f 
 
IMAGINATION 
 
 IN 
 
 LANDSCAPE PAINTING 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2014 
 
 https://archive.org/details/imaginationinlanOOhame_0 
 
IMAGINATION 
 
 IN 
 
 LANDSCAPE PAINTING 
 
 By 
 
 Philip Gilbert Hamerton 
 
 Author of " The Graphic Arts," " Etching and Etchers," " Landscape," etc. 
 
 WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 New Edition 
 
 LONDON 
 SEELEY AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 Essex Street, Strand 
 1896 
 
 \ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Is the Landscape Painter's Imagination of a 
 
 Special Kind? i 
 
 II. The Two Senses of the Word ''Imagination ' ... 6 
 
 in. Of Images in the Mind 18 
 
 IV. Dangerous Imagination 34 
 
 v. The Training of the Memory 41 
 
 VI. Gifts and Acquired Knowledge 59 
 
 vii. The Mechanical and Scientific Imagination ... 67 
 
 vili. Images evoked by Feeling 76 
 
 IX. The Alteration in Images produced by Feeling 85 
 
 x. Unity as a Result of Imagmatio?t 94 
 
 XI. How the Imagination deals with Definite Lines 
 
 and Proportions 106 
 
 XII. Of Special Exaggerations in Buildings ... 127 
 
 Xlll. The hnaginative Value of Distance to Bitildings 1 39 
 
I 
 
 vi Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 xiv. Of Imaginative Execution in dealing with 
 
 Architecture 149 
 
 XV. The Range of our Imaginative Sympathy con- 
 cerning Human Work in Landscape ... 158 
 
 xvi. Passive Imagination^ or Reverie 191 
 
 XVII. Working Imagination, or Invention, as applied 
 
 specially to Landscape ... ... ... 202 
 
 xvill. Composition and Imagination 210 
 
 XIX. Effect as the Expression of Nature 216 
 
 XX. Substance and Effect 231 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Dance by the Water 
 
 Claude 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 
 River Scene 
 
 Corot 
 
 to face page 
 
 14 
 
 The Watering Place 
 
 Gainsborough 
 
 it 
 
 46 
 
 Forest Scene 
 
 Ruysdael 
 
 n 
 
 62 
 
 Windmill 
 
 David Cox 
 
 >» 
 
 98 
 
 Glendearg 
 
 Cattermolc 
 
 » 
 
 102 
 
 Tobias and the Angel 
 
 Rembrandt 
 
 
 104 
 
 Woman playing Cymbals 
 
 Turner 
 
 it 
 
 108 
 
 Queen of Sheba 
 
 Claude 
 
 n 
 
 112 
 
 Boulevard St. Germain ... 
 
 Lalanne 
 
 
 122 
 
 Castle of the Middle Ages 
 
 Victor Hugo 
 
 » 
 
 132 
 
 Landscape with Village 
 
 
 
 
 Churches 
 
 Ruysdael 
 
 
 142 
 
 St. Anthony 
 
 Diirer 
 
 » 
 
 152 
 
 Landscape with a Town ... 
 
 Titian 
 
 it 
 
 162 
 
 Mill on the Stour 
 
 Constable 
 
 tt 
 
 174 
 
 St. Mawes, Cornwall 
 
 Turner 
 
 it 
 
 178 
 
viii List of Illustrations 
 
 Bandits 
 
 Salvator Rosa to face page 194 
 
 Sunset 
 
 Rubens 
 
 „ 206 
 
 Girl with the Tambourine 
 
 Turner 
 
 „ 212 
 
 Evening 
 
 Wilson 
 
 „ 222 
 
 The Traveller 
 
 Cuyp 
 
 ,, 224 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream 
 
 Poole 
 
 „ 226 
 
 Footbridge over the Wiley 
 
 Chattock 
 
 „ 228 
 
 Inverary Castle 
 
 Turner 
 
 „ 242 
 
IMAGINATION 
 
 IN 
 
 LANDSCAPE PAINTING 
 
 I 
 
 Is the Landscape Painter's Imagination of a special 
 
 HE imagination of the landscape painter 
 
 differs from that of other imaginative 
 people only in the class of objects or phe- 
 nomena with which it is concerned. The 
 objects that occupy him are those which are 
 easily visible on the surface of the earth, and 
 the phenomena in which he takes an interest 
 are the effects of light and colour which 
 seem to give to those objects a varying 
 
 kind ? 
 
 B 
 
2 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 value and significance. He is interested in 
 these things and appearances, not for them- 
 selves alone, but because he perceives in 
 them certain obscure analogies with the 
 moods of man. 
 
 Landscape painters, like other men, may- 
 be endowed with the imaginative faculties in 
 the most varied degrees and in quite different 
 orders. We shall have to discriminate be- 
 tween some, at least, of these in the course 
 of the following chapters. For the present, 
 we must content ourselves with the simple 
 assertion, to be maintained subsequently by 
 proofs, that there is nothing peculiar in the 
 imagination of a landscape painter, except 
 this, that it is occupied with objects and 
 phenomena that interest him more peculiarly 
 than others. Not that other people are 
 necessarily without interest in these objects 
 and phenomena, for if they were so, the pro- 
 ductions of the landscape painter would have 
 
Is the Imagination of a special kind? 3 
 
 no sale, and he could never win reputation. 
 Thousands of passages in literature give 
 evidence of a landscape painter's tastes, and 
 many seem to prove that the writer pos- 
 sessed exactly the kind of imagination which 
 we are in the habit of attributing to painters. 
 There is abundant evidence, too, of the 
 presence of taste and imagination exercised 
 with reference to landscape, in people who 
 have no artistic training whatever, and who 
 do not express themselves in literature. 
 We know this by their evident delight in 
 romantic natural scenery, by their choice, 
 when the opportunity is offered, of beautiful 
 sites for their places of residence, and especi- 
 ally by an enjoyment of imaginative pictures 
 which is not the less real because dissociated 
 from the technical discussions of the studio. 
 There is good evidence, even, that a large 
 proportion of the outside public is really 
 more imaginative than some of the land- 
 
4 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 scape painters themselves, for accurate, unim- 
 aginative landscape painting is never widely 
 popular, and the lowest popular forms of the 
 art, as well as the highest, invariably appeal 
 far more to the spectator's imagination than 
 to any supposed accuracy in his knowledge. 
 The views of places painted on the panels of 
 steam-boats, or the coloured prints that are 
 bestowed gratuitously on the purchasers of 
 certain groceries, or the sketches of land- 
 scape on screens and trays, are probably the 
 lowest forms of the art that deserve to be 
 taken into consideration ; and in all these 
 you will find, I do not say any display of 
 noble imaginative powers, but certainly far 
 more the impulse to be imaginative than the 
 anxiety to be accurate. This is only in 
 accordance with what we know of the popular 
 imagination in other things. We owe the 
 development of all early myths and legends 
 to the common people, whilst the criticism 
 
Is the Imagination of a special kind ? 5 
 
 that distinguishes between legend and history 
 is always the product of a small cultivated 
 class. There is, indeed, such vigour of 
 imagination in the popular mind that the 
 artist who is destitute of it cannot satisfy the 
 instinctive needs of the people. They will 
 be unmoved by his art, and however 
 careful, however full of conscientious ob- 
 servation, it may be, they will feel it to be 
 unsatisfactory, and therefore reject it as 
 untrue. 
 
II 
 
 The Two Senses of the Word ' Imagination ' 
 
 J ITTRE marks the distinction in popular 
 use between two meanings of the word 
 Imagination. The first sense, according to 
 him, is 'a faculty that we have of recalling 
 vividly, and of seeing, so to speak, objects 
 that are no longer before our eyes.' This is 
 the first sense, but the second appears to 
 involve the exercise of an additional faculty. 
 Littre defines the second sense as, 'particu- 
 larly in literature and the fine arts, the faculty 
 of inventing, of conceiving, joined to the 
 talent of rendering conceptions in a lively 
 
 manner. So we say, "this poet, this painter 
 
 6 
 
Two Senses of the Word ' Imagination 9 7 
 
 has a great deal of imagination," and we 
 speak of "the creative imagination."' 
 
 Voltaire, in his ' Philosophical Dictionary,' 
 said that there are ' two kinds of imagin- 
 ation, one which consists in retaining a 
 simple impression of objects, the other which 
 arranges the images so received, and com- 
 bines them in a thousand ways.' 
 
 Webster makes the distinction with equal 
 clearness. He defines imagination in the 
 first sense as ' the image-making power ; the 
 power to create or reproduce an object of 
 sense previously perceived ; the power to 
 recall a mental or spiritual state that has 
 before been experienced.' In the second 
 sense, Webster says that imagination is 1 the 
 representative power ; the phantasy or fancy ; 
 the power to re-construct or re-combine the 
 materials furnished by experience or direct 
 apprehension ; the complex faculty usually 
 termed the plastic or creative power.' Not 
 
8 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 satisfied with these two definitions, Webster 
 o-oes farther and adds a third, defining- 
 imagination in this last and highest sense 
 as 'the power to re-create or re-combine 
 with readiness, under the stimulus of excited 
 feeling, for the accomplishment of an elevated 
 end or purpose ; in this sense, distinguished 
 from fancy' 
 
 The reader will observe that Webster, in 
 his second definition, makes imagination and 
 fancy synonymous, whereas in his third he 
 distinguishes them. 
 
 Webster says that Imagination and Fancy 
 are different exercises of the same general 
 power — the plastic or creative faculty ; that 
 * Imagination is the higher exercise of the 
 two, and has strong emotion as its actuating 
 and formative cause ; whilst Fancy moves 
 on a lighter wing, it is governed by laws of 
 association which are more remote, and 
 sometimes arbitrary or capricious.' 
 
Two Senses of the Word 1 Imagination ' 9 
 
 Wordsworth had a distinction between 
 Fancy and Imagination in his mind when 
 he classified his poems ; but if we examine 
 them carefully, taking the poem ' To the 
 Skylark ' as an example of Fancy (it having 
 been so classed by its author), and that ' To 
 the Cuckoo ' as an example of Imagination, 
 we shall not find any greater difference than 
 this, namely, that the tone of the first poem 
 is less mysterious than that of the second. 
 In both poems the first lines are equally gay 
 and the last equally serious. If imagination 
 is the reproduction of the images of things, 
 neither one nor the other of the two poems 
 has any claim to be imaginative, as there is 
 no clear sight of an image in either, and the 
 motive of the verses to the cuckoo is pre- 
 cisely the invisibility of the bird. The 
 reason why the poet called his verses to the 
 skylark fanciful, and those to the cuckoo 
 imaginative, is because, in the first, his 
 
io Imagination in Lajtdscape Painting 
 
 imagination played about a fact, the joyful 
 ascent of the lark, whilst in the second it 
 played about a fictitious idea that the song 
 of the cuckoo was not from a bird, but a 
 mysterious voice without any bird's throat 
 to make it. The fiction with regard to the 
 cuckoo is carried far indeed when the poet, 
 for the purposes of his art, tries to make us 
 believe that the bird is always invisible ; 
 one would think that he had never lived in 
 the country. As for me, I have seen the 
 cuckoo many a time, and Gilbert White of 
 Selborne once saw several cuckoos at once. 1 
 The inference seems to be that, in Words- 
 worth's conception, the Imagination acts 
 more in supposing fictions than in evoking 
 images of realities. 
 
 In the original edition of the second 
 volume of ' Modern Painters,' Mr. Ruskin 
 
 1 The birds were skimming over a large pond and 
 catching dragon-flies. 
 
Two Senses of the Word 1 Imagination ' 1 1 
 
 distinguished somewhat elaborately between 
 Fancy and Imagination ; but it is interesting 
 to observe that, in the more recent handy 
 edition of that portion of his great book, 
 he frankly abandons the distinction in the 
 following plain words : — 
 
 * In the first place, the reader must be warned not to 
 trouble himself with the distinctions, attempted, or 
 alluded to, between Fancy and Imagination. The sub- 
 ject is jaded, the matter of it insignificant, and the 
 settlement of it practically impossible, not merely be- 
 cause everybody has his own theory, but also because 
 nobody ever states his own in terms on which other 
 people are agreed. I am, myself, now entirely indifferent 
 which word I use ; and should say of a work of art 
 that it was well " fancied," or well " invented," or well 
 " imagined," with only some shades of different meaning 
 in the application of the terms, rather dependent on the 
 matter treated than the power of mind involved in the 
 treatment.' 
 
 The distinction between Fancy and Imagin- 
 ation is, indeed, one of those which appear to 
 be invented more for the exercise of a need- 
 lessly refined ingenuity than for any practical 
 
12 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 purpose, and it has the immense incon- 
 venience of obliging a critic to be always 
 on his guard in the employment of terms, 
 for if he speaks of the imagination of one of 
 the lighter and more graceful artists it may 
 be objected that an artist of that calibre is 
 not imaginative at all, but only fanciful ; and 
 when the critic has to deal with an artist 
 whose imagination is sometimes grave and 
 profound, and at other times disposed to 
 play in a charming manner with trifles, the 
 most unprofitable objections may be raised 
 against the use of either word. In short, 
 this is one of those distinctions which afford 
 opportunities for chicanery, and therefore no 
 attention will be paid to it in these chapters. 
 Whenever necessary, a distinction will be 
 made between different phases or tempers 
 of the one great faculty that is properly 
 called the Imagination, but the faculty itself 
 will always be called by one name. 
 
Two Senses of the Word 1 Imagination ' 1 3 
 
 For us, then, there will be only two senses 
 of the word Imagination. We cannot well 
 do without these two, though it may be 
 objected that one of them is only Memory, 
 an objection to be answered in the next 
 chapter. For the present, it may be enough 
 to call the attention of the reader to one of 
 those questions which often produce con- 
 fusion in our thinking. Imagination is the 
 power of seeing images of things that are 
 absent ; Imagination is also the power of 
 combining and altering these images so as to 
 fit or fuse them together in artistic wholes 
 from which incongruous images are ex- 
 cluded. Now, here we have two powers 
 which are at least so far independent that 
 the first can exist without the second, though 
 the second cannot exist without the first. 
 Many people can bring images before the 
 mind's eye, who have not the smallest gift 
 for combining them in works of art. On 
 
14 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 the other hand, there have been instances 
 of good composing power in which it was 
 not accompanied by that vivid representing 
 power which seems to be the indication of a 
 perfectly clear memory. Let us suppose the 
 case of an artist with these two gifts, or a 
 gift and an acquirement. 
 
 1. The power of recalling images of absent 
 things. 
 
 2. The power of representing these images 
 la painting. 
 
 Would you call the works of such an artist 
 imaginative paintings ? Most probably not. 
 You might call them truthful, but not imagin- 
 ative. It is even possible that you might be 
 so deceived by their fidelity as to think that 
 not even the memory had anything to do 
 with them, and that they were painted 
 entirely from nature. I remember an in- 
 stance of this. A painter, whose memory 
 was very good, relied upon it for the 
 
o 
 U 
 
Two Senses of the Word 6 Imagination ' 1 5 
 
 materials of a certain work which was after- 
 wards written about as being obviously 
 painted from nature, and as having the usual 
 defects of pictures or studies executed out- 
 of-doors. Nobody would call such a work 
 imaginative, and yet it resulted from the 
 artist's power of recalling images, and it was 
 the very strength of the memory which 
 made the work seem as if it had not been 
 painted from memory. In other words, the 
 image-recalling faculty was so strong, that 
 it could not be believed in, and its results 
 were attributed to something else. 
 
 Let us now suppose the case of an artist 
 with an additional gift, that of imagination in 
 the second sense, and we shall see if he is 
 likely to meet with greater justice. Nature 
 and his own labours together have armed 
 him with these three talents : — 
 
 1. The power of recalling images of absent 
 things. 
 
1 6 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 2. The power of representing these images 
 in painting. 
 
 3. The power of fusing images into pictorial 
 wholes. 
 
 I should say that an artist, so gifted, 
 would have every chance of being recognised 
 as what we call an imaginative artist, and that 
 the recognition would be due to the third talent 
 especially. But the first and third equally 
 belong to Imagination. The true distinction 
 I take to be this, that the power of recalling 
 images with clearness is Imagination of the 
 more ordinary kind, though it is more usually 
 called Memory, whilst the power of combining 
 these images in such a manner as to make 
 them into works of art, is the gift of Artistic 
 Invention, which is very much rarer than the 
 other. But if the first is only Memory, why 
 not simply call it so ? The reason is that it is 
 a peculiar kind of memory in which an imago 
 is distinctly present. If I remember what a 
 
Two Senses of the Word ' Imagination ' 1 7 
 
 man said to me, that is verbal memory ; but if 
 his face, figure, costume, attitude, and expres- 
 sion, with the effect of light upon him as he 
 spoke, are all present to me at the same time, 
 then an imago appears to me, and I possess 
 the faculty of simple or ordinary imagination. 
 If several such imagines combine themselves 
 in my mind's eye so as to form pictorial com- 
 positions, governed and ordered by artistic 
 motives, then I possess that faculty of artistic 
 invention which artists call Imagination. The 
 kind of Imagination which leads to mechanical 
 invention will have to be considered briefly 
 in a future chapter. It is very nearly related 
 to artistic invention, but differs from it in one 
 important particular. 
 
 c 
 
Ill 
 
 Of Images in the Mind 
 
 r J^HE subject of the distinctness of images 
 in the mind has occupied the attention 
 of scientific men and teachers of drawing 
 more seriously since it has been understood 
 that the clearness of the image varied in 
 different brains, according to their constitu- 
 tion, and also that in some brains the power 
 o f evoking clear images could be very greatly 
 increased by culture. 
 
 I regret not to have Mr. Francis Gal ton's 
 inquiry on this subject before me, but remem- 
 ber enough of it to know that he proposed a 
 series of questions to different people with 
 
 the object of ascertaining the degree of 
 
 j8 
 
Of Images in the Mind 19 
 
 clearness attained by the image in different 
 cases, and that the results were more various 
 than would have been anticipated by any one 
 who had not given some special attention to 
 the subject. The common impression is that 
 all people remember much in the same way, 
 and each person believes that the usual way 
 of remembering is his own way. The truth 
 is, however, that memory acts in many ways 
 that do not concern us here : for example, 
 there is the memory of musical sounds, 
 which may be quite distinct from recalling 
 the visible images of printed notes, as many 
 people remember music who are unable to 
 read the notes ; and there is the memory of 
 what people have said, which is not the same 
 as being able to recall the image of a printed 
 page, and reading from it in the mind. 1 
 
 1 Taine speaks of sounds as having also their images, 
 because a musician remembers them. This is employing 
 the word 1 image ' in a very extended sense. It will be 
 
20 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 Another very curious and remarkable fact 
 about memory is, that it may carry away a 
 very clear and definite abstract of some 
 material object which is, nevertheless, not at 
 all an image of the object as it was seen by 
 the bodily eye. There are architects and 
 lovers of architecture who, after visiting a 
 cathedral, carry away plans and sections of 
 the edifice in their minds, yet, as the building 
 is entire, they cannot have seen any plans 
 and sections of it in the material form. 
 What they have seen is a succession of per- 
 spective views, outside and inside, varying 
 with every step taken during their visits, yet 
 these views have not left clear images of 
 themselves, and have only contributed to 
 form an abstraction that has never been seen. 1 
 
 convenient for our purpose if we take the word always to 
 mean a visible image, that is, something visible with the 
 mind's eye. 
 
 1 In this case, however, the lover of architecture may 
 
Of Images in the Mind 21 
 
 It is probable that the memory of Caesar 
 was an abstracting military memory, as his 
 * Commentaries ' are quite remarkable for the 
 absence of ocular impressions ; indeed, they 
 might have been written by a blind man 
 from information given by others. To his 
 mind an army would be a certain measurable 
 quantity of force that could be applied to 
 counteract another quantity of force, which 
 it was his business to estimate ; he would 
 probably not see the soldiers in his mind's 
 eye, as Homer or Virgil would. There may 
 be the clearest abstract ideas when the op- 
 portunity for making images is denied. For 
 example, a friend writes to you that he is 
 building a boat which will carry 450 square 
 feet of canvas, and have a ton of lead in her 
 keel. Now, there are distinct reasons why 
 
 first form an ideal image of a plan or section in his mind, 
 and afterwards remember that image as distinctly as if he 
 had drawn it on paper. 
 
22 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 it is impossible for you, without further in- 
 formation, to form any image of that boat 
 in your mind. You know nothing about the 
 model of her hull, nor the kind of rig adopted ; 
 but, notwithstanding this ignorance, notwith- 
 standing the impossibility of forming an 
 image, every boating man will have as clear 
 an idea of the sailing-force possessed by such 
 a boat as of the financial force that there is 
 in a definite sum of money. Here we are in 
 the region of arithmetic, but of arithmetic 
 aided by practical experience, as nobody who 
 depended on figures only could form any 
 notion of sailing-force in his mind. 
 
 In all cases of this kind, when we think 
 without images, there is a substitution of a sign 
 for the visible image. In the present case, 
 the sailing-force is represented by the figures 
 450 for the area of canvas, and 1 for the 
 weight of ballast, but it might equally be 
 represented by letters or any other conven- 
 
Of Images in the Mina 23 
 
 tional sign, representing a certain amount of 
 sailing-force. The electricians have lately- 
 adopted the terms volts, amperes, and ohms, 
 to represent electrical force — terms which 
 must be entirely dissociated from visible 
 images in their minds, and yet convey to 
 them far more accurate ideas of the force 
 employed than we should derive from seeing 
 batteries and coils. 
 
 It appears certain that a large class of 
 thinkers dispense with visible images by 
 substituting signs, but these thinkers are the 
 opposite of painters, they approach more to 
 mathematicians. A successful painter said 
 that he believed there was a simple preliminary 
 test by which the presence of a natural gift 
 for painting might be ascertained. Let the 
 aspirant take any book in which the actions 
 of men were narrated or represented — a 
 volume of Macaulay's history or a play of 
 Shakespeare — and observe whether, whilst 
 
24 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 he reads, visible images of the persons 
 appeared to his mind's eye, or whether the 
 characters are names for him and bundles of 
 qualities or faults. If the history or play 
 seems to be continuously illustrated by a 
 succession of visible images, moving like 
 actors on a stage, then the reader has the 
 natural faculties of a painter, and needs only 
 practice to paint well. This seems possible 
 at first, but it does not take into consideration 
 the necessity for the technical gifts by which 
 a painter translates the images he sees into 
 the painted images of the picture. If he has 
 not the craftsman's talent of copying cleverly 
 from the living model, it is evident that he 
 will not be able to paint better from a 
 phantom in the mind. Still, there can be 
 no doubt that this test is enough to deter- 
 mine the presence or absence of Imagination 
 in the primary sense of the word — that is, 
 the power of evoking images. The reader 
 
Of Images in the Mind 25 
 
 may amuse himself, if he pleases, by applying 
 a test of this kind to his own mental constitu- 
 tion. I will write down successively three or 
 four words, and the reader may take note 
 whether they bring images before his mind 
 or not, it being only postulated that he is not 
 to seek for images, as they ought to appear 
 spontaneously and at once. The first word 
 shall be Royalty. Now, have you seen any- 
 thing in the mind's eye ? For me, I have 
 just seen the Queen, in the state coach, going 
 to open Parliament, with Prince Albert by 
 her side. The impression was very vivid, 
 and is, in fact, nothing but a very old recollec- 
 tion suddenly revived ; but why should Her 
 Majesty be in the state coach ? Why was 
 she not sitting in a chair, as I have seen her 
 since, dressed like any other lady ? The 
 reason evidently is that the word ' Royalty ' 
 had suggested the idea of perfectly regal 
 state. The next word shall be Aristocracy. 
 
26 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 It may be considered either as representing 
 an abstract principle or a class in society ; 
 but we may see representatives of the prin- 
 ciple or the class. Does the reader see any- 
 thing ? I see some gentlemen and ladies very 
 well dressed, riding on very beautiful well- 
 groomed horses. The vision is very distinct 
 in parts ; it is a sunny afternoon in summer, 
 the nearest horse is a bay, and the rider has 
 white trousers ; the other horses are darker, 
 and their riders not so distinctly seen ; but 
 they are evidently English people. Now, for 
 a contrast, let us try Democracy. What do 
 you see ? The Agora at Athens, full of 
 citizens in ancient Greek dress, or a modern 
 crowd in the United States ? My vision (it 
 came clearly on writing the word) is a group 
 of factory workers coming out of a mill in 
 Lancashire. I see them plainly enough : the 
 men have paper caps on their heads, the 
 women cover their heads with shawls, and 
 
Of linages in the Mind 
 
 27 
 
 the foremost man has his hands in his 
 pockets, thereby lifting up his waistcoat, 
 which is double-breasted and has brass 
 buttons, the two lowest being unfastened. 1 
 Another day, Royalty, Aristocracy, Demo- 
 cracy may call up quite different images, 
 such as a king on a throne, the interior of 
 the House of Lords, and a Parisian mob, but 
 there will always, for me, be something visible 
 in association with such words, and so, I 
 believe, it is with all who have this kind of 
 imagination. The reader will, perhaps, find 
 a similar experience in his own case. If he 
 is a painter, who has worked much from the 
 figure, the images he sees in his mind's eye 
 will probably be far more clear and distinct 
 
 1 Many other details might have been given. For 
 example, the mill is on the right side — it is built of 
 stone ; there are cottages on the other side of the street, 
 and they are of brick. I do not remember having seen 
 the place in reality, but see it now as a real place, or 
 nearly so, though not with the bodily eye. 
 
