OF THE USE OF PICTURES.
Sec. 1. I am afraid this will be a difficult chapter; one of drawbacks,
qualifications, and exceptions. But the more I see of useful truths,
the more I find that, like human beings, they are eminently biped;
and, although, as far as apprehended by human intelligence, they are
usually seen in a crane-like posture, standing on one leg, whenever
they are to be stated so as to maintain themselves against all
attack it is quite necessary they should stand on two, and have
their complete balance on opposite fulcra.
Sec. 2. I doubt not that one objection, with which as well as with
another we may begin, has struck the reader very forcibly, after
comparing the illustrations above given from Turner, Constable, and
Claude. He will wonder how it was that Turner, finishing in this
exquisite way, and giving truths by the thousand, where other
painters gave only one or two, yet, of all painters, seemed to
obtain least acknowledgeable resemblance to nature, so that the
world cried out upon him for a madman, at the moment when he was
giving exactly the highest and most consummate truth that had ever
been seen in landscape.
And he will wonder why still there seems reason for this outcry.
Still, after what analysis and proof of his being right have as yet
been given, the reader may perhaps be saying to himself: "All this
reasoning is of no use to me. Turner does _not_ give me the idea of
nature; I do not feel before one of his pictures as I should in the
real scene. Constable takes me out into the shower, and Claude into
the sun; and De Wint makes me feel as if I were walking in the
fields; but Turner keeps me in the house, and I know always that I
am looking at a picture."
I might answer to this; Well, what else _should_ he do? If you want
to feel as if you were in a shower, cannot you go and get wet without
help from Constable? If you want to feel as if you were walking in the
fields, cannot you go and walk in them without help from De Wint? But
if you want to sit in your room and look at a beautiful picture, why
should you blame the artist for giving you one? This _was_ the answer
actually made to me by various journalists, when first I showed that
Turner was truer than other painters: "Nay," said they, "we do not
want truth, we want something else than truth; we would not have
nature, but something better than nature."
Sec. 3. I do not mean to accept that answer, although it seems at this
moment to make for me: I have never accepted it. As I raise my eyes
from the paper, to think over the curious mingling in it, of direct
error, and far away truth, I see upon the room-walls, first,
Turner's drawing of the chain of the Alps from the Superga above
Turin; then a study of a block of gneiss at Chamouni, with the
purple Aiguilles-Rouges behind it; another, of the towers of the
Swiss Fribourg, with a cluster of pine forest behind them; then
another Turner, Isola Bella, with the blue opening of the St.
Gothard in the distance; and then a fair bit of thirteenth century
illumination, depicting, at the top of the page, the Salutation; and
beneath, the painter who painted it, sitting in his little convent
cell, with a legend above him to this effect--
"ego jah{ann}es sc{ri}psi hunc librum."
I, John, wrote this book.
None of these things are bad pieces of art; and yet,--if it were
offered to me to have, instead of them, so many windows, out of
which I should see, first, the real chain of the Alps from the
Superga; then the real block of gneiss, and Aiguilles-Rouges; then
the real towers of Fribourg, and pine forest; the real Isola Bella;
and, finally, the true Mary and Elizabeth; and beneath them, the
actual old monk at work in his cell,--I would very unhesitatingly
change my five pictures for the five windows; and so, I apprehend,
would most people, not, it seems to me, unwisely.
"Well, then," the reader goes on to question me, "the more closely
the picture resembles such a window the better it must be?"
Yes.
"Then if Turner does not give me the impression of such a window,
that is of Nature, there must be something wrong in Turner?"
Yes.
"And if Constable and De Wint give me the impression of such a
window, there must be something right in Constable and De Wint?"
Yes.
"And something more right than in Turner?"
No.
"Will you explain yourself?"
I _have_ explained myself, long ago, and that fully; perhaps too
fully for the simple sum of the explanation to be remembered. If the
reader will glance back to, and in the present state of our inquiry,
reconsider in the first volume, Part I. Sec. I. Chap. V., and Part
II. Sec. _I._ Chap. VII., he will find our present difficulties
anticipated. There are some truths, easily obtained, which give a
deceptive resemblance to Nature; others only to be obtained with
difficulty, which cause no deception, but give inner and deep
resemblance. These two classes of truths cannot be obtained
together; choice must be made between them. The bad painter gives
the cheap deceptive resemblance. The good painter gives the precious
non-deceptive resemblance. Constable perceives in a landscape that
the grass is wet, the meadows flat, and the boughs shady; that is to
say, about as much as, I suppose, might in general be apprehended,
between them, by an intelligent fawn and a skylark. Turner perceives
at a glance the whole sum of visible truth open to human
intelligence. So Berghem perceives nothing in a figure, beyond the
flashes of light on the folds of its dress; but Michael Angelo
perceives every flash of thought that is passing through its spirit;
and Constable and Berghem may imitate windows; Turner and Michael
Angelo can by no means imitate windows. But Turner and Michael
Angelo are nevertheless the best.
