have used the palette-knife to lay his colours on the canvas, instead of
the pencil. Whether it is the knife or any other instrument, it suffices
if it is something that does not follow exactly the will. Accident in
the hands of an artist who knows how to take the advantage of its hints,
will often produce bold and capricious beauties of handling and
facility, such as he would not have thought of, or ventured, with his
pencil, under the regular restraint of his hand. However, this is fit
only on occasions where no correctness of form is required, such as
clouds, stumps of trees, rocks, or broken ground. Works produced in an
accidental manner will have the same free unrestrained air as the works
of nature, whose particular combinations seem to depend upon accident.
I again repeat, you are never to lose sight of nature; the instant you
do, you are all abroad, at the mercy of every gust of fashion, without
knowing or seeing the point to which you ought to steer. Whatever trips
you make, you must still have nature in your eye. Such deviations as art
necessarily requires, I hope in a future discourse to be able to
explain. In the meantime, let me recommend to you, not to have too great
dependence on your practice or memory, however strong those impressions
may have been which are there deposited. They are for ever wearing out,
and will be at last obliterated, unless they are continually refreshed
and repaired.
It is not uncommon to meet with artists who, from a long neglect of
cultivating this necessary intimacy with nature, do not even know her
when they see her; she appearing a stranger to them, from their being so
long habituated to their own representation of her. I have heard
painters acknowledge, though in that acknowledgment no degradation of
themselves was intended, that they could do better without nature than
with her; or, as they expressed it themselves, _that it only put them
out_. A painter with such ideas and such habits is indeed in a most
hopeless state. _The art of seeing nature_, or, in other words, the art
of using models, is in reality the great object, the point to which all
our studies are directed. As for the power of being able to do tolerably
well, from practice alone, let it be valued according to its worth. But
I do not see in what manner it can be sufficient for the production of
correct, excellent, and finished pictures. Works deserving this
character never were produced, nor ever will arise, from memory alone;
and I will venture to say, that an artist who brings to his work a mind
tolerably furnished with the general principles of art, and a taste
formed upon the works of good artists, in short, who knows in what
excellence consists, will with the assistance of models, which we will
likewise suppose he has learned the art of using, be an over-match for
the greatest painter that ever lived who should be debarred such
advantages.
Our neighbours, the French, are much in this practice of _extempore_
invention, and their dexterity is such as even to excite admiration, if
not envy; but how rarely can this praise be given to their finished
pictures!
The late Director of their Academy, _Boucher_, was eminent in this way.
When I visited him some years since, in France, I found him at work on a
very large picture, without drawings or models of any kind. On my
remarking this particular circumstance, he said, when he was young,
studying his art, he found it necessary to use models; but he had left
them off for many years.
Such pictures as this was, and such as I fear always will be produced by
those who work solely from practice or memory, may be a convincing proof
of the necessity of the conduct which I have recommended. However, in
justice I cannot quit this painter without adding, that in the former
part of his life, when he was in the habit of having recourse to nature,
he was not without a considerable degree of merit,--enough to make half
the painters of his country his imitators; he had often grace and
beauty, and good skill in composition; but, I think all under the
influence of a bad taste: his imitators are indeed abominable.
Those artists who have quitted the service of nature (whose service,
when well understood, is _perfect freedom_), and have put themselves
under the direction of I know not what capricious fantastical mistress,
who fascinates and overpowers their whole mind, and from whose dominion
there are no hopes of their being ever reclaimed (since they appear
perfectly satisfied, and not at all conscious of their forlorn
situation), like the transformed followers of Comus,--
Not once perceive their foul disfigurement;
But boast themselves more comely than before.
Methinks such men, who have found out so short a path, have no reason to
complain of the shortness of life, and the extent of art; since life is
so much longer than is wanted for their improvement, or indeed is
necessary for the accomplishment of their idea of perfection. On the
contrary, he who recurs to nature, at every recurrence renews his
strength. The rules of art he is never likely to forget; they are few
and simple; but nature is refined, subtle, and infinitely various,
beyond the power and retention of memory; it is necessary, therefore, to
have continual recourse to her. In this intercourse, there is no end of
his improvement; the longer he lives, the nearer he approaches to the
true and perfect idea of art.
DISCOURSE XIII
_Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distribution of
the Prizes, December 11, 1786._
Art not merely Imitation, but under the Direction of the Imagination.
In what Manner Poetry, Painting, Acting, Gardening, and Architecture
depart from Nature.
