The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 10 (of 12)

by William Hazlitt

This account may serve to show that Italy is no longer Italy: why it is so, is a question of greater difficulty. The soil, the climate, the religion, the people are the same; and the men and women in the streets of Rome still look as if they had walked out of Raphael’s pictures; but there is no Raphael to paint them, nor does any Leo arise to encourage them. This seems to prove that the perfection of art is the destruction of art: that the models of this kind, by their accumulation, block up the path of genius; and that all attempts at distinction lead, after a certain period, to a mere lifeless copy of what has been done before, or a vapid, distorted, and extravagant caricature of it. This is but a poor prospect for those who set out late in art, and who have all the excellence of their predecessors, and all the fastidious refinements of their own taste, the temptations of indolence, and the despair of vanity, to distract and encumber their efforts. The artists who revel in the luxuries of genius thus prepared by their predecessors, clog their wings with the honeyed sweets, and get drunk with the intoxicating nectar. They become servitors and lacqueys to Art, not devoted servants of Nature;—the fluttering, foppish, lazy retinue of some great name. The contemplation of unattainable excellence casts a film over their eyes, and unnerves their hands. They look on, and do nothing. In Italy, it costs them a month to paint a hand, a year an eye: the feeble pencil drops from their grasp, while they wonder to see an Englishman make a hasty copy of the Transfiguration, turn over a portfolio of Piranesi’s drawings for their next historical design, and read Winckelman on virtù! We do much the same here, in all our collections and exhibitions of modern or ancient paintings, and of the Elgin marbles, to boot. A picture-gallery serves very well for a place to lounge in, and talk about; but it does not make the student go home and set heartily to work:—he would rather come again and lounge, and talk, the next day, and the day after that. He cannot do all that he sees there; and less will not satisfy his expansive and refined ambition. He would be all the painters that ever were—or none. His indolence combines with his vanity, like alternate doses of provocatives and sleeping-draughts. He copies, however, a favourite picture (though he thinks copying bad in general),—or makes a chalk-drawing of it—or gets some one else to do it for him.—We might go on: but we have written what many people will call a lampoon already!

There is another view of the subject more favourable and encouraging to ourselves, and yet not immeasurably so, when all circumstances are considered. All that was possible had been formerly done for art in Italy, so that nothing more was left to be done. That is not the case with us yet. Perfection is not the insurmountable obstacle to our success: we have enough to do, if we knew how. That is some inducement to proceed. We can hardly be retrograde in our course. But there is a difficulty in the way,—no less than our Establishment in Church and State. Rome was the capital of the Christian and of the civilized world. Her mitre swayed the sceptres of the earth; and the Servant of Servants set his foot on the neck of kings, and deposed sovereigns with the signet of the Fisherman. She was the eye of the world, and her word was a law. She set herself up, and said, ‘All eyes shall see me, and all knees shall bow to me.’ She ruled in the hearts of the people by dazzling their senses, and making them drunk with hopes and fears. She held in her hands the keys of the other world to open or shut; and she displayed all the pomp, the trappings, and the pride of this. Homage was paid to the persons of her ministers; her worship was adorned and made alluring by every appeal to the passions and imaginations of its followers. Art was rendered tributary to the support of this grand engine of power; and Painting was employed, as soon as its fascination was felt, to aid the devotion, and rivet the faith of the Catholic believer. Thus religion was made subservient to interest, and art was called in to aid in the service of this ambitious religion. The patron-saint of every church stood at the head of his altar: the meekness of love, the innocence of childhood, ‘amazing brightness, purity, and truth,’ breathed from innumerable representations of the Virgin and Child; and the Vatican was covered with the acts and processions of Popes and Cardinals, of Christ and the Apostles. The churches were filled with these objects of art and of devotion: the very walls spoke. ‘A present deity they shout around; a present deity the walls and vaulted roofs rebound.’ This unavoidably put in requisition all the strength of genius, and all the resources of enthusiastic feeling in the country. The spectator sympathized with the artist’s inspiration. No elevation of thought, no refinement of expression, could outgo the expectation of the thronging votaries. The fancy of the painter was but a spark kindled from the glow of public sentiment. This was a sort of patronage worth having. The zeal and enthusiasm and industry of native genius was stimulated to works worthy of such encouragement, and in unison with its own feelings. But by degrees the tide ebbed: the current was dried up or became stagnant. The churches were all supplied with altar-pieces: the niches were full, not only with scriptural subjects, but with the stories of every saint enrolled in the calendar, or registered in legendary lore. No more pictures were wanted,—and then it was found that there were no more painters to do them! The art languished, and gradually disappeared. They could not take down the Madona of Foligno, or new-stucco the ceiling at Parma, that other artists might undo what Raphael and Correggio had done. Some of them, to be sure, did follow this desperate course; and spent their time, as in the case of Leonardo’s Last Supper at Milan, in painting over, that is, in defacing the works of their predecessors. Afterwards, they applied themselves to landscape and classical subjects, with great success for a time, as we see in Claude and N. Poussin; but the original state impulse was gone.

What confirms the foregoing account, is, that at Venice, and other places out of the more immediate superintendence of the Papal See, though there also sacred subjects were in great request, yet the art being patronized by rich merchants and nobles, took a more decided turn to portraits;—magnificent indeed, and hitherto unrivalled, for the beauty of the costume, the character of the faces, and the marked pretensions of the persons who sat for them,—but still wildly remote from that public and national interest that it assumed in the Roman school. We see, in like manner, that painting in Holland and Flanders took yet a different direction; was mostly scenic and ornamental, or confined to local and personal subjects. Rubens’s pictures, for example, differ from Raphael’s by a total want of religious enthusiasm and studied refinement of expression, even where the subjects are the same; and Rembrandt’s portraits differ from Titian’s in the grossness and want of animation and dignity of his characters. There was an inherent difference in the look of a Doge of Venice or one of the Medici family, and that of a Dutch burgomaster. The climate had affected the picture, through the character of the sitter, as it affected the genius of the artist (if not otherwise) through the class of subjects he was constantly called upon to paint. What turn painting has lately taken, or is likely to take with us, now remains to be seen.

With the Memoirs of Sir Joshua Mr. Farington very properly connects the history of the institution of the Royal Academy from which he dates the hopes and origin of all sound art in this country. There is here at first sight an inversion of the usual order of things. The institution of Academies in most countries has been coeval with the decline of art: in ours, it seems, it is the harbinger, and main prop of its success. Mr. F. thus traces the outline of this part of his subject with the enthusiasm of an artist, and the fidelity of an historian.

‘At this period (1760) a plan was formed by the artists of the metropolis to draw the attention of their fellow-citizens to their ingenious labours; with a view both to an increase of patronage, and the cultivation of taste. Hitherto works of that kind produced in the country were seen only by a few; the people in general knew nothing of what was passing in the arts. Private collections were then inaccessible, and there were no public ones; nor any casual display of the productions of genius, except what the ordinary sales by auction occasionally offered. Nothing, therefore, could exceed the ignorance of a people who were in themselves learned, ingenious, and highly cultivated in all things, excepting the arts of design.

‘In consequence of this privation, it was conceived that a Public Exhibition of the works of the most eminent Artists could not fail to make a powerful impression; and if occasionally repeated, might ultimately produce the most satisfactory effects. The scheme was no sooner proposed than adopted; and being carried into immediate execution, the result exceeded the most sanguine expectations of the projectors. All ranks of people crowded to see the delightful novelty; it was the universal topic of conversation; and a passion for the arts was excited by that first manifestation of native talent, which, cherished by the continued operation of the same cause, has ever since been increasing in strength, and extending its effects through every part of the Empire.

‘The history of our Exhibitions affords itself the strongest evidence of their impressive effect upon public taste. At their commencement, though men of enlightened minds could distinguish and appreciate what was excellent, the admiration of the many was confined to subjects either gross or puerile, and commonly to the meanest efforts of intellect; whereas, at this time, the whole train of subjects most popular in the earlier exhibitions have disappeared. The loaf and cheese, that could provoke hunger, the cat and canary-bird, and the dead mackarel on a deal board, have long ceased to produce astonishment and delight; while truth of imitation now finds innumerable admirers, though combined with the high qualities of beauty, grandeur, and taste.

‘To our Public Exhibitions, and to arrangements that followed in consequence of their introduction, this change must be chiefly attributed. The present generation appears to be composed of a new, and at least, with respect to the arts, a superior order of beings. Generally speaking, their thoughts, their feelings, and language on these subjects differ entirely from what they were sixty years ago. No just opinions were at that time entertained on the merits of ingenious productions of this kind. The state of the public mind, incapable of discriminating excellence from inferiority, proved incontrovertibly that a right sense of art in the spectator can only be acquired by long and frequent observation; and that, without proper opportunities to improve the mind and the eye, a nation would continue insensible of the true value of the fine arts.

‘The first or probationary Exhibition, which opened April 21st, 1760, was at a large room in the Strand, belonging to the society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, which had then been instituted five or six years. It is natural to conclude, that the first artist in the country was not indifferent to the success of a plan which promised to be so extensively useful. Accordingly, four of his pictures were for the first time here placed before the public, with whom, by the channel now opened, he continued in constant intercourse as long as he lived.

‘Encouraged by the successful issue of the first experiment, the artistical body determined that it should be repeated the following year. Owing, however, to some inconveniences experienced at their former place of exhibition, and also to a desire to be perfectly independent in their proceedings, they engaged, for their next public display, a spacious room near the Spring Gardens’ entrance into the Park; at which place the second Exhibition opened, May 9th, 1761. Here Reynolds sent his fine picture of Lord Ligonier on horseback, a portrait of the Rev. Laurence Sterne, and three others....