“The dignity of the snow-capped mountain is lost in distinctness, but the joy of the tourist is to recognize the traveller on the top. The desire to see, for the sake of seeing, is, with the mass, alone the one to be grasped, hence the delight in detail.”
It were better at the outset to define our terms, for nothing leads more certainly to confusion in studying a subject than a hazy conception of the meanings of words and expressions. Perhaps in no branch of writing have words so many meanings as in writings on Art, where every expositor seems intent upon having his own word or expression. For this reason we wish clearly to define the words and art expressions in use in this book. Not, be it understood, that we claim in any way for any definitions that they are the rigid and final definitions of the expressions used, but we define what we mean by certain words and terms so that the reader may understand clearly the text in which such words occur, our aim being to be clear and to avoid all empty phraseology.
Seizing the impression of natural objects, and rendering this impression in its essentials has been called analyzing nature; and the impression so rendered is an analysis.
Art is the application of knowledge for certain ends. But art is raised to Fine Art when man so applies this knowledge that he affects the emotions through the senses, and so produces æsthetic pleasure in us; and the man so raising an art into a fine art is an artist. Therefore the real test as to whether the result of any method of expression is a fine art or not, depends upon how much of the intellectual element is required in its production. Thus Photography may be, and is, in the hands of an artist, a method of expression producing works of fine art, because no such works can be produced in photography by a man who is not an artist; whereas organ-grinding is a mode of expressing music, but the result is not a fine art, because no intellect, and therefore no artist, is required to produce the expression; a monkey might produce as good music on a hand-organ as could a Beethoven.
A compound term applied by some writers to photography, and by others to all crafts founded upon science. It is an absurd term, and its use should be strongly discouraged. It is to be found in no good dictionary. It is an unmeaning expression, because photography is an art founded upon science, just as is etching, and to call photography an “art-science” is to show imperfect knowledge of the English language, and especially of the meaning of the two words of which the compound is formed—art and science.
A word greatly misused by photographers. When applied to a person, it means one trained in art, and when applied to a work, it means leaving the impression of an artist’s handiwork; and this photographers should not forget, neither should they forget that an artist has been trained in art. This should especially be borne in mind by those who dub themselves “artist-photographers,” whatever they may mean by that compound. Photographers should wait for other people to call them artists, and when artists call a photographer a brother artist, he will probably deserve the title, and not before. In the same way they should refrain from calling things artistic or inartistic, for it must be remembered that to use these words aright implies that the speaker possesses a knowledge of art.
Is a term used to describe simple arrangements of light and shade of colour, which produce a sense of the largeness and space of nature. All great work has breadth, all petty work is devoid of it; for petty minds cannot see the breadth in nature, so they are naturally unable to get it into their work.
“This theory of what constitutes fine colour is one of the peculiar traits of the old-time painters, and of the landscape critic who studies nature in the National Gallery. If one may judge by their remarks or by the examples they worship, a painting to be fine in colour must first of all be brown, or at least yellow; the shadows must all be hot and transparent; lakes and crimsons must be used freely, while a certain amount of very deep blue should be introduced somewhere, that the rest of the picture may appear the warmer by the contrast. Above all things it must not be natural, or it ceases to be fine and sinks to the level of the commonplace. In fact, these colourists appear to admire a picture from just the same point of view they would an Indian carpet, a Persian rug, old tapestry, or any other conventional design, and seem to judge of it by similar standards; if one suggests that it has no resemblance to what it claims to represent, they reply, ‘Ah, but it is a glorious frame, full of colour!’ But colour in painting can only be really fine so far as it is true to nature. A grey picture may be just as fine in colour as the most gorgeous. Beauty in colour, as in form, depends on its fitness and truth.”—T. F. Goodall.
The vulgar view of fine colour is easily explained on evolutionary grounds, it is but a harking back to the instincts of the frugivorous apes—our ancestors.
There is much misconception as to the use of the word “creator” in the arts. Some think only those gentlemen who paint mythological pictures, or story-telling pictures, are creators. Of course such distinction is absurd; any artist is a creator when he produces a picture or writes a poem; he creates the picture or speech by which he appeals to others. He is the author, creator, or whatever you like to call him, he is responsible for its existence.
Versifying, Prose-writing, Music, Sculpture, Painting, Photography, Etching, Engraving, and Acting, are all arts, but none is in itself a fine art, yet each and all can be raised to the dignity of a fine art when an artist by any of these methods of expression so raises his art by his intellect to be a fine art. For this reason every one who writes verse and prose, who sculpts, paints, photographs, etches, engraves, is not necessarily an artist at all, for he does not necessarily have the intellect, or use it in practising his art. It has long been customary to call all painters and sculptors artists, as it has long been customary in Edinburgh to call all medical students doctors. But in both cases the terms are equally loosely applied. Our definition, then, of an artist is a person who whether by verse, prose, sculpture, painting, photography, etching, engraving, or music, raises his art to a fine art by his work, and the works of such artist alone are works of art.
In a word, high and low art are absurd terms, no art is high or low. Art is either good or bad art, not high or low, except when skied or floored at exhibitions. “High art” and “higher artistic sense” we shall not use because they are meaningless terms, for if they are not meaningless then every picture falls under one or other category, high or low; if so let some one classify all pictures into these two divisions and he will find himself famous—as the laughing-stock of the world.
A volume might be written on this word, but it would be a volume of words with little meaning. As applied to art, the meaning of “ideal” has generally been that of something existing in fancy or in imagination, something visionary, an imaginary type of perfection. G. H. Lewes says, “Nothing exists but what is perceived;” we would say, nothing exists for us but what is perceived, and this we would make a first principle of all art. A work of pictorial art is no abstract thing, but a physical fact, and must be judged by physical laws. If a man draws a monster which does not exist, what is it? It is but a modified form of some existing thing or combination of things, and is after all not half so terrible as many realities. What is more terrible than some of the snakes than the octopus, than the green slimy crabs of our own waters? Certainly none of the dragons and monsters drawn from the imagination is half so horrible. Did the great Greek artist, Æschylus, describe a dragon as gnawing at the liver of Prometheus? No, he simply drew the picture of a vulture as being sufficiently emblematic. But let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the dragon is more dreadful than any reality, even then the pictorial and glyptic artist cannot use it, for as he has no model to work from, the technique will necessarily be bad, there will be no subtleties of tone, of colour, of drawing, all which make nature so wonderful and beautiful. The dragon will be a pure caricature, that is all. Again, some people consider it wonderful that a painter takes a myth and renders it on canvas, and he is called “learned” and “scholarly” for this work. But what does he do? Let us say he wishes to paint the Judgment of Paris. He, if he is a good painter, will paint the background from physical matter, shaped as nearly like the Greek as possible, and he will paint the Paris and the ladies from living models. The work may be perfect technically, but where is the Greek part of it; what, then, does the painter rely upon? Why, the Greek story, for if not why does he not call it by a modern name? But no, he relies upon the well-known story—the Judgment of Paris—in fact he is taking the greater part of the merit that belongs to another man. The story of the Judgment of Paris is not his, yet it is that which draws the public; and these men are called original, and clever, and learned. Jean François Millet, in one of his scenes of Peasant Life, has more originality than all of these others put together. Many people, not conversant with the methods of art, think artists draw and paint and sculpt things “out of their heads.” Well, some do, but no good artist ever did. We have in our possession a beautiful low relief in marble, done from a well-known Italian model in London. The work is as good as any work the Greeks did, the type is most admirable, and it was done by one of the sternest naturalistic sculptors of to-day.
A highly educated friend, an old Oxford man, called on us not long ago, and was greatly taken with the head; after looking at it a long while, he turned to us and said, “An ideal head, of course!” So it is the cant of “idealism” runs through the world. But we have heard some of the most original and naturalistic artists use the word “ideal,” and on pressing them, they admitted it was misleading to others for them to use the word; but they meant by it simply intellectual, that is, the work of art had been done with intelligence and knowledge, but every suggestion had been taken from nature. The word ideal, to our mind, is so apt to mislead that we shall not use it.
Ideal work (q.v.).
To us Impressionism means the same thing as naturalism, but since the word allows so much latitude to the artist, even to the verging on absurdity, we prefer the term Naturalism, because in the latter the work can always be referred to a standard—Nature. Whereas if impressionism is used, the painter can always claim that he sees so much, and only so much, of Nature; and each individual painter thus becomes a standard for himself and others, and there is no natural standard for all. A genius like Manet tried to work out new ways of looking at nature, and that was legitimate, but when weak followers took up his “manner” and had not his genius, the result was eccentricity. For these reasons, therefore, we prefer and have used the term “naturalism” throughout this work. But, as we have said, we regard the terms “impressionism” and “naturalism” as fundamentally synonymous, although we think the work of many of the so-called modern “impressionists” but a passing craze.
