Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide,
In thy most need to go by thy side.
This is No. 118 of Everyman’s Library. A list of authors and their
works in this series will be found at the end of this volume. The
publishers will be pleased to send freely to all applicants a
separate, annotated list of the Library.
J. M. DENT & SONS LIMITED
10-13 BEDFORD STREET LONDON W.C.2
E. P. DUTTON & CO. INC.
286-302 FOURTH AVENUE
NEW YORK
EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS
ESSAYS
FIFTEEN DISCOURSES DELIVERED
IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY
BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS · INTRODUCTION
BY L. MARCH PHILLIPPS
JOSHUA REYNOLDS, born in 1723 in Devonshire, the son of the Rev.
Samuel Reynolds. Lived at Plymouth, 1746-9, afterwards going to
Italy. Settled in London, 1752, becoming fashionable
portrait-painter. Founded the Literary Club. In 1768 the first
president of the Royal Academy. Died in 1792, and buried in St.
Paul’s.
FIFTEEN DISCOURSES
[Illustration: colophon]
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS
LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. INC.
_All rights reserved_
_Made in Great Britain
at The Temple Press Letchworth
and decorated by Eric Ravilious
for_
_J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
Aldine House Bedford St. London_
_Toronto_ . _Vancouver_
_Melbourne_ . _Wellington_
_First Published in this Edition 1906_
_Reprinted 1928_
INTRODUCTION
THE most careless reader of these Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds will
be struck by their frequent slighting and depreciatory allusions to the
great Venetian colourists, and by the almost passionate note of warning
sounded in them against the teaching and influence of these masters. The
school of Venice is always referred to by Sir Joshua as the “decorative”
school; “mere elegance” is defined as its principal object, and its
“ornamental” character is affirmed to be totally inconsistent with any
achievement of the first order. Tintoret and Veronese are selected for
especial condemnation. “These are the persons who may be said to have
exhausted all the powers of florid eloquence to debauch the young and
inexperienced.” They have turned many painters “from those higher
excellences of which the art is capable, and which ought to be required
in every considerable production.”
If we seek more particularly the ground of Sir Joshua’s dislike of the
Venetians, we shall find it in the fact that that school was, as he says
himself, “engrossed by the study of colour to the neglect of the ideal
beauty of form.” Ideal beauty of form constituted, in Sir Joshua’s view,
the only possible really noble motive in art. He never for a moment, in
criticism and theory, admitted the possibility of colour constituting
such a motive. Colour, in his judgment, remained always a quite
secondary and merely decorative affair, while the true greatness of the
painting depended entirely on its excellence as a study of form. In one
of his letters to the _Idler_ he pushes this view to such a length, and
so entirely confines the idea of beauty to form, and form alone, that he
actually asserts that the colour of a thing can have no more to do with
its beauty than its smell has.
If it were an ordinary critic who wrote and reasoned thus, we should
pass by his judgments as indicative merely of a totally defective colour
sense. But to suppose that Reynolds, of all men, was defective in this
respect would be absurd. The extraordinary thing about him is that no
sooner had he passed from the lecture-room to his own studio than he
proceeded to demonstrate in his work his own intense appreciation of
that insidious school of colour against which he was never tired of
warning his hearers. He was himself one of those victims whom Tintoret
and Veronese had “debauched.” He had stayed in Venice but a few weeks,
in Rome two years, and yet the example of the Venetians had made
incalculably the deeper impression upon him. With all the force of his
judgment and reason he approved the teaching of Michael Angelo, but with
a warmth which had more of emotion in it he adored the great colourists.
Into the examination of the methods by which these had obtained their
effects he threw himself with an energy which amounted to downright
excitement, and to his thirst for information sacrificed even the
paintings that so allured him, rubbing and scraping away, as we are
told, the impasto of several valuable pictures in order that he might
investigate the composition of the successive layers of colour. His own
ceaseless experiments in colour effects and the use into which he was
led of refractory pigments, resulting too often in the cracking or
peeling of his pictures, are a further testimony to the hold which,
entirely against his will, Venice exerted over him. He recognised it
himself even while he submitted to it. In the last words addressed by
him to the Academicians there is a pathetic consciousness of what he
seems to have felt as his own disloyalty in not sticking in practice to
that greatness which his reason always assured him was pre-eminent. He
could claim to be an admirer only, not a follower, of Michael Angelo. “I
have taken another course, one more suited to my abilities and to the
taste of the times in which I live. Yet,” he exclaims contritely,
“however unequal I feel myself to that attempt, were I now to begin the
world again I would tread in the steps of that great master; to kiss
the hem of his garment, to catch the slightest of his perfections,
would be glory and distinction enough for an ambitious man.”
In practice devoted to Venice, in theory despising her; in practice
ignoring the great Florentines, in theory strenuously upholding their
ideals: such are the contradictions one meets with in Sir Joshua
Reynolds, and certainly his judgments, and these lectures in which they
are contained, will never be rightly understood until a clue to these
contradictions be found.
Let us remember, in the first place, that down to the eighteenth century
the native art of England had been essentially an art of form. The great
Gothic creative epoch had exhibited its energy and power in architecture
and sculpture alone. No great school of painting arose in the North to
vie with the varied and rich productions of the builders and sculptors
of that age. Such colour as was used was used in a subordinate or, to
use Sir Joshua’s word, a “decorative” sense--to enrich, that is, and add
a brilliance to form. But it was in form only, whether structural, as in
the great cathedrals, or statuesque, as in the innumerable and beautiful
figures and effigies which adorn or repose in them, or expressed in the
carved likeness of flowers and foliage and animals and birds--it was in
form, I say, only that the Gothic genius displayed its real power and
initiative.
And this being so, the nature of the contributions which the Gothic
nations were to make to pictorial art might almost, perhaps, have been
foreseen. Drawing rather than painting gave them the effects they
sought, and the art of wood engraving became in their hands a natural
and popular mode of expression. The powerful black line of the graver
was found to be extraordinarily effective in delineating mere form, and
accordingly in this new art, first started in Europe about the beginning
of the fifteenth century, the Gothic races, however hopelessly behind in
delineation by colour, took the lead. They treated it, indeed, quite
frankly, not as a pictorial but as a sculptural representation. That is
to say, they ignored aerial perspective and effects of light and shade
altogether, and made no attempt to produce the illusion to the eye of a
represented scene or landscape. On the other hand, each figure, or
object, or animal was outlined with extraordinary clearness and force,
as if it were being designed for a carving in relief. One has but to
turn from the sculptured work in wood or stone to the wood engravings of
the same period to recognise the similarity in spirit between the two,
and realise how thoroughly genuine a product of its age the art of
engraving was. It carried on the Gothic temper and characteristic view
of nature and life. It loved the same direct and literal statements, and
its sole preoccupation was how to express them with as much
matter-of-fact precision as possible and invest them with all the air of
positive realities. Moreover, the art, as it was developed in the North,
betrays the same strong popular sympathies that run through all Gothic
art. The same perception belongs to it of the significance and interest
of all homely objects and scenes, and it loves to depict in the same way
the details of the life and labour of the common people. And if it
cannot give to these things the actual reality of concrete form, it
still endeavours to attain this end so far as can possibly be done by
outline. Its instinct is always to treat its subjects as things, never
as appearances.
Wood engraving, then, carries on directly the great Gothic movement, and
is part of that movement. It continues to apply to life that measure of
_form_ which had hitherto so completely satisfied the Northern nations,
but which was soon to satisfy them no longer. Moreover, although this
splendid Gothic outburst of formative and structural art by degrees
waned and spent itself, yet still it remained the only aspect of art of
which the North had cognisance. The influence of the Renaissance was for
long accepted in the North as a structural influence only. In England
painting remained a dead letter, and on the Continent the only notable
school which arose, the Dutch school, was remarkable for just the
characteristics which had always distinguished Northern art--a love of
the facts of common life and a close, exact, and literal representation
of form. In short, if we were to take our stand in the middle of the
eighteenth century we should find stretching behind us the long history
of an art which had developed with unexampled vigour all the resources
of form, but which had never been really warmed and suffused by any
great conception of the value of colour. This was the atmosphere and
world of art into which Sir Joshua was born, and of which his criticism
is the outcome.
I will ask the reader now, in this brief survey of ours of the currents
that are carrying us on to the moment of Reynolds’s life and influence,
to turn his eyes southward to Italy, where he will perceive an
altogether new element in art gathering head and preparing to exert an
influence contrary to the old influence of form over the rest of Europe.
I have always thought myself that, as the intellectual and
matter-of-fact qualities of the Western mind are especially embodied in
form, so the emotional and sensuous qualities of the Eastern mind are
embodied, or find expression, in colour. However that may be, it would
seem to be certain that a conception of the possibilities of colour
quite unknown in Europe previously was gradually introduced into Italy
during the centuries which ensued between the collapse of classic Rome
and the rise of the Gothic nationalities by Byzantine artists and
architects arriving from Constantinople and the Eastern empires. This
new use of colour, contributed by the East, and which was to take
deepest root wherever the influence of the East had been most firmly
established, is, moreover, quite easy to understand and define. Gothic
colour was used, as I have said, subordinately to form and as one of
form’s attributes, its range and limits being exactly defined by the
body of those objects it belongs to. Oriental colour, on the other hand,
is used quite differently. Instead of being handled by form, it is
handled by light and shade, and with the help of light and shade it is
at once enabled to overcome the limitations of form and to develop a
rich and ample scheme of its own extending through the whole
composition. The marks of colour used in this sense are, I believe,
invariably these two: (1) It always employs its warmest and richest
hues; (2) it always melts away the edges and exactitudes of form, and
suffuses them all in a universal sunny glow.
