Two definitions are laid down, which, as frequent reference is made to them, we copy. Definition of painting—"The art of applying colours, without relief, upon a plain surface, so as to imitate any object in the manner in which it is seen, or may be conceived visible in nature." "A good picture" he defines to be, "a good choice of subject well represented." If we knew precisely what is here meant by "nature," a word used by all writers on art in very various senses, and commonly very vaguely, we might not find fault with the definition; but genius, which has
"Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new,"
is not too strictly to be limited to the actualities of external nature. It is the nature of the mind, under certain impulses and impressions, to exaggerate, to combine from memory, not from sight, even to the verge of the impossible; for even this extravagance is the product of human passion, which by its nature disdains common boundaries; and this, in painting, is especially the province of Colour, which may be said to be the poetical language of art, and admits differences of the same kind as exist between common speech and poetical and figurative diction.
The painter as well as poet may colour somewhat highly,
"And breathe a browner horror o'er the woods."
Critics too often write of art as if it had only to do with what actually exists; whereas it is given to it as to poetry "to make," to create—all that is required is a certain connexion with the real, sometimes exceedingly slight, which shall be sufficiently delusive for present purpose. The agile mind can pass over a deep and formidable chasm upon a slender thread; and when over, is too much occupied in the new region to turn back and measure the means of passage. We suspect our author's view of nature is too limited.
Upon "a good choice of subject" are some good remarks. Disgusting subjects are justly condemned. "It is evident that an animal, flayed or embowelled, entrails, meat raw or mangled, blood, excrements, death's-heads, carcasses, and similar objects, if they strike upon the view too much, will be as disgusting in a picture as they are in nature; and that grimaces, hideous or monstrous deformities, whether moral or physical, will be as shocking in the one as the other. Events which are sufficiently unnatural, barbarous, and cruel, to shake violently the soul, and cause it to tremble with insurmountable horror, create an agitation too frightful for it to resist, much less to be pleased with. Subjects of so bad a choice, (which Horace severely prohibits from being introduced upon the scene,) do little honour to the painter. They become even more insupportable in proportion as they approach nearer to reality by the perfection of their execution." The translator thinks his "author has stated this too broadly;" and instances, as pictures of this kind to be admired for their truth, The Lesson of Anatomy, by Rembrandt; Prometheus Devoured by the Vulture, by Salvator Rosa; Raising of Lazarus, by Sebastian del Piombo. Of the two first subjects, we think they are to be condemned, if, in the Prometheus, the enduring mind of Prometheus be not the subject. But surely the grand picture of Piombo, though it is all awful, has in it nothing disgusting, or that comes within the condemned list. The question to be asked in all these cases is, what is the object, as well as what is the subject. Is it to teach, to improve, to soften the mind by human love and sympathy, or to excite it to a just and hopeful indignation, for therein is a source of pleasure? The rule of tragedy should be applicable here. Undoubtedly, we receive pleasure from tragic representations. Isolated, barbarism, cruelty would be intolerably disgusting. But in every good tragedy, there are always good and lovely characters with whom we can sympathise. We are bettered by thus uniting ourselves with what is lovely; and are content to take at second-hand, and thus feel only in a safe degree, the distresses to which, as human nature ourselves, we are liable. In pictured representation, however, we have to guard against the too vivid, and at the same time too permanent, as being a fixed expression, which, by the art and power of language, we are not allowed to dwell upon too exclusively; and relief is offered in change and diversity. There are some very judicious remarks upon disgusting subjects in "An Essay on the Choice of Subjects in Painting," read, we believe, some years ago, by Mr Duncan, at the Institution at Bath. We remember an account in the Essay of a very ridiculous burlesque (it is not intended so to be) of some of the horrific legends of the Italian schools. The picture was exhibited in the chapel of Johanna Southcote, at Newington Butts, near London. St Johanna was represented in a sky-blue dress, leading the devil with a long chain, like a dancing-bear, surrounded by adoring angels. Is not this doubtful? "I add, that, excepting man, that King of Nature, whose head presents to a painter the subject that is most interesting for character, grace, dignity, and expression of the whole mind, of which it is the mirror, no animal, dead or alive, affords, in any one part of its frame, whatever care may be taken in the execution, more than a subject for a study, or will by any means form what can be called a picture." This surely is not quite true. There is a very fine picture of a lioness, dimly seen at the mouth of her den, in grim repose, that is very grand. One colour pervades the whole—there is nothing forced; but the very colour is of the stealthiness of the animal's nature; it is so dim, that the animal is not strikingly discoverable, but grows out upon the sight, and we feel the sense of danger with the knowledge of security. And surely this is the sublime of art. Had the author seen some of the noble animals, gifted with noble characters by nature, and by the hand of our Landseer, he would have hesitated ere he pronounced thus strongly.
