OF REALIZATION.
Sec. 1. In the outset of this inquiry, the reader must thoroughly
understand that we are not now considering _what_ is to be painted,
but _how far_ it is to be painted. Not whether Raphael does right in
representing angels playing upon violins, or whether Veronese does
right in allowing cats and monkeys to join the company of kings: but
whether, supposing the subjects rightly chosen, they ought on the
canvas to look like real angels with real violins, and substantial
cats looking at veritable kings; or only like imaginary angels with
soundless violins, ideal cats, and unsubstantial kings.
Now, from the first moment when painting began to be a subject of
literary inquiry and general criticism, I cannot remember any
writer, not professedly artistical, who has not, more or less, in
one part of his book or another, countenanced the idea that the
great end of art is to produce a deceptive resemblance of reality.
It may be, indeed, that we shall find the writers, through many
pages, explaining principles of ideal beauty, and professing great
delight in the evidences of imagination. But whenever a picture is
to be definitely described,--whenever the writer desires to convey
to others some impression of an extraordinary excellence, all praise
is wound up with some such statements as these: "It was so
exquisitely painted that you expected the figures to move and speak;
you approached the flowers to enjoy their smell, and stretched your
hand towards the fruit which had fallen from the branches. You
shrunk back lest the sword of the warrior should indeed descend, and
turned away your head that you might not witness the agonies of the
expiring martyr!"
Sec. 2. In a large number of instances, language such as this will be
found to be merely a clumsy effort to convey to others a sense of the
admiration, of which the writer does not understand the real cause in
himself. A person is attracted to a picture by the beauty of its color,
interested by the liveliness of its story, and touched by certain
countenances or details which remind him of friends whom he loved, for
scenes in which he delighted. He naturally supposes that what gives him
so much pleasure must be a notable example of the painter's skill; but
he is ashamed to confess, or perhaps does not know, that he is so much
a child as to be fond of bright colors and amusing incidents; and he is
quite unconscious of the associations which have so secret and
inevitable a power over his heart. He casts about for the cause of his
delight, and can discover no other than that he thought the picture
like reality.
Sec. 3. In another, perhaps a still larger number of cases, such
language will be found to be that of simple ignorance--the ignorance
of persons whose position in life compels them to speak of art,
without having any real enjoyment of it. It is inexcusably required
from people of the world, that they should see merit in Claudes and
Titians; and the only merit which many persons can either see or
conceive in them is, that they must be "like nature."
Sec. 4. In other cases, the deceptive power of the art is really felt
to be a source of interest and amusement. This is the case with a
large number of the collectors of Dutch pictures. They enjoy seeing
what is flat made to look round, exactly as a child enjoys a trick
of legerdemain; they rejoice in flies which the spectator vainly
attempts to brush away, and in dew which he endeavors to dry by
putting the picture in the sun. They take it for the greatest
compliment to their treasures that they should be mistaken for
windows; and think the parting of Abraham and Hagar adequately
represented, if Hagar seems to be really crying.
It is against critics and connoisseurs of this latter stamp (of
whom, in the year 1759, the juries of art were for the most part
composed) that the essay of Reynolds, which we have been examining,
was justly directed. But Reynolds had not sufficiently considered
that neither the men of this class, nor of the two other classes
above described, constitute the entire body of those who praise Art
for its realization; and that the holding of this apparently
shallow and vulgar opinion cannot, in all cases, be attributed to
the want either of penetration, sincerity, or sense. The collectors
of Gerard Dows and Hobbimas may be passed by with a smile; and the
affectations of Walpole and simplicities of Vasari dismissed with
contempt or with compassion. But very different men from these have
held precisely the same language; and, one amongst the rest, whose
authority is absolutely, and in all points, overwhelming.
Sec. 5. There was probably never a period in which the influence of art
over the minds of men seemed to depend less on its merely _imitative_
power, than the close of the thirteenth century. No painting or
sculpture at that time reached more than a rude resemblance of reality.
