Vol. xxxiv.] [August 1820.
Vol. xxxiv.] [August 1820.
Vol. xxxiv.] [August 1820.
This, with regard to its main object, must certainly be regarded as a superfluous publication. Forty years after the death of Sir Joshua, Mr. Farington has found himself called upon to put forth a thin octavo volume, to revive the recollection of the dispute between their late President and the Academy, and to correct an error into which Mr. Malone had fallen, in supposing that Sir Joshua was not entirely to blame in that business. This is a remarkable instance of the tenaciousness of corporate bodies with respect to the immaculatepurity of their conduct. It was at first suggested that printed notes might be sufficient, with references to the pages of Mr. Malone’s account: but it was finally judged best to give it as a connected narrative—that the vindication of the Academy might slip in only as a parenthesis or an episode. So we have a full account of Sir Joshua’s birth and parentage, god-fathers and god-mothers, with as many repetitions beside as were necessary to give a colouring to Mr. Farington’s ultimate object. The manner in which the plot of the publication is insinuated, is curious and characteristic: But our business at present is with certain more general matters, on which we have some observations to offer.
‘In the present instance,’ says Mr. F., ‘we see how a character, formed by early habits of consideration, self-government, and persevering industry, acquired the highest fame; and made his path through life a course of unruffled moral enjoyment. Sir Joshua Reynolds, when young, wrote rules of conduct for himself. One of his maxims was, “that the great principle of being happy in this world, is, not to mind or be affected with small things.” To this rule he strictly adhered; and the constant habit of controlling his mind contributed greatly to that evenness of temper which enabled him to live pleasantly with persons of all descriptions. Placability of temper may be said to have been his characteristic. The happiness of possessing such a disposition was acknowledged by his friend Dr. Johnson, who said, “Reynolds was the most invulnerable man he had ever known.”
‘The life of this distinguished artist exhibits a useful lesson to all those who may devote themselves to the same pursuit. He was not of the class of such as have been held up, or who have esteemed themselves, to be heaven-born geniuses. He appeared to think little of such claims. It will be seen, in the account of his progress to the high situation he attained in his profession, that at no period was there in him any such fancied inspiration; on the contrary, every youthful reader of the Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds may feel assured, that his ultimate success will be in proportion to the resolution with which he follows his example.’
This, we believe, is the current morality and philosophy of the present day; and therefore it is of more consequence to observe, that it appears to us to be a mere tissue of sophistry and folly. And first, as to happiness depending on ‘not being affected with small things,’ it seems plain enough, that a continued flow of pleasurable sensations cannot depend every moment on great objects. Children are supposed to have a fair share of enjoyment; and yet this arises chiefly from their being delighted with trifles—‘pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.’ The reason why we so seldom carry on thehappy vivacity of early youth into maturer age is, that we form to ourselves a higher standard of enjoyment than we can realize; and that our passions gradually fasten on certain favourite objects, which, in proportion to their magnitude, are of rare occurrence, and, for the most part, out of our reach. The example, too, which suggested these general remarks, actually exposes their fallacy. Sir Joshua didnotowe his happiness to his contempt of little things, but to his success in great ones—and it was by that actual success, far more than by the meritorious industry and exertion which contributed to it, that he was enabled to disregard little vexations. Was Richardson, for example, who, it is observed afterwards, ‘had merit in his profession, but not of a high order, though he thought so well on the subject of art, and had practised it so long,’ to feel an equal moral enjoyment in the want of equal success? Was the idea of that excellence, which he had so long laboured in vain to realize, to console him for the loss of that ‘highest fame,’ which is here represented as the invariable concomitant of persevering industry? Or was he to disregard his failure as a trifle? Was the consciousness that he had done his best, to stand him in stead of that ‘unruffled moral enjoyment’ which Sir Joshua owed in no small degree to the coronet-coaches that besieged his doors, to the great names that sat at his table, to the beauty that crowded his painting-room, and reflected its loveliness back from the lucid mirror of his canvas? These things do indeed put a man above minding little inconveniences, and ‘greatly contribute to that evenness of temper which enables him to live pleasantly with persons of all descriptions.’ But was Hudson, Sir Joshua’s master, who had grown old and rich in the cultivation of his art, and who found himself suddenly outdone and eclipsed by his pupil, to derive muchunruffled enjoymentfrom this petty circumstance, or to comfort himself with one of those maxims which young Reynolds had written out for his conduct in life? When Sir Joshua himself lost the use of one of his eyes, in the decline of his life, he became peevish, and did not long survive the practice of his favourite art. Suppose the same loss to have happened to him in the meridian of his fame, we fear that all his consciousness of merit, and all his efforts of industry, would have been insufficient to have supplied that unruffled felicity which we are here taught to refer exclusively to these high sources.
The truth is, that those specious maxims, though they may seem at first sight to minister to content, and to encourage to meritorious exertion, lead in fact to a wrong estimate of human life, to unreasonable anticipations of success, and to bitter repinings and regrets at what in any reverse of fortune we think the injustice of society andthe caprice of nature. We have a very remarkable instance of this process of mental sophistication, or the setting up a theory against experience, and then wondering that human nature does not answer to our theory, in what our author says on this very subject of Hudson, and his more fortunate scholar afterwards. P. 46. ‘It might be thought that the talents of Reynolds, to which no degree of ignorance or imbecility in the art could be insensible, added to his extraordinary reputation, would have extinguished every feeling of Jealousy or Rivalship in the mind of his master Hudson; but the malady was so deeply seated as to defy the usual remedies applied by time and reflection.Hudson, when at the head of his art, admired and praised by all, had seen a youth rise up and annihilate both his Income and his Fame; and he never could divest his mind of the feelings of mortification caused by the loss he had thus sustained.’ This Mr. F. actually considers as something quite extraordinary and unreasonable; and which might have been easily prevented by a diligent study of Sir Joshua’s admirable aphorisms, against being affected by small things. Such is our Academician’s ethical simplicity, and enviable ignorance of the ways of the world!
