Detail.—The question of detail may well come in here. How far are you to carry detail in your painting? The Dutch painters went to both extremes. Gerard Dou worked two weeks on a broom-handle, and hoped to finish it in a few days more. Frans Hals would paint a head in an hour. The French painter Meissonier paints the high light on every button of a trooper's coat, and De Neuville barely paints the button at all. What way are you to turn? Which are you to choose? We have a great deal said nowadays against detail in painting. Much is said of breadth and broad painting. Which is right?
True Breadth.—The answer lies in the central idea of the picture. There are times when detail may be very minute, and times when the greatest freedom is essential. True breadth is compatible with much even minute detail in the same canvas. For breadth does not mean merely a large brush. It never means slap-dash. It is the just conception of the amount of detail necessary (and the amount necessary to be left out) in order that the idea of the picture may be best expressed.
Detail is out of place in a large canvas always, and in proportion to its size it is allowable. A decorative canvas, a picture which is to be seen from a distance, or is to fill a wall space, wants effect, much justness of composition and color. Largeness of conception and execution, and only so much detail as shall be necessary to the best expression compatible with that largeness. On the other hand, a "cabinet picture," a small panel, will admit of microscopic detail if it be not so painted that the detail is all you can see. And just here is the heart of the whole matter. Whether you use much or little detail, it is not for the sake of the detail, not for any interest which lies in the detail itself, but for what power of expression may lie in it. If the picture, large or small, be largely conceived, and its main idea as to subject and those qualities of æsthetic meaning I have spoken of are always kept in view, and never allowed to lose themselves in the search for minuteness, then any amount of detail will take its place in true relation to the whole picture. If it does not do this it is bad.
The relations of parts to the whole are the key to the situation always.
Boar-Hunt. Snyders.
To show relation of detail to the whole picture. The detail is carried far, yet does not interfere with emphasis of action and life. The picture is broad in spirit and effect if detailed in execution.
Nothing is right which interferes with the true relations in the picture. This is where the working for detail is most likely to lead you astray. It takes great ability and power to keep detail where it belongs. Detail is always the search for small things, and they are almost sure to obtrude themselves to the neglecting of the more important things. Details which do not stay in their places had better be left out of the picture. There is such a thing as values in facts as well as other parts of your work. And this applies to breadth as well as to detail.
Gerard Dou remains a great painter, and even a broad painter, strange as it may sound, in spite of his microscopic work. But only because of his breadth of eye. The detail is not the most important thing with him. It is in the picture, and you can see it when you look for it. But as you look at the picture it is not peppered all over with pin-points of detail, until the picture itself cannot be seen. Every detail stays back as it would in nature; loses itself in the part to which it belongs; modestly waits to be sought out; is not seen until it is looked for. This is broad painting, because the main things are emphasized; and if the details are painted they are seen in their true relations, and the power of the whole is not sacrificed to them.