"My life's employment and my leisure's charm,
My soul's first choice, my fancy's early flame;
My chance of fortune and my hopes of fame."
_Shee_.
There is no subject on which mankind more unhesitatingly decide, than
upon the productions of the pencil, and none perhaps upon which the
people of our own country especially, are so little qualified to form
a correct judgment. Few works of any excellence ever reach us, and
these are for the most part confined to the large cities, where those
who visit them are more attracted by the _subject_ than the
_execution_ of the painting. A striking illustration of this, may be
found in the crowds which rushed a short time since, to see the
immodest and demoralizing exhibition of our _first parents in a state
of nudity_--an offence for which Ham was accursed to be a servant of
servants to his brethren; and yet our modest maidens, attended by
their equally modest beaux, hastened in company to view this
production of Parisian profligacy. At the same time, the splendid
painting of "Christ rejected" by the eminent West, scarcely attracted
notice; and the beautiful "Star of Bethlehem" by Cole, twinkled in an
empty hall. Still no one doubts his own intuitive knowledge of the
arts!--He does not, indeed, profess to understand the _modus
operandi_, by which they are perfected,--but yet he knows exactly what
_delights_ him, and with equally becoming modesty, knows how to
_censure_ what he does not like,--although to the real _connoisseur_,
the work condemned may perchance be one of superlative beauty and
value. There are some who fall into raptures at Cimmerian darkness and
obscurity in a picture; they have heard that the works of the old
masters are very dark,--_ergo_, all black pictures must be very good.
Some have heard that Reubens and Rembrandt, painted with a bold free
pencil,--and every daub is therefore free and bold; and there are
others the very antipodes of these, who would have the canvass ivory
smooth, and always test the excellence of a picture with their
finger's ends. Such are the arbiters of taste, to whom the artist must
look for patronage and favor; to whose critical acumen he must
sacrifice the highest professional attainments, and all the poetry of
imagery, for the prosing portraiture of vulgar nature as the
uninstructed eye perceives it. Against such critics, Sir Joshua
Reynolds warned his young academecians. "Study not," said he, "to
please the many, but the few of cultivated taste." Alas! how few in
any age, have given that attention to the subject which is essential
to the formation of a correct judgment. They say,--do we not see and
understand what nature is, and can we not tell when the artist has
truly represented her?--We answer no. The eye unaccustomed to
_contemplate_ nature, cannot perceive the ever changing beauty of her
scenery,--her lights and shades more various than the Dolphins hues;
nor can it discern that play of the thoughts and passions in the
"human face divine," which eludes common observation, and is beheld
only by him who has studied profoundly, that wonderful title page to
the volume of mind. Nature, it is true, like a lovely and virtuous
maiden, is seen and admired by all; but the blush which reveals her
sweetest charm, is only perceived and felt by the devoted lover. That
Lover is the artist. To him the revolving year, brings but a change of
_beauty_. It is the element in which he breathes,--the aliment on
which he lives; his eye detects each flitting shadow--and the whole
world of real or imaginary things, is to his mind full of moving
pictures, which he can, in a moment, transfix and perpetuate on his
canvass. On him the graces attend, and wreathe the flowers of every
season into garlands of beauty; the jocund spring strews buds and
blossoms in his way, which he transplants to other climes, to live in
unfading bloom, and flourish on the same wall with the fruits of
summer, or mingle with the sober and varied hues of autumn. Even
winter, with frosty locks and snowy visage, is compelled to linger in
social companionship with the burning heats of tropical regions. Old
Time, in his onward march, strews cities and temples in the path of
the artist, but his pencil like the wand of the enchanter, bids their
sculptured fragments remain forever, and they obey him. When Aurora
comes forth in the chariot of day, and Cynthia lights her pale lamp at
Diana's altar,--he snatches promethean fire from heaven, and like
Joshua, commands the unwearied sun to stand still, and the glowing
canvass receives it. He not only transfers
"Italian skies to English walls,"
but by the magic of his pencil, the very faces and persons of the fair
and the brave of ages gone by, come down to our day in the bloom of
youth, and with the daring eye, as they lived and moved when
Shakspeare wrote, or lovely Juliet died.
Where do not the trophies of this incomparable art arrest our
attention?--from the ruins of Pompeii to imperial Rome, or from the
Vatican, where Raphael's immortal pencil traced the transfiguration,
to Hampton Court, the gallery of the cartoons, and of that fair but
frail society, of which England's voluptuous monarch was the sun and
centre.[1] But these are neither black, nor daubed, nor smooth!--and
yet they are excellent in art, and have been so esteemed for three
hundred years. To these the painter may appeal as imbodying all that
is noble in his profession, or like Sir Joshua, who felt and
understood, what others only imagined, he may patiently submit to the
ignorance of vanity--and the vanity of ignorance.
When they talk of their Raphael, Corregio and Stuff,
He shifted his trumpet and only took snuff.