It is especially interesting to note that Tieck finds the drawing of Angelika Kaufmann without error. ("Two Gent. Verona," last scene). Here he declares that no clumsy clothing conceals the figures, but the lines are well brought out under the garments. The disguised Julia is at once recognizable in spite of her masculin attire, and the manner of the artist is "graziös." An examination of the figure shows that Julia's figure has something of the immature in it and that the face is rather boyish. One thinks at once of the somewhat malicious words of Friedrich Schlegel to his brother, "Wie Angelika Kaufmann, der die Busen und Hüften, auch immer wie von selbst aus den Fingern quellen." Both Tieck and Schlegel felt the sensuous charm of the painter whose best known self-portrait is in the garb of a Vestal Virgin, tho the Schlegels, like Georg Forster, had no illusions as to the qualities of her art.[25]
Engravings in stipple emfasize less than line engravings mere questions of drawing. It is perhaps with some instinctiv feeling for this that Tieck suggests that one of Hamilton's pictures has been hurt by the bad engraving, just as certain other plates have gaind thru the engraver (page 22). The hint for this point came originally from the Anzeigen but Tieck has developt it. While it is now no longer possible to check up each plate with its corresponding picture, it is true that the engravers were relatively better craftsmen, as a rule, than the painters. In hardly any one case is the painting a sample of the best work of the artist. Often, as in the case of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painting redounds but little to his credit.[26] Where, as in the case of Barry, Sir Joshua's great rival, the picture is reckond with his superior work, the only conclusion is that Barry was a very bad artist and so Tieck considers him. The engravers, on the other hand, had had no better chance in years to exhibit their art than in this imposing series, and most of the best names in stipple appear in it. The best that Tieck does to recognize this fact is in the occasional lament for the waste of good labor on a bad subject or painting (e. g., page 20).
Besides having the good feeling for the human form under the garment, as in the case of the figure of Julia and of those of Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page by Smirke, Tieck also criticizes several cases of misdrawing. So, the clumsy legs of one of Opie's figures are scored and in blaming this failing of Opie, Tieck hits one of the most pronounced weaknesses of that artist both in the "Gallery" and in Bell's British Theater. But Opie, the "Comedy Wonder," is hardly the "ungeübter Künstler" that Tieck makes him out to be. Here Tieck, following the criticism of the Anzeigen, from which he may have got the hint on Opie's drawing, develops the criticism too far and goes astray. There is a constant suspicion that Tieck is trying to master a jargon.
Often it is a mere chance whether Tieck will see or not see a peculiarity. Some of the sentimental, foolish, and misdrawn hands escape his notis, whereas in other cases he criticizes them.
Perhaps the best example of Tieck's criticism of drawing is that of Northcote's plate to "Richard III." (III, 1, page 27). He says, "Der alte Cardinal scheint ganz verzeichnet zu sein, man ist ungewiss, ob er steht oder kniet: in beiden Fällen ist die Zeichnung fehlerhaft." Tieck's strictures are correct. The space from the waist down is found upon examination to be abnormally long for a kneeling person, and groteskly short for one standing. Tieck's critique is good, for it points out the error and the reason, and shows that in any case the alternativ is a bad one.
Tho Tieck may hav been over-kind to Angelika Kaufmann, he quite agrees with his contemporaries in the condemnation of another German Swiss living in England, namely Füessli, whom he calls one of the worst of the admirers of Michaelangelo. The michaelangelesk school of the day faild in its expression of great muscular effort, in that it put for strength distortion and violence. Füessli was one of the most important adherents, or rather, was the greatest representativ of the fad perhaps anywhere and seems therby to hav largely incurd the displesure of his German critics. That Tieck really understood Michaelangelo is shown by his later article in the "Phantasien über die Kunst." He defends him from the charge of having drawn to show his knowledge of anatomy and among other things, exclaims on his "greatness, his wild grace, his fearful beauty."[27] But Tieck had no use for those of his imitators who caught only the extravagance of his figures and debased his Titanic creations into bizarre contortions by over-emfasis on mere muscle.
That Tieck was not unconscious of the effect of mere line is shown by his pointing out the unplesantness of the line made by Leontes' figure in Hamilton's picture of the statu scene from "Winter's Tale." Awkwardness and violence, anything that savord of "affectation and bombast," where in Shakspere "power and energy" are found, met Tieck's disapproval. So this figure of Leontes, so Orlando standing with his legs far apart, so the faces drawn by Füessli. Wherever there were violent angles, sharp points and corners, Tieck felt himself ill at ease. When he saw in some of Füessli's plates faces which giv the impression of the plaster blocks of the art schools that are used to draw from the cast, the square chins, the noses, either very pointed or cut off square, imprest him as repulsivly inhuman. "Widrig, unnatürlich, abgeschmackt, manierirt," are the terms applied to Füessli's cursing scene from Lear.
It would hav been interesting had Tieck seen Füessli's later scenes in the "Gallery." The Bottom scenes from the "Midsummer Night's Dream" show that fantastic imagination which was the artist's strong point. All the forms from the fairy world were there, Moth, Peascod and a welth of other spirits. There is a distinct appeal to the imagination which justifies the painter of "Die Nachtmahr," tho the faces of Titania and Oberon are here too hard and sullen. But the imagination shown has a curious similarity with the work of Tieck in his later stories such as "Die Elfen," and which has so warm an afterglow in "Die Vogelscheuche."
Composition means for Tieck especially order. He has not yet lernd the principle of triangulation of arrangement enunciated by Caroline in the "Gemälde" essay in the Athenaeum. He expects no more than that the principle character shall be in an important place in the picture and insists that the lighting devices serv to throw such personages into relief. So when the perspectiv is bad it is because of the wrong emfasis on the principal figures rather than that the harmony of the whole is disturbed by a wrong arrangement.
What irritates Tieck especially is an arrangement of figures in the picture in the regular semi-circle borrowd directly from the theater. The evil of unnaturalness which such attitudinizing brings with it, is enhanced by light effects drawn from the same source. So, for example, where the light is that of a lamp, only so much light as a lamp would giv, or the effect of natural lamp-light is allowable. If, on the other hand, the sunlight streams into the room, the source of the sunlight should be evident as outside the room. Tieck might hav mentiond as an example of this some of the fine interiors of Pieter De Hoogh. The light effects should not be harsh but graded down so that no violent light contrasts occur within the same room. The light, too, should be broken up, not kept in a mass as if it were a separate entity to be treated apart from all other objects.