Indeed, true pictorial feeling finds its way into still less clear conceptions than we have cited. The very means of expression are often tinged by it. There may be no deep sentiment in the subject or characters. It may be only a group of tavern brawlers by Jan Steen or a smirking fish-wife by Frans Hals, and yet the picture may be handled in color and light with such charm as to produce a prismatic poem. Diaz could and did paint flowers as worthy of Paradise as Ghiberti’s “Gates of the Baptistery,” solely because of his fine feeling for color. Sometimes there is a feeling for the sweep and flow of lines, as in Raphael, Tintoretto, and Rubens, that is poetic in the best sense of the word, and in Delacroix’s colors there is often the haunting suggestion of passion, fury, fire, and death. The subject may count for little. What the painter feels about it may make it poetic. Decamp got poetry out of the exact value of a spot of sunshine falling on the floor; and Chardin found it in the textures of pots and pans in a kitchen.
Paint itself may be made poetic by the sympathetic handling of it, just as words and sentences in literature. There is nothing remarkably poetic in thought about Byron’s
“Before St. Mark’s still glow his steeds of brass,
Their gilded collars glittering in the sun,”
but can you not feel in the expression of it the stately and majestic march of numbers? You may think there is nothing remarkable in thought in the flying figures of William Blake. They are descriptions like Byron’s couplet, but under them is the feeling of vast sweeping power. This is all poetry of a most sovereign kind; and that, too, shown in the means of expression—in the technique of art. The same kind of feeling appears in the contours of Leonardo, in the light-and-shade of Correggio, in the coloring of Paolo Veronese, in the modelling of Velasquez, in the brush-work of Manet. It rises to the sublime with Michael Angelo; it abides in the smallest things of earth in the hands of the Japanese. Into the infinitely little as into the infinitely great the feeling of the man may infuse that true poetry of painting which is perhaps the highest as it is the ultimate aim of pictorial art. That it is not the only aim we shall see immediately when we come to discuss the decorative value of painting.
CHAPTER V
THE DECORATIVE QUALITY
We could easily settle, ex cathedra, this matter of art if our views were the only ones to be considered; but, unfortunately, intelligent people differ with us, and the painter himself is often our most determined antagonist. The painter, in fact, has opinions of his own about his pictures and he sometimes asserts them with no uncertain voice. His most persistent assertion is that the picture should be something decorative in form or color—be something beautiful to look at—rather than something moral, intellectual, or narrative. But the public, being differently minded, keeps insisting that the picture should be something in subject or have some literary meaning; and, consequently, it often misses the decorative altogether. So it is that there is plenty of material for disagreement. The painter and his public seem ever at swords’ points. Let us to-day review the case for the plaintiff and to-morrow perhaps we can sum up for the defendant public.
It is true, to begin with, that the average person who takes an interest in painting and attends gallery exhibitions often shoots wide of the mark in his appreciations. He starts wrong by devoting too much attention to pictures that have pretty faces and tell pretty stories. He is over-fond of heroes and heroines, plots and tales, dramatic scenes from history, or familiar characters in fiction. The ideal, whether in figure, face or landscape, pleases him; and he does not object to a laugh over the comic or the ludicrous. But he cannot abide coarse peasants or fishermen in art; Dutch pictures with their tavern brawls are not to his taste; and he persists in misunderstanding Italian people dressed in modern garb and representing sacred characters. Anachronisms of type, furniture, architecture, bother him beyond measure. The Madonna and the Apostles were Jews and lived in Judea, and he wishes an archæological report of the race, country, climate and soil. Of course, he does not care for portraits by Velasquez with their outlandish dresses, or large Flemish women by Rubens, or the “splashy” painting of Dutch burghers by Frans Hals. In short the average person is devoted to the pleasant subject in art and is continually asking of the picture: What does it mean?
The view of the painter is very different from all this. He is not interested in the pretty face. The Madonnas and Saints whether Dutch, French, German, or Italian, do not interest him as Madonnas and Saints. A figure, whether sacred or profane, is to him only a figure. As for the pretty story, the ideal, the correct costume, he usually turns up his nose at them. He is not always interested in what a picture means. Too often perhaps he cares not a rap whether it means anything or not. His question is first of all: What does it look? He wishes to know whether that figure is well drawn, rightly placed, beautiful as form solely and simply. Costume, whether right or wrong, is no great matter; but does that Madonna’s robe make for graceful line, or play well as a spot of color? The interior of a room has no significance architecturally. It may be false to history; but does it make a good setting for the figures, does it lend readily to light-and-shade, has it atmosphere (Plate [27])? Finally, what is the result of the workmanship as a whole? Has the painter handled his materials artistically, has he drawn his figures effectively, has he arranged them compactly, has he brought his lights-and-shades together truthfully, and has he fused his color-masses harmoniously? If so he has produced a work of art, whether its subject means much or means little.