painting models for poetry

Overview

Painting is not poetry, and only a few outstanding painters have been competent poets (like Michelangelo), or vice versa (like Alexander Pope). Nonetheless, some parallels can always be found between the two arts if the context is broadened sufficiently — to Ming China, the Symbolist Movement in Europe, American Realism, etc. Many books and reviews deal very adequately with their general features. We want something much more detailed and practical, and accordingly start with a review of European painting.

Development of European Painting

Brian Thomas {1} grouped the history of European painting into four overlapping stages:

1. Line design

Woven out of relationships of shape and outline. Dominant between decline of Roman Empire and Renaissance. May be unrealistic (Book of Hours) or realistic (Flemish Gothic). Legible element distinct from illusionist. Stereotype and non-personal symbols generally employed. Outlines emphasized by colour changes. Areas filled by pattern. Popular for narrative, when features irrelevant to storytelling are omitted. Hidden geometry important. Flowing brush strokes only in illuminated MSS (unlike far-eastern art.) Development from late Roman to Byzantine and to Gothic is not based on direct observation. Symbols are distorted for religious effect. Important artists appearing at end of period include:

Jan van Eyck. Painted direct from nature, capturing illusion of space and pattern of light and tone relationships. Worked by

Modelling light and shade in opaque pigment (probably egg-oil emulsion)

Covering with more or less transparent glaze, and

Working over light side of forms and half shadows in thin films of opaque paint.

Holbein. Worked by:

Interpreting form by contour lines of great simplicity and subtlety. Lines built of short lines infinitely sensitive to change in direction of surface planes.

Blending flat pattern and realistic rendering of surface quality of clothes and flesh.

2. Form design

Involved the third dimension, often running in counterpoint to a line design as well. Both decorative and descriptive. Intricate and subtle patterns built up by interweaving forms in space, speeding up, slowing and stopping the recession as desired. Artist studied nature to elucidate construction of forms in space, and to relate them rhythmically. Construction uses tone or line, the latter indicating axial and sectional lineaments. Perspective helps. Artists think in the round. Significant artists:

Cimabue and Duccio renovated the Byzantine mode.

Giotto and Cavallini introduced form design. Giotto observed nature closely and used broad form-design to create monumental and moving tableaux-vivants.

Masaccio dispensed with wiry outline of Giotto and used tonal gradation to place his figures in a realistic setting. Tones due to local colour are repressed.

Piero della Francesco. Further mastery of perspective — used decoratively, to lend cogency to surface pattern. Recession muted and controlled. Figures static.

Signorelli. As Masaccio, but introduced strong, often overemphatic modelling into both lights and shadows, exaggerating the modelling in the shadows by stressing reflected light.

Filippo Lippi and Botticelli stressed sinuous lines in slender, mobile forms.

Pollaiuolo popularized the nude, introducing the sinewy strength found in Donatello's sculpture.

Fra Angelico brought realistic blue skies into general use.

Giorgione introduced atmosphere, a feeling for the weather. Aim was to give enduring satisfaction on prolonged contemplation, rather than intense but transitory emotion.

Leonardo. Variety of interests left little time for painting. Works important for a. penetrating understanding of the construction of natural objects, b. sensitivity to rhythmic flow of forms in nature and c. subordination of colour to delicate gradations of light.

Michelangelo. Depicted vigorous, contrasted action in bulging muscles and swinging draperies. Modelling subtle, but main figure often silhouetted in strong tonal contrasts.

Raphael. More successful than Michelangelo in architectonics of groups of figures. Supremely intelligent artist, learning from others.

Correggio foreshadowed the Baroque. Smooth, rounded forms, suave and undulating rhythms, caressed with soft lighting all set a mood — helped by paint quality, tonality, colour, stylization and choice of motive.

Tiepolo was decorative, creating intricate interplays of line from "theatre flats" and foreshortened figures.

Poussin. Used illustration as a pretext for pictorial architecture, perfect in proportion and rhythmic articulation. Dry style, remote subjects, but he avoided heaviness by a. exaggerating luminosity and reflected light in shadows and b. playing off strong contrasts of tone against subtle ones.

3. Tone design

Aimed at a. creating a satisfying pattern out of degrees of light and shade and b. representing perceptual truth more closely by some pictorial convention that represents the eye's varying sharpness of focus. Lasted early 16th to early 19th centuries. Artists were more concerned with tone than colour. Where important, as in Venetian painting, colour was generally used decoratively. Willingness to sacrifice detail in areas 'out of focus' meant that brushwork could vigorous and free, adding life and sparkle to the painting. Significant artists:

Leonardo blended outlines in his Mona Lisa.

Gentile and Giovani Bellini used oil on canvas to avoid corrosive effect of sea air, and had a good sense of paint quality, which led to an appreciation of tonal values.

Giorgione absorbed the poetic mood and love of landscapes of the Bellinis, but composed his paintings as a whole, with only such detail as was needed.

Titian achieved a complete mastery of all expedients of tone design — slowly, intuitively, after much experimentation and fumbling. He created a new type of feminine beauty, used richer, juicier colour, graded his brushstroke according to importance of what was being depicted, and used a variety of compositional means, often reducing depiction to extreme simplicity that would inspire Velasquez and Hals.

Tintoretto used a greater range of tone and more forced lighting.

Veronese introduced a greater realism and sumptuous, decorative colour.

Caravaggio created a. stark realism and vivid characterization, b. sharp contrasts and c. mood of drama and mystery.

