Lectures on Landscape
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John Ruskin >> Lectures on Landscape
49. See, then, how the picture divides itself. In the fleshly
baseness, brutality and stupidity of its main conception, is the Dutch
part of it; that is Rubens' own. In the noble drawing of the dead body
and of the birds you have the Phidias-Greek part of it, brought down
to Rubens through Michael Angelo. In the embroidery of Juno's robe you
have the Daedalus-Greek part of it, brought down to Rubens through
Veronese. In the head of Iris you have the pure Northern-Gothic part
of it, brought down to Rubens through Giorgione and Titian.
50. Now, though--even if we had given ten minutes of digression--the
lessons in this picture would have been well worth it, I have not, in
taking you to it, gone out of my own way. There is a special point for
us to observe in those dark peacocks. If you look at the notes on the
Venetian pictures in the end of my "Stones of Venice," you will find
it especially dwelt upon as singular that Tintoret, in his picture of
"The Nativity," has a peacock without any color in it. And the reason
of it is also that Tintoret belongs, with the full half of his mind,
as Rubens does, to the Greek school. But the two men reach the same
point by opposite paths. Tintoret begins with what Venice taught him,
and adopted what Athens could teach: but Rubens begins with Athens,
and adopts from Venice. Now if you will look back to my fifth
Lecture[9] you will find it said that the colorists can always adopt
as much chiaroscuro as suits them, and so become perfect; but the
chiaroscurists cannot, on their part, adopt color, except partially.
And accordingly, whenever Tintoret chooses, he can laugh Rubens to
scorn in management of light and shade; but Rubens only here and
there--as far as I know myself, only this once--touches Tintoret or
Giorgione in color.
[Footnote 9: "Lectures on Art" (the Inaugural Course, 1870), Sec. 138.]
51. But now observe farther. The Greek chiaroscuro, I have just told
you, is by one body of men pursued academically, as a means of
expressing form; by another, tragically, as a mystery of light and
shade, corresponding to--and forming part of--the joy and sorrow of
life. You may, of course, find the two purposes mingled: but pure
formal chiaroscuro--Marc Antonio's and Leonardo's--is inconsistent
with color, and though it is thoroughly necessary as an exercise, it
is only as a correcting and guarding one, never as a basis of art.
52. Let me be sure, now, that you thoroughly understand the relation
of formal shade to color. Here is an egg; here, a green cluster of
leaves; here, a bunch of black grapes. In formal chiaroscuro, all
these are to be considered as white, and drawn as if they were carved
in marble. In the engraving of "Melancholy," what I meant by telling
you it was in formal chiaroscuro was that the ball is white, the
leaves are white, the dress is white; you can't tell what color any of
these stand for. On the contrary, to a colorist the first question
about everything is its color. Is this a white thing, a green thing,
or a blue thing? down must go my touch of white, green, or dark blue
first of all; if afterwards I can make them look round, or like fruit
and leaves, it's all very well; but if I can't, blue or green they at
least shall be.
53. Now here you have exactly the thing done by the two masters we are
speaking of. Here is a copy of Turner's vignette of "Martigny." This
is wholly a design of the colored school. Here is a bit of vine in the
foreground with purple grapes; the grapes, so far from being drawn as
round, are struck in with angular flat spots; but they are vividly
purple spots, their whole vitality and use in the design is in their
Tyrian nature. Here, on the contrary, is Duerer's "Flight into Egypt,"
with grapes and palm fruit above. Both are white; but both engraved so
as to look thoroughly round.
54. All the other great chiaroscurists whom I named to you--Reynolds,
Velasquez, and Titian--approached their shadow also on the safe
side--from Venice: they always think of color first. But Turner had to
work his way out of the dark Greek school up to Venice; he always
thinks of his shadow first; and it held him in some degree fatally to
the end. Those pictures which you all laughed at were not what you
fancied, mad endeavors for color; they were agonizing Greek efforts to
get light. He could have got color easily enough if he had rested in
that; which I will show you in next Lecture. Still, he so nearly made
himself a Venetian that, as opposed to the Dutch academical
chiaroscurists, he is to be considered a Venetian altogether. And now
I will show you, in a very simple subject, the exact opposition of the
two schools.
