International studio (40.1910)

Blue Shadows in Nature and Art

detail of stairway in the morgan memorial
hartford, conn.

BLUE SHADOWS IN NATURE AND
ART
BY J. W. MORAN

That the luminous, silvery-blue moonlights of
the river Thames were invented by Whistler, and
that nature ever after imitated them, is an arresting
hyperbole which, "with likelihood to lead to it,"
has been accredited to Oscar Wilde. Akin though
the saying be to many another purposely con-
ceived paradox in his three brilliant essays on the
Art of Criticism, it must, if his, have been uttered,
one would think, some years before they were
written. Irrespective, however, of any question as
to its origin, might not the spirit of satiric comment
it conveys, in regard to the failure of artists and lay-
men to observe these transparent, ethereal emana-
tions until after Whistler painted them, be also ap-
plied to the immemorial preconvictions of both,
that the blue and purple shadows of nature were
merely neutral brown or gray, and ought to be so
rendered.

For is it not evident that it is only since a consid-
erable body of artists of distinction, both in the

United States and abroad, impelled almost syn-
chronously and with one accord, one would think,
yet acting, of course, spontaneously and independ-
ently, introduced blue and purple into their shad-
ows, as light conditions necessitated—and that with
manifest gain to color, luminosity, life and atmo-
sphere—that such artists as have not as yet adopted
them, and some, at least, in all probability, of the
amateurs who have seen them in pictures, have be-
gun at last to observe that the colors are corrobo-
rated by nature ?

During the five centuries over which brown and
gray shadows continued to be in vogue the few spo-
radic instances of painters who employed color in
their shadows had no effect in changing the prac-
tice. When Turner introduced blue and purple
into his, the innovation was met with ridicule, he
himself being considered an irresponsible eccentric.
Now, however, we find in The International
Studio of June last Mr. Henri Frantz, in his appre-
ciation of the works of M. Jeanes, saying that "his
wonderful power as a colorist . . . makes one
think of no less a person than the great Turner
himself." Accompanying the article is a fine repro-
duction of the Marmarole Dolomites, in which the
setting and color of the clouds, the wonderful play
of red-purple and blue shadows over the impressive
mass of the mountain range, might form an object
lesson on the subject of the present article. More
than half a century after Turner first began his
color innovations had passed before Manet, toward
the end of his career, introduced violet shadows and
his freer, more broken, though flowing brush work—
becoming the protagonist of la peinture claire.
Monet, Sisley and Renoir we know followed him
in these, though with a more minced-looking, stac-
cato execution; their younger followers, Seurat, Sig-
nac and Anquetin, adding "the division of the
tones," together with extravagant color theories and
uses of violet; Monet progressing into blue shadows
only as late as his Thames series. In the interval
between Turner and Manet an occasional practi-
tioner of both, or either, appeared—Sam Bough,
Melville, Mactaggart, rarely Mauve, Jules Breton
—but only in one or two sunlit snow scenes—
Corot but seldom, Bargue and Domingo. These
are all I can at present recall, but in the Metro-
politan Museum I noticed in an example of the
fifteenth century, The Deposition from the Cross, by
Antonello Da Messina, purple shadows of build-
ings behind the figures and blue shadows among the
peaks of a snow-capped sierra in the distance. In
Frans Hals's portrait of his wife there are grayish-
blue shadows in her wide, ample collar and her cuffs

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