One would think that the name of Hudson, which occurs frequently in these pages, might have taught our learned author some little distrust of that other favourite maxim, that Genius is the effect of education, encouragement, and practice. It is the basis, however, of his whole moral and intellectual system; and is thus distinctly announced and enforced in a very elaborate passage.
‘With respect to his (Sir Joshua’s) early indications of talent for the art he afterwards professed, it would be idle to dwell upon them as manifesting any thing more than is common among boys of his age. As an amusement he probably preferred drawing to any other to which he was tempted. In the specimens which have been preserved, there is no sign of premature ingenuity; his history is, in this respect, like what might be written of very many other artists, perhaps of artists in general. His attempts were applauded by kind and sanguine friends; and this encouraged him to persevere till it became a fixed desire in him to make further proficiency, and continually to request that it might be his profession. It is said, that his purpose was determined by reading Richardson’s Treatise on Painting. Possibly it might have been so; his thoughts having been previously occupied with the subject. Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Cowley, writes as follows—“In the windows of his mother’s apartment lay Spenser’s Faery Queen, in which he very early took delight to read, till by feeling the charms of verse, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet. Such are the accidents which, sometimesremembered, and perhaps sometimes forgotten, produce that peculiar designation of mind, and propensity for some certain science or employment, which is commonly called Genius. The true genius is a man of large general powers accidentally determined to some particular direction. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great painter of the present age, had the first fondness for his art excited by the perusal of Richardson’s Treatise.” In this definition of genius, Reynolds fully concurred with Dr. Johnson; and he was himself an instance in proof of its truth. He had a sound natural capacity, and, by observation and long-continued labour, always discriminating with judgment, he obtained universal applause, and established his claim to be ranked amongst those to whom the highest praise is due; for his productions exhibited perfect originality. No artist ever consulted the works of eminent predecessors more than Sir Joshua Reynolds. He drew from every possible source something which might improve his practice; and he resolved the whole of what he saw in nature, and found in art, into a union, which made his pictures a singular display of grace, truth, beauty and richness.’
From the time that Mr. Locke explodedinnate ideasin the commencement of the last century, there began to be a confused apprehension in some speculative heads, that there could be no innate faculties either; and our half metaphysicians have been floundering about in this notion ever since: as if, because there are no innate ideas, that is, no actual impressions existing in the mind without objects, there could be no peculiar capacity to receive them from objects; or as if there might not be as great a difference in the capacity itself as in the outward objects to be impressed upon it. We might as well deny, at once, that there are organs or faculties to receive impressions, because there are no innate ideas, as deny that there is an inherent difference in the organs or faculties to receive impressions of any particular kind. If the capacity exists (which it must do), there may, nay we should say theremust, be a difference in it, in different persons, and with respect to different things. To allege that there is such a difference, no more implies the doctrine of innate ideas, than to say that the brain of a man is more fitted to discern external objects than a block of marble, imports that there are innate ideas in the brain, or in the block of marble. The impression, it is true, does not exist in the sealing-wax till the seal has been applied to it: but there was the previous capacity to receive the impression; and there may be, and most probably is, a greater degree of fitness in one piece of sealing-wax than in another. That the original capacity, the aptitude for certain impressions or pursuits, should be necessarily the same in different instances, with thediversity that we see in men’s organs, faculties, and acquirements of various kinds, is a supposition not only gratuitous, but absurd. There is the capacity of animals, the capacity of idiots, and of half idiots and half madmen of various descriptions: there is capacity, in short, of all sorts and degrees, from an oyster to a Newton: Yet we are gravely told, that wherever there is a power of sensation, the genius must be the same, and would, with proper cultivation, produce the same effects. ‘No,’ say the French materialists; ‘but in minds commonly well organized (communement bien organisés), the results will, in the same given circumstances, be the same.’ That is, in the same circumstances, and with the sameaveragecapacity, there will be the same average degree of genius or imbecility—which is just an identical proposition.
To make any sense at all of the doctrine, that circumstances are everything and natural genius nothing, the result ought at least to correspond to the aggregate of impressions, determining the mind this way or that, like so many weights in a scale. But the advocates of this doctrine allow that the result is not by any means according to the known aggregate of impressions, but, on the contrary, that one of the most insignificant, or one not at all perceived, will turn the scale against the bias and experience of a man’s whole life. The reasoning is here lame again. These persons wish to get rid of occult causes, to refer every thing to distinct principles and a visible origin; and yet they say that they know not how it is, that, in spite of all visible circumstances, such a one should be an incorrigible blockhead and such an other an extraordinary genius; but that, no doubt, there was a secret influence exerted, a by-play in it, in which nature had no hand, but accident gave a nod, and in a lucky or unlucky minute fixed the destiny of both for life, by some slight and transient impulse! Now, this is like the reasoning of the astrologers, who pretend that your whole history is to be traced to the constellation under which you were born: and when you object that two men born at the same time have the most different character and fortune, they answer, that there wasan imperceptible intervalbetween the moment of their births, that made the whole difference. But if this short interval, of which no one could be aware, made the whole difference, it also makes their whole science vain. Besides, the notion of an accidental impulse, a slight turn of the screws giving a total revulsion to the whole frame of the mind, is only intelligible on the supposition of an original or previous bias which falls in with that impression, and catches at the long-wished for opportunity of disclosing itself:—like combustible matter meeting with the spark that kindles it into a flame. But it is little less than sheer nonsense to maintain, while outward impressionsare said to be every thing, and the mind alike indifferent to all, that one single unconscious impression shall decide upon a man’s whole character, genius, and pursuits in life,—and all the rest thenceforward go for nothing.
