Gainsborough’s landscapes are of two classes, or periods; his early and

his later pictures. The former are, we imagine, the best. They are

imitations of nature, or of painters who imitated nature;—such as a

_Woody Scene_; another, which is a fine imitation of Ruysdale; and a

_Road Side, with figures_, which has great truth and clearness. His

later pictures are flimsy caricatures of Rubens, who himself carried

inattention to accuracy of detail to the utmost limit that it would

bear. Lord Bacon says, that ‘distilled books are, like distilled waters,

flashy things.’ The same may be said of pictures.—Gainsborough’s latter

landscapes are bad water-colour drawings, washed in by mechanical

movements of the hand, without any communication with the eye. The truth

seems to be, that Gainsborough found there was something wanting in his

‘_early manner_,’—that is, something beyond mere literal imitation of

natural objects, and he seems to have concluded, rather hastily, that

the way to arrive at that _something more_, was to discard truth and

nature altogether. He accordingly ran from one extreme into the other.

We cannot conceive anything carried to a greater excess of slender

execution and paltry glazing, than _A Fox hunted with grey-hounds_, _A

romantic Landscape with Sheep at a Fountain_, and many others. We were,

however, much pleased with an upright landscape, with figures, which has

a fine, fresh appearance of the open sky, with a dash of the wildness of

Salvator Rosa; and also with _A Bank of a River_, which is remarkable

for the elegance of the forms and the real delicacy of the execution. _A

Group of Cattle in a warm Landscape_ is an evident imitation of Rubens,

but no more like to Rubens than ‘I to Hercules.’ _Landscape with a

Waterfall_ should be noticed for the sparkling clearness of the

distance. _Sportsmen in a Landscape_ is copied from Teniers with much

taste and feeling, though very inferior to the original picture in Lord

Radnor’s collection.

Of the fancy pictures, on which Gainsborough’s fame chiefly rests, we

are disposed to give the preference to his _Cottage Children_. There is,

we apprehend, greater truth, variety, force, and character, in this

groupe, than in any other. The colouring of the light-haired child is

particularly true to nature, and forms a sort of natural and innocent

contrast to the dark complexion of the elder sister, who is carrying it.

_The Girl going to the Well_ is, however, the general favourite. The

little dog is certainly admirable. His hair looks as if it had been just

washed and combed. The attitude of the _Girl_ is also perfectly easy and

natural. But there is a consciousness in the turn of the head, and a

sentimental pensiveness in the expression, which is not taken from

nature, but intended as an improvement on it. There is a regular

insipidity, a systematic vacancy, a round, unvaried smoothness, to which

real nature is a stranger, and which is only an idea existing in the

painter’s mind. We think the gloss of art is never so ill bestowed as on

subjects of this kind, which ought to be studies of natural history. It

is perhaps the general fault of Gainsborough, that he presents us with

an ideal common life, whereas it is only the reality that is here good

for any thing. His subjects are softened and sentimentalised too much,

it is not simple, unaffected nature that we see, but nature sitting for

her picture. Gainsborough, we suspect, from some of the pictures in this

collection, led the way to that masquerade style, which piques itself on

giving the air of an Adonis to the driver of a hay-cart, and models the

features of a milk-maid on the principles of the antique. The _Girl and

Pigs_ is hardly liable to this objection. There is a healthy glow in the

girl’s face, which seems the immediate effect of the air blowing upon

it. The expression is not quite so good. The _Fox-dogs_ are admirable.

The young one is even better than the old one, and has undeniable

hereditary pretensions. The _Shepherd Boys_ are fine. We do not like the

_Boys with Dogs fighting_. We see no reason why the one should be so

handsome and the other so ugly, why the one should be so brown and the

other so yellow, or why their dogs should be of the same colour as

themselves: nor why the worst-looking of the two should be most anxious

to part the fray. The sketch of the _Woodman_, the original of which was

unfortunately burned, fully justifies all the reputation it has

acquired. It is a really fine study from nature. There is a picture of

Gainsborough’s somewhere of _A Shepherd Boy in a Storm_, of which we

many years ago saw an indifferent copy in a broker’s shop, but in which

the unconscious simplicity of the boy’s expression, looking up with his

hands folded, and with timid wonder, the noisy chattering of a magpye

perched above him, and the rustling of the coming storm in the branches

of the trees, produced a romantic pastoral impression, which we have

often recalled with no little pleasure since that time. We have always,

indeed, felt a strong prepossession in favor of Gainsborough, and were

disappointed at not finding his pictures in the present collection, all

that we had wished to find them.

He was to be considered, perhaps, rather as a man of taste, and of an

elegant and feeling mind, than as a man of genius; as a lover of the

art, rather than an artist. He pursued it, with a view to amuse and

sooth his mind, with the ease of a gentleman, not with the severity of a

professional student. He wished to make his pictures, like himself,

amiable; but a too constant desire to please almost necessarily leads to

affectation and effeminacy. He wanted that vigour of intellect, which

perceives the beauty of truth; and thought that painting was to be

gained, like other mistresses, by flattery and smiles. It is an error

which we are disposed to forgive in one, around whose memory, both as a

man and an artist, many fond recollections, many vain regrets must

always linger. Peace to his shade![15]

MR. KEMBLE’S PENRUDDOCK

_The Champion._] [_Nov. 20, 1814._

Mr. Kemble lately appeared at this theatre in the character of

Penruddock, and was received (not indeed with waving handkerchiefs, and

laurel garlands thrown on the stage, but what is much better) with

heart-felt approbation and silent tears. His delineation of the part is

one of his most correct and interesting performances, and one of the

most perfect on the modern stage. The deeply rooted, mild, pensive

melancholy of the character, its embittered recollections and dignified

benevolence, were given by Mr. Kemble with equal truth, elegance, and

feeling. This admirable actor appeared to be the unfortunate, but

amiable individual whom he represented; and the expression of the

sentiments, the look, the tone of voice, exactly true to nature, struck

a correspondent chord in every bosom.—The range of characters, in which

Mr. Kemble shines, and is superior to every other actor, are those which

consist in the developement of some one sentiment or exclusive passion.

From a want of rapidity, of scope, and variety, he is often deficient in

expressing the bustle and complication of different interests, nor does

he possess the faculty of overpowering the mind by sudden and

irresistible bursts of passion. But in giving the habitual workings of a

predominant feeling, as in Penruddock, Coriolanus, and some others,

where all the passions move round a central point, and have one master

key, he stands unrivalled. In Penruddock, he broods over the

recollection of disappointed hope, till it becomes a part of himself, it

sinks deeper into his mind the longer he dwells upon it, and his whole

person is moulded to the character. The weight of sentiment which

oppresses him never seems suspended, the spring at his heart is never

lightened, his regrets only become more profound as they become more

durable. So in Coriolanus, he exhibits the ruling passion with the same

continued firmness, he preserves the same haughty dignity of demeanour,

the same energy of will, and unbending sternness of temper throughout.

He is swayed by a single impulse. His tenaciousness of purpose is only

irritated by opposition: he turns neither to the right nor to the left:

but the vehemence with which he moves forward increases every instant,

till it hurries him to the catastrophe. In Leontes, in the Winter’s

Tale, the growing jealousy of the king, and the exclusive possession

which it at length obtains of his mind, are marked in the finest manner,

particularly where he exclaims—

‘Is whispering nothing?

Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?

Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career

Of laughter with a sigh, a note infallible

Of breaking honesty? horsing foot on foot?

Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?

Hours minutes? the noon, midnight? and all eyes

Blind with the pin and web, but theirs; theirs only

That would unseen be wicked? Is this nothing?

Why then the world and all that’s in ‘t is nothing.

The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing,

My wife is nothing, if this be nothing.’

In the course of this enumeration every proof tells harder, his

conviction becomes more rivetted at every step of his progress, and at

the end his mind is wound up to a frenzy of despair. In such characters,

Mr. Kemble has no occasion to call in the resources of invention, or the

tricks of the art; his excellence consists entirely in the increasing

intensity with which he dwells on a given feeling or enforces a

predominant passion. In Hamlet, on the contrary, Mr. Kemble unavoidably

fails from a want of flexibility, or of that quick sensibility, which

yields to every motive, and is borne away with every breath of fancy,

which is distracted by the multiplicity of its reflections, and lost in

its own purposes. There is a perpetual undulation of feeling in the

character of Hamlet (though it must be confessed, much of this, which is

the essence of the play, is left out on the stage), but in Mr. Kemble’s

acting ‘there is no variableness nor shadow of turning.’ He plays it

like a man in armour, with a determined inveteracy of purpose, in one

undeviating strait line, which is as remote from the natural grace and

easy susceptibility of the character, as the sharp angles and abrupt

starts to produce an effect, which Mr. Kean introduces into it. Mr.

Kean’s Hamlet is, in our opinion, as much too ‘splenetic and rash,’ as

Mr. Kemble’s is too deliberate and formal. In Richard, Mr. Kemble has

not that tempest and whirlwind of the passions, that life and spirit,

and dazzling rapidity of motion, which, as it were, fills the stage, and

burns in every part, which Mr. Kean displayed in it till he was worn out

by the managers. Mr. Kean’s acting, in general, strongly reminds us of

the lines of the poet, when he describes

‘The fiery soul that working out its way

Fretted the pigmy body to decay,

And o’erinformed the tenement of clay.’

Mr. Kemble’s manner on the contrary has always something dry, hard and

pedantic in it. ‘You shall relish him more in the scholar than the

soldier.’ But his monotony does not fatigue, his formality does not

displease, because there is always sense and feeling in what he does.

The fineness of Mr. Kemble’s figure has perhaps led to that statue-like

appearance which his acting is sometimes too apt to assume; as the

diminutiveness of Mr. Kean’s person has probably forced him to bustle

about too much, and to attempt to make up for the want of dignity of

form by the violence and contrast of his attitudes. If Mr. Kemble were

to remain in the same posture for half an hour, his figure would only

produce admiration—if Mr. Kean were to stand still only for a moment,

the contrary effect would be produced.

To return to Penruddock and the Wheel of Fortune. The only novelties

were Miss Foote in Emily Tempest, and her lover, Mr. Farley, as Sir

David Daw. The latter, who is a Welch Adonis of five-and-twenty, from

the natural advantages of his person, and the artificial improvements

which were added to it, was a very admirable likeness, on a reduced

scale, of the Prince Regent. We do not know whether the burlesque was

intended, but it had a laughable effect. We acknowledge that Mr. Farley

is one of those persons whom we always welcome heartily when we see him.

What with laughing at him and laughing with him, we hardly know a more

comic personage. Miss Foote played and looked the part of Emily Tempest

very naturally and very prettily, but without giving to the character

either much interest or much elegance. Her voice is in itself as sweet

as her person, and when she exerts it, she articulates with ease and

clearness: but we should add, that she has a habit of tripping in her

common speaking, that is, of dropping her voice so low, except where a

particular emphasis is to be laid, as to make it difficult for the ear

to follow the sense.

