Line and Form (1900)
by Walter Crane · English · Gutenberg #25290 · 309,297 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Line and Form (1900)
Author: Walter Crane
Release date: May 2, 2008 [eBook #25290]
Language: English
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LINE & FORM
BY WALTER CRANE
[Illustration]
LONDON: G. BELL & SONS, LTD.
_First published, medium 8vo_, 1900.
_Reprinted, crown 8vo_, 1902, 1904, 1908, 1912, 1914.
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
In the original of this work, most pages are headed by a topic phrase so
that a topic can be located quickly by riffling the pages of the book.
In this etext, the same topic phrases can be found right-aligned above
the paragraph that begins that topic. Thus a topic can be found by
scrolling the text and scanning the right margin.
The original of this work is copiously illustrated. Although this etext
cannot include the figures, it does include their caption as lines like
the following:
[Illustration (f002): The Origin of Outline]
Here f002 is a numeric label for the figure. Because an etext of this
type does not have page numbers, in references to a figure in the List
of Illustrations and in the Index these figure labels are used
instead of page number. In the body text, references to figures by page
number have been supplemented with the figure labels.
The illustrations f006, f007, f008 and f016 do not have captions in the
original and descriptive captions have been added.
The caret is used to indicate superscripts, for example ED^wd^ indicates
ED followed by a small superscript "wd".
Two minor typographical errors were corrected: "thing" to "think" on
page 10 and "intregal" to "integral" on page 197.
PREFACE
As in the case of "The Bases of Design," to which this is intended to
form a companion volume, the substance of the following chapters on Line
and Form originally formed a series of lectures delivered to the
students of the Manchester Municipal School of Art.
There is no pretension to an exhaustive treatment of a subject it would
be difficult enough to exhaust, and it is dealt with in a way intended
to bear rather upon the practical work of an art school, and to be
suggestive and helpful to those face to face with the current problems
of drawing and design.
These have been approached from a personal point of view, as the results
of conclusions arrived at in the course of a busy working life which has
left but few intervals for the elaboration of theories apart from
practice, and such as they are, these papers are now offered to the
wider circle of students and workers in the arts of design as from one
of themselves.
They were illustrated largely by means of rough sketching in line before
my student audience, as well as by photographs and drawings. The rough
diagrams have been re-drawn, and the other illustrations reproduced, so
that both line and tone blocks are used, uniformity being sacrificed to
fidelity.
WALTER CRANE.
Kensington, July, 1900.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
Origin and Function of Outline--Silhouette--Definition of Boundaries
by--Power of Characterization by--Formation of Letters--Methods of
Drawing in Line--The Progressive Method--The Calligraphic Method--The
Tentative Method--The Japanese Direct Brush Method--The Oval Method--
The Rectangular Method--Quality of Line--Linear Expression of
Movement--Textures--Emotion--Scale of Linear Expression 1
CHAPTER II
The Language of Line--Dialects--Comparison of the Style of Various
Artists in Line--Scale of Degrees in Line--Picture Writing--Relation
of Line to Form--Two Paths--The Graphic Purpose--Aspect--The
Ornamental Purpose--Typical Treatment or Convention--Rhythm--Linear
Plans in Pattern Designing--Wall-paper Design--Controlling
Forms--Memory--Evolution in Design--Variety in Unity--
Counterbalance--Linear Logic--Recurring Line and Form--Principle
of Radiation--Range and Use of Line 23
CHAPTER III
Of the Choice and Use of Line--Degree and Emphasis--Influence of the
Photograph--The Value of Emphasis--The Technical Influence--The
Artistic Purpose--Influence of Material and Tools--Brushwork--
Charcoal--Pencil--Pen 51
CHAPTER IV
Of the Choice of Form--Elementary Forms--Space-filling--Grouping--
Analogies of Form--Typical Forms of Ornament--Ornamental Units--
Equivalents in Form--Quantities in Design--Contrast--Value of
Variations of Similar or Allied Forms--Use of the Human Figure
and Animal Forms in Ornamental Design 73
CHAPTER V
Of the Influence of Controlling Lines, Boundaries Spaces, and Plans in
Designing--Origin of Geometric Decorative Spaces and Panels in
Architecture--Value of Recurring Line--Tradition--Extension--
Adaptability--Geometric Structural Plans--Frieze and Field--
Ceiling Decoration--Co-operative Relation 108
CHAPTER VI
Of the Fundamental Essentials of Design: Line, Form, Space--Principles
of Structural and Ornamental Line in Organic Forms--Form and Mass in
Foliage--Roofs--The Mediaeval City--Organic and Accidental
Beauty--Composition: Formal and Informal--Power of Linear
Expression--Relation of Masses and Lines--Principles of Harmonious
Composition 138
CHAPTER VII
Of the Relief of Form--Three Methods--Contrast--Light and Shade, and
Modelling--The Use of Contrast and Planes in Pattern
Designing--Decorative Relief--Simple Linear Contrast--Relief by Linear
Shading--Different Emphasis in relieving Form by Shading Lines--Relief
by means of Light and Shade alone without Outline--Photographic
Projection--Relief by different Planes and Contrasts of Concave and
Convex Surfaces in Architectural Mouldings--Modelled Relief--
Decorative Use of Light and Shade, and different Planes in Modelling
and Carving--Egyptian System of Relief Sculpture--Greek and Gothic
Architectural Sculpture, influenced by Structural and Ornamental
Feeling--Sculptural Tombs, Medals, Coins, Gems--Florentine
Fifteenth-century Reliefs--Desiderio di Settignano 165
CHAPTER VIII
Of the Expression of Relief in Line-drawing--Graphic Aim and
Ornamental Aim--Superficial Appearance and Constructive
Reality--Accidents and Essentials--Representation and Suggestion of
Natural Form in Design--The Outward Vision and the Inner Vision 204
CHAPTER IX
Of the Adaptation of Line and Form in Design, in various materials and
methods--Mural Decoration--Fresco-work of the Italian Painters--
Modern Mural Work--Mural Spacing and Pattern Plans--Scale--The
Skirting--The Dado--Field of the Wall--The Frieze--Panelling--
Tapestry--Textile Design--Persian Carpets--Effect of Texture on
Colour--Prints--Wall-paper--Stained Glass 224
CHAPTER X
Of the Expression and Relief of Line and Form by _Colour_--Effect of
same Colour upon different Grounds--Radiation of Colour--White Outline
to clear Colours--Quality of Tints relieved upon other Tints--
Complementaries--Harmony--The Colour Sense--Colour Proportions--
Importance of Pure Tints--Tones and Planes--The Tone of Time--
Pattern and Picture--A Pattern not necessarily a Picture, but a
Picture in principle a Pattern--Chiaroscuro--Examples of Pattern-work
and Picture-work--Picture-patterns and Pattern-pictures 256
INDEX 283
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Origin of Outline f002
Silhouettes f003
Coast and Mountain Lines--Gulf of Nauplia f004
Proportions of Roman Capital Letters and of lower-case f005a
German text. From Durer's "Geometrica"
The Progressive Method of Drawing in Line f006a
The Calligraphic Method f007a
The Tentative Method f007b
The Oval and Rectangular Methods f008
Lines of Characterization in the Form and Feature of f009
Flowers: Lily and Poppy
Silhouette of Beech Leaves and Line Rendering of the same f010a
Lines of Movement f010b
Effect of Wind upon Trees f011
Line Arrangement in ribbed Sea-sand f012
Lines of different Textures, Structures, and Services f013
Lines of Exaltation and Rejoicing in Unison. The Morning f014
Stars, after William Blake
Lines of Grief and Dejection: Designs from Flaxman's Homer f015
Landscape f016
Scale of various Degrees of Linear Weight and Emphasis f017
Curvilinear Scale of Direction f018
Rectangular Scale of Direction f018
Picture Writing f019
Olive Branch, from Nature f020
Olive Branch, simplified in Decorative Treatment f021
Study of Horned Poppy f022
Adaptation of Horned Poppy in Design: Vertical Panel for f023
Needlework
Question and Answer in Line f024, f025
Diagram showing the Use of a Geometric Basis in Designing a f026
Repeating Pattern
Use of Controlling Boundaries in Designing Sprays f027
Method of Testing a Repeating Pattern f028
Sketch to show how a Pattern of Diverse Elements may be f029
harmonized by Unity of Inclosing and Intermediary Lines
The Principle of Counterbalance in different Systems of f030
Design
Border Units and Border Motive f031
Recurring Line and Form in Border Motives f032
Radiating Principle of Line in Natural Form f033
Radiating Lines of the Pectoral Muscles and Ribs f034
Vaulting of Chapter House, Westminster f035
Lines of Characterization of Feathers and Shells f036
Pen Drawing of Fruit f037
Effect of different Emphasis in Treatment of the same f038, f039
Designs
Effect of different Emphasis in the Drawing of Landscape f040
Example of Page Treatment to show Ornamental Relation f041a
between Text and Pictures
Suggestion for a Carpet Pattern and Abstract Treatment of f041b
the same on Point Paper as detail of Brussels Carpet
Brush Forms f042
Direct Brush Expression of Animal Form f043
Japanese Drawing of a Bird. From "The Hundred Birds of Bari" f044
Elementary Geometrical Forms f045a
Use of the same Forms in Architecture f045b
Poppy-heads f046
Apple cut to show Position of Seeds f047
Cube and Sphere in Architectural Ornament f048a
Filling of Square Space f049a
Filling of Circular Space f049b
Inlay Design: Pattern Units and Motives f050
Grouping of Allied Forms: Composition of Curves f051a
Grouping of Allied Forms: Composition of Angles f051b
Still-life Group illustrative of Wood-engraving f052
Japanese Diagonal Pattern f053
Treatment of Fruit and Leaf Forms: Corresponding Curvature f054
Correspondence in General Contour between Leaf and Tree f055a
Some Analogies in Form f055b
Tree of Typical Pattern Forms, Units and Systems f056
Sketches to show Use of Counterbalance, Quantity, and f057
Equivalents in Designing
Quantities and Counterchange of Border and Field in Carpet f058
Motives
Sketches to illustrate Value of different Quantities in f058-f061
Persian Rugs
Recurrence and Contrast in Border Motives f062
Use of inclosing Boundaries in Designing Animal Forms in f063a
Decorative Pattern
Decorative Spacing of Figures within Geometric Boundaries f063b
Simple Linear Motives and Pattern Bases f064
Use of Intervals in Repeating the same Ornamental Units f065
Designs of Floral, Human, and Animal Forms, governed by f066
Shape of inclosing Boundary
The Parthenon: Sketch to show Spaces used for Decorative f067
Sculpture in Greek Architecture
The Tower of the Winds, Athens f068
Sketch of part of the Arch of Constantine to show spaces for f069
Decorative Sculpture in Roman Architecture
Byzantine (Mosaic) Treatment of Architectural Structural f070
Features: Apse, S. Vitale, Ravenna
Detail of Canopy of Tomb of Gervaise-Alard, Winchelsea f071
Walberswick Church: West Door f072
Miserere in St. David's Cathedral f073
Recessed Panel from the Tomb of Bishop John Morgan, St. f074
David's Cathedral
Corbel from Bishop Vaughan's Chapel, St. David's Cathedral f075
Gothic Tile Pattern, St. David's Cathedral f076
Surface Pattern Motives derived from Lines of Structure f077a
Repeating Patterns built upon Square and Circular Bases f077b
Plan of a Drop Repeat f078
Sketch Designs to show Relation between Frieze and Field in f079
Wall-paper
Principles of Structural and Ornamental Line in Natural f080
Forms
Radiating, Recurring and Counterbalancing Lines in the f081a
Structure of the Skeleton and the Muscles
General Principles of Line and Form in the Branching and f081b
Foliage Masses of Trees
Principles of Structure in Foliage Masses f082
Albert Durer: Detail from "The Prodigal Son" f083
Albert Durer: St. Anthony f084
Roof-lines: Rothenburg f085
St. Margaret Street, Canterbury f086
Figure Designs controlled by Geometric Boundaries f087, f088
Expression of Storm and Calm in Landscape f089
Expression of Repose and Action f090
Controlling Lines of Movement: Movement in a Procession f091a
Lines left by a Watercourse--Lines governing fallen Debris f091b
from a Quarry
Relief of Form, (1) by Outline, (2) by Contrast, (3) by f092
Light and Shade
Relief of Form and Line in Pattern Design by means of f093
Contrast and the Use of Planes
Treatment of Mantling (14th-16th centuries) f094a, f094b
Brass of Martin de Visch, Bruges, 1452 f095
Relief in Pattern Design by means of Simple Linear Contrasts f096a
Relief by adding Shading Lines to Outline f097a
Relief by Diagonal Shading f097b
Different Method and different Emphasis in Relieving Form by f098
Shading Lines
Albert Durer's Principle in the Treatment of Drapery: From f099
the Woodcut in the "Life of the Virgin" Series
Albert Durer: Pen-drawing f100
Filippino Lippi: Study of Drapery f101
Raphael: Studies of Drapery f102
Relief by means of Light and Shade alone, in Pen-drawing f103a
without Outline
Relief by means of White Line on a Dark Ground and _vice f103b
versa_
Relief in Architectural Mouldings f104
Roman Treatment of Corinthian Order, Forum of Nerva, Rome f105
Egyptian Relief Sculpture: Thebes f106
Greek Relief: Eleusis f107
Egyptian Relief: Denderah f107
Chartres Cathedral: Carving on West Front f108
Chartres Cathedral: Tympanum of Central Door of West Front
f109
Medals of the Lords of Mantua, Cesena, and Ferrara, by f110
Vittore Pisano
Treatment of Draped Figure in Black on White Ground and f111a
_vice versa_
Treatment of the same Figure in Light and Shade f111b
The Graphic Principle of the Expression of Form by Light and f112
Shade; with and without Outline
Linear Expression of Features, Feathers and Fur: Notes from f113
Nature
Sketches to illustrate the Graphic and the Decorative f114
Treatment of Draped Figures
Decorative Treatment of Birds f115
Floral Designs upon Typical Inclosing Shapes of Indian and f116
Persian Ornament
Dancing Figure with the Governing Lines of the Movement f117a
Lines of Floral Growth and Structure: Lily and Rose f117b
Coast-lines, Gulf of Nauplia f118a
Lines of Movement in Water, Shallow Stream over Sand f118b
Giotto: Chastity (Lower Church, Assisi) f119
Pinturicchio: Mural Painting (Piccolomini Chapel, Siena) f120
Diagram showing the Principal Fundamental Plans or Systems f121
of Line governing Mural Spacing and Decorative Distribution
Diagram to show how the apparent Depth of a Space is f122
increased by the Use of Vertical Lines, and its apparent
Width by the Use of Horizontal Lines
Decorative Spacing of the Wall: Sketches (to half-inch f123
scale) to show different Treatment and Proportions
Figure of Laura, from the Burgundian Tapestries: The f124
Triumphs of Petrarch, in the South Kensington Museum
Pinturicchio: Fresco in the Appartimenti Borgia f125
Portion of Detail of the Holy Carpet of the Mosque of f126
Ardebil: Persian, sixteenth century
Sketch to illustrate Treatment of Borders in a Persian Rug f127
Arras Tapestry: Diagrams to show the Principle of Working f128
and Surface Effect
Contrasting Surfaces in Warp and Weft in Woven Silk Hanging f129
Indian printed Cotton Cover: South Kensington Museum f130
Stained Glass Treatment: Inclosure of Form and Colour by f131
Lead Lines
Sketch to show Effect of the same Colour and Form upon f132
different Coloured Grounds
Principle of the Effect of the Blending or Blurring of f133
Colours at their Edges
Use of Black and White Outline to clear the Edges of f133
Coloured Forms upon different Coloured Grounds
J. Van Eyck: Portrait of J. Arnolfini and his Wife f134
Ver Meer of Delft: Lady at a Spinet f135
Botticelli: The Nativity f136
Holbein: The Ambassadors f137
Botticelli: Madonna and Child f138
Crivelli: The Annunciation f139
Perugino: The Virgin in Adoration with St. Michael and St. f140
Raphael, and Tobias
Titian: Bacchus and Ariadne f141
Madox Brown: Christ Washing St. Peter's Feet f142
[Illustration (f002): The Origin of Outline.]
OF LINE AND FORM
CHAPTER I
Origin and Function of Outline--Silhouette--Definition of
Boundaries by--Power of Characterization by--Formation of
Letters--Methods of Drawing in Line--The Progressive Method--The
Calligraphic Method--The Tentative Method--The Japanese Direct
Brush Method--The Oval Method--The Rectangular Method--Quality of
Line--Linear Expression of Movement--Textures--Emotion--Scale of
Linear Expression.
Outline, one might say, is the Alpha and Omega of Art. It is the
earliest mode of expression among primitive peoples, as it is with the
individual child, and it has been cultivated for its power of
characterization and expression, and as an ultimate test of
draughtsmanship, by the most accomplished artists of all time.
The old fanciful story of its origin in the work of a lover who traced
in charcoal the boundary of the shadow of the head of his sweetheart as
cast upon the wall by the sun, and thus obtained the first profile
portrait, is probably more true in substance than in fact, but it
certainly illustrates the _function_ of outline as the definition of the
boundaries of form.
[Silhouette]
As children we probably perceive forms in nature defined as flat shapes
of colour relieved upon other colours, or flat fields of light on dark,
as a white horse is defined upon the green grass of a field, or a black
figure upon a background of snow.
[Illustration (f003a): Silhouette]
[Illustration (f003b): Silhouette]
[Definition of Boundaries]
To define the boundaries of such forms becomes the main object in early
attempts at artistic expression. The attention is caught by the
edges--the shape of the silhouette which remains the paramount means of
distinction of form when details and secondary characteristics are
lost; as the outlines of mountains remain, or are even more clearly
seen, when distance subdues the details of their structure, and evening
mists throw them into flat planes one behind the other, and leave
nothing but the delicate lines of their edges to tell their character.
We feel the beauty and simplicity of such effects in nature. We feel
that the mind, through the eye resting upon these quiet planes and
delicate lines, receives a sense of repose and poetic suggestion which
is lost in the bright noontide, with all its wealth of glittering
detail, sharp cut in light and shade. There is no doubt that this
typical power of outline and the value of simplicity of mass were
perceived by the ancients, notably the Ancient Egyptians and the Greeks,
who both, in their own ways, in their art show a wonderful power of
characterization by means of line and mass, and a delicate sense of the
ornamental value and quality of line.
[Illustration (f004): Coast and Mountain Lines--Gulf of Nauplia]
[Formation of Letters]
Regarding line--the use of outline from the point of view of its value
as a means of definition of form and fact--its power is really only
limited by the power of draughtsmanship at the command of the artist.
From the archaic potters' primitive figures or the rudimentary attempts
of children at human or animal forms up to the most refined outlines of
a Greek vase-painter, or say the artist of the Dream of Poliphilus, the
difference is one of degree. The tyro with the pen, learning to write,
splotches and scratches, and painfully forms trembling, limping O's and
A's, till with practice and habitude, almost unconsciously, the power to
form firm letters is acquired.
Writing, after all, is but a simpler form of drawing, and we know that
the letters of our alphabet were originally pictures or symbols. The
main difference is that writing stops short with the acquisition of the
purely useful power of forming letters and words, and is seldom pursued
for the sake of its beauty or artistic qualities as formerly; while
drawing continually leads on to new difficulties to be conquered, to new
subtleties of line, and fresh fascinations in the pursuit of distinction
and style.
