Paysage. J. B. C. Corot.
CHAPTER XII
FORM AND COLOR
WHEN we began to speak about composition we continually used the words “line and form.” Gradually, however, as we left the subject of formal composition and talked of naturalistic composition, we found ourselves substituting the words “colored masses.”
It would seem then as if there were a distinction between these two things; that form was on one side of the fence and color on the other. Yet that would contradict our experience; for we know that everything which has a form or shape, visible to the eye, has also color that we can see. And most things that have color are seen to have a shape or form. Not all; for example, when the sky is a cloudless blue, or when we gaze over a distant expanse of sea. Still, as a general experience, color and form are identical. The face of a friend—you recognise it by its color as well as by the form of the features; and, should you have the sorrow of looking upon that face when it is dead, the change in the color would make you recognise the once familiar features as strangely different.
Yet, notwithstanding the identity of form and color, we find a certain separation between the two, when we come to study pictures. The reason is that some artists are more sensitive to form, others to color. As I have already said, an artist paints only the particular impression of an object which his eye receives. Every eye has its own particular way of seeing. Even the eye, most sensitive to form, will not see it as other eyes will; nor will any one color seem the same to every eye that is chiefly interested in color. This is only another way of saying that the varieties in nature are inexhaustible. Nevertheless, although no two elm trees are exactly alike, all elm trees are sufficiently similar to be recognised at once as elm trees. So with artists, some group themselves as painters of form; others, of color. In the old Italian days this distinction separated the artists of Florence from those of Venice. The Florentines—Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, among the greatest—were masters of form; the Venetians, especially in the persons of Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese, were masters of color. The one group saw especially the shapes of things, the other saw the world as an arrangement of spots or masses of color.
The Florentines, in consequence of their interest in form, took great pains with the outlines of their figures. The outlines were clearly defined; in the mural paintings the figures were enclosed by an actual line; and always the figure shows distinctly against the background. For, having drawn the figure very carefully, the artist did not let the color, that was afterwards laid on, lap over the line or interfere with the subtle undulations of the outline. They were in fact, a school of great draughtsmen, who relied principally on the beauty and vigor of the drawing. The Venetians, however, were great colorists, relying on color; and may be spoken of as painters rather than draughtsmen. Yet they too, of course, were masters of drawing. They could represent the action of the figure as well as the Florentines, but unlike the latter, did not care for the clear outline. On the contrary, they softened or blurred the outline slightly, in closer imitation of nature.
If, for example, you look carefully at a tree, you will not find that its shape is enclosed by a hard line. The light creeps round the edges of the trunk and of the masses of foliage in such a way that the outlines are softened or slightly blurred. It is the same with a figure seated in a room; here and there its edges may seem sharply cut out against the background, but in other parts the edges will seem to melt into the background. In other words, as we look at the figure, what we are most conscious of is not its outline, but its mass of color in relation to the other masses of color that surround it.
Now, this distinction, between the way in which the Florentines and the Venetians saw and represented objects, still appears in modern art. In fact, ever since the days of the great Italians there have been artists who relied on drawing and artists who relied on color. For over a hundred years the importance of drawing has been upheld by the great school of art in Paris maintained by the French government. One of its famous teachers, Ingres, used to tell his pupils “form is everything, color is nothing.” Perhaps he only meant by this that, as long as they were pupils, the only necessary thing for them to think about and learn to represent was form. Because to draw well is so important for any artist, and it is a thing that can be thoroughly taught and learned. The French school takes as its standard of excellence the perfect forms of classic sculpture and the great works of the Florentine artists. Although the student may be drawing from a living model whose form is not perfect, he is taught to correct the imperfections of this or that part, in order that the figure, as it appears in his drawing, may be as near as he can get it to classic perfection. But color, as we shall see presently, is so much a matter of each person’s feeling, that it is impossible to reduce the teaching of it to any method or standard. So perhaps that is what Ingres had in mind. He meant that, for the time being, his students should consider form to be everything, color nothing.
On the other hand it is generally understood that he meant much more than this, that he was telling his pupils what he himself considered to be the whole duty of an artist. Let us try and enter into his point of view.