I assume that whatever method is adopted for painting flesh, the object
ought to be to get it like nature. I don’t mean necessarily like the
model, but like what nature would be under the conditions imposed by the
subject, and it is very necessary continually to bear in mind what those
conditions are. It will not do (if you have an open-air subject to
paint) to copy your model faithfully as he appears in the studio, and
then put in a sky and background from your out-of-door studies.

Although the whole picture might truly be said to be painted from
nature, yet it would certainly not look right. The figures would have
been painted under one condition of light, and the landscape under
another.

You cannot be expected, except under peculiar circumstances, to paint
direct from your model out-of-doors, but you may take careful notice of
the difference between studio light and shade and open-air effect. I
must do modern painters the justice to say that this difference is much
more generally recognized than it was twenty years ago. Formerly a
group of figures used to be painted with more or less care from models
as they appeared in the studio, the aperture which admitted light being
often not more than three or four feet wide. It was immaterial to the
artist whether the scene of his subject was an apartment similarly
lighted, or an open heath; and the consequence was that the picture,
however cleverly it might be painted, had an unreal appearance whenever
a landscape background was introduced. This discrepancy must have been
felt, and hence no doubt we may account for the perfectly conventional
landscape backgrounds we notice in many pictures by the masters of the
last century. Instead of the old artifice of spoiling the landscape for
the sake of the figures, it is much better and healthier art to paint
the figures to suit the landscape. We cannot do this completely unless
we paint the whole picture on the spot, and then we should not have the
same command over the arrangement of the groups as we have in the
studio; but we _can_ make an approximation toward this desirable end,
and it is satisfactory to notice that many young artists, both French
and English, are making efforts in this direction, and thus studying the
ever-varying effects of color and light in the only way in which they
ought to be studied. If you do not feel equal to the task of thus
modifying your studio work, choose some subject where the scene is an
interior, analogous to your own room, and then you may copy literally
the color and light and shade of your models and draperies.

I am not going to give any recipe for painting flesh; some English
artists and the great majority of foreigners paint it in at once as near
nature as they can. Others model it first in what is technically called
dead color, and finish with transparent or semi-transparent tints. If
the result is good, it matters little how it has been obtained. Every
artist has his own method, and he generally adheres to it, either
because he is accustomed to it, or because it suits his style of
composition and drawing. I shall therefore confine the remarks I have to
make on color to the harmonious arrangement of backgrounds, draperies,
and costumes.

First, as to backgrounds. It is a curious fact, which any one can
verify, that if you have painted a head and you find the color too hot
and red, the proper remedy is to paint the background of a cool green or
some cold color. Naturally one would suppose that on the principle of
contrasts the cool-colored background would make the head appear redder.
Such, however, is certainly not the case. A vermilion curtain behind
your rubicund gentleman would make him appear more objectionably
rubicund, but a cool gray or green would have the contrary effect.

On the other hand, if you want warmth of color in your head, paint a red
background to it. If you try to give warmth to it by setting it in a
cold background you will make it look more ghastly than it did.

The only explanation I can offer for this apparent anomaly is that the
eye gets filled or saturated with the color of the background until the
head seems to partake of it. In the first example the eye gets filled
with cool green, and thus the redness of the head becomes less apparent.
In the second example, the optic nerves get accustomed to a hot color,
and so the pallor of the head disappears.

In my opinion a colored sketch or water-color drawing gains brilliancy
by being mounted on a white ground, whereas, according to theory, the
dazzling whiteness of the mount ought to make the drawing look dingy.

In the same way, supposing you have painted a series of figures for the
decoration of a pediment or frieze, and you find that your figures are
dull and heavy in color, how are you to remedy this without repainting
them? My answer would be, Give them a gold or light bright-colored
background. It is not only that this bright background enlivens the
whole work, but it has the effect of making each individual figure
appear less dull in color.

Although experience has taught me that these apparently anomalous
effects are produced with color, yet, of course, where black and white
alone are concerned, the law of contrast follows its natural course;
that is, if you want to give brilliancy to a white spot, surround it
with black; and if you want to give darkness to a black spot, surround
it with white.

In a composition of several figures, it is almost always desirable to
assist the effect by selecting white or light-colored draperies for the
figures in the light, and dark colors for the figures in the shade.

This principle may, of course, be carried too far, but as a general rule
it may be depended on.

A good deal has been said by Sir J. Reynolds and others in praise of a
simple palette, and with much of this I cordially agree; still I think
that in the ordinary practice of figure-painting nine or ten colors are
indispensable.

If I give you my own palette, it is not that I wish to dictate to you
what colors to employ, but simply as a foundation for the remarks I am
going to make about the colors generally used. First, with regard to
white.

White lead is the pigment all but universally used in oil-painting. Many
years ago I tried zinc-white. It was strongly recommended, on the ground
that it did not turn yellow or black with age like white lead. I believe
it has this good quality, but it wants opacity and body; and although I
think it might be used with great advantage in skies, or for scumbling,
I don’t think it can ever replace white lead for flesh-painting.

We next come to Naples yellow. I am no chemist, and do not profess to
tell you what Naples yellow is made of, any more than I could inform you
of what London butter is made. There are a great many shades of this
useful color, but I think that the pale greenish variety is the most
serviceable. The French have _jaune de Naples ordinaire_, _jaune
brilliant_, and three shades of _jaune Pinard_. Our colormen have pale
and deep Naples yellow, of various shades, and lemon yellow besides. Of
all these varieties, I prefer the light-colored _jaune Pinard_. In
painting flesh it will be found useful, especially in the reflected
light of the shadows, where white lead would probably create heaviness
and opacity; but it is in light-colored draperies, in gold-embroidered
brocades, and in glowing sunsets that Naples yellow of some kind becomes
indispensable. Yellow ochre ought to be a simple earth, tinted yellow in
nature’s laboratory; but, like the aforesaid Naples yellow, you cannot
tell what the contents of the tube you purchase as yellow ochre really
are.

The _terra chiara_, which, in Italian fresco, replaces our yellow ochre,
is perfectly durable, but no yellow ochre that I ever bought in London
would resist the action of the lime.

Hence I conclude that the yellow ochre of the trade is not a genuine
earth. However that may be, it is quite indispensable on the palette,
and in oil-paintings seems perfectly durable. Roman ochre, golden ochre,
and other varieties are quite unnecessary if you have yellow ochre on
your palette; but brown ochre is capital for one particular purpose, and
for nothing else that I know of. The purpose of which I am speaking is
for painting a dead white luminous bit of wall or pavement. If you
mellow your white lead with a very little brown ochre, you will get a
luminous compound which is neither yellow nor red, and is totally
dissimilar to your flesh tint.

Of raw sienna I would speak with great respect, as it is perfectly
durable in fresco-work, where yellow ochre drops off the wall and
disintegrates every thing it is mixed with. Nevertheless, raw
sienna wants body; when ground in oil, and except perhaps for
landscape-painting, I hardly ever use it.

Before exhausting the yellows, I may mention that the only violent
yellow you ought ever to admit on your palette is cadmium. Chromes of
all kinds are rank poison, and cadmium, though quite safe, is a
difficult color to manage with discretion.

Light red is burnt ochre, and is one of the most useful colors of the
palette for painting flesh. Mixed with white and a very little yellow it
is the foundation of all flesh-painting. The French light red, or
“_brun rouge_,” as it is called, is much better than ours. It is a
little more pink in color, and is generally pleasanter to work with.

We now come to vermilion. Of this color there are two kinds in common
use, the Chinese and the so-called extract of vermilion. I should think
it hardly necessary to have both kinds on the palette, but some artists,
who are much better colorists than I can pretend to be, think otherwise;
and although they omit altogether umbers and browns of all sorts, yet
never lay their palette without both sorts of vermilion.

Burnt sienna is the next color on our palette, and is of universal use.
It is the best color to use for giving warmth to shades, and for
preparing draperies or stuffs which are ultimately to be blue or green.
Of course, one may use it too much, but it never gives opacity and
heaviness, which any other red would do if employed for a similar
purpose.

There are many other reds. Venetian red is hardly to be distinguished
from light red. Indian red is a deep laky red, and very opaque. I don’t
think it is much used now, but formerly it was in great request for
painting flesh. Etty was very fond of it.

The so-called Mars reds are perfectly durable, but all these colors are
quite unnecessary.

Of the lakes the most useful for general purposes is madder lake. Some
of them, such as yellow lake and scarlet lake, are very fugitive and
not safe to use. Rose madder and purple madder are expensive, and,
except for very rich stuffs, are seldom wanted. There are several
varieties of brown and yellow madders, which may be used with advantage
in landscape, but which are never really wanted for figure-painting.

Green is a color which is not absolutely necessary if you have blue on
the palette, still it is sometimes very useful for the half tones. Oxide
of chromium is the best of the decided greens, but I think that the
French _vert de Cobalt_ is more generally useful. This is a bluish
green, and a most excellent color for painting skies.

_Terra verte_ has no body in it, and I find it turns black very
speedily. Malachite green is a sickly color that I cannot recommend; and
what we used to call emerald green, but which the French call _vert
veronese_, is rank poison on the palette.

Almost all the rich dark greens required for foliage and verdure in
landscape-painting can be obtained by a judicious mixture of blues and
yellows. French ultramarine, mixed with raw or burnt sienna, gives a
strong dark green, which is not at all heavy, and every
landscape-painter discovers new combinations of blues and blacks with
yellows and reds, which enable him to give the infinite variety of
nature.

As for blues, the only colors I can recommend are cobalt and French
ultramarine. The colors known as ultramarine ash and mineral gray are
sometimes useful, but they can very easily be imitated on the palette. I
never use either Prussian, Antwerp, or any other cyaneous blue; and I
think that, at any rate for figure-painting, they are unnecessary.

You will observe that I have not put any brown on the palette, not even
umber.

I am quite aware that with many painters, especially English ones, raw
umber is considered a _sine quâ non_, and I thought so myself a few
years ago.

I took, however, a dislike to it from a conviction that it turned black,
and I fancy that I have done better since I discarded it. It is very
seldom seen on the palettes of foreign artists. Asphaltum and bitumen
are very seductive colors, but, as every one knows, they have been the
ruin of many excellent pictures, and it is well to steer clear of them.
I think, however, that either color, when mixed with white lead, is
tolerably safe, and nothing else that I know of gives so effectively and
pleasantly the gray hair and fur of animals.

In blacks, you have ivory or blue black, both excellent colors, and
there is also a charcoal black which is much more gray than either of
the others, and has very little body. I think, when mixed with white,
that it may be useful in painting clouds. It is generally gritty and
badly ground, but for the purpose I mention, I don’t think this fault
matters much.

Before taking leave of the palette, I may be expected to say something
about brushes and mediums.

First, as to brushes:

As to the size of the brushes, this depends very much on the taste and
habits of the artist.

I am fond of small ones myself, not necessarily sables, but small hog’s
hair tools, and I should recommend them to beginners, who wish to
express form as well as color in their work.

I never use flat brushes for painting flesh, and very seldom for any
thing else, but this is merely an old habit.

Every one is perfectly right to use the tools which he finds the most
convenient, only let them be good of their kind, and always kept in
working order.

Now as to mediums:

This is a subject on which I speak with diffidence, as opinions vary
greatly about these compounds. I think, however, that I may safely say
that the less they are used by students the better. By mediums, I mean
the various copal jellies which are sold in tubes, and placed on the
palette like the colors.

I do not say that they are unsafe to use in moderation, but moderation
is said by teetotalers to be a virtue more difficult to practise than
total abstinence.

For a great many years I used them, and have only quite lately discarded
them altogether in favor of clarified poppy oil. This oil is a very slow
drier, and is, therefore, peculiarly suitable for Academy students’
work. It continually happens that a student prepares a larger portion of
the figure than he can finish in one day. The next day it is too dry to
continue the modelling, and yet not dry enough for glazing and
repainting.

If he has painted it with poppy oil, he will find it in a very workable
state for two or even three days.

Nothing can be safer, provided of course the picture is painted
throughout with the same slow drier. The best and purest poppy oil is
known by the name of _huile chromophile_. It has a strong smell of
castor-oil, which to susceptible persons may be rather an objection.

I shall not attempt a criticism of the various oils and essences which
are to be found at the color-man’s. What is one man’s meat is another
man’s poison, and I even go farther and say, that the same man at one
period of his career will swear by some compound which a few years
afterward he will regard with special aversion. The only advice I give
to young artists is to use the simplest materials they can, both for
mediums and colors; and I may add, that the better the colorist, the
simpler his palette generally is.

I have seen on some foreign artists’ palettes as many as six different
kinds of lake, when one would have been quite sufficient, and I need
hardly say that whatever other merit their pictures may have had, they
were not distinguished for brilliant color.

