Goethe on Roos's Etchings of Sheep.
In the "Conversations of Goethe with Eckerman and Soret"[261] in 1824, he handed me some etchings by Roos, the famous painter of animals; they were all of sheep, in every posture and position. The simplicity of their countenances, the ugliness and shagginess of the fleece—all was represented with the utmost fidelity, as if it were nature itself.
"I always feel uneasy," said Goethe, "when I look at these beasts. Their state—so limited, dull, gaping, and dreaming—excites in me such sympathy, that I fear I shall become a sheep, and almost think the artist must have been one. At all events, it is most wonderful how Roos has been able to think and feel himself into the very soul of these creatures, so as to make the internal character peer with such force through the outward covering. Here you see what a great talent can do when it keeps steady to subjects which are congenial with its nature."
"Has not, then," said I, "this artist also painted dogs, cats, and beasts of prey with similar truth; nay, with this great gift of assuming a mental state foreign to himself, has he not been able to delineate human character with equal fidelity?"
"No," said Goethe; "all that lay out of his sphere, but the gentle, grass-eating animals—sheep, goats, cows, and the like—he was never weary of repeating; this was the peculiar province of his talent, which he did not quit during the whole course of his life. And in this he did well. A sympathy with these animals was born with him, a knowledge of their psychological condition was given him, and thus he had so fine an eye for their bodily structure. Other creatures were perhaps not so transparent to him, and therefore he felt neither calling nor impulse to paint them."[262]