The method of rendering a picture as it appears to the eye has been called interpreting nature. Perhaps interpreting is as good an expression as any, for the artist in his language (for art is only a language) interprets or explains his view of nature by his picture.
“The local or proper colour of an object (Körper-farbe) is that which it shows in common white light, while the illumination colour (Licht-farbe) is that which is produced by coloured light. Thus the red of some sandstone rocks, seen by common white light, is their proper local colour, that of a snow mountain in the rays of the setting sun is an illumination colour.”—E. Atkinson, Ph.D., F.R.S.
See high art.
By this term we mean the true and natural expression of an impression of nature by an art. Now it will immediately be said that all men see nature differently. Granted. But the artist sees deeper, penetrates more into the beauty and mystery of nature than the commonplace man. The beauty is there in nature. It has been thus from the beginning, so the artist’s work is no idealizing of nature; but through quicker sympathies and training the good artist sees the deeper and more fundamental beauties, and he seizes upon them, “tears them out,” as Durer says, and renders them on his |Durer.| canvas, or on his photographic plate, or on his written page. And therefore the work is the test of the man—for by the work we see whether the man’s mind is commonplace or not. It is for this reason, therefore, that artists are the best judges of pictures, and even a trained second-rate painter will recognize a good picture far quicker than a layman, though he may not be able to produce such a one himself. Of course Naturalism premisses that all the suggestions for the work are taken from and studied from nature. The subject in nature must be the thing which strikes the man and moves him to render it, not the plate he has to fill. Directly he begins thinking how he can fill a certain canvas or plate, he is no longer naturalistic, he may even then show he is a good draughtsman or a good colourist, but he will not show that he is naturalistic. Naturalistic painters know well enough that very often painting in a tree or some other subject might improve the picture in the eyes of many, but they will not put it in because they have not the tree before them to study from. Again, it has been said that arranging a foreground and then painting it might improve the picture, but the naturalistic painter says no, by so doing “all the little subtleties are lost, which give quality to the picture!” Nature, is so full of surprises that, all things considered, she is best painted as she is. |Aristotle.| Aristotle of old called poetry “an imitative art,” and we do not think any one has ever given a better definition of poetry, though the word “imitative” must not in our present state of knowledge be used rigidly. The poetry is all in nature, all pathos and tragedy is in nature, and only wants finding and tearing forth. But there’s the rub, the best work looks so easy to do when it is done. |Burns.| Does not Burns' poem “To a mouse” look easy to write? This, then, is what we understand by naturalism, that all suggestions should come from nature, and all techniques should be employed to give as true an impression of nature as possible.
This is a mightily misused word. Only those artists can be called original who have something new to say, no matter by what methods they say it. A photograph may be far more original than a painting.
Some of the best writers and journalists of the day have adopted the use of the word “photographic,” as applying to written descriptions of scenes which are absolutely correct in detail and bald fact, though they are lacking in sentiment and poetry. What a trap these writers have fallen into will be seen in this work, for what they think so true is often utterly false. And, on the other hand, photography is capable of producing pictures full of sentiment and poetry. The word “photographic” should not be applied to anything except photography. No written descriptions can be “photographic.” The use of the word, when applied to writing, leads to a confusion of different phenomena, and therefore to deceptive inferences. This cannot be too strongly insisted upon, as some cultured writers have been guilty of the wrong use of the word “photographic,” and therefore of writing bad English.
Quality is used when speaking of a picture or work which has in it artistic properties of a special character, in a word, artistic properties which are distinctive and characteristic of the fineness and subtlety of nature.
By Naturalism it will be seen that we mean a very different thing from Realism. The realist makes no analysis, he is satisfied with the motes and leaves out the sunbeam. He will, in so far as he is able, paint all the veins of the leaves as they really are, and not as they look as a whole. For example, the realist, if painting a tree a hundred yards off, would not strive to render the tree as it appears to him from where he is sitting, but he would probably gather leaves of the tree and place them before him, and paint them as they looked within twelve inches of his eyes, and as the modern Pre-Raphaelites did, he might even imitate the local colour of things themselves. |Pre-Raphaelites.| Whereas the naturalistic painter would care for none of these things, he would endeavour to render the impression of the tree as it appeared to him when standing a hundred yards off, the tree taken as a whole, and as it looked, modified as it would be by various phenomena and accidental circumstances. The naturalist’s work we should call true to nature. The realist’s false to nature. The work of the realist would do well for a botany but not for a picture, there is no scope for fine art in realism, realism belongs to the province of science. This we shall still further illustrate in the following pages.
