but drapery, 
 and did not draw the natural but the classic line, 
 because these were more appropriate to their he- 
 roic themes. The Florentines and Romans of the 
 Renaissance time worked in much the same way. 
 Doubtless in many cases they failed to paint text- 
 ures, because they did not know how, but this was 
 not always the case. Judged by texture-painting 
 alone, the celebrated " Sistine Madonna " of Raphael 
 at Dresden is a poor affair, the surfaces being rather 
 hard and dry throughout ; but to disabuse your 
 pind of the idea that Raphael did not know how to 
 paint textures, you need only to see his portraits of 
 Leo X. and Julius II., in either of which cloth, flesh,
 
 XXII. — CORRtGCilO, WUcJonnu of bt |-rancis.
 
 ^J 
 
 i 
 I
 
 TEXTURES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH WOEK 225 
 
 hair, wood, are wonderfully well rendered, consid- 
 ering the age in which Raphael lived. 
 
 There :ei«, however, few of the Florentines who 
 knew or cared much about texture-painting. Mi- 
 chael Angelo, Leonardo, Andrea del Sarto, usually 
 disregarded such embellishments of style, and it 
 was not until the time of the Venetians that brillian- 
 cy in the painting of silks, velvets, jewelry, and the 
 like began to appear. Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, 
 and Paolo Veronese introduced all things that 
 could add to the splendor of effect, and with great 
 power, as we shall note further on ; but for per- 
 fection in texture-painting the}' are not perhajjs 
 so celebrated as the Dutchmen, Steen, Terburg, 
 and Pieter de Hooghe with their pots, tile-floors, 
 huckster-stalls, and family groups. In modern 
 times the French, the Spanish, and the American 
 schools have devoted a great deal of time and en- 
 ergy to surfaces, perhaps at the expense of deeper 
 qualities, but certainly not without compensating re- 
 sults. The practice has developed among the 3'oung 
 men a great facility of the brush, which is in itself a 
 pleasing accomplishment, and has helped toward a 
 better and truer knowledge of nature by calling our 
 attention to humble beauties. Clever texture-paint- 
 ing does not of itself make a great art, but it pro- 
 duces a strong, a virile, a healthy art, and when we 
 see it combined with color in the works of Stevens, 
 15
 
 226 ART FOR ART'S SAKE 
 
 Vollon, Chase, it takes upon itself an importance 
 and lias a rank comparable to the best painting of 
 modern times. 
 
 Brush-work. Finally, I come to speak of that 
 which is intimately connected with the subject of 
 textures — in fact the manner of their production in 
 painting — the handling of the brush. This may 
 strike you as a slight part of painting, with which 
 the outside world should have little to do ; and it is 
 just because many people think in that way that I 
 wish to take it up. 
 
 From our own endeavors we oftentimes content 
 ourselves by exacting too little ; from other peo- 
 ple's endeavors we oftentimes disconieni ourselves 
 by exacting too much. All of us, in our differ- 
 ent callings, are putting forth efforts to be good 
 workmen, and few of us get beyond mere skilful 
 proficiency ; in passing judgment on others we 
 somehow never consider them as learned or un- 
 learned in their work, we require that they shall 
 be geniuses. The average person in a gallery is 
 seeking a masterpiece of sublimity, an exposition of 
 transcendent beauty ; he never asks : Is this piece 
 skilfully done ? Is that one strong ? Is the other 
 one brilliant ? It is not to be wondered at, then, 
 that he overlooks that cunning of the craftsman.
 
 TEXTDKES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH WORK 227 
 
 that sureness of the hand in art, which might pleas- 
 urably and profitably engage his attention. Those 
 who seek continually after stars can hardly be ex- 
 pected to admire the loveliness of field flowers. Yet, 
 shall we say that field flowers have no attractive- 
 ness? It cannot be claimed for brush work that it 
 is the highest aim of art ; neither can it be pushed 
 aside as unworthy of consideration. It does not, 
 perhaps, possess the sublimity of noble design, but 
 at least it has the virtue of perfect achievement, and 
 in this perfection there is a beauty which, the artists 
 have rightly insisted, should have its proper recog- 
 nition. 
 
