Paintings of record—Scenes from the novel and written drama—From the acted drama—Humorous subjects—Allegorical works.

When the invention of the painter is circumscribed by the requirements of another art, whether a fine art or not, then his art ceases to be a pure art and becomes an art of record, subordinate to the art by which his work is circumscribed. This may be termed the Secondary Art of painting. The art may be of importance outside the purposes of the fine arts, and in certain cases may be productive of good pictures, but only by way of accident: hence a work of secondary art never engages the attention of a great artist unless he be specially called upon to execute it. Hard and fast lines dividing the pure from the secondary art cannot be laid down, as one often verges on the other, but there is a general distinction between them which is easily comprehensible in the separate branches of painting.

Secondary art is not produced from incidents or characters taken from sacred or mythological history, because here the general invention of the painter is never circumscribed, for he is able to produce form and expression above experience. In profane history the art is secondary when the painter confines his invention to recorded details. Thus in a picture of the Coronation of Charlemagne, the composition is entirely invented by the artist, and so the work becomes one of pure art; but the representation of the Coronation of Queen Victoria, where the artist reproduces the scene as it actually occurred, is secondary art, for he is precluded from the exercise of his imagination in the design, the end of art being subordinated to that of record or history. Such a picture is necessarily stiff and formal. Where the scene represents a number of actions, as in a battle design, the artist is unable to record the actual occurrence, though he may represent particular actions; consequently he has large scope for his imagination, and may limit his representation to those actions which together make a fine example of pure art. But a battle scene where a particular event, as a meeting of generals, has to be painted, immediately becomes secondary art, for then the surrounding battle events would be accessory in their nature. It is possible for simple historical works painted to order centuries ago to appear now as of high art value, because we commonly connect a strict formality with old pictures of the kind, whether executed from records or invention. Thus Holbein's Henry VIII. presenting a Charter to the Barber-Surgeons no doubt closely depicts the actual event, yet the stiffness of the design does not seem out of place.[a] Nevertheless it is a refreshing change from this picture to Richard III. offered the Crown by London Merchants, which is a magnificent modern work of pure invention.[b]

A scene from a story of actual life is necessarily secondary art, because here the painter imitates what is already an imitation, and cannot ascend above experience. He is confined to the invention of the novelist, and is therefore subordinate to him.

The written drama is available for the painter as a source for designs only in cases of high tragedy, or mixed plays containing strong dramatic events of tragic import. Seeing that the drama is itself an imitative art, only such actions or characters can be used by the painter which are above life experience, and it is only in tragedy that the dramatist can exalt human attributes, and ennoble the passions above this experience. Tragedy deals directly with the two great contrasting human mysteries—life and death. From one to the other is the most awful and sublime action within human knowledge, and consequently the motives and sentiments relating to it may be carried to the loftiest reach of the understanding. An exaggeration of ordinary life, where the combination of perfected parts in form and expression is not possible, means only the abnormal; while comedy, which imitates conditions inferior to ordinary life, cannot be exaggerated except into distortion. High tragedy therefore is the only section of the written drama that concerns the painter. If he draw from any other work of the dramatist he only produces secondary art, as when he draws from the novelist. The picture may be interesting, but both interest and beauty will be fleeting.

While the painter may use the written drama in certain cases, he can by no means be concerned with the acted drama. It is useless to attempt to produce a good picture by imitating an imitation accomplished by a combined art, as the opera or drama. A painted scene from a play as it is acted, is merely the execution of another man's design which in itself is entirely circumscribed by conditions of action and speech wholly foreign to the art of the painter. A picture of a particular moment of action in a written play, as it is thrown upon the brain in the course of reading, is interesting, firstly because our imagination has wide limits of invention, and we naturally and instinctively adopt a harmonious rendering of the scene so far as the writing will allow; and secondly for the reason that we pass rapidly from impression to impression, and so the whole significance of each picture, separately and relatively, is conveyed to us. But a painting of an acted scene is meaningless, for it can represent only one in a series of a thousand moments of action which are all connected, and of which the comprehension of any one is dependent upon our knowledge of the whole. The painter has no scope. He simply copies a number of figures in a fixed setting, and the result is necessarily inferior art to a copy of the poorest original picture, since in this case the artist at least copies the direct product of the imagination, while in the other he has only before him a series of dummies who are imitating the product. The sense of unreality arising from such a picture must instantly overpower any harmony of colour or form that may be present.

Where the portrait of an actor is painted in a stage rÔle, the same principle is involved, though the result is not so disastrous. We still have the unreal, but it is painted and put forward as a living person. The artist moreover has a little imaginative scope. He can choose a moment of action best suited to his art, and may even vary the character of the action, which is not possible where an acted scene is depicted. But notwithstanding all the relative advantages, a Raphael could not make a fine picture out of a man in character. He may largely overcome the disabilities arising from the limitation to his invention; he may introduce great effects of light and shade; may ennoble expression and give grandeur to form; but he will never hide the sham—never conceal the fact that he is representing an imitation of life. The actor on the stage is one of a number of signs used by the dramatist. His identity apart from the sign is lost, or presumed to be lost for the time being, and so he is not a sham; but outside of the stage his use or meaning as a sign does not exist. Hence the representation of this sign as a subject of a painting is only a degree less incongruous than would be the introduction of a painted figure as one of the characters of a stage scene.