The choice of a subject is considered as belonging solely to invention, irrespective of composition or disposition. "The honour of inventing truly belongs to him whose imagination creates all, or almost all, of new." A distinction is made between composition and design: indeed, according to our author, there are three parts of invention—composition, disposition, and design. There is a repetition of the charge of disproportion in objects, brought against Raffaelle, to which we do not implicitly bow. He is considered as having "committed two striking faults against nature and lineal perspective, in his famous picture of the Transfiguration, by the ridiculous smallness of his Mount Tabor, and by the disproportionable size of the Christ and of the two Prophets." But we question if the mind, in that state of feeling in which it beholds a miraculous and altogether overwhelming subject, is not necessarily in a condition to overstep the actual rules of nature, and to receive a type of things for the reality, admitting the small to stand for the great. Were it conscious of very exact formal truth, the power of the subject would be reduced. Actual perspective would have, in Raffaelle's case, ruined the picture. There was that boldness of genius which Shakspeare, when the nature of the subject required it, adopted, which made the one, leap over time, and the other, space and proportion.
Under the head "disposition of the subject," there is a somewhat unsatisfactory sentence. "It contributes to the 'goodness' of the picture," "if it avoid uniformity and positions that are too symmetrical; if it distribute the light well; if by means of it the groups pyramid and unite well; and if it give value to all the parts of the picture by means of each other, in such a manner as that the result shall be a satisfactory whole." There is much here that is true; but there is something false. And that which is false in it, has often strangely misled artists in their arrangement and grouping. There are some subjects of a perfectly symmetrical character; however rare they may be, there are some. Raffaelle, in his cartoon of delivering the keys to Peter, paints, as nearly as may be, all the apostles' heads in one line. Is not the character of Gothic architecture symmetrical? Painters of architectural subjects very commonly overlook this, and by perspective difference destroy this orderly character. Few make the centre the point of sight; which is, however, the proper one for representation, as it alone shows the exact conformity and order, the idea of which it was the purpose of the architect to present, and which constitutes the beauty. The "pyramid" rule is manifestly absurd, and seldom has even a tolerably good effect. It was the quackery of a day.[[5]] The good masters did not work upon it. It is, in fact, a little truth taken out of a greater, and misapplied—a part of that circular character of composition, as it were a principle of reflection, by which lines close in upon or recede from each other. We have, in a former paper in this Magazine, treated of this principle—to dwell on it now would take us far from our purpose. As to the ability of all persons to judge of the naturalness of a picture, the translator doubts the correctness of the affirmative opinion of his author. He remarks, that "it requires considerable practice and experience to enable one to judge how much art can do; what is the exact medium between feebleness and exaggeration, which constitutes the all-surpassing quality of truth, of which he declares himself a partisan; and in what manner one painter differs from or excels another in the representation of it." It may also be observed, that people in general have uncultivated eyes, and see not the whole beauties of any one object; they are commonly quite ignorant of ideal and sentimental beauty, almost wholly arising out of the power of art—the representing the imagination. It is when such persons are called upon to see nature in a picture, that they show how imperfect their sight has been. Seeing the representation in a frame, they know it to be a work of art, and generally object to shadow; whereas, could they see the picture placed at an open window or some deceiving position, they would be deceived. Many, knowing the intention is to deceive them, are ready armed with objections, which, however, they make because they have sought them, not because they have felt them. What we term local colour, is termed by M. de Burtin proper colour; local colour he considers as the colour made variable by space, by locality, air, light, and surrounding bodies. The distinction may be useful; but proper colour will itself be difficult to discover, for we never can see it entirely separated from some foreign influence. In a picture it would be perhaps best to consider that the proper colour which would be proper to the half-tone, whether modified by aerial perspective or not. He considers that proper colour is not shown mostly in objects in the foreground, for there the light which destroys it is most powerful; light destroys proper colour, and substitutes its own. "It is the perfect understanding of this interesting principle, which renders the works of Rubens, and of his best scholars, so superior for their magic truth of colour. It is this which explains why they make the colour of the blood to appear through the fine and transparent skin of their Flemings, particularly of the women, only in proportion as the effect of the light is lost in the retiring parts; and why the red prevails more in these parts in general, which are illuminated only by a reflected light too feeble to change the natural colour. The latter may often be even strengthened by the colour of the object from which the reflected light proceeds, which happens when one flesh part is reflected upon another, as may be remarked more particularly towards the extremities."
The following quotation is well worth considering—the observation it contains is new. "As to the influence of light upon the local colours, one of the plainest proofs of it is, that the colour of objects seen in broad day, diminishes in force the more that the sun enlightens the distant plain on which they are placed. This observation, and many other analogous ones, convince me that the light in a picture in general exerts a greater influence upon the local colours than even the air, although those who have written upon the art seem to attribute the local colours exclusively to the interposition of the air and the vapours with which it is charged. The above remark, though useful to all painters, becomes the more indispensable to those who have to do with landscape, seeing that without attention to it, the aerial perspective would render useless, by a false and mannered representation, the just proportions and the exact contours dictated by linear perspective. Another remark, not less interesting, is, that the colour of cast shadows depends, beyond every thing, on that of the light, and consequently on the state of the atmosphere and the time of the day, as well as the season of the year." Hence is it that the brown shadows of art, which are adopted for the sake of warm, are, in good painters such as Vandyke, always blended with the silvery grey.