GENTLEMEN,
To discover beauties, or to point out faults, in the works of celebrated
masters, and to compare the conduct of one artist with another, is
certainly no mean or inconsiderable part of criticism; but this is still
no more than to know the art through the artist. This test of
investigation must have two capital defects; it must be narrow, and it
must be uncertain. To enlarge the boundaries of the art of painting, as
well as to fix its principles, it will be necessary, that _that_ art and
_those_ principles should be considered in their correspondence with the
principles of the other arts which, like this, address themselves
primarily and principally to the imagination. When those connected and
kindred principles are brought together to be compared, another
comparison will grow out of this; that is, the comparison of them all
with those of human nature, from whence arts derive the materials upon
which they are to produce their effects.
When this comparison of art with art, and of all arts with the nature of
man, is once made with success, our guiding lines are as well
ascertained and established, as they can be in matters of this
description.
This, as it is the highest style of criticism, is at the same time the
soundest; for it refers to the eternal and immutable nature of things.
You are not to imagine that I mean to open to you at large, or to
recommend to your research, the whole of this vast field of science. It
is certainly much above my faculties to reach it; and though it may not
be above yours to comprehend it fully, if it were fully and properly
brought before you, yet perhaps the most perfect criticism requires
habits of speculation and abstraction, not very consistent with the
employment which ought to occupy and the habits of mind which ought to
prevail in a practical artist. I only point out to you these things,
that when you do criticise (as all who work on a plan will criticise
more or less), your criticism may be built on the foundation of true
principles; and that though you may not always travel a great way, the
way that you do travel may be the right road.
I observe, as a fundamental ground, common to all the arts with which
we have any concern in this discourse, that they address themselves only
to two faculties of the mind, its imagination and its sensibility.
All theories which attempt to direct or to control the art, upon any
principles falsely called rational, which we form to ourselves upon a
supposition of what ought in reason to be the end or means of art,
independent of the known first effect produced by objects on the
imagination, must be false and delusive. For though it may appear bold
to say it, the imagination is here the residence of truth. If the
imagination be affected, the conclusion is fairly drawn; if it be not
affected, the reasoning is erroneous, because the end is not obtained;
the effect itself being the test, and the only test, of the truth and
efficacy of the means.
There is in the commerce of life, as in art, a sagacity which is far
from being contradictory to right reason, and is superior to any
occasional exercise of that faculty; which supersedes it; and does not
wait for the slow progress of deduction, but goes at once, by what
appears a kind of intuition, to the conclusion. A man endowed with this
faculty feels and acknowledges the truth, though it is not always in his
power, perhaps, to give a reason for it; because he cannot recollect and
bring before him all the materials that gave birth to his opinion; for
very many and very intricate considerations may unite to form the
principle, even of small and minute parts, involved in, or dependent on,
a great system of things: though these in process of time are forgotten,
the right impression still remains fixed in his mind.
This impression is the result of the accumulated experience of our whole
life, and has been collected, we do not always know how, or when. But
this mass of collective observation, however acquired, ought to prevail
over that reason, which, however powerfully exerted on any particular
occasion, will probably comprehend but a partial view of the subject;
and our conduct in life as well as in the arts is, or ought to be,
generally governed by this habitual reason: it is our happiness that we
are enabled to draw on such funds. If we were obliged to enter into a
theoretical deliberation on every occasion, before we act, life would be
at a stand, and art would be impracticable.
It appears to me, therefore, that our first thoughts, that is, the
effect which anything produces on our minds, on its first appearance, is
never to be forgotten; and it demands for that reason, because it is the
first, to be laid up with care. If this be not done, the artist may
happen to impose on himself by partial reasoning; by a cold
consideration of those animated thoughts which proceed, not perhaps from
caprice or rashness (as he may afterwards conceit), but from the fulness
of his mind, enriched with the copious stores of all the various
inventions which he had ever seen, or had ever passed in his mind. These
ideas are infused into his design, without any conscious effort; but if
he be not on his guard, he may reconsider and correct them, till the
whole matter is reduced to a commonplace invention.
This is sometimes the effect of what I mean to caution you against; that
is to say, an unfounded distrust of the imagination and feeling, in
favour of narrow, partial, confined, argumentative theories; and of
principles that seem to apply to the design in hand; without considering
those general impressions on the fancy in which real principles of
_sound reason_, and of much more weight and importance, are involved,
and, as it were, lie hid, under the appearance of a sort of vulgar
sentiment.
Reason, without doubt, must ultimately determine everything; at this
minute it is required to inform us when that very reason is to give way
to feeling.
