Pictorial art

“ An artist was copying it, and producing certainly something very like a fac-simile, yet leaving out, as a matter of course, that mysterious something that renders the picture a miracle. It is my present opinion that the pictorial art is capable of something more like magic, more wonderful and inscrutable in its methods, than poetry or any other mode of developing the beautiful. ”

“ It is the drawing—the design projected from that peculiar pictorial temperament or constitution, in which, while it may possibly be ignorant of true anatomical proportions, all things whatever, all poetry, every idea however abstract or obscure, floats up as a visible scene, or image: it is the colouring—that weaving as of just perceptible gold threads of light through the dress, the flesh, the atmosphere, in Titian's Lace-girl—the staining of the whole fabric of the thing with a new, delightful physical quality. ”

“ The aim. We wish from the first to make it clearly understood as to what is our object in comparing photography with the other pictorial arts. It is not to condemn any of the other arts as inadequate for artistic expression, for we hold that good art, as expressed even by a lead pencil, is better than bad art expressed on the largest of canvases, but our object is to inquire what position the technique of photography takes when regarded side by side with the methods and limits of each of the pictorial arts. ”

“ The appeal of the picture-book is universal; but the Book Beautiful, in which the printed text and the illustrative scheme are conceived as a decorative whole, is as yet a rare thing. How much our joy in a book may be enhanced by pictorial embellishment must depend, of course, upon our individual conception of illustration in relation to the permanent elements of pictorial art. ”

“ And our landscape-painters of to-day are equally painters of pictures. Some of them might be thought, by a modern taste, too conventionally painters of pictures—too much occupied with composition and tone and other pictorial qualities at the expense of freshness of observation—while our briskest and most original observers have, many of them, a power of design and a manner of casting even their freshest observations into pictorial form that is as admirable as it is remarkable. ”

“ The very illusory powers of photography serve to define the true sphere of art, which is a product of the human mind as well as of the eye and hand.
There is another form of pictorial appeal which has, owing to the association of art with commercial enterprise, attained such vast proportions as to count as a popular education of the eye—for good or for evil. I mean the pictorial poster, which might be said to be the most original flourishing and vigorous type of popular art existing, and the only popular form of mural painting. ”

“ It is an unfaltering record of a clearly defined impression, and is not less interesting on account of the sensitive and characteristic rendering of the worn, old face of the model than as a piece of still life painting of quite extraordinary force. The qualities that make it great are those which distinguish the productions of none but the unquestionable masters of pictorial art. ”

“ The rules of composition which may be found to apply in one of the pictorial arts must necessarily apply equally in the others, and so therefore to pictorial photography which at least aspires to be considered an art. If on a sheet of paper a rectangular space is given us wherein to draw the likeness of anything, the most natural course to pursue would be to draw that figure in the centre or thereabouts, and if then we are asked to add the likeness of two or three more objects we should naturally place these near the first object. ”

“ Quite so; and it is in just such a light that engraving is or ought to be regarded. A picture, whether illustrating [69] a story or recording an artistic impression, is never so great as when it enchants the imagination with an ideal presence. Absolute realism is not always desirable either in pictorial art or pictorial expression. No matter how realistic it may be, it is a doubtful gain to introduce into the composition of a picture a mass of detail which might only prove disconcerting, and distract attention from the main issues of the subject. ”

“ Now, in pictorial art, a portrait, in order to present a satisfactory and successful resemblance to its subject, must contain lights and shadows. You cannot have all light, or all shadow, but it is necessary to have a judicious mixture of both. ”

“ The pictorial art that appeals to the young or the ignorant is the kind that tells a story—perhaps historical painting on enormous canvasses, perhaps the small genre picture, possibly something symbolic or mythological ”

“ Selection of what is fitting as an art subject means experience. The “ungrateful” subject and bad composition are therefore likely to mark the nouveau in picture making—the student fresh from the atelier with accurate drawing and true color and who may be full of promise, but who has become tangled with what the French term the soujet ingrat. Every artist has studies of this sort which contain sufficient truth to save them from being painted over as canvas, and most painters know the place for such—the storeroom. ”

“ He knows how to approach the extreme possibilities in pictorial decoration without losing sight of certain elements of repose. Seen from a distance, their effect at first is somewhat startling, owing to their new note, not reminiscent in the very least of the work of any other living - or past - painter. ”

“ Today, pictorial illustration depends on photography, and there is apparently little or nothing in life beyond the reach of photographic art. It discloses the internal arrangements of human anatomy; it makes a record of the affairs of the heavenly bodies; it pictures things that the human eye cannot see ”

“ Pictorial representation must exclude everything unpleasing or ugly; "painting as imitation may express ugliness: painting as a fine art will refuse to do so: all visible objects belong to art taken under the former title: the latter may claim only such objects as awaken pleasing sensations." ”

“ The applied arts certainly attained their highest development during those centuries, and it is probably safe to say that in no other country nor at any other epoch, ancient or modern, were the services of pictorial art so widely and so successfully employed for decorative purposes. ”

“ What I desire to enforce is the great truth that within the art of painting there exists, flourishes and advances a noble and glorious science which is essential and progressive.”
“Any one who can learn to write can learn to draw;” and every one who can learn to draw should learn to compose pictures. ”

“ He must learn, as the painter has to do, to distinguish what in nature is really suitable for pictorial purposes, on account of beauty of form, or tone, from what merely gives him pleasure by some quality which, however impressive in nature, it is not possible to transfer to canvas. A picture being a design enclosed by four straight lines, can only please and impress by certain suitable decorative qualities in the subject. To know what will make a picture is one of the most difficult secrets in landscape art ”

