Turner and Mulready : the effect of certain faults of vision on painting, with especial reference to their works. The real and ideal in portraiture. The deterioration of oil paintings : three lectures / by R. Liebreich.

  • Liebreich, Richard, 1830-1917.
Date:
1888
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Turner and Mulready : the effect of certain faults of vision on painting, with especial reference to their works. The real and ideal in portraiture. The deterioration of oil paintings : three lectures / by R. Liebreich. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    difference between the colour of light, or of an illuminated object, and the pigments employed in painting, that it appears wonderful that the art of painting can, by the use of them, produce such perfect optical delusions. It can of course only produce optical delusions, never a real optical identity; that is to say, the image which is traced in our eye by real objects is not identical with the image produced in our eye by the picture. This is best observed by changing the light. Whoever paints in London has but too frequent opportunities of observing this. A little more or less fog, the reflexion of a cloud illuminated by the sun, suflices to alter entirely the colouring of the picture, while the colouring of natural objects is not changed in the same manner. Let us now return to our experiment with the yellow glass, and we shall find that it affects our eye very much in the same way as a yellow tint in the light, and therefore modifies natural objects in quite a different degree from pictures. If we continue the experiment for a considerable time, the difference becomes more and more essen- tial. As I said before, the eye becomes dulled with regard to the yellow light, and thus sees nature again in its normal colouring. The small quantity of blue light which is excluded by the yellow glass produces no sensible difference, as the difference is equalised by a diminution of sensibility with regard to yellow. In the picture, on the contrary, there is found in many places only as much blue as is perfectly absorbed by the yellow glass, and this therefore can never be perceived, however long we continue the experiment. Even for those parts of the picture which have been painted with the most intense blue the painter could produce, the quantity of blue excluded by the yellow glass will make itself felt, because its power is not so small with regard to pigments as with regard to the blue in nature. Imagine now that in the course of years one of the transparent media in the eye of a painter had gradually become yellowish, and that this yellow had by degrees considerably increased in intensity, and you will easily understand the influence it must exercise upon his work. He will see in nature almost everything correctly ; but in his picture everything will appear to him yellowish, and consequently, he will paint it too blue. Does he not perceive this himself ? Does he not believe it if told of it ? Were this the case, it would be easy for him to correct the fault, since an artist can paint in a yellower or bluer tone, as he chooses. These are two questions which are easily answered by psychological experience. He does not perceive it him- self, because he does not remember that he formerly saw in a different way. Our remembrance with regard to opinions, sensations, percep- tions, &c, which have become gradually modified in the course of years—not by any external influence or sudden impression, but by a gradual change in our own physical or mental individuality—is almost nil. He does not believe it—I would not say because an artist rarely