Again, we hear it said that the difference of understanding or character is not very apparent at first:—though this is not uniformly true—but neither is the difference between an oak and a briar very great in the seed or in the shoot:—yet will any one deny that the germ is there, or that the soil, culture, the sun and heat alone produce the difference? So circumstances are necessary to the mind: but the mind is necessary to circumstances. The ultimate success depends on the joint action of both. They were fools who believed in innate ideas, or talked of ‘heaven-born genius’ without any means of developing it. They are greater, because more learned fools, who assert that circumstances alone can create or develop genius, where none exists. We may distinguish a stature of the mind as well as of the body,—a mould, a form, to which it is predetermined irrevocably. It is true that exercise gives strength to the faculties both of mind and body; but it is not true that it is the only source of strength in either case. Exercise will make a weak man strong, but it will make a strong man stronger. A dwarf will never be a match for a giant, train him ever so. And are there not dwarfs as well as giants in intellect? Appearances are for it, and reason is not against it.
There are, beyond all dispute, persons who have a talent for particular things, which according to Dr. Johnson’s definition of genius, proceeds from ‘a greater general capacity accidentally determined to a particular direction.’ But this, instead of solving, doubles the miracle of genius; for it leaves entire all the former objections to inherent talent, and supposes that one man ‘of large general capacity’ is all sorts of genius at once. This is like admitting that one man may be naturally stronger than another—but denying that he can be naturally stronger in the legs or the arms only; and, deserting the ground of original equality, would drive the theorist to maintain that the inequality which exists must always be universal, and not particular, although all the instances we actually meet with are particular only. Now surely we have no right to give any man credit for genius in more things than he has shown a particular genius in. In looking round us in the world, it is most certain that we find men of large general capacity and no particular talent, and others with the most exquisite turn for some particular thing, and no general talent. Would Dr. Johnson have made Reynolds or Goldsmith, Burke, by beginning early and continuing late? We should make strange havoc by this arbitrary transposition of genius and industry. Some personscannot for their lives understand the first proposition in Euclid. Would they ever make great mathematicians? Or does this incapacity preclude them from ever excelling in any other art or mystery? Swift was admitted by special grace to a Bachelor’s Degree at Dublin College, which, however, did not prevent him from writing Gulliver’s Travels: and Claude Lorraine was turned away by his master from the trade of a pastry-cook to which he was apprenticed, for sheer stupidity. People often fail most in what they set themselves most diligently about, and discover an unaccountableknackat something else, without any effort or even consciousness that they possess it. One great proof and beauty of works of true genius, is the ease, simplicity, and freedom from conscious effort which pervades them. Not only in different things is there this difference of skill and aptness displayed; but in the same thing, to which a man’s attention is continually directed, how narrow is the sphere of human excellence, how distinct the line of pursuit which nature has marked out even for those whom she has most favoured! Thus in painting, Raphael excelled in drawing, Titian in colouring, Rembrandt inchiaroscuro. A small part of nature was revealed to each by a peculiar felicity of conformation; and they would have made sad work of it, if each had neglected his own advantages to go in search of those of others, on the principle that genius is a large general capacity, transferred, by will or accident, to some particular channel.
It may be said, that in all these cases it is habit, not nature, that produces the disqualification for different pursuits. But if the bias given to the mind, by a particular study, totally unfits it for others, is it probable that there is something in the nature of those studies which requires a particular bias and structure of the faculties to excel in them, from the very first? If genius were, as some pretend, the mere exercise of general power on a particular subject, without any difference of organs or subordinate faculties, a man would improve equally in every thing, and grow wise at all points. But if, besides mere general power, there is a constant exercise and sharpening of different organs and faculties required for any particular pursuit, then a natural susceptibility of those organs and faculties must greatly assist him in his progress. To argue otherwise, is to shut one’s eyes to the whole mass of inductive evidence; and to run headlong into a dogmatical theory, depending wholly on presumption and conjecture. We would sooner go the whole length of the absurdities of craniology, than get into this flatting-machine of the original sameness and indiscriminate tendency of men’s faculties and dispositions. A painter, of all men, should not give into any such notion. Does he pretend to see differences in faces, and will he allow none in minds? Or, does hemake the outline of the head the criterion of a corresponding difference of character, and yet reject all distinction in the original conformation of the soul? Has he never been struck withfamilylikenesses? And is there not an inherent, indestructible, and inalienable character to be found in the individuals of such families answering to this physiognomical identity, even in remote branches, where there has been no communication when young, and where the situation, pursuits, education, and character of the individuals have been totally opposite? Again, do we not find persons with every external advantage, without any intellectual superiority; and the greatest prodigies emerge from the greatest obscurity? What made Shakespeare! Not his education as a link-boy or a deer-stealer! Have there not been thousands of mathematicians, educated like Sir Isaac Newton, who have risen to the rank of Senior Wranglers, and never been heard of afterwards? Did not Hogarth live in the same age with Hayman? Who will believe that Highmore could, by any exaggeration of circumstances, have been transformed into Michael Angelo? That Hudson was another Vandykeincognito; or that Reynolds would, as our author dreads, have learned to paint like his master, if he had staid to serve out his apprenticeship with him? The thing was impossible.—Hudson had every advantage, as far as Mr. Farington’s mechanical theory goes (for he was brought up under Richardson), to enable him to break through the trammels of custom, and to raise the degenerate style of art in his day. Why did he not? He had not original force of mind either to inspire him with the conception, or to impel him to execute it. Why did Reynolds burst through the cloud that overhung the region of art, and shine out, like the glorious sun, upon his native land? Because he had the genius to do it. It was nature working in him, and forcing its way through all impediments of ignorance and fashion, till it found its native element in undoubted excellence and wide-spread fame. His eye was formed to drink in light, and to absorb the splendid effects of shadowy obscurity; and it gave out what it took in. He had a strong intrinsic perception of grace and expression; and he could not be satisfied with the stiff, formal, inanimate models he saw before him. There are indeed certain minds that seem formed as conductors to truth and beauty, as the hardest metals carry off the electric fluid, and round which all examples of excellence, whether in art or nature, play harmless and ineffectual. Reynolds was not one of these: but the instant he saw gorgeous truth in natural objects, or artificial models, his mind ‘darted contagious fire.’ It is said that he surpassed his servile predecessors by a more diligent study, and more careful imitation of nature. But how was he attracted to nature,but by the sympathy of real taste and genius? He also copied the portraits of Gandy, an obscure but excellent artist of his native county. A blockhead would have copied his master, and despised Gandy: but Gandy’s style of painting satisfied and stimulated his ambition, because he saw nature there. Hudson’s made no impression on him, because it presented nothing of the kind. Why then did Reynolds perform what he did? From the force and bias of his genius. Why did he not do more? Because his natural bias did not urge him farther. As it is the property of genius to find its true level, so it cannot rise above it. He seized upon and naturalized the beauties of Rembrandt and Rubens, because they were connate to his own turn of mind. He did not at first instinctively admire, nor did he ever, with all his professions, make any approach to the high qualities of Raphael or Michael Angelo, because there was an obvious incompatibility between them. Sir Joshua did not, after all, found a school of his own in general art, because he had not strength of mind for it. But he introduced a better taste for art in this country, because he had great taste himself, and sufficient genius to transplant many of the excellences of others.
