Development of the Actual Painting

DEVELOPMENT OF THE ACTUAL PAINTING We often hear it said that a picture has darkened or turned yellow. We are not here referring to the changes to which the varnish is subject, since although varnish gives the colours their maximum intensity, it does not form an integral part of the pic ture and will be dealt with only at the end of the article. What we now have to consider is the development of the paint which actually constitutes the picture.

Preparation

of the Groundwork.—It has already been said that artists should give the utmost personal attention to the prep aration of their canvases. Upon the preparation of the ground work the final aspect of the finished picture may depend. The old masters varied the priming of their panels or canvases accord ing to the nature of the picture which they intended to paint. Rubens used a ground-work which was sometimes grey, sometimes tinted with ochre, sometimes greenish, and sometimes plain white as in the "Miraculous draught of fishes." Poussin used a grey ground-work for his "Autumn," and Boucher a pink-tinted one for his "Three Graces." There is no doubt that the ground-work affects the painting which is superimposed on it. Let us suppose that two replicas of the same picture are painted, one on a yellow and one on a red canvas. After a few years the two pictures will be seen to differ from one another, and their general colour harmony will change, becoming nearer to that of the ground-work. A painter can thus, to a limited extent, plan in advance the future development of his picture, and should not neglect a factor which may add to its beauty later.

The desire to obtain rich colour harmonies must however always be subordinated to the numerous and complex exigencies of paint. Many pictures painted on light grounds have preserved an astonishing freshness down to the present day, while others painted on red, brown and even black grounds have suffered; indeed such paintings have generally worn badly, even if they were painted by Tintoretto, Poussin or Courbet.

The red grounds which so many painters have found attractive certainly make it easy to obtain a vibrant and transparent tone.

But such a ground is of no value unless the paint itself is very lightly applied over it. And although the results may be satisfac tory at first and may remain so for a number of years, the thin layer of paint which covers the coloured ground nevertheless grad ually tends to disappear, and the tone of the ground begins to prevail over the others, thus putting out the colour harmony of the picture and destroying the balance of values ; for, as will readily be supposed, the only parts which resist will be the high lights, which are generally painted in strong colours and which last all the better because they have probably been applied with fairly vigorous impasto in order to hide more completely the dark ground on which they were painted.

From the last observations we may at once draw a general con clusion which is of the greatest consequence to the painter : it must never be thought that the colours of a picture can be neu tralized by the final layers of paint which are applied over them. A proof of this may be found in the curious phenomena con nected with what are known in France as repentirs. These are corrections of a part of a picture which has already been painted, made before the whole picture is complete. If for example, at one of the sittings for a portrait, the artist sees that the arm or leg of his subject would produce a more characteristic effect if its position were changed, he may merely repaint the arm or leg without scraping off the original paint. Or again, accessories which prove inconvenient in the composition of a picture may be cov ered over with a few strokes of the brush. It often happens that after a longer or a shorter period the original detail begins to show through, and sometimes becomes quite clearly visible. This can be seen in Velasquez' portrait of Philip IV. in the Prado, in Ingres' "Jesus among the doctors" at Montauban, and in Bon ington's "View of Venice" and Gros' "Portrait of the Comte Fournier-Sarloveze" in the Louvre, to mention a few examples chosen haphazard from hundreds of others equally striking.