Where Art Begins

HE AUTHOR OF 'MODE

er altogether from his beliefs. We may go fifteen miles out of t

John Ruskin and love his character, and yet take a stand against him when he directs painting! to coincide with his

t, this year may be met in my mind with over-balancing excuses and reasons. I was close upon it when it loomed up, and it looked a mountain, hiding with its black shadow all the rest; b

ething that we are able to point out the mote in the eye of our brother? It is a compliment which we

s object; microscopic in his vision (herein lies his fault as a general teacher-he cannot stand far enough back from his picture), seeking to the core before he will be satisfied, becoming the disciple of the man he

sfied with him, who, having fallen in love, have become blind, and he has the weakness to be satisfied with their satisfaction. The gold is pure which he has refined, the armour is bright which Faith

leader, as a poet and beautifu

t up by the Founder of Christianity, further from forms, falsehoods, luxuries. But the world has its own

not all gold, but so great is my love of the gold that it forces me to hate in p

RIES: YELLOW,

street showman throwing up three balls in the air,

t not also to you, if I could have aided my symbol by introducing to you at this point the model of some long-haired gentleman, with his symmetrical person glittering with spangles and bright textures, wh

colours that I wish to begin the game, an

e soothed with the harmony they produce all together. Red passes yellow, and an image of orange flashes in front of us, even while we see both red an

orange, purple, and green are the direct mixt

is no red, or yellow, or blue, no distinct orange, purple, or green, but a thousand indefinite shafts and ripples of colour. Is it red, blue, green, orange, purple, yellow, or gems

in his work, some thought in his head, and his eye steadfastly fixed on nature, and nature only, while his fingers run over the keyboard to the music she sets before him. He wi

ture-book with a red face, yellow coat, and blue decorations. Most likely you will find him disdain all mixtures, except per

twist of the ornament meaning a grade or a power, every streak a motive or a threat. His gods are reverenced only as the me

randeur of simplicity: with its solid works that

lue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble:

T EGYPTIA

ia sketch b

the war-chariots jostled and the broad moon hung like a golden lamp between heaven and earth, and mingled her silver shafts with the ruddy sparkles of the perfume

round the ankles of the dancers? the laughter of the drinking guests of Ahasuerus?-or the snapping and snarling of the

use Egypt came up first with her first principles in art and science, to

ns a partial knowledge of art, and like us all when only half educated

nd palette with every conceivable colour that is made, particularly the more e

will lay in a set of sables and pick away at little threads like a weaver until he is half blind; if it is the low-toned school he affects, then daylight become

eyes. In Hunt's 'Boy Christ' I saw nothing but china-blue eyes and hard little touches, hair like bits of wire, and all devotion worked out of it by the multitude of its pitiful details: I saw time and drawing and infinite work on it, but nothing else. I never saw the original of the 'Light of the World,' but I have seen engravings from it, and although five hundred greater men than John Ruskin were to write that it is 'the mos

ters are regarded as infallible, yet in the exhibition of autotypes from the Queen's drawings from old masters, at one time exhibited at the Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh, I saw many samples of bad drawing, weak handling, timidity, slow-dragg

before I can see outlines so soft and hazy, and colours so undecided and sombre, as his are. Corot I cannot see to be the prince of landscape painters, although the critics did call him so, if the picture

n its side, for when we compare our scale of colours with the sc

and what a leaden symbol it is when we

hallow it is when we try to look int

and keep down every step or key of our board in the same proportion as our lights and our darks are-make our picture, in fact, not so much

t Turner struck a high note in his scale

w key, and went out o

laying falsetto, lose themselves in dingy obscurity

y look straight at nature and not on her reflections; and because, as our whites are already so far below nature

ed colour, something in the same way that the youthful anatomist sees only a lovely disse

blindly, like a reasonless lover, but with the qualified reverence of a sensible helpmate. I lik

nd greys, and if he does not, will never get it to look like a peach; so that great power over colour is always a sign of large art intellect: every other gift may be erroneously cultivated, but this will guide to all healthy, natural, and forcible truth. The student ma

r and cobalt, terre verte and siennas, and all that he can range out in battle-order, across his canvas. Time mellows painters as it does paint, and where

ort of excuse for the faults of Ruskin. He will be able to dissect the picture, tell you how this part has bee

flaw in his particular hobby and firmly fixed habits, he will get no further, and see nothing else; just as a sensit

e; so ought the man who has painted it, and per

action in my life, far

ugged painter sees only paltry crotchet work in the pre-Raphaelite. They are all rig

