■ — ■ 
 


 * 
 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART, 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 BY 
 
 PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTGN, 
 
 AUTHOR OF “A PAINTER’S CAMP,” “ ETCHING AND ETCHERS,” ETC) 
 
 NEW EDITION, REVISED , WITH NOTES, 
 AND AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 “ Fortunate is he who at an early age knows what art isT — Goethe. 
 
 IToKbon : 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1873- 
 
 [ The Right aj Translation and Reproduction is reserved. ] 
 
LONDON 
 
 R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, 
 ^ BREAD STREET HILL 
 
 {J 
 
 THEGErrYCEtWBP 
 
 U3RAW 
 
TO 
 
 WILLIAM WYLD, 
 
 CHEVALIER OF THE LEGION OF HONOUR, 
 
 MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF AMSTERDAM. 
 
 My dear Wyld , — When the “ Painter's Camp" and 
 “ Thoughts about Art ” were issued together as one work , the 
 whole was dedicated to you . Now that they are distinct books , 
 I renew the dedication in each of them; not regretting that 
 my affection for you personally and admiration for your art 
 should be commemorated in two books instead of one . 
 
 Ever yours most faithfully, 
 
 P. G. HAMERTON. 
 

 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In this edition the earlier Essays have been considerably 
 abridged, but scarcely altered otherwise, and more recent ones 
 have been added to bring the work more nearly down to the 
 present date. Notes have been appended to several of the 
 Essays with the same intention. 
 
 Since the public has favoured previous editions with some 
 degree of approbation, an endeavour has been made to give 
 the present one a relative permanence by reprinting nothing of 
 merely temporary interest. Thus, it has been thought advis- 
 able to exclude criticisms of works of art which comparatively 
 few readers were likely to have seen or to remember clearly 
 enough to follow a criticism of them with pleasurable attention ; 
 and only those papers have been retained which might possibly 
 be found readable ten years hence at a distance from London 
 or Paris. “ There is always,” as Emerson says, “ a selection 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 viii 
 
 in writers, and then a selection from the selection.’" This 
 being so, it seems best to rid our books of what might 
 become an impediment to such limited longevity as may 
 be hoped for them. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The sentence of Goethe which I have quoted as a 
 motto on the title-page of this edition shall be the text 
 for a little sermon in this place, intended to serve 
 as a general introduction to the more special questions 
 treated in the course of the volume. 
 
 “ Fortunate is he who at an early age knows what art is ! ” 
 
 It would be difficult in the whole course of ancient 
 or modern literature, to find a sentence relating to art 
 implying so much thought and experience as this. 
 Goethe felt that true knowledge of a subject so difficult 
 and complicated as art, is, if we reach it at all, unhappily 
 only too likely to be reached at a time of life when it 
 comes too late to be carried out effectively in practice, 
 and that therefore the fortunate man,! amongst men to 
 whom art is of any consequence, is he to whom this 
 knowledge comes early, when it may light up for him 
 the obscurity in which he works. And if we had access 
 to Goethe’s mind, such as it was when he wrote that 
 profound and immortal sentence, we should discover, 
 most probably, that he used the word “ art ” in a sense 
 
X 
 
 INTRODUCTION . 
 
 much more comprehensive than the sense that is com- 
 monly attached to it, and that, in his much-embracing 
 view, the good consequences of a knowledge of “ what 
 art is” would extend to many spheres of human 
 activity that are usually believed to lie entirely outside 
 of art ; indeed, it is not impossible that Goethe, like 
 other enlightened men of modern times, may have 
 perceived that art cannot be understood, until so much 
 of life and nature is understood that the mastery of 
 this single subject implies at least an intelligent 
 appreciation of almost every other subject. 
 
 The reader will not expect me to attempt, in the 
 narrow limits of an Introduction, an explanation of 
 “ what art is.” The whole volume is merely tentative 
 towards such an explanation; and indeed the whole 
 of that rich and constantly increasing art literature 
 which (to the displeasure of the merely practical) has in 
 modern times investigated almost every field of artistic 
 labour and enterprise, is nothing more than a very large 
 and continuous attempt to understand “ what art is.” 
 
 Still it is possible, even in a space so limited as this, 
 to lead the minds of some readers in such a direction 
 that they may at least appreciate the full importance of 
 the problem, and become heartily interested in it. And, 
 to begin with, let me contend against the too prevalent 
 idea that art is only a product of the richest and most 
 civilized communities, and not a thing of general human 
 concern, not a product of human nature outside of 
 academical influences. The simple truth is that wher- 
 ever man has fixed his residence, from the equator to 
 the poles, he has always been either an artist or a 
 promoter of art, certainly not always highly cultivated 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xi 
 
 in these capacities, yet sufficiently for the satisfaction of 
 the artistic wants which he felt as they developed them- 
 selves within him. The opinion that art is to be found 
 nowhere but in Europe, and even in Europe hardly 
 outside of the Latin races in modern times, or the 
 Grecian and Roman races in antiquity, is one of those 
 opinions which appear to us less and less reasonable 
 and admissible as we gradually advance in knowledge. 
 Our most accomplished colourists have the most serious 
 admiration for the perfect colouring of the richly- 
 endowed Chinese ; our ablest draughtsmen acknowledge 
 the magnificent power of abstraction that was displayed 
 by the national artists of Japan, at a time when Europe 
 and her culture were absolutely unheard of there. Nor 
 is it only these highly gifted and ancient races who 
 have produced art to which no cultivated European can 
 refuse his admiration ; for in the art of every country, 
 even of the most savage tribes — with the exception of 
 those rare instances when man is simply brutal — the 
 artistic instinct finds its expression, often a strangely 
 interesting and beautiful expression, in the adornment 
 of the things that are regarded with love and pride, or 
 with feelings of religious veneration, in the carving of 
 temple-pillar or war-canoe, in the embroidery of the 
 mantle or the tent. 
 
 And as we look far back in time, to ancient Egypt 
 or Assyria, or to the oldest Indian civilization, a time so 
 early in the history of humanity that its most primitive 
 instincts may be supposed to have operated without the 
 restraint of the critical habit that grows upon us after- 
 wards, we perceive that these races had art — an art full 
 of might and majesty, whose silent language is still 
 
• XU 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 intelligible to us, and conveys to us a clear conception of 
 their mind and life. We are a long way past the young 
 intolerance of criticism that can only read the art of 
 some favoured epoch which may happen to be in fashion 
 as a subject of present investigation. It has become 
 plain to us that every art which is thoroughly genuine, 
 every art which is the spontaneous expression of a 
 people’s taste and feeling, has in it some precious and 
 incommunicable quality, which is a part of the great 
 mind of humanity, setting itself forth in the most per- 
 fect shape. Nobody in these days would deserve the 
 reputation of a critic who had not powers of sympathy 
 and imagination sufficiently large in their activity to 
 enable him at least to enjoy both the art of the time of 
 Pericles, and the art that flourished under Saint Louis. 
 But the perfect critic would have a sympathy almost 
 divine in its universality. He would perceive that what 
 are narrowly called the defects of any kind of art that 
 is really a genuine product of human nature (and not a 
 pastiche) are truly inseparable from its qualities, and if 
 rightly considered will be found to be qualities them- 
 selves. Let me take an illustration from one of the arts 
 of utility, from ship-building. It is now admitted by 
 everybody who understands boats and ships that the 
 “ perfect ship ” is an impossibility, because what we call 
 qualities are destructive of each other, so that if one of 
 them is highly developed it must be at the expense of 
 another. And what is now the consequence, in ship- 
 building, of the admission of this great truth ? The 
 consequence is that men no longer vainly endeavour 
 to unite all the qualities in one vessel, but determine 
 before they begin to construct, which quality is to be 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xiii 
 
 predominant, and then knowingly make partial sacrifices 
 of the rest. Just so in our edifices on the land, it has 
 been well observed by M. Charles Blanc that though 
 every building must necessarily have height, length, and 
 width, we do not strongly feel the effect of any one of 
 these qualities until the others have been purposely 
 sacrificed to it; so that even a small chapel will seem 
 lofty if only it is long and narrow, and a cathedral will 
 seem crushed and low, though it be thrice the height of 
 the chapel in feet and inches, if it be wide and short 
 proportionately. 
 
 Now if we keep this principle well in view whilst 
 studying the art of different times and nations, and 
 even of contending schools in one country, or of indi- 
 vidual artists in one school, we shall clearly see that the 
 variety of art is due to the predominance, at one time 
 of one quality, at another time of another quality, and 
 that consequently there can be no uniform rule of merit 
 in artistic production except this, that every kind of art 
 may be considered good which sets forth any one quality 
 to the best advantage. 
 
 There is not space, in the limits of an Introduction, 
 to attempt an exposition of the nature of these qualities, 
 but I may affirm as much as this, that art is always 
 human , and that every attempt which has been made 
 hitherto (there have been several such attempts) to carry 
 art outside of human prejudice and affection into the 
 region of pure truth has always either ended in the 
 death of fine art, or else caused a strong reaction 
 towards the exaggerations of personal passion. If you 
 divest art of its human element, you bring it to the 
 condition of a scientific diagram or of a photograph, 
 
XIV 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and we all feel that there is an essential difference 
 between these and the productions of what we are 
 accustomed to call fine art. There is a difference, an 
 essential and ineffaceable difference. You will find, 
 indeed, in one of the writings of Leonardo da Vinci a 
 statement to the effect that the looking-glass is the 
 master of painters, and that the way to test the excel- 
 lence of a picture is to set by its side a mirror con- 
 taining a reflection of the reality. Now, although we 
 are well accustomed to hear artists say foolish things 
 about their art, it may be doubted whether any artist 
 ever gave expression to a doctrine so erroneous in so 
 many various ways as this doctrine is ; and the error of 
 it is most especially remarkable for its simplicity, for 
 the sort of simplicity which usually belongs to childish- 
 ness and absolute inexperience. If it were possible to 
 paint a picture exactly answering to Leonardo’s ideal 
 of perfection, that is to say a picture just like a reflec- 
 tion in a mirror, the work when done would not be a 
 work of fine art, for the human element would be 
 entirely eliminated. It would be a mere reflection, like 
 a photograph, with the addition of colour, and even the 
 colour of it would not be what artists understand by 
 colour, but a reflection of the hues of nature, no more 
 like artistic colour than the accidental jumbling together 
 of different shapes in a photograph is like thoughtful 
 artistic composition. Neither would there be a single 
 line, no not so much as one fold of drapery, entirely 
 satisfactory to the artistic sense within us. It is im- 
 possible, as Leslie discovered, when attempts were made 
 in society to copy famous pictures by tableaux vivants , 
 it is impossible to arrange the real drapery as great 
 
INTRODUCTION, 
 
 xv 
 
 artists arrange drapery on their canvases. Natural 
 drapery will not fall so, or stand so, and cannot be 
 made to stand so. But I may go still further than this, 
 and affirm, which I do boldly, that all those accents of 
 line and of colour which constitute so much of the 
 charm and quality of all painting worthy of the name 
 of fine art are invariably deviations from the precise 
 truth in one way or another, being, as Proudhon said, 
 either laudatory or depreciatory, either augmentative or 
 diminutive ; indeed, the whole creative and executive 
 power of a great artist depends upon the skill with 
 which he intentionally or unconsciously deviates from 
 the literal truth of nature. In Raphael the deviation 
 was clearly intentional, for he plainly said that he did 
 not paint what is, but that which ought to be ; and we 
 have evidence in comparing his studies with the pictures 
 he painted from them how much he deviated from the 
 truth, and how masterly and right his deviations were. 
 In Leonardo’s practical work the departures from accu- 
 racy may have been unconscious, as his doctrine of the 
 mirror appears to show ; but though not anything like 
 so much of an artist as either Raphael or Titian, he 
 was still far too much the artist to let the mirror be his 
 master. Nobody ever saw in a looking-glass, and it 
 may be safely affirmed that nobody will ever behold in 
 any looking-glass not bewitched by necromancy, such 
 an arrangement of form and line as we have in Leo- 
 nardo’s Last Supper. 
 
 Now there has existed for the space of nearly a 
 generation in England a theory about art, which future 
 ages will probably look back upon as one of the most 
 curiously interesting of bygone popular delusions. 
 
.XVI 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Stated quite fairly, and not maliciously, the theory was 
 briefly this : “ Art has but one firm basis, the truth of 
 
 nature ; and sound criticism has but one method, to 
 ascertain in the first place what the truth is, and then 
 to praise artists or condemn them exactly in proportion 
 to their conformity or non-conformity to the truth.” 
 No imaginable theory of fine art could have been more 
 agreeable to the English mind. People who all their 
 lives long had felt an uneasy self-consciousness that 
 they really knew nothing about the matter, and could 
 not see into it with the most patient looking, were 
 delighted to be told that art, after all, was merely 
 the representation of nature as it is, and that whoever 
 would carefully observe what nature is, might become 
 like that fortunate young man of Goethe’s who knew 
 “ what art is.” Before the discovery of this doctrine art 
 had been insaisissable ; people felt that it had a sort of 
 existence, as a rainbow has, but it was constantly eluding 
 critical rules and definitions and could not be grasped 
 and fixed. After trying to lay hold of that rainbow for 
 generations, what a comfort it was to have art made as 
 positive and measurable as a park-wall, to be able to 
 go straight up to it, and touch it, and take out one’s 
 pocket foot-rule, and settle its merits indisputably by a 
 simple arithmetical operation ! The new doctrine har- 
 monized so nicely, too, with the conception of art which 
 naturally exists in every primitive and ignorant under- 
 standing ! For the truly ignorant person, the person 
 in a state of rude uncultivated nature, such as the native 
 Hottentot, the English Philistine, the French bourgeois 
 and the like, has but one uniform conception of graphic 
 art when he sees it, and that is the simple copy ism of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XVII 
 
 objects. If the picture pleases him, he does not praise it 
 for fine arrangements of colour or light-and-shade^ but 
 for imitative fidelity : if he blames it, the blame does 
 not attach to any artistic imprudence or stupidity, but 
 to the neglect of imitative truth— a neglect of which the 
 greatest masters have left us the most striking examples. 
 The notion of an artist's work which exists amongst the 
 ignorant, and which the new doctrine about the truth of 
 nature fostered and encouraged to the uttermost, is that 
 he is a sort of living photographic camera having for 
 its business to copy faithfully whatever is set before 
 it. And the new criticism congratulated itself on the 
 establishment of an eternal criterion, and expected by 
 means of a little scientific preparation, a little botany, a 
 little geology, a little meteorology, and even perhaps a 
 little animal anatomy, to fix and regulate for ever the 
 rank of a class of workers, whose essential qualities can 
 no more be ascertained by positive science than the 
 course of a balloon can be ascertained by a reference to 
 Bradshaw. 
 
 A picture might be painted, a statue might be carved, 
 which should be patiently faithful to nature yet desti- 
 tute of the qualities of art, and wholly unworthy to 
 occupy a place in any well-chosen collection. So long 
 as the painter or sculptor is bound down to the literal 
 truth, his artistic faculties are not allowed to operate. 
 Art only begins with the liberty of the artist, as flight 
 only begins with the liberty of the bird. 
 
 Let me endeavour to show how the artistic faculties 
 will operate in a particular case. Let us suppose that 
 a painter who has the artistic gifts in their full strength 
 and energy, and is not trammelled by any theory 
 
 b 
 
xviii 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of criticism or exigence of customers, takes a canvas 
 with the simple intention of doing with it what seems to 
 him best. He has a certain conception in his own mind, 
 and his purpose in painting is twofold : he wants to see 
 his idea realized on canvas, and he wishes to communi- 
 cate it to others. The idea, to begin with, has been re- 
 ceived from or suggested by something that the artist has 
 seen in the world of nature. This is inevitable, for art is 
 always based upon nature in this way. But now let me 
 attempt to show how incompatible are the realization of 
 the artistic idea and the simple copyism of the material 
 facts by which the idea was suggested. The impression 
 the artist has received depends on the condition of his 
 mind, a condition resulting from the most complex 
 causes, from his own physical and mental organization, 
 from his past experience of all kinds, and from every- 
 thing which at the time he received the impression could 
 even temporarily affect his mental state. Now it is 
 a necessity of all such peculiar mental states that they 
 accept some parts of the reality and reject other parts, 
 that they proceed by selection and emphasis, that they 
 delight in certain objects or qualities, and ignore other 
 objects and qualities as completely as if they did not 
 exist, and that they present what has affected them in 
 a manner as far as possible removed from judicial im- 
 partiality. Suppose, then, that an artist in this partial 
 and passionate state of mind (without which he cannot 
 be an artist) endeavours to place on record the clear 
 perceptions and intense emotions that he feels, how is it 
 possible that in the vulgar sense of the words he should 
 give the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
 truth ? What he will practically do is this. He will 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xix 
 
 give invention, and partial truth, and emotion mixed with 
 truth. His constant endeavour will be to present an 
 accurate image not of the actual incident or scene, but 
 of the condition of his own mind as it happened to be 
 affected by the incident or scene. And in order to 
 effect this he will exaggerate some things and diminish 
 others, and omit many other things altogether ; whilst 
 throughout what he does consider necessary to his work, 
 the same exaggeration, diminution, and rejection will ope- 
 rate incessantly even in the most apparently trifling de- 
 tails, so that no single object will be presented exactly as 
 it is, but they will all be shaped anew by the artist’s 
 governing will, to form no longer a part of the world of 
 nature, but to be moulded and fitted to their places in 
 the other world of art. It is the exercise of this govern- 
 ing, ordering will ( ordering , I say advisedly, for its pur- 
 pose is a new and beautiful order) that is the great 
 business of the artist, and artists take rank in propor- 
 tion as this governing power is strong in them ; it is 
 present in all true artists, for without it there is no fine 
 art, but it is strong only in great ones, and strongest 
 in the greatest. 
 
 We are told sometimes, in little treatises on the 
 practice of oil and water-colour painting, that colour 
 is peculiarly difficult because it depends so much upon 
 relation ; so that if you give a dab with a brush charged 
 with a mixed tint on one part of a picture, and then give 
 another dab with the same brush, charged with the same 
 tint on another part of the picture, the two dabs will 
 appear entirely different in hue. There can be no doubt 
 about the truth of this, but the curious thing is that so 
 few of those who insist upon it seem to be aware that 
 
XX 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the same law of relativity governs everything in the 
 world of art, riot colour only, but everything whatever 
 that can have any influence upon the spectator. To 
 exercise the great art-faculty is to extract power from 
 these relations ; and the copyism of objects, in isolated 
 studies, does not exercise the high art-faculty at all. 
 Goethe perceived this long since. He perceived that the 
 effect of everything depends upon its surroundings, and 
 that to detach and isolate is to destroy. He found out 
 that if you go and draw an oak-tree without the back- 
 ground that it had in nature, you can never make it 
 look like the same oak, do what you will. Every obser- 
 vant person must have noticed how different a man we 
 have known at his own home looks when we meet him 
 elsewhere, from the absence of those surroundings which 
 were a part of him in our conception. 
 
 Enough has been said to put the reader in possession 
 of the leading idea which governs my thinking about 
 the fine arts, an idea which is practically set forth in all 
 great art whatever, but which has sometimes been lost 
 sight of by modern craftsmen and modern writers upon 
 art. I maintain that in every work which pretends to 
 be a work of art, the art itself, and not what is vulgarly 
 supposed to be the subject, is the chief thing, and that 
 the art consists in invention, selection, omission, accent, 
 passion, partiality, exaggeration, diminution, glorification 
 and condemnation, all which are in open defiance of 
 the rigidity of literalism. And if anyone, after this 
 declaration of independence, should inquire how much 
 natural truth may, after all, be considered necessary to 
 fine painting, I can only answer, just as much as the 
 artist chooses, and the public of his time will exact from 
 
INTRODUCTION, \ 
 
 xxi 
 
 him on the one hand, or tolerate on the other. The one 
 thing to be attended to is to avoid discussions about 
 truth. If the public happens to be knowing and scien- 
 tific, it is as well to give it truth enough to prevent it 
 from thinking about scientific deficiencies when it ought 
 to be impressed by art ; but if, on the other hand, the 
 public is very ignorant, the wise artist will refrain as 
 much as possible from troubling it with facts that are 
 strange to it, that it cannot possibly understand, and 
 which will only vex its mind, and make it incapable of 
 quiet sympathy and enjoyment. The embarrassment of 
 the modern artist is that his public is both scientific and 
 ignorant at the same time, so that he may offend by. 
 knowing too little, and offend by knowing too much. 
 
 What the artist really needs, and what is most diffi- 
 cult for him in the circumstances of modern life, is to 
 preserve the artistic state of mind in all its purity and 
 vigour, and not to allow himself to be drawn away into 
 other states of mind incompatible with that which 
 alone can render great production possible to him. He 
 is not so much in danger from the commercial or poli- 
 tical, as from the literary and scientific states. In litera- 
 ture he may find strength or weakness — strength in the 
 great old poets who could see and live in the mighty 
 imaginative temper, but weakness in the incessant 
 arguments and controversies of the hour. In science he 
 may find some help to memory of things, and some- 
 times (but this merely in the grandest results of science, 
 not in its slow and delicate processes) a stimulus to his 
 sense of wonder and a relief from his special work. 
 But the only literary spirit which is compatible with 
 great art is the spirit of the noblest inventive literature, 
 
XXII 
 
 INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 not the temperance of philosophy nor the pride of eru- 
 dition, and the only science that is safe for an artist is 
 that which is free from any eagerness to demonstrate. 
 The artist ought to believe in art and rely upon art, 
 and live in it, for in the palace of the soul are many 
 mansions, and his is not the least capacious nor the 
 least permanent, whilst we are all aware that it is cer- 
 tainly not the least beautiful, 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 P 
 
 I. That certain Artists should write on Art , . i 
 
 II. Painting from Nature . . io 
 
 III. Painting from Memoranda .... a ... . 33 
 
 IV. The Relation between Photography and Painting 52 
 
 V. Word-Painting and ColoUr-Painting a . . . . 66 
 
 VI. Transcendentalism in Painting ....... So 
 
 The Law of Progress in Art ... a .. . . 94 
 
 VIII. Artists in Fiction ... ......... ioi 
 
 IX. Picture Buying . . . . ........ . 125 
 
 X. Fame ...... ...... a ... . 144 
 
 XI. Art Criticism 151 
 
 XII. Analysis and Synthesis IN Painting ..... 166 
 
 XIII. The Reaction from Pre-RaFhaelitisM . . . . 184 
 
 XIV. The Artistic SFirit . . ........ . 192 
 
 XV. The Place of Landscape-Painting amongst the 
 
 Fine Arts ... .......... . 207 
 
 XVI. The Housing of National Art Treasures . . . 235 
 
 XVII. On the Artistic Observation of Nature . . . 250 
 
 XVIII. Proudhon as a Writer on Art .... ... 265 
 
XXIV 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XIX. Two Art Philosophers . . 293 
 
 XX. Leslie 304 
 
 XXI. Picture-Dealers 324 
 
 XXII. Thorvaldsen 331 
 
 XXIII. The Philosophy of Etching . 338 
 
 XXIV. Amateur Painters 350 
 
 XXV. Can Science help Art? 365 
 
 XXVI. Picture-frames . 368 
 
 XXVII. Autographic Art , . . . 374 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 i. 
 
 THAT CERTAIN ARTISTS SHOULD WRITE ON ART. 
 
 The public use of literature may be comprehensively defined 
 in a single word. All literature is a record. The important 
 service it renders to mankind is the perpetual registering of the 
 experience of the race. Without literature it is inconceivable that 
 any race of men could reach a degree of culture comparable 
 to ours, because, without a literature to record it, the expe- 
 rience of dead generations could never be fully available for 
 the living one. Oral and practical tradition no doubt have 
 their use, as we see to this day in many trades and professions ; 
 but this tradition is in our time nearly always aided by, or 
 based upon, written records. And nothing is more charac- 
 teristic of our age than its constantly increasing tendency to 
 commit everything to writing. The most ordinary professions 
 and trades have their literatures, — trades which not long since 
 were merely traditional. The experience of the race is now 
 registered by literature in all its departments. Our novelists 
 paint the manners of their time. 
 
 How precious such verbal paintings will be in a thousand 
 years ! Thackeray and Balzac will make it possible for our 
 descendants to live over again in the England and France of 
 to-d^y. Seen in this light, the novelist has a higher office than 
 
 7E B 
 
2 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 merely to amuse his contemporaries; he hands them down all 
 living and talking together to the remotest ages. When the 
 new Houses of Parliament and the new Louvre shall be as 
 antique to others as the Colosseum is to us, they shall know 
 what manner of men and women first walked under the freshly 
 carved arcades of the new palace on the banks of the Seine, 
 
 ' and saw the tall towers grow year after year like young trees at 
 Westminster. 
 
 This view of all literature as a register of human expe- 
 rience may be demurred to with regard to some of its depart- 
 ments. It may be objected, for example, that our contempo- 
 rary poetry is not a record of our experience. But it is 
 a record of our feelings , and these are a part, and a very 
 important part, of the experience of all cultivated persons. 
 A poem which has been greatly popular in its own time, even 
 though it may bear no very obvious relation to it, must never- 
 theless have been in close unison with much contemporary 
 sentiment. 
 
 I mentioned fiction and poetry first because they seemed 
 the weakest point of my argument ; but when I come to 
 periodical literature no one will for a moment dispute that it is 
 strictly a register of all the thoughts and acts of humanity, 
 day by day, week by week, and month by month. In the files 
 of the newspapers our descendants will possess a full and 
 detailed record, not only of our acts, but of our most transient 
 opinions and hopes. A number of the Times has not done its 
 work when you or I have read it. Other eyes will read it 
 after a thousand years with all the advantages of that immense 
 experience behind them ! They will see us timidly delaying, 
 or earnestly advocating, changes whose vast results shall to them 
 be matter of history. 
 
 Such history as that of Macaulay and Motley is a register of 
 the retrospective kind. It is like the early chapters of an auto- 
 biography. In an autobiography we have an accurate type of 
 mankind’s ways of placing itself on record. Such records or 
 memories of their life as childhood and youth preserve to 
 maturity are afterwards sifted, judged, arranged, and re-written 
 by the grown man in the full light of his experience. Yet the 
 past is continually slipping away from us, and, though we keep 
 its results, we forget its circumstances. So all that we call 
 history is no better than the early or introductory chapter of 
 
THAT CERTAIN ARTISTS, <&V. 
 
 3 
 
 Humanity’s autobiography . 1 Its best history is its diary ; that 
 is, its daily newspapers. For histories, though they may pre- 
 serve facts, which is not always to be said of them, inevitably 
 lose impressions, whereas journalists write down the most tran- 
 sient impressions of the intelligent class in their time. We may 
 therefore look upon the newspaper not merely as a register of 
 facts, but a record of thoughts. 
 
 The technical literature which has taken such a vast develop- 
 ment of late is, however, the strongest basis of the argument I 
 wish to enforce. The immense quantity of books published 
 within the last twenty years for the especial use of particular 
 trades and professions is one of the best results of the increase 
 of population, and the consequent increase of professional 
 readers. It is, perhaps, in law and medicine that this develop- 
 ment is most remarkable ; but it extends to all trades, for almost 
 every mechanic can read, and cheap technical literature is 
 brought within the reach of all purses. Mr. Weale, of Holborn, 
 hasjpublished a very valuable series of cheap technical works 
 at a shilling a volume. M. Roret, of Paris, has issued an im- 
 mense encyclopaedia, including every conceivable trade from 
 common blacksmith’s work up to religious architecture. 
 
 In reviewing all these technical works, the first fact that 
 strikes one with regard to their authors is, that they are none 
 of them what we call literary men. They are not men who 
 live by literature as a profession ; they live by other trades or 
 professions, and resort to literature only as a means of com- 
 municating to others their professional observations. 
 
 It therefore appears that literature is not an exclusive pro- 
 fession, but a common magazine to which intelligent men of all 
 classes, and of every occupation, contribute the results of their 
 particular experience. This is the point which I desire the 
 reader to concede. If he maintains, as some literary men do, 
 that literature is a profession which no one can enter without 
 an exclusively literary training, if he believes that no one 
 ought to write who does anything else, it will be necessary 
 for me to argue my point more elaborately. 
 
 There is no proof that literature is an exclusive profes- 
 sion ; if it is one, it presents the singular peculiarity that its 
 
 1 And it has exactly the same defects which attach to the earlier chapters 
 of all autobiographies, for it does not describe the reality of youth, but 
 Maturity's conception of what youth must have been.. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ATT, 
 
 professors are often surpassed by amateurs. It is not at all on 
 the same footing with painting in this respect. The art of 
 pictorial expression is quite technical, and peculiar to a certain 
 limited class of students ; the art of verbal expression is com- 
 mon to all men who can talk, and the art of literary expression 
 to all who can write a letter. 
 
 It is not too much to say that, of the great writers of the 
 world, at least one-half have been amateurs. Chaucer and 
 Milton were ; and even in the case of Shakespeare, though his 
 plays made money, his authorship was secondary to his busi- 
 ness of theatrical manager. Scott and Talfourd were both 
 lawyers, not bred especially to literature ; Kingsley is a clergy- 
 man, Ricardo was a banker, so was Grote ; and John Stuart 
 Mill was a hard-working servant of the East India Company. 
 Sidney Dobell was a wine-merchant, and followed that busi- 
 ness assiduously fifteen years. Samuel Warren is an indus- 
 trious lawyer, Mr. Trollope a clerk in the Civil Service, and the 
 author of u Tom Brown’s School-days” a barrister, whom I 
 have heard solicitors speak highly of in his professional capa- 
 city. These are names which occur to me whilst writing 
 rapidly. If I took time to reflect, I should find a host of other 
 instances of amateurs who have succeeded in literature ; but 
 this is needless. It is enough to suggest a truth so obvious. 
 It can require no accumulation of evidence to show, what ail 
 men’s experience proves, that the faculty of expressing one- 
 self well in written language is by no means peculiar to those 
 who . earn their living by it. The contributors to our best reviews 
 are not invariably writers by profession, and their editors are 
 only too happy to receive good articles written by intelligent 
 men in the intervals of quite different avocations. The last 
 phrase reminds me of a book called “ Essays written in the In- 
 tervals of Business,” which has passed through many editions, 
 — a fact which of itself proves that a man of business may 
 successfully occupy himself with literature. 
 
 No merely literary man can, as such, be expected to write 
 any one of those very useful and even necessary books which 
 treat of subjects that require great special experience. Literary 
 men never do write such books unless prepared for them, as 
 Lewes was for his “ Essays on Physiology,” by a distinct pro- 
 fessional education, quite apart from purely literary culture. 
 If by accident a man who has been intended by his parents for 
 
THAT CERTAIN ARTISTS, &c. 
 
 5 
 
 a lawyer, and educated for the law, and who has practised for 
 some years as a lawyer, afterwards abandons the law for general 
 literature, he may compose a legal treatise ; but a magazine 
 writer by profession, who had never received any legal educa- 
 tion, could not. 
 
 There is no subject in the world of which the mere writer-of- 
 all-work is less competent to treat than art. It is eminently a 
 subject requiring practical experience and especial study. It 
 cannot be grasped in its large relations by minds habitually 
 occupied with other matters, and whose only claim to treat of 
 it is their faculty of verbal expression. It demands great 
 personal devotion, and untiring enthusiasm. It requires also 
 much technical knowledge. The devotion and the enthusiasm 
 are occasionally found in men who are not practically artists, 
 thed£chnical experience never. 
 
 This is the reason why our art criticism is for the most part 
 so unprofitable. Even the best of it generally deals with works 
 of art in their intellectual aspect only, with a slight admixture 
 of technical jargon, but no intelligent reference to the facts of 
 nature. 
 
 I do not, however, argue that artists should write criticism. 
 It may be undesirable that painters should spend any of their 
 time or energy in what would in their case be too likely to 
 degenerate into personal recrimination. It is true that literary 
 men attack each other’s works from behind the shelter of the 
 anonymous, and a few of the best art criticisms are contributed 
 to the periodicals by artists. But this is not a desirable direc- 
 tion for the talents of an artist who writes. His especial office 
 with the pen is to contribute to the general enlightenment on 
 the subject of art in its relation to nature, in ways which need 
 not involve attacks on his living rivals. 
 
 I was present on one occasion when a distinguished painter 
 was asked by a young author how it happened that artists so rarely 
 wrote upon their own art. “ Because,” said the painter, “ they 
 are so generally deficient in the first rudiments of a literary 
 education.” I believe that answer, however unfavourable to 
 artists, to have been much nearer to the truth than the common 
 theory that there is something essentially incompatible between 
 the literary and artistic intellects. Certainly Ary Scheffer re- 
 cognized no such incompatibility when he said, that “pour etre 
 artiste, il taut avoir en soi un sentiment eleve', ou une convic- 
 
6 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 lion puissante, digne d’etre exprime par une langue qui peut 
 etre indifferemment la prose, la poesie, la musique, la sculpture, 
 ou la peinture. ,, 
 
 Persons to whom the mere act of writing is the most arduous 
 of all exertion are not likely to spend more time upon it than 
 they are absolutely compelled so to spend. This simple com 
 sideration is sufficient to account for the fact that artists, in 
 general, are not communicative by means of the pen. IT they 
 were all educated in literature before they began to paint, as 
 clergymen and lawyers are before they begin to preach and to 
 practise, artist writers would, probably, bear as great a propor- 
 tion to the numbers employed in their art as legal and clerical 
 authors to the other members of their professions. And if 
 painters were so educated, perhaps they would not paint worse 
 for it. It does not follow that T urner would have painted less 
 skilfully if he had had such a degree of education as every 
 schoolboy of twelve years old ought to possess. It he had 
 been able to write good English, and even spell such French 
 words as he required as titles to his drawings, he might, never- 
 theless, in spite of these attainments, have reached his present 
 rank as a landscape painter. 
 
 In the case of artists who can write and do not, there may be 
 two reasons for their silence. The first is, that when a success- 
 ful painter lays down the brush to take up a pen, he is sacri- 
 ficing, for each hour that he writes, a certain calculable sum of 
 money • another reason is a strong conviction, common to most 
 artists, that if they were to say anything about their art it would 
 be of no use, because the public could not understand it. 
 
 This feeling has hitherto been well founded, but there can 
 be no doubt that a certain portion of the public is advancing 
 towards such a knowledge of art as may enable it to receive 
 the teaching even of artists themselves. The consequence 
 of this, and its inevitable result in creating a demand for a 
 kind of literature relating to the fine arts, will be, that unless 
 artists are themselves prepared to supply such a literature, they 
 will be supplanted by dilettants, who thus acquire an influence 
 over public opinion on matters connected with art to which 
 they have no natural right. On the other hand, the public 
 itself must be retarded in its art culture by the dissemination 
 of crude and imperfect theories. And since it has not time to 
 investigate such matters for itself, and must alwavs take them 
 
THA T CERTAIN ARTISTS , &c. 
 
 7 
 
 on trust from some one in temporary authority, society will 
 set up its favourite writers as rulers, against whose verdict 
 there will be no appeal. It appears therefore desirable that 
 a few artists in each generation should themselves contri- 
 bute to the literature of art, in order to maintain the influence 
 which their knowledge entitles them to. For as the priesthood 
 in every religion takes into its own hands the production of a 
 theological literature based on its especial tenets, so, it appears, 
 ought painters to lead the literature of their own art, though I 
 would not discourage intelligent amateurs from freely con- 
 tributing to it. — 1 86 1 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 Since this little essay was written in 1S61, I have had farther 
 experience, especially in the foundation of an artistic periodical, 
 the Portfolio , which may throw some additional light upon this 
 subject. I still consider the persistent silence of accomplished 
 artists to be an evil for general art-culture, but I have little hope 
 of seeing this evil remedied by any serious literary activity on their 
 part. A most distinguished painter, who is now also deservedly 
 celebrated as a poet, told me some years before he became known 
 in literature, that although he delighted in literary composition, the 
 subject of art was the very last subject he would ever feel induced 
 to write about. Another English artist, a man of general culture, 
 told me that although he wrote very frequently for his own pleasure, 
 his writings always, by some irresistible inward necessity, took a 
 purely lyrical form, and when I asked for articles he sent me 
 sonnets. An eminent living sculptor wrote a successful poem, but 
 felt no inclination to express himself in reflective prose. The 
 difficulty appears to be this. Perfect artistic execution is com- 
 patible with the most narrow and erroneous theories, and the 
 perfection of it is often positively enhanced and favoured by such 
 narrowness, which concentrates practical effort ; whereas to write 
 well we need the breadth and tolerance of philosophy, with its 
 capacity for sympathising with the most various conditions of 
 feeling. For example (I am alluding here to living men, in France 
 and England, well known to me personally), one artist will despi:-* 
 
8 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ATT. 
 
 all Gothic architecture together as a monstrosity, the product of 
 mental disease, whilst another will come back from Rome and tell 
 you in perfect good faith that Michael Angelo was nothing but a 
 vulgar stupid brute. If it were possible for me to publish' the 
 opinions which artists have expressed in my hearing, in the con- 
 fidence of private conversation, the collection would fill most 
 readers with the utmost astonishment. Let me mention two or 
 three such opinions as examples of what we have to be prepared 
 for. Two painters visited the great French Exhibition of 1867, and 
 afterwards affirmed that there was nothing in that collection worth 
 looking at. An eminent English painter expressed a hearty con- 
 tempt for all water-colours, and wondered why I ever went to see 
 any ; another despised all engravers and engravings ; a third 
 wondered how I could take any interest in etching. Then, in the 
 way of particular criticism, one painter affirms that Mulready 
 never could draw at all, and that at forty years old he would have 
 been refused admission, as a pupil, at the school of fine art in 
 Paris ; another says that Hunt is absolutely ignorant of the first 
 principles of colouring ; a third that Gerome never produced any- 
 thing deserving serious attention ; whereas some utterly unknown 
 man is the greatest artist since Raphael. Now all these prejudices 
 do no harm to the artists who are possessed by them, but they 
 would be a most serious impediment to a writer. It is desirable for 
 practical persons that they should have whatever prejudices may 
 foster their practical energy, but it is not desirable for a m..n who 
 attempts to lead others in their thinking that his head should, be a 
 chaos of blundering injustice, and that he should butt with it, like 
 a goat, against everything that is beyond his comprehension. The 
 truth is that practical art is a faith, whilst the theory of art is a 
 philosophy ; and the difficulty, of getting good writing about art 
 from the hands of artists lies in the intensity of their beliefs, which 
 makes them love and hate so ardently that it is impossible for them 
 to enter into the minds and work of others. Of all artists who 
 have written upon their art, Leslie was the least likely to be carried 
 away by any prejudice that could take the form of uncharitableness, 
 and yet Leslie was strikingly unfair in his appreciation of con- 
 temporary art. The British school, according to Leslie, had the 
 wine, and the continental schools the water of art, at least until 
 after the Peace, and then the British wine became mixed with con- 
 tinental water. He says that it will be time enough to call the work 
 of continental painters the cultivation of high art “when they 
 
Til A T CERTAIN ARTISTS , &c. 
 
 9 
 
 produce pictures that will bear even a distant comparison with the 
 works of the great old masters : ” and then he cites Fuseli and others, 
 even including Haydon, in some of his works, as men whose pro- 
 ductions “will hang with credit amongst those of the greatest 
 painters who ever lived.” FI is low estimate of contemporary work 
 is evidenced by his approval of Constable’s sinister prediction, “ the 
 art will go out in thirty years.” 
 
 And still, notwithstanding these wrong estimates, occasioned by 
 that passionate feeling about art without which it is impossible to 
 be an artisj, it seems most desirable that artists should leave some 
 record of their convictions. The public would easily learn to make 
 the necessary allowances for the faith of the practical painter, and 
 if these allowances were once made the painter could throw a 
 stronger and clearer light upon the kind of art he loved, than the 
 dispassionate, unpractical critic. “ Love is not a hood, but an 
 eye- water,” as Emerson says. Love makes things visible to us, 
 hatred blinds us. The artist always loves and hates with the most 
 passionate intensity. Fie is clear-sighted in his love, and in his 
 hatred blind. In everything that he says in favour of other art 
 than his own there is sure to be much truth that we should be the 
 better for apprehending, but his condemnations are merely a horror 
 of darkness, of his own darkness and ignorance. 
 
 The objection to artists, as writers on art, is their injustice ; the 
 objection to literary men who write on art is their ignorance of 
 technical conditions and difficulties, and their consequent inca- 
 pacity for making the necessary allowances. The plain truth is 
 that to write on art we require two distinct educations, one in 
 literature and philosophy, the other in practical art-work. It is 
 difficult to have the two in sufficient strength and completeness ; 
 hence the excessive rarity of competent writers upon artistic subjects. 
 Successful painters find that the cultivation of their own corner 
 in the great garden of the arts occupies the whole of their time 
 and energy ; successful writers need several hours a day for the 
 study of literature, and several other hours for the production of 
 their own literature, so that they have rarely the time for much 
 practical work in the fine arts. And yet it is practical work, and 
 this alone, which opens our eyes to nature. It is with pencil and 
 brush, and not with book and pen, that we clear our way through 
 the forest of thorns that encircles the paradise of art. — 1873. 
 
PAINTING FROM NATURE. 
 
 Tiie practice of painting from nature, in the modern sense, is 
 of very recent adoption. It is probable that before our own 
 time no landscape painter ever began and finished an oil 
 picture out of doors and from nature itself . 1 Figure painters 
 painted from nature, and landscape painters made studies from 
 nature, with more or less accuracy and resolution ; but no one 
 seriously thought of finishing anything but mere sketches or 
 studies out of doors. The art of landscape painting was 
 essentially practised in the studio ; its materials were gathered 
 in the fields, like the raw material of human food, but cooked 
 in the artistic kitchen before being served up for the appre- 
 ciation of the connoisseur. At the present day, however, many 
 painters — especially our younger ones — are devoting immense 
 labour to the finishing of pictures out of doors ; a costly and 
 inconvenient proceeding, and one which ought to reward its 
 votaries very richly for all the trouble and fatigue it inevitably 
 entails. 
 
 I propose in the present chapter to analyse the art ot 
 painting from nature, to point out the various ways in which it 
 may be pursued, to examine one by one all the principal diffi- 
 culties against which painters who work directly from nature 
 
 1 It may still be doubted whether any painting of landscape possessing 
 the unity, and the qualities of artistic conception and feeling, which are 
 essential to a true picture , as distinguished from a study, has ever been 
 wrought directly from nature. Work from nature, in landscape, always 
 seems to run inevitably into studies, not into pictures. — 1873. 
 
PAINTING FROM NATURE. 
 
 1 1 
 
 have continually to contend, and lastly to suggest certain plans 
 and contrivances by which a few of the most irritating of them 
 may be combated and overcome. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that, in taking their canvases out of 
 doors, all painters propose to themselves the same object. A 
 certain limitation is always, whether consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, imposed on himself by every artist in his imitation of 
 naturet— -TL no such limitation were resolved upon by the artist, 
 no picture would ever be finished, and no artist would ever 
 have done with any one of his works. If, on the other hand, 
 no such limitation were accepted by the public, no human 
 labour could ever satisfy it. So far from being unpopular, a 
 strict limitation of the imitative art is quite joyfully understood 
 and admitted by everybody ; sketches being generally quite as 
 much liked in their way as finished pictures ; and pictures which 
 are little more than sketches in oil, as, for instance, those of 
 Decamps, being often eagerly purchased by collectors. Every 
 artist, therefore, has his point of limitation, his finishing point, 
 and he has also his point of imitation, beyond which he does 
 not think fit to follow nature. Even the severest pre-Raphaelite 
 must make up his mind to stop somewhere in his copyism 
 of natural objects, — if he could not submit to this, he would 
 have to abandon the art altogether, for the pursuit of it with 
 unbridled instincts of imitation would be altogether intolerable, 
 and enough to drive any man mad. These two limitations of 
 finish and of imitation are, however, very different things. A 
 painter may finish minutely without imitating minutely ; but he 
 cannot imitate minutely without finishing minutely. In working 
 from nature, all the limitations that the painter has accepted 
 hem him in and determine the character of his work. Those 
 limitations are of all kinds, — they may be purely conventional, 
 as, for instance, the classicism of Sir George Beaumont ; they 
 may be fixed by the practice of some former master whom the 
 artist looks up to as an authority that it would be presumptuous to 
 surpass ; they may be settled lor the painter by the narrowness 
 of his own sympathies and the dulness of his own sight, and so 
 be the most impassable of all prison boundaries, — those of a 
 man’s own nature. Lastly, they may be wise and necessary 
 limitations, imposed upon himself consciously, severely, and 
 sorrowfully, by a great man who thoroughly loves Nature, and 
 longs to lollow her wherever she would lead him, but who 
 
12 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 restrains himself at a certain” definite point, knowing that 
 human weakness can go no farther without failure. 
 
 In order to place more vividly before the reader the manner 
 in which these limitations operate, I will show how several 
 different classes of painters work from nature, and afterwards 
 explain what seems to be the most reasonable and practical 
 way of working from nature. 
 
 THE CLASSICAL SCHOOL, 
 
 These painters do, indeed, work from nature, but they adapt 
 all they find to preconceived ideas in their own minds, formed 
 from famous pictures in the galleries. They are painting from 
 nature in quite a peculiar sense. Claude and Poussin stand 
 between them and every thing they see. When they see any 
 thing in nature that is like Claude, they think it good for art, 
 and introduce it ; first carefully altering it in a Claudesque 
 manner. When they find things not to be found in Claude 
 or Poussin, a circumstance that must very frequently occur to 
 them, they reject them without hesitation, as unfitted for ar- 
 tistic purposes. Two foreign artists of this kind when travelling 
 in the Highlands, on seeing a magnificent effect at Loch Awe, 
 rather contemptuously observed that “the effect was false” 
 though in nature itself, their standard of truth being not nature, 
 but Claude . 1 All classical students approach Nature in this 
 spirit. They do not go to her to be taught, but to impose 
 their own rules on ail they take ; consequently they learn 
 nothing. Once benumb the human soul with the fatal mes- 
 merism of too much reverence for some dead man’s name, and 
 you can render it for ever blind to the plainest facts in the 
 world it lives in. All classical art-students have accepted the 
 principle that the perfection of landscape art was attained two 
 hundred years ago by the classical landscape-painters, and 
 during all their lives will see nothing except through the 
 Poussin spectacles. For them nature only exists as a mine 
 
 1 Suppose these painters had seen a true picture of the effect which they 
 called false in nature, would they not have called it false also in art? 
 
 Yes ; and there is another thing to be said. 
 
 Other people, who would not have dared to call the effect false in nature , 
 would have called it false in art , though truly painted ; and they do so 
 constantly . 
 
PAINTING PROM NATURE . 
 
 13 
 
 of possible Claudes and Poussins, and where they do not see 
 Claude or Poussin, they see nothing} 
 
 THE IMAGINATIVE MODERN SCHOOL. 
 
 They are^too original and have too much natural ability to 
 allow of their patiently Poussinizing nature ; but they are, at 
 the same time, too independent and self-reliant to imitate her. 
 They paint from imagination in the presence of nature, using 
 nature merely for the first suggestion of the idea, and in the 
 subsequent progress of the work as an authority on scientific 
 facts of form, colour, &c. 
 
 In works produced on this principle there is no pretence to 
 imitation, although the painter may begin and finish his picture 
 out of doors, and although, when finished, the work may seem 
 imitative. 
 
 As painters of the classical school are prevented from imi- 
 tating by their reverence for dead artists, so these cannot 
 imitate because their imagination is too strong, and they must 
 obey it. They love nature quite sincerely and exclusively, 
 caring for other artists only so far as they lead them to nature. 
 Nevertheless, they cannot imitate nature, because, in them, 
 imagination overrules the imitative tendency. Artists of this 
 order, when the imagination is not only powerful but of truly 
 inventive quality (an imagination may be powerful that is not 
 in the artistic sense inventive), if their imagination is really of 
 the inventive order, such artists would do quite wrong to 
 imitate, for loyalty to the laws of its constitution is the first 
 duty of genius. These artists use natural phenomena as a 
 novelist uses the people he meets with • they study them, and 
 employ them as they think fit. But since, after all, they really 
 do study them, and not scorn them like the classical landscape- 
 
 1 Our complete deliverance from the “ classical ” landscape-painters has 
 ultimately led us to a more complete enjoyment of those classical landscape- 
 painters themselves. The reputation of Claude has lost nothing by our 
 emancipation from the authority which formerly belonged to him. I enjoy 
 Claude very heartily now, just as I do Virgil ; I hated both when their 
 names were used in contempt of that nobler nature which neither Claude 
 nor Virgil understood. It seems to me now that the qualities of these two 
 charming poets are, within their own limits, most precious and most 
 desirable. — 1873. 
 
14 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 painters, they have their reward, and learn much, though they 
 copy little. The most illustrious example of this order of 
 artists is Turner. In the early part of his career, being- 
 subjected to the prevailing theories, he wore the Claude and 
 Poussin spectacles for a while, but soon threw them aside for 
 ever. After that he looked at nature earnestly, learned an 
 immense number of facts, gathered a huge encyclopaedia of 
 observations, but never once imitated without altering. He 
 used external nature as Scott used mankind. Both were authors 
 of fiction, yet both eminently true in their work. One cannot 
 quarrel with painters and writers of this order because they give 
 the full rein to their imagination ; for therimaginative faculty was 
 just as much given to be used as the imitative faculty. Nor 
 does such altering as theirs imply the slightest want of reverence 
 for nature. They revere nature none the less that they also 
 respect the laws of their own nature. 
 
 It is evident that working out of doors on this principle 
 cannot be so painfully laborious a process as strict imitation 
 would be. It is, in fact, little more than swift sketching of 
 memoranda, even when colour is used. And if painters of this 
 order ever finish from nature, it is merely to have the scientific 
 facts right, not for accuracy of form ; so that they do not copy 
 Nature, they merely refer to her as an author refers to the 
 books in his library on matters of fact about which he is 
 anxious to avoid error ; but this is a very different thing to 
 copying the books out, word for word, comma for comma. 
 
 THE ARTIFICIAL OR TECHNICAL SCHOOL. 
 
 They do not yet imitate in the accurate sense, but there is 
 something bearing a distant resemblance to imitation visible 
 in the outlines of their principal masses, yet even these are 
 wilfully arranged. They use nature for reference ; and there is 
 a general appearance of likeness in their work, more satisfac- 
 tory to common judges than the wholly imaginative arrange- 
 ment of Turner. 
 
 They avoid detail, however, wherever mere skilful manipu- 
 lation of colour may be made to stand for it. How far such 
 manipulation may be made to go is very remarkable. It may 
 be made to represent any thing that has no very definite form, 
 
PAINTING FROM NATURE . 
 
 
 and consequently does duty for a great deal of hard drawing. 
 'These painters do not really paint detail, but their skilful 
 manipulation conveys the impression of detail. 
 
 I may make myself better understood by naming Mr. Hard- 
 ing as a well-known representative of this order of artists. The 
 amount of manual skill and dexterity' lavished by Mr. Harding 
 on a system of interpretation, whose uniform aim and object 
 was to avoid anything like downright study of detail, was 
 quite marvellous. He was not in any sense an imitator, but a 
 skilled interpreter of nature. He and nature did pot speak 
 the same language, had not the same formulae. He was not a 
 student trying hard to ; learn nature’s language, but a great 
 professor, foreign to nature, writing a translation of nature into 
 his own tongue. The translation is exceedingly clever and 
 brilliant, but it bears just as much resemblance to the original 
 as Mr. Pope’s translation of the “ Iliad ” does to the old Greek. 
 Some people like Pope better than Homer, and some no doubt 
 secretly prefer Mr. Harding to nature ; but it does not at all 
 follow that if you like the original you will relish the transla- 
 tion, nor the converse. 
 
 The influence which Mr. Harding has so long exercised over 
 the immense number of amateurs who put their trust in him 
 has been, on the whole, more salutary than might have been 
 expected, considering that the first condition of popularity 
 amongst amateurs is, that you are not to teach true art, but a 
 pretty and cheap substitute for art, — cheap, T mean, in cost of 
 labour. No drawing-master could earn his living by teaching 
 art seriously, and the chief anxiety of every drawing-master is to 
 invent the prettiest and easiest substitute for real art that he 
 can. Now, Mr. Harding’s substitute was extremely pretty and 
 successful, and, what is much more to his credit, it really con- 
 tained as much truth as the amateurs it was intended for were 
 ever likely to tolerate. Up to a cei'tain pomt , Mr. Harding led 
 his scholars to nature; but the worst of alb such systems as his 
 is, that, once their fixed point reached, they arrest the edu- 
 cation of the eye. 
 
 Mr. Harding is not the only artist of this class. They are 
 exceedingly numerous, and each has a system of his own, in 
 many cases quite as original, if not so cleverly contrived, as 
 Mr. Harding’s. Their uniform object, so far as they are them- 
 selves concerned, is to escape the painful elaboration of detail 
 
x 5 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 which the principles of imitation demand. Their other object, 
 as to their pupils, is to supply an easy and cheap substitute 
 for genuine work. Nevertheless, they study nature laboriously 
 within the limits imposed by their own systems. I believe that 
 in very many cases such systems are to be attributed entirely 
 to the fact of the painter’s giving lessons to amateurs, and that, 
 if it were not necessary to flatter pupils with easy methods, such 
 painters would often frankly abandon their systems altogether, 
 and devote themselves in good earnest to the study of nature, 
 accepting only the necessary and inevitable limitations, not 
 these unnecessary artificial ones. 
 
 SHALLOW PSEUDO-IMITATORS. 
 
 We begin now to enter upon the province of imitation, but 
 are as yet only on its frontiers. 
 
 These painters do indeed imitate, but only just so far as a 
 common and very careless spectator is likely to see into the 
 subject when he idly gazes at it without observing it. They 
 are of a very popular order, for they accurately reproduce, not 
 the scene itself, nor anything really resembling it, but every 
 indolent spectator’s impression of it. Their pictures demand 
 little intelligence in the spectator, as they cost little to the 
 artist. They are, therefore, intelligible, which is the first of all 
 the conditions of saleableness, and such works are produced 
 for the market in immense numbers. 
 
 In these works nature is happily arranged on received 
 principles of composition, and such truths only are stated as 
 are conducive to prettiness and perfectly easy to understand. 
 
 CLEVER AND LABORIOUS PSEUDO-IMITATORS. 
 
 They are not imitators in the pre-Raphaelite sense ; but their 
 work from nature goes very far, and is exceedingly laborious 
 in detail. The difference between their imitation and pre- 
 Raphaelite imitation is very easy to feel and very difficult to 
 explain. It consists in this, that their fidelity is limited by 
 habits of continual alteration and absolute want of intellectual 
 and moral sympathy with the objects they illustrate, so that 
 
PAINTING PROM NATURE . 
 
 *7 
 
 they never seize the significant marks. They admire nature, 
 and have much energy and industry, so they work hard, and 
 produce landscapes very full of detail ; but they do not really 
 sympathise with the expression of inanimate objects, so as to 
 render it with power. Nor is any one of their details perfectly 
 accurate ; .they do n6t love nature well enough for that. 1 They 
 fill their canvas with detail to make it rich, and the detail is really 
 very cleverly painted, and all copied from nature from beginning 
 to end out of doors, only not one atom of it is thoroughly 
 genuine and true. On the other hand, it is seldom imaginative 
 because the gift of invention is so rare. I could name a score 
 of successful landscape painters who belong to this class, clever, 
 prosperous, and most industrious workmen in a high branch of 
 manufacture, but neither true poets nor accurate observers. 
 Tlieir habits of work have nothing in common with Harding’s 
 masterly tricks of interpretation ; they are scarcely intellectual 
 enough to conceive and apply such principles. They are 
 looked upon by the public as tolerably faithful imitators, the 
 real fact being that they are only pseudo-imitators. As on the 
 one hand their works have none of the majesty of imagination, 
 so on the other they lack the preciousness of genuine imitation. 
 
 Painters of this order are often very rapid and skilful in 
 working from nature, because the constant habit of manu- 
 facture leads to a certain dexterousness quite impossible for 
 close observers and copyists of nature, and seldom compatible, 
 with great depth of feeling. 
 
 THE TRUE IMITATIVE SCHOOL. 
 
 We have come to true imitation at last. These painters 
 work from nature in quite a different sense to any of the pre- 
 ceding ones. They really endeavour to render as much of 
 nature as is to be rendered by colour, but will not sacrifice 
 greater truths to less, and stop firmly at that difficult point 
 where the imitation of details, pushed to its uttermost lawful 
 
 1 Although this is perfectly true, it is rather unjust so far as it seems to 
 imply that the want of accuracy is wrong. All works of art in which the 
 artistic element has controlled and moulded the material, are quite sure to 
 be inaccurate in their details. This -law is universal. Studies may be 
 accurate ; noble pictures are never accurate. — 1873. 
 
 C 
 
i8 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 power, is to be sternly arrested before it endangers the truth of 
 the whole work. Pass this point ne.ver so little, and your work 
 is inevitably ruined, for the over-fidelity with which some 
 favourite bit of detail is sure to be imitated will destroy the 
 harmony of the whole. If, on the other hand, you fall short 
 of this point, your art of painting from nature is not yet quite 
 perfectly and preciously imitative. This high order of imitative 
 painting requires great knowledge of the resources of art, and 
 infinite patience and industry. I shall have more to say of it 
 shortly . 1 
 
 ASPIRANTS AFTER PERFECT ACCURACY. 
 
 Painters in whom the desire for accuracy has reached a 
 morbid excess, and in whose works the passion for truth of 
 imitation is so unrestrained by artistic judgment as to be 
 destructive to pictorial harmony. 
 
 This leads to the production of studies, of which parts are 
 well painted, but entirely out of harmony with other parts. 
 With the passion for accuracy in excess, all production of true 
 pictorial art is quite impossible, for no natural materials can be 
 woven together into the shape of a complete picture without 
 some sacrifice of accuracy. 
 
 No one can continue long in this state of mind, which is 
 merely a disease of the imitative faculties, and always leads 
 either to the entire abandonment of the art, or the conscious 
 and resolute acceptance of the limitations necessary to the 
 health of the artistic intellect 
 
 A common delusion of young painters is to suppose that 
 this over-accuracy is in itself an attractive quality, because it 
 costs them immense patience and labour. They naturally 
 value it too much in proportion to what it costs them , and 
 without sufficient reference to the effect it is able to produce 
 on others. But this, the costliest of qualities in a picture, is 
 the very one which produces the least effect upon the world. 
 
 1 Perfectly imitative painting of landscape has never, to my knowledge, 
 been done out of the English School. Minute painting has been done else- 
 where (trees with small, distinct leaves, &c. ). Whilst still clearly recog- 
 nizing the peculiar quality and interest of strictly accurate imitation in 
 landscape-painting, I believe now that from the constitution of human 
 nature such painting can never affect it. Only emotional art moves man- 
 kind, and emotion is incompatible with accuracy. — 1873. 
 
PAINTING FROM NATURE. 
 
 19 
 
 It will not help a picture to find a place in the exhibition, 
 because the judges cannot have the real scene before their 
 eyes for comparison, and always look for qualities of compo- 
 sition which rigid accuracy requires us to sacrifice. It will 
 not command a purchaser, because, if the purchaser knows 
 the scene , 1 an accurate transcript of it will inevitably seem to 
 him inadequate and spiritless, whereas, if he does not know it, 
 the accuracy will, of course, be quite thrown away upon him. 
 It will not catch the critics, because critics consider accuracy 
 incompatible with imagination, and therefore do not consider 
 accurate painters as artists at all in the higher sense. 
 
 The first secret of the painter from nature is to select his 
 subject wisely. 
 
 None but foreground subjects can be really painted from 
 nature in a climate so changeable as ours ; but there is a kind 
 of intermediate art, a combination of the two arts of painting 
 from nature and painting from memoranda, which is competent 
 to deal with mountains. 
 
 To illustrate this, let us take a single instance of no extra- 
 ordinary difficulty. The painter wants a faithful picture of 
 Ben Cruachan. So he plants his easel as near to the mountain 
 as he can get it, if he wishes to see it at all, which of course 
 must be a few miles off. He sits down conscientiously to 
 paint a portrait of Ben Cruachan from nature. 
 
 The first day is the 10th of July. A good, plain daylight 
 effect is on the hill— not a difficult evanescent effect, but 
 such plain daylight as an unimaginative copyist likes best. 
 
 The picture cannot possibly be finished before the 10th of 
 August. 
 
 On the 10th of July, the water is a deep blue, the mountain 
 a pale but rich olive-green, with a peculiar velvety texture, 
 anything but easy to imitate. 
 
 The next day the water is cold grey, almost white, and the 
 mountain full of various new greys and deep purples, with an 
 entirely new texture not at all velvety. 
 
 1 This for reasons stated in a chapter on the relation between photo- 
 graphy and painting. 
 
20 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 Now, the question is, whether the painter, in continuing to 
 paint the effect of the ioth of July on the nth, is painting 
 from nature or from memory. 
 
 He is painting from memory. It is self-deception on his 
 part to fancy that he is painting from nature merely because 
 he is working out of doors. 
 
 And day after day there is a new and brilliant effect ; in- 
 conceivably more brilliant in its imposing presence than 
 the painter’s fast-fading recollection of what he saw on the 
 ioth of July. If he is determined to finish the picture from 
 nature, in the sense of direct copyism of the hues before him, 
 there are only two ways of doing it. Either he may paint from 
 nature day by day, and so make his picture intensely unna- 
 tural, by mixing together a hundred incompatible and contra- 
 dictory effects, or he may paint whenever the chosen effect 
 shall recur, which may be five or six times in a twelvemonth. 
 
 It might be objected that in working from nature he would 
 at least get the for?n of the mountain ; that , at least, might be 
 expected to remain stationary. 
 
 No ; the form of a mountain under changing light is the most 
 unstable thing in the world, except that of a sea-wave. The 
 perception of mountain form is entirely dependent on effect. A 
 great, rough boss on the side of a mountain is its principal 
 feature one minute, and the next you cannot find it, — seek as 
 you will, you cannot find it any more than if the thing had 
 been fairly chiselled away .by the hand of a mighty sculptor. 
 Rocks alter in apparent shape as the light changes. A wreath 
 of mist creeps stealthily, and shows you a chasm you never 
 suspected yesterday; a sunbeam falls, and a great crag leaps 
 out to bask in it like an eagle from the copse. And after a 
 certain practical apprenticeship, the student at last discovers 
 that the only truth of landscape-painting is temporary effect, 
 and that real form belongs to sculpture alone. 
 
 It is unnecessary to explain that clouds can never be 
 painted from nature. Even the slowest of them are full of 
 rapid and continual change, which, however little seen by 
 unobservant people, is only too evident as soon as one attempts 
 to draw them. The utmost that can really be got from na- 
 ture of a complete sky is a rude pencil memorandum of the 
 arrangement of its principal masses, not pretending to form in 
 any part of it, still less to colour, A rapid draughtsman may, 
 
PAINTING FROM N A TURE. 
 
 21 
 
 however, get a tolerable pencil outline of a single cloud, if he 
 tries for that only. But all attempts to paint skies from nature 
 are futile. Constable’s way of sketching them in oil may have 
 served occasionally for a rude memorandum of the relations of 
 colour in a common lowland sky, but he had to sacrifice the 
 forms. 
 
 Trees may be painted from nature if they are near to us, 
 and on condition that we work only for two hours at a time on 
 the same picture, and in lowland scenery where there is much 
 sameness of effect. 
 
 Rocks admit of careful and accurate painting from nature, 
 so of course does a great precipice, if we are near to it. A 
 great deal of good material for artists who paint from nature is 
 to be had along our own coasts. The cliffs on the southern 
 coast are excellent subjects, and the climate not unfavourable. 
 
 Water may occasionally, as for instance in rapidly running 
 streams, be painted from nature, because there the same forms 
 are continually reproduced by the effect of the submerged 
 stones on the surface of the water ; but great expanses of 
 broad rivers and lakes cannot be painted from nature at all, 
 because they change incessantly. It is needless to add that 
 the sea cannot be copied in the strict sense, though it may, 
 no doubt, under certain circumstances, be wise to paint it from 
 memoranda in the presence of nature. 
 
 In the selection of climate, a painter who works from nature 
 on pre-Raphaelite principles ought to permit himself to be 
 guided by his practical convenience, and not by the splendour 
 of the scenery. 
 
 Of all climates that are classed as “ temperate,” that of the 
 Highlands of Scotland is the very worst for painting from 
 nature. The continual prevalence of rainy weather, the inces- 
 sant changes of effect, the intense brilliance of the colour, 
 subject everywhere to sudden and violent revolution, the 
 frequent occurrence of low rain-clouds which hide the hills 
 much more effectually than a cloak hides the human form, — all 
 these objections are in the aggregate insuperable, and not to 
 be lightly laughed away as small evils which a little resolution 
 would overcome. The Highlands of Scotland are a noble 
 field for painters from memoranda; but artists who wish to 
 work trom nature ought not to think of going there. 
 
 On the other hand, lowland France is a perfect climate for 
 
22 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 painting from nature. On the borders of Burgundy and 
 Champagne, on the banks of the river Yonne, it is possible to 
 work from nature as many days in one year as you would get 
 in seven years in the Highlands. 1 And those French subjects, 
 if not so grand as the Highland scenery, are infinitely prettier , 
 infinitely easier to deal with, and, 1 should imagine, could be 
 worked up into more popular pictures. 
 
 Painters who are not much accustomed to paint mountains 
 from nature are invariably defeated by the subtlety of the 
 natural lines ; the extreme refinement of form, so different 
 from the vulgar exaggerations of many popular artists, the 
 infinity of detail, and the impenetrable mystery which 
 veils it all as with enchantment. Add to these difficulties 
 the tremendous one of Nature’s changefulness . Every day 
 she offers some new effect to the student ; some days she 
 offers two or three hundred, any one of which, in its glorious 
 and august presence, seems to him more noble and more 
 worthy to be painted than the one he has already selected. 
 The temptations of the new effects are to beginners quite 
 irresistible. They alter their work to suit some effect seen 
 more recently, and so ruin it. As for the recent effect being 
 grander than the one first chosen, it is generally a mere delusion, 
 for the comparison instituted by the painter cannot really be 
 between the two effects , as they occurred in nature, but between 
 his strong and vivid recollection of the effect of to-day, and 
 his worn-out impression of the effect he saw a fortnight ago ; 
 and no wonder, if, after a comparison of this kind, the most 
 recent effect should appear the more noble and beautiful. An 
 experienced workman makes his choice of effect carefully, but 
 once chosen he abides by it, and relies upon it, nor can all the 
 enchantments of subsequent splendour turn him one instant 
 from his purpose. A good way to guard oneself against this 
 besetting temptation of recent effects is, to make memoranda 
 of them all as they occur, even though it may interrupt the 
 progress of the picture. These memoranda will always be 
 valuable, and they serve to allay the instinctive desire to 
 represent everything that moves and excites us. 
 
 1 Farther south, in Provence, and even in Spain, the artist is still more 
 sure of the same effect at the same hour for many successive days. But 
 the monotony is very dreadful in its effect upon the mind, and the variety 
 of the Highlands is a thousand times more entertaining. 
 
PAINTING FROM NATURE . 
 
 2 3 
 
 The impenetrable mystery of nature is a great cause of 
 defeat to young artists who, even when they have skill enough 
 to draw firmly and accurately, can so rarely attain that wonder- 
 ful evanescence of execution which represents just so much of 
 objects as we see of them in nature and no more . No object 
 is ever well drawn that is completely drawn, nor can any 
 picture ever have the look of reality, in which details, however 
 numerous, are all brought out with perfect definition. It does 
 not signify how much work there may be in a picture ; where 
 every detail is thoroughly defined, it will always look poor ; and 
 a rapid sketch by a real artist, if only mysterious enough, will 
 have more power over the mind, and recall more mightily the 
 infinity of nature, than any quantity of perfectly definite labour. 
 Now the difficulty of rendering the mystery of Nature is inti- 
 mately associated with the other difficulty occasioned by her 
 changefulness. She generally defines something; some frag- 
 ment of the outline of an object comes out clearly for a 
 moment, whilst a great part of the same outline lies in various 
 degrees of semi-definition, and the rest of it is un traceable 
 altogether. This for perhaps two seconds, but the third 
 second the very part of the outline which was untraceable 
 may have become the clearest and most definite, the part that 
 was definite at first being now quite vague or perhaps entirely 
 invisible. Such changes occur incessantly in every detail of 
 a great mountain's front, even in the serenest weather. Any 
 attempt to paint such a detail by mere ocular copyism must 
 therefore be futile, for a touch cannot be laid before it will 
 become falsified by these minute changes ; changes by ordinary 
 eyes unnoticed and uncared, for, but which cannot long be 
 ignored by any practical student. 
 
 Mountains in nature are full of exquisite and refined form , 
 needing most masterly skill in drawing for even an approxi- 
 mate rendering, such skill as only three or four men now alive 
 possess, — such skill as the rest of us may humbly labour for and 
 aspire to. How shall we follow the lines of their innumerable 
 streams ? — how render the roundings of their infinitely various 
 surfaces, the delicate moulding of the swelling forms between 
 the streams, the projections of the descending slopes throwing 
 all the sculpture of the great mountain front into intricate^ 
 fore-shortening, full of difficult perspective ? The very best of 
 us can but give a sort of abstract of mountain. No man ever 
 
24 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 really drew a mountain front in its infinite fulness, and no 
 man ever will draw one, for such work is beyond all human 
 power. The most masterly mountain painting in the world is 
 nothing but a well- selected abstract and abridgment, choosing 
 the most expressive lines, but not rendering one line out of 
 ten. And in those lines that we do render, how are we to 
 approach the ineffable tenderness and subtlety of nature ? 
 What the coarseness of our faculties exaggerates into strong 
 curves are often so slightly different from straight lines that 
 nothing but the photograph can render them without either 
 omitting the curve altogether or destroying its perfect delicacy 
 by exaggeration. And is not the habit of exaggeration just as 
 often a sign of mere bluntness and coarseness as of noble 
 emotion ? We may exaggerate because we feel strongly, but 
 we far oftener exaggerate because we do not feel delicately. 
 Perfect drawing, like perfect cookery, or perfect rowing, or 
 riding, or sailing, or indeed anything else that men do, 
 becomes in its latest advance an exceedingly delicate business, 
 dealing with subtle distinctions which the untrained faculties 
 cannot perceive at all. For the perfectly trained man, how- 
 ever strong he may be, is also much refined by his training, 
 and in his strongest exercise of power is full of grace and 
 gentleness and self-restraint, only untrained and inexperienced 
 hands using violence. And the more refined the skill of the 
 draughtsman the less he will need exaggeration, owing to his 
 habitual self-government and moderation, from which the 
 slightest departure is at once recognized as the sign of over- 
 powering emotion. It is like the writing of a great master in 
 words, who wall express himself strongly rather by the exact 
 and adhesive 1 fitness of his words to the occasion than by their 
 violence ; or like the hostility of a perfectly refined lady, who 
 will inflict acute torture in the gentlest phrases, whereas her 
 sisters in Billingsgate, coarser but not so cruel, are obliged to 
 seek the most sounding epithets. 
 
 Of all exaggeration in landscape-painting the commonest is 
 exaggeration of height in high objects, and consequently of 
 
 1 In good joiner’s work the strength consists very much in exquisitely 
 true fitting. If a piece of wood is perfectly fitted to its place, it is easy to 
 make it stick there without using violence; and if a word is well fitted, it 
 will stick also and for ever. 
 
PAINTING FROM NATURE . 
 
 25 
 
 steepness in their sloping lines. This is universal with all 
 landscape-painters, anch I believe the landscape-painter never 
 lived who did not habitually exaggerate height and steepness. 
 But no one ever exaggerates the length of a horizontal line. 
 If, for instance, a mountain to be true ought to be two feet 
 high and six feet long in a large picture, the chances are that a 
 painter will make it about three feet high and five feet long. 
 Turner exaggerated in this way habitually ; but there is no 
 instance in which he exaggerated the proportionate length of 
 a horizontal line. Our most rigid topographical painters may 
 ultimately, if they work in entire submission to photography, 
 and with its continual guidance, come to produce unexagge- 
 rated work ; but if ever such work shall be exhibited nobody 
 will believe it to be true, because it will fail to give the 
 impression of steepness and height that Nature produces on her 
 own scale, with exactly the same lines. I have occasionally, for 
 an especial purpose, made rigidly unexaggerated topographical 
 drawings ; but they always look so flat and tame that people 
 intimately acquainted with the scenery never know what they 
 are intended for, and I have always to prove their truth by a 
 comparison with photographs of the same places. Now, it is 
 evident that as a painter cannot always be at hand with a port- 
 folio of photographs to defend, in hours of reasoning, the 
 literal exactness of accurate work, such work, in his absence, 
 must continually be slighted as feeble, and even condemned as 
 unfaithful. 
 
 If landscape-painters painted on thin sheets of vulcanized 
 india-rubber, instead of canvas, their pictures might be made 
 tolerably true by a simple process. It would then only be 
 necessary to stretch the india-rubber sheet horizontally, and the 
 drawing would come, in a rude way, nearly right. Some 
 painters would need more stretching than others, but even Mr. 
 Newton, the truest painter of Highland landscape who ever 
 lived, would need a little stretching. His noble “ mountain 
 gloom in Glen Coe ” shortens the horizontal length of the 
 rocky mass in the middle distance, and so exaggerates its 
 vertical height. 
 
 You will, however, constantly find that there is a notable 
 difference beween the exaggerations of true men and false. 
 When a true artist exaggerates, it is not from coarseness of 
 perception, but strength of enthusiasm, whereas the false one 
 
25 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 exaggerates one fact merely because he is blind to all the rest. 
 In mountain drawing, in addition to the exaggeration of height 
 and steepness already mentioned, bad painters always exag- 
 gerate ruggedness, and always curvature ; whereas good ones, 
 though they usually exaggerate height , because they are forced 
 to do so, in order to produce the impression they desire, 
 rarely exaggerate curves and projections with anything like 
 violence, because they perceive and relish the reserve and 
 delicacy of nature. The reader would understand this at 
 once if he had the opportunity of comparing one of Turner’s 
 mountains with any specimen of mountain drawing by our 
 third-rate water-colour men.* 
 
 The supreme difficulty in painting from nature is to know 
 what to take and what to leave, how far to follow nature, 
 how to select the most essential and mutually helpful truths. 
 We cannot have all the truths, do what we will. 
 
 How far are we to be slaves to the subject, and when are we 
 to act in something like independence of it? 
 
 All painting from nature includes a great deal of painting 
 from memory, and this is even rendered more difficult out of 
 doors than in the studio, by the presence of other and em- 
 barrassing facts which it costs us a great effort to reject. It 
 is true, for example, that in painting our mountain from nature 
 we have to colour from nature, but in quite a peculiar sense, 
 not in the way of simple imitation, and matching of particular 
 tints. The colour of the mountain never continuing the same 
 for a single hour, how is it possible to match its hues ? If you 
 match them for a few square inches of your picture to-day, and 
 match the other hues for a few square inches to-morrow, what 
 good will come of it ? Will not the harmony of your picture 
 
 1 If the reader cares to follow out the subject of exaggeration as it affects 
 our popular types of figure painting, he will find, on comparing what are 
 considered good Academy studies with photographs of the same models, 
 that figure painters have a constant habit of exaggeration in the volume 
 of muscle, and that they mark all projections too violently on the human 
 form, just as the landscape painters do on the mountains. This makes 
 photographs of the naked figure look thin and ridiculous, for none but the 
 best-made persons look very classical without their clothes. Yet the photo- 
 graph is nearly true to the actual form (not quite, for several reasons too 
 long to be explained here), and the common Academy study is a bastard 
 ideal made up of the model, much exaggerated, together with confused 
 reminiscences of Raphael and the Greeks. 
 
PAINTING FROM NATURE. 
 
 27 
 
 be utterly and irretrievably ruined, and the whole work be 
 quite false and monstrous ? Then why are you to colour from 
 nature at all, if you may not match the natural tints you see ? 
 Why not paint such pictures entirely in the studio ? The 
 answer is, that you are to paint from nature in order to avoid 
 falsity, and that you may have the opportunity of always referring 
 to nature for any fact you find it necessary to ascertain. Now, 
 many facts of local colour may be ascertained through and in 
 spite of the intervening veil of transient colour. For instance, 
 in painting a Highland hill in late autumn you may always 
 ascertain (when the weather will allow of you seeing it at all) 
 where the patches of red fern are, and what is their shape, a 
 thing not easy to invent rightly in a studio ; and, of the trees 
 in the forest on the mountain’s flank, you may see with great 
 precision how far they are reddened by the death of their 
 leaves. ~ But if you merely try to imitate the mountain as you 
 see it, not taking the trouble to use your intellect as well as 
 your eyes, your picture, though painted from nature, will be as 
 false and discordant as if it had been painted in the dingiest 
 studio in Newman Street. 
 
 So that self-reliance is one of the first lessons a young artist 
 has to learn, in working directly from nature. He is to get all 
 he can from the natural scene, but to be thoroughly indepen- 
 dent of it, and only submit to its guidance just so far as may 
 assist the truth of his work. All slavish, Chinese imitation of 
 separate bits is death and destruction to the whole picture. 
 Nor must any reader misunderstand the reason for this most 
 essential of all principles. The object of every artist who 
 takes his canvas out of doors is to get more truth, yet always 
 harmonious truth. We are not to mix together discordant and 
 contradictory truths, and mere ocular imitation is sure to do so. 
 What there is of simple imitation in good painting from nature 
 is really very slight, for it is modified first by constant obe- 
 dience to the memory, often in direct opposition to the facts im- 
 mediately before our eyes ; and farther, it is overruled by the 
 necessity for compromise in all translation of nature into art, 
 a necessity occasioned by the difference in point of light 
 between flake white and the sun, and the difference in point of 
 depth between ivory black in broad daylight and the intense 
 vacuity of natural darkness. Only the uninformed imagine 
 that the most accurate work from nature is to be accomplished 
 
28 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 without very great reliance on the memory and considerable 
 effort of the intellect. It requires, no doubt, both delicacy of 
 hand and clearness of vision ; but it requires, in addition to 
 these, much of that strength of memory, and all that know- 
 ledge of the resources of art, which are essential to the painter 
 who works exclusively in the studio. Hence, the very curious 
 and interesting truth that a painter who can produce a good 
 picture in a studio from slight memoranda is more likely to 
 paint well from nature than one who has never done anything 
 else, because he has acquired the habit of self-reliance, and 
 can hold straight on his own path without being allured away 
 from it by the attractions of the ever-changing subject. 
 
 The artist who paints from nature must be content to 
 produce little, if he cares for accuracy. Watch a careful 
 painter at work, and you will find his time incessantly divided 
 between two distinct acts, — looking at nature, and putting 
 down what he has seen. First, the retina must receive a 
 strong impression, and then, whilst this remains quite vivid in 
 the memory, it must be got into colour. But this looking at 
 nature occupies as much time as the actual work of paintmg. 
 An artist, therefore, who works directly from nature in the 
 pre-Raphaelite manner, must spend twice as much time on 
 his picture as if he did it from memory and invention in the 
 Turnerian manner. When we take the nature of the two 
 procedures into consideration, there is nothing surprising in 
 this difference. 
 
 A curious result in popular criticism of the difference 
 between active and passive looking is, that the critic, who 
 looks passively, finds fault with the painter who looks actively. 
 I have heard such critics declare that no detail was to be seen 
 in nature, and thence deduce the conclusion that painters 
 ought not to paint detail. But the true painter does not paint 
 what an unobservant spectator sees, but what he sees himself 
 which is a different matter. It may be readily believed that to 
 people who never really look at nature, no details are visible : 
 it is also probable that the broadest effects of light, and the 
 most obvious facts of form, are never seen by them ; but let us 
 repudiate the doctrine that a painter is to regulate his expres- 
 sion of natural truth by a reference to the degree of informa- 
 tion on the subject possessed by people who have not yet 
 learned the use of their eyes. When the function of the 
 
PAINTING FROM NATURE . 
 
 29 
 
 painter shall be rather better understood, let us hope that this 
 imbecile doctrine, that he has no right to see deeper and know 
 more than other people, will die like its sister doctrines, that 
 have so long retarded the advance of science ; let us even 
 hope that the world will ultimately perceive how the especial 
 duty and function of the artist is precisely to see farther than 
 the rest of mankind, and to lead the eyes of all men to the 
 deepest truths of nature . 1 
 
 It is needless to observe that no landscape can be painted 
 from nature on such a scale, or with such a degree of finish, 
 as would demand more than a very few weeks for its comple- 
 tion. The changes in local colour produced by the continual 
 advance or decline of vegetation are so incessant and so great, 
 that to paint longer than three or four weeks on one canvas, 
 would generally involve the registering of inconsistent and 
 contradictory facts, and consequently destroy the truth of the 
 work. In the depth of winter, however, a longer time may be 
 given ; and with a tent it is as easy to paint from nature in 
 winter as in summer, except that the days are shorter. 
 
 Before quitting the subject of painting from nature, I desire 
 to add a few observations on the advantages and dangers of 
 the practice. 
 
 The advantages are twofold ; some of them belong to the 
 picture, and others to the artist. 
 
 A picture which is painted from nature, if well done, is sure 
 to contain many truths which would have escaped the strongest 
 memory in the studio, unless aided by memoranda as copious 
 in detail as the very picture itself. Such works have, therefore, 
 a peculiar value for their authenticity, independently of their 
 
 1 I leave this as it was originally written, but will add some farther 
 observations. The younger English painters in i860 were certainly looking 
 too hard into natural detail, so that they lost the perception of masses, and 
 of the tonic weights and values of masses ; and besides this they were 
 powerfully affected by colours, as distinguished from colour. The quarrel 
 between them and the ignorant portion of the public was not simply 
 between greater and less information, but (perhaps in a still more marked 
 degree) between people who lived in an inflamed state of the perceptions 
 (the artists) and people who lived in a benumbed and frigid state. The 
 artists had much reason on their side, but not all reason. They were in 
 that state of excitement which seems to be necessary to make men perceive 
 new truth, but which at the same time makes them incapable of per- 
 ceiving truths in their just relations. — 1873. 
 
3 ° 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 intellectual or artistic value. When strictly topographical, as 
 Seddon’s Jerusalem, in the National Gallery, or Brett’s Vat 
 d’ Aosta, they considerably exceed the most perfect photograph 
 in interest and value as records of the scene they represent. 
 The details cannot be quite so accurately drawn as in the 
 photograph, nor so minute, but there are more of them in the 
 picture ; and, in addition to this, we have the facts of colour 
 and atmosphere, which have a great deal to do with our 
 impression of any natural scene, and which it is consequently 
 very desirable to preserve in a record of it. 
 
 The advantages of painting from nature are, however, still 
 more striking as they concern the artist himself. 
 
 It is not for what he does , but for what he learns , that the 
 practice is so useful. Whilst he is painting a scene under one 
 effect, he sees it under a thousand, and is incessantly occupied 
 in comparing them. He is always learning something which he 
 did not intend to learn ; knowledge of all kinds being brought 
 before him as he sits at work by the inevitable changes of the 
 natural scene. He intends to paint Ben Cruachan in clear 
 weather, and he has not been two days at work before the 
 whole mountain is veiled in a half- transparent mist. If the 
 painter has the true temper of the student, instead of being 
 angry at the mist, he will set to work and study it, and learn 
 the laws of evanescence. Round about his tent, in the 
 intervals of painful labour, he will find a thousand objects of 
 interest — beautiful plants and mosses, delightful studies of rock 
 and tree forms — which he may as well sketch while he has the 
 opportunity, and about which he consequently learns a great 
 many truths which have nothing to do with the particular 
 picture he is engaged upon, but which will be of the greatest 
 use to his education. 
 
 The dangers of painting from nature are more obvious. It 
 undoubtedly weakens the memory and deadens the inventive 
 faculty, and that to such an extent, that if persisted in without 
 frequent alternation with studio work, or unless counteracted 
 by the continual practice of drawing from the memory with the 
 express object of preserving its power, the habit of painting 
 from nature may deprive the artist of that faculty altogether. 
 The simple imitation of nature must precede, but ought by no 
 means to preclude, the exercise of the memory and the practice 
 of painting as a fine art , which is absolutely impossible so long 
 
PA/NT/JVG FROM NATURE. 
 
 3i 
 
 as we are held down to the strictly accurate copyism of natural 
 detail. It is an inexpressible relief to eyes and hands jaded 
 with the wearing toil of mechanical imitation to revel in the 
 happy elysium of the memory, and realize the day-dreams of 
 invention ; and again, it is often a salutary and refreshing 
 change to turn from this exciting poetry of the art to the brave 
 scientific prose of the most determined imitation. This action 
 and reaction of all large intellects between the real and the 
 ideal, the fact and the dream, is so universally necessary to 
 their healthful life, that they always will have it somehow, either 
 in their art or out of it. James Watt refreshed himself with 
 fiction, and Shelley braced himself with mathematics. The 
 painter may find the two elements in the practice of his own 
 all-embracing art, and alternate between the labours of obser- 
 vation and the pleasures of memory, to the perplexity of his 
 critics, but with substantial benefit to his own nature, because 
 in obedience to its profoundest laws. — 1S60. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 This essay was for the most part written in my tent in the High- 
 lands, in the intervals of actual landscape-painting direct from 
 nature. I did a good deal of hard work in that way, as the younger 
 English artists used to do fourteen or fifteen years ago. We were 
 quite right in taking palette and canvas into the presence of the 
 scenery we loved, but we should have derived more advantage 
 from our studies, and made more satisfactory progress in the art 
 of painting, if, instead of trying to make complete pictures out of 
 doors, we had confined ourselves to good broad artistic daubing 
 for tone and light, in oil-studies done simply for our own improve- 
 ment and not for public inspection. English landscape-painters 
 ought to have known the value of this kind of study, for they 
 belong to the country of Crome and Constable ; but many of the 
 younger ones were led into a wrong direction by the pre-Raphaelite 
 figure-painters and by the recommendations of Mr. Ruskin. It is 
 difficult to speak quite justly of Mr. Ruskin’s influence in a little 
 
32 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 space, because it has been complicated in its effects, but he did great 
 harm to many of the younger landscape-painters, though no doubt 
 with the very kindest and best intentions. He had two very strong 
 and catching enthusiasms, the enthusiasm for natural magnificence 
 and the enthusiasm for, novelty and discovery in the Fine 'Arts. 
 Many of us were fully prepared to be partakers of these enthu- 
 siasms, by the same influences of literature and science which had 
 excited them in Mr. Ruskin himself. It was our great delight to 
 live with the magnificence of nature, and to do, in art, what had 
 never been done before. We lived most happily in the wildest 
 solitudes, and we attempted to paint effects which the elder land- 
 scape-painters had never recorded upon canvas. But our ardour 
 was not really and fundamentally artistic, though we believed it 
 to be so. It came much more from a scientific motive than from 
 any purely artistic feeling, and was a part — though we were not 
 ourselves aware of it — of that great scientific exploration of the 
 realms of nature which this age has carried so much farther than 
 any of its predecessors. Whilst botanists and geologists were 
 occupied in investigating the construction of landscape, we inves- 
 tigated its aspect, and the expedition which became subsequently 
 known as A Painter* s Camp in the Highlands was as much a 
 scientific expedition (to compare small things with great) as the 
 voyage of the Challenger . The distinction between scientific and 
 artistic feeling as applied to landscape-painting may be easily and 
 firmly defined. The thorough artist is always occupying himself 
 about the effect of his technical arrangements, and he keeps steadily 
 in view one object, which is to produce a certain emotion in the 
 spectator, — the emotion of awe, delight, or melancholy, as the case 
 may be. The thorough artist is always absolutely regardless of 
 truth except just so far as it is conducive to his artistic purposes, 
 and he. goes to nature simply to give himself emotions which he 
 can communicate by his art to others. Now, our temper in going 
 to nature was very different from this. We went in the search for 
 rigorously accurate truth, and for new truth, which is an entirely 
 scientific state of mind. Our pictorial work was as much a scien- 
 tific exposition as the chapters on the structure of the Alps in the 
 fourth volume of Modern Painters . And I perceive now, having 
 learned to distinguish between the scientific and artistic spirits, 
 that the proper expression for what I learned in the Highlands (I 
 learned a good deal there in an irregular way) would have been, 
 not pictures, but a book with coloured illustrations. 
 
FAULTING FROM NA TURE . 
 
 33 
 
 It was a manifest destiny that the English school of landscape 
 should become ardently scientific in this century, because our race 
 has so little natural gift or aptitude for what is purely artistic, that 
 whenever we can get some other interest under the outward guise 
 of art we are quite sure to follow after it with eagerness. Thus in 
 figure-art our countrymen always run after literary interest, and 
 the scientific interest of recent landscape discovery led many of us 
 into that very pitfall which Leslie foresaw in the year 1855 when 
 he said with a degree of personal emphasis so unusual with him 
 that it expressed an unusual sense of the importance of his words, 
 “The Fine Arts are often selected as themes affording opportunities 
 for the display of eloquence and learning ; and in apparently pro- 
 found dissertations, accompanied often with much valuable infor- 
 mation, theories are not unfrequently advanced utterly adverse to 
 the right progress of Art — theories the more dangerous for the 
 talents with which they are advocated ; and from the peculiar 
 fashions at present dominant in criticism, I have no hesitation in 
 expressing my conviction that the thing, just now, most in danger 
 of being neglected by painters is the Art of Painting; and that 
 want of patronage is far less to be dreaded than the want of that 
 which patronage should foster.” 
 
 Looking, then, to progress in the art of painting alone, and not 
 to scientific discovery, what is the wisest course in our work directly 
 done from nature? The most experienced landscape-painters of 
 the generation immediately preceding ours were agreed in the 
 conviction that it was useless to paint pictures from nature, because 
 effects would not stay to be painted. For some years the younger 
 English artists hoped otherwise, but now these men (no longer 
 young men) have also come to recognize the necessity for painting 
 pictures in the studio. At the same time we believe that a painter 
 cannot paint anything well in the studio unless he has previously 
 exercised himself in painting things of the same kind direct from 
 nature. If this should fall into the hands of any young landscape- 
 painter, let me tell him that all recent experience has fully con- 
 firmed this view, and that the right course to acquire at the same 
 time both technical certainty and natural knowledge of the kind 
 most suitable to the purposes of the artist, is to make as many 
 studies as possible in the material that he will afterwards use in 
 his own painting-room ; leaving each study when Nature, in her 
 transience, leaves him, or at the most carrying it forward only 
 just so long as his memory of the effect remains quite clear and 
 H D 
 
34 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 vivid. Oil -painters ought to study in oil from nature, making what 
 the French call ebauches , that is good daubs , daubs in which the 
 tones and hues are right in the large masses, with no more atten- 
 tion to detail than is quite compatible with this rightness. Painters 
 who intend their pictures to be in water-colour, should, of course, 
 employ water-colour for their studies. The best continental artists 
 always go through an immense amount of this serious kind of 
 daubing, and that is why they often paint so well in mass and 
 tone. It was the mania for scientific detail which hindered the 
 progress of Englishmen twenty years ago. 
 
 Another thing has to be said which no student of landscape 
 ought to be ignorant of. The study of landscape is not a good 
 initiation into the technical art of painting. Mr. Peter Graham, 
 the admirable landscape-painter (one of the most thoroughly ac- 
 complished landscape-painters the world has ever seen) told me 
 that in his opinion — and I am profoundly convinced of the truth 
 and justice of this opinion — landscape does not afford good material 
 for early study, on account of its extreme intricacy and the difficulty 
 of determining the exact value of what you have done. He believes, 
 and so do I, that the shortest road to good landscape-painting is an 
 indirect road, and that he himself got his first initiation into the 
 mysteries of landscape effect through constant observation of the 
 delicate play of light and shade in a gallery of statues. He earnestly 
 recommends the practice of portraiture as the best of preliminary 
 training. It is a complete mistake to go to landscape under the 
 impression that it is easy. The naked figure, difficult as that also 
 is, is a simple object in comparison with a forest or a mountain. 
 We ought to proceed, in study, from simplicity to intricacy, and 
 the great difficulty in landscape is to find anything that is simple 
 enough for early study. — 1873. 
 
III. 
 
 PAINTING I'ROM MEMORANDA, 
 
 When new ways of doing things become fashionable, we are 
 too apt to consider the old ways altogether obsolete. We do 
 not easily see at first that the new method may only be useful 
 for the production of a certain limited order of things, and 
 that the old, instead of being abolished and superseded by the 
 new, may be destined to endure along with it, and live for ever 
 by its side. 
 
 When our younger painters first began to finish their works 
 from nature, the greater part of them believed, in their secret 
 hearts, that the art of painting from memoranda in the studio 
 was thenceforth doomed to extinction. They did not perceive 
 that this other art rests on its own grounds, has its own reasons 
 for existing, and is a necessary result of certain causes in nature 
 itself, and in the constitution of man, which causes have lost 
 none of their force because some artists have taken their easels 
 out of doors. 
 
 In some essential respects a picture painted from memo- 
 randa is likely to be more valuable than one painted directly 
 from nature. It may not be so accurately imitative, but it is 
 likely to be more harmoniously and equally worked out, truer 
 in effect, and better in technical execution. It will also have 
 a higher value as an intellectual product, if the intellect of the 
 artist be of a sufficiently elevated order to make it desirable 
 that its presence should be visible in his work. 
 
 The action of the imagination is more vigorous when the 
 bodily sight is occupied by no real scene. Hence imaginative 
 painters have a well-grounded dislike to painting anything 
 
 D 2 
 
36 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 more than mere studies from nature. For to a great artist the 
 imaginative faculty is the most precious of all his gifts, and he, 
 therefore, instinctively places himself in the conditions most 
 favourable to its free and happy exercise. Those conditions 
 are, first, complete bodily comfort, and, secondly, a certain 
 restriction of space. A good room offers both the comfort 
 and the restriction. 
 
 It is needless to point out that, however imaginative a great 
 artist may be, he is also intensely observant. When in the 
 presence of glorious natural scenery, it is not the imaginative 
 part of him which works best, but the observant. All his 
 intellectual power is then concentrated on the faculty of obser- 
 vation for the enrichment of his memory. No one will be 
 surprised at this who has any conception how laborious the act 
 of artistic observation really is. It absorbs for the time nearly 
 all the mental energy of the painter, and, in those rare cases 
 where the imagination does really work in the presence of 
 nature, it is because the observant faculty is not developed to 
 its full power and activity. 
 
 The painter from memoranda, therefore, divides his labours 
 into two distinct portions. In working from nature, it is his busi- 
 ness to observe, note down, and accumulate an immense miscel- 
 lany of natural facts. In the painting-room his imagination 
 governs the creation of works of art, in obedience to the laws of 
 nature, and with the help of memoranda taken from nature. 
 
 Another reason why the imagination works better when it is 
 shut up between four walls is this : to an imaginative person 
 with a retentive memory, it is extremely desirable that all his 
 ten or twenty thousand impressions should be equally acces- 
 sible and equally unobtrusive ; but in working from nature, the 
 last impression is for a time very obtrusive indeed, and puts all 
 the impressions that remain in the memory into a state of 
 temporary eclipse. This is very disagreeable to an imaginative 
 painter, because he likes to have equal and absolute power 
 over all his accumulated impressions, so as to realize whichever 
 he will, and retain it without interruption from other causes, 
 until it is realized. Now, whatever effect you choose for a 
 picture which you are painting from nature, you may be sure 
 that, long before you have finished it, some other effect will 
 present itself whose glorious presence will seem to you more 
 worthy to be represented than your fading recollection of the 
 
PAINTING PROM MEMORANDA . 
 
 37 
 
 one selected. This kind of interference an imaginative painter 
 instinctively avoids, and when he shuts himself up in a room, it 
 is mat he may have all his facts and impressions under perfect 
 control, and protected from the intrusion of other impressions 
 which are foreign to the subject he intends to realize. 
 
 In all this there fs no distrust of, or infidelity towards, nature, 
 but the reverse. There is an acute consciousness on the part of 
 the artist of his own too great sensitiveness to new impressions, 
 against which he instinctively protects himself by opaque walls 
 of masonry. A picture painted from nature, in the strict sense 
 of copying, tint for tint, exactly what the painter saw, would 
 not be true, but monstrous ; for it would consist of unrelated 
 fragments of different effects, associated as unprofitably as leaves 
 taken at random from a hundred volumes and bound together 
 in one. Even in painting from nature, as I have shown on 
 another page, the artist has to remain faithful to some selected 
 effect, of which he preserves a memorandum, and utterly to 
 refuse and reject all the effects which come after it ; so that he 
 does not really copy nature, hue for hue, but paints from a 
 memorandum, or from memory, aided by reference to nature 
 for certain facts. And I also showed, that even these facts have 
 to be twice transposed before they can be put into the picture : 
 once from the passing effect to the one selected, which usually 
 involves a complete change of colour, and very frequently even 
 of form ; and again from the natural scale of light to the pic- 
 torial subdivided scale, another transposition which destroys all 
 chance of real imitation. If to these transpositions you have 
 to add the changes introduced into every particle of the natural 
 scene by the imagination of a truly creative or poetical landscape 
 painter, does it not seem doubtful whether there can be any use 
 in his painting from nature at all? Would it not be mere self- 
 deception on his part, to set up a tent on the mountains, under 
 pretext of painting from nature, when everything he saw had 
 to be transposed three several times before he could make any 
 use of it? 
 
 1. From the effect visible at the moment to the one selected 
 when the picture was begun. 
 
 2. From the natural scale of light to the pictorial subdivided 
 scale. 
 
 3. From the natural order to the imaginative composition. 
 
 So that, after all, there is not such a very wide difference 
 
3S 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 between a picture done from nature and one done in the studio, 
 as to the direct copyism of facts. For if you copy facts from 
 nature, without carefully observing at least the two first transpo- 
 sitions, there can be no truth in your work ; and if you do not, 
 or cannot, add the third, which revolutionizes the arrangement of 
 every particle , your picture will have slight value as a work of art. 
 And between a picture painted out of doors, in which all the 
 three transpositions were accomplished throughout in a masterly 
 manner, and another similar picture, done in the studio by the 
 help of abundant memoranda, for the facts to be transposed, 
 there can scarcely be much difference in point of authenticity. 
 The superiority in technical execution is nearly sure to be on 
 the side of the studio picture ; and this superiority has great 
 weight with artists, especially with the most accomplished ones. 
 
 The reasons why the technical superiority is likely to be 
 found in the studio picture are the physical comfort of a large 
 studio, its perfect preparation of 7neans of all kinds, and the 
 absence of hurry caused by the permanence of memoranda in 
 comparison with the transience of nature. 
 
 Of all the occupations of men, I can at this moment re- 
 member none, not involving some considerable degree of bodily 
 movement and exercise, which the persons devoted to them are 
 in the habit of following without the shelter of some kind of 
 building. Even joiners and blacksmiths, whose muscular exer- 
 tion is sufficient to enable them to resist ordinary degrees of 
 cold, are in the habit of working in forges and workshops. 
 And of all the trades followed in a metropolis like London, 
 there is not one which is practised in the open air when there 
 is the choice of practising it under cover. The reason for this 
 is, that the open air, however pleasant under certain circum- 
 stances — as, for instance, to sportsmen — is full of an immense 
 variety of small annoyances and interruptions, which so seriously 
 hinder most kinds of labour, that the workers, in self-defence, 
 protect themselves by walls and roofs, and actually find it more 
 profitable in the long run to pay rent for a building to shelter 
 them whilst they work than to work in the open air. 
 
 The annoyances I speak of here are all but unknown to 
 sportsmen ; but they are very well known to painters. When 
 in vigorous exercise a man will easily resist a degree of incle- 
 mency in the weather which would kill him if he were to take 
 a chair and sit still in it for eight or ten hours every day. I 
 
PAINTING FROM MEMORANDA . 
 
 39 
 
 have ridden on horseback and pulled in a boat in every con- 
 ceivable variety of bad weather without taking the least harm ; 
 but I have been laid up for a month in consequence of a few 
 hours’ imprudent painting from nature. And of all the pre- 
 mature deaths of landscape-painters, I believe that a large 
 percentage might be distinctly traced to the habit of painting 
 or studying in the open air. 
 
 It is not, however, as it affects the health and longevity of 
 artists, but the technical perfection of their work, that we have 
 at present to consider the utility of the studio. It tends to 
 technical excellence by protecting the artist from small inter- 
 ruptions and annoyances. 
 
 There is no doubt that it is very miserable to human nature 
 generally to be out of doors in a state of compulsory quies- 
 cence. There is always something to plague one. Either it is 
 too hot, or it is too cold, or there are flies, or one is on a wasp’s 
 nest, or it rains, or the sunshine dazzles one’s eyes, or the move- 
 ment of the water wearies them, or some other such little misery 
 maddens the unfortunate student. The artist who should allow 
 himself to be disturbed merely because a gnat was regaling 
 itself on his blood would accomplish little. The resolute ones 
 work on in serene calm when sucked by several gnats at once. 
 Practically, however, I confess that there are limits to this 
 endurance, and I never could work patiently under the stimulus 
 of more than six gnats at a time. 
 
 A friend of mine, a resolute painter from nature, tells me 
 that he never allows moderate rain to stop him, even though it 
 falls on the canvas itself. Still, drops of water do no good to 
 a carefully laid surface of oil-colour, and rain is a hindrance to 
 the technical art of painting. Then there are the extremes of 
 heat and cold, the burning, glare of Oriental suns, the icy blast 
 of a Highland winter, all to be borne patiently, if such subjects 
 are to be painted from nature. There are some sketches and 
 studies which no painter can look at without a sensation of 
 awe at the endurance they prove, like the awe which other 
 people feel when they read of some terrible military retreat or 
 arctic exploratory expedition. Gentlemen who follow painting 
 merely as a polite amusement, and lay it aside whenever it 
 becomes arduous or unpleasant, have little conception of the 
 energy and resolution of mind, and firm bodily endurance, 
 which those men need who have to live by their art and really 
 
40 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 
 face its hardships. Against some of these hardships I am 
 happy to think that my studio tent is an effectual protection. 
 Henceforth neither wind nor rain need vex the landscape- 
 painter any more. 
 
 But a studio tent, comfortable as it is in comparison with .the 
 open air, is very inferior to a painting-room. The tent will no 
 doubt contain materials for the execution of a small picture, 
 and even, by removing the central pole, a picture six feet long 
 might be painted in it, but the space is still very inconveniently 
 restricted in comparison with that afforded by the studio. If 
 an artist were painting rather a large picture in the tent, he could 
 not get back far enough to see the relations of the masses of 
 colour ; and although, no doubt, an accomplished artist can, in 
 a great degree, guess at the effect of what he is doing, and paint 
 without having the opportunity of seeing what he is painting, 
 nevertheless we all like to assure ourselves from time to time 
 that the relative weight of the colour in different parts of the 
 picture has been rightly determined. And for practical con- 
 venience, in following out the different processes of painting 
 to a successful and complete result, especially if the work be on 
 a large scale, a great space is extremely desirable. The comfort 
 of a great studio is most conducive to technical excellence. 
 A substantial oak easel, heavy and firm, with a screw to raise 
 and lower the picture without disturbing it, and wheels to move 
 the whole into precisely the best light ; a painting-table, with 
 one or more drawers, neatly divided with partitions for colours ; 
 shelves with everything that can possibly be wanted at any stage 
 of the work, always at hand, and in perfect order : all these 
 things are helps which no wise man despises, for they make 
 good and beautiful workmanship easier and pleasanter to him. 
 And the absence of hurry in studio-work is another great 
 advantage. In painting from nature, you must work rapidly, 
 and you cannot well undertake more than one picture at a time. 
 The changes in local colour occasioned by the ceaseless advance 
 of vegetation are so great, so revolutionary, that it is of little 
 use undertaking any work from nature which will occupy us more 
 than a month. But a month is not enough for a picture which 
 is solidly painted, if all its processes are to be carefully followed, 
 with sufficient intervals for drying. At least three months are 
 necessary for the fair construction of an oil-picture in which 
 impasto is employed, if we allow the right time for drying, paint 
 
PAINTING FROM MEMORANDA. 
 
