255. The worst danger by far, to which a solitary student is exposed, is
that of liking things that he should not. It is not so much his
difficulties, as his tastes, which he must set himself to conquer: and
although, under the guidance of a master, many works of art may be made
instructive, which are only of partial excellence (the good and bad of
them being duly distinguished), his safeguard, as long as he studies
alone, will be in allowing himself to possess only things, in their way,
so free from faults, that nothing he copies in them can seriously
mislead him, and to contemplate only those works of art which he knows
to be either perfect or noble in their errors. I will therefore set
down, in clear order, the names of the masters whom you may safely
admire, and a few of the books which you may safely possess. In these
days of cheap illustration, the danger is always rather of your
possessing too much than too little. It may admit of some question, how
far the looking at bad art may set off and illustrate the characters of
the good; but, on the whole, I believe it is best to live always on
quite wholesome food, and that our enjoyment of it will never be made
more acute by feeding on ashes; though it may be well sometimes to taste
the ashes, in order to know the bitterness of them. Of course the works
of the great masters can only be serviceable to the student after he has
made considerable progress himself. It only wastes the time and dulls
the feelings of young persons, to drag them through picture galleries;
at least, unless they themselves wish to look at particular pictures.
Generally, young people only care to enter a picture gallery when there
is a chance of getting leave to run a race to the other end of it; and
they had better do that in the garden below. If, however, they have any
real enjoyment of pictures, and want to look at this one or that, the
principal point is never to disturb them in looking at what interests
them, and never to make them look at what does not. Nothing is of the
least use to young people (nor, by the way, of much use to old ones),
but what interests them; and therefore, though it is of great importance
to put nothing but good art into their possession, yet, when they are
passing through great houses or galleries, they should be allowed to
look precisely at what pleases them: if it is not useful to them as art,
it will be in some other way; and the healthiest way in which art can
interest them is when they look at it, not as art, but because it
represents something they like in Nature. If a boy has had his heart
filled by the life of some great man, and goes up thirstily to a Vandyck
portrait of him, to see what he was like, that is the wholesomest way in
which he can begin the study of portraiture; if he loves mountains, and
dwells on a Turner drawing because he sees in it a likeness to a
Yorkshire scar or an Alpine pass, that is the wholesomest way in which
he can begin the study of landscape; and if a girl's mind is filled with
dreams of angels and saints, and she pauses before an Angelico because
she thinks it must surely be like heaven, that is the right way for her
to begin the study of religious art.
256. When, however, the student has made some definite progress, and
every picture becomes really a guide to him, false or true, in his own
work, it is of great importance that he should never look, with even
partial admiration, at bad art; and then, if the reader is willing to
trust me in the matter, the following advice will be useful to him. In
which, with his permission, I will quit the indirect and return to the
epistolary address, as being the more convenient.
First, in Galleries of Pictures:
1. You may look, with trust in their being always right, at Titian,
Veronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, John Bellini, and Velasquez; the
authenticity of the picture being of course established for you by
proper authority.
2. You may look with admiration, admitting, however, question of right
and wrong,[75] at Van Eyck, Holbein, Perugino, Francia, Angelico,
Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio, Vandyck, Rembrandt, Reynolds,
Gainsborough, Turner, and the modern Pre-Raphaelites.[76] You had better
look at no other painters than these, for you run a chance, otherwise,
of being led far off the road, or into grievous faults, by some of the
other great ones, as Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Rubens; and of being,
besides, corrupted in taste by the base ones, as Murillo, Salvator,
Claude, Gaspar Poussin, Teniers, and such others. You may look, however,
for examples of evil, with safe universality of reprobation, being sure
that everything you see is bad, at Domenichino, the Carracci, Bronzino,
and the figure pieces of Salvator.
Among those named for study under question, you cannot look too much at,
nor grow too enthusiastically fond of, Angelico, Correggio, Reynolds,
Turner, and the Pre-Raphaelites; but, if you find yourself getting
especially fond of any of the others, leave off looking at them, for you
must be going wrong some way or other. If, for instance, you begin to
like Rembrandt or Leonardo especially, you are losing your feeling for
color; if you like Van Eyck or Perugino especially, you must be getting
too fond of rigid detail; and if you like Vandyck or Gainsborough
especially, you must be too much attracted by gentlemanly flimsiness.
257. Secondly, of published, or otherwise multiplied, art, such as you
may be able to get yourself, or to see at private houses or in shops,
the works of the following masters are the most desirable, after the
Turners, Rembrandts, and Dürers, which I have asked you to get first: