Intelligent finishing consists in correcting small faults of detail, in revising the relative values of the shades and half-tones, in giving definite form to the fingers and toes, or any portion of the figure which may have been neglected. Unintelligent finishing, or what I call polishing, consists in getting a nice even grain for all the modelling of the figure. This polishing process may not in itself be objectionable, but it becomes objectionable when it interferes (as it too often does) with necessary alterations and modifications.
You probably all know that I am no advocate of sketching in the schools. However much I may admire the nude studies of the great masters, I do not wish to see the same kind of work attempted by the students. I am decidedly for “finish,” “high finish” even, but by the term I mean accuracy of drawing and modelling, and not neatness or evenness of execution.
To return to the Doge’s portrait, which I have taken as a thoroughly good specimen of minute finishing.
It is perfectly true that if you go close up to it and examine it with a lens, you will find it much more like nature than would be a head by Titian or Rembrandt if subjected to the same microscopic investigation; but pictures are not meant to be microscopic objects any more than human beings.
If in some foreign town I meet unexpectedly my old friend Smith, I should probably recognize him some fifty yards off. I should say: “That must be Smith, it is so like his figure and general appearance.” As I approach him I begin to distinguish his features, and I become more and more certain, until finally I grasp his hand and all doubt as to his identity vanishes. It is Smith all over, and, as I remark, not a bit changed since I last saw him.
I do not pull out a pocket lens and count the number of gray hairs in his whiskers, or the small warts about his eyes.
It appears to me that a life-size portrait should be treated in the same way. Viewed from the end of the gallery, it should resemble the person it represents, and the likeness should become more and more striking the nearer we approach, until we get within a very short distance.
If we approach still nearer, the brush-work of the artist begins to appear, and finally, if we examine the features with a lens, we can discover but very little left of the resemblance which was so striking at a reasonable distance.
The whole question is, What is a reasonable distance? In portraits by the minute finishers, the point at which the work looks its best is evidently too near, and I think that in a good deal of modern painting it is too far off.
A life-size head should look its best at from about six to ten feet distance. Nearer than six feet the impasto and brush touches of the painter would be too apparent, and beyond ten feet the delicate modelling of details would begin to be lost.