 4i 
 
 soundly, and do not use perilous driers. Now, in the studio, 
 there is no occasion for any hurry whatever. Your memoranda 
 will be the same three months hence, and you may as well have 
 three or four pictures going on together, letting each dry as long 
 as is necessary. In the modern w r ay of using opaque colour, 
 and obtaining texture by leaving various kinds of surface for 
 the subsequent reception of transparent films, it is frequently 
 necessary that certain parts of the ground-colours should retain 
 the rough marks of the brush, whilst in other parts these marks 
 must be carefully scraped away, so as to leave a surface as smooth 
 as polished ivory. This scraping, on colour not perfectly dry, 
 is quite impossible ; and even in the height of summer the 
 thicker parts of a gound-colour will take a fortnight to harden 
 enough to be fit for the scraper. Many of these minor artifices, 
 which contribute so much to the effect of a picture, have to be 
 omitted in work done directly from nature ; and hence the 
 common assertion of French critics like M. de Lasteyrie, that 
 we English do not understand the technical art of painting — 
 an accusation for which there is this degree of foundation, that 
 in our works from nature we are often obliged to neglect a 
 variety of cunning little expedients which lend a great charm 
 to the best studio pictures. And it does, indeed, seem very 
 possible that in a school like ours, where the custom of working 
 from nature is extremely prevalent, the artist craft is in some 
 danger of being neglected and lost for mere want of the leisure 
 and convenience necessary to its elaborate exercise. There is 
 a continual temptation, in working from nature, to abridge 
 the orderly succession of processes, and do too much at a time. 
 No doubt a very accomplished artist may, if he pleases, finish 
 a few square inches of his picture when he has the chance of 
 doing it from nature — I mean, when the effect of the moment 
 in some degree resembles the effect originally selected for the 
 work — but it is dangerous for ordinary painters to yield to 
 such temptation. For them there is no safety but in the orderly 
 and calm division of the business to be done. 
 
 Memoranda for pictures may be accumulated in two ways. 
 Either the artist accumulates memoranda of natural facts and 
 phenomena with no other intention than to provide himself with 
 a kind of encyclopaedia for general reference, or he goes to 
 nature with the direct intention of obtaining memoranda for a 
 particular picture. The first method has the advantage of 
 
42 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 keeping his attention so continually alive, that no natural fact 
 can possibly come amiss to him ; and an artist of this universally 
 accumulative character, although his particular works may not 
 present any striking imitative truth, is sure to know a great deal 
 more about nature than artists who work only with reference, to 
 some picture they have resolved to paint. This was Turner’s 
 way of accumulating memoranda, and no doubt a very good 
 way it is, but it has a defect which I must here indicate. 
 
 The evil of it is, that although your memoranda may be in 
 the aggregate very voluminous, they rarely afford, when taken 
 in this desultory manner, all the information you desire when 
 you come to consult them with reference to some particular 
 work. They fail to inform you about some fact which you 
 find to be indispensably necessary ; and the want of authentic 
 information on such points tends to a general weakness of 
 statement in your whole picture ; for although you may state 
 some facts with perfect certainty, you feel so uncertain about 
 others that you dare not enter very far into detail anywhere. 
 Perhaps this simple consideration may explain the vagueness 
 of assertion so common in Turner’s foregrounds. It is pos- 
 sible in one or two of his more carefully studied foregrounds 
 to discover a few plants and leaves about which there is some- 
 thing approaching to an intelligible statement; and a critic 
 whose object was to exalt Turner, and not to teach truth, 
 might, no doubt, from the immense mass of his works, point 
 to a few such details as a proof that Turner’s observation 
 extended to them ; but the plain truth is, that Turner hardly 
 ever painted either trees or foregrounds in careful completion, 
 his interest being chiefly concentrated in the distance, and in 
 effects of atmosphere and water. Leslie’s criticism, “ I look in 
 vain for a specific discrimination in his trees, or in the vege- 
 tation of his foregrounds,” is perfectly well founded, Turner’s 
 vegetation being generally weak and unmeaning; nor would 
 it be possible out of the innumerable works he left behind him 
 to extract anything like a complete illustration of the principal 
 English and French trees, though he devoted two distinct series 
 of works to the scenery of England and France. The reasons 
 for this weakness appear to have been, first, his youthful 
 deference to elder masters, who lived in days when landscape 
 was considered so far beneath the attention of a true student 
 that trees were not thought to be worthy of serious study, and 
 
PAINTING FROM MEMORANDA. 
 
 43 
 
 were seldom specifically rendered; and, secondly, his own 
 system of memoranda, which was better fitted for dealing with 
 sudden effects of light than the elaborate details of botanical 
 structure. In considering his system of memoranda, we are 
 therefore to bear in mind that it was invented and employed 
 by a painter whose great object was to paint remote distances, 
 and to whom foreground detail was a matter of secondary 
 importance ; and we are only to imitate it so far as we ourselves 
 attempt to deal with effects in the sky and distance. 1 
 
 So far as I have been able to examine Turner's memoranda, 
 I should say that those of the sky are nearly all that it was pos- 
 sible to obtain in the time, whilst the memoranda of mountains 
 and trees were generally much slighter than they might have 
 been if the painter had cared to have them elaborate. Being, 
 however, accustomed to charge his memory with infinite details 
 of cloud structure, it is natural that Turner should have relied 
 upon it for everything else to the same extent. Still I see no 
 reason why we should not get abundant memoranda of things 
 that will stay to be studied, merely because we are forced to 
 content ourselves with slight notes of transient things ; and I 
 look upon Turner’s whole system as rather a result of habit 
 than reflection. As a painter pre-eminently of skies and dis- 
 tances, he had acquired the habit of working almost entirely 
 from memory, aided by the very slightest notes, and he carried 
 the same habit into the foreground. In deliberately reasoning 
 out a system of memoranda, we are, however, to remember 
 that we are not all of us Turners, and cannot, like him, get weak 
 
 1 This criticism of Turner’s foliage and foreground drawing still appears 
 to me perfectly just so far as truth of science is concerned, but there are 
 certain qualities in painting which are strangely and curiously independent 
 of scientific truth. There are many of our younger landscape-painters who 
 can paint trees with far more botanical truth than either Turner or Claude, 
 yet their work may be less valuable as art from the want of the qualities of 
 grandeur or grace which charm us in the poetical painters. One of the 
 very best modern masters of foliage tells me that he looks up to Claude as 
 the supreme master, and believes Claude’s mother must have been a Dryad. 
 This expression is of itself sufficient to point to the real reason for the 
 admiration. It is a reference to poetic legend, not to science ; and the 
 most advanced criticism forgives a great deal of scientific ignorance or error 
 for the sake of poetic emotion. It is as well, however, that we should be 
 clearly aware of the ignorance of the poets, and not set them up as teachers 
 of infallible truth. — 1873. 
 
44 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ATT. 
 
 foregrounds forgiven for the sake of glorious skies and illimitable 
 
 distances. 
 
 Thus of the memoranda by Turner, given in the fourth 
 chapter of the fifth volume of Modern Painters the slight 
 notes of a sunrise at page 187 (first edition) are nearly all that 
 could have been obtained in the time ; whereas the sketch of 
 Lausanne, opposite page 189, is merely the jotting down of an 
 idea, not by any means a study of the place. All this was 
 perfectly right for Turner; and the longer I live the more I 
 ‘perceive that every artist finds out the natural expression of his 
 own talent. Either Turner’s memory was not strong enough 
 to carry the specific characteristics of the different kinds of 
 trees and plants, or he despised these orders of truths and 
 rejected them on system. 
 
 In offering a detailed explanation of my own system of 
 memoranda, I wish the reader to observe that it is adapted to 
 my own wants, and ~ r ould probably have to be modified before 
 it could be as useful to any other artist. Still it is more likely 
 to be of general use than Turner’s plan, which relied entirely 
 upon invention, and which, therefore, can be of little use to 
 painters who have no invention to rely upon. 
 
 Memoranda may be made to serve a double purpose, the 
 education of the artist and the collecting of materials for 
 pictures. Of the two purposes, the first is never to be lost sight 
 of, and the second ought always to be kept in subordination to 
 it. An artist’s first purpose should always be to train himself 
 to perfect power, not to produce this or that agreeable picture. 
 
 The other and immediate, yet secondary, purpose of getting 
 materials for particular works has also to be carefully provided 
 for. We are to get all the facts that can possibly be got directly 
 from nature. We cannot really draw the clouds in a sky, so we 
 must be satisfied with a sketch of their arrangement, aided by 
 shorthand notes for colour ; but we can draw the principal forms 
 of a mountain with tolerable accuracy, and we are therefore to 
 do so. On the other hand, we cannot get transient colour from 
 nature ; but we may get a careful study in oil or water-colour 
 of local colour, which w T e are therefore to try for. The golden 
 rule is to get from nature whatever nature’s transience will allow 
 us fairly to obtain. 
 
 The secret of success in this is separation of aim . It is a 
 bad and lazy plan to try for everything in the same study. 
 
PAINTING FROM MEMORANDA. 
 
 45 
 
 The right way is to take a series of studies each with its own 
 object : one for form, severe and delicate ; a second for light 
 and shade, this one mainly for the forms of shadows , a most 
 desirable kind of truth; a third for transient form and colour, 
 this one being a very hasty pencil memorandum with shorthand 
 notes ; a fourth being a rapid attempt to realize the effect in 
 water-colour, whilst the impression of it remains quite fresh in 
 the memory. To these five studies a few collodion photographs 
 may be added with advantage, if their exposure is strictly regu- 
 lated according to the particular kind of detail the artist requires. 
 The photographs are especially useful for reference as to texture , 
 which collodion renders perfectly, and which none of the other 
 memoranda can render at all, unless those in water-colour, at 
 the cost of infinite labour. But the collodion photographs do 
 not by any means do away with the necessity for the severe 
 form-study. I cannot stay here to explain why photographs are 
 of little use to landscape-painters as records of form ; but the 
 reader will find the whole subject investigated in the chapter on 
 the relation of photography to painting . 1 
 
 It is generally useless to attempt transient form and colour 
 with the brush, which can render neither truly in the time. All 
 that is to be got from nature in cloud-drawing is a rapid pencil 
 memorandum of the natural composition, covered all over imme- 
 diately afterwards with brief shorthand notes of colour and light. 
 Whilst these shorthand notes are being added, of course the com- 
 position will be rapidly breaking up and running into new forms ; 
 but we have secured its main lines, nevertheless, and may add 
 some notes of its principal colours. I have a great number of 
 memoranda of Highland effects of this kind taken at all seasons 
 of the year, and I find the shorthand notes upon them valuable 
 to me as records of colour and light. My system of notation 
 once thoroughly mastered, so as to be always at one’s fingers’ 
 ends, opens new possibilities of veracity to the painter of transient 
 effects, but it is rather complicated and elaborate, and needs 
 
 1 I leave this passage about the photographs as it stands, because one or 
 two experienced landscape-painters tell me they find them very useful ; but 
 my own experience for the last few years has been unfavourable to photo- 
 graphy, and I never use it now, or even look at it. Photography never 
 gives me what I want , though it gives me much I have no need for. 
 An artist can generally get more of what concerns him in half an hour's 
 sketching from nature than he could dig out of the detail of a photograph. 
 
 -1873- 
 
46 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 some practice before it can be used with the necessary readiness. 
 For there is this peculiarity in all memoranda of transient 
 effects, that they must be done in so short a space of time that 
 there is not a second to spare for deliberation. The brain 
 must be ready and in full action, with perfect command of all 
 its means and materials ; the hand must be swift and unerring, 
 the eye eager and piercing. To work thus at utmost speed, 
 and make no mistakes in the application of an elaborate set of 
 signs, it is necessary to have used them long. 
 
 I made them, however, as simple as I could, and used no 
 mysterious hieroglyphics, but only plain initial letters. Still, 
 as blue and black and brown all begin with a B, I called blue 
 H, the initial letter of heaven, because the sky is blue ; and 
 black I marked N, because night is black. Then, again, as 
 green and grey both begin with G, I called green E, because 
 the earth is green and as rose and red both begin with the 
 letter R, I called rose F, for flower. With these little changes, 
 I found I could represent a considerable number of colours 
 with one letter only for each. 
 
 iCOLOURS. 
 
 Red, 
 
 R. 
 
 Grey, 
 
 G. 
 
 Blue, 
 
 H. (heaven). 
 
 White, 
 
 W. 
 
 Yellow, 
 
 Y. 
 
 Black, 
 
 N. (night). 
 
 Green, 
 
 E. (earth). 
 
 Brown, 
 
 B. 
 
 Purple, 
 
 P. 
 
 Crimson, 
 
 C. 
 
 Violet, 
 
 V. 
 
 Scarlet, 
 
 S. 
 
 Orange, 
 
 O. 
 
 Mauve, 
 
 M. 
 
 Lilac, 
 
 L. 
 
 Drab, 
 
 D. 
 
 Rose, 
 
 F. (flower). 
 
 
 
 But as colours in nature are hardly ever pure, I had to find 
 out some way of writing such a combination as bluish grey, 
 and I represented the syllable ish by means of a colon, thus, 
 H: G. Then, as the words “ warm ” and “ cold ” are much used 
 by artists to distinguish tints into two large classes, I invented 
 signs for them thus : warm A, cold V. It was easy to remember 
 that warm was something like a A, and cold the same sign 
 turned upside down. 
 
 Then, as all colours in nature are gradated, I required some 
 sign capable of being extended at will over a great surface, 
 without interfering with the other signs, and which might thus 
 indicate gradations either in large spaces or small. For this 
 
PAINTING FROM MEMORANDA. 
 
 47 
 
 purpose I finally selected a single dotted line : 
 
 Since, however, it was absolutely necessary that I should know 
 which end of my gradation was darker than the other, I put a 
 D at the darker end, and an L at the lighter end, thus — 
 
 D L 1 
 
 Again, as the same colour would occur in very different 
 degrees of intensity, I required some graduated scale of signs 
 to indicate the degree. I found the following most con- 
 venient ; — 
 
 Yellow Y. 
 
 Strong Yellow Y.//_ 
 
 Intense Yellow Y .uu 
 
 Very intense Yellow i • • . Y. mm 
 
 I needed a simple sign for the word “ pale,” and another 
 for the word “ dark,” because these words are of constant 
 occurrence in memoranda of transient effect. For “ pale ” I 
 took a small open circle °, and for “dark” the same circle 
 filled up °. 
 
 Thus °G is pale grey, and *G dark grey. 
 
 In taking memoranda of skies, every painter must have 
 perceived that their colours are extremely metallic ; even poets 
 perceive this, and call the sky “ golden,” “ silvered,” “ copper,” 
 “leaden,” and the French poets sometimes call it brazen 
 ( d'airain ). I therefore selected the metals most likely to be 
 useful ; but as their initial letters were the same as some already 
 devoted to colours, I wrote each initial letter of the English 
 word in the corresponding small Greek character. It would 
 have been useless pedantry to take the initials of the Greek 
 words themselves, because I am not in the habit of thinking in 
 Greek. This gave me the following additional signs, which I 
 have since found of great use ; — 
 
 Silver, <r. 
 
 Bronze, /3. 
 
 Gold, -y. 
 
 Aluminium, a. 
 
 Copper, re. 
 
 Lead, A. 
 
 The new metal, aluminium, was particularly useful, perhaps 
 the most useful of all, its delicate grey being of constant 
 occurrence in the paler rain-clouds. 
 
 1 I began with this, but afterwards used the dotted line with circles at the 
 <*uds of it, simply filling up the circle at the darker end. -r-- 1873. 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 48 
 
 Again, as everybody who is in the habit of reading poetry 
 must have remarked that the poets, when they describe the 
 phenomena of the sky, cannot get on at all without precious 
 stones, and as the peculiar transparency of air and semi- 
 transparency of cloud often really do resemble precious stones, 
 I added a series of abbreviations of the most useful stones, 
 thus, taking the first two letters of each : — 
 
 Diamond 
 
 Di. 
 
 Topaz, 
 
 To. 
 
 Ruby, 
 
 Ru. 
 
 Amethyst, 
 
 Am. 
 
 Emerald, 
 
 Em. 
 
 Turquoise, 
 
 Tu. 
 
 Pearl, 
 
 Pe. 
 
 Coral, 
 
 Co. 
 
 Sapphire, 
 
 Sa. 
 
 Opal, 
 
 Op. 
 
 Chrysoprase, 
 
 Ch. 
 
 Lapis lazuli, 
 
 La. 
 
 These abbreviations are occasionally of great use, though 
 less frequently required than the preceding ones. 
 
 We have now got some indication of colour and gradation, but 
 in order to make our memorandum really valuable, we require 
 tolerably accurate notes of light and shade. 
 
 There is no time to get these with the brush. It is quite 
 impossible by such means to define the degree in which a light 
 cloud relieves itself against a darker one, before both are trans- 
 formed, or even to render the delicate differences in light 
 between minute portions of the same cloud’s surface. But it 
 is fortunate that, although colour can only be noted down in a 
 rude and imperfect manner, degrees of light can, by a practised 
 student, be noted with accuracy and precision. It is not 
 desirable, for it would be of no use, to note the light of nature 
 as it is; we need only set it down as paint is able to represent 
 it. I therefore transpose the scale of Nature’s light to my own 
 scale of pictorial light in the memorandum itself. 1 
 
 You may state light and dark with quite sufficient delicacy 
 by means of numbers. I take 100 as my highest light — that 
 is, the sun, and the intense splendour immediately surrounding 
 it ; with zero for my darkest dark — that is, a mountain at 
 moonless midnight. All the intermediate numbers represent 
 intermediate degrees of light. 
 
 If I had needed more minute distinctions, I might have 
 graduated my light into a thousand degrees, but a hundred 
 
 1 The reader will find a full explanation of this difference in scale between 
 natural and pictorial light in the chapter on the Relation between Photo- 
 graphy and Painting. 
 
PAINTING FROM MEMORANDA . 
 
 49 
 
 were quite sufficient and the numbers from one to a hundred 
 will express degrees of light with a delicacy and exactness 
 which no combinations of words, however elaborate, could 
 rival. They have also the great advantage of being expressible 
 in figures, which are a very perfect kind of shorthand. 
 
 In looking over my memoranda, I continually find such 
 distinctions as this : One ridge of mountain is marked 50, 
 another close to it 51 ; a distinction so extremely delicate 
 that nothing but numbers or art could state it ; words certainly 
 could not, and all artistic expression of it would cost too 
 much time. The slightest exaggeration in the light of the 
 second ridge would deprive a third ridge of its relief, and so 
 destroy the truth of the memorandum. By the help of num- 
 bers, the gradation sign gains also in significance. 
 
 D L 
 
 Here is the gradation without the help of numbers. We 
 know that the colour is darkest at our left hand, and lightest 
 at our right ; but we do not know whether the gradation is 
 regular or not, nor whether it is strong or faint. Gradation in 
 nature is hardly ever regular ; it usually becomes more rapid 
 towards one end* of the scale. Let us see how numbers will 
 help us. 
 
 We see by this that the gradation is much more rapid at our 
 left hand, and that the middle tint is not half-way from the 
 dark to the light, but much nearer the dark. 
 
 These figures being written in a very minute hand may be 
 put in all sorts of little places. A mere touch of intense sun- 
 shine on a cloud or mountain may be isolated by the pencil- 
 point, and marked with a high figure to indicate the intensity 
 of the light upon it, when the space would be too small to 
 allow of a word being written in it. 
 
 My own memoranda of transient effects are covered all over 
 with these signs ; but as it always requires some mental effort 
 to decipher and realize such complicated pages, I find it saves 
 time to translate them into colour before painting the effects 
 in studio pictures. 1 
 
 1 Artists usually have very elaborate plans for study when they are 
 young, and simplify them as they advance in life. If they retain any 
 
 H E 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 So 
 
 Although we are to rely as little as may be on the memory, 
 we cannot paint away from nature without continual reference 
 to it. Minute difficulties are perpetually arising, which nothing 
 but the memory can solve. In order to paint really well in 
 the studio, we need vast and profound science. It would be 
 difficult to give any just idea of the immense miscellany of 
 information which a landscape-painter must have at his com- 
 mand if he would make the best use of his memoranda. He 
 employs, in fact, at every instant, the whole of his professional 
 education and experience, just as a clever lawyer does in his 
 daily practice, or a skilful general in actual warfare, or an 
 experienced surgeon when he pays his daily visit to his 
 hospital. The amount of knowledge which may be concen- 
 trated in the painting of half-a-dozen leaves, or in the 
 covering of one square inch of canvas representing a bit of 
 mountain flank, or a fragment of morning cloud, is so vast that 
 it could not be fairly stated in many such volumes as this, 
 even if words could express such knowledge at all, which they 
 cannot. And all good studio painters, however abundant and 
 minute their memoranda, paint far more from knowledge accu- 
 mulated in the memory by years of observation, than from the 
 studies and sketches in their portfolios. — 1861. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 This essay on Painting from Memoranda contains, in its present 
 form at least, no statement which is not confirmed by common ex- 
 perience, but there is an omission in it of the greatest importance, 
 and this omission I hasten to supply. It is found in practice that 
 the value of a memorandum to an artist does not usually depend 
 upon its slightness or its fulness, but upon his previous knowledge 
 of the class of objects or effects to which the memorandum refers. 
 As an illustration of this I may mention ordinary handwriting as it is 
 practised by very rapid and bad writers. It would be entirely ille- 
 gible if we did not already know the words ; it would be impossible 
 
 practice for so long a period as eleven years, it must be useful enough to have 
 recommended itself by experience. I have discarded as useless several 
 kinds of memoranda which were recommended in the first edition of this 
 work (especially those for local colour only), but I still use this system of 
 notation, and advise others to use it. The numbers especially are valuable, 
 and the gradation signs. — 1873. 
 
PAINTING FROM MEMORANDA. 
 
 51 
 
 for a foreigner, ignorant of our language, to make out what words 
 these signs were intended to represent. Our ability to read bad 
 writing is due entirely to previous knowledge acquired by the most 
 careful practice of writing in our childhood, practicedn which every 
 letter was studiously formed. So it is with the memoranda of 
 painters ; they cannot, after a lapse of time, read even their own 
 memoranda in any full and perfect sense, unless they have studied 
 material similar to the subjects of these memoranda, with a patient 
 elaboration resembling that of a schoolboy practising his letters. 
 It is found too, that when an artist is painting an oil-picture, it is 
 not necessary that the memoranda actually before him should be 
 painted in oil ; a pencil scratch is sufficient for the purpose : but it 
 is necessary that he should have made studies from nature at some 
 former period of his practice, in oil-colour, of natural material 
 similar to the material of his picture. A painter who works from 
 memoranda ought therefore to be a very highly educated painter, 
 for the excellence of his work will depend much more upon the 
 completeness of his previous training than upon the fulness of the 
 memoranda before him. 
 
 My present opinion about the practice of landscape, founded upon 
 the observation of methods used by the most able artists known to 
 me, is that all pictures of landscape ought to be painted sys- 
 tematically from memoranda, never from nature ; but that land- 
 scape-painters ought to do a great deal of sincere study from 
 nature in oil-colour, in careful broad daubing for tint and tone, 
 with just so much detail as can be got without sacrificing the truth 
 of large relations. It is better to study detail separately. Animal 
 and figure painters appear to need more of what is called finish in 
 their studies for self-education, and to carry them farther in the 
 way of texture and surface. If you can paint one oak-tree 
 thoroughly well from nature, you will probably be able to paint 
 any other oak afterwards fairly well from a memorandum in pen 
 and ink ; if you can paint one sheep, you can paint all sheep ; if 
 one horse, all horses. The great danger in painting from memo- 
 randa is attempting to paint in that way what would defeat us if 
 it were before our eyes, and the surest of all safeguards is simply 
 to ascertain in preliminary studies how far our knowledge of similar 
 material may carry us in the actual presence of nature. If you 
 have mastered the sort of material you have to deal with, the 
 merest scrawl is a sufficient memorandum ; if not, the most 
 detailed study is of no use. — 1873. 
 
 E 2 
 
IV. 
 
 THE RELATION BETWEEN PHOTOGRAPHY AND 
 PAINTING. 
 
 Photography is the blackening and decomposition of a salt 
 by some of the solar rays, and these not the luminous ones. If 
 a photograph were really drawn by the luminous rays, it would 
 be far truer than it is. Mr. Hardwich has clearly distinguished 
 between the luminous and actinic rays, or the rays which 
 produce what we call light, and those which effect the chemical 
 changes we habitually call “photography.” He says, in his 
 “Photographic Chemistry” (Fourth Edition, p. 61), “The 
 actinic and luminous rays are totally distinct from each other, 
 and the word ‘ photography/ which signifies the process of 
 taking pictures by light , is in reality inaccurate.” And, again 
 (page 62), “ In exemplifying further the importance of dis- 
 tinguishing between visual and actinic rays of light, we may 
 observe, that, if the two were in all respects the same, photo- 
 graphy must cease to exist as an art. It would be impossible 
 to make use of the more sensitive chemical preparations, from 
 the difficulties which would attend the previous preparation 
 and subsequent development of the plates. These operations 
 are now conducted in what is termed a dark room ; but it is 
 dark only in a photographic sense, being illuminated by means 
 of yellow light which, whilst it enables the operator easily to 
 watch the progress of the work, produces no injurious effect 
 upon the sensitive surfaces.” 
 
 Photography having been ascertained to be the blackening 
 and decomposition of a salt by some of the solar rays, the 
 next question of importance is how these rays blacken it. 
 
 And here it is necessary to say a little about Nature’s light. 
 
PHO T 0 GRA PHY AND PAINTING. 
 
 53 
 
 Let one million represent the sun, the brightest thing we 
 know, and the unit represent the blackness of night, the 
 blackest black we know. If we take this as representative of 
 Nature's scale of light and dark, the most extensive scale 
 attainable on paper may be from a dark five hundred times 
 lighter than Nature’s dark, to a light a thousand times darker 
 than Nature’s light, or somewhere between the figures 500 and 
 1,000. 
 
 So that to represent Nature’s million degrees we have, let us 
 say, about five hundred degrees. 1 
 
 Nature is very rich, and Art very poor. Nature has a million 
 to spend where Art has five hundred. What is the most 
 prudent thing for poor Art to do ? There are two ways of 
 imitating Nature. Art may spend side by side with Nature, 
 degree for degree of light, coin for coin, till all her resources 
 are exhausted, and then confess herself bankrupt. Or she 
 may establish a scale of expenditure suited to her limited 
 resources ; and, abandoning all hope of rivalry with Nature, 
 set herself to the humbler task of interpreting her. 
 
 And here is the first essential difference between photo- 
 graphy and painting ; a difference which, of itself, is sufficient 
 to separate them for ever. 
 
 Poor Photography spends degree for degree with rich Nature, 
 and, of course, is very soon exhausted ; but poor Painting 
 husbands her little resources, and spends a penny for light 
 where Nature spends a pound. 
 
 1 This estimate of the difference between natural sunshine and the 
 white at the command of the painter is not hyberbole, but simple truth. 
 That the sun is more than a thousand times brighter than white paper in 
 ordinary daylight may be positively demonstrated as follows. The white- 
 washed ceiling of a room of moderate size has, from its extent of area, a 
 light-giving power (every visible thing gives off light by reflection) certainly 
 more than a thousand times that of the lighter colours employed in a cabinet 
 picture ; yet you can look at the ceiling without pain. But you cannot look 
 even on a white cloud in full sunshine without pain, still less at the sun 
 itself. Not only the sun, but any white thing in sunshine is a thousand 
 times brighter than white paper in ordinary daylight. When you see a 
 strong shadow cast upon white paper, the shaded part looks black , and yet 
 any piece of white paper out of doors on a sunny day must be much lighter 
 even in its darkest shadow than a white thing in a room without direct 
 sunshine, on account of the reflections from the sky. I should be glad if 
 any scientific person would invent a measure capable of expressing inten- 
 sities of light quite accurately in numbers ; it would simplify art- theory 
 considerably on questions of light and tone. — 1873- 
 
54 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 All photographs, therefore, which attempt to copy Nature’s 
 effects of light, lose themselves either in a vacuity of light or 
 a vacuity of shade. 
 
 Here is another illustration, but not so good a one as 
 the preceding, because it does not sufficiently set forth the 
 enormous difference in scale between Nature and the 
 photograph. 
 
 Nature’s power of light is like a great organ with all its vast 
 range of octaves. The photograph’s power of light is, in com- 
 parison, something like a voice, but a voice of extremely 
 limited compass. 
 
 How is the voice to follow the organ in an exercise on the 
 scales ? 
 
 The voice will sing its own notes in the places where they 
 occur, but must ignore all the rest. 
 
 This is exactly the way the photograph imitates Nature. And 
 when Nature plays only in the middle of her scale, photography 
 would follow her with much accuracy if it were not for that fact 
 about the excited film being insensitive to yellow rays. 
 
 Now, what is painting ? 
 
 It is an intellectual and emotional interpretation of Nature, 
 by means of carefully balanced and cunningly subdivided hues. 
 Its powers of imitation are extremely limited. However, the 
 eye of the painter, instead of being insensible to everything 
 that is yellow, is as sensitive to gold and orange as to blue, 
 so that in this respect he may do truer work. And in his way 
 of interpreting Nature’s light, he has opportunities of com- 
 promise and compensation which the unthinking photograph 
 cannot have. So he gets more truths. 
 
 With a view to ascertain something of the relative power of 
 light in Nature and Art, I have made a few simple experiments 
 which the reader may easily repeat for his own satisfaction. 
 
 People cannot see either pictures or photographs in full out- 
 of-door sunshine. They see them best, and they see them 
 habitually, in" quiet, dull daylight without sunshine. 
 
 The sun in a picture is usually made of a little flake white, 
 mixed with Naples or other yellow. 
 
 The whitest flake white is not so white as snow. 
 
 During the winter months I have obtained a great many 
 memoranda of mountain snow. On looking over these me- 
 moranda I find that when not illuminated by direct sunshine 
 
PHOTOGRAPHY AND PAINTING . 
 
 55 
 
 the snow is in many instances considerably darker than the 
 sky ; darker even than grey clouds. 
 
 And yet I know that the flake white I have to imitate sno7v 
 in sunshine with is, in reality, itself darker than snow i?i 
 shadow. 
 
 Our whitest white is darker than -many of Nature’s ordinary 
 blues and greens and reds. 
 
 And our blackest black is lighter than many of Nature’s 
 greys.. 
 
 This last fact is easily ascertained. Hang a common black 
 cloth dress coat on a stand out of doors any moonless night, 
 so as to bring it against the sky. Throw the light of a lamp 
 upon it, and you will find your black cloth coat, the blackest 
 thing you have, a great deal lighter than a clear starlit sky. 
 
 And this experiment gives a result infinitely below the truth. 
 A fairer way would be to cast some rays of electric light on 
 the coat, because, as everybody knows who has walked in the 
 streets at night, even gaslight is immeasurably below ordinary 
 clouded daylight, such as we require for seeing pictures. 
 
 Well, but though the sky is darker than the coat, there are 
 some clouds visible which, in their turn, are considerably 
 darker than the sky. And the mountain under the clouds is 
 infinitely darker than they are. So here we are in Nature’s 
 bass notes ; and no art can get down there. 
 
 In all photographs which attempt landscape, and include 
 distant and highly illuminated objects, such as mountains and 
 the sky, the sensitive film of the negative has always been so 
 entirely decomposed by Nature’s middle degrees of light as to 
 leave no room for farther decomposition by the highest, or else 
 the time of exposure has been insufficient for the due action of 
 Nature’s lower degrees of light, so that they have not been 
 able to make any impression. 
 
 The consequence of this in the positive , with which the 
 public is most familiar, is that all Nature’s higher notes are lost 
 in white vacancy, or else all her lower notes in black or brown 
 vacancy. 
 
 Thus, in a photograph of the sea, — because the sea is 
 a bright object,— if we want to have the glitter of the wave 
 we must expose our negative so very short a time that any 
 solid objects on the shore will take no effect upon it, and be 
 left blank. 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 56 
 
 In the positive, these blank objects will print as brown 
 silhouettes. 
 
 We will now examine a few photographs by the ablest hands 
 to see whether this is so. And then we will examine one or 
 two pictures and engravings to see in what manner intellectual 
 art contends with this great difficulty, and how far the human 
 intellect has found means to overcome it. 
 
 I have at hand a portfolio of good photographs by profes- 
 sional photographers, and a portfolio of photographs, not so 
 good, done by myself. These will afford ample materials for 
 our investigation. 
 
 One of the best photographs of the sea which I have been 
 able to procure in Paris, is a view of sea and sky, with a pier 
 and lighthouse at the spectator’s right. It is by E. Colliau, 
 and is entitled “La Jetee.” The negative has been exposed a 
 very short time indeed, in order to preserve the light on the 
 clouds and the glitter of the sunshine on the water. These 
 two truths are accordingly obtained, the silvery touches of soft 
 light on the clouds are all admirably rendered, and the glitter 
 of the ripple is accurately recorded too. But the grey shade 
 of the clouds is given in deep brown ; and, although the sun 
 is high, the lighthouse, the pier, and the people upon it ai'e all 
 in silhouette , without the famt est trace of any detail whatever . 
 Of course, if M. Colliau had exposed his wet collodion nega- 
 tive a few seconds more, he would have obtained the detail in 
 the pier at the cost of his sky, which would have been all 
 decomposed away by the powerful action of the abundant 
 chemical rays, and his negative on development would have 
 exhibited a black sky over a very dark sea, which in the 
 positive would have given us a white sky and pale water, 
 without glitter. But we should have had our pier in the 
 corner quite perfect, and should have been able to see the 
 people upon it distinctly. 
 
 A prudent photographer will always, where possible, avoid 
 these discrepancies. The pier was introduced to add a little 
 human interest to the subject, and in this respect with judg- 
 ment, for one cannot help sympathising with the people on 
 the pier, who are waiting for their friends. But in photo- 
 graphy, the great compass of Nature’s light should never be 
 attempted, for it can never be even suggestively rendered. 
 And M. Colliau has succeeded in producing better sea-views. 
 
PHOTOGRAPHY AND PAINTING. 
 
 57 
 
 where there was nothing in the foreground darker than the sea 
 itself, as, for example, in that one entitled “ Le mauvais temps/’ 
 a most valuable memorandum of the action of sea-waves. 
 The peculiar leaping of sea-water is perfectly given, and the 
 white crests in the middle distance are as good as may be. 
 This photograph fails towards the edges, where it becomes 
 dark — a common defect in sea-views, on account of their very 
 brief exposure, which M. Colliau has wisely remedied in some 
 others of his by having the positives cut into ovals before 
 being mounted. With the exception of this defect, this photo- 
 graph is all that one can desire ; the light in the natural sub- 
 ject, though excessively high in pitch, being very limited in 
 compass. For the pitch matters nothing whatever to the 
 photograph, as that can always be transposed to Photography’s 
 own key by an exposure more or less prolonged ; but the 
 compass is of the greatest importance, because Photography 
 has so narrow a compass, that when the natural subject 
 includes both treble and bass notes, she must pass two-thirds 
 of them in absolute silence. 
 
 I have an oval photograph of sea by M. Colliau, with a boat 
 in the middle distance. The time of exposure must have 
 been very brief, for the forms of the waves are quite firm and 
 clear, yet there is nothing black but the hull of the boat. If 
 there had been anything solid in the foreground — as, for 
 instance, a pier — it would have come in silhouette, and spoiled 
 the photograph. 
 
 I have another oval of rough sea, by the same manipulator. 
 It includes a fine cumulus cloud, and is altogether wonderful. 
 Where it fails as a study is in the absence of distinction 
 between foam and ?'eflection. The negative has evidently been 
 exposed long enough for the foam to act upon it ; so that it 
 is as bright as the glitter, and there is no separating them. 
 A little more exposure, and the middle tints would have 
 blackened the negative all over the surface of the water in the 
 interstices between the spots of foam and glitter. Once this 
 done, the picture would have been destroyed altogether ; for 
 the sea would have been one black blank in the negative, and 
 one white blank in the positive. 
 
 And now, if we want to know the relation between these 
 marine photographs and a good picture of the sea, it is easy 
 to ascertain it. We have only to compare one of the best 
 
58 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART, 
 
 specimens of marine photography we can find, with one of the 
 best^pictures of sea hitherto produced by our realist school. 
 
 I will take for this purpose one of Gustave le Gray’s marine 
 photographs, and Holman Hunt’s exquisite little picture en- 
 titled “ Fairlight Downs : Sunlight on the Sea.” . • 
 
 In the photograph the blaze of light upon the sea is given 
 with perfect fidelity ; but in order to get this, and the light on 
 the edges of the clouds, all else has been sacrificed : the 
 shaded sides of the clouds, in nature of a dazzling grey, 
 brighter than white -paper, are positively black in the photo- 
 graph, and the pale splendour of the sun-lit sea — except where 
 it flashes light — is heavy and impenetrable darkness. Towards 
 the sides of the photograph, the distinction between sea and 
 sky is wholly lost in one' uniform shade of dark brown, ex- 
 tending from top to bottom, without any indication of a 
 horizon ; so that, if you were to cut a strip an inch and a half 
 broad from each side of the photograph, no one on looking 
 at the strip would at all suspect that it represented either sea 
 or sky, or anything else in nature. The crowning falsity is, 
 however, the sun itself, which is darker than the surrounding 
 clouds, being simply a grey wafer on a white ground. 
 
 However, since it is one of the peculiar misfortunes of the 
 photograph that it is not capable of giving two truths at once, 
 not having any method of compensation like that which every 
 painter finds out for himself, we must be satisfied in all photo- 
 graphs of sunlight on the sea with this one truth only- — the 
 glitter on the ripple — and not ask for any more. I have 
 observed that simple people always take such photographs for 
 moonlights, and I suspect that they are extensively sold as 
 such. The truth is, that they do approach nearer to the 
 character of moonshine than sunshine ; but even in moonlit 
 water there is a diffused light outside the reflection or glitter, 
 which is lost in these photographs. 
 
 It is agreeable to turn from this representation of one truth 
 to a picture which, in about the same superficies, gives us a 
 thousand. 
 
 At Mr. Gambart’s Winter Exhibition in the year 1858, the 
 reader may have seen a wonderful little picture by Holman 
 Hunt, entitled “ Fairlight Downs : Sunlight on the Sea.” The 
 sunlight itself in its broad white glare on the water under the 
 sun, and its gradual scattering into glitter to the right hand 
 
PHOTOGRAPHY AND PAINTING. 
 
 59 
 
 and to the left; in its long lines in the distance, divided by 
 the shadows of the clouds ; in its restless flashing on the 
 crests of the little waves far away, — is as true and truer than the 
 photograph : but here all comparison ends, because there is no 
 longer in the photograph anything to be compared with the 
 picture. Where the photograph is simply dark brown, the 
 picture is full of the most delicate gradations, and the sweetest 
 play of hue. Where the glitter is not, we have still the sunlit 
 beauty of the fair sea, which is indeed better and more precious 
 even than the glitter itself, just as the fairness of a beautiful 
 woman is better than the glitter of her diamonds. And there 
 is a hot haze in the blinding distance miles away, and there is 
 a sultriness in the accumulated clouds which shall light up that 
 sea at night with another and more terrible splendour. And 
 then there is the green of the rich land, and the purple of the 
 fallow, and nearer is a mingled glow of scarlet flowers and 
 green leaves, and staring sheep, and a dog, and the shepherd’s 
 staff. And all these other facts Hunt could get into his picture 
 because painting is a great intellectual art ; an art of compen- 
 sation, and compromise, and contrast ; an art capable of 
 moderation, and subject to mastery. And all these other facts 
 Gustave le Gray could not get into his photograph, because 
 photography is not a fine art, but an art science; narrow in 
 range, emphatic in assertion, telling one truth for ten false- 
 hoods, but telling always distinctly the one truth that it is able 
 to perceive. 
 
 On comparing photographs with good topographical pen- 
 drawings of the same objects, I find a result very different 
 from anything that many persons would expect. I find the 
 sum of detail, in subjects including both distant and near 
 objects, to be much greater in the drawing than in the photo- 
 graph. Thus, Bisson’s Chillon, a magnificent photograph, 
 gives the castle in true detail, but loses the near foliage in 
 black, and the mountain detail in pale brown, like the sky. 
 A good topographical drawing would have given the castle 
 less exquisitely, but we should have had the nearer foliage 
 thoroughly drawn, and the mountain forms defined. I have 
 before me a good positive of the Lac de Gaube, evidently 
 printed from a waxed-paper negative, and therefore a 
 remarkable degree of detail is not to be expected ; still 
 few people not accustomed to analyse photographs would be 
 
6o 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 prepared, in a photograph of clear weather, such as this one 
 evidently is, to find such a large space of sheer vacancy as the 
 mountain slope on the left. A topographical drawing might 
 be done in a week which would contain ten times as many 
 facts as this photograph. 
 
 Having taken a waxed-paper negative of Craiganunie, and 
 since drawn and painted the same subject in various ways, 
 I find that with five or six hours’ labour I can get a memo- 
 randum containing much more detail than the photograph. 
 The details in the drawing are not so accurately or delicately 
 done ; but they are quite accurate enough for artistic purposes, 
 and there are more of them than in the photograph. 
 
 The collodion process would have afforded more abundant 
 detail ; but, to an artist, this additional detail is often of little 
 consequence, being not the detail he wants. For the best 
 photograph of any extensive scene never gives more than 
 partial detail, however perfect as far as it goes. The artist, 
 too, gives selected detail, that which seems to him the most 
 needful and vitally expressive : and here, ten to one, if he is 
 a good artist, he and the photograph will not be of the same 
 opinion. 
 
 It is, therefore, quite impossible to produce good pictures by 
 copying photographs. And this is the reason why Mr. Ruskin, 
 in answer to a malicious accusation against the pre-Raphaelites 
 that they “ copied photographs,” challenged the accusers to 
 produce a pre-Raphaelite picture themselves, or anything like 
 one, by that process. The challenge was perfectly safe, and 
 has never been responded to. 
 
 The way in which artists ordinarily use photographs is this. 
 When their memoranda from nature are not minute enough, as 
 sometimes from circumstances they cannot be, painters will 
 take a suggestion from a photograph, and invent details for 
 their pictures, which the photograph rather suggests than 
 contains. This is the practice of some artists ; but one of our 
 most popular painters of winter scenery always works from the 
 photograph alone, and never even draws from nature. The 
 study of winter scenery from nature involves, of course, the 
 physical difficulty of resistance to the cold ; and it seems 
 natural that a painter who does, not use a studio-tent should 
 find painting from photographs in a warm studio pleasanter 
 work than painting from nature in the cold open air of 
 
PHOTOGRAPHY AND PAINTING. 
 
 61 
 
 December. Even in this extreme instance, however, the true 
 way of stating the case would be to say that the artist works 
 from memory and invention aided by reference to photographs, 
 because there is a good deal of colour in his works, which 
 could not be got from photographs ; and his system of light is 
 artistic and not photographic , a little fact which , of itself at once 
 precludes the servile copying of photographs. 
 
 Since most artists buy photographs of subjects not often 
 obviously connected with the particular subjects of their 
 pictures, the question naturally suggests itself, whether it would 
 not be desirable for the painter to take photographs himself, 
 which might afford more direct and useful data than any pro- 
 curable in the shops, as he might then obtain memoranda of 
 the particular subjects he intended to paint. Such a course 
 appears at first sight likely to be peculiarly advantageous to a 
 painter, for the important reason that he might adjust the time 
 of exposure of the negative to the especial result required ; 
 and so, by taking several photographs of the same subject, of 
 different degrees of exposure, obtain from their united testi- 
 mony the various truths of detail he would need for his picture. 
 This suggests itself as a wise and politic course to pursue, for 
 it apparently obviates the greatest inconvenience of photo- 
 graphy, its loss of detail at the two ends of the scale. By 
 a careful regulation of the exposure, half-a-dozen collodion 
 negatives of one scene might be made to yield an enormous 
 aggregate of detail in every part of the subject. 
 
 It seems also evident that since the wet collodion process is 
 almost instantaneous, certain memoranda of effects of light may 
 be got by its means which are not otherwise attainable ; as, 
 for example, the complicated shadows of mountains, which 
 it is impossible to draw truly on account of their swift 
 changing. And, to a painter who has to deal with rich archi- 
 tecture, it seems as if the photograph would be a most useful 
 servant, giving him accurate data for every stone in the most 
 elaborately wrought building . 1 No memorandum of cloud- 
 form is equal to a photograph, for none other can be true, 
 even in outline ; whereas the sensitive collodion will arrest 
 in an instant the flying change of innumerable clouds. And, 
 
 1 I speak of exteriors only. Gothic interiors are generally too dark to 
 be photographed in detail. 
 
62 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 in matters of foreground detail, when a painter cannot remain 
 on the spot to finish an elaborate drawing from nature, — 
 as, for example, on a Swiss glacier, — the abundant detail 
 obtainable by a collodion photograph in a few seconds will 
 naturally tempt a landscape-painter to encumber himself with 
 a camera. 
 
 For this photography, as an art so imperfect, is a wonderfully 
 obedient slave for the collecting of memoranda, if only its one 
 great peculiarity be humoured a little. Photography cannot 
 often give very much truth at once ; but it will give us innu- 
 merable truths, if we only ask for one at a time. And a large 
 collection of photographic memoranda, taken by a painter for 
 especial purposes, seems likely to be a precious possession 
 for him. 
 
 But here occur other considerations. 
 
 Photography affords a very interesting proof of a fact well 
 known to artists, that a certain degree of exaggeration is quite 
 indispensable to apparent veracity. I believe that this is so in 
 literature also ; and that no study of human character would 
 ever be generally recognized as true which was not idealized 
 and exaggerated almost to the verge of caricature. A certain 
 extravagance of statement seems in literature essential to effec- 
 tive work, owing to the coarseness of our faculties, which need 
 something stronger than pure truth. But, however this may be 
 in books, it is quite demonstrably so in pictures, as the photo- 
 graph conclusively proves. Photographs of mountains are 
 hardly recognizable . 1 The most careful topographic drawing, 
 if it looks like nature, is sure to be full of exaggerations. 
 People who are not aware of this can never recognize photo- 
 graphs of distant scenery, however familiar the scenery may 
 be to them ; but they will recognize an exaggerated sketch 
 without difficulty. The grandeur of noble scenery excites 
 the imagination. It is incredible how small a space is really 
 occupied, in the picture on the retina of the eye, by that far 
 gorge between the hills that we know to be a thousand feet 
 deep, and five miles through. The photograph gives the fact 
 in its stern truth, so many actinic rays and no more, an image 
 so large in proportion and no larger. But the painter always 
 
 1 This depends on the degree of their steepness. A precipitous Alp is 
 recognizable in a photograph, but our English and Scotch hills lose all the 
 majesty they have. — 1873. 
 
PHOTOGRAPHY AND PAINTING. 
 
 63 
 
 sympathises, more or less, with the excitement of the beholder, 
 for he is himself a beholder. And therefore the photographic 
 truth about mountains will always, in its lifelessness, strongly 
 offend the artistic sense, and seem false and inadequate, as, 
 indeed, it is, in relation to the spectator’s imagination. 
 
 But all good painting, however literal, however pre-Raphaelite 
 or topographic, is full of human feeling and emotion. If it 
 has no other feeling in it than love or admiration for the 
 place depicted, that is much already, quite enough to carry 
 the picture out of the range of photography into the regions 
 of art. 
 
 This power of the excited imagination to change the actual 
 forms and relative magnitudes of objects I have repeatedly 
 tested by experiment. The best test, for a person who can 
 draw, is to sketch some real scene exactly as it appears to him 
 when excited by its beauty, not in forced coldness or real 
 apathy. Let him afterwards photograph the same subject. 
 On comparing the sketch with the photograph, he will under- 
 stand the degree in which the fire of imagination affects the 
 forms of things. And what is still more astonishing at first is, 
 that he cannot believe that the photograph is true at all, it 
 seems as if there were something altogether wrong about it. But 
 if he sets up a threaded frame and deliberately measures the 
 mountains by the reticulations of the crossed threads, and then 
 coldly copies them on a sheet of paper ruled with lines 
 answering to the threads, he will prove the literal accuracy of 
 the photograph. There is another way to prove it. Let the 
 painter look at the same scene by starlight. In the daylight 
 his imagination is excited by the mountains, and they seem to 
 occupy the whole plane of vision, but at night it is not so : 
 then the stars tyrannize over the imagination, and the mountains 
 all shrmk into a narrow , black, irregular line, tamed into absolute 
 insignificance, and precisely like the brown stam that represents 
 them in the photograph . So that a photograph of a range of 
 mountains may be a good and serviceable memorandum for a 
 night picture, when they do not affect the imagination much 
 on account of their own vacancy, and the stronger influence 
 of the stars, and yet quite inadequate for any powerful daylight 
 effect when the mountains themselves are mighty. — 1860. 
 
64 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 This paper was written in answer to a declaration made by one 
 of my friends to the effect that “ the discovery of photography had 
 made painting no longer of any use, since all that painting did 
 could be done much more truthfully by the photograph.” This set 
 me thinking, and the result was a rather long and dogmatic essay, 
 of which the one given here is an abridgment. It was a charac- 
 teristic of the typical English gentleman thirteen years ago to be 
 at the same time totally ignorant of art and disposed to hold it in 
 slight esteem, so that my friend (a very dear friend) quite spoke 
 the language of his caste in saying a thing about photography and 
 painting which expressed contempt for the latter and ignorance of 
 both. It was difficult, at that day, to go much into general society 
 without hearing monstrous theories about artistic subjects, for most 
 people talked about them, and few had taken the trouble to ascer- 
 tain the great truths upon which all sound theory in fine art must 
 ultimately rest. 
 
 Photography is a most useful and curious invention, of the 
 greatest value for the record of plain facts about persons and 
 places, but it is not a fine art at all, and can never be made one. 
 The nearest approach to fine art yet made by photography has 
 been in the remarkable photographs by Mrs. Cameron which many 
 readers will remember or possess. Mrs. Cameron defeated the 
 obtrusiveness of photographic detail by putting her subjects out 
 of focus, which gave them a massive breadth not unlike the 
 gloom and obscurity of some old pictures. She was fortunate in 
 fine models, for several of the noblest heads in England were 
 copied in her camera. Even in this instance, however, although 
 the result was more pleasing and harmonious than photographs 
 usually are, the old impossibilities remained, as they must remain, 
 unconquered. 
 
 I photographed landscape a good deal in 1859, and animals in 
 1865, but found that, practically, it was not worth while to con- 
 tinue. Photography is a great time-waster, on account of the 
 excessive care it requires about chemicals and cleanliness ; it is 
 uncertain too, and there are many failures. A professional photo- 
 grapher contends more easily against these difficulties than a 
 painter can, who only uses photography as an auxiliary. The 
 photographer is more patient and more skilful, and he renews his 
 chemicals more frequently. Painters have not time to struggle 
 
PHOTOGRAPHY AND PAINTING . 
 
 ^5 
 
 with much technical difficulty outside of their own too difficult 
 craft. 0 
 
 I omitted to mention, in the course of the preceding essay, the 
 well-known defect of the photograph by which the lens exaggerates 
 and falsifies the perspective of objects, throwing them out of draw- 
 ing. It is scarcely necessary to do more than allude to this, as 
 everyone must have observed it in photographic portraits, where 
 the knee or the hand of the sitter will often be out of proportion to 
 the rest of his person. 
 
 The objections to photography from the purely artistic point of 
 view may be summed up as follows : — 
 
 1. It is false in local colour, putting all the lights and darks of 
 natural colouring out of tune. 
 
 2. It is false in light, not being able to make those subdivisions 
 in the scale which are necessary to attain relative truth. 
 
 3. It is false in perspective, and consequently in the porportions 
 of forms. 
 
 4. Its literalness, and incapacity for selection and emphasis, are 
 antagonistic to the artistic spirit, — 1873, 
 
 H 
 
 r 
 
V. 
 
 WORD-PAINTING AND COLO DR-PAINTING. 
 
 The comparison between words and colours, as means for 
 the expression of artistic ideas, has for a long time possessed a 
 great attraction for me; and as it is a matter which very 
 closely concerns all workers in literature and painting, I intend 
 here to offer such results as I have been able to arrive at ; so 
 far, at least, as they may influence the practical labours of those 
 who write or paint. 
 
 If we examine a single coat of arms, we shall at once 
 perceive that its describableness is due entirely to artistic 
 poverty. 
 
 “ Paly wavy of six, or and azure, a lion rampant pean, ona * 
 chief gules, three crosses fleury ermine.” 
 
 I have selected the most elaborate coat I can recollect. If I 
 had chosen the most simple, as, for instance, “ Argent, a bend 
 sable,” the artistic poverty would have been more evident. 
 But a shield of fifty quart erings is infinitely poorer, artistically, 
 than the commonest natural object, and therefore infinitely 
 easier to describe. 
 
 For, first of all, there is no gradation in heraldry. The 
 colours are all crude ; or , azure , and gules merely mean gold 
 leaf, ultramarine, and vermilion, just as they come from the 
 colourman’s. 
 
 And again, the variety in the forms i$ finite; it is even 
 exceedingly limited. “ Paly wavy of six ” — a herald knows at 
 once what that means ; he has drawn it a hundred times. “ A 
 lion rampant ” — the creature and its three or four attitudes are 
 kept in stock in every heraldic mind ready for immediate 
 
WORD-PAINTING, &c. 
 
 67 
 
 application. And the cross fleury being a rigid, conventional 
 form, is as easy, to remember as the + in algebra. 
 
 Let us see whether we can make an equally accurate de- 
 scription of some similar objects in nature. 
 
 “ Paly wavy or and azure,” There is often wavy or and 
 azure in sunset skies amongst the upper clouds ; but, as every 
 curve in it is full of unexpected and indescribable changes, and 
 every hue of it is full of infinite, and most subtle, and most 
 inexplicable gradations, how can words ever blazon this Divine 
 heraldry at all ? There are lions enough in Africa yet, in spite 
 of English rifles ; but no words can perfectly picture the least 
 of their mighty movements. “ Pean,” “ ermine,” “ gules,” 
 “or,” and “ azure !” good enough for the splendour of lordly 
 pride ; but not good enough for one wreath of perishing cloud, 
 nor one feather in a wild duck’s wing ! 
 
 Now all good writers who ever lived have frankly confessed 
 the impossibility of accurate description of natural scenery in 
 words. Good writers scarcely ever attempt it. Their descrip- 
 tions, even when most elaborate, are no more than stimulants 
 to the reader’s imagination, rather trying to make him imagine 
 a scene for himself than vainly endeavouring to convey to him 
 a truthful picture of something he has not seen. All word- 
 description that goes beyond this, though it may be highly 
 accurate and ingenious, is, so far as the reader is concerned, 
 positively useless. 
 
 For the accurate realization of a complex word-description, 
 even if it were possible, which it is not, would require an effort 
 of the intellect so enormous that not one mind in a million 
 would be capable of it, unless previously trained for years to 
 practical landscape-painting. 
 
 Even the best word-painting of our own day, whenever it 
 reaches a certain point of elaboration, is probably only com- 
 prehensible by devoted students of nature, and they always 
 realize something else than the object described. 
 
 Word-painting of the human figure seems easier than that of 
 landscape, because the varieties of human form are restrained 
 within more definite limits than the varieties of mountains and 
 clouds. But words are not capable of anything like accuracy 
 even in figure painting. The signalement attached to an ordi- 
 nary French passport is a kind of description where a rigidly 
 prosaic accuracy would be really of use, and is seriously 
 
 f 2 
 
6$ 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 attempted. The object, of course, is to render the passport 
 not transferable. But passports are transferable, notwithstand- 
 ing the signalement , and are very frequently transferred. 
 
 As an illustration of the difficulty of conveying a true image of 
 anybody by words, take the common case of a child who has 
 lost its mother at birth. If no portrait of the mother exists, 
 that child has no chance of ever getting to know what she was 
 like. All the neighbours know ; all the child’s elder relations 
 know ; he is never tired of asking questions about his mother, 
 and they answer all his questions as well as they can ; but they 
 cannot, by means of words, transfer to his brain the image of 
 her which exists so vividly in their own ; and he goes on 
 through life, actually surrounded by a thousand truthful por 
 traits of his mother, impressed on the brains of his friends 
 and contemporaries, not one of which, in spite of all his ardent 
 longing, will he ever be permitted to see. 
 
 The art of word-painting has its secrets. Its first law is 
 brevity. It is not possible to produce, with an elaborate word- 
 picture, that single-stroke effect which makes the power of an 
 elaborate colour-picture. For a long word-description must 
 first be read from beginning to end before there is any chance 
 of a perfect image being produced by it ; and then the reader 
 must gather up and fit together all the parts of it like a child’s 
 puzzle-map — no easy matter, especially for indolent or half- 
 interested readers. It is on this account that long word- 
 descriptions are generally so fatiguing, and make such exhaust- 
 ing demands on the reader’s energy. 
 
 The next secret is to attempt nothing that words are mani- 
 festly incapable of doing. It is needless to aim at accuracv. 
 Very rude, broad, imperfect sketching is all that words are fit 
 for. To try after imitative accuracy is a waste of time, and is 
 certain to make the reader skip the passage, if he does not shut 
 the book. 
 
 The object of the word-painter being to make the reader 
 imagine a scene for himself, he must profoundly understand the 
 capacity of ordinary people’s imaginations, and take care not 
 to go beyond it. 
 
 The commonest trick of famous and clever word-painters is 
 to dazzle people by sounding phrases and brilliant metaphors 
 into the belief that they have really received a very noble 
 impression, when the whole force of the impression, if analysed, 
 
WORD-PAINTING, &*c. 
 
 69 
 
 would be found to be due to the music of the sentences and 
 the splendour of the metaphors, not to the natural scene which 
 is the pretext for them. 
 
 Our best modern English word-painters are, amongst the 
 poets, Tennyson, Shelley, Byron, Scott, Wordsworth, and Keats, 
 m order of excellence. 
 
 And of prose writers, Ruskin stands quite alone ; then after 
 him, but at a great distance, come about a dozen others whom 
 it is needless to particularize. 
 
 Of all these I give to Tennyson the first place. Even 
 Ruskin, the best prose word-painter who ever lived, says that 
 no description of his is worth four lines of Tennyson. 
 
 Tennyson seems to me to understand the limitations of 
 word-painting better than any other man. There is not the 
 slightest straining after unattainable fidelities in any one of his 
 descriptions. They go no farther than the limits of the art 
 allow; and they are always exquisite as far as they go. This 
 is the highest praise that can be given to any artist, because it 
 implies his perfect conception of the boundaries of his art, and 
 his mastery over all that lies within those boundaries. 
 
 Shelley’s painting has a remarkable resemblance to Turner’s, 
 which I think no critic has hitherto pointed out. There are 
 the same splendour, colour, and mystery; the same love of 
 clouds and water; the same unreality and abstraction. If 
 Shelley had given himself a pictorial instead of a literary 
 training, and possessed the picture-making faculty, he might, if 
 he had lived, have rivalled Turner on his own ground. 
 
 Byron’s word-painting is too passionate to be in any way 
 accurate. It owes all its power to fire of language and strength 
 of imagery. The reader is never really moved by the scene 
 described, but by the vivid images and allusions it calls forth 
 from the poet. 
 
 Scott’s descriptions are affectionate and often very spirited 
 in their way, but not always artistic . 1 They are seldom pic- 
 
 1 There is a little confusion here between what is artistic in the literary 
 and in the pictorial sense. A literary artist will do what is most effective 
 in literature without reference to painting. Scott’s descriptions are cer- 
 tainly not pictorial, his mind lay quite outside of painting, but he was a 
 good literary artist in his own way, seeing the earth rather as a place to be 
 travelled in, and hunted over, than to be contemplated in passionate 
 painter’s ecstasies. 
 
7o 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 torially conceived. They harmonize, however, very well with 
 the vigorous human action of his characters. His view of 
 nature, though he seems to have enjoyed colour, was perhaps 
 rather that of a sportsman happy to be out in the open air 
 than that o # f a student of landscape. 
 
 Keats might have made an excellent word-painter if he had 
 lived ; but I do not share Mr. Ruskin’s too humble veneration 
 for what he actually wrote. His words are often very cleverly 
 fitted in quaint odd ways, and do, no doubt, attain a peculiar 
 power which I dare say would be difficult to imitate, if it were 
 desirable, which it certainly is not. Mr. Ruskin himself is, 
 when excited, a much better writer of English than Keats, in 
 his brief career, ever came to be. 
 
 Wordsworth knew more of natural scenery than any other 
 writer not also a painter — knew as much, I should say, as 
 many a professed landscape painter ; but as an artist in words 
 he attempted too much. All who know the scenery Words- 
 worth described, must recognize the delicate truthfulness of his 
 descriptions. They contain evidences of observation very rare 
 in literature ; but they are without effect on readers ignorant of 
 landscape, because they require powers of memory and imagi- 
 nation in the reader, which no reader who is not an observer 
 of nature can possibly possess. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin’s art of description in prose is in every way 
 wonderful. He complained somewhere that his readers missed 
 the arguments in his books, and dashed at the descriptions. 
 A novel complaint truly ! What author but Mr. Ruskin ever 
 found his descriptions dangerously seductive ? Other people’s 
 descriptions are skipped habitually by the prudent reader. Mr. 
 Ruskin’s, it appears, do positive injury to the graver and more 
 argumentative parts of his writings. He is decidedly the first 
 author who has made landscape description too attractive. 
 And when we try to get at the reason for this attractiveness 
 in his word-pictures, we see that it is mainly owing to an un- 
 usual magnificence of language, and a studied employment of 
 metaphor. 
 
 George Sand has a passionate love for nature, with the 
 intensest feeling. She understands the expression of landscape, 
 and renders it with great power. Her interest in landscape 
 seems to strengthen as she grows older, her latest novels being 
 remarkable for their evidence of close and recent observation 
 
WORD-PAINTING, &c. 
 
 71 
 
 of nature. Her descriptions are thoroughly masterly and 
 artistic, and rank very high as specimens of what may be done 
 with words. 
 
 Of these writers I will take Tennyson, giving extracts from 
 him only, for the limits of my space would not allow oi an 
 adequate study of the others. 
 
 And first, I am sorry to say, the Tennyson pictures are by 
 no means numerous. There are scarcely fifty of them in all. 
 So little faith has this prince of poet landscapists in the powers 
 of verbal art, that he employs it very rarely and very briefly. 
 
 The first that occur are in “ Mariana.” 
 
 “ With blackest moss the flower-plots 
 Were thickly crusted, one and all : 
 
 The rusted nails fell from the knots 
 
 That held the peach to the garden-wall. 
 
 The broken sheds look’d sad and strange : 
 
 Unlifted was the clinking latch ; 
 
 Weeded and worn the ancient thatch 
 Upon the lonely moated grange.” 
 
 Here there is no attempt at form, and little at colour. The 
 moss is simply all described as blackest . This is near enough 
 for poetry ; but a painter knows that this black moss would, m 
 nature, be full of purples and greys infinitely various. The 
 gradations in the moss on the flower-plots are not so much as 
 alluded to, for a volume of description would not have con- 
 veyed them to the reader’s mind. The sadness and strange- 
 ness of the broken sheds may, however, be mentioned verbally, 
 because these are mental feelings, which are the peculiar 
 province of language. It is not the broken sheds that are in 
 themselves sad, but their appearance excites that feeling in the 
 poet, who conveys the feeling to his reader when he could not 
 possibly convey the form. The extreme slightness of the 
 description of the grange itself is equally apparent : it is 
 lonely, and moated, and thatched, and the thatch is out of 
 repair — no more. 
 
 Now, let us suppose that I were to select this subject for a 
 picture ; what then ? As Tennyson treats it slightly in words, 
 can I also treat the subject with equal slightness on canvas? 
 
 No. Because the art of - colour-painting is so infinitely 
 superior to the art of word-description that far more is 
 required of it, and it cannot be so rude and imperfect if it 
 
72 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 would. For Tennyson’s “ blackest moss ” I must set an elabo- 
 rate palette of purples and greys, with perhaps one touch of 
 real black on one of the nearer flower-plots ; whereas he 
 blackens them all alike, superlatively and indiscriminately, .as 
 if there were no such thing as gradation in the world. 
 
 And then the forms of the mosses ? Every patch of moss 
 'must, in a picture, have a form of some sort ; for in nature 
 every patch of moss has an. outline designed on the object it 
 attaches itself to, which is not less delicate and elaborate than 
 the outline of England on the sea. Tennyson, of course, 
 takes care not to talk about the forms of the mosses ; he is too 
 much of an artist to waste his words. A poem the length of 
 “ Paradise Lost ” would not describe accurately the form of the 
 mosses on one of the flower-plots. And the plots themselves ; 
 how many were there of them? Tennyson did not count 
 them : saw the flower-plots in the vision, but took no heed of 
 their number. But in my picture my flower-plots must of 
 necessity be countable, and I must decide how many I will 
 put. No answer from the poet. But the painter cannot avoid 
 these details. His superior power of description is accom- 
 panied by the need of larger and more accurate knowledge. 
 
 And the garden-wall, what were its height and length ? Was 
 it of brick or of stone ? And the broken sheds ; ruinous we 
 see, but how large were they, how shaped, and on what side of 
 the house were they situated ? And then the most important 
 thing of all, the grange. Not one word of architectural detail. 
 The reader is to imagine, as he best can, a moated grange, — 
 any old house with a ditch round it will do. Tennyson knew 
 that the imaginative reader would make a vety-good moated 
 grange for himself, and that the dull, unimaginative reader 
 would never be able to realize the most elaborate description, 
 so it was of no use to attempt one. But no painting could 
 possibly be so vague. A house in a picture must have definite 
 architectural forms. They cannot be dispensed with. And 
 the painter here, as in everything else, requires hard know- 
 ledge of forms and colours, where the poet will satisfy us with 
 a sweet sounding word. 
 
 The fourth stanza of “ Mariana ” contains a little detailed 
 foreground picture in the pre-Raphaelite manner : — 
 
 “ About a stone-cast from the wall 
 
 A sluice with blacken’d waters slept, 
 
WORD-PAINTING, &c. 
 
 73 
 
 And o’er it many, round and small, 
 
 The cluster’d marish mosses crept. 
 
 Hard by a poplar shook alway, 
 
 All silver green with gnarled bark : 
 
 For leagues no other tree did mark 
 The level waste, the rounding grey.” 
 
 It would have been difficult to compress more of Nature 
 into so confined a compass of verse : but the reader will easily 
 see for himself that a painter would either have to invent, or to 
 seek out in Nature, a thousand details that the poet has not 
 given us. The shape of the sluice is not mentioned, nor its 
 size either, and the colouring of the marish mosses is not even 
 hinted at. The poplar was silver green, but there are some 
 millions of poplars in France, “ all silver green, with gnarled 
 bark,” so that this does not amount to a description of any 
 particular poplar. So one might say of an Academy model, 
 that she was “ all flesh colour with a smooth skin,” but that 
 would not amount to a recognizable portrait of the individual 
 woman. The waste was level, and the horizon rounded the 
 landscape with grey ; but every artist knows that in the flattest, 
 dullest countries, there are no two landscapes alike, and yet 
 this sketch is as general as that of the poplar, and is applicable 
 to any treeless flat. 
 
 It is like the opening sketch in “ The Dying Swan : ” — 
 
 “ The plain was grassy, wild and bare, 
 
 Wide, wild, and open to the air, 
 
 Which had built up everywhere 
 An under-roof of dolelul grey.” 
 
 But this is made rather more definite in character by the 
 distance, which is well put in, and true in effect : — 
 
 “ Some blue peaks in the distance rose, 
 
 And white against the cold white sky, 
 
 Shone out their crowning snows.” 
 
 And the colouring of the mosses on the water is given this 
 time : — 
 
 “ And far thro’ the marish green and still 
 
 The tangled water-courses slept, 
 
 Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.” 
 
 A painter, however, would have to know where the purple 
 and green and yellow were, and what proportion of the held of 
 
74 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 vision was occupied by each. And he would have to paint not 
 merely purple , but a thousand varieties of it ; not merely green, 
 but infinite gradations of bluish green, yellowish green, and 
 green much neutralized by red ; not merely yellow, but delicate 
 changes of grey and gold in the yellow. For the painter goes 
 so infinitely beyond the writer in landscape, that the most 
 detailed written pictures are almost as crude as heraldic 
 blazoning in comparison with painters’ work. 
 
 There are two magnificent lines in “ Oriana — 
 
 “ When the long dun wolds are ribb’d with snow 
 
 And loud the Norland whirlwinds blow.” 
 
 It would take a painter a month to realize the first line on 
 canvas. When snow lies in the hollows of rough land, it 
 assumes outlines of a complexity quite infinite and exceedingly 
 difficult to draw. It is very well for a poet to say “ ribb’d,” 
 and so have done with the difficulty, just as he would say of a 
 ship’s hull in process of construction, that it was “ ribb’d,” 
 using the same word for both. And it is the very word which 
 gives so much truth and value to the two capital lines which 
 Wordsworth made for Coleridge, and which Coleridge used in 
 the beginning of the fourth part of the “ Ancient Mariner : ” — 
 
 “ And thou art long, and lank, and brown, 
 
 As is the ribbed sea-sand.” 
 
 The poets may use the same word for snow in mountain 
 stream furrows, and sand corrugated by waves, but a painter 
 could not render both with the same kind of work. In the 
 one case, he would have to understand and declare an immense 
 variety of facts concerning mountain anatomy, of which the 
 poet might remain ignorant without injury to his verse, and, in 
 the other case, a totally different order of facts concerning 
 aqueous action on sand. 
 
 The “ Lady of Shalott ” opens with a charming description — 
 
 “ On either side the river lie 
 
 Long fields of barley and of rye, 
 
 That clothe the wold and meet the sky ; 
 
 . And thro’ the field the road runs by 
 
 To many-tower’d Camelot ; 
 
 And up and down the people go, 
 
 Gazing where the lilies blow 
 Round an island there below, 
 
 The island of Shalott.” 
 
WORD-PAINTING, 
 
 75 
 
 “ Willows whiten, aspens quiver, 
 
 Little breezes dusk and shiver 
 Thro’ the wave that runs for ever 
 By the island in the river 
 
 Flowing down to Camelot. 
 
 Four grey walls and four grey towers 
 Overlook a space of flowers, 
 
 And the silent isle imbowers 
 
 The Lady of Shalott.” 
 
 This is the best and most perfect word-picture we have yet 
 come upon. Yet there is not one form in it, and only the very 
 slightest hint of colour. The willows whiten, and the walls 
 and towers are grey; that is all the colouring. Form there is 
 none, except the length of the fields, if we allow that shapeless 
 length is indeed form at all. We are told nothing of the 
 height of the walls, nor of the sort of battlements upon them, 
 nor, indeed, whether they had battlements. We are not even 
 informed whether the towers were round or square. To form 
 any idea whatever from such a description as this, it is 
 necessary that the reader should set his own imagination 
 vigorously to work, which, in fact, every reader does, according 
 to his capacity, though in most instances unconsciously. When 
 I analyse the picture that rises before me on reading these two 
 stanzas, I find that I have little authority for it in Tennyson. 
 It is a composition formed from memories of scenes I know, 
 fitted together without the slightest regard for topography. 
 For the fields I see are English, like the scenery of Kent; and 
 the road is English ; I confess to an anachronism in the road, , 
 for the one I see is most decidedly macadamized ; but “ many- 
 tower’d Camelot ” is, in my dream, not English at all, but an 
 old towered town on the Rhone, opposite Avignon, with a few 
 more towers and no modern houses. The island of Shalott is 
 one I remember on the Yonne. And the four grey walls and 
 four grey towers are a reminiscence of a grand old castle in 
 Wales. 
 
 The peculiar powers and defects which distinguish word- 
 painting from colour-painting appear to be briefly these : — 
 
 Words describe the emotions of the spectator better than the 
 scene he sees. 
 
 They convey mental impressions, not material forms. 
 
 Colours convey material forms more accurately than mental 
 emotions. 
 
76 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 Words are quite incapable of rendering form and colour in 
 any but the very rudest way. They may, however, indicate 
 great delicacy of perception in the person who uses them. 
 
 Colours, in skilful hands, may be made to render form and 
 hue so very accurately, that to have seen a good topographical 
 picture of a place is almost as good as having seen the place 
 itself. 
 
 Words may be very vague and still quite intelligible. As* 
 for instance, you may say “the church had a tower,” without so 
 much as specifying whether the church was built of brick or 
 stone, in Gothic or classical architecture; whether it was large 
 or small, old or new ; whether the tower was tall or short, 
 had a spire or not, &c. &c. 
 
 Colours, on the other hand, must be definite, or they would 
 cease to be intelligible. In a coloured picture of a church the 
 architecture must not only be stated, but worked out with 
 some degree of detail, so that not only would the spectator be 
 aware at once what the architecture and materials were, but he 
 would receive an impression of a certain number of windows, &:c. 
 
 Unless a word-picture is insufferably tedious, the facts con- 
 veyed by it will be very few. 
 
 A colour-picture will record innumerable facts without be- 
 coming tiresome at all. 
 
 A word-picture, if long, cannot be combined into one whole 
 without a great intellectual effort on the part of the reader. 
 
 A colour-picture is combined into one whole by the artist, 
 and the spectator cannot, if he would, see one part out of its 
 relation to the other parts, whose influence it cannot escape. 
 
 Artists in words can reach more brilliant effects of light than 
 artists in paint, because they recall the light of nature. 
 
 Artists in colour are bound down to dingy white lead. 
 
 Artists in words help themselves out by acoustic description ; 
 as, lor instance, they add to the force of a storm at sea by 
 telling of the roar of the wind, the canvas rattling like musketry, 
 the thunder pealing, and the breakers dashing against the cliffs 
 with a report as of cannon. 
 
 Colour art is silent. 
 
 Words may be true, because they go such a little way. It is 
 quite true, for example, that Rouen Cathedral is a magnificent 
 specimen of Gothic architecture. 
 
 But no picture of Rouen Cathedral ever was, or ever can be, 
 
WORD-PAINTING , &c. 
 
 77 
 
 so absolutely true as the above statement, because in all painting 
 there must be innumerable little inaccuracies of detail, owing 
 to the imperfection of human handiwork ; and yet, in painting, 
 this cannot be avoided, as in writing, by the total omission of 
 detail, because in painting such omission is direct falsehood in 
 itself. 
 
 The office of the word-painter is to get people to look at art 
 and nature, to pierce through their dulness and indifference 
 with earnest and powerful language. 
 
 The office of the colour-painter is to give an idea of beautiful 
 natural scenes to people living at a distance from them. 
 
 I had not space in this essay to compare the pictorial and 
 literary novel. I had intended to take Hogarth’s “ Marriage a 
 la mode” as an example of what may be done in the pictorial 
 novel on an elaborate scale, and Cruikshank’s “ Bottle ” series 
 as a pictorial tale. I should then have shown how far such 
 works might be considered to contend with the literary novel 
 in the delineation of character. 
 
 The subject of this essay, if developed in all its branches, 
 might very easily be made to fill a volume. For the sake of 
 any reader who is interested enough in the matter to pursue it 
 for himself, I will observe briefly : 
 
 That so far as the art of painting concerns itself with man, 
 as a subject, it is undoubtedly inferior, and very far inferior, to 
 written language. 
 
 For the art of painting renders the bodily shape and so 
 much of mind as the body expresses, but language reveals the 
 most secret thoughts. 
 
 Considered with reference to the body alone, painting is as 
 superior to writing as it is in landscape. 
 
 But considered as interpretations of mental character, written 
 narratives are quite incomparably superior to any possible 
 series of pictures. 
 
 Hogarth’s famous series is as meagre, in comparison to one 
 of Fielding’s novels, as a word-picture by Tennyson to a pre~ 
 Raphaelite landscape. 
 
 We know the persons by sight, which is an advantage the 
 novelists do not give us ; but we know very little about 
 them except their appearance. 
 
 People say that the character and history of each individual 
 
78 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 are written on his face, so that such pictures as Hogarth's 
 ought to be as good a revelation of character as a novel by 
 Thackeray. 
 
 Yet, in ordinary life, does the aspect of a man, even when 
 combined with the chief visible facts of his history, open for 
 us his inner life and mind, and his secret history ? Not in 
 the least. 
 
 And are bodily appearances easy to interpret? I know 
 an unlucky peasant who was endowed with a great red nose 
 by nature : he is one of the most abstemious of men, yet 
 enjoys the reputation of being a drunkard, merely because his 
 nose is red. If Hogarth had put him in a picture, Mr. 
 Sala and other commentators would have moralized on the 
 “ drunkard's ” nose. 
 
 To compare word-painting and linear drawing in stories 
 of human life it is only necessary to separate Thackeray's 
 illustrations to “ Vanity Fair” from the novel itself, and 
 compare the two. The illustrations, without the novel, would 
 hardly, I think, convey a very full or adequate idea of the 
 characters. 
 
 Even Doyle’s illustrations to “The Newcomes,” which are 
 much better, are weak in comparison to the words they 
 illustrate. We could not guess the history and character of 
 the Colonel merely from the pictures of him, still less Ethel’s. 
 For the novelist has always this immense advantage over the 
 painter, that he can make his characters utter their own sen- 
 timents, and report to us every word they used. 
 
 The men and women that painters represent are all dumb. 
 
 Again, the novelist can narrate a connected series of mental 
 changes and circumstantial events, whose necessary develop- 
 ment and final accomplishment may come about very gradually 
 and slowly. 
 
 The painter, on the other hand, can only give us detached 
 glimpses, each of one second of time. 
 
 This single-stroke effect, this concentration of the labour of 
 months to realize the effect of a moment, and that upon a 
 canvas which shall be comprehended at one glance, — a power 
 which in landscape gives the painter such an immense ad- 
 vantage over the writer with his tiresome consecuiiveness of 
 detail, — happens to be just as great a disadvantage in the de- 
 lineation of character, where the literary process of consecutive 
 
WORD-PAINTING, &c. 
 
 79 
 
 revelation, not instantaneous illumination, is the process ex- 
 actly suited to the purpose. 
 
 In landscape and human physical form, nearly all the 
 advantages lie with colour-painting. 
 
 In illustrations of human character , all the advantages are 
 on the side of the writer. 
 
 For colours paint things best, but words convey thoughts 
 best. — 1860. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 I add to this essay an observation on the art of verbal description 
 which may concern the critical or literary reader. 
 
 A description is never worth anything when it has not peculiar 
 features of its own, and the talent of the describer consists in per- 
 ceiving these peculiar features in nature, and expressing them in 
 well-chosen language, exactly and especially adapted to the scene 
 described. When Fontanes travelled in the Pyrenees, he. wrote to 
 his friend Gueneau de Mussy, and tried to describe the scenery, 
 but got no farther than un torrent terrible, des vallees delicieuses , 
 un spectacle ravissant. This is not description at all, it is nothing 
 but words. Sainte-Beuve very justly observed, in criticising this 
 kind of writing — 
 
 “Un spectacle ravissant , c’est bientot dit. Et comment et pour- 
 quoi est-il ravissant ? el plus ravissant la qu’ailleurs ? Vous ne 
 nous le montrez pas, et vous seriez bien embarrasse de le faire ; 
 il y a toute une langue de formes, de couleurs, que vous ne savez 
 pas, et quand on n’a pas la langue, on n’a pas les idees, au moins 
 les idees bien demelees ; et dans le cas present, on n’a pas la vision 
 complete et distincte.” 
 
 The sources of good literary description are the close observation 
 of special characteristics, and intensity of personal feeling. But 
 in the craft itself there is the most subtle cunning in the use of 
 words, for their value in sound, in reminiscence, and in suggestion. 
 —1873. 
 
VI. 
 
 TRANSCENDENTALISM IN TAINTING. 
 
 The connection between the word “ transcendental” as ori» 
 ginally employed by Kant, and the same word as I employ 
 it in the present essay, may be briefly indicated before we 
 consider the especial subject of the essay itself. 
 
 Kant used the word to designate the class of ideas existing 
 in the human mind independently of experience. Emerson 
 calls all persons who rely on their own intuitions rather than 
 on the experience of others, Transcendentalists. Transcen- 
 dentalism in painting may be defined as the longing to realize 
 artistic ideals hitherto existing only in the mind of the artist. , 
 Whether such an ideal is purely technical, as, for example, 
 possible processes not hitherto employed ; or artistic, in the 
 restricted sense of compositions of an order for which there is 
 no precedent ; or scientific, as natural effects yet unrecorded, 
 — the transcendental tendency is to realize the dream and 
 aspiration of the artist’s own mind, rather than simply to 
 reproduce the results of other people’s experience. 
 
 The transcendental state of mind is therefore directly 
 opposed to the whole feeling of the ordinary practical intellect. 
 The transcendentalist takes no interest in the merely doing 
 over again what others have done before him, but kindles into 
 enthusiasm with the exciting hope of realizing his own ideal. 
 The practical man has no faith in intuitions ; does not believe in 
 the possibility of anything not yet actually done, and restricts all 
 his action to the safe and mechanical reproduccion oi such 
 ideas of other men as he has already seen embodied in mate- 
 rial forms. The two classes of men — idealists and materialists 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM IN FAINTING. 
 
 8 1 
 
 — are equally necessary to mankind, though necessary in very 
 different proportions ; and neither of these two classes has any 
 right to despise the other. 
 
 The transcendentalists think much, but usually produce 
 little ; the materialists produce much, but do not, in the strict 
 sense, think at all. The transcendentalists, however, are ac- 
 customed to maintain that by mere thinking they can increase 
 their practical skill. 
 
 Thus it is said that Ole Bull, the celebrated Norwegian 
 violinist, arrived at his most wonderful effects less by manual 
 practice than meditation. He practised less, and thought 
 more, than other violinists. This is quite in keeping with 
 his reflections after hearing Paganini. Ole Bull actually sold 
 his last shirt to hear that mighty master, and, having heard 
 him, instead of saying like the crowd that nothing new was 
 possible after that, began to seek after hitherto unknown effects 
 that even Paganini had not discovered. Both these facts 
 indicate clearly that Ole Bull was a musical transcendentalist, 
 and his long retirement confirms it. A true transcendentalist 
 dislikes publicity, and loves to cultivate himself in solitude. 
 
 No man has ever reached commanding eminence without 
 some touch of transcendentalism. Even in great conquerors 
 this spirit lurks and w r orks. Their discontent with the extent 
 of their territorial dominion, and eager desire to enlarge it, 
 correspond to a similar feeling in the philosopher with regard 
 to the boundaries of present intelligence. Conquerors are 
 the visible types and examples of the intellectual conquerors, 
 and Napoleon is never so grand and commanding a figure 
 as on the Alpine snow. Every transcendentalist thrills with 
 pleasure when he hears of that passage of the Alps; for he 
 also would cross the mighty barriers that bar him from the 
 golden fields. 
 
 The English mind does not welcome the transcendental 
 philosophy, because it prefers that sort of intellectual repose 
 which permits the most energetic and continuous labour. 
 Politically, the French are transcendentalists, and the English 
 not. The most practical minds have no love for this philo- 
 sophy, because they instinctively perceive it to be a great 
 hindrance to productiveness. It is impossible to produce so \ 
 long as we only dream about what we ought to produce. This j 
 philosophy cannot become habitual either in nations or indi- 
 
 II G 
 
82 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 viduals without destroying productive energy. Its most 
 salutary action is intermittent, by epochs. Transcendental 
 epochs are necessary to progress, but they ought to leave us 
 long intervals for hard, undoubting labour. Else all this fine 
 philosophy would end in wishing , without the possibility of 
 realization. 
 
 I have observed that in particular instances the abuse of 
 this tendency of the intellect has resulted in a permanent state 
 of intellectual lassitude and debility. It is, in fact, an abuse 
 of the ideal, or imaginative faculty, and will naturally produce 
 the same disastrous effects upon the mind that sensual excesses 
 do upon the body. Habitual transcendentalists in thought are 
 anything but transcendental in action. They surpass nobody ; 
 and by waiting all their lives long before deciding what to do, 
 are easily distanced by persons of less imaginative power, but 
 greater practical force. So this philosophy is at the same time 
 useless to a man’s ambition, and dangerous to it . 1 With 
 regard to the arts, and especially that of painting, I intend 
 here to point out the advantages of transcendentalism, and to 
 indicate its peculiar dangers. 
 
 In all labours there are three stages — the mechanical, or 
 imitative ; the transcendental or reflective ; and the intelligently 
 practical.* I do not say that every labourer passes through all 
 these stages. The vast majority stop at the first ; a few reach 
 the second ; still fewer attain to the third. 
 
 It is obvious that to enter upon the second phase, that of 
 reflection, a new order of faculties is needed. Every human 
 being possesses in a greater or less degree the faculty of 
 imitation, or the tendency to do what he has seen other people 
 do. But the sceptical or examining faculty, that which looks 
 (creWo/mi), is rarer, and it is this power which leads men into 
 the second or reflective phase. And, difficult as it may be to 
 enter this transcendental region, it is yet more difficult to pass 
 through it, out on the other side, into the third phase, the 
 intelligently practical. 
 
 The men who remain always in the imitative stage are useful 
 
 1 The best instance in literature, well known to the public, is that of 
 Joubert. The cla c s of minds to which Joubert belonged naturally and 
 necessarily remain in most cases obscure ; but by accident we get to know 
 one of them occasionally, as we know him. See the allusion to Joubert 
 in the Intellectual Life , and Mr. Matthew Arnold’s Essay on him. — 1873. 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM IN TAINTING . 
 
 83 
 
 to society as copyists and reproducers of other men’s thoughts. 
 The men who get on as far as the second or reflective stage, 
 and stop short there, are of no good to anybody that I see, 
 except as a warning, and for their continual protest against low 
 standards of criticism, and their dissatisfaction with all im- 
 perfect and inadequate performances . 1 But persons who have 
 reached the third phase, and are not only reflective but 
 practical, usually achieve worthy results. They attain to the 
 highest mark their several natures are capable of reaching. 
 They are the best and swiftest workers. Henceforth they lose 
 no time. Knowing the limits of art, they do not expect 
 impossibilities. No unforeseen difficulty arrests them. Having 
 learned from the transcendental philosophy the inadequacy of 
 all means, and yet the exact degrees of utility and available- 
 ness of every material aid, and having lost the childish ex- 
 pectation of too great and too immediate results; having 
 learned the limits of their own powers, and ascertained by 
 reflection what objects they ought to strive for, these transcen- 
 dentalists, when they do become practical, are the most reso- 
 lutely practical of men. 
 
 In our art an intelligent critic would easily point out the 
 transcendentalists. The Prince of them all is Leonardo. 
 I have not at hand his Tratiato della Pittura ; but in Rio’s life 
 of him there is a passage very much to our purpose which is 
 founded on that treatise. “ Pour lui, le peintre dont les con- 
 naissances ne vont pas au-dela de son ouvrage, et qui a le 
 raalheur d’etre content de lui-meme, est un homrne qui a 
 manque sa vocation ; au contraire, celui qui n’est jamais 
 satisfait de son oeuvre, a toutes les chances de devenir un excel- 
 lent ouvrier. II est vrai qu’il produira peu ; mais tout ce qu’il 
 produira sera admirable et attrayant.” This dissatisfaction 
 with their own work is one of the most striking characteristics 
 of the transcendentalists. Rio speaks elsewhere of “cet in- 
 curable mecontentement de soi-meme, qui le tourmentait sans 
 relache et le forgait a refaire ou a retoucher vingt fois la meme 
 chose.” Ludovico Dolci, in his Dialogue on Painting, re- 
 
 1 They are often useful as critics, though the business of a critic is one 
 of the least satisfactory, and the least understood or appreciated, that a 
 clever man can choose or pursue. The transcendental critic maintains the 
 banner of the Ideal, and delivers us, or does what he can to deliver us, from 
 the slavery to small facts to which most of us are so prone. — 1873. 
 
 G 2 
 
8 4 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 presents Leonardo as “ a -sublime genius, always discontented 
 with his own works." Again, Leonardo used to say that 
 theory was the general, and practice the soldiers, thereby 
 attributing a degree of importance to theory, which, though' 
 perfectly just, would never have been accorded by any merely 
 practical person. And his strong, and in some respects 
 unfortunate, tendency to extend the boundaries of his activity, 
 was quite transcendental. He was always seeking new realms . 1 
 His French biographer thus alludes to this disposition : “ Cette 
 disposition a etendre plutot qu’a affermir ses conquetes in- 
 tellectuelles, s’etait deji manifestee chez lui des son enfance, 
 et ne le quitta plus pendant le cours de sa longue carriere, a 
 laquelle man qua toujours l’unite de but, non par Teffet d’une 
 application superficielle, mais par la promptitude avec laquelle \ 
 des horizons nouveaux s'ouvraient a son esprit P This continual 
 opening of “new horizons” is the element of general progress 
 contained in the transcendental philosophy, yet often dis- 
 qualifies the individual for signal success in his especial 
 vocation. With respect to his artistic faculty, Rio says : “ On 
 peut dire que, seul entre tous les artistes, par la force, la hauteur 
 
 1 The transcendentalism of Leonardo was due to the qualities of his in- 
 tellect that lay outside of the artistic qualities, to the reflective and scientific 
 part of his nature. No pure and simple artist ever was transcendental, 
 but Leonardo was not all artist ; if he had been, he would have painted 
 continually as Titan did, feeling a confident pride in his work, but not reflect- 
 ing about it, nor deserting it for engineering. The reason why there have 
 been so many transcendentalists in art during the last twenty years, is 
 because in a time of learning and thought like ours it is so exceedingly 
 difficult to keep the artistic temper pure. That temper, in its knowledge of 
 what words cannot express, in its ignorance of the easily-mastered informa- 
 tion which the world considers necessary, in its strongly personal view 
 of all things, its intense prejudices, its delight in its own gifts and doings — 
 that temper is most difficult to maintain in its force and strength amidst the 
 other and wholly different states of mind which prevail in an age of ratio- 
 nalism. Hardly anyone living can have the artist-temper in the full 
 exuberance of its productive energy. It ought to blossom with the bloom 
 of. youth, unchecked by any criticism except the kindly help of the master 
 or fellow-student, unchilled by any shadow of deadly doubt, and then 
 bring forth its fruit abundantly, uninterruptedly during manhood, to fail 
 only at last with failing hand and eye. Instead of this happy sequence, 
 the modern artist finds himself hampered and vexed by contradictory 
 criticisms and theories, so that he can never do anything simply and "with- 
 out thought. He becomes half-artist, half-thinker and philosopher, and 
 his energy is lowered, his production hindered, his mind given over to 
 reflection. — 1873. 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM IN PAINTING. 
 
 85 
 
 et la souplesse de son genie, il s’eleva jusqu’a la synthese de 
 Fidealisme et du realisme .” He made endless preparations 
 before beginning a serious task, “preparatifs qui avaient pour 
 unique but de satisfaire sa conscience d’artiste.” In him the 
 transcendental period does not appear to have been limited to 
 certain years of youth, but rather to have alternated with his 
 practical state at irregular intervals to the very close of life. 
 Thus, nobody could ever be sure that he would execute a 
 commission entrusted to him, because, even when amongst 
 his multifarious occupations, he might have found time to do 
 it, ten to one he would just happen to be in his ideal or 
 transcendental state, with a settled conviction that all human 
 labour was vanity, especially his own. So it happened that his 
 great bronze statue, that was to have been, never got beyond 
 the clay model. Italy waited ten years while Leonardo 
 prepared his studies for this statue. He got it at length 
 modelled in clay, and, instead of casting it in bronze imme- 
 diately, thenceforth took no farther interest in the matter, so 
 that the casting was delayed till Ludovico could not furnish the 
 bronze on account of the war with France. Then the French 
 soldiers came and amused themselves with shooting at the clay 
 model, which they found convenient as a target ; and thus this 
 great and noble work, universally recognized by the Italians, 
 during its brief existence, as the best of its kind in Italy, was 
 lost for ever to the world. The portrait of Mona Lisa was 
 four years on Leonardo’s easel. Vasari says : “ After loitering 
 over it for four years, he finally left it unfinished.” His Ado- 
 ration of the Magi in the Uffizj is unfinished. In his Last 
 Supper, at Milan, the head of Christ was never finished, from 
 incapacity on the part of the artist to realize his too lofty ideal. 
 It is related that the Prior of the monastery where Leonardo 
 painted this work “ could in no way comprehend wherefore the 
 artist should sometimes remain half a day together absorbed in 
 thought before his work without making any progress that he 
 could see. This seemed to him a strange waste of time, and 
 he would fain have had him work away as he could make the 
 men do who were digging in his garden, never laying the 
 pencil out of his hand.” The Prior complained of Leonardo’s 
 idleness to the Duke. Leonardo condescended to explain to 
 the Duke, “ that men of genius are sometimes producing most 
 when they seem to be labouring least, their minds being 
 
86 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 occupied in the elucidation of their ideas, and in the com- 
 pletion of those conceptions to which they afterwards give 
 form and expression with the hand.” And with reference to 
 the slow progress of the equestrian statue, Vasari says : “ There, 
 is good reason to believe that the very greatness of his most 
 exalted mind, aiming at more than could be effected, was 
 itself an impediment ; perpetually seeking to add excellence to 
 excellence and perfection to perfection.” Some Servite monks, 
 who gave a commission to Leonardo, wishing him to get on 
 with it, conceived the hospitable but somewhat imprudent idea 
 of lodging him and all his household, supplying the expenses 
 of the whole. But he kept them waiting a long time, and 
 made no beginning. “ At length, however,” says Vasari, 44 he 
 prepared a cartoon.” Piero Soderini paid Leonardo every 
 month whilst he worked for him, but Leonardo did not complete 
 the work , and so honourably offered to return the money 
 received. “ It is related,” says Vasari, “ that Leonardo, having 
 received a commission for a certain picture from Pope Leo, 
 immediately began to distil oils and herbs for the varnish, 
 whereupon the pontiff remarked: ‘Alas the while! this man 
 will assuredly do nothing at all, since he is thinking of the end 
 before he has made a beginning to his work.’ ” There seems 
 to have been amongst Leonardo’s customers, a very general 
 conviction that he was not to be relied upon. Vasari, in a 
 general observation on this characteristic, gives a sufficient 
 reason for it : “ Leonardo, with his profound intelligence of 
 art, commenced various undertakings, many of which he never 
 completed, because it appeared to him that the hand could 
 never give its due perfection to the object or purpose which 
 he had in his thoughts, or beheld in his imagination.” In 
 short, he was a transcendentalist, too strongly imbued with 
 that philosophy for sustained action, yet far from being quite 
 paralysed by it, or we should probably never have heard of 
 him. His habit of seeking for discoveries, even in the most 
 ridiculous trifles, his endless longing after the unknown, and 
 his aspirations towards unattainable perfection, are so many 
 signs and symptoms of transcendentalism. He tells the Duke 
 Ludovico il Mauro that the difference between himself and the 
 other military engineers of his day is, that their warlike instru- 
 ments do not differ from those in common use, whereas he has 
 discovered secrets. It is certainly much to be regretted that 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM IN TAINTING. 
 
 87 
 
 these tendencies should have possessed Leonardo all his life. 
 Up to thirty, he might have learned the doctrines of this 
 exacting and imperious philosophy ; but at that age he was 
 already great enough to have left her schools. What a long 
 life he lived ! and how richly he was gifted ! and what a poor, 
 inadequate result he has left in comparison with his astonishing 
 powers and his length of days ! A faded fresco on a broken 
 plaster wall, a few fair canvases, a treatise or two, and one 
 short philosophical poem ! He made some wonderful guesses 
 and discoveries, and achieved a colossal fame ; but so long as 
 his immortal name shall be remembered by men, it can never 
 be meditated on otherwise than mournfully. O splendid Leo- 
 nardo ! the many-sided ; a narrower nature might have yielded 
 more abundant fruit ! It is enough to make one hate all 
 transcendental philosophers to think that so mighty a genius 
 was all but lost to art, because he would play with their most 
 benumbing and paralysing torpedo of a philosophy. 
 
 It is odd that the realists should be more disposed to 
 transcendentalism than what are called the idealists ; but this 
 seeming anomaly may be thus accounted for : The realist 
 
 compares his work continually with nature, whereas the tra- 
 ditional idealist merely obeys certain prescribed rules. Leo- 
 nardo, the most transcendental of painters, was so loyal to 
 Nature as to assert that she alone was the mistress of superior 
 intellects. And you will always find that the most intense 
 realists in our art are the most exposed to the seductions of 
 the transcendental philosophy, for their endless striving after 
 nature is a perpetual discouragement, and their best success 
 seems to them but failure. 
 
 Therefore, it is likely that this philosophy has never had so 
 many votaries in our art as now, when the victory of the 
 realist schools of Europe may be looked upon as at last assured. 
 Every other young painter in England is a transcendentalist. 
 There is small hope for those who do not pass through this 
 phase of intellectual experience. 
 
 This does not affect the truth of what I have just stated at 
 the beginning of this chapter respecting the general rarity of 
 transcendentalists. What I said was this : — 
 
 “ In all labours there are three stages — the mechanical, or 
 imitative ; the transcendental, or reflective ; and the intelligently 
 practical. I do not say that every labourer passes through all 
 
88 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 these stages. The great majority stop at the first ; a few reach 
 the second ; still fewer attain to the third.” 
 
 I spoke of #// labours, not of ours alone. Now, if you take 
 the mass of human occupations, you will find that the most 
 part are favourable rather to the imitative than to the reflective 
 man. In most trades reflection and discovery are superfluous, 
 generally positively injurious to the pocket. In the manu- 
 facturing districts, where there is as much successful energy 
 and ability as are to be found anywhere, the atmosphere is by 
 no means favourable to transcendentalism. Cotton manufac- 
 turers with an ideal turn usually ruin themselves by the 
 premature adoption of new, and as yet imperfect inventions, 
 and a want of steadiness in their habits of business. If 
 Leonardo had lived in Rochdale forty years ago, he would 
 have contributed very excellent inventions to the cotton manu- 
 facture ; but it is scarcely probable that he could ever have 
 profitably worked a mill. And so in other active and busy 
 trades. If you pause too much to reflect, you are ruined. In 
 trade, invention may occasionally lead to fortune, but as a 
 general rule mere industry is safer. This is so commonly 
 understood by the more prudent tradesmen, that they rest 
 contentedly in the traditional or imitative stage, leaving the 
 poor geniuses to improve upon their instruments and machines. 
 
 But in art the conditions are entirely reversed. A painter 
 who is a realist does not merely compare his paint with his 
 neighbour’s paint, — is not satisfied merely because he can turn 
 out as good an article at as low a figure as the rest of his 
 trade, — but, on the contrary, is always comparing it with 
 appearances in Nature, which are quite other than paint, and 
 with which all rivalry is hopeless. The bitter and discouraging 
 lessons that this continual comparison forces upon him, are to 
 an intelligent young painter nothing less than an elementary 
 course of transcendental philosophy ; and after learning a 
 while in this terrible school, there is no telling what will 
 become of him. His future fate, circumstances and his own 
 degree of strength must determine. He will either lapse into** 
 inactivity and despair, in which case a speedy and total change 
 of profession is the best thing to be hoped for him, or he will 
 get through his transcendentalism as a child gets through its 
 teething, having thereby gained new instruments for the acqui- 
 sition of a stronger nourishment. 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM IN TAINTING. 
 
 89 
 
 A great deal of the present prevalence of this philosophy is 
 due to Mr. Ruskin and the pre-Raphaelites. Mr. Ruskin is 
 almost as transcendental as Leonardo. And here let me 
 observe, in passing, that although the transcendentalists are 
 slow and unreliable as workmen, so that when they begin 
 anything there is no telling whether they will ever finish it, 
 they are yet the best and most stimulating of critics. Emer- 
 son, in his Lecture on the Transcendentalists, thus describes 
 their critical tendency. He speaks of “the extravagant 
 demand they make on human nature. That, indeed, consti- 
 tutes a new feature in their portrait, that they are the most 
 exacting and extortionate critics. Their quarrel with every 
 man they meet, is not with his kind but with his degree. 
 There is not enough of him ; that is the only fault. They 
 prolong the privilege of childhood in this wise, of doing 
 nothing, but making immense demands on all the gladiators in 
 the lists of action and fame.” No critic ever answered so pre- 
 cisely to this description as Mr. Ruskin does. The immense 
 service he has rendered to art has been by unceasing and 
 importunate demanding. He has never enough of good things. 
 He is possessed with so insatiable a hunger and thirst for all that 
 is excellent in art, that a thousand artists toil from year to 
 year without satisfying him. One might give a list of the things 
 he has asked for, and got, and yet he is still asking. Let him 
 ask ! for to demand, and exact, and stimulate to nobler and 
 sterner aims, are his office and mission upon earth. Mr. Brett 
 gave him chalk hills, and he asked for the Yal d’ Aosta ; the Val 
 d ’ Aosta was accordingly mirrored for him with a marvellous 
 fidelity, and then he wanted more of soul than the mirror gave. 
 Once he wanted apple-blossoms, and suddenly at his word the 
 walls of the Academy blossomed like an orchard. This drew 
 from him the observation that the greatest men did not like 
 flowers, so the flowers faded away from Trafalgar Square. 
 
 In Mr. Ruskin’s own work the transcendental habits of 
 Leonardo are frequently betrayed. His long and careful 
 collecting of materials ; the extent of his range, including 
 architecture and painting as the most prominent subjects, with 
 politics and theology and literary criticism filling up the back- 
 ground, occasionally to the detriment of the matter in hand ; 
 his want of method and self-direction, leading him in his best 
 works to give us disquisitions having nothing to do with the 
 
9 o 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 subjects of the chapters where they occur ; his constant study 
 of Nature and ceaseless reference to her as the only authority ; 
 his contempt for tradition ; and, as an artist, his refinement and 
 delicacy of hand, to be acquired only by the severest self- 
 criticism, — all these things are so many marks and symptoms 
 by which I know him for a transcendentalist. 
 
 And the effect Mr. Ruskin has had on art may be generally 
 described in this manner; that he has inoculated all our 
 younger painters with more or less of his own transcendental 
 tendencies. All the best young painters now alive in England 
 are striving with all their might, either to paint what no one 
 else ever painted before, or, if their subjects are old ones, to 
 treat them more truly than they ever were treated before. 
 Our English School is in a state of intense aspiration after 
 hitherto unattained perfections, a state of the general mind 
 sure to breed transcendentalists by hundreds. And so we have 
 plenty of them of both sorts, the active and inactive. 
 
 I think as Mr. Ruskin is the best example of a critical 
 transcendentalist I could find amongst writers on art, so Mr. 
 Holman Hunt is the most known example of a transcenden- 
 talist in action. The whole pre-Raphaelite movement is, 
 indeed, a result and embodiment of this philosophy. The 
 boundless confidence of these painters in convictions which 
 had but slight support at first beyond the limits of their own 
 consciousness, their decisive preference of internal to external 
 guides ; their firm reliance on principles rather than persons ; 
 their courage and obstinacy in opposition ; their laborious 
 obedience to the idea which impelled them beyond the sym- 
 pathies of the hour, — all these things indicate a transcendental 
 rather than a materialistic state. But strong and gifted must 
 that painter be who with a judgment so severe and exacting, 
 does yet attempt to realize his conceptions in so imperfect a 
 material as paint. To most people, when once their ideal 
 rises to a certain height thenceforth all execution seems vanity. 
 How many young painters have I seen in the Slough of 
 Despond, lost in the wild hopeless dream of the transcenden- 
 talist, longing after impossible perfections ! It is not so to 
 the same extent in any other art, because no other human 
 labour suggests comparisons so discouraging. A musician 
 may sing to an audience which is not just fresh from a chorus 
 of angels. A poet has to contend against no superhuman 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM IN TAINTING. 
 
 9i 
 
 rivalry. Even a sculptor enters into no hopeless contest with 
 Nature, for he does not attempt colour and light, the two 
 unattainable things, but confines himself to form alone, which 
 is quite accurately imitable. But the painter is always in the 
 presence of another Painter, with whom all rivalry^ is hope- 
 less ; and the traveller comes to his dingy canvases with eyes 
 still dazzled by the glitter of the glacier and the splendour of 
 the sea. 
 
 And thus in the pictorial art transcendentalism is peculiarly 
 fatal to productiveness. Let a young painter resolve that he 
 will paint entire verity — the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
 but the truth— and he may as well burn palette and brushes 
 at once. The utmost we can hope for is to be as true as the 
 nature of our means and materials permits, — a vast concession 
 to falsity. But these limitations of materials are intolerable 
 to the ardent aspirant. He sees so vividly, and feels so 
 strongly, that he will never endure to complete any of his 
 attempts. He feels them to be, at the best, mockeries and 
 makeshifts. He finds it impossible to express himself in paint. 
 He will try language, perhaps, and write poems, because the 
 poem does not pretend to imitate, only to celebrate, the 
 beauty of the universe. Or, if he has courage enough to stick 
 to painting, he will push imitation to its utmost limit, like 
 Leonardo and Hunt and Millais, to discover after all that art 
 is less an imitation than an interpretation of nature. — 1860. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 Between the years 1850 and i860 the younger English painters 
 were, most of them, in the transcendental condition of which this 
 paper attempts to give some account. The true origin of the con- 
 dition was a new beginning of art, and a beginning which so far 
 as human faculties were concerned was decidedly at the wrong 
 end. We were all beginning art from nature ; our predecessors in 
 all ages of the world had begun art from the most independent 
 conventionalism, gradually adding more and more of nature as 
 their senses became more acute. To be followed industriously and 
 
92 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 happily art should be conceived, and has always been conceived, 
 as a thing delightful in itself for its beautiful forms and colours, 
 with only just so much subservience to natural law as the criticism 
 of the spectator (that is, of the epoch) may happen to require. 
 The temper of the happily productive artists has always been (I 
 use the word reverently, almost religiously) a childish temper, 
 pleased with its own inventions and its own successes, loving 
 nature up to a certain point, but not painfully toiling and disquiet- 
 ing itself about natural phenomena. The most modern English 
 school started, as no other school ever did before, with an intensely 
 keen and observant insight into nature, resulting in the most 
 anxious endeavours to render pure natural truth in paint. We 
 therefore entirely lost the happy, playful feeling of other times 
 when men began with their own ideas, and gradually added truth 
 as it forced itself upon their, awakening perceptions. In the 
 matter of colour, for example, nobody before our time ever made 
 himself miserable because his colour was not scientifically true ; the 
 elder artists were contented to have colour plausible enough to 
 pass muster, provided only it were pleasing, and by working on 
 this principle their taste was free to produce the most agreeable 
 harmonies. They cared very little even for scientific accuracy in 
 form ; and though their works had form enough, in the fully- 
 developed schools, to satisfy the eye, they forgave themselves many 
 errors in drawing and perspective, if only the general result were 
 fortunate as a pictorial arrangement. The elder artists gradually 
 worked their way from the conventional Egyptian statue to the 
 art of Phidias, or from the Gothic illuminated manuscript to the 
 painting of Van Eyck. We tried to work our way from absolute 
 nature, seen scientifically, to an absolutely true imitation : hence 
 our frequent failures ; hence, too, our unsatisfactory moral and 
 mental state, so far removed from the enviable childishness and 
 quiet undoubting industry of the pre-scientific times. 
 