[Illustration (f005a): Proportions of Roman Capital Letters and Method
of Drawing Them (From Albert Durer's "Geometrica").]
[Illustration (f005b): Proportions of Lower-Case German Text and Method
of Drawing the Letters (From Albert Durer's "Geometrica").]
The practice of forming letters with the pen or brush, from good types,
Roman and Gothic, however, would afford very good preliminary practice
to a student of line and form. The hand would acquire directness of
stroke and touch, while the eye would grow accustomed to good lines of
composition and simple constructive forms. The progressive nature of
writing--the gradual building up of the forms of the letters--and the
necessity of dealing with recurring forms and lines, also, would bear
usefully upon after work in actual design. Albert Durer in his
"Geometrica" gives methods on which to draw the Roman capitals, and also
the black letters, building the former upon the square and its
proportions, the thickness of the down strokes being one-eighth of
square, the thin strokes being one-sixteenth, and the serifs being
turned by circles of one-fourth and one-eighth diameter. The capital O,
it will be noted, is formed of two circles struck diagonally.
[Methods of Drawing in Line]
Letters may be taken as the simplest form of definition by means of
line. They have been reduced through centuries of use from their
primitive hieroglyphic forms to their present arbitrary and fixed types,
though even these fixed types are subject to the variation produced by
changes of taste and fancy.
But when we come to unformulated nature--to the vast world of complex
forms, ever changing their aspect, full of life and movement, trees,
flowers, woods and waters, birds, beasts, fishes, the human form--the
problem how to represent any of these forms, to express and characterize
them by means of so abstract a method as line-drawing, seems at first
difficult enough.
But since the growth of perception, like the power of graphic
representation, is gradual and partial, though progressive, the eye and
the mind are generally first impressed with the salient features and
leading characteristics of natural forms, just as the child's first idea
of a human form is that of a body with four straight limbs, with a
preponderating head. That is the first impression, and it is
unhesitatingly recorded in infantine outline.
The first aim, then, in drawing anything in line is to grasp the general
truths of form, character, and expression.
[The Progressive Method]
There are various methods of proceeding in getting an outline of any
object or figure. To begin with, the student might begin progressively
defining the form by a series of stages in this way. Take the profile
of a bird, for instance; the form might be gradually built up by the
combination of a series of lines:
[Illustration (f006a): (bird forms)]
or take the simpler form of a flask bottle:
[Illustration (f006b): (bottle forms)]
or a jar on the same principle:
[Illustration (f006c): (jar forms)]
or, simpler still, a leaf form, putting in the stem first with one
stroke (1):
[Illustration (f006d): (leaf forms)]
and building the form around it (2, 3).
[The Calligraphic Method]
[Illustration (f007a): (calligraphic forms)]
This might be termed the calligraphic method of drawing; and in this
method facility of hand might be further practised by attempting the
definition of forms by continuous strokes, or building it up by as few
strokes as possible. The simpler types of ornament consisting of
meandering and flowing lines can all be produced in this way, i.e., by
continuous line, as well as natural forms treated in a certain abstract
or conventional way, which adapts them to decoration.
[The Tentative Method]
[Illustration (f007b): (jar forms)]
Another method is to sketch in lightly guide lines for main masses,
building a sort of scaffolding of light lines to assist the eye in
getting the correct outline in its place, using vertical centre lines
for symmetrical forms to get the poise right. This is the method very
generally in use, but I think it very desirable to practise direct
drawing as well, to acquire certainty of eye and facility of hand; and
one must not mind failure at first, as this kind of power and facility
is so much a matter of practice.
[Illustration (f007c): (birdbath sketch)]
[The Japanese Direct Brush Method]
The Japanese, who draw with the brush, have accustomed themselves to
draw in a direct manner without any preliminary sketching, and the charm
of their work is largely owing to that crisp freshness of touch only
possible to their direct method. The great object is to establish a
perfectly intimate correspondence between eye and hand, so that the
latter will record what the former perceives.
Abundant specimens of the freedom and naturalism of the modern school of
Japanese artists in this direct brush method may be found in the work of
Bari, Hiroshigi, and Hokusai, and in the numerous prints and books of
designs from their hands. To all draughtsmen and designers they are most
valuable to study for their direct method and simple means of expression
of form and fact. Accidental as they frequently seem in composition, the
placing of the drawing upon the paper is carefully considered before
starting, and this, of course, is always a very important point.
Yet another method of drawing, more especially in relation to the
drawing of the human figure and animal forms, I may mention as a help to
those who do not feel strong enough for the direct method. At the same
time it must be borne in mind that we can accustom ourselves to _any_
method; and the more dependent we become upon a single method, the less
facility we shall have for working in any other. But for all that it is
desirable to master _one_ method--that is, to be able to draw in line
_freely_ in one way or another--and experience and practice alone will
enable us to find the method most satisfactory.
[The Oval and Rectangular Methods]
[Illustration (f008): (human and horse forms)]
[The Rectangular Method]
This other method is to block in the principal masses of the forms we
desire to represent by means of a series of ovals, as shown in the
illustration, and when we have got the masses in their proper relations,
to proceed to draw in the careful outline of the figure, or whatever it
may be, upon this substructure of guiding lines, correcting as we go
along. It would be quite possible to work on the same principle, but
upon a structure of more or less rectangular masses. The real use of the
method is to assist the student to get a grasp of the relation of the
masses of a figure and a sense of structure in drawing; whether square
or oval blocking in is used may be a matter of choice. It may be said
for the oval forms that they resemble the contours of the structure in
human and animal forms.
If one had a tendency to round one's forms too much, it would be well to
try the rectangular method to correct this, and _vice versa_.
After a certain facility has been acquired in rendering form by means of
line, we shall perceive further capacities of expression in its use, and
begin to note how different characteristics of form and natural fact may
be expressed by varying the quality of our outline.
If we are drawing a plant or a flower, for instance, we should endeavour
to show by the quality of our line the difference between the fine
springing curves in the structure of the lily, the solid seed-centre and
stiff radiation of the petals of the daisy, and the delicate silky folds
of the poppy.
[Quality of Line]
[Illustration (f009): Lines of Characterization in the Form and Feature
of Flowers: Lily and Poppy.]
But, as leaves come before flowers, it would be best to begin with leaf
forms and try to express the character of oak and beech, lime and
chestnut leaves, for instance, by means of outline. Probably at first
we shall feel dissatisfied with our outline as not being full enough: it
may look meagre in quality and small in definition of form. This
probably arises from not allowing enough space--from setting the
outline too much within the boundary of the form. To correct this one
cannot do better than block in the form of the object we are drawing
(leaf, flower, or figure) with a full brush in black silhouette, placing
the object against the light or white paper, so that its true boundary
may be seen uninterfered with by surface markings or shadows, and,
concentrating our attention upon the _edge_, follow it as carefully as
possible with the solid black. Then, if we compare the result with our
outline, it will help to show where it has failed; and the practice of
thus blocking in with the brush in solid silhouette will tend to
encourage a larger style of drawing, since good outline means good
perception of mass; and as a general principle in drawing, it may be
recommended to place one's outline _outside_ the silhouette boundary of
the form rather than within it; that is to say, when the figure or
object is relieved in light against dark, as the line in that case
defines the edge against the background. When the figure or object
appears as dark upon a light ground, however, the outline should be
within the silhouette, obviously, or its delicate boundary is lost.
[Illustration (f010a): Silhouette of Beech Leaves and Line Rendering of
the Same.]
[Linear Expression of Movement]
Another important attribute of line is its power of expressing or
suggesting _movement_. By a law of inseparable association, undulating
lines approaching the horizontal, or leading down to it, are connected
with the sense of repose; whereas broken curves and rectangular lines
always suggest action and unrest, or the resistance to force of some
kind.
[Illustration (f010b): Lines of Movement]
The recurrence of a series of lines in the same direction in a kind of
crescendo or wave-like movement suggests continuous pressure of force in
the same direction, as in this series of instantaneous actions of a man
bowling, where the line drawn through or touching the highest points in
each figure takes the line of the curve of a wave. The wave-line,
indeed, may be said not only to suggest movement, but also to describe
its direction and force. It is, in fact, _the line of movement_. The
principle may be seen in a simpler way, as Hogarth points out in his
"Analysis of Beauty," by observing the line described along a wall by
the head of a man walking along the street. Or, as we may see sometimes
near the coast, trees exposed to the constant pressure of the wind
illustrate this recurrence of lines in the same direction governing
their general shape; and as each tree is forced to spread in the
direction away from the wind, the effect is that of their being always
struggling against its pressure even in the calmest weather; and this is
entirely due to our association of wind-movement with this peculiar
linear expression.
[Illustration (f011): Lines Expressive of Movement: Effect of Wind Upon
Trees]
Flowing water, again, is expressed by certain recurring wave-lines,
which remind us of the ancient linear symbols of the zigzag and meander
used from the earliest times to express water. In the streams that
channel the sands of the sea-shore when the tide recedes we may see
beautiful flowing lines, sometimes crossing like a network, and
sometimes running into a series of shell-like waves; while the sands
themselves are ribbed and channelled and modelled by the recurring
movement of the waves, which leave upon them the impress and the
expression of their motion (much as in a more delicate medium the
air-currents impress the fields of cloud, and give them their
characteristic forms).
[Illustration (f012): Line Arrangement in Ribbed Sea Sand]
[Linear Expression of Textures]
Textures and surfaces, too, fall within the range of linear expression.
One would naturally use lines of totally different consistency and
character to express rough or smooth surfaces: to express the difference
of value, for instance, between the ivory-like smoothness of an egg and
the scaly surface of a pine-cone, entirely different qualities of line
are obviously wanted. The firm-set yet soft feathers of the plumage of a
bird must be rendered by a very different touch from the shining scales
of a fish. The hair and horns of animals, delicate human features,
flowers, the sinuous lines of thin drapery, or the broad massive folds
of heavy robes, all demand from the designer and draughtsman in line
different kinds of suggestive expression, a translation or rendering of
natural fact subordinate to the artistic purpose of his work, and in
relation to the material and purpose for which he works.
[Linear Expression of Emotion]
[Illustration (f013): Lines of Different Textures, Structures, and
Surfaces.]
Then, again, when we come to the expression of ideas--of thought and
sentiment--we find in line an abstract but direct medium for their
illustration; and this again, too, by means of that law of inseparable
association which connects the idea of praise or aspiration and
ascension, for instance, with long lines inclining towards the severe
vertical, as when we draw a figure with upraised hands; while the
feeling might be increased if led up to or re-echoed by other groups and
objects in the composition, forming a kind of vertical crescendo on the
same principle which we were considering in regard to the expression of
lateral movement. Few things in design are finer or more elevated in
feeling than William Blake's design of the Morning Stars singing
together, in the series of the Book of Job, yet it is little more than
a vertical arrangement of figures with uplifted and intercrossing arms.
The linear plan gives the main impetus to the expressiveness of the
design, and is the basis of the beauty, which culminates in the rapture
of the fresh youthful faces.
[Illustration (f014): Expression of Emotion: Lines of Exaltation and
Rejoicing in Unison. The Morning Stars, After William Blake. (From the
Book of Job.)]
[Scale of Linear Expression]
Bowed and bent lines tending downwards, on the other hand, convey the
opposite ideas of dejection and despair. This is illustrated in these
figures of Flaxman's, who was a great master of style in outline.
[Illustration (f015): Lines of Grief and Dejection. Flaxman: Designs to
Homer.]
[Capacity of Line]
We seem here to discover a kind of scale of linear expression--the two
extremes at either end: the horizontal and the vertical, with every
degree and modulation between them; the undulating curve giving way to
the springing energetic spiral, the meandering, flowing line sinking to
the horizontal: or the sharp opposition and thrust of rectangular, the
nervous resistance of broken curves, the flame-like, triumphant,
ascending verticals. Truly the designer may find a great range of
expression within the dominion of pure line. Line is, indeed, as I have
before termed it, a language, a most sensitive and vigorous speech of
many dialects; which can adapt itself to all purposes, and is, indeed,
indispensable to all the provinces of design in line. Line may be
regarded simply as a means of record, a method of registering the facts
of nature, of graphically portraying the characteristics of plants and
animals, or the features of humanity: the smooth features of youth, the
rugged lines of age. It is capable of this, and more also, since it can
appeal to our emotions and evoke our passionate and poetic sympathies
with both the life of humanity and wild nature, as in the hands of the
great masters it lifts us to the heavens or bows us down to earth: we
may stand on the sea-shore and see the movement of the falling waves,
the fierce energy of the storm and its rolling armament of clouds,
glittering with the sudden zigzag of the lightning; or we may sink into
the profound calm of a summer day, when the mountains, defined only by
their edges, wrapped in soft planes of mist, seem to recline upon the
level meadows like Titans and dream of the golden age.
[Illustration (f016): (landscape)]
CHAPTER II
The Language of Line--Dialects--Comparison of the Style of
various Artists in Line--Scale of Degrees in Line--Picture
Writing--Relation of Line to Form--Two Paths--The Graphic
Purpose--Aspect--The Ornamental Purpose--Typical Treatment or
Convention--Rhythm--Linear Plans in Pattern Designing--Wall-paper
Design--Controlling Forms--Memory--Evolution in Design--Variety
in Unity--Counterbalance--Linear Logic--Recurring Line and
Form--Principle of Radiation--Range and Use of Line.
I spoke of Line as a Language, and gave some illustrations of its power
and range of expression, showing that line is capable not only of
recording natural fact and defining character, but also of conveying the
idea of movement and force, of action and repose; and, further, of
appealing to our emotions and thoughts by variations and changes in its
direction, the degree of its emphasis, and other qualities.
[Dialects]
Yet every designer and draughtsman uses line in a different way, and of
a different quality, according to his preference, habit, training, or
personality. The endless variations which result I should--to pursue the
analogy of speech further--term _dialects_. We might collect abundant
examples of these from the work of line-designers since the world began,
or compare the methods of any of the popular illustrators of to-day to
find constant variations and individual differences occurring even
among those which might be said, under the influence of a prevailing
mode, to be variations of one type.
Compare a Greek vase-painter's delicate brush line-drawing with the bold
pen-line of Albert Durer (to get a contrast in historic style). Compare
(to take two masters of different schools, but of the same country) the
line-treatment of Mantegna with the line-treatment of Raphael; or, to
take another jump, compare the line-work of Blake and Flaxman; or, to
take a modern instance, and to come to our own contemporary artists,
compare a drawing by Burne-Jones and one by Phil May.
We might construct a sort of scale of the degrees and qualities of line.
There is, for instance, outline of every degree of boldness or fineness,
from the strong black half-inch outline and upwards used in mosaic-work
and stained-glass leading; the outline of the pattern designer for
block-printing; the outline of the pen draughtsman for process-work or
woodcut; and so on, down to the hair-line of the drypoint etcher.
[Scale of Degrees in Line]
There are the _qualities_ of line in different degrees of firmness,
roughness, raggedness, or smooth and flowing. There are the degrees of
_direction_ of line, curvilinear or angular. On the angular side all
variations from the perpendicular and horizontal, or rectangle, within
which we may find all these degrees, and on the curvilinear side, all
the variations from spiral to circle: so that we might say that the
rectangle was the cradle of all angular variations of line, while the
semicircle was the cradle of all curvilinear variations. (See the
diagrams on p. 26.[f018])
[Illustration (f017): Scale of Various Degrees of Linear Weight and
Emphasis.]
Every artist, sooner or later, by means of his selective adaptive sense,
finds a method in the use of line to suit his own personality--to suit
his own individual aim in artistic expression--and in course of time it
becomes a characteristic manner, by which his work is instantly known,
like a friend's handwriting.
[Illustration (f018): Curvilinear and Rectangular Scales of Direction.]
Now what determines this choice, this personal selection, over and above
necessities of method and material, it would be difficult to say, unless
we had more minute knowledge of the natural history of a human being
than we are likely to possess. We can only say that from practice are
evolved certain methods or principles, consciously or unconsciously; and
it is only these general methods or principles that can be explained and
tested for the benefit of those essaying to follow the arduous and
difficult path of art.
[Relation of Line to Form]
At the outset we see that we need a means of definition in drawing, just
as a child needs a word to express a thing it wants. _Line_, at the
point of the pencil, pen, or brush, places this possibility of
definition within our reach; but before we can grasp it we need some
knowledge, however rudimentary, of its inseparable companion, _Form_.
I recall two innocent and entertaining methods from the traditions of
the nursery, which appeal at once in a curious way to both the oral and
graphic senses, and unite story and picture in one. These are
illustrated on p. 28.[f019] By such devices a child learns to associate
line and form, unconsciously and step by step defining form in the use
of, or pursuit of, line.
[Illustration (f019): Modern Picture-writing According to Nursery
Tradition]
It would be very entertaining and agreeable if we could carry the
principle further, and get a passable study from the antique, for
instance, by a similar process. In line-drawing we may, however, always
tell some story or fact, or character, phase, or idea.
[The Graphic Purpose]
But supposing we have mounted our steed _Form_, and taken our bridle
_Line_ in hand, and have started riding at large in the vast domain of
nature, with the primary object of finding and hunting down truth at
last; we soon perceive that there are so many truths, or rather that
truth, even of natural fact, has so many sides, that it is difficult to
make up our mind which one to pursue. Thought, however, will soon
discover that in this pursuit of truth we strike a road that naturally
divides itself, or branches out, into two main paths distinct in aim.
These two paths in art have been called by many names; they occasionally
cross each other, or overlap, and are sometimes blended, or even
confused; but it will be useful for our present purpose to keep them
very distinct. I will term them, for convenience:
1. The Graphic Purpose. (Accidental form.)
2. The Ornamental Purpose. (Typical form.)
Our use of line will largely depend upon which of these two it is our
object to pursue. Now when we look at anything with intent to draw--say
a leafy bough as it grows in the sunshine--we see great complexity of
form and surface-lighting. The leaves, perhaps, take all manner of
variations of the typical form, and are set at all sorts of angles. In
making a rapid sketch with the object of getting the appearance of the
bough, we naturally dwell upon these accidents and superficial facts. At
the same time, with nothing but line to express them, we are compelled
to use a kind of convention, though our aim be purely naturalistic, to
get a faithful portrait of the bough.
We must make our line as _descriptive_ as possible, defining the main
forms boldly, and blocking in broadly the main masses of form and light
and shade. We are now aiming at the general look of the thing. We are
striving to grasp the facts of _Aspect_. We are concerned with the
purely graphic purpose, to make a picture upon paper.
[Illustration (f020): Olive Branch From Nature]
We cannot, however, even under these simple conditions, altogether
leave out of account considerations which, strictly speaking, must be
termed "decorative." For instance, there is the question of placing the
study well upon the paper, a very important point to start with; and
then the question of beauty must arise, not only in the selection of our
point of view, but in the choice of method, in the treatment of line we
adopt; and it does not follow that the most apparently forcible way of
getting bold projection by means of black shadows, at the cost of the
more delicate characteristics of our subject, is the best. On the
contrary, the finest draughtsmanship is always the most subtle and
delicate, and one cannot get subtle and delicate draughtsmanship without
faithful study and careful constant practice--_knowledge of form_, in
short--and I am afraid there is no short cut to it.