e whether it is a landscape or a figure we are aiming at; we must begin it first with a few marks of distance, put it into squares, divide it with straight lines, measure it with our eye in its broadest sense, box it up, and put rigidly from us all temptations at this stage to enter into details. Leave all the fine curves until we

his window or nose with their length, and the breadth and length of something else; look at the relative position of two parts, the angles of imaginary lines that you mental

lost the square angles without losing the firmness which they have given to us, and with perfect assurance and ease dash in our beautif

colour-the brightest first, our lemons and chromes, Naples yellows, ochres, cadmiums, and raw siennas. You will not need the half of these unless you like. Next follow the reds-vermilion, crimsons, roses, light

e proper thing to do. We set our palette thus, because our tints are thus in harmonious gradations from us; and also, if by mistake our brush comes into contact with two colours at

ime and experience alone can teach you-that the greater your art knowledge, the more limited will be your range of colours and implements. You may begin with the rainbow, but you will return eventu

o much pleasanter to a beginner. But if it is not miniature, pre-Raphaelite, or tea-tray painting which you aspire to, keep from them as long as you can. Do not use

be; for if we look at nature we cannot find lines, or if there seem lines they are formed by many cross

of the effect and feeling that we from our distance can trace. This is why, from my point of view, pre-Raphaelitism is a clumsy, abo

r our washes-that is, if it is water-colour

he effect left on our dazzled mind after reading the matchless cloud-and-water poetry to be found in the pages of 'Modern Painters' and other works by the same author. How fondly we are apt to imagine, as we quote, that we have seen countless miles of transparent cloud beyond cloud

ictures, thought out half the mountains of thought his admirer makes hi

he same glorious knack of being able to leave alone 'happy flukes', which chance and accide

de the veins upon the little shell by the sea-shore, the twist of the palette knife that broke the colours into prismatic ripples on the rounded wave-all that his admirer writes as forethought I do not believe. He must have thought on the clouds and waves and sands which he so often watched, the varying shapes and tints they took, the mixture of a

d heartburn of a remembered chance cast away. We go on polishing and working, rounding off this energetic sentence, touching over

cated way, take the graceful expression and be thankful, only get the thought and do not silence the peasant because he cannot speak good grammar, or until you have taught him his grammar. Grammar and refinement are good things both, only be sure of the better things first.... Always look for invention first, and after that for such execution as will help the invention and

tter to have the rough work and the full thought than the finished work and something lost. But, no matter whether it be science or art that the man is treating, I would reverse the advice Ruskin gives in his introduction to 'Proserpina,' and tell the man to write it in the language that he and his neighbours are most familiar with, and not waste his time locking it up in

ries of the sunset or moonrise with a callous, critical, investigating glance, indulging in n

l of Shel

nset ma

lit sea

s of rest

and dots them lemon, orange, chrome, ros

ines. If we have any sentiment in our composition at all, we can no more gaze upon the beautiful or grand without a respon

ce or graceful form must teach us more than carnation and ochre, or we deserve to be the hero of Campbell's melancholy poem 'The Last Man.' If we do not feel the spirit of the

is more than this. We dissect hair, we see in the dark the rich brown madder shadows with the purple half-lights and blue gleams, and we know this makes the raven's plume from the right standpoint; or the golden tress, with its mixtures of ochre, green, and red, and w

ous stones from my castle in Spain; with the other palette seeking to snatch from the weak little tubes that intense dun and purple rolling about through the thunder-drift,-seeking to bring down the waves of variation, the orange and the gold

whole conundrum

itons never shall be slaves'; and although, perhaps, it ought to give an oak-tree an air of all this as it stands before us, yet there it stands before us, full of knots and wrinkles, with its gnarled limbs flung about it, and its green moss, silver lichen, and amber and purple darting between; and I take it, this is what our painter has to get into his head and imitate. We cannot see past its bark unless it is torn open, and then we may not see the bark, and we must never think of painting what we cannot see. If, by the help of our poetic taste,

someone tells you there is a man coming along the road; you think it does look like a man, but you only see a splash of mixed

ine of detail about your figure more than the tree, or stone, or hedge beside him, you

e same variations. What paints sunset, paints sunrise, midday, moonlight; the same colours that sparkle in the bright patch sparkle in the deep shadow, and the variations of yellow, red, and blue are as pronounced and ap

stand for ever; but bring back all your knowledge, so that you may know why you painted as you did when you began. T

strikes us is the great masses of light and shadows before us; objects are all divided th

