CHAPTER XXVII

We returned down the Rhine through Holland. I was willing to see the

contrast between flat and lofty, and between Venice and Amsterdam. We

left Vevey on the 20th of September, and arrived in England on the 16th

of October. It was at first exceedingly hot; we encountered several days

of severe cold on the road, and it afterwards became mild and pleasant

again. We hired a _char-aux-bancs_ from Vevey to Basle, and it took us

four days to reach this latter place; the expense of the conveyance was

twenty-four francs a day, besides the driver. The first part of our

journey, as we ascended from the Lake on the way to Moudon, was like an

aërial voyage, from the elevation and the clearness of the atmosphere;

yet still through the most lovely country imaginable, and with glimpses

of the grand objects behind us (seen over delicious pastures, and

through glittering foliage) that were truly magical. The combinations of

language, however, answer but ill to the varieties of nature, and by

repeating these descriptions so often, I am afraid of becoming tiresome.

My excuse must be, that I have little to relate but what I saw. After

mounting to a considerable height, we descended to Moudon, a small town

situated in a most romantic valley. The accommodations at the inn here

were by no means good, though it is a place of some pretensions. In

proportion to the size of the house and the massiveness of the

furniture, the provisions of the kitchen appeared to be slender, and the

attendance slack. The freshness of the air the next morning, and the

striking beauty and rapid changes of the scenery, soon made us forget

any disappointment we had experienced in this respect. As we ascended a

steep hill on this side of Moudon, and looked back, first at the green

dewy valley under our feet, with the dusky town and the blue smoke

rising from it, then at the road we had traversed the preceding evening,

winding among thick groves of trees, and last at the Savoy Alps on the

other side of the Lake of Geneva (with which we had been familiar for

four months, and which seemed to have no mind to quit us) I perceived a

bright speck close to the top of one of these—I was delighted, and said

it was Mont Blanc. Our driver was of a different opinion, was positive

it was only a cloud, and I accordingly supposed I had taken a sudden

fancy for a reality. I began in secret to take myself to task, and to

lecture myself for my proneness to build theories on the foundation of

my conjectures and wishes. On turning round occasionally, however, I

observed that this cloud remained in the same place, and I noticed the

circumstance to our guide, as favouring my first suggestion; for clouds

do not usually remain long in the same place. We disputed the point for

half a day, and it was not till the afternoon when we had reached the

other side of the lake of Neufchatel, that this same cloud rising like a

canopy over the point where it had hovered, ‘in shape and station

proudly eminent,’ he acknowledged it to be Mont Blanc. We were then at a

distance of about forty miles from Vevey, and eighty or ninety from

Chamouni. This will give the reader some idea of the scale and nature of

this wonderful scenery. We dined at Iverdun (a pretty town), at the head

of the lake, and passed on to Neufchatel, along its enchanting and

almost unrivalled borders, having the long unaspiring range of the Jura

on our left (from the top of which St. Preux, on his return from his

wanderings round the world, first greeted that country, where ‘torrents

of delight had poured into his heart,’ and, indeed, we could distinguish

the _Dent de Jamant_ right over Clarens almost the whole way), and on

our right was the rippling lake, its low cultivated banks on the other

side, then a brown rocky ridge of mountains, and the calm golden peaks

of the snowy passes of the Simplon, the Great St. Bernard, and (as I was

fain to believe) of Monteroso rising into the evening sky at intervals

beyond. Meanwhile we rode on through a country abounding in farms and

vineyards and every kind of comfort, and deserving the epithets, ‘verd

et riant.’ Sometimes a tall rock rose by the road side; or a ruinous

turret or a well-compacted villa attracted our attention. Neufchatel is

larger and handsomer than Iverdun, and is remarkable for a number of

those genteel and quiet-looking habitations, where people seem to have

retired (in the midst of society) to spend the rest of their lives in

ease and comfort: they are not for shew, nor are they very striking from

situation; they are neither fashionable nor romantic; but the decency

and sober ornaments of their exterior evidently indicate fireside

enjoyments and cultivated taste within. This kind of retreat, where

there is nothing to surprise, nothing to disgust, nothing to draw the

attention out of itself, uniting the advantages of society and solitude,

of simplicity and elegance, and where the mind can indulge in a sort of

habitual and self-centred satisfaction, is the only one which I should

never feel a wish to quit. The _golden mean_ is, indeed, an exact

description of the mode of life I should like to lead—of the style I

should like to write; but alas! I am afraid I shall never succeed in

either object of my ambition!

The next day being cloudy, we lost sight entirely of the highest range

of Alpine hills, and saw them no more afterwards. The road lay for some

miles through an open and somewhat dreary country, in which the only

objects of curiosity were the tall peasant-girls working in the fields,

with their black gauze head-dresses, sticking out from their matted hair

like the wings of a dragon-fly. We, however, had the Lake of Bienne and

Isle of St. Pierre in prospect before us, which are so admirably

described by Rousseau, in his ‘Reveries of a Solitary Walker,’ and to

which he gives the preference over the Lake of Geneva. The effect from

the town of Bienne where we stopped to dine was not much; but in

climbing to the top of a steep sandy hill beyond it, we saw the whole to

great advantage. Evening was just closing in, and the sky was cloudy,

with a few red streaks near the horizon: the first range of Alps only

was discernible; the Lake was of a dull sombre lead colour, and the Isle

of St. Pierre was like a dark spot in it; the hills on one side of the

Lake ascended abrupt and gloomy; extensive forests swept in magnificent

surges over the rich valley to our left; towns were scattered below us

here and there, as in a map; rocky fragments hung over our heads, with

the shattered trunks of huge pine-trees; a mountain-torrent rushed down

the irregular chasm between us and the base of the mountain, that rose

in misty grandeur on the opposite side; but the whole was in the

greatest keeping, and viewed by the twilight of historic landscape. Yet

amidst all this solemnity and grandeur, the eye constantly reverted to

one little dark speck, the Isle of St. Pierre (where Rousseau had taken

refuge for a few months from his sorrows and his persecutions) with a

more intense interest than all the rest; for the widest prospects are

trivial to the deep recesses of the human heart, and its anxious

beatings are far more audible than the ‘loud torrent or the whirlwind’s

roar!’ The clouds of vapours, and the ebon cloud of night prevented our

having a distinct view of the road that now wound down to ——, where we

stopped for the night. The inn here (the Rose and Crown), though almost

a solitary house in a solitary valley, is a very good one, and the

cheapest we met with abroad. Our bill for supper, lodging, and

breakfast, amounted to only seven francs. Our route, the following

morning, lay up a broad steep valley, with a fine gravelly road through

it, and forests of pine and other trees, raised like an amphitheatre on

either side. The sun had just risen, and the drops of rain still hung

upon the branches. On the other side we came into a more open country,

and then again were inclosed among wild and narrow passes of high rock,

split either by thunder or earthquakes into ledges, like castle walls,

coming down to the edge of a stream that winds through the valley, or

aspiring to an airy height, with the diminished pines growing on their

very tops, and patches of verdure and the foliage of other trees

flourishing in the interstices between them. It was the last scene of

the kind we encountered. I begin to tire of these details, and will

hasten to the end of my journey, touching only on a few detached points

and places.

BASLE.—This is a remarkably neat town; but it lies beyond the confines

of the picturesque. We stopped at the Three Kings, and were shewn into a

long, narrow room, which did not promise well at first; but the waiter

threw up the window at the further end, and we all at once saw the full

breadth of the Rhine, rolling rapidly beneath it, after passing through

the arches of an extensive bridge. It was clear moonlight, and the

effect was fine and unexpected. The broad mass of water rushed by with

clamorous sound and stately impetuosity, as if it were carrying a

message from the mountains to the ocean! The next morning we perceived

that it was of a muddy colour. We thought of passing down it in a small

boat; but the covering was so low as to make the posture uncomfortable,

or, if raised higher, there was a danger of its being overset by any

sudden gust of wind. We therefore went by the Diligence to Colmar and

Strasburg. I regretted afterwards that we did not take the right hand

road by Freybourg and the Black Forest—the woods, hills, and mouldering

castles of which, as far as I could judge from a distance, are the most

romantic and beautiful possible. The tower at Strasburg is red, and has

a singular appearance. The fortifications here, in time of peace, have

an effect like the stillness of death.

RASTADT.—We crossed the Rhine at Strasburg, and proceeded through

Rastadt and Manheim to Mayence. We stopped the first night at the Golden

Cross at Rastadt, which is the very best inn I was at during the whole

time I was abroad. Among other things, we had _chiffrons_ for supper,

which I found on inquiry were wood-partridges, which are much more

highly esteemed than the field ones. So delicately do they distinguish

in Germany! Manheim is a splendid town, both from its admirable

buildings and the glossy neatness of the houses. They are too fine to

live in, and seem only made to be looked at. Would that one of the

streets could be set down in Waterloo-place! Yet even Manheim is not

equal to the towns in Italy. There the houses are palaces.

Mayence is a disagreeable town. We half missed the scenery between this

and Coblentz, the only part of the Rhine worth seeing. We saw it,

however, by moonlight (which hung over it like a silver veil), with its

nodding towers and dismantled fortresses over our heads, the steep woody

banks on the opposite side, and the broad glittering surface of the

Rhine, reflecting the white clouds or dark sail gliding by. It was like

a brilliant dream; nor did the mellow winding notes of the horn, calling

to the warders of the drawbridges as we passed along, lessen the effect.

Ehrenbreitstein overlooks Coblentz, and crowns it with magnificence and

beauty. The Duke of Wellington, I understood, had been here, and being

asked by a French officer, ‘If it could be taken?’ answered, ‘Yes; in

two ways, by hunger and gold.’ Did the Duke of Wellington make this

answer? I cry you mercy—it was the Frenchman who gave the answer: the

Duke said nothing.

Cologne is the birth-place of Rubens; and at one of the churches, there

is a _Crucifixion_ by him, which we did not see, for it being the time

of divine service, the back was turned to the spectator, and only a copy

of it was exhibited. The road from Cologne to Neuss is the only really

bad one we found on the Continent; it is a mere sand-bank, and not

likely to be soon mended, from its vicinity to the Rhine.

From Neuss to Cleves we went in the Royal Prussian Diligence, and from

thence to Nimeguen, the first town in Holland. From a small tower here

we had an admirable view of the country. It was nearly a perfect flat

all round, as far as the eye could reach; yet it was a rich and

animated, as well as a novel scene. You saw a greater extent of surface

than is possible in a hilly country; all within the circumference of the

horizon lay exposed to the eye. It was like seeing a section of the

entire globe, or like ‘striking flat its thick rotundity.’ It was a fine

clear afternoon, and in the midst of this uniformity of surface, you saw

every other variety—rich meadows, with flocks and herds feeding,

hedge-rows, willowy banks, woods, corn-fields, roads winding along in

different directions, canals, boats sailing, innumerable villages,

windmills, bridges, and towns and cities in the far-off horizon; but

neither rock, nor mountain, nor barren waste, nor any object that

prevented your seeing the one beyond it. There were no contrasts, no

masses, but the immense space stretched out beneath the eye was filled

up with dotted lines, and minute, detached, countless beauties. It was

as if the earth were curiously fringed and embroidered. Holland is the

same everywhere, except that it is often more intersected by canals; and

that as you approach the sea, the water prevails over the land. We

proceeded from Nimeguen to Utrecht and Amsterdam, by the stage. The rich

uninterrupted cultivation, the marks of successful industry and smiling

plenty, are equally commendable and exhilarating; but the repetition of

the same objects, and the extent of _home_ view, become at last

oppressive. If you see much at once, there ought to be masses and

relief: if you see only detached objects, you ought to be confined to a

few of them at a time. What is the use of seeing a hundred windmills, a

hundred barges, a hundred willow-trees, or a hundred herds of cattle at

once? Any one specimen is enough, and the others hang like a dead-weight

on the traveller’s patience. Besides, there is something lumpish and

heavy in the aspect of the country; the eye is clogged and impeded in

its progress over it by dams and dykes, and the marshy nature of the

soil damps and chills imagination. There is a like extent of country at

Cassel in France; but from the greater number of woods and a more

luxuriant vegetation (leaving the bare earth seldom visible,) the whole

landscape seems in one glow, and the eye scours delighted over waving

groves and purple distances. The towns and villas in Holland are

unrivalled for neatness, and an appearance of wealth and comfort. All

the way from Utrecht to Amsterdam, to the Hague, to Rotterdam, you might

fancy yourself on Clapham Common. The canals are lined with farms and

summer-houses, with orchards and gardens of the utmost beauty, and in

excellent taste. The exterior of their buildings is as clean as the

interior of ours; their public-houses look as nice and well-ordered as

our private ones. If you are up betimes in a morning, you see a servant

wench (the domestic Naiad,) with a leathern pipe, like that attached to

a fire-engine, drenching the walls and windows with pail-fulls of water.

With all this, they suffocate you with tobacco smoke in their

stage-coaches and canal-boats, and you do not see a set of clean teeth

from one end of Holland to the other. Amsterdam did not answer our

expectations; it is a kind of paltry, rubbishly Venice. The pictures of

Rembrandt here (some of which have little shade) are inferior to what we

have in England. I was assured here that Rembrandt was the greatest

painter in the world, and at Antwerp that Rubens was. The inn at

Amsterdam (the Rousland) is one of the best I have been at; and an inn

is no bad test of the civilization and diffusion of comfort in a

country. We saw a play at the theatre here; and the action was

exceedingly graceful and natural. The chimes at Amsterdam, which play

every quarter of an hour, at first seemed gay and delightful, and in a

day and a half became tedious and intolerable. It was as impertinent as

if a servant could not come into the room to answer the bell without

dancing and jumping over the chairs and tables every time. A row of

lime-trees grew and waved their branches in the middle of the street

facing the hotel. The Dutch, who are not an ideal people, bestow all

their taste and fancy on practical things, and instead of creating the

chimeras of poetry, devote their time and thoughts to embellishing the

objects of ordinary and familiar life. Ariosto said, it was easier to

build palaces with words, than common houses with stones. The Hague is

Hampton-Court turned into a large town. There is an excellent collection

of pictures here, with some of my old favourites brought back from the

Louvre, by Rembrandt, Vandyke, Paul Potter, &c. Holland is, perhaps, the

only country which you gain nothing by seeing. It is exactly the same as

the Dutch landscapes of it. I was shewn the plain and village of

Ryswick, close to the Hague. It struck me I had seen something very like

it before. It is the back-ground of Paul Potter’s _Bull_. From the views

and models of Chinese scenery and buildings preserved in the Museum

here, it would seem that Holland is the China of Europe. Delft is a very

model of comfort and polished neatness. We met with a gentleman

belonging to this place in the _trackschuyt_, who, with other

civilities, shewed us his house (a perfect picture in its kind,) and

invited us in to rest and refresh ourselves, while the other boat was

getting ready. These things are an extension of one’s idea of humanity.

It is pleasant, and one of the uses of travel, to find large tracts of

land cultivated, cities built and repaired, all the conveniences of

life, men, women, and children laughing, talking, and happy, common

sense and good manners on the other side of the English channel. I would

not wish to lower any one’s idea of England; but let him enlarge his

notions of existence and enjoyment beyond it. He will not think the

worse of his own country, for thinking better of human nature! The

inconveniences of travelling by canal-boats in Holland is, that you make

little way, and are forced to get out and have your luggage taken into

another boat at every town you come to, which happens two or three times

in the course of the day. Let no one go to the Washington Arms at

Rotterdam; it is only fit for American sea-captains. Rotterdam is a

handsome bustling town; and on inquiring our way, we were accosted by a

Dutch servant-girl, who had lived in an English family for a year, and

who spoke English better, and with less of a foreign accent, than any

French woman I ever heard. This convinced me that German is not so

difficult to an Englishman as French; for the difficulty of acquiring

any foreign language must be mutual to the natives of each country.

There was a steam-boat here which set sail for London the next day; but

we preferred passing through Ghent, Lille, and Antwerp. This last is a

very delightful city, and the spire of the cathedral exquisitely light,

beautiful, and well-proportioned. Indeed, the view of the whole city

from the water-side is as singular as it is resplendent. We saw the

Rubenses in the great church here. They were hung outside the choir; and

seen against the huge white walls, looked like pictures dangling in a

broker’s shop for sale. They did not form a part of the building. The

person who shewed us the Taking Down from the Cross, said, ‘It was the

finest picture in the world.’ I said, ‘One of the finest’—an answer with

which he appeared by no means satisfied. We returned by way of St. Omers

and Calais. I wished to see Calais once more, for it was here I first

landed in France twenty years ago.

I confess, London looked to me on my return like a long, straggling,

dirty country-town; nor do the names of Liverpool, Manchester,

Birmingham, Leeds, or Coventry, sound like a trumpet in the ears, or

invite our pilgrim steps like those of Sienna, of Cortona, Perugia,

Arezzo, Pisa and Ferrara. I am not sorry, however, that I have got back.

There is an old saying, _Home is home, be it never so homely_. However

delightful or striking the objects may be abroad, they do not take the

same hold of you, nor can you identify yourself with them as at home.

Not only is the language an insuperable obstacle; other things as well

as men speak a language new and strange to you. You live comparatively

in a dream, though a brilliant and a waking one. It is in vain to urge

that you learn the language; that you are familiarized with manners and

scenery. No other language can ever become our mother-tongue. We may

learn the words; but they do not convey the same feelings, nor is it

possible they should do so, unless we could begin our lives over again,

and divide our conscious being into two different selves. Not only can

we not attach the same meaning to words, but we cannot see objects with

the same eyes, or form new loves and friendships after a certain period

of our lives. The pictures that most delighted me in Italy were those I

had before seen in the Louvre ‘with eyes of youth.’ I could revive this

feeling of enthusiasm, but not transfer it. Neither would I recommend

the going abroad when young, to become a mongrel being, half French,

half English. It is better to be something than nothing. It is well to

see foreign countries to enlarge one’s speculative knowledge, and dispel

false prejudices and libellous views of human nature; but our affections

must settle at home. Besides though a dream, it is a splendid one. It is

fine to see the white Alps rise in the horizon of fancy at the distance

of a thousand miles; or the imagination may wing its thoughtful flight

among the castellated Apennines, roaming from city to city over cypress

and olive grove, viewing the inhabitants as they crawl about mouldering

palaces or temples, which no hand has touched for the last three hundred

years, and see the genius of Italy brooding over the remains of virtue,

glory and liberty, with Despair at the gates, an English Minister

handing the keys to a foreign Despot, and stupid Members of Parliament

wondering what is the matter!

THE END.

MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS ON THE FINE ARTS

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Of the essays on the Fine Arts which follow, none were collected for

publication in volume form by Hazlitt. Particulars as to their source

will be found at the head of the Notes referring to each essay.

In 1838 the articles on _Painting_ and _The Fine Arts_, ‘contributed to

the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, by B. R. Haydon,

Esq., and William Hazlitt, Esq.,’ were republished in Edinburgh by

Messrs. Adam & Charles Black, in a post 8vo. volume. See the article in

the present volume and notes thereto.

In 1843 appeared a fcap. 8vo. volume of ‘Criticisms on Art: and Sketches

of the Picture Galleries of England. By William Hazlitt. With Catalogues

of the Principal Galleries, now first collected. Edited by his Son,’ and

published by John Templeman, 248, Regent Street. A Second Series

appeared the year following, published by C. Templeman, 6 Great Portland

Street, London. These volumes contain the essays printed in the present

volume, together with others on Art which are to be found in _Table

Talk_, _The Round Table_, _The Plain Speaker_ and volume x. of the

present edition, where the _Edinburgh Review_ articles will be found.

They also contain two appendixes of catalogues of pictures in the

various galleries, compiled by Hazlitt’s son, and not here reprinted. In

the Advertisement to these volumes Mr. W. Hazlitt (the second) states:

‘I have carefully corrected all the references to the pictures

described, according to the latest arrangement of each particular

gallery; and I have here and there ventured to append an illustrative or

corrective note, where such seemed to be required as to a matter of

fact.’ In the present edition the Essays are given as Hazlitt published

them, and in the order of their first publication.

A ‘New Edition’ of ‘Essays on the Fine Arts by William Hazlitt,’ was

published in one volume by Messrs. Reeves & Turner in 1873, edited by

Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt.

CONTENTS

PAGE

On Haydon’s Solomon 309

The Catalogue Raisonné of the British Institution 311

West’s Picture of Death on the Pale Horse 318

On Williams’s Views in Greece 324

On the Elgin Marbles 326

Fonthill Abbey 348

Judging of Pictures 356

The Vatican 359

English Students at Rome 367

Fine Arts 377

James Barry 413

Originality 423

The Ideal 429

Royal Academy 434

ESSAYS ON THE FINE ARTS

ON HAYDON’S SOLOMON

The Tenth Exhibition of the Society of Painters in Oil and Water Colours

opened on Monday last. The productions of Glover, Cristall, De Wint, &c.

principally fill and adorn the Water Colour Department.—Among the oil

pictures in the room, the principal are, _The Judgment of Solomon_, by

Mr. Haydon, and _Don Quixote receiving Mambrino’s Helmet from Sancho_,

by Mr. Richter. The former is a work that evidently claims a place in

the higher department of art; and we are little disposed to reject that

claim. It certainly shews a bold and aspiring mind; in many parts (that

which we hold above all other things to be essential to the painter) an

eye for the picturesque both in form and colour; considerable variety of

expression, attitude and character, and great vigour and rapidity of

execution throughout. It would, at the same time, be in vain to deny,

that the success is not always in proportion to the effort made; that

the conception of character is sometimes erroneous; that the desire to

avoid insipidity and monotony has occasionally led to extravagance and

distortion; that there are great inequalities in the style, and some

inconsistencies in the composition; and that, however striking and

admirable many of the parts are, there is a want of union and complete

harmony between them. What was said of the _disjecta membra poetæ_ is

not inapplicable to this picture. It exhibits fine studies and original

fragments of a great work—it has many powerful starts of genius—without

conveying that impression of uniform consistency and combined effect,

which is sometimes attained by the systematic mechanism of

well-disciplined dullness, and at others is the immediate emanation of

genius.

That which strikes the eye most on entering the room, and on which it

dwells with the greatest admiration afterwards, are the figures of the

two Jewish Doctors on the left of Solomon. We do not recollect any

figures in modern pictures which have a more striking effect. We say

this, not only with respect to the solid mass of colour which they

project on the eye, the dark draperies contrasting finely with the

paleness of the countenances, but also with respect to the force, truth,

and dramatic opposition of character displayed in them. The face of the

one is turned in anxious expectation towards the principal actors in the

scene: the other, looking downwards, appears lost in inward meditation

upon it. The one is eagerly watching for the catastrophe,—the other

seems endeavouring to anticipate it. Too much praise cannot be given to

the conception of the figure of Solomon, which is raised above the rest

of the picture, and placed in the centre—the face fronting, and looking

down, the action balanced and suspended, and the face intended to

combine the different characters of youth, beauty, and wisdom. Such is

evidently the conception of the painter, which we think equally striking

and just; but we are by no means satisfied that he has succeeded in

embodying this idea, except as far as relates to the design. The

expression of the countenance of the youthful judge, which ought to

convey the feeling of calm penetration, we think, degenerates into

supercilious indifference; the action given to the muscles is such as to

destroy the beauty of the features, without giving force to the

character, and instead of the majesty of conscious power and intellect,

there is an appearance of languid indecision, which seems to shrink with

repugnance from the difficulties which it has to encounter. The

colouring of the head is unexceptionable. In the face of the good

mother, the artist has, in our opinion, succeeded in overcoming that

which has been always considered as the greatest difficulty of the

art—the union of beauty with strong expression. The whole face exhibits

the internal workings of maternal love and fear; but its death-like

paleness and agony do not destroy the original character of feminine

beauty and delicacy. The attitude of this figure is decidedly bad, and

out of nature as well as decorum. It is one of those sprawling,

extravagant, theatrical French figures, in which a common action is

strained to the extremity of caricature. The action and expression of

the executioner are liable to the same objection. He is turbulent and

fierce, instead of being cold and obdurate. He should not bluster in the

part heroically like an actor—it is his office.—On the whole, we think

this picture decidedly superior to any of this Artist’s former

productions, and a proof not only of genius, but of improved taste and

judgment. In speaking of it with freedom, we trust we shall best serve

both him and the art.

THE CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ OF THE BRITISH INSTITUTION

We will lay odds that this is a fellow ‘damned in a fair face;’ with

white eyes and eye-brows; of the colour of a Shrewsbury cake; a smooth

tallow-skinned rascal, a white German sausage, a well-fed chitterling,

from whose face Madame de —— would have turned away in disgust,—a

transcendental stuffed man! We have no patience that the Arts should be

catechised by a piece of whitleather, a whey-face, who thinks that

pictures, like the moon, should be made of green-cheese! Shall a roll of

double tripe rise up in judgment on grace; shall a piece of dough talk

of feeling? ‘Tis too much. ‘Sdeath, for Rembrandt to be demanded of a

cheese-curd, what replication should he make? What might Vandyke answer

to a jack-pudding, whose fingers are of a thickness at both ends? What

should Rubens say, who ‘lived in the rainbow, and played i’ th’ plighted

clouds,’ to a swaddling-clout, a piece of stockinet, of fleecy hosiery,

to a squab man, without a bend in his body? What might Raphael answer to

a joint-stool? Or Nicholas Poussin, charged in the presence of his

_Cephalus and Aurora_ with being a mere pedant, without grace or

feeling, to this round-about machine of formal impertinence, this

lumbering go-cart of dulness and spite? We could have wished that as the

fellow stood before the portrait of Rembrandt, chattering like an ape,

making mocks and mows at it, the picture had lifted up its _great grimy

fist_, and knocked him down.

