Canvas

“ Painter or sculptor alike would have rejoiced to depict the face on canvas or carve it in marble—its perfect shape, fine tinting, the lines of the features, the beauty of the eyes, the wealth of the dark, clustering hair, were all as near artistic perfection as could be. ”

“ Thus, when the painter has represented on his canvas some wild phase of scenery, where the gadding vine, the tangled underwood, the troubled brook, the black, frowning rock, the untamed savage growth of the forest,
"Old plash of rains and refuse patched with moss,"
impress us with awe, and a sad, homeless feeling, as if we were lost children, how eloquent is that last touch of his pencil that shows us a simple spire peeping over the tree-tops! How it comforts us! ”

“ We would have a face to start out from the canvas at once—not feature by feature, or touch by touch; we would be glad to convey an attitude or a divine expression to the spectator by a stroke of the pencil, as it is conveyed by a glance of the eye, or by the magic of feeling, independently of measurements, and distances, and foreshortening, and numberless minute particulars, and all the instrumentality of the art. ”

“ After years of the most exacting discipline something of the very illusion of the sunbeams seemed to get on to the canvas, and the artist's hand learned the cunning of his swift, flying, vivid, suggestive touch—a touch which sometimes seems like an electric shock received from the tense and excited vision. ”

“ The air-drawn visions that hover on the verge of existence have a bodily presence given them on the canvas: the form of beauty is changed into a substance: the dream and the glory of the universe is made “palpable to feeling as well as sight.”—And see! a rainbow starts from the canvas, with its humid train of glory, as if it were drawn from its cloudy arch in heaven. ”

“ If I were an artist, my ambition would be to go in the lovely autumn days on a pilgrimage to these shores and humbly try to put on my canvas the perfectly gorgeous but harmoniously blended rose, pink, scarlet, red, yellow, purple, green, amber and blue—a perfect intoxication of glorious colours which the imagination would be unequal to, unless they were absolutely thrown on the sky before one's own eyes. ”

“ The painter who crowds his canvas with the innumerable spots of colour that can be squeezed out of every tube of beautiful paint that the colourman sells, is no nearer his goal than he who fills his rooms with a heterogeneous miscellany of articles swept together from every clime and of every age. ”

“ There have been marvels on the canvas so beautiful that one approaches the work of remodelling it with awe. But not only is the picture imperfect,—a thing of snatches,—but with years it becomes less and still less like its original. ”

“ The warmth of sunlight and depth of shadow on the rich materials lend a magnificent orientalism to the canvas, and as the eye turns from the throne, the dazzle of her eyes, her gems, and the deep softness of colors go with one. ”

“ In this canvas was revealed the masterpiece of an art obeying the unopposable urge to render the tangible and the invisible, to make manifest the crying impurity of the flesh and to make sublime the infinite distress of the soul. ”

“ We lose rather than gain in power by forcing the note, and a picture in which the whole scale from black to white should be employed would be absolutely without atmosphere, and without charm. It would indeed be a crudity and a horror, from which we would flee with hands on high. The whole beauty of a canvas depends often on the wisdom with which we make this choice of key—whether our picture is pitched in the upper, the middle, or the lower register, and whether we use a limited or an extended scale. ”

“ One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel – every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream. ”

“ She carries a two-handled canvas basket, containing drawing materials, though, should she weary of reproducing Nature, yet another solace does the canvas basket contain, for is not that the corner of a novel peeping out? She is going to have a whole long morning all to herself on the seashore. ”

“ At length the day arrives when the stones of the street must be uprooted, the tall scaffolding planted, and the innumerable pieces of painted canvas which form the external covering of the arch, united and raised to their respective places. ”

“ Canvas is also a very coarse cloth made of hemp, unbleached, serving to make towels, and answering other domestic purposes. It is also used to make s for s, &c.
Canvas is used among the French, for the model and first words, where an air or piece of music is compo, and given to a poet to regulate and finish. ”

“ Of these two definitions of the artist's activity we must choose the second, if we think of the exhibition just described. On one canvas is a huddle of objects painted with varying degrees of skill, virtuosity and vigour, harshly or smoothly. ”

“ The incident of the single canvas, which by its illuminating revealment first discloses to the observer the true significance of pictures, is typical of the whole scope of art. The mission of art is to reveal. It is the prophet's message to his fellow men, the apocalypse of the seer. ”

“ As to your canvas, work at arm's length. Don't bend over—again you see parts, and you must treat your canvas as a whole. Never rest your hand or arm on the canvas. Train your arm to be steady. Sit up straight, hold your brush well out at the end of the handle, and your arm extended ”

“ The canvas is but the means by which these conceptions of beauty, passion or anguish are manifested to the souls of others. Who will argue that the destruction of the frail canvas is the destruction of these conceptions? They existed before they were transferred to canvas; its destruction does not extinguish them. ”

“ The canvas is a tribute to the many great personalities whose lives have been devoted to the making of our national history, and, rightly understood, it is an eloquent appeal to us all to follow worthily in their footsteps. ”

“ For a further variation in effect, a drawing may be executed in crayon or pencil on a fairly smooth paper previously pressed into close contact with any rough surface, such as sandpaper or canvas. The unsized side of a canvas for oil painting, or the cover of a book, will answer the purpose; openness of work, and the amount of ultimate reduction desirable, being depended upon and controlled accordingly. ”