It was in the interiors of their mosaic churches, swathed in mellow
gold, inlaid with rich colours, and always deeply and darkly shadowed,
that the Byzantine architects best embodied this Oriental conception of
colour effect, and the whole of Italy was to some extent warmed by their
glow. But it was in Venice, where the influence of the East was always
paramount, and where the most splendid of all these mosaic churches
glowed and glittered in the midst of the city, that the example had
strongest and most definite effect. Here it grafted itself and bore
fruit, and in the city which for so many centuries had sucked
nourishment from Eastern sources there arose in due time a school of
painting in which all the great characteristics of Oriental colour are
exhibited.
This school it was which took Reynolds captive. But in yielding to
colour of this kind he was not yielding to decorative colour. The rich,
suffused colour on the canvas of a Tintoret or a Titian is not
decorative colour at all. It is emotional colour, colour used to instil
a sensation and a feeling, not to define an object. Will the reader
compare in his mind the inside of St. Mark’s at Venice with the inside
of St. Peter’s at Rome? Both make much use of colour, but in St. Mark’s
the colour appears as a pervading deep and rich glow, governed and
controlled by light and shade; in St. Peter’s it appears as a
complicated pattern of variously cut marbles exposed in clear daylight.
This last is the decorative use of colour, and excites no feeling at
all. The former is the emotional use of it, and both excites and
satisfies deep feeling. The same difference is apparent between colour
as dealt with by the Venetian painters and colour as dealt with by the
Northern nations before Venice’s influence had been felt.
Bearing these facts in mind, the theory and the practice of Reynolds
both gain in significance. He came at the moment when the spread of that
Eastern ideal of colouring, which had already been carried here and
there through Europe, had become possible in England. He has himself
drawn attention to this tendency it possessed to overflow and extend
into other nations. “By them,” he says--that is, by Tintoret and
Veronese especially--“a style merely ornamental has been disseminated
throughout all Europe. Rubens carried it into Flanders, Voet to France,
and Lucca Giordano to Spain and Naples.” To which he might have added,
“and I myself to England.”
From the point of view of his work and example, Reynolds is to be
considered as the instrument of destiny appointed to a great end, while
at the same time his own slighting and inadequate criticism of this kind
of colour and his humble contrition for having been led astray by it are
not, if we remember his date, unintelligible. For, having behind him a
national past throughout which form, and the intellectual associations
suggested by form, ruled paramount, and in which the only recognised
function of colour had been its decorative function, it must seem to be
inevitable that, however natural an aptitude he may have possessed for
judging the grandeur of form, he could have possessed little for
appraising the effects of colour. The truth is that he applies to colour
used as the Venetians used it exactly the kind of criticism which he
might have applied to it as it was used all through the Gothic epoch. It
was inbred in Reynolds that colour must be and could be only a property
of form--must and could be, that is to say, only decorative. To this
formula he returns again and again, and however inapplicable it may seem
to the mighty Venetian canvases, we have only to put ourselves in
Reynolds’s time and place to perceive that the use of it was natural and
inevitable.
But all this represented, after all, only his conscious criticism and
reasoning. Form is intellectual, colour emotional, and if intellectually
Sir Joshua remained true to the first, emotionally he abandoned himself
entirely to the last. Venice never conquered his reason, but she
conquered his instincts and feelings and affections, and, for all that
reason could do, for thirty years, from his return from Italy until his
death, he poured forth work which owes all its power and charm to that
very glow and suffusion of colour which year by year he denounced to the
pupils of the Royal Academy as a delusion and a snare. It seems to me
that this conquest of Sir Joshua Reynolds, in spite of all his protests
and in defiance of all his reasoning, is about the most remarkable proof
extant of the irresistible influence which emotional colouring can
exert.
Well, then, turning to these Discourses, let us say at once that all the
strictures on the great colourists which they contain do not constitute
a real valuation of colour at all, but only a valuation of it by one
bred in traditions of form. They have, indeed, their own great interest.
They enable us to realise, more vividly than anything else I can think
of, the limitations and one-sidedness of art in England in the days
before Reynolds’s own painting achievements had helped to lay the basis
of a truer standard in criticism than any he himself possessed or could
possess. Here their interest is unique. But as criticism we may pass
them by. No one, indeed, has refuted them more ably than Sir Joshua
himself. His real and genuine estimate of colour is to be found, not in
what he said, but in what he did.