 The natural development of the arts of design is from rude 
 human work and primitive human conceptions towards higher and 
 completer truth ; and so long as men follow this course they are 
 happy and confident, pleased with what they achieve, and rejoicing 
 in their increase of practical force. But when they forget that art 
 is a huryan product, and try to make it simply a reflection of the ] 
 splendour and perfection of the universe, they fail inevitably, and \ 
 are oppressed by the sense of failure. Then comes the terrible 1 
 Nemesis, the doubt of the value of all that man can do, the dis- } 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM IN TAINTING. 
 
 93 
 
 belief in humanity, in its capacities and sentiments, the vague 
 aspiration after the absolutely, unquestionably true. This state ot 
 mind, the transcendental state, is fatal to production in the fine 
 arts, which are in their essence human before all things. An artist 
 ought to believe in himself even more than in the external world, 
 to believe in his own preferences and passions more than in the 
 absolute truth, to rely upon an inward rather than an exterior law. 
 Only in this self-confident temper can he work happily and pro- 
 ductively. If he loses this strong central personality to diffuse 
 himself in outer nature, like a gas in the immensity of the atmo- 
 sphere, it is not life he gains, but death. Nature lives on, 
 afterwards, eternally, but art and the artist are absorbed in her 
 infinity. — 1873. 
 
THE LAW OF PROGRESS IN ART 
 
 The course of artistic or other discovery appears to be very 
 much the same as the succession of processes followed by an 
 artist in the construction of a certain picture, only that in the 
 great field of human progress the work is accomplished by the 
 race , and taken up successively at its different stages by relays 
 of innumerable workers. The construction of a picture is 
 usually effected very much as follows. First a rude charcoal 
 sketch to get things in their places and to indicate the division 
 of the future labour. This first sketch is rude to such a degree 
 that persons not conversant with art would not know what was 
 meant by it, most of the curves being represented by angles 
 and straight lines even by the best figure-painters ; but however 
 rude, it is useful as a marking out of boundaries. Then comes 
 a careful outline of the principal of these boundaries ; that is, 
 the line enclosing the great masses. Then within these lines 
 the dead colour is roughly laid — roughly, though with consum- 
 mate foresight. After that comes a second painting in detail, 
 then a third in still minuter detail, and, with some men, even 
 a fourth, fifth, and sixth, of detail within detail, film over film, 
 till the work has reached the highest excellence possible to the 
 painter. 
 
 Now, the history of human art in its great relations to the 
 whole race is merely the repetition of this process on a vast 
 scale, extending its minor processes through ages, and employ- 
 ing, not merely the fingers of one workman, but of all the best 
 workmen in the world, generation after generation. 
 
 First the great Father of the art comes and traces out the 
 
THE LA W OF PROGRESS IN ART 
 
 95 
 
 charcoal sketch. He has time only to do this roughly, and 
 then die. Another generation carries the work on by a more 
 accurate division and definition of the boundaries of future 
 labour. A third begins to fill these boundaries. A fourth 
 goes over the whole ground again, but this time in detail, 
 A fifth traverses it all over again, but with far minuter detail ; 
 and after this the only work for the race is this continual 
 going over and over again the whole field of labour traced 
 out and partly prepared by their forefathers, but every time 
 with more accurate discrimination in the detail. 
 
 The same order of progress is visible in maritime discovery, 
 in the geography of the land, in the progress of agriculture, and 
 in the advance of every science. 
 
 In maritime discovery you will find this law of progress con- 
 stant from the voyage of Columbus to that of the last New 
 York clipper. When Columbus crossed the Atlantic, the first 
 rude sketch was made. To-day thousands of sea-captains are 
 hard at work on the details. The credit of originating this 
 great system of observation is due to the United States. More 
 than a thousand of her navigators “ were engaged,” says Maury, 
 iC day and night, and in all parts of the ocean, in making and 
 recording observations according to a uniform plan, and in 
 furthering this attempt to increase our knowledge as to the 
 winds and currents of the sea, and other phenomena that re- 
 late to its navigation and physical geography.” And now all 
 the great European nations co-operate in this plan, so that the 
 ocean is covered with observers. 
 
 In the geography of the land we see a steady tendency 
 towards accuracy in maps. If we take Great Britain alone as 
 an example, we shall observe that the improvement from the 
 earliest known maps to the Ordnance survey is not in extent 
 of ground, but in accuracy of detail. The wonderful advance 
 from the first rude sketch of the island to the present minute 
 survey of every square yard of it, is a perfect type of all human 
 progress, which consists far less in the conquest of new realms 
 — for this is only possible in the very earliest stage of progress 
 — than in the increasing accuracy with which realms long 
 since conquered by our forefathers are gradually made known 
 to us. 
 
 In the progress of agriculture we find another equally in- 
 structive example. It is always tending to a culture less and 
 
96 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 less superficial, or “ skimming,” as they call it in America, and 
 more and more thorough. The progress of agriculture does 
 not consist in the enlargement of kingdoms. The new genera- 
 tion occupies the old ground, but carries its culture to a more 
 detailed perfection. 
 
 In the advance of other sciences the same course is followed. 
 First comes a man of large grasp, who lays down the rough 
 charcoal outline of the new science ; then two or three take it 
 up and define his outline better, correcting it where faultiest. 
 Some time afterwards you will find ten thousand labourers 
 filling up the minutest details of the discovery. The history of 
 photography from the days of Niepce to the present time is the 
 most striking illustration I remember. The original problem 
 has scarcely been enlarged, but how minutely has it been 
 worked out ! Human anatomy and physiology have followed 
 the same law. The first problem was Man, and the problem 
 ) of to-day is still Man ; but within this narrow envelope, our 
 i skin, how much has been explored and learned, how much 
 yet remains for future investigation ! 
 
 In the history of our art of landscape-painting, Turner, our 
 Columbus, did not supersede, but prepare our work. We are, 
 in relation to him, as observant sea-captains to a great mari- 
 time discoverer. We go over the same waters, and we add 
 the results of our lives of observation to his great hints and 
 strivings after truth. In the broad facts he saw and proved, 
 our evidence confirms his, but we have still much to explore 
 in which his charts cannot help us. 
 
 What is known as the pre-Raphaelite movement in painting 
 resembles the system of maritime observations instituted by 
 the United States. The sea had been traversed before by in- 
 numerable navigators, but the time had at last arrived when a 
 more accurate and perfect knowledge of it was felt to be de- 
 sirable. It was all to be examined over again, therefore, on a 
 system infinitely more exacting and more severe than had ever 
 been applied to it before. And in art, though Titian had 
 painted figures and Turner landscapes, it was felt by our 
 younger painters that the time was ripe for a new investiga- 
 tion of Nature’s aspects , both in man and earth ; hut this new 
 investigation must be conducted with a resolute adherence to 
 truth, and an accurate recording (in colours) of artistic obser- 
 vations. So we are going over the whole ground again like 
 
THE LA W OF PROGRESS IN ART. 
 
 97 
 
 the modern sea-captains with their charts and note-books. 
 And it is probable that we shall surpass our predecessors in 
 accuracy, because this is a quality which increases with the 
 progress of science. But as to our surpassing them in creative 
 genius, that is quite another matter, depending entirely on 
 individual capacity. For the painter is a compound of poet 
 and man of science, and it does not follow that the poetic half 
 of him will develop itself with the same rapidity as the scien- 
 tific half. The probability seems even to lie a little the other 
 way ; it is difficult to conceive any order of quite accurate 
 landscape as purely poetical as the fairest Turnerian dreams. 
 
 I thus associate artistic progress with scientific, because the 
 art of painting is strictly a compound of two sciences, with a 
 poetic infusion from the mind of the artist. The sciences are, 
 first, the great science of natural aspects, an infinite ocean of 
 discovery which ten thousand discoverers might traverse for 
 ever without exhausting ; and, secondly, the technical science 
 of colour. These sciences follow precisely the same law of 
 progress as all other sciences, though the element of human 
 feeling may remain much the same in different generations of 
 men. Painting, however, develops itself very unequally, because 
 one of its component sciences may be quite stationary, whilst 
 another is in rapid progress. Thus in the Renaissance schools, 
 generally, the science of the human figure .progressed with 
 astonishing vigour, whilst that of landscape gained little ground. 
 The science of colour, more limited and technical than that 
 of natural aspects, reached an early and splendid maturity 
 in Titian ; nevertheless the moderns have added to it several 
 valuable processes, unknown to Titian, yet absolutely necessary 
 for the accurate rendering of many truths they desire to express, 
 which did not come within the range of Titian’s art. In all 
 this, painting is exactly on the same footing with other sciences; 
 the highest element in it, the soul of its master-works, being 
 always, in every age, a matter of individual genius. The 
 progressive element in art is the scientific element, not the 
 poetic ; but it must not be forgotten that the scientific portion 
 of any work of pictorial art is a very large portion of it — is, in 
 short, the whole body of it ; that the feeling of the artist infuses 
 the spiritual element only, and has nothing to do with matters 
 of scientific fact. 
 
 We are neither to underrate nor to exaggerate the importance 
 
 H H 
 
98 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 of the science of natural aspects, but we are to understand 
 that, like all other sciences, it is essentially progressive, and we 
 are to accept its progress as a matter of course. Artists will 
 not be any the more famous for being scientific, but they are 
 compelled to become so because they have embraced a pro- 
 fession which includes a natural science, just as the profession 
 of medicine does. What I desire to enforce is the great truth 
 that within the Art of Painting there exists, flourishes, and 
 advances, a noble and glorious science — a science as great as 
 geology, or astronomy, or chemistry — a science, like them, 
 based entirely on nature, and which is essentially and irresistibly 
 progressive. 
 
 Whether, in its mighty progress, this great science will for- 
 ward the poetic part of the art, I know not ; but it will un- 
 doubtedly furnish continually new subjects for noble thought, 
 and new excitement to the enthusiasm ot the student. Without 
 this stimulus of progress, the art wculd become conventional- 
 ized and sink into a manufacture, as it always has done when 
 religious authority or national customs have arrested its scien- 
 tific advance. I therefore believe that the very greatest of all 
 dangers to our art, if not the only danger to it, is the stop- 
 page of its scientific development : in other words, its aban- 
 donment of the pursuit of truth. So long as all Nature is 
 open to art, there surely cannot lack the necessary excite- 
 ment for the poetic temperament in the artist. 
 
 And as I perceive now around me all the signs of intense 
 scientific activity in contemporary artists ; as they ransack all 
 the realms of nature for new facts, and are incessantly record- 
 ing on canvas truths which were never before recorded for the 
 human race, I feel unlimited hope and confidence in the 
 future. The apprehension of the approaching extinction of 
 the art of painting, expressed by Constable and others, appears 
 to me just as reasonable and well founded as the apprehension 
 of the approaching extinction of geography. — 1860. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 This little essay states very truly the progressive nature of that 
 part of the art of painting which depends upon the knowledge of 
 natural facts, but it does not bring sufficiently into relief the still 
 
THE LA W OF PROGRESS IN ART. 
 
 99 
 
 greater importance of technical excellence in painting, and the 
 curiously unprogressive nature of the art in this respect. The 
 distinction between the two may be made clearer by an example. 
 Claude knew much less about sky and water than our ordinary 
 young landscape-painters of the present day, yet he painted better 
 what he attempted (of sky and water) than they do. Everyone 
 who is acquainted with technical matters in the fine arts is aware 
 that the quietly perfect art of oil-painting is extinct, or nearly so, 
 and that in its place we have a great variety of extremely clever 
 and dexterous substitutes, resulting in skilful, partial expressions of 
 artistic beauty, but not reaching that calm divine harmony of aim 
 and method which we find in Titian and Giorgione, and even in 
 such work as that of Velasquez. The greatest painting of past 
 times had one quality which no modern one really possesses — it 
 had tranquillity. The moderns fly in the empyrean as if on wings 
 of Daedalus, in an anxious, agitated manner, feeling always as if 
 they were making perilous experiments and likely to catch a fall. 
 The truly consummate artists did their wonderful feats surely - 
 and quietly, like eagles sailing on the wing. 
 
 In the year i860, like the whole of the artistic school I belonged 
 to, I attached too much importance to the positive science of 
 natural aspects, and not enough importance to the technical art of 
 painting. Our English nature is not spontaneously artistic, we 
 only arrive at the understanding of art by intellectual processes, 
 and we are all of us, both artists and public, much more literary 
 than artistic in our habitual mental operations. This is why we 
 were all so ready to go in search of natural truth and so unready 
 to attain the finest pictorial quality, which, though not quite inde- 
 pendent of natural truth, is bound to it very loosely. If these two 
 things are husband and wife, the marriage between them is one of 
 those marriages which permit each of the two parties to go alone 
 whenever it seems to be more convenient. A thorough a 7 list 
 always gives just as much truth as suits his purpose, and no more, 
 but we Englishmen, with our national honesty and veracity, became 
 much more enthusiastic about truth to nature than we had ever 
 been about pictorial artifices and qualities. The result was visible 
 in our works, which contained many natural facts that had never 
 been painted before ; but, unfortunately, from our neglect of art we 
 painted them so crudely that it might perhaps have been just as ' 
 well not to record them at all. I see now, however, with the 
 greatest pleasure, that the younger men do not seem to be working 
 
 n 2 
 
100 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 with that over-strained anxiety for new and minute truth which 
 hindered us from reaching harmony. They are content to paint 
 what is already perfectly well known, but they try to paint it simply 
 and harmoniously. It is right, assuredly, that the whole realm of 
 nature should be open to the artist, but things are never painted 
 really well just when they are first freshly discovered. Immediately 
 after the discovery of scientific perspective, the artists made their 
 pictures hideous with it, and many modern pictures have been 
 made hideous by our own discoveries. After some years the novel 
 material attracts no particular attention, and then it falls into its 
 right place and gets just the relative degree of prominence that it 
 deserves. * 
 
 And now, if I try to say in a few words what, after the experience 
 of the schools of Europe during the last twelve years, seem to be 
 the prospects of art in the way of any possible progress, I may 
 express the hope that the greater schools are settling down quietly 
 to try for better technical work, and for more perfect harmony. 
 What artists most feel themselves to need is a quiet completeness 
 of pictorial expression resembling that of the great old masters, 
 but including modern discovery in due subordination to the highest 
 artistic purposes. The modern scientific impetus has done its 
 work. It has added immensely to the range of art, especially in 
 landscape ; and now, as its active force no longer operates, the 
 artists are free to devote themselves wholly to artistic aims. But 
 the artists of the future must be content to equal, if they can, the 
 masters of the past. The Loire rises three times in a generation, 
 but only to a level it has attained before ; and so the river of art, 
 ever flowing, may lift itself again and again, but not above the 
 mark the old Italians left. The men of science are like the coral 
 insects in the sea ; they build on the work of their predecessors and 
 rise ever higher and higher, but the artist is like a wave whose 
 crest can never lift itself more than a fixed height above the sea- 
 level, a height that has been attained before by the waves that have 
 passed away. — 1873. 
 
VIII. 
 
 ARTISTS IN FICTION 
 
 “ If a man applies himself to servile ox mechanic employments, 
 his industry in those things is a proof of his inattention to 
 nobler studies. No young man of noble birth or liberal senti- 
 ments, from seeing the Jupiter at Pisa , would desire to be Phidias, 
 or from the sight of the Juno at Argos to be PolycletusP So says 
 old Plutarch ; and we may therefore argue from this passage 
 alone, if other proofs were wanting, that the artist was, in his 
 time, socially considered, a despised person. The secret of 
 Plutarch’s contempt for Phidias lies in the word servile. He 
 respected government and not servitude. He liked the rough 
 virtues, often in reality very great vices, which lead men to 
 power, and he had an honest contempt for such mean genius 
 as that of Phidias and Polycletus, which exercised itself in the 
 service of mankind* 
 
 Most people are of Plutarch’s opinion ; he only gave a frank 
 expression to one of the fundamental instincts of humanity. 
 The thermometer does not more accurately indicate the precise 
 degree of caloric present in any fluid, than the popular respect 
 the degree of governmental power present at any given epoch 
 in any one class of society. Its indications are quite reliable. 
 Men respect only power. They detect the exact amount of it 
 present in any class of their contemporaries with an instinct 
 which is absolutely infallible, and in strict proportion to the 
 amount of power present is the degree of deference yielded. 
 
 And accordingly, if we study the social position of the artist, 
 we shall find it slippery, unsatisfactory, and insecure. Goethe 
 observes somewhere, that though the artist is a privileged 
 
102 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 person, and though his talent has an inward certainty, its 
 outward relation is peculiarly uncertain. One can easily fancy 
 that the position of a great Greek sculptor in a society holding 
 Plutarch’s notions must have been inferior. And since, as I 
 said before, the world generally is quite of Plutarch’s opinion, 
 the modern successors of Phidias, whether in sculpture or other 
 fine arts, find a frank and equal intercourse with the general 
 world next to impossible for them. 
 
 The best and truest pictures of contemporary manners are, 
 undoubtedly, to be found in what the French call “ studies of 
 manners,” or those modern novels in which the society of to-day 
 is painted from the life. Let us see how the painter’s relation 
 to this society is sketched by one or two of the ablest hands . 1 
 
 In “The Newcomes,” when young Clive devotes himself to 
 painting, it is considered a family disgrace by his friends, whose 
 place in society, by the way, is of quite recent acquisition, and 
 whose origin is so low that they are all forced to tell lies about 
 it. But Clive is not on the road to power, and, of course, 
 without power, gets no consideration from the governing 
 classes. His occupation withdraws him from the society of 
 gentlemen, and we find him, not at university wine-parties with 
 young lords, but working at Gandish’s with a set of low flatterers 
 for his associates, and the son of a domestic servant for his 
 most intimate friend. That reverend puppy, Charles Honey- 
 man, the perfect incarnation of all that the weakest women 
 most deeply love and reverence, says with bland dignity, “ My 
 dear Clive, there are degrees in society which we must respect. 
 You surely cannot think of being a professional artist. Such a 
 profession is very well for your protege — but for you . . . ” 
 when Clive vehemently interrupts him. Mrs. Hobson New- 
 come tells the Colonel that his boy is not good enough to 
 associate with hers, because “ he lives with artists and all sorts 
 of eccentric people,” whereas hers “ are bred on quite a dif- 
 ferent plan. Hobson will succeed his father in the bank, and 
 dear Samuel,” she trusts, “will go into the Church.” The 
 father of these hopeful young gentlemen calls Clive’s devotion 
 to art “ this madcap freak of turning painter.” “ Confound it,” 
 
 1 Part of what follows is abridged from a review article contributed by 
 myself to the West of Scotland Magazine and Review , and entitled 
 “Artist-Life in Fiction.” 
 
ARTISTS IN FICTION 
 
 says he, 44 why doesn’t my brother set him up in some respect- 
 able business ? I ain’t proud ; I have not married an earl’s 
 daughter , . . but a painter ! hang it, a painter’s no trade at 
 all — I don’t fancy seeing one of our family sticking up pictures 
 for sale. I don’t like it, Barnes ; ” and two minutes afterwards 
 he heartily damns 44 all literary men, all artists, the whole lot 
 of them !” The said Barnes agrees pleasantly with his uncle, 
 and farther on in the book speaks of his cousin Clive as “ a 
 beggarly painter, an impudent snob, an infernal young puppy,” 
 and so forth. Even Clive’s father did not seriously believe 
 that his son would live by painting pictures, but considered him 
 as a young prince who chose to amuse himself with painting. 
 Mr. Barnes mentions at home “a singular whim of Colonel 
 Newcome, who can give his son twelve or fifteen hundred a 
 year, and make an artist of him.” Ethel writes to the Colonel 
 from Baden, “You will order Clive not to sell his pictures, 
 won’t you? I know it is not wrong, but your son might look 
 higher than to be an artist. It is a rise for Mr. Ridley, but a 
 fall for him. An artist, an organist, a pianist, all these are very 
 good people ; but, you know > not 4 de notre monde] and Clive 
 ought to belong to it.” 1 Mrs. Mackenzie, when Clive in his 
 adversity tries to support the house by his labour, says, 44 It is 
 most advisable that Clive should earn some money by that 
 horrid profession he has chosen to adopt — trade I call it.” 
 And Thackeray himself says, 44 The Muse of Painting is a lady, 
 whose social position is not altogether recognized with us as 
 yet. The polite world permits a gentleman to amuse himself 
 with her, but to take her for better or for worse ! forsake all 
 other chances and cleave unto her ! to assume her name ! 
 many a respectable person would be as much shocked at the 
 notion, as if his son had married an opera-dancer. However, 
 it never entered into Clive’s head to be ashamed of the pro- 
 fession he had chosen ; and though he saw many of his school- 
 fellows in the world, these entering into the army, others talking 
 
 1 Ethel’s reasoning here is feminine. She confounds together persons of 
 creative and of merely interpretative power. They ought to be clearly 
 separated, thus : — 
 
 CREATORS. 
 
 Poets. 
 
 Original Painters. 
 Musical Composers. 
 
 INTERPRETERS. 
 
 T ranslators. 
 
 Engravers and Copyists. 
 Musical Performers. 
 
104 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 with delight of college and its pleasures or studies, yet, having 
 made up his mind that art was his calling, he refused to quit 
 her for any other mistress, and plied his easel very stoutly 
 
 But Thackeray is too profound a student of human nature 
 not to let this continual opposition have its natural effect in the 
 end. The fact is, our affections must be very deeply engaged 
 in a pursuit to enable us to follow it steadily against the opinion 
 of all around us ; and Clive, not being a born painter like J. J., 
 but only a lad of good abilities (not of genius in any wise), 
 having the choice of war with his father and his wife, or the 
 virtual abandonment of his art, does as most of us would 
 under similar circumstances, — pursues the art by stealth with 
 just sufficient ardour to make his wife jealous of it, but not half 
 enough ardour for success in it. So he is miserable (being in 
 a false position), and J. J. feelingly laments for his friend : 
 “ Among them they have taken him away from his art. They 
 don’t understand him when he talks about it, they despise him 
 for pursuing it. Why should I wonder at that? my parents 
 despised it too, and my father was not a grand gentleman like 
 the Colonel.” Ultimately, when restored to prosperity by his 
 marriage with Ethel, Clive shaves his beard, and abandons his 
 art. The moral of the story is thus admirably completed. 
 
 This J. J. Ridley, the true artist, is only the son of a domestic 
 servant. Thackeray could not have made him the son of a 
 gentleman, because the obstacles placed by society in the path 
 of a man of genius of sufficient worldly rank to bring him 
 within its influence are nearly insurmoun f able, and all the 
 terrible difficulties of poverty and ignorance are as nothing in 
 comparison with the one difficulty of facing social degradation. 
 Gentlemen are the born officers of the social army, and they 
 do not like to have their epaulettes torn off. But men in the 
 ranks may do the menial work of the world, because their posi- 
 tion is so humble already that it cannot well suffer by any 
 act not absolutely criminal. So the butler’s boy may paint 
 pictures as he might have brushed boots, and nobody considers 
 it a degradation, except his parents, who probably had higher 
 views for their son, and would have liked to see him in 
 livery. 
 
 The other professional artists, to whom Mr. Thackeray in- 
 troduces us, are not men who would naturally take a strong 
 position amongst gentlemen. Gandish, the martyr to “Igh 
 
ARTISTS IN FICTION 
 
 105 
 
 Art,” tells Smee, the portrait-painter, the secret history of a 
 grand work. “ The models of the hancient Britons in that 
 pictur alone cost me thirty pound — when I was a struggling 
 man, and had just married my Betsy here. You reckonise 
 Boadishia, Colonel, with the Roman ’elmet, cuirass, and jave- 
 ling of the period — all studied from the hantique, sir, the 
 glorious hantique.” Again, with what a wonderful command 
 of all the resources of our language does the same eloquent- 
 artist discourse to Colonel Newcome on his illustrations of 
 English History. “ If you do me the honour to walk into the 
 Hatrium, you’ll remark my great pictures also from English 
 ’istory. An English historical painter, sir, should be employed 
 chiefly in English ’istory. That’s what I would have done. 
 Why ain’t there temples for' us where the people might read 
 their history at a glance without knowing how to read ? Why 
 is my Alfred ’anging up in this ’all? Because there is no 
 patronage for a man who devotes himself to Igh Art. You 
 know the anecdote, Colonel. King Alfred flying from, the 
 Danes took refuge in a neaterd’s ’ut. The rustic’s wife told 
 him to bake a cake, and the fugitive sovering sat down to his 
 ignoble task, and, forgetting it in the cares of state, let the cake 
 burn, on which the woman struck him. The moment chose is 
 when she is lifting her ’and to deliver the blow. The king 
 receives it with majesty, mingled with meekness. In the back- 
 ground the door of the ’ut is open, letting in the royal officers 
 to announce the Danes are defeated. The daylight breaks in 
 at the aperture, signifying the dawning of ’Ope. That story, 
 sir, which I found in my researches in ’istory, has since become 
 so popular, sir, that hundreds of artists have painted it, — hun- 
 dreds ! I, who discovered the legend, have my picture — here !” 
 In a country where the due aspiration of the letter h is con- 
 sidered the indispensable qualification of every one claiming 
 the rank of gentleman, I do not see how Mr. Gandish could 
 ever expect to be recognized as one. 
 
 It is observable that, whenever Mr. Thackeray has anything 
 to say of the artistic class, it is always to leave a strong impres- 
 sion on the reader’s mind of the artist’s social nonentity. The 
 memory of Becky Sharp’s father, for instance, is never recalled 
 in a manner favourable to him, his drunkenness or his poverty 
 being the characteristics by one or other of which he is roughh 
 hauled before the reader from time to time. In “ The New 
 
io6 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 comes ” the only supportable artist is J. J. Ridley ; but in an 
 aristocratic country like this, people don’t particularly affect the 
 society of their domestics or their families, and it is therefore a 
 considerable obstacle to Mr. Ridley’s social success that his 
 father is a butler. Gandish is an ignorant old goose, and Srhee 
 one of the meanest of toadies. Clive Newcome is not an artist 
 at all ; but if, by courtesy, we count him as one, his idleness 
 and infirmity of purpose were no credit to that profession which 
 his swell manners adorned. In the character sketches the essay 
 entitled “The Artists” does not contain one single portrait 
 agreeable enough to make one wish to know the original ; and 
 by continually exhibiting poverty and meanness on the one 
 hand, or a base and unworthy success on the other, as the oppo- 
 site poles of the artistic career, the writer easily conveys the 
 impression that the career is in itself inevitably degrading. But 
 this, as I happen to know, was not Mr. Thackeray’s own private 
 opinion at all. As an individual, Thackeray loved and reve- 
 renced our art to a degree that no one would believe possible 
 who knew no more about him than is to be gathered from his 
 published works. It is as a satirist only that he laughs at the 
 brotherhood of the brush, and the brethren of that order are no 
 worse off than any order of men of whom that satirist treats. 
 Without, therefore, complaining in any way of this rough usage, 
 we have only to note with regard to Thackeray’s works, con- 
 sidered as a collection of studies from life, taken by one who 
 scorns the artifice of flattery, that the artists occupy in them 
 much the same position, relatively to the rest of the world, that 
 they do in real life ; that is to say, a very unsound and unsatis- 
 factory position. 
 
 In “St. Ronan’s Well” the guests at the table d'hbte cannot 
 believe Tyrrell to be a professional artist, simply because his 
 manners are good. 
 
 “ I doubt, too, if he is a professional artist,” said Lady Binks. 
 “ If so, he is of the very highest class, for I have seldom seen a 
 better-bred man.” 
 
 “ There are very well-bred artists,” said Lady Penelope ; “it 
 is the profession of a gentleman.” 
 
 “ Certainly,” answered Lady Binks, “ but the poorer class 
 have often to struggle with poverty and dependence. In general 
 society they are like commercial people in presence of their 
 customers, and that is a difficult part to sustain. And so you 
 
ARTISTS IN FICTION. 
 
 107 
 
 see them of all sorts — shy and reserved, when they are conscious 
 of merit — petulant and whimsical by way of showing their inde- 
 pendence — intrusive in order to appear easy — and sometimes 
 obsequious and fawning when they chance to be of a mean 
 spirit. But you seldom see them quite at their ease, and there- 
 fore I hold this Mr. Tyrrell to be either an artist of the first class, 
 raised completely above the necessity and degradation of patron- 
 age, or else to be no professional artist at all.” 
 
 There is an exquisite touch in the fifth chapter, which I can- 
 not omit, though a little out of place. Lady Penelope, when 
 Tyrrell avows his artistic character, “had to recede,” says Scott 
 — and mark this, for it is thoroughly masterly and characteristic 
 — “from the respectful and easy footing on which he had con- 
 trived to place himself, to one which might express patronage 
 on her own part and dependence on Tyrrell’s, and this could 
 not be done in a moment.” Sir Walter Scott knew nothing 
 of painting, but observed closely whatever might indicate the 
 social estimate of art. Sir Walter never once penetrated beyond 
 the surface of the artistic nature, and, though a great artist him- 
 self in his work, was merely a diiettant in feeling. Still, even 
 to him, who had no sympathy whatever with painters, it was 
 plain enough that society, even in his day, did not treat them 
 on terms of equality. 
 
 As Scott, in “St. Ronan’s Well,” and Thackeray, in “The 
 Newcomes,” have illustrated our subject, so has Charles 
 Dickens in “ Little Dorrit.” “ Mr. Henry Gowan, inheriting 
 from his father, the commissioner, that very questionable help 
 in life, a very small independence, had been difficult to settle. 
 At last he had declared that he would become a painter ; 
 partly because he had always had an idle knack that way, and 
 partly to grieve the souls of the Barnacles in chief who had not 
 provided for him. So it came to pass, that several distinguished 
 ladies had been frightfully shocked.” And of all the shocked 
 ladies, Gowan’s mother was shocked the most. She says to 
 Clennam, “ Perhaps you have heard that I have suffered the 
 keenest distress of mind from Henry’s having taken to a pursuit 
 which — well ! ” shrugging her shoulders, “ a very respectable 
 pursuit, I dare say, and some artists are, as artists, quite superioi 
 persons ; still, we never yet in our family have gone beyond an 
 
 amateur, and it is a pardonable weakness to feel a little 
 
 Here Mrs. Gowan sighed. 
 
io8 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 A very clever and not unfair statement of the causes for the 
 peculiar jealousy with which the rich trading class regards culti- 
 vated persons, and, above all, persons artistically cultivated, is 
 put into the mouth of an intelligent man of business by Miss 
 Jewsbury, in her masterly novel, “ The Half-Sisters/' — a novel, 
 by the way, which enters better into the true artist feeling than 
 any other I know. I have never seen the question so skilfully 
 handled ; in the few sentences I shall quote, considerations are 
 taken into account which would altogether escape any ordinary 
 observer. The statement that authors and artists have “ no 
 professional or business-like habits ” is not true, as Mr. Smiles 
 proved in his “ Self-help;” but it is perfectly well placed, dra- 
 matically, in the mouth of a man of business, being a prejudice 
 common to his class. It is Mr. Eryant who speaks first, a great 
 master-miner. 
 
 “ Professional people live in a world of their own ; and it is 
 very undesirable that they should be introduced into the private 
 circles of the middle classes. ... I have a singular objection 
 to meeting with authors, actors, artists, or professional people of 
 any sort, except in the peculiar exercise of their vocation, which 
 I am willing to pay for. There may be respectable people 
 amongst them, but they are not sufficient to give a colouring 
 to the class ; and as a class, there is a want of stamina about 
 them : they have no precision or business-like habits, the absence 
 of which leaves an opening for faults with very ugly names ; 
 and persons whose profession it is to amuse others and make 
 themselves pleasing, cannot, in the nature of things, expecl 
 to take a very high position. Men cannot feel reverence oj 
 respect for those who aspire to amuse them ! ” 
 
 “ Well ! ” cried Conrad, laughing, “ I have always observed 
 that heavy, sententious, stupid persons seem to entertain a 
 species of contempt for those who possess the lighter gifts ol 
 being entertaining ; but I never heard it made into a theory 
 before. To leave that part of the question, however, let me 
 ask you whether you consider that the province of those who 
 profess the fine arts is only to amuse ? Do you think that 
 they have gained the real end of their labour when they are 
 paid for what they do ? and do you consider the production 
 of works of art to be a mere mode of earning a living ? ” 
 
 “ This is an industrial country,” said Bryant ; “ the great 
 mass of sympathy and intellect take a practical direction — a 
 
ARTISTS IN FICTION. 
 
 109 
 
 direction that we can understand ; we have no real knowledge 
 of art, no real instinct or genuine aspiration after it ; and I 
 should say, that in our hearts we do not respect, love, or honour 
 fine art in any of its manifestations, as we do that which is scien- 
 tific or practical. To the Italians, to the French even, music 
 and pictures are necessaries ol life ; to us English they only take 
 the guise of ornament or convenience — of superfluity, in short. 
 That being the case, we naturally do not feel drawn to the 
 society of artists ; we have nothing in common with them — we 
 do not admire them ; neither do we feel disposed to introduce 
 to the society of our wives and daughters a parcel of actors, 
 artists, musicians, and so forth, who have no stake in society, 
 who have little to lose, whose capital is all invested in them- 
 selves and their two hands, and who have, therefore, naturally 
 cultivated themselves far beyond what we practical men have 
 had a chance of doing, and are capable of throwing us into the 
 shade in our own houses, whilst they show that they despise 
 us. Let them keep their places, and let us keep ours ! ” 
 
 “ But do you allow nothing for the civilizing influence of men 
 of cultivated intellect amongst you ? ” said Conrad. 
 
 “ Railroads will do more,” replied Bryant ; “ every people 
 must work out its civilization in its own way. Love of the fine 
 arts is not our specialty : we do not know a good thing from a 
 bad one unless we are told ; and the pretence we make about 
 it has a bad effect on our character.” 
 
 An impression prevails in England that artists have a better 
 position in France. This is partly true, and partly a mistake. 
 From what I have seen, personally, across the Channel, I should 
 say that the position of a painter in France, as compared with 
 his position here, is, on the whole, very little better, except 
 after fame is won, and then I grant that no place in Europe is 
 pleasanter for an artist than Paris, if his art be of a kind that 
 the Parisians can understand. I remember two lines in LHon- 
 neur et T Argent, which indicate very well the position of a great 
 artist in France ; but I also remember a good many other 
 passages, in that and other books, which indicate with equal 
 clearness the national contempt for the artistic aspirant, or even 
 for the consummate workman whose power has not as yet ob- 
 tained public recognition. The two lines I shall quote first are 
 spoken by a charming young French lady, excited to enthu- 
 siasm by a disinterested and honourable action : — 
 
no 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 “ C’est plus qu’un grand artiste, et plus qu’un grand seigneur, 
 
 Plus qu’un homme opulent ; c’est un homme d’honneur.” 
 
 Now it certainly would never occur to an English girl who 
 happened to be seeking for superlatives of human greatness by 
 comparison with which to exalt a man she admired — it would 
 occur, I say, to no English girl to put a great artist and a great 
 nobleman side by side as examples of the highest human dig- 
 nities, and I consider these lines therefore valuable on account 
 of their peculiarly French view of the matter. 
 
 In the first act of La Fiammina , too, by Mario Uchard, there 
 is a charming conversation between a father and his son, which 
 gives an agreeable idea of the successful artist’s life. The father, 
 “ Daniel Lambert,” is a celebrated painter ; the son, a young 
 poet. It is to be regretted, by the way, that M. Uchard should 
 have selected that particular name for his great artist, it being 
 already the property of a celebrity great in quite another sense. 
 Henri, the son, says to his father : — 
 
 “ Tu es le premier peintre du temps ; grace a toi je suis riche, ton nom 
 est un talisman pour moi, il me souffle du bonheur comme au temps des 
 fees ; toutes les portes s’ouvrent devant lui : ‘ C’est le fils de Daniel 
 Lambert,’ dit on sur mon passage, et l’on te fete en moi; je suis ton clair de 
 lune, je te reflete.” 
 
 DANIEL. 
 
 [ Mais tu as bien tes rayons a toi. 
 
 HENRI. 
 
 Rayons d’emprunt . . . Je me sens bien humble devant cette considera- 
 tion qui me vient toute de toi, et me reduit a rien. Quand on dit, par 
 exemple, “ C’est Lambert le fils,” il me semble que ce mot de fils est place 
 la comme une sentinelle qui crie : “Halte-la ! ne confondez pas : celui-c 
 n’est pas le celebre.” 
 
 It is also observable that when Lord Dudley, a distinguished 
 English “ patron,” comes to see Lambert, his manner is any- 
 thing but patronizing. Lambert, for reasons I cannot stop to 
 explain, declines the commission Lord Dudley has come to 
 offer, requesting him to pardon the refusal. On this his lord- 
 ship answers : — 
 
 “J e ne saurais vous en vouloir, monsieur; je venais en solliciteur, et je 
 n’ai pas perdu ma joumee, puisque j’ai eu l’honneur de vous voir.” 
 
 Which is all very civil and polite. 
 
ARTISTS IN FICTION. 
 
 in 
 
 In the third act Henri challenges Lord Dudley, and in the 
 course of their conversation I find an expression which we have 
 met with elsewhere. Henri says, page 85 : — 
 
 Je pourrais avoir recours a un de ces outrages publics qui ferment 
 toute retraite, mais entre gens de noire monde, un tel eclat ferait rechercher 
 la cause de mon agression, et c’est ce que je veux eviter a tout prix. 
 
 The expression “ de notre monde/' is what I allude to. We 
 have already met with it in a letter addressed by Miss Ethel 
 Newcome to her uncle the Colonel, in which she says that 
 artists are not “ de notre Monde.” The coincidence is curious. 
 Here we have the son of a French artist talking to a rich English 
 lord as if he considered himself in every way his lordship’s 
 equal. He is, however, not merely the son of a painter, but 
 of a very famous one, which, in France, is quite as good as a 
 patent of nobility. Yet, when I have granted that celebrated 
 artists are respected at Paris, I cannot admit that the great 
 body of painters get more consideration there than they do 
 here, or that true art is better loved for itself by our neighbours 
 than by us. 
 
 The destruction of the old French noblesse has, as every- 
 body knows, given a character to French society which makes 
 it less than ever like our own. There are, however, some 
 country towns in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire 
 where a new society, in default of hereditary leaders of ancient 
 descent, accepts for its chief class an aristocracy of recent 
 origin and precarious tenure, based on the fluctuating revenues 
 of commerce. The spirit of speculation in money matters, 
 which is strong enough in these towns to cause great vicissi- 
 tudes in families, is yet more powerful at Paris, and there is not 
 a place in Europe where the effects of money may be better 
 studied than there. Accordingly much labour and ability have 
 been devoted by several eminent French writers, to the analysis 
 of money power in its relation to life in all its forms — to artistic 
 life amongst the rest. What the modern financial aristocracy 
 of France thinks of artists we will try to gather from Ponsard 
 and others. Balzac and Edmond About will tell us what the 
 vulgar bourgeoisie think. As for what the old noblesse thought 
 on the subject, that is quite simple, and need not detain us; 
 it looked on all artists as handicraftsmen, and therefore con- 
 temptible. 
 
1 1 2 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 Since the days of Horace the world has regarded with sus- 
 picion the praises of critics who have just plentifully feasted 
 at a poet’s table, and Horace’s satire is no less applicable to 
 the case of painters. Dilettants are, however, much more 
 likely than artists to become the victims of these post- prandial 
 eulogies, partly, perhaps, because artists do not give so many 
 dinners as dilettants, but mainly because true artists cannot 
 bear to hear themselves praised by ignorant “ connoisseurs ” 
 (who are always icily indifferent to the peculiar excellencies of 
 individual artists, and who, when they praise, cause the keenest 
 suffering their feebleness is capable of inflicting), and wise 
 painters therefore most carefully avoid showing their work to 
 miscellaneous company. But you can never dine with a 
 thorough dilettant without having to look at his sketches. 
 The first scene in that immortal comedy of Ponsard, “ LHon- 
 neur et /’ Argent” is of this familiar kind. Alas, how many 
 times have we not all passed through similar ordeals ! 
 
 The best bit here is what the statesman says : — 
 
 “ It’s pretty and good. I believe you paint very well. But 
 leave all that, George, to those who have nothing. A poor 
 hungry devil without a half-penny may daub well or ill a few 
 canvases to get his living, — I don’t blame him for it, — though 
 he might, in my opinion, find a better use for a piece of good 
 canvas. But you, rich and honoured, whom people seek after 
 and are delighted to receive, — we must put other projects into 
 your head.” 
 
 The reader will perceive that this bears a wonderful resem- 
 blance to what Clive Newcome’s friends used to say to him. 
 It sounds like Mr. Honeyman, though that divine would 
 scarcely have put the matter so forcibly as the statesman does. 
 Why art should only be pursued by penniless persons I do not 
 clearly see ; on the contrary, artists seldom do anything great 
 until they cease to be penniless, and art is, of all professions, 
 the one where private fortune is most desirable and useful. 
 The views of the statesman, however, and indeed of the 
 majority of men who think themselves and their doings of 
 much importance to the world, may be more nakedly expressed 
 thus : “ Painting is a foolish and trifling occupation, which, 
 like standing on one’s head in the street for chance half-pence, 
 may yet be pardoned in a man who is compelled to degrade 
 himself by sheer hunger ; but in a man of fortune, to whom 
 
ARTISTS IN FICTION 
 
 1*3 
 
 all careers are open, the choice of such a low trade is un- 
 pardonable.” I believe this to be a very just and exaggerated 
 statement of the opinion of society on this question, both here 
 and on the Continent. 
 
 You may sometimes change the colour of a conversation 
 by dropping the word “ painter ” into it, just as suddenly as a 
 chemist will change the colour of a fluid by dropping something 
 into it from another phial. I have done it sometimes for 
 amusement, and seen lively people become reserved, and cour- 
 teous people stiff, with a rapidity quite magical. So the 
 authors of “ Les Faux Bonshommes ” are quite right in putting 
 the two little words avec dedam for the actor’s guidance. 
 
 PEPONET. 
 
 II est peintre. 
 
 vertillac, avec dedain. 
 
 Ah! 
 
 Then later in the same conversation, after Peponet has dis- 
 closed the name of his intended son-in-law, and Vertillac has 
 sworn that Octave shall not have a penny of his, poor Peponet 
 cries out,— 
 
 Oh ! mais voila qui change terriblement les choses ! 
 
 VERTILLAC. 
 
 Pourquoi ? puisque vous croyez a l’avenir de monsieur Octave ? 
 
 PEPONET. 
 
 Un avenir d’artiste ! * . . Je suis votre serviteur ! 
 
 You see Peponet has no great faith in an artist’s expec- 
 tations when his rich uncle abandons him. So Peponet breaks 
 off Octave’s marriage with poor Emmeline, and Mademoiselle 
 Eugenie is not sorry. 
 
 “C’est egal, ma soeur n’ira pas en omnibus.” 
 
 Such is the young lady’s prudent reflection on this circum- 
 stance. 
 
 Octave, however, marries Emmeline after all, at last, and 
 succeeds in his art, and gets the ribbon of the Legion of 
 Honour. Then he has no further need of the services of 
 Monsieur Vertillac ; so of course Vertillac comes and recon- 
 ciles himself with his nephew. As a true man of the world, 
 H 1 
 
1 14 
 
 THOLGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 he could do no less. The first rule in the world’s ethics is 
 to remember the fortunate and successful, and to treat them 
 with tenderness. 
 
 In Balzac’s “ Menage de Gargon ” we find as a marked 
 characteristic of the people we meet, a characteristic to 
 which Balzac frequently draws our attention himself, that 
 they cannot understand a painter, and that they do not 
 respect him. Joseph’s own mother even, the object of his 
 continual filial love and solicitude, cannot consider him 
 anything else than a disgrace to her, and the crimes of her 
 elder son weaken her affection less than the innocent pur- 
 suits of this. She and her friend Madame Descoings think 
 of art “ only as a trade.” Philip himself despises and affects 
 to patronize Joseph. When Joseph goes to Issoudun, the 
 people there cannot make him out at all, and dislike him 
 extremely. Hochon sneers at his art. Joseph’s mother pre- 
 sents him to these friends with a tone and manner which 
 imply how little she loves him or respects his calling. Rouget 
 tells him he may have the pictures “ if they can be of any use 
 to him in his trade.” Balzac, I fear, is no more encouraging 
 than Thackeray ; at the same time, Balzac shows how he him- 
 self loves artists, by describing the artistic nature with such 
 tenderness and kind feeling. The character of Joseph Bridau 
 is one of the purest and noblest in French fiction. Simple, 
 generous, affectionate, a good son, a forgiving brother, an 
 unselfish and high-principled man of genius, he is no unworthy 
 ideal of the artistic nature. So in the “ Newcomes,” poor J. J. 
 is the gentlest, the humblest, and the most inoffensive creature 
 in the whole book. Very little is said of him, but every time 
 he is mentioned you see that in that little pale and deformed 
 lad dwells a heavenly soul ; and Thackeray never rises into 
 such pure strains of eloquence, never so willingly lays aside 
 his lancet of satire, as when he speaks of the butler’s boy. 
 In all others, even in the good colonel, he has follies to 
 ridicule or cloaked sins to reveal ; but this guileless and 
 meek heart is too holy for dissection. “ Whenever you 
 found him he seemed watchful and serene, his modest virgin 
 lamp always lighted and trim. No gusts of passion extin- 
 guished it, no hopeless wandering in the darkness afterwards 
 led him astray. Wayfarers in the world, we meet now and 
 then with such purity, and hush while it passes on.” 
 
ARTISTS IN FICTION 
 
 “5 
 
 Painters ought to feel grateful to these two great novelists, 
 for, however faithfully they have described the world’s con- 
 tempt for the painter, they have with equal clearness cou- 
 rageously disclaimed all participation in it. There is, indeed, 
 and must ever be, strong sympathy between true artists, 
 though in different realms of art ; and some who work in 
 words, like Balzac and Thackeray, can comprehend and 
 esteem, and also, it appears, even respect, others who express 
 themselves by the less generally understood medium of 
 colours. 
 
 M. Edmond About, in the clever “Mariages de Paris,” gives 
 us the history of a successful young painter who wants to 
 marry the daughter of a rich bourgeois. The property of the 
 girl’s father consisting in building lots, the story is entitled 
 
 “ Terrams a vendre .” 
 
 After a long speech from the painter to his intended father- 
 in-law, in which, as is the wont of young gentlemen with 
 similar views, he temptingly dwells on the hopeful state of 
 affairs, he pauses for once to take breath, and then adds : 
 
 “ 4 Je ne sais, monsieur, si je me suis fait comprendre. . . .’ 
 “ ‘ Oui, monsieur,’ repondit M. Gaillard, ‘et, tout artiste que 
 vous etes, vous m’avez l’air d’un bien honnete homme.’ 
 
 “ Henri Tourneur rougit jusqu’au blanc des yeux. 
 
 “ ‘ Excusez-moi,’ reprit vivement le bonhomme ; 4 je ne veux 
 pas dire de mal des artistes : je ne les connais pas. Je voulais 
 simplement vous faire entendre que vous raisonnez comme un 
 homme d’ordre, un employe, un negociant, un notaire, et que 
 vous ne professez point la morale cavaliere des gens de votre 
 etat. Du reste, vous etes fort bien de votre personne, et je 
 crois que vous plairiez a ma fille si elle vous voyait souvent. 
 Elle a toujours eu un gout prononce pour la peinture, la 
 musique, la broderie et tous ces petits talents de societe.’ ” A 
 little farther on, he says, “Vous me dites que vous gagnez des 
 montagnes d’or, et je vous crois, bien qu’il me semble assez 
 extraordinaire qu’un seul homme puisse fabriquer pour quatre- 
 vingt mille francs de tableaux en dix-huit mois.” 
 
 This is all very good, especially the sentence where the 
 bourgeois says that his daughter has always had a strong taste 
 for painting, and music, and embroidery, and all those little 
 “ talents de societe .” 
 
 The individualism of art is its greatest social drawback, 
 
 I 2 
 
n6 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 because it deprives artists of a certain ground of sympathy 
 with a disciplined society. Military life, being organized and 
 disciplined, trains men for society, which has also an organiza- 
 tion and a discipline; whereas, art develops those qualities, 
 most w T hich # society likes least, — qualities, indeed, which have 
 a decided tendency to unfit men for society. 
 
 Again, this individualism is, socially, weakness. So long as 
 the world endures, the men who can band themselves together 
 will be stronger and more respected than those who cannot 
 cohere. Priests laugh at independent thinkers, and call them 
 a rope of sand : the Cardinals will ever bully a lonely Galileo. 
 Every ensign is protected by the proud will of a hundred 
 legions. The inventor is utterly unsupported, till he has made 
 himself famous, and gathered round him a private body-guard *+ 
 of determined defenders. It is by association that classes of 
 men compel respect, but alas for the original man who can find j 
 no associates ! 
 
 And this, though generally true of all branches of our art, is- 
 pre-eminently so of landscape. There have been great schools 
 of the figure, such as those of Raphael and Rubens, where a 
 train of pupils and imitators followed the great master as cour- 
 tiers follow a Prince, but the chief of landscape-painters was 
 the loneliest of men. Landscape-painting has hitherto been 
 the most unsocial of all professions. I know of no employ- 
 ment to be compared to it, in this respect, but that of watching 
 in a lighthouse. Yet even these watchers are appointed by 
 threes to trim the lamps in those stormy towers ; but the 
 painter watches the waves alone. For his art is singularly 
 isolating by the very conditions of success in it. It loves 
 desert places ; its truest votaries are pilgrims, and vagabonds, 
 and mountain anchorites. I can understand that, to persons 
 whose degree of culture does not permit them to read his 
 motives, a true student of nature must appear a very sulky 
 eremite indeed. A few, perhaps, may understand that although 
 the studies of the landscape-painter lead him into solitude, his 
 heart is still human, and that if he has few companions, it is 
 rather because they do not relish his hard fare, than that his 
 tents are without hospitality, and his tabernacle closed to the 
 friendly guest. 
 
 On looking back upon all I have said in this essay on the 
 subject of the relation of painters to society, I think it very 
 
ARTISTS IN FICTION. 
 
 ii 7 
 
 probable that the reader may have wondered ere this whether 
 anybody is to be found so eccentric as to respect these pariahs. 
 Yes, a few such persons are to be found — they even form a class, 
 though a small one, and every member of this little body is 
 recognizable in an instant by a true artist. The class, I repeat, 
 is a small one — so small, as scarcely to have an appreciable 
 influence in general society, though I hope that it may one 
 day have influence even there. 
 
 And who belong to this exceptional class ? 
 
 All who comprehend art , or can feel its power ; and these only. 
 
 This rule is universal. I have never met with a person who 
 knew good work from bad, and did not profoundly respect 
 all true artists. People generally pretend to separate their 
 (affected) love of art from their (sincere) contempt for the 
 artist ; but no such separation of sentiment is possible, and all 
 that this ever means is, that the love of art which such 
 people profess is hypocrisy, whilst their scorn of the artist is 
 all sincerity. True lovers of art of course feel no respect for 
 false or incapable workmen ; but we are not considering here 
 any question having reference to the capacity of individual 
 workmen, and the reader will remember that, at the very outset, 
 we began with Plutarch's contempt for Phidias, who, so far 
 from being false or incapable, was the chief of Greek artists 
 and one of the greatest of all time. But this rule is infallible 
 that, whoever comprehends art respects all true artists , and who- 
 ever despises a true artist is sure' to be ignorant of aid. 
 
 In all good fiction, those persons who are represented as 
 holding painters in contempt are also of necessity represented 
 as being at the same time ignorant of art. Thus Thackeray 
 says of Honeyman : “ But Honeyman knew no more of the 
 subject, than a deaf and dumb man knows of music. tie 
 could talk the art cant very glibly, and had a set of Morghens 
 and Madonnas as became a clergyman and a man of taste ; 
 but he saw not with eyes such as those wherewith Heaven had 
 endowed the humble little butler’s boy, to whom splendours 
 of Nature were revealed, to vulgar sights invisible, and beauties 
 manifest in forms, colours, shadows of common objects, where 
 most of the world saw only what was dull, and gross, and 
 familiar.” 
 
 It is necessary to have read “The Newcomes” attentively 
 to have a definite idea of Colonel Newcome’s views as to art 
 
ii8 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 and artists. He is very civil and courteous to Gandish and 
 Smee, and lets his son be an artist without opposition. Still, 
 Colonel Newcome would not have been exactly the u gentle- 
 man ” he is intended to be, had he seriously ranked art along 
 with other manly pursuits. He belongs to the large class, 
 who, without despising artists as necessarily base or ignoble, 
 treat them kindly and consider them very good people, but 
 frivolous, and occupied, not in a very mean pursuit, but in 
 a trifling one. It is obvious that, with such views, Colonel 
 Newcome would be kind, in a somewhat condescending way, 
 to our friends Gandish and Smee, and would even allow his 
 son full liberty to pursue his art, as an amusement , which was 
 the light in which the Colonel always regarded it. But when 
 the Colonel’s great banking speculation is at its height, and 
 Clive still tries to pursue his art, the Colonel cannot see 
 without bitterness that this boyish pastime of painting inter- 
 feres with the serious duties of Clive’s position as the son 
 of a speculator. It is a vexation to the Colonel when Clive 
 goes to his painting-room, puts on his old velvet jacket, and 
 works with his palette and brushes. “ Palettes and brushes ! 
 Could he not give up those toys when he was called to a 
 much higher station in the world ? ” 
 
 This gentlemanly degree of contempt for art and its pro- 
 fessors, which however is by no means excessive, not being 
 either haughty or insolent, or even unkind, is yet thus severely 
 accounted for by the satirist : — 
 
 “ The world enters into the artist’s studio, and scornfully 
 bids him a price for his genius, or makes dull pretence to admire 
 it. What know you of his art ? You cannot read the alphabet 
 of that sacred book , good old Thomas Newcome ! What can you 
 tell of its glories, joys, secrets, consolations?” 
 
 The reader will observe in the words I have italicised a 
 strong confirmation of my argument that scorn of the artist is 
 never accompanied by real admiration for his art, only by a 
 dull pi'etence at admiration. Thackeray cannot help reiterating 
 this great truth ; and in this passage it is stated in as direct a 
 manner as a novelist usually employs. 
 
 There is a striking paragraph in “ Modern Painters,” in 
 which Mr. Ruskin expresses some of the feelings in which he 
 looks on the great masterpieces. This is the way Colonel 
 Newcome looked at them : — 
 
ARTISTS IN FICTION 
 
 1 19 
 
 “ But what was all this rapture about a snuffy brown picture 
 called Titian, this delight in three flabby nymphs by Rubens, 
 and so forth ? As for the vaunted antique, and the Elgin 
 Marbles — it might be that that battered torso was a miracle, 
 and that broken-nosed bust a perfect beauty. He tried and 
 tried to see what they were. He went away privily, and 
 worked at the National Gallery with a catalogue ; and passed 
 hours in the Museum before the ancient statues, desperately 
 praying to comprehend them, and puzzled before them, as he 
 remembered he was puzzled before the Greek rudiments as a 
 child, when he cried over 6 ml 77 aXrjQte, ml to dXrfiec.” 
 
 And so Colonel Newcome’s contempt for the pursuit of art 
 is quite satisfactorily accounted for. 
 
 In like manner Balzac makes Rouget ignorant of the value 
 of his own pictures, and indicates how little Philippe Bridau 
 knew of the matter, by making him steal a copy, mistaking it 
 for the original. But it is Agatha, the mother, whose ignor- 
 ance is most dwelt upon, even in the last touching scenes, 
 justly, and with profound artistic truth; for her contempt for 
 art is one of her most strongly marked characteristics through- 
 out the book. So, on her very death-bed, when she repents of 
 her conduct to Joseph, he says to her, “ Est-ce que tu n’es pas 
 la douce et l’indulgente compagne de ma vie miserable ? Tu 
 ne comprends pas la peinture ? . . . Eh ! mais ya ne se donne 
 pas .” And later, one evening, looking at a picture, she 
 exclaims aloud, “ Oh, comme je voudrais s avoir ce que dest que 
 la couleur ! ” 
 
 Nor have the novelists failed to enforce the other half of the 
 argument. Just as the ignorant people always despise artists, 
 so the better informed ones respect them. Colonel Newcome 
 and Honeyman may despise poor J. J., but Clive Newcome 
 does not ; for Thackeray, having represented him as naturally 
 alive to art, and as also possessing some acquired knowledge of 
 the subject, could never have made him despise a true artist 
 like J. J., notwithstanding his humble birth. Clive writes in a 
 letter: “ Our friend J. J., very different to myself in so many 
 respects, so superior in ait," &c. ; and afterwards, speaking to 
 Pendennis of his father and his wife, he says : “ But they 
 neither understand me, don’t you see? The Colonel can’t 
 help thinking I am a degraded being, because I am fond of 
 painting. Still, dear old boy, he patronizes Ridley ; a man of 
 
120 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ATT. 
 
 genius, whom these sentries ought to salute, by Jove, sir, when 
 he passes. Ridley patronized by an old officer of Indian 
 dragoons, a little bit of a Rosey, and a fellow who is not fit to 
 lay his palette for him ! I want sometimes to ask J. J/s pardon 
 after the Colonel has been talking to him in his confounded 
 condescending way, uttering some awful bosh about the fine 
 arts. Rosey follows him, and trips round J. J/s studio, and 
 pretends to admire, and says, ‘ How soft, how sweet ; * recalling 
 some of mamma-in-law’s dreadful expressions^ which make me 
 shudder when I hear them.” 
 
 And so we come back to our theory of respect. It is 
 power, always power that commands the respect of men ; for 
 power is always respected when it is recognized. When 
 people, guilty of no evident crime, do not happen to be re- 
 spected, it may mean, either that they have no power, or that 
 their power is as yet unrecognized. And the power *of artists 
 is of so subtle a nature, that very few indeed can ever detect 
 its presence, far less be appalled and awe-stricken by its mani- 
 festations. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 The preceding paper appeared in the previous editions of this 
 work, under a different title, “The Painter in his relation to Society/’ 
 It is here considerably abridged, not from any desire to withdraw 
 what may have offended some critics in the paper as it originally 
 stood, but because the rapid progress * of liberal ideas makes it no 
 longer necessary to occupy many pages in fighting against one of 
 the most stupid and narrow-minded prejudices of our barbarian 
 and Philistine classes. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin, in his evidence before a Parliamentary Commission 
 in 1863, recognized the existence of this prejudice as frankly as 
 Thackeray did. Here are two of the questions addressed to 
 him, with his answers, which are worth quoting at full length. 
 
 “ 5092. Have you any reason to observe, or to make yourself 
 acquainted with the working of the schools of the Royal Academy? 
 — Yes, I have observed it. I have not made myself acquainted 
 with the actual methods of teaching at present in use, but I know 
 the general effect upon the art of the country. 
 
ARTISTS IN FICTION 
 
 I 21 
 
 “ 5093. What should you say was that effect ? — N early nugatory ; 
 exceedingly painful in this respect, that the teaching of the 
 Academy separates, as the whole idea of the country separates, 
 the notion of art-education from other education ; and when you 
 have made that one fundamental mistake, all others follow. You 
 teach a young man to manage his chalk, and his brush — not always 
 that — but having done that you suppose you have made a painter 
 of him ; whereas to educate a painter is the same thing as to 
 educate a clergyman or a physician — you must give him a liberal 
 education primarily, and that must be connected with the kind of 
 learning peculiarly fit for his profession. That error is partly 
 owing to our excessively vulgar , and excessively shallow , English 
 idea that the artisfs profession is not , and cannot be , a liberal one . 
 We respect a physician, and call him a gentleman, because he can 
 give us a purge and clean out our stomachs ; but we do not call an 
 artist a gentleman , who 7 n we expect to invent for us the face of 
 Christ. When we have made that primary mistake, all other 
 mistakes in education are trivial in comparison. The very notion 
 of an Art Academy should be, a body of teachers of the youth who 
 are to be the guides of the nation through its senses ; and that is a 
 very important means of guiding it. We have done a good deal 
 through dinners, but we may some day do a good deal more 
 through pictures.” 
 
 The change in public opinion on this subject is merely a part of 
 a much vaster change which in the whole of Western Europe is 
 steadily breaking down the barriers of caste. It would be un- 
 philosophical to condemn the caste idea, as altogether noxious. It 
 appears to be necessary to society at a certain stage, when it helps 
 the organization of great masses by dividing them in a definite way 
 into distinct sections, each of which can lead a more perfect and 
 harmonious class-life than would be possible for it without such 
 isolation. For the English gentry to act together powerfully as 
 a coherent body, it was above all things necessary that their class 
 should be very sharply defined, and so they had to “ draw a line 
 somewhere,” according to the common phrase. Being as a class 
 profoundly ignorant of the nature of art, and having remarkably 
 little natural vocation for it in their own persons, they inevitably 
 excluded artists. A certain injustice resulted which I will endeavour 
 to explain as accurately as I may be able. Simply to be excluded 
 from the rank of gentlemen is not in itself a grievance, or would 
 only be felt as such in those exceptional cases where a youth of 
 
122 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 good family was led by his instincts to embrace a profession which 
 involved the sacrifice of caste, and even in cases of this kind the 
 sacrifice would be made with full knowledge of its consequences 
 and a hope of compensation in the following of a beloved pursuit. 
 The real grievance in the treatment of art and artists by English 
 society was that an utterly false and degrading notion of the 
 occupation itself was the notion fashionably received. The fashion- 
 able world did not say, “ Art is one of the forms in which high 
 culture manifests itself, and yet it is necessary, nevertheless, to 
 exclude artists from our own caste ; ” it said, “ Proficiency in that 
 merely manual trade is an evidence of the neglect of nobler 
 studies,” the assumption being that the fashionable world (which 
 in reality was not devoted to culture at all, but to amusement) did 
 itself pursue those nobler studies with the effect of elevating its 
 mind into regions unattainable by the craftsmen that it scorned. 
 “ I think,” said Mr. Ruskin before the Royal Commission, “ if you 
 educate our upper classes to take more interest in art, which implies, 
 of course, to know something about it, they might be most efficient 
 members of the Academy ; but if you leave them, as you leave 
 them now, to the education which they get at Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, and give them the sort of scorn which all the teaching there 
 tends to give , for art and artists , the less they have to do with an 
 Academy of Art the better.” This word “ scorn ” is a strong word, 
 and yet it is strictly accurate. The prevalent public feeling (not 
 the feeling of the few who were better informed, as a consequence 
 of personal tastes) was really and truly one of “ scorn for art and 
 artists.” Wordsworth’s sonnet on illustrated books and newspapers 
 is a good example of the sort of feeling which prevailed even 
 amongst people who really had culture, though it was exclusively 
 literary. They seem to have looked upon graphic art as at once 
 useless and childish. 
 
 “ Now prose and verse, sunk into disrepute, 
 
 Must lacquey a dumb Art that best can suit 
 The taste of this once-intellectual land. 
 
 A backward movement surely have we here, 
 
 From manhood — back to childhood ; for the age — 
 
 Back towards caverned life’s first rude career. 
 
 Avaunt this vile abuse of pictured page ! 
 
 Must eyes be all in all, the tongue and ear 
 Nothing ? Heaven keep us from a lower stage ! ” 
 
 Wordsworth did not even perceive the lower utility of drawing 
 in giving accurate information, whilst he was entirely incapable of 
 
ARTISTS IN FICTION. 
 
 123 
 
 perceiving its higher uses in the embodiment of poetical ideas. It 
 has always been one of the characteristics of classes to be able 
 to perceive truth and poetry quite accurately and delicately in the 
 forms which the class approves, and to be at the same time entirely 
 blind to them in forms not consecrated or accepted by the class. 
 The educated Cambridge men of Wordsworth’s day saw truth and 
 beauty in literature because their caste-feeling admitted literary 
 culture, but they could be as blind to truth and beauty in art as if 
 they had possessed no culture whatever. 
 
 Art is merely one of the vehicles in which genius and culture 
 express themselves ; and as the barriers of caste give way, it will 
 be perceived that painting and writing are equally voices of the 
 intellect and emotions, and by their nature equally worthy to be 
 employed by the most refined and perfect gentlemen. The objection 
 to selling pictures (for it is by selling a picture that a gentleman 
 forfeits caste) will cease along with the objection to all commerce 
 which was a part of the caste-sentiment of the age we are rapidly 
 leaving behind us. I long for the day when a gentleman of ancient 
 family may have many honest trades to choose from without being 
 rudely disclassed and severed from the traditions of his race. Still 
 more do I long for that more distant day when men will no longer 
 be ranked according to the occupations that they ostensibly follow, 
 but by their personal qualities and character. It is there that you 
 must look for the signs of the true gentleman ; and it is a pleasure 
 to reflect that not only the art of painting but many humbler arts 
 are quite compatible with the preservation of high character, and 
 even with the attainment of a degree of general culture at least 
 equal to that usually possessed by the proud and idle persons who 
 despise them. I saw in the newspaper the other day that Mr. Odger 
 was treated with great superciliousness by an English Justice 
 for being a shoemaker, or for venturing in that humble calling to 
 have any political opinions of his own. Now I am not going to 
 enter into any examination of Mr. Odger’s politics or culture, but I 
 will say that it is in the strictest sense of the word impertinent 
 to refer in that tone to the work he lives by. Mr. Odger’s shoe- 
 making is his private affair, and a perfectly honourable way of 
 earning his living, and we ought to be able to consider his other 
 accomplishments and qualities, whatever they may be, without any 
 prejudice against him on account of the way he wins his bread. 
 We ought not to settle in our own minds beforehand that a man 
 cannot be a gentleman because we are aware that he follows some 
 
124 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 calling that it pleases us to despise ; but we ought to estimate his 
 qualities for themselves, independently of his calling, as we should 
 do if we met him on a steamboat in ignorance of his private affairs. 
 Now if you apply this rule to artists, not allowing your knowledge 
 of their business to affect your judgment one way or the other, you 
 will find that many artists are not gentlemen at all, but cads, snobs, 
 voyons , or by whatever other name the uncivilized European may 
 be more accurately designated ; but you will also find that other 
 artists, and their number is proportionately on the increase, are as 
 perfect and true gentlemen as any in all England. There is nothing 
 in the pursuit of art incompatible with that ideal, for the aims 
 of art are accuracy of knowledge, delicacy of feeling, and the 
 world’s emancipation from vulgarity. Art may possibly be — is very 
 likely to be-^-above us ; it can never be beneath us. You may 
 aspire to art, and your aspiration may be unrewarded ; you can 
 never condescend to art. — 1873. 
 
IX. 
 
 PICTURE BUYING. 
 
 A truth bitter to all men who live by the exercise of their 
 talents is the supremacy of money over talent, and the power 
 of mere gold to enslave the finest and most delicate intelli- 
 gences. It is useless to endeavour to evade or deny this fact, 
 and the position of talent in the world would be sounder if its 
 real relation to capital were thoroughly and universally under- 
 stood. Why not admit frankly, if the fact is indeed so, that 
 the purse is the master and the brain the slave?- Our philo- 
 sophy ought to be able to face any fact, however unpleasant. 
 
 The simple truth is, that capital is the nurse and governess 
 of the arts, not always a very wise or judicious nurse, but 
 an exceedingly powerful one. And in the relation of money 
 to art, the man who has money will rule the man who has 
 art, unless the artist has money enough to enable him to 
 resist the money of the buyer. For money alone is powerful 
 enough to resist money, and starving men are weak. 
 
 But for capital to support the fine arts, it must be abundant 
 — there must be superfluity. The senses will first be gratified 
 to the full before the wants of the intellect awaken. Plenty of 
 good meat and drink is the first desire of the young capitalist ; 
 then he must satisfy the ardours of the chase. One or two 
 generations will be happy with these primitive enjoyments of 
 eating and slaying • but a day will come when the descendant 
 and heir of these will awake into life with larger wants. He 
 will take to reading in a book, he will covet the possession of a 
 picture ; and unless there are plenty of such men as he in a 
 country, there is but a poor chance there for the fine arts. 
 
 The desire for art being one of our higher appetites, and 
 
126 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 the desire for noble art the very highest of them all, it is of 
 late development, and feeble in its first manifestations ; accord- 
 ing to the well-known law, that the successive development of 
 human desires is also progressive — that is, from lower .desires 
 to higher. 
 
 The first desire for art appears to be always for portraiture, 
 and generally portraiture of self and self’s wife. Certainly 
 there is no subject in the world more interesting to a man than 
 himself, unless it be his wife ; but these two subjects may not 
 always be quite so delightful to all the acquaintances of the 
 happy pair, especially considering that they can look at the 
 originals, if their eyes desire that satisfaction. The love of 
 portrait is a vulgar form of egotism so long as it is confined to 
 conjugal canvases which are so frequently to be seen in this 
 domestic country, hanging in stately gilt frames, over highly 
 polished mahogany sideboards. But when this love of por- 
 trait extends itself to one’s friends it becomes more respectable, 
 and it speaks well for a man’s capacity for friendship if he has 
 a little gallery of those he loves best. “ Little,” I say, and 
 advisedly ; for one narrow room would probably contain the 
 images of all who care for us, yet how precious will those 
 images be when Death shall have done his work ! And the 
 portraits of those whom we have not seen, yet who are our 
 companions in thought, or our teachers by their example, may 
 also be deservedly precious to us if procurable. A man would 
 follow his profession none the worse in a cabinet surrounded 
 with the likenesses of those who had most ennobled it. How 
 could a painter suffer himself to be unworthily discouraged by 
 the difficulties of his art, if the faces of Reynolds and Velas- 
 quez were looking down upon him in their victorious calm ? 
 
 The desire for family portraits is supplied in our day by pho- 
 tography, with one very happy result— the necessary diminution 
 in scale. The offensiveness of the old conjugal daubs was 
 not merely in the execution, but the impertinent importance 
 of the size. Why should a worthy citizen require thirty square 
 feet of canvas for the exhibition of himself? Would not a 
 more modest area suffice ? Photography has settled this 
 question by the miniature sizes of photographic portraits. 
 But where is the necessity for hanging these photographs about 
 chimney-pieces, in little gilt frames ? They are quite ineffec- 
 tive as room decoration, and valueless as art. Pray let them 
 
PICTURE BUYING . 
 
 127 
 
 be printed always on paper from collodion negatives, and then 
 kept in an album. 
 
 The first sign of a love of art great enough to go beyond 
 portraits is the purchase of engravings. The subjects of these 
 engravings, when the purchasers select for themselves, indicate 
 their tastes in the clearest manner. There are religious, prints, 
 sporting prints, and licentious prints; prints theatrical, prints 
 military, prints ecclesiastical. Engravings sell enormously in 
 England, and are provided for all classes and all tastes. But 
 these engravings are not so much bought from a love of art as 
 from a feeling of interest in the subjects they illustrate. Thus, 
 when I go into a house where there is a pretty engraving of 
 surpliced choristers, with an inscription in red letters underneath 
 — probably a scrap of Latin — I know that the master of the 
 house, or its mistress, is a Puseyite ; but when I behold John 
 Knox thundering from his pulpit,. I suspect that the head of the 
 family has a leaning to the Low Church. But I do not infer 
 that either cares for art. And if you penetrate to the private 
 chambers of young bachelors, like Mr. Harry Foker, you will 
 find prints of a more objectionable character, indicating a taste 
 for fine female ankles and well-developed busts. Yet in all this 
 there is no interest in art. 
 
 Still, even when some care for art does really awaken, engrav- 
 ings are always better appreciated than pictures. This for many 
 reasons. The child likes bright coloi&s, and the perfectly culti- 
 vated man likes good colouring ; but to the man whose culture 
 is just beginning, colour is a great trouble and embarrassment : 
 he does not really enjoy it, and is very glad to be rid of it, 
 always preferring, in his private soul, an engraving from a pic- 
 ture, to the picture itself. Thus, Turner’s works are popular in 
 the engravings, and have been widely disseminated by engravers ; 
 but the originals are not popular, nor ever can be. And inde- 
 pendently of the question of colour, the mechanical workmanship 
 of a skilful engraver always appears more wonderful to ignorant 
 observers than the handling of the greatest painters, because 
 the intentional roughness of loaded colour, or any powerful im- 
 pasto, looks like daubing and bad execution to them : whereas 
 in a print this is not possible, and the skilled cutting of the lines 
 has a delicacy of a kind more obvious than the most delicate 
 application of a colour film. The great Duke of Wellington 
 was in this stage all his life ; so that any reader who happens to 
 
128 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ATT 
 
 be there too may console himself with the reflection that he is 
 in very good company. 
 
 But let no one flatter himself that his preference of engravings 
 to pictures is the result of a refined appreciation of form , because, 
 however exquisite in their execution, engravings from first-rate 
 pictures are generally very far inferior to the originals, even if 
 judged with reference to form only. All good engravers know 
 the infinite difficulty of perfect copyism in their art ; and the 
 thorough mastery of the burin is so rare, that the majority of our 
 popular prints are not to be relied upon for form at all. The 
 designs on wood furnished to our wood engravers are habitually 
 cut to pieces by all but the very best men, and even these are 
 only to be trusted when they do every stroke with their own 
 hands, and do not employ unskilful assistants. 
 
 Barbarous Orientals enjoy good colour, and can produce it 
 in their arts. But erudition and the conceit it fosters seem 
 deadly to this instinct, for hitherto the most erudite epochs 
 have coloured the most vilely. Latin and Greek, and classical 
 architecture, and academic rules killed colour in France ; but 
 Decamps, and Troy on, and Breton recovered the faculty in the 
 fields. For its perfect exercise sound health is needed, and 
 not too much poring over books, nor yet too deep an immersion 
 in affairs. Very few people can have the faculty in its full 
 strength, because so few have any opportunities for exercising 
 it. There is no colour to be seen in our modern towns, and 
 not very much of it in our ordinary English rural landscape 
 under its usual aspects . 1 In the Highlands you have it in 
 abundance, and may enjoy it all the year round; but those 
 deep purples slashed with emerald green, those wonderful 
 silvery greys, that depth of glowing gold, those scarlet clouds 
 of sunset, those rosy heights of snow, and coloured flames of 
 the bright northern aurora, — such things are not visible day by 
 day to every citizen of London or Manchester. And so the 
 sense of colour languishes from sheer want of its natural nutri- 
 ment, and the houses of our rich middle class are covered 
 outside with white stucco instead of coloured marbles, and 
 
 1 Linn ell’s works stiow how much colour may be found in common 
 English landscape ; but it needs to be watched for, because its grandest 
 colour effects are rare. The usual appearance of English landscape is 
 better seen in Constable’s green and grey than in Linnell’s purple and 
 gold* 
 
PICTURE BUYING. 
 
 129 
 
 hung within with works of art in which black printers’ ink 
 is the only pigment used. And as colour is banished from 
 these houses, so it is entirely banished from the festive cos- 
 tume of the men who live in them ; so that a party of English 
 gentlemen after dinner form as colourless a picture as you 
 could find anywhere out of a coal-pit. White and black are not 
 colour at all, though both very valuable to a colourist ; and if 
 ever the capacity to enjoy colour shall be given to our descen- 
 dants, one of the first signs of it will be their rejection of our 
 black and white ideal of festive costume. Why should we all 
 go into mourning every time we go to feast with our friends ? 
 Is it because we all know beforehand that the dinner is going 
 to be a dull and melancholy business, for which the most 
 mournful possible costume is the most becoming and appro- 
 priate ? What an incongruous sight it is to see a dozen jolly 
 Englishmen at a festive board, dressed precisely as if they had 
 just been to a funeral and hung up their crape hatbands in 
 the hall ! Let any artist imagine what would become of the 
 Marriage Feast at Cana, in the Louvre, if the gentlemen 
 present were all to be dressed in black swallow-tails, with white 
 cravats ! 
 
 The effect of this indifference to colour as it concerns our 
 art is an indifference to painting because painting is es- 
 pecially the art of colour. And the recognition of that art 
 in any country depends, primarily, on the delicacy of the 
 sense of colour in that country. Now, there is no nation 
 in Europe at the present day of which it can be truly said 
 that it possesses the colour faculty in a national way ; some 
 exceptional individuals possess it in each nation, just as some 
 may possess the poetic gift. And so picture buying is an 
 exceptional direction of expenditure ; whereas, if the sense of 
 colour were as generally acute as the sense of taste, it would be 
 as universal amongst all who could afford it as wine buying is 
 with us. 
 
 When this sense of colour begins to awaken, people begin to 
 want pictures, but for a long time they believe in copies , and, in 
 their private opinion, think them quite as good as the original 
 works of great men. They cannot as yet distinguish between 
 good and bad colour, and are very easily satisfied, anything like 
 elaborate or subtle colouring being an offence to them. I saw 
 a little girl learning French phrases one dav, and had the 
 
 H ' K 
 
130 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 curiosity to open her book, when I came upon a conversa- 
 tion about pictures, supposed to take place in some continental 
 gallery, and which supplied young ladies with the necessary 
 critical observations to be generally applied to pictures, in 
 galleries. Amongst them, of course, I found the following: 
 “ Those colours are too lively, they should have been sub- 
 dued that being the stock observation of a whole class of 
 people in the earliest stages of connoisseurship. Provided 
 the hues be confined to brown and grey, they are considered 
 right and safe by this class of incipient judges, when any- 
 thing like Nature’s brilliance of various colour is rejected by 
 them on system as glaring and false . 1 This class of young 
 beginners in picture buying supports a class of artists of its 
 own, consisting mainly of copyists and brown conventionalists, 
 but never including a colourist. 
 
 These lovers of brown art are naturally victimized by false 
 old masters, which have the irresistible charm of plenty of thick 
 brown varnish. Considering the extreme difficulty of estimating 
 the value of works by the old masters, and the wildly artificial 
 prices they fetch, it appears rather a melancholy necessity in 
 nature that the most inexperienced picture buyers should throw 
 themselves the most readily into a path so certain to be ruinously 
 expensive, and so spotted with all manner of pitfalls laid by 
 the most accomplished and scientific swindlers. Nothing is 
 easier than to buy the works of living painters ; you go to their 
 own studios, you see them personally, you have ascertained the 
 
 1 Something may be said, however, in favour of these uneducated per- 
 sons. The uneducated eye and the perfectly educated eye agree in their 
 dislike of raw and crude colouring; but when an Englishman has studied 
 painting practically for a few years, yet has not reached artistic maturity, 
 he sees raw and crude colour in nature under the belief that he sees splendid 
 and pure colour. A half-trained sensitiveness to colour, in our English 
 race, always seems to land us in the condition of mediaeval illuminators. 
 A Frenchman begins always with mud and clay, and gradually (if he has 
 the right faculty) comes to perceive delicate colour gleaming m soft grada- 
 tions through the mud and clay, till finally he clears away the mud and is 
 a colourist. An Englishman begins by colouring, like a child, with violent 
 primaries and secom aries. I do not think, now, that the vulgar are so far 
 wrong as I used to think them. They are certainly nearer to the feeling o 
 cultivated painters ban artists n the crude student-stage, when the colour- 
 faculty is neither simply h^lthy nor yet cultivated, but only irritated and 
 nfLamed. — 1873. 
 
PICTURE BUYING. 
 
 131 
 
 current prices of their works, and you give them commissions, 
 having settled the three questions of size, and price, and sub- 
 ject. There is little chance of your being deceived, every work 
 so commissioned is quite sure to be authentic, and the painter’s 
 regard for his own reputation is your guarantee that he will do 
 his best. The work is delivered to you new and sound, no 
 tricks have been played with it, no clearing away of delicate 
 glazes, no repainting by other hands, no brown varnishing to 
 hide the crudity of bad colour. At any rate you see what you 
 buy, and are not deceived. But when you lay out money in 
 old masters, no such certainty is possible. You cannot refer 
 to the painter himself, for he has been in his grave for centuries. 
 And even if you were sure of their being genuine, the works of 
 dead masters are, when worth having at all, so costly that 
 private persons can scarcely afford to contend for them. Their 
 prices are now out of all proportion to their merits, and merely 
 represent the competition that exists for them amongst the 
 great personages and Governments of Europe. The Soult 
 Murillo in the Louvre, for which the French Government 
 gave twenty-four thousand six hundred and twelve pounds, 
 does most assuredly not contain' as much good painting as you 
 could get from our best living colourists for the same sum. It 
 is not an honour to the art, nor any proof of a genuine interest 
 and delight in it, when people show themselves so ostenta- 
 tiously indifferent to the variety of its teaching and its pleasures 
 that they would rather waste a fortune on a single canvas by 
 an old master than buy thirty equally noble masterpieces by 
 modern ones. 
 
 Whilst reflecting on this great subject, the buying of genuine 
 old masters at artificial prices, and false old masters at swin- 
 dlers’ figures, I remember a novel that I read in my boat one 
 day during the summer, when the breeze was faint, and she 
 was gliding idly on Loch Awe. 
 
 In this story, which is entitled “ Cinq cent mille francs 
 de rente,” there is a banker, M. Picard, who gets rich and 
 buys false old masters, and is lamentably fleeced and swin- 
 dled. The novelist, Dr. Veron, moralizes a little on the 
 subject. I will quote a paragraph or two, which especially 
 suit my purpose : — 
 
 “ On poussait Picard vers l’ecole italienne. 
 
 “ Dieu sait de combien de faux Raphael, de faux Veronese, 
 
 K 2 
 
132 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 de faux Titien, de faux Correge, de faux Leonard de Vinci, 
 1’ Europe tout entiere est encombree ! 
 
 “ C’est surtout avec les grandes ecoles d’ltalie que se fait 
 sur une vaste echelle l’agio en peinture. On sait que les 
 copies des plus belles oeuvres abondaient deja du temps des 
 maitres, et se brossaient meme dans le voisinage de leurs 
 ateliers. De nos jours encore, des copies des chefs d’ecole 
 les plus recherches se font a rentreprise.” 
 
 Dr. Veron, it seems, is very much of my opinion as to the 
 superior prudence of buying modern works direct from the 
 artists themselves. If M. Picard had done so, we are told 
 that he would not have been cheated and pillaged as he 
 was ; — 
 
 “ Malheureusement, les nombreux fripons qui exploiterent 
 l'in experience de ce nouvel amateur avaient pris soin de le 
 detoumer du gout des oeuvres modemes. Si Picard eut visite 
 les ateliers de nos artistes et leur eut fait des commendes , il rieut 
 lomt etc gruge et dupe par tout ce vilain mondeT 
 
 In the formation of private collections, great attention ought 
 always to be given to the character of the collection as a 
 whole. Every collection ought to have a character of its own, 
 and no work should be admitted into it which does not quite 
 harmonize with that character. Nothing is more incongruous, 
 nothing fatigues the eye more, than great differences of scale in 
 pictures hung in the same room ; and there are different kinds 
 of art, each good separately, which harm each other very 
 seriously when seen together. In this respect the Vernon 
 Gallery was anything but a well-selected one. Separately, the 
 pictures are, many of them, of great excellence; but the 
 collectioji is brought together without any attempt at unity ; 
 and the pictures help one another no more than odd volumes 
 on a bookstall. The Sheepshanks’ collection, on the other 
 hand, is more consistently chosen. Again, of national galleries, 
 the Louvre is as badly ordered a collection as could well be 
 imagined, there being no proportion whatever in the space 
 .allotted to different masters; it is a mere agglomeration, 
 without any plan, in which the most precious things and the 
 most worthless are stuck together like relics in some recent 
 geological formation. 
 
 An ideal national collection would contain specimens of 
 every great master, but it would necessarily limit the number of 
 
PICTURE BUYING. 
 
 133 
 
 examples of each painter, which ought, in every case, to be 
 the very finest procurable for money. In a few examples, 
 masterpieces, carefully selected so as to illustrate the strongest 
 period of the artist’s career, a very sufficient idea might be 
 given of all but the most versatile of painters. Each painter 
 ought to have a room to himself, with his name inscribed over 
 the door , 1 and on the walls within, in great legible golden 
 letters, so that there might be no confusion in the minds of 
 ordinary spectators as to whose work they were looking at. 
 Under every picture there should be a brief account of the 
 intention of the picture, and its history (but no attempt at 
 criticism or pointing out of “beauties”), engraved in legible 
 characters on a tablet of marble as long as the frame of the 
 picture, and on which the lower part of the frame should rest. 
 Black marble would be the best, with the letters engraved and 
 gilded. No catalogue whatever ought to be required, because 
 it is wrong to put poor people to the expense of buying one. 
 If, as is generally the case with painters, a portrait of the artist 
 existed, there ought to be a marble bust of him, as truthful as 
 possible, placed directly opposite the entrance, with its back 
 to the wall, and not above six feet from the floor, nor in the 
 middle of the room, because that would impede the sight of 
 his pictures. 
 
 Three or four copies of a brief biography of the painter 
 should also be accessible in different parts of the room, legibly 
 printed and simply framed, with a glass for protection. 
 
 Every picture should be hung with its horizon on a level 
 with the eye of a spectator of ordinary stature, and there 
 should be a clear space of three feet at least between the 
 larger pictures, and two feet between the smaller ones, which 
 space should be filled up, if possible, with velvet of a dark 
 colour. If a nation is too poor to show its pictures to the best 
 advantage (as that poverty-stricken country, England, appears 
 to be), a flock paper, with slight pattern and all of one 
 colour, is the next best thing to velvet. 
 
 It is not to be expected that a nation like Great Britain 
 should be able to afford velvet for its picture galleries ; but a 
 private speculator, who has established a permanent exhibition 
 
 1 This would not be possible in private collections, and often variety is 
 jsought for on its own account; still it is better for the study of any artis 
 (that his works should at least be kept together as much as possible. — 1873 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 1 J4 
 
 of pictures at Paris, was cunning enough to cover all his walls 
 with it from top to bottom before he hung a single picture 
 upon them, a piece of extravagance which would astonish our 
 House of Commons if carried out, as it ought to be, in our 
 National Gallery. 
 
 Arrangements such as these would do more to facilitate the 
 study of painting in galleries than any one would believe 
 possible who had not been accustomed to pass whole days and 
 weeks in looking at pictures. The fatigue of such study, it 
 undertaken in earnest, must always be very great, but it is now 
 needlessly increased by a want of consideration for the con- 
 venience of the student. It is at present impossible for 
 anyone to study seriously in any public gallery without tiring 
 himself in seeking out works which ought never to have been 
 separated, and straining his eyes, and stiffening his neck, in 
 vain endeavours to see pictures which are purposely hung so 
 high as to be out of sight. Galleries like the Louvre are an 
 affair of mere vulgar national ostentation : there are great 
 treasures in them, but no sign of any supposition on the part 
 of their guardians that the treasures can be of any use. The 
 great Rubenses in the long gallery are, it is true, hung together , 
 but they are hung at least six feet too high, the only earnest 
 endeavour after perfect hanging and helpful association in the 
 whole collection having been bestowed on the worst pictures 
 in any public gallery in the world, — the hideous series of 
 illustrations of the life of St* Bruno, by Eustache Lesueur. 
 These were hung in uninterrupted order, but the priceless 
 Titians are carelessly scattered amongst other men’s works, 
 high or low, according to the caprice of the director or the 
 convenience of the hangers. 
 
 These defects have hitherto been almost inevitable in 
 national collections, which are accumulated gradually by suc- 
 cessive Governments, depend largely on bequests, and are 
 usually given over to the care of personages who have little 
 knowledge of or interest in art. But such defects need spoil 
 no private collection. The principle of giving a separate 
 room to each artist may, in large houses, be carried out 
 without inconvenience, and all the more easily if the owner 
 has several houses. The practical difficulty of acting upon 
 this principle is that ordinary rooms are often so badly lighted 
 that pictures cannot be seen in them. A gallery may, there- 
 
PICTURE BUYING. 
 
 135 
 
 fore, be a necessary adjunct to houses which have been con- 
 structed without reference to the convenient study of art 
 treasures. The best gallery, however, would be a suite of 
 small rooms, all lighted from above, and of which each should 
 be dedicated to a particular master, in the manner already 
 suggested for national galleries. If the owner were fortunate 
 enough to possess a few pictures of great size and importance, 
 he ought to give a separate room to each of them, with no 
 other furniture than a large and comfortable sofa, placed at 
 the right distance from the picture. An ordinary exhibition, 
 where a thousand paintings are incessantly occupied in doing 
 each other as much harm as they possibly can, is the perfect 
 type of what a collection ought not to be. 
 
 The supreme merit of any collection is Unity. Every 
 picture ought to illustrate and help the rest. And if the 
 buyer keeps in view some great leading purpose, the unity will 
 come of itself, but it cannot easily be reached otherwise. 
 Mere miscellaneous buying, according to the caprice of the 
 moment, leads to the raking together of unrelated objects, 
 but not to that beautiful and helpful order, which multiplies 
 the value of every particle. 
 
 Having presumed that the reader really loves art, I need 
 scarcely hint to him the desirableness of such arrangements 
 as will allow his pictures to be seen. If he cares for them at 
 all, he will certainly hang them so that he can see them. There 
 is no better proof of the insensibility of many owners of 
 pictures than their habit of hanging them where not a creature 
 except the flies can ever hope to behold them. Whenever two 
 pictures are hung one above another, one of them is sure to be out 
 of sight } Pictures hung in ordinary rooms, which people in- 
 habit regularly, should not be crowded up to the very ceiling 
 like an exhibition, but rather carefully isolated and distributed 
 all over the house, such pictures only being allowed to remain 
 near each other as are naturally fitted to be companions. They 
 ought also to be intellectually in harmony with the uses of 
 the room. Illustrations of literature, and portraits of authors, 
 have a greater value in libraries than in billiard-rooms. I enjoy 
 
 1 The only exception to this rule is when large pictures are hung in large 
 rooms. They may be placed rather high and still seen from the opposite 
 side of the room. In these cases space may be left for small pictures under 
 them. — 1873. 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 
 good landscapes so heartily myself that I am glad to meet with 
 them anywhere, but they have a better chance of being seen 
 in drawing-rooms than in dining-rooms. A landscape is half 
 lost 'unless you can see its detail, which from your seat at table 
 is often impossible in a large dining-room. But a portrait of 
 life-size loses nothing a few yards away. At the Manchester 
 Exhibition of Art Treasures, Gainsborough’s imperious Beauty 
 awed the crowd, with her scornful eye, twenty paces off. 
 Nothing is nobler in a dining-room than a series of lordly 
 portraits by Vandyke or Reynolds ; but their successors of the 
 present day have such terrible difficulties of costume to con- 
 tend against that it would be a dangerous experiment to sur- 
 round a scene of festivity with gentlemen in well-fitting waist- 
 coats and highly-varnished boots. And if you have any ugly 
 portraits that you have an affection for, as is very likely, let 
 them be placed in your most private rooms, where no guests 
 come. They are better there for many reasons. It is in our 
 calmest hours that the dead come back to us in memory ; it is 
 then that we hear again their dear voices ; it is then that 
 we recall most vividly their half-forgotten looks and gestures. 
 The ugly portrait may be precious to us , but it cannot touch 
 the hearts of strangers. Alone, we may look up to it through 
 brimming tears ; but the world will not weep before it. 
 
 I think the prevalent idea that the purchasing of pictures 
 is exclusively a luxury for very rich people who can afford 
 collections is unfortunate for the art. We all of us buy books, 
 though very few of us can afford a library ; why should we not 
 all buy pictures too ? The most of us pay wine-merchants’ 
 bills ; and wine, though pleasant in its way, is no more essential 
 than pictures. I see no other reason than this, — that we like 
 wine better. Every comfortable house ought to have three or 
 four good pictures, at least one in each of its principal rooms ; 
 but such a picture as its owner will not weary of, or else he 
 must have more. And all good pictures are inexhaustible : 
 some by a mysterious charm and fascination, as the melancholy 
 portrait in the Louvre, opposite the great Veronese, or the face 
 of the Mona Lisa ; some by their mighty poetry, as the Teme- 
 raire in the Turner Gallery ; some by a wonderful ideal of beauty, 
 as the Phryne ; and some by fulness of matter and endless 
 harmonies of colour, as the best works of John Lewis. 
 
 But if we are to have as noble pictures in our houses as the 
 
PICTURE BUYING. 
 
 137 
 
 merchants used to have at Venice, we ought to have as noble 
 houses to put them in ; not necessarily big ones, — our own are 
 generally quite large enough, — but houses glorious with fair 
 architecture. There has been as much money spent on 
 English country-seats as would have built three or four Venices, 
 and yet there are few of them that one could endure to paint ; 
 and such as are fit for pictorial treatment are so rather by 
 reason of mere quaint picturesqueness than any high architec- 
 tural excellence ; the corrupt and barbarous Elizabethan being 
 the most effective domestic style we can boast. And in our 
 treatment of such old buildings as we possess we have almost 
 all of us sinned against their builders, either by “ modernizing ” 
 in the last century, or “ restoring ” (which means destroying) 
 in this. 
 
 I cannot tell what is to come in the future, whether we are 
 always to live contentedly in square boxes with oblong holes 
 in them, as at present, or whether we shall inhabit worthier 
 dwellings. For it is conceivable that human habitations might 
 be erected which might stand alone in the fields and not be 
 utterly shamed by the contrast between Nature’s glory and their 
 meanness ; buildings whose marble walls might lift themselves 
 against the blossoming trees, themselves variegated with hues 
 not less exquisite ; mansions whose sculptured portals might in 
 some degree respond to the infinite sculpture of natural leaves 
 and branches in the depths of their ancient woods. 
 
 When every house shall have good art which now has good 
 literature, a good natural art will be provided to supply the 
 want, — an art neither beyond the sympathies of our richer 
 middle class, nor beyond its purse. That class will, of course, 
 understand works of genre before it comes to understand land- 
 scape ; but I do not despair even for landscape, for it seems 
 that people cannot be in the habit of travelling every autumn 
 without eventually perceiving natural beauty. 
 
 As death gradually removes the collectors one by one, they 
 will naturally feel the desire, common to all their order, to keep 
 their treasures together. For the pictures when separate are 
 the work of the artist who painted them ; but their helpful 
 association is the work of the collector alone, and a work 
 requiring very high qualities of judgment and right feeling. 
 Now no man likes the idea that his life’s labour will be 
 annihilated at his death ; and collectors find great bitterness in 
 
138 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 the thought that what they have so carefully associated wall be 
 dispersed as widely as ever when they are gone. And, if the 
 public only has the wisdom to avail itself of this feeling in 
 collectors of works of art, it may come to possess splendid 
 galleries for the mere cost of the necessary buildings to keep 
 them in. 
 
 All towns of sufficient importance to have a lecture-hall 
 or a concert-room are also large enough to have a free gallery. 
 They may be deterred from this for some time by the im- 
 pression that they cannot afford to fill such galleries with 
 works of art, but this is a needless anxiety. The galleries 
 w r ould be filled in a hundred years by gifts and bequests, and 
 until then it would be well to remember that pictures do 
 not look tvorse for being w r ell isolated ; and that, if there were 
 a few yards of space between them for the first twenty years, 
 they would be seen all the better for it. Let the galleries only 
 be large enough, so as to invite contributions, and the con- 
 tributions will come ; but, if our municipal bodies do with the 
 Provincial free galleries what the Government has hitherto 
 done with the National one — that is, discourage contribution 
 to the utmost — they need not hope for many contributors. 
 The Vernon collection was first put into a dark cellar, and 
 afterwards on the ground-floor of an empty old house, 
 wffiere no picture could possibly be seen ; next it was re- 
 moved to a temporary structure at Kensington. The mag- 
 nificent Turner bequest was treated with no more consideration ; 
 and therefore when Mr. Sheepshanks presented his gallery to 
 the nation, the gift was accompanied by the condition that it 
 should have a building of its own. If the Government had 
 erected a National Gallery twice as large as the Louvre, and 
 invited private individuals to fill it, it would have been filled 
 in a hundred years, and that most richly. All collectors, all 
 living artists, should be encouraged to contribute pictures to 
 the National Gallery, a responsible council having the power 
 of declining unsuitable offers ; and the nation w r ould thus 
 obtain great numbers of valuable works for the mere cost of 
 the w r all to hang them on. — 1861. 
 
PICTURE BUYING. 
 
 139 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 During the last twelve years the appreciation of modern pictures 
 has become so firmly established that even a living artist may sell 
 his works for prices equal to those given for old canvases of the 
 same quality. It appears that ,£4,000 is the last price given for 
 a Meissonier to the artist, and given too by a dealer who had to 
 resell at a profit. Setting aside the class of sensation pictures, 
 which were painted and bought as shows, and not for their value as 
 possessions, it may now be considered quite a settled rule of ordi- 
 nary trade that any picture of importance by an artist whose name 
 is in repute is worth a thousand pounds, whilst exceptionally fine 
 examples of great men easily rise to twice or three times that 
 figure. And even those artists who are not famous, but have only 
 a respectable professional standing, reach four or five hundred 
 pounds for their best works. Whatever may have been the neglect 
 of contemporary art in former generations, our age cannot be justly 
 accused of it. 
 
 Every thoroughly good picture finds a purchaser, and many 
 pictures which are not good find purchasers also. The art is 
 handsomely encouraged, and yet there may be grounds for some 
 anxiety about the direction into which modern picture-buying is 
 forcing the energies of artists. It has given an enormous predo- 
 minance to incident and costume painting, so that serious figure- 
 painting and poetic landscape are abandoned by many artists who 
 might have successfully pursued them if they had not been com- 
 pelled to consider the state of the market. The decline in the 
 study of the naked figure, on a large scale, is an evil which goes far 
 beyond the mere extinction of a single branch of art, for it weakens 
 other branches also. I observe too, with regret, that the sort of 
 figure-painting which is popular has a tendency to starve our noble 
 school of landscape by withdrawing men from it on account of 
 its poor prospects in money and reputation. The kind of art which 
 sells most readily in the exhibitions is not that which carries a 
 great artistic nature highest or farthest, though it is conveniently 
 adapted to the capabilities of a small one. This has one good 
 result, — the majority no longer think it necessary to attempt high 
 art, which is always too high to be within their reach. A young 
 man, in the present day, who adopts the profession of art, soon 
 
140 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 perceives what is most likely to be a remunerative investment of 
 his time. He learns to paint faces and costumes as prettily and 
 cleverly as possible, and then seeks some incident such as Queen 
 Elizabeth’s toothache, or King Charles knighting the sirloin, which 
 will at the same time amuse the public and afford a proper oppor- 
 tunity for costume painting. All this is very excusable, but really, 
 when "you reflect upon it, does it seem a quite adequate employment 
 for men of grave and serious genius ? Let anyone examine the 
 catalogues of our exhibitions, and he will be surprised by the pre- 
 dominance of trifling subjects, chosen purposely to hit what the 
 artists evidently suppose to be the popular taste. I do not insist 
 upon any necessity for nobility of subject, for much of the very 
 greatest art has displayed itself in perfect grandeur with scarcely 
 any subject at all. A Dwarf, in the hands of Velasquez, yields 
 grander art than an Emperor Nicholas in the hands of a vulgar 
 court-painter ; a field and hedge by Old Crome are nobler than 
 Alpine ranges when painted by men who have no nobility in their 
 own souls. But I say that when the subject is at the same time 
 trivial and obtrusive , as it is in this popular art I am just now 
 writing about, the whole picture is likely to be vulgar from begin- 
 ning to end, and unredeemed by any elevated thought whatever. 
 Great art has either no subject or a sublime subject; it has very 
 rarely an obtrusive subject of a character to take away atten- 
 tion from itself. 
 
 Cultivated people may use their influence advantageously in dis- 
 couraging those lower kinds of incident-painting which abound in 
 the modern schools, and in helping, whenever it may be in their 
 power, by money or by praise, all good art that, in addition to sound 
 technical quality, possesses the characteristic of nobleness. Art 
 which is only pretty and amusing is always a degraded kind of art, 
 which does no good to the mind in the way of refinement or eleva- 
 tion, though it may do some good as a harmless diversion for the 
 thoughts from the anxieties of daily life. 
 
 Whilst the present edition of this work is passing through the 
 press, there have been several important sales of collections in 
 England and France. The run of prices is much the same in both 
 countries, though for different artists. The Sardanapalus of Dela- 
 croix (not his best picture by any means, I know it well) fetched 
 close on ,£4,000, and a Theodore Rousseau in the same sale about 
 ^3,000. The last sale which has taken place this month (April 1873) 
 gives a list of prices which, without presenting any one figure so 
 
PICTURE BUYING. 
 
 141 
 
 exceptional as the preceding, gives a regular run of sustained high 
 prices which fully confirms what I have written above, for all these 
 works are modern, and some by living men. The pictures had 
 belonged to M. Laurent Richard. Here is a selection from the 
 catalogue, with the prices attained: — 
 
 Corot . . . 
 
 ,, ... 
 
 „ ... 
 
 E. Delacroix . 
 ,, 
 
 „ 
 
 ,, 
 
 >, 
 
 Diaz .... 
 ,,.... 
 
 Jules Duprd . 
 „ 
 
 ,, 
 
 „ 
 
 5, 
 
 ,, 
 
 ,, 
 
 ,, 
 
 „ 
 
 Fromentin . . 
 
 Marilhat . . 
 
 Meissonier . . 
 
 Millet” . . . 
 
 Th. Rousseau. 
 ,, 
 
 „ 
 
 ,, 
 
 „ 
 
 „ 
 
 ,, 
 
 „ 
 
 „ 
 
 Troy on . . . 
 
 „ ... 
 
 Nymphes et Faunes . 
 Danse de Nymphes . 
 Souvenir de Marissel 
 
 Medee 
 
 Christ au Tombeau . 
 Saint S6bastien secouru 
 Christ en Croix 
 Lievre et Lapin . . 
 
 Descente de Bohemiens 
 Une Eclaircie . . . 
 
 La Mare aux chenes . 
 
 Le Pont . 
 
 Les Landes 
 La Riviere 
 La Barque 
 L’Etang . 
 
 Marine 
 
 Arbres au bord de Feau 
 Le petit Pont . . . 
 
 La Fantasia . . . 
 
 L’Enfant Prodigue . 
 
 Le Joueur de Guitare 
 Soldat sous Louis XIII 
 La Lampe . . . 
 
 Le Givre . . . 
 
 Le vieux Dormoir 
 Les Bucheronnes . 
 
 Lisiere de Clairbois 
 Metairie sur FOise 
 Cours d’eau (Sologne) 
 L’Automne F ontainebleau 
 Plaine et Marais 
 Landes Boisees (Sologne) 
 Le Gu£ .... 
 
 Berger et Moutons 
 
 £ 
 
 920 
 
 560 
 
 604 
 
 2,360 
 
 I,l6o 
 
 1,260 
 
 I,l6o 
 
 1,242 
 
 600 
 
 1,028 
 
 1,520 
 
 1,140 
 
 1,200 
 
 L440 
 
 780 
 
 720 
 
 760 
 
 682 
 
 512 
 
 1,620 
 
 1,220 
 
 1,480 
 
 1,248 
 
 1,540 
 
 2,404 
 
 1,440 
 
 1,440 
 
 1340 
 
 1,528 
 
 1,600 
 
 1.480 
 1,200 
 
 688 
 
 2.480 
 1,668 
 
142 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 £ 
 
 Troyon . . . Vaches, Soleil couchant .... 1,082 
 
 . . . . Retour du Troupeau 1,020 
 
 . . . . Animaux a l’ombre ...... 768 
 
 One reflection suggested by these prices is rather melancholy. 
 Some of these famous artists, only a few years ago, sold their 
 pictures with difficulty, and at prices scarcely sufficient to pay them 
 for their labour. Eugene Delacroix and Jules Dupre are now 
 great names in sales ; yet Delacroix offered that very picture of 
 “ Sardanapalus ” for less than £80 to the French Government, and 
 they refused it. A picture by Jules Dupre, the “ Environs of 
 Southampton,” was sold very recently for forty times the price 
 which he received for it ; or, in other words, his total remuneration 
 amounted to six months’ interest, at five per cent., on the present 
 market value of the work. It is not always, or often, the artists 
 themselves who benefit by these great prices, but the first pur- 
 chasers of their pictures. It was at first supposed that prices of 
 this kind were the result of a temporary fever or rage for art which 
 would soon abate, but experience seems to show that the love of 
 art, or of ostentation of wealth in this shape, is now so rooted in 
 modern society that great prices for pictures will be quite a matter 
 of daily and permanent habit. It would be desirable, perhaps, 
 that works should be sold rather more on their merits and less on 
 the strength of mere reputation. The merit of that picture by 
 Jules Dupre cannot have increased forty-fold since he painted it. 
 Nothing is more baneful to the work of an artist than the convic- 
 tion that it is not the quality of what he does but the noise that is 
 made about it which is the most powerful factor of success. The 
 best state for art would be a state in which every man would 
 seek to do what was simply right and good, with a well-grounded 
 conviction that it would pay him best in the end. It is diffi- 
 cult to keep this conviction in its strength and calm when we 
 perceive so plainly that it is not quality but reputation which 
 rules the market. 
 
