There is a right and a wrong way to study, and it all centres around the fact
that what you aim to learn is perception and expression. What you are to express
you do not learn; you grow to that. But you must learn how to use all possible
means; all the facts of visible nature, and all the characteristics of pigments.
All qualities, color and form and texture, are but the means of your expression,
and you must know how they may be used. Your perception and appreciation must be
trained, and your mind stored with facts and relativities. Then you are ready to
recognize and to convey the true inwardness you find in conditions commonplace
to others.
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You are to see where others see not; for it is marvellous how little the
average eye sees of the really interesting things, how little of the visual
facts, and how rarely it sees the picture before it is painted. All is material
to the painter. It is not that "everything that is, is beautiful," but that
everything that is has qualities and possibilities of beauty; and these, when
expressed, make the picture, in spite of the superficial or obvious ugliness. In
one sense nothing is commonplace, for everything exists visibly by means of
light and color, and light and color are of the fundamental beauties. So arrange
or look upon the commonplace that light and color are the most obvious
qualities, and the commonplace sinks into the background—is lost. There is
nothing like painting to make life fascinating; for there is nothing which
brings so many charming combinations into your perception, as the habit of
looking to find the possibilities of beauty in everything that comes within your
view.
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You must form the habit of looking always from the painter's point of view.
The painter deals primarily with pigment, and what can be represented with
pigment; chiefly color and light in the broadest sense, including form and
composition, as things which give bodily presence and action to the
possibilities of pigment. Shade, or shadow, of course, is an actuality in
painting, because it is the foil of light and color, and furnishes the element
of relation.
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Methods.—Two general methods are at the command of the student from
the first,—to study at once from nature, or to copy. I think I may safely claim
to speak for the great body of teachers who are also professional artists, in
saying that copying is a means of study rather for the advanced student than for
the beginner. You cannot begin too soon to study nature with your own eyes, and
to accumulate your own facts and observations and deductions. The use of copying
is not to find out how to paint, but to see how many ways there are of painting.
The great end of all study in painting is to train the eyes to see relations, to
see them in nature. It is not to see that there are relations, but to see where
they are; to recognize and to measure and to judge them. Painting is the art of
perception before everything,
oil painting reproductions for sale, and when you copy you only see, accept, what some
one else has already perceived. Copying does not help you to
perceive, it
can only help to show you how something can be
expressed after it has
been perceived, and that is not the vital thing in the study of painting.
Handling, composition, management of color, technique of the brush generally,
may be studied by copying. These only—and for these things it is useful and
wise. But the beginner is not ready for these, for they are not the alphabet,
but the grammar of painting.
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Danger.—The danger of too early copying is that the student learns to
set too much value on surface qualities rather than those to which the surface
is merely incidental. With this is the danger (a serious one, and one hard to
overcome the results of) that the student becomes clever as a producer of
pictures before he has trained his power to see. He becomes a student of pictures
rather than a student of nature, and when in doubt will go to art rather than to
nature for help and suggestion. Could anything be more fatal? Consider the
things that student will have to unlearn before he can think a picture in terms
of nature—the only healthy, the only prolific way of thinking. He sees always
through other people's eyes, and thinks with other people's brains, and feels
other people's emotions; that is not creation; that is the attitude for the
spectator, not for the painter.
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These things are all useful and good, but not for the beginner. Later, when
you have found out something for yourself, when you have ground of your own to
stand on, then you may not only without danger, but with benefit, go to the work
of other men to see the range of possible point of view and expression, to see
the scope of technical material and individual adaptation; and so broaden your
own mental view and sympathy, possibly reform or educate your taste, and perhaps
get some hints which will help you in the solving of some future problem.
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But rather than the undue sophistication which can result from unwise
copying,—the over-knowledge of process and surface, and under-knowledge of
nature,—is to be preferred a frank crudeness of work which is the result of an
honest going to nature for study. You should not expect a perfect eye for color
and form too soon. Better a healthily youthful crudity of perception based on
nature, and standing for what you have yourself studied and worked out, which
represents your own attainment, than a greater show of knowledge which is
insincere and superficial because it represents a mere acceptance of the facts
set down by others; and not only that, but even with it an acceptance also of
the actual terms used by those others.
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Often copying is the most convenient way in which you can get help. There is
really much to be learned from it, and you can make a picture serve as a
criticism on your own work. Particularly in the matter of color or tone, as
something to recognize the achievement of for its own sake. If you can recognize
good color as such, aside from what it represents, if you can appreciate tone in
a picture which is the work of some one else, you are so much the more likely to
notice the lack of those qualities in your own work. So, too, there are
qualities of brush-work which are always good, and some which are always bad.
