OF THE TRUE IDEAL:--FIRST, PURIST.
Sec. 1. Having thus glanced at the principal modes in which the
imagination works for evil, we must rapidly note also the principal
directions in which its operation is admissible, even in changing or
strangely combining what is brought within its sphere.
For hitherto we have spoken as if every change wilfully wrought by
the imagination was an error; apparently implying that its only
proper work was to summon up the memories of past events, and the
anticipations of future ones, under aspects which would bear the
sternest tests of historical investigation, or abstract reasoning.
And in general this is, indeed, its noblest work. Nevertheless, it
has also permissible functions peculiarly its own, and certain
rights of feigning, and adorning, and fancifully arranging,
inalienable from its nature. Everything that is natural is, within
certain limits, right; and we must take care not, in over-severity,
to deprive ourselves of any refreshing or animating power ordained
to be in us for our help.
Sec. 2. (A). It was noted in speaking above of the Angelican or
passionate ideal, that there was a certain virtue in it dependent on
the expression of its loving enthusiasm. (Chap. IV. Sec. 10.)
(B). In speaking of the pursuit of beauty as one of the
characteristics of the highest art, it was also said that there were
certain ways of showing this beauty by gathering together, without
altering, the finest forms, and marking them by gentle emphasis.
(Chap. III. Sec. 15.)
(C). And in speaking of the true uses of imagination it was said, that
we might be allowed to create for ourselves, in innocent play, fairies
and naiads, and other such fictitious creatures. (Chap. IV. Sec. 5.)
Now this loving enthusiasm, which seeks for a beauty fit to be the
object of eternal love; this inventive skill, which kindly displays
what exists around us in the world; and this playful energy of
thought which delights in various conditions of the impossible, are
three forms of idealism more or less connected with the three
tendencies of the artistical mind which I had occasion to explain in
the chapter on the Nature of Gothic, in the Stones of Venice. It was
there pointed out, that, the things around us containing mixed good
and evil, certain men chose the good and left the evil (thence
properly called Purists); others received both good and evil
together (thence properly called Naturalists); and others had a
tendency to choose the evil and leave the good, whom, for
convenience' sake, I termed Sensualists. I do not mean to say that
painters of fairies and naiads must belong to this last and lowest
class, or habitually choose the evil and leave the good; but there
is, nevertheless, a strange connection between the reinless play of
the imagination, and a sense of the presence of evil, which is
usually more or less developed in those creations of the imagination
to which we properly attach the word _Grotesque_.
For this reason, we shall find it convenient to arrange what we have
to note respecting true idealism under the three heads--
A. Purist Idealism.
B. Naturalist Idealism.
C. Grotesque Idealism.
Sec. 3. A. Purist Idealism.--It results from the unwillingness of men
whose dispositions are more than ordinarily tender and holy, to
contemplate the various forms of definite evil which necessarily
occur in the daily aspects of the world around them. They shrink
from them as from pollution, and endeavor to create for themselves
an imaginary state, in which pain and imperfection either do not
exist, or exist in some edgeless and enfeebled condition.
As, however, pain and imperfection are, by eternal laws, bound up
with existence, so far as it is visible to us, the endeavor to cast
them away invariably indicates a comparative childishness of mind,
and produces a childish form of art. In general, the effort is most
successful when it is most naive, and when the ignorance of the
draughtsman is in some frank proportion to his innocence. For
instance, one of the modes of treatment, the most conducive to this
ideal expression, is simply drawing everything without shadows, as
if the sun were everywhere at once. This, in the present state of
our knowledge, we could not do with grace, because we could not do
it without fear or shame. But an artist of the thirteenth century
did it with no disturbance of conscience,--knowing no better, or
rather, in some sense, we might say, knowing no worse. It is,
however, evident, at first thought, that all representations of
nature without evil must either be ideals of a future world, or be
false ideals, if they are understood to be representations of facts.
They can only be classed among the branches of the true ideal, in so
far as they are understood to be nothing more than expressions of
the painter's personal affections or hopes.
Sec. 4. Let us take one or two instances in order clearly to explain
our meaning.
