THE ART

PORTRAIT PAINTING

THE HON. JOHN COLLIER

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MISS EVELEEN TENNANT (MRS. FREDERIC W. H. MYERS).
BY SIR J. E. MILLAIS, BART., P.R.A.

By permission of Mrs. Temant.

THE ART OF
/

PORTRAIT PAINTING

BY

THE HON. JOHN COLLIER

Vice-President of the Society of Portrait Painters

Author of " A Primer of Art" and "A Manual of Oil Painting'

WITH FORTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS

_ ^ IN COLOUR AND HALF-TONE

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED

LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE
MCMV. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
II
 PREFACE.

1HAVE to thank Sir James Knowles for his kind permission

to reproduce in the historical section of this work the
substance of an article on " Portrait Painting in its Historical
Aspects," which appeared in The Nineteenth Century some ten
years ago (this, again, was founded on a lecture delivered at the
Royal Institution).
My thanks are also due to Mr. Edwin Bale, for whose counsel
in helping me to select the illustrations and for whose care and
patience in supervising the reproductions I cannot be sufficiently
grateful.

On Mr. Bale's advice I have tried the experiment of reproducing

some of the pictures by the three-colour process —a method which
has been very much improved of late. I was a little nervous
about this, but I think the results have fully justified the step.
Colour is such an important element in portraiture that where
it is possible to give a fairly truthful suggestion of it in a
reproduction it is surely worth while to do so. Of course some
pictures lend themselves much better to reproduction than others,

but most of those that I am able to give are extraordinarily

faithful to the originals.

This little work has no pretensions to be an exhaustive treatise.

There are many omissions — many eminent names have been left

out, especially amongst the modern artists ; but as far as it goes I

trust it will be found accurate and helpful.

J. c.
il
 CONTENTS.

PART I.

Historical

PART II.

Aims and Methods of the Great Masters ... 36

PART III.

The Practice of Portrait Painting .... 77

ll
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Bastien-Lepage, " My Grandfather " Plate No. 36
J.

Cooper, Samuel . General Monk, Duke of Albemarle ,, 40

Gainsborough, T., R.A. Mrs. Sheridan and Mrs. Tickell ("The Misses
Linley "). Colour M 15

Mrs. Robinson (" Perdita ") ,, 28

Ghiriandajo . . . . The Birth of John the Baptist .... 2

Giotto Head of Dante ... ... ,. I

Hals, Frans .... The Company of St. George, 1 627 ,, 8

Dr. Albert Van Nierop. Colour .... .. 26

Holbein, Hans Hubert Morett *20

,.

Reskemeer, a Cornish Gentleman .... ,, 21

George Gisse. Colour „ 22

HoU. Frank, R.A. The Duke of Cleveland . . \ 19

Lavery, John, R.S.A. . Portrait in Grey and Blue. Colour 35

Leonardo da Vinci The Gioconda (Monna Lisa) .... ,, 3

Millais,SirJ.E.,Bart.,P.R.A. Miss Eveleen Tennant (Mrs. F. W, H. Myers). Colour Frontisp tecc

Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone Plate No 30

John Ruskin .> .. 18

Moroni, Giambattista Portrait of a Tailor. Colour .... .. 5

Orchardson, W. Q., R.A. . Viscount Peel. Colour ,, ,, 33

Raeburn, Sir H., R.A. . Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster .1 M 29

Rafael, Sanzio Leo X., with Cardinals Giulio de' Medici and
Ludovico de' Rossi „ 4

Rembrandt van Ryn The Lesson in Anatomy .. 10

Central Figures from " The Night Watch "

. II

The Syndics of the Clothworkers' Guild .. 12

 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Reynolds, Sir J., P.R.A. Mrs. Siddons as " The Tragic Muse." Colour Plaie No. 16

Dr. Johnson .. 38

Romney, George . .
" The Parson's Daughter." Colour .. 17

Sargent, J. S., R.A. . AVeleGonfie ,. 34

Titian La Bella „ 6

......
. .

L'Homme au Gant .. .. 23

Ariosto. Colour ., 24

Van der Heist, B. . Banquet of the Civic Guard to Celebrate the Peace

of Munster „ 9

Vandyke, Sir A. . . Maria Luisa de Tassis Colour .... ,. 13

Philip Lord Wharton .. .. 27

Van Eyck, Jan . Jan Arnolfini, of Lucca, and his Wife Colour ., 7

Velasquez . Central Figures from "The Surrender of Breda" . „ 14

Las Meninas * .
,. 25

The Jester (Pablillos of Valladolid) .. 37

Watts, G. F.. O.M. R.A. . Miss Alice Prinsep (Mrs. Stracey-Clitherow) Colour ., .. 32

Whistler, J. McN. Miss Alexander. Colour .. 31

Wright, Joseph, of Derby " An Experiment with the Air-Pump "

. .. 39
 THE

ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

Parr h
HISTORICAL.

THE that
whole of modern
of the Greeks
art

and
has been so
Romans
much
that it
influenced
is obviously
by

necessary in any discussion of the history of portrait

painting to consider what portraiture was like in classical times.
The prior art of Egypt may be left aside. To quote MM.
Perrot and Chipiez, " Painting never became an independent and
self-sufficing art in Egypt. It was commonly used to complete
sculpturesque effects, and it never freed itself from this subordina-

tion." In fact, it had its origin in the painted bas-relief, and it

never advanced beyond the process of filling in an outline with

flat tints. Obviously this can never give us portrait painting in
the true sense of the term, and it is with this branch of por-
traiture only that I am here concerned.
Classical art has aroused such unbounded enthusiasm, and has
been investigated with such loving care, that in spite of its

remoteness we really know a great deal about it much more, —

indeed, than we know of the art of the Middle Ages. But there
are very serious gaps in our information ; and it is precisely in

the present subject that one of these gaps occurs.

We can form a very good idea of what classical painting in
general was like from the remains at Pompeii, for although they
13
2 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

belong to a comparatively debased period, they are certainly an

echo of the finest Greek art. That is to say, the best Greek
painting was like that, only a great deal better. But it is a very

curious thing that there is practically no portraiture amongst the

Pompeian remains. The nearest approach to it is in the great

mosaic of the battle of Issus, where the principal figure is cer-

tainly meant for Alexander ; but it is a very conventional rendering,

and, being in mosaic, can only give a vague idea of what a painted
portrait was like. So that we can take it that there is no direct
evidence bearing on our subject until we come to the funeral por-
traits of the late Roman period, found in the Fayoum. These are
so debased in style that I am afraid they cannot help us much,
though I will refer to them further on.
Nevertheless, although direct evidence is wanting, we can form
from analogy with the other arts a fairly definite idea of the charac-

teristics of classical portraits. There is little doubt that in the best

period of Greek art they were very good indeed. In one par-
ticular, that of rendering the essential dignity of the human face

and figure, I think it is likely that they have never been equalled.
This quality is found again in the best periods of Italian art,

though probably in a lesser degree, but it has been generally

deficient in the work of even the finest painters of other nations.
Among the leading characteristics would be, in the first place,

great restraint. There were no very powerful effects of light and

shade. Although some classical painters obtained renown for their

mastery over chiaroscuro, yet we may be sure that it fell far short

of the boldness and resourcefulness of Velasquez and of Rembrandt.

Violent gestures, strained attitudes, forced expressions, would
assuredly be absent. They were very sparingly used even in

subject pictures ; for portraits they would be considered' quite

inadmissible. Neither the face nor the figure would be shown in
positions that require foreshortening. It is one of the most curious
 HISTORICAL. 3

generalisations to be made from the paintings and mosaics at

Pompeii that there is hardly any foreshortening of human figures ;

at the most there are a few limbs treated in this way.

The execution would never be rough or coarse ; even when
slight it would not look unfinished. The colouring would be bright
and admirably harmonious.
To modern eyes these portraits might seem a little lacking in
character. That is to say, the touch of caricature that we are
gradually getting to think essential to a speaking likeness would
certainly be absent. The person would be represented at his best,
and would often be slightly idealised. Even when an ugly person
was faithfully portrayed (and some painters had the reputation of
not extenuating defects) there would be a certain suave play of
line which would go far to redeem this ugliness. A Greek of the
best time must have had a feeling for the gracefulness of a
delicately modulated curve that would give a sense of beauty to
everything he touched.
So that portraiture amongst the Greeks was at its best a most
harmonious and dignified art, more beautiful probably than it has
ever been since — at its worst stilly harmonious and decorative, but
rather tame and lacking in character.

No doubt it degenerated somewhat when it got into the hands

of the Romans. Their artists, indeed, were mostly Greeks, but
they were influenced by the inferior taste of their patrons. Do we
not read of a colossal portrait of Nero, 120 feet high ? It stood in a
garden, and must have been one of the most monstrous of sky-signs.
Then the exuberance of Roman demands would induce a hasty and
mechanical production. We hear, for instance, that Varro had a
gallery containing no fewer than 700 portraits. And so the age of
shoddy set in, until the fashionable artist became a mere manufac-
turer of graceful inanities.

And here we come at last on direct evidence as to what was

 4 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

the popular taste in portraiture in the second and third centuries of

the Christian era. The likenesses of the dead found in the Graeco-
Roman cemetery of the Fayoum must not, of course, be regarded
as good specimens of the art of the time. They were, no doubt,
hastily executed by very inferior practitioners, but they show the
prevailing fashion for all that.

It is very curious how nearly they resemble the fashionable

portraiture of a very different period — that of the early Victorian
era ; they have so many of the characteristics of that interesting
though extremely debased form of art. The eyes are too big, the
noses too long, the nostrils too narrow, the mouth too small,
the face too oval, the neck too thin and long, the shoulders
too sloping. These likenesses of the early Christian times seem
strangely familiar when one thinks of the books of beauty of
some fifty years ago.
And then this style became gradually less and less human,
until it developed into Byzantine formalism, such as we see in
the celebrated mosaic at Ravenna, representing Justinian and
Theodora —a work of the sixth century.
Afterthis we lose our art for a time, for portrait painting,
as we understand it, can hardly be said to have existed during
the early Middle Ages.
We first get a glimpse of it again when Italian painting revived

in the person of Giotto. This great innovator was born in 1276,

and died in 1336. His influence on art can hardly be overrated,
although his master Cimabue had started the revival to which
Giotto gave so remarkable an impetus. To quote Vasari :
" He
became so good an imitator of nature that he banished the rude
Greek manner, restoring art to the better path adhered to in

modern times, and introducing the custom of accurately drawing

living persons from nature, which had not been used for more than
200 years." Nor, indeed, for much longer.
HEAD OF DANTE.
FHOM QIOTTO'S FnEBOO. " IL I'AnADISO," IN TMt DABQELLO, FLORENOt.

Frum a riwlnf;iii/>h liy Aliiiiiii, Florence.

 HISTORICAL. 5

Of course, however ardent an admirer of nature a man may be,

the bondage of convention is far too strong to be broken in one

lifetime. To his contemporaries Giotto was an audacious realist,

probably a bmtal realist, or even worse, in the language of the

art critics of the day. To us, his work, though vigorous, is

strangely stiff and formal. His ardent study of nature led him to
introduce portraits of his friends into his imaginative works. In
the chapel of the Bargello at Florence, the lower portion of the
great fresco of "Paradise" is filled by a procession of citizens,

amongst whom is Dante with others of Giotto's friends. This

very interesting work was discovered in 1840 beneath a coat of
whitewash. It is much damaged, and has been extensively re-
painted, but in spite of this we can gain from it a very clear idea
of what the great Dante looked like. (Plate i.)

The next decided advance in Italian art was due to Masaccio.

He was born in 1402, and with him began the noble array of
fifteenth-century masters, who, to many people (though not to

myself), are more fascinating than the great painters of the six-

teenth century. As usual, the advance was made by a more strict

adherence to nature, and, as usual, the increase of realism produced

a leaning towards portraiture. It was Masaccio who developed
the practice, first tentatively introduced by Giotto, of grouping a
crowd of spectators, composed of the painter's friends and acquaint-
ances, in the midst of the historical scenes he was depicting.
This practice was continued with great success by most of the
fifteenth-century masters, such as Filippo and Filippino Lippi,
Benozzo Gozzoli, and especially Ghirlandajo. In the picture that
I reproduce by this latter master of the birth of St. John the
Baptist, the beautiful figure in the foreground is a portrait of
Ginevra de' Benci. (Plate 2.) At the same time they had hardly
arrived at the modern conception of portraiture ; that is, a picture
which depends for its interest on the likeness of an individual.
 6 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

The modern practice of individual portraiture seems to have

sprung up, naturally enough, with the popularity of easel pictures,
and this, again, was much influenced by the introduction of oil-

painting.
Whether Antonello of Messina really acquired the art from the
Van Eycks or from Lucas of Leyden, as some have conjectured, is

very doubtful, but it was certainly he who introduced the new pro-
cess into Venice, whence it spread all over Italy.

We have now come to the full development of the art of

painting that sprang up towards the close of the fifteenth century,
and which was chiefly embodied in four great men, Leonardo,
Rafael, Michel-Angelo, and Titian. All of these were great por-
trait painters in the true sense of the term, with the exception of
Michel-Angelo, who seldom condescended to easel pictures and who
never worked in oil.

The great advance made by the sixteenth-century painters over

the pre-Rafaelites was much fuller utilisation of
in the the resources
of chiaroscuro. Up to this time the colours used were mostly clear
and light, and only so much shading was introduced as was
necessary to give relief tothe figures. The value of shadow in
itself was hardly appreciated ; in fact, the whole conception of
painting was to show everything as far as possible in a full light.
The great innovator in this matter was Leonardo. Being, as
he was, as much a man of science as a painter, the problems of
light and shade interested him in both capacities, and he investigated
them in something of the modern spirit. By the aid of the know-
ledge thus acquired, he succeeded in giving to his figures a round-
ness and a relief that had been hitherto unknown. In fact, he
carried it so far that they are sometimes over-modelled.
The extraordinary thing about Leonardo is that with his rest-
less activity and length of years he produced so little. Indeed,
of all great artists, he is almost the solitary example of unproduc-
THE GIOCONDA (MONNA LISA).

BY LEONARDO DA VINCI. Plate 3.

'-^
LEO X., WITH CARDINALS GIULIO nF.' MEDICI AND LUDOVICO DE' ROSSI.

BY RAFAEL. PldtC 4.

From a I'holo^iaph hy Aliiuiii, I- lot-

 HISTORICAL. 7

tiveness. All others (except possibly Giorgione) have been very

prolific, some of them far too prolific.

Fortunately for our purpose, one of the few works of the

master that are absolutely authentic, and at the same time fairly

well preserved, is the celebrated " Monna Lisa" at the Louvre.

The colour of the face has faded a good deal, owing, no doubt, to
his pernicious habit of glazing thinly over a preparation in mono-
chrome, but the exquisite modelling remains. The delicacy of this
modelling and the subtlety of the expression have never been sur-
passed. It is one of the finest examples of highly finished and
elaborate portraiture that exist. (Plate 3.)

Rafael also was a very fine portrait painter. Indeed, to those

who, like myself, get rather tired of the mannered grace of his

religious pictures, there is something very refreshing in the manly

vigour and simplicity of his portraits. Take, for instance, the
celebrated group of Pope Leo X. with the Cardinals Giulio de'

Medici and Ludovico de' Rossi. This is an admirable example of

thorough workmanship and acute characterisation. (Plate 4.)

But the portrait painter amongst the great Italian artists of the

Renaissance was undoubtedly Titian. That is to say, he devoted

more of his energies to this branch of art than either Rafael or
Leonardo. Taken all round, I am inclined to consider Titian as the
greatest painter who has ever lived, though not the greatest portrait
painter. It was hardly possible for Titian, with his very elaborate

technique, with his habit of keeping pictures by him for years,

retouching and retouching until they attained their final perfection,

to give to his portraits the intense vitality that Velasquez and

Rembrandt obtained by their much more summary methods. But
setting aside a certain lack of spontaneity, Titian's male portraits,

with their wonderful dignity and their rich but sober colouring, can
hold their own with those of any other master. His female portraits

are apt to be stiff.

 8 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

It is odd how many fine painters appear to have suffered from

this lack of ease in the rendering of their female sitters. It was
owing, I believe, to the extreme gorgeousness of the clothes that
the ladies always insisted on putting on for their portraits. The
men, leading perforce a more active life, suffered less from this

disability. The female portraits of Velasquez are an extreme

example of this tyranny of clothes. Even Vandyke, with all his
mannered grace, was seldom able to get his women into anything
like the easy attitudes that distinguish his men. And certainly
the Italian portraits of the best time are very disappointing in
this respect. In the National Gallery there is a very striking
example of this failing. Amongst the numerous fine portraits by
Moroni, there is one of a lady in a red dress, sitting in a chair in
a most uncomfortable position, which is an extraordinary contrast
to the easy and unaffected attitudes of the men. Again, in the
same gallery there is the magnificent female portrait by Bordone,
which in spite of, or rather because of, its magnificence is as
stiff and awkward as possible. We find another very marked
example in one of the most celebrated of Titian's portraits —the
one in the Pitti Palace commonly called " La Bella." (Plate 6.)

It is in many ways a charming picture, but why could he

not have given it the ease and grace of the draped figure in

his " Sacred and Profane Love " ? Because there, as in other
subject pictures, he was able to modify the costume a little to
suit his artistic tastes, whilst " La Bella " would have perished
sooner than allow the slightest alterations in her uncomfortable
finery. I may mention that the head has been a good deal
repainted.
As an example of the much greater ease that Titian displayed
in his male portraits I have reproduced the celebrated " Homme
au Gant" of the Louvre —a much more satisfactory work than
" La Bella," in spite of the decorative qualities of the latter picture.
 Plate 5.

PORTRAIT OF A TAILOR.
hi BY MORONI, IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON.
LA BELLA.
BY TITIAN.
IN THE PITTI PALACE, FLORENCE.

From a Photoi^riiph hy li. AHn

H
 HISTORICAL. 9

The painter above mentioned, Moroni, is about the first ex-

ample that we come to of the specialised portraitist, such as we
know him in modern times —that is, a man whose chief business
is the painting of portraits, and whose other work, if he does any,
is comparatively unimportant. Moroni's subject pictures are quite
uninteresting and have fallen into merited oblivion, but as a
specialist he takes a very high rank. The celebrated "Tailor"
in our National Gallery is an admirable example of his skill.

(Plate 5.)
Its great quality is a certain refined and dignified simplicity.

The pose and expression are perfectly natural ; the colouring is

a harmony in grey, the background is a plain tone, and there

are no accessories beyond the scissors he is holding in his hand
and a small piece of drapery on the table. The execution is

smooth, but not tame. Altogether a wonderfully fine example of

portraiture pure and simple.
But then what a charming person to paint — really we poor
moderns are rather severely handicapped ! ,Where shall we find
sitters like this amongst our tailors — or elsewhere?
We must now leave the Italian schoo-l, although of course there
are many admirable portrait painters, especially amongst the Vene-
tians, whom I have left unnoticed. The great characteristic of this
school is the feeling for human beauty and human dignity no ;

doubt this feeling was still greater in classical art, but, with this

exception, it has never been manifested to anything like the same

extent by any other school of painting. Dignity is to be found in

Spanish art, but certainly not beauty of face or figure, and the

Flemish and Dutch schools, until we come to Vandyke, were

strikingly deficient in both dignity and beauty. Vandyke approached
the Italian ideal, but more as an imitator than with real convic-
tion ; and the great English school of the eighteenth century
showed a wonderful feeling for grace and charm of a somewhat
c
 10 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

flimsy and superficial order, but certainly fell far short of the robust

and magnificent types of the great Italian masters.

It is an interesting inquiry why it is that the non-Italian schools

are so deficient in the feeling for human beauty. It is only in Italy
that we find a really fine ideal. The other nations, however
admirable their schools of painting may be, are all far below
her in that one quality. As to the cause of this I have little

doubt that, at the time of the Renaissance, the Italian was the
handsomest race in Europe, so that the painters had better

models to choose from ; but what was probably of greater

importance was that the classical influence never entirely died
out, and also that Italy was full of the remains of ancient art.

We will now turn to the early Flemish school, to which a

special interest attaches, as, according to tradition, the Van Eyck
family were the inventors of oil-painting.
There were three members of the family who were renowned
artists — Hubert, his younger brother John, and his sister Margaret.
Vasari ascribes the invention to John. Of course, this has been
hotly disputed, and many learned works have been written on
the subject, mostly made in Germany.
However that may be, it is John who claims our attention
now, for, amongst other things, he was a very remarkable portrait
painter. We have in the National Gallery an admirable specimen
of his skill. It is a small picture of a merchant and his wife, done
with an exquisiteness of minute finish that is quite unsurpassable.
(Plate 7.)

Unlike the Moroni, it is very rich in all kinds of accessories,

wonderfully painted. The two figures have an immense amount of
character, but, considered as human beings, they are appallingly

hideous. One reflects at once how much more beauty would have
been shown in an Italian picture of the same date, and is inclined
to put it down to the natural ugliness of the Flemish race, when
 Plate 7.

JAN ARNOLFINI, OF LUCCA, AND HIS WIFE.

BY JAN VAN EYCK, IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON.

II
 HISTORICAL. II

these speculations are suddenly cut short by the discovery that

these people are Italians —a certain Arnolfini of Lucca and his
wife. They may have been, of course, exceptionally ugly Italians,
but I cannot help thinking that the ugliness resides a good deal
in the Flemish way of looking at them. A very fine portrait for
all that, and, as usual with the Van Eycks, time has had but little

effect on its vivid pigments. The invention of oil-painting seems

to have been complete at its first inception ; the successors of the
Van Eycks have never bettered the process.
The great Holbein seems, as regards his method, a direct

descendant of these Flemish masters, although he belongs to a

different school —the German. He also was a member of an artistic

family. His father and (probably) his grandfather before him were
called Hans Holbein, and were noted painters. Hans Holbein, the
younger, was born at Augsburg in 1494, or thereabouts.
In 1526 he visited England, where he was received into the
family of Sir Thomas More, to whom he brought an introduction
from Erasmus. He soon was appointed Court painter to Henry
the Eighth, and became the fashionable portrait painter of the day.

There is one \vell-known anecdote concerning him that has

always troubled me. It is said that he was sent to paint the
portrait of Anne of Cleves, and that he so flattered the likeness that
Henry proposed to the lady on the strength of it, but was bitterly
disappointed when he saw the original. Now, it is very difficult

to believe that Holbein ever flattered anybody ; his portraits show

him to be the most uncompromising of realists, and bear the

stamp of the most minute and subtle accuracy. They are not
lovely as a rule, human beings are not lovely as a
but then
rule. Not being an Italian, he may have missed some of the
essential beauty of his sitters, but his portraits arc never grotesque
and are often dignified. Their chief characteristic is the look of

absolute and unrelenting truth.

 12 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

The next school of portraiture to be considered — the Dutch

is perhaps, as a school, the greatest of all. At the head of it

stands Rembrandt ; but there were a great number of portrait

painters of high merit, and there was a general encouragement

of portraiture that must have helped materially to bring out
the latent talent of the artists. It was in Holland that the
practice sprang up of painting great portrait groups : the mayor
and aldermen of a town, the syndics of a guild, or a company of
archers or arquebusiers making merry —which, indeed, seems to

have been their chief occupation. These portrait groups involved

problems of extreme difficulty, and the way in which these
difficulties were overcome by the Dutch masters excites the
admiring wonder of every modern artist.

The first really great name that occurs in Dutch painting is

Frans Hals. He was born in 1584 and died in 1666. His work
can be properly studied only at Haarlem, where there are a
number of his great portrait groups, representing mostly companies
of arquebusiers. (Plate 8.) These were a sort of volunteers, who,

in Hals's time, existed less for purposes of national defence than

for friendly jollification — something like our Foresters and Odd-
fellows, but of a higher social grade.
These groups at Haarlem are distinguished by a most
extraordinary vivacity. The men seem to be all talking and
laughing in a most animated manner ; their gestures and
attitudes are wonderfully life-like ; the composition is varied and
skilful, and the general play of colour is delightfully fresh and
vivid.

