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Seven Discourses on Art
by Sir Joshua Reynolds
May, 2000 [Etext #2176]
Project Gutenberg Etext Seven Discourses on Art by Joshua Reynolds
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SEVEN DISCOURSES ON ART
by Sir Joshua Reynolds
INTRODUCTION
It is a happy memory that associates the foundation of our Royal
Academy with the delivery of these inaugural discourses by Sir
Joshua Reynolds, on the opening of the schools, and at the first
annual meetings for the distribution of its prizes. They laid down
principles of art from the point of view of a man of genius who had
made his power felt, and with the clear good sense which is the
foundation of all work that looks upward and may hope to live. The
truths here expressed concerning Art may, with slight adjustment of
the way of thought, be applied to Literature or to any exercise of
the best powers of mind for shaping the delights that raise us to
the larger sense of life. In his separation of the utterance of
whole truths from insistance upon accidents of detail, Reynolds was
right, because he guarded the expression of his view with careful
definitions of its limits. In the same way Boileau was right, as a
critic of Literature, in demanding everywhere good sense, in
condemning the paste brilliants of a style then in decay, and
fixing attention upon the masterly simplicity of Roman poets in the
time of Augustus. Critics by rule of thumb reduced the principles
clearly defined by Boileau to a dull convention, against which
there came in course of time a strong reaction. In like manner the
teaching of Reynolds was applied by dull men to much vague and
conventional generalisation in the name of dignity. Nevertheless,
Reynolds taught essential truths of Art. The principles laid down
by him will never fail to give strength to the right artist, or
true guidance towards the appreciation of good art, though here and
there we may not wholly assent to some passing application of them,
where the difference may be great between a fashion of thought in
his time and in ours. A righteous enforcement of exact truth in
our day has led many into a readiness to appreciate more really the
minute imitation of a satin dress, or a red herring, than the
noblest figure in the best of Raffaelle's cartoons. Much good
should come of the diffusion of this wise little book.
Joshua Reynolds was born on the 15th of July, 1723, the son of a
clergyman and schoolmaster, at Plympton in Devonshire. His bent
for Art was clear and strong from his childhood. In 1741 at the
age of nineteen, he began study, and studied for two yours in
London under Thomas Hudson, a successful portrait painter. Then he
went back to Devonshire and painted portraits, aided for some time
in his education by attention to the work of William Gandy of
Exeter. When twenty-six years old, in May, 1749, Reynolds was
taken away by Captain Keppel to the Mediterranean, and brought into
contact with the works of the great painters of Italy. He stayed
two years in Rome, and in accordance with the principles afterwards
laid down in these lectures, he refused, when in Rome, commissions
for copying, and gave his mind to minute observation of the art of
the great masters by whose works he was surrounded. He spent two
months in Florence, six weeks in Venice, a few days in Bologna and
Parma. "If," he said, "I had never seen any of the fine works of
Correggio, I should never, perhaps, have remarked in Nature the
expression which I find in one of his pieces; or if I had remarked
it, I might have thought it too difficult, or perhaps impossible to
execute."
In 1753 Reynolds came back to England, and stayed three months in
Devonshire before setting up a studio in London, in St. Martin's
Lane, which was then an artists' quarter. His success was rapid.
In 1755 he had one hundred and twenty-five sitters. Samuel Johnson
found in him his most congenial friend. He moved to Newport
Street, and he built himself a studio--where there is now an
auction room--at 47, Lincoln's Inn Fields. There he remained for
life.
In 1760 the artists opened, in a room lent by the Society of Arts,
a free Exhibition for the sale of their works. This was continued
the next year at Spring Gardens, with a charge of a shilling for
admission. In 1765 they obtained a charter of incorporation, and
in 1768 the King gave his support to the foundation of a Royal
Academy of Arts by seceders from the preceding "Incorporated
Society of Artists," into which personal feelings had brought much
division. It was to consist, like the French Academy, of forty
members, and was to maintain Schools open to all students of good
character who could give evidence that they had fully learnt the
rudiments of Art. The foundation by the King dates from the 10th
of December, 1768. The Schools were opened on the 2nd of January
next following, and on that occasion Joshua Reynolds, who had been
elected President--his age was then between forty-five and forty-
six--gave the Inaugural Address which formed the first of these
Seven Discourses. The other six were given by him, as President,
at the next six annual meetings: and they were all shaped to form,
when collected into a volume, a coherent body of good counsel upon
the foundations of the painter's art.
H. M.
TO THE KING
The regular progress of cultivated life is from necessaries to
accommodations, from accommodations to ornaments. By your
illustrious predecessors were established marts for manufactures,
and colleges for science; but for the arts of elegance, those arts
by which manufactures are embellished and science is refined, to
found an academy was reserved for your Majesty.
Had such patronage been without effect, there had been reason to
believe that nature had, by some insurmountable impediment,
obstructed our proficiency; but the annual improvement of the
exhibitions which your Majesty has been pleased to encourage shows
that only encouragement had been wanting.
To give advice to those who are contending for royal liberality has
been for some years the duty of my station in the Academy; and
these Discourses hope for your Majesty's acceptance as well-
intended endeavours to incite that emulation which your notice has
kindled, and direct those studies which your bounty has rewarded.
May it please your Majesty,
Your Majesty's
Most dutiful servant,
And most faithful subject,
JOSHUA REYNOLDS.
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY.
Gentlemen,--That you have ordered the publication of this Discourse
is not only very flattering to me, as it implies your approbation
of the method of study which I have recommended; but likewise, as
this method receives from that act such an additional weight and
authority as demands from the students that deference and respect,
which can be due only to the united sense of so considerable a body
of artists.
I am,
With the greatest esteem and respect,
GENTLEMEN,
Your most humble
And obedient servant,
JOSHUA REYNOLDS
SEVEN DISCOURSES ON ART
A DISCOURSE
Delivered at the Opening of the Royal Academy, January 2nd, 1769,
by the President
Gentlemen,--An academy in which the polite arts may be regularly
cultivated is at last opened among us by royal munificence. This
must appear an event in the highest degree interesting, not only to
the artists, but to the whole nation.
It is indeed difficult to give any other reason why an Empire like
that of Britain should so long have wanted an ornament so suitable
to its greatness than that slow progression of things which
naturally makes elegance and refinement the last effect of opulence
and power.
An institution like this has often been recommended upon
considerations merely mercantile. But an academy founded upon such
principles can never effect even its own narrow purposes. If it
has an origin no higher, no taste can ever be formed in it which
can be useful even in manufactures; but if the higher arts of
design flourish, these inferior ends will be answered of course.
We are happy in having a prince who has conceived the design of
such an institution, according to its true dignity, and promotes
the arts, as the head of a great, a learned, a polite, and a
commercial nation; and I can now congratulate you, gentlemen, on
the accomplishment of your long and ardent wishes.
The numberless and ineffectual consultations that I have had with
many in this assembly, to form plans and concert schemes for an
academy, afford a sufficient proof of the impossibility of
succeeding but by the influence of Majesty. But there have,
perhaps, been times when even the influence of Majesty would have
been ineffectual, and it is pleasing to reflect that we are thus
embodied, when every circumstance seems to concur from which honour
and prosperity can probably arise.
There are at this time a greater number of excellent artists than
were ever known before at one period in this nation; there is a
general desire among our nobility to be distinguished as lovers and
judges of the arts; there is a greater superfluity of wealth among
the people to reward the professors; and, above all, we are
patronised by a monarch, who, knowing the value of science and of
elegance, thinks every art worthy of his notice that tends to
soften and humanise the mind.
After so much has been done by his Majesty, it will be wholly our
fault if our progress is not in some degree correspondent to the
wisdom and, generosity of the institution; let us show our
gratitude in our diligence, that, though our merit may not answer
his expectations, yet, at least, our industry may deserve his
protection.
But whatever may be our proportion of success, of this we may be
sure, that the present institution will at least contribute to
advance our knowledge of the arts, and bring us nearer to that
ideal excellence which it is the lot of genius always to
contemplate and never to attain.
The principal advantage of an academy is, that, besides furnishing
able men to direct the student, it will be a repository for the
great examples of the art. These are the materials on which genius
is to work, and without which the strongest intellect may be
fruitlessly or deviously employed. By studying these authentic
models, that idea of excellence which is the result of the
accumulated experience of past ages may be at once acquired, and
the tardy and obstructed progress of our predecessors may teach us
a shorter and easier way. The student receives at one glance the
principles which many artists have spent their whole lives in
ascertaining; and, satisfied with their effect, is spared the
painful investigation by which they come to be known and fixed.
How many men of great natural abilities have been lost to this
nation for want of these advantages? They never had an opportunity
of seeing those masterly efforts of genius which at once kindle the
whole soul, and force it into sudden and irresistible approbation.
Raffaelle, it is true, had not the advantage of studying in an
academy; but all Rome, and the works of Michael Angelo in
particular, were to him an academy. On the site of the Capel la
Sistina he immediately from a dry, Gothic, and even insipid manner,
which attends to the minute accidental discriminations of
particular and individual objects, assumed that grand style of
painting, which improves partial representation by the general and
invariable ideas of nature.
Every seminary of learning may be said to be surrounded with an
atmosphere of floating knowledge, where every mind may imbibe
somewhat congenial to its own original conceptions. Knowledge,
thus obtained, has always something more popular and useful than
that which is forced upon the mind by private precepts or solitary
meditation. Besides, it is generally found that a youth more
easily receives instruction from the companions of his studies,
whose minds are nearly on a level with his own, than from those who
are much his superiors; and it is from his equals only that he
catches the fire of emulation.
One advantage, I will venture to affirm, we shall have in our
academy, which no other nation can boast. We shall have nothing to
unlearn. To this praise the present race of artists have a just
claim. As far as they have yet proceeded they are right. With us
the exertions of genius will henceforward be directed to their
proper objects. It will not be as it has been in other schools,
where he that travelled fastest only wandered farthest from the
right way.
Impressed as I am, therefore, with such a favourable opinion of my
associates in this undertaking, it would ill become me to dictate
to any of them. But as these institutions have so often failed in
other nations, and as it is natural to think with regret how much
might have been done, and how little has been done, I must take
leave to offer a few hints, by which those errors may be rectified,
and those defects supplied. These the professors and visitors may
reject or adopt as they shall think proper.
I would chiefly recommend that an implicit obedience to the rules
of art, as established by the great masters, should be exacted from
the YOUNG students. That those models, which have passed through
the approbation of ages, should be considered by them as perfect
and infallible guides as subjects for their imitation, not their
criticism.
I am confident that this is the only efficacious method of making a
progress in the arts; and that he who sets out with doubting will
find life finished before he becomes master of the rudiments. For
it may be laid down as a maxim, that he who begins by presuming on
his own sense has ended his studies as soon as he has commenced
them. Every opportunity, therefore, should be taken to
discountenance that false and vulgar opinion that rules are the
fetters of genius. They are fetters only to men of no genius; as
that armour, which upon the strong becomes an ornament and a
defence, upon the weak and misshapen turns into a load, and
cripples the body which it was made to protect.
How much liberty may be taken to break through those rules, and, as
the poet expresses it,
"To snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,"
may be an after consideration, when the pupils become masters
themselves. It is then, when their genius has received its utmost
improvement, that rules may possibly be dispensed with. But let us
not destroy the scaffold until we have raised the building.
The directors ought more particularly to watch over the genius of
those students who, being more advanced, are arrived at that
critical period of study, on the nice management of which their
future turn of taste depends. At that age it is natural for them
to be more captivated with what is brilliant than with what is
solid, and to prefer splendid negligence to painful and humiliating
exactness.
A facility in composing, a lively, and what is called a masterly
handling the chalk or pencil, are, it must be confessed,
captivating qualities to young minds, and become of course the
objects of their ambition. They endeavour to imitate those
dazzling excellences, which they will find no great labour in
attaining. After much time spent in these frivolous pursuits, the
difficulty will be to retreat; but it will be then too late; and
there is scarce an instance of return to scrupulous labour after
the mind has been debauched and deceived by this fallacious
mastery.
By this useless industry they are excluded from all power of
advancing in real excellence. Whilst boys, they are arrived at
their utmost perfection; they have taken the shadow for the
substance; and make that mechanical facility the chief excellence
of the art, which is only an ornament, and of the merit of which
few but painters themselves are judges.
This seems to me to be one of the most dangerous sources of
corruption; and I speak of it from experience, not as an error
which may possibly happen, but which has actually infected all
foreign academies. The directors were probably pleased with this
premature dexterity in their pupils, and praised their despatch at
the expense of their correctness.
But young men have not only this frivolous ambition of being
thought masterly inciting them on one hand, but also their natural
sloth tempting them on the other. They are terrified at the
prospect before them, of the toil required to attain exactness.
The impetuosity of youth is distrusted at the slow approaches of a
regular siege, and desires, from mere impatience of labour, to take
the citadel by storm. They wish to find some shorter path to
excellence, and hope to obtain the reward of eminence by other
means than those which the indispensable rules of art have
prescribed. They must, therefore, be told again and again that
labour is the only price of solid fame, and that whatever their
force of genius may be, there is no easy method of becoming a good
painter.
When we read the lives of the most eminent painters, every page
informs us that no part of their time was spent in dissipation.
Even an increase of fame served only to augment their industry. To
be convinced with what persevering assiduity they pursued their
studies, we need only reflect on their method of proceeding in
their most celebrated works. When they conceived a subject, they
first made a variety of sketches; then a finished drawing of the
whole; after that a more correct drawing of every separate part,
heads, hands, feet, and pieces of drapery; they then painted the
picture, and after all re-touched it from the life. The pictures,
thus wrought with such pain, now appear like the effect of
enchantment, and as if some mighty genius had struck them off at a
blow.
But, whilst diligence is thus recommended to the students, the
visitors will take care that their diligence be effectual; that it
be well directed and employed on the proper object. A student is
not always advancing because he is employed; he must apply his
strength to that part of the art where the real difficulties lie;
to that part which distinguishes it as a liberal art, and not by
mistaken industry lose his time in that which is merely ornamental.
The students, instead of vying with each other which shall have the
readiest band, should be taught to contend who shall have the
purest and most correct outline, instead of striving which shall
produce the brightest tint, or, curiously trifling endeavour to
give the gloss of stuffs so as to appear real, let their ambition
be directed to contend which shall dispose his drapery in the most
graceful folds, which shall give the most grace and dignity to the
human figure.
I must beg leave to submit one thing more to the consideration of
the visitors, which appears to me a matter of very great
consequence, and the omission of which I think a principal defect
in the method of education pursued in all the academies I have ever
visited. The error I mean is, that the students never draw exactly
from the living models which they have before them. It is not
indeed their intention, nor are they directed to do it. Their
drawings resemble the model only in the attitude. They change the
form according to their vague and uncertain ideas of beauty, and
make a drawing rather of what they think the figure ought to be
than of what it appears. I have thought this the obstacle that has
stopped the progress of many young men of real genius; and I very
much doubt whether a habit of drawing correctly what we see will
not give a proportionable power of drawing correctly what we
imagine. He who endeavours to copy nicely the figure before him
not only acquires a habit of exactness and precision, but is
continually advancing in his knowledge of the human figure; and
though he seems to superficial observers to make a slower progress,
he will be found at last capable of adding (without running into
capricious wildness) that grace and beauty which is necessary to be
given to his more finished works, and which cannot be got by the
moderns, as it was not acquired by the ancients, but by an
attentive and well-compared study of the human form.
What I think ought to enforce this method is, that it has been the
practice (as may be seen by their drawings) of the great masters in
the art. I will mention a drawing of Raffaelle, "The Dispute of
the Sacrament," the print of which, by Count Cailus, is in every
hand. It appears that he made his sketch from one model; and the
habit he had of drawing exactly from the form before him appears by
his making all the figures with the same cap, such as his model
then happened to wear; so servile a copyist was this great man,
even at a time when he was allowed to be at his highest pitch of
excellence.
I have seen also academy figures by Annibale Caracci, though he was
often sufficiently licentious in his finished works, drawn with all
the peculiarities of an individual model.
This scrupulous exactness is so contrary to the practice of the
academies, that it is not without great deference that I beg leave
to recommend it to the consideration of the visitors, and submit it
to them, whether the neglect of this method is not one of the
reasons why students so often disappoint expectation, and being
more than boys at sixteen, become less than men at thirty.
In short, the method I recommend can only be detrimental when there
are but few living forms to copy; for then students, by always
drawing from one alone, will by habit be taught to overlook
defects, and mistake deformity for beauty. But of this there is no
danger, since the council has determined to supply the academy with
a variety of subjects; and indeed those laws which they have drawn
up, and which the secretary will presently read for your
confirmation, have in some measure precluded me from saying more
upon this occasion. Instead, therefore, of offering my advice,
permit me to indulge my wishes, and express my hope, that this
institution may answer the expectations of its royal founder; that
the present age may vie in arts with that of Leo X. and that "the
dignity of the dying art" (to make use of an expression of Pliny)
may be revived under the reign of George III.
A DISCOURSE
Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distribution
of the Prizes, December 11, I769, by the President.
Gentlemen,--I congratulate you on the honour which you have just
received. I have the highest opinion of your merits, and could
wish to show my sense of them in something which possibly may be
more useful to you than barren praise. I could wish to lead you
into such a course of study as may render your future progress
answerable to your past improvement; and, whilst I applaud you for
what has been done, remind you of how much yet remains to attain
perfection.
I flatter myself, that from the long experience I have had, and the
unceasing assiduity with which I have pursued those studies, in
which, like you, I have been engaged, I shall be acquitted of
vanity in offering some hints to your consideration. They are
indeed in a great degree founded upon my own mistakes in the same
pursuit. But the history of errors properly managed often shortens
the road to truth. And although no method of study that I can
offer will of itself conduct to excellence, yet it may preserve
industry from being misapplied.
In speaking to you of the theory of the art, I shall only consider
it as it has a relation to the method of your studies.
Dividing the study of painting into three distinct periods, I shall
address you as having passed through the first of them, which is
confined to the rudiments, including a facility of drawing any
object that presents itself, a tolerable readiness in the
management of colours, and an acquaintance with the most simple and
obvious rules of composition.
This first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is
in literature, a general preparation to whatever species of the art
the student may afterwards choose for his more particular
application. The power of drawing, modelling, and using colours is
very properly called the language of the art; and in this language,
the honours you have just received prove you to have made no
inconsiderable progress.
When the artist is once enabled to express himself with some degree
of correctness, he must then endeavour to collect subjects for
expression; to amass a stock of ideas, to be combined and varied as
occasion may require. He is now in the second period of study, in
which his business is to learn all that has hitherto been known and
done. Having hitherto received instructions from a particular
master, he is now to consider the art itself as his master. He
must extend his capacity to more sublime and general instructions.
Those perfections which lie scattered among various masters are now
united in one general idea, which is henceforth to regulate his
taste and enlarge his imagination. With a variety of models thus
before him, he will avoid that narrowness and poverty of conception
which attends a bigoted admiration of a single master, and will
cease to follow any favourite where he ceases to excel. This
period is, however, still a time of subjection and discipline.
Though the student will not resign himself blindly to any single
authority when he may have the advantage of consulting many, he
must still be afraid of trusting his own judgment, and of deviating
into any track where he cannot find the footsteps of some former
master.
The third and last period emancipates the student from subjection
to any authority but what he shall himself judge to be supported by
reason. Confiding now in his own judgment, he will consider and
separate those different principles to which different modes of
beauty owe their original. In the former period he sought only to
know and combine excellence, wherever it was to be found, into one
idea of perfection; in this he learns, what requires the most
attentive survey and the subtle disquisition, to discriminate
perfections that are incompatible with each other.
He is from this time to regard himself as holding the same rank
with those masters whom he before obeyed as teachers, and as
exercising a sort of sovereignty over those rules which have
hitherto restrained him. Comparing now no longer the performances
of art with each other, but examining the art itself by the
standard of nature, he corrects what is erroneous, supplies what is
scanty, and adds by his own observation what the industry of his
predecessors may have yet left wanting to perfection. Having well
established his judgment, and stored his memory, he may now without
fear try the power of his imagination. The mind that has been thus
disciplined may be indulged in the warmest enthusiasm, and venture
to play on the borders of the wildest extravagance. The habitual
dignity, which long converse with the greatest minds has imparted
to him, will display itself in all his attempts, and he will stand
among his instructors, not as an imitator, but a rival.
These are the different stages of the art. But as I now address
myself particularly to those students who have been this day
rewarded for their happy passage through the first period, I can
with no propriety suppose they want any help in the initiatory
studies. My present design is to direct your view to distant
excellence, and to show you the readiest path that leads to it. Of
this I shall speak with such latitude as may leave the province of
the professor uninvaded, and shall not anticipate those precepts
which it is his business to give and your duty to understand.
It is indisputably evident that a great part of every man's life
must be employed in collecting materials for the exercise of
genius. Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new
combination of those images which have been previously gathered and
deposited in the memory. Nothing can come of nothing. He who has
laid up no materials can produce no combinations.
A student unacquainted with the attempts of former adventurers is
always apt to overrate his own abilities, to mistake the most
trifling excursions for discoveries of moment, and every coast new
to him for a new-found country. If by chance he passes beyond his
usual limits, he congratulates his own arrival at those regions
which they who have steered a better course have long left behind
them.
