WILSON’S LANDSCAPES, AT THE BRITISH INSTITUTION
| The Champion.] | [July 17, 1814. |
The landscapes of this celebrated artist may be divided into three classes;—his Italian landscapes, or imitations of the manner of Claude, his copies of English scenery, and his historical compositions.
The first of these are, in our opinion, by much the best; and of the pictures of this class in the present collection, we should, without any hesitation, give the preference to the Apollo and the Seasons, and to the Phaeton. The figures are of course out of the question—(Wilson’s figures are as uncouth and slovenly as Claude’s are insipid and finical)—but the landscape in both pictures is delightful. In looking at them we breath the very air which the scene inspires, and feel the genius of the place present to us. In the first, there is all the cool freshness of a misty spring morning: the sky, the water, the dim horizon all convey the same feeling. The fine grey tone, and varying outline of the hills, the graceful form of the retiring lake, broken still more by the hazy shadows of the objects that repose on its bosom; the light trees that expand their branches in the air, and the dark stone figure and mouldering temple, that contrast strongly with the broad clear light of the rising day, give a charm, a truth, a force and harmony to this landscape, which produce the greater pleasure the longer it is dwelt on.—The distribution of light and shade resembles the effect of light on a globe.
The Phaeton has the dazzling fervid appearance of an autumnal evening; the golden radiance streams in solid masses from behind the flickering clouds; every object is baked in the sun;—the brown foreground, the thick foliage of the trees, the streams shrunk and stealing along behind the dark high banks, combine to produce that richness, and characteristic propriety of effect, which is to be found only in nature, or in art derived from the study and imitation of nature. The glowing splendour of this landscape reminds us of the saying of Wilson, that in painting such subjects, he endeavoured to give the effect of insects dancing in the evening sun. His eye seemed formed to drink in the light. These two pictures, as they have the greatest general effect, are also more carefully finished in the particular details than the other pictures in the collection. This circumstance may be worth the attention of those who are apt to think that strength and slovenliness are the same thing.
Cicero at his Villa is a clear and beautiful representation of nature. The sky is admirable for its pure azure tone. Among the less finished productions of Wilson’s pencil, which display his great knowledge of perspective, are A Landscape with figures bathing, in which the figures are wonderfully detached from the sea beyond; and A View in Italy, with a lake and a little boat, which appear at an immeasurable distance below:—the boat is diminished to
‘A buoy almost too small for sight.’
A View of Ancona; Adrian’s Villa at Rome; a small blue greenish landscape; The Lake of Neimi; a small, richly-coloured landscape of the banks of a river; and a landscape containing some light and elegant groups of trees, are masterly and interesting sketches. A View on the Tiber, near Rome, a dark landscape which lies finely open to the sky; and A View of Rome, are successful imitations of N. Poussin. A View of Sion House, which is hung almost out of sight, is remarkable for the clearness of the perspective, particularly in the distant windings of the River Thames, and still more so for the parched and droughty appearance of the whole scene. The air is adust, the grass burned up and withered: and it seems as if some figures, reposing on the level, smooth shaven lawn on the river’s side, would be annoyed by the parching heat of the ground. We consider this landscape, which is an old favourite, as one of the most striking proofs of Wilson’s genius, as it conveys not only the image, but the feeling of nature, and excites a new interest unborrowed from the eye, like the fine glow of a summer’s day. There is a sketch of the same subject, called A View on the Thames.
A View near Llangollen, North Wales; Oakhampton Castle, Devonshire; and The Bridge at Llangollen, are the principal of Wilson’s English landscapes. They want almost every thing that ought to recommend them. The subjects are not fit for the landscape-painter, and there is nothing in the execution to redeem them. Ill-shaped mountains, or great heaps of earth, trees that grow against them without character or elegance, motionless water-falls, a want of relief, of transparency, and distance,—without the imposing grandeur of real magnitude (which it is either not within the province of the art to give, or which is certainly not given here), are the chief features and defects of these pictures.—The same general objections apply to Solitude, and to one or two pictures near it, which are masses of common-place confusion. In near scenes, the effect must depend almost entirely on the difference in the execution, and the details: for the difference of colour alone is not sufficient to give relief to objects placed at a small distance from the eye. But in Wilson there are commonly no details; all is loose and general; and this very circumstance, which assisted him in giving the massy contrasts of light and shade, deprived his pencil of all force and precision within a limited space. In general, air is necessary to the landscape-painter: and for this reason, the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland afford few subjects for landscape-painting. However stupendous the scenery of that country is, and however powerful and lasting the impression which it must always make on the imagination, yet the effect is not produced merely through the eye of the spectator, but arises chiefly from collateral and associated feelings. There is the knowledge of the distance from which we have seen the objects, in the midst of which we are now placed,—the slow, improgressive motion which we make in traversing them,—the abrupt precipice,—the torrent’s roar,—the dizzy rapture and boundless expanse of the prospect from the highest mountains,—the difficulty of their ascent,—their loneliness, and silence;—in short, there is a constant sense and superstitious awe of the collective power of matter, of the gigantic and eternal forms of nature, on which from the beginning of time the hand of man has made no impression, and which by the lofty reflections they excite in him, give a sort of intellectual sublimity even to his sense of physical weakness. But there is little in all these circumstances that can be translated into the picturesque, which depends not on the objects themselves, so much as on the symmetry and relation of these objects to one another. In a picture a mountain shrinks to a molehill, and the lake that expands its broad bosom to the sky, seems hardly big enough to launch a fleet of cockle-shells.
