OF FINISH.
Sec. 1. I am afraid the reader must be, by this time, almost tired of
hearing about truth. But I cannot help this; the more I have
examined the various forms of art, and exercised myself in receiving
their differently intended impressions, the more I have found this
truthfulness a final test, the only test of lasting power; and,
although our concern in this part of our inquiry is, professedly,
with the beauty which blossoms out of truth, still I find myself
compelled always to gather it by the stalk, not by the petals. I
cannot hold the beauty, nor be sure of it for a moment, but by
feeling for that strong stem.
We have, in the preceding chapters, glanced through the various
operations of the imaginative power of man; with this almost
painfully monotonous result, that its greatness and honor were
always simply in proportion to the quantity of truth it grasped. And
now the question, left undetermined some hundred pages back (Chap.
II. Sec. 6), recurs to us in a simpler form than it could before. How
far is this true imagination to be truly represented? How far should
the perfect conception of Pallas be so given as to look like Pallas
herself, rather than like the picture of Pallas?
Sec. 2. A question, this, at present of notable interest, and demanding
instant attention. For it seemed to us, in reasoning about Dante's
views of art, that he was, or might be, right in desiring realistic
completeness; and yet, in what we have just seen of the grotesque
ideal, it seemed there was a certain desirableness in incompleteness.
And the schools of art in Europe are, at this moment, set in two
hostile ranks,--not nobly hostile, but spitefully and scornfully,
having for one of the main grounds of their dispute the apparently
simple question, how far a picture may be carried forward in detail,
or how soon it may be considered as finished.
I propose, therefore, in the present chapter, to examine, as
thoroughly as I can, the real signification of this word, Finish, as
applied to art, and to see if in this, as in other matters, our
almost tiresome test is not the only right one; whether there be not
a _fallacious_ finish and a _faithful_ finish, and whether the
dispute, which seems to be only about completion and incompletion,
has not therefore, at the bottom of it, the old and deep grounds of
fallacy and fidelity.
Sec. 3. Observe, first, there are two great and separate senses in
which we call a thing finished, or well finished. One, which refers
to the mere neatness and completeness of the actual work, as we
speak of a well-finished knife-handle or ivory toy (as opposed to
ill-cut ones); and, secondly, a sense which refers to the effect
produced by the thing done, as we call a picture well-finished if it
is so full in its details, as to produce the effect of reality on
the spectator. And, in England, we seem at present to value highly
the first sort of finish which belongs to work_manship_, in our
manufactures and general doings of any kind, but to despise totally
the impressive finish which belongs to the _work_; and therefore we
like smooth ivories better than rough ones,--but careless scrawls or
daubs better than the most complete paintings. Now, I believe that
we exactly reverse the fitness of judgment in this matter, and that
we ought, on the contrary, to despise the finish of work_manship_,
which is done for vanity's sake, and to love the finish of _work_,
which is done for truth's sake,--that we ought, in a word, to finish
our ivory toys more roughly, and our pictures more delicately.
Let us think over this matter.
Sec. 4. Perhaps one of the most remarkable points of difference between
the English and Continental nations is in the degree of finish given to
their ordinary work. It is enough to cross from Dover to Calais to feel
this difference; and to travel farther only increases the sense of it.
English windows for the most part fit their sashes, and their woodwork
is neatly planed and smoothed; French windows are larger, heavier, and
framed with wood that looks as if it had been cut to its shape with a
hatchet; they have curious and cumbrous fastenings, and can only be
forced asunder or together by some ingenuity and effort, and even then
not properly. So with everything else--French, Italian, and German,
and, as far as I know, Continental. Foreign drawers do not slide as
well as ours: foreign knives do not cut so well; foreign wheels do not
turn so well, and we commonly plume ourselves much upon this, believing
that generally the English people do their work better and more
thoroughly, or as they say, "turn it out of their hands in better
style," than foreigners. I do not know how far this is really the case.
