Evidencia de la investigación del sector sobre la movilidad del cliente en la

work from the head must come before you attempt the figure, and there

are a good many things that you can learn from landscape which will

help you in figure-work. The manner of painting figures has been much

modified, too, of late years, owing to certain qualities and points of view

which are due to the study of landscape and the important position that

it has come to occupy.

In the old days landscape was only a secondary thing, not only as a branch of art in itself, but particularly as it was used by figure painters. In this century it has so broadened in its scope that it is now recognized to be as important a field of work as any. But further than this, it has become the most influential study in the whole range of painting. From the development of the study of outdoor nature, and particularly outdoor light, it has come about that certain facts of nature have been recognized which were before

neglected, ignored, or unsuspected, and these facts bear quite as much on the painting of the figure as on the painting of landscape. So that it is no more possible to paint the figure, in some respects, as it was painted as a matter of course a hundred years ago, while other ways of painting the figure, which were undreamed of at that time, are the matters of course now.

The whole problem of light has taken a new phase, and the treatment of color in that relation is modified in the painting of figures as well as in the other branches of work. Pitch. - In no direction is this more marked than in the matter of pitch, or key. With the study of landscape, the range of gradation from light to dark has broadened. A picture may now be painted in a “high key;” the picture may be, from the highest to the lowest note in it, far lighter than would have been thought possible even thirty years ago. This question of “bright pictures” is one which demands consideration. One has only to go into any exhibition of pictures to-day to be struck with the fact that the key of almost every picture in it, of whatever kind, has changed from what it would have been in the last generation. This is not merely the result of the spread of the “Impressionist” idea. That influence has only been strongly felt in this country within the last ten years. It is not that which I am speaking of now I mean the fact that even the grayer pictures - those which do not in any ordinary sense of the word belong to Impressionist work - are light in color, where they would once have been dark, or at least darker, The

impressionists have had a definite influence, it is true; but the work of the earlier “plein air” men - the men who posed their models out-of-doors as a matter of principle, who studied landscape out-of-doors - was the first and most powerful influence, and that of the impressionists, coming along after it, has simply emphasized and carried it farther.

Bright Pictures. - Whatever may be thought of the work of those painters who are called “impressionists,” it must be recognized that they have taught us how some things may be possible. And the present quality of brightness will necessarily be to a certain extent a permanent one in art. For like it or not as we may, it is true - true to a certain great, fundamental characteristic of nature. For outdoor light is bright, even on a gray day. The luminosity of color is too great to be represented with dark paint or lifeless color. And once this fact is recognized, it is a fact which will

inevitably influence all kinds of work. What is possible and right at a certain stage of knowledge or recognition may be impossible when other points of view have once been accepted. We see only what we look for, and we look for on1y what we expect to see or are interested to see. You cannot go out-of-doors now and paint as you would have painted a hundred years ago. Then you would have painted what you saw then; but you would not have seen nor looked for things which you cannot help seeing now. For our eyes have been opened to new qualities and new facts, and once the eyes have been opened to them they can never be closed to them again.

Average Observation. - I say we see only what we look for, what we expect to find; anything out of the ordinary is hard to believe at first. In looking at nature the average observer does not even see the obvious. Certain general facts he accepts in the general, but as a rule there is no real recognition of what is there; no perception of the relations of things; no analysis; no real seeing, only a conventional acceptance of a thing as a thing. Men look at nature with one idea, and at a picture of nature with an entirely different idea.

Nature in the picture is to most people just what they have I been accustomed to see in other pictures. They get their idea or how nature looks from those pictures, and if you show them a picture differently conceived they have difficulty in taking it in. For this reason the “bright picture” does not “look right.” I remember being asked by a man in a modern exhibition what I thought or “these bright pictures.” When I asked which pictures he had reference to, I found that he meant the work of a man whose whole aim in painting landscape was, as he once said to me, to get “the just note” in color and value. One would think that the fact that the whole force of an extremely able and sincere mind was directed to that purpose, would produce a picture with at least truth of observation. Yet this was not what my passing