Relative tone or value is the difference in the amount of light received on the different planes of objects when compared with one another.
Artists speak of the “sentiment of nature” as a highly desirable quality in a picture. This means that naturalism should have been the leading idea which has governed the general conception and execution of the work. Thus the sentiment of nature is a healthful and highly desirable quality in a picture. Thus “true in sentiment” is a term of high praise. “Sentiment” is really normal sympathetic “feeling.”
As opposed to sentiment, is a highly undesirable quality, and a quality to be seen in all bad work. It is an affectation of sentiment, and relies by artificiality and mawkishness upon appealing to the morbid and uncultured. It is the bane of English art. The one is normal, the other morbid.
Soul = Vis medicatrix = Plastic force = Vital force = Vital principle = O. The word is, however, used by some of the most advanced thinkers in art, and when asked to explain it they say they mean by it “the fundamental.” From what we can gather, the word “soul” is the formula by which they express the sum total of qualities which make up the life of the individual. Thus a man when he has got the “soul” into a statue, has not only rendered the organic structure of the model, but also all the model’s subtleties of harmony, of movement and expression, and thought, which are due to the physical fact of his being a living organism. This “life” is of course the fundamental thing, and first thing to obtain in any work of art. In this way, then, we can understand the use of the word “soul” as synonymous with the “life” of the model. The “soul” or life is always found in nature, in the model, and the artist seizes upon it first, and subdues all things to it. “Soul,” then, to us is a term for the expression of the epitome of the characteristics of a living thing. The Egyptians expressed the “soul” or life of a lion, Landseer did not.
By technique is meant, in photography, a knowledge of optics and chemistry, and of the preparation and employment of the photographic materials by the means of which pictures are secured. It does in no way refer to the manner of using these materials, that is the “practice.”
To begin with, as this book is for photographers, we must tell them they invariably use the word tone in a wrong sense. What photographers call “tone” should properly be colour or tint, thus: a brown tint, a purple tint, or colour.
The correct meaning of tone is the amount of light received upon the different planes of an object.
“‘A mere transcript of nature’ is one of the stock phrases of the art critic, and of many artists of a certain school. The precise meaning attached to it puzzles us; were it not always used as a term of reproach, we should believe it the highest praise that could be bestowed upon a picture. What adds to our perplexity is that the phrase is generally applied by the critic to work which has nothing in common with nature about it: and is used by artists who themselves have never in their lives painted a picture with the simplest values correct, as though transcribing nature to canvas were a stage in the painter’s development through which they had passed, and which was now beneath them. The critic must have but a very superficial acquaintance with nature who applies this term, as is frequently done, to work in which all the subtleties of nature are wanting. We have heard of pictures in which no two tones have been in right relation to one another, in which noisy detail has been mistaken for finish, and the mingling of decision and indecision in fine opposition—the mysterious lost and found, the chief charm of nature—has been utterly unfelt, described as ‘transcripts of nature.’ Those artists who use the phrase, adopt it as a convenient barricade behind which they may defend their own incompetence.”—T. F. Goodall.
All photographers would do well to lay these remarks to heart. Instead of it being an easy thing to paint “a mere transcript of nature,” we shall show it to be utterly impossible. No man can do this either by painting or photography, he can only give a translation, or impression, as Leonardo da Vinci said long ago; but he can give this impression truly or falsely.
In this chapter we shall endeavour to trace the influence
of the study of nature on all the best art up to the present
day. |Woltmann and
Woermann.| In order to do this it will be necessary to
follow in chronological order the development of art, and
we propose taking as our guide in this matter Messrs.