On the other hand, perhaps the very solidity and unity of that great
Northern tradition which stretched behind him gave a simplicity and
power to his analysis of form which it would scarcely in a later day
have possessed. Certainly I do not know where else in English art
criticism are to be found such clear and weighty definitions of what
grandeur of style consists in as occur throughout these Discourses. The
principle of the selection of essential traits, or those common to the
species, together with the elimination of accidental ones, or those
peculiar to the individual, which may be said to underlie his whole
theory of the grand style, is indeed that principle on which art itself
is founded, and the recognition of which has made the difference in all
ages between the cultured and ignorant, between the artist who
simplifies and the artist who complicates, between Greek and barbarian.
It is little to the point to say that this principle is already familiar
to us, and that we have no need of further instruction in it, for it is
with this as with other truths that matter, which become dimmed and
stale in the world, and lose their meaning and have to be reaffirmed
from time to time by some great teacher with emphasis and power.
It is in their powerful handling of first principles in all that regards
form that the value of these lectures lies. It is this also which gives
them for the present age their character of an antidote. There are times
during which the national life, uncertain and fluctuating in convictions
and aims, is incapable of inspiring art with any definite impulse
whatsoever. These, for art, are melancholy days--days divested of all
tradition and agreement--which it occupies rather in experimenting on
its own methods and processes than in producing definite constructive
work. Such experiments, however, are taken very seriously by
contemporaries, and all kinds of ingenious, far-fetched tricks are
played in paint or marble with as much zeal as if they formed part of a
genuine creative movement. Art criticism, it is needless to say, follows
the lead of art, and analyses these fugitive individual experiments as
solemnly as if they were an authentic expression of the life of their
age. The combined effect of this kind of art and this kind of art
criticism on a disinterested stranger would probably be that, far from
conceiving of art as a very important and vitally human affair, he would
conclude that it was an extremely clever and ingenious kind of juggling,
which, however interesting to cliques and coteries, could be no concern
of mankind in general.
There is no doubt that the best way, or only way, of counteracting this
tendency to triviality, to which in an experimental age we are liable,
is now and then to have recourse to those primitive and fixed principles
of art which are the same in all ages, and obedience to which alone
constitutes a passport to the regard of all ages. Only, in order that
such principles may be made acceptable and attractive, it is essential
that they should be treated with that directness and simplicity which an
intimate consciousness of their truth inspires. They are so treated in
these Discourses, and the consequence of their being so treated is that
just as a reader wearied by the trivialities of contemporary poetry or
the arguments of contemporary theology may find rest and refreshment by
turning over a page or two of Wordsworth or Thomas à Kempis, so in
something the same way at least, though perhaps in a less degree, he may
be brought closer again to the reality he had lost touch of in matters
of art by turning from the art criticism of the newspapers to the
lectures of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Discourses delivered in the Royal Academy, 1769-1791 (published
separately).
Seven Discourses delivered in the Royal Academy (1769-76), 1778.
Edited by H. Morley (Cassell’s National Library), 1888.
Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Ed. E. Gosse, 1884.
Ed. H. Zimmern (Camelot Classics), 1887.
Works: Ed. G. Malone, 2 vols., 1797, 1798.
Complete Works, 3 vols., 1824.
Ed. H. W. Beechey, 2 vols., 1835; 1852 (Bohn). (Works include “A
Journey to Flanders and Holland,” Annotations on Du Fresnoy’s “Art
of Painting,” and three letters to the _Idler_, 1759, on Painting,
and the True Idea of Beauty.)
Sir Joshua Reynolds and his Works (Gleanings from Diary,
unpublished MSS., &c.), by W. Cotton. Ed. J. Barnet, 1856.
PREFACE TO DISCOURSE I.
TO THE MEMBERS
OF
THE ROYAL ACADEMY
GENTLEMEN,
THAT you have ordered the publication of this discourse is not only very
flattering to me, as it implies your approbation of the method of study
which I have recommended; but, likewise, as this method receives from
that act such an additional weight and authority, as demands from the
students that deference and respect which can be due only to the united
sense of so considerable a body of artists.
I am,
With the greatest esteem and respect,
Gentlemen,
Your most humble
and obedient Servant,
JOSHUA REYNOLDS.
DISCOURSE I
_Delivered at the opening of the Royal Academy, January 2, 1769._
The Advantages proceeding from the Institution of a Royal
Academy.--Hints offered to the Consideration of the Professors and
Visitors;--That an Implicit Obedience to the Rules of Art be
exacted from the Young Students;--That a Premature Disposition to a
Masterly Dexterity be repressed;--That Diligence be constantly
recommended, and (that it may be effectual) directed to its Proper
Object.
GENTLEMEN,
An Academy, in which the Polite Arts may be regularly cultivated, is at
last opened among us by Royal munificence. This must appear an event in
the highest degree interesting, not only to the artists, but to the
whole nation.