“ True breadth is compatible with much even minute detail in the same canvas. For breadth does not mean merely a large brush. It never means slap-dash. It is the just conception of the amount of detail necessary (and the amount necessary to be left out) in order that the idea of the picture may be best expressed.
Detail is out of place in a large canvas always, and in proportion to its size it is allowable. A [Pg 220] decorative canvas, a picture which is to be seen from a distance, or is to fill a wall space, wants effect, much justness of composition and color. ”

“ It can hardly be called learned in design, nor can it be said to have any conspicuous dignity of style; yet the knowledge of form, the intimate observation of the growth of riverside vegetation, and the appreciation of autumnal colouring, which were turned to account by the artist in his treatment of the subject, make the canvas prominent among the greatest nature studies of modern times. ”

“ But you work on: an enthusiasm has taken possession of you; the paints mix too slowly; you use your thumb, smearing and blending with a bit of rag—anything for the effect. One moment you are glued to your seat, your eye riveted on your canvas, the next, you are up and backing away, taking it in as a whole, then pouncing down upon it quickly, belaboring it with your brush. ”

“ Now in the base of all these six vast and most beautiful canvases was seen painted a gracious throng of children, each occupying himself in the profession appropriate to the canvas placed above, who, besides the adornment, were seen to be demonstrating with great accuracy with what beginnings one arrived at the perfection of the men painted above; even as with much judgment and singular art the same canvases were also divided and adorned by round and very tall columns and by pilasters, and by various ornaments of trophies all in keeping with the subjects to which they were near. ”

“ The typical figures alive on the canvas each telling its own tale, the beautiful grouping, and the background in which they are placed, present to the eye of the reader what this work strives to convey to his mind in words. ”

“ A scratch across the sky, a little indentation, and the illusion disappears; for the observer has become conscious of the surface of the canvas. The rough edge of the stretcher has the same disillusioning effect, and for this reason no picture is really complete until it is enclosed within the sheltering protection of a frame. It is necessary to separate the real from the unreal, the hard reality of the background of burlap or of wall-paper from the illusion of the picture. ”

“ This does not mean that an equal amount of paint must be spread upon every quarter of the canvas, nor that objects of equal visual importance in themselves must be equally distributed over it. A tiny dot of distinctive paint, placed a certain distance from the center of the canvas, may perfectly balance an object ten times its size which is placed relatively nearer the center. ”

“ Gothic was barbarous anyway; antiquated crudities must give place to refined work worthy of the new enlightenment! Paint a picture on canvas, then paint that picture on your glass. It can be done, certainly, if you will not allow yourself to be bothered with the nuisance of leads, but just get an ample pane of glass, unobstructed, and go at it with your brush and paints! ”

“ It seems to me that if I were an artist I should try to get on my canvas the same effects that nature produces, and I would do it after my own fashion and not after some received method just then prevailing. ”

“ As it is not his purpose to perpetuate on canvas an aspect of the external world, by which to produce an artistic impression, but to represent with the brush the impression he has directly received from nature, synthesized by his fantasy, he does not put on the canvas the remembrance of a past sensation, but describes a present sensation.... ”

“ When your picture is entirely finished, and you should want [Pg 70] to give the canvas more solidity, you may paint it over on the back with any colour or tint, and bring it again and for the last time to the fire, to fix that colour; if you apprehend there is not wax enough, apply a little dissolved in spirit of turpentine, as mentioned in the foregoing observations on Art. ”

“ and, if it is to be made an art, requires as exclusive a devotion, as hard a preparation, as any painter's or sculptor's work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or cold marble, compared with having to do with the living body—the temple of God's spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts; I had almost said, the finest of the Fine Arts. ”

“ Like a true painter, he sees a picture in everything he studies. It gives to each of his canvases a distinct aesthetic charm; grandiose in some, ravishingly elegant in others, delicately quaint in a few, but all of them variously characterized by grandeur of line, suppleness of arrangement, and fascinating surprise of detail ”

“ Between nine and ten, at last, in the high clear picture—he was moving in these days, as in a gallery, from clever canvas to clever canvas—he drew a long breath: it was so presented to him from the first that the spell of his luxury wouldn’t be broken. ”

“ This done, the canvas is for the first time produced, and thereon is enlarged the design, the painter re-drawing the outline—never departing a hair's breadth from the outlines and forms already obtained—and then highly finishing the whole figure in warm monochrome from the life. Every muscle, every joint, every crease is there, although all this careful painting is shortly to be hidden with the draperies; such, however, is the only method of insuring absolute correctness of drawing. ”

“ All that remains to be done is to tack down the two sides, straining out from the center towards each side. If there be a seam in the part of the canvas just lifted up, get it horizontal by means of the chalk line and nails, as before explained, which would also serve to regulate the tacking at the bottom. Now size and prime the new surface in the same manner as before, using the size and priming hot, and the whole of the canvas will present a uniform appearance. ”

“ The canvas, which is of course of vast dimensions, can be raised to the ceiling, or lowered through the floor, to suit the convenience of the artist, by means of machinery of ingenious construction. The painter has invariably made a preliminary water-colour sketch of his scene, on paper or cardboard. Oftentimes, with the help of a miniature stage, such as schoolboys delight in, he is enabled to form a fair estimate of the effect that may be expected of his design. ”

“ Having completed this study, which established for himself the knowledge and skill he had sought and became a model for the instruction of other artists, he filled in the rest of the canvas in a somewhat perfunctory manner. The sky has good quality, but remains a background in the rear of the composition; the intermediate landscape, overspread effectively with a pale light, does not maintain its proper plane. The beasts in the foreground are as hard as wood, the details of the tree niggling, and the figure of the man ill drawn and tamely comprehended. ”