 Brush work constitutes the painter's style as 
 drawing the draughtsman's style. Each of them is 
 analogous to the style of the writer upon which we 
 lay considerable stress in our criticism. In both 
 literature and painting, that which is said is doubt- 
 less of more importance than the manner of its 
 saying ; but again, we need not be so extreme 
 as to conclude that because the matter is some- 
 thing, therefore the manner is nothing. We appre- 
 ciate the simplicity of Cardinal Newman, the im- 
 petuous power of ]\I:icaulay, the ornate splendor of 
 Theophile Gautier ; why should we overlook these 
 same qualities when shown in the paintings of 
 Giorgione, Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese ? The 
 individuality of the man, which is so ajjparent in
 
 228 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 the writer, is hardly less apparent in the painter, 
 When people write or paint they may describe 
 things, but in doing so they record themselves. 
 Those great Renaissance painters ! how well and 
 truly they wrote their autobiographies upon the 
 walls and altars of the Italian churches ! We might 
 know the character of the men, had Vasari never 
 lived and had German historical research never 
 traced baptismal records and consulted tombstones. 
 The autobiography in literature is one of the most 
 interesting kinds of reading ; the autobiography in 
 art is not less so. Who would not rather learn 
 something of Tintoretto in his style, than something 
 of his Venetian senators in their portraits ? Who 
 cares for Rembrandt's sitters as compared with 
 Rembrandt himself? And is not the character of 
 Velasquez as shown in his art quite as interesting as 
 the royalty he portrayed ? " The pencil speaks the 
 tongue of every land." It speaks the varying nat- 
 ures of many men, their views, ideals, sentiments, 
 feelings. We cannot afford to despise it, for it is a 
 part of our universal history. 
 
 By brush work I mean simply a manner of put- 
 tin;,' on paint. An easy thing, to be sure, and many 
 think it done the best when the method of its doing 
 is quite imperceptible. I do not know how the 
 opinion ever obtained, but it seems still to exist 
 in many quarters, that a picture which is as smooth
 
 TEXTURES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH WORK 229 
 
 as porcelain in its surface mus-t be a very fine work ; 
 whereas, on the contrary, one that shows brush - 
 marks and rough facture must be a very bad work. 
 Let me disabuse your mind of that idea if you pos- 
 sess it. The smooth canvas is more likely to be 
 weak and worthless than the rough one— especially 
 if it be a modern picture. Raphael, Michael Ange- 
 lo, Leonardo, Fra Bartolommeo, all painted smooth 
 pictures, but they were not remarkable for being 
 good painters. That may sound to you like a 
 strange statement in view of the reputation of these 
 men, but please note that I use the word painters. 
 They were among the greatest artists the world has 
 produced, but they lived in an age when handhng 
 was almost in its infancy, when there was little ex- 
 pression derived from the brush, and when the pure- 
 ly sensuous, the brilliant, the vivacious qualities of 
 painting were undeveloped. Line and composition 
 were their reliance, and inipressiveness, dignity, 
 grace, or grandeur their usual aim. Painting was 
 little more than a filling-in of circumscribed spaces 
 with different colors. The outline was made first 
 and the color was added — with great effect surely, 
 considering the materials used and the lack of brush 
 knowledge at that time ; but, nevei'theless, as com- 
 pared to later painting, quite immature. Men like 
 Leonardo, Raphael, Perugino, Lorenzo di Credi 
 worked over their canvases in a way that is almost
 
 230 ART FOR ART'S SAKE 
 
 paiuful to behold in its nicety and accuracy. They 
 were all dreadfully afraid their brush would slip 
 over the edge or impinge upon the line. The great 
 Leonardo ! he who was so bold and self-reliant in 
 invention, apparently handled a brush with the 
 timidity of an academy art-student. Nor did any- 
 one of those around him have the courage to use 
 paint boldl}', directly, enthusiastically, sacrificing 
 smooth surfaces to expressive pigment, as Delacroix 
 sacrificed legs and arms to expressive line. It was 
 not for them to give that embellishment to art 
 whe^'ein we see the clear eye and the sure swift 
 hand of the trained technician. Perhaps they did 
 not need it ; they certainly did nobly without it ; 
 and it is not the privilege of anyone to slur them 
 nor do other than honor them. Yet it is a con- 
 ceded fact in art criticism that the Florentines were 
 not mature bruslimen, and I state simply the fact 
 that you may appreciate the Venetians who were 
 mature brushmen. 
 
