THE ARTISTIC ANATOMY OF TREES |
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How to Draw TreesCONTENTSGENERAL INTRODUCTION -- Painting and drawing PART ITREES CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO PAINTINGI. The painting of trees illustrated by a chronological series of pictures, with some descriptive notes. PART IITHE ANATOMY OF A TREEX. Introductory. XI. Outline forms of trees--A short comparison of some species. XII. The likeness between twig and bough--The difference between shoot and twig--The arrangement of buds on the shoot : (1) opposite buds, (2) buds arranged singly, (3) buds crowded in groups. XIII. The effects produced on the branch anatomy of a tree by (1) opposite buds, the constant failure of buds ; (2) (a) buds arranged singly in two rows ; (b) in three or more rows ; (3) (c) buds clustered in groups--Twigs arrested in growth--Additional buds--Different branch systems of young and old trees. XIV. How a tree is built up. PART IIITHE DETAILS OF TREESXV. Introductory. XVI. Leaves --How they are set on the twigs : (a) right-angled pairs, (b) arranged singly in two rows, (c) in more than two rows, (d) leaves clustered--The position of old and young leaves--Leaf-stalks and how leaves are set on the twigs--Duration of leaves. XVII. Leaves (continued)--Forms of young leaves--Texture of leaves--Their colour--Leaf patterns--The margin--The veins--The planes of a leaf. XVIII. Flowers--The way flowers are arranged : (I) " Indefinite " inflorescence, (2) " Definite " inflorescence --" Raceme " " catkin," " capitum," " corymb," " umbel," " cyme ". XIX. Flowers (continued)--Shapes of flowers : " complete," " incomplete," " male," '' female," '' bisexual," " unisexual "--Trees that are " moncecious," " dicecious," " tricecious," " polygamous "--The construction of flowers. XX. Fruits--Winged fruits--Cones : " drupe,' " pome," " nut," " berry "--Construction of fruits. XXI. Lesser details:--Stipules--Bracts--Buds--Scales--Spines --Seedlings--The bark. APPENDIX--The Distribution of Trees in Europe. BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX to Drawings by the Author. - to the Pictures reproduced in this Volume. - to Letterpress. LIST OF PLATES I. PENCIL STUDY BY THE AUTHOR ... THE ARTISTIC ANATOMY OF TREESGENERAL INTRODUCTION-PAINTING AND DRAWINGIf drawing were universal, people would not confuse, as they now do, mere copies of nature with works of art ; but would frankly acknowledge the former as records, and judge them by the amount of interesting information they convey. A letter is useful as transmitting information, and a drawing can be the same. If your letter is nicely worded and your drawing shows taste they begin to appeal to another sense, and we say they have " style." If your intention is grand and is expressed in fine language, and your drawing conveys a grand impression, we honour them as works of art. Landscape painting is, I fancy, but little understood even amongst the educated. It does not surprise one that the yokel should eye a painting as a coloured topographical inventory of his countryside and praise the performance in proportion as room is found for every well-known object, each exactly where it should be. I know a farmer much perplexed because a painting of his farm was sold for a larger sum of money than the farm itself soon after realised, and this though the pond, old Eheds, and the very ducks themselves were included. He wonders yet at the stupidity of the picture-buyer, who, by a less expenditure, could have sat by the real pond and gazed daily at his farm. Much the same attitude is assumed by the better educated when they ask, " How do you find such a beautiful place, and was it exactly like that ? " You must say it was identical, blade for blade and leaf for leaf, or your reputation as an honest man is lost. But one must not be over critical, for I have not forgotten my disgust as a boy on discovering a certain dirty ditch which had served as the foundation for a fine picture I had previously seen. Latterly, people have been reading strangely involved writings on art and ignorant criticisms of pictures. This, and their visits to some new exhibitions of canvases daubed by people of weak intellect, have led them to believe that all representations of nature as we know and love her are wrong, and they are persuaded to profess admiration only for that which no one can understand. If we consider some of the aims that every true artist owns, we may gain a more tolerant attitude towards his work, even though it does not conform to our preconceived notions of what a picture should be like ; it may help us to appreciate many of the different forms in which good art is presented to us, and to weed out work of ability that perhaps is not immediately understood from that which is claptrap. Since an artist appeals to the intelligence and to the emotions, his work can only give real pleasure to those in whom it arouses a consciousness of beauty similar to his own perception. For this reason a picture may give intense pleasure to some, while others are unable to receive the meaning, and, for want of understanding, are apt to dub it a worthless performance. The feeling for beauty (The word "beauty" is not used in this book in the same sense as "pretty.") in its best sense is conveyed in so many ways--by colour, by light and shade, by line, by pattern, and by technique ; and any or all of these become the visible means for explaining the deeper feelings that influence the painter. One, or a combination of these, cannot attract everyone, equally, but