The productions of such minds are seldom distinguished by an air of
originality: they are anticipated in their happiest efforts; and
if they are found to differ in anything from their predecessors, it
is only in irregular sallies and trifling conceits. The more
extensive therefore your acquaintance is with the works of those
who have excelled the more extensive will be your powers of
invention; and what may appear still more like a paradox, the more
original will be your conceptions. But the difficulty on this
occasion is to determine who ought to be proposed as models of
excellence, and who ought to be considered as the properest guides.
To a young man just arrived in Italy, many of the present painters
of that country are ready enough to obtrude their precepts, and to
offer their own performances as examples of that perfection which
they affect to recommend. The modern, however, who recommends
HIMSELF as a standard, may justly be suspected as ignorant of the
true end, and unacquainted with the proper object of the art which
he professes. To follow such a guide will not only retard the
student, but mislead him.
On whom, then, can he rely, or who shall show him the path that
leads to excellence? The answer is obvious: Those great masters
who have travelled the same road with success are the most likely
to conduct others. The works of those who have stood the test of
ages have a claim to that respect and veneration to which no modern
can pretend. The duration and stability of their fame is
sufficient to evince that it has not been suspended upon the
slender thread of fashion and caprice, but bound to the human heart
by every tie of sympathetic approbation.
There is no danger of studying too much the works of those great
men, but how they may be studied to advantage is an inquiry of
great importance.
Some who have never raised their minds to the consideration of the
real dignity of the art, and who rate the works of an artist in
proportion as they excel, or are defective in the mechanical parts,
look on theory as something that may enable them to talk but not to
paint better, and confining themselves entirely to mechanical
practice, very assiduously toil on in the drudgery of copying, and
think they make a rapid progress while they faithfully exhibit the
minutest part of a favourite picture. This appears to me a very
tedious, and I think a very erroneous, method of proceeding. Of
every large composition, even of those which are most admired, a
great part may be truly said to be common-place. This, though it
takes up much time in copying, conduces little to improvement. I
consider general copying as a delusive kind of industry; the
student satisfies himself with the appearance of doing something;
he falls into the dangerous habit of imitating without selecting,
and of labouring without any determinate object; as it requires no
effort of the mind, he sleeps over his work; and those powers of
invention and composition which ought particularly to be called out
and put in action lie torpid, and lose their energy for want of
exercise.
It is an observation that all must have made, how incapable those
are of producing anything of their own who have spent much of their
time in making finished copies.
To suppose that the complication of powers, and variety of ideas
necessary to that mind which aspires to the first honours ill the
art of painting, can be obtained by the frigid contemplation of a
few single models, is no less absurd than it would be in him who
wishes to be a poet to imagine that by translating a tragedy he can
acquire to himself sufficient knowledge of the appearances of
nature, the operations of the passions, and the incidents of life.
The great use in copying, if it be at all useful, should seem to be
in learning to colour; yet even colouring will never be perfectly
attained by servilely copying the mould before you. An eye
critically nice can only be formed by observing well-coloured
pictures with attention: and by close inspection, and minute
examination you will discover, at last, the manner of handling, the
artifices of contrast, glazing, and other expedients, by which good
colourists have raised the value of their tints, and by which
nature has been so happily imitated.
I must inform you, however, that old pictures deservedly celebrated
for their colouring are often so changed by dirt and varnish, that
we ought not to wonder if they do not appear equal to their
reputation in the eyes of unexperienced painters, or young
students. An artist whose judgment is matured by long observation,
considers rather what the picture once was, than what it is at
present. He has acquired a power by habit of seeing the brilliancy
of tints through the cloud by which it is obscured. An exact
imitation, therefore, of those pictures, is likely to fill the
student's mind with false opinions, and to send him back a
colourist of his own formation, with ideas equally remote from
nature and from art, from the genuine practice of the masters and
the real appearances of things.
Following these rules, and using these precautions, when you have
clearly and distinctly learned in what good colouring consists, you
cannot do better than have recourse to nature herself, who is
always at hand, and in comparison of whose true splendour the best
coloured pictures are but faint and feeble.
However, as the practice of copying is not entirely to be excluded,
since the mechanical practice of painting is learned in some
measure by it, let those choice parts only be selected which have
recommended the work to notice. If its excellence consists in its
general effect, it would be proper to make slight sketches of the
machinery and general management of the picture. Those sketches
should be kept always by you for the regulation of your style.
Instead of copying the touches of those great masters, copy only
their conceptions. Instead of treading in their footsteps,
endeavour only to keep the same road. Labour to invent on their
general principles and way of thinking. Possess yourself with
their spirit. Consider with yourself how a Michael Angelo or a
Raffaelle would have treated this subject: and work yourself into
a belief that your picture is to be seen and criticised by them
when completed. Even an attempt of this kind will rouse your
powers.
But as mere enthusiasm will carry you but a little way, let me
recommend a practice that may be equivalent, and will perhaps more
efficaciously contribute to your advancement, than even the verbal
corrections of those masters themselves, could they be obtained.
What I would propose is, that you should enter into a kind of
competition, by painting a similar subject, and making a companion
to any picture that you consider as a model. After you have
finished your work, place it near the model, and compare them
carefully together. You will then not only see, but feel your own
deficiencies more sensibly than by precepts, or any other means of
instruction. The true principles of painting will mingle with your
thoughts. Ideas thus fixed by sensible objects, will be certain
and definitive; and sinking deep into the mind, will not only be
more just, but more lasting than those presented to you by precepts
only: which will, always be fleeting, variable, and undetermined.
This method of comparing your own efforts with those of some great
master, is indeed a severe and mortifying task, to which none will
submit, but such as have great views, with fortitude sufficient to
forego the gratifications of present vanity for future honour.
When the student has succeeded in some measure to his own
satisfaction, and has felicitated himself on his success, to go
voluntarily to a tribunal where he knows his vanity must be
humbled, and all self-approbation must vanish, requires not only
great resolution, but great humility. To him, however, who has the
Ambition to be a real master, the solid satisfaction which proceeds
from a consciousness of his advancement (of which seeing his own
faults is the first step) will very abundantly compensate for the
mortification of present disappointment. There is, besides, this
alleviating circumstance. Every discovery he makes, every
acquisition of knowledge he attains, seems to proceed from his own
sagacity; and thus he acquires a confidence in himself sufficient
to keep up the resolution of perseverance.
We all must have experienced how lazily, and consequently how
ineffectually, instruction is received when forced upon the mind by
others. Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been
their own teachers. We prefer those instructions which we have
given ourselves, from our affection to the instructor; and they are
more effectual, from being received into the mind at the very time
when it is most open and eager to receive them.
With respect to the pictures that you are to choose for your
models, I could wish that you would take the world's opinion rather
than your own. In other words, I would have you choose those of
established reputation rather than follow your own fancy. If you
should not admire them at first, you will, by endeavouring to
imitate them, find that the world has not been mistaken.
It is not an easy task to point out those various excellences for
your imitation which he distributed amongst the various schools.
An endeavour to do this may perhaps be the subject of some future
discourse. I will, therefore, at present only recommend a model
for style in painting, which is a branch of the art more
immediately necessary to the young student. Style in painting is
the same as in writing, a power over materials, whether words or
colours, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed. And in
this Lodovico Carrache (I mean in his best works) appears to me to
approach the nearest to perfection. His unaffected breadth of
light and shadow, the simplicity of colouring, which holding its
proper rank, does not draw aside the least part of the attention
from the subject, and the solemn effect of that twilight which
seems diffused over his pictures, appear to me to correspond with
grave and dignified subjects, better than the more artificial
brilliancy of sunshine which enlightens the pictures of Titian.
Though Tintoret thought that Titian's colouring was the model of
perfection, and would correspond even with the sublime of Michael
Angelo; and that if Angelo had coloured like Titian, or Titian
designed like Angelo, the world would once have had a perfect
painter.
It is our misfortune, however, that those works of Carrache which I
would recommend to the student are not often found out of Bologna.
The "St. Francis in the midst of his Friars," "The
Transfiguration," "The Birth of St. John the Baptist," "The Calling
of St. Matthew," the "St. Jerome," the fresco paintings in the
Zampieri Palace, are all worthy the attention of the student. And
I think those who travel would do well to allot a much greater
portion of their time to that city than it has been hitherto the
custom to bestow.
In this art, as in others, there are many teachers who profess to
show the nearest way to excellence, and many expedients have been
invented by which the toil of study might be saved. But let no man
be seduced to idleness by specious promises. Excellence is never
granted to man but as the reward of labour. It argues, indeed, no
small strength of mind to persevere in habits of industry, without
the pleasure of perceiving those advances; which, like the hand of
a clock, whilst they make hourly approaches to their point, yet
proceed so slowly as to escape observation. A facility of drawing,
like that of playing upon a musical instrument, cannot be acquired
but by an infinite number of acts. I need not, therefore, enforce
by many words the necessity of continual application; nor tell you
that the port-crayon ought to be for ever in your hands. Various
methods will occur to you by which this power may be acquired. I
would particularly recommend that after your return from the
academy (where I suppose your attendance to be constant) you would
endeavour to draw the figure by memory. I will even venture to
add, that by perseverance in this custom, you will become able to
draw the human figure tolerably correct, with as little effort of
the mind as to trace with a pen the letters of the alphabet.
That this facility is not unattainable, some members in this
academy give a sufficient proof. And, be assured, that if this
power is not acquired whilst you are young, there will be no time
for it afterwards: at least, the attempt will be attended with as
much difficulty as those experience who learn to read or write
after they have arrived to the age of maturity.
But while I mention the port-crayon as the student's constant
companion, he must still remember that the pencil is the instrument
by which he must hope to obtain eminence. What, therefore, I wish
to impress upon you is, that whenever an opportunity offers, you
paint your studies instead of drawing them. This will give you
such a facility in using colours, that in time they will arrange
themselves under the pencil, even without the attention of the hand
that conducts it. If one act excluded the other, this advice could
not with any propriety be given. But if painting comprises both
drawing and colouring and if by a short struggle of resolute
industry the same expedition is attainable in painting as in
drawing on paper, I cannot see what objection can justly be made to
the practice; or why that should be done by parts, which may be
done altogether.
If we turn our eyes to the several schools of painting, and
consider their respective excellences, we shall find that those who
excel most in colouring pursued this method. The Venetian and
Flemish schools, which owe much of their fame to colouring, have
enriched the cabinets of the collectors of drawings with very few
examples. Those of Titian, Paul Veronese, Tintoret, and the
Bassans, are in general slight and undetermined. Their sketches on
paper are as rude as their pictures are excellent in regard to
harmony of colouring. Correggio and Barocci have left few, if any,
finished drawings behind them. And in the Flemish school, Rubens
and Vandyke made their designs for the most part either in colours
or in chiaroscuro. It is as common to find studies of the Venetian
and Flemish painters on canvas, as of the schools of Rome and
Florence on paper. Not but that many finished drawings are sold
under the names of those masters. Those, however, are undoubtedly
the productions either of engravers or of their scholars who copied
their works.
These instructions I have ventured to offer from my own experience;
but as they deviate widely from received opinions, I offer them
with diffidence; and when better are suggested, shall retract them
without regret.
There is one precept, however, in which I shall only be opposed by
the vain, the ignorant, and the idle. I am not afraid that I shall
repeat it too often. You must have no dependence on your own
genius. If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if
you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their
deficiency. Nothing is denied to well-directed labour: nothing is
to be obtained without it. Not to enter into metaphysical
discussions on the nature or essence of genius, I will venture to
assert, that assiduity unabated by difficulty, and a disposition
eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit, will produce effects
similar to those which some call the result of natural powers.
Though a man cannot at all times, and in all places, paint or draw,
yet the mind can prepare itself by laying in proper materials, at
all times, and in all places. Both Livy and Plutarch, in
describing Philopoemen, one of the ablest generals of antiquity,
have given us a striking picture of a mind always intent on its
profession, and by assiduity obtaining those excellences which some
all their lives vainly expect from Nature. I shall quote the
passage in Livy at length, as it runs parallel with the practice I
would recommend to the painter, sculptor, or architect.
"Philopoemen was a man eminent for his sagacity and experience in
choosing ground, and in leading armies; to which he formed his mind
by perpetual meditation, in times of peace as well as war. When,
in any occasional journey, he came to a straight difficult passage,
if he was alone, he considered with himself, and if he was in
company he asked his friends what it would be best to do if in this
place they had found an enemy, either in the front, or in the rear,
on the one side, or on the other. 'It might happen,' says he,
'that the enemy to be opposed might come on drawn up in regular
lines, or in a tumultuous body, formed only by the nature of the
place.' He then considered a little what ground he should take;
what number of soldiers he should use, and what arms he should give
them; where he should lodge his carriages, his baggage, and the
defenceless followers of his camp; how many guards, and of what
kind, he should send to defend them; and whether it would be better
to press forward along the pass, or recover by retreat his former
station: he would consider likewise where his camp could most
commodiously be formed; how much ground he should enclose within
his trenches; where he should have the convenience of water; and
where he might find plenty of wood and forage; and when he should
break up his camp on the following day, through what road he could
most safely pass, and in what form he should dispose his troops.
With such thoughts and disquisitions he had from his early years so
exercised his mind, that on these occasions nothing could happen
which he had not been already accustomed to consider."
I cannot help imagining that I see a promising young painter,
equally vigilant, whether at home, or abroad in the streets, or in
the fields. Every object that presents itself is to him a lesson.
He regards all nature with a view to his profession; and combines
her beauties, or corrects her defects. He examines the countenance
of men under the influence of passion; and often catches the most
pleasing hints from subjects of turbulence or deformity. Even bad
pictures themselves supply him with useful documents; and, as
Leonardo da Vinci has observed, he improves upon the fanciful
images that are sometimes seen in the fire, or are accidentally
sketched upon a discoloured wall.
The artist who has his mind thus filled with ideas, and his hand
made expert by practice, works with ease and readiness; whilst he
who would have you believe that he is waiting for the inspirations
of genius, is in reality at a loss how to beam, and is at last
delivered of his monsters with difficulty and pain.
The well-grounded painter, on the contrary, has only maturely to
consider his subject, and all the mechanical parts of his art
follow without his exertion, Conscious of the difficulty of
obtaining what he possesses he makes no pretensions to secrets,
except those of closer application. Without conceiving the
smallest jealousy against others, he is contented that all shall be
as great as himself who are willing to undergo the same fatigue:
and as his pre-eminence depends not upon a trick, he is free from
the painful suspicions of a juggler, who lives in perpetual fear
lest his trick should be discovered.
A DISCOURSE
Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution
of the Prizes, December, 14, 1770, by the President
Gentlemen,--It is not easy to speak with propriety to so many
students of different ages and different degrees of advancement.
The mind requires nourishment adapted to its growth; and what may
have promoted our earlier efforts, might, retard us in our nearer
approaches to perfection.
The first endeavours of a young painter, as I have remarked in a
former discourse, must be employed in the attainment of mechanical
dexterity, and confined to the mere imitation of the object before
him. Those who have advanced beyond the rudiments, may, perhaps,
find advantage in reflecting on the advice which I have likewise
given them, when I recommended the diligent study of the works of
our great predecessors; but I at the same time endeavoured to guard
them against an implicit submission to the authority of any one
master, however excellent; or by a strict imitation of his manner,
to preclude ourselves from the abundance and variety of nature. I
will now add that nature herself is not to be too closely copied.
There are excellences in the art of painting, beyond what is
commonly called the imitation of nature: and these excellences I
wish to point out. The students who, having passed through the
initiatory exercises, are more advanced in the art, and who, sure
of their hand, have leisure to exert their understanding, must now
be told that a mere copier of nature can never produce anything
great; can never raise and enlarge the conceptions, or warm the
heart of the spectator.
The wish of the genuine painter must be more extensive: instead of
endeavouring to amuse mankind with the minute neatness of his
imitations, he must endeavour to improve them by the grandeur of
his ideas; instead of seeking praise, by deceiving the superficial
sense of the spectator, he must strive for fame, by captivating the
imagination.
The principle now laid down, that the perfection of this art does
not consist in mere imitation, is far from being new or singular.
It is, indeed, supported by the general opinion of the enlightened
part of mankind. The poets, orators, and rhetoricians of
antiquity, are continually enforcing this position, that all the
arts receive their perfection from an ideal beauty, superior to
what is to be found in individual nature. They are ever referring
to the practice of the painters and sculptors of their times,
particularly Phidias (the favourite artist of antiquity), to
illustrate their assertions. As if they could not sufficiently
express their admiration of his genius by what they knew, they have
recourse to poetical enthusiasm. They call it inspiration; a gift
from heaven. The artist is supposed to have ascended the celestial
regions, to furnish his mind with this perfect idea of beauty.
"He," says Proclus, "who takes for his model such forms as nature
produces, and confines himself to an exact imitation of them, will
never attain to what is perfectly beautiful. For the works of
nature are full of disproportion, and fall very short of the true
standard of beauty. So that Phidias, when he formed his Jupiter,
did not copy any object ever presents to his sight; but
contemplated only that image which he had conceived in his mind
from Homer's description." And thus Cicero, speaking of the same
Phidias: "Neither did this artist," says he, "when he carved the
image of Jupiter or Minerva, set before him any one human figure as
a pattern, which he was to copy; but having a more perfect idea of
beauty fixed in his mind, this he steadily contemplated, and to the
imitation of this all his skill and labour were directed.
The moderns are not less convinced than the ancients of this
superior power existing in the art; nor less conscious of its
effects. Every language has adopted terms expressive of this
excellence. The Gusto grande of the Italians; the Beau ideal of
the French and the GREAT STYLE, GENIUS, and TASTE among the
English, are but different appellations of the same thing. It is
this intellectual dignity, they say, that ennobles the painter's
art; that lays the line between him and the mere mechanic; and
produces those great effects in an instant, which eloquence and
poetry, by slow and repeated efforts, are scarcely able to attain.
Such is the warmth with which both the ancients and moderns speak
of this divine principle of the art; but, as I have formerly
observed, enthusiastic admiration seldom promotes knowledge.
Though a student by such praise may have his attention roused, and
a desire excited, of running in this great career, yet it is
possible that what has been said to excite, may only serve to deter
him. He examines his own mind, and perceives there nothing of that
divine inspiration with which he is told so many others have been
favoured. He never travelled to heaven to gather new ideas; and he
finds himself possessed of no other qualifications than what mere
common observation and a plain understanding can confer. Thus he
becomes gloomy amidst the splendour of figurative declamation, and
thinks it hopeless to pursue an object which he supposes out of the
reach of human industry.
But on this, as upon many other occasions, we ought to distinguish
how much is to be given to enthusiasm, and how much to reason. We
ought to allow for, and we ought to commend, that strength of vivid
expression which is necessary to convey, in its full force, the
highest sense of the most complete effect of art; taking care at
the same time not to lose in terms of vague admiration that
solidity and truth of principle upon which alone we can reason, and
may be enabled to practise.
It is not easy to define in what this great style consists; nor to
describe, by words, the proper means of acquiring it, if the mind
of the student should be at all capable of such an acquisition.
Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer
taste and genius. But though there neither are, nor can be, any
precise invariable rules for the exercise or the acquisition of
those great qualities, yet we may as truly say that they always
operate in proportion to our attention in observing the works of
nature, to our skill in selecting, and to our care in digesting,
methodising, and comparing our observations. There are many
beauties in our art, that seem, at first, to lie without the reach
of precept, and yet may easily be reduced to practical principles.
Experience is all in all; but it is not every one who profits by
experience; and most people err, not so much from want of capacity
to find their object, as from not knowing what object to pursue.
This great ideal perfection and beauty are not to be sought in the
heavens, but upon the earth. They are about us, and upon every
side of us. But the power of discovering what is deformed in
nature, or in other words, what is particular and uncommon, can be
acquired only by experience; and the whole beauty and grandeur of
the art consists, in my opinion, in being able to get above all
singular forms, local customs, particularities, and details of
every kind.
All the objects which are exhibited to our view by nature, upon
close examination will be found to have their blemishes and
defects. The most beautiful forms have something about them like
weakness, minuteness, or imperfection. But it is not every eye
that perceives these blemishes. It must be an eye long used to the
contemplation and comparison of these forms; and which, by a long
habit of observing what any set of objects of the same kind have in
common, that alone can acquire the power of discerning what each
wants in particular. This long laborious comparison should be the
first study of the painter who aims at the greatest style. By this
means, he acquires a just idea of beautiful forms; he corrects
nature by herself, her imperfect state by her more perfect. His
eye being enabled to distinguish the accidental deficiencies,
excrescences, and deformities of things from their general figures,
he makes out an abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any
one original; and what may seem a paradox, he learns to design
naturally by drawing his figures unlike to any one object. This
idea of the perfect state of nature, which the artist calls the
ideal beauty, is the great leading principle by which works of
genius are conducted. By this Phidias acquired his fame. He
wrought upon a sober principle what has so much excited the
enthusiasm of the world; and by this method you, who have courage
to tread the same path, may acquire equal reputation.
This is the idea which has acquired, and which seems to have a
right to the epithet of Divine; as it may be said to preside, like
a supreme judge, over all the productions of nature; appearing to
be possessed of the will and intention of the Creator, as far as
they regard the external form of living beings.
When a man once possesses this idea in its perfection, there is no
danger but that he will he sufficiently warmed by it himself, and
be able to warm and ravish every one else.
Thus it is from a reiterated experience, and a close comparison of
the objects in nature, that an artist becomes possessed of the idea
of that central form, if I may so express it, from which every
deviation is deformity. But the investigation of this form I grant
is painful, and I know but of one method of shortening the road;
this is, by a careful study of the works of the ancient sculptors;
who, being indefatigable in the school of nature, have left models
of that perfect form behind them, which an artist would prefer as
supremely beautiful, who had spent his whole life in that single
contemplation. But if industry carried them thus far, may not you
also hope for the same reward from the same labour? We have the
same school opened to us that was opened to them; for nature denies
her instructions to none who desire to become her pupils.
