After speaking of him, we are ashamed to go back to Fonthill, lest one drop of gall should fall from our pen. No, for the rest of our way, we will dip it in the milk of human kindness, and deliver all with charity. There are four or five very curious cabinets—a triple jewel cabinet of opaque, with panels of transparent amber, dazzles the eye like a temple of the New Jerusalem—the Nautilus’s shell, with the triumph of Neptune and Amphitrite, is elegant, and the table on which it stands superb—the cups, vases, and sculptures, by Cellini, Berg, and John of Bologna, are as admirable as they are rare—the Berghem (a sea-port) is a fair specimen of that master—the Poulterer’s Shop, by G. Douw, is passable—there are some middling Bassans—the Sibylla Libyca, of L. Caracci, is in the grand style of composition—there is a good copy of a head by Parmegiano—the painted windows in the centre of the Abbey have a surprising effect—the form of the building (which was raised by torch-light) is fantastical, to say the least—and the grounds, which are extensive and fine from situation, are laid out with the hand of a master. A quantity of coot, teal, and wild fowl sport in a crystal stream that winds along the park; and their dark brown coats, seen in the green shadows of the water, have a most picturesque effect. Upon the whole, if we were not much pleased by our excursion to Fonthill, we were very little disappointed; and the place altogether is consistent and characteristic.
JUDGING OF PICTURES
Painters assume that none can judge of pictures but themselves. Many do this avowedly, some by implication, and all in practice. They exclaim against any one writing about art who has not served his apprenticeship to the craft, who is not versed in the detail of its mechanism. This has often put me a little out of patience—but I will take patience, and say why.
In the first place, with regard to the productions of living artists, painters have no right to speak at all. The way in which they are devoured and consumed by envy would be ludicrous if it were not lamentable. It is folly to talk of the divisions and backbitings of authors and poets while there are such people as painters in the world. I never in the whole course of my life heard one speak in hearty praise of another. Generally they blame downrightly—but at all events their utmost applause is with a damning reservation. Authors—even poets, the genus irritabile—do taste and acknowledge the beauties of the productions of their competitors; but painters either cannot see them through the green spectacles of envy, or seeing, they hate and deny them the more. In conformity with this, painters are more greedy of praise than any other order of men. ‘They gorge the little fame they get all raw’—they are gluttonous of it in their own persons in the proportion in which they would starve others.
I once knew a very remarkable instance of this. A friend of mine had written a criticism of an exhibition. In this were mentioned in terms of the highest praise the works of two brothers—sufficiently so, indeed, to have satisfied, one would have thought, the most insatiate. I was going down into the country to the place where these brothers lived, and I was asked to be the bearer of the work in which the critique appeared. I was so, and sent a copy to each of them. Some days afterwards I called on one of them, who began to speak of the review of his pictures. He expressed some thanks for what was said of them, but complained that the writer of it had fallen into a very common error under which he had often suffered—the confounding, namely, his pictures with his brother’s. ‘Now, my dear sir,’ continued he, ‘what is said of me is all very well, but here,’ turning to the high-wrought panegyric on his brother, ‘this is all in allusion to my style—this is all with reference to my pictures—this is all meant for me.’ I could hardly help exclaiming before the man’s face. The praise which was given to himself was such as would have called a blush to any but a painter’s face to speak of; but, not content with this, he insisted on appropriating his brother’s also: How insatiate is the pictorial man!
