'What an effect,' he says, 'might a design like this, happily planned and executed, produce! How magnificent, how instructive it might be made! How entertaining to trace down from the earliest records of our history the gradual increase of our navy! to remark the different stages of its growth from a few simple canoes, in its infancy, to the stupendous magnitude of a hundred first-rate men-of-war, miracles of the mechanic arts, proudly bearing Britain's thunder! the bulwarks of England! the glory of Englishmen, and the terror and admiration of the world! How flattering to the imagination to anticipate the pleasure of walking round such an edifice, and surveying the different subjects depicted on its walls! Battles under all varied circumstances of day, night, moonlight, storm, and calm!—the effects of fire, water, wind and smoke mingled in terrific confusion. In the midst, British Valour triumphantly bearing down all opposition, accompanied by Humanity, equally daring and ready to succour the vanquished foe! Discoveries, in which we see delineated the strange figures and still stranger costume of nations till then unknown, and where the face of Nature herself is exhibited under a new and surprising aspect. Then to turn and behold the statues and portraits of the enterprising commanders and leaders in the expeditions recorded, and compare their different countenances: here a Drake and an Anson! there a Blake, a Hawke, a Boscawen, and a Cook!'
To me these enthusiastic sentences have something of the ring of a sea-song of Dibdin's; and it is pleasant to think that the idea has been carried out in the Painted Hall at Greenwich Hospital.
His Lectures before the Royal Academy (prepared with a severity of labour which probably shortened his life), are, however, the works by which his literary fame will be handed down to posterity. Sandby tells us that Opie had, shortly before his appointment to his Professorship, delivered some lectures on Art at the Royal Institution; but though they were generally thought good, and were numerously and fashionably attended (that sour critic, Allan Cunningham, by the way, calls them 'confused, abrupt, and unmethodical'), Opie was himself much dissatisfied with them, and would not complete the intended course. He was also concerned in a scheme, in conjunction with West and Flaxman, for establishing a 'Gallery of Honour,' under the sanction of the Royal Academy, for the encouragement and reward of all those who contributed to the higher walks of art. And he is further said to have projected a colossal statue of Britannia, to be erected in some prominent position in the Isle of Wight, as an alternative mode of commemorating the naval victories of Great Britain. Northcote, again (whom, it may be observed, Wolcot, as Opie's patron, much abused), was associated with Opie in 'a project of getting paintings into St. Paul's,' which they hoped 'would tend to raise the drooping head, or rather the almost expiring art, of painting;' and to this project the Bishop of London gave his assent.
Opie's 'Discourses on Painting' were delivered before the Royal Academy in 1807.[124] His scheme included six: four on the practical aspect of the subject, viz., 'Design or Drawing,' 'Colouring,' 'Chiaroscuro,' and 'Composition;' and two on the intellectual side, viz. 'Invention' and 'Expression.' The last of the series in each division, viz. those on 'Composition' and 'Expression,' he did not live to complete. I propose to give as characteristic a short specimen as I can select from each of the four which Opie delivered,[125] merely premising that they were enthusiastically received, and that their author was, for once, satisfied with his work, and so elated by his success that he could not sleep. Even Allan Cunningham admitted: 'A passage such as this would reflect credit on any professor the Academy ever possessed.'
In his first lecture, on 'Design or Drawing,' after insisting on the absolute necessity for hard study of anatomy, with constant practice so as to insure accurate drawing, without which, whatever may be the other merits of the work, 'when the tide of taste rises, and the winds of criticism bluster and beat upon it, the showy but ill-founded edifice must quickly be swept away, or swallowed up and forgotten for ever,' he goes on to say:
'These remarks are the more necessary, as it must be confessed that the strength of the English painters never lay so much as it ought in design; and now perhaps, more than ever, they seem devoted to the charms of colour and effect, and captivate by the mere penmanship of the art—the empty legerdemain of the pencil.
'But if the English artist runs counter in this instance to the established character of his country, and prefers the superficial to the solid attainments in art, has he not many excuses? May it not in great measure be attributed to the general frivolity and meanness of the subjects he is called upon to treat? to the inordinate rage for portrait-painting (a more respectable kind of caricature), by which he is for ever condemned to study and copy the wretched defects, and conform to the still more wretched prejudices, of every tasteless and ignorant individual, however in form, features, and mind, utterly hostile to all ideas of character, expression, or sentiment? And may it not in part be attributed to the necessity he is under of painting always with reference to the exhibition? In a crowd he that talks loudest, not he that talks best, is surest of commanding attention; and in an exhibition he that does not attract the eye does nothing. But however plausible these excuses, it becomes the true painter to consider that they will avail nothing before the tribunal of the world and posterity. Keeping the true end of Art in view, he must rise superior to the prejudices, disregard the applause, and contemn the censure of corrupt and incompetent judges; far from aiming to be fashionable, it must be his object to reform, and not to flatter—to teach, and not to please—if he aspires, like Zeuxis, to paint for eternity.'
The spirit of this passage will, I think, enable us to understand how irksome mere portrait-painting must always have been to our professor; and its precepts might be laid to heart even by the artists of the close of this nineteenth century.
In the lecture on 'Invention' the following passage seems to me worthy of being reproduced. He observed that both the poet and the painter have 'something more to do than to illustrate, explain, or fill the chasms of history or tradition;' they must both first penetrate thoroughly into the subject, and then mould it anew.