28 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 than mine ; if he has never drawn or painted 
 anything, they are likely to be less distinct. 
 The practice of graphic art, especially in 
 colour, improves the power of recalling 
 images, and thereby educates the primary 
 kind of imagination, though it is not proved 
 that it can do much for the secondary or 
 combining imagination. Even the sight of 
 correct drawings may be of use, and that is 
 why it is so desirable to have them on the 
 walls of school-rooms. A boy, who has any 
 imagination at all, is sure to see images 
 whilst he reads, so that if you can help him 
 to imagine with some approach to correctness, 
 you will have spared him many erroneous 
 conceptions. Here is an example, a very 
 absurd example, of what I mean. On first 
 becoming acquainted with Virgil at a very 
 early age, a certain school-boy used to see 
 Aeneas dressed as an English clergyman, 
 rather portly in form, and carrying a thick, 
 
Of Images in the Mind 
 
 29 
 
 silver-headed cane. The reason for this was 
 the recurrent epithet ' pius,' and as a clergy- 
 man seemed to be the embodiment of piety, 
 the school-boy did this tailoring for Aeneas. 
 On his re-reading the ' Aeneid ' in later life, 
 lo ! the old familiar portly clergyman reap- 
 peared, though he had been quite forgotten 
 in the interval, and it was as much as the 
 now mature reader could do to expel him 
 finally from the brain, and substitute a Trojan 
 prince. 1 Here the faulty childish imagination 
 required to be educated, and we may be 
 quite sure that the imaginations of uneducated 
 people are continually playing them such 
 tricks. The country peasant who hears 
 about Solomon's temple will fancy a building 
 
 1 The reader will please bear in mind that we are 
 considering the image only, which comes within the 
 mind's vision involuntarily. Every school-boy knows 
 quite well that Aeneas was a Trojan commander and 
 prince, and that he could not have been dressed like 
 a modern Englishman, whether cleric or layman. 
 
3<d Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 of some kind, but in the absence of all 
 architectural knowledge the image that 
 presents itself to him will probably be some- 
 thing like the handsomest building in the 
 next market-town. 
 
 When the brain is in a healthy state, the 
 image may be clearly visible by the mind's 
 eye, but it will never confound itself with 
 realities, it will not seem to be visible with 
 the bodily eye ; in a word, there will be no 
 hallucination. Taine quotes from Brierre de 
 Boismont the case of an English portrait 
 painter who had a wonderful power of 
 remembering faces, and cultivated it to such 
 a degree that he could see the absent model 
 * sitting on a chair as distinctly as if real, and 
 even with forms and colours more lively and 
 decided.' ' From time to time,' said the 
 artist himself, ' I looked at the imaginary 
 figure and painted, then I interrupted my 
 work to examine the pose, exactly as if the 
 
Of Images in the Mind 3 1 
 
 original had been before me. Every time I 
 fixed my eyes on the chair I could see the 
 man.' To cultivate the image-evoking 
 power to such a degree as this is one of the 
 most dangerous experiments that can be 
 made upon the human brain. In this case, 
 over-culture led to an inability to distinguish 
 between the phantom and the reality ; then 
 came mental confusion, and the patient had 
 to be placed in an asylum, where he remained 
 for thirty years. On his restoration to health, 
 he found that the old power of painting from 
 the phantom still remained, but his medical 
 advisers would not permit him to exercise it. 
 Efforts of the imagination which are easily 
 borne by one brain may be fatal to another. 
 There have been famous chess-players who 
 could play eight or ten games at once without 
 seeing the boards. Labourdonnais (M. 
 Taine tells us) played two games in this 
 manner, but on one occasion he attempted 
 
32 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 three, and the effort cost him his life. Inaudi, 
 the most wonderful mental arithmetician who 
 ever became famous, can see an image in his 
 mind of a large black board covered all over 
 with small figures, and read them correctly 
 in their places, though he has never seen the 
 board itself, and he has only been told where 
 the figures were written, and that some 
 hours before. 1 Here the image has to be 
 constituted in the mind before it can be con- 
 sulted, and it must evidently be quite a clear 
 image all over, not distinct in some parts 
 only and obscure in others. Being much 
 interested in the production of mental images, 
 I asked Inaudi if this effort fatigued him, 
 and his answer was that he was not yet 
 
 1 The figures may be statements of thirty or forty 
 arithmetical problems, with their answers, entirely dis- 
 connected from each other. Inaudi remembers not only 
 each problem, and its answer, but also its place upon the 
 board. This is very like remembering all the details of 
 a picture. 
 
Of Images in the Mind 
 
 33 
 
 conscious of any fatigue from it. I then put 
 a further question of much import, — ' Do 
 figures and arithmetical problems haunt you 
 in your hours of leisure ? ' ' Not in the 
 least,' he said ; ' I am very fond of reading 
 and of fishing, and I never see or think of 
 figures when occupied with those amuse- 
 ments.' This is an example of the image- 
 making power in great strength, and at the 
 same time in perfectly healthy action. The 
 images evoked may be as clear as photo- 
 graphs, but they ought not to haunt the brain. 
 
 D 
 
IV 
 
 Dangerous Imagination 
 
 E have attempted, in the preceding 
 chapters, to show that imagination in its 
 
 primary sense 1 must be the seeing of images 
 in the mind's eye, and that the images so 
 seen are not illusions. When the images 
 acquire what the French call exteriority, that 
 is to say, when they appear to be seen with 
 the physical eye as if they were external 
 realities, then they are no longer imaginings, 
 but hallucinations, and the condition of the 
 
 1 To anticipate a possible misconstruction, it may be 
 well to add that in the secondary or usual sense of the 
 word imagination means far more than this. I insist, 
 however, on the clear-seeing of images in the mind as 
 especially essential to the imagination of a painter. 
 
 34 
 
Dangerous Imagination 35 
 
 brain which is subject to these hallucinations 
 is so near to insanity, that the victim remains 
 sane only just so long as he is able to say 
 to himself, ' The thing that I see there is 
 not real, although it appears real for the 
 moment ; it is nothing but a projection from 
 the brain.' So soon as he loses this faculty 
 of recognising the hallucination for what it 
 is, and takes it for the reality which it 
 appears to be, he has become insane. 
 
 Here we have the exact reason why genius 
 has a certain relationship to insanity. The 
 power of raising up clear images before the 
 mind's eye is not to be gained without mak- 
 ing a step in the direction which may lead 
 ultimately, if a certain degree of clearness is 
 passed, to dangerous hallucination. The 
 stories told of Shelley and other imaginative 
 persons who have had occasional hallucin- 
 ations, show the peril of constantly culti- 
 vating the imaginative faculty, even without 
 
36 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 that most powerful of all forcing which is 
 given by the practice, of the graphic arts. 
 Here is a short extract from Rossetti's life 
 of Shelley : — 
 
 ' On the 6th of May (1822) Shelley and Williams were 
 walking on the terrace of the house in a moonlight even- 
 ing, when the poet grasped his companion's arm violently 
 and stared hard at the surf, exclaiming, "There it is 
 again ! There ! " He ultimately " declared that he saw, 
 as plainly as he then saw me (Williams), a naked child 
 rise from the sea, and clap its hands as in joy, smiling at 
 him." 5 
 
 Nothing can be easier than to trace this 
 hallucination to its real source in the habitual 
 imaginings of the poet. Shelley was passion- 
 ately fond of the sea, and most tenderly fond 
 of children, so that both frequently occupied 
 his poetic imagination. I open his works 
 quite at random, and find the two together 
 in a stanza of the ' Revolt of Islam ' : — 
 
 ' Woe could not be mine own, since far from men 
 I dwelt, a free and happy orphan child. 
 By the sea-shore, in a deep mountain glen, 
 
Dangerous Imagination 37 
 
 And near the waves, and through the forests wild 
 I roamed.' 
 
 The second canto of the same poem begins 
 thus — 
 
 'The starlight smile of 'children 
 
 and the second stanza of that canto begins 
 with this verse : — 
 
 ' In Argolis beside the echoing sea J 
 
 The thirtieth stanza * ends with these 
 lines : — 
 
 ' All things became 
 Slaves to my holy and heroic verse, 
 Earth, sea, and sky, the planets, life, and fame, 
 And fate, or whate'er else binds the world's wondrous 
 frame.' 
 
 In the thirty-first stanza the child appears 
 again : — 
 
 1 And this beloved child thus felt the sway 
 Of my conceptions gathering.' 
 
 Opening again the same poem, this time 
 in the twelfth canto, I find the following 
 
38 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 association of waves with a child, though they 
 are river waves : — 
 
 ' As we sate gazing in a trance of wonder, 
 
 A boat approached, borne by the musical air ■ 
 Along the waves, which sung and sparkled under 
 
 Its rapid keel. A winged shape sate there ; 
 
 A child with silver-shining wings, so fair 
 That, as her bark did through the waters glide, 
 
 The shadow of the lingering waves did wear 
 Light, as from starry beams ; from side to side, 
 While veering to the wind, her plumes the bark 
 did guide.' 
 
 It is needless to multiply quotations ; 
 enough has been quoted to show that waves 
 and children were essential parts of Shelley's 
 poetical world. When writing the verses 
 quoted, his imagination had realised them to 
 the minds eye, and the vision narrated by 
 Williams was no more than a translation of 
 an old mental vision into an external shape. 
 The alarm felt by Shelley at the moment is 
 the inevitable and peculiarly horrible dread 
 which the mind feels when there is no longer 
 
Danger otis Imagination 39 
 
 a clear distinction between the imagined and 
 the actual. How is a man to guide himself 
 in a world where some beings are real, and 
 others, who seem not less real, are intangible 
 phantoms of the brain ? 
 
 That dwelling upon images in the mind, 
 which is the mental habit of the poet, is, 
 however, less likely to increase the clearness 
 of the mental image, with the tendency to 
 exteriority, than the far closer studies of the 
 painter. What painters call * study ' is the 
 impressing of images on the brain, and it 
 differs essentially from literary study in this 
 — that the student of books sees the object 
 of his study with the mind's eye only (the 
 paper and type of a book being so indifferent, 
 that they only attract attention when one is 
 not reading), whereas the painter observes 
 with the bodily eye and the mind's eye at the 
 same time. All the studies of a painter are, 
 in fact, directed to two purposes : one is to 
 
40 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 imitate or interpret the appearances of things, 
 but the other is to fix images clearly in the 
 memory ; therefore the imagination of the 
 painter is in quite a special sense a trained 
 and cultivated imagination. If Shelley saw 
 the child clearly, he being a poet, it is pro- 
 bable that a painter, with his more perfect 
 education of the eye and the eye's memory, 
 would have seen the child still more clearly 
 both before and after reaching the point of 
 hallucination. 
 
V 
 
 The Training of the Memory 
 
 r Jj^HE memory of things seen has often been 
 cultivated by painters in certain special 
 directions for their own purposes. All land- 
 scape painters are compelled to cultivate it 
 for the representation of transient effects, and 
 of many transient forms also, especially the 
 forms of clouds ; but this individual culture 
 of the memory does not afford us such good 
 opportunities for observing its results, as the 
 simultaneous culture of many different mem- 
 ories in a school. M. Lecoq de Boisbaudran, 
 who was at one time Professor at the Imperial 
 School of Drawing in Paris, and at the Lycee 
 
 St. Louis, was the first teacher known to us 
 
 41 
 
42 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 who cultivated the memory systematically 
 and took careful notes of the results. The 
 following replies, taken from his valuable 
 little work on the subject, will show the won- 
 derful power of training to increase the clear- 
 ness of the imagre. It will be understood 
 that the image is always seen with the mind's 
 eye only ; and notwithstanding the extreme 
 clearness that it may sometimes attain, does 
 not pass into the dangerous * exteriority ' of 
 Shelley's child upon the waves. 
 
 In answer to a question about his way of 
 drawing from memory, one pupil says, ' I 
 try to imagine the absent model, but only 
 see him in a confused way.' Another says, 
 ' I see the model in my head.' A third replies 
 that he sees the model better with his eyes 
 shut. Then comes the question, 'How do 
 you manage when the model, or rather the 
 image of the model, is too confused, or dis- 
 appears ? ' To this one reply is that after 
 
The Training of the Memory 43 
 
 making an effort the model becomes more 
 visible, that sometimes the model disappears 
 altogether, but that by application of the 
 mind it can be recovered. Another pupil 
 answers, that the image appears confused as 
 a whole, but that if he applies his attention 
 to a detail only it becomes clear enough to 
 be drawn, and then the first detail helps him 
 to recover a second, and so on from one to 
 another till he is able to reconstruct the 
 whole. 1 
 
 After exercising the memory by a system- 
 atic training for four months, all the pupils 
 declared that the image was much more dis- 
 tinct than formerly, and that if it disappeared 
 
 1 This recovery by detail is extremely interesting. I 
 have often attempted to recover images by that process, 
 but have generally found that when the image did not 
 come in a complete shape recovery by detail would leave 
 some hiatus. The pupils of M. de Boisbaudran had, 
 however, the advantage of beginning the systematic 
 training of the ocular memory at a comparatively early 
 age. 
 
44 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 from the mental vision it could be recalled 
 almost at will. 
 
 In answer to the question, 4 What means 
 do you employ to fix the model in the 
 memory ? ' one pupil said, 1 1 draw it repeat- 
 edly ; ' but another said, ' I make observations 
 on dimensions, forms, and colours.' The 
 master said that the latter of these two 
 answers was by far the more satisfactory 
 to him, as it proved intelligent observation 
 and not merely a mechanical repetition of 
 labour. 
 
 Another remarkable result of this system- 
 atic training, which had not been thought of 
 or schemed for when it was first instituted, 
 was that when the pupils drew from nature 
 they were able to work for a longer time 
 after looking at the model, and yet that their 
 work was quite as accurate as it had been 
 in former years when they referred to the 
 model frequently. 
 
The Training of the Memory 45 
 
 The cultivation of the memory may be 
 carried a step farther, in this way. The 
 pupil who has been accustomed to drawing 
 from nature may be told simply to look at an 
 object for a short time, and to draw it after- 
 wards from memory in another place. This 
 is the ultimate result of training the artistic 
 memory, and it is infinitely valuable to a 
 landscape painter, as it enables him to carry 
 away transient forms and effects. 
 
 A skilful French landscape painter, Nazon, 
 whose pictures always attracted attention at 
 the Salon, and deserved it, made it a rule 
 never to sketch from nature, but to observe 
 with the closest attention, taking mental notes 
 only, after which, on returning to the house, 
 he would paint a study of what he had seen. 
 This was an excellent way of dealing with 
 transient effects, for this reason. Suppose 
 an effect lasts five minutes ; if you are not 
 drawing you can give the five minutes entirely 
 
46 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 to observation, but if you are drawing you 
 will spend half of them, at least, in looking at 
 your paper and your pencil-marks. 
 
 It is well known that any artist who has 
 been accustomed to work from memory, can 
 copy a picture without carrying any visible 
 sketching apparatus into the gallery where it 
 is exhibited. He has nothing to do but learn 
 the picture by heart. Suppose it to be Gains- 
 borough's Watering Place. The process of 
 learning it by heart would be first to take 
 note of the principal objects and their posi- 
 tions. The wagon is descending a steep 
 bank ; there are four horses in a zig-zag 
 position, the two first beginning to drink ; 
 there is a little hand-railed bridge with a man 
 on it ; on the opposite side of the stream 
 there is a big denuded trunk to the right, 
 and farther off we see a rich clump of full- 
 foliaged trees on rising ground to the left. 
 These things having been well noticed, the 
 
The Training of the Memory 47 
 
 picture may be mentally divided into four 
 squares, or rather oblongs, and the contents 
 of each division observed. This would be 
 quite enough for the first sketch. Afterwards 
 the parts would be corrected, and details 
 added from fresh observations as the work 
 progressed. 
 
 The aid of science may be called in to help 
 the memory of what is observed in nature. 
 This has always been done by figure painters 
 with the study of anatomy, especially the 
 anatomy of the bones, which give a per- 
 manently useful memorandum for the lengths 
 of limbs and parts of limbs, and for their 
 possible attitudes. Landscape painters have 
 usually treated science with more indifference, 
 but its utility to them as a help to memory 
 is perfectly indisputable. A painter will 
 surely remember gneiss, sandstone, or slate 
 more accurately if he thinks of them under 
 those names than if he confounds them all 
 
48 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 together in his memory as being only ' rocks.' 
 He will remember poplar and pine more dis- 
 tinctly than ' trees,' and if he has a clear idea 
 in his mind of the difference between pinus 
 sylvestris and other pines, he will paint pinus 
 sylvestris the more faithfully. I cannot 
 imagine a more efficacious help to memory 
 than the clear and accurate knowledge of the 
 characteristics of species. Which of these 
 two series of observations is likely to recall 
 the scene described the more vividly ? 
 
 1. A castle on a rock with trees about 
 
 it. 
 
 2. A castle of pure Norman architecture 
 standing on a granite rock, at the foot of 
 which is a clump of oaks. On the steep 
 slope of the rock are a few birches, and just 
 under the walls of the castle are two ash-trees 
 and a buckthorn. 
 
 The difference between these two memo- 
 randa is exactly that between the two follow- 
 
The Training of the Memory 49 
 
 ing, and nobody would dispute the greater 
 utility of the second. 
 
 1. A house with a group of animals. 
 
 2. A thatched Highland cottage, with three 
 cows of the Highland breed, two goats, a 
 pony, and a colley dog. 
 
 Notwithstanding the obvious usefulness of 
 science as a help to memory, there are still to 
 be found landscape painters who despise it, 
 and who look upon the most prudently limited 
 study of botany and geology as a trifling 
 waste of time. The prejudice against botany 
 is founded on the erroneous idea that botani- 
 cal study is always microscopic (because a 
 botanist has occasional recourse to the micro- 
 scope), and th^at such study is incompatible 
 with the grand style in painting. But to 
 notice the manner in which a walnut-tree 
 throws out its fine strong arms, is just «as 
 much a botanical study as the dissection of 
 its flower, and to see a distinction in texture 
 
50 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 between the bark of the walnut and that of a 
 beech is to have made a botanical observa- 
 tion already. In Schacht's valuable work 
 on trees, a strictly scientific book including 
 microscopic study, there are many observa- 
 tions of a kind likely to help the memory of 
 a landscape painter. Here is a specimen of 
 the notes concerning ramification : — 
 
 ' The regularity of ramification which exists in such a 
 high degree in our Pine, in a more restricted manner in 
 the Fir, which is hardly recognisable in the Epicea, and 
 has totally disappeared in the Larch, this regularity may 
 be still observed, more or less distinctly, in trees with 
 membranous leaves. The arrangement and direction of 
 , branches are fixed characteristics of each species of tree. 
 The Beech, when it grows freely, spreads out its branches 
 in a direction nearly horizontal, and its twigs take the 
 same direction. The same tree, when in a confined 
 situation, directs its principal branches upwards, and its 
 twigs only begin to spread when they reach the light. 
 The Birch produces many branches which rise in forming 
 an acute angle, whereas the young sprays, which are very 
 slender, hang with an arched curve. Meanwhile, the 
 central branch 1 of the Birch grows powerfully upwards. 
 
 I should consider this as strictly a continuation of 
 
The Training of the Memory 5 1 
 
 The more the branches are developed the weaker they 
 become, and the more the tree bows its head, as, for 
 example, in the weeping-birch. The Oak is characterised 
 by a very strong ramification, but it is most irregular, 
 which results from the death of terminal buds and that 
 of certain branches. In the Alder, the principal branches 
 form an acute angle with the trunk, whereas the twigs 
 from these branches spread out horizontally.' 
 
 Here we have knowledge of the most 
 valuable kind for a landscape painter concen- 
 trated in a very short space. It is given 
 here simply as a specimen, but it would be 
 easy to find many other passages in botanical 
 and geological works that would be equally 
 useful in giving precision to the memory of 
 a landscape painter. If he is really observant 
 he will make observations for himself, which 
 are applicable to all rocks and trees of the 
 same species. 
 
 The value of special knowledge in educat- 
 ing the memory of the eye, is shown in 
 
 the stem even to the very top of the tree, where it ends 
 in a point as fine as the terminal sprays of the branches. 
 
52 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 nothing more decidedly than in architecture. 
 A professional architect, or even an amateur, 
 who has seriously studied good typical ex- 
 amples of different styles, is able to learn 
 a building by heart when the uneducated 
 observer will not retain any distinct impres- 
 sion of it. As this education of the memory 
 is a subject that interests me, I have carefully 
 observed to what degree those who have 
 never studied architecture are able to retain 
 impressions of buildings ; and, although 
 nothing can astonish me now, I was at one 
 time amazed beyond all expression by what 
 seemed the incomprehensible inaccuracy of 
 the uneducated memory with regard to build- 
 ings that had actually been seen and visited. 
 Provincial or foreign visitors will go to Lon- 
 don and York, and afterwards be quite 
 unable to say, of two photographs, which is 
 York Minster and which is Westminster 
 Abbey. They sometimes even fail to dis- 
 
The Training of the Memory 53 
 
 tinguish between the Houses of Parliament 
 and Westminster Abbey, or between the 
 National Gallery and the British Museum. 
 People will go to visit a country house of 
 the most marked architectural character, and 
 not be able to remember the most obvious 
 characteristics of its structure, such as whether 
 the front stands in a straight line or has 
 advancing wings, or whether the windows 
 are in single lights or divided by stone mul- 
 lions. All that the uneducated in architecture 
 appear to be able to retain about buildings is 
 the impression of their size, and a confused 
 recollection about the richness of their de- 
 corations. They generally remember that 
 the Church of Brou is richly carved, that 
 the inside of the Sainte Chapelle is painted 
 and gilt, and that St. Peter's at Rome is big. 
 
 The same inaccuracy of the uneducated 
 memory is strikingly obvious in reference to 
 shipping. Ships are constantly drawn in 
 
54 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 such a way that they could not sail, and yet 
 the drawings are accepted without question. 
 Just before writing this chapter I had seen a 
 published print of shipping, where the shrouds 
 were so placed that the yards could only be 
 set at right angles to the keel. 1 In Ziem's 
 picture of Venice at the Luxembourg, an 
 American brig has mast hoops where no 
 shipbuilder ever placed them since the world 
 began. 
 
 The education of the memory does not 
 only concern the construction of natural and 
 artificial things ; it equally concerns those 
 appearances of nature to which all things 
 whatever are alike subjected. For example, 
 suppose the case (which is not imaginary, as I 
 have a real instance in view) of an artist who, 
 
 1 The shrouds went straight from the summit of the 
 topgallant masts to the bulwarks. Such an arrangement 
 would be possible only on condition that the vessel was 
 always to sail with a fair wind, as she was a square-rigged 
 ship. 
 
The Training of the Memory 55 
 
 for many years, has given especial attention 
 to the study of sunshine. He has made so 
 many studies of objects under sunshine, that 
 his mind has become perfectly familiar with 
 the effects of it in regard to colour, to the 
 relief of objects, and to cast shadows. His 
 knowledge of sunshine is a permanent pos- 
 session of his mind, as ready to hand on 
 any occasion as a language to one who has 
 thoroughly assimilated it. Now observe the 
 difference between such an artist and one 
 who has a very imperfect knowledge of sun- 
 shine. Suppose the two together on a fine 
 summer's day in the south of France or in 
 Italy ; they have just time to make a hasty 
 pencil sketch, and each of them writes upon 
 his sketch the words ' full southern sunshine ' 
 as a memorandum. To the artist whose 
 memory of sunshine has already been 
 thoroughly educated, the words recall the 
 southern light, such as it really is, so that it 
 
56 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 is almost as if he went back to the hour 
 when the sketch was made, but to the other 
 the words are little more than marks with a 
 lead pencil. A memorandum of that kind 
 only recalls what we already know, and it is 
 not of the least use to make these drafts on 
 the bank of the memory, unless there is 
 already capital enough in it to honour them. 1 
 The full value of such capital may be esti- 
 mated by the few who have been privileged 
 to see Alma-Tadema paint the light of the 
 Mediterranean within a stone's throw of the 
 Regents Park Canal. 
 
 1 With regard to the action of the memory in dealing 
 with memoranda, the following piece of actual experience 
 may be worth recording. A distinguished painter, now a 
 Royal Academician, told me that he had never found it 
 possible to paint things well from hasty memoranda unless 
 he had carefully painted objects of the same kind, at one 
 time or other, from nature ; but that he could always 
 paint with his full power from slight memoranda when 
 this condition had previously been fulfilled. This was 
 said with reference to landscape subjects. 
 
The Training of the Memory 57 
 
 It is even true that an artist who has a 
 thorough knowledge of sunshine will paint it 
 better, incomparably better, from memory, 
 than an artist of inferior knowledge could 
 paint it from nature itself. This is not 
 advanced merely as a statement that is likely 
 to be true ; I have actual examples in view 
 whilst making it, and quite literally ' in view,' 
 as I happen to be writing in a room where 
 there is an elaborate study from nature sup- 
 posed to be in full sunshine, but where the 
 sun does not shine at all ; whilst in another 
 picture, which was done in the studio, he does 
 shine. 
 
 The ultimate object of the cultivation of 
 the memory in landscape, is to be able to fix 
 transient effects. At first the young land- 
 scape painter painfully takes note of each 
 particular effect in its details, but after some 
 experience he makes the discovery that the 
 same effects recur, though the forms of the 
 
58 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 clouds, &c, may be varied. Here, then, is 
 another great help to memory. Instead of 
 having to remember each effect individually, 
 the painter remembers the class to which it 
 belongs, and notes only the variation in the 
 special case. And as the effects often recur, 
 he has many new opportunities of correcting 
 old observations which, when thus frequently 
 corrected and added to, become assimilated 
 as knowledge. A landscape painter who 
 really knows by heart about twenty of those 
 effects which are most suitable for his own 
 work, has an amply sufficient provision of 
 that kind of artistic science. Many a success- 
 ful landscape painter has not known half so 
 many, or else his knowledge was much more 
 comprehensive than his art. 
 
