the noblest certainly ever painted by man, is that of the Slave Ship,
the chief Academy picture of the Exhibition of 1840. It is a sunset on
the Atlantic after prolonged storm; but the storm is partially lulled,
and the torn and streaming rain-clouds are moving in scarlet lines to
lose themselves in the hollow of the night. The whole surface of sea
included in the picture is divided into two ridges of enormous swell,
not high, nor local, but a low, broad heaving of the whole ocean, like
the lifting of its bosom by deep-drawn breath after the torture of the
storm. Between these two ridges, the fire of the sunset falls along the
trough of the sea, dyeing it with an awful but glorious light, the
intense and lurid splendor which burns like gold and bathes like blood.
Along this fiery path and valley, the tossing waves by which the swell
of the sea is restlessly divided, lift themselves in dark, indefinite,
fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly shadow behind it along
the illumined foam. They do not rise everywhere, but three or four
together in wild groups, fitfully and furiously, as the under strength
of the swell compels or permits them; leaving between them treacherous
spaces of level and whirling water, now lighted with green and lamp-like
fire, now flashing back the gold of the declining sun, now fearfully
dyed from above with the indistinguishable images of the burning clouds,
which fall upon them in flakes of crimson and scarlet, and give to the
reckless waves the added motion of their own fiery flying. Purple and
blue, the lurid shadows of the hollow breakers are cast upon the mist of
the night, which gathers cold and low, advancing like the shadow of
death upon the guilty[69] ship as it labors amidst the lightning of the
sea, its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood, girded with
condemnation in that fearful hue which signs the sky with horror, and
mixes its flaming flood with the sunlight,--and cast far along the
desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines the multitudinous
sea.
Sec. 40. Its united excellences and perfection as a whole.
I believe, if I were reduced to rest Turner's immortality upon any single
work, I should choose this. Its daring conception--ideal in the highest
sense of the word--is based on the purest truth, and wrought out with the
concentrated knowledge of a life; its color is absolutely perfect, not
one false or morbid hue in any part or line, and so modulated that every
square inch of canvas is a perfect composition; its drawing as accurate
as fearless; the ship buoyant, bending, and full of motion; its tones as
true as they are wonderful;[70] and the whole picture dedicated to the
most sublime of subjects and impressions--(completing thus the perfect
system of all truth, which we have shown to be formed by Turner's
works)--the power, majesty, and deathfulness of the open, deep,
illimitable Sea.
FOOTNOTES
[66] Not altogether. I believe here, as in a former case, I have
attributed far too much influence to this change of focus. In
Turner's earlier works the principle is not found. In the rivers of
the Yorkshire drawings, every reflection is given clearly, even to
the farthest depth, and yet the surface is not lost, and it would
deprive the painter of much power if he were not sometimes so to
represent them, especially when his object is repose; it being, of
course, as lawful for him to choose one adaptation of the sight as
another. I have, however, left the above paragraphs as first
written, because they are true, although I think they make too much
of an unimportant matter. The reader may attribute to them such
weight as he thinks fit. He is referred to Sec. 11 of this chapter, and
to Sec. 4 of the first chapter of this section.
[67] On a large scale it is so, but the same lines are to be seen
for the moment whenever water becomes exceedingly rapid, and yet
feels the bottom as it passes, being not thrown up or cast clear of
it. In general, the drawing of water fails from being too
interrupted, the forms flung hither and thither, and broken up and
covered with bright touches, instead of being wrought out in their
real unities of curvature. It is difficult enough to draw a curved
surface, even when it is rough and has texture; but to indicate the
varied and sweeping forms of a crystalline and polished substance,
requires far more skill and patience than most artists possess. In
some respects, it is impossible. I do not suppose any means of art
are capable of rightly expressing the smooth, multitudinous rippling
of a rapid rivulet of shallow water, giving its transparency lustre
and fully-developed forms; and the greater number of the lines and
actions of torrent-waves are equally inexpressible. The effort
should, nevertheless, always be made, and whatever is sacrificed in
color, freedom, or brightness, the real contours ought always in
some measure to be drawn, as a careful draughtsman secures those of
flesh, or any other finely-modelled surface. It is better, in many
respects, the drawing should miss of being _like_ water, than that
it should miss in this one respect the grandeur of water. Many
tricks of scratching and dashing will bring out a deceptive
resemblance; the determined and laborious rendering of contour alone
secures sublimity.
[68] The "yesty waves" of Shakspeare have made the likeness
familiar, and probably most readers take the expression as merely
equivalent to "foamy;" but Shakspeare knew better. Sea-foam does
not, under ordinary circumstances, last a moment after it is formed,
but disappears, as above described, in a mere white film. But the
foam of a prolonged tempest is altogether different; it is "whipped"
foam,--thick, permanent, and, in a foul or discolored sea, very
ugly, especially in the way it hangs about the tops of the waves,
and gathers into clotted concretions before the driving wind. The
sea looks truly working or fermenting. The following passage from
Fenimore Cooper is an interesting confirmation of the rest of the
above description, which may be depended upon as entirely free from
exaggeration:--"For the first time I now witnessed a tempest at sea.
Gales, and pretty hard ones, I had often seen, but the force of the
wind on this occasion as much exceeded that in ordinary gales of
wind, as the force of these had exceeded that of a whole-sail
breeze. The seas seemed crushed; the pressure of the swooping
atmosphere, as the currents of the air went howling over the surface
of the ocean, fairly preventing them from rising; or where a mound
of water did appear, it was scooped up and borne off in spray, as
the axe dubs inequalities from the log. When the day returned, a
species of lurid, sombre light was diffused over the watery waste,
though nothing was visible but the ocean and the ship. Even the
sea-birds seemed to have taken refuge in the caverns of the adjacent
coast, none reappearing with the dawn. The air was full of spray,
and it was with difficulty that the eye could penetrate as far into
the humid atmosphere as half a mile,"--_Miles Wattingford_. Half a
mile is an over-estimate in coast.
[69] She is a slaver, throwing her slaves overboard. The near sea is
encumbered with corpses.
[70] There is a piece of tone of the same kind, equal in one part,
but not so united with the rest of the picture, in the storm scene
illustrative of the Antiquary,--a sunset light on polished sea. I
ought to have particularly mentioned the sea in the Lowestoffe, as a
piece of the cutting motion of shallow water, under storm,
altogether in gray, which should be especially contrasted, as a
piece of color, with the grays of Vandevelde. And the sea in the
Great Yarmouth should have been noticed for its expression of water
in violent agitation, seen in enormous extent from a great
elevation. There is almost every form of sea in it,--rolling waves
dashing on the pier--successive breakers rolling to the shore--a
vast horizon of multitudinous waves--and winding canals of calm
water along the sands, bringing fragments of bright sky down into
their yellow waste. There is hardly one of the views of the Southern
Coast which does not give some new condition or circumstance of sea.
SECTION VI.
OF TRUTH OF VEGETATION.--CONCLUSION.
CHAPTER I.
OF TRUTH OF VEGETATION.
Sec. 1. Frequent occurrence of foliage in the works of the old masters.
We have now arrived at the consideration of what was, with the old
masters, the subject of most serious and perpetual study. If they do not
give us truth here, they cannot have the faculty of truth in them; for
foliage is the chief component part of all their pictures, and is
finished by them with a care and labor which, if bestowed without
attaining truth, must prove either their total bluntness of perception,
or total powerlessness of hand. With the Italian school I can scarcely
recollect a single instance in which foliage does not form the greater
part of the picture; in fact, they are rather painters of tree-portrait
than landscape painters; for rocks, and sky, and architecture are
usually mere accessories and backgrounds to the dark masses of laborious
foliage, of which the composition principally consists. Yet we shall be
less detained by the examination of foliage than by our former subjects;
since where specific form is organized and complete, and the occurrence
of the object universal, it is easy, without requiring any laborious
attention in the reader, to demonstrate to him quite as much of the
truth or falsehood of various representations of it, as may serve to
determine the character and rank of the painter.
Sec. 2. Laws common to all forest trees. Their branches do not taper, but
only divide.
It will be best to begin as nature does, with the stems and branches,
and then to put the leaves on. And in speaking of trees generally, be it
observed, when I say _all_ trees, I mean only those ordinary forest or
copse trees of Europe, which are the chief subjects of the landscape
painter. I do not mean to include every kind of foliage which by any
accident can find its way into a picture, but the ordinary trees of
Europe,--oak, elm, ash, hazel, willow, birch, beech, poplar, chestnut,
pine, mulberry, olive, ilex, carubbe, and such others. I do not purpose
to examine the characteristics of each tree; it will be enough to
observe the laws common to all. First, then, neither the stems nor the
boughs of any of the above trees _taper_, except where they fork.
Wherever a stem sends off a branch, or a branch a lesser bough, or a
lesser bough a bud, the stem or the branch is, on the instant, less in
diameter by the exact quantity of the branch or the bough they have sent
off, and they remain of the same diameter; or if there be any change,
rather increase than diminish until they send off another branch or
bough. This law is imperative and without exception; no bough, nor stem,
nor twig, ever tapering or becoming narrower towards its extremity by a
hairbreadth, save where it parts with some portion of its substance at a
fork or bud, so that if all the twigs and sprays at the top and sides of
the tree, which are, and _have been_, could be united without loss of
space, they would form a round log of the diameter of the trunk from
which they spring.
Sec. 3. Appearance of tapering caused by frequent buds.
But as the trunks of most trees send off twigs and sprays of light under
foliage, of which every individual fibre takes precisely its own
thickness of wood from the parent stem, and as many of these drop off,
leaving nothing but a small excrescence to record their existence, there
is frequently a slight and delicate appearance of tapering bestowed on
the trunk itself; while the same operation takes place much more
extensively in the branches, it being natural to almost all trees to
send out from their young limbs more wood than they can support, which,
as the stem increases, gets contracted at the point of insertion, so as
to check the flow of the sap, and then dies and drops off, leaving all
along the bough, first on one side, then on another, a series of small
excrescences, sufficient to account for a degree of tapering, which is
yet so very slight, that if we select a portion of a branch with no real
fork or living bough to divide it or diminish it, the tapering is
scarcely to be detected by the eye; and if we select a portion without
such evidences of past ramification, there will be found none
whatsoever.
Sec. 4. And care of nature to conceal the parallelism.
But nature takes great care and pains to conceal this uniformity in her
boughs. They are perpetually parting with little sprays here and there,
which steal away their substance cautiously, and where the eye does not
perceive the theft, until, a little way above, it feels the loss; and in
the upper parts of the tree, the ramifications take place so constantly
and delicately, that the effect upon the eye is precisely the same as if
the boughs actually tapered, except here and there, where some
avaricious one, greedy of substance, runs on for two or three yards
without parting with anything, and becomes ungraceful in so doing.
Sec. 5. The degree of tapering which may be represented as continuous.
Hence we see that although boughs may, and must be represented as
actually tapering, they must only be so when they are sending off
foliage and sprays, and when they are at such a distance that the
particular forks and divisions cannot be evident to the eye; and
farther, even in such circumstances the tapering never can be sudden or
rapid. No bough ever, with appearance of smooth tapering, loses more
than one tenth of its diameter in a length of ten diameters. Any greater
diminution than this must be accounted for by visible ramification, and
must take place by steps, at each fork.
Sec. 6. The trees of Gaspar Poussin;
And therefore we see at once that the stem of Gaspar Poussin's tall
tree, on the right of the La Riccia, in the National Gallery, is a
painting of a carrot or a parsnip, not of the trunk of a tree. For,
being so near that every individual leaf is visible, we should not have
seen, in nature, one branch or stem actually tapering. We should have
received an _impression_ of graceful diminution; but we should have been
able, on examination, to trace it joint by joint, fork by fork, into the
thousand minor supports of the leaves. Gaspar Poussin's stem, on the
contrary, only sends off four or five minor branches altogether, and
both it and they taper violently, and without showing why or
wherefore--without parting with a single twig--without showing one
vestige of roughness or excrescence--and leaving, therefore, their
unfortunate leaves to hold on as best they may. The latter, however, are
clever leaves, and support themselves as swarming bees do, hanging on
by each other.
Sec. 7. And of the Italian school generally, defy this law.
But even this piece of work is a jest to the perpetration of the bough
at the left-hand upper corner of the picture opposite to it,--the View
near Albano. This latter is a representation of an ornamental group of
elephants' tusks, with feathers tied to the ends of them. Not the
wildest imagination could ever conjure up in it the remotest resemblance
to the bough of a tree. It might be the claws of a witch--the talons of
an eagle--the horns of a fiend; but it is a full assemblage of every
conceivable falsehood which can be told respecting foliage--a piece of
work so barbarous in every way, that one glance at it ought to prove the
complete charlatanism and trickery of the whole system of the old
landscape painters. For I will depart for once from my usual plan, of
abstaining from all assertion of a thing's being beautiful or otherwise;
I will say here, at once, that such drawing as this is as ugly as it is
childish, and as painful as it is false; and that the man who could
tolerate, much more, who could deliberately set down such a thing on his
canvas, had neither eye nor feeling for one single attribute or
excellence of God's works. He might have drawn the other stem in
excusable ignorance, or under some false impression of being able to
improve upon nature; but _this_ is conclusive and unpardonable. Again,
take the stem of the chief tree in Claude's Narcissus. It is a very
faithful portrait of a large boa-constrictor, with a handsome tail; the
kind of trunk which young ladies at fashionable boarding-schools
represent with nosegays at the top of them, by way of forest scenery.
Sec. 8. The truth, as it is given by J. D. Harding.
Let us refresh ourselves for a moment, by looking at the truth. We need
not go to Turner, we will go to the man who, next to him, is
unquestionably the greatest master of foliage in Europe--J. D. Harding.
Take the trunk of the largest stone-pine, Plate 25, in the Park and the
Forest. For the first nine or ten feet from the ground it does not lose
one hairbreadth of its diameter. But the shoot, broken off just under
the crossing part of the distant tree, is followed by an instant
diminution of the trunk, perfectly appreciable both by the eye and the
compasses. Again, the stem maintains undiminished thickness, up to the
two shoots on the left, from the loss of which it suffers again
perceptibly. On the right, immediately above, is the stump of a very
large bough, whose loss reduces the trunk suddenly to about two-thirds
of what it was at the root. Diminished again, less considerably, by the
minor branch close to this stump, it now retains its diameter up to the
three branches, broken off just under the head, where it once more loses
in diameter, and finally branches into the multitude of head-boughs, of
which not one will be found tapering in any part, but losing themselves
gradually by division among their offshoots and spray. This is nature,
and beauty too.
Sec. 9. Boughs, in consequence of this law, _must_ diminish where they
divide. Those of the old masters often do not.
But the old masters are not satisfied with drawing carrots for boughs.
Nature can be violated in more ways than one, and the industry with
which they seek out and adopt every conceivable mode of contradicting
her is matter of no small interest. It is evident, from what we have
above stated of the structure of all trees, that as no boughs diminish
where they do not fork, so they cannot fork without diminishing. It is
impossible that the smallest shoot can be sent out of a bough without a
diminution of the diameter above it; and wherever a branch goes off it
must not only be less in diameter than the bough from which it springs,
but the bough beyond the fork must be less by precisely the quantity of
the branch it has sent off.[71] Now observe the bough underneath the
first bend of the great stem in Claude's Narcissus; it sends off four
branches like the ribs of a leaf. The two lowest of these are both quite
as thick as the parent stem, and the stem itself is much thicker after
it has sent off the first one than it was before. The top boughs of the
central tree, in the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, ramify in the same
scientific way.
Sec. 10. Boughs must multiply as they diminish. Those of the old masters
do not.
Sec. 11. Bough-drawing of Salvator.
But there are further conclusions to be drawn from this great principle
in trees. As they only diminish where they divide, their increase of
number is in precise proportion to their diminution of size, so that
whenever we come to the extremities of boughs, we must have a multitude
of sprays sufficient to make up, if they were united, the bulk of that
from which they spring. Where a bough divides into two equal
ramifications, the diameter of each of the two is about two-thirds that
of the single one, and the sum of their diameters, therefore, one-fourth
greater than the diameter of the single one. Hence, if no boughs died or
were lost, the quantity of wood in the sprays would appear one-fourth
greater than would be necessary to make up the thickness of the trunk.
But the lost boughs remove the excess, and therefore, speaking broadly,
the diameters of the outer boughs put together would generally just make
up the diameter of the trunk. Precision in representing this is neither
desirable nor possible. All that is required is just so much observance
of the general principle as may make the eye feel satisfied that there
is something like the same quantity of wood in the sprays which there is
in the stem. But to do this, there must be, what there always is in
nature, an exceeding complexity of the outer sprays. This complexity
gradually increases towards their extremities, of course exactly in
proportion to the slenderness of the twigs. The slenderer they become,
the more there are of them, until at last, at the extremities of the
tree, they form a mass of intricacy, which in winter, when it can be
seen, is scarcely distinguishable from fine herbage, and is beyond all
power of definite representation; it can only be expressed by a mass of
involved strokes. Also, as they shoot out in every direction, some are
nearer, some more distant; some distinct, some faint; and their
intersections and relations of distance are marked with the most
exquisite gradations of aerial perspective. Now it will be found
universally in the works of Claude, Gaspar, and Salvator, that the
boughs do _not_ get in the least complex or multiplied towards the
extremities--that each large limb forks only into two or three smaller
ones, each of which vanishes into the air without any cause or reason
for such unaccountable conduct--unless that the mass of leaves
transfixed upon it or tied to it, entirely dependent on its single
strength, have been too much, as well they may be, for its powers of
solitary endurance. This total ignorance of tree structure is shown
throughout their works. The Sinon before Priam is an instance of it in a
really fine work of Claude's, but the most gross examples are in the
works of Salvator. It appears that this latter artist was hardly in the
habit of studying from nature at all after his boyish ramble among the
Calabrian hills; and I do not recollect any instance of a piece of his
bough-drawing which is not palpably and demonstrably a made-up phantasm
of the studio, the proof derivable from this illegitimate tapering being
one of the most convincing. The painter is always visibly embarrassed to
reduce the thick boughs to spray, and _feeling_ (for Salvator naturally
had acute feeling for truth) that the bough was wrong when it tapered
suddenly, he accomplishes its diminution by an impossible protraction;
throwing out shoot after shoot until his branches straggle all across
the picture, and at last disappear unwillingly where there is no room
for them to stretch any farther. The consequence is, that whatever
leaves are put upon such boughs have evidently no adequate support,
their power of leverage is enough to uproot the tree; or if the boughs
are left bare, they have the look of the long tentacula of some
complicated marine monster, or of the waving endless threads of bunchy
sea-weed, instead of the firm, upholding, braced, and bending grace of
natural boughs. I grant that this is in a measure done by Salvator from
a love of ghastliness, and that in certain scenes it is in a sort
allowable; but it is in a far greater degree done from pure ignorance of
tree structure, as is sufficiently proved by the landscape of the Pitti
palace, Peace burning the arms of War; where the spirit of the scene is
intended to be quite other than ghastly, and yet the tree branches show
the usual errors in an extraordinary degree; every one of their
arrangements is impossible, and the trunk of the tree could not for a
moment support the foliage it is loaded with. So also in the pictures of
the Guadagni palace. And even where the skeleton look of branches is
justifiable or desirable, there is no occasion for any violation of
natural laws. I have seen more spectral character in the real limbs of a
blasted oak, than ever in Salvator's best monstrosities; more horror is
to be obtained by right combination of inventive line, than by drawing
tree branches as if they were wing-bones of a pterodactyle. All
departure from natural forms to give fearfulness is mere Germanism; it
is the work of fancy, not of imagination,[72] and instantly degrades
whatever it affects to third-rate level. There is nothing more marked in
truly great men, than their power of being dreadful without being false
or licentious. In Tintoret's Murder of Abel, the head of the sacrificed
firstling lies in the corner of the foreground, obscurely sketched in,
and with the light gleaming upon its glazed eyes. There is nothing
exaggerated about the head, but there is more horror got out of it, and
more of death suggested by its treatment, than if he had turned all the
trees of his picture into skeletons, and raised a host of demons to
drive the club.
Sec. 12. All these errors especially shown in Claude's sketches and
concentrated in a work of G. Poussin's.
Sec. 13. Impossibility of the angles of boughs being taken out of them by
wind.
It is curious that in Salvator's sketches or etchings there is less that
is wrong than in his paintings,--there seems a fresher remembrance of
nature about them. Not so with Claude. It is only by looking over his
sketches, in the British Museum, that a complete and just idea is to be
formed of his capacities of error; for the feeling and arrangement of
many of them are those of an advanced age, so that we can scarcely set
them down for what they resemble--the work of a boy ten years old; and
the drawing being seen without any aids of tone or color to set it off,
shows in its naked falsehood. The windy landscape of Poussin, opposite
the Dido and Aeneas, in the National Gallery, presents us, in the
foreground tree, with a piece of atrocity which I think, to any person
who candidly considers it, may save me all farther trouble of
demonstrating the errors of ancient art. I do not in the least suspect
the picture: the tones of it, and much of the handling, are masterly;
yet that foreground tree comprises every conceivable violation of truth
which the human hand can commit, or head invent, in drawing a
tree--except only, that it is not drawn root uppermost. It has no bark,
no roughness nor character of stem; its boughs do not grow out of each
other, but are stuck into each other; they ramify without diminishing,
diminish without ramifying, are terminated by no complicated sprays,
have their leaves tied to their ends, like the heads of Dutch brooms;
and finally, and chiefly, they are evidently not made of wood, but of
some soft elastic substance, which the wind can stretch out as it
pleases, for there is not a vestige of an angle in any one of them. Now,
the fiercest wind that ever blew upon the earth, could not take the
angles out of the bough of a tree an inch thick. The whole bough bends
together, retaining its elbows, and angles, and natural form, but
affected throughout with curvature in each of its parts and joints. That
part of it which was before perpendicular being bent aside, and that
which was before sloping, being bent into still greater inclination, the
angle at which the two parts meet remains the same; or if the strain be
put in the opposite direction, the bough will break long before it loses
its angle. You will find it difficult to bend the angles out of the
youngest sapling, if they be marked; and absolutely impossible, with a
strong bough. You may break it, but you will not destroy its angles. And
if you watch a tree in the wildest storm, you will find that though all
its boughs are bending, none lose their character but the utmost shoots
and sapling spray. Hence Gaspar Poussin, by his bad drawing, does not
make his storm strong, but his tree weak; he does not make his gust
violent, but his boughs of India-rubber.
Sec. 14. Bough-drawing of Titian.
These laws respecting vegetation are so far more imperative than those
which were stated respecting water, that the greatest artist cannot
violate them without danger, because they are laws resulting from
organic structure, which it is always painful to see interrupted; on the
other hand, they have this in common with all laws, that they may be
observed with mathematical precision, yet with no grateful result; the
disciplined eye and the life in the woods are worth more than all
botanical knowledge. For there is that about the growing of the tree
trunk, and that grace in its upper ramification which cannot be taught,
and which cannot even be seen but by eager watchfulness. There is not an
Exhibition passes, but there appear in it hundreds of elaborate
paintings of trees, many of them executed from nature. For three hundred
years back, trees have been drawn with affection by all the civilized
nations of Europe, and yet I repeat boldly, what I before asserted,
that no men but Titian and Turner ever drew the stem of a tree.
