Once your interest is aroused in portraiture the art of the silhouette will not wholly satisfy your cravings. It is a charming but, it must be admitted, a limited art.
Now we are prepared to pass on to more ambitious subjects, and here I must offer a word of advice, for I do not want to make this difficult business of portraiture unnecessarily more difficult. We must go warily. The fascinating task of drawing likenesses is sometimes apt to give offence.
"That—my portrait!" said an old lady, ruefully regarding a drawing of mine. "Ah, well!"—following up with a sigh—"I was considered rather nice-looking in my day." The sad result was that the old lady refused to pose again, and the rest of the holiday was wasted, so far as further endeavours at sketching a likeness were concerned.
It is just as well to bear in mind what was written of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great portrait-painter of the eighteenth century:
- His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand;
His manners were gentle, complying, and bland;
Still born to improve us in every part,
His pencil our faces, his manner our heart.
- His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand;
Compare our beloved Sir Joshua with the Chinese painter, who like most Chinese artists, was excellent at copying a likeness, defect and blemish complete, and to whom one of his sitters objected that he had not made him handsome enough. The painter replied, blandly but firmly:
"No hab got handsome face, how can hab handsome picture?"
Supposing that it is your intention to sketch the likeness of a person who has what is sometimes called an unfortunate profile, you should not pitch on the particular position of a profile for choice.
The pencil says that my model has a small eye, snub nose, receding chin, and it records these facts remorselessly. It may not mean to be unkind. But the outline is such and down it goes.
