Such technique produces the highest tonal quality. It cannot be supposed that Rembrandt glazed and repainted on his portraits for a lesser reason than to supply them with a quality which direct painting denied, nor that Frank Holl, of our own times, employed a like method _for the sake of being like Rembrandt._
Natural Color; Tonal Color, representing nature; and Tonality plus “Quality” (the last a vague term denoting depth and fullness of color) are three grades represented, the first by Meissonier in his _“__1807__”_, a picture devoid of tone; the second by the portraits of Alice, by Chase, and _Lady Archibald Campbell_, by Whistler; and the last or tonal quality, by the later works of George Fuller and Albert Ryder. Under these specified classes the lists of names in art are now lengthening and shortening, the indications of our present art pointing to a revival of the color quality of a former age.
[Alice--W.M. Chase (Verticals Diverted); Lady Archibald Campbell--Whistler (Verticals Obliterated); The Crucifixion--Amie Morot (Verticals Opposed)]
It was stated in the introduction that the commandments of this book would be the “must nots,” yet for him who apprehends principles, commandments do not exist. A few conclusions from the foregoing arguments may, however, be of service to beginners in the practice of composition.
Those in which the lines all run one way without opposition:
Those especially in which the bottom of the frame is paralleled:
Those in which the perspective of a line or the edge of a mass happens to be a vertical:
Those in which an opposing plane or attractive mass barricades the entrance of the picture:
Those in which two masses in different planes happen to be the same size:
Those in which objects of equal interest occur in the same picture:
Those in which an object awkwardly prolongs a line:
Those in which the line of the background duplicates the lines of the subject:
Those in which the picture is cut by lines too long continued in any direction:
Those in which radial lines fail to lead to a focal object:
Those in which the items of a picture fail to present a natural sequence:
Those in which the subject proper is not dignified by a conspicuous placement or is swamped by too attractive surroundings: