Light and Shade. George Inness.
ocean. We cannot see its particles, but we do see the light reflected from them; and, I suppose, it is the differences in the appearances of the lighted reflections that make us conscious of the stillness or movement of the atmosphere on days when there is no wind. We need not be very sensitive to nature to notice these differences of the atmosphere at different seasons of the year; how, on certain winter days, the air seems absolutely motionless; while on other days it seems alert and sprightly; how in early spring it seems astir with gentle life, while in summer or autumn it may be alive with animation or heavy with drowsy languor.
The motionless air of winter has been rendered with marvellous truth by John H. Twachtman; the stir of spring by Dwight W. Tryon; the active air of summer by Childe Hassam, and its languorous drowsiness by George Inness. All these are American artists, whom I mention only as examples. For much of the beauty of modern art, both American and foreign, is due to the sensitive rendering of the variations in the atmosphere. For, the best artists now-a-days are not satisfied to paint the features of nature only; they aim to depict the varying expressions on her face. And the chief cause, as I have said, of these variations is the constant change in the conditions of the lighted atmosphere.
CHAPTER XVI
COLOR (Continued)—TONE
WE shall frequently hear the words tone, tonal, tonality, applied to pictures. People say, for example, this picture is rich in tone; that has fine tonal qualities; another has a delicate tonality. It is rather difficult to explain what these words mean, for they do not seem to be used in the same way by everybody. However, let us try.
It is clearly a word derived from music, where its meaning is more definite. We speak of a piano’s tone, by which we mean that, though it sounds the same notes as another piano, the quality of the sounds differs. We shall be using the word quality often in the present chapter, so let us be sure we understand its meaning. It is from the Latin word qualis, which means of what kind. Of what kind is this piece of dress goods; what is its quality, compared with another piece, at first sight similar? Is it all wool, for example, while the other is cotton mixture? Is it softer, while the other is harder and drier? Will the one stand washing, while the other will shrink? Similarly, when the same note is struck on two pianos the tone of one may be rich, mellow, resonant, while that of the other is thin, raw, and metallic.
Why is the tone superior? You know, I suppose, that when a piano string is struck it vibrates. That is to say, it ceases to be a straight line, and becomes agitated into a series of waves. In order to increase the volume of the sound a thin layer of wood, called the sound board, is placed beneath the strings. As the string vibrates, this board vibrates in sympathy, and so the volume of sound is increased and enriched. Now the least thing may disturb the perfection of this sympathetic vibration. Accordingly, the superiority of the one piano is due to the fact that all its parts are of finer make and material, and are more perfectly adjusted to one another. They are in so perfect a relation, that there is no jar in any part, and thus the body of the instrument is a united whole.
The tone of the piano, then, is due to the perfect relation existing between the parts of the piano. Applying this idea to a picture: it would seem that tone is the result of all the colors being so perfectly related to one another, that the vibration or rhythm of the whole color-harmony is increased.
Now this is certainly, in a general way, the meaning of the word tone. So, although the word itself is new to you, the idea contained in it is not. We have talked a good deal about color-relations, rhythm, and harmony. You remember our talk on Vermeer’s picture. Well, his is a tonal picture, because of the perfect relation of all the colors to one another. It is beautiful in tone; its tonality is exquisite. And do you remember one particular feature of its exquisiteness? I pointed out to you that it is full of lighted atmosphere, and that the atmosphere seems to vibrate; that its rhythm passes through and through the picture, uniting all the masses of color into a harmonious whole. We noted the difference between this kind of rhythm and that in Raphael’s Jurisprudence, where the rhythm is the result of line. You could not describe that picture as tonal; for in it color plays a very unimportant part. Raphael was busied with the relations, not of color, but of line.