acquaintance wanted to see. The picture he liked, which “had some nature in it,” as he pointed out to me, was an extremely commonplace landscape with a black tree against a garish sky, reflected in a pool of water. The “bright picture” seemed to me exquisitely gray and quiet, though high in key, and the one with “nature in it,” harsh and crude, but conventional; and that was just the point. The average observer wants to see, and does see, in nature what he is accustomed to accept in a picture as nature. But a painter cannot go on such a basis. He may paint a dark picture, but he must find a subject which is dark to do so. He may not paint daylight with false pitch and false relations, and say he sees it so. With every liberty for personal seeing, there are still certain facts so established and obvious that personality must take them and deal with them, must use them and not ignore them, in its self-expression.

The pitch of daylight is one of these facts. Light and luminosity may not be qualities which appeal to your temperament. You may therefore not make them the main theme of your painting of landscape; but you cannot paint a daylight picture without in some way making it obvious that luminosity is a fundamental characteristic of day light. There is no other quality so universally present and pervasive. In sunlight it is the most vital quality. You might as well paint water with. out recognizing the fact that water is wet, as to paint daylight without recognizing the fact that diffused sunlight is brilliant.

A Help. - You will find it very useful as a help in seeing pitch as well as color to have a card with a square hole cut in it to look through at your landscape. Have one side

covered with black velvet and the other left white. Compare darks with the black, and the lights with the white, and make the picture compose in the opening as in a frame.

Key and Harmony. - But you should remember that the high key for out-of-door work does not mean crude nor unsympathetic color, neither does it mean that there is nothing but sunshine and shadow. Your picture may be as high as you please in pitch, and yet be harmonious and pleasing. I have seen impressionist pictures of most

pronounced type hung in the same room with old pictures and in perfect harmony with them. It means that good color is always good color, and will always be harmonious with other good color, whatever the pitch of either. One picture is simply a different note from the other, that is all. The color in nature is not crude in not being dark. The relations of spots of color are just; you have only to be as just in observing them, and your picture will be harmonious.

Make your notes just all over your canvas. Have some of them just and the rest false, and of course it will be wrong. Or if you try to make crudity take the place of brilliancy, you will not get harmony. The harmony which comes from the presence in just relation of all the colors is none the less beautiful because more alive. You need not try for the most contrasting and most sparkling qualities of out-of-door color, but you should feel for the out-of-doorness of it.

The space, the breadth, lack of confines, the largeness and movement, vibration and life, - these are the things which the modern painter has discovered in landscape and has emphasized; and this is what has made modern landscape a vital force in modern art. Whatever you do or do not see, feel, and express in your painting, these you must see, feel, and express j for once these qualities are recognized and accepted they are as universal as the law of gravity, and can be as little ignored.

Landscape Drawing. - Landscape is more difficult to draw than is generally thought; not only is the character affected by the scale of the main masses, but there is great probability of overdrawing. The curves that mark the modelling of the ground are very difficult to give justly. The altitude and slope of mountains are almost invariably exaggerated. The twists and windings of roadways and fences are seldom carefully drawn; yet the most exquisite movement of line is to be gained by just representation of them. To give the character of a tree, too, without making out too much of the detail of it, needs more precise observation than it generally gets.

Get the character; get the sentiment of it. Search for the important things here first, and be more particular about the placing of each line than about the number of lines. Don’t draw too many lines in a landscape; don’t draw too many objects. Carefully study the scene before you till you have decided what parts are most essential in giving the character that you want to express, and then draw most carefully those parts.

See which are the most expressive lines in it. Get the swing and movement of those lines in the large; then study the more subtle movement of them. Get these things on the can vas first, and put everything else in as subsidiary to them. Have all this well placed before you I begin to paint, and allow for little things being painted on to this.

Don’t get too many things into one landscape. The spirit of the time and place is what will make the beauty of it, not the details nor the mere facts. This spirit you will find in a few things, not in many. Having found which lines and forms, which masses and relations of color and value, express this, the more carefully you avoid putting in other things the more entirely you emphasize the quality which is the real reason of existence of your picture.