Rubens. Eclectic. Supreme master of rhythmic movement. Combined realism with nobility and decoration. Great vitality and creativeness. Opulent colour.

El Greco. Fluent and hallucinatory rhythms. Used coloured glazes over monochrome.

Velasquez. Consummate artist. Simplified colour to produce effective tonal patterns. Always efficient painter: interprets rather than creates.

Hals. Produced animated portraits by lively brushwork, high tonality and crisp tone patterns.

Vermeer. Great sensitivity to light, with a strain of poetry.

Rembrandt. Took Caravaggio's dramatic and poetic potentialities to the limit. Great sense of form. Consummate craftsman. Compassion for suffering humanity.

Goya. Great tone designer, but often careless and hurried, using knife and dry brush.

Van Dyck. More febrile and haughty than Rubens: more refinement and poetry but used a flat nut oil that reduced the scale, richness and atmosphere of his mentor.

Watteau. Painted jewelled world of imagination with iridescent, atmospheric qualities that Van Dyck neglected. Graceful drawings unsurpassed for analytical clarity.

Boucher. Artificial scenes, slightly acid colour, but suavely classical and showing perfect artistic tact.

Hogarth. Moralist whose art is securely based on Baroque tone design, with a particularly crisp handling of paint.

Gainsborough. Natural painter. Work is play between nebulous films of paint drawn with tip of sable brush and racy passages of loaded brushwork. Thin paint has exceptional fluency of brushwork that avoids poor appearance.

Reynolds. Excelled in use of decorative tone. Rich colour. His Discourses are among the best of art criticism. Fresh handling of paint was an inspiration to Constable and French School, but his experimentation in materials was generally unfortunate.

4. Colour design

Final stage in cycle of pictorial realism. Colour had always played an important part in painting but not until nineteenth century were painters prepared to make drastic sacrifices on tone and precise delineation. Harmony was the object — achieved by some relationship of warm and cold (i.e. red or blue bias) or colour saturation (e.g. a brilliant orange, dark brown, warmish grey and flesh pink are all orange either neat, reduced in tonal intensity, desaturated and reduced in intensity and desaturated respectively — i.e. orange with nothing, black, grey or white added.) Form tended to be lost and dim interiors were banished for bright landscapes. Finest landscape school was the English of first half of nineteenth century — helped by Rubens' experiments, atmospheric renderings of Poussin and Claude, and rustic motifs from Dutch painters. Significant artists:

Turner. Unrivalled knowledge of landscape under different weather conditions. Mastery of paint and poetic imagination.

Constable. Great realism in drawing, colour and tone but underpinned by old masters' techniques.

Pre-Raphaelites. Hectic realism. Sharp, angular drawing with great precision of detail. Painted thin colour over wet flake white.

Corot. Painted broadly large areas with tones very close to one another, and then set off this subtlety with brilliant accents of dark or light crisply added.

Courbet. Broad, impressionist handling with brush or palette knife — designed to display physicality of scene.

Manet. Adopted Hals' approach, developing an audacious pictorial summary in tone and colour of what he observed. Loose and racy brushwork to compensate for loss of more traditional techniques.

Impressionists. Ruthlessly eliminated beauties of linear or tonal pattern to accurately interpret the colours of light.

Seurat. Used broken colour, placing spots of additive colour to blend at a distance (yellow made by spots of red and green: painters had traditionally used subtractive colour, the paint filtering out other wavelengths.)

Degas. Mordantly incisive drawing. Influenced by Japanese print and photography.

Gauguin. Use line design to enclose colour-schemes that resemble gaudy plumage of parrot.

Van Gogh. Fierce colour and agitated brushstrokes to convey his perception of forces of nature.

Cezanne. Painted direct from nature in almost mystical state. Tried to reconcile colour and bulk by modelling by means of colour gradations entirely, rather than by tone. Sought harmony in a logical articulation of planes.

Twentieth Century

By the beginning of the twentieth century, this fourfold evolution had run its course, leaving artists with no obvious avenue for development, nor a proper role in society. The School of Paris therefore chose experimentation, producing work with the following characteristics:

Emphasis on the decorative at expense of representational and narrative elements.

Reversion to line design.

Use of fine and daring colour.

Influences absorbed from negro, child and lunatic art.

Simplified handling of paint to point of crudity to achieve strength and intensity rather than precision or elegance.

This art could also be slovenly in execution, and highly mannered, its styles not being developed to express or represent some aspect of the visible world so much as arbitrarily imposed — i.e. designed to show that the work was aggressively "modern".

Bridget Riley {2} added these points:

We should distinguish between pictorial colour (colour needed to make a picture) and perceptual colour (everyday experience of colour: as it actually is). Artists work with both.

Artists recast their sensations in pictorial terms. They have to create a pictorial reality which is credible — i.e. invent a credible spatial structure.

All artists need a method, a way of creating their pictures. Though sometimes based on scientific theories, these theories are not adhered to consistently and are often wrong. In fact there is no guiding principle of colour, or firm conceptual basis to picture making — perhaps just as well, as each artistic sensibility can then make its unique expression.

Titian was the first artist to create such a spatial structure with colour alone. He created a pictorial unity from colour relations — modulating and picking up the same colour in various tones and hue variations throughout a painting, always bearing in mind that the other colours created by juxtapositions have also to create a unity.