 It was Giorgione, Titian, and their school who 
 inaugurated and brought to maturity the painter's 
 art. Line and comj^osition, which in their time 
 even in the Venetian school held high rank, were 
 not disregarded, but were made to share with color 
 and brush work the task of pleasing the eye. Neat- 
 ness, fineness, exactness gave way to facility, effec- 
 tiveness, force. The monochrome ground upon
 
 TEXTURES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH WORK 231 
 
 which the Florentines and Komans depended for 
 transparency was pushed aside, and Titian based 
 his picture in thick color, using this as a foundation 
 to build upon. There is only the second-hand tes- 
 timony of Palma Giovine to Titian's method of 
 painting left us, but it is known that he worked 
 over his pictures a great deal, amending and alter- 
 ing (it is said with his fingers, which he greatly pre- 
 ferred to his brush), and what with a kneading of 
 the under-pigments and transparent surface glazes, 
 he produced that richness of coloring, that warmth 
 of flesh, and strength of touch, so characteristic of 
 his work. The object of his art, like that of the 
 Florentines, was to express pictorial creations, but 
 he chose to embellish his work by color and bril- 
 liancy of handling for the purpose of pleasing the 
 eye. How well he succeeded in this may be judged 
 from the fact that painters and lovers of art for 
 art's sake date the beginning of painting from Ti- 
 tian or Correggio, not from the early Italians or 
 Kaphael ; as the book-lover may date the beginning 
 of fine printing from Froben or Elzevii-, not from 
 Coster or Gutenberg. Almost all of the Venetians 
 were remarkaV)le for skilful fingers. Tintoretto's 
 brush was headlong and impetuous, at times hasty 
 and even ineffective, but at its best powerful in 
 directness and splendid in strength. Giorgione, 
 Pulma, Vecchiu, i'uulo VLionese were all masters of
 
 232 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 the craft, and even the last of the great Venetians, 
 Tiepolo, inherited in no slight degree the painter's 
 skill of his predecessors. 
 
 But the Venetians did not exhaust the resources 
 of the brush. Many men with many styles were to 
 come after. The style of Rubens was very differ- 
 ent from that of Tintoretto. One was hasty and 
 disposed to run riot ; the other was swift enough 
 but sure, measured but certain, free and yet con- 
 strained by a strong intelligence. Rubens's hand, 
 one of the most adroit and certain hands that ever 
 used a brush, moved to the dictates of Rubens's 
 mind, touching, recording, impressing in the very 
 spirit of that mind. With him there is no fire of 
 hand except as secondary to a fire of thought. The 
 stroke is premeditated, sensitive, absolutely truth- 
 ful. With these qualities he combined a simplicity 
 — a way of doing great things with slight means — 
 that forms of itself a beauty in painting. Neither 
 the porcelain surface niggled over with so great care, 
 nor the rough plaster surface dashed on with so lit- 
 tle care attracted him. Fromentin, himself an ar- 
 tist with exceptional advantages for studying Ru- 
 bens's style, wrote of him : " He does not load, he 
 paints ; he does not build, he writes ; his hand 
 glides lightly over the ground, coaxing a little here, 
 strengthening a bit there ; with thin and limpid 
 drag he spreads a broad glaze, suiting its consist«
 
 o 
 m
 
 TEXTURES, SURB^ACES, AND BRUSH WORK 233 
 
 ency, degree of breadth, or finesse to each separate 
 passage of his work." Infallibly he knows where 
 to touch and where to leave untouched, where to 
 place a light and where a dark, where a full tone 
 and where a broken one. There is no need to ques- 
 tion, the mind knows ; there is no need to hesitate, 
 the eye sees ; there is no need to tremble, the hand 
 moves. So, at least, it appears to us in examining 
 the results of his brush. There is in the Lichten- 
 stein Gallery, at Vienna, a picture of a woman's 
 nude back with yellow hair streaming down it, that 
 is, perhaps, the simplest and yet most powerful 
 piece of painting in all the world of art. The abso- 
 lute knowledge of effect, the sureness of the hand, 
 the skilful ease with which the brush travels, are 
 really astounding. 
 
