Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 40, February, 1861

WILLIAM PAGE.

Among artists, William Page is a painter.

This proposition may seem, to the great public which has so long and so well known him and his works, somewhat unnecessary. There are few who are not familiar with his paintings. Whether these seem great or otherwise, whether the Venus be pure or gross, we may not here discuss; the public has, and will have, many estimates; yet on one point there is no difference of opinion, apparently. The world willingly calls him whose hand wrought these pictures a painter. It has done so as a matter of course; and we accept the title.

But perhaps the title comes to us from this man's studio, charged with a significance elevating it above the simply self-evident, and rendering it worthy of the place we have given it as a germ proposition.

Not every one who uses pigments can say, "I also am a painter." To him who would make visible the ideal, there are presented the marble, the pencil, and the colors; and should he employ either of these, just in proportion to his obedience to the laws of each will he be a sculptor, a designer, or a painter; and the revelations in stone, in light and shade, or on canvas, shall be his witnesses forevermore,—witnesses of him not only as an artist, in view of his relation to the ideal world, but as possessing a right to the especial title conferred by the means which he has chosen to be his interpreter.

The world has too much neglected these means of interpretation. It has condemned the science which would perfect the art, as if the false could ever become the medium of the true. The art of painting has suffered especially from the influence of mistaken views.

Nor could it be otherwise. Color-manifestation, of all art-utterance, is the least simple. It requires the fulfilment of a greater number of conditions than are involved in any other art. He who has selected colors as his medium cannot with impunity neglect form; light and shade must be to him as important as they are to the designer in chiaro-scuro; while above all are the mystery and power of color.

There is perplexity in this. The science of form seems to be vast enough for any man's genius. No more than he accomplishes is demanded of the genuine sculptor. His life has been grand with noble fulfilments. We, and all generations, hold his name in the sacred simplicity which has ever been the sign of the consummate. Men say, Phidias, Praxiteles, and know that they did greatly and sufficiently.

Yet with the science which these men had we combine elements equally great, and still truth demands the consummate. Hence success in painting has been the rarest success which the world has known. If we search its history page by page, the great canvas-leaves written over with innumerable names yield us less than a score of those who have overcome the difficulties of its science, through that, achieving art, and becoming painters.

Yes, many men have painted, many great artists have painted, without earning the title which excellence gives. Overbeck, the apostle artist, whose rooms are sacred with the presence of the divine, never earned that name. Nor did thousands who before him wrought patiently and earnestly.

We think that we have among us a man who has earned it.

What does this involve? Somewhat more than the ability critically to distinguish colors and to use them skilfully.

Although practice may discipline and develop this power, there must exist an underlying physiological fitness, or all study and experience will be unavailing. In many persons, the organization of the eye is such that there can be no correct perception of the value, relation, and harmony of hues. There exists often an utter inability to perceive differences between even the primary colors.

The late sculptor Bartholomew declared himself unable to decide which of two pieces of drapery, the one crimson and the other green, was the crimson. Nor was this the result of inexperience. He had been for years familiar not only with Nature's coloring, but with the works of the best schools of art, and had been in continual contact with the first living artists.

The instances of this peculiar blindness are exceptional, yet not more so than is the perfection of vision which enables the eye to discriminate accurately the innumerable tints derived from the three primitives.

Nothing can be finer than the sense of identity and harmony resulting from this exquisite organization. We have been told that there is a workman at the Gobelin manufactory who can select twenty-two thousand tints of the material employed in the construction of its famous tapestries. This capability is, of course, almost wholly dependent upon rare physical qualifications; yet it is the basis, the very foundation of a painter's power.

Still, it is but the foundation. An "eye for color" never yet made any man a colorist.

Perhaps there can be no severer test of this faculty of perception than the copying of excellent pictures. And among the few successful copies which have been produced, Page's stand unsurpassed.

The ability to perceive Nature, when translated into art, is, however, a possession which this painter shares with many. Nor is he alone in the skill which enables him to realize upon his own canvas the effects which some master has rendered.

It is in the presence of Nature itself that a power is demanded with which mechanical superiority and physical qualifications have little to do. Here the man stands alone,—the only medium between the ideal and the outward world, wherefrom he must choose the signs which alone are permitted to become the language of his expression. None can help him, as before he was helped by the man whose success was the parent of his own. Here is no longer copying.

In the first place, is to be found the limit of the palette. Confining ourselves to the external, what, of all the infinitude of phenomena to which the vision is related, so corresponds to the power of the palette that it may become adequately representative thereof?

Passing over many minor points in which there seems to be an imperfect relation between Nature's effects and those of pigments, we will briefly refer to the great discrepancy occasioned by the luminosity of light. In all the lower effects of light, in the illumination of Nature and the revelation of colored surfaces, in the exquisite play and power of reflected light and color, and in the depth and richness of these when transmitted, we find a noble and complete response on the palette. But somewhere in the ascending scale a departure from this happy relation begins to be apparent. The color -properties of light are no longer the first. Another element—an element the essential nature of which is absorbed in the production of the phenomena of color—now asserts itself. Hitherto the painter has dealt with light indirectly, through the mediatorship of substances. The rays have been given to him, broken tenderly for his needs;—ocean and sky, mountain and valley, draperies and human faces, all things, from stars to violets, have diligently prepared for him, as his demands have arisen, the precious light. And while he has restrained himself to the representation of Nature subdued to the limit of his materials, he has been victorious.

Turner, in whose career can be found almost all that the student needs for example and for warning, is perhaps the best illustration of wise temperance in the choice of Nature to be rendered into art. Nothing can be finer than some of those early works wrought out in quiet pearly grays,—the tone of Nature in her soberest and tenderest moods. In these, too, may be observed those touches of brilliant color,—bits of gleaming drapery, perhaps,—prophetic flecks along the gray dawn. Such pictures are like pearls; but art demands amber, also.