As the opposite extreme to the slapdash Rubens, take the careful Gerard Dow, and observe how the delicate and minute finish of the heads is carried out into every detail of his pictures. If we examine any genuine work of Rembrandt or of David Teniers, we shall always find the same homogeneous qualities. The heads may (as is often the case in Rembrandt) be more carefully painted than the unimportant parts of the picture; or contrariwise, as in David Teniers, we may sometimes find a stoneware flagon more elaborated than the hand of the boor who is holding it, but we recognize everywhere the touch of the master.
I know of no example amongst the old masters where the kind of disparity in style which I am deprecating is observable.
In certain modern pictures, however, this homogeneous quality in painting is sadly wanting. In the so-called Spanish school (by which I mean the school of Fortuny), the background, draperies, and accessories are painted with a crisp dexterity which is quite marvellous, whilst the heads are labored like colored photographs.
The contrast is sometimes so great that it is difficult to believe that the picture is not the work of two artists. This fault has become apparent in certain pictures of the Austrian school; but the contagion does not appear to have extended to us, at least not to our oil-painters.
I have, however, noticed a tendency amongst a few of our water-color figure-painters toward this singular modern peculiarity.
The difficulties of giving color, form, and expression to a head, and at the same time preserving a free style of painting, are no doubt much greater in water-color than in oil, but I think it so desirable that a work should be homogeneous that I would sacrifice a good deal in the way of finish and even of expression in the faces, to obtain that quality.
If a man has great versatility with his brush and wishes to display it, let him paint one picture in the style of Holbein or Memling, and another in the style of Velasquez, but he should not in the same picture (and à fortiori in the same figure) attempt to unite two dissimilar styles of painting.
One of the principal difficulties young artists have to encounter in finishing a figure-picture is the management of their drapery.
If they are painstaking and make an intelligent use of their models they will succeed with their heads, hands, and all their flesh-painting; or if they do not succeed, the way to success is so obvious that I need say but little about it.
I assume that our young artist has gone through a course of study, and is able to paint a nude figure or a head from nature tolerably correctly. His difficulty will be, not in copying his models, but in making use of them without copying them.