The Painter in Oil Part 8

Imitation is not the highest art; but the highest art requires the ability to imitate as a mere power of representation. The mind must not be hampered in its expression by lack of knowledge and control of materials, and the painter who is constantly occupied with the problems he should have worked out in his student days, is just so far from being a master. He must have all his means perfectly at his command before he can freely express himself.

The acquirement of this mastery of means is the student's business.

Everything he does which aids him in this makes him so much nearer to being a painter. But he must remember that he is still a student, and as he hopes to be a painter, must have patience with himself; must not hurry himself, must work as a student for the ends of a student.

All the facts of nature art uses. But she uses them as she needs them, simplifying, emphasizing, suppressing, combining as will best meet the necessities of the case in hand. All this requires the utmost knowledge, for it must be done in accordance not only with laws of art, but with the laws of nature.

There are changes which can be made, and be right--made as nature might make them. Other changes which would be false to nature's ways, and so false to art also. For art works through nature always, and in accordance with her. This is the aim of the painter, to express ideas through nature, not to express notions about nature.

The facts of nature are the material of art; the words of the language in which the ideas of art are to be conveyed. But there are truths more important than these facts. The underlying sentiment of which they are the external manifestation, and which is the vivifying spirit of them. This is the true fact of the picture.

It is more important to give the sentiment of the thing than to give the fact of it; not merely because it is more truly represented so, but because the beauty is shown in showing the character. For the character of the fact is the beauty of the fact.

To bring out the beauty which may lie in the fact is the aim of the artist; to acquire the ability to do this is the aim of the student.

CHAPTER XIV

HOW TO STUDY

There is a right and a wrong way to study, and it all centres around the fact that what you aim to learn is perception and expression. What you are to express you do not learn; you grow to that. But you must learn how to use all possible means; all the facts of visible nature, and all the characteristics of pigments. All qualities, color and form and texture, are but the means of your expression, and you must know how they may be used. Your perception and appreciation must be trained, and your mind stored with facts and relativities. Then you are ready to recognize and to convey the true inwardness you find in conditions commonplace to others.

You are to see where others see not; for it is marvellous how little the average eye sees of the really interesting things, how little of the visual facts, and how rarely it sees the picture before it is painted. All is material to the painter. It is not that "everything that is, is beautiful," but that everything that is has qualities and possibilities of beauty; and these, when expressed, make the picture, in spite of the superficial or obvious ugliness. In one sense nothing is commonplace, for everything exists visibly by means of light and color, and light and color are of the fundamental beauties. So arrange or look upon the commonplace that light and color are the most obvious qualities, and the commonplace sinks into the background--is lost.

There is nothing like painting to make life fascinating; for there is nothing which brings so many charming combinations into your perception, as the habit of looking to find the possibilities of beauty in everything that comes within your view.

You must form the habit of looking always from the painter's point of view. The painter deals primarily with pigment, and what can be represented with pigment; chiefly color and light in the broadest sense, including form and composition, as things which give bodily presence and action to the possibilities of pigment. Shade, or shadow, of course, is an actuality in painting, because it is the foil of light and color, and furnishes the element of relation.

=Methods.=--Two general methods are at the command of the student from the first,--to study at once from nature, or to copy. I think I may safely claim to speak for the great body of teachers who are also professional artists, in saying that copying is a means of study rather for the advanced student than for the beginner. You cannot begin too soon to study nature with your own eyes, and to acc.u.mulate your own facts and observations and deductions. The use of copying is not to find out how to paint, but to see how many ways there are of painting. The great end of all study in painting is to train the eyes to see relations, to see them in nature. It is not to see that there are relations, but to see where they are; to recognize and to measure and to judge them. Painting is the art of perception before everything, and when you copy you only see, accept, what some one else has already perceived. Copying does not help you to _perceive_, it can only help to show you how something can be _expressed after_ it has been perceived, and that is not the vital thing in the study of painting. Handling, composition, management of color, technique of the brush generally, may be studied by copying. These only--and for these things it is useful and wise. But the beginner is not ready for these, for they are not the alphabet, but the grammar of painting.

