If these five photo-paintings were on good paper enlarged to twenty by
twenty-four inches, they would do to frame and hang on the wall of any
study, for a month or so. And after the relentless test of time, I would
venture that some one of the five would prove a permanent addition to the
household gods.
Hastily made photographs selected from the films are often put in front
of the better theatres to advertise the show. Of late they are making
them two by three feet and sometimes several times larger. Here is a
commercial beginning of an art gallery, but not enough pains are taken to
give the selections a complete art gallery dignity. Why not have the most
beautiful scenes in front of the theatres, instead of those alleged to be
the most thrilling? Why not rest the fevered and wandering eye, rather
than make one more attempt to take it by force?
Let the reader supply another side of the argument by looking at the
illustrations in any history of painting. Let him select the pictures
that charm him most, and think of them enlarged and transferred bodily to
one corner of the room, as he has thought of the sculpture. Let them take
on motion without losing their charm of low relief, or their serene
composition within the four walls of the frame. As for the motion, let it
be a further extension of the drawing. Let every gesture be a bolder but
not less graceful brush-stroke.
The Metropolitan Museum has a Van Dyck that appeals equally to one's sense
of beauty and one's feeling for humor. It is a portrait of James Stuart,
Duke of Lennox, and I cannot see how the author-producer-photographer can
look upon it without having it set his imagination in a glow. Every small
town dancing set has a James like this. The man and the greyhound are the
same witless breed, the kind that achieve a result by their clean-limbed
elegance alone. Van Dyck has painted the two with what might be called a
greyhound brush-stroke, a style of handling that is nothing but courtly
convention and strut to the point of genius. He is as far from the
meditative spirituality of Rembrandt as could well be imagined.
Conjure up a scene in the hereditary hall after a hunt (or golf
tournament), in which a man like this Duke of Lennox has a noble parley
with his lady (or dancing partner), she being a sweet and stupid swan (or
a white rabbit) by the same sign that he is a noble and stupid greyhound.
Be it an ancient or modern episode, the story could be told in the tone
and with well-nigh the brushwork of Van Dyck.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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