DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68796#0157
CHAP. I
The Painter's training
i37
in his power, so that when he had sketched in a portrait he
was able to render the essential features in light-and-shade
with single strokes of the pencil, each in the right place,a
without altering them and without fusing them together.’1
Velasquez, a more exquisite painter, has the same power of
giving back the life of nature in all its varied subtleties by
means of free broad strokes that do not seem to follow
any contours, but when the spectator is at the right dis-
tance, make the form appear to stand out with startling
vividness and relief. In one of his very latest works, the
portrait of the Infant Philipp Prosper at Vienna, as a child
of two years old, the white drapery, the minute fingers,
the delicate baby face from which look out great eyes of
darkest blue, are all indicated with touches so loosely
thrown upon the canvas that seen near by they are all
confusion—yet the life and truth are in them, and at the
proper focal distance Nature herself is before us. The
touches combine to give the forms, the local colours, the
depth, the solidity of nature, while at the same time the
chief impression they convey is that of the opalescent
play of changing tones and hues which, eluding the limita-
tions of definite contours, make up to the painter’s eye the
chief beauty of the external world.
§ 89. How the Painter is prepared for his Work.
Seeing now that this painterlike treatment of nature
is at once so fine and so difficult, representing the ideal
at which all true painters must aim but which only the
greatest fully attain, it might have been expected that the
graphic artist’s method of training and practice would have
all been directed towards fitting him for the accomplish-
ment of this special task of his art. As a matter of fact
1 Houbraken, Groote Schouburgh, s’Gravenhage, 1753, i. p. 92.
The Painter's training
i37
in his power, so that when he had sketched in a portrait he
was able to render the essential features in light-and-shade
with single strokes of the pencil, each in the right place,a
without altering them and without fusing them together.’1
Velasquez, a more exquisite painter, has the same power of
giving back the life of nature in all its varied subtleties by
means of free broad strokes that do not seem to follow
any contours, but when the spectator is at the right dis-
tance, make the form appear to stand out with startling
vividness and relief. In one of his very latest works, the
portrait of the Infant Philipp Prosper at Vienna, as a child
of two years old, the white drapery, the minute fingers,
the delicate baby face from which look out great eyes of
darkest blue, are all indicated with touches so loosely
thrown upon the canvas that seen near by they are all
confusion—yet the life and truth are in them, and at the
proper focal distance Nature herself is before us. The
touches combine to give the forms, the local colours, the
depth, the solidity of nature, while at the same time the
chief impression they convey is that of the opalescent
play of changing tones and hues which, eluding the limita-
tions of definite contours, make up to the painter’s eye the
chief beauty of the external world.
§ 89. How the Painter is prepared for his Work.
Seeing now that this painterlike treatment of nature
is at once so fine and so difficult, representing the ideal
at which all true painters must aim but which only the
greatest fully attain, it might have been expected that the
graphic artist’s method of training and practice would have
all been directed towards fitting him for the accomplish-
ment of this special task of his art. As a matter of fact
1 Houbraken, Groote Schouburgh, s’Gravenhage, 1753, i. p. 92.