DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68796#0158
138 Effect in the Arts of Form part ii
however, the painter’s education and his early practice seem
rather designed to make this free, broad, general delineation
of nature’s aspect as difficult to him as possible. As a
general rule in our schools of art the learner is not taught
to look at Nature as she actually appears, as tone and
colour, but is obliged, first, mentally to translate that tone
and colour into terms of form, and, next, to abstract from
the resulting forms their boundaries and nothing more,
reducing in this way the whole to lines alone. This method
of beginning with outlines is open to the obvious objection
that it ignores the aspect of nature as a whole, and attends
only to the parts. It breaks up what should always
remain one, and it asks the delineator to substitute for
what he really sees, certain conventions arrived at by a
process of abstraction. On this ground it is every now
and then sharply criticised ; ‘ Do not begin with outlines,'
some say, ‘ but with the tones which you actually see ’; and
the method in question has only held the field because,
though illogical and inartistic, it has certain practical con-
veniences. The fact is that Nature, when viewed in all her
subtle and melting loveliness, is too complex for the un-
trained eye to seize. The strong framework which under-
lies her gleaming outward show, and which the master
draughtsman like Hals or Velasquez always lets us feel
beneath his soft transitions of tone and colour—the anatomy
so to say of nature — is not easy to apprehend, and the
effort of the untrained eye and hand would be liable to end
only in vagueness. The practice of the greatest painters
lends indeed a sanction to this traditional method of teach-
ing the graphic art. They all begin by emphasising form,
and divide their objects off from each other by compara-
tively definite outlines and marked patches of shadow.
Velasquez does this and Correggio, and Rembrandt and
Hals, John Phillip too and Millais, and it is not till they
however, the painter’s education and his early practice seem
rather designed to make this free, broad, general delineation
of nature’s aspect as difficult to him as possible. As a
general rule in our schools of art the learner is not taught
to look at Nature as she actually appears, as tone and
colour, but is obliged, first, mentally to translate that tone
and colour into terms of form, and, next, to abstract from
the resulting forms their boundaries and nothing more,
reducing in this way the whole to lines alone. This method
of beginning with outlines is open to the obvious objection
that it ignores the aspect of nature as a whole, and attends
only to the parts. It breaks up what should always
remain one, and it asks the delineator to substitute for
what he really sees, certain conventions arrived at by a
process of abstraction. On this ground it is every now
and then sharply criticised ; ‘ Do not begin with outlines,'
some say, ‘ but with the tones which you actually see ’; and
the method in question has only held the field because,
though illogical and inartistic, it has certain practical con-
veniences. The fact is that Nature, when viewed in all her
subtle and melting loveliness, is too complex for the un-
trained eye to seize. The strong framework which under-
lies her gleaming outward show, and which the master
draughtsman like Hals or Velasquez always lets us feel
beneath his soft transitions of tone and colour—the anatomy
so to say of nature — is not easy to apprehend, and the
effort of the untrained eye and hand would be liable to end
only in vagueness. The practice of the greatest painters
lends indeed a sanction to this traditional method of teach-
ing the graphic art. They all begin by emphasising form,
and divide their objects off from each other by compara-
tively definite outlines and marked patches of shadow.
Velasquez does this and Correggio, and Rembrandt and
Hals, John Phillip too and Millais, and it is not till they