Generally, I think, the perception of the muscular qualities of the tree
trunk incomplete, except in men who have studied the human figure, and
in loose expression of those characters, the painter who can draw the
living muscle seldom fails; but the thoroughly peculiar lines belonging
to woody fibre, can only be learned by patient forest study; and hence
in all the trees of the merely historical painters, there is fault of
some kind or another, commonly exaggeration of the muscular swellings,
or insipidity and want of spring in curvature, or fantasticism and
unnaturalness of arrangement, and especially a want of the peculiar
characters of bark which express the growth and age of the tree; for
bark is no mere excrescence, lifeless and external--it is a skin of
especial significance in its indications of the organic form beneath; in
places under the arms of the tree it wrinkles up and forms fine lines
_round_ the trunk, inestimable in their indication of the direction of
its surface; in others, it bursts or peels longitudinally, and the
rending and bursting of it are influenced in direction and degree by the
under-growth and swelling of the woody fibre, and are not a mere
roughness and granulated pattern of the hide. Where there are so many
points to be observed, some are almost always exaggerated, and others
missed, according to the predilections of the painter. Rembrandt and
Albert Durer have given some splendid examples of woody texture, but
both miss the grace of the great lines. Titian took a larger view and
reached a higher truth, yet (as before noticed) from the habit of
drawing the figure, he admits too much flaccidity and bend, and
sometimes makes his tree trunks look flexible like sea-weed. There is a
peculiar stiffness and spring about the curves of the wood, which
separates them completely from animal curves, and which especially
defies recollection or invention; it is so subtile that it escapes but
too often, even in the most patient study from nature; it lies within
the thickness of a pencil line. Farther, the modes of ramification of
the upper branches are so varied, inventive, and graceful, that the
least alteration of them, even in the measure of a hairbreadth, spoils
them; and though it is sometimes possible to get rid of a troublesome
bough, accidentally awkward, or in some minor respects to assist the
arrangement, yet so far as the real branches are copied, the hand libels
their lovely curvatures even in its best attempts to follow them.
Sec. 15. Bough-drawing of Turner.
These two characters, the woody stiffness hinted through muscular line,
and the inventive grace of the upper boughs, have never been rendered
except by Turner; he does not merely draw them better than others, but
he is the only man who has ever drawn them at all. Of the woody
character, the tree subjects of the Liber Studiorum afford marked
examples; the Cephalus and Procris, scenes near the Grand Chartreuse and
Blair Athol, Juvenile Tricks, and Hedging and Ditching, may be
particularized; in the England series, the Bolton Abbey is perhaps a
more characteristic and thoroughly Turneresque example than any.
Of the arrangement of the upper boughs, the Aesacus and Hesperie is
perhaps the most consummate example, the absolute truth and simplicity
and freedom from anything like fantasticism or animal form being as
marked on the one hand, as the exquisite imaginativeness of the lines on
the other: among the Yorkshire subjects the Aske Hall, Kirby Lonsdale
Churchyard, and Brignall Church are most characteristic: among the
England subjects the Warwick, Dartmouth Cove, Durham, and Chain Bridge
over the Tees, where the piece of thicket on the right has been well
rendered by the engraver, and is peculiarly expressive of the aerial
relations and play of light among complex boughs. The vignette at the
opening of Rogers's Pleasures of Memory, that of Chiefswood Cottage in
the Illustrations to Scott's Works, and the Chateau de la belle
Gabrielle, engraved for the Keepsake, are among the most graceful
examples accessible to every one; the Crossing the Brook will occur at
once to those acquainted with the artist's gallery. The drawing of the
stems in all these instances, and indeed in all the various and frequent
minor occurrences of such subject throughout the painter's works is
entirely unique, there is nothing of the same kind in art.
Sec. 16. Leafage. Its variety and symmetry.
Sec. 17. Perfect regularity of Poussin.
Let us, however, pass to the leafage of the elder landscape painters,
and see if it atones for the deficiencies of the stems. One of the most
remarkable characters of natural leafage is the constancy with which,
while the leaves are arranged on the spray with exquisite regularity,
that regularity is modified in their actual effect. For as in every
group of leaves some are seen sideways, forming merely long lines, some
foreshortened, some crossing each other, every one differently turned
and placed from all the others, the forms of the leaves, though in
themselves similar, give rise to a thousand strange and differing forms
in the group; and the shadows of some, passing over the others, still
farther disguise and confuse the mass, until the eye can distinguish
nothing but a graceful and flexible disorder of innumerable forms, with
here and there a perfect leaf on the extremity, or a symmetrical
association of one or two, just enough to mark the specific character
and to give unity and grace, but never enough to repeat in one group
what was done in another--never enough to prevent the eye from feeling
that, however regular and mathematical may be the structure of parts,
what is composed out of them is as various and infinite as any other
part of nature. Nor does this take place in general effect only. Break
off an elm bough, three feet long, in full leaf, and lay it on the table
before you, and try to draw it, leaf for leaf. It is ten to one if in
the whole bough, (provided you do not twist it about as you work,) you
find one form of a leaf exactly like another; perhaps you will not even
have _one_ complete. Every leaf will be oblique, or foreshortened, or
curled, or crossed by another, or shaded by another, or have something
or other the matter with it; and though the whole bough will look
graceful and symmetrical, you will scarcely be able to tell how or why
it does so, since there is not one line of it like another. Now go to
Gaspar Poussin, and take one of his sprays where they come against the
sky; you may count it all round, one, two, three, four, one bunch; five,
six, seven, eight, two bunches; nine, ten, eleven, twelve, three
bunches; with four leaves each,--and such leaves! every one precisely
the same as its neighbor, blunt and round at the end, (where every
forest leaf is sharp, except that of the fig-tree,) tied together by the
roots, and so fastened on to the demoniacal claws above described, one
bunch to each claw.
Sec. 18. Exceeding intricacy of nature's foliage.
But if nature is so various when you have a bough on the table before
you, what must she be when she retires from you, and gives you her whole
mass and multitude? The leaves then at the extremities become as fine
as dust, a mere confusion of points and lines between you and the sky, a
confusion which you might as well hope to draw sea-sand particle by
particle, as to imitate leaf for leaf. This, as it comes down into the
body of the tree, gets closer, but never opaque; it is always
transparent, with crumbling lights in it letting you through to the sky;
then, out of this, come, heavier and heavier, the masses of illumined
foliage, all dazzling and inextricable, save here and there a single
leaf on the extremities; then, under these, you get deep passages of
broken, irregular gloom, passing into transparent, green-lighted, misty
hollows; the twisted stems glancing through them in their pale and
entangled infinity, and the shafted sunbeams, rained from above, running
along the lustrous leaves for an instant; then lost, then caught again
on some emerald bank or knotted root, to be sent up again with a faint
reflex on the white under-sides of dim groups of drooping foliage, the
shadows of the upper boughs running in gray network down the glossy
stems, and resting in quiet checkers upon the glittering earth; but all
penetrable and transparent, and, in proportion, inextricable and
incomprehensible, except where across the labyrinth and the mystery of
the dazzling light and dream-like shadow, falls, close to us, some
solitary spray, some wreath of two or three motionless large leaves, the
type and embodying of all that in the rest we feel and imagine, but can
never see.
Sec. 19. How contradicted by the tree-patterns of G. Poussin.
Now, with thus much of nature in your mind, go to Gaspar Poussin's View
near Albano, in the National Gallery. It is the very subject to unite
all these effects,--a sloping bank shaded with intertwined forest;--and
what has Gaspar given us? A mass of smooth, opaque, varnished brown,
without one interstice, one change of hue, or any vestige of leafy
structure in its interior, or in those parts of it, I should say, which
are intended to represent interior; but out of it, over it rather, at
regular intervals, we have circular groups of greenish touches, always
the same in size, shape, and distance from each other, containing so
exactly the same number of touches each, that you cannot tell one from
another. There are eight or nine and thirty of them, laid over each
other like fish-scales; the shade being most carefully made darker and
darker as it recedes from each until it comes to the edge of the next,
against which it cuts in the same sharp circular line, and then begins
to decline again, until the canvas is covered, with about as much
intelligence or feeling of art as a house-painter has in marbling a
wainscot, or a weaver in repeating an ornamental pattern. What is there
in this, which the most determined prejudice in favor of the old masters
can for a moment suppose to resemble trees? It is exactly what the most
ignorant beginner, trying to make a complete drawing, would lay
down,--exactly the conception of trees which we have in the works of our
worst drawing-masters, where the shade is laid on with the black-lead
and stump, and every human power exerted to make it look like a
kitchen-grate well polished.
Sec. 20. How followed by Creswick.
Oppose to this the drawing even of our somewhat inferior tree-painters.
I will not insult Harding by mentioning his work after it, but take
Creswick, for instance, and match one of his sparkling bits of green
leafage with this tree-pattern of Poussin's. I do not say there is not a
dignity and impressiveness about the old landscape, owing to its
simplicity; and I am very far from calling Creswick's good
tree-painting; it is false in color and deficient in mass and freedom,
and has many other defects, but it is the work of a man who has sought
earnestly for truth; and who, with one thought or memory of nature in
his heart, could look at the two landscapes, and receive Poussin's with
ordinary patience? Take Creswick in black and white, where he is
unembarrassed by his fondness for pea-green, the illustrations, for
instance, to the Nut-brown Maid, in the Book of English Ballads. Look at
the intricacy and fulness of the dark oak foliage where it bends over
the brook, see how you can go through it, and into it, and come out
behind it to the quiet bit of sky. Observe the gray, aerial transparency
of the stunted copse on the left, and the entangling of the boughs where
the light near foliage detaches itself. Above all, note the forms of the
masses of light. Not things like scales or shells, sharp at the edge and
flat in the middle, but irregular and rounded, stealing in and out
accidentally from the shadow, and presenting, as the masses of all trees
do, in general outline, a resemblance to the specific forms of the
leaves of which they are composed. Turn over the page, and look into
the weaving of the foliage and sprays against the dark night-sky, how
near they are, yet how untraceable; see how the moonlight creeps up
underneath them, trembling and shivering on the silver boughs above;
note also, the descending bit of ivy on the left, of which only two
leaves are made out, and the rest is confusion, or tells only in the
moonlight like faint flakes of snow.
Sec. 21. Perfect unity in nature's foliage.
But nature observes another principle in her foliage more important even
than its intricacy. She always secures an exceeding harmony and repose.
She is _so_ intricate that her minuteness of parts becomes to the eye,
at a little distance, one united veil or cloud of leaves, to destroy the
evenness of which is perhaps a greater fault than to destroy its
transparency. Look at Creswick's oak again, in its dark parts. Intricate
as it is, all is blended into a cloud-like harmony of shade, which
becomes fainter and fainter, as it retires, with the most delicate
flatness and unity of tone. And it is by this kind of vaporescence, so
to speak, by this flat, misty, unison of parts, that nature, and her
faithful followers, are enabled to keep the eye in perfect repose in the
midst of profusion, and to display beauty of form, wherever they choose,
to the greatest possible advantage, by throwing it across some quiet,
visionary passage of dimness and rest.
Sec. 22. Total want of it in Both and Hobbima.
It is here that Hobbima and Both fail. They can paint oak leafage
faithfully, but do not know where to stop, and by doing too much, lose
the truth of all,--lose the very truth of detail at which they aim, for
all their minute work only gives two leaves to nature's twenty. They are
evidently incapable of even thinking of a tree, much more of drawing it,
except leaf by leaf; they have no notion nor sense of simplicity, mass,
or obscurity, and when they come to distance, where it is totally
impossible that leaves should be separately seen, yet, being incapable
of conceiving or rendering the grand and quiet forms of truth, they are
reduced to paint their bushes with dots and touches expressive of leaves
three feet broad each. Nevertheless there is a genuine aim in their
works, and their failure is rather to be attributed to ignorance of art,
than to such want of sense for nature as we find in Claude or Poussin;
and when they come close home, we sometimes receive from them fine
passages of mechanical truth.
Sec. 23. How rendered by Turner.
But let us oppose to their works the group of trees on the left in
Turner's Marly.[73] We have there perfect and ceaseless intricacy to
oppose to Poussin,--perfect and unbroken repose to oppose to Hobbima;
and in the unity of these the perfection of truth. This group may be
taken as a fair standard of Turner's tree-painting. We have in it the
admirably drawn stems, instead of the claws or the serpents; full,
transparent, boundless intricacy, instead of the shell pattern; and
misty depth of intermingled light and leafage, instead of perpetual
repetition of one mechanical touch.
Sec. 24. The near leafage of Claude. His middle distances are good.
I have already spoken (Section II. Chapter IV. Sec. 15,) of the way in
which mystery and intricacy are carried even into the nearest leaves of
the foreground, and noticed the want of such intricacy even in the best
works of the old masters. Claude's are particularly deficient, for by
representing every particular leaf of them, or trying to do so, he makes
nature finite, and even his nearest bits of leafage are utterly false,
for they have neither shadows modifying their form, (compare Section II.
Chapter III. Sec. 7,) nor sparkling lights, nor confused intersections of
their own forms and lines; and the perpetual repetition of the same
shape of leaves and the same arrangement, relieved from a black ground,
is more like an ornamental pattern for dress than the painting of a
foreground. Nevertheless, the foliage of Claude, in his middle
distances, is the finest and truest part of his pictures, and, on the
whole, affords the best example of good drawing to be found in ancient
art. It is always false in color, and has not boughs enough amongst it,
and the stems commonly look a great deal nearer than any part of it, but
it is still graceful, flexible, abundant, intricate; and, in all but
color and connection with stems, very nearly right. Of the perfect
painting of thick, leafy foreground, Turner's Mercury and Argus, and
Oakhampton, are the standards.[74]
Sec. 25. Universal termination of trees in symmetrical curves.
Sec. 26. Altogether unobserved by the old masters. Always given by Turner.
The last and most important truth to be observed respecting trees, is
that their boughs always, in finely grown individuals, bear among
themselves such a ratio of length as to describe with their extremities
a symmetrical curve, constant for each species; and within this curve
all the irregularities, segments, and divisions of the tree are
included, each bough reaching the limit with its extremity, but not
passing it. When a tree is perfectly grown, each bough starts from the
trunk with just so much wood as, allowing for constant ramification,
will enable it to reach the terminal line; or if by mistake, it start
with too little, it will proceed without ramifying till within a
distance where it may safely divide; if on the contrary it start with
too much, it will ramify quickly and constantly; or, to express the real
operation more accurately, each bough, growing on so as to keep even
with its neighbors, takes so much wood from the trunk as is sufficient
to enable it to do so, more or less in proportion as it ramifies fast
or slowly. In badly grown trees, the boughs are apt to fall short of
the curve, or at least, there are so many jags and openings that its
symmetry is interrupted; and in young trees, the impatience of the upper
shoots frequently breaks the line; but in perfect and mature trees,
every bough does its duty completely, and the line of curve is quite
filled up, and the mass within it unbroken, so that the tree assumes the
shape of a dome, as in the oak, or, in tall trees, of a pear, with the
stalk downmost. The old masters paid no attention whatsoever to this
great principle. They swing their boughs about, anywhere and everywhere;
each stops or goes on just as it likes, nor will it be possible, in any
of their works, to find a single example in which any symmetrical curve
is indicated by the extremities.[75]
But I need scarcely tell any one in the slightest degree acquainted with
the works of Turner, how rigidly and constantly he adheres to this
principle of nature; taking in his highest compositions the perfect
ideal form, every spray being graceful and varied in itself, but
inevitably terminating at the assigned limit, and filling up the curve
without break or gap; in his lower works, taking less perfect form, but
invariably hinting the constant tendency in all, and thus, in spite of
his abundant complexity, he arranges his trees under simpler and grander
forms than any other artist, even among the moderns.
Sec. 27. Foliage painting on the Continent.
It was above asserted that J. D. Harding is, after Turner, the greatest
master of foliage in Europe; I ought, however, to state that my
knowledge of the modern landscape of Germany is very limited, and that,
even with respect to France and Italy, I judge rather from the general
tendency of study and character of mind visible in the annual
Exhibition of the Louvre, and in some galleries of modern paintings at
Milan, Venice, and Florence, than from any detailed acquaintance with
the works of their celebrated painters. Yet I think I can hardly be
mistaken. I have seen nothing to induce me to take a closer survey; no
life knowledge or emotion in any quarter; nothing but the meanest and
most ignorant copyism of vulgar details, coupled with a style of
conception resembling that of the various lithographic ideals on the
first leaves of the music of pastoral ballads. An exception ought,
however, to be made in favor of French etching; some studies in black
and white may be seen in the narrow passages of the Louvre of very high
merit, showing great skill and delicacy of execution, and most
determined industry; (in fact, I think when the French artist fails, it
is never through fear of labor;) nay, more than this, some of them
exhibit acute perception of landscape character and great power of
reaching simple impressions of gloom, wildness, sound, and motion. Some
of their illustrated works also exhibit these powers in a high degree;
there is a spirit, fire, and sense of reality about some of the
wood-cuts to the large edition of Paul and Virginia, and a determined
rendering of separate feeling in each, such as we look for in vain in
our own ornamental works.[76] But the French appear to have no teaching
such as might carry them beyond this; their entire ignorance of color
renders the assumption of the brush instantly fatal, and the false,
forced, and impious sentiment of the nation renders anything like grand
composition altogether impossible.
Sec. 28. Foliage of J. D. Harding. Its deficiencies.
It is therefore only among good artists of our own school that I think
any fair comparison can be instituted, and I wish to assert Harding's
knowledge of foliage more distinctly, because he neither does justice to
himself, nor is, I think, rightly estimated by his fellow-artists. I
shall not make any invidious remarks respecting individuals, but I think
it necessary to state generally, that the style of foliage painting
chiefly characteristic of the pictures on the line of the Royal Academy
is of the most degraded kind;[77] and that, except Turner and Mulready,
we have, as far as I know, no Royal Academician capable of painting even
the smallest portion of foliage in a dignified or correct manner; all is
lost in green shadows with glittering yellow lights, white trunks with
black patches on them, and leaves of no species in particular. Much
laborious and clever foliage drawing is to be found in the rooms of the
New Water-Color Society; but we have no one in any wise comparable to
Harding for thorough knowledge of the subject, for power of expression
in a sketch from nature, or for natural and unaffected conception in the
study.
Maintaining for him this high position, it is necessary that I should
also state those deficiencies which appear to me to conceal his real
power, and in no small degree to prevent his progress.
Sec. 29. His brilliancy of execution too manifest.
His over-fondness for brilliant execution I have already noticed. He is
fonder of seeing something tolerably like a tree produced with few
touches, than something very like a tree produced with many. Now, it is
quite allowable that occasionally, and in portions of his picture, a
great artist should indulge himself in this luxury of sketching, yet it
is a perilous luxury; it blunts the feeling and weakens the hand. I have
said enough in various places respecting the virtues of negligence and
of finish, (compare above the chapter on Ideas of Power in Part I. Sect.
II., and Part III. Sect. I. Ch. X. Sec. 4,) and I need only say here,
therefore, that Harding's foliage is never sufficiently finished, and
has at its best the look of a rapid sketch from nature touched upon at
home. In 1843, (I think,) there was a pretty drawing in the rooms of the
Water-Color Society,--the clear green water of a torrent resting among
stones, with copse-like wood on each side, a bridge in the distance, a
white flower (water-lily?) catching the eye in front; the tops of the
trees on the left of this picture were mere broad blots of color dashed
upon the sky and connected by stems. I allow the power necessary to
attain any look of foliage by such means, but it is power abused: by no
such means can any of the higher virtue and impressiveness of foliage be
rendered. In the use of body color for near leaves, his execution is
also too hasty; often the touches are mere square or round dots, which
can be understood only for foliage by their arrangement. This fault was
especially marked in the trees of his picture painted for the Academy
two years ago; they were very nearly shapeless, and could not stand even
in courtesy for walnut leaves, for which judging by the make of the
tree, they must have been intended.
Sec. 30. His bough-drawing and choice of form.
His drawing of boughs is, in all points of demonstrable law, right, and
very frequently easy and graceful also; yet it has two eminent faults,
the first, that the flow of the bough is sacrificed to its texture, the
pencil checking itself and hesitating at dots, and stripes, and knots,
instead of following the grand and unbroken tendency of growth: the
second, that however good the arrangement may be as far as regards
merely flexibility, intricacy, and freedom, there are none of those
composed groups of line which are unfailing in nature. Harding's work is
not grand enough to be natural. The drawings in the park and the forest,
are, I believe, almost facsimiles of sketches made from nature; yet it
is evident at once that in all of them nothing but the general lie and
disposition of the boughs has been taken from the tree, and that no
single branch or spray has been faithfully copied or patiently studied.
This want of close study necessarily causes several deficiencies of
feeling respecting general form. Harding's choice is always of tree
forms comparatively imperfect, leaning this way and that, and unequal in
the lateral arrangements of foliage. Such forms are often graceful,
always picturesque, but rarely grand; and when systematically adopted,
untrue. It requires more patient study to attain just feeling of the
dignity and character of a purely formed tree with all its symmetries
perfect.
Sec. 31. Local color, how far expressible in black and white, and with what
advantage.
One more cause of incorrectness I may note, though it is not peculiar to
the artist's tree-drawing, but attaches to his general system of
sketching. In Harding's valuable work on the use of the Lead Pencil,
there is one principle advanced which I believe to be false and
dangerous, that the local color of objects is not thereby to be
rendered. I think the instance given is that of some baskets, whose
darkness is occasioned solely by the touches indicating the
wicker-work. Now, I believe, that an essential difference between the
sketch of a great and of a comparatively inferior master is, that the
former is conceived entirely in shade and color, and its masses are
blocked out with reference to both, while the inferior draughtsman
checks at textures and petty characters of object. If Rembrandt had had
to sketch such baskets, he would have troubled himself very little about
the wicker-work; but he would have looked to see where they came dark or
light on the sand, and where there were any sparkling points of light on
the wet osiers. These darks and lights he would have scratched in with
the fastest lines he could, leaving no white paper but at the wet points
of lustre; if he had had time, the wicker-work would have come
afterwards.[78] And I think, that the first thing to be taught to any
pupil, is neither how to manage the pencil, nor how to attain character
of outline, but rather to see where things are light and where they are
dark, and to draw them as he sees them, never caring whether his lines
be dexterous or slovenly. The result of such study is the immediate
substitution of downright drawing for symbolism, and afterwards a
judicious moderation in the use of extreme lights and darks; for where
local colors are really drawn, so much of what seems violently dark is
found to come light against something else, and so much of what seems
high light to come dark against the sky, that the draughtsman trembles
at finding himself plunged either into blackness or whiteness, and
seeks, as he should, for means of obtaining force without either.
It is in consequence of his evident habit of sketching more with a view
to detail and character than to the great masses, that Harding's
chiaroscuro is frequently crude, scattered, and petty. Black shadows
occur under his distant trees, white high lights on his foreground
rocks, the foliage and trunks are divided by violent oppositions into
separate masses, and the branches lose in spots of moss and furrowings
of bark their soft roundings of delicate form, and their grand relations
to each other and the sky.
Sec. 32. Opposition between great manner and great knowledge.
It is owing to my respect for the artist, and my belief in his power and
conscientious desire to do what is best, that I have thus extended these
somewhat unkind remarks. On the other hand, it is to be remembered, that
his knowledge of nature is most extended, and his dexterity of drawing
most instructive, especially considering his range of subject; for
whether in water, rock, or foliage, he is equally skilful in attaining
whatever he desires, (though he does not always desire all that he
ought;) and artists should keep in mind, that neither grandeur of manner
nor truth of system can atone for the want of this knowledge and this
skill. Constable's manner is good and great, but being unable to draw
even a log of wood, much more a trunk of a tree or a stone, he left his
works destitute of substance, mere studies of effect without any
expression of specific knowledge; and thus even what is great in them
has been productive, I believe, of very great injury in its
encouragement of the most superficial qualities of the English school.
Sec. 33. Foliage of Cox, Fielding, and Cattermole.
The foliage of David Cox has been already noticed (preface to second
edition.) It is altogether exquisite in color, and in its impressions of
coolness, shade, and mass; of its drawing I cannot say anything, but
that I should be sorry to see it better. Copley Fielding's is remarkable
for its intricacy and elegance; it is, however, not free from
affectation, and, as has been before remarked, is always evidently
composed in the study. The execution is too rough and woolly; it is
wanting in simplicity, sharpness, and freshness,--above all in specific
character: not, however, in his middle distances, where the rounded
masses of forest and detached blasted trunks of fir are usually very
admirable. Cattermole has very grand conceptions of general form, but
wild and without substance, and therefore incapable of long maintaining
their attractiveness, especially lately, the execution having become in
the last degree coarse and affected. This is bitterly to be regretted,
for few of our artists would paint foliage better, if he would paint it
from nature, and with reverence.
Sec. 34. Hunt and Creswick. Green, how to be rendered expressive of light,
and offensive if otherwise.
Hunt, I think, fails, and fails only, in foliage; fails, as the
Daguerreotype does, from over-fidelity; for foliage will _not_ be
imitated, it must be reasoned out and suggested; yet Hunt is the only
man we have who can paint the real leaf green under sunlight, and, in
this respect, his trees are delicious,--summer itself. Creswick has
sweet feeling, and tries for the real green too, but, from want of
science in his shadows, ends in green paint instead of green light; in
mere local color, instead of color raised by sunshine. One example is
enough to show where the fault lies. In his picture of the Weald of
Kent, in the British Institution this year, there was a cottage in the
middle distance with white walls, and a red roof. The dark sides of the
white walls and of the roof were of the same color, a dark purple--wrong
for both. Repeated inaccuracies of this kind necessarily deprive even
the most brilliant color of all appearance of sunshine, and they are
much to be deprecated in Creswick, as he is one of the very few artists
who _do_ draw from nature and try for nature. Some of his thickets and
torrent-beds are most painfully studied, and yet he cannot draw a bough
nor a stone. I suspect he is too much in the habit of studying only
large views on the spot, and not of drawing small portions thoroughly. I
trust it will be seen that these, as all other remarks that I have made
throughout this volume on particular works, are not in depreciation of,
or unthankfulness for, what the artist has done, but in the desire that
he should do himself more justice and more honor. I have much pleasure
in Creswick's works, and I am glad always to see them admired by others.
Sec. 35. Conclusion. Works of J. Linnell and S. Palmer.
I shall conclude this sketch of the foliage art of England, by mention
of two artists, whom I believe to be representative of a considerable
class, admirable in their reverence and patience of study, yet
unappreciated by the public, because what they do is unrecommended by
dexterities of handling. The forest studies of J. Linnell are peculiarly
elaborate, and, in many points, most skilful; they fail perhaps of
interest, owing to over-fulness of detail and a want of generalization
in the effect; but even a little more of the Harding sharpness of touch
would set off their sterling qualities, and make them felt. A less known
artist, S. Palmer, lately admitted a member of the Old Water-Color
Society, is deserving of the very highest place among faithful followers
of nature. His studies of foreign foliage especially are beyond all
praise for care and fulness. I have never seen a stone pine or a cypress
drawn except by him; and his feeling is as pure and grand as his
fidelity is exemplary. He has not, however, yet, I think, discovered
what is necessary and unnecessary in a great picture; and his works,
sent to the Society's rooms, have been most unfavorable examples of his
power, and have been generally, as yet, in places where all that is best
in them is out of sight. I look to him, nevertheless, unless he lose
himself in over-reverence for certain conventionalisms of the elder
schools, as one of the probable renovators and correctors of whatever is
failing or erroneous in the practice of English art.
FOOTNOTES
[71] It sometimes happens that a morbid direction of growth will
cause an exception here and there to this rule, the bough swelling
beyond its legitimate size; knots and excrescences, of course,
sometimes interfere with the effect of diminution. I believe that in
the laurel, when it grows large and old, singular instances may be
found of thick upper boughs and over quantity of wood at the
extremities. All these accidents or exceptions are felt as such by
the eye. They may occasionally be used by the painter in savage or
grotesque scenery, or as points of contrast, but are no excuse for
his ever losing sight of the general law.
[72] Compare Part III. Sect. II. Chap. IV. Sec. 6, 7.
[73] This group I have before noticed as singularly (but, I doubt
not, accidentally, and in consequence of the love of the two great
painters for the same grand forms) resembling that introduced by
Tintoret in the background of his Cain and Abel.
[74] The above paragraphs I have left as originally written, because
they are quite true as far as they reach; but like many other
portions of this essay, they take in a very small portion of the
truth. I shall not add to them at present, because I can explain my
meaning better in our consideration of the laws of beauty; but the
reader must bear in mind that what is above stated refers,
throughout, to large masses of foliage seen under broad
sunshine,--and it has especial reference to Turner's enormous scale
of scene, and intense desire of light. In twilight, when tree-forms
are seen against sky, other laws come into operation, as well as in
subject of narrow limits and near foreground. It is, I think, to be
regretted that Turner does not in his Academy pictures sometimes
take more confined and gloomy subjects, like that grand one, near
the Chartreuse, of the Liber Studiorum, wherein his magnificent
power of elaborating close foliage might be developed; but, for the
present, let the reader, with respect to what has been here said of
close foliage, note the drawing of the leaves in that plate, in the
Aesacus and Hesperie, and the Cephalus, and the elaboration of the
foregrounds in the Yorkshire drawings; let him compare what is said
of Turner's foliage painting above in Part II. Sect. I. Chap. VII. Sec.
40, Sec. 41, and of Titian's previously, as well as Part III. Sect. I.
Chap. VIII., and Sect. II. Chap. IV. Sec. 21. I shall hereafter
endeavor to arrange the subject in a more systematic manner; but
what additional observations I may have to make will none of them be
in any wise more favorable to Gaspar, Salvator, or Hobbima, than the
above paragraphs.
[75] Perhaps in some instances, this may be the case with the trees
of Nicholas Poussin; but even with him the boughs only touch the
line of limit with their central _points_ of extremity, and are not
_sectors_ of the great curve--forming a part of it with expanded
extremities, as in nature. Draw a few straight lines, from the
centre to the circumference of a circle. The forms included between
them are the forms of the individual boughs of a fine tree, with all
their ramifications (only the external curve is not a circle, but
more frequently two parabolas--which, I believe, it is in the
oak--or an ellipse.) But each bough of the old masters is
club-shaped, and broadest, not at the outside of the tree, but a
little way towards its centre.
[76] On the other hand, nothing can be more exquisitely ridiculous
than the French illustrations of a second or third-rate order, as
those to the Harmonies of Lamartine.
[77] Of Stanfield's foliage I remember too little to enable me to
form any definite judgment; it is a pity that he so much neglects
this noble element of landscape.
[78] It is true that many of Rembrandt's etchings are merely in
line, but it may be observed that the subject is universally
_conceived_ in light and shade, and that the lines are either merely
guides in the arrangement, or an exquisite indication of the
key-notes of shade, on which the after-system of it is to be
based--portions of fragmentary finish, showing the completeness of
the conception.
CHAPTER II.
GENERAL REMARKS RESPECTING THE TRUTH OF TURNER.
Sec. 1. No necessity of entering into discussion of architectural truth.
We have now arrived at some general conception of the extent of Turner's
knowledge, and the truth of his practice, by the deliberate examination
of the characteristics of the four great elements of landscape--sky,
earth, water, and vegetation. I have not thought it necessary to devote
a chapter to architecture, because enough has been said on this subject
in Part II. Sect. I. Chap. VII.; and its general truths, which are those
with which the landscape painter, as such, is chiefly concerned, require
only a simple and straightforward application of those rules of which
every other material object of a landscape has required a most difficult
and complicated application. Turner's knowledge of perspective probably
adds to his power in the arrangement of every order of subject; but
ignorance on this head is rather disgraceful than knowledge meritorious.
It is disgraceful, for instance, that any man should commit such
palpable and atrocious errors in ordinary perspective as are seen in the
quay in Claude's sea-piece, No. 14, National Gallery, or in the curved
portico of No. 30; but still these are not points to be taken into
consideration as having anything to do with artistical rank, just as,
though we should say it was disgraceful if a great poet could not spell,
we should not consider such a defect as in any way taking from his
poetical rank. Neither is there anything particularly belonging to
architecture, as such, which it is any credit to an artist to observe or
represent; it is only a simple and clear field for the manifestation of
his knowledge of general laws. Any surveyor or engineer could have drawn
the steps and balustrade in the Hero and Leander, as well as Turner has;
but there is no man living but himself who could have thrown the
accidental shadows upon them. I may, however, refer for general
illustration of Turner's power as an architectural draughtsman, to the
front of Rouen Cathedral, engraved in the Rivers of France, and to the
Ely in the England. I know nothing in art which can be set beside the
former of these for overwhelming grandeur and simplicity of effect, and
inexhaustible intricacy of parts. I have then only a few remarks farther
to offer respecting the general character of all those truths which we
have been hitherto endeavoring to explain and illustrate.
Sec. 2. Extreme difficulty of illustrating or explaining the highest truth.
Sec. 3. The _positive_ rank of Turner is in no degree shown in the
foregoing pages, but only his relative rank.
Sec. 4. The exceeding refinement of his truth.
Sec. 5. There is nothing in his works which can be enjoyed without
knowledge.
Sec. 6. And nothing which knowledge will not enable us to enjoy.
The difference in the accuracy of the lines of the Torso of the Vatican,
(the Maestro of M. Angelo,) from those in one of M. Angelo's finest
works, could perhaps scarcely be appreciated by any eye or feeling
undisciplined by the most perfect and practical anatomical knowledge. It
rests on points of such traceless and refined delicacy, that though we
feel them in the result, we cannot follow them in the details. Yet they
are such and so great as to place the Torso alone in art, solitary and
supreme; while the finest of M. Angelo's works, considered with respect
to truth alone, are said to be only on a level with antiques of the
second class, under the Apollo and Venus, that is, two classes or grades
below the Torso. But suppose the best sculptor in the world, possessing
the most entire appreciation of the excellence of the Torso, were to sit
down, pen in hand, to try and tell us wherein the peculiar truth of each
line consisted? Could any words that he could use make us feel the
hairbreadth of depth and distance on which all depends? or end in
anything more than bare assertions of the inferiority of this line to
that, which, if we did not perceive for ourselves, no explanation could
ever illustrate to us? He might as well endeavor to explain to us by
words some taste or other subject of sense, of which we had no
experience. And so it is with all truths of the highest order; they are
separated from those of average precision by points of extreme delicacy,
which none but the cultivated eye can in the least feel, and to express
which, all words are absolutely meaningless and useless. Consequently,
in all that I have been saying of the truth of artists, I have been able
to point out only coarse, broad, and explicable matters; I have been
perfectly unable to express (and indeed I have made no endeavor to
express) the finely drawn and distinguished truth in which all the real
excellence of art consists. All those truths which I have been able to
explain and demonstrate in Turner, are such as any artist of ordinary
powers of observation ought to be capable of rendering. It is
disgraceful to omit them; but it is no very great credit to observe
them. I have indeed proved that they have been neglected, and
disgracefully so, by those men who are commonly considered the Fathers
of Art; but in showing that they have been observed by Turner, I have
only proved him to be _above_ other men in knowledge of truth, I have
not given any conception of his own positive rank as a Painter of
Nature. But it stands to reason, that the men, who in broad, simple, and
demonstrable matters are perpetually violating truth, will not be
particularly accurate or careful in carrying out delicate and refined,
and undemonstrable matters; and it stands equally to reason, that the
man who, as far as argument or demonstration can go, is found invariably
truthful, will, in all probability, be truthful to the last line, and
shadow of a line. And such is, indeed, the case with every touch of this
consummate artist; the essential excellence--all that constitutes the
real and exceeding value of his works--is beyond and above expression;
it is a truth inherent in every line, and breathing in every hue, too
delicate and exquisite to admit of any kind of proof, nor to be
ascertained except by the highest of tests--the keen feeling attained by
extended knowledge and long study. Two lines are laid on canvas; one is
right and another wrong. There is no difference between them appreciable
by the compasses--none appreciable by the ordinary eye--none which can
be pointed out, if it is not seen. One person feels it,--another does
not; but the feeling or sight of the one can by no words be communicated
to the other: it would be unjust if it could, for that feeling and sight
have been the reward of years of labor. And there is, indeed, nothing in
Turner--not one dot nor line--whose meaning can be understood without
knowledge; because he never aims at sensual impressions, but at the deep
final truth, which only meditation can discover, and only experience
recognize. There is nothing done or omitted by him, which does not imply
such a comparison of ends, such rejection of the least worthy, (as far
as they are incompatible with the rest,) such careful selection and
arrangement of all that can be united, as can only be enjoyed by minds
capable of going through the same process, and discovering the reasons
for the choice. And, as there is nothing in his works which can be
enjoyed without knowledge, so there is nothing in them which knowledge
will not enable us to enjoy. There is no test of our acquaintance with
nature so absolute and unfailing as the degree of admiration we feel for
Turner's painting. Precisely as we are shallow in our knowledge, vulgar
in our feeling, and contracted in our views of principles, will the
works of this artist be stumbling-blocks or foolishness to
us:--precisely in the degree in which we are familiar with nature,
constant in our observation of her, and enlarged in our understanding of
her, will they expand before our eyes into glory and beauty. In every
new insight which we obtain into the works of God, in every new idea
which we receive from His creation, we shall find ourselves possessed of
an interpretation and a guide to something in Turner's works which we
had not before understood. We may range over Europe, from shore to
shore; and from every rock that we tread upon, every sky that passes
over our heads, every local form of vegetation or of soil, we shall
receive fresh illustration of his principles--fresh confirmation of his
facts. We shall feel, wherever we go, that he has been there before
us--whatever we see, that he has seen and seized before us: and we shall
at last cease the investigation, with a well-grounded trust, that
whatever we have been unable to account for, and what we still dislike
in his works, has reason for it, and foundation like the rest; and that
even where he has failed or erred, there is a beauty in the failure
which none are able to equal, and a dignity in the error which none are
worthy to reprove.
Sec. 7. His former rank and progress.
Sec. 8. Standing of his present works. Their mystery is the consequence of
their fullness.
There has been marked and constant progress in his mind; he has not,
like some few artists, been without childhood; his course of study has
been as evidently as it has been swiftly progressive, and in different
stages of the struggle, sometimes one order of truth, sometimes another,
has been aimed at or omitted. But from the beginning to the present
height of his career, he has never sacrificed a greater truth to a
less. As he advanced, the previous knowledge or attainment was absorbed
in what succeeded, or abandoned only if incompatible, and never
abandoned without a gain; and his present works present the sum and
perfection of his accumulated knowledge, delivered with the impatience
and passion of one who feels too much, and knows too much, and has too
little time to say it in, to pause for expression, or ponder over his
syllables. There is in them the obscurity, but the truth, of prophecy;
the instinctive and burning language, which would express less if it
uttered more, which is indistinct only by its fulness, and dark with its
abundant meaning. He feels now, with long-trained vividness and keenness
of sense, too bitterly the impotence of the hand, and the vainness of
the color to catch one shadow or one image of the glory which God has
revealed to him. He has dwelt and communed with nature all the days of
his life; he knows her now too well, he cannot palter over the material
littleness of her outward form; he must give her soul, or he has done
nothing, and he cannot do this with the flax, and the earth, and the
oil. "I cannot gather the sunbeams out of the east, or I would make
_them_ tell you what I have seen; but read this, and interpret this, and
let us remember together. I cannot gather the gloom out of the
night-sky, or I would make that teach you what I have seen; but read
this, and interpret this, and let us feel together. And if you have not
that within you which I can summon to my aid, if you have not the sun in
your spirit, and the passion in your heart, which my words may awaken,
though they be indistinct and swift, leave me; for I will give you no
patient mockery, no laborious insult of that glorious nature, whose I am
and whom I serve. Let other servants imitate the voice and the gesture
of their master, while they forget his message. Hear that message from
me; but remember, that the teaching of Divine truth must still be a
mystery."
CHAPTER III.
CONCLUSION.--MODERN ART AND MODERN CRITICISM.
We have only, in conclusion, to offer a few general remarks respecting
modern art and modern criticism.
Sec. 1. The entire prominence hitherto given to the works of one artist
caused only by our not being able to take cognizance of character.
Sec. 2. The feelings of different artists are incapable of full comparison.
Sec. 3. But the fidelity and truth of each are capable of real comparison.
Sec. 4. Especially because they are equally manifested in the treatment of
all subjects.
Sec. 5. No man draws one thing well, if he can draw nothing else.
We wish, in the first place, to remove the appearance of invidiousness
and partiality which the constant prominence given in the present
portion of the work to the productions of one artist, can scarcely fail
of bearing in the minds of most readers. When we pass to the examination
of what is beautiful and expressive in art, we shall frequently find
distinctive qualities in the minds even of inferior artists, which have
led them to the pursuit and embodying of particular trains of thought,
altogether different from those which direct the compositions of other
men, and incapable of comparison with them. Now, when this is the case,
we should consider it in the highest degree both invidious and
illogical, to say of such different modes of exertion of the intellect,
that one is in all points greater or nobler than another. We shall
probably find something in the working of all minds which has an end and
a power peculiar to itself, and which is deserving of free and full
admiration, without any reference whatsoever to what has, in other
fields, been accomplished by other modes of thought, and directions of
aim. We shall, indeed, find a wider range and grasp in one man than in
another; but yet it will be our own fault if we do not discover
something in the most limited range of mind which is different from, and
in its way better than, anything presented to us by the more grasping
intellect. We all know that the nightingale sings more nobly than the
lark; but who, therefore, would wish the lark not to sing, or would deny
that it had a character of its own, which bore a part among the melodies
of creation no less essential than that of the more richly-gifted bird?
And thus we shall find and feel that whatever difference may exist
between the intellectual powers of one artist and another, yet wherever
there is any true genius, there will be some peculiar lesson which even
the humblest will teach us more sweetly and perfectly than those far
above them in prouder attributes of mind; and we should be as mistaken
as we should be unjust and invidious, if we refused to receive this
their peculiar message with gratitude and veneration, merely because it
was a sentence and not a volume. But the case is different when we
examine their relative fidelity to given facts. That fidelity depends on
no peculiar modes of thought or habits of character; it is the result of
keen sensibility, combined with high powers of memory and association.
These qualities, as such, are the same in all men; character or feeling
may direct their choice to this or that object, but the fidelity with
which they treat either the one or the other, is dependent on those
simple powers of sense and intellect which are like and comparable in
all, and of which we can always say that they are greater in this man,
or less in that without reference to the character of the individual.
Those feelings which direct Cox to the painting of wild, weedy banks,
and cool, melting skies, and those which directed Barret to the painting
of glowing foliage and melancholy twilight, are both just and beautiful
in their way, and are both worthy of high praise and gratitude, without
necessity, nay, without _proper_ possibility of comparing one with the
other. But the degree of fidelity with which the leaves of the one and
the light of the other are rendered, depends upon faculties of sight,
sense, and memory common to both, and perfectly comparable; and we may
say fearlessly, and without injustice, that one or the other, as the
case may be, is more faithful in that which they have chosen to
represent. It is also to be remembered that these faculties of sense and
memory are not partial in their effect; they will not induce fidelity in
the rendering of one class of object, and fail of doing so in another.
They act equally, and with equal results, whatever may be the matter
subjected to them; the same delicate sense which perceives the utmost
grace of the fibres of a tree, will be equally unerring in tracing the
character of cloud; and the quick memory which seizes and retains the
circumstances of a flying effect of shadow or color, will be equally
effectual in fixing the impression of the instantaneous form of a moving
figure or a breaking wave. There are indeed one or two broad
distinctions in the nature of the senses,--a sensibility to color, for
instance, being very different from a sensibility to form; so that a man
may possess one without the other, and an artist may succeed in mere
imitation of what is before him, of air, sunlight, etc., without
possessing sensibility at all. But wherever we have, in the drawing of
any one object, sufficient evidence of real intellectual power, of the
sense which perceives the essential qualities of a thing, and the
judgment which arranges them so as to illustrate each other, we may be
quite certain that the same sense and judgment will operate equally on
whatever is subjected to them, and that the artist will be equally great
and masterly in his drawing of all that he attempts. Hence we may be
quite sure that wherever an artist appears to be truthful in one branch
of art, and not in another, the apparent truth is either owing to some
trickery of imitation, or is not so great as we suppose it to be. In
nine cases out of ten, people who are celebrated for drawing only one
thing, and _can_ only draw one thing, draw that one thing worse than
anybody else. An artist may indeed confine himself to a limited range of
subject, but if he be really true in his rendering of this, his power of
doing more will be perpetually showing itself in accessories and minor
points. There are few men, for instance, more limited in subject than
Hunt, and yet I do not think there is another man in the old Water-Color
Society, with so keen an eye for truth, or with power so universal. And
this is the reason for the exceeding prominence which in the foregoing
investigation one or two artists have always assumed over the rest, for
the habits of accurate observation and delicate powers of hand which
they possess, have equal effect, and maintain the same superiority in
their works, to whatever class of subject they may be directed. And thus
we have been compelled, however unwillingly, to pass hastily by the
works of many gifted men, because, however pure their feeling, or
original their conceptions, they were wanting in those faculties of the
hand and mind which insure perfect fidelity to nature: it will be only
hereafter, when we are at liberty to take full cognizance of the
thought, however feebly it may be clothed in language, that we shall be
able to do real justice to the disciples either of modern or of ancient
art.
Sec. 6. General conclusions to be derived from our past investigation.
But as far as we have gone at present, and with respect only to the
_material_ truth, which is all that we have been able to investigate,
the conclusion to which we must be led is as clear as it is inevitable;
that modern artists, as a body, are far more just and full in their
views of material things than any landscape painters whose works are
extant--but that J. M. W. Turner is the only man who has ever given an
entire transcript of the whole system of nature, and is, in this point
of view, the only perfect landscape painter whom the world has ever
seen.
Sec. 7. Truth, a standard of all excellence.
Nor are we disposed to recede from our assertion made in Sec. I. Ch. I.
Sec. 10, that this material truth is indeed a perfect test of the relative
rank of painters, though it does not in itself constitute that rank. We
shall be able to prove that truth and beauty, knowledge and imagination,
invariably are associated in art; and we shall be able to show that not
only in truth to nature, but in all other points, Turner is the greatest
landscape painter who has ever lived. But his superiority is, in matters
of feeling, one of kind, not of degree. Superiority of degree implies a
superseding of others, superiority of kind only sustaining a more
important, but not more necessary part, than others. If _truth_ were all
that we required from art, all other painters might cast aside their
brushes in despair, for all that they have done he has done more fully
and accurately; but when we pass to the higher requirements of art,
beauty and character, their contributions are all equally necessary and
desirable, because different, and however inferior in position or rank,
are still perfect of their kind; their inferiority is only that of the
lark to the nightingale, or of the violet to the rose.
Sec. 8. Modern criticism. Changefulness of public taste.
Sec. 9. Yet associated with a certain degree of judgment.
Sec. 10. Duty of the press.
Such then is the rank and standing of our modern artists. We have,
living with us, and painting for us, the greatest painter of _all_ time;
a man with whose supremacy of power no intellect of past ages can be put
in comparison for a moment. Let us next inquire what is the rank of our
critics. Public taste, I believe, as far as it is the encourager and
supporter of art has been the same in all ages,--a fitful and
vacillating current of vague impression, perpetually liable to change,
subject to epidemic desires, and agitated by infectious passion, the
slave of fashion, and the fool of fancy, but yet always distinguishing
with singular clearsightedness, between that which is best and that
which is worst of the particular class of food which its morbid appetite
may call for; never failing to distinguish that which is produced by
intellect, from that which is not, though it may be intellect degraded
by ministering to its misguided will. Public taste may thus degrade a
race of men capable of the highest efforts in art into the portrait
painters of ephemeral fashions, but it will yet not fail of discovering
who, among these portrait painters, is the man of most mind. It will
separate the man who would have become Buonaroti from the man who would
have become Bandinelli, though it will employ both in painting curls,
and feathers, and bracelets. Hence, generally speaking, there is no
_comparative_ injustice done, no false elevation of the fool above the
man of mind, provided only that the man of mind will condescend to
supply the particular article which the public chooses to want. Of
course a thousand modifying circumstances interfere with the action of
the general rule; but, taking one case with another, we shall very
constantly find the price which the picture commands in the market a
pretty fair standard of the artist's rank of intellect. The press,
therefore, and all who pretend to lead the public taste, have not so
much to direct the multitude whom to go to, as what to ask for. Their
business is not to tell us which is our best painter, but to tell us
whether we are making our best painter do his best.
Sec. 11. Qualifications necessary for discharging it.
Sec. 12. General incapability of modern critics.
Sec. 13. And inconsistency with themselves.
Now none are capable of doing this, but those whose principles of
judgment are based both on thorough _practical_ knowledge of art, and on
broad general views of what is true and right, without reference to what
has been done at one time or another, or in one school or another.
Nothing can be more perilous to the cause of art, than the constant
ringing in our painters' ears of the names of great predecessors, as
their examples or masters. I had rather hear a great poet, entirely
original in his feeling and aim, rebuked or maligned for not being like
Wordsworth or Coleridge, than a great painter criticised for not putting
us in mind of Claude or Poussin. But such references to former
excellence are the only refuge and resource of persons endeavoring to be
critics without being artists. They cannot tell you whether a thing is
right or not; but they can tell you whether it is like something else or
not. And the whole tone of modern criticism--as far as it is worthy of
being called criticism--sufficiently shows it to proceed entirely from
persons altogether unversed in practice, and ignorant of truth, but
possessing just enough of feeling to enjoy the solemnity of ancient art,
who, not distinguishing that which is really exalted and valuable in the
modern school, nor having any just idea of the real ends or capabilities
of landscape art, consider nothing right which is not based on the
conventional principles of the ancients, and nothing true which has more
of nature in it than of Claude. But it is strange that while the noble
and unequalled works of modern landscape painters are thus maligned and
misunderstood, our historical painters--such as we have--are permitted
to pander more fatally every year to the vicious English taste, which
can enjoy nothing but what is theatrical, entirely unchastised, nay,
encouraged and lauded by the very men who endeavor to hamper our great
landscape painters with rules derived from consecrated blunders. The
very critic who has just passed one of the noblest works of Turner--that
is to say, a masterpiece of art, to which Time can show no
parallel--with a ribald jest, will yet stand gaping in admiration before
the next piece of dramatic glitter and grimace, suggested by the
society, and adorned with the appurtenances of the greenroom, which he
finds hung low upon the wall as a brilliant example of the ideal of
English art. It is natural enough indeed, that the persons who are
disgusted by what is pure and noble, should be delighted with what is
vicious and degraded; but it is singular that those who are constantly
talking of Claude and Poussin, should never even pretend to a thought of
Raffaelle. We could excuse them for not comprehending Turner, if they
only would apply the same cut-and-dried criticisms where they might be
applied with truth, and productive of benefit; but we endure not the
paltry compound of ignorance, false taste, and pretension, which assumes
the dignity of classical feeling, that it may be able to abuse whatever
is above the level of its understanding, but bursts into genuine rapture
with all that is meretricious, if sufficiently adapted to the calibre of
its comprehension.
Sec. 14. How the press may really advance the cause of art.
To notice such criticisms, however, is giving them far more importance
than they deserve. They can lead none astray but those whose opinions
are absolutely valueless, and we did not begin this chapter with any
intent of wasting our time on these small critics, but in the hope of
pointing out to the periodical press what kind of criticism is now most
required by our school of landscape art, and how it may be in their
power, if they will, to regulate its impulses, without checking its
energies, and really to advance both the cause of the artist, and the
taste of the public.
Sec. 15. Morbid fondness at the present day for unfinished works.
Sec. 16. By which the public defraud themselves.
Sec. 17. And in pandering to which, artists ruin themselves.
Sec. 18. Necessity of finishing works of art perfectly.
One of the most morbid symptoms of the general taste of the present day,
is a too great fondness for unfinished works. Brilliancy and rapidity of
execution are everywhere sought as the highest good, and so that a
picture be cleverly handled as far as it is carried, little regard is
paid to its imperfection as a whole. Hence some artists are permitted,
and others compelled, to confine themselves to a manner of working
altogether destructive of their powers, and to tax their energies, not
to concentrate the greatest quantity of thought on the least possible
space of canvas, but to produce the greatest quantity of glitter and
claptrap in the shortest possible time. To the idler and the trickster
in art, no system can be more advantageous; but to the man who is really
desirous of doing something worth having lived for--to a man of
industry, energy, or feeling, we believe it to be the cause of the most
bitter discouragement. If ever, working upon a favorite subject or a
beloved idea, he is induced to tax his powers to the utmost, and to
spend as much time upon his picture as he feels necessary for its
perfection, he will not be able to get so high a price for the result,
perhaps, of a twelvemonth's thought, as he might have obtained for
half-a-dozen sketches with a forenoon's work in each, and he is
compelled either to fall back upon mechanism, or to starve. Now the
press should especially endeavor to convince the public, that by this
purchase of imperfect pictures they not only prevent all progress and
development of high talent, and set tricksters and mechanics on a level
with men of mind, but defraud and injure themselves. For there is no
doubt whatever, that, estimated merely by the quantity of pleasure it is
capable of conveying, a well-finished picture is worth to its possessor
half-a-dozen incomplete ones; and that a perfect drawing is, simply as a
source of delight, better worth a hundred guineas than a drawing half as
finished is worth thirty. On the other hand, the body of our artists
should be kept in mind, that by indulging the public with rapid and
unconsidered work, they are not only depriving themselves of the benefit
which each picture ought to render to them, as a piece of practice and
study, but they are destroying the refinement of general taste, and
rendering it impossible for themselves ever to find a market for more
careful works, supposing that they were inclined to execute them. Nor
need any single artist be afraid of setting the example, and producing
labored works, at advanced prices, among the cheap, quick drawings of
the day. The public will soon find the value of the complete work, and
will be more ready to give a large sum for that which is inexhaustible,
than a quota of it for that which they are wearied of in a month. The
artist who never lets the price command the picture, will soon find the
picture command the price. And it ought to be a rule with every painter
never to let a picture leave his easel while it is yet capable of
improvement, or of having more thought put into it. The general effect
is often perfect and pleasing, and not to be improved upon, when the
details and facts are altogether imperfect and unsatisfactory. It may be
difficult--perhaps the most difficult task of art--to complete these
details, and not to hurt the general effect; but until the artist can do
this, his art is imperfect and his picture unfinished. That only is a
complete picture which has both the general wholeness and effect of
nature, and the inexhaustible perfection of nature's details. And it is
only in the effort to unite these that a painter really improves. By
aiming only at details, he becomes a mechanic; by aiming only at
generals, he becomes a trickster: his fall in both cases is sure. Two
questions the artist has, therefore, always to ask himself,--first, "Is
my whole right?" Secondly, "Can my details be added to? Is there a
single space in the picture where I can crowd in another thought? Is
there a curve in it which I can modulate--a line which I can graduate--a
vacancy I can fill? Is there a single spot which the eye, by any peering
or prying, can fathom or exhaust? If so, my picture is imperfect; and
if, in modulating the line or filling the vacancy, I hurt the general
effect, my art is imperfect."
Sec. 19. _Sketches_ not sufficiently encouraged.
But, on the other hand, though incomplete pictures ought neither to be
produced nor purchased, careful and real _sketches_ ought to be valued
much more highly than they are. Studies in chalk, of landscape, should
form a part of every Exhibition, and a room should be allotted to
drawings and designs of figures in the Academy. We should be heartily
glad to see the room which is now devoted to bad drawings of incorporeal
and imaginary architecture--of things which never were, and which, thank
Heaven! never will be--occupied instead, by careful studies for
historical pictures; not blots of chiaroscuro, but delicate outlines
with the pen or crayon.
Sec. 20. Brilliancy of execution or efforts at invention not to be
tolerated in young artists.
Sec. 21. The duty and after privileges of all students.
From young artists, in landscape, nothing ought to be tolerated but
simple _bona fide imitation_ of nature. They have no business to ape the
execution of masters,--to utter weak and disjointed repetitions of other
men's words, and mimic the gestures of the preacher, without
understanding his meaning or sharing in his emotions. We do not want
their crude ideas of composition, their unformed conceptions of the
Beautiful, their unsystematized experiments upon the Sublime. We scorn
their velocity; for it is without direction: we reject their decision;
for it is without grounds: we contemn their composition; for it is
without materials: we reprobate their choice; for it is without
comparison. Their duty is neither to choose, nor compose, nor imagine,
nor experimentalize; but to be humble and earnest in following the steps
of nature, and tracing the finger of God. Nothing is so bad a symptom,
in the work of young artists, as too much dexterity of handling; for it
is a sign that they are satisfied with their work, and have tried to do
nothing more than they were able to do. Their work should be full of
failures; for these are the signs of efforts. They should keep to quiet
colors--grays and browns; and, making the early works of Turner their
example, as his latest are to be their object of emulation, should go to
nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and
trustingly, having no other thoughts but how best to penetrate her
meaning, and remember her instruction, rejecting nothing, selecting
nothing, and scorning nothing; believing all things to be right and
good, and rejoicing always in the truth. Then, when their memories are
stored, and their imaginations fed, and their hands firm, let them take
up the scarlet and the gold, give the reins to their fancy, and show us
what their heads are made of. We will follow them wherever they choose
to lead; we will check at nothing; they are then our masters, and are
fit to be so. They have placed themselves above our criticism, and we
will listen to their words in all faith and humility; but not unless
they themselves have before bowed, in the same submission, to a higher
Authority and Master.
Sec. 22. Necessity among our greater artists of more singleness of aim.
Among our greater artists, the chief want, at the present day, is that of
_solemnity_ and definite purpose. We have too much picture-manufacturing,
too much making up of lay figures with a certain quantity of foliage, and
a certain quantity of sky, and a certain quantity of water,--a little bit
of all that is pretty, a little sun, and a little shade,--a touch of
pink, and a touch of blue,--a little sentiment, and a little sublimity,
and a little humor, and a little antiquarianism,--all very neatly
associated in a very charming picture, but not working together for a
definite end. Or if the aim be higher, as was the case with Barrett and
Varley, we are generally put off with stale repetitions of eternal
composition; a great tree, and some goats, and a bridge and a lake, and
the Temple at Tivoli, etc. Now we should like to see our artists working
out, with all exertion of their concentrated powers, such marked pieces
of landscape character as might bear upon them the impression of solemn,
earnest, and pervading thought, definitely directed, and aided by every
accessory of detail, color, and idealized form, which the disciplined
feeling, accumulated knowledge, and unspared labor of the painter could
supply. I have alluded, in the second preface, to the deficiency of our
modern artists in these great points of earnestness and completeness; and
I revert to it, in conclusion, as their paramount failing, and one fatal
in many ways to the interests of art. Our landscapes are all descriptive,
not reflective, agreeable and conversational, but not impressive nor
didactic. They have no other foundation than
"That vivacious versatility,
Which many people take for want of heart.
They err; 'tis merely what is called "mobility;"
A thing of temperament, and _not of art,
Though seeming so from its supposed facility_.
* * * * *
This makes your actors, _artists_, and romancers;
Little that's great--but much of what is clever."
Only it is to be observed that--in painters--this vivacity is _not_
always versatile. It is to be wished that it were, but it is no such
easy matter to be versatile in painting. Shallowness of thought insures
not its variety, nor rapidity of production its originality. Whatever
may be the case in literature, facility is in art inconsistent with
invention. The artist who covers most canvas always shows, even in the
sum of his works, the least expenditure of thought.[79] I have never
seen more than four works of John Lewis on the walls of the Water-Color
Exhibition; I have counted forty from other hands; but have found in the
end that the forty were a multiplication of one, and the four a
concentration of forty. And therefore I would earnestly plead with all
our artists, that they should make it a law _never_ to repeat
themselves; for he who never repeats himself will not produce an
inordinate number of pictures, and he who limits himself in number gives
himself at least the opportunity of completion. Besides, all repetition
is degradation of the art; it reduces it from headwork to handwork; and
indicates something like a persuasion on the part of the artist that
nature is exhaustible or art perfectible; perhaps, even, by him
exhausted and perfected. All copyists are contemptible, but the copyist
of himself the most so, for he has the worst original.
Sec. 23. What should be their general aim.
Let then every picture be painted with earnest intention of impressing
on the spectator some elevated emotion, and exhibiting to him some one
particular, but exalted, beauty. Let a real subject be carefully
selected, in itself suggestive of, and replete with, this feeling and
beauty; let an effect of light and color be taken which may harmonize
with both; and a sky, not invented, but recollected, (in fact, all
so-called invention is in landscape nothing more than appropriate
recollection--good in proportion as it is distinct.) Then let the
details of the foreground be separately studied, especially those plants
which appear peculiar to the place: if any one, however unimportant,
occurs there, which occurs not elsewhere, it should occupy a prominent
position; for the other details, the highest examples of the ideal
forms[80] or characters which he requires are to be selected by the
artist from his former studies, or fresh studies made expressly for the
purpose, leaving as little as possible--nothing, in fact, beyond their
connection and arrangement--to mere imagination. Finally, when his
picture is thus perfectly realized in all its parts, let him dash as
much of it out as he likes; throw, if he will, mist around
it--darkness--or dazzling and confused light--whatever, in fact,
impetuous feeling or vigorous imagination may dictate or desire; the
forms, once so laboriously realized, will come out whenever they _do_
occur with a startling and impressive truth, which the uncertainty in
which they are veiled will enhance rather than diminish; and the
imagination, strengthened by discipline and fed with truth, will achieve
the utmost of creation that is possible to finite mind.
The artist who thus works will soon find that he cannot repeat himself
if he would; that new fields of exertion, new subjects of contemplation
open to him in nature day by day, and that, while others lament the
weakness of their invention, _he_ has nothing to lament but the
shortness of life.
Sec. 24. Duty of the press with respect to the works of Turner.
And now but one word more, respecting the great artist whose works have
formed the chief subject of this treatise. All the _greatest_ qualities
of those works--all that is mental in them, has not yet been so much as
touched upon. None but their lightest and least essential excellences
have been proved, and, therefore, the enthusiasm with which I speak of
them must necessarily appear overcharged and absurd. It, might, perhaps,
have been more prudent to have withheld the full expression of it till I
had shown the full grounds for it; but once written, such expression
must remain till I have justified it. And, indeed, I think there is
enough, even in the foregoing pages, to show that these works are, as
far as concerns the ordinary critics of the press, above all
animadversion, and above all praise; and that, by the public, they are
not to be received as in any way subjects or matters of opinion, but of
Faith. We are not to approach them to be pleased, but to be taught; not
to form a judgment, but to receive a lesson. Our periodical writers,
therefore, may save themselves the trouble either of blaming or
praising: their duty is not to pronounce opinions upon the work of a man
who has walked with nature threescore years; but to impress upon the
public the respect with which they are to be received, and to make
request to him, on the part of the people of England, that he would now
touch no unimportant work--that he would not spend time on slight or
small pictures, but give to the nation a series of grand, consistent,
systematic, and completed poems. We desire that he should follow out his
own thoughts and intents of heart, without reference to any human
authority. But we request, in all humility, that those thoughts may be
seriously and loftily given; and that the whole power of his unequalled
intellect may be exerted in the production of such works as may remain
forever for the teaching of the nations. In all that he says, we
believe; in all that he does we trust.[81] It is therefore that we pray
him to utter nothing lightly--to do nothing regardlessly. He stands upon
an eminence, from which he looks back over the universe of God, and
forward over the generations of men. Let every work of his hand be a
history of the one, and a lesson to the other. Let each exertion of his
mighty mind be both hymn and prophecy,--adoration, to the
Deity,--revelation to mankind.
FOOTNOTES
[79] Of course this assertion does not refer to the differences in
mode of execution, which enable one painter to work faster or slower
than another, but only to the exertion of mind, commonly manifested
by the artist, according as he is sparing or prodigal of production.
[80] "Talk of improving nature when it _is_ nature--Nonsense."--_E.
V. Rippingille_. I have not yet spoken of the difference--even in
what we commonly call Nature--between imperfect and ideal form: the
study of this difficult question must, of course, be deferred until
we have examined the nature of our impressions of beauty; but it may
not be out of place here to hint at the want of care in many of our
artists to distinguish between the real work of nature and the
diseased results of man's interference with her. Many of the works
of our greatest artists have for their subjects nothing but hacked
and hewn remnants of farm-yard vegetation, branded root and branch,
from their birth, by the prong and the pruning-hook; and the
feelings once accustomed to take pleasure in such abortions, can
scarcely become perceptive of forms truly ideal. I have just said
(423) that young painters should go to nature trustingly,--rejecting
nothing, and selecting nothing: so they should; but they must be
careful that it _is_ nature to whom they go--nature in her
liberty--not as servant-of-all-work in the hands of the
agriculturist, nor stiffened into court-dress by the landscape
gardener. It must be the pure, wild volition and energy of the
creation which they follow--not subdued to the furrow, and
cicatrized to the pollard--not persuaded into proprieties, nor
pampered into diseases. Let them work by the torrent-side, and in
the forest shadows; not by purling brooks and under "tonsile
shades." It is impossible to enter here into discussion of what man
can or cannot do, by assisting natural operations: it is an
intricate question: nor can I, without anticipating what I shall
have hereafter to advance, show how or why it happens that the
racehorse is _not_ the artist's ideal of a horse, nor a prize tulip
his ideal of a flower; but so it is. As far as the painter is
concerned, man never touches nature but to spoil;--he operates on
her as a barber would on the Apollo; and if he sometimes increases
some particular power or excellence,--strength or agility in the
animal--tallness, or fruitfulness, or solidity in the tree,--he
invariably loses that _balance_ of good qualities which is the chief
sign of perfect specific form; above all, he destroys the appearance
of free _volition_ and _felicity_, which, as I shall show hereafter,
is one of the essential characters of organic beauty. Until,
however, I can enter into the discussion of the nature of beauty,
the only advice I can safely give the young painter, is to keep
clear of clover-fields and parks, and to hold to the unpenetrated
forest and the unfurrowed hill. There he will find that every
influence is noble, even when destructive--that decay itself is
beautiful,--and that, in the elaborate and lovely composition of all
things, if at first sight it seems less studied than the works of
men, the appearance of Art is only prevented by the presence of
Power.
"Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her: 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy; for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings."
WORDSWORTH.
[81] It has been hinted, in some of the reviews of the Second Volume
of this work, that the writer's respect for Turner has diminished
since the above passage was written. He would, indeed, have been
deserving of little attention if, with the boldness manifested on
the preceding pages, he had advanced opinions based on so shallow
foundation as that the course of three years could effect
modification of them. He was justified by the sudden accession of
power which the great artist exhibited at the period when this
volume was first published, as well as by the low standard of the
criticism to which he was subjected, in claiming, with respect to
his then works, a submission of judgment, greater indeed than may
generally be accorded to even the highest human intellect, yet not
greater than such a master might legitimately claim from such
critics; and the cause of the peculiar form of advocacy into which
the preceding chapters necessarily fell, has been already stated
more than once. In the following sections it became necessary, as
they treated a subject of intricate relations, and peculiar
difficulty, to obtain a more general view of the scope and operation
of art, and to avoid all conclusions in any wise referable to the
study of particular painters. The reader will therefore find, not
that lower rank is attributed to Turner, but that he is now compared
with the greatest men, and occupies his true position among the most
noble of all time.
POSTSCRIPT.
The above passage was written in the year 1843; too late. It is true
that soon after the publication of this work, the abuse of the press,
which had been directed against Turner with unceasing virulence during
the production of his noblest works, sank into timid animadversion, or
changed into unintelligent praise; but not before illness, and, in some
degree, mortification, had enfeebled the hand and chilled the heart of
the painter.
This year (1851) he has no picture on the walls of the Academy; and the
_Times_ of May 3d says, "We miss those works of INSPIRATION!"
We miss! Who misses?--The populace of England rolls by to weary itself
in the great bazaar of Kensington, little thinking that a day will come
when those veiled vestals and prancing amazons, and goodly merchandise
of precious stones and gold, will all be forgotten as though they had
not been, but that the light which has faded from the walls of the
Academy is one which a million of Koh-i-Noors could not rekindle, and
that the year 1851 will in the far future be remembered less for what it
has displayed than for what it has withdrawn.
DENMARK HILL, _June_, 1851.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
* * * * *
CORRECTIONS MADE TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT.
Page xiii: 'attack of the following colums' corrected to 'columns'.
Page lxiii: (Table of Contents) Sec. 8. Monotony and falsehood... 239
corrected to 230.
Page 34: 'attained with greater porportional' corrected to
'proportional'.
Page 74: 'exquisite truths of specfic' corrected to 'specific'.
Page 84: 'things as in the right exhbition' corrected to 'exhibition'.
Page 89: 'man's working from nature comtinually' changed to
'continually'.
Page 146: 'But I allow this inferiority only with respect to the
paintings,' superfluous comma omitted.
Page 277: 'But the vignette of Aosta, in the Italy', 'the' omitted.
Page 281: 'lateral chains separated rll' corrected to 'all'.
Footnote 41: Comma after Esq changed to period.
Footnote 74: 'is above stated refers, thoughout' changed to
'throughout'.
End of Project Gutenberg's Modern Painters Volume I (of V), by John Ruskin