[The Ornamental Purpose]
[Illustration (f021): Olive Branch Simplified in Decorative Treatment]
Now supposing we make our study of leaves, not as an end in itself, and
for its simple pictorial values or qualities only, but with an
ornamental or decorative purpose in view, intending to make use of its
form and character in some more or less systematic design or
pattern-work--adapted to special methods and materials--intended to
decorate a wall-surface or a textile, for instance; we might certainly
start with a general sketch of its appearance as before, but we should
find that we should want to understand it in its detail; the law of its
growth and construction; we should want to dwell upon its typical
character and form, the controlling lines of its masses, rather than on
its accidental aspects, because it would really be only with these that
we could successfully deal in adapting anything in nature to the
conditions and limitations of a design. To do this requires as much art
as to make a clever graphic sketch, perhaps more; but it is certainly
not so easily understood and appreciated, as a rule. Pattern-work is
taken so much for granted, except by those technically interested,
whereas a graphic sketch may bring the drama of nature, and of human
character and incident, before our eyes. It does not require us to stop
and think out the less obvious meaning, or trace the invention or grace
of line, to appreciate the rhythmic, silent music which the more
formalized and abstract decorative design may contain, _quite apart from
the forms it actually represents_.
[Illustration (f022): Study of Horned Poppy]
[Illustration (f023): Adaptation of the Horned Poppy in Design: Vertical
Panel For Needlework.]
[Question and Answer in Line]
Here we discover another function of line. For, directly we endeavour to
construct a decorative design--that is, a design intended to adorn or to
express an object or surface--we find that we must build it upon some
sort of a plan, or geometric controlling network or scaffolding, so as
to give it unity, rhythm, and coherence--especially so in the case of
repeating designs. Even in an isolated panel or picture the necessity of
this linear basis will be felt, since one cannot draw a line or define a
form without demanding an answer--that is, a corresponding, re-echoing
line or mass.
[Illustration (f024): Curves 1.Q and 2.A]
The curve (1. Q) is a proposition or question. It is answered or
balanced by the corresponding curve (2. A), and forms the basis for a
scroll design.
[Illustration (f025): Curves 1 and 2]
The five radiating lines (1) are obviously incomplete by themselves, but
if we add another four, in reverse order, (2) we get a centred and
symmetric motive of an anthemion character.
[Wall-Paper Design]
Take, however, a wall-paper. The problem is to construct a design
pleasant to the eye in line, form, colour, and suggestion; which will be
interesting in detail, and yet repeat upon a wall-surface without flaw,
and without becoming wearisome. Moreover, one which will lend itself to
being cut upon wood, if for block-printing, and which may be reproduced
with a due regard to economy of means. The designer may have a square of
twenty-one inches in which to make his design.
[Illustration (f026): Diagram Showing the Use of a Geometric Basis in
Designing Repeating Pattern.]
A useful way to begin with is to rule out a sheet of paper into squares,
say on the scale of 1-1/2 inch to the foot, and upon this jot down your
first ideas of linear arrangement and colour motive, and get the
general effect, and test the plan of repeats. When you are satisfied
with one, enlarge it to full size, correct and amplify it, and improve
it in form and detail. Changes will probably be found necessary in
drawing it upon the larger scale, sometimes additions, sometimes
omissions. Now in sketching out the general plan, one builds, as before
said, upon some basis or plan, however simple, since one cannot put a
simple spot, sprig, or spray upon paper intending to repeat, without
some system of connection to put them into relation.
[Controlling Forms]
In designing one's sprig, too, the best plan to secure good decorative
effect is to see that its general form is inclosed or bounded by an
agreeable linear shape, although itself not actually visible. Simple
leaf and flower forms are generally the best to use for these
controlling boundaries. Sprays designed on this principle may be relied
upon for repeating pleasantly and safely when they are placed upon, and
connected by, the controlling geometric plan. A good practical test of
the truth and completeness of your square repeat is, when the design is
done, or even in progress, to cut it into four equal parts (supposing it
to be a twenty-one inch square). This will enable you to get the joints
true, and also, by altering the position of the squares, to give you a
very good idea of the effect of the repeat full size. (See the diagrams
on p. 41.[f028])
These things must be considered, of course, merely as practical aids to
invention: not by any means as substitutes for it. One cannot give any
recipe for designing, and no rules, principles, or methods can supply
the place of imagination and fancy. "He who would bring back health from
the Indies," says an old proverb, "must take it out with him."
At the same time the imagination can be enfeebled by starvation and
neglect. It can be depressed by dull and sordid surroundings. It is apt
to grow, like other living things, by what it feeds on, and is stronger
for exercise and development.
[Illustration (f027): Use of Controlling Boundaries in Designing
Sprays]
[Memory]
Memory, too, is an important and serviceable thing in designing, and
this, again, can be cultivated to an almost unlimited extent. I mean
that selective kind of memory which, by constant and close observation,
extracts and stores up the essential serviceable kind of facts for the
designer: facts of form, of structure, of movement of figures,
expressive lines, momentary or transitory effects of colour--all those
rare and precious visual moments which will not wait, and which happen
unexpectedly. They should be captured like rare butterflies and
carefully stored in the mind's museum of suggestions, as well as, as far
as is possible, pinned down in the hieroglyphics of the note-book.
[Evolution in Design]
As regards procedure in working out a design, one generally thinks of
some leading feature, some central mass or form or curve--of a figure or
a flower, say--and one thinks of its capacity in repeat; and, since one
form or line should inevitably suggest or necessitate--as by a kind of
logic--another, one adds other forms until the design is complete. For
it must never be forgotten that design is a growth which has its own
stages of evolution in the mind, answering to the evolution of the
living forms of nature--first the blade, then the ear, after that the
full corn in the ear.
Experience teaches us that the most harmonious arrangements of form and
line are those in which the leading lines and forms through all sorts of
variations, continually recur. We cannot place a number of sharply
contrasting and contradictory forms together in design satisfactorily--
at least we cannot do so without recourse to other elements to harmonize
and to bring them into relation. For instance, we might get a great deal
of ornamental variety by means of a number of heraldic devices upon
shields, full in themselves of quaintness and contrasts, but brought
into harmony by the boundary lines of the shields and the divisions; or,
still further, by throwing them upon a background of leaves and stems,
the meandering lines and recurring forms of which would answer as a kind
of warp upon which to weave the heraldic spots into a connected and
harmonious pattern.
[Illustration (f028): Method of Testing a Repeating Pattern.]
[Variety in Unity]
But even in the ornamental treatment of diverse forms, as the mediaeval
heraldic designers were well aware, they can be brought into
decorative harmony by following a similar principle to the one already
laid down in regard to the designing of sprigs and sprays: that is to
say, that in designing an animal or figure for heraldry or introduction
into a pattern, one should arrange it so that it should fall within the
boundary of some geometric or foliated form, square, circular,
elliptical or otherwise, as might be desirable. To this, however, I
hope to return in a future chapter.
[Illustration (f029): Sketch to Show How a Pattern of Diverse Elements
May Be Harmonized by Unity of Inclosing and Intermediary Lines.]
[Counterbalance]
We may here consider another important principle in designing with line
and mass, that of _counterbalance_.
[Illustration (f030): The Principle of Counterbalance in Different
Systems of Design.]
Take any defined space as a panel, tile, or border to be filled with
design: you place your principal mass, and instantly feel that it must
be balanced by a corresponding mass, or some equivalent. Its place will
be determined by the principle upon which the design is built. If on a
symmetrical arrangement, you find your centre (say of a panel), and you
may either throw the chief weight and mass of the design upon the
central feature (as a tree), and balance it by smaller forms or wings
each side, or _vice versa_; or, adopting a diagonal plan, you place your
principal mass (say it is a tile) near the top left-hand corner (suppose
it is a pomegranate), connecting it with a spiral diagonal line (the
stem); the place of the counterbalancing mass (the second pomegranate)
is obviously near the bottom right-hand corner of the square. You may
then feel the necessity for additional smaller forms, and so add to it
(the leaves), completing the design. (See preceding page.)
[Linear Logic]
On the same principle one may design upon various other plans. The exact
choice of the distribution of the counterbalancing masses must always be
a matter of personal feeling, judgment, and taste, controlled by the
perception of certain logical necessities: as it seems to me that
designing is a species of linear reasoning,* and might almost be
worked in its elementary stages on the principle of the syllogism,
consisting of two propositions and a conclusion. A spiral curve is a
harmonious line, says the designer: repeat it, reversed, and you
prolong the harmony; repeat it again, with variations, and you complete
the harmony. Or, harmonious effect is produced by recurring form and
line. Here is a circular form; here is a meandering line: combine and
repeat them, and you get a logical and harmonious border motive.
[*] I recall here a saying of Sir E. Burne-Jones, that "a bad
line can only be answered by a good line."
[Illustration (f031): Border Units and Border Motive.]
[Recurring Line and Form]
The everlastingly recurring egg and dart moulding and the volute are
instances of the harmonious effect of very simple arrangements of
recurring line and form. We also get illustrated in these another linear
quality in design--that up-and-down movement which gives a pleasant
rhythm to the simplest border, and is of especial consequence in all
repeating border and frieze designs. The borders of early, ancient, and
classical art might be said to be little besides rhythmical and logical
arrangements of line. The same rhythmical principle is found in the
designs of the classical frieze in all its varieties, culminating in the
rhythmic movement of the great Pan-Athenaic procession in that
master-frieze of the Parthenon, which, though full of infinite variety
and delicate sculptured detail, is yet controlled by a strictly
ornamental motive, and constructed upon the rhythmic recurrence of pure
line.
[Illustration (f032): Recurring Line and Form in Border Motives.]
[The Principle of Radiation]
Another great linear principle in design is what is known as the
_radiating_ principle, which gives vitality and vigour alike to both
arrangements of line and delineations of form. It is emphatically and
abundantly illustrated in natural forms, from the scallop shell upon the
sea-shore to the sun himself that radiates his light upon it. The
palm-leaf in all its graceful varieties demonstrates its beauty, its
constructive strength combined with extraordinary lightness, which
becomes domesticated in that fragile sceptre of social influence and
festivity, the fan, and which again spreads its silken, or gossamer,
wing as a suggestive field for the designer. We find the principle
springing to life again in the fountain jet, and symbolical of life as
it has ever been; by means of the same principle applied to construction
the Gothic architects raised their beautiful vaults, and emphasized the
structural principle and the beauty of recurring line by moulding the
edges of their ribs; while we have but to look at the structure of the
human frame to find the same principle there also, in the fibres of the
muscles, for instance, the radiation of the ribs, and of the fingers and
toes.
[Illustration (f033): Radiating Principle of Line in Natural Form.]
In truth, as I have said, if there can be said to be one principle more
than another, the perception and expression of which gives to an
artist's work in design peculiar vitality, it is this principle of
radiating line. One may follow it through all stages and forms of
drawing and design, and it is equally important in the design of the
figure, in the structure of a flower, in the folds of drapery, and alike
in the controlling lines of pictorial composition and decorative plan,
whether the lines radiate from seen or from hidden centres, which in all
kinds of informal design are perhaps the most important.
[Illustration (f034): Radiating Lines of the Pectoral Muscles & Ribs]
[Range and Use of Line]
We see, therefore, that line possesses a constructive and controlling
function, in addition to its power of graphic expression and decorative
definition. It is the beginning and the end of art. By means of its
help we guide our first tottering steps in the wide world of design;
and, as we gain facility of hand and travel further afield, we discover
that we have a key to unlock the wonders of art and nature, a method of
conjuring up all forms at will: a sensitive language capable of
recording and revealing impressions and beauties of form and structure
hidden from the careless eye: a delicate instrument which may catch and
perpetuate in imperishable notation unheard harmonies: a staff to lean
upon through the journey of life: a candid friend who never deceives us:
perchance a divining rod, which may ultimately reveal to us that Beauty
and Truth are one--as they certainly are, or ought to be, in the world
of art.
[Illustration (f035): Radiating Line in Architectural Construction:
Vaulting of Chapter House, Westminster.]
CHAPTER III
Of the Choice and Use of Line--Degree and Emphasis--Influence of
the Photograph--The Value of Emphasis--The Technical
Influence--The Artistic Purpose--Influence of Material and
Tools--Brush-work--Charcoal--Pencil--Pen.
Recognizing the great range and capacity of line as a means of
expression, and also the range of choice it presents to the designer and
draughtsman, the actual exercise of this choice of line, with a view to
the most expressive and effective use in practice, becomes, of course,
of the first consequence.
In this matter of choice we are helped by natural bias, by personal
character and preferences, for which it would, as I have said, be
difficult fully to account; but beyond this a kind of evolution goes on,
arising out of actual practice, which controls and is controlled by it.
Draw simply a succession of strokes with any point upon paper, and we
find that we are gradually led to repeat a particular kind of stroke, a
particular degree of line, partly perhaps because it seems to be
produced with more ease, and partly because it appears to have the
pleasantest effect.
[Choice of Line]
By a kind of "natural selection," therefore, influenced no doubt by many
small secondary causes, such as the relation of the particular angle of
the hand and pencil-point to the surface--the nature of the point
itself and the nature of the surface--we finally arrive at a choice of
line. This choice, again, will be liable to constant variation, owing
to the nature of the object we are about to draw, or the kind of design
we want to make.
[Use of Line]
The kind of line which seems appropriate to representing the delicate
edges of a piece of low-relief sculpture, for instance, would require
greater force and firmness if we wanted to draw an antique cast in the
round, and in strong light and shade. The character of our line should
be sympathetic with the character of our subject as far as possible, and
sensitive to its differences of character and surface, since it is in
this sensitiveness that the expressive power and peculiar virtue of
line-drawing consists.
[Illustration (f036): Lines of Characterization.]
A feather, a lily, a scallop shell, all show as an essential principle
of their form and construction the radiating line; but what a different
quality of line would be necessary to express the differences of each:
for the soft, yet firm, smooth flowing curves of the feather fibres no
line would be too delicate; and the lily would demand no less delicacy,
and even greater precision and firmness of curve, while a slight
waviness, or quiver, in the lines might express the silken or waxy
surface of the petals; while a crustier, more rugged, though equally
firm line would be wanted to follow the rigid furrows and serrated
surface of the shell. The leaves of trees and plants of all kinds, which
perhaps afford the best sort of practice in line-drawing at first,
present in their varieties of structure, character, and surfaces
continual opportunities for the exercise of artistic judgment in the
choice and use of line.
The forms and surfaces of fruits, again, are excellent tests of line
draughtsmanship, and their study is a good preparation for the more
subtle and delicate contours of the human form--the greatest test of
all. Here we see firmness of fundamental structure (in the bones) and
surface curve (of sinew and muscle), with a mobile and constantly
changing surface (of flesh and sensitive skin). To render such
characteristics without tending to overdo either the firmness or the
mobility, and so to become too rigid on the one hand, or too loose and
indefinite on the other, requires extraordinary skill, knowledge, and
practice in the use of line. I do not suppose the greatest master ever
satisfied himself yet in this direction.
[Illustration (f037): Pen Drawing of Fruit.]
[Degree and Emphasis]
When we have settled upon our quality of line and its _degree_--thick or
thin, bold or fine--we shall be met with the question of _emphasis_, for
upon this the ultimate effect and expression of our drawing or design
must largely depend. In the selection of any subject we should naturally
be influenced by the attractiveness of particular parts, characters, or
qualities it might possess, and we should direct our efforts towards
bringing these out, as the things which impress us most. That is the
difference between the mind and hand working together harmoniously and
the sensitized plate in the photographic camera, which, uncontrolled in
any way by human choice (and even under that control as it always is to
some extent), mechanically registers the action of the light rays which
define the impress of natural forms and scenes through the lens focussed
upon the plate. So that, as we often see in a photograph, some
unimportant or insignificant detail is reproduced with as much
distinctness (or more) as are the leading figures or whatever form the
interesting features or the motive of the subject. The picture suffers
from want of emphasis, or from emphasis in the wrong place. It is, of
course, here that the art of the photographer comes in; and, although he
can by careful selection, arrangement, and the regulation of exposure,
largely counteract the mechanical tendency, a photograph by its very
nature can never take the place of a work of art--the first-hand
expression, more or less abstract, of a human mind, or the creative
inner vision recorded by a human hand.
[Influence of the Photograph]
Photography does wonders, and for certain qualities of light and shade,
and form and effect without colour, no painting or drawing can approach
it; but it has the value and interest of science rather than of art. It
is invaluable to the student of natural fact, surface effect, and
momentary action, and is often in its very failures most interesting and
suggestive to artists--who indeed have not been slow to avail themselves
of the help of photography in all sorts of ways. Indeed the wonder is,
considering its services to art in all directions, how the world could
ever have done without it.
But a photograph cannot do everything. It cannot make original designs,
and it cannot draw in line. You can design in the solid, and make your
groups in the studio or the open air; you can select your point of view,
and the photograph will reproduce. You can make your drawing in line,
and it will copy it; and we know its sphere of usefulness in this
direction is enormous, since it can bring before our eyes the whole
range of ancient art.
In short, photography is an excellent servant and friend, but a
dangerous master. It may easily beguile us by its seductive
reproductions of surface relief and lighting to think more of these
qualities than any other, and to endeavour to put them in the wrong
places--in places where we want colour planes rather than shadow planes,
flatness and repose rather than relief, for instance, as mostly in
surface decoration.
But one way of learning the value of emphasis is to draw from a
photograph, and it will soon be discovered what a difference in
expression is produced by dwelling a little more here, or a little less
there.
[The Value of Emphasis]
In designing, the use of emphasis is very important; and it may be said
that drawing or designing without emphasis is like reading without
stops, while awkward emphasis is like putting your stops in the wrong
place.
By a difference in emphasis the same design may be given quite a
different effect and expression.
[Illustration (f038): Effect of Different Emphasis in the Treatment of
the Same Design.]
Suppose, for instance, we were designing a vertical pattern of stem,
leaves, and fruit in one colour. By throwing the emphasis upon the
leaves, as in No. 1, we should gain one kind of effect or decorative
expression. By throwing the emphasis upon the fruit, and leaving the
leaves in outline, we should get quite a different effect out of the
same elements, as in No. 2. While by leaving stem, leaves, and fruit all
in outline, and throwing the emphasis upon the ground, we should get,
again, a totally distinct kind of effect and expression.
Similar differences of effect and expression, owing to differences of
emphasis, might be studied in the drawing and treatment of a head (as in
A, B, and C). The possibilities of such variations of emphasis in
drawing are practically unlimited and co-extensive with the variations
of expression we see in nature herself. The pictorial artist is free to
translate or represent them in his work, controlled solely by the
conditions and purpose of his work.
[Illustration (f039): Different Emphasis in the Treatment of a Head
[examples A, B, C].]
It is these conditions and purposes which really control both choice and
treatment, and determine the emphasis, and therefore the expression of
the work.
No kind of art can be said to be unconditioned, and the simplest and
freest of all, _the art of the point and the surface_, which covers all
the graphic art and flat designing, is still subject to certain
technical influences, and it may be said that it is very much in so far
as these technical influences or conditions are acknowledged and
utilized that the work gains in artistic character.
