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

Let us understand what direct painting is first, and then consider varieties of handling. For whatever may be the subsequent manipulations, the picture is generally "laid in" with the most direct possible manner of laying on paint, and the other processes are mainly to modify or to further and strengthen the effect suggested in the first painting. And generally, also, in all sketches and studies which are preliminary preparations for the picture, the most direct painting is used, and the various processes are reserved for working out more subtle effects on the final canvas.

Old Dutch Painting.—Probably there are no better examples of frank painting than the works of the old Dutchmen. You should study them whenever you have a chance. Waiving all discussion as to the æsthetic qualities of their work,—as painters, as masters of the craft of laying on paint, they are unexcelled. And in most cases, too, they possessed the art of concealing their art. You will have to use the closest observation to discover the exact means they used to get the subtle tones and atmospheric effects.

The only obvious quality is the perfect understanding and skill of their brush-work. In the smoothest as well as in the roughest of their work, you can note how perfectly the brush searches the modelling, and with the most exquisite expressiveness and perfect frankness, follows the structural lines. No doubt there were often paintings, glazings, and scumblings; but they always furthered the meaning of the first painting, and never in the least interfered with or obscured the effect of naïveté, of candor of workmanship.

It is, however, this simple and sincere brush-work that you should strive to attain as the basis of your painting. Learn to express drawing with your brush, and to place at once and without indecision or timidity the exact tone and value of the color you see in nature at that point. Until you are enough of a master of your brush to get an effect in this way, do not meddle with the more complex methods of after-painting. You will never do good work by subsequent manipulation, if you have a groundwork of feebleness and indecision. Direct painting is the fundamental process of all good painting.

Let me take the type of old Dutch painting to represent to you this quality of direct painting. First of all notice a basis of perfect drawing,—a knowledge, exactness, and precision which admits of no fumbling, no vagueness, but only of a concise and direct recognition of structure. Note that this drawing is as characteristic of the brush-work as of the drawing which is under it. Observe that the handling of the whole school, from the least to the greatest, is founded on a similar and perfect craftsmanship,—the same use of materials; the same deliberateness; the same simple yet ample palette; the same use of solid color candidly expressing the planes of modelling, freely following the lines of structure; the absence of affectation or invention of individual means. Whatever the individuality of the artist, it rests on something else than difference of technique. From the freest and most direct of painters, Frans Hals, to the most smooth and detailed, Gerard Dou, the directness and ingenuousness of means to ends is the same, and founded on the same technical basis of color manipulation. The one is more eager, terse, the other more deliberate and complete; but both use the same pigments, both use the same solid color, are simple, lucid, both occupied solely with the thing to be expressed, and the least degree in the world with the manner of it. That manner comes from the same previous technical training which each uses in the most matter-of-course way, with only such change from the type, as his temperament unconsciously imposes on him.

The Fisher Boy. Frans Hals.
To show the directness and sureness of brush-stroke, and candor and simplicity of means, always present in Dutch work, though never so free as with Hals.

There is nothing like it elsewhere. Study it; notice the unaffectedness of brush-stroke in Rembrandt. See how it is the same as Hals, but less perfunctory. See how the brush piles up paint again and again along the same ridge of flesh, taking no notice of its revelation of the insistence of attempt at the right value, nor of its roughness of surface. To get that drawing and that color in the freest, frankest, most direct way: that is the aim. The absolute conviction of it: that is the essence of this technique of the old Dutch masters. And whatever else it may have or may not have, you will find in it all that you can find anywhere of suggestion of direct and frank and sincere painting, and nothing I can say will give you any such clear idea of what you should strive for as the basis of all the different sorts of brush-work necessary or useful in the production of an oil painting.