 A picture was discovered some time since, the intrinsic value of 
 which was £8, for that was the highest price that could be got 
 for it ; but somebody made out that the picture had been painted 
 by Cuyp, and then it was sold for £ 2,000 . This is a good instance 
 of what merit and reputation can do in picture-selling. The 
 account stands thus : — 
 
PICTURE BUYING. 
 
 ' 143 
 
 £ 
 
 To the merit of the painting ..... 8 
 
 To the reputation of Cuyp’s name . . . 1,992 
 
 The reader will at once perceive the sort of discouragement 
 which this brings to a good workman in the days of his obscurity. 
 “ I can only do the painting,” he thinks, “ I cannot write a signature 
 that will sell it.” The healthiest state for art would be that in 
 which reputation had the least possible influence. A buyer ought 
 not to purchase the signature, but the work. — 1873. 
 
FAME . 
 
 A French gentleman whom I know very well had a daughter 
 —she is now dead — who was distinguished as one of the most 
 brilliant performers on the pianoforte in all France. Her father 
 was rich, and belonged to that class of society which considers 
 that its daughters cannot earn money in any way whatever with- 
 out loss of caste, so the lady could not be a professional musician, 
 as she ought to have been, but was left to develop her wonderful 
 talent for the delight of a few private friends. Such a position 
 was essentially false. When Nature endows a human being with 
 supreme musical genius, it is intended, not for the possessor 
 alone, nor for any one circle of private friends, but for the human 
 race. And the desire for publicity grew in the girl's mind as 
 she rose to the heights of her art. It became necessary to give 
 weekly musical soirees for the exhibition of her talent. After a 
 while this no longer sufficed, and she performed in a few public 
 concerts of the highest order. Some said that this was vanity, 
 and not a ladylike tendency at all. But was it not the irre- 
 sistible impulse of a true genius ? Can a great instrumentalist 
 be intended by Nature to perform for his own selfish pleasure ? 
 People are no more endowed with music that they may play to 
 themselves than with tongues that they may talk to themselves. 
 And when a nobleman of high rank, like the Marquis of Candia 
 (commonly known as Mario), is gifted by nature with so admir- 
 able a natural instrument, we have all a kind of claim to the 
 delight of it, as we have to the light of the stars. And though 
 the instinctive thirst for fame may be often quenched by the 
 coldness of high caste, there is such an appetite, either active or 
 
FAME. 
 
 145 
 
 dormant, in all intellects to which fame naturally belongs. A 
 certain degree of fame is essential to the free exercise of certain 
 forces within us, and where there is a constitutional indifference 
 to it those forces have no existence. The desire for widely 
 spread celebrity, so commonly reproached against the artistic 
 class as a weakness or a defect, is perfectly rational and right, 
 and means no more than this, that all persons belonging to that 
 class desire a field sufficiently ample for the free exercise of 
 their especial functions — a feeling they have in common with 
 many other classes. 
 
 It is necessary, however, to draw a trenchant distinction 
 between this right desire for fame, and the morbid or foolish 
 longing for it on its own account. It is one thing to desire to 
 be celebrated, that we may work with due effect, and another to 
 desire only that we may be celebrated. But even the most dis- 
 eased and degraded craving for notoriety is often the perversion 
 of a true instinct unconscious of its own import. 
 
 Fame of very different degrees and very different orders is 
 necessary to men in different situations. Men of the highest 
 social rank are immensely famous without the least effort on 
 their part ; and yet, as they are saved all that visible seeking 
 after fame which characterizes artists of all kinds, they are never 
 spoken of as celebrated, celebrity is so inevitable to them. We 
 say of Landseer that he is a celebrated painter, but not of Vic- 
 toria that she is a celebrated queen, because painters are for the 
 most part obscure, whereas all monarch s are celebrated by the 
 mere fact of their position. They cannot help being famous : 
 their names are on every one’s lips, whether they will or no. 
 And they are famous because a great glare and blaze of fame 
 penetrating into every nook and cranny of their dominions is 
 necessary to the exercise of sovereignty. We may, therefore, 
 take the fame of the monarch, to begin with, as the most obvious 
 instance of functional or necessary celebrity, the only celebrity 
 in whatever class which rational men desire ; and in descending 
 the social scale we are likely to find that the desire for fame, so 
 far from being peculiar to the artistic class, is common to all 
 men in their several spheres, each desiring that degree and 
 order of renown which is suitable to his position, and necessary 
 to his forceful and effectual life therein. 
 
 No order of fame is so certain as that which attaches to 
 social position. The renown of monarchs is the best and 
 H L 
 
146 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 most obvious example of this kind of celebrity, yet it is not 
 confined to any royal or noble class, but belongs in minor de- 
 grees to all rich or locally influential men. The fame of rulers 
 is necessarily co-extensive with the number of people they 
 govern; and as the Emperor Napoleon is inevitably known to 
 all Frenchmen, so is the cotton manufacturer known to his 
 hands, the landlord to his tenants, and the schoolmaster to his 
 scholars. Men also become known to us when we have need 
 of them ; and those who, from their occupation, render occa- 
 sional services to large numbers of people, are known to large 
 numbers. Thus, we find numerous classes of society, every 
 member of which is inevitably famous, more or less, if he dis- 
 charges the ordinary functions of his office. The governor is 
 famous in the sphere of his government, and many labourers in 
 the humblest occupations acquire a degree of celebrity which is 
 not called celebrity only because it is so intensely local, but 
 which, if judged by the number of persons reached by it, is as 
 great as the fame of some true poets and philosophers. 
 
 If we examine the social organization of any populous town, 
 we shall find many persons there who live in the broad light of 
 a local fame of a very intense and penetrating kind. Fifty miles 
 off, their names are scarcely known ; but in their own neighbour- 
 hood they enjoy a well-recognized and brightly-focussed repu- 
 tation. Like the brilliant chandelier of a ball-room, their glory 
 shines with wonderful splendour on one well-packed crowd, but 
 is prevented by opaque walls from reaching the outer world. 
 There is the principal landowner first, who cannot help being 
 locally famous, however modest and retiring his disposition ; 
 there is next the most important clergyman, who is known to 
 everybody in the place ; and the smaller incumbents and curates, 
 whose names are household words at a thousand tea-tables, where 
 they supply an inexhaustible topic of conversation. There is 
 also, probably, a banker, and there are sure to be one or two 
 solicitors known to everybody, though less talked about than 
 the clergy. And the fame of the local surgeons is as certain as 
 disease and death. And the principal tradesmen — the druggist, 
 the tailor, the draper, the fashionable boot and shoe maker, the 
 grocer, the butcher — are all absolutely necessary to the commu- 
 nity, and well known to it both personally and by name. In a 
 country town there is no obscurity, save for the poor. All rich 
 proprietors, all prosperous tradesmen, are known to thousands ; 
 
FAME. 
 
 147 
 
 and, as a general rule, you will not find these people shrinking 
 from the degree of publicity which naturally belongs to their 
 station. The landowner will be a magistrate, and preside at 
 public meetings ; the clergyman preaches in public every Sun- 
 day, and will speak from the platform of the Literary Institute 
 when called upon ; the attorney, however bashful by nature, will 
 not shrink from the publicity incident to his profession; and 
 the tradesmen will print circulars and advertise. Of all these 
 locally famous people not one perhaps cares about celebrity in 
 itself ; but their several positions absolutely require some de- 
 gree of it, or the whole business of the town would come to a 
 standstill. And if you were to take the most retiring of towns- 
 men and make an artist of him, he would immediately desire a 
 more extended recognition than his own little neighbourhood 
 could afford, for a community which is large enough to keep 
 a thriving grocer or a prosperous tailor might be far too little 
 to supply cultivated people in sufficient numbers to sustain a 
 painter of pictures, or pay for successive editions of musical or 
 poetical compositions. The desire for extensive fame, which 
 characterizes the artist class in our day, is the sense of a com- 
 mercial necessity. Small populations afford no market for 
 intellectual works, because the persons capable of appreciating 
 such works are so rare that they have to be sought out from 
 amongst millions. But as the feelings and aims of the Flor- 
 entine artists were local because they could find appreciation 
 and remuneration enough in their own locality, so our own 
 artists would generally content themselves with local recognition 
 if such recognition could bring them, in wealth and honour, an 
 adequate reward for their labours. The difference between a 
 locally celebrated man — as, for instance, a popular clergyman — 
 and a widely celebrated one — as, for instance, a poet — often 
 consists only in this, that the persons whom the celebrity has 
 reached are, in the one case, concentrated in a single parish or 
 diocese, and, in the other, scattered very thinly over a kingdom. 
 The poet, however, is considered hungry after fame if he wishes 
 his thoughts to be received by a few thousand persons, whereas 
 the same natural desire on the part ot a clergyman is called a 
 “wish for an adequate sphere of usefulness/' Yet is it not 
 possible that a poet may wish to raise men to higher views than 
 were before attainable by them? and could any poet, with 
 such a noble conception of his calling, feel himself justified in 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 14S 
 
 dedicating his whole life to it, unless he saw good reason for 
 believing that his efforts would not altogether fail of their effect 
 upon the world? When the clergyman flattens his manuscript 
 sermon on the velvet pulpit-cushion, he is sure of his audience,' 
 and knows that he is fulfilling an undeniable function in the 
 world. The artist enjoys no such satisfactory feeling until he is 
 what men call famous. Until fame comes, the author does not 
 feel sure of a single reader, nor even of a publisher. The written 
 thought may never see the light. And the painter who is not 
 famous is scarcely more sure of producing any effect on his 
 fellow-creatures, for the public will not look at what he does, 
 nor the hangers in the exhibitions put it where it can be seen. 
 For these men to desire fame is therefore not more indicative 
 of vanity or weakness in them than it would be in a clergyman 
 to desire a church. An artist without reputation is like a pastor 
 without a flock. Fame is the necessary condition for the due 
 discharge of his function of artist. What the parish is to the 
 parson, with its thousands of inhabitants, fame is to the poet or 
 painter with the thousands of readers or spectators that it brings 
 him. — 1860. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 The fame of painters is dependent upon material conditions that 
 cannot be wholly overcome. A picture may be engraved, but can- 
 not be reproduced in colour, and all the photographic processes are 
 imperfect and unreliable, so that to judge of a painter’s work we 
 have either to go to the canvas or have the canvas sent to us. 
 The result of this is, that the true appreciation of painters, much 
 more than that of literary authors, is confined to the inhabitants of 
 large cities and to persons who often visit them. There are great 
 numbers of well-educated people in out-of-the-way places who 
 have never seen any authentic work by a great master. 
 
 The painter does not easily reach the great country and colonial 
 public, and his ambition is to gain a metropolitan celebrity which 
 may have echoes elsewhere, but he does not concern himself much 
 about the echoes. Some artists are quite careless of fame, and 
 
FAME, . 
 
 149 
 
 neglect it, sending their works direct to the private purchaser 
 without exhibiting them ; but this course, though agreeable to a 
 man who wishes to avoid the risk of being rejected at the Academy, 
 or badly hung, and though prudent so far as it escapes the danger 
 of criticism, is not altogether prudent. A private connection is 
 not so safe as a well-established public position. 
 
 There is a healthy effect in publicity which is always good for us, 
 whether the result is favourable or the reverse. Authors who 
 remain in manuscript, painters who do not exhibit, become easily 
 morbid, but when there is access to the public it is like getting out 
 into the open-air. Some readers may remember a Salon des Refuses , 
 which was established along with the regular Salon many years 
 ago in Paris. The discontinuance of this institution was not much 
 to be regretted for the general public (except that it made them 
 laugh most heartily, and so was good for their health), but it was a 
 misfortune for many bad painters who were by its means relieved 
 from the oppressive sense of being under an extinguisher. Publi- 
 city is good for all artists or persons who call themselves artists ; 
 obscurity is good for all students. We ought to pursue our studies 
 in the most tranquil and complete privacy, to enjoy that privacy 
 deeply and defend it jealously. The healthiest situation for authors 
 and artists is one in which their works are exposed to the fullest 
 glare of publicity, whilst their life of study is protected from 
 curiosity and intrusion. But they do not in their youth understand 
 the value of the obscurity that kindly protects their growth, and 
 in their maturer years, when fame is won, they often undervalue it. 
 One who had attained celebrity said to me, “ How different the 
 reality is from the dream ! ” as if the reality were a disappointment ; 
 and yet Fame had given him many distinguished friends, had 
 lifted him from poverty to competence, had permitted him to pur- 
 sue the noblest and most elevating studies. Reputation may not 
 be so brilliant and dazzling as the ardour of youth imagines : a 
 distinguished man may live outwardly very much as people do who 
 are not distinguished, and be treated very much as other people 
 are treated ; he may find that fame is not a protection against 
 suffering, and anxiety, and regret ; and still it may be a most pre- 
 cious possession — a possession well worth all the labour that it cost 
 him. There are many sour and disappointed persons who repeat 
 that the aspirations of the earlier and more active half of life are 
 illusions, like those silvery lakes in the desert that vanish as the 
 parched traveller advances ; as if God did nothing but cheat us by 
 
i5o 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 false promises, and every hope that budded were destined to a fatal 
 blight. The plain truth is, that the reality is always different from 
 the dream, and always more sober in its colouring ; but that not-, 
 withstanding what in the realities of life may be described as the 
 predominance of grey, the grey itself may turn out to be of a 
 quality more exquisite than the more splendid yet cruder colouring 
 of our early hope and imagination. This is so in love and fame : 
 the ardent lover does not quite perceive what love will be to him 
 in after years, and still may live to be thankful for the good that he 
 had not foreseen ; the aspirant after intellectual distinction may 
 believe that celebrity is more splendid than he will find it, and yet 
 live long enough to receive from it benefits that he had never sus- 
 pected. The substantial benefits of reputation are not in satisfied 
 vanity, but in the encouragement to cheerful perseverance in our 
 Work and in the enlargement of our opportunities for friendship, 
 which are good for our moral health. — 1 873. 
 
XL 
 
 AR7 CRITICISM. 
 
 Amongst the various items which go to make up a news- 
 paper, we occasionally find a column or two of criticism on 
 the Exhibitions. These criticisms are not, in general, very 
 entertaining or attractive reading, and it may be questioned 
 whether anybody ever reads them fairly through. They are 
 looked over with some anxiety by the youngest artists, skimmed 
 and dipped into by visitors to the Exhibitions, and skipped 
 by the rest of the world. They are probably inserted from 
 the feeling that literary notice of some sort is due to the 
 acknowledged importance of the Fine Arts. On the whole, 
 the periodical appearance of these contributions may be 
 accepted by painters as a compliment to their profession. 
 The present writer is by no means disposed to regret the 
 existence, or deny the possible utility of printed art-criticism. 
 It appears to him a natural and necessary product, grow- 
 ing inevitably in every country that possesses active artists 
 and an abundant periodical literature. The object of this 
 paper is not to weaken the influence of the true critic, but 
 rather to strengthen and confirm it by attempting a definition 
 of his functions. 
 
 But it may be doubted whether all who write on art, or 
 even a large proportion of them, are qualified by previous 
 study to form opinions whose publication is desirable. It 
 would be interesting to have an authentic list of anonymous 
 art-critics, to know what are their usual avocations, and what 
 proportion of their lives has been devoted to the study of art. 
 M. Ferdinand de Lasteyrie tells us that fewer qualifications are 
 
152 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 required from Parisian art-critics than from any other writers 
 for the French press ; that the most inexperienced youths 
 begin with the criticism of pictures, which is considered to 
 require so small a stock of information, and so little judgment, 
 that any raw boy may undertake it. Theatrical criticism is, 
 however, in Paris, on quite a different footing, and editors 
 take great care to employ qualified writers for that department. 
 The cause of this difference is obvious. The Parisian public 
 is itself a good judge of theatrical art, but not of pictorial; 
 it therefore at once detects a pretender in theatrical criticism, 
 whereas an ignorant critic of pictures may write on in perfect 
 safety. The tendency of an advancing general culture is there- 
 fore to elevate the tone of printed criticism by excluding igno- 
 rant writers from the periodicals. 
 
 Many persons interested in the Fine Arts are beginning to 
 feel that a great change must, before long, come over the tone 
 of current art-criticism ; that the duties of the ordinary critic 
 will be better understood and more worthily fulfilled, and that 
 the relation between the critic and the artist on the one hand, 
 and the critic and the public on the other, will become sounder 
 and more serviceable than heretofore. 
 
 The functions and duties of an art-critic appear to be as 
 follows : — 
 
 1. To utter wipopular truths . — The reader may perhaps 
 suspect me of putting this so prominently out of sheer perver- 
 sity. But it is the first and most important of critical functions, 
 the chief use of a critic being that he should announce truths 
 which others do not yet perceive. There are but two things 
 that a critic can state — a truth and a fallacy. Each of these, 
 however, has two subdivisions as to its popularity; a truth 
 may be popular or not, and so may a fallacy. The popular 
 truth, being already sufficiently expressed, has no need of 
 the critic’s advocacy; fallacy of either kind he had better 
 abstain from altogether ; so there is nothing left for him but 
 the statement of unpopular truth, — rather an unpleasant and 
 ill-requited duty, yet the chief duty which the art-critic has 
 to fulfil. 
 
 2. To instruct the public in the theoretical knowledge of art . — 
 The work most needed is not as yet pure criticism, but art- 
 teaching as preparatory to it. Art is a subject so deep and 
 difficult, so infinitely subtle and complex, that it is only after 
 
ART CRITICISM. 
 
 153 
 
 the study of years that men even begin to comprehend it . 1 
 But painting has also another characteristic peculiar to itself, 
 and which places its teachers and practitioners in a position 
 of singular delicacy. Other profound studies, as for instance 
 chemistry or mathematics, are seen to be difficult by everyone, 
 and persons who have not studied them never labour under 
 the illusion that they know all about them. But painting 
 seems so simple, the object which it proposes to itself is 
 apparently so obvious, that everyone secretly believes himself 
 competent to judge of it. The really informed teacher has 
 therefore first to persuade his less informed readers that paint- 
 ing is not a simple matter, but a very deep and subtle compound 
 of several sciences with poetry; next, that they are themselves 
 as yet more or less ignorant of painting ; and thirdly, that he, 
 the critic, knows enough of the subject to be a trustworthy 
 teacher and guide. Now, even if the critic can persuade his 
 audience that art is difficult of comprehension, he is accused 
 of contempt for the public as soon as he implies his opinion 
 that the public is generally ignorant of painting . 2 This is 
 so far from being a just accusation, that some of the men 
 whose genius we most revere, as for instance Byron and Scott 
 and Wellington, knew nothing whatever of painting. Grown- 
 up people, however, seldom like to be told that they are igno- 
 rant of anything, and indeed it is superfluous rudeness to 
 tell people of their ignorance when they are already quite 
 aware of it. 
 
 Men devoted to pure science, as for instance mathemati- 
 cians, are spared this unpleasant necessity, because no one 
 who has never learned mathematics ever dreams of setting 
 himself up as a judge of merit in mathematicians. But when 
 people are ignorant of art, they are so usually to that degree 
 that they are not even aware of their own ignorance. The 
 most politic critic is, therefore, continually driven into the 
 
 1 In cases of exceptional endowment people may understand art early in 
 life, by sympathy and genius, yet this early understanding is not either 
 widely comprehensive or perfectly just. A youth may be a clever artist, 
 because in order to be that it is only necessary to comprehend one depart- 
 ment of art, but he can never be an enlightened and just critic, because to 
 become that it is necessary to see many varieties of art in their true rela- 
 tions to each other. — 1873. 
 
 2 An accusation often brought against Mr. Ruskin. 
 
r 54 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 dilemma, either to hold his peace and so let error go uncon- 
 tradicted, or else convince his pupil, by offensive demonstra- 
 tion, that he does not yet understand the subject. And when 
 we consider that the writer on art addresses himself neither to 
 the obedience of infancy nor the humility of the poor, but to 
 men and women of mature age, already highly refined, often 
 deeply and variously learned in other matters, generally be- 
 longing to the upper ranks of life, often very rich, and there- 
 fore likely to be very proud, highly susceptible, impatient of 
 instruction, almost incapable of imagining that they have any- 
 thing yet to learn, — the practical difficulty of such teaching is 
 clear. And even if, after making hosts of enemies by his 
 frankness, an art-teacher should at last succeed in persuading 
 his readers that they cannot know what they have never 
 learned, the difficulty of proving his own competence yet 
 remains. In art-criticism the most instructed teacher is con- 
 tinually liable to err. Painting includes positive science, but 
 it also includes much more. Of its noblest powers the feeling 
 of some finely-organized human being is the only criterion ; 
 of Turner’s dream-power, or Raphael’s refinement, the soul is 
 the only judge. And here is a question of deep and inborn 
 affinity : we are not organized alike, and genius affects us 
 variously. My impressions will seem wrong to you if I state 
 them quite honestly, and so would yours to me. A critic, 
 therefore, who ever quits the plain ground of easily ascertain- 
 able fact to attempt the higher criticism of feeling, is sure to 
 awaken dissent. Rude and simple persons express this dissent 
 with vehemence, and become personally hostile ; intellectual 
 men mark with curious interest the point of divergence, and 
 calmly try to account for it. But both henceforth regard the 
 critic as a fallible person, whose teaching is to be either re- 
 jected altogether or received with thoughtful caution. 
 
 It may be asked when this educating function of the art- 
 critic is to cease. It is like asking when schoolmasters are to 
 cease. Every day thousands of new human beings come into 
 the world whose future social position will require them to 
 pretend to appreciate pictures. Is this pretension to be a 
 hollow make-belief, degrading to manliness, destructive to 
 honesty, and thus vitally injurious to character? or is it to be 
 the simple assertion of a well-founded right to a real opinion ? 
 If the latter, the theoretical art-teacher — the “ critic,” as he is 
 
ART CRITICISM. 
 
 155 
 
 yet called — has endless work before him. By means of books 
 and articles in the reviews and newspapers, and, I think, still 
 more by direct personal communication in the form of lectures, 
 he will have to train the public in those eternal truths which 
 are the beginning of criticism. He and his successors will 
 have to repeat them over and over again so long as civilization 
 shall endure. 
 
 3. To defend time living artists against the malice of the 
 ignorant . — Every original painter, especially in landscape, 
 has to pass through a period of contempt which it is in the 
 power of any intelligent critic to shorten by demonstrating his 
 fidelity to nature. This ought not to be an exceptional act of 
 kindness on the critic’s part ; it is a simple duty which he is 
 bound to perform whenever he sees the need of it. The most 
 acute sufferings of men of genius are inflicted by the instinc- 
 tive tendency of mankind to consider all originality a fair 
 butt for ridicule. But little men are weak against a strong will, 
 and one resolute voice will silence the silly laughter of whole 
 multitudes. 
 
 A peculiar form of this duty is the defence of young artists 
 whose powers are as yet imperfectly developed. It is certain 
 that a young painter who sees and feels very intensely will try 
 for too much, and spoil his pictures. The sort of injury to 
 young men’s work which comes of their good qualities ought, 
 therefore, to be spoken of with the utmost indulgence, and 
 even defended, by the art-critic. Of course he must state the 
 defects frankly, but at the same time he is bound to enforce 
 the truth, too often forgotten, that certain rare and noble 
 qualities, like swans, are repulsive at first, and only become 
 beautiful as they approach maturity. 
 
 4. To prevent false living artists from acquiring an influence 
 injurious to the general interests of art . — Some good-natured 
 people think it very wrong and unkind in a critic to point out 
 the defects of living men, and so reduce their incomes ; but as 
 soon as a painter acquires any influence, his shortcomings 
 ought to be clearly, though not discourteously, stated. For 
 example, a certain famous painter, whose services as an illus- 
 trator of interesting buildings were, before the invention of 
 photographic printing, of quite inestimable value, has for some 
 years exhibited a peculiar kind of cleverly-tinted drawings in 
 oil, of which he is the inventor. But a critic who should fail 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 156 
 
 to point out the difference between these and real pictures 
 would not be doing his duty. There is no necessity, either in 
 this or any other such case, to speak of the artist with unkind- 
 ness, or to vex and irritate him by sarcasm. It is riierely 
 necessary to demonstrate that his works, though exhibited as 
 pictures, and therefore supposed to be works in colour, are 
 only tinted drawings executed in oil, with no attempt to render 
 the variety of natural hues. After reading such a criticism, 
 the spectator might still sufficiently admire these works on 
 their own grounds, but he would be protected from an influence 
 which might else have vitiated his sense of colour, and so 
 incapacitated him for the enjoyment of colour in nature, and 
 prevented him from rendering the honour which is due to 
 genuine painters who really do work in colour. 
 
 5. To exalt the fame of dead artists whose example may be 
 be 7 ieficial . — It may frequently happen that some dead artist, 
 whose name is not on everybody's lips, has nevertheless done 
 certain things in such a supremely excellent way that attention 
 ought from time to time to be directed to his works with 
 reference to their especial quality. It requires some effort to 
 remember very many names, and so, out of pure indolence, the 
 human race prefers to repeat incessantly half-a-dozen of the 
 most famous, and ignore the rest absolutely. This is very 
 convenient, for it enables us to gain credit for a knowledge of 
 art without heavily burdening our memories, but it is neither 
 instructive to the living nor just to the dead. There is no 
 habit more degrading to the human intelligence than that of 
 narrowing our powers of admiration to three or four sets of 
 objects. We ought to admire all that is good, whoever did 
 it, be he living or dead. True artists, thank God ! have been 
 and still are numerous, and from every true artist there is 
 always something to be learned that no other can teach us 
 so well. 
 
 6. To weaken the fame of dead artists whose names have an 
 injurious degree of authority . — One of the most melancholy 
 things in the world is the enormous power for evil of the dead 
 over the living. There are dead foreigners who govern England 
 in many ways with a tyranny that we should endure from no 
 living one. Great artists, who, when alive, were probably far 
 too liberal and large-minded to conceive it desirable that any- 
 body should slavishly imitate them, are erected, when dead, 
 
ART CRITICISM. 
 
 157 
 
 into colossal obstacles in the road to original achievement. 
 There is scarcely a single famous painter whose name has not 
 been misused as a means for the repression of genius. The 
 way in which great men are admired by little ones is so utterly 
 childish and irrational that they pervert even originality itself 
 into an argument against originality. Instead of saying, 
 “ Raphael was original, and you ought to be so too,” they say, 
 “ Raphael was original, therefore you are to mimic him.” 
 They can conceive of no other sort of respect for genius than 
 that which monkeys have for humanity. 
 
 There is, unfortunately, only one way of meeting this fallacy. 
 It is useless to argue that when Raphael worked he had 
 no idea of binding down all future painters to his particular 
 manner. It is in vain to suggest that it would probably be 
 rather unpleasant than not to a man of original genius to be 
 copied for ever and ever by endless generations of mere imi- 
 tators. It is idle to hope that persons devoid of originality 
 can ever be brought so far to comprehend its nature as to per- 
 ceive that the object of its intensest scorn is not another 
 originality, which it always heartily respects, but precisely that 
 slavish imitation by which people imagine that they are paying 
 it an appropriate homage. So the only course left is to point 
 out the failings of great men ; and as every great man has 
 plenty of them, there is much to be said in that way. 
 
 We are sharers in, or witnesses of, a vast critical movement 
 of the modern mind, the general object of which may be defined 
 as the emancipation of the living intellect from the tyranny of 
 the dead. Nothing whatever is safe from this movement. No 
 sanctity of tradition will preserve the most revered writings from 
 the severe scrutiny of this universal criticism. No dead histo- 
 rian will escape questioning as to the evidence for his events ; 
 no dead natural philosopher will pass conjecture for experiment ; 
 for the human race is advancing to ripe years, and no longer 
 accepts as infallible the authorities that governed its infancy. 
 Nor can famous artists, any more than famous writers and men 
 of science, be henceforth the faultless gods they were. All their 
 claims are to be sifted in a new and strange way, not by pas- 
 sionate partisans, but by calm, clear heads that care for no man’s 
 name. Out of this ordeal many a white fame will come shri- 
 velled and frail and black, like paper out of fire ; but others will 
 only be brightened by it afresh. And the benefit to the people 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 158 
 
 will be, that they will no longer worship blindly, like savages, 
 but admire intelligently like thinking men. 
 
 7. To speak always with absolute sincerity . — There is a certain 
 kind of criticism, very knowing in tone, and light and jaunty in 
 expression, which scarcely even pretends to a conviction of any 
 kind whatever. Such criticism is almost invariably insincere. 
 When men are quite in earnest, they are never frivolous or flip- 
 pant. Perhaps an insincere writer on art may often be rather 
 shallow and careless than dishonest, and utter idle fallacies 
 merely because nothing concerning art has acquired in his own 
 mind the solidity and consistence of a truth. His main object 
 is to produce telling remarks about pictures, and say as many 
 smart things as he can find a pretext for. The criticisms in 
 some of the French newspapers are perfect masterpieces of this 
 kind of writing. They have nothing to do with art-teaching, 
 for you may read them from year to year without learning any- 
 thing. They appear to be quite purposeless, and only leave a 
 general impression on the reader’s mind that the writer must be 
 rather a sharp fellow. If these men were to say to themselves 
 before writing, “ I will say nothing but what I think, I will set 
 down only my real opinions,” they would be much embarrassed, 
 because they do not think, and have no opinions. 
 
 Happily, men have an instinct which protects them from the 
 influence of the insincere. One writer with a set of real convic- 
 tions, be they truths or mistakes, has more power in the world 
 than a hundred without an opinion. The influence of insincere 
 art-critics can therefore only be considerable in regions where 
 no earnest one is active. They feel this so instinctively that 
 when a true man appears, they always immediately combine 
 against him, being afraid of him, as well they may. Any par- 
 ticularly sincere and earnest painter is also sure to be the object 
 of their untiring animosity ; but they laud false artists with a 
 brotherly good-will. 
 
 8. To give open expression to vicissitudes of opinion , not fearmg 
 the imputatioii of inconsistency. — This, though put separately on 
 account of its importance, is of course comprised in the simple 
 duty of sincerity. A man who always says what he thinks, and 
 whose opinions modify themselves continually, cannot always 
 say the same thing. The opinions of men who think are always 
 growing and changing, like living children. All honest and 
 thoughtful men know this, and the sort of consistency which is 
 
ART CRITICISM. 
 
 159 
 
 merely the repetition of a formula is not, in their view, a thing 
 to be respected. Such consistency is often to be attributed to 
 simple stolidity, and still oftener perhaps to a very cunning sort 
 of dishonesty. A dishonest writer thinks, before he commits 
 anything to print, “ I must mind what I am about, and not say 
 anything contrary to what I have said somewhere else ; ” so 
 instead of publishing his opinions of to-day, in other words his 
 only sincere opinions, he dishonestly twists them to make them 
 fit in with opinions expressed perhaps years ago, and thereby 
 gets respected for his precious consistency. A stupid man, on 
 the other hand, is consistent from sheer inertness. He arrived 
 at a conclusion some time ago, and finds it too disturbing and 
 troublesome to look into the grounds of it now, wherefore he 
 also is held to be wise. But a writer who is both honest and 
 intelligent is perpetually reviewing his own conclusions, and 
 asking himself candidly where he may have been mistaken ; and 
 every time he feels convinced that he has been leading people 
 wrong, he is simple enough to be in a hurry to tell them so ; on 
 which the people, who have a violent admiration for consistency, 
 and a proportionate contempt for the want of it, utterly scorn 
 and despise him as an unsafe and uncertain guide that does not 
 know his own mind, and cannot tell whither he is going. And 
 indeed in this last particular they are very right ; for whosoever 
 accepts Truth for his leader, and follows her faithfully, scarcely 
 can tell whither she may lead him. 
 
 9. To make himself as thoroughly informed as his time and 
 opportunities will allow about everything concerning the Fine 
 Arts , whether directly or indirectly . — Art is so vast that it is 
 scarcely conceivable how any man can become a very pro- 
 found judge of it, without devoting his whole time to it. But I 
 have inserted the phrase, “ as his time and opportunities will 
 allow,” under the supposition that it might perhaps be possible 
 for some writer of very extraordinary genius to acquire an 
 extensive knowledge of art in the intervals of other and, to 
 him, more important avocations. The only way to learn the 
 rudiments of art-criticism is to draw and paint the facts of 
 nature ; that is, to produce careful studies from nature, each 
 with the especial object of recording faithfully some particular 
 natural fact. Perhaps a thousand such studies might suffice 
 for the acquisition of the elements of natural law. They 
 ought to be executed in different materials, according to their 
 
i6o 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 especial purpose. But to become an accomplished art-critic it 
 is also essential to make studies of pictures and drawings by 
 different masters, not in the way of copying complete works, 
 but rather studying parts of them, always with a definite object. 
 It is unnecessary to indicate the immense range of literary 
 culture essential to the art-critic. The success of historical 
 painting is not to be estimated by persons ignorant of history, 
 nor can illustrations of poets be intelligible to spectators who 
 never read verse. And there is this peculiarity about the 
 position of every art-critic, that his knowledge must embrace 
 the knowledge, not of one artist only, but of thousands. 
 
 Nor can people who stay at home become art-critics. No 
 one can judge authoritatively of the representation of a class 
 of scenery with which he is not familiar. The range of our 
 landscape-painters is extensive. They illustrate every kind of 
 scenery in Europe, and of late years they penetrate into 
 Egypt and Asia. The critic must follow them everywhere, 
 taking memoranda of natural facts. He must also travel to 
 see pictures. The critic of literature may find in London all 
 the books he needs ; but the productions of painters are not so 
 easily accessible. The colour of a picture cannot be repro- 
 duced. Hence nothing but the original handiwork of the 
 painter himself is of the least use for reference. And to 
 grasp the whole mind of a great artist we must see all his 
 works, for every great artistic nature is so large that each 
 picture is a new revelation of ranges of power before unknown 
 to us. 
 
 io. To enlarge his own powers of sympathy . — How far this 
 may be done by an effort of the will must depend on the 
 nature of the man. But the elasticity and universality of his 
 sympathy are amongst the noblest and rarest distinctions of 
 the genuine critic. Painting is an expression of human 
 feeling. Cold and unsympathetic temperaments, which are 
 so often tempted to write criticism by the love of power, are 
 disqualified for it by their own constitution. A true critic feels 
 with the artist, and is therefore strangely tolerant of the most 
 opposite kinds of artistic expression ; an unfeeling nature 
 prides itself on remaining unmoved, and actually esteems its 
 own callousness a sort of superiority. An artist may be all 
 the better for not being self-conscious, but a critic needs a 
 highly sensitive self-consciousness to deliver him from that 
 
ART CRITICISM. 
 
 161 
 
 slavery to its own narrow personality which enthrals every 
 simple mind. 
 
 ii. To resist the formation of prejudices . — The Fine Arts 
 naturally breed prejudice. Almost every painter is perfectly 
 convinced that some process or colour is abominable, merely 
 because he is not master of it ; or that some natural object or 
 effect is unsuitable for artistic purposes, because he himself 
 has no feeling for it. One painter tried to persuade me that 
 cobalt is incompatible with harmony, and that it ought to be 
 rejected from the colour-box; and every colour has some 
 bitter and inveterate enemy amongst artists. There is hardly 
 a painter who has not some crotchet which the experience of 
 many others proves to be quite groundless, and the more we 
 know of Art the less we feel disposed to pin our faith to the 
 dicta of any single theorist or practitioner. 
 
 The explanation of this with regard to painters is that their 
 personal experience, being intensely narrow and practical, 
 naturally gives rise to strong convictions, which they have 
 seldom enough of self-consciousness to attribute to their 
 simple personal cause, and which they therefore express as if 
 they were absolute, and not merely relative truths. Instead of 
 saying, for instance, “ I don’t enjoy green,” a painter will very 
 likely tell you that “ green is incompatible with fine colour.” 
 Sometimes this takes the form of a violent animosity against 
 some unoffending tree or plant. Englishmen often have a 
 prejudice against poplars, and I met a Frenchman once who 
 railed at chestnut-trees with an incredible acerbity. 
 
 Prejudices of this kind, however foolish and unfounded, are 
 not of much consequence in painters, because if they have an 
 antipathy to a certain colour or tree, they only avoid it. But 
 one or two such prejudices might vitiate the judgment of a 
 critic, so as to make him unjust to whole classes of artists. 
 
 The artifices of pseudo art-criticism are so transparent that 
 it seems hardly worth while to indicate them ; still, as they 
 appear to impose upon some people even yet, they have a 
 claim upon our attention. 
 
 To be a true art-critic it is necessary, first, to be in possession 
 of an enormous amount of information about Art and Nature 
 such as very few persons have either time or industry to 
 acquire. Of course we presuppose a natural talent or dis- 
 position for criticism, but that, without the information, only 
 
 H M 
 
62 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 makes people talk ; and when people talk about matters which 
 they do not understand, they generally talk nonsense. 
 
 The pseudo art-critic is a person who writes what is called . 
 criticism without being in possession of the preliminary infor- 
 mation which is indispensable to the production of true 
 criticism. His chief anxiety is to hide this deficiency from his 
 readers, and to leave the impression on their minds that he 
 knows all about the Fine Arts. This is easy or difficult in 
 exact proportion to the cultivation of his audience. 
 
 A genuine art-critic often confesses ignorance of particular 
 truths ; as, for instance, in criticising a naked figure, if he 
 does not understand anatomy he will probably tell you so with 
 perfect frankness; or if he has not witnessed a storm at sea, 
 yet has to criticise a shipwreck, he will begin by telling you 
 that his opinion on the subject is not of much value, but that 
 the remarks he ventures to offer may be taken for what they 
 are worth. A pseudo critic never does this ; 1 and whenever a 
 critic pretends to know everything, it is the surest sign that he 
 knows nothing, that he has not even an idea of what it is to 
 know anything thoroughly. The pretence to universality in 
 art-criticism is sure to be hollow, because human life is not 
 long enough for a man to become a universal art-critic, if he 
 studied for it ten hours a day, and never did anything else. 
 
 The immediate object of a pseudo critic is to discover 
 defects ; that of a true one, to arrive at opinions. The false 
 critic cannot, however, afford to point out the defects of painters 
 already canonized, because, by so doing, he would oppose the 
 popular opinion, which he always takes care to conciliate. 
 There is this peculiarity about painting, that it is impossible 
 to produce an absolutely true picture, because some truths 
 must always be sacrificed to others. If, in a landscape, the 
 relation of one shadow to its light is truly given, the rest of 
 the picture must be either false or out of harmony with that 
 shadow. Again, colour has to be sacrificed to light, and form 
 to colour. A painter has always to purchase truths with 
 falsities, as men buy bread with money; and this necessity 
 being not in the least understood by the public generally, offers 
 to the pseudo critic infinite opportunities for the exercise of 
 
 1 That is, up to the date of the present publication. When they have 
 read this paper, they will invent a new set of dodges, amongst which— 
 who knows ? — even modesty may find a place. 
 
ART CRITICISM. 
 
 163 
 
 his little art or trick of petty fault-finding. And not only that, 
 but the extreme difficulty of painting exposes all painters, even 
 the greatest, to genuine errors, which a noble critic notices 
 only when absolutely necessary, but which the base one fastens 
 upon instinctively, whenever he dare, to the neglect of every- 
 thing else ; so that the whole tissue of his criticism, like the 
 talk of an ill-tempered woman, is tiresome and interminable 
 fault-finding. 
 
 Then there is the safe old well-known critical trick of 
 blaming a thing for not being something else. The aims of 
 our English painters are, to their honour, so large and various 
 that endless opportunities occur for the exercise of this ancient 
 artifice. The wonder is, that there should exist people so 
 simple as to be imposed upon by it ; yet it still apparently 
 answers, like many other cunning contrivances of our ances- 
 tors which modern ingenuity strives vainly to supersede. 
 Thus if I want to leave an impression that John Lewis and 
 John Brett are not what they should be, I have only to suggest 
 that Reynolds and Gainsborough did not paint in that manner, 
 which of course is undeniable. 
 
 But an invention which modern times may fairly claim is 
 the art of hinting that you could say a good deal against a 
 picture if you felt inclined, but that the faults you vaguely 
 allude to are too obvious to require specification. This has 
 great effect on people not very conversant with Art. Another 
 form of it is to allude to classes of Art whose merit and value 
 you cannot quite safely deny, as if they were so very familiar 
 as to have become stale and tiresome. There exists amongst 
 artists a complete vocabulary of slang, the great convenience 
 of which is that it enables you to talk knowingly about your 
 superiors, and, without committing yourself to the expression 
 of a single real opinion, affect to estimate lightly all that they 
 have accomplished. 
 
 The one distinguishing quality of all valuable art-criticism 
 is largeness — largeness of acquired information, to grasp the 
 knowledge of so many thousands of artists, and largeness of 
 natural sympathy, to enter into the individual feelings and 
 affections of so great a multitude of minds. For to criticise 
 adequately any artist’s work, mere talent and honesty, though 
 needful, are not enough. It is necessary to have learned what 
 he ha,s learned, and felt what he has felt. — 1863. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 I observe a curious habit, and a very pernicious habit, in- the 
 art-critics of the newspaper press, which ought to be guarded against 
 by their readers, and, if possible, also by themselves. When 
 an exhibition does not strike them as extraordinary, they often 
 condemn it, as if the quality were positively defective. This is 
 most unjust towards the artists, who are only responsible for the 
 positive quality of their work, and not for its rarity. It is one of 
 the marks of the most perfect culture to enjoy things which are 
 good or beautiful in themselves for their own goodness or beauty, 
 quite independently of this other question of rarity or novelty, 
 which is entirely outside, and has nothing to do with merit. Every 
 rational person, who properly appreciates the gifts of God, delights 
 in pure air and pure water, although there is an infinite quantity of 
 both upon the world, and sees the beauty of a drop of dew hanging 
 from a frond of fern just as he sees that of a diamond glittering at 
 the ear of an empress. Everyone who has attained true wisdom, 
 and that knowledge which belongs to wisdom only, well knows that 
 there is an absolute value in certain gifts and possessions entirely 
 independent of their rarity. Health and good looks are happily 
 much commoner than certain rare forms of disease and deformity, 
 yet health and good looks have always a positive and substantial 
 value of their own, and ought to be rejoiced in by all who are 
 fortunate enough to possess them, though thousands of others may 
 be as happily gifted. Just so in art, there is a positive good to 
 which rarity adds nothing, from which the utmost profusion of 
 abundance can detract nothing ; and the aim of the artist ought not 
 to be so much to distinguish himself from his fellows as to reach 
 this positive undeniable good. However numerous may be the 
 artists who in any age have the ability and industry necessary for 
 the attainment of positively good quality, their merit ought to be 
 liberally acknowledged. It is the vice of vulgar criticism not to 
 acknowledge this. Vulgar criticism wants to be astonished, and if 
 it is not astonished, that is to say, if a school of art has attained a 
 high general level of positive attainment, then this vulgar criticism 
 declares that there is nothing worthy of its attention. May it not 
 be, rather, that everything is worthy of its attention ? A very 
 numerous and very highly cultivated school of painters resembles, 
 in its wealth of production, that inexhaustible wealth of nature 
 which offers us far more than we have time or energy to enjoy, yet 
 
ART CRITICISM. 
 
 165 
 
 of which every detail is worthy of our careful study and able richly 
 to reward it. And as the true student of nature can take delight, 
 and find interest, in a group of leaves on the branch of some 
 common tree, although groups of equal beauty may be found every 
 summer by thousands of millions in every temperate climate, so 
 ought we to enjoy quite heartily every sound and beautiful work in 
 painting, even although such works, in our well-trained industrious 
 modern schools, be thick as leaves in Vallombrosa. I protest the 
 more decidedly against the constant clamour for what is merely 
 novel and extraordinary that it unsettles the purposes of the 
 younger men, and encourages them in the pernicious belief that a 
 fair and honourable success is not to be attained by the quiet 
 pursuit of what is simply and eternally right , but that in order to 
 get an assured position they must attract attention to themselves 
 by the most exhausting efforts. Whoever produces art that is right 
 in itself deserves fair recognition, although such art may not be in 
 the category of rarities ; and the object of young artists ought not 
 to be excellence , or the excelling of others, but sound quality in 
 their own work, irrespectively of what others may perform. The 
 whole system of estimating art relatively is prejudicial to its highest 
 interests, since, wherever such a system prevails, the more a school 
 advances in thoroughness of study and ability of performance, the 
 less will the merits of the individual artist be acknowledged. 
 Then the critics repeat that there are no distinguished painters, 
 and conclude that the art is in decadence, when the truth is that 
 the art has not declined, but risen, like rising waters which make 
 isolated objects seem lower than they were before. Certainly the 
 exhibitions are nearer to a level than they used to be, but it is a 
 higher level, and to paint simply well enough to be up to that level 
 requires good gifts of nature and very resolute application. Sir 
 Walter Scott observed many years ago a similar rise in the quality 
 of current literature, and affirmed that distinction grew more 
 difficult as the prevalent culture rose. Distinction may be rarer 
 and less striking in epochs of culture than in epochs of barbarian 
 ignorance, but quality is not so rare. — 1873. 
 
. XII. 
 
 ANAL YSTS AND SYNTHESIS IN TAINTING . 
 
 When Mrs. Beecher Stowe visited England, she found to her 
 great perplexity, that artists and critics could no more agree 
 about art than mankind generally can about religion. 
 
 To a thoughtful and sincere woman, anxious to find out 
 what she ought to believe about everything in which she felt an 
 interest, the discovery of the diversity in art doctrine which 
 exists in Europe must have been quite painful. This diversity 
 is a fact full of difficulty and discouragement to students 
 whose only wish is to learn to think rightly, and whose degree 
 of culture in the matter of art is not yet sufficient to give 
 them an independent standing-point of their own. You pay 
 a visit, let us suppose, to some eminent artist ; and if your 
 degree of acquaintance permit it, or you appear to desire it, he 
 will probably, out of pure kindness to you, be led into a sort of 
 talk more or less positive and didactic, and will enunciate 
 some strong opinion, and lay down some hard dogmas, of the 
 truth of which a long experience has convinced him. You go 
 away, congratulating yourself on having acquired so much 
 wisdom, and if you never talk with any other painter (or 
 critic), you may , perhaps, rest satisfied with what you have 
 heard. But if you know another eminent painter, the chances 
 are that he will utter another set of doctrines ; and if you 
 know half-a-dozen, you will hear so many opposite opinions, 
 that one of two results will be produced in you : either 
 hopeless, helpless, lifelong bewilderment, or a quiet resolve 
 to labour to acquire independent opinions of your own. 
 
 Is the truth, then, nowhere ? Nay, rather, it is everywhere. 
 
ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS. 
 
 167 
 
 For as animal life is a balanced warfare of opposite forces, so 
 the life of art is a fine balance, resulting from the perpetual 
 contention of warring truths. And each of these truths has its 
 living enunciator, some painter or critic who insists upon it 
 without ceasing ; so that every truth gets uttered ultimately 
 with all those advantages of vigorous statement which the hot 
 ardour of partisanship can alone achieve. After all, it is but a 
 difference of emphasis here and emphasis there. A man will 
 always emphasize those truths about art which most strongly 
 recommend themselves to his own peculiar personal tempera- 
 ment. This comes from the vastness of art, and the variety cf 
 human organizations. For art is so immense a study, that no 
 one man ever knew the whole truth about it. Art is a world 
 of which each student sees and knows some fragment, just as 
 our globe is known in little bits to different members of the 
 human race, each farm being known to its own farmer, each 
 house to its own inhabitant, but no one man knowing all the 
 farms and all the houses on the globe. And the opinions of 
 artists and critics can only be profitable to us if we consider 
 their own point of view, where they are on the great art sphere, 
 and what they can or cannot see from thence. And it is also 
 necessary to take into account their personal organization, of 
 which, for this time, we have only space to consider two 
 broad characteristics. Some men see synthetically, others 
 analytically. 
 
 1. The analytic habit of mind . — If the reader has amongst 
 his friends men of much intellectual culture, he will probably 
 have met with an analyst. They are wonderfully keen investi- 
 gators, and cunning hunters-up of particular facts, in the 
 pursuit of which they pay no attention to other facts. They 
 do not fish with a net, nor even with a trident, but with one 
 thin sharp spear. It is perhaps on this account that analytic 
 people often seem to us at once so intelligent and so obtuse. 
 When sufficiently excited to investigate a fact, they penetrate 
 it very soon, but without that excitement every fact escapes 
 them. The pure analyst is like a man always looking through 
 a microscope : what he does see he sees with supernatural 
 clearness, but that one point is very small in comparison to all 
 that is going on around him. 
 
 2. The synthetic habit of mind . — Synthetists find continual 
 pleasure in observing the relations of things, but from their 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 1 68 
 
 largeness of range they constantly miss minute truths, nor do 
 they ever see anything so vividly as the analysts see thatx 
 which they have analysed. Whenever they have to sacrifice 
 either a truth of relation or a truth of detail, they always 
 sacrifice the detail. The synthetic breadth of view seems to 
 analysts to want accuracy, and to be something very like a 
 general bluntness. The synthetist, on the other hand, con- 
 siders analysts to be clever children, surprisingly sharp on 
 some points, and ignorant of everything else. The analyst 
 esteems his own quality, penetration ; the synthetist also 
 esteems his own quality, which is the power of seeing many 
 things at once, with all their mutual influences. 
 
 3. The combination of two minds in one. — It sometimes 
 happens that a synthetist is gifted with considerable powers of 
 analysis, or the converse. When the two powers co-exist in 
 great vigour the result is, in painting, that union of breadth 
 with detail which is so precious and so rare. An artist 
 endowed with the double gift analyses all the pictorial impres- 
 sions he receives by resolving them into their minutest par- 
 ticles, but at the same time he sees all these particles in their 
 just relations, which the mere analyst does not. The best 
 intellect for painting is one habitually synthetic, yet capable of 
 the most accurate analysis by an effort of the will. When the 
 analytic tendency predominates, even though there be con- 
 siderable power of synthesis, the work is not so good, 
 because good wholes , with defective parts, are always more 
 valuable than bad wholes even though their parts be separately 
 excellent. 
 
 4. Primary artistic analysis of natural appearances. — A 
 finished picture is an attempt to render nature as nearly as 
 possible in full, but many kinds of drawing purposely leave 
 out whole classes of truths, and this, in itself, is a sort of 
 rude primary analysis. Every natural picture, whether of land- 
 scape or figures, has at least the following elements : — 
 
 Shapes of objects, or spaces occupied by them on the field 
 of vision. 
 
 Their local colour. 
 
 Reflected colour. 
 
 Light and dark produced by local colour. 
 
 Light and dark produced by illumination. 
 
 If we reject colour we still have the various other truths 
 
ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS. 
 
 169 
 
 represented in a good engraving ; but we may go much farther 
 in rejection, and still remain intelligible. We may reject the 
 light and dark produced by local colour, as the old masters 
 often did in their studies, and as is done constantly, either 
 absolutely or partially, in most of our popular woodcuts. 
 We may reject even the light and dark produced by illumi- 
 nation, and merely represent our objects by outlines, giving the 
 boundaries of their shapes. The way in which men have 
 always been accustomed to take and leave the truths of nature 1 
 proves a certain power of analysis, without which it would 
 hardly have occurred to anyone to translate coloured objects 
 into white and black, and still less to represent them by mere 
 outlines, which are only artificial enclosures of spaces, like 
 fences round fields. 
 
 5. Artistic analysis of light .— Light presents itself to the 
 simple and unscientific, but very observant, artistic mind in 
 two different characters, as direct or reflected light. What are 
 called shadows, being merely parts of the subject not directly 
 illuminated, are lighted by complex reflected lights. In the 
 study of direct light, the artistic analyst is so far an optician 
 as to perceive that surfaces at right angles to the direct rays 
 are most strongly illuminated, and that as the angle becomes 
 more acute the degree of illumination diminishes ; this fact, at 
 least he perceives, because it is the first secret of successful 
 modelling. But it is in the study of reflected lights that 
 artistic analysis is most actively exercised. They come from 
 sources often so unexpected that a definite mental effort is 
 needed to trace them all to their various origins, and as reflec- 
 tions are almost always complex, the sort of effort they most 
 frequently call for is analysis. Again, as light is endlessly re- 
 verberating, we have re-reflections and re-re-reflections, which, 
 mingling together, produce appearances that all artists try to 
 account for, and that never can be accounted for without the 
 most subtle and delicate analysis. 
 
 6. Artistic analysis of forms . — The study of anatomy is the 
 most definitely analytic movement in this direction in figure 
 painting. Actual dissection is evidently analytic, but so also is 
 mere observation, when it seeks the separate causes of attitudes 
 
 1 And that for thousands of years. The Nineveh marbles give evidence 
 of great power of analysis, and so does much Egyptian work. Their strong 
 abstraction must have been based upon some kind of analysis. 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 170 
 
 and expressions in living creatures, for these cannot be clearly 
 defined without reference to the facts of anatomy. The best 
 analyst of expression would be an anatomist accustomed to 
 observe living faces under all the varieties of human emotion, 
 with continual reference to anatomy. Sir Charles Bell was 
 such an observer, and his treatise on the Anatomy of Expres- 
 sion is an interesting example of the analysis of art and nature 
 in connection with each other. In landscape we have an 
 increasing tendency to analysis, as shown by' the special study 
 of plants, even to dissection of flowers, and the careful 
 analysis of mountain form with reference to geological 
 structure. Mountains cannot be actually dissected, but by 
 means of geological diagrams we arrive at the results of dissec- 
 tion. This kind of study has, however, the peculiarity that it 
 teaches the actual forms, not the apparent ones ; and therefore, 
 though valuable to a certain extent for the definite information 
 it conveys, would be of no use in drawing and painting unless 
 carried on in conjunction with that other kind of form-analysis 
 which deals with the appearances of forms, that is, the shapes 
 of the spaces which they occupy on the plane of vision, and 
 their projection. 
 
 The science of perspective, though of little practical utility 
 in painting, was a resolute attempt to analyse the appearances 
 of forms in a rigidly scientific manner. A more profitable 
 kind of analysis is that constantly exercised by the eye of 
 every good draughtsman when he looks energetically at a 
 cluster of forms and decomposes them, just before drawing 
 them. In such moments of hard looking, a good figure- 
 painter resolves a model into hundreds of variously swelling 
 muscles with many projections of bony structure, every one 
 of which, though never so faintly marked, he sees and seizes 
 in its own place. But I cannot help thinking (this may be 
 because I try to paint landscape myself, and so feel the 
 difficulty of it) that the most marvellous efforts in this kind of 
 analysis are made by the best of our modern English land- 
 scape painters. The way in which they distinguish the 
 thousands of quite different objects, every one of which has 
 to be separately examined and studied before a modern 
 detailed landscape can possibly be painted, is, I believe, the 
 uttermost reach of analysis which can be pointed to in the 
 history of art. For, first, there is the analysis of the species of 
 
ANALYSIS AJVD SYNTHESIS. 
 
 171 
 
 objects, as all the endless species of trees, plants, rocks, &c., 
 and then the disentangling of the innumerable crowds of them 
 which cover natural scenery in infinite confusion. When you 
 have analysed the human body thoroughly you are master of 
 figure analysis, but when you have analysed an oak-tree 
 thoroughly you are not master of landscape analysis ; there 
 still remain ever so many other species of trees, and then the 
 mountains, and the rocks, and the infinite foreground vegetation, 
 and the forms of water as it runs in torrents and rises in 
 storm-waves, and the forms of clouds — fields vast enough, each 
 of them, for the labour of a life ! 
 
 7. Artistic analysis of colour .— In looking at any natural 
 picture, whether a group of men or animals, or a landscape, 
 we are aware of certain broad masses of colour, but also, in 
 exact proportion to our culture, we perceive variety within 
 the masses. For example, the popular mind of the Burgundy 
 wine district has long perceived the splendid golden colour of 
 the vines in autumn, so that the French department in which 
 those vineyards are situated has for its title that noble one the 
 Cote d’ Or, a name peculiarly interesting as a national recog- 
 nition of the glory of natural colour. 1 Every traveller, not 
 colour-blind, who in the month of October drives along the 
 broad road that runs past the Clos de Vougeot through Nuits 
 to Beaune, sees on his right hand such a perpetual blaze of 
 golden colour over the vast expanse of sloping vineyards, 
 that the least observant cannot help talking about it and 
 wondering at it. But I doubt whether anybody who has not 
 tried to paint knows of how many elements that colour is 
 composed : what subtle, delicate greys there are in it, what 
 strange purples, what tender, exquisite greens, what spots of 
 sanguine crimson, what grave and sober sorts of russet, what 
 paleness of fading yellow, nearer the colour of primroses than 
 of gold. The impression given by the union of all these 
 colours is invariably that of deep, reddish, very rich gold ; but 
 pray how can a painter paint so composite a colour without 
 first decomposing it? On finding himself in front of such a 
 burning expanse of vine-leaves, of whose countless millions 
 
 1 This is an artist’s explanation of the name given to the Burgundy wine- 
 district, but I rather suspect that the title more probably originated in the 
 appreciation of coined gold, than of autumnal colour. The vine-lands are 
 productive of enormous revenues. — 1873. 
 
172 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 not two are coloured precisely alike, a painter’s first thought is 
 to sift out and analyse the elements of his own impression in 
 order that he may himself afterwards, by the re-union of the 
 same elements, reproduce the impression on the minds of 
 others. For the public mind is, on this question, more critical 
 than its habitual simplicity of language would lead us to sup- 
 pose. A gentleman who has been driving through the wine 
 district in autumn uses such simple, emphatic words to describe 
 his impressions that you would imagine a little pure cadmium 
 yellow might satisfy him, and that the greys and purples were 
 superfluous. Not so. He would at once feel that the cadmium 
 was crude (though no cruder than his own word “ golden ”), 
 and to satisfy him you would have to paint the greys and 
 purples, to accomplish which you must first analyse them. 
 
 It is probable that spectators who only look at pictures, and 
 are not accustomed to the conversation of artists, may not 
 give them credit for much of this sort of analysis • but the 
 portfolios of many landscape-painters contain sketches and 
 memoranda on which letters, or words, and sometimes whole 
 sentences are written, from which it would be easy to prove 
 that their authors really do analyse colour before painting it. 
 The following paragraph, copied just as it stands from a note 
 written upon a study of my own, may be taken as a specimen 
 of such memoranda. It was scribbled hastily for my own 
 guidance* and may be accepted for what it is worth, though 
 I would much rather quote from the private memoranda of 
 some other and better painter if I had the opportunity. The 
 numbers refer to corresponding numbers on the study. 
 
 “ The causes of the varieties of colour in these mountains 
 are as follows : — First, there is the rocky structure of the 
 mountain itself, which comes out bare in the bosses, as, for 
 instance, continually in Ben Vorich (No. i), which is the best 
 example of ruggedness at Loch Awe. This bare rock gives a 
 valuable cool grey tint, but grass grows where the soil holds, 
 and this grass, as the ground is poor, reaches no more bril- 
 liant colour than a warm olive green. The most precious result 
 of this conformation is, that wherever water runs in wet weather 
 the grass is much greener, and this produces the appearance of 
 an infinite number of winding lines of green, running in and 
 out amongst the rocks in the most wayward manner, but in 
 reality always subject to the laws by which water flows. And 
 
ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS. 
 
 173 
 
 it is these green stream-marks which indicate, more than any- 
 thing else except shadow , the true mountain form. Although 
 visibly enough defined, they are always gradated at their edges 
 into the olive-green around, because the water does not always 
 flow down them in the same quantity, and only occasional 
 floods refresh the edges, whereas every shower nourishes the 
 roots in the middle, which therefore produce the greenest 
 grass. The trees at present (May) are of a dark olive green, 
 but the places where the wood has been cut are reddish. In 
 No. 2 there is little variety of colour just now, the principal 
 elements of it being the usual olive grass and the rock struc- 
 ture under it. The exposed ground to the right on this moun- 
 tain is redder, though still very grey. No. 3 has a very slender 
 covering of grass, slashed all over with reddish openings. In 
 No. 4, just under the figure, or a little to the right of it, the 
 openings are redder than anywhere else. In No. 5 the bare 
 rock scarcely appears at all, but there is a great intricacy of 
 mosaic on account of the grass being patched with heather. 
 In No. 6 the bare rock is nowhere visible, but there is the 
 richest mosaic of grass and heather. As to the middle distance, 
 beginning with the promontory, some trees are now in their 
 richest spring green, whilst the evergreens show dark amongst 
 them, and therefore produce a telling contrast. The rest of 
 the middle distance is a mosaic of purple and green, neither 
 intense now.” But all this, I fear, is becoming tiresome, and 
 so let us get to the concluding sentence, which certainly 
 seems to have been written by somebody who was trying very 
 hard to analyse (or separate the elements of) the natural 
 subject, and found himself baffled by Nature’s inextricable 
 entanglement. “ Objects come against each other continually 
 where there is not contrast enough, either of colour or light , to 
 separate them , a 7 id the consequence is an inextricable co 7 ifusio 7 i ; 
 this is especially noticeable in the leafless tree to the right, 
 which is quite confused with the leafy one and the mountain 
 background.” 
 
 Here is only the very rudest analysis. Grass is greener in 
 one place than in another because it is better watered, hills are 
 slashed with reddish openings in the grassy turf, or covered 
 with a rich mosaic of purple and green. There is another 
 kind of colour analysis incomparably more delicate : that of a 
 colourist actually working in colour, for then, at every instant, 
 
174 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 he is analysing hues which no words can describe, no writing 
 decompose. A colourist must be an analyst of colour — how 
 far consciously so or not it may be difficult to determine, 
 some colourists thinking and looking laboriously before they 
 paint, others working (as it would seem) by happy instinct. 
 But out of analysis, in every case, comes the astounding 
 sorcery of making things look quite right by means that seem 
 so arbitrary, and odd, and wrong. If you go to any great 
 work in colour, and stare hard into it, at a distance of six 
 inches, you will see queer dots and streaks of colour quite 
 unlike what lies on that part of the natural subject, but which 
 tell truly, at the right distance, because they are conce?itrations 
 of colour elements gathered by the a?ialysis of surrounding fields 
 of colour. They are true essences, obtained by analysis. 1 
 
 8. Critical analysis of compositions. — Art-critics sometimes 
 analyse pictorial compositions with a view to ascertain the 
 laws of composition. True composers, I imagine, rarely, if 
 ever, analyse their own work in this way, and the main use of 
 such analysis is that it makes us admire good compositions 
 more and enjoy them better. The sort of analysis w r ith which 
 critics often amuse themselves may be best understood by an 
 example ; and I will choose a drawing by Nicholas Poussin, a 
 photograph of which was given in the second number of the 
 Fine Arts Quarterly Review . 
 
 It is a building of many forms, apparently acting in perfect 
 freedom, into one structure of a character so peculiarly arti- 
 ficial that composition of this perfect kind is never found in any 
 natural group. Nature gives abundant hints and suggestions, 
 but never quite composes, in our human sense ; just as the 
 murmurs of waves and the whistling of the wind may suggest 
 musical ideas, but never play tunes. In this drawing the 
 structural arrangement of the group is obvious at a glance. 
 
 1 There is a curious resemblance between the faculty of analysis in seeing 
 colour and in tasting food. Many of us can know that a dish is badly 
 cooked without being able to say why. Any practised analyst of flavours, a 
 good cook, or an epicure, can somehow separate the most composite flavour 
 into all its elements, and so finds out at once which element is superabun- 
 dant and which deficient. The faculty of musical analysis is of the same 
 kind. A good musical critic not only hears the whole of a chorus, but he 
 hears all the parts separately, as well as simultaneously. And it seems 
 probable that a composer, when writing an opera, hears in his imagination 
 combinations of sound, which he has to analyse before making out his score. 
 
ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS. 
 
 175 
 
 The centre is the head of Pan’s image. A canopy is formed 
 over it, not only by the trees, but by an imaginary arch begun 
 at one side by the arm and trumpet of a faun, and at the other 
 by the arm and timbrel of a nymph. See how curiously the 
 right arm of the faun continues the curve of the arch, and as 
 the hand did not go far enough down it holds a piece of 
 drapery which carries the line almost to the thigh of the 
 kneeling faun, which really bears, on that side, the weight of 
 the arch. On the right the arch is continued by three flying 
 pieces of drapery, and the body and leg of the boy, his foot 
 in the right-hand corner being the termination of the arch on 
 that side. Under this imaginary arch is another easily trace- 
 able, one of which the head of Pan’s image is the keystone. 
 This second or inner arch is constructed on the right of the 
 outspread arms and head of the nymph taking the flowers, the 
 head of the child who carries the flower-basket, and the head, 
 body, and left leg of the boy who is helping the drinking 
 satyr. On the left, the same arch runs from the right knee of 
 the kneeling faun through his body and head to the head of 
 the woman on the goat, then through the faun’s head at her 
 side to the left hand of the nymph carrying the faun, whence 
 the ascent to Pan’s head is very slight. The reader will 
 observe how curiously all the other forms support this arch or 
 correspond to it. The arm of the kneeling faun, the woman’s 
 outstretched arm, the arm of the faun at her side, are built 
 together compactly. And observe that the faun on the nymph’s 
 shoulder keeps its right hind-leg lower for the same reason. 
 To complete the composition, there are festoons of forms under 
 Pan as well as arches above him. The most important festoon 
 begins on the left with the inclined body and the extended right 
 leg of the nymph on the goat. It reaches the ground in the 
 thigh of the fallen satyr, and rises again through his shoulder 
 to the body of the stooping faun. See how the three heads of 
 the stooping faun, the drunken satyr, and the boy, carry the 
 festoon up regularly on the right. There is also a smaller 
 festoon nearer Pan descending from the uplifted hand of the 
 nymph who carries the faun, through her right hand, and along 
 the faun’s head, to the shoulder of the nymph who has pushed 
 down the satyr, thence it rises through her head to the drapery 
 of the nymph taking flowers, and through her head to the 
 timbrel. A lower festoon is completed by the flower-basket. 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 176 
 
 thrown down in the foreground, to which the foot of the riding 
 nymph points, and the trees in the background are strength- 
 ening pillars within the larger or imaginary arch. The compo- 
 sition may be summarily described as a central image of Pan 
 surrounded by arches and festoons of combined forms. It is 
 a real structure , not a fortuitous agglomeration. Much more 
 might be said of it in this way, for the smallest details quite 
 curiously corroborate what has been already advanced, but this 
 analysis is long enough to be read with patience. 
 
 9. Artistic analysis in technical methods .■ — Painters with a 
 strong analytic tendency often try to separate the work of 
 painting as much as possible, because such intellects find 
 difficulties conquerable in succession which, to them, are in- 
 superable when united. The excessive technical difficulty of 
 painting consists in this, that with one and the same touch the 
 artist has to give true form and true colour — it is like a game of 
 billiards where you have to hit two balls with one stroke, with 
 the difference that in painting misses are injurious to the beauty 
 of the work and are hard to retrieve. The finest execution 
 is therefore always marked by great power of synthesis, of 
 which more presently; but it is safer for artists who are 
 not endowed with that power to divide the difficulties as 
 if they were hostile armies, and attack them separately. 
 Such painters often work in a sort of mosaic on a carefully 
 prepared design ; and as working with mixed tints is a kind 
 of synthesis, they sometimes carry the analytic principle so far 
 as to resolve the tints into their components, and paint with 
 small touches of quite pure colour. The practical analysis of 
 natural tints has never, I believe, been carried farther than by 
 Whaite and Alfred Hunt, who succeeded in rendering them 
 with remarkable brilliance on the principle of resolving 
 compound tints and representing them by the juxtaposition, 
 or superposition, of the component colours. 1 It is right to add 
 that conquering difficulties by dividing them was not the only 
 object of these artists. They perceived that the brilliance of 
 pigments was always dulled by mixture, and that the too 
 common modern practice of unlimited intermixture led to ruin- 
 ous results. To avoid this they adopted the plan of working in 
 pure colours on a white ground, and, as they liked form, they 
 chose to work on a careful design. But the analytic tendency 
 1 At least in their practice before 1863. 
 
ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS. 
 
 177 
 
 in execution is by no means confined to these artists and their 
 school. We observe it in much modern English work. Holman 
 Hunt’s practice is analytic : indeed the pre-Raphaelite way of 
 work is naturally analytic, because pre-Raphaelitism has, from 
 the beginning, been an analytic movement, and may be best 
 defined as a new analysis of nature. When pictures are 
 painted on careful designs and finished part by part, it is 
 analytic execution. When they are first blocked out roughly in 
 formless masses and brought forward all at once into drawing 
 and detail, it is synthetic execution. Of course in the first 
 instance there must co-exist considerable intellectual power 
 of synthesis, and, in the second, of analysis, but as regards 
 execution the distinction is real. 
 
 10. Analytic systems of art - study. — The principle of 
 analysis may be carried very far in art education. The pupil 
 may have the difficulties so ingeniously divided for him as 
 rarely to present more than one at a time for him to contend 
 against. The good of this system is that by separating the 
 difficulties they are more thoroughly understood and more 
 easily conquered ; the evil of it, that it in no way represents the 
 struggles of the mature career of an artist whose supreme 
 embarrassment is not the number of difficulties, but the fact 
 of their intimate inter-union. The pupil who has always been 
 breaking the sticks one by one is likely to experience severe 
 disappointment when he discovers that he cannot break the 
 faggot. 
 
 Advocates for the analytic system of art-education generally 
 attach such importance to drawing, that they would have 
 painting postponed until the pupil has acquired the power of 
 accurate design. The following sketch of an analytic system 
 of education in landscape will show how far the principle may 
 be carried. As to the policy of adopting any such system in 
 practice, it would be wise to do so only on condition of 
 frequently laying it aside for a completely synthetic way of 
 work. For example, a pupil who should work alternately six 
 months with a severe analyst and six with a synthetist would 
 escape the dangers peculiar to each method when followed 
 exclusively. 
 
 (1) Study of simple objects in black and white with the pen, 
 like Diirer’s woodcuts, not recognizing local colour, and only 
 using shading to help the expression of form. Common day- 
 
 77 N 
 
i 7 8 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 light permitted, but no sunshine. Great attention directed to 
 firmness and accuracy of line. 
 
 (2) Study in black and white, aiming chiefly at the trans- 
 lation of local colour. No sunshine admitted. Form not so 
 severely required as before. 
 
 (3) Studies of the same objects in sunshine. In the attempt 
 to render light , form and local colour not severely required 
 from the student. This involves the careful study of cast 
 shadows and reflected lights. 
 
 (4) Analytic study of many classes of natural objects by the 
 foregoing methods. Leaves, flowers, grasses, mosses, branches, 
 twigs, trunks, stones, rocks (especially such portions of them as 
 best show their structure), parts of mountains, bits of fore- 
 ground, and so on. All the principal species of trees, rocks, 
 &c., to be studied separately. 
 
 (5) Studies admitting colour, but no sunshine. These studies 
 being entirely for local colour, everything else is, for the time, 
 treated as of minor importance. Repetitions of the analytic 
 study of natural objects, this time with their local colour, and 
 for it peculiarly. 1 
 
 (6) Studies for coloured sunshine. New analysis of natural 
 objects in sunshine. Truth of sunlight and sun-colour all thaf 
 is aimed at. 
 
 11. Partial or irregular analysis . — It is only in very recent 
 times that the doctrine that everything is worthy of study has 
 been admitted by artists, and even yet we find figure-painters who 
 will not take the trouble to analyse landscape seriously, and 
 therefore cannot paint it at all. Ingres is a notable example 
 of partial analysis ; he has analysed the human figure, and can 
 draw it well, but he cannot draw a stick or a stone, far less a 
 wave of the sea or the ripple of a brook. But if the reader 
 cares to seek for examples of partial analysis he will find them 
 abundantly in the Exhibitions. The best painting requires an 
 insight so universal that nothing can escape it, and as this sort 
 of insight is rare, we find that one painter analyses one thing, 
 and another another, but that nearly all of them miss some 
 orders of truths. Partial analysis is indeed only another name 
 for imperfect information, which cannot be hidden in painting, 
 as it may in literature, by artfully passing one’s ignorances in 
 
 1 The best time for such study as this is in gloomy weather, after, or 
 during rain. The local colours are then at their fullest, and still imitable. 
 
ANALYSIS AND SY NINE SIS. 
 
 179 
 
 a parenthesis and loudly enlarging upon the little we know. 
 The empty space in the painter’s brain is represented by a 
 corresponding emptiness in his pictures. 
 
 12. Pernicious excess in analysis. — When painters see detail 
 very clearly, they are often fatally led into morbid or excessive 
 analysis. In this state the artist perceives detail with surprising 
 minuteness, and is, as it were, fascinated and blinded by it, than 
 which nothing can be more dangerous to any painter, for then 
 he cannot see one natural picture, nor even a part of it, but 
 only the particles of parts. 
 
 We see the same tendency at work in other things. Gram- 
 mar is an analysis of language, and may be of some use in its 
 way, provided we do not weary ourselves with it. But excessive 
 grammar is over-analysis, and grammarians are often rendered 
 insensible to the artistic beauty of great literary works by their 
 petty grammatical habits. They will interrupt you in the finest 
 passages to expatiate on the force of a particle. As there are 
 two ways of reading Homer, that of the poet and that of the 
 philologist, so also there are two ways of reading nature, — the 
 artist’s and the analyst’s. 
 
 13. Premature synthesis. — Synthesis, which is attempted 
 before a sufficient po wer of analysis has been acquired and exer- 
 cised. The colour work of amateurs, who are so situated as to 
 be able to devote little time to the practice of art, is nearly 
 always rendered nugatory by premature synthesis. So also, 
 very frequently, is that of artists by profession who are obliged 
 to expose pictures for sale without having given sufficient time 
 to analysis in the way of study. 
 
 14. Synthesis in light. — The lightness and darkness of each 
 object, being relative, must be translated synthetically, that is, 
 with continual reference to the rest of the picture. When this 
 is not done, the parts may be separately true, yet false when 
 considered with reference to the whole. The necessity for 
 synthetic and artificial systems of light in pictorial art results 
 from the difference in scale of natural and pictorial light, for, if 
 they were the same, a part truly copied in its light and dark 
 would also be true relatively to the whole, which it cannot be so 
 long as our scale is shorter than Nature’s. 
 
 There is also, in all good pictorial art, a synthetic and 
 artificial arrangement of light. It very seldom occurs that a 
 natural scene is illuminated in a way precisely fitted to the 
 
 N 2 
 
i8o 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 purposes of art, because the first want of human art is unity, 
 and Nature, in those fragments of her creation which we make 
 into artistic wholes, seldom cares to achieve unity. The real 
 unities of Nature are so large as to be beyond the grasp of 
 painting. Her landscapes are fragments, but the globe is a 
 rounded whole ; her men and women are imperfect details, 
 but the human race is a balanced being. Art takes tiny 
 fragments of Nature’s great wholes and makes little wholes of 
 them. Nature’s illumination is generally scattered — wants 
 concentration. Good artists contrive, without violating the 
 laws of possible phenomena, to light their pictures in such a 
 manner that the light, instead of shattering the composition 
 into fragments, shall bind and bring together all its chiefest 
 elements. 
 
 15. Synthesis in colour . — Colour requires higher power of 
 synthesis than anything else in art, for although analysis is of 
 use in studying natural colour, it does not of itself enable us 
 to make colour of our own ; because, whether you will or not, 
 in painting on any one part of your picture you are really 
 painting upon, that is, changing the colour of, the whole canvas 
 at once, and unless you do this always synthetically you 
 will never succeed. Every new touch changes all the touches 
 already laid, — if wanner it cools them, if cooler it warms 
 them, if brighter it dulls them, if duller it lends them bright- 
 ness. This is so curiously true that visitors to the studios of 
 painters constantly believe that the artist has been working 
 on portions of his picture which he has never touched since 
 their previous visits. And they are right. 
 
 16. Synthesis in form. — Commonly called composition. The 
 synthetic arrangement of forms is strikingly apparent in all 
 first-rate design, and it is one of the eternal distinctions which 
 separate good design from photography. In photography th^ 
 arrangement of forms can never be synthetic. You may group 
 your models and materials as artfully as you like, there will be 
 no synthesis. So in living groups of costumed models, called 
 tableaux vivants , which people sometimes amuse themselves by 
 getting up, it is not possible, by any amount of care in arrange- 
 ment, ever to obtain artistic synthesis. Why ? 
 
 Because synthesis in form does not merely arrange given 
 forms, but runs into, and modifies, every line in the forms 
 themselves. A great inventive artist never in a picture draws 
 
ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS . 
 
 181 
 
 anything exactly as it is, but compels it into such shapes 
 as he wants in that place, having reference all the time to all 
 the other shapes either already put, or to be put, in all the 
 other parts of the picture. Hence the imitation of artistic 
 composition by grouping things for the photographer, or by 
 tableaux vivants , is a manifest absurdity. 
 
 Something of the mutual effect of colours is observable in 
 the relations of forms. They modify each other to a con- 
 siderable extent by contrast ; a stiff line seems doubly stiff 
 beside a flowing one, and a slight curve is much more perceptible 
 when you set it beside a straight line. Good composers avail 
 themselves of this property with great skill, and their lightest 
 grace and sturdiest strength are due to it. 
 
 17. Syjithetic systems of art study . — A difference of opinion 
 exists amongst painters as to whether young artists ought to 
 begin to paint before they have mastered drawing, or only 
 take up the palette when already accomplished draughtsmen. 
 This difference may be stated as, on the one hand, an advocacy 
 of the analytic system of art-education, and, on the other, 
 of the synthetic. Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mr. Leslie are 
 amongst the synthetists ; and I know a good painter, who, 
 on finding that a young friend of his was drawing assiduously 
 to improve his forms, recommended him most urgently not 
 to draw in black and white, but rather try to improve his 
 drawing gradually whilst painting; in other words, to study 
 synthetically. 
 
 There is much truth in this view, and much importance is 
 to be attached to the fact that since painting is, after al], 
 work emphatically synthetic (being the union of many forms 
 and colours and lights and darks into artistic wholes), it must 
 be right to get the student as early as possible into the habit 
 of synthesis. But painting is a synthesis of what ? Of innu- 
 merable truths. And it is found, in practice, that the human 
 faculties are not large enough to learn all these truths at once. 
 
 The most rational conclusion appears to be that the right 
 principle of early study is analysis ; but that between the 
 period of studentship and that of mastery there exists an 
 interval, in many cases long and laborious, when the artist is 
 painfully acquiring the power of synthesis, that is, the power 
 of expressing all at once, and harmoniously, the many different 
 facts which he is already able to express separately. 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 182 
 
 Such are a few of the reflections which naturally suggest 
 themselves, in one shape or other, to every painter who 
 thinks about his art. But it is seldom that painters are 
 willing to recognize the full value of both the two great 
 mental operations which govern the art of painting. Some 
 urge the necessity of analysis : the separation of aim in 
 study, the resolution of all things into their component parts, 
 and the conscious investigation of causes. Others, and these 
 generally the greater men, say that all analysis is valueless 
 except as a part, and by no means the most difficult part, 
 of study — that for performance it goes a very little way; and 
 these latter have such slight respect for the power of analysis, 
 that they neither value it much in themselves nor honour it 
 in their fellow-artists. They assert, too, that a strong healthy 
 eye, which sees things truly as they appear, and a retentive 
 memory, which holds what the eye has seen, are better 
 possessions for a painter than the power of minute analysis. 
 And they are certainly right so far, that analysis becomes 
 a habit, and always has a tendency to attach itself to some 
 facts to the neglect of others, so that a skilled analyst sees 
 a few things with supernatural clearness and is blind to every- 
 thing which he has not analysed. On the other hand, a true 
 synthetist sees quite impartially , and this impartiality makes 
 him largely receptive. The analyst penetrates and resolves 
 many things, but a perfect synthetist would receive all things. 
 
 The best state for a painter would, no doubt, be to see 
 things all at once, in their right pictorial relations, and then 
 to be able to keep the natural group or scene in his memory 
 with perfect distinctness, and look at it, as one looks at a real 
 scene, but without any effort of analysis, simply seeing and 
 copying the complete picture in the mind. Painters are 
 generally strong as they approach to this state, and weak 
 as they recede from it ; the weakest state of all being when 
 the artist finds himself compelled to think about what he 
 is doing, and to analyse nature with full consciousness of 
 his occupation. Nevertheless, simplicity of sight and strength 
 of memory are so rare, that most painters are wise in making 
 up for the deficiency of these, so far as they are able, by scien- 
 tific accuracy of analysis and laborious gathering of registered 
 observations. Yet, though it may be permitted to accumulate 
 materials by such processes of separation, w T e may rest assured 
 
ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS. 
 
 183 
 
 of this, that in all fine art, the supreme Lord of Construction, 
 who, if present, makes precious the most meagre materials, 
 and in whose absence all that knowledge can contribute and 
 wealth procure will be lavished vainly, is that strong ruler 
 Synthesis, whom Analysis may effectually serve, but can never 
 either replace or represent. — 1864. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 Analysis seems to be resorted to in the study of painting, partly 
 for the purpose of saving time. Thus a painter will often draw in 
 black-and-white (although drawing in black-and-white is not his 
 business) in order to get at form more rapidly than he could get 
 at it through colour. Artists advance more rapidly in the begin- 
 ning by analytic education, but there are the best reasons for 
 believing that if they studied synthetically from the first, advancing 
 only from simpler to more complicated subjects, but taking light, 
 form, and colour all together, they would have a more perfect 
 mastery in their maturity, and be more likely to execute xtdl paint- 
 ing than th painted drawing which is so common, and to produce 
 colour rather than colours.— 1873. 
 
XIII. 
 
 THE REACTION FROM PRE-RAPffA ELITISM. 
 
 The paper on Analysis and Synthesis in Painting was written 
 to clear the way for this. Having considered the great theo- 
 retical question at length, we can now dispose of this practical 
 one briefly. 
 
 The Pre-Raphaelite movement is understood to have com- 
 bined two very distinct aims : first, the intellectual elevation 
 of art by the choice of noble and original subjects, and 
 secondly, its technical advancement by a new and minute 
 analysis of nature. The movement was therefore at the same 
 time very ambitious intellectually, and very arduous practically, 
 requiring both considerable mental power for conception and 
 enormous labour of hand for realization. In two words, the 
 Pre-Raphaelites were intellectual and analytic, both to a 
 superlative degree ; previous art, in England at least, having 
 generally been unintellectual (much of it even bete ), and 
 either nobly synthethic (Reynolds, Gainsborough, Turner), or 
 feebly attempting synthesis (West, Haydon, &c.), or again 
 partially analytic (Wilkie, Landseer), but never yet resolutely 
 and thoroughly analytic. 
 
 The Pre-Raphaelite movement in painting was contemporary 
 with similar tendencies in the outer public mind. We are 
 generally more intellectual than men of the last generation, 
 because more familiar with literature, and consequently with 
 many forms of thought which find full expression in literature, 
 yet have no sufficient room for development in the fragmentary 
 patchwork of common conversation. The steady increase of 
 scientific studies has also given very many of us the habit of 
 
REACTION FROM PRE-RA PH A ELITISM. 
 
 185 
 
 analysis. The father and mother of modern Pre-Raphaelitism 
 were modern literary thought and modern scientific investigation 
 of the facts of nature. 
 
 The reader is familiar with the chief products of the move- 
 ment. He has a general idea of what constitutes a pre- 
 Raphaelite picture. But if he endeavours to construct a 
 definition of a Pre-Raphaelite picture, he will find it exceed- 
 ingly difficult ; I venture to add that he will not be able to 
 construct such a definition at all without including some of the 
 defects of Pre-Raphaelitism ; and I argue that as in course of 
 time, by a reaction natural to men of high artistic endowments, 
 the Pre-Raphaelite leaders will probably get rid of these defects, 
 they will then produce works which, however excellent, will no 
 longer be recognizable as Pre-Raphaelite works, or distinguish- 
 able by the more obvious marks of the sect. 
 
 The marks of the sect were intellectual and emotional 
 intensity, marvellous power of analysis, sensitiveness to strong 
 colours, insensitiveness to faint modulations of sober tint , 1 
 curious enjoyment of quaintness and rigidity in arrangement, 
 absolute indifference to grace, and size, and majesty. 
 
 Now, as the greatest artists hitherto have become synthetic as 
 they approached maturity, and used analysis only for the acqui- 
 sition of knowledge, it seemed likely that after awhile the Pre- 
 Raphaelites would begin to feel that so long as they combined 
 the greatest possible amount of analysis with the smallest 
 allowable degree of synthesis, they were paying unequal worship 
 to the dual deity of art. The pendulum had swung so far on 
 the side of analysis, that it needed little foresight to predict a 
 movement in the opposite direction. 
 
 Besides, there was the question of individual temperament, a 
 consideration not to be overlooked in dealing with an art so 
 peculiarly the product of individual organizations . 2 It needed 
 
 1 This is exactly equivalent to saying that their colour-power was in a 
 very early stage of development. — 1873. 
 
 2 For example, the temperament of Horace Vernet. For Vernet to 
 have attempted to paint like Holman Hunt would have been artistic 
 suicide. Vernet, at the best, could only have made himself a third-rate 
 Pre-Raphaelite, and as such would not have expressed one-hundredth part 
 of the conceptions he lived to realize. Such as he was, without being in 
 the strict sense a great painter, he expressed his particular talent most 
 completely ; and I argue that if he had attempted to be a Pre-Raphaelite,, 
 that particular talent of his would never have found expression at all. But 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT AR7. 
 
 1 86 
 
 not only wonderful patience to produce Pre-Raphaelite pictures, 
 it needed also the peculiar faculty of dwelling long on one 
 subject. Some men can do this quite contentedly, others cannot 
 endure to do it at all. Leonardo really liked to be long about a 
 picture, did not wish to see it finished, as some mothers do not 
 wish to seq their children become men and women. On the 
 other hand, artists like Turner and Gustave Dore, being pressed 
 by multitudes of conceptions, are impatient to get the idea of 
 to-day expressed, that to-morrow may be given to to-morrow’s 
 thought. It is evident that artists of this latter class will always 
 seek for expeditious modes of expression, and refuse long 
 elaboration, not because they do not see detail, but because 
 they would rather utter a thousand thoughts briefly than ten 
 thoughts elaborately. 
 
 Then, again, though Pre-Raphaelite work when at its best is 
 very admirable, its aims are so high and its pretensions so great, 
 that it does not admit of mediocrity. No painter, who held 
 large views of his art, could endure to .produce second-rate Pre- 
 Raphaelite pictures. Art which professes only to suggest and 
 remind, may fail in many things, and still be precious to us for 
 its obscure hints of natural beauty : art which professes to be 
 perfect imitation makes such immense claims that success is 
 proportionately more difficult. Pre-Raphaelitism was only too 
 uncompromising ; for the art of painting is confessedly a com- 
 promise. And the minuter the detail you profess to give, the 
 more accurate must your information be. Prudent men keep 
 within their science, and do not profess to know everything ; he 
 who offers to tell us the whole truth has need of enormous 
 knowledge. 
 
 It is on these grounds that I have always felt convinced that 
 the Pre-Raphaelites would not effect that universal and perma- 
 nent revolution in our school of painting which Mr. Ruskin 
 seems at one time to have anticipated. That they have 
 exercised a great and, on the whole, a beneficial influence is 
 indisputable ; that they will succeed in imposing the two prin- 
 ciples of intellectual conception and technical elaboration on 
 the English school generally is not to be hoped for. Still less 
 
 there need be little apprehension, in these days, of such loss as this would 
 have been ; for men of original genius will not now submit to any system, 
 however excellent in itself, when submission would involve the stifling of 
 their own faculties and the abdication of their own place. 
 
REACTION FROM PRE-RA PI/A ELITISM. 
 
 187 
 
 is it probable that they will revolutionize the disciplined schools 
 of the Continent. 
 
 One of the conclusions about painting, to which I have been 
 most unwillingly driven, is that it is not necessarily an intel- 
 lectual occupation. There are painters who are intellectual 
 men, and such men put an intellectual element into their art ; 
 but there are also very good painters who are not, in the right 
 sense of the word, intellectual. Good eyes and skilful fingers 
 are of more practical importance to a painter than under- 
 standing. This is a reason why an intellectual school of painters 
 is not likely to be realized, for in every school there will be 
 men of strong sight and manual skill without much power 
 of thought. 
 
 Then as to minute elaboration, the mightiest painting 
 refuses it almost always, for master-painters will not waste 
 months in expressing facts by copyism which they can express 
 better by their magic in a day. That magic may be defined as 
 the power of representing things with profounder truth by 
 substitution of abstract results of study, than by imitation of 
 the object. As the Pre-Raphaelites acquire this power, they 
 will desist from minute elaboration ; and other artists, endowed 
 from the beginning with this gift, will reject the Pre-Raphaelite 
 discipline. 
 
 It was curious to observe this turning-point in the career of 
 Millais. The following quotation from Mr. Ruskin’s Notes 
 on the Academy Exhibition of 1857 marks it : — “The change 
 in his manner, from the years of Ophelia and Mariana to 
 1857, is, not merely Fall, it is Catastrophe ; not merely a loss 
 of power, but a reversal of principle ; his excellence has been 
 effaced, as a man wipeth a dish — wiping it, and turning it 
 upside down.” The truth is, that Millais, before goings on 
 his new tack, was for a while arrested in his progress, even 
 visibly receding, his uncertain sails shivering powerless in the 
 wind. And Mr. Ruskin, the most keenly interested on-looker, 
 feeling instinctively that the Pre-Raphaelite period was over, 
 raised this bitter cry of disappointment and regret. Since then 
 Millais paints better than ever, but he is no longer a Pre- 
 Raphaelite. Take, for instance, the picture called “ My First 
 Sermon,” a most charming, loveable, covetable work, but not 
 in any obvious way bearing the marks of Pre-Raphaelitism. 
 The thought is pretty and interesting, but not profound ; the 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 'i 88 
 
 execution skilful, but not elaborate. It is a quite successful bit 
 of popular painting, equal to Leslie in felicity of expression, 
 superior to him in colour. But if “ My First Sermon ” is a 
 Pre-Raphaelite work, I am at a loss to recognize the signs by 
 which it is known as such. And the illustrations to popular 
 novels which Millais has of late years so richly given us do 
 not visibly exemplify the principles of Pre-Raphaelitism. 
 
 It is of course difficult to prove positively that any artist of 
 the realist schools is or is not a Pre-Raphaelite, because the 
 Pre-Raphaelites have never publicly defined their doctrines ; 
 wisely leaving the public and the critics to find them out as 
 they best might, and by this policy reserving much liberty of 
 action. I have the greatest respect for Millais, who, though 
 very unequal and with grave defects, seems to me as unques- 
 tionably a man of genius as either Keats or Tennyson, and 
 as sure of immortality. But if Millais is a Pre-Raphaelite 
 now, I see nothing to exclude Landseer, or Leslie, or any 
 'other thorough modern, from the sect. We have been told 
 that one important distinction of Pre-Raphaelitism was that, 
 whereas other men illustrated poets and novelists, the Pre- 
 Raphaelites were to be their own poets ; yet as Leslie illus- 
 trated Cervantes so Millais illustrates Mr. Anthony Trollope. 
 We have been told that another distinction of Pre-Raphaelitism 
 was its care and labour in detail; but the present work of Millais 
 is not so careful as that of Gerome, or Meissonier, or Blaise 
 Desgoffe, yet nobody calls these men Pre-Raphaelites. We may 
 be told now that this popularized art is the natural development 
 of Pre-Raphaelitism, which is becoming freer in workmanship 
 and more popular in subject ; that is to say, that the school has 
 developed itself into its opposite, as Protestantism sometimes 
 “ develops ” itself into Romanism. This is not development : 
 it is reaction. Now, either Pre-Raphaelitism has a peculiar 
 doctrine, or it has not. If it has a peculiar doctrine, in what 
 respect is that doctrine exemplified in the present work of 
 Millais, and not exemplified in the work of Landseer and Frith ? 
 And if Pre-Raphaelitism has no peculiar doctrine at all, — what 
 is it? 
 
 There are states of the public mind which produce artistic 
 results at particular times which, for lack of the necessary heat 
 and excitement, no subsequent epoch can ever engender. And 
 in these days we live intellectually so fast that such epochs occur 
 
REACTION FROM PRE-RA PH A ELITISM. 
 
 189 
 
 every twenty years. They leave their mark in some work of 
 inimitable art, never again to be produced by the intelligence of 
 man. Marmion, Ivanhoe, Faust, Don Juan, Jocelyn, In Memo- 
 riam, Vanity Fair, are not to be written twice. And I could name 
 as many pictures which are not to be painted twice, but in this 
 place it is only necessary to point to Hunt’s “ Finding of the 
 Saviour in the Temple,” as the culminating and representative 
 Pre-Raphaelite figure picture, and Brett’s “ Val d’ Aosta” as 
 the culminating and representative Pre-Raphaelite landscape. 
 Those pictures had the qualities, a?id the defects , of the sect. 
 There could be no question about how those works ought to 
 be classed ; they stood as visibly distinct from other forms of 
 art as soldiers in full uniform do from a crowd of civilians. 
 
 But since then, Pre-Raphaelitism, having produced the one 
 or two representative works in which it seems to be a law of 
 nature that each new thought shall embody itself, is losing its 
 individuality, and melting into other art as an iceberg drifting 
 southwards slowly melts and loses itself in the warm seas that 
 there surround it. It will exist still, as water exists mingled with 
 other water ; but it will be no longer a definite, visible, isolated 
 power. 
 
 Force is not lost, but it becomes untraceable when diffused, 
 and is only recognizable by us when concentrated, or at its 
 source. Pre-Raphaelitism has been unquestionably a force — 
 a very great force — and its effects, though it may cease to 
 exist, will be lasting. It was a strong and beneficial reaction 
 from indolent synthesis to laborious analysis, and from mental 
 inactivity to new thought and emotion — a great sharpening of 
 the sight and rousing of the intellect, and even a fresh stimulus 
 to the feelings. The irresistible pendulum swung then towards 
 analysis and thought ; it is now swinging back towards synthesis 
 and manual power. Such reactions take place in the private 
 lives of individual artists. They try hard for synthesis and 
 unity, then find the details weak, and give themselves up to 
 analysis ; after that, they perceive, shortly, an alarming lack 
 of unity, and so swing back to synthesis. 
 
 The representative of the most recent tendency is Mr. 
 Whistler. Of his work as an etcher, I shall have to speak 
 at length before long. As a painter, he has the rare faculty of 
 true oil-sketching, selecting, with certainty, the most essential 
 truths. Mr. Whistler’s merits may be best expressed in this 
 
190 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 way Given a canvas, so many feet square, and so many hours 
 to cover it in, Mr. Whistler will put more truths, and truths 
 of greater importance, upon that canvas, in the given time, 
 than most of his contemporaries. Such a faculty is of the 
 utmost value to a landscape-painter, on account of the rapid 
 changes of vegetation. 1 Mr. Whistler seems insensible to 
 beauty, which is a grievous defect in any artist ; but his work 
 is redeemed from vulgarity by strange sensitiveness to colour 
 and- character. It is audacious, almost impudent, in manner; 
 but it is not affected, though it looks so at first, and even its 
 audacity is based on directness and simplicity of purpose. 
 
 Nature is perpetually breaking bounds. We hedge thought 
 round with formulas ; and, in a few years, being too narrow, 
 they are broken before we are aware of it. The Pre-Raphaelite 
 boundaries exist no longer. “ Even Pre-Raphaelitism,” says 
 Mr. Ruskin, “ is degenerating and forgetting the principle with 
 which it set out — that nobility of subject is a main thing in 
 painting ; nay, the Pre-Raphaelites are forgetting even con- 
 scientiousness of workmanship.” Still we owe them the 
 acknowledgment that they taught us, at a time when we needeS 
 the lesson, that nature repays every new analysis, and that art 
 may be grave and thoughtful. — 1864. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 The principle that “nobility of subject is a main thing in paint- 
 ing ” finds little to support it in the previous history of the art. 
 Many of the very finest pictures by masters of former centuries 
 have had for their subjects the most commonplace incidents of life, 
 and many of the best works by contemporary artists go to prove 
 that if a subject is pictorial it need not deeply exercise the intellect. 
 
 1 No summer landscape can be painted from nature if it takes more 
 than a month, no spring or autumn landscape if it takes more than a fort- 
 night. I am disposed to believe now that the most precious results of 
 landscape-painting are frank and genuine colour sketches done from nature 
 at high speed. Anything further must be done in the studio, and it is 
 doubtful whether the studio elaboration is in all cases worth the rough note 
 from nature. 
 
REACTION FROM PRE -RA PH A ELITISM. 
 
 191 
 
 This theory about nobility of subject was not based upon experi- 
 ence, but on a desire to make experiments, a feeling which might 
 be verbally expressed as follows : — “ Hitherto, painters have very 
 frequently wasted their skill upon trifling or vulgar subjects ; we 
 will reserve ours for great ones, and see whether by this means 
 we may not leave a deeper impression on the public mind.” The 
 attempt was attended by partial success, but it sometimes happened 
 that the attention to subject weakened the pictorial arrangement of 
 the work. It was a literary and not an artistic notion, and it is a 
 good and not a bad sign of the progress of the modern schools in 
 the direction of real art, that this idea is now almost entirely 
 abandoned. What the subject of a picture may be matters ex- 
 ceedingly little if only it is pictorial , and if the subject is not 
 pictorial, then the painter had no business with it. The old artists 
 knew this, and troubled themselves very little about nobility of 
 subject, but were generally careful to see that the material they 
 painted would come as they wanted it, in form, colour, light-and- 
 shade, and composition. 
 
 Pre-Raphaelitism was an intellectual and scientific movement 
 rather than an artistic one, and as art is better understood and 
 more valued on its own account there will be less risk of these 
 disturbances from without. — 1873. 
 
THE ARTISTIC SPIRIT 
 
 The following slight notes on a very deep and subtle sub- 
 ject have no pretension to exhaust it, or even to get quite 
 to the bottom of it. Just after writing them I perceive 
 already that more things might have been said, and even 
 these few things better said. Still, such observations as these, 
 though somewhat baldly set down, may have a certain utility 
 in times when there is more external interest in art than 
 inward sympathy with the spirit of it. If once the spirit 
 of art were fully entered into, a true understanding of it 
 would ultimately follow ; but the erudition of criticism is in 
 vain, if we have not that inward sympathy. How rare this is 
 I hardly like to say positively, for it may be more frequent 
 among unknown lovers of art than I know of, or at present 
 imagine. But amongst known writers it is indeed very rare. 
 Robert Browning thoroughly enters into the artistic mind, 
 and sees it from the inside ; but no other English poet ever 
 did that. And of prose writers Thackeray understood artists. 
 These two are on the inside ; Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, and 
 their predecessors, on the outside only. 
 
 i. As to Aristocracy . — The spirit of aristocracy would seem 
 to have this in common with art, that it loves refinement and 
 grace. The fine art of an aristocracy is its good behaviour ; 
 and the perfect aristocrat, with his grand air and fine manner, 
 has always been a favourite with the best figure-painters. 
 But to conclude that between art and aristocracy there is 
 anything more than an occasional sympathy would be erroneous. 
 Art is not necessary to an aristocracy, as such, the only arts 
 
THE ARTISTIC SPIRIT 
 
 193 
 
 which really serve it being family portraiture and the degree 
 of architecture, scarcely deserving the name of a fine art, 
 which suffices to distinguish the house of the great landowner. 
 
 There is true and intimate sympathy between aristocracies 
 and established military and ecclesiastical hierarchies, true 
 and intimate antipathy between aristocracies and dissent in 
 politics and religion ; but between the spirit of art and the 
 spirit of aristocracy there is coolness, and that coolness neither 
 writing nor lecturing is likely to overcome. 
 
 But then, on the other hand, art is not particularly demo- 
 cratic. Artists, if they find little to appeal to in the richest 
 class, find still less in those poorer classes whose entire energy 
 is absorbed in the struggle for daily bread. It is true that the 
 French republicans have usually, even in the midst of the 
 utmost national excitement, found leisure to care for the pro- 
 tection and encouragement of art ; but this is less a republican 
 than a national sentiment. It is an accepted creed in the 
 minds of all Frenchmen that their country has conquered, and 
 must maintain, the first place in two things — war and art ; nor 
 could any popular government altogether refuse to employ 
 artists and keep up picture galleries. Even Louis Philippe, who 
 shared and represented the bourgeois feeling, spent money on 
 pictures for Versailles, though these were generally bad ones; 
 and the present Government cherishes art as much as its prede- 
 cessors did. 
 
 Yet, though art be neither aristocratic nor democratic, it is 
 worthy of remark that whenever the artistic spirit develops itself, 
 it effaces, between the persons possessing it, the distinctions 
 of rank. A man of rank, endowed with artistic perceptions, 
 is drawn towards all true artists by a feeling of confraternity. 
 It has been observed even of photography, that it affords a 
 common ground on which men of all classes fraternize. This 
 is still more true of painting, probably because painting 
 cultivates the feelings so much more, and therefore awakens 
 subtler sympathies. Much has been written by Thackeray 
 and other novelists about the narrow contempt with which 
 society regards art and artists. The truth is, that so long as 
 people of station are ignorant of art, they do undoubtedly 
 hold its professors in slight esteem, because the Fine Arts can 
 only influence by sympathy, never by force. But on the other 
 hand, it is equally true that when rich men are endowed with 
 H o 
 
194 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 the faculties which apprehend art, they always respect good 
 artists, and show that they value their friendship. 
 
 2. As to the Bourgeois Spirit . — The state of mind in which 
 our middle classes and the French bourgeois live, is unfavour- 
 able to art in many ways. Competence and comfort and 
 cleanliness are very good and pleasant and desirable, and it is 
 wonderful with how little money a managing couple in the 
 middle classes will procure those blessings ; but when they are 
 made the only aims of life, they bring on an incredible 
 pettiness of soul. I never met with any thoroughly bourgeois 
 mind which had the least understanding of art. If, for example, 
 a mayor and common council, composed of this class of 
 people, have to deliberate about the destruction of some 
 grand relic of the Middle Ages, you may perhaps find some 
 one man amongst them who is superior enough to think that 
 the object ought to be preserved for its historical or antiquarian 
 interest, but you would not be likely to find anyone to suggest 
 its preservation on purely artistic grounds ; and if you tried to* 
 explain its artistic value to such people, you would waste your 
 explanation. The cardinal bourgeois virtues of tidiness and 
 decency and order are always likely to be offended by the 
 grandeur of the high artistic spirit. For example, a mutilated 
 antique is not exactly what the bourgeois mind would care to 
 have in its parlour. 
 
 Much of the Bohemianism we find amongst artists is due 
 to their instinctive revolt from middle-class narrowness. The 
 artists lose a great deal, no doubt, by yielding so far to this 
 repulsion, because there are virtues conspicuous in the middle 
 class which all men ought to strive for, and which, when faith- 
 fully practised, add very greatly to human happiness in every 
 condition of life. The bourgeois often has his revenge and 
 triumph in the ruin and wretchedness consequent on the care- 
 less, irregular ways of Bohemianism ; but the narrow prudence 
 which hates ideas, scorns beauty, and regulates everything 
 with reference to the lowest standard of utility, is quite in- 
 compatible with artistic achievement ; and not only that, but it 
 even incapacitates men for comprehending such achievement. 
 
