DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5538#0093
PORTRAIT-PAINTING IN ANCIENT EGYPT. 73
orate head-dresses, were all treated with exquisite minuteness,
and in the same flat tints.
Such being his system of color, it was of course impossible
for our Egyptian to represent light and shadow, or the tex-
ture of stuffs, or the flow of drapery. His art, in fact, can-
not be described as painting, in our sense of the term. He
did not paint; he illuminated. (") Inasmuch, therefore, as he
excelled in the methods of illumination, he was a singularly
skilful craftsman; but inasmuch as he has never been surpass-
ed for purity and precision and sweep of outline, or for the
fidelity with which here produced the racial characteristics
of foreign nations, or for the truth and spirit with which he
depicted all varieties of animal life, he was undoubtedly and
unquestionably an artist. Drawing only in profile, and paint-
ing only in flat washes, he could not, and did not, attempt to
show the changing expression of the human face in joy or
grief or anger. The widow wailing over the mummy of her
husband, the Pharaoh slaying his thousands on the field of
battle, looks out into space with the smiling serenity of a
cherub on a tombstone. But let Rameses return to Thebes
after a victorious campaign in Ethiopia or Asia Minor, bring-
ing a string of foreign captives bound to his chariot-wheels,
and see then what our Egyptian artist can do! With noth-
ing but his reed-pen and his whole-colored washes, he pro-
duces a series of portraits of Sj'rians, Libyans, negroes, and
Asiatic Greeks which no English or French or American ar-
tist could surpass for living and speaking individuality, and
which probably none of them could do half so well if com-
pelled to employ the same methods.
There is, however, one point upon which it is necessary
to insist in this connection. Among even those who care
much and know much about art, there prevails an impression
that the art of the Egyptians was phenomenally rigid and
incorrect, and that Egyptian painters committed more glar-
ing errors in their treatment of the " human form divine "
than the early artists of other nations. This is a grave
misconception. The beginnings of pictorial art in all nations,
orate head-dresses, were all treated with exquisite minuteness,
and in the same flat tints.
Such being his system of color, it was of course impossible
for our Egyptian to represent light and shadow, or the tex-
ture of stuffs, or the flow of drapery. His art, in fact, can-
not be described as painting, in our sense of the term. He
did not paint; he illuminated. (") Inasmuch, therefore, as he
excelled in the methods of illumination, he was a singularly
skilful craftsman; but inasmuch as he has never been surpass-
ed for purity and precision and sweep of outline, or for the
fidelity with which here produced the racial characteristics
of foreign nations, or for the truth and spirit with which he
depicted all varieties of animal life, he was undoubtedly and
unquestionably an artist. Drawing only in profile, and paint-
ing only in flat washes, he could not, and did not, attempt to
show the changing expression of the human face in joy or
grief or anger. The widow wailing over the mummy of her
husband, the Pharaoh slaying his thousands on the field of
battle, looks out into space with the smiling serenity of a
cherub on a tombstone. But let Rameses return to Thebes
after a victorious campaign in Ethiopia or Asia Minor, bring-
ing a string of foreign captives bound to his chariot-wheels,
and see then what our Egyptian artist can do! With noth-
ing but his reed-pen and his whole-colored washes, he pro-
duces a series of portraits of Sj'rians, Libyans, negroes, and
Asiatic Greeks which no English or French or American ar-
tist could surpass for living and speaking individuality, and
which probably none of them could do half so well if com-
pelled to employ the same methods.
There is, however, one point upon which it is necessary
to insist in this connection. Among even those who care
much and know much about art, there prevails an impression
that the art of the Egyptians was phenomenally rigid and
incorrect, and that Egyptian painters committed more glar-
ing errors in their treatment of the " human form divine "
than the early artists of other nations. This is a grave
misconception. The beginnings of pictorial art in all nations,