So subtle and novel a use of colour was not immediately appreciated. Caravaggio introduced a workable formula, simplifying colour to chiaroscuro. Tone was divorced from colour, readily lending itself to engraving and teaching. This conception held sway in European art until the nineteenth century.

Veronese and then Watteau adopted some of Titian's practices, using decoration, fabrics, architecture and objects as agents carrying colour around their pictures. Rubens transferred the components of his skin tones to other objects in his paintings, so uniting them. Velasquez appeared to be using chiaroscuro but in fact uses greys as colours, hovering between warm and cool to create space. Vermeer often brought primaries (yellow and blue) together in a focus of interest and then spread them out into other parts of the painting. Poussin did something similar, finding some dominant colour chord to orchestrate around. Delacroix worked out his colour schemes prior to painting, often years before. Commonly he used the greatest tonal contrast when colour was diminished, and vice versa (i.e. using strong colour contrast when tones were equal).

Seurat and the Pointillists distinguished between colours — direct reflected light, partially reflected/absorbed light, local colour & ambient complementary colour — but Seurat commonly employed just two principles — increased contrast of tone at meeting of dark and light objects, and complementary colours placed in dots side by side {3}.

Monet and Impressionists used what they called a perceptual 'enveloppe' — typically a representation of light and air by pairs of complementaries which induced colours by interaction, and a secondary interaction between induced colours and primaries. There might be three or more pairs in each painting, these being used to represent the sensations the painter actually experienced in front of nature. Violet in shadows became intolerable, and in fact (contrary to theory) the Impressionists often resorted to a simple black.

Cezanne created pictures with a single, dislocated plane, orchestrating colour and simplifying shapes to do so.

The Cubists used the simple shapes but opened up depth again by colour.

Matisse argued that if the precise character of sensations could be represented by colour, then the procedure could be reversed, pictorial colour creating its own sensations.

Post Modernism

Though difficult to define, the term is usually applied to post 1950 styles that employ modernistic techniques in a teasing mood of engagement with society. Work is typically eclectic, commercial and large. Society, especially bourgeois society, may be criticized, but no programmes for radical change are urged: various outlooks and philosophies are expected to coexist in a pluralist world. Aspects of contemporary world are reflected — relativism, lack of authority or consensus, embarrassment of intellectual riches, consumerism.

But if such art tends to be popularist, it is also very conscious of its pedigrees. It may mix and match international styles, or can be more purist, with no concessions to its audience whatsoever. Serial music and abstract painting, for example, ask to be accepted for what they are, and to the extent artists need the gallery-critic-museum network to sell their work, they also need to have their creations surrounded and supported by theoretical scaffolding. It is not therefore by technique, skill, training or anything to do with execution or performance that importance is to be achieved (say art critics) but by conception — i.e. originality of inspiration, this being the one thing unique to the individual. Artist formally trained often use their skills to suppress evidence of that training.

Understandably, the vast mass of art criticism becomes promotional, self-referencing and pretentious. The very actions of critics in identifying works as "abstract-expressionist" , "minimalist", etc. wards off enquiries as to values, and to intentions of the artists or their productions — i.e. the labelling protects from criticism. By conception is not meant political allegiance or sociological ideas necessarily (though some critics believed these important) but painterly objectives. Artists realize that they need to place themselves in some stylistic tree recognized by the art establishment, and then to pursue in a personally distinctive manner one of the fashionable concerns. Such concerns are not in essence different from what has always interested artists (colour depth, balance, kinetics, pattern, gesture, texture, etc.) but are pursued in a more uncompromising and 'scientific' way.

Practical Aspects

Painting has two aspects, the inspirational/conceptual/aesthetic and the craft. Both are needed if the work is to go on pleasing the informed observer. They are also interdependent: new techniques encourage new perspectives, and vice versa. Before dealing with the techniques of oil painting, which has the longest history and so the greatest variety of approaches, we should note two things. First is that there is no single way of working. Fashions and materials change, though it's not unusual for art schools and studios to play down the diversity of techniques that the great masters employed, and insist on a simple heuristic approach that rapidly hardens into dogma. The second is that schools and individual painters have to be examined without preconceptions. The Impressionists and Pointillists did not, for example, paint alla prima entirely, any more than were the late canvases of Titian a culmination of his craft.

General Approaches

Until recently, oil painting has been a craft-dominated affair employing these techniques/approaches {4}:

Alla prima. Rapid spontaneous painting of Rubens, Velazquez and Hals which aims at final effect within the one session. Unlike direct painting of modern artists, however, this follows careful thought and preparation.

Fa presto. Rapid application of opaque paint over and incorporating coloured ground. Fresh finish, but can also show faults in drawing, composition, colouring, modelling and/or tonal relationships.

Direct painting. Completion of picture surface in opaque paint without using ground or underpainting — e.g. Impressionists and most moderns.

Three-tone technique. Form and colour represented simultaneously by three tones: light, middle and dark. Used in three ways

tones derived as tints (white added) or shades (black added)

three separate mixtures, not necessarily from same colour

three more or less pure colours (though five or even seven tones may be used in practice.)

Wet into wet. Wet paint into, over or alongside other wet paint.

Wet over dry. Traditional approach allowing systematic control.

Painting to completion or in sections. More control with latter, but a disjointed appearance is the danger.

Painting in layers. Principle behind traditional technique.

Refining foundation. Adding to the body colour with more subtlety of colour and tone.

Finishing with glazes. Final modifications of above with glazes.

Varying paint thickness. Modifying tone and colour by thickness of paint: common but needs great skill.