 3. As to Religion . — The Fine Arts illustrate religion willingly, 
 because it affords good subjects, and there is nothing in the 
 artistic spirit in any way incompatible with the purest spirit of 
 devotion ; indeed, art draws us continually towards a state of 
 
THE ARTISTIC SPIRIT 
 
 195 
 
 mind akin to the devotional, by requiring us to spend our 
 time in the conscious contemplation of the work of the 
 Supreme Artist. Still, it is quite certain that there exists an 
 opposition between art, which takes pleasure in God’s work, and 
 all those various forms of religious fanaticism which condemn 
 pleasure as sinful. The healthiest temper of art is to rejoice 
 in the sight of all visible beauty, fully, heartily, and exquisitely; 
 the temper of religious fanaticism is to turn away from all 
 earthly loveliness, and to mortify the desire of the eyes. Roman 
 Catholic piety appears to find a certain utility in art, for it 
 buys much ; but it seems to like bad art just as well as good, 
 and even to have a decided taste for certain kinds of foppery 
 — as in the curling of saints’ hair; or tawdriness — as in the 
 tinsel on their garments — which true art disdains. Our own 
 most earnest Protestants care very little for art ; if they buy 
 an engraving now and then, it is not for any artistic quality, 
 but for the subject, as connected with their faith; or if it be 
 secular, for its interest as a portraiture of some great man 
 they admire, — -some Cromwell, or Wellington, or Havelock. 
 The reason seems to be that religious enthusiasm is always 
 so ready to be kindled, so ready to illuminate and exalt every- 
 thing it loves with its own internal light, that it does not care 
 whether the work of art be good if it only have the religious 
 spirit, or some plausible manufactured imitation of it; and it 
 is surprising what a very poor mockery of it suffices. The 
 customs of society in matters of outward observance, to which 
 many sceptics find it expedient to conform, make it difficult to 
 ascertain with precision what are or have been the real con- 
 victions of great artists, but amongst recent ones we may note 
 that Haydonwasan extremely religious man, who prayed almost 
 literally without ceasing, whilst Turner was a sceptic. Thomas 
 Seddon, on the other hand, was eminently pious, at least 
 during his labours in the East, but then the artistic spirit is 
 just what is absent from his works. Love of the sacred ground, 
 reverence for the fact, earnestness, patient industry, keenness 
 of sight, delicate skill of hand, all these he had, and exercised 
 most conscientiously, most bravely, but the spirit of art he 
 had not. Of living men it is better not to speak ; it is use- 
 less to mention those who are religious without naming others 
 who are not, and it would be wrong to expose these latter 
 to public odium on account of opinions which can only be 
 
196 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 known privately, and which in no wise injuriously affect their 
 pictures. 
 
 4. As to Morality . — The general opinion about the morality 
 of figure-painters is this : Common sense argues that it is not 
 probable that men can pass a great portion of their time in 
 the study of the female form, without undergoing temptations 
 which human nature is seldom insensible enough, or resolute 
 enough, to resist. It may, however, be observed, without 
 claiming immaculate purity of life for all these artists, that the 
 naked figure loses, when seen habitually, and for purposes 
 of serious study, much of that disturbing influence over the 
 senses which a beautiful woman, unclothed, would, in other 
 circumstances, generally exercise. And it is only fair to say 
 that artists, as a class, are not more immoral than other men. 
 Young officers, young attorneys, young cotton manufacturers, 
 have, as a general rule, little right to reproach young painters 
 with licentiousness. 
 
 But it is not so much with morality of life that we are here 
 concerned, as with the morality of the artistic spirit itself. 
 The truth is that art, as such, has nothing to do with either 
 morality or immorality ; it illustrates both with equal artistic 
 satisfaction, provided that the quality of the material be to 
 its mind. The leaning towards sensual subjects evinced by 
 Gerome, for instance, is, we are convinced, due far more to 
 artistic predilections for certain qualities of line and modelling, 
 best found in such subjects, than to prurience of feeling. 
 When the artistic spirit is powerful, and has predilections of 
 this kind, it is apt to overrule all other considerations. The 
 spectator who does not share this spirit, sees immorality where 
 none was intended, and, as he sees nothing else, imagines 
 that the work was produced only for immoral purposes. On 
 the other hand, the artist, who was aiming at some purely 
 artistic triumph, some masterly feat of drawing and arrangement 
 of forms, and who selected the immoral subject because it so 
 precisely furnished the excuse for, and called for the display 
 of, those subleties of his craft, thinks no more about the im- 
 moral conduct of his figures than a girl thinks of the sensual 
 behaviour of t ; e flowers she gathers in her garden. There 
 have been examples, no doubt, of artists endowed with the 
 true faculty, who had, notwithstanding, religious convictions 
 powerful enough to enable them to withstand these artistic 
 
THE ARTISTIC SPIRIT. 
 
 197 
 
 temptations, but such men are rare, and they are not the 
 greatest painters. It is the nature of art to give to artistic 
 considerations such importance that they gradually come to 
 outweigh all others. I remember taking part in a discussion 
 in a French atelier , as to the merits of a certain modern picture. 
 The subject was most immoral, but the work had valuable 
 artistic qualities, and it was on these qualities alone that the 
 discussion turned. The disputants were insensible to the 
 apparejit subject, which, as they all knew, was only a pretext ; 
 their entire attention was occupied by the more or less successful 
 artistic achievement which was the real purpose of the painter. 
 
 5. As to the Military Spirit . — Artists like soldiers, as they 
 like priests, for their costume and action. But the military and 
 ecclesiastical costumes have both grievously declined in artistic 
 interest since the Middle Ages. Golden cope and jewelled 
 mitre were nobler to look upon than wig and lawn sleeves ; 
 armour of steel inlaid with silver and gold was better worth 
 painting than padded coatee or strapped pantaloons. Horace 
 Vernet loved modern military tailoring, however, and knew 
 the craft down to every braid and button. But are the 
 pictures of Vernet due to the artistic or the military spirit? 
 Is he not rather a soldier using paint for military purposes than 
 a painter using soldiers for artistic ends? He had a wonderful 
 memory, but of the kind which distinguishes good generals ; 
 he remembered men, and uniforms, and military combinations. 
 He drew very cleverly, and coloured brightly and plausibly ; 
 yet who goes to VerneFs works for their artistic qualities? 
 
 When greater artists have painted battles, it has usually 
 ■ been either for the action of the naked figure, to display which 
 they purposely stripped the combatants, or for the costume of 
 some more picturesque time or nation ; not from any definitely 
 military spirit. A good many artists, too, have painted battles 
 from a love of horror and slaughter, which it would be grievous 
 injustice to all noble soldiers to call their spirit. A high- 
 minded soldier walks through blood whither duty commands 
 him, but he does not wallow in it. 
 
 6. As to the Commercial Spirit . — What first strikes us here 
 is the obvious reflection that commerce is the best and 
 kindest helper and friend of the Fine Arts, and yet that the 
 spirit of commerce is directly opposed to the spirit of art. 
 
 In recognizing this opposition, we by no means intend to 
 
\gS 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 detract from the utility of the commercial spirit, or to imply 
 any wish to substitute for it the artistic feeling generally. It 
 is the object of commerce to increase wealth, and the result 
 of the general spread of the commercial spirit in a country is 
 the augmentation of the national power and resources. If it 
 were to become the general custom of all persons having 
 capital enough to afford them perfect leisure, to devote their 
 whole time to the study of the Fine Arts, not only would the 
 country become so enfeebled both in money and population 
 as to be incapabl-e of maintaining its independence, but even 
 the Fine Arts themselves would be ruined by the diminution of 
 that wealth, a great abundance of which is absolutely necessary 
 to their support. 
 
 Men of business, whose primary object is gain, have usually 
 some difficulty in appreciating the truest artists, with whom 
 gain is the secondary and art the first object. Either they look 
 upon the Fine Arts as a trade, or else, perceiving that artists 
 are often indifferent to their pecuniary interests, they consider 
 them foolish children, who cannot discern what is best to be 
 done. No doubt a commercial man who sets aside his pecu- 
 niary interest for an idea, disobeys and sets aside, in so doing, 
 the commercial principle. Some tradesmen do this knowingly 
 from time to time, as, for instance, it now and then happens 
 that a publisher issues a book by which he is aware that he is 
 likely to be a loser, merely because he thinks that the work 
 ought not to be stifled. Or, again, a manufacturer occasionally 
 tries a new invention less in the hope that it will pay than from 
 a desire to give ingenuity a fair chance. Men who do these 
 things often render great services to humanity, but they are not • 
 likely to get much reputation for wisdom in any society which 
 recognizes profit as the measure of intelligence. 
 
 Now, the true artist outrages the commercial spirit habitually. 
 To begin with, his choice of art at all as a means of living is 
 in itself contrary to the commercial principle, because art is 
 as a profession too precarious to be embraced by anyone not 
 prepared to endure poverty contentedly, and contentment with 
 poverty is an idea foreign to the commercial mind, which is 
 accustomed to consider it as the proof of incapacity. In nine 
 cases out of ten art is a bad investment of ability, and people 
 who make bad investments seldom enjoy high credit for prac- 
 tical sense. But not only in the selection of his profession 
 
THE ARTISTIC SPIRIT 
 
 199 
 
 does an artist outrage the commercial spirit ; he often outrages 
 it still more in the way he follows his art. Instead of carefully 
 studying the market and providing what the public best likes, 
 original artists are apt to make themselves martyrs to their 
 artistic predilections. A successful tradesman said to me one 
 day, “ In business we provide what sells best ; that is our affair. 
 Whether a pattern is artistic or not does not concern us ; we 
 encourage bad art if our customers prefer it ; and the shop- 
 keeper who proceeds on any other principle is pretty sure to 
 ruin himself.” When you buy a carpet or a wall paper and the 
 shopman tells you that the design is beautiful, what he means 
 is that it is in fashion ; and a thing gets into fashion as soon as 
 everybody thinks everybody else approves of it. The temper 
 of a real artist is not this shopman’s pliant mood ; it is more 
 like the temper of William Wordsworth. He offers what he 
 believes to be the worthiest thing that he is capable of doing, 
 whether anybody likes it or not ; and he will not condescend 
 to offer anything less worthy because the people like it better. 
 This Wordsworthian condition of mind looks self-opinionated, 
 conceited ; would it not be more graceful to yield the point, 
 conform to precedent, defer to the general opinion ? And 
 artists, so far as they approach to this state, are liable to be 
 accused of vanity, which is the only explanation that the 
 world can find for such strange, unaccountable ways. 
 
 A better explanation, however, does not seem unattainable. 
 Original men appear to be endowed with an almost ungovern- 
 able desire to find an outlet for their originality ; and it would 
 be as well if, instead of setting down originality as folly, we 
 were to give Heaven credit for understanding the best interests 
 of humanity when it accompanied every good gift with the 
 condition that the possessor should be uneasy till he had set it 
 forth. All artists, poets, inventors, thinkers, are compelled to 
 set forth their gifts. And this is the condition of genuineness 
 in art- work. Original art is not only the best, it is the only art 
 which has any interest. The simple expression of a real gift, 
 however humble, is better than the most learned imitation of 
 other men’s labour. Nor is it vanity which makes men try to 
 express lesser talents ; vanity would rather suggest the more 
 ambitious notion of rivalling great men on their own ground. 
 William Hunt, not being a vain man, became what we all 
 know j had nature added vanity to his composition, he would 
 
200 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 never have painted such simple subjects. His life was a 
 bright triumph of that combination of humility with self- 
 reliance which distinguishes the true artist. 
 
 It follows that since a painter cannot without danger pay 
 much attention to the question of profit, he is obliged, if he 
 would be happy, to learn the philosophy preached by so many 
 ancient sages, and enforced by the authority of no less a 
 teacher than theJHead of Christianity, that poverty has its own 
 blessings and compensations, and that it is, in some important 
 respects, a better condition than wealth. This philosophy, 
 wild as it may seem to the worldly, has an immense attraction 
 for noble minds ; the more so that it allows of a more 
 cheerful view of human life generally. If happiness is attain- 
 able by the poor, we may hope that a good many more or less 
 completely attain to it. But if on the other hand happiness 
 cannot possibly be procured for less than two thousand pounds 
 a year, many human beings are for ever debarred from it. It 
 seems so glorious for a human being to bear bravely the 
 suffering and contempt which poverty brings, so enviable to 
 have found the secret of an inward happiness strong enough to 
 dwell serenely in the midst of privation, that heroic spirits are 
 one and all in love with this lofty creed. A true artist will eat 
 bread and drink water for his art ; and this temper, able to be 
 happy almost without money, often makes him careless of it 
 when it comes : if he gets any, he is apt to be foolishly 
 generous with it, especially to brother artists who are in want. 
 This characteristic of artists tends, however, to diminish as 
 their place in general society is better recognized. Living 
 more in the world than they used to do and less in solitude 
 or in Bohemia, they are learning a new virtue and a new vice — 
 provident habits and polite selfishness. And as the Philistines 
 only practise Christianity so far as it is consistent with a very 
 high degree of physical comfort, the artist who, having two 
 coats, was always ready to give one of them, if not both , , to 
 his less fortunate brother, is now to be sought rather in the 
 taverns of disreputable Bohemia than in the pillared streets of 
 the West End. 
 
 7. As to the Industrial Spiidt . — The industrial principle is to 
 find out, first, how to make a thing, and then to produce that 
 identical thing in the utmost possible quantities and at the 
 lowest possible rate for ever and ever. 
 
THE ARTISTIC SPIRIT 
 
 201 
 
 The artistic principle is that when once a thing has been 
 perfectly well done, there is little or no use in trying to do it 
 again. If, for instance, a water-colour painter felt inclined to 
 paint birds’ nests, he would very likely be deterred from 
 attempting them by the reflection that Hunt had done them 
 so well. An industrial mind would endeavour to find out 
 means of producing unlimited copies of Hunt’s nests in 
 colour. 
 
 This is one reason the more why good artists are almost 
 always new. If a man has the artistic spirit, he will either seek 
 unusual material in nature ; or if he appears to accept the old 
 material, he will make it new by finding unthought-of elements 
 and suggestions in it. 
 
 Artists, however, occasionally share the industrial spirit to 
 a certain extent ; but when they do, it degrades them exactly 
 in proportion to its degree. It would be easy to mention 
 painters, who, to save time and earn money, have got more or 
 less into habits of manufacture, producing many works which 
 are in reality only modifications of one. This gives great ap- 
 parent manual facility, because such works are, in consequence 
 of their frequent repetition, produced with great certainty, 
 whereas in art of a higher order every new work is an untried 
 and somewhat hazardous experiment. 
 
 Of course the industrial principle is right in industrial 
 business, where indeed it is the only safe or possible principle. 
 Nothing can be more remote from my intention than to express 
 anything but the most respectful admiration for the wise maxims 
 which commerce and industry must ever apply if they would 
 prosper. The magnificent results achieved by faithful obe- 
 dience to these principles prove that they are sound and in 
 harmony with natural law. All I say is, that commercial and 
 industrial wisdom is not applicable to the Fine Arts, nor can 
 the Fine Arts be either effectively advanced or heartily enjoyed 
 by a people which has only that wisdom. 
 
 In the ways of labour in an artist’s life, violations of indus- 
 trial principles are frequent. Good artists are always laborious, 
 but they are seldom steadily and regularly laborious. “ When 
 you begin to tire of your work,” said Leslie, “ leave off; 
 otherwise you will probably injure it. You will certainly 
 injure yourself.” Leslie was quite right in speaking so to 
 young artists ; but only fancy a cotton manufacturer saying 
 
202 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 to his hands, “When you begin to tire of your work, leave 
 off ! ” The hard industrial law requires the steadiness of a 
 steam-engine from its servants ; but then it only requires the 
 same sort of work that steam-engines may do — incessant repe- 
 tition of identically similar acts. The exigencies of Fine Art 
 are far heavier, not merely because it requires to some extent 
 the use of the mind, but still more because it demands the 
 unflagging expenditure of feeling ; and the feelings, more than 
 any other of our faculties, are subject to sudden and unac- 
 countable exhaustion. Fine Art work is useless unless you 
 are in the vein, and neither picture nor poem can go on with 
 the unrelaxing steadiness displayed in the weaving of a piece 
 of cotton cloth. But a prudent artist, knowing this, will con- 
 trive to have easier artistic work at hand for his more torpid 
 hours. If he cannot paint passionately to-day, he may yet be 
 able to study accurately, and the picture may be laid aside for 
 some careful drawing done from nature for information alone. 
 The wise rule is never to force yourself to work you are 
 momentarily unfit for, only do something , if it be but to make 
 a note in your memorandum book. 
 
 8. As to the Intellectual Spirit . — It is a tendency of the 
 present age to exalt the intellectual at the expense of the per- 
 ceptive and imaginative faculties. For example, if, in speaking 
 of artists, I happen to say that A. was intellectual and B. not, 
 nine readers out of ten would conclude that I was praising A. 
 and putting B. down ; whereas I might say that with perfect 
 truth and all the time reverence B. as a man of the rarest 
 order of soul, whilst I considered A. no better than a good 
 many of us. An attorney is generally more intellectual than a 
 saint, an average artillery officer is likely to be more intellectual 
 than Garibaldi, any tolerably good critic may be more intel- 
 lectual than the immortal colourists. The art of painting does 
 not proceed so much by intelligence as by sight, and feeling, 
 and invention. Painters are often curiously feeble in their 
 reasonings about art, and the best painters are commonly the 
 worst reasoners. Not that their theories of art are without 
 value; on the contrary, no art-theories are so valuable as 
 theirs if only we translate them into more philosophical lan- 
 guage, which may be easily done by taking into account their 
 special points of view. The unfeigned contempt which almost 
 all artists feel for critics— even for the best of them — is partly 
 
THE ARTISTIC SPIRIT 
 
 203 
 
 explicable by the fact that the artistic spirit can neither 
 appreciate nor follow intellectual methods. 
 
 The elevation of scholarship , or quantity of traditional 
 acquisition, above faculty or mental flexibility and force, 
 which has always hitherto been prevalent in society, is one of 
 those inevitable pieces of injustice which it is useless to 
 combat directly, but which, we may reasonably hope, will 
 yield in due time to the gradual influences of culture. The 
 more serious attention given in these days to the Fine Arts, 
 and the fact that pedantry is now considered bad taste, are 
 hopeful indications. True art, which requires free and healthy 
 faculties, is opposed to pedantry, which crushes the soul under 
 a burden. 
 
 9. The Principle of Art for Art. — A pernicious principle in 
 one way, that it tends to deprive painting of much of its influ- 
 ence over the public by directing its efforts to aims in which 
 the public cannot possibly take any interest, and yet a principle 
 which has always had great weight with artists, which regulates 
 the admission of pictures to exhibitions, and has more in- 
 fluence than any other consideration in determining the rank 
 which an artist’s name must ultimately hold in the catalogue 
 of masters. Here is a recent example. Many readers will 
 remember a picture by Mr. Whistler, called “The Woman in 
 White.” The work was unpleasant, and, to those who did 
 not see the technical problem which it attempted to solve, 
 most uninteresting; nevertheless it did Mr. Whistler’s name 
 good amongst persons conversant with art, because it proved, 
 on his part, at least an intelligent interest in his profession. 
 The difficulty he proposed to wrestle with was that of relieving 
 white upon white ; there was some presumption in the essay, 
 but it is quite in the artistic spirit to make such attempts. 
 The difficulty of painting white objects may be to some extent 
 understood by the unprofessional reader in this way. Nature 
 always lets us see that a white object is white, even when, 
 from its situation, it is darker than some coloured objects. 
 Nature can paint dark whites ; but when painters try to paint 
 dark whites, they generally end by producing light greys, or 
 dirty, pale, yellowish browns. The difficulty is to paint a dark 
 colour which shall obviously stand for white and look perfectly 
 pure ; and this difficulty is quite infinite, because to find one 
 tint is not enough. Nature has not only one dark white, she 
 
204 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 has millions of various hues, produced by reflected colour, 
 which all in their own place, and under their own peculiar 
 conditions, stand for white. 
 
 It will often be found that pictures by good painters which 
 seem to have no subject worth representing, are serious endea- 
 vours to master some peculiar artistic difficulty ; and, when 
 successful, these solutions of technical problems are often 
 highly valuable and interesting in a certain sense. The Lor- 
 rain’s great problem evidently was to produce something 
 which, by careful management, might be made to look rather 
 like the sun ; and it is generally understood that he resolved 
 that problem so far as its immense difficulty admits of a solu- 
 tion. The great interest of painting as a practical pursuit is, 
 that its difficulties are so infinite, that every new artist may find 
 some untried one to grapple with, and reasonably indulge the 
 hope that, if he succeeds, that conquest will give him a place 
 in the history of art development. No age has been more 
 fertile in triumphs of this kind than our own, and there is no 
 surer sign of the vigour of a school than the healthy disposition 
 to seek for new conquests. So long as painters are content to 
 do what has only been done before, they always do less than 
 their predecessors. 
 
 And this principle, of art for art, makes all things which 
 deserve to be painted interesting ; the question is less whether 
 the thing is of the rarest and noblest order of beauty than 
 what we can make of it. For instance, in landscape the 
 grand and rare effects are, considered as natural effects, by far 
 the most interesting ; but looking at nature with strict reference 
 to art, it must be admitted that the problem of the right 
 management of a few delicate greys in some simple every-day 
 effect, is quite as deep and curious. I know a very intelligent 
 amateur who has devoted years to the study of common 
 sunshine. Indeed, it may safely be asserted that any artist or 
 critic who has mastered the facts of appearance in any common 
 object under common effects, knows much. 
 
 Many painters, from an insufficient apprehension of the im- 
 portance of merely artistic qualities, have deceived themselves 
 in the hope that by painting more learned and thoughtful 
 pictures, or pictures of rarer and more wonderful subjects, or 
 pictures of more accurate veracity than their contemporaries, 
 they might thereby achieve high artistic rank. For example, 
 
205 
 
 THE ARTISTIC SPIRIT. 
 
 we find many historical painters, especially in Germany, who 
 are thoughtful and philosophical to such a degree, that they 
 lose the healthy sensuous relish for beautiful colour and fair 
 form which is absolutely indispensable to a good painter ; and 
 we have landscape-painters, of whom the well-known traveller, 
 Mr. Atkinson, is an instance, who endeavour to acquire artistic 
 renown by seeking some remote ground hitherto unoccupied ; 
 and we have young artists who spare no pains to secure 
 veracity. Now, all these things are good things, and there 
 lies the danger, for if they were evidently valueless, no sensible 
 man would aim at them. Thought is good, novelty is good, 
 veracity is good ; but, alas ! they cannot of themselves produce 
 art. I could easily name fine pictures, priceless treasures, in 
 which there is no thought, in which there never was any 
 novelty, and whose veracity, both as to facts of history and 
 facts of science, is so unreliable, that any well-informed critic 
 could point out falsities and impossibilities by the dozen. Why, 
 then, are such works treasures ? Because, with all their faults, 
 they have quality. The men who painted them may not have 
 been either thinkers, or travellers, or historians, or men of 
 science, but they were ai'iisis. You or I may know more, 
 think more, observe more, but somehow, with all our efforts, 
 we cannot paint so. 
 
 The world, notwithstanding its ignorance of art, sees this 
 better than some critics and connoisseurs do, but, seeing it, 
 draws conclusions of its own. The world sees that painting 
 is a pursuit in which thought, scholarship, information, go for 
 little ; whereas a strange, unaccountable talent, working in 
 obscure ways (a special talent as it seems to outsiders, though 
 in reality i,t results from a high harmony of physical and mental 
 endowments), achieves the only results worth having. And the 
 world wisely hesitates before entering the arena of art. Here 
 is a field in which neither birth nor condition is of any use, 
 and wealth itself of exceedingly little; here faculty alone 
 avails, and a kind of faculty so subtle and peculiar, so difficult 
 to estimate before years have been spent in developing it, or 
 wasted in the vain attempt to develop it where it does not exist, 
 that men having already any solid advantages in life may well 
 pause before they stake them on such a hazard. 
 
 It remains only to consider whether, in a national sense, it is 
 wise to assist in the spread of the artistic spirit. The general 
 
20 6 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 opinion has concluded that it is. Our schools of design, our 
 art-exhibitions, the great quantity of our printed art-criticism, 
 all urge the country towards an art epoch, which promises 
 ultimately to be brilliant, for we have both the wealth and the 
 talent necessary for such a time. But it may be doubted 
 whether the national mind has turned to art from the pure 
 love for it. We discovered that, for want of artistic counsel 
 and help, we were spending our money badly every time we 
 tried either to build a public building, or weave a carpet, or 
 colour a ribbon. We found out that the French managed 
 these things better, and with less outlay got handsomer results, 
 and it appeared that this superiority was due to their artistic 
 education. So we said, Let us study Raphael that we may sell 
 ribbons. This was not a very promising temper to start with ; 
 we were laughed at for our awkwardness, and we did not like 
 to be laughed at, so we resolved to silence derision by the 
 acquisition of art skill. Nevertheless, in spite of the commer- 
 cial spirit of this beginning, we are generally tending art- wards, 
 and the problem before us is whether this artistic infusion 
 will not injuriously affect the traditional character of English- 
 men. It will modify it very considerably, rely upon that. 
 There is a difference between minds which are artistic and 
 minds which are not, so strong and decided, that nobody can 
 question the influence of art upon character. Not that art 
 always influences in the same way ; various itself, it produces 
 varied effects. But it always alters our habitual estimates of 
 things and men ; it alters our ways of valuing things. A child 
 in a library values those books most which have gilt edges ; a 
 book collector prizes the rarest editions ; but a lover of 
 reading for its own sake neither cares for gilt edges nor rare 
 editions, only for the excellence of the matter and the accuracy 
 of the text. So is our value for men and nature affected by 
 the artistic spirit. To it, vulgar show is the gilt-edged book ; 
 the extraordinary is the rare edition ; what it values is often very 
 humble and poor to eyes that cannot read it. It can see 
 majesty and dignity in many a poor labourer; it can detect 
 meanness under the mantle of an emperor ; it can recognize 
 grandeur in a narrow house, and pettiness in the palace of a 
 thousand chambers. — 1865. 
 
XV. 
 
 THE PLACE OF LANDSCAPE-PAINTING AMONGST 
 THE FINE ARTS . 
 
 Landscape-painters are very generally aware that there exist 
 amongst figure-painters and in society opinions relative to 
 landscape art which tend to assign it a very inferior position. 
 These opinions are not without grounds ; they are founded on 
 reasons which deserve consideration • but they fail to take into 
 account other reasons of equal weight, which would, if fairly 
 heard, have the effect of at least partially counterbalancing 
 them. I therefore invite the reader’s attention to the whole 
 question, and beg him to enter with me into a fair examination 
 of it, without hoping to settle definitely either this or any other 
 disputed point about art, for it is idle to expect perfect harmony 
 of opinion on these matters ; we may still benefit ourselves by 
 discussing such questions as this, since they involve the recog- 
 nition of truths which we are always apt to lose sight of. 
 
 Amongst figure-painters success in landscape-painting is 
 usually held in slight estimation as an artistic achievement, 
 from the idea that it is so easy that no very great credit is due 
 to mastery in it. The truth on which this opinion is founded 
 is that accurate drawing is not necessary in landscape, and 
 that scarcely any painter who confined his studies to that 
 branch of the profession has ever been able to draw accu- 
 rately. “In England,” says Mr. Armitage, “nobody knows 
 what drawing is.” 1 Without going quite so far as Mr. Armi- 
 tage, we may safely admit that learned drawing, or what Mr. 
 
 1 Minutes of Evidence before the Royal Academy Commission. 
 Question 5,051. 
 
208 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 Ford Madox Brown would call the pedantry of drawing, is 
 much rarer in England than in France. But it is a fact very 
 much to our present purpose that the French, who so rigorously 
 exact this kind of drawing from their historical painters, 
 scarcely so much as take it into consideration as one of the 
 minor points in a landscape-painter. The favourite landscape- 
 painter amongst artists in France, the one whose reputation 
 has been made by the admiration of artists, Corot, can scarcely 
 draw better than a school-girl. Our own Turner was not an 
 accurate draughtsman, but he was a good one. The distinction 
 which figure-painters fail to observe in their criticisms of land- 
 scape art is this one between quality and accuracy. The 
 necessities of pictorial composition make accuracy impossible 
 for all but the most rigidly topographic landscape-painter. 
 When Titian or Paul Veronese wants a form to support another, 
 he may make one figure bend and still draw it well ; but when 
 Turner needs the same thing in a mountain composition, he 
 has to alter the main lines of the whole scene, and conse- 
 quently every detail within them, and as he must do this every 
 time he lays pencil to paper he becomes habitually inaccurate. 
 But quality may be sought for and attained notwithstanding 
 this inaccuracy. What I mean by quality of drawing in land- 
 scape is its truth to the nature of the thing represented. 
 Perfectly accurate drawing would have this, of course, for it 
 would be included in the merit of accuracy ; but much topo- 
 graphic exactitude may be reached with very low quality indeed. 
 The popular views of Switzerland, that so many tourists have 
 such an odd fancy for carrying away in their portmanteaus as 
 reminiscences of the country, are more truthful as to accuracy 
 than Turner's, but in quality of drawing they are beneath 
 contempt. 
 
 The next question is, whether this quality is easy of attain- 
 ment. It means, as I have said, the power of representing 
 the nature of things ; their abstract, innermost nature. For 
 example, cloud must look like cloud, oak-tree like oak, granite 
 like granite ; and in mountain drawing the most expressive 
 markings must be instinctively selected. In all things the kind 
 of touch and workmanship must be found which will most 
 truly render the nature of the object. An accurate outline, 
 even accurate modelling, would often be easier of attainment 
 than the craft which can accomplish this. 
 
TILE PLACE OF LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 
 
 209 
 
 I find on examining the works of great landscape-painters 
 that quality of this kind, in drawing and colour, has come to be 
 their chief aim in middle life. They may try to draw accu- 
 rately at first, but they usually discover, before the age of 
 thirty, that to be accurate is of little artistic use in comparison 
 with that far deeper kind of truth which for want of a special 
 word we have to call quality. Turner let many of his more 
 solid merits melt away from his canvases in the hope of 
 reaching some exquisite results of this kind, and ultimately his 
 aspirations ended in utter shapelessness. Constable in another 
 way tried for quality ; and if he failed in form, Troyon and the 
 Bonheurs understood his aims and profited by his example. 
 
 “ If landscape-painters could draw,” say historical painters, 
 “ they could draw the figure. Now we see that every time 
 they attempt a figure they make things no better than puppets 
 or dolls dressed as peasants, therefore we decline to consider 
 them draughtsmen.” One step more, and it is easy to refuse 
 even the title of artist to a landscape-painter. If you consider 
 Academic drawing everything , as Ingres does ; if you consider 
 that without accurate drawing there can be no serious art, as 
 Mr. Armitage does, then you can scarcely look upon landscape- 
 painters as artists in the serious sense at all. 
 
 The difficulty of arguing this point on my side of it is, that 
 whilst the figure-painter appeals to a merit easily ascertainable, 
 
 I appeal to a merit which cannot be proved to the satisfaction 
 of any but competent judges ; and for them all such proof is 
 needless. They know that right abstraction is rare and difficult. 
 All landscape-painters find that to abstract in such a manner 
 as to explain in every touch the essential nature of the object, 
 requires infinite care and study. But who shall judge of the 
 relative merit of different abstractions? It is evident that no 
 measuring by compasses will do this ; for we admit that land- 
 scape abstraction does not profess accuracy of this kind. 
 Relative merit can then only be determined by persons who 
 have at the same time an intimate acquaintance with the kind 
 of object represented, practical familiarity with the technical 
 difficulties of the art, and a mind both philosophical enough 
 to comprehend the nature of abstract ideas, and capacious 
 enough to tolerate various interpretations. This last quality 
 is perhaps the rarest of the critical endowments, because it 
 requires us to have seen in nature all the facts which the united 
 II p 
 
210 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 observation of the whole body of landscape-painters has been 
 able to discover there, and still at the same time to be catholic 
 enough to praise one man for seeing one order of truths, and 
 another for seeing a quite different order. 
 
 Now it is hopeless to expect these critical requirements 
 from anyone who in the least despises landscape art. If you 
 perceive in anyone, whether painter or connoisseur, the 
 slightest approach to superciliousness in speaking of landscape, 
 you may rely upon it that he neither has acquired, nor ever, 
 can acquire, so long as he remains in that mood, any real 
 knowledge of the subject. And the objection I have to make 
 to the criticism of persons inclined to think little of landscape 
 lies there, that they begin by despising it, and look upon the 
 subject as unworthy their serious attention ; consequently they 
 are from the very beginning in an unteachable and unobser- 
 vant frame of mind. 
 
 It is evident how seriously belief in the facility of landscape 
 must detract from the consideration of landscape-painters 
 amongst artists, for artists always esteem each other mainly by 
 reference to a standard of technical difficulty. This is prob- 
 ably one reason why landscape-painters find Academic honours 
 all but hopelessly unattainable by them. One of the most 
 distinguished of living Academicians said to me, “ The great 
 charm of landscape-painting is that it is so delightfully easy,” 
 and I believe most other figure-painters share this impression. 
 The feeling that they are no longer obliged to draw accurately 
 when painting landscape backgrounds is to them a feeling of 
 relief. They enjoy a liberty which has removed an irksome 
 responsibility and restraint, and are little capable, in the full 
 fruition of this novel pleasure, of estimating the real difficulties 
 of an art which they take up occasionally in the spirit of re : 
 laxation. The public, too, is particularly kind and indulgent 
 in its demands upon the landscape backgrounds of figure- 
 painters. It expects nothing more than a slight sketch which 
 shall surround the figures with not inharmonious colouring. 
 No true colourist can give less than that, even in his most 
 careless hours. 
 
 But is landscape easy? Let us consider what elements it 
 is composed of, what materials it attempts to represent. 
 
 A landscape-painter has to encounter the difficulties of 
 imitating the sky, the earth, vegetation, and water, and these 
 
THE PLACE OF LANDSCAPE-PAINTING . 
 
 2 1 1 
 
 difficulties are complicated and multiplied infinitely by effect , 
 which, in landscape, utterly transfigures every object it touches, 
 so that an object under one effect does not seem to be the 
 same thing, has not even apparently the same form , as under 
 another. It may also be observed that the difficulties of 
 landscape-painting are most seriously increased by the evanes- 
 cence of the appearances it attempts to represent. If the 
 effect would stay , the art would be less difficult, though still 
 very far from easy. But so soon as the landscape-painter desires 
 to record any of those magnificent unities of Nature, when her 
 scenery masses itself together in full synthesis, he must work 
 from memory alone. 
 
 Has the reader ever actually looked at a cloud, or a tree, 
 or a running brook, or a calm lake .? Perhaps not, for the 
 majority never look at these things ; they like pleasant land- 
 scape, they benefit by its exquisite influences, sunshine, lovely 
 colours, sweet sounds, and pure, refreshing air : all these they 
 truly appreciate and value in their way, but they no more study 
 them than an amorous boy studies the anatomy of the fair face 
 he delights in. External nature is, to the mass of mankind, 
 a source of sensuous refreshment, not a matter of laborious 
 observation ; it is passive pleasure and perpetual benefit. 
 Happier than critic or painter, the rest of mankind need only 
 enjoy what these have to investigate and remember. 
 
 But if the reader has ever looked at a cloud, can he believe 
 that clouds are easy things to paint ? Take a great, elaborate, 
 well-developed cumulus, for example, — would not the model- 
 ling of it puzzle Ingres himself, and the unapproachable 
 splendour of it defeat him ? Could he, could anyone, remem- 
 ber the true detail of it faithfully enough ? Could anyone 
 draw it delicately enough ? 
 
 Who ever really painted a field of the cloud vulgarly known 
 as mares 7 tails, — those long films, delicate as the trains of 
 comets, which wave with gentle curves across the sky ? Who 
 can remember a field of thirty thousand cirri so as to paint it 
 truly? Hundreds of artists have attempted to render storms, 
 but who ever gave the true evolution of the heavily-laden 
 thunder-cloud? You who say that landscape is easy, paint for 
 us the form and hue of those threatening messengers ! There 
 is modelling enough there, and there are strange gradations of 
 lurid colour too. 
 
 P 2 
 
212 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 And the flames of sunset, dashing the blue lead colour of 
 the clouds at the horizon with intense streaks of crimson fire, 
 fainter as they rise towards the zenith, and fading over our 
 heads in scarcely perceptible inward glowing; are they easy? 
 Is it easy to get that light with that colour ? 
 
 And the gradations in the exquisite open sky, so deep, so 
 pure, so ever varying, by whom have they been quite rightly, 
 quite unexceptionably wrought ? By one or two early religious 
 painters, it may be, but not in their full variety. Who can 
 gradate quite truly an evening sky with intense gold at the 
 horizon and cold blue at the zenith ? Will there not generally 
 occur some dubious or false passage between the gold and the 
 blue ? Skilful painters of draperies, are you perfectly confident 
 that you can quite successfully resolve this particular little 
 problem ? And if you had mastered it, why, there are a 
 million more such problems in reserve for you, tons plus diffciles 
 les ims que les autres . 
 
 Mountains, too, are supposed to be easy. I may be ex- 
 cused for feeling sceptical on that point. I lived a few years 
 under the shadow of Ben Cruachan, and carefully observed 
 him under thousands of very different aspects, but it never 
 occurred to me that that immense agglomeration of ever- 
 changing, yet always perfectly hajunonious detail, could by any 
 possibility become easy to paint. Every separate aspect of 
 that mountain would have cost the labour of months, and it 
 did not last even minutes , only fractions of a minute. Who 
 can carry in his memory for months the true relative coloui 
 and true apparent form of the Jiundred minor hills that boss 
 his craggy sides ? But if Cruachan and Shehallion are too 
 easy, have we not the Alps on which to wreak our energies? 
 If bosses of crag and heather are unworthy of us, the white 
 waves and azure crevasses of a glacier may deserve our conde- 
 scending attention. Why does not some famous painter of 
 history deign to prove to us that glaciers are easy enough, after 
 all, to men who have had the advantages of a sound Acade- 
 mical educatiqn ? 
 
 The subject of foliage is sure to draw forth the usual refer- 
 ence to Titian’s “ Peter Martyr.” On this, however, two 
 observations may be made : the first, that all figure-painters 
 are not necessarily Titians ; the second, that his foliage, though 
 the best in old art, is not nearly so good as his figures. 
 
THE PLACE OF LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 
 
 213 
 
 Titian did not succeed as a landscape-painter, further than 
 this, that he painted landscape backgrounds which, as such, 
 were satisfactory, and suited his figures. They are partly 
 naturalistic, but also to a great degree governed by a conven- 
 tionalism of his own. But even if Titian had painted landscape 
 as well as paint would permit, would the necessary inference be 
 that landscape was easy, or even that it was easy for all figure- 
 painters ? That would be a poor compliment to Titian. Pro- 
 bably we, who consider landscape difficult, respect Titian more 
 for what seems to us a very partial mastery in the art, than 
 others do for what seems to them absolute success in it. With 
 regard to the foliage in the backgrounds of modern figure- 
 painters, it may be summarily divided into two classes : the 
 careless and the careful. To the careless belongs all modern 
 background foliage up to the second quarter of this century, 
 and most of it since. To the careful belongs the work of 
 Leslie, Mulready, Millais, and a few less celebrated men. Now 
 Leslie, though everybody dislikes the chalkiness of his colour, 
 was a real painter. He could paint an expression, but he 
 could not paint a tree ; there are some trees of his at South 
 Kensington, which, though excusable in a painter of polite 
 comedy, would not do credit to a professor of landscape. It 
 is probable that Millais would paint a better tree now than 
 when he attempted the willow in the Ophelia, or the blooming 
 orchard that we all remember. Those efforts, though serious, 
 and therefore most creditable (for how rare is such condescen- 
 sion on the part of a painter of genre !), failed on the side ot 
 hardness. The leafage was not like free, soft, natural leafage, 
 with life and sap in its vessels ; it was like artificial leaves 
 carefully cut out of sheet metal painted green. The foliage 
 and even the bough drawing of Mulready fail in another way. 
 They attempt massing , but they are entirely conventional, and 
 as examples for young landscape-painters no models could 
 well be worse. His trees are bad examples, on account of his 
 satisfaction with them ; there is no sign of effort after better 
 things. They are drawn with more refinement, perhaps, as to 
 line, than Constable’s, but there is a quality in Constable’s work 
 which all landscape-painters must appreciate, — the noble dis- 
 satisfaction which would rather even daub than draw, if in 
 “ drawing ” is to be involved the sacrifice of moisture and 
 mystery and freshness. Constable’s trees are painted by a 
 
214 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 man who feelingly loved nature, and desired to express how 
 nature affected him. Mulready’s are either empty abstractions, 
 or cold, though industrious, studies. 
 
 N ot that an intelligent critic could, without reserve, say that 
 anyone’s foliage is “good.” No painter hitherto has done 
 more than express two or three of the chief qualities of trees. 
 Foliage is so infinitely difficult that human craft always fails 
 before it in some point, and always must. 
 
 In near leaf drawing no landscape-painter has hitherto par- 
 ticularly distinguished himself. A few figure-painters have 
 introduced leaves well when they have paid attention to them ; 
 but they seldom give their natural relations as to position ; 
 they usually separate the leaves more than nature does, and 
 avoid, to some considerable extent, the difficulties of fore- 
 shortened curves. 
 
 When you add to difficulties of drawing and colour those of 
 illumination, you have a complication which only the greatest 
 executants may hope to contend with. An accomplished 
 master of the figure showed me several studies in which he 
 had seriously attempted to paint near leaves in sunshine, all 
 failures, and he knew it. The intensity of reflection and the 
 brilliancy of transparency in sun-lighted leaves, all acting upon 
 and through surfaces of such extremely varied and complex 
 curvature, produce in the aggregate difficulties which no mortal 
 hand may conquer. 
 
 Of water I hardly know bow to speak, so little is popularly 
 known of it. Even such a comparatively common and simple 
 fact as the interruption of a reflection by a breeze is beyond 
 the cognizance of many persons who concern themselves with 
 the fine arts. I had a curious instance of ignorance of water 
 phenomena one day when talking with a French art critic. I 
 discovered that he was under the impression that an object 
 could not be reflected in water unless the sun was behind the 
 object ; he actually believed that reflections and shadows were 
 the same thing. A moment’s observation on the side of any 
 pond would have taught him a very different theory, but this 
 little effort of observation is just what you cannot get people 
 to give. The fact that breezes take all sorts of different colours 
 is also not generally understood, a breeze being popularly 
 supposed to be white, even by persons advanced enough to 
 know that there are such things as breezes. So if any 
 
THE PLACE OF LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 
 
 215 
 
 historical painter chooses to say that water is very easy, I 
 scarcely know how to answer him, the word “ water ” not 
 signifying the same thing to both of us. 
 
 To paint a lake surface rightly, if it is varied by breezes and 
 calms, and semi-calms and demi-semi-calms (for there are such 
 things, and they are often all visible at one time), — to paint such 
 a lake surface, I say, with all the curves of its breeze outlines, and 
 the truth of reflection in its little isolated bits of perfect mirror, 
 and the ineffably light dimness of places that the faintest airs 
 have breathed upon, and the million-rippled acres where the 
 breeze is stronger, — to paint that vast and marvellous surface, 
 so perfect in its finish, so exquisite in the phantasy of its 
 design, so wide, so wonderful, and above all so evanescent, is 
 a task to try the utmost skill of hand, the utmost power of 
 memory, the utmost delicacy of sight ever reached by, or given 
 to, the most finely organized of men ! 
 
 And sea-waves, — what of them ? Who can paint a wave ? 
 who can even draw one ? Stanfield and Turner have given us 
 two interpretations of waves which do indeed render some of 
 the facts, and are full of honest intentions ; but if you want 
 difficulties, even the elementary ones are as yet unconquered. 
 
 Is there not an admission of the difficulty of landscape in 
 the very desperation of the best landscape-painters? When 
 Turner came to paint at last in his wild later way, that was 
 due to a recklessness brought on by two causes : first, the 
 impossibility of really painting the facts he desired to record ; 
 secondly, the uselessness of trying to make them intelligible to 
 the common public. And Corot, too, is reckless of much that 
 a less sensitive artist would strive for. When he gets the right 
 relative tone on any part of his canvas, he dares not meddle 
 with it, dares not put detail upon it, may lightly sketch a thin 
 twig or two across it, but is far too prudent to attempt what 
 we call “finish.” For finish in landscape-painting is generally 
 false, because true finish is so infinitely difficult. When a 
 third-rate artist industriously dots over his trees with little 
 regular lumps of paint, he calls that “finish.” No sensitive 
 painter could endure to do that ; he would rather splash like 
 Constable, daub like Daubigny, blur and rub like Corot, blot 
 and wash like David Cox. All these men would have told you 
 that they considered their methods quite inadequate to repre- 
 sent nature, but that landscape-painting was so difficult that 
 
2l6 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 they were forced to content themselves with anything that 
 would even approach the kind of quality they desired . 1 
 
 Those who most habitually undervalue landscape-painting 
 for its inaccuracy are the very persons who least clearly under- 
 stand what accurate drawing in landscape is and leads to. It 
 would lead to pure topography , and there is little encouragement 
 to draw landscape in that manner. A painter is an author, 
 and likes to move his public, and topography moves nobody. 
 And not only that, but topography, being the product of an 
 artificial and rigidly self-conscious, self-governing state of mind, 
 does not even satisfy the artist himself. If you draw an object 
 freely and innocently as it appears to you, even setting aside 
 all intention of composition, it will be quite wrong topographi- 
 cally. To get into a cool and accurate state you must reason 
 with yourself, and say, “ Every hill is half the height it looks, 
 every curve looks twice as round as it is, every interesting 
 feature is insignificant. You must disbelieve the evidence of 
 your senses, divest yourself not only of the enthusiasm of the 
 artist, but even of the common feelings of humanity ; you 
 must train yourself by patient labour and cautious self-denial 
 to become a looking-glass. Are the backgrounds of the great 
 historical painters models of this accuracy? And if they have 
 it not, and can yet maintain a reputation as draughtsmen, why 
 may not landscape-painters who are but equally far from such 
 rigid exactitude, escape the reproach of bad drawing? 
 
 Historical painters are no doubt generally in the right when 
 they consider themselves more highly trained than landscape 
 artists. It is not because they are more industrious or more 
 intelligent, but the figure, though not Jess difficult than the 
 materials of landscape, affords a more convenient and regular 
 training. Its modelling can be studied quietly under a man- 
 ageable light day after day ; its surface is not broken as tree 
 masses are by leaves, and mountain masses by rocks and 
 
 1 I ought to say that since writing “A Painter’s Camp in the High- 
 lands,” in which (vol. ii. p. 374) I spokd somewhat severely of Constable, 
 a great change has taken place in my views of him. Seeing much mor^ in 
 nature than I did then, I can better enter into the true spirit of his work. 
 His execution still seems to me empirical ; but I have learned to prefer 
 intelligent experiments which prove original observation, even when they 
 are only partially successful, to clever traditional handicraft. I have not 
 space here to do Constable justice, but hope to do so fully on a future 
 occasion. 
 
THE PLACE OF LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 
 
 217 
 
 forests; it is not so full of unforeseen accidents; you know 
 what to expect, and you find it ; and, above all, when you are 
 wrong, you readily perceive your error. Landscape, as usually 
 pursued, affords no such steady and instructive training. 
 Many clouds are as elaborate in form as a living model, but 
 the model will stay for you, and the cloud not. Cloud-drawing, 
 as training, is therefore what the figure would be if the stu- 
 dents were only allowed to see nude figures marching past 
 them, never for one instant still. Waves are even worse than 
 clouds, mountains somewhat better, yet not so much better as 
 would seem to persons who have not tried to paint them from 
 nature ; for a mountain never gives you time to study its 
 modelling fairly. As for trees, the changes of light affect 
 them even more than they do a solid substance, for the light 
 gets into a tree amongst the leaves, and alters it continually 
 from within as well as from without. Then, if you want to 
 study leaves, — draw them on the bough, the light alters, the 
 breeze moves them ; bring them into the house, and they 
 droop and fail out of their places. And for the first elementary 
 study of mountains or foliage, what can you get comparable 
 in point of practicable utility to a statue for the figure? The 
 best model of mountain scenery in the world is probably that 
 of Mont Blanc and its surrounding valleys, at Geneva ; but a 
 student of landscape could not procure such models, and if 
 he could, they are only topographic sketches of the very rudest 
 kind, lacking all those refinements that an artist looks for. 
 
 Again, the first training of a figure-painter is more useful, as 
 we see ; but, what is of still greater consequence to him as an 
 artist, his practical work is more improving than landscape 
 work. Landscapes are for the most part painted in the studio ; 
 they are always painted, even when in the presence of nature, 
 to a large extent from memory. Painting from memory may 
 exercise that faculty, but it adds nothing to the stock of ac- 
 quired information. A figure-painter, working constantly more 
 or less from models, painting even inanimate accessories from 
 the actual objects, is always acquiring information, always 
 training and maintaining his faculty of representing things, and 
 that faculty is nothing less than the very foundation of pictorial 
 power. So that figure-painters are likely to be better crafts- 
 men than landscape-painters. And are they not so in fact? 
 Surely no unprejudiced observer can have failed to remark it. 
 
218 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 The low position of landscape in the estimation of Acade- 
 mies is probably in part attributable to this cause. The faculty 
 of able representation is rightly esteemed by all good painters, 
 and a class of artists which is habitually deficient in this 
 quality is sure to find a difficulty in acquiring, from- artists, 
 honour and recognition. But the niggard recognition of land- 
 scape is also due to still more serious objections. It is the 
 commonly received doctrine amongst painters of history and 
 genre, that figure-painting is the representation of mind, 
 whereas landscape-painting is the representation of matter. 
 By an inference, not altogether justified, as I hope to show, 
 not altogether logical, yet an inference of a kind which many 
 persons are in the habit of accepting without question, they 
 proceed thence to the conclusion that to paint the figure 
 requires mind, whilst to paint landscape mind is not requisite, 
 or, at any rate, never called for in anything like the same 
 degree. 
 
 There are writers who speak of Turner as a copier of life- 
 less matter. This view ignores two things : first, the mind 
 of Turner, who threw his whole soul into an interpretation of 
 nature, which was as far removed from copyism as Shakspeare’s 
 writing is from newspaper reporting ; and secondly, the mind 
 of God, which invests external nature with all its interest, 
 exactly as the mind of an author invests paper and print with 
 interest. 
 
 The fact is, that by our ingenious invention of a goddess of 
 nature, whom we are in the habit of speaking very lightly 
 about, we have left the idea of God to theologians. In our 
 mythology this nature-goddess holds a peculiar place of her 
 own. She is half demon, half deity. Tennyson says she is 
 
 “ Red in tooth and claw, 
 
 With ravine. ” 
 
 Ruskin playfully accuses her of miserliness ! “ Sometimes I 
 
 have thought her miserliness intolerable ; in a gentian, for 
 instance, the way she economizes her ultramarine down in the 
 bell is a little too bad.” Scores of writers speak of her in the 
 same disrespectful tone. Substitute God for Nature, and Him 
 for her, and see how that little accusation of miserliness reads ! 
 Do these writers really believe that Nature consciously exists 
 as a working goddess? Probably not. She is a fiction for 
 
THE PLACE OF LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 
 
 219 
 
 the sake of convenience. In the present state of the public 
 mind no fearless investigation of the Divine system of govern- 
 ment, as we see it actually at work , is permitted to us ; so when 
 we talk of any hard and inexorable law, it is a “ law of 
 nature;” we do not exactly like, as yet, to call it a law of 
 God. By this timidity we do ourselves serious intellectual 
 injury, and, amongst many other unfortunate results,, we arrive 
 at one which closely concerns oar present argument. Natural 
 scenery, as the work of a supposed nature-goddess, whom we 
 do not respect, has not, for us, anything like that serious 
 interest which it would have had if we could have received it 
 as a direct expression of the Supreme. 
 
 I put forward this argument with no intention of writing 
 what foreigners so justly reprobate as our English cant. For 
 instance, in looking at a fine natural scene, the head of Loch 
 Awe if you will, it never occurs to me to imagine that God 
 designed it as an artist composes a picture. I believe, rather, 
 that by the operation of general laws depressions in the earth 
 were produced, nobody knows exactly how, and that these 
 basins become lakes, as the depressions in a Yorkshireman’s 
 plate of porridge become pools of milk, whilst the lumps rise 
 out of them mountainously. And in my view the Scotch or 
 Swiss lakes and mountains cost the Creator just as much 
 thought as, and no more* than, the hollows and lumps in the 
 porridge. So of effects ; I see God's invention in them, but 
 do not superstitiously imagine that He designed every sunset 
 separately as a painter does. 
 
 But, on the other hand, in spite of this modern recognition 
 of pervading law, producing artistic- beauty as it produces 
 mechanical construction, I never look at any natural scene or 
 object without the sense of being placed by it in direct com- 
 munication with the Supreme Artist. You may, if you will, 
 call this world inanimate nature, but every atom of it is in- 
 scribed. And let the reader be assured that to comprehend 
 never so slight a manifestation of the Divine mind is no 
 unworthy task for the proudest and cleverest of us. All who 
 study the great natural Revelation are, as to the subject-matter 
 of their studies, on a footing of fraternal equality. Anatomists, 
 astronomers, botanists, geologists, landscape-painters, figure- 
 painters, no one of these has the right to despise the pursuit 
 of the other. There are inequalities of capacity : Raphael is 
 
220 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 greater than Dughet, but so is Turner greater than Haydon 
 and West. In science we find no such narrow classifications. 
 Men who explore the solar photosphere do not scorn men who 
 explore a grain of pollen ; men who dissect the human body 
 do not scorn men who dissect vegetables. 
 
 And one great reason why we go to external nature now is 
 because man no longer conveys to us the Divine idea in its 
 purity, as an Alp or a wild chamois does. It is very well to say 
 that all human developments are in their origin Divine ideas, 
 and no doubt this is in a certain sense true * no doubt the 
 industrial age, for example, was a Divine intention, so that in 
 this sense even the most unlovely life in the hideous streets 
 of Oldham and Rochdale deserves study for its interest as a 
 necessary phase of human evolution. But the artistic instinct 
 turns away from this. The artistic instinct is warned that such 
 phases of human life do not concern it. They concern 
 thinkers and rulers, not artists. 
 
 For there is no beauty there. Long rows of cottages, 
 whose monotonous brick fronts are dark with soot; heaps of 
 ashes on the black acre of building-ground yet unoccupied ; 
 foul ordure visible everywhere ; filthy children playing amongst 
 it with bits of broken pot ; behind the cottages a roaring 
 factory, six or seven stories high, its vast monotonous wall 
 pierced with a hundred windows, all alike, and all ugly — half 
 an acre of ugliness, set up vertically against the sky, to bar the 
 sunshine out ; great chimney-stalks for towers — ay, fifty of them 
 within a mile, — pouring opaque clouds of foul coal-smoke into 
 the vitiated atmosphere ; — no human beauty left there that has 
 not been marred beyond recognition by the life the men and 
 women lead there from infancy ; no costume but shapeless 
 fustian for the men, having neither grace nor gaiety ; and long 
 straight pinafores for the factory girls, bound round their 
 waists with greasy leathern belts. 
 
 To anyone having the sense of beauty, — and all true artists 
 have it, -^nothing can well be more depressing than the 
 influences of such a scene. The heart sinks, the sight suffers 
 under them. Yet within the distance of a day’s ramble there 
 are wild moors where the heather blooms, and little dells where 
 pure streams fall over rocks of sandstone under green fern, 
 into lucid pools, where the crimson-spotted trout dart swiftly. 
 
 We are at the point at last. That street under the factoiy 
 
THE PLACE OE LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 
 
 221 
 
 seems less divine than this solitude. The street may have a 
 more tragic interest, and some woodcut designer, working in 
 the same temper as Hood when he wrote the “Song of the 
 Shirt,” might find matter there for his note-book, but he must 
 be a man caring nothing for beauty in comparison with human 
 interest, — that is, he must be less an artist than a moralist. 
 
 One day I was in the cottage of a factory operative in a 
 back street in Rochdale. The young man who was master of 
 the house (they marry early there) was in a loud agony of grief. 
 After the expiration of a minute, some men brought in a 
 sack, apparently heavy ; in the sack was the poor lad's young 
 wife, dead. The sack was opened, and the surgeon who was 
 with me gave the decisive word, “Nothing to be done.” It 
 was a most impressive scene ; the dead woman's eyes were 
 still quite bright, for she had died of heart-disease, most sud- 
 denly, ten minutes before, and her face was by nature beautiful ; 
 but the prosaic character of all the accessories quite unfitted, 
 the subject for pictorial treatment. It would have done for 
 Cruikshank, however . 1 
 
 Nothing turns away true painters from human life so soon 
 as the loss of visible dignity. And our English life, in every 
 class, has lost it. Our prosy ugly costume and love of con- 
 venience have taken away all grandeur from our visible style 
 and carriage. Besides, we are not serious enough, mentally, 
 to deserve the attention of the most serious artists. We are 
 exactly suited for the caricaturist ; we are the right material for 
 Doyle and Leech ; taking us at the best, we may do for Frith, 
 but we should not much gratify Titian or Velasquez. 
 
 “ Chose digne d’attention ! ” said the venerable Delecluze, 
 “ c’est lorsque rien n’est plus pris au serieux, c’est quand 
 Thomme en est arrive a rire lui-meme que les artistes, ainsi que 
 les poetes qui conservent cependant encore le sentiment et le 
 gout des grandes choses, las de chercher en vain dans les 
 actions des hommes quelque chose de cette grandeur dont la 
 
 1 I might have added a detail which the reader may pardon me for 
 adding in a note. The young woman had been found dead in one of 
 those petties of which there is a row behind every factory. This detail is 
 necessary to the completeness of the impression which the incident pro- 
 duced upon me. To die in a petty (one of twelve in a row) and be 
 brought home in a sack, this is poetical certainly (I am not speaking 
 ironically), but the poetry is of the kind which has immortalized the “Bridge 
 ot Sighs,” and the “ Song of the Shirt.” — 1873. 
 
222 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 Bible, dont Homere entre autres fournissent tant d’exemples, 
 rejettent en quelque sorte l’humanite corame une matiere 
 epuisee, et vont chercher dans la nature vegetale et dans les 
 animaux des sujets oil la vie est imparfaite, mais demeur^e 
 pure depuis la creation. Comment expliquer autrement le gout 
 de Poussin pour la solitude, le soin qu’il a pris — lui, peintre 
 d’histoire si excellent, de peindre les bois, les bords ombreux et 
 tristes des fleuves, si ce n’est pas ce besoin imperieux qu’ont 
 les grandes ames de se retremper aux sources primitives et in- 
 alterables de la creation ? ” 
 
 Men and women are more wonderful than mountains, if in 
 the overpowering marvel of creation one thing can be called 
 more wonderful than another, when all are alike utterly incom- 
 prehensible by us. But men and women have a fatal liberty 
 which mountains have not. They have the liberty of spoiling 
 themselves, of making themselves ugly, and mean, and ridicu- 
 lous. They tattoo themselves in South Sea islands ; what they 
 do in North Sea islands it would be more prudent not to parti- 
 cularize. But a mountain does not know how to be ridiculous. 
 A mountain cannot dress in bad taste. Neither is it capable 
 of degrading itself by vice. Noble human life in a great and 
 earnest age is better artistic material than wild nature ; but 
 human life in an age like ours is not. 
 
 Note the subjects that true artists choose and avoid, and 
 believe that their instincts lead them rightly. If they paint 
 men, they go back to some age of costume and dignity, or else 
 to some golden time of early poetry, when the primitive human 
 creature fought and loved under the bright sky of the world’s 
 youth. Or, if it is contemporary life that they choose, they 
 choose it as humble as possible, to get dow?i below the strata 
 which vulgarity permeates . Thus a noble artist will gladly 
 paint a peasant driving a yoke of oxen, but not a commercial 
 traveller in his gig. 
 
 I have said so much in other places about the popular 
 ignorance of landscape, that it would be tiresome to harp on 
 that string any longer; but anyone who is habitually attentive 
 to the indications which show the state of culture on a subject 
 that interests him, cannot help forming an opinion, more or 
 less favourable, of the degree to which it is generally under- 
 stood. What is to be regretted in the present condition 
 of popular information about landscape is this : landscape- 
 
THE PLACE OF LANDSCAPE-PAINTING, 
 
 223 
 
 painters feel no confidence in the public, whereas an artist 
 ought always to feel satisfied that if he merits acknowledgment 
 he will receive it. Here is a little anecdote to the point. Last 
 autumn I found myself on the deck of a steamer plying on the 
 Lake of Geneva. It was crowded with passengers, and just as 
 we got past Coppet, their great object of interest was Mont 
 Blanc. A white cloud concealed the mountain, and all the 
 passengers that I overheard were quite certain that the cloud 
 was Mont Blanc itself. Shortly afterwards the snowy crest 
 became visible, and then they believed that to be a cloud. 
 This mistake would have been impossible if they had known 
 anything about Alpine landscape ; because, although clouds 
 under certain unusual circumstances do occasionally look like 
 mountains, that particular one had forms so entirely unlike 
 mountain forms, that nobody acquainted with mountain ana- 
 tomy could have made the mistake. Such little occurrences 
 as this are, I repeat, discouraging to a landscape-painter. 
 Here were many gentlemen and ladies, rich enough to travel, 
 who could not recognize a mountain when actually set there 
 before them ; how, then, should they render justice to the same 
 thing in a picture ? They used telescopes and opera glasses ; 
 but no trained eyes would have needed a telescope ; thqt 
 sharp, delicate outline of the snow would have been enough 
 for it. 
 
 The reader is not aware, perhaps, that some figure-painters 
 even deny to landscape the right to exist as an independent 
 art at all. Landscape is very good, they say, for backgrounds, 
 but it was never intended as anything else than a foil to 
 human or animal life. The doctrine may be shown to be 
 untenable by reminding the reader that there exist, in all scenic 
 nature, magnificent compositions, any one of which would be 
 entirely destroyed by the intervention of a large figure or 
 animal in the foreground. No one who is familiar with the 
 Highlands of Scotland, or Switzerland, or even with our 
 English lake district, would desire to hand over pictures of 
 their most striking scenes to an historical painter in order to 
 have figures of large size painted upon them. Surely there 
 are scenes in nature complete enough to deserve a few square 
 feet of canvas to themselves ! 
 
 A theory more commonly received is the following. It is 
 urged that no scene in nature is worth painting without some 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 224 
 
 direct reference to humanity; that nature without human 
 interest is devoid of artistic value. 
 
 This is one of those questions which cannot be settled in 
 any definite way for the whole body of spectators. If you say 
 that pure nature has no artistic interest, you speak truly, no 
 doubt, so far as your own feelings are concerned, but I cannot 
 admit that your proposition is universally true, because pure 
 nature has an infinite artistic interest for me, and therefore 
 probably for others who are similarly constituted . 1 It is from 
 the belief that I am on this point the spokesman of a consider- 
 able class that I venture to explain this sentiment more in 
 detail. We who love pure nature are not indifferent to huma- 
 nity. We may, as thinkers and moralists, take the keenest pos- 
 sible interest in human affairs, but we perceive that in this age 
 men and their dwellings are not usually objects of much artistic 
 interest, both because they have so little beauty, and, what is a 
 far graver deficiency, so little sublimity. In these respects the 
 loneliest defiles of the Alps are better than the hotels and 
 
 1 There is a fine passage in the “ Seven Lamps of Architecture ” in which 
 Mr. Ruskin first describes a Jura landscape, and then attributes its chief 
 power over the mind (justly, no doubt, in his own case) to historical asso- 
 ciation. “ The writer well remembers,” he continues, “ the sudden blank- 
 ness and chill which were cast upon it when he endeavoured, in order more 
 strictly to arrive at the sources of its impressiveness, to imagine it, for a 
 moment, a scene in some aboriginal forest of the New Continent. The 
 flowers in an instant lost their light, the river its music, the hills became 
 oppressively desolate ; a heaviness in the boughs of the darkened forest 
 showed how much of their former power had been dependent upon a life 
 which was not theirs, how much of the glory of the imperishable, or con- 
 tinually renewed, creation is reflected from things more precious in their 
 memories than it, in its renewing.” 
 
 On the other hand, it may be observed that the forest scenery of France 
 (or any populous and civilized country) may gain greatly in sublimity 
 whenever we are able momentarily to imagine it to be the scenery of true 
 primaeval forests in America or Africa. Chateaubriand moved thousands 
 of readers by describing the forests of that very New Continent which 
 chilled Mr. Ruskin’ s imagination when he thought of it. The exact truth 
 appears to be simply this, that different persons, or the same persons in 
 different moods, may feel impressed either by the presence of human asso- 
 ciation in landscape or by its absence. As an example of the latter let me 
 mention the feelings of a man when he sets his foot (as . »n an Alpine peak 
 hitherto unascended) where no human foot has ever before trodden, and 
 also the strong impression received by travellers such as Livingstone, from 
 scenery wdiich for the European mind can have no association with human 
 history or tradition. — 1873. 
 
THE PLACE OF LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 
 
 225 
 
 tourists of Chamounix. Indeed Switzerland, in our view, is as 
 nearly as possible spoiled by its visitors. In like manner we 
 believe the valleys of Lancashire and Yorkshire — the beautiful 
 vale of Todmorden, for example — to be (artistically) ruined by 
 factories, and rows of cottages, and railways, and excellent 
 turnpike roads. We have no objection to an old castle, we 
 consider the head of Loch Awe to be improved by Kilchurn ; 
 but we cannot admire the modern castles of Taymouth and 
 Inverary, much as we may respect the families of Breadalbane 
 and Argyll. In short, when the human interest increases the 
 pictorial value of the locality, as mediaeval fortifications do, we 
 are glad to have it ; but when it diminishes the pictorial value, 
 as almost all modern buildings and engineering works do, we 
 prefer wild nature. 
 
 It remains only to indicate what, in the present writer's 
 opinion, ought to be the chief aims of landscape-painting, and 
 what position is due to it. Its great object as an art ought to 
 be the faithful rendering of the spirit and character of natural 
 scenery and interesting localities. Any accuracy is worthless 
 which does not express character ; every inaccuracy is to be 
 praised which helps to express it better. Everything in land- 
 scape art ought to contribute to render, with the most striking 
 fidelity, not merely the scene, but that which is far deeper and 
 more divine, the spirit of the scene. And here, I am bound 
 to observe, many of our most popular artists fail, and they fail 
 from a dread of producing strange-looking pictures. If you 
 paint local character, your work is sure to have peculiarities 
 which will fail to correspond with the vague general ideas that 
 exist on the subject of landscape, and therefore you are likely 
 to offend. A well-known and most experienced dealer said to 
 me one day, in all friendliness, “ If you paint a truth which 
 one spectator has not seen in nature, you make that man your 
 enemy.” A recent critic, speaking of an artist of real genius, 
 Mr. E. B. Jones, said, what was true, that his works pleased 
 some and offended others ; but then the critic proceeded to 
 mention another artist, of whom he said, with understood allu- 
 sion to Mr. E. B. Jones, that this man “trod on nobody's 
 toes.” To paint, then, in a manner not agreeable to the spec- 
 tator, is resented by him as a personal annoyance and injury 
 - — a treading on the toes. Now, it is very desirable that a 
 more liberal view should prevail. If the works of an artist do 
 n Q 
 
226 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 not please you, pass on to those of another whom you like 
 better, and try to believe that there is no intention to hurt 
 or offend you on the part of the painter you dislike. In all 
 probability he has been aiming at some quality he thinks 
 desirable ; perhaps he has not attained the quality, but is on 
 the road to it. It is not his interest to give offence ; he would 
 be ten times happier to give pleasure ; but he is trying to 
 accomplish something that he sees clearly enough, no doubt, 
 yet which it is not to be expected that we should see until 
 he has fully set it forth. 
 
 I may have insisted upon this somewhat importunately; I 
 may have offended by praising the truth that gives offence, but 
 no art doctrine has need of more frequent reiteration than this, 
 Local t7'uth should be held sacred and inviolable . I do not mean 
 that we ought to confine ourselves to rigid topography, but that 
 local character ought to be everywhere affectionately studied, 
 thoroughly understood, faithfully though freely rendered. And 
 there is the more need to preach this doctrine, that many critics 
 have a lofty scorn of local truth, as something opposed to the 
 true spirit of art and incompatible with noble work. For 
 example, because Gustave Dore went into Spain before illus- 
 trating “Don Quixote,” a well-known French critic thought it 
 the right thing to say that the work would have been better if 
 Dore had not seen Spain. 
 
 I would entreat the reader to use all his influence in favour 
 of that kind of landscape which really means something and 
 expresses something. If a painter, by the side of some French 
 river, is struck by some long monotonous line of poplars, do 
 not find fault with the monotony, but thank him for it ; it is 
 the spirit of the place. If another painter far in the Scottish 
 hills reproduces the sadness and solitude of their dear humble, 
 barren crests, grey and purple in the chilly twilight, do not 
 find fault with the melancholy and loneliness of his work ; it 
 ought to be melancholy and lonely, for that was the spirit of 
 the scene. 
 
 It is generally a waste of time to trouble ourselves much 
 about classifications of painters according to subjects ; the 
 points of real importance are the qualities of the individual 
 artist. Anyone who has the true critical faculty can easily 
 recognize great powers in the treatment of very simple subjects. 
 It is those powers by which an artist takes his place. And 
 
THE PLACE OF LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 
 
 227 
 
 whatever branch of art a man may have chosen, if he has con- 
 trived to make first-rate gifts manifest in his work, we ought 
 to put him in the first rank. The phrases “ simple pays agist t ” 
 and “ mere landscape-painter ” imply that criticism is a much 
 easier business than it really is. Truly, if the rank of artists 
 might be settled by the kind of subjects they paint, anybody 
 might be an art critic. The real difficulty of criticism lies 
 in the fact that the most splendid artistic faculties may be 
 lavished on apparently humble work, and a good critic is 
 neither to be dazzled by ambition in the choice of a subject, 
 nor turned aside from what is good and able because it does 
 not happen to be at the same time pretentious. 
 
 The strong point of landscape is its power of affecting the 
 feelings by influences very difficult to define in words. Music 
 also has nameless powers, and, as a writer lately observed in 
 the Cornhill Magazine, there is some resemblance between the 
 way landscape-painting and musical compositions move us. 
 
 I am inclined to believe that the communicative powers of 
 musical sounds are habitually underrated. They deserve 
 passing allusion here in connection with landscape-painting, 
 because music, like landscape art, is not strictly what is called 
 an intellectual pursuit, and is held in exceedingly low estima- 
 tion by all who are insensible to it. But may not these vague 
 musical expressions of thought and feeling be the only expres- 
 sion possible for those thoughts and those feelings? I have 
 often felt whilst listening to great music that something was 
 thereby communicated to me which could not reach me 
 through any other channel. Literary expression is no doubt 
 more practical and positive ; but are we quite sure that it is 
 higher, merely because it is more definite ? The same narrow 
 spirit of classification which roughly sets down landscape as 
 unmeaning, would put music below poetry ; but the more we 
 understand it, the more embarrassing it appears to settle its 
 place. It may be that music expresses aspirations that words 
 cannot express, and these aspirations may very possibly be 
 higher than those we utter verbally. 
 
 If the peculiar strength of landscape lies in this vague kind 
 of influence, that of figure-painting is to be sought in dramatic 
 expression. Thus, so far as it is possible to compare one man 
 of genius with another, we might say that Leslie was a suc- 
 cessor of Pope and Goldsmith, whilst Millais is the youngei 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 brother of Tennyson and Keats, whereas Turner might be 
 better compared with some very great musician. 
 
 As to the rank which landscape-painting ought to hold 
 amongst the fine arts, I claim for it simple independence. 
 One of my critics said that I seemed to rank it above figure- 
 painting, but that such would never be the general opinion. 
 This is one of those misinterpretations to which every public 
 writer is liable. Some previous writers have treated landscape 
 with contempt, and I say that it does not deserve contempt ; 
 therefore it is inferred that I set up landscape art above figure 
 art. The inference is entirely unwarranted . 1 If anyone asserts 
 that landscape is easy, that it is a mindless copyism of dead 
 matter, I am ready to answer him that it is difficult , and that, 
 •when good, it is a mindful interpretation of mind ; that is to 
 say, an interpretation by human genius of the Mind that created 
 the world. But the idea of giving precedence to artists accord- 
 ing to the subjects they choose, seems to me so unpractical, so 
 inapplicable, so deficient in the simplest elements of common 
 sense, that it never once occurred to me to entertain it. 
 
 The fact will always remain, that men take a keener interest 
 in each other than in the external world, and so naturally pay 
 most attention to the art which deals with man. Perhaps, too, 
 our love of landscape is in great part due to a repulsion from 
 the present unartistic and unlovely aspect of humanity. In an 
 age when men and architecture are fit only to be caricatured, 
 artists who have not the peculiar faculty of the caricaturist 
 naturally go to external nature and the life of animals or 
 peasants. But if, in the future, man and his dwellings should 
 again become noble and interesting, will not artists turn to 
 him and them again, and neglect forests and mountains ? 
 There is some chance of this. 
 
 Meanwhile we have the beauty of the earth, and its gran- 
 deur. But can we paint its grandeur? Is it wise to desert the 
 common pastoral subjects of Claude and Cuyp for the snowy 
 
 1 Notwithstanding this passage, which I had hoped was sufficiently clear, 
 an American critic, in speaking of this very book, again attributed to me 
 the opinion that landscape ought to have a higher place than figure painting. 
 This is very far from my thoughts. I like a good landscape better than a 
 bad figure-picture, and the converse, but have always respected figure - 
 painters quite as heartily as landscape-painters, and enjoyed their works 
 quite as much as landscapes. — 1873. 
 
THE PLACE OF LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 
 
 229 
 
 crests that dazzled the eyes of Calame? M. Delaborde 
 doubts this ; he does not exactly admit that art may deal with 
 the extraordinary in landscape. He is right in one point, I 
 think. Painting, even the truest, is a kind of fiction ; and it 
 is admitted that fiction cannot quite safely deal with extra- 
 ordinary truth, because it appeals to the recognition of the 
 fidelity of its representation, and few can recognize what is 
 rare in nature. So far, it may be admitted that Troyon, for 
 instance, was wiser than Calame. But I object to M. Dela- 
 borde’s idea that Alpine scenery is more “ irregular” than 
 commonplace landscape ; and I object also to another theory 
 of his, that such scenery lies out of the conditions of por- 
 traiture. Alpine scenery may not be familiar to Parisians, but 
 it is strictly natural, strictly under the influence of law , and 
 of very wonderful and beautiful laws too ; indeed, the laws of 
 earth structure can nowhere be seen more plainly than in 
 Switzerland, where, from flat diluvial ground to Alpine aiguilles , 
 you can study every manifestation of the energy of the earth. 
 And as to the objection that the Alps lie out of the con- 
 ditions of portraiture, let this little anecdote answer it. Not 
 very long ago, I entered Martigny in the evening from the 
 Forclaz. A nameless mountain rose before me, but I knew it 
 instantly from a drawing of Ruskin’s. I had quite forgotten 
 the locality of the drawing, but on returning home I looked 
 through “ Modern Painters ” and found it. The real truth is, 
 that every mountain has features of its own which bring it 
 within the conditions of portraiture quite as much as a man’s 
 face ; but faithful landscape is too modern to obtain recogni- 
 tion, as yet, from orthodox criticism, which always makes a 
 point of being a century or two behind its age. 
 
 Of Calame’s degree of success in Alpine landscape I have 
 not space to speak here with justice ; but, considering what 
 had been done before him, he was a discoverer in art. What 
 is more to our present purpose is the comparison instituted by 
 M. Delaborde between Flandrin and Calame, so much to the 
 disparagement of the latter. This is only one instance the 
 more of the extreme difficulty of obtaining in landscape anything 
 like that serious kind of consideration awarded to distinguished 
 figure-painters. Calame deserved this if ever anyone did. 
 He was quite as earnest as Flandrin, and quite as pure and 
 devoted a genius. Calame had the highest aims, and in great 
 
230 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 part realized them ; so indeed had also Flandrin. But Calame 
 practised an art which did not admit of the direct display of 
 those human sympathies which most surely reach the heart of 
 humanity. Flandrin painted saints and princes ; Calame gave 
 the energy of a life/ to the chilling sublimities of nature. 
 
 Closely connected with the dislike to extraordinary scenery 
 is the dislike to extraordinary effects. The spectator’s impres- 
 sion on looking at a picture in which one of these effects is 
 attempted appears to be frequently something of this kind : 
 “ The artist is amusing himself at my expense : ” or else, 
 “ The artist means to read me a lesson on my own ignorance ; ” 
 and in either case a feeling of rebellion or resentment arises. 
 The simple truth is, that effects are the life of landscape, and 
 that the most powerful of them are the moments when this 
 life is carried to its utmost pitch and paroxysm of intensity. 
 Such effects are necessarily rare, as the crises of passion 
 are rare in the soul of man ; but no one knows a landscape 
 who has not seen it under a noble effect, just as no one knows 
 a human being who has not seen him in a moment of supreme 
 excitement. And again, not only for their intensity of life are 
 the noble effects observed and valued, but still more for their 
 great artistic quality of synthesis. A fine effect is pictorially 
 complete ; a common effect is usually scattered and compara- 
 tively unmeaning : a fine effect has large masses and vigorous 
 oppositions ; a common effect is apt to be broken and feeble, 
 requiring much artistic faculty in the painter himself to get 
 a synthetic whole out of it. And it is especially natural that 
 colourists should like the rare effects, because they always 
 give magnificent arrangements of colour. Intense gold and 
 purple are to be seen on the horizon of hilly countries for 
 ten minutes at a time, on perhaps twenty evenings in a year ; 
 rich crimson and fiery scarlet still more rarely. A landscape- 
 painter who loves gold and purple, or crimson and scarlet, 
 is therefore very naturally led to attempt these rare effects. 
 A figure-painter who loves the same colours may intro- 
 duce them whenever he chooses by means of draperies 
 and accessories. 
 
 As to the prudence of attempting these effects, no doubt 
 that is another question. If we cannot paint plain daylight, it 
 is useless to attempt these splendours. But no young land- 
 scape-painter would be worth much who did not long to try 
 
THE PLACE OF LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 
 
 231 
 
 for them ; and even a few failures may be better for him than 
 placid contentment with sober green and grey. 
 
 The worst of adopting landscape as a means of expressing 
 yourself is the difficulty, not of putting intelligence and feeling 
 into your work, for landscape will absorb any quantity of 
 both, but of getting credit for them when there. It may be 
 answered, that painters ought to be above the desire for public 
 recognition, above the vanity which cannot live without praise. 
 But we may observe that not painters only, but all men, 
 need recognition in their avocations to enable them to work 
 cheerfully. It is not praise and fame they want so much as 
 the satisfaction of feeling that the amount of mind they put 
 into their work will reach others. Nothing is more cruelly 
 discouraging to an intellectual and feeling workman than 
 the sense that an obstruction exists between his mind and 
 the mind of the public. 
 
 This may serve to account for the fact, that whereas we 
 have in England, at the present day, at least a dozen most 
 excellent landscape-painters, and twenty or thirty really good 
 ones, we hear on every side complaints of the decadent 
 condition of landscape. Now, it is a positive truth that the 
 average merit of landscape work has never been so high or any- 
 thing like so high as it is now. But a few years since a great 
 commotion was made about the works of Turner, and the 
 brilliant advocacy of a distinguished writer directed, for a time, 
 public attention to the branch of the art which Turner pro- 
 fessed. Since then the public mind has reverted to its natural 
 channel, and even great landscape-painters have no chance of 
 obtaining that degree of attention which is freely accorded to 
 third-rate painters of a figure. Lee Bridell awoke a little 
 murmur of fame before he died, and a few were aware that a 
 noble career had been cut short in its early prime ; but the 
 busy world was ignorant of its loss. The imperial biographer 
 of Caesar has read the nations a lesson on their want of confi- 
 dence in that order of genius which must subjugate before it 
 can improve ; yet it is not unnatural that we should fail to 
 recognize benefactors who begin by requiring us to be slaves. 
 An ingratitude far less excusable is that which repels a benefit 
 accompanied by no condition, and turns away coldly from the 
 kindly teaching which would lay no yoke upon us but the thrall 
 of a sweet pleasure that never knew repentance. — 1865. 
 
1 NOUGHTS ABOUT ATT. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 In “ Essays in History and Art,” by R. H. Patterson, I find. some 
 passages which express the feeling about landscape that is often 
 prevalent amongst literary and cultivated people. Mr. Patterson 
 says : — 
 
 “ The spirit which leads to the acknowledgment of God in His 
 works will ever concentrate itself peculiarly upon that part of 
 nature which is more divine than the rest — upon living beings 
 rather than dead things — and, most of all, upon Man. Man, the 
 noblest of God’s works which human eye can see — made after the 
 very image of God himself, — who alone of all this world’s pageantry 
 is destined for immortality, — who can set his foot on the everlasting 
 hills and say ‘ I outlive you ! ’ Man, lord of the earth, and heir 
 of heaven — is there anything in the whole world that can furnish 
 a theme like this ? anything so noble, so beautiful, so divine, for 
 poet or artist to lavish his might on, or for the human race itself 
 to contemplate ? Landscape-painting — bah ! ” 
 
 Again, in the concluding passage of the same essay, Mr. Patterson 
 recurs to the subject in the same tone : — 
 
 44 All history shows that the highest departments of Science and 
 Art were occupied first : Godin Ipdia and Judaea — man in China 
 — mind in Greece — and the stars everywhere, but especially in 
 Assyria. Taking European civilization alone, we find as indices 
 of this truth, in ancient Greece, Homer and yEschylus, Plato and 
 Aristotle — in mediaeval Italy, Dante and Tasso, Michael Angelo 
 and Raffaelle — in England, Shakespeare and Milton, Bacon and 
 Newton. And just as these higher fields are excelled in (we do not 
 say exhausted, for no department of mind will ever be exhausted) 
 by the finite intelligence of man, men take of the lower ones. 
 They turn from the old to the new, from the higher to the lower ; 
 and then we have arrived at the age of Landscape-painting. We 
 do not undervalue Landscape-painting ; — it is no part either of 
 our inclination or of our theory to do so. We love it, as we think, 
 
 4 Wisely,’ not, like Mr. Ruskin, 4 too well.’ And we shall never 
 consent that he should defame higher and infinitely nobler mani- 
 festations of mind by subordinating them to, or even placing them 
 on an equality with, this last and lowest of aesthetic studies. A 
 copier of lifeless matter, of inanimate nature, to be classed with 
 
THE PLACE OF LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 
 
 233 
 
 giants of intellect whose heads touched the skies ! An expatiator 
 in the narrow field of landscape-painting to be ranked with men 
 whose genius overflowed all creation ! 6 Shakespeare — Bacon — 
 
 Twiner / ’ Bah ! ” 
 
 This kind of writing has not precision enough to be readily 
 answerable, but let me try, only avoiding the theological matter, 
 on which discussion would not be possible in these limits, or in a 
 book of this character. That men turn from the higher to the 
 lower as their knowledge advances, is true in a sense quite different 
 from that which the writer of the above passages attached to his 
 favourite theory. The truth is that as men become more cultivated 
 and better informed, the number of things that interest them 
 enlarges, but they do not desert high subjects for low ones ; their 
 circle of vision simply includes more. Our own age has been 
 fruitful in the most elevated speculation, and has thrown much light 
 upon subjects which in all ages have been considered high subjects. 
 At the same time fit takes an increasing interest in subjects which 
 times of inferior knowledge would have considered beneath atten- 
 tion, and this simply because its general power of taking interest 
 is extended by its wider culture. Amateurship in landscape, said 
 Goethe, presupposes a highly cultivated art, and we may go still 
 further and affirm that the painting of landscape by professional 
 artists presupposes an advanced culture in the public they address. 
 But a highly cultivated age does not desert or abandon any one of 
 the fields of culture. Astronomy awakened the interest of the most 
 ancient peoples, yet astronomy has never been followed by so 
 many students as to-day. It is a great error to suppose that 
 because we are interested in landscape we are less interested in 
 humanity. The landscape work of Turner is full of human interest 
 from beginning to end. He drew thousands of buildings, and 
 in every scene he illustrated there is a pervading sentiment which 
 is not less profoundly human than that of other poets who have 
 expressed themselves in the medium of verse. It is childish to 
 speak of the stars as a higher subject than landscape, merely 
 because the stars are popularly supposed to be above the earth. 
 Seen rightly, in its true relations to God and man, every object, 
 however humble, is richly deserving of our study. Geology is not 
 a lower study than astronomy ; it is the investigation of a planet 
 which we have the advantage of seeing near, as astronomy is the 
 investigation of planets and stars seen at a distance. The most 
 concentrated expression of that modern feeling for nature which 
 
234 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 Mr. Patterson despises is to be found in this little poem of 
 Tennyson : — 
 
 4 4 Flower in the crannied wall, 
 
 I pluck you out of the crannies, 
 
 Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
 
 Little flower — but if I could understand 
 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
 
 I should know what God and man is.” 
 
 — 1873- 
 
THE HOUSING OF NATIONAL ATT TREASURES. 
 
 When artistic questions come before Parliament, it is usually 
 in connection with public edifices or national pictures. On 
 such occasions it is curious to observe how few members really 
 take part in the discussion, how these few always reappear, 
 and with what languid interest other honourable gentlemen 
 listen to them or bear with them. Lovers of art ought to- feel 
 warmly grateful to the few representatives who maintain, how- 
 ever they may differ among themselves, that Art is a matter of 
 national concern, requiring, from time to time, the attention 
 of the Legislature. It might be desirable, perhaps, that these 
 gentlemen should be more united in their views ; but it is well 
 known to all who study the fine arts that identity of opinion 
 on that subject is hopeless, the only agreement that can be 
 expected amongst lovers of art being that they all agree 
 to love it in one way or other, though never exactly in the 
 same way. 
 
 There is a marked tendency in the English mind, especially 
 in that peculiar manifestation of it which may be called the 
 English parliamentary mind, to receive coldly any proposition 
 based upon abstract ideas of what ought to be, whilst it readily 
 entertains proposals for modifications and improvements in 
 what is. English sentiment in this respect is very faithfully 
 represented by the way in which country gentlemen usually set 
 about improvements on their mansions and estates. They 
 have a rooted dislike to comprehensive plans, necessitating 
 sacrifices which are to be made all at once, and changes which 
 admit of no transition. They make sacrifices which are in the 
 
236 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 end equally heavy, and changes which are equally revolution 
 ary, but they set about it in the national manner, pulling down 
 a gable here, building out a new room there, altering the roads 
 and fences year by year, till the ghosts of their fathers would 
 not know the old places again if they revisited the -moon’s 
 glimpses. This is probably due to some tenderness of senti- 
 ment. We get attached to places and things, even when we 
 acknowledge them to be inconvenient. A total and sudden 
 change, even for the better, leaves a void in the recesses of 
 our hearts. Here is Mr. Cowper, for instance, who has got 
 attached in some mysterious way to those plain and homely 
 little rooms in Trafalgar Square, which we dignify by the proud 
 title of a “ National Gallery,” and so pleads for their retention 
 in the body of a new Palace of Art worthy of the nation. “It 
 would be a clumsy thing,” he says, “to pull down the present 
 Gallery entirely ; a good architect would leave a great part of it 
 standing, but transform it by additions into all that is desired. 
 There would be a new fagade and a new building would be 
 attached to the old building, which would be so altered and 
 reconstructed that you would not know it again.” Mr. Cowper 
 cannot feel hurt at being compared to so respectable a class 
 of men as country gentlemen. I therefore venture to observe 
 that this bit of economy is exactly that of a country gentleman 
 making what he calls “ alterations ; ” it is very respectable, and 
 in the highest degree national, but it is not artistic, and it is 
 not wise. It is potteiHig. And whatever has to be done about 
 art should be done in a very different spirit. 
 
 Other members felt this as soon as they heard that there was 
 a hankering for saving the beloved old rooms. Mr. Tite said, 
 “ It was quite idle to think of adapting the present building to 
 the purposes of a National Gallery.” Sir G. Bowyer, like an 
 Israelite in Canaan, would pull the present building down 
 utterly, and “let not one stone remain upon another.” Mr. 
 Locke “ entirely concurred in the opinion that if anything 
 was to be done with the National Gallery, it ought to be pulled 
 down altogether. As, he understood the right honourable 
 gentleman (Mr. Cowper), he was going to put a new face upon 
 the National Gallery ; but putting a new face upon a man did 
 not alter his inside, nor did it produce any greater change in a 
 building. Although a new face might be put upon the National 
 Gallery, the old miserable rooms would remain within, and 
 
HOUSING OF ART TREASURES. 
 
 237 
 
 every disgrace and inconvenience which attached to the 
 building would be perpetuated.” Mr. Gregory hoped “that 
 his right hon. friend would make it a sine qua non that the 
 new Gallery should be built de novo , and that nothing should 
 be taken from the present structure. No patchwork whatever 
 could convert the present gallery into a creditable building 
 worthy of the treasures it was to contain.” Mr. Locke re- 
 peated that “ if the new gallery were to be built in harmony 
 with the old one, it would be a dead failure. It would cost a 
 great deal and satisfy no one.” Sir J. Pakington “was anxious 
 that there should be neither harmony nor resemblance between 
 the present National Gallery and the proposed new building, 
 which he trusted would be a complete design suited to the site 
 and the object required.” 
 
 It is highly satisfactory to know that a few energetic mem- 
 bers of Parliament are quite alive to the necessity for a grander 
 way of treating this question than the Government seems 
 inclined to venture upon. To retain the present building, or 
 any portion of it, within the new one, would be a fatal error. 
 It would ruin the design by compelling the new galleries to 
 accommodate themselves to the bad ones we have already. 
 The existing rooms are such as would naturally be constructed 
 at an epoch when the nation was only just beginning, in a 
 feeble, infantine way, to wish for a collection of pictures, but 
 they are not such as a wealthy country like England ought to 
 retain permanently even as a portion of its great art gallery. 
 The Government hopes to save a little money by retaining 
 these apartments, and it is the traditional policy of British 
 Governments to pinch on artistic expenditure generally, because 
 the mass of country constituents care nothing about art. 
 Governments are not to be severely blamed for representing, 
 in the way they order the expenditure of public money, the 
 general feeling of the nation, however narrow or misguided it 
 may be. If the nation were really anxious to have noble 
 public buildings, Cabinets would seek popularity by erecting 
 them. But it may be permitted to observe that on certain 
 occasions it may become the duty and even the interest of the 
 Government to make itself the representative of a small 
 instructed class rather than of a large uninformed one. Our 
 Government does so from time to time on various occa- 
 sions: it has done so even in artistic matters, especially in 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 238 
 
 the purchase of valuable pictures, most notably the magni- 
 ficent Veronese. The country constituents would not, as a 
 body, be inclined to think that a piece of old canvas could 
 possibly be worth such a sum as 14,000/.; still the purchase 
 was made, and very rightly, because the country constituents 
 were not the best judges. I only wish that in the erection 
 of a new building for the national pictures something of the 
 same boldness might be exercised. Mr. Cowper, with that 
 timidity which is habitual to gentlemen in his position, tries 
 to propitiate Parliament by the assurance that the new gallery 
 will only cost 100,000/. Immediately afterwards we read 
 that “the vote of 200,000/., the proportion of the total sum of 
 703,000 /. required this year for the purchase of lands and 
 houses for a site for the new Courts of Justice and offices, 
 was agreed to.” The Courts of Justice are not likely to 
 cost much less than a million, including the site, and one- 
 tenth of that sum is proposed for the great national Palace 
 of Art. 
 
 I am aware that the site of the new National Gallery is 
 already partly supplied by the land occupied by the old one, 
 and it fortunately happens that the remaining ground required 
 is to be had on reasonable terms. Still, such a sum as 
 100,000/. is evidently inadequate even for the erection of a 
 fine building. Imagine, for example, what it would cost to 
 reproduce the Louvre in London ! I am far from desiring 
 such a reproduction, for although the Louvre is altogether 
 very grand, and in parts very beautiful (especially the old 
 quadrangle and the colonnade), it is not by any means a 
 perfect picture gallery ; but I do say that England, considering 
 her prodigious wealth, and her proud position amongst Euro- 
 pean nations, ought to have an art palace, in no way inferior 
 to the Louvre in point of size and artistic magnificence, and 
 very far superior to it in convenience and wise adaptation to 
 the purposes for which it should be erected. What the Louvre 
 has cost I hardly dare venture to estimate : the new buildings 
 which join it to the Tuileries have swallowed up, I believe, 
 more than two millions sterling; the old quadrangle could 
 scarcely be erected in our day for less than a million. It is 
 true that much of the new structure is used for other than 
 artistic purposes, but we have said nothing about the long gallery. 
 A more useful building might be had for less cost, but a build : 
 
HOUSING OF ART TREASURES. 
 
 239 
 
 in g which should be at the same time a good gallery and an 
 imposing work of architectural art could scarcely be completed 
 for less than one million sterling, exclusively of the site. 
 
 Not that our gallery need be erected all at once. The best 
 way would be to get first the land for the site, and a noble' 
 design, one specially suited to an art gallery, yet at the same 
 time of palatial splendour, then pull down the present National 
 Gallery entirely, as Sir George Bowyer would have it, leaving 
 not one stone remaining upon another; after that begin to 
 build a piece of the new palace, large enough for our present 
 wants, and let the plan be strictly followed, as future necessities 
 arose. In the great Gothic times, “ when men knew how to 
 build,” it never seems to have occurred to them that a cathedral 
 must necessarily be finished before it was used, or that one 
 generation was bound to end the labour. Only let the plan be 
 worthy enough and magnificent enough, only begin it grandly, 
 and posterity will be sure to carry it forward ! 
 
 It is especially necessary that a National Gallery should be 
 begun on the understanding that the design is too vast for 
 one generation. National art collections are accumulative ; 
 no year passes without adding to their wealth. If it were 
 known that the nation had a great building which was intended 
 to grow with the collections, valuable bequests would be thereby 
 much encouraged and would become much more frequent. 
 Therefore, I say, let us begin a great Palace of Art of such 
 vast design that to complete it will cost millions, but let us 
 not think of completing it in our day, only of beginning it, 
 and gradually going on with it as fresh space is wanted. 
 
 This would be the right spirit in which to enter on such a 
 task. The present building is an excellent example of how a 
 wrong and foolish spirit sets to work in such matters. It is 
 thoroughly bourgeois from dome to pavement. A National 
 Gallery was to be built at once, — that is, in a year or two, — it 
 must look rather imposing, and yet be economical. Pillars, 
 it is well known, are imposing : there were royal pillars at 
 Carlton House, no longer wanted, a capital opportunity for 
 uniting economy with a certain degree of splendour, so the 
 architect is told that he must make use of these particular pillars. 
 The front was planned to fit these adjuncts, and the domes 
 were added to give an august and Michelangelesque expression 
 to the whole. We know the result; we know that for years 
 
240 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 such of us as have eyes and can see are weary of pillars and 
 pediment, and utterly ashamed of the dome and her twin 
 daughters. Even our good, honest English attachment to ugly 
 things that we have been accustomed to will not reconcile us 
 to them. 
 
 That edifice is now somewhere about thirty years old, and 
 we are already talking about destroying it, or metamorphosing 
 it so that nobody may know it again ; for so heartily is the 
 thing hated, that anyone who ventures to talk of preserving it is 
 at particular pains to impress it on our minds that we shall not 
 recognize the object of our aversion in the disguise he proposes 
 for it. And what did this condemned monstrosity cost ? It 
 cost ninety-six thousand pounds. And for four thousand more 
 Mr. Cowper now tells us that he hopes to provide an edifice 
 worthy of the nation ! Well may he be anxious to destroy as 
 little as possible of the existing building ! Well may he reflect 
 that all that brickwork, and lath, and plaster, and flooring, 
 have cost money ! 
 
 We cannot have a noble edifice for any such sum. We may 
 get bare shelter for the pictures, and if we manage very cleverly, 
 more cleverly than any nation ever yet did manage, we may so 
 arrange our simple picture-shed as to be able to see and study 
 the works it will protect. That would be a great thing, certainly, 
 a result well worth the money asked for. But a national edifice 
 worthy of England for four thousand more than the Wilkins' 
 gallery cost is a delusion ! 
 
 If the Government does not feel justified in voting more than 
 a small sum, say 200,000/., why not make an appeal to all 
 lovers of art in England ? Might we not all join, according to 
 our means, in a great national subscription ? If it is wrong to 
 tax those who do not care for Art in order to build a palace 
 they will never enjoy, let us who do care tax ourselves 
 voluntarily. Might not the Royal Academy, as a body, give a 
 handsome sum for so great a purpose ? Might not our great 
 collectors give the value of one or two pictures ? Might not 
 our successful artists give a month's earnings ? And might not 
 all these subscriptions be repeated, along with a new Govern- 
 ment grant, as each generation built its piece of the great palace ? 
 That is how the great cathedrals were built : everybody gave 
 something, generation after generation. It is true that they did 
 it often from selfish reasons — to eat butter in Lent, to escape 
 
HOUSING OF ART TREASURES. 
 
 241 
 
 hell, to obtain indulgences ; but may not we, who profess to be 
 enlightened lovers of the fine arts, spend for once, together , and 
 for a great public purpose, instead of spending always singly 
 for our own selfish ends ? 
 
 Let us first imagine what a very simple but useful gallery, 
 or picture shed, ought to be; and then after that let us in- 
 dulge the dream of what a noble national Palace of Art 
 ought to be. 
 
 No actually existing picture gallery comes so near to the 
 plain practical ideal as that at South Kensington. You can 
 see the pictures, or most of them ; the rooms are not too lofty, 
 and the light, though not too glaring, is abundant. There is 
 no room in the Louvre so good, unless it be that new little one 
 with the black doors, the first on your right hand as you pass 
 from the Salon Carre down the long gallery. For, after all, 
 the best gallery is that in which the pictures are best seen. 
 The best thing, of whatever kixid, is that which best answers 
 the peculiar purpose of that particular sort of thing. For in- 
 stance, the gallery at South Kensington, however unadorned, 
 is a better gallery than those two new halls in the Louvre 
 where the French School is lodged. Those rooms are most 
 noble rooms; but they are so lofty that three-fourths of the 
 pictures are lost in them by being hung, not too high to be 
 seen , as objects, but too high to be studied , , as pictures. I 
 may be told that it is a good thing to have lofty halls, for two 
 reasons : first, because they are grander, architecturally, which 
 is very true ; and, secondly, because more people may breathe 
 in them, which is also true. I may also be told, that although 
 the hall may be lofty, there is no necessity for hanging pictures 
 any higher than in a lower room. To these objections I 
 answer, first, that the architectural qualities of the rooms must 
 be made subservient to their fitness for their purpose, and that, 
 as a matter of fact, low rooms may be, and often have been, 
 beautiful in their own way; secondly, that although more 
 people could breathe in lofty rooms, low ones would spread 
 the visitors over three times the extent of flooring, and so 
 neutralize the objection ; thirdly, that to expect that all pic- 
 tures in a crowded collection will be hung low, when there are 
 vast wall spaces above left quite unoccupied, is futile, because 
 the pictures must be put somewhere, and will be hung on that 
 empty space, as the collection increases, whether out of sight 
 
 H R 
 
2/J.2 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 o«r not. When you sacrifice a hundred masterpieces of paint- 
 ing to the architectural proportions of one hall, you are guilty 
 of great waste. The whole Louvre, as a work of art, is not 
 worth the tenth part of the treasures that are hidden in it by 
 reason of its irrational construction ; and if the whole of that 
 palace were razed to the earth, and a plain cotton-spinning 
 shed built on the site of it, and the pictures shown under the 
 shed, on low screens of wood, or low brick walls, such as we 
 enclose paddocks with, the collection would gain more by that 
 change than it lost when the Allies took away from it the spoils 
 of Napoleon. 
 
 It is so difficult to speak on this subject with common 
 patience, that I hardly dare trust myself on such ground at all. 
 Such picture-hanging as that in the Louvre seems to me to be 
 not merely foolish or thoughtless, but so entirely irrational as 
 to be the work of something below the level of humanity. 
 No English word is strong enough to express stupidity of that 
 calibre ; but a French word will, namely, bete. To buy master- 
 pieces, and then stick them up for hundreds of years where 
 they cannot be seen, is bete, because a picture is of no use if it is 
 not seen. If a lad went to study Latin, and his tutor were to 
 say to him, “ You shall not hold your book where you can read 
 it, but it shall be placed at such a distance from you as to be 
 illegible,” what would you think of that tutor? Would you 
 not say he was crazy? Well, but picture-hangers constantly 
 do that. I being a student of art, go to the Louvre, and very 
 much wish to see certain pictures : these pictures are hung so 
 high as to be for purposes of study inaccessible to me ; but I 
 find the general public, which does not care to read the pic- 
 tures, is perfectly contented to leave them where they are ; all it 
 wants is to give one glance, be able henceforth to say it has 
 “ seen ” them (a polite fib), and be off to its drive and its dinner. 
 But ask some real student what he thinks of it ! 
 
 In all practical matters unconnected with the fine arts the 
 right kind of building is found and erected at once. Look at 
 a great cotton-weaving shed ; what a vast area ! how well 
 lighted ! and yet one of the cheapest of constructions, when 
 once you have the ground. Such a shed would be an ideal 
 gallery ; let it be provided with partitions or screens, and it 
 would hold thousands of pictures ! Some mention was made 
 in Parliament of a “ quadrangle ; ” is a picture gallery to have 
 
HOUSING OF ART TREASURES. 
 
 243 
 
 a quadrangle because the colleges at Oxford have ? It is 
 a most wanton waste of space. All that space should be 
 covered in. Staircases were mentioned also. What need of a 
 staircase ? Is the gallery to be necessarily two storeys high ? 
 One vast ground-floor is what is wanted. If you have two 
 storeys, only one of them can be lighted from above. If, in 
 addition to a shed for pictures, we can afford a palatial front 
 towards the square, we should need staircases to get to the 
 upper storeys of our palace ; but as we are planning a cheap 
 gallery just now, to suit the proposed vote of 100,000/., it is 
 no use talking about staircases. The great thing is to resolve, 
 first, that our gallery shall be immensely spacious, and so well 
 arranged that every picture may be seen perfectly. A low 
 shed will accomplish this ; if we can afford a noble palace, 
 by all means let us have one between the shed and the square . 
 But what is most to be deprecated is a cheap attempt which 
 tries to be both palace and gallery, and is neither the one 
 nor the other, — a building where the pictures cannot all be 
 seen, which leaves no room for expansion, and which in itself, 
 with all its pretensions, is without importance as a piece of 
 architecture. 
 
 I am quite aware that these notions will seem strange and 
 heretical to persons accustomed to build from tradition. But I 
 want us to be as independent of tradition in our gallery as we 
 have been in most other things in which we have succeeded. 
 Railway carriages are not constructed precisely like stage 
 coaches ; and is there any particular reason why picture 
 galleries should be built like gentlemen’s mansions ? 
 
 When you go to a painter’s studio and ask him to show you 
 a picture, he does not run upstairs with it and hang it out at 
 the window of the third storey and tell you to go out into the 
 street and look up at it. No ; he puts it on an easel, level 
 with your eye, wheels the easel into the best light, and you 
 really see the work. Now in a rationally contrived gallery you 
 ought to be able to see every picture just as easily and com- 
 fortably as that. And if I and the others who think with me 
 had our will about the National Gallery, every picture in it 
 would be as accessible and as easily seen as if it were still on 
 the easel in the studio of the master who painted it. 
 
 So that if the object were to have a cheap gallery I would 
 first pull down the present building, and then, having bought a 
 
 r 2 
 
244 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 large space of land behind it, proceed to erect a vast shed, 
 one storey high, with a decent-looking stone front towards the 
 square, and plain brick walls behind. This shed I would have 
 lighted from above over its whole extent ; then, inside, I would 
 build long low walls of partition so as to divide the shed into 
 many corridor-like galleries. Small separate rooms would eco- 
 nomize space still farther, and would have the advantage of 
 isolating each master. But there is the practical objection that 
 each room would require the constant presence of a guardian. 
 There should be only o?ie Ime of pictures. Each picture should 
 be so hung that its own horizon line should be from five feet 
 to five feet six inches from the floor. The walls should be 
 covered with flock paper of a rich dark maroon colour, show- 
 ing a slight, just perceptible pattern, nearly in the same tint. 
 (The paper in the present Turner Gallery is of too light and 
 bright a red.) Ample space should be left round every picture 
 frame. A good rule to make would be that every picture 
 should have a margin of bare wall equivalent to half its own 
 breadth. All this luxury of floor and wall space could scarcely 
 be achieved in a thin line of building running round a quad- 
 rangle, whereas it might most easily be afforded in a great 
 shed occupying the whole space. We might easily manage, if 
 we really made it an object, to hang every one of the national 
 pictures on the line. If a picture is not good enough to be 
 hung on the line, it is not good enough to be in the national 
 collection. If we cannot afford to hang the present pictures 
 all on the line, we had better stop purchasing, and even sell 
 part of our present collection, till we can afford it. But it is 
 nonsense to talk of England not being able to afford a few 
 hundred yards of low brick wall. For the cost of some com- 
 mon governmental blunder or mishap, for one-tenth part of 
 the cost of some useless and inglorious war, such a gallery 
 might be built as would show perfectly and conveniently to art 
 students every picture and drawing we possess, and leave 
 ample space for the acquisitions of a coming half-century. 
 
