The result of overstepping these bounds is that the painter is likely to enter into rivalry with the poet, to feel his lack of ability in the struggle and to produce empty declamation insted of a work of the creativ imagination and to offer to the spectator nothing for either imagination or reason.
But in the comedies there are many moments which almost force themselves on the painter. These are scenes in which he can portray the poet just as he finds him and in which his rivalry is legitimate and, indeed, may tend to make him surpass the poet. If he can do this it will be by bringing out more plainly the light shades of the poet's meaning and he will become a commentator, so to speak, of these. Under such circumstances, the painter must be very careful to choose just the most beautiful and most interesting passages.
The relation to Lessing is again at once clear. The culminating moment of passion as it appears in the tragedies is not suitable from the artistic point of view for reproduction but the comedies, from their admixture of the flegmatic, the almost imperativ concomitant of Shaksperean humor, tone down this superlativ expression and are therefore within the pale. How Tieck carries out his theory in practis, has been sufficiently shown: his love for the sentimental and melodramatic, for the climatic and striking lead him to neglect his delimiting theoretical remarks.
Before leaving the discussion of Tieck's article, it may be well to compare it with another contemporary treatment of the Boydell Gallery. This is by the famous traveler and publicist, George Forster. It was Forster's account which furnisht Fiorillo with much of his data for the treatment of the "Gallery" in his history of British art, but it is hardly likely that the account is a source for Tieck. I hav no external evidence and the internal evidence is entirely negativ.
If Friedrich Schlegel's estimate of Forster's artistic capabilities be accepted, it is just such pictures as these, where the social interest is great and the artistic valu is secondary, that should bring out Forster's strength of judgment. Forster was also a finely discriminating amateur, with a decided sense of tactile form based on a sincere love of Greek art and confirmd by a study of Winkelmann and Lessing, beyond whom he past in his appreciation of the portrait and the landscape and of the coloring of the great masters.
Forster's essay, "Die Kunst und das Zeitalter" (1791), was written about the time that he saw the Boydell pictures. It shows his attitude toward Greek art and givs more than a hint of his standards which point so clearly toward Schiller. His "Ansichten vom Niederrhein," especially the discussions of the galleries and collections at Düsseldorf, Brussels and Antwerp fully express his ideas on Dutch and Flemish art, especially emfasizing the characteristics of Rubens for whose fleshy types Forster had little use.
In the discussion of British art which comes as an appendix to the "Ansichten," Forster includes a rather detaild description of the Boydell paintings. He did not see the engravings, or rather, his description is based on the paintings as they hung in the gallery in Pall Mall and so the material of this sketch in two parts, is in one way fundamentally different from that of Tieck. All the discussion of technique in which Tieck was so weak, is entirely lacking in Forster. His point of view, too, is different. He is the traveld, experienced man from whose traind eye and broad judgment more may be expected than from the student Tieck. There is, as Friedrich Schlegel says, an out-of-doorness in Forster's work that Tieck could never hav had; the over-emfasis on Shakspere on the part of the latter is only one product of his inexperience.
In spite of all this, it is surprizing to find what correspondences there are between the student Tieck and the more traind Forster. The latter who knew vastly more of English life than Tieck, fails to understand it in just those vital points where Tieck went farthest astray. Smirke and Peters fare badly at his hands, perhaps because of a certain puritanism in his atitude, or to quote Schlegel, because "Keine Vollkommenheit der Darstellung konnte ihn mit einem Stoff aussöhnen, der sein Zartgefühl verletzte, seine Sittlichkeit beleidigte oder seinen Geist unbefriedigt liess." For this reason he can call one of the Peters paintings from the "Merry Wives" a brothel (ein Speelhuis) or refer to the women of that artist as "lockere Nymphen."
Besides the same general dislike for the caricatures of Smirke that was noted in all previous instances, there is the usual praise of Hodges, the usual condemnation of Opie's bad drawing. Füessli, too, comes in for his share of the blame: "Der Beifall, welchen Füesslis Gemälde in England erhalten, bezeichnet mehr als alles die Ueberspannung des dortigen Kunstgeschmacks. Dieser junge Schweizer ... brachte nebst der Kenntniss akademischer Modelle sein malerisches Kraftgenie mit sich über das Meer; seiner Phantasie ward es wohl unter wilden Traumgestalten und Bildern des Ungewöhnlichen. Diese Stimmung ... verführte ihn nur gar zu bald zu allen Ausschweifungen der Manier. Es ist zwar leicht das Alltägliche zu vermeiden, indem man Kontorsionen darstellt ..." (page 466). Again: "Es sind nicht Menschen, die dieser Künstler phantasiert, sondern Ungeheuer in halb menschlicher Gestalt, mit einzeln sehr gross gezeichneten und sehr verzerrten, verunstalteten Theilen und Proportionen: ausgerenkte Handgelenke, aus dem Kopfe springende Augen, Bocksphysiognomien u. s. f...." (page 503). Northcote is damned with the faint praise "Nicht ohne Verdienst," a frase that clings to the characterizations of his work from the Anzeigen to Fiorillo. Barry is shown to lack grace, noble greatness and beauty. His distorted figures border on caricature and his forms are of giants, colossi. His coloring is bad in spite of his theoretical knowlege and good drawing.
Forster sees thru Angelika Kaufmann and Hamilton better than Tieck did. Hamilton's paintings are "Machwerk" and his figures move in "Tanzschritt," while Angelika's are hermafroditic (page 501). "Die deutsche Muse Angelika verbarg die Inkorrektheit und das Einerlei ihrer allzuschlanken Figuren unter dem Schleier der Grazie und Unschuld" (page 459).