this conduct sends the imagination back into antiquity; and, like the
poet, he makes the elements sympathise with his subject; whether the
clouds roll in volumes, like those of Titian or Salvator Rosa, or, like
those of Claude, are gilded with the setting sun; whether the mountains
have sudden and bold projections, or are gently sloped; whether the
branches of his trees shoot out abruptly in right angles from their
trunks, or follow each other with only a gentle inclination. All these
circumstances contribute to the general character of the work, whether
it be of the elegant, or of the more sublime kind. If we add to this the
powerful materials of lightness and darkness, over which the artist has
complete dominion, to vary and dispose them as he pleases; to diminish,
or increase them, as will best suit his purpose, and correspond to the
general idea of his work; a landscape thus conducted, under the
influence of a poetical mind, will have the same superiority over the
more ordinary and common views, as Milton’s _Allegro_ and _Penseroso_
have over a cold prosaic narration or description; and such a picture
would make a more forcible impression on the mind than the real scenes,
were they presented before us.
If we look abroad to other arts, we may observe the same distinction,
the same division into two classes; each of them acting under the
influence of two different principles, in which the one follows nature,
the other varies it, and sometimes departs from it.
The theatre, which is said _to hold the mirror up to nature_,
comprehends both those ideas. The lower kind of comedy or farce, like
the inferior style of painting, the more naturally it is represented,
the better; but the higher appears to me to aim no more at imitation, so
far as it belongs to anything like deception, or to expect that the
spectators should think that the events there represented are really
passing before them, than Raffaelle in his cartoons, or Poussin in his
sacraments, expected it to be believed, even for a moment, that what
they exhibited were real figures.
For want of this distinction, the world is filled with false criticism.
Raffaelle is praised for naturalness and deception, which he certainly
has not accomplished, and as certainly never intended; and our late
great actor, Garrick, has been as ignorantly praised by his friend
Fielding; who doubtless imagined he had hit upon an ingenious device, by
introducing in one of his novels (otherwise a work of the highest merit)
an ignorant man, mistaking Garrick’s representation of a scene in Hamlet
for reality. A very little reflection will convince us, that there is
not one circumstance in the whole scene that is of the nature of
deception. The merit and excellence of Shakspeare, and of Garrick, when
they were engaged in such scenes, is of a different and much higher
kind. But what adds to the falsity of this intended compliment is that
the best stage-representation appears even more unnatural to a person of
such a character, who is supposed never to have seen a play before, than
it does to those who have had a habit of allowing for those necessary
deviations from nature which the art requires.
In theatric representation, great allowances must always be made for the
place in which the exhibition is represented; for the surrounding
company, the lighted candles, the scenes visibly shifted in your sight,
and the language of blank verse, so different from common English; which
merely as English must appear surprising in the mouths of Hamlet, and
all the court and natives of Denmark. These allowances are made; but
their being made puts an end to all manner of deception: and further, we
know that the more low, illiterate, and vulgar any person is, the less
he will be disposed to make these allowances, and of course to be
deceived by any imitation; the things in which the trespass against
nature and common probability is made in favour of the theatre being
quite within the sphere of such uninformed men.
Though I have no intention of entering into all the circumstances of
unnaturalness in theatrical representations, I must observe, that even
the expression of violent passion is not always the most excellent in
proportion as it is the most natural; so great terror and such
disagreeable sensations may be communicated to the audience, that the
balance may be destroyed by which pleasure is preserved, and holds its
predominance in the mind: violent distortion of action, harsh screamings
of the voice, however great the occasion, or however natural on such
occasion, are therefore not admissible in the theatric art. Many of
these allowed deviations from nature arise from the necessity which
there is, that everything should be raised and enlarged beyond its
natural state; that the full effect may come home to the spectator,
which otherwise would be lost in the comparatively extensive space of
the theatre. Hence the deliberate and stately step, the studied grace of
action, which seems to enlarge the dimensions of the actor, and alone to
fill the stage. All this unnaturalness, though right and proper in its
place, would appear affected and ridiculous in a private room; _quid
enim deformius, quam scenam in vitam transferre?_
And here I must observe, and I believe it may be considered as a general
rule, that no art can be engrafted with success on another art. For
though they all profess the same origin, and to proceed from the same
stock, yet each has its own peculiar modes both of imitating nature, and
of deviating from it, each for the accomplishment of its own particular
purpose. These deviations, more especially, will not bear
transplantation to another soil.
If a painter should endeavour to copy the theatrical pomp and parade of
dress and attitude, instead of that simplicity, which is not a greater
beauty in life than it is in painting, we should condemn such pictures,
as painted in the meanest style.
