OF IDEAS OF RELATION.
Sec. 1. General meaning of the term.
I use this term rather as one of convenience than as adequately
expressive of the vast class of ideas which I wish to be comprehended
under it, namely, all those conveyable by art, which are the subjects of
distinct intellectual perception and action, and which are therefore
worthy of the name of thoughts. But as every thought, or definite
exertion of intellect, implies two subjects, and some connection or
relation inferred between them, the term "ideas of relation" is not
incorrect, though it is inexpressive.
Sec. 2. What ideas are to be comprehended under it.
Under this head must be arranged everything productive of expression,
sentiment, and character, whether in figures or landscapes, (for there
may be as much definite expression and marked carrying out of particular
thoughts in the treatment of inanimate as of animate nature,) everything
relating to the conception of the subject and to the congruity and
relation of its parts; not as they enhance each other's beauty by known
and constant laws of composition, but as they give each other expression
and meaning, by particular application, requiring distinct thought to
discover or to enjoy: the choice, for instance, of a particular lurid or
appalling light, to illustrate an incident in itself terrible, or of a
particular tone of pure color to prepare the mind for the expression of
refined and delicate feeling; and, in a still higher sense, the
invention of such incidents and thoughts as can be expressed in words as
well as on canvas, and are totally independent of any means of art but
such as may serve for the bare suggestion of them. The principal object
in the foreground of Turner's "Building of Carthage" is a group of
children sailing toy boats. The exquisite choice of this incident, as
expressive of the ruling passion, which was to be the source of future
greatness, in preference to the tumult of busy stone-masons or arming
soldiers, is quite as appreciable when it is told as when it is
seen,--it has nothing to do with the technicalities of painting; a
scratch of the pen would have conveyed the idea and spoken to the
intellect as much as the elaborate realizations of color. Such a thought
as this is something far above all art; it is epic poetry of the highest
order. Claude, in subjects of the same kind, commonly introduces people
carrying red trunks with iron locks about, and dwells, with infantine
delight, on the lustre of the leather and the ornaments of the iron. The
intellect can have no occupation here; we must look to the imitation or
to nothing. Consequently, Turner rises above Claude in the very first
instant of the conception of his picture, and acquires an intellectual
superiority which no powers of the draughtsman or the artist (supposing
that such existed in his antagonist) could ever wrest from him.
Sec. 3. The exceeding nobility of these ideas.
Such are the function and force of ideas of relation. They are what I
have asserted in the second chapter of this section to be the noblest
subjects of art. Dependent upon it only for expression, they cause all
the rest of its complicated sources of pleasure to take, in comparison
with them, the place of mere language or decoration; nay, even the
noblest ideas of beauty sink at once beside these into subordination and
subjection. It would add little to the influence of Landseer's picture
above instanced, Chap. II., Sec. 4, that the form of the dog should be
conceived with every perfection of curve and color which its nature was
capable of, and that the ideal lines should be carried out with the
science of a Praxiteles; nay, the instant that the beauty so obtained
interfered with the impression of agony and desolation, and drew the
mind away from the feeling of the animal to its outward form, that
instant would the picture become monstrous and degraded. The utmost
glory of the human body is a mean subject of contemplation, compared to
the emotion, exertion and character of that which animates it; the
lustre of the limbs of the Aphrodite is faint beside that of the brow of
the Madonna; and the divine form of the Greek god, except as it is the
incarnation and expression of divine mind, is degraded beside the
passion and the prophecy of the vaults of the Sistine.
Sec. 4. Why no subdivision of so extensive a class is necessary.
Ideas of relation are of course, with respect to art generally, the most
extensive as the most important source of pleasure; and if we proposed
entering upon the criticism of historical works, it would be absurd to
attempt to do so without further subdivision and arrangement. But the
old landscape painters got over so much canvas without either exercise
of, or appeal to, the intellect, that we shall be little troubled with
the subject as far as they are concerned; and whatever subdivision we
may adopt, as it will therefore have particular reference to the works
of modern artists, will be better understood when we have obtained some
knowledge of them in less important points.
By the term "ideas of relation," then, I mean in future to express all
those sources of pleasure, which involve and require, at the instant of
their perception, active exertion of the intellectual powers.
SECTION II.
OF POWER.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES RESPECTING IDEAS OF POWER.
Sec. 1. No necessity for detailed study of ideas of imitation.
We have seen in the last section, what classes of ideas may be conveyed
by art, and we have been able so far to appreciate their relative worth
as to see, that from the list, as it is to be applied to the purposes of
legitimate criticism, we may at once throw out the ideas of imitation;
first, because, as we have shown, they are unworthy the pursuit of the
artist; and secondly, because they are nothing more than the result of a
particular association of ideas of truth. In examining the truth of art,
therefore, we shall be compelled to take notice of those particular
truths, whose association gives rise to the ideas of imitation. We shall
then see more clearly the meanness of those truths, and we shall find
ourselves able to use them as tests of vice in art, saying of a
picture,--"It deceives, therefore it must be bad."
Sec. 2. Nor for separate study of ideas of power.
Ideas of power, in the same way, cannot be completely viewed as a
separate class; not because they are mean or unimportant, but because
they are almost always associated with, or dependent upon, some of the
higher ideas of truth, beauty, or relation, rendered with decision or
velocity. That power which delights us in the chalk sketch of a great
painter is not one of the fingers, not like that of the writing-master,
mere dexterity of hand. It is the accuracy and certainty of the
knowledge, rendered evident by its rapid and fearless expression, which
is the real source of pleasure; and so upon each difficulty of art,
whether it be to know, or to relate, or to invent, the sensation of
power is attendant, when we see that difficulty totally and swiftly
vanquished. Hence, as we determine what is otherwise desirable in art,
we shall gradually develop the sources of the ideas of power; and if
there be anything difficult which is not otherwise desirable, it must be
afterwards considered separately.
Sec. 3. Except under one particular form.
But it will be necessary at present to notice a particular form of the
ideas of power, which is partially independent of knowledge of truth, or
difficulty, and which is apt to corrupt the judgment of the critic, and
debase the work of the artist. It is evident that the conception of
power which we receive from a calculation of unseen difficulty, and an
estimate of unseen strength, can never be so impressive as that which we
receive from the present sensation or sight of the one resisting, and
the other overwhelming. In the one case the power is imagined, and in
the other felt.
Sec. 4. There are two modes of receiving ideas of power, commonly
inconsistent.
There are thus two modes in which we receive the conception of power;
one, the most just, when by a perfect knowledge of the difficulty to be
overcome, and the means employed, we form a right estimate of the
faculties exerted; the other, when without possessing such intimate and
accurate knowledge, we are impressed by a sensation of power in visible
action. If these two modes of receiving the impression agree in the
result, and if the sensation be equal to the estimate, we receive the
utmost possible idea of power. But this is the case perhaps with the
works of only one man out of the whole circle of the fathers of art, of
him to whom we have just referred, Michael Angelo. In others, the
estimate and the sensation are constantly unequal, and often
contradictory.
Sec. 5. First reason of the inconsistency.
The first reason of this inconsistency is, that in order to receive a
_sensation_ of power, we must see it in operation. Its victory,
therefore, must not be achieved, but achieving, and therefore imperfect.
Thus we receive a greater sensation of power from the half-hewn limbs of
the Twilight to the Day of the Cappella de' Medici, than even from the
divine inebriety of the Bacchus in the gallery--greater from the life
dashed out along the Friezes of the Parthenon, than from the polished
limbs of the Apollo,--greater from the ink sketch of the head of
Raffaelle's St. Catherine, than from the perfection of its realization.
Sec. 6. Second reason for the inconsistency.
Another reason of the inconsistency is, that the sensation of power is
in proportion to the apparent inadequacy of the means to the end; so
that the impression is much greater from a partial success attained with
slight effort, than from perfect success attained with greater
proportional effort. Now, in all art, every touch or effort does
individually less in proportion as the work approaches perfection. The
first five chalk touches bring a head into existence out of nothing. No
five touches in the whole course of the work will ever do so much as
these, and the difference made by each touch is more and more
imperceptible as the work approaches completion. Consequently, the ratio
between the means employed and the effect produced is constantly
decreasing, and therefore the least sensation of power is received from
the most perfect work.
Sec. 7. The sensation of power ought not to be sought in imperfect art.
It is thus evident that there are sensations of power about imperfect
art, so that it be right art as far as it goes, which must always be
wanting in its perfection; and that there are sources of pleasure in the
hasty sketch and rough hewn block, which are partially wanting in the
tinted canvas and the polished marble. But it is nevertheless wrong to
prefer the sensation of power to the intellectual perception of it.
There is in reality greater power in the completion than in the
commencement; and though it be not so manifest to the senses, it ought
to have higher influence on the mind; and therefore in praising pictures
for the ideas of power they convey, we must not look to the keenest
sensation, but to the highest estimate, accompanied with as much of the
sensation as is compatible with it; and thus we shall consider those
pictures as conveying the highest ideas of power which attain the most
_perfect_ end with the slightest possible means; not, observe, those in
which, though much has been done with little, all has not been done, but
from the picture, in which _all_ has been done, and yet not a touch
thrown away. The quantity of work in the sketch is necessarily less in
proportion to the effect obtained than in the picture; but yet the
picture involves the greater power, if out of all the additional labor
bestowed on it, not a touch has been lost.
Sec. 8. Instances in pictures of modern artists.
For instance, there are few drawings of the present day that involve
greater sensations of power than those of Frederick Tayler. Every dash
tells, and the quantity of effect obtained is enormous, in proportion to
the apparent means. But the effect obtained is not complete. Brilliant,
beautiful, and right, as a sketch, the work is still far from
perfection, as a drawing. On the contrary, there are few drawings of the
present day that bear evidence of more labor bestowed, or more
complicated means employed, than those of John Lewis. The result does
not, at first, so much convey an impression of inherent power as of
prolonged exertion; but the result is complete. Water-color drawing can
be carried no farther; nothing has been left unfinished or untold. And
on examination of the means employed, it is found and felt that not one
touch out of the thousands employed has been thrown away;--that not one
dot nor dash could be spared without loss of effect;--and that the
exertion has been as swift as it has been prolonged--as bold as it has
been persevering. The power involved in such a picture is of the highest
order, and the enduring pleasure following on the estimate of it pure.
Sec. 9. Connection between ideas of power and modes of execution.
But there is still farther ground for caution in pursuing the sensation
of power, connected with the particular characters and modes of
execution. This we shall be better able to understand by briefly
reviewing the various excellences which may belong to execution, and
give pleasure in it; though the full determination of what is desirable
in it, and the critical examination of the execution of different
artists, must be deferred, as will be immediately seen, until we are
more fully acquainted with the principles of truth.
CHAPTER II.
