habits of this extraordinary man; points which come more within the
reach of an observer: I, however, mean such only as are connected with
his art, and indeed were, as I apprehend, the causes of his arriving
to that high degree of excellence which we see and acknowledge in his
works. Of these causes we must state, as the fundamental, the love
which he had to his art; to which, indeed, his whole mind appears to
have been devoted, and to which everything was referred; and this we
may fairly conclude from various circumstances of his life, which were
known to his intimate friends. Among others, he had a habit of
continually remarking to those who happened to be about him whatever
peculiarity of countenance, whatever accidental combination of figure,
or happy effects of light and shadow, occurred in prospects, in the
sky, in walking the streets, or in company. If, in his walks, he found
a character that he liked, and whose attendance was to be obtained, he
ordered him to his house: and from the fields he brought into his
painting-room stumps of trees, weeds, and animals of various kinds;
and designed them, not from memory, but immediately from the objects.
He even framed a kind of model of landscapes on his table; composed of
broken stones, dried herbs, and pieces of looking-glass, which he
magnified and improved into rocks, trees, and water. How far this
latter practice may be useful in giving hints, the professors of
landscape can best determine. Like every other technical practice, it
seems to me wholly to depend on the general talent of him who uses it.
Such methods may be nothing better than contemptible and mischievous
trifling; or they may be aids. I think, upon the whole, unless we
constantly refer to real nature, that practice may be more likely to
do harm than good. I mention it only, as it shows the solicitude and
extreme activity which he had about everything that related to his
art; that he wished to have his objects embodied, as it were, and
distinctly before him; that he neglected nothing which could keep his
faculties in exercise, and derived hints from every sort of combination.
We must not forget, whilst we are on this subject, to make some
remarks on his custom of painting by night, which confirms what I
have already mentioned,--his great affection to his art; since he
could not amuse himself in the evening by any other means so agreeable
to himself. I am, indeed, much inclined to believe that it is a
practice very advantageous and improving to an artist; for by this
means he will acquire a new and a higher perception of what is great
and beautiful in nature. By candle-light, not only objects appear more
beautiful, but from their being in a greater breadth of light and
shadow, as well as having a greater breadth and uniformity of colour,
nature appears in a higher style; and even the flesh seems to take a
higher and richer tone of colour. Judgment is to direct us in the use
to be made of this method of study; but the method itself is, I am
sure, advantageous. I have often imagined that the two great
colourists, Titian and Correggio, though I do not know that they
painted by night, formed their high ideas of colouring from the
effects of objects by this artificial light; but I am more assured
that whoever attentively studies the first and best manner of
Guercino, will be convinced that he either painted by this light, or
formed his manner on this conception.
Another practice Gainsborough had, which is worth mentioning, as it is
certainly worthy of imitation; I mean his manner of forming all the
parts of his picture together; the whole going on at the same time, in
the same manner as nature creates her works. Though this method is not
uncommon to those who have been regularly educated, yet probably it
was suggested to him by his own natural sagacity. That this custom is
not universal appears from the practice of a painter whom I have just
mentioned, Pompeio Battoni, who finished his historical pictures part
after part, and in his portraits completely finished one feature
before he proceeded to another. The consequence was as might be
expected; the countenance was never well expressed; and, as the
painters say, the whole was not well put together.
The first thing required to excel in our art, or I believe in any art,
is not only a love for it, but even an enthusiastic ambition to excel
in it. This never fails of success proportioned to the natural
abilities with which the artist has been endowed by Providence. Of
Gainsborough, we certainly know, that his passion was not the
acquirement of riches, but excellence in his art; and to enjoy that
honourable fame which is sure to attend it.--That _he felt this ruling
passion strong in death_ I am myself a witness. A few days before he
died, he wrote me a letter, to express his acknowledgments for the
good opinion I entertained of his abilities, and the manner in which
(he had been informed) I always spoke of him; and desired he might see
me once more before he died. I am aware how flattering it is to myself
to be thus connected with the dying testimony which this excellent
painter bore to his art. But I cannot prevail on myself to suppress
that I was not connected with him, by any habits of familiarity: if
any little jealousies had subsisted between us, they were forgotten in
those moments of sincerity; and he turned towards me as one who was
engrossed by the same pursuits, and who deserved his good opinion, by
being sensible of his excellence. Without entering into a detail of
what passed at this last interview, the impression of it upon my mind
was, that his regret at losing life was principally the regret of
leaving his art; and more especially as he now began, he said, to see
what his deficiencies were; which, he said, he flattered himself in
his last works were in some measure supplied.
When such a man as Gainsborough arrives to great fame, without the
assistance of an academical education, without travelling to Italy, or
any of those preparatory studies which have been so often recommended,
he is produced as an instance how little such studies are necessary;
since so great excellence may be acquired without them. This is an
inference not warranted by the success of any individual; and I trust
it will not be thought that I wish to make this use of it.
