To accent the more strongly the value of this dominant light even though it
be treated in very low gradation, I recall that a year ago the art world was
startled by the sum received for a medium sized picture of some coryphées
painted by Degas, now an old man over eighty years old—a subject which he always
loved and, indeed, which he has painted many times. Some thirty years ago, when
he was comparatively a young man, I saw, at the Bartholdi exhibition in New
York, a picture by this master of these same coryphées, two figures standing
together in the flies resting their weary, pink, fishworm legs as they balanced
themselves with their hands against the wabbling scenery. It was a wholly gray
picture, and almost in a monotone, and yet the flashes of their diamond earrings, no larger
than the point of a pin, were distinctly visible, holding their place in, if not
dominating, the whole color scheme. original oil paintings
Again, in that marvellous portrait of Wertheimer, the bric-à-brac dealer, if
you remember, the eye first catches the strong vermilion touch on the lower lip,
and then, knowing that a master like Sargent would not leave it isolated, one
finds, to one's delight and joy, a little swipe of red on the tongue of the
barely discernible black poodle squatting at his feet. Had the red of the dog's
tongue predominated, we should never have been thrilled and fascinated by one of
the great portraits of this or any other time. art oil painting
This is also true in other great portraits—in, for instance, the pictures of
Rembrandt, Vandyck, and Frans Hals, especially where a face is relieved by the
addition of a hand and the white of a ruff. Somewhere in that warm expanse of
the face there can be found a pinhead of color, brighter and more dominating than any
other brush touch on the canvas. It may be the high egg-light in the forehead,
or the click on the tip of the nose, or a fold of the white ruff; but slight as
it is and unnoticeable at first, because of it not only does the head look round
as the egg looks round when relieved by the same treatment, but the attention is
fixed. Unless this had been preserved, the eye would have, perhaps, rested first
on the hand, something foreign to the painter's intention. abstract oil paintings for sale
Recalling again the law of the high light and strong dark, and referring
again to the value of the skilful manipulation of light and shade forming the
mass thereby expressing the more clearly the meaning of a picture, I repeat
that, while the eye is always caught by the strongest dark against the strongest
light, it is next caught by the lesser supplementary light and lesser
supplementary dark; and then, if the painter is skilful enough in the management of
the remaining lesser lights and darks, the eye will run through the gradations
to the end, rebounding once more to the greater light and dark, exactly in the
order intended by the painter; thus unfolding to the spectator little by little,
quite as a plot of a novel is made clear, the story which the painter had in his
own mind to tell. This is effected purely and entirely by the correct
accentuations of the explanatory lights and darks. One mistake in the
management—that is,buy oil paintings online, the accentuating of the third light, if you please, instead
of the second—will not only confuse the eye of the spectator, but may perhaps
give him an entirely different impression from what was intended by the painter,
just as the shifting of a chapter in a novel would confuse a reader; and this,
if you please, without depending in any way upon either the drawing or the color
of the accessories.
I can best illustrate this by recalling to your mind that marvellous picture of the
so-called literary school of England, a picture by Luke Fildes known as "The
Doctor" and now hanging in the Tate Gallery in London, in which the whole sad
story is told in logical sequence by the artist's consummate handling of the
darks and lights in regular progression. where to buy oil paintings
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