COLOUR IN PAINTING.
MHE scientific spirit is often charged with attempts to invade and conquer other domains than its own. In that of the Fine Arts, a certain legitimate influence, it is true, has always been assigned to it. Its aid is useful in technical processes, and in our study of all objects of imitation. But any attempt on its part to conquer and permanently occupy or to interfere with the capital city, as it were, in which the sacred power of artistic invention reigns of right supreme, we instinctively feel to be an outrage. We are no less sensitive with respect to any scientific interest in the province of Colour. Nay, there are reasons why we should be even more so. A great natural philosopher or successful experimentalist must have his share at least of imagination, he may be keenly alive to the beauties of poetry, and enjoy those of painting, so far as they depend on truthful portraiture and effective arrangement of forms ; but it is very unlikely that he will have an eye for colour, and a sheer impossibility—we will run all risks in saying
' it,—that he should be endowed with any feeling for 4, tone." No two kinds of mind, we believe, are more diverse than those of the scientific person, or the critic with scientific leanings, and the colourist, so born. Even among great artists, the few who have been distinguished by scientific ability—who were engineers, architects, mechanicians, or discoverers in natural philosophy, have not, if we take the most conspicuous examples, possessed the colour-gift. As for examples in the world around us, the experience of any one conversant with artists will tell the same way. Those who feel colour strongly are, as a rule, the last to talk about it. Unhappily, it is very much otherwise with those who do not feel it strongly, although they are keenly interested in art. It is all a matter of taste and decorative effect. If the scientific spirit is to be viewed with suspicion, we have no great confidence in that of the decorator, whose dealing with tints and tones in abstract colour does not always tend to a healthy judgment of colour in painting.
The October number of the Corn kill Magazine contains an article on the subject which is able and truthful in its noting of various facts in the history of Art, but is marred, to our thinking, by a mistaken view of what a really fine picture ought to be, and by an evidently imperfect appreciation of colour, as used in pictures. The writer's main purpose is to show that hitherto we have claimed to receive from the art of painting the twofold pleasure of having our eyes agreeably stimulated by colours, and an intellect addressed by the correct imitation of natural objects; that we have allowed our craving for the former more immediate and sensuous delight to get itself satisfied at the cost of the latter more purely intellectual one ; and that as time goes on, and our taste improves, it is probable that we shall naturally come to de- mand the separation of the two, or at all events, a more decided insistance in art on the one ground of pleasure or the other. The delight in colour is natural and good,—only let it be seen clearly that the gratification of it has little or nothing to do with the direct imitation of nature, whose colours are, for the most part, too grave and subdued to yield the de- sired amount of chromatic stimulation. That object must be obtained by means definitely directed to that end, and no other. For want of seeing this, we have had our pictures hurt as like- nesses of nature by over-colouring, artists being accustomed either to choose subjects naturally bright, for the sake of the fine colours they were capable of bearing without falsehood, or to falsify the colours of naturally dull subjects, for the sake of decorative effect of which colour is the chief element. Our delight in colour has been in no degree lessened by civilisation,—we get much more pleasure from the gratification of our refined and perfected msthetic feeling in regard to it than the savage can obtain from his startling pigments ; "but we have found out that we cannot in one and the same artistic product enjoy both the accurate de- lineation of nature, and also the stimulation of colours very much brighter and more pronounced than nature. The result has been that decorative and imitative art have necessarily diverged," and it is interesting to guess how much further this process of diver- gence will extend, and whether we shall finally arrive at the point of knowing for certain that we have no right to look for power of colour or exquisiteness of design in any trustworthy representation of reality, such delights being reserved for purely "ideal pieces" only. Representations of the actual world will tend, in propor- tion to their accuracy, to be unexciting in hue and undelightful in form ; for we may remark here that the writer in the Cornkill has the same future in store for the graceful lines, curves, and sinuosities which artists have hitherto pretended to see in nature, as for their gay, exaggerated, and in truth entirely decorative colours.
