Artwork

“ The special pleas of painters, whether for realization or decoration or illustration, are, of course, to be heard and accepted in part; but we are not to believe in any one of them to the utter exclusion of the others. Each is excellent of its kind, so far as it goes; but in our final judgment of the work of art we may conclude that the sum of the whole is greater than any of its parts, and that truth to nature, individuality, imagination, pictorial poetry, decorative beauty, subject—all the elements—go to the making of what is called “great art.” ”

“ What is this art, which is considered so important and necessary for humanity that for its sake these sacrifices of labor, of human life, and even of goodness may be made?
"What is art? What a question! Art is architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry in all its forms," usually replies the ordinary man, the art amateur, or even the artist himself, imagining the matter about which he is talking to be perfectly clear, and uniformly understood by everybody. ”

“ It is true that the manifestations of the art-impulse are innumerable, embracing not only painting, sculpture, literature, music, and architecture, but also the handiwork of the craftsman in the designing of a rug or in the fashioning of a cup or a candlestick; it is true that each art has its special province and function, and that each is peculiarly adapted to the expression of a certain order of emotion or idea, and that the distinctions between one art and another are not to be inconsiderately swept aside or obscured. ”

“ The fine arts are Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Poetry, and Music, and though we could live if none of these existed, yet life would be far from the pleasant experience that it is often made to be through the enjoyment of these arts.
In speaking of Painting, just here I wish to include the more general idea of pictures of various sorts, and it seems to me that while picture-making belongs to the fine or beautiful arts, it is now made a very useful art in many ways. ”

“ The softness of touch, the purity and delicacy of feeling, and the sunny mellowness of tone, as well as the chasteness of design and correctness of drawing, produced on the best pieces of his productions, show him to be a thorough artist, and place him high above most others in this difficult art, while his intimate knowledge of all the phases and intricacies of Art, and of all the processes of the manufacture, render him peculiarly fitted for the post to which he has been called. ”

“ It is only of late, and chiefly by a superficial imitation of foreigners, that we have begun to use the word Art by itself, and to speak of Art as we speak of Science, or Government, or Religion: we used to talk of the Arts, and more specifically of the Fine Arts: and even by them were vulgarly meant only two forms of art, Painting and Sculpture, the two which as a people we cared least about—which were regarded even by the more cultivated among us as little more than branches of domestic ornamentation, a kind of elegant upholstery. ”

“ MANY persons of culture and poetic imagination, with a keen sense of the beautiful, but with little knowledge of living nature, believe and maintain, and in one sense justly, that certain works of old and modern masters are works of high art, from color, grouping, elegance of figures, and the various accessories which, in themselves, or by ideas and emotions excited by them, make painting and sculpture very powerful agents in instructing and elevating kind. ”

“ Able at last to interpret the painter's medium, the appreciator comes to seek in pictures not primarily an exhibition of the craftsman's skill, not even a recall of his own pleasurable experiences, but rather, beyond all this, a fuller visible revelation of beauty.
The essential significance of art, that art is revelation, is illustrated not only by painting but by the other arts as well. ”

“ Painting remained to us, arrogating to herself the rôle which hitherto the whole company had combined to make successful. In her struggle to fill the giant's robe, she has run unresistingly in the ruts of the age. She has crowded her portable canvases, side by side, into exhibitions and galleries, and claimed the title of art for literary rather than æsthetic suggestions. ”

“ And so the art of painting has its correlative science of painting, involving laws of optics, and of form; the art of sculpture, its correlative science of sculpture, involving the science of human anatomy, &c.; and each one of the literary arts has its correlative science—the art of verse its science of verse, the art of prose its science of prose. ”

“ The painter must in the end judge of painting, and the sculptor judge of sculpture. But there are two distinct sides{163} to a work of art,—to every work, for that matter: there is the relation between the worker and his work, and the relation between the completed work and the public,—the work being the intermediary between artist and people, his means of communication, his mode and manner of speech. ”

“ Though much of that exists in our modern decorations, it is highly desirable that it should not partake of that character; a little taste, a little poetry, gracefulness, order, and some display of general knowledge, of artistic combinations and principles, cannot fail to make our productions more valued and valuable. Give a tinge of some originality,—display an attempt of your own inventive powers, based upon acknowledged principles of beauty and effect, and your productions will soon reach an eminence of which art is ever capable! ”

“ It is certainly a kind of novel and in many ways admirable art in the way of expression. Great thoughts have found expression almost worthy of them in painting, in sculpture, in etching, in wood-engravings, in color and in black-and-white; in the single costly work of art and in the easily multiplied and cheap productions of the press. ”

“ The ultimate significance of a work of art is its content of emotion, the essential controlling idea, which inspires the work and gives it concrete form. In its actual embodiment, the expressive power of the work resides in the medium. The medium of any art, then, as color and mass in painting, line in drawing and etching, form in sculpture, sound in music, is its means of expression and constitutes its language. ”

“ The development of painting in the last century is a striking illustration of such continuity. The painters sought to develop a definite tradition, thinking of themselves as carrying further the work of their predecessors. Of course these developments were largely technical in character, but beauty itself is the fruition of technique. ”

