PORTRAIT OF LEON COGNIET. After the painting by L. Bonnat, drawn, probably, by the painter himself, upon grained scratch-board with lithographic crayon (?), the lights scratched out with a penknife.
{92} as the Bonnard where, you will notice, it comes down about as far as the lower lip, as in the Gaillard, and you would realize why it was left out in the Dagnan-Bouveret and Marchand drawings.
The Bonnat portrait of Cogniet becomes particularly interesting from this view point, e. g., practice for the sake of observation. It is executed by a process of no value to the printer of the country newspaper, but there is food for thought in the way the form is brought out by the juxtaposition of masses of light and dark that are not lines. Ordinarily we do not recommend to the printer to experiment with such effects, but rather to confine himself to outline or silhouette, but the value of the white-line will be considered in connection with wood engraving, and any practice in drawing from nature in light masses will help you appreciate the judicious use of white-line in wood engraving, or strong contrasts of white and black in any medium. We publish, for example, two very different kinds of drawing as companions to the Bonnat. One in which Verdyen has obtained an effect of the brilliancy of fireworks by scratching out whites from a very black drawing. Similar effects may be got with great ease in wood engraving.
A still more clear effect of light is got in the Bonnard tailpiece, where, by simply breaking the window sash with the light fold of a curtain, he makes us feel the color of the curtain from the top to the bottom of the picture. We should advise you to practice in any medium, endeavoring to get similar effects, as they are most valuable in saving a drawing from monotony. In the Brun drawing, for example, no casual observer {93}
A FETE AT BRUSSELS. Drawn by Verdyen, probably on ruled scratch-board (see tones in the sky), with crayon, in sky, and with brush, in figures; the plate very much retouched by hand.
{94} would appreciate the white pillars, and an untrained draftsman would be likely to cover them with tones, but as a matter of fact they help immensely to give variety to the drawing. In an architectural exhibition we are frequently tired by the monotony of similar drawings where the draftsmen, in their desire to render texture and local color, cover such surfaces with lines meant to represent stone, brick or mortar.
We would remark also that just as our own repetition of the Watts analysis apropos of the Bonnard’s Choudieu portrait was intentional, so the apparent conglomeration of portrait studies, landscapes and buildings is not the result of careless arrangement on our part, but is intentional, that it may be shown that a certain principle in drawing, studied from one object, may be applied to any other. If you draw a friend’s face by lamplight and pick out the lights upon it and his cuff, as in the Bonnat Cogniet, you will be prepared to pick out similar lights on portions of buildings as in the pillars in the Brun drawing; or on window curtain folds as in Bonnard’s tailpiece.
It may be interesting to printers for us to narrate the difficulty of preparing a proper legend for the Choudieu. It was a tailpiece to an article in a French magazine, and bore no legend. To all appearances it was the portrait of one Mr. Dangers, but knowing how liberal the French are in their use of cognomens, we took the precaution to investigate. A Frenchman may be born Smith, but in manhood is known to the public by one or a dozen other names. He may marry Miss Brown, and, therefore, parade as Mr. Brown; his Uncle Jones {95}