INTRODUCTION TO AN ACCOUNT OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS’S DISCOURSES

_The Champion._] [_Nov. 27, 1814._

The general merit of these Discourses is so well established that it

would be needless to enlarge on it here. The graces of the composition

are such, that scholars have been led to suspect that it was the style

of Burke (the first prose-writer of our time) carefully subdued, and

softened down to perfection: and the taste and knowledge of the subject

displayed in them are so great, that this work has been, by common

consent, considered as a text-book on the subject of art, in our English

school of painting, ever since its publication. Highly elegant and

valuable as Sir Joshua’s opinions are, yet they are liable (so it

appears to us) to various objections; and it becomes more important to

state these objections, because, as it generally happens, the most

questionable of his precepts are those which have been the most eagerly

adopted, and carried into practice with the greatest success. The

errors, if they are such, which we shall attempt to point out, are not

casual, but systematic. There is a finespun metaphysical theory, either

not very clearly understood, or not very correctly expressed, pervading

Sir Joshua’s reasoning; and which appears to have led him in several of

the most important points to conclusions, either false or only true in

part.[16] The rules thus laid down, as general and comprehensive maxims,

are in fact founded on a set of half principles, which are true only as

far as they imply a negation of the opposite errors, but contain in

themselves the germ of other errors just as fatal: which, if strictly

and literally understood, cannot be defended, and which by being taken

in an equivocal sense, of course leave the student as much to seek as

ever. The English school of painting is universally reproached by

foreigners with the slovenly and unfinished state in which they send

their productions into the world, with their ignorance of academic rules

and neglect of the subordinate details; in other words, with aiming at

_effect_ only in all their works of art: and though it is by no means

necessary that we should adopt the defects of the French and German

painters, yet we might learn from them to correct our own. There was no

occasion to encourage our constitutional indolence and impatience by

positive rules, or to incorporate our vicious habits into a system. Or

if our defects were to be retained, at least they ought to have been

tolerated only for the sake of certain collateral and characteristic

excellencies out of which they might be thought to spring. Thus a

certain degree of precision or regularity might be sacrificed rather

than impair that boldness, vigour, and originality of conception, in

which the strength of the national genius might be supposed to lie. But

the method of instruction pursued in the Discourses seems calculated for

neither of these objects. Without endeavouring to overcome our habitual

defects, which might be corrected by proper care and study, it damps our

zeal, ardour, and enthusiasm. It places a full reliance neither on art

nor nature, but consists in a kind of fastidious tampering with both.

Both genius and industry are put out of countenance in turn. The height

of invention is made to consist in compiling from others, and the

perfection of imitation in not copying from nature. We lose the

substance of the art in catching at a shadow, and are thought to embrace

a cloud for a Goddess!

That we may not seem to prejudge the question, we shall state at once,

and without further preface, the principal points in the Discourses

which we deem either wrong in themselves, or liable to misconception and

abuse. They are the following:—

1. _That genius or invention consists chiefly in borrowing the ideas of

others, or in using other men’s minds._

2. _That the great style in painting depends on leaving out the details

of particular objects._

3. _That the essence of portrait consists in giving the general

character, rather than the individual likeness._

4. _That the essence of history consists in abstracting from

individuality of character and expression as much as possible._

5. _That beauty or ideal perfection consists in a central form._

6. _That to imitate nature is a very inferior object in art._

All of these positions appear to require a separate consideration, which

we shall give them in the following articles on this subject.

ON GENIUS AND ORIGINALITY

_The Champion._] [_December 4, 1814_

It is a leading and favourite position of the Discourses that genius and

invention are principally shewn in borrowing the ideas, and imitating

the excellences of others. Differing entirely from those ‘who have

undertaken to write on the art of painting, and have represented it as a

kind of _inspiration_, as a _gift_ bestowed upon peculiar favourites at

their birth,’ Sir Joshua proceeds to add, ‘I am, on the contrary,

persuaded, that by imitation only,’ (that is, of former masters,)

‘variety and even originality of invention is produced. I will go

further! even genius, at least what is generally called so, is the child

of imitation.’ ‘There can be no doubt but that he who has most materials

has the greatest means of invention; and if he has not the power of

using them, it must proceed from a feebleness of intellect.’ ‘Study is

the art of using other men’s minds.’ ‘It is from Raphael’s having taken

so many models, that he became himself a model for all succeeding

painters; always imitating, and always original.’ Vol. i. p. 151, 159,

169, &c. All that Sir Joshua says on this subject, is either vague and

contradictory, or has an evident bias the wrong way. That genius either

consists in, or is in any proportion to, the knowledge of what others

have done, in any branch of art or science, is a paradox which hardly

admits serious refutation. The answer is indeed so obvious and so

undeniable, that one is almost ashamed to give it. As it happens in all

such cases, an advantage is taken of the old-fashioned simplicity of

truth to triumph over it. It is another of Sir Joshua’s theoretical

opinions, often repeated, and almost as often retracted in his lectures,

that there is no such thing as genius in the first formation of the

human mind. That is not the question here, though perhaps we may recur

to it. But, however a man may come by the faculty which we call

_genius_, whether it is the effect of habit and circumstances, or the

gift of nature, yet there can be no doubt, that what is meant by the

term, is a power of original observation and invention. To take it

otherwise, is a solecism in language, and a misnomer in art. A work

demonstrates genius exactly as it contains what is to be found no where

else, or in proportion to what we add to the ideas of others from our

own stores, and not to what we receive from them. It may contain also

what is to be found in other works, but it is not that which stamps it

with the character of genius. The contrary view of the question can only

tend to deter those who have genius from using it, and to make those who

are without genius, think they have it. It is attempting to excite the

mind to the highest efforts of intellectual excellence, by denying the

chief ground-work of all intellectual distinction. It is from the same

general spirit of distrust of the existence or power of genius that Sir

Joshua exclaims with confidence and triumph, ‘There is one precept,

however, in which I shall only be opposed by the vain, the ignorant, and

the idle. I am not afraid that I shall repeat it too often. You MUST

HAVE NO DEPENDENCE ON YOUR OWN GENIUS. If you have great talents,

industry will improve them. If you have but moderate abilities, it will

supply their deficiency. Nothing is denied to well directed labour;

nothing can be obtained without it. Not to enter into metaphysical

discussions on the nature and essence of genius, I will venture to

assert, that assiduity unabated by difficulty, and a disposition eagerly

directed to the object of its pursuit, will produce effects similar to

those which some call the _result of natural powers_.’ P. 44, 45. Yet so

little influence had the metaphysical theory, which he wished to hold

_in terrorem_ over the young enthusiast, on Sir Joshua’s habitual

unreflecting good sense, that he afterwards, in speaking of the

attainments of Carlo Maratti, which, as well as those of Raphael, he

attributes to his imitation of others, says, ‘It is true there is

nothing very captivating in Carlo Maratti; but this proceeded from a

want which cannot be completely supplied, that is, _want of strength of

parts. In this, certainly, men are not equal_; and a man can bring home

wares only in proportion to the capital with which he goes to market.

Carlo, by diligence, made the most of what he had: but there was

undoubtedly a heaviness about him, which extended itself uniformly to

his invention, expression, his drawing, colouring, and the general

effect of his pictures. The truth is, he never equalled any of his

patterns in any one thing, and he added little of his own.’ P. 172. Poor

Carlo, it seems, then, was excluded from the benefit of the sweeping

clause in this general charter of dulness, by which all men are declared

to be equal in natural powers, and to owe their superiority only to

superior industry. What is here said of Carlo Maratti is, however, an

exact description of the fate of all those, who, without any genius of

their own, pretend to avail themselves of the genius of others. Sir

Joshua attempts to confound genius and the want of it together, by

shewing, that some men of great genius have not disdained to borrow

largely from their predecessors, while others, who affected to be

entirely original, have really invented little of their own. This is

from the purpose. If Raphael, for instance, had only copied his figure

of St. Paul from Massacio, or his groupe, in the sacrifice of Lystra,

from the ancient bas-relief, without adding other figures of equal force

and beauty, he would have been considered as a mere plagiarist. As it

is, the pictures here referred to, would undoubtedly have displayed more

genius, that is, more originality, if those figures had also been his

own invention. Nay, Sir Joshua himself, in giving the preference of

genius to Michael Angelo, does it on this very ground, that ‘Michael

Angelo’s works seem to proceed from his own mind entirely, and that mind

so rich and abundant, that he never needed, or seemed to disdain to look

abroad for foreign help;’ whereas, ‘Raffaelle’s materials are generally

borrowed, though the noble structure is his own.’ On the justice of this

last statement, we shall remark presently. Perhaps Reynolds’s general

account of the insignificance of genius, and the all-sufficiency of the

merits of others, may be looked upon as an indirect apology for the

gradual progress of his own mind, in selecting and appropriating the

beauties of the great artists who went before him: he appears anxious to

describe and dignify the process, from which he himself derived such

felicitous results, but which, as a general system of instruction, can

only produce mediocrity and imbecility. It is a lesson which a well-bred

drawing-master might with great propriety repeat by rote to his

fashionable pupils, but which a learned professor, whose object was to

lead the aspiring mind to the heights of fame, ought not to have offered

to the youth of a nation. ‘You must have no dependence on your own

genius,’ is, according to Sir Joshua, the universal foundation of all

high endeavours, the beginning of all true wisdom, and the end of all

true art. Would Sir Joshua have given this advice to Michael Angelo, or

to Raphael, or to Correggio? Or would he have given it to Rembrandt, or

Rubens, or Vandyke, or Claude Lorraine, or to our own Hogarth? Would it

have been followed, or what would have been the consequence, if it

had?—That we should never have heard of any of these personages, or only

heard of them as instances to prove that nothing great can be done

without genius and originality! We are at a loss to conceive where, upon

the principle here stated, Hogarth would have found the materials of his

Marriage a la Mode? or Rembrandt his Three Trees? or Claude Lorraine his

Enchanted Castle, with that one simple figure in the foreground,—

‘Sole sitting by the shores of old romance?’

Or from what but an eye always intent on nature, and brooding over

‘beauty, rendered still more beautiful’ by the exquisite feeling with

which it was contemplated, did he borrow his verdant landscapes and his

azure skies, the bare sight of which wafts the imagination to Arcadian

scenes, ‘thrice happy fields, and groves, and flowery vales,’ breathing

perpetual youth and freshness? If Claude had gone out to study on the

banks of the Tyber with Sir Joshua’s first precept in his mouth,

‘Individual nature produces little beauty,’ and had returned poring over

the second, which is like unto it, ‘You must have no dependence on your

own genius,’ the world would have lost one perfect painter.[17] Rubens

would have shared the same fate, with all his train of fluttering

Cupids, warriors and prancing steeds, panthers and piping Bacchanals,

nymphs, fawns and satyrs, if he had not been reserved for ‘the tender

mercies’ of the modern French critics, David and his pupils, who think

that the Luxembourg gallery ought to be destroyed, to make room for

their own execrable performances. Or we should never have seen that fine

landscape of his in the Louvre, with a rainbow on one side, the whole

face of nature refreshed after the shower, and some shepherds under a

group of trees piping to their heedless flocks, if instead of painting

what he saw and what he felt to be fine, he had set himself to solve the

learned riddle proposed by Sir Joshua, whether _accidents in nature_

should be introduced in landscape, since Claude has rejected them. It is

well that genius gets the start of criticism; for if these two great

landscape painters, not being privileged to consult their own taste and

inclinations, had been compelled to wait till the rules of criticism had

decided the preference between their different styles, instead of having

both, we should have had neither. The folly of all such comparisons

consists in supposing that we are reduced to a single alternative in our

choice of excellence, and the true answer to the question, ‘Which do you

like best, Rubens’s landscapes or Claude’s?’ is the one which was given

on another occasion—both. If it be meant which of the two an artist

should imitate, the answer is, the one which he is likely to imitate

best. As to Rembrandt, he would not have stood the least chance with

this new theory of art. But the warning sounds, ‘you must have no

dependence on your own genius,’ never reached him in the little study

where he watched the dim shadows cast by his dying embers on the wall,

or at other times saw the clouds driven before the storm, or the blaze

of noon-day brightness bursting through his casement on the mysterious

gloom which surrounded him. What a pity that his old master could not

have received a friendly hint from Sir Joshua, that getting rid of his

vulgar musty prejudices, he might have set out betimes for the regions

of _virtù_, have scaled the ladder of taste, have measured the antique,

lost himself in the Vatican, and after ‘wandering through dry places,

seeking he knew not what, and finding nothing,’ have returned home as

great a critic and painter as so many others have done! Of Titian,

Vandyke, or Correggio we shall say nothing here, as we have said so much

in another place.