Though I have often spoken of that mean conception of our art which
confines it to mere imitation, I must add, that it may be narrowed to
such a mere matter of experiment, as to exclude from it the application
of science, which alone gives dignity and compass to any art. But to
find proper foundations for science is neither to narrow nor to
vulgarise it; and this is sufficiently exemplified in the success of
experimental philosophy. It is the false system of reasoning, grounded
on a partial view of things, against which I would most earnestly guard
you. And I do it the rather, because those narrow theories, so
coincident with the poorest and most miserable practice, and which are
adopted to give it countenance, have not had their origin in the poorest
minds, but in the mistakes, or possibly in the mistaken interpretations,
of great and commanding authorities. We are not therefore in this case
misled by feeling, but by false speculation.
When such a man as Plato speaks of painting as only an imitative art,
and that our pleasure proceeds from observing and acknowledging the
truth of the imitation, I think he misleads us by a partial theory. It
is in this poor, partial, and so far false view of the art, that
Cardinal Bembo has chosen to distinguish even Raffaelle himself, whom
our enthusiasm honours with the name of Divine. The same sentiment is
adopted by Pope in his epitaph on Sir Godfrey Kneller; and he turns the
panegyric solely on imitation, as it is a sort of deception.
I shall not think my time misemployed, if by any means I may contribute
to confirm your opinion of what ought to be the object of your pursuit;
because, though the best critics must always have exploded this strange
idea, yet I know that there is a disposition towards a perpetual
recurrence to it, on account of its simplicity and superficial
plausibility. For this reason I shall beg leave to lay before you a few
thoughts on this subject; to throw out some hints that may lead your
minds to an opinion (which I take to be the truth), that painting is not
only to be considered as an imitation, operating by deception, but that
it is, and ought to be, in many points of view, and strictly speaking,
no imitation at all of external nature. Perhaps it ought to be as far
removed from the vulgar idea of imitation, as the refined civilised
state in which we live, is removed from a gross state of nature; and
those who have not cultivated their imaginations, which the majority of
mankind certainly have not, may be said, in regard to arts, to continue
in this state of nature. Such men will always prefer imitation to that
excellence which is addressed to another faculty that they do not
possess; but these are not the persons to whom a painter is to look, any
more than a judge of morals and manners ought to refer controverted
points upon those subjects to the opinions of people taken from the
banks of the Ohio, or from New Holland.
It is the lowest style only of arts, whether of painting, poetry, or
music, that may be said, in the vulgar sense, to be naturally pleasing.
The higher efforts of those arts, we know by experience, do not affect
minds wholly uncultivated. This refined taste is the consequence of
education and habit; we are born only with a capacity of entertaining
this refinement, as we are born with a disposition to receive and obey
all the rules and regulations of society; and so far it may be said to
be natural to us, and no further.
What has been said, may show the artist how necessary it is, when he
looks about him for the advice and criticism of his friends, to make
some distinction of the character, taste, experience, and observation in
this art of those from whom it is received. An ignorant uneducated man
may, like Apelles’s critic, be a competent judge of the truth of the
representation of a sandal; or to go somewhat higher, like Molière’s old
woman, may decide upon what is nature, in regard to comic humour; but a
critic in the higher style of art ought to possess the same refined
taste, which directed the artist in his work.
To illustrate this principle by a comparison with other arts, I shall
now produce some instances to show, that they, as well as our own art,
renounce the narrow idea of nature, and the narrow theories derived from
that mistaken principle, and apply to that reason only which informs us
not what imitation is,--a natural representation of a given object,--but
what it is natural for the imagination to be delighted with. And perhaps
there is no better way of acquiring this knowledge, than by this kind of
analogy: each art will corroborate and mutually reflect the truth on the
other. Such a kind of juxtaposition may likewise have this use, that
whilst the artist is amusing himself in the contemplation of other arts,
he may habitually transfer the principles of those arts to that which he
professes; which ought to be always present to his mind, and to which
everything is to be referred.
So far is art from being derived from, or having any immediate
intercourse with, particular nature as its model, that there are many
arts that set out with a professed deviation from it.
This is certainly not so exactly true in regard to painting and
sculpture. Our elements are laid in gross common nature,--an exact
imitation of what is before us: but when we advance to the higher state,
we consider this power of imitation, though first in the order of
acquisition, as by no means the highest in the scale of perfection.
Poetry addresses itself to the same faculties and the same dispositions
as painting, though by different means. The object of both is to
accommodate itself to all the natural propensities and inclinations of
the mind. The very existence of poetry depends on the licence it assumes
of deviating from actual nature, in order to gratify natural
propensities by other means, which are found by experience full as
capable of affording such gratification. It sets out with a language in
the highest degree artificial, a construction of measured words, such as
never is, nor ever was used by man. Let this measure be what it may,
whether hexameter or any other metre used in Latin or Greek--or rhyme,
or blank verse varied with pauses and accents, in modern
languages,--they are all equally removed from nature, and equally a
violation of common speech. When this artificial mode has been
established as the vehicle of sentiment, there is another principle in
the human mind, to which the work must be referred, which still renders
it more artificial, carries it still further from common nature, and
deviates only to render it more perfect. That principle is the sense of
congruity, coherence, and consistency, which is a real existing
principle in man; and it must be gratified. Therefore having once
adopted a style and a measure not found in common discourse, it is
required that the sentiments also should be in the same proportion
elevated above common nature, from the necessity of there being an
agreement of the parts among themselves, that one uniform whole may be
produced.
