CARNIVOROUS QUADRUPEDS.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATES.
That there has hitherto existed no good book of Engravings of the nobler wild animals, to assist the progress of the student in that department of Art, is to be regretted. The talents of Mr. John Scott, brought into action by those of Gilpin, Cooper, and the Reinagles, have presented the public with excellent representations of the distinguished ornaments of the turf: the sports of the field, and the habits and manners of the canine race, were also duly honoured: but of the ferocious Tiger tribe, and the lordly Lion, we have nothing extant that would bear critical inspection, beyond a few detached prints:—nothing like a collection of figures, whose justness and accuracy of form, action, character, and expression, might be relied on.
Does any reader imagine that the various Etchings which have been performed—chiefly abroad—by Artists of no mean ability, may be considered as exceptions? They are not exceptions: or at best, the number which might be so regarded is but small, and those, for the most part, of dimensions not accommodated to the drawer of the cabinet, or the shelf of the library.
But they are not objectionable on this ground alone. Speaking of them in the aggregate, the heavier charge lies against them of being insufficient to those purposes of taste and information which are the ends of Art. Even those after Titian and after Rubens (the latter of whom has perhaps painted a greater number than any other of the old masters) are far more deficient in form, character, and expression, than is generally supposed, or than will be easily believed, by those who have not actually compared them with the Lions, Leopards, and Tigers of Nature. They have been taken too much on the credit which attaches to the great names of their authors.—Nor is this intended to impugn the merits, as historical or poetical painters, of those distinguished Artists, but simply as an assertion of truth. It is possible, that as a painter of allegory, Rubens might consider that strong infusion of human form, character, and expression, by which his Lions, for example, are distinguished, as necessary, or conducive, to his allegorical purposes; or, it is possible that his knowledge of this animal may not have been thoroughly well-grounded, and that he may have laboured under early prejudice of mind, or of vision, in this part of his education as a Painter, and may not have seen Lions as they really are. This is what the writer is most inclined to believe, (though not to insist); for even in treating the subject of Daniel in the den of Lions—the scene of which, by the way, he has not represented as a royal menagerie, but as a wild, rocky cavern—his animals partake of the artificial character of which we cannot bring ourselves to approve.
Of this fact, however, we purpose to exhibit proof with our assertion. Improved versions, to the best abilities of our Artists, of some of these Lions of Rubens and the Assyrian king, will here be introduced, which the reader, who pleases, may compare with the originals. Our second, third, and fourth Plates are of the number.
The Lions of Rubens are humanized. We do not intend to discuss at length whether the ideality of allegorical painting required this: we only state the fact: yet the opinions which we felt at liberty to form on the subject, we feel at liberty to utter. So much in apology for using the licence of asserting that the heads of many of the Lions of Rubens rather resemble those of frowning old gentlemen decorated with Ramillies wigs; as if Nature’s journeymen had made manes, and not made them well. There is a profusion of flowing and curling hair, which seems rather to solicit the unguents of the perfumer, than to have endured the torrid heats of the desert, or the rough storms of the forest. The shag of a Lion’s mane is a very different sort of thing.
However such dressed Lions may be thought to accord with Allegory, they are demonstrably at variance with Nature. To be sure, what might become a Lion in the procession of the Cardinal Virtues, might be rather unsuitable in his den, or within the precincts of those wild haunts, where he is accustomed to roam in his natural state. We have often read of the fabled Men-bulls, or (Minotaurs,) and we find such on the coinage of Crete. These allegorical creatures of Rubens, which, alas! have sometimes been quoted by Artists without half his genius, and placed in savage conflicts, or beside their Britannias—are a species of Men-lions. Placed among the Sabæan sculptures, they might pass for incarnations of Sol in Leo; but would very ill pass for Leo alone.
Among the observers of this poetic improvement, or this natural and unpoetical deficiency, on the part of Rubens, Titian, Julio Romano, and other painters, both ancient and modern; and of the consequent desideratum on the part of the public, of a cabinet or library collection of the nobler wild animals in a state of Nature, so as to answer the purposes of reference, while they conduced to the pleasures of Taste, were Mr. Edgar Spilsbury and Mr. Thomas Landseer. Whether or not the public “looked up to them for light” on that subject, (to use the language of Sterne,) they thought the Public “deserved it;” and they therefore, as the best practical means of eliciting that light, first copied the general forms and attitudes of most of the wild animals that appear in this book, from the old masters—generally speaking, from works that are well known—and then, went to Nature and corrected the details. They carried with them what, in those ancient masters, was meritorious in composition, attitude and chiaroscuro, and brought away, to the best of their ability—superadding it to, and blending it with, the above—accuracy of detail.