To the principle I have laid down, that the idea of beauty in each
species of beings is invariably one, it may be objected that in
every particular species there are various central forms, which are
separate and distinct from each other, and yet are undeniably
beautiful; that in the human figure, for instance, the beauty of
the Hercules is one, of the gladiator another, of the Apollo
another, which makes so many different ideas of beauty.
It is true, indeed, that these figures are each perfect in their
kind, though of different characters and proportions; but still
none of them is the representation of an individual, but of a
class. And as there is one general form, which, as I have said,
belongs to the human kind at large, so in each of these classes
there is one common idea and central form, which is the abstract of
the various individual forms belonging to that class. Thus, though
the forms of childhood and age differ exceedingly, there is a
common form in childhood, and a common form in age,--which is the
more perfect, as it is more remote from all peculiarities. But I
must add further, that though the most perfect forms of each of the
general divisions of the human figure are ideal, and superior to
any individual form of that class, yet the highest perfection of
the human figure is not to be found in any one of them. It is not
in the Hercules, nor in the gladiator, nor in the Apollo; but in
that form which is taken from them all, and which partakes equally
of the activity of the gladiator, of the delicacy of the Apollo,
and of the muscular strength of the Hercules. For perfect beauty
in any species must combine all the characters which are beautiful
in that species. It cannot consist in any one to the exclusion of
the rest: no one, therefore, must be predominant, that no one may
be deficient.
The knowledge of these different characters, and the power of
separating and distinguishing them, is undoubtedly necessary to the
painter, who is to vary his compositions with figures of various
forms and proportions, though he is never to lose sight of the
general idea of perfection in each kind.
There is, likewise, a kind of symmetry or proportion, which may
properly be said to belong to deformity. A figure lean or
corpulent, tall or short, though deviating from beauty, may still
have a certain union of the various parts, which may contribute to
make them, on the whole, not unpleasing. When the artist has by
diligent attention acquired a clear and distinct idea of beauty and
symmetry; when he has reduced the variety of nature to the abstract
idea; his next task will be to become acquainted with the genuine
habits of nature, as distinguished from those of fashion. For in
the same manner, and on the same principles, as he has acquired the
knowledge of the real forms of nature, distinct from accidental
deformity, he must endeavour to separate simple chaste nature from
those adventitious, those affected and forced airs or actions, with
which she is loaded by modern education.
Perhaps I cannot better explain what I mean than by reminding you
of what was taught us by the Professor of Anatomy, in respect to
the natural position and movement of the feet. He observed that
the fashion of turning, them outwards was contrary to the intent of
nature, as might be seen from the structure of the bones, and from
the weakness that proceeded from that manner of standing. To this
we may add the erect position of the head, the projection of the
chest, the walking with straight knees, and many such actions,
which are merely the result of fashion, and what nature never
warranted, as we are sure that we have been taught them when
children.
I have mentioned but a few of those instances, in which vanity or
caprice have contrived to distort and disfigure the human form;
your own recollection will add to these a thousand more of ill-
understood methods, that have been practised to disguise nature,
among our dancing-masters, hair-dressers, and tailors, in their
various schools of deformity.
However the mechanic and ornamental arts may sacrifice to fashion,
she must be entirely excluded from the art of painting; the painter
must never mistake this capricious changeling for the genuine
offspring of nature; he must divest himself of all prejudices in
favour of his age or country; he must disregard all local and
temporary ornaments, and look only on those general habits that are
everywhere and always the same. He addresses his works to the
people of every country and every age; he calls upon posterity to
be his spectators, and says with Zeuxis, In aeternitatem pingo.
The neglect of separating modern fashions from the habits of
nature, leads to that ridiculous style which has been practised by
some painters who have given to Grecian heroes the airs and graces
practised in the court of Louis XIV.; an absurdity almost as great
as it would have been to have dressed them after the fashion of
that court.
To avoid this error, however, and to retain the true simplicity of
nature, is a task more difficult than at first sight it may appear.
The prejudices in favour of the fashions and customs that we have
been used to, and which are justly called a second nature, make it
too often difficult to distinguish that which is natural from that
which is the result of education; they frequently even give a
predilection in favour of the artificial mode; and almost every one
is apt to be guided by those local prejudices who has not chastised
his mind, and regulated the instability of his affections, by the
eternal invariable idea of nature.
Here, then, as before, we must have recourse to the ancients as
instructors. It is from a careful study of their works that you
will be enabled to attain to the real simplicity of nature; they
will suggest many observations, which would probably escape you, if
your study were confined to nature alone. And, indeed, I cannot
help suspecting, that in this instance the ancients had an easier
task than the moderns. They had, probably, little or nothing to
unlearn, as their manners were nearly approaching to this desirable
simplicity; while the modern artist, before he can see the truth of
things, is obliged to remove a veil, with which the fashion of the
times has thought proper to cover her.
Having gone thus far in our investigation of the great style in
painting; if we now should suppose that the artist has formed the
true idea of beauty, which enables him to give his works a correct
and perfect design; if we should suppose also that he has acquired
a knowledge of the unadulterated habits of nature, which gives him
simplicity; the rest of his talk is, perhaps, less than is
generally imagined. Beauty and simplicity have so great a share in
the composition of a great style, that he who has acquired them has
little else to learn. It must not, indeed, be forgot that there is
a nobleness of conception, which goes beyond anything in the mere
exhibition, even of perfect form; there is an art of animating and
dignifying the figures with intellectual grandeur, of impressing
the appearance of philosophic wisdom or heroic virtue. This can
only be acquired by him that enlarges the sphere of his
understanding by a variety of knowledge, and warms his imagination
with the best productions of ancient and modern poetry.
A hand thus exercised, and a mind thus instructed, will bring the
art to a higher degree of excellence than, perhaps, it has hitherto
attained in this country. Such a student will disdain the humbler
walks of painting, which, however profitable, can never assure him
a permanent reputation. He will leave the meaner artist servilely
to suppose that those are the best pictures which are most likely
to deceive the spectator. He will permit the lower painter, like
the florist or collector of shells, to exhibit the minute
discriminations which distinguish one object of the same species
from another; while he, like the philosopher, will consider nature
in the abstract, and represent in every one of his figures the
character of its species.
If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art, there is no
doubt, indeed, but the minute painter would be more apt to succeed:
but it is not the eye, it is the mind, which the painter of genius
desires to address; nor will he waste a moment upon these smaller
objects, which only serve to catch the sense, to divide the
attention, and to counteract his great design of speaking to the
heart.
This is the ambition I could wish to excite in your minds; and the
object I have had in my view, throughout this discourse, is that
one great idea which gives to painting its true dignity, that
entitles it to the name of a Liberal Art, and ranks it as a sister
of poetry.
It may possibly have happened to many young students whose
application was sufficient to overcome all difficulties, and whose
minds were capable of embracing the most extensive views, that they
have, by a wrong direction originally given, spent their lives in
the meaner walks of painting, without ever knowing there was a
nobler to pursue. "Albert Durer," as Vasari has justly remarked,
"would probably have been one of the first painters of his age (and
he lived in an era of great artists) had he been initiated into
those great principles of the art which were so well understood and
practised by his contemporaries in Italy. But unluckily, having
never seen or heard of any other manner, he considered his own,
without doubt, as perfect."
As for the various departments of painting, which do not presume to
make such high pretensions, they are many. None of them are
without their merit, though none enter into competition with this
great universal presiding idea of the art. The painters who have
applied themselves more particularly to low and vulgar characters,
and who express with precision the various shades of passion, as
they are exhibited by vulgar minds (such as we see in the works of
Hogarth) deserve great praise; but as their genius has been
employed on low and confined subjects, the praise that we give must
be as limited as its object. The merrymaking or quarrelling of the
Boors of Teniers; the same sort of productions of Brouwer, or
Ostade, are excellent in their kind; and the excellence and its
praise will be in proportion, as, in those limited subjects and
peculiar forms, they introduce more or less of the expression of
those passions, as they appear in general and more enlarged nature.
This principle may be applied to the battle pieces of Bourgognone,
the French gallantries of Watteau, and even beyond the exhibition
of animal life, to the landscapes of Claude Lorraine, and the sea-
views of Vandervelde. All these painters have, in general, the
same right, in different degrees, to the name of a painter, which a
satirist, an epigrammatist, a sonnetteer, a writer of pastorals, or
descriptive poetry, has to that of a poet.
In the same rank, and, perhaps, of not so great merit, is the cold
painter of portraits. But his correct and just imitation of his
object has its merit. Even the painter of still life, whose
highest ambition is to give a minute representation of every part
of those low objects, which he sets before him, deserves praise in
proportion to his attainment; because no part of this excellent
art, so much the ornament of polished life, is destitute of value
and use. These, however, are by no means the views to which the
mind of the student ought to be PRIMARILY directed. By aiming at
better things, if from particular inclination, or from the taste of
the time and place he lives in, or from necessity, or from failure
in the highest attempts, he is obliged to descend lower; he will
bring into the lower sphere of art a grandeur of composition and
character that will raise and ennoble his works far above their
natural rank.
A man is not weak, though he may not be able to wield the club of
Hercules; nor does a man always practise that which he esteems the
beat; but does that which he can best do. In moderate attempts,
there are many walks open to the artist. But as the idea of beauty
is of necessity but one, so there can be but one great mode of
painting; the leading principle of which I have endeavoured to
explain.
I should be sorry if what is here recommended should be at all
understood to countenance a careless or indetermined manner of
painting. For though the painter is to overlook the accidental
discriminations of nature, he is to pronounce distinctly, and with
precision, the general forms of things. A firm and determined
outline is one of the characteristics of the great style in
painting; and, let me add, that he who possesses the knowledge of
the exact form, that every part of nature ought to have, will be
fond of expressing that knowledge with correctness and precision in
all his works.
To conclude: I have endeavoured to reduce the idea of beauty to
general principles. And I had the pleasure to observe that the
professor of painting proceeded in the same method, when he showed
you that the artifice of contrast was founded but on one principle.
And I am convinced that this is the only means of advancing
science, of clearing the mind from a confused heap of contradictory
observations, that do but perplex and puzzle the student when he
compares them, or misguide him if he gives himself up to their
authority; but bringing them under one general head can alone give
rest and satisfaction to an inquisitive mind.
A DISCOURSE
Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution
of the Prizes, December 10, 1771, by the President.
Gentlemen,--The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the
mental labour employed in it, or the mental pleasure produced by
it. As this principle is observed or neglected, our profession
becomes either a liberal art or a mechanical trade. In the hands
of one man it makes the highest pretensions, as it is addressed to
the noblest faculties, In those of another it is reduced to a mere
matter of ornament, and the painter has but the humble province of
furnishing our apartments with elegance.
This exertion of mind, which is the only circumstance that truly
ennobles our art, makes the great distinction between the Roman and
Venetian schools. I have formerly observed that perfect form is
produced by leaving out particularities, and retaining only general
ideas. I shall now endeavour to show that this principle, which I
have proved to be metaphysically just, extends itself to every part
of the art; that it gives what is called the grand style to
invention, to composition, to expression, and even to colouring and
drapery.
Invention in painting does not imply the invention of the subject,
for that is commonly supplied by the poet or historian. With
respect to the choice, no subject can be proper that is not
generally interesting. It ought to be either some eminent instance
of heroic action or heroic suffering. There must be something
either in the action or in the object in which men are universally
concerned, and which powerfully strikes upon the public sympathy.
Strictly speaking, indeed, no subject can be of universal, hardly
can it be of general concern: but there are events and characters
so popularly known in those countries where our art is in request,
that they may be considered as sufficiently general for all our
purposes. Such are the great events of Greek and Roman fable and
history, which early education and the usual course of reading have
made familiar and interesting to all Europe, without being degraded
by the vulgarism of ordinary life in any country. Such, too, are
the capital subjects of Scripture history, which, besides their
general notoriety, become venerable by their connection with our
religion.
As it is required that the subject selected should be a general
one, it is no less necessary that it should be kept unembarrassed
with whatever may any way serve to divide the attention of the
spectator. Whenever a story is related, every man forms a picture
in his mind of the action and the expression of the persons
employed. The power of representing this mental picture in canvas
is what we call invention in a painter. And as in the conception
of this ideal picture the mind does not enter into the minute
peculiarities of the dress, furniture, or scene of action, so when
the painter comes to represent it he contrives those little
necessary concomitant circumstances in such a manner that they
shall strike the spectator no more than they did himself in his
first conception of the story.
I am very ready to allow that some circumstances of minuteness and
particularity frequently tend to give an air of truth to a piece,
and to interest the spectator in an extraordinary manner. Such
circumstances, therefore, cannot wholly be rejected; but if there
be anything in the art which requires peculiar nicety of
discernment, it is the disposition of these minute circumstantial
parts which, according to the judgment employed in the choice,
become so useful to truth or so injurious to grandeur.
However, the usual and most dangerous error is on the side of
minuteness, and, therefore, I think caution most necessary where
most have failed. The general idea constitutes real excellence.
All smaller things, however perfect in their way, are to be
sacrificed without mercy to the greater. The painter will not
inquire what things may be admitted without much censure. He will
not think it enough to show that they may be there; he will show
that they must be there, that their absence would render his
picture maimed and defective.
Thus, though to the principal group a second or third be added, and
a second and third mass of light, care must be yet taken that these
subordinate actions and lights, neither each in particular, nor all
together, come into any degree of competition with the principal;
they should make a part of that whole which would be imperfect
without them. To every part of painting this rule may be applied.
Even in portraits, the grace and, we may add, the likeness,
consists more in taking the general air than in observing the
effect similitude of every feature.
Thus figures must have a ground whereon to stand; they must be
clothed, there must be a background, there must be light and
shadow; but none of these ought to appear to have taken up any part
of the artist's attention. They should be so managed as not even
to catch that of the spectator. We know well enough, when we
analyse a piece, the difficulty and the subtlety with which an
artist adjusts the background, drapery, and masses of light; we
know that a considerable part of the grace and effect of his
picture depends upon them; but this art is so much concealed, even
to a judicious eye, that no remains of any of these subordinate
parts occur to memory when the picture is not present.
The great end of the art is to strike the imagination. The painter
is, therefore, to make no ostentation of the means by which this is
done; the spectator is only to feel the result in his bosom. An
inferior artist is unwilling that any part of his industry should
be lost upon the spectator. He takes as much pains to discover, as
the greater artist does to conceal, the marks of his subordinate
assiduity. In works of the lower kind everything appears studied
and encumbered; it is all boastful art and open affectation. The
ignorant often part from such pictures with wonder in their mouths,
and indifference in their hearts.
But it is not enough in invention that the artist should restrain
and keep under all the inferior parts of his subject; he must
sometimes deviate from vulgar and strict historical truth in
pursuing the grandeur of his design.
How much the great style exacts from its professors to conceive and
represent their subjects in a poetical manner, not confined to mere
matter of fact, may be seen in the cartoons of Raffaelle. In all
the pictures in which the painter has represented the apostles, he
has drawn them with great nobleness; he has given them as much
dignity as the human figure is capable of receiving yet we are
expressly told in Scripture they had no such respectable
appearance; and of St. Paul in particular, we are told by himself,
that his bodily presence was mean. Alexander is said to have been
of a low stature: a painter ought not so to represent him.
Agesilaus was low, lame, and of a mean appearance. None of these
defects ought to appear in a piece of which he is the hero. In
conformity to custom, I call this part of the art history painting;
it ought to be called poetical, as in reality it is.
All this is not falsifying any fact; it is taking an allowed
poetical licence. A painter of portraits retains the individual
likeness; a painter of history shows the man by showing his
actions. A painter must compensate the natural deficiencies of his
art. He has but one sentence to utter, but one moment to exhibit.
He cannot, like the poet or historian, expatiate, and impress the
mind with great veneration for the character of the hero or saint
he represents, though he lets us know at the same time that the
saint was deformed, or the hero lame. The painter has no other
means of giving an idea of the dignity of the mind, but by that
external appearance which grandeur of thought does generally,
though not always, impress on the countenance, and by that
correspondence of figure to sentiment and situation which all men
wish, but cannot command. The painter, who may in this one
particular attain with ease what others desire in vain, ought to
give all that he possibly can, since there are so many
circumstances of true greatness that he cannot give at all. He
cannot make his hero talk like a great man; he must make him look
like one. For which reason he ought to be well studied in the
analysis of those circumstances which constitute dignity of
appearance in real life.
As in invention, so likewise in, expression, care must be taken not
to run into particularities, Those expressions alone should be
given to the figures which their respective situations generally
produce. Nor is this enough; each person should also have that
expression which men of his rank generally exhibit. The joy or the
grief of a character of dignity is not to be expressed in the same
manner as a similar passion in a vulgar face. Upon this principle
Bernini, perhaps, may be subject to censure. This sculptor, in
many respects admirable, has given a very mean expression to his
statue of David, who is represented as just going to throw the
stone from the sling; and in order to give it the expression of
energy he has made him biting his under-lip. This expression is
far from being general, and still farther from being dignified. He
might have seen it in an instance or two, and he mistook accident
for universality.
With respect to colouring, though it may appear at first a part of
painting merely mechanical, yet it still has its rules, and those
grounded upon that presiding principle which regulates both the
great and the little in the study of a painter. By this, the first
effect of the picture is produced; and as this is performed the
spectator, as he walks the gallery, will stop, or pass along. To
give a general air of grandeur at first view, all trifling or
artful play of little lights or an attention to a variety of tints
is to be avoided; a quietness and simplicity must reign over the
whole work; to which a breadth of uniform and simple colour will
very much contribute. Grandeur of effect is produced by two
different ways, which seem entirely opposed to each other. One is,
by reducing the colours to little more than chiaroscuro, which was
often the practice of the Bolognian schools; and the other, by
making the colours very distinct and forcible, such as we see in
those of Rome and Florence; but still, the presiding principle of
both those manners is simplicity. Certainly, nothing can be more
simple than monotony, and the distinct blue, red, and yellow
colours which are seen in the draperies of the Roman and Florentine
schools, though they have not that kind of harmony which is
produced by a variety of broken and transparent colours, have that
effect of grandeur that was intended. Perhaps these distinct
colours strike the mind more forcibly, from there not being any
great union between them; as martial music, which is intended to
rouse the noble passions, has its effect from the sudden and
strongly marked transitions from one note to another, which that
style of music requires; whilst in that which is intended to move
the softer passions the notes imperceptibly melt into one another.
In the same manner as the historical painter never enters into the
detail of colours, so neither does he debase his conceptions with
minute attention to the discriminations of drapery. It is the
inferior style that marks the variety of stuffs. With him, the
clothing is neither woollen, nor linen, nor silk, satin, or velvet:
it is drapery; it is nothing more. The art of disposing the
foldings of the drapery make a very considerable part of the
painter's study. To make it merely natural is a mechanical
operation, to which neither genius or taste are required; whereas,
it requires the nicest judgment to dispose the drapery, so that the
folds have an easy communication, and gracefully follow each other,
with such natural negligence as to look like the effect of chance,
and at the same time show the figure under it to the utmost
advantage.
Carlo Maratti was of opinion that the disposition of drapery was a
more difficult art than even that of drawing the human figure; that
a student might be more easily taught the latter than the former;
as the rules of drapery, he said, could not be so well ascertained
as those for delineating a correct form, This, perhaps, is a proof
how willingly we favour our own peculiar excellence. Carlo Maratti
is said to have valued himself particularly upon his skill in this
part of the art yet in him the disposition appears so artificial,
that he is inferior to Raffaelle, even in that which gave him his
best claim to reputation
Such is the great principle by which we must be directed in the
nobler branches of our art. Upon this principle the Roman, the
Florentine, the Bolognese schools, have formed their practice; and
by this they have deservedly obtained the highest praise. These
are the three great schools of the world in the epic style. The
best of the French school, Poussin, Le Sueur, and Le Brun, have
formed themselves upon these models, and consequently may be said,
though Frenchmen, to be a colony from the Roman school. Next to
these, but in a very different style of excellence, we may rank the
Venetian, together with the Flemish and the Dutch schools, all
professing to depart from the great purposes of painting, and
catching at applause by inferior qualities.
I am not ignorant that some will censure me for placing the
Venetians in this inferior class, and many of the warmest admirers
of painting will think them unjustly degraded; but I wish not to be
misunderstood. Though I can by no means allow them to hold any
rank with the nobler schools of painting, they accomplished
perfectly the thing they attempted. But as mere elegance is their
principal object, as they seem more willing to dazzle than to
affect, it can be no injury to them to suppose that their practice
is useful only to its proper end. But what may heighten the
elegant may degrade the sublime. There is a simplicity, and I may
add, severity, in the great manner, which is, I am afraid, almost
incompatible with this comparatively sensual style.
Tintoret, Paul Veronese, and others of the Venetian schools, seem
to have painted with no other purpose than to be admired for their
skill and expertness in the mechanism of painting, and to make a
parade of that art which, as I before observed, the higher style
requires its followers to conceal.
In a conference of the French Academy, at which were present Le
Brun, Sebastian Bourdon, and all the eminent artists of that age,
one of the academicians desired to have their opinion on the
conduct of Paul Veronese, who, though a painter of great
consideration, had, contrary to the strict rules of art, in his
picture of Perseus and Andromeda, represented the principal figure
in shade. To this question no satisfactory answer was then given.