VI 
 
 Gifts and Acquired Knowledge 
 
 ' J^HOSE who are fond of opposing natural 
 talent to the discipline of education, 
 are likely to make objections of the following 
 kind to what has been advanced in the 
 preceding chapter. 
 
 They will say that there is a distinction 
 between the memory of the eye, which is the 
 artist's special gift, and the scientific know- 
 ledge of appearances, which anybody may 
 acquire by labour. The really gifted artist, 
 they will urge, has no need of scientific 
 observations, because he has only to look at 
 an object or an effect to remember it ; and 
 
 since he can recall at will the image of what 
 
 59 
 
60 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 he has seen, he can paint from the image in 
 his mind, just as another would paint from 
 nature. 
 
 Certainly there is a distinction between 
 painting from a clear recollection of the indi- 
 vidual object, and painting partly from that 
 and partly from knowledge acquired before- 
 hand. Certainly, also, there are artists who 
 have peculiar gifts of memory, which enable 
 them to seize what escapes others, such as 
 the gift of the elder Leslie for seizing a 
 transient expression in human beings, or that 
 of Landseer for making a dog look human 
 without losing the quality of doggishness ; 
 and the more a critic learns about art the 
 more he comes to be persuaded that these 
 personal gifts, which are so much genius, can 
 never be acquired by labour. No amount 
 of toil would ever have enabled either Titian 
 or Raphael to paint the expressions of ladies 
 in drawing-rooms in any manner comparable 
 
Gifts and Acquired Knowledge 61 
 
 to that of Leslie. Neither Vandyke nor 
 Velasquez, though they could both paint 
 dogs, would ever have had the slightest 
 chance of rivalling Landseer, as a painter of 
 subtle and various canine moods. It may be 
 granted once and for all that special gifts 
 are unapproachable, but at the same time 
 we may observe that all men of genius who 
 have greatly succeeded in the fine arts have 
 possessed knowledge, or accumulated observ- 
 ation, as well as the genius which observes 
 keenly for a moment, and that without 
 knowledge their genius would have been 
 paralysed. 
 
 What, after all, is the exact nature of an 
 artist's knowledge, what is that which we 
 specially call knowledge in an artist ? It is 
 the possession of certain general truths which 
 are applicable to a special case. Suppose 
 that two landscape painters try to remember 
 a birch-tree ; one of the two men comes well 
 
62 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 provided with previous knowledge, the other 
 has nothing to guide him but the observation 
 of the moment. The first knows what is 
 applicable to all trees whatever and to the 
 art of representing them ; he knows all about 
 the rounding of trunks, the starting of 
 branches from the trunk, the manner in 
 which foliage catches the light and the effect 
 of shade on its appearance, how it is some- 
 times massed and sometimes scattered, and 
 how the massing and the scattering of it are 
 so governed by the laws of growth and 
 gravitation, that every leaf on a tree takes 
 its place and share in the well-ordered 
 beauty of the whole. Then, with reference 
 to birches in particular, he knows already 
 many things that are true of all birches ; 
 he knows all about the very peculiar bark, 
 all about the growth and branching of the 
 tree and the remarkable nature of its foli- 
 age, with the great changes in its appear- 
 
Gifts and Acquired Knowledge 63 
 
 ance, from the pale green cloud that shows 
 itself so early in the year to the scattered 
 spots of gold that linger late. To see a 
 birch is, therefore, for him at the same 
 time a refreshing of old impressions and a 
 rapid noting of individual peculiarities, such 
 as the form and growth of this particular 
 specimen. Meanwhile the artist without 
 knowledge is dependent on his observation 
 of the single specimen for all that he can 
 carry away with regard to it, and that is not 
 likely to be very much. This is the reason 
 why the paintings of young artists are fre- 
 quently at the same time laborious and 
 incomplete. They try to imitate this or that 
 specimen of a natural product and attain a 
 sort of fidelity, but not having in their minds 
 a clear recollection of the qualities which are 
 common to all healthy individuals in the 
 species, they fall short of a full representation 
 of those qualities. The artist who has learn- 
 
64 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 ing and experience, on the other hand, holds 
 more loosely to the particular specimen, but 
 has his mind so charged with knowledge of 
 a more comprehensive kind, that he expresses 
 a greater sum of truth. We believe, then, 
 that the most comprehensive kind of artistic 
 memory is impossible without accumulated 
 knowledge. We have never known a single 
 example of an artist, however gifted, who 
 could draw really well from memory without 
 having previously studied ; but we have 
 known several instances of men whose 
 imagination was active, and whose works 
 were defective because they relied upon it 
 too much. A very conspicuous recent ex- 
 ample was Gustave Dore. His imagination 
 was fertile enough ; but as he never had the 
 patience to submit to discipline and acquire 
 the knowledge that so large a productivity 
 needed, the great mass of what he did, es- 
 pecially in painting, is marred by visible 
 
Gifts and Acquired Knowledge 65 
 
 insufficiency, so that his early illustrations to 
 Balzac's ' Contes Drolatiques ' will ever re- 
 main his most satisfactory performance. 1 The 
 want of knowledge is also evident in the less 
 ambitious art of Richard Doyle, where the 
 recollection of individual figures could not 
 supply its place. In artists of more serious 
 rank than these, the rule holds good that 
 they only remember or imagine clearly what 
 they have studied diligently, and this accounts 
 for the otherwise inexplicable fact, that in the 
 same picture you will sometimes find human 
 beings represented with great power, and 
 rocks painted without any attention either to 
 their structure, their colour, or natural decor- 
 ation with moss and lichen, and yet rocks are 
 far easier to paint truly and completely than 
 human beings. 
 
 1 Being on a small scale, and frankly grotesque, the 
 woodcuts in the 'Contes Drolatiques' enable us to 
 enjoy the inventive genius of the artist, without being 
 troubled by any reflections about inadequate studies. 
 
 F 
 
66 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 There is the less need to insist upon the 
 necessity for previous knowledge, that we are 
 all familiar with the failure of amateurs for 
 the want of it. There is no reason to sup- 
 pose that the natural gifts of the artist are 
 less common amongst amateur than profes- 
 sional workers. In many cases the amateur 
 must have the gift of memory, but from the 
 insufficiency of his accumulated knowledge 
 he retains images of insufficient distinctness. 
 
 The memory of an artist is distinguished 
 from that of other people chiefly by this, that 
 as he alone has really the knowledge of 
 appearances, he is the only person who is 
 able to call up images before the mind's eye 
 which are distinct enough, and permanent 
 enough, to be painted. 
 
VII 
 
 The Mechanical and Scientific Imagination 
 
 LTHOUGH the subject of this work is 
 
 Imagination as it acts in one of the 
 fine arts, it may be well to consider in this 
 place what is the action of the same faculty 
 in mechanical invention and scientific investi- 
 gation or exposition, and to inquire if it really 
 is the same faculty. No competent thinker 
 would deny that mechanical inventors and 
 men of science have imagination, but instead 
 of admitting this without thinking about it, I 
 will ask the reader to consider with me two 
 particular instances. We shall then be able 
 to observe at leisure how the imagination 
 operates in matters quite outside of the fine 
 
 67 
 
68 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 arts, and we shall be better prepared to ap- 
 preciate its action within their borders, or 
 to distinguish between the scientific and the 
 artistic imagination if such a distinction is 
 necessary. 
 
 Of all the ingenious mechanical contrivances 
 that I have ever examined minutely enough 
 to understand them, I do not remember any 
 that have required more imagination than a 
 card-making machine invented in Rochdale 
 many years ago. A 'card,' as manufac- 
 turers use the word, means a thick piece of 
 leather, or of some substitute for leather, in 
 which are inserted innumerable pieces of 
 wire that stand up like the bristles in a brush. 
 It is mounted on a cylinder and used for 
 ' carding ' wool or cotton by separating and 
 cleaning the fibres. * Cards ' are an old 
 invention, and they used to be made by 
 hand. To make them it was necessary to 
 pierce two little holes, to take a piece of wire, 
 
Mechanical and Scientific Imaginatio7t 69 
 
 cut it to a certain length, bend it into this 
 shape I I , insert the points in the holes, 
 drive the wire home till the angles touched 
 the leather, and then give the two upright 
 pieces of wire a bend to make them stay in 
 their place. All this had to be repeated 
 thousands of times to make a ' card,' and it 
 was a very dull, monotonous kind of work. 
 An ingenious, imaginative man in Rochdale 
 thought it might be possible to contrive a 
 machine that would perform all these opera- 
 tions with infallible exactness. It is wonder- 
 ful that such an idea could enter a man's 
 head, and it must have been a very imagin- 
 ative head. For only just consider what the 
 machine had to do. It had to pierce the two 
 little holes, but that is nothing ; it had to cut 
 a bit of wire of a certain length from a coil ; 
 to handle that loose bit of wire as a man 
 would handle it, bending it to two right 
 angles ; then it had to carry the bent bit to 
 
jo Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 the holes in the leather, insert the two points 
 exactly in the holes, drive the wire home, and 
 bend it to a second angle behind the leather. 
 Well, the machine does all this, and does it 
 so fast that when it is really at work no 
 human eye can see what it is doing ; to see 
 its work you must disconnect it from the 
 steam-engine and let a man turn the wheel 
 deliberately. 
 
 Now, the man who invented this must 
 have had a powerful imagination, which 
 probably operated in this way. He may 
 have seen images in his mind of something 
 half-human yet made of steel and brass, that 
 was doing automatically the work of a human 
 card-maker ; or he may, in his long solitary 
 musings, have seen a man and a machine 
 working together, the machine doing gradu- 
 ally more and more of the man's work, till 
 finally the man vanished like a ghost and left 
 the machine working completely and effectu- 
 
Mechanical and Scientific Imagination 71 
 
 ally in his place. Evidently the gifted seeker 
 exercised not only imagination — not only the 
 faculty of seeing images in the mind — but 
 imaginative invention, or the power of see- 
 ing that which has not yet been realised. 
 Familiar with machines already, familiar 
 with the action of men in doing that which 
 he wanted his machine to do, the inventor 
 passed from the existent to the non-existent 
 by a mental process so like that of the 
 creative artist, that one is tempted to ask if 
 the two kinds of invention are not essentially 
 the same. 
 
 I reserve the answer for the next chapter, 
 having still to consider how the imagination 
 may operate in scientific exposition, which 
 lies outside of practical inventions. 
 
 Some readers will remember Professor 
 Clifford's lecture on 'Atoms,' in which he 
 began by describing a certain structure, 
 which he had never seen in a realised form, 
 
72 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 to explain the properties of an atom which 
 he had never seen either. The structure 
 was composed as follows. There were metal 
 bells answering to different notes, and all 
 ' fastened to a set of elastic stalks, which 
 sprang out of a certain centre to which they 
 were attached.' The bells were held in such 
 a way that they could spin round upon the 
 points to which they were fastened. 4 And 
 then the centre to which these elastic stalks 
 are fastened or suspended you may imagine 
 as able to move in all manner of directions ; 
 and that the whole structure — made up of 
 these bells, and stalks, and centre — is able to 
 spin round any axis whatever. We must 
 also suppose that there is surrounding this 
 structure a certain framework. We will 
 suppose the framework to be made of some 
 elastic material, so that it is able to be 
 pressed to a certain extent. Suppose that 
 framework is made of whalebone, if you like.' 
 
Mechanical and Scientific Imagination 73 
 
 Professor Clifford went on to explain that 
 although a structure of this kind is not an 
 atom, it is convenient to have it in the mind 
 as an illustration of the qualities of an atom, 
 such as certain capabilities of vibration, 
 certain motions of parts, and the capability 
 of spinning round about any axis. The 
 whalebone framework was intended to show 
 that atoms cannot be put closer together 
 than a certain degree of neighbourhood ; as 
 if there were several of the imaginary things 
 in the same room, the whalebone framework 
 belonging to each would prevent contact, 
 and by its elasticity have a tendency to repel 
 every other structure of the same kind. 
 
 This is quite one of the best examples I 
 am able to recollect of imagination in the 
 service of scientific instruction. It is evident 
 that Clifford saw the elaborate structure of 
 bells, centres, elastic stalks, and whalebone 
 defences, just as plainly in his mind's eye as 
 
74 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 if it had been before him in the room. It is 
 a seeing of images as in memory, yet it is 
 not only memory, as no such things had 
 ever been constructed. It is imaginative 
 invention. 
 
 In the biography of Clifford, by Mr. F. 
 Pollock, the biographer says that he once 
 had perplexities about Ivory's theorem con- 
 cerning the attraction of an ellipsoid, and 
 that he consulted Clifford on the matter. 
 i Being out for a walk with Clifford, I opened 
 my perplexities to him ; I think I can recall 
 the very spot. What he said I do not 
 remember in detail, which is not surprising, 
 as I have had no occasion to remember 
 anything about Ivory's theorem these twelve 
 years. But I know that as he spoke he 
 appeared not to be working out a question, 
 but simply telling what he saw. Without 
 any diagram or symbolic aid he described 
 the geometrical conditions on which the 
 
Mechanical and Scientific Imagination 75 
 
 solution depended, and they seemed to stand 
 out visibly in space. There were no longer 
 consequences to be deduced, but real and 
 evident facts which only required to be seen.' 
 
 Surely this is an accurate description of 
 the image-making faculty, the power of 
 seeing things as images in the mind. And 
 now let us inquire what it is that separates 
 this kind of imagination from that of artists. 
 
VIII 
 
 Images evoked by Feeling 
 HE mechanical inventor and the imagin- 
 
 ative man of science have much in 
 common with the artist, but not all. They 
 have evidently the power of seeing their 
 conceptions as clear images, but the images 
 are not evoked by any emotion except the 
 practical desire for efficiency or the in- 
 tellectual desire for a more perfect appre- 
 hension of truth. Now although it is quite 
 possible that a man with the practical or the 
 intellectual imagination might write verses or 
 take to painting, he would never, I believe, 
 be recognised as an imaginative poet or 
 painter. The clearer the evidence of truth- 
 
Images evoked by Feeling 77 
 
 fulness in his work the more he would be 
 looked upon as a simple copyist of nature. 
 
 The artistic imagination has this special 
 peculiarity, that the images are always 
 evoked by feeling, and that the degree of 
 their reality is always determined for them 
 by an emotion which might be said to come 
 from the heart if there were not some reason 
 to suppose that it comes rather from a special 
 sensibility. 
 
 In any case it always seems to come from 
 the heart, though there are good reasons for 
 believing that a highly accomplished artist 
 works in a state of secondary emotion, that is, 
 a half-feigned or half-remembered emotion, 
 rather than in a state of real immediate 
 emotion. One reason for believing this is, 
 that in a state of real emotion the artist 
 would hardly be able to attend to the neces- 
 sary technical conditions of his craft. The 
 poet would hardly be able to make beautiful 
 
yS Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 verses, or the painter to lay his colour with 
 the most perfect skill. A man whose house 
 had just been burnt down, and his children 
 suffocated in their beds, would certainly not 
 be able to make the best of the subject in an 
 elegy. He would probably not even be able 
 to narrate the event in a letter. I remember 
 a case in point. Not long after the Indian 
 Mutiny, I was in a railway carriage, when a 
 comfortable-looking gentleman expressed a 
 hope that the evil deeds of the rebels had 
 been exaggerated. A silent man in the 
 corner of the carriage here interposed : 
 'They tied me to a tree, and they killed my 
 wife, my faithful servants, and my children, 
 before my eyes.' He used no eloquence, no 
 poetry, but stated the facts in this bald way, 
 and then lapsed again into silence. The 
 emotion was too real to permit the develop- 
 ments of art. 1 
 
 1 As an example of the total want of imagination, I 
 
Images evoked by Feeling 79 
 
 This brings us to a most important con- 
 clusion which enhances still more the great 
 value of imagination in the fine arts. Not 
 only are the images seen by the imaginative 
 artist called up by emotion, but the emotion 
 itself is imaginative. By the power of his 
 imagination the artist enters into a state of 
 emotion, and yet, at the same time, this 
 emotion, which is only half real, leaves him 
 sufficient mental liberty to attend to all the 
 technical details of his work as a versifier or 
 painter. When a poet seems most deeply 
 moved, he has still leisure enough to choose 
 effective syllables and sonorous rhymes, as 
 an actress, in the storm of simulated passion, 
 assumes those attitudes which display her 
 person to advantage. 
 
 When the artist's feelings are of an 
 
 may add that the comfortable-looking gentleman, by 
 way of being consolatory, said, ' Oh, you're young yet ; 
 you'll marry again, very likely, and have another family ! ' 
 
So Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 imaginative character they leave him at 
 liberty to have consideration for the feelings 
 of others. The poet is not carried away by 
 his own pegasus, but thinks of his reader, 
 and is careful not to weary or overpower 
 him. I will select an example, and cannot 
 think of a better than the mission of Iris 
 just at the close of the Fourth Book of the 
 4 Aeneid.' Many readers will remember how 
 in the course of that book we are made 
 to sympathise so much with the unhappy 
 Dido that the long account of her passionate 
 grief and rage on the departure of Aeneas 
 becomes at length oppressive. If the poetry 
 were not so powerful we should say there 
 was too much of the subject ; as it is, we are 
 carried along to the end, and are made 
 spectators of an agony that tires us by its 
 prolongation. By the time that Virgil had 
 arrived at those verses where the dying 
 queen raises herself three times on her 
 
Images evoked by Feeling 81 
 
 elbow, falling back each time upon her 
 couch, he knew that the reader would want 
 her to be put out of her misery, as nothing 
 can be more trying to the spectator than 
 a suicide not quite effectually accomplished. 
 A vulgar poet might have perceived this 
 also, and brought, perhaps, the repulsive 
 image of Death to the heroine's relief. 
 Virgil, having much delicacy of taste, a 
 delicacy of which he has given many other 
 proofs, delivers the victim without intro- 
 ducing any dreadful personage whatever, 
 and consoles us by a spectacle of sovereign 
 pity and immortal grace. He brings a 
 beautiful messenger from Olympus. Juno 
 has taken pity upon the 'longum dolorem' 
 and the 1 difficiles obitus ' of Dido, and sends 
 Iris to effect her deliverance by cutting one 
 hair from her head and carrying it to 
 Pluto. Iris does this gently, and with kind 
 words : — 
 
 G 
 
82 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 ' Hunc ego Diti 
 Sacrum jussa fero, teque isto corpore solve' 
 
 The two concluding verses bring us to 
 perfect repose : — 
 
 ' Sic ait, et dextra crinem secat ; omnis et una 
 Dilapsus calor, atque in ventos vita recessit.' 
 
 The entire passage narrating the mission 
 of Iris, from the line beginning 'Turn Juno 
 Omnipotens' to those just quoted, is an 
 example of imagination suggested by feeling 
 and employed both to awaken and to satisfy 
 the feelings of the reader. The connexion 
 between visible beauty and the moral beauty 
 of mercy, though in itself imaginary, is 
 suggested to the mind in order to satisfy 
 an ideal desire for harmony between appear- 
 ances and realities. Even in so brief a 
 narrative two verses are given to colour and 
 glitter, to the saffron-coloured wings of Iris, 
 dewy, and drawing a thousand various tints 
 from the sun. Here the poetic imagination 
 
Images evoked by Feeling 83 
 
 works in its own way, having nothing like 
 utility in view, as when a man invents 
 ingenious machinery, nor yet the explanation 
 of what is believed to be a fact, as when 
 a professor tries to make us understand 
 the properties of atoms and molecules, 
 but the one object of the poet is to 
 play upon his reader's feelings. First he 
 makes him suffer, and then he relieves the 
 suffering. Here the imagination of the poet 
 deals with two opposite kinds of feeling 
 by a contrast planned beforehand on the 
 principle that 'sweet is pleasure after pain.' 
 Exactly the same art is employed in the 
 description of the infernal regions in the 
 Sixth Book. After having been saddened 
 by the spectacle of suffering, Aeneas is 
 relieved, and the reader with him, by coming 
 to the 
 
 ' locos laetos et amoena vireta 
 Fortunatorum nemorum, sedesque beatas.' 
 
84 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 It may be remarked, in passing, that 
 Virgil avoids here the one great artistic 
 error of Dante, who tortures our feelings 
 almost without respite through more than 
 thirty cantos, and puts his more agreeable 
 imaginings into another poem. 
 
IX 
 
 The Alteration in Images produced by Feeling 
 
 (^UPPOSE the cases of two painters, 
 
 both of them working from memory, 
 
 that is, painting from images in the mind. 
 
 One of them shall have a clear memory but 
 
 be without feeling, the other shall have the 
 
 most lively and sensitive feeling, like a poet 
 
 (which, indeed, a sensitive painter really is). 
 
 The first will see impartially and therefore 
 
 remember and paint with impartial truth, the 
 
 other will not remember in this way because 
 
 the images in his mind will have undergone 
 
 a peculiar transformation in consequence of 
 
 the activity of his feeling. 
 
 If this transformation did not take place, 
 85 
 
86 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 a critic would never be able to say that one 
 artist had more feeling than another, as the 
 feeling of the artist would not be visible in 
 his work. 
 
 Those who know nothing about art and 
 to whom its language conveys no meaning, 
 sometimes indulge their wit at the expense 
 of the criticism which takes feeling into con- 
 sideration, and express their contempt for 
 the word as a canting term of the prevalent 
 aestheticism. It is, however, as certain as 
 anything can be which is outside the region 
 of the exact sciences, that although the 
 power of art may be due in a great degree 
 to knowledge, so that ignorant painting is 
 always really weak painting however bold 
 and pretentious, the charm of art, on which 
 its success depends, is not due to knowledge 
 but to feeling. The evidence in support 
 of this statement is overwhelming. All 
 those works of art that we dwell upon with 
 
Alteration produced by Feeling 87 
 
 ever-renewed pleasure attract us by the 
 delicacy, the tenderness, or the force of those 
 emotions which the artist imaginatively felt 
 when he was producing them ; and it is one 
 of the most wonderful yet undeniable powers 
 of painting, and of all the graphic arts, that 
 the emotions of the artist are communicated 
 to all spectators who have naturally a sensi- 
 tiveness like his own. 1 Our admiration may 
 be excited by sheer manual ability or by the 
 splendour of a picture as a show of colour 
 and form, but to make us love his work an 
 artist must win our sympathy with his feel- 
 ing. Let him once do that, and we shall 
 overlook a hundred imperfections. 
 
 1 The rule is that they are communicated, but there 
 are exceptions. An artist who has a passionate love of 
 truth may paint so that his work, from its too equal 
 veracity, may seem passionless, and an artist whose 
 emotions are profound may sometimes be so little in 
 unison with the shallower feelings of less serious or less 
 imaginative people that they may feel more disposed to 
 laugh at him than to admire him. 
 
88 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 It is one of the most interesting investiga- 
 tions in art-criticism to find out by what 
 means the feeling of a painter reaches us. 
 In our loose, figurative way of speaking, we 
 talk almost as if the painter had words at 
 his command like a poet, and could tell us 
 what he loved, as young Byron expressed 
 his boyish affection for 'dark Loch na Garr.' 
 But the painter has really no resource except 
 a choice of materials and qualities in nature, 
 and the alteration of what he has chosen. 
 It is amazing that feeling can be expressed 
 by such limited means as selection and alter- 
 ation, but so it is. Modern science, in pro- 
 viding us with an art — photography — which 
 is perfectly destitute of feeling, has given us 
 a possibility of comparison, though the com- 
 parison does not extend to colour. Photo- 
 graphy is a purely scientific or unfeeling 
 art, which drawing can only exceptionally 
 become in the hands of a purely scientific 
 
Alteration produced by Feeling 89 
 
 or unfeeling artist. If the reader could see 
 a photograph of a natural landscape, and 
 then a sketch or picture of the same land- 
 scape by a sensitive artist, he would observe 
 a thousand changes suggested by the artist's 
 dislike to some parts of his materials and 
 his affection for others. He would observe 
 in the representation of those things which 
 he had not rejected a certain partiality for 
 some qualities and neglect of others, which 
 are the signs of artistic feeling. An artist 
 cannot even paint the bough of a leafless 
 tree without letting us know whether he 
 prefers curves or angles ; and if he likes 
 curves better, we shall soon see what is his 
 favourite quality in curves. If he paints a 
 wood with many different species of trees, 
 we shall see which is his favourite species 
 merely by his way of painting it. His affec- 
 tion, too, may itself be of one quality or 
 another : it may be a robust affection, ac- 
 
90 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 cepting the rude natures of things ; or it 
 may be a delicate, idealising affection, that 
 attaches itself only to a sort of spiritualised 
 essence. Nobody would suppose that Ruys- 
 dael loved oaks as Corot loved a birch ; or 
 that the rustic affection of Constable for an 
 elm was like the sentiment of delicate ad- 
 miration that led Raphael to attenuate still 
 further the tenuity of a young ash. There 
 is an infinite variety in our sentiments, even 
 when we love the same thing ; and this is 
 what gives such perennial freshness to art. 
 
 A young English landscape painter wrote 
 to a landscape painter of the ripest experience 
 to the effect that he felt strongly tempted to 
 live in a certain part of England ; but that 
 as it had long been a regular haunt of artists, 
 he feared the material there had become 
 excessively hackneyed, and must have lost 
 all novelty. The answer he received has a 
 direct bearing on our present subject. The 
 
Alteration produced by Feeling 91 
 
 elder artist, who himself constantly painted 
 very well-known places, wrote in reply that 
 the apprehensions of his young friend were 
 groundless ; because his own personal feeling, 
 if he allowed it full play, would give com- 
 plete novelty to his subjects. The pro- 
 found truth of this is illustrated every year 
 by artists who make Wales, Scotland, 
 Switzerland, and even Venice, new for us. 
 The stronger the personal quality in the 
 artist, the more will the images in his mind 
 be altered by his own feeling. 
 
