Turner and Mulready : the effect of certain faults of vision on painting, with especial reference to their works. The real and ideal in portraiture. The deterioration of oil paintings : three lectures / by R. Liebreich.
- Liebreich, Richard, 1830-1917.
- Date:
- 1888
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Turner and Mulready : the effect of certain faults of vision on painting, with especial reference to their works. The real and ideal in portraiture. The deterioration of oil paintings : three lectures / by R. Liebreich. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![recognizes what others tell him with regard to his works, but because with him as with everyone else, the impressions received through his own eye have a stronger power of conviction than anything else. Sehen geht vor Sagen (seeing is believing), says the old adage. We are almost always conscious of indistinct vision, be it in con- sequence of incorrect accommodation or insufficient power of sight, especially if it is not congenital, but has gradually appeared. But it is extremely difficult, and in many cases impossible, to convince those of their defect who suffer from incorrect vision as to form and colour. They never become conscious of it themselves, even if it is not con- genital, and the most enlightened and intelligent among them remain incredulous, or become even angry and offended when told of it. In- correct perception of form may, however, easily be demonstrated. If in consequence of astigmatism a square appears oblong to anyone, he can measure the sides with a compass ; or, what is more simple still, he can turn it so that the horizontal lines are changed into vertical ones, and vice versa, and his own sight will convince him of his error. It is more difficult to demonstrate whether a person sees colours cor- rectly or not. Such glaring mistakes as those produced by colour- blindness can be easily recognised, but faults produced by a diminished sensation of small differences in the shades of colour can only be recognised as such by the fact that the majority of persons with normal vision declare them to be faults. Such, for instance, are devi- ations produced by an incorrect perception of pigments, which in painting makes itself felt by constantly recurring ]?lus or minus of a single colour in the whole picture. It may also show itself by small faults in the rendering of every colour. In discussing this subject with artists, they at once declare these anomalies to represent a school, a taste, a manner, which may be arbitrarily changed. They most unwillingly concede that peculiarities of sight have anything to do with it. It seems to me sometimes as if they considered it in a certain measure a degradation of their art, that it should be influenced by an organ of sense, and not depend entirely upon free choice, intelligence, imagination, and talent. Thus, to return to the point from which we started, if a painter whose lens becomes yellower begins to paint in a bluer tone, it is said that he has changed his style. The painter himself vehemently pro- tests against this opinion; he thinks that he still paints in his old style, and that he has only improved the tone of his colour. His earlier works appear to him too brown. To convince him of his error it would be necessary to remove his lens suddenly. Then everything would appear to him too blue, and his paintings far too blue. This is no hypothesis, but a fact. Patients on whom I have operated for cataract, very often spontaneously declared, immediately after the operation, that they saw everythiug blue ; in these cases I invariably found their crystalline lens to be of an intense yellow colour. In pictures painted after the artists were considerably over sixty, the effect of the yellow lens can often be studied. To me their pictures](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22300053_0016.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
