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[Illustration: THE KAPELLBRUeCKE, LUCERNE
FROM A DRAWING BY
RUSKIN]
Library Edition
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
JOHN RUSKIN
MODERN PAINTERS
VOLUME IV--OF MOUNTAIN BEAUTY
/OF LEAF BEAUTY
VOLUME V < OF CLOUD BEAUTY
\OF IDEAS OF RELATION
NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
NEW YORK CHICAGO
MODERN PAINTERS.
VOLUME IV.,
CONTAINING
PART V.,
OF MOUNTAIN BEAUTY.
[Illustration: The Gates of the Hills.]
PREFACE.
I was in hopes that this volume might have gone its way without preface;
but as I look over the sheets, I find in them various fallings short of
old purposes which require a word of explanation.
Of which shortcomings, the chief is the want of reference to the
landscape of the Poussins and Salvator; my original intention having
been to give various examples of their mountain-drawing, that it might
be compared with Turner's. But the ten years intervening between the
commencement of this work and its continuation have taught me, among
other things, that Life is shorter and less availably divisible than I
had supposed: and I think now that its hours may be better employed than
in making facsimiles of bad work. It would have required the greatest
care, and prolonged labor, to give uncaricatured representations of
Salvator's painting, or of any other work depending on the free dashes
of the brush, so as neither to mend nor mar it. Perhaps in the next
volume I may give one or two examples associated with vegetation; but in
general, I shall be content with directing the reader's attention to the
facts in nature, and in Turner; leaving him to carry out for himself
whatever comparisons he may judge expedient.
I am afraid, also, that disappointment may be felt at not finding plates
of more complete subject illustrating these chapters on mountain beauty.
But the analysis into which I had to enter required the dissection of
drawings, rather than their complete presentation; while, also, on the
scale of any readable page, no effective presentation of large drawings
could be given. Even my vignette, the frontispiece to the third volume,
is partly spoiled by having too little white paper about it; and the
fiftieth plate, from Turner's Goldau, necessarily omits, owing to its
reduction, half the refinements of the foreground. It is quite waste of
time and cost to reduce Turner's drawings at all; and I therefore
consider these volumes only as _Guides_ to them, hoping hereafter to
illustrate some of the best on their own scale.
Several of the plates appear, in their present position, nearly
unnecessary; +14+ and +15+, for instance, in Vol. III. These are
illustrations of the chapters on the Firmament in the fifth volume; but
I should have had the plates disproportionately crowded at last, if I
had put all that it needed in that volume; and as these two bear
somewhat on various matters spoken of in the third, I placed them where
they are first alluded to. The frontispiece has chief reference to the
same chapters; but seemed, in its three divisions, properly introductory
to our whole subject. It is a simple sketch from nature, taken at sunset
from the hills near Como, some two miles up the eastern side of the lake
and about a thousand feet above it, looking towards Lugano. The sky is a
little too heavy for the advantage of the landscape below; but I am not
answerable for the sky. It was _there_.[A]
In the multitudinous letterings and references of this volume there may
possibly be one or two awkward errata; but not so many as to make it
necessary to delay the volume while I look it over again in search of
them. The reader will perhaps be kind enough to note at once that in
page 182, at the first line of the text, the words "general truth" refer
to the angle-measurements, not to the diagrams; which latter are given
merely for reference, and might cause some embarrassment if the
statement of measured accuracy were supposed to refer to them.
One or two graver misapprehensions I had it in my mind to warn the
reader against; but on the whole, as I have honestly tried to make the
book intelligible, I believe it will be found intelligible by any one
who thinks it worth a careful reading; and every day convinces me more
and more that no warnings can preserve from misunderstanding those who
have no desire to understand.
Denmark Hill, March, 1856.
FOOTNOTES
[A] Persons unacquainted with hill scenery are apt to forget that
the sky of the mountains is often close to the spectator. A black
thundercloud may literally be dashing itself in his face, while the
blue hills seen through its rents maybe thirty miles away. Generally
speaking, we do not enough understand the nearness of many clouds,
even in level countries, as compared with the land horizon. See also
the close of Sec. 12 in Chap. III of this volume.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PART V.
