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

COLOR

The subject of color naturally divides, for the painter, into two branches,—color as a quality, and color as material. Considered in the former class, it divides into an abstract a theoretical and a scientific subject; considered in the latter, it is a material and technical one. The material and technical side has been treated of in the Chapter on "Pigments." In this chapter we will have to do with color considered as an æsthetic element.

The Abstract.—The quality of color is the third of the great elements or qualities, through the management of which the painter works æsthetically.

Just as he uses all the material elements of his picture as the means of making concrete and visible those combinations of line and mass which go to the making of the æsthetic structure, so he uses these in the expression of the ideal in combinations of color. In this relation nothing stands to him for what it is, but for what it may be made to do for the color-scheme of his picture. If he wants a certain red in a certain place, he wants it because it is red, and it makes little difference to him, thinking in color, whether that red note is actually made by a file of red-coated soldiers, by a scarlet ribbon, or by a lobster. The scarlet spot is what he is thinking of, and what object most naturally and rightly gives it to him is a matter to be decided by the demands of the subject of the picture; and its fitness as to that is the only thing which has any influence beyond the main fact that red color is needed at that point. If he were a designer of conventional ornament, the color problem would be the same. At that point a spot of red would be needed, and a spot of paint would do it. The painter thinks in color the same way, but he expresses himself in different materials.

The Ideal.—This is the reason that a still-life painting is as interesting to a painter as a subject which to another finds its great interest in the telling of a story. To the painter the story, or the objects which tell it, are of minor importance. That the picture is beautiful in color is what moves him. As composition and color the thing is an admirable piece of æsthetic thinking and æsthetic expression, and so gives him a purely æsthetic delight; and the technical process is secondary with him, interesting only because he is a technician. The representation of the objects incidental to the subject is as incidental to his interest, as it is to the picture considered as an æsthetic thought.

This is what the layman finds it so impossible to take into his mental consciousness. And it is probable that many painters do not so distinguish their artistic point of view from their human point of view. But consciously or unconsciously the painter does think in these terms of color, line, and mass when he is working out his picture; and whether he admits it to himself or not, these characteristics are the great influencing facts in his judgment of pictures, as well as in the growth and permanency of his own fame. That is why a great popular reputation dies so rapidly in many instances. The æsthetic qualities of the man's work are the only ones which can insure a permanent reputation for that work; for the art of painting is fundamentally æsthetic, and nothing external to that can give it an artistic value. Without that its popularity and fame are only matters of accidental coincidence with popular taste.

If a painter is really great in the power of conception and of expression of any of the great æsthetic elements, his work will be permanently great. It will be acknowledged to be so by the consensus of the world's opinion in the long run; nothing else can make it so, and nothing but obliteration can prevent it.

I am explicit in stating these ideas, not because I expect that you will learn from this book to be a great master of the æsthetic, but because I am assured that you can never be a painter unless you understand a painter's true problems. You must be able to know a good picture in order to make a good picture, and however little you try for, your work will be the better for having a painter's way of looking at a painter's work. The technical problems are the control of the materials of expression. The painter must have that control. The student's business is to attain that control, and then he has the means to convey his ideas. But those ideas, if he be a true painter, are not ideas of history or of fiction, but ideas of line and mass and color, and of their combinations.

The Color Sense.—Therefore color is a thing to be striven for for its own sake. Good color is a value in itself. You may not have the genius to be a good colorist, but you need not be a bad one; for the color sense can be definitely acquired. I will not say that color initiative can always be acquired; but the power to perceive and to judge good color can be, and it will go far towards the making of a good painter, even of a great one.

I knew one painter who came near to greatness, and near to greatness as a colorist, who in twelve years trained his eye and feeling from a very inferior perception of color to the power which, as I say, came near to greatness. He was an able painter and a well-trained one before that; but in this direction he was deficient, and he deliberately set about it to educate that side of himself, with the result I have stated. How did he do it? Simply by recognizing where he needed training, and working constantly from nature to perceive fine distinctions of tone; and by careful and severe self-criticism. Summer after summer he went out-doors and worked with colors and canvas to study out certain problems. Every year he set himself mainly one problem to solve. This year it might be luminosity; next it might be the domination of a certain color; another year the just discrimination of tones—and he became a most exquisite colorist.