Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgement of Pictures – CHAPTER XIII – THE MAN IN ART Post 2

This book, Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures, by Henry Rankin Poore and written in 1903 is one of the most brilliantly written books I have come across. It is a subject about which many artists lack knowledge and thus struggle with their work, simply because it was information they were never taught. Originally written, as many books from that time were,  with a more eloquent and decorative speech, something many folks may find difficult to wade through. I will be attempting to translate the dialogue in the book into something you may find easier to read – hopefully without losing too much in the translation. It is a book you can find on-line or as an E-book. Some of the pictures he references in the book I will try to re-source since the scans of the original may be suboptimal.

CHAPTER XIII – THE MAN IN ART Post 2

A work of art which attracts us, stirs within us two emotions; pleasure in the subject; admiration for the artist. Just as watching an athlete perform amazing physical feats of strength and skill, our interest isn’t so much for the thing he did, which is a momentary thing, but for the athlete themselves. The poet with a hidden longing to express or a story to tell, who works within a self imposed style limitation, is more admired than someone who hasn’t limited themselves within that style. This poet showcases his powers of word, rhythm, and style.

It is the personal element which has established photography and given it the characters which we can call art. Says J.C. Van Dyke, “ a picture is but an autobiographical statement; it is the man and not the facts that may awaken our admiration; for unless we feel his presence and know his genius, the picture is nothing but a collection of incidents (items). It is not the work but the worker, not the mold, but the molder, not the paint but the painter.”

Ruebens, The Holy Family

Who does not sense the genius of the mind who created the art in it the work of Michelangelo, in both paint and marble. How we feel the man of it in Franz Hals, in Rembrandt, in Rubens, Van Dyck, Valasquez, Ribera and Goya, in Watteau and Teniers, in Millet and Troyon, in Rousseau and Rico, in Turner, Constable, and Gainsborough, in Fildes and Holl, in Whistler, in Monet, in Rodin and Barnard, in Inness, in Wayant and George Fuller.

Like religion, art is not a matter of surfaces. Its essence is to be spiritually discerned. It is the spirit of the artist you must seek; — find the man.

Back of the canvas that throbs, the painter is hinted and
hidden;
Into the statue that breathes the soul of the sculptor is
bidden;
Under the joy that is felt lie the infinite issue of feeling;
Crowning the glory revealed is the glory that crowns the
revealing.
Great are the symbols of being, but that which is symboled
is greater;
Vast the create and beheld, but vaster the inward creator;
Back of the sound broods the silence, back of the gift
stands the giving;
Back of the hand that receives thrill the sensitive nerves of
receiving.

Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgement of Pictures – ChapXIII post 1

This book, Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures, by Henry Rankin Poore and written in 1903 is one of the most brilliantly written books I have come across. It is a subject about which many artists lack knowledge and thus struggle with their work, simply because it was information they were never taught. Originally written, as many books from that time were,  with a more eloquent and decorative speech, something many folks may find difficult to wade through. I will be attempting to translate the dialogue in the book into something you may find easier to read – hopefully without losing too much in the translation. It is a book you can find on-line or as an E-book. Some of the pictures he references in the book I will try to re-source since the scans of the original may be suboptimal.

PART III – THE CRITICAL JUDGEMENT OF PICTURES.

“With the critic all depends on the right application of
his principles in particular cases. And since there are
fifty ingenuous critics to one of penetration, it would be
a wonder if the applications were in every case with the
caution indispensable to an exact adjustment of the scales of
art.”—Lessing’s Laocöon.

CHAPTER XIII – THE MAN IN ART.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge said, “Art is a middle quality between a thought and a thing – the union of that which is nature with that which is exclusively human”. For those who take the time to appreciate paintings and drawings much of the secret lies in the idea that art is nature, with the man added; in other words, it is nature seen and considered through a human brain. We gain pleasure not by the actual scene, but by the way it has been recreated or represented. Nature is easily seen on the surface of pictures. We see this immediately. To find the person within it requires a deeper sight.

If a painter of portraits, has he painted just the likeness, or has he painted the character? Has he gone in fits and starts unsuccessfully chasing after it, or has he nailed it: has he won with it finally? Is he a man whose natural refinement proved a true mirror in which his sitter was reflected or has the coarse and uneven grain of the artist become obvious in the false planes of the character presentation? Finding the artist personality in portraits is more difficult than in other subjects. But some of the ablest, while interpreting another’s character, frequently add somewhere in it their own. The old masters rarely signed, feeling that they wrote themselves all through their works.

