Gainsborough (I mean particularly his want of precision and
finishing), who so ingeniously contrived to cover his defects by his
beauties; and who cultivated that department of art, where such
defects are more easily excused; you are to remember, that no apology
can be made for this deficiency, in that style which this Academy
teaches, and which ought to be the object of your pursuit. It will be
necessary for you, in the first place, never to lose sight of the
great rules and principles of the art, as they are collected from the
full body of the best general practice, and the most constant and
uniform experience; this must be the groundwork of all your studies:
afterwards you may profit, as in this case I wish you to profit, by
the peculiar experience and personal talents of artists, living and
dead; you may derive lights, and catch hints, from their practice; but
the moment you turn them into models, you fall infinitely below them;
you may be corrupted by excellencies, not so much belonging to the
art, as personal and appropriated to the artist; and become bad copies
of good painters, instead of excellent imitators of the great
universal truth of things.
DISCOURSE XV.
_Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distribution of
the Prizes, December 10, 1790._
THE PRESIDENT TAKES LEAVE OF THE ACADEMY.--A REVIEW OF THE
DISCOURSES.--THE STUDY OF THE WORKS OF MICHEL ANGELO RECOMMENDED.
The intimate connection which I have had with the Royal Academy ever
since its establishment, the social duties in which we have all
mutually engaged for so many years, make any profession of attachment
to this Institution, on my part, altogether superfluous; the influence
of habit alone in such a connection would naturally have produced it.
Among men united in the same body, and engaged in the same pursuit,
along with permanent friendship occasional differences will arise. In
these disputes men are naturally too favourable to themselves, and
think, perhaps, too hardly of their antagonists. But composed and
constituted as we are, those little contentions will be lost to
others, and they ought certainly to be lost amongst ourselves in
mutual esteem for talents and acquirements: every controversy ought to
be, and I am persuaded will be, sunk in our zeal for the perfection of
our common Art.
In parting with the Academy, I shall remember with pride, affection,
and gratitude, the support with which I have almost uniformly been
honoured from the commencement of our intercourse. I shall leave you,
Gentlemen, with unaffected cordial wishes for your future concord, and
with a well-founded hope, that in that concord the auspicious and not
obscure origin of our Academy may be forgotten in the splendour of
your succeeding prospects.
My age, and my infirmities still more than my age, make it probable that
this will be the last time I shall have the honour of addressing you
from this place. Excluded as I am, _spatiis iniquis_, from indulging my
imagination with a distant and forward perspective of life, I may be
excused if I turn my eyes back on the way which I have passed.
We may assume to ourselves, I should hope, the credit of having
endeavoured, at least, to fill with propriety that middle station
which we hold in the general connection of things. Our predecessors
have laboured for our advantage, we labour for our successors; and
though we have done no more in this mutual intercourse and
reciprocation of benefits than has been effected by other societies
formed in this nation for the advancement of useful and ornamental
knowledge, yet there is one circumstance which appears to give us an
higher claim than the credit of merely doing our duty. What I at
present allude to is the honour of having been, some of us, the first
contrivers, and all of us the promoters and supporters, of the annual
Exhibition. This scheme could only have originated from Artists
already in possession of the favour of the public, as it would not
have been so much in the power of others to have excited curiosity. It
must be remembered that, for the sake of bringing forward into notice
concealed merit, they incurred the risk of producing rivals to
themselves; they voluntarily entered the lists, and ran the race a
second time for the prize which they had already won.
When we take a review of the several departments of the Institution, I
think we may safely congratulate ourselves on our good fortune in having
hitherto seen the chairs of our Professors filled with men of
distinguished abilities, and who have so well acquitted themselves of
their duty in their several departments. I look upon it to be of
importance, that none of them should be ever left unfilled: a neglect to
provide for qualified persons is to produce a neglect of qualifications.
In this honourable rank of Professors I have not presumed to class
myself; though in the Discourses which I have had the honour of
delivering from this place, while in one respect I may be considered
as a volunteer, in another view it seems as if I was involuntarily
pressed into this service. If prizes were to be given, it appeared not
only proper, but almost indispensably necessary, that something should
be said by the President on the delivery of those prizes: and the
President, for his own credit, would wish to say something more than
mere words of compliment, which, by being frequently repeated, would
soon become flat and uninteresting, and by being uttered to many,
would at last become a distinction to none: I thought, therefore, if I
were to preface this compliment with some instructive observations on
the Art, when we crowned merit in the Artists whom we rewarded, I
might do something to animate and guide them in their future attempts.
I am truly sensible how unequal I have been to the expression of my
own ideas. To develop the latent excellencies, and draw out the
interior principles of our art requires more skill and practice in
writing than is likely to be possessed by a man perpetually occupied
in the use of the pencil and the pallet. It is for that reason,
perhaps, that the sister Art has had the advantage of better
criticism. Poets are naturally writers of prose. They may be said to
be practising only an inferior department of their own art, when they
are explaining and expatiating upon its most refined principles. But
still such difficulties ought not to deter Artists, who are not
prevented by other engagements, from putting their thoughts in order
as well as they can, and from giving to the public the result of their
experience. The knowledge which an Artist has of his subject will more
than compensate for any want of elegance in the manner of treating it,
or even of perspicuity, which is still more essential; and I am
convinced that one short essay written by a Painter will contribute
more to advance the theory of our art than a thousand volumes such as
we sometimes see; the purpose of which appears to be rather to display
the refinement of the Author's own conceptions of impossible practice,
than to convey useful knowledge or instruction of any kind whatever.
An Artist knows what is, and what is not, within the province of his
art to perform; and is not likely to be for ever teasing the poor
Student with the beauties of mixed passions, or to perplex him with an
imaginary union of excellencies incompatible with each other.
To this work, however, I could not be said to come totally unprovided
with materials. I had seen much, and I had thought much upon what I
had seen; I had something of an habit of investigation, and a
disposition to reduce all that I observed and felt in my own mind to
method and system; but never having seen what I myself knew distinctly
placed before me on paper, I knew nothing correctly. To put those
ideas into something like order was, to my inexperience, no easy task.
The composition, the _ponere totum_ even of a single Discourse, as
well as of a single statue, was the most difficult part, as perhaps it
is of every other art, and most requires the hand of a master.
For the manner, whatever deficiency there was, I might reasonably
expect indulgence; but I thought it indispensably necessary well to
consider the opinions which were to be given out from this place, and
under the sanction of a Royal Academy; I therefore examined not only
my own opinions, but likewise the opinions of others. I found in the
course of this research many precepts and rules established in our
art, which did not seem to me altogether reconcilable with each other,
yet each seemed in itself to have the same claim of being supported by
truth and nature; and this claim, irreconcilable as they may be
thought, they do in reality alike possess.
To clear away those difficulties, and reconcile those contrary
opinions, it became necessary to distinguish the greater truth, as it
may be called, from the lesser truth; the larger and more liberal idea
of nature from the more narrow and confined; that which addresses
itself to the imagination from that which is solely addressed to the
eye. In consequence of this discrimination, the different branches of
our art, to which those different truths were referred, were perceived
to make so wide a separation, and put on so new an appearance, that
they seemed scarcely to have proceeded from the same general stock.
The different rules and regulations which presided over each
department of art followed of course: every mode of excellence, from
the grand style of the Roman and Florentine Schools down to the lowest
rank of still life, had its due weight and value--fitted some class or
other; and nothing was thrown away. By this disposition of our art
into classes, that perplexity and confusion, which I apprehend every
Artist has at some time experienced from the variety of styles and the
variety of excellence with which he is surrounded, is, I should hope,
in some measure removed, and the student better enabled to judge for
himself what peculiarly belongs to his own particular pursuit.