A theory, then, by which these great artists could have been lost to

themselves and to the art, and which explains away the two chief

supports and sources of all art, _nature_ and _genius_, into an

unintelligible jargon of words, cannot be intrinsically true. The

principles thus laid down may be very proper to conduct the machinery of

a royal academy, or to precede the distribution of prizes to the

students, or to be the topics of assent and congratulation among the

members themselves at their annual exhibition dinner: but they are so

far from being calculated to foster genius or to direct its course, that

they can only blight or mislead it, wherever it exists, and ‘lose more

men of talents to this nation,’ by the dissemination of false

principles, than have been already lost to it by the want of any.

But it may be said, that though the perfection of portrait or landscape

may be derived from the immediate study of nature, yet higher subjects

are not to be found in it; that there we must raise our imaginations by

referring to artificial models; and that Raphael was compelled to go to

Michael Angelo and the antique. Not to insist that Michael Angelo

himself, according to Sir Joshua’s account, formed an exception to this

rule, it has been well observed on this statement, that what Raphael

borrowed was to conceal or supply his natural deficiencies: what he

excelled in was his own. Raphael never had the grandeur of form of

Michael Angelo, nor the correctness of form of the antique. His

expression was perfectly different from both, and perhaps better than

either, certainly better than what we have seen of Michael Angelo in the

prints from him compared with those from Raphael in the Vatican. In

Raphael’s faces, particularly his women, the expression is superior to

the form; in the antique statues, the form is evidently the principal

thing. The interest which they excite is in a manner external, it

depends on a certain grace and lightness of appearance, joined with

exquisite symmetry and refined susceptibility to voluptuous emotions,

but there is no pathos; or if there is, it is the pathos of present and

physical distress, rather than of sentiment. There is not that deep

internal interest which there is in Raphael; which broods over the

suggestions of the heart with love and fear till the tears seem ready to

gush out, but that they are checked by the deeper sentiments of hope and

faith. What has been remarked of Leonardo da Vinci, is still more true

of Raphael, that there is an angelic sweetness and tenderness in his

faces peculiarly adapted to his subjects, in which natural frailty and

passion are purified by the sanctity of religion. They answer exactly to

Milton’s description of the ‘human face divine.’ The ancient statues are

finer objects for the eye to contemplate: they represent a more perfect

race of physical beings, but we have no sympathy with them. In Raphael,

all our natural sensibilities are raised and refined by pointing

mysteriously to the interests of another world. The same intensity of

passion appears also to distinguish Raphael from Michael Angelo. Michael

Angelo’s forms are grander, but they are not so full of expression.

Raphael’s, however ordinary in themselves, are full of expression even

to o’erflowing: every nerve and muscle is impregnated with feeling, or

bursting with meaning. In Michael Angelo, on the contrary, the powers of

body and mind appear superior to any events that can happen to them, the

capacity of thought and feeling is never full, never tasked or strained

to the utmost that it will bear. All is in a lofty repose and solitary

grandeur which no human interests can shake or disturb. It has been said

that Michael Angelo painted _man_, and Raphael _men_; that the one was

an epic, the other a dramatic painter. But the distinction we have made

is perhaps truer and more intelligible, _viz._ that the former gave

greater dignity of form, and the latter greater force and refinement of

expression. Michael Angelo borrowed his style from sculpture, which

represented in general only single figures, (with subordinate

accompaniments,) and had not to express the conflicting actions and

passions of a multitude of persons. He is much more picturesque than

Raphael. The whole figure of his Jeremiah droops and hangs down like a

majestic tree surcharged with showers. His drawing of the human figure

has all the characteristic freedom and boldness of Titian’s

landscapes.[18]

To return to Sir Joshua. He has given one very strange proof that there

is no such thing as genius, namely, that ‘the degrees of excellence

which proclaims genius is different in different times and places.’ If

Sir Joshua had aimed at a confutation of himself, he could not have done

it more effectually. For what is it that makes the difference but that

which originates in a man’s self, _i.e._, is first done by him, is

genius, and when it is no longer original, but borrowed from former

examples, it ceases to be genius, since no one can establish this claim

by following the steps of others, but by going before them? The test of

genius may be different, but the thing itself is the same,—a power at

all times to do or to invent what has not before been done or invented.

It is plain from the passage above cited what influenced Sir Joshua’s

mind in his views on this subject. He quarrelled with genius from being

annoyed with premature pretensions to it. He was apprehensive that if

genius were allowed to stand for any thing, industry would go for

nothing in the minds of ‘the vain, the ignorant, and the idle.’ But as

genius will do little without labour in an art so mechanical as

painting, so labour will do still less without genius. Indeed, wherever

there is true genius, there will be true labour, that is, the exertion

of that genius in the field most proper for it. Sir Joshua, from his

unwillingness to admit one extreme, has fallen into the other, and has

mistaken the detection of an error for a demonstration of the truth.

‘The human understanding,’ says Luther, ‘resembles a drunken clown on

horseback; if you set it up on one side, it tumbles over on the other.’

ON THE IMITATION OF NATURE

_The Champion._] [_December 25, 1814._

The imitation of nature is the great object of art. Of course, the

principles by which this imitation should be regulated, form the leading

topic of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s lectures. It is certain that the

mechanical imitation of individual objects, or the parts of individual

objects, does not always produce beauty or grandeur; or, generally

speaking that _the whole of art does not consist in copying nature_.

Reynolds seems hence disposed to infer, that the whole of art consists

in _not_ imitating individual nature. This is also an error, and an

error on the worst side.

Sir Joshua’s general system may be summed up in two words,—‘_That the

great style in painting consists in avoiding the details, and

peculiarities of particular objects_.’ This sweeping principle he

applies almost indiscriminately to portrait, history, and landscape;—and

he appears to have been led to the conclusion itself, from supposing the

imitation of particulars to be inconsistent with general truth and

effect.

It will not be unimportant to inquire how far this opinion is

well-founded: for it appears to us, that the highest perfection of the

art depends, not on the separation, but on the union (as far as

possible) of general truth and effect with individual distinctness and

accuracy.

First, it is said that the great style in painting, as it relates to the

immediate imitation of external nature, consists in avoiding the details

of particular objects.

It consists neither in giving nor avoiding them, but in something quite

different from both. Any one may avoid the details. So far, there is no

difference between the Cartoons, and a common sign-painting. Greatness

consists in giving the larger masses and proportions with truth;—this

does not prevent giving the smaller ones too. The utmost grandeur of

outline, and the broadest masses of light and shade, are perfectly

compatible with the greatest minuteness and delicacy of detail, as may

be seen in nature. It is not, indeed, common to see both qualities

combined in the imitations of nature, any more than the combination of

other excellences; nor are we here saying to which the principal

attention of the artist should be directed; but we deny, that,

considered in themselves, the absence of the one quality is necessary or

sufficient to the production of the other.

If, for example, the form of the eyebrow is correctly given, it will be

perfectly indifferent to the truth or grandeur of the design, whether it

consist of one broad mark, or is composed of a number of hair-lines,

arranged in the same order. So, if the lights and shades are disposed in

fine and large masses, the _breadth_ of the picture, as it is called,

cannot possibly be affected by the filling up of those masses with the

details;—that is, with the subordinate distinctions which appear in

nature. The anatomical details in Michael Angelo, the ever-varying

outline of Raphael, the perfect execution of the Greek statues, do not

assuredly destroy their symmetry or dignity of form;—and in the finest

specimens of the composition of colour, we may observe the largest

masses combined with the greatest variety in the parts, of which those

masses are composed.

The _gross_ style consists in giving no details,—the _finical_ in giving

nothing else. Nature contains both large and small parts,—both masses

and details; and the same may be said of the most perfect works of art.

The union of both kinds of excellence, of strength with delicacy, as far

as the limits of human capacity and the shortness of human life would

permit, is that which has established the reputation of the greatest

masters. Farther,—their most finished works are their best. The

predominance, however, of either excellence in these masters, has, of

course, varied according to their opinion of the relative value of these

different qualities,—the labour they had the time or patience to bestow

on their works,—the skill of the artist, or the nature and extent of his

subject. But, if the rule here objected to,—that the careful imitation

of the parts injures the effect of the whole,—be at once admitted,

slovenliness would become another name for genius, and the most

unfinished performance would necessarily be the best. That such has been

the confused impression left on the mind by the perusal of Sir Joshua’s

discourses, is evident from the practice as well as the conversation of

many (even eminent) artists. The late Mr. Opie proceeded entirely on

this principle. He left many admirable studies of portraits,

particularly in what relates to the disposition and effect of light and

shade. But he never finished any of the parts, thinking them beneath the

attention of a great man. He went over the whole head the second day as

he had done the day before, and therefore made no progress. The picture

at last, having neither the lightness of a sketch, nor the accuracy of a

finished work, looked coarse, laboured, and heavy.

‘Would you then have an artist finish like Denner?’ is the triumphant

appeal which is made as decisive against all objections. To which, as it

is an appeal to authority, the proper answer seems to be,—‘No; but we

would have him finish like Titian or Correggio.’ Denner is an example of

finishing not to be followed, but shunned, because _he did nothing but

finish_; because he finished ill, and because he finished to excess;—for

in all things there is a certain proportion of means to ends. He pored

into the littlenesses of objects, till he lost sight of nature, instead

of imitating it. He represents the human face, perhaps, as it might

appear through a magnifying glass, but certainly not as it ever appears

to us. It is the business of painting to express objects as they appear

naturally, not as they may be made to appear artificially. His flesh is

as blooming and glossy as a flower or a shell. Titian’s finishing, on

the contrary, is equally admirable, because it is engrafted on the most

profound knowledge of effect, and attention to the character of what he

represents. His pictures have the exact look of nature, the very tone

and texture of flesh. The endless variety of his tints is blended into

the greatest simplicity. There is a proper degree both of solidity and

transparency. All the parts hang together: every stroke tells, and adds

to the effect of the rest.

To understand the value of any excellence, we must refer to the use

which has been made of it, not to instances of its abuse. If there is a

certain degree of ineffectual microscopic finishing, which we never find

united with an attention to other higher and more indispensable parts of

the art, we may suspect that there is something incompatible between

them, and that the pursuit of the one diverts the mind from the

attainment of the other. But this is the real point to stop at—where

alone we should limit our theory or our efforts. Wherever different

excellences have been actually united to a certain point of perfection,

to that point (abstractedly speaking) we are sure that they may, and

ought to be united again. There is no occasion to add the incitements of

indolence, affectation, and false theory, to the other causes which

contribute to the decline of art!

Sir Joshua seems, indeed, to deny that Titian finished much, and says

that he produced, by two or three strokes of his pencil, effects which

the most laborious copyists would in vain attempt to equal. It is true

that he availed himself, in a considerable degree, of what is called

_execution_, to facilitate his imitation of nature, but it was to

facilitate, not to supersede it. By the methods of scumbling or glazing,

he often broke the masses of his flesh,—or by laying on lumps of colour

produced particular effects, to a degree that he could not otherwise

have reached without considerable loss of time. We do not object to

execution: it saves labour, and shews a mastery both of hand and eye.

But then there is nothing more distinct than execution and _daubing_.

Indeed, it is evident, that the only use of execution is to give the

details more compendiously, and sometimes, even more happily. Leave out

all regard to the details, reduce the whole into crude unvarying masses,

and it becomes totally useless; for these can be given just as well

without execution as with it. Titian, however, made a very moderate,

though a very admirable use of this power; and those who copy his

pictures will find, that the simplicity is in the results, not in the

details.

The other Venetian painters made too violent a use of execution, unless

their subjects formed an excuse for them. Vandyke successfully employed

it in giving the last finishing to the details. Rembrandt employed it

still more, and with more perfect truth of effect.—Rubens employed it

equally, but not so as to produce an equal resemblance of nature. His

pencil ran away with his eye.—To conclude our observations on this head,

we will only add, that while the artist thinks that there is any thing

to be done, either to the whole or to the parts of his picture, which

can give it still more the look of nature, if he is willing to proceed,

we would not advise him to desist.—This rule is still more necessary to

the young student, for he will relax in his attention as he grows older.

And again, with respect to the subordinate parts of a picture, there is

no danger that he will bestow a disproportionate degree of labour upon

them, because he will not feel the same interest in copying them, and

because a much less degree of accuracy will serve every purpose of

deception;—the nicety of our habitual observations being always in

proportion to our interest in the objects.—Sir Joshua somewhere objects

to the attempt to deceive by painting; and his reason is, that wax-work,

which deceives most effectually, is a very disagreeable as well as

contemptible art. It might be answered, first, that nothing is much more

unlike nature than such figures generally are, and farther, that they

only produce the appearance of prominence and relief, by having it in

reality,—in which they are just the reverse of painting.

Secondly, with regard to EXPRESSION, we can hardly agree with Sir Joshua

that ‘_the perfection of imitation consists in giving the general idea

or character, not the peculiarities of individuals_.’—We do not think

this rule at all well-founded with respect to portrait-painting, nor

applicable to history to the extent to which Sir Joshua carries it. For

the present, we shall confine ourselves to the former of these.

No doubt, if we were to chuse between the general character and the

peculiarities of feature, we ought to prefer the former. But they are so

far from being incompatible with, that they are not without some

difficulty distinguishable from, each other. There is indeed a general

look of the face, a predominant expression arising from the

correspondence and connection of the different parts, which it is always

of the first and last importance to give; and without which no

elaboration of detached parts, or marking of the peculiarity of single

features, is worth any thing; but which at the same time, is certainly

not destroyed, but assisted, by the careful finishing, and still more by

giving the exact outline of each part.

It is on this point that the French and English schools differ, and (in

my opinion) are both wrong. The English seem generally to suppose, that,

if they only leave out the subordinate parts, they are sure of the

general result. The French, on the contrary, as idly imagine, that by

attending to each separate part, they must infallibly arrive at a

correct whole,—not considering that, besides the parts, there is their

relation to each other, and the general character stamped upon them by

the mind itself, which to be seen must be felt,—for it is demonstrable

that all expression and character are perceived by the mind, and not by

the eye only. The French painters see only lines, and precise

differences;—the English only general masses, and strong effects. Hence

the two nations constantly reproach one another with the difference of

their styles of art; the one as dry, hard and minute, the other as

gross, gothic, and unfinished; and they will probably remain for ever

satisfied _with each other’s defects_, which afford a very tolerable

fund of consolation on either side.

There is something in the two styles, which arises, perhaps, from

national countenance as well as character:—the French physiognomy is

frittered away into a parcel of little moveable compartments and

distinct signs of intelligence,—like a telegraphic machinery. The

English countenance, on the other hand, is too apt to sink into a

lumpish mass, with very few ideas, and those set in a sort of stupid

stereotype.

To return to the proper business of portrait-painting. We mean to speak

of it, not as a lucrative profession, nor as an indolent amusement, (for

we interfere with no man’s profits or pleasures), but as a _bona fide_

art, the object of which is to exercise the talents of the artist, and

to add to the stock of ideas in the public. And in this point of view,

we should imagine that that is the best portrait which contains the

fullest representation of individual nature.

Portrait-painting is the biography of the pencil, and he who gives most

of the peculiarities and details, with most of the general

character,—that is of _keeping_,—is the best biographer, and the best

portrait-painter. What if Boswell (the prince of biographers) had not

given us the scene between Wilkes and Johnson at Dilly’s table, or had

not introduced the little episode of Goldsmith strutting about in his

peach-coloured coat after the success of his play,—should we have had a

more perfect idea of the general character of those celebrated persons

from the omission of these particulars? Or if Reynolds had not painted

the former as ‘_blinking Sam_,’ or had given us such a representation of

the latter as we see of some modern poets in some modern magazines, the

fame of that painter would have been confined to the circles of

fashion,—where they naturally look for the same selection of beauties in

a portrait, as of topics in a dedication, or a copy of complimentary

verses!

It has not been uncommon that portraits of this kind, which professed to

admit all the peculiarities, and to heighten all the excellences of a

face, have been elevated by ignorance and affectation, to the dignified

rank of historical portrait. But in fact they are merely _caricature

transposed_: that is, as the caricaturist makes a mouth wider than it

really is, so the painter of _flattering likenesses_ (as they are

termed) makes it not so wide, by a process just as mechanical, and more

insipid. Instead, however, of objecting captiously to common theory or

practice, it will perhaps be better to state at once our own conceptions

of historical portrait. It consists, then, in seizing the predominant

form or expression, and preserving it with truth throughout every part.

It is representing the individual under one consistent, probable, and

striking view; or shewing the different features, muscles, etc. in one

action, and modified by one principle. A face thus painted, is

_historical_;—that is, it carries its own internal evidence of truth and

nature with it; and the number of individual peculiarities, as long as

they are true to nature, cannot lessen, but must add to the general

strength of the impression.

To give an example or two of what we mean. We conceive that the common

portrait of Oliver Cromwell would be less valuable and striking if the

wart on the face were taken away. It corresponds with the general

roughness and knottiness of the rest of the face;—or if considered

merely as an accident, it operates as a kind of circumstantial evidence

of the genuineness of the representation. Sir Joshua Reynolds’s portrait

of Dr. Johnson has altogether that sluggishness of outward

appearance,—that want of quickness and versatility,—that absorption of

faculty, and look of purblind reflection, which were characteristic of

his mind. The accidental discomposure of his wig indicates his habits.

If, with the same felicity and truth of conception, this portrait (we

mean the common one reading) had been more made out, it would not have

been less historical, though it would have been more like and natural.

Titian’s portraits are the most historical that ever were painted; and

they are so for this reason, that they have most consistency of form and

expression. His portraits of Hippolito de Medici, and of a young

Neapolitan nobleman in the Louvre, are a striking contrast in this

respect. All the lines of the face in the one;—the eyebrows, the nose,

the corners of the mouth, the contour of the face,—present the same

sharp angles, the same acute, edgy, contracted expression. The other

face has the finest expansion of feature and outline, and conveys the

most exquisite idea possible of mild, thoughtful sentiment. The harmony

of the expression constitutes as great a charm in Titian’s portraits, as

that of colour. The similarity sometimes objected to them, is partly

national, and partly arises from the class of persons whom he painted.

He painted only Italians; and in his time none but persons of the

highest rank, senators or cardinals, sat for their pictures.

Sir Joshua appears to have been led into several errors by a false use

of the terms _general_ and _particular_. Nothing can be more different

than the various application of both these terms to different things,

and yet Sir Joshua constantly uses and reasons upon them as invariable.

There are three senses of the expression _general character_, as applied

to ideas or objects. In the first, it signifies the general appearance

or aggregate impression of the whole object, as opposed to the mere

detail of detached parts. In the second, it signifies the class, or what

a number of such objects have in common with one another, to the

exclusion of their characteristic differences. In this sense it is

tantamount to _abstract_. In the third it signifies what is usual or

common, in opposition to mere singularity, or accidental exceptions to

the ordinary course of nature. The general idea or character of a

particular face, _i.e._ the aggregate impression resulting from all the

parts combined, is surely very different from the abstract idea, or what

it has in common with several others. If on giving the former all

character depends; to give nothing but the latter is to take away all

character. The more a painter _comprehends_ of what he sees, the more

valuable his work will be: but it is not true that his excellence will

be the greater, the more he _abstracts_ from what he sees.—There is an

essential distinction which Sir Joshua has not observed. The details and

peculiarities of nature are only inconsistent with abstract ideas, and

not with general or aggregate effects. By confounding the two things,

Sir Joshua excludes the peculiarities and details not only from his

historical composition, but from an enlarged view and comprehensive

imitation of individual nature.

We have here attempted to give some account of what should be meant by

the _ideal_ in portrait-painting: in our next and concluding article on

this subject, we shall attempt an explanation of this term, as it

applies to historical painting.

ON THE IDEAL.

_The Champion._] [_January 8, 1815._

‘For I would by no means be thought to comprehend those writers of

surprising genius, the authors of immense romances, or the modern novel

and Atalantis writers, who, without any assistance from nature or

history, record persons who never were, or will be, and facts which

never did, nor possibly can happen: whose heroes are of their own

creation, and their brains the chaos whence all their materials are

collected. Not that such writers deserve no honour; so far from it, that

perhaps they merit the highest. One may apply to them what Balzac says

of Aristotle, that they are _a second nature_; for they have no

communication with the first, by which authors of an inferior class, who

cannot stand alone, are obliged to support themselves, as with

crutches.’—FIELDING’S _Joseph Andrews_, vol. ii.

What is here said of certain writers of romance, would apply equally to

a great number of painters of history. These persons, not without the

sanction of high authority, have come to the conclusion that they had

only to quit the vulgar path of truth and reality, in order that they

‘might ascend the brightest heaven of invention,’—and that to get rid of

nature was all that was necessary to the loftiest flights of art, as the

soul disentangled from the load of matter soars to its native skies. But

this is by no means the truth. All art is built upon nature; and the

tree of knowledge lifts its branches to the clouds, only as it has

struck its roots deep into the earth. He is the greatest artist, not who

leaves the materials of nature behind him, but who carries them with him

into the world of invention;—and the larger and more entire the masses

in which he is able to apply them to his purpose, the stronger and more

durable will his productions be. Sir Joshua Reynolds admits that the

knowledge of the individual forms and various combinations of nature, is

necessary to the student, but it is only in order that he may _avoid_

them, and steering clear of all representation of things as they

actually exist, wander up and down in the empty void of his own

imagination, having nothing better to cling to, than certain shadowy

middle forms, made up of an abstraction of all others, and containing

nothing in themselves. Stripping nature of substance and accident, he is

to exhibit a decompounded, disembodied, vague, ideal nature in her

stead, seen through the misty veil of metaphysics, and covered with the

same fog and haze of confusion, while

‘Obscurity her curtain round him draws,

And siren sloth a dull quietus sings.’

The concrete, and not the abstract, is the object of painting, and of

all the works of imagination. History-painting is _imaginary_

portrait-painting. The portrait-painter gives you an individual, such as

he is in himself, and vouches for the truth of the likeness as a matter

of fact: the historical painter gives you the individual such as he is

likely to be,—that is, approaches as near to the reality as his

imagination will enable him to do, leaving out such particulars as are

inconsistent with the preconceived idea,—as are merely trifling and

accidental,—and retaining all such as are striking, probable, and

consistent. Because the historical painter has not the same immediate

data to go upon, but must connect individual nature with an imaginary

subject, is that any reason why he should discard individual nature

altogether, and thus leave nothing for his imagination, or the

imagination of the spectator to work upon? Portrait and history differ

as a narration of facts or a probable fiction differ; but abstraction is

the essence of neither. That is not the finest historical head which has

least the look of nature, but which has most the look of nature, if it

has the look of history also. But it has the look of nature, _i.e._ of

striking and probable nature,—as it has a marked and decided character,

and not a character of indifference: and as the features and expression

are consistent with themselves, not as they are common to others. The

ideal is that which answers to the idea of something, and not to the

idea of any thing, or of nothing. Any countenance strikes most upon the

imagination, either in a picture or in reality, which has most

distinctness from others, and most identity with itself. The keeping in

the character, not the want of character, is the essence of history.