After all, it is only natural that it should be so.

An artist who is not a good colorist must (unless he is blinded by
conceit) have some suspicion of his deficiency, and would naturally
endeavor by a more elaborate palette to remedy his shortcomings, just as
some of our bad cooks endeavor to improve their cuisine by a liberal use
of made sauces. With artists as with cooks, the remedy is unsuccessful;
in both cases it is taste that is wanted, and not a multiplicity of
ingredients.

If a student has a germ of feeling for color, he may develop it into a
plant of respectable growth. He will probably never become a great
colorist, but he may at any rate learn to attain a certain degree of
harmony and propriety, qualities which are not always found in the works
of noted colorists.

I would strongly deprecate the habit of painting pictures up to
exhibition pitch. Paint them up to the pitch you see in nature, and you
will have quite enough to do. Exasperation is not force, and although a
soberly-colored work may be eclipsed on the exhibition walls by a
dazzling neighbor, yet it will more than hold its own when removed from
the glare and glitter of its surroundings.

Color, as understood by many people, means violent contrasts of reds,
blues, and yellows. Now, I am far from saying that strong contrasts and
positive colors are always inharmonious. We have (even in our climate)
plenty of wild flowers to prove the contrary. The scarlet poppy, the
blue corn flower, the common yellow buttercup, are all as positive in
color as red, blue, and yellow well can be, but the green stalk and
leaves of each plant harmonize perfectly with the flower, and the
contrast, though strong, is never offensive. The kind of contrasts I am
deprecating are perhaps best known by the epithet “vulgar.” Look at the
cheap colored glass windows which abound in our country churches, and
which are generally much admired by the congregation. As a rule, the
more crude the colors, the more grateful are the farmers and their wives
to the donors of these windows for giving them something cheerful to
look at during the service. We need not go into the country for
specimens of vulgar taste in color. I never pass a London pillar
letter-box without an uncomfortable feeling, particularly after it has
been newly painted.

The post-office authorities are certainly not bound to educate the eye
of the British public, and their object in painting these post-boxes
vermilion was of course to make them more conspicuous, just as a red
flag is used to indicate danger. But the daily press, and particularly
that sheet which claims the largest circulation in the world, praised
the authorities for “giving us a bit of color” to refresh the eye. Had
these letter-boxes been painted of a laky Indian red, or of a bronze
color, they would have been unobjectionable, but no one would have
thought of commending them as “bits of color.”

Again, if we consider the scheme of clothing the volunteer regiments in
scarlet, and try to account for the enthusiasm with which certain corps
have hailed the innovation, we shall find that the “bit of color” is at
the bottom of it. It can hardly be supposed that the gallant East-end
volunteers wish to be mistaken for militiamen; it must be that the
scarlet cloth is thought becoming, both by themselves and their female
relatives. If I am not mistaken, the West-end corps, such as the
Queen’s, the Inns of Court, and especially the artists, will be very
loth to give up their gray uniforms and don the national red.

I am afraid that the average Englishman’s taste in color (though much
improved of late years) is still but little more refined than the West
African’s. If he no longer buys hideous wall-papers and vulgar carpets,
it is not that he dislikes them, but that he does not know where to get
them, so great has been the improvement in our manufactures. If we turn
from the English Philistine to the English artist, we find ourselves at
the opposite pole. He has often such a horror of loud, vulgar tints,
that he is apt to fall into the affectation of painting on too subdued
a scale, and I would caution you against this affectation. Truth is not
necessarily dull, nor is simplicity monochromatic. There is no danger of
the general public, which delights in the red coats of our soldiers, and
thinks the crudest colored dyes the prettiest, encouraging you to paint
sad olive pictures. The danger comes from the select few who are gifted
with æsthetic tastes, and who, having recently awakened to the fact that
crude contrasts do not constitute color, fall into the opposite extreme,
and praise whatever is negative and colorless.

The dismal view of nature seems to me an unhealthy view; and although it
may be commended as a reaction against vulgar, tawdry color, the art
which it tends to foster is morbid and unsound.

Beauty of color is a much more subtle and indefinable quality than
beauty of form. We are all pretty well agreed that the antique is the
nearest approach to perfection of form which has ever been made, but we
are by no means agreed about color. Some will think that Titian was the
greatest colorist that ever lived, some Velasquez, some Paul Veronese,
and some Rembrandt; and it is not only individual opinions that differ,
but the collective opinion of the age. We all are familiar with
instances of pictures which are now highly prized for their color, but
which within the present century failed to gain admission to any
exhibition.

Delacroix’s pictures used to be regularly rejected, or very badly hung,
and these same pictures are now considered the gems of the gallery at
Versailles. On our side of the Channel we used to turn out Muller’s,
and, I believe, Constable’s pictures. These acts of what we should call
injustice were not committed from any Academic spite or jealousy. They
were simply the expression of the general public opinion at that time.

It may be noted that our predecessors in this country were by no means
indifferent to color. On the contrary, they prided themselves on being
the _crème de la crème_ of colorists, and any one who expressed
admiration for the color of Gros and Géricault would be looked upon as a
kind of traitor to the English school.

It was a generally accepted article of belief in England, that the
French could draw, but knew nothing about color, and that for fine
coloring you must look at home.

We have less national prejudice now, and I hope that we are in a better
path toward forming a right judgment than our predecessors were. They
almost always judged of the color of a picture by comparing it with
similar works by the old masters, and if it reminded them of Titian,
Correggio, Rubens, or some other acknowledged colorist, it was
pronounced a fine thing. If it were unlike the work of any accepted
master of color, it was thought nothing of, however true it might be to
nature. Hence as Constable’s pictures resembled neither Claude, Cuyp,
nor Ruysdael, they were disliked by the connoisseurs of the period, and
were quite unsalable.

A remnant of this artificial way of judging pictures still lingers
amongst us, but, speaking generally, the present generation has ceased
to take this narrow view of color.

Mistakes in judgment are no doubt made, and posterity may pronounce a
different verdict on some of our favorites; still the principle on which
we decide whether a man is to be called a colorist or not, is sound.

The principle is briefly this:--That however unusual or novel the
coloring of a picture may be, if it reminds one vividly of some harmony
of nature, if there is space and air in it, and if the same atmosphere
pervades the whole canvas, it is the work of a real colorist.

I have abstained in this lecture from giving you any of the
old-fashioned recipes for coloring (such as keeping the shades warm and
lights cool, and _vice versâ_), because I think that all such rules have
a tendency to cramp and fetter the artist who follows them. Nothing can
be more dissimilar than the works of the Florentine Ghirlandajo and the
portraits of Rembrandt, and yet few will deny the right of both these
painters to rank as colorists. I might bracket Titian with Rubens, or
Correggio with Ostade, to show how broad is the path which leads to
excellence in color.

An innate sense of the harmonious color in nature, and a steadfast
determination, by hook or by crook, to reproduce an echo of this harmony
on your canvas, must ultimately lead to a good result.

No original colorist could tell you by what process he arrives at the
effects he obtains. His only secret (if secret it be) is that he
observes more closely and intelligently than other men. It is not the
colors he uses, nor the canvas, nor the medium, nor even the technical
skill of his hand which cause his pictures to look like nature, whilst
his neighbor’s look like paint. It is simply what phrenologists would
call his bump of color, but what I (who do not believe in bumps) would
term his keen appreciation of the harmony of nature, and his retentive
memory which enables him to reproduce in his studio the fleeting effects
he has seen.

I cannot promise you that by adopting the same method you will all
become great colorists; but of this you may rest assured, that habits of
observation and repeated attempts at rendering honestly and faithfully
what you have seen, will tend to improve your color far more than all
the rules that have ever been laid down, and all the lectures that have
ever been delivered.

LECTURE VIII.

ON DECORATIVE PAINTING.

By decorative painting, I mean moral figure-painting. Ornamental designs
are a very important factor in all decorative work, but as this branch
of the art is out of my province, I shall say nothing about it.

The great mistake most artists make when they have a large wall-space to
decorate with figures, is to proceed in the same way as they would for
an easel picture. Elaborate finish, powerful light and shade, expression
and individuality in the heads, are all excellent qualities in an easel
picture, but they are by no means necessary in decorative work.

On the other hand, a well-balanced and harmonious composition, a pure
and grand style of drawing, and great breadth and luminosity of coloring
are absolutely essential for good decorative work.

These are all qualities which are never got by dexterity of hand, dodges
about color, or chance, to which much of the fascination of oil-painting
on canvas must be attributed. They are only attainable by patient and
laborious work. I will endeavor to show you, step by step, what the
nature of this work is.

It is always advisable for decorative work of any importance to make a
cartoon of the size of the painting, and, if possible, after the
completion of the cartoon, to have it put up _in situ_, so that the size
of the figures, the arrangement of the groups, and the general effect
may be judged of.

If the result is satisfactory, the work may be considered three parts
done. Should there, however, be any alterations required, they should be
carried out on the cartoon. Nothing which requires alteration should be
left knowingly. There will always be plenty of unforeseen changes
suggesting themselves during the progress of the painting, without
complicating matters by having an imperfect cartoon.

For fresco-painting a cartoon is absolutely necessary.

In the course of this lecture I will describe the process of
fresco-painting. Before, however, proceeding to speak of the different
methods of painting, we will first consider the preliminary operations.

The first thing to be done, even before a stroke of charcoal sullies the
spotless purity of our cartoon paper, is to get an idea of the kind of
arrangement which it will be best to adopt. This pursuit of an idea for
the general arrangement of our subject is of course entirely brain-work,
but as soon as an idea is got, the hand comes into play; not, however,
with charcoal on the big cartoon, but with pen and ink or pencil in the
scrap-book.

I always think the clearest way of describing any process is to take an
example. We will therefore take an example, and suppose that we are
lucky enough to have the decoration of a town-hall or some similar
building in a large seaport town entrusted to us, and that it has been
suggested to us by our employers that groups of figures representing all
countries would be appropriate.

Very well, we don’t at once seize a stick of charcoal and begin drawing
promiscuously. We think first how we can best fit our subject into the
space allotted to us.

How are we to arrange our personages? Shall we group them irrespective
of their nationality, like the figures in Delaroche’s “Hemicycle”; or
shall we adopt a kind of geographical arrangement? Shall we have a
centre figure or group? Shall we introduce architecture into the
background, as Raffaelle has done in the “School of Athens”?

These and a dozen other questions of vital importance to our design have
all to be settled before the cartoon is begun, and we must be guided in
our settlement very much by the nature of the building, the shape of the
panel, the height of the work from the ground, etc. The decorative
painter ought always to bear in mind that his work is supplementary to
that of the architect. Inattention to this self-evident truism has been
the cause of many failures. In an easel picture we order the frame to
suit the picture. We don’t paint the picture to suit the frame; but in
mural painting the reverse ought always to be the rule. Of course, there
are cases--as, for instance, in museums and picture galleries--where the
works of art are the jewel and the building the setting; but these works
of art are not decorative. The very word decorative implies subserviency
to that which has to be decorated.

To return to our imaginary work; I will suppose we have decided that a
central group of figures is desirable, and that England, as the greatest
maritime power in the world, ought to occupy the place of honor.
Moreover, not being of the “Perish India” school, we think that she
ought to be supported by her colonies. We will, therefore, surround her
with figures representing Canada, India, Australia, etc.

Having so far settled our scheme of composition, we must abandon our
idea of a geographical arrangement. We find that it is more logical to
arrange our figures according to the importance of the countries they
represent, than according to their latitude and longitude. We will
accordingly place in the immediate vicinity of our central group,
representatives of France, the United States, Germany, Italy, etc. We
then gradually descend to less civilized countries, until finally we
reach the remote corners, which we reserve for barbarians like our late
enemy King Coffee.

The next point for our consideration would be, ‘How are we to represent
England?’ Certainly not as a pseudo-classical Minerva with a trident in
her hand, and the British lion at her feet; still less as an obese,
ill-tempered John Bull. We may leave this venerable joke to the comic
press.

We must try and invent something new, which shall be characteristic of
England, and yet neither commonplace nor grotesque.

We may, however, leave the costume and action of our Britannia for
future consideration. We have made up our minds that Britannia must be
typified by a female figure, but farther than this we need not go at
present. Having got the key-note (as it may be called) of the
composition, we shall have no difficulty in determining that all the
other civilized countries must also be represented by female figures.

It will not probably be advisable to clothe these figures in their
respective national costumes; such a mode of treatment would be
incompatible with a grand style of decoration. It will, nevertheless, be
quite allowable to vary their features and complexion according to the
nationality they represent, and to give them something, either flowers,
fruit, grain, or produce, which will help to identify them.

