‘There is old Proteus coming from the sea,
And wreathed Triton blows his winding horn.’
There, too, are the two St. Jeromes, Correggio’s and Dominichino’s; there is Raphael’s Transfiguration, the St. Mark of Tintoret, Paul Veronese’s Marriage of Cana, the Deluge of Nicholas Poussin, and Titian’s St. Peter Martyr;—all these, and more than these, of which the world is scarce worthy. Yet all these amount to nothing in the eyes of those virtuosos the Cossacks, and their fellow-students of The Times! ‘What’s Hecuba to them, or they to Hecuba?’ But we must be allowed to see with our own eyes, and to have certain feelings of our own. We will not be brayed by these quacks like fools in a mortar. We too, as Mr. Burke expresses it, have ‘real feelings of flesh and blood beating in our bosoms.’ ‘We look up with awe to Kings; with affection to parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility.’ But all this is a machine that goes on of itself, and may be repaired if out of order. We bow willingly to Lords and Commoners, though we know that ‘breath can make them as a breath has made.’ Blücher, Wittgenstein, Winzingerode, and Ktzichigoff, are true heroes; their names become the mouth well, and rouse the ear as the sound of a trumpet; but they are the heroes of a day, and all that they have done might be as well done by others to-morrow. But here it is: once destroy the great monuments of art, and they cannot be replaced. Those mighty geniuses, who have left their works behind them an inheritance to mankind, live but once to do honour to themselves and their nature. ‘But once put out their light, and there is no Promethean heat that can their light relumine.’ Nor ought it ever to be re-kindled, to be extinguished a second time by the harpies of the human race. What have ‘the worshippers of cats and onions’ to do with those triumphs of human genius, which give the eternal lie to their creed? We would therefore recommend these accomplished pioneers of civilisation and social order, after they have done their work at the Louvre, to follow the river-side, and they will come to a bare inclosure, surrounded by four low walls. It is the place where the Bastille stood: let them rear that, and all will be well. And then some whiffling poet who celebrated the fall of that monument of mild paternal sway—that sacred ark of the confidence of Kings—that strong bulwark of ‘time-hallowed laws,’ and precious relic of ‘the good old times,’ in an ode, may hail its restoration in a sonnet!
WILSON’S LANDSCAPES, AT THE BRITISH INSTITUTION
| The Champion.] | [July 17, 1814. |
The landscapes of this celebrated artist may be divided into three classes;—his Italian landscapes, or imitations of the manner of Claude, his copies of English scenery, and his historical compositions.
The first of these are, in our opinion, by much the best; and of the pictures of this class in the present collection, we should, without any hesitation, give the preference to the Apollo and the Seasons, and to the Phaeton. The figures are of course out of the question—(Wilson’s figures are as uncouth and slovenly as Claude’s are insipid and finical)—but the landscape in both pictures is delightful. In looking at them we breath the very air which the scene inspires, and feel the genius of the place present to us. In the first, there is all the cool freshness of a misty spring morning: the sky, the water, the dim horizon all convey the same feeling. The fine grey tone, and varying outline of the hills, the graceful form of the retiring lake, broken still more by the hazy shadows of the objects that repose on its bosom; the light trees that expand their branches in the air, and the dark stone figure and mouldering temple, that contrast strongly with the broad clear light of the rising day, give a charm, a truth, a force and harmony to this landscape, which produce the greater pleasure the longer it is dwelt on.—The distribution of light and shade resembles the effect of light on a globe.
The Phaeton has the dazzling fervid appearance of an autumnal evening; the golden radiance streams in solid masses from behind the flickering clouds; every object is baked in the sun;—the brown foreground, the thick foliage of the trees, the streams shrunk and stealing along behind the dark high banks, combine to produce that richness, and characteristic propriety of effect, which is to be found only in nature, or in art derived from the study and imitation of nature. The glowing splendour of this landscape reminds us of the saying of Wilson, that in painting such subjects, he endeavoured to give the effect of insects dancing in the evening sun. His eye seemed formed to drink in the light. These two pictures, as they have the greatest general effect, are also more carefully finished in the particular details than the other pictures in the collection. This circumstance may be worth the attention of those who are apt to think that strength and slovenliness are the same thing.
Cicero at his Villa is a clear and beautiful representation of nature. The sky is admirable for its pure azure tone. Among the less finished productions of Wilson’s pencil, which display his great knowledge of perspective, are A Landscape with figures bathing, in which the figures are wonderfully detached from the sea beyond; and A View in Italy, with a lake and a little boat, which appear at an immeasurable distance below:—the boat is diminished to
‘A buoy almost too small for sight.’