[14]. The reader is referred to an elegant and beautiful description of Claude, in Mr. Northcote’s Dream of a Painter.
[15]. The idea of the necessity of tampering with nature, or giving what is called a flattering likeness, was universal in this country fifty years ago. This would no doubt be always easy, if the whole of the art consisted in leaving out, and not putting in, what is to be found in nature. It may not be improper to add here, that, in our opinion, Murillo is at the head of the class of painters, who have treated subjects of common life. There is something in his pictures which is not to be found at all in the productions of the Dutch school. After making the colours on the canvass feel and think, the next best thing is to make them breathe and live. But there is in Murillo’s pictures a look of real life, a cordial flow of animal spirits, to be met with no where else. We might here particularly refer to his picture of the Two Spanish Beggar-boys in Mr. Desenfans’ collection, which cannot be forgotten by those who have ever seen it.
[16]. This theory will be found contained in Richardson’s Essay on Painting, and in Coypel’s Discourses to the French Academy.
[17]. This painter’s book of studies from nature, commonly called Liber Veritatis, disproves the truth of Sir Joshua’s assumption, that his landscapes are mere general compositions, for the finished pictures are nearly fac-similes of the original sketches, and what is added to them in point of regularity (if this addition was any advantage) was at least the result of his own genius.
[18]. Sir Joshua considers it as a great disadvantage to Raphael in studying from the antique, that he had not the facilities afforded by modern prints, but was forced to seek out, and copy them one by one with great care. We should be disposed to reverse this conclusion.
[19]. The pictures of Rubens at Blenheim are another proof of this, and certainly finer than the Luxembourg gallery.
[20]. Michael Angelo took his ideas of painting from sculpture, and Sir Joshua from Michael Angelo.
[21]. Why fabulous or obscure?
[22]. The personification of the Deity is another instance of critical contradiction and conceit. Objecting to the figures of Raphael and Michael Angelo as mythological and sensible, he introduces a little golden triangle behind a cloud (triangulum in nube) as a philosophical emblem of the Trinity!
[23]. When the writer of this article was in France twelve years ago, a young French artist began to copy in pencil a figure of the Virgin by Leonardo da Vinci. He returned to it day after day, and week after week. He was always there. He would first retouch an eyebrow or an eyelash, then do something to one of the fingers, then mark in a bit of the drapery, and then return to the face again. All this he did, sometimes leaning over the railing before the picture, sometimes sitting on a stool, mechanically screwed on to it, sometimes standing on one leg. He also relieved the monotony of his undertaking, by retiring to a small distance to compare his copy with the original, or shewed it to some one near him, or went round to look over others who were copying, or stood at the fire for an hour together, or loitered into the sculpture room, or walked round the gallery, and generally observed at his return that Poussin was excellent ‘pour la composition,’ Raphael ‘pour l’expression,’ Titian ‘pour les beaux coloris,’ but that David and his pupils united all these qualities to the fine forms of the antique. At the end of eleven weeks, we left him perfecting his copy. For anything we know, he may be at it still.