In reviewing my Discourses, it is no small satisfaction to be assured
that I have, in no part of them, lent my assistance to foster
_newly-hatched unfledged_ opinions, or endeavoured to support
paradoxes, however tempting may have been their novelty, or however
ingenious I might, for the minute, fancy them to be; nor shall I, I
hope, anywhere be found to have imposed on the minds of young Students
declamation for argument, a smooth period for a sound precept. I have
pursued a plain and _honest method_: I have taken up the art simply as
I found it exemplified in the practice of the most approved Painters.
That approbation which the world has uniformly given, I have
endeavoured to justify by such proofs as questions of this kind will
admit; by the analogy which Painting holds with the sister Arts, and,
consequently, by the common congeniality which they all bear to our
nature. And though in what has been done no new discovery is
pretended, I may still flatter myself, that from the discoveries which
others have made by their own intuitive good sense and native
rectitude of judgment, I have succeeded in establishing the rules and
principles of our art on a more firm and lasting foundation than that
on which they had formerly been placed.
Without wishing to divert the Student from the practice of his Art to
speculative theory, to make him a mere Connoisseur instead of a
Painter, I cannot but remark, that he will certainly find an account
in considering, once for all, on what ground the fabric of our art is
built. Uncertain, confused, or erroneous opinions are not only
detrimental to an Artist in their immediate operation, but may
possibly have very serious consequences; affect his conduct, and give
a peculiar character (as it may be called) to his taste, and to his
pursuits, through his whole life.
I was acquainted at Rome, in the early part of my life, with a Student
of the French Academy, who appeared to me to possess all the qualities
requisite to make a great Artist, if he had suffered his taste and
feelings, and I may add even his prejudices, to have fair play. He saw
and felt the excellencies of the great works of Art with which we were
surrounded, but lamented that there was not to be found that Nature
which is so admirable in the inferior schools; and he supposed with
Felibien, De Piles, and other Theorists, that such an union of
different excellencies would be the perfection of Art. He was not
aware that the narrow idea of nature, of which he lamented the absence
in the works of those great Artists, would have destroyed the grandeur
of the general ideas which he admired, and which was, indeed, the
cause of his admiration. My opinions being then confused and
unsettled, I was in danger of being borne down by this kind of
plausible reasoning, though I remember I then had a dawning of
suspicion that it was not sound doctrine; and at the same time I was
unwilling obstinately to refuse assent to what I was unable to confute.
That the young Artist may not be seduced from the right path by
following what, at first view, he may think the light of Reason, and
which is indeed Reason in part, but not in the whole, has been much
the object of these Discourses.
I have taken every opportunity of recommending a rational method of
study, as of the last importance. The great, I may say the sole use of
an Academy is, to put, and for some time to keep, Students in that
course, that too much indulgence may not be given to peculiarity, and
that a young man may not be taught to believe, that what is generally
good for others is not good for him.
I have strongly inculcated in my former Discourses, as I do in this,
my last, the wisdom and necessity of previously obtaining the
appropriated instruments of the Art, in a first correct design, and a
plain manly colouring before anything more is attempted. But by this I
would not wish to cramp and fetter the mind, or discourage those who
follow (as most of us may at one time have followed) the suggestion of
a strong inclination: something must be conceded to great and
irresistible impulses: perhaps every Student must not be strictly
bound to general methods, if they strongly thwart the peculiar turn of
his own mind. I must confess that it is not absolutely of much
consequence whether he proceeds in the general method of seeking first
to acquire mechanical accuracy, before he attempts poetical flights,
provided he diligently studies to attain the full perfection of the
style he pursues; whether, like Parmegiano, he endeavours at grace and
grandeur of manner before he has learned correctness of drawing, if
like him he feels his own wants, and will labour, as that eminent
artist did, to supply those wants; whether he starts from the East or
from the West, if he relaxes in no exertion to arrive ultimately at
the same goal. The first public work of Parmegiano is the St.
Eustachius, in the church of St. Petronius in Bologna, and was done
when he was a boy; and one of the last of his works is the Moses
breaking the tables in Parma. In the former there is certainly
something of grandeur in the outline, or in the conception of the
figure, which discovers the dawnings of future greatness; of a young
mind impregnated with the sublimity of Michel Angelo, whose style he
here attempts to imitate, though he could not then draw the human
figure with any common degree of correctness. But this same
Parmegiano, when in his more mature age he painted the Moses, had so
completely supplied his first defects, that we are here at a loss
which to admire most, the correctness of drawing or the grandeur of
the conception. As a confirmation of its great excellence, and of the
impression which it leaves on the minds of elegant spectators, I may
observe, that our great Lyric Poet, when he conceived his sublime idea
of the indignant Welsh Bard, acknowledged, that though many years had
intervened, he had warmed his imagination with the remembrance of this
noble figure of Parmegiano.
When we consider that Michel Angelo was the great archetype to whom
Parmegiano was indebted for that grandeur which we find in his works,
and from whom all his contemporaries and successors have derived
whatever they have possessed of the dignified and the majestic; that he
was the bright luminary, from whom Painting has borrowed a new lustre;
that under his hands it assumed a new appearance, and is become another
and superior art; I may be excused if I take this opportunity, as I have
hitherto taken every occasion, to turn your attention to this exalted
Founder and Father of Modern Art, of which he was not only the inventor,
but which, by the divine energy of his own mind, he carried at once to
its highest point of possible perfection.
The sudden maturity to which Michel Angelo brought our Art, and the
comparative feebleness of his followers and imitators, might perhaps
be reasonably, at least plausibly explained, if we had time for such
an examination. At present I shall only observe, that the subordinate
parts of our Art, and perhaps of other Arts, expand themselves by a
slow and progressive growth; but those which depend on a native vigour
of imagination generally burst forth at once in fulness of beauty. Of
this Homer probably, and Shakespeare more assuredly, are singular
examples. Michel Angelo possessed the poetical part of our art in a
most eminent degree; and the same daring spirit which urged him first
to explore the unknown regions of the imagination, delighted with the
novelty, and animated by the success of his discoveries, could not
have failed to stimulate and impel him forward in his career beyond
those limits which his followers, destitute of the same incentives,
had not strength to pass.
To distinguish between correctness of drawing and that part which
respects the imagination, we may say the one approaches to the
mechanical (which in its way, too, may make just pretensions to
genius), and the other to the poetical. To encourage a solid and
vigorous course of study, it may not be amiss to suggest, that perhaps
a confidence in the mechanic produces a boldness in the poetic. He
that is sure of the goodness of his ship and tackle puts out
fearlessly from the shore; and he who knows that his hand can execute
whatever his fancy can suggest, sports with more freedom in embodying
the visionary forms of his own creation. I will not say Michel Angelo
was eminently poetical, only because he was greatly mechanical; but I
am sure that mechanic excellence invigorated and emboldened his mind
to carry painting into the regions of poetry, and to emulate that art
in its most adventurous flights. Michel Angelo equally possessed both
qualifications. Yet of mechanic excellence there were certainly great
examples to be found in Ancient Sculpture, and particularly in the
fragment known by the name of the Torso of Michel Angelo; but of that
grandeur of character, air, and attitude, which he threw into all his
figures, and which so well corresponds with the grandeur of his
outline, there was no example; it could therefore proceed only from
the most poetical and sublime imagination.
It is impossible not to express some surprise that the race of
Painters who preceded Michel Angelo, men of acknowledged great
abilities, should never have thought of transferring a little of that
grandeur of outline which they could not but see and admire in Ancient
Sculpture, into their own works; but they appear to have considered
Sculpture as the later Schools of Artists look at the inventions of
Michel Angelo--as something to be admired, but with which they have
nothing to do: _quod super nos, nihil ad nos_.--The Artists of that
age, even Raffaelle himself, seemed to be going on very contentedly in
the dry manner of Pietro Perugino; and if Michel Angelo had never
appeared, the Art might still have continued in the same style.