The _Catalogue Raisonné_ of the British Institution is only worth

notice, as it is pretty well understood to be a declaration of the views

of the Royal Academy. It is a very dull, gross, impudent attack by one

of its toad-eaters on human genius, on permanent reputation, and on

liberal art. What does it say? Why, in so many words, that the knowledge

of Art in this country is inconsistent with the existence of the

Academy, and that their success as a body of men instituted for

promoting and encouraging the Fine Arts, requires the destruction or

concealment of all works of Art of great and acknowledged excellence. In

this they may be right; but we did not think they would have come

forward to say so themselves. Or that they would get a fellow, a low

buffoon, a wretched Merry Andrew, a practical St. Giles’s joker, a dirty

Grub-Street critic, to vent his abominations on the _chef-d’œuvres_

produced by the greatest painters that have gone before them, to paw

them over with his bleared-eyes, to smear the filth and ordure of his

tongue upon them, to spit at them, to point at them, to nickname them,

to hoot at them, to make mouths at them, to shrug up his shoulders and

run away from them in the presence of these divine guests, like a

blackguard who affects to make a bugbear of every one he meets in the

street; to play over again the nauseous tricks of one of Swift’s

Yahoos—and for what? Avowedly for the purpose of diverting the public

mind from the contemplation of all that genius and art can boast in the

lapse of ages, and to persuade the world that there is nothing in Art

that has been or ever will be produced worth looking at but the gilt

frames and red curtains at the Exhibition of the Royal Academy! We knew

before that they had no great genius for the Arts; but we thought they

might have some love of them in their hearts. They here avow their

rankling jealousy, hatred and scorn, of all Art and of all the great

names in Art, and as a bold put indeed, require the keeping down of the

public taste as the only means of keeping up the bubble of their

reputation. They insist that their only hope of continued encouragement

and support with a _discerning public_ is in hood-winking that public,

in confining their highest notions of Art to their own gross and

superficial style of daubing, and in vilifying all works of standard

genius.—This is right English. The English are a shop-keeping nation,

and the Royal Academy are a society of hucksters in the Fine Arts, who

are more tenacious of their profits as chapmen and dealers, than of the

honour of the Art. The day after the _Catalogue Raisonné_ was published,

the Prince Regent, in the name and on behalf of his Father, should have

directed it to be burned by the hands of the hangman of their Committee,

or, upon refusal, have shut up their shop. A society for the

encouragement and promotion of Art has no right to exist at all, from

the moment that it professes to exist only in wrong of Art, by the

suppression of the knowledge of Art, in contempt of genius in Art, in

defiance of all manly and liberal sentiment in Art. But this is what the

Royal Academy professes to do in the _Catalogue Raisonné_.

The Academy, from its commencement and up to the present hour, is in

fact, a mercantile body, like any other mercantile body, consisting

chiefly of manufacturers of portraits, who have got a regular monopoly

of this branch of trade, with a certain rank, style, and title of their

own, that is, with the King’s privilege to be thought Artists and men of

genius,—and who, with the jealousy natural to such bodies, supported by

authority from without, and by cabal within, think themselves bound to

crush all generous views and liberal principles of Art, lest they should

interfere with their monopoly and their privilege to be thought Artists

and men of genius. The Academy is the Royal road to Art. The whole style

of English Art, as issuing from this Academy, is founded on a principle

of appeal to the personal vanity and ignorance of their sitters, and of

accommodation to the lucrative pursuits of the Painter, in a sweeping

attention to effect in painting, by which means he can cover so many

more whole or half lengths in each season. The Artists have not time to

finish their pictures, or if they had, the effect would be lost in the

superficial glare of that hot room, where nothing but rouged cheeks,

naked shoulders, and Ackermann’s dresses for May, can catch the eye in

the crowd and bustle and rapid succession of meretricious attractions,

as they do in another hot room of the same equivocal description. Yet

they complain in one part of the Catalogue, that ‘they (the

Academicians) are forced to come into a hasty competition every year

with works that have stood the test of ages.’ It is for that very

reason, among others, that it was proper to exhibit the works at the

British Institution, to show to the public, and by that means to make

the Academicians feel, that the securing the applause of posterity and a

real rank in the Art, which that alone can give, depended on the number

of pictures they finished, and not on the number they began. It is this

which excites the apprehensions of the cabal; for if the eye of the

public should be once spoiled by the Old Masters, the necessity of doing

something like them might considerably baulk the regularity of their

returns. Why should they complain of being forced into this premature

competition? Who forces them to bring forward so many pictures yearly

before they are fit to be seen? Would they have taken more pains, more

time to finish them, to work them up to that fastidious standard of

perfection, on which they have set their minds, if they had not been

hurried into this unfair competition with the British Institution, ‘sent

to their account with all their imperfections on their heads,

unhouseled, unanointed, unanealed?’ Would they have done a single stroke

more to any one picture, if the Institution had never been opened? No

such thing. It is not then true, that this new and alarming competition

prevents them from finishing their works, but it prevents them from

imposing them on the public as finished. _Pingo in eternitatem_, is not

their motto. There are three things which constitute the art of

painting, which make it interesting to the public, which give it

permanence and rank among the efforts of human genius. They are, first,

_gusto_ or expression: _i.e._ the conveying to the eye the impressions

of the soul, or the other senses connected with the sense of sight, such

as the different passions visible in the countenance, the romantic

interest connected with scenes of nature, the character and feelings

associated with different objects. In this, the highest and first part

of art, the Italian painters, particularly Raphael, Correggio, &c.,

excel. The second is the _picturesque_; that is, the seizing on those

objects, or situations and accidents of objects, as light and shade, &c.

which make them most striking to the mind as objects of sight only. This

is the _forte_ of the Flemish and Venetian painters, Titian, Paul

Veronese, Rubens, Vandyke, Rembrandt, and they have carried this part of

the art as high as it can go, some of them with more, some of them with

less of the former excellence. The third is the exact and laborious

imitation of natural objects, such as they exist in their component

parts, with every variety and nicety of detail, the pencil performing

the part of a microscope, and there being no necessity for expression or

the picturesque in the object represented, or anything but truth in the

representation. In this least interesting but still curious and

ingenious part of the Art, the Dutch School have been allowed to excel,

though with little of the former qualities, which indeed are not very

much wanted for this purpose. Now in all these three the English School

are notoriously deficient and they are so for these following reasons:—

They cannot paint _gusto_, or high expression, for it is not in the

national character. At least, it must be sought in Nature; but our

Painters do not go out of their way in search of character and

expression—their sitters come to them in crowds; and they come to them

not to be painted in all the truth of character and expression, but to

be _flattered_ out of all meaning; or they would no longer come in

crowds. To please generally, the Painter must exaggerate what is

generally pleasing, obvious to all capacities, and void of offence

before God and man, the shewy, the superficial, and the insipid, that

which strikes the greatest number of persons with the least effort of

thought; and he must suppress all the rest; all that might be ‘to the

Jews a stumbling block, and to the Gentiles foolishness.’ The Exhibition

is a successful experiment on the ignorance and credulity of the town.

They collect ‘a quantity of barren spectators’ to judge of Art, in their

corporate and public capacity, and then each makes the best market he

can of them in his own. A Royal Academician must not ‘hold the mirror up

to Nature,’ but make his canvass ‘the glass of fashion, and the mould of

form.’ The ‘numbers without number’ who pay thirty, forty, fifty, a

hundred guineas for their pictures in large, expect their faces to come

out of the Painter’s hands smooth, rosy, round, smiling; just as they

expect their hair to come out of the barber’s curled and powdered. It

would be a breach of contract to proceed in any other way. A fashionable

Artist and a fashionable hair-dresser have the same common principles of

theory and practice; the one fits his customers to appear with _éclat_

in a ball room, the other in the Great Room of the Royal Academy. A

certain dexterity, and a knowledge of the prevailing fashion, are all

that is necessary to either. An Exhibition-portrait is, therefore, an

essence, not of character, but of commonplace. It displays not high

thought and fine feeling, but physical well-being, with an outside label

of health, ease, and competence. Yet the Catalogue-writer talks of the

dignity of modern portrait! To enter into a general obligation to paint

the passions or characters of men, must, where there are none, be

difficult to the artist; where they are bad, be disagreeable to his

employers. When Sir Thomas Lawrence painted Lord Castlereagh some time

ago, he did not try to exhibit his character, out of complaisance to his

Lordship, nor his understanding, out of regard to himself; but he

painted him in a fashionable coat, with his hair dressed in the fashion,

in a genteel posture like one of his footmen, and with the prim,

smirking aspect of a haberdasher. There was nothing of the noble

_disinvoltura_ of his Lordship’s manner, the grand _contour_ of his

features, the profundity of design hid under an appearance of

indifference, the traces of the Irish patriot or the English statesman.

It would have puzzled Lavater or Spurzheim to have discovered there the

author of the Letter to _Mon Prince_. Tacitus had drawn him before in a

different style, and perhaps Sir Thomas despaired of rivalling this

great master in his own way. Yet the picture pleased, and Mr. Perry of

the _Chronicle_ swore to the likeness, though he had been warned to the

contrary. Now, if this picture had erred on the side of the

characteristic expression as much as it did on that of mannered

insignificance, how it must have shocked all parties in the State! An

insipid misrepresentation was safer than a disagreeable reality. In the

glosses of modern art, as in the modern refinement of law, it is the

truth that makes the libel.—Again, the _picturesque_ is necessarily

banished from the painting rooms of the Academicians, and from the Great

Room of the Academy. People of fashion go to be painted because other

people do, and they wish to look like other people. We never remember to

have seen a memorable head in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy. Any

thing that had any thing singular or striking in it would look quite

monstrous there, and would be stared out of countenance. Any thing

extraordinary or original in nature is inadmissible in modern art; any

thing that would strike the eye, or that you would ever think of again,

would be a violation of decorum, an infringement of professional

etiquette, and would disturb the uniform and well-arranged monotony of

the walls of the Exhibition ‘with most admired disorder.’ A man of any

originality of mind, if he has also the least common sense, soon finds

his error, and reforms. At Rome one must do as the people at Rome do.

The Academy is not the place for the eccentricities of genius. The

persons of rank and opulence, who wish to have their pictures exhibited,

do not wish to be exhibited as objects of natural history, as

extraordinary phenomena in art or nature, in the moral or intellectual

world; and in this they are right. Neither do they wish to volunteer

their own persons, which they hold in due reverence, though there is

nothing at all in them, as subjects for the painter to exercise his

skill upon, as studies of light and shade, as merely objects of sight,

as something curious and worth seeing from the outward accidents of

nature. They do not like to share their triumph with nature; to sink

their persons in ‘her glorious light.’ They owe no allegiance to the

elements. They wish to be painted as Mr. and Mrs. Such-a-one, not as

studies of light and shade; they wish to be represented as complete

abstractions of persons and property, to have one side of the face seen

as much as the other; to have their coat, waistcoat and breeches, their

muslin dresses, silks, sophas, and settees, their dogs and horses, their

house furniture, painted, to have themselves and all that belongs to

them, and nothing else painted. The picture is made for them, and not

they for the picture. Hence there can be nothing but the vapid, trite,

and mechanical, in professional Art. Professional Art is a contradiction

in terms. Art is genius, and genius cannot belong to a profession. Our

Painters’ galleries are not studies, but lounging shew-rooms. Would a

booby with a star wish to be painted (think you) with a view to its

effect in the picture, or would he not have it seen at all events and as

much as possible? The Catalogue Writer wishes the gentlemen-sitters of

the Royal Academy to go and look at Rembrandt’s portraits, and to ask

themselves, their wives, and daughters, whether they would like to be

painted in the same way? No, truly. This, we confess, is hard upon our

Artists, to have to look upon splendour and on obscurity still more

splendid, which they dare not even attempt to imitate; to see themselves

condemned, by the refinements of taste and progress of civilization, to

smear rouge and white paste on the faces and necks of their portraits,

for ever; and still ‘to let _I dare not_ wait upon _I would_, like the

poor cat in the adage.’ But why then complain of the injury they would

sustain by the restoration of Art (if it were possible) into the

original wardship of nature and genius, when ‘service sweat for duty,

not for meed.’ Sir Joshua made a shift to combine some of Rembrandt’s

art with his portraits, only by getting the start of public affectation,

and by having the lead in his profession, so that like the early

painters he could assert the independence of his own taste and judgment.

The modern makers of catalogues would have driven him and his _chiaro

scuro_ into the shade presently. The critic professes to admire Sir

Joshua, though all his excellencies are Gothic, palpably borrowed from

the Old Masters. But he is wrong or inconsistent in everything.—The

imitation of the details of nature is not compatible with the

professional avarice of the painter, as the two former essentials of the

art are inconsistent with the vanity and ignorance of his employers.

‘This, this is the unkindest blow of all.’ It is that in which the

understanding of the multitude is most likely to conspire with the

painter’s ‘own gained knowledge’ to make him dissatisfied with his

disproportioned profits or under the loss of them. The Dutch masters are

instructive enough in this way, and shew the value of detail by shewing

the value of Art where there is nothing else but this. But this is not

all. It might be pretended by our wholesale manufacturers of

_chef-d’œuvres_ in the Fine Arts, that so much nicety of execution is

useless or improper in works of high gusto and grand effect. It happens

unfortunately, however, that the works of the greatest gusto and most

picturesque effect have this fidelity of imitation often in the highest

degree (as in Raphael, Titian, and Rembrandt), generally in a very high

degree (as in Rubens and Paul Veronese), so that the moderns gain

nothing by this pretext. This is a serious loss of time or reputation to

them. To paint a hand like Vandyke would cost them as much time as a

dozen half-lengths; and they could not do it after all. To paint an eye

like Titian would cost them their whole year’s labour, and they would

lose their time and their labour into the bargain. Or to take Claude’s

landscapes as an example in this respect, as they are in almost all

others. If Turner, whom, with the Catalogue-writer, we allow, most

heartily allow, to be the greatest landscape-painter of the age, were to

finish his trees or his plants in the foreground, or his distances, or

his middle distances, or his sky, or his water, or his buildings, or any

thing in his pictures, in like manner, he could only paint and sell one

landscape where he now paints and sells twenty. This is a clear loss to

the artist of pounds, shillings, and pence, and ‘that’s a feeling

disputation.’ He would have to put twenty times as much of every thing

into a picture as he now has, and that is what (if he is like other

persons who have got into bad habits) he would be neither able nor

willing to do. It was a common cant a short time ago to pretend of him

as it formerly was of Wilson, that he had other things which Claude had

not, and that what Claude had besides, only impaired the grandeur of his

pictures. The public have seen to the contrary. They see the quackery of

painting trees blue and yellow, to produce the effect of green at a

distance. They see the affectation of despising the mechanism of the

Art, and never thinking about any thing but the mechanism. They see that

it is not true in Art, that a part is greater than the whole, or that

the means are destructive of the end. They see that a daub, however

masterly, cannot vie with the perfect landscapes of the all-accomplished

Claude. ‘To some men their graces serve them but as enemies’; and it was

so till the other day with Claude. If it had been only for opening the

eyes of the public on this subject, the Institution would have deserved

well of the art and their country.

