Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners Part 8

As he advances, however, he grows bolder, and altogether discards his theory of judging of the artist by the cla.s.s to which he belongs--'But we have the sanction of all mankind,' he says, 'in preferring genius in a lower rank of art to feebleness and insipidity in the highest.' This is in speaking of Gainsborough. The whole pa.s.sage is excellent, and, I should think, conclusive against the general and fact.i.tious style of art on which he insists so much at other times.

'On this ground, however unsafe, I will venture to prophesy, that two of the last distinguished painters of that country, I mean Pompeio Battoni and Rafaelle Mengs, however great their names may at present sound in our ears,(3) will very soon fall into the rank of Imperiale, Sebastian Concha, Placido Constanza, Musaccio, and the rest of their immediate predecessors; whose names, though equally renowned in their lifetime, are now fallen into what is little short of total oblivion. I do not say that those painters were not superior to the artist I allude to,(4) and whose loss we lament, in a certain routine of practice, which, to the eyes of common observers, has the air of a learned composition, and bears a sort of superficial resemblance to the manner of the great men who went before them. I know this perfectly well; but I know likewise, that a man looking for real and lasting reputation must unlearn much of the common-place method so observable in the works of the artists whom I have named. For my own part, I confess, I take more interest in and am more captivated with the powerful impression of nature, which Gainsborough exhibited in his portraits and in his landscapes, and the interesting simplicity and elegance of his little ordinary beggar-children, than with any of the works of that school, since the time of Andrea Sacchi, or perhaps we may say Carlo Maratti: two painters who may truly be said to be ULTIMI ROMANORUM.

'I am well aware how much I lay myself open to the censure and ridicule of the academical professors of other nations in preferring the humble attempts of Gainsborough to the works of those regular graduates in the great historical style. _But we have the sanction of all mankind in preferring genius in a lower rank of art to feebleness and insipidity in the highest.'_

Yet this excellent artist and critic had said but a few pages before when working upon his theory--'For this reason I shall beg leave to lay before you a few thoughts on the subject; to throw out some hints that may lead your minds to an opinion (which I take to be the true one) that Painting is not only not to be considered as an imitation operating by deception, but that it is, and ought to be, in many points of view and strictly speaking, no imitation at all of external nature. Perhaps it ought to be as far removed from the vulgar idea of imitation as the refined, civilised state in which we live is removed from a gross state of nature; and those who have not cultivated their imaginations, which the majority of mankind certainly have not, may be said, in regard to arts, to continue in this state of nature. Such men will always prefer imitation' (the imitation of nature) 'to that excellence which is addressed to another faculty that they do not possess; but these are not the persons to whom a painter is to look, any more than a judge of morals and manners ought to refer controverted points upon those subjects to the opinions of people taken from the banks of the Ohio or from New Holland.'

In opposition to the sentiment here expressed that 'Painting is and ought to be, in many points of view and strictly speaking, no imitation at all of external nature,' it is emphatically said in another place: 'Nature is and must be the fountain which alone is inexhaustible, and from which all excellences must originally flow.'

I cannot undertake to reconcile so many contradictions, nor do I think it an easy task for the student to derive any simple or intelligible clue from these conflicting authorities and broken hints in the prosecution of his art. Sir Joshua appears to have imbibed from others (Burke or Johnson) a spurious metaphysical notion that art was to be preferred to nature, and learning to genius, with which his own good sense and practical observation were continually at war, but from which he only emanc.i.p.ates himself for a moment to relapse into the same error again shortly after.(5) The conclusion of the Twelfth Discourse is, I think, however, a triumphant and unanswerable denunciation of his own favourite paradox on the objects and study of art.

'Those artists' (he says with a strain of eloquent truth) 'who have quitted the service of nature (whose service, when well understood, is perfect freedom) and have put themselves under the direction of I know not what capricious fantastical mistress, who fascinates and overpowers their whole mind, and from whose dominion there are no hopes of their being ever reclaimed (since they appear perfectly satisfied, and not at all conscious of their forlorn situation), like the transformed followers of Comus,

Not once perceive their foul disfigurement; But boast themselves more comely than before.

