June 30, 1887] 



NATURE 



199 



after will find that "the total elimination" amounts to "one." 

 Since the publication of the Calendar, again, no fewer than six 

 have been added to the list of European Professors in the 

 University. S. Sekiya. 



Imperial University, Tokio, April 22. 



SCIENCE FOR ARTISTS. 



ON many former occasions, furnished by the opening of 

 the Royal Academy, the Grosvenor, and other exhibi- 

 tions 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 pheno- 

 mena, and secondly, because, in representing the human 

 form, artists have now for many years received such com- 

 plete instruction that there is little chance of any gross 

 error beioig coaaaiitted. Why we think it worth while to 

 write these artkles at all is that, so far as we can find out, 

 in no schense erf art instruction does the study of natural 

 phenomena find any place, and one of our objects is to 

 show that such 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 prob- 

 lem. In the first place, there is no book, as far as we 

 know, containing any statement in regard to sunset 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 in- 

 cessantly ; while, perhaps worst of all, the artist himself 

 has to choose his colours from a palette which is illumin- 

 ated by a light the colours of which are constantly 

 changing as the sun gets lower and lower. In spite, 

 however, of these enormous difficulties, artists have suc- 

 ceeded 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. Sun- 

 sets are not always so exactly alike as the painter of that 

 picture paints them, as if pictuies 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 wanner 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 circum- 

 stances there is no green light, or very littfe 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. 



On a former occasion, some years ago now, we'ventured 

 to put together a few notes regarding the hints that 

 artists might glean, if they chose, in two or three hours' 

 reading from any elementary books on astronomy about 

 the moon. We are sorry to say that the moons in this 

 year's Academy show that such advice still holds good, 

 for in most cases the moons are wofully wrong. Funnily 

 enough, there is a difference between the moons now and 

 the moons of ten years ago. They were then far too 

 large, now as a rule they err in an opposite direction. 

 It may perhaps be imagined that the artist has no 

 available means of drawing the moon to anything like 

 the correct scale. This really is not so. If the artist has 

 made up his mind that his picture shall contain, say, some 

 60^ in the horizontal scale, so that six such pictures 

 would enable him to give a complete panorama of the 

 landscape around him from the place he has chosen to 

 paint from, we have — provided the 60° are properly 

 estimated — a perfect method of drawing the moon to 

 scale, for the reason that as the diameter of the moon 

 is about half a degree, so the diameter shown should 

 be 1/ 1 20 of the length of the picture. We are inclined 

 to believe that a moon of this size would really look rather 

 too small, although, of course, it would be scientifically 

 correct, for the reason that we have been fed upon large 

 moons in pictures all our lives, and it is a part of our 

 artistic education at the present moment to expect to see 

 a large moon on canvas, and there is something uncanny 

 about a small one, even if it is pverfectly correctly painted. 

 This artistic treatment of the moon will of course lose all 

 its objectionable characters as the years roll by, and we 

 shall not expect to see one thing in a picture and 

 another thing, which the picture is supposed to represent, 

 in the heavens. 



Inpictures Ii8and23i the moons would have been truer 

 to nature if they had been slightly larger; but the worst of 

 it is that this is not the only defect about them. Thus, 

 dealing with 118, it is obvious that the sun is setting to 

 the right of the picture ; the moon, therefore, cannot have 

 been full. If the artist thought he was drawing a gibbous 

 moon, then he should have shown the imperfect edge of 

 it away from the sun, and not below it as he has done. 

 The fault in No. 231 is that the vvami tone of the picture 

 generally, indicates that we are somewhere about the hour 

 of sunset ; the sun has evidently not yet set, the luminosity 

 of the picture shows that. Now we cannot get a full 

 moon as high as the artist has represented his until after 

 the sun has set, for a very simple reason which is known 

 to everybody. We should like also to suggest to another 