Having got thus far, we may begin to map out our groups on the cartoon.

We do not engage models until we have approximately decided on the
various attitudes we wish our figures to assume.

Some must be standing, some sitting, and very possibly some kneeling or
reclining. We try these various attitudes on the cartoon, sketching them
in very lightly with soft charcoal. We transfer and shift them about
until we get an harmonious and pleasant arrangement of line, not too
symmetrical, and yet sufficiently so to give an air of grandeur and
repose to the work. These figures need not, of course, be more than
indicated, but they ought to be tolerably correct in proportion, and the
attitudes should be natural, or at any rate possible.

It is here that a knowledge of anatomy is especially useful to the young
artist. When a man has been drawing figures for forty years he ought to
draw the human form very much as he forms the letters of the alphabet
when writing; but until long experience has given him this kind of
facility, he will find his studies of anatomy and proportion of the
greatest benefit to him. He will save many a long and profitless
morning’s work from a model, and save his pocket too.

It is when the cartoon is in this state of progress--that is, when the
size of the figures, the general arrangement of the different groups,
and their relative position have been settled approximately--that it is
so desirable to hoist it up to its place on the wall. Any alteration
can be made now much easier than later; certain figures or even whole
groups may want to be shifted a few inches, certain actions modified,
the line of heads may require revisal, and so on; and it is obvious that
what can be done now with a few lines of charcoal, would at a later
period involve a great amount of rubbing out and a great waste of labor.

Having at last decided on the proportions and positions of the various
groups and single figures, we may now begin to work from the living
model; and here it may perhaps not be out of place if I give you some
advice about the selection of your models.

I would strongly advise you to engage those who are intelligent and apt,
rather than those who may be better proportioned, but who are stiff and
awkward. What you want in the present stage of your work is natural and
graceful action, and with some models it is hopeless to struggle in this
direction.

When I was a student in Paris, there were some three or four models who
were so intelligent (and I may say so artistic) that they naturally put
themselves into the attitudes wanted, and even suggested and assumed
other positions which were often adopted by the artist.

In violent and spontaneous action suitable for battle pictures these
models were invaluable, and the decline of many a great reputation in
historical painting dates from the death of these humble assistants,
some of whom could neither read nor write. I am afraid the race is
extinct, but even in the present generations of models some are far
superior in artistic feeling to others. In our present cartoon, however,
we do not require any violent action; all we need is perfect ease and
dignity.

As our personages are to be clothed, it will be unnecessary to make
careful nude studies. Nevertheless, it will be well to get rough outline
drawings from the nude of all the figures, just to correct and verify
the proportions of our personages.

Two or three of these nude studies can be made in a day. If the artist
is an experienced draughtsman, there may not be much to correct on the
large cartoon; but let him be ever so experienced, there is always
something wrong about the attitude of figures drawn without models, and
occasionally very gross mistakes are made.

I knew a very clever draughtsman in Paris who made the mistake of giving
one of his figures two right hands, and he did not find it out until he
began to work from nature.

In an outstretched arm, the twist of the radius and ulna makes all the
difference about the position of the thumb, and if the thumb be placed
on the wrong side of the hand, you immediately make a right hand of what
ought to be a left, and _vice versâ_.

I will assume now that we have corrected the drawing of our cartoon
from our small nude studies.

We are fully aware that the drawing of every figure will have to be
perfected from nature, that is, the head, neck, arms, hands, and feet;
but we are satisfied that the attitudes are all possible, and that there
is no great fault in the proportions. _Now_, therefore, we may look out
for models for the heads, arms, feet, etc., and work with chalk or
charcoal (if it can be fixed) on the cartoon itself.

And here let me caution you against ever working from a model whom you
know to be unsuitable. If, as often happens, you engage a model, and
find when you have got him into position that he won’t do, pay him his
sitting and send him away. It is better to lose five shillings than to
lose five shillings and your morning’s work into the bargain.

At this stage of progress we ought to be draping our figures as well as
drawing the heads and hands.

Whatever may be said about small easel pictures, I am quite sure that
for large mural work a lay figure is indispensable. In adjusting
draperies on a lay figure a good deal of ingenuity, and, above all, a
good deal of patience, are necessary.

Nothing is so stupid as a lay figure, and many artists prefer studying
their draperies on the living model; but the studies thus done will very
seldom have the precision and finish of those done from the lay figure.
They are, therefore, less suitable for large cartoon-work.

I will now suppose that all our figures are draped, and the heads and
hands finished. There still remains the selection of the different
symbols or attributes which are to give nationality to our personages,
and here we must endeavor to reconcile truth with pictorial fitness. We
have the whole vegetable and animal kingdom to choose from, and it will
go hard if we cannot fit each female figure with some flower, fruit,
bird, or beast, which shall be typical of the country she represents and
at the same time ornamental and graceful.

The cartoon is now at last finished, and the next thing to be done is to
make a colored sketch. I need not go through this process at length.
Every one knows that the scheme of color intended at first is often
abandoned, and minor changes are innumerable. At last, however, we get
what we think a good result, and all our preliminary work is over. Not
quite, however, for we have to trace the cartoon on transparent paper,
and prick the tracing.

Some artists omit the tedious process of pricking the tracing, but the
labor that is thus saved is fully counterbalanced by the trouble of
following all the lines of the tracing with a point before an impression
can be got, whereas with a pricked tracing a bag of pounded charcoal
does the work at once.

I will now give a short account of the different mediums principally in
use for mural painting.

The first medium I shall notice is oil, or some modification of oil. The
great objection to oil for mural work is the impossibility of seeing the
painting when it faces the light. An absorbent ground will to a certain
extent mitigate this evil. The use of spirits of turpentine, benzine,
and other essences, will also contribute toward giving a flat surface;
but do what we will, we can never get in an oil-painting the pure, clear
qualities of water-color or fresco.

The compound known as Parris’ medium and sold by Roberson, is not a bad
thing for diminishing the shine of oil-painting. It is made of white wax
dissolved in spirits of lavender, but I am inclined to think that an
absorbent ground prepared with parchment size and whiting is the best
preventive of the greasy surface inseparable from oil-painting. The
great desideratum in all mural and decorative oil-painting is that every
part should have an equal amount of shine.

Take an ordinary oil-picture and place it opposite the light. The
lighter parts will be tolerably well seen, but the oily or gummy darks
will reflect the light of the sky and spoil the effect completely.

All we can aspire to, in decorative oil-painting, is to give to the dark
parts as little shine as there is in the light ones, where white lead
and opaque colors generally have been freely used.

I cannot say as much in favor of wax as a medium for grinding the colors
in. It is neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring; that is, it has
neither the richness of oil nor the luminosity of fresco. Most of the
modern decorative pictures in the Paris churches are painted with this
medium. The colors are much the same as for oil-painting, but the
blacks, browns, and lakes have a very dull appearance. The fluid medium
used for painting is a kind of essential oil of lavender, so that this
method, if somewhat deficient in light, is at any rate overflowing with
sweetness.

I have found that to use the ordinary oil-colors diluted with a medium
composed of wax, mastic varnish and turpentine, is by far preferable to
legitimate wax-painting. The colors are much more manageable and dry
brighter, without having any more shine than when actually ground with
wax.

What is called encaustic painting has also wax as a foundation, but is
quite a different process to “_peinture à la cire_.” “Encaustic” implies
burning, and in this method of painting the colors are laid on rather
thick, and when the work or any portion of it has to be finished, a hot
iron is applied to melt the wax and allow the brush to do its softening
and finishing work.

The Pompeii paintings are mostly done in this way, but it is very
unfitted for large figure-painting.

Distemper has many excellent qualities, but its want of durability will
always prevent its being used for costly and important work.

It might, however, be made much more durable than it generally is, by a
careful selection of materials.

Distemper is generally associated with scene-painting or some temporary
work, for which any rubbish can be used; but if care were taken about
the size and the colors, and above all if some coating of silica were
floated over the finished painting to protect it from damp and
atmospheric changes, I see no reason why this very pleasant method
should not be generally used.

The so-called silica method has been much used in Germany under the name
of Wasserglas. I have no experience in this method, and therefore cannot
enter into detail. Speaking generally, the process consists in painting
on a dry surface with colors simply ground in water, and fixing the
colors afterward by the spray of silicated water. I believe that after
this silication the work can be retouched and even repainted; subject,
however, to another fixing by silication.

We now come to the best and grandest style of decorative work; namely,
legitimate fresco. People who don’t know much about painting are very
apt to call any picture on a wall a fresco, but I suppose I need hardly
tell you that oil-or wax-paintings on walls are no more frescoes than is
an oil sketch on paper a water-color.

In all the methods of painting I have mentioned, some medium is used to
fix the color. It is either oil, copal, wax, size, or silica, but in
fresco no vehicle of any kind except water is used. How then is the
color fixed? How have Michael Angelo’s and even Giotto’s frescoes lasted
to the present day? We all know that if some powdered color is mixed
with water and applied by a brush to a wall, it will stick as long as it
is wet, but as soon as the water evaporates, the color returns to the
powder it was before, and falls off, or brushes off with the slightest
friction. The reason that frescoes can be dusted and washed without
effacing the color, is that they were originally painted on _wet_
mortar, and the lime of which the mortar is composed has the property of
retaining and fixing the color.

I will now describe the whole process of fresco-painting.

The first care ought to be the wall. A brick wall is the best, but stone
will do very well, provided every precaution has been taken against
damp. On this wall there ought to be a coating of strong rough mortar
about half an inch thick. The surface ought not to be smoothed with the
trowel, but left rather uneven. As soon as this mortar is thoroughly
dry, the fresco may be begun. I have already told you that all real
fresco is painted on wet mortar, but the mortar, or _intonaco_, as the
Italians call it, is not the rough stuff which has already been used for
coating the wall. The composition of this intonaco is all-important, and
I am perfectly convinced that the rapid decay of our modern frescoes is
due entirely to the bad quality of the intonaco.

The lime should be thoroughly slaked, so as to deprive it of its caustic
properties, but it does not follow that it should be twenty or thirty
years old. Lime can be kept in a slaked state and skimmed until it
almost ceases to be lime at all, and this worn-out material is unfit for
fresco. Then the sand should be gritty and hard to the touch. Clean
river-sand collected in a granite country is very good; ground lava is
used by modern Italian fresco-painters.

I do not know where the sand supplied to the fresco-painters of
Westminster Palace came from, but it was a great deal too fine and soft
to the touch.

The older and more worn-out the lime is, the sharper and more tenacious
ought to be the sand.

Having got some well-slaked but not worn-out lime and some good hard
sand, the mortar that is required for the day’s use should be made fresh
every day, or at least as often as twice a week.

When I was painting some frescoes at Islington, I got my intonaco from a
man who had had great experience. Instead, however, of sending me the
lime and sand separate, he sent me about twenty small barrels of
ready-made mortar. My work took me nearly two years, and every morning
my plasterer had to go with a pick-axe and hack a piece of dry mortar
out of the barrels.

This he beat up with water and spread it for my day’s work, smacking his
lips as if he had got a most delicious compound on his trowel. I knew no
better then, but now I am surprised, not that the frescoes should be
decaying, but that the decay should not be more rapid. Improper colors
and the omnipresent gas may have had something to do with the decay of
all frescoes painted in London, but from experience I can assert with
confidence that the main cause has been the weakness of the lime and
sand.

We will suppose in our imaginary decoration that we don’t fall into this
mistake, that we get lime of the proper strength and clean granite sand.
We will also suppose that we don’t get a dozen barrels of mortar made
up, but have our intonaco mixed fresh every other day.

The first thing to be painted is the sky or background, whatever it may
be. We mark out on the wall with charcoal the extreme extent of this
background. We don’t trace the outline of the heads, but make our black
mark well beyond where this outline should be.

The plasterer ought to be an early riser, so that by nine or ten o’clock
when we arrive we may find the mortar all ready for us, even in surface,
and tolerably firm or “set” as it is called.

I never could get an English plasterer to _throw_ the mortar against the
wall, as is done by Italian and French workmen. When spoken to about it
he always seemed to think he ought to know his own trade best, or
perhaps the Union forbids him to make the mortar stick too close.

His way of smearing or buttering the wall answers pretty well on a very
rough surface, but on smooth stone or tiles it would not do at all. In
Italy it is not at all uncommon to see marble columns coated with
frescoes more than four hundred years old. The intonaco in these cases
is very thin, not above one eighth of an inch in thickness.

As a rule the thinner the intonaco the better it will stick.

We will suppose now that we have painted our flat background and
finished our first day’s work. We now get our pricked tracing, and
holding it so as to fit the panel, we apply our charcoal bag to the
outline of the heads. When we remove the tracing-paper we find a black
dotted line which gives us the outline against the sky. With a knife or
a sharp spatule we cut away the superfluous mortar. The cut should not
be at right angles with the wall, or the outline will be sure to be
injured next day when the fresh mortar is joined on to it.

It should be inclined at an angle of fifty or sixty degrees. I always
make a point of doing this cutting job myself. The dotted line is
sometimes indistinct, and I have to cast a glance at the cartoon. Where,
therefore, there is any complication of outline or the least
indistinctness, this operation ought to be done by the artist.

Before leaving, we make a charcoal mark as before, which will completely
cover our next day’s work and leave us a remnant to cut away. Our
plasterer fits in the new mortar up to the charcoal mark the next
morning, and so we proceed bit by bit as if we were putting together a
puzzle, until the whole is completed.

It is hardly necessary to say that it is very desirable that each
cutting should correspond with some natural division of the work. Thus,
in painting a female head, we might paint the hair and diadem the first
day, and go on with the face and neck the next, stopping at the
necklace. In real fresco nothing can be retouched. Every day’s work must
be finished and complete in the minutest detail.

I will now say something about the colors and execution of fresco.

In fresco (as in distemper) the colors in drying become of a much
lighter shade. It is, therefore, very desirable to have a piece of some
very absorbent material at hand to try the tints on. There are two
distinct modes of painting fresco. One is the solid body-color method,
as practised by M. Angelo, Raffaelle, and all the other masters of that
period. The other is the thin water-color method.

If we adopt the first mode, we get a porcelain or metal palette, and
set the colors on it just as we do for oil-painting. Lime takes the
place of white lead. The only yellow it is safe to use, at least in
England, is raw sienna; probably, however, Mars yellow, which is derived
from iron, might be used with safety. Light red of various kinds and
burnt sienna are the principal reds. Oxide of chromium is the green. Raw
and burnt umber are quite safe, as is also black. Blue is a very
difficult color to manage in fresco.

It seems very antagonistic to lime, and it is almost impossible to paint
a blue sky properly graduated. On the other hand, raw umber takes very
kindly to fresco. Lakes and all vegetable colors are to be strictly
avoided.

The brushes ought to be hog’s hair tools, but long and soft, so as not
to disturb the surface of the wet mortar.

Painting fresco in this opaque, solid method is a very similar process
to oil-painting. It is best to begin with the shades and work up to the
lights, no scumbling is practicable, but at the end of the day, when the
surface is becoming too dry for solid painting, thin washes of color may
be used with great advantage.

The Italian terra rossa, burnt sienna, raw sienna, and even vermilion,
may be of great service for these light glazings.

It will take three or four days (and often more, if the intonaco is
thick and the weather cool) before the colors begin to lose their dark,
wet tint.

The beginner must not be discouraged if the colors seem to be drying not
as he intended. Some colors take a longer time than others, and it is
well to have a little patience. The old masters generally retouched
defective parts with what was called _fresco secco_ (dry fresco), but
which was simply some compound of white of egg, vinegar, and garlic; but
it is much better to cut the defective portions out, to have fresh
intonaco laid on, and to repaint them. If once you begin to retouch, the
whole work seems to require it, and you never know where to stop.

The second method of painting fresco is totally different. I very much
prefer it, as the work is done more rapidly, and the colors hardly
change at all in drying. Besides (as far as my experience goes), the
result is more durable.

As soon as the fresh intonaco for the day’s work is sufficiently set,
you mix some lime with water very fluid, something like milk (good milk,
I mean, and not milk and water).

You float this over the intonaco, and in about ten minutes you may give
it a second coating of lime-water. This ought to smooth the surface, and
remove any little grains of sand.

You now trace your outline as before with the tracing paper and the bag
of charcoal. You have no palette, but half-a-dozen small tumblers.

Into one of these you put a small lump of raw umber and about the same
quantity of oxide of chromium. You add water, and mix them well
together. The result is of course a brownish olive green.[3] You pour
half the mixture into another tumbler, and add water, thus getting a
weaker solution of the same mixture. You repeat the process into a third
tumbler, and get a still weaker tint.

With these three or more tints you begin to model your head, beginning
with the dark parts and working up to the light. You must bear in mind
that no rubbing out is possible; you cannot wash or sponge out as in
water-color drawing.

You must therefore be very careful in approaching the light parts, and
copy the cartoon as carefully as possible.

You continue thus to draw and model with your green color until the head
looks like a finished drawing. This operation will take from two to four
hours, according to the nature of the head.

You now take three clean tumblers and put a small lump of light red or
terra rossa into one of them, add water, and mix as before; you make
weaker solutions, just as you did with the green. If the head is that of
an old man or a bronzed warrior, you ought to add raw sienna to the
light red, but for ordinary complexions the light red is quite
sufficient. You apply this flesh tint in washes with a very broad and
soft brush, using the stronger solution for the lips and cheeks, the
medium for the intermediate parts, and the weakest for the high lights.
No modelling is required; the modelling has already been done, and this
tinting is very soon accomplished.

You now take either burnt sienna pure, or burnt sienna and umber, and
with a fine sable give strength and precision to the darkest parts, such
as the nostrils, the division of the lips, the inside of the ears, etc.
If a little black is necessary for the eyebrow or eyelashes, you now
give these little finishing touches, and your head is complete.

You have not used one grain of lime or of any solid color; the wall is
stained rather than painted, and you have none of those strange and
capricious changes of color to fear which are so constantly occurring in
the solid method, where lime is used freely as a pigment.

I have now gone through the whole process of fresco-painting as far as I
know it. I shall conclude with a few general observations.

The fresco-painter ought to be of a nature capable of continued
exertion. Whatever the work is, whether head, torso, or drapery, it must
be finished in a day. He must not, on the plea of headache or
seediness, give himself a half-holiday. He may of course abstain from
work for a whole day, or for a week if he likes, but those little
snatches of rest, involving a game at lawn-tennis, a good lunch, or a
look at the papers, to which many artists are rather partial, are denied
him.

He is always working against time, and although this is trying at first,
he soon gets accustomed to it.

Secondly, he must be a man of fixed purpose. He has got his cartoon and
his colored-sketch, and he must turn a deaf ear to all suggestions of
alterations when once these preliminaries are settled.

An alteration in the turn or size of a head, or a change in the action
of a figure, are very easily carried out in an oil picture, but in a
fresco it is a very serious matter to begin alterations.

Thirdly, he must not mind a bit what the workmen and people about the
building think of him. I believe that the upper ten thousand (at least
the æsthetically inclined amongst them) do not hold mural decoration in
contempt, but the working class invariably take the fresco-painter in
his blouse and on his scaffold to be one of their own fraternity.

If they were to see the same artist in a handsome studio painting
somebody’s portrait in a gilt frame, they would at once suppose he was a
gentleman, but coloring a wall is a very ungentlemanly occupation.

When I was painting a large monochrome work at University Hall, there
were some plumbers and glaziers employed in repairing gas-pipes and
mending windows. One of them came down into the hall where I was at
work, and began to look about for something amongst the pots and colors
on my table. Apparently he did not find what he wanted, so he turned
round and called to me, “I say, governor, you don’t happen to have a bit
of putty in your pocket?”

Fourthly and finally, the mural painter ought to be satisfied with
moderate pay.

At the Tercentenary Rubens Festival celebrated at Antwerp, last year, an
Art Congress was held, at which I assisted.

The principal question proposed for discussion was an eminently
practical one. It was; “How can monumental and decorative painting be
best encouraged and revived at the present time?”

In answer to this practical question I gave what I thought a practical
answer. After passing in review various difficulties with which modern
artists had to contend, I summed up by saying that the real impediment
to the development of mural painting was its enormous cost, and I
pointed out that it was only by the artist accepting very moderate pay,
and having at his command a staff of efficient pupils who would be
willing to work under him for little or no remuneration, that such works
as were executed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries could again
become common. I said a good deal respecting the costliness of large
mural paintings done by modern artists of any repute, and on the other
hand gave examples of modern work, which, with the help of efficient
assistants, had been done not only well but at a moderate cost.

At the conclusion of my paper, up jumped a gifted orator, who knew no
more about painting than a cobbler, and in a torrent of eloquence swept
away the few grains of common-sense I had ventured to import into the
congress.

It was a sacrilege (according to him) to profane the temple of high art
with a dirty question of pounds, shillings, and pence.

Art was a subtle essence, a delicate perfume. Art was a religion. Art
appealed to all our higher sympathies, and it was only by educating
people up to a kind of art-millennium pitch that we could hope to see
our public buildings decorated with historical paintings. He sat down
and mopped himself amidst loud applause, and I felt considerably
humiliated. We had a great deal more of this sort of thing at the
congress. The few artists who were present sat dumb, and the high
æsthetic gentlemen had it all their own way, so that the congress, which
might have served some practical end, finished in vapor and smoke.

In spite, however, of this termination of the discussion, I am still
convinced that until mural painters have sufficient love for their art
to accept a small remuneration, decorative work of a high class will
languish.

For the mural painter’s work, Manchester millionnaires do not vie with
each other. No spirited and enterprising dealers beset his studio, eager
to secure whatever he has on the easel. All of what Dr. Johnson called
the “Potentiality of becoming rich beyond the dreams of avarice” is
denied him. Pay of course he must have, but his patrons are generally
committees or corporate bodies of some kind, who seldom give fancy
prices.

Let him therefore console himself with the thought that his is the
highest and noblest branch of the profession, and that whilst
high-priced easel pictures are relegated to private galleries and
dining-rooms, only to reappear at intervals at Christie’s salerooms,
_his_ work is a fixture, and can always be seen by the public.

With the hope that it may be admired as well as seen I shall conclude my
lecture.

LECTURE IX.

ON FINISH.

It has always been a disputed point, both amongst artists and writers on
art, how near an approach to absolute truth is desirable in painting;
some insisting on photographic accuracy, whilst others go to the
opposite extreme, and consider mere suggestiveness to be the great
desideratum in painting.

Much may be argued in favor of both sides of the question, but a medium
course is certainly the best.

Imitation of nature is no doubt the foundation-stone of all sound
painting, and the natural inference would be, that the closer the
imitation the better the picture. But, on the other hand, a picture
which is not an exact counterpart of the object portrayed, but leaves
something to be imagined, is generally more interesting than a more
perfect copy would be.

This fact is particularly noticeable in pictures of flowers, fruit, and
still life generally.

A picture which at a little distance gives thoroughly the character of
the fish, game, or flowers it is intended to represent, will be much
more masterly and artistic if the scales of the fish, the feathers of
the birds, and the petals of the flowers are not individually studied
with microscopic care, but treated in a broad, suggestive manner.

In a painting so handled the loss of a few minute details is more than
compensated by greater freshness of color, and the charm inseparable
from a rapid and dexterous execution.

If it were possible to combine the two qualities, if we could get
breadth and brilliancy united with minute finish, it would even then be
doubtful whether the picture would be any the better for the additional
pains bestowed upon it.

In looking at pictures, we require to be deceived only up to a certain
point, and the whole question depends on where to fix that point. In
to-night’s lecture I intend to investigate this subject, and to extend
my remarks to other kindred questions connected with the finish of a
work of art.

All writers and lecturers on art are pretty well agreed that excessive
finish is undesirable. I mean such finish as one sees in Bellini’s
portrait of the Doge, where each individual hair is painted, and where
every wrinkle or pimple is studied as though it were of the utmost
importance.

There is, however, a kind of finish of an infinitely more objectionable
kind than Bellini’s.

If Bellini elaborated small details to an extensive extent, they were at
any rate thoroughly and honestly studied. His minute, delicate work
always had a laudable object, whether it were the exact rendering of a
stray hair or the microscopic modelling of the wrinkles about the eyes.
But the finisher of whom I am now speaking has no object, beyond
smoothness.

Bad proportions and gross errors in drawing are nothing to him provided
he gets a smooth, uniform surface. Like the old-fashioned provincial
drawing-master, who taught oils, water-colors, and Poonah painting,
smoothness and finish are with him synonymous terms.

Probably most of you are happily ignorant of the lost art of Poonah
painting and drawing, and I certainly do not mean to waste our time in
describing it. It will be sufficient to say that the process was almost
entirely mechanical, and that the results exhibited the maximum of
smoothness combined with the minimum of art.

It used often to be taught in young ladies’ schools. It would be both
invidious and unjust to compare the work of any Academy student with
these inane productions, but I wish to warn you, as I have often warned
you before, against confounding “finishing” with mere polishing.

