ART.
MR. COLLIER ON OIL-PAINTING.* Tills book consists of but one hundred pages, and is divided into twe distinct parts, of which one part is technical and clear, while the second is neither. Though no doubt most true and most meritorious, it is a more or less confused mixture of scientific facts and artistic theories. There are few people who can present scientific troths in a clear, intelligible, and popular form within the compass of a magazine article, and Mr. Collier —be it said to no detriment of his artistic qualities—is not one. In a work of such little pretensions as the present, the intro- duction of these elaborate semi-scientific facts—long and short ether-waves, nerve elements and fibres—these references to Helmholtz, Young, Wollaston, and the Royal Society, savour a little of pedantry, and are in the highest degree superfluous. A manual of oil-painting need not be a manual of the physiology of sight, which latter, if written about at all, would require more exhaustive treatment, and be suitable for a class of readers different from young art students. Therefore, in this notice, we shall say bat little of the second portion of this work.
Well, then, what is our author's notion on painting? what is the way in which he proposes to students to carry out that notion ? Mr. Collier has no gospel that can be called specially new, and the chief quality of his instruction is its pretended simplification of the matter in question, for he tells us himself with considerable frankness
"This representation of natural objects by means of pigments on a fiat surface is a very definite matter, and most people are com- petent to judge of the truth or falsehood of such a representation if they are fairly put in a position to do so ; even the student himself can be a good judge of the success of his own work if he will make due allowance for his natural partiality for it. There is, after all, nothing so very mysterious in the matter. Every natural object appears to us as a sort of pattern of different shades and colours. The task of the artist is so to arrange his shades and colours on his canvas that a similar pattern is produced. If this be well done, the effect on the eye will be almost identical. As far as seeing is con- cerned, the two things, the object and the picture, will be alike ; they will be absolutely different to the sense of touch, or indeed to any other sense, but to the sense of sight they will be practically identical."
Is this really so? Let ne examine. Are most people com- petent to judge of the representation of natural objects ? Such is not our experience. The present writer, at least, would say that so far from this being the case, moat people (it must be remembered that "most people " are not the people acquainted with pictures) have a double incapacity for appreciating the truth of the representation of natural objects; in the first place, they do not know (without the object actually before them) what it is like in Nature (this may be easily demonstrated by talking to an ordinary countryman or townsman of the less educated class for five minutes), and in the second place, they are wholly unaware of the limitations imposed upon a painter,—the effects, for instance, of light and shade, the necessary subordination of one object to another, &c. What Mr. Collier means is, that if Jones were looking at a picture of a butterfly, he would be able to judge of the accuracy with which that insect had been painted, if he had ever seen one of a similar kind, supposing that the artist painted it as it actually appeared to his eye. But this is exactly, we main-
• d Manual of 011.Peiniing. By the Eon. yobs Collier. London: Cassell and Co.
tain, what the uneducated Jones would be unable to do, for the effect on the eye of an uneducated person, or the mental im- pression that a person uneducated in art carries away with him instead of the pure visual effect, is compounded of the image pro- duced on his retina, and all his previous knowledge of the subject of that image. By this we mean that an ordinary person, un- accustomed to pictures, cannot get rid of his preconceived ideas in considering any visual effect; and this being so, it is absolutely incorrect to say that ordinary people are capable of judging of the truth or falsehood of a painter's representa- tion of a natural object. They would be competent to judge of the representation of a silk gown, we will say,—that all the buttons were on, and that it was laced up the back or down the front in the ordinary manner ; but they would be absolutely incompetent to say that the way in which the artist had repre- sented the light or shade, the effect of the tints, that the relative prominence and obscurity of the buttons or laces were correct; and the further an artist departs from art of the merely dia- grammatic kind, the farther removed will be the ordinary mass of mankind from being able to judge of the truth or untruth of his representation.