Dead colouring. First application in layered technique, either built up subsequently into further layers or into underpainting.

Underpainting. Painting which is designed to combine with later painting (often but not necessarily glazes) to produce desired effect.

Using ground. Ground is important component of finished picture.

Most painters have generally experimented with mixtures of the above, but a rough grouping {4} would be:

Early Approaches

A very slow, methodical approach that employed a brilliant white ground and no thinners. Used by van Eyck and early Flemish masters. 6-12 months needed to complete even a small picture. Wood was the favoured support and this needed to be made smooth and non-absorbing. Allowed painting to be undertaken in discrete, easily remedied stages. Recommended steps:

Make precise, detailed drawing on white ground and prime over with thin glaze of oil or oil varnish. Dry.

Add shadows with thin glaze of oil and earth colour. Dry.

Add dead colour precisely in glazes, frotties or body colour — most of previous showing through. Dry for several weeks.

Oil out (rub in fat oil medium to allow adhesion to previous layer) and continue dead colour into underpainting using glazes and thin frotties. Several stages to this. When no more is possible leave to dry for several weeks.

Oil out and refine painting of previous step.

Add final glazes and/or final unifying overall glaze.

Painting on Toned Ground

Approach popular in 17th-18th centuries that employed pale ground as middle tone. Recommended steps:

Place accurate drawing over one or two-tone ground.

Shade shadows with thin raw umber washes, ground to show through. Paint dead colour as pale thin turps washes of eventual colours. Washes, ground and shadows now form three-tone scheme. Dry. (Old masters would have used lean colours in essential oils and allowed canvas to dry for months at this stage to ensure that no oil was left to dry later.)

Remodel above with thicker, more opaque colours, still allowing ground to show through. Dry. (Old masters understood each pigment separately, and varied the medium accordingly.)

Repaint with more definition, still allowing ground to show through. Reduce yellows to allow for yellowing in time. Dry.

Add glazes, thickening or wiping out as necessary.

Painting on a Dark Ground

Used by Rembrandt, Velazquez and others for strong chiaroscuro effects. Ground is used for shadows, other areas overlying this have varying degrees of opaqueness. Recommended steps

Apply a priming of coloured glaze over white ground.

Add drawing or sketch in main outlines as required.

Underpaint in grisaille: model in tones ones only with frotties and glazes over the dark ground. Final underpainting may take several sessions and should be slightly lighter than eventual result to allow for darkening of final glazes.

Add highlights in white. Dry

Add coloured (generally multiple) glazes.

Classical Alla Prima

Essentially as painting on a toned or dark ground but simplifying matters by doing away with coloured glazes or restricting them to small areas in the painting stages. Recommended steps:

Over a pale-toned ground put a careful shaded brush sketch. Add shadows in two levels of glaze.

Scumble in white highlights while still wet. Dry if necessary.

Add colours as frotties or spread coloured glazes, which are then worked into with some white or body colour. Ground shows through.

Rework previous applications with more body colour.

Add limited finishing touches of thin body colour in medium.

Fa Presto

Resembles alla prima but there is no preliminary drawing and the paint is applied directly to the ground. Recommended steps:

Over a lightly toned ground, paint in washes and frotties the broad areas of colour. Application is generally lean and may allow some of the ground to show through.

Rework the application with a fatter medium and more body colour.

Add finishing details. Steps can be left to dry, or completed in the one session.

Direct Painting

A style popular since the late 19th century where the paint is applied opaquely to completely cover the ground. Painting commonly proceeds by stages, with drying in between, but may be completed in the one session given the right skill and circumstances. White is used throughout, plus thin washes in the lower stages, but glazing is absent. Recommended steps:

Sketch in charcoal. Brush away surplus and trace sketch in turps-thinned paint.

Block in broad areas of colour with turps-thinned but opaque washes of colour. Rework these wet into wet with white or more colour as necessary. Dry if necessary.

Paint with more subtlety and detail in a fatter medium. Previous stage may or may not show through.

Add details in fine soft brush.

Glazing onto a White Ground

Here a stained-glass effect is achieved by applying coloured glazes upon a drawing with the minimum of body colour, the latter being necessary to recapture highlights, control the floating effect of glazes, and to simply make them look better. Recommended steps:

Transfer a precise, delicate pencil drawing onto the white ground.

Apply a guide to shading with faint coloured glaze. Dry.

Apply overlapping coloured glazes, working wet into wet where necessary. Dry.

Retouch shadows. Dry.

Apply stronger-coloured glazes, oiling out previous surface if too dry to take new glaze. Dry.

Add detail in finishing glazes, including white in thin glaze to areas where highlights have been lost.

Combined Underpainting and Glazing

Product of body colour applied in a free, painterly way and a subsequent application of precise detailed glazes. Underpainting is built up thickly in layers so that the ground is completely covered. Work proceeds by stages of trial and error, with layers being scraped back or removed (oiling out surfaces between layers helps). Gestation lengthy, 6-12 months perhaps being needed to finish the work. Recommended steps:

Begin like a watercolour with few pencil lines and broad washes of turps-thinned paint. Dry.

Lay in thin body colour. Dry.

Lay in second thin body colour, accepting or overpainting first.

Build up underpainting in a long, continuous process of trial and error, using the full range of painting techniques. Dry.

Lay in glazes flatly and work wet into wet as necessary. Dry.

Lay in thicker glazes, modifying where necessary.