OF IDEAS OF POWER, AS THEY ARE DEPENDENT UPON EXECUTION.
Sec. 1. Meaning of the term "execution."
By the term "execution," I understand the right mechanical use of the
means of art to produce a given end.
Sec. 2. The first quality of execution is truth.
All qualities of execution, properly so called, are influenced by, and
in a great degree dependent on, a far higher power than that of mere
execution,--knowledge of truth. For exactly in proportion as an artist
is certain of his end, will he be swift and simple in his means; and, as
he is accurate and deep in his knowledge, will he be refined and precise
in his touch. The first merit of manipulation, then, is that delicate
and ceaseless expression of refined truth which is carried out to the
last touch, and shadow of a touch, and which makes every hairsbreadth of
importance, and every gradation full of meaning. It is not, properly
speaking, execution; but it is the only source of difference between the
execution of a commonplace and of a perfect artist. The lowest
draughtsman, if he have spent the same time in handling the brush, may
be equal to the highest in the other qualities of execution (in
swiftness, simplicity, and decision;) but not in truth. It is in the
perfection and precision of the instantaneous line that the claim to
immortality is laid. And if this truth of truths be present, all the
other qualities of execution may well be spared; and to those artists
who wish to excuse their ignorance and inaccuracy by a species of
execution which is a perpetual proclamation, "qu'ils n'ont demeure qu'un
quart d'heure a le faire," we may reply with the truthful Alceste,
"Monsieur, le temps ne fait rien a l'affaire."
Sec. 3. The second, simplicity.
The second quality of execution is simplicity. The more unpretending,
quiet, and retiring the means, the more impressive their effect. Any
ostentation, brilliancy, or pretension of touch,--any exhibition of
power or quickness, merely as such, above all, any attempt to render
lines attractive at the expense of their meaning, is vice.
Sec. 4. The third mystery.
The third is mystery. Nature is always mysterious and secret in the use
of her means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable.
That execution which is the most incomprehensible, and which therefore
defies imitation, (other qualities being supposed alike,) is the best.
Sec. 5. The fourth, inadequacy; and the fifth, decision.
The fourth is inadequacy. The less sufficient the means appear to the
end, the greater (as has been already noticed) will be the sensation of
power.
The fifth is decision: the appearance, that is, that whatever is done,
has been done fearlessly and at once; because this gives us the
impression that both the fact to be represented, and the means necessary
to its representation, were perfectly known.
Sec. 6. The sixth, velocity.
The sixth is velocity. Not only is velocity, or the appearance of it,
agreeable as decision is, because it gives ideas of power and knowledge;
but of two touches, as nearly as possible the same in other respects,
the quickest will invariably be the best. Truth being supposed equally
present in the shape and direction of both, there will be more evenness,
grace and variety, in the quick one than in the slow one. It will be
more agreeable to the eye as a touch or line, and will possess more of
the qualities of the lines of nature--gradation, uncertainty, and unity.
Sec. 7. Strangeness an illegitimate source of pleasure in execution.
These six qualities are the only perfectly legitimate sources of
pleasure in execution; but I might have added a seventh--strangeness,
which in many cases is productive of a pleasure not altogether mean or
degrading, though scarcely right. Supposing the other higher qualities
first secured, it adds in no small degree to our impression of the
artist's knowledge, if the means used be such as we should never have
thought of, or should have thought adapted to a contrary effect. Let us,
for instance, compare the execution of the bull's head in the left hand
lowest corner of the Adoration of the Magi, in the Museum at Antwerp,
with that in Berghem's landscape, No. 132 in the Dulwich Gallery. Rubens
first scratches horizontally over his canvas a thin grayish brown,
transparent and even, very much the color of light wainscot; the
horizontal strokes of the bristles being left so evident, that the whole
might be taken for an imitation of wood, were it not for its
transparency. On this ground the eye, nostril, and outline of the cheek
are given with two or three rude, brown touches, (about three or four
minutes' work in all,) though the head is colossal. The background is
then laid in with thick, solid, warm white, actually projecting all
round the head, leaving it in dark intaglio. Finally, five thin and
scratchy strokes of very cold bluish white are struck for the high light
on the forehead and nose, and the head is complete. Seen within a yard
of the canvas, it looks actually transparent--a flimsy, meaningless,
distant shadow; while the background looks solid, projecting and near.
From the right distance, (ten or twelve yards off, whence alone the
whole of the picture can be seen,) it is a complete, rich, substantial,
and living realization of the projecting head of the animal; while the
background falls far behind. Now there is no slight nor mean pleasure in
perceiving such a result attained by means so strange. By Berghem, on
the other hand, a dark background is first laid in with exquisite
delicacy and transparency, and on this the cow's head is actually
modelled in luminous white, the separate locks of hair projecting from
the canvas. No surprise, nor much pleasure of any kind, would be
attendant on this execution, even were the result equally successful;
and what little pleasure we had in it, vanishes, when on retiring from
the picture, we find the head shining like a distant lantern, instead of
substantial or near. Yet strangeness is not to be considered as a
legitimate source of pleasure. That means which is most conducive to the
end, should always be the most pleasurable; and that which is most
conducive to the end, can be strange only to the ignorance of the
spectator. This kind of pleasure is illegitimate, therefore, because it
implies and requires, in those who feel it, ignorance of art.
Sec. 8. Yet even the legitimate sources of pleasure in execution are
inconsistent with each other.
Sec. 9. And fondness for ideas of power leads to the adoption of the
lowest.
Sec. 10. Therefore perilous.
The legitimate sources of pleasure in execution are therefore truth,
simplicity, mystery, inadequacy, decision, and velocity. But of these,
be it observed, some are so far inconsistent with others, that they
cannot be united in high degrees. Mystery with inadequacy, for
instance; since to see that the means are inadequate, we must see what
they are. Now the first three are the great qualities of execution, and
the last three are the attractive ones, because on them are chiefly
attendant the ideas of power. By the first three the attention is
withdrawn from the means and fixed on the result: by the last three,
withdrawn from the result and fixed on the means. To see that execution
is swift or that it is decided, we must look away from its creation to
observe it in the act of creating; we must think more of the pallet than
of the picture, but simplicity and mystery compel the mind to leave the
means and fix itself on the conception. Hence the danger of too great
fondness for those sensations of power which are associated with the
three last qualities of execution; for although it is most desirable
that these should be present as far as they are consistent with the
others, and though their visible absence is always painful and wrong,
yet the moment the higher qualities are sacrificed to them in the least
degree, we have a brilliant vice. Berghem and Salvator Rosa are good
instances of vicious execution dependent on too great fondness for
sensations of power, vicious because intrusive and attractive in itself,
instead of being subordinate to its results and forgotten in them. There
is perhaps no greater stumbling-block in the artist's way, than the
tendency to sacrifice truth and simplicity to decision and velocity,[5]
captivating qualities, easy of attainment, and sure to attract attention
and praise, while the delicate degree of truth which is at first
sacrificed to them is so totally unappreciable by the majority of
spectators, so difficult of attainment to the artist, that it is no
wonder that efforts so arduous and unrewarded should be abandoned. But
if the temptation be once yielded to, its consequences are fatal; there
is no pause in the fall. I could name a celebrated modern artist--once a
man of the highest power and promise, who is a glaring instance of the
peril of such a course. Misled by the undue popularity of his swift
execution, he has sacrificed to it, first precision, and then truth, and
her associate, beauty. What was first neglect of nature, has become
contradiction of her; what was once imperfection, is now falsehood; and
all that was meritorious in his manner, is becoming the worst, because
the most attractive of vices; decision without a foundation, and
swiftness without an end.
Sec. 11. Recapitulation.
Such are the principal modes in which the ideas of power may become a
dangerous attraction to the artist--a false test to the critic. But in
all cases where they lead us astray it will be found that the error is
caused by our preferring victory over a small _apparent_ difficulty to
victory over a great, but concealed one; and so that we keep this
distinction constantly in view, (whether with reference to execution or
to any other quality of art,) between the sensation and the intellectual
estimate of power, we shall always find the ideas of power a just and
high source of pleasure in every kind and grade of art.
FOOTNOTES
[5] I have here noticed only noble vices, the sacrifices of one
excellence to another legitimate but inferior one. There are, on the
other hand, qualities of execution which are often sought for and
praised, though scarcely by the class of persons for whom I am
writing, in which everything is sacrificed to illegitimate and
contemptible sources of pleasure, and these are vice throughout, and
have no redeeming quality nor excusing aim. Such is that which is
often thought so desirable in the Drawing-master, under the title of
boldness, meaning that no touch is ever to be made less than the
tenth of an inch broad; such, on the other hand, the softness and
smoothness which are the great attraction of Carlo Dolci, and such
the exhibition of particular powers and tricks of the hand and
fingers, in total forgetfulness of any end whatsoever to be attained
thereby, which is especially characteristic of modern engraving.
Compare Sect. II. Chap. II. Sec. 21. Note.
CHAPTER III.
OF THE SUBLIME.
It may perhaps be wondered that in the division we have made of our
subject, we have taken no notice of the sublime in art, and that in our
explanation of that division we have not once used the word.
Sec. 1. Sublimity is the effect upon the mind of anything above it.
The fact is, that sublimity is not a specific term,--not a term
descriptive of the effect of a particular class of ideas. Anything which
elevates the mind is sublime, and elevation of mind is produced by the
contemplation of greatness of any kind; but chiefly, of course, by the
greatness of the noblest things. Sublimity is, therefore, only another
word for the effect of greatness upon the feelings. Greatness of matter,
space, power, virtue, or beauty, are thus all sublime; and there is
perhaps no desirable quality of a work of art, which in its perfection
is not, in some way or degree, sublime.
Sec. 2. Burke's theory of the nature of the sublime incorrect, and why.
Sec. 3. Danger is sublime, but not the fear of it.
Sec. 4. The highest beauty is sublime.
Sec. 5. And generally whatever elevates the mind.