Without some such limitation as we have here given, on the general

statement of Sir Joshua, we see no resting-place where the painter or

the poet is to make his stand, so as not to be pushed to the utmost

verge of naked common-place inanity,—nor do we understand how there

should be any such thing as poetry or painting tolerated. A _tabula

rasa_, a verbal definition, the bare name, must be better than the most

striking description or representation;—the argument of a poem better

than the poem itself,—or the catalogue of a picture than the original

work. Where shall we stop in the easy down-hill pass of effeminate,

unmeaning insipidity? There is one circumstance, to be sure, to

recommend the system here objected to, which is, that he who proposes

this ideal perfection to himself, can hardly fail to succeed in it. An

artist who paints on the infallible principle of not imitating nature,

in representing the meeting of Telemachus and Calypso, will not find it

difficult to confound all difference of sex or passion, and in

pourtraying the form of Mentor, will leave out every distinctive mark of

age or wisdom. In representing a Grecian marriage he will refine on his

favourite principles till it will be possible to transpose the features

of the bridegroom and the bride without the least violation of

propriety; all the women will be like the men; and all like one another,

all equally young, blooming, smiling, elegant, and insipid. On Sir

Joshua’s theory of the _beau ideal_, Mr. Westall’s pictures are perhaps

the best that ever were painted, and on any other theory, the worst; for

they exhibit an absolute negation of all expression, character, and

discrimination of form and colour.

We shall endeavour to explain our doctrine by some examples which appear

to us either directly subversive of, or not very obviously included in,

Sir J. Reynolds’s theory of history painting, or of the principles of

art in general. Is there any one who can possibly doubt that Hogarth’s

pictures are perfectly and essentially _historical_?—or that they convey

a story perfectly intelligibly, with faces and expressions which every

one must recognise? They have evidently a common or general character,

but that general character is defined and modified by individual

peculiarities, which certainly do not take away from the illusion or the

effect any more than they would in nature. There is, in the polling for

votes, a fat and a lean lawyer, yet both of them are lawyers, and

lawyers busy at an election squabble. It is the same with the voters,

who are of all descriptions, the lame, the blind, and the halt, yet who

all convey the very feeling which the scene inspires, with the greatest

variety and the greatest consistency of expression. The character of

_Mr. Abraham Adams_ by Fielding, is somewhat particular, and even

singular: yet it is not less intelligible or striking on that account;

and his lawyer and his landlady, though copied from individuals in real

life, had yet, as he himself observes, existed four thousand years, and

would continue to make a figure in the world as long as certain passions

were found united with certain situations, and operating on certain

dispositions.

It will, we suppose, be objected that this, though history and

invention, is not high history, or poetical invention. We would answer

then at once by appealing to Shakespeare. It will be allowed that his

characters are poetical as well as natural; yet the individual portrait

is almost as striking as the general expression of nature and passion.

It is this and this only which distinguishes him from the French school.

Dr. Johnson, proceeding on the same theoretical principles as his friend

Sir Joshua, affirms, that the excellence of Shakespeare’s characters

consists in their generality. We grant in one sense it does; but we will

add that it consists in their particularity also. Are the admirable

descriptions of the kings of Thrace and Inde in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale,

less poetical or historical, or ideal, because they are distinguished by

traits as characteristic as they are striking;—in their lineaments,

their persons, their armour, their other attributes, the one black and

broad, the other tall, and fair, and freckled, with yellow crisped locks

that glittered as the sun. The four white bulls, and the lions which

accompany them are equally fine, but they are not fine because they

present no distinct image to the mind. The effect of this is somehow

lost in Dryden’s Palamon and Arcite, and the poetry is lost with it.

Much more is it necessary to combine individuality with the highest

works of art in painting, ‘whose end and use both at the first, now is,

and was, to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature.’ The painter gives

the degree and peculiarity of expression where words in a manner leave

off, and if he does not go beyond mere abstraction, he does nothing. The

cartoons of Raphael, and his pictures in the Vatican, are sufficiently

historical, yet there is hardly a face or figure in any of them which is

anything more than fine and individual nature finely disposed. The late

Mr. Barry, who could not be suspected of a prejudice on this side of the

question, speaks thus of them,—‘In Raphael’s pictures (at the Vatican)

of the Dispute of the Sacrament and the School of Athens, one sees all

the heads to be entirely copied from particular characters in nature,

nearly proper for the persons and situation which he adapts them to; and

he seems to me only to add and take away what may answer his purpose in

little parts, features, &c.: conceiving, while he had the head before

him, ideal characters and expressions, which he adapts these features

and peculiarities of face to. This attention to the particulars which

distinguish all the different faces, persons and characters, the one

from the other, gives his pictures quite the verity and unaffected

dignity of nature, which stamp the distinguishing differences betwixt

one man’s face and body and another’s.’

If any thing is wanting to the conclusiveness of this testimony, it is

only to look at the pictures themselves, particularly the Miracle of the

Conversion, and the Assembly of Saints, which are little else than a

collection of divine portraits, in natural and expressive

attitudes,—full of the loftiest thought and feeling, and as varied as

they are fine. It is this reliance on the power of nature, which has

produced those master-pieces by the prince of painters, in which

expression is all in all;—where one spirit—that of truth—pervades every

part, brings down heaven to earth, mingles cardinals and popes with

angels and apostles, and yet blends and harmonises the whole by the true

touches and intense feeling of what is beautiful and grand in nature. It

is no wonder that Sir Joshua, when he first saw Raphael’s pictures in

the Vatican, was at a loss to discover any great excellence in them, if

he was looking out for his theory of the ideal, of neutral character and

middle forms.

Another authority, which has been in some measure discovered since the

publication of Sir Joshua’s Discourses, is to be found in the Elgin

Marbles, taken from the Acropolis, and supposed to be the works of the

celebrated Phidias. The process of fastidious refinement, and flimsy

abstraction, is certainly not visible there. The figures have all the

ease, the simplicity, and variety of nature, and look more like living

men turned to stone than any thing else. Even the details of the

subordinate parts, the loose folds in the skin, the veins under the

belly or on the sides of the horses, more or less swelled as the animal

is more or less in action, are given with scrupulous exactness. This is

true nature, and true history. In a word, we can illustrate our position

here better than we could with respect to painting, by saying that these

invaluable remains of antiquity are precisely like casts taken from

nature.—Michael Angelo and the antique may still be cited against us,

and we wish to speak on this subject with great diffidence. We confess,

they appear to us much more artificial than the others, but we do not

think that this is their excellence. For instance, it strikes us that

there is something theatrical in the air of the _Apollo_, and in the

_Hercules_ an ostentatious and over-laboured display of the knowledge of

the muscles. Perhaps the fragment of the _Theseus_ at Lord Elgin’s has

more grandeur as well as more nature than either of them. The form of

the limbs, as affected by pressure or action, and the general sway of

the body, are better preserved in it. The several parts in the later

Greek statues are more balanced, made more to tally like modern periods;

each muscle is more equally brought out, and highly finished, and is so

far better in itself, but worse as a part of a whole. If these wonderful

productions have a fault, it is the want of simplicity, of a due

subordination of parts, which sometimes gives them more a look of

perfect lay-figures put into attitudes, than of real imitations of

nature. The same objection may be urged against the works of Michael

Angelo, and is indeed the necessary consequence either of selecting from

a number of different models, or of proceeding on a scientific knowledge

of the structure of the different parts; for the physical form is

something given and defined, but motion is various and infinite. The

superior symmetry of form, common to the ancient statues, we have no

hesitation in attributing to the superior symmetry of the models in

nature, and to the superior opportunity for studying them.

In general, we would be understood to mean, that the ideal is not a

voluntary fiction of the brain, a fanciful piece of patch-work, a

compromise between the defects of nature, or an artificial balance

struck between innumerable deformities, (as if we could form a perfect

idea of beauty though we never had seen any such thing,) but a

preference of what is fine in nature to what is less so. There is

nothing fine in art but what is taken almost immediately and entirely

from what is finer in nature. Where there have been the finest models in

nature, there have also been the finest works of art. The Greek statues

were copied from Greek forms. Their portraits of individuals were often

superior to their personifications of their gods; the head of the

_Antinous_, for example, to that of the _Apollo_. Raphael’s expressions

were taken from Italian faces; and we have heard it observed, that the

women in the streets of Rome seem to have walked out of his pictures in

the Vatican.

If we are asked, then, what it is that constitutes historic expression

or ideal beauty, we should answer, not (with Sir Joshua) abstract

expression or middle forms, but consistency of expression in the one,

and symmetry of form in the other.

A face is historical, which is made up of consistent parts, let those

parts be ever so peculiar or uncommon. Those details or peculiarities

only are inadmissible in history, which do not arise out of any

principle, or tend to any conclusion,—which are merely casual,

insignificant, and unconnected,—which do not _tell_; that is, which

either do not add to, or which contradict the general result,—which are

not integrant parts of one whole, however strange or irregular that

whole may be. That history does not require or consist in the middle

form or central features is proved by this, that the antique heads of

fauns and satyrs, of _Pan_ or _Silenus_, are perfectly grotesque and

singular; yet are as undoubtedly historical, as the Apollo or the Venus,

because they have the same predominant, intelligible, characteristic

expression throughout. _Socrates_ is a person whom we recognise quite as

familiarly, from our general acquaintance with human nature, as

_Alcibiades_.[19] The simplicity or the fewness of the parts of a head

facilitates this effect, but is not necessary to it. The head of a

negro, a mulatto, &c. introduced into a picture is always historical,

because it is always distinct from the rest, and uniform with itself.

The face covered with a beard is historical for the same reason, because

it presents distinct and uniform masses. Again, a face, not so in

itself, becomes historical by the mere force of passion. The same strong

passion moulds the features into the same emphatic expression, by giving

to the mouth, the eyes, the forehead, etc., the same expansion or

contraction, the same voluptuous movement or painful constraint. All

intellectual and impassioned faces are historical;—the heads of

philosophers, poets, lovers, and madmen. Passion sometimes produces

beauty by this means, and there is a beauty of form, the effect entirely

of expression; as a smiling mouth, not beautiful in common, becomes so

by being put into that action.

Sir Joshua was probably led to his opinions on art in general by his

theory of beauty, which he makes to consist in a certain central form,

the medium of all others. In the first place, this theory is

questionable in itself: or if it were not so, it does not include many

other things of much more importance in historical painting (though

perhaps not so in sculpture[20]) namely, character, which necessarily

implies individuality; expression, which is the excess of thought or

feeling, strength or grandeur of form, which is excess also.—There

seems, however, to be a certain symmetry of form, as there is a certain

harmony of sounds or colours, which gives pleasure, and produces beauty,

independently of custom. Custom is undoubtedly one source or condition

of beauty, but it appears to be rather its limit than its essence; that

is, there are certain given forms and proportions established by nature

in the structure of each thing, and sanctioned by custom, without which

there can only be distortion and incongruity, but which alone do not

produce beauty. One kind is more beautiful than another; and the objects

of the same kind are not beautiful merely as we are used to them. The

rose or lily is more beautiful than the daisy, the swan than the crow,

the greyhound than the beagle, the deer than the wild goat; and we

invariably prefer the Greek to the African face, though our own inclines

more to the latter. We admire the broad forehead, the straight nose, the

small mouth, the oval chin. Regular features are those which record and

assimilate most to one another. The Greek face is made up of smooth

flowing lines, and correspondent features; the African face of sharp

angles and projections. A row of pillars is beautiful for the same

reason. We confess, on this subject of beauty, we are half-disposed to

fall into the mysticism of Raphael Mengs, who had some notion about a

principle of _universal harmony_, if we did not dread the censure of an

eminent critic.