One common thread connecting all of the great portraitist is that he is a man of refinement. This all history shows.

If our artist is a genre painter: then does his mind see small things to delight in them, or to delight us – if this, he is a servant or little better, – does he go at the whole thing with the sincerity of an artistic purpose and somewhere place a veritable touch of genius, or only represent one item after another until the whole catalog of what is before him is complete, careful that he leaves no cause for criticism? Has the man dignified his subject and raised it to something above imitative art, or does he clearly state in his treatment of it that imitation is the end of art? Is he a painter of moments in history; then does he convince you that his facts are accurate, or allow you to surmise that his details are made up? Is the scene an inspiration or commonplace? Has he been able to put you into the atmosphere of a bygone day, or do his figures look like models in rented costumes and quite ready to put on their own clothes and modern life?

Flowers in a glass vase Rachel Ruysch

Is he a painter of flowers; then is he an artist or a botanist?

Beach at Long Branch: Sunrise, William Trost Richards

Is he a marinist; (paintings of oceans/lakes) then as a person who’s never been to the sea has he painted for you the water so solid it looks as though you could walk on it, even without faith? Has he shown you the dignity, the vastness, the tone and above all the movement of the sea?

Woodland Brook, William Trost Richards

Is he a landscape painter? Then has he interpreted the scene through his own temperament and emotions more than all the others? Then is he in a position to assert himself to a greater degree than they all?The farther one may remove himself from his theme, the less of its minutiae will he see. The process of simplification is individual. What he takes from nature must go through the lens of his own mind and sensibilities and then places forward onto the canvas. The landscape painter becomes an interpreter of moods… his own as well as nature’s, and in his selection of these he reveals himself. Does he show you the kingdoms of the world from some high mountain, or make you believe they may be found if you keep moving through the air and over the ground such as he creates? Does he make you listen along with him to the soft low music when nature is kindly and tender and lovable, or is his stuff of that robust essence which makes her a teammate to him in her ruggedness and strength?

As the hidden forces of nature control man, yet they bend to his will – electricity, air, steam, etc., so do the open and obvious ones which the painter deals with. They dictate all the conditions and yet somehow – he governs. The different ways in which he does this gives to art its’ variety and enables us to form a scale of relative values.

Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgement of Pictures – ChapXII post 10

This book, Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures, by Henry Rankin Poore and written in 1903 is one of the most brilliantly written books I have come across. It is a subject about which many artists lack knowledge and thus struggle with their work, simply because it was information they were never taught. Originally written, as many books from that time were,  with a more eloquent and decorative speech, something many folks may find difficult to wade through. I will be attempting to translate the dialogue in the book into something you may find easier to read – hopefully without losing too much in the translation. It is a book you can find on-line or as an E-book. Some of the pictures he references in the book I will try to re-source since the scans of the original may be suboptimal.

FINISH.

Anton Mauve Painting of his wife

There is a natural question to this, “if we don’t want to create an unhappy amount of deception, should the artist stop before he has brought his work to a complete finish?”

Finish is not dependent upon putting in everything which nature contains, or else art would not be a matter of selection. Finish, though interpreted uniquely by different artist as to degree, is universally understood to mean the same thing.

Finish is the expression of the true relations of objects or the parts of one object. When the true relations or values of shade and color are rendered, only then is the work is complete. That ends it. The student for the first year or so imagines his greatness is dependent on detail and prides himself on how much of it he can see. The instructor insists on his looking at nature with his eyes half closed in the hope that it will help him to see the big end of things. There is a war between student and instructor until the student finally surrenders, after which the instructor tells him to go which ever way the student may please. The instructor knows once this lesson is learned the pupil will not go wrong.

Anton Mauve, The Return of the flock

As a comprehensive example of finish without detail, one can look at the works of Mauve. Mauve worked at representing nature as truly as possible in her exact tints.

Anton Mauve

No one can view any picture painted by this master and not be drawn down close to the ground feeling as if he may walk on it, or to raise his head into the air and breathe it, or think it could be possible to send a stone sailing into its liquid depths.

Oh the finish! When we look for it where or what is it?

Detail of Review of Curiasiers at the Battle of Frieland Meissonier

At the Stewart Gallery, the attendant usually would offer the visitor a magnifying glass with which to exam the luster of a horse’s eye or the buckles upon Napoleon’s saddle, in the “Review of Cuirassiers at the Battle of Friedland”, by Meissonier.