'Methinks such men who have found out so short a path have no reason to complain of the shortness of life and the extent of art; since life is so much longer than is wanted for their improvement, or is indeed necessary for the accomplishment of their idea of perfection.(6) On the contrary, he who recurs to nature, at every recurrence renews his strength. The rules of art he is never likely to forget; they are few and simple: but Nature is refined, subtle, and infinitely various, beyond the power and retention of memory; it is necessary therefore to have continual recourse to her. In this intercourse there is no end of his improvement: the longer he lives, the nearer he approaches to the true and perfect idea of Art.'

NOTES to ESSAY XIII

(1) How careful is Sir Joshua, even in a parenthesis, to insinuate the obligations of this great genius to others, as if he would have been nothing without them.

(2) If Sir Joshua had an offer to exchange a Luca Giordano in his collection for a Claude Lorraine, he would not have hesitated long about the preference.

(3) Written in 1788.

(4) Gainsborough.

(5) Sir Joshua himself wanted academic skill and patience In the details of his profession. From these defects he seems to have been alternately repelled by each theory and style of art, the simply natural and elaborately scientific, as it came before him; and in his impatience of each, to have been betrayed into a tissue of inconsistencies somewhat difficult to unravel.

(6) He had been before speaking of Boucher, Director of the French Academy, who told him that 'when he was young, studying his art, he found it necessary to use models, but that he had left them off for many years.'

ESSAY XIV. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

The first inquiry which runs through Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses is whether the student ought to look at nature with his own eyes or with the eyes of others, and on the whole, he apparently inclines to the latter. The second question is what is to be understood by nature; whether it is a general and abstract idea, or an aggregate of particulars; and he strenuously maintains the former of these positions.

Yet it is not easy always to determine how far or with what precise limitations he does so.

The first germ of his speculations on this subject is to be found in two papers in the _Idler._ In the last paragraph of the second of these, he says:

'If it has been proved that the painter, by attending to the invariable and general ideas of nature, produces beauty, he must, by regarding minute particularities and accidental discrimination, deviate from the universal rule, and pollute his canvas with deformity.'

In answer to this, I would say that deformity is not the being varied in the particulars, in which all things differ (for on this principle all nature, which is made up of individuals, would be a heap of deformity), but in violating general rules, in which they all or almost all agree.

Thus there are no two noses in the world exactly alike, or without a great variety of subordinate parts, which may still be handsome, but a face without any nose at all, or a nose (like that of a mask) without any particularity in the details, would be a great deformity in art or nature. Sir Joshua seems to have been led into his notions on this subject either by an ambiguity of terms, or by taking only one view of nature. He supposes grandeur, or the general effect of the whole, to consist in leaving out the particular details, because these details are sometimes found without any grandeur of effect, and he therefore conceives the two things to be irreconcilable and the alternatives of each other. This is very imperfect reasoning. If the mere leaving out the detail const.i.tuted grandeur, any one could do this: the greatest dauber would at that rate be the greatest artist. A house or sign painter might instantly enter the lists with Michael Angelo, and might look down on the little, dry, hard manner of Raphael. But grandeur depends on a distinct principle of its own, not on a negation of the parts; and as it does not arise from their omission, so neither is it incompatible with their insertion or the highest finis.h.i.+ng. In fact, an artist may give the minute particulars of any object one by one and with the utmost care, and totally neglect the proportions, arrangement, and general ma.s.ses, on which the effect of the whole more immediately depends; or he may give the latter, viz. the proportions and arrangement of the larger parts and the general ma.s.ses of light and shade, and leave all the minuter parts of which those parts are composed a mere blotch, one general smear, like the first crude and hasty getting in of the groundwork of a picture: he may do either of these, or he may combine both, that is, finish the parts, but put them in their right places, and keep them in due subordination to the general effect and ma.s.sing of the whole. If the exclusion of the parts were necessary to the grandeur of the whole composition, if the more entire this exclusion, if the more like a _tabula rasa,_ a vague, undefined, shadowy and abstracted representation the picture was, the greater the grandeur, there could be no danger of pus.h.i.+ng this principle too far, and going the full length of Sir Joshua's theory without any restrictions or mental reservations.