 And what is the object of all this, you ask? To 
 make the scene on canvas more effective and more 
 beautiful in the manner of its telling ; to bring us 
 nearer to the personality of the artist, which we 
 may see in every combination of color, manage- 
 ment of light, modelling of form, handling of stuffs. 
 We shall not know tlie Raising of the Cross aiul 
 the Descent, the Calvary and the Crucifixion, with- 
 out also knowing Rubens the brilliant stylist, Ru- 
 bens the splendid colorist, Rubens the strong tech- 
 nician. We like Shakespeare's ideas, but after all 
 there is little that is actually new in them. The
 
 234 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 plays recite thoughts that have passed vaguely 
 through the minds of many men at diflferent times. 
 But none in all the world has so well expressed 
 them as Shakespeare, In other words Shake- 
 speare's style counts for much. Why not that of 
 Rubens ? 
 
 Rembrandt never had the great facility of Ru- 
 bens, but he was hardly less powerful in his results. 
 In his early and middle style of painting he finished 
 rather minutely and with smooth surfaces, but later 
 on he loaded heavily and positively. Some of these 
 late canvases appear to have been dragged and 
 thumbed somewhat like those of Titian ; the pig- 
 ments are laid over and worked through ; and he 
 did not seem to think that art consisted in conceal- 
 ing art, for his brush (or thumb) can be traced in 
 its movements through many of his canvases. The 
 effect secured by Rembrandt in his work is usually 
 most potent, but the means he employed for obtain- 
 ing the effect appear rather compounded at times 
 by the saci-ificing of color to light. 
 
 Velasquez was much simpler in method. He was 
 a painter of things in mass rather than in detail, 
 and to get character without elaboration or hard- 
 ness he used broad light sweeps of the brush from 
 the very beginning of the picture. He did not 
 catch at nor emphasize any particular feature. 
 Light, form, color, all were but a part of a uni*
 
 TEXTURES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH WORK 235 
 
 versal whole, and to paint the whole with truthful- 
 ness of effect and frankness of manner was his aim. 
 Mixing, kneading, overlaying of pigments were quite 
 foreign to his methods. His painting appears to be 
 done once, no more, as though, like Lambro's sword- 
 thrust, his first stroke left little need for a second 
 one. Everywhere in his canvases he shows the 
 trained hand of a most skilled technician ; and it is 
 the consciousness of power we receive from such 
 work that gives us so large a part of the pleasure 
 we feel in looking at it He was one of the great 
 masters of the brush, and when it is taken into con- 
 sideration that his other artistic qualities were not 
 inferior to his skill as a painter, we have one whose 
 greatness the world, with all its admiration for him, 
 has not yet appreciated. Painting reached its apo- 
 gee with Velasquez ; no one has carried it higher. 
 Long time after him, in Spain, Goya seems to have 
 partly inherited and cultivated his style ; but Goya, 
 though a clever handler of the brush, had not the 
 freedom from eccentricity of Velasquez, nor the 
 calm robust spirit that characterizes great genius. 
 
 From men like Velasquez, veritable Shakespeares 
 of the brush, who maintain tlie equilibrium of style 
 and thought, permitting neither the one nor the 
 other to be obtrusively prominent, we may go back 
 to the little Dutchmen, Hals, Steen, Terburg, who 
 had not much to siiy, but had a charming way of
 
 236 ART FOR ART'S SAKE 
 
 saying it. It can hardly be considered extravagant 
 to assert that we would know little and care less for 
 the pictures of Franz Hals, were it not that he pos- 
 sessed a vigorous style — an individual style. There 
 is a strong characterization about his portraits, but 
 that would hardly be noticed were it not for the 
 easy strength of their handling. He seems to have 
 been gifted with clever fingers, for in looking at his 
 work we cannot imagine he ever served an appren- 
 ticeship. His work is not labored nor studied, but 
 improvised, struck off on the spur of the moment. 
 Veron says quite truly of him : " He launches his 
 brush upon the canvas, and that with so great cer- 
 tainty and address that it always falls upon the pre- 
 cise spot where it is wanted, and never remains 
 there one moment longer than absolutely necessary 
 for the production of the required effect. We can- 
 not conceive him deliberating over, retouching, or 
 correcting his work. He carries out his idea at 
 once and never i-eturns to it." He has no great 
 imagination, but he has an enthusiasm in his style 
 that is contagious with the observer ; he is not 
 much of a poet, but he is a sparkling embodiment 
 of dash and spirit ; he is not profound, but lie is 
 decidedly clever in perception and brilliant in ex- 
 position. Some artists seek for the glory of the 
 high ideal, and some for the verve of perfect skill ; 
 there is beauty in both, and it is not necessary that
 
 TEXTURES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH WORK 237 
 
 we should institute any comparisons as to which is 
 the more beautiful. If there is an attractiveness 
 about the style of Franz Hals, then let us enjoy it 
 as such and be thankful that he possessed not the 
 insipidity of Sassoferrato, the sterility of Denner, 
 nor the prettiness of Van der Werflf. 
 
