THE SECRET OF THE OLD MASTERS

In reference to the Old Master's technic, in his book the "Graphic Arts," edition of 1886, Hamerton says: " It is wonderful that so little should be known, but it is the more wonderful since eyewitnesses have positively attempted to give an account of the Venetian methods and stopped short before their tale was fully told, and that neither from inabil- ity nor unwillingness to tell all, but simply because they did not foresee what we should care to know about, or else took it for granted that we should be inevitably acquainted with all that belonged to the common practice of the time." Hamerton thus confesses his lack of knowledge on a subject that formed the greater part of his book. It further indi- cates the general knowledge among artists in England and on the Continent up to that time.

In January, 1891, the following little de- spairing note came to a New York paper from Paris, the greatest productive center of paintings in the world: " The members of the French Society of Artists are pondering upon a proposed abandonment of oil colors and brushes in favor of some more permanent mediums of preserving their works for posterity. Detaille, Bouguereau, Robert Fleury, Vibert, Saint-Pierre form a committee of investigation. One expert, Gabriel Deneux, proposes a system of encaustic painting by which hot irons would be used instead of brushes. The work, after being branded in- stead of painted, would have to be treated chemically. The conservative painters, however, hope that some improvement may be attained in the mixture of colors in which such a radical innovation as cautery will not be resorted to." This indicates plainly that the hest-known artists and teachers in Paris at that time (1891) were somewhat at a loss as to how to paint soundly or durably. They were all fine artists and painters, but they were aware that their system was some- how not that of the Masters. Then, in 1893, Vibert published his book, " La Science de la Peinture," in which resin with petroleum is announced as the true medium for painting (of which more anon). Again, in April, 1904, we have this anent some work exhibited in the Salon : ' ' For some time past, X, like so many of the greatest living painters, has been dissatisfied with modern methods of technic. He argues, as I have heard other great painters argue, that the art of painting has been lost; that while the artistic instinct and the intellect of the painter are just as great and keen as ever, he is no longer in possession of the same means as the Old Masters. He does not prepare his canvas in the same way, nor build up his pictures as they did. He knows well enough what he is aiming at, but not how to attain the end by methods which are at once solid, masterly, and lasting. A profound study, a minute technical dissection, as it were, of the greatest works at the
Louvre, have revealed secrets to X which have made him the pioneer of the most brilliant modern retreat to the ideals of painting pursued by such giants as Rubens, Velasquez, and Franz Hals. . . . The actual painting is that of the Old Masters ... a thin ' jus de cou- leur ' over an elaborately developed ' grisaille.'

. . . But Rubens has merely guided X 's brush. There is no slavish imitation in the young French master's work." These quotations can give but a faint hint of the number of men who have knocked on the door of the Old Masters' painting room to be admitted to their technical secrets. Through the centuries there have been a few admitted, hardly more than a dozen perhaps. And so every earnest art student, if the Old Masters' great work has any influence on him whatever, in time is confronted with the problems purely of technic, apart from the problems of drawing, painting, and composition. The selec- tion and use of colors, logical methods, mediums, varnishes, and grounds to paint on remain perplexing questions even to eminent artists, as we have seen. Considering the enormous amount of painting done it is amazing that so little is known on this subject. Drawing, painting, and composition are, in modern times, freely taught in many countries, but I have never heard of the real tech- nic of oil painting being taught anywhere. Every student and artist picks up his knowledge about the technic of his art wherever and however he can. It is mostly chance, guesswork, a friendly hint and some experi- ence that finally weds him to some manner of painting, some favored colors, and some fav- ored canvas. It is only within a few years that the quality and durability of colors has become generally questioned, and some discrimination in their use become evident on the part of artists. Still, this discrimination has not advanced much beyond the accept- ance of the ochres and the rejection of aniline colors, most artists knowing enough not to use them when they know them to be such. Every new and loudly heralded make of material is hopefully taken up and tried, and as sadly laid away again, while the same old feeling of uncertainty and perplexity re- mains. If any artists have hit upon what they considered the real and only technic, they have, like Sir Joshua Reynolds, kept it carefully secret. I once asked a friend in Munich, who had many years of experience in painting, what medium or vehicle he used to dilute the colors on the palette, and he said, " balsam copaiba, spike oil, with a little wax melted in," adding the usual injunction," don't tell anyone." I thought at the time the injunction showed a narrow spirit I had heard it before, and have often since, but when I found by my own experience that it took a great deal of time and study to invent useful and beneficent things, I became some- what reconciled to the idea.

The one distressing thing about my search for the true technic of oil painting was, that even with an exhaustive amount of experimenting and with notebooks, it was impossible to come to any positive conclusion without the necessary lapse of considerable time. And if the reader will have the patience to follow me through this little book, I hope to prove to him beyond the shadow of a doubt that the conclusions I have arrived at are the only logical ones, and that the principles of the process described are those of the " Grand Old Masters " and no others! I am very well aware that many more or less eminent men have in the last three and a half centuries sought for and claimed to have dis- covered this precious process; that many theories other than the ones herein contained have been advanced by able artists. Their theories have been for a time, to a great extent, accepted, but in no case have such theories been sustained by any conclusive evidence, proof, or facts that could be ac- cepted by any logical mind. The theories were all more or less built up on dogmatic assertions. Some inspiration like the petroleum theory would be seized, and an attempt made to fit it in with practice. It would be asserted that the Venetians painted with petroleum, because a vague tradition says Correggio once made a varnish of it! The great difficulties in the search lay in the strange fact that an artist may have found a part of the principles governing the true technic, and yet not know it positively until he had proved it, and by elimination dis- proved all theories that came in conflict with it. This in course of time even necessitated going over the same ground, and many times experimenting around a circle back to the starting point, and in my case has covered a period of twenty-five years. Many times I was " stuck/' to use one of Thomas A. Edison's expressions, not knowing which way to turn to go forward, feeling that the labor of years was thrown away. Then I would try to dismiss the whole subject from my mind for a short time, to find at the end that a new path was revealed that led to final success.

The very simplicity of the problem made it so baffling, like looking for an elephant where a mouse should have been expected. One of the great stumbling-blocks to a quick solution of the problem was the well-nigh universally known fact among artists that oil in a picture darkens and yellows it to the verge of de- struction. No one seemed to be able or will- ing to give any help or advice. Some years ago I heard one prominent artist say that " experimenting was dangerous." His work painted at that time has since reached the dark yellow, and some the brown, stage, all its former charm having vanished. Other capable artists when questioned, revealed on this subject the ignorance and innocence of children. I even knew of a French painter, a former " Prix de Rome " pupil painting a picture with colors mixed with vaseline ! But it did not take him long to discover how unwise this was, for his work never dried, and had to be repainted. And of other painters using equally silly material, there are many. Chemists have been appealed to from time to time, but, excepting in regard to a few colors, have not been able to help us out. The cause of this was not far to seek, since they were not artists and could not know or understand our wants ; but, on the other hand, the artists did not seem to solve the problem either. Without going into the history of oil painting here, let us ask, What is the logical course to follow in establishing true oil-painting principles? It is obvious that the best and oldest we know of in oil painting must be the subject of our investigations and should guide us, and that best must have stood the test of time, not of fifty or one hundred years, but of centuries; the older the better, provided the tech- nic is also combined with excellent drawing and fine coloring. Therefore, as we look back in the dim past, the works of the Grand Old Masters Titian, Paul Veronese, Velasquez, Rubens, Van Dyck, Reynolds must be the source to which we must travel to gain knowledge. There are a few others who belong to this grand company, but only those will be re- ferred to who will best serve our present purpose.
Now we must bear in mind that most of those men during their lives had two or more ways of painting, a fact apparent even to the unprofessional eye of the art historians. Even the Masters had to go through a period of evolution. We must choose that which is of undoubted authenticity and has necessarily stood the test of time. This means that it was interesting and attractive enough to have escaped the attic, museum cellar, or scrap heap, and, last and most important reason for our purpose, stood the test of atmospheric changes light and darkness, removal from place to place, revarnishings, etc.; and further, its very existence proving that at its birth each work had a sound physical constitution.