Intelligent finishing consists in correcting small faults of detail, in
revising the relative values of the shades and half-tones, in giving
definite form to the fingers and toes, or any portion of the figure
which may have been neglected. Unintelligent finishing, or what I call
polishing, consists in getting a nice even grain for all the modelling
of the figure. This polishing process may not in itself be
objectionable, but it becomes objectionable when it interferes (as it
too often does) with necessary alterations and modifications.

You probably all know that I am no advocate of _sketching_ in the
schools. However much I may admire the nude studies of the great
masters, I do not wish to see the same kind of work attempted by the
students. I am decidedly for “finish,” “_high finish_” even, but by the
term _I_ mean accuracy of drawing and modelling, and not neatness or
evenness of execution.

To return to the Doge’s portrait, which I have taken as a thoroughly
good specimen of minute finishing.

It is perfectly true that if you go close up to it and examine it with a
lens, you will find it much more like nature than would be a head by
Titian or Rembrandt if subjected to the same microscopic investigation;
but pictures are not meant to be microscopic objects any more than human
beings.

If in some foreign town I meet unexpectedly my old friend Smith, I
should probably recognize him some fifty yards off. I should say: “That
must be Smith, it is so like his figure and general appearance.” As I
approach him I begin to distinguish his features, and I become more and
more certain, until finally I grasp his hand and all doubt as to his
identity vanishes. It is Smith all over, and, as I remark, not a bit
changed since I last saw him.

I do not pull out a pocket lens and count the number of gray hairs in
his whiskers, or the small warts about his eyes.

It appears to me that a life-size portrait should be treated in the same
way. Viewed from the end of the gallery, it should resemble the person
it represents, and the likeness should become more and more striking the
nearer we approach, until we get within a very short distance.

If we approach still nearer, the brush-work of the artist begins to
appear, and finally, if we examine the features with a lens, we can
discover but very little left of the resemblance which was so striking
at a reasonable distance.

The whole question is, What _is_ a reasonable distance? In portraits by
the minute finishers, the point at which the work looks its best is
evidently too near, and I think that in a good deal of modern painting
it is too far off.

A life-size head should look its best at from about six to ten feet
distance. Nearer than six feet the impasto and brush touches of the
painter would be too apparent, and beyond ten feet the delicate
modelling of details would begin to be lost.

Artists and the art-loving portion of the public delight no doubt in
going close up to a fine Titian, Rembrandt, or Vandyck, but this is to
see how the marvellously life-like effect has been produced (to learn a
lesson in short), but not to view the work from the most favorable
standpoint. I think it will be found that, generally speaking, the old
masterpieces of portraiture are best seen within the distances I have
mentioned.

There are, no doubt, exceptions. Thus the portraits of Holbein gain by
being studied closely, and those of Velasquez are best appreciated at a
considerable distance, whilst the figures of Van der Helst are so
admirably painted that they will bear a very close scrutiny as well as a
distant view.

If an artist has the precision of a Holbein or the consummate execution
of a Van der Helst, there is no harm in his following finish in
portraiture almost to its extreme limit; but if not, he had better rest
and be satisfied with less literal work.

In spite of a few honorable exceptions, the tendency of modern artists
is, however, not toward the finish of Holbein, but rather in the
opposite direction.

No one can walk through a Paris exhibition without being struck by the
enormous amount of sketchy, imperfect work; the best specimens of which
have, at a great distance, a look, a reminiscence of nature, but when
viewed nearer, resolve themselves into smears of paint, generally
plastered on with the knife.

Now it is this kind of work which is so attractive to the modern
connoisseur. The peasant, the workman, the soldier pass it by with a
laugh, or sometimes with an expression of bewilderment. The cultured
artist shrugs his shoulders, but tries to view it leniently, as he would
the work of a savage; but the _dilettanti_ and those who have a
smattering of art-knowledge delight in it. It flatters their vanity to
supplement out of their inner consciousness the artist’s short-comings.

These pictures get talked about in the salons and praised in the
newspapers, whilst good, honest, sober work is comparatively ignored.
Public taste having thus declared itself, it is not surprising that an
ever-increasing crop of these young “impressionists” should be
forthcoming to minister unto it.

There is another kind of departure from truth in connection with finish,
which is, I think, almost as much to be deprecated. I mean where the
heads are painted in a different style to the rest of the picture.

If we go back to the old masters, we shall never find this fault.
Examine any of their works. Recall to mind the Raffaelles, the Titians,
the Correggios, or the Poussins of the National Gallery, and observe
that the draperies, accessories, and backgrounds are all in keeping with
the heads. If, as in Perugino’s and Raffaelle’s early works, the
painting of the flesh is delicate and smooth, though dry and hard, you
will find the same qualities and defects in the whole picture.

If, on the other hand, as in Titian and Paul Veronese, the
flesh-painting is rich and free, the draperies will be equally so. Take
Rubens, again; how homogeneous is _his_ work! Let us suppose that a
picture by this master were unexpectedly discovered, and that by some
accident all the flesh-painting in it had been destroyed, would any one
hesitate, on inspection of what remained, in attributing it to Rubens?
Would not the good and bad qualities of the master be apparent in every
part?

As the opposite extreme to the slapdash Rubens, take the careful Gerard
Dow, and observe how the delicate and minute finish of the heads is
carried out into every detail of his pictures. If we examine any genuine
work of Rembrandt or of David Teniers, we shall always find the same
homogeneous qualities. The heads may (as is often the case in Rembrandt)
be more carefully painted than the unimportant parts of the picture; or
contrariwise, as in David Teniers, we may sometimes find a stoneware
flagon more elaborated than the hand of the boor who is holding it, but
we recognize everywhere the touch of the master.

I know of no example amongst the old masters where the kind of disparity
in style which I am deprecating is observable.

In certain modern pictures, however, this homogeneous quality in
painting is sadly wanting. In the so-called Spanish school (by which I
mean the school of Fortuny), the background, draperies, and accessories
are painted with a crisp dexterity which is quite marvellous, whilst the
heads are labored like colored photographs.

The contrast is sometimes so great that it is difficult to believe that
the picture is not the work of two artists. This fault has become
apparent in certain pictures of the Austrian school; but the contagion
does not appear to have extended to us, at least not to our
oil-painters.

I have, however, noticed a tendency amongst a few of our water-color
figure-painters toward this singular modern peculiarity.

The difficulties of giving color, form, and expression to a head, and at
the same time preserving a free style of painting, are no doubt much
greater in water-color than in oil, but I think it so desirable that a
work should be homogeneous that I would sacrifice a good deal in the way
of finish and even of expression in the faces, to obtain that quality.

If a man has great versatility with his brush and wishes to display it,
let him paint one picture in the style of Holbein or Memling, and
another in the style of Velasquez, but he should not in the same picture
(and _à fortiori_ in the same figure) attempt to unite two dissimilar
styles of painting.

One of the principal difficulties young artists have to encounter in
finishing a figure-picture is the management of their drapery.

If they are painstaking and make an intelligent use of their models they
will succeed with their heads, hands, and all their flesh-painting; or
if they do not succeed, the way to success is so obvious that I need say
but little about it.

I assume that our young artist has gone through a course of study, and
is able to paint a nude figure or a head from nature tolerably
correctly. His difficulty will be, not in copying his models, but in
making use of them without copying them.

He should form an ideal in his mind of the personage he means to
represent, and take care to select either from professional models or
from his friends those who approach nearest to this ideal. He will
probably have to make use of casts. The small heads of the warriors on
the Trajan Column are admirable in character and very suggestive. Casts
from the mediæval heads of Pisano, Donatello, and Luca della Robbia are
also very useful.

All these and other means toward his end will suggest themselves to him,
but his course is not so clear when he comes to tackle his draperies.

Every student must be aware that draperies adjusted on the lay figure
and carefully copied, have always an unnatural and trivial look about
them. The form underneath, if expressed at all, is the form of the lay
figure, and not that of nature. It will not do therefore in a picture to
adjust the drapery on a lay figure and copy the result.

This _may_ be done with advantage for those folds which hang altogether
independent of the figure, but for all those which are in the slightest
degree connected with the form underneath, some other method must be
adopted.

No doubt the best method of all (were it possible) would be to dress up
the living model and paint direct on to the picture, but this is seldom
practicable.

Long before the artist has had time to study the folds, the model moves,
and all has to be done over again.

If an artist has great experience with drapery, and the attitude is a
very easy one, he may make a charcoal study which will serve him for the
picture without having subsequently to readjust his drapery on the lay
figure, but no young hand would be able to do this in a satisfactory
way. He must go more systematically to work. He must first get a
characteristic study of the nude figure. I mean such a study as the old
masters used to make, giving the exact attitude and the form of the
salient parts. He must then make a replica in charcoal of this study and
adjust the drapery on his living model. On this replica he will now, as
far as he can, reproduce the arrangement of the folds he has before him.
There are plenty of studies by Raffaelle and the old masters which
explain better than words can, the process I am trying to describe.

He has now two working drawings to guide him, viz., his original nude
study, and the study from the draped model. Having thus as it were laid
his foundations, he may drape his lay figure and paint direct from it on
to his picture, taking care (as he proceeds) to correct the form from
his preliminary studies. He will thus be doing sound, honest work, and,
even if dissatisfied with his finished drapery, he has always his
studies to fall back upon.

Some artists, especially French and Italians, make a great use of
photography, and, if kept within bounds, I see no objection whatever to
the practice. It would hardly be legitimate art to dress up and pose a
number of models and have them photographed with the intention of
transferring the group to canvas, but it is perfectly allowable to call
in the aid of photography for draperies or costumes, where, from the
action of the figures, it would be impracticable to draw the folds from
nature.

All portrait-painters know that it is not easy to get ladies and
gentlemen to sit for their clothes, and it is far better to get help
from a good photograph than from a model or a lay figure whom the
clothes do not fit. I have no doubt that if photography had been known
in the time of Raffaelle he would have largely availed himself of it. He
often copied whole figures from his predecessors, and this is certainly
more reprehensible.

I now approach the vexed question as to how far the draperies,
background, and accessory parts of a picture should be finished without
detracting from the heads.

Most of you will doubtless recollect the passage in Sir Joshua’s
discourses where, speaking of drapery, he says: “It is the inferior
style that marks the variety of stuffs. With the historical painter the
clothing is neither woollen, nor linen, nor silk, nor satin nor velvet:
it is drapery, nothing more.”

I would fain believe that Sir Joshua meant to say that it was beneath
the dignity of high art to trouble itself with surface texture, in which
case I should certainly agree with him; but I am afraid this is hardly
what he _did_ mean. However that may be, it is certainly not the
inferior style which by intelligent arrangement and careful study of the
folds expresses the nature and quality of the various stuffs. How is it
possible (using Sir Joshua’s own words) to “dispose the drapery with the
nicest judgment, and to copy it carefully,” without clearly expressing
the material out of which it is made?

Satin and velvet are very seldom wanted in pictures of subjects taken
from the Bible, ancient history, or mythology. The figures should be
clothed in woollen or linen stuffs, and without descending to minute
imitation of texture, the nature of these garments should be clearly
expressed.

If in Raffaelle’s frescoes, and in the works of the Roman school
generally, we are in doubt as to whether the draperies are meant for
wool, linen, or silk, it is because their folds were _not_ “studied
with the greatest care,” and often _not_ “disposed with the nicest
judgment.” In many of Raffaelle’s works, and particularly in those of
Giulio Romano, we feel that the draperies are wholly imaginary, and
hence the vague uncertainty as to the material.

This uncertainty, instead of being a quality to be imitated, appears to
me as a blemish to be avoided.

In the highest style of landscape-painting, again, although it would
doubtless be absurd for the artist to elaborate his foliage leaf by
leaf, yet there would be nothing beneath the dignity of his art in
faithfully giving the general characteristics of the oak, the beech, the
ash, the bay, and the olive, so that each species should be distinctly
recognized in the picture.

I am quite aware that in many classical landscapes by Poussin and the
old masters, it is difficult to specify the kind of trees they contain,
but the botanical uncertainty in which we are left, instead of enhancing
the merit of the work, rather lessens it.

I remember going through an Italian gallery with a mixed company, and
coming upon a magnificent Titianesque landscape.

This arrested the attention of all the party, and was greatly admired,
until some botanical Philistine asked what kind of trees the artist had
meant to represent. We none of us could tell; I thought they were
evergreen oaks, another said they were elms, a third apple-trees, and so
on; but we were all in doubt.

“Well,” says the questioner, “it cannot be much of a picture if the
trees are done so badly that no one can tell what they are.”

Our Philistine was no doubt wrong, but, at the same time, the work would
have been all the better, and would have lost none of its imposing
grandeur if the specific characters of the trees had been given with
greater care.

I am glad to note that almost all modern landscape-painters are fully
alive to the fact that a tree is not merely a tree, but a particular
species of tree, and that the species can be thoroughly indicated
without in any way lessening the grand character of the work.