WEST’S PICTURE OF DEATH ON THE PALE HORSE

Mr. West’s name stands deservedly high in the annals of art in this

country—too high for him to condescend to be his own puffer, even at

second-hand. He comes forward, in the present instance, as the painter

and the showman of the piece; as the candidate for public applause, and

the judge who awards himself the prize; as the idol on the altar, and

the priest who offers up the grateful incense of praise. He places

himself, as it were, before his own performance, with a _Catalogue

Raisonné_ in his hand, and, before the spectator can form a judgment on

the work itself, dazzles him with an account of the prodigies of art

which are there conceived and executed. This is not quite fair. It is a

proceeding which, though ‘it sets on a quantity of barren spectators to

_admire_, cannot but make the judicious grieve.’ Mr. West, by thus

taking to himself unlimited credit for the ‘high endeavour and the glad

success,’ by proclaiming aloud that he has aimed at the highest

sublimities of his art, and as loudly, with a singular mixture of

pomposity and phlegm, that he has fully accomplished all that his most

ardent hopes had anticipated,—must, we should think, obtain a great deal

of spurious, catchpenny reputation, and lose a great deal of that

genuine tribute of approbation to which he is otherwise entitled, by

turning the attention of the well-informed and unprejudiced part of the

community from his real and undoubted merits to his groundless and

exaggerated pretensions. _Self-praise_, it is said, _is no praise_; but

it is worse than this. It either shows great weakness and vanity for an

artist to talk (or to get another to talk) of his own work, which was

produced yesterday, and may be forgotten to-morrow, with the same lofty,

emphatic, solemn tone, as if it were already stamped with the voice of

ages, and had become sacred to the imagination of the beholder; or else

the doing so is a deliberate attempt to encroach on the right of private

judgment and public opinion, which those who are not its dupes will

resent accordingly, and endeavour to repel by acts of precaution or

hostility. An unsuccessful effort to extort admiration is sure to

involve its own punishment.

We should not have made these remarks, if the ‘Description of the

Picture of Death’ had been a solitary instance of the kind; but it is

one of a series of descriptions of the same sort—it is a part of a

system of self-adulation which cannot be too much discouraged. Perhaps

Mr. West may say, that the Descriptive Catalogue is not _his_; that he

has nothing to do with its composition or absurdities. But it must be

written with his consent and approbation; and this is a sanction which

it ought not to receive. We presume the artist would have it in his

option to put a negative on any undue censure or flagrant abuse of his

picture; it must be equally in his power, and it is equally incumbent

upon him, to reject, with dignified modesty, the gross and palpable

flatteries which it contains, direct or by implication.

The first notice we received of this picture was by an advertisement in

a morning paper, (the editor of which is not apt to hazard extravagant

opinions without a prompter,) purporting that, ‘in consequence of the

President’s having devoted a year and a half to its completion, and of

its having for its subject the _Terrible Sublime_, it would place Great

Britain in the same conspicuous relation to the rest of Europe in arts,

that the battle of Waterloo had done in arms!’ We shall not stay to

decide between the battle and the picture; but the writer follows up the

same idea of the _Terrible Sublime_ in the Catalogue, the first

paragraph of which is conceived in the following terms:—

‘The general effect proposed to be excited by this picture is the

terrible sublime, and its various modifications, until lost in the

opposite extremes of pity and horror, a sentiment which painting has so

seldom attempted to awaken, that a particular description of the subject

will probably be acceptable to the public.’

‘So shall my anticipation prevent your discovery.’ Mr. West here, like

Bayes in the ‘Rehearsal,’ _insinuates the plot_ very profoundly. He has,

it seems, opened a new walk in art with its alternate ramifications into

the opposite regions of horror and pity, and kindly takes the reader by

the hand, to show him how triumphantly he has arrived at the end of his

journey.

‘In poetry,’ continues the writer, ‘the same effect is produced by a few

abrupt and rapid gleams of description, touching, as it were, with fire,

the features and edges of a general mass of awful obscurity; but in

painting, such indistinctness would be a defect, and imply, that the

artist wanted the power to pourtray the conceptions of his fancy. Mr.

West was of opinion that to delineate a physical form, which in its

moral impression would approximate to that of the visionary Death of

Milton, it was necessary to endow it, if possible, with the appearance

of superhuman strength and energy. He has, therefore, exerted the utmost

force and perspicuity of his pencil on the central figure.’ This is

‘spoken with authority, and not as the scribes.’ Poetry, according to

the definition here introduced of it, resembles a candlelight picture,

which gives merely the rim and outlines of things in a vivid and

dazzling, but confused and imperfect manner. We cannot tell whether this

account will be considered as satisfactory. But Mr. West, or his

commentator, should tread cautiously on this ground. He may otherwise

commit himself, not only in a comparison with the epic poet, but with

the inspired writer, who only uses _words_. It will hardly be contended,

for instance, that the account of Death on the Pale Horse in the book of

Revelations, never produced its due effect of _the terrible sublime_,

till the deficiencies of the pen were supplied by the pencil. Neither do

we see how the endowing a physical form with superhuman strength, has

any necessary connection with the _moral impression of the visionary

Death of Milton_. There seems to be here some radical mistake in Mr.

West’s theory. The moral attributes of death are powers and effects of

an infinitely wide and general description, which no individual or

physical form can possibly represent, but by courtesy of speech or by a

distant analogy. The moral impression of Death is essentially visionary;

its reality is in the mind’s eye. Words are here the only things; and

things, physical forms, the mere mockeries of the understanding. The

less definite the conception, the less bodily, the more vast, unformed,

and unsubstantial, the nearer does it approach to some resemblance of

that omnipresent, lasting, universal, irresistible principle, which

everywhere, and at some time or other, exerts its power over all things.

Death is a mighty abstraction, like Night, or Space, or Time. He is an

ugly customer, who will not be invited to supper, or to sit for his

picture. He is with us and about us, but we do not see him. He stalks on

before us, and we do not mind him; he follows us behind, and we do not

look back at him. We do not see him making faces at us in our lifetime!

we do not feel him tickling our bare ribs afterwards, nor look at him

through the empty grating of our hollow eyes! Does Mr. West really

suppose that he has put the very image of Death upon his canvas; that he

has taken the fear of him out of our hearts; that he has circumscribed

his power with a pair of compasses; that he has measured the length of

his arm with a two-foot rule; that he has suspended the stroke of his

dart with a stroke of his pencil; that he has laid his hands on the

universal principle of destruction, and hemmed him in with lines and

lineaments, and made a gazing-stock and a show of him, ‘under the

patronage of the Prince Regent’ (as that illustrious person has taken,

and confined, and made a show of another _enemy of the human race_)—so

that the work of decay and dissolution is no longer going on in nature;

that all we have heard or felt of death is but a fable compared with

this distinct, living, and warranted likeness of him? Oh no! There is no

power in the pencil actually to embody an abstraction, to impound the

imagination, to circumvent the powers of the soul, which hold communion

with the universe. The painter cannot make the general particular, the

infinite and imaginary defined and palpable, that which is only believed

and dreaded, an object of sight.

As Mr. West appears to have wrong notions of the powers of his art, so

he seems not to put in practice all that it is capable of. The only way

in which the painter of genius can represent the force of moral truth,

is by translating it into an artificial language of his own,—by

substituting hieroglyphics for words, and presenting the closest and

most striking affinities his fancy and observation can suggest between

the general idea and the visible illustration of it. Here we think Mr.

West has failed. The artist has represented Death riding over his

prostrate victims in all the rage of impotent despair. He is in a great

splutter, and seems making a last effort to frighten his foes by an

explosion of red-hot thunderbolts, and a pompous display of his

allegorical paraphernalia. He has not the calm, still, majestic form of

Death, killing by a look,—withering by a touch. His presence does not

make the still air cold. His flesh is not stony or cadaverous, but is

crusted over with a yellow glutinous paste, as if it had been baked in a

pye. Milton makes Death ‘grin horrible a ghastly smile,’ with an evident

allusion to the common Death’s head; but in the picture he seems

grinning for a wager, with a full row of loose rotten teeth; and his

terrible form is covered with a long black drapery, which would cut a

figure in an undertaker’s shop, and which cuts a figure where it is (for

it is finely painted), but which serves only as a disguise for the King

of Terrors. We have no idea of such a swaggering and blustering Death as

this of Mr. West’s. He has not invoked a ghastly spectre from the tomb,

but has called up an old squalid ruffian from a night cellar, and

crowned him ‘monarch of the universal world.’ The horse on which he

rides is not ‘pale,’ but white. There is no gusto, no imagination in Mr.

West’s colouring. As to his figure, the description gives an accurate

idea of it enough. ‘His horse rushes forward with the universal wildness

of a tempestuous element, breathing livid pestilence, and rearing and

trampling with the vehemence of unbridled fury.’ The style of the figure

corresponds to the style of the description. It is overloaded and

top-heavy. The chest of the animal is a great deal too long for the

legs.

The painter has made amends for this splashing figure of the Pale Horse,

by those of the White and Red Horse. They are like a couple of

rocking-horses, and go as easy. Mr. West’s vicarious egotism obtrudes

itself again offensively in speaking of the Rider on the White Horse.

‘As he is supposed,’ says the Catalogue, ‘to represent the Gospel, it

was requisite that he should be invested with those exterior indications

of purity, excellence, and dignity, which are associated in our minds

with the name and offices of the Messiah. But it was not THE SAVIOUR

healing and comforting the afflicted, or the meek and lowly JESUS,

bearing with resignation the scorn and hatred of the scoffing multitude,

that was to be represented;—it was the King of Kings going forth,

conquering and to conquer. He is _therefore_ painted with a solemn

countenance, expressive of a mind filled with the thoughts of a great

enterprise; and he advances onward in his sublime career with that

serene Majesty,’ &c. Now this is surely an unwarrantable assumption of

public opinion in a matter of taste. Christ is not represented in this

picture as he was in Mr. West’s two former pictures; but in all three he

gives you to understand that he has reflected the true countenance and

divine character of the Messiah. _Multum abludit imago._ The Christs in

each picture have a different character indeed, but they only present a

variety of meanness and insipidity. But the unwary spectator, who looks

at the catalogue to know what he is to think of the picture, and reads

all these _therefores_ of _sublimity_, _serenity_, _purity_, &c.

considers them as so many infallible inferences and demonstrations of

the painter’s skill.

Mr. West has been tolerably successful in the delineation of the neutral

character of the ‘Man on the Black Horse;’ but ‘the two wretched

emaciated figures’ of a man and woman before him, ‘absorbed in the

feelings of their own particular misery,’ are not likely to excite any

sympathy in the beholders. They exhibit the lowest stage of mental and

physical imbecility, that could never by any possibility come to any

good. In the domestic groupe in the foreground, ‘the painter has

attempted to excite the strongest degree of pity which his subject

admitted, and to contrast the surrounding objects with images of

tenderness and beauty;’ and it is here that he has principally failed.

The Dying Mother appears to have been in her lifetime a plaster-cast

from the antique, stained with a little purple and yellow, to imitate

the life. The ‘Lovely Infant’ that is falling from her breast, is a

hideous little creature, with glazed eyes, and livid aspect, borrowed

from the infant who is falling out of his mother’s lap over the bridge,

in Hogarth’s Print of Gin-Lane. The Husband’s features, who is placed in

so pathetic an attitude, are cut out of the hardest wood, and of the

deepest dye; and the surviving Daughter, who is stated ‘to be sensible

only to the loss she has sustained by the death of so kind a parent,’ is

neither better nor worse than the figures we meet with in the elegant

frontispieces to history-books, or family stories, intended as Christmas

presents to good little boys and girls. The foreshortening of the lower

extremities, both of the Mother and Child, is wretchedly defective,

either in drawing and colouring.

In describing ‘the anarchy of the combats of men with beasts,’ Mr. West

has attained that sort of excellence which always arises from a

knowledge of the rules of composition. His lion, however, looks as if

his face and velvet paws were covered with calf’s skin, or leather

gloves pulled carefully over them. So little is the appearance of hair

given! The youth in this group, whom Mr. West celebrates for his

muscular manly courage, has a fine rustic look of health and strength

about him; but we think the other figure, with scowling swarthy face,

striking at an animal, is superior in force of character and expression.

In the back figure of the man holding his hand to his head, (with no

very dignified action), the artist has well imitated the bad colouring,

and stiff inanimate drawing of Poussin. The remaining figures are not of

much importance, or are striking only from their defects. Mr. West,

however, omits no opportunity of discreetly sounding his own praise.