But still I do not put Frans Hals quite in the first rank of
portrait painters. He has always been famed for his essentially
painter-like qualities, but I am firmly of opinion that this is a
mistake. He can brush in a costume or a background with great
dash and vigour, but his flesh-painting —and this is, after all, the
O I .j

? < , 5«
 HISTORICAL. 13

real test — is distinctly inferior. In his heads he is more of a

draughtsman than a painter ; it is to his marvellous draughts-
manship that he owes the animated expressions for which he is

so justly famous. Of course the painting is vigorous enough, but

vigorous painting is not necessarily good painting. Nor do I

complain of its being sketchy. Rembrandt's latest work may also

be called sketchy, but it is full of the most subtle truth ; whereas
Hals's heads are not quite true either in colour or texture, and
they are certainly not subtle.
But, for all that, no one has ever put more life into an
expression.
As a contrast we will take the work of Van der Heist,
who was a little later in date, as he was born in 1613.
His chef-cT oettvre is "The Banquet of the Civic Guard on the
Solemnisation of the Peace of Munster," now in the museum
of Amsterdam. It is an immense picture, containing twenty-five
figures of the size of life. (Plate 9.)
All these figures and the numberless accessories display a high
degree of finish. Nothing is scamped, nothing is sacrificed.

There is not a tumbler nor a piece of bread that is not admirably

well painted, and yet the whole is harmonious and well balanced.
The miracle of it is that such a high level of achievement has
been kept up without faltering throughout the whole of this

immense picture. Every head is admirable in character ; every

figure is well posed and finely drawn. But perhaps the most
extraordinary part of the picture is the hands.
There is nothing in which even the greatest painters more
often fail than in the hands, and yet here we have them in a
great variety of positions, all faultlessly drawn and painted, and
with so much individual character that it has been said of them
that if they were cut off and thrown in a heap one could select

with ease the hands that fitted each of the heads. When we
 14 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

come to painters like Vandyke, who gave everybody the same

hands, or like Sir Joshua and Gainsborough, who seldom drew
them even decently, we shall be able to appreciate at its just

value this great achievement of Van der Heist.

Lest my enthusiasm for this picture may seem excessive I

may mention that Sir Joshua Reynolds, of all people, pronounced

it " perhaps the finest picture of portraits in the world, compre-

hending more of those qualities which make a perfect portrait

than any other I have ever seen." I do not go as far as this,

for the flesh-painting is not nearly as fine as Rembrandt's, and

the colouring, although good, is not that of a born colourist.

Also I feel the want of concentration in the treatment. There

is a certain monotony in the uniform emphasis on all the figures.
Nevertheless, I think that in certain qualities, and those very
important ones, this picture has never been beaten.
I must add that in no other work that I have seen of his
has Van der Heist ever approached this high level. There is

another large group at Amsterdam which is distinctly inferior, and

his single figures are, as a rule, tame and uninteresting.
In point of time Rembrandt comes between the two painters
I have just described, for he was born at Leyden probably in

1606 or 1607.
To the best of my judgment, he and Velasquez are the greatest
portrait painters who have ever lived, but I should give the palm
to Velasquez.

Like that of most great artists, Rembrandt's work underwent

a gradual evolution. His early style is rather smooth, and,
although broad in treatment, is marked by great delicacy of
detail. Then he gradually adopted a freer style of execution, which
developed into the very rough and comparatively coarse method of
his later years. But in each style he was admirable.
The celebrated " Lesson in Anatomy " at the Hague is the
CENTRAL FIGURES l-ROM "THE NIGHT WATCH.'
BY REMBRANDT.
IN THE RIJKS MUSEUM. AMSTERDAM.

From a rhoUii-rnph by Fraiir. llnnfsliiai^l.

 HISTORICAL. 15

finest extant example of his earlier style. (Plate 10.) It was

painted in 1632, when he was about twenty-five.
We find in it, already fully developed, his mastery over light
and shade ; but it is scarcely so skilful in arrangement as some of
his later works.

What is very noteworthy in this early work is that the

heads, although smoothly painted, are quite as vigorous as in his
later and much rougher style. Of course, the reason is (though
this is often overlooked) that vigour of effect depends on truth of
tone and strength of light and shade, and not on thickness and
roughness of paint.
Rembrandt's later style was finer than his earlier because it

gave more truly the impression of texture; also the work was
done more rapidly and with more ease. Consequently it was more
masterly — but it was not more effective.

It is this essential truth and vigour that, to my mind,

constitute Rembrandt's chief claim to be one of the two greatest
portrait painters of the world. For his mastery over chiaroscuro
I think he has been overpraised. This mastery he undoubtedly
had, and in many of his pictures it is used most worthily to

enhance the general effect, but in others it is employed in an

exaggerated and unnatural manner, and degenerates into something
very like a trick.

For instance, the wonderful picture which used to be called

"The Night Watch" got its misnomer by reason of the excessive

darkness of its shadows. It certainly does look very like a night
effect, but, as a matter of fact, it was meant for daylight, and
indeed for actual sunlight, as witness the definite shadow thrown
by the hand of the principal figure. (Plate 11.)

It is true that the picture may have darkened a good deal, but

we know from contemporary records that it was always very low

in tone. Samuel Van Hoogstraten, Rembrandt's pupil, says of it
 i6 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

" It is so picturesque, so beautiful in its arrangement, and so

powerful, that, by its side, in the opinion of many, other canvases
look like playing-cards. Nevertheless" (he goes on to say) "/
C07i/c/ have wished a little more lights And I wish it too.

Hoogstraten 's praise is not nearly warm enough for its picturesque

qualities ; the heads are splendid, the composition is admirable,

and the colouring extremely rich and harmonious, but I feel very
strongly that the light and shade are forced and artificial to the
last degree, and that good honest daylight, to say nothing of
sunlight, is far too fine in itself to be played tricks with in this
way.
A much simpler and more natural picture is that of " The
Syndics of the Clothworkers' Guild," also at Amsterdam. (Plate 12.)
This was painted in 1661, when Rembrandt was in the fulness

of his powers. It is simply a representation of five respectable

merchants seated round a table with their servant waiting on
them. The heads are magnificent, the lighting is simple and
consistent, and the colour is as fine a combination of rich red,

golden grey, and black as one could wish to see. The grouping,
too, is wonderful in its quiet effectiveness. But yet, to my
prosaic mind, there is one undoubted drawback : the perspective is

perfectly insane. The table, covered with a red cloth (which is as

fine a mass of one colour as I have ever seen in a picture), is

obviously looked at from below — for we do not see the top of

it. Yet the heads are certainly not looked at from below, and the
lines of the woodwork behind them are absolutely inconsistent
with this view of the table.

Many people, especially of the superior order, will say that it

does not matter in the least— I think it does matter, but that
nevertheless this is one of the finest portrait groups in the world.
Many of Rembrandt's isolated portraits are equally masterly,
but I have dwelt on these groups as the painting of combined
 S 5

1
I ;
 HISTORICAL. 17

portraits is much more difficult than the painting of single figures,

and there are far fewer artists who have succeeded in it.

I have already expressed my opinion that the one rival of

Rembrandt is Velasquez. Indeed, I am distinctly inclined to put

the Spaniard above the Dutchman.

The former, although a master of chiaroscuro, did not play the
same tricks with it as the latter. His colouring too, although not
so alluring as his rival's, is free from that artificial golden-brown
tone which gives to many of Rembrandt's pictures a touch of
mannerism. On the other hand, Velasquez was so far influenced
by the excessive formality of his courtly surroundings that his
portraits are often a little stiff. From this Rembrandt was
absolutely free.

Velasquez was born in 1599, so he was Rembrandt's senior by

eight years. Unlike Holland, Spain could not boast in his time of
a large and flourishing school of portrait painters. Good portraits

were produced by Murillo and others, but the great Spanish

school of portraiture may be said to begin and end with Velasquez.
Like Rembrandt, he gradually worked up to the masterly and
summary handling that distinguishes his later style through an
early period which was characterised by great precision and some
hardness. Indeed, it may be laid down as a general law in

painting (a law to which I should like to call the attention of my

friends the Impressionists) that the only way to arrive at a really

masterly sketchiness is to do a great deal of preliminary work in

a very precise and careful style. Even when the method of

Velasquez was most rapid and summary, it never degenerated into
carelessness ; indeed, he was one of the few Court painters who
have been able to resist the deteriorating influences of their

surroundings. Holbein was another; they were no doubt both of

them men of very exceptional character.
These surroundings, however, although they did not degrade
D
 i8 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

the man, have certainly endangered his reputation as a painter,

for the constant demand for replicas of his royal portraits necessitated

his setting up a workshop, where these replicas were produced by

his assistants. Although he never did careless work himself, yet
he made himself responsible for a great deal of work that was
done by inferior hands. It is this question of the workshop
that makes it so difficult to be sure of the genuineness of any
reputed work of the master. For instance, there was an exhibition
at the New Gallery in 1895 in which were about forty pictures
assigned to Velasquez, but I think most good judges would say
that not more than six or seven of them at the outside were by
his hand.
That Velasquez, when he had a good chance, could manage
a portrait group as well even as the great Dutch painters can be
seen from the magnificent picture of "The Surrender of Breda,"

commonly called " The Lances," which is one of the great ornaments
of the Prado Gallery at Madrid. This is something half-way
between a portrait piece and an historical painting, and is of
the highest excellence in either aspect. The composition is
original and striking to the last degree. None but the boldest
genius could have ventured on the line of spears that rise up
into the sky on the right-hand half of the picture. But the
success of this startling arrangement is so obvious that from it

the picture has obtained its popular title. And from the point of
view of portraiture nothing can excel the dignity and distinction
of the principal figure —the Marquess of Spinola, receiving with a
magnificent courtesy the keys of the fortress from the vanquished
General, Justin de Nassau. (Plate 14.)

A more strictly portrait group and an even more remarkable

achievement from the technical point of view is " Las Meninas,"
in which the painter is represented at work in his studio ; but
this I will discuss in a later chapter.
 Plate 18.

MARIA LUISA DE TASSIS.

BY VANDYKE. IN THE LICHTENSTEIN GALLERY, VIENNA.
CENTRAL FIGURES FROM "THE SURRENDER OF BREDA.'
BY VELASQUEZ.
IN THE PRADO. MADRID.

From a Photograph by Urauii, Pans.

|i
 HISTORICAL 19

We will return now to the Flemish School as embodied in

Vandyke^a man of great talent, but who, I consider, has had

an unfortunate influence on Art.
He was born at Antwerp in 1599 —the same year as
Velasquez. He became the pupil of Rubens, a bad master for a
youth gifted with such a fatal facility as Vandyke. Fortunately
for himself, he took a journey to Italy when he was quite a
young man, and, conceiving a warm admiration for Titian and
the other great Italian painters, he adopted a style much finer

than the sloppy exuberance of his master, whom I have always

regarded as a strangely overrated painter.
Vandyke's best portraits were painted during his stay in Italy,

and after his return to his native land, whilst he was still under
the influence of his Italian studies. He was not a Court painter
then, and was not pushed to too rapid production by popularity
and extravagance.
Unlike most of his predecessors and contemporaries, Vandyke
paid great attention to female portraiture. Perhaps the best
example of his skill is the beautiful portrait of a young lady of
Antwerp, Maria Luisa de Tassis, in the Lichtenstein Gallery,
Vienna. (Plate 13.)
In 1632 he settled in England, where his success was
immediate. In that same year he was knighted, and was
appointed painter to Charles the First. He died in the winter
of 164 1, at the early age of forty-two.

His productiveness during this short period was extraordinary,

and, I may add, lamentable. He was a weak man, and very
extravagant, so that his studio became at last a mere manufactory
of mannered and superficial portraits.

Of course it takes a great deal to destroy such very remarkable

gifts as those with which Vandyke was endowed, so that during
the worst fever of this over-production he still painted occasional
20 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

masterpieces. But the stamp of mannerism lay heavily on most

of his work. There is a distinct lack of individuality ;
many of

his portraits have a strong family likeness ; in the poorer specimens

the colouring became weak and the handling mechanical.
It was the beginning of a decadence which became more
marked in his followers as it passed from Sir Peter Lely to
Sir Godfrey Kneller.
For a long time the chief painters in England were imported
foreigners; and it is a very remarkable thing that in a country
that had hitherto suffered from such a striking lack of native
talent, there should spring up suddenly, in the middle of the
eighteenth century, a truly British school of painting, with three

men of undoubted genius at the head of it.

Reynolds was born in 1723, Gainsborough in 1727, Romney

in 1734.
Reynolds died in 1792, outliving Gainsborough by four years;
Romney died only four years later than Reynolds —so that for a
long period they were all working side by side. And although
there were interesting differences in their methods, they all had
the same conception of portraiture. It was a kind of revival of
the best traditions of Vandyke, and, it must be added, of some
of the worst also.

They were all three pre-eminently successful with women.

Indeed, for the first time since the classical epoch had female
portraiture completely emancipated itself from the tyranny of stiff

clothes and of consequently stiff attitudes. They all three gave the
special charm and grace of womanhood in a way which has never
been seen before or since —not even, I believe, in those classical
times when they had a far higher ideal of feminine beauty.
The male portraits are on the whole less satisfactory. Now
and then they attain a very high level, especially in the work
of Sir Joshua, who was distinctly the manliest painter of the three ;
 Plate 16.

MRS. SHERIDAN AND MRS. TICKELL (THE MISSES LINLEY).

BY THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R.A., IN THE DULWICH GALLERY.
 HISTORICAL. 21

but the weaker examples, which are very numerous, fall far below
the standard of the great masters. No amount of grace and
charm will compensate for the absence of a body beneath the fine
clothes, for hands that are so weak and sketchy as to be almost
non-existent — in short, for a general lack of firm and vigorous
drawing.
Like Vandyke, they were all three immensely prolific — Sir
Joshua, who was a very methodical man, has left us his note-
books with a careful record of his various sitters. From them we
learn that in the year 1758, when he was thirty-five years of age,
he painted no fewer than 150 portraits.
This was his best year as regards numbers, but there were 148
in the following year, and he kept up an average of about 120 for

a long period.
Gainsborough and Romney hardly equalled his enormous
productiveness, but, judged by modern standards, their output also

would be considered prodigious.

Of course, the question immediately arises, how was it pos-
sible to go on painting good pictures at- such a rate as this ?

The answer, to my mind, is simple enough — it was not possible.

When they had sitters that pleased them, or when, for one reason
or another, they put out their full strength, these men of genius
produced admirable pictures, and from these pictures they have
deservedly gained their great reputation. But their average
work was very slight, and, in fact, scamped, and their poorest
work was very poor indeed ;
ill-drawn, conventional in attitude

and expression, and with very little of the individuality that

makes a good portrait. Like Vandyke, they were spoilt by

becoming the fashion. It was the manufactory over again.

Gainsborough is the most unequal of the three. A really

poor Gainsborough —and there are many of them — is an abom-

inably ill-drawn, flimsy caricature of humanity, but at his best
 22 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

he carries the essential charm of the school further than either

of his rivals. They were all fine colourists, but he was the
finest. He was also, I think, the most original of the three.

The group of the Linley sisters, which is one of the chief

ornaments of the Dulwich Gallery, is a very characteristic Gains-
borough. (Plate 15.) The heads are delightful; it is difficult to

imagine a more sympathetic rendering of two charming young

women. The arrangement is simple and pleasing, with all the
grace and hardly any of the affectation that usually distinguish
the school. The background is skilfully conventional, and the
colour is quietly harmonious. On the other hand, the drawing
is very poor —the hands and arms being even worse than
usual.

As a contrast, I give the splendid " Mrs. Siddons as the

Tragic Muse," from the same gallery. (Plate 16.)
This is a fine example of the robuster art of Sir Joshua
Reynolds. It is much better drawn than the Gainsborough
(though not impeccable in this respect), and has a strength and
vigour quite beyond the scope of either of Sir Joshua's great
rivals.

The colouring reminds one of a fine Rembrandt —a harmony

in golden-brown. Gainsborough's colouring is essentially cool,

whereas Sir Joshua's feeling was always for warm tones.

I say but little about Romney, as he is distinctly less inter-

esting than the other two ;

yet he also produced an occasional
masterpiece.
Many of his numerous portraits of Lady Hamilton are
endowed with a wonderful fascination, whilst the little head in

the National Gallery called " The Parson's Daughter " is quite an
epitome of the merits of the school. (Plate 17.) It is extraordin-
arily empty. There is hardly any modelling, the eyes, nostrils,

and mouth just touched in with a few strokes of the brush —the
 MRS. SIDDONS AS "THE TRAGIC MUSE."
BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A., IN THE DULWICH GALLERY.
 HISTORICAL. 23

whole thing is so slight in painting that the canvas scarce seems

covered. And yet all the essential charm is there. It is really

miraculous that so much can be suggested by such slight means.

This is an undoubted masterpiece.

Sir Joshua's " Dr. Johnson " (Plate 38) is one of the best
examples of what he could achieve in male portraiture. Neither
Gainsborough nor Romney can touch him here.

There is, for once, no touch of convention. Indeed, the Doctor

hardly lends himself to it. The character of the heavy, uncouth,
intellectual head has been rendered in the most masterly man-
ner, with, as usual, an extraordinary economy of means. Perhaps
this economy is carried a little too far. Rembrandt would have given
us more, and so would Velasquez. But still, as regards the head,
all the essentials are there. The hand, as usual, is abominable.
With all its drawbacks, this is perhaps the most charming
school of portraiture that has ever existed.
I say "most charming" advisedly, but assuredly not the
greatest. Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Romney lived in too
artificial an age to produce the highest art, but this very
artificiality gives a dainty grace that is in some ways more
attractive than the robust truthfulness of the greatest schools of
painting. It is precisely in this quality of truthfulness that the
work of these exquisite artists falls short. They flattered their

sitters abominably. Then their productiveness was so immense

that in all but their finest work they scamped everything but
the head. Indeed, they adopted the fatal practice of having
draperies, backgrounds, and even hands painted for them by
their assistants, generally without the presence of the sitters.

The male portraits have more individuality than the female, so

they do not display the same tendency to conform to a type.
In general, it may be said of them that the faces are apt
to be a little fatuous, and are mostly very well nourished, and
 24 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

that the oldermen seem to be fortunate in avoiding wrinkles.

But the women seem to be all of one family, the members
of which are not often handsome, and are never quite plain.

They seldom look very intellectual, but then they seldom look
foolish, and they generally have a particular charm of expression
that makes one forget that their features are not really fine and
that their bodies are mostly very poor and weedy. They all look
moderately good, and seem very lively and good-tempered.
They all have to conform to an ideal type — full of grace and
charm. But grace and charm are not everything. I maintain
that an ideal of womanhood founded almost exclusively on these
two qualities is but a poor ideal.

And not only is their ideal a very flimsy one, but the way
in which they allowed it to swallow up the individuality of their
sitters is fatal to the highest portraiture. Were none of their
innumerable female sitters ever broad-shouldered? Had they none
of them big firm mouths and square jaws? They cannot all

have been slim and dainty. Had none of them the magnificent
robust type of the Venus of Milo or of the women of Titian ?
Indeed, we may go further. Some of them must have been
fat. Do we ever find a fat woman in the painting of this school ?

And some of them must have been short and squat, and some
of them must have been downright ugly. But we never see
them. I am aware that there is the most uncanny power of adap-
tation in the female form to the prevailing fashion, but it is not
unlimited. For instance, it is now the fashion for women to be
tall, and it is remarkable how many of them contrive to be in the
fashion ;
but there are exceptions. In these charming portraits
there seem to be practically no exceptions to the prevailing type.
Decidedly there must have been a great lack of sincerity in these
courtly painters, and I must repeat that for the highest portraiture
sincerity is an essential.
 Plate 77.

THE PARSON'S DAUGHTER.

BY GEORGE RO.MNEY. IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON.
Ill
 HISTORICAL. 25

This is the last of the great epochs of portrait painting.

About the same time, or rather a little earlier, there arose a
school in France with somewhat the same aims and character-
istics, but, on the whole, very inferior to ours. They differed from
the English school in not being chiefly portrait painters, but
they had the same feeling for the charm of a very artificial

femininity set in a background of equally artificial landscape.

The women of the English painters, however, are far more
attractive than the soulless minxes who disport themselves so
coquettishly in the French canvases of the period.
To return to Great Britain : the tradition of Sir Joshua was
carried on by such excellent painters as Northcote and Hoppner
and to a less extent by a much greater painter than either of
these — Sir —
Henry Raeburn a man of marked originality who,
although he remained more or less a follower of the conventions
of the British school in his design and in his light and shade,
yet broke away from them completely in his technique. In this

he reminds one of Frans Hals, and of those moderns who follow

the Halsian methods. Raeburn was a singularly direct painter,

and absolutely forsook the devious ways by which Sir Joshua

obtained his wonderful results.
He lived and worked entirely in Scotland, which, no doubt, is

the reason why he had so little influence on English art. Indeed,

it is only quite of late years that the English public has become
alive to his merits. I shall return to his technique in a later

chapter. I only wish to put on record here my opinion that in

his limited way he was one of the most masterly of painters.
Unfortunately the most popular follower of Sir Joshua was
Sir Thomas Lawrence, in whose hands the great tradition became
vulgarised. The type is, if anything, more artificial, but the
charm, except in the very best of his pictures, has fled. They are
painted with an extraordinary ability of a very tricky and flashy

E
 26 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

kind. And then we gradually descend to the mere inanities of the

early Victorian Era.
And now we come to the moderns. About them I had
much rather be silent. I am a man of peace, and, all unworthy
though it be, I still hold my life dear. But at any risk I must
venture on this perilous field, for, after all, it is modern work
that should interest us most. Before coming to personalities

I must say a few words as to the general tendency of modern

portraiture.

In the first place it is very varied and highly experimental.

We are always trying new effects new methods of light and shade,
of handling, new harmonies of of new colour, to say nothing
discords. And this, I think, is good in the main. The tendency
in all art to convention is so strong and so fatal when yielded to,

that this wholesale seeking after new methods is, I believe, a

wholesome sign. But there should be some moderation in it.
We are ready enough to condemn the seeking after novelty for mere
novelty's sake in the fashions of female dress. We talk of the
silliness and vulgarity of this restless love of change, but we
forget that a similar feeling in art is just as vulgar. It should be
no recommendation for a style of painting to be new if it be not
good also. This may sound a very obvious truism, but it needs
enforcing, for all that. I have not yet in modern art come across
a portrait of a gentleman standing on his head, but I have no
doubt I shall do so.

Then, again, I am old fogey enough to consider that a portrait

ought to resemble the person it is meant for. I am aware that

many of my brother artists will consider this a mere antiquated
prejudice, and I am willing to concede that I have perhaps stated
the principle a little too strongly, but this I must adhere to —that
a portrait ought at least to resemble a human being.
But I must now leave the comparatively safe ground of
JOHN RUSKIN.
BY SIR J. E. MILLAIS BART., Plate 18.
BY PERMISSION OF MISS ACLAND.
 HISTORICAL. 27

generalities and treat of modern portraiture as practised by a few

representative artists.
The founder of modern portraiture, at any rate in Great
Britain, is certainly Millais. This great artist was a realist, and
he broke once and for ever with the mannered grace and essential
artificiality of the great school of the eighteenth century. Millais
was one of the most original of painters ; in his early days he was
influenced by the other pre-Rafaelites, but his middle and later

styles are entirely his own. Not necessarily the better for that,

but undoubtedly more original, and his portrait work falls almost
entirely into these two periods —and, unfortunately, chiefly into the
latter. I say unfortunately, as his latest style is not his best. It

is often careless, and I would willingly exchange some of his

dashing impressions of fashionable beauties for a few careful

studies such as the little figure of Ruskin, which is one of the

few portraits of the early period. (Plate 18).