Review of Curiasiers at the Battle of Frieland, Meissonier

(The Metropolitan Museum of Art states: The painting was a sensation and widely praised, though there were dissenting voices. Henry James (1876) criticized it as “a thing of parts rather than an interesting whole.”Édouard Manet quipped “everything looks made of steel . . . except for the cuirasses” (quoted in Rivière 1921). )

These are what interested the great detailest and they are perfect; but with all the intense effort of six close years of labor the picture has less real finish than any work ever signed by Mauve. The big thing in finish has been missed and I doubt if any artist or connoisseur has ever come upon this picture, now in the Metropolitan Museum, without a slight gasp at the false relation of color existing between the green wheat , the horses trampling through it and the sky above it. The unity of these elements was the first step in finish, and the artist even with all his vast knowledge of the little things never knew it.

If then, perfect finish is a matter beyond detail, then it is obvious we must look for finish elsewhere than at this end of nature.

The average man doesn’t look at a picture and think about the finish or how it lacks finish. Instead, he thinks of nature; acknowledging through the suggestions of the picture that he has been touched by her.

“During these moments,” says John La Farge in his “Considerations on Painting,” “are not the spectators excusable who live for the moment in a serene existence, feeling as if they had made the work they admire?”

The argument then is that the master painter is one who selects the subject, takes precious care that its foundation quantities and qualities are furnished and then hands it over to any one to finish. His only concern is that it falls into sympathetic hands.

“It requires two men to paint a picture,” says Mr. Hopkinson Smith, “one to work the brush and the other to kill the artist when he has finished the picture and doesn’t know it.”

 

 

 

 

Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgement of Pictures – ChapXII post 9

This book, Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures, by Henry Rankin Poore and written in 1903 is one of the most brilliantly written books I have come across. It is a subject about which many artists lack knowledge and thus struggle with their work, simply because it was information they were never taught. Originally written, as many books from that time were,  with a more eloquent and decorative speech, something many folks may find difficult to wade through. I will be attempting to translate the dialogue in the book into something you may find easier to read – hopefully without losing too much in the translation. It is a book you can find on-line or as an E-book. Some of the pictures he references in the book I will try to re-source since the scans of the original may be suboptimal.

RELIEF.

Rembrandt Peale self portrait.

Many artists attempt to make their pictures stand out; but it is probably more accurate to say, “they should stand in”. Pictures need to keep their places within the frame and to keep the each of the parts in control. A single object straining to be more prominent because it is painted more three dimensionally than it really is, or in other words so it looks as if it hovers more towards the viewer than of the rest of the painting (Mr Poore terms it “the great relief it exhibits”) is just as objectionable as when one voice in choir is heard louder than the rest. If one voice is louder than it should be, then the harmony of the blend suffers.

Rembrandt Peale. Note how the glasses are painted in more relief. They seem to project above everything else above the canvas. I believe he did this intentionally.

It is a law of light that all objects which have planes that face the same direction then receive the same amount of light intensity. If then, one of those planes seems more important and perhaps brighter, it must be because you’ve suppressed brightness of the rest. Now and then this is necessary, but it should occur because it is of suppression of the less important and not by unnatural forcing of the favored planes.

It isn’t necessary for the artist to use an unnaturally strong or forcing a light onto their model in order to make them “pop” off the canvas this is just as bad as if they create too intense a shadow in order to separate the sitter from the wall behind them.

Corregio Madonna and Child with St Jerome and Mary Magdalen

Correggio knew so well to conserve breadth just here. Instead of this cheap and easy relief, he almost always chose to offset the dark side with a darker tone in the background. This allowed the figure’s shadow to melt imperceptibly into the back space. .

Breadth and softness was of course the result.

(As a refresher, HR Poore has defined breadth as: “Breath does not signify neglect of detail or neglect of finish; it means simplification where unity had been threatened. It is seeing the big side of small things, if the small things cannot be ignored.”)

Valesquez Portrait Pablo de Valladolid

Occasionally however, a distinct attempt at relief may be witnessed in the work of good painters. Some of Valesquez’ standing portraits are expressive of the painter’s joy in making them “stand out”. In all these pictures however, there are no other objects, no items added to the background from which the figure’s is separated. The subject simply stands in the air. In other words- it is an entity and not a composition.