“ Therefore, in using the phrase pictorial poetry I would be understood as meaning pictorial poetry and not literary poetry. They are two quite different things by virtue of their means of expression. The idea in art, whether poetic or otherwise, has its material limitations, which we must not fail to take into account. The first limitation is the major one and it demands that painting deal with things seen. ”

“ Such early essays to represent objects by lines, though commonly crude enough and apt to shock the æsthetic sense of the matured artist by their unsightliness, are closely related to art, and deserve to be studied as a kind of preliminary stage of pictorial design. ”

“ The pictorial imagination almost always lays emphasis upon prominent features, and may at times distort them without falsifying them as art. The very first act, the seeing of things pictorially—that 66is, as they would appear in a picture rather than as they appear in real life—is necessarily a translation if not a free rendering. ”

“ His art has a tender pallor, tones purposely deadened, faded tints like those on Japanese screens of old feudal castles, of a wondrous harmony and softness. Details, discreetly accentuated, allow the ensemble to retain its full importance, and against dark background, in soft neutral tints, figures that the painter desires to bring out show with an illusion of life truly magical. Herein con [Pg 251] sists the last great pictorial invention; it is through this that painting still has the faculty to powerfully address the modern mind. ”

“ In our age, for various reasons (social, commercial, economic) , the specialised and purely pictorial painter is dominant. His aims and methods influence other arts and crafts, but by no means advantageously as a rule; since, unchecked by judicious ideas of design, attempts are made in unsuitable materials to produce so-called realistic force, and superficial and accidental appearances dependent on peculiar qualities of lighting and atmosphere, quite out of place in any other method than painting, or in any place but an easel picture. ”

“ Let us suppose that a piece of pottery or porcelain has been painted, and that the action of the fire has made the coloring perennial, so that we find on it a portrait or a landscape everlasting as the ware itself. Let us suppose, further, that the tints are natural, that, in short, the portrait is all that we now understand by the word, and that in the landscape nature is displayed as on canvas—then we should have a specimen of the perfect union of the potter’s and painter’s art. ”

“ In order to give the likeness and correct drawing, the face and bust and hands of portraits are taken by the lens, and then enlarged to the size of an ordinary water-colour sketch, which the artist colours and finishes off in the form of a vignette portrait, by a few free washes of the brush. It is almost impossible to tell these exquisite works of art from an ordinary water-colour, but that the drawing of the face and hands is beyond the human draughtsman’s power. ”

“ Thus by the magic of pictorial design our vision is caught and so controlled that a single glance, sweeping the picture in the direction ordained by the artist, gives us a definite feeling of movement. ”

“ A flat canvas will not discourse music like the board of a piano. Forms and colors may talk very eloquently to the eye, but they say nothing to the ear. The old division of the arts made over a century ago by Lessing is still acceptable to-day. The fine arts of architecture, sculpture, and painting address the sense of sight; the fine arts of music and literature address the sense of hearing. Therefore, let us assume that such thoughts, ideas, or emotions, poetic or otherwise, as a painter may wish to express in painting should be primarily pictorial by addressing the sense of sight. ”

“ The channels by which all noble imaginative work in painting should touch, and do touch the soul, are not those of the truths of life, nor metaphysical truths. But that pictorial charm which does not depend on any literary reminiscence for its effect on the one hand, nor is yet a mere result of communicable technical skill on the other, comes of a certain inventive and creative handling of colour. ”

“ The message of impressionism is light, as the effort of the early painters was to secure light, the quest of all the philosophies. The impressionist calls upon every part of his work to speak of light, the middle tint, the high lights and the shadow all vibrating with it. From the decorative point of view alone, the picture, as a surface containing the greatest amount of beauty of which the subject is capable is more beautiful when varied by many tones, or by few, in strong contrast, than when this variety or contrast is wanting. ”

“ They have degraded the invisible arts into the obvious arts, and the one thing not worth looking at is the obvious. I do not say that poet and painter may not treat of the same subject. They have always done so and will always do so. But while the poet can be pictorial or not, as he chooses, the painter must be pictorial always. For a painter is limited, not to what he sees in nature, but to what upon canvas may be seen.
And so, my dear Ernest, pictures of this kind will not really fascinate the critic. ”

“ It is when objects and groups of objects have taken on themselves this pictorial beauty, which only the artistically trained eye can discern, that the modern painter finds himself in the presence of his “subject,” and he knows that this magical play of beauty may appear in the most casual and unlikely places, in mean and squalid corners, and upon the most ordinary objects of daily life. ”

“ For him, a portrait, even as a still-life piece or a landscape, is a piece of temperamental art, a problem in colour, so much so that he is unable to start upon his portrait, has no inclination to do so, before all the conditions of tonality in the face of his model and in the environment selected by him are such that they respond in a measure to the painter's own sense of colour. ”

“ Portrait-painting is good practice for a landscape painter, both because it forces him to treat a simple subject with close attention, and because it is the branch of art which has the most sound and definite technical traditions. ”

“ Pictorial-ness, yes; that, when it becomes a wonderful vision of all things, is the ‘Spirit of the Universe.’ The pictorial attitude is not a good one for one’s continuous life, but for a season it transports one out of reality. ”

“ The representation, the "Interior" in itself, has no value for him, except in so far as its space can be exhibited as the recipient of tone and colour: the pictorial symbol, as the medium of his need for expression, is everything to him; the object, the thing and its shape, are nothing. Thus the cautious painter of "The Frosty Morning" becomes an artist; thus the thing [Pg 161] he paints is transformed into spiritual significance, its shape becomes pictorial symbol; and the technique, which before was carefully veiled, changes to the boldest impressionism. ”