‘The story of this group,’ it is said, ‘would have been incomplete, had

the lions _not_ been shown conquerors to a certain extent, by the two

wounded men,’ &c. As it is, it is perfect! Admirable critic! Again we

are told, ‘The pyramidal form of this large division is _perfected_ by a

furious bull,’ &c. Nay, indeed, the form of the pyramid is even

preserved in the title-page of the catalogue. The prettiest incident in

the picture is the dove lamenting over its mate, just killed by the

serpent. We do not deny Mr. West the praise of invention. Upon the

whole, we think this the best coloured and most picturesque of all Mr.

West’s productions; and in all that relates to composition, and the

introduction of the adjuncts of historical design, it shows, like his

other works, the hand of a master. In the same room is the picture of

Christ Rejected. Alas! how changed, and in how short a time! The colours

are scarcely dry, and it already looks dingy, flat, and faded.

ON WILLIAMS’S VIEWS IN GREECE

There has been lately exhibited at the Calton Convening Room, Edinburgh,

a collection of views in Greece, Italy, Sicily, and the Ionian Isles,

painted in water colours by Mr. Hugh Williams, a native of Scotland,

which themselves do honour to the talents of the artist, as the

attention they have excited does to the taste of the northern capital.

It is well; for the exhibition in that town of the works of living

artists (to answer to our Somerset-House exhibition) required some

set-off. Mr. Williams has made the _amende honorable_, for his country,

to the offended genius of art, and has stretched out under the far-famed

Calton Hill, and in the eye of Arthur’s Seat, fairy visions of the fair

land of Greece, that Edinburgh belles and beaux repair to see with

cautious wonder and well-regulated delight. It is really a most

agreeable novelty to the passing visitant to see the beauty of the

North, the radiant beauty of the North, enveloped in such an atmosphere,

and set off by such a back-ground. Oriental skies pour their molten

lustre on Caledonian charms. The slender, lovely, taper waist (made more

taper, more lovely, more slender by the stay-maker), instead of being

cut in two by the keen blasts that rage in Prince’s street, is here

supported by warm languid airs, and a thousand sighs, that breathe from

the vale of Tempe. Do not those fair tresses look brighter as they are

seen hanging over a hill in Arcadia, than when they come in contact with

the hard grey rock of the castle? Do not those fair blue eyes look more

translucent as they glance over some classic stream? What can vie with

that alabaster skin but marble temples, dedicated to the Queen of Love?

What can match those golden freckles but glittering sun-sets behind

Mount Olympus? Here, in one corner of the room, stands the Hill of the

Muses, and there is a group of Graces under it! There played the NINE on

immortal lyres, and here sit the critical but admiring Scottish fair,

with the catalogue in their hands, reading the quotations from Lord

Byron’s verses with liquid eyes and lovely vermilion lips—would that

they spoke English, or any thing but Scotch!—Poor is this irony! Vain

the attempt to reconcile Scottish figures with Attic scenery! What land

can rival Greece? What earthly flowers can compare with the colours in

the sky? What living beauty can recall the dead? For in that word,

GREECE, there breathe three thousand years of fame that has no date to

come! Over that land hovers a light, brighter than that of suns, softer

than that which vernal skies shed on halcyon seas, the light that rises

from the tomb of virtue, genius, liberty! Oh! thou Uranian Venus, thou

that never art, but wast and art to be; thou that the eye sees not, but

that livest for ever in the heart; thou whom men believe and know to be,

for thou dwellest in the desires and longings, and hunger of the mind;

thou that art a Goddess, and we thy worshippers, say dost thou not smile

for ever on this land of Greece, and shed thy purple light over it, and

blend thy choicest blandishments with its magic name? But here (in the

Calton Convening Room, in Waterloo place, close under the Melville

monument—strange contradiction!) another Greece grows on the walls—other

skies are to be seen, ancient temples rise, and modern Grecian ladies

walk. Here towers Mount Olympus, where Gods once sat—that is the top of

a hill in Arcadia—(who would think that the eyes would ever behold a

form so visionary, that they would ever see an image of that, which

seems only a delicious vanished sound?) this is Corinth—that is the

Parthenon—there stands Thebes in Bœotia—that is the Plain of

Platæa,—yonder is the city of Syracuse, and the Temple of Minerva

Sunias, and there the site of the gardens of Alcinous.

‘Close to the gate a spacious garden lies,

From storms defended, and inclement skies;

Tall thriving trees confess the fruitful mould,

The reddening apple ripens here to gold.

Here the blue fig with luscious juice o’erflows,

With deeper red the full pomegranate glows;

The branch here bends beneath the weighty pear,

And verdant olives flourish round the year.

The balmy spirit of the western gale

Eternal breathes on fruits, untaught to fail;

The same mild season gives the blooms to blow,

The buds to harden, and the fruit to grow.’

This is Pope’s description of them in the Odyssey, which (we must say)

is very bad, and if Mr. Williams had not given us a more distinct idea

of the places he professes to describe, we should not have gone out of

our way to notice them. As works of art, these water-colour drawings

deserve very high praise. The drawing is correct and characteristic: the

colouring chaste, rich, and peculiar; the finishing generally careful;

and the selection of points of view striking and picturesque. We have at

once an impressive and satisfactory idea of the country of which we have

heard so much; and wish to visit places which, it seems from this

representation of them, would not bely all that we have heard. Some

splenetic travellers have pretended that Attica was dry, flat, and

barren. But it is not so in Mr. Williams’s authentic draughts; and we

thank him for restoring to us our old, and, as it appears, true

illusion—for crowning that Elysium of our school-boy fancies with

majestic hills, and scooping it into lovely winding valleys once more.

Lord Byron is, we believe, among those who have spoken ill of Greece,

calling it a ‘sand-bank,’ or something of that sort. Every ill-natured

traveller ought to hold a pencil as well as a pen in his hand, and be

forced to produce a sketch of his own lie. As to the subjects of Mr.

Williams’s pencil, nothing can exceed the local interest that belongs to

them, and which he has done nothing, either through injudicious

selection, or negligent execution, to diminish. Quere. Is not this

interest as great in London as it is in Edinburgh? In other words, we

mean to ask, whether this exhibition would not answer well in London.

There are a number of other very interesting sketches interspersed, and

some very pleasing _home_ views, which seem to show that nature is

everywhere herself.

ON THE ELGIN MARBLES

‘Who to the life an exact piece would make

Must not from others’ work a copy take;

No, not from Rubens or Vandyke:

Much less content himself to make it like

Th’ ideas and the images which lie

In his own Fancy or his Memory.

No: he before his sight must place

The natural and living face;

The real object must command

Each judgment of his eye and motion of his hand.’

The true lesson to be learnt by our students and professors from the

Elgin marbles, is the one which the ingenious and honest Cowley has

expressed in the above spirited lines. The great secret is to recur at

every step to nature—

‘To learn

Her manner, and with rapture taste her style.’

It is evident to any one who views these admirable remains of Antiquity

(nay, it is acknowledged by our artists themselves, in despite of all

the melancholy sophistry which they have been taught or have been

teaching others for half a century) that the chief excellence of the

figures depends on their having been copied from nature, and not from

imagination. The communication of art with nature is here everywhere

immediate, entire, palpable. The artist gives himself no fastidious airs

of superiority over what he sees. He has not arrived, at that stage of

his progress described at much length in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s

Discourses, in which having served out his apprenticeship to nature, he

can set up for himself in opposition to her. According to the old Greek

form of drawing up the indentures in this case, we apprehend they were

to last for life. At least, we can compare these Marbles to nothing but

human figures petrified: they have every appearance of absolute

_fac-similes_ or casts taken from nature. The details are those of

nature; the masses are those of nature; the forms are from nature; the

action is from nature; the whole is from nature. Let any one, for

instance, look at the leg of the Ilissus or River-God, which is bent

under him—let him observe the swell and undulation of the calf, the

inter-texture of the muscles, the distinction and union of all the

parts, and the effect of action every where impressed on the external

form, as if the very marble were a flexible substance, and contained the

various springs of life and motion within itself, and he will own that

art and nature are here the same thing. It is the same in the back of

the Theseus, in the thighs and knees, and in all that remains unimpaired

of these two noble figures. It is not the same in the cast (which was

shown at Lord Elgin’s) of the famous Torso by Michael Angelo, the style

of which that artist appears to have imitated too well. There every

muscle has obviously the greatest prominence and force given to it of

which it is capable in itself, not of which it is capable in connexion

with others. This fragment is an accumulation of mighty parts, without

that play and re-action of each part upon the rest, without that

‘alternate action and repose’ which Sir Thomas Lawrence speaks of as

characteristic of the Theseus and the Ilissus, and which are as

inseparable from nature as waves from the sea. The learned, however,

here make a distinction, and suppose that the truth of nature is, in the

Elgin Marbles, combined with ideal forms. If by _ideal forms_ they mean

fine natural forms, we have nothing to object; but if they mean that the

sculptors of the Theseus and Ilissus got the forms out of their own

heads, and then tacked the truth of nature to them, we can only say,

‘Let them look again, let them look again.’ We consider the Elgin

Marbles as a demonstration of the impossibility of separating art from

nature without a proportionable loss at every remove. The utter absence

of all setness of appearance proves that they were done as studies from

actual models. The separate parts of the human body may be given from

scientific knowledge:—their modifications or inflections can only be

learnt by seeing them in action; and the truth of nature is incompatible

with ideal form, if the latter is meant to exclude actually existing

form. The mutual action of the parts cannot be determined where the

object itself is not seen. That the forms of these statues are not

common nature, such as we see it every day, we readily allow: that they

were not select Greek nature, we see no convincing reason to suppose.

That truth of nature, and ideal or fine form, are not always or

generally united, we know; but how they can ever be united in art,

without being first united in nature, is to us a mystery, and one that

we as little believe as understand!

Suppose, for illustration’s sake, that these Marbles were originally

done as casts from actual nature, and then let us inquire whether they

would not have possessed all the same qualities that they now display,

granting only, that the forms were in the first instance selected with

the eye of taste, and disposed with knowledge of the art and of the

subject.

First, the larger masses and proportions of entire limbs and divisions

of the body would have been found in the casts, for they would have been

found in nature. The back and trunk, and arms, and legs, and thighs

would have been there, for these are parts of the natural man or actual

living body, and not inventions of the artist, or _ideal_ creations

borrowed from the skies. There would have been the same sweep in the

back of the Theseus; the same swell in the muscles of the arm on which

he leans; the same division of the leg into calf and small, _i.e._ the

same general results, or aggregation of parts, in the principal and most

striking divisions of the body. The upper part of the arm would have

been thicker than the lower, the thighs larger than the legs, the body

larger than the thighs, in a cast taken from common nature; and in casts

taken from the finest nature they would have been so in the same

proportion, form, and manner, as in the statue of the Theseus, if the

Theseus answers to the _idea_ of the finest nature; for the idea and the

reality must be the same; only, we contend that the idea is taken from

the reality, instead of existing by itself, or being the creature of

fancy. That is, there would be the same grandeur of proportions and

parts in a cast taken from finely developed nature, such as the Greek

sculptors had constantly before them, naked and in action, that we find

in the limbs and masses of bone, flesh, and muscle, in these much and

justly admired remains.

Again, and incontestibly, there would have been, besides the grandeur of

form, all the _minutiæ_ and individual details in the cast that subsist

in nature, and that find no place in the theory of _ideal_ art—in the

omission of which, indeed, its very grandeur is made to consist. The

Elgin Marbles give a flat contradiction to this gratuitous separation of

grandeur of design and exactness of detail, as incompatible in works of

art, and we conceive that, with their whole ponderous weight to crush

it, it will be difficult to set this theory on its legs again. In these

majestic colossal figures, nothing is omitted, nothing is made out by

negation. The veins, the wrinkles in the skin, the indications of the

muscles under the skin (which appear as plainly to the anatomist as the

expert angler knows from an undulation on the surface of the water what

fish is playing with his bait beneath it), the finger-joints, the nails,

every the smallest part cognizable to the naked eye, is given here with

the same ease and exactness, with the same prominence, and the same

subordination, that it would be in a cast from nature, _i.e._, in nature

itself. Therefore, so far these things, _viz._, nature, a cast from it,

and the Elgin Marbles, are the same; and all three are opposed to the

fashionable and fastidious theory of the _ideal_. Look at Sir Joshua’s

picture of Puck, one of his finest-coloured, and most spirited

performances. The fingers are mere _spuds_, and we doubt whether any one

can make out whether there are four toes or five allowed to each of the

feet. If there had been a young Silenus among the Elgin Marbles, we

don’t know that in some particulars it would have surpassed Sir Joshua’s

masterly sketch, but we are sure that the extremities, the nails, &c.

would have been studies of natural history. The life, the spirit, the

character of the grotesque and imaginary little being would not have

made an abortion of any part of his natural growth or form.

Farther, in a cast from nature there would be, as a matter of course,

the same play and flexibility of limb and muscle, or, as Sir Thomas

Lawrence expresses it, the same ‘alternate action and repose,’ that we

find so admirably displayed in the Elgin Marbles. It seems here as if

stone could move: where one muscle is strained, another is relaxed,

where one part is raised, another sinks in, just as in the ocean, where

the waves are lifted up in one place, they sink proportionally low in

the next: and all this modulation and affection of the different parts

of the form by others arise from an attentive and co-instantaneous

observation of the parts of a flexible body, where the muscles and bones

act upon, and communicate with, one another like the ropes and pullies

in a machine, and where the action or position given to a particular

limb or membrane naturally extends to the whole body. This harmony, this

combination of motion, this unity of spirit diffused through the

wondrous mass and every part of it, is the glory of the Elgin

Marbles:—put a well-formed human body in the same position, and it will

display the same character throughout; make a cast from it while in that

position and action, and we shall still see the same bold, free, and

comprehensive truth of design. There is no alliteration or antithesis in

the style of the Elgin Marbles, no setness, squareness, affectation, or

formality of appearance. The different muscles do not present a

succession of _tumuli_, each heaving with big throes to rival the other.