I am fully prepared to allow of much ingenuity in Burke's theory of the
sublime, as connected with self-preservation. There are few things so
great as death; and there is perhaps nothing which banishes all
littleness of thought and feeling in an equal degree with its
contemplation. Everything, therefore, which in any way points to it,
and, therefore, most dangers and powers over which we have little
control, are in some degree sublime. But it is not the fear, observe,
but the contemplation of death; not the instinctive shudder and struggle
of self-preservation, but the deliberate measurement of the doom, which
are really great or sublime in feeling. It is not while we shrink, but
while we defy, that we receive or convey the highest conceptions of the
fate. There is no sublimity in the agony of terror. Whether do we trace
it most in the cry to the mountains, "fall on us," and to the hills,
"cover us," or in the calmness of the prophecy--"And though after my
skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God?" A little
reflection will easily convince any one, that so far from the feelings
of self-preservation being necessary to the sublime, their greatest
action is totally destructive of it; and that there are few feelings
less capable of its perception than those of a coward. But the simple
conception or idea of greatness of suffering or extent of destruction is
sublime, whether there be any connection of that idea with ourselves or
not. If we were placed beyond the reach of all peril or pain, the
perception of these agencies in their influence on others would not be
less sublime, not because peril or pain are sublime in their own nature,
but because their contemplation, exciting compassion or fortitude,
elevates the mind, and renders meanness of thought impossible. Beauty is
not so often felt to be sublime; because, in many kinds of purely
material beauty there is some truth in Burke's assertion, that
"littleness" is one of its elements. But he who has not felt that there
may be beauty without littleness, and that such beauty is a source of
the sublime, is yet ignorant of the meaning of the ideal in art. I do
not mean, in tracing the source of the sublime to greatness, to hamper
myself with any fine-spun theory. I take the widest possible ground of
investigation, that sublimity is found wherever anything elevates the
mind; that is, wherever it contemplates anything above itself, and
perceives it to be so. This is the simple philological signification of
the word derived from _sublimis_; and will serve us much more easily,
and be a far clearer and more evident ground of argument, than any mere
metaphysical or more limited definition, while the proof of its justness
will be naturally developed by its application to the different branches
of art.
Sec. 6. The former division of the subject is therefore sufficient.
As, therefore, the sublime is not distinct from what is beautiful, nor
from other sources of pleasure in art, but is only a particular mode and
manifestation of them, my subject will divide itself into the
investigation of ideas of truth, beauty, and relation; and to each of
these classes of ideas I destine a separate part of the work. The
investigation of ideas of truth will enable us to determine the
relative rank of artists as followers and historians of nature.
That of ideas of beauty will lead us to compare them in their
attainment, first of what is agreeable in technical matters, then in
color and composition, finally and chiefly, in the purity of their
conceptions of the ideal.
And that of ideas of relation will lead us to compare them as
originators of just thought.
PART II.
OF TRUTH.
SECTION I.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES RESPECTING IDEAS OF TRUTH.
CHAPTER I.
OF IDEAS OF TRUTH IN THEIR CONNECTION WITH THOSE OF BEAUTY AND RELATION.
Sec. 1. The two great ends of landscape painting are the representation of
facts and thoughts.
It cannot but be evident from the above division of the ideas conveyable
by art, that the landscape painter must always have two great and
distinct ends; the first, to induce in the spectator's mind the faithful
conception of any natural objects whatsoever; the second, to guide the
spectator's mind to those objects most worthy of its contemplation, and
to inform him of the thoughts and feelings with which these were
regarded by the artist himself.
In attaining the first end, the painter only places the spectator where
he stands himself; he sets him before the landscape and leaves him. The
spectator is alone. He may follow out his own thoughts as he would in
the natural solitude, or he may remain untouched, unreflecting and
regardless, as his disposition may incline him. But he has nothing of
thought given to him, no new ideas, no unknown feelings, forced on his
attention or his heart. The artist is his conveyance, not his
companion,--his horse, not his friend. But in attaining the second end,
the artist not only _places_ the spectator, but _talks_ to him; makes
him a sharer in his own strong feelings and quick thoughts; hurries him
away in his own enthusiasm; guides him to all that is beautiful;
snatches him from all that is base, and leaves him more than
delighted,--ennobled and instructed, under the sense of having not only
beheld a new scene, but of having held communion with a new mind, and
having been endowed for a time with the keen perception and the
impetuous emotion of a nobler and more penetrating intelligence.
Sec. 2. They induce a different choice of material subjects.
Each of these different aims of art will necessitate a different system
of choice of objects to be represented. The first does not indeed imply
choice at all, but it is usually united with the selection of such
objects as may be naturally and constantly pleasing to all men, at all
times; and this selection, when perfect and careful, leads to the
attainment of the pure ideal. But the artist aiming at the second end,
selects his objects for their meaning and character, rather than for
their beauty; and uses them rather to throw light upon the particular
thought he wishes to convey, than as in themselves objects of
unconnected admiration.
Sec. 3. The first mode of selection apt to produce sameness and repetition.
Now, although the first mode of selection, when guided by deep
reflection, may rise to the production of works possessing a noble and
ceaseless influence on the human mind, it is likely to degenerate into,
or rather, in nine cases out of ten, it never goes beyond, a mere appeal
to such parts of our animal nature as are constant and common--shared by
all, and perpetual in all; such, for instance, as the pleasure of the
eye in the opposition of a cold and warm color, or of a massy form with
a delicate one. It also tends to induce constant repetition of the same
ideas, and reference to the same principles; it gives rise to those
_rules_ of art which properly excited Reynolds's indignation when
applied to its higher efforts; it is the source of, and the apology for,
that host of technicalities and absurdities which in all ages have been
the curse of art and the crown of the connoisseur.
Sec. 4. The second necessitating variety.
But art, in its second and highest aim, is not an appeal to constant
animal feelings, but an expression and awakening of individual thought:
it is therefore as various and as extended in its efforts as the
compass and grasp of the directing mind; and we feel, in each of its
results, that we are looking, not at a specimen of a tradesman's wares,
of which he is ready to make us a dozen to match, but at one coruscation
of a perpetually active mind, like which there has not been, and will
not be another.
Sec. 5. Yet the first is delightful to all.
Sec. 6. The second only to a few.
Hence, although there can be no doubt which of these branches of art is
the highest, it is equally evident that the first will be the most
generally felt and appreciated. For the simple statement of the truths
of nature must in itself be pleasing to every order of mind; because
every truth of nature is more or less beautiful; and if there be just
and right selection of the more important of these truths--based, as
above explained, on feelings and desires common to all mankind--the
facts so selected must, in some degree, be delightful to all, and their
value appreciable by all: more or less, indeed, as their senses and
instinct have been rendered more or less acute and accurate by use and
study; but in some degree by all, and in the same way by all. But the
highest art, being based on sensations of peculiar minds, sensations
occurring to _them_ only at particular times, and to a plurality of
mankind perhaps never, and being expressive of thoughts which could only
rise out of a mass of the most extended knowledge, and of dispositions
modified in a thousand ways by peculiarity of intellect--can only be met
and understood by persons having some sort of sympathy with the high and
solitary minds which produced it--sympathy only to be felt by minds in
some degree high and solitary themselves. He alone can appreciate the
art, who could comprehend the conversation of the painter, and share in
his emotion, in moments of his most fiery passion and most original
thought. And whereas the true meaning and end of his art must thus be
sealed to thousands, or misunderstood by them; so also, as he is
sometimes obliged, in working out his own peculiar end, to set at
defiance those constant laws which have arisen out of our lower and
changeless desires, that whose purpose is unseen, is frequently in its
means and parts displeasing.
Sec. 7. The first necessary to the second.
Sec. 8. The exceeding importance of truth.
But this want of extended influence in high art, be it especially
observed, proceeds from no want of truth in the art itself, but from a
want of sympathy in the spectator with those feelings in the artist
which prompt him to the utterance of one truth rather than of another.
For (and this is what I wish at present especially to insist upon)
although it is possible to reach what I have stated to be the first end
of art, the representation of facts, without reaching the second, the
representation of thoughts, yet it is altogether impossible to reach the
second without having previously reached the first. I do not say that a
man cannot think, having false basis and material for thought; but that
a false thought is worse than the want of thought, and therefore is not
art. And this is the reason why, though I consider the second as the
real and only important end of all art, I call the representation of
facts the first end; because it is necessary to the other, and must be
attained before it. It is the foundation of all art; like real
foundations it may be little thought of when a brilliant fabric is
raised on it; but it must be there: and as few buildings are beautiful
unless every line and column of their mass have reference to their
foundation, and are suggestive of its existence and strength, so nothing
can be beautiful in art which does not in all its parts suggest and
guide to the foundation, even where no undecorated portion of it is
visible; while the noblest edifices of art are built of such pure and
fine crystal that the foundation may all be seen through them; and then
many, while they do not see what is built upon that first story, yet
much admire the solidity of its brickwork; thinking they understand all
that is to be understood of the matter; while others stand beside them,
looking not at the low story, but up into the heaven at that building of
crystal in which the builder's spirit is dwelling. And thus, though we
want the thoughts and feelings of the artist as well as the truth, yet
they must be thoughts arising out of the knowledge of truth, and
feelings raising out of the contemplation of truth. We do not want his
mind to be as badly blown glass, that distorts what we see through it;
but like a glass of sweet and strange color, that gives new tones to
what we see through it; and a glass of rare strength and clearness too,
to let us see more than we could ourselves, and bring nature up to us
and near to us. Nothing can atone for the want of truth, not the most
brilliant imagination, the most playful fancy, the most pure feeling,
(supposing that feeling _could_ be pure and false at the same time;) not
the most exalted conception, nor the most comprehensive grasp of
intellect, can make amends for the want of truth, and that for two
reasons; first, because falsehood is in itself revolting and degrading;
and secondly, because nature is so immeasurably superior to all that the
human mind can conceive, that every departure from her is a fall beneath
her, so that there can be no such thing as an ornamental falsehood. All
falsehood must be a blot as well as a sin, an injury as well as a
deception.
Sec. 9. Coldness or want of beauty no sign of truth.
We shall, in consequence, find that no artist can be graceful,
imaginative, or original, unless he be truthful; and that the pursuit of
beauty, instead of leading us away from truth, increases the desire for
it and the necessity of it tenfold; so that those artists who are really
great in imaginative power, will be found to have based their boldness
of conception on a mass of knowledge far exceeding that possessed by
those who pride themselves on its accumulation without regarding its
use. Coldness and want of passion in a picture, are not signs of the
accuracy, but of the paucity of its statements; true vigor and
brilliancy are not signs of audacity, but of knowledge.
Sec. 10. How truth may be considered a just criterion of all art.
Hence it follows that it is in the power of all, with care and time, to
form something like a just judgment of the relative merits of artists;
for although with respect to the feeling and passion of pictures, it is
often as impossible to criticise as to appreciate, except to such as are
in some degree equal in powers of mind, and in some respects the same in
modes of mind, with those whose works they judge; yet, with respect to
the representation of facts, it is possible for all, by attention, to
form a right judgment of the respective powers and attainments of every
artist. Truth is a bar of comparison at which they may all be examined,
and according to the rank they take in this examination, will almost
invariably be that which, if capable of appreciating them in every
respect, we should be just in assigning them; so strict is the
connection, so constant the relation between the sum of knowledge and
the extent of thought, between accuracy of perception and vividness of
idea.
I shall endeavor, therefore, in the present portion of the work, to
enter with care and impartiality into the investigation of the claims of
the schools of ancient and modern landscape to faithfulness in
representing nature. I shall pay no regard whatsoever to what may be
thought beautiful, or sublime, or imaginative. I shall look only for
truth; bare, clear, downright statement of facts; showing in each
particular, as far as I am able, what the truth of nature is, and then
seeking for the plain expression of it, and for that alone. And I shall
thus endeavor, totally regardless of fervor of imagination or brilliancy
of effect, or any other of their more captivating qualities, to examine
and to judge the works of the great living painter, who is, I believe,
imagined by the majority of the public to paint more falsehood and less
fact than any other known master. We shall see with what reason.
CHAPTER II.
THAT THE TRUTH OF NATURE IS NOT TO BE DISCERNED BY THE UNEDUCATED
SENSES.
Sec. 1. The common self-deception of men with respect to their power of
discerning truth.
It may be here inquired by the reader, with much appearance of reason,
why I think it necessary to devote a separate portion of the work to the
showing of what is truthful in art. "Cannot we," say the public, "see
what nature is with our own eyes, and find out for ourselves what is
like her?" It will be as well to determine this question before we go
farther, because if this were possible, there would be little need of
criticism or teaching with respect to art.
Now I have just said that it is possible for all men, by care and
attention, to form a just judgment of the fidelity of artists to nature.
To do this, no peculiar powers of mind are required, no sympathy with
particular feelings, nothing which every man of ordinary intellect does
not in some degree possess,--powers, namely, of observation and
intelligence, which by cultivation may be brought to a high degree of
perfection and acuteness. But until this cultivation has been bestowed,
and until the instrument thereby perfected has been employed in a
consistent series of careful observation, it is as absurd as it is
audacious to pretend to form any judgment whatsoever respecting the
truth of art: and my first business, before going a step farther, must
be to combat the nearly universal error of belief among the thoughtless
and unreflecting, that they know either what nature is, or what is like
her, that they can discover truth by instinct, and that their minds are
such pure Venice glass as to be shocked by all treachery. I have to
prove to them that there are more things in heaven and earth than are
dreamed of in their philosophy, and that the truth of nature is a part
of the truth of God; to him who does not search it out, darkness, as it
is to him who does, infinity.
Sec. 2. Men usually see little of what is before their eyes.
The first great mistake that people make in the matter, is the
supposition that they must _see_ a thing if it be before their eyes.
They forget the great truth told them by Locke, Book ii. chap. 9, Sec.
3:--"This is certain, that whatever alterations are made in the body, if
they reach not the mind, whatever impressions are made on the outward
parts, if they are not taken notice of within, there is no perception.
Fire may burn our bodies, with no other effect than it does a billet,
unless the motion be continued to the brain, and there the sense of heat
or idea of pain be produced in the mind, wherein consists actual
perception. How often may a man observe in himself, that while his mind
is intently employed in the contemplation of some subjects and curiously
surveying some ideas that are there, it takes no notice of impressions
of sounding bodies, made upon the organ of hearing, with the same
attention that uses to be for the producing the ideas of sound! A
sufficient impulse there may be on the organ, but it not reaching the
observation of the mind, there follows no perception, and though the
motion that uses to produce the idea of sound be made in the ear, yet no
sound is heard." And what is here said, which all must feel by their own
experience to be true, is more remarkably and necessarily the case with
sight than with any other of the senses, for this reason, that the ear
is not accustomed to exercise constantly its functions of hearing; it is
accustomed to stillness, and the occurrence of a sound of any kind
whatsoever is apt to awake attention, and be followed with perception,
in proportion to the degree of sound; but the eye, during our waking
hours, exercises constantly its function of seeing; it is its constant
habit; we always, as far as the _bodily_ organ is concerned, see
something, and we always see in the same degree, so that the occurrence
of sight, as such, to the eye, is only the continuance of its necessary
state of action, and awakes no attention whatsoever, except by the
particular nature and quality of the sight. And thus, unless the minds
of men are particularly directed to the impressions of sight, objects
pass perpetually before the eyes without conveying any impression to the
brain at all; and so pass actually unseen, not merely unnoticed, but in
the full, clear sense of the word, unseen. And numbers of men being
pre-occupied with business or care of some description, totally
unconnected with the impressions of sight, such is actually the case
with them, they receiving from nature only the inevitable sensations of
blueness, redness, darkness, light, etc., and except at particular and
rare moments, no more whatsoever.
Sec. 3. But more or less in proportion to their natural sensibility to what
is beautiful.
Sec. 4. Connected with a perfect state of moral feeling.
The degree of ignorance of external nature in which men may thus remain,
depends, therefore, partly on the number and character of the subjects
with which their minds may be otherwise occupied, and partly on a
natural want of sensibility to the power of beauty of form, and the
other attributes of external objects. I do not think that there is ever
such absolute incapacity in the eye for distinguishing and receiving
pleasure from certain forms and colors, as there is in persons who are
technically said to have no ear, for distinguishing notes, but there is
naturally every degree of bluntness and acuteness, both for perceiving
the truth of form, and for receiving pleasure from it when perceived.
And although I believe even the lowest degree of these faculties can be
expanded almost unlimitedly by cultivation, the pleasure received
rewards not the labor necessary, and the pursuit is abandoned. So that
while in those whose sensations are naturally acute and vivid, the call
of external nature is so strong that it must be obeyed, and is ever
heard louder as the approach to her is nearer,--in those whose
sensations are naturally blunt, the call is overpowered at once by other
thoughts, and their faculties of perception, weak originally, die of
disuse. With this kind of bodily sensibility to color and form is
intimately connected that higher sensibility which we revere as one of
the chief attributes of all noble minds, and as the chief spring of real
poetry. I believe this kind of sensibility may be entirely resolved into
the acuteness of bodily sense of which I have been speaking, associated
with love, love I mean in its infinite and holy functions, as it
embraces divine and human and brutal intelligences, and hallows the
physical perception of external objects by association, gratitude,
veneration, and other pure feelings of our moral nature. And although
the discovery of truth is in itself altogether intellectual, and
dependent merely on our powers of physical perception and abstract
intellect, wholly independent of our moral nature, yet these
instruments (perception and judgment) are so sharpened and brightened,
and so far more swiftly and effectively used, when they have the energy
and passion of our moral nature to bring them into action--perception is
so quickened by love, and judgment so tempered by veneration, that,
practically, a man of deadened moral sensation is always dull in his
perception of truth, and thousands of the highest and most divine truths
of nature are wholly concealed from him, however constant and
indefatigable may be his intellectual search. Thus, then, the farther we
look, the more we are limited in the number of those to whom we should
choose to appeal as judges of truth, and the more we perceive how great
a number of mankind may be partially incapacitated from either
discovering or feeling it.
Sec. 5. And of the intellectual powers.
Sec. 6. How sight depends upon previous knowledge.
Next to sensibility, which is necessary for the perception of facts,
come reflection and memory, which are necessary for the retention of
them, and recognition of their resemblances. For a man may receive
impression after impression, and that vividly and with delight, and yet,
if he take no care to reason upon those impressions and trace them to
their sources, he may remain totally ignorant of the facts that produced
them; nay, may attribute them to facts with which they have no
connection, or may coin causes for them that have no existence at all.
And the more sensibility and imagination a man possesses, the more
likely will he be to fall into error; for then he will see whatever he
expects, and admire and judge with his heart, and not with his eyes. How
many people are misled, by what has been said and sung of the serenity
of Italian skies, to suppose they must be more _blue_ than the skies of
the north, and think that they see them so; whereas, the sky of Italy is
far more dull and gray in color than the skies of the north, and is
distinguished only by its intense repose of light. And this is confirmed
by Benvenuto Cellini, who, I remember, on his first entering France, is
especially struck with the clearness of the sky, as contrasted with the
_mist_ of Italy. And what is more strange still, when people see in a
painting what they suppose to have been the source of their impressions,
they will affirm it to be truthful, though they feel no such impression
resulting from it. Thus, though day after day they may have been
impressed by the tone and warmth of an Italian sky, yet not having
traced the feeling to its source, and supposing themselves impressed by
its _blueness_, they will affirm a blue sky in a painting to be
truthful, and reject the most faithful rendering of all the real
attributes of Italy as cold or dull. And this influence of the
imagination over the senses, is peculiarly observable in the perpetual
disposition of mankind to suppose that they _see_ what they _know_, and
_vice versa_ in their not seeing what they do not know. Thus, if a child
be asked to draw the corner of a house, he will lay down something in
the form of the letter T. He has no conception that the two lines of the
roof, which he knows to be level, produce on his eye the impression of a
slope. It requires repeated and close attention before he detects this
fact, or can be made to feel that the lines on his paper are false. And
the Chinese, children in all things, suppose a good perspective drawing
to be as false as we feel their plate patterns to be, or wonder at the
strange buildings which come to a point at the end. And all the early
works, whether of nations or of men, show, by their want of _shade_, how
little the eye, without knowledge, is to be depended upon to discover
truth. The eye of a Red Indian, keen enough to find the trace of his
enemy or his prey, even in the unnatural turn of a trodden leaf, is yet
so blunt to the impressions of shade, that Mr. Catlin mentions his once
having been in great danger from having painted a portrait with the face
in half-light, which the untutored observers imagined and affirmed to be
the painting of half a face. Barry, in his sixth lecture, takes notice
of the same want of actual _sight_ in the early painters of Italy. "The
imitations," he says, "of early art are like those of children--nothing
is seen in the spectacle before us, unless it be previously known and
sought for; and numberless observable differences between the age of
ignorance and that of knowledge, show how much the contraction or
extension of our sphere of vision depends upon other considerations than
the mere returns of our natural optics." And the deception which takes
place so broadly in cases like these, has infinitely greater influence
over our judgment of the more intricate and less tangible truths of
nature. We are constantly supposing that we see what experience only
has shown us, or can show us, to have existence, constantly missing the
sight of what we do not know beforehand to be visible: and painters, to
the last hour of their lives, are apt to fall in some degree into the
error of painting what exists, rather than what they can see. I shall
prove the extent of this error more completely hereafter.
Sec. 7. The difficulty increased by the variety of truths in nature.
Be it also observed, that all these difficulties would lie in the way,
even if the truths of nature were always the same, constantly repeated
and brought before us. But the truths of nature are one eternal
change--one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face of the globe
exactly like another bush;--there are no two trees in the forest whose
boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which
could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly
alike. And out of this mass of various, yet agreeing beauty, it is by
long attention only that the conception of the constant character--the
ideal form--hinted at by all, yet assumed by none, is fixed upon the
imagination for its standard of truth.
It is not singular, therefore, nor in any way disgraceful, that the
majority of spectators are totally incapable of appreciating the truth
of nature, when fully set before them; but it is both singular and
disgraceful that it is so difficult to convince them of their own
incapability. Ask the connoisseur, who has scampered over all Europe,
the shape of the leaf of an elm, and the chances are ninety to one that
he cannot tell you; and yet he will be voluble of criticism on every
painted landscape from Dresden to Madrid, and pretend to tell you
whether they are like nature or not. Ask an enthusiastic chatterer in
the Sistine Chapel how many ribs he has, and you get no answer; but it
is odds that you do not get out of the door without his informing you
that he considers such and such a figure badly drawn!