Velasquez Cardinal Pamphili

The technical process for subduing or lessening of “relief” is flattening the shadows, thus rendering the marked roundness of the objects less pronounced. So if an object seems to be forward, more towards the viewer, by flattening the shadow – simplifying the shadow will help to lessen the objects three dimensional appearance. There are two ideas which will really help to help produce the necessary and proper amount of relief in a painting. All paintings should express the ideas that all objects are enveloped in air and that all objects are detached from one another. These two ideas help to keep one item from popping forward too much and destroying the unity of the painting.

Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgement of Pictures – ChapXII post 8

This book, Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures, by Henry Rankin Poore and written in 1903 is one of the most brilliantly written books I have come across. It is a subject about which many artists lack knowledge and thus struggle with their work, simply because it was information they were never taught. Originally written, as many books from that time were,  with a more eloquent and decorative speech, something many folks may find difficult to wade through. I will be attempting to translate the dialogue in the book into something you may find easier to read – hopefully without losing too much in the translation. It is a book you can find on-line or as an E-book. Some of the pictures he references in the book I will try to re-source since the scans of the original may be suboptimal.

RESERVE.

A spin-off of simplicity is Reserve. In the simple statement of the returning Roman general: “I came, I saw, I conquered,” all the senate desired to know was stated and it gained force by virtue of what was left unsaid. Anything else might have made satisfied the curiosity of the assembly, but the man, in holding this secret, made himself an object of interest. Rembrandt has shown us through his paintings that anything which can be expressed doesn’t require us to travel all the way into the deepest dark or the highest light of our palette, but some distance from these extremes. Expression through limitations is dignified, unlike straining to reach these outer limits of paint sacrifices that dignity. It is the force so quickly squandered by the young actor, who “overacts,” disturbing the balance of forces in the other parts.

Jules Guerin Lincoln Memorial

The idea of Reserve falls exactly mid-way between the contentious ideologies spouted by the Impressionists and the Tonists. The Impressionists would keep the gas pedal to the floor from start to finish; the Tonist prefer the “Waiting Race” with every atom of force governed and in control, held for that moment when increasing strength is necessary. It is the difference between aiming at the bull’s-eye or the whole target.

Jules Guerin Egypt

Reserve can also be demonstrated by the recent tendency of illustration to produce a picture in three or four flat tones. In the new movement within decorative art one can observe these ideas within it. In the work of Jules Guérin it is interesting to note how the controlling ideas of these two factors of breadth (simplicity and reserve) have been applied to every stroke, now and then only, detail being allowed its say, and only in a small voice.

 

With the large number of pictorial ideas now being recast in the decorative formula, it has become necessary to have a clear notion of the purpose and limitations of decorative art. It is far too easy to misunderstand this new art or to confuse it with the purely pictorial.

William Morris wall paper

Decoration is essentially flat. It represents length and breadth. It applies primarily to the flat vertical plane. It deals with the symbols of form, with fact by suggestion, with color in mass. It substitutes light and dark for nature’s light and shade. They are ideas which are only arranged on a flat vertical plane (picture plane). Classically, they might be the heraldic designs on shields where the natural fact is secondary to the happy adjustment of spaces. Nature, to the decorative mind, presents a varied pattern from which they can clip any shape which the color design demands.

Some designs by Arthur Wesley Dow

The influence that decorative design has brought into pictorial art something which has never been classified.

The different decorative ideas have intermixed and have been nurtured and matured through history and grown into the art nouveau movement. The seed of decoration has been suddenly transplanted into the garden of pictorial art. There was hardly room in this garden for these newer things, but somehow they were able to elbow out some space for themselves.

 

 

Prendergast

It is difficult, for instance, to reconcile the crowded and spotted surfaces in Mr. Maurice Prendergast pictures, to the rules of balance in pictures. It has to be recognized however, that their main claim to attraction is their color, which is usually a harmony in red, yellow and blue. When the crowds of people or buildings do not form balanced combinations, they often fill the canvas leaving excellent spaces. These spaces are even more commanding because of their isolation than the groups choking the edges of the canvas. Most often though these crowds can be found to hang most beautifully on a natural axis and to comply with all the principles of pictorial structure.

Met museum says about Central Park: “Prendergast captured the park’s festive energy on a summer day and suggested, with broad horizontal bands, the tripartite traffic system that accommodated carriages, horses with riders, and pedestrians. The painting, once titled “Central Park in 1903,” may have been begun in that year and later reworked. It shows women in the types of dresses and hats that were stylish in 1903 and horse-drawn carriages as opposed to the automobiles and bicycles that appeared shortly thereafter. Prendergast’s dense pigments, juxtapositions of complementary colors, and whirls of form indicate the influence upon him of contemporary Synchromist painting.”

“Central Park” M. Prendergast

In his park scene, showing several tiers of equestrians one above the other, the chief charm is the idea of continuous movement which the scene conveys. The detail, wisely omitted, if supplied would stop the movement and hold the attention challenging the feeling of motion. It would then be found that what we accepted as an impression of a nature being perceived by another, we would demand more of as a finished picture. It is because it is more decorative than pictorial and because its pictorial parts are rendered by suggestion, that it makes so winning an appeal.

Charles Livingston Bull

The quaint and fascinating concepts of Charles Livingston Bull in the range of animal drawing and painting are all struck in the stamp of this new mold. There is an ever growing list of able illustrators whose work shows the principles of reserve.

Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgement of Pictures – ChapXII post 7

This book, Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures, by Henry Rankin Poore and written in 1903 is one of the most brilliantly written books I have come across. It is a subject about which many artists lack knowledge and thus struggle with their work, simply because it was information they were never taught. Originally written, as many books from that time were,  with a more eloquent and decorative speech, something many folks may find difficult to wade through. I will be attempting to translate the dialogue in the book into something you may find easier to read – hopefully without losing too much in the translation. It is a book you can find on-line or as an E-book. Some of the pictures he references in the book I will try to re-source since the scans of the original may be suboptimal.

 

SIMPLICITY.

(As a refresher, HR Poore has defined breadth as: “Breath does not signify neglect of detail or neglect of finish; it means simplification where unity had been threatened. It is seeing the big side of small things, if the small things cannot be ignored.”)

Breadth, while encouraging suggestiveness leads us towards simplicity, which is something of a subjective quality.

When applied to pictorial art, simplicity’s first appeal is a mental one. We are attracted by neither technique nor color, nor by other things which can cause problems for the painter, but by his mental attitude toward his subject. So if we decide the resulting picture has come about by discarding that which wasn’t required, and that the artist has sacrificed everything else so only his preferred idea remains, then we acknowledge his ability to condense the idea down and respect him for it. There is, however, a type of simplicity, the Simple Simon sort, or a reluctance to attempt difficult things, which leads to a selection of the easy subject in nature. Having found some modest bit of charm, the Simple Simon turns and twists it until he has completely weakened it, then goes around saying “there is no greater quality than simplicity”. The question remains, did the artist simplify to facilitate a great poetic idea behind the subject or because his lack of understanding prevented him from unraveling the big idea from what isn’t needed.

Where simplicity really serves the artist in his task is in those cases demanding the unification of many elements.

“The Shipwreck”, JMW Turner

 

In painting, Rubens, and Turner out of chaos, bringing harmony from something much like a massive church organ with three banks of keys and many stops, a near herculean task.

“St Bavo is received by Saints Amand and Floribert”, Rubens

 

It doesn’t matter what the subject is, the quality of principality takes precedence over all others. This is the first step toward simplicity; some single thought is made to be the chief idea. One lone object in the composition of many things and only one individual light in the scheme of chiaroscuro can be dominant. With this determined, the problem which follows is, how shall principality be maintained and to what degree of sacrifice must all other objects be submitted.

In the rapid examination of many works of art, those that appeal strongest will be found to be those in which the elements are simple, or if complex, are governed by this quality through principality.

Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgement of Pictures – ChapXII post 6

This book, Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures, by Henry Rankin Poore and written in 1903 is one of the most brilliantly written books I have come across. It is a subject about which many artists lack knowledge and thus struggle with their work, simply because it was information they were never taught. Originally written, as many books from that time were, with a more eloquent and decorative speech, something many folks may find difficult to wade through. I will be attempting to translate the dialogue in the book into something you may find easier to read – hopefully without losing too much in the translation. It is a book you can find on-line or as an E-book. Some of the pictures he references in the book I will try to re-source since the scans of the original may be suboptimal.

MYSTERY.

The idea of suggestion, and the varied paths it can take us down, all lead to the cathedral of Mystery. In this place, the artist would wise to sit down and learn all the holy will teach to him. Here, the positive light of day passes into the twilight of the moon and stars. What things may be seen and forms be created out of the simple mystery of twilight!

Its value by suggestion may be known technically to the artist, for through the elimination of detail, the work is sifted to its essence and we then see it in its bigness if it has any and if not, then we can discover this lack. When the studio light fails our best critic enters and shows us in a few moments what we have been looking for all day long.

In most pictures there should be and opportunity of having an area which is open to interpretation by the viewer according to his the way he thinks, a little place where each may delight in setting free his own imagination.

To figure out the reason why certain pictures gain such popularity seems impossible except for the fact they contain the property of mystery. The strong appeal made to everyone by subjects containing areas of mysterious suggestion is demonstrated by how frequently these pictures win awards in photographic and other competitions.

The student of photography asks if blurred edges, empty shadows and vaporous detail mean quality. They certainly mean mystery, which when applied to an appropriate subject signifies that the artist has joined his art with the imagination of the beholder. He has loaned it out to the viewer to get an exorbitant interest rate.

A cottage near a wood may be a very ordinary subject at three in the afternoon, but at eight in the evening, seen in the vibrating outline against the forest blackness or the low toned sky, it becomes an element in a scheme of far larger dimensions. The difference between the definite and indefinite article when joined with that house, is the difference in the quality of the art of which we speak.

Struggle by Robert Demachy. Emulsion on photographic plate was chosen so it would appear as a chalk drawing.

Mystery by deception is a misguided use of an art quality. In photography one man delights in the etching point and cannot stop until he has made a network all over his plate and led us to look at this instead of his picture. Which if it had been good should have been left alone – a clever device of throwing dust into our eyes. Another person produces what appears to be a pencil drawing and a very good imitation some of them are, but at best a deception. To make something look like something else is a perversion of a brilliant discovery in photographic processes, which offers the means for securing unity (and in this word lies every principle of composition) by adding to or subtracting from the first product. This may involve the destruction of two-thirds or three-fourths of the plate or it may demand many an accent subtly supplied before unity is satisfied, before the subject is stripped of its non-essentials or before it may be regarded complete. Let such good work go on – and the other sort too, if you will, the stunts, the somersaults and the hoop performances, but in the dignity of the photographic competitions give the deceptions, the imitations of other things no standing or quarter.

(editors note: I believe he is referring to a style of photography which attempted to emulate painting or drawing. According to the Met Museum people like Robert Demachy did this as “part of an effort to distinguish his pictures from the products of amateur snap shooters and commercial photographers”. Apparently, Mr. Poore did not think too highly of photographs being manipulated to the point that they were no longer distinguishable as photographs. He didn’t believe the manipulated pictures should be allowed in photography competitions. Oh, I wonder what he would think of the computer and photoshop now!)

Archibald Cochrane an example of overdone value shifting. The sheep do not belong to the picture and therefore create a sense of falseness because the values are incorrect.

No one will deny the interest there is in a sensitive, flexible line and in the rendition of mass by line. But photography is an art dealing with finished surfaces of perfect modeling and workers in this art should preserve the “nature” of their subject. The man who feels line had better etch or use a pencil.

 

 

Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgement of Pictures – ChapXII post 5

This book, Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures, by Henry Rankin Poore and written in 1903 is one of the most brilliantly written books I have come across. It is a subject about which many artists lack knowledge and thus struggle with their work, simply because it was information they were never taught. Originally written, as many books from that time were,  with a more eloquent and decorative speech, something many folks may find difficult to wade through. I will be attempting to translate the dialogue in the book into something you may find easier to read – hopefully without losing too much in the translation. It is a book you can find on-line or as an E-book. Some of the pictures he references in the book I will try to re-source since the scans of the original may be suboptimal.

Suggestiveness continued.

In comparison to the portrait painter, the landscape artist can suggest a much wider range. Who has not experienced the fascination of a hilltop? The hill may be uninteresting – on your side, –- but there is another. There is a path winding over it, could be small or large created by the passing of few or many feet; you can imagine your own feet treading on the path and crossing to see what sort of enchanting sights and sounds lie on the other side.

Let’s suppose there is a scene at twilight on one of the great plains in northern France where beets are the only crop. A group of carts and oxen complete the background and no people are visible. Let’s say there are two handfuls of beets silhouetted against the sky and arcing toward the carts, we would know that someone must have thrown them. A figure or even part of a figure would be unnecessary for the viewer to know if there was anyone about. These beets, inanimate objects, moving through the air toward the cart mean life. The painter has created one object (beets) and by these few touches implied the presence of other people who are harvesting them. This is a suggestion of a fact.

By showing the figure already having thrown these handfuls of beets bending over to pick up others is the suggestion of an act. This is demonstrated by the beets suspended in mid-air and the figure bending towards another goal of picking more beets something which hasn’t been accomplished yet. We can position the figure at a point in time where there is no way that he could have possibly thrown the beets. This forces the figure into an accelerated action which ranges anywhere between the startling, the amusing, and the impossible.

Van Gogh in the study of Peasant and Peasant woman planting potatoes is illustrating the principle mentioned above… of having an action in the past while movement implying the future. This creates the value of time in the painting.

 

This isn’t an original Timomachus, but may be a display of the same scene.

The power of implied force or action by suggestion is the basis of the Greek sculptured art of the highest period. Much of the argument of Lessing’s elaborate essay on the “Laocoon” is aimed at this idea. He makes his viewer imagine the crisis without having to show it. In the essay “Laocoon”, his discussion of Timomachus’ treatment of Ajax driven mad by Athena was not shown while he was killing the sheep, goats, and oxen. Instead, this master painted him sitting wearily after these imagined deeds of heroism and thinking about how his dishonor has forced him to take his own life. That was really the raving mad Ajax, not because he was raving at the moment, but because we see he was crazed and with what violence his present reaction of shame and despair vividly portrays.

( Note: Timomachus was an influential painter of the first century b.c. In Sophocles’ play Ajax, Prior to the beginning of the play there is an argument between Odysseus and Ajax over who should receive the invulnerable armor had been made for Achilles by the god Hephaestus. The recipient would thus receive recognition as the greatest after Achilles. As the play begins, Athena is explaining to Odysseus how she has tricked Ajax into believing that the sheep and cattle that were taken by the Achaean’s (Greeks) as spoils of war are actually the Greek leaders. He slaughters and mutilates some of them, and takes the others back to his home to torture, including a ram which he believes to be his main rival, Odysseus. When he comes to his senses, covered in blood, he realizes that what he has done has diminished his honor, and decides that he prefers to kill himself rather than live in shame.)

The Wreck Eugene Isabey 1854

We see the force in a wild storm driven seascape in the wreck of a ship and the corpse which it has strewn on the beach.



In the artful photograph of the nude, this quality is mandatory. We don’t want to have offered us so intimate a likeness of a nude figure that we ask, “Who is she, or he?” The general and not the particular is quite enough to meet the requirement; the type, not the person. There are few better examples than the sleeping senator found in the “Death of Caesar” by Gerome. Here, the action has happened while one senator has slept through it all.

In the suggestion of an idea, graphic and sculptural art rise to the highest levels of poetry. The picture or the poem then becomes the surface, refracting the idea which stretches on into infinity. The dying lion of Lucerne, mortally pierced by the shaft, the wounded lion of Paris, striking under his forepaw the arrow meant for his destruction are symbols memorializing the Swiss guard of Louis XVI, and the unequal struggle of France against Germany in 1872.

At the death of Lorenzo de Medici the arts languished and Michelangelo’s supine and hanging figures in his tomb are there to indicate it.

Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgement of Pictures – ChapXII post 4

This book, Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures, by Henry Rankin Poore and written in 1903 is one of the most brilliantly written books I have come across. It is a subject about which many artists lack knowledge and thus struggle with their work, simply because it was information they were never taught. Originally written, as many books from that time were,  with a more eloquent and decorative speech, something many folks may find difficult to wade through. I will be attempting to translate the dialogue in the book into something you may find easier to read – hopefully without losing too much in the translation. It is a book you can find on-line or as an E-book. Some of the pictures he references in the book I will try to re-source since the scans of the original may be suboptimal.

SUGGESTIVENESS

(from chapter XII post 1 as a reminder: Breadth does not signify neglect of detail or neglect of finish; it means simplification where unity had been threatened. It is seeing the big side of small things, if the small things cannot be ignored.)

By Federico de Madrazo – uwFLy0ICxkKHtw at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21975695

Breadth is often responsible for mystery and leads to suggestiveness. It is at this point where graphic art touches hands with the invisible – where the thing merges into the idea. Here we deliver our little canvas two foot by four foot painted affair into the keeping of larger hands which expand its possibilities. If Imagination carries us beyond the limits of graphic art, then we should certainly make use of it. The realist looks at this area of art with folded arms. In the same way, those who paint the fanciful scenes of Greek mythology can only tiptoe on the edges of the day to day life of that age. .

The still-life painter has to do with fact (or reconstructing exactingly what is before them), and for many other subjects also the fact alone is sufficient. Generally this is true in portraiture where the accurate depiction of form is attempted, but the portrait may suggest reverie and reflection, or, by an intimate closeness, provoke a wide-ranging movement in thought.