[The Technical Influence]
The draughtsman in line who draws for surface printing, for the book or
newspaper, should be able to stand the test of the peculiar conditions;
and, so far from attempting to escape them, and seeking something more
than they will bear, should welcome them as incentives to a distinct
artistic treatment with a value and character of its own, which indeed
all the best work has. It is, for instance, important in all design
associated with type for surface printing, that there should be a
certain harmonious relation between lettering or type and printer's
ornament or picture.
[Illustration (f040): Sketches to Illustrate Effect of Different
Emphasis in the Treatment of the Same Elements in Landscape.]
[Illustration (f041a): Example of Page Treatment to Show Ornamental
Relation Between Text and Pictures.]
[Illustration (f041b): I. Textile Motive: Suggestion for a Carpet
Pattern.]
[Illustration (f041c): II. An Abstract Treatment of the Same on Point
Paper, as Detail of Brussels Carpet.]
A firm and open quality of line, with bright black and white effects,
not only has the most attractive decorative effect with type, but lends
itself to the processes of reproduction for surface printing best,
whether woodcut or one of the numerous forms of so-called automatic
photo-engraving, as well as to the conditions of the printing press.
In all design-work which has to be subjected to processes of engraving
and printing, clearness and definiteness of line is very necessary.
Designs for textile printing of all kinds, for wall-papers, especially,
require good firm drawing and definite colour planes. This does not,
however, mean hardness of effect. A design should be clear and
intelligible without being hard.
For weaving, again, definiteness in pattern designing is very necessary,
since the design must be capable of being rendered upon the severe
conditions of the point paper, by which it is only possible to produce
curves by small successive angles (which sounds like a contradiction in
terms). The size of these angles or points, of course, varies very much
in the different kinds of textile with which pattern is incorporated,
from the fine silk fabric, in which they are almost inappreciable, to
carpets of all kinds, where they are emphatic; so that a certain
squareness of mass becomes a desirable and characteristic feature in
designs for these purposes, and, indeed, I think it should be more or
less acknowledged in all textile design, in order to preserve its
distinctive beauty and character.
[The Artistic Purpose]
_Beauty and character._--In these lies the gist of all design. While the
technical conditions, if fully understood, fairly met, and frankly
acknowledged, are sure to give _character_ to a design, for whatever
purpose, _beauty_ is not so easy to command. It is so delicate a
quality, so complex in its elements, a question often of such nice
balance and judgment--depending perhaps upon a hair's-breadth difference
in the poise of a mass here, or the sweep of a curve there--that we
cannot weave technical nets fine enough to catch so sensitive a
butterfly. She is indeed a Psyche in art, both seeking and sought, to be
finally won only by devotion and love.
This search for beauty--this Psyche of art--is the purely inspiring
artistic purpose, as distinct from the technical and useful one, which
should, perfectly reconciled and united with it, determine the form of
our work.
In drawing or design we may seek particular qualities in line and form
either of representation or of ornament. We may desire to dwell upon
particular beauties either of object or subject. Say, in drawing from a
cast or from natural form of any kind, we desire to dwell upon beauty of
line or quality of surface. Well, since it is most difficult, if not
impossible, to get everything at once, and nothing without some kind of
sacrifice, we shall find that to give prominence to--to bring out--the
particular quality in our subject (say beauty of line), it becomes
necessary to subordinate other qualities to this. A drawing in pure
outline of a figure may be a perfect thing in itself. The moment we
begin to superadd shading, or lines expressive of relief of any kind, we
introduce another element; we are aiming at another kind of truth or
beauty; and unless we have also a distinctly ideal aim in this, we shall
mar the simplicity of the outline without gaining any compensating
advantage, or really adding to the truth or beauty of the drawing.
In designing, too, unless we can so contrive the essential
characteristics of our pattern that they shall be adaptable to the
method and material of its production, and make its reproduction quite
practicable, it is sure to reappear more or less marred and incomplete.
The thing is to discover what kind of character and beauty the method
will allow of--whether beauty or quality of line, or surface, or colour,
or material; and if to be reproduced in a particular method or material,
the design should be thought out in the method or material for which it
is destined, rather than as a drawing on paper, and worked out
accordingly, using every opportunity to secure the particular kind of
beauty naturally belonging to such work in its completed form.
Thus we should naturally think of _planes of surface_ in modelled work,
and the delicate play of light and shade, getting our equivalent for
colour in the design and contrast of varied surfaces. In stained glass
we should think of a pattern in lead lines inclosing one of translucent
colour, each being interdependent and united to form a harmonious whole.
In textile design we should be influenced by the thought of the
difference of use, plan, and purpose of the finished material; as the
difference between a rich vertical pattern in silk, velvet, or tapestry,
to be broken by folds as in curtains or hangings, and a rich carpet
pattern, to be spread upon the unbroken level surface of a floor. The
idea of the wall and floor should here influence us as well as the
actual technical necessities of the loom. It would be part of the
artistic purpose affecting the imagination and artistic motive, and
working with the strictly technical conditions.
The mind must project itself, and see with the inner eye the effect of
the design as it would appear in actual use, as far as possible.
Invention, knowledge, and experience will do the rest.
[Brush-Work]
Keeping, however, to strictly pictorial or graphic conditions--to the
art of the point and the surface--with which, as designers and
draughtsmen, we are more immediately concerned, we cannot forget certain
technical considerations strictly belonging to the varieties of point
and of surface, and their relations one to another. The flexible point
of the brush, for instance, dipped in ink, or colour, has its own
peculiar capacity, its own range of treatment, one might say, its own
forms.
The management admits of immense variation of use and touch, and its
range of depicting and ornamental power are very great: from the simpler
leaf forms, which seem to be almost a reflection or shadow of the moist
pointed brush itself, to the elaborate graphic drawing in line or light
and shade.
[Illustration (f042): Brush Forms.]
In forming the leaf shape one begins with a light pressure, if at the
point, and proceeds to increase it for the middle and broader end. On
the same principle of regulation of pressure any brush forms may be
built up. It is essential for freedom in working with the brush not to
starve or stint it in moisture or colour. For ornamental forms a full
brush should be used: otherwise they are apt to look dragged and meagre.
For a rich and flowing line also a full brush, however fine, is
necessary. It is quite possible, however, to use it with a different
aim, and to produce a sort of crumbling line when half dry, and also in
colour-work for what is called dragging, by which tone, texture, or
quality may be given to parts of a drawing. One should never lose
sight, in using the brush as a drawing tool, of its distinctive quality
and character, and impart it to all work done by its means.
[Illustration (f043): Direct Brush Expression of Animal Form.]
The direct touch with the full brush--to cultivate this is of enormous
advantage to all artists, whatever particular line of art they may
follow, since it may be said to be of no less value in design than it is
in painting pure and simple. We can all feel the charm of the broad
brush washes and emphatic brush touches of a master of water-colour
landscape such as De Wint. This is mastery of brush and colour in one
direction--tone and effect. A Japanese drawing of a bird or a fish may
show it equally in another--character and form. A bit of Oriental
porcelain or Persian tile may show the same dexterous charm and
full-brush feeling exercised in a strictly decorative direction.
[Illustration (f044): Japanese Drawing of a Bird. From "The Hundred
Birds of Bari."]
The empire of the brush, if we think of it in all its various forms and
directions, is very large; and it commands, in skilled hands, both
_line_ and _form_, in all their varieties, and leaves its impress in all
the departments of art, from the humble but dexterous craftsman who puts
the line of gold or colour round the edges of our cups and saucers, to
the highly skilled and specialized painter of easel pictures--say the
academician who writes cheques with his paint-brush!
[Charcoal and Pencil]
Then we have the ordinary varieties of the firm point: charcoal, pencil,
pen. Charcoal, being halfway between hard and soft--a sort of halfway
house or bridge for one passing from the flexible brush to the firm and
hard points of pencil and pen--is first favourite with painters when
they take to drawing. Its softness and removability adapts it as a tool
for preliminary and preparatory sketching in for all purposes, and both
for designer and painter; but it lends itself to both line and tone
drawing, or to a mixture of both. It is therefore a very good material
for rapid studies (say from the life) and the seizing of any effect of
light and shade rapidly, since the masses can be laid in readily, and
greater richness and depth can be obtained in shorter time, perhaps,
than by any other kind of pencil.
Charcoal is also very serviceable for large cartoon-work, since it is
capable of both delicacy and force, and bears working up to any extent.
A slight rubbing of the finger gives half tones when wanted, and is
often serviceable in giving greater solidity and finish to the work.
Then there is the lead pencil--the point-of-all-work, as it might be
called--more generally serviceable than any other, whether for rapid
sketches and jottings in the note-book, or careful and detailed
drawings, or sketching in for the smaller kinds of design-work. It is
also, of course, used for drawings which are afterwards "inked in." I do
not think, however, that pen-work done in this way is so free or
characteristic as when done direct, or at any rate quite freely, upon a
mere scaffolding of preliminary lines, used only to make the plans for
the chief masses and forms.
Pencil drawing is capable of being carried to a greater pitch of
delicacy and finish, and has a silvery quality all its own. It has not
the force or range of charcoal, but in its own technical range it
possesses many advantages. Its gray and soft line, however charming in
itself, does not fit it for work where sharpness and precision of line
and touch are required, as may be said to be the case with all work
intended to be reproduced by some process of handicraft or manufacture,
except some sorts of photo-engraving or lithography. We must therefore
look to another implement to enable us to obtain these qualities,
namely, the brush, the use and qualities of which I have already touched
upon.
[The Pen]
There remains yet another point of the firm and decisive order, the pen,
which enables us to get firmness and sharpness of line and precise
definition, as well as considerable range of treatment and freedom of
touch.
The pen seems to bear much the same relation to the brush as the lead
pencil does to charcoal--not capable of such full and rich effects or
such flowing freedom of line, but yet possessing its own beauty and
characteristic kinds of expression. Its true province is in
comparatively small scale work, and its natural association is with its
sister-pen of literature in the domain of book-design and decoration,
and black and white drawing for the press. Its varieties are endless,
and the ingenuity of manufacturers continually places before us fresh
choice of pen-points to work with; but though one occasionally meets
with a good steel pen, I have found it too often fails one just when it
is sufficiently worn to the right degree of flexibility. One returns to
the quill, which can be cut to suit the particular requirements of one's
work. For large bold drawing the reed-pen has advantages, and a pleasant
rich quality of line.
But with whatever point we may work, the great object is to be perfectly
at ease with it in drawing--to thoroughly master its use and capacities,
so that in our search for that other command, of line and form, we may
feel that we have in our hands a tool upon which we can rely, a trusty
spear to bear down the many difficulties and discouragements that beset,
like threatening dragons, the path of the art-student.
CHAPTER IV
Of the Choice of Form--Elementary Forms--Space-filling--Grouping--
Analogies of Form--Typical Forms of Ornament--Ornamental Units--
Equivalents in Form--Quantities in Design--Contrast--Value of
Variations of Similar or Allied Forms--Use of the Human Figure
and Animal Forms in Ornamental Design.
We were considering the choice and use of Line in the last chapter: its
expressive characters and various methods. We now come to the no less
important question to the designer and draughtsman--_The Choice of
Form_.
If Line may be said to be the bone and sinew of design, Form is the
substance and the flesh, and both are obviously essential to its free
life and development.
[Elementary Forms]
The _cube_ and the _sphere_ give us the fundamental elements, or primal
types from which are derived the multifarious, ever varying, and complex
forms, the products of the forces and conditions of nature, or the
necessitous inventiveness of art, just as we may take the square and the
circle to be the parents of linear and geometric design.
[Illustration (f045a): Elementary Forms: Pyramid, Sphere, Cube, Hexagon,
Cone.]
The cube and the sphere, the ellipse, the cone, and the pyramid, with
other comparatively simple forms of solid geometry, present themselves
to the student as elementary tests of draughtsmanship--of the power,
that is, of representing solid bodies upon a plane surface. Such forms
being more simple and regular than any natural forms, they are supposed
to reduce the problem of drawing to its simplest conditions. They
certainly afford very close tests of correctness of eye, making any
fault in perspective or projection at once apparent.
[Illustration (f045b): Use of Elementary Forms in Architecture.]
To avoid, however, falling into mechanical ways, and to maintain the
interest and give vitality to such studies, the relation of such forms
to forms in nature and art should be borne in mind, and no opportunity
missed of comparing them, or of seeking out their counterparts,
corresponding principles, and variations, as well as their practical
bearing, both functional and constructive; as in the case of the typical
forms of flowers, buds, and seed-vessels, for instance, where the cone
and the funnel, and the spherical, cylindrical, and tubular principles
are constantly met with, as essential parts of the characters and
organic necessities of the plant: the cone and the funnel mostly in buds
and flower-petals for protection and inclosure of the pollen and seed
germs, the tube for conducting the juices; the spherical form to resist
moisture externally, or to hold it internally, or to avoid friction, and
facilitate close storage, as in the case of seeds in pods. The
seed-vessel of the poppy, for instance, has a curious little pent-house
roof to shield the interstices (like windows in a tower) till the seed
is ripe and the time comes for it to be shaken out of the shell or pod.
A further practical reason for the prevalence of spherical form in seeds
is that they may, when the outer covering or husk perishes, more readily
roll out and fall into the interstices of the ground; or when, as in the
case of various fruits, such as the apple and orange, the envelope
itself is spherical and intended to carry their flat or pointed seeds to
the ground, where it falls and rolls when ripe.
[Illustration (f046): Poppyheads.]
The cube and the various multiple forms may be found in crystals and
basaltic rocks, as well as in organic nature, as, for instance, in the
honeycomb of bees, where choice of form is a constructive necessity: the
cube is in every sense of the word the corner-stone in architecture, and
without squaring and plumbing no building could be constructed, while
the cylindrical and conical principles of form are illustrated in towers
and roofs, spires and pinnacles. In architectural ornament and carved
decoration the cube and sphere again form the basis, both forming
ornaments themselves by mere recurrence and repetition, and also forming
constructional bases of ornament.
[Illustration (f047): Apple Cut to Show Position of Seeds.]
[Dog-Tooth Ornament]
[Illustration (f048b): Dog-tooth Formed From Cube.]
A very simple but effective form of carved ornament characteristic of
early Gothic work is what is known as the dog-tooth. This is formed
simply by cutting a cube of stone into a pyramid, depressing the sides,
and cutting them into geometric leaves, leaving the sharp angles of the
pyramid from the base to the apex standing out in bold relief. In
ground-plan this is simply composed geometrically of a rectangle divided
diagonally into four equal parts, and by striking four semicircles from
the centres of the four sides of the rectangle. Here we get a form of
ornament in the flat which appears to have been very widely used, and
reappears in the early art of nearly all races so far as I am aware. We
find it, for instance, in Assyrian carving and in early Greek
decoration, in China and Japan, and in European mediaeval work of all
kinds. Its charm perhaps lies in its simplicity of construction yet rich
ornamental effect, either as carved work or as a flat painted diaper. It
might also be used as the geometric basis of an elaborate repeating
wall-pattern over a large surface.
[Illustration (f048a): Cube and Sphere in Architectural Ornament: Brick
Dental, Ball Flower Moulding, and Dog-tooth Moulding.]
[Filling of Spaces]
When it comes to the choice of form, when we are face to face with a
particular problem in design, ornament, or decoration (say, as most
frequently happens, it is to fill a panel of a given shape and size), we
are bound to consider form in relation to that particular panel, to the
subject we propose to treat, and the method by which the design is to be
produced, or the object and position for which it is intended. This
generally narrows the range of possible choice. Firstly, there is the
shape of the panel itself. A well-known exercise for the Teacher's
Certificate under the Department of Science and Art is to give a drawing
of a plant adapted to design in a square and a circle. Now in the
abstract one would be inclined to select for a circular fitting
different forms from those one might select for a square filling, since
I always consider that the shape of the space must influence the
character of the filling in line and form. Still, if the problem is to
fill a square and a circle by the same forms, or an adaptation of them,
we must rely more and more upon difference of _treatment_ of these
forms, and not try to squeeze round forms into rectangular space, or
rectangular forms into circular space. In a rose, for instance, it would
be possible to dwell on its angular side for the square, and on its
curvilinear side for the circle. Anyway, we should seek in the first
place a good and appropriate motive.
[Illustration (f049a): Filling of Square Space.]
Supposing the design is for wood inlay, we should have to select forms
that would not cause unnecessary difficulty in cutting, since every form
in the design would have to be cut out in thin wood and inserted in the
corresponding hollow cut in the panel or plank to receive it. Complex or
complicated forms would therefore be ruled out, as being not only
difficult or impossible to reproduce in the material, but ineffective.
[Illustration (f049b): Filling of Circular Space.]
[Inlay Design]
A true feeling for the particular effect and decorative charm of inlaid
work should lead us to limit ourselves to comparatively few and simple
forms, treating those forms in an emphatic but abstract way, and making
use of recurring line and form as far as possible. We might make an
effective panel, say, for a casket, or a clock-case, or a floor, by
strictly limiting ourselves to very few and simple forms--say, for
instance, a stem, a leaf, a berry, or disc, and a bird form, or fruit
and leaf forms. It would be possible to build up a design with such
elements both pleasant in effect and well adapted to the work. An
excellent plan would be to cut out all one's forms with knife or
scissors in stiff paper, as a test of the practicability of an inlay
design. This is actually done with the working drawing by the inlay
cutter.
[Illustration (f050): 1. Units of Simple Inlay Pattern; 2. Motive for
Inlaid Pattern Built of the Same Units; 3. Treatment of Form as Pattern
Units for Inlaid Work; 4. Pattern Motive for Inlaid Work]
I once designed an inlaid floor for the centre of a picture gallery.
The scale was rather large, and the work was bold. One kept to large,
bold, and simple forms--water-lilies and broad leaves, swans, scallop
shells, and zigzag borders. Forms which can be readily produced by the
brush would generally answer well for inlay, since they would have
simple and sweeping boundaries and flat silhouette. And for inlay one is
practically designing in black, white, or tinted silhouette. This makes
it very good practice for all designers, both for the invention it tends
to call out, owing to the limited resources and restriction as to forms,
and also as giving facility and readiness in blocking in the masses of
pattern.
The water-colour painter, too, would find that blocking in in flat local
colour all his forms and the colours of his background was an excellent
method of preparatory work, and afforded good practice in direct
painting, since he could add his secondary shades and tints in the same
manner until the work was brought to completion, while preserving that
fresh effect of the undisturbed washes which is the great charm of
water-colour.
[Grouping of Allied Forms]
In seeking forms to group together harmoniously--which is the whole
object of composition--we shall find that much the same kind of
principle holds good whether we are arranging a still-life group or
designing a wall-paper or textile. It is only a difference of degree and
scale. In the one case we are designing in the solid with the actual
objects, before drawing or painting them as a harmonious pictorial
composition; in the other we are arranging forms upon the flat with a
view to harmonious composition with a strictly decorative purpose in
view. In the first we are dealing with concrete form in the round; in
the second, generally speaking, with abstract form in the flat.
[Illustration (f051a): Grouping of Allied Forms: Composition of Curves.]