So also gardening, as far as gardening is an art, or entitled to that
appellation, is a deviation from nature; for if the true taste consists,
as many hold, in banishing every appearance of art, or any traces of the
footsteps of man, it would then be no longer a garden. Even though we
define it, “Nature to advantage dress’d,” and in some sense is such, and
much more beautiful and commodious for the recreation of man; it is,
however, when so dressed, no longer a subject for the pencil of a
landscape-painter, as all landscape-painters know, who love to have
recourse to nature herself, and to dress her according to the principles
of their own art; which are far different from those of gardening, even
when conducted according to the most approved principles; and such as a
landscape-painter himself would adopt in the disposition of his own
grounds, for his own private satisfaction.
I have brought together as many instances as appear necessary to make
out the several points which I wished to suggest to your consideration
in this discourse, that your own thoughts may lead you further in the
use that may be made of the analogy of the arts, and of the restraint
which a full understanding of the diversity of many of their principles
ought to impose on the employment of that analogy.
The great end of all those arts is, to make an impression on the
imagination and the feeling. The imitation of nature frequently does
this. Sometimes it fails, and something else succeeds. I think therefore
the true test of all the arts is not solely whether the production is a
true copy of nature, but whether it answers the end of art, which is to
produce a pleasing effect upon the mind.
It remains only to speak a few words of architecture, which does not
come under the denomination of an imitative art. It applies itself, like
music (and I believe we may add poetry), directly to the imagination,
without the intervention of any kind of imitation.
There is in architecture, as in painting, an inferior branch of art, in
which the imagination appears to have no concern. It does not, however,
acquire the name of a polite and liberal art, from its usefulness, or
administering to our wants or necessities, but from some higher
principle: we are sure that in the hands of a man of genius it is
capable of inspiring sentiment, and of filling the mind with great and
sublime ideas.
It may be worth the attention of artists to consider what materials are
in their hands, that may contribute to this end; and whether this art
has it not in its power to address itself to the imagination with
effect, by more ways than are generally employed by architects.
To pass over the effect produced by that general symmetry and
proportion, by which the eye is delighted, as the ear is with music,
architecture certainly possesses many principles in common with poetry
and painting. Among those which may be reckoned as the first is that of
affecting the imagination by means of association of ideas. Thus, for
instance, as we have naturally a veneration for antiquity, whatever
building brings to our remembrance ancient customs and manners, such as
the castles of the barons of ancient chivalry, is sure to give this
delight. Hence it is that _towers and battlements_[23] are so often
selected by the painter and the poet, to make a part of the composition
of their ideal landscape; and it is from hence in a great degree, that
in the buildings of Vanbrugh, who was a poet as well as an architect,
there is a greater display of imagination than we shall find perhaps in
any other, and this is the ground of the effect we feel in many of his
works, notwithstanding the faults with which many of them are justly
charged. For this purpose, Vanbrugh appears to have had recourse to some
of the principles of the Gothic architecture; which, though not so
ancient as the Grecian, is more so to our imagination, with which the
artist is more concerned than with absolute truth.
The barbaric splendour of those Asiatic buildings, which are now
publishing by a member of this Academy,[24] may possibly, in the same
manner, furnish an architect, not with models to copy, but with hints of
composition and general effect, which would not otherwise have occurred.
It is, I know, a delicate and hazardous thing (and as such I have
already pointed it out), to carry the principles of one art to another,
or even to reconcile in one object the various modes of the same art,
when they proceed on different principles. The sound rules of the
Grecian architecture are not to be lightly sacrificed. A deviation from
them, or even an addition to them, is like a deviation or addition to,
or from, the rules of other arts,--fit only for a great master, who is
thoroughly conversant in the nature of man, as well as all combinations
in his own art.
It may not be amiss for the architect to take advantage _sometimes_ of
that to which I am sure the painter ought always to have his eyes open,
I mean the use of accidents; to follow when they lead, and to improve
them, rather than always to trust to a regular plan. It often happens
that additions have been made to houses, at various times, for use or
pleasure. As such buildings depart from regularity, they now and then
acquire something of scenery by this accident, which I should think
might not unsuccessfully be adopted by an architect, in an original
plan, if it does not too much interfere with convenience. Variety and
intricacy is a beauty and excellence in every other of the arts which
address the imagination; and why not in architecture?
The forms and turnings of the streets of London, and other old towns,
are produced by accident, without any original plan or design; but they
are not always the less pleasant to the walker or spectator, on that
account. On the contrary, if the city had been built on the regular plan
of Sir Christopher Wren, the effect might have been, as we know it is in
some new parts of the town, rather unpleasing; the uniformity might have
produced weariness, and a slight degree of disgust.