 The fine arts are not an isolated manifest- 
 ation of human genius ; and it is impossible 
 to understand them without reference to that 
 general human nature which they reflect. In 
 everything we see old subjects made fresh 
 and new by the entirely unexpected treatment 
 they receive from new men. The three 
 words ' Monarchy, Aristocracy, Democracy ' 
 — which have been mentioned in connexion 
 
92 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 with the images they evoke, have meanings 
 continually undergoing modification in conse- 
 quence of new personal conceptions. What 
 is still more remarkable is that the history 
 of past ages, whose account seems closed 
 with the death of all those who belonged to 
 them, is constantly presented to us in new 
 aspects by the selecting imagination of 
 new historians. 1 
 
 The changes produced by imagination 
 may be brought under one uniform law. 
 Every imaginative mind is so constituted 
 that certain qualities in men or things attract 
 its attention, as being either pleasing or 
 repugnant. These qualities then assume an 
 
 1 I had hardly written the above when I came upon 
 the following passage in a speech on books and reading 
 by Mr. James Russell Lowell : — ' And in what, I pray, 
 are those we gravely call historical characters, of which 
 each new historian strains his neck to get a new and 
 different view, in any sense more real than the person- 
 ages of fiction ? ' 
 
Alteration produced by Feeling 93 
 
 excessive importance, disproportionate for 
 other minds, but seeming right to the indi- 
 vidual imagination. If the imaginative 
 person is a writer or a painter, his work will 
 be full of his feeling about those qualities ; 
 and it will contain but slight reference, if any, 
 to other qualities, equally existent In reality 
 but having no relation to the individual mind. 
 This, I believe, is a fair statement of the 
 general law. It follows that when images 
 are evoked by feeling they cannot be images 
 of complete realities, but only of some 
 qualities appertaining to realities ; and of 
 those qualities only with which the single 
 imaginative mind is in attractive or repellent 
 relation. The application of this law to the 
 work of imaginative landscape painters will 
 be our present study. 
 
X 
 
 Unity as a Result of Imagination 
 
 J T is lucky for the fine arts, and, I believe, 
 a purely accidental consequence of the 
 imaginative way of conceiving or remember- 
 ing what is visible, that when the realities of 
 the material world have passed through the 
 alembic of the imagination they gain as 
 much in unity as they lose in minuteness of 
 detail. That this result is in a certain sense 
 accidental seems to be proved by the fact 
 that it is due quite as much to weakness of 
 memory as to strength of invention. An 
 artist whose memory had no failures would 
 retain everything so perfectly that he would 
 
 always be painting from nature, and he would 
 
 94 
 
Unity as a Result of Imagination 95 
 
 lose the advantage of that natural selection 
 and omission which the unequal action of the 
 memory makes involuntary. This is one of 
 those curious but very frequent cases in which 
 a defect turns out to be really an advantage. 
 The unity that charms us in a landscape by 
 Gainsborough or David Cox, and which 
 contributed so powerfully to build up the 
 astonishingly high reputation of Corot, is due 
 in great part to the same natural infirmity of 
 the memory that makes it so difficult for the 
 school-boy to retain details that do not 
 interest him. In art, however, this infirmity 
 would be of no practical value if it were not 
 subordinate to feeling. The sentiment of 
 the artist makes certain things interesting 
 and important to him, and as his sentiment 
 governs the action of his memory, he re- 
 members only what is necessary. No one 
 who has not studied the subject with close 
 attention can fully realise the great practical 
 
g6 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 advantage which the imaginative artist de- 
 rives from his habit of involuntary omission. 
 It is not only useful to him in forgetting 
 things which would uselessly intrude, but it 
 also enables him to pass over all those quali- 
 ties in nature that would interfere with his 
 special purpose. In this way it may be said 
 to be essential to masterly execution and to 
 style. Nothing, in the execution of the 
 great masters, is more remarkable than their 
 broad and simple manner of painting. How 
 simply Titian painted, and our own Gains- 
 borough and Reynolds ! How different their 
 work is. in -this respect from that of many 
 inferior artists ! The reason is that they 
 never painted without imagination, and there- 
 fore were delivered from the tyranny of those 
 qualities in nature that importune the painter 
 who observes and does not imagine. The 
 same quality of simplification is conspicu- 
 ous in the whole of Girtin's work, and in 
 
Unity as a Result of Imagination 97 
 
 that of David Cox. To my mind there is 
 something profoundly satisfactory in the 
 independence with which Girtin left un- 
 furnished spaces in his drawings. The un- 
 imaginative inventors of recipes for compo- 
 sition would have told him to put groups of 
 figures or cattle in his unfurnished spaces, 
 and to cut his quiet lines with buildings, but he 
 never would put a figure or a building where 
 his own imaginative sentiment did not feel the 
 need. There are many drawings by David 
 Cox which depend on the simplicity in the 
 use of material for their lasting effect upon 
 the mind. The Windmill is a case in 
 point. The immediate foreground is, in 
 itself, dull ; the bit of road in the left-hand 
 corner is insignificant, and the long band of 
 heather is neither interesting nor clearly 
 made out. Beyond this lies a broad space 
 of shade containing nothing that is attractive. 
 The sky is so extremely quiet that the subtle 
 
 H 
 
98 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 arrangement of its cloud-forms (if they can 
 be called forms) must escape the attention of 
 every one except an experienced - artist or 
 critic. The house is not very picturesque, 
 and certainly has no pretension to beauty, 
 nor is it easily explicable how such dispro- 
 portionately large dormer windows co-exist 
 with the very low front which is all there is 
 room for under them. The horse and cart, 
 with the driver, seem commonplace, and 
 show no special invention ; the trees are 
 stunted, the rising ground so low as to have 
 none of the interest of hills. All these 
 criticisms are just, but they are beside the 
 mark. The one merit of the drawing is the 
 perfect unity of impression that it conveys. 
 Nothing in the whole composition is suffi- 
 ciently interesting to set up a conflict with 
 the windmill. Substitute, mentally, a pretty 
 piece of architecture for the cottage, and the 
 interest would be too much carried to the 
 
Unity as a Result of Imagination 99 
 
 riofht. Observe how the little interest there 
 is diminishes gradually like a dying cadence 
 in music, the dormer windows are nearest 
 the mill, then you have the chimney, and 
 after that nothing but a low roof. The only 
 tree that shows some slight elaboration is 
 near the centre of the drawing, that behind 
 the cottage to the right is a mere blot. 
 Never was composition less obtrusive, anxl 
 yet you have it everywhere. The windmill 
 is a sort of triangle with a steep side to the 
 left, and a more sloping side to the right. A 
 similar diminution to the right is repeated in 
 the cottage and figures. A broadly curved 
 sweep in the mass of darker cloud is repeated 
 in a steeper curve by the birds. Lastly, 
 whatever arrangements of minor material 
 may have seemed advisable, the artist has 
 not for one moment forgotten that the subject 
 of his drawing was the Windmill, which is 
 as predominant and as important as it can be. 
 
ioo Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 This simplicity of treatment is of the kind 
 that belongs especially to Imagination. Its 
 opposite is to be found in those numerous 
 compositions in which the one dread of the 
 artist is that some part of his work may be 
 condemned as uninteresting. To escape 
 from this criticism he fills it from end to 
 end with heterogeneous matter, and amuses 
 the vulgar spectator by putting the materials 
 of half-a-dozen pictures that might separately 
 have been satisfactory into one inconsistent 
 accumulation. 
 
 The reader may perhaps ask at this point 
 where is the feeling that has been mentioned 
 as distinguishing artistic and scientific or 
 mechanical imagination ? The answer is that 
 feeling is shown here by the artist's quiet 
 and happy contentment with the sources of 
 interest that the rustic scene really afforded. 
 The reader may examine the work as closely 
 as he likes ; he will not find even the very 
 
Unity as a Result of Imagination 101 
 
 slightest intrusion of any foreign element, 
 neither does the artist vainly attempt to en- 
 noble the simple materials before him by 
 giving them a grandeur not their own. A 
 common draughtsman would not hesitate to 
 introduce a lady and gentleman on horseback 
 into such a scene, and would think their 
 presence an improvement on the vacant bit 
 of road in the corner. 
 
 A very perfect example of the simplicity 
 and unity which belong to those imaginative 
 compositions that are suggested by feeling is 
 Cattermole's drawing of Glendearg, engraved 
 by Willmore as an illustration to Scott's 
 ' Monastery,' and mentioned long ago with 
 approbation in the first volume of 1 Modern 
 Painters.' Cattermole did not quite strictly 
 adhere to Scott's description, having too clear 
 an imaginative conception of his own to 
 follow that of another, but Scott's word- 
 
102 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 picture has the same quality of unity pro- 
 duced by feeling. 
 
 c A November mist overspread the little valley, up which 
 slowly but steadily rode the monk Eustace. He was 
 not insensible to the feeling of melancholy inspired by 
 the scene and by the season. The stream seemed to 
 murmur with a deep and oppressed note, as if bewailing 
 the departure of autumn. Among the scattered copses 
 which here and there fringed its banks, the oak-trees 
 only retained that pallid green that precedes their russet 
 hue. The leaves of the willows were most of them 
 stripped from the branches, lay rustling at each breath 
 and disturbed by every step of the mule ; while the 
 foliage of other trees, totally withered, kept still precarious 
 possession of the boughs, waiting the first wind to scatter 
 them.' 
 
 Cattermole held very loosely to this descrip- 
 tion. His monk is riding down the valley 
 instead of up it, as we know by the flowing 
 of the water ; and he gives us neither the 
 mist of November, nor the scattered oak 
 copses, nor the willows. His drawing, there- 
 fore, must be taken simply on its own merits 
 
f 
 
Unity as a Result of Imagination 103 
 
 as an original conception of border landscape. 
 A stony stream, rather broad and very rapid, 
 flows past the foot of a low, bare, and steep 
 hill, behind which the sun has set, leaving 
 still just enough light to fill three or four 
 faint streaks of level cloud. The monk has 
 been riding on a narrow path between this 
 hill and the water, and the knight is galloping 
 after him at the hill's foot. The only trees 
 are two poor trunks, that look like alder, on 
 the bare shore to the right in the middle 
 distance, and two copse-bushes far away. 
 The bareness of the hill is complete, and 
 evidently intentional as an important element 
 in the dreary, wild, and thoroughly northern 
 character of the scene. The water is mono- 
 tonous in its swift flowing ; it does not rest 
 in a calm pool, to flow on again when it has 
 rested. 
 
 The subject is exactly one of those that 
 the vulgar artist would consider uninteresting. 
 
104 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 The bare hill would seem to him to require 
 ornament of some sort ; and he would either 
 diversify it with roads, or clothe its nakedness 
 with trees, or sublimise it into a mountain. 
 The poverty of the opposite shore would 
 seem to call for a cottage or a fisherman. He 
 would not like the general stony character of 
 the stream, but would group the scattered 
 stones together picturesquely on one side. 
 By all these improvements he might, per- 
 haps, succeed in making his work more 
 saleable ; but he would effectually destroy 
 that simple unity of character which in Catter- 
 mole's drawing resulted from feeling and 
 imagination. 
 
 Rembrandt's Landscape with figures of 
 Tobias and the Angel is a good instance of 
 the simplicity and unity which result from 
 a purely imaginative conception. Noth- 
 ing could be simpler than the materials ; 
 the rising ground to the left is rough and 
 
Unity as a Result of Imagination 105 
 
 broken to convey the idea that the journey 
 of young Tobias has not been quite easy 
 hitherto ; and for the same reason he is 
 walking on rough ground ; the sky, the wood, 
 and the river are gloomy, to impress us with 
 a sense of awe, but there is a light in the sky 
 behind the trees which at the same time 
 gives a centre to the subject, and makes us 
 feel that although the way may be rough and 
 the weather gloomy, the traveller is not 
 abandoned either to darkness or despair. 
 The introduction of the angel with wings is 
 rather opposed to the text, as Tobias saw 
 nothing to indicate the angelic rank, but 
 it is almost necessary as a painter's license. 
 
XI 
 
 How the Imagination deals with Definite Lines 
 and Proportions 
 
 £ F one were suddenly asked what is the 
 greatest need of the Imagination, he 
 would probably answer either ' abundance 
 of materials' or else 'liberty.' 
 
 A great abundance of material to select 
 from is indeed evidently necessary ; but not 
 less necessary is great liberty in the employ- 
 ment of it. This need for liberty has been 
 felt by the poets to such a degree that they 
 have seldom been willing even to let them- 
 selves be bound by the laws of Nature ; and 
 when they have had small belief, or no belief, 
 
 in the supernatural, they have assumed a 
 
 106 
 
Definite Lines and Proportions 107 
 
 poetical belief in it merely for its extreme 
 convenience. Nor is there any sign that this 
 tendency is diminishing as we become more 
 scientific. On the contrary, the distinction 
 between poetry and what is not poetry is 
 more and more clearly seen to be the dis- 
 tinction between imaginative and unimagina- 
 tive literature. The tendency is more and 
 more to leave to poetry the utmost freedom 
 in the fields of both the natural and the 
 supernatural ; and our most recent bards are 
 accustomed to feign what are called super- 
 stitious beliefs even more frequently than 
 their immediate predecessors. There is less 
 of the supernatural in Scott and Byron than 
 in Rossetti. 
 
 It is, however, incomparably easier to deal 
 with realities imaginatively in poetry than in 
 painting, since in poetry the desired liberty 
 may be aided by an intentional vagueness of 
 expression ; whereas in painting the pos- 
 
108 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 sibility of vagueness is much more limited, 
 and there are many things which the painter 
 must express with some degree of definition. 
 There are things, too, which he must not 
 only define, but represent in certain fixed 
 proportions, on pain of appearing ignorant. 
 It is impossible for the most imaginative 
 artist to enjoy any freedom in painting a 
 Doric column. We should say, in looking 
 at the picture, that the column was more or 
 less pure in type ; and if it were not carefully 
 done, we should say that the drawing was 
 inaccurate. In a good, authentic Doric 
 column, the outline, as every student knows, 
 is not a straight line, but a very delicate 
 convex curve. If a painter were to omit the 
 curve, he would give the column a stiffness 
 that it has not in reality ; but if he drew the 
 curve at all visibly he would probably exag- 
 gerate it. In either case there would be 
 very little room for imagination. If he 
 
Definite Lines and Proportions 109 
 
 curved the outline more on one side than 
 the other, we should all declare that he could 
 not draw ; and nobody would listen to any 
 demand for such liberty on the ground of 
 imaginative requirements. 
 
 Architecture has been so often introduced 
 into landscape, and was an element of such 
 importance in the landscapes of Turner and 
 Claude, that I am not going out of my way 
 in taking architectural drawing as a conveni- 
 ently positive and measurable test of the 
 action of the imagination in dealing with 
 things of a definite shape. 
 
 It is to be observed, first, that in all 
 sketches done in the heat of imagination, 
 architectural forms, however rigid and severe, 
 are dealt with as freely as anything else. 
 What has been just said about the painter 
 and the Doric column referred to pictures 
 only. In sketches the most famous painters 
 work in a manner which, to the unintel- 
 
1 10 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 ligent, must appear ignorant and careless ; 
 but which in reality is nothing more than 
 the free play of mind upon the subject. 
 
 This is also the case even with architects. 
 One of the most interesting and beautiful 
 architectural works ever published — Baron de 
 Geymullers work on the early projects for 
 St. Peter's at Rome — contains facsimiles of 
 many sketches by Bramante and others, which 
 were projects set down on paper whilst the 
 ideas were still fresh in the brain and the 
 imagination in full activity. In all these 
 sketches, though the subjects are the rigid 
 forms of Renaissance architecture, the hand 
 is as little restrained, and the drawing 
 as remote from strict accuracy, as that 
 of a landscape painter occupied in sketching 
 a tree. 
 
 This by way of parenthesis, as our present 
 concern is with painters only. I allude to 
 architects because they are of necessity most 
 
Definite Lines and Proportions 1 1 1 
 
 strict and accurate men ; and yet, as we see 
 their accuracy gives way before Imagination. 
 The architect will become accurate again 
 when the actual work of invention is com- 
 pleted, and he has only to elaborate its 
 results. 
 
 I see no great difference between the 
 imagination of a painter when he deals with 
 architecture and that of the architect himself, 
 supposing the latter to be, as he ought always 
 to be, an artist. At the moment of invention 
 the painter will sketch loosely, even (as it 
 may seem) wildly ; but when he works out 
 his idea in a finished picture, he will become 
 accurate in exact proportion to the degree of 
 finish he aims at. 
 
 Nothing is more likely to deceive an un- 
 thinking critic than the sort of finish given 
 to buildings in Claudes pictures. It is so 
 quietly methodical — the temper of the work- 
 man seems so entirely destitute of passion — 
 
ii2 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 that one can hardly credit him with imagin- 
 ation. For example, in the familiar Em- 
 barkation of the Queen of Sheba, it would 
 be difficult for any one who thought of the 
 picture only, without recollecting Claude's 
 sketches, to believe that any imagination 
 had gone to the drawing of the buildings, 
 which are ruled with a mechanical careful- 
 ness. Look at the square-cut stones in the 
 corner, under the arch, and the Corinthian 
 column. See how careful the artist has 
 been about the mason's work, laying it stone 
 by stone, and not forgetting the iron clamps 
 that hold the stones together. Observe the 
 steps by which the Queen and her followers 
 are descending, with what almost Philistine 
 accuracy the lines of the perspective are 
 ruled. They would, indeed, have been per- 
 fectly intolerable in a picture without the 
 groups of figures that interrupt them. In 
 like manner the hard, mechanical drawing 
 
\ 
 
Definite Lines and Proportions 113 
 
 of the palace, with the portico, makes us 
 long for the relief which is supplied just 
 in the right place by the beautiful group 
 of trees. The reproduction here given 
 translates the calm manner of Claude, but 
 to appreciate it fully one must see not only 
 how the architecture is drawn, but how it is 
 painted — with what workmanlike regularity 
 the paint is applied to one stone after 
 another, there being exactly the same degree 
 of imperceptible excitement in every case. 
 Some degree of excitement is necessary to 
 the production of every picture. 
 
 This calmness, this deliberate care, in the 
 treatment of architecture is, I believe, com- 
 mon to all the pictures of Claude, as it is 
 certainly common to all those which I have 
 seen. When, however, we turn to his etch- 
 ings, we find a touch decidedly more 
 picturesque and a pleasure in the treatment 
 
 of more or less broken line, even in classical 
 
 1 
 
i 1 4 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 architecture. Thus, the columns and archi- 
 trave to the left in the Campo Vaccino are 
 treated with an evident desire to avoid hard- 
 ness, and so are the massive fluted columns, 
 with the rich Corinthian capitals, that support 
 a fragmentary architrave in the Troupeau 
 en Marc he par un Temps d'Orage. In the 
 famous Stmrise plate the Roman triumphal 
 arch to the left is almost as picturesque in 
 its decay as it would be in a modern water- 
 colour. In La Danse au Bord de VEau 
 there is a small watermill with a tower, and 
 Claude is as careful about the picturesque 
 quality of these buildings as Brunet-Debaines 
 might be. He avoids outline altogether, 
 relieving the tower against the wood, and 
 the cottage against the tower, by the simple 
 opposition of light and dark, whilst he care- 
 fully shows in these white silhouettes that 
 the masonry is somewhat touched by Time, 
 and that it is not vertical. All this seems to 
 
Definite Lines and Proportions 115 
 
 indicate a much more picturesque imagin- 
 ation than we should guess at from the 
 Queen of Skeba. 
 
 But it is when we come to Claude's 
 sketches that we see how picturesque his 
 imagination really was. It was not chilled 
 or arrested by severity in buildings, but 
 dealt with easily and naturally, on principles 
 that will have to be elucidated shortly with 
 reference to modern sketching of non-ruinous 
 architecture. 
 
 The probability seems to be that the love 
 of careful and mechanical architectural draw- 
 ing in finished pictures had come to Claude 
 from Raphael, as Raphael himself had got 
 it from the early Italian painters directly 
 through Perugino. 1 It will scarcely be a 
 digression to give some thought to the 
 Raphaelesque formality in this place, on 
 account of its great influence. There is a 
 1 This is not a guess ; there is clear evidence. 
 
n6 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 very good example of it in the picture called 
 the Madonna Ansidei, recently added to our 
 National Gallery. The Virgin is seated 
 on a throne raised on a plinth, to which 
 access is given by two steps that look very 
 like a large box and a smaller one. The 
 plinth is adorned with a Greek fret and 
 panelled in front ; the box-like steps are also 
 panelled. Above the throne is a canopy 
 and beyond it a lofty round arch. 
 
 All this mechanical part of the picture is 
 arranged as symmetrically as a two-handled 
 vase. Nor is this the only known form of 
 the same subject. In the Virgin with the 
 Baldacchino (Pitti) the arrangement of 
 throne and arch is the same, except that 
 the arch is filled by an apse instead of 
 having an open view, and in the Ripalda 
 Holy Family the arch is a tympanum 
 above the picture and separated from it by 
 a frieze. In the three pictures the mechani- 
 
Definite Lines and Proportions 117 
 
 cal drawing is equally perfect. There exists, 
 however, a sketch of the motive common 
 to these pictures, though with other figures, 
 and in the sketch the throne and plinth, 
 with the two box-like steps, are drawn quite 
 as lightly and freely as the architecture in 
 Claude's pen-sketches — nay, the instinctive 
 desire to avoid excessive symmetry which 
 characterises most sketches has its satisfac- 
 tion in the simple omission of one half the 
 high back of the throne, whilst the arch is 
 indicated by three loose curved lines on 
 one side only. This is one instance out 
 of many. In a finished picture by Raphael 
 the mechanical work is always sure to be 
 done mechanically, but whilst he is actually 
 composing and imagining, it is as loose 
 and free as a rapid etching of Rembrandt. 
 The mechanical work in the pictures may 
 have been done by another hand, but there 
 are drawings by Raphael (as distinguished 
 
1 1 8 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 from sketches of ideas) in which the per- 
 spective is carefully made out with a ruler. 
 There is evidence, too, that Raphael had 
 rather a mechanical turn of mind. As an 
 architect he was familiar with rigid forms 
 and exact measurements, and whenever any 
 bit of mechanism came in his way, he took 
 pleasure in giving it his attention. One of 
 the most interesting instances is a sort of 
 foretoken or hint of the future paddle-wheels 
 that propel steamers. This is in the 
 Triumph of Galatea, where a small paddle- 
 wheel is drawn very carefully, though it is 
 quite superfluous, as there are two strong 
 dolphins to do the work. 1 
 
 The mechanical perfection in the pictures 
 of Raphael and Claude may have been 
 
 1 Narrow theorists sometimes place the artistic and 
 mechanical intellects in opposition, as if they were irre- 
 concilable ; yet not only have we the case of Lionardo 
 da Vinci, but, in fact, every architect of real imaginative 
 power must unite the two intellects in his own person. 
 
Definite Lines and Proportions 119 
 
 partly due to the indirect influences of the 
 burin. The classical school of engraving 
 had developed a taste for severe lines in 
 backgrounds, as it dealt far more easily with 
 anything that could be ruled, or defined with 
 a clear curve, than with the forms of natural 
 landscape. In this way it is not improbable 
 that the work of Marc Antonio, and others, 
 in the backgrounds of figure-pictures, may 
 have had an influence on landscape painting. 
 They liked pavements, columns, and orders, 
 with perhaps a glimpse of landscape in the 
 distance. If we wonder at the ease with 
 which Claude and Canaletti tolerated ex- 
 tremely stiff and artificial foregrounds made 
 by masons, the explanation may be found in 
 the classical school of engraving and in the 
 use of a tool which is not a painter's tool — 
 the burin. 
 
 The practice of etching, on the other 
 hand, in our own day has impelled the 
 
120 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 graphic arts generally in another direction, 
 which is well worth inquiring into, as it 
 involves a most curious question about truth. 
 
 Suppose that an artist has to draw some 
 pure and rigid piece of architecture, such as 
 a new stone house of severe classical design 
 (it does not signify whether it is a reality 
 or only an architectural project), we all 
 know that whatever very slight irregu- 
 larities there may be in the edges of the 
 stone, they will be invisible a few yards 
 off, and that if the artist is far enough 
 away to see the building as a whole, it 
 will be represented for him by lines so pure 
 that the ruled line of the professional archi- 
 tectural engraver is only just clear enough 
 and accurate enough to represent them. 
 But now comes an artist like Lalanne, for 
 example, who has to draw the well-finished 
 masonry, and nothing can induce him to 
 work with that degree of precision. We 
 
Definite Lines and Proportions 121 
 
 may be sure that the objection does not 
 arise from indolence ; it must come from 
 an artistic motive of which the artist may 
 or may not be conscious. It would be easy 
 to say that Lalanne draws severe buildings 
 loosely because such treatment is artistic, 
 but, prenez garde ! have we not just seen 
 that both Claude and Raphael tolerated 
 clear lines in their finished work, and shall 
 we go so far as to say that it was not 
 artistic? If we said that, we ought to say 
 the same of sculpture and of classical burin 
 engraving. No ; the hard, clear drawing 
 in Raphael's backgrounds is artistic, since 
 it goes well with the finish of his figures, 
 but it has the serious defect of not stimu- 
 lating the imagination of the spectator. I 
 do not say that it is not the product of 
 imagination in Raphael. In his own peculiar 
 way he had a great deal of imagination ; 
 he imagined noble personages amidst noble 
 
122 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 surroundings, but his finished work does 
 not greatly stimulate the imaginations of 
 others. 
 
 If the reader will turn to one of Lalanne s 
 etchings, or to one of his pen-sketches in 
 some modern city, such as Paris, he will 
 see at once that his peculiar treatment of 
 formal, highly-finished modern buildings is 
 much more the expression of a certain feel- 
 ing experienced in a place than an attempt 
 to imitate what might be seen by hard and 
 careful looking. In order to spare the 
 reader the trouble of a reference to my 
 volume on ' Paris,' I have requested the 
 publishers to reprint in this place Lalanne's 
 sketch-view of the Boulevard St. Germain. 
 It may be objected that this is only a sketch, 
 and that Raphael himself sketched loosely ; 
 but the difference is, that Lalanne always 
 works on the same principle, though, when 
 he etches, the greater perfection of the 
 
Definite Lines and Proportions 123 
 
 etching process would make the work look 
 more refined. 
 
 The first quality that strikes me in this 
 sketch is that it immediately produces the 
 impression of being on the Boulevard itself. 
 Before I have had time to examine a single 
 detail I am in Paris, close to the church of 
 St. Germain, and feel an impulse to go and 
 see some things and people I know in the 
 neighbourhood. This comes from the lively 
 truth of aspect which has been seized upon 
 by the artist. This sketch seems to contain 
 many details ; but when I try to examine 
 them I only find a suggestion which is gener- 
 ally the merest hint, my own intimate know- 
 ledge of the locality, and an easily stimulated 
 imagination, doing the rest. Let us take 
 one detail. The nearest tree does not grow 
 as most trees grow, from the soil, thicker 
 near the ground where the roots begin to 
 spread ; the fact being that we cannot see 
 
124 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 the beginning of the roots, as they are down 
 below a circular grating. The reader will 
 see this grating rapidly indicated by a line, 
 and within it he will see three or four other 
 lines converging towards the trunk. I know 
 what Lalanne means by these hints. He 
 means that the design of the grating radiates 
 like the spokes of a wheel. Let us now pass 
 to the block of houses on the left. Its 
 general proportions are most truthful, and 
 the details are effectually suggested to one 
 who is familiar with Parisian houses ; but not 
 one of them is drawn with anything like the 
 severity which in reality belongs to archi- 
 tecture of that kind. There is almost every 
 truth in the sketch except that severity, and 
 the absence of it may be excused in this 
 way : — So long as we look at a scene of this 
 kind in the reality without effort, without 
 close scrutiny, we do not see much more 
 clearly than in the sketch. Our impression 
 
Definite Lines and Proportions 125 
 
 is a confused impression of a multitude of 
 details, and we do not perceive the severity 
 of clear lines as we should if we looked at 
 them steadily. I may add that the sketch 
 gives an excellent idea of Paris in another 
 way. There is not much effect, but we feel 
 that we are in a place where there is a 
 predominance of light tones. 
 
 A sketch of this kind is a collection of 
 hints to awaken memory. The water-colours 
 of Jules Jacquemart were done on the same 
 principle of defining nothing, but giving as 
 many hints as possible. There is no reason 
 why oil-colour should not be used in the 
 same way, and, in fact, it is frequently so 
 used by clever artists. The word 'clever,' it 
 may be observed in passing, is more fre- 
 quently applied to suggestive artists than to 
 any others. 
 
 This kind of drawing is a consequence of 
 practice with the etching-needle, an instru- 
 
126 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 ment that conveniently expresses knowledge 
 in this way and suggests straight, complete 
 things, by lines that are crooked and incom- 
 plete. This kind of drawing can never, 
 therefore, be precisely true when rigid, 
 highly-finished architecture has to be drawn, 
 yet it suggests more numerous truths than 
 the more perfect kind of drawing ever realises. 
 An architect's draughtsman would give the 
 pilasters on the house-fronts accurately, but 
 he would not convey either the truths that 
 I have pointed out in Lalanne's sketch, or 
 others that I pass in silence. 
 
XII 
 
 Of Special Exaggerations in Buildings 
 
 ' J^HERE is another kind of deviation from 
 strict truth more common in the works 
 of Turner than in those of Lalanne. The 
 French artist generally, though not always, 
 is accurate in the proportions of parts, and is 
 really a careful draughtsman with an appear- 
 ance of ease and carelessness. Many a 
 laborious drawing of street architecture, many 
 a painfully wrought engraving, is much farther 
 from the right proportions of masses than the 
 slightest croquis of Lalanne. With Turner 
 the case is different. I am far from wishing 
 
 to impute any real carelessness to Turner. 
 
 127 
 
128 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 Great artists are seldom, if ever, careless, 
 having always some purpose in view, though 
 they may sometimes appear indifferent about 
 the means. In the case of Turner, to be 
 seriously interested in anything was to exag- 
 gerate the thing or the quality that interested 
 him. The mention of Paris and Lalanne 
 reminds me of a very valuable example that 
 I have taken note of elsewhere, but which 
 may be alluded to again, because it shows so 
 well how Turner's imagination acted. The 
 reader remembers the picturesque semicir- 
 cular projections over the piers of the Pont 
 Neuf. Turner perceived at once that these 
 were very characteristic and important fea- 
 tures of the bridge, so he made them three 
 times their real size 1 relatively to the arches, 
 
 1 This is very much understated, as I do not wish to 
 convey a false impression to readers not accustomed to 
 compare cubic sizes. The bartizans in question are half- 
 cylinders, those of Turner being three times the width 
 and three times the height of the real ones (proportion- 
 
Of Special Exaggerations in Buildings 129 
 
 thereby giving the bridge a much heavier 
 appearance than it has in the reality, but 
 making it look a more remarkable and curious 
 bridge, and more unlike other bridges, especi- 
 ally modern ones. Lalanne etched the Pont 
 Neuf, and in his etching the bartizans are of 
 their real relative size, or very near it. No 
 doubt Turner was a much more imaginative 
 artist than Lalanne, and so we may believe 
 that the tendency to exaggerate certain 
 features is a characteristic of imagination ; 
 but as this exaggeration of some features is 
 accompanied by the diminution of others, the 
 mental process may be more correctly de- 
 scribed as a change of proportions rather 
 than exaggeration only. 
 
 A good example of this is a vignette by 
 
 ally to the arches), so that the difference in cubic con- 
 tents, the true measure of relative size, is prodigious. In 
 mere superficial measure of paper surface occupied on a 
 drawing, the difference is as six to fifty-four. 
 
 K 
 
130 Pagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 Turner of the Tower of London engraved 
 for Rogers's Poems. The height of the 
 tower is proportionally much exaggerated, 
 but as its width seems diminished in the 
 same proportion, the result^is not an exag- 
 geration of the building as a mass, indeed 
 it seems less vast and formidable than in the 
 reality. 
 
 When a writer of great imaginative power 
 has expressed himself, however partially and 
 imperfectly, in one of the graphic arts, he 
 is sure to supply interesting evidence as to 
 the operations of the imaginative faculty, 
 because we know beforehand, from his 
 writings, that the power is present in him, 
 and we may presume that it will not be 
 suddenly extinguished merely because he 
 turns from one art to another. The case of 
 Victor Hugo is one of the most interesting, 
 because he drew with utter frankness, not 
 troubling himself in the least about technical 
 
Of Special Exaggerations in Buildings 131 
 
 perfection ; so that every drawing by him is 
 the expression of his own mind, and not an 
 imitation of some artist. From what we 
 have seen of Victor Hugo's drawings (not 
 much in proportion to the quantity of them), 
 it appears that his tendency was to take a 
 strong interest in some one object — often a 
 real or imaginary building — and then to 
 represent it in a strange light not explicable 
 by any known natural law, yet not without a 
 weird and awful character that would be 
 suitable enough to the castle or the heath 
 scene in ' Macbeth.' As for fidelity to the 
 object, no critic acquainted with the revela- 
 tions of style in art would believe that 
 Hugo's impetuous manner could be com- 
 patible with such a modest virtue. I do 
 not remember the ' Maison des Drapeaux ' 
 at Geneva, nor have I seen the belfry at 
 Domfront from which the St. Bartholomew 
 was sounded ; but I am certain that in both 
 
132 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 cases the drawings were of impressions 
 without any accuracy of detail, and also that 
 there were violent exaggerations of parts. 1 
 The Castle of the Middle Ages on the Rhine, 
 with the enormous signature, is probably a 
 pure invention ; and so may be another 
 Rhine subject, with a broken bridge in the 
 foreground, in which the castle — lighted one 
 knows not how or whence — hangs over a 
 void of darkness, like a flying island pass- 
 ing over a black abyss. In these cases, and 
 others, a single object attracts Hugo's 
 attention, and then is exhibited in the most 
 striking manner, with the most arbitrary and 
 violent chiaroscuro. There is a sort of grim 
 humour and conscious extravagance about 
 
 1 Unfortunately both buildings are demolished, or we 
 might have had photographs taken from them to com- 
 pare. The drawings used to belong to M. Burty, and 
 were engraved on wood by M&iulle with the greatest 
 care in preserving their character. (See ' L'Art,' vol. hi., 
 P- 54.) 
 
Of Special Exaggerations in Buildings 133 
 
 such drawing, as in the huge vanity of the 
 signature, eight inches long ; the humour 
 of the grotesque, in which the awful and 
 horrible are mingled with a monstrous, im- 
 possible sublimity. When this mood pre- 
 dominates, the tendency is to prodigious 
 exaggerations of size and height, like the 
 wild inventions of Rabelais. The two best 
 examples of the grotesque in the work of 
 Gustave Dore, the Conies Drolatiques and 
 the Juif Errant, contain several examples 
 of buildings in which the imagination has 
 played without restraint. The most auda- 
 cious instance is the great castle in Berthe 
 la Repentie (Contes), which is so high — so 
 high — that the rain-clouds rest one above 
 another against its walls, as they do against 
 the front of an unscaleable Alpine precipice. 
 Another instance is the drawing called Le 
 Merveilleux Chastel die Cadet de V Isle Adam, 
 with great masses of building about eight 
 
134 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 storeys high on the brink of a deep ravine. 
 Then there is the unending accumulation 
 of donjons, turrets, round towers, and barti- 
 zans, in the upper part of the tumultuous 
 battle-scene in the Juif Errant ; buildings 
 on a scale that no earthly architect ever 
 approached, vast as a hundred Bastilles. I 
 have sometimes thought it possible that 
 these exercises of the imagination, both in 
 Hugo and Dore, might be reminiscences of 
 actual dreams. Many of my readers, if they 
 take an interest in architecture, will prob- 
 ably have sometimes dreamed of buildings 
 far surpassing in size and splendour any 
 that have ever been visible on the earth. 
 This has happened to myself very fre- 
 quently, especially after architectural studies. 
 Wandering in dreamland, I meet with some 
 incomparable site, and think, ' What a place 
 that would be for a castle ! ' and then some- 
 how the towers rise out of the rocks, and 
 
Of Special Exaggerations in Buildings 135 
 
 there is a vision of the most glorious 
 romance. Or I find myself in a cathedral 
 vaster than St. Peter's at Rome and richer 
 than Rouen or Chartres ; a place of ineffable 
 grandeur, with distant, mysterious aisles, lost 
 in irr penetrable gloom. 1 
 
 A reputation that is now remembered 
 only as having been at one time a repu- 
 
 1 My belief is that such dreams must be connected 
 with the first artistic desires of youth, as all the dreams 
 of this kind that have occurred to me have been of 
 mediaeval architecture, the only architecture that I cared 
 for in early life. The most remarkable architectural 
 dream that ever happened to me was this : I was stand- 
 ing with a companion or guide (who seemed to be a 
 supernatural personage) on the brink of a deep ravine. 
 On the opposite side there was a stupendous precipice, 
 crowned by a mediaeval castle of immense extent and 
 unearthly magnificence. I was absorbed in speechless 
 wonder, and observing detail after detail of charming 
 architectural invention, when the towers began to sway 
 slowly from side to side, and then they all bowed for- 
 wards and toppled over together into the abyss with a 
 crash enough to wake the dead. It awoke me at once, 
 and the impression remained for some hours, as if I had 
 seen a real cataclysm. 
 
136 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 tation, was founded on the colossal and 
 almost unlimited grandeur of architectural 
 conceptions that bear a resemblance to 
 dreams, and may have been suggested either 
 by real dreams or by a waking state not far 
 removed from dream-producing sleep. John 
 Martins architecture could not have been 
 accepted in these days of more advanced 
 archaeology, but it is remarkable how its 
 vastness and strength appear to have im- 
 pressed our forefathers. Long rows of thick 
 and sturdy columns support immensely heavy 
 cornices or terraces, and the kind of land- 
 scape that generally accompanies this archi- 
 tecture is arranged in hill or hollow to 
 exhibit it to the best advantage, of course 
 without regard to the real nature of the 
 landscape round the ancient cities whose 
 names are borrowed for the occasion. It is 
 an evidence of change in sentiment that 
 these dreams have lost their influence, but 
 
Of Special Exaggerations in Buildings 137 
 
 I can remember being impressed by them 
 in boyhood, at a time when older and better 
 judges were also very strongly impressed. 
 Martin must, therefore, have had some real 
 imagination, and the reason why we are 
 dead to it now may be simply our more 
 accurate knowledge. We know that the 
 architecture of Nineveh and Babylon, with 
 the exception of the basements, was of a 
 much more perishable character than Martin 
 represented it to be, as well as much lighter 
 in appearance. What remains in Martin is 
 the expression of a vastness unattainable in 
 any buildings that are ever really constructed, 
 and resembling the architectural dreams of 
 Beckford in the oriental story of ' Vathek.' 
 If the reader is acquainted with that remark- 
 able effort of imagination, he will remember 
 how powerful is the effect of the colossal 
 buildings — the tower so lofty that the stairs 
 consisted of eleven thousand steps, and the 
 
138 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 immense terrace of black marble near the 
 entrance to the Hall of Eblis, that terrace 
 4 which was flagged with squares of marble, 
 and resembled a smooth expanse of water, 
 upon whose surface not a leaf ever dared to 
 vegetate.' See the effect of the architectural 
 elements in the following short description ; 
 without them it would be simply moonlight 
 on a table-land in a mountainous region, with 
 them it is what follows : — 
 
 'A death-like stillness reigned over the mountain, 
 and through the air. The moon dilated, on a vast plat- 
 form, the shades of the lofty columns which reached 
 from the terrace almost to the clouds. The gloomy 
 watch-towers, whose number could not be counted, were 
 veiled by no roof ; and their capitals, of an architecture 
 unknown in the records of the earth, served as an asylum 
 for the birds of darkness, which, alarmed at the approach 
 of such visitants, fled away croaking.' 
 
XIII 
 
 The Imaginative Value of Distance to Buildings 
 
 J N Victor Hugo's drawings, I notice that 
 when a building interests him he gener- 
 ally makes it too big for the area of his paper, 
 and brings it too near the spectator. This 
 is one of the commonest mistakes of amateurs 
 and inexperienced artists, a mistake that 
 arises naturally and almost inevitably from 
 the concentration of attention on the main 
 object, to the exclusion of those accessories 
 which a more learned craft would have em- 
 ployed to enhance its value. The inexperi- 
 enced artist imagines that by making his 
 edifice large on the canvas he will give it 
 
 the effect of size, but the truth is often the 
 
 139 
 
140 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 reverse of this, as a building seen at some 
 distance may impress us more with the notion 
 of its vastness than it does when we come 
 close upon it. This is clearly due to the 
 greater activity of the imagination with regard 
 to that which cannot be examined closely. 
 The same rule holds good in other things 
 than the art of painting, and especially in 
 regard to persons whose influence depends 
 on the degree in which they are able to affect 
 the popular imagination. It may be pre- 
 sumed that nobody understands the art of 
 preserving such an influence better than the 
 Popes of Rome, who never travel about, 
 but remain at a distance from the immense 
 majority of those who are accustomed to look 
 up to them. Kings travel more ; still there 
 is a certain remoteness and mystery about 
 them very different from the familiar publicity 
 of Members of Parliament. Even a famous 
 poet requires some removal by distance, which 
 
Imaginative Value of Distance 141 
 
 Shelley has gained by lapse of time and 
 Tennyson by retirement. 
 
 Following out this idea, I amused myself 
 by observing in many drawings or pictures 
 by artists of great experience and ability, 
 how small and distant some building was in 
 which the chief interest of the piece concen- 
 trated itself. In some exceptional cases an 
 important building is put near, but that is 
 generally seen to be a mistake, as in the 
 drawing by Turner of St. Julian at Tours, 
 which blocks the view and presents an awk- 
 ward perspective. The two views of Lille- 
 bonne are, on the contrary, excellent examples 
 of the importance that may be given to a 
 castle in the middle distance. In that with 
 the moon the castle seems to fill the drawing, 
 yet it only measures about \\ inches each 
 way, and the drawing measures 5§ x 3 J. In 
 the other view the castle is about an inch 
 long and three-quarters of an inch high, yet 
 
142 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 it looks imposing and lords it over a vast 
 landscape. In the view of Rouen (with the 
 rainbow) the cathedral is not near, as it is 
 seen beyond the bridge and the houses, but 
 it appears enormous. These, however, are 
 only examples of buildings in middle distance. 
 It is still more wonderful how a building in 
 the remote distance of a drawing, where it 
 is reduced to the smallest dimensions con- 
 sistent with its being seen at all, will at once 
 attract attention to itself. Turner was well 
 aware of this, as we see in the distant aque- 
 duct from the terrace of St. Germain and in 
 many other views or compositions. In a 
 view of Rome from Tivoli, by Gaspar Poussin, 
 the most important objects are a very small 
 white tower, or rather turret, in the middle 
 distance, and the dome of St. Peter's far 
 away, a mere speck in the remote landscape, 
 yet more important than the voluminous 
 clouds above it. 
 
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 Ft, 
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Imaginative Value of Distance 143 
 
 The mention of distant Rome brings me 
 at once to Virgil and Milton ; indeed, all 
 speculations on the imaginative arts bring us 
 inevitably to the great poets, as Samuel 
 Palmer found in his own experience — Samuel 
 Palmer, the imaginative landscape painter 
 who so loved Virgil and Milton, and knew 
 them so well, and derived from them so many 
 suggestions. The reader may remember how 
 in the Eighth Book of the ' Aeneid ' there is 
 a delightful river voyage, when the galleys 
 ascend the Tiber by night and the river-god 
 considerately stays the current to make the 
 surface like a pond in order that the men 
 may row quite easily. All night long they 
 row past the dark and densely-wooded shores, 
 and half the following day, till the sun is 
 high at noon, ' when they see far away the 
 walls and the citadel and the few roofs of 
 the houses which now the Roman power has 
 
144 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 lifted up to heaven.' 1 To my feeling the 
 poetry of this passage is immensely enhanced 
 by the single word % promt j afar, and the 
 first view of the early city that occupied the 
 future site of Rome is much more stimulating 
 to the imagination because it is a distant 
 view. We approach the city with the 
 galleys of Aeneas, and our aroused curiosity 
 is not to be satiated too soon. 
 
 The description of Rome in her magni- 
 ficence in ' Paradise Regained ' is also a dis- 
 tant view, the city being miraculously visible 
 from the Syrian desert during the Tempt- 
 ation ; and although details are visible, by 
 miracle, we are made to feel the distance 
 still ; we have no feeling of being close at 
 hand. In fact, the poet, 
 
 1 ' Sol medium coeli conscenderat igneus orbem 
 Quum muros, arcemque procul, ac rara domorum 
 Tecta vident ; quae nunc Romana potentia coelo 
 Aequavit; turn res inopes Evandrus habebat.' 
 
Imaginative Value of Distance 145 
 
 1 By what strange parallax, or optic skill 
 Of vision, multiplied through air, or glass 
 Of telescope, were curious to inquire,' 
 
 has found an opportunity for describing a 
 city at a greater distance than any painter 
 ever attempted : — 
 
 ' There the Capitol thou seest, 
 Above the rest lifting his stately head 
 On the Tarpeian rock, her citadel 
 Impregnable ; and there Mount Palatine, 
 The imperial palace, compass huge, and high 
 The structure, skill of noblest architects, 
 With gilded battlements conspicuous far, 
 Turrets, and terraces, and glittering spires.' 
 
 After this, a quotation from any other poet 
 is likely to seem an anti-climax, but I may 
 just remind the reader that one of the most 
 effective descriptions in Scott is that very 
 well known one of Edinburgh as seen by 
 Marmion from the moorland heights of 
 Blackford. I note in this description parti- 
 cularly the employment of the adjective 
 
 L 
 
146 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 'huge' that we have just met with in Milton 
 on a similar occasion : — 
 
 ' Such dusky grandeur clothed the height 
 Where the huge castle holds its state, 
 
 And all the steep slope down, 
 Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky 
 Piled deep and massy, close and high, 
 
 Mine own romantic town ! ' 
 
 A painter knows exactly why the word 
 ' huge ' is there. The reason is that at a 
 distance, and under a smoky effect when 
 details are obliterated, a great building looks 
 larger than under any other circumstances. 
 The use of the adjectives ' deep and massy, 
 close and high,' is also due to the effect of 
 distance, when objects are massed together, 
 and appear loftier than when we see the 
 details. 
 
 Scott reminds me of a countryman of his, 
 Sir George Reid, P.S.A., whose treatment 
 of buildings is always extremely skilful ; and 
 I notice that unless he desires to show archi- 
 
Imaginative Value of Distance 147 
 
 tectural detail, as in Melrose and Abbotsford, 
 he willingly places a building as far back 
 as he well can. In his illustrations of the 
 Tweed, Dryburgh is no more than a gable 
 with a window rising out of the wood by 
 Tweed shore, and the keep of Norham is 
 a comparatively small mass rising out of a 
 great wood. The tower of Newark is 
 treated on the same principle. Neidpath 
 Castle is only just brought near enough to 
 show its construction. 
 
 The best way to appreciate the value of 
 this treatment as a stimulus to the imagin- 
 ation, is to compare it with the necessarily 
 opposite treatment adopted by architectural 
 draughtsmen whose business it is to explain 
 all details clearly. The most romantic edi- 
 fice loses its romance in a mechanical drawing, 
 and our only chance of restoring it is to 
 imagine how the building would look at a 
 proper distance and under a favourable effect. 
 
148 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 Before leaving this part of the subject, I 
 may note one very remarkable effect of 
 distance, which is this. When a building 
 has massive pavilions or lofty towers, like 
 the pavilions of the Louvre or the towers of 
 the Houses of Parliament or Windsor Castle, 
 and the spectator is situated at such a dis- 
 tance that loftier parts alone are visible, they 
 produce, by acting on the imagination, a 
 remarkably strong impression of the vastness 
 of the invisible edifice that connects them ; 
 a vastness which, under certain effects of 
 light when the atmosphere is hazy enough 
 to obliterate the details of the towers, may 
 even appear incredible. I have observed 
 this effect in several great buildings, but 
 never in greater perfection than in the Paris 
 Exhibition of 1878, where the building had 
 great pavilions that looked incredibly distant 
 from each other in the haze of evening. 
 
XIV 
 
 Of Imaginative Execution in dealing with 
 
 HERE is a certain exercise of imagin- 
 
 ative power in the treatment of build- 
 ings which, to my mind, is far more valuable 
 in art than mere exaggeration ; it is the 
 power, not easily described, by which all the 
 harsh, hard, and discordant details of real 
 buildings are fused into a mysterious whole 
 that the mind feels to be intensely poetical. 
 
 Fully to understand the value of this 
 treatment, we have only to refer to those 
 stages of the graphic arts in which it was 
 entirely unknown. 
 
 It was entirely unknown to the mediaeval 
 illuminators, and to the painters of all the 
 
 A rchitecture 
 
150 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 early schools, and to the Italian and German 
 engravers of the times when engraving had 
 reached its point of greatness as an inde- 
 pendent art. 
 
 I have no wish to imply that early painters 
 and engravers were indifferent to the beauty 
 of buildings and to their romantic charm. 
 On the contrary, few characteristics of early 
 art are more delightful than the lovely bits 
 of building so often introduced, especially 
 the distant towns, towers, villages, and home- 
 steads in the backgrounds to all sorts of 
 subjects, in a charming but most irrelevant 
 way. These are often most interesting in 
 themselves, as evidences of the kind of dwell- 
 ings and fortifications familiar to the artists 
 of those days, and much imagination may 
 have been exercised in the invention of those 
 that were not drawn from nature ; but they 
 are deprived of half their effect in stimulating 
 the imagination of the spectator, by that hard 
 
Imaginative Execution in Architecture 151 
 
 and definite treatment of all objects whatever 
 which was prevalent in early art. The entire 
 absence of mystery in mediaeval drawing, 
 and not only of mystery, but of all those 
 picturesque elements of execution which 
 consist in the recognition of accident, imper- 
 fection, and decay, was most detrimental to 
 the imaginative effect of mediaeval work. 
 The mediaeval artist loved newness and 
 clearness above all other qualities ; one 
 might say that he drew like a modern 
 mechanical draughtsman if he had not pos- 
 sessed such a vigorous decorative invention. 
 When the days of illumination were over, 
 those of early burin-engraving succeeded, 
 and here again, simply from the nature of 
 the art, there was an irresistible temptation 
 to over-clearness. Accepting this as tech- 
 nically inevitable, we may enjoy the inven- 
 tions of these artists. In the case of Albert 
 Dlirer, it is evident that he took a keen 
 
152 hnagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 pleasure in the invention of picturesque 
 distant buildings, simply as a play of the 
 mind after its more serious effort had been 
 expended upon the figures in the foreground. 
 Of all the examples of this taste that it would 
 be possible to mention, Diirer's St. Anthony 
 is the most remarkable for the evident en- 
 joyment with which the artist has elaborated 
 the details of a mediaeval city. Its gables, 
 turrets, and towers rise in a pyramidal com- 
 position which occupies almost the entire 
 background, and the quantity of detail is so 
 great that, in spite of the extreme clearness 
 of the engraving, there is even a sort of 
 mystery arising from mere abundance. It 
 is only by long and steady looking, by a 
 patient exploration, that we can make our- 
 selves thoroughly acquainted with every 
 house and tower. Another very beautiful 
 example is the city on the summit of the 
 eminence in The Knight, Deaths and Devil. 
 