But in either case we want harmony. We cannot, therefore, throw together
a number of forms unrelated to each in line, contour, or meaning. We
seek in composing or designing not contradictions, but correspondences
of form, with just an element of contrast to give flavour and point. In
grouping pottery, for instance, we should not place big and little or
squat and slender forms close together without connecting links of some
kind. We want a series of good lines that help one another and lead up
to one another in a kind of friendly co-operation. Broad smooth forms
and rounded surfaces, again, require relief and a certain amount of
contrast. We feel the need of crisp leaves or flowers, perhaps, with
our pottery form. We may safely go far, however, on the principle of
grouping similar or allied forms, giving our composition as a whole
either a curvilinear or angular character in its general lines, masses,
and forms, on the principle of like to like. This will entirely depend
upon our choice of grouping of form; but the more by our selection we
make our composition tend distinctly in the one direction or the other,
the more character it will be likely to possess.
[Illustration (f051b): Grouping of Allied Forms: Composition of Angles.]
[Grouping]
[Illustration (f052): Still-life Group Illustrative of Wood-Engraving.]
In selecting forms for still-life grouping and painting, I think
increased interest might be gained by arranging significant objects,
accessories bearing upon particular pursuits, for instance, in natural
relationship and surrounding. Groups suggesting certain handicrafts, for
instance, such as the clear glass globe of the wood-engraver, the
sand-bag, the block upon it, the tools, gravers lying around, the
eye-glass, an old book of woodcuts, and so forth. Other groups
suggestive of various arts and industries could be arranged--such
motives as metal-work, pottery, literature, painting, music, embroidery,
spring, summer, autumn, and winter, might all be suggestively
illustrated by well-selected groups of still life. Even different
historic periods might be emblematically suggested--I should like to see
more done in this way.
[Illustration (f053): Japanese Diagonal Pattern.]
To return to design in the flat. If we start with a motive of circular
masses, we cannot suddenly associate them with sharp angles--I mean in
our leading forms. Of course we can make a network or trellis or diaper
of the angles, to form a mat, ground, or a framework on which to place
our broad masses, as we may see effectively done by the Chinese and
Japanese.
[Corresponding Forms]
[Illustration (f054): Treatment of Fruit and Leaf Forms: Corresponding
Curvature]
If the principal group of forms in our pattern, say, are fruit
forms--apples, pomegranates, or oranges--we must re-echo or carry out
the curves in a lesser degree in the connecting stems and leaves. Change
the form of the fruit, say, to lemons, and a further variation of
connecting or subsidiary curve in stems and leaves will naturally
suggest itself, and at the same time in following such principles we
shall be expressing in an abstract way more of the character of the tree
or plant itself. In looking at the leaf of a tree one may often see a
suggestion of the general character and contour of the tree itself, and
we know the line:
"Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined."
In dealing with angular motives the same principle would be followed,
but corresponding to the difference of motive. Let the form of your
detail be reflected in the character of your mass.
I have spoken of the necessity in designing of seeking correspondences
in form, and although, could we place every form in proper sequence and
supply all the intermediary links to unite them harmoniously, forms of
extreme diversity might thus be associated, given great extension of
space (as in wall decoration, for instance), even then we should want
these forms to correspond and recur. Yet, as a rule, having to deal in
design with what are really parts rather than wholes, we can only
endeavour by making the design of these parts simple and harmonious in
line and form, and true to their special conditions, to render their
association decoratively possible.
[Illustration (f055a): Correspondence in General Contour Between Leaf
and Tree.]
[Illustration (f055b): Some Analogies in Form.]
Certain forms seem to lend themselves to design in ornament better than
others, because they give the designer certain lines and masses which
can be harmoniously repeated or combined with other allied forms or
lines. Design from this point of view becomes a search for analogies of
form.
[Analogies of Form]
I mentioned certain simple geometric forms common to nature and art.
Early ornament consists in the repetition of such forms. The next step
was to connect them by lines: and so form and line, through endless
vicissitudes and complexities, became united, to live happily in the
world of decorative motive ever after. But long after the primitive
unadorned geometric forms themselves have ceased to be the chief forms
in ornament, their controlling influence is asserted over the boundaries
of the more complicated masses introduced.
[Typical Forms of Ornament]
The simple rectangle is disguised under the fret, the circle and spiral
assert their sway over the boundaries of the palmette, or circle and
semicircle unite to form the oval so frequently used both as a unit in
Greek ornament and as a controlling boundary. These are typical border
forms: for extension and repetition in fields of pattern we find the
same geometric plans at work in combination and subdivision, forming at
first the ornament itself, and afterwards furnishing the plan and
controlling boundaries only. Even in later stages in the evolution of
surface decoration, in what are called naturalistic floral patterns,
amid apparent carelessness and freedom, by the exigencies of repetition
the ghost of buried geometric connection reappears, and compels the
most naturalistic roses on a wall-paper to acknowledge themselves
artificial after all, as they nod to their counterparts from the masked
angles of the inevitable diaper repeat.
[Illustration (f056): Tree of Typical Pattern Forms, Units, and
Systems.]
We find in the historical forms of decorative art constantly recurring
types of form and line, such as the lotus of the Egyptians, the anthemia
of the Greeks, the pineapple-like flower and palmette of the Persians,
the peony of the Chinese. These forms, at first valued solely for their
symbolical and heraldic significance, and continually demanded, became
to the designer important elements or _units_ in ornament. They gave him
fine sweeping curves, radiating lines, and bold masses, without which a
designer cannot live, any more than a poet without words. They were
capable, too, of infinite variation in treatment, a variation which has
been continued ever since, as by importation to different countries (the
movement going on from east to west) the same forms were treated by
designers of different races, and became mixed with other native
elements, or consciously imitated as they are now by Manchester
designers and manufacturers, to be sold again in textile form to their
original owners, as it were, in the far East. Truly, a strange turn of
the wheel.
[Ornamental Units]
The range of choice in ornamental units is, indeed, embarrassingly large
for the modern designer, and a careful and tasteful selection becomes of
more and more importance. It is not the number of forms you can combine,
or because they are of Persian or Chinese origin, that your work will be
artistic, but the judicious and inventive use made of the elements of
your design. Ready-made units, such as the Oriental forms I have
mentioned, are no doubt easier to combine, to make an effect with,
because a certain amount of selection has already been done. In fact,
with such forms as the Persian or Indian palmette, we are dealing with
the results of centuries of ornamental evolution, and with emblems
immemorially treasured by ancient races. It behoves us, if we are called
upon to recombine them, to treat them with sympathy, refinement, and
respect, and to let them deteriorate as little as possible, for the
spirit of an important ornamental form is like a gathered flower--it
soon withers and becomes limp.
[Illustration (f057): Sketches to Show Use of Counterbalance, Quantity,
and Equivalents in Designing.]
[Equivalents in Form]
It is the _spirit_, after all, that is the important thing to preserve,
in decorative design, however widely we may depart from the _letter_
sometimes. This is a difficult quality to define, but I should say it
chiefly consists in a nice attention to the character of form, the
elastic spring of curves, an understanding of the construction and
proportions, and grasp of the effect. In designing we constantly feel
the need of repeating certain masses with variations or balancing them
by equivalents, or the necessity of leading up to certain main forms by
subsidiary forms, and to carry out their lines in other parts of the
composition. In designing figures or emblems, for instance, within
inclosed spaces, such as shields or cartouche shapes, forming leading
elements in a design, it requires much invention and ornamental feeling
so to arrange them that, while different in subject or meaning, and
differently spaced, they shall yet properly counterbalance each other,
and, though varied in detail, shall yet be equivalent in quantity. The
same sort of feeling would govern the case of designing two masses of
fruit and foliage, say, forming two halves of an oblong panel, which,
though starting on the symmetric plan from the centre, are not intended
to be alike in detail; or in a frieze composed of a series of formalized
trees, where it was desired to have each different, say, to express the
progression of the seasons, it would be the sense of the necessity of
equivalents which would govern the decorative effect.
[Illustration (f058): Quantities and Counterchange of Border and Field
in Carpet Motives.]
[Quantities in Design]
[Illustration (f059): Sketch to Illustrate Value of Different Quantities
in Persian Rugs.]
Such considerations naturally lead us to the question of the use of
_quantities_ in design--the ornamental proportions of ornament, or the
contrasting distribution of form and line. For the mere repetition of
ornamental forms over surfaces and objects without reference to
proportion or structure is not decoration. The perception of appropriate
quantities in design is really the decorative gauge or measure of
effect.
[Illustration (f060): Sketch to Illustrate Value of Different Quantities
in Persian Rugs.]
In designing a bordered panel--or say a carpet--we might decide to
throw the weight of pattern, colour, or emphasis upon either the field
or border. Supposing the field had a dark ground upon which the
arabesque or floral design was relieved, in the border it would be most
effective to transpose this arrangement, making the ground light, and
bringing out the border design dark upon it. Or, if the motive were
reversed, giving a light ground to the centre, with the pattern dark,
the border might be brought out on a dark field. Or, again, for a less
emphatic treatment the quantities of the pattern itself might be almost
infinitely varied, massive forms and close fillings contrasting with
open borders and united with intermediary bands.
[Illustration (f061): Sketch to Illustrate Value of Different Quantities
in Persian Rugs.]
These intermediary bands or subsidiary borders are very important in
Eastern rugs and carpets, and their quantities very carefully
considered. A Persian designer, for instance, would never leave a blank
unbroken strip of colour to surround his field; his object is not to
isolate the quantities of his pattern, but to distinguish and unite
them: so he makes use of the subsidiary borders as additional
quantities. A usual arrangement which always looks well is to have the
border proper inclosed in two bands of about the same width and quantity
in pattern--or they might be a repeat of each other--and to inclose the
field or centre within another narrow subsidiary border. But the
variations to be observed in any chance selection of Persian rugs or
carpets are constant, and the amount of subtle variety and invention in
these subsidiary borders is endless.
Very excellent examples of the treatment and distribution of quantities
may also be studied in the older Indian printed cottons, such as maybe
seen at South Kensington.
[Contrast]
The consideration of quantities in form and design involves the question
of _contrast_, which, indeed, can hardly be separated from it. There is
the contrast of form and line, and the contrast of colour and plane. It
is with the first kind we are dealing now.
Take the simplest linear border, such as the type common in Greek work.
We should easily weary of the continual repetition of such a form alone
and unassisted, but add a vertical with an alternative dark filling, and
we get a certain richness and solidity which is a relief at once. Add
another quantity, and we get the rich effect of the egg and tongue or
egg and dart moulding.
A still simpler instance of the use of contrast, however, is the
chequer, or the principle of equal alternation of dark and light masses;
but this touches colour contrast rather than form.
[Illustration (f062): Recurrence and Contrast in Border Motives.]
The love of contrast makes the Chinese porcelain-painter break the blue
borders of his plates with small cartouche-like forms inclosing the
light ground, varied with a spray or device of some light kind; or the
diagonal, closely-filled field of his woven silk by broad discs or
cartouches of another plane of ornament. But the love of sharp or very
violent contrasts, more especially of form, may easily lead one astray
and be destructive of ornamental effect. Like all decorative
considerations, the artistic use of contrast depends much upon the
particular case and the conditions of the work, and one cannot lay down
any unvarying rules. There are agreeable and disagreeable contrasts, and
their choice and use must depend upon the individual artist.
[Variation of Allied Forms]
The most beautiful kinds of design rather seem to depend upon the
harmonious variation in association of similar or allied forms than on
sharp contrasts.
In compositions of figures the association of the delicate curves and
angles of the human form, and the lines of drapery, with the emphatic
verticals and horizontals, the semicircles and rectangles of
architectural form, for instance, are always delightful in competent
hands; as also compositions of figure and landscape, with its
possibilities of undulating line corrected by the severe horizon, or
sea-line, and contrasted with the vertical lines of trees, stems, and
the rich forms of foliage masses.
For the same reasons both of correspondence and contrast, masses of type
or lettering of good form are admirable as foils to figure designs, in
which commemorative monuments of all kinds and book designs afford
abundant opportunities to the designer.
[Use Of Human Figure and Animal Forms]
In surface or textile decoration of all kinds nothing gives so much
relief and vitality as the judicious use of animal forms and the human
figure, although they are not much favoured at present. The forms of
birds and animals, if designed in relation to the rest of the pattern,
will give a pleasant variety of form and line, and in their forms and
lines we find just those elements both of correspondence and contrast,
in their relation to geometric or to floral design, which are so
valuable.
[Illustration (f063a): Use of Inclosing Boundaries in Designing Animal
Forms in Decorative Pattern.]
In order to combine such forms successfully, however, great care in
designing is necessary; and a good sound principle to follow as a
general guide is to make the boundaries of the bird or animal touch the
limits of an imaginary inclosing form of some simple geometric or floral
or leaf shape (see p. 104[f063a]). This would at once control the form
and render it available in a pattern as a decorative mass or unit. The
particular shape of the controlling form must, of course, depend upon
the general character of the design, whether free and flowing or square
and restricted, the nature of the repeat, the ultimate position of the
work, and so on. A study of Gothic heraldry and the early Sicilian silk
patterns would be very instructive in this connection, since it is
rather the heraldic ideal than that of the natural history book which is
decoratively appropriate. At the same time it is quite possible to
combine ornamental treatment with a great deal of natural truth in
structure and character.
[Illustration (f063b): Decorative Spacing of Figures Within Geometric
Boundaries.]
Much the same principles apply to the treatment of the human figure as
an element in ornament; they should be designed, whether singly or in
groups, under the control of imaginary boundaries, and care must be
taken that in line and mass they re-echo (or are re-echoed by) other
lines which connect them with the rest of the design, if they occur as
incidents in repeating wall-paper or hanging design, for instance. It
is, however, quite possible to imagine a decorative effect produced by
the use of figures alone (see p. 105[f063b]), with something very
subsidiary in the way of connecting links of linear or floral pattern,
much as figures were used by the ancient Greek vase-painters,
beautifully distributed as ornament over the concave or convex surfaces
of the vases and vessels of the potter, the forms of which, as all good
decoration should do, they helped to express as well as to adorn.
CHAPTER V
Of the Influence of Controlling Lines, Boundaries, Spaces, and
Plans in Designing--Origin of Geometric Decorative Spaces and
Panels in Architecture--Value of Recurring Line--Tradition--
Extension--Adaptability--Geometric Structural Plans--Frieze and
Field--Ceiling Decoration--Co-operative Relation.
The function of line considered from the point of view of its
controlling influence as a boundary, or inclosure, of design, upon which
I touched in the last chapter, is a very important one, and deserves
most attentive study.
The usual problem a designer in the flat has to solve is to fill
harmoniously a given space or panel defined by a line--some simple
geometric form--such as a square or a circle, a parallelogram, a
diamond, a lunette.
[Influence of Controlling Lines, etc.]
Now it is possible to regard such spaces or panels as more or less
unrelated, and simply as the boundaries of an individual composition or
picture of some kind. Yet even so considered a certain sense of
geometric control would come in in the selection of our lines and
masses, both in regard to each other and in regard to the shape of the
inclosing boundary. We seem to feel the need of some answering line or
re-echo in the character of the composition to the shape of its
boundary, to give it its distinctive reason for existence in that
particular form--just as we should expect a shell-fish to conform to the
shape of its shell. Such a re-echo or acknowledgment might be ever so
slight, or might be quite emphatic and dominate as the leading motive,
but for perfectly harmonious effect it must be there.
[Illustration (f064): Relation of Design to Boundary: Simple Linear
Motives and Pattern Bases.]
A strictly simple and logical linear filling of such spaces might be
expressed in the most primitive way, as in the illustration on p.
109[f064].
By these means certain primitive types of ornament are evolved, such as
the Greek volute and the Greek key or fret, the logical ornament of a
logical people.
Such arrangements of line form simple linear patterns, and a decorative
effect of surface is produced simply by their repetition, especially if
the principle of alternation be observed. This principle may be
expressed by taking, say, a series of squares or circles, and placing
them either in a line as for a border arrangement, or for extension
vertically and laterally over a surface, and filling only the alternate
square or circle, leaving the alternate ones, or dropping them out
altogether (see illustration, p. 111[f065]).
[Illustration (f065): Use of Intervals in Repeating the Same Ornamental
Units.]
When we desire to go beyond such primitive linear ornaments, however,
and introduce natural form, we should still be guided by the same
principles, if we desire to produce a strictly decorative effect, while
varying them in application to any extent.
It matters not what forms we deal with, floral, animal, human; directly
we come to combine them in a design, to control them by a boundary, to
inclose them in a space, we shall feel this necessity of controlling
line, which, however concealed, is yet essential to bring them into that
harmonious relation which is the essence of all design (see
illustration, p. 112[f066]).
[Illustration (f066): Designs of Floral, Human, and Animal Forms,
Governed by Shape of Inclosing Boundary.]
We may take it as a general rule that the more purely ornamental the
purpose of our design, and the more abstract in form it is, the more
emphatically we may carry out the principle of correspondence of line
between that of the inclosing boundary and that of the design itself;
and, _vice versa_, as the design becomes more pictorial in its appeal
and more complex and varied in its elements, the more we may combine the
leading motive or principle of line with secondary ones, or with
variations, since every fresh element, every new direction of line,
every new form introduced, demands some kind of re-echo to bring it into
relation with the other elements of the design, or parts of the
composition, whatever may be its nature and purpose.
Now, if we seek further the meaning and origin of this necessity of the
control of geometric lines and spaces in design, I think we shall find
it in the constructive necessities of architecture: for it is certainly
from architecture that we derive those typical spaces and panels the
designer is so often called upon to fill.
[Illustration (f067): The Parthenon: Sketch to Show Spaces Used for
Decorative Sculpture in Greek Architecture.]
[Origin of Geometric Decorative Spaces]
Lintel architecture--the Egyptian and the Greek--gave us the frieze,
both continuous, as in that of the Cella of the Parthenon, or divided by
triglyphs, which represented the ends of the beams of the primitive
timber construction; and the interstices left between these determined
the shape of the sculptured panel or slab inserted, and influenced the
character of its masses and the lines of its design, which was under the
necessity of harmonizing with the whole building (see illustration, p.
114[f067]).
[Illustration (f068): Tower of the Winds Athens BC 50]
The same may be said of the pediments. The angle of the low-pitched roof
left another interstice for the sculptor at each end of the building;
and I have elsewhere* pointed out the influence of the inclosing space
and the angles of the pediment of the Parthenon upon the arrangement of
the groups within it, and even upon the lines taken by some of the
figures, especially the reclining figures near the acute angles.
[*] See "Bases of Design."
Certain lines become inseparably associated with constructive
expression, and are used to emphasize it, as the vertical flutings of
the Doric column, by repeating the lines of the column itself, emphasize
its constructive expression of supporting the weight of the horizontal
lintels, the lines of which, repeated in the mouldings of the frieze and
cornice, are associated with level restfulness and secure repose.
As examples of design which, while meeting the structural necessities
and acknowledging the control of space and general conditions, as the
form of the slabs upon which they are sculptured, yet expresses
independent movement, the figures of the octagonal tower of the winds at
Athens are interesting (see illustration, p. 115[f068]).
Quite a different feeling, corresponding to differences in conception
and spirit in design, comes in with the Roman round _arch_ its allied
forms of _spandril_ and _vault_, _lunette_ and _medallion_, presenting
new spaces for the surface designer, and new suggestions of ornamental
line (see illustration, p. 117[f069]). It is noticeable how, with the
round-arched architecture under Roman, Byzantine (see illustration, p.