But neither of these suppositions is true. The greatest grandeur may coexist with the most perfect, nay with a microscopic accuracy of detail, as we see it does often in nature: the greatest looseness and slovenliness of execution may be displayed without any grandeur at all either in the outline or distribution of the ma.s.ses of colour. To explain more particularly what I mean. I have seen and copied portraits by t.i.tian, in which the eyebrows were marked with a number of small strokes, like hairlines (indeed, the hairs of which they were composed were in a great measure given)--but did this destroy the grandeur of expression, the truth of outline, arising from the arrangement of these hair-lines in a given form? The grandeur, the character, the expression remained, for the general form or arched and expanded outline remained, just as much as if it had been daubed in with a blacking-brush: the introduction of the internal parts and texture only added delicacy and truth to the general and striking effect of the whole. Surely a number of small dots or lines may be arranged into the form of a square or a circle indiscriminately; the square or circle, that is, the larger figure, remains the same, whether the line of which it consists is broken or continuous; as we may see in prints where the outlines, features, and ma.s.ses remain the same in all the varieties of mezzotinto, dotted and lined engraving. If t.i.tian in marking the appearance of the hairs had deranged the general shape and contour of the eyebrows, he would have destroyed the look of nature; but as he did not, but kept both in view, he proportionably improved his copy of it. So, in what regards the ma.s.ses of light and shade, the variety, the delicate transparency and broken transitions of the tints is not inconsistent with the greatest breadth or boldest contrasts. If the light, for instance, is thrown strongly on one side of a face, and the other is cast into deep shade, let the individual and various parts of the surface be finished with the most scrupulous exactness both in the drawing and in the colours, provided nature is not exceeded, this will not nor cannot destroy the force and harmony of the composition. One side of the face will still have that great and leading distinction of being seen in shadow, and the other of being seen in the light, let the subordinate differences be as many and as precise as they will. Suppose a panther is painted in the sun: will it be necessary to leave out the spots to produce breadth and the great style, or will not this be done more effectually by painting the spots of one side of his s.h.a.ggy coat as they are seen in the light, and those of the other as they really appear in natural shadow? The two ma.s.ses are thus preserved completely, and no offence is done to truth and nature. Otherwise we resolve the distribution of light and shade into _local colouring._ The ma.s.ses, the grandeur exist equally in external nature with the local differences of different colours. Yet Sir Joshua seems to argue that the grandeur, the effect of the whole object, is confined to the general idea in the mind, and that all the littleness and individuality is in nature. This is an essentially false view of the subject. This grandeur, this general effect, is indeed always combined with the details, or what our theoretical reasoner would designate as _littleness_ in nature: and so it ought to be in art, as far as art can follow nature with prudence and profit. What is the fault of Denner's style?--It is, that he does _not_ give this combination of properties: that he gives only one view of nature; that he abstracts the details, the finis.h.i.+ng, the curiosities of natural appearances from the general result, truth, and character of the whole, and in finis.h.i.+ng every part with elaborate care, totally loses sight of the more important and striking appearance of the object as it presents itself to us in nature. He gives every part of a face; but the shape, the expression, the light and shade of the whole is wrong, and as far as can be from what is natural. He gives an infinite variety of tints of the human face, nor are they subjected to any principle of light and shade. He is different from Rembrandt or t.i.tian. The English schools, formed on Sir Joshua's theory, give neither the finis.h.i.+ng of the parts nor the effect of the whole, but an inexplicable dumb ma.s.s without distinction or meaning. They do not do as Denner did, and think that not to do as he did is to do as t.i.tian and Rembrandt did; I do not know whether they would take it as a compliment to be supposed to imitate nature. Some few artists, it must be said, have 'of late reformed this indifferently among us! Oh! let them reform it altogether!' I have no doubt they would if they could; but I have some doubts whether they can or not.--Before I proceed to consider the question of beauty and grandeur as it relates to the selection of form, I will quote a few pa.s.sages from Sir Joshua with reference to what has been said on the imitation of particular objects. In the Third Discourse he observes: 'I will now add that nature herself is not to be too closely copied.... 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.'

From this pa.s.sage it would surely seem that there was nothing in nature but minute neatness and superficial effect: nothing great in _her_ style, for an imitator of it can produce nothing great; nothing 'to enlarge the conceptions or warm the heart of the spectator.'

What word hath pa.s.sed thy lips, Adam severe!