55. Here is a study of swans, from a Dutch book of academical
instruction in Rubens' time. It is a good and valuable book in many
ways, and you are going to have some copies set you from it. But as a
type of academical chiaroscuro it will give you most valuable lessons
on the other side--of warning.
Here, then, is the academical Dutchman's notion of a swan. He has
laboriously engraved every feather, and has rounded the bird into a
ball; and has thought to himself that never swan has been so engraved
before. But he has never with his Dutch eyes perceived two points in a
swan which are vital to it: first, that it is white; and, secondly,
that it is graceful. He has above all things missed the proportion,
and necessarily therefore the bend of its neck.
56. Now take the colorist's view of the matter. To him the first main
facts about the swan are that it is a white thing with black spots.
Turner takes one brush in his right hand, with a little white in it;
another in his left hand, with a little lampblack. He takes a piece of
brown paper, works for about two minutes with his white brush, passes
the black to his right hand, and works half a minute with that, and,
there you are!
You would like to be able to draw two swans in two minutes and a half
yourselves. Perhaps so, and I can show you how; but it will need
twenty years' work all day long. First, in the meantime, you must draw
them rightly, if it takes two hours instead of two minutes; and, above
all, remember that they are black and white.
57. But farther: you see how intensely Turner felt precisely what the
Fleming did not feel--the bend of the neck. Now this is not because
Turner is a colorist, as opposed to the Fleming; but because he is a
pure and highly trained Greek, as opposed to the Fleming's low Greek.
Both, so far as they are aiming at form, are now working in the Greek
school of Phidias; but Turner is true Greek, for he is thinking only
of the truth about the swan; and De Wit is pseudo-Greek, for he is
thinking not of the swan at all, but of his own Dutch self. And so he
has ended in making, with his essentially piggish nature, this
sleeping swan's neck as nearly as possible like a leg of pork.
That is the result of academical work, in the hands of a vulgar
person.
58. And now I will ask you to look carefully at three more pictures in
the London Exhibition.
The first, "The Nativity," by Sandro Botticelli.[10] It is an early
work by him; but a quite perfect example of what the masters of the
pure Greek school did in Florence.
[Footnote 10: Now in the National Gallery, No. 1034.]
One of the Greek main characters, you know, is to be [Greek:
aprosopos], faceless. If you look first at the faces in this picture
you will find them ugly--often without expression, always ill or
carelessly drawn. The entire purpose of the picture is a mystic
symbolism by motion and chiaroscuro. By motion, first. There is a dome
of burning clouds in the upper heaven. Twelve angels half float, half
dance, in a circle, round the lower vault of it. All their drapery is
drifted so as to make you feel the whirlwind of their motion. They are
seen by gleams of silvery or fiery light, relieved against an equally
lighted blue of inimitable depth and loveliness.
It is impossible for you ever to see a more noble work of passionate
Greek chiaroscuro--rejoicing in light. From this I should like you to
go instantly to Rembrandt's "Portrait of a Burgomaster" (No. 77 in the
Exhibition of Old Masters).
59. That is ignobly passionate chiaroscuro, rejoicing in darkness
rather than light.
You cannot see a finer work by Rembrandt. It has all his power of
rendering character, and the portrait is celebrated through the world.
But it is entirely second-rate work. The character in the face is only
striking to persons who like candle-light effects better than
sunshine; any head by Titian has twice the character, and seen by
daylight instead of gas. The rest of the picture is as false in light
and shade as it is pretentious, made up chiefly of gleaming buttons in
places where no light could possibly reach them; and of an embossed
belt on the shoulder, which people think finely painted because it is
all over lumps of color, not one of which was necessary. That embossed
execution of Rembrandt's is just as much ignorant work as the embossed
projecting jewels of Carlo Crivelli; a real painter never loads (see
the Velasquez, No. 415 in the same exhibition).
60. Finally, from the Rembrandt go to the little Cima (No. 93), "St.
Mark." Thus you have the Sandro Botticelli, of the noble Greek school
in Florence; the Rembrandt, of the debased Greek school in Holland;
and the Cima, of the pure color school of Venice.
The Cima differs from the Rembrandt, by being lovely; from the
Botticelli, by being simple and calm. The painter does not desire the
excitement of rapid movement, nor even the passion of beautiful light.
