A Child's Guide to Pictures

by Charles H. Caffin

In the case of the Descent from the Cross we have already hinted at the power of tone to arouse emotion. I may add that tone always makes a strong appeal to feeling—to abstract feeling. The tonal harmony of an opal, whose pinks and greens are suffused with creamy atmosphere, arouses in us delight, quite apart from any suggestion to our mind. The delight is one of pure feeling. Can you not see that, if an artist uses the tonal harmony of the opal as a color scheme for a picture, the harmony would still delight us in an abstract way? It would be interwoven now with the subject of his picture, and we need not try, nor do we wish to separate them. But the sentiment of the figure or the scene will be all the more tender and lovely for the harmony with which it is suffused.

I have in mind, for example, the pictures by the American artist, Thomas W. Dewing. They show you one or two women standing or sitting, apparently lost in reverie, while placed beside them may be a table and a vase and on the wall a mirror. If you ask me what the picture is about, I will say: Nothing. There is no subject to them in the sense that you can describe: who the girl is, why she is there, and what she is doing. So, instead of talking to you about the figures, I should try to draw your attention to the subtlety and beauty of the tonal harmony. I should recommend you to look at it with a mind as free from outside thoughts, as when you were looking at the opal. Then by degrees, perhaps, as the beauty of the tone winds itself about your imagination, you will begin to find some sentiment of beauty suggested by the girl herself.

What I wish you to understand is that an artist, who has the gift of composing tonal harmonies, employs them to express the abstract feelings or emotions that he has regarding his subject. A celebrated example is Whistler’s Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, that now hangs in the Luxembourg Gallery, in Paris. I expect you have seen photographs of it and remember that it represents an oldish lady, in a white lace cap and black gown, with her hands folded over a handkerchief on her lap. We see her figure seated in profile, in front of a grey wall. On it are two little black-framed pictures, and on one side hangs a dark green curtain.

When it was first exhibited the artist called it “An Arrangement in Black and Grey.” It may be that he did not wish to drag his Mother into publicity or make a parade of his feelings as a son. But there was another reason, a much greater one. The abstract feelings that he had for his Mother—the love, reverence, and appreciation of her dignity and tenderness—took color in his artist’s mind in an arrangement of black and grey. What a poet might have put into the rhythm and harmony of his verse, Whistler has expressed through the rhythm of a tonal harmony of color.

Another artist who was not a tonalist, might have contrived to put into the face and hands and into the lines of the figure as much dignity and gracious tenderness. But his picture would not move us so deeply as this one. For Whistler—how shall I describe it?—has woven the dignity and tenderness into every part of the canvas. The mother sits alone with her own thoughts, but all about her is the music of color, choiring the love and reverence of her son. No wonder the picture takes its hold upon us; until we see in it not a mother, but the type of what the conception of Mother means to us.

Its tonal harmony is one that is distinguished by sobriety and reticence. It consists of quiet and sober colors; it does not talk to our hearts in brilliant glowing words. It moves us rather by its silence and reserve, its reticence. I mention this because, at first, perhaps, you will be more attracted by brilliant and glowing harmonies; and they are beautiful too. They may fill us, as those of Rubens do, with triumphant joy; or plunge us into poignant emotion as do Rousseau’s sunsets. But, just as our capacity of feeling knows no limits, so there is no limit to the variety of the tonal harmonies that may stir it. And we shall grow to find some of the most exalting and beautiful sensations in those harmonies that are very quiet, subtle, and that speak to our imagination in a “still small voice.”

As a farewell illustration, to sum up the meaning of the quality and expression of tone, let me return to sound tones. Have you ever thought of quality and expression in the case of your own voice? I do not mean the singing voice. Many of us do not possess this kind of voice; but we all have a speaking and reading voice. What are the quality and expression of yours? I am thinking now of the way you use it; of the quality and expression of the sounds you utter.

When you speak; do you drawl “through your nose” or chatter very quickly? Are the sounds shrill or harsh or monotonous? Perhaps you have never stopped to consider. It is astonishing how few people do. Most people think of their voice only as a contrivance for uttering words: they turn it on and off like a faucet and let the words run. How frequently one sees a pretty girl or woman, tastefully dressed and of charming manners, who is altogether pleasing as long as she keeps her mouth shut. But the moment she opens it, half her charm vanishes. There is no tone in her voice; no varieties of light and shade in the pitch of the sounds, no varieties of quietness or warmth in her speech; no rhythm of effect. Even if it is not harsh, it is disagreeably monotonous.

Or somebody else reads a passage from Shakespeare, say The Balcony Scene in “Romeo and Juliet.” He is not as bad a reader as he might be; for example, he does not stumble over the words or jump over the punctuation. In fact, he reads intelligently, with considerable attention to the meaning of the speeches. And yet, after all, he reads very badly, for his voice fails entirely to bring out the music of the verse. The scene is one of the loveliest ever written, and it was written to be spoken aloud, so that the loveliness of the thought might be conveyed in sounds of corresponding loveliness. But of this our reader seems ignorant. He does not appear to know that Shakespeare intended every vowel sound to be uttered in such a way as to bring out the particular quality of its beauty; and arranged the sequence of the sounds, so that one should flow into another in an exquisite rhythm of rising and falling melody. This reader “murders” the beauty of the scene, because there is no quality in the tone of his voice and no tonal expression. Do you understand what I mean?

If you have not thought of this before, I hope you will give it some attention in future. For it is in the power of everyone of us to improve the quality and expression of our voices.