It is indeed difficult to give any other reason, why an empire like that
of Britain should so long have wanted an ornament so suitable to its
greatness, than that slow progression of things, which naturally makes
elegance and refinement the last effect of opulence and power.
An institution like this has often been recommended upon considerations
merely mercantile; but an Academy, founded upon such principles, can
never effect even its own narrow purposes. If it has an origin no
higher, no taste can ever be formed in manufactures; but if the higher
Arts of Design flourish, these inferior ends will be answered of course.
We are happy in having a Prince, who has conceived the design of such an
institution, according to its true dignity; and who promotes the Arts,
as the head of a great, a learned, a polite, and a commercial nation;
and I can now congratulate you, gentlemen, on the accomplishment of your
long and ardent wishes.
The numberless and ineffectual consultations which I have had with many
in this assembly, to form plans and concert schemes for an Academy,
afford a sufficient proof of the impossibility of succeeding but by the
influence of Majesty. But there have, perhaps, been times, when even the
influence of Majesty would have been ineffectual; and it is pleasing to
reflect, that we are thus embodied, when every circumstance seems to
concur from which honour and prosperity can probably arise.
There are, at this time, a greater number of excellent artists than were
ever known before at one period in this nation; there is a general
desire among our nobility to be distinguished as lovers and judges of
the Arts; there is a greater superfluity of wealth among the people to
reward the professors; and, above all, we are patronised by a monarch,
who, knowing the value of science and of elegance, thinks every art
worthy of his notice, that tends to soften and humanise the mind.
After so much has been done by his Majesty, it will be wholly our fault,
if our progress is not in some degree correspondent to the wisdom and
generosity of the Institution: let us show our gratitude in our
diligence, that, though our merit may not answer his expectations, yet,
at least, our industry may deserve his protection.
But whatever may be our proportion of success, of this we may be sure,
that the present Institution will at least contribute to advance our
knowledge of the Arts, and bring us nearer to that ideal excellence,
which it is the lot of genius always to contemplate and never to
attain.
The principal advantage of an Academy is, that, besides furnishing able
men to direct the student, it will be a repository for the great
examples of the Art. These are the materials on which genius is to work,
and without which the strongest intellect may be fruitlessly or
deviously employed. By studying these authentic models, that idea of
excellence which is the result of the accumulated experience of past
ages, may be at once acquired; and the tardy and obstructed progress of
our predecessors may teach us a shorter and easier way. The student
receives, at one glance, the principles which many artists have spent
their whole lives in ascertaining; and, satisfied with their effect, is
spared the painful investigation by which they came to be known and
fixed. How many men of great natural abilities have been lost to this
nation, for want of these advantages! They never had an opportunity of
seeing those masterly efforts of genius, which at once kindle the whole
soul, and force it into sudden and irresistible approbation.
Raffaelle, it is true, had not the advantage of studying in an Academy;
but all Rome, and the works of Michael Angelo in particular, were to him
an academy. On the sight of the Capella Sistina, he immediately from a
dry, Gothic, and even insipid manner, which attends to the minute
accidental discriminations of particular and individual objects, assumed
that grand style of painting, which improves partial representation by
the general and invariable ideas of nature.
Every seminary of learning may be said to be surrounded with an
atmosphere of floating knowledge, where every mind may imbibe somewhat
congenial to its own original conceptions. Knowledge, thus obtained, has
always something more popular and useful than that which is forced upon
the mind by private precepts, or solitary meditation. Besides, it is
generally found, that a youth more easily receives instruction from the
companions of his studies, whose minds are nearly on a level with his
own, than from those who are much his superiors; and it is from his
equals only that he catches the fire of emulation.
One advantage, I will venture to affirm, we shall have in our Academy,
which no other nation can boast. We shall have nothing to unlearn. To
this praise the present race of artists have a just claim. As far as
they have yet proceeded, they are right. With us the exertions of genius
will henceforward be directed to their proper objects. It will not be as
it has been in other schools, where he that travelled fastest only
wandered farthest from the right way.
Impressed, as I am, therefore, with such a favourable opinion of my
associates in this undertaking, it would ill become me to dictate to any
of them. But as these institutions have so often failed in other
nations; and as it is natural to think with regret, how much might have
been done, I must take leave to offer a few hints, by which those errors
may be rectified, and those defects supplied. These the professors and
visitors may reject or adopt as they shall think proper.
I would chiefly recommend, that an implicit obedience to the _Rules of
Art_, as established by the practice of the great masters, should be
exacted from the _young_ students. That those models, which have passed
through the approbation of ages, should be considered by them as perfect
and infallible guides; as subjects for their imitation, not their
criticism.
