The Crown of Wild Olive
spoken for us, not in frightful black letters, nor in dull sentences,
but in fair green and shadowy shapes of waving words, and blossomed
brightness of odoriferous wit, and sweet whispers of unintrusive wisdom,
and playful morality.
Well, I am sorry myself to leave the wood, whatever my reader may be;
but leave it we must, or we shall compose no more pictures to-day.
This law of radiation, then, enforcing unison of action in arising from,
or proceeding to, some given point, is perhaps, of all principles of
composition, the most influential in producing the beauty of groups of
form. Other laws make them forcible or interesting, but this generally
is chief in rendering them beautiful. In the arrangement of masses in
pictures, it is constantly obeyed by the great composers; but, like the
law of principality, with careful concealment of its imperativeness, the
point to which the lines of main curvature are directed being very often
far away out of the picture. Sometimes, however, a system of curves will
be employed definitely to exalt, by their concurrence, the value of some
leading object, and then the law becomes traceable enough.
In the instance before us, the principal object being, as we have seen,
the tower on the bridge, Turner has determined that his system of
curvature should have its origin in the top of this tower. The diagram
Fig. 34. page 369, compared with Fig. 32. page 361, will show how this
is done. One curve joins the two towers, and is continued by the back of
the figure sitting on the bank into the piece of bent timber. This is a
limiting curve of great importance, and Turner has drawn a considerable
part of it with the edge of the timber very carefully, and then led the
eye up to the sitting girl by some white spots and indications of a
ledge in the bank; then the passage to the tops of the towers cannot be
missed.
The next curve is begun and drawn carefully for half an inch of its
course by the rudder; it is then taken up by the basket and the heads of
the figures, and leads accurately to the tower angle. The gunwales of
both the boats begin the next two curves, which meet in the same point;
and all are centralised by the long reflection which continues the
vertical lines.
Subordinated to this first system of curves there is another, begun by
the small crossing bar of wood inserted in the angle behind the rudder;
continued by the bottom of the bank on which the figure sits,
interrupted forcibly beyond it,[255] but taken up again by the
water-line leading to the bridge foot, and passing on in delicate
shadows under the arches, not easily shown in so rude a diagram, towards
the other extremity of the bridge. This is a most important curve,
indicating that the force and sweep of the river have indeed been in old
times under the large arches; while the antiquity of the bridge is told
us by the long tongue of land, either of carted rubbish, or washed down
by some minor stream, which has interrupted this curve, and is now used
as a landing-place for the boats, and for embarkation of merchandise, of
which some bales and bundles are laid in a heap, immediately beneath the
great tower. A common composer would have put these bales to one side or
the other, but Turner knows better; he uses them as a foundation for his
tower, adding to its importance precisely as the sculptured base adorns
a pillar; and he farther increases the aspect of its height by throwing
the reflection of it far down in the nearer water. All the great
composers have this same feeling about sustaining their vertical masses:
you will constantly find Prout using the artifice most dexterously (see,
for instance, the figure with the wheelbarrow under the great tower, in
the sketch of St. Nicolas, at Prague, and the white group of figures
under the tower in the sketch of Augsburg[256]); and Veronese, Titian,
and Tintoret continually put their principal figures at bases of
pillars. Turner found out their secret very early, the most prominent
instance of his composition on this principle being the drawing of Turin
from the Superga, in Hakewell's Italy.
I chose Fig. 20., already given to illustrate foliage drawing, chiefly
because, being another instance of precisely the same arrangement, it
will serve to convince you of its being intentional. There, the
vertical, formed by the larger tree, is continued by the figure of the
farmer, and that of one of the smaller trees by his stick. The lines of
the interior mass of the bushes radiate, under the law of radiation,
from a point behind the farmer's head; but their outline curves are
carried on and repeated, under the law of continuity, by the curves of
the dog and boy--by the way, note the remarkable instance in these of
the use of darkest lines towards the light;--all more or less guiding
the eye up to the right, in order to bring it finally to the Keep of
Windsor, which is the central object of the picture, as the bridge tower
is in the Coblentz. The wall on which the boy climbs answers the purpose
of contrasting, both in direction and character, with these greater
curves; thus corresponding as nearly as possible to the minor tongue of
land in the Coblentz. This, however, introduces us to another law, which
we must consider separately.
6. THE LAW OF CONTRAST.
Of course the character of everything is best manifested by Contrast.
