The Whistler book

by Sadakichi Hartmann

The greatest havoc among chiaroscural effects, however, has been played by modern light appliances. Gas and electric light, with their various modifiers and intensifiers, have killed all the old ideals. There are no longer any striking chiaroscural contrasts or strong accentuations. In the Middle Ages dress and drapery showed depth of folds and recesses which are absolutely unknown to-day. Now, everything is diffused with light. Nothing is steady and fixed, and yet objects stand out in painful relief. The modelling has lost much of its tonal variety, and all objects vaguely reflect the imprint of all-pervading light. The values of colour appear bleached and vary incessantly. Our eyes are perpetually moving in a restless manner from one part to another, and no longer find any place to rest in the depth of shadows.

Luckily for us, we have been rendered unconscious of these dangers, we have grown accustomed to them, but their influence on modern painting has been a most palpable one. Chiaroscural composition underwent a complete transformation. Saliency of object induced the modern painter for a time, at the beginning of the last century, to strive solely for fixed and precise conceptions of form and to utterly neglect the beauty of light and shade. When he discovered his error, he went to the other extreme, and not merely softened contours, but blotted them out completely. At a loss how to meet this difficulty he lost himself in an intenser and more varied study of illumination, with the aim to reach a higher pitch of light. Lamplight and firelight effects and the contrasts of commingling light rays from two, or even three, sources became the order of the day. Sargent studied the effect of Japanese lanterns on white dresses in twilight. Harrison tried to fix the play of sunlight on the naked human body. Dannat experimented with flesh tones and electrical arclight and magnesium flashlight illumination. Zorn endeavoured to solve in his Omnibus picture the conflict of various lights in a glass-encased interior. Degas and Besnard became enchanted with illumination from below, in the cross lights and the lurid unnatural lights of the stage, and his disciples introduced the effects of footlights into interiors by placing the lamp on the floor.

All these studies address themselves most powerfully to the modern mind, as they depict contemporary conditions. The eye may be offended or even repelled by unnecessary trivialities at times, but the underlying aspiration is, after all, the truth. From an æsthetic view-point it is less satisfactory, as this modern substitute of light and shade composition, consisting of an opposition of colours, rather than of masses, does not afford, in the speech of Herbert Spencer, "the maximum of stimulation with the minimum of fatigue." It contains a discord, a lack of normal gratification, and this shortcoming, in conjunction with the deterioration of the crafts, which were replaced by factory labour, and the hopelessly prosaic aspect of modern dress, as far as colour is concerned, directed the painter into other fields of investigation. He realized that nature had remained unchanged, that the colour-symphony of sea and landscapes, of dawn and sunset, were as beautiful as ever, and he went out of doors for inspiration. And then, to his great astonishment, he discovered that the optical sensations afforded by nature were very similar to those he had experienced in his home life, also how everything was diffused with light, and forms rendered uncertain by the vibration of light.

The famous colour harmony of Italian painters, red, green and violet, which aroused action successively in the whole field of vision without exhausting it, seemed meaningless. Strange, apparently discordant combinations of green and blue and yellow, orange and red, which stimulate only certain portions of the retina at the expense of others, obtruded themselves upon his optical consciousness. It became apparent that light does not emphasize, but that it generalizes, and that colours and tones, although more varied, are less decisive than in the painting of the Old Masters. The charm of pictorial illusion seemed to have shifted from the juxtaposition of contrast to the more subtle and less powerful variety of half tones. It is not so much the richness and fullness of colour the modern painter strives for, as Raffaelli has pointed out, but the combination of colours which yield a sensation of light, which, in a way, is a reflection of our temporary light conditions. That the Impressionists banished black from their palette is significant itself.

Owned by John H. Whittemore
"L'ANDALUSIENNE."

Ever since the semi-darkness of the Middle Ages was dispelled, the minds of painters had been occupied with the invention of a new method of painting. Chardin and Watteau, who crosshatched and stippled pure colours in their pastels and water colours, were really the forerunners of impressionism. Delacroix was the first master-painter who scientifically concerned himself with light and colour notation, as Turner (viz. Ruskin) introduced the emphasis of the colour of shadows at the expense of their tones. But not before science came to the assistance of the painter, was he able to perfect his system of open air mosaics, of producing tone by the parallel and distinct projection of pure colours.

And it is Chevreul, Young, Helmholtz and Ogden Rood, who, after analyzing colour sensations from a physiological viewpoint and tracing them to their causes, supplied the genius of Manet, Monet and Degas with a new pictorial revelation of light and colour. The modern style of painting is a direct outcome of the environment in which we live. With the decline of candlelight parties the new era was ushered in, and the kerosene lamp was the last harmonizer of light and darkness. As it went slowly out of fashion, the reign of half and quarter tones, or, in other words, a new reign of light, of light transposed into tone, set in.

It set in, however, at the expense of everything else. It is largely technical, and the representations are photographic, prosaic, crude and often without the slightest suggestion of sentiment, not even that which an ordinary scene out of doors produces in an imaginative mind. This, more than any other course, estranges art from the approval of the general public.