If one is raised, the other falls quietly into its place. Neither do the

different parts of the body answer to one another, like shoulder-knots

on a lacquey’s coat or the different ornaments of a building. The

sculptor does not proceed on architectural principles. His work has the

freedom, the variety, and stamp of nature. The form of corresponding

parts is indeed the same, but it is subject to inflection from different

circumstances. There is no primness or _petit maître-ship_, as in some

of the later antiques, where the artist seemed to think that flesh was

glass or some other brittle substance; and that if it were put out of

its exact shape it would break in pieces. Here, on the contrary, if the

foot of one leg is bent under the body, the leg itself undergoes an

entire alteration. If one side of the body is raised above the other,

the original, or abstract, or _ideal_ form of the two sides is not

preserved strict and inviolable, but varies as it necessarily must do in

conformity to the law of gravitation, to which all bodies are subject.

In this respect, a cast from nature would be the same. Mr. Chantrey once

made a cast from Wilson the Black. He put him into an attitude at first,

and made the cast, but not liking the effect when done, got him to sit

again and made use of the plaister of Paris once more. He was satisfied

with the result; but Wilson, who was tired with going through the

operation, as soon as it was over, went and leaned upon a block of

marble with his hands covering his face. The sagacious sculptor was so

struck with the superiority of this natural attitude over those into

which he had been arbitrarily put that he begged him (if possible) to

continue in it for another quarter of an hour, and another impression

was taken off. All three casts remain, and the last is a proof of the

superiority of nature over art. The effect of lassitude is visible in

every part of the frame, and the strong feeling of this affection,

impressed on every limb and muscle, and venting itself naturally in an

involuntary attitude which gave immediate relief, is that which strikes

every one who has seen this fine study from the life. The casts from

this man’s figure have been much admired:—it is from no superiority of

form: it is merely that, being taken from nature, they bear her ‘image

and superscription.’

As to expression, the Elgin Marbles (at least the Ilissus and Theseus)

afford no examples, the heads being gone.

Lastly, as to the _ideal_ form, we contend it is nothing but a selection

of fine nature, such as it was seen by the ancient Greek sculptors; and

we say that a sufficient approximation to this form may be found in our

own country, and still more in other countries, at this day, to warrant

the clear conclusion that, under more favourable circumstances of

climate, manners, &c. no vain imagination of the human mind could come

up to entire natural forms; and that actual casts from Greek models

would rival the common Greek statues, or surpass them in the same

proportion and manner as the Elgin Marbles do. Or if this conclusion

should be doubted, we are ready at any time to produce at least one cast

from living nature, which if it does not furnish practical proof of all

that we have here advanced, we are willing to forfeit the last thing we

can afford to part with—a theory!

If then the Elgin Marbles are to be considered as authority in subjects

of art, we conceive the following principles, which have not hitherto

been generally received or acted upon in Great Britain, will be found to

result from them:—

1. That art is (first and last) the imitation of nature.

2. That the highest art is the imitation of the finest nature, that is

to say, of that which conveys the strongest sense of pleasure or power,

of the sublime or beautiful.

3. That the _ideal_ is only the selecting a particular form which

expresses most completely the idea of a given character or quality, as

of beauty, strength, activity, voluptuousness, &c. and which preserves

that character with the greatest consistency throughout.

4. That the _historical_ is nature in action. With regard to the face,

it is expression.

5. That grandeur consists in connecting a number of parts into a whole,

and not in leaving out the parts.

6. That as grandeur is the principle of connexion between different

parts, beauty is the principle of affinity between different forms, or

rather gradual conversion into each other. The one harmonizes, the other

aggrandizes our impressions of things.

7. That grace is the beautiful or harmonious in what relates to position

or motion.

8. That grandeur of motion is unity of motion.

9. That strength is the giving the extremes, softness, the uniting them.

10. That truth is to a certain degree beauty and grandeur, since all

things are connected, and all things modify one another in nature.

Simplicity is also grand and beautiful for the same reason. Elegance is

ease and lightness, with precision.

All this we have, we believe, said before; we shall proceed to such

proofs or explanations as we are able to give of it in another article.

* * * * *

At the conclusion of a former article on this subject, we ventured to

lay down some general principles, which we shall here proceed to

elucidate in such manner as we are able.

1. The first was, that _art is (first and last) the imitation of

nature_.

By nature, we mean actually existing nature, or some one object to be

found _in rerum naturâ_, not an idea of nature existing solely in the

mind, got from an infinite number of different objects, but which was

never yet embodied in an individual instance. Sir Joshua Reynolds may be

ranked at the head of those who have maintained the supposition that

nature (or the universe of things) was indeed the groundwork or

foundation on which art rested; but that the superstructure rose above

it, that it towered by degrees above the world of realities, and was

suspended in the regions of thought alone—that a middle form, a more

refined idea, borrowed from the observation of a number of particulars,

but unlike any of them, was the standard of truth and beauty, and the

glittering phantom that hovered round the head of the genuine artist:

‘So from the ground

Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves

More airy, last the bright consummate flower!’

We have no notion of this vague, equivocal theory of art, and contend,

on the other hand, that each image in art should have a _tally_ or

corresponding prototype in some object in nature. Otherwise, we do not

see the use of art at all: it is a mere superfluity, an incumbrance to

the mind, a piece of ‘laborious foolery’—for the word, the mere name of

any object or class of objects will convey the general idea, more free

from particular details or defects than any the most neutral and

indefinite representation that can be produced by forms and colours. The

word Man, for instance, conveys a more filmy, impalpable, abstracted,

and (according to this hypothesis) sublime idea of the species, than

Michael Angelo’s Adam, or any real image can possibly do. If this then

is the true object of art, the language of painting, sculpture, &c.

becomes quite supererogatory. Sir Joshua and the rest contend, that

nature (properly speaking) does not express any single individual, nor

the whole mass of things as they exist, but a general principle, a

_something common_ to all these, retaining the perfections, that is, all

in which they are alike, and abstracting the defects, namely, all in

which they differ: so that, out of actual nature, we compound an

artificial nature, never answering to the former in any one part of its

mock-existence, and which last is the true object of imitation to the

aspiring artist. Let us adopt this principle of abstraction as the rule

of perfection, and see what havoc it will make in all our notions and

feelings in such matters. If the _perfect_ is the _intermediate_, why

not confound all objects, all forms, all colours at once? Instead of

painting a landscape with blue sky, or white clouds, or green earth, or

grey rocks and towers; what should we say if the artist (so named) were

to treat all these ‘fair varieties’ as so many imperfections and

mistakes in the creation, and mass them altogether, by mixing up the

colours on his palette in the same dull, leaden tone, and call this the

true principle of epic landscape-painting? Would not the thing be

abominable, an abortion, and worse than the worst Dutch picture? Variety

then is one principle, one beauty in external nature, and not an

everlasting source of pettiness and deformity, which must be got rid of

at all events, before taste can set its seal upon the work, or fancy own

it. But it may be said, it is different in things of the same species,

and particularly in man, who is cast in a regular mould, which mould is

one. What then, are we, on this pretext, to confound the difference of

sex in a sort of hermaphrodite softness, as Mr. Westall, Angelica

Kauffman, and others, have done in their effeminate performances? Are we

to leave out of the scale of legitimate art, the extremes of infancy and

old age, as not _middle terms_ in man’s life? Are we to strike off from

the list of available topics and sources of interest, the varieties of

character, of passion, of strength, activity, &c.? Is everything to wear

the same form, the same colour, the same unmeaning face? Are we only to

repeat the same average idea of perfection, that is, our own want of

observation and imagination, for ever, and to melt down the inequalities

and excrescences of individual nature in the monotony of abstraction? Oh

no! As well might we prefer the cloud to the rainbow; the dead corpse to

the living moving body! So Sir Joshua debated upon Rubens’s landscapes,

and has a whole chapter to inquire whether _accidents in nature_, that

is, rainbows, moonlight, sun-sets, clouds and storms, are the proper

thing in the classical style of art. Again, it is urged that this is not

what is meant, _viz._ to exclude different classes or characters of

things, but that there is in each class or character a _middle point_,

which is the point of perfection. What middle point? Or how is it

ascertained? What is the middle age of childhood? Or are all children to

be alike, dark or fair? Some of Titian’s children have black hair, and

others yellow or auburn: who can tell which is the most beautiful? May

not a St. John be older than an infant Christ? Must not a Magdalen be

different from a Madonna, a Diana from a Venus? Or may not a Venus have

more or less gravity, a Diana more or less sweetness? What then becomes

of the abstract idea in any of these cases? It varies as it does in

nature; that is, there is indeed a general principle or character to be

adhered to, but modified everlastingly by various other given or

nameless circumstances. The highest art, like nature, is a living spring

of unconstrained excellence, and does not produce a continued repetition

of itself, like plaster-casts from the same figure. But once more it may

be insisted, that in what relates to mere form or organic structure,

there is necessarily a middle line or central point, anything short of

which is deficiency, and anything beyond it excess, being the average

form to which all the other forms included in the same species tend, and

approximate more or less. Then this average form as it exists in nature

should be taken as the model for art. What occasion to do it out of your

own head, when you can bring it under the cognizance of your senses?

Suppose a foot of a certain size and shape to be the standard of

perfection, or if you will, the _mean proportion_ between all other

feet. How can you tell this so well as by seeing it? How can you copy it

so well as by having it actually before you? But, you will say, there

are particular minute defects in the best-shaped actual foot which ought

not to be transferred to the imitation. Be it so. But are there not also

particular minute beauties in the best, or even the worst shaped actual

foot, which you will only discover by ocular inspection, which are

reducible to no measurement or precepts, and which in finely-developed

nature outweigh the imperfections a thousandfold, the proper general

form being contained there also, and these being only the distinctly

articulated parts of it, with their inflections which no artist can

carry in his head alone? For instance, in the bronze monument of Henry

VII. and his wife, in Westminster Abbey, by the famous Torregiano, the

fingers and fingernails of the woman in particular are made out as

minutely, and, at the same time, as beautifully as it is possible to

conceive; yet they have exactly the effect that a cast taken from a fine

female hand would have, with every natural joint, muscle, and nerve in

complete preservation. Does this take from the beauty or magnificence of

the whole? No: it aggrandises it. What then does it take from? Nothing

but the conceit of the artist that he can paint a hand out of his own

head (that is, out of nothing, and by reducing it again as near as can

be to nothing, to a mere vague image) that shall be better than any

thing in nature. A hand or foot is not _one thing_, because it is _one

word_ or name; and the painter of mere abstractions had better lay down

his pencil at once, and be contented to write the descriptions or titles

under works of art. Lastly, it may be objected that a whole figure can

never be found perfect or equal; that the most beautiful arm will not

belong to the same figure as the most beautiful leg, and so on. How is

this to be remedied? By taking the arm from one, and the leg from the

other, and clapping them both on the same body? That will never do; for

however admirable in themselves, they will hardly agree together. One

will have a different character from the other; and they will form a

sort of natural patchwork. Or, to avoid this, will you take neither from

actual models, but derive them from the neutralising medium of your own

imagination. Worse and worse. Copy them from the same model, the best in

all its parts you can get; so that, if you have to alter, you may alter

as little as possible, and retain nearly the whole substance of

nature.[50] You may depend upon it that what is so retained, will alone

be of any specific value. The rest may have a negative merit, but will

be positively good for nothing. It will be to the vital truth and beauty

of what is taken from the best nature, like the piecing of an antique

statue. It fills a gap, but nothing more. It is, in fact, a mental

blank.

2. This leads us to the second point laid down before, which was, that

_the highest art is the imitation of the finest nature, or in other

words, of that which conveys the strongest sense of pleasure or power,

of the sublime or beautiful_.