Wilson’s historical landscapes, the two Niobes, Celadon and Amelia, Meleager and Atalanta, do not, in our opinion, deserve the name; that is, they do not excite feelings corresponding with the scene and story represented. They neither display true taste nor fine imagination; but are affected and violent exaggerations of clumsy, common nature. They are all made up of the same mechanical materials, an overhanging rock, bare shattered trees, black rolling clouds, and forked lightning. The scene of Celadon and Amelia, though it may be proper for a thunder-storm, is not a place for lovers to walk in. The Meleager and Atalanta is remarkable for nothing but a castle at a distance, very much ‘resembling a goose-pye.’ The figures in the two other pictures are not like the children of Niobe, punished by the Gods, but like a groupe of rustics, crouching from a hail-storm. In one of these, however, there is a fine break in the sky worthy of the subject. We agree with Sir J. Reynolds, that Wilson’s mind was not, like N. Poussin’s, sufficiently imbued with the knowledge of antiquity to transport the imagination two thousand years back, to give natural objects a sympathy with preternatural events, and to inform rocks, and trees, and mountains with the presence of a God.[[13]]
The writer of the Preface to the Catalogue of the British Gallery, says—‘Few artists have excelled Wilson in the tint of air, perhaps the most difficult point of attainment for the landscape-painter: every object in his pictures keeps its place, because each is seen through its proper medium. This excellence alone gives a charm to his pencil, and by judicious application may be turned to the advantage of the British artist.’—This praise is equivocal: if it be meant that ‘the tint of air’ is the only excellence of Wilson’s landscapes, the observation is not true. He had also great truth, harmony, and richness of local colouring: he had a fine feeling of the proportions and conduct of light and shade; and, in general, an eye for graceful form, as far as regards the bold and varying outlines of indefinite objects—as may be seen in his foregrounds, hills, etc.—where the mind is left to chuse according to an abstract principle, as it is filled or affected agreeably by certain combinations,—and is not tied down to an imitation of characteristic and articulate forms. In his figures, trees, cattle, buildings and in every thing which has a determinate and regular form, Wilson’s pencil was not only deficient in accuracy of outline, but even in perspective and actual relief. His trees, in particular, seem pasted on the canvas, like botanical specimens.
We shall close these remarks with observing, that we cannot subscribe to the opinion of those who assert that Wilson was superior to Claude as a man of genius: nor can we discern any other grounds for this opinion, than those which lead to the general conclusion, that the more slovenly the performance, the finer the picture; and that that which is imperfect is superior to that which is perfect. It might as well be said, that a sign-painting is better than the reflection of a landscape in a mirror; and the only objection that can be made in the latter case cannot be made to the landscapes of Claude, for in them the Graces themselves have, with their own hands, assisted in disposing and selecting every object.—Is the general effect in his pictures injured by the details? Is the truth inconsistent with the beauty of the imitation? Are the scope and harmony of the whole destroyed by the exquisite delicacy of every part? Does the perpetual profusion of objects and scenery, all perfect in themselves, interfere with the simple grandeur, and immense extent of the whole? Does the precision with which a plant is marked in the foreground, take away from the air-drawn distinctions of the blue, glimmering distant horizon? Is there any want of that endless airy space, where the eye wanders at liberty under the open sky, explores distant objects, and returns back as from a delightful journey? There is no comparison between him and Wilson. The landscapes of Claude have all that is exquisite and refined in art and nature. Every thing is moulded into grace and harmony; and at the touch of his pencil, shepherds with their flocks, temples and groves, and winding glades, and scattered hamlets, rise up in never-ending succession, under the azure sky, and the resplendent sun, ‘while universal Pan,
‘Knit with the Graces, and the hours in dance
Leads on the eternal spring.’—
There is a fine apostrophe in a sonnet of Michael Angelo’s to the earliest Poet of Italy:
‘Fain would I to be what our Dante was,
Forego the happiest fortunes of mankind;’
What landscape-painter does not feel this of Claude![[14]]