The meaning of pictures

by John C. Van Dyke

“What we made, or rather, I should say, what we wished to note, was merely a memorandum of the passing effect upon the hills that lay before us. We had no idea of expressing ourselves or of studying in any way the subject for any future use. We merely had the intention to note this affair rapidly, and we had all used the same words to express to each other what we liked in it. There were big clouds rolling over hills, sky clearing above, dots of trees and water and meadow land below; and the ground fell away suddenly before us. Well, our three sketches were in the first place different in shape; either from our physical differences, or from a habit of drawing certain shapes of a picture, which itself usually indicates—as you know or ought to know—whether we are looking far or near. Two were oblong, but of different proportions; one was more nearly a square: the distance taken into the right and left was smaller in the latter case, and, on the contrary, the height up and down—that is to say, the portion of land beneath and the portion of sky above—was greater. In each picture the distance bore a different relation to the foreground. In each picture the clouds were treated with different precision and different attention. In one picture the open sky was the main intention of the picture. In two pictures the upper sky was of no consequence—it was the clouds and the mountains that were insisted upon. The drawing was the same—that is to say, the general make of things—but each man had involuntarily looked upon what was most interesting to him in the whole sight; and though the whole sight was what he meant to represent, he had unconsciously preferred a beauty or interest different from what his neighbors liked.

“The color of each painting was different—the vivacity of colors and tone, the distinctness of each part in relation to the whole; and each picture would have been recognized anywhere as a specimen of work by each one of us, characteristic of our names. And we spent on the whole affair perhaps twenty minutes. I wish you to understand again that we each thought and felt as though we had been photographing the matter before us. We had not the first desire of expressing ourselves, and I think would have been very much worried had we not felt that each one was true to nature. Of course there is no absolute nature, as with each slight shifting of the eye, involuntarily we focus more or less distinctly some part to the prejudice of others. And not only would this result have been the same if we had gone on painting, but had we made a drawing, had we made a careful representation or rapid note of what we saw by lines (that is to say, by an abstraction of the edges of the surfaces that we saw), anyone could have told the names of the men who had done it.”

This preference for a peculiar point of view crops out very early in the painter’s life. The students in an art class, drawing from the living model on the platform, and each one striving to follow that model literally, all show it. The sketches indicate by the placing of the figure upon the paper, the size of the figure, the height or depth of the shadows, the clearness or vagueness of the outline, that the personal element—individuality—is present, influencing and practically dominating the work of everyone in the class-room. And this, too, in charcoal work, where the color problem is eliminated. Moreover, there are features of these charcoal sketches, aside from mere technique, that are equally interesting as indicative of the peculiar temperament behind the pencil. You cannot fail to be struck with the mood or spirit that creeps into each one of the drawings. On one paper the model looks pleasant, almost jovial, on another he will appear sad-faced or morose, on another, romantic as you might conceive a Wagner hero, or classic and insipid like a Canova marble, and on still another, gross, brutal, or perhaps foolish-looking. It is not possible that the model could exhibit all these different moods. The variation is not in him. He presents the same stolid, tired front common to all models; the mood is added to him by the personality holding the charcoal.

VII.—BELLINI, Madonna and Saints. S. M. dei Frari, Venice.

We see the same variation among the works of older people—full-fledged artists, in the world of art. Nowhere is it more apparent than in the portrait, the one thing which might be thought to call for the elimination of the painter and a close fidelity to the facts of the original. But such is the power of preference that the painter almost invariably emphasizes certain features at the expense of others less interesting to him; or such is the warp of the vision that certain qualities appear abnormal, certain prominences appear unduly accentuated. There are portraits of the Duchess of Devonshire and of Mrs. Siddons (Plate [19]) by both Reynolds and Gainsborough, but how very different they are! With Reynolds both of the characters are healthy, robust, good-natured, somewhat loud and stormy; with Gainsborough they are both delicate, subdued, refined, even melancholy. And think of the portraits in the Louvre of Francis I. by different hands, where only a slight thread of resemblance holds them together; or, better still, the portraits of Napoleon I., painted by the classic painters of his reign who believed in the utter effacement of the artist in favor of the facts before him. How very different in form, feature, mood, and character Napoleon appears in each picture. He is classic; he is romantic; he is thin, fat, amiable, moody, fiery, dreamy. David, Delaroche, Gros, no matter what their theories in art, could not keep themselves out of the representation. All that any one of them could do was to give his individual impression of the model before him. Necessarily each was tinctured by a predilection or a bias. It could not have been otherwise.

What is the cause of the variation in results to be seen in the portrait? Why, for instance, do the photographs of Queen Victoria show substantially the same thing, while the portraits of her by painters show different things? Because the cameras are all made of practically the same material, have the same sensitiveness, and receive light in the same way; whereas men are not made of the same material, have not the same sensitiveness, and receive varying degrees of light according to their lucidity or absorbent power, which is sometimes called genius. No two people are fashioned precisely after the same pattern. They vary in intellectual, emotional, and physical make-up. And let a painter strive as he may to record an exact fact before him, he cannot escape the action of his inherent faculties. These may be brighter, clearer, keener, than those of other painters, or they may be duller and feebler; but at least they are different, and he must use what nature has given him. He was equipped originally to see with his own eyes, think with his own brain, and work with his own hands. Is it not very apparent then that the eye may warp the vision and report peculiarly to the brain, which in turn may tell the hand to work thus and so? And the result in art is what? Why, the individual view of one man; or nature passed through the alembic of that man’s personality.[^[3]]

[3]. “Our eyes, our ears, our sense of smell, of taste, differing from one person to another, create as many truths as there are men upon earth. And our minds, taking instructions from these organs, so diversely impressed, understand, analyse, judge, as if each of us belonged to a different race. Each one of us, therefore, forms for himself an illusion of the world; and the writer (the painter, too) has no other mission than to reproduce faithfully this illusion, with all the contrivances of art that he has learned and has at his command.”—Guy de Maupassant, Fortnightly Review, March, 1888, p. 366.

VIII.—CORREGGIO, Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine. Louvre, Paris.