Those of his portraits which we have seen are not in the first rank. They are in a good measure imitations of Vandyke; and have more an air of gentility, than of nature. His landscapes are of two classes or periods; his early and his later pictures. The former are minute imitations of nature, or of painters who imitated nature, such as Ruysdael, &c. some of which have great truth and clearness. His later pictures are flimsy caricatures of Rubens, who himself carried inattention to the details to the utmost limit that it would bear. Many of Gainsborough’s latter landscapes may be compared to bad water-colour drawings, washed in by mechanical movements of the hand, without any communication with the eye. The truth seems to be, that Gainsborough found there was something wanting in his early manner, that is, something beyond the literal imitation of the details of natural objects; and he appears to have concluded rather hastily, that the way to arrive at that something more, was to discard truth and nature altogether. His fame rests principally, at present, on his fancy-pieces, cottage-children, shepherd-boys, &c. These have often great truth, great sweetness, and the subjects are often chosen with great felicity. We too often find, however, even in his happiest efforts, a consciousness in the turn of the limbs, and a pensive languor in the expression, which is not taken from nature. We think the gloss of art is never so ill bestowed as on such subjects, the essence of which is simplicity. It is perhaps the general fault of Gainsborough, that he presents us with an ideal common life, of which we have had a surfeit in poetry and romance. His subjects are softened, and sentimentalised too much; it is not simple unaffected nature that we see, but nature sitting for her picture. Our artist, we suspect, led the way to that masquerade style, which piques itself on giving the air of an Adonis to the driver of a hay-cart, and models the features of a milk-maid on the principles of the antique. His Woodman’s Head is admirable. Nor can too much praise be given to his Shepherd Boy in a Storm; in which the unconscious simplicity of the boy’s expression, looking up with his hands folded and with timid wonder,—the noisy chattering of a magpie perched above,—and the rustling of the coming storm in the branches of the trees, produce a most delightful and romantic impression on the mind.
Gainsborough was to be considered, perhaps, rather as a man of delicate taste, and of an elegant and feeling mind, than as a man of genius; as a lover of the art, rather than an artist. He devoted himself to it, with a view to amuse and soothe his mind, with the ease of a gentleman, not with the severity of a professional student. He wished to make his pictures, like himself, amiable; but a too constant desire to please almost unavoidably leads to affectation and effeminacy. He wanted that vigour of intellect, which perceives the beauty of truth; and thought that painting was to be gained, like other mistresses, by flattery and smiles. It was an error which we are disposed to forgive in one, around whose memory, both as an artist and a man, many fond recollections, many vain regrets, must always linger.[[56]]
Sir Joshua Reynolds.—The authority of Sir Joshua Reynolds, both from his example and instructions, has had, and still continues to have, a considerable influence on the state of art in this country. That influence has been on the whole unquestionably beneficial in itself, as well as highly creditable to the rare talents and elegant mind of Sir Joshua; for it has raised the art of painting from the lowest state of degradation,—of dry, meagre, lifeless inanity, to something at least respectable, and bearing an affinity to the rough strength and bold spirit of the national character. Whether the same implicit deference to his authority, which has helped to advance the art thus far, may not, among other causes, limit and retard its future progress? Whether there are not certain original errors, both in his principles and practice, which, the farther they are proceeded in, the farther they will lead us from the truth? Whether there is not a systematic bias from the right line by which alone we can arrive at the goal of the highest perfection?—are questions well worth considering.
We shall begin with Sir Joshua’s merits as an artist. There is one error which we wish to correct at setting out, because we think it important. There is not a greater or more unaccountable mistake than the supposition that Sir Joshua Reynolds owed his success or excellence in his profession, to his having been the first who introduced into this country more general principles of the art, and who raised portrait to the dignity of history from the low drudgery of copying the peculiarities, meannesses, and details of individual nature, which was all that had been attempted by his immediate predecessors. This is so far from being true, that the very reverse is the fact. If Sir Joshua did not give these details and peculiarities so much as might be wished, those who went before him did not give them at all. Those pretended general principles of the art, which, it is said, ‘alone give value and dignity to it,’ had been pushed to their extremest absurdity before his time; and it was in getting rid of the mechanical systematic monotony and middle forms, by the help of which Lely, Kneller, Hudson, the French painters, and others, carried on their manufactories of history and face painting, and in returning (as far as he did return) to the truth and force of individual nature, that the secret both of his fame and fortune lay. The pedantic, servile race of artists, whom Reynolds superseded, had carried the abstract principle of improving on nature to such a degree of refinement, that they left it out altogether; and confounded all the varieties and irregularities of form, feature, character, expression or attitude, in the same artificial mould of fancied grace and fashionable insipidity. The portraits of Kneller, for example, seem all to have been turned in a machine; the eye-brows are arched as if by a compass; the mouth curled, and the chin dimpled, the head turned on one side, and the hands placed in the same affected position. The portraits of this mannerist, therefore, are as like one another as the dresses which were then in fashion; and have the same ‘dignity and value’ as the full bottomed wigs which graced their originals. The superiority of Reynolds consisted in his being varied and natural, instead of being artificial and uniform. The spirit, grace, or dignity which he added to his portraits, he borrowed from nature, and not from the ambiguous quackery of rules. His feeling of truth and nature was too strong to permit him to adopt the unmeaning style of Kneller and Hudson; but his logical acuteness was not such as to enable him to detect the verbal fallacies and speculative absurdities which he had learned from Richardson and Coypel; and, from some defects in his own practice, he was led to confound negligence with grandeur. But of this hereafter.