But he hates darkness as he does death; and falsehood more than
either. He has painted a noble human creature simply in clear
daylight; not in rapture, nor yet in agony. He is dressed neither in a
rainbow, nor bedraggled with blood. You are neither to be alarmed nor
entertained by anything that is likely to happen to him. You are not
to be improved by the piety of his expression, nor disgusted by its
truculence. But there is more true mastery of light and shade, if your
eye is subtle enough to see it, in the hollows and angles of the
architecture and folds of the dress, than in all the etchings of
Rembrandt put together. The unexciting color will not at first delight
you; but its charm will never fail; and from all the works of
variously strained and obtrusive power with which it is surrounded,
you will find that you never return to it but with a sense of relief
and of peace, which can only be given you by the tender skill which is
wholly without pretense, without pride, and without error.
III.
COLOR.
61. The distinctions between schools of art which I have so often
asked you to observe are, you must be aware, founded only on the
excess of certain qualities in one group of painters over another, or
the difference in their tendencies; and not in the absolute possession
by one group, and absence in the rest, of any given skill. But this
impossibility of drawing trenchant lines of parting need never
interfere with the distinctness of our conception of the opponent
principles which balance each other in great minds, or paralyze each
other in weak ones; and I cannot too often urge you to keep clearly
separate in your thoughts the school which I have called[11] "of
Crystal," because its distinctive virtue is seen unaided in the sharp
separations and prismatic harmonies of painted glass, and the other,
the "School of Clay," because its distinctive virtue is seen in the
qualities of any fine work in uncolored terra cotta, and in every
drawing which represents them.
[Footnote 11: "Lectures on Art, 1870," Sec. 185.]
62. You know I sometimes speak of these generally as the Gothic and
Greek schools, sometimes as the colorist and chiaroscurist. All these
oppositions are liable to infinite qualification and gradation, as
between species of animals; and you must not be troubled, therefore,
if sometimes momentary contradictions seem to arise in examining
special points. Nay, the modes of opposition in the greatest men are
inlaid and complex; difficult to explain, though in themselves clear.
Thus you know in your study of sculpture we saw that the essential aim
of the Greek art was tranquil action; the chief aim of Gothic art
was passionate rest, a peace, an eternity of intense sentiment. As I
go into detail, I shall continually therefore have to oppose Gothic
passion to Greek temperance; yet Gothic rigidity, [Greek: stasis] of
[Greek: ekstasis], to Greek action and [Greek: eleutheria]. You see
how doubly, how intimately, opposed the ideas are; yet how difficult
to explain without apparent contradiction.
63. Now, to-day, I must guard you carefully against a misapprehension
of this kind. I have told you that the Greeks as Greeks made real and
material what was before indefinite; they turned the clouds and the
lightning of Mount Ithome into the human flesh and eagle upon the
extended arm of the Messenian Zeus. And yet, being in all things set
upon absolute veracity and realization, they perceive as they work and
think forward that to see in all things truly is to see in all things
dimly and through hiding of cloud and fire.
So that the schools of Crystal, visionary, passionate, and fantastic
in purpose, are, in method, trenchantly formal and clear; and the
schools of Clay, absolutely realistic, temperate, and simple in
purpose, are, in method, mysterious and soft; sometimes licentious,
sometimes terrific, and always obscure.
[Illustration: MADONNA AND CHILD.
From the painting by Filippo Lippi.]
64. Look once more at this Greek dancing-girl, which is from a terra
cotta, and therefore intensely of the school of Clay; look at her
beside this Madonna of Filippo Lippi's: Greek motion against Gothic
absolute quietness; Greek indifference--dancing careless--against
Gothic passion, the mother's--what word can I use except frenzy of
love; Greek fleshliness against hungry wasting of the self-forgetful
body; Greek softness of diffused shadow and ductile curve, against
Gothic lucidity of color and acuteness of angle; and Greek simplicity
and cold veracity against Gothic rapture of trusted vision.
65. And now I may safely, I think, go into our work of to-day without
confusing you, except only in this. You will find me continually
speaking of four men--Titian, Holbein, Turner, and Tintoret--in
almost the same terms. They unite every quality; and sometimes you
will find me referring to them as colorists, sometimes as
chiaroscurists. Only remember this, that Holbein and Turner are Greek
chiaroscurists, nearly perfect by adopted color; Titian and Tintoret
are essentially Gothic colorists, quite perfect by adopted
chiaroscuro.
