Tricolour

“ A fine complexion, in the language of the poet, is the dye of love, and the hint of something celestial; the ruby, the rose, the diamond, the youthful blush, the orient morning, and the variegated splendour of the setting sun, consist of, or owe their charms principally to, colour. To the sight it is the index of gaiety, richness, warmth, and animation; and should the most experienced artist, by design alone, attempt to represent the tender freshness of spring, the fervid vivacity of summer, or the mellow abundance of autumn, what must be his success? ”

“ The slight inclination of a head, the shyness of a glance, the mobility of a mouth, the uneasiness of a hand, the nervous strain of a gesture are all turned to account in the ultimate result. Every tone of color in itself and in its relation to the other tones, every light in its relation to its shadow and to the other lights, every melting contour in contrast with every accented contour, and every texture in relation to every other texture—all are caught within the angle of the painter’s focus. ”

“ Colour and shadow, aërial perspective and complicated grouping, denied to sculpture, but within the proper realm of painting, have their own significance, their real relation to feelings vaguer, but not less potent, than those which find expression in the simple human form. To painting, again, belongs the play of feature, indicative of internal movement, through a whole gamut of modulations inapprehensible by sculpture. ”

“ In a book of instructions for the amateur silhouettists of Germany, published in Frankfurt and Leipzig by Philip Heinrich Perrenon, bookseller, of Münster, 1780, we are told: “One can use tinfoil for the ornamentation of silhouettes for hanging. When the glass is turned round, the places where the tinfoil is form a sort of mirror. If the background be black and the portrait the mirror, the effect is pretty, but it is as contrary to nature as a white shadow. It is best to have the ground of looking-glass, and to blacken or colour the silhouette.” ”

“ For all we mould in clay or cast in bronze or carve in stone or tint with encaustic pigments or colour with paint, in a word, every attempt at artistic representation by the hand of man after a brief lapse of time loses its truth and becomes motionless and impassive like the face of a corpse. So far superior to all pictorial art in respect of truthful representation is the craftsmanship of the smooth mirror and the splendour of its art. ”

“ At first the favorite ground was a pale cream-color, which, later, turned to a redder tint, and human took the place of animal forms. The vases in what is called the “old style,” show black figures and ornamentation in monochrome, with the exception of female faces, which are white, and eyes red. The effects of perspective are only occasionally tried. White was used for the hair and beard of old men. Coming down next to the highest art of Greece, the ground is black, the figures red, and the ornamentation white. ”

“ A few characteristics of Egyptian painting and sculpture may be noted. Color is used in flat areas without gradation and effects of light and shade. [pg 23] In drawing, outline is the principal mode of representation. Various conventions originating in the primitive stages of art, such as the representation of the human body with head and legs in profile and the shoulder to the front, became traditional and were continued with little change throughout later periods. ”

“ Perhaps the first departure towards a new style arising out of the elements of Carolingian illumination is in the combination of the bird and serpent used for letter forms and continued into coils of vine-stem and foliage in combination with golden panelled frames or pilasters. The monsters thus produced seem to be a revival of the dracontine forms of the semi-barbarous Celtic and early Frankish arts. But the difference in elegance and refinement of drawing and beauty of colouring is very great indeed. Other animal forms are also made use of, nor is the human figure altogether absent. ”

“ The abstract form which will be infinitely delicate and life-like in the brown clay, which receives every minute dimple and crease from the finger of the artist, which presents a soft, uniform tint to the spectator; this same abstract form will be coarse and lifeless in the purple speckled porphyry, against whose hard grain the chisel is blunted, and the mottled colour and salt-like sparkle of which hide from the eye the real relations of line and curve, of concave and projection. ”

“ In the first place we have the abstract basis of all colour in light and dark. When we posit this contrast and its transitions by themselves without further distinctions of colour effect, we get thereby simply the contrasts supplied us by white as light and black as shadow together with their transitional grades and nuances, contrasts which offer to the art of drawing its integrating quality, appertaining as they do to the real plastic character of form, and producing the prominence, retreat, rondure, and distance of objects. ”

“ Romanic influence is abundant in this triptych, showing that, although exposed to constant changes from abroad, the Spanish mediæval crafts adhered upon the whole with singular tenacity to primitive tradition.
The triptych is of larch, or some such undecaying wood, and measures, when the leaves are opened wide, forty inches over its entire breadth, by twenty-two in height. Linen is stretched upon the wood, and over that the silver-gilt repoussé [62] plates which form the principal adornment of the reliquary. ”

“ Nearly, if not quite all the various colors used in painting may be made from the five primitive colors, black, white, blue, red and yellow, but for the Daguerrean artist it would be the best policy to obtain such as are required by their art already prepared. ”

“ Still more so is the skill which has enabled the artist to prophesy, as he painted with his greys and his greens, that the tints which flowed from his pencil of one colour, should assume, from the nicely-regulated action of an element the most difficult to govern, hues and shades so exquisitely imitative of his great original. ”