Sec. 4. "Well but," the reader persists, "you admitted just now that
because Turner did not get his work to look like a window there was
something wrong in him."
I did so; if he were quite right he would have _all_ truth, low as
well as high; that is, he would be Nature and not Turner; but that
is impossible to man. There is much that is wrong in him; much that
is infinitely wrong in all human effort. But, nevertheless, in some
an infinity of Betterness above other human effort.
"Well, but you said you would change your Turners for windows, why
not, therefore, for Constables?"
Nay, I did not say that I would change them for windows _merely_,
but for windows which commanded the chain of the Alps and Isola
Bella. That is to say, for all the truth that there is in Turner,
and all the truth besides which is not in him; but I would not
change them for Constables, to have a small piece of truth which is
not in Turner, and none of the mighty truth which there is.
Sec. 5. Thus far, then, though the subject is one requiring somewhat
lengthy explanation, it involves no real difficulty. There is not
the slightest inconsistency in the mode in which throughout this
work I have desired the relative merits of painters to be judged. I
have always said, he who is closest to Nature is best. All rules are
useless, all genius is useless, all labor is useless, if you do not
give facts; the more facts you give the greater you are; and there
is no fact so unimportant as to be prudently despised, if it be
possible to represent it. Nor, but that I have long known the truth
of Herbert's lines,
"Some men are
Full of themselves, and answer their own notion,"
would it have been without intense surprise that I heard querulous
readers asking, "how it was possible" that I could praise
Pre-Raphaelitism and Turner also. For, from the beginning of this
book to this page of it, I have never praised Turner highly for any
other cause than that he _gave facts_ more _delicately_, more
Pre-Raphaelitically, than other men. Careless readers, who dashed at
the descriptions and missed the arguments, took up their own
conceptions of the cause of my liking Turner, and said to
themselves: "Turner cannot draw, Turner is generalizing, vague,
visionary; and the Pre-Raphaelites are hard and distinct. How can
any one like both?"[46] But _I_ never said that Turner could not
draw. _I_ never said that he was vague or visionary. What _I_ said
was, that nobody had ever drawn so well: that nobody was so certain,
so _un_-visionary; that nobody had ever given so many hard and
downright facts. Glance back to the first volume, and note the
expressions now. "He is the only painter who ever drew a mountain or
a stone;[47] the only painter who can draw the stem of a tree; the
only painter who has ever drawn the sky, previous artists having
only drawn it typically or partially, but he absolutely and
universally." Note how he is praised in his rock drawing for "not
selecting a pretty or interesting morsel here or there, but giving
the whole truth, with all the relations of its parts."[48] Observe
how the _great virtue_ of the landscape of Cima da Conegliano and
the early sacred painters is said to be giving "entire, exquisite,
humble, realization--a strawberry-plant in the foreground with a
blossom, _and a berry just set_, _and one half ripe, and one ripe_,
all patiently and innocently painted from the _real thing, and_
_therefore most divine_." Then re-read the following paragraph (Sec.
10.), carefully, and note its conclusion, that the thoroughly great
men are those who have done everything thoroughly, and who have
never despised anything, however small, of God's making; with the
instance given of Wordsworth's daisy casting its shadow on a stone;
and the following sentence, "Our painters must come to this before
they have done their duty." And yet, when our painters _did_ come to
this, did do their duty, and did paint the daisy with its shadow
(this passage having been written years before Pre-Raphaelitism was
thought of), people wondered how I could possibly like what was
neither more nor less than the precise fulfilment of my own most
earnest exhortations and highest hopes.
Sec. 6. Thus far, then, all I have been saying is absolutely
consistent, and tending to one simple end. Turner is praised for his
truth and finish; that truth of which I am beginning to give
examples. Pre-Raphaelitism is praised for its truth and finish; and
the whole duty inculcated upon the artist is that of being in all
respects as like Nature as possible.
And yet this is not all I have to do. There is more than this to be
inculcated upon the student, more than this to be admitted or
established before the foundations of just judgment can be laid.
For, observe, although I believe any sensible person would exchange
his pictures, however good, for windows, he would not feel, and
ought not to feel, that the arrangement was _entirely_ gainful to
him. He would feel it was an exchange of a less good of one kind,
for a greater of another kind, but that it was definitely
_exchange_, not pure gain, not merely getting more truth instead of
less. The picture would be a serious loss; something gone which the
actual landscape could never restore, though it might give something
better in its place, as age may give to the heart something better
than its youthful delusion, but cannot give again the sweetness of
that delusion.