 To recapitulate the requirements of a plain picture shed : — 
 
 1. It should be only one storey high. 
 
 2. The whole area of its site should be entirely covered in, 
 and not enclosed by a quadrangle. 
 
 3. This vast floor should be divided by low parallel walls 
 into long corridors. 
 
HOUSING OF ART TREASURES. 
 
 245 
 
 4. Every picture should be hung at that height which in the 
 Royal Academy Exhibition is known as “ the line.” 
 
 5. The building should be perfectly fire-proof, the floor of 
 tiles, the walls of brick, the roof of iron and glass. 
 
 But so great a nation as England ought farther to desire 
 that its Gallery should be not only a convenient receptacle for 
 works of art, but also, in itself, a noble work of art. The 
 wealthiest of nations ought, on so fitting an occasion as this, 
 to act with a grandeur becoming her prosperity. We ought to 
 have, not merely a picture shed, but a great Palace of Art. 
 We ought to erect something not only far more useful than the 
 Louvre as a place for the exhibition of pictures, but even, if 
 possible, more magnificent. We are perfectly aware of the 
 extreme costliness of such a plan, but there are weighty reasons 
 w T hy this cost ought not to be begrudged. 
 
 A great deal of the effect of a picture, far more of it than 
 most people imagine, is due to the objects which surround it. 
 A fine picture is rather a climax or centre of splendour than 
 splendour in itself. There is an art of multiplying fourfold 
 the apparent value of pictures at a cost which bears but slight 
 proportion to the cost of the works themselves. An artist 
 friend of mine, passing one day before the house of a well- 
 known Parisian dealer, observed that one window had been 
 cleared of everything but a solitary small picture. This was 
 framed with extreme splendour and taste, and all round 
 nothing was to be seen but rich pomegranate-coloured velvet. 
 Aided thus, the picture (it was a masterpiece of -colour by 
 Decamps) glowed exceedingly. So my friend went in and said 
 to the dealer, “ You have been taking particular pains about 
 that Decamps ; I suppose you want a high price.” “ Just so ; 
 I must have 40,000 francs for it.” Now, what that cunning 
 tradesman did as a matter of business we ought to do for the 
 national pictures from motives of a higher kind. This way of 
 helping art by surrounding it well does not seem to be at 
 all understood by persons in authority in England. Robert 
 Browning, I imagine, would understand it, for he wrote about 
 the murex dye, — 
 
 4 4 Enough to furnish Solomon 
 
 Such hangings for his cedar house j 
 
 That when, gold -robed, he took the throne 
 In that abyss of blue , the spouse 
 
246 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 Might swear his presence shone 
 Most like the centre spike of gold 
 Which burns deep in the bluebell's womb . ” 
 
 Take the hangings away, and what becomes of Solomon? 
 
 The objection on the score of expense is frivolous. If you 
 can afford to spend 14,000/. on a Veronese and 9,000/. on 
 a Raphael, you can afford to surround each of them with a 
 broad margin of good pomegranate velvet. And not only 
 that, but you can afford a gallery for your paintings so finished 
 that the eye of the spectator may rest upon nothing mean or 
 poor as he approaches these precious masterpieces. It is not 
 seemly that treasures which are of such immense value that 
 money affords no means of estimating it should be housed 
 in rooms meaner and more uncomfortable than the barest 
 entrance-halls to our great hotels. In a National Gallery 
 the pictures should be surrounded with everything that may 
 enhance their beauty and prove, how much we value them. If 
 the floor is of wood, it should be an inlaid parquet of various 
 and beautiful woods ; the doors and fittings of the room should 
 be at once massive and delicately wrought, like the superb 
 ebony panelling of the Salon Carre. But as there is a grave 
 objection to the employment of wood in picture galleries on 
 the score of danger from fire, we should be very lavish of the 
 finest marbles and metals. Minor decorative arts should be 
 called into requisition everywhere^ as freely as they have been 
 in the new Houses of Parliament. Large pictures which 
 cannot be seen near should be guarded by advancing enclosures 
 of the most artistic wrought- iron railing, full of the most 
 quaint and graceful fancies, and the name of the artificer 
 himself, not of the firm which employed him , should be legibly 
 engraven on the work and on the marble pavement in which 
 it was fixed. All the floors should be of marble or encaustic 
 tiles, and the utmost variety of design should be everywhere 
 encouraged ; no two doors alike , no two pieces of railing alike , 
 no two floor-patterns alike . The doors should be of bronze, 
 with a bas-relief in every panel. 
 
 As a Palace of Art ought to have a magnificent front 
 towards Trafalgar Square, the low picture-shed (which I would 
 always retain for its utility, however magnificently it might be 
 finished), would not afford height enough to look grand from 
 
HOUSING OF ART TREASURES. 
 
 247 
 
 Charing Cross; therefore the whole site of the present build- 
 ing should be occupied by a very lofty edifice, four or five 
 storeys high, comprising, first, the ground-floor, a vast entrance- 
 hall giving access to all the corridors in the picture-shed, and 
 furnished with the finest specimens of artistic furniture that 
 could be collected : this hall should be hung with tapestry, 
 and should contain, on tables, a collection of small works of 
 art, such as statuettes, cameos, medallions, gems, &c. At 
 each end of the hall a staircase should lead to the upper 
 storeys, where the drawings and prints belonging to the nation 
 should be exhibited in frames, and under glass, like those in 
 the Louvre. 
 
 At least two long corridors in the shed should be devoted 
 to Sculpture. All the sculpture now in the British Museum 
 should be housed there. It greatly diminishes the effect of 
 our national art collections to keep them divided ; and as the 
 British Museum is in great want of space, it would be a 
 charity to relieve it. We have now, on the whole, a fine 
 collection of sculpture, though still a very incomplete one ; it 
 cannot in its present situation expand farther, for it has 
 already overflowed the building and occupied the colonnades 
 outside. It is surprising that those who have influence in such 
 matters should not be more eager to seize so excellent an 
 opportunity for uniting our art collections, as this reconstruc- 
 tion of the National Gallery will offer. It is an opportunity 
 that is not likely ever to occur again in our time. There 
 appears to be an impression that sculpture, especially the 
 Egyptian and Assyrian, is not so much of artistic as anti- 
 quarian and historical interest, so it is put in the British 
 Museum, near the great national library. But the fact is, that 
 no national gallery of art can be complete without a collection 
 of sculpture, and also that the sculpture of Egypt and Nineveh, 
 considered simply as art , is of the very greatest interest, and, 
 in its own way, of most remarkable merit. The distinction 
 between what ought to be put in the British Museum, and 
 what in the National Gallery, is so easily made as to be self- 
 evident. It makes itself. We have only to draw the line 
 where fine art begins. All antiquities of the nature of fine art, 
 and illustrating the history of fine art, should be placed in the 
 National Gallery ; all antiquities having historical, but not 
 artistic interest, should remain in the Musenm. 
 
248 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 As the study of art is very hard and tiring work, the comfort 
 of visitors should be attended to. A desire was expressed 
 in Parliament that there should be comfortable seats. This 
 is very right ; most visitors to the Louvre regret that capital 
 ottoman which used to be before the great Veronese. But 
 it is not well to put ottomans in the middle of rooms where 
 pictures are exhibited : they often interfere with study. We 
 wish to retire to a certain distance, and find the ottoman in 
 the way. It is better to fix seats near the wall on each side. 
 If the pictures were separated by broad clear spaces, a large 
 easy-chair might be put, with its back to the wall, under each 
 of those empty spaces. 
 
 There can be no doubt as to the style of architecture which 
 we ought to choose. The perpendicular Gothic was right for 
 the new Houses of Parliament, because peculiarly national, 
 and fit to receive a great heraldic record of the chiefs of the 
 nation. But no style of Gothic has any historical connection 
 with good painting, or with any sculpture in which real form 
 has been developed. All the traditions of modern painting 
 and sculpture are inseparably interwoven with the renaissance 
 movement in architecture. No Goth could ever draw the figure. 
 The real study of the figure was itself a renaissance movement. 
 Re?iaissance architectural forms occur continually in the pictures 
 and studies of the greatest masters, Gothic forms hardly ever. 
 Our Art Palace should be of rejiaissance architecture. All- 
 powerful associations settle this for us. That architecture 
 alone will permit of a consistent commemoration of art 
 history. The front of our Palace should be a great record. 
 On inserted slabs of marble should be inscribed the names 
 of great artists, in legible Roman characters, and the names 
 also of great patrons and friends of art. In a hundred niches 
 should be placed their statues. And large panels might be 
 filled with imperishable tile-paintings, or with works like De 
 Triqueti’s Marmor Homericum. 
 
 Proposals for a new palace in London are not likely to 
 receive much consideration at a time when we have not yet 
 quite recovered from certain feelings of disappointment and 
 annoyance about the new Houses of Parliament. Much has 
 been said against that building, both by people who hated archi- 
 tecture in general, and could not see the sense of spending 
 so much “ foolish money,” and, on the other hand, by people 
 
HOUSING OF ART TREASURES 
 
 249 
 
 who loved architecture, but did not love the perpendicular 
 style. But the new Palace of Westminster is, on the whole, 
 an effort of which we have many reasons to be proud. There 
 was very much real grandeur in the idea, though Sir Charles 
 Barry, like many men of talent, had power to plan a great 
 work, but not invention enough to carry it through with that 
 inexhaustible variety and fertility of resource in matters of 
 detail which is the privilege of genius alone. It is not equal 
 to the works of the great Gothic times ; but I am not aware 
 of any perpendicular architecture which is better. The objec- 
 tion to it is an objection to its style. Barry may have done 
 wrong in choosing that style, but it was adapted to the habits 
 of our workmen and the condition of our minor arts. Its 
 enrichment is mechanical, but we are mechanical also. On 
 the whole, we may accept the Houses of Parliament as the 
 grandest achievement which in all likelihood could have been 
 produced in the beginning of the Victorian age; and, so far 
 from feeling ashamed of it, we have a right to congratulate 
 ourselves that the legislature is housed with a grandeur befitting 
 its great traditions. I have said elsewhere that the building 
 was “a lamentable and costly example of mechanical enrich- 
 ment,” because I dislike that style; but I applaud the reso- 
 lution to have as grand a building as we could get in our age, 
 and the willingness to incur the necessary sacrifices. Let 
 us persevere in the same large spirit with advancing power 1 
 Let us vote eagerly, as the old Florentines voted for their 
 Campanile ! Let us eclipse the Louvre ! We are the richest 
 nation in Europe ; let us have the grandest Art Palace : we 
 are the most practical ; let us have the best ! — 1865. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 ON THE ARTISTIC OBSERVATION OF NATURE . 
 
 i. How artistic sight differs from ordinary sight . — Men are so 
 constituted that they see only those aspects of things to which 
 their attention actively directs itself. True seeing is never a 
 consequence of the passive reception of impressions, but of 
 active looking only. To look energetically we must con- 
 sciously look for something — some object, or fact, or quality. 
 If you have no aim in observation, you will see nothing and 
 remember nothing ; if you have an aim, you will see that 
 which you look for, but no more. 
 
 Now, the difference between artistic sight and ordinary sight 
 is occasioned by the fact that mankind generally do not look 
 for those truths and qualities which artists look for. There is 
 an unfortunate tendency in persons living habitually outside of 
 Art to consider themselves contemptuously treated when we 
 take it for granted that they are not likely to see, in the artistic 
 sense of the word, so truly as we see, who have devoted our 
 lives to that particular kind of looking. I desire to establish 
 the distinction in the most decided manner ; and yet to do so, 
 if possible, without conveying to the unartistic reader the 
 notion, which is entirely foreign to my thoughts, that his 
 presumed incapacity to see, in the artistic sense, implies, in 
 my conception, any degree of intellectual inferiority in him. 
 Those who see artistically have necessarily purchased the 
 faculty by a great expenditure of time ; nor does it imply any 
 general inferiority in others that they have devoted their hours 
 to other objects. It is the business of artists to see artisti- 
 cally ; it is the bounden duty of all who write on Art to learn 
 
OBSER VA TION OF NA TURE . 
 
 25a 
 
 to see in that manner ; it is the happiness of all true amateurs ; 
 but it can never be considered a power necessary to humanity 
 generally, nor a virtue indispensable to a blameless human life. 
 But though I wish it to be understood that nothing can be 
 more remote from my thoughts than any feeling of contempt 
 for the millions of active and respectable persons who are, in 
 the artistic sense, permanently blind ; yet, at the same time, I 
 may be permitted to express great regret that they should 
 not be better aware of this. Their entire unconsciousness of 
 deficiency in this direction leads them frequently to form 
 estimates which are grossly unjust, and to use their influence 
 in such a manner as to render their very possession of influence 
 a misfortune. And yet this unconsciousness is inevitable. 
 Let us only reflect how impossible it is that any human 
 creature devoid of a sense should be able to conceive of it. 
 Persons to whom red and green are the same colour live on 
 for years in happy ignorance of their deficiency ; nor do they, 
 even after accident has revealed its existence to others, realize 
 in their own minds the extent of their privation. When we 
 possess a faculty in some minor degree, we are able to conceive 
 of the existence of the same faculty in some more intense 
 degree ; but when we do not possess the same faculty at all y 
 we are not able to realize what it is. For example, recollec- 
 tions of our boyhood may enable most of us to form some 
 idea of the enjoyment of their own agility felt by monkeys 
 when they throw themselves from branch to branch; but no 
 recollections, no reflection, no dramatic force of insight into a 
 foreign nature, can enable the wisest of us to feel for one 
 moment, or for one moment to understand or appreciate, the 
 fierce joy of a young tiger when his strong jaws first tear the 
 living flesh. And there may be senses possessed by other 
 animals even on this planet, or by creatures intellectually our 
 equals in other worlds, so totally inconceivable by us, that we 
 cannot form the remotest notion of what they may be. Just 
 so unknown, so inconceivable, are the aesthetic senses to those 
 who have them not. 
 
 Men use their eyes as channels of information about what 
 they want to know. You want to know the hour, and you 
 look at the clock ; you are a farmer, and you look at the sky 
 to see whether it will rain ; you are a lady, and anxious to see 
 whether your rival has as good lace or as fine diamonds as 
 
252 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 your own, and you give keen glances to ascertain the fact. If 
 I am careless about the time, I may look at the public clock 
 and not see the hour it marks ; if the weather is out of my 
 mind, I may look at the sky and read on it no prognostics ; 
 and, as I am not a lady, lace and diamonds may float and 
 glitter before me without leaving any impression of their value. 
 The eyes are discreet servants : they only tell us what we want 
 to know. 
 
 It is an optical fact, easily proved, that no two men ever saw 
 the same rainbow. It is an aesthetic fact, scarcely more 
 difficult of proof, that no two men ever saw the same appear- 
 ance in any object whatever. What men will see is determined 
 beforehand by very complex conditions of faculties, experience, 
 and education. That is why no natural scene is ever exhausted 
 ground ; a new artist coming to it will discover new material 
 in it. Landscape-painters go in crowds to the same places — 
 Bettws-y-coed, the Highlands, the Lake District, the Valley of 
 Chamouni, the Roman Campagna — and fresh generations may 
 go there for centuries; they will never use them up. On the 
 other hand, what one sees another cannot see. That which is 
 as plain to you as a closed turnpike-gate to a coachman on 
 his box may be as invisible to me as a thread of gossamer in 
 twilight. 
 
 If there are wide differences in this respect between artists 
 and artists, still wider must be the difference between men 
 trained as artists and the laity who have never devoted their 
 time to the study of Art in a practical manner at all. The 
 world in general— seldom thinking about beauty, not intending 
 to paint, nor looking at nature with reference to Art — either 
 does not see the aesthetic aspects of nature at all, or only sees 
 them in disconnection, and without those ever-present coun- 
 ter-facts which the artist cannot at his peril for one moment 
 overlook. What we call ordinary sight is not by any means all 
 of one kind, but varies with our desires and our information. 
 It may be broadly classed together, however, in this connec- 
 tion, as non-artistic, in opposition to that which is artistic. 
 The non-artistic sight is penetrating, seeking always some 
 special fact ; the artistic sight is receptive, trying to grasp all 
 the facts, so far as they are visible, yet no farther. This 
 attempt at universal receptiveness, though all honest artists 
 make it, is nevertheless doomed to eternal insuccess, as every 
 
OBSERVA TION OF NATURE. 
 
 253 
 
 artist is narrow in comparison with the immensity of nature — 
 narrow, I mean, not only in comparison with the universe, but 
 with the Spirit which pervades every fragment and detail of 
 the universe. 
 
 This theory will account for the wide difference of taste 
 which severs artists from the world. What pleases the people 
 best is that which gives evidence of the qualities they most 
 admire and approve ; the qualities admired and approved by 
 the bourgeois mind are wealth and order and cleanliness, not 
 artistic feeling and invention. It results from this, that in 
 buildings and furniture the bourgeois mind will always seek first 
 for the expression of wealth and order and cleanliness, whereas 
 these qualities are compatible with an entire absence of intelli- 
 gence and taste and invention, for which the bourgeois mind 
 cares infinitely less. Now, to the artistic eye, the costliness or 
 cheapness of an object is always a matter of the most supreme 
 indifference. A statue may be hateful and bad, though of 
 pure gold; and a sketch in common modelling clay may be 
 precious and beloved as a treasure, if it be only good Art. 
 Order 1 * * * hardly ever seems to artists to compose well (remem- 
 ber the litter in Rubens 7 pictures, and the foregrounds of 
 Turner’s pictures). Cleanliness has seldom so great a charm 
 as the pathos and sublimity which exclude cleanliness ; the 
 cottages of the rustic poor are more pleasing to artists than 
 the parlours of the prosperous middle classes ; and gipsies on 
 the march suit them better than gentlemen in a drawing-room. 
 It is evident from this difference in taste between artists and 
 the bourgeois world that there must be a wide difference in the 
 things they look for and like to see, and hence just as wide a 
 difference in the things or qualities they actually do see. 
 
 2. That ordinary seeing may be blindness in the artistic sense. 
 — Not to see anything is, so far as that particular thing is 
 concerned equivalent to blindness. That ordinary sight is 
 blindness in the artistic sense is very easily proved. When 
 people talk of learning to draw and paint, they ought rather 
 to say they are learning to see , for that is the main object 
 of artistic education. Beginners in drawing continually give 
 
 1 I mean what the bourgeois mind understands by order. There is in 
 
 every true artist an intense love of a far nobler and profounder order : 
 
 every good picture, however seemingly careless in its arrangement, is, in 
 
 fact, an example of noble order. 
 
2S4 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ATT. 
 
 proof that the uneducated eye scarcely sees at all in the 
 artistic sense. They cannot see the proportions of things, 
 they cannot see the true colours of things, they cannot see the 
 relations of things. Forms which to an educated eye are 
 obvious, the beginner does not indicate. If you are working 
 from nature, your drawing, after making due allowance for the 
 necessities of interpretation, is the accurate measure of your 
 seeing ; if you work from memory, your drawing is the measure 
 of your power of recollection. 
 
 3. That the faculty of artistic sight is to be acquired 07ily by 
 active artistic observation . — Artistic sight is not a natural faculty, 
 but is acquired artificially. There is, no doubt, a natural gift 
 which enables some men to acquire the faculty more readily 
 than others ; and there are wide differences in the degrees to 
 which men are capable of cultivating themselves ; but not- 
 withstanding the fact of the existence of genius, it is certain 
 that no man, without educating himself or being taught by 
 another, ever sees artistically. Artistic education gradually 
 reveals nature to us aesthetically, and develops in us a new 
 sense. Writers who have themselves never been educated 
 artistically often deny this, and say that the “ eye of the 
 artist ” is no better than their own. They may enjoy natural 
 beauty, in some measure, without this education, and they 
 may feel much and truly, but they cannot see artistically 
 without artistic training. At the same time, the mere habit 
 of looking at pictures is much, though practical drawing in 
 addition to it is a great advantage. 
 
 4. Utility of practical work in artistic observation, — Practical 
 work is chiefly useful because it fixes our attention, and takes it 
 surely over the whole field. It is well known that if you have 
 lost anything in an open place, the best way to find it is to 
 divide the ground into small squares by cords, number the 
 squares, and examine each one separately. So, if you make a 
 careful study of any natural object, you ensure a thorough 
 examination of it, and you can ensure it by no other means. 
 It takes time to see anything artistically. The time required 
 by a careful study compels you to look at the object long 
 enough to learn something about it, which, under other 
 circumstances, no human being would have the patience to 
 do. When Ingres painted the Duke of Orleans, he stipulated 
 for a hundred and fifty sittings, and so had time, let us hope, 
 
OBSER VA TION OF NA TURE. 
 
 255 
 
 to study his royal highness’s face. 1 Without the practical 
 object of painting a portrait, no man would stare earnestly at 
 another man’s face for hundreds of hours. Still less would 
 anyone thoroughly examine the details of a landscape. 
 
 Practical work is useful also for the constant comparison 
 it forces us to make. The qualities of things are impressed 
 upon us by nothing so strongly as by comparison. In merely 
 looking at nature, we compare nothing, or at the best only one 
 part of nature with another part ; but in working actively, we 
 continually compare our bad work with Nature’s exquisite 
 work, and so become much more acutely alive to the infinite 
 beauty of the latter. 
 
 I believe that every reader who has drawn much will agree 
 with me, that he knew nothing about the objects most familiar 
 to him until he had drawn them. I have had a striking illus- 
 tration of this in my own recent experience. Though long 
 accustomed to a country life, and (in a very small way) an 
 owner of horses and cows, I never knew anything accurately 
 about these animals until two years ago, when I began to 
 make studies of them with a view to painting. Indeed, I may 
 very truly say that until last year I had never beheld an ox or 
 a cow artistically at all, and, being clearly aware of this, post- 
 poned writing a projected article on Rosa Bonheur from the 
 humiliating conviction, that, although living summer and winter 
 on a large French farm, and intimately familiar with all the 
 oxen on it, and their labours, personally friendly with them 
 even, and calling them by their names, I had not yet, in the 
 deep critical and artistic sense, seen them. 
 
 The best way to know anything about an object is to draw 
 it over and over again in all its aspects. After that, whether 
 we lose our drawing or not, does not much matter; we shall 
 know the thing we have drawn, and know it in a manner 
 of which no person who cannot draw is able to form any 
 conception. 
 
 5. That artistic observation may be , and usually is, very limited 
 in its field . — Even the best artists see only partially ; the 
 nearer they approach to universality, the better the work they 
 do : still, even the very best are limited. The taste and know- 
 ledge of their contemporaries usually erect impassable barriers 
 
 1 If we may believe Alphonse Karr. I have read elsewhere that the 
 number of sittings actually given was eighty. 
 
256 
 
 THOUGHTS AB0U7 ATT 
 
 around artists. If there is no feeling or desire for a certain 
 order of truth on the part of the public, the artist will have no 
 stimulus to study that order of truth ; nay, if he does study 
 and render it, he will incur insult and abuse, and be thereby- 
 driven back into the line of subject and treatment which his 
 contemporaries understand. There is a belief amongst -figure- 
 painters, that if you draw the figure well you will, of necessity, 
 draw anything else well. No belief could be less consistently 
 supported by experience. Whatever their powers of draughts- 
 manship, men only draw those things well which they have 
 seriously studied. What figure-painter ever drew the figure 
 more tenderly and delicately than Leonardo da Vinci ? Yet 
 his landscape, considered as a representation of nature, is 
 puerile ; it is even occasionally ludicrous. And the landscape 
 of Reynolds, even that of Gainsborough, though always 
 pleasant in tone and suitable as a variously-tinted surface 
 behind figures, how deficient it is in definite knowledge of 
 natural objects ! They never drew the fracture of a rock, nor 
 the build of a tree trunk, still less the anatomy of a mountain. 
 And in our own day, what school of painting has devoted 
 itself most consistently and laboriously to form ? The French 
 school. And what artist of that school has, by the admission 
 of all his contemporaries, most successfully reached the special 
 aim of the school? Ingres. Yet the landscape design of 
 Ingres (considered simply as design, and setting aside all 
 question of colour and effect, to which he has no pretension) 
 is entirely worthless. We have a hundred landscape-painters 
 who can draw landscape better than Ingres, yet Ingres is 
 called the high priest of form, and landscape-painters are 
 usually considered to be ignorant of drawing. 
 
 Is there any particular kind of Art which in our day has 
 afforded a proof of the limitation of previous artistic observa- 
 tion ? Yes ; the introduction of pure topography in landscape 
 has proved that former landscape-painters have never accu- 
 rately rendered the forms of natural scenery. The lowness of 
 hills, the slight degree of steepness in lines that seemed nearly 
 vertical, the comparative insignificance of features which for- 
 merly appeared so important that every artist enormously 
 exaggerated them, the general length of horizontal measure- 
 ments in proportion to vertical measurements ; these are 
 modern discoveries which prove to us in a manner not to be 
 
OBSER VA TION OF NA TURF. 
 
 257 
 
 gainsayed, by the aid of demonstrations which cannot be dis- 
 puted, that all previous landscape-painters have drawn land- 
 scape with a degree of inaccuracy so gross, that it would have 
 been rejected at once by the public if this violent distortion 
 and exaggeration of natural forms had not its reason in some 
 deep-seated want or passion of the ordinary human mind. 
 Even at this day, true topographic landscape is considered 
 false, and careless sketching true, and it requires extraordinary 
 manual skill, or the choice of scenery in itself of extraordinary 
 natural grandeur, to make truth of design in landscape ac- 
 ceptable. Until within the last few years, no natural scene was 
 ever drawn as it is ; yet the art of drawing is by no means so 
 recent. I think that this affords sufficient evidence that even 
 general powers of design are not enough to make one see a 
 special object truly. 1 
 
 The reader who has himself studied topographically will 
 believe this at once, or rather, not believe it, but know it for 
 himself already; others, who have made no experiment on 
 the matter, may prefer to take what they may consider the 
 painted evidence of hundreds of excellent landscape-painters, 
 and reject these verbal assertions. The evidence in my favour 
 is, however, patent, and easily tested. Photography, being- 
 topographic, proves very much, but anyone may ascertain how 
 false are the popular landscape forms by simply marking the 
 chief lines of a hilly landscape on a pane of glass held up 
 between him and the scene. 
 
 6. That intense clear-sightedness is compatible with partial 
 blindness . — This follows from the preceding proposition, but it 
 is well to insist on it separately as a warning. English artists 
 are intensely clear-sighted as to surface and detail, but 
 they are often blind to matters of equal if not higher impor- 
 tance, to facts which more closely affect unity. French artists 
 are, as a body, clear-sighted as to constructive truth in figures 
 and animals, but blind to the truths of colour and to con- 
 
 1 Some critics have spoken of my own work as topographic. I have 
 tried to do pure topography, but soon abandoned it for two reasons — first, 
 the drawing, though demonstrably accurate, never satisfied any unprepared 
 spectator ; second, it never satisfied myself. After that I determined to 
 draw landscape as it appeared to me, in a simple unreasoning frame of 
 mind. To produce pure topography one must be in a highly artificial 
 and self-conscious state of the coldest scientific tranquillity. 
 
 H 
 
 s 
 
258 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 structive truths in landscape. In Art we easily perceive the 
 blindness of others, but do not so easily detect our own ; if 
 we began to be aware of it, that dawning consciousness would 
 be a proof that our darkness was passing away, and the light 
 of fresh truth breaking in upon us. 
 
 7. Difficulty of findmg out when we are ourselves artistically 
 blind . — There is a pretty theory that the spirits of the dead 
 may often be with us in our daily life, but that the dulness of 
 our grosser sense hinders us from beholding our ethereal 
 visitants. Thackeray made use of a similar belief about fairies, 
 and said that artists were enviable people who could see the 
 fairies when others saw only what was commonplace and 
 familiar. The difference between artists and others is indeed 
 something as great as this, but not every artist sees all the 
 fairies, — some only see fairies of quite an inferior rank. Let 
 us pray that the best of beautiful spirits may become visible 
 to us. How can we know how many may still be invisible ? 
 The only safe or progressive condition of an artist is to look 
 at the world everywhere and every day with the humble hope 
 and expectation of being permitted to see some new beauty 
 and wonder there. Even in the things most familiar to us, 
 there are yet a thousand discoveries to be made. Let us look 
 at them always with untiring interest and curiosity. However 
 successful as observers of nature, however famous as artists, 
 let us humbly believe, what is most assuredly true, that with 
 reference to very much of natural truth and beauty we are 
 even yet in darkness ! This is our only possible chance of 
 getting to see more ; but if we believe, as some do, that the 
 whole truth is visible to> us, the little we know will close round 
 us like a prison, and the universe, for us, will narrow itself to 
 the dimensions of a cell. 
 
 8. Utility of advice from many artists . — A good way of 
 finding out where we are blind is to encourage many artists to 
 criticise our work frankly in our own hearing. They will 
 express opinions in direct contradiction with each other, and 
 cause, perhaps, some degree of confusion in our own ; but we 
 shall hear, from time to time, some suggestion that will lead 
 us to fresh observations and discoveries. Anyone who 
 has really studied nature for himself is likely to have seen 
 something that no one else has seen. Let us encourage him 
 to tell us what that thing is, so that we also may get leave 
 
OBSERVATION OF NATURE. 
 
 259 
 
 I 
 
 to see it. Every new friend who will tell us what his own 
 observations have been may be as good as a new pair of eyes 
 to us. 
 
 9. Critical study of many schools . — Artists record their obser- 
 vations in their works : the greater the variety of pictures we 
 have the opportunity of studying, the better our chances of 
 meeting with enlarging suggestions. Hence, the critical study 
 of pictures may be an important part of the education even 
 of the practical artist. It is likely, at least, to save him from 
 the besetting danger of narrowness. He will learn how 
 various are the aims of Art, and select for himself those aims 
 which are at the same time most compatible with his own 
 powers and most in harmony with his natural feelings and 
 affections. One or two pictures by Constable, exhibited in 
 Paris at a time when a new school of landscape was beginning 
 to form itself amongst the younger men, sufficed to give a 
 special direction to the efforts of that school, and their influ- 
 ence, transmitted through other minds, has not yet spent itself. 
 
 10. Discoveries . — It is for the advantage of Art, and con- 
 ducive to its extension, that artists should be on the look-out 
 for discoveries in the realms of nature, and led to pride 
 themselves on such discoveries by the public encouragement 
 and applause. This tendency is, on the whole, eminently 
 beneficial by the increased stimulus it affords to all observation 
 of nature, and by the increased interest of the very various 
 Art which is called into existence by the desire to record 
 discoveries worthily. At the same time, however, the love of 
 discovery is not unaccompanied by its peculiar dangers. A 
 consequence of it, very watchfully to be guarded against, is 
 the habit of undervaluing truths long and commonly known, 
 which, nevertheless, may be just as valuable as the new, whilst 
 it is probable that they will be even yet more necessary. For 
 example, the maxims which filled such works as those of 
 Burnet being universally known to, and long accepted by, the 
 world of Art, and whose general utility no reasonable man 
 will be disposed to question, have of late years fallen into 
 neglect, and even into something like contempt, because 
 the recent discoveries of our younger school have turned 
 men’s minds away from them. So far as such maxims as- 
 sume the rigidity of rules, it is indeed a thankworthy service 
 to prove practically that they may safely be dispensed with ; 
 
 s 2 
 
26 o 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 but if they pretend to no higher character than suggestions 
 for artistic convenience, it is as well to give them the atten- 
 tion which the experience of former generations seems to 
 show that they deserve. When tradition is evidently in oppo- 
 sition to natural truth, or even when obedience to it would 
 hinder us from recording some truth unforeseen by our pre- 
 decessors, the tradition ought unquestionably to give way ; 
 but when it compels us to no falsity, and restrains us from 
 the pursuit of no veracity, it ought at least to be considered 
 respectfully. 
 
 To this warning may be added another of an opposite 
 character, yet equally necessary. The stupid opposition to 
 discovery is at least as blameworthy as the too self-reliant 
 independence of tradition. There are whole classes of persons 
 concerning themselves with the Fine Arts, and very influential 
 classes too, who systematically deny the merit of what is new, 
 merely because it has not the authority of precedent. Whatever 
 may be the necessity for precedent in the law, it is quite unne- 
 cessary in Art. If you have produced true and noble work of a 
 kind for which there is a precedent, you have done well ; but 
 if you have produced equally true and noble work which is 
 without precedent, you have done still better, and deserve not 
 less honour and credit, but more honour, more respect, more 
 serious consideration, on account of the greater originality 
 needed for work in the execution of which you have not 
 profited by the guidance of example. 
 
 ii. The art of making observations . — An artistic observation 
 must always be made according to a certain method and for 
 some especial purpose. The most useful observations are 
 those made to ascertain some particular truth about which we 
 want to be quite sure : for example, if an artist is painting an 
 ox in his studio, and, wishing to be right about the motion of 
 a muscle in action, goes into the road and walks by the side 
 of an ox for ten minutes to see the action of that muscle, it is 
 probable that the observation will be more profitable to him 
 than a merely vague and general survey of the movement of 
 the whole animal. Observations may, however, be synthetic, 
 and, indeed, they naturally class themselves under the two 
 heads of analysis and synthesis ; but when synthetic, they are 
 intentionally so, the one condition of a valuable observation 
 being that it shall have been made with a purpose. 
 
OBSER VA T10N OF NA TURE. 
 
 261 
 
 Observations are of little value without comparison : indeed 
 without comparison the memory cannot retain their results. 
 And in order that this comparison may be possible, it is 
 necessary to note all those conditions under which each obser- 
 vation, in any way likely to affect its result, was taken. The 
 value of observations, unlike that of most possessions, in- 
 creases with their abundance : the more we possess of them, 
 the more valuable each becomes, because the more light is 
 thrown upon it. It is necessary in making observations to 
 guard against the natural tendency to the exaggeration which 
 comes of excitement, and to divest ourselves as far as possible 
 of that kind of enthusiasm which, once satisfied of the exist- 
 ence of a fact, has no longer the impartiality necessary to test 
 its value with precision. 
 
 12. The discrepancy between clear obsei'vation and defective 
 performance to be attributed to weakziess of the i?iemory. — There 
 is a common injustice in criticism against which we all ought 
 to guard ourselves. It is often said of painters who, in their 
 performance, visibly fall short of the truth, that they cannot 
 see, or have not noticed the truth. It is very possible, how- 
 ever, they may have studied the facts with care, and observed 
 them with perspicacity. Critics forget that between the 
 moment when an artist sees an effect or a group in nature, and 
 the moment when his completed picture leaves his easel, there 
 is usually an interval of weeks or months, during which he has 
 his memory alone to rely upon, if we except some slight 
 memorandum, such as may be hastily scrawled in his note- 
 book. Between seeing and doing there is a great gulf, and 
 the difficulty is how to get the materials safely across it. 
 Memory is the ferry-boat ; but most people’s memories are 
 boats of very small tonnage, and many of the truths of nature 
 are inevitably left behind. 
 
 13. The art of retaining observatio?is in the memory. — There 
 is, however, an art of memory by which a good deal may be 
 done. First, we ought to learn by heart those characteristics 
 of each natural object which are common to all its kind : for 
 example, a figure-painter ought first to know by heart the struc- 
 ture of the male and female bodies generally, at different 
 periods of life, from infancy to old age. These facts once 
 mastered, he has no further occasion to trouble himself about 
 the facts of structure which are common to all, and his atten- 
 
262 
 
 THOUGHTS AB0U1 ART. 
 
 tion may now be exclusively occupied in noting the deviations 
 from the type which constitute the individuality of his subject. 
 When these deviations are strongly marked, he will remember 
 them without difficulty, and by degrees his powers of observa- 
 tion and memory will become so keen, that very slight devia- 
 tions will impress themselves strongly and be permanently 
 retained. But if, on the other hand, the artist has not made 
 himself perfectly acquainted with those facts of structure 
 which are common to all, he has no standard of comparison in 
 his own mind, and cannot measure the extent of the deviation. 
 The great principle is to possess sta?idards in the memory, and 
 possess them thoroughly. Nor is this a matter requiring 
 extraordinary mental gifts ; it only requires patience and 
 labour. It is recorded of Rosa Bonheur, that when she first 
 began to study animals, she bought a sheep, and kept it always 
 by her in a Parisian apartment. That sheep she studied in 
 every detail till she knew it by heart, and no doubt it be- 
 came her first standard. It does not much signify what we 
 take for a standard, so long as we have one, if only it be not 
 abnormal. The practical purpose is to carry always something 
 in our own minds with which to compare the objects we see 
 in nature. 
 
 14. On scientific guida?ice in artistic observation . — The Fine 
 Arts owe a good deal to various sciences, and we may thank- 
 fully, up to a certain point, accept the hints which science 
 offers. 1 should say that Art is seldom very far ahead of 
 Science in scientific matters : for example, accurate discrimina- 
 tion in rocks did not precede our recent geological develop- 
 ment, but was contemporaneous with it. The rational attitude 
 of artists towards science is one of gratitude and docility, so 
 far as science offers them useful help. It may save them 
 many mistakes ; but it is not to be relied on to the extent of 
 superseding purely artistic observation. If we are too exclu- 
 sively scientific, we are apt to mark too strongly the merely 
 scientific truths, and neglect the artistic, as bad draughtsmen, 
 who have studied anatomy, make figure studies which are 
 nothing better than a mass of muscles and bones, divested of 
 the delicate aesthetic appearances. So, in landscape, studies 
 of rock and mountain might easily, in the hands of a merely 
 scientific artist, degenerate into geological memoranda, mark- 
 ing only those truths which are interesting to geologists. 
 
OBSER VA TION OF NA TURF. 
 
 263 
 
 15. On the prevale?it doubt whether artistic sight is of any 
 use in ordinary life. — It is of use in this way, that it opens 
 fields of noble enjoyment, which without it are closed to us, 
 and is therefore a definite addition to happiness. To men of 
 the world artistic knowledge seems altogether vanity, because 
 it seems to lead to no material results, except the making of 
 pictures and statues, which men of the world consider one 
 of the least important of our manufactures. But there is an 
 argument in favour of artistic culture which has not yet been 
 sufficiently insisted upon. 
 
 High artistic development is rare ; but low artistic develop- 
 ment is so common that we may safely call it universal. As 
 P. J. Proudhon showed in his posthumous work on Art, as far 
 as we attempt to beautify life in any way whatever, so far we 
 are all of us artists. If you wear one single ornament — if you 
 possess in your house one single object which is there for 
 appearance alone, you are, so far, an artist, or a patron of Art. 
 The ribbon and artificial flower in your wife’s bonnet, the 
 patterns on your wall-paper and your carpet, the bit of mean- 
 ingless curvature that is carved on the top of your mahogany 
 sideboard, the mouldings round the ceiling of your room, even 
 the cheap printed stuffs worn by your women- servants — all 
 these things are Art — they are low developments of it, but 
 they are feeble early manifestations of the same instinct that 
 has filled palaces with Art-treasures. Now, if I were address- 
 ing an audience of bourgeois , I should argue with them thus : — 
 I should begin by showing them that even they, who professed 
 to despise Art as frivolity, were compelled by their own 
 natural instincts to have some of it nevertheless ; and thence 
 I should proceed to ask by what consistency they, who so 
 encouraged Art in its lowest forms, could profess to despise it 
 in its higher? Art, in one form or other, the whole human 
 race must and will have : it is a necessity, and not a luxury. 
 Even savages carve their spears and paddles, and decorate 
 themselves and their belongings with shells and feathers. We 
 argue, therefore, that since you must have Art, whether good 
 or bad, it is better, considering the influence of Art on those 
 who live with it, that you should live with good Art, and that 
 artistic observation of the right kind will render a great ser- 
 vice, by ridding you of the bad Art which must pervade the 
 world until supplanted by better. 
 
264 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 The “ practical man ” has, however, the peculiarity that he 
 considers low Art rational, and a fit object for a nation to 
 spend millions upon ; whilst noble Art he despises as trifling, 
 and of no use. Calico-printing, for example, he considers 
 eminently practical ; but noble Art unpractical. With him 
 all low Art that can be manufactured, is serious ; noble. Art, 
 that cannot be manufactured, is frivolous and of no account. 
 —1866. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 PROUDHON • AS A WRITER ON ART . 1 
 
 Amongst all the discouraging facts about the public recep- 
 tion of the Fine Arts, there is not one so discouraging as the 
 difficulty of finding out what people really think. The same- 
 ness of shallow profession that murmurs in our ears is a 
 weariness to the soul. The orthodox in art, like the orthodox 
 in some other matters, seem to find satisfaction in all acqui- 
 escence or verbal submission to their authority ; they are 
 pleased and contented when ignorance repeats, without either 
 feeling or understanding, the consecrated formulae ; they are 
 happy when anyone says what they think, and irritated if he 
 says what he thinks himself. It appears that many minds like 
 echoes better than all the other sounds on earth, and willingly 
 pass their lives in listening to nothing else. Nay, so wedded 
 are they to this strange taste of theirs, that they will listen to 
 nothing else. 
 
 To all such — and alas ! they are many — this book of 
 Proudhon’s is not to be recommended. The sounds that 
 come out of it are not repetitions, but new voices, often flatly 
 contradictory of our own, and of all others hitherto familiar 
 in our ears. Proudhon was a very hard-headed, merciless dis- 
 putant, far too sincere to be always pleasant, saying what he 
 thought “ in words like cannon-balls.” One of his phrases, 
 “ La propi'iete c*est le voip was more than a cannon-ball, it was 
 a bombshell. It was not exactly true, but there was just 
 enough truth in it to make it very terrible. The pages of his 
 
 1 “Du Principe deFArt et de sa Destination Sociale,” par P. J. 
 Proudhon. Paris. 
 
266 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 book on art are charged with smaller bombs that explode in 
 our faces as we turn the leaves . 1 
 
 Proudhon was “ let loose on this planet ” for the purpose 
 of awakening discussion on those fundamental postulates 
 which society likes to take for granted. Nobody would ever 
 discuss these, if some bold thinker did not from time to 
 time attack them. In the realms of social philosophy, and we 
 may now add of art also, Proudhon served the purpose of 
 “ her Majesty’s Opposition ; ;; he was useful as resistance is to 
 force. No force can be exercised without resistance, and, in 
 intellectual matters, real resistance, such as Proudhon’s, is very 
 difficult to get. Ships that sail on water can go against the 
 wind, because they have hold with their keels upon a resisting 
 medium ; but balloons, those ships of the upper air, are driven 
 helplessly to leeward because no strong element withstands 
 their flying cars. In common practical matters the resistance 
 is supplied by material difficulties, and men may sail ; in the 
 intellectual region there is too often no such resistance, and 
 they drift. 
 
 Before criticising these posthumous notes on art which 
 Proudhon has left us, it is quite necessary, in order that we 
 may understand them rightly, to comprehend the strange 
 nature of the man. 
 
 If a great power evidently exists upon the earth, appearing 
 in times and places far apart, and asserting itself victoriously 
 as an influence strong enough to modify the existence of 
 humanity, certain thinkers are satisfied that by the very fact of 
 its wide and forcible action on mankind the power has a Divine 
 authority, or is at least a natural product, and therefore to be 
 examined respectfully. I am of this way of thinking, but 
 Proudhon was not. Take, for example, the power of capital, 
 and its exaction of tribute in the shape of interest. This 
 power has not been created by the will of individuals, or the 
 decision of governments ; it grows everywhere naturally. Its 
 strength may seem to us occasionally a temptation to certain 
 forms of tyranny, which legislation has a right to guard us 
 against, but we humbly recognize the power of capital as an 
 
 1 It now appears that Proudhon never used this expression, which, how- 
 ever, is universally associated with his name. I leave it in the text, that 
 this note may to some extent clear his memory of a doctrine attributed to 
 him by his enemies. — 1873. 
 
PROUDHON AS A WRITER ON ART. 
 
 267 
 
 institution of the Supreme wisdom, and therefore cannot dis- 
 approve of it any more than we can disapprove of the natural 
 collecting of water in lakes and seas. But Proudhon's mind 
 was so constituted that he was capable of feeling the strongest 
 moral disapproval concerning the central institutions of Nature. 
 To hoard capital, in his view, was really a crime ; and the 
 exaction of interest robbery. Nor did he maintain these views 
 because he was poor, and envied the rich. He had oppor- 
 tunities of becoming richer, and refused to profit by them 
 from motives of conscience. Indeed, those English writers 
 must have a very slight acquaintance with the private history 
 of French Republicans who believe them to have been ac- 
 tuated by a motive so easily explained as mere envy. They 
 were enthusiasts who had a faith, and for that faith they gladly 
 suffered poverty, exile, and imprisonment, when the abandon- 
 ment of it would have given them ease, and often have led 
 them to much worldly prosperity. 
 
 This peculiarity of Proudhon’s mind must be remembered 
 when we read his criticism of art. Whatever offends his moral 
 sense he vehemently opposes. Nothing is sacred for him but 
 his own sense of what is right. There is a violence, a virulence, 
 in his onslaughts which becomes most offensive if we lose 
 sight for a moment of his peculiar point of view. But if we 
 are irritated against him, it is evidence of a want of philosophy 
 in ourselves. Proudhon wrote unreservedly what he thought ; 
 he might have abstained from writing, or he might have written 
 what other people thought. It may be doubted whether he 
 acted wisely in leaving for publication his ideas on art, a 
 subject of which he had no special knowledge ; but there 
 cannot be a doubt that if we concede this, and leave him the 
 choice between expressing his own opinions or other people’s, 
 it was his duty to us, his readers, to express his own . 1 
 
 He had no diffidence, nor deference. But these are feelings 
 rather useful to warn us off literary ground than to guide us 
 when we are on it, pen in hand. Men of strong convictions 
 are always liable to the accusation of want of modesty. They 
 say what they believe, as if they not only believed but knew it. 
 
 1 Proudhon wrote quite without literary artifice, and without social tact ; 
 but his absolute sincerity and the unceasing predominance of his moral 
 sense are compensations for these defects, which are defects of art and not 
 of character. — 1873. 
 
268 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 Thorough belief has within itself an assurance equivalent to 
 that of perfect knowledge. If a man has this, his writings 
 will convey the impression that he is conceited when he is 
 only convinced. There is immense assurance in Proudhon’s 
 manner, but it is only the language of genuine earnestness. 
 Writers who are never in earnest about anything have a great 
 advantage over him in this respect; they can cultivate at 
 leisure the amiable art of modesty. 
 
 The first proposition of Proudhon which I should feel 
 inclined to dispute, is the one on which he founds his position 
 as an art critic; namely, the judicial competence of the unin- 
 formed spectator. The following paragraphs, translated and 
 much condensed, contain the essentials of his argument : 1 — 
 
 “ I know nothing by study or apprenticeship about painting, or sculpture, 
 or music. I have always liked their productions as children like engravings. 
 I am of that innumerable multitude which knows nothing of art, as to its 
 execution, or of its secrets, which, far from swearing by a school, is inca- 
 pable of appreciating manual skill, the difficulties overcome, the science of 
 means and processes, but whose suffrage is the only one that artists aspire 
 to, and for whom art creates. This multitude has the right to declare what 
 it rejects or prefers, to signify its tastes, to impose its will upon artists. It 
 may make mistakes, its tastes require to be awakened and exercised ; but 
 it is the supreme judge. It can say — and none may reply — ‘ I command ; 
 it is your business, artists, to obey. For if your art repels my inspiration; 
 if it has the pretension to impose itself on my fancy instead of following 
 it ; if it dares to refuse my decisions ; if, in a word, it is not made for me, 
 I despise it ; with all its marvels, I repudiate it. ’ 
 
 “Nature has made us, as to ideas and sentiments, about equally artists. 
 As the progress of knowledge is slow, and requires studies and efforts, so 
 aesthetic education is rapid. Authority in art is inadmissible. It is enough 
 for any man to consult himself to be in a position to put forth a judgment 
 on no matter what work of art. This is how I have constituted myself an 
 art critic, and I recommend all my readers to do the same. 
 
 “I judge works of art by the taste for beautiful things which is natural 
 to us, and especially by what I have learned in literature. I have no 
 aesthetic intuition, and it is only by reflection and analysis that I arrive at 
 the appreciation of the beautiful. But it seems to me that the faculties of 
 taste and understanding are not so far distinct that one cannot supply the 
 place of the other. 
 
 “ My quality of judge established, I do not hesitate to produce my 
 decisions.” 
 
 The theory that ignorant persons may judge of art is so 
 popular that Proudhon will carry the suffrages of most readers 
 
 1 In all extracts from Proudhon, in the course of this paper, I have con- 
 densed whenever possible. 
 
PROUDHON AS A WRITER ON ART. 
 
 269 
 
 with him, and it is of little use to oppose him by argument, 
 because his theory flatters the self-esteem of the public, whilst 
 the contrary one wounds it. I by no means accuse Proudhon 
 of uttering this doctrine with a view to flatter his readers, for 
 he never condescended to any arts of that kind, but the 
 doctrine is very agreeable to them. If you tell people that 
 they are good judges of art, they like you for it, and willingly 
 listen; if you tell them that they are incompetent, and leave 
 them to infer that you consider yourself competent, they 
 become animated by less kindly sentiments towards you, and 
 attribute your unacceptable doctrine to personal arrogance 
 and conceit. 
 
 To judge of any picture, statue, drawing, or engraving, three 
 distinct kinds of knowledge are needed. First, an accurate 
 acquaintance with the natural facts which ought, in that par- 
 ticular subject, to have been represented ; secondly, some 
 considerable practical acquaintance with the means employed 
 to represent the facts ; thirdly, a philosophical comprehension 
 of the intellectual or imaginative element in the work. 
 
 Take, for example, a simple pastoral subject, the picture of 
 “Ploughing in the Nivernais,” by Rosa Bonheur, in the 
 Luxembourg. The facts to be known by any writer who 
 would criticise that picture include the construction and move- 
 ments of oxen, then (in a less degree in this instance because 
 they are clothed) the construction and movements of men, 
 after that the construction of trees and earth, with the peculiar 
 forms which the earth takes when it comes off the mould-iron, 
 as Woolner says, “ wave lapping wave without a sound.” The 
 sky, too, must have been studied, and it would be no dis- 
 advantage if the writer knew something about ploughs, and 
 had seen ploughing in the country represented (the Nivernais), 
 and were able himself to harness a yoke of oxen after the 
 manner of the peasants in those parts, that he might know 
 whether Rosa Bonheur had made no mistake in that matter. 
 Then, as to colour, though the critic cannot be a colourist, 
 he must have made coloured studies of oxen and ploughed 
 land, or else he will have no notion of what the real colour 
 of them is. Lastly, as to the philosophy of art, he must know 
 enough of that to be able to assign its due place to the work 
 in the history of art, and to determine how far it is imaginative 
 and poetical, or, if only prosaic and observant, what sort of 
 
270 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 prose it is, and what separates it from other prose, such, for 
 instance, as that of Courbet. Criticism is nothing else than 
 the application of a set of tests, which tests are numerous and 
 delicate in proportion to the information and feeling of the 
 critic. These tests are not little rules easily learned, as some 
 imagine, but results of elaborate knowledge of very various 
 kinds. Now it never happens that a critic is in full possession 
 of all the knowledge needed for just criticism; he has the 
 means of applying one or two tests, it may be, but these are 
 not enough for the complete estimation of the w T ork. What 
 is called the public estimation of a work depends ultimately 
 on the success with which it may have passed the successive 
 ordeals of different tests applied by critics of various com- 
 petence. The weakness of most art criticism lies in its igno- 
 rance of those scientific and technical facts which supply the 
 only accurate tests. Common criticism is a mere expression 
 of personal liking or aversion, and deserves very slight atten- 
 tion indeed. Proudhon would elevate this criticism by igno- 
 rance to the rank of something serious that artists are bound 
 to obey; that is, he would have Ignorance dictate to Knowledge. 
 It has done so to some extent, but to a much less extent than 
 Proudhon imagined; and every year the authority of Ignorance 
 diminishes. The public now knows the difference, in England 
 at least, between a critic who has grounds for what he advances 
 and a writer who expresses merely his personal fancy or 
 caprice, and it desires nothing so much as to find and follow 
 competent guidance. The multitude is not the supreme judge. 
 Its suffrage is not the only one that artists aspire to and for 
 which art creates. True artists aspire to the judgment of 
 those w T ho are severally competent in the various specialities 
 of criticism. When these have severally judged the work 
 from their various points of view, a general conclusion as to 
 its merit is drawn from the mass of their testimony; and this 
 general conclusion, more or less modified by time, passes 
 current always in the end. It is encouraging to remember 
 the establishment of Turner’s fame in spite of the popular 
 verdict He did not “obey” the multitude; he had “the 
 pretension to impose himself on its fancy instead of following 
 it;” he did “dare to refuse its decisions.” The multitude 
 “despised his art with all its marvels” and “repudiated it.” 
 And with what result? All the popular outcry and clamour 
 
PROUDHON AS A WRITER ON ART. 
 
 271 
 
 were in vain : the few artists and connoisseurs who understood 
 Turner silenced the thousands who could not comprehend 
 him ; and now, no thanks to any popular favour, his immortal 
 name is engraven where they cannot efface it, high in the 
 House of Fame. There is nothing in life more wonderful, 
 more sublime, more cheering to our faith and hope, than the 
 certain ultimate victory of the few who know. 
 
 Holding these views, believing that to produce art criticism 
 of any value needs laborious preparation, it follows that I 
 cannot allow to Proudhon, who was entirely ignorant of art, the 
 title of art critic in any serious sense at all . 1 And yet it seems 
 well that he should have left us his impressions on the subject, 
 because he wrote so very sincerely, and sincere writing about 
 art, by thoughtful persons, is lamentably rare. Proudhon at 
 least tells us what an ignorant thinker worked out in his own 
 head, and in the course of his thinking, by the sharp pene- 
 trating faculty of his mind, he got down to one or two obscure 
 truths which are likely ere long to become widely known, at 
 least to the more thoughtful class of readers. He was the first 
 to announce in print the relation between some modern art 
 and the new Positive Philosophy. He fished up that murex, 
 and deserves great credit for it. His faculty as an art philo- 
 sopher was naturally large, but there is no evidence that he 
 appreciated artistic performance. I mean, that as a thinker he 
 could grasp the historical relation of school to school ; but as 
 
 1 Proudhon says that he judges works of art “especially by what he 
 has learned in literature.” Many others do so likewise, and yet literary 
 influences are often very misleading in regard to painting and sculpture, 
 and they are so precisely because there is a great gulf between 
 literary and pictorial or plastic conception, between the literary and 
 pictorial habits of mind. For hundreds of years the literary habit of 
 mind has been sedulously cultivated at Oxford, with the uniform result 
 (until combated of late by other influences) of inducing a contempt for art 
 and artists in combination with a sort of resolute ignorance disdainfully 
 unteachable. The literary mind tries to extract its own sort of material 
 from the works of painters ; and when there is not much of that sort of 
 material to be extracted, it says there is nothing in them. A taste for 
 literature by no means implies any capacity for understanding art. I knew 
 an eminent writer and ediior, who lived in London, and who yet with all 
 his scholarship, which was exceptional, and with all his taste, which in 
 literature was both cultivated and refined, never felt himself attracted to 
 the picture galleries, which he did not visit. Every reader of this book 
 must have many acquaintances who have received a Jiterary education and 
 are utterly unable to understand the arts of design. — 1873. 
 
272 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 an observer, I doubt whether he had that delicate insight whic 
 can justly compare picture with picture. 
 
 Proudhon’s assertion that authority in art is inadmissible is 
 not absolutely true, but an important truth lies hidden in the 
 loose and too general phrase. Any pretension to universal 
 authority in art is inadmissible, because no human being in the 
 course of one life can acquire the knowledge necessary to a 
 universal art critic. But, on the other hand, authority on 
 special matters naturally asserts itself, and is always recognized 
 so soon as the grounds of it are ascertained. In a cultivated 
 age authority on particular subjects is allowed to all who 
 can give evidence of superior knowledge on those especial 
 subjects. What Proudhon rebelled against in his heart was 
 the authority of superiority ; but such rebellion is always vain, 
 because Nature herself instituted and ever sustains that just 
 authority. 
 
 The place due to the Fine Arts amongst the occupations 
 of men would naturally occupy a thinker who busied himself 
 so incessantly with social questions. The following passages 
 show how severely Proudhon regarded art and artists from his 
 point of view as a social moralist : — 
 
 ‘ ‘ Whether painters represent drunken priests as Courbet does, or 
 priests saying mass like Flandrm, or peasants, soldiers, horses, or trees, or 
 effigies of antique personages of whom we know next to nothing, or heroes 
 of novels, or fairies, angels, gods, products of fancy or superstition, — in 
 what can all that seriously interest us ? What good does it do to our 
 government, our manners, our comfort, our progress? Does it become 
 serious minds to concern themselves with these costly trifles? Have we 
 time and money to spare? Certainly, we practical and sensible people, 
 not initiated in the mysteries of art, have a right to ask this of artists, not 
 to contradict them, but in order to be edified about what they think of 
 themselves, and what they expect from us. Nobody, however, seems to 
 have given a clear answer on these points. 
 
 “ Every two years, — formerly it was every year, — the Government regales 
 the public with a great exhibition of painting, statuary, &c. Industry 
 never had such frequent exhibitions, and she has not had them nearly 
 so long. In fact, it is an artist’s fair — putting their products for sale, and 
 waiting anxiously for buyers. For these exceptional solemnities the 
 Government appoints a jury to verify the works sent, and name the best. 
 On the recommendation of this jury the Government gives medals of gold 
 and silver, decorations, honourable mentions, money rewards, pensions. 
 There are, for distinguished artists, according to their recognized talents 
 and their age, places at Rome, in the Academy, in the Senate. All these 
 expenses are paid by us, the profane, like those of the army and the 
 country roads. Nevertheless, it is probable that no one, either on the jury, 
 
PROUDHON AS A WRITER ON ART. 
 
 273 
 
 or in the Academy, or in the Senate, or at Rome, would be in a condition 
 to justify this part of the budget by an intelligible definition of art and its 
 function, either private or public. Why can’t we leave ariists to their own 
 business, and not trouble ourselves about them more than we do about 
 rope-dancers ? Perhaps it would be the best way to find out exactly what 
 they are worth. 
 
 ‘ ‘ The more one reflects on this question of art and artists, the more 
 one meets matter for astonishment. M. Ingres, a master painter, like 
 M. Courbet, has become, by the sale of his works, rich and celebrated. It 
 is evident that he, at any rate, has not merely worked for fancy’s sake. 
 Quite lately he has been admitted to the Senate as one of the great notables 
 of the land. His fellow-townsmen at Montauban have voted him a golden 
 crown. Here is painting, then, put on the same level as war, religion, 
 science, and industry. But why has M. Ingres been considered the first 
 amongst his peers? If you consult artists and writers about his value, 
 most of them will tell you that he is the chief, much questioned, of a 
 school fallen into discredit for the last thirty years, the classical school ; 
 that to this school has succeeded another, which in its turn became the 
 fashion, the romantic school, headed by Delacroix, who is just dead ; that 
 this one has given way, and is now partly replaced by the realist school, 
 of which Courbet is the principal representative. So that upon the glory 
 of Ingres, the venerable representative of classicism, are superposed two 
 younger schools, two new generations of artists, as two or three new strata 
 of earth are superposed on the animals contemporary with the last deluge. 
 Why has the Government chosen M. Ingres, an antediluvian, rather than 
 Delacroix or Courbet ? Is art an affair of archaeology, or is it like politics, 
 which has always been horrified by new ideas and walked with its eyes 
 turned backwards in history? If so, then the last comers in painting 
 would be the worst. Then what is the good of encouragement and recom- 
 penses ? Let things go their own way, unless we would follow the advice 
 of Plato and Rousseau, and ostracize this 4 world of art,’ sod of parasites 
 and corruption.” 
 
 All this seems severe, but is very easily answered. Happily 
 for the human race, it is guided in the right direction by its 
 instincts before it has learned to account for its own doings 
 by philosophical reasoning. Those who possess the instinct 
 which either creates or appreciates works of art do not need to 
 quiet their consciences by any argument about the wisdom 
 or utility of paying attention to the fine arts. The art faculty, 
 like every other great faculty of our nature, carries within itself 
 the assurance of its own lawfulness. If any argument is 
 needed to satisfy those unfortunates who can only think and 
 never feel, here is one, such as it is. Nature is always artistic ; 
 the very commonest things have artistic invention. A rose is 
 beautiful and a toad is ugly; both are artistic. Now, so long 
 as man's work is unartistic, it is a discord in the universe; 
 
 H T 
 
274 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 hence art serves the purpose of bringing man and his be- 
 longings into visible harmony with nature. If you answer, 
 “ What is the good of being brought into harmony with nature ? 
 we don't care about artistic qualities even in nature itself ; ” 
 we can only say that art does not work exclusively for you, but 
 that very many other persons find in it a sensible benefit and 
 an addition to happiness. It is easily shown also that art adds 
 to human knowledge, by giving it visibility and precision. 
 
 These questionings of Proudhon as to the utility of art are, 
 however, rather introductory to his own answer than the real 
 questionings of an inquirer who could give no answer and 
 believed that none could be given. Proudhon defines art as 
 “ an idealist represejitation of nature a?id ourselves with a view 
 to the physical and moral adva7iceme?it (perfectionnement) of our 
 species .” This is one of the best definitions hitherto constructed. 
 It includes natural truth, idealism, landscape art, figure design, 
 and the influence of art as drawing attention to, and leading 
 towards, the improvement of our physical and moral life. It 
 misses, however, the affections and sentiments which cause the 
 production of all art that touches us closely. Art is the 
 expression of the artist's delight in what he sees or imagines, 
 and an attempt to communicate the same delight to others, 
 with a view to their sympathy and applause. Then Proudhon 
 considers the aesthetic faculty one of secondary rank, merely 
 an auxiliary in the development of humanity, rather a feminine 
 than a virile faculty, and predestined to obedience. Here also 
 he is undoubtedly right from the political or social point of view, 
 which estimates faculties according to their direct govern- 
 mental power. The aesthetic power influences only those who 
 by their natural constitution are created the subjects of such 
 influence ; its weakness lies in the fact that it only governs 
 those who are willing to be governed. Political power, on 
 the other hand, governs also the unwilling. The difference 
 between the two may be accurately estimated by the difference 
 in national importance between the Royal Academy and the 
 House of Commons. But, on the other hand, considered 
 apart from the question of power over others, I am not sure that 
 the aesthetic faculty, especially when in its highest form of 
 artistic invention, can be considered a secondary or an un- 
 masculine faculty. Be assured that to paint a great picture 
 or write a great poem is manly work in the strongest sense. 
 
PROUDHON AS A WRITER ON ART. 
 
 275 
 
 Shakespeare and Michael Angelo were certainly manly ; and 
 however firm our manhood, it is never too mighty for the great 
 claims which the exigencies of noble art make upon it. 
 
 The wisdom of such governmental encouragement of art as 
 Proudhon questions may indeed be doubted, but the course 
 pursued by the Emperor in selecting Ingres for honours 
 rather than Courbet, or even Delacroix, is marked by Louis 
 Napoleon’s usual tact and prudence. Ingres may be an 
 “ antediluvian,” but his merits, such as they are, have the 
 advantage of universal recognition, whilst the merits of Dela- 
 croix and Courbet are strongly disputed. The great evil of all 
 governmental recognition of contemporary art is that persons 
 in authority can only honour “ safe” men, and these are seldom 
 the greatest, never the most original. Callcott was a safe man 
 and got knighted ; Turner was not a safe man, and thirty years 
 ago any official recognition of him would have excited much 
 clamour, which would have caused the common people to 
 doubt the judgment of their rulers. Besides, it does not follow 
 that antediluvians should be necessarily worse than their suc- 
 cessors ; their only fault is to have aimed at qualities now no 
 longer in fashion amongst artists ; but these qualities may 
 nevertheless be desirable, and to have aimed at them may 
 have been to render permanent service to the arts, even 
 though they are for the present temporarily lost sight of in the 
 pursuit of more novel aims. As to the fitness of the kind of 
 honour bestowed on Ingres there is still, however, room for 
 doubt. The fine arts do not teach men how to govern a 
 country; and the severe study of form, which is Ingres’ sole 
 claim to consideration, is not enough to make him vote wisely 
 on such questions as will come before him in his senatorial 
 capacity. 
 
 Proudhon’s conception of art was large. He perceived the 
 immense extension of the aesthetic faculty in man. He saw 
 that not merely painting or sculpture, but everything that aims 
 at the adornment of life, springs from that faculty. The truth 
 is, that whenever we decorate a building or a piece of joiners’ 
 work with the simplest moulding, whenever we enrich out 
 dress with the least bit of braid or ribbon, or even put a 
 wild flower in a button-hole, we are attempting to give satis- 
 faction to the artistic instinct. A manufacturer at Oldham 
 put a cornice round the top of his factory at a cost of 1,500/. 
 
 t 2 
 
276 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 That was poor art, but it was an attempt at art, and sprang 
 from the instinct which erected the frieze of the Parthenon. 
 The duty of artists and writers on art is to guide this blind 
 instinct to a rational activity. Thus we might suggest to a 
 savage, that instead of carving and staining his own face, he 
 would do better to carve and stain wooden furniture; and it 
 is the duty of every writer on art in the present age to tell 
 the people who invent the prevalent fashions in female dress, 
 that although the desire for becoming costume is a right 
 instinct, the existing mode is a disease of it . 1 
 
 Proudhon’s chapter on the Ideal is somewhat unsatisfactory. 
 So far as I understand the Ideal, it is the typical or perfect 
 form to which nature tends. But there may be various ideals ; 
 indeed, they are infinitely numerous. Nature never quite 
 reaches them in any individual creature, but very clearly 
 indicates them. Proudhon believed that there is Idealism in 
 everything, even in a photograph of raw butcher’s meat 
 chopped in pieces. I confess I see no Ideal whatever in 
 nature or in photography, but only hints giving us a clue to 
 the Ideal. It is scarcely worth while, however, to discuss 
 this point, on which there exists little difference of opinion 
 amongst artists. The difference which does exist, and which dis- 
 tinguishes modern art from the antique, is that we recognize 
 a greater quantity or variety of ideals than the ancients did. 
 This is of importance, because it makes our aims more various 
 and our judgments more liberal than theirs. 
 
 “For philosophers and savants ,” says Proudhon, “ the mode of ex- 
 pression ought to be rigorously exact. Artistic expression, on the other 
 hand, is augmentative or diminutive, laudatory or depreciatory. So that 
 the slavery to the pure idea which characterizes philosophy, science, and 
 industry, is just what destroys the aesthetic sentiment, the ideal, whilst 
 artistic licence gives birth to it. 
 
 “The object of art is not merely to make us admire beautiful things. 
 The attainment of beauty is only the debut of the artist. Our moral 
 life consists of quite other things than this superficial and sterile contempla- 
 tion. There are the variety of human actions and passions, prejudices, 
 beliefs, conditions, castes, family, religion, domestic comedy, public tragedy, 
 
 1 This alludes only to the fashions of 1866. Since then female dress has 
 occasionally been both rational and graceful, but it never remains long 
 in any condition which an artist or philosopher could approve ; and instead 
 of dwelling contentedly in suitable beauty , always flies off again into the 
 wildest extravagances. — 1873. 
 
PROUDHON AS A WRITER ON ART 
 
 277 
 
 national epic, revolutions. All that is as much matter for art as for 
 philosophy. 
 
 “Art is essentially concrete, particularist, and determinative. ” 
 
 All that is very true and good ; one or two phrases are even 
 deep and show unusual insight. The way in which Proudhon 
 defines the change which the Fine Arts love to make in all 
 their materials is very accurate. “Artistic expression,” he 
 says, “ is augmentative or diminutive, laudatory or depreciatory.” 
 His other assertion, that “ the attainment of beauty is only 
 the debut of the artist,” is more likely to be disputed. Beauty 
 and pleasure are considered by many to be the end of art ; 
 truth the end of science; morality the end of philosophy; 
 whereas Proudhon, being a seeker after truth, and a moralist, 
 will have it that art also should seek after these things. I 
 reserve the discussion of this point till we come to Proudhon’s 
 more elaborate development of his doctrine. The last sentence, 
 “Art is essentially concrete, particularist, and determinative,” 
 expresses a truth too often lost sight of by such critics as 
 Proudhon himself, who forget that the particular truths and 
 concrete forms of art can only be met by particular and, so 
 to speak, concrete criticism. Vague abstractions, or even 
 abstractions which, considered philosophically, are not vague, 
 aid us little in our attempts to estimate productions which 
 always come before us with definite forms. Philosophy, or at 
 least the broad philosophical spirit, is a necessary element in 
 good art criticism, but the knowledge of special facts is also 
 indispensable to anyone who would speak of an art which is 
 “ essentially concrete, particularist, and determinative.” 
 
 Proudhon is less happy in a curious attempt he makes to 
 distinguish the Ideal from the Idea. 
 
 “ The Ideal is distinguished from the Idea, because the Idea is an 
 abstract type, whilst the Ideal is the clothing given to the Idea by the 
 imagination or sentiment. For example : — 
 
 “ Idea : It is safer to live in an humble condition than in a high one. 
 Ideal : Fable of the oak and the reed; combat of the rats and the weasels, 
 when the princes of the rat army, with their plumes, not being able to get 
 into the holes, were all massacred. 
 
 “ Idea : Maternal tenderness. Ideal : a hen and her chickens ; the pelican ; 
 opossums ; a woman giving suck to her child ; the lion at Florence.” 
 
 This is very wide of the mark. Proudhon first gives an 
 abstract moral notion, and calls that the Idea ; then an artistic 
 illustration of it in visible shape, and calls that the Ideal. 
 
278 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART . 
 
 Turning to Liddell and Scott for reference to a Greek author 
 who employed the word Ilka in something like its modern 
 artistic sense, I find that “ in the Platonic Philosophy the 
 llkai were not only ellrj, but something more, viz. the perfect 
 archetypes , models or patterns (Lat. formed), of which, respec- 
 tively, all created things were the imperfect anti-types or repre- 
 sentations. ” The word Ilea, in art at least, does not mean a 
 thought or a moral proposition, but a form seen in the mind. 
 So far as a work of art realizes this inner vision, it is ideal. 
 Realism is the surrender to outward vision ; Idealism is 
 the surrender to the inward vision. Proudhon’s examples 
 of ideals are not necessarily ideals at all ; they might 
 have been examples of servile realism. He confounds 
 thought and ideality, just as our vulgar language continually 
 confounds them. People say that they have ideas when they 
 have only thoughts. By an extension of meaning which is 
 metaphorical we talk also of musical ideas, because our 
 language is not critically accurate enough to have a special 
 word for that which the musician hears in his imagination. 
 Proudhon’s “ ideas ” are only thoughts, or moral notions ; and 
 his “ideals” only instances, or illustrations. But when Phidias 
 imagined Jupiter, he saw in his mind a true artistic idea; and 
 when he wrought the great image in ivory and gold, he made 
 a work which, as an attempt to realize that idea, was, so far as 
 he approached it, ideal. 
 
 Since Proudhon was before all things a moralist, seeking a 
 definite moral utility in every thing, and approving every thing 
 only just so far as it seemed to him helpful to moral progress, 
 and since he by no means loved or understood art for itself, 
 but only as a force or influence which might ameliorate men, 
 it is evident that the principle of art for art must have been, 
 in the highest degree, repugnant to him. 
 
 “ Art for art , as it has been called, not having its lawfulness in itself, 
 and resting on nothing, is nothing. It is a debauch of the heart and 
 dissolution of the mind. Separated from right and duty, cultivated and 
 sought after as the highest thought of the soul and the supreme manifesta- 
 tion of humanity, art, or the ideal, shorn of the best part of itself, reduced 
 to nothing more than an excitement of fancy and the senses, is the prin- 
 ciple of sin , the origin of all slavery, the poisoned source whence flow, 
 according to the Bible, all the fornications and abominations of the earth. 
 From this point of view, the pursuit of letters and of the arts has been so 
 often marked by historians and moralists as the cause of the corruption of 
 
PROUDHON AS A WRITER ON ART. 
 
 279 
 
 manners and the decadence of states ; it is for the same reason that 
 certain religions— Magism, Judaism, Protestantism — have excluded it from 
 their temples. Art for art, I say, the verse for the verse, the style for the 
 style, the form for the form, fancy for fancy ; all these vanities , which eat 
 up an age like a disease , are vice in all its refinement , evil in its quintessence. 
 Carried into religion and morality, that is called mysticism, idealism, 
 quietism, and romanticism : a contemplative disposition where the most 
 subtle pride unites itself with the most profound impurity, and which all 
 true practical moralists have opposed with all their energy — Voltaire 
 just as much as Bossuet.” 
 
 This passage is so powerful, so full of conviction, so strongly 
 coloured with the little crystal of truth, which is dissolved and 
 disseminated in so much hot water of fanaticism, that very 
 many good people on reading it would succumb at once, and 
 never dare to oppose to such stern and lofty morality the 
 resistance of reason and common sense. Let us examine for 
 one moment what the principle of art for art really is. It 
 simply maintains that works of art, as such , are to be estimated 
 purely by their artistic qualities, not by qualities lying outside 
 of art . 1 For instance, the comparative poetical rank of Byron 
 and Bowles is not to be settled by a comparison of their re- 
 ligion and morality, but of their art. Leslie used to say that 
 he remembered a versifier who considered himself a better 
 poet than Byron, because Byron’s works often offended against 
 morality, whereas his own were perfectly unexceptionable on 
 that score. But amongst true critics, however desirable 
 purity may appear to them, poetry is judged as poetry, painting 
 
 1 It is probable that if Proudhon were alive to answer me, he would 
 say that his objection refers less to the spirit in which works of art are 
 estimated than to the spirit in which they are produced ; that an artist who 
 works for artistic ends alone is a lost being, whereas an artist who works 
 for moral ends is always safe. Unfortunately for this view, it happens that 
 when art makes itself secondary to any moral or intellectual purpose, 
 it almost always, as if of necessity, loses quality as art, and very frequently 
 sinks so low (artistically speaking) as to get beneath the level of all that 
 deserves the very name of art. The reader may remember Cruikshank’s 
 large painting against drunkenness ; that was a painting with a praise- 
 worthy moral purpose, but it was not a picture at all. (I have called it a 
 “painting,” because any piece of canvas covered with paint is entitled to 
 that designation.) On the other hand, I remember many pictures of 
 drunken and immoral satyrs, by the great . masters, which were not pro- 
 duced with that honourable wish to combat moral evil and help moral good 
 which animated Cruikshank, and yet were truly pictures , and as such are 
 rightly considered treasures, whilst Cruikshank’s work is worth as much as 
 the last teetotal lecture, and no more. 
 
28 o 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 as painting, music as music, art as art. So we say that naughty 
 Alfred de Musset was a poet, because he wrought exquisite 
 poetical work ; and we say of good Mr. Tupper that he is not 
 a poet, because he has not those qualities of ear and intellect 
 and imagination which are necessary to make one. If Mr. 
 Tupper were very naughty, and poor Alfred de Musset a 
 canonized saint in heaven, that would not in the least affect 
 our estimate of them as artists. It is in vain to write Jere- 
 miads against this. A painter who paints supremely well, 
 however few or feeble the moral lessons he inculcates, is sure 
 of applause and immortality. What moral lesson did Rubens 
 teach ? What sermonizing is there in Titian ? Even their 
 sacred subjects are merely treated as artistic motives , and 
 how utterly worldly they both were, how fond of pomp and 
 vanity, how full of the lust of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, 
 and the pride of life ! Yet they are the princes of art; and 
 the preachings, and the teachings, the inculcated lessons, the 
 elaborate allegories, the everlasting impertinences of inoppor- 
 tune counsel that fill our modern exhibitions, will all be swept 
 into deserved oblivion, whilst these great men remain. 
 
 When Proudhon says that “ art for art has not its lawfulness 
 in itself, and rests on nothing,” he forgets that art rests upon 
 nature, and that truth is essential to it . 1 The two great artists 
 whom I have just instanced as famous for purely artistic 
 qualities were pre-eminent for their marvellous powers of obser- 
 vation, and memory, and vividly truthful imagination. They 
 are great because they saw so much, and remembered so much, 
 and because, when they imagined, they imagined with such 
 astonishing veracity, and could so splendidly set forth outwardly 
 on canvas what they had first seen inwardly. Art has its own 
 lawfulness, which is dual, — namely, the law of natural appear- 
 ances and the law of artistic exigencies, — and both these laws 
 are so vast and so complex that it takes half a lifetime to 
 learn them. No wonder that writers like Proudhon, who 
 practise and advocate the art criticism of pure ignorance, 
 should not even be conscious that these great laws exist. 
 
 And even in such technical matters as the laying of a touch, 
 or the judgment with which glazing and impasto are employed, 
 
 1 Truth understood very largely and even loosely, but not truth at all in 
 the sense of accuracy. — 1873. 
 
PROUDHON AS A WRITER ON ART. 
 
 281 
 
 or the prudence of using light or dark grounds ; or whether it 
 is better to get light transparently throitgh the colours or 
 opaquely upon them, whether in water-colour it is better to 
 use the sponge or forego it, whether in etching it is better to 
 obtain darks by depth of biting or by multiplicity of lines, — 
 all such questions as these depend for their solution on the 
 one law, that the best method is always that which best renders 
 the highest order of truth consistently with the permanejice of the 
 zvork . So that even in the way we estimate the most pure’y 
 technical qualities of handling there is an understood reference 
 to nature. What we call quality in work is a very great thing, 
 and implies very great knowledge and observation of nature. 
 Quality does not rest on nothing. If a man can spread half 
 a dozen square inches of canvas with oil paint in such a 
 manner as to put what we call quality into it, that man has 
 studied nature for years and years. 
 
 And again, when writers like Proudhon consider the art of 
 painting as of itself mere, dissoluteness of the mind, they 
 wholly forget the severe discipline that is necessary to success 
 in it. This mistake is especially frequent in men who, having 
 only gone through the usual discipline of school education, 
 consider the fine arts idleness. Latin and Greek are discipline, 
 they know , but art is only “ mental debauchery.” If such 
 men would try to learn to draw in good earnest, they would 
 find out whether art is a discipline or not. Are these gentle- 
 men aware that ignorance lower than theirs looks upon their 
 own pursuits as they, in their ignorance, look upon the 
 pursuits of artists ? Peasants and field-labourers almost 
 always consider mental labour pure idleness. You and I may 
 find a difficult author very hard work, but the ploughman over 
 the hedge thinks we have a pleasant idle time of it in our easy 
 chairs. 
 
 Proudhon makes a good and valuable distinction between 
 personal and impersonal work. The official articles in the 
 Mo?iiteur he gives as instances of impersonal work, Michelet’s 
 “ History of the Revolution ” as personal. Men of genius, 
 who always have a strong personality, hate doing impersonal 
 work ; and instinctively select those occupations where their 
 personality may exercise itself with effect. On the other hand, 
 it is a decided advantage to men without special genius to 
 follow what may be called more impersonal occupations ; they 
 
282 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 shelter themselves behind the strong shield of custom or 
 officialism. Fine art never ought to do this ; it should always 
 be frankly personal ; so ought most literature. Proudhon is 
 right when he says that by his own personality the artist acts 
 directly upon ours, that he has a power over us like that of 
 the magnetizer over the magnetized, and that this power is 
 stronger and stronger as the artist is more and more energeti- 
 cally idealist. To reduce this true doctrine to a concentrated 
 expression, we may put it that the influence of an artist is in 
 proportion to the energy of his ideality. 
 
 In a few short chapters, Proudhon rapidly outlines the 
 * history of art. Egyptian art, according to him, is altogether 
 typical, aiming only at the fixing of types ; Grecian art is the 
 worship of form ; Middle Age art is asceticism ; the Renais- 
 sance was a rehabilitation of beauty, an ambiguous idealism ; 
 then the Reformation brought about the humanizing of art, by 
 reducing it to seek its material in common life. Rembrandt, 
 according to Proudhon, was the Luther of painting. Then 
 came the French Revolution, with the great war of the classics 
 and romantics ; after that a long period of utter confusion 
 and irrationality, out of which anarchy sprang at last the new 
 school of Realism , which Proudhon regards as the final salvation 
 and renovation of art, the principle which is ultimately to 
 place it on a positive basis in perfect harmony with the rational 
 spirit of modern intelligence. 
 
 It is especially interesting to find in this historical summary 
 what Proudhon thought of that great and fruitful movement 
 in art, the Renaissance. He considered it to have been 
 a reaction against the asceticism of the Middle Ages, and then 
 a development of Catholicism triumphant. The art of the 
 Renaissance was the outward splendour and blossoming of 
 the full-grown sovereign Papacy. Borrowing its means from 
 Grecian art, it worked for the glorification of Papal Chris- 
 tianity.. In this Proudhon sees nothing unnatural ; Paganism 
 had filtered into Christianity. “ All religions have a common 
 basis, and on the whole there is but one religion. What is 
 made matter of reproach to Italian Christianity has happened 
 more or less everywhere ; every people has retained, in em- 
 bracing the new religion, as much as possible of its old super- 
 stition. Northern asceticism never got down to Italy, which 
 always remained more Pagan than the rest of Europe.” 
 
PROUDHON AS A WRITER ON ART. 
 
 283 
 
 Proudhon does not see much resemblance between the Venuses 
 of ancient art and the Madonnas of the Renaissance ; he is 
 “ in love ” with the (female) saints of Raphael, but not with the 
 antique goddesses. He has warmer sympathy with Gothic 
 art, however, though “ ascetic,” and considers that it 
 
 “asserted itself with as much power as its predecessors and more 
 sublimity. The Renaissance remains inferior to it on the grounds of 
 geniality, originality, and artistic idea, because in the immense majority 
 of its productions it had for its object to ally together two most incom- 
 patible things — the spirituality of the Christian sentiment, and the ideality 
 of Grecian figures. This mixture of Paganism and Christianity, besides 
 being an inevitable reaction against Catholic asceticism, had its utility, if 
 only to remind us of antiquity, reconnect the chain of the ages, form the 
 artistic communion of the human race, and prepare us for the Revolution. 
 But it was not the less an entirely secondary task. 
 
 “ What characterizes the art and time of the Renaissance is the want 
 of principles, or, if you prefer it, a tolerance incompatible with the ardour 
 of a conviction. The Church Triumphant has entered into her repose and 
 her glory ; it seems as if the purifying times of suffering would never more 
 return to her. Whether from quietism or indifference, she protects equally 
 works frankly Pagan and mystical conceptions. A mixture of Paganism 
 and spirituality, the art of the Renaissance, like that of the Greeks, arrived 
 at the idolatrous worship of form.” 
 
 At the conclusion of the chapter Proudhon strongly objects 
 to the figures of Christ executed at the period of the Renais- 
 sance ; he does not like them at all, likes M. Renan’s Christ 
 still less, and wants a revolutionary one of the temper of 
 Danton and Mirabeau. 
 
 On the whole this is a rational and philosophical way to 
 speak about the Renaissance. During our recent heat of 
 reaction against that movement very many of us have lost 
 sight of its true character. Modern Liberals ought to look 
 back to the revival of classical literature, and the practical 
 imitation of classic art which followed it, with feelings of 
 especial and peculiar gratitude. It is to that movement that 
 we all owe our modern intellectual emancipation. This is 
 proved by the ardent hostility with which the enemies of 
 modernism assail the Renaissance, and by their untiring en- 
 deavours to bring it into general discredit. It is true that the 
 Renaissance led to a period of licence in manners ; its palaces 
 were not houses of purity, nor its great luxury without sin ; 
 but it seems unhappily inevitable that every successive effort 
 towards intellectual emancipation should be followed by 
 
284 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 temporary licentiousness of life. If this is really inevitable, it 
 is ta be regretted ; but the mind of humanity must and will 
 advance, in spite of these occasional disturbances of moral 
 equilibrium. There are signs even now of something of this 
 kind preparing itself for us, a new intellectual movement which 
 is likely to be accompanied by some relaxation in conduct. 
 What is certain is, that, without the Renaissance and the secular 
 studies which it fostered, modern science and modern art 
 would have been still unknown to us, and Europe would have 
 stiffened into a Gothic China or Japan. 
 
 But the Renaissance, in turning towards the literature and 
 art of the ancients, fell into empty idealism, an idealism of 
 externals. The art of the great time of the Renaissance had 
 little apparent connection with the actual life of the age it 
 flourished in. Proudhon quotes a saying, attributed to Raphael, 
 that the business of art is not to represent things as Nature 
 makes them, but as she ought to make them ; and Proudhon 
 attributes the curious mixture of Catholicism and Pagan 
 mythology which distinguishes the art of the Renaissance to 
 this spirit of idealism, which was also the cause, in his opinion, 
 of the moral corruption which immediately followed that 
 movement. 
 
 The effect of the Reformation upon art was to make it 
 condescend to illustrate the actual life of its own time. It 
 resisted the new Paganism into which art had thrown itself, 
 and drove artists to paint what they saw by closing the fields 
 of idolatry and idealism. The title of Proudhon’s chapter on 
 this subject explains his view in one word, “La Reforme; 
 Vart s' humanise .” The art of the Renaissance may have been 
 Divine, but it would not condescend to be human ; aiming at 
 what its professors thought God ought to have done, it failed 
 to perceive the qualides of what He had done. Hence 
 Proudhon gives a far higher place to Rembrandt than to 
 Raphael, puts Rembrandt and Luther together, and Shake- 
 speare along with them in a trinity of reformers. What he 
 likes in Shakespeare is not so much his idealism as his true 
 sympathy with common life and clear understanding of it. 
 Proudhon regrets very much that France did not join this 
 movement, and by no means approves that tiresome pedantry 
 which even down to our own day has led Frenchmen to ape 
 the ancients. 
 
PROUDHON AS A WRITER ON ART 
 
 285 
 
 The war of the classics and romantics is not unfairly 
 described by Proudhon. The following passages contain, I 
 believe, all that is most valuable in the argument of each 
 party : — 
 
 “The romantics reproached the established tradition with two things: 
 the first, with setting aside fifteen centuries of history, whence the narrow- 
 ness of its thought, and the want of life and originality and truth in its 
 works ; the second, with not even understanding its models, and being 
 thereby thrown into endless contradictions. Is the history of Christendom 
 nothing? said they. Is it not as much matter for poetry as the Pagan 
 mythology and wars ? And if it is artistic material, why are we to confine 
 ourselves to the limits of your classics ? And then, with your worship of 
 classic form, which is your ideal, you sacrifice expression which is not less 
 important, and so fall into conventionalism and monotony. The ancients 
 carved their calm gods because they believed in them ; we, who seek 
 action and life, common labours and civic duties, cannot accept them 
 as models. 
 
 i ‘ The classics argued that art is absolute, universal, and eternal ; that 
 its rules, which are the laws of the beautiful, are, like the rules of logic 
 and geometry, immutable ; that the ancients practised them because they 
 understood them, and hence left us incomparable works ; that there is only 
 one and the same art in which nations more or less succeed ; that the 
 revolutions of history do not necessitate revolutions in literature and . art, 
 as the Renaissance artists proved ; that to abandon a tradition, consecrated 
 by so many masterpieces, would be to retrograde, and substitute the 
 worship of the commonplace for the worship of form ; finally, that if the 
 new school thought it could excel the old, it had better try, and would then 
 be judged by its performance.” 
 
 This last challenge, as Proudhon remarks, it was dangerous 
 to accept. Old systems which have produced their full 
 quantity of fruit always contemptuously invite young systems 
 to show theirs ; and when there is little or none to show, they 
 would have it believed that the immature system is perma- 
 nently unproductive. The Renaissance had produced its fruit ; 
 romanticism was only just beginning to produce, so that any 
 comparison on such ground was unfair. In these days we all 
 see that romanticism was less a system than an emancipation, 
 and that its greatest service is to have opened the way to the 
 universality of modern naturalism. Classicism was a the Dry 
 of limitation and restraint ; romanticism a deliverance from 
 this ; naturalism is a boundless study of human life and the 
 external world. Traces of the two first linger yet in art, and 
 some elderly men, on the rare occasions when those once 
 mighty watchwords are pronounced in these days, may even 
 
286 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 still feel a lingering ardour of partisanship, such as that great 
 controversy kindled in their youth; but for the coming 
 generation that war will be as much matter of history as the 
 Wars of the Roses. 
 
 The part of Proudhon’s book which will be read with most 
 interest is that extending from the tenth chapter to the con- 
 clusion. The first nine chapters are full of principles and 
 doctrines, of which I have just given an abridged statement ; 
 but in the tenth Proudhon enters on the direct discussion of 
 the merits of modem painters. His first care is to define the 
 two chief elements of every work of art, reason and taste, 
 and to affirm that criticism ought to possess these two qualities 
 to be able to meet and measure them duly. In the word 
 “ reason” Proudhon understands both sciences and morality ; 
 what he calls “ taste ” includes everything that is to be mea- 
 sured by the aesthetic faculty. I doubt whether he realized 
 the full importance of the sciences which treat of natural 
 aspects ; he was certainly under the impression that a man 
 might write art criticism without them. And I doubt, farther, 
 whether Proudhon rightly saw the limits of taste ; probably 
 he included under that head much that belongs to the higher 
 faculty of invention, and to the more common gift of simple 
 observation. However, taking the two words in his sense, 
 we are to understand that in his criticism he insists always 
 on the moral am 1 rational side of art, and presents more 
 reservedly his aesthetic judgments, which, he feels, may be 
 simply personal. This is the way he himself puts it ; a barer 
 statement would be that he does not judge art as an art critic 
 at all, but as a reasoner and moralist. 
 
 Proudhon is very angry with Eugene Delacroix because 
 that painter had the misfortune to aim at the rendering of his 
 own personal impressions, and to say so. This is resented 
 as the height of artistic presumption. An artist, according to 
 Proudhon, is not to render his own impressions, but those of 
 the public — those of P. J. Proudhon in particular, as one of 
 the public. The artist is to embody, not his own ideas, but 
 the collective ideas of his time. 
 
 This is one of those pleasing theories which the vulgar are 
 always so ready to accept. They like to flatter themselves 
 that men of genius, after all, are not their teachers, but their 
 servants and interpreters. “ It is we,” they delight to believe, 
 
PROUDHON AS A WRITER ON ART 
 
 287 
 
 “ who have great ideas ; the business of artists is to embody 
 our conceptions, as the business of writers is to register our 
 opinions.” It is true that much writing and painting attempts 
 only this, and succeeds ; but it is also certain that great men 
 aim at something more than this. Delacroix certainly did, 
 and so far gave evidence of greatness. Not that his art 
 seems to me really grand and noble; it is too agitated, too 
 feverish, too full of morbid and false energy. Even his colour, 
 which it is the fashion to admire, is generally violent and 
 crude, and his composition often singularly awkward . 1 With 
 better health, and less irritability of nerve, he might have 
 been a great artist, but he had not the calm of a mighty 
 painter. Proudhon objects that he painted a great variety of 
 subjects which he, Proudhon, does not care about, and then 
 asks, “ Comprend-il mon idee, sent-il mon ideal, saisit-il mon 
 impression, a moi profane, qu’il s’agit surtout d’interesser, 
 d’emouvoir, et dont on sollicite le suffrage?” The objection 
 to this style of criticism is that it attributes far too much 
 importance to the personal predilections of the critic. What 
 do we care about Proudhon’s “ideal” when we are studying 
 Delacroix? For any critic to say that a painter is irrational 
 merely because he does not realize his, the critic’s, own im- 
 pressions is a monstrous impertinence. 
 
 Proudhon is severe on Ingres for his “ stupid ” work. The 
 truth is that Ingres is wholly unintellectual. Long labour 
 and a narrow obstinacy have given him unusual skill in draw- 
 ing the muscles (which, nevertheless, as in the picture of St. 
 Symphorien in the Cathedral of Autun, he often violently 
 exaggerates), but no painter of great fame is so mindless. I 
 have not seen his “ Yierge h la Communion,” but am fully 
 disposed to believe all that Proudhon says against it as a 
 pretty young girl posing charmingly, whereas it is evident that 
 when Mary took her first sacrament, it being after the death of 
 
 1 I leave this criticism on Delacroix as it was written, because it is quite 
 just and true, but wish to add the observation, that, although his colour 
 “is generally violent and crude,” it led up to very fine colour in a few 
 of his best works, especially the Marino FaliHo, which is one of the most 
 perfect examples of thoroughly fine painting in the world. On the other 
 hand, the public has recently seen an example of the awkwardness of his 
 composition in the Sardanapalus . Delacroix had a truly artistic mind, 
 and saw and felt as an artist should see and feel, but he was too 
 impetuous. — 1873. 
 
288 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 Jesus, she must have been at least fifty years old, and, having 
 borne great sorrow, could scarcely have retained that early 
 charm which grief and time so certainly wear away. I have 
 not seen this picture, but I remember the Virgin in the same 
 painters “ J esus disputing with the Doctors/’ a face without 
 character and without emotion, like the* visage of a Baker 
 Street wax-work ; and I remember the central figure, the boy 
 Jesus, a conception so commonplace that any religious print- 
 seller will offer you a hundred such. The high-water mark of 
 Ingres’ art was reached in the Source, where all his fine know- 
 ledge of form was called for, and not one ray of intelligence. 
 
 There is an elaborate criticism of Leopold Robert. His 
 pictures of Italian peasants have long been very popular in 
 France, where they are rendered familiar by engravings. They 
 have a great charm, an infinite grace of composition and deli- 
 cate sense of beauty. No artist ever more admirably rendered 
 the harmony of moving forms. His groups are arranged with 
 such consummate art, that no limb, however joyously active, 
 violates the profound accord. Hence we yield to these works 
 as we yield to beautiful music ; they are the music of forms in 
 motion. We are filled with a deep satisfaction, and are glad 
 that an order so exquisite should thus be arrested for ever. 
 For in the actual world of men, beautiful groupings like these 
 are scarcely seen ere they shatter, but in the works of a 
 painter like Leopold Robert the elastic limbs hold themselves 
 unweariedly, and the fair forms bind themselves together in a 
 permanent edifice of grace. 
 
 Whether Italian peasants ever do arrange themselves so 
 felicitously, whether their limbs are so delicately moulded and 
 their faces so ideally beautiful, I cannot undertake to affirm. 
 Proudhon utterly disbelieves these pictures. There is not- 
 corn enough on the cart, he says, for a real harvest, nor any 
 genuine rustic life in these peasants of a painter’s dreamland. 
 Very possibly Proudhon is right. Leopold Robert may have 
 pursued an ideal, which, so far as actual rustic life is con- 
 cerned, must be pronounced false in its superlative refinement. 
 Yet though his gift may have been injudiciously employed, it 
 was a great gift and a rare one, and art can achieve no perfect 
 work without it. 
 
 Proudhon considers Horace Vernet as irrational as Ingres 
 and Delacroix : “ Sottise et impuissa?ice, je riai pas d'autres 
 
PROUDHON AS A WRITER ON ART. 
 
 289 
 
 tenues pour caracteriser de pareils ouvrages .” Such is the verdict 
 on Vernet’s works in general. Descending to particulars, we 
 have a lively expression of dislike. Speaking of that prodi- 
 gious canvas La Smala , our critic uses the following highly 
 energetic language : “ Otez-moi cette peinture : pour le vulgaire 
 qui 1’admire, elle est d’un detestable exemple; pour les hon- 
 netes gens qui savent a quel sentiment elle repond, elle est un 
 sujet de remords. L’auteur a ete paye, je suppose ; je de- 
 mande que cette toile soit enlevee, ratissee, degraissee, puis 
 vendue comme filasse au chiffonnier.” 
 
 I agree with Proudhon so far as this, that V ernet’s work has 
 no intellectual or moral value, and that it is not even in any 
 high sense artistic. Nevertheless, he was a great represen- 
 tative man, and, in his own peculiar way, one of the most 
 marvellously endowed men who ever lived. He painted 
 French soldiers so exactly as French soldiers understand them- 
 selves that his works are, as it were, collective works ; it is as 
 if the whole French army had taken up paint-brushes, and, 
 suddenly gifted with pictorial skill, wrought together unani- 
 mously. His pictures ought to be preserved as a thoroughly 
 faithful record of the common French military mind of this 
 age. The French soldier has a peculiar professional character, 
 and, when it is not natural to him as a man, he rapidly ac- 
 quires it by contact Vernet loved that character; and as he 
 painted what he loved, he did it with a fidelity which, what- 
 ever critics may say, was by no means superficial. Gay, brave, 
 thoughtless, poor, cheerful under privation, happy with a little 
 luxury or honour, — merry and kind habitually, yet stern and 
 savage on occasion, — of almost childish simplicity, yet with 
 a tiger-like spring and fury in attack, — these little madder- 
 breeched heroes were beloved by Vernet sympathetically. He 
 took the utmost interest in them all, knew everything about 
 their existence, could remember every item of their uniforms 
 as a mother remembers the little frocks of her own children. 
 Proudhon has a profound contempt for this interest in exter- 
 nals; but what is a soldier without his uniform and his arms? 
 And Vernet could remember faces too, and paint every 
 soldier from memory whom he had once looked at attentively. 
 Proudhon is angry at Vernet’s honest taste for military life in 
 its less elevating aspects; but what is more wearisome than 
 perpetual heroics ? 
 
 B 
 
 u 
 
290 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ATT. 
 
 Proudhon finds it convenient to admit the degradation of 
 modern art in order to herald the great reform which in his 
 opinion is to renew and re-invigorate it. This reform is the 
 substitution of justice and truth for aesthetic quality as the 
 aim of the artist. We are familiar with this principle already 
 in England in another form. Mr. Ruskin has often told us 
 that art ought to place truth first and beauty second. Proud- 
 hon goes a step farther, and says that in the human mind there 
 is but a duality, or rather polarity, Conscience and Science, or, 
 in other words, Justice and Truth ; the faculty which perceives 
 beauty he excludes, or wholly subordinates. Certainly there 
 is much great art which is devoid of beauty, as for instance 
 Diirer’s ; and there is much small art which has beauty, or at 
 least that lower form of it which we call prettiness : yet the 
 best art is both true and beautiful. Proudhon so strongly 
 detests the principle of art for art, that what he most under- 
 values in works of art is precisely their artistic quality. Like 
 many men of narrow culture who have got hold of a great 
 truth, he has been dragged out of his depth by it. It seems 
 to me that the right theory on this subject has never been 
 precisely stated even by Ruskin, and still less by Proudhon. 
 The relation of truth to aesthetic quality in painting is one 
 of inferior rank, but prior necessity. This complex sort of 
 relation occurs in many other things. In building, for in- 
 stance, the work of the mason is of inferior rank to the work 
 of the architect, yet of prior necessity. In literature, gram- 
 matical accuracy of language is of inferior rank to the poetical 
 gift, yet of prior necessity. In music, truth of intonation is 
 of inferior rank to musical feeling, yet of prior necessity. So 
 that, in my view, truth is to be put before beauty as the first 
 thing to be asked for, yet not above beauty as if it were the 
 higher thing . 1 
 
 i Proudhon never attempts to estimate the value of thought and ima- 
 gination in art, and they can scarcely be brought under his duality. I 
 should say that, in art, natural truth is lower than artistic invention, and 
 yet more necessary ; whilst artistic invention is lower than thought, and 
 yet, for pictorial purposes, more necessary. In art, as in life, necessity 
 and rank are often in inverse proportion, and what is most necessary is 
 first asked for. The food of the body is the first want, the food of the 
 mind the second. The material qualities of art are its first necessity ; the 
 spiritua come after. 
 
PROUDHON AS A WRITER ON ART. 
 
 291 
 
 All these theories and reasonings of Proudhon, of which I 
 have endeavoured to give an accurate account, are introductory 
 to the main object of his work, which is the elevation of 
 Courbet to the rank of a great rational artist, the reformer 
 and regenerator of art. — 1866. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 A writer in the Fine Arts Quarterly Review (Mr. Franklin Leif- 
 child) found fault with this paper on account of its “ apologetic 
 tone/ 7 — “ the low estimate of art in comparison with a more posi- 
 tive kind of power, and the mistrust of its native and intrinsic 
 dignity.” Mr. Leifchild forgot that I was writing with reference 
 to Proudhon and his point of view, which has a constant tendency 
 to draw us out of the purely artistic region into a region of moral 
 and utilitarian speculation. 
 
 It can scarcely be necessary to assure the reader of this volume, 
 who holds in his hand the main results of my thinking about 
 art for the last twenty years, that my estimate of art is not a 
 low estimate, and that I certainly do not mistrust its native and 
 intrinsic dignity. It seems clear that art has no influence, or that 
 it has remarkably little influence, over the great majority even of 
 modern Europeans, for most of them are simply indifferent to 
 what is essentially artistic in the Fine Arts, and the dignity of 
 art is dignity of a kind certainly not appreciable by them ; but 
 I earnestly beg Mr. Leifchild and every other reader to believe 
 that there is not in my own mind the least infirmity of doubt as 
 to the existence of both power and dignity in all Fine Art that 
 is worthy of the name, though few may be so constituted or 
 educated as to perceive them. The power of art, as he rightly 
 argued, is of a very high kind, of the only kind that can move 
 the free ; yet it cannot move all the free, nor even many amongst 
 the free. There is a weakness in its strength, in comparison with 
 political force, which resides in its entire incapacity for compelling 
 the respect or obedience of the unwilling ; yet we do not love 
 it or respect it less because we frankly recognize and admit this 
 weakness. The plain truth is that art is absolutely not perceived 
 
 U 2 
 
292 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 at all by the immense majority of mankind ; they see its works 
 as material objects, as a horse sees the placards on the walls, 
 whilst the art is imperceptible by them. As for the dignity of art, 
 it exists most frequently as the inward dignity of Tasso when 
 he came in his poverty to Turin, and the people saw his rags 
 but could not see his genius. I have no mistrust of the power 
 and dignity of art as qualities which certainly belong to it ; I have 
 not the slightest confidence in their effect upon the people in the 
 street. Art is one of the spiritual powers, and the most delicate 
 of them all ; it moves a few, but only a few, and no one can tell 
 who these may be, or where they may be found. Let the artist 
 respect himself, and respect his noble occupation ; yet it ought 
 to be permitted to us to see the world simply as it is, and to 
 confess the peculiar uncertainty of the influence which art may 
 have upon mankind. We do not esteem it the less for perceiving 
 this outward uncertainty ; but every year’s experience confirms 
 me more and more in the conviction that no one can possibly 
 predict the effect of a work of art, however excellent, on the mind 
 of a man unknown to him, whilst even with reference to the minds 
 we know most intimately we are liable to the strangest surprises. 
 There is a chemistry in men’s minds by which each of them 
 eternally resists certain influences, and is acted on powerfully 
 by other influences, as a metal by its mordant. When they find 
 their own mordant they say that it is powerful, but they laugh at 
 the weakness of the others, though it is only weakness relatively 
 to themselves. — 1873. 
 
XIX. 
 
 TWO ART PHILOSOPHERS. A 
 
 The illusions of perspective exist in the intellectual, as they 
 do in the material world. As the true relations of solar 
 systems cannot be learned or understood without the help of 
 science, so the relations of intellectual systems are not to be 
 comprehended without the aid of philosophy. And as, on 
 the one hand, it is not necessary to the fo cible and effectual 
 life of a man of action that he should accurately conceive 
 of the rank of his own planet amongst the heavenly bodies, 
 so, on the other, it is not necessary to the success of certain 
 special forms of intellectual activity that the labourer should 
 justly estimate the importance of his own little intellectual 
 world, or precisely ascertain its place in the universe of mind. 
 
 This is especially true of artists. An artist is a man who 
 by long labour has trained himself to be able to express one 
 version of one artistic idea, 1 2 — his personal conception of the 
 idea dominant for the time in his own country. If there is a 
 struggle for supremacy between two or more artistic ideas, the 
 artist believes in one, and gives his life to realize his private 
 conception of it, usually looking upon the others with anta- 
 gonism or contempt. As a matter of curiosity, it is always 
 
 1 “ Philosophic deTArt.” Par H. Taine : Legons Professees a l’Ecole 
 des Beaux Arts. Paris: Bailliere. — “ Le Spiritualisme dans 1’ Art. ” Par 
 Charles Leveque, Professeur de Philosophic au College de France. Paris : 
 Bailliere. 
 
 2 Of course I use the words 4 4 artistic idea ” in a special sense. I 
 should be very sorry to seem to imply that artists had not as many ideas 
 as other people, in the current acceptation of the word. What I mean is 
 the vision of desired perfection, which for every artist is necessarily one. 
 
