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 Too often it is forgotten that painting is a craft as well as an art, and, moreover, a difficult craft. At first sight, to dip a brush into a pot of paint and apply it to a surface, seems easy enough. But anyone who has tried to paint his own house knows differently. Trouble immediately arises about the way the material to be painted receives the paint, the consistency of the paint, the suitability of the brush, getting an even surface on the paint, and how to prevent paint going where it is not wanted, especially on to the painter himself. Even if these difficulties are overcome, there remains the question whether his work is going to last. Imagine, therefore, how much more complicated is the painting of a picture, which is to be the expression in visual terms of an artist's ideas and emotions. It is not too much to say that on the mastery of his craft depends the artist's power to say fully and completely what he has to say.
This is not to imply that a great craftsman is necessarily a great artist. On the contrary, many painters with much technical knowledge and great dexterity of hand are sadly deficient in thought and feeling; witness many of the exhibitions at the French Salon in the past hundred years. In contrast, painters with very limited technical resources can produce work that is deeply moving; though almost invariably it will be found that what they produce is an adumbration, or at best a partial expression, of what they feel, and that it would be more impressive had means been more responsive to ends.
In considering painting as a craft, however, there is an important distinction to be made; that between dexterity in handling tools and materials, and knowledge of the characteristics of those materials and of how they can best be combined into the structure of a painting. In the nineteenth century, especially, these two were often divorced, and painters who could use paint with extraordinary speed and certainty to attain their aims, yet used materials which were liable to change in color or in structure, or combined materials in such a way that rapid disintegration was inevitable.
Reynolds and the succeeding generation of English painters used asphaltum or bitumen, a rich brown pigment which quickly darkens and cracks irremediably; some ninteenth-century painters used the recently discovered aniline colors, which fled within a few years; other painters of the nineteenth century mixed their pigments with 'megilp', a combination of oil and mastic varnish which led to splintering and cracking; Whistler would paint thinly on a dark ground, unaware that the paint would lose body and become more transparent, and the painting darken to the tone of the ground; and Sargent would go on with his work when the underlying paint was half dry and sticky, using a coat of socalled retouching varnish to make this possible, and thereby creating a series of layers which contracted at different rates while hardening, and so inevitably caused cracking. Into dangers of this kind the un skilled painter is particularly liable to fall, since in seeking for some particular effect or quality in his work he may not realize that he is using dangerous methods or unstable materials.
It must not be thought, however, that there is one standard set of materials and processes, which the painter deserts at his peril. On the contrary, there are various types of painting, notably fresco, water-color, and oil, which involve very different materials and processes. Also, in each of these types, materials and procedure can vary considerably, though for each type the range of suitable material is restricted, and its handling must conform to certain basic principles. It is when the painter goes outside limits thus set that he runs the risk of losing technical control, or of disaster.
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