There may be a flimsy neatness, as well as a substantial roughness; it
does not necessarily follow that the window which shuts easiest will
last the longest, or that the harness which glitters the most is
assuredly made of the toughest leather. I am afraid, that if this
peculiar character of finish in our workmanship ever arose from a
greater heartiness and thoroughness in our ways of doing things, it
does so only now in the case of our best manufacturers; and that a
great deal of the work done in England, however good in appearance, is
but treacherous and rotten in substance. Still, I think that there is
really in the English mind, for the most part, a stronger desire to do
things as well as they can be done, and less inclination to put up with
inferiorities or insufficiencies, than in general characterise the
temper of foreigners. There is in this conclusion no ground for
national vanity; for though the desire to do things as well as they can
be done at first appears like a virtue, it is certainly not so in all
its forms. On the contrary, it proceeds in nine cases out of ten more
from vanity than conscientiousness; and that, moreover, often a weak
vanity. I suppose that as much finish is displayed in the fittings of
the private carriages of our young rich men as in any other department
of English manufacture; and that our St. James's Street cabs, dogcarts,
and liveries are singularly perfect in their way. But the feeling with
which this perfection is insisted upon (however desirable as a sign of
energy of purpose) is not in itself a peculiarly amiable or noble
feeling; neither is it an ignoble disposition which would induce a
country gentleman to put up with certain deficiencies in the appearance
of his country-made carriage. It is true that such philosophy may
degenerate into negligence, and that much thought and long discussion
would be needed before we could determine satisfactorily the limiting
lines between virtuous contentment and faultful carelessness; but at
all events we have no right at once to pronounce ourselves the wisest
people because we like to do all things in the best way. There are many
little things which to do admirably is to waste both time and cost; and
the real question is not so much whether we have done a given thing as
well as possible, as whether we have turned a given quantity of labor
to the best account.
Sec. 5. Now, so far from the labor's being turned to good account which is
given to our English "finishing," I believe it to be usually
destructive of the best powers of our workmen's minds. For it is
evident, in the first place, that there is almost always a useful and a
useless finish; the hammering and welding which are necessary to
produce a sword plate of the best quality, are useful finishing; the
polishing of its surface, useless.[38] In nearly all work this
distinction will, more or less, take place between substantial finish
and apparent finish, or what may be briefly characterized as "Make" and
"Polish." And so far as finish is bestowed for purposes of "make," I
have nothing to say against it. Even the vanity which displays itself
in giving strength to our work is rather a virtue than a vice. But so
far as finish is bestowed for purposes of "polish," there is much to be
said against it; this first, and very strongly, that the qualities
aimed at in common finishing, namely, smoothness, delicacy, or
fineness, _cannot_ in reality _exist_, in a degree worth admiring, in
anything done by human hands. Our best finishing is but coarse and
blundering work after all We may smooth, and soften, and sharpen till
we are sick at heart; but take a good magnifying glass to our miracle
of skill, and the invisible edge is a jagged saw, and the silky thread
a rugged cable, and the soft surface a granite desert. Let all the
ingenuity and all the art of the human race be brought to bear upon the
attainment of the utmost possible finish, and they could not do what is
done in the foot of a fly, or the film of a bubble. God alone can
finish; and the more intelligent the human mind becomes, the more the
infiniteness of interval is felt between human and divine work in this
respect. So then it is not a little absurd to weary ourselves in
struggling towards a point which we never can reach, and to exhaust our
strength in vain endeavors to produce qualities which exist inimitably
and inexhaustibly in the commonest things around us.
Sec. 6. But more than this: the fact is that in multitudes of instances,
instead of gaining greater fineness of finish by our work, we are only
destroying the fine finish of nature, and substituting coarseness and
imperfection. For instance, when a rock of any kind has lain for some
time exposed to the weather, Nature finishes it in her own way; first,
she takes wonderful pains about its forms, sculpturing it into
exquisite variety of dint and dimple, and rounding or hollowing it
into contours, which for fineness no human hand can follow; then she
colors it; and every one of her touches of color, instead of being a
powder mixed with oil, is a minute forest of living trees, glorious in
strength and beauty, and concealing wonders of structure, which in all
probability are mysteries even to the eyes of angels. Man comes and
digs up this finished and marvellous piece of work, which in his
ignorance he calls a "rough stone." He proceeds to finish it in _his_
fashion, that is, to split it in two, rend it into ragged blocks, and,
finally, to chisel its surface into a large number of lumps and knobs,
all equally shapeless, colorless, deathful, and frightful.[39] And the
block, thus disfigured, he calls "finished," and proceeds to build
therewith, and thinks himself great, forsooth, and an intelligent
animal. Whereas, all that he has really done is, to destroy with utter
ravage a piece of divine art, which, under the laws appointed by the
Deity to regulate his work in this world, it must take good twenty
years to produce the like of again. This he has destroyed, and has
himself given in its place a piece of work which needs no more
intelligence to do than a pholas has, or a worm, or the spirit which
throughout the world has authority over rending, rottenness, and
decay. I do not say that stone must not be cut; it needs to be cut for
certain uses; only I say that the cutting it is not "finishing," but
_un_finishing it; and that so far as the mere fact of chiselling goes,
the stone is ruined by the human touch. It is with it as with the
stones of the Jewish altar: "If thou lift up thy tool upon it thou
hast polluted it." In like manner a tree is a finished thing. But a
plank, though ever so polished, is not. We need stones and planks, as
we need food; but we no more bestow an additional admirableness upon
stone in hewing it, or upon a tree in sawing it, than upon an animal
in killing it.
