Resuming a consideration of the subject-matter suitable in painting
and sculpture, it is necessary to repeat those premises, and to
re-establish those principles which were advanced or elicited in the
first number of this essay.
It was premised then that works of Fine Art affect the beholder in
the same ratio as the _natural prototypes_ of those works would
affect him; and not in proportion to the difficulties overcome in the
artificial representation of those prototypes. Not contending,
meanwhile, that the picture painted by the hand of the artist, and
then by the hand of nature on the eye of the beholder, is, in amount,
the same as the picture painted there by nature alone; but
disregarding, as irrelevant to this investigation, _all concomitants
of fine art wherein they involve an ulterior impression as to the
relative merits of the work by the amount of its success,_ and, for a
like reason, disregarding all emotions and impressions which are not
the immediate and proximate result of an excitor influence of, or
pertaining to, the _things artificial_, as a bona fide equivalent of
the _things natural_.
Or the premises may be practically stated thus:--(1st.) When one
looks on a certain painting or sculpture for the first time, the
first notion is that of a painting or sculpture. (2nd.) In the next
place, while the objects depicted are revealing themselves as real
objects, the notion of a painting or sculpture has elapsed, and, in
its place, there are emotions, passions, actions (moral or
intellectual) according in sort and degree to the heart or
mind-moving influence of the objects represented. (3rd.) Finally,
there is a notion of a painting or sculpture, and a judgment or
sentiment commensurate with the estimated merits of the work.--The
second statement gives the premised conditions under which Fine Art
is about to be treated: the 3rd statement exemplifies a phase in the
being of Fine Art under which it is never to be considered: and
furthermore, whilst the mental reflection last mentioned (the
judgment on the work) is being made, it may occur that certain
objects, most difficult of artistic execution, had been most
successfully handled: the merits of introducing such objects, in such
a manner, are the merits of those concomitants mentioned as equally
without the scope of consideration.
Thus much for the premises--next to the re-establishment of
principles.
1st. The principle was elicited, that Fine Art should regard the
general happiness of man, by addressing those of his attributes which
are _peculiarly human_, by exciting the activity of his rational and
benevolent powers; and thereafter:--2nd, that the Subject in Art
should be drawn from objects which so address and excite him; and
3rd, as objects so exciting the mental activity may (in proportion to
the mental capacity) excite it to any amount, and so possibly in the
highest degree (the function of Fine Art being _mental excitement_,
and that of High Art being the _highest mental excitement_) that all
objects so exciting mental activity and emotion in the highest
degree, may afford subjects for High Art.
Having thus re-stated the premises and principles already deduced,
let us proceed to enquire into the propriety of selecting the Subject
from the past or the present time; which enquiry resolves itself
fundamentally into the analysis of objects and incidents experienced
immediately by the senses, or acquired by mental education.
Here then we have to explore the specific difference between the
incidents and objects of to-day, as exposed to our daily observation,
and the incidents and objects of time past, as bequeathed to us by
history, poetry, or tradition.
In the first place, there is, no doubt, a considerable _real_
difference between the things of to-day and those of times past: but
as all former times, their incidents and objects differ amongst
themselves, this can hardly be the cause of the specific difference
sought for--a difference between our share of things past and things
present. This real, but not specific difference then, however
admitted, shall not be considered here.
It is obvious, in the meanwhile, that all which we have of the past
is stamped with an impress of mental assimilation: an impress it has
received from the mind of the author who has garnered it up, and
disposed it in that form and order which ensure it acceptance with
posterity. For let a writer of history be as matter of fact as he
will, the very order and classification of events will save us the
trouble of confusion, and render them graspable, and more capable of
assimilation, than is the raw material of every-day experience. In
fact the work of mind is begun, the key of intelligence is given, and
we have only to continue the process. Where the vehicle for the
transmission of things past is poetry, then we have them presented in
that succession, and with that modification of force, a resilient
plasticity, now advancing, now recoiling, insinuating and grappling,
that ere this material and mental warfare is over, we find the facts
thus transmitted are incorporated with our psychical existence. And
in tradition is it otherwise?--Every man tells the tale in his own
way; and the merits of the story itself, or the person who tells it,
or his way of telling, procures it a lodgment in the mind of the
hearer, whence it is ever ready to start up and claim kindred with
some external excitement.