It must be remembered that the style and department of art which
Gainsborough chose, and in which he so much excelled, did not require
that he should go out of his own country for the objects of his study;
they were everywhere about him; he found them in the streets and in
the fields, and from the models thus accidentally found, he selected
with great judgment such as suited his purpose. As his studies were
directed to the living world principally, he did not pay a general
attention to the works of the various masters, though they are, in my
opinion, always of great use, even when the character of our subject
requires us to depart from some of their principles. It cannot be
denied, that excellence in the department of the art which he
professed may exist without them; that in such subjects, and in the
manner that belongs to them, the want of them is supplied, and more
than supplied, by natural sagacity, and a minute observation of
particular nature. If Gainsborough did not look at nature with a
poet's eye, it must be acknowledged that he saw her with the eye of a
painter; and gave a faithful, if not a poetical, representation of
what he had before him.
Though he did not much attend to the works of the great historical
painters of former ages, yet he was well aware that the language of
the art--the art of imitation--must be learned somewhere; and as he
knew that he could not learn it in an equal degree from his
contemporaries, he very judiciously applied himself to the Flemish
School, who are undoubtedly the greatest masters of one necessary
branch of art; and he did not need to go out of his own country for
examples of that school; from that he learnt the harmony of colouring,
the management and disposition of light and shadow, and every means
which the masters of it practised, to ornament and give splendour to
their works. And to satisfy himself as well as others how well he knew
the mechanism and artifice which they employed to bring out that tone
of colour which we so much admire in their works, he occasionally made
copies from Rubens, Teniers, and Vandyke, which it would be no
disgrace to the most accurate connoisseur to mistake, at the first
sight, for the works of those masters. What he thus learned, he
applied to the originals of nature, which he saw with his own eyes;
and imitated, not in the manner of those masters, but in his own.
Whether he most excelled in portraits, landscapes, or fancy pictures,
it is difficult to determine: whether his portraits were most
admirable for exact truth of resemblance, or his landscapes for a
portrait-like representation of nature, such as we see in the works of
Rubens, Ruysdaal, and others of those schools. In his fancy pictures,
when he had fixed on his object of imitation, whether it was the mean
and vulgar form of a wood-cutter, or a child of an interesting
character, as he did not attempt to raise the one, so neither did he
lose any of the natural grace and elegance of the other; such a grace,
and such an elegance, as are more frequently found in cottages than in
courts. This excellence was his own, the result of his particular
observation and taste; for this he was certainly not indebted to the
Flemish School, nor, indeed, to any school; for his grace was not
academical or antique, but selected by himself from the great school
of nature; and there are yet a thousand modes of grace, which are
neither theirs, nor his, but lie open in the multiplied scenes and
figures of life, to be brought out by skilful and faithful observers.
Upon the whole, we may justly say, that whatever he attempted he carried
to a high degree of excellence. It is to the credit of his good sense
and judgment, that he never did attempt that style of historical
painting for which his previous studies had made no preparation.
And here it naturally occurs to oppose the sensible conduct of
Gainsborough in this respect to that of our late excellent Hogarth,
who, with all his extraordinary talents, was not blessed with this
knowledge of his own deficiency, or of the bounds which were set to
the extent of his own powers. After this admirable artist had spent
the greater part of his life in an active, busy, and, we may add,
successful attention to the ridicule of life; after he had invented a
new species of dramatic painting, in which probably he will never be
equalled, and had stored his mind with infinite materials to explain
and illustrate the domestic and familiar scenes of common life, which
were generally, and ought to have been always, the subject of his
pencil; he very imprudently, or rather presumptuously, attempted the
great historical style, for which his previous habits had by no means
prepared him: he was indeed so entirely unacquainted with the
principles of this style, that he was not even aware that any
artificial preparation was at all necessary. It is to be regretted
that any part of the life of such a genius should be fruitlessly
employed. Let his failure teach us not to indulge ourselves in the
vain imagination, that by a momentary resolution we can give either
dexterity to the hand, or a new habit to the mind.
I have, however, little doubt, but that the same sagacity which
enabled those two extraordinary men to discover their true object, and
the peculiar excellence of that branch of art which they cultivated,
would have been equally effectual in discovering the principles of the
higher style, if they had investigated those principles with the same
eager industry which they exerted in their own department. As
Gainsborough never attempted the heroic style, so neither did he
destroy the character and uniformity of his own style by the idle
affectation of introducing mythological learning in any of his
pictures. Of this boyish folly we see instances enough, even in the
works of great painters. When the Dutch School attempt this poetry of
our art in their landscapes, their performances are beneath criticism;
they become only an object of laughter. This practice is hardly
excusable even in Claude Lorrain, who had shown more discretion if he
had never meddled with such subjects.