Mr. Farington takes the trouble to vindicate Sir Joshua’s title to be the author of his own Discourses—though this is a subject on which we have never entertained a doubt; and conceive indeed that a doubt never could have arisen, but from estimating the talents required for painting too low in the scale of intellect, as something mechanical and fortuitous; and from making literature something exclusive and paramount to all other pursuits. Johnson and Burke were equally unlikely to have had a principal or considerable hand in the Discourses. They have none of the pomp, the vigour, ormannerismof the one, nor the boldness, originality, or extravagance of the other. They have all the internal evidence of being Sir Joshua’s. They are subdued, mild, unaffected, thoughtful,—containing sensible observations on which he laid too little stress, and vague theories which he was not able to master. There is the same character of mind in what he wrote, as of eye in what he painted. His style is gentle, flowing, and bland: there is an inefficient outline, with a mellow, felicitous, and delightful filling-up. In both, the taste predominates over the genius: the manner over the matter! The real groundwork of Sir Joshua’s Discourses is to be found in Richardson’s Essays.
We proceed to Mr. F.’s account of the state of art in this country, a little more than half a century ago, which is no less accurate than it is deplorable. It may lead us to form a better estimate of the merits of Sir Joshua in rescuing it from this lowest point of degradation, andperhaps assist our conjectures as to its future progress and its present state.
‘It was the lot of Sir Joshua Reynolds to be destined to pursue the art of painting at a period when the extraordinary effort he made came with all the force and effect of novelty. He appeared at a time when the art was at its lowest ebb. What might be called an English school had never been formed. All that Englishmen had done was to copy, and endeavour to imitate, the works of eminent men, who were drawn to England from other countries by encouragement, which there was no inducement to bestow upon the inferior efforts of the natives of this island. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Frederigo Zucchero, an Italian, was much employed in England, as had been Hans Holbein, a native of Basle, in a former reign. Charles the First gave great employment to Rubens and Vandyke. They were succeeded by Sir Peter Lely, a native of Soest in Westphalia; and Sir Godfrey Kneller came from Lubec to be, for a while, Lely’s competitor: and after his death, he may be said to have had the whole command of the art in England. He was succeeded by Richardson, the first English painter that stood at the head of portrait painting in this country. Richardson had merit in his profession, but not of a high order: and it was remarkable, that a man who thought so well on the subject of art, and more especially who practised so long, should not have been able to do more than is manifested in his works. He died in 1745, aged 80. Jervais, the friend of Pope, was his competitor, but very inferior to him. Sir James Thornhill, also, was contemporary with Richardson, and painted portraits; but his reputation was founded upon his historical and allegorical compositions. In St. Paul’s cathedral, in the Hospital at Greenwich, and at Hampton Court, his principal works are to be seen. As Richardson in portraits, so Thornhill in history painting was the first native of this island, who stood preeminent in the line of art he pursued at the period of his practice. He died in 1732, aged 56.
‘Horace Walpole, in his Anecdotes of Painting, observes, that “at the accession of George the First, the arts were sunk to the lowest state in Britain.” This was not strictly true. Mr. Walpole, who published at a later time, should have dated the period of their utmost degradation to have been in the middle of the last century, when the names of Hudson and Hayman were predominant. It is true, Hogarth was then well known to the public; but he was less so as a painter than an engraver,though many of his pictures representing subjects of humour and character are excellent; and Hayman, as a history painter, could not be compared with Sir James Thornhill.
‘Thomas Hudson was a native of Devonshire. His name will be preserved from his having been the artist to whom Sir Joshua Reynolds was committed for instruction. Hudson was the scholar of Richardson, and married his daughter; and after the death of his father-in-law, succeeded to the chief employment in portrait painting. He was in all respects much below his master in ability; but being esteemed the best artist of his time, commissions flowed in upon him; and hisbusiness, as it might truly be termed, was carried on like that of a manufactory. To his ordinary heads, draperies were added by painters who chiefly confined themselves to that line of practice. No time was lost by Hudson in the study of character, or in the search of variety in the position of his figures: a few formal attitudes served as models for all his subjects; and thedisplayof arms and hands, being the more difficult parts, was managed with great economy,by all the contrivances of concealment.
‘To this scene of imbecile performance, Joshua Reynolds was sent by his friends. He arrived in London on the 14th of October 1741, and on the 18th of that month he was introduced to his future preceptor. He was then aged seventeen years and three months. The terms of the agreement were, that provided Hudson approved him, he was to remain four years: but might be discharged at pleasure. He continued in this situation two years and a half, during which time he drew many heads upon paper; and in his attempts in painting, succeeded so well in a portrait of Hudson’s cook, as to excite his master’s jealousy. In this temper of mind, Hudson availed himself of a very trifling circumstance to dismiss him. Having one evening ordered Reynolds to take a picture to Van Haaken the drapery painter; but as the weather proved wet he postponed carrying it till next morning. At breakfast, Hudson demanded why he did not take the picture the evening before? Reynolds replied, that “he delayed it on account of the weather; but that the picture was delivered that morning before Van Haaken rose from bed.” Hudson then said, “You have not obeyed my orders, and shall not stay in my house.” On this peremptory declaration, Reynolds urged that he might be allowed time to write to his father, who might otherwise think he had committed some great crime. Hudson, though reproached by his own servant for this unreasonable and violent conduct, persisted in his determination: accordingly, Reynolds went that day from Hudson’s house to an uncle who resided in the Temple, and from thence wrote to his father, who, after consulting his neighbour Lord Edgcumbe, directed him to come down to Devonshire.
