Edward Armitage

“ When the marble is ready for the finishing-touches of the sculptor, he sometimes endeavors to regain a little of the natural element, but generally he consoles himself with the reflection that high art is incompatible with detail, and so his Venus or nymph leaves his studio for the exhibition or the patron’s gallery, there to be admired as a model of beautiful carving and of exquisite taste; of the former, on account of its soft, boneless appearance; and of the latter, because, though a nude figure, there is no reminiscence of nature about it. ”

“ They have acquired color, but at too great a sacrifice. Beauty and dignity of form, noble composition, and all the higher qualities of art, become rarer every year, and will, if the present downward tendency continue, soon be extinct. Of course I am speaking of historical painting, either sacred or profane; of the art, in short, of Girodet, Géricault, Gros, Ingres, and Flandrin; and I think it will be generally allowed that no school can hold its place in the art-world which allows the noblest branch of the profession to wither and decay. ”

“ Neglect of detail is the besetting sin of those painters who aim at the grand style. They fail to see that the same process of selection may be applied to the detail, as well as to the general proportions of the figure.
In a portrait you must of course copy your sitter. You must take him as you do a wife, for better, for worse. He may have a cast in his eye or a conspicuous pimple on his nose, which, of course, as a faithful portraitist you are bound to reproduce. You are under no such obligation if you are painting an ideal head from the same individual. ”

“ The golden rule for the arrangement of figures in a picture, is that the nature of the subject ought to dictate the lines of the composition. If you have to paint a subject of a quiet, majestic, and dignified class, a subject for all ages, where you wish to express perfect repose and stability, you cannot do better than go back to the pyramid. This pyramidical theory of composition has been much quizzed and laughed at, but that is because the old-fashioned dilettanti who advocated it wanted to apply it universally. ”

“ It is by no means necessary that the painter of religious subjects should be an ascetic, nor even what is commonly called a religious man, but it is necessary that he should import into his work some of the spirit of Christianity, just as it is necessary for the painter of pagan heroes and nymphs to imbue himself with the spirit of classical art until it becomes a second nature to him. ”

“ It may be answered that it is all very well saying that an artist should go to nature and rely on his own powers of creation and invention, but supposing he is relying on a broken reed; suppose he cudgels his brain in vain for ideas, what is he to do? In this case I should advise him, instead of borrowing from the old masters, that he should turn his attention to portrait-painting, landscape, or some branch of the profession where the creative and imaginative faculties are not much required. ”

“ I have in a former lecture praised the Belgian landscape-painters, and I think that a good deal of their merit lies in the happy choice of subjects. They are certainly not classical, like the old school of French landscape-painters, nor do they affect the dreariest commonplace, like some of the moderns. They neither paint precipices and snowy mountains, nor dull stretches of poplar-skirted high-road. Their pictures are to me most interesting, not only on account of their technical excellence, but from the good taste shown in the selection of the subjects. ”

“ When a figure is well drawn, the master will take a pleasure in giving the student some hints about the color, and will perhaps take the palette himself; but to give instruction in color when there is no drawing, is like furnishing a house before the walls are built.
I have noticed that some of you in the life school attach too much importance to the mere outline, and neglect the structure and internal markings of your figures. Now the bones and principal markings of a figure are of infinitely more consequence than the outline ”

“ Before beginning to treat of the composition of a picture, I should like to make some remarks on the choice of a subject. Of course, no rule can be laid down in this matter. What strikes one artist as being a very good subject will appear totally uninteresting to another. It is, perhaps, fortunate that this should be so. The taste of the general public is at least as varied as that of the profession, and thus every one can be suited. ”

“ An historical or figure painter ought, in addition to his knowledge of the human frame, to study the connection between mind and expression, and to steer a middle course between the facial monotony of Giotto, Orcagna, and the early masters, and the grotesque grimacing of the Mantegna school. The works of Lebrun and Lavater on facial expression are ridiculous and useless; indeed, nature is the only book we ought to consult if we wish truly to depict the effects of anger, fear, love, and all the other human passions. ”

“ He was not a great colorist, like his contemporary Delacroix, nor a great draughtsman, like Flandrin, but his pictures have a manly, business-like look about them, and a homogeneous quality which is perfectly marvellous, considering the heterodox way in which they were put together.
No living artist, and probably none that ever lived, could have taken such liberties with his modus operandi without the most disastrous results; and I feel sure that no one present here to-night would think of painting a figure-picture in this haphazard fashion. ”

“ The early reformers, Cimabue, Giotto, and Duccio, would have had the great mosaics of the fifth century, and such remnants of ancient pagan art as were then known, to inspire them. They would have been unfettered by Byzantine tradition, and I think it probable that their works would have been better in every respect.
Every one with any experience knows that it is easier to instil sound principles of art into one who is totally uninstructed, than into one who has already contracted a bad style of drawing; and as it is with individuals, so also is it with schools and phases of art. ”

“ I have wandered away from the proper subject of this lecture, and have but little time left; but before concluding I should wish to explain that although I am continually urging the extreme importance of originality in painting, I do not mean forced singularity or oddity. I mean by the word, the expression of the painter’s own sober ideas. A sane man should produce sane work. It may not be very powerful, it may in no way recall Michael Angelo, but it will have qualities of its own. How charming, simple, and unaffected are Flaxman’s designs until he got inoculated with the Sistine Chapel lymph! ”

