Art

THE reader of Mr. Hunt’s little book,¹ or rather of the little book which has been made up of fragments of Mr. Hunt’s conversations, would not get a very adequate notion of his instruction without a careful synthesis of a hundred different indications scattered through it here and there, or without many allowances for the momentary conditions that called out this or that reported saying. It is somewhat curious to see a man whose characteristic strength lies so much in the ensemble of his work represented in such a bit of uuharmonized mosaic. But the book gives material from which the sympathetic reader should get a pretty vivid impression or picture of the artist’s way of talking and working. It is full of pithy disconnected sayings, which separately are like Mr. Hunt’s pictures, pointed statements each of some single impression, without qualification or detailed explanation, and hung together with as little connection as the artist’s pictures would be in a gallery. It is possible that the editor might so have classified and arranged the scraps of conversation as to weave out of them a connected if not a complete discourse, which should have presented a fair statement of the essence of Mr. Hunt’s instruction; but in fact they seem to have been tumbled together very much as they were scraped from the backs of canvases and bits of paper on which they were first reported. Hence, though here and there a student may get valuable hints from them, they are likely to pass only as a collection of bright and stimulating sayings about art, to be looked at once or twice and laid aside like any table-talk. Only a few thoughtful and interested persons, we should think, will be at the pains to deduce Mr. Hunt’s artistic code from hundreds of disconnected sayings addressed to various pupils at various times, to meet different momentary wants; and more than a few are likely to be offended or misled by the paradoxes into which a brilliant and impulsive mind is apt to slip in the fervor of unpremeditated conversation.

The book, in fact, is of the familiar kind that suits the reading of those who have a personal sympathy with the artist himself or his works, and it is fair to assume that it is intended for them rather than for the general public. It is full of sparkling and epigrammatic sayings; it abounds in wise and conscientious precepts, or, if Mr. Hunt objects to the word conscientious, we will say, of precepts loyal to recognized principle. It gives the impression, as do Mr. Hunt’s paintings, of a frank, fearless, single-minded artistic nature, with keen perceptions and great power of expression, mature study and convictions, and withal singularly free from egotistic assumption.

The publication of this little book and the exhibition of his pictures and sketches have brought on Mr. Hunt many criticisms. He has been roundly accused of carelessness in his work, and, with more reason, of being likely to encourage carelessness in others. But no one who is familiar with his work can well accuse him of doing carelessly those things which from his point of view it is desirable to do. Probably few of his critics have any conception of the intensity of effort with which an artist of Mr. Hunt’s quality strikes for the things he wishes to express, even in his most rapid endeavors, or of the vital watchfulness with which his strokes are directed. Negligent he certainly is, and scornful at times of things which the mass of people look for in pictures, and even people instructed in art regard as important. To him, we should say, the first of qualities are singleness of impression and spontaneity of execution. To him the effect of a passing light on a tree is of more importance than the color of it; the depth and mystery of its foliage than the growth and spring of its branches; its exact “ value ” in the first impression of the scene is more than either. All detail which may divert attention from this first impression is to him an impertinence ; all that does not directly help it is at least an unnecessary intrusion, to be put aside as far as possible. Hence the lookeron, untrained to such impressions as Mr. Hunt’s, often thinks his pictures false and offensive because he misses the things that he is used to look for, and to more instructed persons whose theory of the relative importance of things does not agree with his, they seem imperfect or one-sided. Hence also comes Mr. Hunt’s jealousy of anything that impedes the quick expression of the painter’s idea in its first freshness, his horror of the benumbing effect of laboring over secondary things, of fumbling about for the means of utterance while the thing to be uttered has time to escape ; hence his reiterated protests to his scholars against “niggling,” patching, scrutinizing, hesitating ; hence, finally, the frank charm of his own work to those who can sympathize with it. Add to these things a hearty contempt for laborious aimlessness, for affectation and priggishness, and we have the key to many of his paradoxes.

The value of an impression depends on the mind that receives and transmits it; the preciousness of a first impression, upon the quickness, keenness, and instinctive preference of the beholder. The world could not afford to lose the first impressions of men of such quickened perceptions as Turner or Corôt, or of Mr. Hunt himself. But these instructions are given to fledgelings, and yet, as they stand, are urged as if intended for trained artists. In most pupils, we suppose, the first artistic impressions of any scene that lay before them would be of very little significance, would be likely in fact to miss the most important things, and thus very little good would come from dwelling much on them ; whereas a careful study of the scene and all the elements of its effect would be likely to do much more in training their perceptions, though it might not produce a picture. And in the instruction of the majority of pupils the production of pictures is not the object to be aimed at. The value of the impression of a scene upon the trained artist results from his acquired mastery of all the elements of the scene, from the power of instant and involuntary selection which this mastery has developed in him. It ought in fairness to be said, and it would have been well to say it in the introductory note to the book, that the lessons in which these precepts were given were first intended, not as a full course of training for young painters, but to insist upon one part of a painter’s work which Mr. Hunt considered to be unrecognized among amateurs in Boston, — the making of “pictures,” that is, of paintings of which all the elements are carefully adjusted into one harmonious whole, with a single definite effect. It is evident, nevertheless, that in the course of the lessons the instructions took a wider range than this.

Mr. Hunt has done more perhaps than any other man in our generation to stir and direct aright the artistic impulse among Bostonians. But we should fear that without his restraining hand, of which we see mark enough in the book before us, many of his pupils and followers will be ready to content themselves with a confident crudity and incompleteness in their work. And worse, they may come, and we already see example of the tendency, to take his manner for his spirit and educate themselves into a narrow contempt for everything that is not done in Mr. Hunt’s way. We have known a clever painter of his school, with the advantage of European training, who could find nothing interesting in the work of Fra Angelico, and we have heard far more extravagant things among his abler pupils.

It may often happen, too, that a painter, lost in an impetuous effort to present some one phase of truth or nature, and neglectful of others intimately associated with it, will set it forth with a naked and unsupported emphasis that is grotesque; and it seems to us that Mr. Hunt reaches this point at times in the landscape sketches which he exhibits. It is not strange if his followers, feeling no responsibility and therefore no anxiety for the issue of the paths into which they see him stray, should outrun him in this easy direction.

But Mr. Hunt himself is not wanting in catholicity, and it is clear that his teaching would correct many of the excesses to which his precepts may be strained. To one pupil at one time he complains of painstaking, correction, niggling ; he praises Millet or Corôt; to another he says, “Make careful tracings from the old masters, especially Albert Düver and Mantegna.” At one time, “ Do it in three minutes,” at another, “ That sketch is smart, but I don’t like it. It was done too hurriedly. It shows too much ambition to do a thing quickly.” Again he says, “ Don’t he careless for an instant,” and again, “ Snub your ideal. It costs trouble, but trouble is the artist’s nature.” In short, there is no sympathy in the book for easy negligence, but an intense sympathy with the freedom of spontaneous expression.

The discussion over Mr. Hunt’s works in our daily papers has connected itself with other controversies concerning the different systems of art instruction in use among us. There is so much effort making in drawing schools and classes, both public and private, that we hope the discussion will continue till a clear idea is reached of what we should aim at, and how we are to get to it. People need to be reminded that for most of them the object of learning to draw is not to make pictures or drawings, but to develop and train perceptions, to acquire clear ideas of form and relation, to recognize beauty in art and nature. Especially it helps them to distinguish vital from accidental qualities, dominant from subordinate. Some pupils will learn to make good drawings or clever bits of decoration, but for most this is entirely secondary.

The besetting fault of all the arts in our day, perhaps in every day, is the tendency to display and to admire the mere power of execution,—that is, to take the means of art for art itself. To resist this tendency, the pupils should be carefully instructed to work for what is characteristic and beautiful in their models, and to regard neatness of workmanship as strictly subservient to this end.

Here appears the weakness of the system of art-instruction in our public schools. In the first place, the books of copies prepared for them are very inferior. It is not that they are roughly executed, but the examples are for the most part poor and inartistic, and are rendered without feeling or refinement : some are conspicuously bad in drawing. Then in the mass of exhibited work of the pupils there is much laborious finish, but little evidence of thought or feeling, of effort to catch and render the essential character or beauty of the subject drawn. They bespeak the mechanical, not the artistic aim. We know that the statute provides for the teaching of mechanical and industrial drawing. But if this means anything worth paying for or working for, it means the instruction in drawing of mechanical and industrial people, to the end of improving their perceptions, and of infusing into such of their work as must or may take a decorative form a spirit of beauty and art. The mere teaching of mechanical drawing is to our mind an object unworthy of State interference. There is in the course of trade abundant opportunity of learning it for those who need it; it is a matter as purely mechanical as the use of the file or the lathe ; and our present system of public education does not include the teaching of specialties.

Mr. Hunt and Mr. Ruskin, in their several ways, the one in a small field, the other in a large, have worked for just the end we plead for, — the development of the artistic sense, against mechanical and technical display,—yet their methods and results differ outwardly as much from each other as both do from those of our public teaching. Both, through different channels, are exercising much influence on our community, and to most people, we imagine, their influences seem altogether antagonistic. Opposed they are, at many points, and widely separated at most. Mr. Ruskin’s domain in practice is landscape and its elements, earth and vegetation, air and water. His system of drawing gives no place to the figure ; this is its essential incompleteness, and it almost removes him from contact with the opposite school. The French system, represented among us by Mr. Hunt, is derived by tradition from figure painting, historical painting, so called. Now to the landscape painter no one scene is like another in its elements any more than in its whole effect. Not only is no one species of rock or tree like another, but every individual is characteristically unlike another, and such as each is at one time it is at another, without change. But of figures one is always essentially like another; the characteristic things in their case are momentary changes, which are constant and endless, — expressions, attitudes, movements, grouping. To these may be added effects of chiaroscuro, as accidental, or artificially controllable. Thus the landscape painter might naturally be predisposed to dwell on the permanent characteristics of his subjects, the figure painter on their accidental ones. The one cannot entirely ignore what to the other is principal, but he can give it a different place in his scheme. In our day interest in landscape is largely increased, has indeed become predominant. French painters have given it great attention, but they come to it strongly influenced by the habits and traditions of a well-established school of academic historical painters. Mr. Hunt paints landscape, but with the instincts and habits of a figure painter. It is curious, by the way, to notice the analogy of his work to Allston’s in this respect, and to see how much their landscape has in common. The English painters, on the other hand, have put aside such academic traditions as they had, and have begun from the beginning. Given to a French painter some shapely masses of foliage, cloud, and rock, perhaps a few vigorously accented treestems and surface-lines of ground, and the rest of his picture, the substance of it, in fact, will be made up of tones and values, of lights and darks, not too closely imitated from nature, but delicately balanced and combined in a single vivid impression. But to any school of naturalistic landscape painters, the essentials of tree or mountain will be the spring and dispersion of branches, the clinging or spreading of foliage, if it is near enough to be seen, — or the cliffs and ravines, the lift of ledges and climbing lines of vegetation, the flow of watercourses and fracture of rocks. No one, indeed, who knows Mr. Ruskin’s writings, can accuse him of indifference to the larger aspects of nature; no one who knows his artistic work can fail to see his acute perception of general effect. But his followers and those artists who are in the public mind identified with him have not his range. The school that represents him is the school of special truth. Certainly the way of the French artists is the direct way to make pictures. The power of accomplishing this is the one valuable legacy of the older arttradition. The predecessors of Turner inherited and preserved it. The Englishmen who have succeeded him have in some cases lost their grasp of wide relations, and this has brought on them the scorn of those who study to make pictures. Nevertheless, Dürer knew nothing of “values,”and little of chiaroscuro in the sense in which it has been used, say since Correggio’s time, — as a skillful arrangement of lights and darks throughout a picture : he scarcely painted “ pictures ” as we now talk of them; yet his work has not lost its eminence. The Japanese know nothing of values or chiaroscuro, they do not paint pictures, but their art commands the admiration of those who do. The pre-Raphaelites have been lost in the study of specific character; hence their short - comings. The French extremists have pleased themselves with coördination and subordination, ignoring vital characteristics : hence their one-sidedness.

The perfect landscape painter, whom we and our readers shall hardly live to see, will be he who shall give us to enjoy without let or hindrance the primary impression, the grand aspect of his scene, and then gently lead us to notice, as we should in the scene itself, if we could stay to watch it, the recorded character and action of every member of it, and how each in its place preserves its own life and still something of its own mystery, while it bends to the great influence that molds the whole.