In studying landscape, work for one thing at a time. What has been said of

sketching and studies applies here. Landscape is the most bewildering of subjects in its multiplicity of facts and objects and colors and contrasts. If you cannot find a way to simplify it you will neither know where to begin nor where to leave off. I cannot tell you just what to do or not to do, because no two landscapes are alike. Recipes will do nothing in helping you to paint. But there is the general principle which you may follow, and I try to keep it before you even at the risk of over- repetition. In no kind of picture can you drag in unimportant things simply because they exist in nature. In landscape more than elsewhere, because you cannot arrange it, but must select in the actual presence of everything, you must learn to concentrate on the things which mean most, and to refuse to recognize those which will not lend themselves to the central idea.

Selection. - When you select your subject, or “motif” as the French call it, select it for something definite. There is always something which makes you think this particular view will make a good picture. State to yourself what it is that you see in it, not in detail, but in the general. Is if the general color effect of the whole, or a

contrast? Is it a sense of largeness and space, or a beautiful combination of line in the track of a road, or row of trees, or a river? Perhaps it is the mass and majesty of a mountain or a group of trees. Something definite or definable catches you -else you had better not do it at all; and what that something is you must know quite precisely, or you will not have a well-understood picture.

When you have distinctly in your mind what you want to paint it for, then see that the composition is so placed on your canvas that that characteristic is the main thing in evidence. With this done it is a very easy thing to concentrate on that

characteristic, and to leave out whatever tends to break it up or distract from it. This is the only way you can simplify your subject.

First by a distinct conception of what you paint it for, then by so much analysis of the whole field of vision as will show you what docs and what does not help in the expression of it.

Detail. - Much detail in landscape is never good painting. Whether big or little, your canvas must express something larger and more important than detail. Give detail when it is needed to express character or to avoid slovenliness. Give as much detail where the emphasis lies as will insure the completeness of representation - not a touch more.

Structure. - Have your foreground details well understood in drawing and value. This does not require the drawing of leaf and twig, but it does require structure. Everything requires structure. Structure is fundamental to character. If you will not take the trouble to study the character of any least thing you put in, don’t put it in at all. Nothing is important enough to put in, if it is not important enough to have its character and its purpose in the picture understood.

I spoke of structure in speaking of the head. If I said nothing but “structure, structure, structure” to the end of the section, you would get the impression of what is the most important thing in drawing. If you will look for and find the line and proportion

expressing the anatomy which makes the thing fulfil its particular function in the world, you will understand its character, and that is what is important everywhere.

Work In Season. - Make your picture in the season which it represents- I don’t say that a good summer picture may not be made in winter; but I do say that you are more likely to express the summer quality while the summer is around you. There is too much half painting of pictures, and then leaving them to be “finished up” afterwards.

Of course you can make all your studies and sketches, and then begin and finish the picture from them. If you are careful to have plenty of material, to accumulate all your facts with the intention of working from those facts, all right; but it would be better if you were to work your picture in the season of it, as long as you are a student at least. For until you have had a great deal of experience, you will find when you come to paint your picture that some very much needed material you have neglected to collect, and you cannot safely supply it from memory. If this occurs in the time of year represented in the picture, you can just go out and study it.

Out-of-door Landscapes. - The most important movement in modern art, the most important in its effects on all kinds of work, is what I have mentioned as the plein air movement. It was thought by some clear-headed men that the best way to paint an out- door picture was to take their canvases out-of-doors to paint it. Instead of working from a few color sketches and many pencil studies, they painted the whole picture from first to last in the open air. Working in this way, certain qualities got into the pictures

unavoidably. Necessarily the color was fresher and truer. Necessarily there was more breadth and frankness, and less conventionality and mere picture-making. The spirit of the open got onto the canvas, and the whole type of picture was changed. For the first time out-of-door values were studied as things in themselves interesting and important. The result on landscape pictures was that pictures painted in the studio seemed unreal and insincere, and that men looked and studied less for the making of pictures, and more for what nature had to reveal.

It would be a good thing for you as a student if you would do as these men did

whenever you want to do any work at landscape, whether for itself or for background. If you wish to pose any kind of figure with landscape background, pose and paint your