Woltmann and Woermann, who seem the most trustworthy
and are the most recent of art historians. We
feel, however, that we must state our attitude towards
them as historians of art. For the main historical facts,
we willingly accept as authorities these writers, since
they have studied the matter, but when these historians
try to trace the causes and effects of different phases of
art on contemporary life then we entirely part company
from them, for there are so many wheels within wheels in
this complex comedy of life that we cannot with patience
listen to searchers of manuscripts and students of autographs,
who trace the fall of an empire to an oil painting,
or the decadence of painting to the cheapness of wheat:
such dreams may still serve, as they have always served,
as a peg whereon to hang rhetorical rhapsodies, but they
can have no attraction for rational minds. What we propose,
then, is briefly to compile a short outline, consisting
of the salient facts in the history of art, in so far as they
bear on our subject, that is, how far the best artists have
been naturalistic, and how true in impression their
interpretation of nature. When we agree with any of
the critical remarks of these gentlemen, we shall quote
them in full, acknowledging them in the usual way,
but we reserve to ourselves the right to differ entirely
from them on artistic points. We ourselves feel much
diffidence in advancing any critical remarks of our own
upon these arts, for we are convinced, after a long and
practical study of the subject, that no one can criticize
any branch of art and the criticism be authoritative,
unless he be a practical master artist in the branch of
art which he is criticizing; but as our opinions have been
put to the touchstone of some first-rate practical artists
in other branches than our own, we offer them, standing
always ready to be corrected by any good practical artist
on any point. As to who are good artists is again another
wide question. Certainly their name is not legion.
Our object in traversing all this ground, then, is one of inquiry, to really see how far “naturalism” is the only wear for all good art, and we have done it in an impartial spirit, arriving at the conclusion that in all the glyptic and pictorial arts the touchstone answers. How far this is the case with the arts of Fiction, Poetry, &c., is a more complex matter, and one we cannot now deal with, but we feel that in the literary arts the matter is very different, for in these arts we are not confined, as we are in the pictorial and glyptic arts, to physical facts and their representation; for there is no such thing as abstract beauty of form or colour. Art has served as a peg on which to hang all sorts of fads—fine writing, very admirable in its place—morality, not to be despised—classical knowledge and literature generally, both of the highest æsthetic value, but in no way connected with the glyptic and pictorial arts. Naturalistic art has been found and lost, and lost and found time after time, and it is because the Dutch, French, English and American artists of to-day are finding it again that we feel hopeful for the art of the future.
Our object is, by these notes, to lead our readers to the works of art themselves, hoping that by this means they will, to some extent, educate themselves and finally form independent judgments on art matters. Much of the lamentable ignorance existing on these subjects is due to the acceptance of the dicta of writers on pictures, without the readers seeing the pictures themselves. We earnestly beg, therefore, of any one who may be sufficiently interested in the subject as to read this book, that he will go and see the original pictures and sculptures cited; all of which are within easy reach. It was our original intention to introduce photographic reproductions of the best pieces of sculpture, and the best pictures into this work, but we have decided against so doing, fearing that the reader might be tempted to look at the reproductions and neglect the originals, and a translation, however good it may be, is but a small part of the truth. In thus expressing our conclusions on naturalism in art, we do not set up as the preacher of any new gospel. Such opinions as ours are as old as the art of ancient Greece, nay older, for from the early days of Egypt downwards these ideas have been held, we shall find, by great artists in all ages. It is only in the application of these ideas to photography, and in attempting to reduce them to scientific first principles that we presume to claim any originality.
On examining specimens of Egyptian art, whether it be their paintings, architecture, sculpture or book illustrations (the papyri), one is struck by the wonderful simplicity, decision and force with which they expressed themselves. The history of Egypt has been so little studied, save by students of history, and the old popular stories concerning the nations of the past are so inaccurate and misleading, that one is at first surprised to find such power in the works of those whom we were taught, not so long ago, to look upon as Philistines; so that we might gaze on the Pyramids of Gizeh, the statues of Rameses, and the granite lions, with the wonderment of incomprehension. But now, of course, every one knows that the Egyptians were masters in certain directions, where we are but in our infancy. Even in their cavi relievi and wall paintings, though these latter are but tinted outlines, they are not the outlines of childish draughtsmen, weak and unmeaning, but they show the force of a powerful skill that in one bold outline can give all the essentials of a man, bird or beast, so that the picture looks living and doing. All through their work there is a bigness of conception, a solid grip of nature which makes their work surpass many of the elaborately finished and richly detailed pictures of our modern art galleries.
Let us call the reader’s attention to such examples as are easily to be seen, namely, |The lions.|the granite lions, the cavi relievi and the papyri in the British Museum. The lions, which are remarkable for strength of character and truthfulness of impression, may be taken as representative of the greatest period of Egyptian art, a period which ended about the time of Rameses II.; for after that time the artist began to neglect the study of nature, and gradual decadence set in.