Sec. 7. What is this in the picture which is precious to us, and yet is
not natural? Hitherto our arguments have tended, on the whole,
somewhat to the depreciation of art; and the reader may every now and
then, so far as he has been convinced by them, have been inclined to
say, "Why not give up this whole science of Mockery at once, since
its only virtue is in representing facts, and it cannot, at best,
represent them completely, besides being liable to all manner of
shortcomings and dishonesties,--why not keep to the facts, to real
fields, and hills, and men, and let this dangerous painting alone?"
No, it would not be well to do this. Painting has its peculiar
virtues, not only consistent with but even resulting from, its
shortcomings and weaknesses. Let us see what these virtues are.
Sec. 8. I must ask permission, as I have sometimes done before, to
begin apparently a long way from the point.
Not long ago, as I was leaving one of the towns of Switzerland early
in the morning, I saw in the clouds behind the houses an Alp which I
did not know, a grander Alp than any I knew, nobler than the
Schreckhorn or the Moench; terminated, as it seemed, on one side by a
precipice of almost unimaginable height; on the other, sloping away
for leagues in one field of lustrous ice, clear and fair and blue,
flashing here and there into silver under the morning sun. For a
moment I received a sensation of as much sublimity as any natural
object could possibly excite; the next moment, I saw that my unknown
Alp was the glass roof of one of the workshops of the town, rising
above its nearer houses, and rendered aerial and indistinct by some
pure blue wood smoke which rose from intervening chimneys.
It is evident, that so far as the mere delight of the eye was
concerned, the glass roof was here equal, or at least equal for a
moment, to the Alp. Whether the power of the object over the heart
was to be small or great, depended altogether upon what it was
understood for, upon its being taken possession of and apprehended
in its full nature, either as a granite mountain or a group of panes
of glass; and thus, always, the real majesty of the appearance of
the thing to us, depends upon the degree in which we ourselves
possess the power of understanding it,--that penetrating, possession
taking power of the imagination, which has been long ago defined[49]
as the very life of the man, considered as a _seeing_ creature. For
though the casement had indeed been an Alp, there are many persons
on whose minds it would have produced no more effect than the glass
roof. It would have been to them a glittering object of a certain
apparent length and breadth, and whether of glass or ice, whether
twenty feet in length, or twenty leagues, would have made no
difference to them; or, rather, would not have been in any wise
conceived or considered by them. Examine the nature of your own
emotion (if you feel it) at the sight of the Alp, and you find all
the brightness of that emotion hanging, like dew on gossamer, on a
curious web of subtle fancy and imperfect knowledge. First, you have
a vague idea of its size, coupled with wonder at the work of the
great Builder of its walls and foundations, then an apprehension of
its eternity, a pathetic sense of its perpetualness, and your own
transientness, as of the grass upon its sides; then, and in this
very sadness, a sense of strange companionship with past generations
in seeing what they saw. They did not see the clouds that are
floating over your head; nor the cottage wall on the other side of
the field; nor the road by which you are travelling. But they saw
_that_. The wall of granite in the heavens was the same to them as
to you. They have ceased to look upon it; you will soon cease to
look also, and the granite wall will be for others. Then, mingled
with these more solemn imaginations, come the understandings of the
gifts and glories of the Alps, the fancying forth of all the
fountains that well from its rocky walls, and strong rivers that are
born out of its ice, and of all the pleasant valleys that wind
between its cliffs, and all the chalets that gleam among its clouds,
and happy farmsteads couched upon its pastures; while together with
the thoughts of these, rise strange sympathies with all the unknown
of human life, and happiness, and death, signified by that narrow
white flame of the everlasting snow, seen so far in the morning sky.
These images, and far more than these, lie at the root of the emotion
which you feel at the sight of the Alp. You may not trace them in your
heart, for there is a great deal more in your heart, of evil and good,
than you ever can trace; but they stir you and quicken you for all
that. Assuredly, so far as you feel more at beholding the snowy
mountain than any other object of the same sweet silvery grey, these
are the kind of images which cause you to do so; and, observe, these
are nothing more than a greater apprehension of the _facts_ of the
thing. We call the power "Imagination," because it imagines or
conceives; but it is only noble imagination if it imagines or
conceives _the truth_. And, according to the degree of knowledge
possessed, and of sensibility to the pathetic or impressive character
of the things known, will be the degree of this imaginative delight.
Sec. 9. But the main point to be noted at present is, that if the
imagination can be excited to this its peculiar work, it matters
comparatively little what it is excited by. If the smoke had not
cleared partially away, the glass roof might have pleased me as well
as an alp, until I had quite lost sight of it; and if, in a picture,
the imagination can be once caught, and, without absolute affront
from some glaring fallacy, set to work in its own field, the
imperfection of the historical details themselves is, to the
spectator's enjoyment, of small consequence.
Hence it is, that poets and men of strong feeling in general, are
apt to be among the very worst judges of painting. The slightest
hint is enough for them. Tell them that a white stroke means a ship,
and a black stain, a thunderstorm, and they will be perfectly
satisfied with both, and immediately proceed to remember all that
they ever felt about ships and thunderstorms, attributing the whole
current and fulness of their own feelings to the painter's work;
while probably, if the picture be really good, and full of stern
fact, the poet, or man of feeling, will find some of its fact _in
his way_, out of the particular course of his own thoughts,--be
offended at it, take to criticising and wondering at it, detect, at
last, some imperfection in it,--such as must be inherent in all
human work,--and so finally quarrel with, and reject the whole
thing. Thus, Wordsworth writes many sonnets to Sir George Beaumont
and Haydon, none to Sir Joshua or to Turner.
Sec. 10. Hence also the error into which many superficial artists fall,
in speaking of "addressing the imagination" as the only end of art.
It is quite true that the imagination must be addressed; but it may
be very sufficiently addressed by the stain left by an ink-bottle
thrown at the wall. The thrower has little credit, though an
imaginative observer may find, perhaps, more to amuse him in the
erratic nigrescence than in many a labored picture. And thus, in a
slovenly or ill-finished picture, it is no credit to the artist that
he has "addressed the imagination;" nor is the success of such an
appeal any criterion whatever of the merit of the work. The duty of
an artist is not only to address and awaken, but to _guide_ the
imagination; and there is no safe guidance but that of simple
concurrence with fact. It is no matter that the picture takes the
fancy of A. or B., that C. writes sonnets to it, and D. feels it to
be divine. This is still the only question for the artist, or for
us:--"Is it a fact? Are things really so? Is the picture an Alp
among pictures, full, firm, eternal; or only a glass house, frail,
hollow, contemptible, demolishable; calling, at all honest hands,
for detection and demolition?"
Sec. 11. Hence it is also that so much grievous difficulty stands in
the way of obtaining _real opinion_ about pictures at all. Tell any
man, of the slightest imaginative power, that such and such a
picture is good, and means this or that: tell him, for instance,
that a Claude is good, and that it means trees, and grass, and
water; and forthwith, whatever faith, virtue, humility, and
imagination there are in the man, rise up to help Claude, and to
declare that indeed it is all "excellent good, i'faith;" and
whatever in the course of his life he has felt of pleasure in trees
and grass, he will begin to reflect upon and enjoy anew, supposing
all the while it is the picture he is enjoying. Hence, when once a
painter's reputation is accredited, it must be a stubborn kind of
person indeed whom he will not please, or seem to please; for all
the vain and weak people pretend to be pleased with him, for their
own credit's sake, and all the humble and imaginative people
seriously and honestly fancy they _are_ pleased with him, deriving
indeed, very certainly, delight from his work, but a delight which,
if they were kept in the same temper, they would equally derive
(and, indeed, constantly do derive) from the grossest daub that can
be manufactured in imitation by the pawnbroker. Is, therefore, the
pawnbroker's imitation as good as the original? Not so. There is the
certain test of goodness and badness, which I am always striving to
get people to use. As long as they are satisfied if they find their
feelings pleasantly stirred and their fancy gaily occupied, so long
there is for them no good, no bad. Anything may please, or anything
displease, them; and their entire manner of thought and talking
about art is mockery, and all their judgments are laborious
injustices. But let them, in the teeth of their pleasure or
displeasure, simply put the calm question,--Is it so? Is that the
way a stone is shaped, the way a cloud is wreathed, the way a leaf
is veined? and they are safe. They will do no more injustice to
themselves nor to other men; they will learn to whose guidance they
may trust their imagination, and from whom they must for ever
withhold its reins.
Sec. 12. "Well, but why have you dragged in this poor spectator's
imagination at all, if you have nothing more to say for it than
this; if you are merely going to abuse it, and go back to your
tiresome facts?"
Nay; I am not going to abuse it. On the contrary, I have to assert,
in a temper profoundly venerant of it, that though we must not
suppose everything is right when this is aroused, we may be sure
that something is wrong when this is _not_ aroused. The something
wrong may be in the spectator or in the picture; and if the picture
be demonstrably in accordance with truth, the odds are, that it is
in the spectator; but there is wrong somewhere; for the work of the
picture is indeed eminently to get at this imaginative power in the
beholder, and all its facts are of no use whatever if it does not.
No matter how much truth it tells if the hearer be asleep. Its first
work is to wake him, then to teach him.
Sec. 13. Now, observe, while, as it penetrates into the nature of
things, the imagination is preeminently a beholder of things _as_
they _are_, it is, in its creative function, an eminent beholder of
things _when_ and _where_ they are NOT; a seer, that is, in the
prophetic sense, calling "the things that are not as though they
were," and for ever delighting to dwell on that which is not
tangibly present. And its great function being the calling forth, or
back, that which is not visible to bodily sense, it has of course
been made to take delight in the fulfilment of its proper function,
and preeminently to enjoy, and spend its energy, on things past and
future, or out of sight, rather than things present, or in sight. So
that if the imagination is to be called to take delight in any
object, it will not be always well, if we can help it, to put the
_real_ object there, before it. The imagination would on the whole
rather have it _not_ there;--the reality and substance are rather in
the imagination's way; it would think a good deal more of the thing
if it could not see it. Hence, that strange and sometimes fatal
charm, which there is in all things as long as we wait for them, and
the moment we have lost them; but which fades while we possess
them;--that sweet bloom of all that is far away, which perishes
under our touch. Yet the feeling of this is not a weakness; it is
one of the most glorious gifts of the human mind, making the whole
infinite future, and imperishable past, a richer inheritance, if
faithfully inherited, than the changeful, frail, fleeting present;
it is also one of the many witnesses in us to the truth that these
present and tangible things are not meant to satisfy us. The
instinct becomes a weakness only when it is weakly indulged, and
when the faculty which was intended by God to give back to us what
we have lost, and gild for us what is to come, is so perverted as
only to darken what we possess. But, perverted or pure, the instinct
itself is everlasting, and the substantial presence even of the
things which we love the best, will inevitably and for ever be found
wanting in _one_ strange and tender charm, which belonged to the
dreams of them.
Sec. 14. Another character of the imagination is equally constant, and,
to our present inquiry, of yet greater importance. It is eminently a
_weariable_ faculty, eminently delicate, and incapable of bearing
fatigue; so that if we give it too many objects at a time to employ
itself upon, or very grand ones for a long time together, it fails
under the effort, becomes jaded, exactly as the limbs do by bodily
fatigue, and incapable of answering any farther appeal till it has
had rest. And this is the real nature of the weariness which is so
often felt in travelling, from seeing too much. It is not that the
monotony and number of the beautiful things seen have made them
valueless, but that the imaginative power has been overtaxed; and,
instead of letting it rest, the traveller, wondering to find himself
dull, and incapable of admiration, seeks for something more
admirable, excites, and torments, and drags the poor fainting
imagination up by the shoulders: "Look at this, and look at that,
and this more wonderful still!"--until the imaginative faculty
faints utterly away, beyond all farther torment or pleasure, dead
for many a day to come; and the despairing prodigal takes to
horse-racing in the Campagna, good now for nothing else than that;
whereas, if the imagination had only been laid down on the grass,
among simple things, and left quiet for a little while, it would
have come to itself gradually, recovered its strength and color, and
soon been fit for work again. So that, whenever the imagination is
tired, it is necessary to find for it something, not _more_
admirable but _less_ admirable; such as in that weak state it can
deal with; then give it peace, and it will recover.
Sec. 15. I well recollect the walk on which I first found out this; it
was on the winding road from Sallenche, sloping up the hills towards
St. Gervais, one cloudless Sunday afternoon. The road circles softly
between bits of rocky bank and mounded pasture; little cottages and
chapels gleaming out from among the trees at every turn. Behind me,
some leagues in length, rose the jagged range of the mountains of the
Reposoir; on the other side of the valley, the mass of the Aiguille de
Varens, heaving its seven thousand feet of cliff into the air at a
single effort, its gentle gift of waterfall, the Nant d'Arpenaz, like
a pillar of cloud at its feet; Mont Blanc and all its aiguilles, one
silver flame, in front of me; marvellous blocks of mossy granite and
dark glades of pine around me; but I could enjoy nothing, and could
not for a long while make out what was the matter with me, until at
last I discovered that if I confined myself to one thing,--and that a
little thing,--a tuft of moss, or a single crag at the top of the
Varens, or a wreath or two of foam at the bottom of the Nant
d'Arpenaz, I began to enjoy it directly, because then I had mind
enough to put into the thing, and the enjoyment arose from the
quantity of the imaginative energy I could bring to bear upon it; but
when I looked at or thought of all together, moss, stones, Varens,
Nant d'Arpenaz, and Mont Blanc, I had not mind enough to give to all,
and none were of any value. The conclusion which would have been
formed, upon this, by a German philosopher, would have been that the
Mont Blanc _was_ of no value; that he and his imagination only were of
value; that the Mont Blanc, in fact, except so far as he was able to
look at it, could not be considered as having any existence. But the
only conclusion which occurred to me as reasonable under the
circumstances (I have seen no ground for altering it since) was, that
I was an exceedingly small creature, much tired, and, at the moment,
not a little stupid, for whom a blade of grass, or a wreath of foam,
was quite food enough and to spare, and that if I tried to take any
more, I should make myself ill. Whereupon, associating myself
fraternally with some ants, who were deeply interested in the
conveyance of some small sticks over the road, and rather, as I think
they generally are, in too great a hurry about it, I returned home in
a little while with great contentment, thinking how well it was
ordered that, as Mont Blanc and his pine forests could not be
everywhere, nor all the world come to see them, the human mind, on the
whole, should enjoy itself most surely in an ant-like manner, and be
happy and busy with the bits of stick and grains of crystal that fall
in its way to be handled, in daily duty.