 Of Steen's style Sir Joshua Keynolds wrote that 
 " it might become even the design of Raphael," and 
 Lord Ronald Govver, evidently somewhat surprised, 
 wonders what could have made Sir Joshua write 
 "that astounding statement." But Sir Joshua was 
 right, and there is nothing " astounding " about the 
 statement except its truth, which is always more or 
 less shocking to us. The Italian, with all his gran- 
 deur of conception and nobility of design, was no 
 match for the Dutchman in manijjulating the paint- 
 brush. It was Raphael's weak point ; it was Steen's 
 strong one. The one man was a great artist ; the 
 other man was simply a fine painter. Steen, like 
 Hals, Terburg, Brouwer, Teniers, and the major- 
 ity of Dutch and Flemish genre painters, was not 
 hampered with great ideas and fine frenzies. His 
 thoughts and subjects were commonplace, often low, 
 which was bad ; he was satirical, which was pos- 
 sibly worse, for painting is not much of a medium 
 for satire though cartooning or caricaturing may 
 be ; and he was comic, often funny, which was worst 
 of all, for there is nothing funny about painting.
 
 238 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 But if his head was not always well-balanced, nor 
 his taste refined and elegant, his fingers were cer- 
 tainly skilful, and a fresher, crisper, more attractive 
 way of painting would be hard to find in the Dutch 
 schools. 
 
 The English school, except Sir Joshua and some 
 few others, never excelled in brush-work, nor have 
 the Germans any remarkable men of the brush in 
 their past art-history. Among the more modern of 
 the French painters Boucher, though clever of hand, 
 was rather frivolous ; Fragonard was uneven, often 
 painting with brilliant force and at other times de- 
 generating into weakness ; while Chardin — the still, 
 neglected and comparatively unknown Chardin — 
 and Watteau were perfect painters, each in his pe- 
 culiar field. The work of Watteau is the embodi- 
 ment of liveliness and beauty, but it is in a light 
 strain. He is to Paolo Veronese as a Heine to a 
 Goethe, beautiful in what he attempts but not at- 
 tempting the very great. Content with a lawn 
 party or an interior of fashionably dressed people 
 for a subject, he is likewise content with extreme 
 cleverness, brilliancy of efiect, and playfulness of 
 touch. His style strikes one as an affectation, but 
 in reality it is a serious and most skilful painting 
 of the affected characters and subjects of the Or- 
 leans Eegency. 
 
 David, Ingres, and their following were draughts-
 
 TEXTURES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH WORK 239 
 
 men and advocates of line, not painters in the pres- 
 ent sense of the word. Delacroix revolted against 
 their view in favor of an art with more feeling, pas- 
 sion, and emotion ; and the revolt was one of meth- 
 ods as well as of conceptions. The new handling of 
 Delacroix was designed of itself to interpret certain 
 moods or states of feeling, and within the limits of 
 painting it was fairly successful. The romantic 
 thought, productive of a romantic mood, was ex- 
 pressed in a romantic manner ; but it may be noted 
 that oftentimes all three of these factors with Dela- 
 croix are better suited to literature than to paint- 
 ing. The literary side of romanticism influenced 
 him greatly, and I am inclined to think he too often 
 tried to express with a brush an emotional sensa- 
 tion not readily told by the means of form and 
 color. Though a skilful painter and a fine colorist, 
 he seems to me greater in his conception than in 
 his execution, and deserving of more honor for the 
 original view of art he revealed, than for the man- 
 ner of his revealing it. 
 
