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| Anton Groner Bookbinding Design ca. 1890 watercolor on paper Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
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| Franz von Seitz Bookbinding Design 1867 watercolor and gouache on paper Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
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| Karl Friedrich Schinkel Decorative Scheme for Dining Hall ca. 1827-28 watercolor and gouache on paper (this sheet was destroyed during World War II) Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Valentin Lefebvre Design for Tomb of Ruler ca. 1677 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden |
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| Domenico Santi Design for Cartouche Frame ca. 1660 etching Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
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| Hans Thoma Putti with Armillary Sphere (design for mosaic) 1883 watercolor on paper (this sheet was destroyed during World War II) Städel Museum, Frankfurt |
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| Julius Victor Berger Sketch for Art Nouveau Poster ca. 1890 watercolor on paper Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Anonymous French Artist Ornamental Design for the Grande Galerie at the Louvre ca. 1660-70 watercolor and gouache on vellum Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Anonymous German Artist Warrior supporting (blank) Coat-of-Arms ca. 1520-30 drawing, with added watercolor Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden |
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| René-Marie Castaing Joan of Arc with her Voices ca. 1930 oil on canvas (modello for stained glass) Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau |
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| René-Marie Castaing Joan of Arc at the Stake ca. 1930 oil on canvas (modello for stained glass) Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau |
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| René Boyvin after Léonard Thiry Design for a Mask ca. 1550-60 engraving Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| René Boyvin after Léonard Thiry Design for a Mask ca. 1550-60 engraving Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Francesco Ponte Costume Design for Hasse's opera Solimano ca. 1753 watercolor on paper Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Anton Groner Ornamental Frieze Design ca. 1890 watercolor on paper Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
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| Johann Hermann Design for Printed Textile (Silk Scarf) 1865 watercolor and gouache on paper Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
The very point of Richter's story, after all, is that style rules even where the artist wishes to reproduce nature faithfully, and trying to analyze these limits to objectivity may help us get nearer to the riddle of style. One of these limits we know from the last chapter; it is indicated in Richter's story by the contrast between coarse brush and fine pencil. The artist, clearly, can render only what his tool and his medium are capable of rendering. His technique restricts his freedom of choice. The features and relationships the pencil picks out will differ from those the brush can indicate. Sitting in front of his motif, pencil in hand, the artist will, therefore, look out for those aspects which can be rendered in lines – as we say in a pardonable abbreviation, he will tend to see his motif in terms of lines, while, brush in hand, her sees it in terms of masses.
The question of why style should impose similar limitations is less easily answered, least of all when we do not know whether the artist's intentions were the same as those of Richter and his friends.
Historians of art have explored the regions where Cézanne and van Gogh set up their easels and have photographed their motifs. Such comparisons will always retain their fascination since they almost allow us to look over the artist's shoulder – and who does not wish he had this privilege? But however instructive such confrontations may be when handled with care, we must clearly beware of the fallacy of "stylization." Should we believe the photograph represents the "objective truth" while the painting records the artist's subjective vision – the way he transformed "what he saw"? Can we compare "the image on the retina" with the "image in the mind"? Such speculations easily lead into a morass of unprovables. Take the image on the artist's retina. It sounds scientific enough, but actually there never was one such image which we could single out for comparison with either photograph or painting. What there was was an endless succession of innumerable images as the painter scanned the landscape in front of him, and these images sent a complex pattern of impulses through the optic nerves to his brain. Even the artist knew nothing of these events, and we know even less. How far the picture that formed in his mind corresponded to or deviated from the photograph it is even less profitable to ask. What we do know is that these artists went out into nature to look for material for a picture and their artistic wisdom led them to organize the elements of the landscape into works of art of marvelous complexity that bear as much relationship to a surveyor's record as a poem bears to a police report.
– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960).
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