I can pretend to no skill in the detail of architecture. I judge now of
the art, merely as a painter. When I speak of Vanbrugh, I mean to speak
of him in the language of our art. To speak then of Vanbrugh in the
language of a painter, he had originality of invention, he understood
light and shadow, and had great skill in composition. To support his
principal object he produced his second and third groups or masses; he
perfectly understood in his art what is the most difficult in ours, the
conduct of the background, by which the design and invention is set off
to the greatest advantage. What the background is in painting, in
architecture is the real ground on which the building is erected; and no
architect took greater care than he that his work should not appear
crude and hard: that is, it did not abruptly start out of the ground
without expectation or preparation.
This is a tribute which a painter owes to an architect who composed
like a painter; and was defrauded of the due reward of his merit by the
wits of his time, who did not understand the principles of composition
in poetry better than he; and who knew little or nothing of what he
understood perfectly, the general ruling principles of architecture and
painting. His fate was that of the great Perrault; both were the objects
of the petulant sarcasms of factious men of letters; and both have left
some of the fairest ornaments which to this day decorate their several
countries; the façade of the Louvre, Blenheim, and Castle Howard.
Upon the whole, it seems to me, that the object and intention of all the
arts is to supply the natural imperfection of things, and often to
gratify the mind by realising and embodying what never existed but in
the imagination.
It is allowed on all hands, that facts and events, however they may bind
the historian, have no dominion over the poet or the painter. With us,
history is made to bend and conform to this great idea of art. And why?
Because these arts, in their highest province, are not addressed to the
gross senses, but to the desires of the mind, to that spark of divinity
which we have within, impatient of being circumscribed and pent up by
the world which is about us. Just so much as our art has of this, just
so much of dignity, I had almost said of divinity, it exhibits; and
those of our artists who possessed this mark of distinction in the
highest degree acquired from thence the glorious appellation of Divine.
DISCOURSE XIV
_Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distribution of
the Prizes, December 10, 1788._
Character of Gainsborough;--His Excellences and Defects.
GENTLEMEN,
In the study of our art, as in the study of all arts, something is the
result of _our own_ observation of nature; something, and that not
little, the effect of the example of those who have studied the same
nature before us, and who have cultivated before us the same art, with
diligence and success. The less we confine ourselves in the choice of
those examples, the more advantage we shall derive from them; and the
nearer we shall bring our performances to a correspondence with nature
and the great general rules of art. When we draw our examples from
remote and revered antiquity,--with some advantage undoubtedly in that
selection,--we subject ourselves to some inconveniences. We may suffer
ourselves to be too much led away by great names, and to be too much
subdued by overbearing authority. Our learning, in that case, is not so
much an exercise of our judgment, as a proof of our docility. We find
ourselves, perhaps, too much overshadowed; and the character of our
pursuits is rather distinguished by the tameness of the follower, than
animated by the spirit of emulation. It is sometimes of service, that
our examples should be near us; and such as raise a reverence,
sufficient to induce us carefully to observe them, yet not so great as
to prevent us from engaging with them in something like a generous
contention.
We have lately lost Mr. Gainsborough, one of the greatest ornaments of
our Academy. It is not our business here to make panegyrics on the
living, or even on the dead who were of our body. The praise of the
former might bear appearance of adulation; and the latter, of untimely
justice; perhaps of envy to those whom we have still the happiness to
enjoy, by an oblique suggestion of invidious comparisons. In discoursing
therefore on the talents of the late Mr. Gainsborough, my object is, not
so much to praise or to blame him, as to draw from his excellences and
defects matter of instruction to the students in our Academy. If ever
this nation should produce genius sufficient to acquire to us the
honourable distinction of an English School, the name of Gainsborough
will be transmitted to posterity, in the history of the art, among the
very first of that rising name. That our reputation in the arts is now
only rising must be acknowledged; and we must expect our advances to be
attended with old prejudices, as adversaries, and not as supporters;
standing in this respect in a very different situation from the late
artists of the Roman school, to whose reputation ancient prejudices have
certainly contributed: the way was prepared for them, and they may be
said rather to have lived in the reputation of their country, than to
have contributed to it; whilst whatever celebrity is obtained by English
artists can arise only from the operation of a fair and true comparison.
And when they communicate to their country a share of their reputation,
it is a portion of fame not borrowed from others, but solely acquired by
their own labour and talents. As Italy has undoubtedly a prescriptive
right to an administration bordering on prejudice, as a soil peculiarly
adapted, congenial, and, we may add, destined to the production of men
of great genius in our art, we may not unreasonably suspect that a
portion of the great fame of some of their late artists has been owing
to the general readiness and disposition of mankind to acquiesce in
their original prepossessions in favour of the productions of the Roman
school.
