How the power to discover these things can be acquired, it is, of course, impossible to teach.  All the student can do is to familiarise himself with the best examples of portraiture, in the hope that he may be stimulated by this means to observe finer qualities in nature and develop the best that is in him.  But he must never be insincere in his work.  If he does not appreciate fine things in the work of recognised masters, let him stick to the honest portrayal of what he does see in nature.  The only distinction of which he is capable lies in this direction.  It is not until he awakens to the sight in nature of qualities he may have admired in others’ work that he is in a position honestly to introduce them into his own performances.

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Probably the most popular point of view in portraiture at present is the one that can be described as a “striking presentment of the live person.”  This is the portrait that arrests the crowd in an exhibition.  You cannot ignore it, vitality bursts from it, and everything seems sacrificed to this quality of striking lifelikeness.  And some very wonderful modern portraits have been painted from this point of view.  But have we not sacrificed too much to this quality of vitality?  Here is a lady hurriedly getting up from a couch, there a gentleman stepping out of the frame to greet you, violence and vitality everywhere.  But what of repose, harmony of colour and form, and the wise ordering and selecting of the materials of vision that one has been used to in the great portraiture of the past?  While the craftsman in one is staggered and amazed at the brilliant virtuosity of the thing, the artist in one resents the sacrifice of so much for what is, after all, but a short-lived excitement.  Age may, no doubt, improve some of the portraits of this class by quieting them in colour and tone.  And those that are good in design and arrangement will stand this without loss of distinction, but those in which everything has been sacrificed to this striking lifelike quality will suffer considerably.  This particular quality depends so much on the freshness of the paint that when this is mellowed and its vividness is lost, nothing will remain of value, if the quieter qualities of design and arrangement have been sacrificed for it.

Frans Hals is the only old master I can think of with whom this form of portrait can be compared.  But it will be noticed that besides designing his canvases carefully, he usually balanced the vigour and vitality of his form with a great sobriety of colour.  In fact, in some of his later work, where this restless vitality is most in evidence, the colour is little more than black and white, with a little yellow ochre and Venetian red.  It is this extreme reposefulness of colour that opposes the unrest in the form and helps to restore the balance and necessary repose in the picture.  It is interesting to note the restless variety of the edges in Frans Hal’s work, how he never, if he can help it, lets an edge run smoothly, but keeps it constantly on the move, often leaving it quite jagged, and to compare this with what was said about vitality depending on variety.