Sec. 16. It follows evidently from the first of these characters of the
imagination, its dislike of substance and presence, that a picture has
in some measure even an advantage with us in not being real. The
imagination rejoices in having something to do, springs up with all
its willing power, flattered and happy; and ready with its fairest
colors and most tender pencilling, to prove itself worthy of the
trust, and exalt into sweet supremacy the shadow that has been
confided to its fondness. And thus, so far from its being at all an
object to the painter to make his work look real, he ought to dread
such a consummation as the loss of one of its most precious claims
upon the heart. So far from striving to convince the beholder that
what he sees is substance, his mind should be to what he paints as the
fire to the body on the pile, burning away the ashes, leaving the
unconquerable shade--an immortal dream. So certain is this, that the
slightest local success in giving the deceptive appearance of
reality--the imitation, for instance, of the texture of a bit of wood,
with its grain in relief--will instantly destroy the charm of a whole
picture; the imagination feels itself insulted and injured, and passes
by with cold contempt; nay, however beautiful the whole scene may be,
as of late in much of our highly wrought painting for the stage, the
mere fact of its being deceptively real is enough to make us tire of
it; we may be surprised and pleased for a moment, but the imagination
will not on those terms be persuaded to give any of its help, and, in
a quarter of an hour, we wish the scene would change.
Sec. 17. "Well, but then, what becomes of all these long dogmatic
chapters of yours about giving nothing but the truth, and as much
truth as possible?"
The chapters are all quite right. "Nothing but the Truth," I say
still. "As much Truth as possible," I say still. But truth so
presented, that it will need the help of the imagination to make it
real. Between the painter and the beholder, each doing his proper
part, the reality should be sustained; and after the beholding
imagination has come forward and done its best, then, with its help,
and in the full action of it, the beholder should be able to say, I
feel as if I were at the real place, or seeing the real incident.
But not without that help.
Sec. 18. Farther, in consequence of that other character of the
imagination, fatiguableness, it is a great advantage to the picture
that it need not present too much at once, and that what it does
present may be so chosen and ordered as not only to be more easily
seized, but to give the imagination rest, and, as it were, places to
lie down and stretch its limbs in; kindly vacancies, beguiling it
back into action, with pleasant and cautious sequence of incident;
all jarring thoughts being excluded, all vain redundance denied, and
all just and sweet transition permitted.
And thus it is that, for the most part, imperfect sketches,
engravings, outlines, rude sculptures, and other forms of abstraction,
possess a charm which the most finished picture frequently wants. For
not only does the finished picture excite the imagination less, but,
like nature itself, it _taxes_ it more. None of it can be enjoyed till
the imagination is brought to bear upon it; and the details of the
completed picture are so numerous, that it needs greater strength and
willingness in the beholder to follow them all out; the redundance,
perhaps, being not too great for the mind of a careful observer, but
too great for a casual or careless observer. So that although the
perfection of art will always consist in the utmost _acceptable_
completion, yet, as every added idea will increase the difficulty of
apprehension, and every added touch advance the dangerous realism
which makes the imagination languid, the difference between a noble
and ignoble painter is in nothing more sharply defined than in
this,--that the first wishes to put into his work as much truth as
possible, and yet to keep it looking _un_-real; the second wishes to
get through his work lazily, with as little truth as possible, and yet
to make it look real; and, so far as they add color to their abstract
sketch, the first realizes for the sake of the color, and the second
colors for the sake of the realization.[50]
Sec. 19. And then, lastly, it is another infinite advantage possessed
by the picture, that in these various differences from reality it
becomes the expression of the power and intelligence of a
companionable human soul. In all this choice, arrangement,
penetrative sight, and kindly guidance, we recognize a supernatural
operation, and perceive, not merely the landscape or incident as in
a mirror, but, besides, the presence of what, after all, may perhaps
be the most wonderful piece of divine work in the whole matter--the
great human spirit through which it is manifested to us. So that,
although with respect to many important scenes, it might, as we saw
above, be one of the most precious gifts that could be given us to
see them with _our own eyes_, yet also in many things it is more
desirable to be permitted to see them with the eyes of others; and
although, to the small, conceited, and affected painter displaying
his narrow knowledge and tiny dexterities, our only word may be,
"Stand aside from between that nature and me," yet to the great
imaginative painter--greater a million times in every faculty of
soul than we--our word may wisely be, "Come between this nature and
me--this nature which is too great and too wonderful for me; temper
it for me, interpret it to me; let me see with your eyes, and hear
with your ears, and have help and strength from your great spirit."
All the noblest pictures have this character. They are true or
inspired ideals, seen in a moment to _be_ ideal; that is to say, the
result of all the highest powers of the imagination, engaged in the
discovery and apprehension of the purest truths, and having so
arranged them as best to show their preciousness and exalt their
clearness. They are always orderly, always one, ruled by one great
purpose throughout, in the fulfilment of which every atom of the
detail is called to help, and would be missed if removed; this
peculiar oneness being the result, not of obedience to any teachable
law, but of the magnificence of tone in the perfect mind, which
accepts only what is good for its great purposes, rejects whatever is
foreign or redundant, and instinctively and instantaneously ranges
whatever it accepts, in sublime subordination and helpful brotherhood.
Sec. 20. Then, this being the greatest art, the lowest art is the
mimicry of it,--the subordination of nothing to nothing; the
elaborate arrangement of sightlessness and emptiness; the order
which has no object; the unity which has no life, and the law which
has no love; the light which has nothing to illumine, and shadow
which has nothing to relieve.[51]
Sec. 21. And then, between these two, comes the wholesome, happy, and
noble--though not noblest--art of simple transcript from nature;
into which, so far as our modern Pre-Raphaelitism falls, it will
indeed do sacred service in ridding us of the old fallacies and
componencies, but cannot itself rise above the level of simple and
happy usefulness. So far as it is to be great, it must add,--and so
far as it _is_ great, has already added,--the great imaginative
element to all its faithfulness in transcript. And for this reason,
I said in the close of my Edinburgh Lectures, that Pre-Raphaelitism,
as long as it confined itself to the simple copying of nature, could
not take the character of the highest class of art. But it has
already, almost unconsciously, supplied the defect, and taken that
character, in all its best results; and, so far as it ought,
hereafter, it will assuredly do so, as soon as it is permitted to
maintain itself in any other position than that of stern antagonism
to the composition teachers around it. I say "so far as it ought,"
because, as already noticed in that same place, we have enough, and
to spare, of noble _inventful_ pictures; so many have we, that we
let them moulder away on the walls and roofs of Italy without one
regretful thought about them. But of simple transcripts from nature,
till now we have had none; even Van Eyck and Albert Durer having
been strongly filled with the spirit of grotesque idealism; so that
the Pre-Raphaelites have, to the letter, fulfilled Steele's
description of the author, who "determined to write in an entirely
new manner, and describe things exactly as they took place."
