Animal painting

“ It was late in the history of painting when the animal came into his own, when the perfection of technique made every branch of art possible. We may date the beginning of modern animal art from the seventeenth century Dutch school. From this time on, the most mediocre artist could make a presentable animal picture. But it is only now and then that an artist has attained high distinction in the subject. ”

“ This would be practically impossible were it not for the kindly help we receive from the human imagination, which is ever ready to accept a mere hint and build upon it a whole world; to fill in all discrepancies; and, given a few scratches of pen or pencil, to construct therefrom a complete representation of nature. How peculiarly human is this mental attitude is proved by the fact that no animal is ever known to recognize the most realistic painting as anything more than simple paint and canvas. ”

“ There is no secret of painting animals either in the house or out-of-doors which is not the same as the secret of painting the human figure. If you would paint an animal, get one for a model and study it. Work in some sort of a house-light first, in a barn or shed, or, if it be a small animal, in your studio. Study as you would any other thing, from a chair to a man. The principles of drawing do not change with the character of anatomy. ”

“ In the childhood of the race, as in the childhood of the individual, animals were the favorite art subject, as we see in the ancient sculpture of various peoples. Centuries before the age of painting, the figure decorations of temples and palaces consisted largely of lions and horses. Critics still visit the British museum to marvel at the lion hunt so realistically depicted on an Assyrian bas-relief, and the noble cavalcade of horses forming the frieze of the Parthenon. The best modern animal painters have something to learn from these. ”

“ Now in domesticated animals there is great variation in colouring, but not in the majority of wild species. What the causes are that operate in the painting of the skin of an animal no one can say, any more than one can say how particular spots are arranged on the petal of a flower or the wing of a butterfly. ”

“ And there, where affluence is unknown, and elegance unconsulted,—where no rich tapestry shields the artist’s easel from the light,—is a work of magic art and mystic mystery, which has been seen by hundreds, and will be by thousands. It is a rare bright picture—a childish, dimpled face, with deep, wondrous blue eyes, and thick clustering curls; one round arm is flung over the shaggy neck of a large black dog, as if to show how perfectly the spiritual part of nature can overcome the animal; and the whole picture represents some half-embodied ideal, which is in future years to become a reality. ”

“ In addition he would have enabled others to share his enjoyment with him. There is a great field here for the painter; and many would welcome a change from the same old cows and sheep tamely grazing in a meadow, which is all that artists usually present to us of animal life.
Among the most conspicuous animals met with are the elephant, the bison, the buffalo, and the rhinoceros. And it would be hard to discover beauty in any of these. ”

“ We should like to see one or two of our popular artists, who persist in painting camels and desert scenes without ever having been to the East, just sit down here quietly for one day and paint a camel's head; not flinching from the work, but mastering the wonderful texture and shagginess of his thick coat or mane, its massive beauty, and its infinite gradations of colour. Such a sitter no portrait painter ever had in England. Feed him up first, get a boy to keep the flies from him, and he will sit almost immoveably through the day. ”

“ No one can, one would suppose, pass through the galleries in Cromwell Road and remain quite insensible to the beauties of animal life. Beauty of form and beauty of colour are conspicuously combined in many species of birds and insects. And much of this colour-beauty and splendid iridescence is known to be due to minute scales, to thin films of air or fluid, and to microscopically fine lines developed upon scales or feathers. But there is one phase of beauty which cannot be exhibited in the museum—the beauty that comes of life as opposed to death. ”

“ There were two small pannels occupied by sea-pieces, with gallies; and two charming landscapes, so well coloured, and drawn with such knowledge of perspective and effect, that if we may form a comparative idea of the best pictures, from the specimens of taste and skill in mere house-painting, the ancients must have excelled us as much in painting as in sculpture. I remarked on the wall of an entrance or corridor, a dog starting at a wreathed and crested snake, vividly coloured, and full of spirit and expression. ”

“ He uses body-color but with restraint and his management of light and shade and his broad, free treatment of the landscape background give to his work in this medium a distinction quite apart from that inseparable from the beautiful drawing. In the painting that we reproduce the soft washes of color over the rocky land bring the background into delicate harmony with the richly tinted figure of the tiger with the effect of variety in unity [Pg 20] sought for and obtained by the masters of painting. ”

“ Whatever may be said of the more virile and masculine art of other great animal painters, Rosa Bonheur, by her truthfulness, her science, her close association and intimate communion with her animal world, by the glad and healthy vigor which her paintings breathe, has taught the world the great lesson that there are intelligence, will, love, and even soul, in animals. ”

“ There is no such other artist! To think of such a masterpiece being destroyed!” Now, when all the White Egrets (and let me tell you they are all masterpieces) have been destroyed, it will be quite impossible to replace any one of them; so that that kind of bird—or any other kind of bird or animal that has been shot and shot till there are no more of it left—will have gone in just the same way that a picture goes, when you burn it or tear it to pieces. But is there any picture of a bird or animal, that is so beautiful or so wonderful as that bird or animal itself? ”

“ Everywhere they give a free rein to fancy. They are perfectly unconscious of anomaly, or incongruity in, for instance, painting a stag yellow or a horse green. They paint birds, butterflies, flowers, in hues which nature never wore. Their taste for that harmony of tints which is the perfection of surface decoration demands the abnormal colors, and they never hesitate about using them. ”