This is a masterpiece of pre-Rafaelite art, and might, if he had

persevered in this line, have set a fashion that would have been of
the utmost value at the present day. But. Millais's work, even at

its sloppiest, was always natural and unconventional. It had

extraordinary variety ; indeed, he is almost the only portrait

painter of whom it can be said that his pictures display no family

likeness. Even Rembrandt is not quite free from this reproach.
Millais broke with tradition in another respect which is of
the utmost importance for the welfare of our art. He dis-

pensed entirely with the army of assistants that had hitherto

been the mainstay of the fashionable portrait painter. His work

is all his own, and this break with a bad tradition has, so far,

been a lasting one. There has been no revival of this pernicious

practice — at any rate in Great Britain.

I will discuss the peculiarities of Millais's style in a later

chapter; for the present it is enough to point out that it is

 28 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

characterised by great vivacity of colour and expression, by

immense variety, and by a resolute avoidance of convention.
As a contrast I will cite the work of Frank Holl, who, on the

whole, was the most serious rival to Millais in portraiture. Roll's

work was essentially mannered ; his scheme of colour was mono-
tonous, and there was rarely much vivacity in the expression but —
in his way he was a very fine painter. He had a sureness of
method and a power over his limited convention that remind one of
the great masters. The vigour of his handling and the strength of
his light and shade are such that other portraits look flimsy and
unreal by the side of his. His sitters generally look intellectual
and nearly always dignified. In fact, his was a singularly robust
and distinguished convention. But convention it was. The
backgrounds are nearly always dark brown ; with this he makes a
pleasant though monotonous harmony by painting the black coats
of his sitters a blue-green. They are often sitting in a green
leather chair, and if they have white hair, which is not unusual
with them, as his speciality was painting old men, this white hair
was represented with a strong blue tinge. (Plate 19). When I add
that the figures are often over life-size it will be seen how large a
part convention plays in the work of Frank Holl. On the other
hand, Millais's colouring was, as I have mentioned, extraordinarily
varied — indeed, often too vivid and kaleidoscopic — and he seems to
have looked on every sitter as a fresh problem, not as a creature
to be forced into an artistic mould. Millais, too, was equally
good at men, women, and children, whereas Holl's portraits were
almost exclusively of men, and generally of old men.
For these reasons I regard Millais as by far the greater
portrait painter of the two. But as compared with Holl his
execution was tentative, and he seemed to know much less what
he meant to do and how to do it. In consequence, his failures
were more frequent.

L
THE DUKE OF CLEVELAND.
BY FRANK HOLL, R A. Plate 19.
i
 HISTORICAL. 29

One of Millais's besetting sins was lack of simplicity in

colouring, especially in flesh-painting. This was a legacy from his

pre-Rafaelite days, when the great aim of the brotherhood was to

produce an intense vividness by the juxtaposition of small patches

of the primary colours instead of mixing the required tone on
their palettes. This method is still adopted by some water-colour
artists, and there is a little group of painters in France who
push it to the furthest limits of extravagance, but with these ex-
ceptions the method is now very generally, and I think rightly,

discredited. None of the really great colourists have adopted

it, and I am quite sure that flesh, at any rate, is much better

represented by simple tones, subtly gradated, but not too much

broken up.
The leader of the reaction against this method of Millais was
undoubtedly Whistler —a man of great originality, whose influence
on modern art can hardly be exaggerated. The chief characteristics
of his portrait, as of his other work are a great subtlety of tone,
harmonious colouring, pitched in a very subdued key, and a
simplicity of arrangement that is carried so far at times as to

seem to the natural man mere wilful eccentricity.

Nothing more unlike the art of Millais can well be imagined,

and it is a very useful protest against some of the tendencies of
his school. But there is no denying that it is highly artificial.

By some critics Whistler has been compared to Velasquez, and

this comparison with another artist is probably the one he
would have resented least. It is true that his colouring in its

quiet greys does rather resemble the older master, who also
(though in a much less degree than Whistler) was fond of simplicity
of arrangement. But here, to my mind, the resemblance ceases.
Velasquez was essentially a realist. His figures look like good
honest flesh and blood ; they are solid, they stand out to the eye
as real people would ;
they are vigorous and human. It is said
 30 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

that Philip the Fourth took a portrait of an admiral in the

painter's studio for the admiral himself, and upbraided him for

being away from his duties. This may or may not be true, but
at any rate it does not sound at all unlikely. But who could
possibly imagine any of Whistler's portraits to be living human
beings ? They seem like ghosts of people ; flat, with little

modelling, and no substance. Charming as decorative schemes

and subtle harmonies, but very far removed from the frank vigour
and absolute naturalness of the work of Velasquez.
It is for this reason that I am not so enthusiastic an admirer
of the portraiture of Whistler as it is now fashionable to be. I

have always held that a portrait should be immensely like a

human being. To me the work of Whistler is nothing of the
kind. It is, to use his own expression, a harmony in grey and
flesh-colour, or something to that effect, but it is not Mr. Brown
or Mrs. Smith. Now it may be replied that it is a much higher
form of art than the crude representation of uninteresting people.
This it may be, but it is just in this representation, whether crude

or otherwise, that portraiture consists, and I am convinced that

Velasquez and Rembrandt would be on my side in this controversy.

They undoubtedly endeavoured to give a life-like representation of

the human beings who sat to them, whether interesting in them-
selves or not, and it is just this life-likeness of their portraits of

the contemporary Browns and Smiths that makes them interesting

to us.
Another great figure in English painting has recently passed
from us. It is ungracious to have to speak in any kind of
disparagement of the work of an artist of such distinction as
Watts ; but I must record my conviction that as a portrait painter
he has been much overrated. Some little of his portrait work,

especially of the earlier period, attains a very high level (although

rather too reminiscent of the Italian masters), but the great bulk
 HISTORICAL. 31

of it is disagreeable in execution and often faulty in drawing. It

is always dignified and distinguished in style, and at his best

Watts was a fine colourist ; at his worst the flesh tones are
curiously dirty, and the texture extremely unpleasant.
I must now, with some reluctance, turn to living artists. Of
them, it is difficult to speak quite frankly without fear or favour,

but I will endeavour to do so even at the risk of appearing

invidious. I must merely premise that I have no pretension to

give an exhaustive account of modern portrait painting, and that

the few names I shall mention are chosen chiefly as representing
tendencies. •

Of the older living painters, Mr. Orchardson stands out, a

figure of great distinction, with a very personal method in no way
influenced by the prevailing fashions of modern art. A fine

though limited colourist, he has a great feeling for decorative

arrangement. The prevailing tone is very warm, a sort of golden
hue ; his blacks are always of a brown tone, not very dark.
The backgrounds and clothes are painted thinly, with a some-
what scratchy touch, the shadows being transparent. The flesh

tones are very luminous ; indeed, the heads often tell out too
light against the background. The modelling is somewhat flimsy
and superficial, but the expression is always animated and life-

like. The flimsiness and lightness of the touch remind one a

little of Gainsborough, but otherwise the method is all Mr.
Orchardson's own. In fine, a somewhat limited and not very
natural art, but the convention is a very distinguished one
not so vigorous as that of Frank Holl, but much more refined

and sympathetic. Unfortunately Mr. Orchardson stands alone ; he

has no school, no following.
By far the most commanding figure in modern portraiture is

Mr. Sargent, and his work is vigorous and life-like enough in

all conscience. But he also has a great simplicity of tone and

 32 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

handling that probably owes a good deal to the example of

Whistler.
Like the older painter, Mr. Sargent is said to have derived
his principles and practice chiefly from Velasquez. Indeed, his
art has often been compared to that of the great Spaniard. In
this instance again I consider the comparison mistaken. To my
mind, Mr. Sargent's work is much more reminiscent of Frans
Hals. Besides the vigour, there is a subtlety and delicacy of
modelling and of handling in Velasquez that I fail to find in

the modern master, whose work is not so much modelled as

blocked in. It has all the freshness, but also the lack of sub-
tlety of a sketch ; like that of Hals, the work is admirably
drawn, and painted with a few decided and masterly touches,
but they are left almost unmodified, and consequently it is only
at a considerable distance that these frank strokes of the brush
can be taken for the infinite delicacy of flesh.
This is quite unlike the method of Velasquez, who, even in

his latest and most summary work, blended his tones and
imitated the texture of flesh with extraordinary subtlety.
Another peculiarity of Mr. Sargent is, that in his intense
desire for vividness and vitality, he frequently introduces just a
touch of caricature. This undoubtedly helps him to achieve his
aim, and gives his portraits their astounding individuality; but I

would willingly give up some of the intense characterisation for

the dignity and reticence of Velasquez.

I think it probable that Mr. Sargent owes this tendency to
over-emphasis to the influence of the French painter Manet, who
was a realist of distinctly the brutal order —a man of very
original power, though he, in his turn, is said to have been
inspired to some extent by that erratic genius, Goya, a Spaniard
who flourished towards the end of the eighteenth and the
beginning of the nineteenth centuries, and who was, as it were,
 HISTORICAL. 33

rediscovered by the leaders of the French revolt against

Academic traditions which began some forty years ago.
I have compared Mr. Sargent to Frans Hals. I think, as
regards technique, this is not an unfair comparison, but I

ought to add that the range of Mr. Sargent is infinitely

greater than that of the Dutch master. In the first place, Hals
was pre-eminently a painter of men — in the whole of his work
there are very few young women, and what there are, are
singularly unattractive. He was better at old women, but his
forte lies in the life-like portraiture of commonplace men, mostly
of middle age.
Now, Mr, Sargent is equally good at men, women, and chil-
dren. He has much more feeling for feminine beauty than any
Dutchman that ever lived, and the scope and variety of his
portrait work are quite amazing. He is also, at his best, a fine
and original colourist, and if he has an exceptionally beautiful

complexion to paint, can so far modify his summary methods

as to give the delicacy of nature in a manner never even at-

tempted by Hals.
When all reserves are made there is no doubt that Mr.
Sargent is a master of portraiture. In his own line he is

supreme, but I am afraid that his influence on his contem-

poraries (which of course is very great) has not been for their

good. What in him is masterly sketchiness degenerates in some

of his followers into mere sloppiness, and, speaking generally, a
number of the younger men are endeavouring to copy his facility

without going through the long and arduous study by which

he has gained it. I have remarked before that there is a
general rule that all really masterly work has been preceded
by a course of precise and careful study. The early work of
Velasquez is very hard ; Rembrandt's early portraits are quite
highly finished ; Millais had the invaluable training of his pre-
F
 34 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

Rafaelite days, before he launched out into the freedom of his

middle period —and Mr. Sargent's early studies are no exception
to the rule.

There is nothing more dangerous for the young painter than

to endeavour to be masterly.
I have already disclaimed any pretence to deal exhaustively
with modern portrait painting. The field is far too wide for me
to attempt to cover it. So I shall confine myself to the British
School, partly for the purpose of concentration, but also because I

genuinely believe that portraiture is in a much healthier state here

than on the Continent. With regard to the United States, we
have annexed two of their best portrait painters, so that anything
I have to say of our art will refer to a certain extent to theirs
as well.
Amongst the diverse tendencies of British painting, the
modern Scottish School stands out with marked individuality.
In its wildest developments it represents impressionism gone
mad. But in the hands of its ablest exponents it shows a
marked dignity and reticence, and a very beautiful sense of colour.
It undoubtedly owes a great deal to Whistler, and has many of
his qualities, and also some of his defects.

Sir James Guthrie, the President of the Royal Scottish

Academy, and Mr. Lavery, who, by the way, is an Irishman by
birth, may be taken as the most prominent exponents of the
school. To them, as to Whistler, a portrait is first and foremost
an arrangement. This gives to their work a certain artificiality,

and I cannot help feeling that the human element takes a

somewhat subordinate position. With Mr. Lavery in particular

the head is often somewhat sacrificed to the delicate tones

and harmonies that constitute the arrangement of the picture
and there is such an absence of detail that I have some difficulty,

when I look at one of his charming portraits, in realising the

 HISTORICAL. 35

individuality of the sitter. Each work seems to me like a sketch

for a possible masterpiece which never gets itself painted. If it

did it would be a masterpiece indeed. As it stands it is a

delightful sketch, beautiful but incomplete.
This incompleteness seems to mar much of the clever v/ork
that is now being done. It is either a flashy imitation of
Sargent, or a low-toned perversion of Whistler. Of course,
there is also a certain amount of honest, straightforward, but
perhaps somewhat commonplace portraiture being done, but it is

out of fashion, especially with the critics. The critics, indeed, are
unduly hard on anything that savours of the commonplace. It is

surely better to be good and commonplace than bad and eccentric.

But the fact is, the poor critics are so bored with the number of
pictures that they have to look at that they naturally require
rather a high flavour to tickle their jaded palates. I have every
sympathy with them, but I think it a little distorts their

judgment.
Amongst the youngest of our painters there seems to be a
tendency to a harder and more precise -style. This is all to the
good, and I shall be curious to see if the movement spreads or if

it gets submerged in the prevailing torrent of slop.

At any rate, there is no monotony about modern portraiture.

It is varied and vigorous if somewhat chaotic, and I have great
hopes that out of the chaos will be evolved a school of rational
methods and sane ideals.
 36

Part IK

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS.

OF the half-dozen of the greatest portrait painters of the world

Holbein is the earliest, and his methods are certainly the
farthest removed from most of our modern practice. It

never occurred to him that any part of a picture should be scamped

in order either to save trouble or to give more value to the rest. He
could leave out where he thought advisable — instance, some of
for

his portraits have a quite plain background — but anything that he

put into his picture he painted with the utmost care and finish. This
was not peculiar to Holbein. It was the theory, and more or less

the practice, of all painters up to about the middle of the sixteenth

century. There is plenty of bad work amongst the earlier painters,
but practically no slovenly work — indeed, no sketchiness of any
kind. This theory, that every part of a picture should be well
finished, is much decried nowadays, but it is incontestable that a
number of masterpieces have been produced on this principle.
I am not upholding it as the only method of painting, or
even as the most preferable. Masterpieces have also been produced
on the extreme impressionist principle, and a great number of fine

works are somewhat betwixt and between.The besetting sin

of writers upon art is to be so enamoured of some one school
that they cannot see the merits of any other. I think the real
philosophy of the matter has been summed up by Mr. Kipling
in one of his shorter poems
"There are nine-and-sixty ways
Of constructing tribal lays,
And every single one of them is right."
HUBERT MORETT.
BY HOLBEIN.
IN THE UHESOEN QALLCRY.

From a I'holograph by Franx Han/staengl.

RESKEMEER, A CORNISH GENTLEMAN.
FROM THE DRAWING BY HOLBClN, IN THE ROYAL COLLEOTION, WINDSOR,

Fwm a I'liolot;raph by Uraun, /'(ill's.

;i uL
 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 37

But leaving aside for the present the controversial aspects of this
question, it is an undoubted historical fact that the masters who
may be loosely called pre-Rafaelite finished every part of their
pictures, and were generally fond of introducing a good deal of
minute detail ; and in order to show off this detail their pictures

are rather fully illuminated — deep shadows being avoided. With

Leonardo and Rafael a subordination of certain parts of the
picture begins to take place, but this is effected not by sketchiness
of treatment, but by the employment of large masses of shadow,
in which the detail is necessarily somewhat lost. This has the
result of concentrating the attention on the principal parts of the

picture, and generally produces a bolder and less scattered effect

but the careful finish of every part remains the same.

The originator of what is now called "impressionism" was
undoubtedly Tintoretto. He was the first great painter who
deliberately left parts of his pictures sketchy and unfinished. This
was partly the outcome of theory, but it was also partly necessity,

as owing to the impetuosity of his nature he began far more work

than he could possibly carry out in the -deliberate style of the

early masters. Indeed, he is the first painter who ever seems in a

hurry —there have been many since his time.

To return to Holbein. He belongs distinctly to the pre-

Rafaelites (the real ones, of course, not the English brotherhood

who took the name), if not in point of date, at any rate in point

of manner. There is practically no subordination of detail in his

work, and he mostly avoids large masses of shadow, although he

had a considerable mastery over chiaroscuro when he chose. His
methods are more those of a draughtsman than of a painter. He
seems to have begun all his portraits by making a separate and
very careful drawing upon paper. These drawings are some of
his most admirable and characteristic work, and fortunately a

number of them survive. There are about eighty in the great

38 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

Windsor collection alone. Most of these have been unfortunately

retouched and the outlines strengthened at a later date — probably
not by Holbein himself, although by a skilful hand ; but they are
in sufficiently good preservation to enable us to appreciate the
extraordinarily subtle draughtsmanship of the master. (Plate 21.)
The outlines are studied with the utmost care, and, besides, a
very delicate modelling is introduced. Sometimes they are slightly
coloured, but they are mostly in monochrome, often with written
notes as to the colour by the side.
The drawing was then transferred to the panel or canvas,
sometimes by actual tracing. The costume was occasionally altered,
but the head always remained the same. Apparently the picture
was then laid in from the drawing, making use of the suggestions
of modelling and the written notes as to colour. Then we must
suppose the picture was finished from the actual sitter, and the
details painted very carefully from Nature. But in Holbein's
case, as in that of so many other great painters, contemporary
records are curiously silent as to the method of work.
In the oil-painting the surface is always smooth, texture being
rendered not by inequalities of surface, but by play of light and
shade, as in a photograph. This is a very laborious method, and
even with Holbein is not quite satisfactory. Undoubtedly his

pictures do look too uniformly smooth, and they are a little too
hard and cut out in outline. They have, indeed, the natural defects
of the method — the drawing somewhat overpowers the painting.
On minute observation an actual outline —a thread of paint —can be
discerned, even in his latest pictures, and this certainly accentuates
the impression of over-hardness. Again, there is a slight want of
spontaneity in the expression and attitudes ; some, but not all, of
his portraits are decidedly stiff. But when all drawbacks have been
allowed, how superb is his work ! How subtle, how dignified, and how
strong! And how extraordinarily like the sitters it must have been I
 Plate 22.

GEORGE GISSE.
BY HOLBEIN, IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, BERLIN.
 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 39

It is said of Sir Joshua Reynolds that a good number of his

portraits were returned on his hands as not being likeenough to
the originals. And this, I think, gives the real note of difference
between a painter like Holbein and one like Sir Joshua —both
men of genius, but the first one of the most thorough artists that

have ever lived, the other a man who painted 150 portraits in a
year, who relied on other people to paint his backgrounds and
his draperies, and was often so careless and inaccurate that his
portraits were quite unlike his sitters. To me there is no manner
of doubt as to which produced the higher art; but it is the latter

master that we follow more than the former. Indeed, I could think
of no better augury for the future of portraiture than a movement
of " back to Holbein." There is not much sign of it at present.

As a very characteristic example of our master we will take a

portrait, now in the Berlin Gallery, of a young German merchant
resident in —
London one Gisse. (Plate 22.)
Here we have him in his counting-house, surrounded by the
implements of his trade — his pen and ink, his papers, his

receipts, his balance, his ball of string, hfs seal, his account-book
—everything he wants for his business, and besides, just for the
touch of beauty that it gives, a delicate glass vase with one or two
carnations in it. To me all these details help the portrait ; not
only do they make one understand the man and his surroundings,

but they are so painted as to be delightful in themselves : and yet

the head maintains its mastery over the whole as it would do in

real life. The man is by no means the most interesting of

Holbein's sitters, but this is certainly one of the great portraits

of the world.
Before I pass on to other artists I should like to dwell a
little more on Holbein's extreme care for his outline. He perhaps
carried it too far, but, on the other hand, nothing is more common
than to neglect it too much. It is frequently said that there are
 40 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

no outlines in Nature. This is true enough, literally, but those who

say it forget that there are boundaries —wherever a patch of one
colour or tone is seen against another colour or tone there is an
edge. If the edge is smooth and sharp (as it often is) the boundary
of the patch is quite definite, and may be properly indicated by a
line —a mathematical line, z'.e. length without breadth, would indicate
it perfectly. Even if the line is thick enough to be easily visible,

its breadth may be so small as not to interfere with the substantial

accuracy of the representation. It is the boundary where one patch
of colour ends and another begins. Where the form of the bound-
ary is composed of subtle curves, as it mostly is in the human
face and figure, it is obviously easier for the hand to follow these
curves by a delicate line than by spreading the whole patch of
colour up to the boundary and then making it of the right shape.
So it will generally be found that the draughtsmen who use the
point show greater feeling for the beauty and delicacy of the
play of line than the painters who rely mostly on the broad
brush. It must be conceded, on the other hand, that the broad
brush men have often a truer sense of proportion than the linear
draughtsmen. Even Holbein occasionally errs in proportion. It

is very curious that he often makes the eyes too small — in direct

contrast to the tendency of most artists. In spite of this, Holbein

as a draughtsman is almost unsurpassable ; as a painter, he leaves

more to be desired.

It is said that Tintoretto inscribed over his studio, " The drawing
of Michel- Angelo and the colouring of Titian." In the same way,
one of the most accomplished of modern artists has told me that

his ideal of technique was the drawing of Holbein and the paint-
ing of Velasquez. And a very fine ideal too
This method of accurate draughtsmanship, of smoothness of

surface, and of careful detail is to be found more or less in

all portraits until the time of Titian, who inclines to a much

L'HOMME AU GANT.
BY TITIAN. Plate 23.
IN THE LOUVRE. PARIS.
 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 41

broader treatment and more vigorous handling of the paint. This

is still more pronounced in Tintoretto, but there is no real revolution

until Rembrandt and Velasquez finally break away from the old
traditions, and carry the art of manipulating paint and the
rendering of texture by brushwork to the highest level it has
ever reached.
I have already mentioned that Titian's method was very
elaborate. I will borrow from a very interesting and learned work
on " The Graphic Arts " by Hamerton, a rdsitme of what Boschini
tells us with regard to Titian's practice. This Boschini knew
the younger Palma, whose father had received instruction from
Titian, so it is probable that the tradition handed down by him is

not very wide of the mark.

It seems that the pictures were at first laid in very solidly
with a simple palette composed of white, black, red, and yellow.
There was apparently no blue, but black and white make a bluish-
grey which would be sufficient to indicate this colour in the
first painting.
Boschini speaks of four pencillings which were done in this

way, and then the picture was put aside for several months.
When he took it up again he first amended and corrected all the
forms. He then finished very laboriously with continual glazings
and also with rubbings of opaque colour, frequently applied with
the finger instead of with the brush. In this way he is said to

have gained the exquisite delicacy and richness of colour in which

his paintings surpass all others.

I shall not attempt to criticise a method which has produced

perhaps the finest pictures that the world has ever seen, but it

has obvious drawbacks for portraiture. Indeed, for this, the method
was no doubt somewhat relaxed, or the patience of his sitters would
have been too severely tried ; but he never attained the freshness
and spontaneity of Velasquez and of Rembrandt.
G
 42 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

As a further specimen of Titian's style in portraiture I give

a coloured reproduction of the portrait of Ariosto that has been re-
cently added to our National Gallery. (Plate 24.) I do this with
some misgivings for the painting of the flesh is certainly not worthy
of the master; so some critics have doubted that it is a genuine
work —one of them has endeavoured to evade the difficulty by
assigning the picture to Giorgione. My own belief is that the
picture is a genuine Titian, but that the head has been a good deal
repainted. In other respects it is quite characteristic. It has all

the grandeur of his style and his rich glow of subdued colour.
The sleeve which has not been repainted is a masterpiece of
technique, and, putting the execution aside, the head displays all

that feeling for human beauty that distinguishes the Italian school.
Velasquez and Rembrandt were nearly contemporary. They
both devoted the greater part of their activity to portrait painting
pure and simple, and they both passed through an early period of
precise and highly finished work to the masterly sketchiness of
their later style. They also both suffered from a serious artistic
defect to which I have alluded elsewhere. They had very little

feeling for human beauty.