The artist does not pretend to _invent_ an absolutely new class of

objects, without any foundation in nature. He does not spread his

palette on the canvas, for the mere finery of the thing, and tell us

that it makes a brighter show than the rainbow, or even than a bed of

tulips. He does not draw airy forms, moving above the earth, ‘gay

creatures of the element, that play i’ th’ plighted clouds,’ and scorn

the mere material existences, the concrete descendants of those that

came out of Noah’s Ark, and that walk, run, or creep upon it. No, he

does not paint only what he has seen _in his mind’s eye_, but the common

objects that both he and others daily meet—rocks, clouds, trees, men,

women, beasts, fishes, birds, or what he calls such. He is then an

imitator by profession. He gives the appearances of things that exist

outwardly by themselves, and have a distinct and independent nature of

their own. But these know their own nature best; and it is by consulting

them that he can alone trace it truly, either in the immediate details,

or characteristic essences. Nature is consistent, unaffected, powerful,

subtle: art is forgetful, apish, feeble, coarse. Nature is the original,

and therefore right: art is the copy, and can but tread lamely in the

same steps. Nature penetrates into the parts, and moves the whole mass:

it acts with diversity, and in necessary connexion; for real causes

never forget to operate, and to contribute their portion. Where,

therefore, these causes are called into play to the utmost extent that

they ever go to, there we shall have a strength and a refinement, that

art may imitate but cannot surpass. But it is said that art can surpass

this most perfect image in nature by combining others with it. What! by

joining to the most perfect in its kind something less perfect? Go

to,—this argument will not pass. Suppose you have a goblet of the finest

wine that ever was tasted: you will not mend it by pouring into it all

sorts of samples of an inferior quality. So the best in nature is the

stint and limit of what is best in art: for art can only borrow from

nature still; and, moreover, must borrow entire objects, for bits only

make patches. We defy any landscape-painter to invent out of his own

head, and by jumbling together all the different forms of hills he ever

saw, by adding a bit to one, and taking a bit from another, anything

equal to Arthur’s seat, with the appendage of Salisbury Crags, that

overlook Edinburgh. Why so? Because there are no levers in the mind of

man equal to those with which nature works at her utmost need. No

imagination can toss and tumble about huge heaps of earth as the ocean

in its fury can. A volcano is more potent to rend rocks asunder than the

most splashing pencil. The convulsions of nature can make a precipice

more frightfully, or heave the backs of mountains more proudly, or throw

their sides into waving lines more gracefully than all the _beau idéal_

of art. For there is in nature not only greater power and scope, but (so

to speak) greater knowledge and unity of purpose. Art is comparatively

weak and incongruous, being at once a miniature and caricature of

nature. We grant that a tolerable sketch of Arthur’s seat, and the

adjoining view, is better than Primrose Hill itself, (dear Primrose

Hill! ha! faithless pen, canst thou forget its winding slopes, and

valleys green, to which all Scotland can bring no parallel?) but no

pencil can transform or dandle Primrose Hill (our favourite Primrose

Hill!) into a thing of equal character and sublimity with Arthur’s seat.

It gives us some pain to make this concession; but in doing it, we

flatter ourselves that no Scotchman will have the liberality in any way

to return us the compliment. We do not recollect a more striking

illustration of the difference between art and nature in this respect,

than Mr. Martin’s very singular and, in some things, very meritorious

pictures. But he strives to outdo nature. He wants to give more than she

does, or than his subject requires or admits. He sub-divides his groups

into infinite littleness, and exaggerates his scenery into absolute

immensity. His figures are like rows of shiny pins; his mountains are

piled up one upon the back of the other, like the stories of houses. He

has no notion of the moral principle in all art, that a part may be

greater than the whole. He reckons that if one range of lofty square

hills is good, another range above that with clouds between must be

better. He thus wearies the imagination, instead of exciting it. We see

no end of the journey, and turn back in disgust. We are tired of the

effort, we are tired of the monotony of this sort of reduplication of

the same object. We were satisfied before; but it seems the painter was

not, and we naturally sympathise with him. This craving after quantity

is a morbid affection. A landscape is not an architectural elevation.

You may build a house as high as you can lift up stones with pulleys and

levers, but you cannot raise mountains into the sky merely with the

pencil. They lose probability and effect by striving at too much; and,

with their ceaseless throes, oppress the imagination of the spectator,

and bury the artist’s fame under them. The only error of these pictures

is, however, that art here puts on her seven-league boots, and thinks it

possible to steal a march upon nature. Mr. Martin might make Arthur’s

Seat sublime, if he chose to take the thing as it is; but he would be

for squaring it according to the mould in his own imagination, and for

clapping another Arthur’s Seat on the top of it, to make the Calton Hill

stare! Again, with respect to the human figure. This has an internal

structure, muscles, bones, blood-vessels, &c. by means of which the

external surface is operated upon according to certain laws. Does the

artist, with all his generalizations, understand these, as well as

nature does? Can he predict, with all his learning, that if a certain

muscle is drawn up in a particular manner, it will present a particular

appearance in a different part of the arm or leg, or bring out other

muscles, which were before hid, with certain modifications? But in

nature all this is brought about by necessary laws, and the effect is

visible to those, and those only, who look for it in actual objects.

This is the great and master-excellence of the ELGIN MARBLES, that they

do not seem to be the outer surface of a hard and immovable block of

marble, but to be actuated by an internal machinery, and composed of the

same soft and flexible materials as the human body. The skin (or the

outside) seems to be protruded or tightened by the natural action of a

muscle beneath it. This result is miraculous in art: in nature it is

easy and unavoidable. That is to say, art has to imitate or produce

certain effects or appearances without the natural causes: but the human

understanding can hardly be so true to those causes as the causes to

themselves; and hence the necessity (in this sort of _simulated

creation_) of recurring at every step to the actual objects and

appearances of nature. Having shown so far how indispensable it is for

art to identify itself with nature, in order to preserve the truth of

imitation, without which it is destitute of value or meaning, it may be

said to follow as a necessary consequence, that the only way in which

art can rise to greater dignity or excellence is by finding out models

of greater dignity and excellence in nature. Will any one, looking at

the Theseus, for example, say that it could spring merely from the

artist’s brain, or that it could be done from a common, ill-made, or

stunted body! The fact is, that its superiority consists in this, that

it is a perfect combination of art and nature, or an identical, and as

it were spontaneous copy of an individual picked out of a finer race of

men than generally tread this ball of earth. Could it be made of a

Dutchman’s trunk-hose? No. Could it be made out of one of Sir Joshua’s

Discourses on the _middle form_? No. How then? Out of an eye, a head,

and a hand, with sense, spirit, and energy to follow the finest nature,

as it appeared exemplified in sweeping masses, and in subtle details,

without pedantry, conceit, cowardice, or affectation! Some one was

asking at Mr. H—yd—n’s one day, as a few persons were looking at the

cast from this figure, why the original might not have been done as a

cast from nature. Such a supposition would account at least for what

seems otherwise unaccountable—the incredible labour and finishing

bestowed on the back and the other parts of this figure, placed at a

prodigious height against the walls of a temple, where they could never

be seen after they were once put up there. If they were done by means of

a cast in the first instance, the thing appears intelligible, otherwise

not. Our host stoutly resisted this imputation, which tended to deprive

art of one of its greatest triumphs, and to make it as mechanical as a

shaded profile. So far, so good. But the reason he gave was bad, _viz._,

that the limbs could not remain in those actions long enough to be cast.

Yet surely this would take a shorter time than if the model sat to the

sculptor; and we all agreed that nothing but actual, continued, and

intense observation of living nature could give the solidity,

complexity, and refinement of imitation which we saw in the half

animated, almost moving figure before us.[51] Be this as it may, the

principle here stated does not reduce art to the imitation of what is

understood by common or low life. It rises to any point of beauty or

sublimity you please, but it rises only as nature rises exalted with it

too. To hear these critics talk, one would suppose there was nothing in

the world really worth looking at. The Dutch pictures were the best that

they could paint: they had no other landscapes or faces before them.

_Honi soit qui mal y pense._ Yet who is not alarmed at a Venus by

Rembrandt? The Greek statues were (_cum grano salis_) Grecian youths and

nymphs; and the women in the streets of Rome (it has been remarked[52])

look to this hour as if they had walked out of Raphael’s pictures.

Nature is always truth: at its best, it is beauty and sublimity as well;

though Sir Joshua tells us in one of the papers in the IDLER, that in

itself, or with reference to individuals, it is a mere tissue of

meanness and deformity. Luckily, the Elgin Marbles say NO to that

conclusion: for they are decidedly _part and parcel thereof_. What

constitutes fine nature, we shall inquire under another head. But we

would remark here, that it can hardly be the _middle form_, since this

principle, however it might determine certain general proportions and

outlines, could never be intelligible in the details of nature, or

applicable to those of art. Who will say that the form of a finger nail

is just midway between a thousand others that he has _not_ remarked: we

are only struck with it when it is more than ordinarily beautiful, from

symmetry, an oblong shape, &c. The staunch partisans of this theory,

however, get over the difficulty here spoken of, in practice, by

omitting the details altogether, and making their works sketches, or

rather what the French call _ébauches_ and the English _daubs_.

3. _The_ IDEAL _is only the selecting a particular form which expresses

most completely the idea of a given character or quality, as of beauty,

strength, activity, voluptuousness, &c. and which preserves that

character with the greatest consistency throughout_.

Instead of its being true in general that the _ideal_ is the _middle

point_, it is to be found in the _extremes_; or, it is carrying any

_idea_ as far as it will go. Thus, for instance, a Silenus is as much an

_ideal_ thing as an Apollo, as to the principle on which it is done,

_viz._, giving to every feature, and to the whole form, the utmost

degree of grossness and sensuality that can be imagined, with this

exception (which has nothing to do with the understanding of the

question), that the _ideal_ means by custom this extreme on the side of

the good and beautiful. With this reserve, the _ideal_ means always the

_something more_ of anything which may be anticipated by the fancy, and

which must be found in nature (by looking long enough for it) to be

expressed as it ought. Suppose a good heavy Dutch face (we speak by the

proverb)—this, you will say, is gross; but it is not gross enough. You

have an idea of something grosser, that is, you have seen something

grosser and must seek for it again. When you meet with it, and have

stamped it on the canvas, or carved it out of the block, this is the

true _ideal_, namely, that which answers to and satisfies a preconceived

idea; not that which is made out of an abstract idea, and answers to

nothing. In the Silenus, also, according to the notion we have of the

properties and character of that figure, there must be vivacity,

slyness, wantonness, &c. Not only the image in the mind, but a real face

may express all these combined together; another may express them more,

and another most, which last is the _ideal_; and when the image in

nature coalesces with, and gives a body, force, and reality to the idea

in the mind, then it is that we see the true perfection of art. The

forehead should be ‘villainous low;’ the eye-brows bent in; the eyes

small and gloating; the nose _pugged_, and pointed at the end, with

distended nostrils; the mouth large and shut; the cheeks swollen; the

neck thick, &c. There is, in all this process, nothing of softening

down, of compromising qualities, of finding out a _mean proportion_

between different forms and characters; the sole object is to

_intensify_ each as much as possible. The only fear is ‘to o’erstep the

modesty of nature,’ and run into caricature. This must be avoided; but

the artist is only to stop short of this. He must not outrage

probability. We must have seen a class of such faces, or something so

nearly approaching, as to prevent the imagination from revolting against

them. The forehead must be low, but not so low as to lose the character

of humanity in the brute. It would thus lose all its force and meaning.

For that which is extreme and ideal in one species is nothing, if, by

being pushed too far, it is merged in another. Above all, there should

be _keeping_ in the whole and every part. In the Pan, the horns and

goat’s feet, perhaps, warrant the approach to a more _animal_ expression

than would otherwise be allowable in the human features; but yet this

tendency to excess must be restrained within certain limits. If Pan is

made into a beast, he will cease to be a God! Let Momus distend his jaws

with laughter, as far as laughter can stretch them, but no farther; or

the expression will be that of pain and not of pleasure. Besides, the

overcharging the expression or action of any one feature will suspend

the action of others. The whole face will no longer laugh. But this

universal suffusion of broad mirth and humour over the countenance is

very different from a placid smile, midway between grief and joy. Yet a

classical Momus, by modern theories of the _ideal_, ought to be such a

nonentity in expression. The ancients knew better. They pushed art in

such subjects to the verge of ‘all we hate,’ while they felt the point

beyond which it could not be urged with propriety, _i.e._ with truth,

consistency, and consequent effect. There is no difference, in

philosophical reasoning, between the mode of art here insisted on, and

the _ideal_ regularity of such figures as the Apollo, the Hercules, the

Mercury, the Venus, &c. All these are, as it were, _personifications_,

_essences_, _abstractions_ of certain qualities of virtue in human

nature, not of human nature in general, which would make nonsense.

Instead of being abstractions of all sorts of qualities jumbled together

in a neutral character, they are in the opposite sense _abstractions_ of

some single quality or customary combination of qualities, leaving out

all others as much as possible, and imbuing every part with that one

predominant character to the utmost. The Apollo is a representation of

graceful dignity and mental power; the Hercules of bodily strength; the

Mercury of swiftness; the Venus of female loveliness, and so on. In

these, in the Apollo is surely implied and found more grace than usual;

in the Hercules more strength than usual; in the Mercury more lightness

than usual; in the Venus more softness than usual. Is it not so? What

then becomes of the pretended _middle form_? One would think it would be

sufficient to prove this, to ask, ‘Do not these statues differ from one

another? And is this difference a defect?’ It would be ridiculous to

call them by different names, if they were not supposed to represent

different and peculiar characters: sculptors should, in that case, never

carve anything but the statue of _a man_, the statue of _a woman_, &c.

and this would be the name of perfection. This theory of art is not at

any rate justified by the history of art. An extraordinary quantity of

bone and muscle is as proper to the Hercules as his club, and it would

be strange if the Goddess of Love had not a more delicately rounded

form, and a more languishing look withal, than the Goddess of Hunting.

That a form combining and blending the properties of both, the downy

softness of the one, with the elastic buoyancy of the other, would be

more perfect than either, we no more see than that grey is the most

perfect of colours. At any rate, this is the march neither of nature nor

of art. It is not denied that these antique sculptures are models of the

_ideal_; nay, it is on them that this theory boasts of being founded.