Sec. 7. Well, but it will be said, there is certainly a kind of finish in
stone-cutting, and in every other art, which is meritorious, and which
consists in smoothing and refining as much as possible. Yes, assuredly
there is a meritorious finish. First, as it has just been said, that
which fits a thing for its uses,--as a stone to lie well in its place,
or the cog of an engine wheel to play well on another; and, secondly,
a finish belonging properly to the arts; but _that_ finish does not
consist in smoothing or polishing, but in the _completeness of the
expression of ideas_. For in painting, there is precisely the same
difference between the ends proposed in finishing that there is in
manufacture. Some artists finish for the finish' sake; dot their
pictures all over, as in some kinds of miniature-painting (when a wash
of color would have produced as good an effect); or polish their
pictures all over, making the execution so delicate that the touch of
the brush cannot be seen, for the sake of the smoothness merely, and
of the credit they may thus get for great labor; which kind of
execution, seen in great perfection in many works of the Dutch school,
and in those of Carlo Dolce, is that polished "language" against which
I have spoken at length in various portions of the first volume; nor
is it possible to speak of it with too great severity or contempt,
where it has been made an ultimate end.
But other artists finish for the impression's sake, not to show
their skill, nor to produce a smooth piece of work, but that they
may, with each stroke, render clearer the expression of knowledge.
And this sort of finish is not, properly speaking, so much
_completing_ the picture as _adding_ to it. It is not that what is
painted is more delicately done, but that infinitely _more_ is
painted. This finish is always noble, and, like all other noblest
things, hardly ever understood or appreciated. I must here endeavor,
more especially with respect to the state of quarrel between the
schools of living painters, to illustrate it thoroughly.
Sec. 8. In sketching the outline, suppose of the trunk of a tree, as in
Plate 2. (opposite) fig. 1., it matters comparatively little whether
the outline be given with a bold, or delicate line, so long as it is
_outline only_. The work is not more "finished" in one case than in
the other; it is only prepared for being seen at a greater or less
distance. The real refinement or finish of the line depends, not on
its thinness, but on its truly following the contours of the tree,
which it conventionally represents; conventionally, I say, because
there is no such line round the tree, in reality; and it is set down
not as an _imit_ation, but a _limit_ation of the form. But if we are
to add shade to it as in fig. 2., the outline must instantly be made
proportionally delicate, not for the sake of delicacy as such, but
because the outline will now, in many parts, stand not for
limitation of form merely, but for a portion of the _shadow_ within
that form. Now, as a limitation it was true, but as a shadow it
would be false, for there is no line of black shadow at the edge of
the stem. It must, therefore, be made so delicate as not to detach
itself from the rest of the shadow where shadow exists, and only to
be seen in the light where limitation is still necessary.
Observe, then, the "finish" of fig. 2. as compared with fig. 1.
consists, not in its greater delicacy, but in the addition of a
truth (shadow), a removal, in a great degree, of a conventionalism
(outline). All true finish consists in one or other of these things.
Now, therefore, if we are to "finish" farther we must _know_ more or
_see_ more about the tree. And as the plurality of persons who draw
trees know nothing of them, and will not look at them, it results
necessarily that the effort to finish is not only vain, but
unfinishes--does mischief. In the lower part of the plate, figs. 3,
4, 5, and 6. are facsimiles of pieces of line engraving, meant to
represent trunks of trees; 3. and 4. are the commonly accredited
types of tree-drawing among engravers in the eighteenth century; 5.
and 6. are quite modern; 3. is from a large and important plate by
Boydell, from Claude's Molten Calf, dated 1781; 4. by Boydell in
1776, from Rubens's Waggoner; 5. from a bombastic engraving,
published about twenty years ago by Meulemeester of Brussels, from
Raphael's Moses at the Burning Bush; and 6. from the foreground
of Miller's Modern Italy, after Turner.[40]
[Illustration: 2. Drawing of Tree-Stems.]