Their appreciation of the beauty of light and shade, of colour,
and of texture, and their power of rendering these beauties, are
miraculous, but an ugly human being seems to have been much
the same to them as a handsome one. Velasquez could not only
complacently multiply his portraits of his unwholesome-looking
patron, but he even revelled in painting the unfortunate dwarfs
and idiots that, to the disgrace of Spanish civilisation, were the
chief sources of amusement at the dismal court of Philip the
Fourth. And Rembrandt, too. How few good-looking people
there seem to have been amongst his numerous sitters —a fine
man's head here and there, and very occasionally a passable Dutch
maiden with a pleasant face. But that is all.
 Plate 24.

ARIOSTO.
BY TITIAN, IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY. LONDON.
ii

^i
 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 43

It is unfortunate that a sturdy realism, although it is so

valuable in art, does tend to the neglect of beauty. I think
that if Titian had had the same sitters as these two great masters
he would have made them look far more attractive — though he
might not have painted them so well.

And now comes a question of surpassing technical interest :

How did Velasquez paint?

As usual, contemporary records are provokingly silent on this
point, but we have one invaluable document. In " Las Meninas,"
a work of his finest period, we have from the painter's own hand
a realistic view of his studio, with himself at work in it on a large
canvas. The room is big, very lofty, and rather bare. It is

lighted by high windows at the side, apparently blocked up below

as the light comes a good deal from above, but not from a
skylight. Velasquez is standing to his work, and he uses an
ordinary palette and brushes. The colours on the palette are few
in number. To judge from the reflection of his sitters in a
mirror at his back they are standing some way off the painter,

but nearly in a line with the canvas; that is, the painter can see
both his work and his sitters with a very slight movement of
the head.
It is interesting that the brushes are of the ordinary length,
for Palomino, who wrote only sixty-four years after the death of
Velasquez, states that he painted the portrait of Admiral Pulido y
Pareja with exceptionally long brushes in order to get more vigour
and relief. If this is true he must have abandoned the practice
when he painted "Las Meninas" —a much later picture, and the
high-water mark of his technical achievement. (Plate 25.)

To me there is no doubt that this portrait of the Admiral

is the one that is now in our National Gallery, though its

authenticity has been questioned by no less an authority than

Sefior de Beruete. It is a wonderfully direct and vigorous
44 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

example of the painter's middle period —a little brutal in com-

parison with the exquisite subtlety of his later work.
To return to " Las Meninas." There is one very striking

novelty in it which marks an epoch in the history of art. For

the first time an effort has been made to give absolute truth of

light and shade, and, more than that, to give the effect of
atmosphere that pervades all natural scenes. In all preceding
painting the lighting has been that of a picture rather than
that of Nature ; the figures may look real in themselves, but
they never bear an absolutely real relation to one another and
to their surroundings. For the first time in art a room has
been made to look like a real room, with the figures in it bathed
in a real atmosphere, and lit up with the light and shade of
Nature.
This is a very extraordinary achievement, and although the
lesson of it has been but imperfectly learnt, yet it has had a
lasting effect on modern art. We know, at any rate, that truth
of this kind is possible, and here and there we attempt it with
some small measure of success.

In comparison with this atmospheric realism, the forced

chiaroscuro of Rembrandt seems very crude and artificial.

In all technical matters " Las Meninas " represents the highest
point that painting has ever reached, but at the risk of tedious
repetition I must point out how ugly the picture is from the
human point of view. The foreground is occupied by a misshapen
dwarf kicking a dog with a most ungainly gesture, and the
waiting-maids, from whom the picture derives its name, with the
little princess that they are grouped around, are singularly graceless
and ill-favoured. The only pleasant-looking figure in the picture
is that of the painter himself, and he is, with becoming modesty,
placed in the background.
I have referred to Serior de Beruete, whose work on Velasquez
LAS MENINAS.
BY VELASQUEZ.
IN THE PHADO, MAOniD,

From a Photograph by liraun, I'aris,

 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 45

is probably the most authoritative on the technical side.* His

judgment seems to me occasionally at fault, as in the case of the
portrait of the Admiral ; but as a painter himself, and one who
has devoted his life to the study of the master, his conclusions

as to the technique of Velasquez should be treated with great

respect. He gives the colours on the palette in **Las Meninas" as
vermilion, white, " terre de Seville," and carmine. There are indica-
tions of three or four sombre tones which may be black and various
browns, but there is no trace of the blue and yellow that were
certainly used. He mentions that the brushes in the same picture
are mounted on goose-quills with wooden handles (I confess that
when I examined the picture this detail escaped my attention).

De Beruete goes on to say that Velasquez always used round

brushes, and that there is nothing in his pictures to indicate that
he ever used flat ones. This is one of the arbitrary assertions
that make me somewhat distrust our author's judgment. I am
equally convinced that there are many broad, sweeping passages in
the master's work which could only be rendered by broad, flat

brushes.
De Beruete also rejects the testimony of Palomino as to the
occasional use of long brushes. For this rejection he seems to
have no valid reason.
With regard to the preparation of the canvas, I think we can
follow our author with more confidence. According to him, the
ground was red in the early work, gradually changing to the
neutral grey of the later style. The impasto of this preparation
becomes less and less ; towards the end it only just covers the
canvas, the grain of which is generally fine, even in big
pictures.

In the " Bacchus " the priming was reddish. There are places
(especially round the figures and accessories) where this priming
• A. de Beruete :
" Velasquez," Paris, 1898.
46 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

has never been covered, so instead of working his figures into

the background each part was painted separately, carefully following

the drawing.
In his later work he became presbyopic, so, not being able to
see close, he had to get further and further away from his

canvas, which made his execution more summary. In his latest

pictures he used very fluid colours, in some places only floated on,
as in water-colours, and there is no impasto save in the head and
hands. This method enabled him to paint very rapidly. There
is no technique so simple as that of Velasquez. To each of his
manners correspond special methods. The difference is chiefly

that the thick pigment of his first pictures becomes more and
more liquid as his skill increases.

So far Sefior de Beruete.

I may add on my own account that Velasquez hardly ever
made drawings or studies for his pictures. There is a small
version of " Las Meninas " which may have been a preliminary study,
but is more probably a replica, and there are one or two oil

sketches for other pictures ; but on the whole there is scarcely

another artist of distinction by whom there are so few studies
extant.

In the early and middle period he probably drew in his work

with a painted outline. In the portrait of a sculptor at Madrid,
the bust that he is working on, which has been left unpainted, is

outlined in this way. In the later period this painted outline is

apparently abandoned, although, of course, the work may have

been drawn in with charcoal.
He did not lay in his picture in monochrome, as was the
practice of Leonardo, and probably of Holbein. Nor did he
adopt the method of Frans Hals —and of Mr. Sargent in our
days —what the French call the " peinture a premier coup/' in

which each part of tiie picture is the result of one painting only.
 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 47

If it is wrong it is not modified by subsequent work, but it is

taken out and completely repainted.

The first painting of Velasquez was like the subsequent ones,
only perhaps the colour was a little greyer and weaker. In the
early and middle periods it was put on with a full brush. In
the details of the dress the impasto was often fairly thick, but
much less so than in Rembrandt's later style. Parts of the dress
were often finished at one painting. The subsequent paintings were
merely modifications and improvements of the first laying in. The
colour was opaque, both in the lights and shades, with a very
scrupulous attention to truth of tone. The execution in the early
period was precise and rather hard — in the middle period very
solid and simple, but with much greater freedom — in the third
period it was freer still, rather vaguer and softer, and much more
subtle. In this later period the paint was put on less thickly.

He was not afraid of making alterations when necessary, but one

of the characteristics of his work is the sureness of his intention.
His pictures seem conceived as a whole from the very beginning;
and in his later style the interest is" focussed on the really

important parts^ —the unimportant details being either suppressed

or treated somewhat vaguely. Through all the three periods the
colouring remains simple and subdued. The grey tones of which
it is mostly composed are extraordinarily harmonious, so that
Velasquez is almost as great a colourist as Titian, though their
schemes of colour are as the poles asunder. In truth of tone
he is immensely superior to Titian — indeed, to any of the
Italians; in this his only rivals are some of the Dutch painters,

such as Terborg, Vermeer, or de Hoog.

I think this is all that can be said with any safety as to the
methods of Velasquez. The case of Rembrandt is still more
difficult.

He also dispensed with preliminary studies in his portrait

 48 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

work; of all the numerous drawings that have come down to

us hardly any refer to portraits.

There are one or two etchings which reproduce his portraits,

but these were probably done from the paintings, and not as
studies for them.
He seems to have worked in a studio with a very small
window, so as to get the powerful effects of shadow in which
he delighted. I have already pointed out that his chiaroscuro
is far more artificial than that of Velasquez. It is of course
extraordinarily skilful, and the shadows are so arranged as to

give the utmost value to the important parts, but it is too

arbitrary to be quite satisfactory. Again, the warmth of his

colouring is unnatural, although very pleasing. His feeling for

colour is allied to that of the Venetians, although it is much more

limited, and plays almost exclusively amongst the browns, reds,

and yellows; but within this limited range its quality is supreme.
This extraordinary success of Rembrandt in the key of brown has
led many people to imitate him in their colour schemes, but
nearly always with disastrous results. For the ordinary painter
the greys of Velasquez are much safer, besides having the
advantage of being distinctly truer to Nature.
Like that of Velasquez, Rembrandt's early style is careful and
precise — for instance, in his own portrait in our National Gallery,
painted at the age of thirty-three, there are little hairs at the end
of the moustache, painted with a fine brush, and drawn with the
utmost delicacy. The execution is smooth, and there is scarcely
any attempt to render texture by brush work.
It is in his later style that the handling becomes so
extraordinarily vigorous, and that the thick paint is brushed to
represent texture in a way that seems almost miraculous. In this
quality of brushwork no one has ever equalled Rembrandt. In his
latest manner it becomes rather coarse, but it is always masterly.
 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 49

In grouping and arrangement he was also very skilful,

especially in his middle and later periods. In "The Lesson in

Anatomy" the composition is too obviously arranged, and some

of the heads repeat themselves in a monotonous manner, but
the richness and freedom of the grouping in the so-called " Night
Watch," and the perfect naturalness of " The Syndics," have never
been surpassed.
With all his immense gifts Rembrandt was a very unequal
painter. Some undoubtedly genuine works of his are almost
bad, especially amongst the subject pictures.

His drawing is often careless —the hands are quite commonly

very clumsy — and he had even less than Velasquez the feeling
for the beauty and dignity of the human form. The one nude
female figure painted by Velasquez, although commonplace
enough in form and feature, is an angel of beauty in comparison
with the squalid Bathshebas and Susannas in whom Rembrandt
delighted.
To me this point is of great importance, but I feel that I

must apologise for recurring to it so frequently. Were it not for

this defect I should esteem these two masters the greatest

painters in the world ; as it is, I think them the greatest
portrait painters, and undoubtedly the greatest exponents of the
technique of oil-painting. Both of them in their later styles

made use of the full capacity of paint for the rendering of

texture — the brush-marks were so directed as to express with
the least amount of labour the wrinkles of the skin or the
peculiarities of any surface that they wished to portray. Rem-
brandt carried this much further than Velasquez ; his portraits
of old men are the most skilful examples of brushwork in

the world, but his execution sometimes degenerates into needless

coarseness. Velasquez is always more restrained, but hardly less
masterly.
H
 50 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

Of course this kind of work

must not be looked at too
closely; it has to be some distance to produce its
seen at

proper effect. (Some of the moderns have improved on this so

much that it is impossible to see their pictures at all within the
compass of an ordinary room — they require the whole length of a
big picture gallery, and even then it is difficult.) It is evident
that we have departed far from the principles of Holbein, of
whose work one of the great charms is that it looks right
quite close, and from far off as well —but of course this is only
to be obtained by great and perhaps unnecessary labour. It is

enough if a large portrait looks right at a distance of some ten

or twelve feet, and this is usually the case with our great
impressionist masters. There is no doubt, too, that there is an
appeal in the very magic with which this free work is done.
The skill is so much more obvious than with the careful work
it is sometimes so great as to be quite uncanny. Also the saving
of time, if it be not carried to the point of slipshodness, is an
undoubted gain; with any other method we should not have had
nearly so many masterpieces from these great painters, and we
have all too few as it is.

There is one other point : these summary methods involve much

less strain on the sitter, and very often enable the whole picture to

be painted straight from the original. With Court pictures, indeed,

the dresses have generally to be painted from a model or a lay

figure, for the sitters are much occupied with lengthy futilities
so
that they have not much time left for sitting for their numerous
portraits; but these dresses are mostly so stiff that it doesn't
much matter. Excluding the Royalties, I believe that most of
Velasquez's portraits were painted straight from the sitters, clothes
and all, and practically all of Rembrandt's. This is an undoubted
gain for the rapid painters —a gain that was deliberately thrown
away by Sir Joshua and the other painters of his time, who to
 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 51

give less trouble to themselves and to their lazy patrons, were

in the habit not only of painting the costumes from models, but
even of getting them painted by their pupils.
To sum up, other things being equal, rapidity is a great gain
for the portrait painter. By the methods of Rembrandt and
Velasquez, this rapidity can be achieved without the sacrifice of
any quality of great importance. But in my opinion they carried
this rapidity of execution as far as it can safely be carried. Any
further advance in that direction degenerates into coarseness or
emptiness. Even they sacrificed something ; there are certain
qualities in Holbein that they do not touch, but perhaps the
greatest example of the contrary method is the " Monna Lisa" of
Leonardo. This is, of course, akin to Holbein in its execution, but
it has a delicacy and subtlety that not even he approached. But
this portrait is the work of years ; it is the result of an elabora-
tion that would certainly be thrown away on most sitters, and is

a quite impossible method for the workaday world in which most

portrait painters move.
Amongst the Italian masters, the one who came nearest to the
impressionistic style was Tintoretto. His procedure was undoubtedly
very summary — in fact, he was essentially a glorified sketcher, but
his portraits, although vigorous, are by no means his best work.
For the perfection of the purely sketchy style, we must go north
again, and study the work of Frans Hals, perhaps the most skilful

exponent of direct painting that the world has seen —although

Raeburn and Mr. Sargent run him close. As we have said, the
essential of Hals's method is that each part should be done at one
sitting, consequently it has all the freshness and vivacity of a
sketch. If any part of it be wrong it must be entirely repainted

the method does not admit of modifications. To this freshness,

other very important qualities have to be sacrificed. It is hardly
compatible with any great subtlety of modelling, nor docs it lend
 52 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

itself to delicate varieties of texture. The paint is put on with a

full, wet brush, the touches being kept distinct and very little

blended. To get the proper effect the spectator must stand some
way off and let distance do the blending.
There is undoubtedly something very fascinating about this

method of painting. It looks, and is, so masterly. But unlike the

very finest work, it rather flaunts its cleverness — there is nothing
of the art of concealing art about it.

As regards the texture and modelling of flesh, Hals is not on

the same plane with Velasquez and Rembrandt, but he has one
virtue which is supremely his own. No one has ever given such
natural vivacity of expression, though here again Mr. Sargent runs
him close.

As I have said before, Hals is in some ways more a draughts-

man than a painter. His shadows are put in with clear, decided
touches, and modelling is less thought of than the accurate placing
of the accents that mark the features. There is no fleshiness, no
distinction between the bony parts and the softer ones, no delicate

rounding of the surfaces. The hair is put in with great coarse

strokes like an enlarged drawing. Then the colour of the heads
is poor, hardly more than one even tone with coarse brown shadows.
He seems to have kept all his fine colouring (and it was some-
times very fine) for his costumes and accessories. (Plate 26.)
But when all exceptions have been taken to Hals's method
it must be allowed that it has one great advantage. It is an
admirable training for the painter in sureness of hand and eye.
We are all inclined to put on wrong tones and careless touches
in the comfortable assurance that subsequent work will put them
right ; but with prima painting there is no such hope. If the

work is not right it must all come out and be done over
again, so that the natural laziness of the artist helps to correct
his carelessness and slackness. It is easier to make an effort
 DR. ALBERT VAN NIEROP.
BY FRANS HALS. IN THE HAARLEM MUSEUM.
II

ll'<
 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 53

to get the work right at once than to go on taking out and

repainting.
As a contrast to Hals we may take the courtly Vandyke
also a man of extraordinary talent, but also not quite in the
front rank.
Vandyke was spoilt by success, and degraded his own art

and that of many subsequent painters by establishing a sort of

manufactory of fashionable portraits. He and his master Rubens
were the first to employ assistants on a very great scale. Of
course the pupils of the Italian painters did help them in their

work, but the assistance was not given on nearly such a wholesale
scale as in the case of the two northern painters.

Here is an account given by one of his friends of Vandyke's

method of work.
" He never worked longer than one hour at a time on each
portrait. When his clock told the hour he rose and made a bow
to the sitter, as much as to say that enough was done for that

day, after which his servant came to prepare fresh brushes and
palette, while he received another person to whom he had given
an appointment.
"After having lightly sketched the face, he put the sitter in an
attitude that he had previously meditated, and with grey paper and
black and white crayons he drew in a quarter of an hour the
figure and drapery, which he arranged in a grand manner and
with exquisite taste. He then handed over the drawing to skilful
persons whom he had about him, to paint it from the sitter's own
clothes, which were sent on purpose at Vandyke's request. The
assistants having done their best with the draperies from nature,
he went lightly over them, and soon produced by his genius the
art and truth which we there admire. As for the hands, he
had in his employment persons of both sexes who served as

models."
 54 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

This is a manufactory with a vengeance. It is quite unlike

the atelier of Velasquez, where the assistants were only employed
in copying the master's work.
It will be noted that Vandyke put the sitter into an attitude
that he had previously meditated. That is to say, he made his

subjects fit into his own notions of what was graceful and
artistic without apparently taking the least trouble to find out their
peculiarities. Then he never painted their bodies —a sketch drawn
in a quarter of an hour was enough guidance for that. He had
their clothes, but he didn't even paint them himself, and the
hands were always done from other people. I need hardly point
out how fatal this procedure is to all true portraiture.

The models who served for the hands are perhaps the most
fatal feature. I believe Vandyke was the first portrait painter to
discard all individuality in the hands. Unfortunately his example
has been widely followed, with the worst consequences to our art.

It will be observed that, like Holbein, he began with a separate

drawing, from which the picture was subsequently laid in —but,
unlike Holbein's careful work, this drawing was a mere sketch, and
was handed over to Vandyke's assistants to be painted on to the
canvas. In the case of the inferior portraits, of which there are a
good many in England, no doubt most of the painting is the work
of these assistants.
Vandyke's own handling is facile, but not sketchy ; his work
never looks unfinished. At the worst it is a little tame and
mannered ; at the best it is never as forcible and masterly as
that of Velasquez or of Rembrandt, but it is good sound painting,
well drawn, well coloured, and well modelled.
Perhaps the finest of all his English portraits is that of Lord
Wharton, now at St. Petersburg, which created such a sensation
when it was exhibited at Burlington House in the Vandyke
exhibition of a few years ago. (Plate 27.) Here there is no
PHILIP LORD WHARTON.
BV VANDYKE. Plate 27.
IN TMt HERMITAQE QALLEHV, ST. MtTEHSOUHQ.

From a PhotograpU hy l-raitz Ilan/ilacnul.

 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 55

trace of the manufactory. It was doubtless the work of the

master's hand throughout.
We now come to the great English school of the eighteenth
century.
Sir Joshua Reynolds in his merits and defects is a lineal

descendant of Vandyke. He had even greater charm, at any rate

in his female portraits, but he was also more given to scamping

his work, and had almost less conscience in employing assistants.

We have an account from his pupil Northcote of Sir Joshua's

house in Leicester Square, where he painted from 1760 to the end
of his life.

His own studio was a small one, about 20 feet long by

16 feet in breadth, but there was a long gallery in which were
exhibited the principal pictures he had in hand, and there were
numerous rooms for his pupils, copyists, and drapery men, of
whom he had a considerable staff. His pupils served also as
models for hands and draperies.
As in the case of Vandyke, there was a constant stream of
sitters through the studio. They nearly all sat in the same
chair, in the same light. The Master painted their heads very
methodically, laying them in with a very simple palette consisting
of three or four colours only, and then glazing them with two or
three more. After this they were handed on to the drapery
men and the other assistants to put in the clothes and the back-
grounds. Then the pictures came back to the Master, who worked
all over them a little (apparently without the sitters), mostly in
the direction of giving a broader and more general effect, for

Sir Joshua was great on generalisation.

As for the details of his technique, we have various accounts
from his own note-books and from contemporary records.
Here is a description of his early practice by an amateur
painter who was admitted to his studio.
 56 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.
" On his light-coloured canvas he had already laid a ground
of white where he meant to place the head, and which was still

wet. He had nothing on his palette but flake-white, lake, and

black, and, without making any previous sketch or outline, he
began with much celerity to scumble these pigments together till

he had produced in less than an hour a likeness sufficiently

intelligible, yet withal, as might be expected, cold and pallid to

the last degree; at the second sitting he added, I believe, to the

three other colours a little Naples yellow."

He must have used a somewhat fuller palette for the subse-
quent sittings, but that is not mentioned. It zs mentioned that
this particular picture " very soon faded, and soon after the
forehead particularly cracked, almost to peeling off, which it would
have done long since had not a pupil repaired it."

This was in 1754. There is a letter of Sir Joshua's in

1770 describing his practice then, when he was forty-seven

years old.
" I am established in my method of painting. The first

and second paintings are with oil of copaiva (for a medium),

the colours being only black, ultramarine, and white." "The
second painting is the same." " The last painting is with yellow
ochre, lake, black, and ultramarine, and without white, retouched
with a little white and the other colours."
This may be supplemented by what his pupil, Beechey, says
of his master's method at about the same date
" His vehicle was oil of balsam of copaiba. His colours
were only black, ultramarine, and white, so that he finished his
picture entirely in black and white, all but glazing ; no red or
yellow till the last, which was used in glazing, and that was mixed
with Venice turpentine and wax as a varnish."
Later he seems to have adopted Venice turpentine and wax
almost exclusively as a medium for the heads, whilst the draperies
• -MRS. ROBINSON (" PERDITA ").

BY THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R.A. Plate 28.

IN THE WALLAOe OOLLtOIlON. LONDON.
 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 57

were painted with wax without the turpentine, thus getting a

richer impasto.
In spite of this pretended carefulness and simplicity of method
his experiments with pigments were reckless in the extreme. He
used such colours as gamboge, orpiment, and the cochineal lakes,
all well known now to be fugitive, and many of his pictures have
suffered accordingly.
Altogether Sir Joshua is a very unsafe guide for technique.
The most interesting detail that has come to light about
Gainsborough's methods is that he used very long brushes. Here
is an account by an eye-witness :
" I was much surprised to see
him sometimes paint portraits with pencils on sticks full six feet

in length, and his method of using them was this. He placed

himself and his canvas at a right angle with the sitter, so that he
stood still and touched the features of his picture exactly at the

same distance at which he viewed his sitter."

From this we gather that his sitters, even allowing for his arm
being outstretched, cannot have been more than eight feet away
from him. This is inconveniently close, and may account for the
serious errors of proportion that are to be found in so many of his
pictures.