“ But the artists who are of the broader view readily admit the importance in painting of these extra-artistic features. From the point of view of craft, of technical skill in painting, these matters of line, and color, and light and shade, and arrangement, and method of applying paint, all are of great importance. But only with the craftsman who is unduly interested in the question of skill do these purely artistic matters seem of greater importance than the factors of enjoyment already mentioned. ”

“ You will observe whether the sculptor has animated his stone, or the painter his canvas, into the just expression of those sentiments and passions which should characterize and mark their several figures. You will examine, likewise, whether in their groups there be a unity of action, or proper relation; a truth of dress and manners. Sculpture and painting are very justly called liberal arts; a lively and strong imagination, together with a just observation, being absolutely necessary to excel in either ”

“ But the æsthetic faculty was thus stimulated into activity with results which tended to develop art in all its forms of carving, modelling, sculpture, and painting. An appreciation of colour, not merely for personal adornment, but in its artistic application—alike as a decorative art, and as the means whereby natural objects can be presented with vivid truthfulness to the eye,—is widely diffused; though the mastery of form by the modeller or sculptor long precedes that of chiaroscuro, or aerial perspective. ”

“ The art of the painter consists in combining, according to certain rules of proportion and fitness of outline and color, certain objects, which, either from their peculiar character, or from the fitness of their combination in effecting a given design, awaken emotions of beauty or sublimity. ”

“ The representative arts comprise painting and sculpture, and literature in its manifestations of the drama, fiction, and dramatic and descriptive poetry. These arts draw their subjects from nature and human life, from the world external to the artist. The arts of form comprise architecture and music, and that limitless range of human activities in design and pattern-making for embellishment—including also the whole category of "useful arts"—which may be subsumed under the comprehensive term decoration. ”

“ The artist or the art-critic, discriminating still, even among these raw materials of human creation, derives an elaborate and subtle delight from the suggestiveness of their colours, their odours, and their fabrics—conscious all the while of wondrous and visionary evocations, wherein they take their place. ”

“ The magnificent and superior artist, mature in imagination and composition, fully equipped as a painter of pictures, perhaps even of academical distinction, who turns his attention to the craft, and without any adequate practical training in it, which alone could teach its right principles, makes, and in the nature of things is bound to make, great mistakes—mistakes easily avoidable. ”

“ As you will find that all the employments which have most art and reasonableness and grace are those which most nearly approach the drawing or painting, so those which most nearly approach it proceed from it and are a part or member of it, such as sculpture or statuary, which is nothing else but painting itself, although it may well appear to some to be a separate art ”

“ Knowledge, sympathy, imagination, are all divining-rods, with which he discovers treasure. Let a painter go through the grounds, and he will see not only the general colours of green and brown, but their combinations and contrasts, and the modes in which they might again be combined and contrasted. ”

“ The painter who knows his trade knows just what graduations of colour, what interrelation of masses and line—in brief, what design in detail and in whole—will, in their complex conjunction, rouse in those who receive them such feelings as he himself felt when he not only saw but spiritually exploited the landskip: and into that design he modulates what he saw. ”

“ The office of painting and sculpture seems to be merely initial. The best pictures can easily tell us their last secret. The best pictures are rude draughts of a few of the miraculous dots and lines and dyes which make up the ever-changing "landscape with figures" amidst which we dwell. Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. ”

“ Cut carefully and with selection, and you may get a poem which will soothe you like a melody.
As to the value of the laws which govern the perfect composition, it is unquestionably true that a correct knowledge of these laws [24] makes or unmakes the picture and establishes or ruins the rank of the painter. No matter how careful the drawing, how interesting the subject, how true the mass, how subtle the gradations of light and shade, how perfect the expression of the figures, or how transparent the atmosphere of a landscape, a want of this knowledge will defeat the result. ”

“ The Fine Arts will also form an interesting portion of this division. The object will be, in a few popular histories, to trace the origin, rise, and progress of Sculpture, Painting, Engraving, Music, &c., and their influence on mankind. ”

“ To wring from nature its countless harmonies of tone and colour, to seize and interpret the endless subtleties of individual form and character—these are the ideals that have inspired and have satisfied many of the greatest painters the world has produced. Who then shall say that Art has need of any other, any wider ambition? ”

“ Thus, if when one paints an image or carves it of wood there are, in the name of artistic licence, some stylized parts in a work otherwise resembling the real form; this is, after all, what people love in art. ”

“ The artist takes these little pieces, and, polishing and arranging them, he forms them into the grand and beautiful picture. Each individual part of the picture may be a little worthless piece of glass or marble or shell; but, with each in its place, the whole constitutes the masterpiece of art. ”

“ The eye that judges a work of art should have surveyed the whole human field, so that it can tell from what clay this precious thing was made, in what craftsman's cot that trick of fashioning was learned, what natural beauty suggested to the creative impulse this appropriate form, what human institution helped or hindered its making. ”

“ We are not going to quarrel with the technique of the painters, any more than with their handwriting; if it is clear and legibly conveys the message and satisfies eye and heart, we want to help to an understanding and appreciation of their thought and their art. If it rings true, beauty of style, texture, color, and sentiment will come to the surface and art is manifested. ”

“ Do you, then, painter, make the limbs of your figures roughly and attend first to the movements appropriate to the mental state of the beings composing your story, rather than to the beauty and rightness of their members, because you must understand that if such a composition in the rough will meet the needs of the invention, it will please all the more after it has been adorned with the perfection appropriate to all its parts. ”