All these represent, as far as the engraving goes, simply _nothing_.
They are not "finished" in any sense but this,--that the paper has
been covered with lines. 4. is the best, because, in the original work
of Rubens, the lines of the boughs, and their manner of insertion in
the trunk, have been so strongly marked, that no engraving could quite
efface them; and, inasmuch as it represents these facts in the boughs,
that piece of engraving is more finished than the other examples,
while its own networked texture is still false and absurd; for there
is no texture of this knitted-stocking-like description on boughs; and
if there were, it would not be seen in the shadow, but in the light.
Miller's is spirited, and looks lustrous, but has no resemblance to
the original bough of Turner's, which is pale, and does not glitter.
The Netherlands work is, on the whole, the worst; because, in its
ridiculous double lines, it adds affectation and conceit to its
incapacity. But in all these cases the engravers have worked in total
ignorance both of what is meant by "drawing," and of the form of a
tree, covering their paper with certain lines, which they have been
taught to plough in copper, as a husbandman ploughs in clay.
Sec. 9. In the next three examples we have instances of endeavors at
finish by the hands of artists themselves, marking three stages of
knowledge or insight, and three relative stages of finish. Fig. 7.
is Claude's (Liber Veritatis, No. 140., facsimile by Boydell). It
still displays an appalling ignorance of the forms of trees, but yet
is, in mode of execution, better--that is, more finished--than the
engravings, because not _altogether_ mechanical, and showing some
dim, far-away, blundering memory of a few facts in stems, such as
their variations of texture and roundness, and bits of young shoots
of leaves. 8. is Salvator's, facsimiled from part of his original
etching of the Finding of Oedipus. It displays considerable power
of handling--not mechanical, but free and firm, and is just so much
more finished than any of the others as it displays more
intelligence about the way in which boughs gather themselves out of
the stem, and about the varying character of their curves. Finally,
fig. 9. is good work. It is the root of the apple-tree in Albert
Durer's Adam and Eve, and fairly represents the wrinkles of the
bark, the smooth portions emergent beneath, and the general anatomy
of growth. All the lines used conduce to the representation of these
facts; and the work is therefore highly finished. It still, however,
leaves out, as not to be represented by such kind of lines, the more
delicate gradations of light and shade. I shall now "finish" a
little farther, in the next plate (3.), the mere _insertion of the
two boughs_ outlined in fig. 1. I do this simply by adding
assertions of more facts. First, I say that the whole trunk is dark,
as compared with the distant sky. Secondly, I say that it is rounded
by gradations of shadow, in the various forms shown. And, lastly, I
say that (this being a bit of old pine stripped by storm of its
bark) the wood is fissured in certain directions, showing its grain,
or _muscle_, seen in complicated contortions at the insertion of the
arm and elsewhere.
Sec. 10. Now this piece of work, though yet far from complete (we will
better it presently), is yet more finished than any of the others,
not because it is more delicate or more skilful, but simply because
it tells more truth, and admits fewer fallacies. That which conveys
most information, with least inaccuracy, is always the highest
finish; and the question whether we prefer art so finished, to art
unfinished, is not one of taste at all. It is simply a question
whether we like to know much or little; to see accurately or see
falsely; and those whose _taste_ in art (if they choose so to call
it) leads them to like blindness better than sight, and fallacy
better than fact, would do well to set themselves to some other
pursuit than that of art.
