The meaning of pictures

by John C. Van Dyke

And now, if we stop to consider the great men in the arts, we shall invariably find that each one of them is marked by some quality of universal significance. There is something about them all that overleaps the provincial, the accidental, the small, and the trifling. They disregard in a measure the local truths and aim at the general truths—at things essentially true for all humanity. Our Shakespeares and Platos and St. Pauls survey the world from mountain tops. From these vantage points their perspective is far-reaching, their view of the world expansive. They see and grasp the essentials, the basic elements, the foundations of things. It is this, for one thing, that makes the art of Titian so superlatively great. What wonderful men and women people his pantheon! What types they are of manhood and womanhood! What embodiments of loftiness, dignity, and nobility! And are they not universally admired? No matter what a man’s nationality, he cannot choose but be interested in “The Man with a Glove” or the “Charles V.” at Madrid. There is something in them of that truth seen from mountain heights which every one will recognize as the nobler part of his little valley-world.

Just so with the art of Rembrandt. His type is essentially of the Low Countries; his costumes, landscapes, light-and-shade, and methods are all localized in Holland. But a sadder painter you cannot find in all the reach of painting. His emotional nature had been wrung by trial and suffering and his sympathies were with the down-trodden and the grief-stricken. There never was a painter who painted so much of sorrow in the faces of his people as Rembrandt. The “Christ at Emmaus” is, in form and figure, only a poor emaciated Amsterdam Jew; but in emotional truth it is the one Christ of all painting. That face appeals to Christian, Mahometan, Jew, and infidel alike, not because of its divinity but because of its intense humanity. Should we bring up the names of the other great masters of painting we should find that each one of them is remarkable for some quality of universal significance—Michael Angelo for his great command of form, Rubens for his great splendor of effect, Velasquez for his sense of vitality in the physical presence (Plate [13]), Raphael for his unity and his harmony.

The great men are remarkable for their breadth—the wide angle of their vision. They see, not differently from others, but they see more. Yet it is only a point of view, a limited outlook, and not by any means the total sum of truth. The report of nature made by man, which we have defined as “truth,” is always a report of some sort whoever makes it. The difference between the great minds and the small ones consists in what is seen and reported. A Rousseau who sees and tells of the solidity of the earth, the volume of the forest, the great luminous expanse of the sky, does not think to tell everything that may be in the landscape. He sees the great truths, those truths that are of universal permanence in all landscape, and emphasizes them at the expense of the smaller details. A man of narrower vision would perhaps overlook the sky and earth, and fail to see the forest for the trees. He might centre all his interest in blades of grass, in dew-drops and spider-webs and opening buttercups—the infinitely little things in the landscape.

In portraiture men like Gerard Dou and Denner emphasize the small skin-facts of a man’s face with such minute workmanship that you may study them with a magnifying-glass. You will never see anything like this in the portraits by Titian, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Van Dyck (Plates [3], [13], [18]). They waste no time on small truths. They are intent upon giving the large physical presence, not the petty deformities of the epidermis.

Again in drawing a hand and arm you will observe that men like Gérôme give every curve and break of light along the arm, every accidental contortion of muscle, every wrinkle and twist of flesh; but somehow, when all these features are put down, the arm fails to live, fails to move. It is a petrified arm. For an opposite statement of truth look at the arm of Millet’s “Sower.” There is nothing absolute or minute about the drawing. The arm is generalized, summarized, synthetized as it were. The wrinkles in it are not apparent, the covering of it is vague, the hand is not articulated in the muscles or even definite in the drawing of the fingers. In short the whole arm and hand are cut down to a few elementary lines, so that they appear to the uninitiated somewhat sketchy and peremptory. But looked at for those qualities which Millet thought more important than surface texture, looked at for bulk, mass, weight, motion—particularly motion—and there is a larger view apparent. The arm and hand certainly have motion and life. And these are precisely what Gérôme’s arm and hand have not. Can it not be claimed then that the truth of life and motion is a greater truth than the truth of momentary rigidity? Is it not a fact that Millet has seized upon a general and universal truth characteristic of all arms and hands—that is, the truth of life and movement—whereas Gérôme has seized upon an accidental truth of light-and-shade which may be something local and peculiar to that one hand and arm?

IV.—MILLET, The Gleaners. Louvre, Paris.

If one shows us a snap-photograph of breaking waves, what do we see if not the highest and most brittle wave the camera man could catch? Does this give us a general or a particular truth of the sea? Do waves stand rigidly in air, petrified from base to crest, as we see in the photograph, or do they roll and keep on rolling indefinitely and ceaselessly? Does not the very essence of truth about a wave lie in its restless heave and toss, its breaking and reforming, its eternal indefiniteness of form? How many sea pictures have we seen with every wave in place—pounded into place like hammered steel—with every facet shining like a mirror, and not a possibility of motion in anything? Perhaps we have rather enjoyed them and fancied, in crossing the ocean, that the waves looked like that. Perhaps they did; perhaps we were content to see only the small truths of the ocean; but a study of the marines by Courbet, Manet, and Monet may convince us that there are larger truths of the ocean than those relating to its mirror-like sparkles—larger truths in the ocean’s depth, power, and its restless, ceaseless motion. These painters have discarded small things on the surface of the water, as Frans Hals the small spots on a man’s face, in order to give the sense of form back of it (Plate [22]).

In the same way you will often find painters discarding the exact drawing of objects such as wood or cloth or stone or metal in order that they may give the weight, the elasticity, or the density of these objects. A feather or a leaf may be an epitome of floating, dancing lightness, but if you draw its complete anatomy and paint all its surface texture you will have something that is as heavy as wrought iron. It does not follow either, because Desgoffes gives us the sheen and flash of brasses, china, and satins, that he has told all or the most vital truths about those articles. Vollon may paint the same things in a fuller manner, showing us something of structural character which is just as important and just as true as surface appearance. Moreover, the broader method leaves something to implication and suggestion, where the other method buries under an accumulation of fact.

Please note the word “suggestion,” for it is by suggestion that the greatest truths of art are brought home to us. The realist, whom we have been hastily considering, does not care for this method of approach. He is bent upon realization. He is analytical in his statement of each and every fact and makes a full report. All painters do this in some degree during the early stages of their career, but as they advance in years and experience there is a tendency to a broader treatment, a return to the simple line of the child, to the synthesis of a Millet, as shown in the arms, hands, and backs of the women in “The Gleaners” (Plate [4]), to the implication and suggestion of a Corot, as shown in the sky of the “Biblis.” Facts are summarized. A mere charcoal outline drawn by Degas gives us the reliefs, proportions, weight, and bulk of a human figure; a shadow with Giorgione or Rembrandt sums up the series of facts beneath it, and becomes suggestive by its very mystery and uncertainty; a blended blur of color by Whistler may bring to mind a heaving wave in mid-ocean better than all the drawn and tinted and “realized” waves of all the realists.