The causes of decay of oil paintings are very numerous. Many are foredoomed to early decay before they leave the artist 's easel, because, although the artist may have been a great artist, he may not have been an equally great craftsman, and exer- cised the wisdom and care necessary for the production of great and lasting work. Some modern painters have affected to despise any discrimination in the selection of materials and method as being inartistic and beneath them.
And when artists do seek for light on technical matters, they soon find, as did Sir Joshua Reynolds, that there is no one who can teach them, and so they go a short and uncertain distance in what seems an endless and uncertain path of experimenting. They soon sat- isfy themselves with one or two formulas that seem to work well, and with that they are apt to remain content, and keep on producing paintings attractive enough at the time they leave the easel, but soon becoming uninteresting, and forming part of that great procession going "down and out."

Some of the causes of decay in paintings for which the artist can be blamed are, first, an unsound canvas ground, one improperly made. On such a canvas the greatest genjus's Work is bound soon to yellow, blacken, crack or peel off from the ground and from the threads. Without mentioning a poor quality of linen, the principal cause of the ground peeling from the linen threads is in- ferior glue or improper application thereof to the linen. Upon decomposition this causes the
peeling off of the ground, exposing the threads. Next the ground itself, the surface the artist puts his work on, may lack every essential of permanence or even of logical use. (On this subject of grounds I will have more to say later.) The Old Masters were in this, not only logical, but scientific as well, nothing being left to chance or haphazard. Method and order were instinctive, and the phrase "any old thing is good enough to paint on," so fre- quently heard from modern artists, would to them have been a species of artistic heresy, a ground being to them fully as important as the painting itself, not merely from the view point of permanence, but as a factor in the completed picture. This was particularly the case with Rubens, the greatest of all technical painters, and his equally great pupil, Van Dyck. When we leave the ground to consider causes of decay or deterioration, we enter a boundless field. Let me enumerate just a few. First, insufficient drying of first sketches or paintings, and the same for second or any suc- ceeding paintings. I will show later how important this appeared to the Masters. Second, absurd mediums, vehicles, or combinations in which there could be no chemical union; unclean, stale paints, wax, adulterations, dryers, magilps, etc., were all a fruitful cause of deterioration. The commonest of all causes of de- terioration is a medium made up of two, three, and even four or more different materials, where one of them is sure to destroy the effect intended, in time, and if the other two or three should in themselves carry no injurious con- sequences, their combination is sure to bring about final destruction. And furthermore, the immediate effect with such combinations is rather attractive, and so such pernicious concoctions make lifelong slaves of some artists, and they never get out of the habit of using them. During a period of more than twenty-five years I have experimented with very many of them, and it would not serve any good purpose to go over them all here. Suffice it to say that the artist is to blame in nearly all cases for the darkening, excessive yellowing, cracking, peeling, and premature decay of his painting. Owners of fine oil paintings, as a rule, take tolerably good care of them, but when they begin to darken they are apt to go to the restorer, or even the framemaker (!), and to have them clean the painting, which means a kick down the hill for bad ones, and a start downward for good ones that may have only a little ordinary grime on them through neglect. There are few artists who prepare their own canvas and grind their own colors. The paints and canvas ordinarily used are at the present time made by large firms, and sold as other merchandise. This is a very convenient proceeding for the modern artist, but it produces bad pictures in most instances.

The Old Masters had the knowledge, ex- perience, and wisdom to produce great work considered from every standpoint, and it is necessary in establishing, or rather reestablishing, a sound system to study their work. Many great artists have studied the Old Masters for technical guidance, and have done so by making copies, reproducing, not the aspect alone, but the method and the "handling," ground or surface on which the work is produced, and character of material throughout. Thus Velasquez himself copied Tintoretto and Paul Veronese, and it is well known that Rubens and Van Dyck, as well as Sir Joshua Reynolds and many other great and lesser artists, have made many copies of Titian's paintings and of others of the Venetian Masters. Much of this work was so well done that it now passes for the work of the painter of the original, and sometimes the original is regarded as the copy, as happened to Holbein's Dresden Madonna. In modern
times a copy is condemned without a hearing; in the old days a copy was appreciated with the original, if it was equally well painted. There is no doubt that when the abovenamed artists copied a picture it was done to study and analyze everything there was in it composition, drawing, color, technic, ground, method, and probably medium. We know these copies were sometimes highly prized by the artists themselves.