The life of Angelico was almost entirely spent in the endeavor to
imagine the beings belonging to another world. By purity of life,
habitual elevation of thought, and natural sweetness of disposition,
he was enabled to express the sacred affections upon the human
countenance as no one ever did before or since. In order to effect
clearer distinction between heavenly beings and those of this world,
he represents the former as clothed in draperies of the purest
color, crowned with glories of burnished gold, and entirely
shadowless. With exquisite choice of gesture, and disposition of
folds of drapery, this mode of treatment gives perhaps the best idea
of spiritual beings which the human mind is capable of forming. It
is, therefore, a true ideal;[22] but the mode in which it is arrived
at (being so far mechanical and contradictory of the appearances of
nature) necessarily precludes those who practise it from being
complete masters of their art. It is always childish, but beautiful
in its childishness.
Sec. 5. The works of our own Stothard are examples of the operation of
another mind, singular in gentleness and purity, upon mere worldly
subject. It seems as if Stothard could not conceive wickedness,
coarseness, or baseness; every one of his figures looks as if it had
been copied from some creature who had never harbored an unkind
thought, or permitted itself in an ignoble action. With this immense
love of mental purity is joined, in Stothard, a love of mere
physical smoothness and softness, so that he lived in a universe of
soft grass and stainless fountains, tender trees, and stones at
which no foot could stumble.
All this is very beautiful, and may sometimes urge us to an endeavor
to make the world itself more like the conception of the painter. At
least, in the midst of its malice, misery, and baseness, it is often a
relief to glance at the graceful shadows, and take, for momentary
companionship, creatures full only of love, gladness, and honor. But
the perfect truth will at last vindicate itself against the partial
truth; the help which we can gain from the unsubstantial vision will
be only like that which we may sometimes receive, in weariness, from
the scent of a flower or the passing of a breeze. For all firm aid and
steady use, we must look to harder realities; and, as far as the
painter himself is regarded, we can only receive such work as the sign
of an amiable imbecility. It is indeed ideal; but ideal as a fair
dream is in the dawn of morning, before the faculties are astir. The
apparent completeness of grace can never be attained without much
definite falsification as well as omission; stones, over which we
cannot stumble, must be ill-drawn stones; trees, which are all
gentleness and softness, cannot be trees of wood; nor companies
without evil in them, companies of flesh and blood. The habit of
falsification (with whatever aim) begins always in dulness and ends
always in incapacity; nothing can be more pitiable than any endeavor
by Stothard to express facts beyond his own sphere of soft pathos or
graceful mirth, and nothing more unwise than the aim at a similar
ideality by any painter who has power to render a sincerer truth.
Sec. 6. I remember another interesting example of ideality on this same
root, but belonging to another branch of it, in the works of a young
German painter, which I saw some time ago in a London drawingroom.
He had been travelling in Italy, and had brought home a portfolio of
sketches remarkable alike for their fidelity and purity. Every one
was a laborious and accurate study of some particular spot. Every
cottage, every cliff, every tree, at the site chosen, had been
drawn; and drawn with palpable sincerity of portraiture, and yet in
such a spirit that it was impossible to conceive that any sin or
misery had ever entered into one of the scenes he had represented;
and the volcanic horrors of Radicofani, the pestilent gloom of the
Pontines, and the boundless despondency of the Campagna became under
his hand, only various appearances of Paradise.
It was very interesting to observe the minute emendations or
omissions by which this was effected. To set the tiles the slightest
degree more in order upon a cottage roof; to insist upon the
vine-leaves at the window, and let the shadow which fell from them
naturally conceal the rent in the wall; to draw all the flowers in
the foreground, and miss the weeds; to draw all the folds of the
white clouds, and miss those of the black ones; to mark the graceful
branches of the trees, and, in one way or another, beguile the eye
from those which were ungainly; to give every peasant-girl whose
face was visible the expression of an angel, and every one whose
back was turned the bearing of a princess; finally, to give a
general look of light, clear organization, and serene vitality to
every feature in the landscape;--such were his artifices, and such
his delights. It was impossible not to sympathize deeply with the
spirit of such a painter; and it was just cause for gratitude to be
permitted to travel, as it were, through Italy with such a friend.
But his work had, nevertheless, its stern limitations and marks of
everlasting inferiority. Always soothing and pathetic, it could
never be sublime, never perfectly nor entrancingly beautiful; for
the narrow spirit of correction could not cast itself fully into any
scene; the calm cheerfulness which shrank from the shadow of the
cypress, and the distortion of the olive, could not enter into the
brightness of the sky that they pierced, nor the softness of the
bloom that they bore: for every sorrow that his heart turned from,
he lost a consolation; for every fear which he dared not confront,
he lost a portion of his hardiness; the unsceptred sweep of the
storm-clouds, the fair freedom of glancing shower and flickering
sunbeam, sank into sweet rectitudes and decent formalisms; and,
before eyes that refused to be dazzled or darkened, the hours of
sunset wreathed their rays unheeded, and the mists of the Apennines
spread their blue veils in vain.
