William Hunt, the Yankee, in his 'Talks about Art,' tells us about Dürer
and copying in his own terse way thus: 'Albert Dürer, with an outline,
knew how to make an outline look like a firm, full figure. He began with
firmness, and finished with delicacy.... But he didn't get it in a day.
Hercules may have strangled a serpent when he was a baby, but there was
a time when he couldn't. "Dürer worked in his own way!" No! nor did
anybody else at first. They all worked in the manner of someone else, in
the way they were shown: Raphael after Perugino, Vandyke after Rubens.
If Albert Dürer had lived in Venice he would have been a Venetian
painter. As it was, he worked as the old German artists had worked.'
'The Lord and his Lady,' 'Melancholy,' and 'The Virgin and Child' are
the engravings by Albert Dürer which represent his clear, concise style
as well as any others of his works for our present purpose.
In the first picture, 'The Lord and his Lady,' we have a simple
arrangement of straight perpendicular lines--the lady seen profile, with
sloping unbroken lines of drapery; the lord almost full-face, looking
upon her, a straight sword hung in front and slanting in unison with the
folds of the lady's drapery; a plant at right side with split top,
growing straight so far, yet inclining towards the direction of dress,
sword, and figures; a tree-trunk at left wing with gnarling, repeating
the folds of dress, with the figure of Death behind the tree holding up
his hour-glass:--they are passing from Death's corner, yet by the
hour-glass he knows that, as the shadows travel round, so surely will
they both return.
The light and shade are simple as the arrangement, directly falling from
above and to the left; the light divides the direct half of tree, dress,
clock, and flower, and the other half is in broad shadow, a light
foreground and light distance and a clear sky; all the shade relief
rests about the central objects of interest. As a sample of unaffected
masterly ease of management and restraint I do not know its equal; nor
have I yet seen a photograph treated (although it might easily be so) in
the same possessed way, except perhaps the first efforts of the amateur
before he had learned how to manage his lighting up. If experienced men
would only learn to come back to the effects of their days of ignorance,
bringing their gained knowledge to rectify the defects _outside_ the
accidental effects; if old painters would only take lessons from the
natural attempts of their little sons and daughters--how great we might
all become, and how original!