OF MOUNTAIN BEAUTY.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.--Of the Turnerian Picturesque. 1
" II.--Of Turnerian Topography. 16
" III.--Of Turnerian Light. 34
" IV.--Of Turnerian Mystery: First, as Essential. 56
" V.--Of Turnerian Mystery: Secondly, Wilful. 68
" VI.--The Firmament. 82
" VII.--The Dry Land. 89
" VIII.--Of the Materials of Mountains: First, Compact
Crystallines. 99
" IX.--Of the Materials of Mountains: Secondly, Slaty
Crystallines. 113
" X.--Of the Materials of Mountains: Thirdly, Slaty
Coherents. 122
" XI.--Of the Materials of Mountains: Fourthly, Compact
Coherents. 127
" XII.--Of the Sculpture of Mountains: First, the Lateral
Ranges. 137
" XIII.--Of the Sculpture of Mountains: Secondly, the Central
Peaks. 157
" XIV.--Resulting Forms: First, Aiguilles. 173
" XV.--Resulting Forms: Second, Crests. 195
" XVI.--Resulting Forms: Third, Precipices. 228
" XVII.--Resulting Forms: Fourthly, Banks. 262
" XVIII.--Resulting Forms: Fifthly, Stones. 301
" XIX.--The Mountain Gloom. 317
" XX.--The Mountain Glory. 344
APPENDIX.
I. Modern Grotesque. 385
II. Rock Cleavage. 391
III. Logical Education. 399
LIST OF PLATES TO VOL. IV.
Drawn by Engraved by
Frontispiece.
The Gates of the Hills _J. M. W. Turner_ J. COUSEN
Plate Facing page
18. The Transition from _Ghirlandajo and
Ghirlandajo to Claude Claude_ J. H. LE KEUX 1
19. The Picturesque of _Stanfield and
Windmills Turner_ J. H. LE KEUX 7
20. The Pass of Faido.
1. Simple Topography _The Author_ THE AUTHOR 22
21. The Pass of Faido
2. Turnerian Topography _J. M. W. Turner_ THE AUTHOR 24
22. Turner's Earliest Nottingham _J. M. W. Turner_ T. BOYS 29
23. Turner's Latest Nottingham _J. M. W. Turner_ T. BOYS 30
24. The Towers of Fribourg _The Author_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 32
25. Things in General _The Author_ J. H. LE KEUX 32
26. The Law of Evanescence _The Author_ R. P. CUFF 71
27. The Aspen under Idealization _Turner, etc._ J. COUSEN 76
28. The Aspen Unidealized _The Author_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 77
29. Aiguille Structure _The Author_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 160
30. The Ideal of Aiguilles _The Author, etc._ R. P. CUFF 177
31. The Aiguille Blaitiere _The Author_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 185
32. Aiguille-drawing _Turner, etc._ J. H. LE KEUX 191
33. Contours of Aiguille Bouchard _The Author_ R. P. CUFF 204
34. Cleavage of Aiguille Bouchard _The Author_ THE AUTHOR 211
35. Crests of La Cote and Taconay _The Author_ THE AUTHOR 212
36. Crest of La Cote _The Author_ T. LUPTON 213
37. Crests of the Slaty
Crystallines _J. M. W. Turner_ THE AUTHOR 222
38. The Cervin, from the East
and North-east _The Author_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 233
39. The Cervin from the
North-west _The Author_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 238
40. The Mountains of Villeneuve _The Author_ J. H. LE KEUX 246
12. A. The Shores of Wharfe _J. M. W. Turner_ THOS. LUPTON 251
41. The Rocks of Arona _The Author_ J. H. LE KEUX 255
42. Leaf Curvature Magnolia and
Laburnum _The Author_ R. P. CUFF 269
43. Leaf Curvature Dead Laurel _The Author_ R. P. CUFF 269
44. Leaf Curvature Young Ivy _The Author_ R. P. CUFF 269
45. Debris Curvature _The Author_ R. P. CUFF 285
46. The Buttresses of an Alp _The Author_ J. H. LE KEUX 286
47. The Quarry of Carrara _The Author_ J. H. LE KEUX 299
48. Bank of Slaty Crystallines _Daguerreotype_ J. C. ARMYTAGE 304
49. Truth and Untruth of Stones _Turner and Claude_ THOS. LUPTON 308
50. Goldau _J. M. W. Turner_ J. COUSEN 312
[Illustration: 18. The Transition from Ghirlandajo to Claude.]
PART V.
OF MOUNTAIN BEAUTY.
CHAPTER I.
OF THE TURNERIAN PICTURESQUE.
Sec. 1. THE work which we proposed to ourselves, towards the close of the
last volume, as first to be undertaken in this, was the examination of
those peculiarities of system in which Turner either stood alone, even
in the modern school, or was a distinguished representative of modern,
as opposed to ancient practice.
And the most interesting of these subjects of inquiry, with which,
therefore, it may be best to begin, is the precise form under which he
has admitted into his work the modern feeling of the picturesque, which,
so far as it consists in a delight in ruin, is perhaps the most
suspicious and questionable of all the characters distinctively
belonging to our temper, and art.
It is especially so, because it never appears, even in the slightest
measure, until the days of the decline of art in the seventeenth
century. The love of neatness and precision, as opposed to all disorder,
maintains itself down to Raphael's childhood without the slightest
interference of any other feeling; and it is not until Claude's time,
and owing in great part to his influence, that the new feeling
distinctly establishes itself.
Plate +18+ shows the kind of modification which Claude used to make on
the towers and backgrounds of Ghirlandajo; the old Florentine giving his
idea of Pisa, with its leaning tower, with the utmost neatness and
precision, and handsome youth riding over neat bridges on beautiful
horses; Claude reducing the delicate towers and walls to unintelligible
ruin, the well built bridge to a rugged stone one, the handsome rider to
a weary traveller, and the perfectly drawn leafage to confusion of
copse-wood or forest.[1]
How far he was right in doing this; or how far the moderns are right in
carrying the principle to greater excess, and seeking always for
poverty-stricken rusticity or pensive ruin, we must now endeavor to
ascertain.
The essence of picturesque character has been already defined[2] to be a
sublimity not inherent in the nature of the thing, but caused by
something external to it; as the ruggedness of a cottage roof possesses
something of a mountain aspect, not belonging to the cottage as such.
And this sublimity may be either in mere external ruggedness, and other
visible character, or it may lie deeper, in an expression of sorrow and
old age, attributes which are both sublime; not a dominant expression,
but one mingled with such familiar and common characters as prevent the
object from becoming perfectly pathetic in its sorrow, or perfectly
venerable in its age.
Sec. 2. For instance, I cannot find words to express the intense pleasure I
have always in first finding myself, after some prolonged stay in
England, at the foot of the old tower of Calais church. The large
neglect, the noble unsightliness of it; the record of its years written
so visibly, yet without sign of weakness or decay; its stern wasteness
and gloom, eaten away by the Channel winds, and overgrown with the
bitter sea grasses; its slates and tiles all shaken and rent, and yet
not falling; its desert of brickwork full of bolts, and holes, and ugly
fissures, and yet strong, like a bare brown rock; its carelessness of
what any one thinks or feels about it, putting forth no claim, having no
beauty nor desirableness, pride nor grace; yet neither asking for pity;
not, as ruins are, useless and piteous, feebly or fondly garrulous of
better days; but useful still, going through its own daily work,--as
some old fisherman beaten grey by storm, yet drawing his daily nets: so
it stands, with no complaint about its past youth, in blanched and
meagre massiveness and serviceableness, gathering human souls together
underneath it; the sound of its bells for prayer still rolling through
its rents; and the grey peak of it seen far across the sea, principal of
the three that rise above the waste of surfy sand and hillocked
shore,--the lighthouse for life, and the belfry for labor, and this for
patience and praise.
Sec. 3. I cannot tell the half of the strange pleasures and thoughts that
come about me at the sight of that old tower; for, in some sort, it is
the epitome of all that makes the Continent of Europe interesting, as
opposed to new countries; and, above all, it completely expresses that
agedness in the midst of active life which binds the old and the new
into harmony. We, in England, have our new street, our new inn, our
green shaven lawn, and our piece of ruin emergent from it,--a mere
_specimen_ of the middle ages put on a bit of velvet carpet to be shown,
which, but for its size, might as well be on the museum shelf at once,
under cover. But, on the Continent, the links are unbroken between the
past and present, and in such use as they can serve for, the grey-headed
wrecks are suffered to stay with men; while, in unbroken line, the
generations of spared buildings are seen succeeding each in its place.
And thus in its largeness, in its permitted evidence of slow decline, in
its poverty, in its absence of all pretence, of all show and care for
outside aspect, that Calais tower has an infinite of symbolism in it,
all the more striking because usually seen in contrast with English
scenes expressive of feelings the exact reverse of these.
Sec. 4. And I am sorry to say that the opposition is most distinct in that
noble carelessness as to what people think of it. Once, on coming from
the Continent, almost the first inscription I saw in my native English
was this:
+"TO LET, A GENTEEL HOUSE, UP THIS ROAD."+
And it struck me forcibly, for I had not come across the idea of
gentility, among the upper limestones of the Alps, for seven months; nor
do I think that the Continental nations in general _have_ the idea.
They would have advertised a "pretty" house or a "large" one, or a
"convenient" one; but they could not, by any use of the terms afforded
by their several languages, have got at the English "genteel." Consider,
a little, all the meanness that there is in that epithet, and then see,
when next you cross the Channel, how scornful of it that Calais spire
will look.
Sec. 5. Of which spire the largeness and age are also opposed exactly to
the chief appearances of modern England, as one feels them on first
returning to it; that marvellous smallness both of houses and scenery,
so that a ploughman in the valley has his head on a level with the tops
of all the hills in the neighborhood; and a house is organized into
complete establishment,--parlor, kitchen, and all, with a knocker to its
door, and a garret window to its roof, and a bow to its second story,[3]
on a scale of twelve feet wide by fifteen high, so that three such at
least would go into the granary of an ordinary Swiss cottage: and also
our serenity of perfection, our peace of conceit, everything being done
that vulgar minds can conceive as wanting to be done; the spirit of
well-principled housemaids everywhere, exerting itself for perpetual
propriety and renovation, so that nothing is old, but only
"old-fashioned," and contemporary, as it were, in date and
impressiveness only with last year's bonnets. Abroad, a building of the
eighth or tenth century stands ruinous in the open street; the children
play round it, the peasants heap their corn in it, the buildings of
yesterday nestle about it, and fit their new stones into its rents, and
tremble in sympathy as it trembles. No one wonders at it, or thinks of
it as separate, and of another time; we feel the ancient world to be a
real thing, and one with the new: antiquity is no dream; it is rather
the children playing about the old stones that are the dream. But all is
continuous; and the words, "from generation to generation,"
understandable there. Whereas here we have a living present, consisting
merely of what is "fashionable" and "old-fashioned;" and a past, of
which there are no vestiges; a past which peasant or citizen can no more
conceive; all equally far away; Queen Elizabeth as old as Queen
Boadicea, and both incredible. At Verona we look out of Can Grande's
window to his tomb; and if he does not stand beside us, we feel only
that he is in the grave instead of the chamber,--not that he is _old_,
but that he might have been beside us last night. But in England the
dead are dead to purpose. One cannot believe they ever were alive, or
anything else than what they are now--names in school-books.
Sec. 6. Then that spirit of trimness. The smooth paving-stones; the
scraped, hard, even, rutless roads; the neat gates and plates, and
essence of border and order, and spikiness and spruceness. Abroad, a
country-house has some confession of human weakness and human fates
about it. There are the old grand gates still, which the mob pressed
sore against at the Revolution, and the strained hinges have never gone
so well since; and the broken greyhound on the pillar--still
broken--better so; but the long avenue is gracefully pale with fresh
green, and the courtyard bright with orange-trees; the garden is a
little run to waste--since Mademoiselle was married nobody cares much
about it; and one range of apartments is shut up--nobody goes into them
since Madame died. But with us, let who will be married or die, we
neglect nothing. All is polished and precise again next morning; and
whether people are happy or miserable, poor or prosperous, still we
sweep the stairs of a Saturday.[4]
Sec. 7. Now, I have insisted long on this English character, because I want
the reader to understand thoroughly the opposite element of the noble
picturesque; its expression, namely, of _suffering_, of _poverty_, or
_decay_, nobly endured by unpretending strength of heart. Nor only
unpretending, but unconscious. If there be visible pensiveness in the
building, as in a ruined abbey, it becomes, or claims to become,
beautiful; but the picturesqueness is in the unconscious suffering,--the
look that an old laborer has, not knowing that there is anything
pathetic in his grey hair, and withered arms, and sunburnt breast; and
thus there are the two extremes, the consciousness of pathos in the
confessed ruin, which may or may not be beautiful, according to the kind
of it; and the entire denial of all human calamity and care, in the
swept proprieties and neatness of English modernism: and, between these,
there is the unconscious confession of the facts of distress and decay,
in by-words; the world's hard work being gone through all the while, and
no pity asked for, nor contempt feared. And this is the expression of
that Calais spire, and of all picturesque things, in so far as they have
mental or human expression at all.
Sec. 8. I say, in so far as they have mental expression, because their
merely outward delightfulness--that which makes them pleasant in
painting, or, in the literal sense, picturesque--is their actual variety
of color and form. A broken stone has necessarily more various forms in
it than a whole one; a bent roof has more various curves in it than a
straight one; every excrescence or cleft involves some additional
complexity of light and shade, and every stain of moss on eaves or wall
adds to the delightfulness of color. Hence, in a completely picturesque
object, as an old cottage or mill, there are introduced, by various
circumstances not essential to it, but, on the whole, generally somewhat
detrimental to it as cottage or mill, such elements of sublimity--complex
light and shade, varied color, undulatory form, and so on--as can
generally be found only in noble natural objects, woods, rocks, or
mountains. This sublimity, belonging in a parasitical manner to the
building, renders it, in the usual sense of the word, "picturesque."
[Illustration: 19. The Picturesque of Windmills.
1. Pure Modern. 2. Turnerian.]
Sec. 9. Now, if this outward sublimity be sought for by the painter,
without any regard for the real nature of the thing, and without any
comprehension of the pathos of character hidden beneath, it forms the
low school of the surface-picturesque; that which fills ordinary
drawing-books and scrap-books, and employs, perhaps, the most popular
living landscape painters of France, England, and Germany. But if these
same outward characters be sought for in subordination to the inner
character of the object, every source of pleasurableness being refused
which is incompatible with that, while perfect sympathy is felt at the
same time with the object as to all that it tells of itself in those
sorrowful by-words, we have the school of true or noble picturesque;
still distinguished from the school of pure beauty and sublimity,
because, in its subjects, the pathos and sublimity are all _by the way_,
as in Calais old spire,--not inherent, as in a lovely tree or mountain;
while it is distinguished still more from the schools of the lower
picturesque by its tender sympathy, and its refusal of all sources of
pleasure inconsistent with the perfect nature of the thing to be
studied.
Sec. 10. The reader will only be convinced of the broad scope of this law
by careful thought, and comparison of picture with picture; but a single
example will make the principle of it clear to him.
On the whole, the first master of the lower picturesque, among our
living artists, is Clarkson Stanfield; his range of art being, indeed,
limited by his pursuit of this character. I take, therefore, a windmill,
forming the principal subject in his drawing of Brittany, near Dol
(engraved in the Coast Scenery), Fig. 1, Plate +19+, and beside it I
place a windmill, which forms also the principal subject in Turner's
study of the Lock, in the Liber Studiorum. At first sight I dare say the
reader may like Stanfield's best; and there is, indeed, a great deal
more in it to attract liking. Its roof is nearly as interesting in its
ruggedness as a piece of the stony peak of a mountain, with a chalet
built on its side; and it is exquisitely varied in swell and curve.
Turner's roof, on the contrary, is a plain, ugly gable,--a windmill
roof, and nothing more. Stanfield's sails are twisted into most
effective wrecks, as beautiful as pine bridges over Alpine streams; only
they do not look as if they had ever been serviceable windmill sails;
they are bent about in cross and awkward ways, as if they were warped or
cramped; and their timbers look heavier than necessary. Turner's sails
have no beauty about them like that of Alpine bridges; but they have the
exact switchy sway of the sail that is always straining against the
wind; and the timbers form clearly the lightest possible framework for
the canvas,--thus showing the essence of windmill sail. Then the clay
wall of Stanfield's mill is as beautiful as a piece of chalk cliff, all
worn into furrows by the rain, coated with mosses, and rooted to the
ground by a heap of crumbled stone, embroidered with grass and creeping
plants. But this is not a serviceable state for a windmill to be in. The
essence of a windmill, as distinguished from all other mills, is, that
it should turn round, and be a spinning thing, ready always to face the
wind; as light, therefore, as possible, and as vibratory; so that it is
in no wise good for it to approximate itself to the nature of chalk
cliffs.
Now observe how completely Turner has chosen his mill so as to mark this
great fact of windmill nature; how high he has set it; how slenderly he
has supported it; how he has built it all of wood; how he has bent the
lower planks so as to give the idea of the building lapping over the
pivot on which it rests inside; and how, finally, he has insisted on the
great leverage of the beam behind it, while Stanfield's lever looks more
like a prop than a thing to turn the roof with. And he has done all this
fearlessly, though none of these elements of form are pleasant ones in
themselves, but tend, on the whole, to give a somewhat mean and
spider-like look to the principal feature in his picture; and then,
finally, because he could not get the windmill dissected, and show us
the real heart and centre of the whole, behold, he has put a pair of old
millstones, _lying outside_, at the bottom of it. These--the first cause
and motive of all the fabric--laid at its foundation; and beside them
the cart which is to fulfil the end of the fabric's being, and take home
the sacks of flour.
Sec. 11. So far of what each painter chooses to draw. But do not fail also
to consider the spirit in which it is drawn. Observe, that though all
this ruin has befallen Stanfield's mill, Stanfield is not in the least
sorry for it. On the contrary, he is delighted, and evidently thinks it
the most fortunate thing possible. The owner is ruined, doubtless, or
dead; but his mill forms an admirable object in our view of Brittany. So
far from being grieved about it, we will make it our principal
light;--if it were a fruit-tree in spring-blossom, instead of a desolate
mill, we could not make it whiter or brighter; we illume our whole
picture with it, and exult over its every rent as a special treasure and
possession.
Not so Turner. _His_ mill is still serviceable; but, for all that, he
feels somewhat pensive about it. It is a poor property, and evidently
the owner of it has enough to do to get his own bread out from between
its stones. Moreover, there is a dim type of all melancholy human labor
in it,--catching the free winds, and setting them to turn grindstones.
It is poor work for the winds; better, indeed, than drowning sailors or
tearing down forests, but not their proper work of marshalling the
clouds, and bearing the wholesome rains to the place where they are
ordered to fall, and fanning the flowers and leaves when they are faint
with heat. Turning round a couple of stones, for the mere pulverization
of human food, is not noble work for the winds. So, also, of all low
labor to which one sets human souls. It is better than no labor; and, in
a still higher degree, better than destructive wandering of imagination;
but yet, that grinding in the darkness, for mere food's sake, must be
melancholy work enough for many a living creature. All men have felt it
so; and this grinding at the mill, whether it be breeze or soul that is
set to it, we cannot much rejoice in. Turner has no joy of his mill. It
shall be dark against the sky, yet proud, and on the hill-top; not
ashamed of its labor, and brightened from beyond, the golden clouds
stooping over it, and the calm summer sun going down behind, far away,
to his rest.
Sec. 12. Now in all this observe how the higher condition of art (for I
suppose the reader will feel, with me, that Turner's _is_ the highest)
depends upon largeness of sympathy. It is mainly because the one painter
has communion of heart with his subject, and the other only casts his
eyes upon it feelinglessly, that the work of the one is greater than
that of the other. And, as we think farther over the matter, we shall
see that this is indeed the eminent cause of the difference between the
lower picturesque and the higher. For, in a certain sense, the lower
picturesque ideal is eminently a _heartless_ one: the lover of it seems
to go forth into the world in a temper as merciless as its rocks. All
other men feel some regret at the sight of disorder and ruin. He alone
delights in both; it matters not of what. Fallen cottage--desolate
villa--deserted village--blasted heath--mouldering castle--to him, so
that they do but show jagged angles of stone and timber, all are sights
equally joyful. Poverty, and darkness, and guilt, bring in their several
contributions to his treasury of pleasant thoughts. The shattered
window, opening into black and ghastly rents of wall, the foul rag or
straw wisp stopping them, the dangerous roof, decrepit floor and stair,
ragged misery or wasting age of the inhabitants,--all these conduce,
each in due measure, to the fulness of his satisfaction. What is it to
him that the old man has passed his seventy years in helpless darkness
and untaught waste of soul? The old man has at last accomplished his
destiny, and filled the corner of a sketch, where something of an
unshapely nature was wanting. What is it to him that the people fester
in that feverish misery in the low quarter of the town, by the river?
Nay, it is much to him. What else were they made for? what could they
have done better? The black timbers, and the green water, and the
soaking wrecks of boats, and the torn remnants of clothes hung out to
dry in the sun;--truly the fever-struck creatures, whose lives have been
given for the production of these materials of effect, have not died in
vain.[5]
Sec. 13. Yet, for all this, I do not say the lover of the lower
picturesque is a monster in human form. He is by no means this, though
truly we might at first think so, if we came across him unawares, and
had not met with any such sort of person before. Generally speaking, he
is kind-hearted, innocent of evil, but not broad in thought; somewhat
selfish, and incapable of acute sympathy with others; gifted at the same
time with strong artistic instincts and capacities for the enjoyment of
varied form, and light, and shade, in pursuit of which enjoyment his
life is passed, as the lives of other men are, for the most part, in the
pursuit of what _they_ also like,--be it honor, or money, or indolent
pleasure,--very irrespective of the poor people living by the stagnant
canal. And, in some sort, the hunter of the picturesque is better than
many of these; inasmuch as he is simple-minded and capable of
unostentatious and economical delights, which, if not very helpful to
other people, are at all events utterly uninjurious, even to the victims
or subjects of his picturesque fancies; while to many others his work is
entertaining and useful. And, more than all this, even that delight
which he _seems_ to take in misery is not altogether unvirtuous. Through
all his enjoyment there runs a certain under current of tragical
passion,--a real vein of human sympathy;--it lies at the root of all
those strange morbid hauntings of his; a sad excitement, such as other
people feel at a tragedy, only less in degree, just enough, indeed, to
give a deeper tone to his pleasure, and to make him choose for his
subject the broken stones of a cottage wall, rather than of a roadside
bank, the picturesque beauty of form in each being supposed precisely
the same: and, together with this slight tragical feeling, there is also
a humble and romantic sympathy; a vague desire, in his own mind, to live
in cottages rather than in palaces; a joy in humble things, a
contentment and delight in makeshifts, a secret persuasion (in many
respects a true one) that there is in these ruined cottages a happiness
often quite as great as in kings' palaces, and a virtue and nearness to
God infinitely greater and holier than can commonly be found in any
other kind of place; so that the misery in which he exults is not, as he
sees it, misery, but nobleness,--"poor, and sick in body, and beloved by
the Gods."[6] And thus, being nowise sure that these things can be
mended at all, and very sure that he knows not how to mend them, and
also that the strange pleasure he feels in them _must_ have some good
reason in the nature of things, he yields to his destiny, enjoys his
dark canal without scruple, and mourns over every improvement in the
town, and every movement made by its sanitary commissioners, as a miser
would over a planned robbery of his chest; in all this being not only
innocent, but even respectable and admirable, compared with the kind of
person who has _no_ pleasure in sights of this kind, but only in fair
facades, trim gardens, and park palings, and who would thrust all
poverty and misery out of his way, collecting it into back alleys, or
sweeping it finally out of the world, so that the street might give
wider play for his chariot wheels, and the breeze less offence to his
nobility.
Sec. 14. Therefore, even the love for the lower picturesque ought to be
cultivated with care, wherever it exists; not with any special view to
artistic, but to merely humane, education. It will never really or
seriously interfere with practical benevolence; on the contrary, it will
constantly lead, if associated with other benevolent principles, to a
truer sympathy with the poor, and better understanding of the right ways
of helping them; and, in the present stage of civilization, it is the
most important element of character, not directly moral, which can be
cultivated in youth; since it is mainly for the want of this feeling
that we destroy so many ancient monuments, in order to erect "handsome"
streets and shops instead, which might just as well have been erected
elsewhere, and whose effect on our minds, so far as they have any, is to
increase every disposition to frivolity, expense, and display.
These, and such other considerations not directly connected with our
subject, I shall, perhaps, be able to press farther at the close of my
work; meantime, we turn to the immediate question, of the distinction
between the lower and higher picturesque, and the artists who pursue
them.
Sec. 15. It is evident, from what has been advanced, that there is no
definite bar of separation between the two; but that the dignity of the
picturesque increases from lower to higher, in exact proportion to the
sympathy of the artist with his subject. And in like manner his own
greatness depends (other things being equal) on the extent of this
sympathy. If he rests content with narrow enjoyment of outward forms,
and light sensations of luxurious tragedy, and so goes on multiplying
his sketches of mere picturesque material, he necessarily settles down
into the ordinary "clever" artist, very good and respectable,
maintaining himself by his sketching and painting in an honorable way,
as by any other daily business, and in due time passing away from the
world without having, on the whole, done much for it. Such has been the
necessary, not very lamentable, destiny of a large number of men in
these days, whose gifts urged them to the practice of art, but who
possessing no breadth of mind, nor having met with masters capable of
concentrating what gifts they had towards nobler use, almost perforce
remained in their small picturesque circle; getting more and more
narrowed in range of sympathy as they fell more and more into the habit
of contemplating the one particular class of subjects that pleased them,
and recomposing them by rules of art.
I need not give instances of this class, we have very few painters who
belong to any other; I only pause for a moment to _except_ from it a man
too often confounded with the draughtsmen of the lower picturesque;--a
very great man, who, though partly by chance, and partly by choice,
limited in range of subject, possessed for that subject the profoundest
and noblest sympathy--Samuel Prout. His renderings of the character of
old buildings, such as that spire of Calais, are as perfect and as
heartfelt as I can conceive possible; nor do I suppose that any one else
will ever hereafter equal them.[7] His early works show that he
possessed a grasp of mind which could have entered into almost any kind
of landscape subject; that it was only chance--I do not know if
altogether evil chance--which fettered him to stones; and that in
reality he is to be numbered among the true masters of the nobler
picturesque.
Sec. 16. Of these, also, the ranks rise in worthiness, according to their
sympathy. In the noblest of them, that sympathy seems quite unlimited;
they enter with their whole heart into all nature; their love of grace
and beauty keeps them from delighting too much in shattered stones and
stunted trees, their kindness and compassion from dwelling by choice on
any kind of misery, their perfect humility from avoiding simplicity of
subject when it comes in their way, and their grasp of the highest
thoughts from seeking a lower sublimity in cottage walls and penthouse
roofs. And, whether it be home of English village thatched with straw
and walled with clay, or of Italian city vaulted with gold and roofed
with marble; whether it be stagnant stream under ragged willow, or
glancing fountain between arcades of laurel, all to them will bring
equal power of happiness, and equal field for thought.