Sec. 7. To this inherent shortcoming and narrowness of reach the farther
defect was added, that this work gave no useful representation of the
state of facts in the country which it pretended to contemplate. It was
not only wanting in all the higher elements of beauty, but wholly
unavailable for instruction of any kind beyond that which exists in
pleasurableness of pure emotion. And considering what cost of labor was
devoted to the series of drawings, it could not but be matter for grave
blame, as well as for partial contempt, that a man of amiable feeling
and considerable intellectual power should thus expend his life in the
declaration of his own petty pieties and pleasant reveries, leaving the
burden of human sorrow unwitnessed; and the power of God's judgments
unconfessed; and, while poor Italy lay wounded and moaning at his feet,
pass by, in priestly calm, lest the whiteness of his decent vesture
should be spotted with unhallowed blood.
Sec. 8. Of several other forms of Purism I shall have to speak
hereafter, more especially of that exhibited in the landscapes of
the early religious painters; but these examples are enough, for the
present, to show the general principle that the purest ideal, though
in some measure true, in so far as it springs from the true longings
of an earnest mind, is yet necessarily in many things deficient or
blamable, and _always_ an indication of some degree of weakness in
the mind pursuing it. But, on the other hand, it is to be noted that
entire scorn of this purist ideal is the sign of a far greater
weakness. Multitudes of petty artists, incapable of any noble
sensation whatever, but acquainted, in a dim way, with the
technicalities of the schools, mock at the art whose depths they
cannot fathom, and whose motives they cannot comprehend, but of
which they can easily detect the imperfections, and deride the
simplicities. Thus poor fumigatory Fuseli, with an art composed of
the tinsel of the stage and the panics of the nursery, speaks
contemptuously of the name of Angelico as "dearer to sanctity than
to art." And a large portion of the resistance to the noble
Pre-Raphaelite movement of our own days has been offered by men who
suppose the entire function of the artist in this world to consist
in laying on color with a large brush, and surrounding dashes of
flake white with bituminous brown; men whose entire capacities of
brain, soul, and sympathy, applied industriously to the end of their
lives, would not enable them, at last, to paint so much as one of
the leaves of the nettles at the bottom of Hunt's picture of the
Light of the World.[23]
Sec. 9. It is finally to be remembered, therefore, that Purism is always
noble when it is _instinctive_. It is not the greatest thing that can
be done, but it is probably the greatest thing that the man who does
it can do, provided it comes from his heart. True, it is a sign of
weakness, but it is not in our choice whether we will be weak or
strong; and there is a certain strength which can only be made perfect
in weakness. If he is working in humility, fear of evil, desire of
beauty, and sincere purity of purpose and thought, he will produce
good and helpful things; but he must be much on his guard against
supposing himself to be greater than his fellows, because he has shut
himself into this calm and cloistered sphere. His only safety lies in
knowing himself to be, on the contrary, _less_ than his fellows, and
in always striving, so far as he can find it in his heart, to extend
his delicate narrowness towards the great naturalist ideal. The whole
group of modern German purists have lost themselves, because they
founded their work not on humility, nor on religion, but on small
self-conceit. Incapable of understanding the great Venetians, or any
other masters of true imaginative power, and having fed what mind they
had with weak poetry and false philosophy, they thought themselves the
best and greatest of artistic mankind, and expected to found a new
school of painting in pious plagiarism and delicate pride. It is
difficult at first to decide which is the more worthless, the
spiritual affectation of the petty German, or the composition and
chiaroscuro of the petty Englishman; on the whole, however, the latter
have lightest weight, for the pseudo-religious painter must, at all
events, pass much of his time in meditation upon solemn subjects, and
in examining venerable models; and may sometimes even cast a little
useful reflected light, or touch the heart with a pleasant echo.
[22] As noted above in Chap. IV Sec. 20.
[23] Not that the Pre-Raphaelite is a purist movement, it is stern
naturalist; but its unfortunate opposers, who neither know
what nature is, nor what purism is, have mistaken the simple
nature for morbid purism, and therefore cried out against it.