294 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 interesting to know what artists think of each other ; but their 
 opinions about art are valuable only as to special matters of 
 fact, which their study of nature has enabled them to ascertain, 
 or as indications of the existence of attractions and repulsions 
 of which even the most acute thinkers might never suspect 
 the existence. It is of course possible for an artist to raise 
 himself from time to time out of the little plot of ground 
 which he himself cultivates, and, like a man in the car of a 
 balloon looking down on his own garden, see its true size 
 and position; and it is also just possible for an artist so given 
 to intellectual aerostation to return after each excursion in 
 the upper regions, and cultivate his own acre in humble and 
 laborious contentment, knowing well its littleness, and all the 
 defects of its situation, yet loving it enough to be happy in it. 
 This may be done, and in two or three instances it has been 
 done ; but its extreme rarity almost, though not quite, justifies 
 the general belief that there is something essentially incom- 
 patible between the practical and speculative intellects. One 
 might more profitably listen to a discourse about art by such 
 a layman as Taine than to one by such an artist as was 
 Leopold Robert. He was very justly famous as a practical 
 artist, yet Gustave Planche said of his written observations on 
 art, “ His commonplace style, which I find fault with, comes 
 from the commonplace of his thoughts themselves. What he 
 says about the masters of his art is so obvious that to have 
 said it there was no necessity to be the painter of the 
 4 Moissonneurs.’ Any bourgeois who had walked about in 
 picture galleries would say as much, and say it as well. In 
 reading these letters of Robert, one remains convinced that 
 the practice of art, and the understanding of the general ideas 
 which govern all the forms of invention, are two perfectly 
 distinct things. The understanding of these ideas does not 
 lead to the practice of painting or sculpture, architecture or 
 music ; but it may happen to eminent artists, and L. Robert s 
 correspondence is there to prove it, to enunciate about these 
 arts thoughts so very commonplace, so very useless, so very 
 inapplicable, so utterly worn, so perfectly empty, that they 
 make the most indulgent reader smile.” 
 
 These considerations may prepare us to understand the 
 position of M. Taine. He is not an artist, nor even an art 
 critic, but an art philosopher. This distinction between art 
 
TWO ART PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 295 
 
 critics and art philosophers is, I am aware, a new one, and 
 I may be allowed the space of a paragraph for its clearer 
 definition. 
 
 An art critic, having continually to judge of small points of 
 practical success or failure in the overcoming of particular 
 difficulties, must necessarily be himself minutely acquainted 
 with the practical details of art. Persons like Proudhon, who 
 set up as art critics without this special knowledge, on the 
 ground that, since they judge only results, processes do not con- 
 cern them, are always incapable of true criticism, because they 
 know nothing of the real struggles and aims of artists, and so 
 may praise them for their simplest successes, and remain 
 indifferent to their most arduous achievements. On the other 
 hand (as we have just seen) the practical artist (who is nothing 
 more) may fail as a critic, on account of the very concentra- 
 tion and limitation of his view. His own object is seen by 
 him in proportions so exaggerated, that other aims, not less 
 great and worthy in themselves, are hidden and dwarfed by it. 
 Thus Ingres says that drawing is the whole of art, and that 
 colour may be mastered in one week ; after which, what is the 
 value of his opinion about colourists ? The true critic sees 
 qualities in more accurate proportions than M. Ingres ; nor 
 could any critic tell us that the eye might be educated to 
 colour in eight days without forfeiting for ever all claim to be 
 listened to. So that on the one hand the critic is not to be 
 ignorant of technicalities like Proudhon, nor absorbed in one 
 technical aim like Ingres ; but he ought to combine a thorough 
 knowledge of practical matters with a theoretic largeness of 
 view. When this theoretic largeness becomes the main cha- 
 racteristic of the writer, when he sees art habitually in vast 
 systems and groupings occupying in their aggregate the whole 
 field of art history, there is always a probability that the critic 
 will lose himself in the philosopher, and that the utmost which 
 he will be able to say safely about any particular work of art 
 will be to fix its place in the artistic development of humanity. 
 
 Yet philosophy of this broad kind, if it be sound, has a 
 definite function and use. It is the only force capable of 
 repressing the narrow self-assertion of artistic sects. The 
 devotee of some special idea is always so possessed by the 
 idea, that he cannot see it in its relation to other ideas. What 
 bigoted “classic” or ardent “romantic” ever sanely appre- 
 
296 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 dated the services of both classicism and romanticism ? To 
 go to partisans in art for sound views of the whole subject is 
 like going to a Red Republican, or a believer in the divine 
 right of kings, for a rational political philosophy. For as the 
 {vise politician is a supporter of constitutional monarchy in 
 England, a friend of imperialism in Russia, and of republican- 
 ism in Switzerland, because of these three forms of government 
 each is the best in its own time and place, so an intelligent 
 student of art may dispassionately approve of its various deve- 
 lopments, and thank God that he has been born late enough 
 to study at once the severe ideality of the Greek, the grotesque 
 imagination of the Goth, the science and taste of the Renais- 
 sance artists, and the earnest naturalism of the modems. 
 
 And now at last this wider philosophy has found an official 
 advocate. In^the very centre and head-quarters of academic 
 tradition, the Ecole des Beaux Arts, a professor has told the 
 students, what no painter would be likely to tell them, that art 
 is a natural product of humanity, as vegetation is the product 
 of the soil ; and that its varieties are the inevitable result of 
 the changing states and circumstances of mankind, just as one 
 place and climate has one flora and another another. Nor does 
 he hesitate to give expression to the inference that the only 
 duty of each country and generation is to produce freely its 
 own flowers. How wide the interval from the old academic 
 tradition to this tolerant and liberal doctrine ! How pleasant 
 to hear that what is best for us to do is that which is most our 
 own, and to be released for ever from all obligation to repro- 
 duce an art which was the expression of a life we have not 
 lived ! We, who have been preached to about the duty of 
 imitating the Greeks till some of us had come to that point of 
 weariness that we hated the very name of Hellas, may con- 
 gratulate ourselves that an authorized teacher has advanced 
 a theory by which it may be permitted to us to love Greek 
 art heartily, and yet not waste our whole lives in the vain 
 endeavour to make our own work a repetition of it. 
 
 M. Taine’s theory is not very profound because it is so 
 obviously true, but the truisms of thinkers are very daring 
 speculations in the temples of tradition; and M. Taine de- 
 serves honour, not so much for what he has thought, as for 
 having ventured to give utterance to his thought in a place 
 where its distinct expression marked a new era in official art 
 
TWO ART PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 297 
 
 teaching. Even if M. Taine were to be succeeded by some 
 retrograde professor, the students who heard him are not likely 
 to forget his lesson, and the conclusions to which it leads. 
 If it is true, as this new teacher says, that the artist is the 
 product of his time, it is evident (they will infer) that no 
 modern artist can by effort become like the product of another 
 time. If we are orange-trees, we shall produce oranges ; if 
 fig-trees, we may blamelessly produce figs. If we are in too 
 chilly a climate, our fruit will never ripen, so (as artists) we 
 shall be unproductive ; and the climate, for every artist, is the 
 collective life and intellect of his own time. Those who 
 produce in it are not necessarily the best, but those whom the 
 climate best suits. The average amount of natural artistic 
 endowment is much the same in all ages; but one epoch 
 favours the best, and another that which is not quite the best, 
 and so downwards till some epochs favour no art at all. This 
 seems to be M. Taine’s view ; but here it may be objected 
 that the permanent characteristics of races, as well as the 
 temporary characteristics of epochs, may have much to do 
 with the matter ; and that the average percentage of natural 
 art intellects in the French race is possibly greater than 
 amongst the Tartars or Esquimaux. This consideration, how- 
 ever, in nowise diminishes the natural effect of M. Taine’s 
 view of art on practical work and on criticism. If he is 
 in the main right, as I believe him to be, it is useless for us 
 as artists to try to do work of any kind whatever but our own ; 
 and it is childish in us, as critics, to find fault with schools of 
 art because they differ from our own ideal and from each other. 
 Our business, as art philosophers, is not to find fault, but to note 
 characteristics ; and it is as idle in us to set up some kind of 
 art as perfection, blaming all other in proportion as it deviates 
 from that standard, as it would be in a botanist to set up the vine- 
 leaf as the correct thing in leaf beauty, and condemn the willow 
 as heretical for its obstinate non-conformity to his pet pattern. 
 
 M. Taine thus defines his art philosophy : — 
 
 “Ours is modern, and differs from the old in being historic, and not 
 dogmatic ; that is to say, it does not impose precepts, but ascertains and 
 proclaims 1 laws. The old aesthetics gave first a definition of the beautiful, 
 and said, for example, that the beautiful is the expression of the moral 
 
 1 I use these two words to get the double force of consiater employed 
 in the original. 
 
298 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 ideal, or else that it is the expression of the invisible, or, again, that it is 
 the expression of human passions ; then starting thence as from a legal 
 decision, absolved, condemned, admonished, and guided. I am very 
 happy not to have so heavy a task to perform ; I have not to guide you — 
 I should be too much embarrassed. My only duty is to exhibit facts, and 
 to show you how these facts were produced. The modern method, which 
 I endeavour to follow, and which is beginning to introduce itself into all 
 the modern sciences, consists in regarding human labours and, in- par- 
 ticular, works of art as facts and products whose characteristics are to be 
 noted and whose causes are to be investigated — no more. So understood, 
 Science neither proscribes nor pardons ; she states and explains. She does 
 not say to you, 4 Despise Dutch art, it is too coarse, and enjoy none but 
 Italian.’ Neither does she say to you, ‘Despise Gothic art ; it lacks 
 health ; enjoy none but the Greek.’ She leaves to every one the liberty to 
 follow his private preferences, to love best that which is in conformity with 
 his own temperament, and to study, with a more attentive care, that 
 which best corresponds to the development of his own mind. As for 
 Science herself, she has sympathy for all forms of art and for all schools, 
 even for those which seem most opposed ; she accepts them as so many 
 manifestations of the human mind ; she considers that the more numerous 
 and contrary they are, the more they show the mind of humanity under 
 new and numerous aspects ; she acts like Botany, which studies with 
 equal interest, now the orange-tree and the laurel, now the fir and the 
 birch ; she is herself a sort of Botany, applied not to plants, but to the 
 labours of men. In this character she follows the general movement 
 which draws together in our day the moral and the natural sciences, and 
 which, giving to the former the principles, the precautions, the directions 
 of the latter, communicates to them the same solidity and assures to them 
 the same progress.” 
 
 If M. Taine is an historical positivist in art, — that is, a 
 philosopher who considers all the varieties of art as equally 
 subjects for investigation from the scientific standpoint, whether 
 we regard them as representations of nature or as manifes- 
 tations of mind, — M. Leveque is a being of another order, 
 a passionate spiritualist, with a capacity for quite religious 
 fervour in behalf of the doctrines in which, as he believes, are 
 bound up the fate of the Fine Arts and the moral health of 
 all humanity. 
 
 Spiritualism, as M. Leveque uses the word, means the habi- 
 tual reference to the ideal ; materialism, the forgetfulness of 
 ideal excellence in the absorbing study of material things. The 
 great difficulty of spiritualism is to distinguish between noble 
 ideals and those baser creations of the imaginative faculty 
 which, so far from being higher than material nature, fall short 
 of it or degrade it. It is the business of philosophy, says M. 
 Le'veque, to establish this distinction. 
 
TWO ART PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 299 
 
 61 No one now doubts the power of those concealed movers which 
 at one time push societies onward, and at another pull them violently back, 
 and which are called ideas. It has been given to society to choose 
 between the good and the bad movers. The bad are the ideas in which error 
 predominates ; the good, those where predominates truth. To recognize, 
 unravel, clear up, fortify, develop, the true element ; to distinguish, lay 
 bare, point out, weaken, the false element in ideas — such is the office of 
 philosophy ; and the older a society is, the more men’s minds in it are ripe 
 and disposed for criticism and discussion, the more imperious does this 
 duty of philosophy become.” 
 
 M. Leveque goes on to argue that philosophy divides itself 
 naturally into specialities, and that there are as many philo- 
 sophies as there are sciences. Thus there is a philosophy of 
 history, a philosophy of medicine, a philosophy of political 
 economy ; and all these terms take their place in modern 
 language as the ideas which they express become clearer and 
 more definite. It follows that philosophy is under the necessity 
 of continual expansion and subdivision to correspond with 
 the extent of modern acquisition and its minute ramification 
 in specialities. There is a philosophy of the beautiful, just 
 as there is a philosophy of the true. 
 
 When we get hold of a book like this, with a subject so 
 peculiarly tempting to the dealer in vague and pompous 
 generalities, our best course is, first, to read it through with 
 patient attention, and then try to find out what new deposit 
 the book has left in us. The great difficulty of the spiritualist 
 philosophy has always been that, although it rightly insisted 
 on the necessity for an idea, it was embarrassed when we 
 inquired of it some direction and guidance in our own search 
 after the ideal. Hence spiritualism, in its practical issues, is 
 rather a retrospective than an encouraging philosophy; it 
 names certain artists of the past as its saints and heroes, but 
 has a tendency to restrain present productiveness within 
 the limits of traditionary repetition. What it most dreads is 
 materialism, or the objective study of matter; therefore it has 
 to insist on an intellectual ideal ; and as it is of no use to 
 talk about such ideals as are not yet embodied, nor (so far as 
 we can know) even conceived, spiritualism is always compelled 
 to recur to ideals which have already been made visible to us 
 in marble or on canvas, its favourite examples being Greek 
 sculpture and the designs of Raphael, to which a Frenchman 
 is likely to add the paintings of Nicolas Poussin. By dint of 
 
3 °° 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 incessant repetition of this reference, spiritualism has educated 
 whole generations of artists in the belief that by looking at 
 these works, and copying them, and imitating them, they might 
 themselves reach this wonderful and mysterious goal, the idea 
 which so fascinated from afar the eyes of the devout philo- 
 sophers. Those who, in their own way, sought new ideals in 
 nature, were condemned as materialists, or mere copiers of 
 matter. The misfortune of the spiritualists, as the directors 
 of practical effort, was, that they were always living up in the 
 clouds, and talking about qualities as severed from things , 
 seeking the good, the beautiful, the true, conceived as meta- 
 physical notions, which was a hopeless search for visible 
 adjectives. You might just as profitably set out in search of 
 speed as an entity. 
 
 To escape this imputation of cloudiness, M. Leveque tells us 
 that the spiritualist philosophy is now observant, and has 
 travelled over land and sea, which turns out to mean that M. 
 Cousin undertook a voyage across the Channel to study the 
 Poussins in England. It was a pity to lower the sublime 
 generality of the phrase by this adduced proof. Spiritualism 
 voyaging over land and sea was rather a grand and imposing 
 idea. M. Cousin taking a through ticket to London by Calais, 
 or, if economically disposed, by Boulogne, or, if parsimoniously, 
 by Dieppe, makes somehow a weaker impression on the 
 imagination, and carries one to prosaic associations of little 
 rolling steamboats, and that terrible temporary ailment which 
 subjugates so many voyagers, spiritualist or materialist. Still 
 M. Cousin deserves hearty praise for having been willing to 
 use his corporeal eyes instead of evolving art criticism out of 
 his moral consciousness. There are two duties of the writer 
 on art, — to look and to think ; but philosophers are too apt to 
 consider the first a work of supererogation, whilst they perform 
 the second with infinite patience and diligence. 
 
 Our difficulty with spiritualism is to get at the meaning of its 
 great abstraction — “ the Beautiful.” M. Leveque fixes this for 
 us in a theistic conception. Pantheism could not conceive of 
 it, but Theism can, because Theism has conceived God, who is 
 the Beautiful, and whom, without understanding, we conceive. 
 “We have then, in the innermost depths of our reason, an 
 absolute type of grandeur, not of physical grandeur, but of 
 intellectual and moral grandeur; that is to say, of perfection. 
 
TWO ART PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 301 
 
 Since the Infinite Beauty is conceived, a measure is given us 
 for imperfect and finite beauties.” 
 
 Reasoning of this sort is convenient sometimes with children, 
 because it overawes them, and prevents them from asking 
 questions ; but it is unsatisfactory to men who are out of the 
 childish stage of intellectual development. “ The Infinite 
 Beauty is conceived ; ” Humanity has conceived Divinity, and 
 so has a fixed standard by which to measure finite perfections. 
 Could anything be more various, more fluctuating, more 
 emphatically unfixed, than men’s conceptions of the Supreme 
 Being? Our conception of Him varies from year to year with 
 our varying knowledge and intellectual force. This is quite 
 inevitable ; it would be inevitable still if He lived familiarly 
 amongst us as an earthly Sovereign. We could never form a 
 true conception of Him so long as we remained inferior to 
 Himself. Before fancying that we can conceive of God, it 
 would be well to reflect whether we can even conceive of mere 
 human intellect in its highest examples. The superior may be 
 admired, or even adored, by the inferior, but he cannot be 
 conceived by him. The English conception of God is not the 
 French conception ; it is certainly not the Scotch ; and if we 
 may judge by the pious allusions of Transatlantic politicians, it 
 is most assuredly not the American. Nor does the highest 
 contemporary English conception very closely resemble that 
 held by minds of the same relative rank in the same country 
 thirty years ago. Setting aside atheists and young children, it 
 is likely that there exist in England just now at least fifteen 
 million different conceptions of the English conception of the 
 Deity. How then are we to refer to the Idea of Deity as 
 a fixed visible standard of Beauty? And even if we could 
 suppose this possible as to intellectual and moral perfection, 
 how are we to apply this standard to physical perfection ? How 
 reason from the Beauty of Goodness to the beauty of a statue 
 or a picture? It is this awkward necessity for shifting the 
 argument from morals to matter that demonstrates the weak- 
 ness of dogmatic spiritualism . 1 These philosophers first tell us 
 
 1 Imagine, for example, the absurdity of meditating upon the beauty 
 of sacrifice in order to be able to judge of the comparative beauty of silks. 
 The jurors at the International Exhibition would have failed to perceive 
 the connection between the two, and the manufacturers at Lyons are 
 probably not aware of it. 
 
3°2 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ATT. 
 
 that they have hit upon the immutable, eternal Beauty, which 
 is moral Beauty ; and then they come with that to a piece 
 of carved marble, or painted canvas, and try to apply their 
 immutable standard. It would be as reasonable to devise a 
 converse criticism, and try to measure the accuracy of history 
 with a two-foot rule. 
 
 The spiritualist would find no words severe enough to 
 express his contempt for a philosophy of art which professed 
 to have no fixed standard of Beauty, and I dare say that if 
 I were to develop my own theory of aesthetics I should be 
 called by hard names. What I say is, that spiritualism does 
 not erect fixed standards at all ; it only erects words, the 
 signification of which fluctuates every day. It is amazing 
 how easily men are governed and imposed upon by words, and 
 the less they understand them the more readily they submit to 
 them. To say, “ The Beautiful is the standard of beauty,” is 
 a childish play upon words, because the beautiful is an abstrac- 
 tion having no visible existence. 
 
 At this point a spiritualist would probably accuse me of 
 denying the existence of beauty altogether. Well, except as 
 an adjective, an attribute, I do. It is a quality, not a being. 
 Just so I would deny the separate existence of cleanliness or 
 holiness. There are clean people and holy people, and clean 
 places and holy places ; but you cannot detach the adjective, 
 and set it up as an immutable standard of cleanliness or 
 holiness. Of course we need some kind of standard, and we 
 derive it from some visible example ; but if a higher example 
 were shown us, we should quit our old standard, and take to 
 the new one. For instance : our farmers have lately been 
 told to be clean, in order to diminish the ravages of the cattle 
 plague; but as the word “cleanliness” would to them only 
 signify English cleanliness, a higher example was appealed 
 to ; not an abstraction “ the clean,” as these philosophers say 
 “the beautiful,” but “Dutch cleanliness,” as an art critic 
 might counsel our artists to aim at a Dutch carefulness in 
 execution. 
 
 I have no space to criticise M. Le'veque’s work in detail, 
 though I have read it with care. The central idea of it is 
 that which I have just set before the reader. Though this 
 central idea is certainly an illusion, spiritualism has rendered 
 us the service of insisting upon the necessity for ideality in 
 
TWO ART PHILOSOPHERS, 
 
 303 
 
 art. If there is no immutable standard of “the beautiful/’ 
 there may still be an endless endeavour after that beauty 
 which for each of us seems the best. M. Leveque is especially 
 right in desiring that artists should be penetrated with the faith 
 that their art ought to have lofty intellectual, or psychological 
 aims, and that it can only have enduring value in so far as it 
 is a product of mind. With all my heart I agree with M. 
 Leveque in assigning to those forms of art which are the 
 mere copyism of matter a much lower rank than is due to 
 the art which conveys great messages from the soul of the 
 artist to humanity. It is probable, however, that as to what 
 particular art fell under each category there might be some 
 difference of opinion between us. — 1866. 
 
XX. 
 
 LESLIE . 
 
 Great men leave two different impressions of themselves 
 on their contemporaries, the one the result of their public 
 career, the other of their private life. When these are harmo- 
 nious ; when both what is known to the public as such, and 
 what reaches the public through the report of a great man's 
 intimates, alike are favourable, the personage becomes the 
 object of traditional admiration. It gives a solid satisfaction 
 to the conscience of mankind to be confirmed in its natural 
 tendency to believe in the worthiness of its favourites. It 
 greatly augments the chances of immortality for a genius when 
 those who knew him in the common intercourse of life certify 
 that he was as noble as his performance. It damages the fame 
 of those who most excel in their own craft when it is known 
 that outside of it they were no better than other people ; 
 and nothing diminishes the prestige of a refined artist like 
 evidence that his refinement was limited to his trade, and did 
 not make his manners beautiful nor his conduct wise. 
 
 Charles Robert Leslie, the painter, is a distinguished in- 
 stance of an artist whose private estimation amongst those 
 who enjoyed his intimacy was as high a§ the estimation of 
 him formed by the outer world, that only knew him by his 
 works. I had the advantage of observing him in both 
 capacities — as man and artist. I have never neglected an 
 opportunity for studying his pictures ; and he was good enough 
 to admit me to as great a degree of personal intimacy as the 
 wide difference in our years would naturally allow. 
 
 It may be considered one of the misfortunes of a writer 
 
LESLIE. 
 
 305 
 
 on art that he cannot place himself on terms of friendship 
 with famous artists without renouncing all intention of writing 
 about them. The nil nisi boiium , a rule questionable enough 
 as regards dead men from whom we have received no kindness, 
 will always remain in force concerning men, whether living or 
 dead, who have proved themselves true friends to us. On this 
 account I should have abstained from writing on Leslie 
 altogether if it had seemed necessary to weaken or withhold 
 any criticism out of consideration for his kindness and hospi- 
 tality. For it is the duty of a public writer to withhold no 
 criticism, however severe, which he believes to be just ; but it 
 is the duty of a private friend to pass in silence what appear 
 to him weaknesses or imperfections in his friend. If these two 
 duties conflict, the subject is a forbidden one. In this case 
 they do not conflict. I may speak of Leslie at the same time 
 with the frankness of a critic and the tenderness of a friend. 
 Nothing that I should desire to say of him could hurt him if 
 he were alive to hear it. 
 
 It is the basis of a large and liberal criticism, the basis even 
 of all justice in criticism, to tolerate and applaud the most 
 opposite kinds of faculty, and even, what the ordinary mo- 
 ralist so unwillingly admits, very wide diversities in character. 
 Leslie realized, or closely approached, a very beautiful ideal 
 of life and character, and one especially advantageous in this 
 respect, that it was most eminently favourable to his own 
 happiness, and to that of everybody over whom he had any 
 influence ; but even his good qualities produced, as they always 
 do, an appearance of deficiency in other directions. That 
 wise French proverb, “.On a toujours les defauts de ses qualites 
 tersely expresses this inevitable necessity. If we have a quality 
 we have a defect with it, not necessarily a blameworthy fault 
 or failing, but a deficiency. We have each of us these defi- 
 ciencies ; nor are they, in general, faults to be ashamed of. 
 They may therefore be mentioned without offence, just as we 
 may say of the genus homo , that it is wingless, seeing that 
 being endowed with arms it could not (according to the present 
 arrangements of Nature on this planet) have had wings also. 
 
 A general impression exists here, and I believe in the United 
 States, that Leslie was an American by birth. He was born 
 in London, of American parents, on the 19th of October, 
 1794. On the 18th of September, 1799, his father, Mr. Robert 
 
 H x 
 
3 ° 6 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 Leslie, took his family to America, on board the ship Washington. 
 The voyage was long and difficult ; the ship encountered 
 tempestuous weather in the Channel, and was thirty-four days 
 in beating out. As she passed through our English fleet, a 
 signal gun was fired from the Majestic , which, by carelessness, 
 had a ball in it, that lodged in a spar on the Washi?igto?i , and 
 very nearly killed two passengers. The day after, the Wash- 
 ington met with a French privateer, and had two hard fights, 
 during which the little Leslies were kept down in the hold 
 with other children, where they amused themselves by playing 
 at hide-and-seek. Shortly afterwards they met another priva- 
 teer, which, however, avoided them after receiving one shot. 
 Then they put in at Lisbon for repairs, which detained them 
 there five months and two days. On leaving Lisbon, they 
 encountered a gale of wind, and lost their fore-topmast. On 
 the sudden cessation of the gale, the waves not having yet had 
 time to subside,, and the ship being no longer prevented from 
 rolling by the pressure of the wind on her canvas, did so with 
 such violence that her main-topmast went also. She arrived 
 at Philadelphia on the nth of May, nearly eight months after 
 her departure from London. Mr. Robert Leslie, during his 
 previous residence in America, had been a watchmaker in 
 Philadelphia, where he had a partner, whom he had left in 
 charge of the business during his absence. This person 
 appears to have mismanaged the affairs of the firm, and, as he 
 was now dead, the surviving partner brought an action against 
 his executors, but himself died before the suit was decided. 
 
 Leslie’s mother was now a widow in very narrow circum- 
 stances. She opened a boarding-house, and her eldest 
 daughter taught drawing; but Leslie and his brother con- 
 tinued their education at the University of Pennyslvania, by 
 the kindness of two of the Professors. 
 
 Leslie tells us that he neglected mathematics as much as he 
 possibly could. He had from infancy liked drawing, and now 
 desired to be a painter. His mother, however, could not 
 afford him a painter’s education, and he was bound apprentice 
 to Messrs. Bradford and Inskeep, booksellers, in Philadelphia. 
 The circumstance which changed Leslie’s destiny was the arrival 
 of G. F. Cooke, the actor, whose likeness he drew Irom memory 
 with so much success, that Mr. Bradford believed he might 
 succeed as a painter, and now encouraged his attempts at 
 
LESLIE . 
 
 3°7 
 
 drawing, which he had before discountenanced. This sketch 
 of Cooke was taken to the Exchange Coffee House, at the 
 hour when the merchants of Philadelphia assembled there, and 
 made a sensation amongst them. Mr. Bradford, with a kind- 
 ness which deserves warm praise, and which caused Leslie to 
 remember him always with the most lively gratitude, struck 
 whilst the iron was hot, and got up a subscription (to which 
 he contributed liberally) that enabled Leslie to study painting 
 for two years in Europe. 
 
 Leslie's first lesson in painting was received at Philadelphia 
 from Mr. Sully, a resident artist. “ He began," says Leslie, “ a 
 copy of a picture in my presence, and then put his palette 
 and brushes into my hand, telling me to proceed in the same 
 way with a copy of my own. The next day he carried his 
 work further, and I again followed him, and so on, until the 
 copies were both finished \ thus explaining to me at once the 
 processes of scumbling, glazing, &c.” This is the best practical 
 way of teaching the mechanism of the art. I have elsewhere 
 advocated its adoption in the studios of eminent artists, where 
 several pupils might be allowed to copy, in this way, works 
 as they advance, process by process, without any cost of time 
 or trouble oo the part of the master, beyond an occasional 
 word of counsel. 
 
 Sully gave his pupil letters to West, Beechey, and other artists 
 in London. Leslie sailed in company with Mr. Inskeep, one 
 of the partners in the bookselling establishment he had just 
 quitted, who had business in England. He found Americans 
 in London who were kind to him, and formed a friendship 
 with Morse, then a young art-student like himself, who shared 
 the same painting-room. Their most intimate associates were 
 young Americans from Boston, students of medicine ; they had, 
 however, the advantage of advice from Allston and King. 
 
 No reader of Leslie’s autobiography can have felt surprised 
 to learn that, when young, he was a devoted play-goer. His 
 art, being an interpretation of that order of literature which 
 exhibits men and women in dramatic action, was of itself most 
 intimately allied with the profession of the actor. Actors 
 study plays, and afterwards conceive and personate the cha- 
 racters ; painters like Leslie study plays (or novels), and 
 afterwards conceive and paint the characters ; both study 
 literature with a view to the reproduction, in visible shape 
 
 x 2 
 
308 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 and gesture, of the phantoms evoked by the imagination of 
 the writer. The actor may learn from the painter, and the 
 painter reciprocally from the actor. Much of Leslie’s most 
 valuable artistic education must have been acquired in theatres, 
 and his pictures are permanent models of all those qua- 
 lities of fine acting which appeal to the mind through the 
 eye only. 
 
 Every young man of genius has at first a deep respect for 
 acquired reputations. Leslie reverenced West and Fuseli in 
 his youth. We have a remark in the autobiography which 
 Leslie left us, on Fuseli’s teaching at the Academy when he 
 was a student there, which is not to be passed without notice. 
 “ He generally came into the room once in the course of every 
 evening, and rarely without a book in his hand. He would 
 take any vacant place among the students, and sit reading 
 nearly the whole time he stayed with us. I believe he was 
 right. For those students who are born with powers that will 
 make them eminent, it is sufficient to place fine works of art 
 before them. They do not want instruction, and those that do 
 are not worth it. Art may be learnt , but can’t be taught. 
 Under Fuseli’s wise neglect, Wilkie, Mulready, Etty, Landseer, 
 and Haydon distinguished themselves, and were the better for 
 not being made all alike by teaching, if, indeed, that could have 
 been done.” 
 
 This is one of the few subjects on which it is difficult to 
 agree with Leslie. I am in favour of a thorough artistic 
 education ; believing that if all art cannot be taught, the 
 handicraft of art can, and something besides, and that an 
 educated artist need not necessarily be less original than an 
 educated writer. English painters are for the most part 
 untrained, or half-trained. This, more than any other cause, 
 has delayed their recognition out of their own country. Men 
 of great genius occasionally overcome this disadvantage ; but 
 even the best of them are weakened by it, or prevented from 
 reaching that fine equality of faculty which severe training can 
 alone secure. All lose time, many waste life itself for the lack 
 of that. Painting is not merely mental conception, not merely 
 poetry, but at the same time the most difficult of all the handi- 
 crafts. Carpentry and joinering, cabinet-making even, are only 
 on the same level as house-painting in point of difficulty ; 
 landscape and figure-painting, as handicraft trades , are far more 
 
LESLIE. 
 
 309 
 
 difficult than any one of these. 1 * * * Yet you apprentice carpenters, 
 and joiners, and cabinet-makers, in their youth ; you apprentice 
 even house-painters, but you think it natural to leave artists to 
 pick up their craft by simply looking at what other men have 
 done in it. All that can be said of no teaching is, that it is 
 preferable to a tyrannous system of bad teaching. Nor is it 
 inevitable that artists should be “ made all alike by teaching/ 7 
 If every artist admitted pupils into his own studio, or into a 
 studio close to that in which he himself worked, and applied 
 to their education principles arrived at by himself in the course 
 of his own experience, the variety of experience in the masters 
 would insure a variety of training in the pupils; and each 
 youth, on beginning to learn his profession, might get himself 
 apprenticed to that particular master for whom he felt the 
 closest natural affinity. There is great difference of opinion 
 amongst English artists on the subject of education in their pro- 
 fession. Many share Leslie’s view ; others advocate a uniform 
 and public system ; and the rest think private apprenticeship 
 would answer best, only they do not take apprentices. 
 
 Leslie obtained two silver medals at the Academy. His 
 first large picture had for its subject “Saul and the Witch of 
 Endor.” West assisted him in the composition, often calling 
 to see the work in progress. This picture was refused at the 
 British Gallery, but West kindly hung it in a large room of his 
 own, where it found a purchaser in Sir John Leicester, after- 
 wards Lord de Tabley. 
 
 In the autumn of 1817, Leslie visited Paris in company 
 with Allston and William Collins, and the three made studies 
 in the Louvre. Of the French painters then in vogue Leslie 
 tells us that he liked Guerin best, but that he did not like 
 David. 
 
 Two years afterwards, in 1819, Leslie exhibited the first 
 of those pictures which have won his fame, “Sir Roger de 
 Coverley going to Church; 77 in 1821, when he was elected an 
 Associate of the Academy, “ May Day in the time of Queen 
 Elizabeth;” in 1824, “Sancho Panza in the apartment of 
 the Duchess;” in 1825, the year of his marriage, “Slender, 
 
 1 It appears from a recent speech of Mr. Odger’s, that a shoemaker 
 
 cannot learn to stitch properly in less than seven years. How easily we 
 
 all overlook the difficulties of the handicrafts ! Amateurs always, and 
 
 artists too frequently, overlook them in the fine arts. — 1873. 
 
3io 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 Shallow, and Anne Page.” In 1826 he was elected a member 
 of the Royal Academy. 
 
 Leslie having now found his vein, made a bright beginning 
 of reputation, obtained an Academic diploma, and formed 
 many friendships in England. London was exactly the place 
 for him, but his American relations plotted and contrived' a 
 plan to induce him to recross the Atlantic by accepting for 
 him the appointment of Drawing Master at the West Point 
 Military Academy. One can hardly blame them for this, as 
 affection is often quite unconsciously selfish, and no doubt 
 they thought a fixed income a good thing for a married man ; 
 but Leslie was already too distinguished a painter to waste 
 his time in teaching drawing to schoolboys. On arriving at 
 West Point, and making the experiment of uniting the pro- 
 fessions of painter and drawing-master, Leslie found that the 
 time required by his new occupation was much greater than 
 had been represented to him, whilst the advantages of a per- 
 manent residence in America seemed, on the whole, doubtful. 
 He therefore returned to England with his family after a few 
 months at West Point. His subsequent history consists of 
 little else than quiet labour, steady and successful, but by no 
 means severe ; constant intercourse with many friends, of whom 
 not a few are famous for their own achievements ; the publi- 
 cation of a biography and a book of lectures, and then the 
 gradual decline of health, hastened finally by the loss of a very 
 dear daughter. 
 
 My personal recollections of Leslie are limited to the last 
 few years of his life. Looking back to the time, now many years 
 ago, when I enjoyed the most of his society, I regret very much 
 not to have profited by it better. A distinguished artist, an 
 Academician, who was an old friend of Leslie’s, used to urge 
 me to place my studies more under Leslie’s direction ; and, 
 indeed, nothing would have been easier for me than to have 
 become his pupil, as my lodgings were near to his house, and 
 he would have come to see my work almost daily if I had 
 desired it. But that unhappy fatality which so often prevents 
 men from seeing their true interest till too late interposed 
 between us. I had the greatest respect for Leslie’s own art, but 
 felt convinced that he knew little of landscape, and, not wishing 
 to hurt him by neglecting to follow any recommendations he 
 might offer, I carefully kept my work out of his way, which 
 
LESLIE . 
 
 311 
 
 was the easier as I painted in a studio several miles from my 
 lodgings. There was, perhaps, no great error in this estimate. 
 Leslie was not a good landscape-painter, and his knowledge 
 of the natural phenomena of landscape, his acquaintance with 
 that science of natural appearances which is the basis of the 
 art of landscape-painting, was limited to the commonly-known 
 facts. My error lay in another direction. 1 failed to perceive 
 that, however slight might be Leslie's acquaintance with these 
 specialities of my art, he was in full possession of the kind 
 of technical knowledge which I most needed — the safe and 
 effectual management of oil colour. 1 No artist that ever lived 
 painted more soundly and safely, no artist ever got more satis- 
 factory results by means so simply right. Reynolds and 
 Turner were both better colourists, but neither of them would 
 have taught painting so well as Leslie. He was always ready 
 to do anything he could to serve me. I remember how he took 
 me to see Turner's Gallery in Queen Anne Street whilst the 
 Chancery suit was pending; how he took me to see Rogers 
 and his house, and the studies left in possession of Constable’s 
 family, when we spent hours over them together; how he asked 
 me to meet celebrated friends of his ; how willingly and kindly 
 he showed me everything of his own which he thought might 
 be interesting. He heard me say that I should like to see 
 Landseer, or inferred as much from some expression of admi- 
 ration for Landseer’s work, and so asked me to meet him ; 
 and, when everybody else was gone away, kept me till the 
 last that I might hear some of Sir Edwin’s best talk. I 
 happened to express some curiosity about Leslie’s venerable 
 friend Mr. Rogers, so he took me to St. James’s Place. Mr. 
 Rogers was out for his day’s drive, but Leslie went in and 
 spent an hour or two in showing me everything of artistic 
 interest in the house ; we penetrated even into the poet’s own 
 bedroom. At last Mr. Rogers returned, and Leslie introduced 
 me to him with one of those kind expressions which never 
 failed him when they could be of use. Mr. Rogers thought 
 he remembered having seen me before, and, when told that 
 he was mistaken, said that I could not have been better 
 
 1 Besides this, although Leslie may not have been a good landscape- 
 painter himself, he had a keen appreciation of certain fine qualities in 
 thoroughly mature and accomplished landscape art which a young man is 
 hardly ever able to estimate at their true value. — 1873. 
 
312 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ATT. 
 
 introduced, and asked me if I had been all over the house. 
 Then he began to praise one or two works of Leslie’s that he 
 possessed, and we had a little talk about Velasquez and other 
 subjects. At that date, however, Mr. Rogers, though he still 
 loved art, had lost his memory. In Turner’s house we saw 
 the pictures now in the possession of the nation, and Leslie 
 criticised them in his temperate style. 
 
 In conversation, Leslie belonged to the class of anecdotists. 
 He very seldom argued, advanced opinions with apparent diffi- 
 dence, and never, in my hearing at least, was roused into 
 eagerness or eloquence. His manners were perfect, according 
 to the English ideal ; he never interrupted or contradicted, 
 except in a very careful and delicate way. There was great 
 charm in his society, and he had two very valuable qualities 
 in the highest perfection — simplicity and urbanity. There 
 is, however, an element of dissatisfaction in intercourse with 
 such characters as his. They are never thrown off their 
 guard, they never tell you rude truth ; if a fact is not likely to 
 be agreeable to you, they pass it in silence, and so ; if they 
 are wise, their wisdom does not much benefit you. Leslie 
 would not frankly tell a young artist what he thought of his 
 work, if the full expression of his opinion might possibly 
 hurt him. This was not craft or disingenuousness in him ; 
 it arose from pure tenderness of heart. He could not endure 
 to give pain. 
 
 I have said that he was an anecdotist. Perhaps it is as well 
 that anecdotists should not predominate in society, for they 
 contribute little to the sustained work of conversation, and 
 are rather apt to disconnect it. But Leslie was the most 
 favourable example of the class I ever met. His stories were 
 always interesting and well told, and every one of them had 
 for its point some curious illustration of character. He never 
 wasted a word in superfluous narration, said all that was 
 necessary to prepare you for the point he had in reserve, and 
 then placed it effectually. His autobiography contains many 
 anecdotes which are told exactly as he would have narrated 
 them verbally. Take, for instance, this absurd one about 
 Charles Lamb : — “ I dined with him one day at Mr. Gilman’s. 
 Returning to town in the stage coach, which was filled with 
 Mr. Gilman’s guests, we stopped for a minute or two at 
 Kentish Town. A woman asked the coachman, ‘ Are you 
 
LESLIE. 
 
 313 
 
 full inside ? ’ Upon which Lamb put his head through the 
 window and said, 4 1 am quite full inside ; that last piece of 
 pudding at Mr. Gilman’s did the business for me.’ ” Now, 
 that is a perfectly-told anecdote. In a few brief sentences 
 the reader is fully prepared to relish the saying which is to be 
 quoted. You cannot retrench one syllable. The words 
 “at Kentish Town” might, perhaps, have been omitted, but 
 they add to the interest of the anecdote by giving it locality. 
 Leslie told a story as he painted a face, giving all that the 
 meaning exacted in a few felicitous touches. When he had 
 hit an expression in painting, his countenance beamed with 
 quiet satisfaction ; when he had told a characteristic anecdote, 
 his eyes lighted up with lively humour. This habit of anec- 
 dote bore a very close relation to his habit of looking for 
 and seizing curious momentary expressions in people’s faces. 
 What delighted him most were those accidental revelations 
 of character which other people commonly miss. He 
 watched for those chance liftings of the curtain of conven- 
 tionalism when a look or a word reveals some unsuspected 
 peculiarity of mind. Subtle humorist as he was, he saw the 
 weaknesses and absurdities of men only to smile at them with 
 the kindliest interest. If ever he laughed at anybody, it was 
 as we sometimes laugh at the little oddities of dear friends. 
 Wrong and injustice would have made him indignant if he 
 had dwelt upon them, but he instinctively avoided the con- 
 templation of these. He loved the beauty of the world, fair 
 landscapes, graceful women, pleasant society, and quiet merri- 
 ment. He had no tragic power, and shut his eyes to the 
 existence of evil, repeating to himself a maxim he had made, 
 which is very pretty, and would be very pleasant if it were 
 only true — “ There is no evil but sin, from which I pray God 
 to deliver us all now and hereafter.” He did not see that the 
 operation of the most salutary and necessary natural law 
 causes much suffering which, to the sufferers, is decidedly an 
 evil, and that a small imprudence in this world often brings on 
 more misery than a great sin. He did not see that the one 
 law which governs the world is practical convenience, that the 
 universe is a machine intended to work well as a whole, and 
 that innocence itself may be very cruelly lacerated, like a child 
 in a cotton-mill if it happens to get between the wheels. The 
 perception of this continual tragedy is the condition of the 
 
THO UGH IS ABOUT ART. 
 
 314 
 
 highest intellectual power ; the courage to face this fact is the 
 condition of solemnity in art and eloquence in literature. 
 Not having this, Leslie could still paint refined comedy and 
 write pleasant anecdotes or paragraphs of sensible counsel to 
 his younger brethren. But he had not literary force. He 
 wrote correctly and even elegantly, and always in perfectly 
 good taste, but never passionately or persuasively. His prose 
 is to the prose of born writers what the verse of an Oxford 
 Prize Poem is to the verse of Sordello or Don Juan. 
 
 The “ Life of Constable ” was the first book Leslie made. 
 His object was, by a selection of letters, to place the life and 
 character of his subject as vividly as possible before the reader, 
 effacing himself as biographer, and only coming forward from 
 time to time when a few words of his own were needed to 
 link together the materials he had collected. As a work 
 of literary art, other than simply editorial, the claims of this 
 biography are consequently slight. The publication of private 
 letters is nearly always injudicious. Private letters, when they 
 are private letters intended for no subsequent publicity, are 
 careless, and full of little trivialities which do not easily 
 support the glare of type. It is right that a biographer should 
 have access to letters written by his subject which are not 
 strictly confidential; but he ought to use them only for his 
 own guidance, not deliver them directly to the public eye. 
 The “ Life of Constable” is not a work to be read through 
 easily — the perpetual recurrence of little breaks in the narra- 
 tive, the introduction of trivialities which tempt the reader 
 to skip, and yet the attention required to follow all the 
 movements and details of Constable’s existence across the in- 
 cessant quotations, are unfavourable to the reader’s comfort. 
 There is a passage by Leslie in which he vindicates his own 
 judgment in printing a letter of Constable’s containing ex- 
 pressions of exultation about the quality of one of his own 
 pictures. If you grant that private letters are to be published 
 at all, those which express self-satisfaction ought not to be 
 omitted ; the more, in this instance, as such self-satisfaction 
 ought to be liberally forgiven to painters, who enjoy very little 
 of it. I only find fault with Leslie so far as this — that he 
 conformed to a bad custom. In the way he conformed to it 
 he showed, of course, his usual good taste. 
 
 Leslie’s admiration for Constable was extreme. The simple 
 
LESLIE. 
 
 315 
 
 truth is, that although he may have admired, or thought it 
 his duty to admire, one or two other artists more, no artist 
 touched him so closely as Constable did. He himself says 
 that Constable’s pictures gave him. a delight distinct from, and 
 he almost thinks superior to, that he received from any other 
 pictures whatever. “ Amongst all the landscape-painters, 
 ancient or modern,” says Leslie, “ no one carries me so 
 entirely to nature.” 1 
 
 Mr. Ruskin refuses altogether the rank of a master to 
 Constable, and considers him merely an industrious amateur. 
 Leslie certainly placed him in the very first rank of masters. 
 This difference of opinion is interesting as an example of the 
 hopelessness of unanimity in judgments about art. Mr. 
 Ruskin’s method of study is not such as to lead him naturally 
 to any right appreciation of Constable. Mr. Ruskin draws 
 definite objects with delicate precision and often in outline, 
 nearly always seeking for beauty of line, as especially in his 
 beautiful drawings of leaves and branches, and mountain 
 contours. Constable seems to have been constitutionally 
 indifferent to this kind of beauty ; he did not see lines, but 
 spaces, and in the spaces he did not see simple gradations, 
 but an immense variety of differently coloured sparkles and 
 spots. This variety really exists in nature, and Constable 
 first directed attention to it. Then again, he cared compara- 
 tively little for the repose of nature, much for what seemed to 
 him her life. He liked broken weather, and fitful breezes, 
 and passing clouds ; and, in general, any condition of things 
 which would give movement and glitter. And he preferred 
 
 1 At the time when I knew Leslie he often talked to me about Constable, 
 and tried to make me see his merits ; but although I was always ready to 
 spend any number of hours in looking at Constable’s works, and could 
 listen with pleasure to all Leslie had to say in their favour, I did not really 
 care about them. They seemed to me to lack delicacy of observation, 
 because Constable did not seek after the qualities I thought most necessary, 
 whilst he aimed at other qualities which, for my ignorance, did not so much 
 as exist in nature, as they certainly had never been recognized by any 
 previous art. It is only very lately that I find myself able to understand 
 Constable, and this degree of enlightenment has been forced upon me — 
 as art-knowledge usually is on everybody — by the difficulties of practical 
 work. Finding great defects in my own manner of painting, I perceived 
 at last that they were due to the absence of those very qualities which in 
 Constable’s pictures are always most conspicuously present, and which had 
 for Leslie a charm so seductive. 
 
3i6 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 homely landscape to noble landscape, probably from early 
 association with homely scenery of a kind which is apt to gain 
 a peculiar hold upon the affections. In all these tastes of his 
 he differed widely from the tastes of Mr. Ruskin, and as his 
 art was new it was necessarily empirical. These reasons may 
 in some measure account for Mr. Ruskin’s aversion to it 
 Constable, however, has had wide influence. In France, 
 Troyon and the Bonheurs have looked to him, and all the 
 best modern French landscape is due to the hints he gave. 
 That landscape is now the most influential in Europe ; it is 
 even probable that its influence may extend itself to England. 
 It is possible that, in this roundabout way, Constable may 
 ultimately exercise more lasting power over landscape-art even 
 in England than any of his contemporaries. Leslie’s high 
 opinion of him is supported by artistic opinions of great 
 weight. Troyon’s opinion, especially, is of weight, for Troyon 
 himself was a landscape-painter of extraordinary power. Mr. 
 Ruskin’s recorded verdict may, on the other hand, operate 
 usefully as a check ; there is much in nature which Constable 
 failed to render, and if his influence became consecrated and 
 unquestioned, it would be necessary to insist on certain very 
 important truths which he either unconsciously missed, or 
 consciously sacrificed as incompatible with those novel quali- 
 ties he aimed at. 
 
 The only criticism which would apply to the “ Handbook ” 
 is disarmed by its title. A collection of lectures, intended 
 for young men, must necessarily recapitulate much that is 
 already known ; and the defect of the work, as it appears 
 to those who are already acquainted with artistic tradition, 
 is its want of novelty. The publication of a work may be 
 advisable on one of two different grounds. If, as in the 
 case of “ Modern Painters,” it expresses opinions and calls 
 attention to facts hitherto wholly unknown, it ought to be 
 published for the benefit of the most cultivated ; but if, as in 
 the case of Leslie’s “ Handbook,” it chiefly contains old ideas 
 newly worded, it may still be desirable that it should be 
 published for the benefit of the least cultivated, those to whom 
 these ideas are not yet familiar, in any shape, and who may 
 be benefited by having them presented clearly and conve- 
 niently. It may be observed, moreover, that Leslie had a 
 constant habit of introducing any original opinion of his own 
 
LESLIE. 
 
 317 
 
 bv first repeating a commonplace; and that hasty readers, 
 alighting on the commonplaces, and deterred by them from 
 going farther, might easily conclude that the book contained 
 nothing else. He had also a way of telling facts that every- 
 body knows, instead of merely alluding to them ; as, for in- 
 stance, speaking of Cornaro, he says, “ The fine old man, 
 whose life, by an extraordinary system of temperance, was 
 protracted to a hundred years,” instead of saying, “ Luigi 
 Cornaro, the centenarian,” which would have recalled the 
 story of his temperance to everyone. 
 
 Leslie was usually a safe guide. Even when most inclined 
 to differ from him, I have always found, in the end, as for 
 example in the case of Constable, that his views were based 
 upon considerations which could not be prudently disregarded. 
 Art is always seen from various points of view, and it is a 
 great advantage when painters like Leslie have afforded us 
 the opportunity of seeing the subject from the ground they 
 occupied. For example : how interesting it is to know that 
 he so fully appreciated the beautiful colouring displayed in the 
 minor arts of the Persians and Chinese ! He had true feeling 
 for landscape ; and though his information on that branch of 
 art by no means equalled his love of it, still his criticism on 
 Turner is, on the whole, as just as it is temperate and well- 
 weighed. But Leslie much undervalued our contemporary 
 school of landscape-painters in water-colour, and overvalued 
 Claude and Dughet. He knew absolutely nothing about 
 mountains, so that the fine mountain drawing which distin- 
 guishes Mr. Newton and a few others of our school of water- 
 colourists was lost upon him, whilst he remained insensible to 
 the absurdities of mountain form so prevalent in the works 
 of the old masters. 
 
 Leslie left behind him an autobiography which was a dis- 
 appointment to me because it contained so little about himself. 
 It is full of amusing anecdotes, but his own inner life remains 
 just as much sealed to us as if he had left nothing. The 
 truth is, that his habit of anecdote was so irresistible that he 
 could not help telling the best he knew about everybody. 
 The purely biographic material does not occupy twenty pages, 
 and even in that Leslie himself is treated almost as much 
 from the outside as if the book had been written by another 
 person. 
 
3i3 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 The most interesting feature of this autobiography is the 
 pleasant picture it gives of a great patron — the Earl of 
 Egremont. The relation that subsisted between Leslie and 
 that nobleman was strictly a relation of patronage, yet an 
 exceedingly pleasant one. Many artists will not allow the title 
 “ patron ” to be assumed by, or applied to, their customers ; 
 some imitate attorneys, and call their customers their “ clients.” 
 A desire for equality, an honourable wish for independence, or 
 an aversion to favour and obligation, exists in the present 
 day, and makes men naturally impatient of those airs of pro- 
 tection which the patron assumes, or which, when he does 
 not assume them, our imagination attaches to the title. When 
 a man buys work, which he desires to possess, at its fair 
 market price, he confers no favour. But the true patron really 
 did confer favour, and had a fair claim to a kind of con- 
 sideration quite different from that of ordinary clients and 
 customers. He paid, in the first place, generally far more 
 than the object was worth in the market ; he often ordered 
 it when he did not want it, out of a generous impulse to help 
 merit; and in all these transactions he mingled a personal 
 interest and kindness which often added most materially to 
 the happiness of the artist’s whole existence. Lord Egremont 
 had the nature of a noble patron. It was his delight to serve 
 and aid men of artistic genius, and he did this with such 
 admirable delicacy that the most sensitive of them were never 
 wounded in their self-respect. His interest in Leslie extended 
 itself to all Leslie’s family ; Mrs. Leslie and her children were 
 regularly invited to Petworth every year. Extreme benevo- 
 lence of character, joined to an intelligent appreciation of art, 
 made Lord Egremont what he was — the most perfect example 
 of a patron that ever existed in England. The simple customer 
 or client can never be anything like that ; and the relation 
 between artists and great picture-dealers can seldom, I should 
 imagine, have that pleasant interchange of disinterested kind- 
 ness on the one hand, and willing acknowledgment on the 
 other, which marked the easy intercourse of Leslie and Lord 
 Egremont . 1 
 
 1 From the anecdotes of this nobleman given in Leslie’s autobiography 
 I select the following, both as an illustration of the true politeness and 
 amiability of his character and for its curious resemblance to another story, 
 
LESLIE. 
 
 319 
 
 Leslie was a bad autobiographer, because anything but an 
 egotist. Such writers as Montaigne and Benvenuto Cellini 
 make the best autobiographies. Leslie was perhaps too 
 modest to be an egotist, but it may be doubted whether this is 
 so much a question of modesty as some critics imagine. A 
 man’s attention may be drawn to himself by his own sense of 
 inferiority and desire to correct his own defects. Montaigne 
 was a great egotist, but not in the least disposed to over- 
 estimate his own powers in anything, and no one was ever 
 more truly modest, that is, more clearly aware of his own 
 
 of an old French nobleman, related by the Countess de Bassanville. I 
 have italicised the points of coincidence. 
 
 “As his lordship, from that 4 put-up -ability' of his character which 
 Beechey noticed, seldom changed his servants , some of the upper ones were 
 as old as himself ; and these not being in livery , and his ozvn dress , in the 
 morning, being very plain , he was sometimes by strangers mistaken for one 
 of them. This happened with a maid of one of his lady guests , who had 
 not been at Petworth before. She met him , crossing the hall , as the bell was 
 ringing for his servants' 1 dinner , and said : 4 Come , old gentleman , you and 
 1 will go to dinner together , for I can't find my way in this great house. ’ 
 He gave her his arm , and led her to the room where the other maids were 
 assembled at their table,, and said: 4 You dine here, I don’t dine till seven 
 o’clock.’ ” 
 
 Here is the French anecdote : — 
 
 44 Simple, doux, bienveillant et bienfaisant, le due ne changeait jamais de 
 do?nestiques. Quelques uns de ses gens, qui avaient vieilli dans sa maison, 
 se trouvaient done de son age. 
 
 44 Or, comme ils ne portaient pas de livree , et que le costume de leur maitre 
 etait fort simple , on le prit souvent lui-meme pour Vun de ses gens , et cette 
 meprise fut commise de la fa5on la plus plaisante par une jeune femme de 
 chambre attachee a la baronne de Gir. . . . , qui, pour la premiere fois, avait 
 ete conviee a passer l’automne au chateau. 
 
 44 Cette fille, qui n’ avait pas encore vu le due, le rencontra en traversant 
 le vestibule , au moment oil Von sonnait le dejeuner des domestiques , et, 
 s’avan£ant vivement vers lui : 
 
 4 4 4 Allons, mon bonhomme ,’ lui dit-elle en montrant ses dents blanches 
 dans un gai sourire, 4 donnez-moi le bras pour me conduire a V office, ou nous 
 allons dejeuner. r J'ai peur de me per dr e dans cette grande halle de chateau /’ 
 
 44 Le due, de l’air le plus serieux du monde, ojfrit le bras a la soubrette ; 
 puis, V ay ant conduite a V office, ou les autres domestiques se trouvaient reunis: 
 
 4 4 4 Foil a ou vous dejeuner ez, ’ lui dit-il ; 4 mais je ne puis le faire avec 
 vous, car j’ai deja mange la-haut.’ ” 
 
 The coincidences are so numerous and so very extraordinary, even in the 
 smallest details, that if Madame de Bassanville’s duke had not been the 
 husband of one of her most intimate friends, one would be strongly tempted 
 to believe that Leslie’s story of Lord Egremont had crossed the Channel 
 and assumed a French dress. 
 
320 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 imperfections. Leslie left a strong impression on all who 
 knew him that he was remarkably unassuming, but this may 
 have been due in some measure to his complete success in 
 life. His merits were recognized to the full ; he rose from a 
 position of poverty and obscurity to competence and fame. 
 He was the beloved friend and associate of some of the most 
 distinguished Englishmen of his time. He had not a single 
 claim to consideration which was not liberally allowed, and 
 allowed early , before he had had time to become embittered in 
 that struggle for mere recognition which so often injures the 
 character of aspirants. His relations with the world were 
 always easy and agreeable. He had no troublesome convic- 
 tions of a nature to disturb the serenity of his attitude towards 
 the beliefs or prejudices of his contemporaries. No grievous 
 social wrong or injustice galled him as Shelley was galled ; no 
 ridicule stiffened him, as it did Wordsworth, into solemn self- 
 assertion. He afforded a refined pleasure, and was richly 
 rewarded for so doing ; he amused the great world, and the 
 great world gave him its smiles and welcome. Such natures 
 are happy and enviable, but they are not the natures to which 
 Heaven delegates its stern work and strong authority. Great 
 poets and great thinkers, without being less modest at heart 
 than Leslie was, have capacities of earnestness and emotion 
 which lift them from time to time into states of such intense 
 conviction about things, that they utterly forget discretion. 
 Leslie never, either in writing or painting, had these passionate 
 and inspired moments. He never forgot to be discreet. 
 
 The one point in which Leslie excelled all other painters 
 was vivacity and truth in delicate shades of passing expression. 
 This rare gift was sustained and supported in Leslie by an 
 extraordinary refinement — a refinement so natural to him, and 
 so very perfect, that all he painted, or said, or wrote, or did, 
 was sure, however questionable occasionally on other grounds, 
 to be in irreproachably good taste. He was by no means 
 profoundly intellectual, not a deep thinker; indeed, the most 
 familiar ideas of modern philosophy were apparently unknown 
 to him ; he was not an extensive reader, nor original in his 
 choice of books ; he read a few of the best English classics, 
 and Moliere, Cervantes, and Le Sage, and every morning the 
 articles in the Times. But, as I remember thinking when he 
 read Pope’s “ Rape of the Lock ” to us before the picture, 
 
LESLIE. 
 
 321 
 
 his reading was not like other men’s reading. He saw and 
 realized every personage in his clear inventive brain ; he felt 
 the exact value of every carefully chosen epithet ; he under- 
 stood, with a fineness of sympathy which proved his true 
 brotherhood with great geniuses, the subtlest intentions of his 
 author. Lovers of good acting who may have had the great 
 pleasure of hearing Samson at the Theatre Frangais, will have 
 seen operating, in another but kindred art, the workings of an 
 intelligence akin to Leslie’s. Leslie was only an interpreter of 
 literature, not a creator of new types, and so ranks with the 
 greatest actors in refined comedy. A painter of this kind has, 
 however, one claim which actors cannot have, he can demon- 
 strate his accurate understanding of female character. Leslie’s 
 women are pre-eminent for all feminine graces ; his ladies 
 are the best-bred women in the world of painting ; even his 
 servant girls are vivacious without vulgarity. It is needless to 
 say that Leslie’s gentlemen are gentlemen ; that follows neces- 
 sarily from the fact that Leslie was himself a gentleman, of 
 which nobody who knew him, and was qualified to form an 
 opinion, could ever entertain a doubt. 
 
 For merely artistic qualities, on the other hand, his claims 
 are far less considerable. His colour faculty was by nature so 
 feeble, that he only attained by great labour such a degree of 
 power as would barely save his pictures from giving offence. 
 Now and then, in accessories, he achieved passages of really 
 beautiful colour, which are too generally overlooked by his 
 critics ; but the plain truth is, that he never could paint flesh. 
 I attach little importance to the popular objection about his 
 “ chalkiness,” because colour quite as bad as Leslie’s escapes 
 this censure by very simple expedients which anybody may 
 learn. It was rather to Leslie’s honour that he should have 
 disdained the shining browns and warm yellows, which, whether 
 true or false, make colour comfortable to the popular eye, and 
 tried earnestly for the true tints. In early life, as he told me 
 himself, he could not appreciate colour in the works of other 
 men, but by dint of hard study he came to appreciate it after- 
 wards, and, when I knew him, unaffectedly enjoyed it. All 
 that humility, and patience, and laborious practice and obser- 
 vation could do to make him a colourist they did for him ; and 
 his best works prove that he very well knew what the qualities 
 of good colour are. His faculty was weak and imperfect 
 
 H y 
 
322 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 rather than false, and, poor as his colour is, it is better than 
 very much which the world quite readily accepts. 
 
 Leslie’s system of chiaroscuro was true and luminous, and 
 entirely free from those contradictory violences of opposition 
 which delight ignorant people in Gustave Dore. His know- 
 ledge of reflections was especially accurate. 
 
 His drawing was as good as that of most of his contem- 
 poraries, but not remarkable as drawing, except perhaps for its 
 entire absence of false pretension. There is, however, much 
 inequality in his pictures in this respect — forms being at one 
 time felt with delicacy, whilst at others we get an abstract in 
 which natural curvature and projection are considerably 
 stiffened and flattened, so as to give an appearance of rigidity, 
 which, being usually combined with some opacity of colour, 
 repels the spectator. When one compares Leslie with living 
 rivals, it appears that in technical points he was far inferior 
 to such men as Stevens, Heilbuth, Meissonier, Gerome, and 
 (especially) Plassan, but superior to any one of them in 
 intelligence. Heilbuth, however, is a great master of quiet 
 expression, and possesses much of that kind of subtle obser- 
 vation which distinguished Leslie. 
 
 Finally, there can be no doubt that Leslie is amongst the 
 immortals. His pictures will live as great masterpieces of 
 perception. For his writings on art no independent immor- 
 tality could be predicted; if he were not famous on other 
 grounds, the “ Handbook” would not redeem him from 
 oblivion. Of these things, however, the pictures and the 
 writings, posterity will judge for itself ; and in the end, I doubt 
 not, judge truly. But as to the man, posterity must be con- 
 tent to form its opinion on our testimony ; and as I began this 
 paper by asserting that, in this instance, the private man was 
 as good as the public one, so I will conclude it by reverting to 
 those qualities which did not exhibit themselves in print or on 
 the walls of the Royal Academy. 
 
 Thackeray, in a carefully-written paper published in the 
 Cornhill Magazine soon after Leslie’s death, chose three epi- 
 thets wherewith to characterize him. They were well weighed, 
 no doubt ; and it is interesting to see what that great novelist, 
 whose life was passed in the searching study of human nature, 
 considered the most striking attributes of his dead friend. 
 His genius, of course, Thackeray, with his sense of humour 
 
LESLIE . 
 
 323 
 
 and love of art, could not fail to enjoy ; but these three 
 epithets say nothing about the genius : The good , the gentle , 
 
 the beloved. Those are the chosen words. They are simply 
 accurate and just. Leslie’s goodness was a serene habit, 
 his gentleness a proverb, and all who knew him loved him. 
 — 1866. 
 
 y 2 
 
PICTURE-DEALERS . 
 
 During the last few years a change of very great importance 
 has taken place in the relation of painters towards the public. 
 A class of middlemen has arisen, who intervene between artists 
 and buyers, and these middlemen have acquired great power 
 and influence in the world of art. As it happens that many 
 pictures exhibited in London, especially pictures exhibited in 
 the winter season, are the property of these dealers, it may be 
 worth while to attempt a deliberate examination of this branch 
 of commerce. 
 
 A picture-dealer is usually a tradesman, not only by position, 
 but by nature. He is simply a merchant, whose business it is 
 first to buy what he knows is likely to sell, and then to make 
 the public buy it of him at a profit ; the larger the profit he 
 gets, and the more quickly he turns over his money, the more 
 successful he is as a merchant. The mental elements of 
 success do not in his case consist in a delicately critical 
 appreciation of art, or in any romantic passion for it ; indeed, 
 feelings of this kind would only be likely to divert him from 
 his main purpose, which is to get rid of his acquisitions as fast 
 as possible. The lover of art who buys a picture to keep it 
 and look at it every day of his life, and make a companion of 
 it, must necessarily regard the picture very differently from the 
 dealer whose happiest anticipation with respect to it refers to 
 the wished-for moment when it will finally leave his possession. 
 The difference between them is the difference between a 
 gentleman who buys an estate to live upon and a speculator 
 who invests in land because its value is rising, with the inten- 
 
PICTURE-DEALERS. 
 
 3 2 5 
 
 tion of selling it again to the best advantage. We may there- 
 fore assume, as a general rule, that the dealer will not buy 
 pictures on aesthetic grounds, but simply with a view to the 
 state of the market. But there is yet a further consideration 
 of even greater importance. The dealer may influence the 
 market, and cause an augmentation in the value of such goods 
 as he has on hand. That he will often be unscrupulous in 
 doing this we may rest assured. We do not attach the 
 slightest weight or credence to the favourable opinions ex- 
 pressed by dealers as to the merits of their own goods. We 
 believe that every dealer who does not rise considerably above 
 the usual level of commercial morality will tell his customers 
 everything favourable to the artists who work for him which 
 the customers are likely to believe. He will first ascertain the 
 direction of public opinion, and then push it actively in that 
 direction. It is certain that dealers of low character talk the 
 most amazing nonsense to people whom they take to be fools. 
 Some years ago a gentleman presented himself at a very 
 famous picture-shop in Paris, and begged to be allowed to 
 examine a few landscapes by Lambinet. He was taken for a 
 wealthy English patron, and the comedy that followed beggars 
 all description. He rather enjoyed the joke, and assumed the 
 airs of a rich man ignorant of art, merely to see what the 
 shopman would say and do. He pretended to be tempted by 
 a particular picture with a bridge and a bright sky. The 
 salesman asserted that the mellowing effects of time would 
 turn the Lambinet into a Claude ; and as there was a little 
 dark burnt umber under the woodwork of the bridge, he said 
 that when the picture was varnished no one would know it 
 again. In proof of this he resorted to an expedient which 
 seemed habitual with him. He varnished the bridge provi- 
 sionally with his own saliva, and then threw himself into an 
 attitude of ecstatic admiration, appealing to his customer if it 
 were not wonderful. Of course our friend affected astonish- 
 ment at the marvellous result, and as he seemed exactly the 
 right fish to catch, many other baits were held out to him, and 
 the saliva process was frequently repeated. When this had 
 lasted about an hour our friend had heard such a quantity of 
 downright nonsense that he was utterly sick of it, but congra- 
 tulated himself on the acquisition of a little experience. He 
 had at least learned how picture-dealers estimate their public ; 
 
326 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 he had learned that the public is not supposed to know the 
 difference between unvarnished work and work heightened by 
 saliva or copal, and that it is considered gullible enough to 
 believe that a system of colouring may become another system 
 of colouring when a picture has been kept for a few years. 
 Everyone must have experienced the annoyance of going to 
 see a dealer’s picture which is to be engraved in “ the highest 
 style of art,” which means a cheap and rapid mixture of 
 mezzotint and etching with machine ruling and a little burin 
 work. In these cases the dealer is accustomed to employ a 
 gentleman whose chief attainment is a smooth and plausible 
 eloquence. He always descants on some remarkable quality 
 which makes the work before him the finest of the kind ever 
 produced. He tells you how many thousand pounds have 
 been paid for it, and for the right to engrave it. He leads 
 you gently towards a table, usually covered with green cloth, 
 on which rest two framed prints — one a finished plate in the 
 “ style ” to be followed in the present instance, and the other 
 a proof of the already commenced etching from the picture 
 before you. All kinds of schemes are resorted to. We re- 
 member a picture of the Battle of Trafalgar, where the show- 
 man employed was a sailor who had two claims upon our 
 respect ; he had served on board the Victory , and knew no- 
 thing about pictures, so that he held his tongue except when 
 people questioned him, on which he simply pointed out the 
 gun he had served during the fight. The showman is not 
 always so judiciously selected. He usually gets you to the 
 green table, and tries to make you write your name in a book. 
 To attain this end, he will tell you anything that you may like 
 to hear. A visitor once astonished one of these gentlemen by 
 telling him that, if he bothered him any longer, a complaint 
 would be made to his employers ; and the complaint was 
 made, on which the dealer excused his subordinate by re- 
 presenting that he was quite the right sort of man to get 
 subscribers in country towns, and that the talk which was 
 so tiresome to the stranger, was, on whole, beneficial to the 
 interests of the firm. The dealer added, however, that a less 
 obtrusive salesman was found to succeed in London. 
 
 Assuming that the dealer wishes to sell, and recommends 
 his goods in the manner which experience proves to be most 
 efficacious, we cannot be far wrong in concluding that a kind 
 
PICTURE-DEALERS. 
 
 3 2 7 
 
 of art which, however degraded, is popular, will be encouraged 
 by him, and rendered, if possible, more popular still. The 
 advice of the common dealer to young artists is like the 
 counsel of Mephistopheles. It is simply to cultivate the 
 qualities which sell, and to neglect the aims which the public 
 cannot understand ; in other words, to be diligently com- 
 mercial, and abandon art. One of the most lamentable results 
 of this system is a hampering of artistic development by tying 
 down the artist to a repetition of work already done. An 
 artist becomes known for a particular class of subjects ; he has 
 already, perhaps, exhausted the feeling of interest which first 
 attacted him to these subjects, but the dealer dares not let him 
 wander into new fields, because such wanderings would not be 
 safe in the commercial sense. We will give an instance of this 
 without mentioning names. A very able artist became known 
 to dealers for his admirable views of Venice ; but, although 
 Venice is very beautiful, he discovered, after some years spent 
 in the repetition of canals and gondolas, that change of some 
 sort was desirable. This change he sought in the Pyrenees, 
 and he made many very beautiful drawings there. The dealers 
 still asked for Venice ; and, though they admitted the merits 
 of the new subjects from the Pyrenees, they did not buy any, 
 nor give any commissions for pictures from them, for it was 
 not safe to do so. One day a very famous dealer called in our 
 friend’s studio. He gave two commissions for large pictures at 
 a liberal price. The order was given in less than ten minutes, 
 and the cheque was punctually sent when the pictures were 
 afterwards delivered ; this punctuality in the sending of large 
 cheques being one of the great charms of dealers. But the 
 subjects selected were the “ Ducal Palace,” and the “ Grand 
 Canal,” the two most hackneyed subjects in Christendom, 
 which the artist had already painted a hundred times. When 
 the dealer departed, the painter turned to us and said, with 
 a sad look, “ You see they keep me to it still, but how weary 
 I am of Venice!” Meanwhile, the rich portfolio from the 
 Pyrenees lay unopened. Now what took place in this instance 
 with regard to Venice is continually repeated in other forms. 
 Every artist has his Venice. The encouragement of the dealer 
 may become a slavery ; a man who has to keep a family 
 cannot resist gold when no moral principle is involved. Con- 
 siderations which are merely artistic go to the winds before 
 
328 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 the great duty of providing for one's children. Poverty is 
 liberty compared to this. There are artists who are so poor 
 that they can, with a safe conscience, devote themselves to 
 high aims. There are other artists who are so successful in a 
 lower way that they cannot conscientiously sacrifice time to a 
 higher ambition. A poor but noble painter said the other day 
 — “ It must be very pleasant to earn fifteen pounds a day, but 
 it has the drawback that one could not spend half an hour in 
 thinking without the reflection that one’s thought had cost 
 a sovereign.” And when the dealer urges the wisdom of 
 abandoning the higher aims, when his voice is the voice of 
 prudence and all the wise advisers are with him, what hope 
 is there for the artist in any virtue short of perfect heroism ? 
 And the heroism, when it exists, is so often wasted because 
 unaccompanied by sufficient genius or not crowned with length 
 of days ! 
 
 We have said what may be truly said against the influence of 
 dealers, and will now offer some considerations on the other 
 side. Before dealers came into the modern picture-market 
 prices were low. The dealers have done more than any other 
 class to enhance the market value of modern art. They may 
 do this by puffing their own pictures, but the mere fact that 
 many modern works have, through their agency, fetched great 
 prices, has increased the general scale of payment to contem- 
 porary artists. They seek, of course, as all merchants do, a 
 profit on their acquisitions, and this profit is in some instances 
 very large, a hundred per cent, or more ; but the profit they 
 seek varies with the risk they run. A dealer does not usually 
 profit very much, in a direct way, by his speculations in the 
 works of men who would be sure of customers without him, 
 and when he expects a large profit it is because he is not sure 
 of an immediate return. When an artist of established repu- 
 tation, as, for instance, Gerome or Meissonier, sells to a dealer, 
 he does not do so under the pressure of necessity, but because 
 he finds the transaction convenient to himself. When a 
 struggling artist sells to a dealer, he knowingly sacrifices a 
 chance of future advantage to the certainty of immediate pay- 
 ment. The reasons why artists go to dealers are mainly these 
 — It is more satisfactory to sell to a dealer than to a “patron,” 
 because the transaction involves no subsequent hesitation or 
 annoyance. Commissions received directly from gentlemen 
 
PIC TURE-DEALERS. 
 
 329 
 
 are almost invariably attended by the unpleasant feeling that, 
 although the gentleman has paid for his work, it may not quite 
 suit him when he sees it. Even eminent artists complain that 
 work done on commission direct from collectors leads to 
 frequent misunderstandings. With the dealer these misunder- 
 standings are much less likely to occur, because he looks on 
 the matter simply as one of business. In short, the dealer 
 and the artist understand each other more readily than the 
 artist and his unprofessional customer. On the other hand, 
 the buyer goes to a dealer for a reason of his own. He does 
 not trust himself. He feels his ignorance of art, and hesitates 
 to buy that which has not before been bought. An ordinary 
 buyer is more disposed to give seven hundred pounds for a 
 picture which a dealer has bought for five hundred than to 
 give five hundred directly to the artist. The best recom- 
 mendation for any picture is for it to have fetched already a 
 considerable price. If buyers believed in their own judgment, 
 of course the dealer would cease to exist ; but there is no pro- 
 bability of this, and the dealer knows that his place is secure. 
 
 One point only remains to be considered. Is it an advan- 
 tage to artists, or the contrary, that dealers should sell their 
 works at prices needlessly high — at prices, we mean, much 
 more than enough to remunerate the artist, and of which he 
 receives one-half, or two-thirds, or three-quarters, as the case 
 may be ? We have often talked over this with painters, and 
 they uniformly tell us that, when they have sold works to a 
 dealer, the higher the price he is able to get for them the 
 greater the advantage to the artist, because it raises the prices 
 which he himself can afterwards obtain in dealing directly 
 with the public; and since the public in a great measure 
 estimates painters by the money they earn, a painter rises in 
 position whenever the dealer is enabled to get a higher figure 
 for his work. And, for a reason already stated, the public is 
 more willing to give an extravagant price to a dealer than to 
 the artist himself ; and though this may sound as if the dealer, 
 by putting himself between the two, intercepted a portion of 
 the profit which would flow into the artist’s purse, this is only 
 in appearance, because without the dealer the artist would not 
 sell directly to the public for so much as he now accepts from 
 the dealer himself. The fact is, that the art of painting a 
 picture and the art of selling one are two entirely distinct 
 
330 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 things, and the tendency now is to a separation of the two. 
 If buyers are willing to give hundreds of pounds for the 
 wiprimatur of a great dealer, they pay, in doing so, the natural 
 penalty of ignorance. If they would really take the trouble 
 to study art, they might save the dealer’s profit. At present, 
 a picture is like a doubtful commercial bill which requires 
 endorsement ; the dealer endorses it, and takes a large per- 
 centage for his risk. — 1867. 
 
XXII. 
 
 THORVALDSEN. 
 
 In the month of September, 1838, a Danish frigate entered 
 the Sound between Sweden and Denmark, and, as there was 
 little wind, and that contrary, anchored off Helsingoer. The 
 next morning a steamer with deputations from both countries 
 came to welcome the frigate with all signs of rejoicing — flags, 
 and songs, and musical bands. This frigate, the Rota , had 
 been sent to Italy to fetch an exalted personage, who now 
 came to Denmark with a suite of attendants and sixty large 
 cases of luggage. Copenhagen was in a state of the utmost 
 excitement. The people were in such a fervid condition of 
 mind that they observed the phenomena of the sky with 
 a superstitious readiness to accept and interpret them as 
 omens. An aurora borealis shone in the heavens when the 
 frigate lay all night off Helsingoer, and when she became 
 visible to the inhabitants of Copenhagen it was under the arch 
 of a bright rainbow. A little fleet of boats, decorated with 
 flags, and bearing each one a deputation from some profession 
 or trade, went to meet the ship, and surrounded her. Two 
 gentlemen had been selected as spokesmen, and these mounted 
 the quarter-deck, where they expressed to the illustrious visitor 
 the delight of the Danish people at his arrival amongst them. 
 A gracious and even cordial reception and reply were given to 
 these gentlemen by the visitor, and at the same instant there 
 arose from the fleet of boats a hymn in his honour, composed 
 expressly for the occasion by a national poet. Then the 
 deputations in the boats climbed the ship’s side, and in an 
 instant crowded her decks from stem to stern. So great was 
 the number of people on board that accidents were feared, and 
 
332 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 the illustrious stranger was humbly entreated not to delay his 
 landing, on which he descended into a boat, which the little 
 fleet soon afterwards surrounded. Then the yards were 
 manned by the sailors, and the sailors cheered. And from the 
 crowded quays of Copenhagen rose a shout of answering 
 welcome that did not cease, but renewed itself continually. 
 On his landing, the visitor was received by a public body, and 
 when he stepped into his carriage the horses were unharnessed 
 and the people dragged it to the palace of Charlottenborg. 
 There, for a time, he was lost to the gaze of the multitude, 
 but the multitude clamoured for him, and he showed himself 
 on a balcony, on which thousands became half delirious with 
 joy. The square was so crowded, we are told, that the 
 equestrian statue of Christian V. seemed to swim in an 
 agitated sea, and boys hung in bunches from the gas-lamps. 
 The palace was garlanded with flowers, and at night there was 
 a procession with torches in honour of the hero of the day. 
 For many days afterwards he could get no rest; it was an 
 endless round of banquets and congratulation, and all the 
 inhabitants of the capital who had any claim to position 
 waited upon the visitor. The newspapers were full of him, 
 every minute detail of his existence was recorded, and every 
 morning brought him such quantities of letters, petitions, and 
 invitations, that he found it impossible to read them, and had 
 to employ a gentleman for the purpose. He had so many 
 crosses and stars that he made a little cabinet of them, and 
 showed them to his friends as one of his collections. He was 
 on terms of the greatest intimacy with persons of the most 
 exalted rank, and when the King of Denmark came to ask 
 him to dinner, he declined, without embarrassment, on account 
 of a previous engagement, setting aside the universal rule that 
 an invitation from the Sovereign cancels all others. 
 
 This illustrious personage, for whom a royal frigate was sent 
 to Italy, and who was received by a whole nation with as much 
 enthusiasm as if he had been its king, and a popular king too, 
 was a sculptor of the classical school, called Albert Thorvaldsen, 
 the son of a poor ship-carpenter in Copenhagen. No artist of 
 this century has been more famous. In comparison with his 
 celebrity,' that of Turner, for instance, was perfect obscurity. 
 This Thorvaldsen went from Copenhagen to Rome, and was 
 received in every city with public hospitality and rejoicing. 
 
THORVALDSEN. 
 
 333 
 
 If he passed near a court, the king invited him to his palace ; 
 if he passed near a seat of learning or the fine arts, deputa- 
 tions of savants or artists saluted him with flattery so unmea- 
 sured that the wonder is how he could endure to listen to it. 
 But he seems to have taken all this very easily, and on the 
 whole to have rather enjoyed it, though without much flutter 
 of vanity. . It would have turned the brain of any man of 
 Southern race ; but Thorvaldsen, thanks to his tough Northern 
 organization, bore it without any dangerous excitement. The 
 most curious fact about it is, when we think of it, that this man 
 was a sculptor, and that even of the cultivated classes not one 
 person in fifty knows anything whatever about sculpture, or can 
 tell first-rate from fifth-rate work when he sees it ; and if we 
 reflect further that a whole nation went mad about Thorvald- 
 sen, we may be sure that the proportion of his adorers who 
 adored on critical grounds must have been quite infinitesimally 
 small, perhaps one in five hundred. Human nature is a curious 
 study in many ways, and few of its peculiarities are more 
 astonishing than its capacity for feeling intense enthusiasm 
 about things of which it is absolutely ignorant, and will not 
 take the trouble to inform itself. The enthusiasm of all these 
 Danes about Thorvaldsen was strong enough to make them 
 shout and sing and drag his carriage through the streets of 
 Copenhagen, but it was not enough to make them study art and 
 ascertain for themselves the merits of the artist. All this they 
 found it easier to take for granted, and the faith which takes 
 things for granted was never more vigorously manifested. We 
 understand more easily a national madness about a soldier, or a 
 ruler, or a religious teacher; but to see a little Northern people, 
 usually remarkable for soberness and practical sense, going 
 almost out of its wits about a sculptor who imitated the antique, 
 is not this really extraordinary? If the Norwegians had a 
 national enthusiasm for Tidemand the painter, this would be 
 more intelligible, because he is Northern and national in feeling, 
 and painting is a far more popular art than sculpture ; but that 
 the Danes should have been so delighted with a maker of 
 pseudo-antique statues, however skilful the imitation, passes all 
 understanding. If they had known Thorvaldsen personally 
 very well, we might have attributed their adoration to a liking 
 for the man ; but they knew next to nothing about him, for he 
 had always been an absentee, and though, when he came back, 
 
334 
 
 THOUGHTS AT OUT ATT. 
 
 his long white hair and nice venerable look were of the greatest 
 use to him, still the enthusiasm was already at fever-point before 
 the white locks came in sight on the Rota. 
 
 The explanation of the Thorvaldsen mania in Denmark is 
 that Denmark is a small country, and felt itself elevated by the 
 European fame of one of its children. London takes the 
 celebrity of its artists more coolly than Copenhagen, but it is 
 fair to add that no artist born in London has ever yet achieved 
 a tithe of the continental glory of Thorvaldsen. How this 
 immense fame was acquired we already know. Like most of 
 the great officially recognized celebrities in modern art, Thor- 
 valdsen tied his little boat behind the good old ship the 
 Antique, and was towed triumphantly into port. There was a 
 time — and this sculptor had the good luck to establish himself 
 in Rome exactly at that time — when the princes and great 
 people in Europe were much interested in antique art. They 
 were not very particular about the quality of it ; they felt about 
 antique art generally a readiness to accept anything it had to 
 offer — something like the disposition of many country clergymen 
 in regard to Gothic, who have a reverence for pointed arches and 
 old tracery generally, and have not yet acquired the audacity to 
 discriminate between the good and bad art of the Middle Ages. 
 Thorvaldsen fell in with the humour of the time, and produced 
 works which entirely satisfied his patrons. They all seem to 
 have been perfectly delighted with him, except with his tardiness 
 in the delivery of work commissioned. He would accept any 
 quantity of commissions and establish any number of studios, 
 where he kept a staff of workmen constantly employed in 
 copying his clay models. He understood the art of economizing 
 his own labour, and worked but little in marble, retouching the 
 statues made by his workmen, but not carving much himself. 
 His view of the art of the sculptor was that unfortunately too 
 prevalent in modern times, that it consisted in making clay 
 models. Even in the clay itself Thorvaldsen found means of 
 availing himself of the labours of others. He often sketched 
 the subject roughly in clay, then entrusted it to one of his 
 subordinates to work up to a semi-finish, and retouched finally 
 himself. The quantity of 'work he left behind him would seem 
 inexplicably large if these facts were not taken into consider- 
 ation. It must also be remembered that his life was exception- 
 ally long and laborious. 
 
THORVALDSEN. 
 
 335 
 
 M. Plon’s biography is clearly and agreeably written, and we 
 have read it through with great interest. But it has not altered 
 the opinion of Thorvaldsen’s personal character which we had 
 formed from what was before known of him. M. Plon’s hero 
 is not a man whom we can either love or respect. There are 
 passages in his life which indicate a total absence of honour, 
 and a shameful lack of manly frankness and courage. A 
 Scottish lady, of good family, whose name, with utter w T ant 
 of delicacy, M. Plon gives in full, was unfortunate enough to 
 place her affections on the unworthy sculptor, who for a time 
 encouraged the belief that they were returned. When a 
 marriage between this lady and Thorvaldsen was considered 
 as settled — when everybody in Rome, and the lady's friends in 
 Scotland, talked of it publicly as a certainty — Thorvaldsen 
 suddenly deserted her to form a connection with a married 
 woman from Vienna, who lived in the same street and in the 
 opposite house, so that Miss — — had the mortification of 
 actually seeing him day after day going and coming from his 
 visits there. The delicacy of this piece of conduct is exactly 
 on a par with his arrangements with a mistress of his called 
 Anna Maria. This woman, who was a sort of superior lady’s- 
 maid at a house where Thorvaldsen visited, joined the amuse- 
 ments in which he also took part, and let him seduce her. Some 
 time afterwards, when she had already lived as his mistress, she 
 improved her social position by a marriage with a gentleman 
 who was much her superior in station, but, before the marriage, 
 actually made Thorvaldsen sign an agreement to provide for her 
 maintenance in case of a domestic rupture. This rupture 
 naturally took place when the unfortunate husband found out 
 his wife’s true character, and Thorvaldsen, in virtue of the 
 written agreement, found himself saddled with this woman, who 
 governed him imperiously for years after. The two connections, 
 with this Anna Maria and the Austrian lady, were going on 
 at the time when he ought to have married Miss — — . We 
 should like to know what became of Thorvaldsen’s poor old 
 parents during his prosperity at Rome. We have some recol- 
 lection that, according to another biographer, he allowed his old 
 father to be sent to an asylum. It is certain that, from the 
 time he left Copenhagen as a lad to the time when he came 
 back like a king in a royal ship, he never once either visited his 
 father and mother, or paid their expenses to Rome ; and they 
 
336 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 never set eyes on their son in the days of his celebrity, but 
 toiled on obscurely in their narrow life at Copenhagen. Surely 
 Thorvaldsen cannot have had a really noble nature, or he 
 would have found a deeper pleasure in making his parents 
 witnesses and sharers in his prosperity than in the friendship 
 of his greatest patrons. 
 
 It would be unjust, however, to paint this man’s character 
 entirely in foul colours. Much of his negligence of duty may 
 be attributable to absorption in his occupation, and to his utter 
 ignorance of everything but his trade. Readers who have 
 taken the trouble to study the uneducated classes must have 
 observed that they are less alive to certain forms of duty than 
 those above them, and, without. any intention of doing wrong, 
 they act often with what seems to us great hardness and indiffer- 
 ence. Now Thorvaldsen was always quite illiterate. A maker 
 of clay models, not a man of cultivated mind, he belonged all 
 his life to the uneducated classes. He acquired, by contact, 
 some colloquial use of other languages than his own, and, 
 from constantly mixing in society, some external polish of 
 manner sufficient for the external relations of life. But he 
 never had any delicacy. For instance, Mr. Hope, his first 
 patron, was the cause of all his success. Thorvaldsen was 
 leaving Rome in despair of ever doing anything there ; his 
 portmanteaus were packed, and all that hindered his departure 
 was a delay about a passport, when Mr. Hope saved him by a 
 generous and liberal commission. This was in the year 1803. 
 Long before Mr. Hope’s statue was finished the artist received 
 other orders, and though Mr. Hope had actually advanced 
 part of the price of the statue, and though he frequently wrote 
 about it, the statue was not delivered to him till the year 1828, 
 Thorvaldsen having executed a hundred things for others in 
 the interval. Now we think that conduct of this kind implies 
 a dulness of perception which is happily rare amongst edu- 
 cated men, but we are willing to admit, in palliation of it, 
 the artist’s absorption in other and pressing ideas, and the 
 torpidity of a mind never awakened by education to clear 
 notions of duty and honour. Nothing is said by M. Plon about 
 Thorvaldsen’s religious views. He was not a Christian, but 
 notwithstanding this he might have had a more admirable 
 character. Many honourable and just men, whose lives are 
 pure and whose ideal of duty is high, are unbelievers, and there 
 
THORVALDSEN. 
 
 33 
 
 are so many instances of this kind that we cannot admit 
 unbelief as an excuse for failure in duty. The too common 
 habit of S&ying, “ He was an infidel, therefore he was free to 
 do wrong, ;; has the tendency to emancipate sceptics them- 
 selves from the sense of duty and obligation. We would 
 rather remind them that, since so many of their number have 
 been capable of rectitude, they must all be held responsible 
 members of society. 
 
 Let us close this notice with a pleasant trait. Thorvaldsen, 
 in his utmost height of fame, never scorned poor people. At 
 the time of his full, ripe glory in Copenhagen he actually 
 wanted to eat with his servants, who were man and wife, in 
 order to save the woman the trouble of two services. He was 
 economical to parsimony, and his personal expenses were 
 trifling; but he was liberal in donations, and this liberality 
 had to be restrained and controlled by one of his friends, 
 who became a sort of secretary to him. It has been said that 
 he was fond of smoking and drinking ; but so, in a moderate 
 convivial way, are many excellent men, and an entire indiffer- 
 ence to these pleasures is usually the sign either of an unsocial 
 disposition or of indifferent health. There must have been 
 something personally attractive in Thorvaldsen, or he could 
 not have had so many and such kind friends. — 1868. 
 
 H 
 
 z 
 
XXIII. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ETCHING. 
 
 There is great need of a word in the English language, and, 
 so far as I know, in other languages also, which would express, 
 in a manner so perfectly courteous that nobody could take 
 offence at it, what we mean by the phrase, persons ignorant of 
 art . If we say “ the laity,” borrowing the old clerical form, we 
 are courteous, but we do not exactly say what we mean, because 
 a layman in this sense is merely a person who is not profes- 
 sionally an artist, and it does not follow that he is ignorant of 
 art. If, on the other hand, we plainly use the word “ ignorant,” 
 or any word which means the same thing, we seem to be 
 guilty of rudeness and contempt towards the immense majority 
 of the public, and an unfortunate impression is conveyed that 
 we are proud of our own superior knowledge, when in reality 
 we are simply aware of a difference which is the natural result 
 of a different employment of time and effort, and which, in all 
 other human occupations, is regarded by everyone as inevitable. 
 It is still more dangerous to use the word “ vulgar,” although 
 we may attach no contemptuous meaning to it, because in 
 ordinary conversation it is associated with the idea of ill- 
 breeding. 
 
 It might, perhaps, be permitted us to attempt the introduc- 
 tion of a term which has no associations of reproach. A 
 person ignorant of art might be called an “atechnic,” a man 
 not technically instructed. It is true that the word bears more 
 a practical than a theoretical sense, but this would not be a 
 reason for rejecting it, since the rudiments of critical know- 
 ledge can only be acquired practically, and no one ever saw 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ETCHING. 
 
 339 
 
 form or colour delicately enough to criticise well whose eye 
 had not been educated by practical artistic study. It would be 
 an awkward lengthening of the word to have to compound it 
 with yvuxTTiKOQ, so as to express connoisseurship. 
 
 In every fine art there is much which yis411egible by atechnics, 
 and this is due to the habits of interpretation into which artists 
 always fall, and which grow upon them with the increase of 
 their culture. For reasons which have already been explained 
 by the best English and Continental writers upon art in books 
 which are widely circulated, and which it is unnecessary to 
 quote, the fine arts are less imitative than interpretative, and 
 the nobler the artist the more frankly interpretative he is. 
 Now, there is always, in artistic interpretation, a considerable 
 element of conventionalism; the artist begins with a set of 
 postulates of which the simplest and most familiar is the 
 postulate about the line, which might be worded thus : “ Let it 
 be granted that the line, though it does not exist in nature, may 
 be admitted in art for the sake of the forms which may be 
 defined by it. ; ’ A liberal criticism is always willing to grant all 
 the postulates which may be necessary to the free development 
 of an art. In oil-painting there is an important postulate 
 about light — “ Let it be granted that white lead may mean the 
 highest sunlight ;” and there are also other postulates about 
 colour, which might easily be expressed, if they did not carry 
 us somewhat beyond the subject of this paper. 
 
 Etching may be defined as the stenography of artistic 
 thought, and there exists in etching an amount of conven- 
 tionalism scarcely less than that which exists in all other 
 stenographies. But as there are good and bad stenographies, 
 so there are good and bad styles in etching, and these may 
 be distinguished by reason, aided by artistic perception and 
 experience. Very many systems of shorthand writing have 
 been invented, and it may appear to persons who have not 
 studied shorthand — to persons who, as regards shorthand, are 
 atechnics — that it is not easy to decide which is the best; 
 whereas, since all the systems of shorthand aim only at two 
 results, and at the same two results — namely, to be as rapid as 
 possible and as legible as possible — and since, in compliance 
 with the first of these, only the very simplest lines and the very 
 simplest curves are admissible, the question of relative merit 
 narrows itself to one of intelligent combination ; and, after 
 
 z 2 
 
340 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 comparing several systems of shorthand, it is easy to see which 
 system answers its purpose best. In the same way, since 
 etching proposes to itself the rapid autographic rendering of 
 artistic thought, the best manner in etching, the manner most 
 in conformity with reason, is that which combines the maximum 
 of speed with the maximum of expressional clearness, so that 
 it may be written off whilst the thought is fresh and vivid, and 
 easily read afterwards by the author of it, and by anyone else 
 who has learned to read that kind of artistic writing. All waste 
 of labour, any movement of the hand which is not necessary 
 to the expression of the thought, is a departure from the ideal 
 of the art. But however good and legible an etching may be, 
 it cannot be legible unless we have learned to read it — unless, 
 that is, we have acquired by practice the powder of seeing at 
 once through the sign employed the idea signified by it. A 
 time comes ultimately when the sign suggests the natural fact 
 or the artistic idea so instantaneously that we come to look 
 upon the two as inseparable, and cease to be aware of the 
 conventionalism of the sign. As Blake declared that he 
 looked through his corporeal eye, and not with it, so it is not 
 an exaggeration to say that we look through the hurried lines 
 of artistic shorthand, and not at them. For the shorthand in 
 itself is nothing, we care only for the meaning of it. Where the 
 atechnic sees a few irregular horizontal lines at the top of a 
 piece of paper, the artist, by instantaneous association of the 
 sign with the thing signified, beholds the serene sky ; where 
 the atechnic sees an undecipherable medley of scrawls and 
 scratches, the artist reads the glory of a sunset amongst the 
 illuminated clouds. The tenderest and noblest poetry leaves 
 us cold if we have never learned the characters in which it is 
 written, and good etching* is the poetry of drawing, written 
 down rapidly in shorthand. 
 
 It may seem incredible that an art so inoffensive and un- 
 popular should have enemies, but the present writer has known 
 many instances in which fine etchings have appeared to give 
 offence, and it is sometimes not quite safe to confess that they 
 afford you pleasure. If you say you enjoy certain plates of 
 the more rapid and abstract kind, atechnics often consider that 
 you make such professions from an affectation of superior 
 knowledge, and they do not altogether like you for it. A 
 certain amount of circumspection is necessary in the avowal 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ETCHING . 
 
 34i 
 
 of your preferences : for instance, there are plates of Rem- 
 brandt, and some of Whistler and Jongkind, which a collector 
 wise in his generation would refrain from exhibiting to atechnics. 
 They have an uneasy suspicion that you are amusing yourself 
 at their expense when you say that these things are of fine 
 quality. If you venture to say so in/^rmt, and your book or 
 article should fall into the hands of some thoroughly atechnic 
 reviewer, he will treat you as the victim of monomania. 
 
 The explanation of our liking for such art as that is, how- 
 ever, very simple, and ought to be intelligible even to persons 
 who do not find the art itself intelligible to them. It is merely 
 a question of time given, and of excellence attainable within 
 the limits of the time. If you give a month to a piece of 
 work, you do not set about it in the same way as you would if 
 you had only a week to do it in ; and if you have only a day, 
 or an hour, or twenty minutes, you will adopt a different system 
 of expression, according to the time you have to give. Now, 
 the best plates of Jongkind are admirable as a very summary 
 statement of an impression ; there may be an hour’s work in 
 the most elaborate of them, others may have been done in half 
 an hour, or twenty minutes, or ten. Landscape-painters are all 
 in the habit of taking memoranda which must be very rapid, 
 because the effects of nature pass so rapidly ; and the landscape- 
 painter is obliged to write artistic shorthand to make his reports, 
 just as a reporter in the House of Commons is obliged to write 
 in stenography. The best artistic shorthand is that which 
 notes an impression most perfectly in the time given. The 
 portfolios of landscape-painters are full of memoranda which 
 to atechnics would be quite as unintelligible as the most 
 hurried etchings of Rembrandt or Jongkind ; but artists do 
 not exhibit these — they translate them into the more intelligible 
 form of elaborate painting that the atechnics may read them 
 easily, as they read the copied reports in the newspapers when 
 they could not have read the original shorthand report made in 
 the gallery of the House. 
 
 It does not follow that we prefer these rapid notes, where 
 form itself has often to be sacrificed to the exigencies of 
 rapidity, to drawings of highly elaborated truth ; and it is an 
 unjust misrepresentation of our views to describe us as espe- 
 cially partial to the slight and the incomplete, and indifferent 
 to the noble works of art which have been slowly biought to 
 
342 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 perfection by the efforts of months or years. All that we say 
 is, that this rapid and abstract art is good and valuable in its 
 own kind, and that it has certain special qualities and utilities of 
 its own which do not belong to. the arts of elaboration. It is 
 amongst the arts as amongst the characters of men — you have 
 the rapid and decisive characters, and the slow, patient charac- 
 ters. It would be a very narrow view of humanity which 
 would desire to see either of the two suppressed, since each 
 kind is good for uses of its own. And so it would be a narrow 
 view of the fine arts which would desire the suppression either 
 of the art which swiftly notes impressions, or of that which 
 patiently elaborates them. In fact, there exists between the 
 two a certain interdependence. The power of making a swift 
 and comprehensive syntheses must be preceded by elaborate 
 analytical study, whilst, on the other hand, the picture which it 
 takes years to execute must be founded upon a synthetic con- 
 ception. An art critic who sees the arts in their just relations 
 would be the very last person to deny the value of analysis in 
 study. No man ever executed a fine synthetic etching without 
 having gone through the most patient analysis ; and when 
 atechnic reviewers accuse us of being carried away by an 
 especial enthusiasm for etching which blinds us to the value of 
 elaborated work in other arts, they little know how large a 
 share analysis must have in the education of the swiftest 
 aquafortists. 
 
 The question whether elaborate or summary expression 
 needs the higher artistic accomplishment is answered in oppo- 
 site ways by different artists and theorists, and is, indeed, one 
 of those questions which seem equally to suggest two opposite 
 solutions. We will endeavour to state the arguments on both 
 sides with equal force. 
 
 It may be argued that elaborate expression requires greater 
 knowledge, because the mere elaboration or finish is in itself 
 the adding of more truth. For instance, if you take a rapid 
 etching or other memorandum from nature, and paint a picture 
 from it, you have to add more form, you have to add many 
 subdivisions of light and dark, and you have to add colour. 
 A picture, therefore, it may be argued, contains all that an 
 etching of the same subject and equal quality contains, whilst 
 it also contains much more, and, therefore, to produce it 
 greater knowledge and ability are needed. This is the view 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF- ETCHING. 
 
 343 
 
 most generally received, not only by atechnics, but by many 
 artists and by some critics. 
 
 On the other hand, it may be argued, that since an etching is 
 an abstract or epitome of nature, for which greater power of 
 selection is needed, the mere exercise of selection, if thoroughly 
 well done, implies a certain mental Superiority ; and that this 
 faculty of selection being less needed in elaborate work, and 
 hardly exercised at all in very imitative and literal painting (of 
 which we have had much in England), the elaborate art may 
 in a certain sense be less noble than the abstract art. This 
 idea may be readily illustrated from literature. Suppose that a 
 publisher gave a commission to a man of letters to compile a 
 catalogue of all extant ancient Greek writings, the w r ork would 
 be laborious and the list would be long ; but suppose that he 
 gave a commission to another man of letters to make extracts 
 from Greek literature illustrating some especial subject, as, for 
 instance, Greek religious sentiment, and to group these extracts 
 so as to make them throw the utmost possible light upon each 
 other, would not the work here be of a higher kind, merely 
 because the faculty of synthetic selection was called into play ? 
 The two views may be expressed with great brevity. Accord- 
 ing to the first, elaboration is greater than summary expression, 
 as needing more knowledge ; and according to the second, the 
 summary expression is greater, as needing equal knowledge and 
 more selection. 
 
 The truth is, that to make any summary really well, we must 
 know a great deal more than can be visibly set down in it ; and 
 the knowledge of nature and art possessed by an accomplished 
 etcher must always be much vaster in bulk than the concentrated 
 essence he gives us. The difference between the critic and the 
 atechnic lies in this — that the one infers the masses of know- 
 ledge from which the abstract has been made, and that the 
 other does not infer them. 
 
 It seems to us a very erroneous view to consider a good 
 etching as merely the rude skeleton of a work of art. It is not 
 a skeleton, but a resume. The difference between the two 
 things may be illustrated from the practice of sculpture. 
 Before a sculptor makes a statue he makes a sketch of the 
 complete idea in modelling clay, and afterwards, for the larger 
 and elaborated model, a framework or skeleton of iron is set 
 up. Etchings do not answer to this rigid and formless skeleton, 
 
344 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 they answer to the first little model — the synthetic expression 
 of the entire and living idea. 
 
 The necessity for rapidity in etching presupposes that the 
 idea is quite ripe for expression. If the hand goes faster 
 than the thought, the work will fail in the direction of unmean- 
 ing mannerism ; if, on the other hand, the hand waits for the 
 thought, and the thought comes too slowly, the work may be 
 delicate and careful, but it can hardly have the look of free 
 and passionate inspiration, which is the glory of first-rate 
 etching. Now, there are many excellent and admirable artists 
 who come by their beautiful thoughts in dwelling upon them, 
 and to whom, therefore, slowness and even hesitation in 
 execution are necessary. The method which is natural and 
 right for them is elaboration, and consequently it may be wise 
 in them to abstain from the etching-needle. We do not wish 
 to imply that etching is above them, we mean only that it is 
 unsuitable for them. In the same way there are authors who 
 can write a powerful book, but cannot make an effective speech. 
 Many of the best painters have etched very indifferently, or not 
 at all. 
 
 In speaking of etching as a kind of artistic shorthand, we 
 are quite aware that much might be said to prove that the 
 process is also available for elaboration. For instance, several 
 members of the English school have produced plates which are 
 highly elaborate, and, in their way, very beautiful, especially 
 Samuel Palmer (of whose exquisite art I would always speak 
 with deep respect), Frederick Tayler, and Hook. But it seems 
 to me that in this they have not insisted upon the especial and 
 peculiar power of the art, and might have expressed their 
 thoughts equally well in some other way. Then, again, there 
 is that wonderful man, Jules Jacquemart, who has carried a 
 refined kind of imitation so far in etching as to refute 
 triumphantly the popular notion that etching cannot give light 
 and dark properly, and is not suitable for delicate drawing ; 
 but still, perhaps Jules Jacquemart may have quitted, in some 
 degree, the ground which peculiarly belongs to etching. It 
 may be said that we are somewhat arbitrary and narrow in 
 desiring to define etching as shorthand, since it is capable of 
 just as much elaboration as any other kind of engraving, but 
 the question always is, with reference to an artistic product, 
 Could it be done in any other way ? If it could, it is not 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ETCHING , . 
 
 345 
 
 genuine in its own kind. A pure and genuine etching cannot 
 be imitated by any other process whatever, and the ideas and 
 feelings expressed in it could not be so clearly expressed 
 otherwise. 
 
 The atechnic reader is respectfully informed, that what is 
 said here 1 of etching does not refer to Dry Point, which is quite 
 a distinct art, though often made auxiliary to etching in the 
 progress of a plate. A very ludicrous instance of the blunders 
 made by atechnic reviewers occurred a little time ago in a 
 Scotch paper, where an illustration to a recent work on the art 
 was criticised as an etching, — the fact being that there was not 
 an etched line in it from beginning to end. In Dry Point the 
 needle encounters great resistance from the metal which it has 
 to cut. In etching it encounters no resistance, for here it has 
 to cut nothing but a coat of varnish of the utmost possible 
 tenuity, the copper being afterwards bitten by acid. Conse- 
 quently etching is a much freer art than Dry Point, and nobody 
 who knows the difference between them will expect the same 
 qualities from both. 
 
 It might have interested us to trace the probable effects of 
 the revival of etching upon the practice of oil-painting, but for 
 the present this subject must be reserved. It may, however, 
 be remarked that painting generally is becoming more synthetic, 
 and rather more simple and direct in expression, than it was a 
 few years ago. Nevertheless, artists will always be constitu- 
 tionally divided into two classes, the men who resume their 
 knowledge in rapid and direct work (however slowly and 
 painfully they may acquire that knowledge), and the men who 
 hesitate and linger in execution, and find that the longer they 
 linger over a work the better it becomes. This difference 
 being, as I said, constitutional, will divide artists into two 
 camps so long as the world endures. Let us hope that the 
 progress of a truly philosophical art-culture may enable each 
 to see the merits of the other. . The best etchers will always 
 belong to one of these classes ; the other may produce, as it 
 does to-day, painters of admirable refinement, and engravers of 
 astonishing industry and skill. — 1869. 
 