 In recent years there has been a great deal of 
 painting for paint's sake in France which has re- 
 sulted in some excellent technicians and also in a 
 good many extremists who have brought method 
 into contempt by extravagance. With the good 
 painters one might spend hours describing their 
 different styles and accomplishments, but I must
 
 24:0 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 content myself at this time with noticing only a few 
 of them. Vollon's style is a never-ending source of 
 admiration with painters and paint lovers. He is a 
 master of the brush even in these days when brush- 
 mastery has become an art in itself. It seems to 
 him the merest child's play to brush in the folds of 
 a table-cloth, the side of a china bowl, or a mass of 
 fruit in a dish. He apparently does it with the 
 careless ease of an ordinary painter laying in a 
 ground or varnishing a canvas (indeed, I have been 
 told that he sometimes paints pots and pumpkins 
 with the flat of his forearm) ; yet so far from being 
 careless in effect each stroke he makes is precision 
 itself, and each shade or tint is just the one required 
 and no other. The restorers of old manuscripts 
 have a method of brushing over the parchment with 
 a chemical which brings to the light the blurred 
 and faded characters below ; Vollon's brush is not 
 unlike the'rs in effect. His hand moves, and line, 
 light, color, and textures follow as by magic — the 
 magic of perfect skill. On account of his great 
 technical powers, his fellows of the craft have called 
 him " the painter's painter," and it is among paint- 
 ers that his work is held in the highest esteem. 
 There is no one living who excels him in his way, 
 and for this accomplishment, if for no other, he de- 
 serves the high rank he holds. 
 
 Courbet, scorning both classicism and romanti-
 
 
 ¥ 
 
 a 
 
 L. 
 
 X 
 
 X
 
 TEXTURES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH WORK 241 
 
 cism in favor of realism, used to bold up his fin. 
 gers exclaiming, in his self-satisfied conceited way, 
 "Painting is there." Sure enough the brush part 
 of it was there in his case. Whatever else he was 
 or was not — " realist," as his friends chose to call 
 him ; communist, brutalist, and " drunken Helot," 
 as his enemies named him — he at least possessed the 
 artist's temperament and the painter's skill. He was 
 a more uneven painter than Vollon, often doing in- 
 different commonplace work, but at his best strong 
 as a Titan, turbulent as a Centaur, and moody as 
 Prometheus. The nature of the artist, the subjects 
 that he chose, and the manner of his treatment all 
 move together along parallel lines, powerful in ef- 
 fect, direct in action, and at times violent and revo- 
 lutionary in spirit. There is a certain impetuous 
 energy in his brush, as though his work were done 
 hastily and boastfully, as doubtless it was ; yet there 
 is also a largeness of view and a simplicity of touch 
 about it that show a keen observer and a learned 
 painter. Courbet's fingers made art of a decidedly 
 strong and interesting kind ; but his assumption 
 that there was no art beyond that of the fingers was 
 only one of those one-sided inferences which betray 
 a one-sided view. 
 
 Before Courbet died there was anotiier " art of 
 the fingers," another style of brush-work set forth 
 
 in the work of Mariano Fortuny, the most brilliant 
 16
 
 243 AKT FOR ART'S SAKE 
 
 painter of the modern Spanish school. It caused 
 quite a Pariaian furore in the sixties, and not with- 
 out reason. For Fortuny seemed to have inherited 
 the facihty of Goya, and added to it a glittering 
 ornate style of his own. A man of ability, a shrewd 
 observer and a brilliant recorder, he was more than 
 the "clever painter " people have chosen to consider 
 him ; he was an admirable artist. Yet as that por- 
 tion of life which he was permitted to live (he died 
 at thirty-six) is mainly devoted to mastering tech- 
 nical conditions, so Fortuny's art is perhaps more 
 remarkable for its great skill than its profound im- 
 agination. His style was the embodiment of vi- 
 vacity, captivating by its deftness of hand, dazzling 
 by its sensuous elegance, and startling by its effects 
 bordering on the hizan'e. Nothing in nature es- 
 caped his observation. He seized upon the essences 
 of all things, not despising the flash of a mirror, the 
 sheen of a silk, the polish of a raai'ble ; nor passing 
 by the gentle lap of a wave, the delicacy of a flower, 
 or the billowy roll of a cloud. Wherever he could 
 he strewed his canvas with gem-like flashes of color 
 and light, touching at times as with a butterfly's 
 wing, and again dashing down with strong impulse. 
 It was his way, and a charming one surely, of en 
 livening his picture and pleasing the physical as 
 well as the mind's eye. Poets and novelists strew 
 their pages with simile, metaphor, and imagery to
 
 TEXTURES, SUKFACES. AND BRUSH WORK 243 
 
 brighten the theme and hold the reader's attention ; 
 why should not artists employ their brushes in a 
 similar manner? To call it " style " in the one, and 
 "trickery" or 'mere cleverness " in the other, is 
 very unjust, not to say absurd. 
 