‘Thus did our great artist commence his professional career. Two remarks may be made upon this event. First by quitting Hudson at this early period, he avoided the danger of having his mind and his hand habituated to a mean practice of the art, which, when established, is most difficult to overcome. It has often been observed in the works of artists who thus began their practice, that though they rose to marked distinction, there have been but few who could wholly divest themselves of the bad effects of a long-continued exercise of the eye and the hand in copying ordinary works. In Hudson’s school, this was fully manifested. Mortimer and Wright of Derby were his pupils. They were both men of superior talents; but in Portraits they never succeeded beyond what would be called mediocre performance. In this line their productions were tasteless and laboured: fortunately, however, they made choice of subjects more congenial with their minds. Mortimer, charmed with the wild spirit of Salvator Rosa, made the exploits of lawless banditti the chief subjects of his pencil; while Wright devoted himself to the study of objects viewed by artificial light, and to the beautiful effects of the moon upon landscape scenery: yet, even in these, though deserving of great praise, the effects of their early practice were but too apparent; their pictures being uniformly executed with what artists call a heavy hand.’ p. 19.
‘This is a humiliating retrospect for the lovers of art, and of their country. In speculating upon its causes, we are half afraid to hint at the probable effects of Climate,—so much is it now the fashion to decry what was once so much overrated. Our theoretical opinions are directed far more frequently by a spirit of petulant contradiction than of fair inquiry. We detect errors in received systems, and then run into the contrary extreme, to show how wise we are. Thus one folly is driven out by another; and the history of philosophy is little more than an alternation of blind prejudices and shallow paradoxes. Thus climate was everything in the days of Montesquieu, and in our day it is nothing. Yet it was but one of many cooperating causes at first—and it continues to be one still. In all that relates to the senses, physical causes may be allowed to operate very materially, without much violence to experience or probability. ‘Are theEnglisha Musical people?’ is a question that has been debated at great length, and in all the forms. But whether theItaliansare a musical people, is a question not to be asked, any more than whether they have a taste for the fine arts in general. Nor does the subject ever admit of a question, where a faculty or genius for any particular thing exists in the most eminent degree; for then it is sure to show itself, and force its way to the light, in spite of all obstacles. Thatwhich no one ever denied to any people, we may be sure they actually possess: that which is as often denied as allowed them, we may be sure they do not possess in a very eminent degree. That, to which we make the angriest claim, and dispute the most about, whatever else may be, is not ourforte. The French are allowed by all the world to be a dancing, talking, cooking people. If the English were to set up the same pretensions, it would be ridiculous. But then, they say, they have other excellences; and having these, they would have the former too. They think it hard to be set down as a dull, plodding people: but is it not equally hard upon others to be called vain and light? They tell us, they are the wisest, the freest, and most moral people on the face of the earth, without the frivolous accomplishments of their neighbours; but they insist upon having these too, to be upon a par in every thing with the rest of the world. We have our bards and sages (‘better none’), our prose writers, our mathematicians, our inventors in useful and mechanic arts, our legislators, our patriots, our statesmen, and our fighting-men, in the field and in the ring:—In these we challenge, and justly, all the world. We are not behind-hand with any people in all that depends on hard thinking and deep and firm feeling, on long heads and stout hearts:—But why must we excel also in the reverse of these,—in what depends on lively perceptions, on quick sensibility, and on a voluptuous effeminacy of temperament and character? An Englishman does not ordinarily pretend to combine his own gravity, plainness and reserve, with the levity, loquacity, grimace, and artificial politeness (as it is called) of a Frenchman. Why then will he insist upon engrafting the fine upon the domestic arts, as an indispensable consummation of the national character? We may indeed cultivate them as an experiment in natural history, and produce specimens of them, and exhibit them as rarities in their kind, as we do hot-house plants and shrubs; but they are not of native growth or origin. They do not spring up in the open air, but shrink from the averted eye of Heaven, like a Laplander into his hut. They do not sit as graceful ornaments, but as excrescences on the English character: they are ‘like flowers in our caps, dying or ere they sicken:’—they are exotics and aliens to the soil. We do not import foreigners to dig our canals, or construct our machines, or solve difficult problems in political economy, or write Scotch novels for us—but we import our dancing-masters, our milliners, our Opera-singers, our valets, and our travelling cooks,—as till lately we did our painters and sculptors.
The English (we take it) are a nation with certain decided features and predominating traits of character; and if they haveany characteristics at all, this is one of them, that their feelings are internal rather than external, reflex rather than organic,—and that they are more inclined to contend with pain than to indulge in pleasure. ‘The stern genius of the North,’ says Schlegel, ‘throws men back upon themselves.’—The progress of the Fine Arts has hitherto been slow, and wavering and unpromising in this country, ‘like the forced pace of a shuffling nag,’ not like the flight of Pegasus; and their encouragement has been cold and backward in proportion. They have been wooed and won—as far as they have been won, which is no further than to a mere promise of marriage—‘with coy, reluctant, amorous delay.’ They have not rushed into our embraces, nor been mingled in our daily pastimes and pursuits. It is two hundred and fifty years since this island was civilized to all other intellectual purposes: but, till within half a century, it was a desert and a waste in art. Were there noterræ filiiin those days; no brood of giants to spring out of the ground, and launch the mighty fragments of genius from their hands; to beautify and enrich the public mind; to hang up the lights of the eye and of the soul in pictured halls, in airy porticoes, and solemn temples; to illumine the land, and weave a garland for their own heads, like ‘the crown which Ariadne wore upon her bridal day,’ and which still shines brighter in heaven? There were: but ‘their affections did not that way tend.’ They were of the tribe of Isaachar, and not of Judah. There were two sisters, Poetry and Painting: one was taken, and the other was left.
