Words of Wisdom: More Hints from 'Shorty' Lasar

Charles Augustus C. "Shorty" Lasar (1856-1936) was a Pennsylvanian-born artist who, like many of his fellow Americans, travelled to Paris to further his art education.  In the atelier of Jean-Léon Gérôme, Lasar's draughtsmanship was legendary¹, and after several years successfully exhibiting in the annual Salon, he decided to open his own atelier catering to English-speaking, female artists.  Cecilia Beaux, who friended "Shorty" during her days of study at the Académie Julian, described the expatriate artist as "a funny little man with intensely bright eyes, and dark hair standing around- and his legs about two feet long."²  Of Lasar's teaching, Beaux said his students clung to his strictures as if they were a lifeline, but found that his lessons were too technical for her, and preferred to follow her own intuitive processes.³  "It is splendid for a teacher but I'm afraid it will be the ruin of him as a painter."⁴

The following Composition rules are selections from Lasar's book, Practical Hints for Art Students first published in 1910. Additional suggestions from Lasar can be found in an earlier post on this same blog.

Composition is the pilot of your imagination to guide your common sense.  It is the process of avoiding monotony.  Regulate the scale of emotion according to your feeling.

Composition teaches how to express one’s ideals in the most forcible manner.

Composition is like a monogram interlacing letters together.  The objects of a scene must knit together in one harmonious whole of light, tone, values, line, spot, and mass.

The first stage of a composition will be to place the big masses.

Secondly -- Place foundations under the masses.

Thirdly -- Place the interests in the masses beginning always with the principal one.

The fourth stage will be graceful lines felt in the mass general.

Masses

Mass the whole scene as one object, and decorate it according to proportion.

You may have one big mass in the foreground, and all others getting smaller as they recede from it.

The masses of a composition are frequently made up by a combination of planes, objects in the second plane attached to the first to make an agreeable form to the mass.

To separate masses makes a scene attractive.

To make a large mass appear larger, place a small one upon it.

Dark masses above have a heavy feeling, most entombments are arranged on this principle, also storms with black skies.

Foundations

The foundations of masses are usually horizontal.  Sometimes they support the mass, and sometimes make it more brilliant.

Foundations under the masses, to give support and solidity, may be either dark or light as the occasion requires.

Solid underneath masses give foundation to a composition.

Interests

Have but one principal interest in a composition;  all other objects must be subservient to it.  The eye should be continually attracted to it alone.

The interest may be in the background, the foreground, or the middle distance.

If the interest is in the background have oblique masses running in from the foreground, but if the interest is in the foreground have the masses running down to it.

The silhouette must be kept in objects that form the interest.

If the scene is evening have more shadow than light or light spots.  If the scene is morning have more light than shadow or dark spots.

If the principal interest does not appear sufficiently forcible it is because too much has been made of minor objects.

If the interest is dark have no other dark mass near, but there may be parts of dark masses running out at the sides of the picture.

A small repetition in the background of the big interest in the foreground will give a feeling of space to the picture.

Everything is a background to the interest.

Everything should fall away from the spectator’s eye except the interest.

The principal interest should attract the eye when all other objects disappear from sight.

You may hang a number of interests on one big general line of interest.

The eye should run to the interest more quickly from the bottom, than from the side or top of the picture, therefore, there must be interruptions to the side and top lines.

Make use of every possible chance to run something in to the interest from the outside edge.  Take advantage of mass, line, shadow, light, or form.

The main interest in a picture should look at you, while the accessories look at it.⁵

¹ Alice A. Carter, Cecilia Beaux:  A Modern Painter in the Gilded Age, (Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New York, 2005), p. 79
² ibid. p. 81.
³ ibid. p. 87.
⁴ idem.
⁵ Charles A. Lasar, Practical Hints for Art Students, (Duffield & Co., New York, 1923), pp. 52-72.