Sec. 22. We have now, I believe, in some sort answered most of the
questions which were suggested to us during our statement of the
nature of great art. I could recapitulate the answers; but perhaps
the reader is already sufficiently wearied of the recurrence of the
terms "Ideal," "Nature," "Imagination," "Invention," and will hardly
care to see them again interchanged among each other, in the
formalities of a summary. What difficulties may yet occur to him
will, I think, disappear as he either re-reads the passages which
suggested them, or follows out the consideration of the subject for
himself:--this very simple, but very precious, conclusion being
continually remembered by him as the sum of all; that greatness in
art (as assuredly in all other things, but more distinctly in this
than in most of them,) is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but
_the expression of the mind of a God-made great man_; that teach, or
preach, or labor as you will, everlasting difference is set between
one man's capacity and another's; and that this God-given supremacy
is the priceless thing, always just as rare in the world at one time
as another. What you can manufacture, or communicate, you can lower
the price of, but this mental supremacy is incommunicable; you will
never multiply its quantity, nor lower its price; and nearly the
best thing that men can generally do is to set themselves, not to
the attainment, but the discovery of this; learning to know gold,
when we see it, from iron-glance, and diamonds from flint-sand,
being for most of us a more profitable employment than trying to
make diamonds out of our own charcoal. And for this God-made
supremacy, I generally have used, and shall continue to use, the
word Inspiration, not carelessly nor lightly, but in all logical
calmness and perfect reverence. We English have many false ideas
about reverence: we should be shocked, for instance, to see a
market-woman come into church with a basket of eggs on her arm: we
think it more reverent to lock her out till Sunday; and to surround
the church with respectability of iron railings, and defend it with
pacing inhabitation of beadles. I believe this to be _ir_reverence;
and that it is more truly reverent, when the market-woman, hot and
hurried, at six in the morning, her head much confused with
calculations of the probable price of eggs, can nevertheless get
within church porch, and church aisle, and church chancel, lay the
basket down on the very steps of the altar, and receive thereat so
much of help and hope as may serve her for the day's work. In like
manner we are solemnly, but I think not wisely, shocked at any one
who comes hurriedly into church, in any figurative way, with his
basket on his arm; and perhaps, so long as we feel it so, it is
better to keep the basket out. But, as for this one commodity of
high mental supremacy, it cannot be kept out, for the very fountain
of it is in the church wall, and there is no other right word for it
but this of Inspiration; a word, indeed, often ridiculously
perverted, and irreverently used of fledgling poets and pompous
orators--no one being offended then, and yet cavilled at when
quietly used of the spirit that it is in a truly great man; cavilled
at, chiefly, it seems to me, because we expect to know inspiration
by the look of it. Let a man have shaggy hair, dark eyes, a rolling
voice, plenty of animal energy, and a facility of rhyming or
sentencing, and--improvisatore or sentimentalist--we call him
"inspired" willingly enough; but let him be a rough, quiet worker,
not proclaiming himself melodiously in any wise, but familiar with
us, unpretending, and letting all his littlenesses and feeblenesses
be seen, unhindered,--wearing an ill-cut coat withal, and, though he
be such a man as is only sent upon the earth once in five hundred
years, for some special human teaching, it is irreverent to call him
"inspired." But, be it irreverent or not, this word I must always
use; and the rest of what work I have here before me, is simply to
prove the truth of it, with respect to the one among these mighty
spirits whom we have just lost; who divided his hearers, as many an
inspired speaker has done before now, into two great sects--a large
and a narrow; these searching the Nature-scripture calmly, "whether
those things were so," and those standing haughtily on their Mars
hill, asking, "what will this babbler say?"
[46] People of any sense, however, confined themselves to wonder.
I think it was only in the Art Journal of September 1st,
1854, that any writer had the meanness to charge me with
insincerity. "The pictures of Turner and the works of the
Pre-Raphaelites are the very antipodes of each other; it is,
therefore, impossible that one and the same individual can
with any _show of sincerity_ [Note, by the way, the Art-Union
has no idea that _real_ sincerity is a thing existent or
possible at all. All that it expects or hopes of human nature
is, that it should have _show_ of sincerity,] stand forth as
the thick and thin [I perceive the writer intends to teach me
English, as well as honesty,] eulogist of both. With a
certain knowledge of art, such as may be possessed by the
author of English Painters, [Note, farther, that the eminent
critic does not so much as know the title of the book he is
criticising,] it is not difficult to praise any bad or
mediocre picture that may be qualified with extravagance or
mysticism. This author owes the public a heavy debt of
explanation, which a lifetime spent in ingenious
reconciliations would not suffice to discharge. A fervent
admiration of certain pictures by Turner, and, at the same
time, of some of the severest productions of the
Pre-Raphaelites, presents an insuperable problem to persons
whose taste in art is regulated by definite principles."
[47] Part II. Sec. I. Chap. VII. Sec. 46.
[48] Part II. Sec. IV. Chap. IV. Sec. 23., and Part II. Sec. I. Chap.
VII. Sec. 9. The whole of the Preface to the Second Edition is
written to maintain this one point of specific detail against
the advocates of generalization.
[49] Vol. II. Chapter on Penetrative Imagination.
[50] Several other points connected with this subject have already
been noticed in the last chapter of the Stones of Venice, Sec.
21. &c.
[51] "Though my pictures should have nothing else, they shall have
Chiaroscuro."--CONSTABLE (in Leslie's Life of him). It is
singular to reflect what that fatal Chiaroscuro has done in
art, in the full extent of its influence. It has been not
only shadow, but shadow of Death: passing over the face of
the ancient art, as death itself might over a fair human
countenance; whispering, as it reduced it to the white
projections and lightless orbits of the skull, "Thy face
shall have nothing else, but it shall have Chiaroscuro."