There are many things in the article with which we agree (with our own gloss upon them, perhaps), and much which may help artists to be on their guard against besetting sins—and their very best work is always on the edge of deadly error, somehow—but we hasten to join issue with the writer on the misconception, as it appears to us, which runs through his view of painting alto- gether. Of course, we take for granted that he does not use the word " imitation " in the restricted sense of would-be deceptive resemblance, but as it is commonly understood when we speak of representative, or even realistic art. To us, it appears that no development whatever will ever make art in any of its higher forms other than the expression of the intellectual and emotional elements of our nature in perfect combination ; and that what he speaks of as the "decorative intention," with its requirements of striking colours and studied forms, represents really the sym- pathetic or imaginative force, without which no imitation, however exact, can have power over the minds of men. On the other
hand, we hold equally strongly that the action of the decorative faculty, in painting at all events, is only healthy when it is in direct communion with nature,—inspired by nature, and com- pletely satisfied with the forms and colours of Nature. The lines of the human figure, even in these degenerate days, will surely supply examples of such infinite beauty of curvature, that the most ideal of designers cannot do better than copy them truth- fully. The colours one meets with in ordinary landscape are surely bright and pronounced enough to be effective in the most truthful statement of them without that intensifying of which our writer roundly declares artists to be continually guilty. Has he been so unlucky in his art society as never to have met with an artist of whom be could imagine that the love of truth was so strong that the thought of decorative effect never entered into his head, while the desire to convey by any means in his power the true impression of the splendid colours which almost every ay brought before his eyes amounted to a passion? With a figure-painter, the degree to which he will use the stimulation of colour in telling his story is to some extent a matter of choice, although even in his case, the subtle rendering of intense feeling, as in a lover's parting, is none the less true for the colour being lovely ; but with a landscape painter that degree is pretty well fixed for him by nature, unless he takes some pains to avoid his obligations. Comparatively colourless subjects can be found by seeking for them; but the sympathy with nature would be limited which was never excited by her excitement, and the splendours which she puts forth at such times. Certainly, there could be no real sympathy with the sun. For let it be noted that it is not in sunsets and sunrises only, or in far-away lands under burning skies, that colour facts are offered to our notice as bright, as rich, as " pronounced " as our finest pigments can be. Let the sun light up for a moment the most common-place scene in any ordinary country, the shadows will at once cease to be, if they ever were, a "dull brown," and lichen and russet-leaf or peat-stained river in the sunlight will give more than a "faint hint of colour." A dull day even will do that, in the depth of its tones, which are often as much beyond our power of imitation on the side of darkness as the bright tints are on that of light. But according to the critic, or rather "philosophical te3the- Celan," of the Cori/hill, every plain, uncritical person knows that "artists do introduce a great deal more colour into their imita- tions than they ever find in Nature ;" and further on he declares that most artists and critics still tacitly hold the critical principle that Art ought to be more beautiful than Nature. If so, we are sorry to hear it. He has "actually stood and watched an artist in the very act of reddening a grey cliff." We should like to hear the artist's side of the story. He might say that the rock was unmistakably red, and that his overlooker was perverse in think- ing it grey. Artists, we know, do err greatly in their interpreta- tion of such natural facts, but we also know "plain, uncritical" people in plenty to whom the world is uniformly grey.
Limits of space will only allow us to hint at the existence of certain difficulties which make the perfection of colour-truth a much harder thing to obtain in landscape painting than in any other branch of art. We have given reasons why the landscape painter can hardly help making the attempt to obtain it. The simple fact that our poor, paltry stains of colour at their brightest absorb and do not give out light, while light is the very life of nature, and the representation of its splendour or its fading away through twilight into utter darkness, the chief source of poetical effect which the landscape-painter possesses,—this fact alone is sufficient to indicate the special difficulties of his task. The Cornhill writer may call his love of colour which shall strike as colour, a love of decorative effect, if he likes—it is often, we dare say, nothing more—but we contend that in proportion to the nobleness of his aim his colouring will be beautiful, nay, even gorgeous, in its richness and brilliancy, just so far as it is true. If he or any other artist chooses to paint pictures, i.e., imitations of men and things, which shall be distinctly addressed to the
colour-sense—and many more such pictures will, we think, come to be painted—he has just as much need of mental grasp and ruling power, of purely intellectual strength, in short, as the painter who relies on other more material grounds of effect. The laws of colour are as strict, if not as well known, as those of music.
The writer of the article in the Cornhill either has no likes and dislikes, or keeps them well to himself. Whatever is is right, at least in Art. It is by the objective method of inquiry that he arrives at the conclusion that some day, in all probability, the divergence which is even now visible between the imitative and decorative elements of art will end in something very like complete separa-
tion. We hold, on the contrary, that truth in painting, so far as painting takes rank with poetry as an imaginative art, will always demand beauty of design and colour for its adequate expression, and that a work of art will always be felt to fall below the highest standard, in which these qualities, which are indeed allied to decoration, are not evidently part and parcel of the artist's original creation. We maintain also that the loveliest colouring in pictures will always be the strictest copy of nature. If the art-creed of the future does not contain these articles of faith, we can only say that, like the heathen of the story,—who, no doubt, as a barbarian, had a strong colour-instinct,—We would rather sin and suffer with our ancestors, than be converted to the new creed.
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