You can study the former positively, and the latter negatively, in studying and
copying other pictures.
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I have mentioned the training of your critical judgment as a necessity in
your education. You can do it slowly in learning to paint, but you can facilitate
that training by copying and studying really good pictures, if you do it in the
right way.
The Right Way.—So if you do copy, do it in the right way, so as to get
all the real help out of it, and not so as to have to unlearn the greater part
of it. Don't copy "to get a picture." Don't make a copy which at a distance has
a resemblance to the original, but which on a more careful study shows none of
the qualities which make the original what it is. Not only see to it that the
same subtleties of perception and representation are preserved in your copy, but
that they are attained in the same way. Use the same brush-work or other
execution. Use the same pigments in the same places,
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study the original with your brain as well as with your eyes and hands; try to
see not only how the painter did a certain thing but why. So that as you work,
you follow him in the working out of his problem, and make it your problem also.
In this way you will get some real good from his picture, and not a mere canvas
which has been of no use to you, nor can be of any satisfaction to any one else
who knows a good picture (copy or original) when he sees it.
Why Copy.—There are only two good reasons for making a copy,—to study
the original as a problem, and to have something to serve as an example of the
master on a work which you like. And in either case such a sincere manner of
copying as I urge is the only possible way to get what you want. To "get a
picture," regardless of whether it really does justice to the original, is the
wrong way, and this leads always through bad copying to bad painting, and you
are fortunate if you escape an entire perversion of your point of view.
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You may be able to make some money now and again by doing this sort of thing,
but you will never learn anything from it. On the contrary, it is the surest way
you could find of closing your eyes to all that is worth seeing.
Get to Nature.—If you would really learn to paint, to see for
yourself, to represent what you see in your own way, you cannot get to nature
too soon. Don't bother about what the thing is, so long as it is nature herself.
By nature I mean anything, absolutely anything which exists of itself, not
painted. Whether it be the living figure, or a cast, or a bit of landscape, or a
room interior—all things which actually exist must show themselves by the facts
of light falling upon them: the relation of color, and the contrasts of light
and dark. Whatever you see is useful to you in this way,
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all the qualities and conditions which you most need to study. But models are not
always at command, interiors do not easily stay a long time at your disposal,
and bits of landscape which interest you are not always easy to get at; for a
student is apt to be either far advanced or unusually ardent who will find
interest in the first combination which falls under his eye. Therefore the most
practically useful material for study, which is always "nature," is what we call
"still life,"—
"morte" nature, dead nature is the better or more
descriptive name the French give to it. By this is meant any and all
combinations of objects and backgrounds grouped arbitrarily for representation.
Bottles and jugs and fruits, books and bric-a-brac; all sorts of things lend
themselves readily and interestingly to this use.
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The great value of still life for the student lies in the variety of
combinations of color and form, of light and shade and texture, that he can
always command. There is practically no problem possible to in-the-house light
which may not be worked out by means of still life. The training in perception
and representation, in composition and arrangement, and in technique, which it
will give you is invaluable; and most important of all, while you can always
make such arrangements as will interest you, because you need place only such
things or colors as you like, you are really studying nature herself, you are
looking at the things themselves, and the result you get is the product of your own
eyes and brain. The problem is entirely your own, both in the stating and the
solving, and what you learn is well learned, and represents a definite progress
along the right line.
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You have worked for the sake of the working, and there is nothing which you
have got from it that may not be applicable to any future work you may do, that
does not directly lead to the great object you have in view,—to learn how to
paint well.
Be Sincere.—But, above all, be sincere with yourself; don't do
anything to be clever, nor because it pleases some one else. Painting is
difficult enough at best. You need all the interest and fascination that the
most charming thing can have for you to help you to do it so that it is worth
the trouble. Don't take away the whole life of it by insincerity. A very
thoughtful painter said to me once that he believed that all really good
pictures could be shown to be good by the sole criterion of conviction. Can you
think of any painting being good without it? Can you think of any amount of
cleverness and ability making a picture good without that. And it is quite as
important in study as elsewhere. Never do anything except seriously; take
yourself and your work seriously; only by serious work can serious results
come.
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Joy
in Your Work.—Do it because you like to. But like good work and hate bad
work; and, above all, hate half-way work. Understand yourself: what you want to
do and why you want to do it, and then be honest enough with yourself to work
till you have honestly done what you wanted to do, and as you wanted to do
it.