Our late ingenious Academician, Wilson, has, I fear, been guilty, like
many of his predecessors, of introducing gods and goddesses, ideal
beings, into scenes which were by no means prepared to receive such
personages. His landscapes were in reality too near common nature to
admit supernatural objects. In consequence of this mistake, in a very
admirable picture of a storm, which I have seen of his hand, many
figures are introduced in the foreground, some in apparent distress,
and some struck dead, as a spectator would naturally suppose, by the
lightning; had not the painter injudiciously (as I think) rather
chosen that their death should be imputed to a little Apollo, who
appears in the sky, with his bent bow, and that those figures should
be considered as the children of Niobe.
To manage a subject of this kind, a peculiar style of art is required;
and it can only be done without impropriety, or even without ridicule,
when we adapt the character of the landscape, and that, too, in all
its parts, to the historical or poetical representation. This is a
very difficult adventure, and it requires a mind thrown back two
thousand years, and, as it were, naturalised in antiquity, like that
of Nicolo Poussin, to achieve it. In the picture alluded to, the first
idea that presents itself is that of wonder, at seeing a figure in so
uncommon a situation as that in which the Apollo is placed; for the
clouds on which he kneels have not the appearance of being able to
support him; they have neither the substance nor the form fit for the
receptacle of a human figure; and they do not possess in any respect
that romantic character which is appropriated to such an object, and
which alone can harmonise with poetical stories.
It appears to me that such conduct is no less absurd than if a plain
man, giving a relation of real distress occasioned by an inundation
accompanied with thunder and lightning, should, instead of simply
relating the event, take it into his head, in order to give a grace to
his narration, to talk of Jupiter Pluvius, or Jupiter and his
thunderbolts, or any other figurative idea; an intermixture which,
though in poetry, with its proper preparations and accompaniments, it
might be managed with effect, yet in the instance before us would
counteract the purpose of the narrator, and, instead of being
interesting, would be only ridiculous.
The Dutch and Flemish style of landscape, not even excepting those of
Rubens, is unfit for poetical subjects; but to explain in what this
ineptitude consists, or to point out all the circumstances that give
nobleness, grandeur, and the poetic character, to style, in
landscape, would require a long discourse of itself; and the end would
be then perhaps but imperfectly attained. The painter who is ambitious
of this perilous excellence must catch his inspiration from those who
have cultivated with success the poetry, as it may be called, of the
art; and they are few indeed.
I cannot quit this subject without mentioning two examples which occur
to me at present, in which the poetical style of landscape may be seen
happily executed: the one is Jacob's Dream, by Salvator Rosa, and the
other the return of the Ark from Captivity, by Sebastian Bourdon. With
whatever dignity those histories are presented to us in the language
of Scripture, this style of painting possesses the same power of
inspiring sentiments of grandeur and sublimity, and is able to
communicate them to subjects which appear by no means adapted to
receive them. A ladder against the sky has no very promising
appearance of possessing a capacity to excite any heroic ideas; and
the Ark, in the hands of a second-rate master, would have little more
effect than a common waggon on the highway: yet those subjects are so
poetically treated throughout, the parts have such a correspondence
with each other, and the whole and every part of the scene is so
visionary, that it is impossible to look at them without feeling, in
some measure, the enthusiasm which seems to have inspired the painters.
By continual contemplation of such works, a sense of the higher
excellencies of art will by degrees dawn on the imagination; at every
review that sense will become more and more assured, until we come to
enjoy a sober certainty of the real existence (if I may so express
myself) of those almost ideal beauties; and the artist will then find
no difficulty in fixing in his mind the principles by which the
impression is produced; which he will feel and practise, though they
are perhaps too delicate and refined, and too peculiar to the
imitative art, to be conveyed to the mind by any other means.
To return to Gainsborough; the peculiarity of his manner, or style, or
we may call it--the language in which he expressed his ideas, has been
considered by many as his greatest defect. But without altogether
wishing to enter into the discussion--whether this peculiarity was a
defect or not, intermixed, as it was, with great beauties, of some of
which it was probably the cause, it becomes a proper subject of
criticism and inquiry to a painter.
A novelty and peculiarity of manner, as it is often a cause of our
approbation, so likewise it is often a ground of censure; as being
contrary to the practice of other painters, in whose manner we have
been initiated, and in whose favour we have perhaps been prepossessed
from our infancy; for, fond as we are of novelty, we are upon the
whole creatures of habit. However, it is certain, that all those odd
scratches and marks, which, on a close examination, are so observable
in Gainsborough's pictures, and which even to experienced painters
appear rather the effect of accident than design: this chaos, this
uncouth and shapeless appearance, by a kind of magic, at a certain
distance assumes form, and all the parts seem to drop into their
proper places, so that we can hardly refuse acknowledging the full
effect of diligence, under the appearance of chance and hasty
negligence. That Gainsborough himself considered this peculiarity in
his manner, and the power it possesses of exciting surprise, as a
beauty in his works, I think may be inferred from the eager desire
which we know he always expressed, that his pictures, at the
Exhibition, should be seen near, as well as at a distance.