Were our ancestors insensible to the charms of nature, to the music of thought, to deeds of virtue or heroic enterprise? No. But they saw them in their mind’s eye: they felt them at their heart’s core, and there only. They did not translate their perceptions into the language of sense: they did not embody them in visible images, but in breathing words. They were more taken up with what an object suggested to combine with the infinite stores of fancy or trains of feeling, than with the single object itself; more intent upon the moral inference, the tendency and the result, than the appearances of things, however imposing or expressive, at any given moment of time. If their first impressions were less vivid and complete, their after-reflections were combined in a greater variety of striking resemblances, and thus drew a dazzling veil over their merely sensitive impressions, which deadened and neutralized them still more. Will it be denied that there is a wide difference, as to the actual result, between the mind of a Poet and a Painter? Why then should not this difference be inherent and original, as it undoubtedly is in individuals, and, to all appearance, in nations? Or why should we be uneasy becausethe same country does not teem with all varieties and with each extreme of excellence and genius?[11]
In this importunate theory of ours, we misconstrue nature, and tax Providence amiss. In that short, but delightful season of the year, and in that part of the country where we now write, there are wild woods and banks covered with primroses and hyacinths for miles together, so that you cannot put your foot between, and with a gaudy show ‘empurpling all the ground,’ and branches loaded with nightingales whose leaves tremble with their liquid notes: Yet the air does not resound, as in happier climes, with shepherd’s pipe or roundelay, nor are the village-maids adorned with wreaths of vernal flowers, ready to weave the braided dance, or ‘returning with a choral song, when evening has gone down.’ What is the reason? ‘We also arenotArcadians!’ We have not the same animal vivacity, the same tendency to external delight and show, the same ear for melting sounds, the same pride of the eye, or voluptuousness of the heart. The senses and the mind are differently constituted; and the outward influences of things, climate, mode of life, national customs and character, have all a share in producing the general effect. We should say that the eye in warmer climates drinks in greater pleasure from external sights, is more open and porous to them, as the ear is to sounds; that the sense of immediate delight is fixed deeper in the beauty of the object; that the greater life and animation of character gives a greater spirit and intensity of expression to the face, making finer subjects for history and portrait; and that the circumstances in which a people are placed in a genial atmosphere, are more favourable to the study of nature and of the human form. Claude could only have painted his landscapes in the open air; and the Greek statues were little more than copies from living, every-day forms.
Such a natural aptitude and relish for the impressions of sense gives not only more facility, but leads to greater patience, refinement, and perfection in the execution of works of art. What our own artists do is often up-hill work, against the grain:—not persisted in and brought to a conclusion for the love of the thing; but, after the first dash, after the subject is got in, and the gross general effectproduced, they grudge all the rest of their labour as a waste of time and pains. Their object is not to look at nature, but to have their pictureexhibitedandsold. The want of intimate sympathy with, and entire repose on nature, not only leaves their productions hard, violent, and crude, but frequently renders them impatient, wavering, and dissatisfied with their own walk of art, and never easy till they get into a different or higher one, where they think they can earn more money or fame with less trouble. By beginning over again, by having the same preliminary ground to go over, with new subjects or bungling experiments, they seldom arrive at that nice, nervous point that trembles on perfection. This last stage, in which art is as it were identified with nature, an English painter shrinks from with strange repugnance and peculiar abhorrence. The French style is the reverse of ours: it is all dry finishing without effect. We see their faults, and, as we conceive, their general incapacity for art: but we cannot be persuaded to see our own.
The want of encouragement, which is sometimes set up as an all-sufficient plea, will hardly account for this slow and irregular progress of English art. There was no premium offered for the production of dramatic excellence in the age of Elizabeth: there was no society for the encouragement of works of wit and humour in the reign of Charles II.: no committee of taste ever voted Congreve, or Steele, or Swift, a silver vase, or a gold medal, for their comic vein: Hogarth was not fostered in the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy. In plain truth, that is not the way in which that sort of harvest is produced. The seeds must be sown in the mind: there is a fulness of the blood, a plethoric habit of thought, that breaks out with the first opportunity on the surface of society. Poetry has sprung up indigenously, spontaneously, at all times of our history, and under all circumstances, with or without encouragement: it is therefore a rich, natural product of the mind of the country, unforced, unpampered, unsophisticated. It is obviously and entirely genuine, ‘the unbought grace of life.’ If it be asked, why Painting has all this time kept back, has not dared to show its face, or retired ashamed of its poverty and deformity, the answer is plain—because it did not shoot out with equal vigour and luxuriance from the soil of English genius—because it was not the native language and idiom of the country. Why then are we bound to suppose that it will shoot upnowto an unequalled height—why are we confidently told and required to predict to others that it is about to produce wonders, when we see no such thing; when these very persons tell us that there has been hitherto no such thing, but that it must and shall be revealed in their time and persons? And though they complain that that public patronage which theyinvoke, and which they pretend is alone wanting to produce the high and palmy state of art to which they would have us look forward, is entirely and scandalously withheld from it, and likely to be so!
We turn from this subject to another not less melancholy or singular,—from the imperfect and abortive attempts at art in this country formerly, to its present state of degeneracy and decay in Italy. Speaking of Sir Joshua’s arrival at Rome in the year 1749, Mr. Farington indulges in the following remarks.
‘On his arrival at Rome, he found Pompeo Battoni, a native of Lucca, possessing the highest reputation. His name was, indeed, known in every part of Europe, and was every where spoken of as almost another Raphael; but in that great school of art, such was the admiration he excited, or rather such was the degradation of taste, that the students in painting had no higher ambition than to be his imitators.
‘Battoni had some talent, but his works are dry, cold, and insipid. That such performances should have been so extolled in the very seat and centre of the fine arts, seems wonderful. But in this manner has public taste been operated upon; and from the period when art was carried to the highest point of excellence known in modern times, it has thus gradually declined. A succession of artists followed each other, who, being esteemed the most eminent in their own time, were praised extravagantly by an ignorant public; and in the several schools they established, their own productions were the only objects of study.
