French.—I perceive, Sir, you have a prejudice in favour of the English style of art.
English.—None at all; but I cannot think our faults any justification of yours, or yours of ours. For instance, here is a landscape by a countryman of mine, Mr. Constable (No. 358). Why then all this affectation of dashing lights and broken tints and straggling lumps of paint, which I dare say give the horrors to a consummate French artist? On the other hand, why do not your artists try to give something of the same green, fresh, and healthy look of living nature, without smearing coats of varnish over raw dabs of colour (as we do), till the composition resembles the ice breaking up in marshy ground after a frosty morning? Depend upon it, in disputes about taste, as in other quarrels, there are faults on both sides.
French.—The English style has effect, but it is gross.
English.—True: yet in the inner rooms there are some water-colour landscapes, by Copley Fielding, which strike me as uniting effect with delicacy, particularly No. 360, with some beautiful trees fringing the fore-ground. I think our painters do best when they are cramped in the vehicle they employ. They are abusers of oil-colours.
French.—I recollect the name; but his works did not seem to me to be finished.
English.—They are finished as nature is finished: that is, the details are to be found in them, though they do not obtrude themselves. You French require every thing to be made out like pin’s points or botanic specimens of leaves and trees. Your histories want life, and your landscapes air. I could have sworn the little fishing-piece (No. —) was English. It is such a daub, and yet has such a feeling of out-of-door scenery in it.
French.—You do not flatter us. But you allow our excellence in sculpture.
English.—There is an admirable study of a little girl going into a bath, by Jacquot. It is so simple, true, and expressive, I thought it might be Chantry’s. I cannot say I saw any others that pleased me. The Eurydice, by Nantreuil, is a French Eurydice. It is an elegantly-formed female, affecting trifling airs and graces in the agonies of death. Suppose we return to the pictures in the Green Room. There is nothing very remarkable here, except the portrait of an artist by himself, which looks for all the world as if it fed upon its own white lead.
French.—Do like the figure of a woman in one corner in the Massacre of the Innocents? The artist has done all he could to propitiate the English taste. He has left his work in a sufficiently barbarous and unfinished state.
English.—But he has taken pains to throw expression, originality, and breadth into it. With us it would be considered as a work of genius. I prefer it much to any thing by our artists of the same kind, both for the tone, the wild lofty character, and the unctuous freedom of the pencilling. There is a strange hurly-burly in the background, and a lurid tone over the whole picture. This is what we mean by imagination—giving the feeling that there is in nature. You mean by imagination the giving something out of it—such as the Nymph (No. —) appearing to the River God. The young lady is a very charming transparency, or gauze-drawing; and the River God is a sturdy wooden statue, painted over; but I would ask you, is there any thing in the picture that takes you beyond a milliner’s shop in the Palais-royal, or a tea-garden in the neighbourhood of St. Cloud? The subject of Locusta poisoning a young slave, by Figalon, is, I think, forcibly and well treated. The old sorceress is not an every day person. The French too seldom resort to the grace of Deformity. Yet how finely it tells! They are more timid and fastidious than the ancients, whom they profess to imitate. There is one other large historical composition in the room which I am partial to; and yet the faces, the manners, the colouring, every thing in it is French. It is the Henry the Fourth pardoning the peasants who have supplied the besieged in Paris with food. That head of a young woman near the middle is particularly fine, and in the happiest style of French art. Its effect against the sky is picturesque; it is handsome, graceful, sensitive, and tinged with an agreeable florid hue.