 1 And elsewhere by the same writer. 
 
346 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 Etching is a most exceptional art in some respects ; there is 
 certainly no other product of human labour, except poetry, of which 
 it is so difficult to foresee the condition in any future time, imme- 
 diate or remote. It will add to the clearness of what I have to 
 say on this subject, if I begin by establishing a distinction which is 
 more necessary in these times than it has ever been before. We 
 have now a school of etchers in France, founded chiefly by Leopold 
 Flameng, though Jules Jacquemart and others have worked inde- 
 pendently in the same spirit ; and the purpose of this school is to 
 interpret pictures upon copper by the processes of etching, in a 
 more spirited and artistic manner, in a manner more perfectly in 
 sympathy with the feeling of the painters, than was ever possible 
 with the rigidities of line-engraving. These etchers work with 
 considerable certainty and regularity, and, amongst other things 
 they do, they keep the Gazette des Beaux Arts richly supplied with 
 plates which often render pictures most intelligently. This school 
 does not contain a single member who is at the same time known 
 to the public and yet inefficient as a practical workman with 
 aquafortis upon copper. All these men can draw, to begin with, 
 and at the same time they are all able to do what they want with 
 the copper, to make it yield that truth and harmony of tone as well 
 as line without which it is wholly impossible to interpret an oil- 
 painting satisfactorily. Flameng, Jacquemart, Rajon, Boilvin, Le 
 Rat, Hedouin, Greux, Courtry, Laguillermie, and others are all 
 efficient workmen in this kind of engraving ; and there appears to 
 be no reason why their school should not be indefinitely extended, 
 for theirs is an art that can be taught and learned , if only the pupil 
 has the capacity to see and understand what is essential in fine 
 art, a capacity not exceedingly rare in any highly civilized European 
 nation, certainly not rare in France. These then are the engraver- 
 etchers, working from pictures painted by other men, and nearly 
 always either in full tone or at least with a serious attempt to reach 
 it. These men work with certainty, and if a publisher gives them 
 commissions he may indulge in reasonable hopes that they will be 
 executed. But, on the other hand, there is a class of etchers who 
 attempt to produce original work in which the main purpose is the 
 expression of some strong sentiment concerning life and nature, and 
 here we find, instead of the teachableness of a trade, the incommu- 
 nicability of an inborn gift ; instead of a reliable professional skill, a 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ETCHING . 
 
 347 
 
 discouraging uncertainty about results ; so that the artist himself 
 cannot tell whether or not the day’s work may be worth anything 
 when it is done. And, what is still more strange, it does not 
 appear that etchers of this class either improve their workmanship 
 by practice, or become any surer of their expression. Their power 
 is a subtle charm, dependent upon a profound inexplicable harmony 
 between a state of feeling and the subject which partly causes it 
 and partly modifies it, and which in its turn is altered and trans- 
 figured by the temporary condition of the mind. Etching of this 
 kind is really one of the forms of poetry, and it need not much 
 surprise us that it cannot be produced to order ; for who even 
 amongst the most skilful and most cultivated poets has ever been 
 able to produce good poetry in that manner ? When Byron was 
 sailing with Trelawny they came in sight of the islet of Lonza, at 
 that time occupied as a prison by the Neapolitan Government. 
 Byron became savage at the tyranny of the “ jailers and hangmen 
 of the detestable Austrian barbarians.” Seeing him in a fine 
 passion, Trelawny thought it a good time for the production of 
 indignant poetry, handed him a pencil and paper, guarded him 
 from interruption, and awaited the result. The result was nothing 
 but doggerel, which Byron of course perceived, and said, “ Poetry is 
 a distinct faculty — it won’t come when called. You may as well 
 whistle for a wind! And so it is with that kind of etching which, 
 like verse, is a medium of poetic expression. You may prepare 
 yourself by study so as to make success just possible for you, but 
 you can never count upon success — no, not even in the perfection of 
 your life and strength. It may come to you from time to time, but 
 never at your bidding. You might as well whistle for a wind. 
 
 It appears to be inevitable also that in the etching which is 
 used by men of genius as an expression of their personal thought 
 and feeling, there should be a certain capriciousness or wilfulness 
 of treatment. They may give you strangely powerful suggestions of 
 light-and-shade, but their chiaroscuro is almost always arbitrary, 
 and they rely mainly upon the free and significant use of the line, 
 by which I do not mean outline, merely, but the organic markings 
 wherever they may happen to occur. And even in the drawing of 
 the selected lines which they do give there is always a certain 
 inaccuracy, which inaccuracy is an essential part of their personal 
 expression. There is the same difference between artistic etching 
 and accomplished mechanical engraving that there is between the 
 rapid handwriting of a cultivated author and the skilled engraving 
 
348 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 of the letters on a bank-note. The qualities of autograph would be 
 sacrificed if mechanical exactness had to be attained at all costs ; 
 and there is this difference between literature and etching, that 
 whereas in literature the thought of the author is seen even more 
 clearly in type than in his own handwriting, it is not so in etching 
 or in any kind of drawing, for here the autograph is a mental 
 expression in itself. 
 
 The future of etching will probably be something of this kind. 
 The school of etchers who copy pictures will become a recognized 
 and rather important part of the. art-life of Europe, but there can 
 never be any regular production of original and poetic etching. 
 From time to time some original etcher will appear, and be duly 
 appreciated by a small but highly cultivated public, as Mr. Seymour 
 Haden in England, Charles Jacque in France, or M. Charles Storm 
 de Gravesande in Holland and Belgium ; but the regular demand 
 can never be supplied by men of this rarer quality, nor will such 
 men produce with anything like commercial regularity. They will 
 appear from time to time just as poets do, in an unaccountable 
 way, and work quite irregularly, as poets always have worked and 
 always must. 
 
 Before quitting this subject let me answer an imputation which 
 has occasionally been made upon me by reviewers. It has been 
 implied or affirmed, in different periodicals, that I had an unrea- 
 soning enthusiasm in favour of etching — a sort of passion which 
 had taken possession of me during the last year or two, which 
 made me incapable of seeing my favourite pursuit in its true rela- 
 tion to other branches of the fine arts. Now, the truth -is, that from 
 the earliest dawn of any artistic perception in my mind, the merits 
 of this art have always been sufficiently clear to me for a sincerely 
 respectful appreciation of it, that my first plate was etched in boy- 
 hood, and that I have been attracted to the art ever since by those 
 great and valuable qualities which, in their combination, are quite 
 peculiar to it. I may however confess, and do so willingly, that 
 my respect for etching has always steadily increased in exact pro- 
 portion with my knowledge of it, and has never been so great or 
 so well founded as it is to-day. For of all the forms of art which 
 can be multiplied, etching is the only one which is at the same time 
 perfectly autographic, and yet capable of liberty, delicacy, and 
 strength, each in its utmost perfection. There are dozens of pro- 
 cesses which profess to reproduce the work of artists with exact- 
 ness, there is not a single one of all these processes, etching alone 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ETCHING. 
 
 349 
 
 excepted, which can copy a drawing that is both free, and strong, 
 and delicate, without sacrificing some one of these three qualities. 
 These are not questions of taste, merely, they are assertions capa- 
 ble of demonstration. It may be easily and briefly demonstrated, 
 to anybody not too ignorant to comprehend an argument on a 
 question of practical fine art, that the scale of etching from bass 
 to treble far exceeds the scale of woodcut, and of all the processes 
 which have been invented to supersede woodcut, and it is equally 
 easy to show that etching far exceeds burin-work of all kinds in 
 artistic liberty. The plain truth, indeed, is this, that every thorough 
 artist , I mean every man who has at the same time knowledge 
 enough, and feeling enough, to draw as artists draw and to care for 
 what artists value, will find himself brought to etching quite ine- 
 vitably, so soon as he desires to print a drawing by his own hand. 
 He may believe in other processes first, and come to etching after 
 many disappointments ; but when at last he does come to etching, 
 he will always discover that no failure can be attributed to the 
 process, that all he desires to do has been done thoroughly by some 
 master of the art, and that whereas in other processes disappoint- 
 ments have been caused by the imperfections of chemical or 
 mechanical invention, here, in this art of etching, they are always 
 due to insufficient mastery on the part of the artist, and to this 
 cause alone. — 1873. 
 
XXIV. 
 
 AMATEUR PAINTERS. 
 
 I. 
 
 Two very strong prejudices have long existed, side by side, 
 with reference to the practitioners of the fine arts. It has, 
 until very recently, been a received idea that an artist could not 
 possibly be a gentleman, and it has also been a received idea 
 that a gentleman could not possibly be an artist. In this way 
 the word “ artist” conveyed to the genteel mind an idea 
 equivalent to “cad” or “snob,” and the word “amateur” 
 conveyed the idea of futile idleness. The consequences of 
 these two prejudices were, that a man could not paint at all 
 without incurring a certain amount of contempt (varying with 
 the intensity of the prejudice), for either he was an artist and 
 therefore a snob, or else he was an amateur and therefore an 
 idle pretender to knowledge which it was not possible for a 
 gentleman to possess. 
 
 Now, it may be frankly admitted, to begin with, that there 
 existed strong foundations for these prejudices in the visible 
 facts of life. In point of fact, artists very seldom were 
 gentlemen, and amateurs very generally were futile triflers. 
 The artists were (almost without an exception) men of very 
 humble birth, and they remained illiterate ; whilst, on the other 
 hand, the amateurs were uneducated in art, and they never 
 acquired knowledge enough to make their pursuit of it intel- 
 lectually respectable. But it is easy to show that in this 
 instance, as in many others, the facts which went so far to 
 justify the prejudice were to a great degree the product or 
 consequence of the prejudice itself. Since it was considered 
 settled that an artist could not be a gentleman, men of gentle 
 
AMATEUR PAINTERS. 
 
 351 
 
 birth who were naturally endowed with gifts of the artistic 
 order did not venture to give themselves the benefit of a 
 regular training by openly entering the profession. On the 
 other hand, though amateurship was permitted to gentlemen as 
 a sort of safety-valve for artistic talent, the received idea that 
 amateur art was merely an idle pastime, and could not be 
 anything else, tended very effectually to make it so by steadily 
 discouraging, in amateurs, the idea of study, and by encourag- 
 ing ideas of specious facility and prettiness. The influence of 
 the people who surround us, even when we really attach little 
 importance to their opinions, is always very great. When an 
 amateur is surrounded by people who look upon his pursuit as 
 idleness, it is hard for him to make it anything else than idle- 
 ness ; when a man pursues a difficult study, whether in art or 
 in anything else, he needs either some degree of rational 
 appreciation of his effort in the people who surround him, or 
 else, the secrecy of absolute retirement. The amateur painter 
 had neither the one nor the other. The influences that sur- 
 rounded him were unfavourable, and he could not escape from 
 these influences. Literary studies may be pursued in great 
 privacy, and this is one of their great charms and advantages : 
 if you desire to read or write, you may shut the door of some 
 private cabinet and work in uninterrupted peace ; people 
 don’t come in and look over your shoulder, and give their 
 opinion upon your unfinished essay or translation. But the 
 student of painting is differently situated. The majority of 
 amateur artists have hitherto usually been landscape-painters ; 
 and when they study out of doors, their friends look at their 
 work in its progress and give their opinion, and, in short, 
 exercise a sort of influence which is sure to be disturbing, and 
 is generally sufficient to put the amateur out of the student- 
 state of mind altogether. It unfortunately happens that a 
 painter can talk, or listen, and paint at the same time, so 
 friends come into the amateur’s study at home, and chat with 
 him as they do when they meet with him in the fields. Who 
 are these friends ? The friends of an amateur are usually 
 persons in society who share whatever ideas may happen to 
 be most prevalent at the time, and when the prevalent idea is 
 the futility of amateur effort they surround their friend with 
 this idea, and, as it were, bathe him in it, and paralyse him. 
 The success of all labour, and especially of pure study, 
 
352 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 depends upon states or conditions of the mind quite as much 
 as upon mental power. In a certain state of mind a man will 
 study steadily and effectively, when in another state he, the 
 same man, with the same mental powers and physical energies, 
 will study inefficiently ; and the wonderful and lamentable 
 thing is that such very subtle, such almost inappreciable, 
 influences are sufficient to throw us out of the efficient mental 
 state into the inefficient mental state. The reader has often, 
 no doubt, read about the manias of authors and musical com- 
 posers — how one great novelist wrote best in a magnificent 
 white robe, with a girdle of gold chains and utensils of pure 
 gold : how another closed the shutters and lighted the candles 
 in the daytime ; how a third lay in bed to write ; how a great 
 musician dressed for his hours of solitary labour as if he were 
 going to Court ; and a hundred such instances of habits which 
 had somehow connected themselves with certain mental states 
 so as to have become necessary to the production of those 
 mental states. But of all such influences there is not one so 
 powerful, I may say so irresistible, as the companionship of 
 living men. The doctrine which M. Taine has so steadily en- 
 forced, that the artist is the product of his time — of his century 
 and country — is true ; but in another and closer, and I think 
 much more terrible sense, we are acted upon by the people 
 who immediately surround us ; and the worst of it is, that 
 the people can influence us in regard to matters about which 
 they know absolutely nothing whatever. The people about you 
 may know nothing about art, yet influence your practice, as an 
 artist ; and they may do this by their very ignorance itself, by 
 gradually deepening the conviction in your mind that it is of no 
 use to strive for a higher expression, since the higher your ex- 
 pression the less it seems to be understood ; and that it is useless 
 to toil for knowledge, since the more you know the more the 
 gulf widens between you and the human sympathies you value. 
 
 The fatal way in which a strong social prejudice can bring 
 about such a state of things as will seem to justify it may be 
 illustrated by a hypothesis. I suppose there is no body of men 
 in the world more generally accepted as gentlemen than clergy- 
 men of the Church of England, and there is certainly no body 
 equally numerous which has fairer claims to such consideration. 
 But, if society were to come to hold now, with reference to 
 clergymen, the view which it formerly held about painters, that 
 
AMATEUR PAINTERS. 
 
 353 
 
 view would justify itself in two generations. The consequence 
 of a general prejudice against the clerical profession would be 
 a rapid lowering of its intellectual and social standards, and 
 clergymen would soon become, what painters were, illiterate 
 men of humble birth. So with the studies which clergymen 
 have followed as an introduction to their profession, and which 
 other gentlemen have followed for their own sake, the usual 
 university course of classics and mathematics ; if it were 
 generally believed (as it used to be believed of painting) that 
 these studies could not be seriously followed otherwise than 
 professionally, the consequence would be that they would not 
 be seriously followed otherwise than professionally. The beliefs 
 of large societies bring about their own fulfilment. 
 
 The difference between society generally and the small think- 
 ing class on questions of this kind, lies here, that society uses 
 “ are not ” and “ cannot be ” as convertible terms, whilst the 
 small thinking class does not. It was true that amateurs were 
 not serious students of art, but it was not true that they could 
 not be. Setting aside the evil influence of constant com- 
 panionship with people who did not take them au strieux , the 
 amateurs had fair opportunities for culture. They lost and 
 neglected their opportunities ; but they had them, if they had 
 known how to make use of them. 
 
 The prejudices which severed artists from society, and 
 divided amateurs from artists, are now happily very much 
 weakened, and they grow weaker and weaker every day. 
 Many artists are accomplished gentlemen, and are acknow- 
 ledged to be so by everyone not behind his age ; and at the 
 same time, not a few amateurs have attained a degree of solid 
 acquirement in practical art equal to that usually reached by 
 members of the artistic profession. The number of clevei 
 amateurs who exhibit at the French saloii increases every year, 
 and it is not too much to say that no critic, however acute, 
 could pick out the amateur from the professional works with- 
 out the aid of the catalogue. Again, there is a considerable 
 intermediate class between amateurs and professional painters, 
 a class of men who study art seriously, who exhibit, and who 
 are willing to sell when the opportunity offers, but who, being 
 independent in fortune, do not paint for the market. The 
 present writer has amongst his friends several artists of this 
 class, whose works are received in the principal exhibitions. 
 
 H A A 
 
354 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 One such painter achieved a great and deserved reputation, 
 and became an Associate of the Academy. Another, in France, 
 lately received the decoration of the Legion of Honour. 
 These men, a generation since, would have been prevented 
 from serious work by the prejudices of the world. Several 
 amateurs have lately distinguished themselves as etchers. • 
 
 Nothing is more desirable for art than the extension of 
 a serious practical amateurship, and I hope to show that ama- 
 teurship of this kind is always attainable, even when the 
 amateur has little time at his disposal. It is merely a ques- 
 tion of going farther or not so far, but every amateur may 
 study seriously so far as he has time to go. And when the 
 amateur is master of his own time, as so many men in this rich 
 nation are, there is no reason inherent in the fact that he does 
 not work for money which need prevent him from studying 
 as profitably, and painting as well, as professional painters 
 whose natural gifts are no better than his own. Indeed, it is 
 easy to prove that an independent amateur is more advan- 
 tageously situated for study than a painter who has to be 
 continually thinking about the money his work must bring. 
 
 ii. 
 
 When a notion has long held possession of the popular 
 mind, it will usually be found that it is not altogether without 
 a raison d'etre . It might be argued in favour of the two 
 
 notions above mentioned that artists are illiterate because 
 art is in itself a pursuit so absorbing that it draws off all the 
 energies which are necessary to culture of other kinds. It 
 might also be argued that art requires such labour and such 
 devotion as no amateur would give even if he could, such as 
 certainly no amateur can give who has anything else to do. 
 Or, to put this idea in another form, a man can be a real 
 painter only on condition of giving himself up to painting 
 entirely, therefore a real painter must be ignorant of everything 
 else ; and if an amateur has the knowledge of another profes- 
 sion, or even the common accomplishments of society, he 
 cannot be a real painter. 
 
 There is a great deal of truth in this, but it is an exaggera- 
 tion of the truth, and the prejudices which are based upon 
 the idea would be justified only if it could be accepted without 
 
AMATEUR PAINTERS. 
 
 355 
 
 deduction. It is true that painting makes large drafts on the 
 time and energy of a man, but it is not true that a man cannot 
 be a painter without sacrificing the whole of his time and the 
 whole of his energy to that art. Consider a little the lives of 
 the great painters, how variously accomplished some of the 
 very best of them have been — men learned in the learning of 
 their time, in one distinguished instance so far transcending it 
 that the most learned men of our own age have acknowledged 
 with wondering reverence the debts of the sciences to the 
 far-reaching intellect of Leonardo. And, setting painting 
 altogether aside, how few gentlemen are as fully accomplished 
 in their own accomplishments as Rubens was. He was not 
 illiterate ; he was not deficient in the graces of manner. 
 Considering his education purely from a literary point of view, 
 his knowledge of languages and books was more than respect- 
 able ; whilst in knowledge of the world, and in that kind of 
 mental sharpening and polish which comes of intercourse with 
 mankind, he was considered good enough for delicate diplomatic 
 work, which is saying all that can be said. It is useless to 
 argue this point farther, because it is a well-known and gene- 
 rally admitted fact, that the artists of the great time were 
 remarkable for the variety of their accomplishments. In our 
 own day several instances of the same variety have occurred. 
 For example, Dyce, whose attainments were such that another 
 man of extraordinarily large culture called him “ the mortally 
 omniscient ; ” and Leighton, whose knowledge of modern lan- 
 guages and of music is unusually thorough and complete. 
 Ingres played the violin well from his youth; at the age of 
 thirteen he performed with success a concerto of Viotti at a 
 public festival at the theatre of Toulouse. Eugene Delacroix 
 wrote admirable French ; Leslie wrote admirable English. I 
 could mention a living English sculptor whose range of 
 scientific and literary acquirement is as much beyond an 
 ordinary university education as the university education is 
 itself beyond the knowledge of a young lady leaving school. 
 If his knowledge of art and his manual skill were taken away 
 from him to-morrow, his remaining intellectual possessions 
 would still leave him intellectually very rich. Many other 
 instances will occur to readers who have friends amongst the 
 higher class of artists. Woolner wrote one of the most 
 beautiful of modern English poems ; Dante Rossetti is one of 
 
 A A 2 
 
35 & 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 the most accomplished living poets. The only English- 
 man the present writer ever met who could speak thoroiighly 
 good French is a painter, and painters are more frequently 
 acquainted with modern languages than men in other pro- 
 fessions. 
 
 The argument from the accomplishments of painters, in 
 favour of amateurship is obvious. If an artist can be an 
 educated gentleman, an educated gentleman can be an artist, 
 if he has the natural faculty. It has been proved by many 
 instances that the pursuit of art is ^/incompatible with culture 
 of other kinds, and the idea that it is so furnished the strongest 
 weapon to the hands of the old prejudices. If the idea of 
 the incompatibility of art-culture with other culture were true — 
 if it were necessary, in order to draw well or paint well, to be 
 in all other respects utterly uneducated, no reasonable person 
 would purchase art-culture at such a cost as that. It would 
 not be worth the sacrifice. To take a very extreme instance : 
 if any well-educated gentleman consented to become Turner — 
 that is, to become a great painter utterly illiterate — he would 
 make a fool's bargain. It would be like exchanging all the 
 useful furniture in one’s house for a gilt chair. Let us have 
 what is necessary first, let us be able to spell and read easily, 
 let us know the thoughts of great men in their own language ; 
 after that, let us educate our own eyes in the refinements of 
 seeing. 
 
 The argument that an amateur with leisure at his command 
 has not time to study painting seriously may be met by the 
 reply, that since many painters have painted well in their youth 
 it does not need a lifetime to learn the manual practice of the 
 art. It appears to cost about seven years’ labour, when the 
 whole time is given, being equivalent to an outlay of about 
 14,000 hours. This is a great outlay of time ; but suppose 
 the case of a youth who inherits a fortune, and, having finished 
 his university education, takes to studying art as an amateur. 
 He may expect to paint well at the age of thirty, if he goes 
 through the regular training, and at thirty a man is still young. 
 This, however, supposes the most ambitious amateurship, that 
 which aspires to paint pictures. There are various gradations 
 of less ambitious but equally serious amateurship, which do 
 not require so considerable an expenditure of time. Suppose 
 the case of an amateur who confines himself to drawing, not 
 
AMATEUR PAINTERS. 
 
 357 
 
 attempting colour at all ; he may learn to draw well in from 
 5, goo to 7 ? ooo hours, say three hours a day for seven years. 
 Here, again, he may be less ambitious. This estimate is based 
 on the supposition that he draws the figure, and qualifies 
 himself for severe figure-design. But he may draw sufficiently 
 .accurately for animals and landscapes with less labour, and for 
 purposes of illustration not having artistic quality for an object 
 with less labour still. One may do thoroughly useful and 
 valuable scientific illustrations or topographic memoranda 
 without having given the time necessary to reach the subtleties 
 of art 
 
 We have in these days several different classes of serious 
 and hard-working amateurs. First, the painters, who paint as 
 well as many professional artists, and have received a training 
 as complete as that which the average English painter usually 
 receives ; next, the artistic draughtsmen, who have lately gone 
 a good deal into etching on copper (Mr. Seymour Haden is 
 the best example of this class of amateur in England ) ; and, 
 lastly, the draughtsmen who do not make art, in the higher 
 sense, their object, but content themselves with the power of 
 making accurate and reliable memoranda of facts in illustration 
 of other studies. All these forms of amateurship are equally 
 wise and respectable, merely involving a different outlay of 
 time, and requiring more or less a natural faculty for art : all 
 are equally removed from futile trifling, and from the vain 
 pretensions of the shallow old dilettanteism which they have 
 happily, at least to some extent, supplanted. 
 
 The objection that amateurs have not time to pursue art 
 seriously cannot be sustained. However little we do, either in 
 drawing or anything else, we may do it on the principles of 
 common sense. If an amateur violinist has only one hour 
 a day to give to his instrument, he would be foolish to attempt 
 Spohr’s Ninth Concerto, but he may ultimately achieve “ Auld 
 Robin Gray.” So, if an amateur designer tries to paint 
 pictures on the strength of a daily hour, he is wasting the little 
 hour he has to give, but he might in that space of time teach 
 himself by real discipline the art of making valuable pencil 
 memoranda. It does not at all follow that because we have 
 little time to bestow upon a study, that little must be thrown 
 away in attempting what is not possible. 
 
 The root of false amateurship lies in the absurd way in which 
 
358 
 
 THO UGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 gentlemen and ladies are “ taught drawing ” in their youth. 
 The whole “ drawing-master ” system is so comically pre- 
 posterous that one hardly knows how .to speak about it at all. 
 It is an organized and systematic waste of time, leading 
 nowhere, and spoiling such faculties of artistic perception as 
 young people may have by nature. “ Would any honest school- 
 teacher, ;; says a recent writer, “ let a boy proceed to the second 
 declension of nouns while he hesitated and blundered in the 
 first, then dip him into verbs here and there, and presently 
 (apprehensive of parental discontent) pass him on to syntax 
 and scanning? Yet this is precisely what a drawing-master 
 does when he passes on a pupil from blunder to blunder, and, 
 finding him accurate in nothing, puts paint-box and brushes by 
 his side with as ludicrous (and as genuine) an expectation of 
 his succeeding in colours as the mythic American had of his 
 dog succeeding in racoon-hunting, because, forsooth, he proved 
 good for nothing else.” 
 
 The drawing-master system has a directly pernicious effect 
 upon amateurship by weakening its moral fibre. To play with 
 a study, and master nothing belonging to it, not even its 
 rudiments, is about as bad a thing, morally, as can be taught 
 to young people. It is greatly to the credit of our best 
 amateurs that they have conquered by self-discipline the morally 
 and intellectually ruinous effects of the teaching they went 
 through in their youth. But that teaching has conducted 
 thousands to a rapid and effeminate dilettanteism. 
 
 in. 
 
 The simply empirical artist always lays great stress on the 
 time he has dedicated to art, and says, that when the amateur 
 has given as much time he may possibly attain equal know- 
 ledge. But it is easy to prove, tha.t, although a considerable 
 outlay of time is necessary to success in every study, the mere 
 outlay of time goes for nothing. Study is intellectual climbing, 
 not walking on a level ; and it does not signify how long you 
 walk, if you are not ascending, when it is your object to ascend. 
 The argument that a man has spent time in the practice of art 
 does not prove that he has climbed to a higher level, because 
 you may spend any amount of time on one level. The fallacy 
 of the argument may be shown at once in a bad syllogism : — 
 
AMATEUR PAINTERS. 
 
 359 
 
 1. It takes ten hours’ walking to climb a mountain fifteen 
 thousand feet high. 
 
 2. I have been walking ten hours. 
 
 3. I have climbed fifteen thousand feet. 
 
 But what if, instead of walking ten hours in such a manner 
 as to lift you most rapidly above the sea-level, you have been 
 walking ten hours at precisely the same height above the sea ? 
 Would not one hour, would not half an hour, of real climbing 
 carry you higher ? 
 
 A street fiddler has spent quite as much time (if he is old, 
 he will have spent thrice as much time) in violin-playing as 
 the best pupil at the Conservatoire. But the street fiddler is 
 not the better violinist of the two. And so in every depart- 
 ment of labour, you have the men who climb and the men 
 who do not — the majority do not. It is a difference of mental 
 constitution. Suppose the case of an artist who ceased 
 climbing at twenty-five, and is now sixty years old 3 what is the 
 use of the years between twenty-five and sixty? One of the 
 commonest illusions about the employment of time in especial 
 occupations is that it makes us every year a greater authority 
 on the subject ; but if you have been spelling badly for forty 
 years, it does not follow that you are an authority upon 
 orthography. 
 
 The truth is, that time spent in any pursuit may be time 
 spent in confirming ourselves in bad habits. There are 
 foreigners who have lived in England twenty years without 
 losing their bad pronunciation, because they make no effort to 
 correct it ; other foreigners imitate our sounds with greater 
 accuracy in twelve months. 
 
 A very large proportion of the time spent by professionals 
 in all occupations is mere routine, and does not improve. 
 Indeed, it may be shown that, by reason of their professional 
 position, professional people are compelled to use the know- 
 ledge that they possess, and hindered from acquiring the know- 
 ledge which they do not possess. Nature will not allow the 
 working man to leave off rendering the service which he can 
 render in order to acquire knowledge which may never be of 
 use to others. In the case of painters the way this law 
 operates is very easy to see. No successful landscape-painter 
 can find time for the study of the figure; even successful 
 animal-painters, though nearer to figure-painters than the land- 
 
360 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 scape men are, study the figure imperfectly. But we may go 
 very much farther than this. A landscape-painter, celebrated 
 for one kind of scenery, often finds such difficulty in getting 
 leave to paint another kind of scenery that he is virtually 
 fastened down to what he is best known for. An animal- 
 painter may get fastened in the same way to one or two kinds 
 of animals, and be a horse-painter, or a dog-painter, or a 
 painter of cattle and sheep. And it is found that when a 
 painter has got into habits of manufacture, he does not paint 
 the one or two pictures he is known for any better for having 
 painted^them. repeatedly. When the stage of manufacture is 
 reached — and it is reached by many painters very early in life — 
 a habit of work is formed very like the habits of our ordinary 
 existence ; and just as we do a hundred things every day of 
 our lives, doing them neither better nor worse than ten years 
 ago, so when the production of a certain class of picture has 
 become a habit, the artist will go on producing that class of 
 picture without acquiring either new skill or fresh experience. 
 The reader thinks, perhaps, that this may be because such 
 artists do not go to nature ; but the curious fact is, that even 
 in studies from nature, by men who never abandon the prac- 
 tice of making such studies, precisely the same stoppage and 
 repetition may be observed. Thackeray observed it and 
 described it in the case of “ Pipson, historical painter — 
 
 “ Pipson returns from abroad, establishes himself, has his cards printed, 
 and waits and waits for commissions for great historical pictures. Mean- 
 while, night after night he is to be found at the old place in the academy, 
 copying the old life-guardsmen — working, working away — and never ad- 
 vancing one jot. At eighteen Pipson copied statues and life-guardsmen 
 to admiration ; at five-and-thirty he can make admirable drawings of life- 
 guardsmen and statues. Beyond this he never goes.” 
 
 It appears, in short, that the mountain of art is not, for most 
 men, a needle of prodigious altitude, but a sort of table- 
 mountain, steep enough at the sides, but accessible, and not so 
 very high. Once on the top, the climber finds himself on a 
 flat plain, where he walks about at his leisure. This, of 
 course, is not the received theory about art, and no doubt the 
 “ Excelsior ” ideal is more poetical, but I maintain that my 
 table-mountain theory answers to the fact in the large majority 
 of cases. The natural art-talent of most men is so limited 
 that it soon reaches the largest development it is capable of 
 
AMATEUR PAINTERS . 
 
 361 
 
 The geniuses of course go higher ; they may perch themselves 
 ultimately on their Alpine aiguilles , but the real geniuses are 
 very rare, and a man may reasonably desire to paint, and may 
 paint interesting pictures, without being one of them. 
 
 Having known not a few artists, I may observe farther, that 
 they are not so indefatigably industrious as they sometimes 
 pretend to be. Some of them are hard workers, but for the 
 most part they take it easily, which may be accounted for by 
 the rapidity with which the freshness of the artistic perception 
 is lost, and by the dread of doing bad work. I don't wish to 
 imply that artists are lazy : when they dawdle and waste their 
 time, it is not generally from laziness, but because nature tells 
 them that the inward mirror is dulled. One of the most 
 distinguished painters who ever lived told me that, in his 
 opinion, three hours a day was about as long as a painter 
 ought to work in colour ; and if a really strict account were 
 kept of each painter’s time — an account, I mean, deducting 
 every minute spent in different kinds of rest and recreation — - 
 it would be found that many of them do not work more. One 
 of my painter friends is a numismatist, and a passionate 
 collector of antique marbles and bronzes. He has two or 
 three cabinets of these objects in his studio, and it is perfectly 
 certain that out of the six hours which he spends there every 
 day, at least three are agreeably passed, in fragments of twenty 
 minutes or half an hour, in handling his beloved collection, in 
 gently brushing away the earth from some recently-found coin 
 with a soft toothbrush, in trying to read illegible inscriptions, or 
 in caressing and admiring the fine medals which are the glory of 
 his cabinet. Yet my friend’s theory, of course, is that he paints 
 six hours a day; and if you were to suggest to him that it 
 might be wiser to concentrate his work as an artist into a steady 
 sitting of three hours, and then go out and take exercise, he 
 would tell you that he worked at his painting all day long. 
 By simply working hard when he does work, an amateur 
 might paint as much as my friend does, and still find leisure 
 for the duties of society. When we have little time to bestow 
 on our favourite study, the great art is to learn how to make 
 the best of it. This is the true secret of successful amateurship. 
 Artists whose whole time is at their disposal for painting, may 
 afford to waste some portion of it ; but when an amateur has 
 only three hours a day to give, he must stick very close to his 
 
362 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ATT. 
 
 easel for those three hours. A part of the same great secret is 
 to choose such work as may be most improving to us at each 
 stage of our progress, and here the amateur has a very great 
 advantage over the professional artist. The professional artist 
 is very often obliged to abandon self-culture for mere produc- 
 tion, in order to earn money. I know a professional landscape- 
 painter, who, being bound down by a set of commissions which 
 he could not afford to refuse, spent several years in his studio, 
 making a fortune, when his artistic instincts made him long to 
 refresh himself by new study. The amateur, who is never 
 bound in this way to mere production, can always make use of 
 the time he sets apart for art in the way most directly profitable 
 to him as a student. Another part of this invaluable secret, 
 and another privilege of the amateur, is not to pass on to a 
 difficulty before the difficulty which naturally precedes it is 
 overcome. Artists are often compelled, by the necessity of 
 conforming to the public taste, to attempt things which they 
 know and feel they are not prepared to accomplish in a really 
 successful manner, but which they must do well enough to be 
 in the prevalent fashion : as, for instance, a landscape-painter, 
 finding that landscape does not sell, may feel compelled to 
 attempt figure-pictures, knowing himself to be insufficiently 
 prepared; and very much of the imperfect work done by 
 artists is attributable to pressure of this kind, from which, of 
 course, the amateur is altogether free. 
 
 The great reason for hoping much from serious amateurship 
 is, that although the amateur may have less time to give to 
 art than the artist gives, that time is absolutely at his own 
 disposal. The amateurs of the last generation did not bring 
 amateurship into contempt so much because they had not time 
 to do better work, as because they threw away the time they 
 did give in such an irrational manner. They never would 
 condescend to learn the art step by step ; but either from pure 
 ignorance of what was difficult and what was less difficult, or 
 else from the ridiculously vain expectation that they would 
 overcome the difficulties by sheer force of genius, they dashed at 
 once at the most arduous artistic enterprises. These delusions 
 are now in a great degree dispelled ; a sounder amateurship is 
 establishing itself on a firmer basis, and with more reasonable 
 expectations. For this sound kind of amateurship we have 
 great sympathy and good hopes. It will involve no loss of 
 
AMATEUR PAINTERS. 
 
 363 
 
 time, for every step in genuine culture is worth attaining for 
 itself, even if we cannot go farther ; and instead of being one 
 of the most disappointing of amusements, it will become a 
 valuable and invigorating discipline. — 1869. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 Since writing this paper on amateurs, I have taken note of every- 
 thing which might throw additional light upon the subject, simply 
 to ascertain whether it was right to encourage any amateur in the 
 hope that he might be able to paint, ultimately. I find that no artist 
 can ever be brought to believe in this possibility. Every artist 
 affirms that the mere necessity for manual skill is of itself enough 
 to preclude successful amateurship, whilst the difficulties of colour 
 (artists invariably affirm) require the sacrifice of the entire exist- 
 ence. On the other hand, those artists whose judgment does not 
 seem to be affected by the sentiment of professional jealousy, are 
 always ready to acknowledge that an amateur who has the artistic 
 gift by nature may attain true skill in black-and-white art — in char- 
 coal-drawing, for instance — or in etching. Now there is a simple 
 practical rule which may always preserve an amateur from a fatal 
 waste of time. Let him divide the art into the three progressive 
 stages of line, light-and-shade, and colour, beginning with the line 
 (as the best etchers use it, I mean what we call the organic mark- 
 ings), and not leaving that for full light-and-shade until he has 
 attained unquestionable proficiency, afterwards remaining in tone- 
 drawing till he can do that indubitably well, and finally entering 
 colour by very quiet colouring indeed, avoiding as much as possible 
 what are known to be the great difficulties. To illustrate what I 
 mean, let me observe, by way of example, that the management 
 of red in sunsets is very difficult, because red cannot be made very 
 light without destroying its chromatic quality, so that the light of a 
 red sunset can only be suggestively got by cunning artifices beyond 
 the reach of the amateur ; whereas, on the other hand, any amateur 
 who has mastered light-and-shade can soon paint a yellow sunset 
 so as to make it luminous, because yellow does not lose its chro- 
 matic quality by mixture with flake white. 
 
 The whole principle of prudence in amateurship is to advance to 
 nothing without having made sure of the step that ought to have 
 
3<H 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 preceded what is attempted. If this rule were invariably followed, 
 there would be no very painful disappointments, and not much 
 waste of effort. There is etching, for instance, which is drawing 
 upon copper, and just now a host of amateurs, all over Europe, 
 are trying to etch when they cannot draw upon white paper. If 
 they cannot draw on paper, it is a matter of certainty "that they 
 will be unable to do anything on copper, for the latter presents all 
 the artistic difficulties of ordinary drawing, with most serious tech- 
 nical difficulties par-dessus le mar che. The application of the rule 
 given above is also possible in matters of detail. There are always 
 two ways of presenting a subject, one which is easier for the artist, 
 and the other which is more difficult ; and a prudent amateur, or a 
 prudent artist in his early practice, will avoid as much as possible 
 all difficulties that he sees to be avoidable. Unfortunately, how- 
 ever, we never know what is difficult and what is not until the lesson 
 has been inculcated by experience. On this point my recommenda- 
 tion to the amateur is, to make the acquaintance of some old painter, 
 get him to be sincere, if possible, and then take his advice. But 
 the following general observations may be of some use in the 
 absence of such a friend : — 
 
 1. A subject can hardly ever be too simple, or have too little 
 material, provided there is an artistic subordination in the material. 
 It constantly happens that there is matter for several good pictures 
 in one bad composition. 
 
 2. Beauty of colouring does not depend upon the number of 
 colours or their brilliance. It depends on the harmonious arrange- 
 ment of a very few masses, with delicate contrasts and interchanges 
 to relieve the eye. 
 
 3. The combination of bright colour with bright light is always 
 a matter of prodigious technical difficulty, and may be easily 
 avoided. 
 
 4. All intricacy and perplexing subdivision of material are diffi- 
 culties, consequently it is prudent to choose rather the effects which 
 obliterate intricacy and detail than those which exhibit them. 
 
 5. It is easier to paint an object in plain daylight than in sun- 
 shine, and in pure white light than in coloured light. 
 
 6. There are easy and difficult textures. The easiest are surfaces 
 that are plain and firm without being shiny ; the most difficult are 
 surfaces in which there is a trouble in making out the precise limits 
 of the exterior. For example, plaster-of-paris is an easy texture 
 to imitate, but a cloud is very difficult. — 1873. 
 
XXV. 
 
 CAN SCIENCE HELP ART f 
 
 Very eminent artists and critics may be named on each side 
 the question, so that one cannot express an opinion without 
 placing himself in opposition to distinguished men. The best 
 way in cases of this kind is to express one's own sincere., 
 personal, individual opinion, without deference to this or that 
 authority, since the authorities on each side are equally weighty, 
 I will begin, then, by answering the question in my own way, 
 and after that develop or amplify the answer. 
 
 1. The efficiency of an artist depends, in a great measure, 
 upon his vivid recollection of organic form, and of effect 
 
 2 . Scientific knowledge enables the memory to retain or- 
 ganic form and effect with a precision not otherwise attain- 
 able. 
 
 3. Therefore, scientific knowledge helps the efficiency of an 
 artist. 
 
 The argument on the other side is this (I will do my best 
 to state it quite fairly) : Science can teach things to an artist 
 which are artistically easy, but fails him in what is artistically 
 difficult. For example 5 perspective can teach how to draw the 
 straight edges of a London causeway, but not the curves of 
 the sea-shore ; anatomy can teach the places of bones and 
 muscles, but not the subtle variations of surface and of line on 
 which the living energy of the animal depends for its expres- 
 sion. Scientific theories of colour can teach the relation of 
 primaries, secondaries, tertiaries, but never the relations of the 
 indescribable tints ; and all the tints of a great colourist are of 
 the indescribable kind. 
 
366 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 The whole of this is true. We may even go farther than 
 this, and admit that Science teaches nothing whatever that 
 belongs especially to Art; nothing, that is, in the true and deep 
 meaning of the word, artistic. 
 
 Still, the sciences of perspective, optics, anatomy, are useful 
 to artists; just as the science of geography is useful to a traveller. 
 Take the very best of maps. What does it tell you of the 
 country you intend to explore? It is not a substitute for your 
 observation as a traveller, but simply a reliable informant as 
 to where the places lie, where you will find them, and a help to 
 your topographic memory. After having studied the map, you 
 must observe the country itself, in all its detail, if you want to 
 know its life. But the map has helped you, nevertheless, in 
 the arrangement of the work before you. It has saved you 
 time and trouble, it has prevented you from missing your way. 
 
 What a map is to the traveller, scientific study, wisely pur- 
 sued, is to the artist. It can never serve him as a substitute 
 for his own observation, but it may tell him where to apply his 
 power as an observer, and guard him against innumerable 
 mistakes. If artists could always have nature before them, 
 exactly as they desire to paint it, they might dispense with the 
 help of science altogether. Any artist who sees quite clearly 
 in the artistic sense, sees also as much of organic structure as 
 is necessary to his perfect performance. But when nature 
 is not present, or is constantly changing, which very nearly 
 amounts to the same thing, artists need everything which may 
 counteract the natural infirmity of the memory. The degree 
 to which science can do this may be_ easily demonstrated. 
 
 After we have dissected a plant, with the help of any really 
 good work on botany, the organic structure of the plant, and 
 even such characteristics as its colour, the season of its growth, 
 and the places which it prefers, are engraved on the memory 
 permanently. These things are not art ; they do not describe 
 the artistic appearance of the plant, but, by the association of 
 ideas, they recall its artistic appearance, when that has been 
 previously studied from nature. They present a sort of skeleton 
 of knowledge, which the purely artistic memory clothes with 
 the perfect life . 1 
 
 1 It is customary to speak of anatomy, botany, geology, as separate 
 sciences, and a notion is thereby conveyed that the sciences are too nume- 
 rous to be accessible to an artist. In reality, these three sciences are one. 
 
CAN SCIENCE HELP ART ? 
 
 367 
 
 There are instances of artists who, having been attracted by 
 scientific study beyond the sphere of art, have lost the artistic 
 spirit, and become purely scientific. Thus science may ruin 
 an artist, but not when the artistic spirit is really strong in him. 
 Science did not spoil Rembrandt’s work, nor has it spoiled 
 Landseer’s. I could name half-a-dozen painters who have been 
 ruined by science, but they were all men of feeble artistic gifts 
 to begin with. A man of any native artistic force works as 
 freely after scientific training as before it. The scientific 
 training helps his memory of things, but does not chill or 
 harden his work. A man may write easily and poetically, 
 without a trace of pedantry, notwithstanding his knowledge of 
 grammar, — and grammar, like botany and geology, is one of 
 the branches of anatomy. — 1870. 
 
 Botany and geology are anatomy. Botany is primarily the anatomy of 
 plants, and geology the anatomy of the earth. And anatomy, in any of 
 its branches, is nothing more than the separation of anything into its com- 
 ponent parts. 
 
 Now, there is a very curious characteristic to be noted in the classical 
 spirit, in the spirit of classical tradition in the study of the fine arts. It 
 admits one of the branches of anatomy — that of animal form — as necessary 
 to the artist, but does not admit the necessity of the other branches of 
 anatomy. This may be accounted for by the classic love of the human 
 form, and the classic disdain of landscape ; and I believe it may be asserted, 
 with little fear of any effectual contradiction, that whenever modern artists 
 have been deeply and seriously interested in the study of anything in nature, 
 they have, as a rule, thankfully accepted the help of science with reference 
 to that particular thing. For instance, Rembrandt did not disdain the 
 anatomy of the human body, nor Landseer the anatomy of dogs, nor 
 Ruskin the anatomy of mountains. The disdain of science always seems 
 to apply to things in which the artist is not specially interested, and we 
 commonly find that figure- painters consider the anatomy of plants super- 
 fluous, but not human anatomy. 
 
XXVI. 
 
 PICTURE-FRAMES, 
 
 Tub force of routine, in all matters which concern the working 
 of the common trades, offers such a steady resistance to inno- 
 vation, that it is almost useless to suggest any reform which 
 would involve the practical abandonment of a trade already 
 learned and in the full tide of an assured prosperity. Picture- 
 frames are made admirably Well, and they succeed admirably 
 in the object for which they are intended ; that is to say, they 
 show a picture to the best possible advantage. They have two 
 faults ; but these faults, instead of diminishing the prosperity 
 of the trade, positively go far to increase it, whilst they in- 
 juriously affect only the pocket of the man who buys the 
 picture, or that of the unsuccessful or partially successful artist, 
 who often has pictures left upon his hands. 
 
 These two faults are costliness and fragility, A picture- 
 frame of any magnitude is an expensive thing, and, at the same 
 time, one of the very worst investments of money that it is 
 possible to imagine. The ornaments are made in a kind of 
 paste glued upon a wooden frame-work, and then gilt. A very 
 slight shock is sufficient to break them off, for the paste 
 becomes exceedingly brittle with time ; and if there is any 
 extra heat — as, for instance, if you hang a picture over a 
 chimney-piece— the mouldings are apt to curl up and detach 
 themselves without the help of any shock whatever. Then the 
 gilding, though extremely pretty when perfectly new and fresh, 
 loses its beauty very rapidly; so that, even in galleries possessed 
 by the very wealthiest owners, the idea of keeping picture- 
 frames always perfectly clean and beautiful has to be aban- 
 
PICTURE-FRAMES. 
 
 369 
 
 doned as impracticable. In the country, it is possible to keep 
 them decent a little longer ; but even there it is difficult, if the 
 climate produce abundance of troublesome flies : in an English 
 town, however, especially a manufacturing town (such as 
 Manchester or Leeds), the only way of keeping your frames 
 decent without extravagantly frequent regilding, is by covering 
 them with gauze, which, so long as it remains there, spoils both 
 the frame and the picture. Works of fine art are not like 
 things whose use is independent of appearances. For ex- 
 ample, you may put a cover on an easy-chair without diminish- 
 ing its usefulness as a thing to sit comfortably in ; but as the 
 only usefulness of a picture-frame is one of appearance, you 
 absolutely arrest the performance of its function in the world 
 when once you have hidden it. If picture-frames are to have 
 gauze over them, we might as well begin by simply painting 
 them a dull yellow. 
 
 The inconveniences to owners of pictures which result from 
 the prevalent system of frame-making are, that an amount of 
 dirt has to be tolerated in frames which would never be 
 tolerated in any other piece of furniture, whilst a constant 
 drain of expense has to be going forward, which, if it could be 
 more wisely administered, might give results of higher and 
 more permanent beauty. Considering, however, that the pur- 
 chaser of many pictures is of necessity either a rich man who 
 has money to throw away, or an extravagant one, who throws 
 it away without troubling himself about questions of economy, 
 he does not feel the perishableness of frames as a matter 
 seriously affecting him. On the other hand, the successful 
 painter gets rid of his pictures so quickly that a frame has not 
 time to lose its freshness whilst it remains upon his hands ; 
 besides which, he can easily stipulate, and often does so, that 
 the frame shall be a separate transaction between the purchaser 
 and the frame-maker. And in any case, if a successful painter 
 has to keep a few old frames in his studio, they serve him to 
 paint other pictures in; and it matters little, when they are 
 used for that purpose, whether an ornament be chipped off 
 here and there, or the general tone of the gilding be somewhat 
 dimmed by ineradicable dust Those who suffer most from 
 the extreme perishableness of the frames commonly in use are 
 the ordinary crowd of artists, whose pictures are frequently 
 refused at the exhibitions, and are sent from one exhibition to 
 
 H B B 
 
370 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 another, till one out of three or four is sold, and the rest come 
 back to their author. The frames of pictures declined at the 
 Academy are always damaged ; sometimes they come back in 
 a state so extremely unlike their splendour in the month of 
 March, that the comparison which suggests itself the most 
 readily is that of a spruce and brilliant soldier at a review^ and 
 the same soldier ragged and dirty after a disastrous battle. All 
 artists complain of this, but the fault lies with the system of 
 frame-making, not with the authorities of the Academy. The 
 pictures are knocked about by agents of artists who go to seek 
 for refused works ; and as the ornaments are as fragile as porce- 
 lain, a considerable amount of damage is quite inevitable. 
 
 A system of frame-making is needed, by which it might be 
 possible to preserve the good appearance of our present frames 
 when they are new, whilst giving greater strength and durability. 
 Some attempts in this direction have been made of late years 
 which may be alluded to. The reader will probably remember 
 the massive frames of carved wood which surrounded Bier- 
 stadt’s great landscapes when they were exhibited in this 
 country. These were much stronger, no doubt, than the 
 ordinary frames of paste, and were handsome things in them- 
 selves. As a cornice for some room, richly furnished in carved 
 wood, they would have been very noble and appropriate ; as 
 picture-frames, they had the radical vice of not showing the 
 picture to advantage. In our schemes of reform we must not 
 lose sight of the fact that the function of a picture-frame is 
 purely auxiliary, and that if it fail to be an efficient auxiliary to 
 the work of art it does not signify how beautiful it may be in 
 itself. Many experiments have been tried, but nothing answers 
 so well as gilding. No carved wood helps the appearance of 
 paint as gilding does. The metallic lustre of gold saves it from 
 injuring the tones of paint which might dangerously resemble 
 it, so that there is never any struggle between them ; whilst, on 
 the other hand, there is a. pleasant warmth in the colour of 
 gold which silver does not possess. An immensely important 
 collateral advantage is, that gold adds to the sple?idour of a 
 work of art more than any other surrounding. The frames of 
 Bierstadt’s pictures, though they were magnificent things, were 
 not splendid things ; and a picture-frame ought to be splendid. 
 On the other hand, we have had the pre-Raphaelite experiment 
 in frames — a flat margin, often of solid oak, gilded so as to leave 
 
PICTURE-FRAMES. 
 
 371 
 
 the grain visible. In Mr. Hunt’s Temple picture a margin 
 of ivory intervened, which, though useful as adding to the 
 peculiarity of the work (which was an essential part of the 
 pre-calculated effect on the public mind), 1 and useful farther 
 in conveying the idea of sacrifice to the spectator, did not add 
 anything to the artistic effect of the picture, except by sepa- 
 rating the painted gilding of the Temple from the rivalry of the 
 real gilding of the frame. The ivory, in short, though more 
 expensive, had only the effect of so much paper of the same 
 tint of white ; and it has long been a settled question amongst 
 artists, that oil-paintings are better helped by having gilding 
 close to them than any kind of white or cream-coloured 
 or black margin. The chief defect, however, of the pre- 
 .Raphaelite frame was its want of illusory effect, owing to its 
 flatness. The preliminary idea of all picture-frames is the 
 open window, or the bevelled boards that surround the dio- 
 rama. Although we know that the tromfie-P oeil is not the 
 object of art, still a certain concession is made to the infantine 
 or instinctive desire to be deceived. The frame, by the recession 
 of its sloping sides, leads us first to the foreground, and then to 
 the successive distances of the picture, preventing the perpen- 
 dicular lines on each side of the canvas-stretcher (or stretching 
 frame) from contradicting the pictorial distances, and so helping 
 to produce the degree of illusion which is right and necessary 
 even in the most elevated art. A flat frame does not suffi- 
 ciently achieve this (though it achieves it partly), and conse- 
 quently it misses much of the utility of the typical picture- 
 frame. For the typical picture-frame is not only a margin, but 
 much more. It is to the action or scenery in the picture what 
 the walls and side-scenes of the theatre are to the acting and 
 scenery upon the stage. 
 
 The -American carved-wood frame and the English pre- 
 Raphaelite frame, though both much more durable than the 
 
 1 This passage has been very widely misunderstood. I intended to con- 
 vey no Unfavourable reflection on Mr. Holman Hunt. Of course all works 
 of art are arranged with a pre-calculated effect on the public mind, as a 
 lady’s dress is, or the interior of her drawing-room. This is quite right 
 and innocent ; and if an artist concerns himself with a frame at all, it is 
 inevitable that he should think of its effect. Mr. Hunt’s frame added to or 
 harmonized with the originality of his picture, so that its eccentricity is to 
 be approved of, but for reasons given above that style of frame is not on the 
 whole the best adapted for helping pictures generally, as works of art. — 1873. 
 
 B B 2 
 
372 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 frames we are usually accustomed to, could not, therefore, be 
 considered as a satisfactory solution of the difficulty. What 
 we want is a kind of frame which shall show a picture as well 
 as the best frames of the ordinary kind, and yet be sufficiently 
 durable to bear dust and coal-smoke, and even a little occa- 
 sional hard usage in the exhibitions. I have no pretension to 
 be able to suggest any satisfactory solution of this difficulty ; 
 indeed, I do not proffer, but ask for a solution. Something, 
 however, may be said as to the direction in which the solution 
 will have to be sought. 
 
 The frame must be gilded — that is imperative ; or, if not 
 gilded, it must look as if it were. It would be interesting to 
 know for what price the ornaments of a frame, or of some 
 of its mouldings, might be done in electrotype, and what 
 gilding of sufficient thickness would cost by the same process. 
 Or, perhaps, the comparatively new compound bronze of 
 aluminium, which is extremely like gold in colour, and 
 can be easily cleaned, would supply the material which we 
 need. Wood-carving, gilded afterwards, is too expensive for 
 ordinary use, besides being brittle, though not so brittle as 
 the common paste. A plain frame of wood, well recessed, 
 and plated with bronze of aluminium, might show a picture to 
 advantage, and still be durable and easily cleaned. Projecting 
 ornaments, or the kind of bold carving common in Italian 
 frames, are not at all necessary to the effect of a picture, and 
 are merely a sort of exuberance of Southern taste and invention. 
 We can dispense with these easily enough, but we cannot 
 dispense with the deep recess, nor with the effective contrast 
 between dead and burnished gold. It is clear, that if any 
 ingenious inventor could make for us frames which should be 
 as easily cleaned as silver plate is, and as little liable to injury, 
 we could afford to pay for them at least twice what we pay for 
 the present perishable frames. 
 
 The best models, of modern frames, which have come within 
 the writer's experience, are those of M. Bourdon of Paris, who 
 was a painter before he took to the business of frame-making, 
 and who therefore learned what was the utility of a frame as an 
 auxiliary to the effect of a picture. Pictures look better, and 
 more effective, in M. Bourdon’s frames than in any others, 
 except those of M. Chercuitte, who is frankly an imitator of 
 Bourdon, and began his present style by simply copying the 
 
PICTURE-FRAMES. 
 
 373 
 
 work of his master. The present writer has employed both 
 these frame-makers, but they have a fancy for putting a wreath 
 or border of laurel on the projecting edge of the frame, which 
 has a pretty effect, but which detaches itself under the influence 
 of damp or of heat, and which has to be removed if the frame 
 is to last long in a trying climate. If we could have such a 
 frame as one of Bourdon’s best and most studied productions, 
 in which the exquisite taste of the frame-maker is entirely 
 subordinated to the effect of the picture — like a judicious 
 accompaniment to a musical solo— such a frame as Bourdon’s, 
 with the additional virtue of durability, would be all that a 
 painter or collector could desire. Surely, in the present 
 advanced state of the industrial arts, this cannot be altogether 
 unattainable. — 187 1. 
 
XXVII. 
 
 AUTO GRA PHIC ART 
 
 In every art that conveys ideas it is important that the idea 
 should be conveyed in its integrity, without diminution or 
 alteration by the way. Absolute perfection in the conveyance 
 of the idea is exceedingly rare, but there are a hundred degrees 
 of imperfection, and it is well to be aware of them. 
 
 In literature the conveyance of the idea seems perfect. So 
 far from losing in clearness by being printed, a manuscript 
 positively gains, and it gains so much that some authors have 
 their writings printed that they may correct them, not being 
 able to see where the corrections are needed so long as the work 
 remains in the obscurer form of handwriting. But even in the 
 conveyance of literary ideas there are many shades of perfec- 
 tion. For example, our forefathers had a way of printing the 
 letter which differed from f so slightly, that, although we may 
 be told what the letter stands for, we cannot read it without 
 feeling that it casts a veil between us and the text. So it is 
 with the old black letter ; we may know quite well what all the 
 letters mean, and yet be incapable of reading a book in black 
 letter without feeling a lack of perfect light. It is not enough 
 that the letters have been explained to us ; nothing but life-long 
 habit, and daily habit, can give us absolute clearness. Even 
 such a purely material thing as the paper affects the conveyance 
 of ideas. If the present essay were printed on dingy, bad 
 paper, two hundred years old, the reader would be sensible of 
 a disguise. Authors who understand their art have an objec- 
 tion to every peculiarity of type, binding, paper, which has * 
 anything like incongruity with the nature of the literary com- 
 
AUTOGRAPHIC art 
 
 375 
 
 position, or which sets up a rivalry in interest. It is felt that 
 even an ornamental letter is dangerous if the ornament has an 
 interest of its own, and there are certain forms of artistic 
 decoration so fatal to the written text, that a prudent writer 
 would pray to be delivered from them. Borders of all kinds 
 come within this category, — infinite artistic skill may be lavished 
 upon borders, but authors dread them. Many authors, too, 
 have a horror of being illustrated, or of having their poetry set 
 to music ; for even these marriages of the arts, natural as they 
 seem, and customary as they have always been, produce 
 associations in the public mind which are fatal to the single- 
 ness of the mental impression. No reader who has been in 
 the habit of singing “ Come into the garden, Maud,” can read 
 Tennyson’s verses afterwards without hearing at the same time 
 in his imagination the notes of the remembered music. No 
 one who has bought Dante’s Hell with Dore’s illustrations need 
 ever hope to get Dore fairly out of his mind again when he 
 reads the Italian text. But the intervention of the printer, 
 papermaker, illustrator, musical composer, however injurious 
 to the singleness of the impression, is far surpassed in power 
 for evil by the intervention of the translator. The translator 
 is the personage most to be dreaded. In all literature that 
 belongs to art, all composed literature, in which the art of 
 expression is carried far, translation of any really accurate kind 
 is so difficult as to be possible only for a sentence here and 
 there which has its exact equivalent in the other tongue : for 
 the rest, all that can be done is a sort of paraphrase. Young 
 writers aspire to be translated, because it is a proof of some 
 degree of success ; but it is probable that few writers who have 
 had that youthful aspiration realized can think of translations 
 afterwards with satisfaction. The most conscientious of trans- 
 lators cannot alter the genius of his language, and the real 
 difficulty is beyond remedy. And even when translation is not 
 considered necessary, as in the case of books written in a 
 language not at that time fully developed, but now read by 
 people who use the same language in its maturity, there exists 
 a veil between him who wrote and him who is now reading, 
 which is the more deceptive that we are not always quite clearly 
 aware of its existence. And if this is so for old books in our 
 own language, it is so in a degree still greater for books written 
 in languages which we have painfully learned, or half-learned, 
 
37 ^ 
 
 Th OUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 and which we translate for ourselves as we are reading. The 
 best of scholars feel that there is a veil between them and the 
 ancients, which the grammarians and lexicographers can never 
 quite remove. And it might be a subject of somewhat grave 
 reflection to all authors whose present rank in literature is such 
 as to give them reasonable hopes for immortality, that as. time 
 gradually advances a mist will rise between them and the living 
 world which, though it may add vaguely to the impression of 
 their grandeur, will assuredly conceal much that a contemporary 
 alone can quite clearly see or adequately appreciate. 
 
 All these obstacles to the perfect conveyance of ideas by 
 means of literature have their very precise counterparts in the 
 fine arts. The artist has to contend against the intervention 
 of materials, and has often also to bear the intervention of 
 interpreters. Many of his materials are very treacherous, and 
 so soon as he desires to multiply his work, his artistic inter- 
 preters are not more to be relied upon than the translator of 
 literary performances. There is even one department of fine 
 art in which the original work is destroyed by the translator, 
 who puts his own interpretation in the place of it. The 
 draughtsman on wood knows that his work is to be destroyed 
 by the tool of the wood-engraver, and therefore he works, on 
 principle, simply to convey such hints to the engraver’s mind 
 that he, the engraver, may produce a sufficiently good cut. 
 This habit of drawing for the wood-engraver has very curious 
 effects, and is in itself a quite peculiar professional training. 
 It is not every artist who can draw . satisfactorily upon wood ; 
 there are artists whom the engravers like, because they find 
 them intelligible and easy to interpret effectively; there are 
 other artists who give much trouble to the engravers, and whose 
 work costs great labour in interpretation, whilst it seldom turns 
 out satisfactorily. These designers are usually loud in their 
 complaints of the engravers ; and it is true that their work is 
 spoiled, which they can hardly be expected to bear with 
 equanimity. A few of the most skilful draughtsmen on wood 
 are satisfied with the rendering of their work. Gustave Dore 
 likes to be engraved, and troubles himself about no autographic 
 processes ; but then, Dore has a vast experience of that peculiar 
 kind of drawing, and is served by the best wood-engravers in 
 the world, whom he has himself gradually trained to interpret 
 him. I should think Sir John Gilbert and Mr. Birket Foster 
 
AUTOGRAPHIC ART. 
 
 377 
 
 have little to complain of, either, if we may judge from the 
 good quality of the many engravings that we know. But it is 
 perfectly true that an artist who draws on wood is liable, as a 
 general rule, to very vexatious disappointments. A first-rate 
 wood-engraver ca?i come very close when he does the work 
 entirely with his own hands, and is in sympathy with the artist ; 
 but wood-engraving is carried on as a simple business, and 
 blocks which bear the name of this or that engraver are in 
 reality very often done by men or youths employed by him. 
 The wood-engravers are often paid so inadequately that it does 
 not remunerate them to do the work themselves, and it is done 
 by assistants, with the benefit of superintendence only. It 
 need not surprise us that many woodcuts translate the work of 
 the draughtsman very imperfectly. All the fine arts are enor- 
 mously difficult ; engraving on wood is not an exception to the 
 rule, it is a kind of engraving which can only be done really 
 well by men of rare ability. Complaints of unintelligent 
 interpretation are therefore exceedingly common. The sen- 
 sation of being engraved on wood is very like the sensation of 
 being translated into French : first, you have flattering hopes, 
 then bitter disappointment, usually accompanied by considerable 
 irritation ; finally you resign yourself, and submit to what seems 
 inevitable. This being so, it may be wondered how and why 
 wood-engraving holds its place so well. A score of substitutes 
 have been invented to replace it, and not one has replaced it ; 
 the illustrated newspapers still employ it exclusively, at least in 
 England ; the magazines use it far more than any other species 
 of illustration ; and when the Graphic was established a little 
 time since, there was no hesitation between the old art and the 
 substitutes which, in the opinion of their inventors, were to have 
 replaced it years ago. Yet woodcut is not an autographic art 
 at all, and some of the substitutes were strictly autographic. 
 The question which interests us is, how it happens that a trans- 
 lation of which most artists complain should hold its place 
 against autographic processes which would do away with the 
 evils of translation altogether. 
 
 There are two distinct reasons for this. The first is that 
 the wood-engraver is not merely a translator — he is something 
 more ; he is an elaborating, labour-saving secretary. Just as 
 a man whose time is very precious marks in pencil on the 
 back of his letters a word or two indicating the nature of the 
 
378 
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 reply to be delivered, but leaves the work of arranging the 
 form of it to his secretary, so the designer on wood washes in 
 a shade with his camel-hair brush, but leaves the labour of 
 making the lines which are to represent that shade to the 
 cutter who comes after him. The economy of time which is 
 effected by this is enough to settle the question from the 
 pecuniary point of view. It would have been simply impossible 
 for Gustave Dore to have completed all his designs, or half as 
 many, had he been compelled to draw the lines with which his 
 woodcuts are shaded. The wash of ink or Chinese white enabled 
 him to communicate to the engraver a clear idea of the sort of 
 shading that was wanted, and the engraver afterwards elabo- 
 rated that shading at his leisure. This, at least, is the method 
 pursued in the vast majority of instances; in a certain pro- 
 portion, what is called engraving in fac-simile is resorted to, 
 and then the artist works very much as if he were etching, the 
 business of the cutter being simply to respect his lines, and 
 cut away everything else. For the present, however, let us 
 concern ourselves with the sort of wood-engraving which is not 
 in fac-simile, but is interpreted and elaborated by the cutter. 
 It is clear that the processes which have been invented to 
 supplant wood-engraving could never possess its time-saving 
 utility as regards the original designer. If Dore had to make 
 all the lines which the engraver makes, he would feel the con- 
 sequences of that error in economy so wisely reprehended by 
 Sir Cornewall Lewis when he made his well-known maxim, 
 “ Never do a thing yourself which another can do for you equally 
 well.” The effects of an economical question of this kind on 
 the pursuit or abandonment of a fine art are in the long run 
 simply irresistible, unless of course the artistic drawbacks are 
 so serious that good artists will not put up with them. Let us 
 suppose that Dore had taken up an autographic process, such 
 as Palmer’s Glyphography, or the Beslay process, or the Grapho- 
 type, all of which were invented to supplant woodcutting, as 
 their products can be printed with the text. Inexperienced 
 people, who see nothing before them but the idea that it would 
 be very advantageous to have the artist’s own work, hope all 
 things from these processes, and believe all things which are 
 published in their favour. But the simple truth is, that the 
 effects which Dore gets with the ink-wash on wood, and which 
 are rendered, on the whole, by his engravers with very sur- 
 
AUTOGRAPHIC ART. 
 
 379 
 
 prising fidelity, could not be got by Dore himself in any of the 
 three processes above mentioned, or in any process of a like 
 nature, so that a glyphograph, or a graphotype, or a design by 
 the Comte process, although really quite autographic, would 
 express Dore’s ideas less perfectly than the woodcuts express 
 them, though the woodcuts are nothing better than translations. 
 The only really distinguished artist who occurs to me now as 
 having much employed one of the autographic processes which 
 can be printed with letter-press is Karl Bodmer, who has used 
 the Comte process a good deal. I need not explain the detail 
 of the Comte process ; it is enough to say, that if the artist 
 draws a line as in an etching, that line will be reproduced as in a 
 woodcut. Now, I have no hesitation in saying, that although 
 the Comte process is strictly autographic, the critic who judged 
 Karl Bodmer from his work in that process (in which, be it 
 remarked, the artist has all the advantage which perfect 
 experience can bestow) would have a far less accurate idea of 
 his power as an artist than if he had seen good engravings from 
 Karl Bodmer’s oil pictures. The Comte process is, I believe, 
 sufficiently true to the line, and is useful in some publications 
 on ornamental art ; but for pictorial effect it is of such little 
 value that it has led Bodmer into a system of uniform grey 
 hatching entirely opposed to his natural spirit as an artist, as it 
 is seen in his pictures and his etchings. Of the other pro- 
 cesses the sole survivor appears to be the graphotype, which in 
 the hands of an artist of ability would give good line drawings, 
 but which cannot bear comparison with woodcut for work in 
 full effect of light and shade, so that if Dore adopted grapho- 
 type he would have to abandon three-fourths of his work, that 
 done with the wash, and give the other fourth only, that done 
 with the line. 
 
 There is another autographic process, in favour of which I 
 have written much already, the old art of etching upon copper 
 by means of aquafortis, as Rembrandt did, and as many other 
 great painters have done from generation to generation. Is it 
 not much better to etch on copper autographically than to 
 design for interpretation by engravers? It would be much 
 better, no doubt, if the artist were a perfect master of the 
 resources of etching, — but who is ? There exists a vulgar error 
 that etching is very easy, that anybody who can draw has only 
 to go and buy a copper-plate and some etching-ground and 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART 
 
 380 
 
 acid, and set to work, and produce clever things immediately. 
 This seems to be the prevalent opinion, even amongst people 
 who from their experience of other branches of fine art might 
 be expected to know better. But the real truth is, that the 
 technical difficulties of etching counterbalance, in most in- 
 stances, its advantages as an autographic process, and artists 
 who attempt to etch very commonly find that the proof when 
 it is taken does not say what they intended it to say. It is 
 true that no living interpreter comes between the etcher and 
 the public, but an inanimate interpreter comes between them, 
 which is the acid. It would not be quite fair to reveal the 
 secrets of the laboratory ; but if people who talk of the facility 
 of etching could only know how often even clever etchers suffer 
 from the feeling that the work is not their own but a changeling, 
 they would be both surprised and instructed. The very cle- 
 verest etchers living spoil plates in the biting, sometimes quite 
 irretrievably, but more frequently so, that in letting the plate go 
 they think, “ This is not really my work, it is the work of that 
 malicious fairy who is always making me say what I don’t 
 exactly think, but it may go for whatever it is worth.” Ah, if 
 we had all the wonderful resources of that wonderful art at 
 command, as an engine-driver has the taps of his locomotive, 
 then indeed should we have found full and adequate expression 
 for our thought, better than any help of professional elaboration 
 through copyism, but even then we should purchase the advan- 
 tage at a heavy cost of time. Let it be clearly understood, 
 however, that to dream of these great powers is idle, and that 
 without them etching can give little and rare satisfaction as an 
 autographic art. It may be doubted whether there are a dozen 
 men in Europe, or half-a-dozen, who could translate a drawing 
 in Indian ink in etching with accuracy as to tone ; and until we 
 can do that, there can be no question about the practical utility 
 of the professional engravers . 1 I mean, that if a living painter 
 paints a picture, and wishes to have it reproduced, he would 
 
 1 Every year, however, is now adding to the number of skilful professional 
 etchers, who are really engravers, engraving with the etching-needle and 
 aquafortis ; and these men, by constant practice, attain the mastery over 
 biting which is necessary to an exact translation of tone. But etchers of 
 this class copy pictures by other men, and their certainty does not prove 
 anything in favour of the process as it is occasionally employed by painters. 
 
 —1873- 
 
AUTOGRAPHIC ART. 
 
 381 
 
 do better, as a general rule, to employ a professional engraver 
 to engrave the picture rather than to attempt to etch it himself, 
 although the etching would be autographic and the engraving 
 only an interpretation by another hand. There are cases when 
 another can express our thoughts more adequately than we 
 ourselves. Just as a [half-educated man finds that he can get 
 his cause more justly and clearly stated by a more cultured 
 representative, so an artist who is not master of the copper 
 may be helped to fuller expression by the engraver who is. 
 
 In all that affects the conveyance of ideas we have to con- 
 sider that the obstacles are usually various and often extremely 
 subtle, so subtle that it sometimes requires a rather delicate 
 power of observation to discover them. For instance, there 
 is the reproduction of engravings by photography, which was 
 hailed at the beginning with the exaggerations which commonly 
 attend promising discoveries of all kinds. People were told 
 that if they bought the photographs from Rembrandt’s etchings, 
 it would be as good as having the etchings themselves. But 
 the truth is not quite that ; the photographs are valuable as 
 helps to memory, but considered as substitutes for the etchings 
 themselves, they are very inadequate. They have not the 
 quality of the printed lines at all, which need surprise no one 
 who is acquainted with the processes, and besides this differ- 
 ence of quality there is a loss of quantity in labour. Very 
 many of the lines are not properly rendered, so that where, in 
 the original, you have a delicate close shading, in the photo- 
 graph you have often nothing but a tint, whilst lines which 
 have been deeply bitten and richly printed are apt to present 
 the appearance of a blurred stain. The alteration in texture is 
 enormous ; nobody would take a photograph from an engraving 
 for anything else but a photograph. 
 
 When we come to the photographic reproductions of designs 
 of various kinds, we have, first, to observe that all designs do 
 not come out equally well in the reproduction, and that it will 
 probably be found prudent to design for the autotype in a 
 special manner, or in one of five or six special manners, suited 
 to that kind of reproduction. Oil-paintings generally come 
 out badly, not only on account of the colour, which in trans- 
 lation by photography gives false tonic relations, but more 
 especially by the loss of touch-character in reduction. Some 
 artists like to see their work reduced because it looks more 
 
THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. 
 
 382 
 
 delicate, and the detail seems more abundant, but the loss in 
 character much more than counterbalances these advantages, 
 if they are advantages. Artists would do well to work for the 
 autotype strictly on the same scale as the autotype reproduction 
 itself, and in such material as will allow of the closest possible 
 approximation in the copy. Manual expression always loses 
 meaning in reduction ; a line whose modulations are all visible 
 on its own scale becomes deficient in accent on a smaller 
 scale, and a piece of shading which is merely delicate as the 
 artist drew it, becomes a confused mass in the reduced copy . 1 
 The best kind of drawing for autotype reproduction appears 
 to be an ink-wash sustained by rather powerful pen-lines, or 
 else simply a strongly-marked drawing in pen and ink. Even, 
 however, where there is some considerable loss in the autotype 
 process (and it cannot reproduce all art without loss), it is still 
 nearer to a true autograph than an etching by anyone who is 
 not quite decidedly a master in etching. And even when you 
 have executed an etching which clearly expresses your idea, 
 your communication with the public is not really direct, be- 
 cause there is the intervention of the printer to be considered, 
 an intervention often quite as disastrous to the original work 
 as that of the wood-engraver himself. There are printers who 
 would make the plate look quite without effect, like a vigorous 
 poem spoiled by a weak translation. What with treachery 
 of acid and the ignorance or insensitiveness of many printers, 
 a published etching is too often anything but an autograph. — 
 1872. 
 
 1 This is my private and sincere Opinion, but I find that many artists like 
 to see their work reduced, so no doubt reduction is beneficial in their case. 
 It is also certainly much more convenient to have rather large and coarse 
 work reduced to a small scale than to draw directly on a very small scale. 
 If there is no reduction in the autotype process, the paper of the original 
 drawing must be very smooth.— 1873. 
 
AUTOGRAPHIC ART 
 
 3$3 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 The autographic processes have not turned out quite so satis- 
 factorily in every respect as we had hoped for them when the 
 discoveries were new. There are difficulties peculiar to each of 
 these processes ; for instance, the “ mechanical process/ 7 though it 
 will interpret a black line fairly well, in the manner of a woodcut, 
 will not render a wash with any certainty, and most of the autotype 
 processes are full of risk in the printing, so that good copies are 
 selected copies. The Woodbury process is nearer in effect to 
 copper-plate printing than the mechanical process, which prints 
 (artistically speaking) with results that resemble woodcut as to 
 depth of effect. All these processes are highly interesting and 
 curious, but they are not practically so reliable as the old printing 
 from engravings or even from drawings on stone. Heliotype engrav- 
 ing on metal appears to be the most reliable of the photographic 
 methods, but there is a good deal of manual burin-work in the 
 finishing of these plates ; and when I say that the process is more 
 reliable, I mean only because it permits the old-fashioned method 
 of copper-plate printing. There is nothing in any of these pro- 
 cesses to supersede first-rate engraving, but we may prefer, in 
 many cases, the risk of inadequate interpretation and defective 
 printing in autotype to the other risk of another kind of bad 
 interpretation in engraving by inferior men. — 1873. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
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BELLES LETTRES. 
 
 7 
 
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8 
 
 BELLES LETTRES . 
 
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BELLES LETTRES. 
 
 9 
 
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10 
 
 BELLES LETTRES. 
 
 Kingsley (C.) — continued. 
 
 The author shows , to quote the SPECTATOR, “ what it is that con - 
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BELLES LETT RES. 
 
 n 
 
 Kingsley ( H •)— continued. 
 
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12 
 
 BELLES LETTRES. 
 
 Knatchbull-Hugesse n (Louis). — the history of 
 
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BELLES LETT RES. 
 
 13 
 
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14 
 
 BELLES LETTRES. 
 
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BELLES LETTRES. 
 
 15 
 
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 “ The poem combines in no ordinary degree firmness and workman- 
 
i6 
 
 BELLES LETTRES. 
 
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 Nine Years Old.— By the Author of “St. Olave’s,” “When I 
 
 was a Little Girl/’ &c. Illustrated by Frolich. Third Edition. 
 
 Extra fcap. 8 vo. cloth gilt. 4 ^. 6d. 
 
 It is believed that this story , by the favourably known author of 
 44 St. Olave’s,” will be found both highly interesting and instructive 
 to the young. The volume conta ins eight graphic illustrations by 
 Mr. L. Frolich. The Examiner says : 44 Whether the readers 
 are nine years old, or twice, or seven times as old, they must enjoy 
 this pretty volume.” 
 
 Noel.— BEATRICE, AND OTHER POEMS. By the Hon. 
 
 Roden Noel. Fcap. 8 vo. 6s. 
 
 61 It is impossible to read the poem through without being powerfully 
 moved. There are passages in it which for intensity and tender- 
 ness, dear and vivid vision, spontaneous and delicate sympathy, 
 may be compared with the best efforts of our best living writers.” 
 — Spectator. 
 
 Norton.- — Works by the Hon. Mrs. Norton : — 
 
 THE LADY OF LA GARAYE. With Vignette and Frontispiece. 
 
 New Edition. Fcap. 8 vo. 4 J. 6d. 
 
 6 4 Full of thought well expressed, and may be classed among her best 
 efforts .” — Times. 
 
 OLD SIR DOUGLAS. Cheap Edition. Globe 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 44 This varied and lively novel — this clever novel so full of character, 
 and of fine incidental remark.” — Scotsman. “One of the 
 
 pleasantest and healthiest stories of modern fiction .” — Globe. 
 
 Oliphant. — Works by Mrs. Oliphant : — 
 
 AGNES HOPETOUN’S SCHOOLS AND HOLIDAYS. New 
 
 Edition with Illustrations. Royal i 6 mo. gilt leaves. 4 ^. 6d. 
 
 4 4 There are few books of late years more fitted to touch the heart, 
 purify the feeling, and quicken and sustain right principles .” — 
 Nonconformist. “A more gracefully written story it is impos- 
 sible to desire.”— Daily News. 
 
 A SON OF THE SOIL. New Edition. Globe 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 44 It is a very different work from the ordinary run of novels. 
 The whole life of a man is portrayed in it, worked out with subtlety 
 and insight .” — Athenaeum. 
 
 oirig Grange. Edited by Hermann Kunst, Philol. Professor. 
 
 Extra fcap. 8 vo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 Our Year. A Child’s Book, in Prose and Verse. By the Author 
 
 of 44 John Halifax, Gentleman. ” Illustrated by Clarence 
 
 Dobell. Royal i 6 mo. y. 6d. 
 
 “It is just the book we could wish to see in the hands of every child.” 
 —English Churchman. " 
 
BELLES LETT RES. 
 
 1 7 
 
 Owen G Wynne’s Great Work — By the Author of - 
 
 “ Wandering Willie. ” 2 vols. crown 8vo. 21s. 
 
 Oxford Spectator, The.— Reprinted. Extra fcap. 8vo. 
 
 3 s. 6d. 
 
 Palgrave.— Works by Francis Turner Palgrave, M.A., late 
 Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford 
 
 THE FIVE DAYS’ ENTERTAINMENTS AT WENTWORTH 
 GRANGE. A Book for Children. With Illustrations by Arthur 
 Hughes, and Engraved Title-page by Jeens. Small 4_to. cloth 
 extra. 6s. 
 
 “ If you want a really good book for both sexes and all ages , buy 
 this , as handsome a volume of tales as you'll find in all the 
 market. ” — Athenaeum. i Exquisite both in form and substance. 9 9 
 — Guardian. 
 
 LYRICAL POEMS. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s. 
 
 “A volume of pure quiet verse , sparkling with tender melodies , and 
 alive with thoughts of genuine poetry . . . . Turn where we will 
 throughout the volume , we find traces of beauty , tenderness , and 
 truth ; true poets work , touched and refined by the master-hand of 
 a real artist , who shows his genius even in trifles .” — Standard. 
 
 ORIGINAL HYMNS. Third Edition, enlarged, i8mo. is. 6d. 
 
 “ So choice , so perfect, and so refined , so tender in feeling , and so 
 scholarly in expression , that we look with special interest to every- 
 thing that he gives us ." — Literary Churchman. 
 
 GOLDEN TREASURY OF THE BEST SONGS AND LYRICS. 
 Edited by F. T. Palgrave. i8mo. 4 s. 6d. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS AND SONGS. Edited by F. T. 
 Palgrave. Gem Edition. With Vignette Title by Jeens. 3J. 6d. 
 
 ** For minute elegance no volume could possibly excel the 4 Gem 
 Edition.' " — SCOTSMAN. 
 
 THE C FI ILD REN’S TREASURY OF ENGLISH SONG. 
 Selected and arranged with Notes by F. T. Palgrave. M 
 Two Parts, is. each. Complete in 1 vol. i8mo. Cloth, 2s. 
 
 Parables.— twelve parables of our lord, nius- 
 
 trated in Colours from Sketches taken in the East by McEniry> 
 with Frontispiece from a Picture by John Jellicoe, and Illumi- 
 nated Texts and Borders. Royal 4to. in Ornamental Binding. 16s. 
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 works; 99 while the Graphic says (i nothing in this style , so good, 
 has ever before been published." 
 
 Patmore.— THE CHILDREN’S GARLAND, from the Best 
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 Edition. With Illustrations by J. Lawson. Crown 8vo. gilt. 6 s. 
 Golden Treasury Edition. i8mo. 4 s. 6d. 
 
 “ The charming illustrations added to many of the poems will add 
 greatly to their value in the eyes of children — Daily News. 
 
 B 
 
i8 
 
 BELLES LETTRES. 
 
 Pember.— THE TRAGEDY OF LESBOS. A Dramatic Poem. 
 By E. H. Pember. Fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d. 
 
 Founded upon the story of Sappho. “He tells his story with dramatic 
 force , and in language that often rises almost to grandeur. ” — 
 Athenaeum. 
 
 Poole.— PICTURES OF COTTAGE LIFE IN THE WEST 
 OF ENGLAND. By Margaret E. Poole. New and Cheaper 
 Edition. With Frontispiece by R. Farren. Crown 8vo. 3^. 6 d. 
 
 44 Charming stories of peasant life , written in something of George 
 Eliofs style. . . . Her stories could not be other than they are , as 
 literal as truth, as romantic as fiction , full of pathetic touches 
 and strokes of genuine humour. . . . All the stories are studies 
 of actual life , executed with no mean art .” — Times. 
 
 Population of an Old Pear Tree. From the French 
 
 of E. Van Bruyssel. Edited by the Author of 44 The Heir of 
 Redclyffe.” With Illustrations by Becker. Cheaper Edition. 
 Crown 8vo. gilt. 4^. 6d. 
 
 44 This is not a regular book of 7iatural history , but a description op 
 all the living creatures that came and went in a summers day 
 beneath an old pear tree , observed by eyes that had for the nonce 
 become microscopic , recorded by a pen that finds dramas in every- 
 thing, and illustrated by a dainty pencil. . . . We can hardly 
 fancy anyone with a moderate turn for the curiosities of insect 
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 sketches .” — Guardian. “A whimsical and charming little book.” 
 — Athenaeum. 
 
 Prince Florestan of Monaco, The Fall of. By 
 
 Himself. New Edition, with Illustration and Map. 8vo. cloth. 
 Extra gilt edges, 5^. A French Translation, 5«r. Also an Edition 
 for the People. Crown 8vo. is. 
 
 44 Those who have read only the extracts given, will not need to be 
 told how amusing and happily touched it is. Those who read it for 
 other purposes than amusement can hardly miss the sober and 
 sound political lessons with which its light pages abound, and which 
 are as much needed in England as by the nation to whom the author 
 directly addresses his moral .” — Pall Mall Gazette. 44 This 
 little book is very clever, wild with animal spirits, but showing 
 plenty of good sense, amid all the heedless nonsense which fills so 
 many . of its pages. ” — Daily N ews. 4 4 In an age little remarkable 
 for powers of political satire, the sparkle of the pages gives them 
 every claim to welcome .” — Standard. 
 
 Rankine.— SONGS AND FABLES. By W. J. McQuorn 
 Rankine, late Professor of Civil Engineering and Mechanics at 
 Glasgow. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 6^. 
 
 Realmah.-— -By the Author of 44 Friends in Council.” Crown 
 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Rhoades.-— POEMS. By James Rhoades. Fcap. 8vo. 4 s. 6d. 
 
BELLES LETT RES, 
 
 l 9 
 
 Richardson. — THE ILIAD OF THE EAST. A Selection of 
 Legends drawn from Valmiki’s Sanskrit Poem, 44 The Ramayana.” 
 By Frederika Richardson. Crown 8vo. fs. 6d. 
 
 44 It is impossible to read it without recognizing the value and interest 
 of the Eastern epic . It is as fascinating as a fairy tale , this 
 romantic poem of India, ” — Globe. 4 4 A charming volume , which 
 at once enmeshes the reader in its snares .” — Athenaeum. 
 
 Roby.— STORY OF A HOUSEHOLD, AND OTHER POEMS. 
 By Mary K. Roby. Fcap. 8vo. 5 j. 
 
 Rogers. — RIDICULA REDIVIVA. Old Nursery Rhymes. 
 Illustrated in Colours, by J. E. Rogers, with Ornamental Covers. 
 In four parts, is. each, or complete in i vol. 5 ^ 
 
 44 The most splendid, and at the same time the most really meritorious 
 of the books specially intended for children , that we have seen .” — 
 Spectator. 44 These large bright pictures will attract children to 
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 indifferent consideration with parents who propose to educate their 
 children f - — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 Rossetti. — Works by Christina Rossetti : — 
 
 POEMS. Complete Edition, containing 44 Goblin Market,” 44 The 
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 8vo. 
 
 SPEAKING LIKENESSES. Illustrated by Arthur Hughes. 
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 44 Certain to be a delight to many a juvenile fireside circle. ” — Morn- 
 ing Post. 
 
 Runaway (The), a Story for the Young. By the Author of 
 44 Mrs. Jerningham’s Journal.” With Illustrations by J. Lawson. 
 Globe 8 vo. gilt. 4 ^. 6d. 
 
 4 4 This is one of the best , if not indeed the very best, of all the stories 
 that has come before us this Christmas. The heroines are both 
 charming , and, unlike heroines, they are as full of fun as ot charms. 
 It is an admirable book to read aloud to the young folk when they 
 are all gathered round the fire, and nurses and other ofiparitions 
 are still far away .” — Saturday Review. 
 
 Ruth and her Friends. A Story for Girls. With a Frontis- 
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 4 4 We wish all the school girls and home-taught girls in. the land had 
 the opportunity of reading it .” — Nonconformist. 
 
 Scouring of the White Horse; or, the Long 
 VACATION RAMBLE OF A LONDON CLERK. Illustrated 
 by Doyle. Imp. i 6 mo. Cheaper Issue. 3 ^. 6d. 
 
 Shairp (Principal).— KILMAHOE, a Highland Pastoral, with 
 other Poems. By John Campbell Shairp, Principal of the 
 United College, St. Andrews. Fcap, 8vo. 5 ^. 
 
 B 2 
 
20 
 
 BELLES LETT RES. 
 
 ‘ ‘ Kihnahoe is a Highland Pastoral , redolent of the warm soft air 
 of tke western lochs and moors , sketched out with remarkable 
 grace and picturesqueness . ” — Saturday Review. 
 
 Shakespeare,— The Works of William Shakespeare. Cam- 
 bridge Edition. Edited by W. George Clark, M.A. and W. 
 Aldis Wright, M.A. Nine vols. 8vo. cloth. 4/. 14.?. 6d. 
 
 The Guardian calls ii an 4 4 excellent., and, to the student almost 
 indispensable edition ; ” and the Examiner calls it “an unrivalled 
 edition. ” 
 
 Shakespeare’s Tempest. Edited with Gtossarial and Ex- 
 planatory Notes, by the Rev. J. M. Jephson. New Edition. 
 i 8 mo. is. 
 
 Slip (A) in the Fens.— Illustrated by the Author. Crown 
 8vo. 6s. 
 
 “An artistic little volume , for every page is a picture / 1 — Times. 4 ‘ It 
 will be read with pleasure , and with a pleasure that is altogether 
 innocents — Saturday Review. 
 
 Smedley — TWO DRAMATIC POEMS. By Menella Bute 
 Smedley, Author of 44 Lady Grace, 5 ’ &c. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s. 
 “May be read with enjoyment and profit .” — Saturday Review. 
 
 Smith. — -POEMS. By Catherine Barnard Smith. Fcap. 
 8 vo. 5 s. 
 
 Smith (Rev. Walter). — HYMNS OF CHRIST AND THE 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE. By the Rev. Walter C. Smith, M.A. 
 Fcap. 8 vo. 6s. 
 
 4 4 These are among the sweetest sacred poems we have read for a long 
 time. With no profuse imagery , expressing a range of feeling 
 and expression by no means unco?nmon , they are true and elevated , 
 and their pathos is Profound and simple .” — NONCONFORMIST. 
 
 Stanley, — TRUE TO LIFE.— A SIMPLE STORY. By Mary 
 Stanley. Crown 8vo. 10 ^. 6d. 
 
 4 ‘ For many a long day we have not met with a more simple , healthy , 
 and unpretending story .” — Standard. 
 
 Stephen (C. E.)— THE SERVICE OF THE POOR; being 
 an Inquiry nto the Reasons for and against the Establishment of 
 Religious Sisterhoods for Charitable Purposes. By Caroline 
 Emilia Stephen. Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 6 4 It touches incidentally and with much wisdom and tenderness on 
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 with society , that it may be read with advantage by many who 
 have never thought of entering a Sisterhood .” — SPECTATOR. 
 
 Stephens (J. B.)— CONVICT ONCE. A Poem. By J. 
 Brunton Stephens. Extra fcap. 8 vo. y. 6 d. 
 
 “ It is as far more interesting than ninety -nine novels out of a 
 hundred , as it is superior to them in power , worth , and beauty. 
 We should most strongly advise everybody to read ‘ Convict Once. ’ ” 
 — Westminster Review. 
 
BELLES LETTRES. 
 
 21 
 
 Streets and Lanes of a City : Being the Reminiscences 
 of Amy Dutton. With a Preface by the Bishop of Salis- 
 bury. Second and Cheaper Edition. Globe 8vo. 2 s. 6 d. 
 
 “ One of the most really striking books that has ever come before us.” 
 — Literary Churchman. 
 
 Strivelyne — THE PRINCESS OF SILVERLAND ; and 
 other Tales. By Elsie Strivelyne. With Frontispiece by Sir 
 Noel Paton. Globe 8vo. gilt. 4s. 
 
 “ Delightfully fresh and original '.” — Graphic,, 
 
 “ Readable and pleasant .” — Athenaeum. 
 
 Tell Me a story. With Illustrations by Walter Crane. 
 Globe 8vo gilt. 4 s. 6d. 
 
 Thring. — SCHOOL SONGS. A Collection of Songs for Schools. 
 With the Music arranged for four Voices. Edited by the Rev. E. 
 Thring and H. Riccius. Folio. Js. 6d . 
 
 Tom Brown’s School Days.— By An Old Boy. 
 
 Golden Treasury Edition, 4^. 6d. People’s Edition, 2 s. 
 
 With Seven Illustrations by A. Hughes and Sydney Hall 
 Crown 8vo. 6.r. 
 
 6i The most famous boy’s book in the language.” — Daily News. 
 
 Tom Brown at Oxford. — New Edition. With Illustrations. 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 “ In no other work that we can call to mind are the finer qualities of 
 the English gentleman more happily portrayed — Daily News. 
 66 A book of great power and truth .” — National Review. 
 
 Trench.— Works by R. Chenevix Trench, D.D., Archbishop 
 of Dublin. (For other Works by this Author, see Theological, 
 Historical, and Philosophical Catalogues.) 
 
 POEMS. Collected and arranged anew. Fcap. 8vo. Js. 6d. 
 
 HOUSEHOLD BOOK OF ENGLISH POETRY. Selected and 
 arranged, with Notes, by Archbishop Trench. Second Edition. 
 Extra fcap. 8vo. $s. 6d. 
 
 “ The Archbishop has conferred in this delightful volume an important 
 gift on the whole English-speaking population of the world. ” — 
 Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 SACRED LATIN POETRY, Chiefly Lyrical Selected and 
 arranged for Use. By Archbishop Trench. Third Edition, 
 Corrected and Improved. Fcap. 8vo. 7 s. 
 
 Trollope (Anthony). — SIR HARRY HOTSPUR OF 
 HUMBLETH WAITE. By Anthony Trollope, Author of 
 ‘ 4 Framley Parsonage,” etc. Cheap Edition. Globe 8vo. 2 s.6d. 
 The Athenaeum remarks : “No reader who begins to read this book 
 is likely to lay it down until the last page is turned. This brilliant 
 novel appears to us decidedly more successful than any other of Mr. 
 Trollop! s shorter stories.” 
 
22 
 
 BELLES LETTRES. 
 
 Turner. — Works by the Rev. Charles Tennyson Tue.ner : — 
 
 SONNETS. Dedicated to his Brother, the Poet Laureate. Fcap. 
 8vo 4 6a. 
 
 SMALL TABLEAUX. Fcap. 8vo. 4s. &/. 
 
 Tyrwhitt — OUR SKETCHING CLUB. Letters and Studies 
 on Landscape Art. By Rev. R. St. John Tyrwhitt, M.A. 
 With an Authorized Reproduction of the Lessons and Woodcuts 
 in Professor Ruskin’s 44 Elements of Drawing.” Second Edition. 
 Crown 8vo. 7 s. 6d. 
 
 Under the Limes.- — By the Author of 44 Christina North.” 
 Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 44 One of the prettiest and best told stories which it has been our 
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 Veitch —THE TWEED, AND OTHER POEMS. By J. 
 Veitch, LL.D., Professor of Logic and Rhetoric in Glasgow 
 University. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 Vittoria Colonna.— -LIFE AND POEMS. By Mrs. Henry 
 Roscoe. Crown Svo. 9 s. 
 
 Waller six WEEKS IN THE SADDLE : A Painter’s Journal 
 
 in Iceland. By S. E. Waller. Illustrated by the Author. 
 Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 44 An exceedingly pleasant and naturally written little book. . . Mr. 
 Waller has a clever pencil , and the text is well illustrated with his 
 own sketches.”— -Times. 
 
 Wandering Willie. By the Author ot “ Effie’s Friends,” and 
 44 John Hatherton.” Third Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 44 This is an idyll of rare truth and beauty. . . . The story is simple 
 and touching , the style of extraordinary delicacy , precision , and 
 picturesqueness. ... A charming gift-book for young ladies not 
 yet promoted to novels , and will a?nply repay those of their elders 
 who may give an hour to its perusal .” — Daily News. 
 
 Webster. - — Works by Augusta Webster : — 
 
 44 // Mrs. Webster only remains true to herself , she will assuredly 
 take a higher rank as a poet than any woman has yet done .” — 
 Westminster Review. 
 
 DRAMATIC STUDIES. Extra fcap. Svo. 5*. 
 
 4i A volume as strongly marked by perfect taste as by poetic power.”—* 
 Nonconformist. 
 
 A WOMAN SOLD, AND OTHER POEMS. Crown 8vo. 7 s. 6d. 
 44 Mrs. Webster has shown us that she is able to draw admirably 
 froin the life ; that she can observe with subtlety , and render her 
 observations with delicacy ; that she can impersonate complex con- 
 ceptions and venture into which few living writers can follow her.” 
 —Guardian. 
 
BELLES LETTRES. 
 
 23 
 
 W e b S t C V— -continued. 
 
 PORTRAITS. Second Edition. Extra fcap. Svo. 3 l 6 d. 
 
 “Mrs. Webster's poems exhibit simplicity and tenderness . . . her 
 taste is perfect . . . This simplicity is combined with a subtlety of 
 thought, feeling, and observation which demand that attention which 
 only real lovers of poetry are apt to bestow .” — WESTMINSTER 
 Review. 
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND OF AESCHYLUS. Literally translated 
 into English Verse. Extra fcap. Svo. 3L &d. 
 
 “ Closeness and simplicity combined with literary skill.” — Athe- 
 naeum. 44 Mrs. Webster's 4 Dramatic Studies' and 4 Translation 
 of Prometheus ’ have won for her an honow able place among our 
 female poets. She writes with remarkable vigour and dramatic 
 realization , and bids fair to be the most successful claimant of Mrs. 
 Browning' s mantle .” — British Quarterly Review. 
 
 MEDEA OF EURIPIDES. Literally translated into English 
 Verse. Extra fcap. Svo. %s. 6 d. 
 
 44 Mrs. Webster's translation surpasses our utmost expectations . It is 
 a photograph of the original without any of that harshness which 
 so often accompanies a photograph ! — Westminster Review. 
 
 THE AUSPICIOUS DAY. A Dramatic Poem. Extra fcap. 
 8vo. 5*. 
 
 44 The 4 Auspicious Day 1 shows a marked advance , not only in art , 
 but , in what is of far more importance , in breadth of thought and 
 intellectual grasp .” — Westminster Review. “This drama is 
 a manifestation of high dramatic power on the part of the gifted 
 writer , and entitled to our warmest admiration , as a worthy piece 
 of work. ” — Standard. 
 
 YU-PE-YA’S LUTE. A Chinese Tale in English Verse. Extra 
 fcap. Svo. (id. 
 
 “A very charming tale , charmingly told in dainty verse , with 
 occasional lyrics of tender beauty .” — Standard. 44 We close the 
 book with the renewed conviction that in Mrs. Webster we have a 
 profound and original poet. The book is marked not by mere 
 sweetness of melody — rare as that gift is — but by the infinitely 
 rarer gifts of dramatic power, of passion, and sympathetic insight.” 
 — Westminster Review. 
 
 When I was a Little Girl, stories for CHILDREN. 
 
 By the Author of 44 St. Olave’s.” Fourth Edition. Extra fcap. 
 8 vo. 4L 6 d. With Eight Illustrations by L. Frolich. 
 
 “At the head, and a long way ahead, of all books [for girls, we 
 place 4 When I was a Little Girl ” — Times. “It is one of the 
 choicest morsels of child-biography which we have met with .” — 
 Nonconformist. 
 
 White. — RHYMES BY WALTER WHITE. 8vo. "js. 6 d. 
 
 Whittier.— JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER’S POETICAL 
 WORKS. Complete Edition, with Portrait engraved by C. H. 
 Jeens. i8mo. 4 s. 6 d. 
 
24 
 
 BELLES LETTRES. 
 
 Mr. Whittier has all the smooth melody and the pathos of the author 
 of ‘ Hiawatha, ’ with a greater nicety of description and a 
 quainter fancy. ” — Graphic. 
 
 Willougnby. FAIRY GUARDIANS. A Book fordhe Young. 
 By F. Willoughby. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. gilt. 5^. 
 
 Wolf.— the life and habits of wild animals. 
 
 Twenty Illustrations by Joseph Wolf, engraved by J. W. and E. 
 Whymper. With descriptive Letter-press, by D. G. Elliot, 
 F.L.S. Super royal 4to, cloth extra, gilt edges. 21^. 
 
 This is the last series of drawings which will be made by Mr. Wolf , 
 either upon wood or stone. The Pall Mall Gazette says: 
 “ The fierce , untameable side of brute nature has never received a 
 more robust and vigorous interpretation , a:id the various incidents 
 in which particular character is shown are set forth zvith rare dra- 
 matic power. For excellence that will endure , we incline to place 
 this very near the top of the list of Christmas books A And the. 
 Art Journal observes , “ Rarely , if ever , have we seen animal 
 life more forcibly and beautifully depicted than in this really 
 splendid volume A 
 
 Also, an Edition in. royal folio, handsomely bound in Morocco 
 elegant, Proofs before Letters, each Proof signed by the Engravers. 
 
 Wollaston.— LYRA DEVONIENSIS. By T. V. Wollaston, 
 M.A. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 “It is the work of a man of refined taste , of deep religious sentiment , 
 a true artist , and a good Christian .” — Church Times. 
 
 Woolner.— MY BEAUTIFUL LADY. By Thomas Woolner. 
 With a Vignette by Arthur Hughes. Third Edition. Fcap. 
 8vo. 
 
 4 4 No man can read this poem without being struck by the fitness and 
 finish of the workmanship , so to speak , as well as by the chastened 
 and unpretending loftiness of thought which pervades the whole I 
 — Globe. 
 
 Words from the Poets. Selected by the Editor of “ Rays 
 of Sunlight.” With a Vignette and Frontispiece. i8mo. limp., ir. 
 “ The selection aims at popularity, and deserves it .” — Guardian. 
 
 Yonge (C. M.) — Works by Charlotte M. Yonge. 
 
 THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE. Twenty-first Edition. With Illus- 
 trations. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 HEARTSEASE. Thirteenth Edition. With Illustrations. Crown 
 8vo. 6s. 
 
 THE DAISY CHAIN. Twelfth Edition. With Illustrations. 
 Crown 8 vo. 6s. 
 
 THE TRIAL: MORE LINKS OF THE DAISY CHAIN. 
 Thirteenth Edition. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 DYNEVOR TERRACE. Seventh Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 HOPES AND FEARS. Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 THE YOUNG STEPMOTHER. Sixth Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
BELLES LETTRES. 
 
 25 
 
 Yonge (C. M.) — continued . 
 
 CLEVER WOMAN OF THE FAMILY. Fourth Edition. 
 Crown 8 vo. 6s. 
 
 THE DOVE IN THE EAGLE’S NEST. Fifth Edition. 
 Crown 8 vo. 6 ^. 
 
 4 4 We think the authoress of 4 The Heir of Redclyffe ’ has surpassed 
 her previous efforts in this illuminated chronicle of the olden time.” 
 — British Quarterly. 
 
 THE CAGED LION. Illustrated. Third Edition. Crown 8 vo. 6s. 
 44 Prettily and tenderly written , and will with young people especially 
 be a great favourite .” — Daily News. 44 Everybody should read 
 this.” — Literary Churchman. 
 
 THE CHAPLET OF PEARLS; or, THE WHITE AND 
 BLACK RIBAUMONT. Crown 8 vo. 6 s. Fourth Edition. 
 
 44 Miss Yonge has brought a lofty aim as well as high art to the con- 
 struction of a story which may claim a place among the best efforts 
 in historical romance.” — Morning Post. 44 The plot, in truth , 
 is of the very first order of merit.” — Spectator. 44 We have 
 seldom read a more charming story.” — Guardian. 
 
 THE PRINCE AND THE PAGE. A Tale of the Last Crusade. 
 Illustrated. i 8 mo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 44 A tale which , we are sure , will give pleasure to many others besides 
 the young people for whom it is specially intended. . . . This 
 extremely prettily-told story does not require the guarantee afforded 
 by the name of the author of 4 The Heir of Redclyffe 5 on the title - 
 page to ensure its becoming a universal favourite.” — Dublin 
 ~ Evening Mail. 
 
 THE LANCES OF LYNWOOD. New Edition, with Coloured 
 Illustrations. l 8 mo. 4s. 6d. 
 
 44 The illustrations are very spirited and rich in colour , and the 
 story can hardly fail to charm the youthful razin’ ’—M anchester 
 Examiner. 
 
 THE LITTLE DUKE : RICHARD THE FEARLESS. New 
 Edition. Illustrated. i 8 mo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 A STOREHOUSE OF STORIES. First and Second Series. 
 Globe 8 vo. $s. 6d. each. 
 
 Contents of First Series : — History of Philip Quarll— 
 Goody Twoshoes — The Governess — Jemima Placid — The Perambu- 
 lations of a Mouse — The Village School — The Little Queen — 
 History of Little Jack. 
 
 44 Miss Yonge has done great service to the infantry of this generation 
 by putting these eleven stories of sage simplicity within their reach.” 
 — British Quarterly Review. 
 
 Contents of Second Series Family Stories — Elements of 
 
 Morality — A Puzzle for a Curious Girl — Blossoms of Morality. 
 
 A BOOK OF GOLDEN DEEDS OF ALL TIMES AND ALL 
 COUNTRIES. Gathered and Narrated Anew. New Edition, 
 with Twenty Illustrations by Frolich. Crown 8vo. cloth gilt. 6s. 
 
26 
 
 BELLES LETTERS . 
 
 Yonge (C. M.) — continued, 
 
 (See also Golden Treasury Series). Cheap Edition, is. 
 
 “ We have seen no prettier gift-book for a long time , and none which , 
 both for its cheapness and the spirit in which it has been compiled 
 is more deserving of praise ." — Athenaeum. 
 
 LITTLE LUCY’S WONDERFUL GLOBE. Pictured, by 
 Frolich, and narrated by Charlotte M. Yonge. Second 
 Edition. Crown 4to. ^loth gilt. 6 s. 
 
 “ 6 Lucy's Wonderful Globe 5 is capital , and will give its youthful 
 readers more idea op foreign countries and customs than any number 
 of books of geography or travel .” — Graphic. 
 
 CAMEOS FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. From Rollo to 
 Edward II. Extra fcap. 8vo. 5a Third Edition, enlarged. 5 a 
 
 A Second Series. THE WARS IN FRANCE. Third Edition. 
 Extra fcap 0 8vo. 5 a # 
 
 “ Instead op dry details ," says the Nonconformist, il we have 
 living pictures , faithful , vivid, and striking ." 
 
 P’s AND Q’s ; or, THE QUESTION OF PUTTING UPON. 
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28 
 
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30 
 
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32 
 
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