118[f070]), and Renaissance forms, the scroll form of ornament
developed, the reason being, I think, that it gave the necessary element
of recurring line, whether used in the horizontal frieze in
association with round arches, or in spandrils of vaults and arcades,
and on marble mosaic pavements.
[Illustration (f069): Sketch of Part of the Arch of Constantine to Show
Spaces for Decorative Sculpture in Roman Architecture.]
[Illustration (f070): Byzantine (Mosaic) Treatment of Architectural
Structural Features: Apse, S. Vitale Ravenna.]
[Value of the Recurring Line]
The development of Gothic architecture, with its new constructive
features and the greater variety of geometric spaces, forms, and
interstices which, as a consequence, were available for the designer of
associated ornament, whether carved work, mosaic, stained glass, or
painting, naturally led to a corresponding variety in invention and
decorative adaptation; and we may trace the same principle at work in
other forms--I mean the principle of corresponding, counterbalancing,
and recurring line--Gothic ornament being indeed generally an essential
part of the structure, and architectural features being constantly
repeated and utilized for their ornamental value, as in the case of
canopies and tabernacle work.
We see, for instance, in the Decorated period the acute gable moulding
over the arched recess, niche, doorway, or tomb, lightened and vivified
by a floriated finial springing into vigorous curves from a vertical
stem, forming an emphatic ogee outline which re-echoes the ogee line of
the arch below, and is taken up in variations by the crockets carved
upon the sides of the gable; and their spiral ascending lines lead the
eye up to the finial which completes the composition. We may trace the
same principle in the carved fillings of the subsidiary parts, such as
the trefoiled panels, the secondary mouldings, and the cusps of the
arches, which continue the line-motive or decorative harmony to the last
point (see illustration, p. 120[f071]). The elegance and lightness of
the pinnacles is increased in the same way, and further emphasized by
the long vertical lines of the sunk panels upon their sides.
[Illustration (f071): From Canopy of Tomb of Gervaise-Alard 1303. Temp
ED^wd^ I^st^ Winchelsea]
In church doorways we may see certain voussoirs of the arch allowed to
project from the hollow of the concave moulding, and their surfaces
carved into bosses of ornament; while, again, the doorway is emphasized
by the recurring lines of the mouldings, with their contrasting planes
of light and shadow, and the point of their spring is marked by a
carved lion, controlled in the design of its contour by the squareness
of the block of stone upon which it is carved (see illustration, p.
121[f072]).
[Illustration (f072): Structural Control of Line in Architectural
Enrichments West Door Walberswick Ch. Suffolk]
The carvings of miserere seats in our cathedral choirs often afford
instances of ingenious design and arrangement of elements difficult to
combine, yet always showing the instinct of following the control of the
dominating form and peculiar lines of the seat itself. There is an
instance of one from St. David's Cathedral--apparently a humorous
satire--a goose-headed woman offering a cake to a man-headed gull (?),
or perhaps they are both geese! I won't pretend to say, but it evidently
is intended to suggest cupboard love, and there is a portentously large
pitcher of ale in reserve on the bench. But note the clever arrangement
of the masses and lines, and how the lines of the seat and the curves
of the terminating scroll are re-echoed in the lines of the figures and
accessories.
[Illustration (f073): C. 1460-1480 Wood Carving Miserere Seat Choir
Stalls St. David's Cathedral. Controlling Line in Design of Subsidiary
Architectural Decoration.]
A stone-carving from the end of a tomb in the same cathedral--that of
Bishop John Morgan, 1504--of a griffin with a shield shows an emphatic
repetition of the inclosing line of the arched recess in the curves of
the wings which follow it.
[Illustration (f074): Recessed Panel Carved Stone From the Tomb of
Bishop John Morgan D. 1504, St. David's Cathedral.]
There is also a charming corbel of a half-figure of an angel, which,
though somewhat defaced, shows the architectural sense very strongly in
its design--the vertical droop of the wing-feathers inclosing the figure
repeating and continuing the vertical lines of the shafts and the
subsidiary mouldings of the arrangement of the drapery, and its
termination in crisp foliated forms, which pleasantly counterbalance the
set of the scale feathers of the wings and break the semicircular
mouldings of the base of the corbel, repeating those of the shafts
above.
[Illustration (f075): Constructive Line Reechoed in Architectural
Ornament. Corbel, Bishop Vaughan's Chapel, St. David's 1509-]
[Adaptability in Design]
[Illustration (f076): Gothic Tile Pattern S. David's Cath^l.]
Adaptation to spaces upon a flat surface is also illustrated in some
tile patterns from the same place. They are simple and rude but very
effective bits of spacing, and show a thorough grasp of the principles
we have been considering--if, indeed, it is so far conscious work at
all. But whether or not the outcome of a tradition which seemed to be
almost instinctive with mediaeval workmen--a tradition which yet left the
individual free, and under which design was a thing of life and growth,
ever adapting itself to new conditions, and grafting freely new
inventions to flower in fresh phantasy upon the ancient stock--the
movement in art in the Middle Ages, exhibiting as it does a gradual
growth and a constant vitality, always accompanying and adapting itself
to structural changes, to life and habit, was really more analogous to
the development of mechanical science in our own day, where each new
machine is allied to its predecessors, though it supplants them. The one
law being adaptability, the one aim to apply means to ends, and more and
more perfectly, inessentials and superfluities are shed, and invention
triumphs. It is, too, a collective advance, since each engineer, each
inventor, builds upon the experience of both his forerunners and his
fellow-workers, and everything is brought to an immediately practical
test.
We are not yet in the same healthy condition as regards art, and art can
never be on the same plane as science, though art may learn much from
science, chiefly perhaps in the direction of the inventive adaptation of
analogous principles. But in art the question is complicated by human
feeling and association, and her strongest appeal is to these, and by
these, and as yet we do not seem to have any terms or equivalents
precise enough to describe, or any analysis fine enough to discover
them.
[Extension]
The next consideration in spacing we may term _extension_. This bears
upon all surface design, but more especially upon the design of patterns
intended to repeat over a large surface, and not specially designed for
particular spaces. It is a great question whether any design can be
entirely satisfactory unless it has been thought out in relation to some
particular extent of surface or as adapted to some particular wall or
room. Modern industrial conditions preclude this possibility as a rule,
and so the only sure ground, beyond individual taste and preference, is
technical adaptability to process or material. We should naturally want
to give a different character to a textile pattern, whether printed or
woven, and intended to hang in folds, from one for flat extension as a
wall-paper; and a different character again to such designs intended for
extension horizontally from those intended for vertical space alone.
Floor patterns, parquets and carpets, for instance, naturally demand
different treatment from wall patterns, as those orders of plants in
nature which cling and spread on the flat ground differ from those which
grow high and maintain themselves in the air, or climb upon trees. The
rule of life--_adaptability_--obtains in art as in nature, and, beneath
individual preference and passing fashion, works the silent but real law
of relation to conditions. This again bears upon the choice of scale,
and differentiates the design of dress textiles from furniture textiles,
and the design of varied surfaces and objects, which, while demanding
their own particular treatment, are brought into general relation by
their association with use and the wants of humanity.
[Illustration (f077a): Extension: Surface Pattern Motives Derived from
Lines of Structure.]
[Geometric Structural Plans, etc.]
The law governing extension of design over surface is again geometric,
and our primal circle and square are again the factors and progenitors
of the leading systems which have governed the design of diapers and
wall patterns and hangings of all kinds. Nay, the first weaver of the
wattled fence discovered the principle of extension in design, and
showed its inseparable association with construction; and the builder
with brick or stone emphasizes it, producing the elements of linear
surface pattern, from the mechanical necessity of the position of the
joints of his structure. At a German railway station waiting-room I
noticed an effective adaptation of this principle as a wall decoration
in two blues upon a stone colour (see illustration, p. 128[fig077a]). We
may build upon such emphatic structural lines, either incorporating them
with the design motive, as in all rectangular wall diapers, or we may
suppress or conceal the actual constructive lines by placing the
principal parts or connections of our pattern over them, but one cannot
construct a satisfactory pattern to repeat and extend without them; for
these constructive lines or plans give the necessary organic life and
vigour to such designs, and are as needful to them as the trellis to the
tendrils of the vine (see illustration, p. 129[f077b]).
[Illustration (f077b): Surface Extension: Repeating Patterns Built Upon
(1) Square and (2) Circular Basis.]
The same principle is true of designs upon the curvilinear plan. The
mere repetition of the circle by itself gives us a simple geometric
pattern, and we are at liberty to emphasize this circular plan as the
main motive; or, as in the case of the rectangular plans, to treat it
merely as a basis, and develop free scroll motives upon it; or follow
it through its principal variations, as in the ogee, formed by dropping
out two intermediate semicircles; or the various forms of the scale
arrangement. These simple geometric plans are the most generally useful
as plans of designs intended for repetition and extension over space,
and they are always safe and sound systems to build upon, since a
geometric plan is certain to join comfortably if our measurements are
right.
[Illustration (f078): Surface Extension: Plan of a Drop Repeat.]
We may, however, often feel that we want something bolder and freer, and
start with a motive of sweeping-curves, non-geometric, but even then a
certain geometric relation will be necessary, or an equivalent for it,
since each curve must be counterbalanced in some way, though not
necessarily symmetrically, of course; and even where a square of
pattern--say to a wall-paper repeat of twenty-one inches--has been
designed, not consciously upon a geometric base, but simply as a
composition of lines and masses to repeat, the mechanical conditions of
the work when it comes to be printed will supply a certain geometric
control, since it necessarily begins in the process of repetition a
series of squares of pattern in which the curves are bound to recur in
corresponding places. Without a geometric plan of some sort, however, we
may easily get into difficulties with awkward leading lines, gaps, or
masses, that tumble down, and are only perceived when the paper is
printed and hung.
The designer should not feel at all restricted or cramped by his
geometric plan, but treat it as an aid and a scaffolding, working in as
much variety and richness of detail as he likes, bound only by the
necessity of repeating or counterbalancing his forms and lines. In the
diagram (p. 131[f078]) the plan of making a repeat less obvious by means
of what is termed "a drop" is given, and this system also increases the
apparent width of a pattern.
[Frieze and Field]
The feeling which demands some kind of contrast or relief to a field of
repeating pattern, however interesting in itself, seems now almost
instinctive. It is felt, too, in the case of plain surfaces, where the
eye seeks a moulding to give a little variety or pattern-equivalent in
play of light and shadow upon different planes, lines, or concavities
and convexities. The common plaster cornice placed to unite walls and
ceiling, in our ordinary houses, is a concession (on the part even of
the jerriest of builders) to the aesthetic sense. We get the decorated
frieze in architecture in obedience to the same demand, though
originally a necessary feature of lintel construction, as we have seen,
from the days of the festal garland hung around the eaves of the classic
house, to its perpetuation in stone in so many varieties.* The carved
garland depending in a series of graceful curves, or contrasted with
pendants, or their rhythm punctuated, as it were, by ox-heads, as on the
temple of the Sibyls, Tivoli, formed the needed contrast to the plane
masonry of the wall below. Sculptured figures, with the added interest
of story, as on the choragic monument of Lysicrates, fulfilled the same
decorative function in a more complex and elaborate way.
[*] "Bases of Design."
To satisfy the same feeling we place a frieze above the patterned field
of our modern wall-papers. Such a frieze may be considered as a
contrasting border to the pattern of the field, much as the border of a
carpet, allowing for difference of material and position; or the frieze
may assert itself as the dominant decoration of the room. In this case
it would be greater in depth than the simpler bordering type. The
interest of the field filling would then be subsidiary, and lead up to
the frieze. In wall-paper friezes the difficulty in designing is to
think of a motive which will not tire the eye in the necessarily
frequent repeats of twenty-one inches. Longer ones have occasionally
been produced, the limit being sixty inches. It is often a good plan to
recur in the main lines or forms of the frieze to some variation of the
lines or forms of the field. If, for instance, the main motive in the
field was a vertical scroll design, a _horizontal_ scroll design upon a
large scale used for the frieze would answer, the field being kept flat
and quiet; or the fan, or radiating shell form, used as a frieze, above
a pattern on the scale plan, would be quite harmonious. Relation and
balance of line and mass, and arrangement of quantities in such designs,
are the chief considerations.
With painting or modelling an artist is freer, as he is at liberty to
design a continuous frieze of figures, and introduce as much variety as
he chooses.
A painted frieze of figures above plain oak-panelling has a good effect
in a large and well-proportioned room, and is perhaps one of the
pleasantest ways of treating interior walls.
[Illustration (f079): Sketch Designs to Show Relation Between Frieze
and Field in Wall-paper.]
[Ceiling Decoration]
Ceiling decoration, again, presents problems of extension in designing,
and the large flat plaster ceilings of modern rooms are by no means easy
to deal with satisfactorily. The simplest way is to resort to
wall-paper, and here, restricted in size of repeat and the usual
technical requirements of the work, the designer must further consider
appropriateness of scale, and position in regard to eye, relation to the
wall, and so forth.
The natural demand is for something simpler in treatment than the
walls--a re-echo, in some sort, of plans agreeable to the floor, yet
with a suggestion of something lighter and freer: here we may safely
come back to rectangular and circular plans again for our leading lines
and forms.
Painting and modelling, again, offer more elaborate treatment and
possibilities, and we know that beautiful works have been done in both
ways; but art of this kind seems more appropriate to lofty vaulted
chambers and churches, such as one sees in the palaces of Italy, at
Genoa and Venice, at Florence and Rome.
I remember a very striking and bold treatment of a flat-beamed ceiling
in the Castle of Nuremberg, where a huge black German eagle was painted
so as to occupy nearly the whole field of the ceiling, but treated in an
extremely flat and heraldic way, the long feathers of the wings
following the lines of the beams and falling parallel upon them and
between them; and upon the black wings and body of the eagle different
shields of arms were displayed in gold and colours, the eagle itself
being painted upon the natural unpainted wood--oak, I think. The work
belonged to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, I believe. It seemed
the very antithesis of Italian finesse and fancy, but the fitness of
such decoration entirely depends upon its relation to its surroundings,
which in this case were perfectly appropriate.
[Co-operative Relation]
That is the great point to bear in mind in all design--the sense of
relation; nothing stands alone in art. Lines and forms must harmonize
with other forms and lines: the elements of any design must meet in
friendly co-operation; it is not a blind struggle for existence, a
fierce competition, or a strife for ascendency between one motive and
another, one form and another, or a war of conflicting efforts. There
may be a struggle _outside_ the design, in the mind of the designer. He
may have tried hard against difficulties to express what he felt, and
have only reached harmony through discord and strife, but the work
itself should be serene; we should feel that, however various its
elements, they are not without their purpose and relation one to
another, that all is ordered and organized in harmonious lines, that
everything has its use and place, that, in short, it illustrates that
excellent motto, whether for art or life: "Each for all, and all for
each."
CHAPTER VI
Of the Fundamental Essentials of Design: Line, Form,
Space--Principles of Structural and Ornamental Line in Organic
Forms--Form and Mass in Foliage--Roofs--The Mediaeval
City--Organic and Accidental Beauty--Composition: Formal and
Informal--Power of Linear Expression--Relation of Masses and
Lines--Principles of Harmonious Composition.
We may take it, then, from the principles and examples I have
endeavoured to put before you in the previous chapters, that there are
three fundamental elements or essentials of Design--Line, Form, Space.
[Fundamental Essentials of Design]
Line we need, not only for our ground-plan and framework, but also to
define or express our forms. Form we need to give substance and mass,
interest and variety; and it is obvious that Space is required to
contain all these elements, while Space asserts its influence, as we
have seen, upon both Line and Form in combination upon it, whether
object or surface, by the shape of its boundary, the extension of its
plane, and the angle and position of its plane in regard to the eye, as
well as from the point of view of material and use.
Questions of the character of line and form, and their combination and
disposition in or over spaces, are questions of composition. They demand
the most careful solution, whatever our subject and purpose may be,
from the simplest linear border up to the most elaborate figure design.
But although the three essentials to composition must be always present,
it is always possible to rely more upon the qualities of one of them for
our main motive and interest, keeping the other two subsidiary. We might
centralize the chief interest of our composition upon _Line_, for
instance, and make harmonious relation or combination of lines our
principal object (as in line-design and ornament), or we might rather
dwell upon the contours, masses, and contrasts and relationships of
_Form_: as in pictorial design, figure compositions of all kinds, and
modelling and sculpture: or, again, we might choose that the peculiar
character given by the control of certain inclosing spaces should
determine the interest of our design, as the due filling of particular
panels and geometric shapes; or seek the interest of aerial perspective
in the pictorial and atmospheric expression of space.
Taking combinations of Line first, and bearing in mind what has been
said regarding its capacities for expression, whether of emotion,
direction of force, movement, rest, as well as of facts of structure and
surface, let us see if we can trace the principle of harmonious
composition, of which these things may be considered as parts.
[Line in Organic Forms]
Look at any of the systems of line in the organic structures of nature:
the radiating ribs of the scallop shell, or the spiral of many other
varieties; the set of the feathers upon the expanded wing of a bird; the
radiation of the sun's rays; the flowing line of the wave movement; the
lines of structure in flowers and leaves; the scales of a fish; the
scales of a pine-cone or an artichoke. We feel that any of these
combinations of lines are harmonious and beautiful, and we know that
they are essential to the character and structure. They are organic
lines, in short. They mean life and growth. In principle they are
radiating and recurring lines; in each form they repeat each other in
varying degrees of direction and declension of curve. No two lines are
alike, yet there is no contradiction and no unnecessary line, and
variety is combined with unity. Each affords a perfect instance of
harmonious composition of line, and gives us definite principles upon
which to work (see illustration, p. 140[f080]).
[Illustration (f080): Principles of Structural and Ornamental Line in
Natural Forms.]
These systems of line in organic nature have been adopted and adapted by
art, and are found throughout the historical forms of ornament which, as
we have good reason to believe, were often derived from mechanical
structures, illustrating the same principles; which, again, the logic of
geometry enforces in drawing on plane surfaces.
All organic structures teach us the same lesson of relation and
recurrence of line. The bones of all vertebrate animals, from _fish_ to
_man_, illustrate the constant repetition in different degrees of the
same character and direction of line. The vertebral column itself is an
instance, and the recurring spring of the ribs from it, like the
branches from the stem of a tree, further expressed in the ramification
of the jointed bones of the limbs and extremities. The principle may be
followed out in the structure of the muscles in their radiating fibres,
which the delicate contours and flowing lines of the surface of the
body only combine in a greater degree of subtlety (see illustration, p.
142[f081a]).
[Illustration (f081a): Radiating, Recurring and Counterbalancing Lines
in the Structure of the Skeleton and the Muscles.]
Look at the anatomy of any tree, as it is disclosed to us in its wintry
leaflessness, a beautiful composition of line rather than of form (see
illustration, p. 143[f081b]).
[Illustration (f081b): General Principles of Line and Form in the
Branching and Foliage Masses of Trees.]
Here we see organic life and structure expressed in the vigorous spring
of inter-dependent and corresponding curves, from the rigid sinuous
column of the main stem springing from the ground, presently divided
into the main forks of the branches, which again subdivide and subdivide
into smaller forks, so that the tree may sustain and spread its life in
the air and the sun, both supporting and continuing its existence by
this wonderful economic system of co-operative, subdivided, and
graduated helpfulness.