‘So widely spread was the fame of Battoni, that, before Reynolds left England, his patron, Lord Edgcumbe, strongly urged the expediency of placing himself under the tuition of so great a man. This recommendation, however, on seeing the works of that master, he did not choose to follow:—which showed that he was then above the level of those whose professional views all concentrated in the productions of the popular favourite. Indeed nothing could be more opposite to the spirited execution, the high relish of colour, and powerful effect, which the works of Reynolds at that time possessed, than the tame and inanimate pictures of Pompeo Battoni. Taking a wiser course, therefore, he formed his own plan, and studied chiefly in the Vatican, from the works of Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Andrea del Sarto, with great diligence; such indeed was his application, that to a severe cold, which he caught in those apartments, he owed the deafness which continued during the remainder of his life.’ p. 31.
This account may serve to show that Italy is no longer Italy: why it is so, is a question of greater difficulty. The soil, the climate,the religion, the people are the same; and the men and women in the streets of Rome still look as if they had walked out of Raphael’s pictures; but there is no Raphael to paint them, nor does any Leo arise to encourage them. This seems to prove that the perfection of art is the destruction of art: that the models of this kind, by their accumulation, block up the path of genius; and that all attempts at distinction lead, after a certain period, to a mere lifeless copy of what has been done before, or a vapid, distorted, and extravagant caricature of it. This is but a poor prospect for those who set out late in art, and who have all the excellence of their predecessors, and all the fastidious refinements of their own taste, the temptations of indolence, and the despair of vanity, to distract and encumber their efforts. The artists who revel in the luxuries of genius thus prepared by their predecessors, clog their wings with the honeyed sweets, and get drunk with the intoxicating nectar. They become servitors and lacqueys to Art, not devoted servants of Nature;—the fluttering, foppish, lazy retinue of some great name. The contemplation of unattainable excellence casts a film over their eyes, and unnerves their hands. They look on, and do nothing. In Italy, it costs them a month to paint a hand, a year an eye: the feeble pencil drops from their grasp, while they wonder to see an Englishman make a hasty copy of the Transfiguration, turn over a portfolio of Piranesi’s drawings for their next historical design, and read Winckelman onvirtù! We do much the same here, in all our collections and exhibitions of modern or ancient paintings, and of the Elgin marbles, to boot. A picture-gallery serves very well for a place to lounge in, and talk about; but it does not make the student go home and set heartily to work:—he would rather come again and lounge, and talk, the next day, and the day after that. He cannot doallthat he sees there; and less will not satisfy his expansive and refined ambition. He would be all the painters that ever were—or none. His indolence combines with his vanity, like alternate doses of provocatives and sleeping-draughts. He copies, however, a favourite picture (though he thinks copying bad in general),—or makes a chalk-drawing of it—or gets some one else to do it for him.—We might go on: but we have written what many people will call a lampoon already!
There is another view of the subject more favourable and encouraging to ourselves, and yet not immeasurably so, when all circumstances are considered. All that was possible had been formerly done for art in Italy, so that nothing more was left to be done. That is not the case with us yet. Perfection is not the insurmountable obstacle tooursuccess: we have enough to do, if weknew how. That is some inducement to proceed. We can hardly be retrograde in our course. But there is a difficulty in the way,—no less than our Establishment in Church and State. Rome was the capital of the Christian and of the civilized world. Her mitre swayed the sceptres of the earth; and the Servant of Servants set his foot on the neck of kings, and deposed sovereigns with the signet of the Fisherman. She was the eye of the world, and her word was a law. She set herself up, and said, ‘All eyes shall see me, and all knees shall bow to me.’ She ruled in the hearts of the people by dazzling their senses, and making them drunk with hopes and fears. She held in her hands the keys of the other world to open or shut; and she displayed all the pomp, the trappings, and the pride of this. Homage was paid to the persons of her ministers; her worship was adorned and made alluring by every appeal to the passions and imaginations of its followers. Art was rendered tributary to the support of this grand engine of power; and Painting was employed, as soon as its fascination was felt, to aid the devotion, and rivet the faith of the Catholic believer. Thus religion was made subservient to interest, and art was called in to aid in the service of this ambitious religion. The patron-saint of every church stood at the head of his altar: the meekness of love, the innocence of childhood, ‘amazing brightness, purity, and truth,’ breathed from innumerable representations of the Virgin and Child; and the Vatican was covered with the acts and processions of Popes and Cardinals, of Christ and the Apostles. The churches were filled with these objects of art and of devotion: the very walls spoke. ‘A present deity they shout around; a present deity the walls and vaulted roofs rebound.’ This unavoidably put in requisition all the strength of genius, and all the resources of enthusiastic feeling in the country. The spectator sympathized with the artist’s inspiration. No elevation of thought, no refinement of expression, could outgo the expectation of the thronging votaries. The fancy of the painter was but a spark kindled from the glow of public sentiment. This was a sort of patronage worth having. The zeal and enthusiasm and industry of native genius was stimulated to works worthy of such encouragement, and in unison with its own feelings. But by degrees the tide ebbed: the current was dried up or became stagnant. The churches were all supplied with altar-pieces: the niches were full, not only with scriptural subjects, but with the stories of every saint enrolled in the calendar, or registered in legendary lore. No more pictures were wanted,—and then it was found that there were no more painters to do them! The art languished, and gradually disappeared. They could not take down the Madona of Foligno, or new-stucco the ceiling atParma, that other artists might undo what Raphael and Correggio had done. Some of them, to be sure, did follow this desperate course; and spent their time, as in the case of Leonardo’s Last Supper at Milan, in painting over, that is, in defacing the works of their predecessors. Afterwards, they applied themselves to landscape and classical subjects, with great success for a time, as we see in Claude and N. Poussin; but the originalstateimpulse was gone.