only those whose perceptions are most keenly excited by the particular means selected. Even to those means to which we are less sensitive we can give credit, if not love, if they are well employed. Of the various means at the disposal of a painter, colour seems to have the greatest power of attraction. As children we are interested by colours rather than by forms, and we retain this impulse throughout life--only we temper it by a new desire for a pleasing arrangement of colours. Our instinct for colour becomes acuter, even though we have learned to see the dignity in masses of light and shade, or to appreciate the rendering or suggestion of form by lines. I fancy our minds are interested in form, but our nature is excited by colour. How few people, however, really appreciate good colour ! The majority are content with any colour, so long as a picture resembles the obvious in nature or tells a tale ; and for this they can even tolerate colours that are lifeless or discordant. Colour seems so much more elusive than form. Fine colour can only be felt, though fine shape can be described. Artists are conscious of very definite laws that govern good colouring, and yet colour is so subtle that the introduction of a new element upsets any scheme, and nearly every picture presents a new colour problem. The sense of mastery over fine colour seems to come to the painter last of all and to leave him at the first note of failing powers. How much its elusive charm is connected with the technique of painting will be felt by everyone who has used oil colours. In water colours there is less excuse for bad colouring. If the scheme is a sound one, plain washes of colour can be relied upon by their transparency for a pleasing effect, though identical colours in oils would require very deft management to prevent their becoming repulsive. Those who have not practised painting use the term " A good eye for colour," meaning that we are born with this as an unalterable gift. We must grant that there is a considerable difference in the acuteness of perception for colour amongst youngsters, just as there is a quick or slow recognition of form ; but the science of colour must be studied with even greater zeal than drawing, if a student is the least bit ambitious of fame. It would he interesting to know in what degree the difference in appreciation of colour is due to physical causes. Simple colours have so different an effect upon people. One man I know must laugh with the exuberance of his joy--he cannot help it--when he passes a field of poppies blazing in the sun ; to another it simply gives a headache. We all know that in bad health we can only bear the sight of the most subdued and cleanest of single tints, when at other times we may delight in mixed colours of oriental splendour. In a picture light and shade is as important as colour in awakening our consciousness to that which is grand. The power of attraction (and it is boundless) in finely spaced quantities of light and dark is to me inexplicable ; perhaps it can be explained by the sense of bulk and mystery that they convey. On first seeing a picture by Rembrandt (or better still for this purpose a good black and white reproduction) it is the effect of light and shade that makes us catch our breath in the sudden revelation of beauty long before our minds have had time to take the meaning. A simple experiment will convince you how much a picture depends for dignity upon the distribution of light and dark. Take a few commonplace objects of everyday life and arrange them exactly in the lighting of some well-known picture, in looking at which you had taken for granted that its interest lay in its subject. If you now sketch these in masses of light and dark, with your eyes somewhat closed to exclude petty details, you will find these objects acquiring an interest, and even a dignity, previously unassociated with them. If you can add to your black and white sketch a good colour arrangement, you surprise yourself into the knowledge that all objects are worthy of pictorial treatment ; and the greater doubt is born whether all people are worthy to treat them. For an artist, everything is capable of being used as a theme--an outlet for his joy in living and seeing--and his pictures are but expressions of his own moods conveyed to us through the things he represents. For his purpose he has no better agents than colour and this spacing of light and shade. Drawing that does not include colour can be divided into (1) drawing by masses, (2) drawing by lines. It would be foolish to attempt rigid distinctions ; but usually we find that mass drawing appeals to the deeper emotions and line drawing to the intellectual senses. This may be caused by the association and suggestion of colour that is inseparable from drawing in mass. In mass drawing, light and shade, texture and form of objects, their colour and influence on one another, all play their part. It is the orchestration in black and white art. while other branches serve as single instruments. Drawing in lines is for the most part used for two very different purposes--(1) as a hasty record of action or construction (also as a basis in the composing of a picture) ; (2) as a completed picture within the limitations of black and white. As an expression of action it is unrivalled. Single lines compel our undivided attention, and we feel the rhythm of the line and enter into the action of the scene immediately. The fewer the lines, the more powerfully our interest is focussed. How intensely interesting are the hurried notes