Lectures on Painting, Delivered to the Students of the Royal Acadamy

by Edward Armitage

The great majority, however, of students belong to none of these exceptional classes. They have an average sense of color, just as they have an average sense of form; and although I am quite aware that practice and experience will alone improve and develop their power of coloring, yet a few practical hints may facilitate and shorten their studies.

I assume that whatever method is adopted for painting flesh, the object ought to be to get it like nature. I don’t mean necessarily like the model, but like what nature would be under the conditions imposed by the subject, and it is very necessary continually to bear in mind what those conditions are. It will not do (if you have an open-air subject to paint) to copy your model faithfully as he appears in the studio, and then put in a sky and background from your out-of-door studies.

Although the whole picture might truly be said to be painted from nature, yet it would certainly not look right. The figures would have been painted under one condition of light, and the landscape under another.

You cannot be expected, except under peculiar circumstances, to paint direct from your model out-of-doors, but you may take careful notice of the difference between studio light and shade and open-air effect. I must do modern painters the justice to say that this difference is much more generally recognized than it was twenty years ago. Formerly a group of figures used to be painted with more or less care from models as they appeared in the studio, the aperture which admitted light being often not more than three or four feet wide. It was immaterial to the artist whether the scene of his subject was an apartment similarly lighted, or an open heath; and the consequence was that the picture, however cleverly it might be painted, had an unreal appearance whenever a landscape background was introduced. This discrepancy must have been felt, and hence no doubt we may account for the perfectly conventional landscape backgrounds we notice in many pictures by the masters of the last century. Instead of the old artifice of spoiling the landscape for the sake of the figures, it is much better and healthier art to paint the figures to suit the landscape. We cannot do this completely unless we paint the whole picture on the spot, and then we should not have the same command over the arrangement of the groups as we have in the studio; but we can make an approximation toward this desirable end, and it is satisfactory to notice that many young artists, both French and English, are making efforts in this direction, and thus studying the ever-varying effects of color and light in the only way in which they ought to be studied. If you do not feel equal to the task of thus modifying your studio work, choose some subject where the scene is an interior, analogous to your own room, and then you may copy literally the color and light and shade of your models and draperies.

I am not going to give any recipe for painting flesh; some English artists and the great majority of foreigners paint it in at once as near nature as they can. Others model it first in what is technically called dead color, and finish with transparent or semi-transparent tints. If the result is good, it matters little how it has been obtained. Every artist has his own method, and he generally adheres to it, either because he is accustomed to it, or because it suits his style of composition and drawing. I shall therefore confine the remarks I have to make on color to the harmonious arrangement of backgrounds, draperies, and costumes.

First, as to backgrounds. It is a curious fact, which any one can verify, that if you have painted a head and you find the color too hot and red, the proper remedy is to paint the background of a cool green or some cold color. Naturally one would suppose that on the principle of contrasts the cool-colored background would make the head appear redder. Such, however, is certainly not the case. A vermilion curtain behind your rubicund gentleman would make him appear more objectionably rubicund, but a cool gray or green would have the contrary effect.

On the other hand, if you want warmth of color in your head, paint a red background to it. If you try to give warmth to it by setting it in a cold background you will make it look more ghastly than it did.

The only explanation I can offer for this apparent anomaly is that the eye gets filled or saturated with the color of the background until the head seems to partake of it. In the first example the eye gets filled with cool green, and thus the redness of the head becomes less apparent. In the second example, the optic nerves get accustomed to a hot color, and so the pallor of the head disappears.

In my opinion a colored sketch or water-color drawing gains brilliancy by being mounted on a white ground, whereas, according to theory, the dazzling whiteness of the mount ought to make the drawing look dingy.

In the same way, supposing you have painted a series of figures for the decoration of a pediment or frieze, and you find that your figures are dull and heavy in color, how are you to remedy this without repainting them? My answer would be, Give them a gold or light bright-colored background. It is not only that this bright background enlivens the whole work, but it has the effect of making each individual figure appear less dull in color.