Sec. 11. In the above plate we have examined chiefly the grain and
surface of the boughs; we have not yet noticed the finish of their
curvature. If the reader will look back to the No. 7. (Plate 2.),
which, in this respect, is the worst of all the set, he will
immediately observe the exemplification it gives of Claude's principal
theory about trees; namely, that the boughs always parted from each
other, two at a time, in the manner of the prongs of an ill-made
table-fork. It may, perhaps, not be at once believed that this is
indeed Claude's theory respecting tree-structure, without some
farther examples of his practice. I have, therefore, assembled on the
next page, Plate 4., some of the most characteristic passages of
ramification in the Liber Veritatis; the plates themselves are
sufficiently cheap (as they should be) and accessible to nearly every
one, so that the accuracy of the facsimiles may be easily tested. I
have given in Appendix I. the numbers of the plates from which the
examples are taken, and it will be found that they have been rather
improved than libelled, only omitting, of course, the surrounding
leafage, in order to show accurately the branch-outlines, with which
alone we are at present concerned. And it would be difficult to bring
together a series more totally futile and foolish, more singularly
wrong (as the false griffin was), every way at once; they are stiff,
and yet have no strength; curved, and yet have no flexibility;
monotonous, and yet disorderly; unnatural, and yet uninventive. They
are, in fact, of that commonest kind of tree bough which a child or
beginner first draws experimentally; nay, I am well assured, that if
this set of branches had been drawn by a schoolboy, "out of his own
head," his master would hardly have cared to show them as signs of any
promise in him.
[Illustration: 3. Strength of Old Pine.]
[Illustration: 4. Ramification, according to Claude.]
Sec. 12. "Well, but do not the trunks of trees fork, and fork mostly
into two arms at a time?"
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
Yes; but under as stern anatomical law as the limbs of an animal;
and those hooked junctions in Plate 4. are just as accurately
representative of the branching of wood as this (fig. 2.) is of a
neck and shoulders. We should object to such a representation of
shoulders, because we have some interest in, and knowledge of, human
form; we do not object to Claude's trees, because we have no
interest in, nor knowledge of, trees. And if it be still alleged
that such work is nevertheless enough to give any one an "idea" of a
tree, I answer that it never gave, nor ever will give, an idea of a
tree to any one who loves trees; and that, moreover, no idea,
whatever its pleasantness, is of the smallest value, which is not
founded on simple facts. What pleasantness may be in _wrong_ ideas
we do not here inquire; the only question for us has always been,
and must always be, What are the facts?
Sec. 13. And assuredly those boughs of Claude's are not facts: and
every one of their contours is, in the worst sense, unfinished,
without even the expectation or faint hope of possible refinement
ever coming into them. I do not mean to enter here into the
discussion of the characters of ramification; that must be in our
separate inquiry into tree-structure generally; but I will merely
give one piece of Turner's tree-drawing as an example of what
finished work really is, even in outline. In plate 5. opposite,
fig. 1. is the contour (stripped, like Claude's, of its foliage) of
one of the distant tree-stems in the drawing of Bolton Abbey. In
order to show its perfectness better by contrast with bad work (as
we have had, I imagine, enough of Claude), I will take a bit of
Constable; fig. 2. is the principal tree out of the engraving of the
Lock on the Stour (Leslie's Life of Constable). It differs from the
Claude outlines merely in being the kind of work which is produced
by an uninventive person dashing about idly, with a brush, instead
of drawing determinately wrong, with a pen: on the one hand worse
than Claude's, in being lazier; on the other a little better in
being more free, but, as representative of tree-form, of course
still wholly barbarous. It is worth while to turn back to the
description of the uninventive painter at work on a tree (Vol. II.
chapter on Imaginative Association, Sec. 11), for this trunk of
Constable's is curiously illustrative of it. One can almost see him,
first bending it to the right; then, having gone long enough to the
right, turning to the left; then, having gone long enough to the
left, away to the right again; then dividing it; and "because there
is another tree in the picture with two long branches (in this case
there really is), he knows that this ought to have three or four,
which must undulate or go backwards and forwards," &c., &c.
Sec. 14. Then study the bit of Turner work: note first its quietness,
unattractiveness, apparent carelessness whether you look at it or
not; next note the subtle curvatures within the narrowest limits,
and, when it branches, the unexpected, out of the way things it
does, just what nobody could have thought of its doing; shooting out
like a letter Y, with a nearly straight branch, and then
correcting its stiffness with a zigzag behind, so that the boughs,
ugly individually, are beautiful in unison. (In what I have
hereafter to say about trees, I shall need to dwell much on this
character of _unexpectedness_. A bough is never drawn rightly if it
is not wayward, so that although, as just now said, quiet at first,
not caring to be looked at, the moment it is looked at, it seems
bent on astonishing you, and doing the last things you expect it to
do.) But our present purpose is only to note the _finish_ of the
Turner _curves_, which, though they seem straight and stiff at
first, are, when you look long, seen to be all tremulous,
perpetually wavering along every edge into endless melody of change.