of a painter showing us the essential lines and what they conveyed to him, or the completed study that we delight in, such as a Caldecott drawing and the drawings of many fine draughtsmen who have made Punch almost a necessity for us ! As a basis of a picture lines serve as a backbone, strengthening and connecting separate objects. The building up of a picture by lines restrains an impulsive love for colour and effect, which by themselves might make our work (though beautiful) quite unintelligible. The second type of line drawing--I mean the one giving a completed rendering of form as well as the light and shade, which may, or may not suggest the colour of objects--is I think the least emotional of all art expressions. Having little of the dash or grand isolation of single lines, it exacts from us a more prolonged mental effort ; it has to be read, as it were, to be fully appreciated. Its charm is not spontaneous ; we read it and read it again, each time discovering a new pleasure in the evidence of searching inquiry by the painter, and recognising the mastery over materials that can bring scenes of life to us with such elemental tools as pen and paper. The use of pattern or design is, in the minds of many, associated only with its application to work that is purely decorative. In this service we should expect it to be better appreciated than some other forms of art, for is it not a daily rule of our life to demand some order and arrangement in everything about us ? Our gardens, houses, furniture, and trappings of the room have to conform to laws of decoration, and we are familiar with, if not expert, at such making of order. Fewer people, however, understand that design is the main basis of all pictorial art ; while others concede this to figure painting, but have not considered it in relation to landscape work. It is just this feeling for decorative design that always distinguishes the work of an artist from the mechanical imitator of nature. The side issues of whether much or little detail should be included in a landscape, or whether it should be highly realistic or not, are legitimate paths of divergence, and matters to be settled by the temperament of the painter, or the exigencies of the particular subject ; but whichever path he follows, his work, if it is to be art at all, must be moulded on and regulated by design. This is not an attempt to justify paintings where decoration is obtained at the expense of nature ; we have but to refer to nature herself to satisfy our desire for pattern--it is everywhere. Sky, trees, earth, and water teem with it ; our difficulty lies in selecting and making the whole scene a decoration, giving each part pattern without distortion and without mauling the face of nature. Worship of nature, together with enthusiasm for art, are our only guides, but the love of truth should help to check excesses. This is a most inadequate sketch of the main features that we look for in landscape art. The use of colour, light and shade, line and pattern have been touched upon, and I have intentionally placed technique last in the list of those means by which a painter can bring home to others some of the power in nature that he worships. I have placed it last, as no one possessing that reverence for nature which should be the mainspring in our desire to paint, could be content to represent her except in the best possible way of which he is capable. His self-esteem as a craftsman goads him on to overcome the difficulties in handling his tools. There is a fascination in the technical side of his art that enables a man to bring his work to completion. Without it he would stop short so soon as the excitement he experienced on first tackling his subject had subsided ; and our picture galleries would be full of sketches. So engrossing is this wish to do things well that a painter in spare moments may be found exercising his ability upon the most ordinary objects, and the world is enriched by beautiful renderings of these. A young student, but newly conscious of the difficulty in technique, is apt to become enamoured of work which displays a superficial dexterity. It is fortunate for him if he fails to acquire it, or it is likely before long to become his master instead of his servant. But I cannot resist here quoting at some length what Sir Joshua Reynolds has said : "A lively and what is called a masterly handling of the chalk or pencil,' are, it must be confessed, captivating qualities to young minds, and become of course the objects of their ambition. They endeavour to imitate these dazzling excellencies which they will find no great labour in attaining. After much time spent in these frivolous pursuits the difficulty will be to retreat ; but it will then be too late ; and there is scarce an instance of return to scrupulous labour, after the mind has been debauched and deceived by this fallacious mastery..." * 1 By this He uses the word pencil where we now say brushes. "...useless industry they are excluded from all power of advancing in real excellence. Whilst boys, they are arrived at their utmost perfection ; they have taken the shadow for the substance, and they make the mechanical felicity the chief excellence of the art, which is only an ornament, and of the merit of which few painters themselves are judges. . . . But young men have not only this frivolous ambition of being thought masters of execution, inciting them on one hand, but also their natural sloth tempting them on the other. They are terrified at the prospect before them, of the toil required to attain