DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19954#0024
COSTUME.
It must be left to the judgment of the painter to select
that position which is best adapted to the sex, age, and
character of the sitter, all of which must enter into the
calculation of the artist.
The introduction of the hands and arms contributes
much to the beauty of • the picture. They should be
elegant in form, for it is not necessary in all cases to copy
them from the sitter; and it should be a rule with the
young painter, as it was with Raffaele, to show both hands,
that it should never become a question what was become
of the other.
COSTUME.
Costume is another point of great importance. From the
ever-varying and endless caprice of fashion, that arrange-
ment and form of dress to which we are accustomed at
the present day, will look preposterous and absurd twenty
years hence, or even sooner. Within the last thirty years
we have passed through all the phases of large bonnets
and small bonnets, of long waists and short waists, of
wide sleeves and tight sleeves ; and the present generation
laugh at the odd figures of their grandmothers as handed
down by the portrait painter, while future generations will
ridicule the costume of the present, not because it is more
ridiculous than their own, but because the eye is unaccus-
tomed to it.
It must be left to the judgment of the painter to select
that position which is best adapted to the sex, age, and
character of the sitter, all of which must enter into the
calculation of the artist.
The introduction of the hands and arms contributes
much to the beauty of • the picture. They should be
elegant in form, for it is not necessary in all cases to copy
them from the sitter; and it should be a rule with the
young painter, as it was with Raffaele, to show both hands,
that it should never become a question what was become
of the other.
COSTUME.
Costume is another point of great importance. From the
ever-varying and endless caprice of fashion, that arrange-
ment and form of dress to which we are accustomed at
the present day, will look preposterous and absurd twenty
years hence, or even sooner. Within the last thirty years
we have passed through all the phases of large bonnets
and small bonnets, of long waists and short waists, of
wide sleeves and tight sleeves ; and the present generation
laugh at the odd figures of their grandmothers as handed
down by the portrait painter, while future generations will
ridicule the costume of the present, not because it is more
ridiculous than their own, but because the eye is unaccus-
tomed to it.