We strongly advise all our readers to go to the British Museum and look well at these lions. They are hewn from granite, or porphyry, the hardest of stones, they have conventional moustaches, and are lying in conventional positions, yet withal, there is a wonderful expression of life and reserved strength about them which makes you respect them, stone though they be; and they convey to you, as you look on their long lithe flanks so broadly and simply treated, the truthful impression of strong and merciless animals. Your thoughts involuntarily turn from them to Landseer’s bronze lions guarding Trafalgar Square. In them you remember all the tufts of hair correctly rendered, even to the wool in the ears, the mane, the moustaches. Even the claws are there, and yet you feel instinctively you would rather meet those[2] tame cats of Trafalgar Square, with all their claws, than the Egyptian lions in the British Museum. The reason of this is that the Egyptians knew how to epitomize, so as to express the fundamental characteristics of the lion, they cared not to say how many hairs went to make up the tufted tail, nor yet how many claws each paw should have, but what they tried to do, and succeeded in doing, was to convey a sense of his power and animalism, or to convey, in short, an impression of his nature.
2. Since this was written Mr. Frith has published that Landseer modelled these lions from a tame cat.
These lions were the outcome of the best period of Egyptian sculpture. The Egyptian artists who carved those lions had been striving to interpret Nature, and hence their great success; but as soon as their successors began to neglect nature, and took to drawing up rules, they went wrong, and produced caricatures. |Rameses II. and decadence.| We read that after the time of Rameses II. “every figure is now mathematically designed according to a prescribed canon of numerical proportions between the parts.”
All this we can trace for ourselves in the plates supplied
with Wilkinson’s learned work, entitled, “The
Ancient Egyptians.” We see in those plates that something
has happened to the people and objects represented,
something that makes them no longer tell their own
story, they no longer look alive, but are meaningless;
the reason of this falling off was that the artist no longer
used his eyes to any purpose, but did what was then supposed
to be the right thing to do, namely, followed the
laws laid down by some men of narrow intellect—laws
called as now the “canons of art.” The very life of the
Egyptian artists of that period was against good work,
for they were incorporated into guilds, and the laws of
caste worked as harmfully as they now do in the Orient.
|Artists'
status.|
There is, then, distinct evidence that on the one hand the
Egyptian artists of the best period, when untrammelled
by conventionality, created works which, though lacking
the innumerable qualities of later Greek art, yet possessed,
so far as they went, the first essential of all art—truth of
impression. Again, on the other hand, directly anything
like “rules of art” appeared, and the study of nature was
neglected, their art degenerated into meaningless conventionality,
and as this conventionality and neglect of
nature were never cast aside, the art of Egypt never
developed beyond the work done by the artists who
carved the stone lions.
Assyrian art differed from that of Egypt in that the outline of the figures was much stronger, and that they painted their bas-reliefs; but the “imitation of nature was the watchword” in Assyria, as it was in Babylon.
In studying the Assyrian bas-reliefs, those interested in the subject should go to the Assyrian rooms in the basement of the British Museum, and look at the reliefs of Bani-Pal—the famous lion-hunting scenes. |The lion-hunt.| There is, of course, much conventionality in the work, as there was in that of the Egyptians; but no observer can fail to detect that the Assyrians were naturalistic to a degree that strikes us as marvellous when we consider the subjects they were treating. Note the lioness, wounded in the spine, dragging her hindquarters painfully along. Does this not give a powerful impression of the wounded animal? and does it not occur to you how wonderful was the power of the man who in so little expressed and conveys to you so much. Consider when those Assyrian sculptors lived. Look, too, at the bas-reliefs numbered 47 and 49; and in 50 note the marvellous truthfulness of impression of the horseman, who is riding at a gallop. There is life and movement in the work, though there is much scope for improvement in the truth of the movements. Look, too, at the laden mules in bas-reliefs numbers 70 and 72. Such works as these were done by great men in art, and though crudeness of methods prevented them from rivalling some of the later work, their work is at least honest, and, as far as it goes, naturalistic. The work does not say all that there is to say about the subject; but it does say much of what is most essential, and by doing that is artistically greater than work done by scores of modern men. |Historical value of the bas-reliefs.|In addition to their artistic value, how interesting are these works as records of history. Indisputable, as written history can never be, they are to us a valuable record of the life and times. They constitute historical art in its only good sense.
Greek and Italian art.
In discussing Greek painting we shall rely entirely upon the erudite historical work of Messrs. Woltmann and Woermann, giving a short résumé of their remarks on the subject. |No Greek paintings extant.| This is absolutely necessary, as not one specimen of Greek painting has come down to us.[3] But on the other, hand, in dealing with Greek and Græco-Roman sculpture we shall base our remarks on the Greek and Græco-Roman sculpture in the British Museum.
