Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures

by Henry Rankin Poore

It will be a surprise to the average man in that realm of perfect truth which lies beyond, to mark, in the association of artists of all ages, when the divisions of schools, periods and petty formulas are forgotten, that Raphael will grasp the hand of Abbott Thayer, saying to him in the never dying fervor of art enthusiasm and with the acknowledgment of limitations, which is one of the signs of greatness;

“O, that I had had thy glorious quality of technical subtlety in place of the mechanical directness in which I labored!” and he in turn to be reminded that had he paused for this, the span of his short life were measured long before he had accomplished half his work.

A kindred bias is the eventual acceptance of whatever is persisted in. Almost any form in which a technically good artist may express his idea will in time find acceptance. It has the persuasion of the advertisement, offering what we do not want. In time we imagine we do. Duplications of Cuyp's very puerile arrangement of parts, as in the “Departure for the Chase” to be found in others of his pictures, work in our minds mitigation for those faults. The belief in self has the singular magnetic potency of [pg 253] drawing and turning us. A stronger magnet must then be the living principle. We find it in unity. Originality compromises this at its peril.

And that discrimination against the prophet in his own country! Under its ban the native artist left his home and dwelt abroad; but the expatriation which produced pictures of Dutch and French peasants by native painters was in time condemned. The good of the foreign experience lay in the medals which were brought back out of banishment. These turned the tide of thoughtless prejudice, and international competitions have kept it rising.

But the worth of the foreign signature is now of the lesser reckonings; for with the same spirit in which the native artist would annihilate the tariff on foreign art, have the best painters of Europe declared “there shall be no nationality in art”; for art is individual and submits to the government stamp only by courtesy.

Happy that nation which, when necessary, can believe in its own, not to exclusion, from clannish pride, but on the basis of that simple canon adopted by the world of sport; “Let the best win.”

The commonest bias to judgment is also the most vulgar—price. The reply of the man of wealth to the statement that a recent purchase was an inferior example of an artist's work; “I paid ten thousand for it. Of course it's all right,” was considered final to the critic. The man whose first judgment concerning an elaborate picture of roses was turned to surprise and [pg 254] wonder when told the price, which in time led to respect and then purchase, may find parallels in most of the collections of Philistia. “The value of a picture is what some one will pay for it” is a maxim of the creators of picture values and upon it the “picture business” has its working basis. And so together with the good of foreign art have the Meyer Von Bremens and the Verbeckhovens, the creations of the school of smiles and millinery, and the failures and half successes of impressionism, together with its good, been cornered, and unloaded upon the ingenuous collector.

The most insidious bias of judgment is that developed by the art historian, the man who really knows.

Serene and above the petty matters which concern the buyer of art and perplex the producer, he pours forth his jeremiads upon the age and its art, subjecting them to indefensible comparisons with the fifteenth century and deploring the materialism of modern times.

The argument is that out of the heart the mouth must speak; can men gather figs from thistles: is it reasonable to expect great art when men and messages are transported by steam and electricity, in the face of Emerson's contention that art is antagonistic to hurry? The argument neglects the fact that this present complex life is such because it has added one by one these separate interests to those which it has received as an inheritance, each of which in its own narrowing niche having [pg 255] been preserved under the guardianship of the specialist.