CHAPTER XXIX: FLOWERS
Flower painting is the refinement of still life. You have the same control
of combination, but you have not the same control of time. Flowers will
change, and change more rapidly than any other models you can have;
and at the same time they are so subtle that the most exquisite truth and
justness are necessary to paint them well.
People seem to think that anyone can paint flowers. On the contrary, almost no one can
paint them well. There are not a dozen painters in the world who can really paint flowers
as they ought to be painted. Why? Because while they are so exquisite in drawing and
color, and so infinitely delicate in value, they are also even more infinitely subtle in
substance and sentiment.
When you have got the drawing and the color and the value, you have not got the
quality.
What is the petal of a flower? It is not paper, and it is not wax, neither is it flesh and
blood, of the most exquisite kind. All these are gross as substance compared to the
tender firmness of the flower petal; and the whole bunch of flowers is made up of petals.
Yet you cannot paint the petals either, else you lose the flower. You must paint the
quality of the petal, and the character of the flower.
All these things make the mere perception of facts most difficult, and it must be done
with full knowledge that in an hour it will be something else, and you can never get it
back to its original form again. Yet you cannot paint a bunch of flowers in an hour. What
will you do?
Mass and Value. - There is something besides the flower and the petal; there is the
mass. The mass is one thing, and it is surrounded with air, and air goes through the
interstices of it. You must make this invisible. The difference in value in flowers is
something “infinitely little,” as a great flower painter said to me once. Yet the difference
is there.
The bunch has its nearer and its farther sides, and the way the light falls on it is the most
obvious expression of it.
When you begin a group of flowers, get the whole first. Make up your mind that you
cannot complete your work from the flower you have in front of you, and that you must
constantly change your models. Do not paint the little things, the personal things first
then. Paint what is common to all the flowers in the group first. Paint the mass and the
rotundity of it, and express most vaguely the forms of the accents, and of the darks
which fall between the flowers, but get their values. For you will have to change these,
and you should have nothing there which will influence you to shirk. In this way only can
you get the larger things without hampering your future work by what may be wrong.