It will be remembered that Velasquez is said to have tried

this method of long brushes, but he seems to have given it up,
whereas Gainsborough probably adopted it more and more, until
it becomes habitual in his later work.
This method with Velasquez seemed to be compatible with
great firmness and solidity of touch. With Gainsborough it

seems to produce what, in his best work, is a delightful lightness

of execution, but in his worst is an abominable scratchiness.
For full-length portraits it was Gainsborough's habit to make
a small sketch of the figure before beginning to work on the full

sized canvas. On this he would lay in the head, the figure, the
 58 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

drapery, and other accessories from the sketch, and then finish

from the model.

As an example of Gainsborough's treatment of a full length
portrait when he was in the plenitude of his powers I have re-

produced the "Mrs. Robinson (' Perdita') " in the Wallace Gallery.
(Plate 28.) I have never seen a finer Gainsborough than this.

I have not been able to discover any authentic details about

Romney's practice. It was probably akin to Sir Joshua's, but
simpler and less experimental.
Fortunately we have a fairly definite account of the methods
of the great Scotch master, Raeburn, which are more likely to

appeal to modern artists than the roundabout ways of Sir Joshua

or the flimsiness of Gainsborough.
Raeburn was an exponent of what may be called the direct

method of painting ; that is, he aimed at putting every touch on

the canvas as nearly right in tone and drawing as he could get it.

If he were successful in this it remained unmodified — it was

right at once and for ever. If he were unsuccessful it had to be
re-done, but it was never put on with a view to being subse-
quently modified. So that the finished picture is a sort of mosaic
of definite touches, each of them apparently put on the canvas
with one sweep of the brush.
In his earlier works he carries this method so far that his faces
look too hard ; as if, indeed, they are cut out with a hatchet.
They are also, to my mind, unduly simplified. They are
wonderfully true as far as they go, but they do not tell one
enough about the sitters; in short, they lack subtlety.

Oddly enough, Raeburn's work did not become more summary

as he grew older, as is the case with most artists. On the
contrary, in his later manner he modified the extreme breadth
of his modelling, and gave much more complete suggestion of
a
the real texture of flesh. The square touch of his earlier stylo
SIR JOHN SINCLAIR OF ULBSTKR.
BY SIR HENRY RAEBURN R.A.

DY PERMISSION OF SIR J. 0. TOLIEVIACHE SINCLAIR, PART

I'lom a I'hotosiaph by T. & K. Aiiiiiiu & Sons.

 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 59

becomes a singularly skilful and suggestive smear. In the last

years of his life his handling is almost as fused as that of a late

Velasquez.
Here are some notes of his practice (as handed down by
various sitters) given by Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson in his excellent
introduction to Sir Walter Armstrong's great work on Raeburn :

1. He seldom kept a sitter more than an hour and a half or

two hours.
2. He never gave more than four or five sittings to a head or
bust portrait.
3. He did not draw in his subject first with chalk or char-
coal, but directly with the brush on the blank canvas.
4. Forehead, chin, and mouth were his first touches.

5. He placed the easel behind the sitter and went away to look
at the picture and sitter together.

6. A fold of drapery often caused him more trouble than the

build or expression of a head.

7. He never used a maulstick.

As Stevenson remarks, " If any painter in the eighteenth cen-
tury in these Isles used paint after the sanest and most enduring
traditions, it was Raeburn. The excellence of his straightforward
method has caused his colour to stand much better than that of
Reynolds," Unfortunately this colour which has stood so well
is not of the best quality. His colouring was often harsh and
cold. This, indeed, is his chief defect as a painter.

He was fond of simple backgrounds. These were usually of

a well-chosen tone of grey, with a certain play of light and shade
in them. His more elaborate backgrounds, especially the landscape

backgrounds, were frankly conventional.

Perhaps the finest of all Raeburn's portraits is the one I here
reproduce (Plate 29) of Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster. It is a
miracle of direct and vigorous painting.
6o THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

To come to the moderns, it was my good fortune to be on

intimate terms with Millais, and I have had the great privilege
of watching him at work.
In life-sized portraits he always put the canvas side by side
with the sitter, and walked backwards and forwards for a con-
siderable distance — putting on a touch and then going back to

look at the effect. If it was not right he would come forward

again to modify it. This modification he often did with his finger.

I may add — though this hardly applies to his portraiture, which

was nearly always the size of life — that with figures under life

size he placed the canvas so much in front of the model that

the painting, when looked at from the furthest distance of his

walk, appeared precisely of the same size as the model.

Of course, all painters try to get away from their work from
time to- time, in order to judge of the general effect. But Millais
carried this principle very far. As he told me once, " I like to get

far enough away from my portrait to see it the size of a postage

stamp ; I then know if it is right or not."
It is also unusual to keep the canvas during the whole
operation side by side with the sitter. For one thing, it restricts

the choice of lighting, as the best light for the sitter might not
be a possible light for the canvas. As a matter of fact, most
of Millais's portraits are lit from the side, probably for this very
reason.
His studio, during his later period, was a very long room
with lofty side windows but with no regular top-light such as was
almost universally employed by the older portrait painters, with the
exception of Velasquez, whose studio at the time that he painted
" Las Meninas " seems to have been much like that of Millais.

Probably for such a convinced realist as Millais, a top-light

would have been too conventional, too unlike the conditions under
which people are usually seen.
 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 6i

At the same time, with that inconsistency that often goes

with genius, when his sitters were supposed to be out of doors,
he seldom troubled about getting a true out-of-door effect. In
this again he resembled Velasquez, and, indeed, all the older
painters.

To return to Millais's technique, his method of putting the

sitter side by side with the canvas has the undoubted advan-
tage of giving an immediate comparison between the picture and
the model under the most favourable conditions, and so conduces
to the vividness and life-likeness of the portraiture. But it is

troublesome to carry out, and there is a great temptation not

to go far enough back. Also the execution suffers ; hurried dabs
put on at the end of a walk, and afterwards corrected with the
finger, can hardly have the masterly technique of paint deliber-

ately applied by an artist standing quietly at his canvas.

Nevertheless, Millais's technique was extraordinarily vigorous
and expressive, although it did lack the deliberate precision of
the old masters.
It was one of Millais's essential principles that the picture
had to be right — that is, true in drawing and colour —and
although in his later period he was one of the most rapid of
painters, he would spare no time or trouble to get it right.

For instance, for the portrait of Miss Eveleen Tennant (now

Mrs. Frederic Myers) he had some eighty or ninety sittings.

This was because something went wrong with it, and it took
him all that time to get it right —and this labour was not
thrown away, for in the end it turned out one of the most
brilliant of his numerous representations of beautiful women.
It will be seen from the reproduction {see Frontispiece) that
the colouring is very rich, and that the pose and expression have
a straightforward simplicity which, to me, are quite as charming
as the somewhat mannered grace of the earlier Hnglish masters.
 62 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

To take another instance, in Mrs. Grote's life of her husband

she complains bitterly of the number of sittings that Millais
insisted on for his portrait of the great historian.

I remember talking to Millais about this. " Oh, yes," he

replied. " She says I killed him. It was all because I got the
car too high, and couldn't find out what was the matter for a
long time."
There is an excellent saying of his, to Mr. Stuart Wortley
"
as quoted in the " Life and Letters
" It doesn't matter how beautifully a thing is painted, it is

no good if it isn't right — it's got to come out"; and again,

"What does it matter /low you do it? Paint it with the shovel
if you can't get your effect any other way."
On the other hand, if the work went right from the begin-
ning, Millais was a very rapid painter.

He never did anything better than the portrait of Mr. Glad-

stone, which was done in some five or six hours. (Plate 30.) The
distinguished French painter, Monsieur Benjamin-Constant, de-
scribed it in the Magazine of Art as " the finest portrait of the
time." He says "This painting can hold its own as a work of
art by the side of the greatest masters of the past ; Rembrandt
himself could not injure it by juxtaposition. . . . Never has
life been set on canvas with greater power, nor so large an
existence been presented with a touch, a sweep of the brush."*
Millais very seldom made any preliminary sketches for his
portraits. After very roughly indicating the position of the
figure, he would paint the head straight on to the white canvas,

just smudging a tone round it, to represent the background.

The first painting was with the full vigour of the palette, the
subsequent ones merely modifications of it. There is one other
point with regard to Millais's procedure that I should like to

'Magazine of Art ^ 1900, p. 152.

THE KT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
BY SIR J, E. MILLAIS, BART., P.R.A. Plate 30.
IN THE NATIONAL QALLrRV, ^LONDON,
Ii
 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 63

emphasise. In a letter from Mr. Gladstone, no doubt referring

to the very portrait just reproduced, occurs this passage :
" I was
at once struck with a characteristic which seemed to me to mark
him off from all other artists (and they have in my long life

been many) to whom I have sat. It was the intensity with

which he worked, and which, so far as I may judge, I have
never seen equalled."
I am convinced that this intensity is very essential to the
portrait painter. Whether the sittings be few or many the work
should always be done under high pressure ; only in this way can
that vitality be achieved which is so important for his art.

I now turn to a very different painter. There is no doubt

that the influence of Whistler on modern art has been very great,
much greater than that of Millais. He was essentially a fighter,
and in a time of artistic revolt all the turbulent spirits amongst
the younger painters gathered round his standard, so that his
influence was out of proportion to his actual pictorial achieve-
ment.
That he was a very original painter no one will deny. Nor
that he was an artist to his finger-tips. But to class him with
the great masters is, to me, an absurdity.
I am only now concerned with him as a portraitist. As such,
his reputation is chiefly based on two or three works — the portrait

of his mother, that of Carlylc, and that of Miss Alexander. I

here reproduce the last of the three as giving, on the whole, the
finest example of his peculiar merits.

Most of his other portraits are very inferior. Some are almost

grotesque, like the one of poor Monsieur Theodore Duret, who

deserved better at his hands, as being one of the first art critics

to appreciate his talents, and who has written an excellent, if

over-eulogistic book about him —a very striking example of

magnanimity after such a portrait.
 64 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

To take really fine examples like the ones I have mentioned,

we find a very subtle harmony of tone, an original pose, and great

simplicity of treatment. The tones are in very admirable relation

one to the other, but they are so subdued that the picture does
not look like nature. Miss Alexander is not like a real child

standing against a wall. She is essentially an arrangement in

low tones of grey — more harmonious, doubtless, than the real

child would be, but entirely lacking in vitality. (Plate 31.) His
admirers always compare Whistler with Velasquez, and as I have
before acknowledged, the subtlety of his grey tones and the
admirable simplicity of his arrangements do recall the greater
painter ; but the essential difference is that the portraits of
Velasquez look extraordinarily like real people, those of Whistler
extraordinarily unlike.

As to Whistler's technical methods, I have been given some very

interesting notes of his practice by a person who worked for some
years in his studio. " He put the picture side by side with the
sitter. He objected to figures actually life-sized ; by as much
floor as was in front of the feet, by so much did he suppose his
sitter retired from the frame, and to that amount he made him
smaller. The canvas had a grey preparation made with black
and white mixed with turpentine. He did not use a palette, but
had a table near him on which he mixed the tones he was going
to use. This was a very important part of his practice ; before
actually painting his picture he mixed with great care a quantity
of the tones he would require — such as background-colour, floor-
colour, coat-colour in the light, ditto in the half-tone, ditto in the
shadow; flesh-colour in the light, in the half-tone, and in the
shadow ; hair-colour in the same way, etc. He had a mixture
of oil and turpentine in a saucer standing on the table. Using this

as a medium, he covered thinly the whole canvas with these

prepared tones, using house-painters' brushes for the surfaces,
 MISS ALEXANDER.
BY J. McNeill whistler.

By permission of W. C. Alexander, Esq.

Li
II
 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 65

and drawing lines with round hogshair brushes nearly a yard

long (he said that Carlyle was much struck by these big brushes,
and laughingly approved of them as well fitted for their purpose).
His object was to cover the whole canvas at one painting
either the first or the hundredth, I remember his pulling up
Lady Archibald Campbell for saying that, at the last sitting, he
would *
touch up ' her portrait. Not '
touch it up,' he said, *
give
it another beautiful skin.' This contains a complete statement
of the quality that he aimed at.

"When a thing was incomplete he did not try to patch

it; he did it all over again and again and again — till it was
finished —or wrecked, as often happened, from the sitter getting
tired, or growing up or growing old.
" It was certainly not a recipe for one-down-t'other-come-on
portrait painting, to be delivered in time and depended on.
" He would put the mixtures in little gallipots of water round
the table that served as a palette, so that he could depend upon
taking up the same tone another day.
" During most of his life his palette consisted of white, yellow

ochre, raw sienna, raw umber, Venetian red, Indian red, vermilion,
cobalt, ultramarine, Antwerp blue, ivory black, with the chromes or
cadmiums, I think the latter (Pissarro, who was Whistler's pupil
all his life, used the chromes, and said they were safer). For flesh-

colour he used white, yellow ochre, Venetian red, and chiefly Indian
red, and added for the shadows ivory black and raw sienna.
" For many of his portraits he used a quite black background ;

he told me that he took to it by accident. In the studio where

he painted Miss Rosa Corder there was a black door, and
happening to see her against it, he liked the effect. Afterwards
he had a square of black velvet nailed on to an easel which he
wheeled about.
" The lighting was always subdued ; his sitter posed far away
J
 66 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

in the penumbra of the studio and never under a direct light.

I remember he said he hated '

high lights ' in a picture.

"About 1880, when I knew him first, he had quite got out of
the stiff poses of his earlier portraits. He loved Grevin, and
wished to give to his sitters a dashing, coquettish pose. '
Swagger
was a favourite word, and a quality he loved and sought in the

pose."
So far my informant. I may add on my own account that
however much he aimed at dash and coquetry in the pose, he

certainly never achieved it. His later portraits are very nearly

as stiff as his earlier ones, only they are stiff in a different way.
Mr. Mortimer Menpes, in his interesting book, " Whistler as I

Knew Him," rather differs from my informant as to the pigments

used by Whistler, which shows how difficult it is to rely even
on first-hand information as to details of artistic practice. After
mentioning that he used a table with a polished top as a palette,

he goes on to say that on this table he arranged his colours in a

manner which he maintained to be highly scientific. " Beginning
with flake white in the middle, on the left he placed lemon yellow,
cadmium, yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt umber, burnt sienna, and
ivory black ; on the right, vermilion, Venetian red, rose madder,
cobalt blue, and Antwerp blue." It will be observed that there
are four colours on this list which are not mentioned by my
informant, who gives, on the other hand, three colours (raw umber,
Indian red, and ultramarine) which are not mentioned by Mr.
Menpes. No doubt Whistler altered his practice at different times.

Mr. Menpes goes on to describe the actual method of paint-

ing in the following words :

" When painting a life-size portrait

the master began on a canvas previously prepared with flake

white and ivory black, forming a neutral grey. He then spread

on his palette with a large brush a great patch of the general
flesh-colour, and scrubbed that flesh tone on the canvas in one
 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 67

patch. Thereupon he began to work the violets and the rose

carnation and pearly tints of the flesh into the local colours spread
upon the palette. Every detail of the flesh was amalgamated and
incorporated in the great mass to preserve a oneness ; and his
picturewas more than half painted on the palette.
Having charged his brush with the colour, he put it on the
"

canvas evenly and in one sweep. There was no attempt at what

is called broken colour, which results in a series of accidents,
causing the picture to represent a Persian carpet rather than a
face."

Then we get further details as to Whistler's procedure, from the

account given by Monsieur Theodore Duret of the innumerable
sittings for his own portrait.

It was first of all decided that he was to be painted in even-

ing dress, at that time a startling innovation. It was to be life-

size, full-length, and with a light background. Some accessory had

to be found which would render the black clothes less severe
finally M. Duret was told to bring a rose-coloured domino.
He was posed standing in front of a piece of stuff of a greyish
rose colour, with the domino over his left arm. The portrait was
started without any preliminary drawing ; he merely marked in

charcoal on the white canvas a few points to indicate the posi-

tion of the top of the head, of the feet, and the limits of the
figure at the sides. Then he at once put on to the canvas the
colours and the tones, such as they were to be in the finished

picture. At the end of the first sitting the whole canvas was
covered, and one could judge what the picture was going to be.

But this rapid start did not mean a rapid completion. Mon-
sieur Duret had many long sittings, during which the picture did
not become more finished ; instead of adding details he rather

suppressed them as the work went on, striving always to main-

tain the aspect of a sketch done without effort.
 68 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

He paid great attention to the tones ; if the slightest error

-of tone appeared either in the black of the coat or the rose of
the domino or the grey of the background, he passed a coat of
paint over the whole picture, in order to bring all the parts into
that precise relation which constituted the harmony that he was
seeking. He entirely repainted the figure and the background at

least ten times. The portrait took several months to paint.*

It may be observed what immense trouble Whistler took, and

also how concerned he was to efface all traces of this labour. His
great aim was to make a portrait even at the hundreth sitting look
as if it had been painted at one. This, no doubt, he achieved, but
it is really quite a small quality in art, and to it he sacrificed
many other things of much greater importance.
What was really valuable in his procedure was the intense pre-
occupation with the tones ; and be it observed that these very
delicate tones, that in his best work are so beautifully harmonious,

are put on in the simplest possible way — ^just ordinary paints

carefully mixed and then put on thinly with a big brush. To
the painters who think that " quality " can only be obtained by
broken colour or by glazing or scumbling or other bedevilments,
this triumph of the simplest form of painting may be recommended
as requiring some modification of their theories.
There are, however, certain drawbacks to Whistler's method,
however much one may admire its simplicity. These drawbacks
mostly come from that unfortunate desire of his to make a finished
picture look like a hasty sketch. There is no real advantage in

repainting a whole picture at each sitting. Indeed, with a picture

of any size it is impossible to do it properly.

There are all sorts of delicacies and refinements of drawing and

modelling, which demand more time than can possibly be given
to them by this method. This is no doubt the reason that
* " Histoire de J. McN. Whistler," par Theodore Duret.
 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 69

Whistler's portraits are so very empty, and that the heads in

particular are often mere expressionless masks, with none of the
infinite subtlety and complexity of the human visage,
I must now turn to a very different artist. The differences
between Watts and Whistler are fundamental. They were both
quite single-minded in their devotion to art, but their aims were
entirely different. To Watts the emotional and intellectual side of
art was supreme ; he wished to express feelings and ideas ; he
dealt largely in allegory, despised realism, and was but little

concerned with technique. He was a poet and a dreamer who

chose to express himself in paint rather than in words. His art

was, indeed, closely allied to literature. I do not hold with the

critics who condemn any approach to literature in art, and who
say that a picture should never tell a story and should never express
an idea. This unduly narrows the field. One of the most
interesting and one of the most difficult problems in painting is

the expression of emotion, and unless a picture tells a story it

is difficult to see how emotions can be depicted. It is absurd to

represent people as sad or angry unless the spectator has some
notion of what they are sad or angry about. Again, allegorical
ideas, if they have to be expressed at all (I confess I am not
very fond of them), can be expressed as well by painting as by
literature — perhaps better —and Watts was great in allegory. So
I have no quarrel with the intellectual side of Watts's art. If

an artist can be a poet and a thinker so much the better ; but

he must be something else as well. It is of small use to have
fine ideas unless one is able to express them adequately. There
is one side of painting which is purely a handicraft, and no
painter can afford to neglect this side. Now Watts was not
enough of a craftsman. He had great natural gifts even for the
handicraft, but he did not develop them sufficiently. At his best
he was a very fine colourist, but he was seldom at his best
 70 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

he had an eye for grandeur and distinction of form, but his

drawing was often painfully defective. In his later years he
seldom used a model, and the result was that his figures got
further and further away from Nature. And his method of
putting on paint was never satisfactory; instead of "the beautiful
new skin " that Whistler was always endeavouring to give to his
figures, Watts seemed satisfied with a sort of messy surface
that was neither good paint nor good realism— neither pleasant
in itself nor good as a representation of nature.
On the whole, I consider Watts's early work a good deal superior
to his later. The portrait that I here reproduce (Plate 32) of
Miss Alice Prinsep (now Mrs. Stracey-Clitherow) is a very good
example of this early work. The technique, although not precisely
masterly, is adequate and quite free from the unpleasant texture
of his later work. The pose and expression are simple and
dignified, and the colour is singularly rich and harmonious, and,
indeed, quite worthy of one of those Italian masters whom
Watts was always emulating. It is one of the finest examples
of rich and full colouring to be found in modern art.

As my views on the inadequacy of Watts's technique are not

generally shared, I consider myself very fortunate in being able
to give a definite account of his earlier and better methods from
notes taken by an eye-witness some forty years ago. My informant,
Mr. John Griffiths, is an artist who, as a young man, paid three
visits to Mr. Watts on purpose to learn his methods.
I cannot do better than quote his own words :
" The first

visit records the talk Mr. Watts and I had together. He showed
me several of his works in various stages of progression upon
which he was then working, commenting on each one.
"The other two visits record his method of working on the two
heads which I have. He talked the whole time, the purport of
which I have endeavoured to put down in the notes.
 Plate 82.

MISS ALICE PRINSEP (MRS. STRACEY-CLITHEROW).

BY G. F. WATTS, O.M., R.A.

By permission of the Hon. Sir Henry T. Prinsep.

 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 71

" I well remember that he blended his tints more on the canvas
than on his palette by a series of very rapid dabs, producing in
the painting a sort of buttery effect. As stated in the notes, he

used large brushes (hog-hair), which were worn to a point, so

that if he wanted to make a sharp line he did it most dexterously
with diluted colour and the point of a large brush —a line as fine

as any artist could make with a small sable brush."

I will now give the notes just as they were written down at

the time.
" I St August, 1865. Went to Mr. Watts's studio at Little Holland
House. After some talk about art Mr. Watts said that the great
want in the English school was some definite method of teaching.
He doubted if he could be of any assistance to me, as he was
always experimenting, and his painting a series of tricks. His
method is to paint thickly at first, and get a hardness in the work
and lighter in tone than the finished work, and then to slobber it

all over, probably before it is quite dry, with thin colour and a
quantity of linseed oil (not boiled). Before this he uses in the
work, when required, Roberson's medium or something of the
kind — for greys, ultramarine ash. I observed that in the early

stages of the paintings a quantity of Naples yellow was used.

The colour was laid on exceedingly thick, great masses of white
lying in pellets on the work. He said he always strove to get the
quality of Titian, and this method he found was the nearest
approach to it. He said the after-glazing was not like the ordinary

glaze — that he thought very objectionable —but being done (which

must be very judiciously) while the under-painting is not quite
dry, so that it becomes incorporated with the painting, and gives
that luminous quality, and forms a whole as seen in nature.
" He told me to come the following Sunday morning, and bring
a canvas with me.
"8th August. Got there by 9 a.m. Mr. Watts took my canvas
 72 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

and painted a head before me, taking as his motive the painting
of a woman which was hanging on the studio wall. He com-
menced by covering the canvas over with burnt umber, diluted
with Roberson's medium and spirit of petroleum, using round
brushes. From this brown wash he gradually worked out the
form of the head, having no previous outline. Into this he worked
his tints. A little light red and white and raw sienna or yellow
ochre, and white in broken touches — the burnt umber mixing with
them, and partly showing through, forming lovely greys. As the
work got dryer he worked more solidly on the face, using the
brush first in a series of dabs, but when the w^ork got stiffer more
like drawing with a crayon. For the darker touches, as in the
nostrils, mouth, eyes, etc., he used Indian red, burnt and raw
umber. But I noticed he had on his palette a colour of the
quality of burnt lake, which he introduced with raw and burnt
umber. He said the simpler the colours were the better. His
palette then consisting of white, raw and burnt sienna, light and
Indian red, raw and burnt umber, and the colour resembling burnt
lake were all he used for the face and hair, and for the head-
dress a little black with Naples yellow, forming grey.
" The whole was done in an hour, he painting very leisurely,
holding the brush at arm's length, at the extreme end of the
handle. The effect produced with such simple means was won-
derful, the whole head glowing with colour —the greys lovely,
although not a bit of grey pigment was used.
" He recommended squeezing the white and other colours on
blotting paper before using, in order to absorb the oil out of
them. He said it was better to paint the background thickly

and decidedly, and the object might be painted thinly rather

than the reverse, because there were enough decided forms in

the object which would tell.