Its despised perspective, imperfect chiaroscuro, and unrestrained
flights of fantastic imagination, separated the artist's work from
nature by an interval which there was no attempt to disguise, and
little to diminish. And yet, at this very period, the greatest poet of
that, or perhaps of any other age, and the attached friend of its
greatest painter, who must over and over again have held full and free
conversation with him respecting the objects of his art, speaks in the
following terms of painting, supposed to be carried to its highest
perfection:--
"Qual di pennel fu maestro, e di stile
Che ritraesse l' ombre, e i tratti, ch' ivi
Mirar farieno uno ingegno sottile.
Morti li morti, e i vivi parean vivi:
Non vide me' di me, chi vide il vero,
Quant' io calcai, fin che chinato givi."
DANTE, _Purgatorio_, canto xii. 1. 64
'What master of the pencil, or the style,
Had traced the shades and lines that might have made
The subtlest workman wonder? _Dead, the dead,
The living seemed alive; with clearer view
His eye beheld not, who beheld the truth._
Than mine what I did tread on, while I went,
Low bending.' CAREY.
Dante has here clearly no other idea of the highest art than that it
should bring back, as in a mirror or vision, the aspect of things
passed or absent. The scenes of which he speaks are, on the pavement,
for ever represented by angelic power, so that the souls which traverse
this circle of the rock may see them, as if the years of the world had
been rolled back, and they again stood beside the actors in the moment
of action. Nor do I think that Dante's authority is absolutely
necessary to compel us to admit that such art as this _might_ indeed be
the highest possible. Whatever delight we may have been in the habit of
taking in pictures, if it were but truly offered to us, to remove at
our will the canvas from the frame, and in lieu of it to behold, fixed
for ever, the image of some of those mighty scenes which it has been
our way to make mere themes for the artist's fancy; if, for instance,
we could again behold the Magdalene receiving her pardon at Christ's
feet, or the disciples sitting with Him at the table of Emmaus; and
this not feebly nor fancifully, but as if some silver mirror, that had
leaned against the wall of the chamber, had been miraculously commanded
to retain for ever the colors that had flashed upon it for an
instant,--would we not part with our picture--Titian's or Veronese's
though it might be?
Sec. 6. Yes, the reader answers, in the instance of such scenes as
these, but not if the scene represented were uninteresting. Not,
indeed, if it were utterly vulgar or painful; but we are not yet
certain that the art which represents what is vulgar or painful is
itself of much value; and with respect to the art whose aim is
beauty, even of an inferior order, it seems that Dante's idea of its
perfection has still much evidence in its favor. For among persons
of native good sense, and courage enough to speak their minds, we
shall often find a considerable degree of doubt as to the use of
art, in consequence of their habitual comparison of it with reality.
"What is the use, to me, of the painted landscape?" they will ask:
"I see more beautiful and perfect landscapes every day of my life in
my forenoon walk." "What is the use, to me, of the painted effigy of
hero or beauty? I can see a stamp of higher heroism, and light of
purer beauty, on the faces around me, utterly inexpressible by the
highest human skill." Now, it is evident that to persons of this
temper the only valuable pictures would indeed be _mirrors_,
reflecting permanently the images of the things in which they took
delight, and of the faces that they loved. "Nay," but the reader
interrupts, (if he is of the Idealist school) "I deny that more
beautiful things are to be seen in nature than in art; on the
contrary, everything in nature is faulty, and art represents nature
as perfected." Be it so. Must, therefore, this perfected nature be
imperfectly represented? Is it absolutely required of the painter,
who has conceived perfection, that he should so paint it as to look
only like a picture? Or is not Dante's view of the matter right even
here, and would it not be well that the perfect conception of Pallas
should be so given as to look like Pallas herself, rather than
merely like the picture of Pallas?