But I will venture to say, that if they had considered the class of
the artist, and ranked him as an ornamental painter, there would
have been no difficulty in answering: "It was unreasonable to
expect what was never intended. His intention was solely to
produce an effect of light and Shadow; everything was to be
sacrificed to that intent, and the capricious composition of that
picture suited very well with the style he professed."
Young minds are indeed too apt to be captivated by this splendour
of style, and that of the Venetians will be particularly pleasing;
for by them all those parts of the art that give pleasure to the
eye or sense have been cultivated with care, and carried to the
degree nearest to perfection. The powers exerted in the mechanical
part of the art have been called the language of painters; but we
must say, that it is but poor eloquence which only shows that the
orator can talk. Words should be employed as the means, not as the
end: language is the instrument, conviction is the work.
The language of painting must indeed be allowed these masters; but
even in that they have shown more copiousness than choice, and more
luxuriancy than judgment. If we consider the uninteresting
subjects of their invention, or at least the uninteresting manner
in which they are treated; if we attend to their capricious
composition, their violent and affected contrasts, whether of
figures, or of light and shadow, the richness of their drapery,
and, at the same time, the mean effect which the discrimination of
stuffs gives to their pictures; if to these we add their total
inattention to expression, and then reflect on the conceptions and
the learning of Michael Angelo, or the simplicity of Raffaelle, we
can no longer dwell on the comparison. Even in colouring, if we
compare the quietness and chastity of the Bolognese pencil to the
bustle and tumult that fills every part of, a Venetian picture,
without the least attempt to interest the passions, their boasted
art will appear a mere struggle without effect; an empty tale told
by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Such as suppose that the great style might happily be blended with
the ornamental, that the simple, grave, and majestic dignity of
Raffaelle could unite with the glow and bustle of a Paulo or
Tintoret, are totally mistaken. The principles by which each are
attained are so contrary to each other, that they seem, in my
opinion, incompatible, and as impossible to exist together, as to
unite in the mind at the same time the most sublime ideas and the
lowest sensuality.
The subjects of the Venetian painters are mostly such as give them
an opportunity of introducing a great number of figures, such as
feasts, marriages, and processions, public martyrdoms, or miracles.
I can easily conceive that Paul Veronese, if he were asked, would
say that no subject was proper for an historical picture but such
as admitted at least forty figures; for in a less number, he would
assert, there could be no opportunity of the painter's showing his
art in composition, his dexterity of managing and disposing the
masses of light, and groups of figures, and of introducing a
variety of Eastern dresses and characters in their rich stuffs.
But the thing is very different with a pupil of the greater
schools. Annibale Caracci thought twelve figures sufficient for
any story: he conceived that more would contribute to no end but
to fill space; that they would, be but cold spectators of the
general action, or, to use his own expression, that they would be
figures to be let. Besides, it is impossible for a picture
composed of so many parts to have that effect, so indispensably
necessary to grandeur, of one complete whole. However
contradictory it may be in geometry, it is true in taste, that many
little things will not make a great one. The sublime impresses the
mind at once with one great idea; it is a single blow: the elegant
indeed may be produced by a repetition, by an accumulation of many
minute circumstances.
However great the difference is between the composition of the
Venetian and the rest of the Italian schools, there is full as
great a disparity in the effect of their pictures as produced by
colours. And though in this respect the Venetians must be allowed
extraordinary skill, yet even that skill, as they have employed it,
will but ill correspond with the great style. Their colouring is
not only too brilliant, but, I will venture to say, too harmonious
to produce that solidity, steadiness, and simplicity of effect
which heroic subjects require, and which simple or grave colours
only can give to a work. That they are to be cautiously studied by
those who are ambitious of treading the great walk of history is
confirmed, if it wants confirmation, by the greatest of all
authorities, Michael Angelo. This wonderful man, after having seen
a picture by Titian, told Vasari, who accompanied him, "that he
liked much his colouring and manner; but then he added, that it was
a pity the Venetian painters did not learn to draw correctly in
their early youth, and adopt a better manner of study."
By this it appears that the principal attention of the Venetian
painters, in the opinion of Michael Angelo, seemed to be engrossed
by the study of colours, to the neglect of the ideal beauty of
form, or propriety of expression. But if general censure was given
to that school from the sight of a picture of Titian, how much more
heavily, and more justly, would the censure fall on Paulo Veronese,
or more especially on Tintoret? And here I cannot avoid citing
Vasari's opinion of the style and manner of Tintoret. "Of all the
extraordinary geniuses," says he, "that have ever practised the art
of painting, for wild, capricious, extravagant, and fantastical
inventions, for furious impetuosity and boldness in the execution
of his work, there is none like Tintoret; his strange whims are
even beyond extravagance; and his works seem to be produced rather
by chance than in consequence of any previous design, as if he
wanted to convince the world that, the art was a trifle, and of the
most easy attainment."
For my own part, when I speak of the Venetian painters, I wish to
be understood to mean Paulo Veronese and Tintoret, to the exclusion
of Titian; for though his style is not so pure as that of many
other of the Italian schools, yet there is a sort of senatorial
dignity about him, which, however awkward in his imitators, seems
to become him exceedingly. His portraits alone, from the nobleness
and simplicity of character which he always gave them, will entitle
him to the greatest respect, as he undoubtedly stands in the first
rank in this branch of the art.
It is not with Titian, but with the seducing qualities of the two
former, that I could wish to caution you, against being too much
captivated. These are the persons who may be said to have
exhausted all the powers of florid eloquence, to debauch the young
and unexperienced, and have, without doubt, been the cause of
turning off the attention of the connoisseur and of the patron of
art, as well as that of the painter, from those higher excellences
of which the art is capable, and which ought to be required in
every considerable production. By them, and their imitators, a
style merely ornamental has been disseminated throughout all
Europe. Rubens carried it to Flanders, Voet to France, and Luca
Giordano to Spain and Naples.
The Venetian is indeed the most splendid of the schools of
elegance; and it is not without reason that the best performances
in this lower school are valued higher than the second-rate
performances of those above them; for every picture has value when
it has a decided character, and is excellent in its kind. But the
student must take care not to be so much dazzled with this
splendour as to be tempted to imitate what must ultimately lead
from perfection. Poussin, whose eye was always steadily fixed on
the sublime, has been often heard to say, "That a particular
attention to colouring was an obstacle to the student in his
progress to the great end and design of the art; and that he who
attaches himself to this principal end will acquire by practice a
reasonably good method of colouring."
Though it be allowed that elaborate harmony of colouring, a
brilliancy of tints, a soft and gradual transition from one to
another, present to the eye what an harmonious concert of music
does to the ear, it must be remembered that painting is not merely
a gratification of the sight. Such excellence, though properly
cultivated where nothing higher than elegance is intended, is weak
and unworthy of regard, when the work aspires to grandeur and
sublimity.
The same reasons that have been urged why a mixture of the Venetian
style cannot improve the great style will hold good in regard to
the Flemish and Dutch schools. Indeed, the Flemish school, of
which Rubens is the head, was formed upon that of the Venetian;
like them, he took his figures too much from the people before him.
But it must be allowed in favour of the Venetians that he was more
gross than they, and carried all their mistaken methods to a far
greater excess. In the Venetian school itself, where they all err
from the same cause, there is a difference in the effect. The
difference between Paulo and Bassano seems to be only that one
introduced Venetian gentlemen into his pictures, and the other the
boors of the district of Bassano, and called them patriarchs and
prophets.
The painters of the Dutch school have still more locality. With
them, a history piece is properly a portrait of themselves; whether
they describe the inside or outside of their houses, we have their
own people engaged in their own peculiar occupations, working or
drinking, playing or fighting. The circumstances that enter into a
picture of this kind are so far from giving a general view of human
life that they exhibit all the minute particularities of a nation
differing in several respects from the rest of mankind. Yet, let
them have their share of more humble praise. The painters of this
school are excellent in their own way; they are only ridiculous
when they attempt general history on their own narrow principles,
and debase great events by the meanness of their characters.
Some inferior dexterity, some extraordinary mechanical power, is
apparently that from which they seek distinction. Thus, we see,
that school alone has the custom of representing candle-light, not
as it really appears to us by night, but red, as it would
illuminate objects to a spectator by day. Such tricks, however
pardonable in the little style, where petty effects are the sole
end, are inexcusable in the greater, where the attention should
never be drawn aside by trifles, but should be entirely occupied by
the subject itself.
The same local principles which characterise the Dutch school
extend even to their landscape painters; and Rubens himself, who
has painted many landscapes, has sometimes transgressed in this
particular. Their pieces in this way are, I think, always a
representation of an individual spot, and each in its kind a very
faithful but very confined portrait.
Claude Lorraine, on the contrary, was convinced that taking nature
as he found it seldom produced beauty. His pictures are a
composition of the various draughts which he has previously made
from various beautiful scenes and prospects. However, Rubens in
some measure has made amends for the deficiency with which he is
charged; he has contrived to raise and animate his otherwise
uninteresting views, by introducing a rainbow, storm, or some
particular accidental effect of light. That the practice of Claude
Lorraine, in respect to his choice, is to be adopted by landscape
painters, in opposition to that of the Flemish and Dutch schools,
there can be no doubt, as its truth is founded upon the same
principle as that by which the historical painter acquires perfect
form. But whether landscape painting has a right to aspire so far
as to reject what the painters call accidents of nature is not easy
to determine. It is certain Claude Lorraine seldom, if ever,
availed himself of those accidents; either he thought that such
peculiarities were contrary to that style of general nature which
he professed, or that it would catch the attention too strongly,
and destroy that quietness and repose which he thought necessary to
that kind of painting.
A portrait painter likewise, when he attempts history, unless he is
upon his guard, is likely to enter too much into the detail. He
too frequently makes his historical heads look like portraits; and
this was once the custom amongst those old painters who revived the
art before general ideas were practised or understood. A history
painter paints man in general; a portrait painter, a particular
man, and consequently a defective model.
Thus an habitual practice in the lower exercises of the art will
prevent many from attaining the greater. But such of us who move
in these humbler walks of the profession are not ignorant that, as
the natural dignity of the subject is less, the more all the little
ornamental helps are necessary to its embellishment. It would be
ridiculous for a painter of domestic scenes, of portraits,
landscapes, animals, or of still life, to say that he despised
those qualities which have made the subordinate schools so famous.
The art of colouring, and the skilful management of light and
shadow, are essential requisites in his confined labours. If we
descend still lower, what is the painter of fruit and flowers
without the utmost art in colouring, and what the painters call
handling; that is, a lightness of pencil that implies great
practice, and gives the appearance of being done with ease? Some
here, I believe, must remember a flower-painter whose boast it was
that he scorned to paint for the million; no, he professed to paint
in the true Italian taste; and despising the crowd, called
strenuously upon the few to admire him. His idea of the Italian
taste was to paint as black and dirty as he could, and to leave all
clearness and brilliancy of colouring to those who were fonder of
money than of immortality. The consequence was such as might be
expected. For these pretty excellences are here essential
beauties; and without this merit the artist's work will be more
short-lived than the objects of his imitation.
From what has been advanced, we must now be convinced that there
are two distinct styles in history painting: the grand, and the
splendid or ornamental.
The great style stands alone, and does not require, perhaps does
not so well admit, any addition from inferior beauties. The
ornamental style also possesses its own peculiar merit. However,
though the union of the two may make a sort of composite style, yet
that style is likely to be more imperfect than either of those
which go to its composition. Both kinds have merit, and may be
excellent though in different ranks, if uniformity be preserved,
and the general and particular ideas of nature be not mixed. Even
the meanest of them is difficult enough to attain; and the first
place being already occupied by the great artists in either
department, some of those who followed thought there was less room
for them, and feeling the impulse of ambition and the desire of
novelty, and being at the same time perhaps willing to take the
shortest way, they endeavoured to make for themselves a place
between both. This they have effected by forming a union of the
different orders. But as the grave and majestic style would suffer
by a union with the florid and gay, so also has the Venetian
ornament in some respect been injured by attempting an alliance
with simplicity.
It may be asserted that the great style is always more or less
contaminated by any meaner mixture. But it happens in a few
instances that the lower may be improved by borrowing from the
grand. Thus, if a portrait painter is desirous to raise and
improve his subject, he has no other means than by approaching it
to a general idea. He leaves out all the minute breaks and
peculiarities in the face, and changes the dress from a temporary
fashion to one more permanent, which has annexed to it no ideas of
meanness from its being familiar to us. But if an exact
resemblance of an individual be considered as the sole object to be
aimed at, the portrait painter will be apt to lose more than he
gains by the acquired dignity taken from general nature. It is
very difficult to ennoble the character of a countenance but at the
expense of the likeness, which is what is most generally required
by such as sit to the painter.
Of those who have practised the composite style, and have succeeded
in this perilous attempt, perhaps the foremost is Correggio. His
style is founded upon modern grace and elegance, to which is super,
added something of the simplicity of the grand style. A breadth of
light and colour, the general ideas of the drapery, an
uninterrupted flow of outline, all conspire to this effect. Next
him (perhaps equal to him) Parmegiano has dignified the genteelness
of modern effeminacy by uniting it with the simplicity of the
ancients and the grandeur and severity of Michael Angelo. It must
be confessed, however, that these two extraordinary men, by
endeavouring to give the utmost degree of grace, have sometimes,
perhaps, exceeded its boundaries, and have fallen into the most
hateful of all hateful qualities, affectation. Indeed, it is the
peculiar characteristic of men of genius to be afraid of coldness
and insipidity, from which they think they never can be too far
removed. It particularly happens to these great masters of grace
and elegance. They often boldly drive on to the very verge of
ridicule; the spectator is alarmed, but at the same time admires
their vigour and intrepidity.
Strange graces still, and stranger flights they had,
. . .
Yet ne'er so sure our passion to create
Ae when they touch'd the brink of all we hate.
The errors of genius, however, are pardonable, and none even of the
more exalted painters are wholly free from them; but they have
taught us, by the rectitude of their general practice, to correct
their own affected or accidental deviation. The very first have
not been always upon their guard, and perhaps there is not a fault
but what may take shelter under the most venerable authorities; yet
that style only is perfect in which the noblest principles are
uniformly pursued; and those masters only are entitled to the first
rank in, our estimation who have enlarged the boundaries of their
art, and have raised it to its highest dignity, by exhibiting the
general ideas of nature.
On the whole, it seems to me that there is but one presiding
principle which regulates and gives stability to every art. The
works, whether of poets, painters, moralists, or historians, which
are built upon general nature, live for ever; while those which
depend for their existence on particular customs and habits, a
partial view of nature, or the fluctuation of fashion, can only be
coeval with that which first raised them from obscurity. Present
time and future maybe considered as rivals, and he who solicits the
one must expect to be discountenanced by the other.
A DISCOURSE
Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution
of the Prizes, December 10, 1772, by the President.
Gentlemen,--I purpose to carry on in this discourse the subject
which I began in my last. It was my wish upon that occasion to
incite you to pursue the higher excellences of the art. But I fear
that in this particular I have been misunderstood. Some are ready
to imagine, when any of their favourite acquirements in the art are
properly classed, that they are utterly disgraced. This is a very
great mistake: nothing has its proper lustre but in its proper
place. That which is most worthy of esteem in its allotted sphere
becomes an object, not of respect, but of derision, when it is
forced into a higher, to which it is not suited; and there it
becomes doubly a source of disorder, by occupying a situation which
is not natural to it, and by putting down from the first place what
is in reality of too much magnitude to become with grace and
proportion that subordinate station, to which something of less
value would be much better suited.
My advice in a word is this: keep your principal attention fixed
upon the higher excellences. If you compass them and compass
nothing more, you are still in the first class. We may regret the
innumerable beauties which you may want: you may be very
imperfect: but still, you are an imperfect person of the highest
order.
If, when you have got thus far, you can add any, or all, of the
subordinate qualifications, it is my wish and advice that you
should not neglect them.
But this is as much a matter of circumspection and caution at least
as of eagerness and pursuit.
The mind is apt to be distracted by a multiplicity of pursuits; and
that scale of perfection, which I wish always to be preserved, is
in the greatest danger of being totally disordered, and even
inverted.
Some excellences bear to be united, and are improved by union,
others are of a discordant nature; and the attempt to join them
only produces a harsher jarring of incongruent principles.
The attempt to unite contrary excellences (of form, for instance)
in a single figure, can never escape degenerating into the
monstrous, but by sinking into the insipid, taking away its marked
character, and weakening its expression.
This remark is true to a certain degree with regard to the
passions. If you mean to preserve the most perfect beauty in its
most perfect state, you cannot express the passions, which produce
(all of them) distortion and deformity, more or less, in the most
beautiful faces.
Guido, from want of choice in adapting his subject to his ideas and
his powers, or in attempting to preserve beauty where it could not
be preserved has in this respect succeeded very ill. His figures
are often engaged in subjects that required great expression: yet
his "Judith and Holofernes," the "Daughter of Herodias with the
Baptist's Head," the "Andromeda," and even the "Mothers of the
Innocents," have little more expression than his "Venus attired by
the Graces."
Obvious as these remarks appear, there are many writers on our art,
who, not being of the profession, and consequently not knowing what
can or what cannot be done, have been very liberal of absurd
praises in their descriptions of favourite works. They always find
in them what they are resolved to find. They praise excellences
that can hardly exist together, and above all things are fond of
describing with great exactness the expression of a mixed passion,
which more particularly appears to me out of the reach of our art.
Such are many disquisitions which I have read on some of the
cartoons and other pictures of Raffaelle, where the critics have
described their own imagination; or indeed where the excellent
master himself may have attempted this expression of passions above
the powers of the art; and has, therefore, by an indistinct and
imperfect marking, left room for every imagination, with equal
probability to find a passion of his own. What has been, and what
can be done in the art, is sufficiently difficult; we need not be
mortified or discouraged for not being able to execute the
conceptions of a romantic imagination. Art has its boundaries,
though imagination has none. We can easily, like the ancients,
suppose a Jupiter to be possessed of all those powers and
perfections which the subordinate Deities were endowed with
separately. Yet, when they employed their art to represent him,
they confined his character to majesty alone. Pliny, therefore,
though we are under great obligations to him for the information he
has given us in relation to the works of the ancient artists, is
very frequently wrong when he speaks of them, which he does very
often in the style of many of our modern connoisseurs. He observes
that in a statue of Paris, by Fuphranor, you might discover at the
same time three different characters; the dignity of a judge of the
goddesses, the lover of Helen, and the conqueror of Achilles. A
statue in which you endeavour to unite stately dignity, youthful
elegance, and stern valour, must surely possess none of these to
any eminent degree.
From hence it appears that there is much difficulty as well as
danger in an endeavour to concentrate upon a single subject those
various powers which, rising from different points, naturally move
in different directions.
The summit of excellence seems to be an assemblage of contrary
qualities, but mixed, in such proportions, that no one part is
found to counteract the other. How hard this is to be attained in
every art, those only know who have made the greatest progress in
their respective professions.
To conclude what I have to say on this part of the subject, which I
think of great importance, I wish you to understand that I do not
discourage the younger students from the noble attempt of uniting
all the excellences of art, but to make them aware that, besides
the difficulties which attend every arduous attempt, there is a
peculiar difficulty in the choice of the excellences which ought to
be united; I wish you to attend to this, that you may try
yourselves, whenever you are capable of that trial, what you can,
and what you cannot do: and that, instead of dissipating your
natural faculties over the immense field of possible excellence,
you may choose some particular walk in which you may exercise all
your powers, in order each of you to be the first in his way. If
any man shall be master of such a transcendant, commanding, and
ductile genius, as to enable him to rise to the highest, and to
stoop to the lowest flights of art, and to sweep over all of them
unobstructed and secure, he is fitter to give example than to
receive instruction.
Having said thus much on the union of excellences, I will next say
something of the subordination in which various excellences ought
to be kept.
I am of opinion that the ornamental style, which in my discourse of
last year I cautioned you against considering as principal, may not
be wholly unworthy the attention of those who aim even at the grand
style; when it is properly placed and properly reduced.
But this study will be used with far better effect, if its
principles are employed in softening the harshness and mitigating
the rigour of the great style, than if in attempt to stand forward
with any pretensions of its own to positive and original
excellence.
It was thus Lodovico Caracci, whose example I formerly recommended
to you, employed it. He was acquainted with the works both of
Correggio and the Venetian painters, and knew the principles by
which they produced those pleasing effects which at the first
glance prepossess us so much in their favour; but he took only as
much from each as would embellish, but not overpower, that manly
strength and energy of style, which is his peculiar character.
Since I have already expatiated so largely in my former discourse,
and in my present, upon the styles and characters of painting, it
will not be at all unsuitable to my subject if I mention to you
some particulars relative to the leading principles, and capital
works of those who excelled in the great style, that I may bring
you from abstraction nearer to practice, and by exemplifying the
propositions which I have laid down, enable you to understand more
clearly what I would enforce.
The principal works of modern art are in fresco, a mode of painting
which excludes attention to minute elegancies: yet these works in
fresco are the productions on which the fame of the greatest
masters depend: such are the pictures of Michael Angelo and
Raffaelle in the Vatican, to which we may add the cartoons, which,
though not strictly to be called fresco, yet may be put under that
denomination; and such are the works of Giulio Romano at Mantua.
If these performances were destroyed, with them would be lost the
best part of the reputation of those illustrious painters, for
these are justly considered as the greatest efforts of our art
which the world can boast. To these, therefore, we should
principally direct our attention for higher excellences. As for
the lower arts, as they have been once discovered, they may be
easily attained by those possessed of the former.
Raffaelle, who stands in general foremost of the first painters,
owes his reputation, as I have observed, to his excellence in the
higher parts of the art. Therefore, his works in fresco ought to
be the first object of our study and attention. His easel-works
stand in a lower degree of estimation; for though he continually,
to the day of his death, embellished his works more and more with
the addition of these lower ornaments, which entirely make the
merit of some, yet he never arrived at such perfection as to make
him an object of imitation. He never was able to conquer perfectly
that dryness, or even littleness of manner, which he inherited from
his master. He never acquired that nicety of taste in colours,
that breadth of light and shadow, that art and management of
uniting light, to light, and shadow to shadow, so as to make the
object rise out of the ground with that plenitude of effect so much
admired in the works of Correggio. When he painted in oil, his
hand seemed to be so cramped and confined that he not only lost
that facility and spirit, but I think even that correctness of
form, which is so perfect and admirable in his fresco works. I do
not recollect any pictures of his of this kind, except perhaps the
"Transfiguration," in which there are not some parts that appear to
be even feebly drawn. That this is not a necessary attendant on
oil-painting, we have abundant instances in more modern painters.
Lodovico Caracci, for instance, preserved in his works in oil the
same spirit, vigour, and correctness, which he had in fresco. I
have no desire to degrade Raffaelle from the high rank which he
deservedly holds: but by comparing him with himself, he does not
appear to me to be the same man in oil as in fresco.
From those who have ambition to tread in this great walk of the
art, Michael Angelo claims the next attention. He did not possess
so many excellences as Raffaelle, but those he had were of the
highest kind. He considered the art as consisting of little more
than what may be attained by sculpture, correctness of form, and
energy of character. We ought not to expect more than an artist
intends in his work. He never attempted those lesser elegancies
and graces in the art. Vasari says, he never painted but one
picture in oil, and resolved never to paint another, saying it was
an employment only fit for women and children.
If any man had a right to look down upon the lower accomplishments
as beneath his attention, it was certainly Michael Angelo: nor can
it be thought strange that such a mind should have slighted or have
been withheld from paying due attention to all those graces and
embellishments of art which have diffused such lustre over the
works of other painters.
It must be acknowledged likewise, that together with these, which
we wish he had more attended to, he has rejected all the false
though specious ornaments which disgrace the works even of the most
esteemed artists; and I will venture to say, that when those higher
excellences are more known and cultivated by the artists and the
patrons of arts, his fame and credit will increase with our
increasing knowledge. His name will then be held in the same
veneration as it was in the enlightened age of Leo the Tenth: and
it is remarkable that the reputation of this truly great man has
been continually declining as the art itself has declined. For I
must remark to you, that it has long been much on the decline, and
that our only hope of its revival will consist in your being
thoroughly sensible of its depravation and decay. It is to Michael
Angelo that we owe even the existence of Raffaelle; it is to him
Raffaelle owes the grandeur of his style. He was taught by him to
elevate his thoughts, and to conceive his subjects with dignity.
His genius, however, formed to blaze and to shine, might, like fire
in combustible matter, for ever have lain dormant if it had not
caught a spark by its contact with Michael Angelo: and though it
never burst out with that extraordinary heat and vehemence, yet it
must be acknowledged to be a more pure, regular, and chaste flame.
Though our judgment will upon the whole decide in favour of
Raffaelle: yet he never takes that firm hold and entire possession
of the mind in such a manner as to desire nothing else, and feel
nothing wanting. The effect of the capital works of Michael Angelo
perfectly correspond to what Bourchardon said he felt from reading
Homer. His whole frame appeared to himself to be enlarged, and all
nature which surrounded him diminished to atoms.
If we put those great artists in a light of comparison with each
other, Raffaelle had more taste and fancy, Michael Angelo more
genius and imagination. The one excelled in beauty, the other in
energy. Michael Angelo has more of the poetical inspiration; his
ideas are vast and sublime; his people are a superior order of
beings; there is nothing about them, nothing in the air of their
actions or their attitudes, or the style and cast of their very
limbs or features, that puts one in mind of their belonging, to our
own species. Raffaelle's imagination is not so elevated; his
figures are not so much disjoined from our own diminutive race of
beings, though his ideas are chaste, noble, and of great conformity
to their subjects. Michael Angelo's works have a strong, peculiar,
and marked character; they seem to proceed from his own mind
entirely, and that mind so rich and abundant, that he never needed,
or seemed to disdain, to look abroad for foreign help. Raffaelle's
materials are generally borrowed, though the noble structure is his
own. The excellency of this extraordinary man lay in the
propriety, beauty, and majesty of his characters, his judicious
contrivance of his composition, correctness of drawing, purity of
taste, and the skilful accommodation of other men's conceptions to
his own purpose. Nobody excelled him in that judgment, with which
he united to his own observations on nature the energy of Michael
Angelo, and the beauty and simplicity of the antique. To the
question, therefore, which ought to hold the first rank, Raffaelle
or Michael Angelo, it must be answered, that if it is to be given
to him who possessed a greater combination of the higher qualities
of the art than any other man, there is no doubt but Raffaelle is
the first. But if, according to Longinus, the sublime, being the
highest excellence that human composition can attain to, abundantly
compensates the absence of every other beauty, and atones for all
other deficiencies, then Michael Angelo demands the preference.
These two extraordinary men carried some of the higher excellences
of the art to a greater degree of perfection than probably they
ever arrived at before. They certainly have not been excelled, nor
equalled since. Many of their successors were induced to leave
this great road as a beaten path, endeavouring to surprise and
please by something uncommon or new. When this desire after
novelty has proceeded from mere idleness or caprice, it is not
worth the trouble of criticism; but when it has been in consequence
of a busy mind of a peculiar complexion, it is always striking and
interesting, never insipid.
Such is the great style as it appears in those who possessed it at
its height; in this, search after novelty in conception or in
treating the subject has no place.
But there is another style, which, though inferior to the former,
has still great merit, because it shows that those who cultivated
it were men of lively and vigorous imagination. This I call the
original or characteristical style; this, being less referred to
any true architype existing either in general or particular nature,
must be supported by the painter's consistency in the principles he
has assumed, and in the union and harmony of his whole design. The
excellency of every style, but I think of the subordinate ones more
especially, will very much depend on preserving that union and
harmony between all the component parts, that they appear to hang
well together, as if the whole proceeded from one mind. It is in
the works of art, as in the characters of men. The faults or
defects of some men seem to become them when they appear to be the
natural growth, and of a piece with the rest of their character. A
faithful picture of a mind, though it be not of the most elevated
kind, though it be irregular, wild, and incorrect, yet if it be
marked with that spirit and firmness which characterises works of
genius, will claim attention, and be more striking than a
combination of excellences that do not seem to hang well together,
or we may say than a work that possesses even all excellences, but
those in a moderate degree.
One of the strongest marked characters of this kind, which must be
allowed to be subordinate to the great style, is that of Salvator
Rosa. He gives us a peculiar cast of nature, which, though void of
all grace, elegance, and simplicity; though it has nothing of that
elevation and dignity which belongs to the grand style, yet has
that sort of dignity which belongs to savage and uncultivated
nature. But what is most to be admired in him is the perfect
correspondence which he observed between the subjects which he
chose, and his manner of treating them. Everything is of a piece:
his rocks, trees, sky, even to his handling have the same rude and
wild character which animates his figures.
To him we may contrast the character of Carlo Maratti, who, in my
own opinion, had no great vigour of mind or strength of original
genius. He rarely seizes the imagination by exhibiting the higher
excellences, nor does he captivate us by that originality which
attends the painter who thinks for himself. He knew and practised
all the rules of art, and from a composition of Raffaelle, Caracci,
and Guido, made up a style, of which its only fault was, that it
had no manifest defects and no striking beauties, and that the
principles of his composition are never blended together, so as to
form one uniform body, original in its kind, or excellent in any
view.
I will mention two other painters who, though entirely dissimilar,
yet by being each consistent with himself, and possessing a manner
entirely his own, have both gained reputation, though for very
opposite accomplishments.
The painters I mean are Rubens and Poussin. Rubens I mention in
this place, as I think him a remarkable instance of the same mind
being seen in all the various parts of the art. The whole is so
much of a piece that one can scarce be brought to believe but that
if any one of them had been more correct and perfect, his works
would not be so complete as they now appear. If we should allow a
greater purity and correctness of drawing, his want of simplicity
in composition, colouring, and drapery would appear more gross.
In his composition his art is too apparent. His figures have
expression, and act with energy, but without simplicity or dignity.
His colouring, in which he is eminently skilled, is,
notwithstanding, too much of what we call tinted. Throughout the
whole of his works there is a proportionable want of that nicety of
distinction and elegance of mind which is required in the higher
walks of painting; and to this want it may be in some degree
ascribed that those qualities which make the excellency of this
subordinate style appear in him with their greatest lustre.
Indeed, the facility with which he invented, the richness of his
composition, the luxuriant harmony and brilliancy of his colouring,
so dazzle the eye, that whilst his works continue before us we
cannot help thinking that all his deficiencies are fully supplied.
Opposed to this florid, careless, loose, and inaccurate style, that
of the simple, careful, pure, and correct style of Poussin seems to
be a complete contrast.
Yet however opposite their characters, in one thing they agreed,
both of them having a perfect correspondence between all the parts
of their respective manners.
One is not sure but every alteration of what is considered as
defective in either, would destroy the effect of the whole.
Poussin lived and conversed with the ancient statues so long, that
he may be said to be better acquainted with then than with the
people who were about him. I have often thought that he carried
his veneration for them so far as to wish to give his works the air
of ancient paintings. It is certain he copied some of the antique
paintings, particularly the "Marriage in the Albrobrandini Palace
at Rome," which I believe to be the best relique of those remote
ages that has yet been found.
No works of any modern has so much of the air of antique painting
as those of Poussin. His best performances have a remarkable
dryness of manner, which, though by no means to be recommended for
imitation, yet seems perfectly correspondent to that ancient
simplicity which distinguishes his style. Like Polidoro he studied
them so much, that he acquired a habit of thinking in their way,
and seemed to know perfectly the actions and gestures they would
use on every occasion.
Poussin in the latter part of his life changed from his dry manner
to one much softer and richer, where there is a greater union
between the figures and the ground, such as the "Seven Sacraments"
in the Duke of Orleans' collection; but neither these, nor any in
this manner, are at all comparable to many in his dry manner which
we have in England.
The favourite subjects of Poussin were ancient fables; and no
painter was ever better qualified to paint such subjects, not only
from his being eminently skilled in the knowledge of ceremonies,
customs, and habits of the ancients, but from his being so well
acquainted with the different characters which those who invented
them gave their allegorical figures. Though Rubens has shown great
fancy in his Satyrs, Silenuses, and Fauns, yet they are not that
distinct separate class of beings which is carefully exhibited by
the ancients and by Poussin. Certainly when such subjects of
antiquity are represented, nothing in the picture ought to remind
us of modern times. The mind is thrown back into antiquity, and
nothing ought to be introduced that may tend to awaken it from the
illusion.
Poussin seemed to think that the style and the language in which
such stories are told is not the worse for preserving some relish
of the old way of painting which seemed to give a general
uniformity to the whole, so that the mind was thrown back into
antiquity not only by the subject, but the execution.
If Poussin, in imitation of the ancients, represents Apollo driving
his chariot out of the sea by way of representing the sun rising,
if he personifies lakes and rivers, it is no ways offensive in him;
but seems perfectly of a piece with the general air of the picture.
On the contrary, if the figures which people his pictures had a
modern air or countenance, if they appeared like our countrymen, if
the draperies were like cloth or silk of our manufacture, if the
landscape had the appearance of a modern view, how ridiculous would
Apollo appear instead of the sun, an old man or a nymph with an urn
instead of a river or lake.
I cannot avoid mentioning here a circumstance in portrait painting
which may help to confirm what has been said.
When a portrait is painted in the historical style, as it is
neither an exact minute representation of an individual nor
completely ideal, every circumstance ought to correspond to this
mixture. The simplicity of the antique air and attitude, however
much to be admired, is ridiculous when joined to a figure in a
modern dress. It is not to my purpose to enter into the question
at present, whether this mixed style ought to be adopted or not;
yet if it is chosen it is necessary it should be complete and all
of a piece: the difference of stuffs, for instance, which make the
clothing, should be distinguished in the same degree as the head
deviates from a general idea.
Without this union, which I have so often recommended, a work can
have no marked and determined character, which is the peculiar and
constant evidence of genius. But when this is accomplished to a
high degree, it becomes in some sort a rival to that style which we
have fixed as the highest.
Thus I have given a sketch of the characters of Rubens and Salvator
Rosa, as they appear to me to have the greatest uniformity of mind
throughout their whole work. But we may add to these, all these
artists who are at the head of the class, and have had a school of
imitators from Michael Angelo down to Watteau. Upon the whole it
appears that setting aside the ornamental style, there are two
different paths, either of which a student may take without
degrading the dignity of his art. The first is to combine the
higher excellences and embellish them to the greatest advantage.
The other is to carry one of these excellences to the highest
degree. But those who possess neither must be classed with them,
who, as Shakespeare says, are men of no mark or likelihood.
I inculcate as frequently as I can your forming yourselves upon
great principles and great models. Your time will be much misspent
in every other pursuit. Small excellences should be viewed, not
studied; they ought to be viewed, because nothing ought to escape a
painter's observation, but for no other reason.
There is another caution which I wish to give you. Be as select in
those whom you endeavour to please, as in those whom you endeavour
to imitate. Without the love of fame you can never do anything
excellent; but by an excessive and undistinguishing thirst after
it, you will come to have vulgar views; you will degrade your
style; and your taste will be entirely corrupted. It is certain
that the lowest style will be the most popular, as it falls within
the compass of ignorance itself; and the vulgar will always be
pleased with what is natural in the confined and misunderstood
sense of the word.
One would wish that such depravation of taste should be
counteracted, with such manly pride as Euripides expressed to the
Athenians, who criticised his works, "I do not compose," says he,
"my works in order to be corrected by you, but to instruct you."
It is true, to have a right to speak thus, a man must be a
Euripides. However, thus much may be allowed, that when an artist
is sure that he is upon firm ground, supported by the authority and
practice of his predecessors of the greatest reputation, he may
then assume the boldness and intrepidity of genius; at any rate, he
must not be tempted out of the right path by any tide of popularity
that always accompanies the lower styles of painting.
I mention this, because our exhibitions, that produce such
admirable effects by nourishing emulation, and calling out genius,
have also a mischievous tendency by seducing the painter to an
ambition of pleasing indiscriminately the mixed multitude of people
who resort to them.
A DISCOURSE
Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution
of the Prizes, December 10, 1774, by the President.
Gentlemen,--When I have taken the liberty of addressing you on the
course and order of your studies, I never proposed to enter into a
minute detail of the art. This I have always left to the several
professors, who pursue the end of our institution with the highest
honour to themselves, and with the greatest advantage to the
students.
My purpose in the discourses I have held in the Academy is to lay
down certain general ideas, which seem to me proper for the
formation of a sound taste; principles necessary to guard the
pupils against those errors into which the sanguine temper common
at their time of life, has a tendency to lead them, and which have
rendered abortive the hopes of so many successions of promising
young men in all parts of Europe.
I wish, also, to intercept and suppress those prejudices which
particularly prevail when the mechanism of painting is come to its
perfection, and which when they do prevail are certain to prevail
to the utter destruction of the higher and more valuable parts of
this literate and liberal profession.
These two have been my principal purposes; they are still as much
my concern as ever; and if I repeat my own ideas on the subject,
you who know how fast mistake and prejudice, when neglected, gain
ground upon truth and reason, will easily excuse me. I only
attempt to set the same thing in the greatest variety of lights.
The subject of this discourse will be imitation, as far as a
painter is concerned in it. By imitation I do not mean imitation
in its largest sense, but simply the following of other masters,
and the advantage to be drawn from the study of their works.
Those who have undertaken to write on our art, and have represented
it as a kind of inspiration, as a gift bestowed upon peculiar
favourites at their birth, seem to ensure a much more favourable
disposition from their readers, and have a much more captivating
and liberal air, than he who goes about to examine, coldly, whether
there are any means by which this art may be acquired; how our mind
may be strengthened and expanded, and what guides will show the way
to eminence.
It is very natural for those who are unacquainted with the cause of
anything extraordinary to be astonished at the effect, and to
consider it as a kind of magic. They, who have never observed the
gradation by which art is acquired, who see only what is the full
result of long labour and application of an infinite number, and
infinite variety of acts, are apt to conclude from their entire
inability to do the same at once, that it is not only inaccessible
to themselves, but can be done by those only who have some gift of
the nature of inspiration bestowed upon them.
The travellers into the East tell us that when the ignorant
inhabitants of these countries are asked concerning the ruins of
stately edifices yet remaining amongst them, the melancholy
monuments of their former grandeur and long-lost science, they
always answer that they were built by magicians. The untaught mind
finds a vast gulf between its own powers and these works of
complicated art which it is utterly unable to fathom. And it
supposes that such a void can be passed only by supernatural
powers.
And, as for artists themselves, it is by no means their interest to
undeceive such judges, however conscious they may be of the very
natural means by which the extraordinary powers were acquired; our
art being intrinsically imitative, rejects this idea of inspiration
more, perhaps, than any other.
It is to avoid this plain confession of truth, as it should seem,
that this imitation of masters--indeed, almost all imitation which
implies a more regular and progressive method of attaining the ends
of painting--has ever been particularly inveighed against with
great keenness, both by ancient and modern writers.
To derive all from native power, to owe nothing to another, is the
praise which men, who do not much think what they are saying,
bestow sometimes upon others, and sometimes on themselves; and
their imaginary dignity is naturally heightened by a supercilious
censure of the low, the barren, the grovelling, the servile
imitator. It would be no wonder if a student, frightened by these
terrors and disgraceful epithets, with which the poor imitators are
so often loaded, should let fall his pencil in mere despair,
conscious how much he has been indebted to the labours of others,
how little, how very little of his art was born with him; and,
considering it as hopeless, to set about acquiring by the imitation
of any human master what he is taught to suppose is matter of
inspiration from heaven.
Some allowance must be made for what is said in the gaiety or
ambition of rhetoric. We cannot suppose that any one can really
mean to exclude all imitation of others. A position so wild would
scarce deserve a serious answer, for it is apparent, if we were
forbid to make use of the advantages which our predecessors afford
us, the art would be always to begin, and consequently remain
always in its infant state; and it is a common observation that no
art was ever invented and carried to perfection at the same time.
But to bring us entirely to reason and sobriety, let it be
observed, that a painter must not only be of necessity an imitator
of the works of nature, which alone is sufficient to dispel this
phantom of inspiration, but he must be as necessarily an imitator
of the works of other painters. This appears more humiliating, but
it is equally true; and no man can be an artist, whatever he may
suppose, upon any other terms.
However, those who appear more moderate and reasonable allow that
study is to begin by imitation, but that we should no longer use
the thoughts of our predecessors when we are become able to think
for ourselves. They hold that imitation is as hurtful to the more
advanced student as it was advantageous to the beginner.
For my own part, I confess I am not only very much disposed to lay
down the absolute necessity of imitation in the first stages of the
art, but am of opinion that the study of other masters, which I
here call imitation, may be extended throughout our whole life
without any danger of the inconveniences with which it is charged,
of enfeebling the mind, or preventing us from giving that original
air which every work undoubtedly ought always to have.
I am, on the contrary, persuaded that by imitation only, variety,
and even originality of invention is produced.
I will go further; even genius, at least what generally is so
called, is the child of imitation. But as this appears to be
contrary to the general opinion, I must explain my position before
I enforce it.
Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are
out of the reach of the rules of art--a power which no precepts can
teach, and which no industry can acquire.
This opinion of the impossibility of acquiring those beauties which
stamp the work with the character of genius, supposes that it is
something more fixed than in reality it is, and that we always do,
and ever did agree, about what should be considered as a
characteristic of genius.
But the truth is that the degree of excellence which proclaims
genius is different in different times and different places; and
what shows it to be so is that mankind have often changed their
opinion upon this matter.
When the arts were in their infancy, the power of merely drawing
the likeness of any object was considered as one of its greatest
efforts.
The common people, ignorant of the principles of art, talk the same
language even to this day. But when it was found that every man
could be taught to do this, and a great deal more, merely by the
observance of certain precepts, the name of genius then shifted its
application, and was given only to those who added the peculiar
character of the object they represented; to those who had
invention, expression, grace, or dignity; or, in short, such
qualities or excellences the producing of which could not then be
taught by any known and promulgated rules.
We are very sure that the beauty of form, the expression of the
passions, the art of composition, even the power of giving a
general air of grandeur to your work, is at present very much under
the dominion of rules. These excellences were, heretofore,
considered merely as the effects of genius; and justly, if genius
is not taken for inspiration, but as the effect of close
observation and experience.
He who first made any of these observations and digested them, so
as to form an invariable principle for himself to work by, had that
merit; but probably no one went very far at once; and generally the
first who gave the hint did not know how to pursue it steadily and
methodically, at least not in the beginning. He himself worked on
it, and improved it; others worked more, and improved farther,
until the secret was discovered, and the practice made as general
as refined practice can be made. How many more principles may be
fixed and ascertained we cannot tell; but as criticism is likely to
go hand in hand with the art which is its subject, we may venture
to say that as that art shall advance, its powers will be still
more and more fixed by rules.