66. I used the word "prismatic" just now of the schools of Crystal, as
being iridescent. By being studious of color they are studious of
division; and while the chiaroscurist devotes himself to the
representation of degrees of force in one thing--unseparated light,
the colorists have for their function the attainment of beauty by
arrangement of the divisions of light. And therefore, primarily, they
must be able to divide; so that elementary exercises in color must be
directed, like first exercises in music, to the clear separation of
notes; and the final perfections of color are those in which, of
innumerable notes or hues, every one has a distinct office, and can be
fastened on by the eye, and approved, as fulfilling it.
67. I do not doubt that it has often been matter of wonder among any
of you who had faith in my judgment, why I gave to the University, as
characteristic of Turner's work, the simple and at first unattractive
drawings of the Loire series. My first and principal reason was that
they enforced beyond all resistance, on any student who might attempt
to copy them, this method of laying portions of distinct hue side by
side. Some of the touches, indeed, when the tint has been mixed with
much water, have been laid in little drops or ponds, so that the
pigment might crystallize hard at the edge. And one of the chief
delights which any one who really enjoys painting finds in that art as
distinct from sculpture is in this exquisite inlaying or joiner's work
of it, the fitting of edge to edge with a manual skill precisely
correspondent to the close application of crowded notes without the
least slur, in fine harp or piano playing.
68. In many of the finest works of color on a large scale there is
even some admission of the quality given to a painted window by the
dark lead bars between the pieces of glass. Both Tintoret and
Veronese, when they paint on dark grounds, continually stop short with
their tints just before they touch others, leaving the dark ground
showing between in a narrow bar. In the Paul Veronese in the National
Gallery, you will every here and there find pieces of outline, like
this of Holbein's; which you would suppose were drawn, as that is,
with a brown pencil. But no! Look close, and you will find they are
the dark ground, _left_ between two tints brought close to each other
without touching.
[Illustration: THE LADY WITH THE BROOCH.
From the painting by Reynolds.]
69. It follows also from this law of construction that any master who
can color can always do any pane of his window that he likes,
separately from the rest. Thus, you see, here is one of Sir Joshua's
first sittings: the head is very nearly done with the first color; a
piece of background is put in round it: his sitter has had a pretty
silver brooch on, which Reynolds, having done as much as he chose to
the face for that time, paints quietly in its place below, leaving the
dress between to be fitted in afterwards; and he puts a little patch
of the yellow gown that is to be, at the side. And it follows also
from this law of construction that there must never be any hesitation
or repentance in the direction of your lines of limit. So that not
only in the beautiful dexterity of the joiner's work, but in the
necessity of cutting out each piece of color at once and forever (for,
though you can correct an erroneous junction of black and white
because the gray between has the nature of either, you cannot correct
an erroneous junction of red and green which make a neutral between
them, if they overlap, that is neither red nor green): thus the
practice of color educates at once in neatness of hand and
distinctness of will; so that, as I wrote long ago in the third volume
of "Modern Painters," you are always safe if you hold the hand of a
colorist.
70. I have brought you a little sketch to-day from the foreground of a
Venetian picture, in which there is a bit that will show you this
precision of method. It is the head of a parrot with a little flower
in his beak from a picture of Carpaccio's, one of his series of the
Life of St. George. I could not get the curves of the leaves, and they
are patched and spoiled; but the parrot's head, however badly done, is
put down with no more touches than the Venetian gave it, and it will
show you exactly his method. First, a thin, warm ground had been laid
over the whole canvas, which Carpaccio wanted as an under-current
through all the color, just as there is an under-current of gray in
the Loire drawings. Then on this he strikes his parrot in vermilion,
almost flat color; rounding a little only with a glaze of lake; but
attending mainly to get the character of the bird by the pure outline
of its form, as if it were cut out of a piece of ruby glass.
Then he comes to the beak of it. The brown ground beneath is left, for
the most part; one touch of black is put for the hollow; two delicate
lines of dark gray define the outer curve; and one little quivering
touch of white draws the inner edge of the mandible. There are just
four touches--fine as the finest penmanship--to do that beak; and yet
you will find that in the peculiar paroquettish mumbling and nibbling
action of it, and all the character in which this nibbling beak
differs from the tearing beak of the eagle, it is impossible to go
farther or be more precise. And this is only an incident, remember, in
a large picture.
