How To Look At Pictures

By Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer

From the "Pan-American Art Hand-Book"

The Art-Gallery of the Pan-American Exposition contains, undoubtedly, the best collection of American works of art that has ever been gathered; and they are so arranged that they may be studied to the best advantage, the contributions of each artist being grouped together. Such a collection deserves to be approached in the right mood and the right manner.

The first step toward appreciating and enjoying works of art is to recognize the difference that may exist between the verdict of true judgment and the verdict of personal taste. Often, of course, the two may coincide. But the fact that a picture does not greatly please our own eyes should not convince us that it is a poor picture. We do not decide in this way about other things. No one says, " I don't care to read a book of that kind - therefore it is a poor book; " nor, "That bonnet is unbecoming to me - therefore it is an ugly bonnet." But too often we do say, "I should not care to buy that picture, to live with it - therefore it can't be a fine picture."

Rules for the discovering of true excellence cannot, of course, be laid down in words. They must be learned by educating the mind and the eye in the presence of actual works of art, and, moreover, in the presence of Nature also; for very few eyes untrained in art have ever really looked at Nature in such a way as to be entitled to trust their own testimony in regard to the question whether or not an artist has truthfully portrayed any phase of it. Nevertheless, one general counsel can be given to the inexperienced: Try to put yourself at the artist's point of view, try to understand what he has endeavored to do, before you say whether he has done it well or not.

This counsel is needed even in the most literal sense. Often the effect of a picture depends very greatly upon its distance from the observer's eye. There are many methods of painting, from the most minute and (to use a general but inaccurate term) "highly finished," to the most broadly generalized; and each method, each given canvas, appears at its best from some special distance. To walk about a gallery close to the pictures, studying each as narrowly as possible, is to misread, to misunderstand, the language in which most of them have been written. It is not a habit peculiar to our time. Centuries ago Rembrandt remarked to one of his visitors that pictures were meant to be looked at, not to be smelled. But it is a more unfortunate habit in our own time than it was in certain earlier ones, for modern methods of painting are most often less well adapted to examination at the end of one's nose than were those-to cite an extreme instance-of the so-called "Little Masters" of Holland. A miniature which can be taken in the hand and a wallpainting fifty feet above our head differ as much in the way they are painted as do, in the way they are played, the tenderest violin solo and a military march by a brass band. Between them are works which are meant to be seen at all possible varieties of distance; and the first effort of one who looks at them must be to discover the right points of view in a literal, physical sense.

There is a right point of view also in regard to an artist's choice of subject. He may paint things you would never have chosen. Nevertheless, if his work is well done it ought to give you pleasure of some sort; and it probably will if you will take the time to examine it, trying to see why the artist selected it - for what special beauty of color or line, of light and shadow, of character or meaning.

Then it should be remembered that no kind of painting is or can be a literal and complete representation of the chosen subject, any more than a story can be a full and complete record of all that its characters did and said and felt during the period that it covers. To paint a picture or to tell a story, one must select and condense, omit here and accentuate there. Much must be packed into little; and the result may often be a suggestion rather than a record of the chosen subject, leaving a great deal to the imagination of him who reads the tale or looks upon the canvas. There are many beautiful pictures, indeed, which should be compared rather to brief poems than to stories - which are meant rather to stimulate the memory or to awaken the fancy than to portray facts. The artist has as much right as the worker in words to choose what he shall do. The observer (unless he intends to buy as well as to look!) should merely question whether he has succeeded in his special aim. If he asks for a plainly told anecdote when a poetic suggestion is offered him, he does injustice to the painter and ruins his own chances of enjoyment. Yet this is what that many-minded creature called - "the general public" constantly does in a picture gallery. It complains that all the blades of grass in the foreground of a landscape are not defined, when the painter has cared nothing about them for the moment because he has wanted to suggest the effect of a cloud-shadow on a meadow, or a wind in the tree-tops, or the glow of a sunset sky, and knew that to make his grass-blades conspicuous would distract the eye from this, the central thought, the main intention, of his picture. Or in looking at a portrait the public complains that only the head is "finished," that the gown and the hands are but "roughly" or "carelessly" done, when the painter has wished, perhaps, to concentrate attention upon a beautiful effect of light falling upon the head, and has purposely and very wisely subordinated the other portions of his work. Such instances as these might be almost indefinitely repeated. And they bring me to another point: As truly as the painter may choose what he will paint, and dwell upon some factors in his subject more than upon others if he thinks best, so he may choose the kind of treatment, of handling, of painting in the technical sense, that he will use to express his idea. And if he expresses this idea well, then his picture is well painted and is as "highly finished" as it ought to be.

This very popular term -" highly finished" - is, as I have said, an inaccurate one. It implies that every painter ought to elaborate his canvas as carefully as any brush could, and every part of it in equal measure. But, in truth, the most full and complete expression of a subject is sometimes given by means of brush-work, which is very far indeed from minute, and, when examined close at hand, seems very careless. Notice, for example, some of the pictures by Mr. John Sargent in this collection. Look at them for a moment - not for the sake of enjoyment but of instruction - as closely as you can. Their meaning as an interpretation of Nature will almost disappear. Then go to a distance and look again. You will find them more truthful, more vividly real, and therefore in the genuine sense more skilful and careful pieces of painting than you have often seen. Some of the greatest painters have done their best in this fashion, always or at times. It resembles, for example, the fashion in which Velasquez, one of the greatest artists that ever lived, used his brush. Others, like Holbein, worked minutely, and their pictures can be enjoyed from the nearest point of view as well as from more distant ones. The main thing is not how a painter works but what result he achieves. If the result is truthful and alive, if it portrays or suggests something that he really saw, then his method is good. Your part, as an intelligent observer who wants to enjoy and to learn, is to try to discover what he saw, why he cared to paint it, what he wished his picture to convey to you, and whether he speaks his meaning clearly. And it is surprising how quickly, looking at good pictures in this mood, even the inexperienced may learn something about real pictorial excellence - how soon they will understand that such excellence can be enjoyed even though it does not coincide with strong personal preferences, and how delighted they will be by this enlargement of the power to receive from varied works of art varied kinds of pleasure of the eye and pleasure of the mind

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