To return to draperies and costumes.

The artists of the Byzantine and Romanesque periods used to paint their
heads of a conventional and very ugly type, without any attempt at
individuality, and bestow all their care on the draperies, nimbi, and
accessory parts, often enriching their work with real jewels.

This fashion, which was rampant in the Byzantine period, began to wane
in the fourteenth century, but lingered on almost till Leonardo da
Vinci’s time.

During what may be called the golden age of art (that is, from
Leonardo’s time down to Poussin’s) the proper balance of finish between
flesh and drapery seems to have been well observed, but in the last
century (especially in this country) the artists of the time reversed
the practice of the old Byzantine painters; that is, they painted the
heads of the sitters as well as they could, and left the dress and
accessories to be put in by their assistants.

Bad as the flesh-painting was, the treatment of the dress was still more
slovenly and inartistic. The apologists for this style of work say that
the head is everything in a portrait, and that no one cares about the
dress and background, but this was certainly not the opinion of the old
masters. To take a familiar example. Is not the head of Gavartius
greatly improved by the exquisitely-painted frill which surrounds it?
Or, again, is not the life-like flesh in Bordoni’s female portrait
rendered still more life-like by the gorgeous color and masterly
execution of the crimson dress?

Our National Gallery teems with examples of the same kind, where
judicious finish of the accessory parts assists rather than mars the
effect of the flesh-painting.

I do not wish to be understood as insisting that in all cases the dress
and background should be as much finished as the heads, but there is a
great difference between unfinished work and bad work, and it is this
difference which the advocates for neglecting accessories seem unable to
understand. I do not find fault with a certain charming unfinished
portrait group by Rubens in the Louvre, because the accessory parts are
merely indicated, but I _should_ find fault with it if they were
clumsily and inartistically painted. The kind of work I am protesting
against is that which is often noticeable in portraits of the
Gainsborough and Lawrence schools, where the shoulders and hands are
quite shapeless, and the folds of the dress utterly impossible.

It is very refreshing to me to emerge from a gallery containing pictures
of this class, and to enter one devoted to pictures of the Dutch school.
I feel as if I had reached _terra firma_ after floundering about in a
quagmire. We never find a want of intelligent and careful drawing in the
hands and dresses of portraits by Rembrandt, Van der Heist, Franz Hals,
Terburg, and all the other masters of the school.

It may be objected that I am deprecating a fault which no longer exists,
that my expressions of antipathy to a slovenly treatment of the
accessory parts of a picture are out of date, and that the commonplace,
simpering full-lengths of fifty years ago, with their impossible
shoulders and badly-drawn hands, are no longer seen in an Academy
exhibition. I am quite willing to grant this, but it does not follow
that because this pseudo-Lawrence sort of work is no longer seen on the
walls of the Academy, that therefore it is defunct.

There is a large and ever-increasing class of young artists who are
treading in the footsteps of the old masters, who grudge no time and
spare no pains in the study of their hands, costumes, and every thing
which will give finish and completeness to their work; but, on the other
hand, there are still many who, to save themselves trouble, and perhaps
misled by the present extraordinary popularity of Gainsborough, are
satisfied with the most careless and weak treatment of all accessories
in their pictures.

That these pictures are not often seen on the Academy walls is due to
the rejecting power of the Council, and not to the non-existence of
their authors.

Having thus, I trust, given you to understand that by the word “finish”
I mean something quite different from mere smoothness or polish, I will
now give you a few hints as to how the work of finishing a picture is to
be accomplished.

It was the habit of Horace Vernet to make a very rough pen-and-ink
sketch for his elaborate battle-pieces. He would then, without further
preamble, have his models, and paint direct from them on to the blank
canvas, finishing every thing as he went on.

When the whole canvas was covered, the picture was finished.

I remember, on one occasion, he painted a most gorgeous Arab saddle,
holsters, stirrups, and all, and several weeks afterward painted the
horse which bore it.

Cocked-hats, kepis, etc., he would knock off by the dozen, and then,
when he could get his trooper models, he would paint the wearers. He was
always, in the matter of finish, putting the cart before the horse. I
don’t think that he did this intentionally, but he was of an impatient
nature, and could not bear to sit idle, waiting for his sitters.

He was not a great colorist, like his contemporary Delacroix, nor a
great draughtsman, like Flandrin, but his pictures have a manly,
business-like look about them, and a homogeneous quality which is
perfectly marvellous, considering the heterodox way in which they were
put together.

No living artist, and probably none that ever lived, could have taken
such liberties with his _modus operandi_ without the most disastrous
results; and I feel sure that no one present here to-night would think
of painting a figure-picture in this haphazard fashion.

Supposing the subject of the picture to be the time-honored one of “King
John Signing Magna Charta.”

Instead of (like Vernet) beginning by painting a mediæval inkstand, and
then perhaps doing a bit of tapestry background, proceeding onward
toward the figures, the proper process would be to get the figures done
first, and finish with the accessory parts.

I will assume, therefore, that this has been done, that the composition
of the groups has been thoroughly studied, that a colored sketch has
been made, and that each individual figure has been carefully studied
from nature. The picture, however, after all this work, would probably
be far from finished.

The general effect would have to be revised; certain portions which had
cost hours, and even days of labor, would have to be sacrificed; other
important parts, such as heads and hands, to be altered. Finally, the
general scheme of color, which was pleasing enough in the sketch, but
had somehow deteriorated in the picture, would have to be attended to.

A conscientious artist has often great difficulty in knowing _when_ his
picture may be called finished.

Some men will carry their striving after perfection too far, and waste
their time over really trivial details, or, like Penelope, be always
undoing their previous day’s work. This is, no doubt, better than being
too easily satisfied, but these vacillating artists should recollect
that alterations are not always improvements.

On the whole, I think it may be safely said, that when the artist has
fully carried out on the larger scale the intentions of his sketch, his
work may be said to be done.

By the word “fully” I mean that each figure should be executed in such a
way as to give force and pathos to his version of the subject. In the
designing of hands, for instance, there are fifty ways (to return to
our King John) of holding a pen. He should not hold it as if he were
writing “Yours truly”; he should betray unwillingness mixed with fear
both in his face and his hands.

The burly barons, again, should not appear to be inviting their monarch
to kindly sign his name. Their hands ought to express a resolve that he
_should_ sign it, and in their muscular knotty fingers should be
indicated a foreshadowing of the consequences if he refused.

Attention to all these points is what constitutes “finish” rather than
the elaboration of detail.

My master, Paul Delaroche, was a great adept at this dramatic
completeness; indeed, it was this quality alone which earned him his
reputation. His drawing was sound and correct, but nothing more; his
color was generally inky and cold, but the dramatic force and
truthfulness of his figures were quite enough to insure him a very high
place amongst the artists of the nineteenth century.

When he was painting his well-known “Napoleon after Waterloo,” he wanted
a pair of muddy boots. Some artists would have thought the mud-splashes
of no importance whatever, and would have daubed them in at random;
others, more careful, would have made their model put the boots on, and
sent him for a walk in the muddy streets; but Delaroche, reflecting that
boots are differently splashed after riding to what they are after
walking, hired a horse, and got one of his pupils to don the jackboots,
and take a good gallop across the plain St. Denis. The boots were
splashed to perfection, and it did not take the master long to do them
full justice.

Intelligent brain-work is of a higher order of excellence, and
contributes more largely toward the completion of a work of art than
mere execution. I am far from underrating executive skill, but the term
is rather an elastic one, and generally includes good drawing and good
color as well. Taken in its restricted sense, as meaning merely
brilliant manual dexterity, I hold it to be of but little value. Of
course a certain amount of dexterity is necessary, otherwise a fine
sense of form could not be adequately expressed. If Leonardo and
Raffaelle had not possessed considerable manipulative skill, they could
not have produced a “Last Supper” and a “Madonna de S. Sisto.” Where
would Holbein have been if he had not had great precision of touch as
well as the keenest perception of form? Every painter should have
sufficient power in his hand to give expression to what he feels, but
this is not the kind of manual dexterity to which I have said I attach
little importance. I mean the showy, impudent kind of work of which
there are always numerous examples in foreign exhibitions--the kind of
work which is too common amongst modern Italian painters, and which
seems to be rampant in the Austrian capital.

To return to my subject, namely, the finishing of a picture. I would
advise all young artists to beware of making alterations either in the
composition or in the scheme of color of their pictures, when they are
in an advanced state. A very slight change often brings in its wake many
others, and gets the whole work into a muddle. Observations about
incorrect drawing or faulty proportions are always valuable, as these
imperfections can be remedied without disturbing the rest of the
picture, but beware of suggestions which may in any way affect the
general scheme of coloring.

Thus, if it is suggested to you that a certain mass of white drapery
would be better dark, and you happen to agree with the suggestion, do
not be in a hurry to carry out the change. Try the effect with charcoal
or water-color first, and if the result does not please you, no harm has
been done. Even if it _does_ please you, you should make a large
allowance for the charm of novelty. You have had your picture before
your eyes for a long time, and the change may be agreeable to you at
first sight; and yet, if you carry it out, you may repent. Of course, if
you do not agree with the suggestion, dismiss it from your minds.

The man who listens to every piece of advice that is given him will
never finish his work. You probably all know the story of the artist
with many candid friends, who got so bewildered by their criticisms that
he provided a large piece of chalk and requested each of them to mark
the part he desired altered. By the end of the day the surface of the
picture was like a section of a chalk-pit.

A long experience has taught me that nothing ought to be left undone in
the hope of retouching the picture on the so-called varnishing days.
Such anticipations are almost always illusory; and it does not matter
whether you have one or three days for retouching.

It often happens that one would like to have the picture home again and
repaint it, but the few changes one has time to make during the
purgatorial varnishing time are so trifling, that, except to the artist
himself, they do not affect the general appearance of the picture, and
they often interfere considerably with the rubbing-in of medium or some
temporary varnish, which is generally indispensable for the exhibition
of pictures painted with the ordinary materials.

As the professorship of sculpture is still vacant, I am not trespassing
on any one’s ground if I say a word or two about finish in sculpture.

In this art, even more than in painting, excessive smoothness is too
often mistaken for high finish.

The sculptors of the female figure especially, are too prone to efface
(even in the clay) details which ought to be carefully preserved; and
after the figure has been cast in plaster, the work of polishing goes on
with file and sand-paper, until the few touches of nature which had been
left are effaced.

The great mischief, however, is usually done when the plaster is copied
into marble. The paid statuary who does this work strives to give still
greater roundness to the already smooth and rounded limbs, and he
generally succeeds too well. When the marble is ready for the
finishing-touches of the sculptor, he sometimes endeavors to regain a
little of the natural element, but generally he consoles himself with
the reflection that high art is incompatible with detail, and so his
Venus or nymph leaves his studio for the exhibition or the patron’s
gallery, there to be admired as a model of beautiful carving and of
exquisite taste; of the former, on account of its soft, boneless
appearance; and of the latter, because, though a nude figure, there is
no reminiscence of nature about it.

There is less of this kind of insipid sculpture now than formerly.

Terra cotta, which, as every one knows, is the direct impression of the
artist’s modelling, has to a great extent supplanted marble, and the
smooth pseudo-classical nymphs of forty years ago are rather out of
favor.

French sculptors of the nude have, in their horror of smoothness, gone
into the opposite extreme; and, thinking to give more realism to their
work, have adopted a coarse granular style of modelling for their
surface texture. I question, however, whether this new fashion at all
meets the objection every artist must entertain toward the old style of
work.

Even supposing we grant that, in nature, the skin is of a granular
hummocky texture, such as we see in the plaster statues by Carpeaux and
his school, I cannot allow that any thing is gained by this piece of
realism.

Carpeaux himself was a man of genius, and in _his_ work, nature (though
not of a very beautiful kind) is apparent everywhere; but his imitators,
like most imitators, copy his eccentricities rather than his good
qualities.

The real objection to the work of the Canova school of sculpture is not
that the surface is unlike the human skin, but that unintelligent
carving and excessive polishing tend to obliterate all character and
individuality of form.

This objection can only be met by sculptors aiming at a more
discriminating perception of form, as well as what (from want of a
better word) I may call a more conservative style of execution.

The excellence of the masterpieces of antiquity does not lie either in
their smoothness or in their surface texture, but in the beauty of their
proportions, and in the thorough though never obtrusive knowledge of
anatomy displayed in the modelling of every part.

These qualities, in sculpture as well as in drawing, are what constitute
“finish,” and not mere surface polishing on the one hand, or on the
other a coarse imitation of the cellular tissue of the skin.

LECTURE X.

ON THE CHOICE OF A SUBJECT.

