Study for Bacchanal Drawing.
In connection with this matter, the question comes up how far Mr. La Farge is a thorough draughtsman. It hardly becomes one who is not ready to go into the minute examination of his work, figure by figure, to challenge its merit in the way of anatomical correctness and academic severity of drawing; but it is to be said, at least, that the strongest reason exists for the belief that many of the draped figures would prove incorrect if an absolutely accurate drawing of the nude body in the position assumed by the draped figure could be laid upon the drapery. It is difficult here to express one's exact meaning, because there is no such thing as an absolutely correct drawing of the nude body in any position; but if we take a draped angel or a draped St. Peter or a draped Buddhist priest from this gallery of pictured men and women, we can imagine the consummate draughtsman, the Paul Veronese of the present, if there were such a man, pointing out that a figure seated or standing in that position could not get within the drapery which the artist has pictured. We can even imagine the painter aware of the fact—in advance of all criticism by others. It will be observed that La Farge has seldom painted the nude. His early work involved a great deal of drawing, both from the nude model and in the way of designed and composed nude figures. Naked figures represented on a small scale, as among his numerous Eastern subjects, exist, of course, in his work in great numbers; but the nude in the larger European sense of elaborately rendered, well modelled, thoroughly understood naked figures, male and female, is rare in his work. Mural painting in churches hardly allows of that; glass is, of course, wholly foreign in its purpose and mission from such art as includes the nude, and hardly allows even of the naked hands and head. Now, let it be admitted for the moment not only that La Farge is not given to drawing the nude, but even that he has not done consummate work in that direction; let that be admitted, and let us then see how that affects his pictures and drawings. It need not be asked whether it affects the decorative value of his work—considered as a body of art it cannot affect it badly; we need think, now, only of fine drawing considered by itself. It is a part of the true traditional doctrine of art that no man should paint from the model, nude or draped; that no man should draw from the model, nude or draped, with the intention of using the drawing upon his wall surface or canvas. It is a tradition which ought to have been left intact as it came from older men, that when the artist composes it is his duty to forget his anatomy and to forget the preparatory drawings which he has made by hundreds, and to draw directly upon his canvas or sheet of paper the figure which he now conceives as a part of his design, the figure which he desires to put into his composition as one of its elements. He is free then to do what La Farge himself does freely, to compare this result with the model, nude or draped, or first nude and then draped; but this comparison has for its purpose, not the correction of the drawing or the picture with reference to its anatomical correctness nearly so much as it has in view the lifelike appearance of the figure. Given a draped figure which does not seem to stand quite as firmly upon its feet, or to be moving quite as freely, as the composer himself desires, it is required by consultation of the model to rectify those errors in the drawing which have led to this unfortunate result and to give to that figure the lifelike character which it does not yet possess.
Study for the Watson Window, 1889.
This is the one carried out and sent to the Paris Exposition.
It is a characteristic of Mr. La Farge's art as a painter that he is primarily a colorist. Now it is fairly safe to say that no man since the great Venetians has been at once a consummate draughtsman of the human figure and a consummate master of color; and that apparently the mind of the workman cannot lead his artistic production in such paths that both of these excellences may be attained at once. The workman, if he is sincere, and if he is well advised, follows the course which is easiest for him, and if he conceives of every figure and every group of figures with their setting of landscape or architecture primarily as a piece of splendid coloring, to be taken from nature as an abstract piece of coloring, and so modified that it will tell as an abstract piece of coloring on canvas or on wall—if that is the artist's object he will not improve the work produced on these lines by giving his time and strength to the proposed consideration of accuracy of drawing.
To ask whether La Farge's work would be artistically better if it were consummate in drawing is to ask a question which no one can answer. It is certain that no wise student will go to La Farge to learn figure drawing in the technical sense. It is not that which his art offers the student. There are, however, two large pictures, which can hardly be challenged—the two lunettes in the Villard-Reid house; and it is probable that if these pictures were within easy reach of the public, and could be seen as the wall paintings in the Congressional Library can be seen by all the world and every day, they would tend to raise the general opinion of La Farge's capacity and range as a painter beyond what even his admirers now hold. The pictures represent "The Dance" and "Music." In each of them, smiling landscape forms the background, a landscape not to be called sunny because the work of the true colorist hardly allows of sunshine. Sunshine and full glowing color are not generally found possible of simultaneous presentation, and La Farge certainly makes no attempt to combine them. If, then, we consider one of these two groups of six or eight maidens invested in rather bright and high-lighted colors and set off by a landscape somewhat deeper in tone than their own figures—if we consider each of these pictures as a mural painting intended to be festal in character and to glorify and heighten the beauty of the room which it adorns, while at the same time it is in itself a piece of coloring of almost the highest quality—we have then, perhaps, the fairest and most complete idea of what one of these lunettes is as a work of art—what it has been in the artist's well-realized purpose. The beauty of composition in line and mass in either of the pictures, noticeable as it is, is not important in comparison. The power of line-composition is not very rare; except in its very highest manifestation, it is almost like correct spelling; necessary, but deserving no special remark. But when it is said of any picture that it is a piece of coloring of the highest or almost the highest rank, there has been said of it the utmost that can be said of a work of graphic art. It is not claimed that color is essentially greater or nobler than form, but that color is the graphic artist's especial domain, in which he alone can rule; and further, that color is peculiarly artistical, ideal, abstract, and in this way loftier. Is it possible for the mind of man to conceive of anything more perfect, more remote from, and, in a sense, superior to, whatever else there is in the world of humanity than a color composition of the highest quality? There is only one product of the human mind which can be compared with it; a musical composition of the highest class; a symphony of Beethoven, alone, can be compared to a great composition by Titian. That such a color-gift and such a color-purpose are to be seen in all of Mr. La Farge's work alike would be hardly too much to say. The touch of the consummate colorist is not as evident, but is as discoverable by one who knows how to look, in a piece of nature-study from Fiji, six inches square, as it is in a large composition of saints and angels. The disposition and the power to give to tinted paper the glow, the radiance, the wealth and charm of that strange and inexplicable thing, the mingling of tints into a resulting color-scheme—these are in small work the same essentially that they are in large. Nor is the background of the Ascension picture in the eponymic church to be exalted above the bits of hillside and surf in the drawings of oceanic life, otherwise than as its greater size allows it greater splendor.