Where Art Begins

rushes or camera and dry-plates, must feel the greatest

tter or choosing the landscape under

ant, embody only a disjointed object, apparently badly drawn because it is badly lighted, with the finest pa

f the necessary lines of action, and to prove their utility by the effects as seen in nature every day and in the works of those men who have left a halo round their names by their faithful adherence to the laws and truthful translations of the revelations of nature; for the great men of the p

yourselves altogether, seeking after a beauty that is not of heaven or earth. In the first case you may be passed over without comment, yet you know that you have used the one talent bestowed upon you, and i

ent and proportion, and which the artist ought to observe as closely as he may do the more ordinary or everyday phases of lighting; for ex

dinburgh, 1884,' I intentionally made the horses and portions of the c

ment of this particular subject. I take up the position of a spectator whose pupils have been dilated by the semi-darkness, and who, with imagination active, is suddenly startled by the flaring and irregular flashing of the waving torches

e aid of fire or torchlights which they have seen at other times. I would ask you to exercise the faculties of memory or imagination while I give you a brief description of the emotions it roused in my mind as one of the many thousand spectators, and the effect it had upon my seeing faculties, which will enable you to c

ty. Right and left lay Princes Street, with the Mound a

casional rocket fizzing from Calton Hill, also faintly illumined with white and blue fire, into the umber-tinted darkness of that starless, cloud-bulging sky, and the alternating glaring from Hanover Street of rose-coloured, wh

athetic thrilling sound which ever grips and holds the hearts of a crowd like one heart, and over the houses, with their lights

f a centipede of fire; and so on, with the slow appearance which distance always gives to all rapid motion, the procession crossed the bridge, hiding behind the shops and houses between the bridge and Princes Street, reappearing again by the Post Office, gliding along to Calton Hill; then they paused for a moment, turned round and came towards us, foreshortened, but growing vaster as they neared, until, with a sudden burst, they were r

of spectres they for the moment became: ghosts of giants and dwarfs, and other strange forms, like those extinct monsters of the past, all whirling madly past me, a vision of passion an

ind and making the objects stand out dark, as in sunrises, sunsets, moonlights, or artificial lights behind figures; in the other portion you have the light thrown

thods of dividing a picture, as they are apt to be mannered and fixed; what I would rather advise is, to allow either shadow or light to predominate-shadow, if force is required; ligh

strictly necessary; indeed, in painting a subject with the light from the back, the energy of the painter should principally be directed t

the direction of the light, so that it may pass direct

GUINEA

lighting f

-shutter over an instantaneous plate. It will never be like nature if the light upon one part falls half an hour before the light falls on another portion; so in planning out

omprehensively round, makes a few swift notes, catches the spirit of the effect, and depends upon his memory, or a faithful photograph of his image, for his detail afterwards. We may blink at this as much as we choose, yet pre-Raphaelitism must come to its proper place in good time, and be shut in with the antique casts of the schoolroom, with the

annot be laid aside without injuring all the other parts of the composition; so in lighting, I wish to impress upon all the necessity for the strictest eco

lver-grey it spread from my feet into distance; in mid-distance it took the gleam of quicksilver upon it, growing blue-grey as it receded, and fawn-coloured as it neared me, darkening

Burnet has done, into five parts-light, ha

hen a picture is composed mainly of dark and half-dark, the lights will be more brilliant, but they will be apt to look spotty for want of half-light to spread and connect them, and the piece be in danger of becomi

ne part with another, and the third, a general breadth, is the necessary attendant on extent and magnitude. A judicious management of these three properties is to be found in the best pictures of the Italian, Venetian, and Flemish schools, and ought to employ

stance than easel pictures prevents them looking harsh or cutting, and gives th

rfection in the pictures of Paulo Veronese and Tintoretto; and even the larger works of Titian and Correggio have a fl

ct is only to be produced by a great extent of light or shade pervading the picture. If an open daylight appearance is intended, such as we see in Cuyp, &c., it will be best produced by leaving out part of the middle tint, and allowing a greater spread of light and half-light; this will also give the darks the relative force which they possess in na

arkness surrounding it, as in some of the Dutch pictures, where the light comes through a window, from a bright fire, a lamp, or a candle, the effect will be a

lmost equally divided, the

dark background; if outside, gloomy skies, as in autumn, winter, or storm effects. In landscape, this effect

tally, as in doorways and narrow passages

re horizontally, as in sunrises

a great number of examples to prove the justice of his theory, which to give here would only be a loss of time, as they repeat those different orders of lighting, yet I may with benefit quote the wise advice of Rubens to his students, where he says, 'Begin by painting in your shadows lightly, taking care that no white is su

stain upon any portion of its surface, say two shades deeper grey than the canvas, and you have the effect of lig

ake a mark with white chalk and a few darks, and the ground will give all the other qualifyi

pidity of her changes; also the superiority of light over white, and shadow under black; we see, for example, degrees of light without shadow, and degrees of shadow after the greatest depth of darkness has been attained, and these we can no more follow than we can follow the separate bl

capture of one light, and let the other eleven become ha

the labour, pride, and test of the painter, even although i

o primary laws, angular and circular arrangements, and in colours upon three colours, and it is in the strict observance of those scientific ground lines that the entire success of our design or picture depends; but, above all, the whole secret of scientific and a