" He kept white diluted with turpentine in a small pot. Although

 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 73

his heads, he said, looked dry and hard before varnishing, but
after two or three coats of varnish they were greatly improved.
" He preferred spirit of petroleum to turpentine, because the
former does not wear out the brushes. In laying on the colour
he rolled his brush about, which left the pigment in crisp little
ridges. If he wanted more grey in the head, he commenced by
rubbing the ground over with raw instead of burnt umber, and
so working into it. He then told me to take the head home,
and copy it in the way that I had seen him work, and to
bring the two to him again.
"August 12. Arrived at the studio by 7 a.m. Mr. Watts
took my copy (his own he left untouched), which appeared dirty
in the flesh tints as compared with his, and rubbed with his
fingers a little rose madder on the cheek, nose and ear, and
then put on in little touches, but thinly, tints composed of
Naples yellow and white with rose madder. A thin scumble
of Naples yellow and white over the brown gives a fine pearly
grey. He drew parts, such as the nostril, mouth, etc., with raw
umber, and the colour that looked like burnt lake. If a touch
was too strong, he would touch it with his fingers. If purer
grey were wanted, he rubbed on with his finger a little blue,

which looked like cobalt. He said the work would look spotty,

but be all right when varnished. 'Try and put your touches in

the right place with as little work as possible, and let each
operation carry on the work further towards completion. If you
make a mess, better begin another rather than to continue.
Finish the dresses as perfectly as you can, because they give
interest. Avoid slobbering your colour about. Do not imitate
Reynolds. If you do, it is hopeless. But imitate Titian, for his

work is like looking at a bit of nature.'

I confess that the impression produced on me by these notes
is that Watts's precept was better than his practice. The actual
K
74 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

method seems distinctly messy, and very different from the theo-
retical " put your touches in the right place with as little work as

possible." But to any admirer of Watts's technique (and there are

many), I am sure that this detailed account of his earlier practice

will prove interesting and instructive.

I feel naturally great diffidence in dealing with the work of
living artists. In the first place the field is so vast that I have
had to confine myself to the British school, and even then the
number of our portrait painters of real talent is so great that I

have thought it best to restrict my choice to three artists, who

I think are representative in their various ways of the best work
in portraiture that is being done at present in the British Isles.

Mr. Orchardson represents the older school, and carries on the

brilliant tradition of Millais without being an imitator of his methods.
I have already referred to the chief characteristics of his work
in the historical section of my book. I am now by his courtesy,
and by that of Viscount Peel, enabled to reproduce the fine por-
trait of the latter as Speaker, that is one of the chief ornaments of
the Speaker's House. (Plate 33.) I hope that the reproduction
gives a not inadequate idea of the skill with which an admirable
colour harmony has been evoked out of the simple elements of the
black robes and of the brown woodwork and green leather of the
chair. This must have been a very difficult portrait to paint,

owing to the uncompromising character of the surroundings, and

yet they have been perfectly harmonised with the figure.
The composition, in spite of the difficulties, is singularly happy.
The pose is easy, and the keenness and vigour of the head are
admirably rendered.
I have already referred to the commanding position held by
Mr. Sargent, and have discussed the peculiarities of his style. I

wish I could give definite details of his masterly technique, as

there is no artist in the world whose work is discussed with
 Plate 88.

VISCOUNT PEEL.
7. Q. ORCHARDSON, R.A., IN THE SPEAKER'S HOUSE, WESTMINSTER.
By permission of the Artist and Viscount Peel.
 i

3
A VELB GONFIK.
BY d. 8, SARGENT, ^R.A.

BY PERMISSION Of ASHF.H WERTHFIMtll

From a I'lioloi^raplt by F Hnllye I'cmlnoke Square, Lomlon, IK.

 AIMS AND METHODS OF THE GREAT MASTERS. 75

such keen interest by his brother artists, nor who has an equal
influence on the rising generation of painters. Fortunately in many
ways it is quite simple and hardly requires explanation. Anyone can
see the directness with which the paint is applied, and the strenuous
endeavour that each touch shall be as true, and shall express as
much as one touch can possibly express. But, of course, there is

much more in it than that, and here, alas ! I am at a loss.

I have applied to Mr. Sargent, who is kindness itself in these

matters, but he says, " As to describing my procedure I find

the greatest difficulty in making it clear to pupils even with the

palette and brushes in hand, and with the model before one, and
to serve it up in the abstract seems to me hopeless." So I must
not attempt what the master himself is unable to do. I can only
advise students to look at Mr. Sargent's work. There is much
to be learnt from merely looking at it. I am fortunately enabled
by his courtesy, and by that of Mr. Asher Wertheimer, to reproduce

the portrait called " A Vele Gonfie," that was one of the chief
ornaments of the Academy of 1905. (Plate 34.) The sweep of
the drapery, the swing of the figure, and the extraordinary animation
of the expression make this portrait one of Mr. Sargent's master-
pieces. Its vitality is astounding.

With Mr. Lavery, who is my third representative painter, I have

been more fortunate. I have to thank a lady who is herself an

artist, and who has sat to Mr. Lavery two or three times, for a
very valuable account of his procedure. Here are some extracts
" He has great consideration for the sitter — he arranges a large

mirror which reflects him at work on the canvas so that the sitter
may be interested. He spends a great deal of time and trouble to
find a pose that in its simplicity is dignified, and in its originality

surprises and refreshes the eye. Two days I spent in his studio

trying to take an unaffected pose. Mr. Lavery did sketch after

sketch of me, till once he found what he wanted.

 76 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

" Then discarding the sketches he takes a canvas the size he

requires, and within two hours he has the entire canvas covered
the texture of the frock and the drawing of the features and pose
of the figure almost complete; the following day the greater part
of this paint is removed from the canvas and the picture again
gone over from head to toe. This was repeated every day for

almost two weeks, each afternoon the picture looking more com-
plete, till finally he decides that he has reached his limit.
" Nearly all his drawing is done with the brush. He uses
charcoal merely to map out or space his composition. His palette

is very simple, the primaries, black, white, and burnt sienna — in all,

six pigments."

It will be noticed that Mr. Lavery's procedure is much akin

to Whistler's, although he was never a pupil of the latter and
never even saw him paint. But there is one important differ-

ence. Whistler entirely repainted his picture every time, making

no use of the previous work, so that at the fiftieth sitting it was no
further advanced than at the first. But Mr. Lavery, although he
goes all over the work, makes use of the previous painting, so that
there is a gradual progress towards completion. This to me is a
much sounder method.
It will be noted what great trouble is taken with the arrange-
ment. And this trouble is certainly not thrown away. I know
of no one who arranges a portrait better, both in colour and
form. As a colourist, Mr. Lavery is distinctly ahead of any por-
trait painter of the day. I am fortunate to be able to reproduce
in colour one of his finest works, which I think will give some
idea of the extraordinarily decorative qualities of his portraits.

(Plate 34.) But, as I have said before, I think he sometimes pushes

these qualities a little too far, so that he seems less interested in
his sitter as a human being than as a decorative arrangement, and
to me the ideal portrait painter should be immensely human.
 PtbU 86

PORTRAIT IN GREY AND BLUE

BY JOHN LAVERY, R.S.A., IN THE LEIPZIG GALLERY.
1 ^1^'^BW
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 11

Pan III.

THE PRACTICE OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

THE practical

set about this

question
difficult
now arises,

art ? I
how
have
should the beginner
endeavoured to set

before him what little is known about the methods of the

great masters. Unfortunately, they are so various and so con-
tradictory that it is very difficult to model one's own practice
upon them. The only thing that is certain is that very fine por-
traits have been produced by all these different methods.
But I can hardly leave the matter there : of course I have cer-
tain views of my own as to the best way of setting to work, and
with all diffidence I must put these before my readers for whatever
they are worth.
To begin with, I am a realist. I hold that the first object of
the artist should be to give faithful likenesses of his sitters, and
these likenesses should be characteristic ; that is, the sitters should
be wearing the sort of clothes that they wear in real life, and
should be in the sort of attitude that they are wont to assume.
If there be any accessories, they should at the least be not incon-
gruous. The background should represent a fairly likely place for
them to be in — if it represent a place at all.

Now and again an advowedly fancy portrait is permissible. Pettie

painted some very interesting portraits of his friends in old

costumes which undoubtedly made them much more picturesque
if less like themselves ; but I think this treatment should be
exceptional.
Here comes a very important question. If accuracy of charac-
 78 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

terisation be the one thing to be aimed at, the sitters should not
be represented at their best —only at their average ; that is as
they look most often.
This, I think, is pushing the principle too far. As long as we
do not represent them as they never are, it is quite permissible to
paint them when they look their best, and in their most becoming
clothes, and in as little awkward an attitude as their habits enable
them naturally to assume. In the same way the background and
accessories, as long as they are not incongruous, may fairly help

to make the picture a pleasing one.

There are some painters to whom this rendering of character is

so supremely important that they like to over-emphasise it — that is,

to give a touch of caricature. When skilfully done this is very

effective, and quite dispels that danger of the tame and the com-
monplace that haunts the painters of commonplace people. But
personally, I do not regard it as legitimate, and it does not seem to
have been the method of the greatest masters.
I have so far said nothing about the purely artistic qualities

of the picture — the harmony of colour, the play of light and

shade, the pleasant rhythm of line and the skilful arrangement
of masses. I do not forget that these are an essential part of every
really fine painting, but in portraiture the other must come first

that is, the more purely artistic qualities must be subject to the
primary requirements of an accurate likeness.
Undoubtedly the restrictions are severe, but it is precisely these
restrictions that make the problem so interesting. I think with
some few sitters it is practically insoluble, but in nearly every
case the solution is possible without infringing the conditions of
legitimate portraiture.
If we wish to see how a great master can move freely within
the most rigid barriers, we have only to consider the portrait groups
of Frans Hals.
 THE PRACTICE OF PORTRAIT PAINTING. 79

In these he had to represent a definite number of people in

definite costumes. All the faces had to be well seen, and probably
he had not even the choice as to which of the persons had to be
put in the most conspicuous places ; and yet how free and har-
monious are the resultant compositions
It must be borne in mind that the colour-scheme of a portrait
can with advantage be very simple.
Many of the finest works of Velasquez and of Rembrandt are
merely harmonies in grey and in golden-brown respectively. Most
of the Dutch painters made great use of black. Even Titian's
colouring is in his portraits generally quiet and simple. But
these subtle variations of one dominant tone are extraordinarily
difficult.

An agreeable play of line can generally be achieved in women's

portraits by the arrangement of the drapery. But with men it

is more difficult, as modern male costume is singularly graceless.

This question of costume is one of our greatest trials, and
the temptation to clothe our sitters in some fanciful and pictur-
esque garb that they would never wear is often hard to resist;

but I think, as a rule, it should be very sternly resisted. Fortun-

ately, in modern female dress there is a good deal of flexibility.
There are very few women who have not some nice gowns
—generally the ones they think least of themselves —and if they
have none it is still possible to have one made that will not be
very different from what they actually wear, but will yet be artisti-
cally harmless.
Indeed, I would even stretch a point. It is perhaps admissible,
if a lady's dress be habitually horrible (which sometimes occurs),
to make her get one which will not be characteristic of her past,
but may be of her future, if she profit by the lesson ; but I admit
that this is a departure from the purity of my first principles.

As for men's dress, the artist must do the best he can.

 8o THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

Shooting clothes are often inoffensive ; some uniforms are not

impossibly gaudy. At the worst a black coat, though mostly bad
in shape, can be made fine in colour.
Furs are quite pictorial, but they must not be worn in defiance
of all probability. It always gives me a shock to see a gentleman
sitting down complacently in his drawing-room in a heavy fur
coat that he would certainly have taken off as soon as he came
indoors. If he be so attired he had better be nowhere in particular,

or else out of doors.

In the same way it hurts my feelings to see a lady portrayed
in evening dress with a large hat on. It may be picturesque,
but it certainly is not natural.
And here we must wrestle with that difficult question, the
open-air portrait. The outdoor dress is often so much better than

the indoor that it would be a pity to neglect it. But the treatment
of the background requires anxious consideration. The old masters
had a very definite principle, and acted up to it in the frankest
and most courageous manner. The sitter was painted as usual in
the studio without any attempt to modify the indoor lighting, and
the landscape background was used as a decorative screen, mostly

quite unlike nature in itself, and always without the slightest

approach to the true relations between the figure and the land-
scape. In fact, the general effect was that of a person standing in
the studio against a wall on which a very conventional landscape
was painted. It was never in the very least like a person standing
in the open-air with real sky and real trees behind him.
I was the very frankness of this convention that saved
think it

it ; the landscape was accepted as a mere decorative screen, and

the eye was satisfied.

This is really better than the compromise adopted by Millais,

who kept the indoor lighting on his figures, whilst the landscape

was more or less realistic.

"MY GRANDFATHER."
BY BASTIEN-LEPAGE. Plate 36.
DY PERMISSION OF MONEIE'JH EMILE BASTIEN-LtPAQE.
 THE PRACTICE OF PORTRAIT PAINTING. 8i

Of course there is another way, and I believe it is the right one

— at any rate for us moderns.
Bastien-Lepage, in his celebrated portrait of his grandfather,
painted the old gentleman in the open-air, and took the utmost
pains to get the real relation between his sitter and the admirably
true background. (Plate 36.)
In its way I regard this as an advance on anything done by
the old masters. Of course it has been tried fairly often since
Bastien-Lepage showed the way, but to me not often enough.
It is unfortunately a very inconvenient way of painting a
portrait, but the inconvenience can be diminished by making use
of a glass-roofed studio, which gives under favourable circumstances
a very near approach to the real out-of-door lighting. But most
people will say that what was good enough for the old masters is

good enough for us. I confess I do not think so. In many

ways they are supreme and likely to remain so, but in other
ways painting has made a distinct advance. This advance has
been mostly in the domain of landscape, and here I believe
the improvement to be immense. I have no great love for the
highly artificial landscapes that delighted our forefathers, and which
still delight ourselves, if we are sufficiently sophisticated.

How any real lover of nature can be content with the

extraordinary travesties of it that used to pass for landscape I

cannot conceive — or, rather, I can conceive of it in our forefathers,

for when realistic landscape had not been invented any approach
to it was better than nothing. But now, when there are so many
painstaking students of nature who collectively have given so many
truthful representations of the varied aspects of the world, I cannot
understand the taste for artificial landscape still surviving. And
if unreality and convention are bad in pure landscape, as I firmly

believe, they are also bad in landscape used as a background to

figures.

L
 82 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

Therefore, if we are to put figures in the open-air, let us

endeavour to do so truthfully. It is very difficult, and the
temptation to shirk the difficulty is great. I have often yielded to
it myself, but I have no doubt as to the right principle, however
I may have fallen off in practice.

But we do not get rid of all difficulties by putting our figures

indoors — far from it.

In the first place there is the studio light. There is no doubt

that a light more from the top than is to be found in most rooms
is not only a becoming light which defines the features pleasantly
without distorting them, but is also very convenient to work by,
for with a high light the canvas can be turned in various positions

without getting a shine on it. Also this light fatigues the eyes of

the sitters less ; they can look in its direction but somewhat under
it without being dazzled, as they would be if they looked towards
the window in an ordinary room. For these reasons most portrait

painters adopt it ; nor do I see any valid reason against it as long

as it does not obviously clash with the lighting of the background
and accessories. But here lies the difficulty. Theoretically, I

should like my sitters to be placed in an ordinary room ; if

possible, one of their own rooms, so that they should be portrayed

as their friends see them. But no ordinary rooms are lit from the
top, and most ordinary rooms are very difficult to paint in. This
difficulty partly arises from the imperfect lighting, but there is

another which is not so obvious.

All portrait painters, as far as I know, like to stand up to their

work. If they adopt the Millais method this is essential, but in

any case it gives much greater freedom and allows them to get
away from their canvas from time to time.
Now if they stand up in an ordinary room they look down too
much on it. They get a quite impossible view of anyone sitting
down, and even if their sitter be standing up the perspective of
THE JESTER (PABLILLOS OF VALLADOLID).
BY VELASQUEZ Plate 37.

From a I'hotof^raph by Hkiuh, I'aiis.

 THE PRACTICE OF PORTRAIT PAINTING. 83

the floor and of the furniture seems absurdly steep. (Some

modern artists have risked this absurdity, but to my mind, with
bad results.)

So in a studio the sitter is put up on a stage, and any

furniture or accessories are, if possible, put up on the stage too,

but this is quite incompatible with representing him in his true

relation to an ordinary room.

know an artist who had a little room built which could be

I

moved about in the studio like an exaggerated model stage. The

principle was excellent, but I fancy it was inconvenient in practice.

All these considerations make it very difficult to represent the

sitter in his own room with all the surroundings as they are in
real life. So the attempt is mostly abandoned, and on the whole
I think rightly, though this may seem to abandon the position of
rigid realism that I took up with regard to landscape backgrounds.
The difference is this : I have no objection to leaving out ; my
objection is to putting in anything that is false. I admit a
background that represents nothing in particular —a plain tone is

to me, quite harmless. I have more scruples about a curtain or a

screen, but I think they may pass as long as they bear a natural
relation to the sitter. With the smaller sizes there is no great
difficulty. Just a head can have almost anything behind it with-
out raising awkward questions as to what the room is like in

which the sitter is placed.

when we come to full-lengths that the difficulty is acute.

It is

There must then be a floor, and the floor seems to demand walls,
and the walls look very bare without some furniture, so that we
are almost driven into constructing at least a plausible room.

I have said "almost," for it is possible to represent a floor

that fades off into space without seeming absurd, as witness

Velasquez's "Admiral" in our National Gallery and the "Pablillos"
in the Prado (Plate 37), or certain portraits of Whistler's. Why it
84 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

does not seem absurd I do not know. But it does not, so on the
principle that there is no harm in omissions, I think this is a quite
legitimate treatment of the background of even a full-length portrait.
But very often accessories are required either to balance the
figure or to improve the line of it, or to harmonise the colour.
This will increase the difficulty of suppressing the background, but
in most cases the less attention is called to the room itself the
better. Of all backgrounds the most convenient is a curtain.

It can be of any colour and of any tone, and can be so

arranged as to give almost any line required, but its very
convenience has made it so hackneyed that it has now to be
used with great discretion.
Tapestry has also been unfortunately popular. It has such
possibilities of quiet broken tones and indefinite forms that it

would be an ideal background were it not so common.

Oak panelling, too, is very useful. Too useful, alas ! I, myself,
have had a hankering after screens. They shut off the rest of the

room so nicely that no one need enquire what it looks like, and
they can be placed with sufficient naturalness wherever the artist
happens to want them. Also, they are capable of a good deal of
variety, though their main forms are somewhat uncompromising.
But when all is said and done perhaps the best background
is a tone that represents nothing in particular — only it must be
just the right tone, and I, for one, have the greatest difficulty in
inventing this right tone.
But whatever background we adopt, it ought to be there in
nature behind the sitter whilst he is being painted, or as near an
approximation to it as can be got.
The simple tone can always be painted on another canvas and
then put behind him. This sounds easy enough, but first catch
your tone.
Then comes the question, shall this tone be even or broken
 THE PRACTICE OF PORTRAIT PAINTING. 85

up? I am inclined, myself, to have it fairly even, with a certain

gradation of light and dark. But there is no objection to broken
tones as long as they do not catch the eye too much, and raise
the fatal enquiry as to what they represent.
As for accessories, there are no general principles to be laid
down, except that they must be natural. If they can also be
characteristic, so much the better. I am always glad if I can put
a sitter in his own chair ; if not I try to provide him with one in

which he feels and looks at home. I do not think a book should be

introduced if the sitter is notoriously averse from reading anything
except the daily paper. If a book be introduced, it should be a
probable book for him to have by him, and so on throughout
the whole range of possible accessories, which, by the way, is

artistically rather limited.

Of course, everything in the picture must be lit by the same

light (anything may have a cast shadow over it) and be in the
same perspective as the sitter. If there is any attempt to represent

a real room, I think the top-light should be abandoned.

Groups require special consideration. They are the most diffi-
cult problems of portraiture, but when happily solved they are
immensely effective, and give a welcome opportunity of escaping
from the monotony which is almost unavoidable in the presentation
of single figures.
Here again I have no general principles to offer. Harmony
of line and mass and colour, which are of the essentials of our art,

unfortunately cannot be defined. Most people have some feeling

for them, and artists ought to, and generally do, possess this feeling
in a specially high degree. It can undoubtedly be improved by
practice, and by the study of fine examples : as to what are these
fine examples, there is a fair consensus of opinion. Certainly
portrait groups afford a fine opportunity for the practice of these
various harmonies.
 86 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

The most maddening, but also one of the most fascinating

branches of our art is the painting of young children. It is of the
essence of childhood never to be still. This gives them a delight-
ful animation in real life, but naturally enhances very much the
difficulty of painting them.
It is, of course, quite necessary to keep them amused, for they

show their emotions with a painful lack of reticence, and when a

child is sulky it can hardly be said to be looking its best.

Something can be done by getting a third person to read to

them, or, still better, to tell them stories, if the person has the right
inventive power. For the artist to endeavour to amuse them
himself is, I think, too great a strain.

A musical box is useful at times. When Millais was painting

one of his daughters at a very early stage in her life, I had the
privilege of working the musical box for him. I learnt then
that one tune would amuse a child for a long time if constantly
repeated. It is less amusing for grown-up people, but that is not
the point.
Perhaps the best way of keeping children quiet is to get a
talented friend to make drawings for them. This can be effectively

done on a spare canvas with charcoal, and will interest them

for some time if they are allowed to suggest the subjects of
the drawings. I recollect that a spirited drawing of a tiger eating

strawberries (by special request) was an immense success with one

very small girl that I painted.
With all possible alleviations it is a heartbreaking business, but
if the portrait turns out well there is a corresponding reward.
There is .something quite unique in the charm of childhood, and
it is an eminently pictorial charm.
I distinctly advise the budding portrait painter not to confine
himself to any one class of subject ; that is, he should not paint
men, women, or children exclusively. The danger of monotony
 THE PRACTICE OF PORTRAIT PAINTING. 87

that haunts such a restricted art is much increased for the

specialist in only one branch of it. I am convinced that Frank
Holl, for instance, would have been a much more interesting and,
indeed, a better painter if he had not practically confined himself
to men's portraits.
It may be objected that the artist has not a free choice in this
matter. He makes a hit with one kind of portrait, and for the
rest of his career he gets commissions from the same class of
sitter and from no other.

Well, if he does it is his own fault. Has he no friends that

he can paint in order to show the public his versatility ?

Indeed, as a general rule, I should advise that a certain number

of portraits should always be painted to please the artist, and not
for gain. He can then choose subjects that inspire him, and he
will have the enormous advantage of a free hand. When people
are painted for nothing they cannot, for very shame, worry the
artist with the suggestions and restrictions that are, after all,

legitimate enough in the case of a commission.

In the height of Millais's popularity he recommended me to

paint my friends even if commissions had to be put aside for the

purpose, and said that he did so himself from time to time. And
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema went further : he told me when I
first took up portraiture never to leave off painting subject-pictures.
" Your portraits will be all the better for it," he said.

And this, I think, is profoundly true. All the great portraitists,

except perhaps Frans Hals, have painted subject-pictures with an
immense gain to the freshness and variety of their art.

We must now leave these generalities and discuss the technical

details that are likely to embarrass the beginner.
In the first place he must have a studio. I have already
explained why it is so difficult to paint in an ordinary room.
After all, the first essential in painting is that the artist should be
 88 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

able to see his work. Great experience may enable him to paint
with a bad light on his canvas, but the beginner had certainly
better not attempt it.