CHARLEMAGNE: OU L’ÉGLISE DÉLIVRÉE.

_The Champion_] [_December 18, 1814._

It seldom happens that the same family produces an emperour and an epic

poet. So it is, however, in the present instance. The brother of

Buonaparte may be allowed to take his rank among poets, as Buonaparte

himself has done among kings. But the historian of Charlemagne does not

appear to us to present quite the same formidable front to the

established possessors of the seats of the muses, as the imitator of

Charlemagne did to the hereditary occupiers of thrones. A self-will

without controul, an ambition without bounds, a gigantic daring which

built its confidence of success on the contempt of danger, were the

means by which Buonaparte obtained and lost his portentous power; and by

which he would probably have lost it on the borders of the Ganges, or

among the sands of the Red Sea, if he had not been prevented by the

snows of Russia.

Our poet is not the same monster of genius that his brother was of

power. In the career of fame, he does not risk the success of his

reputation by the unlimited extravagance of his pretensions. His muse

does not disdain to borrow the conceptions of others, or to submit to

the rules of art; and the boldest flights of his imagination seldom pass

the bounds of a well-regulated enthusiasm. _Charlemagne_ is the work of

a very clever man, rather than a great poet; it displays more talent

than genius, more ingenuity than invention. It is more artificial than

original. In saying this, we would not be understood to mean, that it is

without considerable novelty, either of description or sentiment. Far,

very far from it: almost every page presents examples of both, equally

striking and elegant, which it would be difficult to refer immediately

to any similar passages in other authors. But the whole wants character:

it does not bear the stamp of the same presiding mind: no new world of

imagination is opened to the view: we do not feel the presence of a

power which we have never felt before, and which we can never forget.

The stanzas are all equally or proportionably good: but they are as good

separately, as taken together: they do not run into one another; they do

not make a poem. There is no strong impulse given, no overpowering

grandeur of effect. In scarcely any part of the story does the mind look

back with terror and delight at what is past, or hurry on with eager

curiosity to what is to come. The art is too apparent. The author is too

busy in managing his materials, in selecting, adorning, varying, and

amplifying them to the best advantage: but they seem something external

to him. His subject has not taken entire possession of his mind, and

therefore he does not take full possession of his readers. Yet it is

certain that all the materials of poetry are here;—imagery, incident,

character, passion, thought, and observation—all but the divine

enthusiasm of the poet, which can alone communicate true warmth and

enthusiasm to others.

There is one praise which we most willingly bestow on this poem, which

is, that it is not _French_. It is not another HENRIADE:—that is, it is

not poetry devoid of all imagination, and of every thing like

imagination. On the contrary, it abounds with variety and distinctness

of conception, and is evidently written on the model of Italian poetry.

We were a little surprised to find that the author had not adopted the

common heroic French verse, but has borrowed the Italian Stanza with

varying rhymes, and a little half verse in the middle, which has an

agreeable effect enough in the lighter parts of the poem, but does not

accord so well with the more serious and impressive. The following

stanzas will give our readers an idea of the metre, and of the general

style of description.—They represent Charlemagne traversing the Alps the

night before a battle.

‘Au dessus du mont Jove, un mont plus escarpé

S’élance dans la nue, et sa cime effrayante

N’offre point des sentiers la trace rassurante.

Par les vents orageux sans cesse il est frappé.

Ici, plus de forêts, plus de germe de vie:

Sur la surface unie

L’ardente canicule en vain darde ses feux:

Des glaçons entassés (piramide éternelle!)

Etouffent la nature; et dans ces tristes lieux,

A sa fécondité la terre est infidèle.

C’est par là qu’aujourd’hui Charles s’ouvre un passage,

Les coursiers délaissés errent dans le vallon:

Et par mille détours le terrible escadron

Avance lentement sur la pente sauvage.

L’astre des nuits suivait son cours silencieux;

Les vents impétueux

Entrechoquant par fois les lances formidables,

S’opposaient vainement à ces audacieux,

Qui suivant de leur chef les pas infatigables,

Touchent enfin le sol du piton sourcilleux.

En cercles resserrés près du fils de Pepin,

Ses dignes compagnons au loin jettent la vue

Sur une ténébreuse et profonde étendue

De mobiles vapeurs, de nuages sans fin.

Appuyés sur leur glaive ils dominent la sphere

Où le bruyant tonnerre

S’allume par le choc des principes divers.

Le barde peint ainsi les ombres eclatantes

D’Oscar et de Fingal errant au haut des airs,

Et brandissant encor leurs lances flamboyantes.

Tels, auprès d’Ilion, les dieux enfants d’Homère,

Franchissant de l’Ida les sommets ébranlés,

Près du fils de Saturne en foule rassemblés,

Sont décrits préparant les destins de la terre.

Ces fantômes divins furent jadis des preux:

Les siècles ténébreux,

Osant de Jéhova dénaturer l’image,

Dressèrent des autels aux héros fabuleux:[21]

Et de l’idolatrie affirmissant l’ouvrage,

De ces guerriers obscurs[21] Homère fit de dieux

Ainsi les paladins, environnant leur roi,’ etc.

_Chant huitieme._

We might refer to many other passages equally picturesque, though

perhaps to none so poetical. Such as the comparison of Roland taken from

the scene of combat by Oliver, to a lion led off by an African, that

still roars as he follows his well-known guide;—the first appearance of

Armelie, the death of Wilfred at the altar, the vanishing of Adelard

from the sight of Charlemagne, the forest of Eresbourg, the Druidical

sacrifice, and the funeral rites of Orlando in the valley of

Ronscevalles.

The language of the poem often bears a striking resemblance to the

language of painting, or seems like a detailed description of some _chef

d’œuvre_ of the art, rather than the creation of the poet’s fancy. We

should have little doubt that the solitary church in the valley of

Ronscevalles is copied from that in the back-ground of Titian’s _St.

Peter Martyr_, and the massacre at the altar in the first canto is

certainly taken from some picture of Raphael!

In the sentiments of this poem there is more feebleness, a greater

number of Gallicisms, than in the imagery. We meet with such courtly

expressions as these:

‘Les Francs à chaque instant voient de nouveaux guerriers

_Solliciter l’honneur d’embrasser leur defense_!’

The devil addresses the deity with the following piece of high-flown

sentimentality:

‘Pour braver les remords, et la gêne et la flamme,

Je ne demande rien _qu’un seul rayon d’espoir_.’

We know, indeed, from whence the allusion is taken, and we wonder the

more at the affectation implied in the alteration. It is like some of

Pope’s refinements on Isaiah. In giving an account of the sorrow which

prevails in heaven at the disasters of the church of Christ, the author

has expressed a trite theological sentiment with more felicity than we

recollect to have seen it expressed before:

‘On entend à ces mots toutes les voix célestes

D’une douce tristesse exhaler les soupirs.

La harpe ainsi murmure au souffle des zéphirs.

Les habitants du ciel n’ont point ces sons funestes—

Qu’ici-bas les malheurs arrachent aux humains.

Aux peines, aux chagrins,

Aux passions du monde ils ne sont plus en proie;

D’un amour sans mélange ils goûtent la douceur:

Leurs maux sont moins amers, plus purs que notre joie;

Et leur tristesse à peine altère leur bonheur.’

The conception of his Heaven is much more just than that of Hell, though

the execution is (almost as a matter of course) less powerful. The two

figures of Adam and Moses, in the former, are particularly fine:

‘Le père des humains voit sa nombreuse race,

Et calcule, pensif, le nombre des élus!

Moïse près de lui, d’un seul regard embrasse

Les enfants d’Israël en tous lieux répandus.’

Our poet has, very good-naturedly, (and we hope with the approbation of

his holiness the Pope, to whom this work is dedicated,) set aside two

stanzas for the secret conveyance of the souls of virtuous heathens and

of little children, into the abodes of the blest.

The author of _Charlemagne_ has constructed his hell upon an entirely

new and fanciful theory. We see no sort of reason why Satan should not,

in strict propriety, sit upon a throne; nor why his followers should be

degraded from the rank of fallen angels into modern French

revolutionists. We like Milton’s account much better in all respects;

and our author himself, as is the natural consequence of all

affectation, flounders into contradiction in the very next verse, where

he gives a most superb account of Lucifer. In the same spirit, he has

made a more enlightened distribution of crimes and punishments; and

established an entire new set of regulations and bye-laws in the regions

of the damned. Alexander and the two Brutuses figure there with Cain and

other murderers, while ‘the noble Cæsar’ is exempted. Now we have no

notion of such a philosophical hell as our poetical casuist would carve

out. This celebrated place is, we think, of all others the least liable

to plans of reform. It is almost the oldest establishment upon record,

and placed quite out of the reach of the progress of reason and

metaphysics. We hate disputes in poetry, still more than in religion. At

least, whatever appeals to the imagination, ought to rest on undivided

sentiment, on one undisputed tradition, one catholic faith.[22] Besides,

the whole account of the infernal regions is an excrescence, equally

misplaced and improbable. None of the heroes of the poem descend there,

but as Satan is brought thence to appear to Charlemagne in the shape of

a lying priest, this opportunity is taken to describe the geography of

the place according to the latest discoveries. There is one point in

which we agree with the poet, _viz._ in his indignation against tyrants

and their flatterers, though he does not go so far as honest Quevedo,

who, when his hero wonders to see so few kings in hell, makes his guide

reply sullenly, ‘Here are all that ever reigned.’

We shall conclude our remarks on this part of the poem with the author’s

description of the punishment of Cain, which we think the most striking.

‘Ici rugit Cain, les cheveux hérissés,

Et portant sur son front la marque sanguinaire.

“Cain, Cain, réponds: qu’as-tu fait de ton frère?”

A cette voix du Ciel tous ses sens sont glacés;

Cain croit voir Abel éclatant de lumière;

Et d’un bras téméraire,

Il ose encor frapper l’objet de son courroux:

Il voudrait le priver d’une seconde vie:

Mais l’ombre glorieuse échappant à ses coups,

Redouble dans son cœur les tourments de l’envie.’

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

_The Champion._] [_December 25, 1814._

The story of a poem is seldom worth a long description. It may be

sufficient to say in the present case, that the danger to which the

church was exposed, and from which it was afterwards delivered, arose

from the second marriage of _Charlemagne_ with _Armelie_, the daughter

of _Didier_, the King of the Lombards, who was exerting himself to

depose Pope Adrian. Charlemagne had divorced his first wife, _Adelinde_,

but he is warned in a vision to take her again to his bosom. He does so,

and _Didier_ and his daughter consequently become the enemies of this

Christian Emperor, who takes arms to defend the Holy See. After the

usual casualties and fluctuations of fortune, the son of Pepin finally

triumphs.

On a more careful examination, we see no reason to alter our first

opinion of this poem. It has given us no strong impulse, nor left any

permanent trace on our minds. It opens no new and rich vein of poetry,

though certainly great talents are shewn in the use which is made of

existing materials. Perhaps it may be said that this is all that can be

done in a modern poem: if so, that _all_ is hardly worth the doing.