But to come to the more general subject—I deny in toto and at once the exclusive right and power of painters to judge of pictures. What is a picture meant for? To convey certain ideas to the mind of painters? that is, of one man in ten thousand?—No, but to make them apparent to the eye and mind of all. If a picture be admired by none but painters, I think it is strong presumption that the picture is bad. A painter is no more a judge, I suppose, than another man of how people feel and look under certain passions and events. Every body sees as well as him whether certain figures on the canvas are like such a man, or like a cow, a tree, a bridge, or a windmill. All that the painter can do more than the lay spectator, is to tell why and how the merits and defects of a picture are produced. I see that such a figure is ungraceful and out of nature—he shows me that the drawing is faulty, or the foreshortening incorrect. He then points out to me whence the blemish arises; but he is not a bit more aware of the existence of the blemish than I am. In Hogarth’s ‘Frontispiece’ I see that the whole business is absurd, for a man on a hill two miles off could not light his pipe at a candle held out of a window close to me—he tells me that it is from a want of perspective, that is, of certain rules by which certain effects are obtained. He shows me why the picture is bad, but I am just as well capable of saying ‘The picture is bad’ as he is. To take a coarse illustration, but one most exactly apposite, I can tell whether a made dish be good or bad,—whether its taste be pleasant or disagreeable.—It is dressed for the palate of uninitiated people, and not alone for the disciples of Dr. Kitchener and Mr. Ude. But it needs a cook to tell one why it is bad; that there is a grain too much of this, or a drop too much of t’other—that it has been boiled rather too much, or stewed rather too little—these things, the wherefores, as ‘Squire Western would say, I require an artist to tell me,—but the point in debate—the worth or the bad quality of the painting or potage, I am as well able to decide upon as any he who ever brandished a pallet or a pan, a brush or a skimming-ladle.
To go into the higher branches of the art—the poetry of painting—I deny still more peremptorily the exclusiveness of the initiated. It might be as well said, that none but those who could write a play have any right to sit on the third row in the pit, on the first night of a new tragedy. Nay, there is more plausibility in the one than the other. No man can judge of poetry without possessing in some measure a poetical mind. It need not be of that degree necessary to create, but it must be equal to taste and to analyze. Now in painting there is a directly mechanical power required to render those imaginations, to the judging of which the mind may be perfectly competent. I may know what is a just or a beautiful representation of love, anger, madness, despair, without being able to draw a straight line—and I do not see how that faculty adds to the capability of so judging. A very great proportion of painting is mechanical. The higher kinds of painting need first a poet’s mind to conceive:—Very well, but then they need a draughtsman’s hand to execute. Now he who possesses the mind alone is fully able to judge of what is produced, even though he is by no means endowed with the mechanical power of producing it himself. I am far from saying that any one is capable of duly judging pictures of the higher class. It requires a mind capable of estimating the noble, or touching, or terrible, or sublime subjects which they present—but there is no sort of necessity that we should be able to put them upon the canvas ourselves.
There is one point, even, on which painters usually judge worse of pictures than the general spectator; I say usually, for there are some painters who are too thoroughly intellectual to run into the error of which I am about to speak. I mean that they are apt to overlook the higher and more mental parts of a picture, in their haste to criticise its mechanical properties. They forget the expression, in being too mindful of what is more strictly manual. They talk of such a colour being skilfully or unskillfully put in opposition to another, rather than of the moral contrast of the countenances of a group. They say that the flesh-tints are well brought out, before they speak of the face which the flesh forms. To use a French term of much condensation, they think of the physique before they bestow any attention on the morale.
I am the farthest in the world from falling into the absurdity of upholding that painters should neglect the mechanical parts of their profession; for without a mastery in them it would be impossible to body forth any imaginations, however strong or beautiful. I only wish that they should not overlook the end to which these are the means—and give them an undue preference over that end itself. Still more I object to their arrogating to the possessors of these qualities of hand and eye all power of judging that which is conveyed through the physical vision into the inward soul.
On looking over what I have written, I find that I have used some expressions with regard to painters as a body which may make it appear that I hold them in light esteem; whereas no one can admire their art, or appreciate their pursuit of it, more highly than I do. Of what I have said, however, with regard to their paltry denial of each other’s merits, I cannot bate them an ace. I appeal to all those who are in the habit of associating with painters to say whether my assertion be not correct. And why should they do this?—surely the field is wide enough. Haydon and Wilkie can travel to fame together without ever jostling each other by the way. Surely there are parallel roads which may be followed, each leading to the same point—but neither crossing or trenching upon one another.