“ Wonderful weaver, magic hands, infinite pains, were those to produce such an effect on our sated modern vision, all with a few threads of silk and wool and gold.
Then there is the human face—it takes an artist to describe the various faces with their beauty of modelling, their infinite variety of type, their subtlety of expression. You can almost see the flushing of the capillaries under the translucent skin, so fine are the mediums of silk and wool under the magic handling of the talented weavers in brilliant epochs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a symbol of the moral law as set forth in the revealed will of God.
Every man must have his trestle board, because it is the duty of every man to work out the task which God, the chief Architect, has assigned to him.
TRIANGLE. A symbol of Deity.
This symbolism is found in many of the ancient religions.
Among the Egyptians it was a symbol of universal nature, or of the protection of the world by the male and female energies of creation.
TRIANGLE, RADIATED. A triangle placed within a circle of rays. In Christian art it is a symbol of God; then the rays are called a glory. ”

“ Curved outlines, especially if refined, deaden the color, and confuse the mind. Even in figure painting the greatest colorists have either melted their outline away, as often Correggio and Rubens; or purposely made their masses of ungainly shape, as Titian; or placed their brightest hues in costume, where they could get quaint patterns, as Veronese, and especially Angelico, with whom, however, the absolute virtue of color is secondary to grace of line. ”

“ Hence, as pictorial perspective and composition undoubtedly inclined sculptors to seek greater complexities of relief and greater unity of point of view, so the new importance of drawing and colouring suggested to them a new view of form. A human being was no longer a mere arrangement of planes and of masses, homogeneous in texture and colour. ”

“ It will be observed that the sides of the little triangles are approximately parallel to the parts of the sigmoids and bounding lines to which they are adjacent, thus producing a pleasant effect on the eye. The next step in the evolution of this border consists in uniting the little triangles with the sigmoids, as in Fig. 14, and this form I have observed on a Peruvian vase.
With progress in culture comes the love of variety and change. Savage music, savage art, every thing in fact in uncivilized life, is monotonous. ”

“ In the sweet crystalline time of colour, the painters, whether on glass or canvas, employed intricate patterns, in order to mingle hues beautifully with each other, and make one perfect melody of them all. But in the great naturalist school, they like their patterns to come in the Greek way, dashed dark on light,—gleaming light out of dark. ”

“ Moreover, painting, itself the product of a much greater interest in colour than Antiquity had known, forced upon men's attention the important influence of colour upon form. For, although the human being, if we abstract the element of colour, if we do it over with white paint, has indeed the broad, somewhat vague form, the indecision of lines which characterises antique sculpture ”

“ That the language of sculpture is not more widely understood or at least recognized, in America today, is largely the fault of American sculptors.
Too often have they clouded the expression of form with a semi-literary aspect or, as is the case with him whom we hold in reverent memory as our greatest sculptor, mixed with plastic ideals, certain pictorial qualities which, however beautiful, destroy in a measure, forceful unity of impression and tend to confusion of mind. ”

“ It would almost seem that among primitive tribes decorative art for its own sake does not exist. The only analogies in modern decorative art are such as the use of the flag, of the cross, or of emblems of secret societies, for decorative purposes ”

“ Many of the ancient statues certainly exhibit the appearance of some foreign substance having slightly penetrated the surface of the work to about one eighth of an inch, and its color is of a warmer tint than the marble below it; a process, be it observed, quite distinct from and not to be confounded with polychromy, or what is usually understood by painting sculpture with various tints, in imitation of the natural color of the complexion, hair, and eyes. ”

“ The object here being to produce as nearly as possible fac-similes in colour, touch, and texture, as well as in drawing and light and shadow, of pictures from the pencils of painters of the highest standing, it has been found necessary to employ a large number of stones, in order to produce the almost infinite varieties of tints which are found united in a single picture,—every stone giving a separate impression in its own particular colour or tint. ”

“ Therefore in historical painting, a gay or gaudy drapery can never have a happy effect: and in buildings, when the highest degree of the sublime is intended, the materials and ornaments ought neither to be white, nor green, nor yellow, nor blue, nor of a pale red, nor violet, nor spotted, but of sad and fuscous colors, as black, or brown, or deep purple, and the like. Much of gilding, mosaics, painting, or statues, contribute but little to the sublime. ”

“ The effect of the sculpture of this period was frequently heightened by the use of color. The draperies were enriched by gold ornaments, and painted in rich blue and red, while the flesh parts were delicately tinted. Colors were [Pg 116] used with care, and often served to conceal the defects in the sculpture itself, and were thus of great advantage. Color was most frequently used in interior decoration, but it was not unknown upon exterior portals, and porches were introduced to protect this polychromy, as the painting of sculpture was called. ”

“ With a due quantity of clay, blood, charcoal and grease, amalgamated for the purpose, the artist arms herself with a stick for a brush, and executes divers figures in black, on a red ground; which, if intended to shadow forth men, require a vigorous imagination to detect the purpose. ”

“ But if any one desire the meretricious painting of warm light and cool yet not hard shade, the effect of colour, with the twitching of triangles, the spangles glittering, and all the arrangement contrived to take the eye, then he can have it here as well as noble sculpture. ”

“ We can blend the colours, and produce the effect of light and shadow, which they could not do, by harmonizing and mixing the colours in such a way, and fixing by proper enameling and burning, that they shall afterwards become just as permanent as those of the ancients, with the additional advantage of throwing in superior art. ”

“ As I shall have occasion to speak of the progress of illuminating, and ornamental art, in a separate work about to be published, I merely hint here, at the commencement, that, for modern purposes of illumination, it would be highly pedantic to copy the earlier productions of missal painting, merely because they are antique, if in other respects they do not possess some artistic quality of graceful development both in outline and colouring, to which the modern artist may, with very good taste, give preference. ”