A Child's Guide to Pictures

by Charles H. Caffin

We have said so much about the artist working for a harmony of colors, that I ought to warn you that you will not see color harmonies in all pictures. For a great many painters are not colorists. Bouguereau, for example, was interested chiefly in form. If he represented a young girl, drawing water from a well, he painted her flesh pink; her dress, perhaps, blue; the stone-work of the wall, gray; the wood work of the bucket, brown; and, if there was a bush in the picture, of course, painted it green. His only purpose in choosing this color or that color was to represent the general appearances of the figure and other objects. He only saw color, never felt it. He never even saw it, as it really is; or he would hardly have painted all his girls and women the same kind of pinky or creamy china-color. In fact, color to him was quite unimportant. If he could draw the girl beautifully he was satisfied. So it is beautiful form we must look for in his pictures; the color does not count.

Then there is another kind of painter; Vibert, for example, whose pictures were popular in this country. He liked to paint a cardinal in a scarlet cassock, either in or out of doors. The scarlet makes a big bright spot in the pictures. Vibert was evidently fond of color; but in a very crude or unrefined sort of way. He had the primitive man’s or child’s fondness for gay or brilliant hues; and since there are many people with the same child-like instinct, he sold his pictures easily. He too, for the most part only saw color. Or, if he felt it at all, only in the very simple way of liking one color better than another. Color never stirred in him deep feelings. He never felt it as a musician feels sound. He never wove the related colors into a harmony. He was a gay painter, but not a colorist.

I wonder whether you are beginning to understand the difference? What I have said may help to point the way to an understanding, but no amount of reading can make you feel the beauty of color, or enter into the feelings of an artist who is a colorist; and enjoy his work. This you can only do for yourself by using your own eyes. Nor do I mean by this that you should now and then look at a picture, or once in a while open your eyes to the beauty of nature. What I suggest is that you should get into the habit of keeping your eyes open to the beauty of the world. If you do, you will have your reward. And the more you watch out for beauty, and so train your feeling and taste, the more you will discover beauty in unexpected directions. Especially you will find that some of the most beautiful color harmonies are made up of colors, that a little while ago you would not have felt to be beautiful.

It is not difficult, for example, to enjoy the beauty of nature’s coloring when the sun is shining brightly. But, because it is so easy, some painters who are colorists will not care to represent it in their pictures. They will wait for what they call a gray day—when the sun is hidden behind clouds of mist. Or, like Corot, they will prefer the early morning or late evening, when the sky is very pale, and the colors of nature are very subdued. Or, like Whistler, who painted The White Girl, a girl in white, standing on a white rug in front of a white wall, they will choose some subject in which the difference between the colors is very slight. In a word they are looking, not for splendid but for subtle harmonies. Those grand Venetian colorists of the Sixteenth Century, Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese, and the great Flemish colorist of the Seventeenth Century, Peter Paul Rubens, for the most part gloried in harmonies of splendour, Velasquez, however, Rubens’s contemporary, whose life was spent in the service of Philip IV of Spain, proved himself to be one of the world’s greatest colorists by the soberness and subtlety of his harmonies. A large part of his work consisted in painting the portraits of the King, the Royal Family, and the chief State officers. The taste of the Court was opposed to bright colored costumes; indeed the prevailing colors were black and gray, with occasional touches of relief, such as blue or pale rose. Yet out of these few colors he made wonderful harmonies. To his sensitive eye a black cloak was not a mass of thick darkness. As the light shone upon the various surfaces at different angles, he discovered all sorts of nuances, as the French say, or

Prince Balthazar Carlos. Velasquez.

shades and degrees of lighter and darker black, in fact, a scale of tints out of which he composed a harmony. It was the same way with the grays and drabs. We often call these neutral colors, by which we mean that there is no particular color in them. But Velasquez did not look at grays and drabs in this way. Having to paint them he searched them for possibilities of beauty, and found them in the nuances, occasioned by the action of light. And out of the scale of these nuances he composed harmonies.

To these nuances artists have given a name—values. We know the ordinary use of the word. It represents the relation of something to a certain fixed standard. Thus, we take a dollar as a standard; and say the value of this knife is fifty cents, or of that two dollars. These knives differ in value; or, on the other hand, we may have two or more knives that correspond in value. Or, again, if some of you are arranging a picnic as a Dutch treat, one of the party may undertake to bring ten cents’ worth of eggs, another ten cents’ worth of crackers, and so on. Though every one of twenty boys and girls brings something different, the value of each contribution is the same.