The massive green pavilion of summer, which this delicate vaulting of
branch-work sustains, gives us another, more sumptuous, but perhaps not
a greater beauty in the combination or substitution of form and mass for
line composition.
[Form and Mass in Foliage]
We might express, in an abstract way, the principle of the
line-structure of the ramifying tree by super-imposing vertically fork
upon fork in gradually diminishing scale, either curvilinear or
rectangular; and the principle of the mass-structure in the formation of
the foliage might be expressed by a series of overlapping curves,
suggestive of scales or cloud masses: to both of which indeed they
correspond in principle, illustrating the scale principle in detail and
the cloud principle in the mass; thus repeating the same general law of
natural roofing, or covering, in different materials (see
illustration, p. 145[f082]).
[Illustration (f082): Principles of Structure in Foliage Masses.]
In a mass of foliage each leaf falls partly over the one below it, as by
the system of their growth and suspension upon the stem they are of
course bound to do, whether symmetric or alternate in their arrangement,
the gaps caused by decay or accident being generally filled by new
shoots. Each shoot, eager to expand its leaves in the light, ever
spreading, forms mass after mass of the beautiful green panoply--the
coat armour of the forest, arboreal man's first form of domestic
architecture.
[Illustration (f083): Albert Durer: Detail from 'The Prodigal Son.']
The principle of structure here is just the same as the overlapping
principle of the tiles and slates upon our ordinary house-roofs; but
each leafy tile is different, being alive, and in the mass infinitely
varied and beautiful in form and colour, instead of being mechanical and
uniform, as we try to make our artificial roofs.
[German Roofs]
Very pretty and varied effects are produced in the old roofs of
southern Germany by the use of different coloured glazed tiles--red,
green, and yellow--arranged in simple patterns. One of the old towers at
Lindau has such a roof, and the colour effect is very rich and striking.
But I must not be led into a disquisition upon roofs further than in so
far as they illustrate the subject of composition of line and form, and
from the painter's point of view they frequently do in a very
delightful and instructive way.
[Illustration (f084): Albert Durer: St. Anthony.]
What, for instance, can be more varied and charming than the
compositions we constantly meet with in the rich backgrounds of Albert
Durer? Those steep barn roofs, and those quaint German towns inclosed in
walls with protecting towers--nests of steep tiled gables of every
imaginable degree--which give so much character and interest to his
designs, as in the background of his copper-plates "The Prodigal Son"
and "St. Anthony" here given. Their prototypes still exist here and
there in Germany, in such towns as Rothenburg, practically unchanged
since the sixteenth century, and give one an excellent idea of what such
houses were like. A visit there is like a leap back into the Middle
Ages. Every street is a varied and interesting composition. No two
houses are alike. They were built by the citizens to really pass their
lives in. The town is strongly placed upon the crest of a hill, with a
river at its foot, and well fortified and protected by massive
encircling walls and towers and deep gates, which give it so strong and
picturesque a character, while the timber and tile-roofed gallery for
the warders still exists along the inside of the walls. Such cities
arose by the strength of the social bond among men--the necessity for
mutual help in the maintenance of a higher standard of life, and mutual
protection against the ravages of sinister powers.
[The Mediaeval City]
Strong externally, internally they were made as home-like and full of
the varied delight of the eyes, as if the people had reasoned, "Since we
must live close together in a small place, let us make it as delightful
and romantic as we can." We know that the idea of Paradise and the New
Jerusalem to the imagination of the Middle Ages was always the fair
walled garden and the fenced city. The painters embodied the idea of
security and protection from the savage and destructive forces of nature
and man--a sanctuary of peace, a garden of delight.
[Illustration (f085): Roof-lines: Rothenburg.]
We have in modern times turned rather from the city as a complete and
beautiful thing, to the individual home, and to the interior of that,
and, in the modern competitive search for the necessary straws and
sticks to make our individualist-domestic composition of comfort and
artistic completeness, bowers are too often built upon the ruins of
others, or are fair by reason of surrounding degradation. The common
collective comfort and delight of the eyes is too often ignored, so that
it comes about that, if our modern cities possess any elements of beauty
or picturesqueness, it is rather owing to accidents and to the
transfiguring effects of atmosphere than to the beauty or variety of
architectural form and colour. We have to seek inspiration among the
fragments of the dead past in monuments and art schools.
[Organic and Accidental Beauty]
The modern development of the municipality and extension of its
functions may, indeed, do something, as it has done, and is doing,
something to protect public health and further public education; but we
have yet to wait for the full results, and everything must finally
depend upon the public spirit and disinterestedness of the citizens, and
in matters of art upon a very decided but somewhat rare and peculiar
sympathy and taste, as well as enthusiasm.
The absence of beauty of line, form, and proportion from the external
aspects of daily life in towns has probably a greater effect than we are
apt to realize in deadening the imagination, and it certainly seems to
produce a certain insensibility to beauty of line and composition, since
the perception must necessarily be blunted by being inured to the
commonplace and sordid. The instinct for harmony of line and form
becomes weakened, and can only be slowly revived by long and careful
study in art, instead of finding its constant and most vital stimulus in
every street.
For all that, however, an eye trained to observe and select may, even in
the dullest and dingiest street, find artistic suggestions, if not in
the buildings, then in the life. And where there is life, movement,
humanity, there is sure to be character and interest. Groups of children
playing will give us plenty of suggestions for figure composition.
Workpeople going to and from their work, the common works going on in
the street, the waggons and horses, the shoal of faces, the ceaseless
stream of life--all these things, whether we are able to reproduce them
as direct illustrations of the life of our time, or are moved only to
select from them vivid suggestions to give force to ideal conceptions,
should all be noted--photographed, as it were, instantaneously upon the
sensitive plate of the mind's vision. We can only learn the laws of
movement by observing movement--the swing and poise of the figure, the
relation of the lines of limbs and drapery to the direction of force and
centre of gravity, so important in composition. We must constantly
supplement our school and studio work by these direct impressions of
vivid life and movement, and neglect no opportunity or despise no source
or suggestion.
There are still in England to be found such old-world corners as the
quaint street of Canterbury (p. 153[f086]), which forms an excellent
study in the composition of angular and vertical lines.
[Illustration (f086): St. Margaret St Canterbury Aug: 27 1894]
[Formal Composition]
We may perceive that there are at least two kinds of composition, which
may be distinguished as:
I. Formal.
II. Informal.
I. Under the head of Formal may be classed all those systems of
structural line with which I started, and which are found either as
leading motives or fundamental plans and bases throughout ornamental
design. Yet even these may be used in composition of figures and other
forms where the object is more or less formal and decorative, as
governing plans or controlling lines.
The radiating ribs of a fan, for instance, might be utilized as the
natural boundaries and inclosing lines of a series of vertical figures
following the radiating lines. A strictly logical design of the kind
would be a series of figures with uplifted arms, forming radiating lines
from the shoulders, somewhat in the position of Blake's well-known and
beautiful composition of the Morning Stars in the Book of Job, already
illustrated.
Using the overlapping vertical scale plan we should get relative
positions for a formal composition of three figures, although they need
not necessarily be formal in detail. A typical design of three
associated ideas treated emblematically would be the most natural use of
such an arrangement--as Faith, Hope, and Charity; Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity; Science, Art, and Industry; or the three goddesses Here,
Pallas, and Aphrodite, as choice and purpose might decide. A
semicircular scale plan would not only repeat in a safe and sound
manner, but would afford suggestive shapes in which to throw designs of
figures, and could be effectively utilized either for a wall or ceiling
repeat.
The inclosure formed by two spiral lines gives a graceful ornamental
shape for a half-reclining figure; while a series of floating or flying
figures linking their hands would be appropriately governed by similar
spiral lines, uniting them with the meandering wave line (see
illustration, p. 155[f087]).
[Illustration (f087): Formal Composition: Figure Designs Controlled by
Geometric Boundaries.]
Upon a series of semicircles or ellipses, alternating horizontally,
might be arranged a little frieze of children with skipping ropes, or
Amorini with pendent garlands; the up-and-down movement in the former
case being conveyed by a variation, each alternate semicircle being
struck upwards. This would restore the emphatic wave or spiral line,
which always conveys the sense of rhythmic movement in a design.
Such a line, vertically employed, will give again a good plan for a
series of seated figures, say emblematic of the Hours, where similarity
of attitude and type would be appropriate, while the emblems and
accessories might be varied. A severer treatment would be suggested by
making the controlling line angular (see illustration, p. 156[f088]).
[Illustration (f088): Formal Composition: Figure Designs Controlled by
Geometric Boundaries.]
Such are a few illustrations of what I have termed formal composition,
in which the geometric and structural plans of pure ornament or
ornamental line maybe utilized to combine, control, or even suggest
figure designs.
[Informal Composition]
II. While formal compositions, though naturally falling into classes and
types, may be varied to a very great extent, when we come to informal
compositions the variations are unlimited, and a vista of extraordinary
and apparently endless choice, invention, and selection opens out before
the designer, co-extensive with the variety of nature herself.
In seeking harmonious and expressive composition in the pictorial
direction the guides are much less definite and secure. Individual
feeling and instinct, which must have an important influence in all
kinds of designing, are in this direction paramount. Yet even here, if
we look beneath the apparent freedom and informality, we find certain
laws at work which seem to differ only in degree from the more definite
and constructive control of line which we have been considering. In the
first place, there are our direct impressions from nature; and,
secondly, our conscious aims and efforts to express an idea in our
minds. We have the same restricted and definite forms of language and
materials in each case--line, form, space, brushes, pencil, colour,
paper, canvas, or clay. We are taken by some particular scene: the
composition of line and form at a particular spot attracts us more than
another. We do not stop as a rule to ask why, since it usually takes all
our time and our best skill to get into shape what we are seeking--and
carry away with us an artistic record of the place. We have seen that in
the case of certain natural structures, shells, leaves, flowers, the
fundamental structural lines are so beautiful that they not only form
ornament in themselves, but furnish the basis for whole types and
families of ornament. When we look at a landscape, putting aside for the
moment all the surface charms of colour and effect, and concentrating
our attention upon its lines of structures, we shall find that it owes a
great part of its beauty to the harmonious relation of its leading
lines, or to certain pleasant contrasts, or a certain impressiveness of
form and mass, and at the same time we shall perceive that this linear
expression is inseparable from the sentiment or emotion suggested by
that particular scene.
A gentle southern landscape--undulating downs, and wandering
sheep-walks; the soft rounded masses of the sheep upon smooth cropped
turf--all these are so many notes or words in the language of line and
form which go to express the idea of pastoral life. They are
inextricably bound up with inseparable associations conveyed by such
lines and forms. The undulating lines of resting or dancing figures
would only give point, true emphasis, and variety, and a note of
contrast in the forms would serve to bring out the general sentiment
more strongly.
Substitute rugged rocks, swollen torrents, wind-tossed trees and stormy
skies, and all is changed. Such things cannot be expressed without much
more emphatic lines and masses, and the use of opposing angles and
energetic curves of movement which would be destructive of the sentiment
of peace, in other cases. Yet even then to convey the expression of
energy and rapid movement, concerted groups of lines are none the less
necessary (see illustration, p. 159[f089]).
[Illustration (f089): Informal Composition: Expression of (1) Storm and
(2) Calm In Landscape.]
Such comparisons indicate not only that there is a necessary
association of ideas with certain lines and forms, but also that certain
relations and associations of line of a similar character are necessary
to produce a harmonious composition, and one which conveys a definite
and pervading sentiment or emotion, just as we saw that the controlling
lines of structural curves, spirals, and angles require to be in
relation, and to be re-echoed by the character of the design they
inclose or which is built upon them.
The same law holds true in figure composition. The sense of repose and
restfulness necessary to sitting or reclining groups depends upon the
gentle declivities of the curves and their gradual descent to the
horizontal.
[Illustration (f090): Informal Composition: Expression of Repose and
Action.]
Draw a figure sitting rigid, tense, and alert, and you destroy the sense
of repose at once, and you are obliged also to resort to angles, still
more emphatic where strong action is to be expressed; while to express
continual or progressive movement, a choice of associated lines of
action in different stages of progress leading up to the crescendo of
the final one (as in a group of mowers) would be necessary (see
illustrations, p. 161[f090]). We cannot, then, in any composition have
too definite a conception. We must, at any sacrifice of detail, bring
out the main expression and meaning. Every group of figures must be in
the strictest relation to each other and to the central interest or
expression of the design. You cannot, for instance, in a procession of
figures, make your faces turn all sorts of ways without stopping the
onward movement which is essential to the idea of a procession. This
would not preclude variety, but the general tendency must be in one
direction. Every line in a composition must lead up to the central idea,
and be subordinated or contributory to it (see illustration, Nos. 1 and
2, p. 163[f091a]).
[Illustration (f091a): (1) and (2) Movement in a Procession]
The same with masses: you cannot put a number of forms together without
some sort of relation, either of general character and contour or some
uniting line. We may learn this principle from nature also. Look at a
heap of broken stones and debris, which in detail may contain all sorts
of varieties of form, as we find them tumbled down a steep place, as the
rocky bed of a mountain stream, a heap of boulders upon a hillside, or
the debris from a quarry or mine; in each case the law of gravity and
the persistence of force working together arrange the diverse forms in
masses controlled by the lines, which express the direction and degree
of descent, and the pressure of force. The same thing may be seen on any
hilly ground after heavy rain; the scattered pebbles are arranged in
related groups, combined and composed by the flow of miniature streams,
which channel the face of the ground and form hollows for their
reception (see Nos. 3 and 4, p. 163[f091b]). The force of the tides and
currents upon the sea-shore illustrates the same principle and affords
us magnificent lessons in composition, not only in the delicate lines
taken by the sculptured sand, but in the harmonious grouping of masses
of shingle and shells, weeds and drift, arranged by the movement of the
waves.
[Illustration (f091b): (3) Lines Left by a Watercourse, (4) Lines
Governing Fallen Debris from a Quarry.]
[Principles of Harmonious Composition]
So that we may see that the principles of harmonious composition are not
the outcome of merely capricious fancy or pedantic rule, but are
illustrated throughout the visible world by the laws and forces of the
material universe. It is for the artist to observe and apply them in his
own work of re-creation.
CHAPTER VII
Of the Relief of Form--Three Methods--Contrast--Light and Shade,
and Modelling--The Use of Contrast and Planes in Pattern
Designing--Decorative Relief--Simple Linear Contrast--Relief by
Linear Shading--Different Emphasis in relieving Form by Shading
Lines--Relief by means of Light and Shade alone without
Outline--Photographic Projection--Relief by different Planes and
Contrasts of Concave and Convex Surfaces in Architectural
Mouldings--Modelled Relief--Decorative Use of Light and Shade,
and different Planes in Modelling and Carving--Egyptian System of
Relief Sculpture--Greek and Gothic Architectural Sculpture,
influenced by Structural and Ornamental Feeling--Sculptural
Tombs, Medals, Coins, Gems--Florentine Fifteenth-century
Reliefs--Desideriodi Settignano.
We come now to the consideration of the various means and methods of
expressing relief in line and form.
We may define a form in outline and give it different qualities of
expression by altering the quality and consistency of our outline, and
we may obtain very different kinds of decorative effect by the use of
lines of various degrees of thickness or thinness; but if we want to
give it force and colour, and to distinguish it from its background more
emphatically, we must add to our outline.
[Three Methods of Expressing Relief]
There are three principal methods or systems of giving relief by adding
to our outline.
One is the method of giving relief to form by contrasts of tone, colour,
or tint.
Another by means of the expression of light and shade: and the third by
means of modelling in relief.
Now, still keeping to expression by means of line, the three arms I have
sketched (p. 167[f092]) illustrate: (1) the form in outline alone; (2)
the contrast method; and (3) the light and shade method. The three pots
underneath illustrate the same three stages in a simpler manner.
In number one we see the outline defining the form pure and simple: in
number two the form is relieved by a half-tone formed of diagonal lines,
forming a plane or background behind it. The arm is still further
relieved by the dark drapery. Number three shows the relief carried
further by lines expressive of the modelling of the arm and the rounding
of the pot, and also by cast shadows from the forms.
[Illustration (f092): The Relief of Form: (1) By Outline, (2) By
Contrast, (3) By Light and Shade.]
The system of expressing relief I have termed relief by contrast
includes two kinds of contrast: there are the contrasts of line and
form, and there are the contrasts of planes of tone or tint and local
colour. We may consider that the contrast method covers generally all
forms of pattern and certain kinds of pictorial design. The method of
expressing relief by means of line covers generally all forms of design
in black and white, graphic sketching, pen-drawing, and work with the
point of all kinds.
[Of the Use of Contrast and Planes]
Taking the principle of contrast as applied to pattern design, we can,
even within the limited range of black and white and half-tint (as
expressed by lines), get a considerable amount of decorative effect. In
the first place by bringing out our pattern, previously outlined, upon
a black ground (as in Nos. 1 and 2, p. 169[f093]), increasing the
richness of effect, and getting a second plane by treating the lower
part in an open tint of line.
Simple contrasts of dark upon light or light upon dark are effective,
and sufficient for many purposes, such as borders (as in Nos. 2 and 3,
p. 169[f093]).
When a lighter kind of relief and effect is required, the recurring
forms in a border are often sufficiently emphasized by a tint of open
lines: movement and variety being given by making them follow the minor
curves of the successive forms, as in this instance (No 4, p. 169[f093])
the movement of the water is suggested behind the fish.
The relation of the plain ground-work to the figure of the pattern is
also an important point; indeed the plain parts of the pattern, or the
interstices and intervals of the pattern, are as essential to the
pattern as the figured parts.
In designs intended for various processes of manufacture, such as
printed or woven textiles, wall-papers, etc., where blocks or rollers
are used to repeat the pattern, the extent of plain in proportion to
figured parts must be governed in some measure by the practicable size
of the repeat: but within certain limits great variety of proportion is
possible.
A simple but essentially decorative principle is to preserve a certain
equality between the figured masses and the ground masses. The leaf
patterns (Nos. 6 and 7, p. 169[f093]) consist simply of the repetition
and reversal of a single element. An emphatic effect is obtained by
bringing the leaves out black upon a white ground (as in No. 6), while a
flatter and softer effect is the result of throwing them upon a plane
of half-tint expressed by horizontal lines, with a similar effect of
relief to that which would be given by the warp, if the pattern were
woven.
For larger surfaces, greater repose and dignity in pattern may be
obtained by a greater proportion of the repeat being occupied by the
ground (as in No. 5, p. 169[f093]).
[Illustration (f093): Relief of Form and Line in Pattern Design by Means
of Contrast and the Use of Planes.]
Indeed we may consider as a general principle that the larger the
interspaces of the ground, plane, or field of the pattern, the lighter
in tint they should be, or the necessary flatness is apt to be lost.
Relief in pattern design may be said to be adding interest and richness
without losing the flatness and repose of the design as a whole. When
pattern and ground are fairly equally balanced in quantity the ground
may be rich and dark, and darkest as the interstices, where the ground
is shown, become less. The figure of a pattern relieved as light upon a
dark plane, as a rule, requires to be fuller in form than dark-figuring
upon a light ground.
[Decorative Relief]
In decorative work the use of contrast in the relief of parts of a
design is often useful and effective, as, for instance, the dark shading
or treatment in black or flat tone of the alternating under side of a
turn-over leaf border.
