The meaning of pictures

by John C. Van Dyke

How shrewdly Coleridge discerned the truth in that definition of art which I am so very fond of quoting because of its exactness. He says that painting is of “a middle quality between a thought and a thing—the union of that which is nature with that which is exclusively human.” That is it, precisely. Art is an illusion of nature produced by a personality. Human individuality must be in it because it cannot very well be kept out of it. Whatever we do, we speak ourselves. For a time we may act a part—copy someone else—but sooner or later the mask falls and we stand revealed in the form and manner nature designed for us. We are all peculiar in our make-up physically, mentally, and æsthetically. To the European all Chinamen look alike, and possibly to Chinamen all Americans look alike; but we know there is a variation. We may seem as like as peas in a peck measure, but we differ in the conformation of a wrinkle. Out of a hundred acquaintances on the street how easy it is to recognize each one apart from his fellows. There is a peculiarity in look or walk or bearing that betrays the man. And of those hundred acquaintances each one, as we have already noted, writes in an individual way and you are able to distinguish the handwritings by the variations in the muscular action of the hands. Suppose you should have read to you extracts from a hundred famous authors, do you think you would have much difficulty in recognizing Shakespeare from Victor Hugo, Carlyle from Cardinal Newman, or Walter Scott from Swinburne? Could you possibly mistake an essay by Bacon for an essay by Macaulay, or could you by any chance confuse a sermon by Canon Liddon with a sermon by Spurgeon? I think not, for the individuality of mind and thought is even more positive and assertive than the individuality of the physical presence.

If you are acquainted with pictures you can enter a gallery in which you have never been before, and standing in the middle of the room you can pick out at a distance the Corots, the Diazes, the Monets, the Millets, the Delacroixs—yes, the Rubenses, the Van Dycks, the Holbeins, and the Titians. And this, too, with a large degree of accuracy. You are very likely to be right in your ascriptions. Why? Because you know the artistic individualities of each one of those painters—know just how they see, think, feel, and paint—as you know the personal appearance of an acquaintance upon the street, or recognize his handwriting upon the face of an envelope. When the question of a picture’s attribution comes up, when it is of moment whether a work is by a Raphael or a Perino del Vaga, by a Velasquez or a Mazo, there is an unconscious appeal made to the spirit of the picture. And this quite aside from a question of technique, aside from any Morellian theory of tools or methods or models. Does the work reflect the spirit of Raphael? Is the impress of his individuality to be felt in the canvas? If it is genuine, yes; if by a follower, no. The sugary little “Reading Magdalene” in the Dresden Gallery, so long attributed to Correggio, gives not the slightest hint of that great painter’s individuality; the alleged portrait of Raphael by himself in the Louvre shows all the blundering stupidity of Bacchiacca. Whether master or follower, the painter cannot disguise himself effectively. Back of the work we feel the presence of the worker. The great artists fashion their art after their own thoughts, and that which they love the best or feel the deepest speaks out from the canvas until at last we recognize the poet in his poem, the sculptor in his marble, the painter in his picture.

These qualities of individuality in art are much like the same qualities in real life, and we may perhaps fancy in the picture that which we find admirable in the personal acquaintance. For instance, the traits of frankness and straightforwardness which we all love in a friend, are they not just as apparent in Carpaccio the painter? And just as lovable? The way in which Carpaccio tells the history of St. Ursula or St. George—so frank in spirit and yet so cunning of hand—reminds one somehow of a chapter from Sir John Maundevile or Roger of Wendover. How naif he is with his gorgeously robed Venetians (Plate [6])! How earnest he is about the dignity of the types, the nobility of the faces, the sobriety of the action! His sincerity is as great as that of Giotto, and his absolute unconsciousness—his lack of egotism—as apparent as that of Fra Angelico. At the foot of the “Presentation” in the Venetian Academy is that little angel playing upon a lute which you have all seen in reproductions so many times. You must have noticed that the angel was not playing for public applause, but for the glory of the Madonna standing above. There is no thought of you or of me, or anyone outside of the Madonna and the group of saints. That quality of unconsciousness we need not attribute to angels. It is no characteristic of theirs so far as we know; but it was a quality of Victor Carpaccio, the Venetian painter.

Think for a moment of the “Madonna and Saints” in the sacristy of the Frari by Giovanni Bellini (Plate [7]). How absolutely honest and unabashed she looks! This is not the Madonna of Sorrows, not the pathetic Madonna of Botticelli; but a purely human mother, proud of her boy—a mother and not ashamed. And the little cherubs playing on musical instruments at the foot of the throne, how child-like they are with their serious faces, their little fat cheeks and round childish legs! Everything in and about the picture tells you of the sane, healthy mind and art of Giovanni Bellini. The Madonna’s honesty is Bellini’s honesty; the view of the cherubs as merely beautiful and graceful children of this earth is Bellini’s view; yes, the gorgeous coloring of the patterned background, the superb architecture, even the rich ornamentation of the framing are Bellini’s taste. We cannot, if we would, escape the man. He is omnipresent in his work. Why should he not be? The story in literature becomes fascinating through the personality and skill of the story-teller; why should not the theme in art be beautiful through the individuality and skill of the painter?