Sec. 8. We recognize objects by their least important attributes. Compare
Part I., Sect. I., Chap. 4.
A few such interrogations as these might indeed convict, if not convince
the mass of spectators of incapability, were it not for the universal
reply, that they can recognize what they cannot describe, and feel what
is truthful, though they do not know what is truth. And this is, to a
certain degree, true: a man may recognize the portrait of his friend,
though he cannot, if you ask him apart, tell you the shape of his nose
or the height of his forehead; and every one could tell nature herself
from an imitation; why not then, it will be asked, what is like her from
what is not? For this simple reason, that we constantly recognize things
by their least important attributes, and by help of very few of those,
and if these attributes exist not in the imitation, though there may be
thousands of others far higher and more valuable, yet if those be
wanting, or imperfectly rendered, by which we are accustomed to
recognize the object, we deny the likeness; while if these be given,
though all the great and valuable and important attributes may be
wanting, we affirm the likeness. Recognition is no proof of real and
intrinsic resemblance. We recognize our books by their bindings, though
the true and essential characteristics lie inside. A man is known to his
dog by the smell--to his tailor by the coat--to his friend by the smile:
each of these know him, but how little, or how much, depends on the
dignity of the intelligence. That which is truly and indeed
characteristic of the man, is known only to God. One portrait of a man
may possess exact accuracy of feature, and no atom of expression; it may
be, to use the ordinary terms of admiration bestowed on such portraits
by those whom they please, "as like as it can stare." Everybody, down to
his cat, would know this. Another portrait may have neglected or
misrepresented the features, but may have given the flash of the eye,
and the peculiar radiance of the lip, seen on him only in his hours of
highest mental excitement. None but his friends would know this. Another
may have given none of his ordinary expressions, but one which he wore
in the most excited instant of his life, when all his secret passions
and all his highest powers were brought into play at once. None but
those who had then seen him might recognize _this_ as like. But which
would be the most truthful portrait of the _man_? The first gives the
accidents of body--the sport of climate, and food, and time--which
corruption inhabits, and the worm waits for. The second gives the stamp
of the soul upon the flesh; but it is the soul seen in the emotions
which it shares with many--which may not be characteristic of its
essence--the results of habit, and education, and accident--a gloze,
whether purposely worn or unconsciously assumed, perhaps totally
contrary to all that is rooted and real in the mind that it conceals.
The third has caught the trace of all that was most hidden and most
mighty, when all hypocrisy, and all habit, and all petty and passing
emotion--the ice, and the bank, and the foam of the immortal river--were
shivered, and broken, and swallowed up in the awakening of its inward
strength; when the call and claim of some divine motive had brought into
visible being those latent forces and feelings which the spirit's own
volition could not summon, nor its consciousness comprehend; which God
only knew, and God only could awaken, the depth and the mystery of its
peculiar and separating attributes. And so it is with external Nature:
she has a body and a soul like man; but her soul is the Deity. It is
possible to represent the body without the spirit; and this shall be
like to those whose senses are only cognizant of body. It is possible to
represent the spirit in its ordinary and inferior manifestations; and
this shall be like to those who have not watched for its moments of
power. It is possible to represent the spirit in its secret and high
operations; and this shall be like only to those to whose watching they
have been revealed. All these are truth; but according to the dignity of
the truths he can represent or feel, is the power of the painter,--the
justice of the judge.
CHAPTER III.
OF THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS:--FIRST, THAT PARTICULAR TRUTHS
ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN GENERAL ONES.
Sec. 1. Necessity of determining the relative importance of truths.
I have in the last chapter affirmed that we usually recognize objects by
their least essential characteristics. This very naturally excites the
inquiry what I consider their important characteristics, and why I call
one truth more important than another. And this question must be
immediately determined, because it is evident, that in judging of the
truth of painters, we shall have to consider not only the accuracy with
which individual truths are given, but the relative importance of the
truths themselves; for as it constantly happens that the powers of art
are unable to render _all_ truths, that artist must be considered the
most truthful who has preserved the most important at the expense of the
most trifling.
Sec. 2. Misapplication of the aphorism: "General truths are more important
than particular ones."
Sec. 3. Falseness of this maxim taken without explanation.
Sec. 4. Generality important in the subject, particularity in the
predicate.
Now if we are to begin our investigation in Aristotle's way, and look at
the [Greek: phainomena] of the subject, we shall immediately stumble
over a maxim which is in everybody's mouth, and which, as it is
understood in practice, is true and useful, as it is usually applied in
argument, false and misleading. "General truths are more important than
particular ones." Often, when in conversation, I have been praising
Turner for his perpetual variety, and for giving so particular and
separate a character to each of his compositions, that the mind of the
painter can only be estimated by seeing all that he has ever done, and
that nothing can be prophesied of a picture coming into existence on his
easel, but that it will be totally different in idea from all that he
has ever done before; and when I have opposed this inexhaustible
knowledge or imagination, whichever it may be, to the perpetual
repetition of some half-dozen conceptions by Claude and Poussin, I have
been met by the formidable objection, enunciated with much dignity and
self-satisfaction on the part of my antagonist--"That is not painting
general truths, that is painting particular truths." Now there must be
something wrong in that application of a principle which would make the
variety and abundance which we look for as the greatest sign of
intellect in the writer, the greatest sign of error in the painter; and
we shall accordingly see, by an application of it to other matters,
that, taken without limitation, the whole proposition is utterly false.
For instance, Mrs. Jameson somewhere mentions the exclamation of a lady
of her acquaintance, more desirous to fill a pause in conversation than
abundant in sources of observation: "What an excellent book the Bible
is!" This was a very general truth indeed, a truth predicable of the
Bible in common with many other books, but it certainly is neither
striking nor important. Had the lady exclaimed--"How evidently is the
Bible a divine revelation!" she would have expressed a particular truth,
one predicable of the Bible only; but certainly far more interesting and
important. Had she, on the contrary, informed us that the Bible was a
book, she would have been still more general, and still less
entertaining. If I ask any one who somebody else is, and receive for
answer that he is a man, I get little satisfaction for my pains; but if
I am told that he is Sir Isaac Newton, I immediately thank my neighbor
for his information. The fact is, and the above instances may serve at
once to prove it if it be not self-evident, that generality gives
importance to the _subject_, and limitation or particularity to the
_predicate_. If I say that such and such a man in China is an
opium-eater, I say nothing very interesting, because my subject (such a
man) is particular. If I say that all men in China are opium-eaters, I
say something interesting, because my subject (all men) is general. If I
say that all men in China eat, I say nothing interesting, because my
predicate (eat) is general. If I say that all men in China eat opium, I
say something interesting, because my predicate (eat opium) is
particular.
Now almost everything which (with reference to a given subject) a
painter has to ask himself whether he shall represent or not, is a
predicate. Hence in art, particular truths are usually more important
than general ones.
How is it then that anything so plain as this should be contradicted by
one of the most universally received aphorisms respecting art? A little
reflection will show us under what limitations this maxim may be true in
practice.
Sec. 5. The importance of truths of species is not owing to their
generality.
Sec. 6. All truths valuable as they are characteristic.
It is self-evident that when we are painting or describing anything,
those truths must be the most important which are most characteristic of
what is to be told or represented. Now that which is first and most
broadly characteristic of a thing, is that which distinguishes its
genus, or which makes it what it is. For instance, that which makes
drapery _be_ drapery, is not its being made of silk or worsted or flax,
for things are made of all these which are not drapery, but the ideas
peculiar to drapery; the properties which, when inherent in a thing,
make it drapery, are extension, non-elastic flexibility, unity and
comparative thinness. Everything which has these properties, a
waterfall, for instance, if united and extended, or a net of weeds over
a wall, is drapery, as much as silk or woollen stuff is. So that these
ideas separate drapery in our minds from everything else; they are
peculiarly characteristic of it, and therefore are the most important
group of ideas connected with it; and so with everything else, that
which makes the thing what it is, is the most important idea, or group
of ideas connected with the thing. But as this idea must necessarily be
common to all individuals of the species it belongs to, it is a general
idea with respect to that species; while other ideas, which are not
characteristic of the species, and are therefore in reality general, (as
black or white are terms applicable to more things than drapery,) are
yet particular with respect to that species, being predicable only of
certain individuals of it. Hence it is carelessly and falsely said, that
general ideas are more important than particular ones; carelessly and
falsely, I say, because the so-called general idea is important, not
because it is common to all the individuals of that species, but because
it separates that species from everything else. It is the
distinctiveness, not the universality of the truth, which renders it
important. And the so-called particular idea is unimportant, not
because it is not predicable of the whole species, but because it _is_
predicable of things out of that species. It is not its individuality,
but its generality which renders it unimportant. So, then, truths are
important just in proportion as they are characteristic, and are
valuable, primarily, as they separate the species from all other created
things secondarily, as they separate the individuals of that species
from one another: thus "silken" or "woollen" are unimportant ideas with
respect to drapery, because they neither separate the species from other
things, nor even the individuals of that species from one another,
since, though not common to the whole of it, they are common to
indefinite numbers of it; but the particular folds into which any piece
of drapery may happen to fall, being different in many particulars from
those into which any other piece of drapery will fall, are expressive
not only of the characters of the species, flexibility, (non-elasticity,
etc.,) but of individuality and definite character in the case
immediately observed, and are consequently most important and necessary
ideas. So in a man, to be short-legged or long-nosed or anything else of
accidental quality, does not distinguish him from other short-legged or
long-nosed animals; but the important truths respecting a man are,
first, the marked development of that distinctive organization which
separates him as man from other animals, and secondly, that group of
qualities which distinguish the individual from all other men, which
make him Paul or Judas, Newton or Shakspeare.
Sec. 7. Otherwise truths of species are valuable because beautiful.
Such are the real sources of importance in truths as far as they are
considered with reference merely to their being general, or particular;
but there are other sources of importance which give farther weight to
the ordinary opinion of the greater value of those which are general,
and which render this opinion right in practice; I mean the intrinsic
beauty of the truths themselves, a quality which it is not here the
place to investigate, but which must just be noticed, as invariably
adding value to truths of species rather than to those of individuality.
The qualities and properties which characterize man or any other animal
as a species, are the perfection of his or its form of mind, almost all
individual differences arising from imperfections; hence a truth of
species is the more valuable to art, because it must always be a beauty,
while a truth of individuals is commonly, in some sort or way, a defect.
Sec. 8. And many truths, valuable if separate, may be objectionable in
connection with others.