Thus it is the luck of all things of the past to come down to us with
some poetry about them; while from those of diurnal experience we
must extract this poetry ourselves: and although all good men are,
more or less, poets, they are passive or recipient poets; while the
active or donative poet caters for them what they fail to collect.
For let a poet walk through London, and he shall see a succession of
incidents, suggesting some moral beauty by a contrast of times with
times, unfolding some principle of nature, developing some attribute
of man, or pointing to some glory in The Maker: while the man who
walked behind him saw nothing but shops and pavement, and coats and
faces; neither did he hear the aggregated turmoil of a city of
nations, nor the noisy exponents of various desires, appetites and
pursuits: each pulsing tremour of the atmosphere was not struck into
it by a subtile ineffable something willed forcibly out of a cranium:
neither did he see the driver of horses holding a rod of light in his
eye and feeling his way, in a world he was rushing through, by the
motion of the end of that rod:--he only saw the wheels in motion, and
heard the rattle on the stones; and yet this man stopped twice at a
book shop to buy 'a Tennyson,' or a 'Browning's Sordello.' Now this
man might have seen all that the poet saw; he walked through the same
streets: yet the poet goes home and writes a poem; and he who failed
to feel the poetry of the things themselves detects it readily in the
poet's version. Then why, it is asked, does not this man, schooled by
the poet's example, look out for himself for the future, and so find
attractions in things of to-day? He does so to a trifling extent, but
the reason why he does so rarely will be found in the former
demonstration.
It was shown how bygone objects and incidents come down to us
invested in peculiar attractions: this the poet knows and feels, and
the probabilities are that he transferred the incidents of to-day,
with all their poetical and moral suggestions, to the romantic
long-ago, partly from a feeling of prudence, and partly that he
himself was under this spell of antiquity, How many a Troubadour, who
recited tales of king Arthur, had his incidents furnished him by the
events of his own time! And thus it is the many are attracted to the
poetry of things past, yet impervious to the poetry of things
present. But this retrograde movement in the poet, painter, or
sculptor (except in certain cases as will subsequently appear), if
not the result of necessity, is an error in judgment or a culpable
dishonesty. For why should he not acknowledge the source of his
inspiration, that others may drink of the same spring with himself;
and perhaps drink deeper and a clearer draught?--For the water is
unebbing and exhaustless, and fills the more it is emptied: why then
should it be filtered through his tank _where_ he can teach men to
drink it at the fountain?
If, as every poet, every painter, every sculptor will acknowledge,
his best and most original ideas are derived from his own times: if
his great lessonings to piety, truth, charity, love, honor, honesty,
gallantry, generosity, courage, are derived from the same source; why
transfer them to distant periods, and make them _not things of
to-day?_ Why teach us to revere the saints of old, and not our own
family-worshippers? Why to admire the lance-armed knight, and not the
patience-armed hero of misfortune? Why to draw a sword we do not wear
to aid and oppressed damsel, and not a purse which we do wear to
rescue an erring one? Why to worship a martyred St. Agatha, and not a
sick woman attending the sick? Why teach us to honor an Aristides or
a Regulus, and not one who pays an equitable, though to him ruinous,
tax without a railing accusation? And why not teach us to help what
the laws cannot help?--Why teach us to hate a Nero or an Appius, and
not an underselling oppressor of workmen and betrayer of women and
children? Why to love a _Ladie in bower_, and not a wife's fireside?
Why paint or poetically depict the horrible race of Ogres and Giants,
and not show Giant Despair dressed in that modern habit he walks the
streets in? Why teach men what were great and good deeds in the old
time, neglecting to show them any good for themselves?--Till these
questions are answered absolutory to the artist, it were unwise to
propose the other question--Why a poet, painter or sculptor is not
honored and loved as formerly? "As formerly," says some avowed
sceptic in _old world transcendency_ and _golden age affairs_, "I
believe _formerly_ the artist was as much respected and cared for as
he is now. 'Tis true the Greeks granted an immunity from taxation to
some of their artists, who were often great men in the state, and
even the companions of princes. And are not some of our poets peers?
Have not some of our artists received knighthood from the hand of
their Sovereign, and have not some of them received pensions?"
To answer objections of this latitude demands the assertion of
certain characteristic facts which, tho' not here demonstrated, may
be authenticated by reference to history. Of these, the facts of
Alfred's disguised visit to the Danish camp, and Aulaff's visit to
the Saxon, are sufficient to show in what respect the poets of that
period were held; when a man without any safe conduct whatever
could enter the enemy's camp on the very eve of battle, as was
here the case; could enter unopposed, unquestioned, and return
unmolested!--What could have conferred upon the poet of that day so
singular a privilege? What upon the poet of an earlier time that
sanctity in behoof whereof
"The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground: and the repeated air
Of sad Electra's poet had the power
To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare."
What but an universal recognition of the poet as an universal
benefactor of mankind? And did mankind recognize him as such, from
some unaccountable infatuation, or because his labours obtained for
him an indefeasible right to that estimate? How came it, when a Greek
sculptor had completed some operose performance, that his countrymen
bore him in triumph thro' their city, and rejoiced in his prosperity
as identical with their own? How but because his art had embodied
some principle of beauty whose mysterious influence it was their
pride to appreciate--or he had enduringly moulded the limbs of some
well-trained Athlete, such as it was their interest to develop, or he
had recorded the overthrow of some barbaric invader whom their
fathers had fallen to repel.
In the middle ages when a knight listened, in the morning, to some
song of brave doing, ere evening he himself might be the hero of such
song.--What wonder then that he held sacred the function of the poet!
Now-a-days our heroes (and we have them) are left unchapleted and
neglected--and therefore the poet lives and dies neglected.
Thus it would appear from these facts (which have been collaterally
evolved in course of enquiring into the propriety of choosing the
subject from past or present time, and in course of the consequent
analysis) that Art, to become a more powerful engine of civilization,
assuming a practically humanizing tendency (the admitted function of
Art), should be made more directly conversant with the things,
incidents, and influences which surround and constitute the living
world of those whom Art proposes to improve, and, whether it should
appear in event that Art can or can not assume this attitude without
jeopardizing her specific existence, that such a consummation were
desirable must be equally obvious in either case.
Let us return now to the former consideration. It was stated that the
poet is affected by every day incidents, which would have little or
no effect on the mind of a general observer: and if you ask the poet,
who from his conduct may be the supposed advocate of the past as the
fittest medium for poetic eduction, why he embodied the suggestions
of to-day in the matter and dress of antiquity; he is likely to
answer as follows.--"You have stated that men pass by that which
furnishes me with my subject: If I merely reproduce what they
slighted, the reproduction will be slighted equally. It appears then
that I must devise some means of attracting their sympathies--and the
medium of antiquity is the fittest for three several reasons.
1st.--Nothing comes down to us from antiquity unless fraught with
sufficient interest of some sort, to warrant it being worthy of
record. Thus, all incidents which we possess of the old time being
more or less interesting, there arises an illative impression that
all things of old really were so: and all things in idea associated
with that time, whether real or fictitious, are afforded a favorable
entertainment. Now these associations are neither trivial nor
fanciful:{11} for I remember to have discovered, after visiting the
British Museum for the first time, that the odour of camphor, for
which I had hitherto no predilection, afforded me a peculiar
satisfaction, seemingly suggestive of things scientific or artistic;
it was in fact a _literary smell!_ All this was vague and
unaccountable until some time after when this happened again, and I
was at once reminded of an enormous walrus at the British Museum, and
then remembered how the whole collection, from end to end, was
permeated with the odour of camphor! Still, despite the
_consciousness_ of this, the camphor retains its influence. Now let a
poem, a painting, or sculpture, smell ever so little of antiquity,
and every intelligent reader will be full of delightful imaginations.
2nd.--All things ancient are mysterious in obscurity:--veneration,
wonder, and curiosity are the result. 3rd.--All things ancient are
dead and gone:--we sympathize with them accordingly. All these
effects of antiquity, as a means of enforcing poetry, declare it too
powerful an ally to be readily abandoned by the poet." To all this
the painter will add that the costume of almost any ancient time is
more beautiful than that of the present--added to which it exposes
more of that most beautiful of all objects, the human figure.
{11} Here the author, in the person of respondent, takes occasion to
narrate a real fact.
Thus we have a formidable array of objections to the choice of
_present-day subjects:_ and first, it was objected and granted, that
incidents of the present time are well nigh barren in poetic
attraction for the many. Then it was objected, but not granted, that
their poetic or pictorial counterparts will be equally unattractive
also: but this last remains to be proved. It was said, and is
believed by the author, (and such as doubt it he does not address)
that all good men are more or less poetical in some way or other;
while their poetry shows itself at various times. Thus the
business-man in the street has other to think of than poetry; but
when he is inclined to look at a picture, or in his more poetical
humour, will he neglect the pictorial counterpart of what he
neglected before? To test this, show him a camera obscura, where
there is a more literal transcript of present-day nature than any
painting can be:--what is the result? He expresses no anxiety to quit
it, but a great curiosity to investigate; he feels it is very
beautiful, indeed more beautiful than nature: and this he will say is
because he does not see nature as an artist does. Now the solution of
all this is easy: 1st. He is in a mood of mind which renders him
accessible to the influences of poetry, which was not before the
case. 2nd. He looks at that steadily which he before regarded
cursorily; and, as the picture remains in his eye, it acquires an
amount of harmony, in behoof of an intrinsic harmony resident in the
organ itself, which exerts proportionately modifying influences on
all things that enter within it; and of the nervous harmony, and the
beautifully apportioned stimuli of alternating ocular spectra. 3rd.
There is a resolution of discord effected by the instrument itself,
inasmuch as its effects are homogeneous. All these harmonizing
influences are equally true of the painting; and though we have no
longer the homogeneous effect of the camera, we have the homogeneous
effect of one mind, viz., the mind of the artist.
Thus having disproved the supposed poetical obstacles to the
rendering of real life or nature in its own real garb and time, as
faithfully as Art can render it, nothing need be said to answer the
advantages of the antique or mediaeval rendering; since they were
only called in to neutralize the aforesaid obstacles, which obstacles
have proved to be fictitious. It remains then to consider the
_artistic_ objection of costume, &c., which consideration ranges
under the head of _real differences between the things of past and
present times_, a consideration formerly postponed. But this
requiring a patient analysis, will necessitate a further
postponement, and in conclusion, there will be briefly stated the
elements of the argument, thus.--It must be obvious to every
physicist that physical beauty (which this subject involves on the
one side [the ancient] as opposed to the want of it on the other [the
modern]) was in ancient times as superior to physical beauty in the
modern, as psychical beauty in the modern is superior to psychical
beauty in the ancient. Costume then, as physical, is more beautiful
ancient than modern. Now that a certain amount of physical beauty is
requisite to constitute Fine Art, will be readily admitted; but what
that amount is, must be ever undefined. That the maximum of physical
beauty does not constitute the maximum of Fine Art, is apparent from
the facts of the physical beauty of _Early Christian_ Art being
inferior to that of Grecian art; whilst, in the concrete, Early
Christian Art is superior to Grecian. Indeed some specimens of Early
Christian Art are repulsive rather than beautiful, yet these are in
many cases the highest works of Art.
In the "Plague at Ashdod," great physical beauty, resulting from
picturesque costume and the exposed human figure, was so far from
desirable, that it seems purposely deformed by blotches of livid
color; yet the whole is a most noble work of Poussin. Containing as
much physical beauty as this picture, the writer remembers to have
seen an incident in the streets where a black-haired, sordid,
wicked-headed man, was striking the butt of his whip at the neck of a
horse, to urge him round an angle of the pavement; a smocked
countryman offered him the loan of his mules: a blacksmith standing
by, showed him how to free the wheel, by only swerving the animal to
the left: he, taking no notice whatever, went on striking and
striking; whilst a woman waiting to cross, with a child in her one
hand, and with the other pushing its little head close to her side,
looked with wide eyes at this monster.
This familiar incident, affording a subject fraught with more moral
interest than, and as much picturesque matter as, many antique or
mediaeval subjects, is only wanting in that romantic attraction
which, by association, attaches to things of the past. Yet, let these
modern subjects once excite interest, as it really appears they can,
and the incidents of to-day will acquire romantic attractions by the
same association of ideas.
The claims of ancient, mediaeval, and modern subjects will be
considered in detail at a future period.