=Danger.=--The danger of too early copying is that the student learns to set too much value on surface qualities rather than those to which the surface is merely incidental. With this is the danger (a serious one, and one hard to overcome the results of) that the student becomes clever as a producer of pictures before he has trained his power to see. He becomes a student of pictures rather than a student of nature, and when in doubt will go to art rather than to nature for help and suggestion. Could anything be more fatal? Consider the things that student will have to unlearn before he can think a picture in terms of nature--the only healthy, the only prolific way of thinking. He sees always through other people's eyes, and thinks with other people's brains, and feels other people's emotions; that is not creation; that is the att.i.tude for the spectator, not for the painter.

These things are all useful and good, but not for the beginner. Later, when you have found out something for yourself, when you have ground of your own to stand on, then you may not only without danger, but with benefit, go to the work of other men to see the range of possible point of view and expression, to see the scope of technical material and individual adaptation; and so broaden your own mental view and sympathy, possibly reform or educate your taste, and perhaps get some hints which will help you in the solving of some future problem.

But rather than the undue sophistication which can result from unwise copying,--the over-knowledge of process and surface, and under-knowledge of nature,--is to be preferred a frank crudeness of work which is the result of an honest going to nature for study. You should not expect a perfect eye for color and form too soon. Better a healthily youthful crudity of perception based on nature, and standing for what you have yourself studied and worked out, which represents your own attainment, than a greater show of knowledge which is insincere and superficial because it represents a mere acceptance of the facts set down by others; and not only that, but even with it an acceptance also of the actual terms used by those others.

Often copying is the most convenient way in which you can get help.

There is really much to be learned from it, and you can make a picture serve as a criticism on your own work. Particularly in the matter of color or tone, as something to recognize the achievement of for its own sake. If you can recognize good color as such, aside from what it represents, if you can appreciate tone in a picture which is the work of some one else, you are so much the more likely to notice the lack of those qualities in your own work. So, too, there are qualities of brush-work which are always good, and some which are always bad. You can study the former positively, and the latter negatively, in studying and copying other pictures.

I have mentioned the training of your critical judgment as a necessity in your education. You can do it slowly in learning to paint, but you can facilitate that training by copying and studying really good pictures, if you do it in the right way.

=The Right Way.=--So if you do copy, do it in the right way, so as to get all the real help out of it, and not so as to have to unlearn the greater part of it. Don't copy "to get a picture." Don't make a copy which at a distance has a resemblance to the original, but which on a more careful study shows none of the qualities which make the original what it is. Not only see to it that the same subtleties of perception and representation are preserved in your copy, but that they are attained in the same way. Use the same brush-work or other execution.

Use the same pigments in the same places, with the same vehicles; study the original with your brain as well as with your eyes and hands; try to see not only how the painter did a certain thing but why. So that as you work, you follow him in the working out of his problem, and make it your problem also. In this way you will get some real good from his picture, and not a mere canvas which has been of no use to you, nor can be of any satisfaction to any one else who knows a good picture (copy or original) when he sees it.

=Why Copy.=--There are only two good reasons for making a copy,--to study the original as a problem, and to have something to serve as an example of the master on a work which you like. And in either case such a sincere manner of copying as I urge is the only possible way to get what you want. To "get a picture," regardless of whether it really does justice to the original, is the wrong way, and this leads always through bad copying to bad painting, and you are fortunate if you escape an entire perversion of your point of view.

You may be able to make some money now and again by doing this sort of thing, but you will never learn anything from it. On the contrary, it is the surest way you could find of closing your eyes to all that is worth seeing.

=Get to Nature.=--If you would really learn to paint, to see for yourself, to represent what you see in your own way, you cannot get to nature too soon. Don't bother about what the thing is, so long as it is nature herself. By nature I mean anything, absolutely anything which exists of itself, not painted. Whether it be the living figure, or a cast, or a bit of landscape, or a room interior--all things which actually exist must show themselves by the facts of light falling upon them: the relation of color, and the contrasts of light and dark.

Whatever you see is useful to you in this way, for these bring about all the qualities and conditions which you most need to study. But models are not always at command, interiors do not easily stay a long time at your disposal, and bits of landscape which interest you are not always easy to get at; for a student is apt to be either far advanced or unusually ardent who will find interest in the first combination which falls under his eye. Therefore the most practically useful material for study, which is always "nature," is what we call "still life,"--_"morte" nature_, dead nature is the better or more descriptive name the French give to it. By this is meant any and all combinations of objects and backgrounds grouped arbitrarily for representation. Bottles and jugs and fruits, books and bric-a-brac; all sorts of things lend themselves readily and interestingly to this use.