The studio should be large enough to enable him to get well

away from the picture. If questions of expense did not come in

as, alas ! they mostly do — I should say the larger the better. A
high light is unquestionably the easiest to paint by. If there be

no actual skylight, the room should be lofty and the windows

should reach up high. The main window should face the north
this is necessary to ensure steadiness of illumination. It is a pity
that we have to rely on the north light, as it is apt to be cold
and often dull, but it is almost impossible to work by a light that
is always changing, as it does when it comes from any other
aspect.

There should be a sufficiently elaborate arrangement of blinds

or curtains to enable the light to be varied at will.
Then comes another important question. Most studios are
oblong. If the beginner has a choice of studios, or is able to

build one, should the north window be at the side or at an end ?

In the case of Millais, and apparently of Velasquez also, the room

was a long one with windows on one side. But then these rooms
were large, so that they had not to work too near to the windows.
If the room is not very large it is perhaps better to have the chief
light at one end, for then the other end is plunged into an agree-
able and convenient gloom, in which backgrounds and accessories
can be placed when they have to be subdued in tone. A sitter

also often gains by not being placed in too strong a light.

I think an actual top-light is very useful, but it certainly should

not be the only light in a studio. Indeed, I should have windows

wherever practicable. They can always be covered up when not
wanted, and they can do so much to alleviate the inevitable
monotony of portraiture.
 THE PRACTICE OF PORTRAIT PAINTING. 89

A second studio with a glass roof for open-air work is of

enormous help.

In the studio there should be a large model stage of such a

height that the head of a person sitting on it in an ordinary
chair is just a little above the head of the painter when he is

standing up. I say a little above, as nothing is more unbecom-

ing to a sitter than to look down on him. This shortens the
apparent length of the neck, and makes the head sink into the
shoulders.
The stage should be large enough to admit of a table or a
screen or any other portable accessory being grouped on it with
the sitter.

The ideal model stage would have a platform that could be

moved up and down. I have such a one, but it is unsteady
and otherwise inconvenient, so I seldom use it. But it ought not
to surpass the wit of man to devise a satisfactory one.
To come to a small practical detail, I recommend that the
stage should run on invalid-chair castors. . They work smoothly
and they never wear out. (Most castors become impossible after

a short period of use.) It is very important that the stage, even

with a heavy sitter on it, should be readily moved into any posi-
tion in the room. For this, good castors are essential, and a
parquet floor is also of great help. Carpets are an abomination in
a studio, except loose ones to be used for purely pictorial purposes.
If the stage will not move up and down it is well to have
another lower one for people standing up, especially for full-length
portraits. For these a great difficulty is that the floor has to
be shown, and if the artist is on a level with his subject it is

apt to appear absurdly steep. This can be partly obviated by

going a long way off, but it is better to assist this flattening of
the perspective by placing the standing figure somewhat above
the artist. As a rule about a foot in height is enough.
M
90 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

It is always difficult to make the floor in a picture look flat,

and with very steep perspective it is impossible. I know one

di^inguished artist who habitually adopts a lower horizon for his
floor than for the rest of the picture.

I do not agree with this device, as it is a pity to play

any tricks with nature if it can be avoided. The best solvent
of these difficulties of too violent a perspective is to go far

enough off.

I need not enlarge on the necessity of providing a variety of

backgrounds. The most useful are pieces of stuff" of all sorts of

colours. These can serve as plain tones or as curtains, and are

invaluable to try behind the figure. Even if none of them give
the required tone one can generally be found that will suggest
it. Of course, there are many ways of hanging them up. The
simplest is over a spare canvas on a spare easel.

Another property which personally I find indispensable is a

large looking-glass, mounted on good castors, so that it can be
readily moved about the room. I will explain later why I find

it indispensable.
I need not dilate on the implements of the trade ; the por-
trait painter has presumedly passed his art-student stage. If any
reader wishes for my views on the subject, I must refer him to my
manual of oil-painting.

But there is a little dodge of my own which I have not

mentioned there, which I think may be specially useful to the
portrait painter. As our work is mostly life-size, there is an
obvious advantage in placing the canvas side by side with the
sitter, and looking at them both from some way offi The picture
and the sitter are then seen of the same size and in the same
light, so that this method is a great preventative of errors in

tone and proportion. As I have explained, however, in treating of

Millais's work, it has great drawbacks, owing to the artist having

DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.
BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R / Plate 3S.
IN THE NATIONAL GALLEHV, LONDON
 THE PRACTICE OF PORTRAIT PAINTING. 91

to walk backwards and forwards between the touches. These draw-

backs would disappear if he could keep at a distance and still

work on the canvas. In painting, this is hardly possible. Gains-

borough tried it with six-foot brushes, but this does not put the
painter far enough away, and these brushes are extremely incon-
venient to paint with. Velasquez appears also to have tried it,

but he certainly abandoned the method. So we may take it as

impracticable, at any rate in painting ; but for drawing it is

not so impracticable.
I place a piece of soft charcoal at the end of a Japanese fishing-
rod, made of bamboo, which is fairly stiff and quite light. With
the arm extended it is possible to draw with this whilst standing

more than ten feet off the canvas. It is troublesome to draw in

this way, and only the roughest outlines can be attempted, but I

find it very useful in placing the picture on the canvas, and in

getting the main lines right in direction and proportion. It would
be better if one could stand further off still, but this would be
very difficult.

The question of the canvas is worthy of discussion — it is not

quite so simple as it seems at first sight.

Whether it is to be rough or smooth must be left to the

taste of the Of course, smooth is best
artist. for highly finished
work, and rough for more vigorous treatment ; but if the canvas
is very rough it is difficult to vary the texture, and to make
the brush-work tell sufficiently. The question of colour is more
difficult. Most modern painters use a white canvas, and for some
kinds of work this has a great advantage.
Oil-painting becomes slightly more transparent with age, so

that the ground has a tendency to come through. It also becomes

slightly darker, so that if the ground is light the one tendency
counteracts the other.

But we must not make too much of this. With vigorous

 92 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

solid painting and sound colours, the ground does not come through
to any appreciable extent, so that the colour of it does not affect the

finished picture. Nevertheless, the colour is important, as it certainly

affects the work during its progress. There is a tendency to paint
light on a light ground, dark on a dark ground, warm on a warm
ground, cold on a cold ground. The reason of this is not that the
ground shows through, but that until the canvas is quite covered the

ground contrasts with the painting —a touch of paint on a light ground

looks darker than it really is, and in the same way a touch on a
warm ground looks colder than it really is. So that the painter
in the one case is painting lighter, and in the other case warmer
than he seems to be painting. It is in this way that the ground
colour of the canvas tends to make the painting like itself.

I think this principle may be usefully borne in mind, should

the painter wish to correct some prevailing tendency. For instance,
if his work be too pale and flimsy he should try a dark canvas.

If it be too dark and heavy he should try a very light one.

I may add that without altering the colour of the canvas a
somewhat similar effect may be produced by altering the light-

ing of it. If you wish your picture to be in a very light key

you should turn your canvas away from the light, as then your
painting, whilst you are doing it, will seem darker to you than
it really is. In the same way, if you wish to produce a very dark
effect place your canvas in the fullest light available. You will then

be painting much darker than you think, and you will uncon-
sciously force the shadows and tone down the lights. At first

sight this may seem to contradict the rule about the colour of
the canvas, but a little reflection will show that the principle is

precisely the same.

Wc now come to the procedure to be adopted in the actual

painting of the portrait.

The first sitting should be devoted to finding the best pose
 THE PRACTICE OF PORTRAIT PAINTING. 93

and to settling, if possible, all questions of costume and back-

ground. The most favourable light and shade should be very
carefully studied, and generally the whole arrangement of the
picture thought out. It is often as well to make a small sketch
of this arrangement, but I do not think that this sketch need
be at all elaborate. There is always a danger, if an artist works
too much at the preliminaries, that he may lose the freshness
of his first impression.
When the arrangement is settled, a very careful drawing should
be made with charcoal on the canvas. This drawing again should
not be elaborate ;
only the really important lines should be given,
but these should be as well given as the painter knows how.
Some people consider that this careful drawing cramps the freedom
of the subsequent painting. I hold precisely the opposite opinion.
Nothing is so fatal to freedom of execution as the continual
correction of errors, and nothing saves one more from the necessity
of such correction than a careful preliminary drawing.
The charcoal may either be fixed or preferably gone over with
some dark paint, such as raw umber, made fluid with turpentine.
This gives a line which is less likely to be completely lost before
it has served its purpose.
The first painting should be with a big brush and full paint.
The way of putting on the paint should be very carefully attended
to, as the texture of the finished work will, to a great extent,

depend on this first painting.

is to say, rough surfaces should be painted roughly and
;mooth surfaces smoothly, and the brush-marks should be directed

tThat
n the
If
way which
a head can
best
be
expresses the
finished at this
modelling of the original.
one sitting, there is an
mmense gain in vivacity of touch and freedom of execution, but
:his is a very difficult business for anybody but Mr. Sargent, and
iven he has very often to take his work out and do it again
 94 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

and again before he gets it to his satisfaction. Lesser men, if

they try for this freshness, are apt to get it at the expense of
much more valuable qualities. It is not difficult to finish a head
at a sitting if one is content to leave it ill-drawn, ill-coloured,
and a bad likeness.

To any beginner I should say : Do not attempt the impos-

sible ;
get your first painting as right as you can, but it is

sure to be wrong in many particulars. Leave it to dry, and

then take it up again ;
you will find plenty to improve in it.

But unless radical alterations are required, the subsequent

painting need not be very robust. The necessary impasto and the
suggestion of texture can very well be got at the first painting.
All that is necessary afterw^ards is to correct and refine. Some
vigour will probably be lost in the process, so it is better to

have the foundation rather too rough than too smooth.

Draperies have mostly to be done at once. There is no
getting a fold into the same place again when once disturbed.
A certain refinement and some modification of tone can be added
aftenvards, but if the drapery is wrong, it simply has to be
repainted. Some sitters are so fidgety that it is almost impos-
sible to paint their clothes from them ; in this case recourse
must be had to the professional model, but this is always a
pity.

It is still more of a pity if a lay figure has to be used, but

where a very elaborate pattern occurs it is difficult to avoid so
doing. This difficulty hardly arises except in the skirt of a
lady's dress. In the bodice it is generally possible to do a
piece at a time, whereas a skirt must be treated as a whole.
In any case, the general form of the drapery must be carefully

sketched in from life, and it must then be arranged on the lay

figure in the same general lines.

One of the most difficult things in portraiture is the proper

 THE PRACTICE OF PORTRAIT PAINTING. 95

painting of hands ; indeed, as we have seen, some of the great

painters have failed in this respect.

The reason for this is that it is quite unnatural for anyone

but the trained model to keep his hands still for any length
of time, and there is so much independent movement of the
fingers that it is extraordinarily difficult to replace a hand in

precisely the same position that it had before. Also, many

sitters are very avv^kward in the posing of their hands, and if

the artist tries to pose them himself, the position is apt to seem
unnatural. In spite of these difficulties, the temptation to follow
the practice set by Vandyke, of employing professional models
for the hands, should be strenuously resisted. A hand is as
much an essential part of the sitter as his nose, and there is no
more justification in using a model for one than for the other.
The problem is difficult, but it can be solved — mainly by the
commonplace method of devoting a good deal of time and
trouble to it.

A hand is in some ways more difficult to paint than a

head, and the artist should be prepared, if necessary, to give
more time to painting the former than he gives to the latter.

This question of time, however, is an important one. Other

things being equal, it is far better that a portrait should be
done quickly. It is very disastrous if the sitter gets bored
and if the artist gets bored too, it is simply fatal. At the 'jl

same time, it is of no use to scamp one's work, nor to be

content with obvious errors, because correcting them would take
too long. Therefore, the portrait painter must do his work at

high pressure, must never waste his time, and must, if possible,

prevent his sitter from getting bored. To achieve this latter

object it is essential to engage the victim in conversation, not

necessarily all the time, but at judicious intervals.
This is one of the problems of my profession. When the
 96 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

artist is absorbed in his work, the last thing he wants to do

is to talk. But the sitter has nothing to absorb him, so the
time that flies so rapidly with the artist, crawls very slowly
with his unfortunate patient, and soon that dull and hopeless
expression creeps over him which is so fatal to the success of
any portrait. This must be conjured away at any cost, and
undoubtedly the best way is to get the sitter to talk. The less

talking the artist does the better, but he should cultivate the
gift of drawing out his sitter.

Personally I supplement this fitful conversation by placing a

large looking-glass behind me, so that the sitter can see the
progress of the picture in it. (This also is the practice of Mr.
Lavery, and doubtless of other artists.) Some painters are very
chary of showing their pictures until they are finished, but I

cannot for the life of me see that there is any harm in letting

other people see the steps by which our results are achieved.
This watching of the progress of the picture has naturally a
great interest for the subjects of it, and has the incidental ad-
vantage that they can see, more or less, when they are out of
the pose, and can correct it for themselves.
The looking-glass serves a double purpose. I never paint
without having one behind me, as it is so invaluable in cor-
recting errors of drawing. The most usual error is that of dis-
tortion —that is, a head is drawn with the features all crooked
for instance, one eye higher than the other, the mouth all

awry, and the nose on one side. If not corrected at once, the
artist soon gets accustomed to this distortion, but if he looks in the
glass he sees it precisely reversed, and the crookedness seems even
worse to him than it really is. The glass also puts the picture
further off, and enables him to judge of the effect at a distance with-
out having the trouble of going so far away. This is particularly
valuable in a small studio.
s I
 THE PRACTICE OF PORTRAIT PAINTING. 97

Is it possible to lay down any rules about the arrangement of

light and shade? I think no definite rules can be given, but there
are one or two hints that may be of service to the beginner. I

have already mentioned that a high light is generally more becoming

than one from the side. A strong side light often has a somewhat
distorting effect upon the features.

A rugged and forcible head is, of course, made still more

forcible by strong shadows. The delicacy of a child's or of a
young woman's head is best preserved by a rather full light

without strong shadows.

There is one curious distinction that I have noticed in the
practice of the great masters with regard to male and female por-
traits. They were very fond of representing heads in the three-

quarter view (unduly so to my mind) ; with male portraits the

head was nearly always turned away from the light, so that

the smaller side of the face was in shade, or at any rate so

that the nose was outlined by shadow. In the female portraits the
light comes very often from the side to which the head is turned.

This certainly gives more softness to the features, and has a

slight tendency to diminish the apparent size of the nose.

It is odd that artificial light is so little used in portraiture, and

yet Schalken and Honthorst have shown by their excellent studies

of heads lit up by candlelight how much can be done in this style

and, later, Wright of Derby carried the method to great perfection in

his portrait groups, of which "The Experiment with an Air-pump,"

in our National Gallery, is an admirable example. (Plate 39.)

But with the exception of a few theatrical portraits, such as

the one of Mrs. Patrick Campbell by Mr. Solomon, where the
effect of the footlights is well given, there is very little use of
artificial light in modern work. I think it is unduly neglected ;

we have many advantages over the older painters in the greatly

improved means of illumination that we possess. The great difficulty

N
 98 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

used to be that all the colours are falsified by candlelight, which is

so yellow that it practically cuts out all the blues ; the result

being" that the whites and yellows become almost indistinguishable,

and the blues merge into the greens, the reds and pinks becoming
more orange, so that a picture painted by candlelight looks quite
false in colour when seen by daylight.
But now we have the incandescent gaslight, which shows
colours very well. It is a good deal greener than daylight, but
much nearer to it than the orange light of lamps or candles. The
arc electric light is nearer still. Indeed, all colours are seen by it

with practically no alteration, but it is an inconvenient light to

use. The ordinary or incandescent electric light is, on the other
hand, very convenient, but it is nearly as yellow as candlelight,

and consequently treacherous. The Nernst lamp, which can be

used with the ordinary electric fittings, is much whiter, and, I
think, will be found very useful.
There are many advantages in the use of artificial light. For
one thing, to the artist who uses it, fogs and dark winter days
have lost their terrors. Also, there are many sitters who can come
in the late afternoon and evening more easily than in the daytime.

Again, very strong and interesting effects can be obtained by this

means. A rugged head often looks magnificent by artificial light.

Nor is there anything unnatural in its use : the modern man is as
well known to his friends by artificial light as by daylight. There
is no reason that his portrait should always represent the daylight
aspect of him.
Altogether I think much can be gained by greater freedom and
variety of lighting, and in this direction we have great advantages
over our forerunners.
Before leaving this intricate question of the proper illumination
of a portrait, I must say a few words about the toning down
of subordinate parts, and the consequent emphasising of the
 THE PRACTICE OF PORTRAIT PAINTING. 99

important features. Rembrandt carried this very far, and his

example has been followed by many modern artists.

I think that when plausibly done this toning is quite

legitimate, and is specially serviceable in disguising the ugliness
of modern costume. A pair of trousers is perhaps the most
hopelessly unpictorial article of clothing that has ever been
invented ; so any means of distracting the eye from it is most
welcome. The simplest means is to cast it into shadow —an
expedient that can be adopted with any other part of the picture that
it is advisable to suppress. The only stipulation I should make
is that this toning down should bear some relation to natural
effects, and not appear an entirely arbitrary arrangement of light

and shade. I have already mentioned that Rembrandt often errs

in this respect, and I feel sure that here his example should be
avoided. With care and some little ingenuity the required effect can
be produced quite naturally. The background may be much further

away from the source of light than the sitter, and therefore more
faintly illuminated. Again, it is quite legitimate to suppose that

shadows are cast upon the sitter and his 'surroundings by objects
of some kind in front of him. Indeed, these shadows can be
actually produced in the studio by spare canvases, which may be
taken to represent articles of furniture that are in front of the
picture, and consequently not seen. As a rule, these shadows
should be painted frankly as cast shadows —that is, with more or
less of an edge, and with some definite form. But however
the effect is produced it should look natural.
Then comes the question of size. It has long been a conven-
tion that portraits should be of the size of life or else very small
indeed, in which case they are called miniatures. There is no
reason in the nature of things why they should not be painted of
some intermediate size ; and, of course, they sometimes are, but on
the whole it is not usual. This is a pity, for anything that gives
100 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

variety in portraiture, if only in size, should be cultivated, but the

fact remains that most portraits are of what is called life-size. In
looking round an exhibition, however, it will at once strike the
observer that the term admits of very different interpretations.

What it generally means is that the head on the canvas measures

about the same in length and breadth as the head of a real person
—that is, about nine inches high for a man, and about eight inches
for a woman. In other words, the painting looks the size the sitter
would look if he were standing in the frame wM his head on a
level with it.

Some artists, however, maintain that the sitter's head should

always be considered to be some way behind the frame, and,
according to this principle, they make the painted head decidedly
less in measurement than the real one — still declaring that it

represents the size of life. This contention is logically unassailable

if there is any part of the picture that projects in front of the

head. For instance, in a sitting position the knees are often a
good deal in advance. If they are painted of the actual dimensions
of life, it is obvious that the head, which is further back, should be
on a somewhat smaller scale. This holds still more if there is a
table or any other piece of furniture in front of the sitter. As I

have said, this is undoubtedly logical, but the practice has its

drawbacks. People are so accustomed to look chiefly at the heads

of portraits — indeed, artists often force them to do so by toning
down everything else —that they seldom stop to consider whether
or not these heads are supposed to be further back than other parts
of the picture. They do not recognise the reason for the alteration
of scale, and merely see that the reduced heads look small and
consequently weak in comparison with those in which this reduction
has not taken place.
Other things being equal, the larger the size the more vigorous
and striking is the portrait. This is so well recognised that many
 THE PRACTICE OF PORTRAIT PAINTING. loi

artists deliberately paint a little life-size. Rembrandt over did this

very markedly in his later work. With Frank Holl it was habitual,

and Professor von Herkomer and many lesser men carry it rather
far in our day. Personally, I consider this practice illegitimate. I

daresay we should all be more impressive if we were a good deal

bigger. But being the size we are, I think our portraits ought to
represent us as of that size and of no other.
It is obvious that a portrait can be as much smaller than life as
the artist likes without sacrificing truth ; it merely represents the
sitter as so much further behind the frame. But it cannot
truthfully be larger than life, unless the figure is supposed to be in

front of the frame, which is absurd. I see no reason, however, in

those cases where there is nothing that comes further forward than
the head, why it should not be of the precise dimensions of life

it can be supposed to be on the level of the frame. In those

cases where the head must, in the nature of things, be further
back than other parts of the picture, my reason entirely agrees
with those artists who paint it under life-size, but I have to

confess that my practice does not always follow my reason.

I am so much impressed by the meagre and skimpy appearance

of a head just under life-size as compared with other portraits
of the full dimensions (and in exhibitions these latter will

be sure to predominate) that, although I never paint my heads

bigger than life, yet I often paint them as big when, in strict

logic, they ought to be reduced. It is wrong, I know, but I err

in very great company. It is especially in full-lengths that the

difficulty arises. The figures are mostly represented with a good
deal of floor space in front of their feet, so as not to bring the

feet too near the edge of the frame. Unless the perspective is

uncomfortably steep, this strip of floor means that the figures

are a yard or so behind the frame and ought to be small in

proportion ; but they are not usually so painted.

 102 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

Personally, I make a compromise. I generally show very little

floor in front of the figure, and so get rid of most of the apparent
diminution.
It must also be recollected with regard to full-lengths that

these large pictures should be looked at from some way off, and
the further away the spectator stands the less necessity is there
for a diminution of the figure.

All these difficulties are got rid of by painting the sitters quite
frankly of a much smaller size than life. There is then no
competition with life-sized work, and all questions of perspective
can be much more easily arranged. Also, there is more scope for

the representation of the actual surroundings : if the figures are

on a small scale there is less difficulty in showing the room they
are in.

Fine examples of this can be seen at our National Gallery in

the wonderful group by Van Eyck of the Italian merchant and his
wife that is reproduced in an earlier chapter, and in the very fine

Terborg that hangs in an adjoining room.

It is hopeless to recommend the example of Van Eyck
as one to be followed by modern painters, as they none of
them seem to have the time and patience to emulate him in his
exquisite rendering of minute detail. But it is more possible to
follow Terborg — at any rate, it would be very well worth trying,
and a great relief in the midst of the acres of sloppy canvases that
sprawl at large over the walls of our exhibitions. So there are
more reasons than that of mere variety for experimenting with
portraiture on a reduced scale.
There has been a revival of late of actual miniature painting,
but this is so special an art that it hardly comes into the scope of
a book on ordinary portraiture. At any rate, I must confess that
I know too little of the technique of miniature work to be able to
discuss it with any advantage. Nor, indeed, have I sufficient
DUKE OF ALBEMARLE (GENERAL MONK).
FROM THE MINIATURE BY SAMUEL COOPER.
 THE PRACTICE OF PORTRAIT PAINTING. 103

sympathy with the art ; it has always been, except in its earlier

days, such a highly artificial form of portraiture ; and the modern

revival seems to be mostly in the hands of the amateur, aided by
the photographer. There are some genuine artists who practise it,

but they are all too few. I should like, however, to counsel the
young miniaturist to seek inspiration from the more virile phase
of his art, to go back to Samuel Cooper (Plate 40), or even earlier,
to the Clouets, rather than to attempt the elusive charm of Cosway
and his successors —and, if possible, to avoid the painted photograph.