But by whatever strides criticism may gain ground, we need be under
no apprehension that invention will ever be annihilated or subdued,
or intellectual energy be brought entirely within the restraint of
written law. Genius will still have room enough to expatiate, and
keep always the same distance from narrow comprehension and
mechanical performance.
What we now call genius begins, not where rules, abstractedly
taken, end, but where known vulgar and trite rules have no longer
any place. It must of necessity be that even works of genius, as
well as every other effect, as it must have its cause, must
likewise have its rules; it cannot be by chance that excellences
are produced with any constancy, or any certainty, for this is not
the nature of chance, but the rules by which men of extraordinary
parts, and such as are called men of genius work, are either such
as they discover by their own peculiar observation, or of such a
nice texture as not easily to admit handling or expressing in
words, especially as artists are not very frequently skilful in
that mode of communicating ideas.
Unsubstantial, however, as these rules may seem, and difficult as
it may be to convey them in writing, they are still seen and felt
in the mind of the artist, and he works from them with as much
certainty as if they were embodied, as I may say, upon paper. It
is true these refined principles cannot be always made palpable,
like the more gross rules of art; yet it does not follow but that
the mind may be put in such a train that it shall perceive, by a
kind of scientific sense, that propriety which words, particularly
words of unpractised writers such as we are, can but very feebly
suggest.
Invention is one of the great marks of genius, but if we consult
experience, we shall find that it is by being conversant with the
inventions of others that we learn to invent, as by reading the
thoughts of others we learn to think.
Whoever has so far formed his taste as to be able to relish and
feel the beauties of the great masters has gone a great way in his
study; for, merely from a consciousness of this relish of the
right, the mind swells with an inward pride, and is almost as
powerfully affected as if it had itself produced what it admires.
Our hearts frequently warmed in this manner by the contact of those
whom we wish to resemble, will undoubtedly catch something of their
way of thinking, and we shall receive in our own bosoms some
radiation at least of their fire and splendour. That disposition,
which is so strong in children, still continues with us, of
catching involuntarily the general air and manner of those with
whom we are most conversant; with this difference only, that a
young mind is naturally pliable and imitative, but in a more
advanced state it grows rigid, and must be warmed and softened
before it will receive a deep impression.
From these considerations, which a little of your reflection will
carry a great way further, it appears of what great consequence it
is that our minds should be habituated to the contemplation of
excellence, and that, far from being contented to make such habits
the discipline of our youth only, we should, to the last moment of
our lives, continue a settled intercourse with all the true
examples of grandeur. Their inventions are not only the food of
our infancy, but the substance which supplies the fullest maturity
of our vigour.
The mind is but a barren soil; is a soil soon exhausted, and will
produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilised
and enriched with foreign matter.
When we have had continually before us the great works of art to
impregnate our minds with kindred ideas, we are then, and not till
then, fit to produce something, of the same species. We behold all
about us with the eyes of these penetrating observers, and our
minds, accustomed to think the thoughts of the noblest and
brightest intellects, are prepared for the discovery and selection
of all that is great and noble in nature. The greatest natural
genius cannot subsist on its own stock: he who resolves never to
ransack any mind but his own will be soon reduced, from mere
barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to
imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated.
When we know the subject designed by such men, it will never be
difficult to guess what kind of work is to be produced.
It is vain for painters or poets to endeavour to invent without
materials on which the mind may work, and from which invention must
originate. Nothing can come of nothing.
Homer is supposed to be possessed of all the learning of his time.
And we are certain that Michael Angelo and Raffaelle were equally
possessed of all knowledge in the art which was discoverable in the
works of their predecessors.
A mind enriched by an assemblage of all the treasures of ancient
and modern art will be more elevated and fruitful in resources in
proportion to the number of ideas which have been carefully
collected and thoroughly digested. There can be no doubt that he
who has the most materials has the greatest means of invention; and
if he has not the power of using them, it must proceed from a
feebleness of intellect or from the confused manner in which those
collections have been laid up in his mind.
The addition of other men's judgment is so far from weakening, as
is the opinion of many, our own, that it will fashion and
consolidate those ideas of excellence which lay in their birth
feeble, ill-shaped, and confused, but which are finished and put in
order by the authority and practice of those whose works may be
said to have been consecrated by having stood the test of ages.
The mind, or genius, has been compared to a spark of fire which is
smothered by a heap of fuel and prevented from blazing into a
flame. This simile, which is made use of by the younger Pliny, may
be easily mistaken for argument or proof.
There is no danger of the mind's being over-burdened with
knowledge, or the genius extinguished by any addition of images; on
the contrary, these acquisitions may as well, perhaps better, be
compared, if comparisons signified anything in reasoning, to the
supply of living embers, which will contribute to strengthen the
spark that without the association of more would have died away.
The truth is, he whose feebleness is such as to make other men's
thoughts an incumbrance to him can have no very great strength of
mind or genius of his own to be destroyed, so that not much harm
will be done at worst.
We may oppose to Pliny the greater authority of Cicero, who is
continually enforcing the necessity of this method of study. In
his dialogue on Oratory he makes Crassus say, that one of the first
and most important precepts is to choose a proper model for our
imitation. Hoc fit primum in preceptis meis ut demonstremus quem
imitemur.
When I speak of the habitual imitation and continued study of
masters, it is not to be understood that I advise any endeavour to
copy the exact peculiar colour and complexion of another man's
mind; the success of such an attempt must always be like his who
imitates exactly the air, manner, and gestures of him whom he
admires. His model may be excellent, but the copy will be
ridiculous; this ridicule does not arise from his having imitated,
but from his not having chosen the right mode of imitation.
It is a necessary and warrantable pride to disdain to walk
servilely behind any individual, however elevated his rank. The
true and liberal ground of imitation is an open field, where,
though he who precedes has had the advantage of starting before
you, yet it is enough to pursue his course; you need not tread in
his footsteps, and you certainly have a right to outstrip him if
you can.
Nor, whilst I recommend studying the art from artists, can I be
supposed to mean that nature is to be neglected? I take this study
in aid and not in exclusion of the other. Nature is, and must be,
the fountain which alone is inexhaustible; and from which all
excellences must originally flow.
The great use of studying our predecessors is to open the mind, to
shorten our labour, and to give us the result of the selection made
by those great minds of what is grand or beautiful in nature: her
rich stores are all spread out before us; but it is an art, and no
easy art, to know how or what to choose, and how to attain and
secure the object of our choice.
Thus the highest beauty of form must be taken from nature; but it
is an art of long deduction and great experience to know how to
find it.
We must not content ourselves with merely admiring and relishing;
we must enter into the principles on which the work is wrought;
these do not swim on the superficies, and consequently are not open
to superficial observers.
Art in its perfection is not ostentatious; it lies hid, and works
its effect itself unseen. It is the proper study and labour of an
artist to uncover and find out the latent cause of conspicuous
beauties, and from thence form principles for his own conduct; such
an examination is a continual exertion of the mind, as great,
perhaps, as that of the artist whose works he is thus studying.
The sagacious imitator not only remarks what distinguishes the
different manner or genius of each master; he enters into the
contrivance in the composition, how the masses of lights are
disposed, the means by which the effect is produced, how artfully
some parts are lost in the ground, others boldly relieved, and how
all these are mutually altered and interchanged according to the
reason and scheme of the work. He admires not the harmony of
colouring alone, but he examines by what artifice one colour is a
foil to its neighbour. He looks close into the tints, of what
colours they are composed, till he has formed clear and distinct
ideas, and has learnt to see in what harmony and good colouring
consists. What is learnt in this manner from the works of others
becomes really our own, sinks deep, and is never forgotten; nay, it
is by seizing on this clue that we proceed forward, and get further
and further in enlarging the principle and improving the practice.
There can be no doubt but the art is better learnt from the works
themselves than from the precepts which are formed upon these
works; but if it is difficult to choose proper models for
imitation, it requires no less circumspection to separate and
distinguish what in those models we ought to imitate.
I cannot avoid mentioning here, though it is not my intention at
present to enter into the art and method of study, an error which
students are too apt to fall into.
He that is forming himself must look with great caution and
wariness on those peculiarities, or prominent parts, which at first
force themselves upon view, and are the marks, or what is commonly
called the manner, by which that individual artist is
distinguished.
Peculiar marks I hold to be generally, if not always, defects,
however difficult it may be, wholly to escape them.
Peculiarities in the works of art are like those in the human
figure; it is by them that we are cognisable and distinguished one
from another, but they are always so many blemishes, which,
however, both in the one case and in the other, cease to appear
deformities to those who have them continually before their eyes.
In the works of art, even the most enlightened mind, when warmed by
beauties of the highest kind, will by degrees find a repugnance
within him to acknowledge any defects; nay, his enthusiasm will
carry him so far as to transform them into beauties and objects of
imitation.
It must be acknowledged that a peculiarity of style, either from
its novelty, or by seeming to proceed from a peculiar turn of mind,
often escapes blame; on the contrary, it is sometimes striking and
pleasing; but this it is vain labour to endeavour to imitate,
because novelty and peculiarity being its only merit, when it
ceases to be new, it ceases to have value.
A manner, therefore, being a defect, and every painter, however
excellent, having a manner, it seems to follow that all kinds of
faults, as well as beauties, may be learned under the sanction of
the greatest authorities.
Even the great name of Michael Angelo may be used to keep in
countenance a deficiency, or rather neglect of colouring, and every
other ornamental part of the art.
If the young student is dry and hard, Poussin is the same. If his
work has a careless and unfinished air, he has most of the Venetian
School to support him. If he makes no selection of objects, but
takes individual nature just as he finds it, he is like Rembrandt.
If he is incorrect in the proportions of his figures, Correggio was
likewise incorrect. If his colours are not blended and united,
Rubens was equally crude.
In short, there is no defect but may be excused, if it is a
sufficient excuse that it can be imputed to considerable artists;
but it must be remembered that it was not by these defects they
acquired their reputation: they have a right to our pardon, but
not to our admiration.
However, to imitate peculiarities or mistake defects for beauties
that man will be most liable who confines his imitation to one
favourite master; and, even though he chooses the best, and is
capable of distinguishing the real excellences of his model, it is
not by such narrow practice that a genius or mastery in the art is
acquired. A man is as little likely to form a true idea of the
perfection of the art by studying a single artist as he would be of
producing a perfectly beautiful figure by an exact imitation of any
individual living model.
And as the painter, by bringing together in one piece those
beauties which are dispersed amongst a great variety of
individuals, produces a figure more beautiful than can be found in
nature, so that artist who can unite in himself the excellences of
the various painters, will approach nearer to perfection than any
one of his masters.
He who confines himself to the imitation of an individual, as he
never proposes to surpass, so he is not likely to equal, the object
of imitation. He professes only to follow, and he that follows
must necessarily be behind.
We should imitate the conduct of the great artists in the course of
their studies, as well as the works which they produced, when they
were perfectly formed. Raffaelle began by imitating implicitly the
manner of Pietro Perugino, under whom he studied; so his first
works are scarce to be distinguished from his master's; but soon
forming higher and more extensive views, he imitated the grand
outline of Michael Angelo. He learnt the manner of using colours
from the works of Leonardo da Vinci and Fratre Bartolomeo: to all
this he added the contemplation of all the remains of antiquity
that were within his reach, and employed others to draw for him
what was in Greece and distant places. And it is from his having
taken so many models that he became himself a model for all
succeeding painters, always imitating, and always original.
If your ambition therefore be to equal Raffaelle, you must do as
Raffaelle did; take many models, and not take even him for your
guide alone to the exclusion of others. And yet the number is
infinite of those who seem, if one may judge by their style, to
have seen no other works but those of their master, or of some
favourite whose manner is their first wish and their last.
I will mention a few that occur to me of this narrow, confined,
illiberal, unscientific, and servile kind of imitators. Guido was
thus meanly copied by Elizabetta Sirani, and Simone Cantarini;
Poussin, by Verdier and Cheron; Parmigiano, by Jeronimo Mazzuoli;
Paolo Veronese and Iacomo Bassan had for their imitators their
brothers and sons; Pietro de Cortona was followed by Ciro Ferri and
Romanelli; Rubens, by Jacques Jordans and Diepenbeck; Guercino, by
his own family, the Gennari; Carlo Marratti was imitated by
Giuseppe Chiari and Pietro da Pietri; and Rembrandt, by Bramer,
Eckhout, and Flink. All these, to whom may be added a much longer
list of painters, whose works among the ignorant pass for those of
their masters, are justly to be censured for barrenness and
servility.
To oppose to this list a few that have adopted a more liberal style
of imitation: Pelegrino Tibaldi, Rosso, and Primaticio did not
coldly imitate, but caught something of the fire that animates the
works of Michael Angelo. The Carraches formed their style from
Pelegrino Tibaldi, Correggio, and the Venetian School.
Domenichino, Guido, Lanfranco, Albano, Guercino, Cavidone,
Schidone, Tiarini, though it is sufficiently apparent that they
came from the School of the Carraches, have yet the appearance of
men who extended their views beyond the model that lay before them,
and have shown that they had opinions of their own, and thought for
themselves, after they had made themselves masters of the general
principles of their schools.
Le Seure's first manner resembles very much that of his master
Vovet: but as he soon excelled him, so he differed from him in
every part of the art. Carlo Marratti succeeded better than those
I have first named, and I think owes his superiority to the
extension of his views; besides his master Andrea Sacchi, he
imitated Raffaelle, Guido, and the Carraches. It is true, there is
nothing very captivating in Carlo Marratti; but this proceeded from
wants which cannot be completely supplied; that is, want of
strength of parts. In this, certainly men are not equal, and a man
can bring home wares only in proportion to the capital with which
he goes to market. Carlo, by diligence, made the most of what he
had; but there was undoubtedly a heaviness about him, which
extended itself, uniformly to his invention, expression, his
drawing, colouring, and the general effect of his pictures. The
truth is, he never equalled any of his patterns in any one thing,
and he added little of his own.
But we must not rest contented, even in this general study of the
moderns; we must trace back the art to its fountain head, to that
source from whence they drew their principal excellences, the
monuments of pure antiquity.
All the inventions and thoughts of the ancients, whether conveyed
to us in statues, bas-reliefs, intaglios, cameos, or coins, are to
be sought after and carefully studied: The genius that hovers over
these venerable relics may be called the father of modern art.
From the remains of the works of the ancients the modern arts were
revived, and it is by their means that they must be restored a
second time. However it may mortify our vanity, we must be forced
to allow them our masters; and we may venture to prophecy, that
when they shall cease to be studied, arts will no longer flourish,
and we shall again relapse into barbarism.
The fire of the artist's own genius operating upon these materials
which have been thus diligently collected, will enable him to make
new combinations, perhaps, superior to what had ever before been in
the possession of the art. As in the mixture of the variety of
metals, which are said to have been melted and run together at the
burning of Corinth, a new and till then unknown metal was produced
equal in value to any of those that had contributed to its
composition. And though a curious refiner may come with his
crucibles, analyse and separate its various component parts, yet
Corinthian brass would still hold its rank amongst the most
beautiful and valuable of metals.
We have hitherto considered the advantages of imitation as it tends
to form the taste, and as a practice by which a spark of that
genius may be caught which illumines these noble works, that ought
always to be present to our thoughts.
We come now to speak of another kind of imitation; the borrowing a
particular thought, an action, attitude, or figure, and
transplanting it into your own work: this will either come under
the charge of plagiarism, or be warrantable, and deserve
commendation, according to the address with which it is performed.
There is some difference likewise whether it is upon the ancients
or the moderns that these depredations are made. It is generally
allowed that no man need be ashamed of copying the ancients: their
works are considered as a magazine of common property, always open
to the public, whence every man has a right to what materials he
pleases; and if he has the art of using them, they are supposed to
become to all intents and purposes his own property.
The collection which Raffaelle made of the thoughts of the ancients
with so much trouble, is a proof of his opinion on this subject.
Such collections may be made with much more ease, by means of an
art scarce known in his time; I mean that of engraving, by which,
at an easy rate, every man may now avail himself of the inventions
of antiquity.
It must be acknowledged that the works of the moderns are more the
property of their authors; he who borrows an idea from an artist,
or perhaps from a modern, not his contemporary, and so accommodates
it to his own work that it makes a part of it, with no seam or
joining appearing, can hardly be charged with plagiarism; poets
practise this kind of borrowing without reserve. But an artist
should not be contented with this only; he should enter into a
competition with his original, and endeavour to improve what he is
appropriating to his own work. Such imitation is so far from
having anything in it of the servility of plagiarism, that it is a
perpetual exercise of the mind, a continual invention.
Borrowing or stealing with such art and caution will have a right
to the same lenity as was used by the Lacedemonians; who did not
punish theft, but the want of artifice to conceal it.
In order to encourage you to imitation, to the utmost extent, let
me add, that very finished artists in the inferior branches of the
art will contribute to furnish the mind and give hints of which a
skilful painter, who is sensible of what he wants, and is in no
danger of being infected by the contact of vicious models, will
know how to avail himself. He will pick up from dunghills what by
a nice chemistry, passing through his own mind, shall be converted
into pure gold; and, under the rudeness of Gothic essays, he will
find original, rational, and even sublime inventions.
In the luxuriant style of Paul Veronese, in the capricious
compositions of Tintoret, he will find something that will assist
his invention, and give points, from which his own imagination
shall rise and take flight, when the subject which he treats will,
with propriety, admit of splendid effects.
In every school, whether Venetian, French, or Dutch, he will find
either ingenious compositions, extraordinary effects, some peculiar
expressions, or some mechanical excellence, well worthy his
attention and, in some measure, of his imitation; even in the lower
class of the French painters, great beauties are often found united
with great defects.
Though Coypel wanted a simplicity of taste, and mistook a
presumptuous and assuming air for what is grand and majestic; yet
he frequently has good sense and judgment in his manner of telling
his stories, great skill in his compositions, and is not without a
considerable power of expressing the passions, The modern
affectation of grace in his works, as well as in those of Bouche
and Watteau, may be said to be separated by a very thin partition
from the more simple and pure grace of Correggio and Parmigiano.
Amongst the Dutch painters, the correct, firm, and determined
pencil, which was employed by Bamboccio and Jan Miel on vulgar and
mean subjects, might without any change be employed on the highest,
to which, indeed, it seems more properly to belong. The greatest
style, if that style is confined to small figures such as Poussin
generally painted, would receive an additional grace by the
elegance and precision of pencil so admirable in the works of
Teniers.
Though this school more particularly excelled in the mechanism of
painting, yet there are many who have shown great abilities in
expressing what must be ranked above mechanical excellences.
In the works of Frank Hals the portrait painter may observe the
composition of a face, the features well put together as the
painters express it, from whence proceeds that strong marked
character of individual nature which is so remarkable in his
portraits, and is not to be found in an equal degree in any other
painter. If he had joined to this most difficult part of the art a
patience in finishing what he had so correctly planned, he might
justly have claimed the place which Vandyke, all things considered,
so justly holds as the first of portrait painters.
Others of the same school have shown great power in expressing the
character and passions of those vulgar people which are the
subjects of their study and attention. Amongst those, Jean Stein
seems to be one of the most diligent and accurate observers of what
passed in those scenes which he frequented, and which were to him
an academy. I can easily imagine that if this extraordinary man
had had the good fortune to have been born in Italy instead of
Holland, had he lived in Rome instead of Leyden, and had been
blessed with Michael Angelo and Raffaelle for his masters instead
of Brower and Van Gowen, that the same sagacity and penetration
which distinguished so accurately the different characters and
expression in his vulgar figures, would, when exerted in the
selection and imitation of what was great and elevated in nature,
have been equally successful, and his name would have been now
ranged with the great pillars and supporters of our art.
Men who, although thus bound down by the almost invincible powers
of early habits, have still exerted extraordinary abilities within
their narrow and confined circle, and have, from the natural vigour
of their mind, given such an interesting expression, such force and
energy to their works, though they cannot be recommended to be
exactly imitated, may yet invite an artist to endeavour to
transfer, by a kind of parody, those excellences to his own works.
Whoever has acquired the power of making this use of the Flemish,
Venetian, and French schools is a real genius, and has sources of
knowledge open to him which were wanting to the great artists who
lived in the great age of painting.
To find excellences however dispersed, to discover beauties however
concealed by the multitude of defects with which they are
surrounded, can be the work only of him who, having a mind always
alive to his art, has extended his views to all ages and to all
schools, and has acquired from that comprehensive mass which he has
thus gathered to himself, a well digested and perfect idea of his
art, to which everything is referred. Like a sovereign judge and
arbiter of art, he is possessed of that presiding power which
separates and attracts every excellence from every school, selects
both from what is great and what is little, brings home knowledge
from the east and from the west, making the universe tributary
towards furnishing his mind and enriching his works with
originality and variety of inventions.
Thus I have ventured to give my opinion of what appears to me the
true and only method by which an artist makes himself master of his
profession, which I hold ought to be one continued course of
imitation, that is not to cease but with our lives.
Those who, either from their own engagements and hurry of business,
or from indolence, or from conceit and vanity, have neglected
looking out of themselves, as far as my experience and observation
reaches, have from that time not only ceased to advance and improve
in their performance, but have gone backward. They may be compared
to men who have lived upon their principal till they are reduced to
beggary and left without resources.