 In landscape there has been much expressive 
 brush-work shown by the Fontainebleau-Barbizon 
 group of painters — the so-called men of 1830. Each 
 one of the group saw a particular phase of nature 
 and invented a style that would properly interpret 
 it. To Corot all things were bathed in pale light ; 
 mountains, forests, lakes, marshes, were tinged by 
 it ; and a haze of atmosphere enveloped the scene. 
 In telling this beauty, Corot in his late style seemed 
 to paint with a feathery brush, emphasizing little, 
 rubbing and blurring much for atmospheric effect, 
 working always gently and tenderly as though too 
 strong a touch would sweep away the illusion of 
 light. The style embodied the conception ; it could 
 not have been better. But how different in his no- 
 bler canvases was Rousseau ! He looked upon the 
 world as an enduring, steadfast, eternal thing, a some- 
 thing solid, maijsive, bulky. Intuitively his brush 
 paints solidly. He does not skim over the canvas ; 
 he dashes upon it with a full brush. He does not 
 touch lightly ; he loads heavily. He does not draw 
 and till in thinly ; he models broadly. What is the 
 result ? His trees are strong, deep, full-rounded ;
 
 244 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 his earth is weighty, massive, expansive ; his sky ia 
 the firmament of the days of creation, and his clouds 
 appear like steadfast companies of white-winged 
 ships that have been sailing around and around the 
 globe for centuries. Daubigny and Jules Dupre 
 were somewhat like Rousseau in a strong manner of 
 doing things especially in marines ; while others of 
 the school like Millet, Troyon, and Jacque, though 
 excellent in sentiment and fair technicians, were 
 not remai'kable for the brilliancy of their paint- 
 ing, though it was effective and well suited to the 
 themes they chose. 
 
 I need not further attempt to describe the many 
 different styles of the modern artists ; for I doubt 
 if you are interested in hearing about the methods 
 of men with whose works you are possibly not well 
 acquainted. I wish, however, to call your attention 
 to some leading men in the different schools, so that 
 should you hereafter see good examples of their 
 works you may particularly notice the manner of 
 their painting. In the Spanish school Madrazo, as 
 well as Villegas and Rico, have somewhat of For- 
 tuny's style, but some of the later men in imitat- 
 ing the style have lost the spirit of Fortuny's work, 
 as might have been expected. In the German 
 school Menzel, Leibl, and Uhde all speak different 
 languages, but each in his way is excellent. In 
 France, Alfred Stevens has a charming style, but
 
 TEXTURES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH WORK 24^ 
 
 it is not always seen in that commercial work of 
 which so much has come into this country of late. 
 Carolus-Duran is strong and brilliant at times ; 
 Boldini, a Parisian-Italian, is dainty, dehcate, and at 
 times powerful ; while Gervex, Latouche, and others 
 are facile enough with the brush to keep up the 
 French reputation for cleverness. 
 
 These names you have often heard and will 
 doubtless easily remember ; but I wish to call your 
 attention further to some men here in America 
 whose names and works are perhaps not so famihar, 
 yet whose rank as painters is not below the rank 
 of those whom I have mentioned. The works of 
 Mr. Chase will not reveal to you much imaginative 
 power, they do not attempt to reveal it, in fact they 
 rather scorn it. But in effective brush-work, in 
 strong handling, they will compare favorably with 
 the work of any painter of any school. He is a 
 master in his way, and you will find, when you 
 come to study his pictures, that the enthusiastic 
 dash of his brush, tlie certainty of his hand, make 
 up of themselves an art which we are slow to ad- 
 mire only because of its novelty — because we have 
 not the painter's point of view. You will find in 
 Mr. Sargent as complete and thoroughly equipped 
 a portrait-painter as Europe or America can pro- 
 duce. He has few equals and no superior. His 
 brush-work is knowing to the limit of present
 