This is finish in line, in exactly the same sense that a fine melody
is finished in the association of its notes.
[Illustration: 5. Good and Bad Tree-Drawing.]
Sec. 15. And now, farther, let us take a little bit of the Turnerian tree
in light and shade. I said above I would better the drawing of that
pine trunk, which, though it has incipient shade, and muscular action,
has no texture, nor local color. Now, I take about an inch and a half
of Turner's ash trunks (one of the nearer ones) in this same drawing
of Bolton Abbey (fig. 3. Plate 5.), and _this_ I cannot better; this
is perfectly finished; it is not possible to add more truth to it on
that scale. Texture of bark, anatomy of muscle beneath, reflected
lights in recessed hollows, stains of dark moss, and flickering
shadows from the foliage above, all are there, as clearly as the human
hand can mark them. I place a bit of trunk by Constable (fig. 5.),[41]
from another plate in Leslie's Life of him (a dell in Helmingham Park,
Suffolk), for the sake of the same comparison in shade that we have
above in contour. You see Constable does not know whether he is
drawing moss or shadow: those dark touches in the middle are confused
in his mind between the dark stains on the trunk and its dark side;
there is no anatomy, no cast shadow, nothing but idle sweeps of the
brush, vaguely circular. The thing is much darker than Turner's, but
it is not, therefore, finished; it is only blackened. And "to blacken"
is indeed the proper word for all attempts at finish without
knowledge. All true finish is _added fact_; and Turner's word for
finishing a picture was always this significant one, "carry forward."
But labor without added knowledge can only blacken or stain a picture,
it cannot finish it.
Sec. 16. And this is especially to be remembered as we pass from
comparatively large and distant objects, such as this single trunk, to
the more divided and nearer features of foreground. Some degree of
ignorance may be hidden, in completing what is far away; but there is
no concealment possible in close work, and darkening instead of
finishing becomes then the engraver's only possible resource. It has
always been a wonderful thing to me to hear people talk of making
foregrounds "vigorous," "marked," "forcible," and so on. If you will
lie down on your breast on the next bank you come to (which is
bringing it _close_ enough, I should think, to give it all the force
it is capable of), you will see, in the cluster of leaves and grass
close to your face, something as delicate as this, which I have
actually so drawn, on the opposite page, a mystery of soft shadow in
the depths of the grass, with indefinite forms of leaves, which you
cannot trace or count, within it, and out of that, the nearer leaves
coming in every subtle gradation of tender light and flickering form,
quite beyond all delicacy of pencilling to follow; and yet you will
rise up from that bank (certainly not making it appear coarser by
drawing a little back from it), and profess to represent it by a few
blots of "forcible" foreground color. "Well, but I cannot draw every
leaf that I see on the bank." No, for as we saw, at the beginning of
this chapter, that no human work could be finished so as to express
the _delicacy_ of nature, so neither can it be finished so as to
express the _redundance_ of nature. Accept that necessity; but do not
deny it; do not call your work finished, when you have, in engraving,
substituted a confusion of coarse black scratches, or in water-color a
few edgy blots, for ineffable organic beauty. Follow that beauty as
far as you can, remembering that just as far as you see, know, and
represent it, just so far your work is finished; as far as you fall
short of it, your work is _un_finished; and as far as you substitute
any other thing for it, your work is spoiled.
[Illustration: 6. Foreground Leafage.]
Sec. 17. How far Turner followed it, is not easily shown; for his
finish is so delicate as to be nearly uncopiable. I have just said
it was not possible to finish that ash trunk of his, farther, on
such a scale.[42] By using a magnifying-glass, and giving the same
help to the spectator, it might perhaps be possible to add and
exhibit a few more details; but even as it is, I cannot by line
engraving express all that there is in that piece of tree-trunk, on
the same scale. I _have_ therefore magnified the upper part of it in
fig 4. (Plate 5.), so that the reader may better see the beautiful
lines of curvature into which even its slightest shades and spots
are cast. Every quarter of an inch in Turner's drawings will bear
magnifying in the same way; much of the finer work in them can
hardly be traced, except by the keenest sight, until it is
magnified. In his painting of Ivy Bridge,[43] the veins are drawn on
the wings of a butterfly, not above three lines in diameter; and in
one of his smaller drawings of Scarborough, in my own possession,
the muscle-shells on the beach are rounded, and some shown as shut,
some as open, though none are as large as one of the letters of this
type; and yet this is the man who was thought to belong to the
"dashing" school, literally because most people had not patience or
delicacy of sight enough to trace his endless detail.