the masses-chairs, tables, pictures, people. That is our s

details, ornaments

colour, all the sparkles and gems, and the same in every light. This is

and shadow, when some masses come out and other masses go back, also a general idea of its prevailing tone. Second working-Then, as we work and watch, come indic

as they lie about in all directions, they get mixed up into all sorts of

ere; and if we paint each individual leaf as we would copy one set before us, or as we see them in Christmas cards, we must paint in an abortive, unnatural, and exagger

doing what we can with our own clumsy fingers and clumsier tools; and since we cannot get all the details of natur

able to see the landscape if he pushes himself so amongst the branches and leaves of the tree, or that it is rude to get so close to a lady's face-anything, only keep him back the proper distance. If shorts

as we can, put into our sketch everything that we can see before us, a

f the road with any very ungainly object in front of him, but I doubt if

the picture as conscientiously as the lovely silver b

we may find it full of the objections and faults which we have been taught to reverence. Shall we alter what na

a sin against precedent if we put that wall or fence as it at present stands. Good taste and the example of the old masters forbid us to put on this colour, to do that. At every

be, 'Put in all that looks well in nature, and it will be

annoy them, only the spirit that God gave them to struggle on with, as we should also have did the world not bid us bow down and worship these time-stained old idols. They were great, and so may we become when we a

ot see how to do from nature. For instance, you may learn how to glaze and scumble better from a picture than

stiffness, and give you in his own buoyant style the liberty and joyful colouring you may be deficient in. Vandyke will teach you refinement and digni

ike to the competition; Orchardson for pure and delicate texture; Sir Frederick Leighton for finish; Millais for realism in its best sen

e quality of Job. Nature eventually must make him, as she has made that great realistic maste

f equal use to the public and to the worker; for, leaving one to see the errors that all man's work has, they lay the good before the other, benefiting equally themselves in the instruction they have gained. As for the other class, do they help the work done, or that has to

The decay must be as useful as the life, or it would not b

is only one other practice as pernicious as indiscriminate

azing and

bscure the parts that stand too prominently out; it softens harshnesses, sends back port

o give richness to the depths, lower the tone in places needful, as foregrounds and such like, that com

the pitchfork, to be determined on before you begin your picture, and remembered

of your own. The artist must fluctuate among several styles, always following and trying to understand nature, even while he admires other painters, until at last the scal

g effect, subject, or treatment; then they become like French cooks-continually stirring their minds for new mixtur

ing into the scale against colour and made it weigh them down; or Harvey, who chose the moral thought; or Gustave Doré, who revels in the image. I could go on naming hosts who have styles distinct by power or affectation, for it is in the style that we show our affectation, as we do it in our walking and our talking; but I would only say that if you wish to be natural and great, think very little upo

olumes of steam and smoke, clouds, water, waving trees, and reeds. Fill up your books and scraps of paper with all sorts of shorthand notes; very likely yo

early as possible all about it-the colours you think should be used for it, the shape of

is solved. Like recipe and cookery books, they serve, after you know your subject without them, to warn you against what they advise, also to advertise the ma

sensible on painting, although I cann

weighed as the shade of the edges, and the title as maturely considered as the material on which it has to be printed. It is a great pleasure to handle one of his books, or even

e, soothed with the harmony, exalted with the poetry, thralled with the exquisite grace, diction, and finish; we can hardly

along those Coniston Fells, and the level mists, motionless and grey beneath the rose of the m

pposed in olden times to flash out of the head of the toad. Copy it if you can with your brus

ng out with his lovely lights, and luring you on, now over dry land, now over marsh; giving at

hould enjoy him as we do other poets; but he is like a man who has built a fine house with chaste design and perfect decora

dly silly questions into the mouth of his supposed audience, as if a scavenger who does his work honestly and comports himself uprightly could not be as good a gentleman as the aristocrat who pa

ty of Titian and Correggio, to be perhaps followed up by the information that Titian and Tintoretto

ough in the same breath he will admit that the tiger-skin is rather pretty, and that some bright flowers a

me-I don't know why; or in his own graceful way changing his tune, and tell

s and gloom, to turn with gloating rapt

vocating his slanting steeples as if that were the proper way for steeples to stand, or reviling some one else for the same thing. How he raves throughout his books on the great ma

indulge in such weak and heartless exhibitions of the fop wit as when he replies to Constable's remark about chiaroscuro: 'T

acence of having written a clever thing; it is on a par with his dress-coat retort to the Blackwood critic of October, 1843, about the silver

much a part of nature's graining as the bark outside, or the blade of grass that engrossed his microscopic eye so completely that he could not see the majesty of the Alps above hi

th his saints and kings, or come forth with mighty condescension and tell the nations to hurry up and avail themselves of his priceless services while yet there is time. I admit all his great