exactness. The impetuosity of youth is disgusted at the slow approaches of a regular siege, and desires from mere impatience of labour to take the citadel by storm. They wish to find some shorter path to excellence, and hope to obtain the reward of eminence by other means than those which the indispensable rules of art have prescribed. They must therefore be told again and again that labour is the only price of solid fame, and that whatever their force of genius may be, there is no easy method of becoming a good Painter." A painter should be able to make a good picture of any subject, but it is done, not by a literal statement of formations, but by work which shows his appreciation of the nature of the scene--its dignity, or repose, the desolation of it, or its association with human beings. Perhaps its individuality must be insisted upon ; or lost in a larger idea that is suggested by a mood of nature, the heat of the day, the softness of the spring air, or the gales of autumn. The difference between the exactly copied landscape that shows no appreciation and one that has a meaning to back it, is the same as between a guide-book and a Walter Scott novel. There is no need to force a pretended significance of something that is absent, or to presume any drastic alterations. It is better that you should try and see how much good is there ; and by seeing it you will almost unconsciously emphasize it, and by a legitimate exaggeration influence others to see it also. PART I TREES CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO PAINTING Plate II BLAIR ATHOL (LIBER STUDIORUM). J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. CHAPTER I THE PAINTING OF TREES ILLUSTRATED BY A CHRONOLOGICAL SERIES OF PICTURES, WITH SOME DESCRIPTIVE NOTESTHEODORE ROUSSEAU was able, in the painting of a single tree, to impress us with the greatness of nature--with her very soul, if one may use the expression. In looking at his tree we are not disturbed by wondering whether it is an Oak or an Ash or botanically correct. We are content to look at it and come away, feeling that we have seen something grand and without a wish to analyse it. Sometimes out of doors we may see a tree which will excite the same feeling ; but genius is given to few, and any attempt to depict on canvas the feeling we experience, unless it is backed up by a knowledge of construction, results in flabbiness--as is too often seen in the imitators of Corot. We cannot see with other men's eyes, but we can study what they look for. By sonic our tree will be shown to us as a mere outline, but even that alone can express the severity or rhythm of its lines--lines that would give us pleasure in anything, but here give us the grace, dignity, or strength, as it may be, of the particular tree. Others will wish us to appreciate the tree as a bulk, and will accentuate its statuesque quality in which all details are submerged. Others, again, will find out wonderful shapes, and through them will appeal to our love of pattern, successfully as they extract its complete structure and intricacy of detail.  ILLUS. 1. PHOTOGRAPHS FROM PORTIONS OF THE PICTURES (1) VIRGIN AND CHILD AND THE INFANT ST. JOHN--Fra Bartolomeo (2) L'ANNUNZIAZIO.NE--Botticelli (3) VENUS AND CUPIDS--Sellaio ...of heavy foliage leading into the gloom. Sometimes his tree was a portrait, at others a specimen of the type--often a type evolved from many species--simply a tree--but nevertheless a possible tree. Whether it was the subtle undulations of the foliage or the severity of the lines of the trunks, he had a use for them. To him nothing came amiss ; his sunlight shimmered on the leaves or poured through them in broad shafts of light ; his branches stretched out from the trunk mixing in the blue of the sky : no detail was too trivial to make note of, not even the seams or the roughness of the bark or the single leaves and twigs that he drew so well.' (1) From Titian and Patinier, the Fathers of landscape painting, to Cecil Lawson, we recall the names of those who have treated trees each in his own individual way. Titian, Giorgione, Rubens, Claude, Rembrandt, Poussin, Salvator Rosa, Hobbema, Wilson, Gainsborough, Crome, Girtin, Turner, Constable, Cotman, Cox, Corot, Gtreswick, Diaz, Troyon, Muller, Rousseau, Daubigny, Monticelli, Cecil Lawson. To discuss adequately their points of view and their methods would require another book by another pen, but just to name them seems to brighten our minds and stir us to effort. But our list should start with the Primitive Italians with their precise and delightful little trees painted in such an ingenuous way * 1 Turner's delicate drawings of still life on a minute scale that have been brought to light recently seem to have astonished some people who had overlooked his refined vignettes for book illustration.  ILLUS. 2. A SKETCH OF SOME YOUNG TREES -- Notice the likeness between the one on the left and Botticelli's tree ...with an infinite loving care. Their desire for an art, as something separate and different from ordinary life, seems to have guided them in the selection of just those trees that would satisfy it completely. Their trees were not, as some suppose, thought out formally, but were I truthful copies of such as we find in our own copses today in the young( trees that have been spared after the cropping of the underwood. The work of some painters becomes more interesting if we're member when it was that they lived. Here is a list of those we mention : A LIST OF ARTISTS MENTIONED IN THE TEXT
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