Beside Rome and Florence, where the grandeur of this style was first
displayed, it was on this Foundation that the Caracci built the truly
great Academical Bolognian school, of which the first stone was laid
by Pellegrino Tibaldi. He first introduced this style amongst them;
and many instances might be given in which he appears to have
possessed, as by inheritance, the true, genuine, noble, and elevated
mind of Michel Angelo. Though we cannot venture to speak of him with
the same fondness as his countrymen, and call him, as the Caracci did,
_Nostro Michel Angelo riformato_, yet he has a right to be considered
amongst the first and greatest of his followers; there are certainly
many drawings and inventions of his, of which Michel Angelo himself
might not disdain to be supposed the author, or that they should be,
as in fact they often are, mistaken for his. I will mention one
particular instance, because it is found in a book which is in every
young Artist's hand;--Bishop's _Ancient Statues_. He there has
introduced a print, representing Polyphemus, from a drawing of
Tibaldi, and has inscribed it with the name of Michel Angelo, to whom
he has also in the same book attributed a Sybil of Raffaelle. Both
these figures, it is true, are professedly in Michel Angelo's style
and spirit, and even worthy of his hand. But we know that the former
is painted in the _Institute a Bologna_ by Tibaldi, and the other in
the _Pace_ by Raffaelle.
The Caracci, it is acknowledged, adopted the mechanical part with
sufficient success. But the divine part which addresses itself to the
imagination, as possessed by Michel Angelo or Tibaldi, was beyond
their grasp: they formed, however, a most respectable school, a style
more on the level, and calculated to please a greater number; and if
excellence of this kind is to be valued according to the number rather
than the weight and quality of admirers, it would assume even a higher
rank in art. The same, in some sort, may be said of Tintoret, Paolo
Veronese, and others of the Venetian Painters. They certainly much
advanced the dignity of their style by adding to their fascinating
powers of colouring something of the strength of Michel Angelo; at the
same time it may still be a doubt how far their ornamental elegance
would be an advantageous addition to his grandeur. But if there is any
manner of Painting which may be said to unite kindly with his style,
it is that of Titian. His handling, the manner in which his colours
are left on the canvas, appears to proceed (as far as that goes) from
a congenial mind, equally disdainful of vulgar criticism.
MICHEL ANGELO'S strength thus qualified, and made more palatable to the
general taste, reminds me of an observation which I heard a learned
critic make, when it was incidentally remarked that our translation of
Homer, however excellent, did not convey the character, nor had the
grand air of the original. He replied, that if Pope had not clothed the
naked Majesty of Homer with the graces and elegancies of modern
fashions--though the real dignity of Homer was degraded by such a dress,
his translation would not have met with such a favourable reception, and
he must have been contented with fewer readers.
Many of the Flemish painters, who studied at Rome in that great era of
our art, such as Francis Rloris, Hemskirk, Michael Coxis, Jerom Cock,
and others, returned to their own country with as much of this
grandeur as they could carry. But like seeds falling on a soil not
prepared or adapted to their nature, the manner of Michel Angelo
thrived but little with them; perhaps, however, they contributed to
prepare the way for that free, unconstrained, and liberal outline,
which was afterwards introduced by Rubens through the medium of the
Venetian Painters.
The grandeur of style has been in different degrees disseminated over
all Europe. Some caught it by living at the time, and coming into
contact with the original author, whilst others received it at second
hand; and being everywhere adopted, it has totally changed the whole
taste and style of design, if there could be said to be any style
before his time. Our art, in consequence, now assumes a rank to which
it could never have dared to aspire, if Michel Angelo had not
discovered to the world the hidden powers which it possessed. Without
his assistance we never could have been convinced that Painting was
capable of producing an adequate representation of the persons and
actions of the heroes of the Iliad.