A Child's Guide to Pictures

by Charles H. Caffin

The reason is that the school in Paris which teaches these principles of painting is maintained by the Academy of the Fine Arts; and its example has been followed by many other European Academies of painting. So, when we speak of a picture being Academic in character, we mean that its motive and manner of painting follow the rules laid down by the schools. To repeat a word we have frequently used before, they are based on the Academic Formula. Previously it was the Classic formula of which we spoke. This, you remember was the rule or plan for building up a formal composition, sometimes strengthened by the introduction of classic architecture and often representing some scene or story of classic legend. And it is upon this classic formula that the Academic practice is largely based. So when a modern artist paints a picture after the fashion of Raphael’s Jurisprudence, we can speak of its manner and motive as being Academic, Classic, or Idealistic. Sometimes, in fact, the meaning of these words is practically the same, but not always.

For at times an Academic painter will choose an everyday subject of ordinary life, yet his picture will not be naturalistic. There are two ways in which he may miss the truth of nature. Either he will try to improve upon the actual facts, or he will leave out the light and atmosphere in which the objects appear in nature. We may find examples of both these contradictions of the natural truth in Leutze’s picture. He was trained in the Academy of Düsseldorf, a city on the Rhine; at a time when that school had abandoned Classical subjects for incidents from history, or scenes from German legends, or what it called genre-pictures of peasant life. But these last were not genre in the sense that the old Dutch pictures were. For the latter reproduced the actual habits and life of the times, whereas the Düsseldorf artists presented fancy pictures in which the peasants were grouped, as if they were taking part in some scene in an opera or other theatrical performance. This artificial treatment appears in Washington Crossing the Delaware.

It is supposed to represent a historical incident. Do you think it has the value of history; that the incident really happened as it is here depicted? The artist, of course, was not present; he was compelled to shape the facts of the incident according to what he had read about them, or, as I rather suspect, according to what his fancy had pictured them. History tells us that the crossing began early in the evening of December 25, 1776, and lasted until four a.m. the following morning. Does this picture represent the dimness of a winter twilight, much less the gloom of night? I might ask the further question, is any kind of natural light suggested in this picture? I feel confident the answer is “no.” Leutze probably had no thought of representing this aspect of the truth; the Düsseldorf School paid no attention to the real appearances of light; or to the effect that light would have upon the appearance of the figures. Their outlines are sharply defined; every figure is rendered with about equal distinctness; no effort has been made to represent them in relation to one another, with varying degrees of clearness and obscurity. A similar artificiality appears in the representation of the ice. It is true the lights and shadows and gleam of the surfaces of real ice have been studied; so that the painting conveys the idea of ice; but this is a very different thing from the painted blocks representing the effects of real ice, as seen in real light.

So we find that Leutze, though wishing to give us a vivid representation of the incident, has neglected a number of important facts relating to the hour of the occurrence and to the conditions of atmosphere and light, as they must have affected the appearance of the scene. He was simply not interested in these matters. Then, what of the point on which he evidently relied—the grouping of the figures in the foreground? It is a ticklish job to pull a boat through a mass of floating ice-cakes.

Washington Crossing the Delaware. Emanuel Leutze.

(Property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

Do you think that Washington and the flag-bearer would have increased the difficulty and peril by standing up? Don’t you know that to stand up in a boat even on smooth water is a foolhardy thing to do? It is a frequent cause of accident and loss of life in pleasure parties. On an occasion so serious as this would the leader have been guilty of such folly? Certainly not. Washington and every man, not actually engaged in navigating the boat, would have been sitting low down, so as to help preserve the balance and offer as little resistance as possible to the wind. Here, then, is another indifference to facts in this so-called historic picture. But Leutze did not care about facts. His motive was to bring out the heroic character of the events. So he made Washington strike a heroic attitude. It is the way in which a popular actor takes the center of the stage and strikes an attitude and waits for the applause. Leutze wanted a central figure around which to build up his composition and, in order to support the central figure, reared another behind it holding aloft the flag. Thus he wins applause, at once, for the star actor and the patriotic sentiment of the scene. In fact his composition is similar in intention and arrangement to the grouping of figures on the stage of a popular theater. It is theatrical. I do not say dramatic, but theatrical, between which two ideas there is this distinction. When we speak of a scene being dramatic we mean that the action of the plot has been vividly expressed by means that create an illusion of truth—that the characters behave as they might be expected to do in real life under the circumstances. By theatrical, on the other hand, we imply that the behaviour of the actors, instead of “holding the mirror up to nature,” is regulated so as to produce an artificial effectiveness. Such a scene we call theatrical, or stagey. And the same words, in my opinion, can be applied to this picture. For Leutze failed to realise, not only that truth may be stronger than fiction, but also that it may be more impressive than artificial effectiveness. The true word spoken in simple earnestness, the true act done simply, often move men’s imagination, where loud rhetoric and ostentatious conduct leave it cold. So, too, in a picture, a deeper sentiment may be aroused by simple truth of representation, than by a display of mock heroics.