For Forster, Shakspere is the most logical portrayer of nature that ever existed; he meets the painter halfway in his work by his excellent characterization of the salient features of a personage and so givs the painter sharply defined subjects for his fantasy. For the artists of the British school this is especially valuable because effect is their highest aim and beauty only secondary. Extremes of passion, astonishment, surprize are strivn for. "Sie hascht nach der Wahrheit der Natur in ihren grässlichen Augenblicken und erlaubt ihrer Phantasie den verwegenen Flug, nicht in das schöne Feenland des Ideals sondern in die verbotene Region der Geister und Gespenster."
But while the general condemnation of British artists shows far more perspectiv than is found in Tieck, the acquaintance with the details of Shakspere's plays is never drawn on to point out any defects in choice of subject matter. Forster can refer to the acted plays from an experience that was at this time still denied Tieck, but this experience does not result in any well-defined theory of Shakspere-illustration as a whole and as we found Tieck to hav. The melancholy Jacques in the forest is a good scene for Forster, whereas Tieck rejected it as having no structural relation to the rest of the play. Forster finds it worthy of portrayal as one of the moments arising from Shakspere's variety of scene, character and condition of life, to say nothing of the chance to show the lonesome melancholy stag by the famous animal painter, Gilpin!
On Reynolds' famous Beauford picture, Tieck and Forster are entirely at odds. For Tieck the execution is terrible, the choice of subject satisfactory. For Forster, the choice is inexcusable, the execution in part masterly; a dying criminal in his last throes seems to Forster an utterly impossible subject for representation. So with Kirk's picture from "Titus Adronicus": in spite of the attempt to meliorate the impression of the butcherd Lavinia, the whole picture remains for Forster a disgusting sight. The conclusion is obvious: Forster's sense of delicacy rebeld at the crass and brutal; wildness and terror shockt him.
But if Tieck's article compares favorably with Forster's in all points respecting the "Gallery" itself, it must be confest that the political, patriotic note, the application to Germany of the principles of national betterment in art which arose in the mind of Boydell, escape him. He was not, of course, like Forster, a political writer, and revolutionary conditions had no immediate interest for him as for the older man. And so his art criticism does not look forward to Germany as does Forster's or as does that of a propagandist like Kleist in his Abendblætter article. Tieck does not rise above the milieu; the "Gallery" offers no hold with which to test contemporary art in his own land. It is only a beginning, clearsighted in part and in general sustaind, an ernest of what the matured criticism of the Romantic school was later on to do.
NOTES
[1] Die Kupferstiche nach der Shakspeare-Gallerie in London. Briefe an einen Freund. 1793. "Kritische Schriften," vol. I, pages 3-34. [Kr. Sch.]
[2] 2 For full title, see bibliografy.
[3] E. g. in the letters.
[4] Krit. Sch. I, 4. Jean Paul, Titan, I, 42. [Berlin, 1827.]