A Child's Guide to Pictures

by Charles H. Caffin

Since each artist is a person different to all other persons, the varieties of motive and point of view are infinite. There is no end to the variety; and, as you grow older, and continue your study of pictures, you will find more and more interest in looking into and discovering just what is the particular motive and point of view of each artist. For he cannot help betraying them in his pictures, any more than you can help betraying yours, if, being a partisan of Yale, you are watching a football game between Yale and Harvard. Just as your behavior will betray your feelings, so is a picture the expression of an artist’s personal likes and dislikes. In studying pictures, therefore, you are also studying the personality of the men who painted them.

I wish you to feel that this sort of study has no limits. Its interest will last you, as long as you live. At the same time my aim is to help you to enter upon the study. And at the start everything should be made as simple as possible. So, although motives and points of view are infinite in variety, let us see if we cannot find some simple clue to the study of them. I think it may be found in dividing all artists into two big groups. On the one side, those who are inclined to represent the world as they see it to be; on the other side, those who represent things according to their own ideas. It is the great division between the naturalistic or realistic and the idealistic motive and point of view. Some artists are naturalists, or realists; others are idealists; a great many are a mingling of the two.

This broad general distinction must be thoroughly understood. For you can see that it would be impossible to enter into the merits of an idealistic picture, if you insist on approaching the study of it from the naturalistic point of view. And vice versa. The only way to appreciate a picture is to approach it from the point of view of the man who painted it. We must try to enter into his mind and find out his motive and see the subject as he saw it.

When we have done so, we may not like his picture. That is another matter. Perhaps his motive and point of view, when we have discovered them, do not please us. Our own are so different, that he and we cannot really agree. Or possibly, while we agree with his motive and point of view, we do not feel that he has expressed them well. In either case, his picture is not for us. At least, not to-day; for, as we grow older, we shall find that our own motive and point of view are apt to change. We have studied more, and know more, and may find that pictures, we once did not care for, we now admire; and, on the other hand, that the pictures we once liked have ceased to please us.

Now for a talk about the difference between naturalistic or realistic and idealistic. When the art of painting began to revive in Italy at the end of the Thirteenth Century, the first aim of the artists was to make their pictures more really resemble life and nature. I have already told you of Giotto, who gave roundness and natural gestures to his figures, made the objects look more real, and suggested the depth and distance of their surroundings. Next of Masaccio, who gave his figures still more resemblance to life, and filled in their surroundings with a suggestion of atmosphere. Then I told you of Mantegna, who from the study of the remains of classic sculpture gave further naturalness of life and vigor to his figures; until, by degrees, from the observation of nature and the study of the classic sculpture, artists reached proficiency in the natural rendering of the figure. So far as form was concerned, their figures were absolutely natural. But, as yet, the naturalistic motive and point of view had not included the seeing and rendering of nature’s light. That was to come later.

On the other hand, the study of classic sculpture, while helping the progress toward naturalism, had started some artists in the direction of a new motive and point of view. For now the appreciation of the antique sculpture became increased and supplemented by the study of scholars, who were translating and explaining the newly discovered writings of the Greeks and Romans. Plato was the special favorite, and the Italians of the end of the Fifteenth Century learned from him the motive of idealism and the idealistic point of view.

They learned from his writings to think not only of things, but of ideas. Even to consider ideas of more importance than things; especially the idea of beauty. You will remember that in speaking of Raphael’s Allegory of Jurisprudence, we said that Jurisprudence represented an abstract idea: the conception of what justice is in itself and of the qualities of Prudence, Firmness, and Temperance that it involves, apart from the machinery for making and administering the law. Men make laws, and some are good and some are bad. Even the good ones are not always perfectly administered. To-day, in America, our conception or idea of law is higher than our methods of putting it in practice. Everywhere, always, men’s ideals are higher than their conduct.

Ideals, then, which are the motives, resulting from ideas, represent the highest effort of man after what is best and most beautiful. Most beautiful because it is best and best because it is most beautiful.

Such was part of what artists learned from Plato. Do you see how they applied it to their art? To Leonardo da Vinci, one of the first Italian artists to become influenced by the classic spirit, the teaching appealed in some such way as the following: The idea of Beauty is separate from the things or objects in which it is manifested; just as we may have an idea of smell apart from any particular flower; or of love, apart from the object of our love. The highest ideal for an artist is to express in his pictures something of this abstract idea of beauty, to give to his figures beauty and grandeur of form and noble heads; to put them in positions of grace and dignity. He will not paint human nature as he sees it to be, with all its imperfections, but will people his pictures with a race of men and women and children of ideal beauty.

This was the motive that inspired those noble Italian pictures of the Sixteenth Century. It was from the high standpoint of abstract beauty that the artists looked at their subject. Their point of view was idealistic. But this was not the only thing that made their pictures noble. The artists were inspired also by a great demand on the part of the people of their day. Religion held a strong place in the hearts of the people. They called for pictures to beautify the churches and, at the same time, to teach those that could not read the beauties of religion. To-day people have learned to read, and books to a large extent serve the purpose that pictures used to do. But in those days the people needed pictures; and it was this strong need, acting like rich soil to the beautiful plant of idealism, that helped to produce these wonderful pictures. They are the most wonderful that the modern world has ever seen, just because of this union of two most strong motives—the religious need of the people and the exalted love of beauty of the artists.