The slightness which we see in his best works cannot always be imputed
to negligence. However they may appear to superficial observers,
painters know very well that a steady attention to the general effect
takes up more time, and is much more laborious to the mind, than any
mode of high finishing, or smoothness, without such attention. His
_handling_, _the manner of leaving the colours_, or, in other words,
the methods he used for producing the effect, had very much the
appearance of the work of an artist who had never learned from others
the usual and regular practice belonging to the art; but still, like a
man of strong intuitive perception of what was required, he found out
a way of his own to accomplish his purpose.
It is no disgrace to the genius of Gainsborough to compare him to such
men as we sometimes meet with, whose natural eloquence appears even in
speaking a language which they can scarce be said to understand; and
who, without knowing the appropriate expression of almost any one
idea, contrive to communicate the lively and forcible impressions of
an energetic mind.
I think some apology may reasonably be made for his manner without
violating truth, or running any risk of poisoning the minds of the
younger students, by propagating false criticism, for the sake of
raising the character of a favourite artist. It must be allowed, that
this hatching manner of Gainsborough did very much contribute to the
lightness of effect which is so eminent a beauty in his pictures; as,
on the contrary, much smoothness, and uniting the colours, is apt to
produce heaviness. Every artist must have remarked how often that
lightness of hand which was in his dead colour, or first painting,
escaped in the finishing when he had determined the parts with more
precision; and another loss he often experiences, which is of greater
consequence: whilst he is employed in the detail, the effect of the
whole together is either forgotten or neglected. The likeness of a
portrait, as I have formerly observed, consists more in preserving the
general effect of the countenance than in the most minute finishing of
the features, or any of the particular parts. Now Gainsborough's
portraits were often little more, in regard to finishing, or
determining the form of the features, than what generally attends a
dead colour; but as he was always attentive to the general effect, or
whole together, I have often imagined that this unfinished manner
contributed even to that striking resemblance for which his portraits
are so remarkable. Though this opinion may be considered as fanciful,
yet I think a plausible reason may be given why such a mode of
painting should have such an effect. It is presupposed that in this
undetermined manner there is in the general effect enough to remind
the spectator of the original; the imagination supplies the rest, and
perhaps more satisfactorily to himself, if not more exactly, than the
artist, with all his care, could possibly have done. At the same time
it must be acknowledged there is one evil attending this mode; that if
the portrait were seen previous to any knowledge of the original,
different persons would form different ideas, and all would be
disappointed at not finding the original correspond with their own
conceptions; under the great latitude which indistinctness gives to
the imagination to assume almost what character or form it pleases.
Every artist has some favourite part, on which he fixes his attention,
and which he pursues with such eagerness, that it absorbs every other
consideration; and he often falls into the opposite error of that
which he would avoid, which is always ready to receive him. Now
Gainsborough, having truly a painter's eye for colouring, cultivated
those effects of the art which proceed from colours: and sometimes
appears to be indifferent to or to neglect other excellencies.
Whatever defects are acknowledged, let him still experience from us
the same candour that we so freely give upon similar occasions to the
ancient masters; let us not encourage that fastidious disposition,
which is discontented with everything short of perfection, and
unreasonably require, as we sometimes do, a union of excellencies, not
perhaps quite compatible with each other. We may, on this ground, say
even of the divine Raffaelle, that he might have finished his picture
as highly and as correctly, as was his custom, without heaviness of
manner; and that Poussin might have preserved all his precision
without hardness or dryness.
To show the difficulty of uniting solidity with lightness of manner,
we may produce a picture of Rubens in the church of St. Gudule, at
Brussels, as an example; the subject is "Christ's Charge to Peter;"
which, as it is the highest and smoothest finished picture I remember
to have seen of that master, so it is by far the heaviest; and if I
had found it in any other place, I should have suspected it to be a
copy; for painters know very well, that it is principally by this air
of facility, or the want of it, that originals are distinguished from
copies. A lightness of effect produced by colour, and that produced by
facility of handling, are generally united; a copy may preserve
something of the one, it is true, but hardly ever of the other; a
connoisseur, therefore, finds it often necessary to look carefully
into the picture before he determines on its originality. Gainsborough
possessed this quality of lightness of manner and effect, I think, to
an unexampled degree of excellence; but it must be acknowledged, at
the same time, that the sacrifice which he made to this ornament of
our art was too great; it was, in reality, preferring the lesser
excellencies to the greater.