71. Let me notice, in passing, the infinite absurdity of ever hanging
Venetian pictures above the line of sight. There are very few persons
in the room who will be able to see the drawing of this bird's beak
without a magnifying-glass; yet it is ten to one that in any modern
gallery such a picture would be hung thirty feet from the ground.
Here, again, is a little bit to show Carpaccio's execution. It is his
signature: only a little wall-lizard, holding the paper in its mouth,
perfect; yet so small that you can scarcely see its feet, and that I
could not, with my finest-pointed brush, copy their stealthy action.
72. And now, I think, the members of my class will more readily
pardon the intensely irksome work I put them to, with the compasses
and the ruler. Measurement and precision are, with me, before all
things; just because, though myself trained wholly in the chiaroscuro
schools, I know the value of color; and I want you to begin with color
in the very outset, and to see everything as children would see it.
For, believe me, the final philosophy of art can only ratify their
opinion that the beauty of a cock robin is to be red, and of a
grass-plot to be green; and the best skill of art is in instantly
seizing on the manifold deliciousness of light, which you can only
seize by precision of instantaneous touch. Of course, I cannot do so
myself; yet in these sketches of mine, made for the sake of color,
there is enough to show you the nature and the value of the method.
They are two pieces of study of the color of marble architecture, the
tints literally "edified," and laid edge to edge as simply on the
paper as the stones are on the walls.
73. But please note in them one thing especially. The testing rule I
gave for good color in the "Elements of Drawing," is that you make the
white precious and the black conspicuous. Now you will see in these
studies that the moment the white is inclosed properly, and harmonized
with the other hues, it becomes somehow more precious and pearly than
the white paper; and that I am not afraid to leave a whole field of
untreated white paper all round it, being sure that even the little
diamonds in the round window will tell as jewels, if they are gradated
justly.
Again, there is not a touch of black in any shadow, however deep, of
these two studies; so that, if I chose to put a piece of black near
them, it would be conspicuous with a vengeance.
But in this vignette, copied from Turner, you have the two principles
brought out perfectly. You have the white of foaming water, of
buildings and clouds, brought out brilliantly from a white ground; and
though part of the subject is in deep shadow the eye at once catches
the one black point admitted in front.
74. Well, the first reason that I gave you these Loire drawings was
this of their infallible decision; the second was their extreme
modesty in color. They are, beyond all other works that I know
existing, dependent for their effect on low, subdued tones; their
favorite choice in time of day being either dawn or twilight, and even
their brightest sunsets produced chiefly out of gray paper. This last,
the loveliest of all, gives the warmth of a summer twilight with a
tinge of color on the gray paper so slight that it may be a question
with some of you whether any is there. And I must beg you to observe,
and receive as a rule without any exception, that whether color be gay
or sad the value of it depends never on violence, but always on
subtlety. It may be that a great colorist will use his utmost force of
color, as a singer his full power of voice; but, loud or low, the
virtue is in both cases always in refinement, never in loudness. The
west window of Chartres is bedropped with crimson deeper than blood;
but it is as soft as it is deep, and as quiet as the light of dawn.
75. I say, "whether color be gay or sad." It must, remember, be one or
the other. You know I told you that the pure Gothic school of color
was entirety cheerful; that, as applied to landscape, it assumes that
all nature is lovely, and may be clearly seen; that destruction and
decay are accidents of our present state, never to be thought of
seriously, and, above all things, never to be painted; but that
whatever is orderly, healthy, radiant, fruitful and beautiful, is to
be loved with all our hearts and painted with all our skill.
76. I told you also that no complete system of art for either natural
history or landscape could be formed on this system; that the wrath of
a wild beast, and the tossing of a mountain torrent are equally
impossible to a painter of the purist school; that in higher fields of
thought increasing knowledge means increasing sorrow, and every art
which has complete sympathy with humanity must be chastened by the
sight and oppressed by the memory of pain. But there is no reason why
your system of study should be a complete one, if it be right and
profitable though incomplete. If you can find it in your hearts to
follow out only the Gothic thoughts of landscape, I deeply wish you
would, and for many reasons.