Imaginative Execution in Architecture 153 
 
 I fancy that Diirer had in his mind an idea 
 of the Celestial City, so much raised above 
 the gloomy common world that it seems 
 inaccessible, and yet the Christian knight is 
 in reality riding towards it through dark and 
 dangerous paths beset with horrors. This 
 interpretation seems to be confirmed by the 
 narrow road on the hill which leads to the 
 city itself. But notwithstanding the rich 
 invention that is so attractive in Diirer, it 
 was impossible, with his methods of execu- 
 tion, that he should convey the notion of an 
 ideal or heavenly city ; indeed, almost any of 
 the graphic arts would be too definite for 
 that enterprise, and the most delicate treat- 
 ment too material. The reader may re- 
 member with what cautious and prudent 
 haste Tennyson passes by the difficulty in 
 the < Holy Grail.' 
 
 ' Then in a moment when they blazed again 
 Opening, I saw the least of little stars 
 
[54 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 Down on the waste, and straight beyond the star 
 I saw the spiritual city and all her spires 
 And gateways in a glory like one pearl — 
 No larger, tho' the goal of all the saints — 
 Strike from the sea ; and from the star there shot 
 A rose-red sparkle to the city, and there 
 Dwelt, and I knew it was the Holy Grail, 
 Which never eyes on earth again shall see.' 
 
 The dissatisfied reader may at this point 
 complain, that although I have spoken of a 
 kind of execution which is imaginative and 
 another which is not, I have failed to give 
 any description of the two beyond affirming 
 that a too hard and definite manner is un- 
 favourable to the imagination. I should say, 
 then, that a matter-of-fact style of execution 
 is one which gives clearly all that can be 
 measured with a two-foot rule, like the lines 
 of a quay or the angles of a church, whilst 
 an imaginative style of execution, though 
 often incorrect about what is measurable, is 
 ready to take note, in passing, of many 
 truths and qualities which are sure to be 
 
Imaginative Execution in Architecture 155 
 
 omitted by the other, and consequently the 
 imaginative style, though it does not look 
 the more truthful, is really the more obser- 
 vant of the two. Again, I should say that 
 the imaginative manner would suggest far 
 more than it would positively assert, and 
 would be continually passing from greater 
 to less degrees of definition. Compare Cana- 
 letti's Venices with those of Turner. It is 
 possible (and a matter of slight importance) 
 that the testimony of photography may be in 
 favour of Canaletti, but Turner's Venices 
 convey to us the notion of certain qualities 
 in Venice that Canaletti habitually missed. 
 Canaletti's style is hard, clear, and matter-of- 
 fact ; the superiority of Turner's style is 
 proved by its greater power of stimulating 
 and exciting the faculty of imagination in 
 ourselves. It is a suggestive style, it does 
 not insist too much, but gives or hints 
 enough of each thing to make us imagine 
 
156 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 more. This result is attained by the most 
 varying degrees of definition, ranging be- 
 tween complete clearness (for a moment) 
 and an intentional vagueness, in which 
 meaning is incompletely revealed. 
 
 The style of Turner was perfectly adapted 
 to a kind of subject that happens to be very 
 familiar to me, the ancient towns of France. 
 The roofs of a town are seldom, if ever, 
 agreeable things to see, because there are 
 always unpleasant angular [patches amongst 
 them, and it almost invariably happens that 
 there is one ugly and obtrusive roof to spoil 
 everything. There are no cities more sug- 
 gestive from a distance than French cities 
 generally are ; yet in the numerous illustra- 
 tions to Malte-Brun's great geography of 
 France, which are quite matter-of-fact with- 
 out even the usual improvements that the 
 humblest artists make, these cities are all 
 hideous as dwellings of the Philistines. The 
 
Imaginative Execution in A rchitecture 157 
 
 imagination of Turner, and his fine taste, 
 enabled him to give a quality to a collection 
 of houses ; suggested, no doubt, by what he 
 had seen in parts of the picturesque French 
 cities, but idealised still farther by poetic and 
 artistic feeling. 
 
XV 
 
 The Range of our Imaginative Sympathy concerning 
 Human Work in Landscape 
 
 J N a magnificent picture-gallery in a rich 
 
 man's house a conspicuous place may 
 
 be given to a landscape full of great natural 
 
 beauty, and the most conspicuous object 
 
 in that landscape may happen to be a poor, 
 
 ill-kept, disorderly cottage that the owner 
 
 of the gallery would not willingly live in 
 
 for a day. The cottage in the reality may 
 
 be worth only a fraction of the sum paid 
 
 for the painted representation of it ; and 
 
 the owner of the picture would probably 
 
 not tolerate a real cottage of that kind 
 
 within the precincts of his park, where 
 
 158 
 
Range of Imaginative Sympathy 1 59 
 
 the only rustic dwellings are neat and 
 tidy specimens of gardener's architecture. 
 
 In examining the reasons for this curious 
 and very well known fact about the fine 
 arts, that they make things more acceptable 
 in the fictitious semblance than in the reality 
 itself, we may hear the familiar answer 
 that such things are good in art because 
 they are picturesque, by which it is under- 
 stood that their forms are various and 
 amusing in an irregular, unforeseen manner, 
 and their colour rich, perhaps, in mossy 
 greens and umbery browns. Well, no doubt 
 this is often the chief reason for the intro- 
 duction of such poor buildings into art, 
 but it cannot be the only reason, since the 
 cottages painted by the greatest artists are 
 often decidedly less picturesque than those 
 of inferior men, and, indeed, the devotion 
 to the ultra picturesque is invariably the 
 sign of a second-rate intelligence. The 
 
160 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 artist who gives all the powers of his mind 
 to getting together a variety of picturesque 
 shapes without other intention than the 
 arrangement of quaint material may possibly 
 amuse us for an hour, but he can have 
 little influence on our imagination. 
 
 The real secret of influence lies deeper. 
 It is in the appeal to imaginative sympathy, 
 and imaginative sympathy is ready in all 
 who have mind and feeling enough to care 
 seriously about the fine arts. The creative 
 imagination is quite a distinct gift ; it is very 
 rare, and at the same time it is a necessity 
 for all artists who aspire to greatness, but 
 the sympathetic imagination is comparatively 
 common, and it is probable that every reader 
 of these pages possesses it, else the mere 
 title of them would effectually scare him 
 away. 
 
 Whenever there is any trace of human 
 labour in a landscape the sympathetic 
 
Range of Imaginative Sympathy 161 
 
 imagination is set to work at once, even 
 when the labour is of the rudest and most 
 humble kind. It is even true that rude and 
 humble labours awaken our sympathy more 
 readily than magnificent labours, because we 
 have a kindly feeling towards the humble 
 effort, whereas accomplished power does not 
 seem to need our sympathy. A poor little 
 rustic bridge makes us share the satisfaction 
 of the villagers who erected it ; a great 
 railway viaduct is only what is called a 
 triumph of science. 
 
 In the Salon of 1885 there was a picture? 
 by Normann, of the Sognefiord, in Norway, 
 a salt-water loch shut in by precipitous 
 mountains of bare rock, — a most oppressive 
 scene, quite of a nature to justify that 
 dread and horror with which all humanity 
 regarded the grandest scenery, until modern 
 eyes discovered that beauty was mingled 
 with its grandeur. Can you imagine any- 
 
 M 
 
 f 
 
1 62 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 thing more dreadful than to have to live 
 just opposite to that enormous mass of 
 immovable granite, so near as to shut out 
 the distance and half the sky, presenting 
 only for your daily contemplation the details 
 of surface and fracture, with here and there 
 a streamlet that fertilises no grassy bank, 
 no shady trees, but from the upper snows 
 that feed it rushes down desperately to 
 the abyss ? A bare precipice of hard stone 
 is in its nature so inhospitable, so unfriendly 
 to man, that he cannot look upon it with 
 those grateful sentiments that he has 
 towards his harvest fields. And yet, in 
 this picture, just opposite to this scene of 
 terrible desolation, there are three or four 
 poor little wooden buildings to show that 
 man lives even there, and the pathetic 
 interest of the work lies in the sympathy 
 that we immediately feel for the inhabitants. 
 ' What ! ' we say to ourselves, ' do human 
 

 
Range of Imaginative Sympathy 163 
 
 beings live in such a solitude ? ' The artist 
 then tells us, in his way, that this little 
 colony is not deprived of communication 
 with the outer world, for he shows us a 
 steamer under the precipice, steadily making 
 its way on the calm, deep water, with a 
 line of foam at its bows. Small and insig- 
 nificant as it appears under the giant 
 mountain, and rare as may be its visits, 
 the mere possibility of them is a link with 
 distant humanity. The success of the 
 picture was due, no doubt, in great part to 
 this artifice, by which the sympathetic 
 imagination was first disquieted and after- 
 wards gently reassured. 
 
 In this instance our sympathy was with 
 poor and small humanity living in the 
 presence of overwhelming nature without 
 being overwhelmed by it ; but artists also 
 show us man triumphant in his work, as 
 when some lordly castle seems to reign 
 
164 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 over hill and dale. In this case the scenery 
 ought not to be too magnificent ; it is best 
 as at Arundel, for example, where the 
 country is sufficiently varied in hill and 
 plain to give dignity to the castle without 
 detracting from its significance. It is due 
 to Mr. J. F. Hardy to say that I am 
 thinking of his charcoal drawings of Arundel, 1 
 which are conceived entirely from an ima- 
 ginative point of view. In these drawings 
 the castle on its height asserts itself so 
 conspicuously that it is sure to excite either 
 sympathy or antipathy. If we look upon 
 it with the feelings of Scott, it is delightful 
 with the most romantic, antiquarian, and 
 poetical associations ; if modern radicalism 
 or the higher intellectual modern dissatis- 
 faction has touched us, it becomes a strong- 
 hold of barbaric power still partially sur- 
 viving. ' 1 often/ said Matthew Arnold in 
 1 Published by the Autotype Company. 
 
Range of Imaginative Sympathy 165 
 
 a well-known Essay, 'when I want to 
 distinguish clearly the aristocratic class from 
 the Philistines proper, or middle class, name 
 the former, in my own mind, the Barbarians ; 
 and when I go through the country and see 
 this and that beautiful and imposing seat of 
 theirs crowning the landscape, " There," I 
 say to myself, "is a great fortified post of 
 the Barbarians."' 
 
 It may be objected that I am here passing 
 out of the purely artistic considerations to 
 social considerations, but the truth is, that 
 the impressions we derive from the fine arts 
 are so complex that there is no other limit 
 to their suggestiveness than the limits of our 
 own ideas and feelings. The presence or 
 absence of the historical sense is one of the 
 most important of the positive or negative 
 influences that affect our appreciation of 
 human work in landscape. An archaeologist, 
 in whom this sense was remarkably strong, 
 
1 66 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 was the first to open my eyes to the fact 
 that many people are entirely destitute of it. 
 For them an ancient hall, a baronial castle, 
 is simply a structure of a certain shape that 
 occupies a certain space in the picture. If 
 it is not imposing by its size, they do not 
 feel its antiquity to be imposing. But if you 
 have the historical sense, the old building 
 speaks to you, in a language of its own, of 
 the generations who have lived and died 
 within its walls, and have regarded it with 
 love or pride, in days that are no more. 
 
 There may, however, possibly be one 
 drawback to the advantages of possessing 
 this historical sense. A painter, in whom 
 the sense was naturally strong, and after- 
 wards developed by culture, might fall into 
 an error from which another less gifted and 
 less cultivated might escape. This would 
 occur if his peculiar interest in old buildings 
 led him to regard them with an affection 
 
Range of Imaginative Sympathy 167 
 
 blind to their artistic deficiencies. Whenever, 
 in the fine arts, from any cause the interest 
 felt by the artist in his work is not purely 
 an artistic interest there is danger. The 
 only extraneous passions that are an unmixed 
 benefit to painters are those for poetry and 
 music, because in these arts the purely 
 artistic element predominates over all others. 
 Sciences, though they may be helpful, may 
 also be dangerous to the imaginative art of 
 painting. With regard to archaeology, so 
 long as it remains a sentiment only, a con- 
 servative affection for what is old, it can do 
 nothing but good to a landscape painter ; it 
 lends a pathetic interest to many a scene 
 which without it would signify little. On 
 the other hand, a highly developed scientific 
 archaeology would almost inevitably give 
 antiquities too great a space on their own 
 account, as material objects, without regard 
 to the imaginative artistic sentiment, which 
 
1 68 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 ought to be the dominant motive of the 
 picture. For example, the archaeologist has 
 no objection to a great unrelieved space of 
 blank wall, if it is an ancient wall, but the 
 pictorial artist feels it to be an embarrassment 
 whether it is a piece of antiquity or not. 
 Again, the archaeologist is interested in 
 ancient battle-fields, but the pictorial artist 
 inquires first of all whether they are good 
 landscapes. 
 
 As the imagination carries us into the 
 regions of the ideal, it seems to make our 
 sympathies more general with regard to 
 what we see in art than they are in the 
 presence of the reality itself. Browning 
 remarked long since in some well-known 
 lines, that we see things when they are 
 painted which we miss in the reality ; and 
 not only do we see beauties in pictures that 
 escape us in nature, but we have livelier 
 and warmer, and I may add, far kinder 
 
Range of Imaginative Sympathy 169 
 
 sympathies at the call of the imaginative 
 artist than the real world usually awakens 
 in us. The reason seems to be because the 
 awakening of imagination in us by the artist 
 both elevates and intensifies our feelings, 
 and the reality does not stimulate our 
 imagination as an imaginative picture stimu- 
 lates it. Consider how carefully the sight 
 of real poverty is excluded from the houses 
 of the rich. The only poor people admitted 
 in splendid rooms are the domestics who 
 serve ; and although they are often badly 
 lodged in lightless holes and corners, care 
 is always taken that they shall be well 
 dressed so that their poverty may be hidden 
 from the eye. The difference between ima- 
 gination and reality may be understood by 
 asking how the owner of some valuable 
 beggar picture by Rembrandt or Murillo 
 would like real beggars in his rooms. The 
 imaginary sympathies are not only the most 
 
170 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 agreeable, but they are by far the, most 
 comprehensive. They descend into a 
 thousand details. A painter represents for 
 us some poor cottage garden, and we immedi- 
 ately appreciate all the humble attempts of 
 the cottager to adorn his dwelling. The 
 common flowers, the cheap shells, the bits 
 of spar, the narrow walls, the tiny arbour 
 where the children play in summer, all these 
 things gain immediately a fictitious value in 
 a picture simply because the painted repre- 
 sentation is itself a fiction. When figure 
 painters represent interiors they well know 
 the value of simplicity and poverty as 
 pathetic elements, whereas in real life all 
 men prefer the exact opposites of simplicity 
 and poverty. I know that in a good painting 
 there is always the refined taste in the artist 
 himself which arranges materials harmoni- 
 ously ; and by a natural error that the artist 
 intends us to commit we attribute this refine- 
 
Range of Imaginative Sympathy 1 7 1 
 
 ment to the inhabitant of the poor dwelling 
 represented, but in real life most people 
 respect vulgar interiors, if they show signs 
 of wealth, more than the most tasteful 
 arrangements of worthless things. Possibly 
 the real refinement of good artists may 
 ultimately contend with some effect against 
 the false refinement of commonplace expendi- 
 ture, but the result attained hitherto is simply 
 to have encouraged an idealising state of 
 mind in which we recognise the beauty of 
 humble things on canvas. 
 
 It may seem, at first sight, as if these 
 remarks concerned rather the painters of 
 rustic interiors than landscape painters, but 
 many landscape painters have frequently, 
 and successfully, appealed to this fictitious 
 interest in the humble efforts of the poor. 
 Cottages and their gardens, rude and primi- 
 tive little bridges, rustic paths and stiles, 
 poor fishermen's boats, and figures busy in 
 
172 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 all the common occupations that can be 
 pursued in the open air, are seized upon 
 with avidity by the most prudent and 
 ingenious landscape painters who calculate 
 upon the natural and constant tendencies 
 of the public. It is pleasant to believe that 
 the interest taken by such painters in humble 
 life is a real interest, and not feigned for the 
 purposes of their art. It may have been 
 real and genuine at first, to become purely 
 artistic afterwards. The following sugges- 
 tions may offer some explanation of its 
 origin. 
 
 There is no human pursuit which gives 
 such excellent opportunities for observing 
 life quietly and silently as the occupation of 
 a landscape painter. He sits for hours 
 together apparently absorbed in painting a 
 cottage or a group of trees, yet in a purely 
 accidental way he will see the life of the 
 little place far better than the squire when 
 
Range of Imaginative Sympathy 173 
 
 he comes to pay his visit of patronage or 
 kindness. In a very short time people 
 entirely forget his presence, and go on with 
 their life and talk exactly as if he were not 
 there. Hour by hour he is a privileged 
 spectator. He is supposed to be entirely 
 occupied with his painting, which becomes 
 a sort of screen for him, and behind it there 
 is nothing that he may not see or hear. 
 The spectacle of real life is not so concen- 
 trated as a theatrical performance, but the 
 reality of it gives an unrivalled interest for 
 one who cares about reality, and the very 
 absence of concentration makes it easier to 
 follow with half the mind. An artist could 
 not, whilst painting, do anything requiring 
 the close application of the intellect, but he 
 can follow the reading of an easy book, or 
 quietly listen to conversation. He can 
 observe in two ways at the same time ; in 
 his own artist way for shapes and colours, 
 
174 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 and in a more broadly human way for the 
 labours and incidents of common life. 
 Hence it may come to pass, after some 
 years of sketching from nature, that a land- 
 scape painter has quite an exceptionally 
 large acquaintance with common out-of-door 
 existence ; and if he is imaginative he has 
 a great store of reminiscences to draw upon 
 for the invention of foreground incident. 
 Constable and Turner are both remarkable 
 for their perfect imaginative sympathy with ) 
 common life and work. In Constable the 
 range is narrow, but the knowledge is most 
 intimate and familiar. He knew windmills 
 and watermills'like a miller, and thoroughly 
 understood the life of farm-servants and 
 boatmen on the banks of his well-beloved 
 Stour. One of the finest incidents in his 
 pictures, the 'leaping horse,' is due to his 
 acquaintance with a strictly practical matter, 
 namely, that the fields through which the 
 
Range of Imaginative Sympathy 175 
 
 Stour passes were enclosed by barriers 
 to prevent the cattle from straying, and 
 that the horses were taught to leap these 
 barriers because there were no gates. So 
 far the incident is a simple fact, and the 
 reader may ask what it has to do with 
 imagination. It was treated imaginatively 
 by the artist, who was careful to display 
 the nobility of the horse with the dignity 
 of his harness, ornamented about the collar 
 with crimson fringe. ' Constable/ says Les- 
 lie, * by availing himself of these advantages, 
 and relieving the horse, which is of a dark 
 colour, upon a bright sky, made him a very 
 imposing object.' 
 
 In those expressions of love for nature 
 that have been preserved in Constable's own 
 words, it is curious how unfailingly he men- 
 tions the results of humble human labour. 
 The materials of his art were to be found, 
 he said, in every lane and under every 
 
1 76 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 hedge, ' But the sound of water escaping 
 from mill-dams, willows, old rotten planks, 
 slimy posts, and brickwork— I love such 
 things. Shakespeare could make every- 
 thing poetical ; he tells us of poor Tom's 
 haunts among "sheepcotes and mills." As 
 long as I do paint I shall never cease to 
 paint such places. They have always been 
 my delight.' Leslie confirms this prediction, 
 by adding that * the last picture Constable 
 painted, and on which he was engaged on 
 the last day of his life, was a mill, with 
 such accompaniments as are described in 
 this letter.' 
 
 The range of Turner s sympathy with 
 human labours is too well known to require 
 any exposition here ; but it may be observed 
 that, although it includes magnificent labours 
 like the building of Carthage, it includes in 
 far greater quantity and frequency the most 
 humble labours of ordinary English and 
 
Range of Imaginative Sympathy 177 
 
 French life. In many of Turner's fore- 
 grounds the human work, so far from being 
 neglected, is undeniably over-done ; there 
 are too many ungainly figures, and their 
 industry, if we observe it, detracts from the 
 repose of the picture, whilst it withdraws 
 attention from the landscape subject. In 
 the views of St. Mawes, Cornwall, the 
 landscape subject is noble, and requires 
 that breadth of repose which Girtin would 
 certainly have given it ; but Turners fore- 
 grounds are uncomfortably filled up with 
 fisher people and innumerable fishes that 
 must have sorely tried the patience of the 
 engraver. The corrective of this uncom- 
 fortableness in Turner's more crowded fore- 
 grounds is usually some working man in 
 temporary rest, sitting on the gunwale of a 
 boat or the edge of a little jetty, with his 
 arms folded and a pipe in his mouth. It is 
 very characteristic of Turner that to illustrate 
 
 N 
 
178 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 the ' Datur hora quieti} he should have 
 represented a plough left in the furrow and 
 sailing craft moored to the bank of a slug- 
 gish river. He took an interest in petty 
 commerce, showing us the dog-dealers in 
 Paris, with the announcement, ' Ckiene (sic) 
 a vendre] and the flower markets near the 
 Parisian Palace of Justice and the imposing 
 front of the cathedral at Rouen. His river 
 shores are almost invariably littered with 
 common things relating to the commerce of 
 the place — logs of wood, barrels, or pack- 
 ages. The ordinary means of locomotion 
 interested him. He drew and painted 
 diligences and steamboats ; and in later life 
 the railway, getting over the dreadful 
 mechanical difficulties of rails and locomor 
 tives by the most judiciously sketchy 
 treatment. 
 
 Unimaginative artists may, of course, 
 illustrate human labours as frequently and 
 
Range of Imaginative Sympathy 1 79 
 
 abundantly as their more gifted brethren ; 
 but in their hands these labours will remain 
 prosaic by the absence of ideal dignity. 
 The sympathy of a great artist, being 
 imaginative, ennobles prosaic details. This 
 is the beneficent power of the Imagination 
 — in the highest sense a most useful power 
 — to reveal the essential dignity, or at least 
 the possible dignity of the common things 
 and works that seem vulgar to the spirit 
 of gentility. 
 
 I need hardly do more than mention 
 the name of Millet in connexion with this 
 part of the subject. The simple dignity of 
 his figures is now universally known, and 
 they are usually engaged in the most 
 humble occupations. He did not flatter 
 his peasant models on the score of physical 
 beauty : but when he observed some un- 
 conscious nobility in the carnage or gesture, 
 he never failed to make the most of it. 
 
i So Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 And yet the bare truth as it is in nature, 
 without the presence of imaginative power 
 in the artist, would never have touched the 
 world. One of the best proofs that this 
 imaginative power was genuine is to be 
 found in the perfect unity and simplicity 
 of purpose in the unobtrusive landscapes 
 which accompanied the figures of Millet ; 
 and in the courage (conscious or not) with 
 which he so often made the landscapes 
 expressive of the monotony and dreariness 
 that accompanied the peasants' toil. A 
 shallower painter would have said to him- 
 self, ' My figures look rather sad and 
 melancholy, so I must charm the purchaser 
 with delightful rural scenery.' 
 
 No artist was ever more clearly conscious 
 of the value of imagination in art than 
 Samuel Palmer, who from the first made 
 his choice between literal transcription and 
 the imaginative treatment of reality ; and it 
 
Range of Imaginative Sympathy 181 
 
 is remarkable in connexion with this subject 
 that Palmer had as strong a sympathy with 
 humble rustic life as Constable, though his 
 love of beauty and his idyllic feeling made 
 impossible for him the painfully sad sympathy 
 of Millet. As Constable loved the common 
 world, and said, 1 1 am not made for the 
 great, nor the great for me,' so we are told 
 of Palmer that he did not despise the society 
 of the rural poor, but during his travels on 
 foot for the study of nature would content- 
 edly ' take his place, after a hard day's work, 
 in some old chimney-corner, joining, on equal 
 terms, the village gossip/ 
 
 ' He held,' says his son, 'and not unwisely, 
 that intelligence is not quite denied to those 
 who lead a quiet country life, to be lavished 
 on those favoured ones who live a grimy one 
 in the turmoil of cities. " Virgil," he wrote, 
 " was simple enough to suppose that a 
 country life had an influence on our common 
 
1 82 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 nature, nor was he aware that the cultivation 
 of the earth was a stupefying employment, 
 and the peasant, skilled in the varieties of 
 rural labour, a log. No ! Non omnia possu- 
 mus omnes — that discovery was reserved for 
 us. How could Virgil anticipate our progress, 
 with whom the bucolic mind has become the 
 synonym of fatuity ? But those who are 
 behind the age, and not very anxious to 
 overtake it, will discern in their ancient 
 friends — in the Ploughman who lives in 
 Chaucer's verse, and his kindred, something 
 better than a barbaric foil to the intelligence 
 of the modern artisan." ' 
 
 It is worth remarking that the title-page 
 of Samuel Palmer's Life consists of a sepia 
 drawing of rural implements of the most 
 primitive kind, with a broad-brimmed mower's 
 hat. In an early part of the volume his son 
 gives an interesting description of the village 
 of Shoreham, where his father lived for some 
 
Range of Imaginative Sympathy 183 
 
 time, and received many lasting impressions 
 of rural beauty. The inhabitants are not 
 omitted : ' The soil was tilled, and the golden 
 corn was reaped, by sturdy villagers whose 
 dress was picturesquely beautiful, their im- 
 plements archaic. Their strenuous flails 
 resounded in spacious, lichen-covered barns, 
 where the thick masses of dark-green moss 
 half hid the deep, overhanging thatch. They 
 lived in oak-beamed cottages with ample 
 chimney-corners, in which, on tempestuous 
 winter nights, many a strange legend and 
 weird superstition lingered still.' 
 