To correspond therefore with this general system of deviation from
nature, the manner in which poetry is offered to the ear, the tone in
which it is recited, should be as far removed from the tone of
conversation, as the words of which that poetry is composed. This
naturally suggests the idea of modulating the voice by art, which I
suppose may be considered as accomplished to the highest degree of
excellence in the recitative of the Italian Opera; as we may conjecture
it was in the chorus that attended the ancient drama. And though the
most violent passions, the highest distress, even death itself, are
expressed in singing or recitative, I would not admit as sound criticism
the condemnation of such exhibitions on account of their being
unnatural.
If it is natural for our senses, and our imaginations, to be delighted
with singing, with instrumental music, with poetry, and with graceful
action, taken separately (none of them being in the vulgar sense
natural, even in that separate state); it is conformable to experience,
and therefore agreeable to reason as connected with and referred to
experience, that we should also be delighted with this union of music,
poetry, and graceful action, joined to every circumstance of pomp and
magnificence calculated to strike the senses of the spectator. Shall
reason stand in the way, and tell us that we ought not to like what we
know we do like, and prevent us from feeling the full effect of this
complicated exertion of art? This is what I would understand by poets
and painters being allowed to dare everything; for what can be more
daring, than accomplishing the purpose and end of art, by a complication
of means, none of which have their archetypes in actual nature?
So far therefore is servile imitation from being necessary, that
whatever is familiar, or in any way reminds us of what we see and hear
every day, perhaps does not belong to the higher provinces of art,
either in poetry or painting. The mind is to be transported, as
Shakspeare expresses it, _beyond the ignorant present_ to ages past.
Another and a higher order of beings is supposed; and to those beings
everything which is introduced into the work must correspond. Of this
conduct, under these circumstances, the Roman and Florentine schools
afford sufficient examples. Their style by this means is raised and
elevated above all others; and by the same means the compass of art
itself is enlarged.
We often see grave and great subjects attempted by artists of another
school; who, though excellent in the lower class of art, proceeding on
the principles which regulate that class, and not recollecting, or not
knowing, that they were to address themselves to another faculty of the
mind, have become perfectly ridiculous.
The picture which I have at present in my thoughts is a sacrifice of
Iphigenia, painted by Jan Steen, a painter of whom I have formerly had
occasion to speak with the highest approbation; and even in this
picture, the subject of which is by no means adapted to his genius,
there is nature and expression; but it is such expression, and the
countenances are so familiar, and consequently so vulgar, and the whole
accompanied with such finery of silks and velvets, that one would be
almost tempted to doubt, whether the artist did not purposely intend to
burlesque his subject.
Instances of the same kind we frequently see in poetry. Parts of
Hobbes’s translation of Homer are remembered and repeated merely for the
familiarity and meanness of their phraseology, so ill corresponding with
the ideas which ought to have been expressed, and, as I conceive, with
the style of the original.
We may proceed in the same manner through the comparatively inferior
branches of art. There are in works of that class, the same distinction
of a higher and a lower style; and they take their rank and degree in
proportion as the artist departs more, or less, from common nature, and
makes it an object of his attention to strike the imagination of the
spectator by ways belonging specially to art,--unobserved and untaught
out of the school of its practice.
If our judgments are to be directed by narrow, vulgar, untaught, or
rather ill-taught reason, we must prefer a portrait by Denner or any
other high finisher, to those of Titian or Vandyck; and a landscape of
Vanderheyden to those of Titian or Rubens; for they are certainly more
exact representations of nature.
If we suppose a view of nature represented with all the truth of the
_camera obscura_, and the same scene represented by a great artist, how
little and mean will the one appear in comparison of the other, where no
superiority is supposed from the choice of the subject. The scene shall
be the same, the difference only will be in the manner in which it is
presented to the eye. With what additional superiority then will the
same artist appear when he has the power of selecting his materials, as
well as elevating his style? Like Nicolas Poussin, he transports us to
the environs of ancient Rome, with all the objects which a literary
education makes so precious and interesting to man: or, like Sebastian
Bourdon, he leads us to the dark antiquity of the Pyramids of Egypt; or,
like Claude Lorrain, he conducts us to the tranquillity of arcadian
scenes and fairyland.