I can recommend nothing better, therefore, than that you endeavour
to infuse into your works what you learn from the contemplation of
the works of others. To recommend this has the appearance of
needless and superfluous advice, but it has fallen within my own
knowledge that artists, though they are not wanting in a sincere
love for their art, though they have great pleasure in seeing good
pictures, and are well skilled to distinguish what is excellent or
defective in them, yet go on in their own manner, without any
endeavour to give a little of those beauties which they admire in
others, to their own works. It is difficult to conceive how the
present Italian painters, who live in the midst of the treasures of
art, should be contented with their own style. They proceed in
their common-place inventions, and never think it worth while to
visit the works of those great artists with which they are
surrounded.
I remember several years ago to have conversed at Rome with an
artist of great fame throughout Europe; he was not without a
considerable degree of abilities, but those abilities were by no
means equal to his own opinion of them. From the reputation he had
acquired he too fondly concluded that he stood in the same rank,
when compared to his predecessors, as he held with regard to his
miserable contemporary rivals.
In conversation about some particulars of the works of Raffaelle,
he seemed to have, or to affect to have, a very obscure memory of
them. He told me that he had not set his foot in the Vatican for
fifteen years together; that indeed he had been in treaty to copy a
capital picture of Raffaelle, but that the business had gone off;
however, if the agreement had held, his copy would have greatly
exceeded the original. The merit of this artist, however great we
may suppose it, I am sure would have been far greater, and his
presumption would have been far less if he had visited the Vatican,
as in reason he ought to have done, once at least every month of
his life.
I address myself, gentlemen, to you who have made some progress in
the art, and are to be for the future under the guidance of your
own judgment and discretion
I consider you as arrived to that period when you have a right to
think for yourselves, and to presume that every man is fallible; to
study the masters with a suspicion that great men are not always
exempt from great faults; to criticise, compare, and rank their
works in your own estimation, as they approach to or recede from
that standard of perfection which you have formed in your own mind,
but which those masters themselves, it must be remembered, have
taught you to make, and which you will cease to make with
correctness when you cease to study them. It is their excellences
which have taught you their defects.
I would wish you to forget where you are, and who it is that speaks
to you. I only direct you to higher models and better advisers.
We can teach you here but very little; you are henceforth to be
your own teachers. Do this justice, however, to the English
Academy, to bear in mind, that in this place you contracted no
narrow habits, no false ideas, nothing that could lead you to the
imitation of any living master, who may be the fashionable darling
of the day. As you have not been taught to flatter us, do not
learn to flatter yourselves. We have endeavoured to lead you to
the admiration of nothing but what is truly admirable. If you
choose inferior patterns, or if you make your own FORMER works,
your patterns for your LATTER, it is your own fault.
The purpose of this discourse, and, indeed, of most of my others,
is to caution you against that false opinion, but too prevalent
amongst artists, of the imaginary power of native genius, and its
sufficiency in great works. This opinion, according to the temper
of mind it meets with, almost always produces, either a vain
confidence, or a sluggish despair, both equally fatal to all
proficiency.
Study, therefore, the great works of the great masters for ever.
Study as nearly as you can, in the order, in the manner, on the
principles, on which they studied. Study nature attentively, but
always with those masters in your company; consider them as models
which you are to imitate, and at the same time as rivals which you
are to combat.
A DISCOURSE
Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy on the Distribution
of the Prizes, December 10th, 1776, by the President.
Gentlemen,--It has been my uniform endeavour, since I first
addressed you from this place, to impress you strongly with one
ruling idea. I wished you to be persuaded, that success in your
art depends almost entirely on your own industry; but the industry
which I principally recommended, is not the industry of the HANDS,
but of the MIND.
As our art is not a divine gift, so neither is it a mechanical
trade. Its foundations are laid in solid science. And practice,
though essential to perfection, can never attain that to which it
aims, unless it works under the direction of principle.
Some writers upon art carry this point too far, and suppose that
such a body of universal and profound learning is requisite, that
the very enumeration of its kind is enough to frighten a beginner.
Vitruvius, after going through the many accomplishments of nature,
and the many acquirements of learning, necessary to an architect,
proceeds with great gravity to assert that he ought to be well
skilled in the civil law, that he may not be cheated in the title
of the ground he builds on.
But without such exaggeration, we may go so far as to assert, that
a painter stands in need of more knowledge than is to be picked off
his pallet, or collected by looking on his model, whether it be in
life or in picture. He can never be a great artist who is grossly
illiterate.
Every man whose business is description ought to be tolerably
conversant with the poets in some language or other, that he may
imbibe a poetical spirit and enlarge his stock of ideas. He ought
to acquire a habit of comparing and divesting his notions. He
ought not to be wholly unacquainted with that part of philosophy
which gives him an insight into human nature, and relates to the
manners, characters, passions, and affections. He ought to know
something concerning the mind, as well as a great deal concerning
the body of man.
For this purpose, it is not necessary that he should go into such a
compass of reading, as must, by distracting his attention,
disqualify him for the practical part of his profession, and make
him sink the performer in the critic. Reading, if it can be made
the favourite recreation of his leisure hours, will improve and
enlarge his mind without retarding his actual industry.
What such partial and desultory reading cannot afford, may be
supplied by the conversation of learned and ingenious men, which is
the best of all substitutes for those who have not the means or
opportunities of deep study. There are many such men in this age;
and they will be pleased with communicating their ideas to artists,
when they see them curious and docile, if they are treated with
that respect and deference which is so justly their due. Into such
society, young artists, if they make it the point of their
ambition, will by degrees be admitted. There, without formal
teaching, they will insensibly come to feel and reason like those
they live with, and find a rational and systematic taste
imperceptibly formed in their minds, which they will know how to
reduce to a standard, by applying general truth to their own
purposes, better perhaps than those to whom they owed the original
sentiment.
Of these studies and this conversation, the desired and legitimate
offspring is a power of distinguishing right from wrong, which
power applied to works of art is denominated taste. Let me then,
without further introduction, enter upon an examination whether
taste be so far beyond our reach as to be unattainable by care, or
be so very vague and capricious that no care ought to be employed
about it.
It has been the fate of arts to be enveloped in mysterious and
incomprehensible language, as if it was thought necessary that even
the terms should correspond to the idea entertained of the
instability and uncertainty of the rules which they expressed.
To speak of genius and taste as any way connected with reason or
common sense, would be, in the opinion of some towering talkers, to
speak like a man who possessed neither, who had never felt that
enthusiasm, or, to use their own inflated language, was never
warmed by that Promethean fire, which animates the canvas and
vivifies the marble.
If, in order to be intelligible, I appear to degrade art by
bringing her down from her visionary situation in the clouds, it is
only to give her a more solid mansion upon the earth. It is
necessary that at some time or other we should see things as they
really are, and not impose on ourselves by that false magnitude
with which objects appear when viewed indistinctly as through a
mist.
We will allow a poet to express his meaning, when his meaning is
not well known to himself, with a certain degree of obscurity, as
it is one source of the sublime. But when, in plain prose, we
gravely talk of courting the muse in shady bowers, waiting the call
and inspiration of genius, finding out where he inhabits, and where
he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to
times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest
vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the equinox, sagaciously
observing how much the wild freedom and liberty of imagination is
cramped by attention to established rules, and how this same
imagination begins to grow dim in advanced age, smothered and
deadened by too much judgment. When we talk such language, or
entertain such sentiments as these, we generally rest contented
with mere words, or at best entertain notions not only groundless,
but pernicious.
If all this means what it is very possible was originally intended
only to be meant, that in order to cultivate an art, a man secludes
himself from the commerce of the world, and retires into the
country at particular seasons; or that at one time of the year his
body is in better health, and consequently his mind fitter for the
business of hard thinking than at another time; or that the mind
may be fatigued and grow confused by long and unremitted
application; this I can understand. I can likewise believe that a
man eminent when young for possessing poetical imagination, may,
from having taken another road, so neglect its cultivation as to
show less of its powers in his latter life. But I am persuaded
that scarce a poet is to be found, from Homer down to Dryden, who
preserved a sound mind in a sound body, and continued practising
his profession to the very last, whose later works are not as
replete with the fire of imagination as those which were produced
in his more youthful days.
To understand literally these metaphors or ideas expressed in
poetical language, seems to be equally absurd as to conclude that
because painters sometimes represent poets writing from the
dictates of a little winged boy or genius, that this same genius
did really inform him in a whisper what he was to write, and that
he is himself but a mere machine, unconscious of the operations of
his own mind.
Opinions generally received and floating in the world, whether true
or false, we naturally adopt and make our own; they may be
considered as a kind of inheritance to which we succeed and are
tenants for life, and which we leave to our posterity very near in
the condition in which we received it; not much being in any one
man's power either to impair or improve it.
The greatest part of these opinions, like current coin in its
circulation, we are obliged to take without weighing or examining;
but by this inevitable inattention, many adulterated pieces are
received, which, when we seriously estimate our wealth, we must
throw away. So the collector of popular opinions, when he embodies
his knowledge, and forms a system, must separate those which are
true from those which are only plausible. But it becomes more
peculiarly a duty to the professors of art not to let any opinions
relating to that art pass unexamined. The caution and
circumspection required in such examination we shall presently have
an opportunity of explaining.
Genius and taste, in their common acceptation, appear to be very
nearly related; the difference lies only in this, that genius has
superadded to it a habit or power of execution. Or we may say,
that taste, when this power is added, changes its name, and is
called genius. They both, in the popular opinion, pretend to an
entire exemption from the restraint of rules. It is supposed that
their powers are intuitive; that under the name of genius great
works are produced, and under the name of taste an exact judgment
is given, without our knowing why, and without being under the
least obligation to reason, precept, or experience.
One can scarce state these opinions without exposing their
absurdity, yet they are constantly in the mouths of men, and
particularly of artists. They who have thought seriously on this
subject, do not carry the point so far; yet I am persuaded, that
even among those few who may be called thinkers, the prevalent
opinion gives less than it ought to the powers of reason; and
considers the principles of taste, which give all their authority
to the rules of art, as more fluctuating, and as having less solid
foundations than we shall find, upon examination, they really have.
The common saying, that tastes are not to be disputed, owes its
influence, and its general reception, to the same error which leads
us to imagine it of too high original to submit to the authority of
an earthly tribunal. It will likewise correspond with the notions
of those who consider it as a mere phantom of the imagination, so
devoid of substance as to elude all criticism.
We often appear to differ in sentiments from each other, merely
from the inaccuracy of terms, as we are not obliged to speak always
with critical exactness. Something of this too may arise from want
of words in the language to express the more nice discriminations
which a deep investigation discovers. A great deal, however, of
this difference vanishes when each opinion is tolerably explained
and understood by constancy and precision in the use of terms.
We apply the term taste to that act of the mind by which we like or
dislike, whatever be the subject. Our judgment upon an airy
nothing, a fancy which has no foundation, is called by the same
name which we give to our determination concerning those truths
which refer to the most general and most unalterable principles of
human nature, to works which are only to be produced by the
greatest efforts of the human understanding. However inconvenient
this may be, we are obliged to take words as we find them; all we
can do is to distinguish the things to which they are applied.
We may let pass those things which are at once subjects of taste
and sense, and which having as much certainty as the senses
themselves, give no occasion to inquiry or dispute. The natural
appetite or taste of the human mind is for truth; whether that
truth results from the real agreement or equality of original ideas
among themselves; from the agreement of the representation of any
object with the thing represented; or from the correspondence of
the several parts of any arrangement with each other. It is the
very same taste which relishes a demonstration in geometry, that is
pleased with the resemblance of a picture to an original, and
touched with the harmony of music.
All these have unalterable and fixed foundations in nature, and are
therefore equally investigated by reason, and known by study; some
with more, some with less clearness, but all exactly in the same
way. A picture that is unlike, is false. Disproportionate
ordinance of parts is not right because it cannot be true until it
ceases to be a contradiction to assert that the parts have no
relation to the whole. Colouring is true where it is naturally
adapted to the eye, from brightness, from softness, from harmony,
from resemblance; because these agree with their object, nature,
and therefore are true: as true as mathematical demonstration; but
known to be true only to those who study these things.
But besides real, there is also apparent truth, or opinion, or
prejudice. With regard to real truth, when it is known, the taste
which conforms to it is, and must be, uniform. With regard to the
second sort of truth, which may be called truth upon sufferance, or
truth by courtesy, it is not fixed, but variable. However, whilst
these opinions and prejudices on which it is founded continue, they
operate as truth; and the art, whose office it is to please the
mind, as well as instruct it, must direct itself according to
opinion, or it will not attain its end.
In proportion as these prejudices are known to be generally
diffused, or long received, the taste which conforms to them
approaches nearer to certainty, and to a sort of resemblance to
real science, even where opinions are found to be no better than
prejudices. And since they deserve, on account of their duration
and extent, to be considered as really true, they become capable of
no small decree of stability and determination by their permanent
and uniform nature.
As these prejudices become more narrow, more local, more
transitory, this secondary taste becomes more and more fantastical;
recedes from real science; is less to be approved by reason, and
less followed in practice; though in no case perhaps to be wholly
neglected, where it does not stand, as it sometimes does, in direct
defiance of the most respectable opinions received amongst mankind.
Having laid down these positions, I shall proceed with less method,
because less will serve, to explain and apply them.
We will take it for granted that reason is something invariable and
fixed in the nature of things; and without endeavouring to go back
to an account of first principles, which for ever will elude our
search, we will conclude that whatever goes under the name of
taste, which we can fairly bring under the dominion of reason, must
be considered as equally exempt from change. If therefore, in the
course of this inquiry, we can show that there are rules for the
conduct of the artist which are fixed and invariable, it implies,
of course, that the art of the connoisseur, or, in other words,
taste, has likewise invariable principles.
Of the judgment which we make on the works of art, and the
preference that we give to one class of art over another, if a
reason be demanded, the question is perhaps evaded by answering, "I
judge from my taste"; but it does not follow that a better answer
cannot be given, though for common gazers this may be sufficient.
Every man is not obliged to investigate the causes of his
approbation or dislike.
The arts would lie open for ever to caprice and casualty, if those
who are to judge of their excellences had no settled principles by
which they are to regulate their decisions, and the merit or defect
of performances were to be determined by unguided fancy. And
indeed we may venture to assert that whatever speculative knowledge
is necessary to the artist, is equally and indispensably necessary
to the connoisseur.
The first idea that occurs in the consideration of what is fixed in
art, or in taste, is that presiding principle of which I have so
frequently spoken in former discourses, the general idea of nature.
The beginning, the middle, and the end of everything that is
valuable in taste, is comprised in the knowledge of what is truly
nature; for whatever ideas are not conformable to those of nature,
or universal opinion, must be considered as more or less
capricious.
The idea of nature comprehending not only the forms which nature
produces, but also the nature and internal fabric and organisation,
as I may call it, of the human mind and imagination: general
ideas, beauty, or nature, are but different ways of expressing the
same thing, whether we apply these terms to statues, poetry, or
picture. Deformity is not nature, but an accidental deviation from
her accustomed practice. This general idea therefore ought to be
called nature, and nothing else, correctly speaking, has a right to
that name. But we are so far from speaking, in common
conversation, with any such accuracy, that, on the contrary, when
we criticise Rembrandt and other Dutch painters, who introduced
into their historical pictures exact representations of individual
objects with all their imperfections, we say, though it is not in a
good taste, yet it is nature.
This misapplication of terms must be very often perplexing to the
young student. Is not, he may say, art an imitation of nature?
Must he not, therefore, who imitates her with the greatest fidelity
be the best artist? By this mode of reasoning Rembrandt has a
higher place than Raffaelle. But a very little reflection will
serve to show us that these particularities cannot be nature: for
how can that be the nature of man, in which no two individuals are
the same?
It plainly appears that as a work is conducted under the influence
of general ideas or partial it is principally to be considered as
the effect of a good or a bad taste.
As beauty therefore does not consist in taking what lies
immediately before you, so neither, in our pursuit of taste, are
those opinions which we first received and adopted the best choice,
or the most natural to the mind and imagination.
In the infancy of our knowledge we seize with greediness the good
that is within our reach; it is by after-consideration, and in
consequence of discipline, that we refuse the present for a greater
good at a distance. The nobility or elevation of all arts, like
the excellence of virtue itself, consists in adopting this enlarged
and comprehensive idea, and all criticism built upon the more
confined view of what is natural, may properly be called shallow
criticism, rather than false; its defect is that the truth is not
sufficiently extensive.
It has sometimes happened that some of the greatest men in our art
have been betrayed into errors by this confined mode of reasoning.
Poussin, who, upon the whole, may be produced as an instance of
attention to the most enlarged and extensive ideas of nature, from
not having settled principles on this point, has in one instance at
least, I think, deserted truth for prejudice. He is said to have
vindicated the conduct of Julio Romano, for his inattention to the
masses of light and shade, or grouping the figures, in the battle
of Constantine, as if designedly neglected, the better to
correspond with the hurry and confusion of a battle. Poussin's own
conduct in his representations of Bacchanalian triumphs and
sacrifices, makes us more easily give credit to this report, since
in such subjects, as well indeed as in many others, it was too much
his own practice. The best apology we can make for this conduct is
what proceeds from the association of our ideas, the prejudice we
have in favour of antiquity. Poussin's works, as I have formerly
observed, have very much the air of the ancient manner of painting,
in which there are not the least traces to make us think that what
we call the keeping, the composition of light and shade, or
distribution of the work into masses, claimed any part of their
attention. But surely whatever apology we may find out for this
neglect, it ought to be ranked among the defects of Poussin, as
well as of the antique paintings; and the moderns have a right to
that praise which is their due, for having given so pleasing an
addition to the splendour of the art.
Perhaps no apology ought to be received for offences committed
against the vehicle (whether it be the organ of seeing or of
hearing) by which our pleasures are conveyed to the mind. We must
take the same care that the eye be not perplexed and distracted by
a confusion of equal parts, or equal lights, as of offending it by
an unharmonious mixture of colours. We may venture to be more
confident of the truth of this observation, since we find that
Shakespeare, on a parallel occasion, has made Hamlet recommend to
the players a precept of the same kind, never to offend the ear by
harsh sounds:- "In the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of your
passions," says he, "you must beget a temperance that may give it
smoothness." And yet, at the same time, he very justly observes,
"The end of playing, both at the first and now, is to hold, as it
were, the mirror up to nature." No one can deny but that violent
passions will naturally emit harsh and disagreeable tones; yet this
great poet and critic thought that this imitation of nature would
cost too much, if purchased at the expense of disagreeable
sensations, or, as he expresses it, of "splitting the ear." The
poet and actor, as well as the painter of genius who is well
acquainted with all the variety and sources of pleasure in the mind
and imagination, has little regard or attention to common nature,
or creeping after common sense. By overleaping those narrow
bounds, he more effectually seizes the whole mind, and more
powerfully accomplishes his purpose. This success is ignorantly
imagined to proceed from inattention to all rules, and in defiance
of reason and judgment; whereas it is in truth acting according to
the best rules, and the justest reason.
He who thinks nature, in the narrow sense of the word, is alone to
be followed, will produce but a scanty entertainment for the
imagination: everything is to be done with which it is natural for
the mind to be pleased, whether it proceeds from simplicity or
variety, uniformity or irregularity: whether the scenes are
familiar or exotic; rude and wild, or enriched and cultivated; for
it is natural for the mind to be pleased with all these in their
turn. In short, whatever pleases has in it what is analogous to
the mind, and is therefore, in the highest and best sense of the
word, natural.
It is this sense of nature or truth which ought more particularly
to be cultivated by the professors of art; and it may be observed
that many wise and learned men, who have accustomed their minds to
admit nothing for truth but what can be proved by mathematical
demonstration, have seldom any relish for those arts which address
themselves to the fancy, the rectitude and truth of which is known
by another kind of proof: and we may add that the acquisition of
this knowledge requires as much circumspection and sagacity, as to
attain those truths which are more open to demonstration. Reason
must ultimately determine our choice on every occasion; but this
reason may still be exerted ineffectually by applying to taste
principles which, though right as far as they go, yet do not reach
the object. No man, for instance, can deny that it seems at first
view very reasonable, that a statue which is to carry down to
posterity the resemblance of an individual should be dressed in the
fashion of the times, in the dress which he himself wore: this
would certainly be true if the dress were part of the man. But
after a time the dress is only an amusement for an antiquarian; and
if it obstructs the general design of the piece, it is to be
disregarded by the artist. Common sense must here give way to a
higher sense.
In the naked form, and in the disposition of the drapery, the
difference between one artist and another is principally seen. But
if he is compelled to the modern dress, the naked form is entirely
hid, and the drapery is already disposed by the skill of the
tailor. Were a Phidias to obey such absurd commands, he would
please no more than an ordinary sculptor; since, in the inferior
parts of every art, the learned and the ignorant are nearly upon a
level.
These were probably among the reasons that induced the sculptor of
that wonderful figure of Laocoon to exhibit him naked,
notwithstanding he was surprised in the act of sacrificing to
Apollo, and consequently ought to be shown in his sacerdotal
habits, if those greater reasons had not preponderated. Art is not
yet in so high estimation with us as to obtain so great a sacrifice
as the ancients made, especially the Grecians, who suffered
themselves to be represented naked, whether they were generals,
lawgivers, or kings.
Under this head of balancing and choosing the greater reason, or of
two evils taking the least, we may consider the conduct of Rubens
in the Luxembourg gallery, of mixing allegorical figures with
representations of real personages, which, though acknowledged to
be a fault, yet, if the artist considered himself as engaged to
furnish this gallery with a rich and splendid ornament, this could
not be done, at least in an equal degree, without peopling the air
and water with these allegorical figures: he therefore
accomplished that he purposes. In this case all lesser
considerations, which tend to obstruct the great end of the work,
must yield and give way.