I am confident, that this is the only efficacious method of making a
progress in the Arts; and that he who sets out with doubting, will find
life finished before he becomes master of the rudiments. For it may be
laid down as a maxim, that he who begins by presuming on his own sense,
has ended his studies as soon as he has commenced them. Every
opportunity, therefore, should be taken to discountenance that false and
vulgar opinion, that rules are the fetters of genius; they are fetters
only to men of no genius; as that armour, which upon the strong is an
ornament and a defence, upon the weak and mis-shapen becomes a load, and
cripples the body which it was made to protect.
How much liberty may be taken to break through those rules, and, as the
poet expresses it,
To snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,
may be a subsequent consideration, when the pupils become masters
themselves. It is then, when their genius has received its utmost
improvement, that rules may possibly be dispensed with. But let us not
destroy the scaffold, until we have raised the building.
The directors ought more particularly to watch over the genius of those
students, who, being more advanced, are arrived at that critical period
of study, on the nice management of which their future turn of taste
depends. At that age it is natural for them to be more captivated with
what is brilliant, than with what is solid, and to prefer splendid
negligence to painful and humiliating exactness.
A facility in composing,--a lively, and what is called a masterly,
handling of the chalk or pencil, are, it must be confessed, captivating
qualities to young minds, and become of course the objects of their
ambition. They endeavour to imitate these dazzling excellences, which
they will find no great labour in attaining. After much time spent in
these frivolous pursuits, the difficulty will be to retreat; but it will
be then too late; and there is scarce an instance of return to
scrupulous labour, after the mind has been debauched and deceived by
this fallacious mastery.
By this useless industry they are excluded from all power of advancing
in real excellence. Whilst boys, they are arrived at their utmost
perfection; they have taken the shadow for the substance; and make the
mechanical felicity the chief excellence of the art, which is only an
ornament, and of the merit of which few but painters themselves are
judges.
This seems to me to be one of the most dangerous sources of corruption;
and I speak of it from experience, not as an error which may possibly
happen, but which has actually infected all foreign academies. The
directors were probably pleased with this premature dexterity in their
pupils, and praised their dispatch at the expense of their correctness.
But young men have not only this frivolous ambition of being thought
masters of execution inciting them on one hand, but also their natural
sloth tempting them on the other. They are terrified at the prospect
before them, of the toil required to attain exactness. The impetuosity
of youth is disgusted at the slow approaches of a regular siege, and
desires, from mere impatience of labour, to take the citadel by storm.
They wish to find some shorter path to excellence, and hope to obtain
the reward of eminence by other means than those, which the
indispensable rules of art have prescribed. They must therefore be told
again and again, that labour is the only price of solid fame, and that
whatever their force of genius may be, there is no easy method of
becoming a good painter.
When we read the lives of the most eminent painters, every page informs
us, that no part of their time was spent in dissipation. Even an
increase of fame served only to augment their industry. To be convinced
with what persevering assiduity they pursued their studies, we need
only reflect on their method of proceeding in their most celebrated
works. When they conceived a subject, they first made a variety of
sketches; then a finished drawing of the whole; after that a more
correct drawing of every separate part,--heads, hands, feet, and pieces
of drapery; they then painted the picture, and after all re-touched it
from the life. The pictures, thus wrought with such pains, now appear
like the effect of enchantment, and as if some mighty genius had struck
them off at a blow.
But, whilst diligence is thus recommended to the students, the visitors
will take care that their diligence be effectual; that it be well
directed, and employed on the proper object. A student is not always
advancing because he is employed; he must apply his strength to that
part of the art where the real difficulties lie; to that part which
distinguishes it as a liberal art; and not by mistaken industry lose his
time in that which is merely ornamental. The students, instead of vying
with each other which shall have the readiest hand, should be taught to
contend who shall have the purest and most correct outline; instead of
striving which shall produce the brightest tint, or curiously trifling,
shall give the gloss of stuffs, so as to appear real, let their ambition
be directed to contend, which shall dispose his drapery in the most
graceful folds, which shall give the most grace and dignity to the human
figure.
I must beg leave to submit one thing more to the consideration of the
visitors, which appears to me a matter of very great consequence, and
the omission of which I think a principal defect in the method of
education pursued in all the academies I have ever visited. The error I
mean is, that the students never draw exactly from the living models
which they have before them. It is not indeed their intention; nor are
they directed to do it. Their drawings resemble the model only in the
attitude. They change the form according to their vague and uncertain
ideas of beauty, and make a drawing rather of what they think the figure
ought to be, than of what it appears. I have thought this the obstacle
that has stopped the progress of many young men of real genius; and I
very much doubt, whether a habit of drawing correctly what we see, will
not give a proportionable power of drawing correctly what we imagine. He
who endeavours to copy nicely the figure before him, not only acquires a
habit of exactness and precision, but is continually advancing in his
knowledge of the human figure; and though he seems to superficial
observers to make a slower progress, he will be found at last capable of
adding (without running into capricious wildness) that grace and beauty,
which is necessary to be given to his more finished works, and which
cannot be got by the moderns, as it was not acquired by the ancients,
but by an attentive and well compared study of the human form.