All that is truly grand or excellent is a figment of the imagination, a vapid creation out of nothing, a pure effect of overlooking and scorning the minute neatness of natural objects. This will not do. Again, Sir Joshua lays it down without any qualification that--

'The whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists in being able to get above all singular forms, local customs, peculiarities, and _details_ of every kind.'

Yet we find him acknowledging a different opinion.

'I am very ready to allow' (he says, in speaking of history-painting) 'that _some_ circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances 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, circ.u.mstantial parts, which, according to the judgment employed in the choice, become so useful to truth or so injurious to grandeur.'

That's true; but the sweeping clause against 'all particularities and details of every kind' is clearly got rid of. The undecided state of Sir Joshua's feelings on this subject of the incompatibility between the whole and the details is strikingly manifested in two short pa.s.sages which follow each other in the s.p.a.ce of two pages. Speaking of some pictures of Paul Veronese and Rubens as distinguished by the dexterity and the unity of style displayed in them, he adds:

'It is by this, and this alone, that the mechanical power is enn.o.bled, and raised much above its natural rank. And it appears to me that with propriety it acquires this character, as an instance of that superiority with which mind predominates over matter, by contracting into one whole what nature has made multifarious.'

This would imply that the principle of unity and integrity is only in the mind, and that nature is a heap of disjointed, disconnected particulars, a chaos of points and atoms. In the very next page the following sentence occurs:

'As painting is an art, they' (the ignorant) 'think they ought to be pleased in proportion as they see that art ostentatiously displayed; they will from this supposition prefer neatness, high finis.h.i.+ng, and gaudy corlouring, to the truth, simplicity, and unity of nature.'

Before, neatness and high finis.h.i.+ng were supposed to belong exclusively to the littleness of nature, but here truth, simplicity, and unity are her characteristics. Soon after, Sir Joshua says: 'I should be sorry if what has been said should be understood to have any tendency to encourage that carelessness which leaves work in an unfinished state. I commend nothing for the want of exactness; I mean to point out that kind of exactness which is the best, and which is alone truly to be so esteemed.' This Sir Joshua has already told us consists in getting above 'all particularities and details of every kind.' Once more we find it stated that--

'It is in vain to attend to the variation of tints, if in that attention the general hue of flesh is lost; or to finish ever so minutely the parts, if the ma.s.ses are not observed, or the whole not well put together.'

Nothing can be truer; but why always suppose the two things at variance with each other?

't.i.tian's manner was then new to the world, but that unshaken truth on which it is founded has fixed it as a model to all succeeding painters; and those who will examine into the artifice will find it to consist in the power of generalising, and in the shortness and simplicity of the means employed.'

t.i.tian's real excellence consisted in the power of generalising and of _individualising_ at the same time: if it wore merely the former, it would be difficult to account for the error immediately after pointed out by Sir Joshua. He says in the very next paragraph:

'Many artists, as Vasari likewise observes, have ignorantly imagined they are imitating the manner of t.i.tian when they leave their colours rough and neglect the detail; but not possessing the principles on which he wrought, they have produced what he calls _goffe pitture_--absurd, foolish pictures.'

Many artists have also imagined they were following the directions of Sir Joshua when they did the same thing, that is, neglected the detail, and produced the same results--vapid generalities, absurd, foolish pictures.

I will only give two short pa.s.sages more, and have done with this part of the subject. I am anxious to confront Sir Joshua with his own authority:

'The advantage of this method of considering objects (as a whole) is what I wish now more particularly to enforce. At the same time I do not forget that a painter must have the power of contracting as well as dilating his sight; because he that does not at all express particulars expresses nothing; yet it is certain that a nice discrimination of minute circ.u.mstances and a punctilious delineation of them, whatever excellence it may have (and I do not mean to detract from it), never did confer on the artist the character of Genius.'

