The Crown of Wild Olive
chestnut, shedding its leaves, Fig. 24.; but in either of them, even the
general reader, unpractised in any of the previously recommended
exercises, must see that there are wandering lines mixed with the
radiating ones, and radiating lines with the wild ones: and if he takes
the pen and tries to copy either of these examples, he will find that
neither play of hand to left nor to right, neither a free touch nor a
firm touch, nor any learnable or describable touch whatsoever, will
enable him to produce, currently, a resemblance of it; but that he must
either draw it slowly, or give it up. And (which makes the matter worse
still) though gathering the bough, and putting it close to you, or
seeing a piece of near foliage against the sky, you may draw the entire
outline of the leaves, yet if the spray has light upon it, and is ever
so little a way off, you will miss, as we have seen, a point of a leaf
here, and an edge there; some of the surfaces will be confused by
glitter, and some spotted with shade; and if you look carefully through
this confusion for the edges or dark stems which you really _can see_,
and put only those down, the result will be neither like Fig. 9. nor
Fig. 24., but such an interrupted and puzzling piece of work as Fig.
25.[228]
Now, it is in the perfect acknowledgment and expression of these _three_
laws that all good drawing of landscape consists. There is, first, the
organic unity; the law, whether of radiation, or parallelism, or
concurrent action, which rules the masses of herbs and trees, of rocks,
and clouds, and waves; secondly, the individual liberty of the members
subjected to these laws of unity; and, lastly, the mystery under which
the separate character of each is more or less concealed.
I say, first, there must be observance of the ruling organic law. This
is the first distinction between good artists and bad artists. Your
common sketcher or bad painter puts his leaves on the trees as if they
were moss tied to sticks; he cannot see the lines of action or growth;
he scatters the shapeless clouds over his sky, not perceiving the sweeps
of associated curves which the real clouds are following as they fly;
and he breaks his mountain side into rugged fragments, wholly
unconscious of the lines of force with which the real rocks have risen,
or of the lines of couch in which they repose. On the contrary, it is
the main delight of the great draughtsman to trace these laws of
government; and his tendency to error is always in the exaggeration of
their authority rather than in its denial.
Secondly, I say, we have to show the individual character and liberty of
the separate leaves, clouds, or rocks. And herein the great masters
separate themselves finally from the inferior ones; for if the men of
inferior genius ever express law at all, it is by the sacrifice of
individuality. Thus, Salvator Rosa has great perception of the sweep of
foliage and rolling of clouds, but never draws a single leaflet or mist
wreath accurately. Similarly, Gainsborough, in his landscape, has great
feeling for masses of form and harmony of colour; but in the detail
gives nothing but meaningless touches; not even so much as the species
of tree, much less the variety of its leafage, being ever discernable.
Now, although both these expressions of government and individuality are
essential to masterly work, the individuality is the _more_ essential,
and the more difficult of attainment; and, therefore, that attainment
separates the great masters _finally_ from the inferior ones. It is the
more essential, because, in these matters of beautiful arrangement in
visible things, the same rules hold that hold in moral things. It is a
lamentable and unnatural thing to see a number of men subject to no
government, actuated by no ruling principle, and associated by no common
affection: but it would be a more lamentable thing still, were it
possible to see a number of men so oppressed into assimilation as to
have no more any individual hope or character, no differences in aim, no
dissimilarities of passion, no irregularities of judgment; a society in
which no man could help another, since none would be feebler than
himself; no man admire another, since none would be stronger than
himself; no man be grateful to another, since by none he could be
relieved; no man reverence another, since by none he could be
instructed; a society in which every soul would be as the syllable of a
stammerer instead of the word of a speaker, in which every man would
walk as in a frightful dream, seeing spectres of himself, in everlasting
multiplication, gliding helplessly around him in a speechless darkness.
Therefore it is that perpetual difference, play, and change in groups of
form are more essential to them even than their being subdued by some
great gathering law: the law is needful to them for their perfection and
their power, but the difference is needful to them for their _life_.
And here it may be noted in passing, that if you enjoy the pursuit of
analogies and types, and have any ingenuity of judgment in discerning
them, you may always accurately ascertain what are the noble characters
in a piece of painting, by merely considering what are the noble
characters of man in his association with his fellows. What grace of
manner and refinement of habit are in society, grace of line and
refinement of form are in the association of visible objects. What
advantage or harm there may be in sharpness, ruggedness, or quaintness
in the dealings or conversations of men; precisely that relative degree
of advantage or harm there is in them as elements of pictorial
composition. What power is in liberty or relaxation to strengthen or
relieve human souls; that power, precisely in the same relative degree,
play and laxity of line have to strengthen or refresh the expression of
a picture. And what goodness or greatness we can conceive to arise in
companies of men, from chastity of thought, regularity of life,
simplicity of custom, and balance of authority; precisely that kind of
goodness and greatness may be given to a picture by the purity of its
colour, the severity of its forms, and the symmetry of its masses.