Those of you who have been in Rome and have studied in the Sistine Chapel know with what a feeling of awe the great figures on the ceiling inspire one. You feel the presence of a mighty spirit within the walls, hovering about the vaulted space, in the very air of the chapel itself. What is it? Surely, nothing in the architecture or the lighting of the chapel; nothing in the subjects of the frescoes, for they are familiar subjects in art. It is the impress of a commanding individuality that you feel. Michael Angelo lives here in his pictures. Those great forms of the Prophets and Sibyls lost in thought, brooding over the evil of their days, isolated in their grandeur, living on in gloomy solitude, how very like they are to what we know of Michael Angelo himself! Notice the fore-shortened hand and arm of the “Delphic Sibyl” (Plate [21]) and how symbolic of strength it is, how like to the power that lay in the arm, hand, and mind of the master himself! Follow the outline of the figure of the newly created Adam—perhaps the grandest piece of drawing in all pictorial art—and how that summarized, synthetized line speaks the comprehensive grasp, scope, knowledge, and plastic feeling of the great draughtsman.

So it is that individuality creeps into the work of art and tinges the whole character of it. Of the thousands of pictures we pass before in public galleries the great majority of them are merely records of individual tastes, beliefs, aspirations, emotions. In other words they are partial autobiographies of the painters, showing countless moods of human nature. Some of them are grave, some gay, some refined, some fierce, some grandiloquent, some resplendent. Almost every shade of sentiment and feeling, almost every quality personal to the man, can be recorded in art. And this, without premeditated thought, without extravagant effort, without conscious action. The note of a bird discloses its kind not more unconsciously than the hand of the artist tells the quality of the man.

If all the lives of Rembrandt were swept out of existence we should still be able to reconstruct his individuality from his pictures. His must have been an intensely emotional nature. For not in the “Supper at Emmaus” alone do we find the sorrow-stained face. The portraits of himself are only too often sad-eyed and passion-wrung; and there is in the National Gallery, London, one of his portraits of an old woman with a lace cap and a white ruff (No. 775 of the Catalogue) that shows a mouth and chin quivering with emotion, and eyes that seem red with weeping. The man was tragic in his passionate power. He could not suppress it. Even when he laughs you feel that he is doing so to avoid a moan. We have little record of the life of Giorgione, but from two or three of his pictures we know he must have been quite the reverse of Rembrandt. His “Madonna,” at Castelfranco (Plate [24]) and his “Concert,” in the Louvre (in Giorgione’s style if not by his hand), tell us his Theocritean nature—loving life for its pastoral beauty, revelling in sunshine, shadow and color, careless of everything but the pure joy of living. We know still less about Correggio, but his pictures (Plate [8]) say to us that he was of a similar faun-like nature—a man who grew eloquent over the grace and charm of women and children, and cared little or nothing for the religious themes of his time.

And so we might go on down the long line of paintings, recognizing in each picture the note that harmonized with the painter’s individuality. What, for instance, is more apparent than the charm of Corot as seen in his landscapes (Plate [9])? His pictures delight us by their alluring qualities of calmness, radiance, unity. They are fair dreams of splendor in which dawn and twilight glow through a silver veil of atmosphere, in which the winds are hushed and the waters are stilled and that peace that passeth understanding, that joy which is beyond price, have fallen upon the dwellers in Arcadia Charm in its various manifestations has been the possession of not a few painters. Many of the Italians—Leonardo, Filippino, Lorenzo Costa, Sodoma—possessed it; the eighteenth century Englishmen—Wilson, Gainsborough, Romney—were not without it; and the modern landscape painters—Daubigny (Plate [16]), Cazin, Homer Martin, Tryon—have shown it in almost all their work. Serenity is a quality allied to charm in that it is restful and hence an attractive feature. All the great men possessed it. Raphael was primarily its exponent in Rome as Giorgione in Venice. The superb repose of Titian and Velasquez is akin to it; and the calm of the Parthenon marbles is part of the same spirit. Refinement is another characteristic that may be shown in painting as readily as in print. It has nothing to do with fine furniture, fine clothes, and a pretty face. A picture may possess all the elegance of the latest fashion and still be the epitome of vulgarity. Refinement in art means the delicacy, the distinction of feeling that a painter may possess and show in his work. Terburg made it apparent in so simple a thing as the drawing of a chair leg or a table-cloth, Chardin showed it in his pots, pans and dishes, and it is obvious to the most obtuse in Van Dyck’s portraits of men, women and children. (Plate [18].) A tenderness of feeling as well as of touch has been exhibited many times in painting. Dürer shows it in his “Christ on the Cross” (Plate [10]), and Botticelli suggests it in almost every picture he ever painted, whether sacred or profane (Plate [29]). Just so with sensitiveness, which we see so beautifully shown in the portraits by Lorenzo Lotto, or impetuosity as revealed in the great dramatic canvases by Tintoretto, or liveliness as seen in the garden scenes of Pater or the soubrette figures of Fragonard. The words describe the spirit of the pictures and they also suggest the nature of the painter.

IX.—COROT, Landscape. Louvre, Paris.