Ruskin says,' 'as Carlyle remarks,' when Solomon has said it all before, and perhaps many wise sages before him. God has given minds to us as well as to Carlyle or Ruskin, and surely it is better to say in our own way the

or of something not our own; also there may be times when, like the use of a foreign wo

similar subject. Modesty will perhaps point out many faults and shortcomings that we could not find out in any other way; but the most vicious habit in young painters is the perpetual running

ry day: all good work in themselves, but with so little difference of sty

the whole, I am of opinion that originality and individuali

fidelity; but it is better to paint a moral and a thought, even although it is only half expressed, for the spectators may fill

llais a realistic painter; others are purely imaginative, and paint and write about visions and the unseen, steadfast and serene dreamers of the ideal. Shelley and Coleridge are imaginative poets, William

becomes a question impossible to answer, which

sired than the merry fancy that builds its domes and castles out of the clouds, or from the rocks and surroundings draws images of other creations; neither would I say that there was less of power or poetry in the mind that

e wri

ect and ear

mselves wit

in vogue and considered fine, I hold to my theory

illustrate our thoughts, imaginings, dreams, and embody the images

whole vanishes; that is our first experience, but by practice and perseverance you will find the characters come to be le

h our own sense of manliness the fashions of the day; but it is not good to enslave ourselves eith

ish, and we desire to please the artists and picture-dealers, and live as it were for the hour, we may acquire this affectation, if it does not cost too much thought; that must ever rank above a

y be led by one man who constitutes himself the leader, and he will be followed if enduring enough to place himself

, not even the children; his pictures got turned out or skied in exhibitions, he was glad to sell a

mwell that he is to us? The relations of Robert Burns thought the

s up here. I do not know, although I have seen much of his work; but it seemed to me a

ur different critics with their different tastes-the opinion of one

d grumble afterwards if the p

eir pictures. If the thing is bad in Raphael, it is bad in Whistler

ho paid that sum for it, it can never be

ikings, no opinions, he ought to depend on some one whom he can trust who has knowledge, and never alter afterwards; or he ought to spend his money only on what he has fixed ideas about, or give it away in the cause of charity, about which we all, as human being

hers against our feelings. For instance, if we are eating something nice, is it no longer nice if our neighbour says it is not? or ought we weakly to ta

with the ground or paper serving as our white. The tre

. Like engraving, its chief merit is the vast labour it costs, if that is a

e or zinc white with the colours. A little chemistry should be studi

rbitrary laws; do whatever brings the conclusion quickest, and it must be legitimate. If your knife does better than your brush, use it; if your fingers, use them. Scratch, scrape, rub, cut, polish, shave, do whatever you think will succeed, and if it does not, try some other experiment until it does come up to your wishes. If t

of nature, but that I have already done.[10] I am tempted to draw a sunset, or a storm, or a calm, with all their different objects in the background, middle distance, and foreground, dissect

oating on the glittering ocean, or diving amongst the deep reflections of the lake; peeping out of the froth and the heavy curl of the advancing wave; dashed into piece

one ever acting the monarch, yet ever being dethroned and supplanted by one of the two counsellors, to join the other

that the painter's eye is the best guide, we must have

, and when to trail them; how long our reflections ought to be, and why at one time we make them longer than the object, and why at another time so much shorter. This is all imperative to the art student, although it may be overdone. The rules are not so hard as some imagine, and, like

ere a little deviation from the stiff law would have redeemed the whole; just as many a cl

subject, it is no excuse for our ignorance; the science is now established, and it is our

es, and yet be to a certain extent natural. Look at his thousands of figures, with their countless

r climate, our costumes, our habits are all against us, and without the knowledge of bones and muscles we should never discern between the

nd what ought not to be, in our model, if

ther the Greek statues are perfect, if we do not know why that lump starts out when the arm or leg is planted so?

d on Exhibition

is, when we can. Although I think the intelligent public do not pay so much heed as to whether your name is in the catalogue or

nt, for the best pictures for rooms are not always the pictures that look best in exhibitions. They may

le part with other single-part pictures, so as to make a pleasing harmony of the whole. It is the student's own choice whether

as he likes, and the world will say

and his hand, and keep active his mind to the true principles of art and the animation of

SK RIVER

ph by Major Aike