It is an indication of the sure public instinct in matters of art principles, that general opinion has always tacitly condemned paintings of stage scenes and characters. They have not infrequently been produced, and sometimes artists of high rank, as Reynolds and Lawrence, have painted portraits of actors in stage rÔles, but never has one met with public appreciation as a work of art. Probably in most cases these works were executed as mementoes rather than as works of art, for it is scarcely possible to conceive a painter of the stamp of Reynolds, who was so well acquainted with first principles, putting forward even a portrait of Garrick in a stage rÔle, as a serious work, notwithstanding that he might well know that it was a masterpiece in respect of execution.

Humour is not a subject for the painter to deal with, for a humorous picture cannot be comprehended without the assistance of another art. Further, comedy is founded upon a sense of the ridiculous, which means distortion of form or idea. Distortion of form would tend to destroy the art if reproduced, and distortion of idea implies events in time which are beyond the scope of the painter. If any humour were exhibited in the representation of a single moment of action in a story, it would quickly disappear, for a permanent joke is beyond the range of human understanding. In poetry and fiction, humour may be appropriately introduced, because here it is of a fugitive character, and may serve as a possible relief of the mind, as a discordant note in music; but in a painting, the moment of humour is fixed, and a fixed laugh suggests mental disorder.

Nor is there place in the art of the painter for works intending to convey satire or irony, for such pictures also mean distortion. Moreover they are merely substitutes for, or adjuncts to, the art of writing. The object of caricature is to present an idea in a more direct and rapid way than it can be expressed in writing, and not specially to exhibit beauty, which is the purpose of the painter. Hogarth's many caricatures are composed of superlative signs of writing, and not of any fine art. Cartoons (as the word is commonly understood) are of the nature of allegory, and may afford scope for the painter, but as they necessarily refer to more or less fleeting conditions of a political or social character, they cannot retain permanent interest.

Allegorical paintings are secondary art when they endeavour to cover more than a moment of time in a single design, or when the allegory is merely a metaphor applying to action. The first variety is rarely seen in modern works, but it was not very uncommon from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, though it was never produced by first-class artists, and seldom indeed by those of the second rank. Quite a number of works of this period, formerly supposed to have an allegorical signification, are now properly identified as rarely represented mythological legends, or historical incidents which have only lately been unearthed,[c] and we may rest assured from internal evidence that many others of the same kind will yet be newly interpreted. A good design cannot be produced from an event in time because the figures in a presumed action must be shown in repose,[d] or else the action appears incongruous and opposed to experience, as when a goddess is overpowered by a personage with the appearance of a human being.[e] In both cases the figures must seem to be falsities. Designs of the first kind can only be properly represented in a sequence of pictures, each indicating a particular action, as in the Marie de' Medici series of Rubens; and those of the second by commonly accepted figures of sacred or mythological history or legend, as where St. Michael and the Dragon typify Good overcoming Evil.

It is scarcely necessary to do more than barely refer to the use of metaphor by the painter when the representation of action is involved, as for instance if he should produce a picture of a heaving ship in a storm, to meet the metaphor "As a ship is tossed on a rough sea, so has been the course of my life," though this kind of picture has been occasionally executed, the artist forgetting that it is not the object depicted that is compared, but the action—in the example quoted, the tossing of the ship—which cannot be represented on canvas. Another form of metaphor sometimes used by the painter is that where a comparison of ideas is represented by physical proportions, as in Wiertz's Things of the Present as seen by the Future, in which the things of the present are indicated by liliputian figures on the hand of a woman of life size who represents the future. Needless to say that such designs, of which there are about a dozen in existence, can only suggest distortion, for the smaller figures must appear too small, and the larger ones too great; or if our experience with miniature imitations of the human figure warrants us in regarding the smaller figures as reasonable, then the larger ones must appear as giants of the Brobdingnagian order.

The only form of metaphor which may be used by the painter is that wherein a beautiful symbol typifies a high abstract quality. Metaphor belongs properly to the arts of the poet and novelist who can indicate the symbol and things symbolized in immediate succession, so that the whole meaning is apparent. The painter can only represent the symbol, and unless this is beautiful and its purport readily comprehended, his sign is merely a hieroglyph—a sign of writing. Secondary art includes symbolic painting when the symbol may represent either the symbol itself or the thing symbolized, for such a condition involves a confusion of ideas which tends to destroy the Æsthetic effect of the work. The most notable painting of this kind is Holman Hunt's The Scapegoat, where the design shows only a goat in desert country. The scapegoat has ceased to be an actuality for centuries, and the only meaning of the term as it is now used applies to a man: hence, with the title the goat appears to be a symbol of both a man and an animal, while without the title it is merely the image of a goat without symbolism. But the conception of an animal of any kind as a symbol is foreign to the art of the painter whose symbol should always be beautiful, whatever the nature of the representation.

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