3. Some paintings quite recently discovered in Egypt are apparently the work of Greek artists, and tend to confirm this written testimony.
Beginning then with Greek painting, let us see what the historians tell us. They begin by saying, in painting “the Greeks effected nothing short of a revolution ... by right of which they deserve the glory of having first made painting a truthful mirror of realities.” This fact, that their pictorial art reached such perfection, is not generally known, for the reason that the assertion rests on written testimony,—but it is reliable testimony. The historians “insist on the fact that no single work of any one of the famous painters recognized in the history of Greek art has survived to our time.” Let us then briefly trace the rise of Greek painting till it culminated in Apelles. |Polygnotos.| Polygnotos (B.C. 475-55) is the first name we hear of, and of his works we are told, “they were just as far from being really complete pictorial representations as the wall-pictures of the Assyrians and Egyptians themselves,” although in some particulars there must have been a distinct advancement on the work of the orientals. For example, we are told Polygnotos painted the “fishes of Acheron shadowy grey, and the pebbles of the river-bed so that they could be seen through the water.” Polygnotos fell, however, into a pitfall which has entrapped many painters since, he painted imaginative pictures. We are told he “was a painter of heroes,” some of his school attempted portraiture, “but painting though in this age was still a mere system of tinted outline design.” |Agatharchos.| Then followed Agatharchos, “the leader of a real revolution, a revolution by which art was enabled to achieve great and decisive progress towards a system of representation corresponding with the laws of optics and the full truth of nature.” Agatharchos was a scene-painter, and was no doubt led by striving for naturalism in his scenery to study naturalism in painting generally. |Scene-painting.| As the historians remark, “In scene-painting as thus practised, we find the origins not only of all representations of determinate backgrounds, but also, and more especially, of landscape painting. It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of the invention of scene-painting as the most decisive turning-point in the entire history of the art, and Agatharchos is named as the master who, at the inspiration of Æschylus, first devoted himself to practising the invention.” |Perspective.| This painter, it is said, also paid great attention to perspective, and left a treatise which was afterwards used in drawing up the laws of perspective. It is said his manner of treatment was “comparatively broad and picturesque.” |Apollodoros.| Next came Apollodoros, a figure-painter, who also combined landscape and figure subjects, and of whom Pliny says “that he was the first to give the appearance of reality to his pictures, the first to bring the brush into just repute, |Easel-pictures.| and even that before him no easel-picture (tabula) had existed by any master fit to charm the eye of the spectator.” |Chiaro-oscuro.| Apollodoros was the first to give his pictures a natural and definite background in true perspective; he was the first, it is emphatically stated, “who rightly managed chiaro-oscuro and the fusion of colours.... He will have also been the first to soften off the outlines of his figures.... |Brunn.| For this reason we may, with Brunn, in a certain sense call Apollodoros “the first true painter.” We are told, however, that his “painting was, in comparison with his successors, hard and imperfect,” and that the innovations made by him in the relation of foreground and background cannot be compared to the improvements effected by the brothers Van Eyck in modern times. |Zeuxis, Parrhasios, and Timanthes.| We now read of Zeuxis, Parrhasios, and Timanthes, who, we are told, “perfected a system of pictorial representation, adequately rendering on the flat surface the relief and variety of nature, in other particulars if not in colour.” The endeavour of Zeuxis was “by the brilliant use of the brush to rival nature herself,” and from anecdotes related of him and of Parrhasios, we gather that they “laid the greatest stress on carrying out to the point of actual illusion the deceptive likeness to nature.” Many of Zeuxis' subjects were taken from everyday life—another step in the right direction. |Eupompos.| We now come to the Dorian school, with Eupompos as its founder; and here we find a determination to study painting scientifically, and to conscientiously observe nature, for we are told Eupompos expressed the opinion “that the artist who wished to succeed must go first of all to nature as his teacher.” |Pamphilos.| Pamphilos, a pupil of Eupompos, brought this school to maturity, and insisted on the “necessity of scientific study for the painter.” |Melanthios.| He was followed by Melanthios, who pursued the same lines of scientific investigation; and was in his turn succeeded by Pausias, of whom we hear, |Pausias.| “It is quoted as a novel and striking effect, that in one of his pictures the face of Methê (or personified Intoxication) was visible through the transparent substance of the glass out of which she drank.” His work was considered to have great technical excellence, his subjects were taken from everyday life, and his pictures were all on a small scale. Pliny says “his favourite themes were ‘boys,’ that is, no doubt, scenes of child-life.... He developed, it seems, a more natural method of representing the modelling of objects by the gradations of a single colour.” We read, too, that his paintings drawn fresh from life “were much appreciated by the Romans.” Such is the case with all good naturalistic works, they always interest posterity, whereas the so-called imaginative works only interest the age for which they are painted. We should to-day prefer and treasure as beyond price one of Pausias' studies of familiar Greek life, whereas the heroes of Polygnotos would lack interest for us, and excite but little enthusiasm. |The Theban-Attic school.| There was a third school of Greek painting, that called the Theban-Attic, and of this we read that there was “a great ease and versatility, and an invention more intent upon the expression of human emotion,” but no painter of this school made any very great advance. |Apelles.| At length we come to Apelles, the most famous of all Greek painters. He, although already well known and highly thought of, went to the Sikyonian school, to study under Pamphilos, and we afterwards hear of him as court painter to Alexander the Great. We are told that at court his “mission was to celebrate the person and the deeds of the king, as well as those of his captains and chief men.” This was at any rate legitimate historical painting. Woltmann and Woermann say, “In faithful imitation of nature he was second to none; he was first of all in refinement of light and shade, and consequent fulness of relief and completeness of modelling.” And again we read, “Astonishing technical perfection in the illusory imitation of nature” distinguished Apelles. Thus we see that the great aim of the greatest of Greek painters was to paint nature exactly as she is, or as glib critics would say, to paint “mere transcripts of nature.” |Protogenes.| Contemporary with Apelles was Protogenes, whose aim was to reach the “highest degree of illusion in detail.” The cycle of development seemed now to have reached its highest point, and as the naturalistic teachings fell into the hands of inferior men, they were abused, and Woltmann and Woermann tell us the imitative principle was not kept subservient to artistic ends, and in the hands of Theon of Samos the principle of illusion became an end in itself, and art degenerated into legerdemain. This same tendency is now showing its hydra head, and in London, Brussels, and other places are to be seen inferior works hidden in dark rooms, or to be viewed through peep-holes. |Theon.| We only want the trumpets of Theon or the music of the opera bouffe to complete the degradation.Following Theon, and probably disgusted with his phantasies, came painters of small subjects;|The rhyparographi.| the rhyparographi of Pliny, or the rag-and-tatter painters, “who painted barbers' shops, asses, eatables, and such-like.” “We see, therefore, that about B.C. 300 ... Greek painting had already extended its achievements to almost all conceivable themes, with the single exception of landscape. Within the space of a hundred and fifty years the art had passed through every technical stage, from the tinted profile system of Polygnotos to the properly pictorial system of natural scenes, enclosed in natural backgrounds, and thence to the system of trick and artifice, which aimed at the realism of actual illusion by means beyond the legitimate scope of art.”
“The creative power of Greek painting was as good as exhausted by this series of efforts. In the following centuries the art survived indeed as a pleasant after-growth, in some of its old seats, but few artists stand out with strong individuality from among their contemporaries. Only a master here and there makes a name for himself. |Timomachos.| The one of these whom we have here especially to notice is Timomachos, of Byzantium, an exception of undeniable importance, since even at this late period of Greek culture he won for himself a world-wide celebrity.”
Decadence, however, had already set in, and we find that Timomachos neglected the study of familiar subjects, and returned to the so-called imaginative style, producing such works as “Ajax and Medea,” and “Iphigenia in Taurus.” |Greek landscape painting.| Curiously enough, it was during this period that the only branch of painting not yet tried by the Greeks, namely, landscape painting, was attempted. Woltmann and Woermann suggest a reason for this new departure when they say, “We can gather with certainty from poetry and literature that it was in the age of the Diadochi (the kings who divided amongst them the kingdom of Alexander) that the innate Greek instinct of anthropomorphism, of personifying nature in human forms, from a combination of causes was gradually modified in the direction of an appreciation of natural scenes for their own sake, and as they really are.” Landscape painting, however, did not reach any great perfection, for we are told it “scarcely got beyond the superficial character of decorative work.” |Decadence.| With this period ends the true history of Greek painting, though it still lingers on, and becomes so far merged into that of Roman art that between the two it is not possible to draw a line of distinction. |Fabius and Ludius.| Roman art had a character of its own, and even two painters, whose names, Fabius and Ludius, and in the case of the latter whose works, have been handed down to us; but the works of Ludius do not appear to have been more than decorative work.