Sec. 7. It is not easy for us to answer this question rightly, owing to
the difficulty of imagining any art which should reach the perfection
supposed. Our actual powers of imitation are so feeble that wherever
deception is attempted, a subject of a comparatively low or confined
order must be chosen. I do not enter at present into the inquiry how
far the powers of imitation extend; but assuredly up to the present
period they have been so limited that it is hardly possible for us to
conceive a deceptive art embracing a high range of subject. But let
the reader make the effort, and consider seriously what he would give
at any moment to have the power of arresting the fairest scenes, those
which so often rise before him only to vanish; to stay the cloud in
its fading, the leaf in its trembling, and the shadows in their
changing; to bid the fitful foam be fixed upon the river, and the
ripples be everlasting upon the lake; and then to bear away with him
no darkened or feeble sun-stain (though even that is beautiful), but a
counterfeit which should seem no counterfeit--the true and perfect
image of life indeed. Or rather (for the full majesty of such a power
is not thus sufficiently expressed) let him consider that it would be
in effect nothing else than a capacity of transporting himself at any
moment into any scene--a gift as great as can be possessed by a
disembodied spirit': and suppose, also, this necromancy embracing not
only the present but the past, and enabling us seemingly to enter into
the very bodily presence of men long since gathered to the dust; to
behold them in act as they lived, but--with greater privilege than
ever was granted to the companions of those transient acts of
life,--to see them fastened at our will in the gesture and expression
of an instant, and stayed, on the eve of some great deed, in
immortality of burning purpose. Conceive, so far as it is possible,
such power as this, and then say whether the art which conferred it is
to be spoken lightly of, or whether we should not rather reverence, as
half divine, a gift which would go so far as to raise us into the
rank, and invest us with the felicities, of angels?
Yet such would imitative art be in its perfection. Not by any means
an easy thing, as Reynolds supposes it. Far from being easy, it is
so utterly beyond all human power that we have difficulty even in
conceiving its nature or results--the best art we as yet possess
comes so far short of it.
Sec. 8. But we must not rashly come to the conclusion that such art would,
indeed, be the highest possible. There is much to be considered
hereafter on the other side; the only conclusion we are as yet
warranted in forming is, that Reynolds had no right to speak lightly or
contemptuously of imitative art; that in fact, when he did so, he had
not conceived its entire nature, but was thinking of some vulgar
conditions of it, which were the only ones known to him, and that,
therefore, his whole endeavor to explain the difference between great
and mean art has been disappointed; that he has involved himself in a
crowd of theories, whose issue he had not foreseen, and committed
himself to conclusions which he never intended. There is an instinctive
consciousness in his own mind of the difference between high and low
art; but he is utterly incapable of explaining it, and every effort
which he makes to do so involves him in unexpected fallacy and
absurdity. It is _not_ true that Poetry does not concern herself with
minute details. It is _not_ true that high art seeks only the
Invariable. It is _not_ true that imitative art is an easy thing. It is
_not_ true that the faithful rendering of nature is an employment in
which "the slowest intellect is likely to succeed best." All these
successive assertions are utterly false and untenable, while the plain
truth, a truth lying at the very door, has all the while escaped
him,--that which was incidentally stated in the preceding
chapter,--namely, that the difference between great and mean art lies,
not in definable methods of handling, or styles of representation, or
choices of subjects, but wholly in the nobleness of the end to which
the effort of the painter is addressed. We cannot say that a painter is
great because he paints boldly, or paints delicately; because he
generalizes or particularizes; because he loves detail, or because he
disdains it. He is great if, by any of these means, he has laid open
noble truths, or aroused noble emotions. It does not matter whether he
paint the petal of a rose, or the chasms of a precipice, so that Love
and Admiration attend him as he labors, and wait for ever upon his
work. It does not matter whether he toil for months upon a few inches
of his canvas, or cover a palace front with color in a day, so only
that it be with a solemn purpose that he has filled his heart with
patience, or urged his hand to haste. And it does not matter whether he
seek for his subjects among peasants or nobles, among the heroic or the
simple, in courts or in fields, so only that he behold all things with
a thirst for beauty, and a hatred of meanness and vice. There are,
indeed, certain methods of representation which are usually adopted by
the most active minds, and certain characters of subject usually
delighted in by the noblest hearts; but it is quite possible, quite
easy, to adopt the manner of painting without sharing the activity of
mind, and to imitate the choice of subject without possessing the
nobility of spirit; while, on the other hand, it is altogether
impossible to foretell on what strange objects the strength of a great
man will sometimes be concentrated, or by what strange means he will
sometimes express himself. So that true criticism of art never can
consist in the mere application of rules; it can be just only when it
is founded on quick sympathy with the innumerable instincts and
changeful efforts of human nature, chastened and guided by unchanging
love of all things that God has created to be beautiful, and pronounced
to be good.