The decorative value of this principle is recognized by heraldic
designers in the treatment of the mantling of the helmet, which in
earlier times is treated simply as a hanging or flying strip of drapery
with a lining of a different colour, by which it is relieved as it hangs
in simple spiral folds. This ornamental element became developed by the
designers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries into elaborate
scroll designs springing from the circlet of the helmet and surrounding
the shield: but the principle of the turned-up lining remained, often
variegated and enriched with heraldic patterns (see illustrations, pp.
172[f094a], 173[f094b]).*
[*] The increased importance given to the mantling in later times
may have been due to the disappearance of the housings of the
knight's horse and his surcoat, which originally displayed his
arms and colours. The mantling of later times displayed the
heraldic colours of the knight, when, being clad in plate armour,
there was no other means of displaying them except on the shield.
Decoratively, of course, the mantling is of great value to the
heraldic designer, enabling him to form much more graceful
compositions, to combine diverse and rigid elements with free and
flowing lines and masses, and to fill panels with greater
richness and effect, whether carved or painted, or both.
[Illustration (f094a): Decorative Relief: Counterchange, Treatment of
Mantling, Fourteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.]
[Illustration (f094b): Decorative Relief: Treatment of Mantling.]
[Use of Diapered Backgrounds]
The principle, too, of counterchange in heraldry answers to our
principle of relief by contrast, and though its chief charm lies in its
ornamental range of form and colour combinations, it can be expressed in
black and white, and it remains a universal principle throughout
decorative art. The decorative effect and charm of the relief of large
and bold forms upon rich and delicate diapers is also an important
resource of the designer. The monumental art of the Middle Ages affords
multitudes of examples of this principle in ornamental treatment. The
miniaturist of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries constantly relieved
his groups of figures upon a diapered ground. The architectural sculptor
relieved the broad masses of flowing drapery and the bold projection of
his effigies and recumbent figures by delicately chiselled diapers upon
the surface of the wall behind them. This treatment may frequently be
seen in the recessed tombs of the fourteenth century.
The incisor of memorial brasses, again, more especially in continental
examples, shows a fondness for the same principle. The long vertical
lines of drapery of ladies and ecclesiastics, the broad masses of the
heraldic surcoat, or armour of the knights, the rich and heavy furred
gowns of the burghers, are often relieved upon beautiful diapered or
arabesque grounds, generally embodying some heraldic device, motto, or
emblem of the person or family whose tomb it ornaments. Such decoration
is strictly linear, yet within its own limits, and perhaps because of
them, we find in this province of design extremely admirable work, no
less for delineation of character and decorative treatment than for
ornamental invention controlled by strict economy of line.
[Illustration (f095): Relief Upon a Diapered Ground: Brass of Martin De
Visch, Bruges, 1452.]
[Relief of Form by Linear Shading]
This brings us to the consideration of our second method of relief by
means of line.
Take any simple allied elements to form a repeating pattern, say spiral
shells, place them at certain rhythmic intervals, and we can unite and
at the same time give them relief by filling in the ground by a series
of waved lines to suggest the ribbed sand. Add a few dots to soften and
vary the effect, and we get a pattern of a certain balance and
consistency (No. 1, p. 177[f096a]).
[Illustration (f096a): Relief in Pattern Design by Means of Simple
Linear Contrasts (1)]
With the more varied and complex floral form, but treated in a very
abstract way, placing the daisies in a line, horizontally, and reversing
the sprig for the alternate row, we have another motive, which is
connected and steadied as well as relieved by the suggestion of grass
blades in groups of three slightly radiated vertical strokes (No. 2,
p. 177[f096b]). A pattern of two elements, again, may be formed in a
still more simple way by linear contrast, as in No. 3, where the
pyramidal trees are formed by a continuous serpentine stroke of the pen
terminating in a spiral stem. The diagonal arrangement of the trees
produces a chequer, the intervals of which can be varied by the
contrasting black masses of the birds.
[Illustration (f096b): Relief in Pattern Design by Means of Simple
Linear Contrasts (2), (3)]
In graphic drawing, lines to express forms in the relief of light and
shade are often needed to give additional force even where no great
degree of realism is desired. A tint formed by horizontal lines is
sufficient to relieve a face from the background and give it solidity,
while local colour may be given to the hair, and at the same time serve
to relieve the leaves of a wreath encircling the head (see illustration,
p. 178[f097a]).
[Illustration (f097a): Relief by Adding Shading Lines to Outline.]
The rich effect of clustered apples growing among their leaves could
hardly be suggested without the use of lines expressive of light and
shade, the interstices of the deepest shade running into solid black (p.
178[f097a]). In adding lines in this kind of way to give relief or extra
richness or force, the draughtsman is really designing a system of lines
upon his outline basis, which may have quite as decorative a quality as
the outline itself. At the same time nothing is more characteristic of
the artist than the way in which such lines are used, and of course the
choice of direction and arrangement of such lines will make all the
difference in the effect of the drawing.
[Diagonal Shading]
Where the object is to express the figure in broad masses of light and
shade, the use of a series of diagonal lines is an effective, and
probably the most ready and rapid, method when working with the pen (see
p. 179[f097b]). This system of expressing the broad surfaces of shade
was much used by the Italian masters of the Renaissance in their rapid
pen sketches and studies of figures, and a certain breadth and style is
given to their drawings owing in part to the simplicity of this linear
treatment.
[Illustration (f097b): Relief of Form by Diagonal Shading.]
[Emphasis]
No doubt the simpler the system of line adopted in giving relief to
figures the better, if the particular expression aimed at is
accomplished, and, as a general rule, we should endeavour to get the
necessary force and depth without the use of cross-line, or many
different directions of line in shading a figure: but, given any power
of draughtsmanship, the individuality of the artist is bound to come in,
and it is not likely, nor is it to be desired, that any two artists in
line should give exactly the same account of natural fact, or reproduce
the images in their minds in the same forms, any more than we should
expect two writers to express their ideas in the same terms.
The kind and degree of emphasis upon different parts, the selection of
moment or fact, would all naturally make considerable differences in the
treatment. The three sketches of the skirt dancer are given as instances
of the different effects and expression to be obtained in rendering the
same subject (p. 181[f098]).
[Illustration (f098): Different Method and Different Emphasis in
Relieving Form by Shading Lines.[A, B, C]]
In A the broad relief of the white dress against the tones of the floor
and background, and the darker note of the hair, are the facts chiefly
dwelt upon. In B the form of the figure is brought out in broad light
and shade and cast shadow, and the dress relieved by radiating folds. In
C quicker movement is given, the lines of the successive wave-shaped
folds radiating spirally from the shoulders being the chief means of
conveying this, while the head and arms are thrown into strong relief
against a dark background, the cast shadow being of a lighter tone.
The direction of line used in relieving forms, and expressing modelling
and details, must depend much upon individual taste and feeling as well
as knowledge of form. The element of beauty of design also comes in, and
the question between this and force or literalness--the difference
between a study or direct transcript from nature, and a design with a
purely ornamental aim, or a composition directed mainly to the
expression of a particular idea or emotion.
Such considerations will ultimately determine the choice and use of
line, the degree of relief and emphasis, for these and the direction of
the line itself are the syllables and the words which will convey the
purport of the work to the mind of the beholder.
Study of the masters of line--Durer, Titian, Mantegna, Holbein--will
inform us as to its capacities and limitations. The limitations, too, of
method and material will be a powerful factor in the determination of
style in the use of line and in the economy of its use.
The bold firm line suitable to the facsimile woodcut, the broad and
simple treatment of line with solid black useful in the plank-cut line
block to be used with colour blocks, the comparatively free and
unconditioned pen-drawing for the surface-printed process block--all
these will finally give a certain character to our work beyond our own
idiosyncrasies in the use of the pen or the brush.
[Illustration (f099): Albert Durer's Principle in the Treatment of
Drapery: From the Woodcut in the "Life of the Virgin" Series.]
Useful things may be learned by the way, such as Albert Durer's
principle of giving substance to his figures and details, more
especially seen in his treatment of drapery, when the lines run into
solid black and express the deeper folds and give emphasis and solidity
to the figure (p. 183[f099]). The reproductions here given of sketches
of drapery by Filippino Lippi and Raphael also show the same principle.
[Illustration (f100): Albert Durer: Pen-Drawing.]
A figure or object of any kind, seen in full light and shade, is
relieved at any of its edges either as dark against light, or as light
against dark, and we recognize it as a solid form in this way; the
boundaries of natural light and shade defining it, and projecting it
from the background upon the vision. There may be infinite modulations,
of course, between the light part, the half-tones, and the darkest
parts; but this broad principle governs all work representing light and
shade.
[Illustration (f101): Filippino Lippi: Study of Drapery.]
It is, in fact, _the principle of the relief of form_ represented upon a
plane surface.
[Illustration (f102): Raphael: Studies of Drapery.]
[Relief by Light and Shade Alone]
If the draughtsman's object be to represent the _appearance_ of a figure
or any object in full natural light and shade with the pen or other
point, he could do so without using outline at all, but by simply
observing this principle and defining the boundaries of light on dark or
half-tone in their proper masses and relations. The pen sketch of the
man with the hoe (p. 188[f103a]) is intended to illustrate this method.
[Illustration (f103a): Relief by Means of Light and Shade Alone, in
Pen-drawing Without Outline.]
There is also the method of representing form in relief by means of
working with white line only upon a dark ground, the modelling and
planes of surface being entirely expressed in this way (as in A, p.
189[f103b]). This may be termed drawing by means of _light_, and may be
contrasted with the opposite method of working by means of black line
only on a light ground, or drawing by means of _shade_ (as in B, p.
189[f103b]).
[Illustration (f103b): Relief of Form: (A) By White Line Only on Dark
Ground, and (B) By Black Line Only on Light Ground.]
Yet another method, and one in which the effect of relief can be
obtained more readily and rapidly, perhaps, is by working on a
half-toned paper, drawing in the form with pencil, chalk, or brush,
blocking in the darker shadows and heightening the highest lights with
touches of white. These white touches, however, should be strictly
limited to the highest lights. This method is represented by the
half-tone blocks used in this book, those which were taken from drawings
made on brown paper and touched with white.
[The Principle of the Photograph]
The definition of form by means of light is strictly the principle of
the photograph, which comprehends and illustrates its complementary of
relief by means of shade, and I think it is due to the influence of the
photograph that modern black-and-white artists have so often worked
on these principles. The drawings of Frederick Walker and Charles Keene
may be referred to as examples. I shall, however, hope to return to this
branch of the subject later.
[Relief in Architectural Mouldings]
So far we have been considering the relief of form by means of line. We
now come to what may be termed the relief of form by actual form and
plane, or modelling in actual light and shade, as in architecture and
sculptors' and carvers' work. Then relief is gained by the contrast of
actually different planes, forms, surfaces, and textures. The simplest
illustrations of the principles of modelled relief are to be found in
architectural mouldings, by means of which buildings are relieved and
enriched, and important structural or functional parts are emphasized,
as in cornices and ribs of vaults, arches, and openings.
Place a concave moulding side by side with a convex one either
horizontally or vertically, and a certain pleasant effect of contrasting
light and shade is the result, reminding one of the recurring concave
and convex of the rolling waves of the sea (A, p. 191[f104]).
A series of flat planes of different widths and at different levels also
produces a pleasant kind of relief useful in a picture frame or the jamb
of a door (B).
All architectural mouldings might be said to be modifications or
combinations of the principles illustrated by these two.
Very different feeling may be expressed in mouldings, and if we compare
the two types, the classical and the Gothic, the comparatively broad and
simple effect of the former (C, D, E, F, G) contrasts with the
richness and variety and the stronger effect of light and shade,
produced by deep undercutting, in the latter (H, I, J, K).
[Illustration (f104): Relief in Architectural Mouldings.]
The Romans, however, produced rich and highly ornate effects in the use
of these types of mouldings, as they reappeared in the Corinthian order,
the ovolo cut into the egg and dart, with the Astralagus beneath, the
Cyma recta above the brackets of the cornice casting a bold shadow, and
both in the cornice and the hollow beneath the dentils enriched with
carving, as seen in the splendid fragment of the Forum of Nerva.
[Illustration (f105): Roman Treatment of Corinthian Order, Forum of
Nerva, Rome.]
When we pass to the more complex problems of figure modelling and
sculpture, it is but carrying on and developing the same principle of
the contrast of planes, of the relief of plane upon plane, of forms upon
one plane, to forms upon forms in many planes. From the contrast of bead
and hollow we come to consider the contrast between the rounded limb and
the sinuous folds of drapery; from the rhythm of the acanthus scroll we
turn to the less obvious but none the less existing rhythm of the
sculptural frieze.
Line, we may say, controls the modeller's and sculptor's composition,
but form and its treatment in light and shade give him his means of
ornament. The delicate contours of faces and limbs contrasted with the
spiral and radiating folds of drapery, or rich clusters of leaves and
fruits, the forms of animals and the wings of birds--these are his
decorative resources.
[Egyptian Reliefs]
The early stages of sculpture in relief may be seen in the monumental
work of ancient Egypt.
Simple incised work appears to have been the first stage, and the
forms afterwards slightly modelled or rounded at the edges into the
hollow of the sunk outline.
Large figures and tables of hieroglyphic inscription were thus cut upon
vast mural surfaces, and carried across the joints of the masonry,
without disturbing the flatness and repose of the wall surface (p.
195[f106]). The Egyptians, indeed, seem to have treated their walls more
as if they were books for record and statement, symbol and hieroglyphic.
[Illustration (f106): Egyptian System of Sculptured Relief: Thebes.]
Messrs. Perrot and Chipiez, in their "History of Ancient Art in Egypt,"
speak of three processes in the treatment of Egyptian reliefs (vol. ii.,
p. 284):
1. That followed by the Greeks, in which the figures are left standing
out from a smooth bed, sometimes slightly hollowed near the contours
(see illustration, p. 196[fig106]).
2. Where the figures are modelled in relief in a sunk hollow, from an
inch to one and a half inch deep.
3. Where the surface of the figures and the bed or field of relief are
kept on one level (see illustration, p. 196[f107]), the contours
indicated by hollow lines cut into the stone; very little modelling,
little more than silhouette, in which the outline is shown by a hollow
instead of by the stroke of a pencil or brush.
One would be inclined to reverse the order of these three processes, on
the supposition that No. 3 was the earliest process, and that it arose,
as I have conjectured, from the practice of representing forms by
incised lines only.
There is certainly a strong family likeness as to method between the
Egyptian reliefs and the Assyrian, the Persian, and the archaic Greek;
and there is a far greater difference in treatment between archaic Greek
relief sculpture and the work of the Phidian period than between the
archaic work of the three races named.
The strictly mural and decorative conditions which governed ancient
sculpture no doubt gave to Greek sculpture in its perfection a certain
dignity, simplicity, and restraint, and also accounted in a great
measure for that rhythmic control of invisible structural and ornamental
line which asserts itself in such works as the Pan-Athenaic frieze. It
was strictly slab sculpture, and became part of the surface of the wall.
[Illustration (f107): Greek Relief. Eleusis. Egyptian Relief. Denderah.]
[Gothic Sculpture]
The structural and ornamental feeling also asserts itself strongly in
Gothic sculpture, owing to its close association with architecture, as,
when it was not an integral part of the structure, it was always an
essential part of the expression of the building, and it was this which
controlled its treatment decoratively, in its scale and its system and
degree of relief.
In the porches of the Gallo-Roman churches of France of the twelfth
century, the figures occupying the place of shafts became columnar in
treatment, the sinuous formalized draperies wrapped around the elongated
figures, or falling in vertical folds, as in the figures in the western
door of Chartres Cathedral (p. 199[f108]). The lines of the design of
the sculptured tympanum were strictly related to the space, and the
degree and treatment of the relief clearly felt in regard to the
architectural effect (p. 201[f109]).
[Illustration (f108): Chartres Cathedral: Carving on the West Front.]
[Illustration (f109): Chartres Cathedral: Tympanum of the Central Door
of the West Front.]
[Architectural Influence]
In the sculptured tombs of the Middle Ages, with their recumbent figures
and heraldic enrichments, again, we see this architectonic sense
influencing the treatment of form and relief, as these monuments were
strictly architectural decorations, often incorporating its forms and
details, and often built into the structure of the church or cathedral
itself, as in the case of the recessed and canopied tombs of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
As sculptures became detached from the building and wall, and appeared
in full relief in the round, though still, as it were, carrying a
reminiscence of their origin with them in the shape of the moulded
pedestal, architectural control became less and less felt, statues in
consequence being less and less related to their surroundings. The
individual feeling of the sculptor or the traditions of his school and
training alone influenced his treatment, until we get the incidental and
dramatic or sentimental isolated figure or group of modern days.
[Medals and Coins]
It is noteworthy, however, that even in the smaller works of the
modeller, carver, or sculptor of the Middle Ages or the early
Renaissance, a sense of decorative fitness and structural sense is
always present. We see it in the carved ornaments of seats and
furniture, in the design and treatment of coins and seals and gems and
medals. These latter from the time of the ancient Greeks afford
beautiful examples of the decorative treatment of relief in strict
relation to the object and purpose. The skill and taste of the Greeks
seemed to have been largely inherited by the artists of the earlier
Italian Renaissance, such as Pisano, whose famous medal of the Malatesta
of Rimini affords a splendid instance not only of the treatment of the
portrait and subject on the reverse perfectly adapted to its method and
purpose, but also of the artistic use of lettering as a decorative
feature (see p. 203[f110]).
[Illustration (f110): Medals of the Lords of Mantua, Cesena, and
Ferrara, by Vittore Pisano of Verona (Middle of the Fifteenth Century).]
The treatment and relief of figures and heads upon the plane surfaces of
metals and coins, the composition controlled by the circular form, have
always been a fine test of both modelling and decorative skill and
taste. Breadth is given by a flatness in the treatment of successive
planes of low relief, which rise to their highest projection from the
ground, in the case of a head in profile, about its centre. The delicate
perception of the relation of the planes of surface is important, as
well as the decorative effect to be obtained by arrangement of the light
and shade masses and the contrast of textures, such as hair and the
folds of drapery, to the smooth contours of faces and figures, and the
rectangular forms of lettering.
In gems we see the use made of the concave ground, which gives an
effective relief to the figure design in convex upon it. Bolder
projection of prominent parts are here necessary in contrast to the
retiring planes, the work being on so small a scale, and also in view of
its seal-like character; for, of course, it is the method of producing
form by incision, and modelling by cutting and hollowing out, that gives
the peculiar character to gems and seals; and it is in forming human
figures that the building up of the form by a series of ovals, spoken of
in a previous chapter, becomes really of practical value: the method of
hollowing the stone or metal in cutting the gem or making a die and
the character of the tool leading naturally in that direction.
[Desiderio di Settignano]
Perhaps the most delicate and beautiful kind of sculptured or modelled
relief is to be found in the work of the Florentine school of the
fifteenth century, more especially that of Donatello and Desiderio di
Settignano, who seem indeed to have caught the feeling and spirit of the
best Greek period, with fresh inspiration and suggestion from nature and
the life around them, as well as an added charm of grace and sweetness.
It is difficult to imagine that marble carving in low relief can be
carried to greater perfection than it is in the well-known small relief
by Desiderio di Settignano of the "Madonna and Child," now in the
Italian Court of the South Kensington Museum. T
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