You need not be in the least afraid of pushing these analogies too far.
They cannot be pushed too far; they are so precise and complete, that
the farther you pursue them, the clearer, the more certain, the more
useful you will find them. They will not fail you in one particular, or
in any direction of enquiry. There is no moral vice, no moral virtue,
which has not its _precise_ prototype in the art of painting; so that
you may at your will illustrate the moral habit by the art, or the art
by the moral habit. Affection and discord, fretfulness and quietness,
feebleness and firmness, luxury and purity, pride and modesty, and all
other such habits, and every conceivable modification and mingling of
them, may be illustrated, with mathematical exactness, by conditions of
line and colour; and not merely these definable vices and virtues, but
also every conceivable shade of human character and passion, from the
righteous or unrighteous majesty of the king, to the innocent or
faultful simplicity of the shepherd boy.
The pursuit of this subject belongs properly, however, to the
investigation of the higher branches of composition, matters which it
would be quite useless to treat of in this book; and I only allude to
them here, in order that you may understand how the utmost nobleness of
art are concerned in this minute work, to which I have set you in your
beginning of it. For it is only by the closest attention, and the most
noble execution, that it is possible to express these varieties of
individual character, on which all excellence of portraiture depends,
whether of masses of mankind, or of groups of leaves.
Now you will be able to understand, among other matters, wherein
consists the excellence, and wherein the shortcoming, of the
tree-drawing of Harding. It is excellent in so far as it fondly
observes, with more truth than any other work of the kind, the great
laws of growth and action in trees: it fails--and observe, not in a
minor, but in a principal point--because it cannot rightly render any
one individual detail or incident of foliage. And in this it fails, not
from mere carelessness or incompletion, but of necessity; the true
drawing of detail being for evermore _impossible_ to a hand which has
contracted a _habit_ of execution. The noble draughtsman draws a leaf,
and stops, and says calmly--That leaf is of such and such a character; I
will give him a friend who will entirely suit him: then he considers
what his friend ought to be, and having determined, he draws his friend.
This process may be as quick as lightning when the master is great--one
of the sons of the giants; or it may be slow and timid: but the process
is always gone through, no touch or form is ever added to another by a
good painter without a mental determination and affirmation. But when
the hand has got into a habit, leaf No. 1. necessitates leaf No. 2.; you
cannot stop, your hand is as a horse with the bit in its teeth; or
rather is, for the time, a machine, throwing out leaves to order and
pattern, all alike. You must stop that hand of yours, however painfully;
make it understand that it is not to have its own way any more, that it
shall never more slip from, one touch to another without orders;
otherwise it is not you who are the master, but your fingers. You may
therefore study Harding's drawing, and take pleasure in it;[229] and you
may properly admire the dexterity which applies the habit of the hand
so well, and produces results on the whole so satisfactory: but you
must never copy it, otherwise your progress will be at once arrested.
The utmost you can ever hope to do, would be a sketch in Harding's
manner, but of far inferior dexterity; for he has given his life's toil
to gain his dexterity, and you, I suppose, have other things to work at
besides drawing. You would also incapacitate yourself from ever
understanding what truly great work was, or what Nature was; but by the
earnest and complete study of facts, you will gradually come to
understand the one and love the other more and more, whether you can
draw well yourself or not.
I have yet to say a few words respecting the third law above stated,
that of mystery; the law, namely, that nothing is ever seen perfectly,
but only by fragments, and under various conditions of obscurity.[230]
This last fact renders the visible objects of Nature complete as a type
of the human nature. We have, observe, first, Subordination; secondly,
Individuality; lastly, and this not the least essential character,
Incomprehensibility; a perpetual lesson in every serrated point and
shining vein which escape or deceive our sight among the forest leaves,
how little we may hope to discern clearly, or judge justly, the rents
and veins of the human heart; how much of all that is round us, in men's
actions or spirits, which we at first think we understand, a closer and
more loving watchfulness would show to be full of mystery, never to be
either fathomed or withdrawn.
The expression of this final character in landscape has never been
completely reached by any except Turner; nor can you hope to reach it at
all until you have given much time to the practice of art. Only try
always when you are sketching any object with a view to completion in
light and shade, to draw only those parts of it which you really see
definitely; _preparing_ for the after development of the forms by
chiaroscuro. It is this preparation by isolated touches for a future
arrangement of superimposed light and shade which renders the etchings