Roughly speaking, Mr. Collier's instruction to the student in beginning his painting, is to draw in a rough outline in charcoal, to go carefully over and correct this outline with a fine brush, to match the tint of each part of his subject by holding up- a palette-knife covered with colour against the patch of colour which has to be copied, until the right hue is attained. Then to dab the paint on to the proper place on the canvas, " and spread it with a brae,'" till it is the required size and shape ; and when this is done, he says the first day's work is over. The second day's painting consists in correcting the tints which are seen to be false when the picture is placed aide by side with the sitter or object ; the tones, also, are to be corrected, and the larger details (whatever they may be) are to be put in, and the texture given where it is necessary. But in the main, the attempt of this second painting is to modify without obscuring the first day's work. Now, this is practically the chief part of the actual instruction in oil-painting contained in the manuaL This is the method which Mr. Collier considers to be right, and incul- cates on those who listen to his counsels,—first, the careful drawing•in the outlines ; a series of tints as like as possible to those seen in the subject of the picture ; a spreading of each tint carefully with the brush in the right place; and a subse- quent modifying, glazing, enforcing, " tickling-up " process, to
the whole thing nice and neat, and clean and accurate. The question presents itself at once,—Is this right or wrong P In our opinion—and be it remembered we are speaking of painting in the technical sense of the word, not of learning to draw, for that, by the author's hypothesis, has already been done—we think that this is wrong, the very worst possible instruction that could be given to students; that it begins at the wrong end of the matter, and if followed by them, would prevent them not only from ever learning to paint, but very probably from ever producing a work of art.
These are strong words, but the necessities of the case call for them. It is excessively difficult in the brief space at our disposal to put this matter with sufficient clearness to show our non-artistic readers both the deficiencies of the above instruc- tion, and the ill-effects likely to result from following it ; but a few considerations may be briefly given. And, first of all, it may be asked whether a student of painting should not be required to take, as the beginning of his study, the moat important quality of the subject to be represented ; and if so, what is that most important matter ? Surely it is the total effect of the whole,—the masses rather than the contours, the impression which the eye receives long before it goes into details of form, or colour, or detail. It can be clearly put, perhaps, in this way,— Shall we first take a mosaic of various hues and shapes, and try to produce what we require by absolute accuracy in each minute- piece of our mosaic, till we obtain the broad effect ? or shall we take first the broad effect—that is, the great necessity, or rather the chief object of our toil—and try to add thereto, or rather combine therewith what further information of colour, and detail of form we can introduce without inconsistency, that is to say, without losing our main effect P To ns, at least, the ques- tion answers itself. We decide for the latter course, and are so in accordance with the methods of instruction in all the Euro- peen schools of painting, with the one exception of England.. But Mr. Collier does not seem to see that the latter course exists at all. He even gives us a description—as he calls it—of the
practice in Carolas Duran's studio, which is, as far as it goes, based on an excellent method, and calmly proceeds to assert that there is but little difference between this system of painting and that of Mr. Poynter, which latter was the foundation of the author's own style. As a matter of fact, the two systems are in as nearly perfect opposition as any two systems can be,—the one instructs its pupils to make a careful outline, fill it up with bits of colour and detail one after another, till the general effect is produced ; the other, as we should have thought was well known to every artist in England, since it is perhaps the most typical of foreign methods, instructs its student to look first for the largest mass of tone in the subject, and with comparative disregard of colour and details of form, and with almost total disregard of outline, to put that down in the first place, and then to put side by side with that, the mass of next importance, and so on throughout the work. Could any two systems be more different in prin- ciple P One is the English, the other the French method,—one is drawing by contour, the other is drawing by mass,—the last is based on visual impression, the first, if it be carefully examined, is seen to be based on detailed consideration of the subject, on an endeavour to make the sum of many small im- pressions equivalent to the unity of a single glance. It would merely be an exaggeration to say that all the defects of the English schools of painting might be traced to the adoption of this theory of Mr. Collier's ; and on this neglect of detail in form and local colour in comparison with truth of mass and value, all the French systems of painting are based, and are based securely. Get your details right bit by bit, says our author in other words, and modify them subsequently till your effect is accurate. Get your effect true from the first, says the French master, and then your details will fall naturally into their right place, and at the worst you will be working on a foundation of truth. We have criticised this book as we believe Mr. Collier wished it to be considered—namely, from the mint of view of its suitability for art students—and we have only to say in conclusion that it is a genuine attempt to put its subject. matter unaffectedly and plainly; but as a manual of oil.painting, its point of view is, we think, wholly mistaken.
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