Again, a truth which may be of great interest, when an object is viewed
by itself, may be objectionable when it is viewed in relation to other
objects. Thus if we were painting a piece of drapery as our whole
subject, it would be proper to give in it every source of entertainment,
which particular truths could supply, to give it varied color and
delicate texture; but if we paint this same piece of drapery, as part of
the dress of a Madonna, all these ideas of richness or texture become
thoroughly contemptible, and unfit to occupy the mind at the same moment
with the idea of the Virgin. The conception of drapery is then to be
suggested by the simplest and slightest means possible, and all notions
of texture and detail are to be rejected with utter reprobation; but
this, observe, is not because they are particular or general or anything
else, with respect to the drapery itself, but because they draw the
attention to the dress instead of the saint, and disturb and degrade the
imagination and the feelings; hence we ought to give the conception of
the drapery in the most unobtrusive way possible, by rendering those
essential qualities distinctly, which are necessary to the very
existence of drapery, and not one more.
With these last two sources of the importance of truths, we have nothing
to do at present, as they are dependent upon ideas of beauty and
relation: I merely allude to them now, to show that all that is alleged
by Sir J. Reynolds and other scientific writers respecting the kind of
truths proper to be represented by the painter or sculptor is perfectly
just and right; while yet the principle on which they base their
selection (that general truths are more important than particular ones)
is altogether false. Canova's Perseus in the Vatican is entirely spoiled
by an unlucky _tassel_ in the folds of the mantle (which the next
admirer of Canova who passes would do well to knock off;) but it is
spoiled not because this is a particular truth, but because it is a
contemptible, unnecessary, and ugly truth. The button which fastens the
vest of the Sistine Daniel is as much a particular truth as this, but
it is a necessary one, and the idea of it is given by the simplest
possible means; hence it is right and beautiful.
Sec. 9. Recapitulation.
Finally, then, it is to be remembered that all truths as far as their
being particular or general affects their value at all, are valuable in
proportion as they are particular, and valueless in proportion as they
are general; or to express the proposition in simpler terms, every truth
is valuable in proportion as it is characteristic of the thing of which
it is affirmed.
CHAPTER IV.
OF THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS:--SECONDLY, THAT RARE TRUTHS
ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN FREQUENT ONES.
Sec. 1. No accidental violation of nature's principles should be
represented.
It will be necessary next for us to determine how far frequency or
rarity can affect the importance of truths, and whether the artist is to
be considered the most truthful who paints what is common or what is
unusual in nature.
Now the whole determination of this question depends upon whether the
unusual fact be a violation of nature's general principles, or the
application of some of those principles in a peculiar and striking way.
Nature sometimes, though very rarely, violates her own principles; it is
her principle to make everything beautiful, but now and then, for an
instant, she permits what, compared with the rest of her works, might be
called ugly; it is true that even these rare blemishes are permitted, as
I have above said, for a good purpose, (Part I. Sec. I. Chap. 5,) they
are valuable in nature, and used as she uses them, are equally valuable
(as instantaneous discords) in art; but the artist who should seek after
these exclusively, and paint nothing else, though he might be able to
point to something in nature as the original of every one of his
uglinesses, would yet be, in the strict sense of the word, false,--false
to nature, and disobedient to her laws. For instance, it is the practice
of nature to give character to the outlines of her clouds, by perpetual
angles and right lines. Perhaps once in a month, by diligent watching,
we might be able to see a cloud altogether rounded and made up of
curves; but the artist who paints nothing but curved clouds must yet be
considered thoroughly and inexcusably false.
Sec. 2. But the cases in which those principles have been strikingly
exemplified.
Sec. 3. Which are comparatively rare.
Sec. 4. All repetition is blamable.
Sec. 5. The duty of the painter is the same as that of a preacher.
But the case is widely different, when instead of a principle violated,
we have one extraordinarily carried out or manifested under unusual
circumstances. Though nature is constantly beautiful, she does not
exhibit her highest powers of beauty constantly, for then they would
satiate us and pall upon our senses. It is necessary to their
appreciation that they should be rarely shown. Her finest touches are
things which must be watched for; her most perfect passages of beauty
are the most evanescent. She is constantly doing something beautiful for
us, but it is something which she has not done before and will not do
again; some exhibition of her general powers in particular circumstances
which, if we do not catch at the instant it is passing, will not be
repeated for us. Now they are these evanescent passages of perfected
beauty, these perpetually varied examples of utmost power, which the
artist ought to seek for and arrest. No supposition can be more absurd
than that effects or truths frequently exhibited are more characteristic
of nature than those which are equally necessary by her laws, though
rarer in occurrence. Both the frequent and the rare are parts of the
same great system; to give either exclusively is imperfect truth, and to
repeat the same effect or thought in two pictures is wasted life. What
should we think of a poet who should keep all his life repeating the
same thought in different words? and why should we be more lenient to
the parrot-painter who has learned one lesson from the page of nature,
and keeps stammering it out with eternal repetition without turning the
leaf? Is it less tautology to describe a thing over and over again with
lines, than it is with words? The teaching of nature is as varied and
infinite as it is constant; and the duty of the painter is to watch for
every one of her lessons, and to give (for human life will admit of
nothing more) those in which she has manifested each of her principles
in the most peculiar and striking way. The deeper his research and the
rarer the phenomena he has noted, the more valuable will his works be;
to repeat himself, even in a single instance, is treachery to nature,
for a thousand human lives would not be enough to give one instance of
the perfect manifestation of each of her powers; and as for combining or
classifying them, as well might a preacher expect in one sermon to
express and explain every divine truth which can be gathered out of
God's revelation, as a painter expect in one composition to express and
illustrate every lesson which can be received from God's creation. Both
are commentators on infinity, and the duty of both is to take for each
discourse one essential truth, seeking particularly and insisting
especially on those which are less palpable to ordinary observation, and
more likely to escape an indolent research; and to impress that, and
that alone, upon those whom they address, with every illustration that
can be furnished by their knowledge, and every adornment attainable by
their power. And the real truthfulness of the painter is in proportion
to the number and variety of the facts he has so illustrated; those
facts being always, as above observed, the realization, not the
violation of a general principle. The quantity of truth is in proportion
to the number of such facts, and its value and instructiveness in
proportion to their rarity. All really great pictures, therefore,
exhibit the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare,
and beautiful way.
CHAPTER V.
OF THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS:--THIRDLY, THAT TRUTHS OF
COLOR ARE THE LEAST IMPORTANT OF ALL TRUTHS.
Sec. 1. Difference between primary and secondary qualities in bodies.
In the two last chapters, we have pointed out general tests of the
importance of all truths, which will be sufficient at once to
distinguish certain classes of properties in bodies, as more necessary
to be told than others, because more characteristic, either of the
particular thing to be represented, or of the principles of nature.
According to Locke, Book ii. chap. 8, there are three sorts of qualities
in bodies: first, the "bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion or
rest of their solid parts: those that are in them, whether we perceive
them or not." These he calls primary qualities. Secondly, "the power
that is in any body to operate after a peculiar manner on any of our
senses," (sensible qualities.) And thirdly, "the power that is in any
body to make such a change in another body as that it shall operate on
our senses differently from what it did before: these last being usually
called _powers_."
Sec. 2. The first are fully characteristic, the second imperfectly so.
Hence he proceeds to prove that those which he calls primary qualities
are indeed part of the essence of the body, and characteristic of it;
but that the two other kinds of qualities which together he calls
secondary, are neither of them more than _powers_ of producing on other
objects, or in us, certain effects and sensations. Now a power of
influence is always equally characteristic of two objects--the active
and passive; for it is as much necessary that there should be a power in
the object suffering to receive the impression, as in the object acting
to give the impression. (Compare Locke, Book ii. chap. 21, sect. 2.) For
supposing two people, as is frequently the case, perceive different
scents in the same flower, it is evident that the power in the flower
to give this or that depends on the nature of their nerves, as well as
on that of its own particles; and that we are as correct in saying it is
a power in us to perceive, as in the object to impress. Every power,
therefore, being characteristic of the nature of two bodies, is
imperfectly and incompletely characteristic of either separately; but
the primary qualities, being characteristic only of the body in which
they are inherent, are the most important truths connected with it. For
the question, what the thing _is_, must precede, and be of more
importance than the question, what can it do.
Sec. 3. Color is a secondary quality, therefore less important than form.
Now by Locke's definition above given, only bulk, figure, situation, and
motion or rest of solid parts, are primary qualities. Hence all truths
of color sink at once into the second rank. He, therefore, who has
neglected a truth of form for a truth of color, has neglected a greater
truth for a less one.
Sec. 4. Color no distinction between objects of the same species.
And that color is indeed a most unimportant characteristic of objects,
will be farther evident on the slightest consideration. The color of
plants is constantly changing with the season, and of everything with
the quality of light falling on it; but the nature and essence of the
thing are independent of these changes. An oak is an oak, whether green
with spring or red with winter; a dahlia is a dahlia, whether it be
yellow or crimson; and if some monster-hunting botanist should ever
frighten the flower blue, still it will be a dahlia; but let one curve
of the petals--one groove of the stamens be wanting, and the flower
ceases to be the same. Let the roughness of the bark and the angles of
the boughs be smoothed or diminished, and the oak ceases to be an oak;
but let it retain its inward structure and outward form, and though its
leaves grew white, or pink, or blue, or tri-color, it would be a white
oak, or a pink oak, or a republican oak, but an oak still. Again, color
is hardly ever even a _possible_ distinction between two objects of the
same species. Two trees, of the same kind, at the same season, and of
the same age, are of absolutely the same color; but they are not of the
same form, nor anything like it. There can be no difference in the color
of two pieces of rock broken from the same place; but it is impossible
they should be of the same form. So that form is not only the chief
characteristic of species, but the only characteristic of individuals of
a species.
Sec. 5. And different in association from what it is alone.
Again, a color, in association with other colors, is different from the
same color seen by itself. It has a distinct and peculiar power upon the
retina dependent on its association. Consequently, the color of any
object is not more dependent upon the nature of the object itself, and
the eye beholding it, than on the color of the objects near it; in this
respect also, therefore, it is no characteristic.
Sec. 6. It is not certain whether any two people see the same color in
things.
And so great is the uncertainty with respect to those qualities or
powers which depend as much on the nature of the object suffering as of
the object acting, that it is totally impossible to prove that one man
sees in the same thing the same color that another does though he may
use the same name for it. One man may see yellow where another sees
blue, but as the effect is constant, they agree in the term to be used
for it, and both call it blue, or both yellow, having yet totally
different ideas attached to the term. And yet neither can be said to see
falsely, because the color is not in the thing, but in the thing and
them together. But if they see forms differently, one must see falsely,
because the form is positive in the object. My friend may see boars blue
for anything I know, but it is impossible he should see them with paws
instead of hoofs, unless his eyes or brain are diseased. (Compare Locke,
Book ii. chap. xxxii. Sec. 15.) But I do not speak of this uncertainty as
capable of having any effect on art, because, though perhaps Landseer
sees dogs of the color which I should call blue, yet the color he puts
on the canvas, being in the same way blue to him, will still be brown or
dog-color to me; and so we may argue on points of color just as if all
men saw alike, as indeed in all probability they do; but I merely
mention this uncertainty to show farther the vagueness and unimportance
of color as a characteristic of bodies.
Sec. 7. Form considered as an element of landscape, includes light and
shade.
Sec. 8. Importance of light and shade in expressing the character of bodies
and unimportance of color.
Before going farther, however, I must explain the sense in which I have
used the word "form," because painters have a most inaccurate and
careless habit of confining the term to the _outline_ of bodies, whereas
it necessarily implies light and shade. It is true that the outline and
the chiaroscuro must be separate subjects of investigation with the
student; but no form whatsoever can be known to the eye in the slightest
degree without its chiaroscuro; and, therefore, in speaking of form
generally as an element of landscape, I mean that perfect and harmonious
unity of outline with light and shade, by which all the parts and
projections and proportions of a body are fully explained to the eye,
being nevertheless perfectly independent of sight or power in other
objects, the presence of light upon a body being a positive existence,
whether we are aware of it or not, and in no degree dependent upon our
senses. This being understood, the most convincing proof of the
unimportance of color lies in the accurate observation of the way in
which any material object impresses itself on the mind. If we look at
nature carefully, we shall find that her colors are in a state of
perpetual confusion and indistinctness, while her forms, as told by
light and shade, are invariably clear, distinct, and speaking. The
stones and gravel of the bank catch green reflections from the boughs
above; the bushes receive grays and yellows from the ground; every
hairbreadth of polished surface gives a little bit of the blue of the
sky or the gold of the sun, like a star upon the local color; this local
color, changeful and uncertain in itself, is again disguised and
modified by the hue of the light, or quenched in the gray of the shadow;
and the confusion and blending of tint is altogether so great, that were
we left to find out what objects were by their colors only, we would
scarcely in places distinguish the boughs of a tree from the air beyond
them, or the ground beneath them. I know that people unpractised in art
will not believe this at first; but if they have accurate powers of
observation, they may soon ascertain it for themselves; they will find
that, while they can scarcely ever determine the _exact_ hue of
anything, except when it occurs in large masses, as in a green field or
the blue sky, the form, as told by light and shade, is always decided
and evident, and the source of the chief character of every object.
Light and shade indeed so completely conquer the distinctions of local
color, that the difference in hue between the illumined parts of a white
and black object is not so great as the difference (in sunshine) between
the illumined and dark side of either separately.
Sec. 9. Recapitulation.
We shall see hereafter, in considering ideas of beauty, that color, even
as a source of pleasure, is feeble compared to form; but this we cannot
insist upon at present; we have only to do with simple truth, and the
observations we have made are sufficient to prove that the artist who
sacrifices or forgets a truth of form in the pursuit of a truth of
color, sacrifices what is definite to what is uncertain, and what is
essential to what is accidental.
CHAPTER VI.
RECAPITULATION.
Sec. 1. The importance of historical truths.
It ought farther to be observed respecting truths in general, that those
are always most valuable which are most historical, that is, which tell
us most about the past and future states of the object to which they
belong. In a tree, for instance, it is more important to give the
appearance of energy and elasticity in the limbs which is indicative of
growth and life, than any particular character of leaf, or texture of
bough. It is more important that we should feel that the uppermost
sprays are creeping higher and higher into the sky, and be impressed
with the current of life and motion which is animating every fibre, than
that we should know the exact pitch of relief with which those fibres
are thrown out against the sky. For the first truths tell us tales about
the tree, about what it has been, and will be, while the last are
characteristic of it only in its present state, and are in no way
talkative about themselves. Talkative facts are always more interesting
and more important than silent ones. So again the lines in a crag which
mark its stratification, and how it has been washed and rounded by
water, or twisted and drawn out in fire, are more important, because
they tell more than the stains of the lichens which change year by year,
and the accidental fissures of frost or decomposition; not but that both
of these are historical, but historical in a less distinct manner, and
for shorter periods.
Sec. 2. Form, as explained by light and shade, the first of all truths.
Tone, light and color are secondary.
Hence in general the truths of specific form are the first and most
important of all; and next to them, those truths of chiaroscuro which
are necessary to make us understand every quality and part of forms, and
the relative distances of objects among each other, and in consequence
their relative bulks. Altogether lower than these, as truths, though
often most important as beauties, stand all effects of chiaroscuro which
are productive merely of imitations of light and tone, and all effects
of color. To make us understand the _space_ of the sky, is an end worthy
of the artist's highest powers; to hit its particular blue or gold is an
end to be thought of when we have accomplished the first, and not till
then.
Sec. 3. And deceptive chiaroscuro the lowest of all.
Finally, far below all these come those particular accuraciesor tricks
of chiaroscuro which cause objects to look projecting from the canvas,
not worthy of the name of truths, because they require for their
attainment the sacrifice of all others; for not having at our disposal
the same intensity of light by which nature illustrates her objects, we
are obliged, if we would have perfect deception in one, to destroy its
relation to the rest. (Compare Sect. II. chap. V.) And thus he who
throws one object out of his picture, never lets the spectator into it.
Michael Angelo bids you follow his phantoms into the abyss of heaven,
but a modern French painter drops his hero out of the picture frame.
This solidity or projection then, is the very lowest truth that art can
give; it is the painting of mere matter, giving that as food for the eye
which is properly only the subject of touch; it can neither instruct nor
exalt, nor please except as jugglery; it addresses no sense of beauty
nor of power; and wherever it characterizes the general aim of a
picture, it is the sign and the evidence of the vilest and lowest
mechanism which art can be insulted by giving name to.
CHAPTER VII.
GENERAL APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES.
Sec. 1. The different selection of facts consequent on the several aims at
imitation or at truth.
We have seen, in the preceding chapters, some proof of what was before
asserted, that the truths necessary for deceptive imitation are not only
few, but of the very lowest order. We thus find painters ranging
themselves into two great classes; one aiming at the development of the
exquisite truths of specific form, refined color, and ethereal space,
and content with the clear and impressive suggestion of any of these, by
whatsoever means obtained; and the other casting all these aside, to
attain those particular truths of tone and chiaroscuro, which may trick
the spectator into a belief of reality. The first class, if they have to
paint a tree, are intent upon giving the exquisite designs of
intersecting undulation in its boughs, the grace of its leafage, the
intricacy of its organization, and all those qualities which make it
lovely or affecting of its kind. The second endeavor only to make you
believe that you are looking at wood. They are totally regardless of
truths or beauties of form; a stump is as good as a trunk for all their
purposes, so that they can only deceive the eye into the supposition
that it _is_ a stump and not canvas.
Sec. 2. The old masters, as a body, aim only at imitation.
Sec. 3. What truths they gave.
To which of these classes the great body of the old landscape painters
belonged, may be partly gathered from the kind of praise which is
bestowed upon them by those who admire them most, which either refers to
technical matters, dexterity of touch, clever oppositions of color,
etc., or is bestowed on the power of the painter to _deceive_. M. de
Marmontel, going into a connoisseur's gallery, pretends to mistake a
fine Berghem for a window. This, he says, was affirmed by its possessor
to be the greatest praise the picture had ever received. Such is indeed
the notion of art which is at the bottom of the veneration usually felt
for the old landscape painters; it is of course the palpable, first idea
of ignorance; it is the only notion which people unacquainted with art
can by any possibility have of its ends; the only test by which people
unacquainted with nature can pretend to form anything like judgment of
art. It is strange that, with the great historical painters of Italy
before them, who had broken so boldly and indignantly from the trammels
of this notion, and shaken the very dust of it from their feet, the
succeeding landscape painters should have wasted their lives in
jugglery: but so it is, and so it will be felt, the more we look into
their works, that the deception of the senses was the great and first
end of all their art. To attain this they paid deep and serious
attention to effects of light and tone, and to the exact degree of
relief which material objects take against light and atmosphere; and
sacrificing every other truth to these, not necessarily, but because
they required no others for deception, they succeeded in rendering these
particular facts with a fidelity and force which, in the pictures that
have come down to us uninjured, are as yet unequalled, and never can be
surpassed. They painted their foregrounds with laborious industry,
covering them with details so as to render them deceptive to the
ordinary eye, regardless of beauty or truth in the details themselves;
they painted their trees with careful attention to their pitch of shade
against the sky, utterly regardless of all that is beautiful or
essential in the anatomy of their foliage and boughs: they painted their
distances with exquisite use of transparent color and aerial tone,
totally neglectful of all facts and forms which nature uses such color
and tone to relieve and adorn. They had neither love of nature, nor
feeling of her beauty; they looked for her coldest and most commonplace
effects, because they were easiest to imitate; and for her most vulgar
forms, because they were most easily to be recognized by the untaught
eyes of those whom alone they could hope to please; they did it, like
the Pharisee of old, to be seen of men, and they had their reward. They
do deceive and delight the unpractised eye; they will to all ages, as
long as their colors endure, be the standards of excellence with all,
who, ignorant of nature, claim to be thought learned in art. And they
will to all ages be, to those who have thorough love and knowledge of
the creation which they libel, instructive proofs of the limited number
and low character of the truths which are necessary, and the accumulated
multitude of pure, broad, bold falsehoods which are admissible in
pictures meant only to deceive.
There is of course more or less accuracy of knowledge and execution
combined with this aim at effect, according to the industry and
precision of eye possessed by the master, and more or less of beauty in
the forms selected, according to his natural taste; but both the beauty
and truth are sacrificed unhesitatingly where they interfere with the
great effort at deception. Claude had, if it had been cultivated, a fine
feeling for beauty of form, and is seldom ungraceful in his foliage; but
his picture, when examined with reference to essential truth, is one
mass of error from beginning to end. Cuyp, on the other hand, could
paint close truth of everything, except ground and water, with decision
and success, but he has no sense of beauty. Gaspar Poussin, more
ignorant of truth than Claude, and almost as dead to beauty as Cuyp, has
yet a perception of the feeling and moral truth of nature which often
redeems the picture; but yet in all of them, everything that they can do
is done for deception, and nothing for the sake or love of what they are
painting.
Sec. 4. The principles of selection adopted by modern artists.
Modern landscape painters have looked at nature with totally different
eyes, seeking not for what is easiest to imitate, but for what is most
important to tell. Rejecting at once all idea of _bona fide_ imitation,
they think only of conveying the impression of nature into the mind of
the spectator. And there is, in consequence, a greater sum of valuable,
essential, and impressive truth in the works of two or three of our
leading modern landscape painters, than in those of all the old masters
put together, and of truth too, nearly unmixed with definite or
avoidable falsehood; while the unimportant and feeble truths of the old
masters are choked with a mass of perpetual defiance of the most
authoritative laws of nature.