Before beginning to treat of the composition of a picture, I should like
to make some remarks on the choice of a subject. Of course, no rule can
be laid down in this matter. What strikes one artist as being a very
good subject will appear totally uninteresting to another. It is,
perhaps, fortunate that this should be so. The taste of the general
public is at least as varied as that of the profession, and thus every
one can be suited. I remember an old gentleman who has now been dead
many years, but who in his day was a great patron of artists, telling me
that he preferred pictures with little or no subject in them. He liked
what he called nice “satiny” bits of painting, and the less story there
was in them to distract his attention from the “satiny” painting the
better. I fancy that this want of appreciation of composition is more
common than is generally supposed. For one person who notices the skill
shown in the general arrangement of a picture, fifty will be found to
admire its color and execution.

Now I do not wish in any way to depreciate the charm of harmonious color
and brilliant execution. Of all qualities in painting they are,
perhaps, the most captivating; but they are not the alpha and omega of
art. I purpose, therefore, to devote several lectures to the study of
composition, and acting in conformity with the precept about “first
catching your hare before you proceed to cook it,” we will this evening
review the various kinds of subjects generally chosen by artists.

In my lecture on the International Exhibition, I mentioned with
disapproval a certain class of subjects much affected by the modern
French school. The artists seem to have ransacked history for every
incident that was most loathsome and horrible. I am not at all
squeamish, and should not object to blood and torture occasionally, but
it is the morbid treatment of these ghastly subjects and their frequency
which are offensive.

Perhaps it is hardly necessary to caution English students against
painting death and putrefaction. They generally have a laudable desire
to sell their pictures, and this desire would naturally tend to keep
their subjects sweet. Some letters on the dismal tendency of modern
British art appeared in the _Times_ last autumn, and certainly I am not
prepared to say that the writers were wholly in the wrong.

But if they had had an opportunity of comparing our school with the
French, I think the letters would not have been written. Why, our
deathbed scenes, funerals, etc., are positively cheerful, compared with
the sensational pictures of a French exhibition. No; whatever the faults
of English pictures may be, I don’t think the subjects can be called
dismal.

On the contrary, I should say, speaking generally, that they are too
frivolous. Pictures are continually being painted which have little or
no subject. The costumes of the period are pretty, the mild incident
depicted happened, or might have happened, and these are quite
sufficient reasons to many young artists for painting the picture.

I am far from saying that such a picture must be a bad one. It may be,
and often is, charming in color, arrangement, and execution.

Indeed, the better the painting, the more one regrets that so much good
work should be spent on so trivial an incident.

Before proceeding to what I have to say about the choice of a subject, I
would impress upon you that I only profess to give you my own opinions.

If any student or young artist has a great fancy for a certain subject,
the probability is that he will treat it better than he would one less
congenial to him, and I should be very sorry to dissuade him from it.
Indeed, I should be much pleased to find that he had a subject at all.
If there is a rock ahead for the English school, it is a tendency to
shirk the difficulties of composition.

Pictures representing single figures (mere models dressed up as
men-at-arms, milk-maids, or Highland lassies) are much commoner now
than they used to be. Of course, in the minor exhibitions of London one
expects to find plenty of work of this class, but the preponderance of
these subjectless figure-pictures is becoming very marked even at the
Academy; and as lecturer on painting, I should be neglecting my duty if
I failed to notice it. It may be that these pictures pay, but art is not
a trade; and even from a commercial point of view, I would suggest that
there is such a thing as over-stocking the market.

The whole domain of history, both sacred and profane, is open to the
artist, besides which there are innumerable subjects which are not
strictly historical, but are suggested by history. Finally, to those who
prefer illustrating the poets, there are Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and
a whole host of more modern writers. Surely in such a vast quarry it
cannot be difficult to dig out good subjects suitable to every mind.
Many subjects are too hastily rejected because they have already been
painted; when probably a new reading is very possible, or by slightly
altering the moment chosen, the subject assumes another aspect.

In a former lecture I mentioned, as a familiar instance, the parable of
the good Samaritan. Here is a trite and hackneyed subject enough. Every
one has painted it, and yet it would be very possible, by altering the
moment depicted, to give a new version of it.

Take the moment when the good Samaritan intrusts the wounded traveller
to the care of the innkeeper, and leaves him money, adding that whatever
more he may spend will be repaid him; and you have a capital subject,
which has never, to my knowledge, been painted. Again, imagine the
return of the Samaritan after a few days’ absence, and the gratitude of
the injured man, now nearly restored to health, and you have another
first-rate subject.

As an extreme example, take the “Holy Family.” How often has this
subject been painted! Raffaelle alone painted it over thirty times, and
I should think that there are at least a thousand original Holy Families
in existence; and yet the subject seems to me as fresh as ever. The
reason of this is, because it embodies the purest form of maternal love
in the same way that the good Samaritan illustrates human kindness.

Maternal love and humanity are many-sided, and hence the subjects which
illustrate them will be many-sided too.

Some artists shrink from taking known subjects from a laudable modesty.
They could not think of entering into rivalry with Raffaelle or André
del Sarto.

I deem this modesty unnecessary, provided they bestow on their work
original thought and invention.

If they attempt to rival the _manner_ of the great masters, then they
may be taxed with presumption, but no artist need be deterred from
painting such subjects as the “Last Supper,” or the “Walk to Emmaus,”
because many great masters have treated the same themes. I have probably
said enough in defence of taking subjects which have already been
painted, and will now attempt some classification of subjects suitable
for the higher class of figure-pictures.

The term “Religious,” in connection with art, ought, I think, to be
confined to those subjects in which Divine personages are introduced, or
to those which embody some miracle. Thus “The Creation of Adam,” “The
Holy Family,” “The Raising of Lazarus,” or “The Conversion of St. Paul,”
would all come under the head of religious subjects; but I think the
term misapplied when speaking of such subjects as “Hagar in the Desert,”
“The Finding of Moses,” “Samson and Delilah,” etc., which have no
religious element in them, although they are of course strictly
Scriptural.

It is almost needless for me to remark that the Old and New Testament
offer an inexhaustible field for pictorial illustration. The Bible is
more read and better known than any other book in the world, and this
alone would preëminently distinguish it as a source whence artists
should derive subjects for their pictures; but besides this, the
costumes from Noah down to St. Paul are simple and dignified,
suggesting the highest style of art.

There are reasons which militate against young artists (or old ones
either) attempting this highest class of religious subjects, the
principal of which is the fear of failure; failure in this class being a
much greater humiliation than in a lower walk of art. But there is also
another good reason, and that is, the want of a market for their work.

Our churches do not, as a rule, purchase Biblical pictures, and our lay
patrons of art naturally enough object to importing a “Crucifixion” or a
“Noli me Tangere” into galleries and rooms full of mundane-subject
pictures.

There seems, however, no reason why the second class of Scriptural
subjects (those, I mean, which are simply historical or anecdotic)
should not be more often painted than they are.

Of allegory and allegorical subjects I need hardly say any thing. For
mere decorative purposes they may sometimes be eligible, but even then I
think them quite out of date, and should be sorry to see a revival of
the painted riddles which were so much the fashion in the time of Giotto
and his followers.

Such semi-allegorical subjects as Reynolds’ “Garrick between Tragedy and
Comedy” are permissible enough, because they are easily comprehended;
but the allegories I object to are those which are totally
incomprehensible without a page or two of letterpress to explain their
meaning.

Mythology offers a much better field than allegory for decorative
purposes. “Juno in her Peacock-drawn Car Ascending to Olympus,” “Orpheus
and Eurydice,” “Prometheus Vinctus,” etc., etc., are all splendid
subjects.

There is a _bourgeois_ objection to them on the ground that nobody now
cares for Juno or any of the heathen gods and demi-gods; but I should
like to ask these objectors if they think that any one cares now for the
“Vicar of Wakefield” and his family, or for “Tom Jones” and his Sophia,
and yet pictures illustrative of these old-fashioned novels are painted
every day, and often meet with great success.

It is quite a mistake to suppose that in order to admire or appreciate
pictures we _must_ take a lively interest in the biography of the
_dramatis personæ_. Jove, Mars, Venus, and Hercules are of interest to
us _now_, just as they probably were to the Athenians in the time of
Phidias and Praxiteles, namely, as representatives of power, courage,
beauty, and strength; and so long as these qualities are valued by the
human race, so long will their personifications continue to be
interesting.

Historical subjects may be divided into two classes:--

1. Those where the interest is solely derived from the rank or
historical importance of the personages depicted.

2. Those which, from their nature, are dramatically interesting,
independently of the names of the personages.

What are commonly called “official pictures” belong to the first class,
such as coronations, royal marriages, and ceremonials of all
descriptions. Such pictures as Terburg’s “Council of Trent,” and others
of the same kind, belong to this category, because all the interest of
the work lies in the faithful portraiture of the figures. Deprive the
figures of their historical importance, and all interest in the subject
(_as_ a subject) vanishes. Of course the picture may have technical
excellences which may make it interesting and valuable, but this has
nothing to do with the point at issue.

Any trivial incident from the domestic lives of Queen Elizabeth, Charles
I, Cromwell, Frederick the Great, etc. (specimens of which are to be
found in every exhibition), belong essentially to this class of
subjects.

I would hardly class our old friend, “Alfred Minding the Cakes,” with
these subjects, simply because he did _not_ mind them; and the contrast
between the disguised monarch’s thoughtful and anxious look and the
humble task to which he had been set is sufficiently interesting _per
se_. Had he done his task cleverly, and toasted the muffins to a turn,
this time-honored but apocryphal subject would have been a good specimen
of the class I am speaking of.

The following are a few more subjects which will illustrate my
meaning:--“Milton Dictating ‘Paradise Lost’ to his Daughters”; “Francis
I Picking up Titian’s Brush”; “Sir Isaac Newton Watching an Apple Fall”;
“Hampden Refusing to Pay Ship-money.” In all these and similar subjects
you will observe that no human passions are concerned. The only reason
for painting them at all is either because such famous men as Titian,
Francis I, and Milton are engaged in them, or because they led to very
important scientific and political consequences, as in the falling apple
and the ship-money instances.

I would give as instances of the second class of historical
subjects:--“The Death of Seneca”; “Charlemagne Crossing the Alps”;
“Cæsar Landing in Britain”; “Queen Boadicea Haranguing the Iceni.”

These are all well known, and, indeed, rather hackneyed subjects, but
they will serve as examples of what I mean. There is a certain dramatic
quality about them which fits them for pictorial treatment,
independently of the particular history attached to each; and these are,
in my opinion, the best kind of historical subjects.

Events which do not concern the life of any particular person are also
very pictorial, provided always there is plenty of the dramatic element
in them:--“A Man Escaping to a City of Refuge”; “A Departure of
Emigrants”; “A Rescue from Fire”; “Launching the Life-Boat”; “Return
from Victory,” are all eminently suitable for painting, and yet there
are no kings and queens, nor even distinguished statesmen, poets, or
philosophers to be introduced. There are human interests of various
kinds to be excited, and this is quite enough.

War episodes are always interesting. We do not care to know the exact
spot or date of the engagement, we have no curiosity about the names of
the combatants, nor even much about their nationality. The scene itself
is sufficiently exciting without any accompanying explanation. It is
true that there are plenty of highly uninteresting battle-pictures, but
the fault lies with the treatment and not with the subject.

In selecting a subject, no matter whether from mythology, Scripture,
history, fiction, or every-day life, care should be taken to choose one
which has unity of action. There ought to be a story in your subject,
but not more than _one_ story. In your secondary groups you may have
separate action and by-play, but they ought somehow to be connected with
the main story of the picture, and instead of distracting the attention
from the subject, they ought rather to assist in concentrating it. Where
there is more than one centre of interest in a picture, the effect,
dramatically speaking, is weakened.

The old masters often disregarded the tolerably self-evident rule.

The famous Transfiguration picture of Raffaelle is a well-known instance
in point. The interest is divided between the Transfiguration proper
and the demoniac boy. Although some of the figures are pointing upward,
yet the faces are all turned toward the demoniac, and he is certainly
the principal focus of interest.

This blemish in Raffaelle’s picture is all the more unaccountable, as no
mention is anywhere made of a demoniac having been present at the time;
but the old masters (especially those of the German schools) abound in
incongruities of this kind. I remember seeing somewhere a picture of the
“Martyrdom of St. Lorenzo.”

The saint is about to be roasted alive, but the largest and most
prominent figure in the picture is one of the executioners, who is
making a horrible face, having got some of the smoke in his eye. The
introduction of these irrelevant and grotesque episodes cannot be
justified, however well they may be painted; and if it be granted that
it is undesirable to _select_ a subject in which there is more than one
centre of interest, how much more objectionable is it to _invent_
disturbing incidents which are not recorded in the text of the subject.