Add body colour to recapture areas glazed too heavily.

Encaustic

Employed wax, with or without resins. Pigment and wax may be applied cold, but heat is needed to drive in for finishing. Lasts well and was used for frescoes, etc.

General Maxims

Like any craftsmen, painters accumulate practical hints: here are just a few {5} :

Talent is no more than persistence in recognizing and solving problems. Continual practice is essential.

The crucial question is not how to paint but what. First decide what you want to paint and then how you'll do it.

Start with an image in your mind and paint that.

Ensure you put in every stroke as best you can, even in underpainting. Each stroke should follow naturally from the previous and lead on the next. Think before applying paint.

Work the whole picture at once.

Experiment widely: even professionals must take risks if they're to maintain freshness.

Decide where and how to focus attention.

Aim to create a beautiful painting more than learn to paint.

Work from large to small.

Do everything as simply and economically as possible. If you can bring an element to completion quickly, do so.

Grasp the importance and significance of what you see: developing that is more important than technique.

Practice and reflection are needed to understand what is taught.

Crucial to painting is seeing, i.e. sustained concentration and unlearning many preconceptions.

Don't paint what you see: understand what you're seeing and paint that.

Paint from dark to light.

Try to indicate form and texture of object by modifying brushstrokes.

Highlights occur where a plane changes direction.

Centre of interest is always in the light.

Eye prefers warm colours to cold.

Highlights should be shaped to lead eye as desired.

Add touches of colour to where shadow meets light.

Make areas lighter by making the area lighter or by making surrounding area darker.

Treat similar areas similarly. Keep shadow areas and background similar in tone.

Darks get lighter as they go further back.

Darkest shadow is closest to light.

Highlights on cold areas are warm, and vice-versa.

Value is more difficult to control than hue. Keep the values simple, and plan.

Third dimension is not only to be created by value: you should use colour temperature, edges and colour intensity.

Keep shadows consistent for material - e.g. heavy cloth has darker shadows than thin.

Edges can be hard or soft, and/or outside (pointing out from picture and indicating thickness of plane) or inside (pointing in.)

Hard edges rivet attention. Use them for composition and to create depth.

Use more colour and less white to make paint brighter.

Use colour to unify and/or make something happen.

Reserve most intense colours to areas in light.

Warm colours advance, cold colour recede.

Decide on one or two dominant colours: de-intensify others.

Make blacks darker by adding warm colours. Make them lighter with cobalt blue or raw umber. Make them opaque with earth colours and translucent with cadmiums.

You can't paint hues and values at the same time: they need separate brushstrokes.

Chalkiness is muddiness that is lighter in value, and from same mistake: blending too many colours.

Art World

Leaving aside art critics, journalists, galleries and curators, the main players in the art world are:

Commercial artists: the great majority, who work in graphic design, textiles, illustration, etc. Technique adequate to very good.

Establishment painters, including some 80 royal academicians in the UK and a few hundred much-commissioned artists. A select group who work through contacts in society and the establishment, plus the leading galleries. Traditional painting of moderate to very high skill.

Serious anti-traditionalists. Work in variety of styles and media, always very conscious of trends. Promoted by gallery-art critic-museum establishment. Skills very various, but always carried off with bravura. Some do very well for a decade or two, but risk of financial hardship when expectations change.

Trendies who catch and develop current fashions. Paint to make money. Skills very bad to good.

Teachers in art college and adult education establishments. Work in various styles of the avant-garde whenever duties allow the time. Some become independent in their forties, but most teach until retirement. Traditional skills usually well in advance of their pupils, but not sufficient to establish a real reputation.

Art course attendees. Painting usually restricted to course hours, and products not generally saleable. Skills poor to good. Awareness of trends and of past achievements rather limited.

Amateurs. Very variable group. Some earn several thousand a year turning out popular subjects. Most spend the odd weekend on presents for friends. Skills poor to good; usually traditional in approach.

Colour Theory

Basically, there are five colour schemes that will yield harmonious results:

Monochrome. One colour. Composition is achieved entirely in terms of values or tones. Limited but powerful.

Complementary. Composition using one colour and its complementary — e.g. red and green. The colours can be mixed in various proportions, and tones added with white or black (or preferably dark earths).

Analagous. Composition using just 3 colours of 12-colour wheel - e.g. red, red-violet and violet only. As in complementary, the colours can be mixed, and their tone adjusted. This scheme can be further divided into one pure colour and the other two semi-neutral (i.e. mixed, muddy, low intensity). The pure tone will advance more than the others, whether is warm or cold. Usually applied in a broken fashion so that colours of the same value shimmer when seen close to, but can group to broad areas of colour from a distance: one dominant, one subordinate and one minor. The dominant is used widely in different tones and intensities.

Split complementary. Composition as analogous, but with the addition of the complementary of the mid-colour of the analogous range. Easier to introduce warm/cool balances.

Triadic. Using all three colours that are equidistance on colour wheel. Mixed and toned as before. Subdivided:

primary colours. Very difficult to use.

secondary triadics, e.g. scarlet, mauve and viridian. Very beautiful effects possible, probably because all colours contain some of the other two secondaries.

Colour Schemes in Operation

How does colour harmony apply in practice? Some analyses:

Tiepolo used complementary and split-analogous for preference, but usually added a further colour to give variety. Purple is never used. Colours are often sharp or acid, when the scheme verges on the triadic. Highlights (white usually) make up 10-15% of area, and are used for composition and contrast. The whites are rarely pure but generally creamy, greenish, etc. High-lit areas are always serrated with shadow and boldly painted to give energy and movement. Dark tones make up 10-15% of area but do not play any part in composition: used for modelling and to some extent contrast. Key to composition is tertiaries (about 40% of area) which link the purer colours. For example: The Finding of Moses. Grey-green robe to grey-green vegetation of background to yellowish-grey-green of dress in shadow to green-yellow of shadowed dress to bright yellow dress of queen. Pink lining of dress also links through flesh tints to scarlet tunic of jester. Deep blue of dress of left hand figure links through paler blue of dress of right hand figure to cerulean blue of sky and palest blue of cloak of figure behind queen.

Boucher was a decorative painter: refined and feminine. A triadic color scheme was generally used, but two colors — often red and green — are so pronounced that the scheme can seem a complementary one. Colors were acid and cold, thus giving the flesh tones an extra warmth. Purple rarely appeared, and yellow-greens sparingly. Flesh tints were nacreous-orange, never pink: anatomy is sensitive but there is little hint of the skeleton, only of firm, softly glowing skin. Draperies seemed always to be silk: thin, silvery and expensive. Paintings were generally light in key with highlights (sky and flesh) making up 30% of area. Skies were calm, draperies glittered and flesh glowed. Dark tones were rarely very deep, and tended to be massed, often in corners of painting, making up under 10% of area. Color harmonies were much more limited than Tiepolo's, often being no more than a juxtaposition of complementaries, creating an agitation that offsets the languor of the scene. Boucher never used the tertiaries in Tiepolo's manner, and though there were low-intensity colors they tended to sink restfully into the background.

John Singer Sergeant (1865-1925) Painted genre, landscapes and portraits in oil and watercolour (2500 works), but is best known for portraits (700). Very popular with Americans and nouveax riche, whom he invested with presence and panache. Painted from an early age, studied under Carolus-Duran, and was painting acceptable portraits by 1879. His Oyster Catchers of Cancale (1879) looks impressionist, but is in fact solidly based on studio traditions: deft brushwork, dark colours and glazes. Colour scheme simple: often complementaries or split complementaries with a good deal of chiaroscuro. Great socialite though shy. Excellent musician, intelligent and well read in four languages. Was a painter in tradition of Velasquez and Hals, using the gesture to delineate style and character. Success aroused great envy among younger generation, and he was denounced as slick and superficial after his death.

William Orpen. Successor to Sargent: most successful portrait painter of his day. Edwardian romantic realist, greatly talented: excellent psychological penetration but too prolific and successful to escape censure and neglect after his death. Colours rich though palette was simple: flake white, crimson lake, orange vermilion, chrome yellow, blue, black, viridian green, raw & burnt umber, burnt sienna. Often used double lighting. Paint applied with breadth, simplicity and conciseness. Started by giving canvas a coating of monochrome brown. Then outline, particularly triangle of eyes and nose, in burnt umber. After that he worked swiftly, scraping back if dissatisfied. Had little time for contemporary fads or studio jargon. Too varied to generalize on colour schemes or tonal proportions.

Bernard Dunstan is a latter-day Nabi who paints intimiste interiors and some land- or city-scapes. His colours are always muted, and it is sometimes difficult to decide whether the work is an oil or pastel. Small-scale, charming, almost feminine in sensibility. Dunstan is fond of complementary colour schemes (blue/orange usually), analogous colour schemes (green/green-blue/blue, earth colours) and split complementaries (orange versus green/green-blue/blue, yellow-purple/purple blue/blue) with the complementary very understated (muted or small in area.) Tonal range is small. Darks are not very dark, and lights are pearly and/or muted. Medium-dark may occupy up to 50% of area but is commonly around 20%. Elements are harmonized by large areas of similar tone and similar texture and decoration in sketchy drawing. Paint is applied tentatively and very dry, allowing previous paint to show through.

Immediate Parallels with Poetry

Enough on painting, which may make sense only to practitioners. The parallels suggested by these very sketchy notes {6} are:

1. old master paintings were immensely costly to produce and, as patronage shifted from Church and court to the bourgeoisie, the previous slow and impressive manufactures were replaced by less demanding creations. Workshop skills were less in evidence, and 'individuality', 'freshness of vision', 'verve of brushwork', etc. sought in their place. A similar shift is seen in poetry.

2. oil paintings were built by a great multitude of techniques and approaches, and it would be surprising if a similar variety did not apply to the composition of poetry.

3. poets can be grouped in ways similar to those of the art world, but earnings are considerably lower.

4. the School of Paris (highly-mannered, often slovenly in execution and making aggressive show of its modernity) was a forerunner of much Modernist writing. Claims notwithstanding, the intention was not to catch the contemporary note, or depict the changing world more faithfully, but to gain notoriety for the artist and find a purchaser for the work.

5. Post-Modernist painting tends to be unashamedly promotional, self-referencing and pretentious. Its symbiotic art critics employ categories (abstract-expressionist, minimalist, etc.) to outlaw dumb enquiries (the broad value or meaning of the work, the technical competence of the artist). Radical literary criticism, which replaces aesthetic evaluation by social, political and quasi-philosophical considerations, is adopting a similar strategy. Protection and not explication is the aim.

6. conceptual art appeals to the intellect, and the idea generating the work of art is more important than its execution. {7} Something similar operates in experimental poetry, which is understood through philosophic theory, often with a dash of political argument added. Appreciation often comes through understanding the process of its creation, moreover, rather than responding to any literary qualities the poem may have.