 So far we have only been considering 
 Palmer's interest in reality, but an extract 
 from one of his letters shows the immense 
 importance that he attached to imagination. 
 The capitals are his own. % 
 
 ' Claude, Poussin, Bourdon, did not attempt to satisfy 
 that curiosity of the eye which an intelligent tourist 
 ever feeds and never sates, nor did they attempt to 
 
184 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 reproduce a scene ; for they knew that every hedgerow 
 contains more matter than could be crowded into a 
 picture-gallery, and that, supposing they could deceive 
 the eye, the real impression could not be completed but 
 by touch and hearing, the gushes of air, and the singing 
 of birds. They addressed not the perception chiefly, 
 but the IMAGINATION, and here is the hinge and 
 essence of the whole matter.' 
 
 Guided by our knowledge that Palmer had 
 a real sympathetic interest in common rustic 
 life, and also that what he most valued in art 
 was imagination, we find this taste and this 
 principle fully exemplified in his own works. 
 His compositions may be broadly divided 
 into two classes — illustrations of the poets, 
 and designs suggested by nature, though 
 never slavishly copied from actual scenes. 
 In both classes of designs the references to 
 rustic labour are very frequent. The figures 
 in most cases have some definite rustic 
 employment ; they are not simply figures 
 inserted to fill up a vacant space, and there 
 is a beautiful sympathy with the life and 
 
Range of Imaginative Sympathy 185 
 
 functions of all of them, from the bellman 
 who goes down the village street to the good 
 farmer who stops his horse to bestow charity. 
 How stimulating an imaginative motive was 
 to Palmer may be proved by what he wrote 
 to Mr. Valpy about the first of these two 
 subjects : — 
 
 'You ask me to show you anything which specially 
 affects my inner sympathies. Now only three days have 
 passed since I did begin the meditation of a subject 
 which for twenty years has affected my sympathies with 
 sevenfold inwardness, though now for the first time I 
 seem to feel, in some sort, the power of realising it. It 
 is from one of the finest passages in what Edmund 
 Burke thought the finest poem in the English language. 
 The passage includes " the bellman's drowsy charm." I 
 never artistically knew "such a sacred and homefelt 
 delight " as when endeavouring, in all humility, to realise, 
 after a sort, the imagery of Milton.' 
 
 It was a great advantage to Samuel 
 Palmer that the connexion between his own 
 art and poetry was always present to his 
 mind, as it kept his art consciously imagina- 
 tive, and would have prevented him, if there 
 
186 Imagination in Landscape Painting' 
 
 had been any danger of such a catastrophe, 
 from falling into that commonplace literalism 
 which is the sure destiny of manual skill 
 when left to its own unaided resources. He 
 believed that the habit of reading the great 
 poets was the best fertiliser of a painter's 
 brain ; and in one of his letters to me I 
 remember that he did not speak simply of 
 poetry but of old poetry, as if old poetry 
 were a better stimulus than new. I remember 
 feeling instinctively that he was right, and 
 no doubt the explanation is that the older 
 the association with the experience and 
 feelings of mankind the more poetical every- 
 thing becomes. Even the newest verse, 
 when it is intended to be poetry of the 
 highest kind, is usually archaic in the choice 
 of its materials, and often in forms of lan- 
 guage. The agriculture described by poets 
 is still that which was known to Virgil, and 
 their heroes more frequently travel in sailing- 
 
Range of Imaginative Sympathy 187 
 
 boats or on horseback, like the paladins of 
 Ariosto, than in steamers and railway trains. 
 A poor traveller on foot, with a bundle at 
 the end of a stick, is much better fitted for 
 poetic art than a young man on a bicycle, 
 and yet the bicycle (one would think) ought 
 to be a poetic instrument, for swiftness is 
 certainly poetical ; but the want of old 
 associations with the bicycle, and perhaps 
 its too great mechanical perfection, are 
 against it, besides the necessity for good 
 macadamised roads. Turners introduction 
 of steamers is a case in point, and may at 
 first sight appear contrary to my theory; yet 
 it is evident that in this case there were 
 other attractions for the artist, the volumes 
 of escaping steam, and the fine contrast 
 between the water churned into foam and 
 waves and the calmer water around it. 
 
 With regard to the introduction of modern 
 mechanical industry in art, I happened last 
 
1 88 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 winter to pass the great French metallurgic 
 establishment of the Creuzot. It was at 
 night, and as the train slowly passed out of 
 the station, the place presented itself in an 
 aspect which certainly brought it within the 
 category of available suggestions for ima- 
 ginative art. There was moonlight, and just 
 under the moon the vast workshops and 
 long chimneys happened at one moment to 
 come into a sort of mountainous composition, 
 with enormous clouds of smoke and steam. 
 The lighting of the scene was not left en- 
 tirely to the moon. Some of the workshops 
 were lighted with gas, others with blinding 
 stars of electric light that shone amongst 
 the moving clouds and made some masses 
 of building look intensely black by contrast. 
 The ghastly brilliance of the electric light, 
 the yellow gaslight, and the pale moon far 
 above, produced a complex play of effects 
 that impressed me strongly ; but, on analys- 
 
Range of Imaginative Sympathy 189 
 
 ing my impression afterwards, it seemed that 
 the whole of it could not be conveyed in 
 painting. It was partly due to the changes 
 of composition produced by the motion of 
 the train, and partly to the clang of the 
 great steam-hammers and the confused noise 
 of many labours, and also to my own pre- 
 vious knowledge that the four mighty blast- 
 engines were called after the four winds, 
 with the old Latin names inscribed upon 
 them. Besides this, there came a recol- 
 lection that I had read about some place 
 where — 
 
 'Nigh on the plain, in many cells prepared, 
 That underneath had veins of liquid fire 
 Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude 
 With wond'rous art founded the massy ore, 
 Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion dross : 
 A third as soon had form'd within the ground 
 A various mould, and from the boiling cells, 
 By strange conveyance, filled each hollow nook.' 
 
 Even the strange lights reminded me of 
 that pile where — 
 
» 
 
 190 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 * Many a row 
 
 Of starry lamps and blazing vessels, fed 
 With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light 
 As from a sky.' 
 
 So the reader perceives that if a scene 
 of modern industry suggested a painting, it 
 recalled poetry at the same time ; and it 
 happens that the poetry was old poetry 
 written by Palmer's own master, Milton. 
 
XVI 
 
 Passive Imagination^ or Reverie 
 
 HIS is the condition of mind in which 
 
 we are capable of following without 
 effort the active imagination of others, but 
 do not create anything by an imaginative 
 effort ourselves. It is most familiar to us 
 in listening to music, provided that we listen 
 simply for the pleasure of the moment, and 
 not for any purpose of criticism. 
 
 Passive Imagination finds its pleasures, so 
 far as landscape is concerned, in looking at 
 pictures simply for enjoyment, and especially 
 in the changing beauty of nature. This 
 delight in natural beauty is understood by 
 those who do not share it to be what they 
 call an idle pleasure, and they sometimes 
 
ig2 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 condemn it on this ground. We may accept 
 the imputation of idleness in this case, whilst 
 declining to accept the blame. The state 
 of passive imagination is idle, assuredly, in 
 this sense, that for the moment it produces 
 nothing, but it may be receptive. The 
 listener to music is not a composer, but he 
 is a recipient of musical ideas. This is so 
 far understood that it is not considered a 
 waste of time to go to concerts ; then why 
 should it be a waste of time to allow our 
 minds to be saturated with the beauty of 
 that natural or painted landscape which is 
 the music that the eyes desire ? The state 
 of active production, or even of conscious 
 observation, is not, and ought not to be, 
 permanent. We all of us need times of 
 pure and simple receptivity, and if we are 
 ourselves productive, the only difference is 
 that we need such times far more imperiously 
 than others, 
 
Passive Imagination, or Reverie 193 
 
 As to passive imagination in the enjoy- 
 ment of painted landscape, it appears neces- 
 sary that it should be disengaged from ideas 
 of criticism, and the same kind of imagination 
 in the presence of nature needs to be disen- 
 gaged from ideas of production. 
 
 The interference of the critical spirit is, I 
 believe, invariably fatal to the imaginative 
 enjoyment of art. The critical condition of 
 mind might be friendly to imagination if it 
 accompanied or followed it, but criticism 
 never does that for long without interposing 
 objections of some kind ; and being itself 
 much more intellectual than sympathetic, is 
 always likely to interpose a discordant note 
 of its own, or else to bring into dispropor- 
 tionate and unnecessary prominence some 
 weakness in the imaginative artist, some 
 deficiency of knowledge, some error of taste, 
 which, had it only been left to itself, would 
 
 never have attracted attention. I am able 
 
 o 
 
194 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 to remember three distinct phases in my 
 own feelings with reference to Claude. If 
 ever, in boyhood, I looked over a collection 
 of engravings, the Claudes always stopped 
 me and set me dreaming about lands where 
 the trees were always grouped majestically 
 or beautifully, and seas where the ships 
 sailed into ports adorned with princely archi- 
 tecture, and the sunshine fell softly on the 
 foreground or glittered on the harmless 
 waves. I had a drawing-master, a man of 
 the most gentle temperament, who never 
 could mention Claude without infusing I 
 know not what additional gentleness and 
 tenderness into the tones of his voice, and 
 in golden afternoons of summers past long 
 ago, he would gaze on the light that reminded 
 him of an ideal Italy, and talk to me of 
 * Claude Lorraine.' 
 
 It was in this perfectly uncritical state of 
 youthful ignorance that I was able to enjoy 
 
Bandits. By Salvator Rosa. 
 
Passive Imagination, or Reverie 195 
 
 Claude, in print and picture, with an innocent, 
 dreamy enjoyment that I should now call a 
 condition of passive imagination. At the 
 same time Salvator seemed very grand and 
 wild, and I had instinct enough to perceive 
 that there was something imposing in the 
 sombre masses of foliage in Gaspar Poussin. 
 I can throw myself back into that youthful 
 condition even now by an effort of memory, 
 a condition in which it was possible simply 
 to feel and imagine, by humbly following the 
 imagination of the painter, without having 
 to form any kind of definite opinion about 
 him. But soon afterwards came three in- 
 fluences all at once, a closer and more literal 
 study of nature, the criticisms of Ruskin, 
 and photography. These influences made it 
 impossible for many a year to dream with 
 Claude in the old innocent, passive way. 
 What was artificial in his works had become 
 too obvious for his very real love of nature 
 
196 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 to overcome it, and what seemed to me the 
 ostentation of his art had over-shadowed the 
 amenity of his sentiment. Long afterwards, 
 when the critical effect of modern naturalism 
 had spent its force, it became possible once 
 more to sympathise, in imagination, with the 
 serenity of Claude's spirit and to wander at 
 idle times happily enough in the earthly 
 paradise that he created, with a dreamy 
 and not too critical admiration of its beauties. 
 At the same time the tendency that comes 
 upon us in full maturity to use the imagina- 
 tion more, and the critical faculty rather less, 
 has certainly led me to see more grandeur 
 in other old landscape masters of late years, 
 and to appreciate much better their largeness, 
 and dignity, and solemnity of conception. 
 We all of us invariably believe that a change 
 in our views is in the direction of progress, 
 so it is but natural that this change should 
 appear to myself in the guise of an advance ; 
 
Passive Imagination, or Reverie 197 
 
 but whether it be an advance or not the 
 result of it is to make passive imagination 
 possible again, and without it nobody can 
 appreciate the imaginative powers of great 
 artists. 
 
 It is probable that in the future the faculty 
 of passive imagination will be less interfered 
 with than it was in the middle of the nine- 
 teenth century by the matter-of-fact criticism 
 of that time, and the sudden effect of photo- 
 graphy. It is not conceivable that any 
 future influence can be like the first effect 
 of these scientific influences. The probability 
 seems rather to be that as clearly detailed 
 photography, and extremely accurate draw- 
 ing, and very highly-finished woodcutting, 
 have now become so common that they are 
 as much a matter of course as the finish of a 
 blank sheet of note-paper, they will in future 
 scarcely attract more attention ; and as people 
 will be surfeited with prodigious quantities 
 
198 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 of facts, the tendency may be to seek a 
 deliverance from facts in the fairyland of 
 Imagination. It will then be understood 
 that an artist is nothing if not imaginative, 
 and that although his public may not need 
 creative genius, it will need the genius of 
 imaginative sympathy which is, happily, 
 common enough in human nature left to its 
 own instincts and not prevented by the 
 acquired habit of analysis. 
 
 Before leaving this subject of receptive 
 imagination, which in a larger work would 
 deserve more prolonged study, I wish to add 
 some expression of the belief that it is one 
 of the best gifts we have, and one of the 
 most conducive to human happiness. I have 
 said that it is a common gift, and we may be 
 thankful that it is common. Without it 
 many an existence would be hopelessly and 
 absolutely dreary, which is now brightened 
 on the imaginative side by those influences of 
 
Passive Imagination, or Reverie 199 
 
 literature, art, and music, which are all really 
 one and the same influence. The readers of 
 the great imaginative writers, the admirers 
 of the great painters, the listeners to the 
 great musicians, may be unable, themselves, 
 to create either poem, picture, or sonata, and 
 some critic may coldly tell them that they 
 are destitute of imagination, but they, in 
 their hearts, know better. Is it nothing to 
 be able to follow the lead of genius ? It is 
 the best deliverance from the monotony of 
 common life ; it is, to many, the only open- 
 ing that looks out of a hard, mechanical, 
 grinding, vulgar world. Imaginative art of 
 all kinds is best appreciated in those deserts 
 of brick and stone where multitudes are 
 deprived of nature, and here it comes as a 
 relief and a repose to the spirit, disconnected 
 from any personal ambition. It is to the 
 citizen what the fields are to the rustic, the 
 mountains to the mountaineer. And there 
 
200 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 is no kind of art which gives this relief more 
 completely than imaginative landscape. 
 
 The perfectly passive enjoyment of natural 
 scenery is perhaps difficult for artists who 
 think too much of their work, and that is 
 one of the drawbacks attendant upon high 
 professional culture, but for many others it is 
 the healthiest of indolent pleasures. It has 
 been called ' the opium-eating of the intellect,' 
 which is an unfair comparison. It is much 
 rather the repose of the intellect and the 
 enriching of other faculties by a process 
 that involves no labour, a natural education 
 that nothing can replace. 
 
 It is at the same time, for those who are 
 destined to work afterwards in the fine arts, 
 an invaluable and indispensable preparation. 
 We must begin by observing without any 
 sense of effort before we are able to apply 
 the mind to observation as a business. All 
 artists have been amateurs in the real begin- 
 
Passive Imagination, or Reverie 20 1 
 
 ning, however early in life were the first 
 serious studies, and all amateurs have begun 
 by watching things as idle people watch 
 them. We are first enticed by the pleasures 
 of indolent imagination, and afterwards led 
 into work by a sort of accident. Between 
 the ease of indolence and the ease of mastery 
 there lies a difficult passage, that season of 
 apparent failure when the imaginative faculty 
 is impeded by the straining of the attention. 
 
XVII 
 
 Working Imagination, or Invention, as applied 
 specially to Landscape 
 
 y^FTER examining the question of inven- 
 tion to the best of my ability, with 
 the help of those writers who have given 
 it the most careful study, and especially with 
 the help of M. Paul Sourian, whose Theorie 
 de i Invention is a perfect model of close 
 reasoning and original observation, I have 
 come to a conclusion somewhat different 
 from his, that is to say, I believe now that 
 invention is simply imagination that the 
 possessor can set to work on a given task. 
 In my view, the distinction between the 
 
 inventive imagination and the common 
 
 202 
 
Working Imagination, or Invention 203 
 
 faculty lies simply in this capability of 
 discipline. 
 
 To this it may be answered that the idea 
 which would be considered the real invention 
 usually comes to us involuntarily, as, for 
 example, when a novelist hits upon a new 
 and ^original plot at a time when his mind 
 is occupied with something entirely different. 
 I am aware of this, but do not consider that 
 the real display of inventive power is to 
 be sought for in the original idea, which is 
 often of the most extreme simplicity, and is 
 not unfrequently borrowed from another 
 source without any kind of acknowledgment. 
 Notes of first ideas, both by artists and 
 writers, are frequently so crude that they 
 give no conception of the future work, nor 
 has the inventor himself any clear con- 
 ception of it ; he only sees his way as he 
 proceeds. What he does is to take a motive 
 and see what he can make of it by the 
 
204 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 application of his inventive powers. Then 
 comes the real test, which is the working 
 out of the idea so as to present it in the 
 most striking form, and with the most vivid 
 appearance of reality. To accomplish this, 
 the inventor, in common language, ' sets his 
 wits to work/ that is to say, he possesses 
 a kind of imagination that is obedient to 
 the will. The common person seems to 
 have no imagination because he is unable 
 to apply his disconnected dreamings to a 
 purpose. 
 
 When the real inventor has got hold of 
 a good motive, he applies his mind to the 
 business of invention in this way. He is 
 not able to invent at a moment's notice, but 
 he knows that in a space of time, which is 
 almost definite in his own mind, he will cer- 
 tainly be able to work out the requisite 
 amount of detail. An arrangement is made 
 between a publisher and a clever novelist 
 
Working Imagination, or Invention 205 
 
 by which the novelist promises to deliver a 
 manuscript at a certain date. At the time 
 when the promise is made he is in ignorance 
 as to details, but he knows that by the ap- 
 plication of his imaginative faculty he will 
 be able to shape them. An uninventive 
 person might see almost as much of the 
 subject at a first glance, but the difference 
 is that he would never see anything more. 
 
 Now, if we accept my theory that In- 
 vention is Imagination that can be made to 
 work, it must follow that the real inventors 
 will work at invention just as they would at 
 anything else, and that those who ' wait for 
 inspiration ' are just the people to whom 
 inspiration is least likely to be given. Does 
 not experience generally confirm this ? 
 Setting aside the vulgar error that men of 
 genius are idle fellows (an error that can 
 only arise from ignorance of the toil involved 
 in that which seems so easy), and looking 
 
206 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 to the real facts of the case, do we not find, 
 when we know them personally, that they 
 work just like other professional men ? We 
 may even go further, and say that if there 
 is a difference, it is in favour of the men of 
 genius, who work more than common men, 
 because they have finer powers of work, and 
 take a pleasure in exercising them. Con- 
 sider the amount of work done by Shake- 
 speare, Cervantes, Scott, Balzac, Victor 
 Hugo, and amongst painters, by Rubens, 
 Titian, Claude, and Turner! In some cases 
 it is true that the great labours of men of 
 genius have been performed under the 
 stimulus of necessity, but we do not find 
 that wealth leads to indolence in their case. 
 Victor Hugo and Turner continued to work 
 long after they had become rich men. 
 
 Invention in landscape, as in every other 
 art, requires a certain liberty, but in land- 
 scapes especially this liberty involves a con- 
 
Working Imagination, or Invention 207 
 
 dition of a peculiar kind, which has led to the 
 belief that landscape painters are an especially 
 careless race. Bound down to rigid condi- 
 tions of truthful portraiture, the landscape 
 painter would be unable to compose. The 
 painter of the figure can group his personages 
 without destroying the likeness, and alter 
 their shapes on the canvas by simply altering 
 their attitudes, but the faithful portraiture of 
 mountains would take away the possibility of 
 composition. It follows from this that all 
 inventive landscape painters prefer material 
 of a kind that is easily arrangeable, and that 
 if the material is not arrangeable by nature, 
 they arrange it in spite of itself. It is a part 
 of their art to do this, the strong men have 
 always done it, and their strong successors 
 are likely to continue the practice. 
 
 The reader probably remembers the dis- 
 tinction in the French language between a 
 meuble and an immeuble ; a piece of furniture 
 
2o8 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 is called a moveable, and a house is called an 
 immoveable. In landscape painting we may- 
 establish the same distinction, though not 
 exactly in the same way. I should not call 
 a peasant's cottage an immoveable from the 
 landscape painter's point of view, because he 
 can do what he likes with it, alter its form, 
 or change its position, but I should call 
 Somerset House and Waterloo Bridge im- 
 moveables from the painter's point of view. 
 Such things are the greatest of all embarrass- 
 ments for the inventive artist. He can 
 hardly exercise his genius upon them, except 
 in the choice of an effect of light. Moun- 
 tains are difficult to deal with for the same 
 reason, but not in the same degree, as they 
 may be treated with some liberty. Still, a 
 mountain is a permanent feature in a country, 
 and no painter would give to Mont Blanc 
 the outline of the Matterhorn. The most 
 tractable materials for the inventive artist are 
 
Working Imagination, or Invention 209 
 
 trees (that may be supposed to grow in any- 
 favourable situation), clouds that may be 
 grouped in any manner consistent with their 
 character, ships and boats that may be sup- 
 posed to have floated accidentally into the 
 most charming arrangements, cottages that 
 may be built over again cleverly with the 
 brush with the most anti-Philistine improve- 
 ments, and all the multitude of foreground 
 things that may be shifted here and there at 
 pleasure. 
 
 p 
 
XVIII 
 
 Composition and Imagination 
 
 J TAKE the difference between compo- 
 sition and imagination to be that Com- 
 position is simply the art of putting materials 
 tastefully together, whereas Imagination pro- 
 vides the materials themselves in the shape 
 of images clear enough to be painted. 
 
 It may be objected to this account of the 
 matter, that it is too simple, and that Imagin- 
 ation of the highest kind would provide the 
 images and the composition at the same time, 
 by a complete synthesis. To know all about 
 a matter of such difficulty we ought to be able 
 to ask questions of imaginative artists, but 
 they might be as little inclined to talk as 
 
 2IO 
 
Composition and Imagination 1 1 1 
 
 Frederick Walker, or as little able to express 
 themselves as Turner. We have, however, 
 distinct and undeniable evidence, in the 
 notes written by Turner for his engravers, 
 that composition was with him a perfectly 
 conscious mental process, and really a labour ; 
 and we have evidence in the sketches of 
 many masters that they composed laboriously 
 and tried many experiments in composition, 
 just as an architect makes various sketches 
 for a projected building before he selects the 
 one that is to be elaborated in detail. I 
 myself have seen painters of firmly estab- 
 lished reputation trying experiments in com- 
 position as painfully as any student, yet they 
 were reputed to be masters of that depart- 
 ment of the art, and there is indeed no reason 
 why a task should not be laborious and yet 
 well performed ; at the same time the most 
 complete statement of the case would appear 
 to be that although Imagination is the faculty 
 
212 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 of seeing images, and Composition is the art 
 of putting images well together, a practical 
 composer may from the first see his mental 
 images in an artistic order, though he would 
 probably improve upon it afterwards. 
 
 I find it impossible to resist the conclusion 
 that composition is far more an art of taste, 
 culture, and the knowledge of what has been 
 already done, than an act of imaginative 
 genius. Nothing is more common, even 
 amongst artists of ability, than the adoption 
 of old forms of composition, slightly disguised, 
 as, for example, in classical landscape the 
 great clump of trees on one side, a smaller 
 clump on the other, and a distance with hills 
 of moderate height in the open space between 
 them. This composition remains exactly the 
 same in principle when the columns of a 
 temple or palace are substituted for the 
 clumps of trees, and it is not greatly varied 
 in modern landscapes of lake scenery when 
 
Composition and Imagination 213 
 
 rocky promontories are the coulisses and the 
 ground is a watery plain with a mountainous 
 vista in the middle. A little familiarity with 
 the common receipts of composition enables 
 us to detect old arrangements under what 
 may at first seem quite impenetrable dis- 
 guises, even, for example, the adaptation of a 
 figure composition to the purposes of the 
 landscape painter. The same composition, 
 that is, the same arrangement of masses, may 
 serve indifferently for a group of figures, a 
 group of trees, shipping, or architecture. 
 Burnet understood composition as an art of 
 universal applicability in pictures, and he 
 called it ' angular composition,' or 1 circular 
 composition,' the first including arrangements 
 dominated by a diagonal line, or with points 
 like a diamond, the second, those curved 
 arrangements that bear some resemblance to 
 circles seen in perspective. 
 
 The practical value of composition can 
 
214 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 hardly be overrated as an addition to the 
 charm of landscape subjects, they need it 
 even more than figure pictures, as they have 
 not the attraction of simulated life ; but the 
 reader will not expect in this place any 
 attempt to investigate the art of landscape 
 composition in detail, especially as I am but 
 little disposed to confound it with Imagina- 
 tion. It is a special gift which, when it 
 exists at all, may be further cultivated by 
 education, and in the absence of the real gift 
 a tolerably effective substitute for it is to be 
 had in the stock receipts of painters which 
 have helped many an ordinary artist through 
 difficulties otherwise insurmountable. There 
 are certain well-known solecisms in composi- 
 tion that no educated artist would ever fall 
 into, and the common mistakes of the unedu- 
 cated are not thought excusable on the 
 ground of a lack of genius. It is well to 
 learn what is ascertained, and well to practise 
 
Composition and Imagination 215 
 
 the methods that have been confirmed by the 
 experience of centuries, but it is a mistake to 
 confound this kind of educated ingenuity 
 with imagination. The real gift of composi- 
 tion is but the gift of order in its highest and 
 most beautiful manifestation, of order con- 
 trolled by taste, but beyond this it does not 
 appear to imply extraordinary mental powers. 
 
XIX 
 
 Effect as the Expression of Nature 
 VERY scene in the world has its favour- 
 
 able or unfavourable effects — the effects 
 that are specially suitable or unsuitable to 
 that particular scene. Under the most 
 favourable it seems like a revelation, but 
 when the effect is not so well adapted to 
 the particular scene (however perfectly it 
 might have suited others), then the power 
 of the landscape over our minds is reduced 
 to its lowest degree. 
 
 This depends upon a union of the forms 
 of the earth with cloud forms, and on the 
 display of both under the light that gives 
 them the most perfect unity, and brings 
 
 216 
 
Effect as the Expression of Nature 2 1 7 
 
 the finest features of the landscape into 
 the most distinct relief, whilst reducing all 
 that is commonplace to a subordinate posi- 
 tion. It is evident that such perfectly 
 favourable effects are likely to be rare, but 
 they do occur, and the business of the 
 imaginative artist is either to seize upon 
 them when they do occur, or imagine them 
 in their absence. 
 
 Now, we come to a matter of quite 
 peculiar importance which underlies the 
 influence of landscape art on man, and is 
 probably its strongest force. 
 
 When we see — I mean we who are sensi- 
 tive to these influences — when we see the 
 kind of effect that we call an impressive 
 or a noble effect, our feeling is distinctly 
 that the wonderful powers of nature are 
 expressing themselves to us, in an especial 
 manner, by the display of that transient 
 beauty, or splendour, or melancholy solem- 
 
218 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 nity. It seems like a communication from 
 the Eternal Source to short-lived mortals, 
 and this impression is enhanced — immeasur- 
 ably enhanced — by the remarkable fact that 
 the grander effects last just long enough 
 for our powers of attention. They also 
 begin quietly, gradually increase in intensity, 
 reach their highest perfection, and then 
 rapidly fade in colour, whilst the well- 
 combined arrangement of form and light 
 becomes disorganised. In this they exactly 
 answer to our own capacity of attention, 
 which is easily fatigued, and requires the 
 most varied degrees of excitement ; and so 
 the natural effect is incomparably more 
 interesting than the fixed representation of 
 it in painting. 
 
 The feeling that the Eternal Power is 
 addressing itself to us by a sort of special 
 revelation in the grandest effects is, I 
 believe, quite illusory, so far as each special 
 
Effect as the Expression of Nature 219 
 
 display is concerned, and yet it is an illusion, 
 like the familiar one that the sun really rises, 
 which one cannot overcome at the moment ; 
 nor, for my part, do I wish to overcome it. 
 Here the Imagination may be permitted a 
 degree of liberty that cannot very greatly 
 deceive any of us, for although we may 
 flatter ourselves too much in supposing that 
 the effect was made for us personally, it is 
 still a part of the general beauty of the 
 world which makes the world what it is 
 to us, at the same time habitation and so 
 much more, the medium by which the 
 unseen Power is constantly acting upon us. 
 
 The manner of the influence is by affect- 
 ing our states of feeling ; and here there 
 is this to be noted, that if the feeling is 
 not in ourselves already, the effects of nature 
 are perfectly impotent to excite it. All they 
 can do is to deepen or intensify feelings 
 that already exist, at least potentially. The 
 
2 20 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 strongest and most ready men of action do 
 not seem to be in the least affected by that 
 which would impress an artist profoundly, 
 and move a poet to tears ; they attend to 
 what concerns their affairs, and look to some 
 practical result. 
 
 Our own experience in such extremely 
 personal matters as those that concern feel- 
 ing is all that we can really know. I have 
 a friend who is deeply impressed by effects 
 that seemed to me at one time utterly in- 
 significant, and that do not strike me even 
 to-day as having any other quality than that 
 of extreme delicacy, but they are evidently 
 in close relation to his mental idiosyncrasy, 
 which is an uncommonly refined one, and 
 they give him the sort of happiness which 
 results from the feeling that the world, for 
 a short time at least, is exactly suitable to 
 our taste. It must then become for him a 
 sort of temporary heaven, as it certainly is 
 
Effect as the Expression of Nature 2 2 1 
 
 for me under effects of an entirely different 
 character. I sometimes wonder if there is 
 anybody else in the world on whom the 
 effects of landscape have as much influence 
 as they have on me. There are two very 
 opposite kinds of effect that I delight in 
 equally. A grey sky with shreds of rain : 
 cloud flying before the wind, highland hills 
 all russet in late autumn, and a dark lake 
 flecked with foam on the crests of ten thou- 
 sand waves ; an effect of this kind renews 
 lost youth for me, and creates at once a 
 sort of northern paradise dearer than the 
 lands of the vine. In the south there are 
 effects of a milder enchantment, especially 
 in summer evenings, when the heat of the 
 day is over, leaving a soft glow in the serene 
 sky, and making the rich woods look richer 
 than ever, the wheat-fields glow with a 
 deeper gold, and the distant mountains, 
 range behind range, darken to Titian's own 
 
222 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 azure. Under this effect the world seems 
 to me a paradise of poetic rest, as the 
 northern effect made it a heaven of healthy 
 energy. 
 
 To attempt any account, even the most 
 succinct, of the uses that landscape artists 
 have made of effect as a means of influence 
 upon our minds would be to weary the 
 reader with a repetition of much that he 
 knows already. The reader is well aware 
 that effect is the supreme power in land- 
 scape painting,' that it arouses or soothes 
 the feelings like music, that it ennobles the 
 humblest materials, and adds grandeur and 
 dignity to the grandest and most noble. 
 Without effect the finest landscapes in nature 
 have but little power on the mind ; aided 
 by beautiful or impressive effects the poorest 
 subjects become pictures. This being so it 
 is not surprising that all the most imagina- 
 tive landscape painters have looked to effect 
 
Effect as the Expression of Nature 223 
 
 as the secret of their power over their fellow- 
 men, and that their imaginations have been 
 exercised far more in the creation or selec- 
 tion of effects than in the portrayal of 
 tangible and measurable things. 
 
 Nevertheless, as drawing is the foundation 
 of art, the love of effect is sometimes looked 
 upon by able draughtsmen as the sign of 
 an inferior capacity, and we know that 
 transient and accidental effects were con- 
 demned in the last century as being incom- 
 patible with the i Grand Style.' This arose 
 from a confusion between figure and land- 
 scape art. Certainly, in painting a human 
 face it is a deviation of attention to think 
 about sunshine and shadow instead of think- 
 ing about the man's character and history, 
 but in landscape the character of the scene 
 depends so greatly upon effect that it 
 acquires an expressional value, which is the 
 equivalent in landscape for the changing 
 
224 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 expressions of the human face. So far from 
 being incompatible with style, the study of 
 effect is a positive encouragement to it by 
 massing details together, and by permitting, 
 or even requiring a breadth of treatment 
 which would be applied with far greater 
 difficulty to the obtrusive details of an effect- 
 less landscape. It is this tranquil breadth 
 that makes the charm of many old masters, 
 who certainly could not draw detail with a 
 delicacy at all comparable to that of our 
 most able contemporary book illustrators in 
 England and America. Look at Wilson, for 
 example, what infinite calm there is in his 
 quiet Italian afternoon or evening scenes ! 
 There are no landscapes more tranquillising 
 if we enjoy them in the right spirit ; that 
 is, if we quietly accept their influence with- 
 out setting up tiresome critical objections. 
 The long, warm afternoon is slowly waning 
 — so slowly that it seems as if it would be 
 
Effect as the Expression of Nature 225 
 
 always afternoon, or the summer evening 
 lingers yet, when the sun has sunk behind 
 tree and tower and the lakelet lies asleep 
 in its basin. 
 
 The reputation of Cuyp is largely due to 
 his quiet afternoon sentiment and to the 
 degree of imagination, not very elevated or 
 very powerful, but still genuine of its kind, 
 which enabled him to put himself in the 
 place of a traveller riding through a land 
 of sunshine, on a summer's day, and coming 
 perhaps on a white or light grey horse, as 
 yet but little wearied, to some ford in a 
 tranquil river. Without the imaginative 
 sentiment of effect what would be the charm 
 or value of pictures such as these ? 
 
 In marine pictures the range lies chiefly 
 between the extremes of calm and storm. 
 This, of course, is connected with imagina- 
 tive reference to the fates of men, to the 
 
 quiet labour done by fishermen in calm 
 
 Q 
 
226 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 weather, and the rough, dangerous work of 
 sailors in a tempest ; but besides this sym- 
 pathy with sailors there is always an under- 
 current of possibly unconscious reference to 
 the lives of all human beings whatever, for 
 we have all our range of experience between 
 tranquillity and unrest, and we are all of us 
 liable, almost as sailors are, to see our 
 tranquillity disturbed. 
 
 The value of the tranquillity of the sea, 
 in imaginative connexion with human life, 
 was very ably appreciated by Mr. Poole 
 when he painted his picture entitled, A 
 Midsummer Nights Dream. In this picture 
 a sailor boy is lying asleep on a rocky shore, 
 and behind him a wide expanse of sea is 
 rippling gently under an unseen moon. The 
 picture was very impressive, and the power 
 of it was entirely due to the imagined con- 
 nexion between nature and human life. 
 Some readers will remember how Alexander 
 
Effect as the Expression of Nature 227 
 
 Smith, in his poetry, was constantly using 
 the sea in this manner for its expression of 
 tumult or repose ; and I think he spoke of 
 it as being ' asleep in moonlight,' exactly like 
 Mr. Poole's boy. 
 
 Turner's science of effects is absolutely 
 without rivalry for variety ; but Girtin, in 
 a far more limited range, showed quite as 
 strong an appreciation of imaginative senti- 
 ment in effects. There could not be a 
 better lesson concerning the value of such 
 a sentiment than to take a few of Girtin's 
 most impressive drawings and copy the 
 material things in them only, without any 
 effect whatever. It would then be seen how 
 meagre the materials were in comparison 
 with the richness of the sentimental and 
 imaginative clothing with which he was able 
 to invest them. 
 
 In some of the narrower graphic arts the 
 artist has to restrict himself to a very limited 
 
228 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 choice amongst the effects of nature. For 
 example, in the kind of pen-drawing now so 
 frequently done, for typographic reproduction 
 it is useless to attempt delicate effects, and 
 the stronger, ones can only be represented 
 conventionally with such simple means as a 
 pen and perfectly black ink. When the ink 
 may be diluted, as in pen-drawing not done 
 for reproduction, the case is entirely altered 
 and the imagination has a wider range. A 
 singular consequence results from these tech- 
 nical restrictions, which is that those who 
 love effects the most attempt them the least 
 willingly in the limited arts. I observed to 
 an excellent professional pen draughtsman 
 that he never attempted skies, and soon dis- 
 covered from his conversation that it was 
 because he appreciated and understood those 
 qualities which were unapproachable in his 
 art. A draughtsman of less delicate percep- 
 tions would not have been so abstinent. 
 
Effect as the Expression of Nature 229 
 
 would not have laid himself open to the 
 charge of blank indifference to that which 
 he really loved in nature and probably appre- 
 ciated far better than his critics. Neverthe- 
 less, by a bold and frank conventionalism, 
 some skies may be treated with the pen, but 
 never the most delicate ones. 
 
 It may be observed, that the art of etching, 
 which is not suitable to all effects, is remark- 
 ably well adapted to some evening effects of 
 a kind that appeals very powerfully to the 
 imagination. Here, for example, is the re- 
 production of an etching by Mr. Chattock, 
 representing a long, low, wooden bridge 
 across a shallow stream going to some cot- 
 tages. Beyond the bridge is a wood of leaf- 
 less trees, and through the trees may be seen 
 a silvery river winding away in the distance 
 beneath a low, dark hill ; the sky contains 
 only some light wavy clouds. The sentiment 
 of such a scene could not have been conveyed 
 
230 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 more perfectly in any art. We do not even 
 feel the absence of colour. Technically, the 
 success of the plate may be attributed to the 
 depth obtained in the dark trees by a vigorous 
 biting, and to the contrasting lightness of the 
 wavy dry point lines in the sky. The imagin- 
 ative importance of these technical powers 
 would be understood by attempting to trans- 
 late this etching into a pen-drawing repro- 
 ducible by a typographic process. 
 
XX 
 
 Substance and Effect 
 
 HE scientific conception of nature is 
 
 always without effect, and so is the 
 common or practical conception. In these 
 cases the mind abstracts from nature the 
 qualities that concern the science or the 
 practical business, and dwells upon them to 
 the exclusion of others, a process which is 
 absolutely necessary to efficient scientific or 
 practical thinking, but outside of the artistic 
 imagination. All modern conceptions of 
 landscape, whether in the brain of the poet 
 or the painter, include effect as well as 
 substance. 
 
 I have already briefly alluded to a common 
 confusion between the resources of the figure 
 
232 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 painter and the landscape painter, by which 
 the importance of effect to the latter is much 
 under-rated. In many pictures of the figure 
 it is evident that the artist, so far from seeking 
 strong effects of light and shade, has positively 
 been at some pains to avoid them by placing 
 his model in such open and diffused light that 
 it is well seen, but nothing more. You can- 
 not affirm on which side the light strikes 
 more than on the other, you do not know 
 what time of day it is, nor the season of the 
 year, nor the nature of the weather. There 
 is no light and shade, though there are lights 
 and darks ; the eyes are dark perhaps, and 
 the hair ; the linen may be white, and the 
 costume brown or black. In pictures of this 
 nature the interest is independent of effect ; 
 it depends on the personages represented, 
 and we think of what they were and did ; we 
 think of Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth, 
 and not of sun or shadow. 
 
 « 
 
Substance and Effect 233 
 
 Another way in which the art that deals 
 with the figure often widely differs from land- 
 scape — I mean from fully developed modern 
 landscape — is in the accentuation or neglect 
 of line. The figure painter may still often 
 proceed, without reproach, very much upon 
 the principles followed by the designer of an 
 Etruscan vase ; he may rely, first of all, on 
 clean linear definition, especially in decorative 
 work, drawing all outlines firmly and care- 
 fully, and afterwards filling up the spaces so 
 enclosed with colour. This is the process 
 natural to primitive art, the first inevitable 
 process that we find everywhere from China 
 to Egypt, from Egypt through Greece and 
 Rome to mediaeval France and England ; 
 and it is therefore not at all surprising that 
 there should be a strong temptation to fall 
 back upon such a process, even in later ages, 
 since it is the easiest and most natural to 
 man. It is, however, the very worst of all 
 
234 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 possible preparations for modern landscape 
 painting, an art in which the mapping out of 
 substances by frontier lines is contrary alike 
 to sentiment and to truth. 
 
 You may map out a man's leg and boot 
 with clear lines, and fill up the thigh part 
 with the colour of the cloth he wears, and the 
 lower part with black for the leather, and you 
 will have a recognisable leg and boot. Not 
 only that, but if the artist is a very able 
 draughtsman his ability will be evident. You 
 will say that his line is pure, that its curves 
 are beautiful, that he has studied the ancient 
 Greeks, and if his pictures are of an Academic 
 character, you will say that he ought to be 
 made a Royal Academician. 
 
 If a landscape painter worked on the same 
 principles of line and mass without mystery 
 and effect, you would probably not see his 
 work, because it would hardly be received in 
 the exhibitions ; but if, by chance, it were 
 
Substance and Effect 235 
 
 accepted, you would condemn it as dry and 
 hard, and deplore especially its lack of feeling 
 and imagination. 
 
 The two kinds of art are not measured in the 
 same measure or weighed in the same balance. 
 Sound and careful drawing is so much valued 
 in the figure that it condones for the absence 
 of effect, and Academies are willing, for the 
 sake of it, to tolerate the most mediocre 
 colour. In landscape painting, on the con- 
 trary, an artist who draws carefully gets no 
 thanks, but he may win success by effect and 
 colour when his drawing is almost formless. 
 
 The reason for this difference has been 
 already given. It is because in figure paint- 
 ing expression may be obtained by the mere 
 tension or relaxation of muscles and the 
 animation of the eyes, all which is an affair 
 of drawing ; whereas in landscape painting 
 expression is given to every scene by effects 
 of light and shade and of colour. Therefore 
 
236 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 in landscape painting effect is of more im- 
 portance, and substance of less, than in any 
 other form of art. 
 
 I may observe, by way of parenthesis, 
 that this is a misfortune for landscape 
 painters, as it takes away from under their 
 feet the only positive basis on which the art 
 of painting is founded, and if a landscape 
 painter does not hit the public taste by his 
 effects there is nothing for him to appeal to. 
 In landscape one might draw as well as 
 Gerome without having the slightest chance, 
 whilst some clever interpreter of natural 
 effects or ingenious inventor of studio effects 
 was painting his way to fortune. I am far 
 from desiring to undervalue the work of 
 figure painters, well knowing what a price 
 of industry and perseverance they have to 
 pay for their success ; but I say that in 
 having a positive sort of work to do, that is 
 measurable when it is done, they enjoy a 
 
Substance and Effect 237 
 
 great practical advantage over landscape 
 painters, who catch and interpret the most 
 fugitive effects, their success in doing so 
 being in its nature what neither they them- 
 selves nor their most favourable critics 
 can demonstrate, yet what anybody may 
 deny. 
 
 The sense of the necessity for effect in 
 landscape is so general that the worst land- 
 scape painters aim at effect as their great 
 object, often failing much less from lack of 
 appreciation of it in nature than from ignor- 
 ance of tonic and chromatic relations. The 
 best landscape painters have exactly the 
 same aim, the difference between the two 
 cases being that greater delicacy of percep- 
 tion gives a more refined quality to the 
 work, whilst superior strength of memory 
 and fecundity of invention make it fuller and 
 more interesting. 
 
 Between these two classes of painters of 
 
238 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 effect — the worst and the best of landscape 
 painters — comes an intermediate class, en- 
 tangled in matter, laboriously endeavouring 
 to realise substance, deserving all the honour 
 that may be due to painstaking endeavour, 
 yet never touching the heart of the public, 
 and, notwithstanding all their knowledge and 
 all their manual skill, passing through life 
 like other ordinary workmen, with certain 
 oblivion at the end of it. The case of these 
 men seems all the harder that their know- 
 ledge is often sounder than that of the effect 
 painters, and certainly it is more positive, 
 more amenable to exact criticism. It has 
 happened to me many a time to come upon 
 their strong and observant work, and to 
 think, ' What knowledge is here ! what 
 energy and study have been expended to 
 gain the power of producing this ! ' and yet 
 I know that it cannot be immortal work, 
 that the artist is only like some traveller or 
 
Sttbstance and Effect 239 
 
 journalist who toils for the passing hour. 
 Meanwhile some poet, with perhaps not half 
 this knowledge, will see the poetic aspects of 
 things and paint them far more slightly, but 
 so that his canvas shall be a joy for ever. 
 In literature there are many such examples. 
 What substance is there in some of the most 
 charming verses ? What substance is there 
 in Poe ? On the other hand, the most sub- 
 stantial parts of Wordsworth are often a 
 dead weight and his lighter work more 
 enduring, whilst even in Scott the substance 
 is now telling against him — his Pegasus is 
 clad in armour, and encumbered by it. 
 
 The progress of a landscape painter ap- 
 pears to be through a kind of materialism 
 to a visionary idealism by which he attains 
 in its full perfection the artistic estimate of 
 things. Materialism appears to be necessary 
 as a stage, but only as a stage. If we began 
 landscape painting in the visionary stage we 
 
240 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 should be too ignorant of matter, and our 
 painting would be like a dress without a 
 body inside it. Suppose the case of an 
 amateur of genius passing to the visionary 
 stage without dwelling long enough in the 
 study of things, his painting might be poet- 
 ical, but it would be flimsy and weak, and 
 would not be taken seriously by artists. 
 They would prefer sound materialist work, 
 that is, work in the second stage. In other 
 words, artists prefer work showing sound 
 progress, as far as it has gone, to premature 
 accomplishment. 
 
 It may make my meaning clearer if I take 
 a special example, such as a full-grown oak. 
 Considered as matter it is a column of the 
 strongest wood we have, with a foundation 
 much firmer than that of ordinary stakes and 
 piles. The column is so strong that with its 
 immense head of foliage it usually resists the 
 most furious gales of our latitudes. No 
 
Substance and Effect 241 
 
 edifice built by man, with the single excep- 
 tion of a lighthouse, has foundations in any 
 way comparable to its foundations. 
 
 An artist much impressed with this idea 
 of strength would probably draw the oak 
 with hard firm outlines, and give its rugged 
 character with great force and truth, but he 
 would pay less attention to the light and 
 shade and colour. In a more advanced 
 stage, he would think of light and colour 
 more and think of them together. Finally, 
 in the visionary stage, an oak would be to 
 him simply a variety of colour masses with 
 their gradations and much confusion of 
 mystery in leaves and branches. In this 
 completely artistic way of seeing things there 
 is no necessity for thinking about matter, 
 though it is represented with a higher kind 
 of truth, as to its appearances, than by 
 students who think of substance. 
 
 We are all of us visionary artists for one 
 
 R 
 
242 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 familiar object, the moon. We do not think 
 of the heavy globe of rock with prodigious 
 cloudless mountains, sun-heated to an in- 
 tolerable temperature. That is the scientific 
 conception that we keep in some odd corner 
 of the brain for use when it may be wanted, 
 as one keeps a scientific instrument in a 
 drawer, but in ordinary times the moon 
 means for us a crescent or a disc of silvery 
 and sometimes of golden splendour, the 
 brightest thing that we are able to look upon 
 in nature. Now to sever, in this way, the 
 splendour of the moon from the idea of her 
 reality, her substance, is exactly the artistic 
 way of seeing. An accomplished artist sees 
 terrestrial things in the same way, as so 
 much splendour or gloom. He sees a bridge 
 under the moon, and thinks no more of the 
 granite in the bridge than of the lunar 
 granite, if the moon is made of anything like 
 granite. The bridge is a certain tone of 
 
Substance and Effect 243 
 
 colour, the moon is a certain degree of 
 brightness. 
 
 All nature, as seen by an artist in the 
 most advanced condition of culture, is but a 
 variety of coloured spaces. One thing is 
 hardly more material than another. The 
 lead-covered dome of a distant church may 
 be quite near to the tone and colour of a 
 cloud, and scarcely seem more opaque. 
 The sea has been sometimes really taken 
 for a wall, and a roof for a mountain. In 
 scenery where the Alps are sometimes visible 
 on the horizon, but not always visible, clouds 
 are often taken for mountains and mountains 
 for clouds, in fact, they are not distinguish- 
 able at all by tone and colour, nor do the 
 distant mountains look more substantial, the 
 only sure distinction is in the mountain 
 forms, which require to be known scientific- 
 ally for perfect certitude. It used to be 
 one of the faults commonly found with 
 
244 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 Turner that his land did not look substantial, 
 especially where it met the sky ; and cer- 
 tainly the more he advanced in art the less 
 did his mind distinguish between substance 
 and effect, till it finally seemed almost to 
 lose the sense of substance, and the world 
 became for him a vision, or succession of 
 visions, in which castle, cloud, and mountain- 
 peak were all of them only what dreams 
 are made of. 
 
 If, however, it is true that progress in 
 art leads to this visionary state, and that so 
 illusory a condition is the final attainment 
 of the painter, we have to ask ourselves 
 whether it may not be injurious in one way 
 to the imagination itself; for if the imagin- 
 ation loses its hold of fact how can it retain 
 its vigour ? 
 
 It is a very delicate and difficult question 
 to answer, because this perfection of art is 
 perilously near to its decline, and depends 
 
Substance and Effect 245 
 
 upon the degree of permanence that may be 
 granted to the faculties of particular human 
 beings. I should say, however, that when 
 an artist mind loses the sense of substance, 
 the vision of the world becomes for it what 
 Wordsworth aptly called ' eye music,' and 
 that painting is then no longer a study of 
 tangible things at all, but a dream like the 
 dreams of a musician. Then comes a new 
 exercise of the imagination, which no longer 
 occupies itself with imaginary scenes and 
 things, but only with sequences and relations, 
 — in short, it becomes musically creative. 
 It may perceive the most unsuspected rela- 
 tions between colour and form in landscape, 
 and in other things that are commonly sup- 
 posed to have no relation to landscape, and 
 even in accidental combinations of mere pig- 
 ments, as when Turner got three children to 
 dabble water-colours together till he suddenly 
 stopped them at the propitious moment. 
 
246 Imagination in Landscape Painting 
 
 These researches and exercises may easily 
 be condemned as trifling, or even as a de- 
 sertion of nature, but they are certainly not 
 a desertion of art, for there may be a colour- 
 music without meaning, invented by the 
 imagination, exactly as there is a sound-music 
 without meaning, or, at least, of which the 
 meaning could not possibly be expressed in 
 any other language than its own. Therefore, 
 when we come to this kind of imagination, 
 in which substance is either banished alto- 
 gether or reduced to a minimum, whilst the 
 delicacies of colour are retained, the only 
 intelligent way of considering it is to think 
 of it as an art existing on its own basis, 
 which is almost, though not quite, independent 
 of Nature. 
 
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