There is no one who has borrowed his materials more than Milton, or who

has made them more completely his own: there is hardly a line which does

not breathe the same lofty spirit, hardly a thought or image which he

has not clothed with the majesty of his genius. It is the same in

reading other great poets. The informing mind is every where present to

us. Who is there that does not know and feel sensibly the majestic

copiousness of Homer, the polished elegance of Virgil, enamoured of its

own workmanship,—the severe grandeur of Dante, the tender pathos of

Tasso, the endless voluptuousness of Spenser, and the unnumbered graces

of Ariosto? Even the mysterious solemnity of Ossian, and the wild

romantic interest of Walter Scott, are something gained to the

imagination. But in the present instance, we do not feel the same

participation with the author’s mind, nor accession of strength to our

own. So little is it in the power even of the most accomplished art to

counterfeit nature. The true Florimel did not differ more from the

Florimel which was made for the witches’ son, than true genius from the

most successful and elaborate imitation of it.

We shall close these remarks with extracting two passages which in the

opinion of our readers will perhaps be thought to amount to a complete

refutation of our objections. The first is the description of the

funeral rites of Orlando, in the thirteenth canto.

‘Gaiffre a suivi son guide au fond du précipice,

Un clocher solitaire a frappé ses regards:

Dans les jours du repos, les fidèles épars

Accourent au signal du divin sacrifice.

Ici du haut des monts descendent les pasteurs.

La vierge des douleurs

De ces mortels obscurs y reçoit la prière:

Sur un autel de bois on a sculpté ses traits;

Les nombreux ex-voto de la divine mère

Dans ces lieux écartés attestant les bienfaits.

Un son plaintif et sourd vient de frapper les airs;

C’est l’airain qui gémit pour les pompes funèbres.

Dans le temple le jour a fait place aux ténèbres;

Des signes de la mort les parois sont couverts.

Un saint pontife offrait la victime ineffable;

Et sa voix secourable

Invoquait pour nos preux le céleste repos.

Un simple sarcophage au milieu de l’enceinte

Retrace à tous les yeux la tombe du héros,

Et répand dans les cœurs une tristesse sainte.

Le prêtre des hameaux, suivant l’antique usage,

Dans l’Eglise chrétienne en tout temps révéré,

Trois fois avec l’eau sainte et l’encensoir sacré

Fait solennellement le tour du sarcophage.

“Dans le sein de ton Dieu sois heureux à jamais:

Roland, repose en paix.”

Du pontife telle est la fervente prière.

Ces mots ont terminé le sacrifice saint;

Et la foule se rend dans le champ funéraire

Ou gît, sous une croix, le corps du paladin.’

In the nineteenth canto, Lawrence and her children, after their escape

from Bourdeaux, arrive at the castle of Melaric, an old christian

knight, when the following example of perfect description occurs:—

‘La nuit envellopait les champs & les remparts;

Sur les murs menaçants de la salle gothique

Une teinte plus sombre & plus mélancholique

Couvrait les boucliers, les glaives, & les dards;

Le vent du soir soufflait des gorges du Pyrène;

Et sa fougueuse halcine

Des armures des preux entrechoquait l’airain.

Les lances, les cimiers rendent des sons funèbres:

Leur murmure plaintif ressemble au cri lointain

D’un guerrier qui succombe au milieu des ténèbres.’

The author in his notes gives us to understand that he is about another

epic poem, the hero of which is Isolier, a native of Corsica, and which

is to bear the same relation to Charlemagne, that the Odyssey does to

the Iliad.

LUCIEN BUONAPARTE’S COLLECTION, ETC.

_The Champion._] [_January 22, 1815._

We have been able to obtain access to the almost inaccessible collection

of the Prince of Canino. The liberality with which the collections of

foreign princes are thrown open to strangers and the public is often

boasted of; but this liberality, we suppose, ceases when the same

collections are exposed in this country for sale. The pictures of Lucien

Buonaparte, which are valued at £40,000, are kept in most ‘vile

durance’; and even the ticket of admission, which we presented to a

person who seems placed at the door to keep persons out, and not to let

them in, was inspected and objected to with the same scrupulous jealousy

as if it had been a bank-note presented in payment of the purchase-money

of the collection. A cursory glance round the room was sufficient to

explain the source of so much mystery and caution. The pictures are in

general mere trash. Nor is the general dearth of attraction relieved by

even a few examples of first-rate excellence. The only exception to

these remarks which struck us was an exquisite female head by Leonardo

da Vinci. It is one of the finest specimens we have seen of that great

master, both for expression, drawing, the spirit and delicacy of the

execution, and the preservation of the tone of colouring. There is in

Leonardo’s female heads a grace and charm of expression, which is

peculiar to himself—a character of natural sweetness and playful

tenderness, mixed up with the pride of conscious intellect, and with the

graceful reserve of personal dignity. He blends purity with

voluptuousness; and the expression of his women is equally

characteristic of ‘the mistress or the saint!’ His pictures are always

worked up to the utmost height of the idea he had conceived, with an

elaborate felicity. No painter made more a religion of his art! His

fault is, that his style of execution is too mathematical; that is, his

pencil does not follow the graceful variety of nature, but substitutes

certain refined gradations both of form and colour, producing equal

changes in equal distances, with a mechanical uniformity. Leonardo was a

man of profound learning as well as genius; and perhaps transferred too

much of the formality of science to his favourite art. In making this

objection, we have had in our eye two of the most celebrated pictures,

the _Jocunda_ in the Louvre, and the _St. John_ in the possession of Mr.

Hope. The picture in the present collection has more flexibility and

variety; as well as greater heightening of colour; and perhaps the

latter effect may be the cause of the former. It is not impossible that

a certain degree of monotony may have been sometimes produced by the

rubbing off of the higher tints and finishing touches of the pencil, so

as to leave little more of the picture than the general ground-work.

To return to the collection before us. The only remaining pictures which

can excite any interest are, some curious specimens of the early

masters, Ghirlandaio, Bellino, and others;—some small sketches of

Titian; a finely coloured Holy Family by the same master; a portrait by

Sebastian del Piombo; a sketch of Diana and Acteon, by A. Caracci; a

landscape by Ruysdael; and a transfiguration, said to be by Vasari.

Besides these, there is a Frenchified Salvator Rosa, coloured pink and

blue, a copy of Domenichino’s head of St. Jerome, one or two pretended

Claudes, and some _amatory_ pictures of the modern French school. To

these shall we add the picture of Lucien Buonaparte himself? Nothing

certainly can go beyond it in its way. It is the very _priggism_ of

portrait-painting.

We have already said something of the French style of portraits, and we

shall here add a few remarks in explanation, though we are aware that

any hints of a want of refinement will be thrown away on a nation so

entirely _spirituel_ as the French, and we are also afraid that some of

our own artists may take credit to themselves for as many excellences,

as we may charge their neighbours with defects.

The French systematically paint all objects as they would paint _still

life_; and hence they in general never paint any thing _but still life_.

It is not possible to paint that which has life and motion by the same

mechanical process by which that which has neither life nor motion may

be represented. Thus it is not possible to imitate the human

countenance, which is moveable and animated, as you would imitate a

piece of drapery, or a chair, or a table, in which the physical

appearance is every thing, and that appearance always remains the same.

The industry of the eye and hand will go a great way in giving the

effect of a number of parts of any external object, arranged in the same

order; but to give truth of effect to that which is always varying, and

always expressive of more than strikes the senses, imagination and

feeling are absolutely required. Whenever there is life and motion, life

and motion become the principal things; and any attempt to give these,

without a distinct operation or feeling of the mind as to what

constitutes their essence, by a mere attention to the physical form, or

particular details, must necessarily destroy all appearance both of one

and the other. To instance in expression only. This can only be given by

being felt. Take for instance the outline of part of a face, and let it

be so placed as to form part of the outline of a rock, or any other

inanimate object. A copy of this, done with tolerable care, will seem to

be the same thing: but let it be known that this is really a part of a

human countenance, and then it will probably be found to be quite

different _from the difference of expression_. We distinguish all

objects more or less by habitual knowledge; and this knowledge is always

acute in proportion to the interest excited, that is, to the intensity

of the feeling or passion which is combined with the immediate

impression on the senses. Expression is therefore only caught by

sympathy; and it has been received as a maxim, that no painter can

succeed in giving an expression which is totally foreign to his own

character. There are some painters who cannot paint a wise man, and

others who cannot paint a fool: some who cannot give strength, and

others softness to their works. It is the want of character, of

flexibility, and transient expression, which is the great defect of

French portraits. Without the indications of the mind breathed into the

countenance and moulding the features, the whole must appear stiff,

hard, mean, unconnected, and lifeless—like the mask of a face, not like

the face itself—forced, affected, and unnatural. Another consequence of

this mode of copying the letter and leaving out the spirit of all

objects, is that the face in general looks the least finished part of

the picture, for while the other parts remain the same, this necessarily

varies, and the only way to make up for the want of literal exactness,

must be by seizing the force and animation of the expression. A head

that does not look like life, cannot look like any thing else.—The

portrait of Lucien Buonaparte is a striking confirmation of these

remarks. We do not know how to describe it otherwise than by saying that

it looks as if the artist had first modelled the face in wax, oiled it

over, painted the lips purple, stuck on a pair of artificial eyebrows,

and inserted a pair of dark blue glass eyes, and then set to work to

copy every part of this perverse misrepresentation, with tedious and

disgusting accuracy. In a portrait of the author of Charlemagne, one has

a right to expect some refinement of intellect and feeling, if not the

marks of elevated genius. No such thing. The picture has just the

appearance of a spruce holiday mechanic, with all the hardness,

littleness, and vulgarity of expression which is to be found in nature,

where the countenance has not been expanded by thought and sentiment,

and in art, where this expression has been entirely overlooked. The

French artists themselves, both men and women, seem to be aware of the

dilemma to which they are reduced, and prefer copying from plaster

casts, or lay figures, to painting from the life; which baffles the

mechanical minuteness and ‘laborious foolery’ of their style of art.

They set about painting a face as they would about engraving a picture.

This cannot possibly answer. From the general idea of the liveliness and

volatility of the French character one would be apt to suppose, that

instead of the method here described, their artists would have adopted

the happier mode proposed by Pope in describing his characters of women:

‘Come, then, the colours and the ground prepare,

Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air,

Chuse a firm cloud, before it falls, and in it

Catch, ere the change, the Cynthia of a minute!’

But the days of Watteau are over, and the plodding gravity of the Dutch

has succeeded to the natural levity of French art. It is no wonder: for

both proceed from a want of real concentration and force of

intellect.[23]

There is another picture in this collection which we would recommend to

the attention of all _whom it may concern_, as a most instructive lesson

of the vanity of human pretensions, and the capriciousness of national

taste. It is the historical picture of the return of Marcus Sextus, by

Guerin, one of the most admired painters of the modern French school.

This picture combines all the vices of that school in their most

confirmed and aggravated state, and yet it drew, at the time when it was

first exhibited in Paris, crowds of admirers, whose raptures were

excited exactly in proportion as it flattered their habitual prejudices,

and outraged every principle of common sense. It consists of three

figures, that of the husband standing in front of the bed, the wife who

lies dead upon it being behind him, and the daughter kneeling at his

feet. Now all these figures seem as if they had been cut out of

pasteboard, smeared over with putty to represent the shadows, and then

stuck flat against the canvass to make a picture. This is not truth, nor

invention, nor art, nor nature: but it is the French style of painting.

Their pictures are sections of statues, or architectural elevations of

the human figure. They have the effect neither of painting nor

sculpture; for painting has colour, and the appearance of substance,

sculpture has real substance without colour; but these have neither

colour, substance, nor the appearance of it, but consist of mere lines.