“ LECTURE IX.
ON FINISH.
It has always been a disputed point, both amongst artists and writers on art, how near an approach to absolute truth is desirable in painting; some insisting on photographic accuracy, whilst others go to the opposite extreme, and consider mere suggestiveness to be the great desideratum in painting.
Much may be argued in favor of both sides of the question, but a medium course is certainly the best.
Imitation of nature is no doubt the foundation-stone of all sound painting, and the natural inference would be, that the closer the imitation the better the picture. ”

“ One man paints his whole picture in a low key, another paints white figures on a black background, one plasters his color on with a trowel, another models it rather thin. Still I think I may safely say that the majority of French pictures are painted with thick, opaque color and in a very low key.
Mannerism is perhaps the rock on which most rising reputations are shipwrecked, not only in France but everywhere else. A clever young artist paints a really fine picture, full of feeling, originality, and poetry, but rather low in tone. ”

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

“ Although a great advocate for this study, I cannot say I approve of sketching clubs as usually constituted. Experienced painters may perhaps join them with impunity; their evening’s contribution is always a faint echo of something they have done fifty times before, but no good can come of any young artist cudgelling his brains to produce something original in two hours.
I don’t think a professor of music would approve of his pupils meeting once a fortnight to improvise something on a given subject. ”

“ Nothing can be more dissimilar than the works of the Florentine Ghirlandajo and the portraits of Rembrandt, and yet few will deny the right of both these painters to rank as colorists. I might bracket Titian with Rubens, or Correggio with Ostade, to show how broad is the path which leads to excellence in color.{206}
An innate sense of the harmonious color in nature, and a steadfast determination, by hook or by crook, to reproduce an echo of this harmony on your canvas, must ultimately lead to a good result. ”

“ I remember an old gentleman who has now been dead many years, but who in his day was a great patron of artists, telling me that he preferred pictures with little or no subject in them. He liked what he called nice “satiny” bits of painting, and the less story there was in them to distract his attention from the “satiny” painting the better. I fancy that this want of appreciation of composition is more common than is generally supposed. For one person who notices the skill shown in the general arrangement of a picture, fifty will be found to admire its color and execution. ”

“ Drawing is the backbone of all great work, and it is an art which, if neglected when you are young, does not appear ever to be acquired in after-life.
Most artists improve in color, and particularly in execution, as they get older, but in drawing they seldom acquire greater correctness. They acquire facility, but not accuracy. It is, therefore, of the highest importance that all students should carry out their studies in drawing as far as they possibly can whilst they are young. I am not speaking of their chalk studies alone, but also of their painted studies. ”

“ It will seldom happen that when you have to introduce a nude or semi-nude figure into your picture, you can copy the model exactly as you would in the Academy schools. There all you have to do is to copy what you see, but if you have to represent a Moses, a Prometheus, or an Andromeda, and your model has short legs and deformed feet, it will not do to be too literal in your copy of him.
Artists often say on these occasions that the model puts them out, and that they can get on better without nature. ”

“ Of course, if they copy all the defects of their model they may, to a certain extent, be right in saying that they do better without nature; but even in this case I doubt it. Nature, though cramped and vulgarized, is better than feeble reminiscences of Michael Angelo or Carracci. An accomplished draughtsman will constantly refer to nature without servilely copying her. It is not possible that the great sculptors of antiquity found (even in Greece) such matchless specimens of humanity as the Theseus, the fighting gladiator, or the Milo Venus. ”

“ It would hardly be legitimate art to dress up and pose a number of models and have them photographed with the intention of transferring the group to canvas, but it is perfectly allowable to call in the aid of photography for draperies or costumes, where, from the action of the figures, it would be impracticable to draw the folds from nature.
All portrait-painters know that it is not easy to get ladies and gentlemen to sit for their clothes, and it is far better to get help from a good photograph than from a model or a lay figure whom the clothes do not fit. ”

“ Style in drawing is not synonymous with correctness. There can be no true style without a certain amount of correctness, but, on the other hand, a drawing may be very correct and yet deficient in style. Photographs are a good illustration of the distinction.
No one will dispute the general accuracy of photography, and yet how few photographs possess the element of style!
A fine style of drawing may be defined as the delineation of beautiful forms in a masterly and simple manner. It must be founded on nature, but purified and refined by the continual study of the antique. ”

“ I can well understand that a stranger who has been feasting his eyes all the morning on Titians and Paul Veroneses, should find the descent very precipitous to the level of a modern Italian studio; but in Paris there were no such formidable rivals to fear, and it is much to be regretted that Italy did not put forth her whole strength. I am inclined, however, to give another reason why modern Italian art has suffered from the proximity of so many chefs-d’œuvre by the old masters, and that is the temptation to become copyists. ”

“ Before leaving the French painters, I ought, perhaps, to say something about the subjects principally affected by them.
No one can go through a French exhibition without being struck by the number of ghastly and horrible subjects which meet the eye on every side, and which seem to vie with each other in cruelty and brutality.
Death and suffering in every form have always been favorite subjects with French artists. Delaroche was continually painting murders and executions, but the comparatively mild form of horrors affected by him is not sensational enough for the modern school. ”

“ The reason for this is that faults of color and errors of taste are much less conspicuous in a gray picture than in a brilliantly colored one. In the former all the costumes are of a whitey-brown, buff, or slate color, and an injudicious distribution of these Quaker-like tints would be hardly noticeable; but in a work where strong reds, yellows, blues, and blacks predominate, the substitution of one color for another would be fatal to the picture.
In landscape again, it is far easier to paint the gray land of mountain and mist than the brilliant sunshine of the South. ”