Science for Artists | Nature

ON many former occasions, furnished by the opening of the Royal Academy, the Grosvenor, and other exhibitions of pictures, we have made some remarks upon them from a specially scientific

point of view, endeavouring in this way to note if any progress has been made in the treatment of natural phenomena by artists. This has also sometimes been accompanied by minute criticisms

of certain pictures in which such phenomena have been admirably portrayed, or, on the other hand, travestied. Our remarks naturally have referred more to landscapes than to the other classes

of pictures exhibited, first, because we have to deal chiefly with physical phenomena, and secondly, because, in representing the human form, artists have now for many years received such

complete instruction that there is little chance of any gross error being committed. Why we think it worth while to write these articles at all is that, so far as we can find out, in no

scheme of art instruction does the study of natural phenomena find any place, and one of our objects is to show that sach instruction ought to be given to artists side by side with their

anatomical work, in order to prevent them from making grotesque blunders which destroy all the artistic beauty of a picture, however well painted, in the eyes of the initiated. It happens

very curiously that the various scientific points which are raised by the pictures exhibited vary from year to year. This alone would indicate the many points of contact between science and

art, beyond those which we usually recognize. This year we think the questions raised by the pictures exhibited in the Royal. Academy to which we now confine ourselves, for it really comes

to that, are smaller in number than they have been for some time past, and are more restricted in scope. This arises, we believe, in a great measure from the very distinct improvement in the

landscape pictures generally. The air has more atmosphere about it, the skies and clouds are truer in colour and form, the play of light upon water, the forms of waves, and many such points

as these, to which reference might be made, have received better and more careful treatment. The most wonderful play of colour in Nature is brought before us at sunrise and sunset, and the

only wonder is that artists do not pay more attention to the magnificent pictorial effects which are provided by these natural displays. This wonder, however, no doubt is greatly reduced

when we come to consider the enormous difficulty of the problem. In the first place, there is no book, as far as we know, containing any statement in regard to swnset colours which will help

an artist who wishes to paint them. Again, the play of colour in cloud and sky, in the objects illuminated by the fading and coloured light, varies incessantly; while, perhaps worst of all,

the artist himself has to choose his colours from a palette which is illuminated by a light the colours of which are constantly changing as the sun gets lower and lo

wer. In spite, however, of these enormous difficulties, artists have succeeded in producing sunset pictures of great beauty, nor are they absent in the present Academy Exhibition. No. 52,

“Sunset after a Shower,” is a case in point. Sunsets are not always so exactly alike as the painter of that picture paints them, as if pictures represented the different states of an

etching, but the picture in question has many beauties about it; and, as all good pictures should do, it raises a question. In it we are supposed to be looking very nearly towards the place

of sunset, and the sunset is a distinctly coloured one, as is evident by the colours on the clouds, and the very carefully painted zone of the sky getting warmer and warmer as the horizon is

approached. The light in fact is so warm that the blue has disappeared from it, and almost the green. Under these circumstances there is no green light, or very little of it, to be

reflected from the leaves and trees, which are not green in themselves of course, but only have the capacity of reflecting green light. We venture to think, then, that the trees in this

picture are too green, and certainly greener than they would be ever likely to appear when they were backed by a sunset sky. In No. 682, by the same artist, the greenery of the trees would

have been more in place, because in that picture the sunset colours are much less warm, albeit they are beautifully true to Nature, being caused by a different meteorological condition. We

do not see in this year's Academy any distinct attempt to give us that glorious contrast one sometimes sees at sunset between brilliantly illuminated clouds, running through all the

composite colours which are possible between red and yellow, backed by a “daffodil sky,” as Tennyson calls it, or even one approaching an olive green. The nearest approach to such a green

sky as this last we find in No. 990, which the artist funnily styles “Beneath Blue Skies.” Surely the sky in this picture is green, and not blue.

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