The great value of still life for the student lies in the variety of combinations of color and form, of light and shade and texture, that he can always command. There is practically no problem possible to in-the-house light which may not be worked out by means of still life.

The training in perception and representation, in composition and arrangement, and in technique, which it will give you is invaluable; and most important of all, while you can always make such arrangements as will interest you, because you need place only such things or colors as you like, you are really studying nature herself, you are looking at the things themselves, and the result you get is the product of your own eyes and brain. The problem is entirely your own, both in the stating and the solving, and what you learn is well learned, and represents a definite progress along the right line.

You have worked for the sake of the working, and there is nothing which you have got from it that may not be applicable to any future work you may do, that does not directly lead to the great object you have in view,--to learn how to paint well.

=Be Sincere.=--But, above all, be sincere with yourself; don't do anything to be clever, nor because it pleases some one else. Painting is difficult enough at best. You need all the interest and fascination that the most charming thing can have for you to help you to do it so that it is worth the trouble. Don't take away the whole life of it by insincerity. A very thoughtful painter said to me once that he believed that all really good pictures could be shown to be good by the sole criterion of conviction. Can you think of any painting being good without it? Can you think of any amount of cleverness and ability making a picture good without that. And it is quite as important in study as elsewhere. Never do anything except seriously; take yourself and your work seriously; only by serious work can serious results come.

=Joy in Your Work.=--Do it because you like to. But like good work and hate bad work; and, above all, hate half-way work. Understand yourself: what you want to do and why you want to do it, and then be honest enough with yourself to work till you have honestly done what you wanted to do, and as you wanted to do it.

PART III

TECHNICAL PRINCIPLES

CHAPTER XV

TECHNICAL PRELIMINARIES

=Reasons.=--Painting is something more than laying on paint. It implies a certain amount of knowledge of necessary preliminaries--technical matters which are not strictly painting, but without which good painting is impossible.

It is all well enough to put paint on canvas, but there must be a knowledge on which to base the where and the why of laying it on, as well as the knowledge of how to lay it on. If anything, the where and why are more important than the how. There are almost infinite methods and processes of getting the paint onto the surface. Every painter may select or invent his own way, and provided it accomplishes the main purpose--the bringing about of combinations of form, relative color and pitch, the expression of an idea--it is all right. But there are laws which govern the positions of the different spots of paint, and the reasons for placing them in certain relations. These laws are back of personal idiosyncrasy. They are a part of the laws which control all material things. The painter may no more go contrary to them in painting than he may go contrary to physical laws in any of the practical matters of life. If pigments are not used in accordance with the laws governing their chemical composition, they will not stand. If the laws of proportion are not observed in composition, the picture will not balance. The laws of color harmony are as mathematically fixed as the law of gravity. So, too, the relations of size, which give the impression of nearness or distance to objects, rest on the laws of optics. You have infinite scope for individual expression inside of those laws, but you cannot go outside of them.

=Scientific Knowledge not Necessary.=--It is not necessary that you should have any special knowledge of all these laws nor even of the application of them; but you must recognize their existence, and have some practical notions about them and their effect on your work.

You can of course carry the study as far as you are interested to go.

The farther the better. The more you study them the more you will find them interesting, and the easier will it be for you to work freely within their limitations. But this is not the place for special study.

There are books which treat particularly of these things, and you must go to them.

But a superficial consideration of these subjects cannot be left out of any book which would be really helpful to the student of painting.

I can go into the theory of things only so far as to give you that amount of practical knowledge which is absolutely necessary to you as a painter. What I shall give is given only because it cannot be wisely left out, and the form of it as well as the substance and quant.i.ty are determined by the same reason.

As you hope to become a painter, then, do not neglect to study and think of this part of the book, not merely as a preliminary to the process of painting, but as containing matter which is continually essential to it--which is part and parcel of it.

Another reason for the careful reading of these chapters is that any discussion of the art of painting necessarily demands the use of words or phrases which must be understood. To speak of technical things presupposes the use of technical phrases, and without a knowledge of the words there can be no comprehension of the thought.

CHAPTER XVI

DRAWING