I am perfectly aware that in painting small easel pictures all this groping after fine lines may be unnecessary, nay, even detrimental to the life-like spirit of the composition.
“Our own correspondent’s” sketches at the seat of war (if done on the spot, which I am afraid they not always are) will be not only more interesting but better composed than if he had sat at home and trusted to his imagination; but in this lecture I am not dealing with easel pictures and realistic subjects, and I repeat that in decorative figure-painting excellence can only be obtained by a continuous process of altering, modifying, adding, and omitting.
In the same way that the lines and general grouping of a picture should be arranged with a view to expressing the subject with dignity and grandeur, so the management of light and shade should tend toward the same end, and it is as impossible to lay down strict rules for light and shade as for outline designing. Didactic writers on art will tell you that the principal light ought to fall on the principal figure—
“Fair in the front in all the blaze of light,
The hero of thy piece should meet the sight.”
Sir Joshua Reynolds remarks very justly on this piece of doggerel, that there is no necessity for the principal figure to be placed in the middle of the picture, or receive the principal light. He goes on to say that “this conduct, if always observed, would reduce the art of composition to too great a uniformity,” and that “it is sufficient if the place he holds, or the attention of the other figures to him, denote him the hero of the piece.”
In works which partake strongly of a decorative character this axiom about “Fair in the front in all the blaze of light” for the principal figure may be tolerably true, but in historical pictures something more unforeseen is wanted.
In the often-painted subject of the “Death of Cæsar,” I should be very much inclined to put the Cæsar in the shade, and the tyrannicides with their flashing daggers in the light. It appears to me that to throw a shade over the face of the prostrate emperor would somehow or other convey the idea of the shadow of death, which is overspreading him, and the reproachful “Et tu Bruté” would come with greater pathos from a figure half-veiled in shadow than from one in broad daylight. We will suppose now that instead of having the death of Cæsar to paint we have the “Stoning of St. Stephen.” The subject is analogous. The young man named Saul and the Jewish executioners of Stephen were not common assassins any more than the murderers of Cæsar. Shall we, therefore, adopt the same plan with the figure of Stephen as we did with that of Cæsar and put him in the shade? I say, Certainly not. Stephen was the first Christian martyr. We read that his face was as that of an angel, and he ought to be surrounded by an angelic halo of light, and this treatment need not be dictated by the text. We should come to the same conclusion simply on the grounds of pictorial fitness. Stephen was a voluntary martyr, and gloried in his own death. Cæsar was assassinated much against his will; and although we are told that he covered his face with his toga and died with dignity, yet he certainly cannot be called a martyr.
I have introduced these two subjects to show you how hopeless it is to attempt to lay down general rules such as old Du Fresnoy gives us in his poem on the art of painting. Every new theme you undertake to illustrate ought to have a treatment special to itself if you wish to produce a fresh and original picture. When the master of a vessel is starting on a voyage, he would not steer S. W. by W. ½ W. because that happened to be the course he steered the last time he was at sea, nor would he run up his skyscrapers and set his studding-sails because he carried all his light canvas the last voyage out.
He would consult his chart, the state of the tide, the direction of the wind, and act accordingly. In short, for this new voyage, the condition of the wind, tide, and barometer being new, he would give new orders to his mate and crew.
Substituting the brain for the master, the hand for the mate, and the brushes for the crew, we ought to set about our pictures much in the same way.