The realist is a man of drawing and how to do it, of paint and putting it on, of textures and technique; he is a painter; and stops with that. A maker of pictures would step to another point of sight. He would set his aim to shoot over the hilltop. He would hit something which he cannot see.

Suggestion is both technical and subjective. There is suggestion of detail, of act, and of fact; said another way, implying detail, motion, and shape. We can substitute the effect of a shape or mass, or detail instead of faithfully painting everything. When we place on the canvas the value and color mass of a bunch of grass, or a mass of drapery, we substitute suggestion for literalism.


Mariano Fortuny, as a figure painter, was a master of this art of suggestion. His wonderful arrangements of figures amongst drapery and in grasses are examples of his skillful interpretations. Here, out a fantastic crush of color, will materialize a beautifully modeled hand and wrist which connect with the shoulder and body only using the imagination. These tenuous connections located between the sharper and more completely modeled portions are spots of attraction and encourage the search for the connecting parts. The hide and seek of the subject, the “lost and found” in the line, coercing the viewer to complete the picture using brush stroke were the tactics by which Fortuny teased nature and the public, fascinating the art world of his day.


Fortuny, however, never took us beyond the bounds of his picture. It was his doctrine that avoidance of detail was artful; that to carry the whole burden when imagination could be tricked into shouldering some of it was a fool’s errand. Millet, who was his opposite was a clumsy handler of his tools, and declared himself fortunate in being able to suggest much more than he could paint.

In one of the competitions at the Royal Academy in England, the prize was awarded to that rendering of the expression of Grief which showed the face entirely covered, the suggestion being acknowledged stronger than the fact.

Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgement of Pictures – ChapXII post 3

This book, Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures, by Henry Rankin Poore and written in 1903 is one of the most brilliantly written books I have come across. It is a subject about which many artists lack knowledge and thus struggle with their work, simply because it was information they were never taught. Originally written, as many books from that time were,  with a more eloquent and decorative speech, something many folks may find difficult to wade through. I will be attempting to translate the dialogue in the book into something you may find easier to read – hopefully without losing too much in the translation. It is a book you can find on-line or as an E-book. Some of the pictures he references in the book I will try to re-source since the scans of the original may be suboptimal.

Suggestiveness

There are ideas developed by Arthur Wesley Dow dealing with the decorative rather than naturalistic, the aesthetic side with “Beauty,” as the watchword being most important. Spaces must be agreeable and the harmonious arrangement doesn’t have to follow an exacting interpretation of natural form. Most of the time absolute form is ignored when it clashes with the limitations of decorative requirements. Truth is the first and highest principle no matter the field of education. The study of nature will fall into logical channels if we pursue the ideas of truth. If nature’s largeness and simplicity contributes to its value, then nature should be consulted when she is large and simple. Studies of trees in gray silhouette, should be made at twilight, either in the evening or early morning, when the detail, which is useless to the decorative scheme, is not seen. Under these conditions, the low levels of light hide the detail and so we see the largeness without the distraction of the smallness of the detail. The “bigness” of Nature is then contributing her side directly to the student who has no reason to delve further to try to include more than the simple presentation. There are times also when the face of nature is so varied that the most fantastic designs of Notan are observed.(Notan ~ white, black and the variety of gray tones in between. This is nearly the same as the design element, value (a term that Dow also used), but with one difference: Notan implies beauty and harmony, while value does not. Notan-scheme (or notan-structure) ~ is a pleasing arrangement of “tonal masses” (the light and dark shapes) on a support (a sheet of paper, a canvas, board etc.).

Beautiful Notan designs within nature can be found in many places, a harbor filled with sails and seagulls, a crowd of people speckling the shore, the houses of a village dotted over a hillside. These powerful designs that nature can develop herself only happen once and a while and can become wonderful subjects if we can light and create them with care and feeling.

The system of Notan therefore takes a student part way and leaves him still knocking at the door of the complete naturalistic presentation of pictorial art. A natural presentation is one which not only depicts length and width, but also the limitless possibilities of depth. Work which only depicts the flat shapes by reason of its greater simplicity should naturally precede the complications involved producing the completely modeled form. Delaying the teaching of modeling in favor of designing the Notan shapes of light and dark and line in the early stages of the student’s development is a strong one.

Just a side note, above is a series of drawings by Arthur Wesley Dow, using two dimensional design in his composition. Dow’s book has a great deal more information, and you can download it here at Project Gutenberg. He says “A branch of apples furnishes a set of lines and spaces that may be set into a rectangular panel. The unity of such a design is dependent upon the simple and clear disposition of the main spacings.”