DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18975#0571
500
APPENDIX
same influence: it does not mean anything in the least correspondent
to what a musician intends by harmony. Thus a crowd of persons
going towards the same place move harmoniously, or when pleased at
the same moment shout or throw up their caps harmoniously, but there
is nothing in such simultaneous action like the concord of a choir.
Put therefore, for a little while, this musical sense of the word
"harmony" out of your head; and understand by it, in the first
place, rather what a musician would call unison: the assemblage of
many voices or instruments to produce a single note in an equally
low or equally loud degree. In order to understand the meaning
and use of this kind of unison in painting, take an H.H. pencil, and
draw a pretty face with it as well as you can. Then take a pen,
and put the pupil of one eye in with ink, and the corner of one
side of the mouth, and you will find the effect very disagreeable.
But ink all the pencil lines, and though the face may look coarser, it
will not be offensive, for it will still be drawn in harmony. If it
were drawn by a great master, it would still, in ink, give you an idea
of as delicate a face as it did in pencil, though the lines might be
twice as thick and ten times as dark, because it would have lost the
fineness of all its lines in so perfectly harmonious degree that it
would still suggest to you all it had lost.
No virtue of draughtsmanship is more conducive to the pleasure
of the spectator than this of unison, and especially because it is one
of the chief means of deceptive realisation. You may finish a picture
or drawing with extreme care and perfection of imitation in separate
pieces of colour and form: but if there is not also perfect concurrence
and subordination of the parts, the picture will not deceive you into
the idea of reality: while a very few lines or colours laid harmoni-
ously, will make you think yourself at the place. I had for some time
in my rooms at Oxford ^ a little water-colour drawing which I had
bought at a modern exhibition, for the sake of its great truth in repre-
senting colour in shadow against afternoon sunlight. This was done
wonderfully in each case for a large number of separate objects; but
it was not done harmoniously over the whole picture. I had by chance
placed beside it a light pencil sketch of a sunset on the tower of
Cecilia Metella by Richard Wilson, in which there was no effort at
complete effect on any one object; but everything was absolutely
harmonious in the degree of its incompletion. I never looked at the
Wilson without feeling myself warm, and in Rome; but when I
looked at the other drawing, I only felt myself in the water-colour
exhibition, and was obliged at last to put it away.
There is another character in lines for which we have no other
word than harmony, namely, their concurrence in direction, or at least
in tendency to some given point. Lines in true perspective are thus
harmonious, because they all lead to some given point; but the
harmony is much finer when, without absolutely leading to the same
point or arising from it, they yet show evidence of some united ten-
dency or common origin. Thus the branches of a palm tree are
[:.e., at Corpus, as Professor.]
APPENDIX
same influence: it does not mean anything in the least correspondent
to what a musician intends by harmony. Thus a crowd of persons
going towards the same place move harmoniously, or when pleased at
the same moment shout or throw up their caps harmoniously, but there
is nothing in such simultaneous action like the concord of a choir.
Put therefore, for a little while, this musical sense of the word
"harmony" out of your head; and understand by it, in the first
place, rather what a musician would call unison: the assemblage of
many voices or instruments to produce a single note in an equally
low or equally loud degree. In order to understand the meaning
and use of this kind of unison in painting, take an H.H. pencil, and
draw a pretty face with it as well as you can. Then take a pen,
and put the pupil of one eye in with ink, and the corner of one
side of the mouth, and you will find the effect very disagreeable.
But ink all the pencil lines, and though the face may look coarser, it
will not be offensive, for it will still be drawn in harmony. If it
were drawn by a great master, it would still, in ink, give you an idea
of as delicate a face as it did in pencil, though the lines might be
twice as thick and ten times as dark, because it would have lost the
fineness of all its lines in so perfectly harmonious degree that it
would still suggest to you all it had lost.
No virtue of draughtsmanship is more conducive to the pleasure
of the spectator than this of unison, and especially because it is one
of the chief means of deceptive realisation. You may finish a picture
or drawing with extreme care and perfection of imitation in separate
pieces of colour and form: but if there is not also perfect concurrence
and subordination of the parts, the picture will not deceive you into
the idea of reality: while a very few lines or colours laid harmoni-
ously, will make you think yourself at the place. I had for some time
in my rooms at Oxford ^ a little water-colour drawing which I had
bought at a modern exhibition, for the sake of its great truth in repre-
senting colour in shadow against afternoon sunlight. This was done
wonderfully in each case for a large number of separate objects; but
it was not done harmoniously over the whole picture. I had by chance
placed beside it a light pencil sketch of a sunset on the tower of
Cecilia Metella by Richard Wilson, in which there was no effort at
complete effect on any one object; but everything was absolutely
harmonious in the degree of its incompletion. I never looked at the
Wilson without feeling myself warm, and in Rome; but when I
looked at the other drawing, I only felt myself in the water-colour
exhibition, and was obliged at last to put it away.
There is another character in lines for which we have no other
word than harmony, namely, their concurrence in direction, or at least
in tendency to some given point. Lines in true perspective are thus
harmonious, because they all lead to some given point; but the
harmony is much finer when, without absolutely leading to the same
point or arising from it, they yet show evidence of some united ten-
dency or common origin. Thus the branches of a palm tree are
[:.e., at Corpus, as Professor.]