What confirms the foregoing account, is, that at Venice, and other places out of the more immediate superintendence of the Papal See, though there also sacred subjects were in great request, yet the art being patronized by rich merchants and nobles, took a more decided turn to portraits;—magnificent indeed, and hitherto unrivalled, for the beauty of the costume, the character of the faces, and the marked pretensions of the persons who sat for them,—but still wildly remote from that public and national interest that it assumed in the Roman school. We see, in like manner, that painting in Holland and Flanders took yet a different direction; was mostly scenic and ornamental, or confined to local and personal subjects. Rubens’s pictures, for example, differ from Raphael’s by a total want of religious enthusiasm and studied refinement of expression, even where the subjects are the same; and Rembrandt’s portraits differ from Titian’s in the grossness and want of animation and dignity of his characters. There was an inherent difference in the look of a Doge of Venice or one of the Medici family, and that of a Dutch burgomaster. The climate had affected the picture, through the character of the sitter, as it affected the genius of the artist (if not otherwise) through the class of subjects he was constantly called upon to paint. What turn painting has lately taken, or is likely to take with us, now remains to be seen.
With the Memoirs of Sir Joshua Mr. Farington very properly connects the history of the institution of the Royal Academy from which he dates the hopes and origin of all sound art in this country. There is here at first sight an inversion of the usual order of things. The institution of Academies in most countries has been coeval with the decline of art: in ours, it seems, it is the harbinger, and main prop of its success. Mr. F. thus traces the outline of this part of his subject with the enthusiasm of an artist, and the fidelity of an historian.
‘At this period (1760) a plan was formed by the artists of the metropolis to draw the attention of their fellow-citizens to their ingenious labours; with a view both to an increase of patronage, and the cultivation of taste. Hitherto works of that kind produced in the country were seen only by a few; the people in general knew nothingof what was passing in the arts. Private collections were then inaccessible, and there were no public ones; nor any casual display of the productions of genius, except what the ordinary sales by auction occasionally offered. Nothing, therefore, could exceed the ignorance of a people who were in themselves learned, ingenious, and highly cultivated in all things, excepting the arts of design.
‘In consequence of this privation, it was conceived that a Public Exhibition of the works of the most eminent Artists could not fail to make a powerful impression; and if occasionally repeated, might ultimately produce the most satisfactory effects. The scheme was no sooner proposed than adopted; and being carried into immediate execution, the result exceeded the most sanguine expectations of the projectors. All ranks of people crowded to see the delightful novelty; it was the universal topic of conversation; and a passion for the arts was excited by that first manifestation of native talent, which, cherished by the continued operation of the same cause, has ever since been increasing in strength, and extending its effects through every part of the Empire.
‘The history of our Exhibitions affords itself the strongest evidence of their impressive effect upon public taste. At their commencement, though men of enlightened minds could distinguish and appreciate what was excellent, the admiration of themanywas confined to subjects either gross or puerile, and commonly to the meanest efforts of intellect; whereas, at this time, the whole train of subjects most popular in the earlier exhibitions have disappeared. The loaf and cheese, that could provoke hunger, the cat and canary-bird, and the dead mackarel on a deal board, have long ceased to produce astonishment and delight; while truth of imitation now finds innumerable admirers, though combined with the high qualities of beauty, grandeur, and taste.
‘To our Public Exhibitions, and to arrangements that followed in consequence of their introduction, this change must be chiefly attributed.The present generation appears to be composed of a new, and at least, with respect to the arts, a superior order of beings.Generally speaking, their thoughts, their feelings, and language on these subjects differ entirely from what they were sixty years ago. No just opinions were at that time entertained on the merits of ingenious productions of this kind. The state of the public mind, incapable of discriminating excellence from inferiority, proved incontrovertibly that a right sense of art in the spectator can only be acquired by long and frequent observation; and that, without proper opportunities to improve the mind and the eye, a nation would continue insensible of the true value of the fine arts.
‘The first or probationary Exhibition, which opened April 21st, 1760, was at a large room in the Strand, belonging to the society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, which had then been instituted five or six years. It is natural to conclude, that the first artist in the country was not indifferent to the success of a plan which promised to be so extensively useful. Accordingly, four of his pictures were for the first time here placed before the public, with whom, by the channel now opened, he continued in constant intercourse as long as he lived.
‘Encouraged by the successful issue of the first experiment, theartistical bodydetermined that it should be repeated the following year. Owing, however, to some inconveniences experienced at their former place of exhibition, and also to a desire to be perfectly independent in their proceedings, they engaged, for their next public display, a spacious room near the Spring Gardens’ entrance into the Park; at which place the second Exhibition opened, May 9th, 1761. Here Reynolds sent his fine picture of Lord Ligonier on horseback, a portrait of the Rev. Laurence Sterne, and three others....
‘The artists had now fully proved the efficacy of their plan; and their income exceeding their expenditure, affording a reasonable hope of a permanent establishment, they thought they might solicit a Royal Charter of Incorporation; and having applied to his Majesty for that purpose, he was pleased to accede to their request. This measure, however, which was intended to consolidate the body of artists, was of no avail: on the contrary, it was probably the cause of its dissolution; for in less than four years a separation took place, which led to the establishment of the Royal Academy, and finally to the extinction of the incorporated Society. The charter was dated January 26th, 1765; the secession took place in October, 1768; and the Royal Academy was instituted December 10th in the same year.’ p. 53.
On this statement we must be allowed to make a few remarks. First, the four greatest names in English art, Hogarth, Reynolds, Wilson[12]and West, were not formed by the Academy, but were formed before it; and the first gave it as his opinion, that it would be a death-blow to the art. He considered an Academy as a school for servile mediocrity, a hotbed for cabal and dirty competition, and a vehicle for the display of idle pretensions and empty parade.
Secondly, we agree with the writer as to the deplorable state of the art and of the public taste in general, which, at the period inquestion, was as gross as it was insipid: but we do not think that it has been improved so much since, as Mr. Farington is willing to suppose; nor that the Academy has taken more thanhalf-measuresfor improving or refining it.