THE CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ OF THE BRITISH INSTITUTION
From The Examiner, November 3, 1816. See vol. I. The Round Table, pp. 140 et seq. and notes thereto. The article here reprinted is the first of the series of three ‘Literary Notices’ dealing with the Catalogue. Instead of reprinting the second and third of these papers entirely as promised in vol. I., it has been deemed sufficient to insert here the passages omitted from the two articles as given in their Round Table form.
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Damned in a fair face. Cf. ‘damned in a fair wife.’ Othello, Act I. Sc. 1.
Madame de ——. Staël.
Lived in the rainbow. Comus, 298.
[312]. In the presence of these divine guests. An erratum in the following number of The Examiner (Nov. 10, 1816), states that these words should precede ‘the nauseous tricks,’ instead of preceding ‘like a blackguard.’
[313]. Sent to their account. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 5.
[314]. To the Jews a stumbling-block. 1 Cor. i. 23.
A quantity of barren spectators. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.
Hold the mirror up to nature. Ibid., Act III. Sc. 2.
The glass of fashion. Ibid., Act III. Sc. 1.
Numbers without number. Paradise Lost, III. 346.
[315]. Lavater. Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801), the student of physiognomy. Holcroft translated his Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschen-Kenntniss und Menschenliebe (1775–1778) into English (1793). See vol. II. The Life of Thomas Holcroft, p. 115.
Spurzheim. See vol. VII. The Plain Speaker, pp. 17 et seq., and 137 et seq.
Mr. Perry of the Chronicle. James Perry (1756–1821), proprietor and editor of The Morning Chronicle. See vol. II. The Life of Thomas Holcroft, p. 89, etc.
With most admired disorder. Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 4.
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[316]. To let I dare not. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 7.
Service sweat for duty. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 3.
[317]. This, this is the unkindest blow [most unkindest cut] of all. Julius Caesar, Act III. Sc. 2.
Own gained knowledge. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.
Turner. Joseph Mallard William Turner (1775–1851).
That’s a feeling disputation. 1 King Henry IV., Act III. Sc. 1.
[318]. To some men their graces serve them but as enemies. As You Like It, Act. II. Sc. 3.
The Second of the Catalogue Raisonné papers was published in The Examiner, November 10, 1816, and proceeds as in The Round Table to ‘the marring of Art is the making of the Academy’ (vol. I. p. 142); then add: ‘He would have the Directors keep the old Masters under, by playing off upon them the same tricks of background, situation, &c. which they play off upon one another’s pictures so successfully at the Academy Great Room. [Note.] The Academicians having out-done nature at home, wait till their pictures are hung up at the Academy to outdo one another. When they know their exact situation in the Great Room, they set to work with double diligence to paint up to their next neighbours, or to keep them under. Sometimes they leave nearly the whole unfinished, that they may have a more ad libitum opportunity of annoying their friends, and of shining at their expense.—had placed a landscape, consisting of one enormous sheet of white lead, like the clean white napkin depending from the chin to the knees of the Saturday night’s customers in a barber’s shop, under a whole length of a lady by ——, in a white chalk dress, which made his Cleopatra look like a dowdy. Our little lively knight of the brush goes me round the room, crying out, “Who has any vermilion, who has any Indian yellow?” and presently returns, and by making his whole length one red and yellow daub, like the drop-curtain at Covent-Garden, makes the poor Academician’s landscape look “pale as his shirt.”[[62]] Such is the history of modern Art. It is no wonder that “these fellows, who thus o’er-do Termagant,”[[63]] should look with horror at the sobriety of ancient Art. It is no wonder that they carry their contempt, hatred, and jealousy of one another, into the Art itself.’
After the end of the first Round Table paper (‘British Growth and Manufacture’) add: ‘To what absurdities may we be reduced by the malice of folly! The light of Art, like that of nature, shines on all alike; and its benefit, like that of the sun, is in being seen and felt. Our Catalogue-makers, like the puffers to the Gas-light Company, consider it only as a matter of trade, or what they can get by the sale and monopoly of it; they would extinguish all of it that does not come through the miserable chinks and crannies of their patriotic sympathy, or would confine it in the hard unfeeling sides of some body corporate, as Ariel was shut up in a cloven pine by the foul witch Sycorax. The cabal of Art in this country would keep it on the other side of the Channel. They would keep up a perpetual quarantine against it as infectious. They would subject it to new custom-house duties. They would create a right of search after all works of genuine Art as contraband. They would establish an alien-office[[64]] under the Royal Academy, to send all the finest pictures out of the country, to prevent unfair and invidious competition. The genius of modern Art does not bathe in the dews of Castalie, but rises like the dirty goddess of Gay’s Trivia out of the Thames, just opposite Somerset-House, and armed with a Grub-street pen in one hand, and a sign-post brush in the other, frightens the Arts from advancing any farther. They would thus effectually suppress the works of ancient genius and the progress of modern taste at one and the same time; and if they did not sell their pictures, would find ease to their tortured minds by not seeing others admired.’