Deeper Parallels with Poetry

Can the aesthetic harmony of a painting suggest ways of evaluating a poem?

The stumbling block is not meaning or representation. Painting has also to represent and to make some comment on representation: even still lifes are not meaningless snapshots.

The difficulty lies in the abstract qualities of painting, the composition and harmonic elements of colour, mass and line, to which painters develop great sensitivity. Colour, though complicated in practice, can be categorized by hue (e.g. red, red-orange, orange), value (i.e. extent of light or dark) and purity (position on the scale from intense red through brown to muddy grey, for example). But what among words corresponds to such categories? We often talk about the intrinsic quality of phonemes, of dark sounds formed in the back of the throat, of the purity of Italian vowels, but these are vague and relative matters. And whereas a Chinese scroll painting can be analyzed in exactly the same abstract qualities as a Renaissance fresco, the Chinese languages use tones whereas the European do not, and some languages have no vowels at all. There cannot be any one-to-one relationship between the elements of colour and those of word-sound, therefore, and attempts to reduce verse to music, or to find a musical basis to verse, have largely been failures {8}.

A painting, furthermore, can be converted into a line drawing, a poster, an etching or even a black and white photograph and still give us some idea of the original and its quality. But unless made into something of the same sort, another poem, a translation is not affective. A paraphrase may certainly tell us something about the sense or content of the original, but is not usually a guide to quality. Removing any major element of a poem (rhythm, word choice, imagery, content) simply destroys it.

So why continue with such parallels? One reason comes from poetry manuscripts. A word, often a striking adjective or vivid description, is not firmly anchored in a particular sentence but seems to travel through the poem in various rewritings. To the poet it clearly possessed some independent value, and just as painter will rearrange the composition to set colours where needed, the word was similarly shifted to obtain the appropriate effect. Poems seem not to be entirely logical sequences of sentences, therefore, but arrangements of meaning that are deployed over the whole workspace or fabric of the poem. Poems are initially read from beginning to end, but their full effect comes by various routes. We often sense the quality by reading just a few lines. A particular expression clicks into place; we are intrigued by a certain phrasing; we begin to understand the interlocking of rhythm with meaning in a line, and to see further structures of thought, etc., until the whole complex interrelationships is divined and appreciated, a process that needs generous taste and perhaps a lifetime of reading.

To pursue the notion, we shall have to accept (contra Dadaism and Postmodernism) that poems must make some kind of sense. And that this sense is an integral part of the poem: remove it and the poem is immeasurably poorer, if a poem at all. Now suppose we equate this sense with depiction or representation in painting. Unless abstract, a painting has to depict something, and how that depiction is achieved is the art of that particular painting.

Under the notion of 'fancy' many eighteenth and nineteenth century writers and thinkers would have gone along with such an equivalence, but we are adding one crucial difference. Anyone who has watched painters working will know how very differently they can depict a scene, even from the same vantage point. And while it's certainly possible to assess accuracy on the basis of photographic verisimilitude, judging the best painting is another matter. Each artist has emphasized different aspects, using their skills and preoccupations to create a unique rendering.

Are we are so used to the language of business, science and the law, that we suppose that there exists a transparent medium capable of describing things simply as they are? Let us hope not. After a hundred years' search, philosophers are no closer to finding such a language. Deconstructionists point to the ambiguous, creative and self-referencing properties of language to show why the search is hopeless. Everyone selects according to their own criteria, and even court witnesses will describe differently what they saw and remember. Certainly we can judge any expression in speech or writing by how well it succeeds in its particular purpose, and that purpose may well be factual accuracy. But 'facts' are still abstractions, matters not directly given to us, and a more honest, authentic and complete description will generally involve the larger context of the situation and our personality. If that is accepted, then we can develop further the notion of a poem as a canvas of meanings, where only one aspect of sense is read sequentially.

But we should first say something about truth, sense and meaning. It will be clear that we're using the terms very loosely, almost interchangeably. Philosophers demand much more strictness, even though their procedures have created many problems with each proposed solution. The New Critics, secondly, conscious that admired works expressed things that were not strictly true, or were perhaps even offensive to good citizens, felt that the meaning of poems was not to be taken literally. Poems were special creations where everyday belief could be suspended. Their meaning operated only within the context of the poem, or was an emotional equivalent of truth, not the truth itself. (Literary critics sometimes prefer the term 'ideation' to cover all that could be intellectually conceived.)

We're saying something different: that 1) all expression operates in contexts, and 2) poems have no special dispensation. They stand at the bar of truth like every other piece of writing. Just as we can admire a piece of oratory while detesting the political views expressed, so we warm to a poem without wholly subscribing to its views. Extreme views can no doubt damage a poem for us, even make it unreadable, but that is our own personal complex of response, which we shouldn't impose on others as some canon of good taste.

By meaning (or ideation) we're also including all shades of suggestion, connotation, ambiguity and possible inference. Plus the emotional aspects, since we deny the sharp distinction between thought and feeling originating with Descartes and now questioned by current research into brain functioning.

Poems as Workspaces or Canvases of Meaning

Let's summarize our painterly view of poems. Poems:

1. have literal meanings, which are read as any other text.

2. these literal meanings are comparable to representation in paintings, and are important, forming an integral part of the poem.

3. individual lines are woven into a workspace or 'canvas' in which ideation is deployed non-sequentially.

4. metre, imagery, rhyme etc. bind a poem in a temporal and non-sequential manner, allowing a greater richness of ideation across the poem as a whole.

An Illustration: Rhetoric as a Structuring Device

Now for an application. One of the most admired of Shakespeare's sonnets {9} is number 166:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediment. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever fìxed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken:
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Time's not love's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out ev'n to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

The subject is constancy, and the argument is laid out in the usual way of Renaissance rhetoric: exordium, confirmatio, peroratio,

The rhetorical schemes are also fairly obvious: anaphora, parison,

Plus antanaclasis (1) and (2)

And metaphor, hyperbole

Rhetoric was designed to work upon our effective understanding, and is here simply doing its job, which includes structuring the poem.

Illustration Continued: Elements of Ideation

But we are looking for something else. We might accept the arguments as corresponding to the subject of a painting, but we want to see how individual, nonrepresentational elements operate at a deeper level in the poem.

Let's consider what readers generally find so remarkable in this piece by developing some of the suggestions provided by Stephen Booth's commentary. {10}

The poem makes moving assertions on the nature of love that escape refutation or limitation by:

1. Identifying with matters that cannot be denied:

star . . . Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

though rosy lips and cheeks Within (time's) sickle's compass come.

2. Adopting theological language.

The psalm-like Let me not. . . with its echo of the marriage service, also repeated in impediment.

The reminder of the burial service with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out ev'n to the edge of doom.

3. Extended use of negatives. Since love is not what is listed, it can be anything that is left unstated.

4. Conflating the action of looking and being looked at:

That looks on tempests and is never shaken:
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

5. Using sweeping and energetic images of action that a) have unspecified contexts:

And b) are supported by a text energized by long vowels (or vowels emphasized by stress) surrounded by harder consonants (to adopt a simple terminology: {11}):

Many more strategies occur in this celebrated piece, and will be apparent to every close reader. But note that we're not suggesting that specific sounds reinforce the meaning (though they may on occasion) but that they form elements of composition independent of the meaning. Look, for example at the repetition of m and n, that cluster so thickly in the opening sentence and continue throughout the poem. However created — probably unconsciously by Shakespeare — their effect is to bind the poem together:

Concluding Remarks

The above notes and illustrations are very simplistic, to be taken only as suggestions worth following up. Other poems could certainly be analyzed along similar lines, though the exercises would probably fall short of proving that non-sequential ideation is essential to poetry. Such abstract patterning across its whole workspace is a common feature of poetry, however, and its need might serve as some corrective to contemporary manifestos that place poetry somewhere between artless outpourings of emotion and random assemblages of ready-given images.

References

1. Brian Thomas's Vision and Technique in European Painting. (1952).
2. Bridget Riley's Colour for the Painter in Colour: Art and Science. (1995).
3. D. Bomford's The History of Colour in Art. (1995).
4. J. Stephenson's The Materials and Techniques of Painting. (1989).
5. Linda Cateura's Oil Painting Secrets from a Master. (1984).
6. As will be apparent on referring to works like: S.J. Solomon's The Practice of Oil Painting and Drawing (1910), L. Richmond's The Techniques of Oil Painting (1952), W. Januszcak's Techniques of the World's Great Painters (1980), M. Bazzi's The Artist's Methods and Materials (1960), R. Massey's Formulas for Painters (1967), J.M. Parramon's Self-Portraiture (1978), G. Alber and R. Wolf's Basic Oil Painting Techniques (1993), R. Mayer's The Artists's Handbook of Materials and Technique (1991), C. Moody's Painter's Workshop (1982) and H. Hiler's Notes on the Technique of Painting (1958).
7. Conceptual art. http://www.the-artists.org/MovementView.cfm
?id=4F46309A-96D2-4C1A-9D2ECE2243C365B3. Brief explanation and good listing of representative artists.
8. Chapter 1 of Derek Attridge's The Rhythms of English Poetry (1982).
9. Stephen Booth's Shakespeare's Sonnets (1977).
10. pp 384-392 in Booth.
11. Probably too simple: see linguistics textbooks, e.g. Chapter 2 of David Graddol, Jenny Cheshire and Joan Swan's Describing Language. 1994.

Internet Resources

1. Mother of All Art and Art History Links Pages. http://www.art-design.umich.edu/mother/ Compendium of links to art history departments, research resources, image galleries, fine art schools, museums and textural resources.
2. Art History's Resources on the Web. http://witcombe.sbc.edu/ARTHLinks.html Chris Whitcombe's very full listings of online courses in art history, etc., covering all aspects of world art from prehistoric times to the present.
3. Voice of the Shuttle. http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=2707 A more academic listing of art history resources, but with very useful categories, e.g. museums, art magazines and ezines, image libraries, etc.
4. Berger Foundation. http://www.bergerfoundation.ch/ Over 100,000 images available online through searchable database, plus essays in art history.
5. Web Gallery of Art. http://www.kfki.hu/%7Earthp/ Over 11,600 images of European artworks from the period 1150 to 1800.
6. Worqx Color. http://www.worqx.com/color/ An excellent tutorial on color theory, providing an explanation of terms and effects, with illustrations from graphic design, advertising and website design. The selected list of references will take you even further.
7. Oil Painting Techniques. C.J. Holcombe. Jul 2005. http://www.oil-painting-techniques.com. Notes and extensive references.

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PAINTING MODELS FOR POETRY