Sec. 5. General feeling of Claude, Salvator, and G. Poussin, contrasted
with the freedom and vastness of nature.
I do not expect this assertion to be believed at present; it must rest
for demonstration on the examination we are about to enter upon; yet,
even without reference to any intricate or deep-laid truths, it appears
strange to me, that any one familiar with nature, and fond of her,
should not grow weary and sick at heart among the melancholy and
monotonous transcripts of her which alone can be received from the old
school of art. A man accustomed to the broad, wild seashore, with its
bright breakers, and free winds, and sounding rocks, and eternal
sensation of tameless power, can scarcely but be angered when Claude
bids him stand still on some paltry, chipped and chiselled quay with
porters and wheelbarrows running against him, to watch a weak, rippling
bound and barriered water, that has not strength enough in one of its
waves to upset the flower-pots on the wall, or even to fling one jet of
spray over the confining stone. A man accustomed to the strength and
glory of God's mountains, with their soaring and radiant pinnacles, and
surging sweeps of measureless distance, kingdoms in their valleys, and
climates upon their crests, can scarcely but be angered when Salvator
bids him stand still under some contemptible fragment of splintery crag,
which an Alpine snow-wreath would smother in its first swell, with a
stunted bush or two growing out of it, and a volume of manufactory smoke
for a sky. A man accustomed to the grace and infinity of nature's
foliage, with every vista a cathedral, and every bough a revelation, can
scarcely but be angered when Poussin mocks him with a black round mass
of impenetrable paint, diverging into feathers instead of leaves, and
supported on a stick instead of a trunk. The fact is, there is one thing
wanting in all the doing of these men, and that is the very virtue by
which the work of human mind chiefly rises above that of the
Daguerreotype or Calotype, or any other mechanical means that ever have
been or may be invented, Love: There is no evidence of their ever having
gone to nature with any thirst, or received from her such emotion as
could make them, even for an instant, lose sight of themselves; there is
in them neither earnestness nor humility; there is no simple or honest
record of any single truth; none of the plain words nor straight efforts
that men speak and make when they once feel.
Sec. 6. Inadequacy of the landscape of Titian and Tintoret.
Nor is it only by the professed landscape painters that the great
verities of the material world are betrayed: Grand as are the motives
of landscape in the works of the earlier and mightier men, there is yet
in them nothing approaching to a general view nor complete rendering of
natural phenomena; not that they are to be blamed for this; for they
took out of nature that which was fit for their purpose, and their
mission was to do no more; but we must be cautious to distinguish that
imaginative abstraction of landscape which alone we find in them, from
the entire statement of truth which has been attempted by the moderns. I
have said in the chapter on symmetry in the second volume, that all
landscape grandeur vanishes before that of Titian and Tintoret; and this
is true of whatever these two giants touched;--but they touched little.
A few level flakes of chestnut foliage; a blue abstraction of hill forms
from Cadore or the Euganeans; a grand mass or two of glowing ground and
mighty herbage, and a few burning fields of quiet cloud were all they
needed; there is evidence of Tintoret's having felt more than this, but
it occurs only in secondary fragments of rock, cloud, or pine, hardly
noticed among the accumulated interest of his human subject. From the
window of Titian's house at Venice, the chain of the Tyrolese Alps is
seen lifted in spectral power above the tufted plain of Treviso; every
dawn that reddens the towers of Murano lights also a line of pyramidal
fires along that colossal ridge; but there is, so far as I know, no
evidence in any of the master's works of his ever having beheld, much
less felt, the majesty of their burning. The dark firmament and saddened
twilight of Tintoret are sufficient for their end; but the sun never
plunges behind San Giorgio in Aliga without such retinue of radiant
cloud, such rest of zoned light on the green lagoon, as never received
image from his hand. More than this, of that which they loved and
rendered much is rendered conventionally; by noble conventionalities
indeed, but such nevertheless as would be inexcusable if the landscape
became the principal subject instead of an accompaniment. I will
instance only the San Pietro Martire, which, if not the most perfect, is
at least the most popular of Titian's landscapes; in which, to obtain
light on the flesh of the near figures the sky is made as dark as deep
sea, the mountains are laid in with violent and impossible blue, except
one of them on the left, which, to connect the distant light with the
foreground, is thrown into light relief, unexplained by its materials,
unlikely in its position, and in its degree impossible under any
circumstances.
Sec. 7. Causes of its want of influence on subsequent schools.
I do not instance these as faults in the picture: there are no works of
very powerful color which are free from conventionality concentrated or
diffused, daring or disguised; but as the conventionality of this whole
picture is mainly thrown into the landscape, it is necessary, while we
acknowledge the virtue of this distance as a part of the great
composition, to be on our guard against the license it assumes and the
attractiveness of its overcharged color. Fragments of far purer truth
occur in the works of Tintoret; and in the drawing of foliage, whether
rapid or elaborate, of masses or details, the Venetian painters, taken
as a body, may be considered almost faultless models. But the whole
field of what they have done is so narrow, and therein is so much of
what is only relatively right, and in itself false or imperfect, that
the young and inexperienced painter could run no greater risk than the
too early taking them for teachers; and to the general spectator their
landscape is valuable rather as a means of peculiar and solemn emotion
than as ministering to, or inspiring the universal love of nature. Hence
while men of serious mind, especially those whose pursuits have brought
them into continued relations with the peopled rather than the lonely
world, will always look to the Venetian painters as having touched those
simple chords of landscape harmony which are most in unison with earnest
and melancholy feeling; those whose philosophy is more cheerful and more
extended, as having been trained and colored among simple and solitary
nature, will seek for a wider and more systematic circle of teaching:
they may grant that the barred horizontal gloom of the Titian sky, and
the massy leaves of the Titian forest are among the most sublime of the
conceivable forms of material things; but they know that the virtue of
these very forms is to be learned only by right comparison of them with
the cheerfulness, fulness and comparative inquietness of other hours and
scenes; that they are not intended for the continual food, but the
occasional soothing of the human heart; that there is a lesson of not
less value in its place, though of less concluding and sealing
authority, in every one of the more humble phases of material things:
and that there are some lessons of equal or greater authority which
these masters neither taught nor received. And until the school of
modern landscape arose Art had never noted the links of this mighty
chain; it mattered not that a fragment lay here and there, no heavenly
lightning could descend by it; the landscape of the Venetians was
without effect on any contemporary in subsequent schools; it still
remains on the continent as useless as if it had never existed; and at
this moment German and Italian landscapes, of which no words are
scornful enough to befit the utter degradation, hang in the Venetian
Academy in the next room to the Desert of Titian and the Paradise of
Tintoret.[6]
Sec. 8. The value of inferior works of art how to be estimated.
That then which I would have the reader inquire respecting every work of
art of undetermined merit submitted to his judgment, is not whether it
be a work of especial grandeur, importance, or power; but whether it
have _any_ virtue or substance as a link in this chain of truth, whether
it have recorded or interpreted anything before unknown, whether it have
added one single stone to our heaven-pointing pyramid, cut away one dark
bough, or levelled one rugged hillock in our path. This, if it be an
honest work of art, it must have done, for no man ever yet worked
honestly without giving some such help to his race. God appoints to
every one of his creatures a separate mission, and if they discharge it
honorably, if they quit themselves like men and faithfully follow that
light which is in them, withdrawing from it all cold and quenching
influence, there will assuredly come of it such burning as, in its
appointed mode and measure, shall shine before men, and be of service
constant and holy. Degrees infinite of lustre there must always be, but
the weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is
peculiar to him, and which worthily used will be a gift also to his
race forever--
"Fool not," says George Herbert,
"For all may have,
If they dare choose, a glorious life or grave."
If, on the contrary, there be nothing of this freshness achieved, if
there be neither purpose nor fidelity in what is done, if it be an
envious or powerless imitation of other men's labors, if it be a display
of mere manual dexterity or curious manufacture, or if in any other mode
it show itself as having its origin in vanity,--Cast it out. It matters
not what powers of mind may have been concerned or corrupted in it, all
have lost their savor, it is worse than worthless;--perilous--Cast it
out.
Works of art are indeed always of mixed kind, their honesty being more
or less corrupted by the various weaknesses of the painter, by his
vanity, his idleness, or his cowardice; (the fear of doing right has far
more influence on art than is commonly thought,) that only is altogether
to be rejected which is altogether vain, idle, and cowardly. Of the rest
the rank is to be estimated rather by the purity of their metal than the
coined value of it.
Sec. 9. Religious landscape of Italy. The admirableness of its completion.
Keeping these principles in view, let us endeavor to obtain something
like a general view of the assistance which has been rendered to our
study of nature by the various occurrences of landscape in elder art,
and by the more exclusively directed labors of modern schools.
To the ideal landscape of the early religious painters of Italy I have
alluded in the concluding chapter of the second volume. It is absolutely
right and beautiful in its peculiar application; but its grasp of nature
is narrow and its treatment in most respects too severe and conventional
to form a profitable example when the landscape is to be alone the
subject of thought. The great virtue of it is its entire, exquisite, and
humble realization of those objects it selects; in this respect
differing from such German imitations of it as I have met with, that
there is no effort of any fanciful or ornamental modifications, but
loving fidelity to the thing studied. The foreground plants are usually
neither exaggerated nor stiffened; they do not form arches or frames or
borders; their grace is unconfined, their simplicity undestroyed. Cima
da Conegliano, in his picture in the church of the Madonna dell' Orto at
Venice, has given us the oak, the fig, the beautiful "Erba della
Madonna" on the wall, precisely such a bunch of it as may be seen
growing at this day on the marble steps of that very church; ivy and
other creepers, and 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. Fra
Angelico's use of the oxalis acetosella is as faithful in representation
as touching in feeling.[7] The ferns that grow on the walls of Fiesole
may be seen in their simple verity on the architecture of Ghirlandajo.
The rose, the myrtle, and the lily, the olive and orange, pomegranate
and vine, have received their fairest portraiture where they bear a
sacred character; even the common plantains and mallows of the waysides
are touched with deep reverence by Raffaelle; and indeed for the perfect
treatment of details of this kind, treatment as delicate and
affectionate as it is elevated and manly, it is to the works of these
schools alone that we can refer. And on this their peculiar excellence I
should the more earnestly insist, because it is of a kind altogether
neglected by the English school, and with most unfortunate result, many
of our best painters missing their deserved rank solely from the want of
it, as Gainsborough; and all being more or less checked in their
progress or vulgarized in their aim.
Sec. 10. Finish, and the want of it, how right and how wrong.