On this ground, however unsafe, I will venture to prophesy, that two of
the last distinguished painters of that country, I mean Pompeio Battoni
and Raffaelle Mengs, however great their names may at present sound in
our ears, will very soon fall into the rank of Imperiale, Sebastian
Concha, Placido Constanza, Massuccio, and the rest of their immediate
predecessors; whose names, though equally renowned in their lifetime,
are now fallen into what is little short of total oblivion. I do not say
that those painters were not superior to the artist I allude to, and
whose loss we lament, in a certain routine of practice, which, to the
eyes of common observers, has the air of a learned composition, and
bears a sort of superficial resemblance to the manner of the great men
who went before them. I know this perfectly well; but I know likewise,
that a man, looking for real and lasting reputation, must unlearn much
of the commonplace method so observable in the works of the artists whom
I have named. For my own part, I confess, I take more interest in, and
am more captivated with the powerful impression of nature, which
Gainsborough exhibited in his portraits and in his landscapes, and the
interesting simplicity and elegance of his little ordinary
beggar-children, than with any of the works of that school, since the
time of Andrea Sacchi, or perhaps we may say Carlo Maratti, two painters
who may truly be said to be _Ultimi Romanorum_.
I am well aware how much I lay myself open to the censure and ridicule
of the academical professors of other nations, in preferring the humble
attempts of Gainsborough to the works of those regular graduates in the
great historical style. But we have the sanction of all mankind in
preferring genius in a lower rank of art, to feebleness and insipidity
in the highest.
It would not be to the present purpose, even if I had the means and
materials, which I have not, to enter into the private life of Mr.
Gainsborough. The history of his gradual advancement, and the means by
which he acquired such excellence in his art, would come nearer to our
purposes and wishes, if it were by any means attainable; but the slow
progress of advancement is in general imperceptible to the man himself
who makes it; it is the consequence of an accumulation of various ideas
which his mind has received, he does not perhaps know how or when.
Sometimes indeed it happens, that he may be able to mark the time when
from the sight of a picture, a passage in an author, or a hint in
conversation, he has received, as it were, some new and guiding light,
something like inspiration, by which his mind has been expanded; and is
morally sure that his whole life and conduct has been affected by that
accidental circumstance. Such interesting accounts we may, however,
sometimes obtain from a man who has acquired an uncommon habit of
self-examination, and has attended to the progress of his own
improvement.
It may not be improper to make mention of some of the customs and habits
of this extraordinary man; points which come more within the reach of an
observer; I, however, mean such only as are connected with his art, and
indeed were, as I apprehend, the causes of his arriving to that high
degree of excellence, which we see and acknowledge in his works. Of
these causes we must state, as the fundamental, the love which he had to
his art; to which, indeed, his whole mind appears to have been devoted,
and to which everything was referred; and this we may fairly conclude
from various circumstances of his life, which were known to his
intimate friends. Among others he had a habit of continually remarking
to those who happened to be about him, whatever peculiarity of
countenance, whatever accidental combination of figure, or happy effects
of light and shadow, occurred in prospects, in the sky, in walking the
streets, or in company. If, in his walks, he found a character that he
liked, and whose attendance was to be obtained, he ordered him to his
house: and from the fields he brought into his painting-room stumps of
trees, weeds, and animals of various kinds; and designed them, not from
memory, but immediately from the objects. He even framed a kind of model
of landscapes on his table; composed of broken stones, dried herbs, and
pieces of looking-glass, which he magnified and improved into rocks,
trees, and water. How far this latter practice may be useful in giving
hints, the professors of landscape can best determine. Like every other
technical practice, it seems to me wholly to depend on the general
talent of him who uses it. Such methods may be nothing better than
contemptible and mischievous trifling; or they may be aids. I think upon
the whole, unless we constantly refer to real nature, that practice may
be more likely to do harm than good. I mention it only, as it shows the
solicitude and extreme activity which he had about everything that
related to his art; that he wished to have his objects embodied, as it
were, and distinctly before him; that he neglected nothing which could
keep his faculties in exercise, and derived hints from every sort of
combination.
We must not forget whilst we are on this subject, to make some remarks
on his custom of painting by night, which confirms what I have already
mentioned,--his great affection to his art; since he could not amuse
himself in the evening by any other means so agreeable to himself. I am
indeed much inclined to believe that it is a practice very advantageous
and improving to an artist; for by this means he will acquire a new and
a higher perception of what is great and beautiful in nature. By
candle-light, not only objects appear more beautiful, but from their
being in a greater breadth of light and shadow, as well as having a
greater breadth and uniformity of colour, nature appears in a higher
style; and even the flesh seems to take a higher and richer tone of
colour. Judgment is to direct us in the use to be made of this method of
study; but the method itself is, I am very sure, advantageous. I have
often imagined that the two great colourists, Titian and Correggio,
though I do not know that they painted by night, formed their high ideas
of colouring from the effects of objects by this artificial light: but I
am more assured, that whoever attentively studies the first and best
manner of Guercino, will be convinced that he either painted by this
light, or formed his manner on this conception.