The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

The Fésole Club Papers.

XVIII. Action.

Attitude was our last lesson. Action comes naturally next, for by Action I mean the more strenuous kinds of employment, while Attitude exhibits the quieter occupations. In studies of Attitude we have to draw figures which, on the whole, are in repose; in studies of Action we have to draw figures which will not stay still, to be measured and plumbed.

Without some knowledge of general proportions and some skill in sketching the forms, it would be impossible: but our members have climbed over these first difficulties. To be a thorough artist, and to paint moving figures completely, it needs more than climbing over; it needs clearing away, and driving one's own good road through all the obstacles of draughtsmanship and anatomy. But then the temptation is to be so delighted with the road that one is content to saunter up and down it, and to swagger in it, like many of the sixteenth century painters, in their "pride of science." They had discovered artistic anatomy, and the means of expressing Action; and, as people do with a new fashion, they carried Action to extremes, neglecting the virtues of repose, until they lost themselves and their art in exaggerated violence.

It is not violence, but life, that we have to seek: and life cannot be fully expressed without activity. Only, there are two kinds of activity which can be shown in art. There is the ordered, controlled, rhythmic action, which speaks of strength and health, of law and life; and there is the strained, spasmodic, tortured action, which means weakness and disease, madness and death. Our art is not merely to imitate movement, but beautiful movement. It may express power, but that involves ease; it may even be terrible, but with that divine terror which is rapture. In a word the Action which is our subject, is graceful action, or grand action. We may hope, even with out scanty means, to draw children dancing and singing, but we should be no better for being cleaver enough to draw them kicking and screaming. We may draw men ploughing or riding, but not quarrelling in a pothouse: and if they must fight, fighting like Can Grande at Vicenza, not like Torpenhow in the Soudan. *

* ["The Light that Failed," Chap. II. in the splendid, horrible passage introduced, with Mr. Rudyard Kipling's unfailing accuracy of insight, by the allusion to Michael Angelo's "Pisan Soldiery Surprised while Bathing," the picture that heralded the age of anatomical sturm und drang in art.]

But how are we to learn the expression of such action? In our little club, we have only to deal with the draped figure, drawn on a small scale, and suitable to landscape work. This relieves us of all anatomy, but we have still the drapery to conquer. We have, practically, to suggest action with the help of attitude plus drapery. What rules can be given for drapery drawing?

Many years ago a young student, who was ambitious in this line, and had tried most of the tricks, such as dressing a clay model in wet muslin, and arranging his flying scrolls upon the floor to be drawn with a combination of mirrors, and so forth; this young person asked our foremost drapery-painter for his trick. "Well," said the great man, "for this picture"--pointing to the Hesperides dancing round their golden apple tree--"I made a young lady run round the garden, and tried to sketch her."

Observation and diligent sketching are indeed the only tricks, in this as in other lines of art work. The instantaneous photograph is little or no use, for we have to paint the appearance, the effect on the eye and mind, not the separate elements of fact that go to make up that effect. A stormy lake and swaying trees, seen by a lightning-flash, seem to be immoveable: our impression of movement comes from a combination of attitudes, just as our impression of any scene comes from a combination of incidents. In landscape painting it is not any one section of the panorama that, however carefully painted, makes a great painter's subject, but his impression of the scene as a whole. So in the action of a figure, it is not the attitude at any given moment, but the net result of the series of attitudes, that expresses action, as you see in the zoetrope.

Watch, for example, a knitter's hands. They take a series of positions, which they go through over and over again. In some of the positions their action is hardly explained; some of the fingers are hidden, others look awkward; sometimes the needles disappear, or are foreshortened so that they could not be known if they were faithfully drawn. You will find that the look of knitting is best given by a combined attitude, in which all the fingers and needles are shown, even though this may not be the actual fact at any given instant.

What is, then, this typical attitude, and how may we be guided in looking for it? You know how deaf people read the lips? You can practice the art by talking to yourself in the looking glass; and you will observe that many of the positions of the lips, if photographed instantaneously, would hardly show that you were talking. Your mouth will shut when you say B, P or M; when you say F or V the lower lip will be oddly drawn up. On the whole it is the vowels that give the form of the mouth. There is a picture by Meissonier of a man singing to a guitar; you can tell he is saying "Oh!" and the effect, though not comic, is rather humorous. Say or sing "You!" to the glass, and it looks almost like whistling; sing "He" and there is a tendency to a grin. But the normal vowel "Ah," the vowel into which you put your full power and passion, gives the normal effect; when a face is drawn singing "Ah!" you know at once that the face is a singer's. So in regulated, rhythmic action, the moment of most intense energy is that which is most typical. In throwing a ball, in digging or mowing, it is towards the end of the stroke that one gets the speed or strength on, and overcomes resistance most completely, so you naturally paint a bowler just before he lets the ball go. In rowing or threshing, or hewing with an axe, or hay raking, it is near the beginning of the stroke, and accordingly that is the most paintable point in the series of positions. A mower could, of course, be painted at the beginning of his stroke, and a woodcutter with his axe in the tree, but neither would give such an impression of energy; and if we had a group of workmen to draw, each might be in a different attitude; but the principal figure would naturally illustrate the typical and most energetic position.

In a more continuous action, such as ploughing or running, there is less contrast of the separate limbs, but more evidence of the whole figure in movement, especially as shown by the resistance of the air to the drapery. When you watch a runner carefully it is surprising how like a Greek sculpture the whole figure becomes, in spite of modern costume. The figure shows out in the direction in which it is moving, and the drapery flies back in those undulating folds which we admire in ancient marble. The dominant lines are no longer those of trimming and fashionable detail, but the swinging curves of action, which are the same now as in the age of Pericles. In all energetic movement watched carefully, you will see no less transforming power; and perhaps you will feel that Frederick Walker's figures have not, after all, more grace and Greek spirit than belongs of right to any active peasant. You remember how the disagreeable man (in "Ships that pass in the Night") tried to photograph a Swiss girl with her finery on and her charm off:--"For goodness' sake look as though you were baking the bread," he asked her. And you must have felt how picturesque the lass or labourer looks at work in the field or at the farm--the very girl or man whom you thought so awkward in Sunday clothes, trying to do nothing. Partly that is because working clothes take the lines of action, and even men's coats and trousers get creases in harmony with their normal and nobler use, like the cracks of tree trunks or the weathering of rocks; but the beauty of the active figure is chiefly because you see the figure more, and the clothes less, the humanity more and the disguise less.

For this month's study, then, take any figure in any of the active employments--running, mowing, hay-raking, and the rest--which you can watch with ease in the open air. Sketch it repeatedly in the different attitudes it assumes, bearing in mind these two chief principles--the display of the figure, greater than in repose; and the wave-like fall and flight of the drapery. And to check exaggeration, don't draw more limbs than you see; and remember that as every wave is crossed by the recoil of the one that went before, so the flying folds return upon themselves, and their long lines are curved or chequered by minor waves, as they get farther and farther away from the straining point at shoulder, or wrist, or knee. Every main rule has its qualifying minor rules; make sure of the main rule, but be moderate in its application.

For the junior class the subject is a twig of leaves (pinned upon a card, and drawn at a distance of ten or twelve feet). Here, too, are the evidences of Action, for every curve has been built up by the energy of the sap, and remains as nature's picture of the vigorous life and the mysterious activity that created it. And you will find that if you can draw these curves truly--and that can be learnt with reasonable attention--it will be only a step more, and you will be making studies of which Durer himself might say "Well done."

Typed by Chrysanthanum, Sep. 2024