Sir Joseph Reynolds owed his vast superiority over his contemporaries to incessant practice, and habitual attention to nature, to quick organic sensibility, to considerable power of observation, and still greater taste in perceiving and availing himself of those excellences of others, which lay within his own walk of art. We can by no means look upon Sir Joshua as having a claim to the first rank of genius. He would hardly have been a great painter, if other greater painters had not lived before him. He would not have given a first impulse to the art, nor did he advance any part of it beyond the point where he found it. He did not present any new view of nature, nor is he to be placed in the same class with those who did. Even in colour, his pallet was spread for him by the old Masters, and his eye imbibed its full perception of depth and harmony of tone, from the Dutch and Venetian schools, rather than from nature. His early pictures are poor and flimsy. He indeed learned to see the finer qualities of nature through the works of art, which he, perhaps, might never have discovered in nature itself. He became rich by the accumulation of borrowed wealth, and his genius was the offspring of taste. He combined and applied the materials of others to his own purpose, with admirable success; he was an industrious compiler, or skilful translator, not an original inventor in art. The art would remain, in all its essential elements, just where it is, if Sir Joshua had never lived. He has supplied the industry of future plagiarists with no new materials. But it has been well observed, that the value of every work of art, as well as the genius of the artist, depends, not more on the degree of excellence, than on the degree of originality displayed in it. Sir Joshua, however, was perhaps the most original imitator that ever appeared in the world; and the reason of this, in a great measure, was, that he was compelled to combine what he saw in art, with what he saw in nature, which was constantly before him. The portrait-painter is, in this respect, much less liable than the historical painter, to deviate into the extremes of manner and affectation; for he cannot discard nature altogether, under the excuse that she only puts him out. He must meet her, face to face; and if he is not incorrigible, he will see something there that cannot fail to be of service to him. Another circumstance which must have been favourable to Sir Joshua was, that though not the originator in point of time, he was the first Englishman who transplanted the higher excellences of his profession into his own country, and had the merit, if not of an inventor, of a reformer of the art. His mode of painting had the graces of novelty in the age and country in which he lived; and he had, therefore, all the stimulus to exertion, which arose from the enthusiastic applause of his contemporaries, and from a desire to expand and refine the taste of the public.
To an eye for colour and for effects of light and shade, Sir Joshua united a strong perception of individual character,—a lively feeling of the quaint and grotesque in expression, and great mastery of execution. He had comparatively little knowledge of drawing, either as it regarded proportion or form. The beauty of some of his female faces and figures arises almost entirely from their softness and fleshiness. His pencil wanted firmness and precision. The expression, even of his best portraits, seldom implies either lofty or impassioned intellect or delicate sensibility. He also wanted grace, if grace requires simplicity. The mere negation of stiffness and formality is not grace; for looseness and distortion are not grace. His favourite attitudes are not easy and natural, but the affectation of ease and nature. They are violent deviations from a right line. Many of the figures in his fancy-pieces are placed in postures in which they could not remain for an instant without extreme difficulty and awkwardness. We might instance the Girl drawing with a Pencil, and some others. His portraits are his best pictures, and of these his portraits of men are the best; his pictures of children are the next in value. He had fine subjects for the former, from the masculine sense and originality of character of many of the persons whom he painted; and he had also a great advantage (as far as practice went) in painting a number of persons of every rank and description. Some of the finest and most interesting are those of Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith (which is, however, too much a mere sketch), Baretti, Dr. Burney, John Hunter, and the inimitable portrait of Bishop Newton. The elegant simplicity of character, expression, and drawing, preserved throughout the last picture, even to the attitude and mode of handling, discover the true genius of a painter. We also remember to have seen a print of Thomas Warton, than which nothing could be more characteristic or more natural. These were all Reynolds’s intimate acquaintances, and it could not be said of them that they were men of ‘no mark or likelihood.’ Their traits had probably sunk deep into the artist’s mind; he painted them as pure studies from nature, copying the real image existing before him, with all its known characteristic peculiarities; and, with as much wisdom as good-nature, sacrificing the graces on the altar of friendship. They are downright portraits, and nothing more, and they are valuable in proportion. In his portraits of women, on the contrary (with very few exceptions), Sir Joshua appears to have consulted either the vanity of his employers or his own fanciful theory. They have not the look of individual nature, nor have they, to compensate the want of this, either peculiar elegance of form, refinement of expression, delicacy of complexion, or gracefulness of manner. Vandyke’s attitudes have been complained of as stiff and confined. Reynolds, to avoid this defect, has fallen into the contrary extreme of negligence and contortion. His female figures which aim at gentility, are twisted into that serpentine line, the idea of which he ridiculed so much in Hogarth. Indeed, Sir Joshua, in his Discourses (see his account of Correggio), speaks of grace as if it were nearly allied to affectation. Grace signifies that which is pleasing and natural in the posture and motions of the human form, as Beauty is more properly applied to the form itself. That which is stiff, inanimate, and without motion, cannot, therefore, be graceful; but, to suppose that a figure, to be graceful, need only be put into some languishing or extravagant posture, is to mistake flutter and affectation for ease and elegance.
Sir Joshua’s children, as we have said above, are among his chef d’œuvres. The faces of children have in general that want of precision of outline, that prominence of relief, and strong contrast of colour, which were peculiarly adapted to his style of painting. The arch simplicity of expression, and the grotesque character which he has given to the heads of his children, were, however, borrowed from Correggio. His Puck is the most masterly of all these; and the colouring, execution, and character, alike exquisite. The single figure of the Infant Hercules is also admirable. Many of those to which his friends have suggested historical titles are mere common portraits or casual studies. Thus the Infant Samuel is an innocent little child saying its prayers at the bed’s feet: it has nothing to do with the story of the Hebrew prophet. The same objection will apply to many of his fancy-pieces and historical compositions. There is often no connection between the picture and the subject but the name. Even his celebrated Iphigenia (beautiful as she is, and prodigal of her charms) does not answer to the idea of the story. In drawing the naked figure, Sir Joshua’s want of truth and firmness of outline, became more apparent; and his mode of laying on his colours, which, in the face and extremities, was relieved and broken by the abrupt inequalities of surface and variety of tints in each part, produced a degree of heaviness and opacity in the larger masses of flesh-colour, which can indeed only be avoided by extreme delicacy, or extreme lightness of execution.
Shall we speak the truth at once? In our opinion, Sir Joshua did not possess either that high imagination, or those strong feelings, without which no painter can become a poet in his art. His larger historical compositions have been generally allowed to be most liable to objection, in a critical point of view. We shall not attempt to judge them by scientific or technical rules, but make one or two observations on the character and feeling displayed in them. The highest subject which Sir Joshua has attempted was the Count Ugolino, and it was, as might be expected from the circumstances, a total failure. He had, it seems, painted a study of an old beggar-man’s head; and some person, who must have known as little of painting as of poetry, persuaded the unsuspecting artist, that it was the exact expression of Dante’s Count Ugolino, one of the most grand, terrific, and appalling characters in modern fiction. Reynolds, who knew nothing of the matter but what he was told, took his good fortune for granted, and only extended his canvass to admit the rest of the figures. The attitude and expression of Count Ugolino himself, are what the artist intended them to be, till they were pampered into something else by the officious vanity of friends—those of a common mendicant at the corner of a street, waiting patiently for some charitable donation. The imagination of the painter took refuge in a parish work-house, instead of ascending the steps of the Tower of Famine. The hero of Dante is a lofty, high-minded, and unprincipled Italian nobleman, who had betrayed his country to the enemy, and who, as a punishment for his crime, is shut up with his four sons in the dungeon of the citadel, where he shortly finds the doors barred against him, and food withheld. He in vain watches with eager feverish eye the opening of the door at the accustomed hour, and his looks turn to stone; his children one by one drop down dead at his feet; he is seized with blindness, and, in the agony of his despair, he gropes on his knees after them,
——‘Calling each by name
For three days after they were dead.’