 246 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 knowledge ; effective as hardly any brush-work has 
 been since the beginning of this century, and beau- 
 tiful as only expression can become in the hands 
 of genius. There is no better work to be seen in 
 modern ai-t. You will find in Mr. Blum a vivacity 
 and charm of manner somewhat like tb:it of Wat- 
 teau. His brush touches lightly, gracefully, quaint- 
 ly at times. It has a smack of Japanese art about 
 it ; it sometimes reminds one of Whistler's work, 
 and again it has the certainty of Alfred Stevens. 
 Never very profound in subject, his pictures are al- 
 ways entertaining in method ; and in the handling 
 of color and textures, especially in pastel, they are 
 clever in the superlative degree. Differing in style 
 from those I have mentioned, yet not the less brill- 
 iant in their way, will be found the various methods 
 of Dewing, Wiles, and others ; while in landscape 
 Inness, Twachtmann, Tryon, lead in freshness of 
 painting and strength of impression. While we 
 are travelling the world over, viewing old masters 
 in Italy and new masters in France, it may be well 
 for us to keep an eye on our own ; for here in this 
 western world is rising a school of painters which 
 we do not as yet appreciate, but which we shall 
 some day delight to honor. 
 
 In speaking of brush-work I began by calling at- 
 tention to painting under the early Italians, when 
 form was dwelt upon and painting was but a
 
 TEXTURES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH WORK 247 
 
 smooth filliag-in of enclosed spaces. It was then in 
 its infancy. Further on mention was made of the 
 work of Titian, Eubens, Velasquez, and the mod- 
 erns as representing the maturity of art when paint- 
 ing became expressive of style and personality, 
 sharing with line and color the beauty of the pict- 
 ure. It is now worth while to point out a tendency 
 toward over-maturity or exaggeration, which has 
 begun to make itself apparent in some directions. 
 Artists who have carried out ideas in a perfect style 
 are usually followed by those who catch at the style 
 alone and carry it into the grotesque. From the 
 ripeness of painting there has been an inclination 
 in certain schools to what Mr. Hamerton calls "over- 
 ripeness." It is shown in many small catchy effects 
 on the canvas, in the distortion of the true relations 
 of objects, in isolated glitters and glares instead of 
 unity and concentration, and by the painty over- 
 running and sometimes obliteration of line. The 
 pictures of M.onticelli, who, however, only aimed at 
 color and light, will instance this last defect, many 
 of the impressionist pictures will further exemplify 
 it ; and among some of the younger Parisians there 
 is a tendency to heap up ineffectual paint in at- 
 tempts at breadth of handling and relief in model- 
 ling. All this is merely the extravagance that usu- 
 ally follows in the Avake of genius and has no 
 importance in itself. Not even the most enthusias-
 
 248 ART FOR art's SAKE 
 
 tic lover of paint can rhapsodize over meaningless 
 splashes of pigment. Brush-work must be shown 
 to have an ulterior aim, and it must produce a de- 
 cisive effect to command applause. If rightly used, 
 it is an embellishment of art, and in some cases it 
 is art itself. I will not say it is the highest kind of 
 art. After all, it is the gem of thought we seek 
 more than its setting ; but if in the style of the 
 setting we see and know a peculiar beauty, may we 
 not draw an additional pleasure from the work of 
 art? 
 
 Not in this lecture alone, but throughout the 
 whole course, I have spoken to you more of art- 
 methods than art-aims ; I have dwelt upon the ap- 
 pearances of nature as we may see them about us, 
 and as the modern artists portray them ; I have 
 sought to call your attention to those features of 
 painting which are usually overlooked by the casual 
 observer. It has not been claimed that these feat- 
 ures are superior to those qualities of imagination 
 and feeling which so truly belong to greatness in 
 art ; but it has been claimed that they possess a 
 beauty of their own. There is one glory of the sun, 
 and another glory of the moon, and another glory 
 of the stars. There is a time and place for each, 
 and because we enjoy the splendor of the sun is no 
 good reason why we should overlook or disdain the 
 lustre of the stars. The technical beauties of paint'
 
 TEXTURES, SURFACES, AND BRUSH WORK 249 
 
 ing are hardly the creative beauties of painting, but 
 if we look at them aright we shall find that they 
 have a chann of expression quite worthy of our 
 consideration. I hope I have helped you in some 
 measure toward an appreciation of them by calling 
 your attention to them. Such was my object in 
 preparing these lectures. I leave them with you, 
 and for the kind attention you have accorded to 
 them I thank you.
 
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