The Second of the Examiner articles includes the first paragraph of the second of the Round Table articles and ends with ‘encouragement of the Fine Arts?’ (vol. I. p. 147). A letter follows, signed H. R., protesting against being pointed out as the author of the Catalogue Raisonné, to which the following paragraph is added in square brackets:—
‘We insert the above letter as in duty bound; for it is a sad thing to labour under the imputation of being the author of the Catalogue—“that deed without a name.”[[65]] But we hardly know how to reply to our Correspondent, unless by repeating what Mr. Brumell said of the Regent—“Who is our fat friend?” We do not know his person or address, or by what marks he identifies himself with our description of him—Whether he answers to his name as a cheese-curd, or a piece of whitleather, or as a Shrewsbury Cake; or as a stocking, or a joint-stool; or as a little round man, or as a fair squab man? If he claims any or all of these marks as his property, he is welcome to them. We shall believe him. We shall also believe him, when he says he is not the anonymous author of the Catalogue Raisonné; and in that case, we can have no farther fault to find with him, even though he were the beautiful Albiness.’
The Third of the Catalogue Raisonné articles was published in The Examiner, Nov. 17, 1816, and proceeds as in The Round Table with the following additions.
The quotation from Burke to Barry (vol. I. p. 148) has the following footnote:—
‘Yet Mr. Burke knew something of Art and of the world. He thought the Art should be encouraged for the sake of Artists. They think it should be destroyed for their sakes. They would cut it up at once, as the boy did the goose with golden eggs.’
After such heavy drollery (vol. I. p. 150) add: ‘with the stupid, knowing air of a horse-jockey or farrier, and in the right slang of the veterinary art.’
After will speak more (Ibid.) add: ‘We concluded our last with some remarks on Claude’s landscapes. We shall return to them here; and we would ask those who have seen them at the British Institution, “Is the general effect,”’ etc. [here Hazlitt inserted the criticism on Claude he used later in the article on Fine Arts for the Encyclopædia Britannica, see p. [394] of the present volume, ending with ‘What landscape-painter does not feel this of Claude?’]
‘It seems the author of the Catalogue Raisonné does not; for he thus speaks of him:—
“David Encamped.—Claude. Rev. W. H. Carr:—If it were not for the horrible composition of this landscape—the tasteless hole in the wall—the tents and daddy-long-legs, whom Mr. Carr has christened King David, we should be greatly offended by its present obtrusion on the public; as it is, we are bound to suppose the possessor sees deeper into the mill-stone than ourselves; and if it were politic, could thoroughly explain the matter to our satisfaction. Be this as it may, we cannot resist expressing our regret at the absence of Claude Gillee’s Muses.—The Public in general merely know, by tradition, that this painter was a pastry-cook: had this delectable composition to which we now allude been brought forward, they would have had the evidence of his practice to confirm it. It is said to represent Mount Parnassus; and no one, who for a moment has seen the picture, can entertain the smallest doubt of its having been taken from one of his own Plateaux. The figures have all the character and drawing which they might be expected to derive from a species of twelfth-cake casts. The swans are of the truest wax-shapes, while the water bears every mark of being done from something as right-earnest as that at Sadler’s Wells, and the Prince’s Fete of 1814.”
‘This is the way in which the Catalogue-writer aids and abets the Royal Academy in the promotion and encouragement of the Fine Arts in this country. Now, what if we were to imitate him, and to say of the “ablest landscape-painter now living,” that.... No, we will not; we have blotted out the passage after we had written it—Because it would be bad wit, bad manners, and bad reasoning. Yet we dare be sworn it is as good wit, as good manners, and as good reasoning, as the wittiest, the most gentlemanly, and the most rational passage, in the Catalogue Raisonné. Suppose we were to put forth voluntarily such a criticism on one of Mr. Turner’s landscapes? What then? we should do a great injustice to an able and ingenious man, and disgrace ourselves: but we should not hurt a sentiment, we should not mar a principle, we should not invade the sanctuary of Art. Mr. Turner’s pictures have not, like Claude’s, become a sentiment in the heart of Europe; his fame has not been stamped and rendered sacred by the hand of time. Perhaps it never will.[[66]]
‘We have only another word to add on this very lowest of all subjects. The writer calls in the cant of morality to his aid. He was quite shocked to find himself in the company of some female relations, vis-à-vis with a naked figure of Annibal Caracci’s. Yet he thinks the Elgin Marbles likely to raise the morals of the country to a high pitch of refinement. Good. The fellow is a hypocrite too.’
Instead of ‘return? nothing‘, the paper ends thus:—‘return; the low buffoonery of a mechanic scribbler, a Bart’lemy-fair puppet-shew, Mrs. Salmon’s Royal Wax-work, or the exhibition of the Royal Academy, King George the Third on horseback, or his son treading in his steps on foot, or Prince Blucher, or the Hetman Platoff,[[67]] or the Duke with the foolish face, or the great Plenipotentiary[[68]]? God save the mark!’
WEST’S PICTURE OF DEATH ON THE PALE HORSE
From The Edinburgh Magazine, December 1817.
The full title was—Remarks on Mr. West’s Picture of Death on the Pale Horse and on his Descriptive Catalogue which accompanies it.
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[318]. It sets on a quantity of barren spectators. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.
High endeavour and the glad success. Cowper, The Task, V. 901.
[319]. So shall my anticipation. Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.
319. Like Bayes in the ‘Rehearsal.’ A farce by George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, 1671.
[320]. Spoken with authority and not as the scribes. S. Mark i. 22.
[321]. Another enemy of the human race. The phrase is applied to Buonaparte. See vol. VIII. A View of the English Stage, p. 284.
Grin horrible a ghastly smile. Paradise Lost, II. 146.
Monarch of the universal world. Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Sc. 2.
[322]. Multum abludit imago. Horace, Sat. II. 3. 320.