Rest can only be enjoyed after labour; sound, to be heard clearly, must
rise out of silence; light is exhibited by darkness, darkness by light;
and so on in all things. Now in art every colour has an opponent colour,
which, if brought near it, will relieve it more completely than any
other; so, also, every form and line may be made more striking to the
eye by an opponent form or line near them; a curved line is set off by a
straight one, a massy form by a slight one, and so on; and in all good
work nearly double the value, which any given colour or form would have
uncombined, is given to each by contrast.[257]
In this case again, however, a too manifest use of the artifice
vulgarises a picture. Great painters do not commonly, or very visibly,
admit violent contrast. They introduce it by stealth and with
intermediate links of tender change; allowing, indeed, the opposition to
tell upon the mind as a surprise, but not as a shock.[258]
Thus in the rock of Ehrenbreitstein, Fig. 35., the main current of the
lines being downwards, in a convex swell, they are suddenly stopped at
the lowest tower by a counter series of beds, directed nearly straight
across them. This adverse force sets off and relieves the great
curvature, but it is reconciled to it by a series of radiating lines
below, which at first sympathize with the oblique bar, then gradually
get steeper, till they meet and join in the fall of the great curve. No
passage, however intentionally monotonous, is ever introduced by a good
artist without _some_ slight counter current of this kind; so much,
indeed, do the great composers feel the necessity of it, that they will
even do things purposely ill or unsatisfactorily, in order to give
greater value to their well-doing in other places. In a skilful poet's
versification the so-called bad or inferior lines are not inferior
because he could not do them better, but because he feels that if all
were equally weighty, there would be no real sense of weight anywhere;
if all were equally melodious, the melody itself would be fatiguing; and
he purposely introduces the labouring or discordant verse, that the full
ring may be felt in his main sentence, and the finished sweetness in his
chosen rhythm.[259] And continually in painting, inferior artists
destroy their work by giving too much of all that they think is good,
while the great painter gives just enough to be enjoyed, and passes to
an opposite kind of enjoyment, or to an inferior state of enjoyment: he
gives a passage of rich, involved, exquisitely wrought colour, then
passes away into slight, and pale and simple colour; he paints for a
minute or two with intense decision, then suddenly becomes, as the
spectator thinks, slovenly; but he is not slovenly: you could not have
_taken_ any more decision from him just then; you have had as much as is
good for you; he paints over a great space of his picture forms of the
most rounded and melting tenderness, and suddenly, as you think by a
freak, gives you a bit as jagged and sharp as a leafless blackthorn.
Perhaps the most exquisite piece of subtle contrast in the world of
painting is the arrow point, laid sharp against the white side and among
the flowing hair of Correggio's Antiope. It is quite singular how very
little contrast will sometimes serve to make an entire group of forms
interesting which would otherwise have been valueless. There is a good
deal of picturesque material, for instance, in this top of an old tower,
Fig. 48., tiles and stones and sloping roof not disagreeably mingled;
but all would have been unsatisfactory if there had not happened to be
that iron ring on the inner wall, which by its vigorous black
_circular_ line precisely opposes all the square and angular characters
of the battlements and roof. Draw the tower without the ring, and see
what a difference it will make.
One of the most important applications of the law of contrast is in
association with the law of continuity, causing an unexpected but gentle
break in a continuous series. This artifice is perpetual in music, and
perpetual also in good illumination; the way in which little surprises
of change are prepared in any current borders, or chains of ornamental
design, being one of the most subtle characteristics of the work of the
good periods. We take, for instance, a bar of ornament between two
written columns of an early 14th Century MS., and at the first glance we
suppose it to be quite monotonous all the way up, composed of a winding
tendril, with alternately a blue leaf and a scarlet bud. Presently,
however, we see that, in order to observe the law of principality there
is one large scarlet leaf instead of a bud, nearly half-way up, which
forms a centre to the whole rod; and when we begin to examine the order
of the leaves, we find it varied carefully. Let A stand for scarlet bud,
_b_ for blue leaf, _c_ for two blue leaves on one stalk, _s_ for a stalk
without a leaf, and R for the large red leaf. Then counting from the
ground, the order begins as follows:
_b_, _b_, A; _b_, _s_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, A; and we think we
shall have two _b_'s and an A all the way, when suddenly it becomes _b_,
A; _b_, R; _b_, A; _b_, A; _b_, A; and we think we are going to have
_b_, A continued; but no: here it becomes _b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _b_, A;
_b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _c_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; and we think we are
surely going to have _b_, _s_ continued, but behold it runs away to the
end with a quick _b_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, _b_, _b_![260] Very often,
however, the designer is satisfied with _one_ surprise, but I never saw
a good illuminated border without one at least; and no series of any
kind is ever introduced by a great composer in a painting without a snap
somewhere. There is a pretty one in Turner's drawing of Rome, with the
large balustrade for a foreground in the Hakewell's Italy series: the
single baluster struck out of the line, and showing the street below
through the gap, simply makes the whole composition right, when
otherwise, it would have been stiff and absurd.
If you look back to Fig. 48. you will see, in the arrangement of the
battlements, a simple instance of the use of such variation. The whole
top of the tower, though actually three sides of a square, strikes the
eye as a continuous series of five masses. The first two, on the left,
somewhat square and blank; then the next two higher and richer, the