Studies in pictures; an introduction to the famous galleries . but the tellingof it would not necessarily make art. There are pic-tures of battles, of princely pageants, of coronationsand marriages, of Niebelungen happenings, and HolyGrail incidents, wherein all the facts are faithfullyset forth; and there are interiors with seventeenth-century cavaliers playing at cards, or twentieth-cen-tury 3oung women seated at gossip; t)ut again, ineither or in any case, the story told is not the pic-ture. It is not ditBcult to draw with measurablesuccess, a man in Empire uniform standing on aships deck,
Studies in pictures; an introduction to the famous galleries . but the tellingof it would not necessarily make art. There are pic-tures of battles, of princely pageants, of coronationsand marriages, of Niebelungen happenings, and HolyGrail incidents, wherein all the facts are faithfullyset forth; and there are interiors with seventeenth-century cavaliers playing at cards, or twentieth-cen-tury 3oung women seated at gossip; t)ut again, ineither or in any case, the story told is not the pic-ture. It is not ditBcult to draw with measurablesuccess, a man in Empire uniform standing on aships deck, and to call the result Napoleon on theBellerophon ; but to draw and paint a figure thatstands and looks and ii^thfe-dethroned emperor, asOrchardson has done, that is quite another a figure .should have defimte_character is vitallyimportant. It is this very quality of character in the figure,when forcibly given, that brings conviction as truth,and creatos a sense not only of reality but of character does not rest alone in a scowling brow. UJ _1 X FIGURE PAINTING 73 or a furrowed clieek. I shall have something to sayabout that when I come to speak of the portrait;but there may be a portraiture of the figure quite aseffective as of the face, and character may be ex-pressed in finger tips as well as in nose tips. Thereis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Eome aseated figure of the Delphic Sibyl by Michael Angelowith a fore-shortened right arm and a limp half-opened hand resting upon the knee that speaks char-acter quite as forcefully as the solemn face. Thehand has power, though it is not clenched; and ithas beauty, though it is not what would be called select. There is about it a something of the mys-tery that wraps the whole figure. It belongs to thefigure, and has in itself a Sibylline quality, anausterity, a wonderful dignity. Compare it for amoment with the hand of the Samian Sibyl by Guer-cino in the Uffizi, and you will note a great differ-ence. T
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublish, booksubjectpainting