As an extreme instance of a bad selection of subject, I have always
thought that nothing could beat Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Man.” The
lines suggest seven distinct subjects having no connection whatever with
each other. Each is very good of its kind; to attempt to amalgamate them
all into one picture is quite absurd. The result is extremely
unpleasant; suggesting a company of strolling players, each rehearsing
his part, or perhaps the court-yard of a mediæval lunatic asylum.

In justice to Mulready I ought to mention that he did not _select_ “the
seven ages of man” as a subject for his picture. He had the impossible
task imposed upon him by a liberal but injudicious patron.

For decorative work (for a frieze, for instance) such subjects as the
“seven ages of man” are well suited, because each “age” can be treated
separately, forming as it were a picture of itself, the only bond of
union between the seven being that the figures should be of the same
proportion, and should be similar in style and execution.

Another good rule to observe in selecting a subject is to choose one
which has illustrative action in it. What I mean by this is that the
action of the figures should be sufficient to explain the subject. You
cannot put words issuing from their mouths as is done in caricature, you
must therefore explain your story by action and expression. We will take
as examples two not dissimilar subjects. One shall be a meeting of
conspirators, and the other a conference of philosophers. Of course, I
don’t mean to insinuate that there is any analogy between philosophers
and conspirators, but that in both cases we have five or six figures
seated round a table. In the first we should represent our conspirators,
in close conclave, leaning over the table with their heads near
together, one or two perhaps grasping their daggers, another looking
round anxiously--in short, it would be very evident from the expression
and attitude of the figures that they were about some villainous work.

If we now turn to the other subject, the conference of philosophers, how
are we to express the purport of their conversation? What facial muscles
are called into play when men are talking metaphysics or expounding
their theories of evolution? It is clear that, however exquisite the
execution of the picture may be, the subject of it will be
unintelligible, without explanation, and even with the necessary
elucidation it will be inferior to the conspirators in dramatic
interest.

The subject I gave you in the life-school some time ago (I mean Peter’s
denial of Christ) is an eminently good one, because if properly treated
it is impossible to mistake the meaning of the figures. The menacing
interrogatory of the woman, Peter’s alarm for his personal safety, and
the jeers of the soldiers who are sitting round the fire, are all well
adapted for pictorial expression. Any one who had never read the New
Testament, an unconverted Chinaman for instance, would say at once:
“This young woman is taxing a middle-aged man with something he denies,
but there is such downright assertion in her action and such fear mixed
up with his denial, that the accusation, whatever it is, must be true.”

No subject can be called a really good one which requires a long
explanation to make it intelligible. Thus subjects in which the figures
are assuming characters which do not properly belong to them are unfit
for painting. For example, in the “conspirators” just mentioned, it
might very well have happened that to conceal their sinister designs
they assumed the mask of joviality, but you should not select this
particular phase of the story.

On the stage, this kind of make-believe is managed by an “aside.” The
actor takes the audience into his confidence when he says, “Here comes
the king, let us dissemble,” and accordingly for the next ten minutes or
so you are to understand that he is not the obsequious sycophant he
pretends to be, and lest by chance you should forget that he is
dissembling, he will come forward and frown, clench his fist or point
contemptuously over his shoulder at his fellow-actor, who, strangely
enough, never seems to see these ominous gestures.

All this is understood and accepted on the stage, but it does not do in
a picture. I would, therefore, advise you as much as possible to choose
subjects which can be understood at a glance. Let your personages appear
in their natural characters, and not assuming parts which do not belong
to them.

Acts of mercy, such as clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, visiting
the sick, etc., are all good subjects, because the meaning is explained
directly by the action of the figures.

Speaking for myself, I have but little sympathy with subjects taken from
works of fiction.

The artist who selects them for pictorial treatment seems to me to
abnegate whatever creative power he may possess, and to become an
illustrator or translator of other men’s thoughts. Homer, Dante, and
Milton are of course exceptional poets. Their creations are heroic, and
the personifications of their heroes would be either nude or sternly
classical. Besides, they never descend to minute particulars, and the
artist is left very much to his own invention. The more detail an author
gives, and the more picturesque the detail, the less fitted are his
works for figure-pictures. Scott and Dickens are eminently unpaintable;
that is, it is a hopeless task to illustrate them. Pictures taken from
their works are always disappointing. The Ivanhoes, the Mrs. Gamps, and
the Pecksniffs of our imagination are always superior to their effigies
on canvas, and this is more or less the case with the personages of
Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Molière.

Costume has a great deal to do with the choice of a subject, and this,
no doubt, is the reason why the works of Shakespeare, Cervantes, and
Molière are such favorite hunting-grounds for artists. If the Prince of
Denmark had been a modern heir-apparent, attired in a frock coat, tweed
trousers, and a chimney-pot hat, or if Malvolio had worn the dress of an
ordinary British butler, we should not often see them painted.

For one picture taken from Thackeray’s modern novels, we find dozens
illustrating Tennyson’s “Idyls of the King,” or his “Holy Grail.”

Now, although the question of costume must always be an important factor
in the selection of a subject, it ought not to be the only one. A
picture should not be painted _merely_ for the sake of the costumes.
This seemed to me the principal fault in the large Austrian pictures of
the International Exhibition; and I may add that it is a fault which is
not altogether unknown in England.

There is one more class of subjects which I have not yet noticed, and
that is the domestic or “genre” class; the pictures, in short, of
every-day life. Pictures of this kind are much less dependent on a good
choice of subject than those which illustrate some historical incident.
They are generally prized for the brilliancy and harmony of their color,
or for the delicacy of their execution; and if these qualities exist in
a high degree, the subject is a minor consideration.

Still it ought to be a consideration, and in choosing subjects of this
class you should prefer those which are typical of the personages you
have to represent. If you attempt rustic pictures, not only should your
figures look like peasants, but the subject should be thoroughly
bucolic.

A dirty ploughman plodding wearily homeward along a muddy lane on a dull
November evening seems commonplace and prosaic enough, and yet the
subject would not be deficient in pictorial interest. It would be
typical of the man’s hard and comfortless life. It would be in perfect
harmony with his furrowed face, his bony limbs, and his stooping gait.

It would not only represent that particular ploughman in that particular
lane, but it would give a true though mournful impression of
farm-laborers generally.

I should much prefer for the subject of a picture, a common episode from
the life of a laborer to an uncommon one.

Again, if I wished to represent the same man at home, I should endeavor,
without exaggeration, to give the squalor of his surroundings, and
should not, out of my inner consciousness, evolve an ideal peasant
surrounded by a comely family, and looking (as Dickens has somewhere
said) as if he had “spent his little All in soap.”

Artists understand pretty well nowadays that in painting rustic
subjects, honesty is the best policy. The great success of the French
painter, Millet, was due entirely to his uncompromising honesty of
purpose, and to the unerring judgment with which he selected his
subjects.

There _are_ pretty girls (even in France) amongst the peasant class,
although they are certainly rare. There are plenty of _fête_ days when
every woman makes herself as smart as she can; but Millet knew better
than to paint pretty girls and smart dresses. Instead of this, he
depicted the true types of French peasantry, gaunt, hard-featured women,
dressed in the coarsest garments, and shod with wooden sabots. The
novelty of truth was unwelcome at first to the Parisian public. They had
so long been accustomed to Opera Comique peasants that they had lost
relish for the genuine article; but by degrees they began to perceive
that these uncouth figures were very like the Jeannes and the Victoires
they knew _à la campagne_. Moreover, they did not fail to observe that
the subjects chosen by the artist were of that homely, agricultural kind
peculiar to the French peasantry. They smelt of the village dunghill,
and this was the great secret of their success.

I am often told by people who don’t know much about art, that they have
thought of “such a capital subject for a picture,” and it generally
turns out to be something odd or incongruous, and not at all fitted for
painting. For several years we have had pictures sent in for exhibition,
representing children playing at judge and jury, police-courts,
auctions, etc. In these pictures the children are all dressed up to
represent policemen, barristers, plaintiffs, and defendants. Moreover,
they have so thoroughly learned their parts that their action is no
longer childlike. Some of these pictures are very well painted, but the
principle is so wrong and false that we now invariably refuse them
admission.

Children should, in a picture, be engaged on something childlike. Thus
it would be perfectly natural for children to play at being wild beasts,
making use of any bear or wolf skin which happened to be handy.
Coach-and-horses, hen-and-chickens, are again legitimate games for
children, and therefore proper for painting; but in the arts we don’t
want elaborately got-up burlesque.

A group of young children on the sea-sands, at work with their wooden
shovels, would by some be thought a stupid kind of subject, hardly
worthy of being painted at all; but make the same children overtaken by
the tide, with a steep cliff behind them, and probably you will have a
great success, especially if you make your little figures expressing
their fear or courage in a theatrical and unchildlike manner.

The first group would be a typical one--typical of the seaside and
childhood; the second would not be absolutely impossible (like the
bewigged and behelmeted youngsters above mentioned), but it would be
somewhat exceptional, and therefore, in my opinion, not so suitable for
painting as the first group.

In the same way with landscape, the spot you select for pitching your
umbrella should not be mean and ugly, neither should it be
overpoweringly grand and beautiful. Pictures representing the Falls of
Niagara or the gorges of the Rocky Mountains are generally failures. I
have in a former lecture praised the Belgian landscape-painters, and I
think that a good deal of their merit lies in the happy choice of
subjects. They are certainly not classical, like the old school of
French landscape-painters, nor do they affect the dreariest commonplace,
like some of the moderns. They neither paint precipices and snowy
mountains, nor dull stretches of poplar-skirted high-road. Their
pictures are to me most interesting, not only on account of their
technical excellence, but from the good taste shown in the selection of
the subjects.

Incidents which are out of harmony with the character of the persons
engaged, form capital materials for caricature. The late John Leech
showed the nicest discrimination in his selection of subjects. When he
gave us pictures of character, nothing could be better than his sporting
scenes, or his bits from the mining districts. When he wanted to raise a
laugh at something paradoxical, he would give us a lot of mutes making
merry after a respectable funeral, or a used-up swell eating periwinkles
with a pin on the top of a ’bus. In both these cases it was the sharp
contrast between the usual habits of the persons and their exceptional
occupation at the time which made the fun, and very good fun it was
too; but in an oil picture which takes some months to paint, the humor
ought to be of a more delicate kind. I know of no better example of the
kind of humor I mean than Wilkie’s “Blind Fiddler.”

Before closing my lecture I should wish to notice a certain kind of
pictures which do not fit in well with any of the classes I have
mentioned. The pictures I mean are those which are painted expressly to
teach some lesson, or to inculcate some moral precept. The great
originator of this kind of art was Hogarth. Before him nothing of the
sort had ever been done, and since his death no artist has equalled him
in this particular line. Much, however, as I admire Hogarth as a
painter, I cannot coincide with all the praise that has been showered on
him as a great moral teacher. He has often been compared to Molière, but
the great Frenchman attacked the vices and follies of his day with a
sharp rapier, whereas Hogarth wielded a heavy bludgeon. Indeed, I think
it very doubtful whether our art can be converted into an active agent
in the cause of morality. The touches of ridicule which a clever writer
uses with so much effect are very apt to become ponderous when embedded
in oil paint. Hogarth’s reputation may well be allowed to rest on his
numerous technical excellences without hoisting him upon a pedestal as a
great apostle of morality. In like manner the name of Cruickshank will
be preserved as the clever draughtsman and caricaturist, and not as the
champion of teetotalism.

In mitigation, however, of Hogarth’s sledge-hammer style of belaboring
vice, we must bear in mind that the age in which he lived was a very
gross and brutal one, and that his “Rake’s Progress,” his “Marriage à la
Mode,” and similar works, which to us appear exaggerated or caricatured,
were considered by his contemporaries to be very true to nature.

To return to the proper business this evening, which is not to criticise
painters and their work, but to discuss subjects for painting, I cannot
say I particularly delight in the class under notice.

Whoever takes up these subjects becomes (involuntarily perhaps) a kind
of missionary agent for the cause he takes up, whether it be
teetotalism, humanitarianism, or the redressing of the wrongs of our old
friend, the “poor governess”; and as with some other agents, his zeal
often outruns his discretion, and he is apt to thrust forward his moral
too obtrusively. When this kind of picture is painted in pairs, after
the fashion of Hogarth’s “Industrious and Idle Apprentice,” there is a
sort of poster or advertisement flavor about the work, reminding one a
little of “what I was, and what I am” in connection with Mrs. Allen’s
hairwash, or of “before and after using anti-fat.”

No one can, of course, object to such antithetic pictures as “Summer and