“ If pictures are hung in this room nothing less appropriate than those usually chosen as fit subjects for its walls can be imagined. Engravings showing the gentle deer hunted to his death, with the dog’s fangs already buried in his flesh, stuffed heads of the same animal, and paintings of dead fish, ducks or grouse, hanging by their feet, should not give pleasure to or improve the appetites of humane people. If pictures are used let us have those which depict life, joy, kindness, and beauty rather than cruelty, bloodshed, and death. ”

“ In northern art animals have always played an important part, and the motives of medieval decoration are largely drawn from this source, while beast symbolism brings them into vogue in connexion with religious themes. In Italian and early Flemish and German art animals are as a rule only accessories, though some artists in all these schools take special delight in them; and when, early in the 17th century, they begin to take the chief place, the motive is often found in Paradise, where Adam and Eve lord it over the animal creation. ”

“ Fig. 31.—Lion of Reddish Granite. (British Museum.)
Egyptian sculpture, thus under the ban of religious conservatism, always dealt more successfully with the forms of animals than with human beings and deities. In hunting scenes there is wonderful spirit and character in the drawing of the dogs, and of the animals which they attack. The artist attained an elastic and life-like force in the representation of all animal forms, even when these were compelled into monstrous combinations with human members. ”

“ What constitutes a good animal picture? Correct drawing, certainly, but this is not enough. The animal must seem to be alive. He must show, too, his distinguishing characteristics. We know by his looks what manner of beast he is, gentle or fierce, sly, heavy or fleet-footed. It requires no mean ability to produce a real work of animal art. It means a faithful study of the nature and habits of the animal, and a special aptitude on the part of the artist. Two common faults are conspicuous in much of the animal art given to children. ”

“ In their curious masks, carved into forms the most quaint and grotesque, and in many of their carvings of animals, partaking as they do of a half human, half animal character, we have abundant evidence of what authors have characterized as savage taste in sculpture. ”

“ They showed the experimental and adventurous spirit of the artist, the spirit that does not avoid but attempt difficult things; as where the draughtsman had represented the action of the stag when he swings his head clean round and noses towards his tail, an action familiar enough in the horse. But there are many modern animal-painters who would set themselves something of a task in rendering it truly. ”

“ The most abundant subjects are horses and deer, which entirely replace the reindeer drawings so abundant in central France, outlines of the stag and of the doe being very numerous; on the other hand, the bison and the ox are rarely drawn. Belonging to the category of most primitive painting are the simple outlines in black of a horse and of a mammoth, the two limbs of one side being represented as inverted triangles, terminating in a sharp point, like the drawings of children. ”

“ VI. PETS IN ARTIST LIFE.
For the artist pets have a peculiar value. Not only are they companions and live playthings—they are also “properties.” Portrait and landscape painters use them as accessories; animal painters and sculptors find in them their models. They live in close companionship with their human friends, and the tie between them is usually warm and lasting. An exception might be the cat whose fur was sacrificed to the early genius of Benjamin West. In default of brushes, the lad used first the long hairs from her tail, then the shorter ones from her body—until she was half-shorn. ”

“ With reference to the origin of these animal sculptures many writers appear inclined to the view that they are purely decorative and ornamental in character, i.e., that they are attempts at close imitations of nature in the sense demanded by high art, and that they owe their origin to the artistic instinct alone. ”

“ On this little bird nature has profusely lavished her most splendid colours; the most perfect azure, the most beautiful gold, the most dazzling red, are for ever in contrast, and help to embellish the plumes of his majestic head. The richest palette of the most luxuriant painter could never invent anything to be compared to the variegated tints, with which this insect bird is arrayed. ”

“ And since he was very fanciful and took great delight, as it has been said, in painting animals to perfection, he showed in certain lions, who are seeking to bite each other, the great ferocity that is in them, and swiftness and fear in some stags and fallow-deer; not to mention that the birds and fishes, with their feathers and scales, are most lifelike. He made there the Creation of man and of woman, and their Fall, with a beautiful manner and with good and careful execution. ”

“ Dogs leaping and jumping, dogs running—the jog-trot of the terrier, and the easy gallop of the deerhound—here are interesting subjects for your pencil and brush. We might take up a brush fairly full of paint and sketch a little fresco of dogs in action. I say advisedly 'brush.' We can't stipple with a full brush. We must make up our minds, and draw, without hesitation, the thin or plump body, the long or thick legs, the short or pointed nose, the flowing or stunted tail. The fresco may not be very true to Nature but it will certainly teach us a good deal. ”

“ An artist in Paris wished to draw the elephant in the menagerie at the Jardin des Plantes in an extraordinary attitude, which was with his trunk elevated in the air, and his mouth open. An attendant on the artist, to make the elephant preserve the attitude, threw fruits into his mouth, and often pretended to throw them, without doing so. The animal became irritated, and, seeming to think that the painter was the cause of his annoyance, turned to him, and dashed a quantity of water from his trunk over the paper on which the painter was sketching the portrait. ”

“ There would be an interesting study to make on the gradual metamorphoses that the genius of our painters and sculptors has imposed for the last three centuries on these traditional types of lions, horses, tigers, birds, trees and flowers, with which it is never weary of disporting itself, without being either helped or hindered by the sight of any animal or any plant. ”

“ Fish eyes vary so greatly that to strictly copy nature you had better use the uncolored fish eyes, painting the back with suitable oil colors with a coat or two of shellac over it to prevent the clay in which it is set from affecting the paint. The final painting of a mounted fish which is necessary to complete the best work is a task for an artist. If a specimen in the flesh (living if possible) is at hand this is made easier. All fish skins collected should be accompanied by color sketches if possible. ”