If it is objected that Rubens judged ill at first in thinking it
necessary to make his work so very ornamental, this brings the
question upon new ground. It was his peculiar style; he could
paint in no other; and he was selected for that work, probably,
because it was his style. Nobody will dispute but some of the best
of the Roman or Bolognian schools would have produced a more
learned and more noble work.
This leads us to another important province of taste, of weighing
the value of the different classes of the art, and of estimating
them accordingly.
All arts have means within them of applying themselves with success
both to the intellectual and sensitive part of our natures. It can
be no dispute, supposing both these means put in practice with
equal abilities, to which we ought to give the preference: to him
who represents the heroic arts and more dignified passions of man,
or to him who, by the help of meretricious ornaments, however
elegant and graceful, captivates the sensuality, as it may be
called, of our taste. Thus the Roman and Bolognian schools are
reasonably preferred to the Venetian, Flemish, or Dutch schools, as
they address themselves to our best and noblest faculties.
Well-turned periods in eloquence, or harmony of numbers in poetry,
which are in those arts what colouring is in painting, however
highly we may esteem them, can never be considered as of equal
importance with the art of unfolding truths that are useful to
mankind, and which make us better or wiser. Nor can those works
which remind us of the poverty and meanness of our nature, be
considered as of equal rank with what excites ideas of grandeur, or
raises and dignifies humanity; or, in the words of a late poet,
which makes the beholder learn to venerate himself as man.
It is reason and good sense therefore which ranks and estimates
every art, and every part of that art, according to its importance,
from the painter of animated down to inanimated nature. We will
not allow a man, who shall prefer the inferior style, to say it is
his taste; taste here has nothing, or at least ought to have
nothing to do with the question. He wants not taste, but sense,
and soundness of judgment.
Indeed, perfection in an inferior style may be reasonably preferred
to mediocrity in the highest walks of art. A landscape of Claude
Lorraine may be preferred to a history of Luca Jordano; but hence
appears the necessity of the connoisseur's knowing in what consists
the excellence of each class, in order to judge how near it
approaches to perfection.
Even in works of the same kind, as in history painting, which is
composed of various parts, excellence of an inferior species,
carried to a very high degree, will make a work very valuable, and
in some measure compensate for the absence of the higher kind of
merits. It is the duty of the connoisseur to know and esteem, as
much as it may deserve, every part of painting; he will not then
think even Bassano unworthy of his notice, who, though totally
devoid of expression, sense, grace, or elegance, may be esteemed on
account of his admirable taste of colours, which, in his best
works, are little inferior to those of Titian.
Since I have mentioned Bassano, we must do him likewise the justice
to acknowledge that, though he did not aspire to the dignity of
expressing the characters and passions of men, yet, with respect to
the facility and truth in his manner of touching animals of all
kinds, and giving them what painters call their character, few have
ever excelled him.
To Bassano we may add Paul Veronese and Tintoret, for their entire
inattention to what is justly esteemed the most essential part of
our art, the expression of the passions. Notwithstanding these
glaring deficiencies, we justly esteem their works; but it must be
remembered that they do not please from those defects, but from
their great excellences of another kind, and in spite of such
transgressions. These excellences, too, as far as they go, are
founded in the truth of general nature. They tell the truth,
though not the whole truth.
By these considerations, which can never be too frequently
impressed, may be obviated two errors which I observed to have
been, formerly at least, the most prevalent, and to be most
injurious to artists: that of thinking taste and genius to have
nothing to do with reason, and that of taking particular living
objects for nature.
I shall now say something on that part of taste which, as I have
hinted to you before, does not belong so much to the external form
of things, but is addressed to the mind, and depends on its
original frame, or, to use the expression, the organisation of the
soul; I mean the imagination and the passions. The principles of
these are as invariable as the former, and are to be known and
reasoned upon in the same manner, by an appeal to common sense
deciding upon the common feelings of mankind. This sense, and
these feelings, appear to me of equal authority, and equally
conclusive.
Now this appeal implies a general uniformity and agreement in the
minds of men. It would be else an idle and vain endeavour to
establish rules of art; it would be pursuing a phantom to attempt
to move affections with which we were entirely unacquainted. We
have no reason to suspect there is a greater difference between our
minds than between our forms, of which, though there are no two
alike, yet there is a general similitude that goes through the
whole race of mankind; and those who have cultivated their taste
can distinguish what is beautiful or deformed, or, in other words,
what agrees with or what deviates from the general idea of nature,
in one case as well as in the other.
The internal fabric of our mind, as well as the external form of
our bodies, being nearly uniform, it seems then to follow, of
course, that as the imagination is incapable of producing anything
originally of itself, and can only vary and combine these ideas
with which it is furnished by means of the senses, there will be,
of course, an agreement in the imaginations as in the senses of
men. There being this agreement, it follows that in all cases, in
our lightest amusements as well as in our most serious actions and
engagements of life, we must regulate our affections of every kind
by that of others. The well-disciplined mind acknowledges this
authority, and submits its own opinion to the public voice.
It is from knowing what are the general feelings and passions of
mankind that we acquire a true idea of what imagination is; though
it appears as if we had nothing to do but to consult our own
particular sensations, and these were sufficient to ensure us from
all error and mistake.
A knowledge of the disposition and character of the human mind can
be acquired only by experience: a great deal will be learned, I
admit, by a habit of examining what passes in our bosoms, what are
our own motives of action, and of what kind of sentiments we are
conscious on any occasion. We may suppose a uniformity, and
conclude that the same effect will be produced by the same cause in
the minds of others. This examination will contribute to suggest
to us matters of inquiry; but we can never be sure that our own
sensations are true and right till they are confirmed by more
extensive observation.
One man opposing another determines nothing but a general union of
minds, like a general combination of the forces of all mankind,
makes a strength that is irresistible. In fact, as he who does not
know himself does not know others, so it may be said with equal
truth, that he who does not know others knows himself but very
imperfectly.
A man who thinks he is guarding himself against Prejudices by
resisting the authority of others, leaves open every avenue to
singularity, vanity, self-conceit, obstinacy, and many other vices,
all tending to warp the judgment and prevent the natural operation
of his faculties.
This submission to others is a deference which we owe, and indeed
are forced involuntarily to pay.
In fact we are never satisfied with our opinions till they are
ratified and confirmed by the suffrages of the rest of mankind. We
dispute and wrangle for ever; we endeavour to get men to come to us
when we do not go to them.
He therefore who is acquainted with the works which have pleased
different ages and different countries, and has formed his opinion
on them, has more materials and more means of knowing what is
analogous to the mind of man than he who is conversant only with
the works of his own age or country. What has pleased, and
continues to please, is likely to please again: hence are derived
the rules of art, and on this immovable foundation they must ever
stand.
This search and study of the history of the mind ought not to be
confined to one art only. It is by the analogy that one art bears
to another that many things are ascertained which either were but
faintly seen, or, perhaps, would not have been discovered at all if
the inventor had not received the first hints from the practices of
a sister art on a similar occasion. The frequent allusions which
every man who treats of any art is obliged to draw from others in
order to illustrate and confirm his principles, sufficiently show
their near connection and inseparable relation.
All arts having the same general end, which is to please, and
addressing themselves to the same faculties through the medium of
the senses, it follows that their rules and principles must have as
great affinity as the different materials and the different organs
or vehicles by which they pass to the mind will permit them to
retain.
We may therefore conclude that the real substance, as it may be
called, of what goes under the name of taste, is fixed and
established in the nature of things; that there are certain and
regular causes by which the imagination and passions of men are
affected; and that the knowledge of these causes is acquired by a
laborious and diligent investigation of nature, and by the same
slow progress as wisdom or knowledge of every kind, however
instantaneous its operations may appear when thus acquired.
It has been often observed that the good and virtuous man alone can
acquire this true or just relish, even of works of art. This
opinion will not appear entirely without foundation when we
consider that the same habit of mind which is acquired by our
search after truth in the more serious duties of life, is only
transferred to the pursuit of lighter amusements: the same
disposition, the same desire to find something steady, substantial,
and durable, on which the mind can lean, as it were, and rest with
safety. The subject only is changed. We pursue the same method in
our search after the idea of beauty and perfection in each; of
virtue, by looking forwards beyond ourselves to society, and to the
whole; of arts, by extending our views in the same manner to all
ages and all times.
Every art, like our own, has in its composition fluctuating as well
as fixed principles. It is an attentive inquiry into their
difference that will enable us to determine how far we are
influenced by custom and habit, and what is fixed in the nature of
things.
To distinguish how much has solid foundation, we may have recourse
to the same proof by which some hold wit ought to be tried--whether
it preserves itself when translated. That wit is false which can
subsist only in one language; and that picture which pleases only
one age or one nation, owes its reception to some local or
accidental association of ideas.
We may apply this to every custom and habit of life. Thus the
general principles of urbanity, politeness, or civility, have been
ever the same in all nations; but the mode in which they are
dressed is continually varying. The general idea of showing
respect is by making yourself less: but the manner, whether by
bowing the body, kneeling, prostration, pulling off the upper part
of our dress, or taking away the lower, is a matter of habit. It
would be unjust to conclude that all ornaments, because they were
at first arbitrarily contrived, are therefore undeserving of our
attention; on the contrary, he who neglects the cultivation of
those ornaments, acts contrarily to nature and reason. As life
would be imperfect without its highest ornaments, the arts, so
these arts themselves would be imperfect without THEIR ornaments.
Though we by no means ought to rank these with positive and
substantial beauties, yet it must be allowed that a knowledge of
both is essentially requisite towards forming a complete, whole,
and perfect taste. It is in reality from the ornaments that arts
receive their peculiar character and complexion; we may add that in
them we find the characteristical mark of a national taste, as by
throwing up a feather in the air we know which way the wind blows,
better than by a more heavy matter.
The striking distinction between the works of the Roman, Bolognian,
and Venetian schools, consists more in that general effect which is
produced by colours than in the more profound excellences of the
art; at least it is from thence that each is distinguished and
known at first sight. As it is the ornaments rather than the
proportions of architecture which at the first glance distinguish
the different orders from each other; the Doric is known by its
triglyphs, the Ionic by its volutes, and the Corinthian by its
acanthus.
What distinguishes oratory from a cold narration, is a more liberal
though chaste use of these ornaments which go under the name of
figurative and metaphorical expressions; and poetry distinguishes
itself from oratory by words and expressions still more ardent and
glowing. What separates and distinguishes poetry is more
particularly the ornament of VERSE; it is this which gives it its
character, and is an essential, without which it cannot exist.
Custom has appropriated different metre to different kinds of
composition, in which the world is not perfectly agreed. In
England the dispute is not yet settled which is to be preferred,
rhyme or blank verse. But however we disagree about what these
metrical ornaments shall be, that some metre is essentially
necessary is universally acknowledged.
In poetry or eloquence, to determine how far figurative or
metaphorical language may proceed, and when it begins to be
affectation or beside the truth, must be determined by taste,
though this taste we must never forget is regulated and formed by
the presiding feelings of mankind, by those works which have
approved themselves to all times and all persons.
Thus, though eloquence has undoubtedly an essential and intrinsic
excellence, and immovable principles common to all languages,
founded in the nature of our passions and affections, yet it has
its ornaments and modes of address which are merely arbitrary.
What is approved in the Eastern nations as grand and majestic,
would be considered by the Greeks and Romans as turgid and
inflated; and they, in return, would be thought by the Orientals to
express themselves in a cold and insipid manner.
We may add likewise to the credit of ornaments, that it is by their
means that art itself accomplishes its purpose. Fresnoy calls
colouring, which is one of the chief ornaments of painting, lena
sororis, that which procures lovers and admirers to the more
valuable excellences of the art.
It appears to be the same right turn of mind which enables a man to
acquire the TRUTH, or the just idea of what is right in the
ornaments, as in the more stable principles of art. It has still
the same centre of perfection, though it is the centre of a smaller
circle.
To illustrate this by the fashion of dress, in which there is
allowed to be a good or, bad taste. The component parts of dress
are continually changing from great to little, from short to long,
but the general form still remains; it is still the same general
dress which is comparatively fixed, though on a very slender
foundation, but it is on this which fashion must rest. He who
invents with the most success, or dresses in, the best taste, would
probably, from the same sagacity employed to greater purposes, have
discovered equal skill, or have formed the same correct taste in
the highest labours of art.
I have mentioned taste in dress, which is certainly one of the
lowest subjects to which this word is applied; yet, as I have
before observed, there is a right even here, however narrow its
foundation respecting the fashion of any particular nation. But we
have still more slender means of determining, in regard to the
different customs of different ages or countries, to which to give
the preference, since they seem to be all equally removed from
nature.
If an European, when he has cut off his beard, and put false hair
on his head, or bound up his own natural hair in regular hard
knots, as unlike nature as he can possibly make it; and having
rendered them immovable by the help of the fat of hogs, has covered
the whole with flour, laid on by a machine with the utmost
regularity; if, when thus attired he issues forth, he meets a
Cherokee Indian, who has bestowed as much time at his toilet, and
laid on with equal care and attention his yellow and red ochre on
particular parts of his forehead or cheeks, as he judges most
becoming; whoever despises the other for this attention to the
fashion of his country, whichever of these two first feels himself
provoked to laugh, is the barbarian.
All these fashions are very innocent, neither worth disquisition,
nor any endeavour to alter them, as the change would, in all
probability, be equally distant from nature. The only
circumstances against which indignation may reasonably be moved,
are where the operation is painful or destructive of health, such
as is practised at Otahaiti, and the straight lacing of the English
ladies; of the last of which, how destructive it must be to health
and long life, the professor of anatomy took an opportunity of
proving a few days since in this Academy.
It is in dress as in things of greater consequence. Fashions
originate from those only who have the high and powerful advantages
of rank, birth, and fortune; as many of the ornaments of art, those
at least for which no reason can be given, are transmitted to us,
are adopted, and acquire their consequence from the company in
which we have been used to see them. As Greece and Rome are the
fountains from whence have flowed all kinds of excellence, to that
veneration which they have a right to claim for the pleasure and
knowledge which they have afforded us, we voluntarily add our
approbation of every ornament and every custom that belonged to
them, even to the fashion of their dress. For it may be observed
that, not satisfied with them in their own place, we make no
difficulty of dressing statues of modern heroes or senators in the
fashion of the Roman armour or peaceful robe; we go so far as
hardly to bear a statue in any other drapery.
The figures of the great men of those nations have come down to us
in sculpture. In sculpture remain almost all the excellent
specimens of ancient art. We have so far associated personal
dignity to the persons thus represented, and the truth of art to
their manner of representation, that it is not in our power any
longer to separate them. This is not so in painting; because,
having no excellent ancient portraits, that connection was never
formed. Indeed, we could no more venture to paint a general
officer in a Roman military habit, than we could make a statue in
the present uniform. But since we have no ancient portraits, to
show how ready we are to adopt those kind of prejudices, we make
the best authority among the moderns serve the same purpose. The
great variety of excellent portraits with which Vandyke has
enriched this nation, we are not content to admire for their real
excellence, but extend our approbation even to the dress which
happened to be the fashion of that age. We all very well remember
how common it was a few years ago for portraits to be drawn in this
Gothic dress, and this custom is not yet entirely laid aside. By
this means it must be acknowledged very ordinary pictures acquired
something of the air and effect of the works of Vandyke, and
appeared therefore at first sight to be better pictures than they
really were; they appeared so, however, to those only who had the
means of making this association, for when made, it was
irresistible. But this association is nature, and refers to that
Secondary truth that comes from conformity to general prejudice and
opinion; it is therefore not merely fantastical. Besides the
prejudice which we have in favour of ancient dresses, there may be
likewise other reasons, amongst which we may justly rank the
simplicity of them, consisting of little more than one single piece
of drapery, without those whimsical capricious forms by which all
other dresses are embarrassed.
Thus, though it is from the prejudice we have in favour of the
ancients, who have taught us architecture, that we have adopted
likewise their ornaments; and though we are satisfied that neither
nature nor reason is the foundation of those beauties which we
imagine we see in that art, yet if any one persuaded of this truth
should, therefore, invent new orders of equal beauty, which we will
suppose to be possible, yet they would not please, nor ought he to
complain, since the old has that great advantage of having custom
and prejudice on its side. In this case we leave what has every
prejudice in its favour to take that which will have no advantage
over what we have left, but novelty, which soon destroys itself,
and, at any rate, is but a weak antagonist against custom.
These ornaments, having the right of possession, ought not to be
removed but to make room for not only what has higher pretensions,
but such pretensions as will balance the evil and confusion which
innovation always brings with it.
To this we may add, even the durability of the materials will often
contribute to give a superiority to one object over another.
Ornaments in buildings, with which taste is principally concerned,
are composed of materials which last longer than those of which
dress is composed; it, therefore, makes higher pretensions to our
favour and prejudice.
Some attention is surely required to what we can no more get rid of
than we can go out of ourselves. We are creatures of prejudice; we
neither can nor ought to eradicate it; we must only regulate, it by
reason, which regulation by reason is, indeed, little more than
obliging the lesser, the focal and temporary prejudices, to give
way to those which are more durable and lasting.
He, therefore, who in his practice of portrait painting wishes to
dignify his subject, which we will suppose to be a lady, will not
paint her in the modern dress, the familiarity of which alone is
sufficient to destroy all dignity. He takes care that his work
shall correspond to those ideas and that imagination which he knows
will regulate the judgment of others, and, therefore, dresses his
figure something with the general air of the antique for the sake
of dignity, and preserves something of the modern for the sake of
likeness. By this conduct his works correspond with those
prejudices which we have in favour of what we continually see; and
the relish of the antique simplicity corresponds with what we may
call the, more learned and scientific prejudice.
There was a statue made not long since of Voltaire, which the
sculptor, not having that respect for the prejudices of mankind
which he ought to have, has made entirely naked, and as meagre and
emaciated as the original is said to be. The consequence is what
might be expected; it has remained in the sculptor's shop, though
it was intended as a public ornament and a public honour to
Voltaire, as it was procured at the expense of his cotemporary wits
and admirers.
Whoever would reform a nation, supposing a bad taste to prevail in
it, will not accomplish his purpose by going directly against the
stream of their prejudices. Men's minds must be prepared to
receive what is new to them. Reformation is a work of time. A
national taste, however wrong it may be, cannot be totally change
at once; we must yield a little to the prepossession which has
taken hold on the mind, and we may then bring people to adopt what
would offend them if endeavoured to be introduced by storm. When
Battisto Franco was employed, in conjunction with Titian, Paul
Veronese, and Tintoret, to adorn the library of St. Mark, his work,
Vasari says, gave less satisfaction than any of the others: the
dry manner of the Roman school was very ill calculated to please
eyes that had been accustomed to the luxuriance, splendour, and
richness of Venetian colouring. Had the Romans been the judges of
this work, probably the determination would have been just
contrary; for in the more noble parts of the art Battisto Franco
was, perhaps, not inferior to any of his rivals.
Gentlemen,--It has been the main scope and principal end of this
discourse to demonstrate the reality of a standard in taste, as
well as in corporeal beauty; that a false or depraved taste is a
thing as well known, as easily discovered, as anything that is
deformed, misshapen, or wrong in our form or outward make; and that
this knowledge is derived from the uniformity of sentiments among
mankind, from whence proceeds the knowledge of what are the general
habits of nature, the result of which is an idea of perfect beauty.
If what has been advanced be true, that besides this beauty or
truth which is formed on the uniform eternal and immutable laws of
nature, and which of necessity can be but one; that besides this
one immutable verity there are likewise what we have called
apparent or secondary truths proceeding from local and temporary
prejudices, fancies, fashions, or accidental connection of ideas;
if it appears that these last have still their foundation, however
slender, in the original fabric of our minds, it follows that all
these truths or beauties deserve and require the attention of the
artist in proportion to their stability or duration, or as their
influence is more or less extensive. And let me add that as they
ought not to pass their just bounds, so neither do they, in a well-
regulated taste, at all prevent or weaken the influence of these
general principles, which alone can give to art its true and
permanent dignity.
To form this just taste is undoubtedly in your own power, but it is
to reason and philosophy that you must have recourse; from them we
must borrow the balance by which is to be weighed and estimated the
value of every pretension that intrudes itself on your notice.
The general objection which is made to the introduction of
philosophy into the regions of taste is, that it checks and
restrains the flights of the imagination, and gives that timidity
which an over-carefulness not to err or act contrary to reason is
likely to produce.
It is not so. Fear is neither reason nor philosophy. The true
spirit of philosophy by giving knowledge gives a manly confidence,
and substitutes rational firmness in the place of vain presumption.
A man of real taste is always a man of judgment in other respects;
and those inventions which either disdain or shrink from reason,
are generally, I fear, more like the dreams of a distempered brain
than the exalted enthusiasm of a sound and true genius. In the
midst of the highest flights of fancy or imagination, reason ought
to preside from first to last, though I admit her more powerful
operation is upon reflection.
I cannot help adding that some of the greatest names of antiquity,
and those who have most distinguished themselves in works of genius
and imagination, were equally eminent for their critical skill.
Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Horace; and among the moderns,
Boileau, Corneille, Pope, and Dryden, are at least instances of
genius not being destroyed by attention or subjection to rules and
science. I should hope, therefore, that the natural consequence
likewise of what has been said would be to excite in you a desire
of knowing the principles and conduct of the great masters of our
art, and respect and veneration for them when known.
End of Project Gutenberg Etext Seven Discourses on Art by Joshua Reynolds