Sec. 18. "Suppose it was so," perhaps the reader replies; "still I do
not like detail so delicate that it can hardly be seen." Then you
like nothing in Nature (for you will find she always carries her
detail too far to be traced). This point, however, we shall examine
hereafter; it is not the question now whether we _like_ finish or
not; our only inquiry here is, what finish _means_; and I trust the
reader is beginning to be satisfied that it does indeed mean nothing
but consummate and accumulated truth, and that our old monotonous
test must still serve us here as elsewhere. And it will become us to
consider seriously why (if indeed it be so) we dislike this kind of
finish--dislike an accumulation of truth. For assuredly all
authority is against us, and _no truly great man can be named in the
arts--but it is that of one who finished to his utmost_. Take
Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Raphael for a triad, to begin with.
_They_ all completed their detail with such subtlety of touch and
gradation, that, in a careful drawing by any of the three, you
cannot see where the pencil ceased to touch the paper; the stroke of
it is so tender, that, when you look close to the drawing you can
see nothing; you only see the effect of it a little way back! Thus
tender in execution,--and so complete in detail, that Leonardo must
needs draw _every several vein in the little agates_ and pebbles of
the gravel under the feet of the St. Anne in the Louvre. Take a
quartett after the triad--Titian, Tintoret, Bellini, and Veronese.
Examine the vine-leaves of the Bacchus and Ariadne, (Titian's) in
the National Gallery; examine the borage blossoms, painted petal by
petal, though lying loose on the table, in Titian's Supper at
Emmaus, in the Louvre, or the snail-shells on the ground in his
Entombment;[44] examine the separately designed patterns on every
drapery of Veronese, in his Marriage in Cana; go to Venice and see
how Tintoret paints the strips of black bark on the birch trunk that
sustains the platform in his Adoration of the Magi: how Bellini
fills the rents of his ruined walls with the most exquisite clusters
of the erba della Madonna.[45] You will find them all in a tale.
Take a quintett after the quartett--Francia, Angelico, Durer,
Hemling, Perugino,--and still the witness is one, still the same
striving in all to such utmost perfection as their knowledge and
hand could reach.
Who shall gainsay these men? Above all, who shall gainsay them when
they and Nature say precisely the same thing? For where does Nature
pause in _her_ finishing--that finishing which consists not in the
smoothing of surface, but the filling of space, and the
multiplication of life and thought?
Who shall gainsay them? I, for one, dare not; but accept their
teaching, with Nature's, in all humbleness.
"But is there, then, no good in any work which does not pretend to
perfectness? Is there no saving clause from this terrible
requirement of completion? And if there be none, what is the meaning
of all you have said elsewhere about rudeness as the glory of Gothic
work, and, even a few pages back, about the danger of finishing, for
our modern workmen?"
Indeed there are many saving clauses, and there is much good in
imperfect work. But we had better cast the consideration of these
drawbacks and exceptions into another chapter, and close this one,
without obscuring, in any wise, our broad conclusion that "finishing"
means in art simply "telling more truth;" and that whatever we have in
any sort begun wisely, it is good to finish thoroughly.
[38] "With his Yemen sword for aid;
Ornament it carried none,
But the notches on the blade."
[39] See the base of the new Army and Navy Clubhouse.
[40] I take this example from Miller, because, on the whole, he is
the best engraver of Turner whom we have.
[41] Fig. 5. is not, however, so _lustrous_ as Constable's; I
cannot help this, having given the original plate to my good
friend Mr. Cousen, with strict charge to facsimile it
faithfully: but the figure is all the fairer, as a
representation of Constable's art, for those mezzotints in
Leslie's life of him have many qualities of drawing which are
quite wanting in Constable's blots of color. The comparison
shall be made elaborately, between picture and picture, in
the section on Vegetation.
[42] It is of the exact size of the original, the whole drawing
being about 15-1/2 inches by 11 in.
[43] An oil painting (about 3 ft. by 4 ft. 6 in.), and very broad
in its masses. In the possession of E. Bicknell, Esq.
[44] These snail-shells are very notable, occurring as they do in,
perhaps, the very grandest and broadest of all Titian's
compositions.
[45] Linaria Cymbalaria, the ivy-leaved toadflax of English
gardens.