William Morris Hunt: The Value of Values

"Charles Monginot" by William Morris Hunt

"In William Morris Hunt's teaching he never followed the pedantic slavery to outline. How did the thing exist? To him it was largely a matter of light and shade to begin with. It was a dark object against a light ground, or the reverse; and he began his drawing usually as a sculptor would work. He struck out for large planes and masses, dashing off a superfluity here, building up there, where there was a deficiency, gradually evolving the perfect form from the more or less shapeless mass.

Every painter who begins with outline solely, keeping to that throughout his work, never wholly recovers from his slavish devotion to boundary, the trail of the serpent is over it all, from first to last, and his bondage to it is of lifelong duration. 

What does Delacroix say?

'I am at my window, and I see the most beautiful landscape. The idea of a line never comes into my head.The lark sings, the river glitters, the foliage murmurs; but where are the 'lines' that produce these charming sensations? They(some people) can see proportion and harmony only between two lines. The rest for them is chaos, and the compass only is judge.'

M. Puvis de Chavannes commended a student once by saying, 'I like your work because you draw in light and shade.' Artists who have not been trained in that way from the first never quite reach the largeness and grandeur of which their work should be capable. 

Of Hunt's creed, as it might be called, he once gave the following statement, 'We begin with the study of values in order more readily to get the power of expressing the roundness and fullness of objects, the effect of light and shadow, and the mystery of distance and atmosphere. The definiteness of form and proportion should be constantly studied, and endless practice is required in order to obtain such power. The firmest outline drawing is most excellent exercise, but that alone will not suffice to render the impression which nature produces upon our mind.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from Helen Mary Knowlton's book "The Art-Life of William Morris Hunt."