I must now end these very fragmentary hints, which are, of

course only intended for beginners. They may, perhaps, help these
beginners to avoid some of the pitfalls that beset their path. For
the rest, I must refer to the account I have given of the methods of
the great painters, but it is so difficult to get really trustworthy

information as to these methods, and at the best they are so

diverse that it is cruel to turn the student loose amongst them and
to tell him to choose for himself without any further guidance.
My own view is that the greatest of all the portrait painters
is the one whose aims and methods are. the best, and also the
easiest to follow. For what it achieves there is no simpler
technique than that of Velasquez. His aim was to take
a man as he found him, and to represent him truthfully and
naturally; he also sought for harmony of line and colour, but
never at the expense of truth.
His technique was devoted to the attainment of this aim in
the simplest and most direct manner. Unlike many other painters,
he was never the slave of his technique; he had no hard-and-fast
rules, such as that the painting had to go through certain stages,
or that each part of the picture should be painted at one sitting,

or that certain parts should be painted thickly and others thinly, etc.

If the painting came right at first he left it — if not, he modified

it until it did.
 104 THE ART OF PORTRAIT PAINTING.

The picture was well thought out beforehand, so that little

actual correction was needed ; but when it was needed he gave it

without hesitation and without any fad as to repainting the whole

picture when only a part of it was wrong. If thin painting was
sufficient to give the effect he painted thinly. If a suggestion
of texture was required he painted thickly and roughly enough to

give it with the least labour. He could suggest a surface by

brushwork in a way that has only been excelled by Rembrandt,
but he never paraded this brushwork. The last thing that Velasquez
ever seemed to think of was the cleverness of his technique.
And his was an example that in a humble way we can all of
us follow. The simpler the technique, the easier it is to learn : once
it is learnt the less it is thought of the better. When actually

painting we should be absorbed in the one aim of adequately

representing what we see. We should be thinking of nature
and of harmony of line and colour, not of technique. As Millais

said, " Get the thing right, no matter how you do it."

If we have learnt too elaborate a method we have to be

always thinking of it ; if we have learnt no method at all, or
learnt one inadequately, our representation will be fumbling and
defective.

If we resolutely pursue this aim of getting the thing right

(in the artistic sense) in the simplest possible way, we shall be im-
proving our technique all the while, as Velasquez did — till in our
old age even the clumsiest of us may have achieved some method
of masterliness.
But if we are always trying to be clever instead of endeavour-

ing to represent more and more truthfully what we see, we shall

most assuredly degenerate into mannerism — which is the Grave

of Art.
 105

INDEX

X Clothes, Tyranny of, in portraiture, 8 ;

methods of painting, by great artists, 50 ;

Accessories in portraiture, 85
influence of, in portraits of women, 79
Alexander, Miss, Portrait by Whistler of, 63, 64
Cooper, Samuel, 103
Alexander the Great, Portrait of, 2
Corder, Miss Rosa, Portrait by Whistler of, 65
Alma-Tadema, Sir L. , R.A., Advice to portrait
painters by, 87
Anne of Cleves, Portrait by Holbein of, 1

Ariosto, Portrait by Titian of, 42 Dante, Portrait by Giotto of, 5

Artificial light. Use in portraiture of, 97
Duret, M. Theodore, Portrait by Whistler of,
" A Vele Gonfie," by J. S. Sargent, R.A. 75 63, 67 on Whistler's methods, 67
;

Dutch School of Portraitists, Greatness of, 12

B
" Bacchus," by Velasquez,
45
Background, Realism in, 77, 80, 84, 90
" Banquet of the Civic Guard," by Van der English School of Portraitists, Grace and charm
of 1 8th Century, 9 decadence of, 20
; ;
Heist, 13 Sir J. Reynolds on, 14
;
chief painters of, 20 modern members
;

Bastien-Lepage, J., Portrait of his grand-

and work, of, 26, 34
father by, 81
Eyck, Van, family, 10
Benci, Ginevra de'. Portrait by Ghirlandajo
Eyck, Jan Van, as inventor of oil painting, 10 ;
of. 5
" Flemish Merchant and Lady," ugliness
Bordone, Portrait of a Lady by, 8
of, ID
Byzantine portraiture, 4

Fayoum, Funeral portraits of, 2, 4

Campbell, Lady Archibald, Portrait by Whist-
Filippo, Fra, as painter of portraits, 5
65
ler of, " Flemish Merchant and Lady," by Van Eyck,
Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, Portrait by S. J. Ugliness of, 10 size of, 102
;

Solomon, A.R.A., of, 97

Flemish School of Portraitists, Interest of, 10
Canvas, Question of, 91
France, Portraiture in, 25
Caricature in modern portraiture, 3, 32, 78
Carlyle, T., Portrait by Whistler of, 63
Characterisation in portraiture, 77
Children, Difficulties in painting of, 86 Gainsborough, T., R.A., as a painter of hands,
Classic portraiture, i, 2 14 ;
productiveness of, 21, 23; inequality
 io6 INDEX.

of work of, 21 ; as colourist, 22 ;

" The
Linley Sisters," 21 ; methods of, 57 ;
" La Bella," by Titian, Stiffness of pose of, 8
" Mrs. Robinson {' Perdita ')," 58 ; use of
Landscape in portraiture, 80, 81
long brushes by, 91
" Las Meninas," by Velasquez, 18,
Ghirlandajo, as portraitist, 5 43, 44, 45,
46, 60
Giotto, Influence of, 4 as realist, 5 ; ;
portrait
Lavery, John, R.S.A., Style of, 34 methods ;
of Dante by, 5
of. 75. 76, 96
Gisse, George, Portrait by Holbein of, 39
Lawrence, Sir T. P.R.A., " Artificiality " of ,

Gladstone, W. E., Portrait by Millais of, 62

work of, 25
Goya, 33
Lely, Sir Peter, 20
Gozzoli, Benozzo, as portraitist, 5
Leonardo, as portrait painter, 6 ; as innovator
Greek portraiture, 2
in methods of chiaroscuro, 6 ; unpro-
Griffiths,John, on Mr. Watts's methods, 70 " Monna Lisa,"
ductiveness of, 7 ; 7 ;
Grote, Mr., Portrait by Millais of, 62
methods of, 37, 51
Guthrie, Sir J., P.R.S.A., Work of, 34 " Lessons in Anatomy," by Rembrandt, 14, 49
Light, Questions in portraiture of, 82, 85
H Linley, The Misses (Mrs. Sheridan and Mrs.

Hals, Frans, Work at Haarlem by, 12 flesh- Tickell), Portrait by Gainsborough of, 22
;

painting Mr. technique of, Lippi, Filippino, as portraitist, 5

of, 13 ; 25 ;

Sargent compared with, 32, 33 methods ;

of, 51, 52 success with portrait groups

of,79
;

M
Hamilton, Lady, Portraits of, by Romney, 22 —
Mannerisms "the grave of art," 104
Hands, Importance in portraiture of, 13, 14, 95; " Maria Luisa de Tassis," by Vandyke, 19
neglect by English artists of, 21 neglect ;
Masaccio, as painter of portraits, 5
by Vandyke of, 53, 54 Menpes, Mr. Mortimer, on Whistler's
Holbein, Hans appointed Court Painter to
:
methods, 66
Henry VIII., 11 ;
portrait of Anne of
Michel-Angelo, as portraitist, 6
Cleves, 1 1 ; 36
as realist, 1 1 ; methods of, ;
Millais, Sir E. P.R.A., as the founder of
J.
" Pre-Rafaelite " methods of, 37; draw-
modern British portraiture, 27 as realist, ;

ings of, 37, 38 " George Gisse," 39 care

; ;
27; originality of, 27; "John Ruskin,"
for outline of, 39 principles of, 50 ;
27 ; characteristics of portrait works of,
Holl, Frank, R.A., as rival to Millais, 28;
28 lack of simplicity in colour of, 29
; ;

characteristics of work of, 28 " Miss Eveleen Ten-

methods of, 60, 61 ;

Honthorst, Use of artificial light by, 97 nant," 61 " Mr. Grote," 62 " Glad-
; ;

Hoppner, J., 25 stone," 62 method in painting children

;

of, 86 arrangement of studio of, 88

;

Miniature painting, 99, 102, 103

" Monna Lisa," by Leonardo, 7, 51
Impressionism, Tintoretto founder of, 37
Moroni, Portrait of a Lady by, 8 as special- ;
Intensity, an essential of portraiture, 63
ised portraitist, 9 " The Tailor,"
Italy, Portraiture in, in Middle Ages, 4 in ;
9 ;

i6th century, 6 fine ideal of portraiture

;
'
My Mother, by Whistler, 63
'
'
'

in, 10

N
J

Johnson, Dr., Portrait of, by Reynolds, 23 Nero, Colossal Portrait of, 3

"Night Watch, The," by Rembrandt, Mis-
naming of, 15 \'an Hoogstraten on, ;

16, 49
Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 20 Northcote, J., R.A., as portraitist, 25
 INDEX. 107

treatment of, 41 ; defects of, 42; methods

of work of,47, 48 ; portrait of himself,
Oil-painting, Invention of, 6, 10, 11
48 ; inequality of, 49 ; as colourist, 79
Open-air portraiture, 80, 81, 82
Reynolds, Sir P.R.A., as a painter of hands,
Orchardson, W. Q., R.A., Style of, 31, 72 J.,
14 on Van der Heist's " Banquet of the
;
;
portrait of Viscount Peel, 72
Civic Guard," 14; dates of, 20; produc-
Outline, Holbein's use of, 39 in art and ;
tiveness of, 21, 23, " Mrs. Siddons as
nature, 40 use of, by Velasquez, 46
;
'
The Tragic Muse,' " 22 ; colour of, 22 ;

" Dr. Johnson," 23 lack of " likeness

"
;

in portraits of, 39 ; merits and defects of,

55 ; methods of, 55, 56, 57
" Parson's Daughter, The," by Romney, 22
" Robinson, Mrs. (' Perdita ')," by Gains-
Peel, Viscount, Portrait by Orchardson of, 74
borough, 58
Pompeii, Paintings at, 1,3
Roman portraiture, 3
" Pope Leo X.," by Rafael, 7
Romney, George, Period of, 20 productive- ;
Portraiture, Sincerity an essential of, 25 de- ;
" Lady Hamilton " and
ness of, 21, 23 ;

mand for verisimilitude in, 26, 30 " out- ;

" The Parson's Daughter," 22 methods ;
line " in, 40 proportion ;
in, 40 ; ad-
of, 58
vantage of rapidity in, 51 position of
;
Ruskin, John, Portrait by Millais of, 27
canvas and sitter in, 60 ; intensity an
essential of, 63 ; realism in, 77 ; charac-
terisation in, 77 ; colour and light in, 78 ;

clothes in, 79 open-air, 80 ; questions of

;

light in, 82, 85 ; studio arrangements for, Sargent, J. S., R.A., Comparison of his work
with Velasquez's and Hals's, 32 " Mas-
83 accessories
; in, 85 85 ;
groups in, ;
;

children in, 86 ; studio for, 87, 88, 89 ;

ter of Portraiture," 33 of, 75 ; methods ;

question of canvas, 91 procedure in, 92, ;

" A Vele Gonfie," 75
artificial light in, 97 Schalken, Use of artificial light by, 97
93) 94> 95» 96, 97 ; ;

"toning down " in, 99 size in, 99 ;

Scottish School of Portraiture, Style of
Pre-Rafaelite Brotherhood, Millais and, 27, 29 modern,. 34
" Siddons, Mrs., as The Tragic Muse,' " by
'

Pre-Rafaelites (15th century). Style of, 37

Prinsep, Miss Alice (Mrs. Stracey Clitherow), Reynolds, 22
Portrait by Watts Sincerity, an essential of portraiture, 25
of, 70
Pulido y Pareja, Admiral, Portrait by Velas- Sinclair, Sir John, of Ulbster,' Portrait by

quez of, 43, 83 Raeburn of, 59

Solomon, S. J., A.R.A., Portrait of Mrs.
Patrick Campbell by, 97
Spanish School of Portraitists, 17
Raeburn, Sir H., R.A., Originality of, 25; Studio, Arrangement for portraiture of, 87,
methods of, 58, 59; "Sir John Sin- 88, 89
clair," 59 " Surrender of Breda, The," by Velasquez, 18
Rafael, as portrait painter, 6 " Pope Leo X.," " Syndics of the Clothworkers' Guild," by
;

7 methods of, 37
;
Rembrandt, 16, 49
Ravenna, Mosaics at, 4
Realism in portraiture, 77
Rembrandt, Boldness and resourcefulness of,
2 vitality of work of, 7
; greatness of, as ; Tennant, Miss Eveleen (Mrs. Frederic Myers),
portraitist, 12, 14, 49 born at Leyden, ; Portrait by Millais of, 61
14 style of, 14, 15
;
" Lesson in Ana- ; Terborg, Small portrait by, 102
tomy," 15, 49 " The Night Watch," 15;
; Tintoretto, as founder of " Impressionism,"
"The Syndics of the Clothworkers' 37 ;motto of, 40 breadth of treatment ;

Guild," 16 colour of, 17, 48 breadth of

; ; of, 41 ; methods of, 51
 io8 INDEX.

Titian, as portraitist, 6 position of as painter, ; 45, 47 ; becomes presbyopic, 46 use of ;

7 " stiffness " of female portraits of, 7 ;

; outline by, 46 compared with Titian, 47
; ;

" La Bella," 8 " L'Homme au Gant," ; inequality of, 49 use of long brushes by, ;

8 breadth of treatment of, 40 methods

; ; 57, 91 as colourist, 79
; arrangement of ;

of, 41 ;
portrait of Ariosto, 42 ; as studio of, 88 ; simplicity of technique of,
colourist, 79 103
Venetian School of Portraitists, Characteristic
of, 9
"
\'an der Heist, " Banquet of the Civic Guard
of, 13
\'andyke, Portraits of women by, and their
W
"stiffness" of pose, 8; characteristics Watts, G. F., R.A., " Over-ratedness " of, as
of, 9 as a painter of hands, 14
; as pupil ;
portraitist, 30 as colourist, 31 as poet
; ;

of Rubens, 19 facility of, 19 female por-

; ;
and dreamer, 69 faulty drawing of, 70 ; ;

traits by, 19 knig^hted, 19 productive-

; ;
portrait of Miss Prinsep, 70 methods of, ;

ness of, 19; methods of, 53; "Lord 70, 71, 72, 73
Wharton," 54 Wharton, Lord, Portrait by \'andyke of, 54
Varro, Portrait Gallery of, 3 Whistler,J. McN., Influence of, 29, 63 com- ;

\'asari, on Giotto, 4 ; on invention of oil paint- pared to Velasquez, 29, 64 ; lack of " life-

ing-, 10 likeness " in work of, 30 ; originality of,

Velasquez, Boldness and resourcefulness of, 2 ; 63 portraits of his mother, Carlyle, Miss
;

vitality of 7 portraits of women

work of, ;
Alexander, and M. Theodore Duret by,
by, 8 ; position of, as portraitist, 14, 17, 63 ; decorative treatment
of, 64 methods ;

49 stiffness of work of, 17; style of, 17

; ;
of, Mr. Menpes on methods of,
64, 65 ;

" manu,factory " " Las Meninas," of, 18 ; 66 M. Duret on methods of, 68
; ;

18, 43, 44, 45, 46, 60 " The Surrender of ;

" emptiness " of portraits by, 69
Breda," 18 Whistler compared with,
; Women, Influence of costume on portraits of,
29, 64 naturalness of, 30
; Sargent com- ; 8, 79 portraits by i8th century artists of,
;

pared with, 32 hardness in early work ; 20, 24 in French art, 25

;

of, 33 breadth of treatment of, 41

; de- ; Wright, of Derby, " The Experiment with an
fects of, 42 methods of work of, 43, 44,
; Air-Pump " by, 97

Printed by Casskll & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, Ludgatk Hill, London, E.C.
 A PORTRAIT PAINTER It is always the inner
ON passion that utters itself in the overture or
PORTRAIT PAINTING. symphony of Beethoven; but Bach looks down
upon life with a sort of benignant aloofness and
understanding. In fhe development of their
{By A. G. Gardiner.) methods, Rembrandt and Velasquez were alike,
' 'The Art of Portrait Painting. " By the Hon. John ^^^^ founding his art upon truth of detail and
Collier. Cassel!. los. 6d. laborious study, and arriving in his great period
There is a pleasant unpretentiousness about ** ^^^^ summary method which comes not from
tfiis book .that makes amends for the absence of /'^'^^^^ssness and ignorance, but from profound'
literary workmanship or a deeply-considered ^"^^^'^^fse. ^ ...

study of the subject. Mr. Collier would more, ,.'"°"'®'" '* ^^"^^^^ J"^* *« ^'ans Hals. He
truly describe his work as " Notes on the Art of
'
^"^ subtlety, though once, at least, he
, J
Portrait Painting." He puts down as he goes ^""''^^'^ * deep note; but there was never a
along in an easy, conversational wav. his ideas, natural, spontaneous art, more joyous,
,

Jf""^®
exu-
land experiences in reference to an art about ^''^"'.'^"^^ ^°^^-' ^^''^ directness of vision,
which he writes as an expert. He says much ™°''^ ''^ *^*^ genius which is not so
:
much intel-
that is illuminating to the mere lover of por- l®/^*"*' ^n^ considered as an unstudied union
{traiture, and still more that is helpful to the!., the faculties of eye and hand. Hals painted
student. His subject is divided into three sec-' *"^ Imnet sings," and no problems either
i

/f'"^ °' ^"^^ disturbed

j
tions— an historical summary, a chapter on the; his jolly record of a world
.

aims and methods of the great masters, and a "*^" ^^ ^^^^^ ^"'i ^'e- courage a little inclined
chapter on the practice of portraiture. *" swagger and homely joys a little inclined
;
to
to render the human face in line' g^ossness.
The attempt
!
or colour
as old as civilization, and Mr. Collier
is ^"^ decline of portraiture commenced with
considers that in one particular, that of render- "^^ astonishing facility of Vandyck, which easily
ing the essential dignity of fhe human face and degenerated into a mannered courtliness and
figure, it is likely the Greeks have never been P^^'®'^ *he way to the leering "beauties" of Lely
(equalled. In painting as in sculpture the art ^"^ *^^^ wooden conventions of Kneller. The
of ancient Rome was a debased rendering of the '^^'^^'^^ ^^^^^ ^'i^h the birth of the English
art of Greece. Then with the develonment of ®'^^°°'' ^^^ ^re^t as the achievements of that
Byzantine formalism in the sixth century the^'^'^°'?^ ^^^^' '^ey never realised the depth and
night of the Middle Ages settled dov/n upon art. splendid veracity of Velasquez and Rembrandt.
Portraiture emerged with Giotto, who, as Vasari^^"'^*'''^^*"'^^ ^*^ ^t*'* a form of polite compli-
aays, introduced "the custom of accurately ™ent, dressed in 18th century garb, with a con-
;drawing living persons from nature, which ^entional drop-scene landscape as a background,
had
not been used for more than 200 years." " Nor.^°'^^^'°"a'ly there was a triumph of rude truth
indeed, for very much longer," adds Mr. Collier.'*^ "^ Reynolds' "Johnson," or of convincing
Two centuries later the art of portraiture had loveliness as in Reynolds' " Nelly O'Brien
I'iaclted in Italy almost its highest expression, and Gainsborough's "Mrs. Sheridan," and
and Leonardo had probed, with his miraculous the "Morning Walk." But Reynolds, with his
:ac>mbination of art and science, all the mysterie8|150 portraits in a single year, suffered from over- 6"« « « ^ « a>
of light and shade, leaving in "Monna Lisa" one production, and Gainsborough, with his "^
5 S "^ 2^
prefe-i _§
of the supreme examples of the woild's por-'ence for landscape, adopted in his portraiture "S "^ ^^
S "S -S .

ti-aiture. Titian, Raphael, and H*;j>j-oni sounded|a cavalier summariness which, splendid „
in their saveral manners nearly a;> the depthr, of'highest efforts, easily passed into sketchiness 6 2-.
the art, and meanwhile, in norlh&;j Europe, JaiL and thence to unpardonable shallowness. In
Van Eyck and Holbein liad, in tllfe more Gothic many respects Raeburn, v. ho has come to full
spirit, reali'ied the possibilities of portraitu:c. recognition late, had most affinity both in tech-
Truth and beauty are one according to the poet, nique and aim with the supreme masters, though
but in portraiture they are divisible, and through- he offers the singular example of one who began
out grace and heautyhavebeen the chaiacterisfics with the broad, summary method and passed S.-S oi «f ss
of the south; truth, scornful of mere charm, the; later to a more detailed manner, thus reversing
characteristic of the north. Mr. Collier docs not the normal experience just as Bacon reverses'
5 6,
exaggerate the place of Holbein in portraiture., 'he normal course in writing prose.
He had the sincerest \ision, the most unfalteringi Again portraiture plunged downward with the
truth of any painter in history, and if his method flashy brilliance of Lawrence, to return to
is hard it is magnificent as the negation of that 'mature and truth under the inspiration of the
passion for sketchiness which has in modern) Pre-Raphaelite movement and the vigorous,
' "
Iw'
art 80 often degenerated into sloppy shallowi'"holesome genius of Millais. With Whistler
ness. Mr. Collier would like to see a reaction iii 'portraiture became a decorative scheme and
the direction of this genius for taking pains] ^r. Collier rightly ridicules the comparison of £ * £ "a > m
this linear truth and definiteness, this antithesij^^'histler's flat and unsubst-Wjtil figures with .c 3 -a S^'o
of the sin of scamiiing. [the astonishingly realistic work of Velasquez. « -g <" >-Jl
Portraiture reached "its zenith : e contem- We ^o not agree with his depreciation of Watts "S
>,-'?
|
« g t3 ^
porary art of Rembrandt and Velasquez. Mr. ^^ a portraitist. His failures were many; but
Collier rightly gives the preference to the ^t his best he got at the heart of the human ,
g .Jip S 3 .s
Spaniard. Velasquez had the objective truth of '".vstery with incomparable insight ami cer- S
="
t- a .^
His art too has a .aiger incasure
Holbein. He saw with that large, comprehen-,t*">ty- |
»,^| « 3
sive, passionless vision which we call Shake- of
that Rembrandt quality of subjcttive emotion 5 " .S^m "
spearean. There was nothing mean to his royal
than the art of any other English portraitist, « 55
4,
- S' ^M^ « «
n>ore indeed than that of any other artist except "
Boul,
'ioul.
~ and the dwarf, the jesCer, and the mendi-
jester, ^ 5 £ §
.. _
cant are dowered, equally with Pope and King,,
....
. Carriere, whose noble work hnds no mention in
J;
*" "Q
this book. Phiglish portraiture to day is domi- -^
" " -^ '^
twith the majesty of humanity. Rembrandt, on|
the other hand, expresses in all his portraiture
nated by one inaHterful figure, John S. Sargent, » 5 t' — "^
who is the embodiment in art of the coamopolt © '' "^
o
ithe inner drama of his own soul.
j;*
Velasquez
«ee8 into the lieart of tlic mystery before liini;j
tan spirit of the time and whose special contri * •? q "
bution to port ail uri" is the infusion into it of a
1 **
? S) ?
but he tells us nothing of tl greater luyslory «'
i^^jj^ of sardonic satire, as clever as it is unplen
c s-s
I

within him. Kverv stroke of Rembrandt's brusl "

on the other hanfl, is charged vith his ow
'Isaiit. The inevitable comparison with Velasqucs 8 -? .

^Pjis made in regard

egar to him; but it is not very true
broodings and sombre unrest. We think only of of his method and it is wholly
,

untrue of Uiu •3
.i S ~
i » —
Iriiilip, or Innocent, or Admirnl Pareja before the a ..
_i
sjiirit. Even whore Velasquci pictured uiiplea
canvases of Velasquez; in the canvaseM of Roiii- sant persons, as Innocent X., he was
concerned
brandt it is the painter who is ever before us. „„,,, ^j,,, „,^ truth. His own
commeut is never
The great Dutchman is to the Spaniard whst i,,tru<lL>i|
Beethoven is to Bach.