What I think ought to enforce this method is, that it has been the
practice (as may be seen by their drawings) of the great Masters in the
Art. I will mention a drawing of Raffaelle, _The Dispute of the
Sacrament_, the print of which, by Count Cailus, is in every hand. It
appears, that he made his sketch from one model; and the habit he had of
drawing exactly from the form before him appears by his making all the
figures with the same cap, such as his model then happened to wear; so
servile a copyist was this great man, even at a time when he was allowed
to be at his highest pitch of excellence.
I have seen also academy figures by Annibale Caracci, though he was
often sufficiently licentious in his finished works, drawn with all the
peculiarities of an individual model.
This scrupulous exactness is so contrary to the practice of the
academies, that it is not without great deference, that I beg leave to
recommend it to the consideration of the visitors; and submit to them,
whether the neglect of this method is not one of the reasons why
students so often disappoint expectation, and, being more than boys at
sixteen, become less than men at thirty.
In short, the method I recommend can only be detrimental where there are
but few living forms to copy; for then students, by always drawing from
one alone, will by habit be taught to overlook defects, and mistake
deformity for beauty. But of this there is no danger; since the Council
has determined to supply the Academy with a variety of subjects; and
indeed those laws which they have drawn up, and which the Secretary will
presently read for your confirmation, have in some measure precluded me
from saying more upon this occasion. Instead, therefore, of offering my
advice, permit me to indulge my wishes, and express my hope, that this
institution may answer the expectation of its Royal founder; that the
present age may vie in Arts with that of Leo the Tenth; and that _the
dignity of the dying Art_ (to make use of an expression of Pliny) may be
revived under the reign of George the Third.
DISCOURSE II
_Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distribution of
the Prizes, December 11, 1769._
The Course and Order of Study.--The Different Stages of Art.--Much
Copying discountenanced.--The Artist at all Times and in all Places
should be employed in laying up Materials for the Exercise of his
Art.
GENTLEMEN,
I CONGRATULATE you on the honour which you have just received. I have
the highest opinion of your merits, and could wish to show my sense of
them in something which possibly may be more useful to you than barren
praise. I could wish to lead you into such a course of study as may
render your future progress answerable to your past improvement; and,
whilst I applaud you for what has been done, remind you how much yet
remains to attain perfection.
I flatter myself, that from the long experience I have had, and the
unceasing assiduity with which I have pursued those studies, in which,
like you, I have been engaged, I shall be acquitted of vanity in
offering some hints to your consideration. They are indeed in a great
degree founded upon my own mistakes in the same pursuit. But the history
of errors, properly managed, often shortens the road to truth. And
although no method of study that I can offer, will of itself conduct to
excellence, yet it may preserve industry from being misapplied.
In speaking to you of the Theory of the Art, I shall only consider it as
it has a relation to the _method_ of your studies.
Dividing the study of painting into three distinct periods, I shall
address you as having passed through the first of them, which is
confined to the rudiments; including a facility of drawing any object
that presents itself, a tolerable readiness in the management of
colours, and an acquaintance with the most simple and obvious rules of
composition.
This first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is in
literature, a general preparation for whatever species of the art the
student may afterwards choose for his more particular application. The
power of drawing, modelling, and using colours, is very properly called
the language of the art; and in this language, the honours you have just
received prove you to have made no inconsiderable progress.
When the artist is once enabled to express himself with some degree of
correctness, he must then endeavour to collect subjects for expression;
to amass a stock of ideas, to be combined and varied as occasion may
require. He is now in the second period of study, in which his business
is to learn all that has been known and done before his own time. Having
hitherto received instructions from a particular master, he is now to
consider the Art itself as his master. He must extend his capacity to
more sublime and general instructions. Those perfections which lie
scattered among various masters are now united in one general idea,
which is henceforth to regulate his taste, and enlarge his imagination.
With a variety of models thus before him, he will avoid that narrowness
and poverty of conception which attends a bigoted admiration of a single
master, and will cease to follow any favourite where he ceases to excel.
This period is, however, still a time of subjection and discipline.
Though the student will not resign himself blindly to any single
authority, when he may have the advantage of consulting many, he must
still be afraid of trusting his own judgment, and of deviating into any
track where he cannot find the footsteps of some former master.
The third and last period emancipates the student from subjection to any
authority, but what he shall himself judge to be supported by reason.