Yet they give a flat contradiction to its insipid mediocrity. Perhaps

some of them have a slight bias to the false _ideal_, to the smooth and

uniform, or the negation of nature: any error on this side is, however,

happily set right by the ELGIN MARBLES, which are the paragons of

sculpture and the mould of form.—As the _ideal_ then requires a

difference of character in each figure as a whole, so it expects the

same character (or a corresponding one) to be stamped on each part of

every figure. As the legs of a Diana should be more muscular and adapted

for running, than those of a Venus or a Minerva, so the skin of her face

ought to be more tense, bent on her prey, and hardened by being exposed

to the winds of heaven. The respective characters of lightness,

softness, strength, &c. should pervade each part of the surface of each

figure, but still varying according to the texture and functions of the

individual part. This can only be learned or practised from the

attentive observation of nature in those forms in which any given

character or excellence is most strikingly displayed, and which has been

selected for imitation and study on that account.—Suppose a dimple in

the chin to be a mark of voluptuousness; then the Venus should have a

dimple in the chin; and she has one. But this will imply certain

correspondent indications in other parts of the features, about the

corners of the mouth, a gentle undulation and sinking in of the cheek,

as if it had just been pinched, and so on: yet so as to be consistent

with the other qualities of roundness, smoothness, &c. which belong to

the idea of the character. Who will get all this and embody it out of

the idea of a _middle form_, I cannot say: it may be, and has been, got

out of the idea of a number of distinct enchanting graces in the mind,

and from some heavenly object unfolded to the sight!

4. _That the historical is nature in action. With regard to the face, it

is expression._

Hogarth’s pictures are true history. Every feature, limb, figure, group,

is instinct with life and motion. He does not take a subject and place

it in a position, like a lay figure, in which it stirs neither limb nor

joint. The scene moves before you: the face is like a frame-work of

flexible machinery. If the mouth is distorted with laughter, the eyes

swim in laughter. If the forehead is knit together, the cheeks are

puckered up. If a fellow squints most horribly, the rest of his face is

awry. The muscles pull different ways, or the same way, at the same

time, on the surface of the picture, as they do in the human body. What

you see is the reverse of _still life_. There is a continual and

complete action and re-action of one variable part upon another, as

there is in the ELGIN MARBLES. If you pull the string of a bow, the bow

itself is bent. So is it in the strings and wires that move the human

frame. The action of any one part, the contraction or relaxation of any

one muscle, extends more or less perceptibly to every other:

‘Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line.’

Thus the celebrated Iö of Correggio is imbued, steeped, in a manner in

the same voluptuous feeling all over—the same passion languishes in her

whole frame, and communicates the infection to the feet, the back, and

the reclined position of the head. This is history, not carpenter’s

work. Some painters fancy that they paint history, if they get the

measurement from the foot to the knee and put four bones where there are

four bones. This is not our idea of it; but we think it is to show how

one part of the body sways another in action and in passion. The last

relates chiefly to the expression of the face, though not altogether.

Passion may be shown in a clenched fist as well as in clenched teeth.

The face, however, is the throne of expression. Character implies the

feeling, which is fixed and permanent; expression that which it

occasional and momentary, at least, technically speaking. Portrait

treats of objects as they are; history of the events and changes to

which they are liable. And so far history has a double superiority; or a

double difficulty to overcome, _viz._ in the rapid glance over a number

of parts subject to the simultaneous action of the same law, and in the

scope of feeling required to sympathise with the critical and powerful

movements of passion. It requires greater capacity of muscular motion to

follow the progress of a carriage in violent motion, than to lean upon

it standing still. If, to describe passion, it were merely necessary to

observe its outward effects, these, perhaps, in the prominent points,

become more visible and more tangible as the passion is more intense.

But it is not only necessary to see the effects, but to discern the

cause, in order to make the one true to the other. No painter gives more

of intellectual or impassioned appearances than he understands or feels.

It is an axiom in painting that sympathy is indispensable to truth of

expression. Without it, you get only caricatures, which are not the

thing. But to sympathise with passion, a greater fund of sensibility is

demanded in proportion to the strength or tenderness of the passion. And

as he feels most of this whose face expresses most passion, so he also

feels most by sympathy whose hand can describe most passion. This

amounts nearly, we take it, to a demonstration of an old and very

disputed point. The same reasoning might be applied to poetry, but this

is not the place.—Again, it is easier to paint a portrait than an

historical face, because the head _sits_ for the first, but the

expression will hardly _sit_ for the last. Perhaps those passions are

the best subjects for painting, the expression of which may be retained

for some time, so as to be better caught, which throw out a sort of

lambent fire, and leave a reflected glory behind them, as we see in

Madonnas, Christ’s heads, and what is understood by sacred subjects in

general. The violences of human passion are too soon over to be copied

by the hand, and the mere conception of the internal workings is not

here sufficient, as it is in poetry. A portrait is to history what

still-life is to portraiture: that is, the whole remains the same while

you are doing it; or while you are occupied about each part, the rest

wait for you. Yet, what a difference is there between taking an original

portrait and making a copy of one! This shows that the face in its most

ordinary state is continually varying and in action. So much of history

is there in portrait!—No one should pronounce definitively on the

superiority of history over portrait, without recollecting Titian’s

heads. The finest of them are very nearly (say quite) equal to the

finest of Raphael’s. They have almost the look of _still-life_, yet each

part is decidedly influenced by the rest. Everything is _relative_ in

them. You cannot put any other eye, nose, lip in the same face. As is

one part, so is the rest. You cannot fix on any particular beauty; the

charm is in the whole. They have least action, and the most expression

of any portraits. They are doing nothing, and yet all other business

seems insipid in comparison of their thoughts. They are silent, retired,

and do not court observation; yet you cannot keep your eyes from them.

Some one said, that you would be as cautious of your behaviour in a room

where a picture of Titian’s was hung, as if there was somebody by—so

entirely do they look you through. They are the least tiresome

_furniture-company_ in the world!

5. _Grandeur consists in connecting a number of parts into a whole, and

not leaving out the parts._

Sir Joshua lays it down that the great style in art consists in the

omission of the details. A greater error never man committed. The great

style consists in preserving the masses and general proportions; not in

omitting the details. Thus, suppose, for illustration’s sake, the

general form of an eye-brow to be commanding and grand. It is of a

certain size, and arched in a particular curve. Now, surely, this

general form or outline will be equally preserved, whether the painter

daubs it in, in a bold, rough way, as Reynolds or perhaps Rembrandt

would, or produces the effect by a number of hair-lines arranged in the

same form as Titian sometimes did; and in his best pictures. It will not

be denied (for it cannot) that the characteristic form of the eye-brow

would be the same, or that the effect of the picture at a small distance

would be nearly the same in either case; only in the latter, it would be

rather more perfect, as being more like nature. Suppose a strong light

to fall on one side of a face, and a deep shadow to involve the whole of

the other. This would produce two distinct and large masses in the

picture; which answers to the conditions of what is called the grand

style of composition. Well, would it destroy these masses to give the

smallest veins or variation of colour or surface in the light side, or

to shade the other with the most delicate and elaborate _chiaro-scuro_?

It is evident not; from common sense, from the practice of the best

masters, and, lastly, from the example of nature, which contains both

the larger masses, the strongest contrasts, and the highest finishing,

within itself. The integrity of the whole, then, is not impaired by the

indefinite subdivision and smallness of the parts. The grandeur of the

ultimate effects depends entirely on the arrangement of these in a

certain form or under certain masses. The Ilissus, or River-god, is

floating in his proper element, and is, in appearance, as firm as a

rock, as pliable as a wave of the sea. The artist’s breath might be said

to mould and play upon the undulating surface. The whole is expanded

into noble proportions, and heaves with general effect. What then? Are

the parts unfinished; or are they not there? No; they are there with the

nicest exactness, but in due subordination; that is, they are there as

they are found in fine nature; and float upon the general form, like

straw or weeds upon the tide of ocean. Once more: in Titian’s portraits

we perceive a certain character stamped upon the different features. In

the Hippolito de Medici the eye-brows are angular, the nose is peaked,

the mouth has sharp corners, the face is (so to speak) a pointed oval.

The drawing in each of these is as careful and distinct as can be. But

the unity of intention in nature, and in the artist, does not the less

tend to produce a general grandeur and impressiveness of effect; which

at first sight it is not easy to account for. To combine a number of

particulars to one end is not to omit them altogether; and is the best

way of producing the grand style, because it does this without either

affectation or slovenliness.

6. The sixth rule we proposed to lay down was, that _as grandeur is the

principle of connexion between different parts; beauty is the principle

of affinity between different forms, or their gradual conversion into

each other. The one harmonizes, the other aggrandizes, our impressions

of things._

There is a harmony of colours and a harmony of sounds, unquestionably:

why then there should be all this squeamishness about admitting an

original harmony of forms as the principle of beauty and source of

pleasure there we cannot understand. It is true, that there is in

organized bodies a certain standard of form to which they approximate

more or less, and from which they cannot very widely deviate without

shocking the sense of custom, or our settled expectations of what they

ought to be. And hence it has been pretended that there is in all such

cases a _middle central form_, obtained by leaving out the peculiarities

of all the others, which alone is the pure standard of truth and beauty.

A conformity to custom is, we grant, one condition of beauty or source

of satisfaction to the eye, because an abrupt transition shocks; but

there is a conformity (or correspondence) of colours, sounds, lines,

among themselves, which is soft and pleasing for the same reason. The

average or customary form merely determines what is _natural_. A thing

cannot please, unless it is to be found in nature; but that which is

natural is most pleasing, according as it has other properties which in

themselves please. Thus the colour of a cheek must be the natural

complexion of a human face;—it would not do to make it the colour of a

flower or a precious stone;—but among complexions ordinarily to be found

in nature, that is most beautiful which would be thought so

abstractedly, or in itself. Yellow hair is not the most common, nor is

it a _mean proportion_ between the different colours of women’s hair.

Yet, who will say that it is not the most beautiful? Blue or green hair

would be a defect and an anomaly, not because it is not the _medium_ of

nature, but because it is not in nature at all. To say that there is no

difference in the sense of form except from custom, is like saying that

there is no difference in the sensation of smooth or rough. Judging by

analogy, a gradation or symmetry of form must affect the mind in the

same manner as a gradation of recurrence at given intervals of tones or

sounds; and if it does so in fact, we need not inquire further for the

principle. Sir Joshua (who is the arch-heretic on this subject) makes

grandeur or sublimity consist in the middle form, or abstraction of all

peculiarities; which is evidently false, for grandeur and sublimity

arise from extraordinary strength, magnitude, &c. or in a word, from an

excess of power, so as to startle and overawe the mind. But as sublimity

is an excess of power, beauty is, we conceive, the blending and

harmonizing different powers or qualities together, so as to produce a

soft and pleasurable sensation. That it is not the middle form of the

species seems proved in various ways. First, because one species is more

beautiful than another, according to common sense. A rose is the queen

of flowers, in poetry at least; but in this philosophy any other flower

is as good. A swan is more beautiful than a goose; a stag than a goat.

Yet if custom were the test of beauty, either we should give no

preference, or our preference would be reversed. Again, let us go back

to the human face and figure. A straight nose is allowed to be handsome,

that is, one that presents nearly a continuation of the line of the

forehead, and the sides of which are nearly parallel. Now this cannot be

the mean proportion of the form of noses. For, first, most noses are

broader at the bottom than at the top, inclining to the negro head, but

none are broader at top than at the bottom, to produce the Greek form as

a balance between both. Almost all noses sink in immediately under the

forehead bone, none ever project there; so that the nearly straight line

continued from the forehead cannot be a mean proportion struck between

the two extremes of convex and concave form in this feature of the face.

There must, therefore, be some other principle of symmetry, continuity,

&c. to account for the variation from the prescribed rule. Once more

(not to multiply instances tediously), a double calf is undoubtedly the

perfection of beauty in the form of the leg. But this is a rare thing.

Nor is it the medium between two common extremes. For the muscles seldom

swell enough to produce this excrescence, if it may be so called, and

never run to an excess there, so as, by diminishing the quantity, to

subside into proportion and beauty. But this second or lower calf is a

connecting link between the upper calf and the small of the leg, and is

just like a second chord or half-note in music. We conceive that any one

who does not perceive the beauty of the Venus de Medicis, for instance,

in this respect, has not the proper perception of form in his mind. As

this is the most disputable, or at least the most disputed part of our

theory, we may, perhaps, have to recur to it again, and shall leave an

opening for that purpose.

7. _That grace is the beautiful or harmonious in what relates to

position or motion._

There needs not much be said on this point; as we apprehend it will be

granted that, whatever beauty is as to the form, grace is the same thing

in relation to the use that is made of it. Grace, in writing, relates to

the transitions that are made from one subject to another, or to the

movement that is given to a passage. If one thing leads to another, or

an idea or illustration is brought in without effect, or without making

a _boggle_ in the mind, we call this a graceful style. Transitions must

in general be gradual and pieced together. But sometimes the most

violent are the most graceful, when the mind is fairly tired out and

exhausted with a subject, and is glad to leap to another as a repose and

relief from the first. Of these there are frequent instances in Mr.

Burke’s writings, which have something Pindaric in them. That which is

not beautiful in itself, or in the mere form, may be made so by position

or motion. A figure by no means elegant may be put in an elegant

position. Mr. Kean’s figure is not good; yet we have seen him throw

himself into attitudes of infinite spirit, dignity, and grace. John

Kemble’s figure, on the contrary, is fine in itself; and he has only to

show himself to be admired. The direction in which anything is moved has

evidently nothing to do with the shape of the thing moved. The one may

be a circle and the other a square. Little and deformed people seem to

be well aware of this distinction, who, in spite of their unpromising

appearance, usually assume the most imposing attitudes, and give

themselves the most extraordinary airs imaginable.

8. _Grandeur of motion is unity of motion._