Whatever they may do, we cannot think this the highest style of history:

because proceeding on arithmetical principles only, it wants two out of

three of the physical requisites of the art of painting. The picture of

Guerin is painted in strong contrast of light and shade, and ought to

have proportionable prominence and relief. But from the habit of

attending only to lines and detached parts, that is, of never combining

the lesser masses into larger ones, or of contemplating the general

appearance of nature, the whole effect is frittered away, and neither

the prominent parts stand out, nor do the receding ones fall back. The

same flat, imbecile, and dingy effect is produced, as by smearing white

streaks upon a black ground, without knowledge or design, or reference

to any actual object in nature. The drawing in this picture is equally

characteristic of the general French style, and equally repulsive. It is

not easy to explain the elaborate absurdity of the process: but it is in

reality this. The painter has taken the figure of an antique statue for

the figure of his hero. But finding that the position would not answer

his purpose; he therefore gets a lay-figure made from a cast of this

statue, and distorting it into the attitude he wants, places it against

some object which props it up, with the two feet stretched out before

it, as if it could neither move nor stand; and this the artist calls

painting history, and copying the ancients. This is what no other nation

dare attempt. The expression which is given to these mockeries of art

and nature, is of a piece with the rest. It is either copied tamely,

servilely, and without effect, from the model before them, or if any

thing is added to it, all grace and feeling is instantly lost in the

extravagance of grimace and affectation. The ambition of these refiners

on nature is like that of Pygmalion to give life and animation to a

stone, but no miracle has yet come to their assistance.[24] The French

are incapable of painting true history, for they are a people

essentially without imagination, and without a knowledge of the passions

that belong to it. All that is powerful in them, is immediate

sensation—the rest is either levity, or formality, or distortion. Take

the picture of the deluge by Girodet. In this, a daughter is represented

clinging to her mother by the hair of her head, the mother is clinging

to the husband, he is at the same time supporting his father with his

other arm, and is enabled to support the whole of this exquisite family

groupe by taking hold of the branch of a tree which has just broken off

by the weight. This effort of imagination almost equals the exploit of

the clown in the pantomime, who contrives to balance a dozen men on one

another’s shoulders. If Poussin or Raphael had been fortunate enough to

study in the central schools of Paris, what a difference would this new

principle of grouping have introduced into their pictures of the Deluge

and the Incendio del Borgo.

Before we quit this subject of French art, we would notice that there

are two pictures of the Emperor Napoleon to be seen at present, one in

Leicester-fields, which is very bad, and another in the Adelphi, by

Lefebre, which is tolerably good. The last is one of the best French

portraits we have ever seen. The effect however is only good, very near,

and is best when each part is seen through a magnifying glass. There is

considerable character, firmness of drawing, and prominence in the

features. Still it does not convey an adequate idea of the man. It is

heavy, perplexed, and sullen, without sufficient fierceness or energy,

and indeed without either the high or the bad qualities of the original.

It has, notwithstanding, the appearance of being what is understood by a

faithful likeness, and only wants that full developement of the workings

of the mind, which every portrait ought to have, and which, in a

portrait like the present, would be invaluable.

BRITISH INSTITUTION

_The Champion._] [_February 5, 1815._

The Exhibition of this year, which opens to the public on Monday, is

said to be inferior to the last:—that was said to be inferior to the one

before it,—that to the preceding one, and so on. This is the common cant

respecting all Exhibitions; and the reason is obvious enough. We are

naturally less struck by pictures of the same degree and class of

excellence, by the same artists, on repetition than at first sight; and

the art appears to be retrograde, only because it is not progressive.

Perhaps, however, there is some foundation for the objection in the

present instance. At least, we think there is a falling off in the

historical department: though that is the department of the art which

would least bear any kind of retrenchment. We do not know whether to lay

the blame of the deficiency on those artists, who have been away this

summer on their visit to the French capital, or on those who have

remained behind. The picture in this branch of the art which pleased us

the most on looking into it, and which we conceive has decidedly the

greatest number of excellent parts, though the general effect is very

far from striking, is ‘_Brutus exhorting the Romans to revenge the Death

of Lucretia_,’ by C. L. Eastlake. The artist will excuse us, if we say

that we think the principal figure, that of _Brutus_, by much the worst

part of the picture. A more theatrical, and less impressive figure we

have seldom seen. He is quite an orator of the modern stamp, and has

nothing of the ‘antique Roman’ about him. He is not a bit better than

any of the blustering, canting, vapid, Canning school, and is evidently

an orator to be disposed of. We would advise Mr. Eastlake to take a hint

from a high quarter, and get rid of him, at any rate. The effect of the

attitude of this figure, which is represented pointing with a sword to

the body of _Lucretia_, behind him, is almost entirely lost by the want

of distinct foreshortening and prominent relief.[25] The figure of

_Brutus_ seems in a line with that of _Lucretia_. Indeed, the same

defect pervades the whole picture, which is laid-in like mosaic, and the

general pale, stone-colour appearance of the drapery, and of the flesh,

adds to this effect. No one figure comes out before the rest to the eye,

till by tracing it down to the feet, you find where it stands. The dead

figure of _Lucretia_ herself is a complete piece of marble. We wish to

notice more particularly, because it is an excellence very rare in an

English artist, that the attention to costume in the decorations of the

bier on which the dead body lies, and in the other ornaments in the

back-ground of the picture, gives an additional air of truth and

consequently of interest to the scene. The peculiar merit of this

composition is the great variety of distinct faces and characteristic

expressions to be found in it. These, if not of a very high order, are

at least much better than the pompous nonentities to which we are

accustomed. There is very little of passion or emotion given or

attempted, but we think the expression of attention in the surrounding

audience is varied very happily, and with great truth of nature. The

most picturesque and interesting part of the picture is the groupe in

which a girl with a back-figure is supporting (we suppose) the mother of

_Lucretia_. The expression of the countenance in the latter reminded us

of Annibal Caracci, and we are always glad to be reminded of him.

Certainly the same effect was not produced upon our minds by the boy in

the foreground, with sandy hair and weak eyes, who is crying so

piteously: still less did we like the figure of a man in the right hand

corner, who is explaining the story to another with his fists clenched,

and in a boxing attitude. The model for a Roman warrior is as little to

be sought in a Fives Court, as of a Roman patriot in a debating society,

or even (with leave be it spoken) in an English House of Commons. We

have dwelt the longer on this picture, because its immediate effect on

the eye is by no means in proportion to its real merit. The

drab-coloured quakerism of the tone conceals it from observation almost

as much as if it had a veil over it. We do not really understand the

object of these sickly half-tints, which all French artists, and some of

our own, affect. Nicolas Poussin, who had no relief of light and shade,

had strong contrasts of colour: or even if he had had neither, the great

distinctness of his outline, and his striking manner of telling the

story, might still have formed a sufficient excuse for him. In short,

the style of colouring adopted in this picture may, for aught we know,

accord very well with some more artificial and recondite style of

historical composition; but we are sure, it has nothing to do with

natural expression, or immediate effect.

It has been said, that ‘a great book is a great evil.’ We think the same

thing might be applied to pictures: or at least we should not instance

the large picture in this collection of _The Burial of our Lord_, by C.

Coventry, as an exception to the rule. We admit, however, that the face,

dress, and figure of the old man holding the drapery over Christ, are

picturesque, and in the fine manner of Rembrandt. The attitude and

action of this figure are exactly the same as those of a similar figure

in Mr. Bird’s picture of the same subject. This is rather a singular

coincidence in two pictures exhibited at the same time, and which it is

therefore improbable to suppose could have been copied one from the

other. The other figures about Christ we cannot bring ourselves to

admire: they resemble painted wood. The colour of the Christ is a livid

purple, the worst of all possible colours. The women are better; though

the fine turn in the waist of one of them is not in the best style of

history, which does not profess to exhibit women of fashion.

Mr. Bird’s picture of _The Entombment of Christ_, is, we conceive, very

inferior to his picture last year of _Job and his Friends_. The

colouring is equally bad, and the composition is not equally good. There

is one pretty figure of a girl, but her prettiness is not an advantage

to the subject. In all things, ‘It is place which lessens and sets off.’

Mr. Bird constantly introduces the extremities of the hands and feet

into his pictures, only to show how ill he can paint them. The picture

of _The Surrender of Calais_ has been already before the public.

Among the historical pictures, we suppose from its name, we must rank

that of the _Prophet Ezra_, by G. Hayter, though it does not appear to

us to belong to the class. It is a fine, rich, and strongly painted

picture of a man reading a book. The being able to copy nature with

truth and effect is not history, though we think it is the first step to

it. In this picture, which we believe is a first essay, Mr. Hayter has

not redeemed the pledge he gave in his miniatures. If we could paint

such miniatures as he does, we would do nothing but paint miniatures

always; and laugh at the advertisements of great historical pictures in

the newspapers. The _St. Bernard_, by the same artist, is very

indifferent.

Mr. Harlowe’s _Hubert and Arthur_ is the greatest piece of coxcombry and

absurdity we remember to have seen. We do not think that any one who

pleases has a right to paint a libel on Shakspeare.

The generality of the historical pictures in the gallery are such as

have been always painted, and as will always be painted, in spite of all

that can be said to the contrary, and therefore it is as well to say

nothing about them.

Miss Jackson’s _Mars subdued by Peace_ is a very pleasing composition.

Both the face and expression of the figure of _Peace_ are those of a

very beautiful and interesting girl, though from the tender pensiveness

of the features she seems rather as if sending _Mars_ out to battle than

disarming him; and as to the God of War himself, he does not look like

one whom ‘deep scars of thunder have intrenched,’ but as if he had been

kept a long time at home in a lady’s chamber. The Cupids (when Ladies

imagine Cupids, what can they be less?) are very nice, little, chubby

fellows.

There are two pictures of _The Sick Pigeon_ and _The Favourite Kitten_

by Miss Geddes, both of which we like, gallantry out of the question.

The kitten in the last is exquisitely painted. You may almost hear it

_purring_.

Among the foreign contributors to this department we ought to mention

_Music_, by M. Messora, in the manner of the early Italian masters, and

_Devotion_, a small picture by J. Laschallas, which is hung almost out

of sight, and which, if it were hung a little lower, we suspect, would

be found to be ‘a good picture and a true.’

To the scene from the _Marriage of Figaro_, by Chalon, no praise of ours

could add the slightest grace or lustre. We wonder where he got the

figure of his _Susan_, or how he dared to paint her!

In the domestic scenes, and views of interiors, &c. this exhibition is

much like the former ones, except that we miss Collins, and find no one

to replace him.

Of the landscapes, Burnett’s, Fielding’s, Nasmyth’s, Hofland’s, and

Glover’s are the best. In Mr. Glover’s large picture of _Jacob and

Laban_ (which we believe was exhibited and much admired in Paris), there

is a want of harmony and lightness in the whole: but there is a groupe

of trees in the foreground, which Claude himself would not have

disdained to borrow. Mr. Hofland’s landscapes, without being much

finished, have the look, the tone, and freshness of nature. The _View of

Edinburgh_ is, we think, the best. Some of the others are too much

abstractions of aerial perspective: they are naked and cold, and

represent not the objects of nature so much as the medium through which

they are seen. We will only add, in our professional capacity, that this

gentleman’s pictures shew themselves, and that he need not be at the

trouble of shewing them. Nasmyth’s pictures are not too much finished,

but they want a certain breadth, which nature always adds to perfect

finishing. Fielding is a new and most promising artist, of whom we mean

to say more. Of the two Burnetts, we shall only remark at present, that

they have made no addition to their live-stock since last year, which

consisted then, as it does now, of one black, one yellow, and one

spotted cow.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

_The Champion._] [_February 12, 1815._