Confiding now in his own judgment, he will consider and separate those
different principles to which different modes of beauty owe their
original. In the former period he sought only to know and combine
excellence, wherever it was to be found, into one idea of perfection: in
this, he learns, what requires the most attentive survey and the most
subtle disquisition, to discriminate perfections that are incompatible
with each other.
He is from this time to regard himself as holding the same rank with
those masters whom he before obeyed as teachers; and as exercising a
sort of sovereignty over those rules which have hitherto restrained him.
Comparing now no longer the performances of Art with each other, but
examining the Art itself by the standard of nature, he corrects what is
erroneous, supplies what is scanty, and adds by his own observation what
the industry of his predecessors may have yet left wanting to
perfection. Having well established his judgment, and stored his memory,
he may now without fear try the power of his imagination. The mind that
has been thus disciplined, may be indulged in the warmest enthusiasm,
and venture to play on the borders of the wildest extravagance. The
habitual dignity which long converse with the greatest minds has
imparted to him will display itself in all his attempts; and he will
stand among his instructors, not as an imitator, but a rival.
These are the different stages of the Art. But as I now address myself
particularly to those students who have been this day rewarded for their
happy passage through the first period, I can with no propriety suppose
they want any help in the initiatory studies. My present design is to
direct your view to distant excellence, and to show you the readiest
path that leads to it. Of this I shall speak with such latitude, as may
leave the province of the professor uninvaded; and shall not anticipate
those precepts, which it is his business to give, and your duty to
understand.
It is indisputably evident that a great part of every man’s life must be
employed in collecting materials for the exercise of genius. Invention,
strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images
which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory: nothing
can come of nothing: he who has laid up no materials, can produce no
combinations.
A student unacquainted with the attempts of former adventurers is always
apt to overrate his own abilities; to mistake the most trifling
excursions for discoveries of moment, and every coast new to him, for a
new-found country. If by chance he passes beyond his usual limits, he
congratulates his own arrival at those regions which they who have
steered a better course have long left behind them.
The productions of such minds are seldom distinguished by an air of
originality: they are anticipated in their happiest efforts; and if they
are found to differ in anything from their predecessors, it is only in
irregular sallies, and trifling conceits. The more extensive therefore
your acquaintance is with the works of those who have excelled, the more
extensive will be your powers of invention; and what may appear still
more like a paradox, the more original will be your conceptions. But the
difficulty on this occasion is to determine what ought to be proposed as
models of excellence, and who ought to be considered as the properest
guides.
To a young man just arrived in Italy, many of the present painters of
that country are ready enough to obtrude their precepts, and to offer
their own performances as examples of that perfection which they affect
to recommend. The modern, however, who recommends _himself_ as a
standard, may justly be suspected as ignorant of the true end, and
unacquainted with the proper object, of the art which he professes. To
follow such a guide, will not only retard the student, but mislead him.
On whom then can he rely, or who shall show him the path that leads to
excellence? The answer is obvious: those great masters who have
travelled the same road with success are the most likely to conduct
others. The works of those who have stood the test of ages, have a claim
to that respect and veneration to which no modern can pretend. The
duration and stability of their fame is sufficient to evince that it has
not been suspended upon the slender thread of fashion and caprice, but
bound to the human heart by every tie of sympathetic approbation.
There is no danger of studying too much the works of those great men;
but how they may be studied to advantage is an inquiry of great
importance.
Some who have never raised their minds to the consideration of the real
dignity of the Art, and who rate the works of an artist in proportion as
they excel or are defective in the mechanical parts, look on theory as
something that may enable them to talk but not to paint better; and
confining themselves entirely to mechanical practice, very assiduously
toil on in the drudgery of copying; and think they make a rapid progress
while they faithfully exhibit the minutest part of a favourite picture.
This appears to me a very tedious, and I think a very erroneous method
of proceeding. Of every large composition, even of those which are most
admired, a great part may be truly said to be _commonplace_. This,
though it takes up much time in copying, conduces little to improvement.
I consider general copying as a delusive kind of industry; the student
satisfies himself with the appearance of doing something; he falls into
the dangerous habit of imitating without selecting, and of labouring
without any determinate object; as it requires no effort of the mind, he
sleeps over his work; and those powers of invention and composition
which ought particularly to be called out, and put in action, lie
torpid, and lose their energy for want of exercise.
How incapable those are of producing anything of their own, who have
spent much of their time in making finished copies, is well known to all
who are conversant with our art.
To suppose that the complication of powers, and variety of ideas
necessary to that mind which aspires to the first honours in the art of
painting, can be obtained by the frigid contemplation of a few single
models, is no less absurd, than it would be in him who wishes to be a
poet, to imagine that by translating a tragedy he can acquire to himself
sufficient knowledge of the appearances of nature, the operations of the
passions, and the incidents of life.