Houding

"Houding" is a term from the art theory of the Dutch Golden Age which has no equivalent in English. But like a lot of foreign art terms, figuring out what it means can give us an insight into the thought process of artists from previous traditions.

Houding has to do with the "pleasing and effective evocation of space." Another translation renders it as "the tonal and spatial organization of the picture as a whole." 

It combines several factors, including color, chiaroscuro, and atmospheric perspective, all working together to achieve a sense of depth and illusion. If the houding is successful, the colors are chosen and modified with depth and atmosphere in mind, with "the powerful at the front, and the less forceful further back according to their nature." 

(Above, Andrej Schilder, Russian, 1861-1919, The Ravine) 

According to a definition by Goeree from the time of Vermeer, houding is "... that which binds everything together in a drawing or a painting, which makes things move to the front or the back, from the foreground to the middle ground and hence to the background to stand in its proper place without appearing farther away or closer, and without seeming lighter or darker than its distance warrants; so that everything stands out, without confusion, from things that adjoin and surround it, and has an unambiguous position through the proper use of size and color, and light and shadow, and so that the eye can naturally perceive the intervening space, that distance between bodies which is left open and empty, both near and far, as though one might go there on foot, and everything stands in its proper space therein."

Concepts such as houding remind us that the language that we're accustomed to using in twentieth century color theory is inadequate for painters interested in realism because it defines the universe only in purely 2D abstract terms, detached from concerns of depth, light, and atmosphere.
------
Goeree quote from the website Essential Vermeer

Other quotes from the paper "The Concept of Houding in Dutch Art Theory," by Paul Taylor.

Many thanks to Ed Ahlstrom for telling me about this.