At page 53 we find the following words:

'Whether it is the human figure, an animal, or even inanimate objects, there is nothing, however unpromising in appearance, but may be raised into dignity, convey sentiment, and produce emotion, in the hands of a Painter of genius. What was said of Virgil, that he threw even the dung about the ground with an air of dignity, may be applied to t.i.tian; whatever he touched, however naturally mean, and habitually familiar, by a kind of magic he invested with grandeur and importance.'--No, not by magic, but by seeking and finding in individual nature, and combined with details of every kind, that grace and grandeur and unity of effect which Sir Joshua supposes to be a mere creation of the artist's brain!

t.i.tian's practice was, I conceive, to give general appearances with individual forms and circ.u.mstances: Sir Joshua's theory goes too often, and in its prevailing bias, to separate the two things as inconsistent with each other, and thereby to destroy or bring into question that union of striking effect with accuracy of resemblance in which the essence of sound art (as far as relates to imitation) consists.

Farther, as Sir Joshua is inclined to merge the details of individual objects in general effect, so he is resolved to reduce all beauty or grandeur in natural objects to a central form or abstract idea of a certain cla.s.s, so as to exclude all peculiarities or deviations from this ideal standard as unfit subjects for the artist's pencil, and as polluting his canvas with deformity. As the former principle went to destroy all exactness and solidity in particular things, this goes to confound all variety, distinctness, and characteristic force in the broader scale of nature. There is a principle of conformity in nature or of something in common between a number of individuals of the same cla.s.s, but there is also a principle of contrast, of discrimination and ident.i.ty, which is equally essential in the system of the universe and in the structure of our ideas both of art and nature. Sir Joshua would hardly neutralise the tints of the rainbow to produce a dingy grey, as a medium or central colour; why, then, should he neutralise all features, forms, etc., to produce an insipid monotony? He does not indeed consider his theory of beauty as applicable to colour, which he well understood, but insists upon and literally enforces it as to form and ideal conceptions, of which he knew comparatively little, and where his authority is more questionable. I will not in this place undertake to show that his theory of a middle form (as the standard of taste and beauty) is not true of the outline of the human face and figure or other organic bodies, though I think that even there it is only one principle or condition of beauty; but I do say that it has little or nothing to do with those other capital parts of painting, colour, character, expression, and grandeur of conception. Sir Joshua himself contends that 'beauty in creatures of the same species is the medium or centre of all its various forms'; and he maintains that grandeur is the same abstraction of the species in the individual. Therefore beauty and grandeur must be the same thing, which they are not; so that this definition must be faulty. Grandeur I should suppose to imply something that elevates and expands the mind, which is chiefly power or magnitude.

Beauty is that which soothes and melts it; and its source, I apprehend, is a certain harmony, softness, and gradation of form, within the limits of our customary a.s.sociations, no doubt, or of what we expect of certain species, but not independent of every other consideration. Our critic himself confesses of Michael Angelo, whom he regards as the pattern of the great or sublime style, that 'his people are a superior order of beings: there is nothing about them, nothing in the air of their actions or their att.i.tudes, or the style or cast of their limbs or features, that reminds us 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, n.o.ble, 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 n.o.ble structure is his own.(1) How does all this accord with the same writer's favourite theory that all beauty, all grandeur, and all excellence consist in an approximation to that central form or habitual idea of mediocrity, from which every deviation is so much deformity and littleness? Michael Angelo's figures are raised above our diminutive race of beings, yet they are confessedly the standard of sublimity in what regards the human form. Grandeur, then, admits of an exaggeration of our habitual impressions; and 'the strong, marked, and peculiar character which Michael Angelo has at the same time given to his works'

does not take away from it. This is fact against argument. I would take Sir Joshua's word for the goodness of a picture, and for its distinguis.h.i.+ng properties, sooner than I would for an abstract metaphysical theory. Our artist also speaks continually of high and low subjects. There can be no distinction of this kind upon his principle, that the standard of taste is the adhering to the central form of each species, and that every species is in itself equally beautiful. The painter of flowers, of sh.e.l.ls, or of anything else, is equally elevated with Raphael or Michael, if he adheres to the generic or established form of what he paints: the rest, according to this definition, is a matter of indifference. There must therefore be something besides the central or customary form to account for the difference of dignity, for the high and low style in nature or in art. Michael Angelo's figures, we are told, are more than ordinarily grand; why, by the same rule, may not Raphael's be more than ordinarily beautiful, have more than ordinary softness, symmetry, and grace?--Character and expression are still less included in the present theory. All character is a departure from the common-place form; and Sir Joshua makes no scruple to declare that expression destroys beauty. Thus he says: