The Painter in Oil / A complete treatise on the principles and technique necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors

by Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

Return to the Farm. Millet.
To show the effect of mass in giving qualities of "scale" and "the statuesque."

Weight, dignity, the statuesque, scale, are characteristics of mass. Line in this connection only takes from the brusqueness that mass alone would have, or helps to break up any tendency to monotony. The "Return to the Farm," by Millet, shows this combination, the reverse of "The Sower." In this, the line is used to enrich the repose and weight, the statuesque of the mass. In the other, the mass gives dignity and impressiveness to the grace and rhythm of the line.

The color scheme of course will have an equal effect in the emphasizing or modifying of the motive of line or mass. Color will not only have an effect on it, but must be in sympathy with it, or the balance will be lost.

Color.—This is mainly where composition in color will come in. Light and shade or chiaroscuro, as I explained in the last chapter, are necessarily intimately connected with composition here. And you never work in color or mass without working in light and shade also. Of color itself I shall speak in the next chapter. It is only necessary to point out the fact of connection here. Of course in painting, all the elements are most closely related. Although it is necessary to speak of them separately in the actual working out, you keep them all in mind together, and so make them continually help and modify each other.

A Principle.—There is a well-established principle in architecture, that you must never try to emphasize two proportions in one structure. A hall may be long and narrow, but not both long and wide; in which case the proportions would neutralize each other—you would have a simple square, characterless. You may emphasize height or breadth—not both, or you get the same negative character.

So you may apply this principle more or less exactly to the composition of a picture. Don't try to express too many things in one picture, or if you do, let some one be the main thing, and all the rest be subordinate to it. There is perhaps no law more rigid than the one which denies success to any attempt to scatter force, effect, and purpose. One main idea in each picture, and everything subordinated to lend itself to the strengthening of that.

To a certain extent this will apply to line and mass, though not absolutely. As a rule, line or mass, one or the other, must be the main element.

Leverage.—I have often thought that much insight into the principles of balance of masses, and of mass and line, could be gained by thinking of it analogously to equilibrium in leverage. A small mass, or a simple line or accent, may be made to balance a very much greater mass. The greater part of a canvas may be one mass, and be balanced by quite a small spot. But leverage must come in to help. Somewhere in the picture will be the point of support, the fulcrum. And the large mass and the small one will have an obvious relation with reference to that point. Or the element of apparent density will come in. The large mass will be the least dense, the small one the most dense, and the equilibrium is established. For composition is but the equilibrium of the picture, and equilibrium the picture must have.

There are many rules as to placing of mass and arrangement of line, but they are all more or less arbitrary and limiting in influence. Individuality must and will ignore such rules, just because composition deals chiefly with the abstract qualities rules will not help. A fine feeling or perception of what is right is the only law, and the trained eye is the only measure. As in values, so in composition you must study relations in nature, and results in the work of the masters, to train your eye to see; and you must sketch and block in all sorts of combinations with your own hand, to give you practical experience.