Sec. 17. Turner is the only artist who hitherto has furnished the entire
_type_ of this perfection. The attainment of it in all respects is, of
course, impossible to man; but the complete type of such a mind has once
been seen in him, and, I think, existed also in Tintoret; though, as far
as I know, Tintoret has not left any work which indicates sympathy with
the _humor_ of the world. Paul Veronese, on the other hand, had sympathy
with its humor, but not with its deepest tragedy or horror. Rubens wants
the feeling for grace and mystery. And so, as we pass through the list
of great painters, we shall find in each of them some local narrowness.
Now, I do not, of course, mean to say that Turner has accomplished all
to which his sympathy prompted him; necessarily, the very breadth of
effort involved, in some directions, manifest failure; but he has shown,
in casual incidents, and by-ways, a range of _feeling_ which no other
painter, as far as I know, can equal. He cannot, for instance, draw
children at play as well as Mulready; but just glean out of his works
the evidence of his sympathy with children;--look at the girl putting
her bonnet on the dog, in the foreground of the Richmond, Yorkshire; the
juvenile tricks and "marine dabblers" of the Liber Studiorum; the boys
scrambling after their kites in the woods of the Greta and
Buckfastleigh; and the notable and most pathetic drawing of the Kirkby
Lonsdale churchyard, with the schoolboys making a fortress of their
larger books on the tombstone, to bombard with the more projectile
volumes; and passing from these to the intense horror and pathos of the
Rizpah, consider for yourself whether there was ever any other painter
who could strike such an octave. Whether there has been or not, in other
walks of art, this power of sympathy is unquestionably in landscape
unrivalled; and it will be one of our pleasantest future tasks to
analyze in his various drawing the character it always gives; a
character, indeed, more or less marked in all good work whatever, but to
which, being preeminent in him, I shall always hereafter give the name
of the "_Turnerian Picturesque_."
FOOTNOTES
[1] Ghirlandajo is seen to the greatest possible disadvantage in
this place, as I have been forced again to copy from Lasinio, who
leaves out all the light and shade, and vulgarizes every form; but
the points requiring notice here are sufficiently shown, and I will
do Ghirlandajo more justice hereafter.
[2] Seven Lamps of Architecture, chap. vi. Sec. 12.
[3] The principal street of Canterbury has some curious examples of
this _tininess_.
[4] This, however, is of course true only of insignificant duties,
necessary for appearance' sake. Serious duties, necessary for
kindness' sake, must be permitted in any domestic affliction, under
pain of shocking the English public.
[5] I extract from my private diary a passage bearing somewhat on
the matter in hand:--
"Amiens, 11th May, 18--. I had a happy walk here this afternoon,
down among the branching currents of the Somme; it divides into five
or six,--shallow, green, and not over-wholesome; some quite narrow
and foul, running beneath clusters of fearful houses, reeling masses
of rotten timber; and a few mere stumps of pollard willow sticking
out of the banks of soft mud, only retained in shape of bank by
being shored up with timbers; and boats like paper boats, nearly as
thin at least, for the costermongers to paddle about in among the
weeds, the water soaking through the lath bottoms, and floating the
dead leaves from the vegetable-baskets with which they were loaded.
Miserable little back yards, opening to the water, with steep stone
steps down to it, and little platforms for the ducks; and separate
duck staircases, composed of a sloping board with cross bits of wood
leading to the ducks' doors, and sometimes a flower-pot or two on
them, or even a flower,--one group, of wallflowers and geraniums,
curiously vivid, being seen against the darkness of a dyer's back
yard, who had been dyeing black all day, and all was black in his
yard but the flowers, and they fiery and pure; the water by no means
so, but still working its way steadily over the weeds, until it
narrowed into a current strong enough to turn two or three
mill-wheels, one working against the side of an old flamboyant
Gothic church, whose richly traceried buttresses sloped into the
filthy stream;--all exquisitely picturesque, and no less miserable.
We delight in seeing the figures in these boats pushing them about
the bits of blue water, in Prout's drawings; but as I looked to-day
at the unhealthy face and melancholy mien of the man in the boat
pushing his load of peats along the ditch, and of the people, men as
well as women, who sat spinning gloomily at the cottage doors, I
could not help feeling how many suffering persons must pay for my
picturesque subject and happy walk."
[6] Epitaph on Epictetus.
[7] I believe when a thing is once _well done_ in this world, it
never can be done _over again_.